Chapter Text
Adrien David Johnson has always been a reserved child. He cried as a baby, as most babies do, and babbled noises back at his mother when she spoke with him, but overall he was a generally quiet baby, then child.
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He dreams of green eyes and blonde hair, a soft voice and kind words murmuring to him in a language that is as familiar as the pale face that nuzzles his hair. There is another voice, a deeper one, but it is familiar as well, and even if it is not as soft it is still kind.
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The first time he spoke to another person was his fourth birthday. One of Adrien’s friends had grabbed another child’s stuffed rabbit, Mr Ears, whom they carried everywhere. Adrien had seen his friend crying, and very calmly said “Give it back, you’re being mean.” It had left everyone ironically speechless, before things were very loud as they all had something to say about Adrien’s “first words.”
Adrien did not explain that he kept quiet because he had to make sure he was speaking the correct language. He felt nervous at the thought of speaking in the language of his dreams and disappointing his parents. They had never said anything that would make him believe they would be disappointed, but he had also never heard anything other than English from them, and all of the shows, and music, and radio stations, were also in English.
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He had copied the sounds that mean mother, and mother was very happy. She smiled, and gently threw him in the air, and rubbed their noses together. She made many happy sounds he didn’t understand yet, but some of them he did, and Adrien knew that he had done well.
...
He had copied the sounds that mean father, and mother was very happy. She smiled, and gently threw him in the air, and twirled father around in a circle before turning back to Adrien and rubbing their noses together. She made happy sounds, and father smiled and placed a hand on Adrien’s head, and Adrien knew that he had done well.
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At the tender age of six several of his elementary school teachers had approached his mother to ask if he had trouble making friends, and he had nearly been sent to a child psychologist to see if he had some kind of developmental delay. His ability to sit calmly in class and his near-perfect grades had ended up preventing that, but it had been a close call. Apparently having few friends that he liked to sit quietly with was concerning to some of the teachers. Adrien would be more mad except he feels relieved as those teachers are also very quick to stop any bullying from the louder children, and Adrien has always disliked people who are bullies or liars.
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Adrien is sitting on a window bench, sunlight warming his face, the faintest hint of a breeze ruffles his hair through the opening at the top of the window. There are families walking together outside. As Adrien watches, a child trips and before she can even scrunch her face in discomfort her father has swooped in and scooped her up, spinning around before pretending to fall, and the child forgets their pain to smile widely and shriek with laughter.
...
Adrien is going to school, and his heart is racing at just the thought of such a thing! He has friends! They have inside jokes! They hang out! They ask him questions and expect honest answers! They pay attention to his interests so their time together is more enjoyable!
...
The colour orange fills his mind. Lemon-lime eyes peer down at him as honey-sweet words fill his ears. The face shifts, sometimes it is a fox, sometimes a chameleon, but always it leaves him unsettled. Something is wrong here. Why do so few people notice that something is wrong?
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Of the people Adrien would consider friends most of them had known each other since they were babies. Their mothers all attended the same pregnancy classes, and later the same mom-and-baby groups.
Adrien knows that his closest friends have a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy when it comes to him. When his eyes glow green like radiation in cartoons, when objects turn to dust and leave a black pile on the floor just before they were planning to steal their parents’ vacuum, when he perfectly dodges something he shouldn’t have seen coming, when he kisses a bandaid and it glows pink before he carefully puts it over a scraped knee or elbow and when it falls off it reveals only smooth, unbroken skin…
Well. They’ve never asked Adrien if he has magical powers, or if he’s like a superhero. They’ve never confirmed that anyone has noticed anything strange that was based on firm, solid, confirmed knowledge.
So if anyone ever asks if they’ve noticed something strange about Adrien they say his father dresses strangely (a fact confirmed by everyone except the man himself), or his mother can sing high enough to break glass (a fact that she brags about frequently), and if anyone insists on any kind of strangeness about Adrien they say they don’t know anything strange about Adrien, (they may have seen things that are strange, but none of them have confirmed the strangeness, and thus they don’t know it) but you could always ask him? See what he says?
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It is Adrien’s birthday and the house is quiet. The halls echo. The ceiling stretches up and up, the spaces getting bigger and bigger the longer he stares at the walls covered in portraits of people he doesn’t know, at the plants that he is not allowed to touch, and at the doors to his father’s office that is never rarely open.
...
It is Adrien’s birthday and he can smell stinky cheese. People are celebrating but everyone is unhappy. There are bubbles, and screaming, and something is very wrong. A flash of pink light. Ladybugs swirl in the air. Resignation, then joy, then happiness. He is not alone this time.
...
He is alone again, sitting in a room filled with things and no life. The ceiling is high. The windows are large. The room is cold. Then there is a feeling, a pressure on his head. Deep, vibrating, purring. Pitch black fur and toxic green eyes, joy and exasperation, happiness and stinky cheese. Maybe now he is not alone.
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When Adrien started to sleep poorly shortly after his tenth birthday people notice. Teachers told his parents that he fell asleep in class, and his friends told their parents by accident when they were asking about “a friend” who fell asleep in class (“no we don’t mean Adrien why would we be talking about Adrien who is Adrien stop asking questions I am the one asking questions”).
Adrien didn't tell people about why he wasn't sleeping because that would just invite more questions that made him tired. Then he would get even less sleep. Also, his friends would never ask, and Adrien was very aware of why this was, and he was grateful because it meant he wouldn’t have to explain what was going on, but also resentful because even amongst his friends he is alone.
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“See you tomorrow?” Adrien asks cautiously.
“Of course, dude!” Nino gently pushes his shoulder. “It’s only Monday! We’ve got four more days before the weekend! I don’t think I can get through this without my bench buddy!”
...
“You’re coming to the hotel with me today, daddy said so!” Cloé says absently, grabbing Adrien’s arm and tugging him after her. It’s a gentler grip than it used to be, and her nails are shorter today, real instead of gel. She’s holding her phone in her other hand, and Sabrina is carrying her school bag. Adrien doesn’t protest.
...
“Hey, you’re still coming over after class school, right?” Adrien comes face to face with brilliant blue eyes and hair done up in a single high ponytail.
“Of course,” he says, feeling a smile creep across his face, “I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”
Marinette scoffs and tossed her hair dramatically. “You’re gonna eat those words when I whoop your ass again, Agreste!”
Hands go up in pre-emptive surrender. “The Lady is cruel today I see.” He turns it into a nonchalant shrug. “The bigger you think you are, the harder you fall.”
A loud gasp, Marinette biting back a smile as she shakes her finger in his face. “I work in a bakery pretty-boy! I know all about feeding people their just desserts!”
“I was referring to how full of hot air your head is,” he says dryly.
Marinette just scoffs and rolls her eyes, turning away like that will hide her wide grin and delighted eyes. “So are bakeries!”
...
A loud crash echoes through the apartment and Marientte meets Adrien’s eyes.
Adrien sighs and holds up five fingers, counting down and mouthing the numbers.
5…
4…
3…
2…
1…
“Mama! Hugo tripped me and your dress form fell over!”
“Mama! Louis was being mean and making fun of me!”
A moment of silence, then Emma appears in the doorway. “Mama, Papa,” she says seriously, standing as tall as she can and trying her best to copy what she likes to call ‘Mama’s Business Pose,’ (it was originally ‘Mama’s Ass-Kicking Pose, but that name was quickly vetoed by both Adrien and Marinette (and also who exactly taught you that phrase we need to talk to them)), “Louis and Hugo are both being silly gooses-”
“Geese, darling, not gooses.”
“-they were being silly geese and Sass knocked over your dress form.”
A little green face pops up from Emma’s hair. “If you would jussst let me-”
“No.”
“-but I could fix-!”
“NO.”
…
Louis and Hugo peer out from behind Emma. “Does this mean we’re not in trouble,” comes the tentative question from Hugo.
Marinette hums. “Well, that depends. Was it the dress form with the purple fabric covered in glitter for Uncle Jagged? Or was it the dress form with purple fabric and no glitter for Aunt Penny?”
The heads disappear and the boys pull back in the room to double check. They don’t reappear, and the silence is deafening.
Marientte and Adrien lock eyes again.
“Plagg for the glitter?”
“Absolutely not.”
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Adrien liked the dreams. Even the bad ones were precious. There were so many different things that happened in his dreams, Adrien had learned so much just by being asleep. Honestly, he has no idea how normal people manage to learn anything when they have so little time to do it.
His favourite dreams were when he was spending time with Marinette and their children. Even when something was wrong in those dreams, usually because someone broke something or did something they knew they shouldn't have, there was so much love underlying every interaction that Adrien felt like his whole body was full of warmth and joy when he woke up.
He also liked the dreams with his friends, both in school and afterwards, because they helped him figure out how to be his own person and live by himself. Marinette’s expression when she had to teach how to peel potatoes was both hilarious (because she honestly didn’t believe he didn’t know how to do it at first) and also a little scary (because once she believed him she was 100% ready to kill certain people).
Once he turned ten the dreams started getting bad. More than just family bickering and the occasional villain fight that ended with everything and everyone okay. Adrien dreamt about destroying the world, an endless sea of white and blue with nothing left but him (alone again); about him fighting alongside Marinette and their friends -with powers stronger than anything he’s seen on TV or read about from the Justice League- and losing.
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The sky is full of orange and grey smoke, the colours turning to purple as it gets closer to the areas of the city that are on fire. The sun, when it can be seen through the smoke, is violently red.
Ladybug is covered in soot and ash, dry materials sticking to the bloody wetter parts of her suit. There is a deep cut over her left eye, and she had to take a moment to speed the healing enough that it would stop bleeding and impeding her vision.
Chat Noir knows that he’s no better. Their suits may help make their wearers impervious to most things, but they do not make them invulnerable, nor do they prevent various substances from getting on them. He can feel deep bruising what feels like everywhere the suit covers from being thrown through various buildings, and he knows that he has his own collection of open wounds where the suit doesn’t protect him.
The Fox, Bee, and Horse have fallen, their Miraculous collected to hold until the Miraculous Ladybug is cast and they can be returned to their holders.
Something explodes in the distance.
Ladybug sighs, brows furrowed. He can’t see her eyes or expression quite so clearly with the mask, but she looks exhausted. Not resigned, not hopeless; exhausted.
“Once more unto the breach, chaton?”
He gently knocks their shoulders together, leaving them in contact and leaning into her a little.
“Always, mon coeur.”
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When Arien was eleven his parents decided to move to Metropolis. The first reason for doing so was that they figured a change in scenery, and access to better paediatric mental health specialists, would help Adrien’s nightmares.
Nothing can help them, he knows, but it’s not like he is going to tell them that. Mother maybe, but father…
No.
He’s not cruel, but he’s not affectionate either. Even if he was, there is something deep down in his soul, instinctive, that refuses to put his trust in a father figure.
So they’ve moved to The Big City.
Not that they hadn’t been living in a city before, but there is a difference between fourty thousand people and four million people. Adrien doesn’t like it.
There are so many more people, everything is so loud, the buildings are too tall, and there are far too many cars trying to get everywhere all the time. Adrien spends a not-insignificant amount of time counting how many ambulances, police cars, and fire trucks get stuck in traffic within the view of his window on a weekly basis. The numbers are concerning. They rise whenever Superman is spotted in the area because tourists, both pedestrian and driving, block the roads. He’s thinking of sending a letter to the City Council, or whoever is in charge of Emergency Services here.
His parents do not plan to move back home any time soon, despite Adrien’s complaints. At age eleven he has been moved to a new location and his entire life uprooted for the first time (in this life) and Adrien is Not Happy. Even if his friends and their parents were being weird about him falling asleep in class that didn’t mean he wanted to never see them again!
His father, David Gabriel Johnson, is entirely unsympathetic. The second reason they moved was because he was promoted and this required working in a different, larger, office that was much too far to commute to regularly. Instead of taking the company up on their offer of individual company housing within the city and regular transportation to and from said accommodations, Gabriel (his legal first name, David, was too common apparently) decided to move the entire family permanently for the aforementioned first reason.
Adrien’s mother, Eleanor Maria Johnson, is a music teacher. She is also struggling after the move, given that none of her clients were inclined to move with them to continue paying for lessons. She is not qualified to teach at a public or private school, so she teaches lessons on singing and several instruments to people of all ages. The variety of wind instruments, as well as the piano, that she knows well enough to teach were enough to help her stand out in the comparatively smaller city they came from, but Metropolis is far larger and she is having trouble finding new students.
Adrien has noticed that she is having trouble keeping their new apartment as clean as their previous house, and spends more time laying in bed sleeping than she did before, so he’s started cleaning things for her so she can worry less. Some of his dreams are about wandering around a big empty house, but a lot more are about him as a grown-up with three children, a wife, and lots of strange floating maybe-deities, and the three children and assorted maybe-deities are much more messy than Adrien has ever been. He’s learned a lot about cleaning in those dreams.
Not that Gabriel cares. He is spending increasing amounts of time at work, and tends to ignore Adrien and Eleanor when he’s home (except for when he says something about how dinner is cold, or how his coffee is running low, or how the tops of the cabinets are getting dusty, or how the garbage and recycling need to be taken out etc.).
Adrien’s school is boring, and all of the other kids are already friends with each other and aren’t interested in him as anything more than a new person they can ask rude questions of for a few minutes before ignoring him. On the first day Adrien has a moment where he feels sad there’s no boy named Nino to be his friend, before remembering that he’s never met anybody named Nino in real life and he has no idea why he would be sad about this.
Living in the same city as Superman was fun until he realized that people usually only see the hero if he has to rescue them from something bad, and the Superboys also go to school apparently so they’re not seen as much in general. That, and the mentioned tourists, have made their existence much less exciting.
All in all, Adrien is lonely.
This is why, when he starts having Dreams every night instead of maybe once a week he doesn’t say anything to anyone. Because nobody is around to listen.
It’s also when Adrien realizes that Gabriel looks almost the same as the person who seems to be Adrien’s dream father. They even have the same name, and dress in similar clothes. This Gabriel doesn’t own a fashion company like Dream-Gabriel, but he seems to work just as much.
When Adrien turns twelve his dreams start getting worse, but by this point he’s very good at pretending that he’s not lonely and is getting sleep. Before when he had what he would consider a ‘bad’ dream he was just dealing with colourful monsters, but one night Adrien wakes up unable to breathe because the person who was making those monsters and who was the villain that he was fighting with his awesome partner Ladybug was Dream-Gabriel, his Dream-Father.
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It is another fight, their second today, and Ladybug is off letting her kwami recharge.
They’ve had seven fights over the last three days not including their current fight.
Chat Noir is tired. Ladybug is tired. Paris is tired.
Why won’t this stop.
How can they win when their villain always drags random civilians into heir conflict and never shows himself?
This isn’t a TV show. There are no morals here.
How can untrained children defeat an adult man they can’t find?
...
Hawkmoth was out, he was here, and they missed him.
...
There are more heroes with them now, but Hawkmoth remains elusive. He has Mayura now, and she’s been seen in person, but only a few times. Nothing that could help find them!
...
Chat Noir freezes, staring in disbelief at Ladybug.
His head is swimming, vision edging grey. The world is moving around him, and yet his feet are planted firmly on the ground.
“Chaton! You need to breathe!”
Blue eyes, red suit, black hair. Ladybug. Of course it’s her, she was just talking to him. She looks worried. His face is cradled in one of her hands, the other is holding his own hand to her chest as it rises and falls rhythmically.
Oh.
Right.
Breathing.
He gasps, drawing air into slowly unfreezing lungs. He can hear each breath as he inhales and exhales. It’s night in Paris, the streets are only mostly empty, but he can’t hear the cars. He can’t hear anything except his breathing, fast an unsteady, and Ladybug’s, slow and regular.
Ladybug guides them down, sitting against a chimney stack, the illusion that they are out of sight helps to calm his thoughts.
“You said…” he stares up at her, “you said…”
She closes her eyes, tucking his head under her chin. Her latest growth spurt has her notably taller than their classmates, and he loves how she can rest her head atop his when they’re both standing. She can curl around him, his amazing Lady, and for at least a moment he feels safe.
Right now, even like this, he doesn’t feel safe.
“I’m so sorry, chaton. I know you said he couldn’t be, but things are getting worse, and since I now hold the Miraculous Box I figured I could and should make sure given he’s been our only solid lead.”
Her hand firmly runs over his hair.
Even if he is unsafe, if his home has been compromised by the true identity of his father Hawkmoth, at least he is not alone.
Not in this.
...
It’s over. Chat Noir stands above the unconscious form of Gabriel Agreste, butterfly miraculous in hand. The purple kwami, Nooroo, had only looked at him sadly before retreating into the brooch.
Ladybug is next to him, peacock brooch already safely stored away in her yoyo, Nathalie also unconscious on the floor before her.
It’s over and yet…
“My lady…” he whispers, lost.
She gently turns him to face her, ducking down to look him in the eye. “Oh, m'âme,” the words come out as a whisper, a breath. His head still fits neatly under her chin, and he turns his face into her neck so he doesn’t have to look at the room around them.
His father’s Hawkmoth’s study.
“I won’t say it will be alright, or that things will be easy from here, mon coeur.” She’s petting his hair again. The pressure is nice, it helps him feel less like he’s about to float away. “But I can promise you that whatever happens from here, you will not be alone."