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Adrien isn't sure how long he can keep pretending that everything is fine, both as Adrien and as Chat Noir; that he can watch the videos they make about his father at Zoo, with an emotion beyond grief; or that he can continue to look Ladybug in the eyes.
He collapses onto the bed, letting Froggy fall onto his chest, and exhales a long sigh.
“Hey kid, are you okay?” A voice that sounds like Plagg’s tickles his ear. And that’s the question: is everything okay?
“Yep,” Adrien pops the p, keeping his voice low and his gaze on the ceiling of his room. It's not like he's completely under surveillance in his room, not anymore: it's another of the restrictions he lost with his father's death, and Nathalie only visits his room to check that everything is okay and remind him about the three meals a day—that's nothing new; but Adrien isn't sure he can raise his voice right now.
Any answer he gives Plagg means giving voice to his thoughts, means that something is wrong, and means that all of this is real: that he is doubting Ladybug's word, and that in itself is a bad thing.
“Do you want to talk?” He sees less and hears more as Plagg flies toward Froggy, and soon feels the little paws rubbing against the back of the hand holding the stuffed animal. The touch tickles him, as it always has.
In these circumstances, he can say that the touch grounds him to reality.
“Do you think Ladybug trusts me? Like Chat?”
He tries, he really, really tries. But these are the kinds of things he can't talk to his doctor about, no other heroes except Luka and Alix know his identity—but Luka is not only in Brazil, Adrien also doesn't want to burden him with anything beyond his training as a guardian; and Alix is busy guarding the time, she can't neglect her duty because her old classmate has emotional problems, nor Adrien wants to be the cause of her neglecting said duty.
And he doesn't want to risk either his identity as Chat, or his girlfriend's integrity, by talking to Marinette about this.
Which means one thing—Kwamis are his only confidants. Technically speaking, he's laying his emotions bare to a God who just happens to be able to respond.
“What are you talking about, kiddo? But of course she trusts you! For a while, you were the dynamic duo, the Yang to her Yin, the sweet aroma to her cheese selection!”
But does Ladybug think that way? Certainly, it's been a while since he last had that kind of thoughts, but Adrien is sure that they remain, no matter how long and how many times he tries to hide them—like a boat at sea, helpless against any changing tides and vulnerable to the worst storms. He remembers that the last time this happened was when the team began to grow, new heroes emerged as a result of her own training as a Guardian of the Miraculous, and Chat began to be displaced.
Well, ‘displaced’ might be an inappropriate way to put it, but it was a fact that his relevance, his value as the bearer of the Miraculous of Destruction, had been reduced to the background, and Adrien never knew why. It was clear that his partner had gone through something, something she didn’t want to talk about.
Adrien couldn't help but wonder if she had started hiding things from him since then, or if it was something that was already looming at the time—well, when you look at it that way, it's not surprising that she rarely wants to talk to him about her problems within the mask, if he doesn't know the exact point at which their dynamic began to change more than a reference point.
“Adrien, what's wrong?”
The fact that she refused to talk about the final battle against Monarch outside of Gabriel's sacrifice. That's the point that confuses Adrien the most, and he doesn't know if he would have had the willpower to face the fact that Ladybug trusts him more as Chat Noir than as Adrien, but he can't help feeling that there are too many details that Ladybug didn't tell him back in London.
He knows Ladybug could have tried something—heck, even the Miraculous Cure can bring people back from the dead, he's seen it!
So why does this part of his mind keep telling him that it's not enough, that there should be more than what she wants to tell the media?
If there are details of that battle she wants to keep private, Adrien would understand—Chat Noir would understand. But he has been in this fight alongside his partner from the beginning, so why can't he stop feeling like he is less valuable than Ladybug?
“Kitty, I need you to breathe.”
But if there's one thing that Ladybug would never be able to make him reconsider—the recent, sudden argument she had with Rena during the confrontation against Revelator. He wants to believe it was because she discovered Ladybug's identity, but does such a revelation warrant having his partners disappear from the field in the middle of a battle? Has the person behind the spotted mask been so bad as to guarantee Rena's disapproval?
But Adrien isn't stupid, no matter how much people want to believe it: it's a fact that Ladybug broke the only rule they had from the beginning and revealed her identity to Rena—no, to Alya. Their body language has been so obvious for a while, and it's clear there's some camaraderie there; so it can't have anything to do with their identities.
So what is so serious that it required him to use his new power on Alya?
“Adrien!” Plagg's voice, raspy and reeking of rancid cheese, sounded in front of him, and Adrien blinked to notice the kwami hovering there, its paws about to reach the bridge of his nose and forcing Adrien to cross his eyes to focus on his tiny partner. But something was wrong: besides concern, Adrien noticed terror in his kwami's eyes. “I've been trying to talk to you for minutes, but you weren't responding, and you almost…”
However, Adrien is able to perceive it, the sound embedded in his memory after a full year of battles: the fluttering of a butterfly, and he almost falls off the mattress when he notices the dark color that was about to touch Froggy.
The shriek that comes out of him is anything but Adrien as he jumps in place, hugging the stuffed animal tighter to his chest, but the deep breaths he takes and the fluttering of the Ultrakuma flying away only served to settle the weight of his next choice.
“Adrien?” Nathalie's voice sounds before she knocks on the door, and he feels Plagg's breath on the back of his neck as his guardian's head peeks through the door. “I heard you scream, are you okay?”
“Yes, yes, sorry,” he replies before he can think of his words, and looks at Froggy once more before putting him back on the nightstand. “I'm just… going out for a moment. I need to see the doctor.”
And hopefully, he'll be able to talk to Ladybug afterward.
He'll figure out how to bring the topic with both of them, what words to use. Adrien has always been an expert at that, after all.