THE NIGHT THAT ALL OF Paris searched for Adrien Agreste ended in a jail cell.

Actually, since it was a tiny room in the police station's holding facilities, it was technically not jail. Still, this type of confinement was a new low for Adrien.

Detective Raincomprix had been the one who processed Adrien into the system. He took Adrien's fingerprints and swabbed the inside of his cheek with a cotton tip. He gave Adrien a written copy of his rights, reciting them from memory.

And all Adrien could think about was the day he came to their high school for Careers Day. The man was still known inside Adrien's head as Officer Roger, Sabrina's dad, from adolescent memories with deep imprints. Officer then, detective now. He'd gotten a promotion, it seemed.

Good for him.

Halfway through the pamphlet, Roger said, "You have the right to inform someone about your remand into police custody—" And the stocky man had cut himself short, coughing awkwardly. "Do you have anyone you'd like to call?"

Adrien held himself still. Who did he have to notify? His mother was gone, and the last place he saw his father had been in the back of an armoured vehicle.

"Never mind," Roger mumbled, after three fraught seconds, continuing down the list. "You have the right to be examined by a doctor and receive medical care as needed. You have the right to legal representation. If you do not have a lawyer, one can be provided for you at any time upon your request. You have the right to. . ."

Roger asked questions about Adrien's whereabouts, his well-being, his last communication with Gabriel, and whether he'd had any previous indication of his father's crimes. Satisfied with Adrien's answers, he had guided Adrien to the cell and vanished, with a promise to return. That was half an hour ago, and Adrien didn't care where Roger had gone.

In the cell, Adrien kept bouncing his thumb off of his fingers, feeling the residual ink stick. Everything was bolted down. Half the room was occupied by a bed, which was a solid wooden block fixed to the concrete floor with a mattress and threadbare bedding on top. There was a toilet on the wall at the foot of the bed which stank like hell. A rust-covered basin jutted out next to the toilet. No power outlets. No windows.

Using the water from the rusty faucet, Adrien did his best to wash his hands clean. He sat down on the rock-solid bed and faced away from the door. It had one large glass window and a security camera above the frame—which was concealed in the concrete, yet blindingly obvious to his keen eye.

Instead he huddled against the wall and gently retrieved Plagg from his pocket.

"Hey, Plagg," he whispered, withdrawing the slice of Camembert he'd kept wrapped in the left pocket of his jeans. "I'm sorry for being a dick. Here you go."

His kwami swallowed the Camembert whole and belched. "Hmph. That you are. But I'll allow it." Plagg's ear twitched, swivelling in the door's direction, and then his tiny round head followed. "Ginger is coming back."

"Ginger?" Adrien mumbled, scratching his kwami underneath his chin. Plagg slipped into his pocket again. "Roger?"

The detective shoved a key into the door. Adrien heard the tumblers rise and fall within the lock—gosh, had his hearing gotten more sensitive?—and then Roger stepped into the cell.

"Oh, good, you weren't sleeping. We'll have questions for you tomorrow, but I think it's better if you have a lawyer present, and so I thought— uh. . . food."

In a pudgy fist, Roger held up a paper bag, plump with a growing grease stain on the bottom. The smell of low-quality hamburgers and fries hit Adrien, and his stomach grumbled audibly.

"I figured you wouldn't have eaten for a while."

Adrien hadn't. Even at his birthday party, he hadn't eaten. He had been too busy preparing for his piano performance to hit the hors d'oeuvres platters. Not that they would have been very filling, anyway.

"You will probably have a very busy day tomorrow. But for now, just eat." The gesture was strangely gentle, familial, and suddenly he wanted to cry. "Get some sleep. You're safe here, Adrien."

Roger set the fast food bag in Adrien's lap, yawned wide, and left the cell. No-one had any reason to be awake this early, and guilt crawled up Adrien's spine when realised how many people had been looking for him tonight.

The tears came hot and heavy as he ate, trying to shove down the splintering, breaking, burning feeling in his gut by shoving food down his throat. His father would never have allowed a diet like this. His father. His father. His father—

Adrien finished the meal, squeezing his eyes shut for most of it. Wet the napkin with water and wiped his face. Packed all the rubbish into the original paper bag and left it by the door. Washed the grease from his hands. Stared at the wall.

Plagg grabbed the collar of his white button-up and tugged as hard as he could, trying to get Adrien to lay down on the bed. "You have to get some rest, Adrien."

Wordlessly, Adrien followed. He lay on what felt like unadorned concrete and stared at the mouldy ceiling. Plagg growled—the sound high-pitched and feline—and landed on his forehead. "Please sleep."

Adrien's eyeballs felt bone dry, stinging. My father. A second later the tears started, sliding warm down his temples and into his hair. He did not blink. "Why?"

Why, why, why, why. Why did this happen?

Plagg hovered over his skin and with gentle paws, pushed his eyelids down, one at a time.

His kwami grizzled, "Because I said so, damn you."

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Everything passed in a numb blur.

It felt like wearing a VR headset; Adrien could see and hear stimuli, but none of it felt real. Or it felt like when Adrien woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and quickly fell back asleep. He remembered, of course, but he remembered faintly, every word muffled and every scene dark at the edges.

Nothing touched him, even though so many different rotating faces tried to reach out to him. He was swimming in something icy, something deep, and even with his eyes open sometimes his vision was pure black.

Roger was the one to drive Adrien—in his personal car, having clocked off his shift—to Le Grand Paris on Monday evening. It was bizarre: in the police interview room—lit by two bars of harsh fluorescent lighting on the ceiling—one hour felt like eight, but now it had been eight hours of questioning and Adrien didn't even register time ticking by.

"We have made arrangements with the mayor for you to stay here under police protection. Just temporarily," he explained. Roger caught himself, glancing sideways at Adrien in the passenger seat. "Unless you have somewhere you'd like to go?"

Much like the question of who to notify—even when all of Paris was surely watching his every step now—Adrien had even less of an idea of where to go at the end of every day if it wasn't back to the mansion. Which was closed to all civilians for the foreseeable future, an investigation not yet begun but building. Pressing. Clamouring.

So he needed a new home. Fucking joy.

Roger's heavy palm landed on Adrien's shoulder and steered him into the lobby, as if he might run at any moment. "This is only temporary, but the mayor is willing to house you for however long the investigation takes. I know you have extended family in London, but we're going to need you to stay in Paris to help with everything. At the very least, let the police department know if you're planning to leave the city. Can you do that for us, Adrien?"

"Yes," Adrien murmured on auto-pilot. Familiar burgundy upholstery, cream wallpaper and golden chandeliers came into view.

Roger received a key card from reception and escorted Adrien to his suite. "We may have a lot more questions, but that comes later. I will be in touch tomorrow, okay?"

He did get in touch the next day, and the next, and the next, each time looking for a different piece of knowledge and with a new person for Adrien to meet.

Doctor. Grief counsellor. Family lawyer. Tax attorneys. Various judicial police officers each specialising in different fields—technology, forensics, organised crime—one with a court order to search the data on his phone. In return, they gave Adrien the newest iPhone with a prepaid SIM card.

"We wouldn't leave you unable to contact your loved ones," the tech policeman said, and Adrien smiled back that perfect yes-Father smile that he'd worn his whole life. The one with more obedience and goodness than people knew what to do with.

The juge d'instruction—Heloise Hessenpy—assigned to his father's investigation was an intense sort of woman, sharp and concentrated like a freshly-sharpened pencil. Heloise told Adrien that the mansion would without a doubt become one of the primary locations of interest in his father's trial, and, boy, would there be a trial. Lengthy, painful, public.

She asked him for an address that he would always be reachable at, and without thinking, Adrien said Le Grand Paris. So it seemed a new home had been chosen for him.

Things could have been worse. Things could always be worse. At least Adrien's suite was one of the best in the hotel. It was on the second highest floor, far above the heads of any prying paparazzi who might try to snap a shot of the angel who had fallen into hell. Not that his location was accessible to the public.

Plagg very much approved of the suite. On the day they moved in, he went exploring. Upon discovering the safe in the closet, the kwami had dragged him over with an insistent paw and a whipping tail. "Look! They even have a dark chamber to age cheese. With the protective measures it deserves."

"That's great, Plagg. I will get the kitchen to send some Camembert up."

The furnishings all borrowed from the signature Le Grand cream and burgundy palette, with gold accents and a claw-footed couch and reflective sconces and gilded photo frames that sparkled in the light of the crystal chandelier. The room even had a grand piano—so polished Adrien could use the black wood as a mirror—positioned by the window.

Too large, too perfect. It reminded him of how empty the mansion felt with no loved ones around to fill the space. There was even a bodyguard outside—not his own. An armed judicial police officer standing guard over their prized witness. Adrien hated being in the suite, but he wouldn't spit in the face of Mayor Bourgeois' hospitality. Letting the son of Hawk Moth stay in his hotel was a large ask.

Before Adrien even knew it, a week had passed. And he'd never turned the new iPhone on. Never set it up or even tried to contact his friends via internet apps.

Adrien had lived under the spotlight his whole life. First as the celebrity child of an acclaimed actress and an award-winning designer, then as a famous model and internet personality in his own right. He could sense a headline like the smell of rain in the air. He knew the very same night that Hawk Moth was unmasked that a media storm was about to descend, and he would be the world's favourite lightning pylon.

Struck over and over and over again.

Every single childhood memory had been a lie. Did his mother know? Did Nathalie? How had his father targeted so many people he loved?

He thought about Ladybug and felt something splintering in his ribcage. Even now, Adrien couldn't name this pain when he thought of his Lady, like rope burn on his heart.

He thought about the friends who would never feel safe around him and cried.

Marinette, who was caring and funny and bright. Adrien had met her on his day of school, and over the years he'd watch her grow in confidence and kindness. She was one of the best leaders he'd ever known, and even as Chat Noir, he still took lessons from his everyday superhero. She seldom said no to people—but would he be the first? Would he be the first thing that proved too heavy for Marinette to carry?

Alya. Rena Rouge who had been cruelly unmasked by Hawk Moth, and Nino, who—

Nino. Carapace. Carapace, whom his father had tried to destroy again and again. Carapace who fought against Hawk Moth with hard determination, who might never look at Adrien the same way again. Carapace who hated Chat Noir, who thought he was obnoxious and womanising and conniving.

So, perhaps, screw the media. Perhaps the reason Adrien was so afraid of using his phone was not what the media would say. It was not even thinking of what to say to his friends. It was what they might say to him.

Don't! his body screamed. It was the same primal reflex that told Adrien to fucking run on the night of his arrest. Biology stopped him from cutting off his own finger, and likewise no amount of willpower or longing or affection could compel him to walk a path that only led to his friends turning their backs on him.

It was much better to stay inside the hotel room, mind, body and soul. If he was on the surface of his emotions, he was slammed by waves and shredded by riptides. The way to survive was to sink underneath.

There was a perfectly suitable couch behind him, laden with richly coloured cushions, but Adrien had somehow drooped his way onto the carpet. He propped himself against the front of the couch and splayed his legs wide underneath the coffee table.

Adrien brought the bottle of vodka to his lips. He took a gulp that was more appropriately sized for water after a workout. The spirit laid its foul aftertaste on his tongue, and burned like fire down his throat. His stomach grew white-hot while his face went cold.

Dimly, in the back of his mind, Adrien registered a tugging at his hand. Plagg was attempting to pry the bottle from him, but his tiny kwami limbs couldn't even wrap around the circumference.

"Please, Adrien," Plagg hissed. "This is not good for you."

Pfft. He was eighteen now. Everything was fine and dandy and legal. Not like his father, who was not fine and not dandy and doing extremely illegal things on the regular and now he was in prison for his crimes and Adrien, even if he might see Gabriel again, would never see Gabriel the same. In a way his father was dead.

He took another big gulp. Yes. Hotel room good. Mini-fridge good. Vodka good. He didn't have to feel any pain this way.

"How about some exercise? Or playing some piano? Chat Noir could go for a run around the city," Plagg suggested, miming a leap in mid-air and spinning around Adrien's head.

Adrien touched his face, which had gone entirely numb. Where his hand made contact, the skin tingled, but he didn't know if the buzzing came from his fingertips or his cheek. "I thought you didn't like me running around the city."

"That was when you were destroying things." Adrien grunted and nodded and said nothing else. On the coffee table, Plagg saw the menu for room service and made a lunge for it. "Or we could order some room service for dinner! Look. I think they make a charcuterie platter with six different types of cheeses!"

"Not hungry." Adrien shrugged and screwed the top back onto the vodka bottle.

"Adrien."

"I know my limits," he said quietly, even though he was certain he did not. "I'm just. . ." A wave of squeezy discomfort rose up in his stomach, but he swallowed it down. "Doing what I have to in order to sleep."

As if to prove his statement, Adrien got up with a hand braced on both ends of the coffee table. He stamped his toes on the back of each shoe, shunting them off. He stripped and used the bathroom and fell into the king-size bed in a drunken haze of nothingness.

Nothingness was fantastic.

When he was sober, everything hurt. Don't think, Adrien told himself, repeating the words that had held him together this last week. Don't feel.

His face and fingertips tingled right until unconsciousness took him away.

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A / N :

Poor Adrien. 

Clearly he's not going to be coping well, and I imagined that drinking might be one crutch he turns to, from what I've seen in some Season 4 episodes. Adrien gets quite depressive and numb when he's conflicted, whereas Marinette becomes overactive and scattered. 

Plus, this is your timely reminder that when I say 'aged-up' I also mean in content and themes. No smut (sorry for those who expected it), but things like alcohol consumption, mental health, and other mature topics will be discussed. (Legal drinking age is 18 in Europe.)

Aimee <3