CHAT NOIR STRAIGHTENED HIS LEGS, rising from his hunch with effortless grace.

The small pile of glass fragments and the broken photo frame still sat right where Chat Noir had thrown it. Ladybug tore her eyes from the far wall and to the boy in front of her. With his head bent, his shaggy blonde locks hung low over his eyes, obscuring his expression. Why had he done that?

What was he thinking?

Before Chat Noir could breeze by and continue searching the other rooms, Ladybug caught his wrist and tugged him to a stop. He took one look at her expectant, accusatory expression and released a soft, bitter chuckle.

"Such a farce," he mumbled, glancing back over his shoulder. "I hate families like that. Presenting wealth and prestige to the public, when behind closed curtains, they're more corrupt than everyone else."

Ladybug felt a tug in her chest, pulling her to defend Adrien Agreste. He wasn't like that. He wasn't his lineage.

But that wasn't the topic at hand—it was Chat Noir's behaviour while they were supposed to be on the job. Professionals. Her partner's eyes glowed, bouncing back the fading light with radiant peridot green. The bell at his collar could have been burnished gold, and it felt like the sun dipped ten degrees lower along the horizon in this one second, but of course that couldn't be the case.

"Even if you feel that way," she made her voice accommodating, "you can't go around destroying private property." He was unused to the protocols required of investigators. Once he understood the mistake he'd made—

Chat Noir narrowed his eyes, one brow raising. "It's only a picture."

"Still," she said gently, poorly masking her irritation. Why was he so standoffish all of a sudden? Hadn't it been half an hour ago that he was dropping kisses on Ryuko's hand and calling her his dragoness?

"The police haven't checked this place out yet. They might want to take it as evidence or something."

"Evidence of what? How fucked up the Agrestes are?"

Ladybug blinked, unsure why her kitty was behaving so coldly. Did his dislike for the Agrestes truly run that deep? Maybe that was who Chat Noir was, underneath the mask. Maybe he questioned the powerful and rich and elite by his very nature. In that case, she had to make him understand the obligations they had. He was two months behind in terms of experience on the job.

She took a step closer and gestured patiently with one hand. "I know this investigation is new to you. But there are rules governing everything we do." Chat Noir's jaw stiffened. "How we speak, how we treat our surroundings."

"Don't patronise me," he gritted out, leaning his face closer.

"Don't make me patronise you."

He was so stubborn. It was perfectly fine—expected, even—that Chat Noir would make mistakes when he first returned to work. If only he could take the criticisms without getting offended. They were supposed to be a team. "We need to leave everything the way we found it."

They were so close that she could feel the breath that he expelled through his nostrils, one sharp sound of derision. She pressed onwards, tilting her head sideways. "Yes?"

It was a battle of will, of pride. Ladybug was simultaneously terrified that this bickering would devolve into a worse, messier situation, and somehow bracing for such a thing to happen. But Chat Noir stepped off, putting space between them with a breezy smile.

He nodded curtly and said, "Yes, my Lady," strolling past her back into the living room.

In the wake of his subtle, smoky scent, Ladybug was a bit dazed. She cleared her throat and strode after him. "Good," she called confidently. "Let's search the rest of this place. If we find nothing, I'll try to get more information from Adrien Agreste."

Chat Noir had pulled open all the kitchen cupboards, the fridge, the oven. "Adrien Agreste knows nothing," he grumbled, casting his expert eye over the scene.

Ladybug wanted to say that Adrien was not nearly as bad as Chat Noir seemed to think. To the world, he was the pampered child of a supervillain. She saw the real him—the dutiful son who would do anything to please the people he cared about. It wasn't Adrien's fault that his father abused that trust and his generosity.

Ladybug huffed. "I'll let you know if I learn anything new, okay?"

Chat Noir huffed back—was he mimicking her?—slamming the cupboard doors closed when they produced nothing useful at all.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

How could he know so deeply that this girl was bad news for him and still want her?

Whenever he was around Ladybug, everything hurt. His heart hurt from beating so hard, his lungs ached with shallow breaths. His mind hurt from working overtime to keep up the act; innocent Adrien had to be mild-mannered and calm, while Chat Noir, who was Officially Moving On, had eyes for other girls and stood up to Ladybug when she tried to talk down to him, which he used to permit freely. Not anymore.

Maybe he'd chosen the wrong script to read back in Nathalie's safe house. Righteous anger, universal; he could be any disgruntled working-class person. Adrien remembered that flash of blind panic, that she would see his personal aversion to the Agreste photograph and piece together his identity, but Ladybug hadn't even considered the link.

She was only concerned about professional propriety.

Now she was as beautiful as ever, sitting in his hotel suite. A walking heartache in black and red, spearheaded with those sharp blue eyes. He hardly heard her words, just fixed on her mouth moving, as she explained the discovery and subsequent search of Nathalie's secret apartment.

Ladybug asked him for any other such locations that he might have visited or heard about in passing conversation. Even if Adrien wanted to, he had nothing new to add.

"Wherever I went, it was always private transport and five-star accommodation," he said, fingers anxiously fiddling with the stitching on the couch cushion. Get over it. Get over her. "You can refer to the trip itineraries I already gave you."

Ladybug hummed in acknowledgement, staring at the laptop balanced on her knees. As always, on the coffee table, her Bug Phone was poised to record everything. If he was the old Adrien, he would have started daydreaming about her snapping the phone closed and walking over to kiss him—

I am not the old Adrien.

"—sorry for rehashing things," Ladybug was saying. "A large part of this case hinges on whether we find the Peacock Miraculous or not," she explained. "I don't want you getting charged with anything, even misdemeanours."

Of course not. The angelic facade he wore was working—Ladybug believed in him and his innocence, and she would do her best to prove it.

"I don't know if your lawyers have updated you; recently we uncovered video proof that Nathalie was moonlighting as Mayura." I was the one who uncovered it. "Now Nathalie's defence is trying to avoid extra felony charges by claiming that Gabriel emotionally manipulated her."

His lawyers had informed him. He met less with his lawyers than he did with Ladybug, but his lawyers called him on the phone much more. They had constant developments and procedures to clarify with him, but everyone was too busy to leave their cushy corner offices in the 8th arrondissement to come to Le Grand.

"Would you say that Nathalie spent more time with your father, her employer, than with her relatives and friends?"

Adrien cleared his throat. He promised himself that he would get to the end of this interview without fantasising or becoming distracted. "Yes. She was like a full-time guardian to me."

"We have a copy of Nathalie's employment contract," Ladybug continued. She spun the laptop around briefly to flash the contract, but verbally summarised the official responsibilities and obligations Nathalie had. "Do you think Gabriel asked Nathalie to do anything that overstepped these professional boundaries?"

Adrien paused, knowing by now that Ladybug didn't mind however long it took him to form an answer. They had settled into this strange situation, both offering as much softness as possible—though for entirely different reasons.

Thinking of Nathalie stung his throat. It was nothing new—all of Ladybug's questions were pointed and personal, intended to plunge deep and drag his family to the surface, like a harpoon spearing through flesh. These interviews were almost enough to make him rejoice the moments Ladybug left, if not for the part of him that wouldn't die, the part that loved being around his Lady. It would start waning soon. Surely.

"I think the nature of her work was already more intense than most jobs, and she always seemed to do it willingly. She never complained about the workload," Adrien said.

She was there when he went down to breakfast and there when he went to his bedroom for the last time each day. With Nathalie around, Adrien felt like he didn't have to worry about his future—that gigantic, terrifying fog—because she knew whichever commitment was coming next, and she would handle everything. On the long pathway to pleasing his father, Nathalie held Adrien's hand and all he had to do was take the next uphill step.

But did she go to his father at the end of every day and say, "He's finally asleep," before they transformed?

Was she a willing accomplice intent on chaos? Or had Gabriel kept Nathalie under his thumb with his money, his evil powers, the threat of destroying her?

He didn't realise he'd squeezed his eyes shut. Ladybug's sympathy was clear on her face when he opened them. "I don't know what other...demands my father made of her when I wasn't around," Adrien said quietly.

Ladybug read the next line of text on her screen and hesitated. In a thick voice, she asked, "To the best of your knowledge, was there ever a romantic or sexual relationship between Nathalie and your father?"

Adrien had already considered the idea of a relationship between Nathalie and his father.

But this was when he was much younger, much more naive. He didn't yet recognise the power imbalance between a rich, famous man and the younger woman employed in his household. He saw Nathalie's unwavering care and constant proximity, and thought that was the seed of love.

Of course, when he raised it once to his father, Gabriel had been merciless in his rejection. He shut that idea down with an iron fist, holding fast to his love for Emilie Agreste, and Adrien never brought it up again. Maybe the reason his father had reacted like that was because it was already happening.

The best he could say was: "I don't know."

"What do you think Mayura's motivations were? Devotion to your father? Money? Or something else?"

Adrien wanted to laugh. He had never felt so stupid.

Years of knowing Nathalie Sancoeur and he found he didn't really know her at all. He couldn't say if she ever really cared for him, or if he was a nuisance to be handled; if she loved his father or was afraid of him. He couldn't say why she followed Gabriel into the dark. He couldn't even say why his father had first walked into the dark, or when, or how.

What was the wish he so desperately wanted to make with the Black Cat and Ladybug Miraculous?

Didn't he already have everything in the world?

Adrien was valedictorian at fifteen and ignorant to everything in front of his face at eighteen. Chat Noir hadn't been lying when he told Ladybug that Adrien Agreste knew nothing. For all he knew, she could probably find better, truer information researching on her own than from asking him.

"I don't know," he near-whispered. Let this be over.

Ladybug smiled forgivingly, lips parting to speak. Her Bug Phone started ringing. "Sorry," she said, leaning over the coffee table to glance at the screen. "It's Heloise," she told him. For the recording: "Let's end this interview here."

Adrien sat dumbly and watched her take the call.

"Hello," she greeted. "I am." For the next two minutes, Ladybug didn't speak once, except thirty seconds in: "Fuck." Then she fell silent and listened.

It was the first time she'd sworn around Adrien, and he pretended to be surprised, but she wasn't even watching him. She rose and walked to the kitchenette, hiding her face from view. She started pacing. She stopped pacing and put her hand to her mouth, shocked.

She started pacing again.

"Okay," she told Heloise softly. "I'll go there now."

At the end of the call, she strode back to collect her laptop. "Sorry for the rush." Her skin had completely drained of colour. "I'll see you next week, Adrien."

And then she was out the window.

He rose from the couch and shielded himself from view behind the curtains. Adrien had no idea what was going on. As usual. His kwami slipped out from his breast pocket, furry face pinched with confusion, mirroring his emotion.

"Plagg, claws out," he said.

When Chat Noir was certain there was enough distance between himself and Ladybug, he sprung off from the balcony and started his pursuit.