CHAT NOIR KNOCKED ON THE heavy oak door, eyed the polished golden handles in the growing silence, and had just pressed his clawed fingers down on the metal when a voice called out.

"If it's Chat Noir, come in," Heloise said. "If it's someone else, I'm busy."

He strolled into her office and took a seat at her mahogany desk.

The investigating judge, smiling tiredly, every minute of her working day precious as the trial approached, started speaking without preamble. "Final court orders have been released, if you haven't already seen the dates and times. My department is compacting evidence to bring to court already, so don't be surprised if boxes and documents go missing from your office. Why haven't you confirmed your attendance?"

Adrien Agreste had to be at all the trial hearings. Therefore, Chat Noir would not be at any, and decided to play dumb. "My...what?"

"Ladybug has confirmed. As Paris' premier heroes, your attendance would boost morale, not to mention bulk up the courtroom security."

Chat Noir crossed his arms. "Unfortunately, I can't. Besides, I really only joined the investigation halfway through. It was already two months' done by the time I returned. Ladybug can read my statements."

Heloise was deeply confused. The corners of her mouth pulled down, and her frown lines multiplied by four. "And yet your friend, the Familiar, interrogated Gabriel. Transgressing our protocols, might I add, which I forgave on account of your long-standing dedication to this city. You've been one of the most consistent and successful people working this case, and now you're telling me you don't want to see it across the finish line?"

"I'm involved only to find the missing Miraculous. That's my primary aim right now and, of course, it overlaps with anything Hawk Moth related. But, as I said, I still have a lot of work to do."

"Does Ladybug know?" Heloise wondered, "that you won't be attending the trial at all?"

Ladybug did know. She'd been disappointed but understanding when he told her; all he had to do was make any sort of reference to his undefined personal problems, and she gave him anything he asked for.

But Chat Noir did not like the implication in Heloise's tone, her suggestively wide eyes. "Ladybug and I are partners in the truest sense. She doesn't answer to me," he explained, rising from his seat, "and I don't answer to her. Good luck with the trial, Heloise."

Meeting concluded abruptly, Chat Noir planned to walk the multiple flights of stairs down to the basement office but he was accosted on the ground floor by a mob of reporters.

"Chat Noir!" one asked, shoving a microphone into his face. "Why do you think you have enough information to go to trial, given that the Peacock Miraculous has not yet been found?"

"Is there evidence that Gabriel's wife was complicit in his crimes? How do you plan to convict an unconscious woman?"

Light flashes from cameras burst in his vision. He nimbly sidestepped and made for the stairwell, but they encircled him. "Do the heroes have a plan to find the Peacock Miraculous wielder?"

"What is your response to the allegations that Ladybug has orchestrated a new villain in order to keep her job and stay relevant?"

Utter bullshit, that's what. Chat Noir gritted his teeth and smiled easily. "No comment, thank you," he kept saying. "No comment, thank you." If he even deigned to answer one obvious question, they would all want answers.

But they would not take a hint, bunching tighter and tighter around him until he was forced to use his staff to vault out of the crowd. Looked like he wouldn't be doing any research today—namely, continuing his fruitless search through the CCTV on Nathalie's apartment around mid-September to see if he could identify Pavona breaking in.

Chat Noir didn't know what he was expecting (balaclava and baseball bat and getaway car?) but he initially felt certain he'd know Pavona if he saw them. Instead, he was watching day after day of civilians, families, contractors, delivery men and Uber drivers pulling up to the apartment building and leaving, mundane and unassuming, just as they arrived.

Nothing out of the ordinary.

He lowered himself down and set himself down on top of the Palais, crouching on the central dome of the slate-blue tiled roof. A blanket of clouds hung low on the horizon. Paris, his city, sprawled out in a dusty stretch of buildings. Residences and storefronts touching shoulders, crammed together like people in a crowd on a sunny day.

He didn't want to go back to the hotel.

That was one of the locations Pavona could reliably access Adrien Agreste. They knew to find him there, and talking to Pavona was a unique type of exhaustion. Walking a tightrope, blindfolded, carrying mental weights. They liked whispering at the back of his head, running intangible caresses down his consciousness.

Even when Chat Noir could focus and push the amok out of any item of his belongings, mentally severing the connection with Pavona, their voice lived constantly at the back of his mind. Not magically, but in memory. The things they'd said to him were scarring and permanent; he would never be the same again.

Pavona was a perceptive and silver-tongued villain, reading Chat Noir with a bored confidence that cut deep. Even his grief counselor, and the therapist said counselor subsequently referred him onto, had never come as close. Not his friends or family.

It was Pavona who knew him better than anyone else in the world, just as they predicted the first time they communicated.

I know the secret you're keeping from your friends, Pavona had said last night.

Adrien had experienced panic so blinding he physically couldn't see. Eyes open, black spots across his vision. Did they know his secret identity?

Instead, they'd said, You secretly would be relieved if the trial was delayed. If some freak accident prevented the course of justice, if you had to stay in this hotel and keep enjoying Ladybug's little visits.

When they'd said Ladybug's name, he'd detected a hint of venom.

You can't tell your little school friends because they couldn't wrap their feeble brains around emotions this complex, this wrong, Pavona had continued, as Adrien lay paralysed in his bed, Plagg snoozing mere inches from his head. How can Adrien not want to have his life and agency back? How can he not want to move on?

You don't know what you're talking about. I do want to move on.

You do, Pavona had agreed, but you want other things more. I know you better than anyone. I've heard thoughts that you are too afraid to articulate to yourself. You were a canvas for other people to paint on, a mannequin for other people to dress. You grew up wanting to appease your parents in any way it took.

I love them, Adrien had meekly defended. Of course I took their opinions and wishes into account.

But it goes deeper than that, doesn't it? Vapour that takes the shape of its vessel, and without confinement you will just diffuse into nothing. As much as you resented being your father's canvas, you fear what you'd be without him, without the pathway he steered you on, or without your friends and their pretty hopes for you.

He had wanted to say that Pavona was wrong, so wrong and misguided, but as they spoke he'd agreed wholeheartedly, despite himself. Pavona had been inside his mind. It had simply felt like his darkest truths bubbling up from the depths.

Adrien had fought to draw breath. What would I be?

Why, nothing. A blank canvas. A naked mannequin. Vapour molecules. A wordless script. You don't know how to exist on your own, Adrien. That's why you spent years bowing to your father's desires, spent months obeying authorities.

Here was where Adrien had allowed himself a stroke of relief. Pavona's misstep about his mindless obedience had indicated she didn't know his alter ego, the side of him that could disobey, destroy and rebel. But by and large, they were right. He could exist on his own, but he really didn't want to. It was much easier to be told what to want and how to act, like a child.

Modelling? Okay. Basketball, fencing? Chinese lessons, horse-riding, piano playing? Okay, okay.

Be less extravagant, less flirty—be someone like Cat Walker? Okay.

Get answers, take revenge—be someone like the Familiar? Okay.

Find the Peacock Miraculous, save the city—be Chat Noir? Okay.

If this trial ends, you'll fear going out into the world and losing yourself in the gaps between other people and yet that's the only way you know how to live. So you'd rather not find out. And I'm the only one who's ever looked close enough, cared enough, to notice this, Adrien. That's why we are so compatible. Aren't these conversations cathartic? Don't you feel seen?

He had felt seen. He had been photographed and filmed and stalked, he'd spoken to reporters and testified in court, yet he'd never been seen like this.

Completely bare, like climbing to the rim of an impact crater and turning around slowly, beholding the desolation that lay for miles and miles, as far as the eye could see.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

It was lunchtime at Francois Dupont when the weather alerts went off on everyone's phones.

Extreme fog, rolling in quicker than any meteorological service could have predicted, highways being closed and people being discouraged from driving—apparently it was that severe. Nino, Marinette and Alya abandoned their meal trays at their tables and crowded up against the windows with the rest of their schoolmates.

They ended up next to Juleka and Rose, who stood close to the glass to peer through at the streets beyond. Alya couldn't see the streets beyond. Everything had gone... grey? When she came close enough, she realised it must have been a bank of fog or mist that had rolled in within a matter of... minutes? The sky had been blue, granted splattered with clouds, but blue nevertheless, the last time she looked in this direction.

Marinette was nearly pressing her nose against the glass, squinting through the cloudy blur. "Something's wrong,"she commented, raising a finger to gesture to her classmates. "Look at those people."

Alya glanced where her best friend indicated. There were silhouettes on the streets, people getting out of their cars and strolling around. They looked aimless as they walked; instead of lingering around their vehicles, they trailed further and further in no particular direction, not stopping to even talk to each other.

Marinette stepped back from the window and threw a thumb to the cafeteria door. She affected a queasy expression, and Alya read her friend's thoughts perfectly. It was time to suit up. "You know, my stomach is feeling a little upset. I'm going to the bathroom."

She made eye contact with Alya, who nodded and touched Nino's arm. "I'm going to go with Mari, babe. Just in case she needs help. Stay here," lowering her voice, "in case you need to protect people."

Nino nodded, chest puffing up with purpose. "Got it. Feel better soon, Marinette."

"Thank you."

Something about the fog wasn't sitting right in her gut. She and Marinette found empty stalls in the second-floor bathrooms and transformed. Rena Rouge stepped out with her weapon of choice—a charmed flute—wieldy, discreet, and extremely flexible. "I'm going to send out my sensors."

"Good idea," Ladybug said. "You stay here in case you need to evacuate the school, and I'll see what's going on in the street."

Rena Rouge set down the lid of the toilet and stepped on top, pushing open the hinged window. She broke her flute into a dozen smaller components and threw them out the window, shutting it just as quickly.

Each piece was its own self-sustained drone, which would be taking flight, climbing high, and spreading throughout the city as she settled on the top of the toilet. They were equipped with cameras, UV emitters, infrared sensors, and on-board barometric equipment.

Their feeds contributed to an aggregate broadcast that Rena viewed on the screen of her Fox Phone, switching between visual, infrared, and other spectroscopic metrics—like those that would distinguish between a large vapour cloud and surrounding solid buildings. The thirteenth drone held two earpieces, one which she kept, and the other which she gave to Ladybug.

"Stay safe, Ladybug."

Two minutes later, Rena had established an audio connection with Ladybug. She kept one ear trained on the girls' bathroom, listening for schoolmates walking in. The first question she asked: "Is this a sentimonster?"

On the Fox Phone, the visual feed was useless: the fog obscured everything. The infrared feed heat-mapped the city from above. Rena could see Ladybug's every movement as a red-yellow female figure walking around on a screen of blue-green. The spectroscopic feed revealed a gaseous mass enveloping the school's arrondissement, largely composed of a complex gas mixture.

Ladybug's voice came through, crisp and determined. "They usually take the form of a creature, but there's nothing stopping them from being... fog? Mist?" Rena heard her stop a civilian and ask him some establishing questions. "Excuse me, sir, have you seen anyone behaving suspiciously in this area?"

"No, no," he answered, sounding...detached. Dazed? "Who are you?"

"Ladybug," Ladybug said.

"Who's that?" He didn't know Ladybug? Everyone knew Ladybug.

Back in the bathroom, Rena blinked. Switched to the infrared feed and honed in on Ladybug's location, transmitted by the earpiece, where she could see two bodies close together, talking. Something felt off. She was tugged by the same gut instinct she had when she saw the masses of people wandering in the fog.

"Ah," Ladybug was saying, "I'm the Guardian of Paris. Are you a local? Or tourist?" Being a tourist might absolve him from the mental slip, especially if he was older and from a remote part of France.

"I'm a local," he said instead, chuckling with pride, mixed with offence, "I've lived here for... for a long time... How long have I lived here?"

The red-orange figure walked away from the red-yellow figure, who turned around and started searching for another civilian to interview. Rena opened her web browser in another tab on her Fox Phone and searched the chemical properties for the gas mixture, symptoms if inhaled.

The webpage results loaded. A simple asphyxiate, used in memory therapies and as anaesthetic. Prolonged exposure leads to dizziness, nausea, vomiting, loss of consciousness, and death.

"Ladybug," she said, a warning edge in her voice.

"Alya!" Ladybug whooped. No. Not Alya. Rena. She should be calling her Rena. "What are you doing? Why are you calling me Ladybug?"

"It's Rena," Rena Rouge said. How could Ladybug forget protocol like this? "And you are Ladybug. Don't use any other names."

"Oh. Gotcha. Well, I was talking to a gentleman to...to find out... Hm. What was I speaking with him about?"

Crap. The fog was making people forget things. Everything, it seemed, if the man Ladybug had spoken to couldn't even remember how long he'd lived in Paris.

"Call your Lucky Charm now," Rena commanded, routing a virtual map through the fog, "and follow my instructions. I'm getting you out of there."

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

a / n :

to the readers who are still following this fic, thanks for your patience! a lot has happened in 2023, good and bad, that has kept me away from my writing in a logistical sense (access to a device/internet) and in a creative sense (sucking my well dry). 

but this is a five chapter drop, and i'll be putting up the next four chapters immediately after. by the end, i hope you will think the wait well worth it ;)

aimee x