Adrien's heart was throbbing painfully in his chest. His anxiousness couldn't seem to subside. After that dream, he felt a constant state or feeling that he was being watched. It was sickening and awful and for a few days he couldn't figure out where the feeling was coming from until he realized it was himself.

And he was confused by this greatly. Plagg was worried, and Adrien didn't want to talk much about it. He didn't want to feel it either.

He felt better when he was Chat Noir, usually on his own doing patrols. Ladybug and he still weren't on good terms. And to distract himself from his loneliness derived from that, Adrien decided to try and learn something. A new practice.

He had a theory. The Ladybug miraculous was supposedly in balance with his own, a hat money between each other. Ladybug could create, and Chat could destroy. But it wasn't balanced enough so he felt curious.

Ladybug had the ability to mend and heal. Chat had no equivalent to that, thus placing him equal to the other miraculous capabilities which all only had one power. So there had to be more, something Plagg was refusing to tell him.

The school was recovering from it's recent tragedy. Mrs. Bustier was incapable of returning to the school, unfortunately. The injury she had sustained was pretty severe, she could no longer walk and the doctors were confident it wouldn't be long before her baby passed away and she'd give birth to a still born. In fact, they feared that should the woman preform her labor, it would take her life.

That made Adrien worry.

And on that note of pregnancy, his therapist was on maternity leave. But Natalie didn't want to risk waiting the few months it would take for his therapist to bounce back, so the clinic offered to pair him with a new therapist who'd graduated from college recently to fill in. Adrien was open to the idea, though he would miss his old therapist in the meantime.

So back to what was stated earlier, his heart was throbbing in anxiousness. Paris had been oddly quiet lately, and his therapy appointment would start within the next few minutes. He didn't believe he could handle ladybug lashing out at him again if an attack happened while he was trapped in his appointment.

Not only that, but making the new and sudden adjustment would be hard, especially after that dream which he wanted to tell his OLD therapist about. He didn't know how much he could trust the new guy.

"Adrien Agreste?" came a voice.

Adrien looked up to the doorframe which lead to the rest of the mental health clinic, in which stood a very tall man. Adrien stood up meekly and followed the man into the halls of the clinic, and eventually, to his therapist's old room.

"I apologize for the sudden change here, but I'm glad you were open to it." the therapist said as Adrien sat down shyly. He couldn't help but avoid eye contact in his own nervousness. "My name is Iisan Takanashi, but you can call me whatever you'd like."

"Yeah..." Adrien's gaze went to the window, looking out into the outside world.

"I do have all of Mrs. Klepstine's notes from your previous sessions, but I'd like you to tell me about yourself before I make any assumptions."

"Oh.... I dunno...."

"Well Adrien, what do you do for fun?"

"I dunno..."

"You don't do things for fun?"

"I dunno..."

"... you don't have to talk. I'm trying to break the ice, and this IS one of my first official sessions in this field. But if you're more comfortable not talking, then that's alright."

"I'm sorry..."

"You're alright."

"I'm not sure what I'm supposed to say." Adrien sighed, still not looking at the therapist.

"Would you like me to go first?"

".... Sure?"

"Alright. I already told you my name is Iisan Takanashi, but I like it when people call me by my last name unless they're my closer friends. I am 26 years old, and I just graduated college a few months ago. I was born a male, and identify as such-"

"Wait, why did you say that?"

"Hm?"

"I mean, I can tell you're a man by looking at you." Adrien said.

"It's a routine I go through when introducing myself to kids in therapy. In case they're dealing with gender identity issues, saying that, despite not being trans, is supposed to help alleviate the stress of potentially having to come out to me." The man said.

"Oh... ok. You can continue, I'm sorry I interrupted."

"You're perfectly alright." The man said calmly. "Let's see... I was born in Tooyoka Japan, but moved to Colorado in America when I was about 12 years old. I've been married for a year, and I moved to France upon my mother's wishes with my husband. I'm trilingual now because of the places I've lived. Ok now, it's your turn."

"Oh- uh...." Adrien bit his lip nervously. "You already know me."

"That is true, but I want you to tell me about yourself anyways."

"But like... I'm a celebrity basically, everyone knows everything about me."

"And I want to hear it coming from you." Mr. Takanashi stated.

"Ok umm... I uh... um..."

"Take your time."

"Erm... my name is Adrien Agreste, and I'm with being called Adrien. I'm 17 years old now, and I'm still in high-school... obviously.... Uh... I'm a boy too er- yeah. Um... I was born in London, but I've lived in Paris all my life. I've only ever been in one relationship but she broke up with me... I guess... I can speak French, English, and Chinese so I guess I'm trilingual too."

"Chinese? That's very cool."

"Mandarin, yeah." Adrien shrunk.

"I wish I could speak mandarin, that's quite impressive."

"It's because my dad made me learn it, I never wanted to and I don't even enjoy it." Adrien grumbled.

"Have you talked with your father about this?" Mr. Takanashi asked.

"What's the point? He never listens to me." Adrien said bitterly. He still couldn't make eye contact with the man. Some form of embarrassment or shame had crawled into the base of his throat, trying to suffocate his right of words. He found he couldn't speak.

"Mrs. Klepstine did tell me about that." Mr. Takanashi said, pulling out a clipboard.

"What... what else did she tell you?" Adrien asked, his eyes wandering the room anxiously. That jar of condoms was still sitting there on the counter, obnoxiously. The posters about STDs, the immune system, the suicide hotline and warnings of stroke still decorated the walls. Virtually nothing had changed, except that Mrs. Klepstine wasn't there.

"Well..." Mr. Takanashi looked over his papers which were attached to the clipboard. "She mentioned that you do have coping mechanisms for your anxiety attacks, but she said you reported they'd been happening more frequently in recent months. She told me about your family troubles, about what she believes is causing your stress and anxiety, especially within being a model. She told me about what happened to... your mom... a lot of details on your father, and also about the girl you brought up in your last session. She said that was a cause of worry, but you brought it up at the end of the session so there wasn't much she could do or say, so she left it to me to continue that discussion."

"Ah... I see..."

"Are you comfortable talking about that?"

"That girl?"

"Yes." Mr. Takanashi said, putting his clipboard back and grabbing another to take notes on.

"How much do you know?"

"I just got a basic summary, I'm not sure how much you told Mrs. Klepstine. This girl in question, she was stalking you, correct?"

"Yes."

"Right." Mr. Takanashi said. "And she was obsessive over you as well, preforming many illegal acts in this case."

"Yeah..."

"Do you want to tell me more?"

"I mean... sure." Adrien said. "I'm just scared no one will think it's that big of a deal, seeing as I'm some well known model or whatever. I already deal with paparazzi but this is different."

"Because it is different."

"Sure... yeah... what scares me is that I don't even know what extent it stretched to."

"Was she a classmate?"

"Yeah, Marinette." Adrien admitted, looking back out the window.

"Marinette..?" Mr. Takanashi's voice suddenly changed.

"I didn't tell Mrs. Klepstine her name cause I was afraid she'd go to the police."

"Everything we talk about in here is confidential, so you can trust I won't do anything like that unless you wanted me to." Mr. Takanashi. "That's funny though, I know a girl named Marinette myself."

"You do?"

"Mhm. Her family was letting me stay in their home while my husband and I worked out the payments for our flat. But that's not what we're talking about."

"Dupan-Cheng?"

"... Marinette Dupan-Cheng..." Mr. Takanashi restated, as both of them came to the realization that they were talking about the same girl. Adrien finally met the man's eyes, and realized that up until that moment, he hadn't seen Mr. Takanashi's face.

He had incredibly dark eyes, black like the sheet of night and his hair was jet black and messily trimmed, but neither of those traits struck him as unordinary. In fact, it was his reddish birthmark that consumed half his face that Adrien couldn't help but stair at, and the scars that strayed up his cheeks to his eye.

And Adrien recognized him.

"I think I've seen you before..." Adrien said.

"Probably not, I think I would have remembered meeting you." Mr. Takanashi smiled. Adrien faltered, trying to recall his memory of him. Then it dawned on him.

Chat Noir.

———

Hawkmoth didn't attack that day, to Adrien's surprise. But still, he felt on edge. Perhaps it was the lack of the daunting presence of Hawk Moth that caused him such sickening unease. So he chose to go out early on his patrol as Chat Noir, convinced that Hawk Moth would make some sort of appearance.

But the city was perfectly normal, or at least what was normal to him. There weren't as many tourists as usual, this being due to the rise of Hawk Moth which had caught the attention of other militaries.  Perhaps Hawk Moth was also scared, the idea of having the world turn against him isn't have brought him some sort of timidness.

The problem was, the countries of the world could only provide financial support. This was no war, they couldn't get involved. Chat had heard of Americans and British volunteers coming over to Paris to help with wreckage but that did very little. What they really needed was doctors.

Ladybug's magic couldn't fix anything, and she had yet to realize that.

The thought from earlier returned to Chat Noir. What powers did Plagg hide from him that he hadn't unlocked? He'd been experimenting but to no avail.

He felt angry, but that feeling was all too normal for him. The night crept upon him, and his thoughts were eating into his heart. Some of those thoughts were wicked, and he wished he had never thought of such things. But he had little control over his own thoughts, they couldn't be helped.

His baton started ringing, indicating to him that Ladybug was trying to make contact. He answered, and heard her meek, frighten voice answer.

"Chat!"

"Yes?"

"I- I-" she struggled to get the words out. "I... Hawkmoth..."

"What?"

"Hawkmoth... I know who he is."

A/N
Sorry this is sorta late, I've been really busy lately with theater and concert stuff...
-Peter