#adrien redemption

It didn't take long for Marinette to find the news about Chat Noir seemingly betraying the new Ladybug, revealing her to the world as Lila Rossi. She (alongside Felix, who was also unmasked as the new Hawkmoth) were both arrested on charges of essentially staging akuma attacks, while the "Chat" that was Lila's partner was revealed to be a Sentimonster in disguise. All the miraculouses were collected by the real Chat Noir, then he too disappeared.

Marinette knew exactly where he went, however.

Snarling, a livid Marinette went to the office tower of Agreste (renamed from the well known Gabriel brand) where Adrien was located, having returned from a month long vacation. She was unexpectedly let in without resistance however, as Adrien was supposedly expecting her.

Smiling an empty smile, Adrien stared at Marinette, sporting not only a familiar ring, but also a familiar set of earrings.

"Hello Marinette, its been a while, hasn't it?"

Naturally, Marinette was anything but polite. She ranted and raved about how Adrien wasn't supposed to have the ring (nor the earrings). She was outraged, horrified, and most of all confused.

Despite not needing any reason to tell her, Adrien obliged Marinette's demand for an explanation and told her his story.

About a month after Marinette went through her plan, Adrien took a lot of time to think about things. What he had went through regarding losing his miraculous, what he had felt at being tricked by Ladybug and Marinette. He wanted to scream and shout, to let go of his anger and blame everyone around him. Yet he had remembered one of the wise things Plagg once said (during a time he wasn't asking for cheese), and decided to reorient himself by focusing on one step at a time. Adrien messed up by letting his guard down around his former crush, but decided to make up for it by going after the new Ladybug, who at the moment was causing trouble for Paris.

Through some detective work (with the help of Max Kante) and using his head for the first time, Adrien tracked down Felix over the course of a week and managed to catch the latter off guard. Stealing the Peacock Miraculous from his cousin, Adrien created a sentimonster to track down the other miraculouses while pretending to be his cousin (to keep Lila unaware), including his former ring and the butterfly miraculous, which Felix had kept in a safe for when he was causing villainy as "Hawkmoth". He also learned from Dusuu the truth about himself, that he was actually a sentibeing created by his mother, and that her using the then broken miraculous was the reason for his passing. Despite the revelation shaking him, Adrien kept going, focuing on one step at a time.

From there, it was easy to take care of Lila (who grew so arrogant that she didn't expect Adrien to have any way to take her down) and get the rest of the Miracle box back. He also managed to track down the pieces of the Rabbit Miraculous and repair it again, after Marinette was able to destroy it.

With all the Miraculouses returned, Adrien finally used the opportunity to finally figure out what went wrong with his former partner and what caused her to give up being a hero.

Through evidence provided by Tikki and Plagg and a little help from the Rabbit Miraculous (through windows in time), Adrien had learned what went from with Marinette and why she had snapped. She saw how other people used her for granted, Adrien included, and how the responsibility overwhelmed her to the point she felt she had to leave.

However, Adrien also saw that Marinette had also ended up blaming other people for why she was like this (despite having other options to fix her problems), including blaming her partner for being supposedly unreliable (when she had pushed him away from helping with her plans or choosing the wielders) and for being unknowingly tricked by the Sentimonster Ladybug (which he admitted was stupid at the time, but he couldn't have imagined a sentimonster posing as a human at the time). Worse still, Marinette had started to blame the people of Paris for being akumatised, refering to them by their akuma names, despite it clearly being Hawkmoth's fault.

It was Marinette's mention of "Chat Blanc" that got Adrien's attention. Through a window in time, he learned of the alternate timeline in which he was akumatized by Hawkmoth, and learned the truth about his father: he was secretly Hawkmoth this entire time. Adrien was traumatised from this, but kept going.

This eventually led to learning of Marinette's plan to quit, having snapped and deciding to leave the fate of Paris in Lila's hands because "that's what Paris deserved".

Adrien spent a whole week going through all the information, every memory, every significant event, every bit of the life of Marinette Dupain Cheng, then another week to take it all in.

By the end, Adrien was horrified, but he was in a way grateful for what he had learned. Adrien felt sympathy for Marinette and why she felt she had to quit, but at the same time he could not condone her plan to leave Paris to Lila, nor her insults towards her former friends and family, especially with how she blamed them for being akumatized. He also realised that he did in some way play a role in her downfall (especially with his flirting and not trying harder to reach out more), and he did feel somewhat ashamed with himself for not noticing Marinette's feelings until it was too late (though given that Marinette had been somewhat possesive of himself with her stalking and attempts to control his love life, maybe it would have been a toxic relationship that was best to not have happened).

With all that being said, Adrien decided he would take matters into his own hands. With the Miracle Box now in his hands and with the Guardianship belonging to him (after threatening Lila with being Cataclysmed), Adrien decided he would make a new Order of the Guardian sect in Paris, with himself as the leader. He would use the recovered Miraculous to make a team that could not only help Paris, but all of France, choosing people that could handle the stress of being a hero since he could pay them for their services. Since Marinette no longer wanted to be the Guardian due to stress, Adrien would use what he had learnt to ensure he wouldn't make the same mistakes as the former Ladybug. He apologised to Marinette, but told her that he would be taking care of the Miraculouses now.

Of course, this all passed through the increasing erratic Marinette's ears. All she wanted were the Ladybug and Black Cat Miraculous back so she could make her wish and bring everything under her control, all while ensuring everyone suffers. Plain and simple (to her broken mind at least).

Adrien, of course, politely refused, since Marinette had no right to them considering her plans threatened the very reality they were in and that she had given up the box to someone untrustworthy. It was only once Marinette attempted to attack her former partner that Adrien transformed (without uttering phrase, having mastered his powers by this point) and restrained the insane former heroine, at which point he gave up being polite and threatened Marinette with ruining her newfound life with Luka. Adrien did not want to do so, but he would if she kept going with her foolish quest. Marinette wanted her peace? Fine. But she would not threaten others into acting the way that she wanted.

"...Screw you Chat Blanc" Marinette uttered, having finally lost whatever mask of sanity she had before, eyes growing increasingly erratic. "Just like last time, you tried to destroy me and all of Paris to get the wish, now you'll do it again because I walked away from you, right?"

"Now that was just a low blow..." Adrien replied tersely, the comment about the akumatization getting under his skin. "But since we are going for low blows, what gives you the right to blame others for being akumatized? Prin-cess Jus-tice?"

"Th-that wasn't real! YOU'RE LYING!" Marinette yelled.

Smiling a sad smile, Adrien pulled out the Rabbit Miraculous, quickly showing a window in time before Marinette could react. With no words being spoken by the Agreste, Marinette could only watch as her former self fell under the sway of Scarlet Moth, having no means to resist the akumatization, being moments away from removing her earrings before the akumatization process was cancelled, not by Marinette's own strength, but by the slim chance of Nathalie falling ill.

"Of course, you wouldn't be so quick to judge others if you remebered being almost akumatized. But you gave up your memories, didn't you? All so you could be happy."

Marinette fell to her knees, having gotten cataconic from the truth.

"You know ... that apology I said to you before." Adrien continued "I don't think I mean it anymore. Not to this version of you at least. The Ladybug... the Marinette that used to be before you was someone I considered a friend, a person that ended up being broken by the responsibilities of things she couldn't handle on her own. Yet at the same time, she tried to push people away because of it out of a belief she had to sort things on her own. Had I apologised earlier, had I tried harder to reach out to her... perhaps this entire debacle wouldn't have happened, and she could have retired in peace rather than in anger. Then again, I'm not the same person I was before. I grew up. But you didn't, did you? You're just someone who has no idea about what Paris has gone through. You only saw the last letter of a broken woman and decided to take her words to heart, laughing at the suffering of those who once relied on her to feel safe against a manipulative man, blaming them for their own akumatizations despite having no control over themselves, feeling like what they deserved was justified despite having no memory of what they did to you. You're just some echo of Marinette, an echo that has no memory of anything except her hate, her suffering, and her desire for revenge. You didn't grow up. You just ran away while getting to enjoy the spoils of doing so. You didn't grow up. You didn't change."

Marinette could say nothing, having gone entirely blank. Adrien called security into his office and had her escorted off the premises.

Sighing, Adrien went to a portrait of his mother and pulled it back, revealing a small mural of photos, the main one being a smiling picture of a younger and more innocent Ladybug and Chat Noir. Adrien did not know if the emotions Ladybug showed in that photo were real, but he would cherish them regardless, even after she was gone.

—–

AU that starts occuring few days after Emilie’s “disapearance”.

Adrien has never understand why his father is this harsh and controlling and he is completely broken by his mother’s disappearance and his father’s attitude getting worse after that.

Adrien finds by coincidence a Miraculous.

A honeysuckle-themed miraculous, with the kwami telling him that by using their power, he can manifest the feelings between him and someone else Adrien cares about in the form of an aura that makes him and the targeted person stronger, give them a telepathic bond (for five minutes for Adrien as he is a kid).

This kwami is separate from those in the Miracle Box, and has free will to come and go as they please. They have a Miraculous they made themselves, to help conduct their power to a human partner, but they are not under human control the way the kwami in Fu’s Miracle Box are.

Adrien, being excited at the idea of magic and power, accepts and uses this new power to manifest his bond with his mother, all his love into a glow that invigorates him.

He can feel his mother’s calm presence, not a worry in the world, as if she is just sleeping.

This not only helps him get his spirit up, but makes him more determinated to see her again. Where ever she is. At least he knows she’s safe, for now, if what he’s feeling is true. He was afraid when he transformed that she would be afraid, would be in pain, or worse, there would be nothing, but that isn’t the case. 

The rest of things go as normal in the show, at least until it comes to Fu giving him Plagg’s Miraculous, and him siding with Chloe. When she puts gum on Marinette and Alya’s seat, he doesn’t just try to remove it, he calls her out in front of the entire class, and explains the situation to Marinette and Alya when they walk in. His kwami has been a good influence on him since they met, taking a hard stance against his own selfish and cruel tendancies the few times Chloe was over at his house for the summer break, forcing him to see that the way he and Chloe act together isn’t okay, especially not if he wants to stay friends with the kwami. And it’s not just that he wants their help, he feels guilty for disappointing them. They were so upset about the way he and Chloe treated Sabrina. He doesn’t want them to ever feel that disappointed in him again, he likes them too much to lose their friendship. He’s no longer willing to participate in or enable Chloe’s abuse of others just for the sake of maintaining the status quo. He does’t want things to stay the same, he wants them to change, for the better.

He tells Chloe off, says they can’t be friends if she’s going to bully other people, and unlike in canon, he sticks with this promise instead of going back on it within a single episode. He’s hoping that, like with him and his kwami, she will value their friendship enough to change and become a better person. It;s working for him (he still has a lot to learn, but he’s getting better), and there’s no reason it can’t work for her, too.

Chloe is left flabbergasted and annoyed, but assumes that he’ll go back on his word once he gets bored of ‘playing the hero’. But as time goes on and he continues to ignore her, and continues to help the others thwart her plans to torment them, she gets increasingly put out and desperate, and eventually starts not being as cruel as normal, hoping to win back his friendship. But that’s not good enough, and she has to take the long and hard journey to being an actual good person on her own.

In the meantime, Adrien genuinely apologizes to Sabrina, and offers her his real friendship, and does what he can to help her mend the bridges she’s burned with the rest of the class over her years of helping Chloe bully them. He can’t do the work for her, but he can help. She’s one of Chloe’s (and his) victims, but she helped Chloe to victimize the others, and those are wounds that won’t heal overnight. It takes a while for him to earn her trust, and it takes a while for her to earn the trust of the rest of the class. But they’re both trying, and Adrien realizes how much happier he is now than he ever was before, with Sabrina a real friend that he can talk to and hang out with, instead of just someone to bully. His kwami is proud of him for making so much progress, and he feels like his mother would be proud of him, too.

-

Marinette is still Ladybug, and someone else is Chat Noir, but aside from the general chaos of Akuma attacks, that isn’t Adrien’s problem. He’s making real friends and trying to become a better person, and working with his kwami to strengthen their combined ability, with the hope that he can use it to get a sense of direction from his partial mind-meld with his mother. Anytime he uses the ability, she seems to be sleeping. He wants to check in hospitals, in case she was found in a coma and no one just knows who she is, but they won’t tell him anything over the phone, even when he tells them he’s an Agreste.

He tries to tell his father about the possibility, saying he ‘just thought of it’ so his kwami doesn’t get found out, and is floored when his father’s reaction is rage. His father doesn’t want him searching for his mother. He doesn’t want him thinking about searching for his mother. He doesn’t want him to even think about leaving the house to search for his mother. He doesn’t want Adrien to do anything that could help in the search for his mother. The police are handling it, Adrien needs to let them do their job and not waste his time with ‘this foolishness’.

He’s been putting up with his father’s disregard for him for as long as he can remember, and he’s always resented it, but this is just the first of many straws that finally break the camel’s back. His father is standing there yelling at him for caring about finding his mother, and that’s the first time hatred for his father sparks in his heart. He has to stand there silently and take it, clenching his fists, and he wishes, oh, how he wishes, that he could yell back, could break something, could figure out something he could say to hurt his father the way he hurts him. The way he’s always hurt him.

He always knew his father could be cruel. He always knew his father didn’t care about him. But he never knew he could be this cruel. He never knew his father didn’t even care about his mother. 

He is sent to his room, and told he can’t come out for the rest of the night. His friend heard everything, and knows how upset he is. They offer to let him transform, so that he can leave the house without his father knowing, and he can use their abilities to let off steam out in the city, as long as he’s careful to stay out of sight. He accepts, and spends an hour and a half climbing buildings and jumping off of them, releasing his anger and frustration into the exhilarating physical activity, venting to his friend through their telepathic bond the entire time, as they listen, and give him tips and pointers on how to land and what to grab and how far he can fall without getting hurt. This is the first time he’s ever been transformed, and he asks his friend why they never told him about this before.

It’s because they don’t want to risk Hawkmoth or The Guardian from finding out about them, they explain. They would be put at risk, and so would Adrien and his family. Not, they add, that I would mind terribly if your father were to get hurt. No offence, of course.

None taken! Adrien grins back.

He asks more questions, and they answer them. He learns all about the kwami and Miraculouses that Hawkmoth, Ladybug, and Chat Noir are using, and how thre three of them, Nooroo, Tikki, and Plagg, have no free will, and while Hawkmoth absolutely knows this, it’s probable that Ladybug and Chat Noir are being kept in the dark.

It’s obvious to everyone that the two heroes are kids, and Adrien’s friend as a horrible feeling that the Guardian is manipulating them into fighting his battles for him, and that he chose kids specifically so they wouldn’t ask questions, so they won’t know that their kwami are their slaves.

-

Time passes, and Adrien starts to hate his father more and more with every passing day. He keeps trying to search for his mother, with both magical and mundane means, and everytime his father catches him on the phone with someone or on a website for missing people, he is punished, but all it does is dig his hatred deeper. His father locks him in his room, and Adrien and his friend transform and leave a few times, but most of the time they just stick to researching in other ways, and keeping notes. Adrien has started a journal for his research into his mother’s disappearance, and keeps it hidden so his father or Nathalie, his assistant, can’t find it and take it.

And the whole time, he keeps practicing with his mind melding abilities, getting better at them everyday. His mother’s presence is always sleeping, no matter when he uses the ability, furthering his conviction that she’s in a coma. She must be somewhere with the ability to keep her alive, though, because at this point it’s been almost an entire year since she disappeared. The questions keep burning at him--where is she? Who took her? Why did they take her? What happened to her that she’s in a coma?

He’s past the point of trying to talk to his father. Gabriel is more cruel and neglectful than he’s ever been, and it’s to the point where Adrien wouldn’t want to listen even if his father were willing to talk to him. His father has always been terrible, but this last year has cemented what was once desperation for attention and affection into straight up loathing.

Adrien will never forgive his father for the way he’s been treated since he can remember, especially not after his mother disappeared. It’s the final straw, and most days, he’s tempted to tell his friend he’s going to runaway alltogether.

They’ve talked about the possibility before. They don’t much care for the nuclear family, especially not now that they’ve seen how completely Adrien’s father is abusing that structure. They have other friends out there in the world that know about them, both human and kwami, and they’ve even gone so far as to contact them to see if they would be willing to let Adrien stay with them if he ever did decide to leave for good.

He had a bag packed and everything on the day things finally came to a head.

He used the power to connect with his mother’s mind, just like he did every day. But this time was different. His practice had finally paid off. He could feel the connection like a tether between them, and under his friend’s instructions, he carefully grasped that connection with mental fingers, and pulled.

They’d talked about this too. If he could strengthen the bond enough that he could feel the connection between him and the target, he could teleport himself to their location. It would be a one-way trip, not something to be taken lightly, given they didn’t know what kind of circumstances they would be finding on the other side.

But they were both in agreement. The moment they forged a true connection with his mother’s mind, they would take it. He had his backpack and extra clothes on beneath the transformation, and his cellphone in his hand so he could call the police if he needed to.

He tugged on the connection--

And found himself in an underground garden, staring at a cryochamber, with his mother’s unconscious body beneath the glass. Butterflies scattered as he appeared, and he recognized them immediately as the kind Hawkmoth used to Akumatize people.

Then he looks up at the window where the light is shining in from...

...and recognizes it as the window on his father’s wing of the mansion, high up in the tower that Adrien hasn’t ever been allowed to go in. For as long as he’s been alive, he’s never been allowed to go into his parent’s side of the mansion. He’s never seen their bedroom, never seen his father’s real office. But he’s seen it from the outside. He knows that window. And then...

He just barely manages to duck out of sight when an elevator comes up out of the floor a distance away, and watches in shock and horror and quickly mounting rage as his father steps off, chuckling to himself like he’s just heard the world’s funniest joke. He walks away from Adrien and Adrien’s mother until he’s standing in the pool of light beneath the window, casting a dark shadow behind him as he is silhouetted against the sky.

“Nooroo,” Even turned away, his voice rings clear, and the white butterflies startle again, “Dark Wings, rise!”

A small purple kwami that Adrien hadn’t noticed floating in front of the window spirals forward, and before Adrien can even blink...

His father is gone, and Hawkmoth is standing in his place.

Adrien’s friend manifests him a rapier, the first time they’ve ever needed a weapon while transformed. Their thoughts fire back and forth so quickly there are barely any words. His father is Hawkmoth. He hates his father. His father has had his mother this entire time. His father has kept his mother in a coma this entire time, and lied about it to everyone, to him. Just before his mother disappeared she’d asked Adrien if he would be happy to spend some time with his cousin, if they went to visit his aunt for a while. His father has kept his mother hidden in a coma this entire time, and allowed Adrien to think something terrible had happened to her.

Something terrible has happened to her.

He hates his father.

His father is Hawkmoth.

He just sent out an Akuma, corrupting one of the butterflies and poisoning it with negative emotions. He doesn’t have any more tricks up his sleeve, Adrien has the element of surprise.

He has a weapon.

His father has his back turned.

He hates his father.

His friend gives him an extra boost of power to help him do what needs to be done. They are not Shackled, they are much more powerful than poor Nooroo.

Adrien is skilled with a sword, his father has never so much as touched a weapon. 

His father has no clue what is about to happen to him.

Adrien knows exactly what he’s going to do.

_______________________________

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Note: The AU ends up with Adrien finding about his mother, freeing her from Gabriel’s abusive control, and dealing with his father once and for all.

And yes, I am believing the idea that she tried to use the peacock to escape Gabriel’s control, otherwise, he would have just freaking akumatised himself to heal her at some point during his reign of terror on Paris. The guy wants to get the Ultimate Power so he can change Emilie’s personality into what HE thinks she should be.

That makes WAY too much sense if we take account with how canon Adrien acts towards Marinette/Ladybug after all.