#danielle agreste

Dani and Louis exchanged a glance. “Well… anyway, that was right before you showed up,” Louis continued. “The military leaders are all having a big meeting with Alya and her people right now, to figure out what to do next. I sent Grandma a quick coded text to tell her you’re doing good, so now they know they’ll have Ladybug helping too. When everything goes down, that is. And that’s everything.”

Marinette nodded slowly. “I…” she took a breath, and Dani could feel the uneasiness rolling off of her in waves. Louis and Dani had done their best to downplay how dangerous the past four months had been for the three of them, but terror had gripped their mother’s heart more than once during their retelling. Dani had been around enough terrified parents over the past few months that she should have been used to the emotion, but somehow it was different when it was coming from her own mother. “I didn’t know what was happening on the outside, of course,” Marinette said, “but I suppose I should have suspected you three would be doing something about it. Nobody in this family ever gets to sit these things out.”

Dani’s arm was already around her mother, but she hugged a bit more tightly and felt her mother’s bitterness recede a little. “What, um, what about you?” Dani asked. “You know the whole story from our side now. What’s yours?”

Marinette sighed deeply. “Well, I… hang on, we should get your sister. Where is she?” At the question, Louis immediately looked to Dani.

“Still where we left her,” Dani answered confidently. “Working on figuring out where Dad is. It’s going really well.” Marinette frowned, confused. “Or at least, the two of them are way more optimistic than they usually are working on that stuff.”

“Ah,” Marinette said, her expression clearing. Dani made a mental note to herself to dial back her blatant use of empathy until her mother was a little more acclimated to everything.

“You want me to go get her, bring her back here?” Louis offered.

“No,” Marinette said slowly, trying but failing to mask her irritation. “we might as well all go. If… if your uncle really is close to finding your father, it might help him to hear my story, too. I might as well tell it to everyone at once.”

“You sure?” Dani asked. She didn’t relish the thought of being in the same room as her mother and Uncle Jonathan at the same time again. Her mother’s shock, fear and anger upon seeing the man had been so intense Dani had practically struggled just to stay standing in its presence. And while Jonathan’s immediate response to Marinette wasn’t nearly as strong, it hadn’t been long before his emotions were almost as intense as hers.

“I’ll be fine, sweetheart,” Marinette said. Well, she believed it at least, that was something.

~~~

Jonathan didn’t look up as the three of them entered the panic room, but Emma did. “Oh,” she said, “Mom, I-” she started to get up, but Marinette waved her back down.

“It’s fine, love,” she said gently, walking over to the desk. She looked over her daughter’s shoulder for a few seconds before looking at Jonathan. “So,” Marinette said carefully, “you know where Adrien is?”

“Just about,” Jonathan replied. He didn’t look up, and kept his voice neutral. “If you have any idea where you docked, though, that would be helpful for verification.”

Marinette nodded. “I didn’t exactly take a tour of the place, but I’ll see what I can remember.” Marinette looked over Emma’s work silently for a few more moments, then traced a finger lightly over the figures. “This is killing him?” she asked softly.

Jonathan shrugged. “Way things are going, Adrien might still outlive us all,” he muttered to himself. Half a second later he visibly winced as Marinette shot him a death glare. “Sorry. It’s just… it’s not as bad as it sounds. Adrien has at least a few months, probably more. We have more immediate deadlines, unfortunately. The Order’s close to figuring out how to detect Miraculous users, and Emma has less than two weeks of safe teleportation left.”

Marinette paled a little and glanced at Emma, who quickly looked away under her mother’s gaze. “Yes, Dani and Louis mentioned that.” Marinette paused, and from across the room Dani could feel her mother firmly shoving aside the part of herself that recoiled from saying what she was about to say. “Thank you.”

“Oh,” Jonathan said, clearly caught completely off-guard, “yeah, sure. Don’t mention it.”

“Don’t mention it?” Marinette repeated, annoyed. “You saved my daughter’s life.”

Jonathan shrugged. “I didn’t do it for thanks,” he said, somewhat defensively.

“I didn’t say you did! I’m still grateful and that’s what decent people do, they say ‘thank you’ when they’re grateful, and they say sorry when they’re remorseful-”

“Okay,” Louis interrupted. “Can we get back to the spell update?” Marinette and Jonathan both looked up at him, startled, and then Marinette took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Jonathan spread out his notes.

“I’ll have Adrien’s exact location in less than an hour,” Jonathan told them, without a trace of doubt in either his voice or his mind.

“Really?” Marinette asked, all trace of her earlier irritation gone. Jonathan nodded.

“You’re awfully confident,” Dani said, “considering you were completely wrong about the memory spell.”

“I was not wrong about that,” Jonathan insisted, not looking up from his work.

“Mom clearly remembers everything.”

“So she broke it.” Jonathan looked up at Marinette. “When did you get your memories back?”

Marinette stiffened. “How did you know about that?” In response, Jonathan wordlessly pointed at one of the spell pages taped to the wall. Marinette sighed. “Three, or… was it four days ago, now? Five? It was the day before I escaped.”

All three of her children stared at her wordlessly for a moment. “Are you okay?” Dani finally asked in a whisper.

Marinette nodded, though Dani could feel her uncertainty. “It all just happened so fast,” Marinette said. “Remembering, escaping, making it back. It's… I’m still getting used to it.”

“How did you break it?” Emma asked.

There was a flash of desperate longing as Marinette closed her eyes. “I, um, kissed your father, actually.”

Jonathan snorted. “Yeah, that would do it,” he said.

“Oh,” Emma sighed. “Like you did with the Dark Cupid akuma. But how did you know-”

“I didn’t,” her mother interrupted. “I didn’t know anything. We just… fell in love again.”

True Love’s Kiss. Well, that just figured, didn’t it.

Jonathan glanced over at Dani, and she felt him notice her reaction. Ugh, he knew she hated it when he read her, why couldn’t he just-

“They’re not inherently romantic,” Jonathan said, looking back down at his work. Nobody else had noticed him look at Dani before he spoke. “Just… in case anybody was confused about that.”

“They’re not?” Emma asked.

“Sure hope not,” Jonathan replied casually, “or that time I woke Adele up in ‘96 during the Sleeping Beauty incident suddenly feels a lot more awkward. I know in stories they’re always very traditional, romantic… heterosexual,” he added, rolling his eyes, “but as far as real life magic is concerned, ‘true love’ is simply any kind of personal, deeply self-sacrificing love. It can be romantic, familial, even close friendships have been known to work on occasion. Just… you know, in case you kids ever need one, keep that in mind.”

“Oh, good,” Louis said, “so we don’t have to run halfway across Paris to get Henri when Emma gets knocked out or whatever.”

Emma’s face went red. “Why are you assuming it would be me that needed one?” she asked defensively.

“Because it’s always you.” As Emma and Louis continued to bicker, their mother watched on with something actually resembling amusement. Nobody was paying any attention to Dani, and she felt the tension in her chest slowly ease.

“You two remember Mom was about to tell us what happened to her, right?” Dani interrupted a minute later, and Emma and Louis abruptly stopped arguing.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” Marinette said. “I-” she looked across the room suddenly, at the news playing on the TV screen mounted to the far wall. “Can we shut that off?”

“Oh. Um.” Emma quickly crossed the room and grabbed the remote, but she merely lowered the volume. “No, actually,” she told her mother apologetically. “We need to keep an eye on the Order broadcasts. Especially after a mission as big as liberating their high-ranking military prisoner camp. We never know if they’re going to completely censor what we do from the public, or if they’re going to broadcast all the details in the worst light imaginable. And we need to know if everyone in Paris is being told to look out for the people we freed or not.”

“Not that it makes much of a difference,” Louis interrupted quickly. “Most people in Paris still wouldn’t give anyone from the Order the time of day, much less information about the Resistance.”

Marinette nodded. For a moment Dani was sure she’d comment, but then it passed and Marinette simply exhaled. “Well… I woke up in a prison cell,” she started. “I had no idea who I was or what I was doing there, and there was a very young blonde woman yelling at me in Swedish.”

“Swedish?” Emma asked.

“Luckily for me, she spoke French, too,” Marinette said. “There were plenty of cellmate pairs with no common language at all. Communication was… very awkward at first, in that place…”

~~~

“… and after it had been about, oh, fifteen minutes of not hearing any voices,” Marinette said, “I kicked out the panel, climbed out, replaced it, snuck off the boat, and ran for the woods as fast as I could. I probably wouldn’t have succeeded without my luck. Or been found a day later by someone actually willing to drive me home,” she added.

“Lucky the Order never figured out who you were, either,” Emma added, “or he might have been a lot less willing to drive you.”

Marinette frowned. “Why didn’t the Order just release pictures of everyone they’d captured, if identification was so difficult?” Her children shrugged, then one by one looked at their uncle. After a moment he noticed and pulled his reading glasses off, pushing his work aside.

“I can only guess,” Jonathan started, “but… how many prisoners were there?”

“Ninety-four,” Marinette replied, before noticing her children’s shock. “What?”

“It’s just,” Dani dug through her bag and pulled out a tablet, “the Order’s only claimed to have neutralized about fifty superheroes. They have this whole nauseating website devoted to each one. And they ran mandatory broadcasts on each superhero as they were identified.”

“Yeah,” Jonathan said, “ninety-four sounds about right. The Order doesn’t want to admit that they just grabbed everyone powerful enough to be a threat. They’re obsessed with their narrative, and their narrative is that they freed Europe from masked vigilantism. If they released pictures of everyone they grabbed, it wouldn’t take the public long to figure out that half of them aren’t masked vigilantes at all. They’re regular people, like Beth. People who just happen to have powerful magic. And except for you and Adrien, identifying the superheroes wasn’t difficult. The Order doesn’t know how to handle quantic magic, because in this plane of existence quantic magic is pretty much exclusive to the seven Miraculouses, but they’re very competent with more common forms. Quantic identity protection was the Order’s only blind spot, as far as we can tell. So figuring out the superhero identities one by one, that probably seemed like the better option.”

“I see.” Marinette looked at Dani. “Website?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Dani said, handing her tablet over. “Here’s the woman Uncle Jonathan just mentioned, Beth Renaud. The woman they think is you. Recognize her?”

Marinette nodded. “She wasn’t in my group, but I knew her. She was there.” She scrolled down. “The other superheroes are here, too?”

“Yeah,” Dani said, “but don’t read the descriptions if you don’t want to be infuriated, the Order doublespeak gets really obnoxious when superheroes are involved.”

Marinette skimmed through the site. “She was in my group,” she said, pausing at one picture, of a Portuguese woman. “Oh-Two-Three. Our leader. She sort of fell into the roll on a whim, actually, but she was good at it.” Marinette read silently for a moment. “Inez Ferreira, the Angel of Guimarães. A doctor who used her magic healing powers to save the dying.” Marinette finished reading the description and sighed. “How do they manage to spin that like it’s a bad thing?”

Dani rolled her eyes. “They’re all like that,” she said, annoyed.

Marinette kept scrolling. “Oh!” she said with a soft gasp. “One.” She blinked back tears. “She was in my group, too. She was… she was very brave.”

Louis craned his neck to see the screen, and his jaw dropped. “Pyra?” he asked, incredulous. “You were in the same group as Pyra?”

“Is that who she is?” Marinette started to read the description, and Dani felt a pang of guilt from her mother. “We… when we were originally coming up with the escape plan, we were going to send her. She was so young, she had no business being in a place like that. But then I got my memories back, and she insisted it be me. Insisted it would maximize our chances of success. She was right, I suppose, but I didn’t want to admit it at first. She was very insistent.” Marinette put a hand to her cheek. “Actually, she slapped me in the face and told me to snap out of it.”

“Pyra slapped you in the face?” Louis asked in disbelief.

As their mother kept reading, Dani took a few steps over and sidled up to her brother. “Jealous?” she whispered.

Louis’ cheeks turned bright red. “Shut up,” he mumbled back, and Dani grinned.

“She was so convinced she was a hero, after I told everyone about being Ladybug,” Marinette said, more to herself than to her children. “It feels wrong, knowing who she is when she still doesn’t remember.” She finished the description, then looked at Dani, her eyes still wet. “I think I’d like to read the rest of these on my own,” she said. “Could I borrow this?”

Dani nodded. “Of course,” she said. “Take all the time you need with it.”

~~~

“Mom?” Dani poked her head into her mother’s room.

“Oh, hi, sweetie,” Marinette said, looking up from the tablet she’d borrowed. “That was very good timing, I just finished reading through everything.” She paused, then narrowed her eyes. “That wasn’t actually a coincidence, was it?”

“Um. No, I kind of… felt it. Sorry, if that’s bothering you I can stop-”

“No, no,” Marinette said quickly. “I’d like to get used to it. I don’t want you hiding your abilities from me.”

“Oh. Well, okay,” Dani said, entering the room and closing the door softly behind her. Marinette smiled as Dani approached.

“If I can get used to having an empath for a mother-in-law,” Marinette added, as Dani sat next to her, “I’m sure getting used to having one for a daughter will be a piece of cake.” Dani laughed, and some of the noticeable tension in her shoulders eased. “Did you need something?”

“Yeah, um… well, I know you’ve already met Rajji,” Dani started, “and I guess you must know Wayzz even better, but you haven’t actually met-” Dani opened the satchel slung over her shoulder and squinted into it. “Come on,” she whispered impatiently, before reaching inside and turning back to her mother. “You haven’t met Nooroo yet,” she finished, holding her hand up. The tiny kwami in her palm looked up at Marinette shyly, his lilac eyes wide.

“Oh!” Marinette leaned forward. “It’s very nice to finally meet you, Nooroo,” she said. Nooroo’s expression didn’t change.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “For everything that-”

“Oh, no,” Marinette said quickly, and Dani could feel her mother’s heart breaking, just a little. “No, no, none of that was your fault, I know that.”

“I told you she wouldn’t blame you,” Dani said.

Before Nooroo could respond, a red blur darted out from behind Marinette and collided into him. “Nooroo!” Tikki exclaimed, hugging him tightly in mid-air. “We were so worried about you!” Tikki’s energetic embrace had carried them both a few feet across the room, and instead of returning they landed on a nearby dresser and continued to talk quietly. Marinette and Dani watched them silently for a moment, and then Marinette put an arm around her daughter.

“I’m glad that went well,” Dani said softly.

“Why wouldn’t it?” Marinette asked.

Dani shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said, fiddling with the amethyst brooch pinned to her chest, “I knew you wouldn’t really be mad at Nooroo, but… well, you became a superhero to fight his Miraculous, so I… I can see why he’d be nervous.”

“Ah,” Marinette said, understanding dawning. She looked at her daughter. “Were you nervous too?”

Dani shrugged again. “Maybe a little,” she admitted, not meeting her mother’s gaze. “I mean… well, Nooroo couldn’t help it, but I’ve made two akumas while you’ve been gone. I didn’t really know how you’d feel about that.”

Marinette bit her lip. “Danielle, I couldn’t be prouder of everything you and Emma and Louis have done in the last four months. You know that, right?” Dani nodded. “You’ve had to deal with so much more than I did at your age,” Marinette continued, “and it sounds like all three of you have been doing an amazing job.” She sighed. “I know four months doesn’t sound like a very long time, but I can tell you three did a lot of growing up in those months. I hate that I missed it. Everything’s so different now, I’m not sure how long it’ll take me to catch up.”

“Oh,” Dani said, squeezing her mother’s hand reassuringly, “some things are still the same.”

“Yeah?”

“Mm hmm.” Dani nodded. “I’m still perfect, of course,” Marinette grinned, “Louis still breaks into everything, Emma’s still an awkward mess around Henri… which is crazy, if you ask me. You’d think after she teleported unconscious into the guy’s living room they’d finally get over themselves, but no.”

Marinette laughed. “Yes, well. Awkward teenage romance, in my experience, is the one thing that superheroics take a backseat to.” Marinette hesitated. “What about you?” she asked her daughter. “Any new awkward boys I should be worried about with you? Or girls?”

“Oh. Um.” Dani hadn’t forgotten she’d be having this conversation eventually, but she suddenly felt very unprepared for it. “Well, actually, uh. The thing is…”

Marinette frowned. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing, nothing. It’s not wrong,” Dani said defensively,  “it’s just. Um. I’m asexual, actually. So, uh, one less thing you need to worry about?” Dani let out a small and forced laugh, but her mother didn’t laugh back. Dani wasn’t sure how to interpret what, exactly, her mother was feeling. “I would have told you before,” Dani added in a rush, “I just, I didn’t really figure it out until I became an empath and I had, like, a baseline of comparison, you know?”

For a brief, awful moment the clearest emotion Dani could read from her mother was disappointment. But then Marinette grabbed her and hugged her tightly, and Dani realized she’d misinterpreted it completely. “I am so sorry,” Marinette whispered. “I should have been here for that. I should have been here for you.”

“Oh,” Dani said, and her eyes were filling up with tears, partly due to her own relief and partly due to her mother’s regret, “it’s okay.”

“It’s bad enough you were scared to tell me about the akumas, but on top of that you were worried about telling me this, too?” Marinette hugged Dani even more tightly. “Danielle, you’re my daughter and you are perfect, understand?”

Dani nodded wordlessly and clung to her mother silently, not trusting herself to speak for a while. “I wish…”

“What, sweetheart?” Marinette asked, not loosening her embrace.

Dani sighed. “I just wish we had time to go over everything, that’s all. Just… just talk. For, like, a week or two, just talk. There must be so much you can tell us now, things we didn’t know growing up. But we’re still in the middle of this stupid occupation, and things are getting worse. There isn’t any time.” Dani leaned into their embrace, resting her head against her mother’s chest, and for a few minutes the room was quiet.

“You’re not named after my cousin,” Marinette said, breaking the silence abruptly.

Dani frowned. “Huh?”

Marinette sighed and stroked Dani’s hair. “You’re right,” she said. “There isn’t enough time to go through everything your father and I kept from you kids, everything we lied about. But I can tell you things as I think of them, and that was the first thing that came to mind.”

Dani pulled away. “I’m not named after Danielle Miller? But… why would you even lie about that? You send her a Christmas card every year with my picture! What’s the point of-”

“Oh, you’re named after Danielle Miller,” her mother interrupted. “But she’s not my cousin. She’s an FBI agent. Being cousins was just our cover story when we were infiltrating that cult together, the one that had your grandmother.” Dani’s jaw dropped. “It was your father’s idea, actually, to name you after her. I didn’t have two girls’ names picked out, so I asked him to choose yours. Agent Miller helped save his mother, she took a bullet for his wife…” Marinette shrugged. “It seemed fitting.”