#senticousins

LINE 1:

Text: “[...] You are my brother, but”

Image: Adrien and Félix hugging at the end of S3 E23: Félix. Only Félix's face is visible.

LINE 2:

Text: “you do not know me.”

Images: Chat Noir spying on Ladybug and Flairmidable in S4 S26: Strikeback. A sepia filter has been added over Chat Noir's side of the picture.

LINE 3:

Text: “I am not the outcast boy you left behind those many years ago. // Since that time,”

Image: The picture on which part 1 of this web weave ended: Argos watching from a distance as Adrien hugs Marinette and Kagami.

LINE 4:

Text: “I have found myself,”

Images: Félix wearing his ring for the first time; the torn-up rabbit plushie (sepia); Gabriel handing Colt the Peacock Miraculous as portrayed in Representation (sepia).

LINE 5:

Text: “and my place,”

Images: Argos snapping Red Moon out of existence (sepia); Félix standing up to Gabriel's gigantic figure, as portrayed in Representation; Flairmidable apologising to Strikeback for not being able to save them (sepia).

LINE 6:

Text: “and I know who I am.”

Images: Kagami laughing as Argos draws a heart on her window (sepia); the Argami sunrise kiss.

LINE 7:

Text: “And I cannot go with you.”

Since this is technically a no Miraculous AU, sentibeings aren't made using the Peacock Miraculous. Instead, they were all made using the powers of a peacock fairy, Emilie Agreste. She was Touched by Duusuu and therefore had a fairly good -- but not unlimited -- grasp on her powers. The story goes something like this:

Emilie and Gabriel wanted a child. At the same time, some of their friends (Tomoe, Audrey and André) also wanted kids. As a peacock fairy, Emilie could make living beings by giving up a small chunk of her power. The more complex the being, the more power it would take, and while she could give more than one being life at a time, it would take a lot of effort. (The way it works in my head is that she has a certain number of crest feathers on her head and when she runs out, she runs out of magic.)

The first child created was Kagami. Tsurugi Tomoe was a close friend of Gabriel's, and had no plans of ever having a partner. So Emilie sacrificed her first feather to bring Kagami into the world. Tomoe is more lizard-like in nature, while Kagami is an actual dragon spirit.

Next, Audrey and André came to Emilie. You may notice that Chloé and Zoé are both sentikids. Chloé was the first. They wanted a daughter, a bee like them, and Emilie gave her to them. Zoé was born, rather than from love, as a product of someone Audrey had been cheating on André with attempting to babytrap her. Emilie was tricked, having created Zoé hoping that she would be loved. But instead the two girls were raised far apart from one another, and fought most of the time they saw each other.

At this point, Emilie noticed her strength waning. She could give herself her child, or give Amelie the child she had wanted all her life instead, or...

Emilie came up with a compromise. The power of peacock magic is fickle, and it takes more energy to direct it, but if you're willing to let it do what it wants, you can stretch it a little farther. It's a hard sell to Amelie, but once she saw Emilie wasn't budging, she gave in. At this point Gabriel was swamped, between running his fashion empire (yes even as a butterfly fairy) and traveling the world trying to find something to prevent his wife from burning all her magic.

Felix was next. He's a peacock, like Emilie was, but Amelie is also a peacock (even if only Aligned with Duusuu) so he resembles his mother still. Amelie spends her son's first moments crying over him, and the next crying over her sister. Emilie tried to assure her she'll have some time.

There's only one last sentikid to be created. Everyone except Amelie had some requests of their children -- Audrey and André wanted girls, Tomoe wanted someone to be proud of. But Amelie just wanted a child she could love, and Emilie wants the same.

Emilie plucks the last crest feather from her head, and holds out the weddings rings -- one hers, and one left to her while its proper own traveled. As the feather joins the rings, Emilie holds her truest, deepest, most earnest wish close to her chest.

I just want someone I can love, who will grow up to be kind.

See, the powers of peacock fairies sort of force the hand of fate in a way. Creating a tailored sentibeing, like Chloé, Zoé, and Kagami, reaches towards the kwamis and manually asks for the powers granted to a naturally born spirit. All three of them felt a peacock's powers reach out, saw the blueprints for who that child could become, and made their judgements. Pollen saw potential in both Chloé and Zoé, but resented her powers being used for spite, and wanted to give Chloé a chance she'd hardly get otherwise. Longg saw a part of herself in Kagami, and knew that she'd get a chance to shine. Felix, however, had no input for how he would form, so Duusuu's interest in him was natural, and she had no chance to change him in the same ways the others could be changed.

But a peacock's last feather is special. Unlike Felix, who was a default peacock fairy born naturally, this last feather alerted all the kwamis. It's not every day a peacock fairy gives their last drops of magic to create someone. And with such an earnest wish? That's impressive.

Emilie had no control over how her child would turn out. It's not uncommon for peacock fairy creations to turn out Cursed instead, for the kwami to reject their powers being borrowed. So when Adrien finally was born, sporting the appearance of a child Cursed, she accepted it. And she loved him anyways. Gabriel, when he got home, was... less accepting. But Emilie loved Adrien with all her heart.

The decline of Emilie Agreste was a slow one. She wouldn't die, not quite yet. She held onto hope, for her son and her family and even her husband, and she refused to let go until they were all happy. But she was still dying. Day by day, she slowed. She slept for longer. She ate less. Her heartbeat slowed. Until one day, when Adrien was around ten, she stopped. She slumped onto Gabriel's shoulder, breathing slow and shallow and rarely, and he took her away, and no one saw Emilie ever again.

She's alive. Hidden somewhere within Agreste Manor, she's in some sort of magical coma. The air around her is dry from the air being sucked out of it, and the flowers by her feet are brown and brittle, but she's alive as long as there's magic for her body to absorb. There's no way to get her back to health, save for the Blessed of Creation and Destruction to will it together.

Ironically, becoming an Touched Acolyte would've saved her. Nothing Emilie did would've broken the waver she would've made with Duusuu, and it would've given her just enough energy that as long as she created Adrien and Felix the exact same, and as long as she never stopped holding love in her heart, she would've survived, if a little sickly.

Now, dear reader, you may at this point notice a few inconsistencies in my story. We have no Cursed spirits in our cast, and Adrien is Blessed by Plagg. So why does he look Cursed?

If someone is rejected by all kwamis, denied even Alignment with any of them, they fall into a peculiar subset of Destruction. So, every Cursed looks like a black cat spirit.

As a child, it's impossible to tell if a child is Blessed by Plagg or Cursed. In either case, they're born a small half-cat creature; rich black fur all over their bodies, little ears that start folded and slowly poke up, soft downy tails and healthy whiskers. Some will even have cat pupils when they blink.

A Cursed child grows up to show their curse very clearly on their cat form. The fur on their bodies falls out, their ears grow patchy and sometimes damaged, their tails develop kinks in them and their whiskers will become short and bent.

A child Blessed by Plagg looks very different as they grow. Their coat stays thick and healthy and shiny, they gain the ability to run and jump and claw things as they grow, and receive all the benefits of being chosen by He of Destruction.

Plagg's blessing come in disguise. And sometimes, that disguise is to give his Blessed child the exact right powers to hide that he is Blessed. And Adrien is Plagg's favorite child in a long, long while.

So Adrien grows up, and when his mother's passed and he needs a break the most, Plagg appears before him and explains. Adrien's the only one to have a secret identity, as Chat Noir, Plagg's clear Blessed.

And that's the end of the narrative exposition! Phew that was a lot of fun I liked it a lot. What do you do when you love a child so much Destruction himself goes "I'll give helping this child a shot" and then gets attached (Plagg and Adrien are still friends bc that's precious)

This post is. Longer than the last one! But I do really want to talk about how all the sentikids are weird about romance (which is directly related to them being sentikids but mostly because they're kids Literally Made of someone's emotion and so that kinda fucks with how they feel it)

So! Brief rundown of how they're weird and who they feel for!

Adrien: Even when he feels very strongly in one way, he can't help but feel a little bit of the emotional/support type of love for everyone. Romantically he has some unaddressed (pretending they don't exist) flushed feelings for Marinette, his actual official emotional support lover is Chloé, he's got the world's softest least rivalry-based rivalry-love thing going on with Kagami, and nothing in the last section

Felix: Can't help but feel the rivalry-based love for everyone. In a classic romantic relationship with Kagami, but they're also definitely rivals, but he sometimes acts like her emotional supporter. Actively in the world's worst romantic clusterfuck with Kagami and Marinette. Felinette horrible clusterfuck rivalry thing that they're both really into but Marinette hates and that Kagami finds herself having to help out with anyone? (Kagami is their stray cat guy)

Kagami: Romantic-romantic love is her default. She yearns for it, it fuels her in a way that maybe she should get looked at. Felix is her official classic romantic love, and she's the stray cat/emotional support for Felix and Marinette's weird thing. She might have a crush on Marinette in the pale way? Don't ask her she doesn't know. She does for sure have a massive rivals crush on Adrien but she's horrible at expressing it and comes off very emotional support. Girl your mixed signals

Chloé: Just kind of weird in that she doesn't really have any distinctions between the sorts of love she feels. Her romantic and her rivalries and her emotional support are one big huge mess. Biggest source of contention in her life is Marinette, who she can never figure out if she hates(/p) or hates (/r) or just kinda likes actually (/r) and she kinda wants Sabrina to be a thing with her and Marinette but she also just wants to be Sabrina's emotional support partner and honestly she's still so suffocated by her mom she's just gonna be an asshole to everyone to cope

Zoé: Stray cat or nothing for her. She can only really get behind the idea of joining someone else's relationship to help them work out their issues and like kiss them sometimes? But only in the context of stray cat relationship.

Disclaimer that of course none of this actually makes you weird! They're just all some flavor of aspec and very bad at identifying/naming/expressing emotions. Zoé is the most like classically aroace and everyone else falls somewhere between aro and just bad at identifying emotions. I mostly just describe them all as weird about romance because fairy amatonormativity is a funny concept to me and also very very real. Fairy society knows nothing about aromanticism. (Also: Luka is also somewhere aromantic in that he's pretty much only capable of feeling the emotional support kind of love but he's not a sentikid he's just like that)