Counting Ripples

(With this I have run out of prompts! Please send more! I do not mind those that have prompted asking again!)

Adrien will never admit that he smells people.

It's not his fault, it's entirely Plagg's fault. But it's gotten him in trouble in ways that he can't properly explain to anyone else.

How can he explain that after Marinette was almost Akumatized that he started asigning scents to his friends and checking them regularly? Insanity.

How can he explain that some days, Nathalie smells like cigars and on those days the world is made of ice. A door closes between them.

She doesn't know he knows. But he does.

So when Sublime arrives late to their run he's already edge, but when her smell hits him - his entire body goes briefly tense before he makes himself relax, and taps out the sign he's worked out with Plagg to warn his Kwami.

Then he lets the run take him, though he never lets himself relax entirely into it.

"Hey." She says, casually as she finishes her water. "How have things been with Marinette?"

Ears he doesn't currently have pin flat to his head. A tail that isn't his swishes back and forth, balance shifting automatically to his toes completely incongruous with the current shape of him.

"Great!" He answers brightly and flashes a smile that shows normal, human teeth. "How are things with your mom?"

Something tightens around her borrowed eyes - a coldness gone in nothing more than a flash. "Better. I think she is finally listening to me."

How funny, that has the feel of truth. So, their enemy has a problem with their family too. Maybe even specifically with her mom.

Well. Him too, but he hasn't become a supervillan about it. And if she wanted friends, there were better ways to get it them.

"Good. Glad to hear it. It was hard for me, before my dad died." He says it carefully. "It's easier to know what a ghost wants."

"Really?" She's eager. Too eager. Sublime would have made some comforting noises and changed the subject. "What do you think he wants from you?"

Adrien swallows back a smile and lies. "I think he would want me to make sure that everyone remembers him as he was, a flawed human being."

"Oh. But. I mean- he's a hero, right?" Her eyes are too big and too wet and she misses the mark for genuine in her excitement to get him to talk about it.

But then, from the messages he keeps getting from anon accounts - she always knew, didn't she? He wonders if she was there that night.

"I think. He did something heroic. But it doesn’t change the life he lived before it. Lots of people are capable of doing one heroic thing." He tips his head, smiling guilelessly.

He knows he's better at the doe eyes that she is. He doesn't have his tail or his ears to give him away, no crackle of cataclysm at his fingertips.

Right now. He is just Adrien. He meets her gaze. And she looks away first, her gaze dropping to the rings before she offers a handshake. Nice try, but he grew up with Félix and it's a rediculous trick.

"I've told you before, friends hug." He teases and invades her space all at once. She goes stiff in his arms, but her only pats her back twice and steps back.

"Right. Well. Good run." She says, and ducks her head as she grabs her bag.

"See you tomorrow!" He calls after her, and checks his phone. Sublime has already texted back to Plagg's check in, apologizing. She lost her phone and couldn't call him.

But she had never joined him. Not today.

Her shape is already gone from the walkway.

Blurb: the ladies are having tea and talking

(Oh anon you have no idea how Hard I tried to not have this be Nathalie's Terrible No Good day but Amelie has beef.)

Amelie had agreed almost too eagerly when Sabine had asked her to come over.

Amelie has a son who has a Miraculous. Amelie has dealt with this before. Nathalie has used a Miraculous, knows the risks, and isn't going to lie to her.

But the look that flashes across Amelie's face when Nathalie walks in cannot be described as anything *but* predatory and she's already second guessing herself.

"Félix told me you've known for awhile. That must have an intresting conversation." Amelie starts, eyes narrowing.

"Amelie. I..."

"Sorry, Sabine, Nathalie and I have known each other for years. She lived with my sister before Adrien was born." Amelie pours the tea like someone preparing for battle, and Sabine can barely make a noise of acknowledgement around the lump in her throat.

Nathalie looks uncomfortable- but she sits, ramrod straight like she's about to be interrogated and has decided to submit to it even if she doesn't want to.

She has walked into something far bigger than herself, and suddenly Sabine feels like wrestling with her own impulse to protect Marinette might be easier than this conversation.

"I only found out after the fact. I was willing to go to prison for what I did." Nathalie says stiffly.

"And yet you didn't, and Tomoe didn't, and Gabriel ran off with my sister's corpse. And you left the job of cleaning up your mess to a little girl."

"Amelie..." Nathalie starts. Shifting.

"How do you do it?" Sabine blurts out, and Amelie's eyes dart to her. They are so like Adrien's, like Félix's - but there is a darkness under them that neither boy carries. "Just. Let him go out there and risk his life?"

Amelie softens. "I trust Félix. My...husband was terrible person. Félix had to grow up very fast. So did Adrien." A sharp look at Nathalie. "I know there is a risk, but to ask to not go and help them when his heart is set on doing the right thing....I would be destroying him. That doesn't mean that my heart doesn't drop in my chest when he goes to an Akuma - but I know he will tell me if something goes wrong. And...now. knowing that Marinette is Ladybug - it soothes my heart. She won't let anything happen to him."

There is such conviction in her voice, Sabine's eyes burn to hear it. "You trust her that much?"

"It's like all of the pieces clicked together as soon as I knew." Amelie smiles, though it falters. "Including why she lied."

"I didn't ask her to."

"Of course not." Amelie sniffs. "Sabine, the hardest thing for you will be a battle I have fought with Félix." She reaches over and squeezes Sabine's hand. "That Adrien deserves the truth. He needs to know who his parents were. He deserves that. And it cannot come from me."

Sabine closes her eyes. "I hate this for them."

Blurb- watching adrien and felix in whatever contact they were allowed before it was cut off

(So I misread this at first as Amelie and Adrien bird watching, and the idea of it delighted me so intensely that is what you get. Hope you like!)

"Oh, it's another gull." Adrien says, voice heavy with disappointment as he marks a tally next to the bird.

"We'll be at the park soon, darling." Emilie says from her chair, smiling. "I am certain there will be others there."

It's a good day, late September air enough for a jacket but not so cold it requires the boys to be so bundled up they can't move. It is also a good day because Emilie is in good enough spirits to be shuffled into her chair and wrapped in blankets to join them.

Nathalie pushes the chair, and Gabriel is notable in his absence, but Amelie can tell that both boys are chuffed by her presence.

Adrien is holding Félix's mittened hand in his own gloved one, dropping it only to turn the pages.

Félix is practically floating next to him, and she doubts he has seen a single bird that Adrien has called put because his hungry eyes have yet to leave his cousin.

She remembers that feeling with mixed fondness. Emilie had always been the bright one, the light in her eyes. The guide to mischief.

And now her vibrant sister is fading, the color seeping out of her. Colt thinks the boys are evil, but everyone knows that magic has a cost.

The bill comes due eventually.

"A tit!" Adrien chortals, dropping Félix's hand to point. "Look. Do you think it's Eurasian? Or a Great Tit?"

Félix giggles softly. "Um. It's got a yellow belly. That's Eurasian, right?"

Adrien giggles too, and happily marks down the bird in his guide. He bumps against Félix's side like an overeager puppy. "Good job!"

Amelie can't help her smile, glancing at Emilie. Her sister is smiling too, gaze warm and hungry on the boys.

They should get to be like this all the time, a breath away from each other. But as much as she wants that for them, sending her son to Emilie would only be taking him from the darkness he knows into a bigger mess.

Maybe she has some of Emilie's selfishness too - she loves her son, even if he hadn't been a choice she made. She doesn't want to lose him.

The trip to Rio takes an hour - it's quick. He's quick.

Plagg has given him wings to fly.

He doesn't know what to say when Luka opens the window. He doesn't even know how to start. The weight of it feels like it is choking him.

He sees Luka see it, sees the moment he shifts and prepares to receive him - no judgements, not urgent apologies, no lies.

Still - he has to be sure. "Did you know?" He chokes out, his voice breaking around the worlds, his heart shattered.

"Know what?" Luka asks, and reaches for him.

He has to be sure. "My father." He whispers. "Was Monarch."

Luka's face cycles through several complicated emotions, pained comprehension is what he lands on. "I didn't."

And Adrien let's the last of his restraint fall away as he collapses into Luka's arms, transformation melting away as a sob shatters him.

Luka catches the pieces, holds them together as the grief and betrayal rock through him. They kneel on the bed, a gentle hum under his chest and a thumb pressing just behind his ear as Luka rocks him in his arms.

He doesn't speak. Adrien has no words for the gratitude that wells up in him at the comforting silence.

"Why didn't she tell me?" He whispers raggedy when the tears finally slow. His throat and chest ache, and his eyes feel chafed. There is an obvious wet patch on Luka's shoulder that he will probably feel embarrassed about later.

"Why did she say?"

He scoffs, and accepts the tissue Luka gives him to wipe his face. "He asked her to. She thought she was protecting me."

"Oh." Luka breathes out, and it feels disappointed. "I'm sorry, Adrien."

"You didn't know." He says, pushing his head into Luka's chest like a needy cat.

"She came to talk to me. She asked for my Miraculous- I must have over reacted." Luka muses, running steady fingers through his hair. "She used second chance to take it back."

A purr vibrates his chest, and Luka gives a small sound, amusement. He finds he doesn't mind so much.

"What will you do?" Luka asks, softly, when his breathing has slowed and his eyes feel over heavy and his chest rumbles with steady purrs that make him feel the cracks in himself as much as they seem to fuse them.

"Can I stay the night?" He asks, mouth thick and slow around the words.

"Of course you can. You should not be flying back to Paris like this. We're lucky you didn't crash into the ocean." There is a little pressure on his head, as though Luka has pressed his face against his hair. "But I mean after that. What do you want the future to look like. Do you want everyone to know? Or do you want to keep it to yourself."

He tangles his fingers in Luka's shirt. "I want you to know."

Luka's breath huffs, and his face is very close to his hair because he feels it and he doesn't mind it. "Of course, silly cat. I'll know."

"That's as much as I want to decide right now."

"Ok, Adrien." The fingers resume their petting and he relaxes further at the lack of pressure and the steady warmth of Luka's heartbeat under his chest.

It's not that he's anti-social. He really doesn't mind the mass of them. There are just a lot of them.

He leaves the debrief quietly, as is his wont and isn't expecting anyone but maybe Kagami to follow him - and she had been invovled in a quiet conversation with the fox, and from the way rage had wrapped the fox the entire day, he hadn't wanted to get involved.

"Félix!" The tone makes his heart jump, but he turns smoothly on the stairs and looks down at the fox thoughtfully.

She's wearing the anger openly now, her face flushed, her eyes narrowed and her teeth bared.

Félix measures the space between breaths, and arrives at a comfortable five before he plucks a response from his mind. "Argos. When we are transformed, I'm Argos.." He says, voice metered and controlled.

She hisses, the air leaving her in an angry noise that is almost a bark. "Everyone in Paris knows who you fucking are, Félix. Don't play games with me."

He tilts his head, sifting through the layers of her emotions. Anger. Betrayal. A grief sharp and astringent, edged like a scalpel ready to excise it all. A deep affection he lingers on, multilayered, sweet and sour all at once. And under it all a loyalty that snaps and pops like a live wire.

"I never expected *you* to lie your cousin." She snaps put, aiming to hurt.

Félix snorts. "You will find that in this family, secrets and lies are cradlesong." He wouldn't give her his grief, not when she comes at him with blood on her claws.

"Then why protect your Uncle?" She isn't giving up, admirable in any other circumstance. But bothersome in this.

"The situation is far more complicated than that." He answers, flicking the fan opened and clicking it closed again. Duusu's power is a weight in his chest, a second heart that shivers under his skin.

"Or you're just a coward. Adrien deserves the truth about Gabriel Agreste. If Ladybug won't tell him, then you should."

He thinks of his cousin in that terrible mausoleum, sharing a roof and a hearth with the enemy. Loving her.

It makes him sick, in the way of bile coating his tounge. But he doesn't say that.

Instead, he tilts his head. "Did she tell you or did you figure out a piece of it all and decide that was enough?"

It brings Alya up short, and he sees the moment it clicks in her head that she might not understand the entire picture. "I know that Gabriel Agreste was Monarch- and that he made a wish." She bites out.

"A small piece then, admirable deductions. Most people wouldn't question it." Another flick of the fan, it opens smoothly. Effortlessly. And then snaps closed again.

"Most people trusted Ladybug." The hurt is there, under the words.

"Some of it isn't hers to share, I am afraid that being Monarch was only one small part of my uncle's evil." Félix says, voice calm. "If you would like, I can show you part of that truth."

Alya stiffens, her eyes narrowed and focused on him. "A trick?"

"A treat, for your persistence. I have the only Miraculous I want." He answers easily.

"I don't trust you." Ayla says slowly - but her curiosity has already won.

"I don't trust you either. But we are allies. So one of us has to yield." And Félix has more practice in this game than she does.

'He never expected those eyes to turn hard like that. Not at him.'

Plagg has had his share of bad holders. Probably more than his fair share, honestly. But he'd take them over the others getting wrapped up in human conflicts. Even if it meant entire cycles and holders that never liked each other. Even if it meant....well. He would rather take it, Destruction takes the hit, Creation gets the pass and Tikki....it breaks her heart, but they always know how it will end when their holders are fighting. Adrien is different. Both of the current kids are different, in a way that Plagg doesn't want to think on too hard because it makes him feel so damned hopeful and he knows it never lasts. But he never expected those eyes to turn hard like that - sure, the kid has a temper. He's seen it before. Under that cheerful innocent mask, the kid is a killer. He knows that, even if that particular shoe hasn't dropped yet.

He expected the hardness, is the thing. Over time, all his kids get it. Some of them come to him tempered already, sharpened by life until all Plagg becomes is a final push. The final scream of a stone on steel before a blade is ready for use. The thing is, and it isn't fair, because the look is deserved. But he never expected Adrien's eyes to go hard like that at him. "You knew." The accusation has none of the feathering, the slight fondness that colors every other interaction. The softening that made everything easier. "Kid-" Plagg starts. "Don't lie to me, Plagg." And it's an order, in the way that so much else hasn't been. In the way that Adrien has never exerted his will over him in their partnership.

"I knew." Plagg agrees, wilting. Adrien is up in a moment, pacing his room, his entire body taunt - a bowstring made of boy that is finding a target. Anger is easier than grief, in some ways. Harder in others. Plagg waits, he doesn't have to. Adrien hasn't ordered him still or silent. But he waits for the war inside the boy he has let himself love to resolve itself for good or ill. Adrien stops in the middle of the floor, his back to Plagg, his head thrown back like a sunflower seeking light even though the midnight air around them is cold and dark. For whatever else they had done, Duusu had made something beautiful. Someone beautiful. Galatea wandering the world, now without his creators to guide him. Only Plagg, and Plagg knows he's a shit guide.

"Felix!" Marinette's mother gives him an awkward, teary smile. Neither of them look happy, neither of them look pleased.

The shop is closed for the night, and he could have easily gone through her hatch but something in him makes him knock.

Maybe it's the delay. Maybe he needs the normal walk through her house, even transformed, to make himself be calm. Maybe he should have waited for Kagami, but Kagami was handling Adrien and Felix - Felix didn't do idle well.

"Mrs. Cheng." He greets, cautiously, because her mother is easier than her giant father. "Can I talk to Marinette?" She bites her lip, gaze scanning him. "Just talk?"

"Just talk." He assures her, though he didn't know that himself until she let him in the door. Marinette feels like an open wound above him, and he feels like he should do something before the new Butterfly tries to Akumatize her again. Sabine Cheng nods, and foists a tray of snacks and tea on him before she lets him escape.

How strange to have a normal family. How strange to be loved so easily. He shakes it off, and climbs the stairs into her room - Tikki greets him, but doesn't leave Marinette's side, curled next to the girl on the lounge. "What were you thinking?" Felix asks softly, easing the tray onto the table next to her. "Not now, Felix." She whispers to her knees. "Please not now." "Kagami is with him." Felix informs her carefully, sitting down next to her. He feels like his head is on swivel watching for a butterfly, it makes him anxious. But either the new Hawkmoth is asleep or she isn't transformed.

Or she's targeting Adrien, but he trusts Kagami to handle the woman.

"Good." A soft, watery whimper escaped her. "I don't understand." Felix says, studying her in the dark. "Why now?" "I can't keep lying to him. I can't. I ca-can't say I love him and keep something so big from him." "So stop lying?" Felix offers. She glares at him, red eyed and runny nose. "It's not that simple."

Kagami is laughing softly into her cupped hands, watching him sail across the ice.

She had suggested this. And after the pain of the last few weeks he had been even less inclined to refuse her - not that he typically refused at all.

Ice skating.

"Is it working?" He asks, catching her hand as he comes to her side.

"You always bring a smile." She answers, and kisses the corner of his mouth.

"But?" He asks, gently.

"A sister." She says softly. "I had a sister. All those....all of it. She never told me."

He brushes her hair back from her face. Waiting. Quiet. Patient.

"And now she's evil. And i am never going to." Kagami takes a breath, leaning into him. "It seems pointless."

"I know." He draws a careful breath.

"I met her and I didn't know." That is what bothers her the most. He thinks. That Lila- Cerise- whoever she really was. Had been right there, had been a friend and Kagami had not realized.

"You had no reason to realize." He says softly, granting her forgiveness she doesn't ask for.

"Is it foolish to think I should have known anyway?" She bites her lip, and he kisses the mark she leaves.

It isn't her mistake, and still she aches.

Blurb: he’s learned the truth about his father. He’s pretending to Marinette and his friends that he’s fine, but on the inside he’s very much not.

Adrien understands.

He hasn't spoken to Nathalie in seven days and he can feel the line she draws down his spine with her eyes every time he leaves the house- usually early, usually before breakfast - but as much as he *understands* and knows how he needs to preform he can't forgive her.

Not yet. Maybe not ever.

The little Eifle Tower keychain has joined his sock Plagg and the rings in his bag.

One day, maybe. He will walk out the front door and never come back. He'll move in with Felix and his aunt, or run away to join Luka in Rio.

But not today. Today, Nino's arm around his stiff shoulders makes him feel like crawling out of his skin.

The smile he plasters on feels like his model smile, but Nino is too lost in his parent's divorce to realize it.

His friends have their own thing. And he's not sure how to start the conversation.

'My father was a monster, and not just to me, to all of Paris, and he has been in your heads and hurt you.'

The second hand guilt mixes with rage - and he doesn't understand why death has so profoundly altered everyone else's understanding of his father when it's only made him colder.

Like he's looking at his memories through glass and realizing the father who loved him died with his mother, or maybe even before. That the person who had been haunting his house had never cared about him at all.

"Adrien?" Alya's voice is a bit sharp, her eyes shooting to Marinette - they're fighting. But they keep trying to hide it.

Adrien smiles. "Sorry. Zoned out. What was the question?:

"Movie?" Alya repeats more gently. She's been angry at Marinette but so soft with him it's confusing.

"Yeah. That's fine." And he smiles. Because he should.