Bug Bites

Chapter | Thirty-Six

Adrien Agreste had thought he'd seen it all, and well- the reality of life now was that literally anything could happen at any moment. For example, he went from being the son of a fashion designer, to a top model to a hero, then the son of a terrorist it what seemed like a blink of an eye. Now his life was in New York City, just hanging with Avengers and doing a lot more than just the physics homework back at Collège Françoise Dupont.

He felt like he was making a difference with the classes he took and the science he learned. As much as he loved being a hero and having Plagg, there had been thoughts of retiring the hero work and working behind the scenes. Tony  had offered him a job along with Bruce offering to mentor him, and Adrien was seriously considering it. Maybe this was how he could make a difference. He loved science and discovering things, and maybe he could help discover cures for people. It was a different type of hero work, one he felt more fitted for. 

Being Chat Noir was great, it gave him freedom that he had always yearned for after his father had forced him into modeling and having a strict diet. It had been a freedom he couldn't remember, not after his mother went missing. Meeting Plagg, it was liberating. He got to be free, got to discover who he really was outside of who he was expected to be. Even the fighting akumas was fine, but he wasn't really helping people. He got in the way of Marinette who was the one who truly helped, she was the real hero. She knew the loss, the sacrifice. 

He had been to lovesick, too blind by his emotions to realize he caused more harm than good. Especially after Lila. He was able to be akumatized and be saved, to feel emotions or get hit by akuma attacks without a real worry. Not Marinette, she became emotionally compromised, and now she struggled with her emotions since she spent so much time conditioning herself not to feel them. Then she left, and he was the one that had to pick up the broken pieces of Paris with Chloe and the others. 

As much as he had been mad, he understood it wasn't her being selfish. She may not even be here today had she stayed. Chloe had truly saved Marinette's life by sending her away with her mom to New York, and Adrien knew that killed Chloe inside. To see her mother fawning over Marinette in a way the blonde could only dream of her mother ever doing to her. The chances were high that Marinette could be an akuma, and she would be hard to defeat. His heart still twisted that she had been taken, her parents murdered and losing Tikki. Even if he lost his own parents, his father in jail, it could only be a fraction of what she felt. The same loss, but yet so different in circumstance. 

Yet at the same time, Chat Noir only brought back those memories. He loved being Chat Noir, but Gabriel Agreste also ruined that for him. Being tied to Chat, it just tied him back to Paris. He no longer wanted to be tied to Paris, yet another thing her could understand about Marinette. There was just something about coming to New York, learning more in quantum physics and sciences in general. He wanted to do work with meaning, like groundbreaking meaning that mattered. Which was why he was leaning more towards working with Bruce and Tony, to make that difference. 

Time had passed, and now that everything seemed somewhat calm in life he felt like he could breathe. Especially since Marinette was standing on her own two feet again. It had been hard watching her mope around, hard watching those lively blue eyes dull into a mere shade of the color they once were. 

Yet now as they all gathered in Avengers Campus, where Tony Stark had successfully built a time machine, her eyes held a different spark. It was a spark he had missed, the same one that showed determination. Yet it was also something else he couldn't quite put his finger on, so he continued to watch as her eyes would flicker towards Tony and the other older heroes tinkering with the Pym Particles. 

Apprehension.

It was apprehension that shinned in those blue eyes. She was scared that something would go wrong, but there was one more thing Adrien noticed. Her lack of voicing anything. It was the way her eyes drifted back towards Tony, the trust she held in the man was unwavering and it was new. Marinette Dupain Cheng had always had a hard time trusting people, even her own team. Sure she grew closer to Tony, but she was trusting him now with time traveling to find the past Infinity Stones.