"the moth's apprentice" chat noir x y/n

Good and Evil, Love and Hate

In the soft quiet of the late night -- the witching hour, as Mom used to call it -- I could hear his subdued breathing. Even with the blanket over his head, I knew Adrien wasn't really sleeping. The warm curve of his body shifted behind me. 

I turned over, sitting up in my bed. The breathing stilled. 

"What's wrong?" 

"Are you really okay with all of this?" I whispered. 

He was silent for some time, and I wondered if the meaning of my words had gone right over his blonde head. Several more beats passed, and as I opened my mouth to elaborate, he answered: 

"Hawkmoth has this coming, Birdy. He always has." 

"I know," I agreed, wringing my fingers together. Adrien sat up beside me, his green eyes outlined by the dim streetlights outside. "Even if he's an evil villain and all, he's still your father." 

"Blood doesn't mean everything," Adrien muttered. His eyes were downcast and his entire demeanour darkened. "That man stopped being my father the moment he tried to kill you." 

I recalled a conversation I once had with Hawkmoth. He had told me that all he wanted was for his son to be happy. He likened us to himself and the deceased Emilie. I wondered if deep down, there was still a glimmer of the old Gabriel Agreste. 

"That boy loves you with every fibre of his being,"  He had said. 

"To find out that my son was working against me as a superhero was one thing. To find out that he was fully and helplessly in love with my apprentice was quite another."

"I brought you back, Y/N, not just because I value you as Raven, but because I saw how deeply my son loves you. It's rare that love so deep exists amongst mortals but —"

Part of me wondered what would've happened if Adrien had fulfilled his end of the deal. If Gabriel had been able to keep the copy of the Chat Miraculous. 

It played out in my head. 

He would've stolen the Ladybug Miraculous -- if he even could, and then brought his darling wife back to the world of the living. 

A man, torn to pieces by the death of his true love, goes to whatever lengths he can to bring her back. It was a story not unlike what Adrien and I went through. Were they really so different? 

"Adrien?" 

"Yeah?" 

"Do you miss Emilie?" 

Adrien stiffened at hearing the name of his mother. His hands stilled. 

"Of course I do. I wish that she were still here so that --" a glimpse of that anger returned. "So that my father hadn't turned into what he did. I wish that --" his hands shook. "I wish that I'd been enough for him." 

Adrien's body turned away from me for a moment before he relaxed back into the comforter. 

I flicked the light on, bathing the room in a buttery yellow haze. 

"You're enough, Adrien," I murmured. "But a man, no matter how strong, or honourable -- his weakness will always be the person he loves most." 

There was a long silence as Adrien mulled this over. 

"What are you saying, Y/N?" 

"I don't know, I just --" 

"Because it sounds like you're accusing me of something," Adrien's voice hardened. "And if you are, you should know that it wasn't easy." 

"Of course it wasn't." 

"To go against everything I thought was right -- and yeah, I know that I might have behaved like my father -- but we're not the same person. You of all people should know that. You were closer to him than I ever was." 

Those words stung. My time as his apprentice wasn't a walk in the park, and Adrien was describing it as if I had deliberately chosen a path of evil. 

I forged on. 

"Adrien, don't you see, though? How easy it was for both of you to justify a means to an end?" 

Adrien stood up. "You're comparing me to him." He crossed his arms, his face tinted with pink around his cheeks. "How many times do I have to apologize for what I did?" 

"I'm not asking for your apology. I'm asking for you to try and understand. God forbid I ask you to sympathize--" 

"Sympathize with my father? With the man that calls himself Hawkmoth?" 

"You're so determined to see differences, Adrien, and all I see are two people who were deeply hurt!" 

Adrien huffed and he backed away from me. He spun on his heels, pacing back and forth. I waited for him to calm down. For him to come back and see that things weren't all that black and white. 

"I see now," his voice was quiet. It was grating and firm. "You don't want to kill Hawkmoth. You would rather go back to being his apprentice." 

He was missing the point. 

"You're being ridiculous," I lamented. 

"I'm being ridiculous?" Adrien laughed without any emotion. "You're calling me....you're calling me evil!" 

Adrien's breathing was laboured. He flicked hair out of his eyes and waited for me to answer. 

I stood up from my bed. "Adrien." 

"What?" 

"I don't think you're evil," I whispered. I couldn't tell at first if my whisper had reached his ears, but he didn't bite back a retort. "I think you're so good, that the thought of you being evil is just ludicrous. Even if you were, I couldn't care less." 

Adrien sighed, a long and heavy breath. Like the burden on his chest was fluttering -- attempting to leave. 

He wasn't angry. He was hurt. 

"I love you more than anything, Agreste, which means I'll stand with you through whatever choices you make." 

"I--" 

"More than that, if you even dream that you're like Hawkmoth I'll punch you. Because you're not." 

I was only one step away from him now. His head tipped down to meet me eye to eye. "We're not Gabriel and Emilie."  

"Want to know why?" I asked softly, gently grabbing the bottom of his shirt. "Because I hated you, when we first met. I got to know the ruthless Chat Noir, all the worst parts of you. The worst and the best, blended together in a reckless mess. Gabriel might put us in a box labelled 'true love', but he doesn't know what it's like to hate and love in synchrony. How scary, but how real  it makes things." 

Adrien was closer now, the corners of his mouth hiding the ghost of a smirk.

"Where are you going with this, Y/N?" Adrien breathed, his forehead brushing mine. 

"I'm saying that I'm with you. If one day you decide to take over the world, I'll start a google doc with your goddamn plans. I don't care if you think you're a hero, a villain, or something in between. I'm with you." 

Adrien was against me then, silent in his usual permeating rush of thoughts. 

"God, I love you."