"Faceless Future" Book 2 of "Secrets Unraveled" Trilogy |COMPLETED|

Chpt 28: A Difficult Day for Cat Noir.

Cat Noir was sitting at the table in the kitchen talking to Sabine.  He had continued his weekly Tuesday meetings with Marinette's mom even after he had moved in.  While Adrien had considered stopping them thinking it might be too awkward since he was living with them now, Marinette thought that it would be too suspicious for Cat Noir to stop coming the moment Adrien moved in.  She had a point.  And Adrien still found it helpful to talk to Sabine, though he constantly worried he would slip up and tell her something that would reveal his identity.

"And how's it going with your family?" Sabine asked.  It was one of the many recurring topics he discussed with her. They'd already talked about school and his extracurriculars.  He tried to make sure they didn't sound identical to his normal life activities, now that she knew him so well.

Cat Noir tried to think about how to answer the family question without sounding too much like Adrien.  "We've been talking more, which is good I guess.  But, there's a long way to go as they still aren't willing to meet me halfway on anything.  There's no compromise on their part.  I have to do exactly what they want in order to get anything I want and what they ask at times is impossible.  And the really annoying thing is that they know it's impossible, so why do they even bother asking?"  He clenched one of his fists in frustration at the memory of his last meeting with his father.

Sabine took a sip of her tea.  "You know the answer.  Control.  But, the thing that can be difficult to understand is why your family wants this much control over you.  I assume some part of it would be that they are trying to protect you."  Sabine blushed slightly at the memory of her doing the same thing to Marinette.  She hadn't exactly been proud of that, but she had been trying to protect Marinette and possibly help Adrien.

Cat Noir noticed her blush and couldn't stop himself from saying "I guess you've done that to protect Marinette?"

She tried to decide whether explaining her motivation about keeping Marinette from joining Adrien the other night would be helpful.  If Adrien was Cat Noir, maybe he might understand the situation better?  And if he wasn't, maybe it could help him with his family situation?

Sabine finally nodded to Cat.  "Yes, we recently kept Marinette from doing something and she probably thought that was unfair.  It could be viewed as controlling, but we were doing it to protect her.  And help Adrien," she said, closely watching Cat's face for any reaction to what she said.

He tried not to let any expression cross his face as he could feel her scrutiny.  "Adrien?" he asked tentatively.

"Yes, as you probably know Adrien has been staying with us.  He was having some serious issues with his father- not unlike those you seem to be having with your family- and felt like he couldn't live at home.  And Tom and I noticed that he and Marinette seemed to be doing everything together now.  One night when Adrien said he was going to head out to meet a friend, Marinette decided she was going to join him and we stopped her.  We thought it was important for Adrien to do some things on his own.  He has seemed to be feeling a little . . . hmm . . . uncertain in his new life and we thought that it was important for him to do things on his own to feel independent and more confident."

"Okay, that makes sense," said Cat, thinking through what she said, "but how does that have anything to do with protecting Marinette?"  He cocked his head to the side in confusion.

"Well," she said, avoiding his eyes, "we think it's possible Adrien is doing something that he may not want Marinette to know about.  We don't think it's anything bad, but if we are right, we don't want her to get hurt."

Cat Noir's eyes widened at that statement.  What does she mean by that? "If it's not anything bad, then shouldn't Adrien and Marinette get to decide?  In my experience, keeping secrets from people doesn't protect them it just lets them walk into unexpected situations unprepared.  Which can cause more hurt and damage than there would have otherwise been."  He'd certainly run into a lot of that in the past year!