Chapter Text
⊱.⋆° [♫] °✧° [♫] °⋆.⊰
The sun's been out just long enough to make the concrete warm but not scorching, and the big sycamore near the sandbox offers a decent patch of shade. Nino sets out the last of the folding chairs and stretches his arms over his head with a groan that feels like it came from his knees. “All right, my dudes,” he calls, turning back to the half-dozen kids scrambling out of their parents’ arms or bike seats. “Today’s vibe is: choose your own art adventure. Music station, sketching corner, or—” he points dramatically to the picnic table covered in paint-splattered paper, “—chaos.” A chorus of cheers answers him. One girl sprints straight for the table with her glitter pens already uncapped. A boy plops down by the little speaker setup and starts thumbing through the secondhand keyboard. Nino grins, tugging his cap a little lower as he moves through them, swapping batteries, adjusting volume levels, reminding everyone (nicely) not to eat the markers. He never really expected this to be his life. He thought maybe he'd end up behind a mixing desk, or gigging on rooftops with Wayhem. But after a few side gigs volunteering, one pop-up event turned into a twice-a-week thing. Now, he's got a standing permit from the city and a backpack full of old supplies he keeps topping off himself. Most days, it’s enough. More than enough. He’s crouched next to a little girl who's earnestly composing a song called “My Cat is Queen of Space” when a shadow crosses the grass beside them. “That’s a solid hook,” comes a voice low and mellow, with a smile tucked just behind it. “Catchy.” Nino glances up. He was a tall guy, long hair swept into a low ponytail wearing a faded denim jacket over a graphic tee. His sleeves were pushed up to show a few delicate tattoos curling along his forearm. A guitar case slung across his back. It takes a few seconds for him to recognize, but soon, “Wait. Luka?”
Luka smiles, soft and easy. “Hey, Nino. Long time.” Nino stands, brushing grass off his knees. “Dude, no kidding. I haven’t seen you since… what, Adrien’s launch party? You dropped that killer set before the speeches?”
Luka shrugs, modest. “I remember you were the only one who noticed when I switched the bridge melody halfway through.”
“Of course I noticed,” Nino says, grinning. “You’ve still got that weird chord voodoo thing going on.” Luka huffs a quiet laugh. His eyes flick around the little setup. Kids laughing, paint splattering, an off-key melody playing over tinny speakers. “You’re really good with them,” he says eventually. “I’m glad you’re still doing music. Even like this.” Nino feels the compliment sink somewhere deeper than expected. He scratches the back of his neck. “Thanks, man. It’s not exactly fame and fortune, but y’know. Feels real.” Before Luka can respond, a kid, Samir, trots up, clutching a crayon and pointing at Luka’s guitar case with wide eyes. “Mister, do you play?”
Luka smiles down at him. “Yeah, I do.”
“Are you famous?”
“Nope.” Luka crouches so they’re eye-level. “But you don’t need to be famous to play music.” Samir nods seriously, then zips back to his sketchpad. Nino watches the whole exchange with a lopsided smile. “Trying to put more kids on the musician track, are we?” Luka straightens, shifting his guitar case on his shoulder. “Maybe I am, you can’t have enough artists in the world.” Nino hummed in agreement, crossing his arms to watch two kids run around the table. “Fair enough. Wish he’d asked you to play, though. I’ve almost forgotten what your ‘art’ sounds like.”
“Aw man, I really want to but I should get to practice before our drummer stabs me. How about this, you free tonight?”
Nino blinks. “Uh—”
“We’ve got a set at Nocturne. Just a small thing. If you’re still curious.” He pulls a small, slightly crumpled slip of paper from his jacket pocket and offers it. A drink voucher, neatly stamped with the bar’s owl logo and scribbled in Luka’s unmistakable handwriting: Good for one song, one drink, or both . Nino takes it with a short laugh, eyebrows raised. “Subtle.” Luka’s smile tugs a little wider, but he doesn’t say anything more. Just lifts a hand in a wave as he turns, steps quietly across the grass, sunlight catching in the streaks of copper at his temples. Nino watches him go, thumb brushing over the edge of the paper. He tucks the voucher into his pocket.
Just in case.
⊱.✧° [◎] °☍° ✎ °✧.⊰
The newsroom still smelled like burnt coffee and printer toner, even though no one had used the printer in three years. Alya sat cross-legged in her spinny chair anyway, balancing her laptop precariously on one thigh and nursing a stale croissant she’d stolen from the break room an hour ago. “It’s been a decade since Paris was last attacked by an akuma,” she typed. “Ten years without a single butterfly in sight. No red and black blur swinging over rooftops. No claws. Especially, no miraculous saves.” She tapped her fingers against the keyboard, backspaced twice, and sighed. Hard. The original pitch, courtesy of her editor who still hadn’t figured out how to stop capitalizing the word EXCLUSIVE , was simple: A ten-year retrospective on Ladybug and Chat Noir complete with conspiracy theories regarding their identities.
She’d fought it at first. Then flirted with it. Then gone way too deep. Her folder was stuffed with half-finished drafts:
“Ladybug Unmasked: The Secret History”
“Chat Noir: A Legacy of Flirtation and Fury”
“Are Paris’s Greatest Heroes Still Among Us?”
She hated how easily the pieces came together once she started really thinking about it. Felix and Marinette always vanished during the attack, only to show up in the aftermath. Plus there was the matter of their jewelery. The way Ladybug’s voice rang through Alya’s bones with uncanny familiarity. The way Felix looked so soft whenever Marinette called Chat Noir a hero in front of anyone else. She remembered defending them, once. Shouting down people who speculated back when the city felt like it was clinging to magic with white-knuckled hands. Now, with no more magic in sight, she was the one sitting here wondering what to do with the evidence.
Alya leaned back in her chair and stared at the blinking cursor. There were still no answers, but maybe Paris didn’t need one in the first place. In a stroke of inspiration, Alya minimized the window. She opened a new document and started to type.
Once upon a time, Paris was protected by two teenage superheroes. No one knew their identity, and likely no one ever will. The truth is, they were probably just like us. They went to school or work. They argued with friends and hung out with their families. They had bad days. And then, when the worst day came, they stood up anyway. At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter who they were. It matters what they did, and what they made the rest of us believe we could do, too. We all carry that spark with the choice to help. To speak up. To be kind. To be brave. Maybe that’s the final truth of the Miraculous. Not that anyone could be Ladybug and Chat Noir, but that everyone already is. Or, they should try to be.”
Alya read it through once. Then again. Then again. She deleted all the other drafts and sent this one in with the subject line: FINAL FINAL I PROMISE.docx.
There. She could live with that.
She closed her laptop just as footsteps padded down the hallway, slow and familiar. Claude rounded the corner with two coffees in hand, wind-mussed hair and a lopsided smile. “Still alive in here?”
“Barely,” she muttered, taking her cup from him and downing a scalding sip. “This place kills more brain cells than an akuma ever did.”
He chuckled and leaned against the desk. “I figured you’d be in full detective mode. The ten-year thing and all.”
“I was,” she said, slipping her laptop into her bag. “But then I remembered something.”
“Oh yeah?”
She looked up at him. “I don’t think we need to remind the new generation of who Ladybug and Chat Noir were, just what they represented.” Claude nodded and smiled again, slower this time. “Sounds like another perfect execution, babe. You ready to go back home?”
Alya slung her bag over one shoulder. “Am I ever!”
⊱.⫷⚯⫸°⟡⟜⟡°⫷⚯⫸.⊰
Chief Odette Bourgeois-Agreste hated paperwork. She hated the way it piled up on the corners of her desk like mold, the way the reports came in triple-stamped and over-redacted, and especially the way that the bigger the case was, the smaller the print became. She flipped the file open anyway. Case No. 1295-B . Human trafficking, suspected links to international smuggling routes. Girls between ages 14–19. No names, no pictures. Just anonymous silhouettes traced in the system. Just enough to make her want to scream. She tapped her pen against the corner of the file. Ten years ago, she’d watched Chat Noir tear through rooftops to chase an unmarked van in a warehouse district. She’d been just a teenager then, with a warped understanding of how reliable authority was. Ten years later, and the same ring of scum was back. Different country, different names, same sickening game.
This time, Odette was the one in charge.
She leaned back in her chair, let the file flap closed, and stared at the ceiling with the kind of slow-building fury that demanded strategy. She had no intention of going vigilante, but she’d long since stopped waiting for the perfect clean win. With a sigh, she pulled out her phone and scrolled down to the name listed simply as F. A. , then hit Call. “Odette,” came the voice on the other end, crisp and amused, “has hell frozen over? You’re calling me willingly?”
She didn’t grace that with a response. “I’m looking at a case file. You remember Chat Noir’s rescue attempt from years ago? Those people are back.”
“Lovely. And here I was thinking Paris was getting boring.”
“I’m not in the mood for sarcasm, Felix.”
“You're no fun,” he said smoothly. “But fine, must be desperate if you want my advice. Let’s see. If I were a rat with a taste for offshore laundering, I’d probably be moving on weekends. Less scrutiny. More market activity. Are you tracking dockside manifests?”
“Yes.”
“But not truck weigh stations. Hm.” A rustle on his end. He was probably making tea. “Cross-reference vehicle inspections flagged for overcapacity in the past two weeks. Not shipping logs, ground freight.”
Odette pinched the bridge of her nose. “Is that legal?”
Felix scoffed. “Is your moral compass still held together by police tape and chewing gum? Live a little, Odette.” She rolled her eyes, murmuring a quick goodbye before hanging up. Still, her pen was already scrawling across the notes: Check truck inspections. Cross-match w/ dock permits. Ground op? A knock at her door pulled her out of it. Officer Tran poked his head in, holding a mug and a questioning brow. “Chief? Any updates on 1295?”
“Possibly,” Odette said. “We can’t get them through immigration or cargo regs. But DOT violation notices?” She cracked a half-smile. “That’s public record. We use that to pull probable cause.”
Tran frowned. “Is that legal?”
“Technically?” Odette lifted her mug and gestured with it. “We’re not surveilling anyone. We’re just making efficient use of available data.”
He stared for a moment, then chuckled. “Man, I’m glad you’re more imaginative than the last chief. Guy couldn’t solve a jaywalking ticket without permission from four departments.”
“Remind me to arrest you for slander,” Odette muttered, but there was no heat behind it. She got to work. Pulled the right files. Sent the right quiet memo to the right judge who owed her two favors and a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Within hours, they had three license plates and two matching drivers with records long enough to knit into a scarf. It wasn’t the end, but it was a start. Her phone buzzed again as the reports began pinging in. This time:
Adrien A. : how’s the crusade, commissioner?
i made your lentil recipe. pic attached. rlly yum
i’m very proud.
Odette snorted. Attached was a blurry photo of a plate that looked somewhere between an omelette and a biology experiment, with a caption that simply read: culinary justice. She typed back:
you have to sauté the garlic first, dumbass.
good job.
Another buzz.
Adrien A. :😇
She stared at the screen for a moment, then let her phone fall to the desk beside her. Outside, the street lights flickered on. Odette picked up the file again. She wasn’t a vigilante, she knew where the line was.
But she also knew how to step around it.
⊱.｡˚ [☼] ˚✧˚ [☁︎] ˚｡.⊰
The studio lights blazed overhead, hot and artificial, like miniature suns strung up on steel scaffolding. Adrien blinked through them, smile fixed in place, back straight, chin tilted just-so. The camera clicked like a metronome, steady and unforgiving.
Click. “Good, hold that!”
Click. “Turn the shoulder a little. Yes!”
Click. “Let’s try a jacket change. We need something edgier for the evening spread.” It was muscle memory by now: how to angle his collarbone to catch the light, how to smirk like he’d just heard a secret, how to keep breathing even when the flashbulbs started to feel like gunfire. Despite the tedious nature, he enjoyed it. Not every part, of course. There were still agents who treated him like a walking paycheck, and stylists who clipped pins into his skin without so much as a pardon , and old coworkers who still whispered behind their hands about “Gabriel Agreste’s son.” That would never fully disappear. But Adrien found that as long as he liked the job, he didn’t really need anyone’s approval for it.
He spotted them during a break, just beyond the edge of the set: Odette, leaning against the wall in black slacks and a pressed blazer, reading something on her phone with the intensity of someone moments away from arresting the Prime Minister. Felix sat beside her on a folding chair, legs crossed, expression unreadable, but a little quirk of amusement tugging at his mouth whenever Odette muttered something and he replied with what Adrien could only assume was an excessively sarcastic remark. They made an odd pair: the ex-police officer turned chief and the ex-vigilante turned... something. No one was ever quite sure what Felix did for a living, and Felix was perfectly content to let them wonder. Adrien waved. Odette waved back with two fingers.
The rest of the shoot passed in a blur: costume changes, makeup touchups, a mini-interview at the end. By the time he peeled off the last designer coat and ran a hand through his gel-stiff hair, he felt like he’d been wrung out and polished like a stone. He stepped out into the hallway just in time to see Odette slipping outside, phone pressed to her ear. Felix remained, standing now, inspecting a framed photo on the wall of the studio. “Hey,” Adrien called, jogging the last few steps. “You made it.”
Felix turned. “Shocking, I know. Thought I’d hate it more.”
Adrien grinned. “No cases this week?”
“If I told you,” Felix said dryly, “I’d have to kill you.”
Adrien laughed. “Fair.” Felix stepped aside as Adrien approached, eyes flicking down to his brother’s outfit. “You know, if I were the model, I’d have made it a real show. Thrown in a backflip. Bit of opera. Latin motto across the floor in chalk.” Adrien rolled his eyes, tugging at his collar. “Yes, and they’d have escorted you off set in handcuffs for graffiti.”
“Worth it,” Felix said with a grin. They fell into step together, slow and easy, like they’d done a thousand times before and would do a thousand more. Adrien glanced sideways at him, at the long black coat Felix always wore no matter the weather, at the quiet composure that somehow never aged. “Hey… can I ask you something?” Felix didn’t look at him, but his posture shifted. He was listening. Adrien exhaled, “Does it make you uncomfortable? Me doing this? Modeling. After everything.”
Felix blinked and turned toward him. “Uncomfortable?” he repeated. “No. Annoyed by how good your bone structure still is? Absolutely.” Adrien huffed a laugh, but Felix’s expression settled into something more thoughtful. “Look,” he said, voice a little lower now, “it’s not my dream. And I do think the fashion industry is a carnivorous hellbeast disguised as art.”
“Valid,” Adrien murmured.
“But you’re not me. You don’t have to hate it just because I do. And you don’t have to sacrifice what you love to appease some imagined guilt from ten years ago.” Adrien opened his mouth, but Felix cut him off gently. “I don’t resent your choices. I don’t resent you. What I care about is that you’re doing something for yourself this time . ” He paused, meeting Adrien’s gaze directly. “Are you happy?” Adrien looked down at his hands and then back up at his twin. He smiled, quiet and honest.
“Yeah. I am.”
⊱·:·☽ ✦ ☾✦☽ ✦ ☾·:·⊰
Felix’s shoulders ached. Not the dull soreness of a bad posture day or even the stiffness that came after years of ballet recitals. This was the kind of tiredness that clung to your bones. It came from hours of chasing leads that fizzled out, interrogations that led nowhere, and the low hum of tension in his spine that never quite left when something big was brewing but not yet breaking. His coat slid off with a sigh the moment he entered the apartment. The scent of warm chamomile and baked sugar greeted him. Marinette must’ve made tea and something sweet, probably to wind down after her own long day. She was better at that, finding peace in stillness. He… was still learning.
“Welcome home,” came her voice from the kitchen, soft but warm. A few seconds later, she appeared around the corner, cheeks pink from the oven heat, hair slightly mussed from where she’d pushed it back with a pencil. Felix didn’t even have time to respond before she was close enough to press a kiss to his cheek. Her palm brushed lightly over his shoulder, her thumb instinctively finding the tension there. “Rough day?” she murmured.
He nodded. “They slipped through again.”
“Then they’ll slip into cuffs soon,” she said confidently, already turning toward the kettle. Felix huffed a tired laugh and finally took in the rest of the apartment. Their home was… chaotic. Beautiful, yes, but chaotic. Sketches covered the walls like living wallpaper. Some were pinned carefully, others taped up in moments of late-night inspiration. Fashion concepts floated beside half-drawn hero masks. Crayon drawings layered beneath professional renderings. Pencils, thread, scraps of fabric, even glitter glue in one corner. Marinette’s influence had clearly infected their daughter’s sense of artistic discipline. Or, rather, lack thereof. One particularly bright drawing on the coffee table caught his eye. It was a rough sketch in pink and black: Ladybug and Chat Noir, capes billowing in the wind (neither of them had ever worn capes, but who was he to argue with artistic vision). Ladybug had sparkly earrings and a tiara. Chat Noir had a sword, a saxophone, and, for some reason, a pair of heart sunglasses.
“Dad!!” a voice shouted before he could react. A blur of footsteps came barreling toward him, and then eight-year-old Amelie was crashing into his legs, hugging him with the force of someone twice her size. “Do you like it?” she beamed up at him, eyes wide, proud. “I drew them today. I added the sunglasses.” Felix knelt down, exhaustion evaporating under the warmth in her face. “I love it, sweetie. It’s perfect.” She squealed and hugged him tighter, then scampered back to the table to grab more of her sketches. From behind him, Marinette's arms wrapped around his middle. Her chin came to rest on his shoulder. “You were supposed to be in bed fifteen minutes ago,” she said, and though her tone was stern, Felix could hear the smile in it. “I was waiting for Dad!!” Amelie called from the other room. “He promised he’d do tuck-in tonight!” Marinette sighed and started to pull back, but Felix caught her hand before she could. “It’s alright,” he said, softly. “Why don’t you head to bed yourself? I’ve got her.” Marinette kissed his cheek again, lingering for a moment. “You sure?”
“I missed her,” he murmured, then glanced at her sideways. “And you.”
Her smile curved softly. “Then I’ll go warm the tea.” Amelie was already climbing into bed by the time Felix made it to her room. Her blanket was bunched at the footboard, and three of her plush toys were dramatically posed around her pillow like tiny bodyguards. Her sketchpad lay open beside her, flipped to a doodle of Ladybug and Chat Noir holding hands. Felix tucked the blanket up to her chin. “Dad,” she said, already blinking slower, “can you tell me the story of Ladybug and Chat Noir again?” Felix settled beside her on the edge of the bed, fingers brushing through her curls. “Again? Haven’t I told you a hundred times already?”
“ Please ?”
He exhaled like it was a great burden. “Alright. Once upon a time, in a city full of secrets, there was a girl with a heart so brave and so clever, she could outsmart even the darkest shadows. And a boy with a grin so sharp, he could even make sadness laugh.” Amelie’s eyes were half-closed already. “They weren’t always friends,” Felix continued, voice low and gentle, “but they learned to trust each other. And together, they protected Paris from things most people couldn’t even imagine. But the real magic wasn’t their powers. It was their choices. They chose to keep going. To protect others. To do what was right, even when it was hard.” A tiny yawn broke through her lips. “Do you think Ladybug and Chat Noir will ever come back?” she asked sleepily. Felix looked down at her, his heart doing that quiet ache it always did when she said things like that. “Maybe,” he said softly. “They could also already be, just living like everyone else. Being kind. Trying their best.”
⊱.❀° ✿ °❀° ✿ °❀.⊰
The scent of jasmine tea drifted from the kitchen. Marinette leaned against the doorframe, smiling as she watched her grandfather crouch on the living room rug beside eight-year-old Amelie, who was dramatically explaining the plot of a fantasy comic she’d made. “And this one —” Amelie pointed fiercely at a stick figure with sparkly wings “—is Lady Mariposa. She’s, like, based on Mom. She has super fashion magic and she can turn bad guys into glitter. But not the itchy kind.”
“Ah, very good,” Grandpa Cheng said, nodding solemnly as if being briefed by a war general. “And the wings? How do they stay up?”
Amelie beamed. “They’re solar-powered!” Marinette’s heart squeezed as she stepped further into the room. Her grandfather had traveled all the way from Shanghai just to visit for a week, and even though his hair had grown whiter and his voice a little quieter, the way he listened hadn’t changed. He still believed children were worth listening to. That stories were sacred. Now he was here, cross-legged beside her daughter, listening like this superhero comic was scripture. “Alright, wings,” Marinette called gently, brushing a hand along Amelie’s hair as she passed. “Let’s clean up your masterpiece before the cavalry gets here. And you, Grandpa, are on tea duty.”
“I am retired,” he huffed, standing with a theatrical groan, “and yet, I am still being bossed around.”
“That’s what happens when you raise a girl who runs a household and a business and an unofficial superhero fan club,” Marinette teased. Grandpa muttered something in Mandarin that was definitely a compliment disguised as a complaint and shuffled off toward the kitchen.
The doorbell rang.
Marinette wiped her hands on her apron and opened the door to find Adrien, grinning as usual, arms already open for a hug and Odette, beside him, composed and stylish, balancing a wrapped gift and a clipboard in one arm like a true multitasker. “This is for the dining room,” Odette said, handing her the gift. “I thought it needed something blue.”
Adrien leaned in. “She means she saw your curtains and panicked about color theory for three days straight.”
“I was helping,” Odette said flatly. “It’s a curated accent piece.”
Marinette laughed and pulled them both inside. “Come in. Grandpa’s making tea, and Amelie just invented a superhero.” Before anyone could sit down, a knock came at the still-open door. Alya stepped inside, sunglasses perched on her head and lip gloss freshly applied, all confidence and caffeine. “Hey, hey, hey,” she called, tossing her purse onto the entry table. “The gossip queen has arrived.” Behind her, Claude leaned in, still in his work shirt, looking apologetic and fond all at once. “I’ve got a shift, but I’ll be back later. Try not to let her blackmail anyone before brunch, alright?”
“No promises!” Alya shouted after him as he jogged off down the stairs. Marinette shook her head fondly. Alya had fallen into her relationship with Claude like a plot twist in a romance novel. Slow, subtle, and inevitable. The way they’d ended up at the same office after high school, first as coworkers, then lunch buddies, then Friday-night movie partners, it was almost too perfect. “Ugh, this is so unfair,” Adrien groaned, flopping onto the couch as Alya followed Marinette into the kitchen. “How do you all look this good before brunch? I look like I slept on a public bench.”
“You did fall asleep on the subway once,” Odette noted. “During Fashion Week.”
“One time,” Adrien muttered. For the last time, the front door creaked again. This time it was Felix, arms full of grocery bags, walking in with regal disdain. Behind him, Nino followed, cheerfully juggling two boxes of pastries and a bunch of flowers. “Okay, do not judge me,” Nino said immediately, “but I may have bought three different types of croissants.” Felix looked over his shoulder as he dropped the bags onto the counter. “He made a man cry over a mislabeled baguette.”
“I said I was sorry!”
“Did you?” Felix replied coolly. “Because all I remember is you pulling out your DJ license and claiming immunity.”
“Okay, I was hangry. ”
“Oh, and for the record,” Felix added, deadpan, “while we were in the produce aisle, Nino and Luka were exchanging cow eyes. ”
“ WHAT? ” Alya screeched from the table.
“Felix, wait,” Nino said desperately. “I wasn’t that obvious was I?” Adrien doubled over in laughter. Marinette almost dropped the tea tray. Amelie peeked around the corner with wide eyes. “Cow eyes?” she whispered to Marinette.
“Uh,” Marinette coughed, “It’s a… like-like kinda thing.”
“You’re all monsters,” Nino groaned, putting the flowers in a vase like he was punishing them. “You like him!” Alya sing-songed.
“I don’t not like him,” Nino muttered. Odette leaned toward Marinette. “Should we start a betting pool again?”
“I never stopped,” Marinette whispered back. The apartment pulsed with life. Laughter, footsteps, and shouted jokes carried from one room to another. Grandpa Cheng had joined Odette on the floor, showing her how to fold a paper crane. Alya was using her phone to film an impromptu toast to “friendship and pastries and emotional growth.” Felix was lounging at the dining table, eyes closed and relaxed, and Adrien was trying to convince Amelie to let him borrow her Lady Mariposa cape. Marinette stood in the doorway for a second, watching it all. Her friends. Her family. Her home.
It was chaos.
It was hers.
It was perfect.
She stepped into the room, raised her cup, and joined Alya’s toast. “To everyone who ever believed we’d survive our teenage years.” Groans, cheers, laughter. A clinking of cups and mugs and pastry boxes. As the noise rose around her, Marinette smiled. She’d been a disaster. She’d been Ladybug. She’d been in denial, in love, in battle, and now she was here.
Marinette Dupain-Cheng.
Hero, still.