Archive of Our Own ^beta

Argos sat on a rooftop, turning something over in his hands. Chat Noir couldn’t make out what it was. 

“Hey,” he called over, landing softly beside him. Argos flinched, then looked up.

“What are you doing out here?” 

“I could say the same to you,” Chat Noir replied — they were both deflecting, and they both knew it. He glanced over at what Argos was holding, but it was hidden away now, clasped tightly in his palms. “What’s that?”

Another deflection. Argos only shrugged.

“I don’t see why you should know.”

Actually, he did happen to know. Bunnyx had mentioned someone stealing her miraculous; she told him and Ladybug about it, and then in private, told him who.

“You’re the one who stole the stopwatch, aren’t you?” He feigned a reproachful tone. 

“Is that a question or an accusation?”

Chat Noir sat down a small distance away, just out of arm’s reach. “Just curiosity.” 

The sun had long since set; Ladybug was asleep, he assumed. So was Nathalie — he’d checked. The wind whistled past. He could hear the clock tick, faint but real. A countdown. He almost asked Argos to hand it over right then, because this was the task he’d been given, but instead he only watched him.

“Why haven’t you used it yet?”

Argos shrugged, watching the second hand. “Not sure if I should.”

Chat Noir leaned back on his hands. It was a full moon, and the light shone onto the stopwatch. “But … you could undo everything. Save people. Rewrite it all.”

Quietly, almost to himself, Argos replied, “I know.”

He watched Argos’s eyes. Thought about that — turning back time. It had never worked in the past, but the past was in the past. Maybe he could be in the past, too, fighting with Ladybug and saving his father instead of giving up his miraculous like a coward. 

All he needed was to get the watch.

“So,” he said, “why not?”

Argos held the watch up to the light. It was in camouflage mode, Chat Noir noted. That meant he’d already tried.

“Because I don’t know if I’d make things better,” Argos said softly. “And I don’t know who I’d lose, or who I’d bring back wrong.”

Oh. Chat Noir shifted, facing him now. 

“...What would you change?” 

“There’s someone I’d try to save.” Argos looked away. “...Multiple people, actually. Family.” 

He looked at the moon.

“Family,” Chat Noir repeated. “And … you really think that the miraculous could fix what happened to them?”

Felix was smart. He’d have a plan. Chat Noir watched him intently, and Argos still watched the moon. 

Argos sighed, then shook his head. “No. But I think I wanted it to. I think … I think I wanted a version of him that was free, and I got that, in a way. But … it feels so wrong. I had the chance to change that so many times, and I … I always failed. I guess I wanted a version of him that won’t ever exist, and it’s all because of me.”

Argos looked away from the moon, lightly tossing the watch in his hands. 

“I…” Chat Noir started, and then immediately thought better of. He closed his eyes, then started again. “It sounds like you miss him.” 

Argos stiffened, making eye contact. “He’s not dead. But … I guess I just don’t know if he knows me. If there would be anything left in him to miss me back. And that’s what gets me.” 

Argos seemed to have dropped most pretenses. Chat Noir watched him, watched Argos, watched Felix. He’d had no idea that this friend of his — family? — could have such an impact on him. Felix didn’t usually let other people’s problems bother him. But now, he was thinking about bending the universe for them. 

Argos leaned back, looking into the stopwatch like it could answer his questions. “All this time, I kept hoping I could save him. And now I have the one thing that might undo it… but I’m scared I’ll use it, and find out that even with all the freedom in the world, he’d still choose to leave me behind.”

Chat Noir swallowed. He hadn’t even thought of that. 

“You mean…” he started, horror creeping up. “You mean if you saved him, he’d still abandon you. He’d ignore whatever you say. He might not even care. He wouldn’t even care that you’d saved his life.” 

And — Chat Noir wanted to slap himself. Why should it matter if his father cared? What would matter was that he was alive and well, and Adrien had never liked much attention on him anyway.

Argos watched him more carefully now. “It’s not that. Not really. It’s more like … nevermind. Look, I don’t want to undo everything . You and Ladybug would kill me on the spot.” A bitter laugh. “Just a minute. Give me one minute back in time and I could fix it all. I’m sure of it!”

“You … really think that would work?” He frowned; Argos was asking for permission. 

“I know it would,” Argos confirmed, and then stood up. He was determined, now: some kind of emotional confidence, the kind that made one say things they weren’t supposed to and not really care about the consequences. “You didn’t see what they did to him. You didn’t watch him flinch every time someone said his name like it didn’t belong to him. You didn’t have to smile at him when he looked at you blankly.”

His hand tightened around the stopwatch. 

“He isn’t just some stranger,” he said, softly. “He’s my cousin.”

A beat of silence. Chat Noir went silent, and Felix seemed to realise what he’d just said.

“I mean — not by blood. Not really. But he is . You don’t grow up beside someone like that and not feel like every bad thing that happened to them happened to you too.” 

Chat Noir didn’t speak. He only watched, utterly still.

Barely above a whisper, Felix said, “And if there’s any way I can change that … I will.”

He pressed the watch’s activation point, and it came to life in his hands. Its kwami was a burst of blue and white, and looked like it had much to say and millions of questions on its tongue, but held them back and watched the two boys.

The watch had him in a trance; Chat Noir quickly snapped out of it. Argos was about to transform. He had already deactivated the brooch.

“Wait,” Chat Noir said sharply.

Felix looked up, startled. “What?”

“You can’t use it.” Now he was on his feet, too. “Not yet.”

Wary, Felix took a step back, and Chat Noir mentally cursed; he’d never been good at getting his way. “Why not?”

“Because I need it too.”

“Need it for what?”

“My—” he stopped, took a breath, started over. “To save … someone. Someone important.”

“We all want to save someone.” Felix’s voice was cold. “That’s the price of having something to lose. But this … this was mine to fix.”

“So was mine,” he admitted, quiet.

Their eyes locked. Felix studied him, suspicion flickering in his eyes. “Who?”

Chat Noir looked at his ring. “Someone I didn’t get to say goodbye to.”

Felix stared at him, fidgeting with the stopwatch. “...You lost them recently.”

He nodded, once. “Too recently.”

Silence, again. The clock hummed in Felix’s hands, still waiting. He looked down at it, then back at Chat Noir.

“That’s not a reason to mess with the past. You don’t know what this thing could cost.”

“Neither do you.” 

The clock ticked. It was steady, unnatural, a heart beating in the wrong body. Felix watched him for a long moment, not suspicious, not convinced, but something closer to tired. 

“If we do this wrong,” he said finally, “we make it worse. You get that, right?”

Chat Noir nodded. “Yeah. I get it.”

Felix studied him again. Then—

“Alright. Then we go together. We get in, fix what we have to, and get out before the world notices.”

Chat Noir let out a shaky breath. “Agreed.”

Felix activated the miraculous in his hands, transforming with a murmured phrase. He held it up, made a hole in time where the moon was meant to be. The light was slow, white, full of things they didn’t say out loud.

“Whoever you lost,” Felix said, not meeting his eyes, “I hope you get them back.”

A beat. 

“You too,” Chat Noir replied, so softly that Felix never heard it.