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“If you’d let me,” Marinette says when Adrien hangs up the phone, “I would kill him.”
She’s said it before. She knows it doesn’t help, knows that it only makes him feel worse, but it still slips out sometimes. He stares at the black screen in his hand and doesn’t respond, face expressionless. It’s the look he always has after speaking to Gabriel, an emptying of everything she’s worked so hard to fill over the years since Hawkmoth’s defeat.
“He wants me to visit,” Adrien says at last, setting the phone face down on their tiny kitchen table. “I’ll go tomorrow.”
The days that Adrien visits his father in the maximum security prison are dark stains in the tapestry of their lives. It’s Marinette’s job to bleach them out, to build his heart back up again when it crumbles once again in Gabriel’s presence. She never feels more helpless than during these times. She never misses Tikki so much. How convenient it would be to be able to fix things with magic again, to say a few words and throw a spotted object in the air and watch the world repair itself.
Instead, she works slowly, tinkering away with the measly resources of her own heart and mind, determined to free Adrien from his father’s influence one way or another.
First, they take a train. There are no more private cars or security guards for the former model. They live meagerly now, getting by paycheck to paycheck, all of his family's funds having been seized by the government until the inquiry into Hawkmoth’s reign of terror can be completed. He doesn’t want the money anyway, but Marinette wishes sometimes for the shelter a car could provide. There are always people looking at them, and whether the gazes of the strangers are sympathetic or hateful, Adrien never finds out. He doesn’t look up, doesn’t meet the eyes of the citizens he spent years risking his own life to protect.
They don’t know that, of course. No one does. To the world, she and her love are just two normal people, a baker’s daughter and the son of the man responsible for all of Paris’ suffering. They look at the sloping lines of Adrien’s face and see only Gabriel’s sins. They watch Marinette holding his hand and see only the nobody who defends him, who’s been right by his side in every paparazzi photo and interview.
After the train, they take a bus. She squeezes his hand and points at flowers planted in a roundabout. They weren’t there the last time they came this way. He smiles at the sight, brief and fleeting, before his eyes stray to the low, dingy buildings that characterize the area around the prison. A sigh escapes, pulled all the way from his toes, and Marinette works on the two lists she always keeps:
Ways to cheer up Adrien.
And ways to kill Gabriel Agreste.
She fantasizes about how that man’s cold eyes would turn dark with fear if she could only get her hands on him. The shame she feels for her own violence is small, dwarfed entirely by her fury.
“I’ll make clafoutis when we get home,” she says, staring at an advert on the ceiling and imagining her hands around Gabriel’s throat.
“Mm,” Adrien grunts in response.
They have to wait in a line. They have to go through security, emptying their pockets and holding out their arms for metal-detecting wands. They have to leave all their belongings in a row of metal lockers and wait in another line. Then they sit in plastic bucket seats in a cubicle, and Gabriel is brought to them.
His legs and arms are in shackles. They always are, no chances taken. His seat is separated from them by a small table. As soon as they hear him approaching, Adrien changes, transforms. He sits up straighter and pastes on a carefree smile, brushing his hair back casually with his left hand while his right still has Marinette’s clutched in a death grip below the table.
This is his performance: I’m moving on. I’m better off without you. You have no power over me.
Gabriel, tall and imposing, rounds the corner escorted by two correctional officers and takes a seat. Despite his situation, he has retained all of his pompous airs, staring at them both with ice chips for eyes and indifference in his voice.
He addresses only Adrien. “Hello, son.”
After, the bones in both her hands ache: her left from being squeezed by Adrien, her right from the fist she made herself. As soon as his father is out of eyesight, Adrien’s mask slips, revealing glimpses of the broken pieces beneath. He should just hate Gabriel, Marinette thinks, as she’s thought many times before. He should leave him behind. These visits don’t make sense to her; she can’t fathom why he still tries. It breaks her, too, to watch, and she has to learn the lesson all over again each time:
Children love their parents, whether they deserve it or not.
Walking away from the prison, a recent rain has left earthworms stranded on the sidewalk. Adrien bends down and uses twigs and leaves to transport each one back into the grass.
On the bus, a baby peers over the seat in front of them and giggles at the silly faces Adrien makes.
On the train, he falls asleep against her shoulder.
She watches his lips tremble with nightmares, and she reaches out to stroke his mouth with her fingertips, soothing the bad dreams away. Her lists grow throughout the commute, ideas both feasible and impractical added to both sides. She could lasso the moon for him, could gather stars in buckets and present them as a gift. She could get a job as a correctional officer and infiltrate the prison, take care of Gabriel once and for all.
Adrien murmurs something in his sleep, bringing her out of her thoughts. They’re almost home. She touches his arm, shaking it a little, and watches how awareness shifts back across his face. There’s a woman across the aisle glaring at them. Marinette glares back. Adrien only looks away, rubbing at his eyes.
“Lay down on the couch,” she says when they enter their little flat. “I’m going to draw a bath for you.”
“I’m fine,” he protests. He’s not, but he doesn’t feel worthy of her care. This is what she’s learned; this is the battle she fights daily.
Marinette stops with one shoe still on to take him in her arms, the door still unlocked behind them, the key still in her hand. Tight, bodies pressed together, her heart bleeding into his. Take, she orders him in her mind. Just take. It’s okay.
“Adrien,” she whispers into his chest instead. “Please. Let me do this for you.”
And he gives in, surrendering to the hug with shaking shoulders. Silent, tearless sobs that she absorbs with relief. Crying is good, the therapist had said. The first step toward feeling better.
It only takes about fifteen minutes to get the bathroom ready. She’d planned it all out on the train, envisioned every step to take her mind off of Gabriel and his annoying habit of breathing. Candles lit, bath bomb dissolving, she retrieves Adrien from the couch and undresses him in the half-light, pressing kisses to every scar and freckle, every perceived imperfection. His hands are on her as well, not romantic caresses but the intimate touches that beg for simple connection. She gives it in spades, everything he needs.
He’s too tall for this tub, his knees bent above the warm water. She giggles, somewhat forced, and uses a cup to pour warmth back into his exposed skin. Her jeans get wet when she sits on the edge to wash his hair, lathering the shampoo into every inch of scalp, fingers massaging until he lets out a blissful sigh. The cup again, pouring water carefully, washing away the suds. Then a jar of sugar scrub, homemade by Rose. Marinette scoops out a dollop and rubs it into his arms, starting with his elbows and working it all the way down to his fingers.
This is sacred, this moment. Something holy. Something pure. His eyes water again as she washes off the scrub, running her hands over the skin that now feels smooth as silk.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she whispers, voice soft in the reverent silence.
His lower lip quivers a little.
“His sins are not your own. You’re not responsible for what he did.”
As tears spill out onto his cheeks, she leans forward to lift his chin.
“You are Chat Noir, the savior of Paris. I know that. You know that. It’s not enough. I wish…” And she wavers, for a second, caught up in her own regrets because she’s only human, after all. “If there was any justice in the world, everyone would know that. But it doesn’t change the truth.”
The truth: he’d fought for years against an unknown terror.
The truth: he’d struggled for years to be the perfect son.
The truth: in the end, he’d had to choose between those two opposite forces. He’d had to sacrifice. He’d had to make an impossible decision, and he’d picked Paris over his own mother. The lives of millions for the price of one woman, and one boy’s heart.
“You didn’t decide to be his son,” she says, working conditioner into his hair. “But you did decide to be Chat Noir. That’s what matters. That’s who you are.”
And still, she knows, Adrien will continue to love Gabriel. Because that’s what hearts do: they hold on, even when it hurts. Later, after the promised clafoutis is made and eaten, they twine together in their bed, each mutually dependent on the love of the other, while a soft rain taps on the window.
Marinette thinks of the earthworms that will be left stranded in the morning, waiting for a hero.