Chapter Text
Adrien Agreste’s twenty-third birthday falls on a Sunday in October, unseasonably cold.
“You don’t have to do this.”
He’s always liked having an October birthday. Watching the world fade gently into browns and reds and golds always made his heart sit a little softer in his chest. But now, the wind cuts right through Adrien’s light jacket and he shivers, wishing the sun would peek out through the clouds. The phone presses like ice against his ear.
“I know.”
The harsh white of the mansion always seemed a little softer in the fall. A little kinder, maybe. When Adrien was a child, sometimes a stray yellow leaf would find its way onto the courtyard and would crackle beneath his feet as he walked to the car. There would be grumblings above his head about lazy groundskeepers and messy lawns, but Adrien would entertain fantasies of shaking all of the dried yellow leaves to the ground, of gathering them up into a great big pile and jumping into them the way that children in stories sometimes did.
“You really don’t. We can make them push it off another few weeks. I’ll make them.”
Today, though, the once-pristine courtyard is a mess of leaves and overgrowth. Adrien wonders, with a pang of guilt, what happened to the poor groundskeepers who used to make a living here. The large sign staked in front of the gate—”PRIVATE PROPERTY: DO NOT ENTER” obscured by a large sticker reading “CONDEMNED”—sends a nervous twist through Adrien’s gut. He fiddles with the key in his jacket pocket. He never had a house key until after he moved out of this place; isn’t that weird?
“I’ll be okay.”
The ground is burnt yellow, all dry and crinkly with leaves like old parchment, and his shoes sift through them gently as he walks up the front steps. Adrien could build a half dozen leaf piles now if he wanted, and his chest aches at that somehow. It’s too much, all at once. Too little, too late.
“Wait until I get back from New York, at least. Not on your birthday, Adrien.”
He’s never actually used the house key before—that’s the weird part. The house was never something that belonged to him, and it still isn’t, no matter how many documents boast his name in bold print. Adrien has always belonged to it, though, like a dog tethered to a chain, like a ghost to its unfinished business.
“Better to just make them happy, love. We’ve had enough legal conversation about this property to last a lifetime. Plus, we already agreed that birthdays don’t happen until we’re together.”
There is a lock on the front door: a large, ornate, excessive thing. With all of the bells and whistles this house’s security system had originally, plus the measures put in place once it became a permanent crime scene, there is no discernable purpose for the gold-plated lock fastened next to the door handle. Elegance, or tradition, or something. The key is cold in Adrien’s hand.
“Just—just take it slow, okay? Call if you need. I hate that you’re doing this alone. I love you.”
The worry in Marinette’s voice pierces through the grainy phone connection; Adrien can hear the way the bridge of her nose must be scrunched up, brows carving intensity into the softness of her eyes. He smiles at the thought, even though she can’t see it.
“I know. I love you too.”
Adrien twists the key in the great lock and steps inside.
~~~
The end of the world began on the day Adrien Agreste turned thirteen years old.
His birthday fell on a Monday in October, unseasonably warm. It was the sun that woke him up, warm rays reaching for him through his tall windows. And when the light gently peeled his eyelids open, twenty minutes before his alarm was meant to go off, the world didn’t look like it was ending at all. In fact, after pushing up out of the covers and wiping some of the bleariness from his face, Adrien was awash with the bone-deep hope that today might be his favorite kind of day.
It was going to be Adrien’s favorite kind of day, because he was going to see Maman today.
He made himself stay in his bed, even though he was wide-awake now, just in case she came in to wake him up. She’d done that once, on his eighth birthday. He still remembered it so clearly, her soft voice in his ear before he’d even fully awakened, her hands gently smoothing his hair. She’d wrapped him up in a hug and it was the first thing he registered, was Maman’s arms safe around him.
That day, she’d taken him to the Parc Zoologique and they’d spent the morning and afternoon looking at all the animals and eating ice cream. Maman had worn a big white sun hat that flopped around when she laughed, which was often. It was really quiet and empty, not busy and bustling like how zoos always seemed in picture books and movies. Adrien found out later that Maman had rented out the whole zoo for his birthday and that nobody else was allowed in. Which was cool, but Adrien did wonder sometimes if the animals had been confused or lonely, pacing around their cages and wondering where all the children had gone.
The twenty minutes passed and Adrien’s alarm started blaring. He couldn’t quite bring himself to sit up and turn it off, though. It was selfish, but maybe if he kept laying here, pretending to be asleep, Maman might come in and get him up anyway.
The bedroom door snapped open, and Adrien’s heart rose and fell in one swift motion. Maman didn’t open the door like that.
“Adrien, wake up,” Nathalie chided. “You’re expected downstairs for breakfast in ten minutes.”
Adrien opened his eyes again. The light felt brighter now, harsh.
“Yes, Nathalie,” Adrien said. She nodded, shut his door, and left.
No birthday wake-up this morning, then. That was fine. Maman didn’t usually do that, so he shouldn't have expected it. And besides, there was always next year.
Adrien got ready as quickly as he could while still taking care to look nice. He didn’t know what they were doing today, but a lot of times, Maman would take him out somewhere on his birthday. And wherever Maman went, cameras usually did too.
Looking in the bathroom mirror, Adrien tried to tell whether he looked older than usual. More teenager-ish. His face looked pretty much the same, and he didn’t think he was noticeably taller. His hair was definitely getting kind of long, curling up around his ears. It always looked sort of messy and wild in the mornings when it started to grow out like this, which he liked. Adrien finished brushing his teeth and then did some action-hero poses in the mirror.
He looked cool. Definitely teenager-ish.
He wasn’t going to waste the morning admiring his own reflection in the mirror, though. Not when it was his birthday. Not when he was going to see Maman today.
He started to race down the stairs and then caught himself—have some decorum, Adrien—and walked the rest of the way. No matter how excited he was, he was an Agreste. A teenage Agreste, now. Nearly an adult. He needed to be patient. Wherever else they went today—the movies, or an opera, or even a party, with people—it started with family breakfast.
But when Adrien finally made it to breakfast, there wasn’t any family there.
“Maman?” Adrien called, wandering into the empty dining room. “Papa?”
Their places were set at the table, with forks and plates and even a glass of pre-poured orange juice for Adrien, but no people. It wasn’t that odd for Papa to miss family breakfast, like when he had an early work meeting or when he was out of town for business, but Maman was usually there. And she’d never missed a birthday.
“Nathalie?” Adrien called hesitantly, peering down the hallway.
She didn’t seem to be around either, which was—well. It wasn’t that weird. Nathalie was only ever exactly where she needed to be, and if she had finished giving Adrien his instructions, then she probably already needed to be somewhere else. He just wished those instructions included a reason for why, exactly, he was expected at breakfast on his birthday if no one else was going to be there.
Maybe it was a surprise. Maybe he was supposed to sit here and wait and then they’d jump out and yell “Happy Birthday, Adrien!” like in a movie or something. He suppressed a smile, thinking about Papa and Nathalie and Maman all wearing polka-dotted party hats and holding balloons. Now that would be a birthday surprise.
Adrien had just picked up his orange juice to take a sip when a loud, wounded sort of yell echoed across the hallway.
He was on his feet before he could think, racing across the entryway to where the voice had come from, which seemed to be Papa’s office. There was another noise—this one more like a crash—and Adrien froze, panic like a shock of cold in his veins.
“Emilie!” Papa’s voice screamed from inside, and Adrien moved again, grabbing the door knob and twisting hard.
“Maman?” Adrien cried, desperately trying the door. It was locked. “Papa?”
There was only silence now on the other side—or maybe Adrien just couldn’t hear, blood roaring in his ears—and the doorknob wouldn’t budge.
“Maman?” he cried again. He gave up on the doorknob and started pounding. “Papa? Is—are you okay?”
After what felt like forever, there was a click and the door slowly started to open. It was Nathalie who stepped out, her mouth pressed into a thin line as she shut the door tightly behind her.
“Adrien.” Her voice was shaky, which was weird. He’d never seen Nathalie shaky before. “Go and eat your breakfast.”
“What about—” Adrien couldn’t breathe. “What’s going on? Are Maman and Papa okay?”
Nathalie blinked, something foggy and indecipherable on her face. She opened her mouth and then closed it.
“Nathalie, is something wrong?”
A cloud seemed to lift from her eyes, and he watched her expression smooth over. She pulled out her tablet and began to type on it, looking so much like her normal self that Adrien was nearly convinced he’d imagined otherwise.
“Everything is fine. Your mother is simply feeling unwell this morning. You won’t be seeing her.”
“Oh,” Adrien said. Maman was just…sick. That’s what they were worried about. “Is she—will I see her later today?”
“I don’t know, Adrien. Go eat your breakfast.”
She started to walk away like they were finished, but something deep in Adrien whined at the idea of being left alone.
“Is Papa—is he busy too?”
Nathalie frowned. “Yes, your father is very busy. I doubt you’ll be seeing him either.”
“Oh,” Adrien said. “Okay.”
Nathalie did walk away then, and Adrien couldn’t think of any reason he had left to keep her there.
For the rest of the day, Adrien sat around in his bedroom, doing schoolwork and trying to muffle the unsettled feeling slowly rising in his gut. It was probably nothing too bad. Nathalie would’ve told him if it was. Probably Maman was just getting over a cold or something, and soon she’d come and get him and they’d spend the day together.
(But what could’ve made Papa scream like that? What could’ve shaken up Nathalie?)
Adrien finished his maths, history, and literature lessons for the week. None of his tutors showed up for their regular sessions, which was the only indication he had from the outside world that today really was his birthday. Maman must have canceled his tutoring for the day. She had to have planned something. Any second now, she’d come.
Hours trickled by, silent and slow. Fear slipped like sandpaper beneath his skin. He started on next week’s lessons. He practiced his Mandarin. He polished his fencing foil. He took a shower.
(It was fine. Maman and Papa were too busy to see him all the time. It was probably fine.)
The daylight melted from gold to orange to faint blue, boxes of light creeping across his floor. No one came for him. All the thin threads of hope in Adrien’s chest twisted into an anxious gnawing and he stopped being able to focus on anything but the feeling of it eating him whole.
Later, after Adrien had asked the kitchen for some dinner and then sat on his bed trying to think of anything but the sound of his father’s muffled scream from this morning, there was a knock on his door.
His hopes soared up to the ceiling and then crashed back down near his feet. It wasn’t Maman. Or Papa.
Nathalie opened the door.
“Adrien?” she asked softly, peering her head in, and the slight note of gentleness in her voice made tears prick at Adrien’s eyes. He wished, suddenly, that Nathalie was the sort of person he could hug.
“Yes?” Adrien stood up from his bed and walked over to her.
She stood still in the doorway, unwilling to come inside. There was a small rectangular box in her hands, one that Adrien recognized.
“This is for you.” Nathalie handed him the box. “From your father.”
He took the box from her, cold and sleek. He didn’t open it; he’d already memorized the look and feel of the fountain pen inside the last two times he’d received it from Papa on his birthday.
“Thank you,” Adrien said mechanically. Talking to someone else was helping, but his body still felt sort of numb and distant, worry knotted in his chest.
Nathalie waited for a moment, and then shifted her body to leave. Something deep in Adrien protested, fear clawing up his throat.
“Nathalie, wait,” he pleaded. “Is—how is Maman doing? Is she still sick from this morning?”
Nathalie frowned, an unreadable look on her face.
“I believe so, yes.”
“Oh,” Adrien said. He tried to remember when Maman had been seriously ill before—she’d had the flu last winter, and he remembered her having had a few headaches lately. But she’d never been so sick that she refused to see him. “When will she be better?”
Nathalie’s scowl went sharp, and she straightened her glasses on her nose. That was something that Papa did when he was upset; Adrien couldn’t remember when Nathalie started doing it. “I am not a doctor, Adrien. I suggest you spend the evening reviewing your studies.”
“Oh—okay,” Adrien felt his stomach start to churn uncomfortably, like the feeling right before he got a shot at the doctor, but worse. Nathalie turned back toward the hall. Something in her posture was too stiff, and Adrien’s gut twisted, sharp. “Nathalie, wait.”
She stopped, stiffly, and turned her stern gaze on him.
“Is…” Adrien swallowed hard; the churning mess had reached his throat. “Is it bad?”
Something in her expression changed, he thought. It was hard to tell—the light was reflecting on her glasses—but her mouth was softer, maybe.
“It’s not yours to worry about, Adrien,” Nathalie said. “Review your studies. And happy birthday.”
He let her leave, then. But Adrien’s feet stayed there stiffly planted on the tile for a long time, until they were steady enough to methodically pick up off of the floor. Adrien pulled his schoolwork back out and reviewed it, penciling in neat revisions in neater lines.
The panic in Adrien’s gut didn’t recede throughout the rest of the night. Even after he brushed his teeth and tucked himself into bed, the churning was still there, knotting his stomach and squeezing his throat.
There was something wrong with Maman.
Adrien could feel the world start to crumble and break apart and end, at the weight of it.
There was something wrong with Maman.
~~~
The thing about haunted houses is that no one wants to own them.
They’re fun to gawk at and scurry past, to gossip about in hushed tones behind stiff fingers. They’re even fun to throw rocks through the windows of, to decorate with spray paint and choice words. It’s especially fun when there’s decent justification behind it all, when the thing that haunts the house is a years-long reign of exploitative terrorism.
That’s all well and good. He’s fine with it, honestly.
The problem, Adrien decides, as he steps around broken glass in the darkened entryway, is that even haunted houses have to have someone’s name on the lease. You would think that an adolescence spent saving the world from the guy who wrote you into his will would absolve you of the responsibility of dealing with everything he left behind. Honestly, you would think that a house haunted by half-dead mothers and half-lived childhoods and years upon years of bleached-over bloodstains would just, like, crumble under the weight of its own horror.
But no. Instead there’s paperwork.
“Do you think my camembert is still up there?” Plagg whispers solemnly, like he’s trying to match the mood. It’s such a bad attempt that Adrien snorts.
“Would you stay on task?” Adrien turns on his phone’s flashlight and shines it across the dusty marble floor. It makes everything look black and white. “I’m trying to haunt my childhood home.”
“I thought we were here to clean it out?” Plagg floats outside of the flashlight’s beam, looking like just a pair of green eyes in the dark. “I bet the cheese cupboard needs cleaning.”
“Go,” Adrien relents, and Plagg flits off into the darkness.
The room feels emptier without him, but also more familiar. The loneliness stings in a way he remembers. All this space, and nowhere to go.
Home is a funny word for this place.
Childhood is an even funnier word for what happened here.
~~~
He must have fallen asleep eventually, because the thing that pulled him out of his fitful unconsciousness was a warm hand in his hair, a sweet voice around his name.
“Adrien…”
His soul woke up before he did, unfurling like a flower to light. He smiled and opened his eyes.
“Maman?”
And there she was, smiling big and scooping him up into a hug. Adrien laughed, relief flooding his veins. Maman was here. She was okay. Already, yesterday’s fear felt like a lifetime ago.
“You’re okay? Not sick?” Adrien pulled away, just enough to see her.
She looked normal, maybe even livelier than normal. Her hair was shiny and bounced in loose waves over one shoulder, her eyes glinting at him like they were sharing a joke. She smiled, toothy and real, and smoothed his bangs over his forehead.
“Sick?” Maman gaped at him like she couldn’t believe it. “I’m not sick of anything! Except lovesick, of course.”
She grabbed his face and peppered him with kisses, along his forehead and cheeks and the top of his head until Adrien was laughing and prying himself away.
“Maman!” Adrien laughed, cheeks blazing. “Stop it!”
She laughed too, bright. “Oh, fine. I guess you’re too big for that, now that you’re a…” Maman inched closer to him like she was about to tell a secret. Her eyes went wide. “Teenager.”
“Maman…” Adrien dragged the word out, embarrassed. His heart soared, though. She was here. She was okay.
“Since you’re so extra old, I guess we’ll have to have an extra-special day to celebrate your birthday.”
“Really? Like a party?”
“Something like that,” Maman smiled mischievously. “But first you’d better get dressed, birthday prince.”
She leaned in and pressed a gentle kiss to his forehead, and then unceremoniously ruffled his hair so hard that he shrieked and dove back under his blanket, laughing. Maman laughed too—a bright, happy sound—and he peeked up out of the covers enough to watch her race across his bedroom floor over to the door.
“Happy birthday! Meet me downstairs!” Maman called over her shoulder.
“Okay!” Adrien laughed.
He waited there for a minute after she’d left, so giddy with warmth that he couldn’t do anything but sit there in his blankets and grin. Yesterday was just a bad dream. Today was a good day. He had Maman today.
Adrien skipped downstairs in his favorite black shirt and favorite orange shoes, his hair a little messier and grin a little wilder than usual. He hoped it was okay. It seemed like an okay sort of day.
When he neared the dining room, the lights were dimmed and he could hear excited whispering from inside. It was almost like—like something from a story, like a surprise birthday party. Like something so good it could hardly be real.
He peeked his head inside and was greeted with thirteen lit candles on a cake, flickering warm light onto the smiles of three people that he loved.
“Happy birthday!”
Maman was tilting the cake up so that he could see, grinning ear to ear. Papa had a hand on her shoulder, smiling broad and easy. And Nathalie stood behind them in the doorway, a subdued smile on her lips. They were all here. For him.
“Thank you!” Adrien laughed. The cake was beautiful, white with gold frosting spelling out his name. He looked up at Maman. “Um, cake for breakfast?”
“I thought we’d get the day started with a little fun,” she said. “What do you say?”
“Sure!”
“Blow them out,” Maman instructed, and Adrien did.
He sat down at his spot and Maman and Papa sat in theirs. Nathalie disappeared into the kitchen, taking the cake to be cut into pieces.
“Thank you for the pen, Papa,” Adrien said. “I really like it.”
Papa glanced at him over his sip of coffee and smiled. He looked maybe a little more tired than usual, but nothing too out of the ordinary. Papa was always working late. “You’re welcome, son.”
“A pen?” Maman’s smile was thin, voice light. “Isn’t that what you got for your birthday last year?”
“It’s my favorite pen,” Adrien rushed. “I love it.”
“He loves it,” Papa echoed.
“Hm.” Maman looked back at Adrien and smiled big. “Well, good. I’m glad. Oh, the cake!”
They did eat birthday cake for breakfast, and it was fun. Maman gave him the piece with the “A” on it, and he got to lick all of the candles. She even got Papa to eat some, even though he said it was too sweet for him, and he got a little bit of white frosting on his nose. Adrien giggled at that.
“So,” Adrien said, once the plates had all been cleared away, “are we going to go somewhere today?”
Papa’s head shot up, alarm across his face.
“Emilie, you said you would stay in today and rest.”
“Gabriel—“
“We said you could do this, but you agreed to stay here and rest.”
Maman and Papa locked eyes with each other, something heavy and unspoken passing between them. A pit hollowed out in Adrien’s stomach. He swallowed.
“Is—is everything okay? Are you okay?”
Maman broke her gaze with Papa and smiled at him, even brighter than before.
“I’m just fine, baby. Come on, I have something to show you.”
She brought him to her garden, the one in the backyard, overflowing with flowers. They were mostly buds now, since it was getting colder outside. But there were pails of soil and trowels and pairs of gloves all set out like they were going to be gardening.
“Come on.” Maman knelt down in the soil and beaconed Adrien to do the same. “I thought we could plant some flowers together.”
“Okay.” He knelt down beside her.
A few of the pails held plants, he could see now. They had thin green stems and small yellow flowers, bright against all the muted colors of autumn. He turned and saw that Maman was already digging, carefully carving out a small hole in the front of the garden plot. Her hands moved swiftly; Adrien could see flecks of dirt getting caught beneath her manicured nails.
“You can plant flowers in October?” Adrien asked. “Won’t they die?”
“Nope.” Maman stabbed her trowel into the dirt, frowning. “They’re not dying. Not if we take care of them.”
“Why?”
She flashed him a smile. “They’re winter jasmine. They’ll bloom all winter long.”
Adrien smiled too, and then rubbed one of the yellow petals gently between his fingers. It was soft. “Do they mean anything?”
“I’m not sure. Elegance or grace, I think.”
He nodded. Winter jasmine. Elegance and grace.
They planted the first one, and Adrien sat back to admire the way the yellow flowers shone brightly against the slowly fading garden. Maman dusted off her hands and sat back with him for a moment before something seemed to catch her eye. She turned her head behind them and laughed.
“Gabriel, love, don’t hover. Just come and join us.”
Adrien turned around too and saw that Papa was standing there a few meters away, watching them from the back door.
“Yeah, Papa!” Adrien lifted up his palms, coated in dirt. “Come give me a high-five!”
Papa shook his head at them, but started to make his way across the yard nonetheless.
“As much as I would“—Papa gingerly stepped over a shovel and a rake and a pile of soil—“love that, I’m afraid my hands are full.”
He held up his hands, which held his phone and a pair of sunglasses.
But Maman tackled him anyway, managing to get a handprint of dirt on the shoulder of his light gray suit. He gasped in mock outrage, and then just chuckled and kissed her nose.
“We’re planting winter jasmine,” Adrien told him. “It blooms in the winter!”
“How lovely.” Papa smiled. “Here, you two look perfect. Let me take a picture.”
Maman pulled Adrien close to her and laid her cheek on his head. He melted into her in the warm October air, the sweet smell of fresh flowers making the world feel alive, alive, alive.
Papa snapped the photo.
Maman spent the rest of the day with him too, planting the rest of the flowers and telling him stories about the countries she’d been visiting for the press tour of her latest film. She was such a vivid storyteller, painting images with her words that had Adrien hearing music and tasting champagne just hearing about it. Honestly, she could probably describe a walk down the sidewalk, and he’d still hang on her every word. Maman’s world seemed so much bigger than Adrien’s. It was entrancing.
Papa joined them for dinner, and then he even agreed to spend the evening watching films with them in the home theater. At Adrien’s request, Maman put on Les Enfants du Paradis and they watched the whole thing, both parts. Adrien mimed all of Bastille’s performances along with him, and Maman quoted Garance’s lines, morphing her voice into such a good impression that he could hardly pick out which was which.
Papa made disparaging comments about the costuming and every time he did, Maman would interrupt him by planting a kiss on his lips. Adrien hid his face and acted like it was gross, but he was mostly just pretending. It was hard to do anything but revel in the joy of his parents being here with him.
Bastille and Garance were separated by the crowd at the end, like they always were, and Adrien’s heart broke a little bit, like it always did. Maman looked over and saw the tears brimming in his eyes, and she held him close.
“They’ll find each other again,” she told him. “They always do.”
Later, when Maman walked him up to his room and tucked him into bed, the warmth of the day piled up so high in Adrien that it turned him brave.
“Today was the best,” he said as she smoothed the blankets down around him.
Maman smiled. “I’m so glad.”
“Could we…” He took a deep breath. He was brave. “Could I see you again tomorrow? Maybe we could work in the garden again?”
Her smile slid over to the side and her eyes went soft, like she suddenly found Adrien very cute. Like he’d just proposed that they have lunch on the moon tomorrow. He turned his face away, embarrassed.
“You know I would love that, darling.” She brushed a hand over his hair and gently turned his face back toward her. “You know I would. But I have to do my work tomorrow, and you do too.”
“Sorry. That was silly.”
“It’s alright.” She leaned down and kissed him on the forehead. “Happy birthday, Adrien. I love you.”
“I love you too.”
She went to get up, but stopped and steadied herself against his bed frame for a moment before she shifted her weight. Like she was taking extra care not to fall. A thread of worry snaked around Adrien’s heart.
“Maman?”
“Yes, love?”
He almost didn’t want to say it. But it had been eating at him, even as he pretended it wasn’t.
He took a breath. “Where were you yesterday?”
She looked down at him, still smiling, but it looked sort of painted on now. Like there was nothing behind it. Adrien got the sense that anything in the world could be happening, and she’d still be able to smile like that.
“Don’t worry about it, Adrien. Everything’s alright.”
Maman turned off his light and shut his door, and Adrien tried to let that promise coax him to sleep. The world wasn’t ending. Everything was alright.
By the time he woke up again, Maman and Papa were gone for the rest of the month, on the last leg of the press tour for her newest film. Papa didn’t normally accompany her on such long work trips, but he’d been staying pretty close to her side lately. Adrien stayed home, which was fine. He had schoolwork and fencing and piano to keep him busy, and he even convinced Nathalie to look into inviting Chloé over sometime soon.
Whenever he was lonely, he thought of his birthday. Maman and Papa spending the whole day with him, all that laughter and love and warmth filling him up so much it could last him for ages.
(Whenever he was scared, he thought of his real birthday. The one they didn’t talk about. The one he couldn’t be sure anymore was real.)
The air turned chilly and the leaves outside the house shifted to a pretty burnt yellow, matching the bright petals of the winter jasmine that bloomed in Maman’s garden.
Everything was alright.
~~~
The dimmed, dusty foyer curves around Adrien like the walls of a throat, and he thinks, as he often does, that Marinette is right.
Adrien doesn’t have to be here, stepping around finery and wreckage to pull back stiff curtains and let the morning light trickle in. He doesn’t have to fixate on the broken glass setting loose a gust of cool air, sending a shiver through his body. It’s impossible to know whether it was shattered by a passerby's justice-seeking rock, or whether this is an old wound, from an old fight. Something that refuses to heal.
With all the leverage he and Marinette could scrape together between them, they could probably get the city off his back about this property. They’ve jumped through smaller hoops than French realty succession laws.
Adrien used to wait by this window when he was a kid. It’s got the clearest view out into the courtyard, to the gate. If he peered through, he could be the first to see when it started to open, when one of Maman’s or Papa’s cars would glide through. Maman’s cars were white. It feels like he spent so much of his childhood waiting for her to come home.
The glass always seemed impenetrable back then, like the rest of the house. It’s not. It’s broken now.
When he got the call yesterday that the city was finally processing his request to relinquish his inheritance claim on the estate—requiring the immediate removal of everything within it—he knew what Marinette would say. And he knew, of course, that she would be right.
The smartest thing would be to just let it all go. Or, if he can’t stomach that, to hire someone else to sort through the entrails of the house, give him an itemized list of what they find so he can sort everything into boxes labeled keep, donate, and burn.
He wasn’t really allowed to wait at this window. There was always something else he was meant to be doing. And besides, he always left fingerprints on the glass.
He doesn’t feel it until he does, the sharp sting of broken glass slicing his fingertip. Adrien pulls his hand away quickly, only a little surprised. A bead of blood crops up from under his skin and it looks so bright against the muted colors of half-dark.
There’s a sliver of red lining the jagged glass, right where it cut him. Sort of like the house is bleeding too.
The thing about haunted houses is that you can’t really own them at all. They can own you, though, at least as long as you stay on their leash, keep coming when they call. Someone told Adrien a metaphor about that once, about an animal who got so used to being tied to one spot that even after the leash was gone, it didn’t notice. Didn’t even try getting up.
It feels like that, sometimes. Like the only way he’ll ever really believe that he’s free is if he sees it with his own eyes. If he guts this house of everything it ever held over him and leaves the rest to rot. If he chews through the rope himself.
His fingertip stings, and he does not have to do this.
But the house calls his name and Adrien comes, ghosting deeper into its open maw.