Butterfly Delivery - Adrinette

Chat in the Dark

Five months after Genesis Quoi

"Marinette! He got him! Please wake up!" Marinette's mind came alert when her eyes were still not willing to open; someone was over her, on her bed, shaking her awake. In a movement she barely registered, her fist curled and punched out before her - straight into the gut of her assailant.

"Oooh!" She heard the mystery person tumble down to the foot of her bed, groaning from the blow he had received. Shortly, her eyes came open.

"Chat!" Marinette knelt by her recently declared boyfriend, laying a hand over his clawed hand that clutched the point of impact. "I'm so sorry! Are you all right? ..." she paused, processing their situation. "Wait a minute, this is partially your fault! What were you doing in my bedroom while I was asleep?!"

"He got him!" Chat wailed, his momentary physical pain lifting to reveal the emotion underneath.

"He got who?" Marinette asked him.

"Felix!"

"Who got him?"

"HAWKMOTH!"

Hawkmoth got Felix. Any remnant of sleep vanished from Marinette's mind and her eyes came wide. "Tell me you had a nightmare!" she begged. She looked around for the child that Chat would have surely brought along with him, but he was nowhere in sight.

Chat closed his eyes a moment, steadying his breath. Then he proceeded to tell his entire story in a rushed and mechanical tone. "I heard him crying. I thought I was just going to feed or change him and go back to sleep. That's when I saw Hawkmoth by my bedside reaching for the ring on my hand. I knew he knew. I had nothing left to hide, and I had to protect the miraculous, so I transformed. Felix was still crying. I tried to run to him, but my feet were still tangled in my sheets. Hawkmoth got there first. He took my son and vanished. I couldn't find any trace of him, so I came here. He knows who I am, he could know who you are. I had to warn you!"

"No, poor baby!" Marinette gasped, meaning it quite literally. "We have to get him back, but..." she quelled her fervor, reminding herself to look at their task objectively - the way she had been trained by Tikki and Master Fu. She continued in a whisper, "...if we rush in there and get our miraculouses taken away, it won't be any good for anyone - Felix included - uh-oh..." she stopped as she heard the hatch in her floor creak open.

"Marinette?" her mother inquired. "We heard voices up here. What's going on?" Sabine emerged into the attic-turned-bedroom. Tom followed closely behind her. The big man looked up to his daughter's loft bed, where he found Marinette and Chat Noir kneeling on top of it.

"You're here again?" he asked warily. "What are you doing in my daughter's bedroom at night?"

"It's an emergency, Papa," Marinette sighed, coming down the stairs to the main part of her room. "Chat's identity has been found out by Hawkmoth and he's come here to hide."

"Okay?... Why would he come here?"

--

By the end of that discussion, Adrien was sitting - detransformed - on Marinette's chaise, and Marinette's parents knew exactly what their daughter had been doing every time she had pulled a disappearing act over the last year.

"Does your père know where you are?" Sabine asked worriedly.

"No, and he shouldn't," Adrien decided. "When Hawkmoth can't find me, it would be most logical for him to target my only remaining family. If Père can honestly say he doesn't know where I am, then Hawkmoth should leave him alone. It's safer for him that way, and safer for me."

"Then... we can't know where Marinette is either... That's it, Marinette. Tonight you'll be going somewhere safe where you can stay until you form your strategy to counter Hawkmoth! But where can you go?" Tom looked around for inspiration, settling on a souvenir Gina had sent them from her latest adventure. "Mamma!"