Parenting Assignment (Miraculous Ladybug)

Chapter 11

Edited by:

@sleepingintheshadows

@Just_another_star

~.~.~.~.~

Emma's giggling was the only sound in the room. Marinette attempted to look at Adrien but quickly averted her gaze when she saw that he was staring back at her. His eyes, questioning and curious, seemed to penetrate the careful barrier she had set up: the one which hid the answers to all of her lies and secrets.

"M-maybe," she started, trying to make sense of everything, "my friend's doll is defective... Maybe anybody with one of these bracelets can take care of it."

It was a bad excuse, and she knew that it couldn't explain how Chat was able to put her Emma to sleep, but it's all she was able to come up with. It was the only explanation that she wanted to accept, because deep down, another conclusion was forming in her mind, one which she wasn't yet ready to confront.

Adrien finally forced his gaze off of her, letting it fall to the floor with a serious expression. Things weren't adding up. They hadn't added up since the beginning, and now this realization was finally starting to gnaw at him.

He needed answers.

"Yesterday," he couldn't bring himself to look at Marinette, to see her reaction. "Didn't you say that you found Louis lying around? But now you're telling me that he belongs to your friend."

In his peripheral vision the small girl grew fidgety as she tried to come up with an answer, with a lie. Why would she even need to lie about this sort of thing in the first place?

It wasn't just Marinette either, he himself had made up more excuses in the past couple of days than he was used to.

Once the gears started turning there was no stopping them, his brain would continue to look further into this issue until acceptable answers arose.

He waited for Marinette's reply.

She had told him that, hadn't she. This wasn't good, she was so far into her lies that she couldn't keep track of them anymore. After a moment of hesitation, she finally managed to squeak out a half-baked reply. "R-right! That's what I meant of course! Silly me..."

Marinette nervously glanced at him to try and read his face, but Adrien was no longer looking at her. She was worried that he might be angry, but the expression he wore was much worse.

Concentration.

He was listening to every word she spoke, carefully analyzing her reactions. She would have to tread carefully over this thin sheet of ice because one mistake, a single small screw up, could cause her to go crashing through. One obvious lie would lead to another, and another, and so many more until it was impossible to escape from all of them.

This would definitely cause a strain in their relationship, the relationship that she worked so hard to build up. It would be gone, and reasonably so. Nobody wanted a friendship built on lies.

Adrien lifted his head ever so slightly, moving on to the next question without giving Marinette the chance to explain any further, her reaction was all that he needed.

"Why did you tell me that Louis was a boy?"

He finally turned to stare back at the girl beside him as he tried to fit more pieces of the puzzle into place.

Perhaps it was mean of him to ask such a question. He knew that there was no possible reason Marinette would need to lie about the baby's gender unless she was hiding something, but he asked regardless. Typically, as Adrien he would let something such as this slide, sparing the other party the embarrassment of knowing he could see through their lies. But in that moment he let the blunt, Chat-ego break through his outer shell.