Under Oath | Ladynoir ✓

03 | la nuit d'après

CHAT NOIR'S FIRST INSTINCT WAS to burn the Agreste mansion to the ground.

It was a blight on the city. The headquarters of the man who'd held Paris in a cruel fist for four years, targeting people at their lowest and warping them against their will. The nexus of so much evil and pain. It would be very easy to do. One strategic Cataclysm could destroy the foundations, and then he would tear apart the remains by hand if he had to.

But when he arrived at the Agreste mansion, Chat Noir did not see an evil lair.

He saw his childhood home.

The foyer where he'd decorated the Christmas tree every year, without fail, even that holiday after his mother vanished. The rooms he and his father had filled with piano music, playing duets side by side in brighter days. The dining hall where Nathalie Sancouer kept him company, reminding him of his next scheduled extracurricular.

Chat Noir wandered without seeing, guided by his muscle memory the way children wander in the dark to their parents' bedroom after being woken by a nightmare. Except this nightmare was very real.

There were certainties he'd always held, certainties he didn't know about until they were stretched taut and stabbed like a stomach. The sun would always rise in the sky. Good always triumphed in the end. His parents were always heroes. Now the sky was falling, splintering like a frozen lake and crashing down on his head.

Did Nathalie know? Did his mother? A lance of pain shot through his chest at the traitorous thought. He didn't want to believe his mother had anything to do with such darkness.

He tried not to think about it.

Chat Noir stopped in his father's atelier, staring up at the golden portrait of his mother in her prime. With hesitant fingers, he swung the painting outward on its secret hinges. He didn't want to be Adrien right now, but he didn't know the combination to the lock, and his kwami was the only way into the safe.

"Claws in." The green rush of magic swept his body, and he told Plagg, "Open it for me."

"But. . . your father. Adrien. You're in shock," his kwami warned. "Are you sure—"

"Open it."

Plagg blinked twice, his furry snout drooping into a suspicious frown. He phased through the metal and unlocked the mechanism from the inside.

Nothing. Nothing except for souvenirs. Hotel guides from Tibet. A picture of Emelie Agreste, lips curved in a mild-mannered smile. A photo album of Adrien's infancy, which sent revulsion stampeding through his otherwise numb body.

Adrien braced his palm on the cold metal and couldn't even feel the coolness on his skin. His fingertips were buzzing. Hunting deeper into the safe, he pulled out an ancient chronicle.

Plagg floated out of the safe as the book slid past him, sniffing the dense pages deeply. "Oh. . ." he sighed, face shuttering with realisation. "Oh."

Adrien tried to decipher the text within it but couldn't. It looked ancient, but more than that, it felt ancient. Heavy with knowledge and cold with history. He had seen it before, stupidly dismissing it as a piece of superhero merchandise, but it had to be legitimate information about the Miraculous. The shame hit him like an ice pick to the skull, a piece of the sky weighing down his chest.

He had been so fucking blind. No more.

Adrien kept to the shadows as he searched every inch of the house. Downstairs, he heard clamouring voices and footsteps as the housekeeping staff were unexpectedly dismissed for the day. The news was breaking on every channel, every social media app, every phone.