Cat's Eye (Lukadrien)

Volume 1, Chapter 3

Author's Note: Hey guys! Just realised that somehow I completely missed out this page when publishing this fic. I've adjusted the order of the fic so this page fits in chronologically where it should, but to those of you seeing this update as it's posted - I'm sorry!

It'd had been a week since Adrien had gone to see Luka. After his outburst, he'd felt so incredibly embarrassed. That kind of vulnerability – it was something he'd never expressed to someone in his life other than his mother. Speaking of his mother, Chat shook his head. He had to focus on the task at hand. Over the last month he'd been investigating all the various places that his mother had raised money for. It had been easy to do innocuously at first. The night vision granted by the Chat Miraculous, plus the dark nature of his suit had made it easy to sleuth through the records held in the hospitals, libraries and orphanages that Emelie had been involved with.

Adrien had had the idea after he'd secretly gone through the police files on his mother, by sneaking into the station. He'd been shocked to find a practically empty file, with the case closed almost immediately. The notes from the case detective had noted that Gabriel had in fact been in favour of closing the case from very early on. It was such unusual behaviour for the spouse of the missing person that detective had taken it upon himself to look into Gabriel as potentially involved in the disappearance. Not long after, the detective had 'won a lottery ticket' and retired from work altogether, and the case was eventually shelved. Adrien had spent enough time around the upper echelons of society to be able to connect the dots of what happened there. So, if Gabriel had something to do Emelie's disappearance, and was covering it up, it would make sense that he would tell Adrien that he'd 'tried his best' on the case.

Since Gabriel's files were all securely encrypted in camera observed areas, Adrien knew he had no chance of finding anything at home. Hence, he'd followed the only other clue he had in the files. The detective had noted that Emelie had made increasingly larger donations to certain charitable organisations, particularly those pertaining to orphans, healthcare and women's shelters, and had speculated that potentially she could have been planning an escape route from someone.

Maybe, Adrien hoped. Maybe she'd just run away. Maybe she'd escaped whatever Gabriel had going on. Maybe Gabriel was just so embarrassed that his wife had run away that he covered it up. The man was obsessed with his image and his brand, after all. Adrien would know, having slaved away years of his life to cultivating it.

Anyways, so far, he'd not found much. He'd gone through the Women's Shelter first, thinking that was the likeliest route she would have prepared something through. They would probably have the best resources for getting her out as well, especially if she'd managed to fund them in advance. But the files had turned up empty, just a series of donations and fund-raising events she'd done in the name of feminism. Admirable, and very much in character for his mother, but no leads there.

So, Adrien had moved on to the hospitals, where he'd found a more complex system of donations. It was called the Peacock fund, and was funding five of the biggest hospitals in France, to improve treatment for the terminally ill, and help develop novel treatments for illnesses like cancer and autoimmune conditions. Adrien started to draw some connections there – before her disappearance, Emelie had started having dizzy spells, low blood pressure and wasting. She'd lost enough weight that the camera crews had expressed concern for her modelling, and started having regular medical check-ups. Had Emelie been terminally ill, spurring her to invest in treatments of that kind not just for herself, but for others? It didn't make sense – if she'd gone into hospital she wouldn't have disappeared out of the blue.

Adrien was now investigating the files for the chief administrator for the Orphanages that Emelie had made donations too. Again, the system was complicated and consisted of the... no way. The 'Adrien Fund' for orphans, which focused on supplying emotional support to those children in the foster care system who had experienced bereavements, typically of their birth parents. Adrien stared at the file in disbelief.