A/N: This is part of a series. The other stories are not necessary to understanding this one, but helpful! Read "Not the Fairytale we Planned", "His Mother's Ring", and "You had one job, Plagg!" first!

Marinette stared down in disbelief, struck motionless by the object in her hand. Something meaningless turned precious in the blink of an eye. She almost hadn't bought it, thinking she was just stressed...crazy...imagining things. It seemed wasteful. A waste of plastic. Was it even recyclable? She didn't even know! Clearly she was not ready for this responsibility. Was it too soon? She didn't feel prepared. What if she was horrible at it?

Her mind started to spiral and her knees gave out. She caught herself on the edge of the bathtub and sat there. Setting the pregnancy test on the closed toilet seat, she closed her eyes and tried to regulate her breathing. Then she imagined his face.

Adrien when she tells him the news, shock morphing into exuberance as he picks her up and swings her in a circle...Adrien singing in his horribly off-tune voice to her growing stomach...Adrien disheveled from lack of sleep, rocking a baby in a sunny-yellow nursery...Adrien zooming a spoon like an airplane into the giggling mouth of a baby, pureed carrots somehow smeared across his smiling face...Adrien effortlessly braiding their daughter's hair on her first day of school, the two singing along for the millionth time to a child's song...Adrien shouting on the sidelines of her soccer game, pride in his eyes as she falls but gets right back up again… Adrien shopping for prom dresses with the keen eye of a fashion mogul's son and spending an obscene amount of money on the one that is just perfect...Adrien clapping and cheering louder than anyone could imagine as she walks across the stage and accepts her university diploma...Adrien, gray and distinguished, walking their daughter down the aisle, tears in his eyes as his lips linger lovingly on her forehead before giving her away…

She opened her eyes and looked back down at the stick, her hands coming to rest on her still-flat abdomen and her breathing normalizing again. She may not know if she could handle this, but together, they could.

"Marinette?" She looked up to see Tikki's head peeking through the bathroom door. Her eyes immediately on her chosen's face, trying to decipher the riot of emotions there, until Tikki's gaze fell to the test in front of her and tears spring to her eyes.

"Marinette?" Tikki asked again, her tone irrevocably changed as she regarded her girl with shining eyes.

"I'm pregnant, Tikki," Marinette said out loud for the first time, her voice shaky with disbelief but lips turning into a hesitant smile. She watched through a watery gaze herself as Tikki pummeled into her face, the two laughing joyously at the wonderful news.

Tikki floated back, her face glowing with excitement as she bobbed in the air.

"You're going to be a marvelous mother, Marinette."

"You really think so?" Marinette let her insecurity infuse her tone, looking at her friend with a worried gaze.

"Of course! Is that what you've been doing in here so long? Quietly panicking?" Tikki fixed her with her all-knowing gaze and Marinette just grimaced in response. Her kwami rolled her eyes, affectionately tugging a strand of Marinette's hair.

"Okay, up, up! We need to go tell Adrien!"

"What, now?" Marinette laughed, her own excitement building at Tikki's response. "He's on patrol," she reminded her friend, remembering Adrien's strict orders to stay home and rest when she mentioned feeling a bit queasy earlier that night.

"So, find him," Tikki emphasized her words. "Let him tell you what an amazing mother you will be instead of silently stewing here in a pot of irrational fears."

"I'm not stewing," Marinette muttered, letting Tikki pull her out into the living room. Her kwami just gave her a sarcastic look and Marinette sighed.

"Okay, okay, fine. You win," she acquiesced and Tikki smiled triumphantly. "Tikki, spots on!"

Sparing a moment to glance out their back window-to make sure no one had decided today to start taking in the sights of the back alley-Ladybug confirmed the the coast was clear before lassoing the chimney of the adjacent building and pulling herself up to roof. She broke out into a sprint immediately. Even all these years later, there was nothing quite like the feeling of running full-speed across the rooftops of her city. Feet light and wind in her hair, she craved the burn in her muscles as she pushed them to their enhanced, miraculous limit.

She wondered how this would change. She knew enough to not think that she would have to stop her patrols completely. Exercise wouldn't affect the baby, although the citizens of Paris might be shocked to see a pregnant Ladybug swinging along the Parisian cityscape. She'd have to back off from any dangerous situations for a while, but Chat was more than capable of handling akuma victims, and she could be close by to cleanse them. Maybe Fu even had some ideas about what to do. This couldn't be the first time a miraculous holder needed to take a brief hiatus.

Except, it wouldn't exactly be brief. Newborns took a lot of time and effort too, and it wasn't like they could call a babysitter every time an akuma appeared. Not only would that look suspicious, but the pesky butterflies had a habit of picking the most inconvenient times to appear. Maybe if they lived closer to her parents…

Ladybug mind was still negotiating internally with herself when the din finally reached her; the unmistakable sound of a battle far too familiar to her ears. She ran faster, reaching the clearing and spotting Chat in no time, but this was different from any battle she'd seen before.

The streets were clear on the late summer night, no civilians even hovering at the edge of the fight to watch, and when Marinette finally recognized Chat's opponent, she understood why. He wasn't battling just another akuma. He was battling Hawkmoth himself, and as she watched him block his assailant's parries, always on the defensive, Ladybug realized something worse.

Chat was losing.

Chat could concentrate on nothing other than the adrenaline that coursed through his entire body and he cursed himself for allowing the whim of nostalgia that brought him to this moment. With Marinette ill, and him patrolling along for the first time in recent memory, Chat found himself tracing an old familiar route from his first years as Chat, which inevitably took him by his childhood home. It had been four years since he'd seen his father last. After their falling out over his mother's ring, Adrien never saw Gabriel again. He received an unfeeling card every birthday, and Gabriel had sent a gift and note to the wedding, but other than in fashion magazines, his own father's face had become a relic of the past. So, as he vaulted past the austere stone house, Chat couldn't help but take a quick look.

Maybe it was curiosity or some lingering nostalgia for a time when the house had held some joy, but Chat found himself hopping the fence and taking in his old surroundings with the strange disjointed view of his older self. Approaching the house from a completely different angle than he ever had before, his gaze caught a flash of purple light from the rose window at the rear of the property. Strange, he thought, how you could live somewhere for so long and completely miss design elements. Chat must've noticed that window before, but he couldn't conjure it up in his memory. He supposed he'd spent so many years trying to escape this place, he'd never really gotten to know his own home.

Movement in the window caught his eye again, and Chat couldn't help but give into his curiosity, scaling the large plane tree in the back yard until he had a clear view into the window.

What he saw there changed everything.

The man on the other side of the window stood in the center of the barren room, framed dramatically in the light of the moon through the ornately shaped glass. His eyes were immediately on Chat.

Whether it was the movement in the tree or his glowing green eyes that gave him away, Chat didn't know, and he didn't stay to find out, jumping from the tree and vaulting as far away as he possibly could. When he reached a small empty plaza on the edge of the arrondissement where he currently lived, he finally stopped, mind reeling with what his eyes just witnessed.

That's where his father found him

Chat didn't know how long he'd stood in that empty plaza, but when Hawkmoth appeared, he finally began to function again, the rage pouring through his body.

"How could you!" Chat spat, fists clenched and eyes narrowed into dangerous slits.

Hawkmoth didn't even flinch at the venom in his voice, though his eyebrow quirked in consideration, studying Chat like an interesting specimen.

"I suspected this years ago," he intoned finally, hands resting casually together on his cane in front of him. "I thought I had disproved my theroy of you being Chat, but I should have known when I saw that ring on your finger. Apparently, my affection clouded my judgement."

"Affection," Chat repeated, rage giving way to pure disbelief. "You can't be serious."

Hawkmoth sighed in exasperation.

"I'm not in the mood for one of your tantrums, son."

"No," Chat raised a hand, his mind finally clear. Resolve infusing in him as he regarded the man in front of him anew. This wasn't his father. Not anymore. He'd made that choice long ago for both of them, and while it stung to know his father had been the antagonist of his entire life, it also filled him with pity. What must his father's existence truly be like?

"No," Chat repeated. "This isn't about us. This is about your actions for the last decade, and it ends now."

He took a step towards the man who was his father and held out his hand.

"Give me the miraculous, Gabriel."

Hawkmoth's eyes narrowed slightly as he appraised the man in front of him but made no move to surrender.

"I did this for us," he finally said, his voice taking on an unfamiliar soft tone, and Chat steeled his will against the explanation he knew would follow. "For our family. This was the only way to save us."

"It's too late-"

"To save your mother."

Hawkmoth's words stopped Chat's next words, but he refused to let himself be taunted with the impossible. His father was clearly unwell. This man had unknowingly and then knowingly put his own child in direct danger of akumas for years, and now he expected that same son to believe it had all been for him? For their family? Chat just shook his head sadly.

"Maman is dead," he replied.

"Not forever," Hawkmoth finally took a step towards him, an unnatural gleam in his eye. "I just don't have the power yet, but with your miraculous-"

"Hawkmoth-"

"-and Ladybug's, I'll be able to perform the ritual-"

"Gabriel-"

"I've preserved her for years, planned for years-"

"Father!" Chat finally shouted, bringing his mad ramblings to an end. The shell of his father looked at him again, confusion coloring his expression when he didn't find his own excitement reflected on his son's face.

"Adrien, she's not missing, that's just what I told everyone. I can bring her back."

"No," Chat shook his head, voice strained as he pushed past the pain of the final confirmation that his mother was truly dead. "No, you can't"

"I can."

"You won't," Chat amended. "It's not natural, and she wouldn't have wanted it. I won't allow it."

"Allow it?" He hissed in return. Hawkmoth's eyes morphed, tilting dangerously in a split second, and Chat finally realized just how broken his father had become.

"Give me your miraculous, father."

"You think you can command me?" he laughed, shaking his head erratically. "You've always been an insolent-"

"Gabriel-"

"MY NAME IS HAWKMOTH," he shouted with abandon. "And this ends now."