Gabriel Agreste gave his life to defeat Monarch in the final battle. That is what Ladybug told his son Adrien. It's all anyone can talk about when they see him. So what does it matter if Adrien cannot forget all the times the man ignored him, controlled his life, or tried to isolate him from the people he loved? His father was a hero. So Adrien wears a proud smile, even as his insides churn. But when dark secrets come to light, his entire world shatters to pieces. Will Adrien be able to weather the storm, or will the truth ultimately break him?
Open My Eyes
is a fanfic written by buggachat which takes place after season five. It is now complete.
This fanfic provides examples of:
- All for Nothing:
- All the lies Ladybug told of how Gabriel helped her defeat Monarch, just so Adrien would never be burdened with the knowledge that his father was a supervillain, are rendered meaningless when the new Butterfly villain forces her to tell Chat Noir the truth, unaware at this point that he is Adrien.
- For an additional layer of irony, all of Ladybug's efforts simply burdened Adrien with painfully conflicting feelings towards his father, the exact opposite of what she hoped to accomplish.
- Aesop Amnesia: Initially, Ladybug seems to have forgotten the lesson she learned in "Strikeback" about the the consequences of keeping Chat Locked Out of the Loop, although she obviously feels incredibly guilty about lying to him. Later, however, when the new Butterfly villain starts texting them about how she knows the truth, Ladybug realizes that continuing the charade will only make things worse in the long run and comes clean to Chat about what really happened in the Final Battle.
- Bittersweet Ending: Despite the mental and emotional wringer Adrien goes through, he manages to come out of it happier and healthier than he has been in a long time. His relationship with Marinette, which had been strained nearly to the breaking point by all of her lies and deceptions, is also mended and stronger than before now that there are no more secrets between them. However, the new Butterfly villain is still at large and likely to step up her game now that her initial plan has failed, and Chat Noir's Hero with Bad Publicity status from destroying Gabriel's statue remains unresolved, with very few people knowing the truth of why he did it. The fic ends just as Adrien is about to reveal himself as Chat Noir to Carapace/Nino, who has just been brought into the loop about Gabriel being Monarch after spending most of the fic hating Chat for his actions.
- Broken Pedestal:
- Gabriel is obviously this for Adrien after he learns the truth, although that particular pedestal was already pretty fragile by that point anyways.
- Likewise, Nathalie has lost all goodwill for Gabriel at this point, regardless of how his wish may have saved her life. When Chat Noir insists that Gabriel saved her because he loved her, Nathalie outright declares that the only thing he ever loved was his own selfish delusions.
- Ladybug becomes this after confessing that Gabriel was Monarch, plus what really happened during the final battle, and it only gets worse after Adrien discovers that she is Marinette, which means that his own girlfriend had been keeping secrets about his own life and family from him. In chapter 12, he admits that while he still loves her, he doesn't trust her. It starts to become a Rebuilt Pedestal after she reveals all of the other secrets she had been keeping from him.
- Gabriel is obviously this for Adrien after he learns the truth, although that particular pedestal was already pretty fragile by that point anyways.
- Cannot Keep a Secret: After Alya tells Nino that Gabriel was Monarch, he immediately goes to tell Adrien. While he's already known this for days and has forgiven those who kept it from him, Adrien is nonetheless overjoyed to know that he has at least one friend who would never lie to him.
- Condescending Compassion: Played with in that Marinette would certainly never have this attitude towards anyone, least of all Adrien. Unfortunately, when she insists that the truth would destroy him, he interprets it as her believing that he couldn't handle it, which deeply affects his self-esteem throughout the fic.
- Deconstruction Fic: This fic effectively tears apart the notion that Adrien would be better off believing that his father was a hero instead of the villain he'd been fighting for a year on several levels:
- Despite being told that his father heroically gave his life to defeat Monarch, Adrien cannot stop thinking about how cold and controlling the man had been towards him his entire life. Unfortunately, because he believes that his father sacrificed his life to save the world, he feels that he does not have the right to resent him, so he maintains a front of loving and admiring his father while being deeply conflicted about it on the inside.
- It is also shown that the deception has deeply affected his self confidence on both sides of the mask. As Chat Noir, he admits to Ladybug that he believes that Gabriel was a better hero than him for defeating Monarch while he was absent from the final battle. As Adrien, he keeps trying different activities at school in hopes of finding something he’s good enough at to be able to live up to his father’s supposed genius, only to grow increasingly frustrated and despondent when he fails to become an Instant Expert at any of them.
- As anyone could have guessed, Lila, here operating under the alias Cerise, proves that she would absolutely use her knowledge of Monarch’s true identity to sabotage Ladybug, doing so by using the Butterfly Miraculous to send messages to both her and Chat Noir, taunting them over the secrets Ladybug is keeping from her partner. This forces her to tell Chat Noir the truth, breaking his trust in her and driving a wedge between the two of them, just as their new enemy had planned.
- Marinette’s willingness to keep secrets from Adrien just to spare his feelings is similarly picked apart. When she confronts Chat Noir as Ladybug over him Cataclysming Gabriel's memorial statue, she tries to defend her decisions by claiming that learning that his father was Monarch would destroy Adrien, and she refused to let that happen on account of her love for him, subsequently revealing her secret identity. Unfortunately, Chat declares that Gabriel was his father and that he had the right to know what really happened to him, revealing himself as Adrien and effectively tearing Marinette’s argument apart. To make matters worse, now Adrien knows that his own girlfriend has been keeping secrets about his family from him, further damaging their relationship. Ultimately, all Marinette’s efforts to shield Adrien from the truth did was create more problems in the long run.
- Even hiding his true nature as a sentibeing created by the Peacock Miraculous from him proves to be a disastrous mistake. When Adrien punches a metal window pane out of rage and frustration, he accidentally damages the rings containing his amok, putting him in a painful near-death state and would have ultimately killed him if Nathalie hadn’t had the rings repaired. Later, after stealing the Peacock Miraculous to interrogate Duusu, he discovers the amoks in his and Felix’s rings and naturally assumes that his cousin had secretly created two new sentimonsters. Felix is forced to use Adrien’s rings to make him return the brooch before he snaps them both out of existence, leading to Adrien making yet another shocking discovery under less than ideal circumstances.
- On a more lighthearted note, the story also deconstructs the idea that Adrien simply cannot handle the truth. He spends most of the fic is a very bad mental state, as would just about anyone in his position. However, the constant love and support of his friends and family sees him through it all, and by the end he is in a much better place than he was even before he learned the truth. Granted it helps that the only time the new Butterfly villain tries to akumatize him is when he’s surrounded by heroes ready to stop it, but it is nonetheless shown that a proper and sincere support system is far more effective than some pretty lies.
- For Your Own Good: When Adrien gets angry at Felix and Kagami for not telling him that he was a sentibeing, yet were willing to tell Ladybug, Felix explains that since Gabriel was in possession of Adrien's amok, it would have been impossible for him to do anything about the situation, and that knowing that he was being controlled would only make it worse for him.
- Ignorance Is Bliss: Deconstructed to hell and back. In addition to respecting Gabriel's last wish, Marinette genuinely believes Adrien learning the truth about his father's death, let alone his supervillainy, would destroy him, while Felix and Kagami felt it pointless to reveal before then that he was a sentibeing. And yet the fact that the secrets were being kept is what keeps mentally wrecking him, from finding out the secret when Ladybug tells Chat Noir the truth about Gabriel when the new Butterfly villain implies she's keeping secrets from him, to finding out Felix and Kagami told Ladybug about him being a sentibeing and not himself, to finding out his girlfriend is Ladybug and thus is keeping secrets from him. It's only once the truth is out and Adrien has time to heal from the pain of these reveals that he winds up in a better place, mentally and emotionally, than before, and his relationship with Marinette is healthier than ever.
- In Love with Your Carnage: A non-romantic example. When Felix realizes that Adrien is Chat Noir, he gleefully admits that he is a huge fan of him for destroying Gabriel's statue, and urges his cousin to keep letting it out.
- Likes Clark Kent, Hates Superman: Nino quickly comes to absolutely despise Chat Noir after he destroys Gabriel's memorial statue, seemingly upsetting his best friend Adrien, unaware that the two of them are one and the same. After Adrien defaces a school mural of his father and signs it as Chat Noir, Nino is practically howling for Chat's blood, forcing Alya to tell him the truth about Gabriel before her boyfriend could do something incredibly stupid.
- Manipulative Bastard: Cerise immediately capitalizes on the distance between Marinette and Adrien after everything is revealed to try and isolate him from Marinette.
- Plot-Irrelevant Villain: Cerise has risen to take Gabriel's place as the Big Bad, however, she's not the main focus, with the central conflict being Adrien struggling with his own demons and everyone keeping him Locked Out of the Loop.
- Reconstruction:
- Ultimately, the story provides one of Adrien's character. Yes, the reveals of Monarch’s identity and his nature as a sentibeing are extremely traumatic, but with a proper support system, he proves more than capable of handling the truth, and his relationship with Marinette becomes better and healthier than ever before.
- It also provides one for Marinette. Her very questionable decision to keep Adrien in the dark about his father may have done far more harm than good even before the truth came out, but she ultimately proves that she is willing to do right by him by revealing every other secret that she had been keeping from him up to that point, no matter how painful it is for either of them.
- Trauma Conga Line: Oh boy, this fic is not kind to Adrien. First he discovers that Ladybug lied to him, that his father, whom he thought gave his life to defeat Monarch, was Monarch all along, that Gabriel had actually won the final battle, and that he was dying from the Cataclysm Chat had inflicted on him. Then he learns that Ladybug is Marinette, meaning his girlfriend has been lying to his face about his own father. Then when he snatches Felix's Miraculous to try and get answers from Duusu, it quickly leads to him discovering that he is a sentibeing. And it just keeps on going. Near the end of the story, the poor boy is so beaten down and fractured from everything that you could be forgiven for believing that he really was better off not knowing anything.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: While Marinette may have been responsible for keeping Adrien in the dark, Gabriel is this due to asking her to keep his identity as Monarch from his son before summoning Gimmi, not knowing the hell it would unleash on the poor boy, both mentally and emotionally. It even nearly gets him akumatized by the new Butterfly villain.
- Villainous Crush: Cerise has one on Adrien, dedicating lots of effort into isolating him from his friends and making him spend time with her.
