norakwami

[Prior to this point: Hawkmoth wins, Emilie awakens, and Marinette takes her place. Adrien is a Very Unhappy Camper and any subtlety he may have had has left the building.]

Things come to a head all too quickly on Monday, when Adrien's Mandarin tutor visits.

"My girlfriend's name is Marinette Dupain-Cheng. My father killed her and her body is hidden in our basement," Adrien tells the man in intelligible but flawed Chinese, and within minutes of the man's departure their home is being swarmed by police who separate her and Gabriel from their son and each other.

The girl's name is familiar--she's a local schoolgirl who vanished last week, and her picture has been shown on the news. Adrien's always had a delightfully active imagination but Emilie can't understand what possessed her son to say something like that. Like she tells the police, "We don't even have a basement!"

But Adrien guides them to Gabriel's atelier and shows them the combination of discreet buttons--hidden in the portrait of her--that does indeed lead to a basement she knows nothing about.

The girl is there--not dead, not yet, but only because she is encapsulated in a machine that sustains her.  Emilie has to fight down her melodramatic first response and watch stoically as Gabriel is taken away and her home is designated a crime scene.

*

Of course Emilie demands legal representation for herself and Adrien. The lawyers show up quickly, and she breathes easier once she sees one of the officers on scene guiding the competent young associate toward the room where they've taken Adrien.

The young woman returns within minutes, face pale. "He says that Gabriel is Hawkmoth," she hisses to her colleague.

"My husband is not a terrorist!" Emilie snaps, her voice echoing above the noise of the investigators prowling through her home. Several pause and shoot curious glances her way; she defiantly stares them down until they return to their work.

*

Her husband is a terrorist.

Emilie thanks her lucky stars that Adrien is unaware of the hidden safe where she and Gabriel keep their sentimental possessions, because as long as none of the investigators stumble upon the brooch and the pin the evidence linking Gabriel Agreste and Hawkmoth will be circumstantial at best.

Not that it will make much of a difference. There's no way to put a favorable spin on the fact that a girl who's been missing for weeks has apparently been incapacitated in their basement the entire time.

She still has no idea how that came about. Her non-answers frustrate her interrogators, but eventually they determine that they don't have enough to justify taking her into custody, too.

The full story comes to her thirdhand, in bits and pieces cobbled together from the young associate who's been assigned to Adrien and the partner who's spent the day in interrogation with Gabriel.  Gabriel has predictably played his cards close to his vest and is only communicating via his lawyer.

Adrien… has not.