Imagine a pre-s4 Alya who starts to realize a few things.
The akuma attacks started on the first day of school. Their class, or people who are connected to their class, get disproportionately akumatized compared to everyone else. In fact, the very first akuma was someone from their class.
…Could Hawkmoth be from their class?
There are only two people from their class who never got akumatized, but only one of them is a new kid who showed up on the exact same day that the akuma attacks started.
Even crazier because no one would believe that Adrien could be Hawkmoth.
There wasn’t really any proof, it was all circumstantial evidence at best. But man, if that wasn’t a hell of a coincidence.
So she goes to Marinette. She knew everything about him. If anyone would have clues about whether Adrien is secretly a supervillain or not it would be her.
Marinette, obviously, laughs in her face. C'mon, it's Adrien. He's the sweetest, kindest, most amazing, perfect-
(At that point Alya tunes her out.)
For all of Marinette's insistence that it can't be him, Alya isn't convinced. None of that was evidence. Besides, doesn’t she know the "looks like a good guy but is secretly evil and was just pretending to be nice all along" trope? It’s a classic for superheroes stories. Adrien could be like Lex Luthor, where no one believes Superman he's evil because he has such good pr.
So Alya starts investigating.
If Adrien was only pretending to be nice, sooner or later the mask is going to slip. She follows him around, trying to see if he actually is as nice as he seems even when he thinks no one is looking.
But it turns out that he really is what he seems. Even when around strangers, he was always polite and offering help. He was even nice that one time she bribed Etta to run into him with ice cream and smear it all over his shirt.
So Alya is ready to call it quits and admit she was wrong. Maybe even invite him out to ice cream as a silent apology for the whole bribing-her-sister-to-ruin-his-shirt thing.
But then she notices Adrien disappearing during an akuma attack. And not just the one time, either. As she keeps watching she realizes that he disappears during every akuma.
And that is more evidence that Adrien is Hawkmoth than everything else combined.
It's at this point that she starts to get worried and nervous. She wants to tell Nino, but if Marinette laughed at the idea of Adrien being a supervillain, Nino will laugh twice as hard.
Besides, Nino isn’t good at keeping secrets. In the comics when someone figured out the supervillain's secret identity, it never ended well. And if Adrien really was Hawkmoth and realized Nino was onto him...
Alya struggled to imagine Adrien ever hurting his best friend like that, but then again, she also struggled to imagine Adrien being Hawkmoth.
What Alya needed was evidence. Adrien disappearing every akuma attack was super suspicious, but it wasn't damning. There could be other explanations, even if she couldn't think of any.
It’s time to go the direct route.
Trying to subtly interrogate him doesn't work. He’s either telling the truth, or is too good to get caught in a lie. Although Alya does note that he gets kinda cagey whenever the topic of superheroes comes up. Which, again, suspicious but not evidence.
She starts hanging around Adrien more. If she can catch him doing whatever he does when he disappears during an akuma attack, she would have her proof. Except this ends up being harder than she expected, between Adrien's strict schedule and his father not letting him hang out with friends.
The only times she manages to be around Adrien during an akuma attack is in school. Yet somehow, he always manages to disappear if she so much as takes her eyes off him.
It does nothing to make her less suspicious.
And her behaviour does nothing to make her friends less worried about her. They all noticed how she started acting weird lately.
Marinette confronts her. Does she seriously still suspect Adrien may be Hawkmoth?
Alya explains everything she discovered so far and Marinette can't help but doubt a bit. But no, there's no way Adrien was Hawkmoth. Adrien, a supervillain? The very thought was ridiculous. She would prove to Alya that there's simply no way Adrien is a villain.
Nino also tries confronting Alya, but she dodges any questions and pretends like nothing is wrong. So instead he talks to Adrien about it, how it feels like Alya is avoiding him and hiding something from him. He's afraid he did something wrong and that she’s going to break up with him.
Adrien... has a different suspicion.
He noticed the way Alya was trying to get closer to him lately. They were always more friend-of-friend than actual friends themselves, but with how much Alya had been hanging out with him lately he thinks they're approaching solid 'friend' territory. Which he was really glad for! Alya was awesome, he would love being proper friends with her.
But now he's starting to think that maybe Alya has more than friendship on her mind.
So the next day, when Alya suggests they hold hands so they wouldn't get separated during the akuma attack, he starts wondering how to get out of this mess without breaking either of his friends' heart.
(Was messy love drama an inherent part of the school experience? Was that why all the high school dramas he watched had it? It’s too bad none of them prepared Adrien for what he should do in this situation. The characters always had to pick someone and hurt the other. Couldn't they all just be friends?)
But first things first, he had an akuma to deal with.
He tries making excuses but Alya is sticking to him like a limpet. No matter what he says, he can't escape her or even get her to turn her attention elsewhere for a bit.
Which was really bad news considering the akuma of the day was a plant monster who could create massive vines and control them to trap whoever is in reach. His Lady would definitely need his Cataclysm.
Except it turns out that he needs his Cataclysm, because while trying to shake Alya off the vines sneaked up on them and trapped them together in the corner of the room.
Alya leans back, happy as a clam. They could just spend the rest of the akuma attack here together, without either of them going anywhere or doing anything.
But Adrien can't relax like that. Ladybug is going to need him, but he can't get out of here without his power. A power he can't use without transforming right where Alya could see him.
What was more important, his secret identity or the city?
"Alya, I'm going to need you to keep a secret."
Alya watches his transformation with wide eyes.
"Ohhhh, that makes so much more sense than you being Hawkmoth."
"Nevermind, I'll tell you later " Alya shoos him away. "Go save the city, catboy."
She tells him over lunch, after they defeated the akuma and Ladybug restored everything to its place. It hurt a bit, to know she thought he could terrorize the city like that, but even he had to admit how suspicious everything looked.
And on the bright side, he didn't have to deal with any messy love drama!
"I'm so glad Alya isn't in love with me," he tells Plagg while feeding him in his locker.
Plagg responds between bites of camembert. "Love, smove. Humans are so ridiculous with all their romantic feelings. There's a reason why kwamis don't fall in love."
He whips around to see Marinette staring at him. Did she hear him talking with Plagg? Maybe he could pass it off as talking to someone with his phone on speaker.
Except, Marinette didn't look so good. That was really more important. "Are you okay? You look really pale."
Marinette stammers for a bit before managing to choke out the word "nurse" and flee the room.
She finds Alya and drags her somewhere private. "You were right, Adrien is Hawkmoth."
But Alya shakes her head. "I was with him the entire akuma attack. He's 100% not Hawkmoth."
No matter how much Marinette insists, Alya refuses to even entertain the idea. “It was all just coincidences, we never had any real evidence.”
Yet this time, Marinette has evidence. Damning evidence.
She just couldn’t tell it to Alya, because Marinette Dupain-Cheng shouldn't know about kwamis.
And neither should Adrien.
She was so stupid to not realize it. She knew the butterfly was lost with the grimoire. She saw Adrien with it. He should've been suspect number one the entire time, but instead she dismissed it because she was in love with him.
That must be why he did it, tricking her with his kind eyes and beautiful smile. Using his stupid, gorgeous, face to stop her from realizing what he was really like. He was perfect. Too perfect. She should've known he was too good to be true, but instead he played her for a complete fool.
And he fooled Alya as well.
He must've realized that she was onto him, so he arranged an alibi for himself by staying untransformed the entire akuma attack. That way, Alya would think she got proof he isn’t Hawkmoth and eliminate him as a suspect.
He was more cunning than she ever realized.
She would have to be cunning as well if she wanted to catch him. He was slippery and an unparalleled liar to manage to pull off such an act so perfectly. If she went in guns blazing he would surely manage to slip away. But gathering information from a distance wouldn't be enough, not when she already knew so much about him but never once caught a hint of his true nature.
She had to get close to him, to make him trust her enough that he would never see it coming when she sprang the trap on him.
Except... she's been trying to get close to him all year and she never managed it.
She was going to need help.
That night, Ladybug shows up on Nino's windowsill.
"Carapace, I know who Hawkmoth is, and you’re going to help me catch him."
