'What happened to you?'

Nathanaël awoke to find himself floating in a swirling purple void. Something told him he should recognize where he was, recognize the voice that had pulled him from his slumber. But why was he sleeping? Where was he? How did he get here? He called out to...someone. Anyone, but no sound escaped his lips.

'Please, come back to us.'

That voice again. So familiar... Somehow it made him both angry and elated, filled his heart with warmth and his belly with fire. Who was it...who was she? Who was this girl who he both cared for and despised? He attempted to turn and search for the mystery woman, but found he couldn't move. He simply hung in the abyss, aware, but unable to do much more than think.

'Please, Nath. Come...come back to me.'

He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, they met a familiar pair of sky blue eyes, framed by a black and yellow mask. Queen Bee. Nathanaël felt another name dance on his tongue, but some presence in his mind forbade him from speaking it, from even thinking it. Why? What was that other name? And why did the thought of his own name fill him with disgust?

"I am not Nathanaël." The words slipped unbidden from his mouth. "I am Evillustrator."

Oh.

She shook her head, her long blonde hair swaying behind her. "No, you're not. You don't have to listen to Hawkmoth. We can help you. If you'll let us." She laid her hand on the hand holding his stylus and he looked down. Drawn on the tablet fused to his right arm was a mask, an exact recreation of Bee's mask, and his stylus sat poised above it, but not the drawing tip. The eraser.

Pain spiked through his mind, and another familiar voice flooded his psyche. 'Do it, Evillustrator. You're so close. Erase her mask and see who she really is!'

The stylus shook in his hand. Yes. This is what he wanted. Queen Bee's identity. But why? Why was her identity the reason he became akumatized? He looked back into her eyes, so warm, full of concern and tenderness. Eyes that begged him to come back, just as her voice had in the void. Yes, he knew now it was Queen Bee's voice that had called out to him, pulled Nathanaël back to the surface. And now, it was Nathanaël, not Evillustrator, who met her gaze. The rage and focus in the Akuma's eyes melted away to be replaced by the artist's look of desperation and pain.

"Bee..." he struggled to say, his hoarse voice fighting against him. "Help...me..."

Her black lips smiled, and she pulled the stylus from his grip. It wasn't long before the swarm of magical ladybugs descended upon him and ripped the persona of Evillustrator away from him. Or did the insects force it back inside him? Was that darkness always within him, just waiting for a black butterfly to awaken it?

Weakness buckled his knees and he would have fallen had a pair of black and yellow arms not caught him and pulled him into an embrace. He shook away the remaining fog in his mind and registered a shock of blonde hair filling his field of vision. He wrapped his arms around Queen Bee and buried his face in her hair, drawing in the familiar scent of her peach shampoo. He felt safe here, comfortable in her arms. Odd to find comfort in the arms of a girl when you don't even know who she–

His eyes snapped open. The thoughts and memories rushed back to him. What he had been doing before Hawkmoth delivered a little black butterfly into his room. Why he got akumatized. Queen Bee loosened the embrace and pressed her forehead against his, her lips moving but her words lost in the screaming vortex of his mind. It all made sense now. The name he couldn't (wouldn't) speak, the conflicting emotions...

A beep from her Miraculous forced her to pull away from him, her fingers brushing down his arm to interlace with his own. Before she could fly away, Nathanaël tightened his grip on her hand and forced her to wait.

"Bee," he whispered, but didn't really know where to go from here. "Uh, th-the Place de Vosges. Midnight. I, ah...I need to talk to you."

She answered only with a warm smile and a single nod, then flew off over the rooftops.

Almost an hour later, Nathanaël flopped onto his bed, happy that his parents weren't home from work yet, and stared at the slow, hypnotic rotations of his ceiling fan. His floor was still littered with the half-finished sketches of his work prior to Hawkmoth's visit. Anyone else entering the room would only register a random mess, but Nathanaël saw the story hidden in the chaos.

As an artist, he accepted inspiration as it came to him. A flower might inspire a landscape, a person or object a portrait. If he felt in the mood to draw his Super Nathan comics, perhaps he would seek a villain, a plot device, or a potential love interest. His eyes constantly scanned his surroundings in search of something to make his sketching hand itch, and he had never before felt an itch more powerful than when he laid eyes on Queen Bee.

Her face, her form, her eyes and smile graced the pages of multiple sketchbooks, the only one of Nathanaël's muses to ever do so. Usually inspiration lasted only a few pages, the previous record at twenty with Marinette, but Queen Bee... It was more than her body, it was her passion, her fire, her infectious attitude than inflamed Nathanaël's senses. No one before had drawn his attention like this or been drawn as much as she.

That is, until his eyes caught another muse.

He hated the tingle that descended on his hand when he laid his gaze on her. Why would he ever want to draw...her? He hated her. Wanted nothing to do with her and was convinced nothing good could come from her face gracing his sketchpad. But draw her he did, as some irrational, superstitious side of himself believed that if he ever denied a muse, he would lose his passion forever. But as he drew her, he came to realize he had drawn her before. But that was impossible. Surely he would remember sketching the soft curve of her jaw, the gentle flow of her long blonde hair, those immeasurably deep blue eyes...

Nathanaël turned his head to the side and found his first sketches on the ground. One side of the pages showed a hastily drawn bust of Queen Bee, while the other side bore half a sketch of his new muse at the same angle. He inwardly scolded himself for allowing his technique to suffer in his frenzy, but blamed the frantic pencil strokes and sloppy shading on his disturbing realization. Several pages across the carpet followed the same pattern. Queen Bee beside this new muse, sometimes a close-up of their jaws, their brow, even their ears, which Nathanaël had read somewhere were just as accurate for identification as fingerprints.

As his eyes swept the room, the drawings devolved into sketches, then into doodles. At first the pages neatly torn from the sketchbooks, then ripped and lightly creased, then torn and crumpled into balls. He remembered his frenetic search for the truth, and though the truth sat right before him he still refused to acknowledge it.

Denial

He sat up to let his eyes fall on his desk, clear of clutter for the first time in years, but only because the clutter now sat beside it in a mangled heap. A broken pencil sat beneath his chair beside a pile of crumbled charcoal that still bore faint traces of his shoeprint. A glass that once held water used for his watercolors lay shattered against the wall, a sickly rainbow staining the paint as the water dripped down. He remembered screaming. Remembered stomping and driving his fist into the wall, because how dare she? How dare she lie to him? Fool him into admiring someone like her? Into...into actually caring about her. Wanting to see her, to talk to her...

Anger

The memories of what came next were wrapped in a purple fog. He barely recalled a serpent's tongue wrapped in velvet, hissing empty promises into his mind. He wanted answers. He wanted the truth. Needed it. So consumed was he by this need that he made a deal with the devil to get it: the power to rip the mask from Queen Bee's face in exchange for some magic jewelry. And like many other Parisians in the past few years, he had accepted.

Bargaining

Then, when Bee reached out to him rather than fight him, he felt...conflicted. He knew she should hate him, but she didn't. Well, Queen Bee didn't hate him, but the girl he suspected was beneath her mask surely did. So, why? Why didn't she punch him in the face? Why didn't she toss the villain that he was off a building and let Ladybug's magic fix whatever happened to him? Why did she look at him as though seeing him in that state hurt her? He pondered these questions on the slow walk home, feeling more and more confused and lost the more he searched for answers.

What confused him even more was realizing just how little bullying there was in his life since Queen Bee joined Ladybug and Chat Noir. No mocking tones, no sketchbook thefts, no insults. In fact, the classroom had been relatively silent. But that didn't make sense. People don't just change overnight. Yet, she did, and Nathanaël was forced to reexamine everything he knew about her. Everything he felt about her, and that left him empty, anxious, as though everything was about to change and he had absolutely no control over it.

Depression

She had changed. He admitted that now. He had seen her change, but refused to believe it was more than an act. And Queen Bee...she had somehow become more than a muse, had wormed her way into his heart, but...if Queen Bee was who he suspected she was... He glanced down at the dozens of sketches comparing Queen Bee to...her, then turned his eyes back up to the ceiling fan. He couldn't deny it any longer.

Chloé was Queen Bee.

A choked cough echoed in the room. It took Nathanaël a second to realize that he'd made the noise. Then he made it again. And again. The fourth time, he recognized the cough for what it was, or at least what it was trying to be: laughter. His throat, still dry and parched from screaming earlier, burned as a light chuckle poured through. That chuckle became a giggle, and his attempts to suppress it only made it stronger.

He cackled. He howled. He writhed on his bed as uncontrollable laughter filled the room and tears streaked from his eyes. It was as though the universe was playing some cruel joke and he was living the punchline. Fate tricked him into falling for the one girl he hated more than anyone else in this world.

"How?" he asked no one, his fit of laughter subsiding. "How in the hell did I fall in love with Chloé Bourgeois?"

Hearing the words solidified something in him. He'd always admired Queen Bee since she became his muse, but he chalked it up to a celebrity crush, to hero worship. But seeing Bee (and by extension Chloé) concerned over him told him that she felt something in return. Maybe not love, but...no. It had to be love. 'Come back to me.' She emphasized her desire to have him back. She held onto him after Ladybug healed him. She didn't hesitate to agree when he asked to see her tonight.

He loved Chloé.

Chloé loved him.

Again, how in the hell did that happen?

"Well," he sighed, standing up to clean the mess he'd made. "I guess we'll have time to discuss it tonight."

Acceptance