"Sir, I hope you realize that if Adrien ran away once, he'll do it again."
"And if that happens, Nathalie, I'll be sure to fire you for gross incompetence."
"Then he will simply escape my replacement, sir." Nathalie wrung her hands behind her back, knowing everything hinged on her diplomacy skills. She must convince Gabriel to allow Adrien to attend public schools. "I've worked with your family for over seven years and been your personal assistant for the past five, sir, and I know your son better than–" 'even you,' she thought "–most. He's stubborn, out-spoken, and in need of a little leniency in his life, just like his mother." Gabriel flinched. She had him. It was low, dirty to play the 'Mrs. Agreste' card, but Adrien needed this. "If you allow Adrien to attend public school, I assure you, I will take full responsibility for his well-being, as well as managing his schedule."
Steely gray eyes bore down on her, attempted to break her, but with Nathalie's experience facing down horrors more frightening than a middle-aged fashion designer, she weathered the psychological assault.
He dropped his shoulders and sighed. "He is your responsibility, Nathalie. If his performance in any of his extracurricular activities suffers, he will be withdrawn immediately and your employment shall be terminated."
(#)
A sticky note. A tiny sketch of a cake, the word 'bises' beside it, and a smooth signature below it with a heart after. Nathalie snatched the note from the blue packaging and contemplated it for a second before crumpling it up.
'It has to be this way,' she reminded herself. 'It has to.'
She would scream into her pillow that night.
(#)
Nathalie rode in the backseat of the car behind the Gorilla, with Adrien to her right. She knew there was something important about today, but she just couldn't place it. As they rounded a corner, she spotted a massive poster hanging from a building, Fred Haprèle in his mime make-up upon it. She nodded. It was that day.
"Take the next left." Gorilla's eyes darted between the rearview mirror and the road. She leveled her gaze at him and said nothing. He nodded and did as instructed. This route would take them by the Louvre. Her phone vibrated in her pocket and a quick glance confirmed it was Gabriel calling.
"Nathalie."
"Yes sir."
"Inform Adrien that a...special project requires my attention until further notice and I will be unable to attend the show with him."
"Understood, sir. I'm sure he'll understand, sir." She tapped the end call button before the words she truly wished to say could fight their way past her lips.
"My dad's flaking, isn't he?" Adrien had his elbow against the window, leaning against it and gazing at the world passing him by. "Let me guess: something came up."
It burned Nathalie's heart to see Adrien in this state. In the time she had known Adrien before... She had no idea his home life was this horrible. It was no wonder he acted out.
"Yes." Nathalie was able to keep her voice level only through years of practice at reigning in her emotions. He couldn't know. He couldn't know anything was amiss. "But he has reserved the best seats in the house for you, Adrien. Front row." 'Right next to...to Marinette.'
"As usual. The best money can buy."
Before Nathalie could reach out and hug the boy, show him in some small way that his life wasn't completely horrible, the Gorilla slammed on the brakes. Outside, a woman in a red and black body suit deflected an assault of invisible arrows with her yoyo. Adrien rolled down his window to look out at her, and the look, the energy that arced between them made Nathalie's heart ache. She took a moment to savor the irony of her adopted name before she, Adrien, and Gorilla leapt from the car and darted around the corner of the nearest building.
"Come on, Adrien, we need to..." Nathalie turned, but Adrien wasn't behind her. A heavy hand landed on her shoulder and she glanced up into her silent partner's face. "Keep going. I'll find him."
She sprinted back towards the courtyard outside the Louvre in time to see The Mime blow up their car with an invisible bazooka. She shook her head at how ridiculous Hawkmoth could be. Her eyes scanned the area, but she couldn't see where Adrien could have–
"I thought I was gonna be a spectator, not a performer. What about the show?" What was that squeaky voice? It was just around the corner from her.
"No time," came Adrien's voice from the same direction she had heard that high-pitched voice. "Plagg, Claws Out!"
Bright flashes of green light shined around the corner. She leaned around to investigate, but yanked herself back behind cover when Chat Noir sprang out.
Chat Noir.
Adrien.
She would cry into her pillow that night.
(#)
The Akuma called himself Rewind and he wore a solid black suit with a pair of white left-pointing arrows on his chest. He could use his remote control to adjust the flow of time. Fast forward, slow-mo, rewind. He even boasted of being able to transport objects to other points in time, a point he illustrated by throwing Chat Noir forward by ten seconds to avoid an attack.
Rewind glared at the heroes and rambled on about how he was wronged, he wanted their Miraculous, everything Nathalie drowned out as she crouched behind an overturned car. She kept her eyes on the Akuma, waiting for her moment to step in. To intervene.
"Perhaps I should just accelerate time around you until you're a pair of shriveled old prunes! Or maybe put you back in diapers!"
Chat Noir...Adrien...dove at Rewind, swept his staff upwards, and knocked the remote from Rewind's hand. The Akuma spun around and drove his heel into Chat's stomach. Chat flew backwards into Ladybug and Rewind caught his remote. This was it. Nathalie tightened her grip on the tire iron she had dug from the car she hid behind, dashed out from behind her cover, and brought the tool down on Rewind's wrist, just as she remembered. The Akuma shrieked in pain, clutching his hand, now hanging from his arm at an unnatural angle.
"Na–uuhhhh, miss!" Chat Noir stuttered. Nathalie was too focused on her objective to notice Chat's mistake. "You need to get out of here! It's not safe!"
Nathalie dropped the tire iron and rushed towards Ladybug and Chat Noir, throwing an arm around both of them as she ran past, trying to pull them away from the fight. When they both wrestled out of her grip, her heart jumped into her throat. They didn't have time for this.
"No!" Nathalie shouted at him, forgetting for a moment that she was speaking to one of Paris' beloved heroes and instead saw him as the young man she had watched over for the past seven years. "I can't explain right now! All I can say is we need to keep Rewind from zapping–"
"Bitch!" Rewind had shifted his remote to his functional hand and leveled it at Nathalie. This was fine. This was better than the alternative. Nathalie released a slow sigh, ready to accept her fate, but drew in a sharp breath when Ladybug stepped in the way, her yoyo whining in the air. She slapped her hand on Ladybug's shoulder, her fingernails biting into the girl's suit.
"What are you doing?" Nathalie screamed. "Get out of the way!"
"I'm not going to let him hurt–"
Time dilated in such a way that Nathalie would have sworn Rewind has already unleashed his attack. She threw all of her weight into Ladybug to shove her aside, but the spotted heroine used her superior agility to move around Nathalie's arm and into the path of the bright yellow-orange beam shooting from Rewind's remote. Nathalie choked on her own breath. Before the light even struck Ladybug, she knew she'd failed. She knew exactly what was happening, had lived it before. If Nathalie hadn't shoved Ladybug, none of this would have happened.
Chat Noir's knees hit the sidewalk and Ladybug's earrings clattered to the ground before him.
Nathalie forced herself to ignore the soul-deep wail Chat Noir unleashed upon the city. She forced herself to ignore how Ladybug's earrings bit into her palm as her fist clenched ever tighter around them. She forced herself to ignore the weight of the grieving child she had thrown over her shoulder as she sprinted through streets and alleys in an attempt to put distance between them and the Akuma. When she was satisfied that she had lost Rewind, she slipped into an alleyway, ensured they were concealed on both sides by dumpsters, and dropped Chat to the ground.
"She's gone," he moaned, repeating these words over and over as tears flowed wildly across his mask.
"Chat..." Nathalie knelt next to him and placed a hand on his shoulder. "Adrien..." He looked up at his real name.
"N-N-Nathal-lie," he sobbed. "Y-you knew?"
She gave a slight smile. "Since Mime. When I noticed you weren't behind me, I went back and saw you transform."
He nodded and angrily swiped his tears away, jerking back when his claws scraped against his mask. "I'll n-never see her again, Nathalie. She's gone. She's gone and I don't know where–" he scoffed "–or even when she is."
Tears pricked at the corners of Nathalie's eyes. She brought her hand up to cup his cheek and whispered, "Oh, mon minou. I'm right here."
Adrien's sobs ceased, though his chest still jerked as he breathed. He raised his eyes to hers and recoiled when he saw the same blue eyes he had often dreamt of.
"M-m-my L-Lady?"
Nathalie nodded, then reached up to remove the plain white studs from her ears. "We don't have time for me to explain everything, chaton, but here's the short version: Rewind zapped me twenty years into the past. When I figured out what happened to me and realized I didn't have my Miraculous, I made my way to an orphanage, the only way I could actually have a life in that time." She scoffed. "My parents were still in high school, after all.
"I couldn't very well give the orphanage my real name, so I gave them the first name I could think of: Nathalie. When Lucas and Zoe Sancouer adopted me, I recognized my new name as your caretaker's name. Since then, I've fought to make my way back to this moment and prevent all of this from happening." She sighed. "Even though I failed."
"W-wait," Adren interrupted. He brought the back of his arms to his face to wipe away the remaining tears. "If Rewind flung you into the past, then why didn't you warn anyone about Hawkmoth?"
Nathalie paused with one of the Miraculous studs almost affixed in her ear and shot Adrien a glare he immediately recognized as Ladybug's 'are you serious?' glare. "And what was I supposed to tell people: I'm from the future and in twenty years a psychopath obsessed with magic jewelry will use butterflies to turn people into monsters?"
"Well, when you put it like that..."
"Besides, I didn't know how much trying to change the past would affect the future." Nathalie snapped the other earring in place and an orb of red light materialized beside her.
Tikki opened her eyes and turned to the woman wearing her Miraculous. She opened her mouth to speak, but paused and turned her head. This woman looked different, but felt familiar.
"Hello, Tikki. It's been a while." Nathalie blushed. "W-well, it's been a while for me. For you it's been, what? Five, ten minutes?"
Tikki's eyes widened. "Marineeeeeehhh," she droned when she realized Chat Noir was looking between her and Nathalie with a shocked and fascinated look across his face.
"M-Marinette?"
Nathalie flushed and cracked a small grin. "I haven't been called that in twenty years."
"Marinette...you're...my Lady?"
She wiped a lone tear from her cheek. "I'm sorry, Adrien. I'm sorry I couldn't save your Ladybug. I'm sorry if you're so disappointed in–"
Marinette stopped when Adrien threw his arms around her neck. She was stunned. Even after failing to protect herself from Rewind ten minutes ago–twenty years by her perspective–even after failing to save Ladybug and change her past, he wasn't mad.
"I could never be disappointed in you my La...Marinette. You had twenty years of your life stolen from you, yet you still pushed on. You still tried to help, and you...you took care of me for years." He pulled away and looked her in the eyes. "I couldn't have asked for a better friend, partner, or caretaker." He stood and held out a hand to her. "Now, let's go get your life back."
Marinette smiled. Truly smiled for the first time since she became Nathalie Sancouer. She accepted his hand and rose to stand next to him.
"Just remember, chaton, no flirting," she winked with a flick of his bell. "Unless you have a thing for older women."
He gave her his biggest Chat Noir grin and assured her, "My Lady, you're not getting away from my adoration that easily. It's still you, after all."
She giggled, actually giggled for the first time in forever, and turned to Tikki. "Now, let's see if I still remember how to do this. Spots On!"
(#)
"Miraculous Ladybug!"
A storm of ladybugs descended on the city, fixing walls, repairing cars, and restoring the citizens to their rightful forms, places, and times. Well, not all citizens.
Marinette looked down at herself. She was still older. She was still Nathalie. She glanced around her. No Adrien. No Chat Noir. Just Alya running up to her, probably wondering what happened to the old Ladybug. Well, the young Ladybug.
With a quick cast of her yoyo, she zipped and zoomed across the city, and soon, landed on the balcony of her small apartment flat. She slid open the door and released her transformation the moment she stepped inside. She dropped onto her bed and leaned forward, forearms on her thighs, hands dangling between her knees.
She opened the hand that had been clenched into a fist for the latter half of the fight, and gazed on the silver ring that had left a deep, red imprint on her palm.
She would weep into her pillow that night.
(#)
Gabriel had fired her.
Of course he had. She lost his son to an Akuma, after all. She couldn't blame him.
It had been weeks since Adrien Agreste and Marinette Dupain-Cheng went missing. Gabriel blamed Ladybug for failing to save his son, but not a word had come from the bakers in regards to their daughter. Nathalie–she refused to call herself Marinette–had considered going to the bakery and explaining things to her parents. She knew them well enough to know they were loving and accepting, and knew she could prove she was their daughter, but she couldn't bring herself to do it.
It had also been weeks since Rewind and not a single Akuma had attacked the city in that time. It was the longest time between attacks, leaving Paris to believe that Hawkmoth had given up. Which was true. A visit to Master Fu confirmed that the Moth Brooch had been left outside his massage parlor the day after the Rewind attack. Though Paris was left to speculate, Nathalie knew that Hawkmoth was no more.
Master Fu also confirmed that there was no way to fix what Rewind had done to her. He claimed temporal magic was dangerous and unstable at best, and Hawkmoth, whoever he was, had been a fool to dabble in forces he didn't understand. Because of this, for Nathalie Sancouer to exist, Ladybug had to be thrown back in time. Her own existence demanded her failure.
So, as far as this world and this time was concerned, Marinette Dupain-Cheng no longer existed.
...and neither did Adrien.
What surprised Nathalie was Master Fu's insistence that she keep both the earrings and the ring. Said that the time of Ladybug and Chat Noir had not yet come to an end. So, that is what brought Nathalie out to the cafe, a cup of espresso at her lips and a tablet in her hands, researching job openings. She smirked to herself. After dealing with Plagg for the past few weeks, she finally understood Adrien's 'cravings' for Camembert. What she didn't understand was just how expensive it was. Things were different when Gabriel paid for everything. It took Nathalie and Tikki both to convince Plagg to settle on an 'inferior' cheese, as he put it, until she could find a job.
The tablet flopped onto the table, her hands tired of flicking through thousands of job openings. She sighed and ran her fingers through her hair, hanging loose about her shoulders. Her thumb picked nervously at the silver ring on her finger which she refused to remove. She knew Master Fu wanted her to choose a new partner, but she still hadn't gotten over losing Adrien. No matter who she considered, no matter who she observed or covertly tested, it just didn't feel right to replace him. But he was gone, and Ladybug needed a new partner to face...whatever Master Fu insisted the world needed them for, but a new partner wasn't just going to walk up to her and say hello.
"So, what's a beautiful woman like you doing all alone?" she heard from across the table. She glanced at him through her bangs and saw a smiling man about her age with a three day beard, uncombed, disheveled blond hair, and a stack of books and papers under his arm. The faculty badge hanging from his belt stated he was Félix Astruc, physics professor at Université Pierre et Marie Curie. She blinked as the sun glinted off his glasses and shot him a scowl.
"Trying to be alone, if you please. Now go away."
"Oh, come on. Is that anyway to speak to your old pawtner, my Lady?"
The blood froze in Nathalie's veins. She narrowed her gaze and looked closer at him. Lips that curled upwards in a feline grin. Eyes that shined a brilliant green, lively yet tired. Shaggy blond hair that hung around his head in a way that looked so Chat Noir it hurt.
"...A-Adrien?"