Dedicated to my friend, Texas Variety Katie-Bug, for inspiring new headcanons, darker ones, for Mrs. Agreste and La Paon for me to come to believe in or at least contest against my more cheerful ones.
Steel blue eyes flash open, caught in the abyss of what could very well be a storm or the calm before the storm as something in the air just screams that it's not right.
His stomach does cartwheels despite itself, and Gabriel Agreste is left staring at black before suddenly color flashes like the mist over glasses, warping the world into blurry, watered down images.
He gasp when green and peach reveal themselves in the almost absolute darkness, and she stands before him: blond hair piled up as if she were tying it into a bun, only to stop and give up, her eyes are wild and green as if a part of her as snapped somehow.
His heart plummets to his feet, "C-Can you hear me?" It's almost like he's trying to find the words to soothe some distant part of her like he's become a psychiatrist, a counselor, and he feels completely like one, can nearly imagine being dressed in a gray suit with a bright, white hospital coat draped over his frame, can nearly imagine a clipboard in his hands.
Gabriel blinks past his own half shift, but he's more concerned for the woman before him: La Paon as he'd often whispered after days that dragged on, after pride nuzzled itself into his chest and in to her own too, and he'd breathe it like their own near silent mantra.
Now, it didn't feel at all like an endearment; it sent ice pricks all over his heart, and he wanted to curl up away from her, react on instinct, but he never could pull away from her.
Her pale hands morph before his very eyes, leaving him to blink as if he can send the transformation back to its old form, and yet it's real, feels real, and it hurts when clawed hands, talons as he reminds himself, dig in, find purchase where otherwise there was none.
Gabriel doesn't whimper, doesn't have the voice in his throat to do so, and he doesn't cry even though he wants to; there's something about seeing the woman he loved basking in his pain that kills a part of him off silently.
Her green eyes don't soothe as she presses those talons into his broad shoulders, digging down deep, deep as she can go, and he bleeds over the gray suit and the stark, white hospital overcoat.
Gabriel pushes her back with struggling fingers, and the harpy as she appears before him doesn't relent; harpies aren't supposed to be beautiful, but this one is as she's dressed in her old suit, her old transformation, blond hair looking soft despite itself.
He hates how his hands slacken and how her nails, claws, talons dig deeper into his wrists as if she can't really help herself, as if she has to be on top even now.
Gabriel thought she loved him, thought that he loved her much more than anything else, more than Plagg loved Tikki, and yet nothing quite felt real while feeling much more real than ever.
Did she truly hate Hawkmoth when she purred his names from sultry lips, when she begged for him to let her call him by his 'superhero' name as she'd called it long ago?
It was a time before Adrien, before parenthood, and he truly had no idea how much more it felt for her to take his name, to embrace his last name like a lost child, and he still couldn't breathe in awe of it even when it should have felt normal.
Nothing felt normal with her; everything felt like a dream, a fantasy, instead of a reality, and yet right now, he's living a nightmare.
She'd been everything to him once, he still sought that kind of life from her; he still loved the woman that would push down his office chair, so that she could give him an upside kiss, still laughed as she sang his name when he'd worked too long, and she wanted him to relax for once.
She'd been the woman that he'd danced with and let his past be his past, because if she'd been his future, it would be more than anything he'd ever wanted or had before and yet right now, his body runs slick with blood, his own.
"One for every Akuma." She purrs in his ear, and he never feels less like a hero than right now, "One for every time that you ignored our son."
She steps back, eyeing how his gray suit falls away in shambles, "And one for every time you made me feel abandoned."
When La Paon steps forward to leave more talon marks on his skin, he can't refuse or turn away, just bite his lip, and hope that the torture clawing out through her to him will just stop.
It ultimately doesn't as she presses her talons further into his arms before leaving one last purr in his ear, "Time for you to go back to the land of the living."
Perhaps this some cruel relief to realizing that it was just a dream as his head aches and pounds from the wine that he'd had at dinner, his fingers feel numb from clawing and clinging at his skin and his bed while he slept, and he felt tired, restless even, from the night that he'd had.
If Hawkmoth sends out a strange Akuma that night, weak and born out of desperation, no one has to know what a nightmare he'd had.