The request of something salty for dinner had resulted in something their chef called "Tilapia Veracruz". They were usually not fans of such meals, but this evening was an exception. Well, they still didn't like the taste much, but it was Midwinter, so everything that caused their fae sides discomfort was welcome. Salt was enough to make the call of Faerie a little less intense and the itchy St. John's wort did the rest.
Just like the year before, they had attempted to convince their father to put down the iron shutters, but apparently, he had modified them to automatically call the police upon activation. Even if they wanted to, they really couldn't risk it.
Félix sighed as he put down his cutlery and resisted the urge to drown the salty aftertaste with water.
"Don't worry, Fé. We're safe this time," Adrien said immediately.
"I'm not worried," he lied.
Adrien had finished his dinner as well and looked on in displeasure at the otherwise empty table.
"How about we raid the kitchen for some bread and cheese?" He suggested. The bread was another small protection against the fair folk and the cheese was obviously for Plagg, who was a protection in and of himself. Adrien had the right idea to bribe him with cheese.
"And oat flakes," Félix added as he stood up from the table. One could never be too careful on a Solstice.
With a loaf of bread each and with enough cheese to make Nathalie question them when they snuck past her office, the two of them returned to their room. Félix didn't waste a moment, letting himself fall down on the couch and shift. The stress of Midwinter had shown itself in an annoying itch that didn't have anything to do with the St John's wort. It was the same discomfort he felt when something was out of place, so he started grooming his side in an attempt to get rid of it.
He should have known that Adrien would immediately notice it. His attempt at comfort, however, was to pick Félix up and squish him like a stuffed animal. Usually Félix didn't consent to such things, but there were exceptions for everything. He allowed it for a few seconds before swatting at Adrien's face with a paw.
"Ow! Damn it Fé, no claws!" his brother said and let himself fall back on the couch with Félix on top of him. "You're more of a grumpy cat than usual."
"It's Midwinter," Félix grumbled as he made himself comfortable on Adrien's stomach. Adrien was wearing a grey hoodie with a cat on it that said 'stay pawsitive'. It was a horrendous piece of clothing but Adrien obviously loved it as shown by how worn it was. Félix purred when his brother started petting him.
"Things are gonna be different this year," Adrien said after coaxing an especially loud purr out of him. He loved that spot behind his ear.
Félix just made a huffing noise in reply to what his brother said.
"I mean, Plagg is keeping us safe now."
"Different and safe are both relative terms," Félix said and flicked his tail in irritation when an especially insistent eerie feeling tried to penetrate his mind.
"Last year we were on our own and the year before that…"
Adrien trailed off, though Félix's mind filled the silence with what was left unspoken.
Mother left us.
He was still not certain if he should give Plagg's insinuation any real thought, but the seed of doubt had been planted. He despised the sprite for that, but it made it all the more important not to mention anything. Talking about it would make this doubt real, and more importantly, Adrien could hear and then start to have doubts of his own. Or at least further doubts.
"Let's watch a movie," Adrien suddenly said and grabbed the remote from the coffee table.
"A cheese documentary!" Plagg suddenly piped up as he floated over with a piece of Camembert.
"Maybe later, Plagg. Fé, you choose first."
Félix raised his head. "Why me?"
Adrien shrugged. "We can take turns in choosing a movie to watch. Something very non-fae that can help keep us in the here and now. It worked last Midwinter and on Midsummer too, remember?"
"Well, in that case let's watch Intouchables." He hadn't even needed to think about this decision. It was one of his favourite movies, very real and very human. When it came to grounding him in something non-fae, then it was perfect.
"Nice! We haven't watched that one in a while," Adrien said while Plagg yawned.
"After this it's my turn, right?"
"Only if what you choose helps," Félix said.
"I'll have you know that I have impeccable taste!"
Their attention was drawn to the screen when the opening music started to play.
"That'll help. You'll see," Adrien said while munching on a slice of bread and scratching Félix behind the ears with his other hand.
Usually Félix would watch the credits since he enjoyed Una Mattina—he had even learned to play it on the piano once upon a time—but to his surprise, Adrien not only exited the movie but shut off the TV completely.
"Hey! It's my turn now! Why did you shut off the TV!?" Plagg complained.
Félix was about to ask the same question, but it turned into a hiss when his brother suddenly got up and picked him up. Again. He grabbed Adrien's arm with his front paws and bit him, a clear sign to let him down. Adrien hissed in displeasure but didn't let him go.
"Sorry Fé, but I wanted to catch Nathalie before she leaves and you're not staying here on your own."
Félix squirmed in his brother's hold and was disgruntled when he was held in a way that made swiping at Adrien's face impossible.
"I can take care of myself!"
"Not on Midwinter you can't."
"Bite iron," Félix hissed and bit his brother again.
"Smelt it, Fé! Stop being such an ass! I just wanted to ask her about mother."
Félix immediately stilled.
"Oh, that ought to be interesting," Plagg said as he floated over to them from his nest of empty Camembert wrappers.
"I mean, we don't—ow! Fé, just ask like a normal person!" Félix had eventually managed to turn around and now dug his claws into Adrien's shirt to climb up to his shoulders where it would be a little more comfortable. "As I was saying," his brother continued, "We don't have mum to ask about friendships with humans, so let's just ask Nathalie. She has been friends with mum even before our father knew her, so she can probably give us some advice."
"She will be suspicious why we're asking," Félix pointed out as he draped himself around Adrien's shoulders.
"Nope, she won't be! We're at school now, so making friends is part of the deal. She'll understand why we'll want to be careful."
"Well, then you go ahead and ask. I have no interest in her advice." With that, he immediately gave up his perch on Adrien's shoulder and jumped on the ground. He hissed again when Adrien made a move to pick him up once more.
"Excuse you, but I can walk on my own."
"Well, excuse me for being careful because someone had to be hit atop the head with a bouquet of St John's wort last Midwinter to not jump out a window," Adrien countered with an eye roll.
Félix glared at him.
When exiting their room and making their way to the entrance hall they already heard the clacks of Nathalie's heeled shoes. Without any warning Adrien started sprinting and Félix did his best to keep up.
"Nathalie, wait!" His brother called as he slid down the banister while Félix chose to rather take the stairs in a civilised manner.
Nathalie stopped with one hand on the doorknob, her winter coat already donned and obviously about to leave the mansion for the night.
"Shouldn't you two be in your room?" She asked and Félix detected the slightest hint of concern in her voice.
"We wanted to ask you something about mother!" Adrien said. Félix meanwhile stayed silent and sat down next to him on the cold, tiled floor.
They must look exceptionally odd to Nathalie because she stared at the two of them for what felt like half a minute in silence. Maybe she just wasn't used to seeing Adrien in non-designer clothes anymore since he was still required to wear their father's brand when he went to school. Or she was confused to see Félix as a cat outside of his and Adrien's room. Her obvious confusion was most likely caused by a combination of both of those things and the very unexpected question Adrien had just asked.
"Oh," she eventually said and took her hand off the doorknob. Maybe her silence had just been a silent contemplation whether it was worse to go home through the falling sleet or to stay and tell them stories. Félix was glad that, if that was the case, she had chosen the less offensive option.
"Yes, of course," Nathalie said after another small break of silence and then looked around as if someone was watching them. After a few moments, she seemed to come to a decision because her searching look settled on the dining room door. She motioned for the two of them to follow her as she walked towards it. They did.
The dining hall was traversed and left behind without hesitation, leading to the hallway beyond and then into the living room. It was a rarely visited part of the mansion these days with their father mainly staying in his office and Adrien and him only ever being in their room or the dining hall during the time they actually spent at home. Still, Félix had a lot of fond memories with the place.
Adrien sat down on his favourite armchair and Félix didn't hesitate to jump on his lap.
When Nathalie sat down in the chair opposite of them, she shifted nervously. Without a fire in the fireplace and with just the bluish lighting from the ceiling, the room seemed cold and lifeless. Félix hated it.
With a dissatisfied noise he jumped back down from Adrien's lap and trotted over to the empty fireplace. A small pile of logs was still kept next to it, dust collecting on the wood due to disuse. It must have been over a year, maybe two years, since the fireplace had last been in use. That wouldn't do.
"Don't mind me, I'm just going to start a fire. This place feels like a clinic." He shuddered, then shifted and started piling the logs in a way that they wouldn't fall over.
"So," Adrien said, and without even looking Félix could tell that he was both excited and uncomfortable. "Since Fé and I are going to school now and we're making friends, I wanted to ask how you and mum became friends. How did she keep you safe from the Court?"
Félix kept to his work, laying two logs next to each other, then two across them and then two across those. He built them up to a small tower while keeping a keen ear on the conversation that was going on behind him.
"Your mother and I first met in lycée," Nathalie eventually said. "She pretended to be seventeen and enrolled just for fun. I was at the top of the class and also class representative so it was up to me to show her around. She asked me where to have the most fun at school and I told her that I wasn't the right person to give such advice. That's when she decided to make my life more...interesting."
"Did she play pranks on you?" Adrien immediately asked while Félix scoffed.
"She surely was more careful than that. She tried to convince you to go out more, didn't she?" He couldn't help but comment while crumbling up old newspapers—there luckily was still a stash of them next to the fireplace too—and sticking them under the tower of logs.
Nathalie nodded. "You're both right. She started by sneaking rowan sprigs into my bag and at one point even an iron horseshoe."
"But those are precautions, not pranks!" Adrien argued.
"Well, the frog in my locker was definitely a prank," he heard her grumble. "In any case," she continued more audibly, "we ended up becoming friends. Everyone found it quite unusual how a blithe person like Emilie could get along so well with someone dull like me. She loved spiritual and wiccan things, but even when people started realising how strange she was, they were still enamoured with her."
"No surprise there." Félix snorted and tried lighting the fire with a match. The newspaper burned down and he waited to see if the logs would actually catch the flames or if he'd have to try again. Maybe he should have gone and seen if they had some wax lying around somewhere since it usually did wonders to start a fire.
"I couldn't help but live in denial back then. After all, her interest in witchcraft would explain the rowan sprigs and all the other stuff she kept giving me. Since she was my friend, I decided to humour her and actually carried all those talismans with me to school and to the occasional outing."
"So, everyone thought mum was a witch? Not a bad cover," Adrien mused.
"Just don't you dare suggest anything of the sort to Marinette and Alya," Félix threw in before his brother could get any ideas. He could vividly picture particularly Alya jumping on the opportunity to learn something new, especially when it was sold to her with a possible connection to the heroes of Paris. And the more Alya—who was already cursed and therefore prone to having insignificantly small happenings of misfortune plaguing her as a side effect—knew, the more she would notice. Since their goal was the entire opposite, getting Alya, and by extension Marinette, interested in Wiccan customs was a horrible idea.
"Marinette and Alya?" Nathalie repeated, confused.
"They're our friends from school!" Adrien supplied before Félix has the chance to say something. "You met them and Nino on our birthday when they tried to convince father to let us have a party."
Félix frowned deeply when remembering that particular instance. Not only had their father been excessively rude, but he had also banned the three of them from the mansion. The door had barely closed behind him when Félix had already torn into his father verbally for this effrontery. A rant that hadn't moved his stone-faced parent at all.
"Ah, yes, I remember them," Nathalie said after a few seconds. "They don't…know, do they?"
Her question, while worded carefully, still sent a spike of guilt through him.
"No, they don't," Adrien said before he could and sounded strangely determined. "And it's staying that way."
"How did you find out? You never told us," Félix said to get to the important part. Meanwhile, he went back to crumbling more newspapers because the fire had not caught and gone out.
"It was a stupid coincidence," Nathalie said after some time. "I was at the wrong place at the wrong time and saw her shift. She noticed me of course and immediately dragged me home with her. Even though she explained everything it took me a while to really accept it."
"How long was a while?" Adrien asked.
"A few weeks to really fully accept it and then a few more months to get used to it. But keep in mind that I don't have a feeling for the otherness at all. That's also a reason why your mother sought me out specifically. There are people out there who notice the fair folk more easily than others and it's usually hard to keep them ignorant forever."
Félix swallowed when he thought about Marinette and all the close calls they have already had with her. She definitely belonged to the latter group of people.
"Anyway, things changed after that, as did her idea about introducing the concept of adventures to my life. Like, one day after school she took me to Mélusine's—they were already friends back then—and asked if I liked the mountains. It was an odd question, but I said yes. What I didn't expect was to be pulled through a door by her and to get out in a mountain hut on the other side."
"Mélusine has a hut in the Alps?!"
"That's what you got out of that? Seriously?!" Félix turned around to Adrien who then proceeded to blush and smile sheepishly. Nathalie cleared her throat, getting both of their attention back to her.
"We did nothing really special there, just our homework, but it still had a certain thrill to it."
"How long did you know her at that point?" Félix asked as he started his second attempt at lighting the fire.
"For half a year," Nathalie admitted.
He turned around to her with raised eyebrows. "You went along with her even though you only just found out she was fae and even though you knew her for only half a year? I thought you were more rational than that."
Was he imagining it or was Nathalie actually blushing? That was certainly a new emotion on her.
"I was not as mature back then and your mother was very convincing. She might have actually charmed me at some point, I'm not sure."
"So… you didn't think it was scary?" Adrien eventually asked timidly.
"Scary isn't necessarily the word I would use to describe it. Surreal, yes, but not scary. Over time I got used to the strangeness."
Finally, the logs were catching fire. Félix shifted back into his cat form and decided to just stay on the Persian rug in front of the fireplace. While he wouldn't get pets there, it was at least nicely warm.
"It only got scary when after graduation, your mother decided to take me on several vacations and on one of them I met Audrey Bourgeois."
There went the contentment. If the topic shifted to her, it would never stay pleasant for long. He heard Adrien take a startled breath.
"As you can probably imagine, she was not pleased with your mother's acquaintance to me and therefore tried to silence me. Emilie then bought this house and bargained with Audrey for my safety and the safety of everyone else living inside it. She thought it would be big enough to fit several families, so I could convince my parents and brother to move in here too. I tried, but they didn't want to move into a house that wasn't their own. When I went to them one morning to try to convince them one more time, they were just…gone."
Silence, apart from the cracking of the fire, filled the living room. Félix had frozen on the spot as he looked at Nathalie in shock. He had always assumed that her family lived outside of Paris and that he therefore never heard of them. To think that all this time they have probably been dead or worse. Of course the fair folk took them. They took lots of things they had no right to.
"That's horrible," Adrien eventually said quietly. "I'm so sorry."
Nathalie shook her head, her eyes shining with unshed tears.
"It's been twenty-four years since then," she said, her voice sounding strained.
"Wait, but when you tried to make your family move here because the mansion is kept safe, then how come you don't live here right now?" Adrien asked carefully.
This was a question Félix could answer. "Mother also bargained for no harm to come to anyone who works here. Audrey was trying to make me go back on the bargain on Samhain last year."
Nathalie visibly blanched at that.
"You went to a revel, Félix?"
Now it was his turn to shrink in discomfort. "It couldn't be helped. We got invited and at least one of us had to go."
"Why did you move out?" Adrien asked, probably to distract from the topic.
"Because your father didn't want me here."
Félix sat up with his fur standing on end in righteous anger. Nathalie had lost her family to the Court and their father had the nerve to throw her out of the place that was safest for her?!
"How dare he!" He hissed.
"But you were here first!" Adrien threw in at the same time, equally angry.
Nathalie shrugged. "I lived here for two whole years before your mother started to date your father. Three years after that they got married and since Emilie didn't want any future complications, she transferred the ownership of the mansion to Gabriel. It was his house at this point, so he had every right to throw me out."
"No, he didn't," Félix threw in, his voice dark. "When mother made bargains about the house, then in the eyes of the Court the house still belongs to her. And as it is right now, it actually belongs to Adrien and me in mother's absence."
"Not legally though," Adrien threw in quietly and Félix immediately knew what he left unsaid.
If their father would fire Nathalie, then even if the two of them would tell her she could move into the mansion, it wouldn't work with human laws. And if she couldn't move in, then she was basically fair game for the Court. At least that explained why she had suddenly become so inexplicably loyal to their father after their mother's disappearance. She basically had no other choice.
Adrien and Félix had wished Nathalie a good night as she had eventually left, but they stayed in the living room and curled up in front of the fire.
"What if they find out someday?" Adrien said after a while. He was sprawled on the rug in a position that couldn't possibly be comfortable with a human body and absentmindedly petted Félix's fur.
"Then we keep them safe," Félix replied to at least say something. It was a worrisome subject.
"But how?" His brother urged.
"By whatever means will be right at the time."
"I'd like to see the faeries try getting past Tikki!" Plagg snickered and landed on Félix's head. He swatted at the kwami in annoyance.
"Yeah, but…still. What if it won't end well?" Adrien asked. "What if it'll be like with Nathalie and her family? …What if we can't save everyone?"
Yes. What if?