To Stand Among Ruins

by Windcage

To say the Agreste family lies in ruins is nothing short of an understatement, Gabriel's grief having anchored him so deep to the past and the wife he lost, he is unable to face the present and a son who needs him - who hasn't given up on him. Will they remember to walk in the same direction and not leave each other behind?

6. The Painted Lady - Part 3

The Painted Lady - Part 3

Adrien

The night light was turned on over the bedside table, planets and moons and happily smiling stars set to travel across the ceiling as it kept turning, round and round, slower and slower, the sound of paper being softly blow mixing with the sounds of rain and then falling quiet just as the night light came to a stop.

There was movement coming from the bed now. The soft rumble of fabric, a figure twisting under the bed covers, then, finally, a small hand broke away from beneath the sheets and made its way towards the night light, bent on setting it moving again—Or, at least, so it was until a flash of light coming from outside sent it scampering away, a scared whimper left on its wake.

"One. Two. Three. Four—"

Thunder broke in the distance, the muffled sound making a tremulous exhale rise from under the white bed sheets just as a pair of green eyes peeked from under them and a young Adrien risked rising from beneath the bed covers. His attention flew over the book his mother had left over the bedside table and the toys on the floor before focusing on the streams of water moving down the window, bravely trying to look to the storm beyond them. A new flash of light blasting its way inside the bedroom a moment later, however, had him toss the sheets back over his head, hands pressed over his ears.

"One. Two—"

Thunder cut through the silence again and this time it was so close the glass on the windows started to shiver, the menacing growl that filled the room with so loud, Adrien was fighting to get rid of the bed covers and jumping out of bed and fleeing from the bedroom. Rapid footsteps carried him out into the atrium and down the old marble stairway, right towards the oak door to the left of the entrance and the blade of yellowish light peeking from the other side.

Adrien didn't bother knocking before he entered. Not this time, anyway. The door was already open and, taking advantage of it, he pulled it further still, relief that he had made it all the way here not enough that he didn't look around. Still very much alone. Still very much scared.

"Dad?"

If Adrien's older self had been the one standing here at this moment, eyes searching for the man he had just called, his attention going all over the room, the differences between past and present would be too many for him not to recall. The place where his younger self now stood was his father's atelier, Father's old atelier. The one that had been there before the family had moved to the countryside, before the entire state had been turned on its head for them to return and, as it stood in his memory, the atelier was just this old-fashioned room with wooden panels on its walls and a large table right in the middle. There was no console, no safe, no painting of Mother, no desk by the window. And still, for all those differences, there wasn't anything that had changed more than the man who was inside, the person Adrien had ran all the way from his room to get to.

"Father?"

Standing by the windows overlooking the front courtyard, his father looked not as worn down by life as he one day would. He still favored dark blues over the mostly beige and red suits he now wore. His hair was still golden. But that last one, at the very least, was to be expected, after all he was younger and what would change about him that pained Adrien so much wasn't any of those things, but his eyes. They had been blue all those years ago. Blue and gentle and alive. Even as he looked back from the rain-beaten window and the surprise at finding Adrien on his work-space turned to heartache, Father was still very much with him.

"Your mother is not home right now," he informed as Adrien stood at the entrance, holding on to the door handle. His father's words were simple, gentle, and they sounded like he thought they answered any question that might have brought Adrien to him. "She had to leave after putting you to bed."

Even if this wasn't the first time, even if it happened often enough, Adrien felt sadness take over his heart.

"Mom had to go to work?" he queried.

"She had to go to work," Father confirmed and just like that he went back to the window, back to staring at the rolling clouds and the night beyond them, the sorrow to his expression telling he expected Adrien to already be gone. That he expected him to have stepped outside, closed the door and and be moving up the stairs. Back to his room. Back to his bed. Not that Adrien understood why he would think that. With the storm roaring and as scared as he was, his father was the person he wanted to be with regardless of his mother being here or not.

"Can I stay with you?" Adrien blurted out, a new bolt of lightning cutting through the night making him brace himself for the roaring thunder just as Father turned back to him, eyebrows raised in surprise, and the storm exploded overhead. "Please?"

He didn't need to plead. All it took was asking and Adrien was making his way inside, running towards the windows, to Father, closing his hand over his. The two of them had just stepped away from them and walked to the table, however, when Adrien's hand slipped from the large one he was holding and he came to a stop, staring at the table, the pile of things Father had over there, and that somehow he had failed to see until now, making him look from there to his father's back.

"Do you need help?" Adrien offered, attention moving back to the printer and the scanner and the computer and the many many piles of paper that were everywhere, before going back to the Father. Having made his way to sit at the head of the table in the meanwhile, he just shook his head, the expression he gave Adrien seeming to imply it wasn't the first time someone had told him that.

"Et tu, Brute?"

Adrien—

Actually he had absolutely no idea what that meant. Whatever it was, however, it didn't sound like a 'no' so Adrien dragged the nearest chair out of the way, reached for the pile of papers that waited in the printer and walked up to the head of the table with it. Finding him standing at his side, papers in hand—and the one of on top read 'Agreement' so they sounded really important—was all it took for Father to sigh.

"I have to hire an assistant," he whispered, head sinking into one hand.

"What is that?"

Father glanced his way through his fingers, then straightened, the pen he had just picked up being used to point Adrien's attention towards the chaos—and now also a ringing mobile phone—over his desk.

"Someone to put all these—" he started to say. "In order."

Adrien didn't think his eyes could get any wider.

"There are people who would do that?" he whispered, awed, and if Father didn't have the ability to read minds it certainly looked like he did because, attention rising from the papers, he was already giving Adrien... 'The Look'.

"There is no one, young man," he now told him. "That is going to tidy up your room other than yourself."

As Adrien had said. Mind Reading. Which meant there would be no discussion and all that was left to do was give Father an awkward smile and sprint to the other end of the table.

"I'm getting your phone!"

And get the phone he did. Only, Adrien did it just as the storm went back to roaring and bumming and before he knew it he was running back, trying take cover behind Father. Instead, however, he rammed straight into his arm, this long black line the pen cut right through Father's signature leaving Adrien staring at the paper in horror.

"I'm sorry!" Adrien exclaimed, not that Father seemed that worried. Crumbling the paper and letting it fall on the paper bin at his side, he didn't seem mad at all. In fact—

"I seem to recall your mother telling me," he started to say, going to the computer and hitting 'Print' on an open file before turning back to face Adrien, head leaning on the same hand he was still holding the pen with. "That you were no longer afraid of storms."

Adrien felt his cheeks burn.

"I'm not!" he replied, trying to sound normal and not sulky and all the while keeping an eye on the curtains of rain beating the windows. "I just really don't like them."

A new, louder crash of thunder made him retreat closer to Father, hands closing over his arm. And yes, he could see the way Father was looking at him. The way his eyebrows were draw together. It was mind reading again.

"I'm not afraid of storms!" Adrien insisted and now he did sound sulky. "Like Mom isn't afraid of anything! And neither are you!"

A shadow went through Father's eyes that same instant, his attention immediately going to the rain-beaten windows. It was such an strange reaction Adrien found himself following his attention outside, to the storm his mother too must be seeing, and then back inside, back to Father. There was a sudden weight in his heart.

"Is Mom afraid of something?"

"I don't think she is, no."

He had thought that would make Father happy. That he would be proud. That it was a good thing. But Father just kept looking outside, eyes lost to the storm and all of a sudden Adrien wasn't that certain of anything anymore.

"Are you afraid of something?" he queried, curious, going to follow behind his father when he got up and made his way along the table, stopping by the printer to take a single page out. The way his lips were pursed as he signed it and marched back to the head of the table, left Adrien—who had taken to follow him around like a shadow—to stare at this back. Father was afraid of something, wasn't he?

"What are you afraid of?" Adrien insisted, a thousand hypothesis already on his mind. Back at the head of the table and still on his feet, Father simply squared his papers against the table and picked up a stapler, lips firmly sealed. "Is it spiders? Clowns? Snakes?"

It hit Adrien the same instant he stopped at his father's side.

"It's snakes!"

The stapler completely missed the papers.

"It is notsnakes," Father retorted, aggravated, and giving another try at stapling. Still, looking up at him, Adrien simply tilted his head, slightly surprised.

"What about the one in the garden?"

Adrien had him. He knew it. But standing at his side, watching Father shake his head at himself, Adrien really wasn't expecting what he said next:

"I never said I liked them."

Adrien blinked. That was—That was the same thing he had said just a moment ago, wasn't it? About the storm. So, did it mean—? He was staring at Father now, hopeful, then beaming at this look that met him for half a second. He did understand! And knowing he did would have made Adrien's day if the phone hadn't started ringing on his hand and almost made the two of them become lodge on the ceiling.

"It's M. Corbyn again," Adrien announced, glancing at the display then back to Father. "Can't you answer?"

Judging by Father's pressing his lips it wasn't that he couldn't answer, but that he didn't want to. This time, however, he did, so Adrien pulled a chair, took a sit, and went to balance his legs back and forth as he waited and watched Father write down all these dates and times. It was only when he disconnected the call that Adrien got to his knees on the chair and leaned forward to take a peek at what Father was scribbling on the side of the paper, the pen cutting through the space under it three times.

*Hire an assistant.*

Adrien bit his lips but it was stronger than him.

"I know what you are afraid of!" he announced in the most serious tone he could muster, and Father must know what was coming because he was rolling his eyes already. "It is M. Corbyn!"

"Bed."

They both ended upstairs somehow. Adrien tucked away under the sheets, Father sitting in the chair Mom had left at the side of the bed and fighting with the car-shaped bedside lamp so he could keep working on the pile of papers he had brought with him. It was the phone Father had begrudgingly allowed to come here too, however, and that he had just unceremoniously buried under the pile of stuffed animals at the foot of the bed, that was making Adrien chuckle even as he started to doze off.

"Is Mom going to be away long this time?" he still found it in himself to ask, watching Father circle some numbers in red on the papers. "Do you know when she is coming back?"

Father was frowning. There was more than just one red circle around the number he was presently looking at.

"She will be back as soon as she can," he simply said.

"So—she will be back before we know it?" Adrien insisted, gaze immediately falling on the stuffed animals that hid the phone. "We can call her to say goodnight!"

Father's attention slipped away from the papers that same moment, back to the storm.

"I don't think she can pick up now, son," he said and with that he dropped his eyes, going back to the papers. And maybe, Adrien was just prying at this point, but the way Father seemed to be trying to forget the storm was there made him rise from under the bed sheets to sit in front of Father. Curious. Suspicious. Perhaps even a little bit hopeful.

"Father?" Adrien now said, seriously, his head tilted. "What are you really afraid of?"

They were back to each other now and Adrien wondered, he wondered if Father would tell him. He wondered if he would say it was the storm. He wondered if, after all, it wasn't just him. But instead of speaking, instead of telling him that, Father put his papers aside and picked him up, pulling him to his chest, his head going to lie over his. He hugged him. He hugged him for so long Adrien didn't think he meant to ever let him go. He hugged him until Adrien started to think this was meant to be his answer.

"Father?"

But he didn't understand it.

Not even when he hugged Father back.

And the truth was, Adrien wouldn't understand for a very long time. In fact, he would stop being afraid of storms and grow to actually like them without knowing what he had been told back then, he would graduate to fearing missing fencing practice and failing grades and, still, nothing. And then, one day, years later, he would say goodbye to his parents, he would ran after their car, following it as it made its way down their countryside state's gravel path, he would wave as it rolled away, unconcerned and happy, not knowing that last wave Mother had given him, just before fading from view, would truly be her last. That he was never to see her again.

And now, in the present, running out of the living room, panic leading him straight back to the atelier he had searched not even a minute ago, now that Adrien did understand what Father had been so afraid of, there was nothing he feared more than what had been on his mind all those years ago.

"Father!"

The calling exploded loudly on the empty atelier, echoing between the marble walls and the stone models, the lack of answer sending Adrien straight back into the atrium, attention going all over it. He had lost count at how many times he had called Father since arriving. One time too many for him not to be here already. And yet—

"Father?!"

"I don't think he is home, Adrien," Plagg whispered, his head forcing its way out of Adrien's shirt pocket so that he could take a peek around the black and white atrium. "Maybe he is off to work. Wasn't there some trouble from last week?"

Gripping his phone so hard his knuckles were turning white, Adrien marched back inside the atelier, gazing at the chaos of sketches and designs over the desk, his breathing coming in forcefully controlled gulps.

"He is here."

He had no idea what made him so sure of that, but looking outside, through the atelier's windows, the Miraculous biting into his finger like mad, Adrien could see the car Nathalie had been driving this morning parked just in front and he knew exactly why he was so sure of what he said next.

"And Nathalie is here too. Nathalie!"

Why wasn't she answering either? Not to her own name. Not to hearing Father being called time and time again. Her car—Father's car—was right outside! She had to be here! And he knew Nathalie well enough to know one thing above all others. She would never ever ignore him.

"Father! Nathalie!"

What is happening?!

Where on earth were they?!

Adrien's gaze went back to the phone on his hands. To the three words glaring at him from there. His stomach twisting itself into a increasingly painful knot.

*Please, come home*

Home. Unless Father had gone all the way back to the Loire Valley, back to their countryside estate, home meant this house. So he had to be here. There had to be some place he hadn't—

Adrien was running out of the atelier again, his attention jumping straight to the top floor once he was there, a step back then another, leaving him with his eyes stuck to the landing over the atelier, to the black door that was there and to his very last resort.

Father's bedroom.

Please, tell me, you are sleeping.

Not that Adrien thought he was. Not that there was one single part of his mind that believed Father wouldn't have woken up already with the racket he was making. But if there was one single chance—

Please be asleep!

Adrien was running up the stairs even before he finished that thought, sprinting passed his bedroom door and up the flight of stairs to his left, exertion making a visible limp break through his stride as he reached the top landing, pulled the door handle down and ran straight into his father's bedroom.

It was like stepping into different house crossing this doorstep. Or maybe, like returning to the house that had stood here before. The room was old-fashioned. Carved panels covered the walls, a red rug was set over a floor that was wood instead of stone, there were no martial lines, no sharp cold angles. And yet, his feet sinking into the carpet, running all the way to the bed, grabbing hold of the nearest bed column, Adrien barely saw any of it. He was searching. Eyes flying over every single place Father could be at. Like—Like the stepladder near the bookcases right by the entrance! Or the sitting space in front of the fireplace! The armchair on the small work-space surveying the front courtyard! The bathroom! The—

His breathing shivered as Adrien run inside the walk-in closet and found himself surrounded by row after row of carefully organized shoes and jackets and shirts.

Father wasn't here. The house was empty. It was all empty! And this time, Adrien barely noticed Plagg when he once again peeked outside his pocket to look around, he barely heard the kwami point out that—

"There is another room."

He barely heard himself whisper:

"That was Mom's bedroom."

He almost didn't hear himself think Father wouldn't be there. Not anymore. Not without her. Because Adrien was back to the bedroom, he had looked towards the bed headboard, and his attention had fallen on Mom's picture, the one that was over the bedside table, and now he just stood here, frozen and with his voice in a broken whisper.

"Dad?"

"Adrien?"

His heart jumped. That voice—

Nathalie!

She was here! She really was here! And Adrien was running. Not caring how much his ankle was screaming. Not caring to know where Nathalie had just come out of. The only thing that mattered was that when he blasted his way out of Father's bedroom, the door hitting the wall behind him, this CRASH echoing all over the atrium, and he started making his way down, Nathalie was right at the foot of the stairs, looking up, left hand over the stone handrail, a stern expression on her face.

"Adrien, what are you doing—?"

Here. Here would have been her next word, but she never got a chance to say it, Adrien had reached the atrium and tossed his arms around her, fingers sinking into her blouse, face hiding in her shoulder, a strangled sob escaping his lips. He didn't care what Nathalie thought of this. He didn't care what anyone thought of this. Right now, he just couldn't stop thinking about Mother and that one day she was simply gone and—feeling Nathalie's arms close around him, going to hug her as tight as he could—he was just so relieved, she wasn't gone too.

"Where is Father?" Adrien finally managed to ask, the hand Nathalie had been running up and down his hair moving to cup his face, their eyes meeting when Adrien looked up. "I have looked for him everywhere, even in the garden and I can't find him! You know where he is, right?"

Nathalie's fingers combed Adrien's hair away from his face, this tightness around her eyes remaining even as she went to search his expression, frowning at him.

"What are you doing here?" she chose to ask, calmly, and not giving Adrien any chance to interrupt. "Why aren't you at school?"

"I—"

Adrien probably should have been waiting for what happened next. Hiding inside his shirt pocket, faced with his hesitation, Plagg straight up pinched him. It hurt like hell. But it also made quite clear what he was trying to say. Tell her the truth. It came tumbling out of Adrien's mouth the next second.

"Father sent me this!"

Nathalie's hand fell away from his face, the phone that was now with her leaving Adrien to watch as she read the message—one, two, three times—eyebrows getting more and more raised.

"This has to be a mistake." she said after a moment of staring at the phone in confusion, her attention going back to him. "Your Father his back at headquarters, on account of the problems with the fashion show. He is not here right now."

Some part of Adrien seemed to have just regained the ability to breath, the atrium around him regaining its contours enough that he could see more than just Nathalie as she stood in front of him, that the waiting area to his right, and the open doors to the living room and atelier, were more than just blurs in his vision.

"He is fine?" Adrien even so insisted, watching as Nathalie went back to read the message, perplexed.

"I have no idea why he would send you this," she muttered.

Neither did he but—

"Father is fine, right?"

Nathalie raised her attention from the message, lips pressed.

"Why wouldn't he be?"

"No reason—" Adrien whispered, the phone being returned to his hands forcing him to stop fiddling with the Miraculous. "I just—"

Maybe it was silly that it had just now come to him. Maybe it was even sillier how it did come to him. That it took seeing Nathalie's fingers wrapped around his cellphone, the way her nails were without their pale pink varnish to remember, but—Wait just a second!

"How come you are here?" Adrien queried, eyes immediately narrowing in suspicion. "Hadn't you an appointment?"

Nathalie didn't even blink.

"Robot."

Oh—

"Right, Robostus," Adrien cringed, massaging the back of his neck and going back to Nathalie trying to explain. "His name is Markov, Max built it. The teachers decided he was a toy, they were—"

Nathalie knitted her eyebrows in a warning.

"—not that nice." Adrien finished only for his defiant tone to become pleading. "It didn't mean to do any of that!"

It would have been preferable if he had never said it. If he had never tried to defend Markov. There was something to the way Nathalie went to stand in front of him, her arms crossed, jaw set, something—

"It—" Nathalie started to say, eyes boring on his. "Didn't?"

There was something in this moment right now. In this moment of them looking at each other, of staring into Nathalie's eyes, of searching the blue depths, of wanting to find something there, there was something here—But it wasn't until Adrien reminded himself that he had never been able to read Nathalie's expression, that it was her hands not her eyes that had always been the giveaway, that he got it. For once he looked down, he found her with her arms still crossed and fingers digging into her sleeves. Nails biting into the fabric. Looking like a bird's claws.

Adrien suddenly felt sick.

"Is—?"

Nathalie had just noticed him looking at her hands. She was uncrossing her arms, hiding them behind her back. But it was too late. Adrien was looking up and down her now. Eyes jumping from her stockings to her skirt to her blouse. Her clothes seemed intact. She didn't look hurt in any way. But that was to be expected after Lucky Charm. It meant nothing.

"You are fine, right?" Adrien heard himself whisper, feet taking him closer to Nathalie, right hand reaching out to close over her arm. "It didn't hurt you, did it?"

Nathalie's posture had just become so rigid she seemed carved out of stone.

"It didn't hurt me, Adrien."

His heart might as well have stopped. Standing here, the cold marble atrium seeming to be closing in on him, eyes on Nathalie's blue ones, hand closed over her arm, Adrien found himself swallowing. Why—Why did her answer feel all sorts of wrong?

"When you say Father is at headquarters—" he insisted, a desperate look being give to her. "He didn't ask you to lie to me, right?"

Nathalie become sterner all of a sudden. Her lips pressed into a thin, straight line.

"You father," she started to say. "Asked me no such thing."

"Then when he is back—"

"I will inform you," Nathalie guaranteed, calmly and only to bore her eyes into Adrien's the next second. "Why isn't your school informing me of your absence?"

Adrien gave a small jump, this certainty that there was no way in the world he was throwing Marinette under the incoming train making him let go of Nathalie's arm and retreat for the front door, a defensive note to his voice.

"Ah—I sneaked out of class, jumped out of the locker room window, please don't tell Father!"

"Adrien!"

The front door closed between them before Nathalie could go straight into scolding him and, the very next moment, Adrien was marching across the courtyard, a last look being given to the pale chateau behind him before he turned his back on it and gave the press piled by the gate a small wave.

Adrien would long be passed that group and back on the rooftops, back leaning against a chimney's brickwork and feet on the surrounding black tiles, when he reached inside his pocket, pulling out not his phone but the one he had found upon entering the house. It was Father's phone. And Nathalie hadn't seen it lying on the atelier's floor open in half, much like she hadn't remembered G. wasn't here and that Adrien would be making his way back to school alone.

Something was wrong.

Something was very very wrong.

And Nathalie knew what it was. She knew what had happened. Just like she had known back with Mother.

"That doesn't mean we are staying here, does it?" Plagg asked the very same moment Adrien finished speaking, green eyes keeping watch over him as he peeked from behind the chimney, gazing at the chateau that was his home and that was right across the street. "Sure it's tempting! I'm all for lying on the rooftops. Catching some sun. Napping. The cat life. And, I tell you, your Father is just fine! But—" Plagg visibly swallowed, a tense glance being given to the house. "Shouldn't you be, you know, where Nathalie expects you to be just in case he isn't?"

Plagg wasn't wrong and gazing at Father's phone, the pain Adrien had chosen to turn a blind eye to now flaring up his leg with a vengeance, Adrien forced himself to stand up.

"We are going back to school."

But, in truth, it wasn't because of what Plagg had just said. No. It was because Father—and Chat Noir looked back at the chateau one last time, not noticing he was still fiddling with his biting Miraculous—Father was back there. Somewhere. In the house. He just didn't know where to find him.

Nathalie

The front door slipped from Adrien's fingers, the loud crash that was left in his wake drowning both his last plea and Nathalie's outraged cry as he made a break for it and Nathalie stood at the foot of the stairs, the painful tightness on her chest finding no place in her expression even as she remained here, alone.

This one had been close, she couldn't help but think. It had been too close.

And how close it had been lead Nathalie to the atelier and up to its console, the clawing fingers Adrien had so cleverly taken notice of, opening and closing before she ran them over the display, swiped the black butterfly away and went to insert the codes Gabriel had trusted her just before turning Hawkmoth against Paris. The same codes he had given her while standing in this exact spot, composed, distant and with eyes so empty it didn't look like he was behind them anymore.

"In case something happens," Gabriel had said with the same indifference with which he had marched passed her, the single-minded determination that had taken him to the Observatory leaving him blind to the way Nathalie's nails bit into the paper he had given her, to the anxious words she had whispered to his back:

"Nothing will happen."

Nathalie closed her eyes, left hand closing tight around her right arm, pulling it closer. She would be laughing at the memory—at herself—if there wasn't a part of her that desperately wanted to cry, if that conflicting emotion didn't mean she was standing dangerously close to hysteria, if emotion wasn't detrimental to facing this one fact—

Something had happened.

It was as simple as that.

And the only allowance Nathalie would give herself right now was not feeling safe. If Gabriel's disastrous run-in with Simon Says had taught her something was that she wasn't safe, that nobody was, that the bolts on the front door snapping in place could do little more than buy time, that they were nothing. And yet, they were everything she had. Her only ally as she marched up to Emilie's portrait and took a steadying breath, forcing all emotion down, locking herself away where nothing, not even the Butterfly Miraculous, could find her—and only then pressing the combination on the portrait's peacock feathers.

There was a momentary sensation of drop when the lift started moving, the lock closing overhead leaving Nathalie in the dark before cement gave way to glass and the Crypt opened under her. It was a vision she knew well. The heavy machinery keeping the place functional a sharp contrast to the small garden where Emilie rested, peaceful, out of reach and for the first time alone for the white field that always surrounded her was absent, the dozens of butterflies that formed it having chosen to stand vigil over someone else and to wait. To wait for Nathalie to make her way back here. To wait for her to step out of the lift.

"It's just me," she announced and she would have felt silly beyond words standing here talking to butterflies, if the instant she did speak the white field covering the hard metal floor around the lift hadn't taken flight, what seemed to be a thousand petals scattering around her to open a path to the man they had been watching over.

Gabriel sat against the wall to the side of the lift, one leg pulled to his chest and hunched over it, face hiding in one hand, a dozen or so butterflies still on his shoulders. They would stay there, choosing to remain with him, even as Nathalie dropped to her knees at his side.

"I apologize for taking so long," she said. "I ran into Adrien upstairs. He received your message."

Gabriel stirred, a strong shudder running down his back. As much as Nathalie couldn't see his expression right now—what little of his face wasn't hidden by his hand, being covered by ruffled locks of pale blond hair—she could hear his confusion, she could almost feel it.

"My message?" Gabriel whispered and then his voice faded, the pain taking over his expression sending his back crashing against the wall behind him. The butterflies fled at that gesture, going to land on Nathalie's blouse just as the hand that had been covering Gabriel's eyes went to press his forehead, nails sinking into the line of his hair. He stood like that for so long, panting, wincing, Nathalie reached for his arm, hand closing firmly around it.

"Please, say something."

He did.

"I can hear them. All of them."

"Them?"

A shivering breath and Gabriel continued, eyes closed.

"Reflekta, Animan, Copycat—" He was pressing his head so hard now it looked like it might explode. "They are all here—What is this?!"

Maybe it was the fear in his voice, maybe it was that the butterflies had clearly become agitated—the ones that were with Nathalie taking flight, the entire group going to circle around the two of them so fast they looked like a tornado—or maybe that didn't change a thing, maybe she would have cupped Gabriel's face either way and waited until his eyes focused to talk:

"Can you stand?"

Nathalie would never know how they made it to the lift, much less across the atelier and the atrium and into the small bedroom where they finally found themselves at. Knowing Gabriel, however, feeling his strength fail as she let his arm slip from around her shoulders, watching him almost collapse while she helped him sit on the bed, she feared her answer was willpower. It was willpower far too many times with him. A fierce unwillingness not to show any sort of weakness. Not to lose face.

And maybe that was the thing about him, maybe that was the reason why after pressing the shutters commands over the bedside table, watching them go down, seeing darkness swallow a bookcase and a dresser and a small living area whose scarce contents spoke volumes about who lived here—and how much of a bad idea her present conduct was—Nathalie was so shocked when she took a single step back and felt Gabriel's fingers reach out for hers. Maybe that was the reason her eyes grew wide when she sat in the armchair she had just pulled closer to the bed—to him—and Gabriel leaned forward, forehead coming to rest against her shoulder, fingers, rough from drawing and holding too many pencils, pressed firmly around hers.

How long did they stay like this? Sitting in the dark, in silence, the rustling of leaves coming from the garden on other side of the closed shutters keeping them company? How long was it since she had arrived? Since coming down from the Observatory? Why—Nathalie's head went to lean against Gabriel's, her fingers pressed tight around his hand—Why was any of this important?

It was only when her phone alarm went off that Nathalie remembered why.

The photoshoot.

Adrien.

And she was back to her feet the same moment, stepping towards the dresser. Gabriel's hand still holding onto hers, however, forced Nathalie to take a single step back and kneel in front of him.

"I have to get your son," she reminded him, quietly, trying to see up and passed the hand Gabriel had taken to hold his head with in her absence. "It should be safe here and you have your phone. Call me if you need. I will be back here with you. I mean it."

Nathalie had hoped for an answer. The only thing she got, however, was Gabriel's fingers slipping away from hers. And then, she was helping him out of his jacket and waistcoat, she was up and at her dresser, she was picking the car's key-card and her wallet and her bag and rapidly stepping to the door. A last glance at the mirror right at the exit, however, brought her to a halt, the door already open in front of her.

She looked—If someone said a downright mess they would have been kind and if Adrien saw her with her hair like this, if he caught a single glimpse of how she looked right now, then—

Nathalie was back at the dresser, turning on the light, rapidly re-doing her hair, trying to pull that single lock that always insisted on not staying put back to its place and then grimacing at her make-up. Of the many things she didn't need right now, this—all of this!—took first place. She had to pick up Adrien! She needed to be back here with Gabriel! She didn't need to have her lipstick in hand, or to be opening the dresser's top drawer in search for the eyeliner that had fallen somewhere around here this morning and seemingly taken to hide among her bras! She didn't need this! And yet that was exactly what she was doing! And the only good thing about being still stuck in the room was that she could keep an eye on Gabriel for a little while longer. That at least, she could know he was—

"Master."

Nathalie's hands stopped short of grabbing the eyeliner, the laced fabric of the bra she had just pushed aside biting into her fingers as she felt her breathing caught.

That voice just now... That calling...

"Master?"

It was coming from behind her. There was someone...

If ever Nathalie had been as scared as in this moment she didn't recall it, but neither would she have time to dwell on it. There was a cry. The sound of the bed springs groaning. A crash like something had just hit the floor. And she looked back to see Gabriel kneeling to the side of the bed, panting and wincing. She looked back to see this butterfly looming in front of him, hand outstretched, touching his forehead. She saw the way Gabriel looked at that thing.

Like he hated it.

Like it was to blame for everything.

Like he wanted nothing more than to see it gone.

And at that point, something that had been silently boiling inside Nathalie, that part of herself that had veered its head when Adrien had mentioned Robostus, broke through. Calm. Ruthless. The cold gleam taking over her eyes becoming as sharp as a knife as she reached to grab the book that was inside her bag and moved for the butterfly, darkness lending this dark blue tint to her skin, silence following in her wake.

She hadn't thought the thing stood a chance. It never crossed her mind that it would see her coming. That there was a way she could fail Gabriel right when he needed her help. But the butterfly turned just as Nathalie raised the book to swat it, alerted by god knows what. It turned, eyes bulging and shocked to see Nathalie standing behind it, an angry snarl going through her face, her arm falling. She should have hit it! She could have it hit! But right when the book should have made contact, this butterfly shaped-light she had seen around Gabriel's eyes more times than she could count had burned itself over the butterfly's eyes—over her own eyes! And then she couldn't move.

She couldn't move!

Do it as she may she couldn't get out of this! She was standing here with a book in her hand, arm ready to strike and she couldn't do a thing! It felt like something had taken over her body. It was like something was inside her body! And if she wasn't so certain this thing had been lying in wait to harm Gabriel, that it planned to do it again the moment she was gone, Nathalie might have noticed the creature—this humanoid being with butterfly wings hovering between her and Gabriel—looked more terrified than threatening. That never had anything looked at her with this much fear—or any fear at all. That it looked trapped rather than standing in her way. It might have crossed her mind she had read this situation entirely wrong.

It might.

It would.

But right now things just kept getting worse. The hand she was still holding the book with was moving away from the butterfly. It was moving on its own, dropping at her side and her fingers were opening, mimicking the gesture of the creature standing between her and the place where Gabriel was still on his knees, fighting to sit on the bed and pressing his head to one hand, breath coming in short pained gasps.

She had to help him. She had to—!

"Let me go!"

It wasn't because she had spoken. It had nothing to do with how much she was fighting to free herself. No. The only reason she was ever released was because the butterfly willed it and the instant it did, two things happened. The book Nathalie had been holding crashed to the wooden floor and the creature fled, passing so close to her face its wings grazed her cheek. Then, the butterfly disappeared behind her, the line of light fading from Nathalie's eyes.

Maybe she should have followed it. Maybe she should have turned and searched and grabbed hold of whatever that thing was and questioned it. Maybe. But it wasn't what happened. She didn't follow the butterfly, she didn't try to catch it, instead she was moving passed the armchair where she had been sitting, she was at the bed. She was back with Gabriel.

"What were you doing to him?!" Nathalie snapped in cold anger, looking back over her shoulder, towards the small living area, towards the armchair that still remained there and the center desk, towards the place where that butterfly had fled towards. She could feel Gabriel's head falling back against her when she helped him back to sit on the bed. "Come out!"

The butterfly didn't seem to be silly to the point of obeying. That or it was no longer here, something which Nathalie, now sitting on the bed at Gabriel's side and pressing his head to her shoulder, doubted. There was no way it could have gotten out. There was no way it wasn't in the room! But the thing's luck held out for if Nathalie could very easily see half a hundred places it could be at, if demolishing the room to find it sounded like an awfully good idea right now, she never got a chance to do it. The alarm of her phone was ringing again, from inside the bag she had left on the dresser. And the moment it did the fury that was making her look around, disappeared.

Adrien.

He was waiting.

And with the way he was lately, if she stayed here much longer, he would get into his head to get back to the house alone. She had to—

A weak wince rose from near Nathalie's ear, the shivering breath that followed it the only warning she got before all of Gabriel's weight collapsed against her and she was left struggling to keep him straight. It took her a long moment to win that battle, to be able to look at him again, for her fingers to comb Gabriel's hair out of his face, to gaze at him and find him, resting against her shoulder, his eyes closed.

He was asleep.

Or so it would seem.

There was something unnatural to the stillness in his face, to how peaceful he looked that reminded her of someone and that made Nathalie feel like her heart had lodged itself in her throat.

"Sir?" she called out to him, fearful, her hand tremulous when it moved to cup his face. "M. Agreste?"

He didn't answer. He didn't even stir when she pressed his face. Harder this time.

"Sir?"

Nothing. And that same moment, Nathalie's heart started beating so loudly it was all she could hear. The image of a glass capsule and the woman resting inside filing her mind in such a way she was closing her arms around Gabriel, the hand that was cupping his face moving to press him closer, her head going to lie against his.

Please, no.

Let it not be that.

One time—Emilie—That had been one time too many. It was enough. What was she going to tell Adrien? How was she even supposed to—?

"Gabriel," Nathalie called, desperate, back to pressing his face. She was holding him so close now there was no way he wouldn't have heard her. And yet, even when she was distraught to the point the Miraculous between them had to be telling Gabriel all about her, he didn't move. He didn't notice. It was like he wasn't here.

"What did you do to him?" Nathalie whispered, gazing at Gabriel's face, holding him for one last moment before she lowered him to the bed, before she let him go, before she had no choice but to let him go and she went to stand to the side of the bed surveying the entirety of the seemingly empty room. It was not like she expected that butterfly to answer. It was not like she expected it to come out of hiding. And it was a good thing Nooroo didn't. It was a good thing that he remained hidden on the bookcase, that he stayed where he was, curled between a copy of John Williams' "The Theory of Investment Value" and Nathalie's Master Thesis rather than gather enough courage to come out. Nathalie wouldn't have listened—not right now—even if Nooroo had been allowed to speak.

"Sir," Nathalie, at last, said, fighting to keep her voice level as she dropped to her knees beside the bed and took Gabriel's hand in hers, still not giving up. "I have to go. Adrien is waiting."

Nothing. Gabriel wasn't answering. And she couldn't risk Adrien storming the house as he had done in the morning, she couldn't risk him remembering to search for his father in here and finding him like this. She had to take Adrien somewhere else. And, in her distress, fingers squeezing Gabriel's hand, dreading having to leave him here alone with that butterfly, there was only one place she could think of.

Marinette

"This is meeting 4216 of the My Better Half plan," Alya was announcing, the light coming from the round window behind her turning her curly brown hair into this kind of golden halo as she continued, unstoppable as ever. "We gather here today to welcome a new recruit into our cause."

Waving frantically at her best friend, her arm stretched high over her head, and even so managing to somehow fly undetected under her radar, Marinette stole a glance to her side with Alya's words. At her side, sitting on her bedroom's pink carpet and with the stairs to her bunk-bed right behind his back, Alya's new recruit had just grabbed one of the chocolate croissants from the plate in front of him and looked up at Alya, eyebrows raised in an arch.

"Should I introduce myself or something?" he asked, biting into the croissant before turning to Marinette. "Do you two usually say 'hi' at the beginning of these?"

Still waiving, not giving up on getting Alya's attention until there was no hope left in her, Marinette stretched herself the tallest she could while still sitting, trying desperately to be noticed, nervous eyes jumping between Alya and the papers and photos on the magnetic board that stood just in front of her pink chaise longue.

"We don't usually—" Marinette started to say.

"But we are starting now!" Alya finished for her, excited. "Come on, new recruit, on your feet! Give me your best shot!"

"Ah—"

Raising to his full height—which was not small at all—the third element of the group gathered on Marinette's room looked around, his attention going over stuffed animals and sewing supplies, books and a small pile of clothes next to a pink sewing machine, before stopping at this wall to the end of the room. The magazine cuts that hanged there—all of them showing a smiling boy with golden blond hair—left him frowning.

"Hi, I am Nino?" Nino himself said, going back to Marinette and Alya. "You gals kind of know me?"

It was not just Marinette who snorted at his introduction. On her feet, hands on her hips, Alya was chuckling too.

"Were those questions?" she asked while Nino went back to look at the magazine cuts.

"No, but I have a whole lot of them," he admitted, before pointing to his side. "Also, Marinette has been trying to say something for ages."

Her hand now waving from somewhere near Nino's elbow, Marinette breathed a sigh of relief. She could have kissed Nino—Okay, no, not really. But she would be grateful to him forever. It just took him speaking for Alya to blink and drop her attention to her and her already hurting arm.

"Sorry, girl, didn't see you," Alya apologized, taking the opportunity to lean down and pick up one of the glasses of orange juice that were waiting over the carpet. "Speak up."

Marinette gave Alya a strained smile, her attention jumping back to the magnetic board that was the center of her present concerns. If only it was as easy as speaking up. But no. She had to call Alya's attention to the board-problem without alerting Nino. Something which, unfortunately, meant the only thing that came to mind was trying to do that with her eyes—not exactly the most fail-safe way to go at this. Or anything for that matter.

"You forgot something," Marinette nevertheless said, eyes jumping from her best friend to the photos on the board. "Something important."

Alya frowned, stirring her juice with the straw and taking a sip, lips pursed in concentration.

"I did?" she pondered and Marinette nodded vigorously, now signaling with her head towards the board. "Oh, right!"

Marinette almost crumbled over herself with relief, the word 'Safe!' going through her mind before—

"The My Better Half plan is also known as the Get this Girl her Match plan," Alya launched herself into saying while pointing at a nothing short of despairing Marinette and taking another sip through the straw. "However, we have agreed that is a little too conspicuous to use on a day to day basis so 'My Better Half' is also kind of the code name."

Nino snorted, a smile playing on his face.

"Because that is not conspicuous at all!" he commented in good humor and while fishing a second croissant. His attention was back to Alya when she continued, however.

"Now, today," she said and Marinette was short of just tackling her to the ground to stop what was coming. "We have a new plan. Today, we bring to you—"

"Alya!"

"The 'Victory Ball' plan!"

If her Miraculous could just open a hole beneath her, Marinette would have been grateful. Falling through the living room ceiling was in every way preferable to what was going on in here and that could simply be described like this: Alya had just made a theatrical bow, pointing Nino's attention to the board. And there, right there on that same board, clear for him to see were the photos of Juleka, Rose, Alex and Miléne. That, and what was worse, this giant-sized map of one of Adrien's photo shot locations with his picture on the corner. If someone could die from sheer embarrassment and while hiding her face in her hands, cheeks burning, for Marinette this would have been it. Seeming as that apparently wasn't possible—

"Wrong side, Alya," Marinette whispered and immediately her best friend turned on her heels, or in this case sneakers, and took in the board. Half a second later, she had reached up to spin it.

"Yeah, this isn't what we are doing," she announced, unconcerned. "Sorry about that, Nino."

Nino, in the meanwhile, was gaping.

"Wait! What on earth was that?!" he exclaimed, dropping low and almost going to lie on the carpet to try and peek at the spinning board.

"The Flower Path," Marinette offered, glancing to the side, hands still hiding part of her face and trying not to look as embarrassed as she felt. "We are just giving it the final touches."

"She means we just have to bring in the girls," Alya clarified, now nodding at the right side of the board and turning back to them. "It is supposed to go up this week."

Both Marinette and Alya smiled at Nino. As things were, however, they seemed to have completely lost him.

"TheFlower Path?" he repeated, incredulous and looking between the two of them. "Wait a second, when you said meeting four thousand and something does that mean you have the same number of those?!"

Alya shrugged when Nino pointed at the new plan they were showing him, the one he was meant to be part of. How unconcerned her best friend was, however, left Marinette as the only one here with her cheeks burning.

"Not exactly the same number," she went on to say. "Most things end up scratched."

Marinette had to cringe at herself. She had just made it worse, hadn't she? If Nino had had his mouth agape before, now his chin threatened to make contact with the floor.

"You two are completely insane," he whispered, head going left to right as he looked between her and Alya, not seeming to know who should be blamed for this. "Wouldn't it be, you know—not easier in that sense, but definitely easier than that—" He pointed at the board. "To just go ahead and ask the dude out?"

Marinette let her attention drop that same instant, her eyes going to focus on the croissants and the glasses of juice and on Alya's sneakers as they come into view.

"You are forgetting certain factors," she told Nino, taking a step forward.

"Like?"

Marinette dropped her head further at Nino's question.

"Me," she offered at the same time Alya made a discreet gesture her way. "I can't put two words together around Adrien."

Nino parted his lips, only to close them again. His attention moved all over the room before getting back to Alya.

"Can I speak with you?" he asked, a note of urgency in his voice. "Like,right now?"

"Sure. What is it?"

Nino pressed his lips, looking towards the trapdoor leading to the living room and back to Alya. From where Marinette stood it sort of seemed he wanted to talk to Alya. Alone. But much like with her own eye-dance some minute's earlier—

"Nino?"

—Alya was obviously not getting it and, in the end, Nino gave up.

"So this is about getting you a date?" he asked Marinette and she nodded, risking a glance up to find Nino frowning pensively at her.

"Are you in?" Alya now asked from over them, her voice calling Nino's attention back up.

"Of course, I am in," he said, determined. "Bring it on!"

Alya threw her arms up, what was left of her orange juice almost getting spilled right on top of the two of them making Marinette and Nino jump back just as she dropped to her knees and hugged her boyfriend.

"Have I told you are great?" she said, jumping back to her feet to get the black pamphlets she had stuck to the magnetic board and returning to give one to each of them. Only then did she sit, attention going from an anxious Marinette to a blushing Nino.

"So this is our objective," she announced, showing her own pamphlet to the two of them. The silhouette of a pair dancing and this kind of Venetian Carnival mask behind it made Nino go from embarrassed to excited.

"The school ball?" he asked, dropping his eyes to the pamphlet. "Talk about ambitious!"

"Go big or go home!" Alya announced, winking at Marinette. "But before we jump head first, we have to clear the obvious pitch falls," she said, gaining a determined nod from Marinette. "So, Nino, pitch fall number one: did Adrien invite someone?"

Nino let out a chuckle, still turning the pamphlet back and forth, reading it.

"I don't think he even knows about the ball."

"What?" Marinette exclaimed, leaning to stare straight at him. "How can he not know? The school is filled with posters!"

Nino shrugged.

"Guess the dude just goes around ignoring those," he simply said. "I mean, it probably comes with having his face plastered on magazines and billboards. Have you seen the one in—?"

He didn't get a chance to continue. He didn't have to. Looking at the ceiling, Marinette was already sighing, dreamy.

"Yes—"

"I didn't even get to tell you where!" Nino exclaimed, making Alya chuckle.

"Believe me, she saw it," she said and Marinette felt this pat. Returning from 'Adrien Dreamland', she found Alya with her pamphlet rolled up and still held to her head. "Stay with us, girl," Alya said. "Now, moving to pitch fall number two." Alya raised two illustrative fingers towards Nino. "Does he like someone?"

"I don't know."

Alya raised her eyes to the ceiling, apparently asking a higher deity for patience.

"I told you to ask him!" she groaned, pressing her eyes beneath her glasses. "I asked you so many times!"

"And I did ask him," Nino replied, dropping the pamphlet for the first time. "The dude asked me what did I think!"

Marinette looked towards Alya. She was sitting with her arms crossed and chin up. Despite her silence, however, she was obviously not done.

"And you left him off the hook with that?" Alya indeed insisted.

"What else was I supposed to do?" Nino sighed, looking between the two of them. "Drill Adrien for answers?"

Alya snapped her fingers, ending with her index finger pointed directly towards her boyfriend.

"Yes!"

"No."

"You are his best friend," Marinette joined in, the pleading note to her voice making a shadow of guilt go over Nino's face. "Please, please, ask him again?"

Nino sighed, rubbing the back of his neck.

"I don't think the dude will answer," he told her, apologetic.

And from where Marinette was standing, Alya was definitely not done.

"Well, if he doesn't answer it is a best friend's duty to force the answer out," she said, jumping back to her feet and going to pace around the room, determined. "Then have a go at helping!"

"I am all for the second part, but I won't force the dude to say anything," Nino replied, brow furrowing when Alya, who had made her way behind them, turned back to him.

"You don't have to force him," she said. "You just have to shake him!"

Marinette gave Nino an awkward smile as he looked at her, pointing at his still pacing girlfriend.

"Did she shake you?"

"Kind of?"

And now he turning to get back to Alya, who was on the opposite side of the room.

"You shook her?" he said, incredulous.

"It had to be done," Alya said, unapologetic, and making her way back. "She was all sighs and dreamy looks and telling me nothing. The important thing is that I am helping. And you are going to help both her and Adrien!"

Nino was taking off his hat.

"Sure I will, but I won't shake him," he groaned, running one hand through his very short brown hair. "No offense, Marinette, you know I think you are really cool, but let's say for a moment I went with shaking my best friend."

He was back to Alya, hat back in place, arms crossed.

"That dude ended in third place last time he entered a fencing tournament," he pointed out. "I asked him about it. Turns out he sprained his ankle halfway through the competition!" Nino looked between the two of them, trying to make them understand. "The dude got third place with a sprained ankle! I'm sure that makes him pretty much non-shakable!"

Alya stopped on the other side of the croissant plate, arms crossed and unconvinced.

"I don't think that word even exists."

"Also," Nino continued, clearly not caring for such linguistic details and turning to Marinette. "You know why Chloe threw that party after she pulled the fire alarm on your dad's cooking class?"

Marinette was frowning the same moment.

"I know Adrien talked to her."

"Talked?" Nino snorted. "That was not talking. He went all serious on her, not to say scary. And not normal scary, mind you. I can deal with normal scary. That was his-old-man-back-home scary."

Marinette and Alya traded a glance, eyebrows raised.

"Really?" they whispered, proceeding to talk at the same time. "I can't imagine that."

"Lucky you, because now I don't have to," Nino replied just as Marinette tilted her head, curious.

"What did he tell Chloe?"

"Something like he couldn't keep being her friend if she behaved like that with the rest of us," Nino informed and at that Alya dropped back to sit crossed legged on the carpet, her eyes wide and bewildered.

"He said that?" she asked with new found respect. "I didn't think he had that in him, he is always so—" Her brows furrowed. "Do you think he meant it?"

"He meant it alright," Nino put forth, darkly. "Look, the thing is, I like Adrien. I really like him. He is this really cool dude, but I already went straight for the wasp's nest with his old man, I get this feeling if you poke Adrien the wrong way you can do the same with him." Nino looked between the two of them, serious. "I won't do that. If the dude doesn't want to tell me who this girl is—"

It felt like a hole had just swallowed Marinette's heart. A sudden silence befell the room. Sitting in front of her, Alya stared at Nino, watching him press the sides of his head, groaning.

"You did ask him," she whispered.

"He likes someone?" Marinette put forth, in a tiny voice.

Nino dropped his hands, shaking his head at himself.

"That was what I wanted to tell you," he groaned at Alya, before turning back to Marinette. "Look, I couldn't find out who she is! She can be anyone! She can be you!"

Marinette dropped her eyes, a sad gaze being given to the pamphlet she had on her hands before she put it in front of her. Hands going to rest on her lap. This was it then. She—

"Oh no, you are so not going there!" Alya suddenly exclaimed and if Marinette didn't know better, she might have thought Alya had read her thoughts. "You are not backing away! You are not giving up! You are going to Adrien and you are going to say—!"

Marinette looked up, her voice in this almost inaudible whisper.

"Why should it be me?"

Alya leaned forward, right over the croissant plate, her hands, cold as they were from the orange juice, on each side of Marinette's face.

"The question you should be asking is: why shouldn't it be you?" she said, pressing her cheeks. "Come on, girl! You go out there and invite him! What's the worst thing that can happen?"

Marinette dropped her eyes again.

"He can say no."

"He can say yes!"

Nino cleared his throat.

"I think he will say yes," he put forth, and Alya turned Marinette's head so brusquely towards him, Nino jumped. "Dude, do you want to rip her head off or something?!"

"Forget her head," Alya retorted, Marinette's pleading 'Please, save me' coming mixed with her words. "Why do you think he will say yes?"

Nino was on his knees, trying to get Marinette's head out of Alya's grasp.

"Come on, Adrien was locked at home since forever," he reminded them, removing Alya's fingers one by one. "He just joined our class. Do you two really think he is expecting someone to invite him? To even want to go with him? I mean, someone who is not Chloe."

A wave of horror hit Marinette that very same instant. Before either Alya or Nino knew what happened, or how she had done it, she had released herself from Alya's grasp and jumped to stand, eyes wide, over her two friends.

"You think Chloe will invite him?!" she exclaimed, barely giving time for anyone to even nod before she turned to the magnetic board with a fiery look in her eyes. "Right. I'm doing it! I am inviting Adrien to the ball!"

Having been catapulted backwards by Marinette jumping out of her hands, Alya whistled, sitting back up and immediately winking at Nino:

"That's was well played."

"What was well played?" Nino asked honestly bewildered, but Marinette had turned back to them and they both were back to smiling.

"I will wait for Adrien tomorrow before school," Marinette announced, determined. "I will be right by the stairs when he arrives and I will say—I will say—"

Marinette swallowed. She could see Alya and Nino looking up at her, expectant. On the small dollhouse she kept on one of her shelves, Tikki herself was peeking through the window.

"I will say—"

Tikki gave her a supportive nod and Marinette took a deep breath.

"Doyouwantogototheballwithme?"

"What?!" two utterly perplexed voices exclaimed just as Tikki let her head fall into her hands and Marinette crumbled back to the carpet, pressing the sides of her head.

"I can't even say it when he is not here!"

Alya and Nino traded a quick panicked glance.

"It just needs a little practice!" Alya tried to reassure. "Tomorrow, we will have it under wraps! Right, Nino?"

"Sure!" Nino concurred, not that he sounded sure by any stretch of the imagination, which meant he ended up being elbowed into being sure a second later. "Of course, you are!"

"And that practice starts right now!" Alya announced, getting to her feet, phone in hand. A glance at its display, however, and she was frowning at Nino. "Don't you have to be home by six?"

Nino took a glance at his own phone and grabbed hold of his bag and a croissant. He was halfway to the trapdoor when he turned back, running all the way back to kiss Alya.

"You two tell me how that practice went!" he exclaimed, back to running to the trapdoor. "I will catch you on the net, dudettes!"

Marinette joined Alya on waving at him, watching as he disappeared down the trapdoor.

"Bye!" they said and turned to each other, Alya still smiling and stealing glances at the trapdoor Nino had just disappeared through.

"He is great, isn't he?" she said, fondly. "Kind of adorably silly."

Silly wasn't exactly the description that come to Marinette's mind.

"I don't think he is silly at all," she remarked, sharply, and, at that, Alya turned to her.

"I didn't mean silly in that sense," she said, leaving Marinette to frown. "Now, girl, we have to practice your lines, because tomorrow you are getting your act together and get Adrien to that ball!"

It was as if a weight at lodged itself on Marinette's stomach.

"R-Right," she stuttered. "But what if—?"

"Ah-ah-ah! You are going to take those doubts and toss them far far away," Alya said, grabbing her shoulders and shaking her. "Are you hearing me?"

Marinette was hearing her. She was also hearing something else. Footsteps. Someone running across the living room downstairs and then up the ladder. She turned towards the trapdoor in time to see Nino's upper body reaper inside her room.

"What happened?" Alya asked upon seeing him. "Where is the fire?"

Panting, Nino pointed downstairs.

"Adrien is here!"

"What?!"

The three of them were thundering out of the attic the next moment, making enough noise that when they entered the stairs and reached the last landing, there was no one that wasn't already looking up. And by no one, Marinette actually meant half the clients inside the bakery but that wasn't whom she was focusing on. No. Down there, in the house's hall, standing next to the front door, stood three people.

The one closest to the open bakery door was Mom, of course, wearing a blue cheongsam, the apron she was taking off telling enough as to the fact she had been busy in the store. Then—then there was Adrien. Dreamy and wonderful and right off a photo shot if the way his hair was combed back was anything to go by. The last member of the group was Mlle. Sancoeur—Nathalie—and if she hadn't turned back to Marinette's mom the instant she saw the three of them arrive it was very improbable Marinette would ever have stopped staring at Adrien to look at her.

"I see you already have a full house," Nathalie commented, fingers closing tight over the strap of the white sports bag she was carrying on her shoulder. "If Adrien staying here isn't convenient—"

Marinette jumped, a quick glance at Nino and Alya leaving them all staring at the landing. What?!

"He is staying here?" Nino whispered, only to be shushed by Alya right on time for—

"I can find somewhere else," Nathalie was saying.

And now all three of them where trading panicked looks. This very clear "No-no-no!" going through all their faces, leaving Marinette fidgeting.

She had to think of something! Adrien couldn't leave! She had to—

Come on, say something!

"I live here!" Marinette immediately blurted out and why did she have to say something utterly stupid and obvious and—?!

"I practically live here!" Alya jumped in.

"I missed the metro!" Nino joined them and, honestly, it was just not the two of them that were staring at Nino. Adrien was too. And Mom. And Nathalie as well.

"He means the bus!" Marinette had enough presence of mind to say. "He missed the bus!"

"The metro?" Alya whispered behind her.

"I panicked!" Nino groaned and Marinette turned to her mother trying to catch her attention. Suffice it to say that trying to catch anyone's attention today was kind of a lost cause.

"We can give you a ride home, dear," her mother was indeed already offering Nino, the way she went on to look passed the bakery door and take in the large number of costumers presently filling it—not to say Dad trying to keep the boat afloat all on his own—gave Marinette this tiny bit of hope that that wouldn't be possible.

And then Mom turned to Nathalie.

"If it isn't much trouble, could you—?"

"Of course," she said, her attention drifting to Adrien for a moment before she turned to look up towards the landing. Straight at Nino. "Unless a ride defeats the purpose."

A embarrassed expression flashed through his face.

"It kind of does, actually," Nino straight up admitted and then snapped his hands in front of his mouth, incredulous at himself, staring right at Nathalie. What she offered him as answer was little but a shadow of a smile, but Nino turned red all the same.

"Pretty scary?" Alya commented the same moment Marinette's mom finished saying she would call his parents and Nino turned back to see Alya's smile getting broader and broader with each word.

"I better invite you to that school ball just to be on the safe side," she teased. "You know, like I'm doing now?"

"W–What?" Nino stuttered, looking between her and Nathalie, visibly confused. "Why would I invite her? I want to go with you. And I have been working on this entire speech! And flowers. I even asked Marinette if she can teach me her bonbon recipe and I have this box—"

Alya was turning to Marinette now, then back at Nino as he went into this highly detailed description of everything he had prepared.

"He asked for your bonbon recipe?" she whispered, leaning closer to Marinette and wincing at her half smile. "I just messed up, didn't I?"

"Just pretend you didn't ask him," Marinette whispered back. "And that you don't know."

Alya's eyes widened.

"You are actually kind of good at this, aren't you?"

Marinette smiled, attention going all the way down to the ground floor where Nathalie and her mother were talking, back to Adrien. If only she was any good on her own end... Her heart gave a small jump the next moment. Adrien had just looked to the landing where they where, this small smile being sent up as he raised one hand, waiving at—–

Marinette blinked, looking at her side, to Alya and Nino that were pretty much too wrapped up in each other to pay attention to anyone else, and then back at Adrien, who was still waiving at—

Me.

He was waiving at her!

Wave. Come on, wave back!

Marinette meant to wave, she swore she did, but instead she hit the metal handrail while bringing her hand up, got it stuck there and ended up burying her head in her hands. Why was she such a klutz?!

"And, Adrien—"

Nathalie's voice brought Marinette back to the entrance, to see Adrien go back to paying attention to the adults around him, who had apparently now finished speaking. A sigh immediately made its passed his lips.

"Best behavior?" Adrien finished before Nathalie could, eyes meeting hers. "You know you are starting to sound like Father, right?"

Fingers closing tighter over the sports bag strap, Nathalie closed her eyes for a moment.

"I was not telling you to behave," she then said. "I trust you will. I was just reminding you that your bodyguard will pick you for school tomorrow morning. Refrain from disappearing under his watch. You know how much that worries your father."

Adrien dropped his eyes.

"I know," he whispered, the bag Nathalie was carrying changing hands leaving him looking at her for a moment. "You will tell me when you are back to the house, right?"

"Of course."

It seemed to be enough for Adrien to believe her. He was walking—limping—towards the stairs now, sports bag in hand, school bag over his shoulder—And then, then he stopped, a strange expression going over his face as he fished a phone from inside his pocket and turned around, making his way back to Nathalie.

"And, please, give this to Father," he said, putting it on her hands "I found it on the atelier's floor, this morning. Guess he must be looking for it."

Nathalie's widened. She was looking at Adrien, then at the phone, fingers closing over it.

"He–He must," she stammered. "I will see you tomorrow, Adrien."

"Bye."

And he took a step back, glancing at Nathalie over his shoulder even as he climbed the stairs. The moment he stopped in front of them, however, the strange expression that was on his face turned to a smile.

"Guess I am staying here," Adrien announced in disbelief, and at that Alya and Nino jumped, arms raised and excited.

"Slumber party!"

They were towing Adrien up the stairs now. Nino in charge of the school bag. Alya with the sports one. Both talking non-stop. Their quick reaction was such Marinette found herself falling behind. That she found herself alone on the landing when her dad entered the atrium to give a box with pastries to Nathalie. That she was still here when her mom approached Nathalie. That she still got to hear what they said.

"I do apologize for taking advantage of your hospitality with such short notice," Nathalie was stating, speaking in a quiet whisper. "It is hardly my or M. Agreste's intention to be a burden by leaving Adrien in your care."

Her mother shook her head.

"We offered," she smiled. But she looked worried. She looked very very worried.

And it hit Marinette right then. That something was wrong. That something must be wrong for Adrien to spend the night here. Only right at the moment she decided to head downstairs and ask what had happened, Marinette recalled the state of her room. She remembered the board and the magazine cuts and that Adrien was right on route to see all of that and instead of going down, she sprinted after her friends, the stairway exploding in one panicked exclamation:

"Alya!"

Adrien

"What are they doing?" Adrien queried, eyebrows raised in an increasingly higher arch as both him and Nino stood in the Dupain-Cheng's living room, attention stuck to the closed trapdoor on the ceiling, the very same trapdoor that lead to Marinette's attic bedroom and through which both she and Alya had disappeared some fifteen minutes ago, seemingly to run a marathon on the upper floor.

"Are they tidying up or something?" Adrien wondered, stealing a glance at Nino, who stood there, wearing a smile so tense it seemed about to crack his face in half.

"I–I don't know."

"Do you need help?" Adrien shouted to the upper floor, a single step taking him close to the attic's ladder. "Seriously, we can help!"

"We are fine!" Marinette and Alya spoke at the same time, the sound of something heavy being rolled around leading Adrien straight back to Nino.

"It isn't that messy, is it?"

"Maybe they are making it messy!"

Of all things that made absolutely no sense—

Adrien shook his head, looking back up:

"Why would they make it messy?"

Footsteps coming from the house's stairway spared Nino the trouble of trying to come up with a sensible answer—or any answer at all—for Adrien's bewildered question. Looking back, the sounds coming from the upper floor making them glance at the ceiling all the same, Adrien and Nino watched Sabine Dupain-Cheng step out of the stairway and into the living room. She was bringing a plate with her. A plate that was covered with a cloth and giving away this absolutely heavenly smell.

"I believe my daughter is bringing down her shrine," Sabine said with a good-humored smile, the loud CRASH coming from upstairs making her, much like Adrien and Nino, jump. "Marinette!"

"Sorry, Mom!"

"Sorry, Mme. Dupain-Cheng!"

Sabine shook her head, giving out a soft exhale before turning back to them. The reason for the mouth-watering smell that was following behind her was revealed once she pulled the embroidered cloth from the top of the plate she was carrying and showed its contents to them.

"I have brought this for you," Sabine announced, the nothing short of glorious pile of croissants that was now in the middle of the three of them making Nino and Adrien trade a panicky glance and cross their arms, their visible effort not to fall on the food like a pair of ravenous wolfs before the girls were even here, making Sabine give out a heartfelt chuckle.

"Take one," she offered looking at them in turn. "I just took this batch out of the oven. There is chocolat, jambon et fromage, almond… Those are the ones on the left. Right next to the chocolate ones."

The hand Adrien had been hovering over the plate closed over one of the still warm almond croissants, his stomach giving this loud growl just as he prepared to bite into it, making him blush.

"I haven't eaten since lunch," he apologized and at that exact moment Nino lost all manner of control, taking one of the chocolate croissants, sinking his teeth right into it.

"I ate three already!" he announced in the tone of one who had found paradise and who had to quickly think of something not to eat it. "They are really good!"

Sabine gave him a gentle smile.

"If you want I can pack some of your favorites to take to school tomorrow," she offered to the two of them just as Nino seemed to find a way to stop himself from eating and reached to take the croissant plate from her hands. "Oh… Thanks. But you don't have to, I can take it upstairs."

Nino's response was physically impossible seeing as part of his "Stop eating the croissants right now" strategy had consisted on shoving half the one he had taken from the plate into his mouth and eat it anyway. That left Adrien as the only one here who could still speak.

"We are going there anyway," Adrien told Sabine, glancing at the trapdoor. I hope, he thought. By the sound of it, there wouldn't be much of a room to go to when Alya and Marinette finished. "What does she even have a shrine to?"

Nino almost dropped the plate at the question. Sabine's naive expression in the meanwhile looked so sincere that, biting through his croissant—and these were really really good—Adrien couldn't help but think it had to be false.

"Did I say shrine? Silly me," Sabine smiled, brown eyes going up to the trapdoor when Marinette stuck her head through there, her upside-down position leaving her ponytails to fall at the sides of her face. "Everything hidden?"

"Mom…"

Whatever it was that Alya and Marinette had been doing in the bedroom up until now, wasn't that obvious once Adrien and Nino went up the stairs and stepped inside. The room was very much like it had always been. At least, from what Adrien remembered.

There was this long desk where Marinette kept both her computer and sewing machine, equal amounts of books and magazines fighting for space over it. Fashion posters hanged on the far off wall. Stuffed animals peeked from here and there. There didn't seem to be anything missing. Or anything that hadn't been here before, so, even if kind of baffled by what Alya and Marinette had been up to, Adrien followed his friends to the pink carpet next to the bedroom's round window, watched as Nino triumphantly put the plate of croissants he was carrying next to the one that was already there, and dropped to join in the circle formed by his friends, a curious expression to his face.

"What are all of you doing here?" Adrien asked, looking at the three of them. His answer turned three voices into one.

"Conspiring!"

"About what?"

"This!"

And just like that Alya, who sat in front of Adrien, right on the other side of the two croissant plates, pushed this dark piece of paper she was holding into his hands, a three-person "Ta-Tan!" going to fill the room when he looked down.

"A school ball?"

"The School Ball," Nino corrected, speaking from Adrien's right. "There is one every year!"

Adrien was turning the pamphlet back and forth, not so much reading it as staring at the images, a surprised expression on his face.

"I didn't know schools had balls," Adrien whispered, looking back up. "Have you gone before?"

"First year!" all three of them announced, before Alya proceeded to point at Marinette:

"This girl here is going to make both our dresses and his clothes."

A gentle smack to her leg from Alya and Marinette jumped.

"I–I can make yours too!" she immediately told Adrien.

"Really?" Adrien whispered, staring at her. "You would? That's great. Is it formal?"

"It's a masquerade ball," Alya clarified, excited, fingers tapping on the pamphlet Adrien was holding, pointing his attention to this small mass of text written in golden letters. Adrien had gone all the way to the third point when he spotted what Alya meant.

"Make your own mask," he read, going back to his friends. "Who are all three of you going as?"

Marinette, Alya and Nino traded a quick look before turning back to him. Alya, unsurprisingly enough, had once again been elected as the group spokeswoman.

"I wanted to go as Ladybug," she admitted. "But Marinette said that even if no else is going as Ladybug—"

"Which they most definitely are," Marinette, quietly, not to say wisely, put forth.

"—Chloe will go as her," Alya finished. "So Marinette came up with the idea that we should go as a group."

Adrien looked up from the pamphlet he had gone back to reading, interested.

"That sounds cool," he said.

Alya's face opened with a smile.

"Doesn't it?" she beamed, turning back to Marinette. "See? Even he thinks it's cool!"

A smile trembled on Marinette's lips, her eyes fleeing from him to the floor when Adrien looked her way.

"So ideas?" Alya went on to ask Adrien. "We are kind of stuck on the planning stage."

As much as he would like to help, Adrien ended shaking his head. Creativity wasn't exactly his strong point.

"Not really," he admitted, turning back to Marinette. "But I know you will come up with something great!"

Marinette's eyes widened.

"I–I will?" she stuttered and then she straightened, looking like she had just remembered what they were talking about. Fashion. She nodded.

"I will," she told herself, confident, and at that curiosity got the better of Adrien. It irrevocably and completely did.

"Who are you going with?" he asked, only to snort when Alya and Nino very peremptorily pointed at each other.

"I know you two are going together!" Adrien said, chuckling, and went back to the person he had actually been talking to. "I meant who are you going with?"

Marinette blinked, going to stare at him as Adrien leaned his head over one hand, smiling.

"I—"

She glanced at Alya for some weird reason. Then at something on the back of her bedroom, something that seemed to be somewhere near this dollhouse Marinette kept on one of her shelves. Then, she took a deep breath and—

"Marinette?" Adrien called out to her after a long long moment of watching her fidgeting. "Is something wrong?"

Nino and Alya traded a glance.

"She is still making up her mind!" Alya jumped in, grabbing one of Marinette's arms and pulling herso close to her it kind of looked she was trying to get Adrien's attention away from Marinette. Of course, that was so silly it couldn't possibly be it. "So—Who are you going with?"

Be it as it may, it worked. Adrien was looking at Alya now, eyebrows raised.

"Me?"

"Isn't there anyone you want to invite?"

It was Adrien's turn to blink, a smile crossing his lips as he went to shake his head. The girl that had immediately came to his mind, blue-eyed and dark-haired and hiding behind the name Ladybug meant only one thing—

That can't happen.

Still—and at this Adrien turned back to the pamphlet, frowning at the Venetian mask—if this was a masked ball, if he wasn't going to know who Ladybug was anyway, then maybe...

"Do you mind if I take this home?" he asked, going back to his friends, pamphlet being turned their way. "I better show it to Nathalie before I start making plans. She can talk with Father."

Marinette, Nino and Alya leaned his way, an excited gleam to their eyes.

"And the Almighty Dude will let you come if she does?" Nino spoke for all three of them, his choice of words making both girls snort so hard, air came blasting out of their nostrils.

"Probably," Adrien replied, trying both not to get his hopes up and to ignore the painful twist to his stomach as he went back to reading the pamphlet. "I mean, getting me to school must have been a lot harder than—"

Adrien's phone had just pinged from inside his pocket. Getting to his feet, a quick "Be right back!" being left on his wake, he half-limped to stand under Marinette's bunk-bed, right next to a desk and this book on Greek Mythology he didn't even glance at. Then, he took the phone out of his pocket and frowned at the message on the display.

Nathalie. It came from Nathalie. She was back at the house and, apparently, she thought it necessary to send proof she was by attaching a photo of the entrance complete with the car console and the clock glaring from there. It made Adrien smile, albeit sadly, and then pull his contact list all the way down. He knew there wouldn't be anything under Father's picture—he didn't even have his phone right now—but there wasn't anything elsewhere either. Not a hint he had at least tried to say what was going on.

You promised.

And he should have known better.

I really should.

And going back to Nathalie to send a message her way, Adrien put his phone back in his pocket and a smile on his face, and rejoined his friends on the round carpet, looking as if he didn't have a care in the world, not knowing Marinette had been watching him the entire time.

At least, Adrien thought, as he was rapidly pulled into the ongoing conversation, Nathalie was still as good as her word.

Nathalie

The bedroom door clicked back in place, the sound of the key being turned on the lock barely audible on the reigning silence as Nathalie made her way inside the room, not troubling herself with switching on the lights, a glance passed the living area and towards the place where Gabriel lied making her heart grow heavy.

She had hoped—It didn't matter what she had hoped. Stopping near the dresser, her ankle-high boots left behind, both her bag and the cardboard box Tom Dupain-Cheng had given her being put over the dresser, Nathalie looked around the dark room, trying to find the butterfly that had been here previously, her eyes keeping at it even as she turned to the mirror and leaned her head down, starting to go over her hair.

It might be a ruse to find wherever that small creature was hiding, but to work around the pins keeping her hair in place, to take each one out, to place them on the small plate over her dresser, to have some control over something was calming. Or, at least, it was up until the point her phone pinged, the display turned on inside her bag and her attention was called there.

Adrien, the identification read.

It shouldn't surprise her that he had answered. And reaching for the phone, taking it out of the bag, it didn't surprise Nathalie either what it was that he had written.

*Is Father back yet?*

Nathalie's hair fell to her shoulders, cascading down her back in long black locks. Looking at herself in the mirror—the illusion of control now shattered—her face allowed itself a rare display of emotion, of raw distress, before Nathalie took a deep breath and went to focus on the mirror, looking back towards the bed.

Gabriel was as she had left him. Lying on his side. The fleece blanket she had covered him with before leaving still pulled to his chest. He was exactly as she had left him up to the silence that consumed the room. A silence so deep she couldn't even understand if he was breathing and that left Nathalie standing here for a long while. Watching him. Still trying to find that butterfly. Desperately listening. Adrien's question glaring at her from the phone.

She couldn't delay answering him forever. As much as she dreaded what she may have to tell him, she couldn't do that. And so Nathalie made her way to the bed, hesitating for a second before sitting, her hand hovering between the lamp on the bedside table and the shutter's controls before deciding for the latter and pressing the buttons.

The light from the garden illumination peeked timidly inside the room as the shutters went up, its glow so weak it barely had enough strength to reach the place where Gabriel lay, right under the window, before fading. Still what little light there was in the room right now was enough to leave Nathalie tense, her attention stuck to this indentation on bed sheets, right between Gabriel's chest and arm.

It looked like something had been there. Something—Her hand closed over Gabriel's shoulder.

"M. Agreste?" she called out to him. "Sir. Are you—?"

Silence took over the room again. Nathalie's voice dying as she sat there, thumb moving up and down Gabriel's shoulder. That she could see him breathing, his chest rising and falling softly, didn't seem to be enough, however, for her to be able to force the rest of the words out.

"Sir—"

She truly couldn't continue. Not even in her mind could she bring herself to finish. To risk him not answering. And instead of trying to get Gabriel to wake up—to shake him or call him or do whatever she must to make him stir—Nathalie's attention was drifting to his high collar, to the way it was very clearly biting into his neck. That he couldn't be comfortable was the last thing that should be on her mind right now. She had Adrien waiting. She had that butterfly to worry about. And yet she was reaching to loosen Gabriel's collar. Her fingers running over the fabric, sliding over it, making their way to the button on the front of the shirt. Nathalie didn't even remember the Miraculous was right on her way until her fingers went over something warm, something that was softly pulsing and a large hand immediately snapped shut around her wrist, stopping her in her tracks.

Nathalie didn't think she had ever moved as fast as now. Her fingers hit the light on the bedside table as she had dropped to her knees at the side of the bed, the hand Gabriel had pulled away from the Miraculous still wrapped around her wrist.

"M. Agreste?"

Maybe it was her voice that reached him. But in the end, it didn't matter. She couldn't care less what it was. The light from the bedside lamp washing over his sharp features, Gabriel was stirring, his eyelids fluttering, eyes opening, and there was this moment of recognition, of feeling his fingers slipping away from her wrist, of them reaching to touch her face—

"Nathalie?"

There was this moment in which it was just the two of them.

"What are you—?"

—and then Gabriel must have seen something or felt something or been sent plunging straight into her anxiety for Nathalie could see her distress take over his face, she could see him looking up, towards the house, she could see her fear take another form upon finding it empty, a much more terrible form—

"Adrien?"

—and send him straight back to her.

"Where is he?!"

If there was one single thing that Gabriel might have said, one single thing he might have asked, this—

"Adrien is fine," Nathalie whispered, the pressure from the hand that was still cupping her face softening as Gabriel kept searching her eyes. "He is not here. I took the liberty of taking him out of the house, after—"

It was too much all of a sudden. Gabriel's presence. His touch. Being this close to him. Even looking into his eyes. It was all too much when just a moment ago she had thought he would never wake up. And so Nathalie was up, marching away from the bed, from him, taking refuge in the dark living area, stopping only when she reached the support table. If it looked like she was fleeing was because she was. She needed a moment, a minute, even half a second would do, to collect herself right now.

"How do you feel?" she whispered.

There was a long moment before Gabriel answered. A long long moment that seemed to say she hadn't been the only one who needed to step back. And then, the mattress' springs groaned, snapped, and a shivering breath gave way to Gabriel's exhausted voice.

"About as good as I look no doubt."

That might be a smile on her face. A fond smile. A relieved smile. But it wouldn't last. She would never allow it to. And so Nathalie stole a glance over her shoulder to see that Gabriel still sat on the bed, that he remained there, legs covered by the fleece blanket, head sank into one hand, hair ruffled, dark circles under his eyes, rather than already be on his feet, and pursed her lips. Her answer about how he felt was a lot more clear than it needed to be.

"I will risk saying you are not feeling your best," Nathalie offered, the scoff that met her words making her go back to look over her shoulder, back towards Gabriel. "Would you prefer me to be honest?"

That glare of his would have been eloquent enough without him speaking.

"No."

As would have been Nathalie's stern expression.

"I'm very glad to hear it," she replied. If mostly because I wouldn't even know where to start, she stopped herself from saying, hands going to busy themselves with collecting the pillows on the nearest armchair, half-an-eye still being kept on Gabriel. "What happened?"

"I made a mistake."

Nathalie's nails bit right into the pillow she had just picked up. One moment later, she had turned, serene, collected, and with something she hadn't wish to say, something that was not her place to say, right on her lips.

"This mistake—" Nathalie pondered, head softly tilted. "—it happened before or after you started to smuggle explosives into the house?"

If she had ever seen Gabriel caught by surprise this was it. Sitting on the bed, the fingers he had been running back and forth over his forehead falling away, he stared at her, then—Then, his expression hardened.

"You saw those."

"Not in any of the billing documents you sent me," Nathalie observed, now making her way back to him with the pillows. She had just stopped near the bed when she frowned, looking down at Gabriel, watching him go back to rest his head on one hand, tiredness already taking over him. Her voice dropped. "How did you get them?"

"I have my means."

A frustrated pinching of the lips later and Nathalie was back at her game.

"You akumatized someone," she remarked, now trying to put the pillows behind Gabriel's back. What surplus of cooperativeness he had on trying to help her with that, however, he lacked on absolutely everything else.

"I meant money," came the tired answer and Nathalie dropped her efforts so completely the embroidered pillow she was putting behind his back tumbled to the floor, hitting her bare feet just as she went to stand high over Gabriel, arms crossed.

"You akumatized someone," she repeated. And unsurprisingly enough—

"I akumatized someone."

Nathalie shook her head, the exhausted note to her answer making her press Gabriel's shoulder, pushing him carefully until he lowered himself into the pillows. She would be lying if it didn't worry her to see how deeply he sank into them, to feel the way her hand rose and fell along with his chest, to see him cover his eyes again... but in the end there was little she could do other than put her glasses over the computer on the bedside table—the place where Gabriel's too rested—lean to pick up the pillow that had fallen to the floor and think of some topic with which to distract him. Which she did think of, once she sat on the armchair near the bed with the pillow over her skirt, fingers tracing the embroidered carnations on it.

"Considering I am responsible for balancing your checkbooks," Nathalie heard herself stating, falling back to her professional persona. "How much—?"

Her eyes sharpened. Watching Gabriel's hand fall away from his eyes, catching a glimpse of how empty his expression had become, Nathalie might actually not be paying as much attention to him, however, as she was mentally checking his transactions. Now that she thought about it, there hadn't been anything remotely suspicious in his finances, which, knowing what she did now, was suspicions for an entirely different reason.

"Tell me you didn't steal those things," Nathalie heard herself whisper and there was this blue gleam to Gabriel's eyes, that—Nathalie jumped to her feet. "You stole them!"

It was very possible that "Tsk" coming from Gabriel might have been directed not at her outrage but at the fact she was looking at both door and window, leaning over the bed—over him—to look outside, into the garden, searching, expecting—

"There will be no weapons dealers storming in here," Gabriel snapped, irritably, and she turned to look at where he laid, half-sitting, half-lying on the bed, back sank into the pillows, her eyes boring into his.

"There won't be?"

"No."

Nathalie went back to sit, one hand running through her black hair, pulling it back. She was still shaking her head in disbelief when she spoke:

"You are not getting any more of those."

And if anyone expected that to be well received—

"I feel I should remind you, Nathalie," Gabriel hissed. "This is my house."

She failed to see how that changed anything.

"You won't," Nathalie stressed, leaning forward. "Get any more explosives."

Maybe it was a good thing Gabriel was this exhausted. It might have taken a moment, a long long moment, but in the end her answer came with a long exhale. It came with him sinking even deeper into the pillows. It came with—

"If it is that important to you."

Nathalie sat straighter. It wasn't that what was important to her, it was—! She was looking anywhere but at Gabriel all of sudden, leaning back into the armchair, the pillow that was again over her legs being pulled closer to her. When Nathalie again talked, the building emotion that had been about to spill out of her chest was gone.

"What happened?" she asked Gabriel now, and this time she waited. This time, she would have let him answer—If that stubborn look Gabriel had on his face, didn't mean she would have to try to convince him to.

"I know about the robot," Nathalie pointed out, calmly, and at that Gabriel scoffed.

"You and the entire city," he remarked, one hand running through his hair, trying to pull it back from his face. Nathalie had seen Adrien do this exact gesture enough times to know exactly what the end result would be. It fell straight back. And the way Gabriel kept fighting to have his way would actually be endearing if that answer of his was remotely what she was aiming for. If Gabriel didn't know exactly what she had meant.

"It tried to kill you," Nathalie spelled it out.

"I thought we had already ascertained with that—" Gabriel voice filled with disdain. "—illusionist, that it is indeed possible."

Nathalie sighed. Now, he was just being difficult.

"The illusionist didn't turn against Hawkmoth," she remarked, patiently. "None of them ever did. What happened?"

It was one of those moments. One of Gabriel's infamous stare downs. God knows they were still effective even with him lying in bed and looking the worse for wear. But she couldn't back away this time. And so, much like this very morning with Adrien, she held Gabriel's gaze. And much like Adrien, eventually, Gabriel relented.

"I told Robustus what those two Miraculous can be used for," he admitted, irritation flaring on his face. "It was stupidity on my part, there is nothing more to it."

There was something more to it, Nathalie thought, concerned. Something he wasn't willing to tell, and the way Gabriel went to change to subject, frowning, said it quite clearly.

"I don't recall leaving the Observatory," he pointed out. "The last thing I recall—" Gabriel frowned, deep creases appearing on his forehead as he sat there, sank into the pillows, trying to remember. "—is you arriving. I don't remember getting to my room. How did you manage the stairs—?"

It seemed to hit Gabriel just as he spoke. That this wasn't his bedroom. That there couldn't possibly be a way she could have "managed the stairs." That he wasn't anywhere he knew. And that very moment Gabriel pulled himself off the pillows, alarmed, his hand flying to close protectively over hers just as his lips parted. He meant to call Hawkmoth forth. He was calling him forth. But right when he was about to do it, Gabriel's eyes fell on the dresser in front of the bed, on her bag as it laid on top of it, on the black jacket on the hanger right next to the entrance's mirror, on the shoes she had left near the door, and apprehension gave way to confusion.

"Where—?"

Gabriel had just looked through the window at the side of the bed. He was gazing at the wall that was just in front, at the neatly cuts shrubs peeking from the other side of a small path. It was the lower branches of a magnolia in blow, however, that made his eyebrows rise with recognition.

"The side path," Gabriel now whispered, attention coming back inside. "This is your room."

Nathalie sighed, left hand again running through her hair, combing it back. If by this being her room, Gabriel meant the first place she had found to dump what little of her belongings she had managed to get from her own home after that—situation with Adrien and the press had made Gabriel fly into a fury and drag both her and his son to Paris, then, yes. This was her room.

"I feel I should mention your condition didn't offer me much of a choice," Nathalie stated, watching Gabriel as he reached for his glasses, going back to look around the room. "I'm perfectly aware of how unprofessional this is."

As luck would have it, Gabriel's attention chose the exact moment she said that to fall on the beige jacket and waistcoat that were at the foot of the bed. The ones she had help him take off. The ones he visibly didn't remember undress.

Nathalie had to shake her head.

"All of this is," she whispered, not that Gabriel seemed to care all that much. Looking from the white shirt he had on to the room, then at her, eyebrows knitted in confusion, he didn't seem to care for much of anything except for one thing:

"Why?"

Nathalie was left staring.

Why?

He had to ask why?

"I couldn't leave you up there."

Gabriel's expression hardened, lips pressing into a thin line, eyes hard as steel.

"You should have."

Maybe that shouldn't have hurt but it did. And so Nathalie dropped her gaze, going to focus on the carnations on the pillow that was in her lap. She never looked up. She never saw Gabriel's expression crumble to guilt.

"You are cold," he whispered, the hand he still held over hers going to press around it. It felt like an apology and with it Gabriel was on his feet, a clear moment of vertigo leaving him swaying before he walked to the foot of the bed, fingers searching through his jacket's inner pocket. He ended making his way back with the scarf he had been wearing this morning, hands working to fold it in length and—

Nathalie blinked when the scarf was wrapped around her shoulders, surprise making her raise her eyes to Gabriel just as he offered her hair this frown and reached forward, fingers grazing her check, to comb it behind her ear.

If time could just freeze when their eyes met... But it moved forward as ruthless as it always was and Gabriel shook his head, let his attention wander away from her and went back to sit on the bed, expression distant, voice going back to that emotionless register she had become all too familiar with.

"The Observatory?" he now asked, elbows over his knees, a frown being directed at her. It took Nathalie a moment to stop looking at the scarf and go back to him.

"It's fixed," she informed and at that Gabriel looked at the wooden floor, pensive, his fingers steepled.

"I suppose that bug—"

If any of them had forgotten what had gotten them here, into this room, in the first place the universe certainly did not. The words had just became stuck in Gabriel's throat, panic and pain were flaring through his face, and Nathalie was up before she had time to think, jumping out of the armchair to hold his shoulders, seeing he curled over himself, fingers clawing at his head.

It was just like in the afternoon. The wincing and the panting and seeing pain run unchecked through Gabriel's face. And maybe it was due to concern, maybe it was because she could do nothing but sit at his side, because there was nothing to do but be here, but this seemed to have no end. It seemed like it would never subside. But it did subside. Eventually. And when it did, being helped back to bed by Nathalie, his back sinking into the pillows, Gabriel looked drained.

"The robot..." Nathalie gathered enough courage to say once he was comfortable, her voice barely a whisper, fingers combing Gabriel's hair out of his damp forehead. "You said you wouldn't use it. Do I want to know why you risked it?"

"No."

Her voice became quieter still.

"Should I?"

Gabriel's shoulders were rigid, pain still clear his face, his gaze suddenly avoiding hers. It was no answer, but still Nathalie stepped away, walking up to the dresser, the box she had brought from the Dupain-Cheng bakery, the very same one she had left next to her handbag, being taken into her hands.

"I had no idea what you would prefer," Nathalie announced, making her way back to give the box to Gabriel. The way he went to stare at it once it was on his hands, like he didn't know what to do with it, much less what to say, left her to watch him for a moment before taken a single step towards the armchair, looking over her shoulder. "Don't make me fetch a plate."

"That isn't—"

Their eyes met. It was all it took for Gabriel to understand what she meant. That she was offering him a way out. An escape from her previous question.

"That is unnecessary," he said, quietly, attention dropping to the box. "As was this."

The armchair gave a quiet groan as Nathalie sat.

"Just eat," she asked, the sound of the box being opened making her steal a glance at Gabriel—and sigh. "Please, make an effort."

"An effort," Gabriel replied, reaching inside the box, a tired expression being given to the vol-au-vent before he bit into it. He didn't look hungry. But then again, lately he never was. And if anything today he looked sick. Which meant he was indulging her. And it actually meant a lot to Nathalie that he did.

"Is it good?" she queried, looking the phone she now had on her hands and to Adrien's message, relief at what would be her answer washing over her. "It's—"

The bed groaned. This flash of red and beige jumping out of it leaving Nathalie to snap her head up just as Gabriel got to his full height, the box he had on his hands being turned around as he studied every angle, every corner, every side, searching and muttering and—

"Fresh."

Nathalie dropped the phone just in time to see a feverish blue gleam take over Gabriel's expression.

"This is fresh."

She looked, stomach in a knot, just in time to see that grin.

"Where exactly did you leave Adrien?"

Adrien

It was the third time Adrien got up already. Three out of three in which he was forced to make a straight line for the Dupain-Cheng's kitchen upon catching this shadow, this thief, this self-entitled cheese rescuer making his way to the glass dome on top of the fridge, a sinister cackling following in his wake, bright green eyes gleaming with greed.

"Come to me, my beauty," the thief purred, gazing at the cheese that laid within the glass dome and rising up and up in the air, arms wide open. "Come to—AHHHHHHHHHHH!"

It probably had been a bit of an overreaction what had just gone down, Adrien would think once he actually managed to go to bed some half an hour later and his mind went over what this must have looked like from Plagg's perspective—terrifying probably being a good description. That, however, would be half an hour from now. Right at this moment, Adrien was souring through the Dupain-Cheng's kitchen, diving, arms outstretched, to land on his stomach, close his hands around Plagg and grin—a combination that, all things considered, made him look too much like an over-sized cat for anyone's comfort.

"Je te tiens," Adrien purred in a low whisper, pulling Plagg closer to his still grinning face. "Shall we discuss stealing?"

Just now struggling to get out of his grasp, Plagg leaned forward, hands over Adrien's thumb.

"I know all about stealing!" he whispered back, sounding so excited to talk about this that Adrien, still lying belly down on the kitchen floor, had to roll his eyes.

"I meant not stealing," he clarified. "We are not—"

"Adrien?"

A flash of panic went through both his and Plagg's expressions at the sound of that calling. Alarm made Adrien jump so fast to his feet while shoving the kwami behind his back, he almost hit his head on the counter instead of appearing over it, smiling, looking around and—

Adrien tilted his head, his initial confusion at finding the dark living room empty, however, disappeared just a moment later. There, coming down from to the ladder to the attic, the moon's pale light coming from upstairs washing over it, was a figure. A girl. A rather beautiful girl with blueberry blue eyes. A girl, Adrien thought was Ladybug for the moment it took a cloud to cover the moon and for the illusion to shatter, for him to actually look at her.

She was not Ladybug.

This girl wearing a beige and pink pajamas, black hair falling to her shoulders, was—

"Marinette?"

She was staring at him. Staring and looking absolutely bewildered for some reason—and what that reason might be flashed through Adrien's mind the very next moment, leaving him with this very tense half-smile. She had just seen him sky diving into the kitchen, hadn't she?

"I thought I saw a cat," Adrien tried to justify himself, leaving Marinette to blink.

"We don't have a cat," she replied.

He's not yours, Adrien replied mentally just as Plagg went from trying to gross him out by licking his thumb to actually nibbling on Adrien's hand, those small sharp teeth of his actually working just fine in getting Adrien to release him. Not that his newly acquired freedom made Plagg grow some sense and hide. Oh no. Instead this black dart dived back down, towards the kitchen counters and the kwami pressed his back against the wood, greedy eyes still on the cheese.

Adrien wanted to groan. Honestly, did Ladybug have to deal with this too? Were all kwamis like this? Or had he been bestowed a particularly hungry one?

"So, what are doing up?" Adrien now asked Marinette, his kwami-related questions shoved to the back of his mind as he went to lean over the kitchen isle, trying not to glare at Plagg, trying to look normal and smile and behave like himself as he watched Marinette approach the isle, looking slightly anxious. "Did you forget to take something to your room?"

Marinette's smile had a tremulous edge to it when she stopped on the other side of the kitchen isle, the way she was holding a water bottle to her chest almost making it seem like she was trying to hide behind it.

"I come to fetch butter," she explained, eyes bulging the next moment. "I mean gutter! Water!"

Adrien had to smile, reaching out to take the bottle she had on her hands.

"I am on this side, I can fill it."

He looked down just as he turned his back on Marinette, towards the lower side of the counters and Plagg, who was still aiming for the cheese, and glared. His answer? A dramatic sigh. That and—fortunately—Plagg growing some sense and darting up to get inside Adrien's pajama shirt, disappearing from view just as Adrien himself made his way to the kitchen sink and filled Marinette's bottle.

"Thanks."

Neither he nor Marinette said much of anything else while they went to the ladder and stopped for a moment, trading a glance. Marinette looked just like she wanted to say something, to ask something, and like she couldn't find enough courage to do any of those things.

"So—" Adrien finally said. "See you tomorrow."

Marinette gave him this timid wave.

"Bye."

She was going up to her bedroom now. It was just Plagg and him in the living room. Plagg, him and the sleeping Nino back on the couch, but sleeping he was really not much help. And so, Adrien turned his back on the ladder, this weight on his heart that had actually been quite forgotten while he was with his friends and was forced to run after Plagg, returning worse than ever before when he took the phone out of his pocket.

Nathalie had not answered his message—not yet, anyway—and he didn't know what to make of her silence. It was almost two in the morning and, after yesterday and taking him to the hospital, maybe she had just fallen asleep, but—

Plagg forced his head through the pajamas' neckline, looking up.

"He is fine," he tried to reassure, watching Adrien hit his father's picture and type a message. The way his fingers hesitated over the send button, never actually touching it, made the kwami look back up. "Your father is fine. Now, let's fetch some cheese!"

Adrien forced a smile. It crossed his mind right then, Plagg might just be behaving like this to distract him. Just like Nathalie had tried to do when she left him here. With his friends. It did cross his mind that might be their reason. And Adrien would be lying if he said thinking that, didn't scare him even more.

"Adrien."

Plagg dived back inside his shirt, leaving Adrien to blink, surprised. The calling had come from behind him. From the ladder leading to the attic. And the very moment Adrien turned he found Marinette was making her way back down, fingers pressing into her water bottle, a note of anxiety to her voice.

"Is—Is something wrong?"

They stood there for a moment. Marinette holding the bottle against her chest and biting her lower lip. Him in front of the ladder, looking up. Both surrounded by darkness. He didn't—Adrien actually didn't know if it was something in her question, he didn't know if it was because it was her, or just because someone had finally asked, but it came tumbling down his lips the same moment, it came completely without his permission—And it came out completely wrong.

"I'm here," he heard himself whisper and that same moment his stomach dropped. What?!

"I didn't mean—" Adrien tried to correct himself, attention still on Marinette. "I like being here, I—"

He didn't have to finish. Marinette seemed to understand what he meant. And she was coming back down now, bare feet making close to no sound on the wooden stairway. She hesitated for a moment before sitting on the first step, water bottle placed at her side.

"Mom looked worried when she was talking to Nathalie," she told him. "I thought—I thought something might be wrong. What happened?"

Adrien found himself dropping his attention back to his phone. He wanted to talk to someone so much. But from wanting to talk to someone to full-on trusting them was this huge HUGE leap and somehow he found himself jumping right across. Without hesitation. And just like he had trusted Marinette hundreds of times before.

"Remember when I left school today?" Adrien asked and Marinette nodded vigorously, eyes widening when he leaned forward to give her his phone and pointed her attention towards the message in the display. "Father sent me that. That was why I sneaked out."

Marinette was tilting her head now, eyes moving over the words, reading and rereading them, a pensive frown taking over her face.

"He wanted you to go home?" she asked, looking back to him. "Why didn't he call the school?"

"I don't think he meant to send this to me."

"Nathalie?"

Adrien nodded, dropping to sit on the stairs, next to Marinette, right hand closing distractedly over his sprained ankle.

"Yeah. She was back at the house when I got there. She shouldn't have been, Father had given her the day off. I think she got that message too," he said, glancing at the phone Marinette still had in her hands. "It doesn't sound like him, you know? The way that is written. Father doesn't talk like that. And the house where we live right now—He doesn't call it home."

Marinette blinked, back to staring at the phone, then at him, the lights of a passing car going by them.

"It's just three words," she pointed out, giving Adrien back his phone.

"I know," he sighed, running a hand through his hair. "That is about how much you need with him."

"Really?"

"Nobody can come up with the things Father says," Adrien went on to tell her, leaning back to lie on the stairs, phone held high over his head, a note of fondness to his voice. "Or sends. This one time I got three pages worth of number sequences. Sure it was meant for Nathalie, but I sent it to her, got attached to their conversation and went fifteen minutes staring at my phone and wondering if both of them had gone insane. Turns out Nathalie was just out picking up supplies and those were—"

He should have known Marinette would know the answer. She was smiling now. Looking back to where he was lying.

"Thread reel numbers?" she offered and her face flushed red when Adrien found it in himself to smile, it seemed to the cue for her to find refuge in their conversation again. "Maybe he was just being polite?"

Adrien had to shake his head, again pulling his hair off his face.

"This is not Father being polite," he said, the hand he was holding the phone with falling to his side. "If Nathalie gets something like this she won't think he is being polite. She will think something happened, drop everything and come running. Father knows that. It's just how she is. Also—"

Adrien went back to his phone. Rereading Father's message. His own words still peeked from the edition area, unsent. He had lost count of how many times he had read Father's message by now, only this time, something quiet that had been boiling inside him all through the day was rising up his chest and Adrien was up before he noticed, hands behind his back, a harsh note to his voice.

"I know something happened," he snapped, only vaguely aware of Marinette's eyes getting wider and wider as she followed his pacing, looking up at him like she was suddenly seeing someone else. "I know it was something bad. And I don't like not knowing what it was! Or where Father is! Or if he is sick or hurt or doing something stupid because he decided to blame himself for things that are not his fault!"

Adrien had just spoken too loudly. The blade of light peeking from the house's stairways had just been cut by a shadow. There were footsteps coming from the bakery. And that same moment, he and Marinette had jumped off the ladder, running all to way to hide behind the kitchen isle, their heads rising slowly from behind it when the shadow of what was unmistakably Tom Dupain-Cheng was drawn in the stairway and he listened, shrugged and, after a moment, went back to his pastries.

"Sorry about that," Adrien whispered, lowering himself to sit, back against one of the kitchen counters.

Still peeking over the isle, Marinette glanced down at him before going to sit on her typical kneeling position.

"Why didn't you tell us?" she asked in a small voice.

Adrien offered her a sad smile.

"I know what the three of you think of Father," he simply said while looking at the floor, one leg pulled to his chest. "I know what everyone would say. That he is just awful."

"I don't think he is awful."

Adrien turned to Marinette, hope fading into a charming smile that had more of sadness than anything else.

"Right," he said, and the gentle disbelief to his tone made Marinette's eyes go wide with anxiety.

"I really don't!" she tried to assure him, tone pleading. "Because if he was awful I wouldn't have my hat and Chloe might have it and he might have gotten really mad and walked off and I would be barred from all his fashion shows forever!"

Adrien was staring at her.

"Barred from the—?"

It hit him then.

"You are talking about the contest he did at school?" Adrien asked. "The one for the hat?"

Marinette swallowed hard, fidgeting, clearly trying to find the right words.

"He didn't have to let me prove the hat was mine," she finally managed said, visibly fighting her nerves. "That was not what he wrote in the rules. And he taught me how to make a jacket. And–And he didn't have to keep quiet about the—"

Marinette's eyes widened further, whatever she meant to say, whatever Father had kept quiet about, dying right then and there. She was looking up at Adrien now, desperate.

"He is the reason I want to go to fashion!" she blurted out, eyes begging for Adrien to believe her. "I don't think he is awful! Sure he is kind of scary and cold and not that nice—!"

Adrien dropped his eyes. His heart heavy with sorrow.

"He wasn't like that," he heard himself whisper, going back to stare at the phone's directory, at the single message under Father's name. "He wasn't like this either."

Marinette was leaning towards Adrien now. Waiting. Waiting for him to—

"He was—" Adrien started to say and stopped, fingers closing tighter over the phone. "He was always work, rules and secrets, but he—he also—"

The words seemed to have tied themselves around his throat. They burned. They burned all the way to his eyes and Adrien couldn't continue. He just couldn't.

"It shouldn't be that difficult to hit send, should it?" Adrien asked Marinette while staring at his own message. "Sure he is this famous fashion designer, but for me—for me, he is just Father."

And I miss him, the silence between them said, even as the letters of the message were erased one by one.

I really miss him.

Marinette

"Marinette!" Tikki called from the ceiling trapdoor, her whisper far too loud in the quiet living room. "Marinette, come back! Please! He is going to hear you!"

Halfway across the living room already, having done this complex sneak and drop as she moved between every single piece of furniture standing in her path, Marinette slowly parted the curtains she was presently hiding behind, the yellowish light from the street lamp behind her going to find Tikki near the ceiling at about the same time Marinette herself turned to her and gestured for the kwami to come to her side.

"No!" Tikki objected, the light painting her in this deep red as she went to mimic Marinette's gesture and pointed at the empty place at her side. "You come here!"

A pleading look later and Marinette was forced to drop her head in resignation. Tikki was not coming. Still, her attention moving to the sofa a few meters to her right and from there to the phone lying over its arm, Marinette remained determined. She was going to do this. No doubt about it. She was going to walk to that sofa and take Adrien's phone. She was going in.

A resolute nod was given to herself. The curtains were pushed aside. And so, Marinette stepped out of hiding. A foot, then the other, taking her towards her target, closer and closer—and in what was probably this ridiculous Grinch-like tiptoeing she had no idea why she was using. Never mind it, however! It was working! She was getting there. She was almost at the sofa. This was going great! This was working! She was doing it! She was! And then she stumbled. Of course, she stumbled! And now she was not tiptoeing. No. She was moving through the living room with her head down and arms flapping and a muffled yelp on her lips! She was getting her feet caught in the carpet! She was right on route to crash into this small—!

No-no-no!

It was like a disaster was unfolding in slow motion. Only the disaster was herself and Marinette had just rammed into a table. A table that was turning. The magazines on the lower part of it cascading to the carpet. The China lamp that was on top wobbling and swaying and falling and—!

A red bolt flew passed Marinette, hands grabbing the top of the lamp, pulling it up, leaving it floating in the middle of the living room just as a frantic Marinette managed to stop the table from turning and leaned her forehead against the lid.

"Thanks, Tikki."

Tikki sighed, a glance being given to the sofa to her right and the two boys who, by nothing short of a miracle, remained asleep, before she lowered the lamp back to its place and went to hide under the table.

"This is why I'm saying you are going to get caught," Tikki whispered, watching Marinette stack magazine after magazine on the shelf under her. "Please, Marinette, let's go to sleep!"

Marinette pressed her lips together, eyes finding Tikki's.

"I am not going to bed," she stated, leaning forward to talk through the laced cloth the kwami was hiding behind. "I can't, Tikki. And we are not getting caught, we—"

An irritated mumble made both of them snap their heads to the side, then ran—or in Tikki's case fly—to hide next to the sofa's chaise longue. Their backs hit the white fabric just as the light on the side Nino was sleeping on was turned on and Marinette and Tikki went to press the tip of their fingers to each other's mouth.

"Thought I had heard something—" Nino muttered, his shadow being drawn momentarily on the living room, only for it to yawn and crash back down a moment later. "My mistake."

Marinette pressed the back of her head to the couch, her fingers falling away from Tikki's lips as the living room went dark again. She was testing her luck here. But, it was okay. All was fine. All she had to do now was sneak up to the part of the chaise longue arm where Adrien had put his phone and take it. It was right in front of her right now actually, over the white fabric, next to a book Adrien had been reading for a huge amount of time before going to sleep. All she had to do was stretch her arm, not get herself tangled on the bag Adrien had left open on the floor, not knock anything down and—

Tikki appeared at her side, pulling on her pajamas's sleeve, stopping Marinette just as her fingers touched the phone.

"Marinette, stop!" she begged, managing to pull Marinette's hand down and going to float in front of her face, arms open as if to block her. "Think of how angry Adrien will be when he wakes up and catches you messing with his phone!" she went on to say. "And you were getting along so well just now! You were talking!"

Tikki pointed a hand towards Marinette and then to the sofa, to the boy none of them could see, but who was asleep there anyway.

"You, Marinette, talked with Adrien. Don't do this. Please."

"I'm doing it, Tikki."

"Marinette!"

"I know he was talking to me, but he was sad. You saw it," Marinette replied, attention going back to the phone. "And I can do something to change that. So I am doing it."

She pulled Tikki aside with those words, the sight of the kwami covering her mouth, anxious, still clear through the corner of her eyes as Marinette reached for the phone, closed her hand and—Okay, she had it. She had it! And she hadn't caused any major disaster! This was going just fine! And the moment Marinette's eyes fell on the screen, it was not just going fine. It was going great. Marinette's heart fluttered.

"It's unlocked," she whispered, turning back to Tikki with her eyes wide with wonder. "You are lucky."

Tikki gave her a deeply awkward smile and Marinette leaned over the phone, going over the contacts. Her excited smile lost some of its gleam, however, when she raced down to the 'F' and was left staring at an empty directory.

"Adrien has him as 'Dad'," she commented after a moment of searching a very short contact list. "I thought he called him father—Tikki?"

Marinette looked around, searching for the kwami, a moment of alarm over her absence giving way to confusion at finding Tikki right overhead, lips pressed and peeking over the chaise longue arm, right at the place where Adrien was asleep.

"What are you searching for?" Marinette queried.

"No one…" Tikki said, giving a last look to the sofa-bed and coming back to peek at the phone on Marinette's hands. "What are you writing?"

Marinette smiled, going back to curl over the phone, fingers running over the display.

"The same thing Adrien was," she said, turning the phone towards Tikki. "Goodnight."

Tikki's gaze softened, her smile the last thing Marinette saw before stretching her arm to put the phone back and Tikki darted to stop her again, a very alarmed pair of blue eyes going to meet Marinette's confused gaze.

"Did you delete your message?!"

Marinette jumped, a panicked look being give to the fortunately still unlocked phone she was bringing back down, fingers leading her back to the messages again.

Delete! Delete!

Now, now she put the phone back on the sofa, then looked at Tikki, her nod sending her running to the ladder leading to the ceiling trapdoor and jumping inside her room. It was only once she was there that Marinette stopped, picking up the water bottle she had left on the floor.

"Now he just has to answer and Adrien will be so happy!" Marinette beamed, dreamy, smile fading when she saw the concerned expression Tikki was giving her. "What is it?"

The kwami shook her head, starting to lead the way to the bunk bed where Alya was already sleeping.

"Let's go to sleep."

Marinette caught Tikki between two fingers, pulling her back.

"What is it?" Marinette insisted in a whisper, searching Tikki's eyes, trying to find her answer there. "You are worried. You know you can tell me."

Tikki pressed her lips.

"It's nothing, it's—" She sighed, glancing down the trapdoor, back to the living room. "What if Adrien's father doesn't answer?"

Oh—Marinette had to sigh in relief. She thought it would be something bad. Like she had forgotten something downstairs. Not–Not that Gabriel Agreste not answering wasn't bad! But—

Marinette smiled, gently.

"Adrien won't know."

"But you will, Marinette," Tikki replied, wisely, attention back on her. "And you already thought Gabriel Agreste was Hawkmoth. What if he doesn't answer?"

They would never know what would have happened. What she would have thought. A buzz. The ping of a message. Nino's drowsy "Dude, the phone" had broken through the silence. And they were lying belly down on the floor the same moment. Tikki going to hover head down. Marinette holding her hair with one hand and sticking her head through the trapdoor. Both peeking into the living room still in time to see Adrien feel around for his phone, then sit when he didn't find it, a sigh and an eye roll breaking through his visible tiredness at finding the phone on the opposite side of where he had left it.

"Really?"

Marinette bit her lower lip, watching as Adrien let himself fall back into bed—and jumped back up so suddenly it looked like he had hit a large spring on his way down. He was staring at his phone's display now. Eyes wide. Then squinting in suspicion, fingers moving over the display.

A second ping later and Nino too was sitting, rubbing his eyes.

"Seriously, dude, who is texting you in the middle of the night?" he asked, fishing his glasses from the support table at his side. "Is it the girls? Are they awake?"

He was peeking at Adrien's phone now, confusion replacing his curious query.

"Who answers 'See you tomorrow' with 'Go to sleep'?" Nino asked, mouth slightly agape. "Also... I'm going if you are? Who—?"

Another ping.

"This is not up for discussion," Nino read, starting to back away as if the phone could explode. "Ah, dude… Is that your—?"

A new ping. And this time, Adrien rose his phone, showing the display to Nino.

"Go to sleep. And I mean both of you," Nino read, eyes doubling in size. "Y-Yes, Sir!"

And he dived back down, leaving Adrien smiling at his phone.

"That was scary, dude," Nino shuddered from under the sheets, light being turned back off. "Why are you so happy?"

"It was definitely Father."

A smile took over Marinette's expression, the next moment, she was up, hugging her water bottle.

"He is happy, Tikki!"

And she ran up to the ladder, beaming, squealing, swirling, almost falling, before disappearing into bed, in her happiness blind to the fact Tikki had fallen behind and to the grinning black kwami that had just shoved his head through the trapdoor, peeking inside her bedroom, a very generous slice of very stolen cheese on his hands.

"That's some lively holder you have there, Sugar Cube!" Plagg whispered happily while looking at the bunk-bed, a glance Tikki's way making him give her this overly exaggerated sigh. "What did I do now?"

Stealing a glance at her holder's bed, Tikki pressed her lips.

"You know what you did," she whispered turning back to Plagg, foot tapping on a non-existent floor. "You unlocked that phone!"

"Oh, give your girl a break!" Plagg said, unconcerned. "If she hadn't sent that message, I would!"

"We are not supposed to interfere like that!"

Plagg threw his head back for a silent cackle.

"Pfft! Who cares for that boring rule?" he threw at Tikki, his grin showing two rows of small sharp teeth. "Not your Ladybug! And not you last time I checked!"

Tikki turned redder still.

"I care about rules," she replied, only to tilt her head. "And you care about him, don't you?"

Plagg looked up from the trapdoor, nibbling on the cheese.

"Him?"

"Chat Noir," Tikki clarified, expression becoming softer. "You said you wouldn't make the mistake of growing attached to a holder ever again after—"

Something shivered on Plagg's expression, the cheese being shoved whole into his mouth making Tikki drop down the trapdoor to stand at his side, comforting.

"Plagg—"

"I have no idea what you are talking about," he said, sucking on each of his fingers, a greedy look being given to the kitchen behind her. "And now for the pièce de resistance. Époisses de Bourgogne on top of the fridge."

Tikki rolled her eyes, seeing Plagg sneak towards his target, her last glimpse of the living room before closing the trapdoor, however, was not of him but of Adrien going passed the ladder on all fours.

"Plagg, for the love of—!" he whispered. "Drop the cheese, right now. This is not our room!"

Tikki had to smile. Our room, was it?

He likes you too, Plagg, she told him even if just in her heart, and then she went up to Marinette's bed, making her way to her holder and Alya, pulling the bed sheets over both their shoulders and watching a drowsy smile come to meet her when Marinette's eyes opened for a moment… and then closed again.

"Goodnight, Tikki."

"Goodnight, Marinette," Tikki whispered, caressing her forehead, this muffled commotion on the lower floor making her sigh. "Goodnight, Plagg."

Tikki had just entered the doll house on the other side of the bedroom, when she remembered to look back, towards the pale moonlight making its way inside the room, towards the night and the sleepy city nestled under it.

"See you around," she whispered, unbeknownst of the dark figure standing silently just across the street. "Nooroo."

Sabine Dupain-Cheng

The day's finances were spread over one of the bakery's small tables, receipts and supplier's invoices already waiting in neatly piles as Sabine went over the account table shown on her computer one last time, the quiet song that was slowly dancing its way to her making her frown.

"You are singing, dear," Sabine warned, not losing her focus, fingers now flying over the keyboard. "You will wake up the kids."

The muffled hum turned into a lullaby, its playful tone making Sabine press her fingers to her lips, trying to suppress a chuckle, and then look towards the blade of light coming from the kitchen, to the large shadow drawn on the floor.

"Tom—" she reprimanded with no real bite to her words, a fond smile on her lips. "I am going in there."

This time she laughed when the lullaby rose in volume. Uncrossing her legs, one of her feet hitting the extension cord, Sabine threw her hand backwards, catching the lamp just as it hit the blinds and something just outside made her turn.

There was a man going down the street. A tall, elegant man all dressed in black. His face, lit in turn by the streets many lamps, one Sabine had known from her daughter's fashion magazines, long before she had meet him or dreamed she would one day have his son sleeping on her living room couch.

"M. Agreste, Adrien is—"

It dawned on Sabine just as a quiet knock lead her to unlock the bakery's door—the hanging bell overhead tolling, the cold night breeze forcing its way inside—just how weird it was that Gabriel Agreste of all people was at her doorstep, in the middle of the night, his car nowhere to be seen, when his assistant had told her that he was bedridden. It dawned on her, but it was too late already and there was no training, no experience, nothing in Sabine's martial arts knowledge that could have stopped the thing wearing Gabriel Agreste's face or the sketchbook he swept her inside.

"Mom?"

"Mom, is that you?" a drowsy whisper called out.

Sabine blinked. The voice breaking inside her mind, calling her back, left her standing on her daughter's bedroom for a moment, staring in confusion as her hand, now a charcoal drawing, carefully, silently, and of its own volition, closed one of the drawers under Marinette's bunk bed.

"Mom, is something wrong?"

Sabine looked back, to find her daughter climbing down the bunk bed's ladder, rubbing her eyes, drowsiness being replaced by alarm the instant their eyes meet.

"Mom?!"

The thing that had been Marinette's mother stepped forward, determined, mindless, Sabine herself lost inside of it… and yet, that moment of terror before her mind was pulled under and she knew no more, that moment of seeing herself step towards Marinette not knowing what she was about to do, that moment, Sabine would remember it forever.

---

Author's Notes:

And so the Collector steps back into the battlefield - with some updates.

And here we are again :) This part actually took a lot longer to be finished than I expected considering it was mostly down when I published part 2. Next part is still being written so I will ask a little patience while you wait for it! Regardless, I will see you all there!

(And as always comments are much appreciated!)

A big thank you too:

Guest, thank you so much! I have to give kudos for reading it all in one go :) I know how huge this bad boy is!

Reminiscent Lullaby :) Thank you for your ongoing support! And here is the new chapter as promised! (I have to admit Nooroo's POV sneaked up on me last time!)

Ellie, welcome back! Thank you so much for the new comment. About Marinette and the Greek Mythology, prepare yourself for it is worse than you think... I am from Europe too! Only not from a country where Greek monsters are common knowledge and that lead me to an utterly silly conclusion. Fortunately, it is something easy to correct by making Marinette read on it. (Tell me about trying to pull myself out of that hole! lool). Anyway :) I am so glad you like the story, hope to keep seeing you around!

In notes not related to this story: If anyone out there is a fan of Gray Matter (game by Jane Jensen) I published something for it. If you are still here but don't know that story, like Gabriel-type characters (even without powers and the attacking a city bit), a slowly build romance and mystery, I would recommend watching or playing the game. I can't promise you will like it, of course, but it is a very good story. (Also, I may low-key be hoping someone falls in love with it and writes something, because I can't find any fanfics!)