Disclaimer: I don't own anything
Rot
(part 2)
Adrien
Chat Noir landed silently in his bedroom, the angry hiss of wind that had followed him inside falling silent when he picked up the remote and pointed it upwards. A moment of standing alone in the dark room as the small window closed, of staring down just to see a red petal sticking to his belt, and Chat Noir sighed, a quiet whisper of "Claws in" seeing Adrien and Plagg break apart.
"That was a disaster, wasn't it?" Adrien whispered, the same red petal he had plucked from Chat Noir's belt now held between his fingers. "I was so sure Ladybug—"
A new sigh. Letting the red petal fall into the bin to the side of the TV, Adrien looked at Plagg.
"Was I an idiot for thinking Ladybug would say yes?" he asked. "For going through all that trouble with the roses and the candles?"
Flying right passed the large TV, Plagg landed on the center table right in front of it and reached for one of the many pieces of cheese on the plate the two of them had forgotten there.
"I tried to say you would go further by filling everything with cheese," the kwami put forth, words muffled by the far-too-large bite of said delicacy he had managed to fill his mouth with. "No one can say no to cheese!"
Attention abandoning the black kwami so it could drift all the way from the piano to the pinball machine and from there to the basketball hoop all the way to the other side of the bedroom, Adrien shook his head. His mind was so far away it didn't register anything Plagg had said and even less that same kwami wiggling himself right in the middle of the white pillows of the sofa, an entire block of very smelly cheese in his hands.
"At least, I did something nice for Marinette, right?" Adrien now said.
"That one really could do with some cheese in her life," Plagg remarked.
Maybe it was because Plagg went from that to sounding like he was suffocating. Maybe it was because Adrien's attention had just gone by the white sofa. Whatever it was, this time, Adrien blinked, finding himself staring wide-eyed at the cheese block Plagg had managed to— wedge, he would go with wedge —into his mouth.
"I will tell Marinette she needs cheese in her life," Adrien remarked, walking up to the sofa and to the black spot struggling under a full wheel of cheese that was Plagg. A single pull on the cheese on the kwami's mouth, however, and Adrien narrowed his eyes, the small pointy teeth he could see behind the kwami's lips, making him impatientlyinhale.
"Will you stop biting into that thing?"
The cheese came out with a loudpluck a second later. A second more and Plagg was munching down on the cheese again.
"I seriously don't understand how someone wouldn't want a piece of this," the kwami said, the hand that wasn't presently occupied with holding what was left of his treat, giving an affectionate squeeze to his large belly. "I bring out the best in Chat Noir."
Adrien's shoulders had sagged, his mind going all the way to that terrace and the roses, before Plagg's latest declaration found him there and forced him back.
"You bring out the best in Chat Noir?" Adrien stuttered, staring right at the black kwami and the quickly disappearing cheese he was eating while lying on his side, on the sofa, like he was some sort of Roman emperor."You?"
"Me!" Plagg announced, with gleaming eyes. "The charm, the athletics, the good looks—"
"The ravenous appetite?"
Plagg cackled, his expression such that Adrien had to smile.
"All me!" Plagg announced. "Ladybug doesn't know what she is missing!"
Adrien shook his head at that, picked Plagg up from the pillows and took him to the bed on the other side of the bedroom. Watching Plagg snuggle between the white bed sheets as he put his pajamas on, laying down beside him, Adrien wished he could follow after him, to close his eyes and just sleep. Instead, he tossed and turned for what felt like hours and ended up dragging himself out of bed to sit at his computer. A look at his contacts later, particularly at the one immediately over Nino's, one that read "Marinette" — one that unsurprisingly was still online and, more unsurprisingly still, with the words "studying" under it — and Adrien opened the window, started typing and almost immediately let his head fall into his hands.
What was he doing? What did he think he was doing? He was Adrien. Adrien.Not Chat Noir. How the hell was he going to justify talking to Marinette at—
Adrien pulled the mouse down. In the display, the cursor dived down the screen, making the bar and its clock pop up.
Three in the morning.
It was three in the morning.
If Marinette hadn't gone to bed by now, she was asleep in front of the computer, her status didn't change any of that.
Adrien closed the program. A glance to the left, towards the bed and Plagg, who was now purring and curled under the cover, and Adrien's attention returned to its circuit around the bedroom. Piano. Pinball machine Basketball hoop. Piano. Pinball machine—Adrien twisted his nose. A moment more and, not even caring to put some slippers on, he was making his way towards the door and the atrium. There, he sat on the top of the stairs right in front of his door, gazing at the large windows on the wall opposite him, at the city lights beyond the walls, savoring the moonlight that made its way in—wanting to quick himself for being out here.
What on earth was he doing?! Was this his great foolproof plan to not think about being rejected?! To sit in the atrium alone all night and—and what? Hope against hope Hawkmoth wouldn't get up to anything else today because he wasn't sure how he was going to face Ladybug? Or maybe, maybe, he really, really wished Hawkmoth would do just that! Maybe he wished he would pop up right now! That it would be just the two of them for once! Maybe—!
"You should have kept your mouth shut," Adrien now chastised himself. "Idiot."
That last word didn't fully form before it extinguished. It didn't really get a chance to. And if in a moment, Adrien had been sitting on top of the stairs, head leaning into one hand and massaging his forehead, the next he was standing on top of the stairs, gazing down towards the atrium, towards the atelier door, the very place where the unmistakable sound of a key being turned on a lock had just risen, towards the place where that very same door just nowopened.
"Father?"
Adrien called to him just as the door closed, just as his father back went to rest against it and he leaned his head against the hard wood, hand pressed to his eyes. Adrien called him and he immediately turned. And now, rather than do anything, the two of them were simply here, standing in opposite ends of the atrium. His father in front of the atelier, Adrien at the top of the stairway. And there must be a competition on whom of the two of them could look more surprised at seeing the other for there was a long moment when neither said a word. And one when they both did.
"What are you doing up?" they asked and, while he still could, Adrien soldiered on least that "go to your room" he could already see starting to materialize in his father's face made it to his lips.
"Can I stay with you?"
There was not much to go by now. Walking towards the stairs, hands behind his back, his father was just studying him, pondering, weighing, all the while wearing that expression that had always made Adrien feel he could see straight into his soul. Perhaps that was a good thing today, because, finally, his father reached the landing where Adrien stood and pointed upstairs. Adrien didn't hesitate, he practically ran after him — or, more accurately, he ran in front him. Climbing the stairs two steps at the time, he reached the top landing long before his father did and opened the door.
The bedroom on the other side had descended into chaos since the last time Adrien was there. That tidy, organized space with the bookshelves to the left of the entrance, the workspace near the windows to the front courtyard, the bed at the center? That space no longer existed. Or perhaps, it did somewhere under the truckload of paper that had exploded right in the center of it. The very same truckload of paper that had seen Adrien freeze at the door for a pair of seconds before daring to step inside.
There were paper sheets laying over the rugs on the floor, he noted, jumping right over one such area. There were open sketchbooks over the dresser to his right and crumbled sheets that seemed to have been aimed at the paper bin beside it and completely failed their mark. The bed Adrien approached after putting those on the bin, well, the bed, at least, had survived immaculate. The same couldn't be said for the bedposts, though. There were paper sheets hanging from there, and having just reached them, Adrien could see the sketch of a short dress and so many notes scribbled all around it, he would have a clear idea of why and how that one piece of clothing broke into two in the sketch under it if he was to read them.
Still, carefully making his way away from the bed and towards the work area — still jumping over paper — Adrien's wandering mind hadn't been at all captured by the ongoing chaos. Not really. That honor belonged to the mannequin he had glimpsed from the entrance and that his father had propped up right in front of one of the windows overlooking the front courtyard. It belonged to the still very incomplete dress on that very mannequin, to the paper molds lying in a pile over the worktable and the cut pieces of black and red fabric peeking from between them. More than all of that, however, it belonged to the sketch that had been pinned to the wall between the windows, that was right over a very old sewing machine. And it was that sketch, Adrien was now leaning over that same sewing machine to see.
The sheet seemed to have been crumpled before it was rescued from its fate and pinned to the wall. That was a surprise. What was not surprising at all was that Adrien didn't need to study the dress on that page for long, or spend that much time comparing it to its still very incomplete real-life version on the mannequin, for his eyebrows to jump.
"It's a butterfly," he whispered.
That strapless bodice, that long tail flowing down the gown's back definitely made it look like a butterfly. But not any other butterfly. The colors that had been smudged to the side, on one of the corners of the paper, they—
The door clicked shut on the other side of the bedroom, the quiet sound of footsteps broke into Adrien's mind as he tilted his head and looked around. A new look at the workspace around him, at the low center table in particular, actually showed him more than he had previously noticed. There, laid over the only part of the table that was free, was the beginning of the embroidery for the gown's back. And right there! On the support table to the side of the sofa, this very delicate cloth flowers that looked exactly like carnations.
A moment more of studying those and Adrien turned to where his father now stood, putting his scarf inside the top drawer of the farthest of the bedside tables, the one Adrien could only glimpse over the bed itself. In fact, Adrien turned just in time to see his father look at him and immediately slam the drawer with his hip.
"Ah—" Adrien stuttered, eyes widening at seeing his father turn the key on the drawer. What–What was that about? Was he still mad about the safe? Why—?
Adrien shook his head. Important things first.
"Are we going anywhere?" he queried, attention going back to the sketch and the mannequin and the incomplete dress. "This is for Nathalie, right?"
It was. Adrien was sure it was. Taking the key to the bedside table with him as he stepped away, however, his father was giving him this curious look.
"Red and black," Adrien noted, pointing at what was actually the sewing machine before noticing and pulling his hand up. Now, he was pointing at the sketch hanging from the wall and the colors smudged there. "You only put those colors together when it is something for her."
A simple frown. Walking all the way from the other side of the bed, making his way to the workplace — which involved navigating the sketches and papers on the floor — his father stopped right at Adrien's side, gaze moving between the mannequin and his sketch.
"I do?" he whispered, visibly perplexed.
"Carnations, too," Adrien confirmed, now pointing at their cloth brethren resting over the support table to the side of the sofa. "It was always red roses for mother—" Adrien's stomach jerked painfully, that terrace and the red roses struggling to fill his mind, before he closed his hands, looked at his father and forced himself forward. "And pink carnations for Nathalie."
Sure right now the ones over the table were red, Adrien noted. Regardless of that, he was back to his father and that crevice forming between his eyebrows.
"So, what is this for?"
Having drifted all the way to the support table and the flowers, his father's attention had just jumped back to him.
"Fundraiser," he simply put, and stepped right back from where he had come from, going around the sofa. A few steps more and he had disappeared inside the bathroom, leaving Adrien to call after him as he closed the door.
"Am I going?"
"Yes," come the muffled answer.
"Are you going?" Adrien queried, the sound of running water already mixing with the words.
His answer was as one would expect.
"No."
Adrien lowered his head in resignation, a few careful footsteps later seeing him fall into the sofa. He spent several minutes there, staring at the ceiling, at the chandelier, spots of light appearing in his vision. He probably would have stayed there the entire night, if the sound of running water hadn't stopped just minutes later and his father's voice, still muffled by the door, hadn't called out to him.
"Adrien."
He was sitting the next second, pulling himself to see over the sofa's back.
"Yeah?" Adrien called out.
"Go to the bedside table. Bottom drawer."
Jumping right over the sofa's back was probably not the best strategy considering everything that was on the floor, still, that was exactly what Adrien did and landing just short of putting a foot right over one of the sketches, he was moving across the room, going by the bed and leaning over the bedside table.
As it was, upon opening the drawer, he found it empty.
"Someone put your pajamas to wash," Adrien shouted towards the closed bathroom door while already striding for the door immediately beside it. "Don't worry! I know where you keep them!"
Which was on the middle drawer to the very back of the walk-in closet, passed a row of multicolored shirts and trousers and right under a drawer of scarfs. Now picking one of the carefully rolled up pajamas, Adrien strode back into the room.
"Here," Adrien announced with a knock. The bathroom door opened only enough for Adrien to be able to stretch his arm inside. The pajamas was taken from his hand almost immediately, leaving Adrien to lean against the wall right between the bathroom and the closet doors.
"Have you told Nathalie?" Adrien now asked.
The question was met by a few seconds of silence.
"About the fundraiser?" his father finally asked.
Adrien had just rolled his eyes.
"About the dress," he clarified, a movement inside the bathroom making him look to the side, towards the small space between the door and the door frame. "You know she will get super embarrassed if you don't tell her about it."
The bathroom door was pulled open.
"I know she won't wear it if I do," his father remarked while rubbing a towel over his very wet, very disheveled hair.
That his hair was an utter mess wasn't, however, what had left Adrien staring at him. It was not even that black bandage around his wrist, after all, he had known that would be there. The reason why he was staring was that, although his father seemed to not have noticed it, he was just now moving across the room, striding over those paper sheets in the floor, while dressed in a brown pajamas that consisted of shorts and a t-shirt.
"Ah, Father," Adrien whispered, attention moving from his clothes to his face. "You know, it's February, right?"
Towel now over his right shoulder, left hand running through the locks of pale hair in an attempt to comb it, his father looked back.
"I'm aware of that," he spoke and Adrien—Adrien stared at him, and more so at his clothes.
Had he really not noticed? Should he just get back inside the closet and fix this before he got sick or something? He probably should, right? Surely—
"Son."
Adrien's attention snapped away from the closet door, searching around the room until he found where his father had gotten himself to. As it happened, he was already on the workspace, standing right in front of the sewing machine.
"I have been meaning to ask," his father started and immediately stopped, eyes darting to the photograph on the bedside table before going to rest on his sewing machine, a single head shake rendering him silent.
Tilting his head, him too looking at his mother picture before returning to his father, Adrien skipped between several patches of empty floor and joined his father on the workspace.
"What were you going to ask?"
There was silence. Fingers running down the engraved arm of the sewing machine, following the complex pattern, it took a long while until his father finally spoke.
"That school ball of yours, the masquerade—" he said, eyes still on the sewing machine, avoiding Adrien as much as they could. "You know what you wish to go as?"
Adrien's heart felt as if it had dived right through his chest and was lying somewhere at the button of his stomach. Still, he put on a smile and shrugged.
"Not really," he admitted, hands trying to sink into nonexistent pockets. "Marinette is making the costumes. She says she has this huge creative block, though. She tried to get us to be a deck of cards, each one of us a suit. She showed it to me on paper and it looked really cool, but I don't think she likes it. She also tried some characters from an old Italian play, but we are two persons short, so I don't she will go with that."
Adrien stopped, searching the pale gray eyes that had just find their way to him.
"You don't mind she does it, right?" he asked.
"No," his father spoke.
And Adrien waited. For him to say something like "I am curious," because the instant he had mentioned Marinette and her designing clothes, he honestly appeared to be. But his father didn't say anything more. Instead, he looked at him, eyebrows slowly drawing together and stepped back towards the sofa. There he sat, right hand carving this path over a thin white scar cutting vertically over his knee. He was simply studying Adrien now, like he could read him, like he was an open book.
"Is something wrong, son?"
The smile Adrien had been working so hard to act out shivered at the question. Still near the table with the sewing machine, facing his father over the center table where the paper molds and the fabrics were, Adrien stood there fighting with himself to keep on this facade. And yet, the answer spilled out of his lips before he could stop it.
"Yes," he said.
Looking at him from behind the glasses, his father's eyes seemed to get some of their past warmth back.
"What happened?"
Adrien swallowed, attention settling squarely on the floor and his own bare feet.
"Do I have to tell you?" he asked in a whisper.
The question was met by the pair of gray eyes watching him softening further, by his father leaning forward.
"Do you want to?"
Adrien's hands closed into fists, his attention running all over the papers on the floor, trying to find one sketch on which to focus, anywhere he could hide. There was nowhere, though. There was never anywhere he could hide when his father actually cared to look.
"I don't," Adrien admitted and if there had been sadness to his father's face when he said that, if the words had hurt him even a bit, none of it was there when Adrien raised his head again. "But I kind of wish I hadn't told my friends I was going to that ball."
His father's eyebrows drew together. As for Adrien, he had just taken to press his lips together and grimace.
"What is it?" his father queried.
The question made Adrien grunt.
"Am I too old for this?" he shot back, serious, and while crossing his arms. "Getting off things because I don't want to go?"
A long gaze at him, then at the dress he was working on and his father sighed. His next words were as serious as they always were.
"I am definitely too old."
Adrien gave that a tremulous smile and stepped to the sofa, where he sat, legs pulled to his chest. At his side, fetching the tablet he had wedged between the sofa's seats with his bandaged hand, his father tapped at it with the digital pen.
"You can tell your friends I changed my mind," he said, display coming to life on his hands.
Adrien looked his way the same moment, serious.
"But you didn't change your mind," he pointed out. "I did. And it isn't fair to pretend it was you. If they get angry it should be with me."
His father frowned, turning away from his work with his eyebrows pinched and such a contemplative expression he might have been looking at Adrien for the first time. Or maybe, it was more like he had expected something different, some answer that involved Adrien taking the offer and running with it like it was the right thing to do. Try as he might Adrien couldn't fandom where he had gotten the idea it was.
Still, his fatherdefended it.
"The difference between us, Adrien," he heard him say, while looking straight at him. "Is that I don't care what your friends think of me."
Adrien's eyes narrowed.
"I do," he remarked.
A tilt of his head, the slightest narrowing of his eyes, and his father shook his head, going to focus on the tablet over his legs. As for Adrien, having seemingly come on top of this exchange, he let his back hit the couch, and watched as his father work on that dress on the display. For a long while, a long, long while, Adrien just stayed there, silent and unmoving, watching as fashion design became less imaginative and waaaaay too technical. It was only when his father present work looked finished, that Adrien again talked.
"Can I really stay here?" he asked, attention abandoning the display in his father's hands so he could focus on his expression. "You are working. Won't I be a nuisance?"
There was pause. One so complete, the digital pen stopped halfway into a set of notes.
"You are not a nuisance," his father whispered. Then, in a much more audible tone. "But I doubt you will be able to sleep here."
Adrien bristled at the words, immediately letting himself fall to the side.
"Yeah, I can sleep through the alarm clock," he grumbled, going to lie belly up on the sofa. "Watch me!"
Something shivered in his father's eyes, something earnest that seemed to soften his face for a moment even if it never reached his lips.
Turning his back to the room, Adrien closed his eyes. He hadn't expected to actually be able to fall asleep, but fall asleep he did and he would wake up, drowsy and confused, to a weird beeping noise and the sound of a pencilsnapping.
"What was that?" Adrien mumbled, head raising from the pillow. The bedroom was dark. Shadows pressed around the sofa where he lay, peeking just beyond his father, who now sat with a sketchbook and glared at the city outside. "Did you hear that?"
"It was probably a car," his father remarked, tense, and while reaching inside a pencil case he now had at his side. Searching for something within, the sound of pencils hitting each other filling the bedroom, he stole a glance Adrien's way. "It's late. Go back to sleep."
Adrien must not have done what he was told for he would not remember any of that exchange. What he would perfectly remember was the second time he was roused for it came with feeling the covers being carefully pulled over his shoulders and this soft sound right next to his ear, a sound he had learned to dread.
Butterfly wings.
Adrien's eyes burst open, he sat so fast that, for a moment, looking at the wooden columns at the end of the bed, at the bookcases near the door and the closed window to his right, he didn't know where he was. In fact, it took quite a few seconds of his mind struggling with his bedroom back in the Loire, the bedroom he usually shared with Félix in England and the sofa back on Marinette's living room, before he remembered where he was.
He was in Paris.
He was in his father bedroom.
He was—
Adrien blinked, looking around.
He was no longer in the sofa, Adrien noted, that floating panicky sensation to his brain being replaced by a much more grounded one as he remembered what had woken him and looked around, the contours of the room starting to be clearly drawn around him.
He had heard a butterfly. No, surely not just a butterfly. An akuma. There was an akuma in here. There was an akuma in here no one could convince him otherwise.
"Dad?"
The call crossed his lips as he looked around. The panic that flared when he got no response, when he did not find him, that screamed at Adrien his father was already gone, faded only when Adrien looked at the workspace to find his father lying asleep on the sofa.
Adrien kicked the covers to the floor. A vigilant look flying all over the room, he ran to where his father was, stopping right to the sofa's side.
"Dad," Adrien called out, and he grabbed his shoulder, shaking him. "Wake up."
He did. Hedefinitely woke up! And how did Adrien know it? Because he could see his father eyelids flutter, he could see him open his eyes. He was even reaching for the phone charging on the floor, pressing the button to look at the clock—And just like that his father crashed straight back down!
If Adrien was right at that very moment being assailed with half a hundred times he had tried to get his father to wake up and been faced with exactly this scenario, it was because this had happened half a hundred times before. And somehow he had forgotten his father was like this! Always!
"Oh, come on!" Adrien groaned, shaking his father shoulder with rising urgency. "There is an akuma in here! Wake—!"
Something white appeared on Adrien's field of vision, then, the world collided right into his face. Or, at least, it was what it felt like before Adrien's mind noticed that the "world" was soft and strangely malleable and that it had turned his vision white for just a second before disappearing altogether—before Adrien understood that the thing that had just hit him was a pillow and that his father was even now covering his head with it, curling back on the sofa, visibly trying to tune him out.
And at that point, all but glaring at him, Adrien didn't think, he just reacted, and in so doing reached for the pillow on the other side of the sofa and struck the figure laying there. His father sat up so fast, Adrien just had time to have an "oh-oh" cross his lips before he scrambled away from the work area and started to back away towards the door, the ringtone he could hear coming from the atrium, offering this somber background music to his predicament as his father rose to his feet, pillow him hand, eyes locked on him.
Oh boy—
He was a dead Agreste!
Nathalie
Nathalie's phone was ringing. The unrelenting buzzing she was certain was calling her to answer not the front door, but Bernhard having a Gabriel-related meltdown, leaving her to massage the sides of her head as she went up the atrium stairs, the pressure she could feel behind her eyes making her sigh.
She hadn't cared to look at the clock when she had gotten up, after all, the mist pressing at the windows once she had opened the shutters had been telling enough as to one thing—
It was early.
It was far too early.
And as if that wasn't enough on itself, it was Sunday, and—
Nathalie's thoughts derailed, the tapping of her heels fell silent. Coming to a stop on the landing that led to Adrien's bedroom, Nathalie looked up, the sound of a lock clicking, of a door being tossed open and straight up crashing into the wall calling her attention all the way to the top landing just in time to see Adrien sprint out of Gabriel's bedroom, and practically fly down the stairs.
"Nathalie! Run!" he shouted and grabbed her by the hand as he went by her, fleeing from—
Being pulled down the stairs, trying not to trip, Nathalie barely had time to look up again, to see Gabriel appear, in his pajamas, near the handrail on the top floor, raise his right arm and send a pillow flying her and Adrien's way.
"Duck!" Adrien shouted, not that they needed to, the pillow smacked against the handrail at their side with a loud thud before tumbling downwards to lay amid the butterfly tiles on the ground floor.
It was there, between the armchairs on the waiting area near the atelier, that Adrien picked it up, turning to Nathalie with such triumphant bewilderment he didn't even notice Gabriel reappearing right over them, glasses now in place and with a second pillow in hand.
"He failed!" Adrien celebrated.
The second pillow didn't.
Adrien
Math. If there ever was a subject, Adrien would have to point at as being his worse that was it. In fact, he was so bad at it he might have hoped being hit in the back of the head by a pillow might have rewired his brain so he might be able to understand what was going on in the textbook in front of him. Unfortunately—
The pencil in Adrien's hand stopped moving, tip right over the last of the many circles he had been drawing and filling on the side. A second later, staring at the polka-dotted pattern, he found his shoulders sagging.
Okay, scratch that last thought about math. If there really was one thing he wished that pillow had done was take Ladybug out of his mind, to stop seeing her in everywhere and in everything. In all fairness, for like a pair of minutes of running down the stairs, the pillow had done just that, but right now he was. Back. At. It.
"About the costumes Mlle. Nightingale had in mind—" Bernhard said, the sound of his voice enough excuse for Adrien to let his attention slip away from his—
Adrien glanced at the many black circles on the border of the page.
—studies, he chose to finish.
He was in the living room right now. He and Nathalie, to be exact. As for Adrien's father, he had stepped in here some time ago, picked up some of the invoices Nathalie had set to the side and left for the atelier. Adrien just had to lean back in his chair to see he had locked himself in there. Not that any of that was surprising. Nor was, he might add, to be sitting on the living room studying math, Nathalie right at his side. What wasn't expected at all was for her to have her computer, for her to have brought the printer here and set it over the table, and to be dividing her attention between him, the invoices and the video call on the display. That was the place Bernhard's voice had risen from some moments ago. Right now, it showed him biting the back of a pen, while frowning at something on his computer display.
"M. Agreste has asked me to contact headquarters for the materials for Mlle. Nightingale's costumes and her required clothes," Nathalie was now informing. "He intends to make them. I assume you can do something with that."
Bernhard peeked his head, attention flying from whatever he was reading to Nathalie in this side of the call.
"He does?"
"He would trust no one else."
A quick twitch of his lips, what undoubtedly was a satisfied and rapidly suppressed smile, and Bernhard had tossed the pen aside, he was typing. In fact, both him and Nathalie were typing for so long, Adrien actually managed to do something with his equations. And by something he meant he moved the 'x' around. Not that he was certain he had moved it in the right way. Maybe he had? Surely he could ask Nathalie again—
Adrien's attention stumbled on that dotted pattern to the side of the sheet on the way to her. It stumbled and it stayed as a sigh made it across his lips.
"You seem down, kid," Bernhard commented that same instant, his voice intruding on Adrien's thoughts so suddenly, he looked around, dazed.
"What?" he blurted out mindlessly, attention jumping between Nathalie at his side and Bernhard on the computer she had just turned Adrien's way. "Oh. Not really." Adrien raised his notebook, turning the contents to the webcam. "It's just math."
Was he in any other state of mind, he might have noticed the look Bernhard and Nathalie had just shared. Back to staring blindly at his studies, however, he saw nothing. Not even, the way Bernhard had just tilted his head at him.
"It hardly looks like math," he pointed out, causing Adrien to immediately wrinkle his nose at the notebook and the equations.
"Yeah, I know."
Bernhard let out a snort, going to lean back into his chair, right hand running over locks of curly hair.
"By the way, Adrien, I heard you have this photo shot at the Pompidou," he commented. "What have they put you on this time? More clothes? That perfume?"
The top of the pencil, tapping against the notebooks, Adrien frowned, thoughtful.
"I think its clothes again," he said, bringing his attention to the side, to Nathalie, to see her give him a nod. No sooner had she done that, however, than Adrien's eyes narrowed jumping back to the computer's display and Bernhard. "You are not choosing the photos, are you?"
Still, leaning back into his chair, Bernhard blinked.
"That is quite the reaction."
There was no way to react to that other than rolling his eyes, unless that person was Bernhard apparently. He was looking at Adrien with most confused of expressions.
"What does that even mean?"
"I saw what you picked for father," Adrien pointed out, crossing his arms. "He is grinning. It looks nothing like him."
Bernhard's eyebrows had just shot up. Gazing at Adrien from over the phone he had just picked up from the table behind him, Bernhard was the picture of innocence.
"It looks exactly like him."
Adrien rolled his eyes, again. No. No, it didn't.
"He looks like he is plotting to kill someone," he remarked, only for the corner of Bernhard's lips to slowly turn up. Fingers intertwined under his chin, he winked.
" Exactly."
Adrien found a snort trying to make its way to his nose.
"Anyway, kid," Bernhard continued, right hand going for what must be — even though Adrien couldn't see it — the computer's mouse. "Want a ride home back from the Pompidou?"
Having just returned to the string of unfinished equations in the sheets in front of him, Adrien jumped on his seat, attention back to the computer.
"Really? On the bike?" he asked, immediately going to Nathalie. "Do you think—? Right, right, ask Father."
Arm's crossed, Adrien was back to facing Bernhard.
"It's a no."
"The offer stands if it isn't," Bernhard remarked, gaze going from whatever it was he was twitching his nose at to Nathalie. "I feel I have taken enough of your Sunday. I will come back to you tomorrow, when everything is finished."
The screen turned black at Nathalie's nod. The window that had held the video-call, that had showed Bernhard, his gray chair, and the painting behind him, was closed. A glance at her side, and Nathalie reached for Adrien's notebook. A quick look at his work, however, was enough for her to shake her head.
"This is not going anywhere today," she commented, patiently.
"Sorry."
Nathalie took of her glasses and pressed her eyes.
"I wasn't scolding you," she said, turning her gaze on him. "I apologize if it sounded like that. I didn't sleep much."
Adrien gave her a weak smile.
"Yeah. That makes two of us."
A slight tilt of the head and taking a blue squared-tissue from the case in front of her, Nathalie ran it back and forth over the glasses' lenses, her eyes narrowing slightly as she tried to get Adrien's face to focus.
"There truly is something wrong, then," she pointed out.
Adrien pressed his lips, attention going all the way up to the chandelier over the table and running over its many arms. In the end, however, it went back to her.
"Remember that girl I was going to ask to go to the school ball with me?"
He didn't need to say anything else. Nathalie's expression had just softened.
"I see," she said, eyes reclaiming their penetrating quality when she put her glasses back on. "Have you talked with someone?"
A shrug, followed by Adrien rubbing the back of his neck the next second.
"I told Marinette," he admitted. "She is kind of in the same boat."
Nathalie's eyebrows had just shot straight up to form this absolutely perplexed expression. Then, she was squaring a small pile of sheets against the table.
"That was unfortunate," she offered with little emotion.
"Yeah, and I can't tell you how awesome she is!" Adrien exclaimed, crossing his legs over the chair. "He must be a gigantic idiot not to see it!"
Nathalie was pinching her lips for some reason and Adrien might have noticed it if he hadn't reached for the pencil he had left over the table.
"What am I supposed to do now?" he asked after a moment of painting a series of squares in the sheet. "Is it just keep trying or give up?"
There was a moment of silence, a moment where little more than the computer's fan was heard. Then—
"There is a third option," Nathalie spoke, staring at the papers she still held, her eyes so distant she might be talking to herself. And perhaps, she was. Perhaps, Adrien should have just let it be. But—
He leaned her way, hopeful.
"What is it?"
Nathalie's eyes grew dimmer and dimmer, until they lost all light they held.
"You can do neither," she said. "You may end up stuck, unable to."
Adrien pinched his eyebrows, leaning further and further until his head was right to the side of the sheets of paper Nathalie was still holding and his eyes somehow intercepted hers. It was only then, she seemed to notice she had said all of that out loud. Immediately, a small smile touched her lips.
"But that is not you," she reassured, not that it did anything other than cause Adrien to frown, eyes never leaving hers.
"Why are you talking like it is you?"
Nathalie's smile shivered, it waned, falling apart as she turned back to the invoices, to the stapler, to the computer and whatever else was around her. The answer she didn't seem willing to give, however, had just gone through Adrien like a roaring flame, one that made him go straight in his chair.
"You—?" Adrien stuttered, staring right at her, flabbergasted. Then, then he leaned back into the table, trying to gain Nathalie's attention back. "Who is it?!"
Squaring the papers against the table from all possible angles, Nathalie visibly swallowed.
"It's private," she said, eyes avoiding Adrien, fleeing his gaze any way they could and rushing for Adrien's math textbook. "Concerning your studies—"
Jaw set, Adrien reached for the textbook, closing it at his side.
"Do I know who it is?" he insisted, hand still over the textbook, and this time, this time — even though her fingers were clawed around the papers — Nathalie turned to face him.
"It'sprivate, Adrien," she remarked.
Adrien simply crossed his arms.
"Have you talked with someone?"
It was Nathalie's turn to pinch her eyebrows.
"You aren't doing that."
Now sitting sideways on his chair, putting his feet over the chair's spindle, Adrien sure was.
"You could talk to me," he said. "I would listen."
Nathalie turned away from him, left hand going for the stapler. Her silence was a good an answer as any other.
"If you are not going to tell me," Adrien remarked, even if disappointed. "You could talk with father."
At his side, still avoiding his gaze, Nathalie closed her eyes.
"Your father as enough on his shoulders without me burdening him with my problems."
"Yeah, because he would complain," Adrien immediately retorted, arms crossed, the sound of the stapler having just punctuated his words. "Mother would go on and on and on! He doesn't mind listening."
Nathalie's gaze had become lost on the tables and numbers on the back of a new set of sheets.
"Mme. Agreste is his wife, Adrien."
It hit him like a slap, that address, the strangeness of it and just like that Adrien was staring at Nathalie, eyebrows so arched a deep crevice had just appeared in his forehead.
"Madame?" he half-blurted out, half-stuttered, and he might have continued, he seriously might have lost his train of thought right there and asked when had his mother gone from "Emilie" to "Madame Agreste," instead Adrien found himself chewing the question down. Yeah, that didn't matter right now. It didn't matter at all!
"What did he say to you?" Adrien asked. "Did he tell you no?"
"He doesn't need to for me to know."
Adrien's heart sank.
"That means you don't intend to tell him, doesn't it?" he pointed out, the question that had been on the tip of his tongue — that quiet 'Why?' — getting robbed of life as the answer came to him. And Adrien didn't know the reason, but that realization made him blurt out something he hadn't meant to say. To anyone. Ever.
"I spent the entire night wishing he didn't exist, you know? Whoever, she likes," Adrien admitted. "It would be easier if he didn't, maybe then I would have a chance."
Nathalie's expression softened, silence taking over the living room, settling among the fireplace and the chandelier and the table, as she brought her attention away from her work. She was looking at him now. She was going to say something, Adrien could tell she was. But just as Nathalie set her eyes on him a sudden realization seemed to strike her, chasing some sort of shadow Adrien hadn't even noticed was in her eyes.
"I'm glad she did," Nathalie whispered as if to herself, and now Adrien arched his eyebrows, confused. Really really confused.
"Why?"
Nathalie smiled, cupping Adrien's face, running her thumb down his cheek, before turning away. Her hand hit the pen she had set over the table as she did, sending it rolling to the floor.
Perplexed as he still was, Adrien got up.
"I will get it!" he announced, disappearing under the table after the rolling pen. The question that had started this, the one Nathalie hadn't answered, was now back on his lips. "Anyway, who is he?"
The door opened the same moment he spoke. All things considered, it was good the Miraculous on Adrien's finger didn't grant him the ability to read Nathalie's mind or emotions, because, dressed in this light brown suit and waistcoat, wearing a blue shirt underneath, and carrying a small pile of papers in his hands, Adrien's answer had just walked itself in.
"What is with this house and sugar?"
Adrien's attention flew to the side in time to see his father's legs approach the table, to see him pull the chair that had been Adrien's and sit.
"Fifty, one kilo packages for month," he kept going. "Surely, Nathalie, we are not looking to create a shortage."
Silence took the place of words, a strange silence that for some reason looked to Adrien like Nathalie was trying to warn his father about him being under the table, fingers closed over the missing pen. His father must be nose deep into the house's finances, however, for Nathalie had seemingly failed.
"I haven't thought of sugar as a business opportunity," she now said, serious. "But if it is, you will need someone to run the books."
Adrien had to bite his cheek not to snort. As for his father, hand and paper sheets falling to his side and appearing under the table, he had just sighed.
"Nathalie," he whispered, the scolding tone lacking any bite at all. Which was all the better for, on all fours and on his way to get from under the table, Adrien had just remembered he had something he wanted to ask.
"Father?"
Nathalie's effort to silently tell his father he, Adrien, was here, really had failed. Face and upper torso appearing as he went to look under the table, his father had just frowned.
"What are you doing under the—?" he started to say and stopped, sighing, when Adrien showed him the pen. "Never mind. What is it?"
Adrien sat, table right over his head.
"Bernhard asked if he could pick me up from the photo shot," he said and swallowed at how narrowed his father's eyes had just become. "In his bike?"
Yeah, his father's eyes were seriously narrow now.
"Please?" Adrien even though tried. "You know he is careful."
A slight frown going over his face, his father went back to sitting straight.
"I will think about it," he said, causing Adrien to lean forward, hands sinking into the carpet, all the while trying to look up at his father from under the table, mind somewhere between hopeful and suspicious.
"You will?"
"More importantly," his father soldiered on, the rustling of paper sheets coming alongside his voice. "I would normally refrain from commenting on your expenses, Adrien, but—What is with you and all this cheese?"
Adrien's eyes bulged, a rush of panic making him jump to get to his feet and come up with some excuse. Rather than doing that, however, Adrien's ascent came to a sudden stop when he rammed into the table overhead. It felt as if his head had broken right in the middle, and either he was hallucinating right now or his father and Nathalie were in the process of breaking some kind of speed record for they were on their feet, they were pulling the chairs back, they were under the table, they were on their knees in front of him, and before Adrien could say anything Nathalie was holding his face.
"Open it," she ordered making Adrien open his mouth as his father reached forward, fingers run frantically through his hair.
"I forgot there was a table," Adrien moaned.
His father's hand fell from Adrien's head, gaze dropping to meet his eyes. There was little more Adrien could offer his visibly concerned expression other than an apologetic smile, at least, for the second and a half that took him to a whisper a "Auch!" and close his eyes, rubbing the top of his head. In fact, he became so focused on that, he didn't even notice his father close one hand over his right knee and press it as he started to rise.
"How do you forget there is a—?"
SLAM!
Adrien opened his eyes in time to see his father fall back to his knees while holding his head. Kneeling at his side, Nathalie's eyes had just gone wide.
"Are you alright?" she queried, immediately leaning over his father.
And it was stronger than Adrien. It was so much stronger than him!
"He forgot there was a table," Adrien clarified.
Nathalie's fingers flew to her lips, mirth joining the worry in her face as she closed her hand over his father's shoulder, and he grumbled something back.
It would be nighttime when Adrien finally stepped out of the living room, a "Goodnight" being sent Nathalie and his father's way as they headed to their respective rooms. It would be later still when Adrien would be forced to jump out the window because Hawkmoth was at itagain and something happened, something that would have hurt enough without being rejected, that stung all the more because he had. That something made Adrien stand in front of Plagg when they got back home, his expression such the kwami backed away.
"That Miraculous, the Fox one," Adrien snapped. "Where did Ladybug get it?"
Nathalie
Nathalie sat up on her bed, the insistent knocking that had just startled her awake, leaving her looking around as a deep voice cut through her bedroom's silence.
"Nathalie, wake up. "
The light on the bedside table was turned on, its yellowish glow spreading over the armchairs, the center table, the bookshelves, and the small corridor that led to the bedroom's door, down towards where that familiar voice was again rising.
"Nathalie."
Gabriel?
"Moment," Nathalie said, the computer that was still on her lap — that still showed the black window of the movie she had fallen asleep watching — being rapidly set aside as she pulled her legs out of bed.
Feet now sinking on the rug to the side of the bed, drowsy enough she rammed against the nearest armchair while trying to navigate the bedroom — or maybe that was because she had forgotten her glasses — Nathalie made her way to the door. She opened it to find herself face to face with Gabriel, to see him stepping right into the bedroom not even looking back.
"Something happened."
Closing the door, following behind him, Nathalie took a quick look towards her pajamas, and reached for the robe on the back of the armchair.
Whatever she was wearing, however, seemed but a side note on Gabriel's mind—if it registered at all. He had dropped to his knees in front of her bed, he was reaching for the computer, opening the browser and typing something in. Frustration painting his features when the page failed to load, Gabriel hit enter again. This time the page jumped forward. The page and a video that was already starting.
Hugging the robe around her Nathalie stepped closer to the computer, and reached for the glasses on her bedside table. Her eyebrows pinching slightly as she watched Gabriel pull the video forward, trying to make sense of the fast moving images, she stared intently the moment the video was allowed to roll.
"Is there something I should be looking for?"
No earlier had Nathalie asked that than she got her answer. Through the chaos of what was clearly one of Gabriel's akumas, the sound of a flute could be heard. Eyes growing, Nathalie stepped towards Gabriel, she knelt at his side, staring at the images. On the display, Ladybug, Chat Noir, the akuma were no longer visible, instead a girl dressed in a pattern of orange and white, the girl who was playing the flute, had been captured by the camera. And hanging from her neck was a necklace, its pendant in the form of tail.
Nathalie's fingers moved over the touch pad, hitting the pause button, leaving that image frozen on the display. That thing dancing on the unknown girl's chest was a Miraculous. The Fox.
"Did you make that one?" Nathalie queried, eyes rushing to meet Gabriel. Her tone now forceful. "You made that one."
"No."
Nathalie bit her lip, attention on Gabriel'd growing grim, her heart so tight it might have stopped.
"Emilie is right," she heard him say, the fanatical gleam to the familiar gray eyes leaving Nathalie's fingers to close over the fabric of her trousers, to press it harder still when Gabriel turned that feverish gaze on her.
"That person you tracked here, the survivor from the Temple," he now said. "Emilie is right, he is a guardian, he brought a box with him."
Nathalie forced herself to breathe, to untie that painful knot on the back of her throat. Even when she managed to talk, however, to force a single syllable out, her mouth felt like parchment.
"Sir."
"Ladybug and Chat Noir," Gabriel continued. "Those Miraculous of theirs, they don't belong to some holders that survived whatever befell the temple, they are part of an entire set!"
A head shake and Nathalie tried to reach forward, to grab Gabriel's shoulder. It was too late, however. He was up, he was pacing, and for all her worry, for all those pieces of emotion that must be rushing Gabriel's way and bombarding him through the Miraculous, he remained distant, he kept grinning and talking, his mind not in any way with her.
"Emilie would want me to get that box," he said as Nathalie too rose. "She would want it. If she has those Miraculous when she wakes up everything will be much easier. This is an opportunity!"
Nathalie's hands pressed to each other and if anything her growing concern should have alerted Gabriel. But if it did, it didn't stop him, it didn't put out the maniac gleam to his eyes, nothing did, not even her words.
"I just see a problem," Nathalie remarked, eyes following Gabriel as he strode all the way to the bookshelf on the corner of the room and back to where Nathalie stood near the bed. "We know nothing about this guardian. Not who he is. Not what he knows. Not what his intentions are."
Gabriel stopped at those words. Left hand closing over the armchair at his side, fingers clawing into the beige pillow, he looked back.
"We know he has been hiding since the beginning," he now remarked, lips flat, that disturbing grin replaced by a carefully chained anger that made him look taller, that left the entire room under his command. "And what does this paragon of virtue send to the battlefield in his stead? Children. A city of two million and he picks children to toss at me! The flutist far too enthusiastic for her own good! That bug clever but dependent on the kwami! And the cat—!"
It was gone then, the over-bright gleam to his eyes, the energy from a moment ago. Standing near the armchair, Gabriel seemed to diminish, to go back to his usual stature.
"You are still worried Chat Noir might be Adrien," Nathalie spoke.
Gabriel closed his eyes, his lips parted. Standing in front of her, however, gazing at her for a long while, he ended up simply making his way to where Nathalie stood, and lowered himself to sit, his back against the side of the bed.
"Has he talked to you?" Gabriel put forth after a moment of gazing at the chairs and table on the living area now in front of him. "Adrien, I mean."
Nathalie pressed her hands together, bringing their worried fidgeting to a stop.
"Briefly," she informed, quietly, and while looking down to where Gabriel sat. "He talked to you?"
A glance her way and Gabriel leaned his head back against the mattress, going to stare, blindly, at the ceiling.
"He talked only about not wishing to go to that school ball anymore," he shared, voice only a whisper of what it had been a moment ago. "I offered him a way out."
Something in that sentence, on the way it had been spoken, made Nathalie give him a small smile.
"Adrien didn't take it," she said, fondly.
"He didn't," Gabriel confirmed. "Apparently, me getting blamed wouldn't be fair."
"You disagree?" she pressed, a single step forward seeing her take the empty place at Gabriel's side.
"Blaming me would make everything easier," he remarked, dismissive. "I can live with his friends' dislike."
Sadness found a way to Nathalie's expression at Gabriel's tone, at his words. Whether she wished to keep going down this path or not, however, was meaningless. Gabriel had already moved on.
"Adrien told you what happened?"
Now, straightening her robe, Nathalie looked to the side.
"He didn't tell me more than you already concluded," she said while Gabriel took off his glasses and hanged them from the pocket on his waistcoat. "It seems he was rejected."
Gabriel nodded, back to leaning his head against the mattress. A second later, however, and he was leaning forward, eyebrows in an arch.
"By the young lady from the bakery?"
"It wasn't her."
If Gabriel had looked confused before, it was nothing to how mystified he looked right now.
"I—I might have interpreted it wrong," he stuttered, fingers running distractedly over the scarf, right over the spot where the Miraculous laid hidden. "Speaking of Mademoiselle Dupain-Cheng, I remember you telling the Collector, I should mentor her."
Nathalie's eyes widened, going to stare right at Gabriel. She didn't need to say anything, her question was clear enough.
"I remember it," Gabriel remarked, tone such one might think there was a sour taste to the words. "Even if some parts are clearer than others. Adrien." A pause. "You."
Nathalie's heart seemed to stop for a moment, her fingers going back to twisting the fabric of her trousers. In front of her, Gabriel had taken to look at the ceiling.
"It's curious," he was now saying, thoughtful and seemingly lost on the carved designs overhead. "I still don't remember anything from when I first called the Collector forward. Even Adrien's absence was simple knowledge, not in any way a memory."
Bringing his attention back down, Gabriel met the blue of Nathalie's eyes.
"You talked with this Collector," he noted. "Did you notice anything different?"
Nathalie's gaze lingered in Gabriel's eyes for a moment longer, then her attention went for her lap, a feeling of disappointment settling over her when she found it empty, that paper flower the Collector had given her gone.
"He—" she said and brought her attention back up. "Sometimes it felt like he was you."
Gabriel frowned. He wasn't the only one, though. Daring to peek from inside Gabriel's jacket, Nooroo's expression was practically the same. Curious. Attentive. And then, then without any notice, he took flight, picked Nathalie's phone from the bedside table and moved towards the small table where a chess set and a notepad had been set.
"It is of little importance," Gabriel now said, his words accompanied by the sound of Nooroo flipping through the written pages on the notepad. "As for Mlle. Dupain-Cheng—"
Nathalie attention went back to Gabriel, the curious glance she had given to Nooroo's present struggle with very carefully taking a page out of the notepad, abandoned in favor of what she had just heard.
"Is tutoring even a good idea?" she queried, causing Gabriel lips to become thinly pressed.
"It is you who suggested it," he pointed out.
Nathalie could do little but move uncomfortably on her spot.
"That was before the dancing lesson you gave Adrien," she admitted and stopped, her tone becoming softer. "I remember you being patient with the piano."
"I remember being younger," Gabriel immediately retorted. Nathalie took that with a sigh.
"Of course, I forgot you are ancient," she remarked, the good humored gleam to her eyes all but defeating the seriousness to her tone. "A living fossil."
Gabriel rolled his eyes. They sat so close now their arms touched, close enough, it meant he just had to tilt his head to the side to make an extremely poor impression of glaring at her.
"How very funny, Nathalie."
A smile broke through Nathalie's expression at that. Timid as it was, it filled her face, bright enough to distract both of them from their present topic and the sound of Nooroo's putting a video on play on the phone. Letting his head rest against the side of her bed, Gabriel found her gaze.
"It is rather late, isn't it?" he said, voice low, so low, it might feel it was afraid of breaking something. "I could have waited until morning."
Nathalie shook her head, the smell of that spicy cologne she knew filling her nostrils as she inhaled.
"No," she said, her head too going to rest against the side of the mattress, a soft heaviness settling behind her eyes. "No, you couldn't."
Gabriel's expression softened, more so when she continued.
"You were speaking about Marinette."
Gabriel's attention slipped back to the ceiling, back the red lampshades of the ceiling light.
"Mademoiselle Dupain-Cheng, yes," he said, thoughtful. "That girl is talented, if she truly wishes to go into fashion I can offer her a hand. If only to stop this world from eating her alive."
Nathalie closed her eyes for a moment, rubbing them with the tips of her fingers, before opening them again, her eyelids heavy.
"That worries you?" she asked. "That she might fade?"
Whatever softness remained on Gabriel's expression disappeared.
"Not as much as finding out what she has locked on that diary of hers," he remarked. "I intend to go to her home once Mlle. Nightingale departs tomorrow. The sooner we get this out of the way the better."
Nathalie frowned.
"May I inquire how you expect to make Marinette to show you her diary?"
"I don't," Gabriel remarked. "But I do intend to raise the topic of magic boxes. Perhaps for our perfume line. For what Adrien describes of the girl, she likes to be helpful, no doubt she will take the bait. More so if show interest of adapting her design."
A look to his side, so he could face Nathalie, and Gabriel frowned.
"Thoughts," he said.
"It might work."
Gabriel eyebrows arched.
"I expected more resistance," he admitted.
Eyes threatening to close, Nathalie shifted in her place.
"It is a sound plan," she said, and stopped for a moment, covering her lips to yawn.
"And if Marinette refuses your offer?" she then asked. "If she doesn't wish to be under your wing?"
"That wouldn't be unexpected," Gabriel said. "Disappointing, yes, but hardly unexpected. It is not as if I made any effort to be friendly, I wouldn't criticize her if she didn't want anything to do with me. Still, such a failure won't leave me out of options. There is a possibility to—"
Gabriel didn't continue. Something had just slumped against his shoulder, a heaviness that called his attention to the side, to the place where he expected Nathalie to be, listening, to where he instead found her leaning against his arm, asleep.
"Nathalie?"
She didn't move, not when Gabriel again called her, not when he reached forward to slip the glasses from her, not even when he took her in his arms to lay her on the bed. Why he remained there after that, why of all things he elected to approach Nooroo he did not know. But approach him, he did. And, gaze jumping between the kwami's ongoing struggle to fold a paper sheet and the video running on Nathalie's cellphone, Gabriel sat on the nearest armchair, taking the thing off the kwami's hands.
Maybe he should have noticed the hopeful look on Nooroo's eyes right then.
Maybe he should have glared the thing away every time it went to "help" and paused the video.
Maybe he should have demanded he was told why the moment he finished, the very moment an origami flower was on the palm of his hand, Nooroo picked it up. Why he looked so crestfallen when he turned to find Nathalie asleep.
Again, he didn't.
Instead, Gabriel allowed himself to sink into the armchair for a moment, to frown at the chess set in front of him and move one of the black bishops forward. He wouldn't remember closing his eyes after that. He wouldn't remember Nooroo putting the paper flower right to the side of one of the knights. He wouldn't remember that same kwami struggling with the blanket that was over the other armchair or him covering him with it. Instead, Gabriel sank into a welcoming darkness. Indifferent even to the whispers rising through that healing injury Robostus had left in his mind, he slept through the sunlight that started to peek from the other side of the shutters, through the alarm on Nathalie's phone a half-asleep Nooroo went to turn off, through everything—until a sudden restlessness captured him and a rising sense of betrayal burst into his mind, flailing it in such a way Gabriel hissed and grunted and sent his hand flying for the Miraculous least that thing set his chest on fire.
Blind, unthinking, calling for a kwami who was barely even awake — who was sucked into the Miraculous regardless — Hawkmoth stood among the armchairs and books of Nathalie's bedroom, a desperate plea for any of his butterflies to come to him making him rise one hand in front of him.
They would come, but someone else reached him first.
"What's wrong?"
Gabriel blinked, the pair of hands that had just closed over both sides of his face, pulling his head down, leaving him to face a pair of blue eyes. The answer, was one that was leaving Gabriel's skin paler by the second.
"That is Adrien."
Adrien
"Dude, is something up?" Nino asked, footsteps leading him right to where Adrien laid, belly up on one of the school's long benches. "I have been searching for—"
Nino stopped barely having cleared the row of lockers at his side, a profoundly uncomfortable expression going through his countenance when Adrien raised the hand covering his eyes and turned his attention to him.
"I'm fine."
A grimace was all that Nino managed for a while. That and a quick look behind him as he looked for support — or reconsidered his exit strategy. Whatever he decided to do, however, was not something Adrien, now glaring at the ceiling, was privy to. Not, at least, until Nino spoke and Adrien looked to the side to find him with his back leaning against the lockers.
"Seriously, dude," Nino put forth, one hand pressing the back of his neck. "You are looking at everyone the same way your father looks at me. And I have this feeling he is trying to turn me into ash."
A pause. One which, perhaps, Nino expected to elicit laughter. It didn't, however, and so he pushed forward.
"Can't you tell me what is wrong?"
Adrien let his arms fall to his side.
He wished he could. He wished he could share what was in his mind. And that he couldn't, that he had to keep the appearance of that Fox Miraculous to himself, was making his mood sour more and more. That was the reason he had retreated into the locker room rather than spend time with his friends. That was the reason he was happy no one had been waiting for him when he had come down from his bedroom, why he didn't even wonder where Nathalie was. Liable as he was to explode on her and have his father stride right out of the atelier with a chilly "Explain" on his lips, it was better he was left alone. As for Nino—
Adrien stole a quick glance to where his best friend was, leaning against the lockers, looking extremely uncomfortable.
No. Nino didn't deserve to have him explode either.
"I'm fine, I—"
Adrien didn't get to finish. The door to the locker room had opened again. This time, however, rather than let one of his friends in, the people made their way inside weren't anyone he knew. Or, at least, the two girls making their way inside weren't anyone he knew, the person following behind them in an identifiable lab coat was Mme. Mendeleiev.
"It's school rules, ladies," she was saying in her usual strict tone, the very same one that kept the entire class in line without her having to do anything else.
Looking to the side, Adrien could see the trio for the moment it took for them to walk away from the door and disappear behind that row of lockers Nino leaned against.
"It will be returned to you in the end of the day," Mme. Mendeleiev was now saying.
Adrien crossed his legs, ready to go back to his brooding. Almost immediately, however, he found himself leaning over his arm, staring incredulous at the science teacher as she reappeared on that small stretch between the lockers and the door. She was carrying a magazine under her arm and on the cover, under some huge letters obscured by Mme. Mendeleiev arm was a face Adrien hadn't seen in a magazine in months.
Mom?
Adrien was on his feet now. He was striding right passed Nino.
"I forgot something in the classroom."
He was out in the courtyard before Nino could make a gesture to follow him. Now outside, zigzagging towards the crowd enjoying recess, Adrien followed Mme. Mendeleiev, walking all the way across the courtyard and then up the stairs. She was going for their usual classroom as it would seem. At least, that was what this path led him to think. Stepping to the side, mixing with the group of people hanging near the handrail, careful to lean over it and keep his back turned to her, Adrien watched through the corner of his eyes as Mme. Mendeleiev stepped into the classroom and, a few minutes later, again stepped outside.
Lowering his head when the science teacher went right behind him, Adrien lingered outside for a little bit longer, then he walked up to the door. The door opened the instant he pressed the doorknob down. Inside, the classroom was empty, the only thing there his and his colleagues' bags. That side of the classroom wasn't at all, however, what interested him right now. Instead, he walked up to the teacher's desk, a detour that was apparently strange enough for Plagg to force his head out of his chest pocket.
"Adrien?" he called out. "What are you doing?"
A watchful glance at the door, and Adrien leaned forward, opening drawer after drawer until the magazine was in view.
"I'm borrowing this," he informed, taking it out and, drawer snapping shut behind him making his way to his seat and his bag. As for Plagg, he was now hovering behind him.
"This sure doesn't look like borrowing," he commented.
Adrien glared at Plagg, putting his bag on top of the desk and shoving the magazine right in front of the kwami.
"This," he snapped, pointing at his mother's smiling picture on the cover, at the Collector's cruel grin on the lower left. "This was why Nathalie and Bernhard were here last Friday. This thing with the school banning magazines? It's Father. It has Father written all over it, I'm just an idiot not to have seen it earlier. This has nothing to do with people reading magazines during classes or something like that. This is about me reading them! There is something here he doesn't want me to see, I have to know what they are saying about him this time."
"This time?" Plagg repeated, only to shake his head the same second. "Remember the last time you went around poking your nose in your father's business?"
Having just opened his bag, Adrien flinched. He swallowed. Yeah, he remembered. He remembered as if it was happening right now.
The safe.
The book.
The Collector.
"I'm keeping you safe."
Adrien's fingers clawed around the magazine. Hovering at his side, Plagg expression was pleading.
"If your father is keeping something from you, he must have his reasons."
Adrien's hands curled into fists. Reasons. Yeah. Everyone had their reasons, every single time. And just like that the guilt had been building on his chest, sizzled out, it completely burned away and what laid beneath—
"You would know everything about that," he threw at Plagg, magazine still firmly on his hands. "Father has his reasons, and not even once can he trust me."
Plagg's eyes grew wide, he was hovering right in front of Adrien's face now, frantic.
"You are angry at us!" Plagg tried to reason. "Ladybug and me! It is not your father's fault!"
Adrien's nostrils flared.
"Of course, it is not his fault. It is never anyone's fault," he retorted. "I have no reason to be anything but happy!"
Plagg's green eyes seemed to fill his entire face.
"I didn't say that," he tried to remark, nervous. "Your Father never said that. No one said that."
Adrien's eyes sank into Plagg's, their furious glare sending him into the bag. Only then, with Plagg gone, did Adrien turn his attention back to the magazine and sat.
He opened it just as an akuma landed on the window. Just as it looked inside.
Gabriel
"What happened?" Nathalie was querying. "Is Adrien fine?"
Pressed so tightly they had by now turned white, Gabriel's lips parted, his mind stepping far enough away from the akuma and the blond teenager beyond the window, that Hawkmoth could see the small bedroom and woman at his side.
"He got his hands on one of those magazines."
It came through the Miraculous the very moment he finished speaking, the shiver of trepidation, the painful sting of worry. Through all that, however, Nathalie's voice remained level.
"Where is he?"
There was no mistaking Nathalie's answer. Not even if Gabriel hadn't been with the akuma all the way. Not even if the space again filling his mind, the one he could see beyond the window, with its amphitheater-like seats and desks, was not so clearly a classroom.
"He is at school," Gabriel said watching as Adrien's gaze made its way down the text. His eyebrows were pulled so close together a deep crease had formed right between them. "Some of those friends of his must have brought that thing in and showed it to him."
The rising worry that flowed from Nathalie, that hit Gabriel in a marked rhythm, had just been pushed aside. He couldn't see her. He couldn't see anything other than Adrien as he sat and read alone in that classroom. And yet, something of her, something calm, gentle, was wrapping around him as if to soothe.
"We don't know that," Nathalie told him, sensibly. "And I don't believe his friends would ever show something like that to him."
"We don't know that either," Gabriel snapped, fingers clasping at the top of the cane.
A pause. A heartbeat. And then the gentlest of touches as Nathalie's hand closed over his arm.
"Adrien is perfectly capable of finding a magazine himself," she noted.
This time there was no answer Gabriel could give. There was alsonothing he could do other than watch as, alone on that silent classroom, Adrien kept reading. There was nothing he could do. As for Nathalie, the blue-eyed blur that was his assistant had just allowed its attention to slip towards the window, towards the small strip of the garden and the magnolia flowers overhead, and then, as far as she could, to the rooftops and the city beyond that. It took only a moment for her to face him again.
"Should I pick up your son after school?" she queried. "You have to talk to him."
That might have elicited a shiver from Gabriel. His mind, however, had become stuck on something else, something that made the face behind Hawkmoth's silver mask to became suddenly thoughtful.
"Pick him up," he repeated, gaze still on Adrien, on that accursed magazine he was reading, and trying to remember where he heard those words, who had spoken them. "Pick him up."
And then, he remembered.
"Bernhard offered to pick Adrien from the photo shoot."
It wasn't a question and the emotions rising from Nathalie seemed to become suddenly obscured, muddied to the point there was little the Miraculous could make of them. Still, Nathalie's hands were now so tightly closed around his arm, Gabriel could feel her nails through the fabric.
"Yes," she told him.
Gabriel snapped his fingers. In his mind, the image of the classroom — of Adrien hiding the magazine inside his bag just as the school bell rang — vanished, replaced by the warm colors of Nathalie's room, by the butterflies that had made their way through the open window, by the one already turning black on his fingers, the very same one which took flight just as Gabriel's voice filled the room.
"Call him."
Adrien
Adrien's feet were flying down the fire escape of the Pompidou, his hand sliding down the handrail as he made his way down towards the very last landing and the metal door waiting for him.
Hands closing over the panic bar, Adrien pulled the door open, a scowl going through his face as he spun the car keys on his index finger and stepped into the underground parking. The van with Gabriel's black butterfly was just a few meters to his right, beyond a long line of cars. More importantly, however, so was the car and it was to it that Adrien walked, the key he had borrowed from his bodyguard allowing him to open the door, sit, toss his school bag at his feet and take the magazine from inside.
He had read this thing four times, almost like he hoped that doing so would change what it said. Well, it didn't. In fact, nothing had changed in almost nine months. And what had—
Plagg had just risen out of the bag, hidden has he was under the glove compartment, his eyes traveled all the way up to Adrien.
"I don't think you should keep reading that."
"Shut up."
Plagg's eyes widened, the ice to Adrien's eyes making him retreat, slowly carefully until he was back inside the bag.
Now opening the magazine so it lied over his legs, Adrien flicked through it until he found the article announced on the front cover. He wouldn't get passed the first paragraphs before the roar of an engine played around his ears and a friendly, if very muffled, voice called in from outside.
"Hey, kid!"
Adrien closed the magazine, shoving it back inside his bag as fast as he could, before he looked out front. Outside, standing right in front of the car, breaking the view to that never ending ocean of parked cars and gray ceilings, was this large blue motorbike, its rider pulling his visor up and winking.
Ben?
Adrien was stepping out of the car, walking all the way to its front almost the same moment.
"What are you doing here?"
Bernhard took off his helmet.
"Bringing your ride," he informed, immediately tossing it into Adrien's hands.
Adrien's eyes had just bulged, caught so by surprise that he almost failed to grab the helmet.
Wait, wait, wait.
Adrien's attention went from his own reflection on the visor to Bernhard.
"Father allowed it?"
Bernhard cocked one of his eyebrows in good humor as he dismounted.
"It was either him or Nathalie has some incredible hidden talents."
Was this any other day, Adrien would have laughed. Today, the best he managed was to make his way back to the car. With Bernhard following right behind him, leaning against the car as he jumped inside, Adrien pulled his school bag open, dug inside and pulled out his phone. That small smile reaching his lips once he found the message waiting there? It was the first remotely genuine one he had managed in hours.
"I'm not finished, yet," Adrien announced. "But—!"
It was as far as he would get. Bringing his attention up, Adrien excitement gave way to confusion, then alarm. Bernhard was no longer looking at him, he was no longer leaning against the car, instead his attention had moved passed him and down, towards Adrien's bag, towards—
"Where did you find—?"
Adrien tried to close the bag. He did. But it was too late. Eyes wide and incredulous, Bernhard was leaning forward, fingers reaching to pull the magazine from the bag by one of its corners. Now walking back to the bike he had left in front of the car, Bernhard looked between Adrien and the magazine before settling his attention on the latter. As he did, his eyes found the letters, the photos, the article Adrien already new by heart.
"A missing socialite: disappearance or—murder," Bernhard read in a whisper.
And Adrien, rather than jump forward to rip that thing away from Bernhard, he found himself looking around the parking lot, attention moving over the multicolored mass of cars, over the many small domes on the ceiling over the people, a very clear warning blasting up from the Miraculous.
It took a moment for him to find what he knew was here.
A butterfly. An akuma, and it was flying straight at them.
No!
"Ben!"
"Rotten," Bernhard hissed, fingers clawing at the magazine, his face contorting with rage as his eyes moved down the article, indifferent to Adrien having just closed his hand over his forearm, indifferent to how he tried to pull him towards the fire escape, to get him away from here.
"This entire city—" Bernhard voice snapped on the ceiling, just as the akuma dived straight into the bike. "Is rotten."
Author's notes:
First, thank you to MorbidMayhem and Demi clayton for their kind comments :) They really are appreciated.
And so, Rot rises. I hope you liked this chapter :)
Next chapter is mostly written at 16k, just missing a POV and some work on two other (so it will became even bigger loool), I will see you all there or in the comments!
~Windcage