Reading diaries part two
"Do you think we read enough for now?" Marinette smiled encouragingly who flipped the diary to close and lock up without even bothering to mar where they stopped with the reading. The boy breathed quickly and harshly before he started to settle down.
"We have other problems, such as what to do with Nooroo and Duusu." Adrien finally spoke. "The way I see it, we need to talk to those two kwami about their powers and how my parents used them." His voice wavered a little but he remained determined.
"As a guardian, you have the right to ask them." Tikki chirped in.
"Are you sure you want to know kid?" Plagg interjected.
"I was looking at my copy of the Book of Lore." Marinette sighed. "And I did not find anything about fixing Nooroo and Duusu after what happened to them with the temple and everything, there are treatments for the sick kwami that I could try."
"Good, let's try that then." Adrien was ready.
"Ahem." Plagg raised his eyes from his cheese.
"It's not that simple Adrien." Tikki chirped.
"We need the jewels out of the box and we need to wield them and get them out and then we need to treat them until they are cured, we can't return them to the box like we did the last time." She replied quietly.
"Oh." He acknowledged.
"Oh." She confirmed.
"So, we should reach the original Book of Lore … " Marinette continued.
"That is not in the safe in his office." Adrien filled in.
"Gabriel probably took that with him." Marinette nodded. "Or the original tablet from Fu with his notes because I'm not sure I have everything and he did know little more than was written in that book."
"And the original notes are … " Adrien trailed off.
"On the tablet that was probably stolen by Mayura during Miracle Queen." She finished.
"Great, so both are with my father in Chinese prison." He stated.
"Or we could go to the temple." She added quietly.
"So what is it that we know about how to treat sick kwami?" Adrien actually did not have a clue.
"Oh, if I ever fall ill, just give me more smelly cheese and I should recover quickly." Plagg cut in. "In fact, I think I'm feeling rather weak and exhausted right now." The tiny god of destruction put his paw dramatically over his forehead and pretended to fall on the bed.
Two teens and a red kwami laughed at his antics.
"Seriously, the only thing I know that works is the same thing that master Fu did when Tikki was ill." Marinette finally spoke.
"So, let's try with that first." Adrien shrugged.
"As I probably mentioned, it is rather noisy, we can't do it right here right now." She looked around as if she was looking for something there to prove a point.
"That is all right Marinette, you don't have to do it right away." Tikki chirped.
"My parents are having dinner out on Sunday, we could try to do it here then. Otherwise, we need to find some other place where we can produce as much noise as we want and do it there." Marinette was already planning. "But it should be a place where we could work unobserved and unheard."
"You mean, we need a place in the middle of Paris, preferably close by, where we could work with the miracle box unheard and unobserved?" Adrien pondered. "A secretive place that is closed to the public?" He grinned and touched his chin with his index finger.
"I see you already have an idea." Marinette looked at him expectantly, she was not in a mood to guess.
"A place that has a lair … " Adrien grinned.
"No?" That was the last place she ever expected him to propose for their destination.
"Why not?" He shrugged. "I better face all my demons." There was that Chat Noir bravery, that mock the danger straight in the face attitude, throw yourself onto the akuma way of thinking, the only thing missing was an annoying pun.
"Okay, we do it there then, but I have to collect a few things first and repeat what I actually have to do and I will need some time to practise there and we are going to need to collect those … " She was rambling and flailed her hands and was ready to jump and panic pack.
"Aren't you forgetting something?" Tikki chirped.
Marinette blinked at her kwami, confused. Adrien looked at Tikki, then at Marinette, and finally at Plagg, who was smirking. He was none the wiser. They exchanged a few looks, Marinette searched around as if she was looking for a clue.
"We have to get Nooroo and Duusu out of the box first." Marinette noted.
"Exactly." Plagg confirmed.
"But they popped out from their miracle world only in my grandfather's attic." The girl protested.
"You are guardians, you could reach them more easily." Tikki chirped.
"Or faint and be found on the floor." Plagg added.
"But you could help us with that." Adrien smirked. "What if we try to get them while transformed."
"We wielded two miraculous before." Marinette added.
"You wielded almost all of them." Adrien smirked.
"Can we use your help, I mean, your energy, to bring them out and then perform the healing?" Marinette looked ant their two kwami.
"Of course Marinette." Tikki beamed with her blue eyes.
"I would do anything for an appropriate amount of cheese." Plagg grinned.
"We could do it tomorrow evening then, if you don't mind?" Adrien smiled. "I feel like we have that much time and we should get more cheese."
"And cookies, but I'm anxious about prolonging that much further." Marinette admitted.
There was a long silence.
"Well, that about wraps it up, why don't we try to read your mother's diary?" Marinette got on her feet. The two of them snuggled up in her bed and opened a fancy notebook.
There were many short notes about Adrien as a baby and how exhausted Amelie was and how busy Gabriel was as he tried to keep the company afloat. Amelie returned to be his muse and modelled for him soon after she had given birth.
'Adrien grows so fast, I have to have him on my arms while transformed and then I can make Felix grow. Whenever Adrien does something, I just hold him a little and then Amelie calls me and tells me Felix did it too. I'm so happy. This is working.'
"I think your mother transformed with 'feathers rise', not 'dark feathers rise', she was using positive emotions, her own positive emotions, and she made Felix to save her sister from despair." Marinette spoke softly. Adrien was crying.
"And Gabriel probably used her positive emotions and a white butterfly." She added after a while. She actually hoped that was the case, that Emilie did not utilize the evil amok and that Gabriel only started when Emilie fell into that magic coma.
'Did the first shoot with Adrien. It's Adrien's fist shoot, he is so adorable. The camera loves him. That's just perfect, I can take him with me for all my shoots then.'
'Gabriel keeps telling how I am unique. I know that is the reason why I knew he loved me, because he was the first one to say that even after he met Amelie. We are so much alike, as if we are the same, but se are different, and Gabriel saw that. Dainel, Amelie's husband, saw it too, in her."
"I have stopped holding Adrien while transformed each night. It seems he got allergic to feathers. I'm taking his measures every few days now to make sure that I can influence Felix's growth the right way."
"Had another photo shoot with Adrien, it is a perfume commercial. Fans are going crazy, it is good we have a garden around the house so I can give the boy a walk outside. Gabriel thinks we should do it that way all the time."
'I have stopped measuring Adrien every few days now. Once per week should be enough. The staff is doing it now for the fashion shows and photo shoot outfits. Felix is growing just as fast so it is working.'
'Gabriel snarled at me today, that because I made Felix as a copy of Adrien so Adrien is not unique. What did he mean by that? Of course he's unique, he is our son. But Gabriel loves him. I know he does. He wouldn't rely his business so much on us if he did not.'
The diary also marks each of Adrien's accomplishments, like his first tooth, when he began to crawl, hold things, walk, eat on his own, Emilie was a happy and proud mother of a healthy child and enjoyed writing about him.
'I still have to hold Adrien transformed if I want to impact Felix the right way, but the boy really developed an allergy to feathers. Gabriel insists to keep our jewels and the magic a secret from everyone, our son included. Have to find a solution for that.'
'He said 'mama' today, I'm so happy'
The diary continues to list all Emilie's struggles while she raised her son while she also tried to influence the way Felix developed.
'Did my first night session transformed to see if I can do this while Adrien is asleep. Can't really check with Amelie, she chose to forgot how Felix was born. Adrien sneezed and woke up, but fell back to sleep quickly.'
'Amelie discovered that she got the copies of the family wedding rings. Mother told her. They were supposed to go to the oldest child but we are twins so they made copies and I got the original. She claims there is some special bond in the rings. Of course there is, those are wedding rings.'
'I can't give her the ring I have to keep it to keep an eye on Felix. He is able to grow and develop on his own so I can relax. It's been hard to stay transformed around Adrien, I can do it only when he sleeps, and even then he wakes up due to his feather allergy.'
'Gabriel wants me to stop. He doesn't understand that Amelie can't have another child. The procedure they put her through … She just cant, even if she managed to get pregnant and carry the pregnancy till the end, which would be a medical miracle, the psychological toll might be too much for her.'
'I'm making a film, finally, a nice art film to be done here in Paris. It is practically a family project. The family production. Amelie wrote the script and will do cinematography. Andre is going to direct it. Audrey is doing costumes, well she will chose them. Gabriel wants some product placement, Audrey approved his ideas.'
'Film is doing fine, Adrien and Felix get along nicely. The next Gabriel line is going to be retro and homage to the film. He has been pulling into his shell ever since we returned from Tibet, I finally got him out from that shell, if only for a day.'
There were other notes, about their daily life, about how she organized the life, about how they decided to homeschool Adrien contrary to the decision of Audrey and Andre who put Chloe to kindergarten.
Then there were mentions of Nathalie and how everything had to have the business side and make profit.
"My mother really loved being a model and doing acting." Adrien smiled gently.
'Apparently no dress is sold if I do not model it. I'm so tired. Adrien enjoyed the shoot today. He likes it a lot. But that was the only place we went every day of this week. He'll make an excellent model.'
'I have doubts that he still sends an akuma after me in the evenings to visualize his ideas. I can't remember it. But sometimes I wake up in strange parts of the house, dazed and confused how I got there, and Gabriel is always there. He told me I sleepwalked. '
' Today I got akumatized again, Gabriel asked me, I saw the model he draw from that, it is going to be amazing.'
'It is much harder, but I can control the way Felix develops without interfering with Adrien while transformed. It is such a big weight off my shoulders."
She mentioned offhandedly how Gabriel still got her akumatized to see his designs in nature before he put them into production. She also sometimes mentioned how awkward she felt because she coughed at a wrong moment.
"Does that mean that her health deteriorated?" Marinette frowned.
It was painful for Adrien to read those lines where his mother described how she got ill from time to time, especially when Gabriel was on a designing spree and she had to try out all his models and stand there half naked all the time.
There were fewer notes about Felix and Adrien on those days, probably because both Emilie and Gabriel were so busy. But Adrien knew that his mother would visit him each day and they would spend some time together, but now he thought how she had to do it to maintain Felix.
'Felix can live and develop on his own, without my interference, but he is becoming rather different than Adrien in character. They are still like twins when together. They fooled Gabriel over the weekend, he did not appreciate it. Amelie and me laughed our lungs out.'
'Amelie wants to send Felix to school, but Felix refused to go at first. I transformed and made him agree. Amelie is so happy. Happy birthday Amelie.'
The notes continued, they marked Adrien's growth, many fashion seasons and photo shoots, Emilie's frustration at Gabriel becoming more distant from the world, and then one day the notes stopped. It was close to the day Adrien remembered he saw her for the last time.
"She did not write much about falling ill to the miraculous." Adrien spoke quietly. "I remember how she used to feel dizzy and coughed from time to time." Back then, he did not give it too much significance, people coughed all the time for different reasons, even to get attention.
Marinette took his hand and held it firmly. She had no idea what to say to make him feel better about those memories, even if that was possible, but she learned that he calmed down each time she held him, or he held her close.
"I'm also not sure how I feel about Felix if my mother lost her life because of him." Adrien continued. There was that lingering sense of dread and resentment, because the person he regarded as his cousin, practically a brother, although distant, because none of them had any siblings, was now a sentimonster and his mother may have lost her life for creating him.
"She never mentioned that the miraculous was broken." Marinette noted while she skimmed through the pages back and forth as if she was looking for something, something that should have been a clue but she missed it at the moment, something important.
"You mean she didn't know?" He inquired. "That would explain why she took it in the first place and why she kept using it even after she felt sick, if she did not know that it was the miraculous that was hurting her ..."
"I'm sure she knew, but did not think it was important." She shrugged and pointed to a line in the diary that corroborated that claim, maybe, if one squinted, and used some imagination, a lot of it. "Besides, she did write that she wanted that one, to create things."
"Or she thought that the miraculous simply had to be that way. That is what she told me once. It is okay to be broken, nothing has to be perfect. Father disagreed, they had an argument over that." Adrien remembered. "I had to be perfect. She had to be perfect."
"Nobody is perfect, kid." Plagg smirked. "Except cheese."
"Well, what one think is a virtue." Tikki looked at Plagg. "Another one might find as a flaw."
"It is just … I always had to be a different person around him. Sometimes I think my mother also acted around him, especially when Nathalie or someone else was around." It was a fact that he was rather oblivious for other people's feelings, Marinette was the proof.
"Perhaps we should stop now and continue tomorrow?" She whispered. There were many things to do the next day, not only in school, but regarding the kwami and their healing and training of the time travel miraculous holder.
"Yes, yes we should." He confirmed. They put away the diary and the tablet and went to bed. Marinette held him while he cried, but then he stopped, wiped his face and asked to kiss her. He felt better, it was much better feeling, his brain was useless and stopped reminding him what he read.
So the two teens finally fell asleep like that.