Here we go.
This is the last installment to The Beginning of Goodbye series. As of now, I'm planning on updating weekly.
I recommend reading Hold Your Breath and Hope for the Best before jumping into this.
I hope you enjoy!
Chapter One
All the steady, quiet stirring in the house had settled into stillness once the day had traipsed from morning to the brilliant early afternoon. It seemed to Gabriel that he had glided unknowingly between a network of ceaseless and predictable action and a straight-edged microcosm blocked off from the rest of the world, the line separating which was only disturbed by a nearly undetectable breeze passing through the open windows in the atelier, generating the smallest sway in pale curtains.
Early June had a way of isolating the experience of living from life itself, and doing so with the gentlest of pulls. There was sunlight beating down on rooftops, dogs whose collars jingled with their strides, window panes reflected off hardwood floors, the fluttering of hair in a wind that seems especially cool simply because one has taken the moment to feel it. And then, there was him, who on days like this, watched the stretching and shrinking of shadows without taking notice of the passage of time. There was him, who paused in the middle of the room to listen to the muffled rush of sound coming from the restless outside, and whose mind would attach nothing to those sounds but the shapeless thought that this was the coming of summer, and in all this stillness, it could be coming forever.
Footsteps and voices and the opening and closing of doors had faded along with the golden glitter of a morning actively cascading from room to room. Surrounded by noise and movement, standing in an atelier percolated by life other than his own, Gabriel had managed a productive first several hours of the day. Silence and stillness and white afternoon light had now initiated a pause. His screen had been dark for minutes now, hiding a sketch of a formal jumpsuit that was still missing something. It was all quite forgotten now. The answer, he decided, might come later, when the earth began to turn again, when the house lurched back into orbit along with the city surrounding it.
Gabriel was hyper-aware of the little things, like the weight of his glasses on his nose and behind his ears, the warmth building along his collar, and, most of all, the dust that must have been coating the tops of books on shelves lining the wall behind his head. When all was suspended like this, Gabriel found himself appreciating the new life that had emerged in so many different forms. This atelier, for example, was different from the one that had for so long been the setting of his work. Rather than a tall gleaming portrait, those bookshelves loomed over his shoulder, dispensing a far less weighty stare than he had grown so used to - but, of course, for that irritating thought of the dust that surely needed taking care of at some point.
It was a smaller atelier than the one that had been left behind, situated at the back of a smaller house. Just a couple years ago, Gabriel would have balked at the idea of leaving the mansion, hardly able to step outside its door without feeling his skin crawl. So much of the life he lived had been built there, and so much of it swiftly lost. Moving was unthinkable - until the chains had loosened, and he could hear them rattle with the steps he had started taking into the future. Even more surprising was that he had the agency to unlock them.
Early June was when they had found this place. Last year, everything was moving too quickly for moments of stillness to last very long. The spellbinding nature of the late Spring, for all its humid, mundane glory was lost in the transition from house to house. Although, it was difficult to call that a loss, both because it went forgotten till it struck again and because there was too much else to celebrate. A new home, a new marriage, and to their surprise, those weren't the only circumstances to change.
Gabriel blinked and reached into his pocket. It took the buzzing of the phone in his jacket to nudge everything forward, and even then the movement was but a slight meander pressed along a gentle curve; for the house was still quiet, asleep.
A text from Adrien gleamed at him. What time is dinner again?
Giving a quick glance to the curtains still wavering in the faint breeze, Gabriel typed his response. 19:00. Will Marinette still be joining us?
Yes.
Has she mentioned what this is about?
It took a couple minutes for Adrien to reply. In the meantime, Gabriel crossed the room and shut the window, silencing the faint city sounds. At last, he was careening back into a full awareness of the world. Then, his phone alerted him, Hasn't told me. I'm trying to get it out of her. Adrien added a moment later, She has a talent for holding on to secrets.
Gabriel hm'd in amusement and put away his phone. He returned to his computer for a moment to bring the screen back to life and look over the unfinished sketch still waiting on the page.
It would have to wait a little longer. He had something else to attend to.
Gabriel traveled from the atelier through the long hallway that carried him to the house's front entryway, where the sunlight was strongest and a collection of small family and individual portraits hung over the staircase.
The photos had been Adrien's idea, who insisted to Gabriel and Nathalie as they were moving in that "normal families" tended to display multiple "reasonably-sized" photographs in "accessible" places throughout their houses, not "somber, gargantuan portraits larger than the floor space of most bedrooms." They really didn't take much more convincing. Adrien had won a couple battles over how to decorate the place, but he decidedly lost the campaign to convert the wine room into a cheese cellar. Of course, that wasn't really his fight, but the fist-sized kwami's who was still reluctant after all this time to speak with Gabriel and Nathalie directly.
That was always a reminder that life was not as pearly as Gabriel had tried to let himself believe.
He remembered how astonished Adrien had been when he first set foot in the place a year ago. His jaw slackened and fell open, green eyes sweeping over the foyer, over the staircase, a far less grand structure than the white marble steps he had climbed almost all his life. He had taken a couple moments to absorb everything, not even answering Gabriel's initial prompt as to how he was feeling.
Then, he suddenly turned to his father and said, "It's so warm."
Gabriel couldn't help but agree. He had been afraid he would miss the mansion's wide open spaces, its echoes and the chill of stone, but this house, with its smaller, closer rooms and its soft yellow lighting, had invited him in so quickly. He was so prepared to resist, despite this being his idea in the first place, prepared for the fantasy of wanted change to crack and shatter apart and leave him without a shell, but he found he didn't need one.
It was a pleasant surprise.
One of many.
He climbed the stairs to the second floor, looking over the photographs as he passed them by. Most of them had been taken in the last year, but there were a few from the mansion, including a young Adrien and Gabriel holding him by the shoulders, a photo of Adrien with his mother, and another of him in his fencing uniform. Some were even older. One, found in a box at the back of Gabriel's closet, depicted him in his early twenties, holding a tape measurer between his teeth and an unfinished gown in his hands as he stood before a beat-up old mannequin. Another was brought by Nathalie, one of the only photos she had of herself. She was about twenty, hair cut just above her shoulders and dyed a dark shade of blue, standing on a street corner wrapped in a winter coat, looking like she had just noticed the camera the moment in went off. Her lips were slightly parted, forming the beginning of a smile, her blue eyes round and glittering with recognition.
The highest photo on the wall was the newest: a little baby wrapped in a pale pink blanket, its mouth stretched open in a yawn. Gabriel smiled faintly and carried the smile all the way to his bedroom door.
He figured he would find Nathalie here. Recently, she tended to work from the second level, either from the bedroom or from the spare they used as her own personal office. She could never be torn away from her job completely. A new executive assistant hired a number of months ago had alleviated much of the workload she wasn't able to keep up with since Anaīs had entered the picture, but Nathalie was always keen on keeping busy.
Right now, however, as Gabriel found to his amusement, she was far from busy. She laid on the bed, her head propped up on a couple pillows, still donning her glasses as she slept lightly. When he stepped inside, her head shifted as though she heard him, arms slackening over the infant she was holding against her chest. Feeling the movement of her mother, Anaïs's legs kicked out. Gabriel approached the bed and drew a fingertip down his daughter's foot, watched as her toes fanned out in response.
"What time is it?" mumbled Nathalie, her eyes still closed. Gabriel leaned over and pressed a kiss to her forehead, and then another to Anaïs's ear. The baby cooed. Her arm stretched towards Gabriel's nose, blue eyes fluttering open to search for him.
"A little after 14:00. Were you asleep long?"
"Oh, not at all." She stroked the baby's back. "And neither was she. I have to get her in her crib."
"Here, I got her." Gabriel took Anaïs in his arms, allowing Nathalie to sit up. She was smiling now, but there was something weary behind her eyes. There always was. Gabriel was certain that if he looked long enough in the mirror, he could find it in his own gaze. Maybe it was just because he knew her so well, but the fatigue on her face seemed to swim nearer to the surface.
She'd been through a lot. If a troubled history and magically-induced debilitating illness wasn't enough, then a rough pregnancy and complicated twenty hour labor had caused some substantial stress for the both of them. Anaïs's arrival had seemed to heal a lot of those wounds, or at least begin to. Nathalie beamed through that mask of exhaustion. When they brought the baby home, the first thing Nathalie did was cry out of joy. She threw her arms around Gabriel and whispered, "I have everything I have ever wanted."
Of course, with all that gratification came a rather intense fear of loss, a fear, Nathalie admitted to him, that she had never been familiar with until she had become a member of the family. It was a fear that only deepened as the months passed, a fear he knew all too well himself, a fear he tried to warn her against; but he would be coarsely lying if he tried to pretend it didn't still haunt him the way it was slowly and fiercely beginning to haunt her.
It was always best to remind her that he was there. Everything she had was with her, in no danger of slipping away. At times, he had to sleep with her wrapped completely in his embrace, so she wouldn't rise unless the baby needed her. Otherwise, he'd find, she might spend the whole night awake at Anaïs's side. She trembled all the while, cold and terrified, because at night, she said, she couldn't think straight. She saw everything through a screen of shadow, and so the darkness in her head became darker.
"What scares you the most, my dear?" he had asked her once. It was five in the morning. She hadn't been in bed since midnight.
"Memory," she had answered, her voice hardly audible beneath the exhaustion.
Nathalie rose out of bed and trailed after Gabriel, humming softly to herself, the tune of a lullaby he often heard her murmur absent-mindedly. He kept his eyes on the infant as she brought a tiny fist to her mouth, fingers curling and uncurling. He'd been here before, he tried to remind himself. Once, Adrien had been the one in squirming in his arms, the one whose cries filled the house and whose big eyes flitted from above rounded cheeks. But even with all the resurgence of memory, it was hard to believe that Adrien was ever this small, that this wasn't Gabriel's first time as a new father. Seventeen years felt like a lifetime, felt like an entirely different existence.
It felt impossible, how much things had changed. Surely, at least some of it was impossible, at least some of it was an illusion. He could understand a lot of Nathalie's fear; one wrong move and all of this could shatter apart, threatened by the turbulent journey that had led them here. It didn't always add up. There had to be a missing piece, something to assure him that he deserved this.
He laid the baby in her crib, and Nathalie's quiet hum turned to words. The vacant look in her eye as she planted herself by his side told him that the song was not as much for the baby as it was for her.
"When we fall asleep,
"I'll hold you in my arms,
"and though the shadows keep,
"my love, don't be alarmed.
"Someday we'll just pretend.
"Someday we'll dream again."
She fiddled with the mobile above Anaïs's head, gently turning the rods so they drifted in a slow circle. Hand painted wooden stars twinkled with stripes of silver glitter.
"And then we'll find the light
"when the moon reveals her face,
"but for this somber night,
"we'll have to stay here in this place."
"Nathalie," he whispered.
"But darling, hold my hand
"Someday we'll dream again."
"Nathalie," said Gabriel once more.
"Yes?"
"I've always wondered where you got that song."
Trailing her fingers down her daughter's cheeks, Nathalie gave him a blank look. "I think my mother used to sing it when I was really little."
He blinked at her. "I'm surprised you'd want to sing it then."
"Well, when I got older, I started singing it to myself. And to my sister when we were going to sleep." Nathalie smiled warmly as Anaïs's eyes drifted closed. "It's actually a...pleasant memory."
"You don't find the words a little ominous?"
"Not really, no. Besides, she can't understand me anyway."
He put an arm around her and kissed the side of her head. "I must not be very familiar with lullabies."
Leaving the baby to sleep, they returned to their room. Gabriel stood with crossed arms at the door while Nathalie straightened out the pillows she had been resting on when he first walked in. He told her, "Marinette is coming for dinner, after all."
"Is she? I'm surprised," Nathalie replied.
"By the way it sounds, it seems like she has some sort of agenda."
"Of course. She wouldn't intend to be around us for very long otherwise." Her tone was very matter-of-fact, punctuated by an unusually long pause that made her glance up at Gabriel. "What?"
"Nothing."
"Does that bother you?" she questioned, mirroring his stance. "It seems like it bothers you."
"That she doesn't like us?" He shook his head. "I have other things to concern myself with than the opinion of a teenage girl."
"A teenage girl who both is dating your son and knows more about you than the rest of the city's population combined? - particularly in regards to…" Her gaze darkened and dropped from his face to his feet, "...a rather troubling past."
"Nathalie…"
"Well, Marinette can hold onto her grudge as long as she wants. There's nothing we can do about that." Nathalie needlessly fidgeted with the pillows some more. "Can you really blame her? Everything she does is in the best interest of the city, and everything we once had done was actively disturbing it. I understand her not desiring our presence - unless she finds it necessary."
She noticed immediately that he had bit back a reply. It was his pride that made him hesitate, ensnaring him in chains she had the greatest power to break. All it took was a flash of her blue eyes, in them, a white-hot warning against the preservation of his ego and a softer, sweeter promise of understanding. It was like she was standing right in front of him, relaxing him with a simple clasp of his arm and a sympathetic smile. He remembered telling her months ago, the first thing that made him fall in love with her, "The way you make everything okay, just with your touch." He demonstrated by brushing his finger beneath her chin, making her grin. "You're simply magic, darling."
He released a sigh, and the chains dropped away. Crossing the room towards her, he admitted, "You're right, Nathalie. It does bother me, as much as I'd hate to admit it." He sat on the bed, and she placed herself beside him, rubbing circles between his shoulder blades and gazing at him earnestly. "As long as Miss Dupain-Cheng is treating my son well, then I shouldn't mind how she thinks of me. But it's almost been two years. I know there's a lot to forgive, but the circle of people who know the truth is...small. And close. Very close. It's difficult not to be reminded." He leaned his head against Nathalie's, closing his eyes. "I should count my blessings. The situation could be worse. Much, much worse."
She swallowed heavily. "Yes," she breathed, "We're very lucky."
"Do you ever feel…?" Gabriel set a hand on her knee, his words fading into quiet. He felt her head turn, felt her solemn gaze on his temple.
"What?" she murmured.
He didn't know what to say. A hundred questions had been flickering through his head, and he didn't know which one to ask. Do you ever feel like we just don't deserve it? Do you ever feel like there was something we could do about it? Do you ever feel like it would have been better if we'd stopped sooner, before they knew? His jaw tightened. It was foolish for him to think he was capable of letting go without his fingers being pried apart. All this doubt, all this fear, it was his fault, and he couldn't hope for anything better when everything he already had barely felt like it belonged in his arms.
Ashamed of himself for the thought, he rose to his feet. The hand that had been on his back hung in the air for a moment. "Gabriel, love," she whispered. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing, just -" He exhaled, linked his fingers behind his back. "You're right. We're lucky."
"Gabriel…"
There was a knock at the open door. "Mr. and Mrs. Agreste? I'm sorry to interrupt."
Breaking each other's intense stare, Gabriel and Nathalie turned their heads to regard Alain, standing with his tablet tucked under his arm and hands clasped together. He was the new executive assistant they hired before Anaïs was born - previously an apparel production coordinator - who traveled between the house and headquarters, wherever he was most needed.
"Alain. What is it?" prompted Gabriel, burying his unease beneath his clinical tone. He noticed Nathalie's facial expression collapse into neutrality. They rarely discussed their history with miraculous despite knowing how much in haunted them, but they still knew exactly how to quickly conceal the topic. She stood beside him, shoulders square.
"A couple things. The pre-production meeting this morning went smoothly, and I will have sent you my report by the end of the day," said Alain, adjusting his multiple rings.
"Excellent."
"And, secondly," he cleared his throat, "less important but a little strange. On the way out, I was approached by a young woman who claimed to know you two. She seemed about Adrien's age."
"Was she a classmate?" asked Gabriel.
Alain shrugged. "Possibly. She introduced herself as Lila Rossi. Does that ring a bell?"
Nathalie's reaction was similar to how one would react to realizing they had forgotten their wallet in a public place. She stiffened, fingernails biting into her arms and her eyes going wide with dismay. Half a second later, she had masked her shock, but Alain noticed.
"It is familiar, then." He cocked his head, eyes flicking between the two of them. "And judging by your reaction, this Lila isn't a person we like?"
Gabriel set his hand comfortingly on Nathalie's lower back. "No. She is a classmate of Adrien's. At one point, she was a friend," he lied. "But she's not a very pleasant person. They drifted apart. We actually haven't heard from her in a while."
"Funny, she didn't mention Adrien. Just you two. She claimed to have formed a friendship with the both of you a little over three years ago. She says she's familiar with a lot of celebrities and artists from around the world, and mentioned that she was your muse for a time," Alain relayed, an eyebrow raised at them.
"That's false," Nathalie replied, voice cold and sharp. "She was invited to partake in photoshoots alongside Adrien a few times, but that was back when they were friendly. We've never had anything but a professional relationship with her, and it was only for that short time."
Alain nodded. "Understood. I thought it was odd. She was waiting on a bench right outside the building, seemed to immediately recognize me though I've never seen her before. She even called me by my full name, was very friendly but I was a little put off."
"That's…" Nathalie glanced at Gabriel and then back. "Well, that's odd indeed. I'm sorry she bothered you, Alain."
"It's fine, I suppose. I would be troubled if this became a recurring incident. Is that something we'd have to worry about?" Neither of them answering immediately, Alain took out his tablet. "I'll just make a note of this. It's probably not worth fretting about now, but I'll keep an eye out."
"Thanks, Alain," said Nathalie, trying to smile.
"Yeah, sure thing, Nathalie," he replied. More formally, to Gabriel, who was not as receptive to the man's informal affability, he dipped his head, "Mr. Agreste."
He stepped out. Gabriel and Nathalie stood frozen in the middle of the room until they had heard Alain descend the staircase to the first floor. Nathalie went to the door and closed it silently, before looking back at her husband with a slightly alarmed gaze.
"Lila."
"Don't worry about her," Gabriel told her. He went to his lovely wife, brushed some hair behind her ear and rested his palm against her cheek. "That girl is no threat, you know."
"I just forgot about her."
"She's not worth remembering." He pulled her close to her chest. "Oh, my dear, we have too much on our minds already." He planted several kisses on her hair, and Nathalie pulled away so she could kiss him back on the mouth, fingertips pressed against his cheekbones. He smiled against her lips. "I love you, Nathalie."
"I love you, my dear."
He began to pull away, reach for the door to head downstairs and continue the day of work, but Nathalie's hand clasped his wrist. "I'm tired," she murmured. "Will you lay next to me? Just until Anaïs wakes up?"
Gabriel conceded. As Nathalie laid her head on the pillows that she had fluffed up again a couple minutes earlier, he unlatched a window and pushed it open. The sounds of June came fluttering into the room, cars and birdsong and a city that was alive and hot to the touch.
He kicked off his shoes and set his glasses on the bedside table. Nathalie pressed her body against his, head falling against his shoulder. Sunlight kept the room aglow, but she was asleep in a couple minutes, breathing softly, hand resting limp right against his heart beat. Her hair smelled like lemon and lavender, her clothes like the baby.
His eyes drifted shut. He never fell asleep, but he hovered there at the precipice, just conscious enough to never stop feeling the weight of her extraordinary touch.