Someday, We'll Breathe Again

by Reminiscent Lullaby

The Agreste household has seemed to change for the better since Gabriel gave up the butterfly miraculous. But now, after twenty-two months without Hawkmoth, old and new enemies alike step out of the shadows to threaten the fragile peace and shake the Agreste family to its core. When the façades drop, nothing will ever be the same again.

18. Interlude II

Interlude II

Chrysalis noticed how her akuma's hand stalled, as if she had forgotten her action in the middle of performing it. A stern look from her master induced the remainder of the interaction. The akuma apologized, twitching her thumb, and the earrings and ring were dropped into Chrysalis's palm.

"Reaper," she commanded, closing her fist around the jewelry. "Find him. Bring him to me. Now." She spoke as if she was begging for something vital, like air.

The akuma flinched. Chrysalis pinched her eyes narrow and barked the command again, cracking her heel against the floor. Reaper turned around and outstretched her fingers to create a wide hole in space that glowed with a deep violet light. She vanished through the portal and left Chrysalis behind, as well as the fallen heroes lying brokenly elsewhere in the room. One of them was calling out for her to stop, but he was ignored.

Chrysalis glared at him, locking his bright green gaze as she slowly slipped his miraculous on her finger, her left ring finger to be precise, like it was her wedding band. The kwami that manifested the next moment did not hesitate to make his rage quite known, but Chrysalis silenced him with a swing of her cane that just barely clipped his ears as he made the move to dodge.

"That power can't satisfy you," said the hero. He attempted to rise to his feet, but Reaper's final attack had left him and his partner greatly weakened. Even his words struggled past his throat despite the blaze of anger and fear in his eyes. "It isn't designed to."

"What makes you think," snarled Chrysalis as she pushed the ladybug miraculous through her earlobes, "That after a decade of war, you could dissuade me with your empty reasoning?"

His jaw set, perhaps in pain, perhaps in indignation. Chrysalis had the capacity to know, but she simply didn't care. "The wish will ensure you lose what you gain."

"Reaper should have killed you," Chrysalis spat. The ladybug kwami shimmered into existence, expression twisted in disgust, but unlike the black cat, she chose not to speak. "That'd have put us both out of our misery a lot sooner, but I suppose I need to have patience, don't I? I want to savor this. Your time will come soon enough."

He did not engage with her further. He turned his head towards his partner, who lay unconscious but breathing several meters away. Chrysalis stepped back as he started crawling towards her, gently calling her name, as if afraid she wouldn't wake.

But she'd wake. And then she'd be Chrysalis's to put to sleep. For good.

The kwamis trailed behind her every step. Chrysalis felt their eyes like nails at the back of her scalp. Pausing at the window overlooking the brightly lit city, a sigh trembled between her lips. She was tired and electrified at once; she was furious and triumphant; she was grieving and celebrating. She didn't know what else she could have expected after such an exhausting pursuit as this one.

Ten years. Ten long, tedious, carefully calculated years. Chrysalis had hoped that this power would fall into her hands much sooner than now. Perhaps, it would have, had she been a lot less clever. Chrysalis could count the number of akumas she had created on each one of her fingers with none to spare. She'd refused to be like her predecessor. As desperate as she was, desperation was unbecoming. It was disorganized and precarious, and she'd have suffered a lot more losses had she allowed her desperation to show through more than those two robust palmfuls of blackened butterfly wings. Chrysalis was unlike every other super villain that had ever plagued this disappointing, pathetic city. She was slow and deliberate and she knew how to wait and listen for only the best, strongest, most devastating opportunities. Chrysalis was unpredictable. Chrysalis was lethal. And now Chrysalis was victorious.

Ten years had paid off.

Even more savory was the way she had won. Nine other powerful akumas had come close to triumph, but it was only fitting that the one who succeeded was the one who knew her heroes' weaknesses. Chrysalis had not expected an opportunity like this to arise, when she would have the opening to transform one of Paris's beloved defenders into her own impressive creation. Black Witch had been a relentless opponent since she joined her teammates four years prior, having abilities no other superhero had been known to have, but one fateful, devastating day had left her vulnerable to the very power she'd fought so hard against. She'd tried so nobly to thwart the influence of her master, but Chrysalis did not pride herself on her irresistibility for no reason. So, Black Witch had become Reaper, a harvester of energy, and unstoppable magical force.

Chrysalis spread her hands over the window sill and admired the warmth of her bronze skin under the metallic glow of her ring. The power of the newly-acquired miraculous shivered through her body like an electric current. A rattling in her bones and a heat in her blood filled her with such an unusual but invigorating sensation. She'd never felt more alive than she felt now. She teemed with heat and energy that begged to be released. In the reflection of the dark window, Chrysalis met her own gaze and watched the twist of her painted lips into a hungry grin.

"One by one," she murmured under her breath, "I will watch my enemies fall." She would wipe them all away and when none of them remained, she'd have the rest of this city to reign, and the rest of her life to test her outreach. With this great power at her fingertips, nothing could stop her.

"I would exercise caution." Chrysalis's eyes darted to the red kwami hovering in the reflection behind her shoulder. With crossed arms and a heavy scowl, the small creature clearly could not have cared to mask her disdain for her new master. "The power in your hands is incredible and dangerous. You may not be pleased with the outcome."

"It's expected of you to attempt to deter me after so many years being attached to the hip of your previous holder," replied Chrysalis through clenched teeth. "But you could at least try harder than that."

"Your refusal to listen to transparent reasoning will be your downfall," the kwami told her plainly.

Fuming, Chrysalis drew the rapier halfway out of its sheath and whirled around. Both kwamis drew back, the black one clinging to the red. "Tell me your names," she commanded, "And then be silent."

"Tikki."

"Plagg."

They shut their mouths.

Chrysalis's heart leaped when a new hole in space stretched open before her eyes. Reaper emerged, dragging him behind her. As the portal closed, she threw him down on the floor before her master and stepped back. A mask concealed her expression, but her fingers curled into tight fists that visibly shook.

He coughed, rubbing a spot on his chest where Reaper had perhaps struck him while attempting to bring him here. Then, he lifted his eyes to the face of the woman glaring coldly down at him.

"Gabriel Agreste," she snarled.

"You'll regret this." His voice was hoarse and he spoke through his teeth. "You'll pay."

"Will I? But you are the one in debt." She ripped out her sword and placed its point under his chin, raising it higher until his gray eyes caught the shine of the light overhead. "I've been waiting for this day."

He squinted at her. His glasses were gone and his eyesight was poor, but anyone could have made out the layers of mauve satin spilling around her legs and the blur of a black mask framing her murderous glower. And her voice of course, like sickly sweet poison honey, was unmistakable.

"It was you," he grumbled.

"Your lack of shock is touching," she spat, pressing the tip of the sword harder. He sucked in air through his teeth as she broke the skin. "Perhaps it saves me the trouble of giving you any explanation. Why should you even have the satisfaction?"

She kicked him in the face. Across the room, his son cried out and attempted to scramble to his feet, but Reaper stopped him, creating a forcefield that he collided against. His partner, now conscious, reached for his arm and pulled him back down to the floor in her arms. Adrien pounded his fist against the barrier. He begged Reaper to drop it.

"Don't do this!" he shouted, voice muffled by the wall.

Blood pumped between Gabriel Agreste's fingers as he brought them up to his nose.

"Consider yourself lucky," Chrysalis told him, her heels clicking against the floor as she took a few additional steps his way. "I may have wished you dead twice had I not found out what I found out today. Imagine, after almost twenty years, discovering that two of your worst enemies were one and the same all along." Her eyes flicked towards Adrien and Marinette. "It happened threefold, actually. Oh, but they? They came as no surprise. You, however...there's something so despicable about a reclusive, bitter old man using a girl like me to his own advantage in every corner of his depressing life. Look at me now, at the potential you wasted."

She drove the heel of her shoe into the hand he'd splayed against the ground, making him yelp.

"How you ended up so beloved by your family, I'll never understand," she went on, "But very well, I'll gladly make them watch. It's a shame you won't make the audience to their own bitter ends. I'm sure they will miss you."

Gabriel stretched his eyes wide in horror. "Don't…"

Adrien scratched at the forcefield. He kept trying to appeal to Reaper, who didn't seem like she was listening. Her attention was focused on Chrysalis and Gabriel. Then, Adrien called for Plagg, who was compelled by Chrysalis to ignore him.

Chrysalis put away her rapier. "It'd work just as well to use this, but I think the miraculous makes this feel a lot more permanent, don't you?"

Tossing the cane aside, she looked between her kwamis, who both failed to return the eager glances. She finally uttered the words that she had been waiting a decade to say, and when they came, they came a whisper.

"Tikki, Plagg, unify."

Chrysalis was blinded by light that poured out from her miraculous. A rush of power washed up and down her body, fashioning a new transformation, a new her. And in that moment, Chrysalis could not imagine herself being anybody else.

It seemed that even when she shut her eyes, she could see flashes of color dancing behind her lids. She felt weightless, as if she was made of air; perhaps her feet had lifted off the floor. She was floating. She was floating above all the world and could see every little thing beneath her, small and brittle enough to crush under the tip of her finger. She could blow a long, slow breath through puckered lips and make it spin faster on its axis til it was twirling past the sun. She could pop it like a balloon and make a new world out of a ball of claw rolled between her palms. She was light and sound and space and matter. She owned it all. She could do what she wanted with it. Anything. Everything.

She regained a sense of her own body as her left hand clenched and she felt the pierce of her fingernails into her own skin. The ring felt hot and cold at the same time, like it could burn through flesh and freeze her blood. The earrings, meanwhile, felt as though they were shooting a metal rod through her skull. There was half a second when Chrysalis might have ripped the miraculous off her body had she the capacity to voluntarily move, but she reminded herself of her goal. She was too hungry, too eager for a satiating, long-deserved revenge.

When her vision cleared, the first person she laid eyes on was her akuma. Reaper stood rigily, her head twisting back and forth between Gabriel and her master. No longer could Chrysalis feel her emotions, as the butterfly's power was drowned under the sheer magnitude of her new transformation.

She couldn't care for long. Her first victim lay waiting for his punishment. The blood on his face seemed to glow against the shock of his stark white skin: a look of unadulterated fear and regret.

But then, he turned towards his son and the partner clinging to him. He turned towards Reaper, who upon meeting his gaze, fumbled her perfect posture. His terror mellowed, a storm softening into a slow rain.

Over the surge of the magic around her body, Chrysalis could hardly hear him tell them:

"It's not your fault."

Anger snapped within Chrysalis like a fire churning through wood to leave nothing behind.

Her patience and persistence would be rewarded now. Chrysalis's arms seemed to move on their own accord, reaching out in his direction. Bright white light beamed around her hands and obscured him in their brilliant glow. In the way of her power he vanished, and it brought a smile to her lips, that she outshone him. That she outshone everything around her. That she could be the one to realign all the blazing celestial bodies in the sky.

The seconds wound down. This was like listening to the whistle of a firework before it burst, holding one's breath during that heartbeat of silence before the explosion.

And then, moments before she made her wish, the edges of her vision brimmed with the color purple. The butterfly visor flickered around her face, just enough for her to hear the voice of her akuma at the back of her roaring mind.

Please, stop.

Chrysalis had no care for the woes of that girl. She let the connection drop into the whirlwind of power circulating through her body.

But it resurfaced.

Stop. Don't hurt him. Desperate and horrified.

Chrysalis felt her countenance descend into a severe scowl. In fury, she wrapped her own consciousness around that of Reaper and swallowed it. The akuma collapsed to her knees in shock, the forcefield dropping between herself and the fallen heroes. It didn't matter to Chrysalis. It was too late for any of them.

She made her wish deep in her soul. It trembled out from her center of gravity, and she couldn't tell, but it may have rushed through all the universe in a matter of seconds. It may have toppled mountains and emptied oceans. It may have created a billion supernovas in the black sky that night. All Chrysalis knew for sure was that he was dying. She'd always imagined it being painful, slow enough to sink into the distorted sense of an eternity waiting for relief, swift enough that all those watching would not have the chance to feel anything but helpless and futile. She could have heard him screaming, but it may have been her own abundant laughter, full and wild and relieved.

Years of anger, healed.

Chrysalis felt her own feet touch the floor, and then her knees, and then her hands. She laughed still, though the light around her was fading, retreating back into the miraculous. Her long auburn hair had come loose from its bun and dangled towards the floor where she stared, almost too nervous to glance up and see what she had changed.

But she did look.

And he was indeed dead.

Gabriel Agreste lay motionless on the floor, half pulled into his son's lap, his eyes open and clouded with the absence of life. Chrysalis's only regret was that she was too blinded by the effulgence of her own power to see that very moment his soul was ripped out of his body. Adrien's partner and wife, Marinette had her hand clasped around Gabriel's, whose fingers were limp and still wet with blood.

"Father, Father, Dad!" Adrien cried, his voice raw. Marinette pressed her face into his shoulder, tears dripping from her eyelashes.

Gabriel's head hung.

"Don't worry."

They looked to Chrysalis, eyes too bright with anguish to let their anger seep through.

"You won't miss him for long."

She rose back to her feet, finding that her transformation had dropped as the wish came to completion. The kwamis hung tiredly in the air, both betraying their horror, but Plagg especially looked terribly stricken; she only wondered how he'd seem once she'd taken the life of his dear holder as well. Her only question was who she'd wish away next as her eyes darted between the couple curled up on the floor.

"Tikki, Plagg," she growled, ignoring the sway in her own balance, "Unify."

Nothing happened. They only stared at her.

"Unify!" she commanded, having half the mind to wrap her fist around their puny bodies and crush them.

"Ten years you've had that miraculous," Tikki murmured bitterly, "And Nooroo never did tell you about the power you've been chasing with it?"

A terrible dread plummeted into Chrysalis's stomach. "What do you mean?"

"The ladybug and black cat miraculous can only be used simultaneously once by an individual holder," replied the kwami, her sapphire eyes blazing.

Chrysalis's blood turned to ice.

"And you should be very grateful for that," barked Plagg with a violent rasp. "You could probably not survive two wishes. It's a travesty you survived the first!"

Chrysalis stumbled back. She pinched her earrings. She shook her head and disbelief. "You are lying!" she shouted. "Lying! I command you to tell me the truth!"

"We have," they said in unison, compelled by her order.

"No, no." The world tilted back and forth around her. She staggered all the way back towards the window, she grabbed the sill to keep herself from falling. A primal scream split through the air.

"Maybe it's not too late." The words were Marinette's, a gentle whisper into her husband's ear, who clutched Gabriel to his chest. She ran her fingers down his jaw in comfort, wiping away the tears that had trailed down his cheeks. "Maybe we can fix this."

Chrysalis would throw herself out of the top floor of this building before she'd let that hope of theirs last another second.

"Plagg, claws out." As the black cat transformation streamed down her body, she tore the ladybug miraculous out of her ears and held them in the palm of her left hand.

"Chrysalis!" Marinette cried. She leaped to her feet, fingers digging into her husband's shoulder. "Lila, wait-!"

"Fuck that," she snapped. "He took everything from me and you are not going to take it back!"

"Don't!"

"Cataclysm!" roared Chrysalis. The command came so quickly and desperately that it was nearly incoherent, but the magic didn't mind. The ring erupted into darkness.

"No!" screamed Adrien.

She closed her fist and ground the earrings away. They slipped out from between her fingers like sand.

Over her shoulder, Tikki blinked out of existence. Like a mirage, like shapeless, weightless nothing.

Just as they all deserved to be.

"God," Marinette choked. She slumped back down on the floor. "No…"

Chrysalis slid against the wall. She tilted her head back, shutting her eyes as a pair of tears broke free. Vibrant colors were stained into the darkness, remnants of the power that had been unjustly robbed from her, of the vengeance she had yet to take against the rest of these wretched people.

"He's gone," she muttered. "He's gone, and there's nothing you can do. You won't take this from me."

She could still have the rest of her victory. It wasn't too late. It wasn't too late for her...

Something fluttered in her head. Something bright and white-hot. Something that made Chrysalis grit her teeth and sink her fingers into her temples. Reaper's consciousness reemerged in a surge of violent, devastating emotion. She knelt across the room, her hood having fallen off her head, her masked face aimed in the direction of Gabriel's lifeless body and the man holding him.

"D-dad?" she stammered.

"Baby Girl," Adrien whispered, shaking his head at her. "Are you here with us?"

She inched towards them. "Where have I been? Dad? Where have I been?" A heavy sob burst free. She noticed the drag of the cloak around her legs, and looked down at herself. She examined her arms and her boots, and she raised her hands up to her face and felt that it wore a mask. She gasped, "Dad, help me."

"Anaïs. I am so sorry," Marinette wept.

Chrysalis set one hand over the butterfly miraculous still pinned to her chest and held out the other towards her akuma. "Quiet!" she screamed. Reaper shuddered, struggling against the invisible force of her master's will, but that only made her rage bloom even further through Chrysalis's mind. She couldn't afford to lose the akuma anymore, not now that the dual miraculous power had slipped through her fingers. With the black cat ring still on her finger, she had other ways to finish her revenge, but the tempestuous emotions churning through Reaper needed to be brought under control. The purple visor flashed around her hidden eyes, in the same split second that her body went stiff as if falling out of her mind's command. She went straight as a log, blank as a mannequin as Chrysalis forced her will over her akuma's.

You're going to die.

The vow read clear at the forefront of Chrysalis's thoughts, in a deep, authoritative voice that spoke as if its word was law. The visor flickered around Reaper's face, solidified and cast violet light unto the mask, only for everything to go unbearably, precariously still, as if time itself had paused.

I'm going to kill you.

The visor burst apart as an anguished shriek pierced the air, and Chrysalis veered, yanked forward by the sheer force of her akuma breaking free of her. She watched in dismay as a black-winged butterfly fluttered out of the mask. It slipped at once off Reaper's face and cracked on the floor, revealing a pair of silvery-blue eyes locked on Chrysalis, burning with a wrath unlike she had ever felt but in her own tormented heart. An unendurable heat seared her flesh and bone; an incredible hatred lanced through her chest, struck her spine, sending waves of sharp, scorching pain across every nerve. Chrysalis's vision flickered. She needed to get up. Now.

Those eyes. They were like one of the several pairs that had haunted her at night for years. They were brilliant and pained and they wanted Chrysalis dead.

I'm going to kill you.

Her cane laid on the floor maybe seven meters away.

She started towards it.

"Ana-!"

The sound of exploding glass was followed by a flare of white light out of the corner of Chrysalis's eye. And then another, right in front of her.

Right over the cane.

Anaïs appeared out of the Voyage portal and swept the sword into her grasp. She tossed the sheath aside, reached out, and closed her fist Chrysalis's wrist before she could back away.

"Catacl-"

Anaïs broke her finger with a single harsh jerk. She showed her pearl white teeth between lips curled back into an animalistic snarl. She tore the ring off and tossed it behind her, minding not wear it landed.

Chrysalis's eyes went wide. Her knees buckled.

"Anaïs!" cried Adrien.

"No, I'm sorry!"

The plea ended in a gurgled mumble. Anaïs had swung the sword. Right across Chrysalis's throat.

There was a gasp like a gunshot.

Her hands were warm and wet. It felt…

Funny. Like a weird dream.

She dropped into a pool of blood she watched expand before her eyes. Her head went light. Her vision went dark.

"Dad…" she heard. Who was that? Who said that?

She met the dead gaze of Gabriel Agreste across from her and thought about being made of air.

---

"You cut your hair."

"Just a little bit."

"When did you do that?"

"A few weeks ago."

"It's nice."

She gave a little nod, keeping her eyes fixed forward. A leather jacket was bunched in her lap, and she started to wring it through her hands as they drove. He'd pulled up to her house eight minutes later than he said he'd arrive - the kids had distracted him at some point - but she took an additional fifteen to finally step outside into the sunny October afternoon. He wasn't sure what had held her up. She used to wear full faces of makeup, but she was barefaced today; she used to curl her hair, but it had been brushed straight; she used to wear high heels, for she loved being absurdly tall, but she'd shoved on a pair of sneakers and only realized the laces were still untied five minutes into the drive. She placed her feet on the dash and fixed that. When she was a lot younger, she would stick her tongue out of the corner of her mouth to tie shoes. And when she was playing video games. And when she was doing math.

"You hungry?" he asked.

"A little."

"You've been eating, right?"

This earned him a glare. Though he had his eyes on the road ahead of them, he could feel the heat of her stare on his temple. "Yes."

"Has Nathalie?"

There was a pause. "Most days."

"Let me know when she doesn't, okay? I want to be aware." Adrien switched on the bluetooth, expecting her to play some music, but she never reached for her phone. She clutched the jacket like a pillow to her stomach and looked out the window in silence. They did not speak to each other for the remainder of the drive. Adrien nearly missed a turn as he sat there thinking about how much had changed in the last year.

He asked, more formally, how she was doing once they had arrived at the restaurant and been seated at their private table. Anaïs gave him this sharp look as if to say, "You already know." Awful. She's been doing awful for a long time now. They didn't need to go into details, and they probably wouldn't, but Adrien wanted to know. This was the first time he was seeing Ana for longer than a few minutes since her eighteenth birthday. He watched her walk across the stage at her lycée graduation, he exchanged brief words with her when he and Marinette dropped their children off with Nathalie on a couple occasions during the summer, and he saw her on his birthday last month, when he stopped by to visit her and Nathalie and invite them to dinner, but they both refused, claiming not to be hungry. Nathalie, at least, sat with him for a while to chat, but Ana had gone up the stairs and shut herself in her room.

He didn't see her on the anniversary either. He hadn't even spoken to her. Both he and Marinette had attempted calling her phone, but she didn't pick up or return their messages. They visited the gravesite alone and let the kids place the flowers.

It took weeks of persistent - nearly daily - inquiries to get her to join him for lunch. She must have gotten tired of turning him down.

Adrien blew on his soup and asked her what she was going to spend her gap year doing.

Anaïs chewed slowly on a piece of bread and swallowed. She answered, "Thinking."

"Thinking?"

"I have a lot to think about."

He pondered what she meant by this. The pointed glimmer in her eyes concerned him. She reminded him a lot of their father right now. She's reminded him a lot of their father for the last year. It was quite eerie, actually. The terse acknowledgements of his presence, the numerous excuses to avoid seeing him, even the way Nathalie had to be the bridge between them, telling him "Your sister's in her room", "Your sister doesn't want visitors", "I'm sorry." Adrien was thirty-six but he felt like a teenager some days, thrown deep into a past where things had yet to get better. When they did, he really thought it'd have been forever. He was devastated to be wrong.

"Have you been working a lot?" he asked her, deciding not to question what it was exactly she was thinking about.

"Yeah," she replied with a dip of her head. This pleased him.

"On what mostly? Sewing, painting?"

"Writing music. A little bit of everything," she said. Sheepishly, she added, "I haven't finished anything in a long time."

"That's okay. I'm just glad to hear you've been at least a little busy."

"I get distracted," she told him. Her eyes flicked up from her hands to his face, and Adrien felt a chill pass through him. Her tone, her stare, there was something incredibly incisive about them. Adrien found himself watching her, inviting her with wide eyes to explain herself.

But her lashes fell. She sunk into her chair. The moment passed.

Anaïs didn't speak much through the rest of the meal, so Adrien filled the silence by talking about his children. His eldest, Emma, was ten and loved school. She'd struggled with reading comprehension when she was younger, and Ana used to help her when she babysat. They'd been close for a long time. Now, Emma asked her parents when she'd be able to spend time with her young aunt again, and they'd always have to tell her they didn't know. Even their twin sons, both seven, who'd never been as attached to Ana were asking about her. Adrien didn't mention this, though. He only told Ana that they had recently begun fencing lessons, and now they ran through the house with toy swords, dangerously close to knocking over vases and lamps.

"How's Marinette?"

"She's well. They're opening a new boutique of hers in London next year."

"No, I mean," Anaïs set down her water glass and leaned over the table. "How is Marinette?"

Adrien narrowed his eyes. "She's fine, Ana."

"She's not still...angry?"

The waiter walked by, and Adrien immediately launched into a story about Emma losing her hamster in her bedroom for two hours. Anaïs sat through it with a tight expression, her jaw hard and one of her dark eyebrows twitching. But whatever it was she was getting at wasn't brought up again. They didn't stay very long after finishing the food. Adrien paid the bill and they left. This time, Anaïs remembered to slip on her jacket.

Their drive back was entirely silent. Every now and then, Adrien glanced over at his sister and found her with her long legs pulled up to her chest. Her fingernails bit into the fabric of her jeans; some of them had been bitten off, a couple had band-aids wrapped around them. Adrien hadn't noticed earlier that this old anxious habit had returned. He nearly brought it up, but thought against it.

When he pulled up in front of her house, Anaïs sat still. She did not remove her seatbelt or even put down her feet. She glanced out the window at the facade of her childhood home and sighed quietly.

"You okay?"

No reply.

"Ana?"

She looked back at him, and her eyes brimmed with tears.

"Baby Girl," he said, reaching over to set a hand on her knee. "What's the matter? I've been so worried about you."

"I know what I need to do, Adrien," she murmured. "I don't really have a plan yet, but I'm going to work it out."

Adrien's heart dropped into his stomach. "Ana-"

"I'm going to bring him back," she told him, and her eyes blazed like flames of silver.

Adrien killed the engine. He kept his grip on the keys, because he knew if he took his hand away it would start to shake. A paralyzing dread prevented him from glancing back at his sister. He stared out onto the road and all the wavering trees flickering their leaves under the autumn wind.

"Everything Chrysalis did, I'm going to undo."

"You can't."

"Yes, I can. I'll find a way. I know there's a way."

"Ana. The ladybug miraculous has been destroyed. No ladybug miraculous, no restorative power. No restorative power, no reversing Chrysalis's wish." He spoke slowly, like he was explaining this to a young child.

She dropped her legs over her seat with a slam. Adrien did not look at her, but he knew she was glaring. He could hear the tears in her voice when she replied. "No, you're not - you're not thinking hard enough. It's not that simple."

"Listen to me -"

"No, you listen. You listen to me. My entire life has been about finding new ways to use magic. I've never played by your rules. When I tell you, there's a way, you ought to believe me."

"This isn't about me not believing you, okay? Maybe I don't right now, but if you proved me wrong, I wouldn't be shocked." Adrien slipped his fingers up under his glasses and exhaled heavily. "You might not understand this, but I need you to trust me. Whatever you're planning to do, it's better not to do it."

Tossing back her head, she gave an appalled, nonverbal exclamation.

He tried reaching for her again, but she slapped his hand away.

"How could you say that? Seriously, Adrien? Are you joking? It's better not to bring Dad back?"

"I'm not saying I don't miss him!" he said. "I do. I miss him every day. What happened shouldn't have happened, but Ana, it happened. A million terrible things go on in the world every day, but that's life."

"That's life," she mocked. She wiped her hands across her eyes and laughed, an unsettling, bitter sound. "No, that's not my life. A million terrible things go on because ninety-nine percent of the world can't do anything to stop it. How long have you had the miraculous, twenty-two fucking years, and you're acting like you don't have the power in your hands to change the world?"

Adrien's sister had never spoken to him like this. The Anaïs he knew had always been a polite, well-spoken girl, with a razor-sharp wit that made for the occasional biting remark, always made in jest, always made in affection. The anger and pain dripping from her words seemed such a foreign substance to him. He said nothing. He waited for some of that emotion to drain out of her before he made his next reply. She sat in the passenger seat trying to catch her breath and stop the flow of her tears. It was four minutes before she seemed to calm down. Her shoulders relaxed and her cheeks began to dry.

"Are you good?" he asked gently.

"Yeah."

"I want to talk about this, but I want to be calm about it."

"Okay."

Adrien offered the softest expression he could manage despite the unease churning the contents of his stomach. "You've always reminded me so much of him," he told her. "You're artistic, you're passionate, you're protective, your family means the world to you, right?"

She nodded.

"You remind me of all of those wonderful things. But as you know...there was a time before you were born when Dad and I didn't have a very good relationship, and it was because he and I were opposites in that one of us was good and coping with change and the other was extremely resistant to it."

He saw Ana's lips contort into a look of displeasure, but she held her tongue.

"You know the story, Anaïs. I won't share it again. But tell me this isn't the first time you've considered that everything you're going through right now could be a repetition of a very delicate history."

"Everything?"

"Not everything," he corrected, "But a lot of it. You wanting to bring him back through any method possible, no matter the consequences…"

"Hold on." Anaïs held up an index finger. "I want to make it clear. There is a difference between what I'm trying to do and what Dad did."

"I know it feels that way."

"No, there is. If Dad succeeded, he would have totally altered reality, he would have created a massive upset. But Dad's de…" She swallowed dryly, "It was the upset, Adrien, you get it? Chrysalis changed reality, and we can't be content with the way she changed it. It was never meant to be."

As much as it hurt to hear her essentially argue that his mother's death was more acceptable, Adrien couldn't latch onto it now. He took a deep breath and admitted, "You have a sound point. But this isn't about our father, you know. This is about you. Everything I'm telling you, I'm telling you for your own sake. Dad made mistakes, but the biggest problem wasn't that he was trying to create a reality that wasn't meant to be, it was that he was doing so at the cost of what was around him, including his own happiness." He put a hand on Ana's shoulder. "I don't want to see the same thing happen to you. The thought of that scares me, Baby Girl."

"Quit calling me that. I'm not four."

"Anaïs."

"I'm sorry, Adrien, but I'm not letting him go. He wasn't meant to go." Her voice broke. She brought her knuckles up to her mouth and bit down. She tamed the tears before they came again, and Adrien waited patiently for her to regain her composure. "I've made up my mind. I'm doing this, whatever it is. I am going to fix this."

"You may be able to justify this to yourself, and I want to tell you I understand, but," he pinched the bridge of his nose, "I don't get how you could know what happened to us in the past and still think it's the right thing. I know you don't see it this way, but this is what made Dad a villain."

She glared daggers at him.

"Please, please think about changing your mind."

"I've spent the last year making a decision, man, I'm not backing down now. Dad was a man of his word, and I'll be a woman of mine. He'd be proud."

An icy fear sank into Adrien's skin. He tightened his grasp on her shoulder. "Our father knew when to break his promises."

Anaïs winced. She brushed off his hand.

"If this has been going through your head for a year, then I'm even more worried than I already was. You are pinning responsibility for Dad's life on yourself. I've seen this before, and you're just going to feel guiltier for the fact he is gone. This isn't a healthy way to grieve."

"I'm not grieving," she snapped. "Because he's not gone. Not if I can help it."

"Jesus, Ana," breathed Adrien. "This isn't you."

"Yes it is. You said it yourself, I've always reminded you of Dad."

Adrien pulled out his phone and started to scroll through his contacts.

"What are you doing?"

"I know you've refused me before, but before you do anything, I'm begging you to talk to a grief counselor. I have the number for one. I was doing research for Nathalie. I'm giving it to you."

"Are you insane?" she demanded, looking at him like he'd grown a second head.

"It'll help to talk to someone."

"Yeah, okay. I'll do that. No problem," she sneered.

"Anaïs."

"You're not listening to yourself. Talk to a grief counselor? About Dad? That's crazy. What am I supposed to tell them?" Anaïs threw out her arms. "'My dad died and it was really hard', like that's going to solve a damn thing. You know I can't say shit about what really happened. 'By the way, I'm actually Black Witch and my brother is Chat Noir and my dad was Hawkmoth twenty years ago. Chrysalis killed him in cold blood using reality-altering magic'. Is that what I should say?"

Adrien looked at her helplessly. "I just can't stand to know you're feeling this way."

"Sorry, but a grief counselor isn't going to do anything for me. They can't do anything for people like us. People with secrets."

"Nathalie said the same thing." Adrien cracked his knuckles against his forehead. "Please don't rope her into this. I know she's not well."

"Wouldn't dream of it. And she's fine."

He unlocked the car door, and Anaïs finally undid her seatbelt. She looked weary and angry and thoroughly unconvinced. It sent a pang through Adrien's chest.

"Goodbye, Adrien."

"Ana, I know you love him. I love him too, and I wish he was still here with us every day. He made the right choices in the end, but he made a lot of bad ones first. Please, please be better than him."

She stepped out of the car and turned around, shooting him a sad, frigid glare. "Know better. Goodbye, Adrien."

She slammed the door.

---

A few minutes before 3 AM, Nathalie heard the front door open and shut. Exhausted as she was, the sound brought her to attention, and she sat with her spine straight against the back of the chair at the corner of the living room, her fingers curled over the armrests and her eyes fixed on the dark foyer beyond half-open glass doors.

A pair of feet made two small steps into the foyer before there was a sudden pause. The illuminated lights in the living room had been noticed, pale yellow spilling out unto the dark hardwood floor. Anaïs became visible a moment later as her tall silhouette brightened in the way of the doors. Her winter coat was dusted with fine snowflakes; her hair was damp where many of them had already melted into her scalp, and her expression was hardly tinged by guilt.

She removed her boots, maintaining eye contact with her mother behind the doors. The gloves came off next, stuffed into the pockets of her coat. Anaïs had on a backpack that she shrugged away and dropped in the middle of the foyer, before she walked into the living room and closed the doors behind her.

They stared at each other, challenging each other to speak first. Nathalie's heart pounded.

"You lied to me," she finally said, to be met with a silence only interrupted by the soft noise of the house's heating system. She curled her toes in her slippers, squinted at Ana, who only stood there sucking on her teeth. "Why?"

"We want two different things," answered Anaïs quietly. Her nose was red with the cold and she sniffled. "But I'm still going to get mine."

"You're wrong. We want the same thing. We've always wanted the same thing. I just know that it's not something we should have."

"What's the difference?"

"The difference is that we should be able to sit down and have a calm conversation about this situation, as opposed to you sneaking out of the house right under my nose and behaving like I couldn't possibly understand what's going on." Most of Nathalie's hair was still black, but threads of silver caught the lamplight hanging right behind her head as she moved her head to look towards the black window. It had been snowing since eleven, when Nathalie noticed her daughter was gone from her bedroom with all of her old spell books missing from the shelves.

"I really didn't want you knowing about it to begin with, and neither did anyone else."

"Well, I know, Ana, and I've known for a long time, so I really wish you wouldn't pretend like you have something to hide from me."

"I do. I did. You told me to give up."

"And you told me you would."

"I didn't mean to lie."

"So you had an intention of stopping?"

Anaïs released a frustrated grunt, pressing her fists into her temples. "I don't know, okay?" she said. "I don't know."

"No, I believe you did," Nathalie murmured, leaning back, "But I'm sure the moment you had that glimmer of hope in your mind that you were getting somewhere, you changed your mind."

Her daughter stared at her.

"He had that habit too."

Blue-gray eyes froze over. Nathalie had seen Ana glare at her like that many, many times in the last three years and it never started to hurt less. It was rare that her child even looked at her anymore - looked at anything, really, for she often appeared as if she was falling away from her own body and the world surrounding it - but when she did, she glanced with a pair of eyes that seemed older and harder and darker than they should have been. She used to see her husband in those eyes, and now she saw a stranger.

"Well, where were you?" she prompted with the cock of her head. "You might as well share."

"You don't want to know."

"I can guess, Anaïs. I'm not stupid, but I'd rather hear it from you than my own imagination."

The younger woman spat out a sharp breath that disturbed the wet strands of hair hanging messily between her eyes. "His grave, Mom. I was at his grave."

"And what were you doing there?"

"The same thing I've been doing since he died. Trying to think of a way to bring him back!" Anaïs took the gloves out of her pockets and threw them on the floor hard enough to create two loud slaps that rang through the house. "Feel better? You know what I'm up to! Why does this have to be a confrontation?"

Nathalie got to her feet. "For once, could you consider how hard it is for me and everyone else who loves you to watch you dig yourself deeper and deeper into this hole? For once, could you even try to listen to us? Take our advice? Let us help you?"

"I don't need help, alright? Don't you think I would know if I did? I have everything I need in order to find a way to bring him back. I'm close."

"You've been saying that since you were eighteen."

"It was never true until now."

Nathalie wanted to rip her own hair out. She forced her hands back down to her side and tried to remain calm, allowing a sigh to pass through her lungs and hitch with a tearful breath. "Oh, love," she whispered.

"You don't even want to help me. You want to stop me. You've always wanted to stop me." Anaïs started to pace the room. "If you wanted to help me you'd have been working on a plan, and you would have been sitting with me tonight, if we hadn't already fixed everything by then."

"That's not true."

"You were a sorceress. You made Black Witch. You were the one to teach me about other kinds of magic. It's almost like this was meant to be, right? But you stay here, and you hole yourself up in this house - and you get mad at me for never leaving my room when you're the exact same way, aren't you? You hole yourself up and you won't leave your bed and when you leave your bed you ignore everything except for work and - and - and - and you have the gall, you have the nerve, Mom, to - to act like I'm the one who isn't handling this well?"

"Slow down, Ana," Nathalie urged her. "Take a breath."

"I'm trying to do something! I'm trying to fix this! What are you doing?"

"Baby Girl..."

"Your medicine isn't going to help you. Nothing's going to help you. You just want to sit in your pain and make me - make me sit with you!" Nathalie grasped her daughter by the arm, but Anaïs violently shook her off. "No!"

"Calm down. Remember what I said. I want to have a conversation."

"You want to change my mind. You're not changing my mind."

"What will?"

"What will?" Anaïs was jarred by the question. She paused in the middle of the room and flashed her horrified gaze at her mother. "What will? I don't get it. I just don't get it. What will? I'm trying to save Dad's life! He was taken from us, from all of us, or am I - am I misremembering? Is he upstairs now?"

"Would you sit down?" Nathalie asked gently, gesturing to the couch, but Ana remained on her feet. She buried her face in her hands and stood frozen like that for several minutes while Nathalie waited for her to come back.

"Mom?" she whimpered in the silence. "Mom, I'm sorry."

"I really think you need some help, love. I think we both do."

"I don't want to let go. I can do this."

"Maybe you can. But you shouldn't. You're hurting yourself."

"No, I'm not. I'm fine."

"Your father wouldn't want this. He wouldn't want you to repeat his mistakes." Nathalie knew that much was true. She and Gabriel had spent all of their baby's childhood fearing the past would resurface, prepared to do whatever it took to ensure that it didn't. Every villain the heroes had faced in Ana's lifetime was compared to the first that ever terrorized the city, Hawkmoth and Mayura. They were a pair of names that haunted them for years after their surefire demise, to Nathalie like a stain of ink or an unfriendly shadow. Chrysalis's first akuma, Timetagger, attacked when Ana was seven years old, and that was when they decided they could not hold off telling her any longer. That miraculous had once belonged to her father, and he used it to commit atrocities against the city, just like this new holder was doing now. But he and Nathalie were new people, better people. They forged a new path and built a new life and Ana was their greatest joy of it. Ana listened. She asked questions. She understood. Nathalie remembered how her heart swelled with warmth as her little girl leaped into her arms and told her, "You guys are my heroes."

But she didn't understand how they could sit and listen to news commentators and random civilians call Hawkmoth and Mayura villains. She didn't understand how they were content to let only their family know that they had changed. Anaïs wanted to change everything. Anaïs wanted the world to know about the good Hawkmoth and Mayura were truly capable of.

She became Black Witch when she was thirteen. The ally of Ladybug and Chat Noir. The daughter of Hawkmoth and Mayura. The redeemer of their sins. She wanted to wash away the stain of every mistake they'd ever made. Gabriel had been proud. They were both proud, but they were scared too.

Because Chrysalis was one mistake Black With could not erase.

And now, three years later, it seemed like everything else was falling out of the woodwork. Anaïs had been the best of her parents, but she was the worst of them too. She was stubborn and defiant and she couldn't separate love from pain or wrath or shame. Nathalie trembled in fear for what she was watching unfold. She'd lived in fear all her child's life, waiting for something to go wrong, and it finally was. She still wasn't ready. She still felt small enough to be swallowed by all of this.

"Anaïs." Nathalie turned her daughter to face her and brushed back her wild black hair. It desperately needed a cut. The ends looked like frayed wires. "I can't do this again. I can't. You understand that, don't you?"

"Mom?"

"I went through it once. I pinned everything on the hope that things would be better if they just went back to the way they were before." Nathalie cupped her cheek. Her skin was still cold from the winter night outside. "You know a part of me has to think the way you think. A part of me wants to walk with you, but I…" The words died on her lips.

Anaïs took her wrist. "Then look the other way."

She removed her mother's hands and forced them down. Frustrated, Nathalie rushed to the door and blocked Ana's way out. She was smaller than her daughter, but unintimidated. "Please, Ana, you've been so filled with anger and guilt all this time, but you will never be happy as long as you hang on to it."

"Guilt?" Ana said, eyes widening. "Who said anything about guilt? I'm not guilty."

"Ana-"

"What are you implying? Do you think I'm at fault for this?"

Nathalie recoiled. "No!"

Her vehemence earned a strange reaction. Anaïs looked doubtful, but her aggressive stance had faltered a moment, as if she was turning inward. Then, she attempted to move past her mother. Nathalie stood firm. She held her daughter's brisk, outraged stare.

"We're not leaving this room until we've come to an agreement."

"If you want to agree, then you'll let me do this."

"You have to trust that everything will be okay."

"Nothing will be okay until I've brought him back."

Nathalie's heart split apart. She stamped her foot hard enough to shake the room, and Anaïs flinched back. "Oh my God, Anaïs!" she exclaimed, laughing through the surge of agony in her chest. "You're just like him!"

"You say that like it's a bad thing," Ana growled. Tears welled up in her eyes. "It's like - it's like you never even loved him!"

She fell silent. Even her breath, she held. Like a stroke of lightning across a blackened sky, the old Anaïs revealed herself in a loud and blinding flash of regret. Slowly, her hands came up to cover her mouth. Half a dozen band-aids and several more uncovered scabs around her fingernails stood out against the stark paleness of her face.

But then, her eyes went cold. That instantaneous familiarity melted back into darkness, and Ana was once again a stranger wearing the face of Nathalie's child.

And Nathalie stared at her, speechless and numb. She wasn't sure what force it was that was keeping her upright, because she suddenly had no sense of her own body, and no sense of her own mind but for the echo of those words crashing through.

And then getting quieter and quieter.

Until she felt like she was sinking slowly out of existence.

"How dare you?" she heard herself say, though she didn't know she had commanded herself to say it. Anaïs took several steps back. She closed her eyes, and whenever she did that, Nathalie felt like she was looking in a near perfect reflection of herself. Right now, she hated the view.

"I'm done." Ana whispered. She hardened her fists and rolled back her shoulders and attempted to storm past her mother, but Nathalie's arms shot out and shoved Ana back, keeping her in the room.

"Like I never even loved him?" echoed Nathalie. She felt weak. All her body's strength seemed as though it was stirring this pit of embers somewhere deep in her soul, about to light this violent fire, make her burst into heat and light.

But she didn't. She stood perfectly still and she spoke just loud enough for Ana to hear. "I loved him, darling. You know it." must have been something dangerous in Nathalie's face, for fear flickered briefly across her daughter's hard expression. "Maybe if you knew how much I loved him, you wouldn't have said it at all. Do you understand, do you understand that every time I've had to tell you to give this up, it's killed me? Because it feels like I'm killing him. Over and over. It feels like there's this tiny flame of possibility in a universe of darkness and I'm the one blowing it out. It feels like I've touched him, just by the hand, and that I've pushed him away again. Every time I tell you you're making the wrong choice, he dies. I kill him."

Her words earned no reaction. Was she speaking to solid stone? Right now she felt further away from Ana that she felt from anything else in the world.

So she started screaming.

"Are you listening? Are you listening to me? Am I really supposed to believe that what I do is for the best? I have to believe it, because if I don't, then you're going to keep falling further and further away from me. You're going to follow him, but I can't be left alone right now." Nathalie tilted her head back and yelled at the ceiling. Perhaps it would hear her better. "I could live the rest of my life knowing in my heart he shouldn't have been taken from us if I didn't have to fight tooth and nail to keep you from slipping through my fingers! I have to lie to myself every day! I have to pretend I can live in a world where we're apart and that's okay. It's not okay!"

Nathalie knew, Anaïs had only heard her mother shout like this once before. Once before.

And it ruined everything.

Her throat felt raw. She coughed into her elbow and went on, feeling like she couldn't breathe, but finding that the words spilled out of her anyway. "I loved your father more than I loved my own life, and that was something he had to learn the hard way. It was something I'd forgotten until I found out he was gone from me forever. But I almost sacrificed everything, my present life, our entire future for the thought of him being happy again. And now he's gone and it feels like there is no future. It feels like there's nothing left." She coughed again and inhaled a rasping breath. "But you're still here. I still have you. I still have Adrien and Marinette and the kids, but I'm terrified because I know that if I gave myself permission, I'd let it all hang in the balance a second time. A second time. As if I hadn't learned from the first!"

"No," Anaïs finally said, her voice low. "Don't do this. You're not like that. Maybe you were but you're not anymore, because we" - she switched her index finger back and forth erratically - "are not alike. I'm the one willing to make sacrifices. Don't lie to my face and say you have it in you to help me. You make the choice every single day not to. Every day!" she yelled.

"You don't know what you're saying." Tears poured from Nathalie's eyes. She was shaking. Feeling was returning to her limbs, but all she felt was that her body couldn't hold her. She slid down against the door and sobbed into her palms.

"What, like I've lost my mind?"

Nathalie looked at her helplessly, any reply she could have made to that question trapped in an incoherent whirlwind of thoughts on the back of her tongue.

"Do you still wish you'd never told me?" her daughter asked softly. "Are you still that afraid? That you'd have rather lied?"

Nathalie's heart broke apart. She felt like she was dying. "I can't do this, Ana. I'm done. I have to stop this, but it'd be so much easier to just let it go."

"Then let it go."

"I'm trying to hold on. He'd want me to hold on, but…" She looked up and dabbed her eyes with the sleeves of her robe. "Oh, it could be over so soon. I could...I could…"

And then, finally, something gave way on Anaïs's stony visage. Horror dawned in her eyes. But whether it was at herself, or at what her mother was saying, Nathalie never got to know.

She bolted. The door beside Nathalie was flung wide open and crashed against the wall. Looking over her shoulder, Nathalie watched her pick the backpack up off the floor, jam the boots back on her feet and run out of the house, not even bothering to slam the front door behind her.

Snowflakes blew into the foyer and melted on the floor.

Nathalie didn't move until she was shivering cold.

---

As she expected, Marinette found Anaïs in the back of her closet reaching for the gramophone on the highest shelf. She'd flicked on the light switch and stood in the doorway with one of her nine-year-old sons at her side, whose eyes were blown wide at the sight of his aunt attempting to steal what he'd always been told was a priceless heirloom.

Ana paused, looking at the pair with a face white with dread. She lowered her arms.

Marinette tapped her son on the shoulder. "Why don't you go find your siblings and tell them dinner is going to be a little late tonight? Mom needs to have a talk with Ana."

He nodded and ran from the room. Marinette beckoned for Anaïs to step out of the closet and had her take a seat on the edge of the bed. After pulling a chair out from the wall, Marinette sat as well, crossing her legs and folding her fingers in her lap. She wore a placid expression, she evened her breath. Never mind that for half a second, she wasn't completely certain Ana would have the patience for a peaceful encounter, that she'd not take what she wanted and run.

"No need for this," Anaïs said gruffly. "Don't bother with your usual niceties. Tell me to get out. I know that's what you want to say."

"I'm not going to tell you to get out, Ana. I want to talk to you. I've been waiting for the opportunity."

"You and everyone else on the planet. But none of you want to listen to me. You just want to change my mind."

"No, let's chat." Marinette raised her chin in interest. "Tell me what you've been thinking about."

Anaïs had come to her and Adrien's door at four in the morning and refused to explain anything to them. She crashed in the guest bedroom until noon, and emerged to tell them that someone should be keeping an eye on her mother. Adrien had been over there since, and Marinette knew in the meantime that her sister-in-law was bound to take advantage of her current environment for the sake of her long-held goal. Marinette had deliberately left Anaïs alone for a half hour that evening, knowing she would seize the opportunity to go straight for the box. Ana hadn't even spoken to them in months. If she was here, it was because she wanted something.

To Marinette's satisfaction, she recognized there was no reason to lie about it either. She deflated and said, "I have a plan."

"Do you?"

"Yes."

"Care to share it?"

"I…" Anaïs picked at the scabs on her fingers.

"I wouldn't approve, would I?"

"As if you've approved of anything I've been doing."

"Well, you've never talked to me about it. So, you might find yourself surprised." Marinette smiled and leaned forward. "I'm all ears, darling."

Anaïs pursed her lips. As she pondered her response over the next several minutes, she ripped a piece of skin from around her pinkie nail and mindlessly sucked away the blood. Meanwhile, Marinette glanced at the window, idle and patient, yet detecting a stir of anxiety in the pit of her stomach as the silence went on.

Finally, Ana murmured, "I...I'd thought of doing this before, but I was hoping that I could find a way to...bring him back without changing anything else. But I see now that everything needs to change. This entire world feels broken. I spent forever writing and practicing spells that would fix all of this, but it just wasn't adding up."

Marinette knew thanks to Nathalie that Anaïs hadn't nurtured any of her other talents in years. She'd been told that a half-painted canvas has collected dust on Ana's easel since the first anniversary of her dad's murder, and that the only music in the house occurred when a sudden angry cacophony of random piano keys were slammed in a fit of rage. Marinette hated to think of how many hours Ana had spent doing nothing else but agonizing over Gabriel's demise and trying to find a way to fix it.

"So, I guess the only way I can be sure to make everything okay again is…" Anaïs got to her feet. "I need the rabbit miraculous."

Marinette blinked at her, not moving from her chair. "Oh?"

"Please, Marinette."

"Is that what you were trying to take just now? The rabbit?"

"There's so much I could do with the rabbit miraculous that would make all of this go away. Just think of the possibilities, Marinette. I have a million ideas, and if any of them don't work, then I can go back again. I can go back as many times as a need to until all of this is fixed. What if I stopped Chrysalis from ever taking the butterfly miraculous, or what if I-"

"I'm going to stop you right there," Marinette interrupted, holding up a hand. She sighed, studying the wildness in Anaïs's expression. "I'm not giving you the rabbit miraculous."

"But-"

"It takes a very specific kind of holder to handle that power. Not even I would dare to take it up myself. As for you, Anaïs, I know you mean well, but you've demonstrated that you don't have to level head or the foresight to sensibly use that miraculous."

She looked offended by this.

"It's incredibly irresponsible and careless of you to expect numerous trips deeper and deeper into the past to be a means of repairing the timeline. The rabbit is not the snake. There's no reset button."

"You're cruel," growled Ana through gritted teeth. She paced to a nearby window, folding her arms over her chest. "You had me thinking you'd actually hear me out. But you're like everyone else. Telling me I'm incapable and foolish."

"I never said those things. I may not be telling you what you want to hear, but you should still listen." Marinette gestured at the bed once again when Anaïs glanced back over her shoulder, but she remained standing, glowering through narrowed eyes. "Oh, Ana, I've known you since you were a baby. I watched you grow up. You'd always been so smart and self-sufficient. This situation is hard enough as it is, but you're also a girl who's used to being in control. You feel out of it right now, and it's hard."

"Stop. I don't need you to read me."

"I'm attempting to understand you. You tried to write your own destiny when you became Black Witch, and rewrite the legacy of your parents before you. That narrative was completely in your hands for years. And then, all at once, everything felt so out of your reach. Am I right?"

Stiffly, Ana nodded.

"See, I get it. We all get it. No one is deliberately trying to misunderstand you." Marinette gently tapped her feet as she spoke, and Ana watched their movement. "You've been fighting all this time to gain some of that control back, and I know it's the last thing you want to hear, but maybe the best thing for you is to relinquish that control."

Ana scoffed and turned back to the window, hugging herself.

"Let me ask you this: do you feel obligated to save your father?"

"What kind of question is that?"

"What I mean is do you see this as a purely emotional endeavor, or do you think you are responsible for bringing him back?"

Ana reached back and balled all her hair into her fists, asking "Why can't it be both?"

"Is it both?"

"They say justice is blind, but that's a lie," she mumbled. "Justice walks deliberately into the darkness to create light."

"Haven't you already gotten your justice?" Marinette asked thickly. Nobody liked to talk about the moments that immediately followed Gabriel's death. The pointedness of her question got stuck somewhere on the walls of her throat, a welcome mishap, for she had no way of knowing how Anaïs would have reacted to her darkest hour being more directly addressed.

To this question, she merely shrugged and replied, "It righted no wrong."

"On that, we can agree."

Both went quiet. Anaïs stood looking out the window for half a minute before turning back to the rest of the room, and releasing a sigh as if she was disappointed to find the rest of the world still existing around her. She looked exhausted, with smudges of purple skin beneath her eyes and her hair falling messily towards her broad, rigid shoulders. She'd once had a ramrod posture like her parents, but she seemed too weary now to hold her body straight.

Marinette watched her slink back to the edge of the bed. She sat down once more, ran her hands down the sides of her face and gave a large sigh. Her face was busy with thought, and after another moment, she finally flicked her gaze back from up the floor, looking hopeless.

"I'm sorry, Anaïs," Marinette told her, rising to her feet. "I really hope you don't think this hasn't been hard for the rest of us too."

She opened her mouth to respond, but only a weak whimper escaped.

"We've...had to act really strong. If it feels like we've turned our backs on you, then I am sorry." Marinette lowered her voice. "Is that how it's felt?"

Ana shut her eyes and gave a near imperceptible dip of her head.

"I know what it's like to feel abandoned by the people who are supposed to be there for you. I'm not going to tell you that our situations are anything alike, but I can imagine how hard this has been." For the first time in years, Marinette let herself remember those seemingly endless uncertain months of her youth, when the weight of a city pressed down from above, pressed in from every angle, and she'd have considered herself a failure for being crushed. "I was completely unprepared for my mentor to disappear, for the guardianship to fall into my hands. I was still a child at the time, you know, just as you were when Gabriel was...was killed." She brushed some hair behind her ear, not wanting to look at Ana while she spoke. "And it felt like I had nothing. There seemed to be this entire hidden world I needed to unlock, but I was left with none of the keys. To this day, you know, I've never heard from the other guardians, I'd never heard from my old master, and back then, I thought the only way to manage was to hold everything around me under my thumb. I was grappling with the fact that I had no control when I felt I should have had it all."

"I'd never known it was like that for you," whispered Anaïs. "You'd always made it look so easy."

"Well, because I learned eventually that I had to trust the people around me to support me - yes, when I did have it together, but especially when I didn't. I was never alone, Ana. Through every loss and struggle, I had people to count on. Always," she finished. Marinette crossed the space to the bedside and clasped Anaïs's arm, offering a smile. She didn't know how it appeared to the young woman, but she hoped more than anything in that moment that she'd get one back. Get something back.

"Regardless of how you feel now, twenty years later, do you believe," Anaïs murmured, her voice trembling, "that you shouldn't have been abandoned?"

Her heart felt heavy as she answered, "Yes."

"Is it something you would change if you could, if you knew things would be better in the long run?"

"I don't…"

"If you knew, Marinette."

"It's hard to say," she whispered.

"Do you believe…" Ana leaned in closer, putting her hand on top of Marinette's, "that he shouldn't have died?"

Marinette didn't want to reply. There was this feeling of dread at the back of her throat like cotton blocking her airways, but she swallowed it to rasp out another, "Yes."

Ana shot up, startling Marinette back. "I won't use the rabbit miraculous," she said quickly, "But if there was another way, a far less dangerous way, and you knew I truly could bring him back, could you refuse me? Could you let a man who wasn't meant to die stay dead?"

This wasn't the direction the conversation was meant to go. Unsure of how to reply, Marinette merely took a couple more steps back and exhaled sharply.

"Could you justify allowing the ladybug miraculous to be lost to oblivion, when I could take it back?"

Her heart skipped a beat. "What?"

"I really meant it when I said I could fix everything," Ana told her.

"What are you thinking?" Marinette narrowed her eyes skeptically.

"I just need one thing from you: the fox miraculous."

"Now the fox? What for?"

"It makes for the perfect distraction."

Marinette didn't want to admit that was a sensible reply, so she turned her back and looked at the wall.

"Please, Marinette. Don't make me beg for this. If you could allow me to maintain just a shred of dignity..." On the wall hung a family portrait of Marinette, Adrien, and their three children. She focused on each one of their faces, trying to deafen herself to the desperation in Ana's voice, but that only stirred this thick, nauseating guilt inside of her. "You're all I have left. Adrien won't help me. My mother won't help me. They're too afraid of the past. If there's any hope at all, it's you. I need you to trust me, please. Tell me you trust me."

"Anaïs." Marinette composed herself and turned back around to find the young woman with her hands clasped to her chest, her expression an outpour of earnest fear. "You keep promises, right?"

She nodded eagerly. "Yes."

"Will you keep a promise to me?"

"Of course."

"You know, it's broken our hearts to watch this happen over the last three years. We've wanted so badly to help you, it ached. It kept us awake at night."

Anaïs's eyes went bright and round as Marinette stepped towards the closet door.

"It was so hard to know if we were doing the right thing because we knew, even though we didn't see you much, we knew you were unhappy. Terribly unhappy. I wondered if I could live with the fact you were suffering over this, no matter how much we convinced ourselves that it was better to move on."

A part of Marinette screamed at her as she traveled into the closet, pulled out a step ladder and reached for the gramophone on the top shelf. Loudly. Her hands quivered and paused just before wrapping themselves around the old antique. But she stepped down. She emerged from the closet and she set it on the dresser, shaking her head at herself.

"I'm only doing this," she said pointedly, "Because I'm worried you'll do something worse on your own. The longer this goes on, the less I'm certain you'll respect me enough not to steal this box from me anyway. I'm trusting you now, before it's too late, to keep this promise and all its conditions."

"What is it?" Ana asked. She seemed unphased by every other word that had been said to her, and Marinette knew at once that if her sister-in-law had the rabbit miraculous in her possession, she truly might have allowed everything outside of her reckless endeavor to burn to waste in the endlessly shifting flames of time. She'd witnessed the violence Ana was capable of. The blind wrath and hyper-focused passion. She couldn't fool herself into expecting any better at this point. Her mouth went dry at the thought and she realized there perhaps was truly no way to win. So, she'd lose as gracefully as possible.

"Number one." Marinette unlocked the gramophone and watched the miracle box appear. "You keep a low profile. You are not Black Witch. You have no name. You have no face."

She opened the box. Every miraculous lay inside their designated compartment. All but one. Marnette's heart sank.

Oh, how she missed Tikki.

"Number two." She picked up the fox pendant. "You don't take the rabbit miraculous. Number three: nobody learns what you're up to. If someone does, abandon the mission. Understand? Abandon it. You are to be excessively cautious, and patient, and thoughtful."

Ana looked doubtful, but she nodded. "Okay."

"Number four." Marinette closed the box and turned herself completely towards Anaïs, attempting to glare with the heat of the sun, now setting outside the window. She grabbed Ana's wrist and held it tightly, hard enough to squeeze a grimace out of the girl. "You finish this without any more blood on your hands."

Ana's countenance cracked. Marinette saw memory in her glassy silver eyes.

"Do you promise?"

Anguish flickered upon her pale skin, as if a candlelight wavered perilously under a breath of wind.

Ana inhaled. Her gaze pierced into Marinette's as she whispered, "I promise."

The fox miraculous was pressed into her palm.

Anaïs stumbled back. She looked shocked. She looked alive. For the first time in years, Marinette saw her smile, but it filled her with no comfort, no confidence, only grave uncertainty.

Then, she glanced at the miracle box. "I…" Anaïs spread her fingers over the lid. "I need to make some potions before I go. Just a few. And I'll give the box back, and you'll see I've taken no more miraculous than what you've given me. I'll keep my promises, Marinette."

She should have said no.

She had a terrible feeling about all of this.

But the scariest part was that she didn't find it much different from the way she'd been feeling for the last three years. It didn't feel much different from the way she imagined herself if she refused, and Ana found another way…

Because she would.

Marinette sighed and slid the box across the dresser. "I believe you."

---

A billion stars exploded in a single heartbeat. Her eyes swam up to the ceiling, and the floor rushed up to her back.

A mechanical scream blared out from somewhere far away - Lila didn't quite know where she was at the moment - "I've had enough of you!"

She hadn't even noticed that a heeled boot was pressing down on her sternum until she'd made the effort to crawl away. Additional weight descended and pinned her forcefully to the cold metal floor. An agonized groan trembled out of her throat like it was being squeezed out of her. She couldn't breathe. Tears soaked into her hair. As Lila ran her tongue along her teeth, she tasted blood.

The Sorcerer bent at the waist, holding out the hand Lila had bitten just seconds ago, earning her a blow to the side of her head. The pain and the tears made it difficult to make out the smooth silver mask inching closer and closer to her own face.

She raised an arm to try and stop them, but her bones felt to be made of lead. Quickly, the Sorcerer's fingers pinched the pendant around Lila's neck and tore it free, stripping the transformation away. Whatever extra strength she possessed as Volpina drained out of her body, from her head to her feet. There was the feeling of ice in her toes as she became weak and human again. Lila's vision dimmed.

The Sorcerer took their boot off her chest. Coughing, Lila watched as they raised the necklace up to their face.

"Separate," they barked.

A beam of light reflected off their mask for a moment as the one necklace became two. The Sorcerer slipped one of them up the sleeve of their cloak, and the other they placed in an octagonal box, appearing to contain numerous other pieces of jewelry Lila could only guess were other miraculous.

Her head throbbed where she had been struck. She dragged her fingers across the floor until she could lift them up to her quickly bruising brow bone. Lila groaned again and attempted to roll to her side, hoping she had enough strength left to stumble back to her feet, to get out of this place. Where was she? This dark room. And where was the dark room? Over their hideout, she remembered, the old Agreste mansion. Then, she'd be fine. She knew her way home from there…

Lila flinched as the miracle box slammed down on the floor. The Sorcerer's hands wrapped around her shoulders and pulled her up to her feet. Her head rushed with the sudden movement. She demanded to be released.

"You've run out of chances," the Sorcerer threatened.

"You…" Lila heaved a tired breath. Her shoes barely scraped against the floor as she kicked her legs as madly as possible. The Sorcerer stunned her into stillness by bashing her against the wall and holding her there.

"I, what? I, what?!" they screeched. "I ruined your chance at revenge? I betrayed your faithful allegiance? Bullshit."

Lila wailed out a word that may have been "Help!" but she wasn't sure.

They released a quivering laugh. "Why did I even bother with you? For the irony?" They shook Lila hard enough that the hood fell off their head. "Every second I spent with you was torture. Torture. There's really no hope for you at all, is there? You're a cesspool of selfish anger. You're pure, remorseless evil. It all makes sense, even - even now!"

There was something so incredibly lethal in their tone that it made Lila nauseous, like she'd swallowed poison. "Please," she gasped, "please let me go."

They laughed again.

"I won't bother you ever again. I swear it."

"As if I could believe a word out of your mouth. You're damn lucky," they snarled, pulling at Lila's collar aggressively, "that I agreed not to kill you this time!"

Lila didn't understand. She blinked rapidly at the Sorcerer.

Her confusion only seemed to anger them more. Their grip tightened and Lila yelped in pain. "Do you have any idea how many problems that would solve?!" they demanded. "If I just -"

They dropped her. Lila's legs proved too weak to hold her up and she crumpled to the floor in a hyperventilating heap. Her pulse throbbed around her eye. Was it swelling shut?

"But I can't do that," the Sorcerer sighed. "I'm a woman of my word."

Only a few more potions hung on their belt, and they unlatched a small vial filled with a liquid the color of thunderclouds. Unlike every other potion, which they threw to the ground or shattered in their grip, they simply screwed off the cap and tossed it over their shoulder.

"I wrote this spell," they told Lila. There was a strange and sudden absence of emotion from their tone that frightened Lila more than any of the ferocious things they'd said in the last several minutes. "I was at my wit's end. Nearly gave up. I thought that if I could just forget everything that led me to this, then it would be better, but I couldn't betray him like that. Not after I'd…" they trailed off. Their hand was shaking. The potion swirled in its little vial. "Done what I'd done. And I couldn't possibly let you off with the mercy of having forgotten your sins."

"What are you talking about?" Lila murmured. The Sorcerer glared down at her from where she sat on her knees.

"There's a million things I'll have you forget. But there's one I wish you remember." They stepped close enough that their boots touched Lila's fingertips. They whispered a string of words under their breath, a spell, and the contents of the vial were pulled from the glass to dance like a ribbon around their long, gloved fingers. The Sorcerer bent down and took Lila's chin in their free hand, raising up her head until they were level.

"I want you to remember what you see."

The potion flowed around their head, spinning faster and faster until creating a ring that framed their silver mask and its narrow black slits boring into Lila's petrified gaze. The dark gray liquid brightened until the edges of Lila's vision were completely obscured by light, and all she could see was the masked face of the Sorcerer.

"I want you to remember this, because if I fail, Lord forbid it, you'll see me again. And I want you to know, deeper and louder than you know your own name, that when you fashion this face, this cloak, this villain out of your cursed imagination and name it Reaper, you are creating the one person you won't be able to control."

Lila froze. The light grew cold. It flowed into her skin like bitter wind, dry and frigid and biting, like it could tear her flesh away. It streamed through her body, deeper and deeper until it exploded through her mind.

It was like everybody always liked to say, about life flashing before your eyes before you die, except she only felt like she was withering away on the inside. And instead of the images crashing together until their inevitable end, Lila witnessed each one of them be destroyed.

Crushed, like in a pair of hands. Disintegrated.

She felt like that should have hurt, but she didn't know why.

"You are creating the woman who kills you."

Lila saw her. That ugly twist of grief and wrath through every delicate feature, nose and mouth and brow and beaming blue-gray eyes. A shocking fear lanced through her. She felt that she'd had her heart drilled out of her chest. This was her last breath. This was her last breath. This was her last -

"Remember me."

And she saw him too. Saw the eyes they shared, and the blood on his face and the magic dripping from his body as it sucked the life away.

She knew him.

There was all this light around her - where did it come from? - and pressure on her jaw, like a hand, that was slipping away now.

Lila's mind went blank. She felt herself sink into the earth.

The ground.

The floor.

It was dark now.

Where was she?