Chapter Eighteen
"Hello, love."
As he held her for the first time, she was crying, her bright pink face scrunched up and her mouth wide open. Gabriel had her squirming hand at the center of his palm, and he just couldn't believe how tiny it was. A fist much smaller than a strawberry clenched as she released her stirring little wail. His heart thumped in his chest as he listened, listened to her voice, to her furious breath, to those brief pauses between inhale and exhale where the rain splashed against the window before being drowned in her cries again.
"You're beautiful."
He didn't want to cry himself, because he wanted to see her as clearly as possible and the tears would blur his vision. If life was kind he could watch her forever, just like this, and never have to let her go. It was kind enough, at least, to give him this moment and let it last.
A hand clasped his forearm warmly. Gabriel glanced up and met the soft blue gaze of his wife sitting up, before her eyelids gently fell and she sighed through her nose and mumbled something she was too tired to tell him audibly.
Smiling wider, he leaned over and kissed the top of her head. He let his lips linger there as he took in the smell of sweat in her hair and murmured, over and over, how much he loved her. He told her he was proud and happy and relieved and filled with more adoration than he knew what to do with, and faintly, she trembled with a bit of low laughter that made his chest expand with emotion. He pulled away and used his thumb to wipe away the tear that had dropped from her eye.
"My dear," he said.
The newborn baby, just several minutes old, shifted against him and grew quieter and quieter over time, until she was laying there peacefully in his embrace. Over seventeen years ago, Gabriel had experienced this amazement, when he was a younger and simpler man with so much more to learn than he was ever willing to admit. He remembered how brilliant and blinding his wonder had been then, and he didn't think he could ever feel such a thing again, but here he was. A lot different. A lot older. A lot warier, yet still, this vibrant and explosive feeling, it was the same. There was nothing like it in the world, nothing at all. If Gabriel knew how to freeze it and hold it and keep it forever, he'd do in a heartbeat.
He'd spent an awful lot of time striving for perfection in various places, and it was here; it was here stirring against his chest in a little pink hat; it was here to his left fighting not to fall asleep during such a moment as this; it was here in the pulse of his heart and the warmth in his blood. He'd gone through so much to learn that perfect was impossible, that he could be happy without it, but he'd found it now. He'd remember it forever.
All that time they'd worried they were only fit to lose, and this is what the other side had to offer. His baby girl. Healthy and strong and astonishing. As if light had become matter and he held it in his arms.
He'd even been afraid when he first felt her kick, on a cold winter morning when he was just waking up, and he rolled over to entangle himself in Nathalie's limbs. One of his hands had fallen over the curve of her belly, and Gabriel, who'd then been half-asleep, jolted to alertness as he felt a nudge beneath his palm, and then a couple more. Awoken by his movement, Nathalie's eyes fluttered open to catch his wide-eyed stare.
"What?"
"The baby," he murmured, reaching for her again.
"What about…?" She pressed a hand above his, and something like a smile (for she hadn't given a full one in months) brightened her face. "You feel her?"
He nodded. There was a rush of joy within him then, perhaps the beginning of what he'd feel come the middle of Spring in that delivery room, but those days were still full of so much uncertainty. Gabriel didn't know how to process this milestone when he struggled to convince himself he was deserving of any part of the journey. After all that Nathalie had endured and had yet to endure, he should have found it within him to bask in the elation of this moment, but as he sat there in bed, eyes on his wife as she tried to get a few more minutes of rest, all he could think about was how painfully real this was, how intensely different it felt from the first time he had a baby on the way, how it seemed to him that he had so much more to lose, only because he knew now what it truly meant to lose.
Gabriel had never imagined even getting that far. It wasn't that he expected something to go tragically wrong - though the irrational thought crept up on him at times when he was alone and surrounded with silence - rather, he was so overwhelmed by their good fortune over the last year that he'd found it difficult to think much further than what it had already done for them. As deeply in love with Nathalie as he was, he was still getting used to thinking of her as his wife; to look at her and see the future mother of his child felt so far out of reach. Yet, it became a reality at the end of that previous August. Gabriel was nowhere near that perfect place he'd rediscover on the date of his daughter's birth; he was shocked and afraid and confused because this shouldn't be happening. How could he become a father again? How was that something fate could even allow?
They'd said absolutely nothing to each other while they waited on the test, and Nathalie said nothing now as she held the stick between her hands and stared awestruck. The way she held her breath even after taking that long look told him everything he'd needed to know. Gabriel suddenly felt the weight of the last seventeen years crash in all at once. He thought the floor was flying up to catch him, but he blinked his eyes to realize he remained upright, and if Nathalie was going to take in another breath before she was blue in the face, he'd need to say something. He said the only thing he knew for sure at that moment: "It's positive."
To call him scared wouldn't have done it justice. He was sick with dread. It wasn't like what he would come to feel over the next many months of hardship, watching his wife suffer through complications of both the past and present, the dread of losing what he'd decided he wanted more than anything else in the world. He dreaded that this was happening at all. He dreaded what this was going to put her through, this woman who deserved better than to bear and mother the child of a twisted failure like him. He dreaded he was being taunted with all the pieces of life he had no business living.
As much as a part of him still believed a part of that, he could see now that it was no taunt. He felt worlds away from the man who sat on the edge of the bathtub, pressing the shaking hand of a wife in dire need of his comfort while he felt his own soul sliding away into some fearful oblivion. Gabriel, failing to hold back his tears any longer, gave a choked sob as he closed his fingers ever so gently around his daughter's tiny fist. He kissed her round, pink cheek. He murmured into her ear, "Anaïs."
The rain hardened its fall.
Nathalie, who'd been bobbing in and out of sleep, opened her eyes once more and flicked them between the faces of her loving husband and newborn child, and she inhaled deeply, moved.
"I love you, Baby Girl."
Her hand fidgeted, and he let it go.
"I promise…" he whispered, I'm going to do right by you.
I'm going to do right by you.
The rain fell in heavy droplets splashing against the window, against the ground, against the window.
Against him.
He was running.
I'm going to do right by you.
In the distance, she was a blot of color against the city gone gray, fast and desperate and hurting.
I promise.
Hawkmoth landed on a slanted roof. Water poured around his shoes and he fought for a moment to keep from slipping down the side of the building. He used his cane to steady himself, clenching his teeth.
Out of the corner of his eye, his son leaped into view, panting for breath. Chat Noir crouched atop a chimney with his baton clutched tightly in his fist. His green eyes darted towards his father. "She's too fast."
"We have to catch up."
"I know. Are you okay?"
He wasn't. Not remotely. But he nodded his head and made his way carefully up the roof, pausing for a second time at its peak. Anaïs fled several blocks ahead of them. There appeared to be a cape flapping in the wind behind her, obscuring her head.
"What do you think she's planning to do?" asked Chat Noir.
"I don't think she's thinking," Hawkmoth answered. He swiped his hand across his face to wipe away the rain and gestured that they keep moving. It was getting more difficult by the minute. Adrenaline had propelled him through this miserable day, but it felt now that his bones were growing heavier, or the rain was weighing him down. Each landing made him want to sink to his knees; each leap was in danger of falling short; each turn was slow and clumsy, and he'd nearly run into Chat Noir three times. He pushed forward, but his body was begging him to stop.
He couldn't stop. He needed to fix this.
Anaïs was quicker than them, and the further away she ran, the more her dark blue form melted into the hazy distance. When she disappeared behind a building, Hawkmoth panicked, only regaining his breath when she became visible again a moment later. She paused, going still but for the wave of the cape in the wind.
"Maybe she's wearing out," Chat Noir said. He ran a hand through his soaked blonde hair and shook out the moisture.
Behind her head, a branch of lightning surged across the clouds, half a dozen jagged prongs expanding towards them in a blaze of hot silver. Anaïs turned her body away from the rest of the city. As thunder cracked around them, shaking the rooftops they stood upon, she faced the Eiffel Tower rising far above their heads. She made for it.
"She's crazy. She'll get struck."
Hawkmoth ignored the comment. He was sleep-deprived and his legs were shaking, but he followed. All that mattered to him now was that he knew where she was heading.
As he and Chat Noir closed in, they watched her scale the Tower meter by meter, launching herself as high as she could manage before gripping a beam and letting her body slam against the iron. It looked painful. Hawkmoth dropped off the side of a building, rainwater splashing across the pavement with his landing. He used his cane to steady himself as he swayed forward.
"Whoa." Chat Noir helped him too, thumping down at his side and taking him by the arm.
"We have to stop her," grumbled Hawkmoth, half out of breath.
She'd paused on the first floor, and they caught sight of her face. Her skin was not quite as blue as her mother's; rather, there appeared to be a blue undertone that made her seem quite gray from a distance. A delicate mask framed her gaze, which she quickly shielded from view when she made eye contact with Hawkmoth. She doubled over for a moment, shaking out her hair, before continuing upwards.
"This is insane," Chat Noir murmured, not sounding as though he was speaking to his father by the vacant quality to his voice. His eyes burned, wide and round, like they were watching an impossible thing. He let go of Hawkmoth and took a couple steps forward, holding out his baton. His voice grew firmer as the moment of shock passed. "We'll ascend with this. Come on. Before she does something stupid or dangerous or both."
By the time they'd reached the base of the Tower, and Chat Noir had allowed his father to set an arm around his shoulders as he placed the end of the baton on the ground, which, when thunder roared, felt as though it might shatter under their feet, Anaïs had made it to the second floor. Flicking his wrist and willing the baton to expand, Chat Noir and Hawkmoth soared up into the air, surging past the first landing and losing a sense of the earth as the baton collapsed again once they'd reached high enough to tilt themselves over the second floor. The rain was warm but Hawkmoth still felt as though it could cut into his skin like the drops of a vicious late autumn storm. He and Chat Noir struck the floor of the second landing, making the woman standing across from them visibly flinch. Her cape was soaked through, the fabric clinging to her back and lying wrinkled on the ground where the last remaining centimeters fell past her feet. She whirled around to face them, and Hawkmoth caught sight of her flaming red gaze, bright and horrified. But a part of him was grateful that it no longer reminded him of his own.
"Anaïs," he said gently, holding out a hand. As he advanced a step, she tore her eyes away from his and held her fan before her lips.
She whispered something he couldn't hear over the wind.
"What is it?" he asked.
"I don't…" She shook her head erratically. "I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do."
"It's alright," said Chat Noir, mirroring his father's stance. "We're going to help you."
"No, you're not," she cried. Wet strands of indigo hair fell loose from the bun at the base of her skull and fluttered around her countenance, plainly distraught. Hawkmoth's miraculous never ceased to alert him of the pain Anaïs was feeling. It came in various patterns of energy, ripples and stabs of different strengths, different colors at the back of his head, yet all still communicating such violent agony. There was a storm alive in her as well.
"We can," Chat Noir said gently. "Let's talk."
"What more is there to discuss?" Anaïs dropped the fan from in front of her face. She looked over the railing, facing the clouds which rose above their heads in layers of gray: deep, dark, and thundering. "You've made up your mind haven't you? I know how stubborn you are. I'll not have the ladybug miraculous. I'll not eliminate the threat. So, how can you help me?"
Chat Noir approached. "We can find another way. We can figure this out, okay, we just need to - slow down, maybe. Have a conversation."
"We've had a conversation. I've had a million fucking conversations. I know they don't work."
"Father, please." Chat Noir extended a hand towards Hawkmoth. "Tell her. We can find another way to fix this. Another less dangerous way, right?"
Hawkmoth winced. He was numb in the legs. His cane kept him upright. And he didn't reply.
Slowly, Chat Noir's attempt at a hopeful expression inverted. Hawkmoth watched each feature transform until his son was looking at him with something like fear. "Father?"
"I don't know," he whispered.
"What do you mean?" Chat Noir asked. Anaïs turned her head halfway towards them, her red glare darting between her brother and father from beneath a heavy brow. "I hope you're not planning on dying by Lila's hand."
This probably would have meant nothing to Hawkmoth had he not become well-acquainted with the grief of his daughter, this sort of severe, lifeless feeling. Continuous, unchanging, without texture or depth, like his veins had hardened into cement. And because he felt this so strongly and so constantly, the explicit reminder from his son was quite unwelcome, and his face must have changed to something rather alarming, for Chat Noir cowered, and his ears went flat against his dripping hair.
"No," Hawkmoth responded. He didn't have the conviction to remain angry longer than it took to make that simple reply. He deflated, stammering on, "No, I just...we just...we need to talk about this. We - we're not in any position right now to be making rash, reality-altering decisions."
Anaïs released the railing. "How long do you expect me to wait?" she mumbled.
"This is all happening so suddenly."
"For you," she hissed, a violet lip peeling back. "But for me? I've spent three years waiting for this opportunity. Three years agonizing over the fact that you were gone. And don't forget, you were never meant to know about this. If everything had gone right from the start, you'd have never known a thing was wrong."
"But the butterfly miraculous?" challenged Hawkmoth.
"What? You'd never need it." Anaïs's glare narrowed. She looked at Chat Noir, standing halfway between herself and her father, and then at the brooch on Hawkmoth's chest. She chuckled humorlessly as her eyes brightened with the light of some sudden realzation. "I'm such an idiot. I was so hellbent on getting those earrings that I'd forgotten how foolproof my original plan could be. Could still be."
Chat Noir and Hawkmoth exchanged a glance.
"For some reason you don't want me to help you by using the wish, but I can still help you another way." Her boots thumped heavily as she took several steps towards them, moving so quickly and suddenly that Chat Noir had hardly the mind to move away before she clasped his right wrist. "Adrien, Adrien, it's simple. You can do this. Cataclysm the brooch. No butterfly miraculous, no Chrysalis; no Chrysalis, no -" She hardened her jaw. "You get it."
"What?"
"My spells failed but your ring holds the power to destroy a miraculous. I would have done it myself if I'd made it back to my own time, but - well, it's so simple! This could be over in the next few seconds!" Her voice shivered with thrill, but anguish still twisted her visage, like she could feel Chat Noir's reluctance as clearly as Hawkmoth could.
He wondered doubtfully, "And that would fix everything?"
"I can make my memory-erasing potion again," said Anaïs. Chat Noir was tugging his arm away, but she seemed to have an iron grip on him, her fingers hardly budging. "When the butterfly miraculous is gone, I'll make you forget everything. You and Mom and Marinette. You won't remember any of this, and you'll be fine. We'll all be -"
She came to an abrupt stop as caught the look on Hawkmoth's face, and the quality of his movement towards her and his son, slow and careful and like he was afraid of setting her off. Her gaze flicked up and down, searching for a part of him that appeared convicted or a sign of anything but this wary skepticism and pity.
"Oh, what?" she murmured. In the heavy rain, it was difficult to tell if any of the thick droplets rolling down her face were tears, but the wavering look in her eyes told him she was crying now.
Hawkmoth did not know how to tell her about the smaller, quieter reservations mangled in his core, the ones which engaged in battle with his instinct for survival and desire to go on living, the ones that may not have even occurred to him had this twisted fate of his been looming and imminent and heading towards him with the speed of a sword swinging through the air rather than seventeen years into the future; these reservations - had he the time to think about it, that he would consider to be born out of reproach for his previous crimes and a fear of doing wrong out desperation at the price of rational thought, and not out of a sense of responsibility, not out of reverence for a substantial, ancient power - included a concern that eliminating a miraculous from a box would endanger some intangible balance, an unwillingness to slight Nooroo, who he had abused for so long, and above all this jagged-edged self-assessment which designated him unworthy and undeserving of any authority regarding the fates of the miraculous after attempting to dictate reality for his own sake.
No, he couldn't explain any of this to her. She wouldn't have listened. Instead, he honed in on the memory of an emotion he had felt back in the lair, something that surged crisply through a fog of confusion and fear in the head of the one said to take his life. Hawkmoth rubbed his hands together and quietly asked, "Anaïs, are you sure that memory spell works?"
His daughter flinched, dropping Chat Noir's wrist at last, but then she shook her head. "Oh, the fact she remembers I avenge you? Well, I made certain she would."
"No, that's not what I mean. You know, I could feel Lila's emotions too, and she was full of terror, but I don't know if you've made her forget everything she was meant to forget," Hawkmoth said.
Chat Noir and Anaïs watched him with a similar intrigue. "What?" breathed his daughter.
"Because I believe she remembers me. What other explanation is there for the hatred I sensed within her every time she looked my way?"
"Hatred?"
"Whatever you've had her forget, she has not forgotten how she despises me."
Anaïs pounded her foot and the floor thundered beneath her. She rushed at her father, crimson eyes stretching wide in outrage. "No, no! That's impossible! I made her forget everything about the miraculous, about you -"
"Your spell was imperfect. I don't know how much of me she remembers, but my miraculous does not lie to me. What I felt was loathing." He did not flinch away when she shoved her face into his, baring her teeth. "I want you to understand my point, Anaïs. Chat Noir might cataclysm the butterfly and you might try to wipe our minds of this miserable day, but if it is your goal to fix everything, then there's simply no foolproof way to do it."
"Stop," she growled.
"Which is why," he went on, "we need to calm down, get out of this rain, out of these transformations, and take some proper time to think this through." He attempted to take her gently by the arms, but as soon as his fingers brushed against the sleek sleeves of her jumpsuit, she leaped back and threw herself against the railing. Hawkmoth had lunged after her, fearful she would make another escape, but she only leaned halfway over the edge and gutturally screamed into the rain.
"Father," Chat Noir said. He gave a helpless shake of his head. Hawkmoth felt sorry that his son had to witness this.
"I did think this through, I did. So many times, over and over!" Anaïs struck the railing with her fan, a metallic ring splitting through the roar of wind. "Do you know how many nights I spent just - just lying there thinking? Thinking, thinking, thinking, that's all I did! 'Think this through'?! I can't -" She gasped. She looked like she was trying to wrench the rails free.
"I don't want to die, Ana," rumbled Hawkmoth. "I need you to believe that, first and foremost. I don't want to die and leave you, or leave your mother, or leave Adrien. The thought of it breaks my heart."
She dropped into a crouch, pressing her forehead between two rails, her shoulders trembling with sobs.
He came closer. He didn't dare touch a hand to her shoulder, but his fingers hovered, inches above the drenched fabric of her cape. "Even worse is the pain I know you're feeling. I'm so sorry, my dear. You shouldn't have to hurt like this anymore."
"Then, what?" she cried.
"You might have already changed a thousand things just by being here today," he told her, "But if you didn't somehow, then I need you to trust that I and the rest of your family will do what we can to spare you this grief."
She glanced at him with alarm.
"You should go back to your time," he said, meeting her gaze.
Anaïs scoffed. "No."
"We can fix this."
"No, I have to do this. You don't understand."
"My dear, don't you think you have done enough already? You have given us the message, you have shown us a glimpse of this future. Time is not set in stone. We can change things -"
She jabbed her folded fan into his chest, cutting him off abruptly. "You don't fucking get it. It's not enough. It won't be enough until I can witness with my own eyes that something has actually been done to fix this, that I make it happen with my own hands."
"Anaïs, listen to yourself," Chat Noir broke in. The way he spoke was tender and sensitive. His words came slow as he warned her, "I believe you want to do the right thing, but this is beginning to sound like pride."
This appalled her. "Pride?" she echoed. "Pride? You think I care of pride now? You speak as if you know more than five percent of the story."
"I shouldn't have said that," Chat Noir replied apologetically, "What I mean is that I know you might think you're alone right now, and you might have viewed yourself as responsible for fixing this by yourself, but we're here now. We're here, Anaïs."
"No," she said, shaking her head. "You cannot pretend you have this shitstorm figured out. You have no idea what you're saying. I am responsible. That's what you don't know." She pushed herself back to her feet, fingers tearing through her loose hair and plastering it over the top of her head, away from her face flushed with rage. Her voice pealed like a bell when she told them, facing back out into the city, "Chrysalis may have killed dad, but he'd be alive if it wasn't for me."
For a second, they all blanched beneath a lightning bolt's white blaze. Hawkmoth's heart dropped with the crash of thunder above their heads.
"...What?"
For a moment, her taut expression faltered regretfully, but then her eyes went stony, an affirmation of her statement.
His first instinct was to tell her she was wrong. The words quite nearly came snapping out his throat like a curse, as if he had the knowledge and the memories of himself seventeen years older. He'd be shy of sixty then, and he'd know a million things that he could not imagine now, like the possibility that there was even a shred of truth to what Anaïs had just told them.
Voice shaking, he said, "No, you can't blame yourself for something like that."
"I handed those miraculous to her." Anaïs looked at her brother, specifically at the hand he had curled around his baton. Chat Noir's eyes went wide, and he pressed his fist to his chest. "It's a blur. There's only so much I can recall. I don't even -" She swallowed roughly and continued "I don't remember watching you die."
Hawkmoth could have let his cane slip totally out of his grip. Her broad, shapeless grief within him went sharp and piercingly cold.
"But I remember dropping the miraculous into her palm, just turning over the greatest weapon in the world like it was nothing. And I remember hearing her order me to find you." Bluish knuckles went white as her grasp hardened around the railing. "And I remember when I did find you, because you tried to talk to me. You said, 'Ana, we're so sorry.' You were sorry? For what? I was the one pinning your arms behind your back and throwing you down at the feet of your executioner like it wasn't tearing me apart."
"Anaïs, were you akumatized?" Hawkmoth asked her. He was light-headed and shivering cold, with this bitter, electric taste on his tongue that he wanted to spit out.
"That's how she won."
"No way…" Chat Noir gasped.
"Anaïs." Hawkmoth approached her. He didn't know what strength pressed him forward so quickly, but he'd made it to her side by the time her name was out his mouth. He did not hesitate to touch her this time, his hand falling on her shoulder and urging her to turn around to face him. "You cannot think this is your fault, Baby Girl. It's not your fault. You can't control yourself when you're being akumatized like that."
"I should have resisted," she growled, taking his wrist. Fingernails that had otherwise been bitten away were replaced with sharp talons under the peacock transformation, and Hawkmoth grimaced as they sank into his skin. "People had done it before, hadn't they?"
"But-"
"There was no excuse for me. I'd always known that Chrysalis wanted to destroy her enemies. I'd spent ten years of my life hating her. I'd spent four defending Paris from her treachery myself." She saw the way Hawkmoth's face lit up in surprise, and curved her violet lips into an acidic smile, a look that sent a chill down his spine when paired with those tearful, agonized eyes, glassy like garnet. "For you," she added breathlessly. "For you and Mom. You never asked me to, but I did it anyway, because I didn't want the world to see you as the villains."
"You were a hero?" said Chat Noir.
"A sorceress named Black Witch. Oh, I spent years begging Mom to teach me everything she knew, and she did, but…" Her head hung, "You also begged me a couple times to stop. When I did something stupid or reckless or scary. But I didn't listen. I should have listened. If I had, Chrysalis never would have gotten to me."
Helplessly, Hawkmoth withdrew. He wracked his brain for something to say, but shock paralyzed his thoughts. He must have looked in danger of falling over because Chat Noir appeared behind him to keep him steady.
"Anaïs," his son said, "I can't...I can't begin to imagine how terrible this has been for you, but you are not to blame. Chrysalis is the only one to blame. You aren't responsible for reversing her evils."
She was shaking her head, her expression clouded with memory, a sharp and violent memory as Hawkmoth could tell by the harsh stab beneath his miraculous. "But she used me to achieve them."
"That doesn't mean anything."
She looked directly into Hawkmoth's face as she spoke. "It means everything. She used me because of what I knew. I knew you. I knew all of you. Mom was right, and if I'd just listened to her, or if I'd never -" She cut off as her voice cracked.
"What did your mother say?" Hawkmoth asked thinly. He'd sensed his daughter's resentment was strongest for Nathalie out of the rest of her family, and he was feeling it in the air now, how her bitterness was starting to fall in on itself, closer to her center of gravity, where the heart drops its lowest. And he realized her anger towards all of them had been a structure of walls protecting a deeper pain.
"I did something stupid that day," his daughter told him, her eyes still boring into his, her voice held just above her breath to keep the words from shaking. "Something with magic that I wasn't skilled enough to try, something that could have gotten myself and others hurt, badly hurt. I was trying to strengthen myself, to be a better hero, but I'd pushed too far. You and Mom weren't happy." Saying this, she pinched the brooch sitting on her chest between her thumb and forefinger, one long talon running along its grooves. "You were terrified and furious because I was in over my head doing something that didn't even need to be done, and Mom told me - she said - she said, 'I wish you never knew anything. I wish we'd never told you, that we could erase everything and start over again.'"
Hawkmoth stared at her, speechless.
"And she was right to think that, because if I'd never known….But I was too short-sighted to see it then." Gravely, Anaïs told him, "Chrysalis akumatized me that night, and I wasn't strong enough to fight her off. Everything - fuck, everything fell apart, and I am to blame."
Something dimmed behind her eyes, and with it, the intensity of her anguish slowly gave, bit by bit into numbness Hawkmoth could no longer feel. She stepped away. She looked down at herself, at the costume that was soaked through, at the miraculous crookedly pinned under her collarbone, at the bluish tint of her hands.
"I can't do this anymore," she whispered. "I can't fix this."
Chat Noir said softly, "We want to help you."
"No. This can't be fixed. This can't be fixed because I'm the problem, don't you get it?" She shrank away as her brother tried to come closer, pulling her cape tight around her shoulders. "If everyone's against me, then there must be a reason."
"We're not against you. We're your family."
"You turned on me," she returned, gazing incredulously at him. "All of you. You told me to back down and you blamed me for your misery and you had me make promises that were impossible to keep." She glanced now at Hawkmoth, eyes brimming with tears, "And you lied to me, when you said it wasn't my fault you died. But it has to be. For what other reason would have everyone else in my life -"
She went rigid as stone as he grabbed her by the hand, unable to keep himself from crying, "Anaïs, my dear, my daughter," he said, pressing her fidgeting fingers. "I'd hoped that I would never lie to you the way I used to lie to Adrien, the way I used to lie to myself. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, love. But if I told you it wasn't your fault, it's because I didn't want to see you this hurt. It breaks my heart now."
"Dad," she murmured.
"We didn't know we would hurt you. That was never what we wanted. We wanted to tell you the truth about us, because we thought you deserved to know."
"Well, I wish you'd changed your mind," she replied, pulling her hand away. She gestured towards herself with her furled fan. "I shouldn't have been trusted. I've always been too broken to do anything right."
"Ana…"
"I was never going to succeed, was I? I was always doomed, and now…" She swept her dull eyes over the two of them, backing against the railing. A cold flicker of something hazardous passed across her face, though it might have just been the new streak of lightning through the gray sky above them. "The rest of you, you shouldn't have to bear the burden of my mistakes. You shouldn't be forced to make a choice this horrible, just to fix this mess I caused by existing."
Hawkmoth's blood ran cold, "Baby Girl," he called, audibly panicked. "Please-"
"No use," she cried, "keeping a promise that I've already broken." She turned her back on them, outstretching her arms. There was a stillness in the air, though it might have been the way the three of them held their breaths at once, creating such a deep hush that it seemed all the city had died for a moment.
She said, voice breaking, "Nor a promise that will have never been made."
Hawkmoth's fist closed around her cape a split second too late. He wasn't able to secure his grip before the fabric slipped out from between his fingers and she was plunging from the Tower towards the ground.
"Ana!"
Catching herself on numerous beams and plates on the way down, Anaïs bounded further and further away until she was on the run again. And Hawkmoth feared he knew exactly where she was heading this time.
"Father," Chat Noir choked out, grabbing him by the arm.
He yelled, "Hurry!" And the earth was rushing up to catch them.
Thunder cracked through the air, erupting like the feeling of terror through his racing heart.