Chapter Nineteen
Nathalie felt like she had been soaked to the bone when she'd made it home at last, raindrops splattering on the hardwood as she threw open the front door and stepped inside. She haphazardly kicked her shoes to the side, and the sound of them hitting the wall must have alerted Ruby and Jacques, who came rushing out of the kitchen apparently shocked to see her dripping wet, still dressed in her pajamas and a robe.
"Oh, Mrs. Agreste!" Ruby had exclaimed, bringing a wrinkled hand to her chest. "You got caught in this storm? You could have sent for one of us! Jacques or myself would have taken the car and - did you not take the car?"
Nathalie peeled off her robe, not answering. She only half-recognized they were in the room with her and didn't think to hand the drenched article of clothing to either of them. It dropped to the floor around her feet.
"You're pale as a ghost," Ruby went on. "Are you ill? I could bring you some tea, or some -"
Her husband cut her off, limply pointing his finger over Nathalie's shoulder. "Is that Ladybug?"
Indeed, it was. The superheroine stood a few steps outside the front door, just out of the way of the rainfall, and directly behind her was Lila Rossi clinging to her arm, green eyes flicking around the foyer, coming now to a focus on the pair of bewildered cooks, who, a moment later, seemed to recognize her as well. Whether as the unmasked Volpina or the severed former muse of Gabriel Agreste, it was unclear and quite irrelevant to Nathalie.
"Yes, that's Ladybug," she told them flatly, "And she'll now be leaving to take care of Miss Rossi."
Quiet enough that Ruby and Jacques wouldn't make out her words, Ladybug had said, "Mrs. Agreste, are you sure I should leave you? Maybe I'll stay nearby until I can ensure you're okay."
"I'm not. Now go."
She would be back, but then, she'd dipped her head and encouraged Lila to follow. Nathalie had the door swing shut before she sharply looked back to Ruby and Jacques.
"Where's my daughter?"
"In the nursery, madame," answered Ruby softly. She pulled a baby monitor from the pocket of her apron and handed it over. "Just checked on her a few minutes ago."
"What's the matter?" Jacques asked.
Nathalie, finding herself utterly incapable of answering that, had turned away and started making her way towards the stairs.
"Something's happened. Why was Ladybug -"
"Don't question it," snapped Nathalie. Their spines went erect, their spectacled eyes round in surprise. "Do not question anything. It would be best if you retired for the day."
"But madame -"
"Please, just go." Tears stinging her eyes, Nathalie ascended the stairwell, leaving them to look after her, speechless.
As Ruby said, Anaïs was in the nursery. Nathalie, who'd had the intention of storming right to the crib and lifting the infant into her arms, stopped cold in the doorway as soon as she'd made out the child's face, turning to watch her enter. The sight of her felt like a punch to the chest; Nathalie's breath caught and she leaned on the doorknob for support.
"Oh God, Ana…"
The baby had stretched her arms and yawned. Her eyes scrunched closed, nose wrinkling, and then she blinked at her mother, blinked with that pale blue gaze.
Nathalie couldn't stand it. She felt like she was going to throw up, and she might have, had she'd eaten anything in the last eighteen hours. Whirling around, she had let the door slam on the nursery and stood in the hallway with a pulse she could feel beating in her head. Her bones had turned to clay. She sank to the floor.
Thunder shook the photographs on the wall by the stairwell, and Nathalie had turned to look at them just as the rumbles were fading away. Adrien grinned cheerily within several of those frames; Gabriel's smiles were subtler but his eyes were bright, especially in the newer photographs, like one that had been snapped last Christmas, or in the family portrait they'd taken a week after moving into the house. Nathalie looked happy too, because she had been.
And then there the photo above the top step, the one of Anaïs. Little and innocent and perfect. Forever, in that moment captured by a camera.
Nathalie tore away her eyes. She told herself to walk back into the nursery, but when she'd forced herself back onto her feet, they only carried her away from the door. Like she was possessed. And had not the strength to question it.
Several minutes later she laid curled up on her bed, having changed out of her wet pajamas and tossed her glasses onto the bedside table, where they'd made a sloppy landing and spun over the edge before clattering onto the floor. Nathalie made no move to retrieve them. She was wide awake with her eyes glued to the rain-splattered window, cheek resting on her tightly folded hands. She wanted to disappear, or see the world disappear around her, whichever would have sufficed to keep her from feeling this way for another second.
What happened to you?
The trees wavered, branches bending with a powerful gust of wind. Nathalie felt warm, but she could imagine herself out in that storm again, and the thought of being assailed by that breeze (and perhaps the very tempest inside her) caused her to shiver until her breath was unsteady.
The tears began and she didn't try to fight them. As the minutes passed, they rolled from the corners of her wide-open eyes down her temple to the pillow under her head. She was using Gabriel's, she realized, which only made her hold it tighter. Gabriel was out in this storm. She wanted him here now, to drape his arms around her the way he always did on nights she couldn't sleep, nights that would follow her for what she expected to be the rest of time; when he'd press his face to the back of her neck, hands around her midsection, pulse on her spine, and it would quell the desperate urge to run out of her own body and vanish into space - but, she thought, didn't moments like that always reveal the corner of hidden reality where everything she feared was made of memory and mere madness, show her the difference between a perfect present and a past she no longer had to abide by? She was a prisoner just that morning, sealed off from her beautiful, senseless fortune. And now…
And now everything really was…
Really would be…
It happened so suddenly. All at once. This hard and fast fall into a solid surface she crashed right through. Like ice. Like glass. And now she was sinking. The spirit potion tore apart that disguise and in the moment the mask shattered apart, Nathalie had felt her. Somewhere in the violent explosion of emotion within her miraculous, somewhere in that instantaneous stream of unfamiliar pain was a heart that she made. It all had been too overwhelming to make sense of, as they scrambled to bring her to her feet, force her to look up, so they could see her face, see if it was anybody they recognized, and…
Nathalie shot upright as if the movement could launch her out of her memory to bury her face in her hands. The sounds of the storm pressed in around her, rain and wind and thunder, reminders of a world she was desperate to slip away from, and it made her so angry. She wanted to throw something, or feel something break, the same way she was unbearably aware of the way her heart was splitting, slowly and deeply. Nathalie wailed, because it should have been over by now. Her heart should have been left in a mess of lifeless pieces, but she could still feel it ripping apart, as if it could break over and over, break deeper and deeper.
What did she do?
How did this happen?
Her baby…
Nathalie brought her hands up to her chest like she was hugging her daughter there, close to the fractures. Her lips moved in the shape of many silent I'm sorry's, and with each, her fury darkened. She was enraged at herself for asking those questions, enraged she even possessed the nerve to wonder at the back of her head how they ended up here. She knew. How could she have let herself believe for a moment that everything wouldn't fall to pieces eventually? She'd been waiting for a day like today from the very second she found out there was felicity to come, when every promise, every gift would crumble.
She brought this.
She created this Hell.
In a mirror on the wall, hanging above a dresser that had been left in disarray, Nathalie met the gaze of this woman she hated, whose face she wished to shatter into dozens of pieces until every inch of her splotchy skin had rained down. She reached for the pillow behind her but felt her grasp slacken as she realized so soft an object would not serve, and that maybe, despite the churning wrath inside her, breaking something lifeless and expensive as that might only make herself more pathetic than she already felt. Nathalie's lurching breaths sailed more smoothly out of her lungs as the remaining tears slipped free of her eyelashes and trailed gently down her face. Suddenly, she was no longer staring a wretched monster, but a tired, heartbroken mother whose baby had not been held for hours. She hugged her knees and sighed, trying to will the pounding in her skull to subside.
"What am I doing?" she whispered.
It started to sink in, absent of the sense of paralyzing fear and rage, the awful phenomenon she'd borne witness to when the minute hand was positioned just 180 degrees away. A heavy grief dissipated through her. A lump at the back of her throat made her strain not to lose her composure again. Sluggishly, Nathalie tossed the covers off her legs and rose from the mattress. One hand - the injured one, with wet bandages that needed to be changed - curled around a bedpost, for gravity tried to force her down again, and though she rocked back and forth from toe to heel, she held her head forward and found the strength to take a step.
"Anaïs."
Her baby was still a baby. A baby who needed her and loved her, and who she desperately needed to love better.
Duusu's warning rang at the back of her head: "You cloud your love with shame and punishment."
Her entire world had changed in a flash, but she was still the same as ever, unless she could manage to pull herself together now.
The hallway lit up for an instant with another bolt of lightning as Nathalie's footsteps grazed the floor. She'd focused briefly on trying not to look back at the photographs, holding her breath and shutting her eyes while she passed by the stairwell and all the fleeting joy it represented with the expectation that she'd feel lighter once she'd walked far enough.
But when she had, and she released a relieved exhale, the sense of something wrong came very suddenly upon her. Nathalie paused before her office door like she'd struck a wall. Cold electricity coursed up her spine into her scalp. It was a feeling she recognized almost immediately, this pure, instinctual sensation that the environment had dangerously shifted, and she could not determine how or why or even when, only that it had. She was only feeling it now, once she'd shrugged her away her own nauseating discomfort and finally attempted to see with some clarity.
Her pulse quickened. Her mouth went dry. If last night had taught her anything of this feeling, it was that it wasn't something she could ignore. It wasn't something she should ignore. She should be at her baby's side. Now.
But she didn't move right away, because she swore the sounds of the rain had gotten somehow louder, and stillness, for whatever reason, helped her better tell the difference. Sound had not been one of the things to change last night, when all along it had been an illusion crawling the halls, who provided no more than streaks of shadow in her periphery and an eeriness slithering across her skin, pressing against her cheek.
There were no such shadows and no such weight on her skin now, only the sudden certainty that the reason she was hearing the rain louder now was because a window had opened.
It was real, not a blackness bound to soak through her fingers the second she tried to lay a protective hand against it, not a creature so dark and ghostly that it should only belong in a dream.
Nathalie brought a hand to her chest, where there was no miraculous to be found, to feel the thump of her heart against her palm.
"Anaïs!" she called.
Her baby had been silent all this time, but that somehow terrified her more than anything.
Nathalie, for the second time since midnight that day, exploded with a gasp into her daughter's room. Unlike the first instance in the dead of night, she did not rush at once into action. She did not feel that violent burst of emotion through each and every nerve in her body, til ice and fire swirled from head to toe. Rather, she paused, the door crashing against the wall and herself going stiff with amazement, as it was not a protective rage nor a volatile terror surging through her, but something she would not be able to name with a thousand empathetic miraculous pinned to her clothes.
The wind sent drops of rain through the open glass across the room. A trail of water swept from the floor beneath the window to the side of the crib, dragged by the drenched fabric of an indigo cape stitched with red in the pattern of tail feathers, clinging to the back of the young woman standing with her fingers wrapped around the crib's railing. She did not acknowledge Nathalie, vibrant red eyes fixed on the infant beneath her head and face twisted into some indecipherable expression. One hand was held up, stiffly gripping her unfolded fan. The white feathers lining the leaf shivered, but whether from the breeze or because her fist was shaking, Nathalie could not tell. The baby stared up with bright, wide eyes, balled fingers placed beneath her chin. She seemed wonderstruck, perhaps by the bluish skin of this intruder, or her unusual gaze, or her deeply-colored clothes, or because there was something about this moment in time that possessed an energy even she could sense, though all understanding would surely elude her.
And to an extent, it eluded Nathalie, who knew what she was seeing, but whose mind had been paralyzed of all thought, except that this was such a stunning and impossible thing.
The baby and the intruder were still as statues, as was Nathalie while she watched from the door, so captivated by the sight that she hadn't taken a breath in well over a minute. She inhaled deeply, easing the tightness in her lungs, and it was then only that the intruder seemed to notice she was there.
Her head turned, and she caught her mother's gaze. Something about her was softer than she had yet appeared.
Nathalie whispered, "Anaïs?"
The young woman lowered her fan, lowered it until it slipped from between her fingers and clattered on the floor between her boots.
Nathalie had this bizarre feeling in the pit of her stomach that whatever it was she was seeing, she had seen something like it before, not, of course, as if it shouldn't be an unimaginable sight, but as if she was beginning to recognize why this person had shown up in her baby's room and why that fan froze in the air before dropping harmlessly to the ground. As she stared at Anaïs, one who was both a stranger and her beloved child at the same time, Nathalie remembered seeing a face like that in a mirror when she was younger, on an early morning when she'd woken up to snowfall after hours of restless sleep, and all of her dreams and many of her days leading up to this point had been spent wishing she would disappear, preparing to do something about it, until she saw herself and realized she couldn't.
Maybe it had been the snow, softening and brightening the world around her.
Maybe now it was the rain, or the baby's silent, watchful stare, or the sudden and inexplicable and miraculous thought that whatever it was she planned to come here and do, it just couldn't be done.
That second guess, such a rare occurrence in this family, was evident in the twitch of her brow.
The baby made a little sound, and hearing it, Anaïs's shoulders tensed. She sucked in a sharp breath and scrunched up her nose, trying not to cry. A pang in Nathalie's heart urged her to take a step into the room, but Anaïs held out a hand. It was sad and a little funny at first, though not enough to draw a smile out of Nathalie, to see a child whose cries calmed when her mother came and the same child who begged her not to come any closer. A second later, it stopped being funny at all, and Nathalie winced in pain instead. She stifled her own tears and gave a murmur, which might have been her daughter's name again, or might have only been a noise.
Anaïs looked back down at the baby. She made an attempt to harden her visage behind the mask on her face, but it faltered quickly.
"No," she said. Her fingers sank into her scalp, pulling free several more strands of dark blue hair, "Ana...no…"
One foot was feeling for the fan on the floor.
Breathlessly, she whispered, "You have to…"
Followed by a stillness, during which neither Anaïs nor her mother took a breath, a stillness, Nathalie realized a second too late, accounting for the lost convictions of the young woman across the room, who was fighting now to regain them.
She fought internally, until a flare of rage burst through her and she started to shake the crib. Whatever spell Nathalie was under broke that instant. She lunged forward, and what was once the faint glimmer of a confounding, impossible hope was now an intention to seize this intruder by the shoulders or by the hair and drag her down the floor, or better, throw her, hard enough that the impact echoed through the house, so she could know just a fraction of the fierce defensive violence warming her blood.
But Nathalie didn't reach Anaïs before this had already been done. A dark streak flew from the open window towards the crib, and suddenly, Chat Noir was viciously trying to pry her fingers from around the crib. With a scream of outrage, Anaïs clawed him across the face with a set of her long, talon-like nails. He recoiled, but only briefly, long enough to make momentary eye contact with Nathalie, and then turn back.
Hawkmoth surged into the room next, eyes ablaze and visible skin white as a sheet. Without hesitation, he swung his cane and struck Anaïs's hand, finally forcing her to release the crib. She yelped, going stiff as he clasped her by the collar and dragged her several paces from the baby's side. On the way down, she managed to wrap her fingers around her fan, but found no way to use it before Hawkmoth had her pinned to the floor in the center of the room by his foot.
"Don't you dare," he snarled.
The baby was wailing now, terrified by the jolting of her crib and the sudden explosion of commotion in the nursery. Nathalie wanted to grab her and run, but something about the energy surrounding her was telling her not to make another move. She looked at Chat Noir, who held out his baton, prepared to use it if Anaïs happened to spring back to her feet. A few angry red lines had been drawn across his cheek by his sister, though, despite the intensity with which he'd attacked her, he seemed far less enraged than he did distraught and scared. Hawkmoth took on these qualities too, after a few seconds of stillness.
Anaïs sucked in a thorny breath, red eyes beaming with betrayal. She squirmed and stammered below him while fresh tears trailed down her temples. "Why would you - ? You - you won't just let me - " She coughed and kicked at his ankle.
"Never," he replied. "This is over, Anaïs."
"It would be if you only - let me -"
"Stop!" roared Hawkmoth. His arm trembled as he held the tip of his cane above her throat. "Ana, stop. Please. I'm begging you."
She eyed the cane, eyed its placement. That it was sheathed seemed not to matter to her. Hawkmoth flinched, as if feeling something through his miraculous. Anger and hurt darkened her face. A chill crept up Nathalie's spine. Her eyes flicked to the baby, and she began inching closer.
Hawkmoth sighed. "Now, don't move," he told Anaïs. Slowly, he bent over, free hand moving towards the peacock miraculous on her chest. Anaïs caught his fingers before they could fasten around it.
"No," she growled.
He attempted to free his hand, but she held on tighter, sinking in her nails. The foot holding her to the floor was positioned right below her sternum, high enough to allow her to lift up her legs and bend them around his arm. Hawkmoth's eyes went wide as Anaïs swiftly twisted her body, whirling her father off to the side. Chat Noir leaped back into action, but Anaïs flipped to her feet. With a sharp crack of her fan, she shielded her brooch from his own fingers and ducked under the baton, gracefully falling behind him to give a kick to the back of his knee. Chat Noir dove to the floor.
Nathalie had rushed to the crib. She was reaching her arms down to grab the infant inside, when a set of long fingers curled around her forearm and pulled her back up. Nathalie had barely met the wild eyes of her future daughter before the fan sailed for her face and struck her. Pain flared through her nose, and Nathalie lost all sense of direction as she was pushed away. She was unsure at first if she'd hit the floor or the wall, but after a moment of recovery, she found that she was still upright.
Hawkmoth was attempting to hold Anaïs's arms behind her back, and perhaps it was through the use of her claws that one of them managed to snake free long enough for her to nearly knock the miraculous from his throat, so that a look of panic crossed his face and he recoiled. Chat Noir charged her now, but she ducked, and his baton swung through empty air. She jabbed him with her folded fan in the collarbone, and again in the bicep, attacking his pressure points the same way she had done earlier in the day. She was clumsier this time, and it didn't work. Beyond making her brother grimace in pain, nothing happened, and he swung for her again.
"Ana, stop!" he urged her, dodging another blow by the fan. Hawkmoth had almost come up behind her again, but she narrowly missed his jaw with the tip of her boot. Anaïs glided under both of their arms, standing now by the rocking chair, breathing laboriously.
Nathalie wiped away the blood dripping from her nose. She didn't know whether Ana had broken it, but that didn't matter to her now in the slightest.
"I don't want to fucking hurt you people," Anaïs cried. "You just can't make anything easy."
"Nathalie." Hawkmoth and Chat Noir positioned themselves squarely between Anaïs and her mother. "Take the baby and go."
The poor thing was screaming. Nathalie's heart ached.
"Don't do this," Anaïs begged, stepping forward, watching as Nathalie made her way for a second time towards the crib. "Don't put her through this. Don't put me through this."
The bandages on Nathalie's left hand were soaked through with blood. Her nose throbbed.
"This isn't the solution," Hawkmoth said. "I promise you, I promise you we'll find another way."
"Don't risk it. I can't bear this. Stop it, Mom!" Anaïs shouted to Nathalie, who was startled by the severity of her voice. "She doesn't know yet. I know. Help me."
Nathalie leaned over the crib, trying to reach for the baby, but beads of blood still flowed from her nose, down over her lips and dropped onto the mattress, onto the little one's clothes. A hand that she'd begun to place around her body left a crimson print when it was pulled away in hesitation.
Hawkmoth and Chat Noir had both let out a curse over her shoulder, and Nathalie looked back in time to see them tossing aside the rocking chair Anaïs had thrown in their direction. She passed between them and swept the fan across their legs, casting them each off balance.
Nathalie grabbed the baby. She wouldn't move fast enough to evade Anaïs, so instead she dropped to the floor with her body curled around the child.
She felt those talons graze the back of her neck when a light flashed in the nursery. Nathalie had believed it to be another surge of lightning in the storm, but a full second passed of continuous blinding illumination. It was like a spotlight had been switched on in the room. She glanced up cautiously and squinted into the large disk of bright energy that had unfolded before her. A newcomer had passed through the light, who, when Nathalie's eyes adjusted, she recognized to be Ladybug, wearing now a pair of round glasses - a second miraculous.
Her yo-yo was wrapped around Anaïs's waist. She pulled at the young-woman and started dragging her back. Anaïs, exclaiming in shock, grappled for Nathalie's collar, and finally acquired a steel-like grip to pull her along.
Ladybug had vanished into the Voyage Portal. Anaïs was going with her.
Nathalie couldn't free herself.
The baby, crying against her breast, was going to join them, unless she -
Let go. Let her go.
With a stab of agony between her lungs, Nathalie released her baby. Anaïs yanked her through the Portal, and the last thing she saw of the nursery was her child sprawled across the floor, crying, covered in her mother's blood, and Chat Noir kneeling down beside her, watching them go in fear.
Her vision went white.
Wind ruffled her hair.
And rain hit her back.
Nathalie's skin scraped against the rough surface of asphalt. Still being dragged, she kicked her legs, attempting to find some footing, but it wasn't until another set of fingers pried Anaïs's from her collar that was stable enough to press her hands and feet against solid ground.
The Portal closed. Nathalie was panting, wiping her nose repeatedly. Somebody was at her side, encouraging her to stand.
"Nathalie."
She looked up and met her husband's terrified gaze. A pair of storm clouds searched her up and done, gloomy and grave.
"You followed," she whispered.
"Stay back," he told her, helping her to her feet. Nathalie's legs were shaking, but when he lightly shoved her off to the side, she remained upright. Long, unsteady strides opened the distance between herself and the struggle that had begun in the middle of this quiet street, a place Nathalie could not recognize through the pandemonium roaring in her head.
She did not wish to run far enough not to watch. The nearest fixed object she came across, a tree, she clung to, holding it as though it was the only thing that could anchor her in this storm.
Ladybug and Anaïs engaged each other in a continuous exchange of blows, of which the most ferocious were attempted by Anaïs. With a fan as her only weapon, the one way she could fight was at close range, something that made it difficult for Ladybug to effectively utilize her yo-yo. This disadvantage wore her down rather quickly. She was smaller and lighter than Ana, who probably had a third of a meter on her and several more years of training. Nathalie's heart lurched as her daughter managed to lift Ladybug off her feet and fling her down towards the ground. In a flash of light, Ladybug teleported right before striking the asphalt head-first and appeared again a ways off. Anaïs turned around as the heroine tossed her yo-yo forward, barely having the time to smack it away with her fan.
"Anaïs!" Hawkmoth cried, holding out a hand to stall Ladybug. "You won't fix anything if you go through with this. You'll only make it worse."
She paused, heaving, eyes flickering with the flames of fury, brow wrinkled in anguish.
"Just look," Hawkmoth went on, "at what you're doing. Can you justify this? Can you justify the pain you're causing?"
"It doesn't matter," she grumbled. "No matter what I do, it won't be the right choice."
"You're wrong. If you were to only listen, if you were to only trust us -"
"You broke my trust."
"We haven't yet." Hawkmoth gingerly advanced. A distant rumble of thunder filled the silence of Anaïs stunned hesitation. "Give us a second chance, or a negative first chance, whatever you want to call it."
She stared at him, mouth hanging agape as if she had something she wanted to say, but she did not respond. She staggered back, boots splashing through a puddle and bone-white fist holding her fan against her heart.
It took a minute before she next made a move. Hawkmoth seemed to read her intention in the stir of her emotion in his miraculous, for his tense countenance broke with a wrench of horror. Ladybug looked at him in search of a signal for what next to do, but he had his eyes fixed on his daughter.
"Please," he murmured.
Anaïs scowled deeply. "As long as I'm a player, I know how this story ends. I can't give another chance."
Ladybug wound her yo-yo in a circle, preparing to throw it.
A feather was plucked from the leaf of the fan. Nathalie dreaded to imagine what kind of sentimonster the emotions in this circle would yield. Her stomach churned. Her hold around the tree trunk was what kept her standing, for her legs felt like they could give at any moment. She wished to press her face against the bark and let the sounds of the struggle be swallowed by the wind, but she could not rip away her gaze.
Anaïs closed her fingers around the feather, but before she could infuse it with the peacock's magic, Ladybug hurled her yo-yo forward. An indignant gasp shot through the air as the fan was knocked from Ana's grip, and in trying to catch it, she released the feather in her other hand. It took to the wind, gliding far out of reach in a flurry of chaotic swirling movement, and the fan hit the ground to immediately spin towards the feet of Hawkmoth.
She looked between it and her father, glaring coldly. She would not be fast enough to retrieve it before he'd already taken it into his own possession.
"Stand down. This is finished," he told her.
But she smiled joylessly. "No, you forget. I've never been a miraculous holder, but I am a sorceress, and I know exactly," she said, backing up several steps, "how to use its power."
She held her hands out, palms to the sky. The blood thundered in Nathalie's ears as she watched a shower of energy appear at her fingertips, identical to the dark magic that collapsed into Nathalie's fist each time she had formed an amok. Anaïs's brow fell low in concentration, her jaw tightening. From between gritted teeth, she said slowly, "Butterflies? Feathers? You learn enough magic, you realize a lot of this stuff is optional."
A similar cloud of energy had materialized around her heart, surrounding the miraculous and sibilating like moisture on a hot surface. Nathalie's eyes stretched wide in amazement, noticing, just hardly, the gentle course of magic from around the miraculous to the stiffly held hands of her daughter.
Drawing the power out of the brooch.
Ladybug called, "Voyage," and stepped into the white Portal that appeared beside her. At once, she surged forth from above Anaïs's head and brought the string of the yo-yo down around her wrists. Anaïs grunted, the bubbling magic briefly fading in color. Ladybug flipped onto the ground and pulled the string tight to bind Ana's hands.
"Always been clever," she groaned.
With a harsh yank, she pulled Ladybug off balance. Anaïs swung a leg up and pinned the yo-yo string to the ground beneath her foot, forcing the heroine down to her stomach. She shut her eyes, the magic appearing once more, this time with a darker swell of power. In her palms, a spherical deep blue mass flickered to life, rippling like the energy of transformation. Ana's face was draining of color. As her skin went gray, her breath quickened, and the magic took shape.
A pair of cool, luminescent blue eyes appeared in the darkness. The energy expanded, widening the loops around Anaïs's wrists until she was free of the yo-yo and could stagger away from Ladybug. The sentimonster's head was quite birdlike. A shiny black beak grew out from between its icy stare while a long neck billowed into existence, after which - whether it was intentional or a result of Ana's inability to create any more of a solid shape - the body turned to hazy blue shadow. Wings like plumes of smoke opened wide, stretching almost far enough to block the entire road.
The beak pried open. Nathalie's blood turned to ice as it released an explosive, mechanical roar.
Anaïs was shaking head to toe, face contorted in pain. As if her arms were burdened by weights, she thrust them forward, and the creature's head dove towards Ladybug on the ground.
With a call for Voyage and a flash of light, the heroine appeared by Hawkmoth's side. He stood tensely still for a moment longer, before he removed the rapier from its sheath and held the blade before the both of them.
The sentimonster's wings heaved. It had no legs, but that was no matter. It moved as easily as water, unlike the peacock holder behind it. With another screech, the creature lunged for Ladybug and Hawkmoth, while Anaïs fought to stay standing despite her quickly escalating exhaustion. Hawkmoth charged back, slicing his blade through the air in effort to strike something solid, but the sentimonster rose just high enough into the air that he swung through the still-formless energy, passing through it without consequence.
"Gabriel!" Nathalie cried. She let go of the tree and stood on the curb, pulse racing.
Ladybug dodged the senimonster's beak, only for it to split the asphalt beneath her. She twirled her yo-yo, but couldn't find the opportunity to throw it. The sentimonster's glowing blue eyes followed her without relent. It rushed swiftly and unexpectedly, at one point coming so close that Ladybug felt it graze a finger. She yelped, holding the afflicted hand to her chest.
Anaïs's deathly pale visage writhed in agony and anger. The peacock miraculous continued to bubble with energy, and its red accents had blackened completely. Nathalie's breath hitched as she heard her daughter cough, an awfully familiar ragged sound breaking through the air that felt like it was meant specifically for her to hear.
Her nosebleed had slowed down. She wiped her upper lip clean and took an uncertain step in Anaïs's direction, into the road.
"Stop," she called, though she doubted Ana was paying enough attention to hear her. "You're breaking it!"
Hawkmoth's sword finally struck the sentimonster, creating a shallow abrasion that elicited nothing else but another mad roar.
Anaïs faltered. She dropped to one knee as a series of coughs poured from her throat, and the monster she controlled started to momentarily evaporate. This allowed Ladybug and Hawkmoth to take notice of what was happening. They both stared and dared not to move, and when they realized what was happening, their jaws fell open.
Hawkmoth said, "Baby Girl."
Anaïs's eyes snapped open, and she gasped for breath. Glowering, she forced herself back to her feet. She swayed, nearly falling again, but with a clench of her fist, the sentimonster took shape once more, and plunged its head in their direction.
Nathalie's bare feet splashed in the rainwater trickling downhill in the road as she ran their way. Hawkmoth saw her first, and he waved his hand frantically for her to turn back around. Above him, the sentimonster's wings churned like smoke rapidly piping into the air. Its crystal-blue eye flickered, a growl rumbling in its throat. But Nathalie was not deterred.
"Lucky Charm!" A burst of pink light generated a pair of elbow-length gloves that took flight in the wind. Ladybug spun around, but the lucky charm sailed just out of her reach, and while the creature stretched its neck in Nathalie's direction, beak unhinging to reveal rows of white teeth, Ladybug caught sight of her as well.
Nathalie lunged to the side, both to evade the sentimonster's potential attack, but also to catch one of the gloves floating in her direction. The second had dipped towards the ground, and Nathalie froze as it snagged around her ankle.
Ladybug blinked at her, and then turned to Hawkmoth. "Keep it occupied," she told him, before calling "Voyage!"
Nathalie was seized by the wrist and pulled through the Portal. They emerged in an alleyway, and Nathalie stumbled into the brick wall of a building, catching herself with her hands before she could crash head-first. She spun around with a grunt and told the heroine at once, "I need to help."
"I know."
"The only thing I know for sure is that I have to find a way to take the miraculous. She'll break it," Nathalie fretted. "She'll kill herself."
Ladybug threw a quick glance around the corner of the alleyway, searching the scene of the fight. She blew at the wet bangs clinging to her forehead. A ponytail hung down her back, far longer than her usual shoulder-length hair, and the horse miraculous seemed to provide it a subtle copper tint. "That thing is dangerous and fast, and I would prefer if you stayed out of the way as long as you don't have a miraculous, but Anaïs doesn't look like she can move very well on her own." She ducked back into the alley and gestured to the pair of gloves. "And I think my Lucky Charm is telling me you need to help out. The sooner we get you transformed the better. I wouldn't be shocked if thanks to Lila, the police were investigating the mansion now."
Nathale reeled. "What?"
"She doesn't remember anything about me and Chat Noir, so she insisted on getting the police involved. Looking for Anaïs. Maybe Hawkmoth too. That's why I had to get you out of your house. As soon as reports start coming in of this fight, they'll probably be on their way here. We need to resolve this." Without waiting for Nathalie to respond, Ladybug snapped, "Put the gloves on!"
Her hands and forearms were covered in her own blood, only some of which had washed off in the rain. She pulled the gloves up to her elbows and leaned back around the corner of the alleyway with Ladybug, heart in her throat.
Hawkmoth battling against the sentimonster alone was a frightening sight. It's great billowing wings whipped through the air around him, obscuring him from view in their smoky blue darkness. For a second, Nathalie caught sight of the tip of his rapier swirling through the cloud of energy. She screamed when the sentimonster snapped, unable to see at first whether or not it was successful, but Hawkmoth emerged from the smoke a moment later, panting for breath and apparently unscathed.
A ways off, Anaïs seemed in much worse shape. She swayed back and forth on her feet, catching herself before she fell by doubling over and placing her fists on her knees. The magic rippled around her, flowing in rhythm to her sentimonster's frothing wings, weakening each time she hoarsely coughed.
Ladybug held out a hand, prepared at any moment to open a Portal. "You step through on my count. Take the miraculous from behind. As soon as she stands straight again and leaves herself open…"
"What will we do with her?" Nathalie breathed.
Ladybug didn't answer.
Hawkmoth took a number of steps forward, holding up his rapier in menace. He maintained the gaze of the creature as it drifted back, neck feathers quivering with hostility, appearing almost like a rattlesnake in the way it warned of its aggression, but it didn't make another attack. Not while its holder appeared, for a moment, like she had nearly forgotten the fight. One of Ana's hands reached for her miraculous the way one reaches for their lungs as they struggle to breathe.
"Maybe he's got this," Ladybug said, expression sharp. "If he gets close enough…"
Nathalie raised herself onto her toes as if the extra few centimeters would help her better see. She folded her gloved hands to keep them from shaking.
The sentimonster looked like it had changed objectives. Instead of attacking Hawkmoth, it seemed more interested in protecting its holder. As they neared her, it began to raise its wings to shield her from view. From their angle, Ladybug and Nathalie could still see her, hair having come almost completely loose from its bun, red eyes dull and stinging with tears as she heaved for breath.
"Come on," murmured Ladybug as Hawkmoth closed in. The sentimonster's wings began to envelop Anaïs.
And just before she vanished from view, she shot up, outstretching her hands.
"Now!" Ladybug shouted, opening the Portal with a hasty call of Voyage. A chill rushed up Nathalie's spine when the sentimonster gave another ear-splitting screech of rage. Careening through the Portal, she was swallowed by white light and stumbled back out onto the street. Nathalie blinked rapidly to clear her vision and make sense of her shifted surroundings and found her daughter standing just out of arm's reach.
The sentimonster flapped it's wings. Energy flowing, Nathalie just caught a momentary glimpse of Hawkmoth on the other side, of the rapier he was pulling back to thrust into the creature's neck.
It moved to strike him. It barely missed. Hawkmoth hissed in pain as its beak grazed his arm, tearing the durable fabric of his suit.
Anaïs tensed.
"Wait -"
Nathalie leaped forward and wrapped her arms around Anaïs's body, trying to feel for the brooch on her chest. Her daughter exclaimed hoarsely, throwing down her arms to pin Nathalie's against her ribs. There was a flare of magic like a burst of indigo flame and the creature's face altered, it's bright blue glare flickering suddenly into place behind its head, its beak growing from the nape of its neck.
"I tried this once, you know," Nathalie grunted while she struggled to free her arms and search for the brooch. "I tried to die - to fix everything. It wouldn't have fucking. Worked."
She started to pull back, trying to get Anaïs down to the ground, but her daughter pushed against her force. They leaned forward, closer to the creature, closer to its fatal attack. Nathalie's heart pounded as she watched its beak unfasten. Anaïs opened her fists, magic flashing.
An index finger brushed against the miraculous. It was hot to the touch.
The sentimonster roared. It lunged.
"No!" A fearful howl rang out. Hawkmoth's rapier swung.
Nathalie grabbed the miraculous and pulled it free.
The magic evaporated.
The sentimonster vanished.
And the sword -
Nathalie dropped the brooch and heard it hit the asphalt with a tiny rattle, a rattle that sent this gentle, cool shiver into her bones like a feather was brushing its way through the inside of her body. Anaïs's arms had loosened, and Nathalie found that she could wrench her own away. But she didn't. She was paralyzed by this weight that had suddenly fallen against her.
Hawkmoth was standing right there, eyes glassy, staring, staring, mouth trembling...
Nathalie's hands were warm, not because of the gloves. There was...something flowing over them, seeping into the already rain-soaked fabric.
Anaïs's legs gave way.
"Oh…" Nathalie said with a sharp exhale. She went to the ground too and moved a hand to press her daughter's head against her chest. As they fell, Hawkmoth staggered back, pulling away his sword. A silver blade was shining scarlet.
The peacock transformation had drained away. Anaïs was pale and speechless and the stain on her gray sweater was blooming like a rose.
A silent bolt of lightning flung itself through the clouds in the distance. Hawkmoth watched as the rain from above drizzled onto the sword he twisted in his hand. Blood and water spilled down the blade until rust colored droplets trickled to the ground. A moment passed where he did not take a breath, he did not say a word. He did not even blink.
And then his fist relaxed. The rapier slipped out of his grasp and hit the ground with a ring.
"Baby-?"
He knelt down, one hand taking Anaïs's fingers, and the other pressing down over the wound below her sternum. Anaïs slowly blinked. She raised her head and squinted up at her father, blue-gray eyes making little movements as she searched every centimeter of his face. He wasn't looking at her. His attention was on the spot of blood on her shirt.
Nathalie watched her fingers curl around his.
She watched her move his hand away from the wound, telling him it was fine.
She heard her begin to hum, felt the little vibrations of her throat against her own chest.
Nathalie recognized the song. She hummed it too.
For a little while. A minute. A minute that lasted almost forever. Almost.
Anaïs stopped and tilted her head at Hawkmoth. A small smile, a small, sincere smile twitched into place on her lips and whispered something about feeling light and floaty, and also very, very sorry.
And he used his bloody hand to tuck some of her black hair behind her ear. He promised he was going to bring them both back to life.
She didn't respond for a while and they wondered if she had left, but she slowly curled herself against her mother and closed her eyes and sighed that she believed him. She said Mama stay still, you're shaking, and then she said You're warm, and then she said it was like laying on a thundering cloud. Nathalie shook some more because she started crying.
She wasn't one hundred sure that blade hadn't reached her too until she realized the pain in her chest wasn't from a stab. It was from something worse, something deeper.
Anaïs hummed more of her song. She ran her thumb against the back of her father's hand.
Nathalie thought about all the things that she had wanted to say two minutes or a thousand years ago, like that she'd once been so incapable of listening to reason that reason felt like a hammer to a heart made utterly of glass and feelings she was ashamed to have, like that it once didn't feel like it was enough that everyone loved and wanted her because she though she knew better than all of them, like that you need to learn what I learned which is that people love you enough to make this right for you too, even if it'll hurt worse than whatever it is you imagine lives on the other side. She couldn't speak, and she wouldn't have said any of this if she were able. She would have demanded if Ana knew any spells to heal fatal wounds.
Hawkmoth said his daughter's name, said it like he meant to ask her a question.
Said it like he wouldn't have told her goodbye if she'd responded.
At the end of her song, she took a deep breath and died.
Nathalie went still like the world at the end of a storm.
For half a second, she understood.
Hawkmoth brought his hand up to his mouth to stifle the cry in his throat. He was still holding her fingers. He gave a shuddering breath, he let her hand slide out from under his.
Nathalie didn't notice that Ladybug was standing over them, nor did she notice that a Portal had opened and that there were sirens in the distance. She didn't hear her the first time she begged them to get out of there as soon as possible and that she would stay and take care of this even though that was absurd. That was absurd. It was the most ridiculous thing Nathalie had ever heard in her life when she finally heard it the second time. But then Hawkmoth was on his feet, and he was pulling her away from her daughter, and she was fighting him, and she was fighting Ladybug, but once she had been lifted up, Hawkmoth was shielding her from view, and it began to emerge in her mind what was going on. She wasn't transformed and she didn't know where she'd dropped the peacock miraculous and she had absolutely no business being out in a storm during a fight by Hawkmoth's side of all people. So Nathalie went limp in his arms as he dragged her away and pulled her through the Portal.
The sirens harshly died as they appeared in their own house, as did the wind and the rain and any will Nathalie had to do anything but cling to Hawkmoth and sob against his shoulder. He plucked the miraculous from his throat and tossed it aimlessly onto the floor, because surely there was not a single part of him that could bear to feel what everyone else was feeling when his own heart must have been in pieces. He noticed that the blood disappeared with his transformation, which was confusing and cruel, but Nathalie was still drenched in it, and that's how Chat Noir found them when he walked into the room with the baby who had stopped crying, but only barely.
The baby.
Oh, God. The baby.
Nathalie withered. A weak cry sprung from somewhere deep in her chest. Chat Noir was asking them if Nathalie was hurt because he knew she'd been hit in the nose, but that was a lot of blood. She didn't answer him because she was going to grab her baby out of his arms, and though he seemed uncertain, he couldn't possibly refuse her. Nathalie fell to her knees with the infant on her chest and cried against her like she'd cried against her husband, who was right at her side in an instant, an arm around her shoulders and another grabbing Chat Noir by the wrist and pulling him down to sit there beside them. At some point, he seemed to understand what had happened, even though they never said it aloud. He embraced them tightly, and told them he loved them, and that he loved Ana. Somehow, hearing his voice made it hurt a little less.
They stayed there for a long time. Until the rain had stopped.
When Nathalie realized she was still wearing the gloves, after she'd run out of tears to shed and allowed Gabriel to begin cleaning her up with a washcloth as best he could, she sank her teeth into her tongue and wondered to him if they should give them back to Ladybug. So she could reverse or fix or whatever everything that had happened that day.
But Gabriel looked at her, with eyes so like hers, and though it so clearly pained him to shake his head, he shook it nonetheless.
Because it was impossible for them to pinpoint when it had all started to go wrong. Thirty minutes ago Two hours. That morning. Yesterday. Eleven days. One year. Four. Seventeen years from the moment they were sitting up against the wall in the nursery, when Nathalie would say something she didn't know she'd regret, or when their Baby Girl had to watch her father die, or when he couldn't come back because the very miraculous they were talking out was going to be destroyed. But maybe none of that would happen and so none of that would matter and so the Lucky Charm in her hands had become a useless pair of gloves, which knew Nathalie would have to hold her child as she died.
But either way, whatever way, they knew this wasn't the second chance she would have wanted. Maybe she didn't want one at all, but she was still with them now, she was on Nathalie's lap. With a whole life still left to live, and on their broken, dishelevled hearts they swore it would be a whole life.
They decided, this would never happen again.
They showered and they changed and they didn't eat even though they'd not had anything all day. Adrien was on the phone with Marinette for three hours that night and neither of them wanted to know what was being said. Maybe they'd ask tomorrow.
The house was quiet and no one came looking for them, except for Alain, who'd been in a meeting when Nathalie tried to contact him earlier and now was worrying that neither had been answering the phone all day.
That night, long after the fall of darkness and the clearing of the sky, they lit the fireplace in the living room. They stared into the flames for a while in silence before Nathalie stepped forward and dropped the gloves into the light.
The fire turned pink. The gloves disintergrated in seconds.
And after that, they went to bed.
They will be okay, I promise. One chapter left.
~ Lullaby