Chapter Twenty
"When we say goodbye,
"Though I hope we never will,
"We'll always have the earth
"To hug us when we're still
"And someday after then,
"Someday we'll meet again
"Someday we'll meet again
"I hope you'll have my heart,
"And it beats there in your chest,
"For I'd rather live in you
"Than find eternal rest
"Take a first last breath
"Someday we'll meet again…"
Nathalie gently pulled the baby's arms out of the sleeves of her onesie as the words of her lullaby trailed into low hums. A smile adorned Anaïs's face. Sometimes she liked to resist her parents' attempts to change her clothes, but she seemed in a good mood today. At a little past 10 AM, the morning was bright and blue-skied. Nathalie had unlatched the window to let in a mild breeze that stirred the hair hanging around her face as she leaned over her daughter.
She replaced the onesie with a yellow linen dress. Anaïs shook her arms and yawned, and she held still as Nathalie fastened a little white hat around her head. Having folded the onesie and put it away in a dresser drawer, Nathalie lifted the baby off the changing table and pressed a kiss to her round smiling cheek. Ana made a soft noise, little fingers curling around the collar of her mother's shirt.
"Pretty day, isn't it, love?" murmured Nathalie. She glanced out the window at the sound of birdsong. A tree's bright green leaves fluttered at them like fine flakes of emerald, and Nathalie took a deep breath to take in the soft, fresh scent of a summer day. It was the 27th of June, which meant her baby was two months old. Nathalie bounced her a little as they stood admiring the clearness of day, and she said, "I already miss how little you used to be."
It was going to be hard to watch her grow. Weeks ago, she couldn't imagine her daughter as anything other than the tiny creature at her breast, with twitching fingers and a small wrinkled nose and few tufts of black hair. Now, she could see her face when she closed her eyes, a face reminding her powerfully of her own, of that photo of herself above the staircase she had to take off the wall and hide at the back of the closet. It was going to be hard to watch her grow into that, into someone she'd already seen before, someone she never wanted to see again except for in the middle of the night and she felt she needed to hold something.
The soft rap of knuckles on the open nursery door pulled Nathalie out of the rhythm of her back and forth sway. She looked around her shoulder to spot Gabriel, hair freshly-gelled and combed, smelling like a shower, on his way to her side. His hand fell against her lower back, and with a low voice, he told her, "She's here."
Nathalie smiled, not with pleasure of any kind, but merely as an acknowledgement that she'd understood his words, that he wouldn't have to repeat himself, as he may have expected himself to need to do, since she's had a little trouble lately escaping her own thoughts long enough to make sense of what other people have been telling her. But now, the corners of her lips curved upwards joylessly, and she dipped her chin against the baby's head to whisper, "Okay."
He brushed a fingertip against Anaïs's cheek. "Hey, darling," he said to her, before his eyes, bluer than usual in the light of that clear, brilliant morning flicked back up to look at Nathalie closely. "I told them you might need a few minutes. We might need a few minutes."
"Mm," she responded. She rubbed a hand up and down Anaïs's back, pulling her gaze back from his own.
"Two weeks doesn't feel like enough," he murmured.
"We can't wait too long, put it all on Adrien and Marinette to solve."
"I know." Gabriel followed her eyes out the window. He seemed to only notice now that the glass was open, that the sounds and breeze of a summer morning were floating into a house that couldn't possibly match its peace. He took a deep breath through his nose. "But let's wait a moment."
"Of course."
He stood behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. Nathalie sighed as he pressed a cheek against her own. His skin was warm from the shower. His hold was gentle and snug. She didn't need to ask him to kiss her because right as the thought occurred, she felt his lips behind her ear, and then on her temple, and then she turned her head so he would kiss her mouth as well, with something light and sweet and meant to comfort, and it did. Nathalie felt his chest expanding with steady breath against her spine, and the baby's against her heart. The baby, who was soothed by the easy rock of her parents' weight from bare foot to bare foot.
"It'll be okay," Gabriel mumbled into her lips. His hands, folded against her midsection, tightened as he spoke. Nathalie tried to give him a real smile this time, and found it sadly difficult, but she simply leaned against his lips again and found the authenticity in that. They'd been telling themselves It'll be okay for the last two weeks (or less, since it had taken a number of days before their mouths seemed capable of shaping the words), and it felt a little more true each time they said it. Really, it was so little, but Nathalie found the deepest of her comfort in his arms where she was now, and in his loving gaze carrying all the weight of a storm in affection and sincere hope. Nathalie had been told she was magic, the way her touch could heal pain and lift burdens, but if she was magic, he was a miracle.
She remembered what she had to tell him in the beginning, when he went dark inside and Nathalie knew, though he didn't say it and would never dare, that he couldn't forgive himself for swinging that sword at the worst possible moment (the same way, if Nathalie allowed herself the space to think about it, one could argue she'd removed the peacock miraculous at the worst moment). She remembered cupping his cheek and stroking her thumb across the gray-violet shadow beneath his eye and whispering, "Set an example." Set an example. Because the baby had been in his arms at the time, fast asleep, and perhaps it would be in her nature to loathe herself for every mistake like it was his, unless he could teach her not be the keeper of her own chains. Begin now, begin with her in mind, begin believing better of yourself, that the sword was meant for the monster and you were trying to protect us and the only thing to blame for this was timing.
He'd stared at Anaïs, and he'd pressed a pair of fingertips below her sternum and let the breath shudder out of him. Nathalie clasped his hand.
"We did everything we could."
They had to convince themselves of that if they were going to move forward. Forward into a future where they still had the power to do something.
Nathalie sighed and glanced away from the window at last, spinning out of his embrace to face him. "Thank you," she murmured. "It helps. It helps a lot."
He smiled at her, tucking some hair behind her ear. "Are you ready to talk about this?"
"Are you?"
"I'm as ready as I can be."
Nathalie handed Anaïs over to him and adjusted her hat once she laid her in his grip. Together, they traveled out to the hallway and down the stairs, pausing as Ruby passed by them on her way back to the kitchen after providing Marinette something to drink. Nathalie extended a polite "Good morning" despite the lump in her throat, and feeling practically numb with nerves, she walked with Gabriel the rest of the way to the living room, where Adrien and Marinette sat waiting for them.
The girl could not quite raise her eyes up to their faces. She smiled hollowly in greeting while she bounced a leg and cradled the glass of water in her grip. Adrien rubbed a hand up and down her spine in comfort. He waved a couple fingers as his parents shut the glass doors behind them.
"How are you, Marinette?" Nathalie asked.
She hesitated, as if she was hoping to not need to speak so soon. "Better. If you can believe it." The glass tilted back and she took a sip, before exhaling heavily. "How are you guys?"
"Better."
"Good. Glad to hear it."
Nathalie pursed her lips as she took a seat in the armchair close to the fireplace. Gabriel sat with the baby on the opposite end of the sofa as Adrien and Marinette, momentarily surveying the pair before his glance fell to the infant's placid face. She laid a fist against his chest and the other to her mouth, gaze flicking around the room.
Marinette, who used to smile reflexively upon laying her eyes on the baby, saw her and only stared. Nathalie watched her features harden from where she sat, heart sinking a little. She couldn't fault the change in behavior after what they'd all witnessed just two weeks earlier, and she couldn't imagine what exactly Marinette had been through trying to handle the aftermath of the situation. Nathalie and Gabriel had heard none of the story from the girl herself, but from Adrien, who'd only told enough to reassure them that they wouldn't be pursued by any law enforcement. Despite the police discovering the empty lair (attic) above the mansion, they had no reason to find its owners suspicious, not after both Ladybug and Chat Noir insisted that it was the Sorcerer's place of hiding - the Sorcerer, who had never been spotted by any additional witnesses, but who's dangerous endeavor had been ineloquently described by a dazed Lila Rossi and more or less confirmed by a pair of heroes putting a great amount of energy into holding their composure.
"We made an official agreement, you know, a long time ago," Adrien had told them late at night, while all three sat in near darkness at the dining room table after failing to sleep, "Unless their involvement be specifically requested, all miraculous-related conflict would be the responsibility of Ladybug and Chat Noir, who would have authority over city law enforcement - except, you know, if a lot of people were dying or getting hurt beyond the usual akuma stuff."
Luckily this case had only taken one life, and Ladybug had told the police that it belonged to somebody who'd messed with miraculous magic to come from the future. At that point it was far out of their realm of expertise, anyway.
Now, Adrien looked between his parents, heaving a sigh. "Alright," he mumbled. "So, where should we begin?"
Marinette leaned forward to set her glass on the coffee table and rose to her feet. Taking a stance further across the room where she could face everybody else, she brushed some hair behind her ear and said, "Probably with the most pressing issue, which is what to do with Lila." Immediately, she must have felt the energy in the room shift, because she held out her hands like she was trying to prevent an outcry of contempt. Nathalie, for one, found herself on the verge of a hateful sneer when Marinette moved to stop them.
"What?" she said, curling her fingers over the arms of the chair. "Is our disdain not justified?"
"It's justified. It's also complicated."
"Not very. Regardless of the crimes she has yet to commit, she's done quite atrocious things in the past she still has to answer for."
"I know, and I'm not denying it. The girl probably wanted me dead in a ditch only a couple weeks ago." Marinette put her hands on the back of her neck and looked to the ceiling. "It's...it's not that simple. I wish it was, that we could just condemn her for her willing compliance with the - the Sorcerer, and under normal circumstances I probably wouldn't hesitate a moment, but the whole thing with her mind getting scrambled makes this harder to work out, that's all. And that's why I'm bringing it to you. I could have handled it myself, but it's something that we all needed to talk about."
"Just because her memories were erased doesn't mean her actions were," Nathalie replied. She gestured to her husband and the child in his arms. "She used an illusion to spy on this house and threaten my daughter. I can't let that go."
"I'm not asking you to. Please, be angry about it. I'm angry too."
"Then what's your point, Marinette?" asked Nathalie, quirking an eyebrow.
"I guess my point is, what is the purpose of punishment?" Marinette posed. She looked around the room. "There's two ways to look at it, right? Punishment as an act of teaching and punishment as an act of justice."
"Yeah…" said Adrien, folding his hands. "Lila is...kind of unteachable isn't she?"
Gabriel scoffed. "Because she's a psychopath."
"More importantly," Marinette said with a touch of exasperation, "Cause she's broken. As Ladybug, I've talked with her multiple times since the incident. She doesn't remember anything. No Volpina, no Conspiracy, no Ladybug or Chat Noir or anything really about the last four years that has to do akumas, aside from Hawkmoth himself - but even then, the thoughts are fuzzy. She really only remembers a feeling."
"How much she loathes me," Gabriel muttered.
"Yes, but what I'm trying to say is if the function of punishment is to correct behavior, then Lila has to know what behavior is being corrected, right? And she doesn't."
"How do you know?" Nathalie questioned, narrowing her eyes. "She may have forgotten everything at first, but who's to say it isn't going to come back to her, that it hasn't already and she's just lying to preserve her innocence?"
"Well, I know she isn't lying. Lila might be notoriously good at fooling people, but she's never been able to fool me."
No one could argue with that, but it didn't quite ease the minds of anyone in the room. A tense pause stretched on for a number of seconds.
Marinette crossed her arms, looking down at the floor between her feet. "I guess I'm saying, we don't know for sure that her memories won't eventually recover, but I'd like to do something about her beforehand, if they do. I know her mother has been trying to take her to a neurologist, but because the issue is magical, they won't be able to help. She needs intensive therapy to deal with...everything. I mean, the trauma of what happened to her, but also all her anger and compulsive lying and - you know, I've wondered if she just got help that it could have fixed - not fixed, but mitigated this."
"You're much more forgiving than we are," grumbled Gabriel.
"You can see it that way, but this is practical too," she replied, blue eyes flicking up from beneath her bangs. "Look, I know it doesn't seem harsh enough, but if - if what we came here to talk about today is how to prevent all of this from repeating itself, then this is just one more thing we can do. If Lila gets help, if we get her into a position where she can work through all of that resentment, she could have a lot less incentive to do something horrific in the future. Even if it's no longer about me anymore, you," she pointed at Gabriel, "you could still be in danger."
Adrien glanced at his father and leaned over to grasp his arm. "I think she's right. Imagine we punish her, that will only make her more bitter. Even if it feels like justice, it'll just start another fire. That's how Lila is."
With a sigh, Nathalie leaned back and pressed her fingertips up under her glasses. Her eyes were stinging and the back of her throat ached with the threat of oncoming tears.
"What are you thinking, my dear?" asked Gabriel faintly. He was half a room away, but the warmth of concern in his voice made him feel a lot closer.
She opened her eyes and peered towards him, staring softly at the baby in his arms. "I don't know. I don't know, I just - I -" She threw out a hand at Marinette, "She's right, but that's not an easy pill to swallow. I'm livid about everything. You know, I wish she'd hadn't had her memories erased. At least then nobody would have any qualms about giving her what she deserved."
Anaïs fussed as her mother raised her voice into a harsh shout. Sucking in a breath, Nathalie put a palm to her chest and blinked the tears out of her eyes.
"I'm sorry, love," she whispered.
Gabriel bounced the infant, calming her down at once. He looked up at Nathalie with sympathy. "I feel the same way," he told her. "But they have a point."
"I understand your rage," Marinette insisted. "But being around Lila, I'm sure that if you were in my position to see how this was affecting her, it'd be a lot easier to get where I was coming from, and maybe a lot harder to think that giving her some terrible sentence was appropriate."
Nathalie, chest still tight with frustration and outrage, said between her teeth, "See to it, Marinette, that she gets that therapy."
"I will."
"And remember," Adrien chimed in, turning to Nathalie, "it's not a secret anymore than Lila partook in this plot willingly. Memory loss or no memory loss, other people know what her true intentions were at the start of all of this."
She nodded at him, chewing the inside of her cheek.
"Well, with that spoken about, what next?" asked Marinette.
A hush fell over the room and persisted for far longer than what was comfortable. The only thing Nathalie could sense in that time was the pulse of her heart beneath her hand and somewhere deep within her skull. She swallowed dryly, fingernails biting into the arm of the chair.
"I mean," Marinette's voice was feather-light, "If it's more comfortable to take this day by day…"
"No," Gabriel decided, "We're not dragging this out. The sooner everything is settled, the better. This conversation is not even the hard part."
"So, do you know what you're going to do?" asked Adrien. Gabriel and Nathalie looked to him, who was staring at the baby, the meaning of his words abundantly clear in the way his green eyes roundly and anxiously gleamed, the way he leaned forward with his fingers linked over a bouncing leg. As Gabriel and Nathalie exchanged a long, steel-hard look with each other, he went on, "You've been quiet about it. I didn't want to ask before now, because - well, because there's still a lot of time. But I know it's probably been on your minds. And ultimately, Marinette and I will have to know too."
Gabriel cleared his throat. "We agreed -"
"No, we didn't," Nathalie interrupted.
Taken aback, Gabriel flinched. The baby blinked at him and reached up to curl her fingers around his tie. "We said we'd -"
"No," Nathalie repeated sharply. "We didn't."
"Nathalie."
"I'm sorry," she breathed, tearing her gaze away to focus on an empty space on the wall. "I'm sorry. I'm not ready to talk about it. I'm having second thoughts."
His words stumbled out saturated with surprise. "That's alright. You hadn't mentioned…"
"Just now," she added.
"We don't have to commit to anything yet, Nathalie, it's fine."
She hadn't noticed that he'd risen off the sofa and come to kneel down by her side. Nathalie turned her head when she felt his fingers clasp around her forearm, sinking teeth into her lip when she locked eyes with Anaïs. The little girl rounded her mouth in the shape of a little 'o'. Nathalie lifted her hand as though she was lifting a rock in its place, and slowly went to pull the hat down a little further. It looked about ready to fall off. Some of Anaïs's dark hair was visible.
"We'll talk about it," he whispered.
Over his shoulder, Adrien stood up and drifted towards Marinette on the other side of the coffee table. He grasped her shoulder, leaned in, and asked a question under his breath, something Nathalie couldn't make out. Marinette answered back with a slight dip of her head and accepted a kiss on the cheek from her boyfriend before he stepped away.
"What is it?" murmured Nathalie.
"Oh, uh, well," Adrien stammered. He waved a hand towards Marinette. "I guess there's one more thing, then."
Gabriel's eyes darted around the room. His thick, pale brow furrowed at them and he asked. "I've just realized, where are your kwamis?"
Marinette lips curled into a lopsided smile. "They're here." She reached into her pocket and dropped a number of jewels onto the coffee table by her abandoned water glass. Two earrings, two brooches, and a ring clattered down, bright in color, indicating that the kwamis were still inside. Nathalie tensed, cold spreading over her skin as she laid eyes on the peacock and butterfly miraculous again. Marinette had taken both into her possession after the incident, and Nathalie had not expected to see them so soon. Slowly, she pushed herself up from the chair.
Adrien picked up his ring, but he didn't immediately put it on, only cupped it in the palm of his hand as he gingerly watched Marinette's posture falter while she looked over the miraculous on the table. "They know what's going on, but they didn't want to be around to hear us talk about it."
"What do you mean? About what?" Nathalie asked.
"Well," he began with a deep exhale, "if you guys aren't ready to make a decision about what to tell Anaïs, that's okay, of course, but Marinette and I were talking about something over the last few days, and it could make that easier for you."
"What is it?" prompted Gabriel.
Marinette's fingers trembled as she reached for her earrings, picking them up one at a time, observing the way they sat in her hand for a moment before looking up. "I've decided," she whispered, her voice hardly audible. She coughed once into her fist and rolled back her shoulders to say, "I've decided to send the miraculous box back to the temple in Tibet."
Neither Nathalie nor Gabriel said anything in response to this announcement. Nathalie wasn't sure if she'd be able to if she tried, with the way Marinette's words stole the breath out of her lungs. She could only manage to stare helplessly between the young heroine and her partner, who seemed rather eager to hear some kind of reply.
Gabriel's lips parted like he meant to speak, but he only broke out of the rigidity that possessed him to adjust his hold of Anaïs, after which he went stiff again, and still failed to talk at all.
"It's something I probably wouldn't have ever dreamed of doing before all of this happened," Marinette went on to explain. "The guardianship and my duty as a superhero have always felt too heavy of a responsibility to ever abandon. And I love being Ladybug, that's no secret, but…" She sighed, closing her fist around the earrings. "Love should be no deciding factor."
Nathalie stepped towards Marinette. She wanted to say, Impossible, but she was still breathless with shock. Impossible was how it felt. She knew, of course, that Marinette wouldn't always have ownership over the box, nor over those earrings she'd worn unceasingly for the last four years, but it had been such a far away thought that it seemed inconceivable now.
"Well, in regards to Anaïs," muttered Marinette, her convictions, which had already been wavering, now apparently breaking apart, "You wouldn't have to worry about her wanting to take up the role of a superhero if she has no means to become one."
"That - that's why?" Gabriel demanded, silence breaking with a sharp crack of his voice that made the girl wince. "That's why you're making this drastic of a choice?"
"It seems drastic." Marinette shook her head. "I mean, it is. I know it is. But yes. It's one reason, and I thought it would have been enough."
"Don't misunderstand me. I'd be grateful for anything you try to help us with this problem, but are you sure?" Gabriel asked. "How do you know Paris won't need Ladybug and Chat Noir in the future?"
"What would they need us for if there are no miraculous to fall into the wrong hands?" Marinette countered. "Not only is this a way to prevent Lila from ever touching the butterfly, but it would also eliminate the threat from any other potential super villain looking for trouble, wouldn't it?"
Gabriel blinked, absorbing her words.
"The only reason we were needed in the first place was to combat you, someone with a miraculous. Not some random bad guy with no magic. That's not what it's for."
"I didn't, I didn't think…" As he trailed off, he stepped back against the sofa and dropped down into his seat. The baby bounced in his arms.
"Marinette," Nathalie breathed, regaining her voice at last. "This is a huge sacrifice."
"I don't know if it is," she replied to Nathalie's astonishment. "More than anything it feels selfish of me."
"Selfish?"
"Yeah, and do you know why?" Marinette grabbed Adrien's hand and stood near enough to him that their arms touched as well. He turned and kissed the top of her head while her eyes began to glisten with tears under the light of the window she faced, beyond which was a city that didn't know that their beloved Ladybug was ready to disappear. "Because I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to have the weight of Paris, and now this family's future on my back just because two years ago, my one and only mentor found it necessary to drop off the face of the earth to protect himself." She paused to inhale roughly, breath shaking with oncoming tears. "I know I'm going to feel guilty for this, because he trusted me, but honestly, the task he trusted me with before he left, to protect Paris from Hawkmoth, well," she gave a small laugh, "that's behind us."
Adrien solemnly nodded, squeezing his girlfriend's hand. "And it'll stay behind us. We won't ever have to see another Hawkmoth."
Nathalie leaned her cheek into her palm. "And you agree with this, Adrien?"
His step-son glanced her way, and his green eyes, always so expressive and vibrant, were flickering like the wind-rustled leaves outside with the light of myriad emotions. "Not at first. I'm still working through it, to be honest." He looked at the ring in his other hand, face falling. "I don't think I would agree at all if it wasn't a pretty much foolproof way to save Ana, but I want what's best for Marinette too. She's - we've - had the weight of the world on our shoulders since we were kids, and we still kind of are kids. We can't stay that way forever."
Nathalie had to back away a couple paces as Adrien's words started to sink in. It felt like an entire lifetime had passed since all of this had begun, but here her step-son stood, still a few months from eighteen, when it had only been a little more than a couple years ago that by chance she'd discovered his deepest secret and chose to keep hers a little longer, swept up by a whirlwind of emotions she'd barely been strong enough to withstand. Nathalie had felt more than a person should have to feel in their life, and even if it hadn't started with the miraculous, the miraculous had made some of the sharpest edges, some of the darkest nights.
"I can't believe it," she whispered.
"Neither can I." Marinette peeled away from her boyfriend and examined the earrings in her hand. "I mean, for once, I'd like to let go. I think I need to let go. When you think about it, we've been given a unique gift, to erase the story already written and make a new one. I just don't want to regret it. I'm scared to regret anything. But I feel like every day of my life has been about making the right choice and finding the right answer, and most times I get it, sometimes I don't. But now I'm just…" Sullenly, Marinette sank to the floor, crossing her legs and blowing the bangs out of her face. "I'm just tired."
Adrien knelt down beside her and pulled her close, so that her head rested against his shoulder. Nathalie watched them, a pang of sympathy aching behind her ribs. "Marinette," she said gently, "I think it's good for you. Truly."
"Yeah?"
"And I can't say I wouldn't have thought of doing the same thing myself."
The younger woman looked down at her hands. "It wasn't actually my idea." She scooted herself closer to the coffee table and plucked the butterfly miraculous by one of its silver wings. Then, she tossed it at Gabriel, who caught it in his free hand. "It was Nooroo's."
His eyes hardened into blue stone. "Nooroo?"
"I think he knew what I was feeling," she murmured. "And he knew what I would need."
"He's good at that," replied Nathalie affectedly.
"You know, I'm not going to send the box back until I've sorted everything out with Lila first, and I thought you might want some time with them before saying goodbye." Marinette grabbed the peacock brooch as well, and Nathalie came forward to have it pressed to the center of her palm. "I checked it over, by the way. There was a little bit of damage caused by Anaïs's sorcery, but it was a lot easier to fix than the first time."
Nathalie thanked her and slipped the brooch into her pocket, a chill shooting through her fingertips as she remembered the last person to touch it before the guardian was her own daughter. "That miraculous has been through a lot."
"Just like the rest of us."
A flash at the corner of her eye made Nathalie spin to face the sofa, above which a halo of purple light appeared in midair to yield the butterfly kwami blinking his eyes to adjust to the surroundings. Below him sat Gabriel, with the violet jewel pinned to the collar of his shirt, and his hand clutching the baby's to keep her from trying to pull it free. Her pale blue eyes were wide and shining with wonder at the sight, and she laughed when Nooroo flickered his wings in greeting.
"Gabriel," said Nathalie.
Nooroo's little voice fluttered with a polite, "Good morning, Master. Good morning, My Lady."
Anaïs babbled.
"And good morning, little one. Happy, still?"
"Nooroo," Gabriel addressed, his voice stern as it tended to be when he spoke to the kwami. Nooroo stilled the flutter of his wings and waited patiently for the rest of his holder's words. "I wouldn't have expected this."
He tilted his head. "Expected what, Master?"
"Expected you to propose a solution so...radical," answered Gabriel.
"I don't know if it is so radical," the kwami replied, a small smile on his face. "I give where there is need, and you all were in need of a solution."
Nathalie stepped forward and cupped the kwami in her palms. He looked over his wings to peer kindly at her face. "How do we thank you for everything? All of your help and guidance?"
"You need not repay me. Consider it an act of generosity."
Two more bursts of light flared in the living room, exciting the baby, and revealing Tikki and Plagg by their holder's heads. The pair of kwamis appeared rather somber, but soon fell into small fits of amusement as Marinette and Adrien reached for them and pulled them close to their chests.
"So you told them?" Plagg said.
Adrien nodded. "We told them."
"And do they think it's as stupid as I do?"
"You say that, but you won't admit you'll miss me to pieces."
The black cat broke free of Adrien's hand and hissed, "Oh, well, of course I will! Do I really need to say it?" His narrow green eyes flicked to Gabriel and Nathalie. "What I will never admit is that I will miss them too. You hear me? I won't admit it."
"I know you won't." Tearfully, Adrien chuckled. He pulled a wedge of cheese from his pocket and gave it over. "Don't worry. They know you love them."
Tikki nuzzled Marinette's cheek, "Since you still have some things you need to accomplish as Ladybug before you return us to the temple, make sure you work really slowly."
Marinette smiled. "I will."
"Promise?"
"Promise. You're not going anywhere just yet."
Surrounded by the other kwamis, Nathalie decided to summon Duusu among them, who after appearing in her own blaze of light, was quiet for a moment as she assessed the emotions of everybody else in the room. Nathalie took a seat beside her husband, smoothing out her daughter's yellow dress and thinking about everything that was about to change just to save her from herself. For a moment, she wished Anaïs was like Duusu, so she could feel just how immensely she was loved and just how desperately everyone wanted her to live a life that was long and happy and free. Freer than anyone else in the room had ever been. Freer than they were now.
She thought about all the prices they'd thought too great to pay, and how this one was supposedly the right one.
She thought about how ironic it was to be so sad when just weeks ago, she wanted nothing to do with a miraculous at all. And to an extent, it did feel wrong to wear one now, knowing so well what it could take away from her.
Duusu drew near, pink eyes watching them mildly. She put a little blue hand upon Anaïs's hat and said, "It's okay," she said, "To feel all those confusing things. You believe you'll do right by her, yes?"
"Oh Lord, we hope," Gabriel rumbled. "And despite all of this, we still don't know exactly how."
"Most people will never know. In the meantime, don't worry about us." Duusu's mouth lifted into a grin. "If Paris is in need again, the miraculous will find their way back. This will probably be the end, or it might just be the end for now."
Nathalie's feet rocked back and forth against the cool hardwood, following the tilting motion of the chair she'd pulled to the center of the room. That night, the moon was a yellow-silver gibbous floating across a starless charcoal sky from one dark horizon to the other, and now its light spilled through the windows to illuminate the space just enough to make out the pink on the walls, but not quite enough to make out the patch above the crib where the wall had been almost perfectly fixed.
The air conditioning was cool enough that Nathalie had grabbed her robe on the way out of her bedroom and sat wrapped in it, sleeves pulled up to the knuckles. She was shivering, though it wasn't quite cold enough for that. She'd meant to feed the baby and go back to bed, but something had seized her in the doorway and coaxed her in. Maybe the moonlight, bright enough to have to squint against, or the dense silence of the house, or some words clinging to the back of her throat like apple skin, words that couldn't be French or English or German or Russian because she couldn't make them out. She just knew they were there.
Anaïs had long fallen asleep. She laid there with her arms stretched out to her side. If Nathalie leaned forward far enough, she could watch the rhythm of her little breaths.
Someday, our bones will mend,
Someday, we'll breathe again…
Nathalie's toes grazed to a stop as the motion of the rocking chair eased into stillness. She could sense the way gravity had not quite had its way, how she balanced on the rockers, how there was a force holding on somewhere behind her. Turning her head to the left, Nathalie caught sight of his wedding ring glinting under the summery silver while his fingers fastened around the back of the chair, having brought her gently to a stop.
His head ducked against hers, cheek pressed above her ear, where once, a long time ago, a streak of vibrant red had been dyed into her hair. Nathalie sighed, leaning back against him, taking his hands and placing them over the bare skin between her collarbones. He kissed her lightly. He held her tight.
His voice was thick with sleep when he mumbled, "You smell like lemon."
Nathalie smiled, reaching back to run her fingers down the side of his face. He sprinkled kisses across the palm of her hand before slowly pulling away. Nathalie watched him grab an unopened box of diapers from the closet and plant it beside the chair. He took a seat. He placed his hand in her lap and she grabbed it. They fixed their eyes forward on the baby.
Anaïs slept soundly.
To and fro, the movement of the rocking chair began again, creating tiny creaks of sound Nathalie barely noticed. There was the muffled rumble of a car passing along the road outside and the wave of headlights to briefly drown out the moon's shine. It was really so bright in the room. Maybe she should have gotten up to close the curtains, but as the thought occurred to her, she felt suddenly very heavy. Like she had turned to stone. It could have been exhaustion setting in, the urge to return to her own bed, but though her lashes drooped over her eyes, she knew that sleeping was out of the question.
She was paralyzed. Eyes locked on her child. Words tangled amongst themselves in some weighty mass at the back of her mouth, a weight like which was bound to make a person collapse into herself. Nathalie felt like she was getting denser, like bones were breaking to fit her into a tighter space, where there was no room for second guesses or words left unsaid.
Gabriel squeezed her fingers as she began to cry, remaining motionless, maintaining the rock of the chair, silently allowing the first tears to trail down her cheeks, fall from her jawline, land in the plush fabric of her sleeve. She swallowed painfully, attempting to force down the confession which was being crushed out of her, but she exhaled sharply and released a bitter sob instead.
"Look at me." She did. She pivoted her head, and the light reflected off his eyes to reveal the shine of tears much like her own. He reached to sweep the hair over the top of her head, opening up the space around her eyes and wiped the tear tracks from her skin with two faint brushes of his thumb.
"I don't want to lie to her, " Nathalie revealed. As the words escaped, the weight of her breath lightened just slightly, just enough for her to notice, to feel the relief. She sat higher than Gabriel, and so she was looking down at him while she said it. She didn't like the distance so she ducked her head lower and set her forehead against his. "I can't lie to her."
This was a familiar scene. She'd supposed it was a conversation they would have had a lot, the ebb and flow of doubt dictating the many years before they would have planned to reveal the truth of their troubled histories. But now there was an astringency deeper and sourer than they would have ever known. Nathalie could taste it, sharp on her tongue and cold on her lips, a texture and a temperature to a burden that was already agonizing to bear.
The chair scraped against the floor as it spun to face him, and she placed her hands at the back of his neck. "I know it's absurd. I know I should want to hide everything from her. There was so much suffering and anguish inside her, and when I held her...when I held her against me at the end, I could feel it all melt away. She was free." Nathalie closed her eyes, pausing to control herself as the tears continued. "She was free, and wanting to tell her everything is like...wanting to put her back into that prison."
"Nathalie," Gabriel whispered, "don't say that."
"I don't want to put her back there. I want her to be free and happy." She sighed as Gabriel kissed a tear off her face. "But I want my baby to know who I am."
"Oh, my love," he said, lips hovering against her cheek.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be." They both steadily rose to their feet. Gabriel pulled her into a tight embrace, stroking the back of her head. "Don't be sorry, I understand."
"But after what you saw. As if everything else wasn't enough. What she told you and Adrien, but it all being her fault, about not wanting to exist, about wishing she'd never been told - we should grant her that wish. We should want it ourselves, shouldn't we?" She gasped, dropping her face against his shoulder. "Gabriel, you were so scared. You were so scared of telling her and having her think of us as villains. I thought it would have been worse to lie, but you were right. She did think of us as villains, she thought she had to fix everything."
Gabriel's throat trembled as he spoke his reply in a low, calm tone. "But we will this time. We will, Nathalie."
She raised her eyes to his, staring in astoundment. "You believe that?"
"Don't you?" He slid his hands around her waist and leaned close, until he was so close, she could just see the color of his eyes.
Nathalie inhaled, letting the warmth of his touch soak through her whole body, intently narrowing her focus on the guilt and apprehension that had overrun her soul so she could breathe it out. It took a few breaths, but the tears ceased their flow and her chest loosened up and she glanced towards Anaïs, her child, her love, who'd been woken by the urgent words and watched the gradual twirl of the mobile far over her head.
"Marinette's decision gave me hope," she said. Gabriel's visage softened, and she knew at once that he agreed with her statement. "I could have gone the next several years determined but terrified of every word I could say to her. A million things could have changed for us the moment we knew who it had been behind the Sorcerer's mask, or a million things could have stayed the same, and maybe we wouldn't have known until it was already too late, but this." She paused, shaking her head in disbelief. "This choice, this sacrifice, it's a gift. It's certainty. It's security."
"I wouldn't have imagined Marinette would make such a choice," murmured Gabriel. "I know she thinks it selfish, but I feel like I need to repay her."
"An internship, perhaps?"
"Very likely."
Nathalie chuckled. Gabriel released her as she stepped away and approached the side of the crib, placing a hand on the railing to look into the face of her daughter, whose mouth stretched into a yawn and whose eyes drifted shut once again. There was a warmth in Nathalie's heart that she hadn't felt in a couple weeks. "So much of me is who I was back then, that villain I want her to be better than, that I want to be better than every day. She's always deserved to know. And miraculously, I feel like she can."
"Then she will."
"Are you sure?"
He stood behind her with a hand on her back, the other reaching over to clasp hers tenderly. "I'm scared," he admitted, a shadow in his voice, a memory on his mind she was there to see and to feel seeping between her fingers. "But if this is the path you want to walk, then I'll be walking with you."
"Gabriel," she sighed.
"Yes?"
"But is it truly what you want?"
"More than anything," he murmured, rubbing gentle circles between her shoulder blades, "I want to be for my family what I failed to be for them long ago. Faithful, and courageous, and honest. I want to do right by you, and Adrien, and her." He kissed Nathalie's shoulder. "And I believe I can."
With a lighter heart, Nathalie reached into the crib to pull Anaïs into her arms. After planting a soft kiss on the baby's forehead, she and Gabriel departed the nursery, treading lightly down the hallway back to their own bedroom, where the bedsheets had been tossed away and lay ready to consume them again. Gabriel settled in first, and Nathalie right beside him, resting snugly against his side with the baby on her chest, head tucked underneath her chin.
After they whispered their "I love you"s into the dark, after Nathalie had lost count of the baby's steady breaths, after she'd let her eyes fall closed and the world sink into the distant, unimportant background that came of the space outside of peaceful sleep, she heard Gabriel's voice float cleanly through the quiet to say, "She never knew it, but she saved us."
The corners of Nathalie's lips twitched into a smile. She turned her head into Gabriel's neck with a tranquil sigh.
And whispered, "She'll know it."
THE END
Thank you for joining me on this journey. It's been over a year since I first published this series, and I am incredibly grateful to have made it this far. I hope you enjoyed this final chapter. I appreciate you taking the time to read.
If you want to find more of my Gabenath works, you can visit my Ao3 page, ReminiscentLullaby.
Thank you, love you,
~Lullaby