Gabriel Agreste was apprehensive about his assistant's strange outburst of disobedience. Alarming thoughts of a certain Miraculous kept springing up forcefully in the back of his mind, and he just as forcefully shoved them back down.
He tapped his watch. She'd been in the bathroom for twenty minutes now; well over the amount of time required to change clothes, even by a woman's standards. He rapped on the door.
"Are you quite finished? Or have you taken after my son and decided to escape mid-chore through who knows what means?"
Even through the solid oak door, Gabriel could hear his assistant's eye-roll.
"No, sir." A moment of silence passed, and then the door unlocked and slowly swung open.
Gabriel prided himself on his ability to keep his emotions under wraps, but his jaw dropped in shock as Nathalie took a tentative step out. She remained half-hidden in the doorway, and now at least he knew why.
Lesions, scars, and burn marks of various degrees of severity marred the woman's otherwise flawless complexion, like cracks in a piece of smooth white pottery. Her eyes were wide with fear. Gabriel was silent for a moment.
"Turn around."
Nathalie obeyed, turning slowly in a circle so he could see the full extent of the marks. They were mostly small and dotted along her arms, but several large ones were prominently displayed thanks to the backless design of the dress.
"Who did this?" Gabriel asked gravely.
"Th-they're old marks, sir," Nathalie replied, clearing her throat. "Unfortunately, many of them haven't faded… I apologize for not telling you sooner. The remark you made about 'looking the part' while you were hiring made me fear perhaps I'd be disqualified, and I was desperate for the job, so I took extra care in keeping my blemishes hidden." She bowed her head, causing the light to strike her glasses in such a way that her employer could no longer see them.
Gabriel was careful not to let his anger show at her use of the term "blemishes" to describe something so severe. Instead he examined her carefully, the creative part of his brain already spinning gears to solve the problem.
"Actually," he said after a few minutes of consideration, "this isn't unfixable."
Nathalie looked up in surprise and… possibly relief, though Gabriel couldn't be certain. "Sir?"
"Stay there," he replied, and walked quickly off to retrieve an item locked carefully away in a dresser drawer in an upper room of the house. When he returned, Nathalie hadn't moved an inch. He handed her the silk parcel in his hands, which she unfolded with wide-eyed awe.
"But— sir!" In her hands was now a scarcely used pair of shoulder-length black gloves. "Weren't these your wife's?"
"They'll work with the dress, at least for tonight. I'll return them to their rightful place afterwards," he replied. "Now, as for the back…" He walked over behind the woman and started removing both her glasses and the bobby pins from her hair. She flinched in surprise at his touch, but stood stiffly and obediently as he took down her headache-inducing-tight bun and let the dark strands of hair fall against her back. It was coarser than it looked, probably due to the amount of hairspray she used. When he was finished, he ran his fingers through it once or twice and then stepped back.
"Turn around," he commanded again. Gabriel was silent while he studied the replacement model with an artist's eye. He nodded approvingly as she slowly turned for him, her long hair now sweeping over the scarred parts of her back and flowing over her shoulders in a rough yet elegant way. The one maroon streak in her hair matched the subtle accents of the dress, and her blue eyes were piercing and unreadable. A bit of styling with the hair, and perhaps a darker eyeshadow, and…
"You practically wear it better than Ms. Yang," Gabriel noted aloud. Nathalie seemed startled.
"A-are you sure?" she asked, her eyes darting to the floor.
"I'm always sure," he replied with another satisfactory nod. "We'll have the makeup crew do a bit of touch-up tomorrow before the shoot and everything should go smoothly."
"Y-yes, sir," Nathalie said. She started walking through the doorway to change back, but Gabriel laid a hand on her shoulder to stop her. She flinched and spun around.
"One more thing."
Nathalie bit her lip. "Of course."
Gabriel looked into her eyes for a hard moment. "If you ever feel like dropping the name of whoever did this, my akumas will be happy to pay special attention to them during Paris' next unfortunate accident."
Nathalie quickly threw her hand over her mouth, and Gabriel could've sworn he heard her stifle a laugh before she resumed her default expression. "…Thank you, Mr. Agreste."
He nodded and let her go.
(me: I'm a weak little child who can't handle dark stuff, that's why I only watch kids' cartoons
also me: what if the emotionally repressed character who always wears long sleeves is actually covered in scars and burns from physical abuse)