It had all started with a hearth awareness class, at school, when Gabriel had been eleven. It had not covered much - it had been organized because a network of cigarette smuggling had been discovered among the older students - but it had informed Gabriel and his classmates that smoking was bad for you. It gave you cancer. Throat cancer, lung cancer, tongue cancer, pick your cancer cancer.
It had hardly been a traumatic revelation. They knew that, they all knew that. It had not shocked him, it had not traumatized him, it had not even fazed him.
He couldn't have explained why he had started stealing his mother's cigarettes. He had returned home after class, seen a Camel stuck between Elise's glossy red lips, and felt nothing out of the ordinary. She had grasped the cigarette between two fingers and waved at him from her spot next to the open window, mindful of the ashes, and that had been it.
He thought he recalled politely asking her to stop smoking, but was not entirely certain of that. Thirty years had gone by. His memory was vague at best. What he remembered was hearing his parents argue about his thieving habits, three or three months down the line.
"How is he doing it, Elise? How can you pay so little attention? He is stealing burning, smoking little sticks of poison straight out of your hands."
"I don't know , Olivier. I swear I'm trying to watch him but he just… I mean, he's so fast, it's baffling. Have you seen him do it?"
His parents stopped him at the door whenever he left a room. More often than not, if they asked him to surrender the cigarette he had just stolen, he handed it back. He didn't mind being caught. The truth was, he barely noticed stealing them in the first place. He did it on impulse and, while there was a thrill to it, he didn't go looking for it.
His parents stopped him on principle alone. They never spotted him taking the cigarettes (not after the first month, anyway). His mother, chain-smoker than she was, would light a new one every time one went missing, and not question it. She was never sure there had been something to steal. She had to check the ashtray, her own hands, and her spotty memory. It was easier to ask Gabriel to show his hands.
There had been talks.
"Can't you please stop?" Gabriel's father had asked more than once, more worried than angry. "It's really growing concerning."
"I don't notice I'm doing it, Father," the boy would reply with growing annoyance. "I'm sorry. I'll try."
And, every time, he had handed Olivier boxes full of half-smoked cigarettes. It was not really stealing if you did not use them. You could always give them back.
There had been therapy. A psychologist had insisted too rigid a family life was pushing Gabriel to act out. That assessment had puzzled his parents, who were distinctly less rigid than expected from a couple of their prestige and position. Their son had been born forty, they had argued. He wanted rigidity. He imposed it. He was distant, he liked to be left alone to read and draw. He shied away from physical affection. At the age of six, he had been found hidden in the attic with a book during his own birthday party.
Olivier, convinced the psychiatrist had even less of a clue of what was going on in his son's head as he did, had settled on his own explanation. He had made sure his wife understood it.
"Will you just STOP? Can't you see it upsets him? For god's sake, Elise!"
Elise, addict that she was, promised and gave up on smoking for a month, then went back to it, over and over again.
And then, the problem had vanished: at the age of fourteen, Gabriel (who was not really a catch in terms of personality, age, or looks, but had tons of money) had found himself a girlfriend.
His parents had focused on more important issues, such as "he better not get her pregnant" and "that little gold-digger is in it for the gifts".
###
One week. One week went by before the first "this can't happen again", or rather "this can't happen a-".
One.
###
To say Gabriel had will was entirely too flattering a description. If someone had asked Nathalie's opinion (and she had been sure not to be recorded while giving it), she would have gone for 'stubborn as hell'. She didn't mind that he had one-sidedly decided to break their relationship off. 'No heart to shatter', 'it's in the name', and so on.
The feelings bruised had been his. She was not blind.
Gabriel did not pursue what he did not want.
By cutting things off, he had cut himself deeper than he would ever admit.
She knew his tells. She knew how he clasped his hands behind his back, and straightened his spine, and stared you down when he wanted to run. She could also tell the difference between his not noticing your presence and his pretending not to. He rolled his tongue against the roof of his mouth. His muscles were tenser. If he had something in his hands, he played with it.
His hands were his most blatant tell. That was why he hid them. They moved faster than his thoughts. If something monopolized his attention, he fidgeted.
Her comings and goings in his office were punctuated by the clicking of his pen.
Still, it was his choice to keep away, and she let him. For her entire life up to that point, she would not have cared. Now? She worried.
She was not the only one.
"He pushed you away, didn't he?" Adrien asked, after four day spent observing his father's behaviour with increasing worry.
Nathalie nearly jumped out of her bones at that question. She knew the boy knew about that thing with his father, but they had not discussed it. Not in so many words. He had trusted her to handle Gabriel's breakdown a few days before, but that had been desperation, not acceptance.
If it had been in her power, she would have kept the affair from him until the end of time. Getting his approval seemed unlikely. He missed his mother too much, and he had not been allowed nor helped to move on. Nathalie, though she had no desire to walk in his mother shoes, could as best be seen as an unwelcome replacement, if not as the evil stepmother. You couldn't compete with Alice, after all. Saints cast too dark a shadow.
Adrien would have been the last person she wanted to discuss the matter with, had she planned to discuss it at all.
"I'm sorry?" she gasped.
"He pushed you away," the boy replied with a sigh. "I mean, it's not hard to see."
What did you answer to that? Nathalie fumbled for words, aware that her panic was showing on her face and in her posture.
"That…" she tried to say, her voice several octaves higher than she wanted it to be.
She cleared her throat, straightening up, faking composure. She made sure her expression was inscrutable.
"I don't think we should-"
Adrien chuckled.
"I'm sorry!" he immediately exclaimed. "I didn't mean to laugh, I…"
Nathalie blinked, and possibly frowned, confused. He shook his head.
"It's just-" he started. "Nevermind."
Easier said than done. What was that about?
He must have noticed her puzzlement. He smiled, straightening up, raising his chin, and clasping his hands behind his back. Just like his father. And just like she had just done. The difference was that the child's expression was warm and amused. There was fondness in it.
"Same mannerisms," he commented. "I'm sorry. It just hit me. I shouldn't have laughed."
Of course the mannerisms were the same. Nathalie had adopted Gabriel's gestures from the moment she had started working for him. They were incredibly effective.
She huffed and let her arms fall to her sides. That didn't feel quite right, she was too aware of them, so she ended up crossing them.
Adrien watched it all, then put his hands in his front pockets, and rocked on his heels with easy grace. Models.
"I'm not going to ask you if you are alright with that," he said, looking at the wall somewhere on her right. "Him pushing you away. That's private. I just… If you're not alright with it… please, don't let him. You get him. Not everyone does."
She was too baffled to answer. The teenager waited for an instant or so, then took a step back.
"Anyway that was just my opinion, what do I know?" he mumbled, eyes downcast, smile hesitant.
He turned to leave. Nathalie watched him hurry to the closest door. Her brain finally provided a helpful diagram. Every possible path in that flowchart pointed to 'reassure the boy'.
"Adrien", she called.
He stopped and looked at her. She bit her lower lip and did that hand clasping thing again, Nathalie, for god's sake. She tried to look just a little warmer.
"I'll be there if he needs me," she promised.
Adrien studied her face, with an unsettling seriousness, then broke into a grin.
"Thank you," he said, slipping out of the room.
He left her stunned, confused, and unable to process what had just happened.
###
Ladybug perched three buildings away from Pat Messmer's office and waited for any sign of activity. A week had gone by since her encounter with Gabriel Agreste on the roof of the opera. His questionnaire was filled in. She had answers. She wished she could forget them. Keeping her promise to Tikki would not be that easy.
She had no intention of talking to Adrien. Chat, however… She wished she could warn him. He seemed so fascinated by his predecessor. A predecessor who, as Tikki herself admitted, should never have been Chat Noir in the first place.
"You have to understand, Marinette," the Kwami had told her. "He was never evil, just… He fit Alice. He fit Alice, and it meant he was all that Chat Noir should never be."
Tikki had been so remorseful.
"It was my fault. I picked a girl who was as bright as the sun, and her Chat Noir had to be everything she was not. It made for a Chat who was ruthless and cold as ice, and who craved for her light and warmth. Being chosen cost them so much."
"I still don't know what he did, but… How could you possibly have guessed it would end poorly?" Marinette had replied, trying to comfort her. "Everyone makes their own choices. If the ring was taken from him, I imagine he decided to do something terrible."
"He did. That's not the point. He should never have ended up in a position to take that decision to begin with. I could have guessed, Marinette. I should have. We cannot allow such a contrast between Ladybug and Chat Noir, ever. They have to balance each other like you and your Chat: different yet alike, and complementary. When I picked Alice, I allowed for Plagg to chose a child who resembled him, and Plagg is a god of misfortune."
Marinette, listening to her words, had grown more and more nervous.
Tikki had summed up the previous Chat Noir in one sentence.
"His weapon was a sword."
Not a staff, that allowed to fight without inflicting serious damage. Not Marinette's yoyo, used mostly to travel and incapacitate. No. Mister Agreste's weapon, the one he had received upon his first transformation, had been meant to kill.
Marinette's next question had not been 'what did he do?'.
"Who?" she had asked Tikki.
That had been clear enough.
"Hawk Moth," the Kwami had replied. "He used Cataclysm on Hawk Moth."
###
Adrien had observed his father for a week, with increasing worry. Gabriel was making an effort to be more present, and had fitted a fencing session into his busy schedule nearly every day. While Adrien was overjoyed to get to spend time with him (at the cost of a bruised ego and a bruised everything else, as he had never fallen down so much in his life), he could still see that his father was withdrawing into himself.
He had broken up with Nathalie. He kept a respectful distance. He no longer bumped into her. He no longer perked up when he saw her walk into a room (well, he did, but contained himself).
Adrien had not realized how good it was to see him move on until that point. Watching him retreat back into that endless wait for his mother was horrendous. Gabriel would keep his life on hold forever, unless he got answers. And, Adrien suspected, they would never be found. If Tikki did not know what happened, when she was the last person to have seen Alice… There was no one left to question.
As Adrien Agreste, perfect son, was not supposed to know anything about superhero business, he hoped he would get to talk to his father as Chat Noir instead.
His patrols had been quiet and lonely, as Ladybug made sure to avoid him. He suspected she would need a few more days to process his confession, and then some to decide how to handle his unrequited love. That stung a little, but it was hardly unexpected.
It had given him ample time to stalk his father.
Of course, for that entire week, Gabriel had stayed home. He had not gone to his secret office to charge his watch, probably due to the fact that Hawk Moth had been quiet. The supervillain had unleashed a new enemy that afternoon, however. It had not been an easy fight. Laser Tag, as her name clearly indicated, had a taste for stealth, ranged weapons, and scoring a lot of points. Adrien had taken a shot for Ladybug, and finished the battle with a paralyzed shoulder.
His partner had saved the day. Lucky charm had fixed everything, including his arm. They had bumped fists and Chat had tried not to cringe at Ladybug's unease. Then, they had parted ways.
Twenty minutes later, he was breaking into Pat Messmer's office. Again. Having googled the lawyer's name, he chuckled as he did so. His father did have a taste for cat references.
The trapdoor was open. He tiptoed down the stairs, looking around for Gabriel. He found him sitting next to his charging watch, wearing a grey sweater and with his hair in an… 'artistic mess'. That was quite a sight. Also, he looked about to slaughter someone.
"Uh," Chat Noir gasped, tiptoeing backwards to escape the storm, but it was too late, Gabriel had spotted him.
The man jumped out of his chair, joined Chat, and grabbed him by a cat ear. Then he dragged him towards one of the tables.
"Aouch," Adrien exclaimed. "Aow."
"Stop whining, or I'll use the real ones," Gabriel said in his calmest voice. Then he pulled Chat's face closer to the table, right above a tablet. "Now what. Was. THAT? "
Adrien looked down. The screen was showing a picture of the fight against Laser Tag, zoomed him on Chat Noir and his paralyzed arm. His shoulder was glowing red where he had been shot.
He tried to wriggle free. His father let go of his ear.
"That? Well, Laser Tag was about to shoot Ladybug and I-"
"You shielded her, you imbecile. What the hell possessed you?"
Chat Noir turned to him, gaping.
"You have to stop being that stupid," Gabriel continued. "It's a mistake you keep making, and it will get the two of you killed. Just. Stop."
Adrien gaped some more, and snapped out of it thanks to righteous fury.
"What do you mean, 'stop'? I have to protect her!"
His father groaned and muttered something about lovesick children. He picked the tablet up, swiping in every direction.
"I swear you are lucky I have no proper footage of this fight yet ," he snapped. "But I'll just explain my point differently. Here. Do you remember this?"
He turned the screen towards Chat Noir, who blinked and looked at it, confused. A video was playing: a loop of one of Dislocoeur's attack, more precisely the moment where Adrien had been hit by an arrow and turned evil. It looked like it had been filmed by a security camera. It was grainy, in black and white, but the events were clear enough.
Gabriel waited for the loop to start over.
Adrien watched himself try to confess his feelings to Ladybug, standing on his staff on a building's facade with his partner in his arms. Ten seconds in, Kim flew into the picture and fired an arrow. Gabriel paused the video when the Chat on the screen put himself between Ladybug and the arrow.
"Here," he exclaimed, tapping the picture under Chat Noir and Ladybug's feet. "What is that, pray tell?"
Adrien winced.
"A… wall?"
"It's empty space, you dimwit. Empty space, empty space, empty space," his father repeated, pointing at various parts of the screen. " All you had to do was to drop to the ground, or to grab her while falling backwards. Why was your first instinctsuicide ?"
Chat opened and closed his mouth. He desperately tried to find an explanation that sounded tactically sound.
"She… was holding her yoyo's string," he said, as if he did not know that it could stretch at will. "That would have kept her pinned right where she was."
Gabriel rolled his eyes.
"Alright, maybe not," his son conceded. "But it was a split-second decision. I just..."
"It was an asinine decision and you need to cure yourself of reflexes like that. You keep doing it."
Adrien looked away, arms crossed, not quite sulking but… It probably did look just like he was sulking.
"Maybe that time was a mistake," he mumbled. "But sometimes I do not have a choice. Sometimes it is the only option, and I'd gladly give my life if it means she gets to survive."
"Oh please, spare me the self-sacrificing drivel. The whole 'I would die for her' mentality is all very romantic but it has no place on a battlefield."
Chat Noir turned to him, studying his profile. Gabriel was shaking his head, mildly annoyed. He turned the tablet off and set it down on the table.
He believed his words. He absolutely and totally believed them.
Adrien couldn't help but wonder about his parents' fighting dynamics. Gabriel's Chat Noir did not sound as if he had been very focused on defensive techniques. "Sword, cataclysm". What had he been like on the field? How would he have protected Alice?
"Wouldn't you have died for your Ladybug?" the boy asked, hesitant.
"No."
"What?"
"It was never an acceptable solution in my eyes. I do not tolerate failing . I would have taken any measures necessary to do my duty as Chat Noir, but that was not protecting her , it was protecting us ."
He returned to the watch to check on it. It was not charged, so he sighed and sat down again. Chat Noir just stared at him, shocked. His father's point of view made sense, but it was so different from his own that he struggled with the idea. His first instinct was to save Ladybug. There was no conscious thought behind it, as long as no other lives were involved. Civilians took priority over her, and she took priority over Chat himself. That was just… how things were?
After a few moments of silence, Gabriel pursed his lips.
"You are a team," he explained. "If you die, if you are injured, you leave her crippled. You might feel like sacrificing yourself is the best decision, like you gave her a chance to win, but in truth you are depriving her of a good part of her offensive power. Always, always find a better solution."
"What if I can't?"
Gabriel mouthed those words back, aggravated.
"If that's the way you think, you can as well give that ring back. Or you can stop whining and train to get better at this. "
Chat sighed and sat on the table, crossing his hands on his knees. He tapped his claws against the leather of his gloves.
"You were never in a situation where you had no other choice?" he asked.
"Obviously not. I am here, aren't I?"
"Never?"
"Once or twice. We were young. We got lucky. But the thing is, for the next ten years, I could trust Ladybug to handle herself. I could trust her not to put us in a situation where one of us had to make that choice. We trained hard to survive. We found teachers, we reviewed our battles, we did everything in our power to be the best at this."
Adrien stared into the distance, stunned.
"That sounds… so weird. I read a bit about your wife. Curiosity, cats, you know? She sounded... "
Sweet. Tender. Warm. Loving.
"She didn't sound like what you are describing," he finished, saddened to discover his mother had kept so much of herself from him.
"Because she wore pastel dresses and acted bubbly and naive?"
Acted?
Gabriel hesitated for half a second.
"She was all of that, but she was my wife ," he said. "That should be a big sign that there was more to her. There is a lot of ourselves we only show the world when we wear a mask," he finished, taping the corner of his eye. "Aren't you less of a brat as a civilian? Isn't the girl softer?"
Chat cleared his throat.
"I have no idea. I don't know who she is."
His father blinked. Adrien stared at him, just as confused.
"Your wife told you who she was from the start?" he asked.
"Of course not. I peeked. Three days in."
Gabriel sounded exactly like Plagg, when he had told Adrien that he 'peeked, he always peeked'. His son gaped.
"You… What? But that was betraying her trust!"
"Yes. I have the scruples of a snake. Tell me something I don't know."
Chat studied his face. He was smiling - though you had to look hard and long to spot that curve at the corner of his lips - and had relaxed a little.
"What did you do? After finding out who she was? Did you reveal yourself?"
"Absolutely not. She was a girl from my class who had a crush on me. She had confessed to me, actually. Seventeen times. I couldn't stand her. But then… having seen Ladybug … I asked her out. I laid it heavy on the romance, wrapped her around my finger."
Chat opened and closed his mouth. Well. That was horrifying in more ways than one.
Gabriel grinned.
"That went on for a month or so, then she figured me out and kicked my ass from one side of Paris to the other."
"And then?" Adrien said, frowning.
His father chuckled. The teenager turned green.
"FORGET I ASKED."
That got Gabriel to laugh.
Adrien had not seen that man in five years, if not in ten. His father no longer laughed, or only faked it. He did it as a business practice, to get his interlocutors at ease, when he bothered with that. It had taken Adrien's mother, her jokes, her teasing to get sincere laughter out of him. Or, as his son was starting to realize, it had taken his Ladybug. He only showed his true self when he wore a mask, only that mask was not dependent on a costume but on the context. Here, in a room filled with magic, talking to his successor, his inner Chat Noir surfaced.
He would never show that side of himself to Adrien . Gabriel was so set on keeping his son away from Ladybug and Chat noir, on not discussing his family, 'not in any circumstances'. He had build so many walls around his real life and magic, just like he had built walls the size of a mountain around his home. He was afraid of exposing Adrien to danger, and there would be no pushing him to reveal himself.
Adrien wished he could convince him to share a bit more, but asking would just make his father retreat further away. Chat Noir could reach him, however, so the boy lied his way into his confidence, and stole what secrets about his parents he could get.
"So, she loved you already?" he commented, leaning back and sighing. "I wish I was that lucky. My lady won't give me a second glance."
His father raised his eyebrows.
"Won't she, now?"
"I wish she would. I don't think her loving me is in the cards, though. I've been trying to win her heart, and the results have been cat-astrophic."
"Oh, the girl loves you," Gabriel replied, opening the butterfly watch and smiling in satisfaction as it gave a faint pink glow.
Chat Noir jumped and leaned forward.
"What do you mean?"
His father gave him a side-look.
"You don't ever review your fights, do you?"
"Errrrr…"
"She freed you from Dislocoeur's influence with a kiss ," Gabriel clarified. "What kind of magic did you think was at work there? The mystical powers of strawberry-flavored gloss?"
Adrien's eyes went wide. He gaped at his father as the man walked to the aquariums, caught a butterfly, and trapped him inside the watch. Which was a kind of magic that would have to be investigated too.
"You…" he stuttered. "You really think she…"
"Yes. And maybe if you stopped being such an obnoxious flirt, she would notice it."
"Being an obnoxious flirt is who I am!"
"Well, then change who you are?" Gabriel retorted, pushing the watch into his pocket. "Now, you'll have to excuse me, but I'm not powered by quantic energy. I'm going home to sleep. It was nice talking to you."
###