If Hawk Moth were to vanish, he would not be missed.
Maybe that was not strictly true. Monsters had children too, and significant others, and dogs, and cats. Most likely cats.
He would not be missed by Nathalie .
Why would she care if her days no longer included being attacked on the street by some crazy mime firing invisible arrows? Or, for that matter, by elephants. Or giant robots. Or if she did not end up trapped in a flying bubble wobbling at plane level.
She would not have minded spending the rest of her life not having to worry about superpowered lunatics throwing apocalyptic tantrums. She was willing to bet the sentiment was shared by the majority of Parisians.
What she minded was that the one person planning to get Hawk Moth out of the picture was just a broken man with breakable bones, an unbreakable will, and only the one life.
###
Adrien landed on his ass, not for the first time since he had started training with his father, and not even for the first time that day.
He considered staying down and playing possum.
"Come on, Adrien. I know you can do better," Gabriel snapped, holding out a hand to help his son up.
The teenager took it, wincing, and got back to his feet.
"I'm sorry, Father. I guess I'm distracted."
His fight with Marinette had ruined what would have otherwise been a pretty good day, considering his talk with Ladybug earlier, their finally getting close again, sharing jokes, teasing each other. But no. Marinette's visit had made him both angry and apologetic, and now he felt guilty and aggravated.
"I can see that," the stylist commented, rolling his eyes. "Let's just call it a day. It's getting late, we can as well find ourselves something to eat."
Adrien looked up in surprise.
"Don't you have work to do tonight?" he asked. "I figured you'd work late, like usual."
Gabriel shook his head, already walking away, towards the changing rooms.
"I had a migraine this afternoon, Nathalie made sure I would be forced to rest by rescheduling my every task and appointment. I believe some blackmail was involved, but it's best not to ask."
That was a joke. From Gabriel Agreste. A joke. As Gabriel Agreste.
"Blackmail?" Adrien repeated.
"And possibly some forgery. I'm fairly certain some contracts were meant to be sent by tomorrow morning. Do you like italian food?"
The teenager took a deep breath, resigned. He had reached the ripe age of fifteen, but his father was still unaware of what foods he liked, disliked, or could not touch with a ten-foot pole. Adrien guessed some of the blame rested on him: if there was food on the table when his father was present, he ate it without protest. How was one supposed to guess he was turning greener and greener at every bite?
"It's fine, Father," he replied.
Which was not going to help communicating his preferences.
That was how he ended up sitting in an Italian restaurant, staring at the four cheese gnocchi his father had ordered, and poking and probing a salad he did not want to eat, what with all that cheese right under his nose.
That, and he was still thinking about Marinette's visit. He couldn't decide if he had to go to her to try to smooth things over, or if she had gone too far for him to forgive, after all. He understood that she had meant well. He did. It still left a bitter taste in his mouth.
"Stop picking at your food," Gabriel told him after ten minutes of eating in silence. "I swear I'm growing concerned by your eating habits."
"Sorry," Adrien replied, stabbing a piece of potato and elegantly pushing it into his mouth.
His father studied his face, watched him chew and swallow, then looked down at his own food. He ate a mouthful of gnocchis.
"Do you want to discuss miss Dupain-Cheng and the latest developments?" he asked.
"Not really. It was nothing."
Gabriel wiped the corner of his mouth with his napkin, although there was nothing to clean there. He poured himself a glass of water and took two sips of it. He then picked his fork up and returned to eating, until Adrien couldn't take the silence anymore.
"It's just that she came to apologize," the boy exclaimed, "and she made a point of apologizing about everything except what she said to you! She listed everything she was sorry about and picked her words so carefully..."
His father swallowed his food.
"I'm not surprised. You won't catch her lying about something she feels strongly about, even to defuse a situation like this one."
He did not seem concerned at all.
Adrien stabbed his salad.
"So she tried to push the problem under the carpet by giving me 'a little something'?"
"Of course she did. More water?" Gabriel asked, refilling his son's glass without waiting for an answer. "She'll give you white lies, a few self-serving lies and - from what I have observed - a lot of spluttering, but she won't go against her sense of ethics."
That was not much of a sense of ethics, Adrien thought. Then again, it was the same Marinette who had played the Evillustrator like a fiddle, the one who had tricked Chloé out of the room when they were filming that movie. She was could be crafty, and only had scruples when she realized what she was doing was wrong.
"She can't stand you," he declared, without mentioning how Marinette had been the one to giving Ladybug those 'Hawk Moth' suspicions. "I don't get it. She doesn't even know you. She barely even knows me ."
Gabriel took a sip of his drink.
"I no longer allow myself to underestimate how perceptive teenage girls can be when they set their minds to it," he commented. "I've been proven wrong before."
"How so?"
"Did I ever tell you how many times your mother asked me out before I caved in?"
Adrien shook his head.
"Quite a few," his father continued. "I believe the official tally was 'seventeen', but it was my classmates doing the counting. I wanted her nowhere near me. I thought she was the most vapid idiot to ever have walked the earth."
The teenager gaped. Of course, he had heard one version of that story before, when Gabriel had told Chat Noir about uncovering his Ladybug's identity, but his father was now giving him differents parts of the same tale.
"Really?"
"Really. See, I have never been pleasant, let alone likable, and here came this girl who was the definition of 'sweet' and 'sparky'. And dense, my god, so dense. Couldn't take a hint. Couldn't take no for an answer. I had no idea what she saw in me."
He frowned, thought about it, and shook his head.
"Actually," he amended, "I thought she saw someone I was not. She used to read those godawful vampire novels, with the dark, broody vampire love interest and… whatever else those stories are about. And I was dark, and broody, and about as much of a jerk as the male leads of those books. So I thought she had those expectations of redemption and hidden depths and, if you can call it that, 'romance'. I recall making a point of destroying her favorite story by explaining to her how the bipolar heroine was madly in love with her illegitimate brother, who happened to be a psychotic bastard who reveled in torturing animals and indulged in conjugal rape. That did not go over well."
Adrien stared at him in disbelief.
"What book was that?"
"A classic. We read it for school."
"I… don't think we got to that one yet."
"Thank your lucky star. Where was I?"
"Mom liking vampire stories."
Gabriel nodded, looking to the side with a faint smile.
"Yes. I figured she was entertaining fantasies, that she could not see me for who I was. Then, we ended up interacting out of school, I saw a side of her I had never noticed before, we started dating… and it turned out I was the one who did not know her at all."
"So she wasn't dense?" Adrien asked, deadpan, eyebrows raised.
His father gave him a pointed, 'you think you are so funny' look.
"No, she was not dense. As a matter of fact, Alice was always much smarter than I was. It did surprise me. Then again, many, many people were fooled by her naive, happy-go-lucky attitude."
Adrien moved back on his chair, studying his father's face. Gabriel was saying that so casually. It was good to see. For years, he had avoided the topic entirely. His finally discussing his wife meant that he was getting better. As much as his son had wanted them both to keep hoping for Alice to be found alive, as much as he had wanted them to wait for her,
"You told me before… I mean, that she was not really like that. It's so strange. It's like I never really knew her."
Gabriel tilted his head to the side, considering his son's words.
"That's…" he started.
He looked up, left, right, and up again. Then his eyes returned to Adrien.
"It was very, very important to your mother to remain warm and optimistic," he said. "Those were her defining traits. She was generous and loving and cheerful, and that was who she aspired to be. She would explain rather than scold, try to understand people rather than argue with them, smile rather than get offended. She genuinely believed in kindness and hope, so those were the sides of her she most showed. The sharper parts of her, she saw as flaws. She kept them bottled up, unless someone deserved a taste of hell. Most of the time, however, she valued her self-control."
"Like you do?" Adrien asked, his food forgotten.
Maybe, if he put all the pieces together, from what his father told Chat Noir to what he told him, the boy would figure out the person his mother had been.
Gabriel chuckled.
"I suppose so. We were both fonds of masks."
The teenager's eyes went wide at that, and he fought to regain his composure. He was not supposed to understand the secret meaning in that.
"Of course," his father added, "it was for vastly different reasons. She loved to keep people happy, and I loved to keep them away."
Adrien mulled over that.
"So, you were the only one who ever really saw everything she was?"
"Me and her best friend. We both deserved a taste of hell on a regular basis."
Two people.
Well, Adrien himself had maybe one and a half, what with Ladybug knowing only Chat Noir and Nino only catching glimpses of his alter-ego.
Ladybug's words about dropping his perfect persona came back to him, along with her assurance that his friends would love to know the true him.
"That sounds awfully lonely," he replied.
"Not to someone who likes it that way. Facades are a good thing. Nobody owes the world their soul. How many people one lets in is a personal choice."
Adrien nodded. He pushed his salad around.
His father's 'personal choice' seemed to be 'as few people as humanly possible', which translated to 'Alice Beauregard, period'. Then again, the teenager was starting to realize his own facade was not helping.
His father did not know him, but he was not showing himself either, was he? He had always been so set on being good and making Gabriel proud that he had kept what defined him under wraps.
He poked his salad some more.
"I give up," Gabriel snapped. "Please order a dessert. Order an ice cream. Order something you will eat . But stop picking at your food."
###
Gabriel and Alice's first date had been meant to be a romantic walk in the park under the beautiful sunny skies of Paris. They had discussed… 'small-talkey' things. Possibly topics even more insignificant.
The blond had assumed his best 'Prince Charming' persona, showering Alice with compliments on her outfit, on her hair, on her everything, all the while trying to catch a glimpse of Ladybug under the girly, fluffy cheer.
It had started raining cats and dogs thirty minutes in.
"Let's go to my place!" Alice had insisted, getting a red folding umbrella out of her purse and failing to open it.
She had managed after ten tries. By that point, they were soaked to the bone and shivering (well, Gabriel was). Her shoes made a splashing noise at every step. His were ruined. If he had been given ten seconds to think, Gabriel would have called it a day. Alice Beauregard, however, having finally gotten her claws into her prey, was not about to let him go.
It had taken a five minute walk for them to get to her house. They had found it empty, and Alice had immediately started fluttering around, preparing warm drinks, getting them towels and ushering Gabriel into her bedroom. She had served him coffee. She had served herself tea. At no point had she asked what he would have prefered. She just knew. Which was unsurprising, considering the months of stalking he had endured.
Gabriel had looked around, taking in the faint smell of pastry, the pastel walls and pastel furniture, the softness and cheerfulness of it all. It had been very 'Alice Beauregard', with nothing 'Ladybug' in sight, but that didn't mean you couldn't spot the oddities in the bright decor.
He had walked to her bookshelf and read the titles of her books - the ones with the black covers and red lettering, most of them by Anne Rice - only to pick one up at random and scan a page or two.
He had stared at the page.
Then, he had stared some more.
Then, Alice had gathered which specific piece of literature he had gotten his hands on.
"AHAHAHALETMEPUTTHATBACK," she had yelled in a moment of panic, tearing the book out of his hands to shove it back in its place.
If she had been able to slam a doorless bookshelf shut, she would have.
"I'm sorry," he had replied. "I didn't mean to embarrass you. I shouldn't have taken it without asking."
She had smiled, swallowing her panic down, and trying to assess what kind of page he had landed on. He was willing to bet he had found the worst, but was not about to say so.
"It's just… I know you don't really like that kind of stories," she had explained. "I mean, I remember what you said about…"
"I'm sorry about what I said about Wuthering Heights."
"It's alright. I read it again. Some of your points were… on point. Do you want cookies? I can get cookies. We also have cheese crackers, and cheetos, and… I don't know, but we can go and check."
"I'd love cookies, thanks," he had replied with his tenderest, sweetest, warmest, fakest smile.
Alice had scampered.
Gabriel had smirked, sniffed the air, and tried to locate the source of the pastry smell. It seemed to come from the desk, so he had opened the first drawer and grinned to Tikki.
"Hi there. Pleased to meet you."
"Gabriel Agreste," Tikki had grumbled, flying up to the level of his eyes, "you are the most dishonest and conniving person I have ever met, and if you don't tell Alice what you are playing at right now , I will-"
Plagg's squeals of laughter had interrupted her. The black cat had popped out of Gabriel's inner pocket, and twirled around his sister.
"Let us have our fun," he had said. "This is hilarious."
Tikki had answered that with a glare and crossed arms. Plagg, being Plagg, had giggled some more.
"No need to be so serious!" he had drawled. "I, for one, enjoy this welcome change in our chosens' interactions. It's definitely more entertaining."
"Entertaining is not the word I would have used," the red Kwami had snapped, shooting daggers at Gabriel.
The teenager had clasped his hands behind his back and smiled.
"Come on. We mean no harm. I will tell her soon," he had promised.
By 'soon', he meant 'never'. Tikki, from the look on her face, knew that. The conversation had been cut short by the sound of footsteps. Gabriel had pushed the drawer shut as the two Kwamis vanished.
Alice had entered the room with cookies in three flavors, three bags of candy, and the cheese crackers she had talked about. She could get a bit carried away. Three minutes later, sitting on her bed with a board game between them, Gabriel had opened the box of cheese crackers (that without having touched the cookies his date was inhaling). He had endured the most boring game of Sea Battle (and lost). He had endured the second most boring game of Sea Battle in history (and won). Then Alice, proving that she could be merciful, had put the board away.
"It's still raining," she had commented, leaning back on the bed with a long look at her window. "What do you feel like doing?"
He had looked around, trying to suggest an activity available to them. The vampire books were not going to be of much help, nor were the clothes and posters hanging from the walls. There was a television and a VCR, however.
"We could watch a movie," he had suggested.
Alice had smiled.
"We could."
###