"So you finally show up, Chat Noir!" the villain of the day taunted when Adrien dropped on the closest roof to the gigantic cobweb the Akumaized entomologist was standing on. "I thought you'd never arrive. You're just in time. Your partner was hanging on by a thread ."
That was the worst pun Chat had ever heard, and he had heard Copycat's.
It was technically accurate, though: Ladybug was wrapped in spider silk and hanging ten feet above a dozen super-sized black widows.
It didn't look good. Now, it was not as bad as a t-rex, but black widows were nothing to scoff at and it didn't look like Ladybug would manage to free herself. She was wriggling and twisting but both her arms were stuck. The silk threads were tightly wrapped around her body.
Their enemy lowered her by a few inches.
"You know what to do, Chat Noir! Give me your Miraculous, and I'll let her go."
"Thanks but I'll pass!" Adrien shouted, dropping in the middle of the spiders with his staff spinning.
Fails to use ranged weapon to fend the threats off, his father's notes had said. 'I've seen you use your staff as a sword, a shield, a club, and an elevator, but you scarcely ever use it as a staff.'
Now seemed like the perfect time to focus on the 'ranged' thing. He made the staff grow, holding it above his head, and spun it faster and faster. It kept the black widows at bay, though some tried to spit silk or to get closer by jumping over the staff itself.
They were surprisingly heavy.
"Okay, thread carefully here, Chat," the hero muttered after nearly falling to his knees under a single spider's weight.
He could not waste time. His real enemy was going to att-
The four-legged man dropped from his web and shot a long string of sticky silk at him. Chat Noir planted his staff on the pavement and propelled himself up by extending it. He wrapped an arm around Ladybug's waist when he reached her, held on for dear life, then pointed his staff at the farthest wall he could see.
"Guess who is pulling the strings today, my lady?" he joked, making the staff grow until its tip connected with the wall and glued itself there.
"No 'clawing your way out' joke? You disappoint me, Chat."
He chuckled and shrunk the staff without releasing it. They zipped towards the wall, with Chat Noir trying his hardest not to let go of Ladybug, nor of the staff. The silk thread she was hanging from stretched and resisted, but snapped when they got fast enough.
Adrien held her close, releasing his weapon to salto in the air, landing against the wall feet first and jumping down into the street. Only then did he let go of his girlfriend.
He could say girlfriend. They were dating.
"So who is our new friend?" he asked, jumping up to detach his staff from the wall while Ladybug freed herself from her prison of silk.
The villain was racing towards them, followed by his army of arachnids.
"Oh, I'll let him do the honors," Ladybug replied, throwing her yoyo at the highest balcony and shooting through the air. She landed on the roof and looked down. "Couldn't say his name with a straight face."
"That bad?"
"Worse."
Chat Noir grinned.
"Let's see, then," he murmured, watching their enemy draw close.
Four legs, four arms. Black costume. His weapon was a bracelet that could shoot gooey strings he used as restraints or zip-lines. That had to be what the Akuma was hiding in.
"I'll take care of the spiders," Adrien announced. "Good luck with Tarantula."
"It's Spider Fan! " their enemy corrected, throwing himself at Chat.
The teenager dodged, hit the man's chest with his staff, jumped away.
" Seriously? "
"Yep!" Ladybug confirmed.
"Now that's just a trademark lawsuit waiting to happen," her partner pointed out.
'Spider Fan' tried to attack him, only to be dragged away by Ladybug's yoyo.
Adrien focused on the spiders and the civilians who were still cowering in the area. He saved two children who were hiding under a bench, helped a woman fend off the human-sized grey recluse that was trying to force its way through her window, and more generally kept the arthropods away from his girlfriend.
He was doing a good job of it, or so he thought. Then Spider Fan managed to hit him with a ball of gluey silk thread that threw him against a building's facade before unfolding into an inescapable cobweb.
The young hero tried to tear his way out but his claws could not cut through the silk, that was as stretchy and disgusting as old chewing gum. Pushing on the wall to loosen the cobweb did not work. Chat Noir barely managed to bend his leg.
Helpless, he watched Ladybug lure Spider Fan away. She vanished behind a roof, followed by both the villain and a dozen black widows.
Adrien groaned. He had no choice but to try to use Cataclysm, even if it meant that he would be on a timer. At least, the spiders seemed to have forgotten about him/
"Ca-"
A man dropped next to him. His lanky silhouette was easy enough to recognize. Chat Noir had to bite his tongue not to blurt out a 'Father?'.
"Mister Agreste?" he exclaimed instead while Gabriel quickly assessed their surroundings.
It was impossible. He was supposed to be in Syracuse, on the other side of the Atlantic. Adrien had talked to him just the previous day on Skype. They had talked about the hotel Gabriel was staying at, about his getting in touch with the designers who ran the Syracuse Style fashion show. There was no way he could have flown back to France so quickly.
Unless he never went to Syracuse.
Unless he stayed in Paris to track Hawk Moth down without being monitored.
His father turned to him with an inscrutable expression. He did not say a word. Instead, he grabbed one of the silk threads of the cobweb and tugged. The thread stretched but did not break.
"Mister Agreste ?" Chat Noir insisted.
Gabriel ignored him. He wiped his hand on his pants, then took a rectangular metallic box out of his toolbelt, opening it on a thin, stylus-shaped steel blade. It looked plain but, when Gabriel used it on the cobweb Chat Noir's claws had been worthless against, not only did it cut through the silk, it carved deep into the wall itself.
What was that thing? Was it magical?
The man traced the outline of Chat's body, severing enough of the web to free him. Gabriel grabbed his arm and pulled him out of his prison. He put the blade back in its box, which he pushed back into his toolbelt.
The teenager breathed a sigh of relief.
"Thank y-"
"We are going home," his father said, dragging him away.
###
The Seine was cold on any given day, but it was worse at night, when you swam in dark waters for hours on end, day after day. A few minutes in and you would be chilled to the bone, no matter how expensive your swimming equipment, especially if you no longer had superpowers.
Gabriel had not complained once, diving time and time again, a flashlight in his hands, to find a cursed letter opener he knew full well would not be found. It was locked up in his office, in a safe, in a thick electrum box that would keep its aura concealed even if Tikki happened to wander near enough to sense it. Not that it was much of a risk. When Candy Warper had died, the Kwami had all said the Akuma trapped in that candy cane could barely be felt, even from up close. There was no reason Paper Cute's weapon would be any different.
"It's no use," Gabriel had told Ladybug after five nights of fruitless diving, while he was resting on the towpath next to the water. "It must have drifted away. We will not find it."
Alice had known that. She could not accept it.
"That's what Tikki said, but I'll be damned if I don't try my hardest. It can't have been dragged all the way to the English Channel!"
She could not accept it. It broke her. Yet Gabriel had not told her he knew full well where the blade was. He had not told her he had been the first person to find Paper Cute after she had drowned.
Instead, he had tried to soothe her.
"You have to let it go," he had murmured. "Fu will look for it. His Kwami will look for it. They can travel all the way to Le Havre. They gladly will."
"I am not going to give up after just five days, Gabriel! I can't just let that woman's soul… wander. I have to know that… that someday she will be helped. Which can't happen if we don't find that letter opener."
It broke her.
It hadn't mattered in the larger scheme of things. Guilt and pain faded. Danger never did. Gabriel had known Alice would get over that failure, just like she had gotten over Candy Warper and Blood Moon's deaths.
Gabriel had not liked to see her suffer - as a matter of fact, he had hated it - but relinquishing the one weapon he had to protect her had been out of the question.
How many nights had he spent following her from a distance, watching her fight monsters and criminals, all the while knowing he would not be able to intervene if the fights turned sour? There had not been a thing he could have done against a dragon or a malebranche, nor against a sorcerer, nor against a supervillain, not until he had found Paper Cute's cold body tangled in that net right under the Seine's surface, inches away from air.
The blade had changed everything.
Gabriel had never deluded himself into thinking Hawk Moth would never return. Even without that, there was no shortage of monsters in the world.
You did not throw away what little tools you had to fight them.
Sometimes, you had to make the ones you loved suffer a little, for their own good.
###
For the best part of thirty seconds, Chat Noir could only stumble after his father as he dragged him down the street, hand firmly clenched around his wrist.
We are going home.
He knew. There would be no distracting him, no deflecting, no denying. He knew. He knew, and Adrien realized that he should have confessed weeks before, the moment Gabriel and Chat Noir had met, the moment his father had told him about his mother's fate.
His father, who had hidden him behind walls three times the size of a man, who had kept him home-schooled and sheltered, who had warned him against 'suicidal vigilantes' because his wife had been one, because she had run off to tend to quantic business and vanished without a trace. His father who had lived in terror for years, with no answers, with no hope. His father whose son could have died a dozen times with a mask on, erasing Adrien Agreste from the face of the earth.
The boy had dithered for days over telling his girlfriend who he was, but he had totally overlooked the one reveal that mattered.
'Do your parents know you are doing this?'
"Dad! Dad, I'm sorry ," he exclaimed, trying to catch up to face Gabriel.
His father was holding his wrist at such an angle that Adrien had to lag behind not to twist his arm. Gabriel did not answer. He did not even look back.
"Dad!" Adrien tried again, only to be ignored once more. "Father."
The man did not react. He just kept walking, holding Chat Noir's arm without quite pulling it. He did not have to: not following was not an option. Adrien would not have dared to free himself. The teenager's gut felt like ice. Cold sweat was dripping down his back.
He would have preferred to be yelled at. He would have preferred to be punished, sermoned, to have the ring pulled off his finger if that was what it took for Gabriel to feel better. Anything but that cool, collected nothing .
" Dad, " he pleaded.
Nothing.
They were reaching the end of the street. The spiders were mostly gone. They had abandoned the deserted street and the cocoons passerby had been trapped in, most likely to go after Ladybug.
Ladybug.
"W-wait! I-I have t-to go help her. Father, please…"
This time, Gabriel replied, though he did not bother turning.
"She will be fine," he declared. "She does not need you."
His tone was not snappish. There was not the slightest hint of anger in his voice. He was merely stating a fact, with a finality that hit Adrien in the gut.
The young hero tore his hand away from Gabriel's grip.
He could not find words to protest. He wanted to retort that Ladybug did need him, but he did not manage to. Every argument that came to his mind felt like a lie. As much as he would have liked to say that he had saved her time and time again, that they were a team, that she said so herself… it all rang hollow. He did not manage to believe them - not after hearing that - and if he could not convince himself, he would not convince his father.
Five words. It had only taken five words for his confidence to shatter, which was not surprising. It had been built on empty air to begin with.
"I-I have to go," he murmured instead. That , at least, was true.
Gabriel turned to him and studied his face with cold curiosity, just as if he had been staring at some peculiar but insignificant insect.
He did not say a word.
Adrien shrunk under his gaze, uneasy. He did not try to get away. When his father resumed walking, the boy followed. They found his car - a battered grey Ford Escort - parked two streets away. Gabriel pointed at the passenger door and took the driver seat.
Chat Noir hazarded a "dad…" before getting into the car, but his father still refused to talk.
The designer remained silent for their entire ride home. By the time they parked in the mansion's garage, Adrien would have begged to be screamed at. He did.
"Please, please, father, say something! " he exclaimed when they got out of the car. "Talk to me!"
Gabriel made his way to the staircase, then the hallway one floor up, all the while ignoring his son. He only bothered to turn when Ladybug called Chat Noir's weapon, and that was only to give the boy a scathing glare.
Adrien's hand hovered above the baton. He hesitated. He took a shaky breath. In the end, he did not answer. He could not tell if it would make things worse and he was too terrified to risk it. It was better to do exactly was his father wanted - anything - in the hope it could somehow calm him down. Even if Gabriel would not tell him what he wanted.
Adrien was desperate. He did not know how to fix things. He had no idea if things could be fixed.
He followed Gabriel into the dining room. The man's phone rang twice on the way. The first time, he hung up. The second time, he turned the phone off.
Still without a word, he walked to the dining table, grabbed a chair and dragged it to the hallway. He came back, did the same with the next chair, though in a less controlled fashion. He nearly threw it out of the room, which was what he did with the third one. As for the remaining chairs, he shoved them aside, hurling the last ones away to free the center of the room. He flipped the table.
Adrien watched the scene unfold, whispering the odd 'What are you d-' and 'Father, just-' when his clenched throat allowed him to.
When Gabriel grabbed one of the table's leg and used his full weight to twist it off, to boy joined him. The wood of the table creaked. It resisted. The bolts and nails, however, did not. The piece of wood snapped out of its socket.
Gabriel held it in one hand, swinging his arm back and forth, gathering momentum to throw it away. Except he did not do that: he spun on himself and hit Chat Noir in the belly with the table leg, followed that blow by tripping the young hero. Adrien fell, landing flat on his back with his breath knocked out of him.
"Never assume you are safe," his father said, with the same coldness as before. "Up."
The boy propped himself up on one elbow, too stunned to answer.
"Up," Gabriel repeated.
Hesitantly, Adrien sat up and tried to get back to his feet, only for the designer to trip him again.
"What did I just say?" the man told him. "Up."
Chat Noir swallowed. He carefully crouched, then rolled away and saltoed when Gabriel tried to trip him for a third time. The boy landed on his feet at the other end of the room. He massaged his abs, though the blow his father had landed had surprised him more than it had hurt him.
"And don't whine ," his dad snapped, repeating the words his son had heard time and time again during their training sessions, whenever he had failed to block one of Ladybug's or Gabriel's attacks. "You are invulnerable."
"I-"
"Staff."
"W-"
Gabriel narrowed his eyes. Chat Noir detached his weapon from his belt and grew it to its battle size.
"Dad," he pleaded. "Can we not do this? Can we please talk?"
His father threw the table leg away. Once again, he refused to answer. He joined Adrien and reached for the bell at his collar. The teenager blocked by pure reflex, hitting Gabriel's ribs with his staff and jerking his arm to the side. He stopped himself right before he could complete the move and sprain Gabriel's shoulder or worse.
Of course, his father used that hesitation to free himself and trip his son.
"Up," he said after Adrien hit the floor.
The boy clenched his jaw.
"No! No, I am not doing this, I am not , I-"
Gabriel leaned down.
"Let me be clear," he murmured, voice dripping with menace. "If you are to go out there with that ring and willfully endanger yourself, there will be no mistakes . There will be no half-assed dodges, no faulty pirouettes, no fooling around. Either you become a perfect fighter, or you won't be a fighter at all ."
###
Eight days after surrendering the ring, Gabriel had still caught himself idly talking to Plagg, only to remember the Kwami was gone and that they would never meet again.
Sleep had not come easily, or at all, so he had taken pills for a little while. He was not one to find comfort in drugs, but he needed some kind of distraction and sleep was as good as any. The pills had not worked anyway. He had still found himself pacing in the master bedroom at three in the morning, staring out the windows to check for black butterflies or dark silhouettes clad in violet. Whenever he had turned away from the windows, it had been to look at the empty bed, where only one side of the covers was crumpled. Alice had moved into one of the guest bedrooms. While she had not considered divorce an acceptable solution, she had needed distance, and he had given it to her.
On the eighth night, he had knocked on her bedroom's door.
"I. C-can I…" he had stuttered when his wife had opened.
Come in.
Alice had stared at him with the slightest frown, not saying anything.
He had breathed in and tried to collect himself.
"I can't…" - … take this. - "... sleep," he had pretended. "I do not mean to force you to talk to me, but I'd appreciate if…"
He had reached for her belly without touching it. She took his hand and pressed it against the flannel of her pyjamas, over the bump of her outstretched navel. He had hoped to feel a little kick, some motion - you never knew - but the baby had clearly been asleep.
"Come in," Alice had murmured. "Here."
They had not talked, but they had slept in each other's arms. That had been a start.
###
Plagg was nothing like Tikki. He was not cuddly . He was not soft, he was not comforting, he was not nice. That did not mean he was heartless. He felt plenty, compassion included (though empathy was a trait he had acquired late and not without effort). But he shied away from consoling his chosen. What was the point? It was entirely too tiring and complicated. His heroes knew how he felt, anyway. All of that fumbling and cooing and coddling was beyond useless.
He watched from the sidelines whenever heartbreak hit. If his chosens needed him to, he would land on their shoulder and sit there patiently while they sorted through their feelings on their own. He scarcely intervened, except when he had to.
He hated doing it, and he hated in even more when he had to pick one of his humans over the other. Especially when the two humans involved were shattering and when he felt for both of them. But Gabriel had not given him a choice, had he?
Adrien could not defend himself. He could only break and tremble as his father tore his heart to pieces. He was too young and too kind to purposely hurt the ones he loved.
Plagg had given Gabriel enough time to get over himself.
So he was falling apart. Tough luck.
There were lines you did not cross.
Of course, the Kwami was trapped in the quantic realm, watching the so-called training session unfold through Chat Noir's eyes. He could not talk to Gabriel. Not that it left Plagg without a voice.
When Gabriel, after tripping Adrien again , ordered the boy to get back to his feet, Plagg made the ring beep.
The teenager's first reaction was to tense, the sound too unexpected and too loud for his frayed nerves. The next second, his every muscle relaxed as he recognized the beeping of his Miraculous and envisioned the imminent transformation back into himself. He would never have dared to take the ring off, nor to protest in any way at his father's treatment of him. But Gabriel could not blame Adrien for turning back if he was not given a choice in the matter. Relief washed over the young hero.
Gabriel glared at the ring.
"It's not me!" Adrien exclaimed. "Plagg is doing it, he-"
"He cannot force you out of your transformation," the former Chat Noir snapped. "Get. Up."
The relief faded at once. Adrien's shoulder went from slightly relaxed to hunched. He rolled and jumped back to his feet, stumbling as he landed.
His father was right. You couldn't force a Miraculous holder to untransform. If the Kwami had any say in the matter, Hawk Moth would not have been such a problem. They could only obey their masters. Not that Adrien had known that for sure before hearing Gabriel's words. There were a lot of things the Kwami 'failed to mention' about the rules that bound them. You never knew how that knowledge could be used.
Adrien was a good boy, so he had never questioned the way Plagg would sometimes - rarely - start taking paw pads off the ring. One, two, three, four, five. The black cat avoided pulling that trick, so Adrien would always panic when it happened. Truth was a Kwami could not break a transformation unless exhausted. What they could do was confuse and stress their holders into willing themselves to transform back, unknowingly. It only worked when the humans were caught unaware, though.
Thankfully, Plagg did not need the transformation to break. On the contrary.
He made the ring beep again. And again. And again.
Gabriel took a deep breath, collecting the staff Adrien had dropped and throwing it to the boy, who nearly dropped it. He was getting clumsier and clumsier, which meant Gabriel was getting harsher and harsher, because Gabriel had reverted back to his only coping mechanism: focusing on a problem and fixing it.
Normal people screamed themselves hoarse, broke furniture and punched walls, but not him. No. He did not know how to let the anger out, would not allow himself to. He suppressed it and smothered it, keeping it under his skin where it could fester. From there, it seeped into his soul and poisoned him from the inside out.
As long as he accomplished something, as long as he could adjust and control the world around him, he pretended he could ignore that darkness he kept bottled.
"Grab block, once again ," he told Adrien, raising his voice to cover the beeping of the Miraculous.
His son blocked as ordered, too slowly, and twisted his ankle while stepping back.
His father glared.
Plagg was not about to let himself be ignored. He could annoy anyone into breaking. He was the most insufferable creature in the world when he so wanted. He could drive Tikki to distraction.
He made the Miraculous beep continuously, loudly enough to cover Gabriel's voice.
His former chosen took a long, shaky breath, raising his chin to stare at the ceiling. He tried to calm himself and failed.
"Plagg, if you don't stop immediately, I-"
The Kwami raised the volume some more.
It took nearly a minute for Gabriel to give up. He groaned and stormed to the exit, slamming the door as he left.
Adrien tore the ring off his finger. Plagg spiraled out of it, spun in the air and landed on the boy's shoulder. He squeezed himself against his neck and gave his jaw a little bump of the head. His chosen let out a sob, then another, then curled up on the floor.
###
"Does the screaming inside your head ever stop?" Gabriel had once asked a bewildered Alice, after watching her giggle at being 'politely' called an imbecile.
It happened to her every single day.
"What do you mean?" the teenage girl had replied, puzzled out of her mind.
"You know what I mean. Don't those idiots get to you, at least a little?"
"Not really," Alice had replied, shrugging.
That had been a lie, of course, and Gabriel had been aware of that. He had caught her chewing the inside of her cheeks more than once, after the 'well-meaning' mean girls of their school had given her yet another 'friendly tip', or after she had overheard yet another comment on her lack of brains. Her eyes would narrow, she would frown, Ladybug's temper seeping out of the cracks in her mask.
"Is there screaming inside your head?" she had asked the boy.
Gabriel had shaken his head.
"No. If I'm angry, everyone knows it."
That had been a lie, too, except the young hero had believed he was telling the truth. Plagg knew better. If Gabriel was irritated , everyone knew it. He snapped at people, he scolded them, he sent them away. Irritation was an acceptable feeling, so he displayed it openly. Anger, however… True anger was too much of a giveaway. It exposed too much of his heart. He bottled it like up he bottled everything else up, every droplet of it poured into an ever-growing pool of rage.
"If I'm angry, everyone knows it too ," Alice had pointed out. "You know that. You saw me scream at Anne-Laure. You saw me scream at you."
Gabriel had winced at that, shifting in his seat. Painful memories.
"Yes."
His girlfriend had found his discomfort very amusing. He had given her a side-look. After a few seconds, he had relaxed a little.
"Are you alright?"
"Yes. Yes, I am," she had assured him, and it had been the truth.
She was much like Tikki. She took the anger in, slept on it, and it faded into nothing just like the Akuma's darkness.
Gabriel had never learned how to do that.
"Are you alright?" Alice had wondered.
"Why wouldn't I be?" her companion had replied, raising his eyebrows.
He had thought he was being sincere.
In truth, the list of 'whys' was unending.
###
Nathalie had never entertained the possibility that Gabriel could have been a hero, let alone Chat Noir. Dismissing that suspicion had been logical considering he had told her - flat out told her - that Alice had not kept him informed of her activities as Ladybug.
'I was not supposed to be privy to her plans as a hero. Safety precaution, you know?'
That had not been a lie. It could not have been, because Nathalie had been by his side when Alice had vanished. She had seen him collapse, travel all over the word for answers that had never come, answers he was still looking for. There would have been no faking the way he had shattered back then, the way he had harassed the Brazilian detectives, the sheer panic and despair.
He had not known Alice had still been Ladybug when she had left for that trip. The woman had lied. She had kept secrets. It was so different from the young heroes' dynamic that it made the idea of Gabriel being Chat Noir inconceivable. 'Chat Noir is my partner', the new Ladybug would tell the press. 'We are a team'. Meanwhile, Alice had walked away from her husband without sharing as much as a hint of her plans.
Of course, Nathalie had discarded the notion.
Gabriel had made sure not to give her any reason to revise her conclusions. He had told her exactly as much as he wanted her to know.
She should have been watching out for that. She had warned Anne-Laure Lenoir about that trait.
He will pretend to comply and go behind your back every single time.
He will never listen to anyone.
Syracuse, United States, not Syracuse, Sicily.
Nathalie was a liar herself. She had the scruples of a snake. She bribed and tricked and concealed the truth and forged her employer's signature. She should have known better, but she had wanted to believe he could change his stripes, that he only needed to get better to leave the past behind.
When he had closed the Butterfly watch instead of running off to chase after Hawk Moth, she had taken that as a good sign. And the look on his face afterwards… She could recognize sincere guilt and concern. He had been worried sick about her. She had wanted to believe it would make a difference.
She had chosen to ignore who Gabriel was . She had willfully closed her eyes and covered her ears and told herself fairy tales.
He had been worried sick for her because she had been worried sick about him. The simplest way to solve that problem was to make her believe there was nothing to be concerned about anymore. So he had tricked her into thinking he was safe an ocean away, and he had gone behind her back.
She would have done the same.
"Can't find them," Adrien's bodyguard announced as he took his place at the wheel of their car, when he returned from a quick search around the now spider-free block. "Not the boy, not the boss."
He had been looking for twenty minutes, ever since Ladybug had defeated her opponent and cleaned the streets of the myriad of cobwebs that had obstructed them. Nathalie had spent that time in the car, that the young heroine's spell had repaired and haphazardly parked next to the sidewalk they had left it on.
She had called Gabriel several times. She had also made good use of her tablet.
"They went home," she stated. "Or at least their phones did. I have been checking their device locator service."
She had seen the dot of Gabriel's phone travel all the way to the Place du Chatelet on the map of Paris the website had shown her. During that time, Adrien's had been nowhere to be found. It had only appeared a minute before.
"Couldn't he have called?" her coworker mumbled.
Nathalie pursed her lips and stared into the distance.
"Let's just go back," she murmured.
She spent the ride to the mansion with her heart in her mouth, knowing Gabriel had not called because he was about to make them pay for letting Adrien escape. 'Behind you, Nathalie?'. Clumsy as Gabriel was around his son, there was no one he loved more than that boy, and there was nothing he valued more than the child's safety.
There would be hell to pay for their failure to watch their charge properly.
As soon as they parked in the house's garage, Nathalie jumped out of the car and hurried to the staircase, racing up to the hallway. Three upturned chairs were lying next to the dining room door. Her first instinct was to pick them up to carry them back to their spot under the table, then to wonder what they were doing there. She stopped with her hand on the dining room door when that question hit her.
She leaned closer to the door. Hearing whispers, she knocked and waited. The voices died. A moment later, Adrien's shaky voice invited her to come in.
Nathalie pushed the door open and blanched.
The teenager was curled up in a corner, face wet, eyes puffy. He gulped down a sob, then tried to take a deep breath through a stuffy nose. He ended up gasping for air instead.
In an instant, Nathalie was kneeling by his side, squeezing his shoulder.
"Adrien?" she squeaked. "What's wrong? What happened?"
"I-I'm sorry," the boy murmured without looking up. "I ruined everything. I-I lied to him and now…"
The woman ran her hand through his hair, parting it to the side and smoothing it.
"Shh, shh. It's not your fault," she said in the quietest, most reassuring voice she could manage. "What is going on, Adrien?"
The child sniffed. He bit on his trembling lower lip.
"I-I-"
He snapped his mouth shut, turning to the entrance and freezing like a deer in the headlights. She had her back turned to the door but could guess who was standing there. She tensed. Here we go.
"Nathalie. A word, if you please," Gabriel said, in a clipped tone.
She pursed her lips, closed her eyes and nodded, all of that without turning to him. She gave Adrien's arm another squeeze before standing. Only after squaring her shoulders and making sure he spine was straight did she look at Gabriel.
Whatever he was feeling was well hidden. His mask was perfect. She couldn't see through his casual coldness. Something was off with his body language - he was tenser than usual - but it was the only anomaly she could spot.
She did not want to leave Adrien in that state, but it was not unusual of her to do so, was it? So she reluctantly followed her lover to his office.
He walked straight to his desk - he did not hurry, he did not stall - and sat with his hands crossed in front of him.
Nathalie balled her fists behind her back.
"You son is curled up in a ball and weeping two rooms away," she snapped. "What happened ?"
He did not grace that outburst with an answer, so she raised her voice some more.
"What the hell have you done this time?" she yelled.
It was sadly not the first time the man had reduced his son to tears, though the damage had never been quite that awful.
"My son…" - Gabriel stared at his fingers for a second, with resigned indifference. - "Is Chat Noir."
Chat Noir.
The words ran through Nathalie's mind but did not register. That did not make sense. The boy was a bit of an escape artist, but surely… surely… He could not have vanished that often. His schedule was always full. He was supposed to be supervised at all times. She had known he slipped away every now and then, but she knew how crushing his golden cage was. She had not suspected more than the antics of a teenager who needed to spread his wings.
Chat Noir.
The young Ladybug had insisted her partner would be the one handling Gabriel. Did she even know what she was asking from the boy? Did she even know who he was?
"We need to have a conversation," Gabriel announced. "I'd like it to remain civil, if at all possible."
Nathalie was still too stunned and confused to react. Disjointed flowcharts were drawing themselves in her mind as she tried to sort through her memories of the last year, of every Akuma attack, of where Adrien had been meant to be during them. What signs had she missed?
"Please sit," Gabriel said.
She shook her head. He did not comment but kept talking.
"Today's events have made me realize that you are not quite as good a fit for this job as I previously believed. Now, the blame partly falls on me. I redefined what your job entailed along the way. I am aware that I gave you a responsibility you were poorly equipped to handle, one you did not want to begin with. That being said, I still expected a modicum of professionalism. I expected more . Anything else, I could have discarded, but not this." - He paused, barely long enough for his silence to be noticeable. - "You are fired. Please collect your things and leave."
Though she had perfectly understood his words and the intent behind them, her mouth ran away from her brain and went straight for the most inane of answers.
"W-what?" she gasped.
He looked away, keeping his voice polite and engaging, as he did in professional circumstances when he had to handle someone he could not afford to insult.
"You will get a good severance package. Three months of pay. And - of course - I will not impede your career prospects. Should Grenat Fashion still be willing to hire you, I will give you a stellar recommendation. However, from this moment on, all communications will have to go through the company's HR department. They will get in touch with you to handle all legal and financial aspects of the situation, which I'm sure you understand."
By that point, Nathalie had recovered from the revelation on Adrien's secret identity. She had processed Gabriel's speech and analyzed his motivations.
He was going to shut everyone out and withdraw ever deeper into himself. He was going to focus on the one thing that gave him purpose, which was finding Hawk Moth. Knowing that the madman was Adrien's direct enemy would only add fuel to that fire.
"Don't," she murmured. "Don't do this! Please don't," she insisted, joining him and reaching for his shoulder.
He pushed his chair away to avoid her touch. She paused with her hand in the air, trying to convey her feelings through her expression alone.
Gabriel stared straight at her and pretended not to see her pleading look.
"I was willing to let the scarf go," he told her, "even if I knew it was only a symptom of a much larger problem. Now I have irrefutable proof that not only did Adrien escape your watch over and over again for a year, but you have also been hiding it from me. This is the extent of my good will. Go. Just go ."
"No!" she snapped. "Let's discuss this. I'm not going to let you push me away. Not this time."
This was the moment Anne-Laure Lenoir had warned her about, the 'something' that had set Gabriel off, which had to happen because it always, always did. And now he would go after Hawk Moth, and he would do it with neither supervision nor moral support.
Nathalie had been an idiot to believe she could prevent it. She could not prepare for every eventuality, only adjust to them when they presented themselves.
She had no idea what to do.
Gabriel breathed in.
"Don't make me rip you apart," he murmured, looking down at his hands. "Because I will. I will, and I won't stop. So don't."
Nathalie snarled.
She bit the inside of her cheeks bloody.
She collected herself.
"That is more courtesy than you showed your son," she stated. "You do realize that, don't you?"
He stilled. It was not a sudden change. He had been immobile and he did not resume moving at all, not for a minute at least. He looked at his hands in perfect silence, did not blink, barely breathed. His first gesture was to clench his fingers together.
Then he looked up.
"Go," he repeated.
She glared at him and stood firm for a moment, but it was useless. There would be no reaching him. Not yet.
She walked out.
###