The email arrived a little after midnight. Adrien was trying to go to sleep, on Nathalie's orders, when his phone buzzed.
"Must be Ladybug again," he murmured when Plagg landed next to the phone. "Let me see…"
His Kwami threw him the phone, which Adrien turned on without expecting anything more than a 'good night' from Marinette.
She was so concerned for him.
She had spent the previous evening messaging him, enquiring about everything from his state of mind to the kind of pizza he had ordered. Her messages had been littered with gibberish and apologies about how the strange keyboard on her new phone was really difficult to get a hang of. They had texted late into the night, then she had excused herself to go to sleep, but he knew she had gone out to patrol after that. Someone had posted pictures on the Ladyblog.
the
Ladybug had showed up with three boxes of pastries and a tupperware full of cheese in the morning, right before Miss Colibri's attack. Nathalie had stared at the boxes, then at Ladybug, then at the boxes again, without commenting on how the logo on them happened to be the same as the one on the Dupain-Cheng's bakery.
Adrien was fairly sure she had figured Ladybug's identity out.
Of course, they had been forced to abandon the pastries to run after Miss Colibri, so Adrien had eaten them for lunch instead. As for the battle itself, it had been longer than warranted, but they had not spotted his father anywhere.
Queen Bee had promised to keep looking, so Marinette had gone back to school. Not that she had focused the slightest bit on her studies: she had texted Adrien all afternoon. It was not a format that allowed for deep conversation, but the constant stream of messages had been comforting.
As for his own afternoon, Adrien had spent it with Nathalie, waiting for phone calls that had never come. He had listened to her conversations with employees from his father's company, with private detectives she had tasked with finding offices and warehouses registered to a 'Pat Messmer', an 'Otto Sullivan', or a 'Felix something'. She had showed him the photographs and news clippings about the previous Firebird that Gabriel had collected in Syracuse.
It had been strange to see another hero in and out of costume. Adrien, who needed to keep himself busy, had spent hours comparing the pictures of her civilian self with those of her in costume. As a mother of two, she had posed for the Syracuse Herald with her sons, to illustrate an article about a charity event she had organised. As Firebird, she had appeared in a handful official photographs. You would never have guessed the two women were one and the same if she had not worn her Miraculous as a brooch.
At the end of the day, he had put all of that aside to patrol with Ladybug. They had found a few cats to rescue, a mugging to stop, a little girl with a lost doll to locate.
They had not talked much but what little they had said had meant a lot.
"I know I nag you a lot about the puns and the flirting, but… it's all banter. I'd never ask you to change," she had told him. "I'm sorry I let you think I would."
"I. You. You didn't," he had murmured back. "It's just… It's me, I'm… I know you wouldn't."
He had not known how to put his fears into words. When he tried to, in his mind, it all sounded so silly.
"I get it," she had replied. "I get it. "
And she had leaned against him, which had meant the world to him.
"Say," she had blurted out after five minutes of companionable silence.
"Mmh?"
"Would you have breakfast with a Marinette Dupain-Cheng tomorrow? I hear she's a bit of a klutz and a notorious phone thief, but she's cute."
"Is she now?"
"Yup."
"As cute as you?"
"So I've been told."
"I would be honored."
"Eight on the roof of the school?"
"Eight on Marinette Dupain-Cheng's balcony?"
"I believe we have a deal."
He had left feeling much lighter.
Considering how his day had gone, however, he did not expect messages from anyone but her. The notification he found when he turned his phone on was for a new email from his father.
Of course, the subject did not tell him much. 'About the current situation'. That was it. Gabriel firmly believed you could never be too business-like.
His son opened the mail. He did not read it immediately. He was breathing too fast. His throat was too clenched. He couldn't make sense of the letters on the screen. It took him a few moments to calm down enough to focus.
'I am not angry at you, ' the message said. 'I am angry at myself.
I apologize for the way I reacted to discovering you were Plagg's new chosen. It was out of line. It won't happen again.
I will be coming home as soon as I can trust myself to talk to you.
You once told me I was a coward who ran away from the conversations he could not handle. I absolutely am. When I am not in perfect control of myself, what I say scarcely ever conveys what I actually feel. I'd rather not risk causing more damage than I already did. Please bear with me and give me a little time.
I am sorry.
I will be back soon.
I love you."
He gaped at his screen, not knowing what to think but feeling strangely numb. His heart was still thumping from seeing the notification but the email itself left him blank. If he searched deep within himself, he could find some tiredness, but that was it. No dejection. No relief at knowing his father was alive. No guilt. No joy. No anger. Nothing. Maybe love was a finite resource. Maybe it did run out.
He turned to Plagg, who was hovering next to him and reading the email.
"What do you think?" his chosen asked. Then he remembered there was no point asking. "Oh."
"Wait," the Kwami replied.
He dashed across the room and dove through Nathalie's bedroom door. A minute later, she walked out, with the black cat on her shoulder. She looked mildly perplexed, so Adrien explained what was going on.
"Father sent me an email," he told her, holding his phone out.
Nathalie joined him and took the phone. She sat on the edge of the sofa as she read.
"He's apologizing," the teenager explained, though she could see that for herself. "I… don't know what to think."
She did not answer. She was frowning at the screen. Her scowl only deepened as she scrolled down the message. By the end of it, she looked enraged. She turned the phone off and quietly put it down on the coffee table. She took a deep breath.
"I will have a talk with your father," she announced, making sure to keep her voice even. "About all of this."
"But he apologized," Adrien pointed out. "Isn't that a good thing?"
It did not feel like a good thing, but he could not pinpoint why.
Nathalie clicked her tongue.
"The day your father apologizes to you, not only will he do it to your face, but you will know exactly what to think about it. This is not an apology, this is him making excuses for himself. Again."
The words seeped through the cracks in Adrien's heart and hit home.
They rang true.
He still had doubts.
"What if he is sincere?" he asked.
"Someone can be sincere and still be in the wrong!" Nathalie snapped back. She sucked her lips in and forced herself to calm down. When she spoke again, her tone was soothing. "He hurt you, Adrien. More than words can repair. He is still hurting you right now. There is a point where you have to start judging him not on what he says but on what he does. "
Adrien breathed in.
Maybe he was done taking blows and turning the other cheek. He had put his father first for long enough. He was not innocent himself - not revealing he was Chat Noir had been wrong - but he had tried so hard to be good, and for so long. It wasn't so much to ask to get the same level of effort in return.
"Maybe," he said. Then he corrected himself. "No. You are right."
Nathalie let out the softest satisfied sigh, then wrapped an arm around his shoulders and pulled him against her. She pressed her cheek against his hair and ran her hand through it.
"Thank you," Plagg told her, with a politeness and respect he scarcely ever displayed.
So, even if he could not talk, he could make his voice heard.
It seemed like everyone in the room agreed on at least one point.
"Would you mind if I stayed a few days more?" Adrien murmured after a few minutes of silence. Nathalie's hand had not left his hair. She had not pushed him away. "If that's not a bother, that is. I… I don't really feel like going home."
She brushed a strand of his hair back.
"Of course I wouldn't mind."
###
Ladybug did not find the nerve to knock on miss Sancoeur's living room window. She knew Adrien was sleeping there. She did not know what to tell him, how to tell him, so she circled the building and tried to find Nathalie's bedroom instead. It proved easy. The lights were on.
She lowered herself to the windowsill and peeked inside, ready to avert her eyes if she arrived at an inopportune moment. As it turned out, she had, thought not of the kind she expected.
You wouldn't have believed Nathalie Sancoeur could have feelings, not at first sight. She was good with masks. You saw as little of her heart as you saw of her skin. A dab of foundation, a blur of powder, a brush of eyeshadow, the hint of a blush. Mascara, lipstick. All of it added up until she vanished.
She was careful, oh so careful about her facade. You could catch her angry, you could catch her stunned, but for the most part she was as unreadable as a mask of stone.
Here, she was sitting on the edge of her bed, hunched up, with her face in her hands.
Marinette did avert her eyes. She turned her back to the window then gave a little knock. A moment later, it opened.
"Ladybug?" Nathalie murmured. "Did something happen?"
The teenager wrapped herself in her superhero persona, gathering every shred of her confidence.
"I'm afraid so, miss Sancoeur. Can I come in?"
The woman moved out of the way. She concealed her trembling well, but Marinette still noticed the way she clasped her hands behind her back. The girl jumped into the room.
"Should we wake Adrien?" Nathalie asked after closing the window.
I don't know how to tell him, Marinette thought once again. She did not answer.
Miss Sancoeur studied her face.
"Or maybe you would find it easier to give me the news so I can relay them," she said. "That's an option."
Ladybug straightened up, startled. She was not a coward, was she? Not anymore. She had to go to her partner and tell him. She had to find the words. But the more she racked her brains, the more impossible the task seemed.
"I-I will," she assured. "I should."
"I can easily imagine what kind of news bring you to my... doorstep at one in the morning. Once again, I can be the messenger. While I understand that you do not want Adrien to hear the news from a stranger, you are in no way required to shoulder the weight of the world."
"I am his partner. I am his girlfriend. I am his friend . I can't just… I just have to… There has to be a way to tell him that won't… If I f-find the right words…"
The shock and fear she had felt since she had left Alix's building were twisting inside her and turning into rage and loathing. She wished Gabriel Agreste could be there so she could… So she could…
Nathalie put a hand on her shoulder.
"There is no way to deliver those news to Adrien without breaking his heart. And if you tell him, you will break yours in the process. Give me the details. Let me."
Marinette shook her head. It sounded like a good choice. It sounded like the wrong choice. She felt lost.
Miss Sancoeur waited. She sighed.
"I'd say we could delay, but I'm going to assume he is likely to discover something the next time he checks the news."
Ladybug bit her lower lip and nodded.
"I think so. I… Yes, I'm pretty sure he will hear about it from at least facebook."
Silence fell, if only for an instant.
Nathalie reached for Ladybug's bangs but took her hand away before touching her hair. Once again, she clasped her hands behind her back.
"Then there is not much of a choice," she commented, looking at a corner of the room.
"I'll do it," Marinette insisted once again.
"Here's how we will proceed. I will go wake him, and prepare him the best I can, and then we will tell him together. Is that alright with you?"
Ladybug could have sworn on everything she owned that she did not cry easily. She was not about to cry now.
"That sounds good," she replied.
Nathalie did not comment. Once again, she raised her hand, only to hesitate mid-air. She gave Marinette's shoulder a light squeeze. Then she erased all outwards signs of concerned and returned to her collected facade.
"Who died?" she asked.
###
"It's still just a suspicion," Ladybug said. "But the watch… You have seen Alix's watch, Adrien. When you open it, a hologram pops out. Tikki says it is a magical tracker too. It can't be a coincidence."
Adrien nodded, his composure perfect.
"How?" he asked. "What did the cops say?"
"They say mister Kubdel was on his way to a business appointment. It looks like he was speeding a little and missed a turn. His car left the road and crashed into a field, out of sight. It caught fire, but… the cops say everything indicates he was killed on impact."
He closed his eyes and let the news wash over him. He felt Marinette's fingers slip between his. Nathalie squeezed his other hand.
"I see," he said.
Amid the numbness and exhaustion, anger started bubbling.
###
Chat Noir sat on the edge of the roof and stared at the street underneath. At such a late hour, it was empty, with the odd car driving by every fifteen minutes or so.
The young hero distracted himself with the glint of reflected light on the tip of his boots, that came and went as he rocked back and forth. Moonlight, darkness, moonlight, darkness, moonlight. He was trying not to think, since the train of thought pertaining to the current situation had very few stops, all of them unavoidable and blatant. As you traveled quickly between 'a friend's father is dead because of mine' to 'I guess I'm calling the cops', it made for a painfully depressing loop of reasoning.
He had asked Ladybug to go home, even if she did not want to, because he needed to breathe a little. He had transformed because even Plagg's presence was too much right now. He wanted a little emptiness. His thoughts took too much room already. He did not need more voices.
Despite that, he caught himself listening to Nathalie and Anne-Laure Lenoir's conversation, which he could hear even from the roof. They had left a window open and did not realize how acute his hearing was with the costume on.
In his defense, he was not really eavesdropping. Their words blurred into background noise about 'cigarettes inside' and the proper way to prepare coffee. Every now and then, a sentence caught his attention.
"So," Nathalie said. "What do the words 'cursed weapon' entail, exactly?"
"Akuma victim dies, Akuma gets trapped in the fetish." - That was pretty much horrifying. Adrien shivered. Anne-Laure didn't sound bothered by the concept, however. She went on. - "Keeps all of the original powers of the enemy it came with."
Silence.
"This one was Candy Warper's," the retired Queen Bee continued. "Teleportation, but you knew that, and remote-controlling candy."
"And how did you get your hands on it?"
Silence. Crunching noise. A fridge door opening.
"Well, see, normally we hand that shit over to the oldest Miraculous holder. He hides them somewhere, keeps them safe, then whenever all of the Kwami are reunited, they exorcise the weapons. Not that it's going to happen soon with three Miraculous out of seven out of our hands. I borrowed the candy cane when Alice went missing. I needed a fast way to travel through the rainforest."
Adrien already knew she had looked for his mother but hearing those words still gave him a little pang of pleased surprise.
This time, the silence lasted. The boy only heard cups clinking, footsteps - Nathalie's heels only - and chairs shuffling against the floor.
"Are you still looking?" Nathalie ended up asking.
Miss Lenoir's tone got as casual as if she had been discussing slightly inconvenient weather.
"I go back every six months, I guess? Not that there is a point. Pacaás Novos is huge and it's just trees everyfuckingwhere. I landed in Bolivia once, didn't even notice."
"That's dedication," the other woman commented.
Anne-Laure's voice changed, there. It grew darker, colder.
"Alice was like a sister to me. I would have done anything for her."
"I… see," Nathalie answered.
The conversation died down after that, so Adrien returned to inspecting his shoes. He tilted his feet up, then left, then down, just to stare at the reflections on the silvery tip of the boots. At some point, he told himself, he would have to go back inside and pretend to sleep. He was surprised Nathalie had not come after him already.
It could wait.
He listened to the sounds of the city: car noises and, farther away, a train's horn. Faint music. Sirens. If he stayed a little more, birds would probably join in. How long had he been up?
He stretched and shifted back, pulling his feet back on the roof. Miss Lenoir's next words froze him in motion.
"You're pretty serene about the whole thing," she told Nathalie.
That got Adrien's full attention. He wished the silence would tell him more. He wished he could peek through the window and see Nathalie's reaction for himself. She tended to speak in looks rather than in words, and he wanted to know what she was thinking.
She had not told him what she was thinking. Oh, she had shown hints of anger and worry. She had been the voice of reason, promising that his father would never find Hawk Moth, that he would come back crawling. She had organized. She had planned. She had supervised, she had tempered, she had soothed. But she had never shared her feelings on the situation. Not in so many words.
Her answer to Queen Bee's comment was just as evasive.
"So are you," she noted.
There was a slurping noise.
"No use freaking out," miss Lenoir explained. "I know Gabriel is an efficient bastard. That's why I wanted to take the watch. I pretty much expected this."
Nathalie snorted. Anne-Laure went on.
"But you never saw how scary he was as Chat Noir. You couldn't be prepared for this. So I'm a little surprised."
A minute went by. Adrien leaned down, waiting for the answer, wondering .
"I know Gabriel," Nathalie stated.
The teenager sighed.
###
"Did you slip him a sleeping pill?" Plagg asked Nathalie.
They were watching Adrien, who had collapsed on the sofa and was drooling over his own shoulder. He had laid down after breakfast to check his friends' facebook feeds on his phone and finally drowsed off.
"I didn't," Nathalie replied. "Administering chemicals to children without their consent is frowned upon."
"I was about to say it would have been a good thing to do."
"I gave him valerian tea," she replied.
The Kwami's ears perked up.
"So that's what smelled so good!"
She snorted. It only now occurred to her that she had given valerian to a 'cat'.
"What about you?" the tiny deity continued, landing next to her laptop's screen. "Are you ever going to go to bed, or do you plan to play minesweeper all day?"
Nathalie breathed in, eyes still on Adrien. She was long overdue for a few hours of sleep. Exhaustion had caught up with her. She didn't want to leave the boy, however. She had deluded herself into thinking he would sleep better with someone else in the room. His familiar could have filled that role, of course, but still…
Sleep could wait, anyway. She was not just playing minesweeper. She had opened the game on top of the phone-tracking service that would allow her to locate Gabriel's phone if he ever turned it on. That was the ace in her sleeve, the one card she had withheld from the children and Anne-Laure Lenoir. Most of her credentials had been suspended, that was true. That being said, HR had no clue of how many of her former employer's accounts Nathalie knew the passwords for.
She had kept the children in the dark so she would get a chance to confront Gabriel alone. Of course, she had slept through the one moment he had used his damn phone, when he had sent Adrien that disaster of an 'apology'. She was not about to miss her next chance to find him.
She had plans.
She knew him.
Plagg tilted his head to the side, looking at her screen.
"You know, I don't often say that of humans, but you are kind of smart."
She gave him a pointed look.
He yawned and stretched, then flew back to Adrien and curled up on the side of the sofa.
"Anyway, I could use some sleep. Wake me up for lunch."
She rolled her eyes and decided to ignore the creature's silly posturing. Why was she surrounded by prideful imbeciles?
She clicked a few boxes on her minesweeper game. She hit a mine. She started over.
One hour went by, then an eternity.
Adrien slept through lunch ('lunch' being a charitable description of the bread-and-strawberry-jam sandwiches Nathalie had prepared). Ladybug dropped by twice but stopped at the window, leaving with a wave of the hand and mouthing that she would come back.
The hours stretched and multiplied.
Adrien woke and stalked his friend's grieving family over the internet. Nathalie took his phone away and handed him a novel instead. That did not go over well. They settled on turning the television on. The boy paced and sat and stood and sulked on every piece of furniture in sight.
At three, after a phone call from Stéphanie, she had to tell the boy his father had showed up at work, spent twenty minutes inspecting the workshop, then vanished again.
It was hardly surprising. Some people drank their issues away. Others used pills. Others clung to normalcy and order and achievements. Of course he had gone to work. He did not know how to function otherwise. What was surprising - and arguably concerning - was that he had only stayed twenty minutes.
"Was he in a good mood?" Nathalie had asked Stéphanie, because it was the subtlest way she had found to say 'what state was he in?'. 'Is he falling apart at the seams?'. 'Did he look broken to you?'.
"Same old, same old."
Same old, same old.
Anne-Laure Lenoir showed up at seven and did not leave. In other circumstances, Nathalie would have thrown her out, her and her histrionics and her bloody cigarettes, but the blonde cheered Adrien up, so she got to stay.
Nathalie pretended to go to bed and spent six more hours staring at her laptop's screen, until the long-awaited dot that marked Gabriel's phone position finally appeared on the map of Paris.
She zoomed in. She memorized the address. A minute later, she walked out of her room with her best grimace of pain, mumbling about screen glares and painkillers.
"I'm going to go and try to find an open pharmacy," she mumbled when Adrien and Anne-Laure turned to her. "I have the worst migraine."
"I might have something," Lenoir exclaimed, reaching for her bag and nearly destroying her hostess' carefully crafted excuse.
"That's kind of you," Nathalie sighed, trying to refrain from killing her, "but unless you have inderal, I'm afraid it won't do the trick."
"Eh, uh, paracetamol?" the blonde offered, waving a battered box of pills.
"Not strong enough. It's fine. I'll be right back."
"Do you want me to come with you?" Adrien asked, jumping to his feet. "Or I could go! You know. With Plagg."
Nathalie cringed and raised her hands to her ears as if hearing his voice had caused her actual pain.
" Adrien ," she snapped. "I'm perfectly able to walk to a pharmacy on my own. The fresh air will help. So will silence. " - That got him to shrink away and nod, so she softened. - "Thank's for offering. I'll be right back," she promised.
Forty minutes later, she was standing in front of a derelict building on the edge of town. Once upon a time, it had been a shoe factory. The original signs had been covered with a layer of flaking white paint adorned with a 'Garfield Packaging' in dark blue letters.
How had she not thought of Garfield?
How had she not thought of Azrael and Salem and Cheshire, while she was at it? She could have dropped those names to the PIs she had contacted.
'Garfield'.
Gabriel, love, you have the subtlety of a jackhammer.
The obvious giveaway having convinced her she had found the right building, she circled the place and located a beaten up Citroën parked out of sight, right behind it. The block was deserted. High fences lined the closest buildings. There was not a light on that Nathalie could see, save for the street lights whose orange glow did not reach the back of the 'packaging factory'. Nathalie had to satisfy herself with a greyish moonlight that wrapped everything in dark shadows.
She stood a few steps away from the car and waited, only looking away from the building's back door to peek at her watch. She paced a little as the minutes went by but stilled after the first hour. A little after three - finally - the factory's door opened.
Gabriel did not notice her when he walked out, nor did he notice her a minute later, when he leaned against the door and ran his hands over his face. She watched him take deep breath after deep breath and stare at the sky. He composed himself, pushed himself away from the door then turned to his car. And then he saw her.
He blinked once, twice. His mouth formed a silent 'how?', then Nathalie spotted the hint of a grimace that was immediately swallowed by exhaustion. She let him join her, without a comment, without a frown, without as much as a sigh.
He wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her neck.
She reached up, pressing one hand against his back and running the other through his hair.
"Are you satisfied?" she asked, trying to keep the sharpness out of her voice, along with every other emotion. "Have you gone dark enough?"
Gabriel took a shaky breath. His embrace tightened.
She closed her eyes, scratching the back of his head with the tips of her fingers. His short hair slipped back into place with the slightest rasping noise. It was soothing.
"This is it," she stated. "This is the point where you fix your life, Gabriel. This is the point where you drag yourself out of the abyss you have created for yourself, or I swear to god I will walk away and I will take your son with me. I will. I will get social services involved, I will get the cops involved, I will get him emancipated, I will do everything in my power to make sure he is protected from you. Are we clear?"
Once again, she got no answer. With his cheek pressed against her skin, however, she could feel the chattering of his teeth. She kept her fingers moving, drawing eights and circles through his hair with a fingernail until he calmed down.
She gathered her strength for the next question.
She knew the answer.
She knew Gabriel.
Still, it was hard not to doubt.
"Now," she snapped, ever so slightly pulling away. "Where are you keeping Kubdel?"
Gabriel jumped back, wide-eyed, stunned into silence. He gaped in the most ridiculous fashion. It took him a few seconds to recover, after what he snapped his mouth shut and looked away.
"In the basement," he replied, his voice cracking from disuse.
###