Nathalie kept her eyes on Gabriel as the door closed on Adrien.
She was worried about the boy, yes, but she did not want to miss his father's reaction. There was a lot to be learned from it and it would help her decide how to handle Gabriel. She had a long, grueling list of expectations for his future behavior. She had not discussed it so far and would refrain from divulging its points for a time. She wanted to see if Gabriel could figure them out on his own. She hoped he would. He was an intelligent man. There was a process to follow to get his life back on track, and she had no doubt he could plan every step of it through logic and reflexion. What she doubted was not his ability to plan, however. It was his sanity.
If it turned out he was too far gone to figure things out on his own, she would guide him. As things were, she believed his progress would be more meaningful if he moved forward of his own volition.
He stared at the closed door for a moment then sucked his lips in.
"That was very much deserved," he commented, voice barely above a murmur.
"And long overdue," Nathalie added, noncommittal.
He breathed in and sighed. For a handful of seconds, he stared into the distance, then he pulled his facade up. You could see it happen: it washed over him like a wave, his every muscle tensing, his weariness fading away as he straightened his back and squared his shoulders.
When he turned to her, he had regained all of his composure.
She closed her eyes and shook her head. But he needed those walls. He needed them as much as she needed hers. It didn't mean anything.
"What will you tell him when he comes back?" she asked.
That was the important question.
"I believe my actions went well past what words could fix," he replied. "Apologies are in order, of course, but talking to him is not what I should focus on."
Nathalie nodded. Good.
She fetched her tablet and sat down at the dinner table, checking the myriad of emails Gabriel's HR staff had sent her. None of them were pleasant. She filed the ones that pertained to documents to fill in one folder and deleted the threatening ones, unless they mentioned a lawyer.
Gabriel did not take the liberty to sit. He turned to the window and looked outside, but did not advance farther in the apartment to get a better view.
"How are you feeling?" he asked, staring at the clouds. "Have you recovered from the transformation?"
"I'll be fine," she replied. "Though I'd be happy never to have to repeat the experience. I can't fathom how someone would enjoy having such powers. They are rather unpleasant."
That was the understatement of the century. Whenever Nathalie closed her eyes, she expected to see bursts of darkness explode around her.
"I don't think you'll ever have to use them again," her companion commented. "I will question Bella about Alice and, once that's dealt with, I will lock her up until Fu can collect her. I'm sure he will pair her with someone better suited to her brand of magic."
Nathalie froze.
She nearly told him how she had planned to extract the information from the Butterfly Kwami, but now was not the time. She needed him relaxed and malleable, not exhausted and withdrawn.
"It can wait, can't it?" she said, scrolling through her emails.
"Of course. I planned to wait for the dust to settle. Kubdel is still in surgery. I fully expect cops to bang on my door the moment he wakes and starts talking."
"In which case you'll throw lawyers at them," Nathalie muttered, squinting at a particularly nasty message from the head of HR.
Gabriel saw the look on her face and frowned.
"Is something wrong?"
She took a deep breath.
"I might have contacted quite a few people while we were looking for you," she explained. "All the while implying I was still your employee. Vanessa from HR is threatening legal action."
He rolled his eyes.
"I'll get her off your back."
"That would be appreciated."
Gabriel nodded and patted his pockets to find his phone, then retreated to the kitchen to give a single call. It did not last more than three minutes. While Nathalie could not make out the exact words he was using through the closed door, she could tell his tone was glacial.
She shook her head.
"They will not bother you again," he told her when he walked out of the kitchen.
He joined her, sitting not next to her but at the closest end of the table. He bridged his hands and stared at his nails. Then he met her eyes.
"I would like to apologize for the way I ended things," he told her, in the practiced tones of a businessman who had appeased divas and journalists for two decades. "It was callous and insulting. You deserved better."
Nathalie breathed in, turning back to her tablet and purposely launching the minesweeper app. She was not up for that conversation.
"It is over and done, Gabriel. Not to mention hardly relevant at this point."
"I know. I merely wanted to let you know it does not reflect my actual… There was a logic to that reaction, but I swear to god I look back at that moment and cannot figure out why my line of thinking made so much sense."
She slammed her palms on the table.
"I get it . I should have seen Adrien was Chat Noir. I failed to protect him. I get it! Would you drop the topic already?"
He blinked and frowned.
"No," he protested. "No. It wasn't that."
It was Nathalie's turn to look confused. Her companion shook his head.
"Let's be clear. I was a teenage superhero. I managed to hide it from the world for much longer than Adrien. My own parents never realized. I know all the tricks. I can hardly harbor hard feelings towards the people who would fall for them. Now, I did fire you because you had not done your job, but that's not why I pushed you away."
Only Gabriel could consider the two issues as distinct.
She winced.
"Then what? "
"He was behind you. I thought it was yet another symptom that you had no inclination to take care of a child, like the scarf, like every single time you told me you were not suited for it."
So he had been keeping score. Of course. Nathalie lowered her head and pinched the bridge of her nose. Her tongue moved and tripped against the roof of her mouth. She could not get a single word out. She could have screamed. As a matter of fact, her thoughts had turned to an endless shriek.
She had to remove her glasses when a tear dropped on one of her lenses, then to fight not to twist their frame and break it.
Gabriel swallowed.
"I thought I couldn't now allow myself to… Obviously, that reasoning can only be described as insane. By all means, you have been a much better parent to Adrien than I ever was. You still are. I don't know what crossed my mind."
She threw her tablet at his face. He caught it, and they found themselves awkwardly staring at each other, with the device between them. On its screen, bombs were exploding on the minesweeper grid. A moment went by. Gabriel cleared his throat and put the tablet on the table.
"On that note," he murmured, "we need to discuss Adrien."
###
Adrien walked out of Nathalie's building, stormed to the end of the street, then stopped and sat on a bench to check his buzzing phone.
He pulled it out of his pocket, scrolled through the notifications, then frowned. The last time he had seen the device, it was when Kubdel had abandoned it in his vault, before teleporting away. How the phone had appeared in Nathalie's apartment was a mystery. Well, a fairly transparent mystery. Gabriel wouldn't have left evidence of Adrien's identity laying around, and breaking into a vault had to be simple enough for him.
Adrien sighed and pushed the thought away, focusing on the phone instead.
He had slept for a while. Apparently, the entire population of Paris had tried to get in touch with him during that time.
He had never received so many messages in four hours. Well, he had , that time his personal number had been leaked over the internet, but Nathalie had gotten him a new phone plan in less than twenty minutes. Not to mention an endless stream of 'I LUV YOU' and date invitations had been easier on his nerves than what his inbox contained at the moment.
Ten separate classmates had informed him that mister Kubdel was not , as a matter of fact, dead. 'Hes in surgry,' Nino had sent at some point during chemistry class. 'We don't know what happened with the car crash. Sabrina called her dad but he won't say'.
All of the messages had been in that vein, though. No one was going crazy over Hawk Moth's capture. Adrien was surprised the news weren't out yet. Surely the police was planning to release a statement. Maybe they were waiting for mister Kubdel to be out of surgery, to talk to him first. Maybe they wanted proof before revealing the man's identity.
According to Marinette, the cops had footage of the last minutes before her intervention, where mister Kubdel was shown attacking him ('Don't worry, you can't tell it's you', Marinette had insisted in her email). That being said, it did not prove he was Hawk Moth. For that, they would have needed to film the man's transformation. Right now, all the cops had to work with was the word of anonymous children and circumstantial evidence.
Kubdel would go away for a time - attempted murder caught on film would ensure that - but he would likely get away with his crimes as a supervillain.
And then there was the distinct possibility that he would share a cell with Gabriel.
He winced at that thought.
"So where are we going?" Plagg asked.
There was only one answer to that. He scrolled through his contacts to find Marinette's number and called her. There was a fair chance she would be transformed and dealing with the fallback of the morning's events, in which case Chat Noir would be joining her, but he prefered checking first.
She answered near instantly.
"Adrien? Are you okay?" she exclaimed.
She sounded sick with worry.
"I'm f-fine!" he replied with a pang of guilt. "I just… I kind of passed out as soon as I sat down."
"Passed out?"
"Wrong choice of words," Plagg commented.
"I mean I fell asleep!" Adrien explained, frantic. "As soon as I arrived at Nathalie's. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to worry you."
He heard her take a deep breath.
"Alright. I was just wondering why you weren't answering my emails, that's all."
"I wanted to join you, actually. I thought you'd be… I don't know, with the cops, or watching the hospit… I should go check on Anne-Laure. "
"I had Sabrina's father ask how she was, actually, and she is doing fine. The doctors wouldn't believe she had been stabbed."
Adrien sighed, relieved.
"Good. Good. Then I'll visit later." - He was not in the mood for another confrontation. - "Where are you? Did you go back to school?"
"I'm home," she mumbled, sounding more than a little ashamed. "I kind of ran away. Told the cops I was about to untransform and fled. I've been hiding in my room. I told my mom I was not feeling well."
"Can I drop by?"
"Of course you c-"
"I'm on my way!" Adrien said, jumping to his feet to find a good place to transform.
Not fifteen minutes later, he landed on Marinette's balcony. He grimaced, because his leg wound had not vanished during his transformation, and it stung. He also chuckled, remembering all of a sudden how many times he had landed, jumped over or otherwise raced over this very same balcony without ever realizing it was his lady's home. How many times had he seen Marinette leaning over the railing while he was wandering the roofs?
When all of the drama would be over with, he would make sure to surprise her with flowers and chocolates under the moonlight. Or something equally romantic but less cliché.
Something sweet.
He went to knock on her trapdoor. She opened it and gestured for him to come in. He dropped down into her bedroom, on her bed. With his shoes.
That was not a very practical location for a trapdoor.
"I'm glad to see you!" she said, hugging him.
Adrien wrapped his arms around her and squeezed back, though the whole 'crouching on the bed with his shoes on' was definitely playing tricks with both his mind and his injured leg.
He grumbled, not willing to let go, but too uncomfortable to stay like that for long.
"A second," he said, pulling away. "Just a second."
He stretched himself, trying to get his feet out of the bed - to appease his conscience - and to stretch his legs - to appease the stinging of his thigh. He had never quite realized how tall he was before attempting to fit in a normal person's bed (and at a diagonal, at that). He gave up and untransformed so he could make his life easier by removing his shoes.
"Better," he mumbled, placing them on the stairs that led down into Marinette's room.
He turned at her to find her staring at him with wide eyes.
He blinked.
"Oh god," she exclaimed, leaning closer to look at the gauze taped to his throat. "Did you get stitches? What did the doctor say?"
She frowned and tried to look at his leg, but his bandage was covered by his pants and there was no way to get to the wound.
"We just cleaned the cut," he replied. "Plagg said it was healing well."
"You didn't see a doctor?" she exclaimed.
Tikki appear out of nowhere and dashed to them, stopping next to him.
"Plagg said what? " the Kwami asked, irate.
Her brother, who had dropped on a cushion once the transformation had been lifted, hopped closer to them.
"I said it was healing well."
Obviously, that answer did not please Tikki.
"You know nothing about wounds!" she ranted. "You're the prime reason why Gabriel is covered in scars! The boy needed stitches! How did Nathalie agree to this? I thought she was a sensible woman!"
Plagg rolled his eyes.
"It's a flesh wound."
Tikki pulled the gauze away from Adrien's throat, much to the teenager's displeasure. He murmured a 'ouch', because he did not want to attract too much attention on himself when Tikki was angry.
"It will leave a big scar!" she snapped. "With stitches, it would have been barely noticeable!"
"You know what?" Plagg retorted. "If it had been Waspp, she would just have covered it all in vinegar and honey and you would have been all 'Why, thank you, Waspp! Good job, Waspp!'. You are just grumpy because I didn't ask you."
"It would have been a good job two-thousand years ago! Even Waspp admitted the merits of modern surgery."
"It's a fleeeeesh woouuuund," Plagg insisted.
"I-I swear I'm fine," Adrien intervened, only to be ignored.
"It is a deep gash inflicted by a magical weapon! You are just-"
The black cat smirked.
"So are you going to yell at me until the cookie-parents hear you and come check what's going on?"
Tikki slammed her mouth shut and glowered. Her brother rolled onto his back on the bed, smug.
"It's nothing, really," Adrien said, pressing the bandage against in skin in the hope that the tape would stick.
He could live with a scar. He was not worried at all. Marinette, however, was giving him a scowling look of horrified concern. Marinette's face could display a lot of expressions at the same time. He winced.
"And it's not like 'Adrien Agreste, face of the Gabriel brand' could show up at the hospital with the same wounds as Chat Noir without the whole world knowing in five minutes tops, right?"
"See?" Plagg told Tikki. "I was 'exercising caution'."
His sister looked about to explode.
Marinette stared at her hands, dejected. Her shoulders fell. She sighed.
"Right."
"Come on," he said. "It's just a tiny cut. I don't even feel it." - That got him a glare. - "Much," he amended. "Less than getting a full body wax for the summer swimwear collection."
His partner opened her mouth and stared at him, aghast. He grinned and changed the subject.
"Is that a cat pillow I spy, princess?" he joked, lying down on his back and reaching up to poke the nose of the the huge cat pillow that decorated the head of her bed. "You know, I should be vexed. I would have thought you'd have chosen a black one."
"I-I only need one black cat in my life, kitty," she retorted, poking his nose.
She was jittery. It surprised him, because her nervousness around him had mostly vanished lately. Had he done something intimidating?
Plagg yawned.
"Don't worry. I'm here to stay."
The two teenagers froze. They had forgotten the Kwami's presence. Marinette turned to him, stunned. As for Adrien, his eyes went wide. He blinked. Then a snort escaped him, then another, and soon he found himself choking with laughter. It got worse when Marinette turned to him with the same shocked look she had given Plagg. At that point, Adrien lost it and guffawed.
His girlfriend snapped out of her trance and pounced on him, flattening both hands on his mouth.
"My parents will hear!" she whispered.
Adrien tried to calm himself, nodded, but immediately started giggling again. She groaned and exhaled through her nose, rolling her eyes. It was adorable and (unfortunately) hilarious.
It took a few minutes for Adrien to recover. By the time he finally stopped chuckling, Marinette was no longer nervous, just mildly annoyed. She rolled on her back and stared at the ceiling, grumbling.
Adrien studied Marinette's profile, finding himself blushing as he pictured her with the mask on, then off (what an idiot he had been, really). He smiled. He, who had no difficulties wrapping his arms around her as Chat Noir, found himself too nervous to even reach for her.
He watched her expression morph from grumpiness to resignation.
"We are going to have to get out and deal with everything," she declared, looking at the trapdoor. "The police will want to hear from us."
Adrien's own face grew dark. He nodded.
"Did they even announce his arrest?" she muttered, sitting up.
She ran her hand on the shelves above her bed until she found her phone. When she turned it on, it was already playing a live feed of a news channel.
"There wasn't much so far," Adrien told her.
On the screen, a journalist was commenting on an art show somewhere in Reims. It was in no way related to the Miraculous. It wasn't even about Egyptian art.
Marinette sighed and laid down again.
"If they start talking about Hawk Moth, we'll go, alright?"
"Alright," Adrien replied.
He knew procrastinating was wrong, especially in those circumstances, but he was drained. I couldn't summon the energy to drag himself out of the cocoon that was Marinette's bedroom. He wanted peace.
They listened to the reporter praise a modern painter he was interviewing, then learned about a rabbit-themed coffee shop in Dijon, where the customers could meet and pet adoptable bunnies.
"That sounds like the cutest terrible idea ever," Marinette commented.
"It totally does. They're adorable, though," Adrien replied. But he still wrinkled his nose. He was allergic to rabbits too.
Video wouldn't hurt, though, so he squeezed closer to Marinette to get a closer look at her phone screen. She let him, so he blushed and wrapped an arm around her belly. Then they both froze. They had no reason to: Chat Noir had embraced, hugged and carried Ladybug plenty of times. But, as Adrien and Marinette, they could be ditzy around each other. Sometimes. A little.
Their fingers could brush while grabbing a game controller and they would jump away in a panic.
Adrien smiled at that memory and relaxed. He moved closer to Marinette, burying his nose against her shoulder.
As a homeschooled, overly isolated boy of fifteen, he had not gotten much practice at cuddling with one's girlfriend. It looked sweet in the movies. It also looked easy , which had given him highly inaccurate expectations of how the whole thing would go. He had planned on snuggling, on pretending not to sniff Marinette's scent (a mix of lavender, fresh pastry and artificial strawberry scent), and maybe on kissing her shoulder.
A hair stabbed him in the eye. Her pigtail tickled his nose. As if that wasn't bad already, he was laying on one arm he had no idea what to do with.
He endured. His arm quickly fell asleep but he kept enduring. He liked holding her close and, from her drawn, exhausted expression, she needed him to.
Maybe if they stayed there, they could run away from the world forever.
The news were replaced by advertisements, which they stared at. After the advertisements, the TV station started airing a new episode of the Young and the Restless. It was much harder to stare at that, or to give it the slightest kind of focus.
Adrien saw Marinette's thoughts drift towards darkness again. He tried to hold her a little tighter, but it was no use.
"I will have to tell the police what your father did," she told him, still looking at the phone she was holding above their heads. "Would you mind if I did?"
"No," he murmured. It was only partly a lie. They had to do the right thing, or the closest thing to the right thing they could manage. You didn't cover for criminals, no matter what their reasons were. "No. My father made his own choices and if there are consequences, he will have to deal with them."
Plagg and Tikki, who had made themselves scarce for the last twenty minutes, resurfaced. The red Kwami perched herself on Marinette's shelves while Plagg dropped on the corner of the bed. They listened intently.
"But what about you ?" Marinette asked. "What would you do if the police arrests him?"
"I'm sure it will all work out," he commented. "Knowing my father, he prepared for that. Actually, he prepared for the possibility of being killed by Hawk Moth, so I'm pretty sure he had something planned for me."
His partner sighed and sat up. He followed suit.
Plagg jumped from the mattress to Adrien's knees.
" If it happens, I'll be there," he promised. "We'll go to Nathalie's. I like Nathalie."
Adrien gave him a faint smile.
"I noticed that. Thank you, Plagg."
Tikki flew down from the shelves and landed on his shoulder.
"We'll all be there," she said, nuzzling against his cheek. "Whatever happens."
"Thank you, Tikki," Adrien said, cupping his hands around her.
She was trying to hide her worry behind determination, but was a poor liar. As Plagg's chosen, the boy had a lot of practice reading Kwami expressions and could see through Tikki clear as day. He put her down next to her brother, smiling to her. Then Marinette nearly choked him with a surprise bear hug.
A second later, they heard Nadja Chamack's voice.
They pulled away from each other. Marinette grabbed her phone, that she had dropped on the bed. The top of the screen was covered in a 'breaking news' banner. Nadja Chamack was standing in the park, in front of that sculpture of them. There was a podium under it and reporters were packed next to it. Flagpoles had been installed on each side of the statue, one with the french flag and the other with the parisian flag.
"- all curious to know why the mayor called this impromptu press conference," Nadja was saying. "It should start any moment n… And here is mister Bourgeois arriving!" she exclaimed, turning away from the camera.
The cameraman moved away and filmed Chloé's father as he walked from the park's entrance to the podium near the statue. He waved at the crowd. He adjusted the microphone. It took a minute for the conference to start.
Marinette and Adrien held their breaths.
Mister Bourgeois started to talk.
"Citizens of Paris!" he said, with a blinding smile. "Today is a wonderful day for our city and our country! I have great news! " - He marked a pause and stepped to the side to gesture at the statue. - "Thanks to the relentless efforts and exceptional courage of our heroes, I have the utmost pleasure of announcing that Hawk Moth's reign of terror is over!"
As soon as he closed his mouth, questions started pouring in. Every reporter present had something to say and said it very fast and very loudly. Mister Bourgeois waited for them to settle down.
"As I was saying, Hawk Moth was arrested this morning, thank to Ladybug and Chat Noir. It was a difficult battle that left both Hawk Moth and Chat Noir injured, so I'm taking the liberty of announcing the news despite our valiant heroes' absence. They deserve time to rest and to recover from their injuries."
"How considerate of him," Adrien joked.
Once again, the journalists started talking. Mister Bourgeois reminded them that he would answer all of their questions after the conference.
"Now," the mayor continued. "Hawk Moth's identity will be revealed soon, but our priority is to ensure the security of his family, who was unaware of his criminal activities. The police is concerned about retaliation against his wife, children and relatives, though I want to make it clear they were uninvolved. They were questioned and investigated already. Like the rest of the city, they are the innocent victims of one man's madness."
Adrien felt ill. So Alix knew, now. And the rest of the world would know soon. His friend's life was ruined and his conscience kept murmuring 'this is your fault'.
If he had stopped Gabriel, maybe they would have had better options. Maybe they could have convinced mister Kubdel of accepting magical amnesia. But would it have fixed anything? The man was insane. Adrien could still picture the look in his eyes when Alim had been about to murder him. The man had no regard for human life. Memory loss wouldn't have taught him to care.
Lost in thought, Adrien missed a reporter's question. Mister Bourgeois answered that one, of course.
"- narrow escape," the mayor was saying. "Hawk Moth was determined and would have stopped at nothing. Actually, when he realized that his identity had been discovered, he went as far as faking his death to avoid being captured. He was undoubtedly planning to continue attacking the city while on the run but, thankfully, he was caught in a matter of days."
"WHAT?" Marinette and Adrien exclaimed.
The young girl spluttered. She had paled.
"That's not… I never said… I…."
"Why would he…" Adrien murmured.
"I told them I would explain everything later! All they knew was that he had been caught and that you were injured. I never said he had faked his death!"
Plagg landed next to the phone.
"He's controlling the narrative," he said. "You didn't get the story out, so he invented one that he could use."
" He has nothing to do with this! " Adrien snapped.
Then he shut up because that screaming was going to attract the attention of Marinette's parents.
"My father probably bribed him," he murmured, clenching his jaw.
He had not been happy to think of Gabriel being arrested, but thinking about him getting away with what he had done was worse. He grabbed his phone and called his father, glaring at the picture of André Bourgeois, who was still talking.
"Adrien?" Gabriel answered, sounding surprised.
"What have you done ?" his son asked, ignoring Plagg when he hesitantly called his name. "How much did you pay him?"
"I… " - His father's voice grew distant. - "I'm sorry," he told someone else. "There seems to be some kind of problem. What are you talking about, Adrien?"
Plagg nudged the teenager's knee, but his chosen was fully focused on his conversation.
"I'm talking about the mayor's press conference! So what did you promise him? Money? Something else?"
"Wh… Listen, I'm at… in the middle of a meeting," Gabriel replied. You could hear footsteps and a door closing in the background. "I had no idea there was a press conference."
"How convenient he's saying exactly what he should to get you off the hook for that kidnapping thing, then!"
There was a silence. Plagg swatted Adrien's knee.
"Boy!"
The blond looked down. His Kwami had grown irritated and was scowling at him.
Gabriel resumed talking.
"I have gotten out of my way to avoid André Bourgeois for the last fifteen years," he stated. "I haven't bribed him, I haven't threatened him, as a matter of fact I haven't talked to him in nearly six months. He's much more likely to be covering for himself."
"He has nothing to cover!" the boy retorted.
Tikki patted his knee to get his attention.
"He has someone ," she softly pointed out.
###