Present
Even before Hawkmoth became his secret obsession, Gabriel was a man who valued his privacy. His life was a maze of iron bars and steel locks hiding away his every moment like a precious treasure, only brought out of his vault whenever it was of use to him.
His loved ones, his hobbies, his sins, his family history. The world was a ruthless animal always out on the attack, and knowledge simply gave it more to take away, more avenues for it to hurt you.
To the world at large, Gabriel Agreste didn't come into existence until the day of his and Emilie's wedding. To his closest compatriots, Gabriel was born into this world the day he fell in love with Emilie, from of a womb made of the earth of his mother's grave. He was given his name, his purpose, when Emilie called for him and when Nooroo fell into his hands. To everybody but himself there was nothing that came before that day.
At least, he always thought as much.
Now, floating over him in a twitching, fluctuating state, was the defiance of that comfortable thought. This spectre, this creature he'd foolishly dismissed as his own delusion, knew him. It knew about Hawkmoth. It knew about Colt. It dared to whisper the name he'd buried so long ago in his ear. It knew him, it ripped apart any and all of his defences and uncovered that which he hoped to never see the light of day.
He felt angry. He felt violated. He felt sick.
"Ladybug. Butterfly. Together again."
The phantom's voice was like catching a stray thought, hitting Gabriel in flashes of internal monologue, the emotions behind it passing over him in a cold shudder. Glancing over to the wide-eyed Marinette, he could see her reacting to the message as well.
"Answers. Now." He snarled, slamming his fist down on the nearest surface. "And try to be more direct this time."
Marinette rolled her eyes at Gabriel's dramatics, making a dismissive waving motion. "Don't mind him. You might have already noticed that he's an ass when he's cranky. And he's always cranky."
To Gabriel's abject shock Marinette, against all basic logic, decided to move closer to the unidentified ghostly creature. Placing herself at the phantom's feet, she let her curious gaze wonder over him.
A clearer look at the phantom didn't change Gabriel's impression of it much. It still bore a striking resemblance to a mannequin, a façade of humanity that had every expression of character carved out or smoothed over. It still inhabited the world like a picture imposed upon his vision. Though now he, and Marinette, could see how degraded the form looked.
The Phantom's visage was faded, flickering between solid colour and visual noise with the quality of a faulty television. Holes littered the body, cut through with distorted and faded edges like someone had gone over him with a rubber. Cracks twisted around his arms and chest like veins. Butterfly wings hunt limp from his back, looking crumpled and torn.
"Are you okay?" Marinette asked, reaching out only to find her hand going right through him. "You don't look so good."
"I am imprisoned."
He flickers out.
"This. Projection."
He flickers back in, accompanied by a high-pitched whine.
"Strains on mind. Connection fading."
Gabriel scoffed, "So, a convict trying to call for help and you just so happened to find us at the exact time we both get woken up?"
Suddenly, the phantom was in front of Gabriel. He raised his arms with the stiff creaking of brittle bones snapping, pushing a finger through Gabriel's chest, directly into his heart. "Ladybug awakened. You resurrected."
"I really don't care." Gabriel snapped, hoping his icy glare could cover the fleeting nerves as the spectre drew closer. "You have a bigger role here than you're letting on."
It was undeniable, Gabriel knew this for sure. This phantom knew too much, and his appearance was far too convenient to be coincidental. As far as Gabriel was concerned, this ghost was a threat, probably the master of senti-sentry, until proven otherwise. Though this also meant that, for the time being, this creature was their only source of information on what occurred in their absence.
Within the time it took Gabriel to blink, the phantom flashed back to it's original position, clutching it's arm. "The liar. The Defect. Captured me. Long ago."
Gabriel inclined his head to meet Marinette's gaze, the same thought passing between them. Another victim of Lila and her new partner. It still didn't mean the phantom was an ally. "How long are we talking?"
"Your wish."
Gritting his teeth, Gabriel let his mind wonder. It seemed that everything about this situation began on that dreadful day. What he didn't understand was the timing. The same day Monarch had enthralled the world to attack Ladybug, Lila stumbled upon and captured this spirit? And still made time to venture to his mansion and retrieve the butterfly miraculous.
Unless she managed to kill two birds with one stone and the phantom was already at the Agreste Mansion. It would certainly explain how he was already here to greet Gabriel upon his revival. But then Marinette would have witnessed it, would she not? No matter what insults he'd fling at the girl, he was sure she'd have spotted this purple glowing monstrosity near the site of their battle. No, the only thing Lila took from the mansion was the butter-
Gabriel froze, his eyes darting back over to the figure, suddenly noting to himself how the humanoid shape with almost alien features struck a familiar chord. It bore a striking resemblance to how Tikki and Plagg had looked in their true forms, albeit much smaller and more than a little bit 'off brand', but the familiarity was there.
For a moment, a shameful hope bloomed in his chest. He reached out to the phantom.
"Nooroo, is that you?" He asked weakly. Nooroo knew his past. Nooroo was stolen from the mansion. Nooroo had a connection to him even in loss.
"No." The Phantom answered sharply, "With Chrysalis. She binds many kwamis. Dark magic.
Gabriel pulled his hand away as if it had been burned, staring down at his feet shamefully. Why did he hope Nooroo would be there? Why did he think Nooroo would ever willingly return to him after how horribly he treated him?
"Does…" Marinette didn't quite look at the phantom as she spoke, staring off into the space beside him, the edge of her eyes brimming with tears. She took a sharp inhale and continued. "Does she have Tikki?"
The Phantom, even without a face, almost seemed to look sympathetic as he bent down to look over the girl. "Tikki is not safe." A grumbling noise that almost sounded like a demonic sigh. "But Chrysalis does not have her."
Gabriel heard Marinette breathe a heavy sigh of relief. At the very least whatever Lila intended to throw at them, for the moment, there was no danger of her using the wish against them.
"And the other kwamis?" Marinette continued.
The Phantom shook his head. His colours fading to a sadder shade. "Your heroes fought valiantly. But few remain."
While Marinette cast her regretful gaze downward, Gabriel picked up the pace, crossing his arms as he stared at the phantom. "What is your role is all of this? The average joe doesn't exactly possess the magical know-how to project themselves across space."
There was a pause, and Gabriel knew the phantom was taking a moment to reflect on how much he should tell them. Gabriel had made many such pauses himself over the years. Which meant this man had something to hide from them.
When he finally made his mind up, the Phantom lowered his arms and his form, sinking into the floor until only his torso was visible. "My blood pumps beneath your feet. Their plan. Their experiments. All fuelled by a foundation they stole from me."
Marinette blinked silently, slowly raising her hand to gaze at the fingers she'd used to dig into the putrid mud earlier. "Is he being metaphorical or…" More silence came instead of anything comforting. Her lips fell into a disgusted slump. "Ew."
Gabriel's mind turned to the akumatized skyline and the polluted soil up above. The horde of akumas all came from this phantom? It didn't seem possible. Even after years of experience, the act of creating an akuma had been no small feat internally.
Yes, the crying hearts of Hawkmoth's victims lit the spark for the akuma, guided it to it's target and gave it a vessel to host it. But the creation of the akuma itself was all Hawkmoth. Gabriel grounded himself in his most wretched thoughts, bathed in the tragedies that paved his road to Hawkmoth, and only then could he dare extract enough sinister energy to convert one butterfly.
The recovery process was slow, and that was accounting for how the negative energy would return to him after Ladybug's purification stripped it from his butterflies. While he never admitted such things to Nathalie, even his Scarlet Moth form empowered by Catalyst left scars on his mind; a reason why he never tried such a tactic again.
Even if Miss Rossi had developed a new technique that Hawkmoth never figured out (an idea that Gabriel could barely stomach, let alone consider) to extract akumas from someone other than herself, creating a mass of akumas from one person couldn't be possible. A single person, no matter how vile or violated, couldn't possibly harness enough negative energy to produce enough active akumas to blot out the sky without ever returning.
Gabriel's eyes narrowed. If what this phantom said is true, then we're not dealing with just a human with magical capabilities. His gaze returned to the wings once more. He's connected to the butterfly miraculous somehow, I'm sure of it! But if he's not a different form of Nooroo, what else could he be? A guardian perhaps? Or maybe even a pre-
Suddenly, the phantom's form split apart, various limbs teleporting to random separate points in the room. His voice became a distorted howl that bounced between high pitched squeals and low rough grumbles. "It is growing harder to talk. Harder to think."
"We're losing him…" Gabriel growled. Because, of course, getting some actual information for a change would be too convenient.
Marinette jumped up to the nearest disconnected limb, desperation leaking into her voice. "Stay with us!" She looked around, helplessly searching for something to pop out to her. "We can help you, right?"
"Find me." He crackled, "Then you can-" Once more, he vanished.
"What? We can what?" Marinette cried out into the ether through a throat ran ragged. "Please, tell me, can we stop what's happening to Paris? Can we… Can we fix this?"
However, she was forced to jump back in shock when the phantom suddenly appeared in her face, pressing nose to non-existence nose. "You two. Save world. Destroy world. Your choice. Only together."
This only seemed to only illuminate the tears brimming in her eyes, snapping her head over to Gabriel with an expression of dwindling hope. "Me, and him? You sure you don't mean me and Chat? Or, like… Anybody else?" She hissed that final request like a death row inmate deciding their final meal. Gabriel wanted to be offended, but he couldn't find it in him when she was looking so close to being broken again.
"This has happened before." He pushed his finger through her barren ears. "Ladybug." He materialized in front of Gabriel, raking his hand over Gabriel's empty chest. "Butterfly." He was then in the middle of the room, far, far above them with his arms spread out. "Must unify again."
"How?"
"Find me."
"This is madness, how would we even start?" Gabriel spat out, slapping himself across the forehead. "You could be anywhere in Paris!"
The phantom raised on hand forward, pointing behind Gabriel. "You will find your guide. I see myself under the city of lights."
Marinette jumped up onto the nearest table, as if physically being closer would do anything to change the situation. "Wait, don't lea-"
A hole ripped itself open in the phantom's chest.
"Find me."
The hole spread out, a blackhole sucking in all that it touched.
"Find me."
It consumed the figure, pulling him apart until he was compact enough to fit.
"Find me."
And then he vanished in one last flash of light.
"What are you doing?" Gabriel had the innate talent to make even the most basic question sound like he was talking down to a dog who just tipped over the rubbish bin.
Marinette didn't snap back immediately, pushing past Gabriel, and resisting the urge to scoff, until she reached the other side of the room. Gabriel may have been too caught up in his own head to follow the direction of the phantom's fingers, but Marinette had seen exactly what he'd been pointing out to them.
This end of the room there was a massive computer set up, with three or four consoles flushed with more buttons than any keyboard she'd ever seen and a collection of small screens surrounding one big screen. However, what interested her was the dark box tucked away under the one of the consoles. On it's face a gold strip framing a dial – a lock for a safe.
"He pointed at this safe," She finally explained with an exasperated sigh, still feeling Gabriel condescending gaze hitting her in the back. "Maybe there's a map or something inside."
Gabriel let out a burst of incoherent spluttering. "You're not seriously telling me you trust him?"
She leaned back, tugging the (thankfully) unlocked safe open. "I trust him more than you any day." She stopped to watch him approach, matching his dismissive stare with a toothy, and cheeky, grin. "And unless you have any other leads to follow, the guy who actually seems to know what's going on is our best bet."
He opened his mouth to utter a retort, but nothing came to head, instead just clamping his mouth shut, putting on a fittingly sour look and stomping over beside her. She shook her head, holding back a laugh before she returned to the safe, leaning into it to rifle through stacks of paper.
After a moment of blissful, peaceful silence, Gabriel's sigh cut through the atmosphere. She could feel him lean in over her, exasperation punctuating his voice. "So, what's in there?"
Though he couldn't see her she still rolled her eyes anyway. It took a couple of seconds to clear out the safe, not much was in there apart from a few papers (with a whole bunch of text she couldn't read) and pictures of some feudal Japan-looking artifacts she couldn't wrap her head around. When she finished, all she managed to scoop up, at the very end of the safe was a little badge.
It was small an ornate, one of those shiny emblems you'd see adorning noblemen in some cheap fantasy flick. It was in the shape of an hourglass, outlined in blue and filled in with yellow, with a silhouette of a woman's head, tilted back and screaming, in the centre.
"Not much, just this little badge." She pulled back, holding it up to the light.
When she tilted it at a certain angle, she could just catch the glint of something tucked away in the corner of the badge. Marinette pulled it closer to her eye, the 'something' more of a spec than anything, virtually invisible to the naked eye.
Well, it was virtually invisible. But the moment she got close enough to it, the spec glowed, and it grew. It spread outwards and uncoiled to wrap around the boundary of the badge, tying itself into little knots along the way.
"Hey, wait a sec. I've seen this engraving before." Marinette said suddenly, the sense of familiarity hitting her like a truck with a horrific memory. The same coiling engraving had revealed itself to her the day she died. "It was on Defect's miraculous."
Her and Gabriel's eyes met, worried curiosity leaking from his eyes. "Defect had a miraculous?"
Marinette nodded, holding the maybe miraculous to her chest and straining herself to think back to her failed encounter with the bandaged cowboy. "Yeah, looked like a Griffin themed one or something. Didn't see it in any of the lists in the grimoire." She found herself rested her fingers against her chin, tapping at her mind and telling it to wake up. "I never found out what it could do."
Gabriel peered down at the badge, his eyes alight with intrigue. The sudden interest in a potentially new miraculous made him look like a child learning a new swear word, filled with barely restrained wonder and fear, it'd almost be adorable if it were anyone else. "Could this be a miraculous too then? It certainly does bare a striking resemblance to their camouflaged form."
It was a tempting idea, but resting on her knees and turning the badge over, Marinette shook her head, refusing to believe it. "If it was one, wouldn't we be seeing a kwami right about now?"
"Not necessarily." Gabriel said with a sudden solemn undercurrent. "When… When I first had the butterfly, Nooroo didn't make an appearance initially. Almost like he was trapped in there."
Marinette hummed thoughtfully to herself. "Huh. I've never heard of that happening, every miraculous I've ever touched had the kwami coming out the moment you put it on." She hadn't even thought it was possible to stop a kwami from leaving their miraculous, as long as someone was touching the miraculous, the kwami was free to been seen as far as she knew.
However, on second thought, she reminded herself that all the miraculous she had experience with came from Master Fu and the miracle box. The peacock and, potentially, the butterfly had been damaged long ago during Fu's escape from Feast. She'd never had to deal with a broken miraculous before.
But the butterfly couldn't have been broken, Marinette reasoned as she looked over Gabriel again, the whole reason Nathalie, Emilie and Felix's father had to deal with the effects of the peacock was because they didn't know how to repair a miraculous until it was too late. If Gabriel knew how to repair a miraculous none of this would have happened in the first place, so how would he had repaired the butterfly?
As if seeing all the questions and half-baked answers racing through her head, Gabriel shrugged, answering. "I had theories, but by the time I was educated enough to test them, Nooroo had been freed and I had no need to pursue the subject."
She had plenty of questions from that statement alone, but the thought of asking Gabriel about his past immediately gave her the beginnings of a headache. Gabriel Agreste certainly struck her as the sort of man who would make her day an inconvenient nightmare just to avoid answering anything about his past.
Instead, she returned her eyes to the miraculous, squeezing it tight. "The ghost guy said this is our ticket to finding him, maybe he'll know what's up with it." She raised her fist, tapping her knuckles against her forehead. "I don't know how it's gonna help us though."
Still, it was a start. That very thought breathed a sense of relief. Sure, it wasn't much, but it was enough to lighten the pressure in her stomach, enough to let her fall back on her legs and let herself rest easy for the first time since waking up.
If the phantom was to be believed, this mess was fixable. And she was sure regaining the ladybug miraculous and using its healing properties would be the key. In a way, it made this entire bizarre situation more familiar, just an extended akuma fight. The scale was much bigger, but the formula was still the same; find the main akuma, kick new Hawkmoth's ass and unleash the miraculous cure.
But without Chat by her side. Without Rena, or Carapace, or Tikki, or Plagg, or anyone else. Right now, it was just Ladybug… And Hawkmoth.
She watched him, Gabriel now sitting slumped against a wall. His fingers combing through his hair, making some desperate attempt to smooth the dishevelled mess back into place. Which, now that she thought about it, was the perfect summarization of the man that sat before her. He'd comb through his hair, scratch at the blots on his shirt, adjust his tie god knows how many times, try to maintain that calm facade; but nothing he did would cleanse him of the damage done to his character.
The ache from her head-on collision still weighed on her, reducing the edge of her vision to a dream-like blur. For a moment, she was back at her first day of school, looking up to the Eiffel Tower as a face made of butterflies towered over them all, demanding her miraculous on a silver platter. That day, the war between Ladybug and Hawkmoth had been declared.
It escalated from there. Akumas became more varied, Hawkmoth figured out loopholes to exploit, Master Fu taught her how to brew power ups for her and Chat, new heroes joined the fight. For a time, Marinette would privately admit it was fun. Getting to swing around Paris with her super powered form, battling strange, costumed underlings and engaging in a constant back-and-forth with her almost competitive foe.
A double identity brought all sorts of complications to her life, but the reward was an opportunity to take a break from being Marinette. She could be a hero, she could dare to risk, she could let a whole other side of herself come; she could be more.
But then Hawkmoth enlisted Mayura. Then Chat Blanc became a nightmare turned possible future. Then Hawkmoth defeat Master Fu. Then she became the guardian. Then Hawkmoth became Shadowmoth, then Monarch.
Her new identity, her break from Marinette, became so much darker as more of Marinette leaked into it. Everything started to become so damn personal, she pushed people away, she ran herself ragged, she tore herself apart inside just to make room for her new responsibilities. And she lost. She screwed up and it nearly cost them everything.
Monarch was different. Hawkmoth had obviously always been a villain she set out to defeat, but Monarch? He introduced a shift. She'd often wondered about if Hawkmoth had a similar experience of identity, that Hawkmoth partly acted as a release, an excuse, for the man behind the mask. With Monarch, that man was gone. There was no mask anymore, no fractured identity to get in the way; just a deranged, obsessed, malevolent monster.
Marinette sighed, still in disbelief now that there was no immediate danger to distract her. "So… We're really doing this?"
Now, she looked at what remained of Hawkmoth, what little Monarch let survive, crumbled before her eyes as her only hope. It was no dream anymore. It was real. This was all real, and she had to make peace with that.
Gabriel grunted, "We're not doing much of anything at the moment." He laid his head back against the brickwork, waving his arms about like a drunk. "Our only direction is following the trail of some mysterious phantom who was apparently the whole reason this nightmare was possible in the first place."
Marinette shook her head, pulling her knees up to her chest. "You heard him. A city. A prison. I've seen lights in the distance when I was exploring."
She found him making that squinty-eyed cringing look once more, like she had just said something so bafflingly inept that he was wondering how hard she'd hit her head. Was a little hope and optimism really such a difficult concept to wrap his head around?
Looking down past the frame of her knees, she ran her fingers along the ground, brushing over a cable, gripping it like it was her only lifeline. "There's life out there, people still living lives. We need to find people, get the lay of the land, find other heroes-"
"If there are any heroes left." Gabriel interrupted with a sneer, as if he were contractually obligated to interject some pessimism whenever things almost looked comfortable. "The phantom didn't seem too confident that your underlings were up to snuff."
"Then what do you think we should do?" She snapped, glaring at him. "What's your bright idea?"
He shrugged, "I don't think anything."
She shot up to her feet with a growl, whipping out an aggressive finger like she were ripping a gun from it's holster. "Then why are you still here!? Just to piss me off?"
His condescending sneer remained, lightly pushing her finger aside and shaking his head. "I told you, Miss Rossi cannot be allowed to keep my power." With an extra, mocking bow of his head, he made sure to add "And I don't have anything better to do."
She let her lips push out, far out enough to stretch the limits of a normal human smile, trying her best to channel that condescending, passive aggressive, sickly sweet smirk Lila always wielded to hide her disgust behind. "If you have nothing better to do then you'll have no problem falling in line and following my lead."
However, she couldn't keep it up for long. Despite Lila's abhorrent behaviour, Marinette had to give it to her, she had to have the patience of a saint to so easily tolerate people she despised without breaking character.
Marinette found solace in turning around and stomping back over towards the rails, letting her built up resentment and disgust drip from her heaving lips out of view of that rotten man.
"Like it or not, I need your help. You're my responsibility." She tried to hiss the words, but they just came out stilted, and tired. "We're going out there and we're going to find a way to fix all this. That's my responsibility too."
She paused, giving him all the time in the world to shoot back, to say anything that could reflect a smidgen of a better, or at the very least tolerable, man. But he said nothing. Of course he said nothing, what did she expect? Gabriel didn't care about responsibility; he doesn't care about her. She didn't even believe he cared about Adrien, about anyone but himself.
But desperate woman she was, she still tried to reach out for anything in the dark, empty abyss he called a soul that would speak to something resembling humanity. "If you won't do it out of the goodness of that cold black heart of yours, do it for that son you claim to care about, do it because you owe me for covering up how much of a piece of trash you are to protect Adrien."
Her knuckles turned white from gripping the railing, leaning over to see the raging rapids below and suddenly feeling more comfortable staring down a deadly drop than looking at him. Her voice dropped to a low, broken whisper, barely even sure if he could hear her at this point. "Do it because…"
Marinette squeezed her eyes shut, fighting back frustrated, spiteful tears. "God damn it, you've been given a second chance to be something more than a villain when so many better, good, loving people got so much less."
There was silence, leaving her with her desperate pleas for a good thirty seconds. And then finally, she heard Gabriel sigh. It wasn't remorseful or gleeful, nothing she could get an impression out of.
It was just acceptance born from a man who was just as tired as she was.
Next Time - Fellowship:
Chat let himself sit back and breathe a sigh of relief. As far as he was concerned, that would be the hardest part of the meeting dealt with. "Now that we've gotten that out of the way, I want to talk about…"
Still, not being the hardest part didn't make what he wanted to say any easier. He paused, only able to gulp down any remaining doubt with the encouragement of Luka's supportive nodding. "Well, there's no sense beating around the bush: I want to show you who I am."