Present

"What did you do!?"

She repeated that question again and again, until it formed a sort of sinister rhythm. She asked the question, Gabriel's lips blubbered out the crumbs of a response and then she struck him with the pipe, a metallic clang rippling from the point of impact – and then the flapping of the butterflies above seemed to drown everything out for a second or two.

She asks. He blubbers. Metal clang. Butterfly flaps.

Naturally, at some point, he didn't know when as time was lost to him after the third crack across his skull, she realised that her method was flawed. It was difficult to for a man to respond to a question when his face was swelling over his mouth and a cranial injury was tugging at his head. Marinette may not have had super strength anymore, but even she, pumped up on pure violent rage, had little problem giving the stickly Gabriel a good wallop with a blunt instrument.

Though honestly, it was doing wonders as an outlet, and a distraction, so maybe the question could wait.

She had thought she'd stepped into a nightmare when she awoke to the inside of that claustrophobic crystal prison, suspended in the middle of a void that was both so endless she could mistake herself for falling for eternity, yet also so cramped she could feel her lungs choke and splutter like she was drowning.

The experience had been exhausting, both emotionally and physically, left in the dark, where every nightmare scenario, every unknown fate left after the explosion, had free reign to dominate her thoughts.

It came at her in short-lived clusters, snap shots of Chat's body crumbled under the rubble, Defect ambushing the rest of the now exhausted team looking for her, the building collapsing on God knows who else surrounding it, her parents – Oh god, her parents. How long had she been gone? What did they think happened to her? Could Defect have targeted them after he failed to kill her?

So many questions being shot gunned at her at such a rapid pace, there was no room to answer them, to process them. She was drowning in contradicting, yet equally overwhelming sensations that burned out any other sense.

Until he appeared.

When his figure materialized just beyond the boundaries of her cage, even obscured by blurs and shadow she recognised him, she couldn't explain it, but she just knew. Monarch leered over her, and with that revelation, suddenly everything made sense. The voices, the questions, the images, the sensations were all silenced by one narrow focus, like some latent instinct drawn from the routine of her early years. Nothing else mattered, Monarch needed to go down, and then everything would be right again.

So, yeah, she'd admit it.

Having him on the ground, pummelling him with the first thing she could rip off the wall that looked like it could do some damage, just laying into the bastard who sacrificed four years of her childhood to his obsession, who she had still been stupid enough to trust at the last second, who stabbed her in the back, who she still shielded Adrien from the truth of, who apparently had tricked her yet again and faked his death?

It was god damn therapeutic.

But she's supposed to be better than this, isn't she?

Gritting her teeth, she stops her next blow just above his chin, leaving him to flinch. She doesn't pull back, no need to give him room to pull the same surprise ambush he pulled when she had him dead to rights before, but she stays her hand. "Alright, fine, I'll give you a chance. But I'm warning you…" The butt of the pole taps lightly against his chin, her voice low, fed up and threatening. "What did you do?"

Gabriel had the gall to narrow his eyes at her accusation, regarding her with exasperation. "I've been dead for two years." He says with a blunt edge, lightly directing the pole's tip away from his head with his fore finger. "Just because I was a supervillain doesn't mean I'm automatically responsible for everything that goes wrong in your life."

Marinette's eyes bore into him with an unmoving, incredulous edge. She pulled her weapon away, sticking it into the ground and jutting her thumb upwards. "The sky is being consumed by demonic butterflies."

Gabriel opened his mouth to protest, but nothing came out. He pursed his lips. "…I take your point."

He took the opportunity to slowly sit up, trying to ignore the cold trickle of wet mud sinking through his trousers as he shifted. He caught Marinette's fingers, wrapped around the base of the pole, tensing up, reading herself to strike him down once more. "Do you see the butterfly miraculous on me?" He said quickly.

She glared back at him, "You've left your miraculous behind to hide your tracks before."

"You're being ridiculous," He tried to sound careful, but that irritating pride, that need to correct, trickled in. "If this is any plan of mine, it has most certainly gone awry. A nightmare Paris where I have no weapon, no home and my greatest enemy standing over me is nothing that works in my favour."

"Besides," He added, busying his fingers with fixing his flimsy tie as if that would somehow smooth out the mud-stained rags. "I can't have used the miraculous while you're safeguarding it, could I?"

Her head shot forward, jaw snapping open and shut like an aggressive predator's snout. "I don't have the miraculous! It was taken by-"

Marinette's entire body froze.

Miss Rossi sends her regards.

"Lila. Lila took the butterfly miraculous!"

Gabriel gripped the bridge of his nose, groaning. Not only was he hearing that girl's name so long after he thought he was done with the little, manipulative brat, but somehow, she ended up with his miraculous? "How did you let Miss Rossi acquire Nooroo?"

"Don't you dare try to blame me!" Marinette spat, instinctively raising the bar up to her shoulder, but not swinging. "She was there during our fight, probably picked it up while you were busy, you know, ambushing me?"

That comment managed to break his gaze, drawing his eyes back to the mud. "She happened to break into the mansion the day of our final battle? How convenient for her."

Marinette looked like she had something snide to smack him across the face with, but her eyes flashed with something, and she seemed to think better of it. Instead, she turned away from Gabriel, her heart hating Gabriel, but knowing that this broken, tired old man wasn't exactly in any position to pull anything on her.

Her head tilted back, returning to gaze over the akumatized skyline. "Did she do all this then?"

She looked over him once again, a hard gaze with cracks of fatigue dotting her irises. Marinette Dupain Cheng was not a creature built for full blown spite, and she found that out with how exhausting it was to keep up a relentless front, even towards one as well-deserving of her ire as the man before her.

Besides, wasting her time denying what conclusions her subconscious had already come to wasn't going to get her anywhere. Gabriel wasn't a good enough actor to fake being so feeble, as well as having too much ego to stomach such an act.

She sighed, "So, the last thing you remember was making the wish?"

Hesitantly, he nodded. "The wish, and then the lights taking me. I have no idea how I'm still alive with my afflictions gone."

"It's been a year since then on my side," Marinette reached up to clasp her hair, noting for the first time how ragged it had become.

"And how did Lila manage to do in one year what I failed to do in four?" A certain edge to his voice communicated a petty, bitter jealousy. Defeating Ladybug may not have been his main objective, but he still took being upstaged as a slight against his pride as a combatant.

"Wasn't her. At least, not directly. She had her akuma distract everyone else while her partner lured me into a trap." Her fingers twitch and flinch as she finds tiny clusters of muck and grime combing through her hair. "Called himself Defect, disguised a sentimonster bomb as a hostage."

"Defect?"

"Cowboy outfit, wrapped up like a mummy; using a miraculous I never saw in the grimoire." She watches a sense of familiarity wash over Gabriel's face, an edge of confused nostalgia hanging off his frown. "Do you know him?"

It takes him a good few seconds to answer, the light gone and head sharply shaking. "I don't believe so, no."

"You don't sound sure."

He shrugged, "I'm not exactly sure about anything at the moment."

Marinette frowned. On that, they could agree on.

Silence dominated the next few minutes, the two longstanding foes stranded in a world that made no sense, where the only grounding anchors were one another. Gabriel kept his eyes on the woman who now held his fate in her hands, one who had every reason to snuff him out now, held back only by a good and just nature that could very well be eroding this very second.

Marinette, on the other hand, opted to avert her gaze from him. The world around her was a twisted visage of her home, tainted by an unknown force, but it was easier to look at, to accept than the sight of Gabriel. Gabriel's face brought with it the shameful memories, of how she used to idolize this man, of how she used to defend this man, of how she helped this man.

For all she knew, what happened to the world was a delayed result of the wish her stupidity let him make. Even if it wasn't, even if it was all Lila's doing, it was Marinette's failure to secure the butterfly miraculous during her fight with Gabriel that enabled anything Lila did with it in the first place.

A feeling, buried deep in her soul, perhaps remnants of Tikki's own sixth sense, told her that everything came back to that day.

Tikki… She had to bite down hard on her lower lips to stop herself from crying out the Kwami's name. It only hit her with that thought that Tikki was no longer with her, that her ears were barren. Of course, Tikki wasn't there, obviously Defect or someone else would have taken the earrings from her presumed dead body. She just hadn't thought… God.

She had to believe that Chat Noir got to her first and he snagged the miraculous. Marinette wasn't sure she could bare the idea that Tikki was trapped with Lila.

"Where do we go from here, Ladybug?" Gabriel's cold voice drew her attention back to him. It sickened her to think how 'right' it felt for him to call her by the alias, that it was more natural, more comfortable to be known by a name she could no longer claim, and to think of him solely as Hakwmoth. In some way, it made this whole terrible debacle appear as a game of pretend, of something more palatable.

"I'm not gonna kill you. You know that." She grunted, brandishing the metal bar like a spear as she watched him struggle to his feet. "But don't think I trust you for even a second, Hawky."

"I wouldn't have it any other way, Ladybug." He sneered at the nickname. She considered that a small silver lining. "However, that still isn't a course of action."

She used to admire that relentless, firm 'I know better' tone of voice back when she was a kid. Thought it spoke to her idol's years of experience, to how far he'd come from Paris' gutters to achieve his dream. Now, it was just the petty ego of a man who always needed to be in control, who needed to assure her that, even after the emotional speeches of their last encounter, he needed her to know he was above her.

Was the only shred of decency in this man one that stemmed solely from him being at death's doorstep?

"How about you stay there, and I find something we can use as handcuffs?" She spat at him. "And if I'm lucky, a muzzle too."

Gabriel's eyes narrowed, his lips opening to deliver a snobby retort.

EEEEEEE-OOOOOOO

However, no words could escape before being drowned out by the haunting wail that broke out over the dead streets. It was like the siren on an emergency vehicle, loud, drawn-out cries made to warn of imminent danger. Yet the sound was rough, bounced between that mechanical wail, and a more natural, more animalistic growl overlayed on top. And it was getting louder.

Something was approaching, and it was roaring.

"Back into the mansion. Now!"