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"Sir?"
Gabriel Agreste was blinded by a bright light that suddenly shone in his face. Where was he? Why was he handcuffed? His eyes adjusted to the light and he saw a police badge on the man and woman in front of him. Right. He was being interrogated that day. But what for?
"Sir," the man tried again, "we need you to answer some questions about the murders we think you have committed."
Ah. The murders. Where to even start? He chuckled, not even sure what was so hilarious, but something was. Oh, there was so much to say, so much that led to this point. Maybe he'd give the shortened version, just so he could get away from that blinding light in his eyes.
The woman spoke to ask the first question, but he didn't hear her. So she tried again, "Can you tell us what motivated you to kill these innocent people? It doesn't seem like you had much of a motive, since none of the people you killed seem to be related to your family or company in anyway."
They wanted the whole story. From the very beginning. He nodded, "Alright, I'll tell you. But," he lowered his voice, glancing around before continuing, "you can't tell anybody." He shook his head slowly, "It's a secret."
The man and woman shared a glance and a look Gabriel couldn't decifer. "Alright," the man said, "that's a deal."
Gabriel nodded, then started to recall how it all started, "Do you know what the worst feeling is? Seeing your worst nightmare become true, right before your eyes..."
Emilie was dead. She'd been sick, but had worked too hard. He'd tried to tell her to slow down, to relax a bit, to let him or Nathalie take over parts of her work, but she never listened.
"I'm not that sick," she'd said. "You and Nathalie already have a lot to do, I can't make you take my work."
"I'll have someone else take care of it, then, just please, relax," he'd pleaded. But she never listened.
Then she'd gotten into an accident, and into a deep coma. Slowly, one by one, her organs failed her, her condition became less and less stable, and they had to let her go. She was stubborn, so he thought he'd hold onto life a little longer. That was something he'd loved about her, her stubbornness, but with her gone because of that, he wished he'd been more stubborn then her.
Adrien was stubborn too. Since his mother passed he'd been more and more adamant about going to school. Maybe it was because of how withdrawn Gabriel had become.
With Emilie gone there was more work, more press to deal with, and he needed time to grieve. Therapy hadn't worked, so maybe not thinking about it because he was so immersed in work would. And he couldn't face Adrien with how much similarity there was between him and his mother. He just couldn't do it.
But even so, Gabriel did everything in his power to make sure nothing would hurt Adrien. He wouldn't be able to deal with losing his son, too. So he made sure he remained homeschooled, made sure that he had activities to keep him occupied like modeling, fencing, Chinese, piano, basketball, and more. If Adrien was busy, there was no way he'd be lonely. Besides, he had friends like Miss Bourgeois and Miss Tsurugi from fencing.
Why Adrien wanted to go to school so badly Gabriel never understood. He was safe at home, and he had friends. What more could the boy want?
So perhaps it was all his fault that he hadn't noticed right away that Adrien was gone that morning. It wasn't until Nathalie called Adrien to breakfast that they noticed he was gone. Frantic, he'd left his office askew and ordered his driver to prepare the car. They all knew where he'd be. School.
There was horrible morning traffic, but they'd made it to the school near their house before Adrien could get inside it. But they had already been too late. There was nothing Gabriel could do as he watched his son run to help a random girl who was picking up macarons from the floor. A car was heading toward the clueless, careless girl and Adrien was running toward her to get her out of the way.
Gabriel ran out of the car and sprinted toward Adrien, calling out to the boy to stop. He didn't hear him, or maybe he was ignoring him. Gabriel stopped running when the car hit Adrien and the stupid girl in pigtails. He'd dropped to his knees, frozen as horror, anger, pain, and regret had consumed him.
He thought he heard Nathalie calling an ambulance. He'd been sure he saw people gather around, then the press had arrived and he'd been taken into the car by his bodyguard. He'd seen two people, holding each other as they stood outside the bakery, a man and a woman. The tiny woman looked at though she was sobbing into the giant man's chest. Maybe the stupid girl in the pigtails had been their daughter.
He hadn't cared.
"Maybe that's when I began to spiral," Gabriel said with a harsh and bitter laugh. "But if the girl in the pigtails hadn't been so stupid, my son would still be with us. That's not so crazy, really."
The man kept scribbling on his clipboard, his eyes never looking up from it. The woman took a deep breath before asking, "Is that all?"
Gabriel laughed again. "'Is that all?'" he repeated, "Oh, how I wish that was all."
Adrien had ended up in a deep coma, just like his mother had. His stubborn, hard-headed attitude led him to him death, all because he couldn't accept that his father was protecting him. All because he didn't want to accept help. Just like his mother.
Everytime he visited the hospital, he saw the couple that had stood outside the bakery there. Everytime it was the same; the tiny woman would be crying into the giant man's chest, while he held her and cried quietly. Gabriel never payed them much attention. It had been their daughter that caused Adrien to die in the end.
Her and Adrien's stubbornness.
Everytime he visited the hospital, there was never good news. The doctor would act as thought stable condition was great news, but it wasn't progress. And Gabriel had wanted progress. So, he always left quickly.
The first day he got news that wasn't the same old stable condition news, he'd blanched. There was progress, as he'd wanted, but it was progress in the wrong direction. Instead of progress toward waking up, Adrien was making progress toward death.
Gabriel didn't remember much about that night. All he knew was that when he'd woken up the next morning in his office chair, his office was more of a mess than normal, and things had been broken. He didn't think much of it and had a maid clean up the mess, instructing her to simply tidy up, but not throw any papers away.
From that day on, the news got worse, and worse. Until the day he was told Adrien would need to be cut off life support. He knew he'd caused a scene, he knew that he'd ended up on the news for strangling the doctor, but he hadn't really remembered it.
That day he vaguely remembered that the man and the woman who were always crying whenever he got there, weren't crying. That day they'd looked as though they'd received good news. Gabriel hadn't liked that.
How was it fair that their stupid, pigtailed daughter would get better, but his perfect son would not? If it wasn't for his son, their daughter wouldn't have been getting better. If it wasn't for their daughter, his son wouldn't have been dying.
It wasn't fair.
By this time, the man was scribbling furiously on his clipboard. It made Gabriel curious, "Why are you scribbling so fast? What's so important?"
The man didn't reply, so he turned to the woman. She didn't provide him an answer, only another question, "Do you remember what happened on August 1st?"
Gabriel narrowed his eyes. August 1st? What was important about that date? He reached into the back of his mind, desperately trying to retrieve information about it. When his head began to throb, he stopped trying to think and simply shook his head.
"What happened that day? Why is it important?" Gabriel asked her.
She pursed her lips, "That was the day your son died."
Oh. Why didn't he remember that? He knew his son died, and he knew it was within that year, but why didn't he remember the day? Or the month? And why did his head hurt so bad when he tried to remember? Did trauma do that? Did it make you forget?
Gabriel decided it did.
She sighed and asked another question, "Do you remember what you did on August 31st?"
Gabriel shook his head, "I really don't remember anything that happened in August. Not much anyway. Just things that might be been dreams."
"Well, what do you remember?" She glanced at her partner, who look up only for a second to share a look he finally recognized. Pity.
"My office was a mess, there were bruises on different parts of my body, and I had a giant head ache. I think I remember being in... I don't know, what, but I was surrounded by pink."
She nodded slowly, glancing at her partner to get a nod from him, then she motioned for the men who he assumed brought him there to take him away. "We don't need to ask anymore questions. Thank you for being cooperative, sir."
Then Gabriel was taken away.