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Emilie Agreste smiled as she held the peacock miraculous in her hand. “Gabriel, do you know what this means?” Her husband raised an eyebrow at her, clearly wary of messing with magic. He always worried too much, it wasn’t good for him. “We can have a child. I can use these powers to create a child, like we always wanted.”
At that, Gabriel frowned. “And if it goes wrong? You could get hurt, Emilie.”
She waved a dismissive hand at him, “I’ll be fine. Besides, if we don’t like the kid, he’ll be gone with a snap of my fingers.” She missed the way Gabriel’s face blanched at her nonchalance. “I’m gonna go practice.”
Emilie was going to create the perfect family for them, and everything would be fine. Besides, wasn’t that what they had always wanted? A perfect family?
Adrien was the baby’s name. He had his mother’s green eyes and blond hair and his father’s nose. At age 4, the boy had a lot of energy, running around the mansion and causing mischief. It was normal for his age, but it got annoying when Emilie and Gabriel were trying to work.
“Mommy, Daddy, look!” He’d say, before doing something he thought was amazing, like crossing his eyes or attempting at a cart wheel.
Emilie would smile, then tell him she was busy and to go to his room. Sometimes he complied. Other times, when he felt particularly neglected, he acted out. Emilie tried not to use her powers on him, she really did, but sometimes there was too much on her plate and she was too busy to deal with a tantrum. Besides, shouldn’t Adrien have known better by then?
So, she’d transform if there was no one around, ordering Adrien to do as told. It always worked, and he never knew what had happened afterward. Gabriel advised her not to use her powers so often, but she assured him everything was fine. He was worried about the affects of using her powers, but, really, everything worked great. She felt fine, Adrien didn’t know any better, and their family was perfect. Wasn’t that what they had always wanted? A perfect family?
It was at age eight that Adrien started talking of wanting to go to public school. Emilie had told him it was dangerous to go to a public school, and that it would hinder his education. His classes would be too easy, he’d be bored, and school wasn’t anything like it was in the movies.
“Then I’ll go to Chloe’s school,” he’d argued. “It’s close by, and if it’s good enough for the daughter of the mayor, it’s good enough for me.”
She tried to reason with him further for the next few weeks, hoping he’d get discouraged and drop it. But for some reason, he never gave up. He’d mentioned something about wanting to make friends. She told him had friends, like Chloe, Felix, and the boys on his basketball team. He’d argued that Felix was his cousin, he didn’t make good friends with the boys on the basketball team, and that Chloe was only one friend. He’d told her that he wanted to make friends on his own, and have at least a few good ones.
She kept telling him he couldn’t, and got Gabriel to back her up. After all, he wasn’t a normal boy. He was a sentimonster and had no reason to be at a public school. No reason to be away from home. In an effort to make him feel less lonely, they added things to his schedule. Fencing, Chinese lessons, extra tutoring, more rigorous piano lessons, but nothing made him stop talking about public school.
So, she transformed one day when no one was around, ordering Adrien to stop asking to go to public school and to be content about being where he was, at home. The familiar blank stare Adrien got as he was ordered made her feel triumphant, his robotic, “Yes, mother,” filling her with pride. She felt fine, Adrien didn’t know any better, and their family was perfect. Wasn’t that what they had always wanted? A perfect family?
Adrien was ten when Gabriel started noticing how tired Emilie would be by midday. He figured it was just because of all the things she had to keep track of. Sure, she’d limited her acting to one job at a time, but she still had a lot to do at home. And she’d joke that she wasn’t getting any younger, so, despite being wary, he hoped that all was fine.
A year later, things had only gotten worse. As the years progressed, she was too weak to work, and had to stay at home all the time. By the time Adrien was thirteen, she was in bed all the time.
One day, as Emilie lay in bed, too weak and getting to close to death, Gabriel frantically searched for her miraculous. Maybe Emilie had thought she’d hidden the peacock miraculous somewhere Gabriel would never find, but she was wrong. He had stormed into their room, shakily closing the door behind him. He’d been on his knees at her bedside, holding her miraculous.
“You said everything would be fine,” he had told her. “Why is this broken? What went wrong?” He needed answers. He’d never wanted to mess with magic to create a child all those years ago, but she’d assured him everything would be fine. Now, things weren’t, things had gone wrong, and he didn’t know why.
So, she had to explain everything to him. She explained how the miraculous broke not long after she created Adrien. How she didn’t think much of it and how she thought it was fine. She told him she didn’t think she was going to make it, but she wasn’t going to get rid of Adrien.
“Find a way to fix it for me,” she had told him then, “I think that’s the only way for me to get better. It’s too late to stop using the miraculous.” She had handed him her wedding ring, telling him that was where the amok was. “Keep it safe.”
“I will, I promise.”
Not long after, she slipped into a deep coma. The day of her “funeral” Gabriel had seen how distraught Adrien seemed. His eyes had been empty, his whole being in shock, and the tears had never stopped. It was then that Gabriel vowed he’d do whatever it took to bring Emilie back. He would fix the peacock miraculous, bring her back, Adrien wouldn’t know any better, and their family would be perfect again. Wasn’t that what they had always wanted? A perfect family?
It was in an empty auditorium that Gabriel found out Chat Noir was Adrien after five years of fighting against him. At age nineteen, Adrien had been pushing back against his restrictions more forcefully, after all, he WAS an adult. He didn’t have to do everything Gabriel wanted him to do. Finding out he’d been fighting against his own son should’ve made Gabriel give up, but he couldn’t. He’d made a promise to Emilie to fix everything, and he couldn’t stop when he was so close.
Fixing the peacock miraculous hadn’t brought Emilie back. She was still in a coma. With Emilie’s wedding ring on a necklace he’d secretly worn since she’d slipped into a coma, and Adrien glaring back at him, Gabriel did what he had to do. He used his powers on his son, ordering him to hand over his miraculous.
Unlike when he was a child, Adrien tried to fight against it. Ladybug gasped at what was happening, rushing to her detransformed partner’s side. She tried to talk to him, maybe the one way she thought she could help him. Gabriel heard Adrien whisper an apology before his face was blank, and a robotic voice said, “Yes, Father.”
He shoved Ladybug aside as she feebly tried to stop him. But Ladybug had injured herself in battle, limping after Adrien hurriedly. She tried tripping him, standing in the way, shoving him aside, but nothing would work. Once Adrien was ordered to do something, he had to.
Gabriel ordered Adrien to get Ladybug’s miraculous, and he did as told. It was pure luck that she couldn’t get away. Her miraculous beeped urgently as she tried to find a way to escape the building they were in. She detransformed before she could escape, leaving Marinette Dupain-Cheng, one of Adrien’s friends and a talented designer, in her place. She tried to fight back, but being a sentimonster, Adrien easily overpowered her, taking her earrings.
Once both miraculous were in his possession, Gabriel knew what he had to do. With Marinette screaming at him to stop and think, and Adrien coming back to his senses, he had to act fast. Despite knowing there could be consequences—Nooroo had told him many times before— Gabriel made his wish.
He was going to bring everything back to normal, to the way things were before everything went wrong. Him and Emilie would never use the peacock miraculous to create a child, they’d have their own, normal child, they would be happy, and everything would be fine. After all, wasn’t that what they had always wanted? A perfect family?
Gabriel opened his eyes to find a white ceiling greeting him. It worked, he thought to himself, the wish worked. But when he sat up in a bed that wasn’t his, with light blue sheets and heard the beeping of monitors, he knew something was very, very wrong. A doctor walked into the room, eyes lighting up when he saw him awake.
“Mr. Agreste, you woke up,” the doctor said calmly. “Your injuries had required surgery, so we had to put you on anesthesia. How do you feel?”
Immediately, panic surged through Gabriel. “Where am I? What happened? What’s going on?” Where was Emilie? Where was Adrien? Did the wish really work or was this is punishment for misusing the miraculous?
In the same calm, even tone the doctor had greeted him with, he explained, “You were in a car accident.”
Well, that explained absolutely nothing. It didn’t explain whether or not things were as he wanted them to be. “What about my son? My wife? Emilie and Adrien Agreste.”
The doctor seemed confused at the question. “Mr. Agreste, you don’t have a wife or a son,” he told him politely.
Gabriel blanched. How could this be? “Can I have a magazine?”
Seemingly surprised, the doctor nodded, asking a nurse that passed by for a magazine. Once Gabriel had the magazine, the doctor and nurse left.
On the cover was his wife, who apparently wasn’t his wife in this world. She smiled brightly on the cover, a man beside her that must’ve been her significant other. The headline beside them read, “Emilie Graham de Vanilly and her husband speak of preparing for their baby.” There was another subheading that had a page on the timeline of her relationship with the man.
He frantically flipped to the pages mentioned. Once he found them, he skimmed through the articles. Apparently in this world, Emilie married her college sweetheart. They had been married for five years before finally deciding to have a child. The baby was meant to come in a couple of months, and his name would be Adrien. The couple seemed happy and in love, a normal family without magic jewels or magic-made children.
They seemed like the perfect family. And wasn’t that what they had always wanted? A perfect family? Gabriel had to run into the bathroom to throw up.