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Félix slipped a pair of sunglasses into his pocket as he passed through the penthouse living room. He could navigate almost soundlessly if he tried, but it was often less suspicious to be heard. A person who walks might be noticed; a person who sneaks can get caught.
“Félix, love,” his mother called from the open kitchen, “are you going out?”
“Just to the park, Mother,” Félix said. “I intend to take advantage of today’s sun.”
“Take advantage, indeed. It’s a shame I’m stuck working, or I’d go with you. I’m just—” The phone rang in the other room. “Ugh! Couldn't even let me get a few words in with my son. Awful, just awful.” She waved as she hurried to her office. “Have fun, sweetheart!”
“I will,” Félix said, though he didn’t expect to. Exiting casually, he closed the door behind him and headed for the lift.
The park was lovely. Sun shone down between the trees and brightened the grass. If Félix hadn’t already decided his plans for the afternoon, he might have been tempted to stay and people watch. When he was younger, he had found endless delight in giving tourists incorrect directions. His mother had been quick to set them straight.
As he scouted for somewhere out of the way but not too seedy, Félix wondered how his mother would feel if she knew what he was about to do. He had a feeling he’d been right not to tell her.
He located a small indent in an alley, occupied only by a door that looked like it hadn’t been opened in years. There was a dead moth on its threshold.
It wasn’t that he thought his mother would be angry, nor even that she wouldn’t approve. Amélie Graham de Vanily was not easily offended by her son’s actions. In fact, Félix rather suspected she would be impressed, if a little bemused. It was the bemusement that was the problem.
Even before his mother had told him the full story of the Graham de Vanily rings, Félix had felt alone, or, specifically, that nearly no one else in the world could understand him. He and Adrien had been inseparable when younger, but after his mother moved to London full-time, Félix had never felt a strong connection to any other person.
Any other human.
When his mother had explained to him what a Sentibeing was, half of Félix had been angry and half of Félix had felt like the world finally made sense. When he watched and read Parisian news, he understood why he sometimes felt attached to the strange monsters Ladybug and Chat Noir were pitted against. He was linked inextricably with them; they were, at their cores, the same.
Even if the Parisians didn’t see it, even if Ladybug and Chat Noir didn’t see it, Félix understood the state of confusion and suffering the Sentimonsters were in. He understood the way Hawk Moth and Mayura manipulated and used them. He shuddered to think about what it would have been like to be created with a maddening, one-note consciousness, to have lived with a single lonely goal, able to see the rest of the world only through the myopia of one’s creation. It almost seemed a blessing for them to be discarded when Hawk Moth was through.
Almost.
Félix took a steadying breath through his nose. He looked at the dead moth on the dusty stoop and half-thoughtlessly ground it into powder with his heel. “Duusu, spread my feathers.”
The transformation was cool like mist, brushing his skin gently and leaving him feeling fresh and powerful. Instantly he understood what all of his emotions looked like: some of them were ugly; he tried not to push them away. These feelings were his building materials, and he needed the full complement.
He seized upon his desire for revenge first, to build a skeleton of the Suit. A sketch. Vengeance wouldn’t protect him, wouldn’t propel him, but it could serve as a guide.
Next he found anger and determination. These needed to be blended to reach their full potential, but together they formed an impenetrable armor—and more than that. Anger could be graceful. Determination ensured he would find what he was looking for.
Between the gaps in the Suit, Félix threaded other emotions. Love. Fear. Curiosity. These would hold him together no matter what force tried to tear him apart. But only one emotion, one he would not name, had the potency to get him where he wanted to go. He sank this emotion into the Suit’s shoes; he let it weigh down the woven fabric of emotion until he felt the Suit was complete. He was careful to pull out any loose threads of hatred. Hatred had its place. Just not where Félix was going.
Making Sentimonsters came naturally to him, but nothing had prepared him for the hollow feeling left after his emotions had been built into a creation. Félix wheezed, leaning his and the Suit’s weight on the battered door. The crushed moth stayed determinedly within his field of vision.
Félix gripped his left pocket and the pair of sunglasses within. Something about feeling the Amok’s solid form was grounding; it steadied him. Slowly he remembered how to find the emotions he had put into the Suit, and slowly he managed to reintegrate them despite the separation.
The sky was a friendly and beautiful blue. Félix leapt into it and felt the Suit take him up, and up, until the idea of “up” didn’t make sense anymore. The Suit held strong like he’d known it would, as tense and stoic around him as the emotions it had been crafted from.
Félix had never dreamed of being able to fly, but he found secret pleasure in knowing it was just as satisfying as the movies made it seem. There was power in altitude; elation in acceleration. Had it not been for his mission, he might have played a while in the upper stratosphere or explored Earth’s orbit like a futuristic treasure-seeker.
He was already a long way from Earth’s orbit. He had lost sight of Earth, in fact. He trusted the Suit to take him where he needed to go, and to take him, inevitably, home.
Though the Suit withstood it, space was violent. Félix could feel it the way one can feel winter’s cold through even the warmest jacket. Space sucked and burned and froze and threw things at you. Space tried to get you lost in itself, and space tried to hide in itself the things you had already lost.
The Suit, in spite of space’s best efforts, found what Félix needed it to find.
Félix had known the sun was big. Félix had known the sun was monstrously big. He could never have prepared himself for how large the sun really was—nor how hungry. This close, where Strike Back hung in orbit, the sun was the entire field of vision. Though he knew his pupils absorbed light, this close he felt as though he was the thing being absorbed. He was glad he had purged the Suit of all hatred, because nothing could hate more than this.
Strike Back had merged its three bodies together. Whereas the sun was all-consuming, Strike Back was tangibly large. Félix felt strangely and powerfully grateful for the sense of scale. Though he knew sound didn’t carry in space, he found himself saying, “Hello!”
Strike Back did not move.
Félix flew right up to it and touched it, laying one arm over its shoulder as though about to share a piece of schoolyard gossip. This, not the sun, was the most frightening test of the Suit’s integrity. Would Félix’s emotions hold against the confusion and vitriol that laced Strike Back together?
“I’m Félix.” Félix spoke with his head leant against the spot where Strike Back’s ear might be if it were human. “I know what you are, though I don’t know what you’re going through.”
Strike Back was silent, but Félix felt its head tilt slightly. The motion thrummed through the Suit.
“I can take you back to Earth,” Félix continued, though the feeling in the Suit knew it was futile. The three of them, Félix, Strike Back, and the Suit, it was as if a current ran through their forms as one. Félix could feel Strike Back. Strike Back could feel him. “Come with me,” Félix said. He felt as though he were playing two parts in a single scene.
“Back,” rumbled Strike Back. It couldn’t go back. Gabriel Agreste still had its Amok, something Félix had known when he first decided to craft the Suit. If it returned to Earth, it was only as cannon fodder in this human war. Furthermore, Gabriel Agreste could destroy its Amok at any time, rendering its location at time of destruction a moot point.
“But you wouldn’t be alone,” Félix said. I wouldn’t be alone.
Silence.
“And you’ll burn up here. Eventually. Everything does. Even the sun itself is going to burn itself up.”
Strike Back raised one enormous arm—any gesture pointed at the sun; the sun was all there was to point at—and said, “Strike.”
Félix chuckled, or perhaps choked a little on his tears. “You’d strike back the sun if it insulted you,” he said. “Of course you would.”
Strike Back was full of both renewed vigor and hopeless desperation. Félix, only recently in possession of the Peacock, knew the feelings. He felt the sunglasses in his pocket again, and felt the ring on his middle finger press against his skin. They were the same: he, Strike Back, the Suit. They were made from the same stuff.
“I’ll come back for you,” he promised.
“Back,” echoed Strike Back. Félix felt the hope stirring in its shiny black chest.
The emotion he hadn’t been able to name earlier propelled him home. It was certainty, flat certainty: the stuff tragedy is made of.