Work Text:
The first time she had ever encountered Félix Graham de Vanily, they did not exchange a word.
They had been seated side-by-side on Adrien’s couch, the silence stretching wider than Adrien’s strained smile. Kagami had known him well enough, even then, to know how desperately Adrien wished the evening spent with the three of them (and Chloé) would go well. She had known too that Adrien and his cousin were of the rare, identical kind.
It hurt to look at Adrien, who had so recently broken her heart. It did not hurt to look at Félix. His face was the same as Adrien’s, and everything else was different, from the way he looked around the room as though planning a heist to the way he stole a sideways glance at her, cold and calculating.
"I'm going to find my mother," was the only thing she heard him say, and then he left, taking the strange twist in the pit of Kagami’s stomach with him.
♕ ∼ ♖ ∼ ♚
Tomoe Tsurugi had made her expectations clear regarding Adrien Agreste. In their joint public appearances, Kagami was supposed to stand with him a certain way, look at him a certain way, and behave like she was pleased about it while under the watchful scrutiny of their parents. This did not change when they ended their relationship, finished lycée, or when the city was rocked by Chat Noir's death. Nor was she exempted from continuing appearances when it was not Adrien who showed up to the royal wedding, but Félix.
He bowed to her in Adrien’s style, but he did not look at Kagami with Adrien’s eyes. She knew in an instant who he was, and as the twist in her gut returned full force, she pinned the impostor with a glare.
“What gave me away?” he said—the first real question he had ever asked her.
“You’re very different,” Kagami replied truthfully.
"No one's ever caught on so fast."
His gaze cut through her, the sharp green of a shattered bottle. Kagami looked away, but the feeling of being pierced through remained. “Adrien doesn’t look at people like he’s already gotten the upper hand.”
His expression iced over again, and she knew immediately she had spoken wrong. Bearing her mother's comparisons of Kagami’s behavior, accomplishments, and public image against Adrien's was burden enough. What was it like for Félix, who had been held up for scrutiny alongside his cousin for far longer?
“It seems like you’re the one with the upper hand,” Félix said at last, his expression unreadable. “Since I’ll have to ask you not to tell anyone.”
They were a family of secret-keepers, it seemed. Adrien had never been fully honest with her, though she had let him see the parts of her that she had not let anyone see before. What parts of himself did he let Félix see? What did this stone-faced boy with shrewd eyes get to know that Kagami never could?
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“Adrien’s under house arrest for the time being,” he replied. Kagami had the vague impression this was at least some of the truth, if not all of it. “I can pass along a message, if you like?”
She regarded him, getting the sense he was parrying something that was not meant to be a blow.
“He didn’t want to come today," she said quietly. "Did he?”
The distance between Adrien and herself was natural. She had wanted more of him, and he had not wanted to give it, and that difference was irreconcilable. But now none of the others had answers for what he was doing, why he was somewhere, why he was not. Even Marinette, who had always known Adrien best, seemed to have resigned him to his own devices.
Félix said, “You seem to know him very well, Kagami.”
He had never said her name before. It was like the heel of her shoe breaking mid-step, the moment of reaching for a falling object just before she caught it.
She turned away, though it felt like a forfeit. “It’s nice of you to cover for him, Félix,” she said, glad he could no longer see her face—though she was not sure what he’d find there. “But if you’re going to lie to me, at least do a better job than he did.”
She left him there, and only remembered afterward that they’d been expected to dance.
♕ ∼ ♖ ∼ ♚
His knight checkmated her king in the first match they played. Her rook took his queen to win the ninth.
They kept playing.
♕ ∼ ♖ ∼ ♚
“These circumstances are of no benefit to our public image,” said Tomoe, the night after Gabriel’s headquarters hosted the debut of Monarque’s team of villains. “Tsurugi Tech cannot be affiliated with a brand that associates itself with terrorists.”
“Profits will decrease,” Kagami said simply, and if her mother noted the irony in Kagami’s tone, she did not address it.
“Profits have already decreased,” Tomoe said. “Our joint investors will pull their stock if M. Agreste does not employ an exemplary damage control team. We must reclaim our own shares before they depreciate beyond recovery.”
Kagami set her teacup down loud enough so her mother could hear. Tomoe tilted her head, but refrained from pointing out the lack of etiquette.
“And then what?” Kagami asked, watching her mother’s dark glasses, then glancing toward the screen replaying the silent footage of Ladybug battling the four new Holders out on the street. “Our success in Paris is made possible by our partnership with Gabriel. Without the profits from our Alliance collaboration, we would have to move back to Japan.”
“This is why you should have married Adrien Agreste when you had the chance,” Tomoe said.
Kagami clenched her jaw, then looked at the screen again. Four blurry photos of the villain holders colored half of the television as the news reporter spoke silently on the other side. The Peacock Holder would have been the most fearsome, with his strange violet and black-rimmed eyes. But it was Volpina, her face tipped up and her smile directed over her shoulder like a model on a magazine cover, who chilled her blood the most.
Kagami had run the Paris division of Tsurugi Tech for a year and a half on her own. She had done so without being anyone’s wife, and she had done it well. Her employees respected her. Gabriel’s Chief Operating Officer respected her. Maybe one day she would tell him how her youth and inexperience had not daunted her because he had been there, orbiting her movements across the corporate board.
She would not lose that because of four rogue Miraculous Holders.
“Let’s see how Gabriel Agreste handles it,” she said to Tomoe, and was not surprised when he chose to distract the public with a benefit ball.
The expectations had not changed since her girlhood, and had in fact expanded. Kagami was to wear black like the men who controlled the company’s affairs, who held affairs of their own and smoked cigars and discussed anything but business behind closed doors. She was to smile at certain important names and refrain from speaking to others. She was to dance with those Tomoe considered worthy partners—the Director of Communications, the Chairman, and the most wealthy stockholders for both Tsurugi Tech and Gabriel.
Adrien Agreste was an expectation too. By default, so was Félix.
She saw him standing across the room with his cousin, conversing together in low voices. He looked up when he saw her, breaking eye contact with Adrien mid-sentence, a brass brooch on his chest shining as it caught the light.
Kagami turned to him, her heart beating faster in her chest. Adrien said something to Félix as she walked forward, a playful smirk spreading over his face as he knocked his elbow into Félix’s ribs.
The room grew suddenly warm, and warmer still as Félix backed away, then turned and strode out of the ballroom without a backward glance.
“Sorry,” Adrien said, and Kagami realized he had closed the distance between them. She looked up from where she had stopped in the middle of the ballroom, finding Adrien watching the doors through which Félix had gone. “I scared him off, not you.”
“Scared him off?” Kagami asked, deciding not to watch the doors, nor to anticipate Félix’s return. “What did you say?”
Adrien’s smile was small, but genuine. Bowing, he extended his hand with practiced poise. “Guess.”
♕ ∼ ♖ ∼ ♚
She pulled the plain black gift box out of the drawer, lifted the lid, and was no longer alone in the dressing room.
“Oh!” said the kwami, eyes bright and sclera dark. It blinked between her and the miraculous she held in her palm, tailfeathers spreading as comprehension dawned on its features. “Kagami.”
She dropped the Peacock Miraculous, stepping back as it clattered to the floor.
“Please listen,” said the kwami, his voice soft, his paws and tail feathers extended as he floated slowly toward her. “It isn’t what you think.”
“He’s Argos,” Kagami said. Ladybug had told her as much, and Kagami had thought that if it were true, Félix would pick a mythological creature as his namesake.
“He won’t hurt you,” the kwami insisted. “You know that, don’t you? Think about it. Has he hurt anyone while he’s been an active Holder?”
She looked at him, throat tight and mouth dry, her stomach turning strangely as his resemblance to Longg suddenly struck her.
“What are you going to do?” the kwami asked into the silence.
Kagami reached for the Peacock Miraculous, running her thumb over its violet and indigo surface. If she took it, she could return it to Ladybug. The threat of a sentimonster would be eliminated from every battle, as would a member of Monarque’s team.
But Argos had not made any sentimonsters. Why? Why be on Monarque’s team at all, if he did not intend to help?
Footsteps sounded down the hall, coming for the dressing room. Kagami’s blood rushed as she shoved the miraculous into the drawer from which she’d taken it, then slammed it shut. Then, using the countertop to pull herself up, she faced the door as Félix threw it open.
♕ ∼ ♖ ∼ ♚
The lightning storm was not of her own power, but it churned within Ryuko nonetheless, howling like the wind in her ears.
Ladybug held a ring between her fingers, a bright glint of silver in the swirling rain. And Argos looked at her, not in fear, not in anger, not with the shrewdness Ryuko knew better than the rhythm of her own pulse. He was dead on his feet, slack in her grip, blank as uncarved stone.
It hit with the harsh, rapid strike of lightning; this was why he had taken the brooch. This was why he did not use his power.
This was why he wore a ring.
“Argos,” Ladybug said, and Ryuko was running forward, feet pounding the pavement, rain slapping her face as she lunged. “Detrans—”
Ryuko slammed against her with all the rage she possessed, and pried the Amok from Ladybug’s hand.