Work Text:
May 1995.
Gabriel sneaked into the elevated tunnel, trying not to get hurt. Nathalie, a few meters behind, was trying to convince him to come back cause the corridor was way too narrow to be secure.
He just told her not to worry, he would be fine, he needed to explore. She sighed, mumbled something about Emilie who would kill her if the stylist got hurt, but finally renounced. Anyway, she knew her friend would not give up once he had an idea in mind.
A few minutes passed in silence, she was waiting for him to come back, or to call so she could join him. But all she could hear were stones rolling toward her while Gabriel was advancing. Suddenly, something fell, projecting a strange blue light all around. There was silence for a minute, then sounds like an avalanche going down.
“Gabriel? Gabriel, are you ok?”
“Ye… Yes. I am ok. Just got one or two scratches, but it’s nothing, don’t worry.”
“… It’s not in my nature not to worry. Come back here, now, before this whole section falls on your head. Why did you even go there?!”
“I thought I saw something, but there isn’t anything. I’m coming back.”
She heard him crawling towards her, and a few minutes later, he was standing in front of her.
“Gabriel!! How…”
Nathalie couldn’t finish her sentence. How could he say it was nothing?! His arm was entirely torn from the elbow down to the wrist, a few bits of skin still hanging around the wound, like it has been ripped off.
She shook her head, grabbed sanitizer and a large band of tissue from her backpack and started to take care of him. She distanced herself as best as she could from the disgust and the worry that were fighting in her. After disinfecting the wound, she started to make a bandage, mumbling reproaches.
When she finished, she looked at him, tears and lightning fighting in her eyes.
“That was clearly not “nothing””, she commented with a coldness which denoted her anger, her worry, “but now that I took care of it, I refuse that you take any more risk. We go back to the hotel. Now.”
“Ok, ok, I follow you, no need to get upset…”
“I am not angry, she sighed, I am worried. You said it was nothing, but really it wasn’t. You shouldn’t go just cause you “think there is something”!”
“It… There was a light, or a very shiny reflect… I thought it could be... But there wasn’t anything”, he whispered in apology.
“You..”
She didn’t even finish her sentence, hesitating between even more reproaches, exclamations of concern, explanations about how much going anywhere without her was suicidal, or a simple sigh mixing all the options.
The sigh won.
She shook her head again in disapproval, then took her backpack and started to walk to the exit of the cave. Gabriel was completely irresponsible, and Nathalie could not keep him from doing stupid things. A real paradox as he valued his life, he wanted to stay alive, he was scared by the idea of dying. She didn’t care about that but tended to take less risk. The only explanation she could find was that his past had not taught him the meaning of an injury, and to correctly estimate how bad it was.
On the way back to the sun, the young woman made herself a promise. She would teach him the reality of every risk. She would protect him. At all costs.
************
November 2016
Gabriel was standing in his office, looking through the window, hidden behind the curtains.
These last weeks had been strange. And he could not pinpoint why. Since the cataclysm, and even more since Nathalie had asked him to akumatize her one last time, the world seemed hung in an unsure balance.
Like everyone was evolving on a tightrope.
But two weeks ago, the balance had been changed. And became strangely unpleasant.
He could not really figure out why. He knew he didn’t like that. He knew Nathalie turned extremely cold since he almost won. And he felt this coldness paralyzing his bones. He felt her distance digging cracks in his soul, in his goals, through his obsession for the power.
She knew he tried to akumatize Adrien.
She probably knew he would not give up easily.
But… Her avoiding tactic was working a little bit too well.
Her silence was a punch in the heart.
Her absence when she worked in her room was a violent slap in the face.
All of her was missing.
“Nooroo. Why does it affect me like this?”
“You are attached to your assistant, to her smile, to her presence, to the ideas she has and the way she deals with life. And with you. That’s all.”
“She hates me.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I am barely human, with all that I did, all this power I took, all this terror I spread over the city. I am a monster. I am Monarch, and I destroy everything I touch. And this thing I am, she hates it.”
“Maybe she does not like Monarch. Or maybe she’s sad to see his power over you.”
“Her coldness kills everything in me… I don’t even know how to put it into words. The more she’s distant, the more I feel like I’m only miming life, I’m empty. And the worst is… I don’t have any idea how to change it. She hates Monarch. The thing is, his grip on me makes up the majority of my soul, of who I am.”
“I disagree.”
“What do you mean?”
“As long as you fight, as long as you suffer, his grip will reduce more and more. If you consider him as another person, Monarch needs to fight in order to take power.”
“I try to keep him captive. But he is not a different person, just another side of my personality, the side I need to hide, the dark side. And most of the time, it’s the side that is showing. To the point I know very little about my bright side.”
“Well… Your bright side is a fighter, who hopes to find refuge somewhere. It’s a creator who fascinates the whole world. It’s a lover, who would give the world, the stars, who would sell everything for the ones who matter. It’s an empath who can sense other people's emotions and know how to channel them. Your bright side is a father too, who doesn’t know how to express love to his son but would rather die than letting anyone hurt him the way you were hurt. Your dark side exploits all of that, every aspect is poisoned by it, but you can make it retreat.”
“How could I? I let that darkness win, Nooroo. I have broken every life for this selfishness.”
“Listen to what the bright side is screaming, stop blocking your feelings, dare to be yourself. You need to accept the suffering rather than reject it.”
“It’s hard.”
“I know.”
“I created my own hell.”
“So you can extinguish the fire.”
“While burning?”
“You are not alone. I will help you.”
“Thank you, Nooroo. For everything you do, for the way you help me read my own feelings. Even when I refuse to look at them.”
“I’m used to it. I’m a kwami linked to emotions and feelings, it’s been millennia where I’ve seen humans denying what they feel, and therefore who they are. What do you need?”
“I… I need a way to express the tornado in my head. I need… I need to know what I feel and why… Why… No. I know. And I feel illegitimate to have such feelings. Nooroo, I sentenced her to death.”
“You didn’t. She chose it.”
“Involving her in this stupid fight was like asking her. She always felt like she needed to protect me. I just was… I decided to be blind to this evidence, to let her ruin her health for the sake of my power hunt.”
“What will you do now?”
“What I should have done years ago. Accept my fate and face what I live.”
“Come with me”, he whispered while going to Emilie’s portrait and composing the code that led to the room with her coffin.
“Master? What…”
“I need to say goodbye. And then, I’ll free your friends. I hope… I hope that will be enough to build a wall to protect us from my dark side. Nooroo, I free you from all the restrictions I put on you in the course of the years. And… Please, could you call me by my name?”
“Yes, ma… Gabriel.”
“Thank you.”
The stylist opened the opaque part of the coffin where Emilie was lying.
“Hi, dear. I’m sorry for everything I’ve done. Now, I know you wouldn’t have approved, you would have hated it. I broke everything, Emilie. But… I’ll stop now. You are dead, I finally understood it. I promise you to move on and to never let my pain win again. Goodbye, Emilie.”
The coffin closed again, hiding the preserved corpse for ever. Gabriel closed his eyes for a minute.
Without the goal to awake her, everything felt strangely empty, as if the world had suddenly doubled in size. But the stylist felt truly free for the first time in ages.
After another long minute of staring at the wall in front of him, he shook his head, went back to his elevator and straight up to the observatory.
There, he whispered each kwami’s name, freeing them from their restrictions, renouncing their powers, removing the Alliances, giving them to the flying creatures and encouraging them to quickly return to their rightful owner and keeper, Ladybug.
In his head, all of the events of the previous years were succeeding one another, flashing scenes were illuminating his mind. Everything he had done wrong, everything that kept him in the shadows, and the burning light of Nathalie’s presence and help, her smiles and her comforting words, her brilliant ideas.
“I need her.”
“Yes.”
“I love her…”
“Good.”
“And I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Angels don’t go along with demons.”
“Do I have to remind you that you’ve got an angels name?”
“If we were what our names mean, this world would be very different. If I am an angel, I’m a fallen one. In other words, the devil. But she’s a true angel. Because she stays, she helps, she spends her life like it’s extra-cash.”
“What do you want to do?”
“Right now? Crying over the bad I did. And run away from everything. But I must not cry. And I shall not run, escaping is bad…”
“Who told you that?”
“My father… taught me this the hard way.”
“He… He was a really bad father, wasn’t he?”, the kwami asked gently, knowing his owner needed to put words on things.
“Worse than that… But how do you know that?”
“The way you interact with your son shows you could never learn what a good father is, how you should act, the words you used are a proof, and… All your negative emotions when you mentioned him are enough.”
“He was violent, all the time. Anyway, I can’t run from what I’ve done and from what I feel.”
“That would be hard, in fact.”
“Nooroo… You remember, that necklace I found during our travels and gifted to her?”
“The one you got all your arm bloody to get? Yes, I remember, you showed it to me before giving it to your assistant. But she said she destroyed it and threw it away…?”
“I don’t think she really did. She is very attached to the things given to her. And please, don’t use “assistant”, “friend” is better…”
“Hoping to turn that into “girlfriend” soon?”
“Silly…”
“You’re self-doubting.”
“How could I not be?!”
“You gave up. You closed Emilie’s coffin. You freed the kwamis. You removed all my restrictions. All your life has been a fight against fate, and if it gave you despair, it has also made you extremely strong. You’re brighter and stronger than you want to see, I promise you still have angel wings.”
“Thank you… It’ll take time, but I will try to believe you. This said… I would like to create something for her. No, I want to make a ring. With the stone of this necklace because it has great meaning to me. Nooroo, would you be able to go in her safe and see if you can find it?”
“Yes I could. But that would be an invasion of privacy and a violation of property.”
“This is for a good cause.”
“I’m pretty sure she is going to be mad.”
“I’ll explain. Please.”
“Ok. I’ll go tonight, when she will be sleeping.”
“Thank you.”
************
The day after, middle of the night.
Gabriel sighed. Since the moment Nooroo came back with the pieces of the destroyed necklace, the stylist had worked without stopping, hidden in his secret sewing room, with everything he needed to create clothes or simple jewels by himself.
First, he had crafted the largest piece of the stone in a ring, a very simple ring in which he had engraved spirals. The other parts had been reduced to shiny blue dust.
Then, he had started to create a dress. Something unique, something that could show how much he was attached to Nathalie. His heart had screamed to do something difficult, something as tricky as their relationship could be.
The result looked like a ball gown, with a large skirt that seemed to have escaped from a Disney movie, the color varying between a dark blue and a light purple, shining under the light. The top was a simple shirt with long sleeves meant to cover half of the back of her hands, all of this in a very particular afterglow blue that resembled the approaching night, yet remained vibrant and clear.
In the back, two angel wings were attached, done with white artificial feathers, sewed very cautiously, sprinkled with slight gold glitters illuminating the whole dress.
The cloth was lined by light shards, provoked by the stone dust that covered it integrally.
“I hope she’s gonna like it”,he whispered.
“I’m sure she will.”
“Thank you for helping me with it, Nooroo.”
“I did nothing. I just helped you eliminate the ideas that would’ve been too much.”
“And you helped me accept my feelings, accept hope, accept and kill my dark side. You are the one who saved me.”
“You did it by yourself, I was just there to confirm the progress. But you’re welcome.”
“I am not even sure of what I will tell her…”
“Tell her the truth. How her coldness hurt you, how your suffering led you to realize that you could no longer be Monarch, how you needed to create something to express your feelings, how you know you love her. You can do it.”
“I don’t feel like… I’m not able to do it.”
“Oh yes you are. You just spent an entire day and most of two consecutive nights sculpting and sewing for her. Without sleeping and barely eating. Someone who does such a thing out of love can achieve a declaration. I promise.”
“Maybe… I… Ok. I will do it. I just… I will go to sleep, and tomorrow I will tell her.”
“Good.”
The stylist shook his head. For those forty-eight hours where he had worked without a pause, the kwami had tried to make him acknowledge that he had value. And Gabriel was perfectly unable to do it, Monarch’s shadow always present to his mind, this darkness still fighting to come out.
But he had admitted his love, acknowledged the strength asleep in him, his will to do better. And, in Nooroo’s eyes, that was way better than “good enough” to earn the world.
************
The next morning.
Gabriel watched Adrien leave for school with a strange anxiety. Unconsciously, the stylist considered his son as a protection, against the fear, against the fragility, against the loneliness, against his own internal dangers.He felt like nothing could go wrong when Adrien was nearby. He knew this feeling was caused by his fear of facing himself, and that it was false. If Adrien knew, his reaction would probably be destructive.
But for now, Gabriel was alone in the kitchen, staring at the wall, feeling his heart beating in his ears, contemplating the anxiety increasing second after second. He was playing back every cold exchange with Nathalie in the past few weeks, observing the hole in his heart, the pain of her absence, the relief when he found himself acknowledging his love, the joy when he started creating the dress, the excitement of showing her the dress, to explain the details and to remind her of that day.
“Gabriel? Are you alright?”
“Yes, Nooroo. I’m anxious, I fear her answer, but… I think I’m ready to tell her, to confess how much I need her.”
“And to propose?”
“Could you stop turning this into a joke, please? I won’t propose a marriage the second I confess my love. This will be a proposal, in some way, as I will ask her if she’s willing to be my lover, and I’ll give her a ring. But this won’t be… Anyway. I need to go.”
“Sure. May I come with you?”
“Don’t you dare not come. I need you to help me.”
“I’m not a translator, you know? I can be here for comfort, but I can’t talk for you…”
“I know.”
Gabriel smiled. The short conversation with his kwami had helped him gather his courage, and he finally stood up. He walked to the office, took the box where he had put the dress, then went to Nathalie’s room.
In front of the door, he took a deep breath, hoping to relieve some of the stress suffocating him.
He then calmly knocked, composing a neutral face to hide the chaos of his heart.
“Nathalie? Could I talk to you, please?”
“What do you want?”
The answer's tone was so aggressive that the stylist felt a direct pain in his chest, like a strong punch he could not dodge.
“I… I need to give you something, and to talk with you.”
“Why?”
“Because you are the key to my happiness and to my soul and I need to explain it… I need to face all the reproaches you rightfully make about my behavior…”
“You know I don’t hate you, right?”
“Considering the monster I became and the way I treated you, that’s hard to believe…”
“Come in. I can’t hate you, whatever you do. I just can’t, even though I tried.”
“You tried?”, he asked surprised after he entered the room and left the box against the door, “Why? And when?”
“From the beginning, I tried.”, she answered with a smile, gesturing towards the bed to invite him to sit down. “I tried to convince myself that what you were doing in the name of love was criminal. It had the exact opposite effect. Then, I saw hope, and forgot to hate you, for once my heart was talking louder than my brain. After that… I didn’t know what you were doing. When you became Shadowmoth, I started to question everything. And when Monarch appeared… I really, really tried to hate you. I tried to forget your moments of kindness, the beauty of your smile when it’s sincere, the joy you bring, your will to always go further, I tried to remind myself that you sacrificed Emilie’s life in your quest for power. I wanted to hate you. More and more. My brain failed to find enough reasons. My heart failed to produce such a feeling. My body failed to forget your effect on me. Yeah, I tried. But hating you is as impossible as living without breathing.”
“It was not the right scene shown to distract me from power, I think.”
“What do you mean?!”
“I mean I didn’t look at you enough.”, he whispered, one of his fingers losing itself on her cheek, “That’s why I can’t forgive him, that’s why I’ll always be bitter about me. I condemned you to death and sorrow…”
“Gabriel, what the hell are you talking about?!”
“My blindness… How stupid I am. I couldn’t accept to listen my feelings. Like the invisible string tying you to me was so fragile ignoring it would have been enough to destroy it. It was titanium, not the light wool I believed… Please, don’t do it. Please, I beg you to understand… Because even though I could admit it to Nooroo, I don’t know if I’ll be able to put my feelings for you into words…”
“I can’t. I refuse. Because if I hope and I am wrong… The suffering would be even worse than seeing Monarch everyday all day, shading your good with darkness…”
“I swear you won’t have to suffer… I don’t want to lead you to even more suffering. Not anymore. I know you can’t believe me when I say I’ve changed back. I don’t know how to prove that I defeated him, that his grip is mostly gone. So I just want to note what I must and must not do… How was it?”
“Well… Missing you was… It was dark gray, all alone, forgetting you was like trying to know somebody you never met… Fighting with him was like trying to solve a crossword and realizing there’s no right answer… Why did you stop letting him win?”
“I couldn’t continue. I just couldn’t. You had closed the door, you were cold, and regretting you… I couldn’t stand that feeling, I can’t describe it with words, it was just… blue, like I’d never known before. It was cold, sad, with infinite nuances, so deep… Remembering you came in flashbacks and echoes… I… Your absence and your refusal to talk was like salt in a wound, it made me realize how much I need you on my side, walking with me, I love you…”, he whispered while taking the ring out of his pocket, “I love you Nathalie, much more than I could ever say, I know how imperfect I am, I never had the courage of my convictions as long as danger is near and it’s just around the corner, darling, cause it lives in me… No, I could never give you peace, but I’ll try to give you heat, to give you warmth, to give you joy and comfort. The devil is in the details but I assure you from today you’ll have a friend in me, and more, I’d die for you, I promise, you are the one I choose today. I know you probably won’t but Nathalie dear, I hope you can accept my heart, what I have left of strength and reason, what’s left in me of wiseness and of life… Nathalie, would you accept to be my lover, my partner in life and in redemption?”
“Gabriel, how can you even ask?”, she whispered, pulling him into a close hug, “how can you believe I’d say anything but yes? I love you, Gabriel, from all my heart, from longer than I know, I’ve loved you, you’re my home, and it doesn’t matter if you can’t give me peace, I’d sit with you in the trenches till the war ends. I love you, for ever and ever…”
Tears of happiness and relief were running down their cheeks, tears cleaning the shade, the bad, the darkness, carrying away the storms and the nightmares. Tears uniting them after all the division, tears like a blood oath that could never be destroyed.
Their hearts were racing from all the emotions intertwining in the moment, they just stayed nestled in each other's presence until the calm settled down on them again.
When she found back a normal breath, Nathalie looked up to Gabriel and murmured a question:
“Gabriel? I already saw this stone, didn’t I? Where is it from?”
“Do you remember that blue necklace I gave you?”
“The one you found during our travels, got your arm torn apart to collect and then offered to me as a trust sign?”
“Exactly. You said you destroyed it, and threw it away. In some way, I never believed you did that. So… Three days ago, I asked Nooroo to go look for it in your safe… He brought me the pieces, and I craved the ring with the largest.”
“Sometimes I forget you can do literally anything when you decide it… Why this stone?”
“You took care of my injury. And you were really worried about me. That left a deep mark on my spirit. You were the first one to actually take care of a wound… As my father was usually the one creating them and my first friend could never do anything about it… I will tell you my whole story one day…”
“I hope. It’s interesting that you remember that day like this… Cause, when we got out, I swore to myself that I would take care of you and teach you the gravity of an injury. I don’t know if I kept that word, but I tried…”
He looked at her with a glint of recognition in his eyes.
“You did, in a way,” he said. “It applied more to psychological wounds, but you taught me. And you took care of me. You led me to redemption, you helped me grow, and now, I know you will teach me happiness… Thank you, for everything.”
“You’re welcome. Thank you for everything you allow me to be.”
A smile spread across Gabriel's face. He knew that together they had found their harmony, their peace. They could talk, live, love, and learn together.
He knew that he would show her everything he created, and she would always admire, help, and lead him. They were together, and they could re-create the world with their own magic.
As they sat there, looking out at each other, he took her hand in his. He felt a sense of calm and contentment wash over him, knowing that they had each other. They had been through so much, but they had come out the other side, stronger and more resilient than ever before.
He knew that they had a bright future ahead of them, full of love, adventure, and magic. And he couldn't wait to see what lay ahead.
“Gabriel?”, Nathalie whispered after a few minutes of simple peace, “Could you tell me what is inside this box you brought here?”
“Yes, of course. It’s something I made for you…”
“You made me an outfit?!?! Gabriel, no… I…”
“Nathalie, love… Don’t protest. It’s my way to show you how much you really mean to me, how much I care about you, and how I see you. I love you. And creating is my usual way to get things in order. I needed it, from the second I realized how much I loved you, and how much I didn’t deserve any return… I made the ring, but it was not enough, so I went for a whole dress… I hope it won’t bother you to wear a dress…”
“First, I’d wear anything made by you, because the idea of you coming up with a whole design and putting effort like this into something just for me is… Absolutely wonderful, exhilarating. Second, dresses absolutely don’t bother me, I just tend to prefer suits because I have more freedom to move.”
“You won’t fight in this one, obviously. But I think you’ll still have pretty good freedom of movement.”, Gabriel smiled standing up and walking over to pick the box.
“It’s true that I will probably not have to fight anymore, now that we have decided to move forward. We’ll be ok.”
“Yes, we will be perfectly fine, together. Would you like to try it on?”
“Yes. I will try it, I’ll be back in a few minutes…”
“Be careful with the back. It should not be fragile but I am not certain of its solidity…”
“What do you mean…?”
“You’ll see…”
She smiled, took the box and walked to her bathroom with the case, curious.
She had noticed that it was unusually big, all of the dimensions were more important than the boxes usually used by the company, she knew Gabriel kept multiple of these in his secret room.
When she opened the container, she could hardly contain a scream of admiration. The light reflecting everywhere on the stone dust made the whole dress shimmer, the colors were harmonizing perfectly,and the wings gave a taste of a fairytale to the moment. Unpacking the piece of clothing, Nathalie began to work out a plan for how to put it on. These wings were beautiful, but… They made things tricky.
After five minutes of contemplation and reflection, she managed to slide into it, praying she would not damage anything.
Happily, she didn’t. She found herself drowning in an intense feeling of gratitude and happiness, dancing alone in the large room for the pleasure of feeling the textile on her skin, hearing the slight friction of it on the ground and making this fairytale dress her own.
She had no words to express how amazing it was, but she knew she could show it, by just being with Gabriel, loving him everyday.
“Gabriel, thank you!”, she exclaimed while going back to her bedroom, “Thank you very much… It is… Absolutely wonderful…”
“I’m glad you like it.”, he smiled while taking her hand and making her turn around, “You are absolutely stunning, my dear. You look like a queen… You are a queen…”
“Anybody would look like a noble with such a dress! But… Why wings?”
“Because you’re like a guardian angel, protecting me, taking risks for me, leading me to light and good. Because I wanted to do something challenging, to represent all the difficulties we have faced and may still face, in our relationship and towards the world. The blue is your color, but you have thousands of nuances, so it changes on the dress depending on the light, the part you look at, on your movements. I wanted something that would look, feel like you. And,seeing how perfect it is, I think I have done quite well…”
“It is absolutely perfect, Gabriel, really…”
Standing on her tiptoes, she left a little kiss at the corner of his lips, before flying away, smiling.
“That’s not nice!”
“Then come. That’s not torture, that’s an invitation!”
“I love you, silly…”
He smiled, grabbed her wrist and pulled her into a hug, before looking down at her, kissing her calmly, letting their shared feelings explode to this contact, joy, fear, peace, love and hope, dancing in their first kiss, leading them in a fireworks of emotions.
Finally, they were happy.