Chapter Text
There are very few things Chloe bothers to remember. Her mother’s laughter. The gold bright morning the Christmas before her Mama left, full of shiny crinkly paper and Jean-Luc’s cinnamon cookies. The first time she met Adrien, when she was still toddling around on chubby legs, when his mother pushed him out from behind her legs and told them that they would be best friends forever. He’d smiled at her like she was the sun.
The first time Gabriel had made her cry. She’d been running in the hall, too fast for her little legs to follow, arms pumping, limbs going all akimbo. Her hand smacked into a vase. It had teetered, fallen, shattered into a million little shards. He’d reached down and grabbed the back of her collar, fingers huge and rough against the back of her neck, and hauled her off of her feet. He’d held her. Then he’d yelled, loud, his other arm a band around her chest to keep her from touching the ground. She’d cried, and her Papa had come in and apologized, and then they hadn’t seen the Agrestes for a while after that.
It wasn’t the fist time she’d been yelled at - Mama had yelled, often - but her Mama had a tone more biting than loud, more reliant on sharp words than anything else. It was the first time in her life that a man had yelled at her. She remembers the curdled, awful feeling that had swelled inside of her when she’d realized that she’d disappointed him. She hadn’t even been given the chance to say goodbye to Adrien. Her Mama had snapped at her their whole way home about how running in the halls was unladylike and that’s why they weren’t going to stay for dinner.
They’d gone back eventually, of course. There were no more vases left at a height little girls could break them.
It had set a precedent. Gabriel Agreste spoke, and Chloe remembered the hot shame of that vase shattering against the floor.
When Hawkmoth finds her on the roof, it’s Gabriel’s voice she hears.
She’s still shaking from the helpless rage of watching Ladybug choose someone else. Everyone always chose someone else, even when she was trying, even when it was her things that were getting broken, her parents in danger, her people Akumatized.
Chloe is not afraid of Hawkmoth. She knows she should be, because her classmates are, because all of Paris is, but fear is a hard thing to grasp on to. Whenever she thinks of him she thinks of his failures. She thinks of every time his Akuma had tried to kill her and every time they’d failed, because Ladybug was there to save her. Ladybug is there to save everyone.
The sun is beating down on her shoulders. There’s a wind carrying the smells of Paris to her rooftop escape. Traffic is blaring floors below, a muted sound like the background of a movie. People are screaming in the hotel because her parents have been transformed into monsters by some crazed lunatic who hasn’t figured out he can’t win yet. She’d broken a nail shoving the stupid light off of the ledge.
And she’s thinking of that vase, shattered on the ground, Gabriel holding her tight to his chest.
“Ladybug will never give you the Bee Miraculous again.”
Is that it? Chloe studies his face - his mask, so clearly meant to hide the striking line of his nose and his pale hair, the suit that makes his frame look just a little wider than she knows it is, the walking stick that makes him seem older than he is - the marks of a man in hiding.
The voice, though, the voice is the same. Softer, maybe. A little kinder, because he’s trying to cajole and convince her. He’s trying to grandstand while making him her only choice. He wants her. His voice rolls over her like a rising tide, so painfully familiar.
Ladybug didn’t want her.
But Ladybug hadn’t tried to kill her, either.
Ladybug didn’t know Chloe.
“Fix my parents, first.” She holds out a demanding hand, palm up. “Ladybug’s irrelevant. If she faces me, you’ll get what you want. I’ll make you proud.” She wiggles her fingers. His eyes, Gabriel’s eyes, stare unerringly into hers.
“You have my word, my Queen.” His smile is deeply unfamiliar. It’s not cold, like the looks he’d give her when she played with Adrien too loudly. She wouldn’t think much of it if his expression were as cooly distant as she’s used to. There’s a genuine warmth, a terribly joy, in the look he gives her.
Chloe doesn’t spare Pollen a single glance as her Miraculous drops into her waiting palm. Chloe wraps her fingers tight around the hairpin. “Shut up, Pollen, and Buzz on.”
—
Being an Akuma feels good.
Most people talk about feeling guilty in the aftermath. They have nightmares. Some people avoid the thing that triggered their Akumatization.
Chloe doesn’t understand why. It’s not as if they’d asked to be Akumatized. Most people couldn’t stop the Akumatization in it’s tracks, or shrug it off after Hawkmoth had slithered into their brains and suffused them with heady power. They’re not at fault for giving in and just doing what he asked.
Being Antibug had made her feel the same way that being Queen Bee does.
The rush of the Akuma’s power overlays the power of the Miraculous like chasing a shot of expresso with a Columbian coffee. It’s giddy, and almost nauseating, every step she takes making her feel like the ground is pitching under her. Hawkmoth’s desire overlays her own like a tugging tide, carrying her away.
It hadn’t been like that with Antibug, but then, Antibug had her own goals. Hawkmoth’s had been secondary. Now it’s only Hawkmoth’s desire plucking her limbs this way and that in a puppeteer’s dance, filling her with a giddy joy. She’s doing what is expected of her. She’s doing a good job. She can feel his satisfaction on the other side of the Akuma’s power, a thin connection of thought and intent latched on to her brain.
Time and thought slip away from her. There is Paris, and people; the sky is blue and brilliant and wide open above her head. Her minions chase throngs through the streets. She can feel them like a million little extensions of herself. She subsumes the city. There is no one to run away from her now. No one rejecting her. Everyone loves the Miracle Queen. Everyone wants to love the Miracle Queen.
She gathers them up around her, all the people of Paris who love and want her, who will believe in her. Her precious, loyal subjects.
Miracle Queen stares out over the crowd, hands clutching at the Miraculous Box. She can see Hawkmoth with Fu, still trapped inside his own shield. She can see Gabriel Agreste menacing an old man.
Bring me Ladybug and Chat Noir’s Miraculouses. The command is still in place.
He’d been so pleased with her, when he’d handed her the box. He wants her to brilliant things with it. He thinks she’ll make such good use of it that she’ll be able to do what his other comrades hadn’t, what every other Akuma before her had failed to. Her heart is full of the thought of him looking at her with pride. She’d do something worth that look if she did this.
For a moment, Miracle Queen allows herself to luxuriate in the idea of his pride. Akumatization makes every feeling sharper and louder, to shorten the distance between thought and action. It’s like having too many sips of champagne at one of Daddy’s parties, bubbly and bright and perfect. It’s so much easier to feel things as an Akuma.
But it’s only for a moment.
If nothing else, Chloe Bourgeois has always been the best at disappointing the people who believe in her the most.