Chapter Text
Adrien noticed her pen had paused about halfway down the third page of his essay and hovered there. She didn't move for a minute, sitting stiff, before he finally piped up from across the dining room table to ask, "Is there something wrong?"
Nathalie glanced at him, tearing her stare from the page and the words she'd long stopped reading. His voice, though soft and wary, cut through a fog, and she tried to blink her murky thoughts out of her head. "What?" she asked.
"You've been staring at that part for a while. Is there an issue with it? Does it make sense?"
Nathalie lifted the pen off the page. She reread the sentence she'd been looming over. "It's fine."
"Oh, okay. And how's the rest of it?"
"One minute. Let me finish reading first." She grabbed the essay off the table and, trying to will her head clear, went on with her review. Apart from underlining a couple passages that needed rewording and pointing out the typos, Nathalie hadn't much to contribute, and this was strange. She'd always been a merciless proof-reader. Adrien could never get away with writing fewer than three or four drafts of something, no matter how short or informal the assignment was meant to be. His papers were always top-notch for this reason, but Nathalie, as much as she fought to pay attention, could barely skim this one. Her eyes floated over the words without picking up much of anything, and what should have taken her a couple minutes to read took ten. Adrien sat quietly in the meantime, watching her with an increasingly anxious gaze.
When she'd finally finished, she slid the pages across the table back at him and stuck the pen behind her ear. "It looks good."
Adrien waited for more feedback, but Nathalie was finished. He glanced down at the scarce marks and then back up at her again. "It's not bad?"
"No, it's perfectly fine, why?"
He shrugged. "You - you kind of have this look on your face like you didn't enjoy what you were reading. Like -" Adrien demonstrated with a grimace, lips twisting and his brows wrinkling as if in discomfort.
Irked that her mask was slipping, Nathalie forced her face to relax. The pained expression melted away, but Nathalie only wished it could take the actual pain with it. "I didn't realize. I apologize," she said, trying to keep the stilted tone out of her voice. "The essay is good."
She got up from the table hastily, and Adrien started. "Good", to Nathalie, was hardly good enough, especially when it comes to first drafts. "Wait, that's it?" he asked, springing to his feet.
"Yes, Adrien, that's-" She cut off. Her stomach flipped, and it jarred her into silence. She nodded briskly. The pen dropped from ear and clattered on the floor. It wasn't retrieved.
"Are you okay?" She didn't stick around to answer him. Nathalie slipped out of the dining room and once out of sight, bolted for the nearest bathroom.
She didn't throw up this time. After minutes spent knelt over the toilet with her insides kneading themselves around, the wave of nausea passed and she leaned back on her heels, letting a heavy breath sail out of her. The room tilted. A sweat had broken out along her hairline. Nathalie groaned and squeezed her eyes closed to feel her head pitching back and forth through the darkness.
She couldn't decide which symptom of the peacock miraculous's damage was the least intolerable, but this was certainly down there with the worst of what remained.
It had gotten bad lately. Nathalie blamed that on herself; she insisted on being more active. Months of slow recovery had driven her half-mad, and despite the side effects, she didn't regret spending more time on her feet. Being nauseous and light-headed beat wasting away in bed, especially since her cough had mostly vanished anyway, and it had been since September that she's so much as blacked out. Now, at the beginning of December, she was still exhausted, but it was nothing she couldn't live with. Eventually, her body would adjust.
They've all had to do a lot of adjusting lately.
Once the room steadied, she picked herself off the floor and returned to the dining room to collect her tablet and phone. Adrien had gone, presumably back to his computer to make the few and small revisions she'd suggested. At least he would come to her for another proof-read once he'd finished, and she could devote proper attention to his work, but hopefully this would be at her time when her head was on straighter. Despite the worst of her discomfort having passed, she still felt, for lack of a better word, weird. Checking her devices, she found she'd acquired a couple email notifications over the last several minutes, and it was still early enough in the evening that she should reply, but the nausea had drained her.
Nonetheless, she brought her belongings back to the atelier and went to her desktop computer to draft her responses. From across the room, Gabriel greeted her with a nod, and a smile beamed through the gloom of Nathalie's mood.
"How did it go with Adrien?" he asked.
She sat down and pulled herself up to her screen. "Not exceedingly well."
He raised an eyebrow. "Was it not his best work?"
"No, the work was fine. I assume."
"Just fine?"
"I didn't help him as much as I should." She opened the first email. "I was feeling - off."
His face changed. "Have you eaten today?"
A pained expression answered him.
"Nathalie…"
"I wouldn't have kept it down anyway," she defends herself, shrinking a little behind her screen. "I'm okay. It'll get better."
"It's gotten worse."
"That's temporary, I'm sure," she insisted. "Nothing I can't handle, Gabriel."
"This is why I wanted you to take some more time off for your recovery."
"I know you did, and I assure you, I am better off this way. At least I don't feel like I'm losing my mind. Mostly, anyway," she attempts to joke.
"You'll eat dinner tonight, won't you?"
"We'll see."
"Nathalie, all day -"
"Can we change the subject?" The thought of food was making her feel sick all over again, and Gabriel must have seen it in her face because he fell silent. Nathalie looked away and churned out a couple sentences of her first email response, waiting for her stomach to settle.
He eventually spoke again. "Adrien asked me earlier if he could go to a midnight showing of a film with his friends."
This grabbed her attention back. "Really?"
"I told him I don't feel comfortable with him staying out until two in the morning or later," he went on. "Apparently one of the kid's adult siblings was going to join them and make sure they get home safe, but 2 AM is 2 AM."
"I'm surprised he even asked," Nathale remarked.
"So was I," he admitted. "I wasn't mad, just - stunned. I found it bold of him. He'd have never asked such a thing just a few months ago."
"Things have changed," she murmured.
"Yes." Gabriel adjusted his glasses. "And he's gotten used to it."
Nathalie, feeling a little bold herself, replied just loud enough for him to hear her, "So have I."
When she dared to look over, slowly raising her eyes from her keyboard to his face across the room, she found him staring back at her with a smile - faint, barely there, but enhanced by the blue-gray glimmer plain in his eyes.
"Yes," he said, "It's...it's good."
Her heart fluttered, and she had to roll her eyes at herself. Really, this floatiness always made her feel like a teenager. She should have grown accustomed to it by now, but on the other hand, getting too comfortable might have been dangerous. It had only been since the late summer that she and Gabriel had entered into new territory, not to mention against all intention. If she admitted it to herself - which she's been far more inclined to do lately - these last months had been...nice. Really nice. Well over a year of their lives was spent fighting the anchor that threatened to pull them all under the rough surface, tangling them up in the weight of chains. That weight was gone. It was gone for now, and Nathalie hoped - though she knew she was not as naive as this - that now would last a long time.
"Well," she said, trying to turn back to her writing, "Was Adrien upset that you said no?"
"He understood. He has other means of enjoying a safer Paris."
She typed out another sentence, then briefly flicked her eyes his way. "I'm glad, by the way, that you've been letting him spend more time with his friends."
Gabriel looked down at his work. "He's with them more often than I would prefer."
"It's good for him."
Stubborn as ever, he responded with a grunt.
"I'm sure he's very grateful, Gabriel," she added.
"I suppose I can't convince him it isn't safe when there's been no akuma attacks since the summer," he grumbled.
It's for the best. Nathalie bit back the comment. Even though she would have only meant it as reassurance that this was beneficial for Adrien, there was all too high of a chance Gabriel would take it differently. For the most part, they avoided talking about their super villain identities. Maybe out of guilt. When Gabriel came to her in August and told her he would be temporarily suspending his pursuit of the ladybug and cat miraculous, neither of them anticipated the hiatus would last this long. She'd tried to talk him out of it; he only needed encouragement, she assumed, but it was clear soon enough that this was a decision he'd mulled over for quite some time.
"You don't understand, Nathalie. I need a break," he told her, sitting on the edge of her bed. He faced her window, and the pale light of a dreary afternoon wafted between the curtains to whiten his weary countenance, reflect off the surface of dim, tired gaze looking at nothing in particular. "Using two miraculous, it's taking up a lot of energy, energy I need to devote to the other facets of my life, not the least of which is to avoid collapsing from exhaustion before I have the chance to bring her back."
Nathalie, still confined to bed at the time, had leaned forward off the headboard, and placed a hand on his shoulder. She was too stunned to speak.
"It'll be best to take a step back, recuperate and think things through," he went on explaining, that aimless gaze shifting to glance at her soft touch. "Once I've had some time off, I'll come back stronger. I'm not getting anywhere like this."
Voice in her throat, Nathalie muttered, "I think that's a good idea."
"I - I don't know. My mind has been in such a fog lately."
"This will help."
"I'm doing it for you too," he finally said and took her hand, surprising her. "You've put so much of your own time into studying that grimoire and keeping things afloat while I've thrown myself into this, and I want you to focus on your recovery for now." Squeezing her fingers, he'd asked, "Will you do that for me?"
"Yes," she whispered, and it was easy to agree, because when he said "a break", she thought he'd meant two or three weeks at most. But then a month passed, and there was no sign of things returning to normal. Within that month, Nathalie had already started to notice considerable progress on her recovery, slowly beginning to feel more like herself again. Within that month, Gabriel seemed happier, or at least more energized, more expressive. Within that month, they'd formed a habit. A habit that probably should be considered bad for the both of them, but Nathalie couldn't think of it like that. She liked sleeping next to him. She liked a lot about him.
Looking back on it now, she wasn't even sure how it happened. One moment they were talking, the next they were doing something else, and then they were doing that something else more than once over the course of that first month and then that first month bled into three and a half. The part of Nathalie that knew better must have screamed at her that she was making a mistake, but it must not have been screaming loud enough. And in all the time, the word miraculous had come up only enough times to count on her fingers.
If it came up any more, then maybe she'd hear that sensible side of herself a little more clearly. And surely, he would hear his own.
Now, Nathalie tried to shake off her nerves. The words "akuma attack" quickened the pace of her heart, for, despite all she'd already given up for that same cause, her time and her health and very nearly her life, she feared hearing him say it again. It was selfish and stupid, and she knew that, but after months, she had to wonder if it wasn't really for the best after all, if Gabriel seemed so much brighter and Adrien so much freer for any other reason.
She swallowed her thoughts and steadied her hands. "Adrien should take advantage of that while he can," she said lightly, and went on drafting her emails.
The evening elapsed. Nathalie sent her responses, and an hour later, when dinner had been prepared, she submitted to Gabriel's insistence that she eat something. They'd begun taking their meals in the dining room more regularly at the same time Adrien was scheduled to eat, which was one of Nathalie's favorite developments since the end of the summer. Conversation still tended to be scarce, and when present, largely one-sided on Adrien's part, but the boy always seemed thrilled to have the chance to speak to his father. His enthusiasm made Nathalie smile behind her water glass.
She spent most of the meal listening to him talk about the science exam he took that morning, nudging the food around the plate with her fork, wanting none of it at all. And then Adrien's anecdotes faded out beneath the noise in her head, because she was reaching the point where justifying this strangeness demanded the consideration of questions that opened like a chasm beneath her. She loomed over the edge of that treacherous plunge, the echoes of threatening thoughts reaching her from the bottom.
It could be.
It's possible.
You have to wonder.
But she didn't want to. Already, she shivered with stone cold fear and threw herself back from that precipice. She forced her focus on Adrien. She forced herself to swallow a bite. She forced herself to meet Gabriel's eyes across the table and smile. Because everything was fine.
For the rest of the night, she tried not to let herself alone with her thoughts, beginning tasks she'd planned to save for tomorrow, taking every opportunity for pointless conversation. She watched the news. She read more news. She didn't care at all about what she was consuming, but as long as it kept her head busy, she couldn't complain.
Her hands wouldn't stop shaking.
And late at night, when she was washing her face at the bathroom sink and scrubbing maybe a little too hard, when Gabriel walked up behind her, wrapped her in his arms, and kissed her on the shoulder, she tried to think of him. Only him. And a mess they could still clean up if they wanted to, because that was the only mess she had to worry about, right?
Something was definitely wrong.
Even if Nathalie could excuse the vomiting and faintness with the previous months of similar symptoms, even if she could chalk up her late period to the fact that she'd been irregular since using the peacock miraculous in the first place, neither of those explanations - growing flimsier by the day - could spell out why she'd been feeling so damn weird.
Her body was suddenly this foreign vessel. She felt misshapen and unfamiliar and like she was trapped inside herself. She thought her clothes were tighter, but maybe she was just so uncomfortably wary of her body that she paid twice as much attention to things that had always been the same. She didn't trust her reflection. The longer she looked, the wronger she felt and she was sure she had to be losing her mind.
When she woke up the next morning, earlier than her alarm and still cloaked in the dark, she needed to get up right then and there. She needed to somehow get away from herself. As if she could escape her skin by moving fast enough, Nathalie threw her half of the covers onto Gabriel's side of her bed, where he lulled briefly out of sleep and then back again before he could wonder where she was going so suddenly. Nathalie locked herself in the bathroom. She sat down with her back against the tub, her stomach in a knot, her head in a daze, firing off a million what-ifs she couldn't follow.
What had they done?
Half an hour later, when she heard the chime of her alarm on the other side of the door, she got up and turned on the shower. She wouldn't look at the mirror once she undressed, just step under the water and try not to get swept up in the whirl of her mind. She needed to calm down. She needed a plan.
She needed to know. Avoiding the truth would only work for so long if it was truly what she feared.
After making it through the first eleven agonizing hours of the day, managing to hide her hazy terror from Gabriel and Adrien both, the younger Agreste had a photoshoot after school. She informed the bodyguard that she was making a quick stop to the drug store around the corner to buy some painkillers, and considering Nathalie had suffered for months with chronic pain she couldn't always hide, she knew he would think nothing of it. It was a windy December afternoon, and Nathalie pulled the hood of her jacket around her head as she made her way. The average pedestrian would never recognize her anyway, but she couldn't shake the weight of strangers' eyes. It was no use telling herself it was all in her head.
Her heart raced as she purchased the test. The clerk was silent. Nathalie declined a bag and stuck the test up her jacket sleeve.
The rest of the photoshoot passed at a snail's pace, and Nathalie's head was light as helium.
They came home in time for a late dinner, and Nathalie was grateful Gabriel had already eaten because she didn't think she could face him yet. Adrien was tired and relatively quiet, and if he noticed anything strange about Nathalie, he didn't comment on it.
Later, the minutes she spent waiting for the result ate her alive. Nathalie had never felt less like herself. She spread her hands across the cold tile and took a series of deep, shaking breaths that did nothing to compose her nerves. Her soul jumped halfway out of her body at the sound of the timer, and when it settled back in, she did not know if she had the strength to look. She glanced up at the counter, at the test sitting on the edge, at her fate waiting for her to meet it halfway.
She reached for it, ready for the burn.
Now.
Nathalie looked.
The house was so silent, she could have floated away on a dream.
Eventually, the door she stood before became real to her. Nathalie thought that if she reached for it, it would fold under her touch, like it was made of paper. But then, her head could see it for what it was, and she fastened her fingers around the door handle to feel that it was solid.
Go on, she told herself. The thought pierced through empty white shock. Electricity surged through her body, giving her the strength to push the door open and step through.
Gabriel looked up when she entered. He had a pen in his teeth and a fingertip on his screen and a look on his face that told her nothing at all about what was on his mind. She froze in the doorway.
His eyes flicked down. He was checking the time. Then he took the pen from his mouth and said, "You were gone a while."
She couldn't speak.
"I haven't seen you since you and Adrien came home."
Folding her arms tight across her midsection, Nathalie dropped her head.
"Is everything okay?" he asked, watching her demeanor shift.
"Gabriel," she began hoarsely.
"What's the matter?" That little hitch of worry in his tone struck like a hammer. Nathalie's body went rigid as stone and could have broken apart under any more force. Reality suspended somewhere inside of her. Don't let it out.
She didn't tell him. She wasn't ready. She could barely handle it herself. If everything was about to go wrong, then she needed to be able to face that.
So Nathalie just rubbed her arms, looked him up and down, before she whispered through the quiet room, "Nothing. Sorry."
"Are you sure?" he asked gently.
"It's late." Nathalie sighed. "You have a conference call early in the morning. You should come to bed."
He stared at her for a moment. The concern never faded from his eyes. "Very well," he finally said, and closed out of whatever work he had been doing.
When he walked from his podium to the door, he looked at her face. He peered into her eyes, and with all the power Nathalie had, she tried to wipe them blank.
Then, he set a hand on her back, a touch she always melts to. "Let's go, my dear. I think a good night's rest is what we both need."
She went with him, wishing she could agree.