#notte writes

"You haven't failed me at all, Confête!" Ladybug rushes to reassure him. "We knew it was a risk when I asked you to take the horse miraculous home, with your... father, and all..." The name hangs heavy in the air; after the revelations of the last week, Felix has hardly dared to breathe at home, terrified of his father turned terrorist more than he'd ever been before. Ladybug had offered him the horse miraculous as a ready means to escape, but Felix, in his infinite confidence that absentee Gabriel would never step foot in his room, left her behind as he spoke to Nathalie in the hall. By the time he returned, she was gone. 

Only a few days later, half-drowned in water until Gabriel had broken her enough to capitalize on such exquisite fear, Kaalki had been akumatized into Kelkie and was newly terrorizing the city, jumping from portal to portal, emerging in a new unrecognizable shape with each new emergence. 

Felix growled. "I should've been more careful. You know it's true." 

"C'mon, cupcake, don't be so glum." Ladybug bumps her shoulder into his, nearly sending him sprawling over the edge of the tower; she grabs his fluffy tails and yanks him back up. She starts the familiar process of untangling her fingers from his curls. "We'll reign in our friend in no time! She won't be able to stirrup trouble for long." 

Felix can't help himself: he laughs. 

On cue, a roar of flame ignites across the city, followed by the flash of another portal. They've lost her again. Every whisper of joviality drops from their grin.

"Let's go, Ladybug." Then the worst happens: Felix feels his throat constrict, his tail and hair and sleeves puff a little puffier. When he opens his mouth again, it's by no will of his own. "Ah-hyuck!! this is no time for hoRSING AROUND, hee-haa!!"

Piinkie Pie has taken over his hero self again, and there is no new low he can sink to. This is the worst possible time for his kwami to possess his body, and for a joke? Now? Ugh. 

Ladybug stares at him. He wishes the neon pink of his suit would hide his blush, but of course his mask leaves his cheeks open for vulnerability. 

Emilie married Gabriel Agreste for the money. 

It’s not a bad thing. He was sweet to her, attentive and kind if a little too coldly distant for her tastes, and Emilie was a model girlfriend-turned-wife in more ways than one: doting, flirtatious without being scandalous, affectionate, the picture perfect face for his up and coming fashion brand. 

Besides, she was 24 years old and hadn’t even had a crush yet, and her sister loved magic so deeply Emilie was worried this mystical “career” would leave Amelie destitute. Gabriel was soft to her whims, and rich enough to support another family. 

Emilie was just being practical. 

Mr. Ramier was anything but. He was wildly passionate about anything and everything he loved, pigeons most of all. He dreamt of flying free, wild rebellion and dogged pursuit in the name of love. He was the best kind of crazy. 

No one ever imagined he’d be crazy in love with a married woman. 

He certainly never imagined she could love him back. 

Emilie had always been practical, that’s all. So when the offer of a warm body came, a man who made her heart patter in her chest and bring to life the flutter of feathers taking flight in freedom as her wings, she fell into bed with him and loved and laughed and lied to keep her marriage safe. She loved Mr. Ramier for every reason she could never love Gabriel Agreste: he loved her back. 

It’s just such a shame that practicality never prevented accidents. It’s such a shame Emilie could see herself loving this bastard baby enough to be impractical enough to keep him. 

It doesn’t matter. Practical can mean anything, as long as it keeps her-- and now, her lover and her child-- safe. Magic, whispered her sister. Magic, she followed. 

Gabriel, ever devoted servant of his wife, follows obediently. 

Half buried in snow, fingers moments away from permanent frostbite, Emilie unearths her first treasure. It’s not half of what she wanted, neither wishes nor creation nor cat, but the butterfly and peacock miraculi wink and shimmer against snow, and the drop of blood that spills when the brooch pricks stands stark red against the fluffy white. She kicks black pebbles over the trodden snow to cover her tracks and grins, triumphant. 

It’s a promise, Emilie whispers. Red for the ladybug, black for the cat she’ll have in her hands. 

Promises are not practical, she remembers six months later. With every experiment on the brooch, Emilie finds herself coughing up blood and bile, black and red and horrible, horrifying. 

It doesn’t matter. Emilie makes do with what she’s got. Gabriel searches harder, goes on longer trips and calls them business, because it’s his business whether she dies, whether she lives to represent his company, or to keep him company. He’s in Tibet when she succeeds, or manages something close to success. He has no idea the baby’s been lost. 

He’s never known it wasn’t his, anyways. 

Gabriel isn’t due back home before the baby comes; there’s a baby in her arms to greet him at the door and she’s made it herself. He praises her new choker, pigeon feather dusted in gold and glitter hanging down past her throat. 

It’s the last time she’ll ever see Mr. Ramier. Emilie is practical, and her love is not. This gift, though, she will cherish for far longer than her own life. 

She’ll cherish it long enough for her son’s. 

Adrien is a perfect boy, a model boy modeled after his cousin and delightful to every sense; he grows in strange spurts and jumps, and Gabriel is too busy to notice. Emilie keeps her boy home, safe and protected and easy to mold. 

It’s not enough. She sends Gabriel pacing the earth for the miraculi she craves, experiments desperately on the one she has until she’s coughing up more than blood: strength, memories, hope. It doesn’t matter. Anything is too cheap a price to pay for her baby boy, for the love she lost by the hand of her own folly. 

When she gives up the last of everything, Adrien turns into a real boy: hard coded to love and grow and... rebel. He finds his own wings as his mother loses hers, and Gabriel goes mad in his grief. 

After all, he’s lost the two people he’s ever known all at once. 

When his empathy butterfly phases into Mr. Ramier, Gabriel is awash in a type of furiously determined love he's only felt twice.

Once from his wife...