Chapter Text
It’s how Adrien fiddles with his ring that had drawn Gabriel’s attention to it back when he’d considered the possibility of Adrien being Chat Noir.
Recently he’s noticed his son doing it again. It’s a bad habit to be forming, a crutch for Adrien’s unease and an obvious tell. Gabriel should shut this right down now.
Only right now, as Adrien’s twisting his ring around requesting to add another classmate to the group at the award ceremony despite the fact Gabriel has oh-so-kindly already invited a bunch of them (to aid him in his attempts to defeat Ladybug and Chat Noir admittedly but Adrien hardly knows that), Gabriel is doing exactly the same thing with his (no, with Emilie’s ) wedding ring.
Though he at least has the sense to do it behind his back. Stand like that enough and people won’t notice when you do it to cover uncertainty. People won’t even think you have uncertainty.
Indeed sometimes he thinks even Emilie hadn’t always noticed. Nathalie does, though she doesn’t mention it Gabriel has noticed the small actions she takes to smooth his path and he thanks his lucky stars he had the sense to hire her, but Nathalie alone knows the worst of him and still holds faith in him somehow.
So.
Adrien should stop doing it. And Adrien shouldn’t need to do it. He’s like Emilie, not like him. Dealing with people and putting on the mask to get what you want from them isn’t difficult for Adrien. The boy does it as easily as breathing just as his mother had. It’s what made them such good models.
Still.
Gabriel does vaguely recall this being an awkward age though generally he just tries to forget his teenagerhood. Adrien’s just as perfect as Emilie had always said he was but given their son has his fits of rebellion he guesses he might have his fits of awkwardness too.
“She can go,” he halts Adrien’s stuttering request. He’s allowed too many of the others to have a good reason to say no and they’re just wasting time he could be plotting in, “providing Nathalie can confirm her previous behaviour is acceptable. Go ask her.”
Adrien straightens up and deploys his most blinding smile, the one he inherited from Emilie in exactness and says, “Of course Father. Thank you. I’ll go ask her.”
Then his son doesn’t quite run on.
Gabriel’s hands still on his ring. There was nothing wrong in Adrien’s reaction per se. He doesn’t know how else he expected Adrien to respond.
Technically Adrien’s reaction was completely correct. It was what he’d want from his son.
Happiness. Gratitude. An Eagerness to please.
And yet he can’t but think that something seems off.
Adrien stands there, every bit as forthright in his opinions as Emilie used to be in hers, blazing with indignation as if he’d not the one who’s just betrayed his family.
“Go to your room,” Gabriel cuts him off icily and thinks that Adrien is lucky that he’s his father and not his grandfather. Gabriel would have been in for a walloping if he’d made a spectacle of himself the way Adrien had today.
The fight drains out of Adrien immediately, and the boy turns to obey.
And that’s normal. That’s what he expects, it’s exactly what he’s trained Adrien to do.
But usually, usually, they’d be something more. A slight stomp to the Adrien’s steps as he goes up stairs, or a tightness of subsumed anger in Adrien’s jaw. Obedience yes, but a sulking sort of obedience.
Not this ready surrender almost as if Adrien was talking his mother who’d always been able to sweeten any annoyance and get Gabriel and Adrien alike to concede.
Gabriel isn’t his wife. He holds to his rules and strictness because that’s the only way he knows how to control people. It works well enough at work. It works less well at home or Adrien wouldn’t be at school, and Nathalie wouldn’t be upstairs confined to her bed, and Emilie wouldn’t be in her endless sleep below.
But right now it seems to be working perfectly.
Something is off here.
He doesn’t know why it matters.
Adrien is doing exactly what Gabriel wants.
It’s what he wanted isn’t it?
Still he finds himself pushing. Denying Adrien’s every request even when there’s no need to, just to see how his son reacts.
Nathalie has started to notice he knows. There’s a slight dissatisfaction in the furrow of her brows whenever the topic of Adrien comes in between them. He finds himself having to distract her by appealing to her cunning with new plans or by busying himself in caring for her (something really quite necessary given her lack of care for herself) which always provokes such a charming confusion in her eyes as she tries to refuse him.
But the idea of admitting what he’s doing to her makes him feel small.
What could he tell her? That he’s concerned Adrien’s being too obedient?
Ridiculous. Especially with how the boy still sneaks out at times. Gabriel had had to shut himself away in the Atelier to scream after he’d found the boy’s phone propped up on his piano playing music and no evidence of Adrien himself after one akuma attack.
To think Adrien hadn’t even taken his phone. He could have been anywhere in Paris and Gabriel would have had no idea. He could have been kidnapped.
Adrien had flinched back at the telling-off he’d given him after that.
Indeed he might grinding Adrien’s wilfulness down but his son still has his flares of revolt. In this at least Adrien’s no perfect filial child. He’s just the boy he’s always known his son to be. Well-behaved but as mulish as his mother when he gets a bee in his bonnet.
So he’s not really sure what’s concerning him and yet something is.
There’s no pattern he can find in when Adrien’s attempts at mutiny crumble and when the boy stands firm even in defeat.
And yet.
And yet.
The sharp edge of his screen digs into his forehead as he wakes up. His head hurts but whether it’s from the dent it’s no doubt left there or just the lack of sleep giving him a headache he’s not sure.
Nathalie’s right. He does need to sleep more.
But there’s never the time. Not with work. Not with Hawk Moth. Not with Nathalie still unable to fully take her place by his side for either.
The world feels fuzzy and hazy as if he hasn’t quite woken up. The moon casts odd shadows around the Atelier making it almost seem like he’s in quite another room. A funhouse mirror version of the place where he spends most of his life.
He smiles at the idea. A world where what, Emilie was alive and he not? Would Adrien be a true rebel there or would he be—
That’s it.
He grips the screen in front of him before his legs can collapse beneath him.
Mindlessly Obedient.
That’s the difference. That’s what he sees flashes of in his son. That’s why he feels so unsettled by it.
He wants Adrien’s obedience but not mindlessly. He wants it to come from the respect due to him as Adrien’s father (he doesn’t dare hope for it to be out of love the way it had been for Adrien’s mother). He wants it to come from Adrien understanding they want the best for him. Not because his son is incapable of aught else.
Anyway the idea is ridiculous. There’s nothing that would cause that in Adrien.
Or not nothing.
But nothing Gabriel’s used.
It’s not like he keeps his son akumatised every day of his life.
The idea is ridiculous.
The idea is ridiculous.
The idea is—
“You or Nathalie will have to tell Mlle. Bustier I can’t work on the group project,” Adrien says, “I understand we can’t have anyone over to the house but she’ll listen to you two more than she would to me.”
Gabriel’s thrown by the sudden change. Adrien had been asking for permission to have two of his classmates to the house to work on some homework, and Gabriel had been thinking how impossible it was, how he couldn’t risk everything by letting two random teenagers in to poke around and think god knows what, and then his son had suddenly done a total 180.
Helpful except-
Gabriel had never said a word out loud.
It was as if Adrien had responded to his thoughts.
Which is impossible.
Isn’t it?
“Talk to Nathalie about how you can work in this project,” he tells Adrien even as the cogs in his mind turn and turn and turn, “I can’t why you can’t collaborate virtually when I do.”
A school project is hardly a multinational business, but honestly Gabriel doesn’t care about that. He cares about how his son is reacting to his thoughts.
Had he been Nathalie then Gabriel would have written it off as just her usual skill in reading him but Adrien doesn't know him the way his assistant does.
So this is.
This is inexplicable.
He releases his hands letting go of his ring.
His ring.
Emilie’s ring.
Gabriel could throw up.
It’s strange transforming with just the Peacock but he can’t dare a distraction when it comes to something this important.
When it comes to Adrien.
But Gabriel’s little practice with reaching out looking for other people’s amoks. Still. He doubts it will matter. He had little practice using a Miraculous at all once upon a time and now he does just fine.
Besides all of this is a coincidence. It has to be.
The alternative-
The alternative is totally mad.
That his (Emilie’s) wedding ring is a sentimonster with the power to control someone.
It’s their wedding bands. The very symbol of their promises to each other. Emilie wouldn’t have mocked their marriage like that.
Besides if she would do that, could compel obedience then all their other experiments and usage of the Butterfly and the Peacock would be pointless.
Anyway he’d have noticed before. It’s on his hand, it’s right there, he would have noticed, so this must be, has to be, nothing.
Only.
As his mind reaches out to the ring on his finger there is something there.
It’s hard to grasp. Oddly slippery to his mind as if it’s coated in some sort of repellent that makes him look away. He seems somehow unable to focus on it.
It’s too bright to look at. Too dark to look at. Too small to pick up. Too large to get his hands around. Every signal he gets back to his brain is the confusion of another sense.
It’s not a sentimonster.
It’s not an amok.
But it’s something.
So just as he had when they were looking for the leads about the missing temple, just as he had when Emilie started to fall ill, he does what he always do and goes to Nathalie.
“I don’t understand,” she says.
“Here,” he says and reaching out and takes the Peacock Miraculous from his chest and hands it to her.
Her eyes go wide and her hands process to take the Miraculous from his is slow, “you’re letting me?”
“It’s fixed isn’t it?” He says more lightly than he feels, “And you’re,”
Her lips quirk up at the side. “Not fixed?”
“No,” he agrees because she’s not better, not yet and that’s why he can’t let her take Mayura’s mantle back up when all her energy should go to her recovery but, “you are getting better. And this can’t hurt you now.”
Her hand closes over the brooch. “Not physically anyway.”
He sighs letting his eyes close, “It’s probably nothing. I’m sure it’s nothing. She always had stories about those rings. It’s probably just that.”
The flash of Mayura’s transformation permeates through his eyelids and he opens them to see Hawk Moth’s devoted ally in front of him.
Despite the circumstances he almost smiles to see her and her does much the same, but then the smile falls off her face, and she grasps for his hand almost squashing it in her grip.
Her panic is contagious and suddenly there’s a lump in his throat, “Mayura?”
She does some complicated motion with her other hand, “it’s, it’s shielded I think, I’ve read of this but I never thought I’d see it, I mean it’s hardly of us to but,”
“Shielded? Shielding what?”
“Gabriel,” she looks up and horror fills her pink eyes, “Gabriel, I think there’s an amok in there.”
“No,” he says, pulling his hand out of hers and standing up away from her on the bed, “No, no they’re can’t be. No.”
He’d strike out to hit the wall as if he could pummel sense back into the world but Nathalie attempts to stand to follow him, and even as Mayura she seems to sway and he turns to catch the only person in his life he’s sure of these days.
He helps her back down but doesn’t release her, and she whispers her detransformation still in his arms.
“It could be anything,” Nathalie says, “we don’t know what Emilie was doing with that ring.”
“No,” he swallows, “you don’t understand. Adrien obeys me with it.”
“Adrien usually does obey you.” She pauses. “Usually.”
Nathalie hasn’t seen the dullness in Adrien’s eyes. The loss of his personality. “Not like this. Not like this.”
Overcome by sudden nausea he lets go of Nathalie to run into her bathroom before he can throw up.
The door to her room creaks open, “Nathalie?”
Gabriel blinks the sleepiness out of his eyes in confusion as to why Adrien is looking for Nathalie in his room.
Ah.
He’s not in his room.
He remembers collapsing against Nathalie and crying until he had no more tears to spend. No more energy to spend apparently if he’d fallen asleep here. Nathalie been crying too he thinks.
Then he remembers why he was crying.
“Father?” Adrien’s voice comes up slightly strangled and when his forces himself to look up his son is gaping at them with embarrassment painting his cheeks red.
Nathalie’s eyes are open too at this stage with a splotchy blush of her own making its way up the her neck to her face.
He sighs, and reaches for the ring, “You’ll forget this Adrien. Go to school.”
The shock melts off his son’s face, “I’ll just go to school.”
Nathalie’s gasp almost isn’t audible, but once Adrien has left she whispers, “you weren’t exaggerating.”
“No,” how he wishes he was, “I wasn’t.”
He doesn’t understand. He tries and tries and tries but he doesn’t and unless he regains Emilie then he never will.
It just doesn’t make sense. Any of it.
Emilie had never mentioned any of this.
And Emilie, she’d, “she was pregnant. I shared a bed with her at night, I saw her in the bathroom she can’t have faked that to me. It’s not possible.”
Nathalie runs her hands through her hair. She’s more dishevelled than he’s ever seen her and he knows he’s no better.
“She might not have she might,”
“What? Are you going to tell me my real son died one day and my wife just what, hid his body somewhere, and replaced him with a magical clone? That’s-“ then he remembers where his wife is, “not as impossible as it should be is it? Oh my god, Nathalie what am I meant to do?”
“Could,” Nathalie’s mouth twists even as her frown heralds the thoughts in her brain, “she have created the sentimonster inside her womb somehow? If he can grow from a baby to a teenager then why not earlier?”
He stares at her, “is that supposed to be better?”
She purses her lips, “It doesn’t include Adrien dying.”
Her concern for his son when he’s more concerned with what his son is stabs him in his chest and he collapses down beside her. “I suppose you’re right. But then,” if Adrien died then Gabriel has a way to revive him even if that means giving up Emilie but if Adrien is a sentimonster, if Adrien has always been a sentimonster then Gabriel has no idea what that means for any of them, “what do we do about it?”
“Well.” Nathalie says. “I suppose that depends.”
“On what?”
Her eyes meet his. “Do you still consider him your son?”
Adrien is perfect.
Emilie had always said that.
Gabriel had believed it.
Adrien is perfect.
The perfect son, the perfect heir, the perfect heir to his brand.
It rings differently now.
It’s easy for a doll to be perfect. Meticulously created to be so by its creator. Only expressing what they want.
But Adrien doesn’t.
Adrien isn’t perfect.
Adrien’s dramatic, and he cares about things Gabriel doesn’t give a fig for. Adrien’s stubborn and it’s the bane of Gabriel's life. Adrien is hardworking and clever but without Nathalie’s tuition he wouldn’t have top-marks in every subject.
Adrien isn’t perfect.
Adrien’s human.
And Adrien’s an Agreste.
“I, that,” Nathalie watches him unceasingly as he struggles, “Adrien is my son.”
Adrien’s the only one he has. And he’s all he has of Emilie and for all he's starting to think he might hate her for this he thinks that might still matter.
Gabriel brings no flower to Emilie’s coffin.
Instead he stands there railing accusations at a woman who can’t defend herself.
Her gentle expression seems to mock him and for the first time he’s hit by how unnatural this all looks with her suspended like that.
He’s almost tempted to go get a hammer and smash through the glass to see if she’s even really there.
To see if this is just another trick she’s played on him.
There’s an infinitesimal relaxation in Nathalie’s shoulders, “then,” she says, “we work out how to protect him.”