X: All I Hoped Was Impossible
She comes back as if nothing has happened, in the midst of a battle she had longed left behind and yet mockingly has come back to her as if it is her present. Which it is. It is her present, it is her battle now, it is her reality.
Marinette has come back feeling older, wearier, torn apart, but time has made it as if nothing she went through has happened.
As if she hasn't loved and lost Emilie and Gabriel. As if she doesn't know what has happened to Emilie since her disappearance. As if she can't comprehend what has become of the Gabriel she knew, into who he is now.
They had been her heaven and she had fallen so, so hard. She should never have let herself.
She doesn't pay much attention to the battle itself. She focuses on her anger, on her pain –she attacks the akumatized villain with a rage she doesn't outwardly show, but can feel fraught within her small body, unable to cope with the sudden loss. She doesn't even notice Cat Noir arrive to support her or the worried look he sends her.
All she knows is that she really hadn't wanted to come back after all.
Marinette uses her Lucky Charm and finds a way to destroy the akuma, freeing the unfortunate victim from Hawk Moth's –from Gabriel's spell. Before fleeing immediately to preserve her identity, she stands there lost in her memories and in her grief. Cat Noir hesitantly strolls closer, but she looks up and stares at him.
He looks taken aback and she knows every inch of her grief and pain is painted on her face and glaring out from her eyes.
"I need to be left alone," she gasps out.
And she turns from him and finally runs. She runs and runs until she doesn't know where she is, until she's lost, until she's all alone and can collapse to her knees and sob out everything. Everything she's ever felt, all the love she had for her angels, the shock of the realization of Gabriel, the confusion of what had happened...
Marinette doesn't know what to do or where to go now.
Slumped against the earthy grass, all she can do now is let the tears escape her eyes and into the soil, letting the earth absorb her pain.
After how long time passed, she numbly pushes herself up and stumbles to her feet. She heads back home in a daze and heads to her room, where she passes out into a daze and loses herself in memories in the night.
The morning dawns bright and early and she's still not ready.
She doesn't think she'll ever be.
Right now, Marinette feels empty and alone. The two people she'd loved most are gone, one she has no idea what happened to and the other has become this cold, uncaring statue of a man.
...A man that has apparently been her antithesis all along.
What has happened to Gabriel? Where is her beloved quiet but content visionary? This person she once knew is not the same –when she first met him here and when she first met him in the past, it's like the two are two separate, different people and she has no idea when and why that schism happened.
She just knows she's all alone.
"Marinette? It's going to be time for school soon," she hears her mother worriedly call from behind her door.
It's funny how once in the past, she'd wondered why Hawk Moth was doing all this for. Now she ironically, sorrowfully wonders it again, this time with an emptiness and a mocking irony that tells her nothing.
This isn't her Gabriel anymore after all.
Worried, sad sounds escape near her and she sees her sweet Tikki finally appearing before her, looking at her with worry and apprehension.
"Marinette? What's wrong?"
"Everything," she breathes out and it means everything and nothing, and she can't open up about it because the pain is too raw.
"They loved you," Tikki reassures her and she looks at her in shock. Tikki taps her own ears and points to Marinette. "I couldn't leave...but I could see. And I promise that they loved you with all their hearts."
It breaks Marinette down to her core, pulls the sobs out of her throat viciously, and makes her take her heart and soul and try to keep it all from shattering all around her.
Tikki does her best to comfort her and holds onto her head, but Marinette can't hear or feel anything.
~*~
Tikki sits near her head on the pillow, gently rubbing her head, and all Marinette can do is lay there unresponsive to everything and everyone. Her parents have already dropped in and murmured things that are meaningless and mumbles in her ears.
Marinette doesn't go to school that morning. Instead, she lays in bed and lets tears fall until she has nothing left, until she's absolutely empty of tears and feelings –until she's numb and hollow inside. Her heart feels broken and she should've realized her love had been impossible.
But she knew –she knew she'd been happy. She'd been so, so, so happy in the past, with Emilie and Gabriel and even little Adrien. She had grown her own little family, had become part of a whole, and now she is missing parts of her that she hadn't known would become missing until she is here in her 'rightful' place in time.
And she wishes she could scream to everyone, let them know she'd been so happy, let them know of her pain now, let every single thing out of her so that she isn't suffering.
All she had is gone now.
XI: Got Used to Being Someone You Loved
She doesn't know how, but she manages to muster up the energy and willpower to get out of her bed and go to school. Her parents are still worried about her and still don't know what's wrong, but they do their best and try to support her. They even tell her she didn't have to go back to school just yet if she didn't feel like it, but laying in bed makes her remember all the memories, all the feelings, all the pain that she can feel cycle over and over in her.
But the mess of a crowd feels like everyone is converging on her and it gets hard to breathe, almost like she is going to be swallowed up in the loudness, in these people.
These people that weren't her Emilie and Gabriel. Her lively, sweet Emilie and her quietly affectionate Gabriel.
She should never have come here.
"Marinette! Wait up!"
Her breath catches in her throat and it's not in the same way that it used to be when she sees Adrien enthusiastically rush towards her. Once, her breath caught because she was in love with this lovely boy who she used to crush on so hard...Now he's a reminder of what she lost, and he's the godson she never got to raise and adore and take care of...
She gives him a trembling smile that makes him pause and look at her in concern.
"Are you alright?"
And Marinette answers that she's fine and they trek over to where their friends are waiting for them, while she tells herself not to cry.
Not in front of her godson.
~*~
She doesn't know how she got through her classes, how she could focus on any of her work. She doesn't even know if she talked to her friends or what she said. What she does know is that she doesn't know these kids, not anymore. Her heart's too busy tearing itself into pieces still and it doesn't help that Adrien is there with her all the time, sticking by her side and sweetly staying in concern.
She feels out of body.
"Lunch is almost over," Alya pouts and swirls a fry around in the paper container holding ketchup.
It's red, red like the pants Gabriel adorns in honor of Marinette's favorite color.
"I wish they'd give us a longer lunch," Nino moans, slumping over the lunch table.
Marinette looks up at the sun and remembers how Emilie was as bright as it and misses her like the sun has gone dark in her world.
"Well, we can at least be glad school's almost over. Do you want to study over at my house?" Adrien asks them and Marinette's focus sharpens and she looks at her godson breathlessly.
"Is that really okay?" she asks, wanting to go so badly.
"Yeah, I thought your old man didn't like you having friends over?" Nino asks skeptically and she wants to scream at him to be quiet, to not say anything so she can come over and see Gabriel.
To ask him why. To ask him what happened, where was Emilie, how could he do this to Paris –to Marinette?
Most importantly, just to see him.
Adrien shrugged. "I don't think he'll care this time. He seems...distracted."
Marinette almost seems to freeze. Distracted? Why? She wants answers, but mostly she wants the pain gone.
Her godson eats a fry and gets ketchup on his cheek, and it's almost automatic how she absentmindedly uses a napkin to clean it off carefully. It's too late to stop herself when she notices the strange looks from her friends and the embarrassed one from Adrien after what she'd just done.
"Oh," she says quietly. She laughs awkwardly. "There was ketchup on his cheek and it was bugging me."
It isn't because she was so used to cleaning up after baby Adrien affectionately. It really isn't.
(She's his godmother, she's supposed to take care of him.)
~*~
The words are scrawled across the page but seem meaningless to Marinette. She can't concentrate. She doesn't know if she can even breathe.
She remembers this place as clearly as if she had lived in it just yesterday. Which to her, it hadn't been that long since she'd called that mansion home.
There are memories everywhere she looks. If she just turns her head a fraction, she could recall a moment here and there that she treasures, like she remembers that alcove that she had ducked into with Emilie when the blonde had been feeling playful and wanted to avoid the guests that had come to the mansion and had been looking for her. She and Emilie had huddled together, kisses as fresh and sweet as the strawberries they'd had for breakfast that morning...
Gabriel had been the one to find them, looking too amused for his own good and drawing them out and bringing them to his atelier to hide while Natalie had dealt with the guests in their stead. It had been well worth their time though and Marinette almost gets drawn into the memory and forgets her place, only to be prodded by Alya, who looks at her in concern.
She smiles tiredly and realizes this had been a mistake.
The urge to leave overtakes her and she wants to run away, to go back to bed and try to regain her sanity. She wants to be back to how she was before she had ever met and fallen for her beloved angels.
"How are you kids doing?" a familiar voice asks and Natalie is in the living room with them, looking over them with a careful eye.
Marinette chokes back a sob, tries not to be so obvious in holding back tears. She's only thankful it isn't Gabriel who'd entered, because she knew she'd break down. She wouldn't be able to keep herself from holding back from becoming a mess and she'd fall apart.
Adrien answers for them while she keeps quiet, and though everyone chatters a bit, she has nothing to say.
Except maybe for the man that is holed up somewhere in that mansion.
~*~
It's madness maybe, but she excuses herself to the bathroom that Adrien directs her to, with the intention of not going there. She knew her way around that mansion and she knew her destination; she is more than familiar in how to get to Gabriel's atelier.
Steps silent and solemn, Marinette isn't sure what she is going to say to him. She wonders if he remembers her or had he made himself forget through the years? Perhaps she has never really mattered in the long run and he just as easily pushed aside thoughts of her. She doesn't know what has happened, but she knows that he's seen her and doesn't think of her anymore.
Neither as Ladybug or Marinette, his jewel.
Too soon, his door looms over her and she watches it blankly. She still doesn't know what she'd say and she is clueless to how he will react. Did any part of him care to remember her at all?
She opens the door quietly, aware that it is usually unlocked because no one would dare ever enter it –not even his son Adrien. Not unless it had been either her or Emilie, back then when Gabriel was another man and Emilie was there and Marinette was still whole.
When she enters, she sees him sitting by his window, sketchbook on his lap. He's silent and brooding, and it is nothing at all like the Gabriel she remembers. No, the Gabriel she knew personally; this was the Gabriel she knew from before she'd met and loved him as he really was.
At the sounds of the door opening and her footsteps, his head quickly turns towards her and his frown deepens.
"Mademoiselle Dupain-Cheng," he starts disapprovingly, "you should know better than to walk around a house not your own and enter rooms uninvited."
"I'm sorry, G –" his name gets stuck in her throat and she has to remind herself that she can't call him like that, not anymore, "Monsieur Agreste. I just...I just had a question to ask you," she ends quietly.
His frown stays, but he elegantly stands up and puts aside his notebook. "Yes? What is it?" he humors her.
She swallows heavily. "What...what happened to Madame Agreste?" Tell me, please tell me, what happened to our Emilie?
He inhales sharply and watches her with narrowed eyes, but she says nothing and waits patiently (and desperately). His jaw visibly clenches, but then his tenseness melts as he smiles slickly at her.
"Oh, are you curious to know what happened to her?" he asks but she grimaces.
"Not...not curious," she whispers. It's not curiosity, not like that. She needs to know. "I...This place...I'm sorry, Monsieur Agreste, but your home seems so lonely. And I know Adrien misses her a lot," and I know you do too, just like I feel like I don't know how the world hasn't stopped spinning without her.
He pauses and watches her in consideration now.
"Hmm...Would you mind following me then?" he asks and she can't tell what's on his mind, not like she'd used to.
She agrees and they wind up going through secret entrances and tunnels and an underground hideout where she is quick to find Emilie lying in some sort of coffin like she was Snow White. Her breath stops and she stares and she stumbles forward.
"My wife and I...we were unfortunate to get caught up in something we didn't understand," Gabriel starts and she hears about the Miraculouses falling into their hands and Emilie's unfortunate fate at the hands of one of them. He talks about his love for his wife and his desperation to bring her back, and she can't help crying.
He stops and watches her with a strange look on his face.
"I wish she could be back to you and Adrien," and Marinette wants nothing more than to correct everything.
There's a glint in his eyes that she thinks she might understand, and he comes towards her and grasps her shoulder firmly.
"I need all the help I can get, you see," voice half faked in sadness and half not. "Cat Noir and Ladybug have Miraculouses too and I need theirs to bring my wife back," he says persuasively, a hint of anger just hiding under his sorrowed tone. "They are being selfish, keeping theirs to themselves and refusing to help. Won't you agree to help me, Mademoiselle Dupain-Cheng?"
Marinette blinks tears back, knowing what he is doing. She gives him a trembling smile anyway.
"Of course, Monsieur Agreste."
He smiles slowly, triumphantly even. "My, I suppose Adrien does have such good friends indeed. I've been hasty about them after all!"
But she says nothing to that and turns her eyes back to Emilie, crying again while she reaches for Gabriel's hand. She doesn't look at him to know his surprise, his hand slack in hers.
Marinette won't let him akumatize her, but she really will do her best to bring Emilie back, with or without hers and Cat Noir's Miraculouses.
After all, she'd just gotten used to being loved by him and Emilie.
Just one more moment with them was all she asks for, even if their happily ever after didn't include her in it anymore.
XII: Hold On, I Still Want You (come back because I still need you)
She knows what's happened now and she knows it's all her fault, even if Gabriel's tale omits everything of her in it. Everything –from Gabriel's descent into grief and becoming Hawk Moth to Emilie's unresponsive state. If they had never learned of the Miraculouses from her, they would never have gone looking for and gotten ahold of them. And she knows, the missing part of Gabriel's story, is what happens after her disappearance that further led to this end of their small, little family –that she was suddenly just gone and left them behind, and they were left to pick up the pieces.
So Marinette needs to correct this, fix things to what they had been before she had come in to ruin it all.
She visits the Agreste Manor often now, even without Adrien knowing or being there. Gabriel allows it, sees her off to his underground lair where Emilie is kept and where Marinette frequently goes to talk to her and visit –heartbroken, guilt-plagued, and eyes always holding back tears.
"Today was quiet," she tells her softly, watching her princess sleep on. "It is always quiet now in my head, Madame Agreste."
She hates addressing her sun like this so formally, in a way that Emilie would've hated for her to do if she had been awake and aware. Even from the beginning, Emilie had always insisted on Marinette being casual with her.
"One day, you'll wake and hate the quiet too," her lips twitches sadly and she can't help but reach out, hand hesitant before drawing back in sorrow.
"My wife would have agreed with you," Gabriel says, having quietly come up behind her, her inattention missing his presence. "She had always been lively."
"I see," is all she can say, knowing she couldn't tell him 'I know' like she would've and laughed with him about it.
Gabriel continues to watch her with a strange look on his face, and she ignores it because she knows her behavior is odd and that she shouldn't be attached to his wife or be so willing to help or to visit him, her, this place so damn often...
Too many things are off about her, but she cannot stay away.
"That bracelet and your ring," he points out instead and she inwardly winces, since the hand she'd reached out to Emilie had worn those sacred things religiously every day since they'd been given to her, even now that she was back in her time. "May I ask where you'd gotten them? They are very pretty."
She looks down at them and smiles sadly, before looking back at the man she still loved with all her heart.
"The sun and the moon gave them to me once a very beautiful dream before, Monsieur Agreste."
Except now the dream is over and reality is too painful to exist in.
~*~
"I have something for you to see," Gabriel announces to her one day as she is again watching over Emilie, a handful of gardenias to gift their wife with. Gabriel eyes them strangely, but she doesn't say anything about how she knows they're Emilie's favorite. So instead, Gabriel comes closer with a familiar, if old, sketchbook and hands it to her. Her breath hitches. "It's some of my old work. I thought you might appreciate looking through it –Adrien tells me you have an interest in fashion, my work in particular."
"I do," she answers quietly, opening it up and sees various past designs she remembers seeing before, some of which down the line she'd witnessed him making and some of which she'd even helped him with. And then she comes upon the parure and she gets choked up, willing herself not to cry. The edge of the page, old and smudged a bit, says 'For mon bijou, Emilie and I's ciel étoile...'
Gabriel hmms thoughtfully, a bit confused. "I don't, actually, remember this design...Strange...I'm not sure of the inspiration of it either..."
Marinette stays quiet on it. She smiles at him and hopes her eyes aren't glassy.
"It's beautiful," she tells him and then looks back to Emilie, closing his sketchbook and clutching it to her bosom like a lifeline.
Gabriel goes quiet as well.
~*~
In his atelier, her hands touch familiar things. She hopes Gabriel does not notice how she is too comfortable in this room and with his things, and instead watches him at work, for once focused on his actual work and not his activities as Hawk Moth.
"Do you have them still?" she asks suddenly and he stops his work to look at her questioningly. "The Miraculouses?"
He stiffens but she waits him out. Gabriel hesitates but retrieves a box that he opens up to show her the once broken Peacock Miraculous. She looks at it and wishes it had never come near her angels.
"This is the Peacock Miraculous," Gabriel tells her unnecessarily. "It was broken," he says, tone bitter. "Like my wife and I," he strangely vulnerably spits out.
She puts her hand over his and closes the box. She gives him a smile, genuine and whole for once.
"It's not now and you and Emilie are not," she says and she lets slip Emilie's name from her lips.
She wants to think it is on accident, but part of her feels right and that she's allowed herself this balm for the moment.
"It'll be better," she promises and he looks caught off guard before he looks uncertain, and then...and then he looks at her with a strange sense of wonder and hope and like she is his starry sky again.
"I promise," she reiterates.
And he looks like he believes her.
~*~
Marinette is surprised when Gabriel decides to show her the Butterfly Miraculous one day, unpinning his tie (he used to steadfastly insist on correctly and perfectly tying his ties around his neck, so this was strange to see from him) and revealing the Miraculous settled on his shirt, just below his neck. Her breath hitches and her hand has already reached up to touch it, before realizing what she has done. She flinches and retracts her hand as if she'd burned it, but Gabriel surprises her again by catching her wrist and holding her hand to it.
"It helps me sometimes when I don't want to feel," he murmurs, admitting yet another thing so vulnerable to her. "If...if you are feeling things that you do not wish to some days...then when you are here and visiting, you may use it. If you'd like."
She looks at him like she's never seen him before and had never expected such an offer like this from him. But it's here and he's said it, and it's up to Marinette now.
Marinette swallows slowly and finally lets herself cry, knowing he's probably felt every stupid emotion that she'd tried to hide so hard before from him. She can't help but step forward and embrace him.
Gabriel stiffens for a moment, before slowly –hesitantly –his arms move up to embrace her back.
XIII: The World Can't Turn Without You and I Don't Want It To (You'll Be Alright/Don't Leave Me Behind)
She's not sure what else to do to fix this. She wants to but she has no solution. How can she save a broken man and wake up her sweet soleil? She feels helpless and just as lonely as she had been coming back to this strange time, a time that was supposed to be rightly hers.
"Tikki, what do I do to help Emilie?" she asks her companion, her kwami hovering worriedly near her. "What happened to her?"
"She overused the Peacock Miraculous when it was damaged," Tikki gazes sadly back at her. "She slipped into a deep, deep sleep, Marinette."
She sighs and looks out her window at the night sky. "Can she wake up?"
"Yes," Tikki tells her. "The kwami...in the beginning, we could have woken her up and she could have taken the time to rest and recover from the over usage."
Marinette catches Tikki's words though. "You said 'in the beginning'..."
Tikki hesitates. "I don't know if we can now...The Peacock Miraculous kwami, Duusu, was just as deeply in sleep as Emilie. It's also been a long time since Emilie has fallen into that deep sleep, and her body and soul might've become too deeply ingrained into the magical sleep."
Marinette flinches but refuses to leave it there. "There must be a way," she insists and Tikki gives her a helpless look.
But Marinette doesn't give up and will find a way.
Until she does actually find a way.
~*~
She loves Emilie and Gabriel with all of her heart. She does, she really does. And even Adrien, her first love and who became her adoring godson and friend instead, needed and missed his mother.
Marinette just wants her family whole again.
Peering over Emilie, she smiles sadly as she brushes her soft blonde hair back from her face. Emilie is like Snow White or Sleeping Beauty, asleep and just waiting to be woken up by True Love's Kiss or some other sappy notion that makes her want to giggle over, just like she would've with Emilie had the other been awake. Gabriel surely would've played along...at least the Gabriel of before...
Licking her lips anxiously, she rubs the Butterfly Miraculous nestled in between her bosom. She remembers asking Gabriel for it then ("I don't want to feel right now," she tells him and he wordlessly hands it to her, like the Gabriel she knew would've.) and wonders if Adrien would be upset she'd stolen the Cat Miraculous just as she'd quietly taken the Peacock Miraculous without asking.
"Did you know?" she asks Emilie. "The Butterfly Miraculous represents Transmission and the Peacock represents Emotion. All my love for you and Gabriel? I'll use it to power my wish, to power this one thing I can do for my beautiful angels."
She knows, even if she uses the Cat and Ladybug Miraculouses together to activate the Ultimate Miraculous Absolute Power, that any wish she wants (that Gabriel has been trying for) will need an equivalent exchange and that the universe chooses the price.
But the Butterfly Miraculous will directly transmit Emilie's sleep to who Marinette chooses to exchange it with and no one else. And the Peacock Miraculous would use her emotions to power it all because her love for Emilie and Gabriel is everything and she fell from heaven for them once, why not again?
Marinette kisses Emilie's lips just as she activates the Miraculouses. She strangely doesn't transform, but all the kwamis appear and they look too sadly at her, like all of her sadness has transferred to them. The entrance to the basement bursts opened and Gabriel is there in a panic.
"Mademoi –Marinette! What are you doing?!"
But she smiles sorrowfully, tenderly at him. "Take care of our sun, Gabriel." And then she turns back to Emilie and takes her clasped hands into her own, bending over them with eyes closed and placing them against her forehead as if in prayer.
"Wake up, Emilie. You're loved and needed here."
And when she opens her eyes again, she feels the warmth of Gabriel's arms around her and sees beautiful gems for eyes one last time.