Chapter 2

As Marinette walked toward the mansion, she stopped at a nearby bistro and grabbed a quick snack, sitting at a table on the sidewalk and inhaling her food. Tikki admonished her to slow down before she choked but quieted after Marinette slipped her a cookie. She really didn't want a repeat of their earlier meeting with her stomach growling for food. After finishing her quick dinner, she ducked into their restroom to freshen up. Satisfied she didn't appear as if she had run through an obstacle course set out by Hawkmoth (though that's certainly how she felt), she nodded at her reflection and left, quickening her pace to make up for the time lost eating. At five minutes to the hour, she rang the bell, staring up at the mansion in the fading twilight with a faint smile of nostalgia and a large sense of foreboding.

The familiar camera swiveled out, startling her even though she had seen it several times during previous visits to the home.

"Ah, perfect timing," Gabriel's voice filtered through the speaker. "Please come in." The camera retracted and the gate buzzed. Marinette pushed it open and stepped through, walking to the front door with slow, hesitant steps. She knocked and Gabriel immediately answered the door. "This way," he said without anymore introduction. She followed him inside, her footsteps echoing in sharp clicks across the buffed marble in the cavernous foyer. He led her into the side room that she had been in before – but only as Ladybug. She instantly recognized the distinctive brilliant gold portrait of his wife.

She noticed Nathalie's clean desk and dark computer monitor. "Where is everybody?" she asked. Marinette had never seen him without either his assistant or his bodyguard.

"I sent them away for the evening."

Lights illuminated the room with the same brightness as it would be in the daytime, but knowing that no one else was in the house made her feel like the shadows beckoned further and something lurked around the corner. She stifled a shudder.

Chat Noir had once convinced her to walk through an art gallery with him after hours when the place was closed and empty and dark. It was a favor from the curator for purifying the akuma in him, yet despite the thrill of getting to see priceless and beautiful artwork up close, she hated the sensation of walking alone in those halls. She never managed to shake off the constant feeling of unease as they viewed each piece. She never voiced those thoughts to Chat, not wanting to appear silly in front of him. The entire night kept her on edge as her skin prickled with anticipation.

The same prickly sensation settled across her arms right now. Marinette was glad she had worn a light jacket to work that day as it would disguise her current unease.

"I feel this is something best discussed away from prying eyes and ears. Adrien is also out with a friend."

She gulped and a brief wave of regret coursed through her. She hadn't been out with her friends since her internship began. Alya bombarded her with dozens of texts everyday but Marinette couldn't even be bothered to answer more than two or three. She often collapsed onto her bed in exhaustion once arriving home. Her parents believed she was trying to get ahead. Little did they know she was doing everything she could to just scrape by. Maybe Gabriel wanted to fire her in person. Drag out the process. No, she decided. He may be harsh and direct but never needlessly cruel.

She shook herself from her thoughts as he turned to her at last, folding his hands behind his back in his familiar stance. Once again, she resisted the urge to shift under his steady gaze.

"I'll get right to the point. I was like you once," he said. "I, too, had a choice between following my dream or fulfilling my duty." He turned to the portrait, glancing at the picture for a brief moment before pushing it away to reveal a safe. He fiddled with the combination. "I'm sorry to admit that I chose my dream, instead." A hint of sadness touched his voice as he reached inside and pulled out something, turning back to Marinette, who still watched him with confusion. "I do often wonder what things would be like had I not selfishly decided to pursue my own ambitions. Yet today was the first time I was faced with a harder question: did my decision then prevent someone like you from achieving your dream now? Would Hawkmoth even exist if I had been more diligent?"

Was that guilt? It couldn't be. Of all the emotions she had ever seen Gabriel Agreste display as both Marinette and Ladybug, guilt was never one of them.

He opened his hand and Marinette tore her eyes away from his face and look down at his palm. Resting on it was a blue pin in the shape of an open peacock tail. She looked back up to him. "I don't understand," she said in a quiet voice, embarrassed to admit as much in front of her idol. "What is that?"

He released a soft sigh. "Perhaps you should ask your kwami."

Marinette gasped and jerked back as if she had been burned. She blanched and her eyes widened. "Tikki," she whispered, her trembling fingers straying to her earrings. Tikki flew out from her purse the moment she heard her name and zipped around Gabriel, whose gaze flickered to the kwami for a second before focusing his attention back on Marinette. She continued inching toward the door in small, shaky steps. He remained motionless, his hand still outstretched with the pin resting on it, unperturbed by both her panic and the small red kwami floating precariously close to his head.

She drew sharp, erratic breaths. Her eyes darted around the room. Mapping out an escape.

"It's okay, Marinette," Tikki assured her, and Marinette placed her faith in her kwami, dropping her hands from her ears and halting her backwards retreat. Her body remained tensed, coiled like a snake ready to bolt at a moment's notice, but her breathing slowed to normal and her eyes gradually lost the feral look of a caged animal. Tikki continued her inspection of Gabriel, zooming in close to peer into his eyes. He met her scrutiny with calm serenity and continued holding out the pin for her inspection. Tikki zipped down and released her own gasp once her eyes fell upon the object.

"That's a Miraculous," she exclaimed. Marinette's mouth dropped open and she leaned forward to get a closer look despite her reservations. Tikki pressed her tiny face close to it for a moment that seemed to stretch into eternity, then darted back out to float beside Marinette. The little kwami folded her arms and narrowed her eyes at Gabriel, looking quite intimidating despite her diminutive size. "Where did you get Duusu's Miraculous?" she demanded.

"I don't know," Gabriel admitted.

Tikki zipped back into his face so fast Gabriel jolted back. "How did you get the Peacock Miraculous?" she demanded.

"It was left on my desk many years ago. It's mine," Gabriel snapped defensively, "or it was, until I decided to surrender its power."

"Yours?" Marinette blurted out.

"Surrender its power?" Tikki exclaimed at the same time.

Gabriel sat down in one of the seat cushions and motioned for Marinette to do the same. She reluctantly sat, still wary at the developments. Tikki perched upon Marinette's shoulder. Both waited for Gabriel to make the next move.

"Like you," he said to Marinette, "I was given a Miraculous. And like you, eventually its responsibilities conflicted too much with my personal desires. I had a choice." His face tightened.

"You chose to give up the Miraculous," Marinette said.

Gabriel nodded, casting a forlorn look at his palm. "It wasn't a decision I made lightly and I still agonize over it years later." He closed his hand around the pin. "Perhaps if I hadn't, Hawkmoth wouldn't be around now."

"You don't know that," Marinette exclaimed, her fear vanishing for a moment as a surge of Ladybug confidence coursed through her. "You can't hold yourself responsible for the actions of another."

"Marinette is right," Tikki chimed in, "you couldn't know what would have happened. What about your partner?"

"You had a partner?" Marinette asked.

Gabriel's expression grew stricken and he turned away. "Yes, but that's a story for another day."

"Hawkmoth only appeared recently," Marinette said, tilting her head in thought. "What were you doing with an active Miraculous back then?"

"I had a different mission."

"Which was?"

He slipped into silence. Marinette got the impression he was selecting his words very carefully. "Research, mostly." That was it? Marinette opened her mouth to ask another question but Tikki beat her to it.

"Why didn't you give your Miraculous back once you decided not to wield it anymore?" Tikki asked. "A new user would have been chosen."

Gabriel threw the kwami an exasperated look. "I told you, I found this on my desk. I didn't trust anyone else enough to give them this power, so I kept it safely hidden." Marinette and Tikki exchanged a quick glance that wasn't lost on Gabriel. "What is it?" he asked.

Marinette bit her lip, casting her eyes to Tikki for advice. "We know the man who gave you that Miraculous. We could return it to him and have him pass it along to someone else," Marinette said.

He frowned, uncertain with their suggestion.

"There is another answer," Tikki suggested, a sly grin on her face.

Gabriel immediately shook his head. "No."

"Just consider it," she said.

"No," Gabriel repeated, a bit firmer. Marinette opened her mouth to ask what they meant when Gabriel turned to her. "Regardless, I have called you here to offer you a potential solution to the dilemma that mirrored my own years ago." He reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a few papers. He unfolded them to reveal several of her designs. "I see you've been taking inspiration from Hawkmoth's akuma victims."

She flushed. "It's not a homage to him or anything," she muttered.

"I didn't say it was. I have been drawing inspiration from those events as well. Your unexplained absences could be a special project assigned by me." She perked up and for the first time that evening, hope bloomed in her. Could... could she really continue to live both of her lives? She almost missed the rest of the explanation. "- collecting info from akuma attacks. You would be given a title of a field researcher or something similar. Even today's meeting could be explained away by you reporting your findings thus far. What do you say?"

Marinette threw a joyful look to Tikki, who beamed at her in reply with a nod of her head. "Yes!" she cried, jumping to her feet. Tikki floated up beside her. "I can stay and finish my internship?" she asked, raising her fists to her mouth to cover the smile that stretched across her face.

"That's to be expected if you're researching for me," Gabriel said.

She shrieked, scooped Tikki in her hands and whirled around in happiness. "I can do both, Tikki!" she cried.

"See, Marinette, everything is working out for the best," Tikki assured her.

"I'm going to bake you the biggest chocolate chip cookie in the entire world," Marinette promised her kwami.

Tikki giggled. "I couldn't eat it all. I'm not a glutton like Plagg."

That stopped Marinette in her tracks. "Who's Plagg?" she asked.

"He's Chat Noir's kwami," Tikki explained.

"You don't know the identity of your partner?" Gabriel cut in, interrupting the moment between the two.

Marinette turned and shook her head. "No, it's for our own safety. Did you know who your partner was outside of their mask?" she asked.

Something ghosted across Gabriel's face for the briefest of moments before vanishing. "Yes," he said. "Though our dangers weren't nearly as grave as yours are."

"When did you find out about me?" she asked.

The corners of Gabriel's mouth lifted a tiny bit. "Honestly? This afternoon. Your speech struck a chord in me. When you touched your earrings, it all connected."

Marinette frowned and brushed her fingers against her earrings again. "But these don't look anything like my Miraculous when I'm transformed."

Gabriel laughed. A short, refreshing laugh that lightened the lingering tension in the room. His eyes glowed with mirth. "Marinette, I own a Miraculous. Furthermore, I used to own a book containing information on all of the Miraculouses. I've studied them for many years."

Marinette zeroed in on the one detail that stood out among everything he just said. "That was your book?" she blurted, then immediately blushed and clamped a hand over her mouth.

"You know of it?" Now it was Gabriel's turn for surprise.

She flushed. "It's a long story, but Tikki recognized it in someone's possession. It changed hands a few times and was finally discarded in a trash can." At this, Gabriel paled and gasped, squeezing the edge of the cushion. "Don't worry, we retrieved it." He breathed a sigh of obvious relief, relaxing his white-knuckled grip. "It's in safe hands now."

"May I have it back?"

"I don't have it."

"But you said it's safe."

Marinette shifted on the bench. "It is. We gave it to Master Fu to protect."

At the name, Gabriel's eyes widened. "Impossible," he uttered.

"You know Master Fu?"

Gabriel gulped. "It's not the same man. It must be a title handed down. Master Fu was the man who gave me my assignment after I received my Miraculous. But that was many years ago and he was an old man then. He must have passed away by now."

Tikki giggled, her laugh sounding like tinkling bells. Two pairs of eyes swiveled to her. "It's the same man," she assured Gabriel. "He's the one who actually gave you your Miraculous."

He slumped down in shock. His mouth opened and closed several times. "How?" he managed to say at last.

"The power of the Miraculous," Tikki said as if that explained everything. Maybe it did.

Gabriel examined the pin in his hand. "Why didn't he come to claim this back, then?"

Tikki flew in close to him. "Because you are the chosen one," she said simply with a warm smile.

He frowned and closed his fist again. "Not anymore I'm not."

"We could use an extra hand against Hawkmoth," Marinette suggested in a timid voice.

"No." Gabriel drew himself up. "It's not my fight." Tikki stared at him. "I'm too old." Tikki rolled her eyes. "I'll just disappoint everyone." Tikki folded her arms. "I'm not needed," he insisted. "I'm not!" he repeated, but it seemed he was trying to convince himself more than the kwami. He spotted Marinette scribbling in a small notebook. "What are you doing?"

She paused and looked up. "Writing these down," she replied with a cheeky grin that belonged on Ladybug and not the stammering intern. "I was running low on excuses." In that moment, she felt more at ease watching her kwami berate Gabriel like Tikki often chided her and knowing that even the great Gabriel Agreste couldn't stand up to the stubborn kwami. It was as if all of the remaining nervousness flowed out of her as he voiced many of the same fears she herself had felt over the years.

Gabriel glowered at her. "I rejected my Miraculous," he reiterated. "I don't even know if Duusu will accept me again. If she can accept me again."

"She can," Tikki promised him with a confident warmth in her voice that lifted Gabriel's lips into a faint smile for a moment. His shoulders relaxed as if some unseen weight had been lifted.

"All you have to do is want to become that person again," Marinette added in a reassuring tone that echoed her kwami. "Trust me on this, I know a thing or two about rejecting Miraculouses."

"What?" Gabriel blinked. He studied her in a new light. "When did you reject your Miraculous?"

Marinette shook her head. "That's a story for another day," she repeated his words back to him with another grin. "Say, if you helped us take down Hawkmoth, I wouldn't be late for my internship anymore."

"If you're trying to bribe me, you're going to need a better incentive," Gabriel said dryly. "You clearly don't know how to negotiate."

She huffed, throwing him an affronted look. "I'm not trying to bribe you." She thought on it some more. "But if I was, I would offer up some of my pastries as a bargaining chip."

"Trying to sweeten the deal?" A brief look of horror flashed across his face, as if the words slipped from his mouth before could stop them.

Marinette groaned and smacked her forehead with her hand. "Not you, too," she muttered. "I take that back, we don't need your help."

"Good, we agree on something."

Sensing the change of mood, Marinette sobered. "So I'm not fired?" she asked.

"I thought that was obvious this afternoon," he replied.

"Sir, no offense, but with you, nothing is obvious."

He let out a quiet chuckle at her blunt assessment. "You're not fired," he confirmed. "But I will still hold you to the same standards as the other interns, tardiness excluded. I expect your work to reflect as such."

Marinette nodded. "I've been staying late to finish my assignments most nights."

"Yes, your coworkers have told me as much and from my perusal of your designs, I see that my concerns are unfounded. However," he paused, examining her with a frown, "you've been neglecting your health."

"No, I haven't," she insisted. "I'm fine!"

"You look like you haven't gotten a good night's sleep in months."

"One month, actually," she corrected. "That's when the internship began."

"And if this afternoon is any indication, you skip meals as well," he continued. "Have you eaten anything at all today?"

"I grabbed some food on the way over here," Marinette said brightly.

Gabriel rubbed a hand over his forehead. "I hate to imagine what your parents think." Marinette released a sheepish giggle and Gabriel's scrutinizing gaze sharpened. "Do they even know?"

"Well," Marinette drew out the word, "they don't know I'm Ladybug, so obviously they don't know I skip lunch sometimes. And they just think that I stay late to get ahead."

She trailed off as his frown deepened, clearly not liking her explanation. "This is intended to be a learning internship," he said. "Tough, yet not overwhelming. I've seen what you can manage under pressure and this internship should have been an opportunity for you to thrive and hone your skills."

A shadow of darkness clouded her face. "Tell that to Hawkmoth," she ground out. She straightened with renewed determination. "I mean, I can completely handle this! I can take on both. I do it at school all the time," she attempted to assure him, waving her hands in front of her and plastering a smile upon her face.

"Marinette, stop." At his firm command, she froze, lowering her hands. The smile slid from her face. "Remember, I have been in your position before. I don't wish for you to make the same mistakes as I did. If your workload gets overwhelming, please tell me. I understand that your duties as Ladybug come first and I am willing to make exceptions for that. I would rather have a handful of quality ideas from you than a dozen half-assembled pieces."

She swallowed at his stern admonishments and nodded. "Okay."

Tikki, who had been silently observing the entire time, flew into Gabriel's face and whispered something in his ear, which caused his face to slacken in shock. He cleared his throat and stammered something in reply. This seemed to satisfy Tikki, for she nodded and flew back to Marinette. Gabriel glanced at the clock. "It's growing late."

She stood, taking her cue. "Thank you, Mr. Agreste."

"Marinette," Gabriel stopped her, standing as well, "for the record, Adrien didn't say a word to me about your internship. Do you really have such little faith in your talents that you feel my son would need to speak on your behalf?"

She flushed even as Tikki laughed. "See, Marinette?" the kwami chirped.

"Thanks again, Mr. Agreste."

She vanished through the doors. Gabriel opened his hand and stared at the pin for a long time afterwards, only pulling himself from his deep thoughts once he heard Adrien arrive home. He stood and headed to the safe. He stopped before reaching it and glanced back down at the Miraculous in his hand.

"Father?" Adrien's voice filtered into his study.

With a deep breath, Gabriel turned on his heels, stuck the pin in his pocket and walked out to greet his son.

The End

Author's Note: I can't stop writing Gabriel Agreste as a good guy! I love his character so much and feel he has so much room for growth. Thank you to everyone for reading, reviewing, and supporting this story!

A special congratulations to danielmletchford2 for correctly guessing the Peacock Miraculous as what Gabriel wanted to show Marinette.