This is the final update. I know this has been rather short for a multi-chapter fic, but it has been a ton of fun to write. I'm heading back to school soon, so I don't know when I'll be posting something new, but I hope you all enjoyed this! Thanks so much for reading Make sure you leave a review.

Chapter Six

Nathalie didn't show up to work for three days.

The first day was because she couldn't move. Her eyes fluttered open at two o'clock in the afternoon the day after she had failed to end things. Her throat and chest were tight. Her eyes followed the movement of her ceiling fan, and she realized that she was laying on her living room floor, dressed in her turtleneck and slacks with her miraculous still pinned to her chest. Nathalie commanded her limbs to move, but they did nothing more but twitch irregularly.

Duusu was perched on the bookshelf, watching her with round magenta eyes. Nathalie tried to call to her, but her voice caught in her throat, and it wouldn't give. She laid there for nearly an hour, fighting the unrelenting pull of sleep. When she finally had the strength to move, she didn't dare stand up. Duusu followed her silently as she crawled to her room and climbed up onto the bed. It seemed that as soon as her head hit the pillow, she lurched right back into darkness.

She woke again at midnight, gasping for air. Duusu flew into the room with a water bottle from the fridge, which Nathalie took down in a single breath. She hadn't remembered what scared her awake, but she lunged to turn the light on and sat with her knees pulled up to her chest.

When she had calmed down, she looked at Duusu suddenly. "The Agrestes!" she exclaimed, voice hoarse.

"Hawkmoth called you this morning," her kwami murmured.

"You mean Gabriel."

"Yes?" Duusu shook her head, dismissing the matter as unimportant. "He wanted to know where you were."

Nathalie started fishing for her phone in her bedsheets. "I have to call him back."

"It's fine, I answered."

She paused and gazed at Duusu dumbly. "You answered Gabriel?"

"Someone had to." Duusu sat on Nathalie's knee. "I said you were sick. But don't worry, I didn't tell him what you did last night. He said you could have the day off." Her eyes flashed guiltily. "I'm sorry, Nathalie."

She cocked her head. "What for?"

"For making you this way."

Nathalie stared, unsure as to how to reply. After a moment, she let her head fall back against the headboard. Duusu took this as an end to their conversation and floated off to take her place on Nathalie's dresser. They both looked out the window quietly, counting the city lights, pretending not to feel broken.

The next two days were because Nathalie didn't know how to face them. She wasn't sure if she had expected her plan to actually work, but the dread that clawed at her stomach told her that either way, she hadn't intended to ever see them again. If she had succeeded, she'd be gone, nothing but a memory, just another missing woman who didn't matter nearly as much as the one the world had gained back in her place. If she had failed, she expected her identity to be compromised as a result, but she wasn't met with the suggestion that anybody knew who Mayura was.

How was she supposed to go back to a partner who couldn't possibly know why she had so suddenly changed her mind about everything? How could she choose between giving up with no explanation and utterly shattering his world apart with the revelation of Chat Noir's identity? How could that end well? What would that actually solve? Gabriel was already taking a huge risk regarding his son anyway, and realizing that ultimately failed to keep him from the powers of his miraculous. Nathalie had no reason to believe that telling him who his son really was would fix anything. It could easily set him on an even darker path.

How was she to face Adrien, who she betrayed by taking advantage of his trust and stealing his miraculous? How could she let his father continue to pursue him unknowingly while she watched it happen and pretended to be as dumb as the rest of Paris? How could she tell him the truth, letting what little chance he had of seeing his mother again slip away, letting the hope he had in Gabriel, his only remaining parent, be tainted forever? Being honest with Adrien would clear away the smoke of deception and betrayal, while simultaneously tearing apart Adrien and Gabriel for good, without Emilie between them to keep them tethered by a thread.

Nathalie kept the peacock miraculous on for those two days. She rarely spoke to Duusu, but just to have her there, hovering by in the apartment while Nathalie thought herself mad was all the comfort she could soak up. Duusu knew exactly how to help Nathalie when she started coughing or when her head turned to static. She had to wonder if she had treated Emilie this same way leading up to the day she fell asleep for good.

At some point, Nathalie asked Duusu, "Do you have any idea how to fix this?"

The kwami looked at her empathetically. "I don't even know what's wrong."

Nathalie's memory was like a thundercloud. Beyond her awareness that she had failed, the details of that harrowing night were a thick haze of darkness rolling through her head. Then, two charges married, and a flash of memory shot back into place. The serpent-like sentimonster and maze of emotions she navigated to find it; her clumsy bounds from rooftop to rooftop while she fooled herself into thinking that using the black cat miraculous was a good idea; Ladybug's steadfast refusal to give in; the pulses of her emotions as she watched Mayura cough the life out of her body.

"Do you think Ladybug knows there's something wrong with us?" Nathalie asked Duusu gingerly, her voice hardly louder than a breath. The only response she received was a round, unsettled gaze.

The heroine's words came like hailfall breaking through the sound of rain. "Did you really think you could do this?" Nathalie found herself sitting fixed as stone, a blanket wrapped around her legs and a cup of tea going cold in her hands as she stared at the opposite wall. Ladybug may as well have been standing there, voice cutting through the white noise, "You'd have been better off if you just left everything as it was.'

Ladybug was behind her too, a wind at her back, hands falling over hunched shoulders, a whisper in her ear telling her, "It's not too late to be a good person."

Nathalie's tea spilled over her hands as she leaned forward and slammed her cup on the coffee table. "So, which is it then?" she snarled, tears stinging at the corners of her eyes.

Duusu dropped a dishtowel over the spill and flew away with her head down.

Adrien texted Nathalie a few times over the days she was absent, clearly not knowing what to think of her being gone for so long. Nathalie herself didn't even remember the last time she had a day off. She tried to answer him as best she could, but most of the time, she didn't have the words to spare.

On Friday, he texted her, Ladybug told me something weird.

Her heart stopped when she read it, and she dropped her phone like it was on fire. Duusu jumped as it hit the countertop with a resounding slap.

"What if he knows?" she asked her kwami. "What do I say?"

Duusu rushed over to read the text herself. "Ask him what she said. Play dumb."

Nathalie's fingers quivered as she typed her reply. What would that be?

She chewed on her fingernails as she watched the bubbles on her screen bounce up and down. An eternity passed before he wrote, She said she saw Mayura Tuesday night. Apparently she had my you-know-what.

"Shit, Duusu," Nathalie cursed. She took a moment to calm down. Play dumb. She typed, Is it gone?

No. I still have it. I think it must have been a fake. She was trying to get Ladybug to give her the earrings. A pause, and then a second message. One time we fooled a villain with fake miraculous. She probably did the same thing. LB never got close enough to make sure.

Well, since you still have it, I guess that must have been a false alarm, Nathalie replied, sick with herself.

Yeah I guess. Another pause. I really shouldn't be telling u this stuff. The less u know the better.

Nathalie set her phone down, breathing out a sigh of relief. She'd surely be done for if she hadn't managed to return his miraculous.

Her phone vibrated again. I just miss you, Adrien had added. She read it a dozen times.

"Nathalie," Duusu cooed. "Don't cry."

She wiped her eyes and set her phone face down. Perhaps, done for would feel better than this.

On Saturday, Nathalie returned to the Agreste mansion. She knew that Adrien had a photoshoot lasting from ten in the morning to three, so she arrived while he was gone. It would not have done any good to stay away much longer. The best she could do for everybody was what she had always done best, imitate normalcy and encourage others to do the same.

Gabriel, she found, wasn't quite ready for her to fall back into that old role. He waited for her in the foyer, his hands held neatly behind his back. "Did you bring back the peacock miraculous?"

She shut the front door and kept her back to him. "It's in my pocket. Sir, if you don't mind, I'd like to hold on to it permanently."

"Are you sure taking a miraculous out of this mansion is a good idea?" he asked.

Her head turned to the side, and she saw him out of the corner of her eye. "I found over the last few days that I quite enjoy Duusu's company." At the mention of her kwami's name, she thought she saw Nooroo's head bob out from behind Gabriel's shoulder, but he disappeared quickly.

Gabriel approached her, stark as ever in his movement, but when he set his hand on her shoulder, his touch was delicate, like he feared she would break. "What did you do?" he whispered.

"Something foolish, that would have never worked." She smiled bitterly. "So, you know, the usual."

This didn't ruffle him like she thought it might. He pressed on her shoulder to prompt her to turn around completely. "It must have been pretty drastic if you didn't want me to know about it."

"No more drastic than using the peacock miraculous the first time." Her bun was messy that day; she tucked a piece of loose hair behind her ear and placed a hand over the one still holding her shoulder gently. She realized how close they were. "You remember what I said to you last weekend. Seeing Adrien in that kind of danger just..." She closed her eyes tightly, like they had been stung by something potent in the air. "I guess it just made me see things a little differently. I'm getting tired, Gabriel."

"I understand. You're giving up so much for this." He paused, looking at her admirably. "Have I ever told you how much that means to me?"

Her heart fluttered. "Yes. Perhaps a few times."

"A few isn't enough." He released her and stepped away, his hands returning to their position behind his back.

"You don't owe me anything," Nathalie told him. "This was a choice I made willingly."

He looked as though he was about to argue, then decided against it and asked her, his voice a little strained, "So, what do you want to do?"

Nathalie reached into her pocket, her fist closing around her miraculous. She nearly shuddered to think of the things she had done with it a few nights ago, and the things it had done to her in return. She remembered everything now: the spectrum of emotions she drank in as she sat on the floor of her living room, ready to strike as a bird-of-prey in the sky, and then remembered the emotions she felt while wearing it. The hysterical euphoria rushing in her blood like cold fire. The power that electrified her, streaming out of her hands, out of her miraculous, uncontrolled, dangerous, wonderful. The white-hot anger at Ladybug's integrity, then at herself for having so little in comparison. The fear and the desperation and the remorse and the venom that could subdue all of that. The spotty vision at the end of the night. The sound of coughing, of thorns in her lungs and throat. The feeling of a metal rod being driven through her skull every time she took the brooch off.

She knew the answer, but she didn't know how to say it out loud without hating herself. Nathalie gazed up at Gabriel, who was watching her patiently, with more raw compassion in his eyes that she had ever seen this clearly. How could she think that pity was all that he felt for her, as safe and as sensible as it was to believe? She asked him, "Do you think you're a bad person?"

To her surprise, he smiled. It was a small and sad smile, but it was there, and it warmed her just enough to let herself relax. "I see what I'm doing, Nathalie. I know I am. But it's temporary. A bad person today doesn't have to be a bad person forever. If I could just have her back..." He trailed off, closing his eyes.

"How do you live with yourself in the meantime?" she asked quietly, stepping closer, trying not to lose him to a spiral of grief.

He opened his eyes again. "Hope."

They watched each other, two pairs of blue eyes waiting for the other to falter in its sincerity. Neither of them did. Gabriel wrapped his arms around Nathalie's shoulders. She closed her eyes and yielded to the embrace, pressing her face into his chest. She listened to his heart beat, steady, comforting. It made her hold on tighter.

"Everything is going to be fine," he murmured.

She knew it wasn't. But in that moment, she came very close to believing him.

Nathalie was waiting for Adrien when he came home from his photoshoot. The excitement in his bright green eyes sent a stab of guilt through her chest, but she ignored it and accepted his hug. He immediately started telling her about the last three days she had missed, that he had a math exam on Thursday that he aced, and that the night before, he visited Marinette at her family's patisserie and agreed to go on another "date" sometime soon. Nathalie even managed to joke that she hopefully wouldn't be expected to tag along on this one.

He was on his way to his room when she took him by the arm. "Adrien, before you go…"

"Yes, Nathalie?" He beamed at her from a few steps above. Nathalie felt small beneath him.

"I'm sorry," she said, blinking at him somberly.

His smile was polite and puzzled. "For what?"

"For not seeing how brave and strong you always were." She tightened her grip on his arm, eyebrows pinching together as she tried to keep herself from breaking. "I…I just never knew. I never considered it, not for a moment. I've been responsible for you since you were so young, and I guess I just always saw you as someone that needs to be protected, but that's not who you are at all. I know your father and I don't…don't treat you like a hero…" She tried to smile, feeling the corners of her lips twitch. "But you're doing incredible things, Adrien."

The glint in his eyes was brighter than a star. Nathalie could have crumbled at seeing how touched he was. "I'm still the same kid you've always known." He set his hand over hers. "I really meant it when I said I didn't know what I'd do without you. I may wear the mask, but you're the real hero, Nathalie."

He moved to continue up the stairs, but she didn't let him go. She stared down at her own stone-like grip on his forearm, as though her hand wasn't listening to her mind's command to release him.

"Nathalie?"

Her gaze snapped up to his face. "I have to tell you something."

He appeared concerned, though not apprehensive. Adrien nodded his head and coaxed her gently, "Okay, what is it?"

Nathalie's mouth dropped open, beginning to form the shape of words, but only a weak breath escaped her. That look he was giving her, that earnest, well-meaning, compassionate look that shone from his eyes like light reflecting off the surfaces of emeralds – the look hiding behind the eyelids of his mother waiting for her promised rescue in the butterfly sanctuary – stole her voice away. She didn't deserve that look. She wished for a second that he hated her. Ladybug stood on the stair landing, glowering between the both of them, reminding her, "Chat Noir is less forgiving than I am."

Then she let him go and shook away her wish. She never wanted to know if Ladybug was right.

The words she had been trying to force out of her mouth died in an invisible puff of smoke. Her head hung in defeat and she backed down one step. Adrien stared at her from above, quiet, uncertain, hand paused in the air as though he had tried to reach for her as she distanced herself.

"You're a better person than I am," she finally told him, her voice sounding as though it kept getting caught on something deep in her chest. "I'm not a hero. I'm just doing my job, and I'm…I'm so sorry if I have ever hurt you by it. I know I have. I know I will."

Adrien looked like he didn't know how to respond. She didn't want him to. Nathalie adjusted her blazer and descended the remaining stairs, clearing her throat so as to thwart any attempt of his to reassure her. A flip switched in her head; the tightness in her facial muscles relaxed and she turned back to him with her familiar neutral expression. Her next words were intensely clinical:

"Your father wants you spend some time on the piano. Your plans last weekend had interfered with your practice."

Immediately he deflated. For a second or two, his eyes searched for any semblance of the vulnerable woman who had just been speaking to him, and Nathalie merely tilted her chin up when she saw he failed to find her. He started back up the stairs. "Yes, of course," he mumbled. But he stopped bravely at his bedroom door and said to her, "I mean it, Nathalie."

The door had closed, and she felt half-relieved at her failure. Nathalie had never seen herself as someone that Adrien needed. She was only ever attempting to fill space suited for Gabriel and Emilie exclusively, and even then she resisted their molds out of fear of discovering just how misshapen she was for them. But Adrien didn't seem to mind. She wondered if she had been just as deaf to his affection as Gabriel had been all this time. Perhaps, her sudden disappearance would have done more harm than good –

But no, that wasn't right either. She was audacious to consider that. His mother would have been back in her place, and she could never fail him the way Nathalie had. She saw her reflection in the sheen of the marble floors. The woman looking back at her was a supervillain to the all of Paris, mad and evil and bent on unleashing chaos unto them all. She was despicable, selfish –

But she was a hero to Adrien, and she asked herself if that could be enough, just for now.

Ladybug knelt before her, looking between Nathalie and her reflection. "It's not too late to be a good person." Her words crashed into each other as though they were all saying the same thing. "Maybe you should just leave that to me - You'd have been better off if you left everything as it was."

Nathalie gazed at her, a smile tugging at her lips, trying to split through her solemn face. Maybe Ladybug was right – she glanced back at Adrien's door as he took to his piano – how could she possibly give this up? It was everything she had.

The next couple days passed peacefully. Nathalie came close to letting herself be normal, but every now and then her head would start pounding, or she would start coughing, or Duusu would stare at her for just a little too long and send a chill into her bones that she could only stop by closing her eyes, but it was as near to regular as she could get. It was enough for Adrien, and enough for Gabriel, who worked across the room in his same old frenzy. Then, they would meet eyes, and the ghosts of smiles would appear on their faces while sadness and fear and hope gleamed in their ocean-colored irises.

But on Monday, peace came to a grinding halt. Gabriel stiffened at an alert by his miraculous, and his gaze drifted from Emilie's portrait to Nathalie and back again. Nathalie set her tablet down sharply and linked her fingers.

He looked at her. "Will you be coming?"

She countered, "Will you be needing me?"

"It's up to you."

Dutifully, Nathalie nodded her head.

The problem with all of this was, she told herself as she and Gabriel traveled to the lair with Nooroo and Duusu hovering wearily over their shoulders, that she had spent several excruciating days wondering madly about the right thing to do. As though she had ever really cared. Nothing would have changed her mind had she not seen Chat Noir take Adrien's place in a brilliant, damning flash of green light. Had that man not seen him disappear into the building to transform, Nathalie would still be as blind as remorseless as ever, continuing to deny herself the thought that what she was doing was wrong enough to question.

Her heart drummed in her chest. Gabriel glanced down, noticing her distress. She looked forward, trying to ignore it.

It doesn't matter, she repeated, like a mantra written to set her at ease. It doesn't matter that Nathalie was Mayura, or that Gabriel was Hawkmoth, and that that made them super villains.

Adrien was Chat Noir.

That was the only thing that stopped her.

She and Gabriel were a pair bound by ten thousand promises, to themselves and to each other. All of his vowed to bring back Emilie; all of hers swore to help him, at the cost of her own life, whether he knew it or not. She had made the choice to don the peacock miraculous and send the remainder of her days into a slow, steep, and painful descent. Likewise, Adrien had made the choice to be a hero, to pick up the pieces they scattered across Paris in their mission to remain true to their word, even if they had to change reality to do it. Nathalie had already hurt a million people who were all faceless to her, and Mayura enjoyed doing it. Adrien had been the only one that counted, but he was stronger than all of them.

As Hawkmoth appeared before her in a cloud of bright white butterflies, Nathalie remembered every roadblock they had ever crashed into, only to take a couple steps back from the wreckage and keep moving through a labyrinth of walls they failed to see. His devotion was stupid and destructive and amazing, because it couldn't be challenged. One day his eyes would open, and it would be for all the damage he caused. That day had yet to come, but their sides were chosen. The war was still only beginning. Whatever became of her and Gabriel would be exactly what they deserved.

Her heart ached for Adrien in the meantime, but he was the superhero. He was better than both of them. That alone was going to help her sleep at night.

Nathalie hoped to live long enough to see it all through to the end.

She hoped she might be forgiven.

Her hand caressed the brooch on her turtleneck. Even it was less broken than the heart it was pinned over. As she shouted into the open room, she relinquished her mind to her miraculous, let it be ripped apart and snuffed under the weight of the power taking hold. If Nathalie couldn't bear this anymore, then Mayura would take it up, fight for a way out, and assure the woman dying inside of her that this would all be over soon.

Hawkmoth flinched at the pain in her voice.

"Duusu, transform me!"

Have I said too much?
Did I love too hard?
This steel can't carry me now that things are rough

I used to make mountains
But then they grew bigger than me
And I used to hunger
So what can you offer me?

"Waiting for the Snow" by Of Monsters and Men. I love their new album, Fever Dream.

Okay, so I know I probably shouldn't try to explain myself, but I feel like this ending is possibly quite baffling. Rather bold of me to say I wanted to "play with some plot progression" only to end the story exactly where it started, I know. Y'all were probably expecting something dramatic. That's my bad. Let me just say, I did this for two reasons. The first is that I think it's not an obvious direction for Nathalie to take, to stand back and say, "Well, we'll just see how this goes. We already chose our sides; we have to deal with the consequences" - especially since she's a very proactive character disguised as a reactive character - but I did try to set this up against the assertion that she isn't going to survive this situation anyway. In a twisted fashion, she resigned a long time ago.

But the second reason is because I'm not done yet. I have a confession to make, and it's that I hate endings. I hate The End. I hate saying, That's all. It's over. Move on. I'm just not ready for this story to reach its conclusion. What that means is you can probably expect more of my shenanigans in the future. As long as these characters continue being a disaster, I'm going to continue frolicking in the garbage. It's too fun to quit. That's some good news, at least. I'll probably wait until some new episodes come out. Looking at the synopses for the remainder of Season 3, it looks like we'll be seeing Mayura in action a lot, which means we'll see her interact with Hawkmoth, which breathes life into my soul.

So, hopefully I'll see you soon, though I can't say when that will be.

But until then,

~ Lullaby