Wow! I'm finishing this story?
I really wanted to write a final chapter with Hawk Moth's point of view, since he is sort of the main antagonist of the show. So here's my take on that~

I'm taking a number of creative liberties (I think Hawk Moth was severely underdeveloped in the show, so I'm adding a lot of my own ideas here), so you might wanna dip out if you're not into that.

5: Identity

There is a small, glass room beneath the floors of my otherwise comely home. The room is dark and empty save for the bitter, fluttering broken wishes of granted unhappiness. They fly out of me on their own, the violent purple power of my heart's desires sunken into them like poison. This room, this dark, frigid, foreboding room, is what I call my mind's eye, for within this chamber I can see all through my pain, reflected off of the glass.

It is my power. I was granted salvation through my suffering. My loss bequeathed me a gift, and my gift is to watch the rest of the world. To use my ever-reaching powers and make it suffer as I do every aching day of my ever lengthening lifespan, cursed to live with my pain: That is my duty. I feel it, clinging to me, with crooked claws for hands that drag into my soul and fight for purchase on what is no longer my own to control. My empty shell of a body steers me closer, closer, to the point of no return.

I've one lodestar, one reason to drag myself forward in my dreary way of living.

Them.

They remain my salvation, my saviors, my reason not to end it all. Once I have killed them, I am afraid I will lose sight of myself.

But they must die. I remind myself of this every waking moment of my life. If they live, then the world will never truly know my pain, and I will remain alone, unknowable. Unremarkable. I need them to feel my suffering, the tragedy I fought through to be granted with this power.

She creates. He destroys. I am what holds the two together, the motivation that combines them: the desire to create and destroy. With my very hands I can imbue the people of Paris. The toxic butterfly gifts a kiss, and they are under my control, and under my control their possibilities are limitless. They can make; they can unmake. They are their own desire.

Signs of anger work best, as anger distills a lapse in judgment. They will not say no if their emotions are too strong to ignore. And of course my power weakens if I imbue more than one simultaneously. One controlled person per attack ensures my hold will not slip. And I cannot lose my hold.

In the dark of the room, the creatures in the base of my skull whisper these sweet nothings to me, threaten to feed them to me, to force them down my throat. I can be like my prey. I can lose myself in my pain and the power will become strong enough to finally best my adversaries.

But in the darkness, as my head lulls and I lean into the whispers, I remember with stabbing alacrity the only reason these powers exist at all. I remember what I gave up—I remember who I gave up—in order to transform love into strength.

Ladybug and Cat Noir have not a clue to the droplets of blood in their transforming jewelry... not a clue of the morning, thousands of years ago, in which I sacrificed for strength. Had the kwamis not stolen away some of my beloved's powerful blood, there would be no adversary. But there always is, isn't there?

I see them, flickering across my glass screen. She leaps, and his hands fall around her, catching her in midair. The monsters raise up against them as their magical weapons fly outwards, entangling the beasts in their own game of war. I sense it slashing against my skin, the Miraculi's attacks, and I grunt as the pain comes rushing like adrenaline through my timeless veins.

The Miraculous match the heart of the user. Ladybug and her charming polka-dot affinity; Noir to his inky black visage and terrible puns. Were they different people, the relics would manifest differently. Even now, as I watch them, I notice the ever so slight changes that have begun to bloom within them: Ladybug's mask has grown shorter, no longer encasing her face in secretive fear. It now stretches across her eyes and obscures her just enough, but I catch the twinkle in her gaze; she is happy.

The pit in my soul releases a long-imprisoned moan.

Beside her, Cat Noir flickers to her aide, his nasty claws stretching out and shredding another butterfly-imbued beast to dissolving ribbons. When another rounds to their unprotected flank, his hand momentarily passes across her shoulder before he surges aside and strikes at the disfigured beast with his staff. They rotate, footsteps in lockstep, perfectly in harmony, one melding into the other. Creation and destruction. They do not harm but fester to one another, blossoming together, moving the world to a better place.

Noir's outfit has not altered, but the smile attached to his face has loosened. It's genuine.

The monsters disappear when I collapse into myself, unable to sustain them any longer. The corrupted butterflies do not flit from the corpses of my puppets but sizzle into their hearts, eating them alive before dissipating themselves.

I cannot take it any longer. I see it, I see the poisonous affliction in their locked gazes, their dance of destruction.

They've fallen in love. In the midst of my havoc, I have created the perfect habitat for a gentle flower's flourish, and that flower is their happiness.

Without me, they never would have met, never would have become superheroes. Without my sacrifice, without my beloved's blood, they never would have shared reason to save the world.

What have I done...