#have i officially tagged enough things with personal commentary to ensure that this wont show up in the fandom tags?

[aidanchaser]

Boulangérella: A Miraculous Fairy Tale AU - Chapter Nineteen

Table of Contents Read on Ao3 Prologue

Marinette knew that Kagami needed her, but she could not help but think that Alya needed her more. She had done all she could for Char Noir, and now she had to help her other best friend. Tikki slipped into her apron pocket as she left the fitting room, and Marinette detoured to the palace doors where she had left Nino and Alya. She ran into them just as the guards were escorting them out, and she hurried to stop them.

“Alya! Nino!”

As Alya turned her head, Marinette’s heart flinched.

Marinette could not speak from experience, but she had heard from her parents, Alya, and Nino, who had all experienced Hawk Moth’s curses before, that when the curse was undone, there was a hollow, empty sensation left behind. That did not appear to exist in Alya, whose hazel eyes simmered with molten rage.

Marinette wondered if Hawk Moth could simply offer her Rena Rage’s power once more, and if he did, would Alya even attempt to resist?

“What’s happened?” Marinette asked. “I heard someone say that the throne room collapsed and I came to check on you—”

Alya yanked Marinette into a hug. Though it was bone-crushing, it was neither affectionate nor angry. It felt as desperate as Chat Noir had felt grabbing her hand.

“I’ll tell you everything,” Alya whispered, “but not in front of the palace guards.”

The part of her that was Ladybug, the part of her that needed to protect this city because no one else could, tried to raise a protest. Alya couldn’t tell her everything. No one else was supposed to know Rena Rouge’s identity except Ladybug.

Though Marinette supposed King Gabriel, Nino, and half of the palace guards knew the truth by now.

“I need to finish fitting Princess Kagami and the princes,” Marinette whispered back.

Alya’s lips pressed together in a tight line. Through gritted teeth, she spat, “Ask the princes why the king has taken to stealing from his people.”

“Alya—”

“Ask them.”

And then the guards were pulling them apart and practically dragging Alya and Nino from the palace.

Marinette swallowed down the lump in her throat. She knew her best friend well, and Alya would stop at nothing to get back what she had lost. So Marinette would not stop either.

She was going to beg King Gabriel for the fox pendant back.

No, not beg. That wasn’t the right word.

Demand.

Marinette turned to the nearest guard. “I’d like to speak to King Gabriel.”

The woman looked down at her with a bemused expression. “And I’d like a vacation to the sea for a week. Good luck to the both of us, kid.”

Marinette frowned. She supposed luck really would be her only option.

Despite her anger, she stifled a yawn and, as she began the walk up to Princess Kagami’s rooms, tried to put together a plan. She would have to find King Gabriel as Ladybug, and the best way to do that would be to attend the ball. She did not feel quite presentable for a ball in her exhausted state, but she would have to trust Tikki’s magic to take care of that for her.

She wondered what she ought to do for a dress. Her attire as Ladybug was well-suited for running across rooftops and battling Hawk Moth’s monstrous curses, but it was hardly appropriate for a ball.

Marinette would have to ask Tikki if there was any way to change her appearance, but she had already arrived at Princess Kagami’s rooms, and she had no sooner placed her hand on the door before Princess Kagami was there, pulling her inside.

“Where did you go?” Kagami demanded. “What happened?”

“Oh—” Marinette stumbled into the dressing room. “I’m sorry, Your Highness, I only—I went to get help, to find Ladybug.”

“Is that the magic that filled the palace? Just like yesterday evening?”

Marinette yawned again and nodded. “I’m sorry, Your Highness, I don’t mean to be rude, but it’s been a very long two days.” Or, more accurately, a very long month.

But Princess Kagami did not seem to mind Marinette’s exhaustion. She pulled Marinette to her dressing table, sat her down, and said, “As you help me get ready for this evening, I want you to tell me everything about Ladybug.”

Some stories of Ladybug and her heroics in the City of Bright Lights had reached Kagami in the east, and she knew enough about magic in her own country. She did not find the fay so terribly different from the spirits in her land. Similar beings, different names.

But she had never seen magic up close, and if Prince Adrien wanted magic, if that was truly why he had spent so much time with Lila last night, then Kagami wanted to know everything.

So as Marinette helped her dress, she listened. She listened while Marinette told her about Hawk Moth and his desperation for a terrible wish. Marinette told her about Chat Noir and his thieving antics, but also that he was loyal and a hero just like Ladybug. Marinette even told Kagami about Alya, and everything that had happened today.

“The king took the magic from your friend?”

“I’m sure he had a good reason, but I hope he will change his mind.” Marinette rubbed her eyes and tied off the sash around Kagami’s waist. “Don’t you find all these silks heavy?” she asked, and tried to adjust the collar of Kagami’s dresses so that the layers of fabric were more visible. It seemed a shame to bury so much beautiful fabric.

“Don’t you find that your stays pinch your ribs?” Kagami asked. “Perhaps if your king rewarded Chat Noir and Ladybug for all the good they have done for the city, Chat Noir would not resort to such thievery, and your heroes would not have to be so secret.”

Marinette smiled. Chat Noir did what he did for fun, not for the value in what he took. But she wouldn’t complain about a little financial thank you. It’d be nice to provide for her parents after all that they had sacrificed to make sure that she could continue her apprenticeship year after year.

“Maybe,” she conceded, “but I think both Chat Noir and Ladybug do what they do because they want to help. They don’t do it for a reward.”

Marinette pulled back the layers of each dress so that they cascaded more like a collection of panels on the dresses that the other women would be wearing. “It does seem a shame to wear so much fine fabric and cover it all. Would you like me to pin it back?”

Kagami hummed in distracted agreement. “What has King Gabriel done about Hawk Moth’s attacks? To have the palace attacked twice in two days… It seems that something ought to be done.”

“Well, I know he increased the number of guards after yesterday’s attack…”

“Ineffective,” Kagami noted. “For today’s attack was far worse, you said.”

“Yes, but Hawk Moth’s power is stronger when the emotions he uses are stronger. I don’t think that’s something King Gabriel can control.”

“No, I suppose not.”

Kagami surveyed her reflection in the mirror. The way Marinette had pinned back her silks to reveal each layer was unusual to her, but she tried to see it through Marinette’s eyes, as an artistic challenge with certain limitations. The lavender and pale blue silk were lovely, even though they were not meant to be visible. The outer coat, painted in green, blue, and violet irises was still the central piece of the ensemble, but she felt rather exposed.

“Are you happy with it?” Marinette asked.

“It’s… different.”

There was a knock at the door and Kagami’s heart raced. Though she knew that her mother could not see, she felt certain that her mother would immediately know that Marinette had altered her traditional dress into something new.

But it was not her mother at the door. It was only a servant, arrived to tell Marinette that the princes were ready for their fitting.

“Oh—we’re nearly done,” Marinette said, and turned to Kagami. “I can undo it all, really, if you don’t like it.”

“But you like it, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“And… Prince Adrien liked what you designed for him?”

Marinette remembered his tears yesterday and thought it best not to give Kagami any details. “I think he did.”

“Then I shall try it for tonight.”

“You look beautiful,” Marinette assured her. “Yesterday, I thought about how nice your dress would pair with the pale green that Prince Adrien wore. Tonight he’s wearing white and lavender, and I think it will match just as nicely.”

Kagami took in a deep breath and recovered all of her surety. “Thank you, Marinette.”

“You’re welcome, Your Highness.” Marinette curtsied. She glanced down at the jewelry box on the table. “Did you also want to wear the hair pins that Prince Adrien sent you?”

Kagami pulled the lid off of the box and examined the delicate glass lilies. They were gaudier than she was used to, but so was everything in this court. They also would pair well with the irises of her kosode, and she supposed if she wanted any chance with Prince Adrien, she would have to make a show of accepting his apology, even if it still stung.

“Very well.”

Kagami waited while Marinette carefully tucked the pins into her hair, and Kagami could not help but be impressed by this young girl’s generosity. She was a seamstress, but she had done far more for Kagami than any seamstress ought to, from her hair to her makeup to simply listening to Kagami’s heartbreak.

Kagami had never had someone she could count as a friend, and she was not sure that as a princess she could ever ask a peasant to be her friend, but for the first time in her life she imagined this must be what it felt like to have a friend.

“You are attending the ball tomorrow, correct?” Kagami asked.

“Oh… I was going to attend with Alya, but after today, I’m not sure—”

“Please attend.”

Marinette blinked, startled by the plea. It was so different from the controlled, commanding tone she was used to hearing Kagami speak with.

“I should like to meet your friend.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Marinette promised, and with a hasty curtsy, hurried to dress Princes Adrien and Félix.

Prince Adrien had taken his time on his walk back to Félix’s room. He’d used servants’ passages in an attempt to avoid anyone getting a good look at him or the bruises on his face. His heart felt hollow, wrung dry by his conversation with Ladybug. He was still hurt by the secrecy of the painting and worried about his father—though he imagined he would have heard something by now if his father had not made it out of the throne room safely. He wondered, too, why his father had taken the fay gift from Rena Rouge. He twisted the ring on his finger, trying to imagine what it would be like to have Plagg taken from him.

The black cat trotted after him, green eyes glinting in the dim light. He had not said anything, but Adrien had a feeling that as soon as the evening was over, Plagg was going to ask him to steal Trixx’s pendant back. Adrien wanted to, truly, but he also wanted to sleep. His late nights with Mademoiselle Dupain-Cheng had taken their toll on him.

When he reached Félix’s bedroom door, Plagg leapt into Adrien’s pocket, shifting into his smaller fay shape as he did.

Félix had migrated from the bed to his desk, where his charcoals sat in front of him, but the sheaf of paper on his desk was blank. He twirled a pencil lazily in his hand. “Ladybug saved the day again?”

Adrien would never understand how Félix could be so bored by Ladybug’s magic. Most of the city, at the very least, admired the ladybug-like fay creatures that swarmed the city and undid Hawk Moth’s damage after each of Ladybug’s victories. Adrien was positively enamored with it.

“Hawk Moth created a curse that was powerful enough to bring the throne room down. Ladybug managed to save the guards in the throne room and put everything back together.” Almost everything. Adrien’s heart was still torn in two, but at least Ladybug had found him and tried to help.

“The king is fine?” Félix quirked an eyebrow, and Adrien could not quite read the expression there.

“I haven’t heard otherwise.” Adrien leaned against Félix’s desk and absentmindedly thumbed at his cousin’s stack of blank paper. He glimpsed fragments of sketches on the edges of buried sheets. He wasn’t interested in prying, not really, and only caught bits of black and white and gray. A feather here, an eye there, and a curl…

Adrien could not help himself. He knew the shape of that curl of hair, resting on top of a woman’s shoulder. Though he had not seen his mother since the day that she had fallen asleep, he could not forget her lifeless repose. He’d spent hours at her bedside, doing nothing but watching and crying, nothing but begging for her to wake up again.

“Is this… my mother?” Adrien asked.

Félix didn’t answer and Adrien continued to stare at the sketch until his eyes were blurry with tears and the sketch had dissolved into nothing but a gray, watery mist.

He took a moment to make sure he could speak without breaking before asking, “Have you seen the painting my father keeps in the throne room annex?”

Félix did his best to keep his face neutral. It was a long-practiced habit, but his sleepless night had left him raw. His instinct was to lie, but if secrets were not his to control anymore, he wasn’t sure what the point was in keeping them. He also couldn’t say which answer would hurt Adrien more.

“I have,” Félix finally murmured. “I saw it for the first time just the other day.”

Adrien considered the softness in Félix’s traditionally sharp voice. “Your father painted it?”

Félix nodded.

How foolish Adrien had been to think he was alone in his grief.

“I’m sorry,” Adrien said, and set the sketch back down on the desk.

“For what?”

“I don’t know. I just am.”

Adrien, hands still in search of something to do, something to fill his grief or to satisfy his magical penchant for mischief, picked up one of the charcoals. He rolled it between his fingers and watched the way it marked his hands, not unlike the twin bruises on his and his cousin’s faces.

He closed his eyes and searched for something stable inside of himself. He had cried too much today. He couldn’t afford any more tears, certainly not when he had to be presentable at a ball in just a few moments. Certainly not when he still had to face his father with the knowledge of the secret painting and what his father had done to Rena Rouge.

“Félix…”

Félix tucked the sketch back beneath the blank paper. “Hm.”

“Can you think of why Father would take a miraculous gift from someone?”

Félix’s heart accelerated as he recalled Gabriel tearing through his pockets last night as Nathalie held him in place and the strange thought that Gabriel had been disappointed to find Amelie and Michel’s ring, rather than the miraculous gift of destruction.

“No,” Féilx answered in what he hoped was distracted or off-hand way, but his mind was spinning. “What did he take?”

“The gift of illusion.”

“He stole the gift from Lila Rossi?”

Adrien wished it were all that simple. “Er—Chat Noir stole it from Lila, then gave it to Ladybug, who gave it to Rena Rouge, and Father stole it from Rena Rouge.”

Félix carefully set down the charcoal he had been holding and steadied himself against his desk. He felt dizzy with this information. Had the idea of gaining a miraculous through marriage had any influence on Gabriel’s decision to marry a Graham de Vanily? Was there some similar reason that Gabriel wanted Adrien to marry Princess Kagami?

And if Gabriel wanted miraculous gifts so badly, what was he doing with them?

A quick, efficient knock at the door announced Nathalie’s entrance, but Félix hardly heard her.

“Sorry for the delay,” Nathalie said, and hurried through Félix’s drawing room and into his bedroom. “There was an incident in the throne room.”

Nathalie set the tin of chalk powder that she had brought with her onto the dressing table. She eyed the mostly melted snow and the soaked napkins the boys had used. Well, at least they had used them. She’d been worried Félix would not bother out of some stubborn self-martyrdom.

As for Adrien, Nathalie could not imagine how he had hurt his face so similarly. Part of her wondered if the way Félix and Adrien had been created meant that they shared all injuries, but she imagined—or rather hoped—that Gabriel would have been aware of that before he had decided to strike Félix.

She turned to ask Adrien what had happened to him, but he had not followed her. Neither had Félix.

“We don’t have all the time in the world,” she called to them. “Mademoiselle Dupain-Cheng is finishing up with Princess Tsurugi as we speak.”

Adrien was the first through the door, and he sat at the dressing table obediently. Félix trudged in moments later and sank onto his bed, arms folded over his chest.

Nathalie would let him sulk. She supposed his self-pity was not unwarranted.

Carefully, she dipped her fingers in the chalk mixture and smeared it across Adrien’s face. She started with the uninjured side before covering his bruised cheek as delicately as she could.

He wrinkled his nose. “Why does it smell so bad?”

“Vinegar.”

Adrien sighed. Perhaps it might keep Chloé and Lila from trying to kiss him. His nose burned, but he did not complain. He hardly even flinched as Nathalie’s fingers pressed tenderly against his bruise.

“What happened, Adrien?” she asked.

“I fell,” he said with a half-shrug.

Nathalie was unsatisfied, but she did not have time to press.

“Félix, you’re next,” she said.

There was a moment where Adrien and Nathalie alike thought that Félix would refuse to move from the bed, but it was a brief moment. Slowly, he got to his feet, and with the enthusiasm of a thief approaching the noose, slumped into the chair beside his dressing table.

Nathalie’s face was unchanged and her fingers just as delicate as she smeared the paste across Félix’s face as she had Adrien’s, but her heart twitched with sympathy.

Nathalie loved the princes, if only because they were both Queen Emilie’s children, and she loved Queen Emilie.

It was Queen Emilie who had graciously allowed her to take a leave of absence when her pregnancy had begun to show, and hired her back without question when Nathalie had returned to the castle with an infant and no husband. It was Queen Emilie who had found Nathalie in tears one morning because her child was sick with fever, and had ordered Nathalie to return home with pay. It was Queen Emilie who had continued to pay Nathalie for the rest of the month while Nathalie stayed home and grieved the loss of her child.

Nathalie loved Queen Emilie, and by extension she loved Gabriel and Adrien and Félix and Amelie. She knew their grief when Emilie had fallen asleep and Michel had disappeared because she had felt it too, and because she knew what it was to lose someone irreplaceable.

In Emilie’s honor, she had taken over managing the household staff. She had mourned privately and created space for the royal family to indulge in their grief as best as she could.

And when hers and Gabriel’s first attempt to claim the gifts of creation and destruction had gone awry, they had created a plan to bring Queen Emilie back. Their plan had meant that Gabriel would need her help managing the kingdom while he sought to claim the miraculous gifts, and she had readily agreed.

Her heart ached for Félix’s predicament, and Adrien’s, too, but if all worked out as she and Gabriel planned and hoped, then Emilie would be returned to them before the boys’ birthday, and Nathalie would see to it that everything was set right again.

She eyed Félix and Adrien’s faces, checking for the evenness of the powder and just how much of the bruise was evident beneath her cover-up. The swelling had lowered considerably, but their cheeks were still puffy if someone knew what to look for. The color, however, was nigh invisible. It would have to do.

Nathalie capped the tin of chalk. “I’ll send for Mademoiselle Dupain-Cheng. You ought to put on something more appropriate before meeting her in the fitting room.”

The princes dressed, though with little enthusiasm. Nathalie could not recall seeing the princes this solemn since Michel’s funerary services. But she said nothing, merely made them as presentable as she could, and sent them on their way.

Once they arrived in the fitting room, Adrien balked in the doorway. Ladybug’s kiss was still smeared on the looking glass.

Félix looked at the pale smudge and scoffed. “What self-obsessed person left that?”

But Adrien’s heart pounded. So her brilliant red lips that he had dreamed of kissing were purely from her magic. Beneath it all she was… someone else.

He flexed his hand and remembered the feeling of her calloused finger tips. With hands like that, she must work for a living. He should have known; she had always said she was not truly a lady. Would he ever know the truth of who she was?

The knock on the door was gentle, a suggestion more than an interruption.

“Enter,” Félix snapped when Adrien said nothing, and Mademoiselle Dupain-Cheng pushed open the door.

She curtsied deeply to both princes and kept her eyes on the floor. “Your Highnesses, I am at your service.”

Félix went first, and Adrien sank into the nearby chair to watch. Mademoiselle Dupain-Cheng was as professional as ever as she helped Félix into the white doublet and black jerkin. Her eyes were heavily shadowed, and Adrien wondered how many long nights she had poured into these outfits for the ball. Her hands, however, were steady and her jaw set in a firm line. She was here to do a job, and she would do it well.

When she was finished with Félix, Adrien took his turn. This time, he took a moment to appreciate the black lining she had sewn in out of respect for his grief, and he was surprised when she fastened a black doublet around his chest. The jerkin, however, was white. As Mademoiselle Dupain-Cheng fastened his sleeves, he glanced up at his own reflection and at Félix’s, standing just behind him.

They looked more like twins than they ever had before.

Adrien’s jerkin was not just white; it was crafted from shot silk that shimmered white and gold in the late afternoon sun. It was embroidered with the stenciled designs of purple, green, and gold chrysanthemums, and beneath it was a black doublet with a matching embroidered pattern in gold to bring out the shifts in the shot silk.

Félix’s was identical in structure—embroidered chrysanthemums on shot silk—but his jerkin was woven with black and silver silk and embroidered in white flowers; his doublet was white with silver embroidery. It was a much more somber variation of Adrien’s, but the contrast served them well.

Adrien wondered if he would ever stop being amazed with Mademoiselle Dupain-Cheng’s work.

He wondered if she would let him kiss her again.

“I’m not sure how to thank you for all you’ve done,” Adrien murmured as she adjusted the fit between the sleeves of his chemise and the doublet.

Marinette’s cheeks flared red. She had been grateful for the somber mood between both princes. She was not quite capable of conversation today, not between her exhaustion and everything that had happened with Alya and Chat Noir. It had been quite enough to explain it all to Kagami.

“It’s my dog—I mean—my job.”

“You do it well.” More than well. Adrien had, just moments ago, hid behind that mirror and agonized over his love for his father and Ladybug, and how that love would never be reciprocated in the way that he wished for. But Mademoiselle Dupain-Cheng had seen him before he had even asked. She had listened to his grief and respected it. Maybe she wasn’t the heroine that he had first fallen in love with, but she was certainly someone worth loving.

“Would you—” Adrien caught himself. He had been about to ask her to dance with him at the ball, but remembered that he only knew that she would be attending because he had asked her as Chat Noir. He reframed his question. “I mean, do you have plans to attend the ball?”

Mademoiselle Dupain-Cheng tucked her needle into the spool of thread and dropped it into her apron pocket. Carefully she gathered up the wrappings from the delivery boxes and began to fold them. “I had plans to attend tomorrow evening,” she said.

Adrien’s heart sank. “Had?”

Marinette bit down on her cheek. Though Alya had told her to, she did not see what point there was to asking the princes about Trixx. They had not been in the throne room, had not been there when King Gabriel had made his decision to take the fay from Alya.

“I was planning to attend with a friend,” she said. “But I don’t believe my friend will be allowed to return after… well, I don’t believe she’d want to return.”

“Who is your friend?”

“Alya Césaire.”

Adrien searched his memory for any meaning to the name. He thought he remembered a Césaire involved with the kitchens or food of some sort, but he could not remember any recent incidents with the name. “What happened?”

“She—well, she nearly destroyed the throne room today. Because King Gabriel stole her miraculous gift from her, and Hawk Moth took advantage of her anger.”

Adrien tried to put Mademoiselle Dupain-Cheng beside Rena Rouge, the confident trickster whom he had met only briefly. Mademoiselle Dupain-Cheng was quiet, self-assured, and prone to strange outbursts as she stumbled over her words. Rena Rouge was loud and playful. He wondered what it was that held their friendship together.

“Traditionally,” Félix said, “people aren’t exiled for something that happened to them under Hawk Moth’s influence. Otherwise, we’d be well-rid of the Bourgeois family ages ago.”

“Traditionally, people don’t try to collapse the throne room on top of the king,” Mademoiselle Dupain-Cheng pointed out. “But exiled or not, I don’t expect she’ll even want to come to the ball after the king stole a miraculous gift from her.”

“We’ll get it back,” Adrien said, without hesitation.

Félix raised an eyebrow. “We will?”

Adrien reconsidered where he was and who he was with. “We’ll ask for it back. We’ll figure it out.” And if asking didn’t work, well… Adrien knew of a very good thief.

Marinette managed to meet Prince Adrien’s eyes. They seemed to shimmer like the shot silk he was dressed in. Something was off about his face… It was powdered, but that wasn’t what was bothering her.

“Why are you offering to help?” she asked.

“Good question,” Félix grunted.

“Because your friend didn’t deserve what happened to her.” Adrien might have only a handful of details, and he trusted that his father had a good reason, but he also trusted what Ladybug had told him. And he still believed he could find a way to make it right.

He took Mademoiselle Dupain-Cheng’s hand in his. Her fingertips were calloused from years of pressing needles through fabric and her hands rough.

“Also,” he said softly, “I’d like you to be there tomorrow night. I’d like to share a dance with you.”

Marinette’s face was so warm she thought she might simply collapse to the floor. She struggled for a response. “I—I’m promised.”

Adrien bit down on his tongue and let her hand fall. “Oh. Of course.”

“I mean—I mean I have promised—I already promised a dance to someone.”

“I… see.”

Marinette was not entirely sure what the connections between her heart, her head, and her words were doing but she heard herself say, “But I have room for a dance with you, too.”

Prince Adrien smiled hesitantly and Marinette very nearly melted into the floor. “Then I look forward to it. Thank you, Mademoiselle Dupain-Cheng.”

He bowed to her and she hardly had time to register the gesture before he and Félix were gone, and she belatedly dropped into a curtsy to absolutely no one but her own reflection. Finally, upon realizing her foolishness, she let herself fall to the floor.

“Tikki,” she gasped, “what did I just do?”