#hope it didn’t turn out too boring

[logically-asexual]

Love like you

summary:

Betterfly finds himself in a confrontation with Shadybug and Claw Noir inside the Agreste Mansion of the alternate universe they traveled to. Nathalie is in her bedroom processing the fact that Gabriel has finally lost it. Their journeys unexpectedly cross when Betterfly akumatizes Nathalie by accident.

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Chapter 5

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words: 1,298

“That’s enough!” Monarch yelled as he stomped across the room. He grabbed Nathalie’s wrist and attempted to pull her to him. “You and I are leaving now.”

“Gabriel?” she exclaimed. She stuttered the first words of a dozen questions while she struggled against his grip. “What are you doing here?” she said as she finally freed herself, only for him to take her upper arm.

“I should ask you the same question.”

“Let go of her.” Gabriel shouted.

“Mind your own damn business.”

Monarch’s glare and harsh tone was enough to make Gabriel step backwards from where he had stood. He wasn’t going to give up yet, but it was clear that with fifteen miraculous against one, fighting Monarch wasn’t the smart choice. He’d keep his distance and consider de-escalation instead. Nathalie, on the other hand, had no such restraint left.

“Gabriel, stop! I want to help you!” she tried.

“By abandoning me and now plotting against me with my enemies? I can’t allow you to do that, so you’re coming with me. Orikko—!”

Even from her position still sitting down, Nathalie was able to hit Monarch in the stomach with her elbow, take the thumb ring from his hand that loosened around her arm, and push him back. It wasn’t a very strong shove, but it made him stumble.

He slumped forward, recovering his breath. Nathalie noted he was not yet used to having all the power of the jewels combined.

“Gabriel—.”

“I thought you’d be the one to understand me,” he said between panting.

“I understand you. That’s why I know that this isn’t right for you. It’s not what Emilie would have wanted. You understand that, too.”

Monarch shook his head as he looked downwards, avoiding eye contact. After a moment he swallowed and struggled to begin speaking. “I no longer have a choice.”

He didn’t give Nathalie a chance to contradict him as he said the words to detransform. Then he pulled his sleeve back to reveal the black handprint on his arm.

Nathalie barely moved, except for her lip trembling and her eyes welling up. As if for once it took real effort for her to maintain a brave face. Gabriel could hear her steadying breaths as she took the information in.

“So… we’re both dying.”

“What?” the Gabriel in lavender exclaimed.

“It’s… a long story.”

She took Gabriel’s hand in hers to examine the wound. The surface of the handprint was slowly expanding. It was almost imperceptible, until one focused on the position of the edges long enough.

“We need that wish,” he murmured.

Nathalie looked up to his eyes, where the strong determination she was used to had shifted to resignation. Then she spotted the crowd of kwamis hiding behind his back. She looked back at him. “Take them off.”

He closed his eyes and his nose scrunched up only for a fraction of a second, before he did begin to take the pieces of jewelry off and to lay them on the coffee table. As he removed the miraculous one by one, the kwamis were absorbed into them, until only Nooroo was left. Gabriel didn’t take the brooch off.

Once he was done, he took a deep breath and fell onto a chair across from the couch. “So what do you want me to do? I have no option but to keep going, even now that I have all those stupid creatures I can’t do anything without the wish. They’re all useless!”

Nathalie looked at the golden rooster talon in her hand. She put it on and watched it transform into two silver rings connected by a chain. The rooster kwami appeared in front of her. She remembered this was the one who could give the holder the power of their choice.

“You really can’t heal us?”

The bird looked from Gabriel to her. “What do you have?”

“I am ill from the broken peacock miraculous,” she reluctantly confessed.

Orikko frowned at her answer. “Well… I don’t know much about that, but at least about the cataclysm there’s nothing I can do because those healing abilities correspond to the power of creation, and, as we already told Mr. Gabriel, we can’t duplicate another kwami’s power.”

“But we’ve done that with akumatized villains many times.”

“Yes,” Nooroo interceded, “but they always had less strength and more limitations than the power they mimicked, unless you’d akumatize someone with a miraculous, in which case it was the same power the holder already possessed that would become enhanced along with their emotions.”

“You’ve used your powers on miraculous holders before?” alternate Gabriel asked.

“Indeed,” Nathalie replied for Gabriel. “The time Mr. Agreste discovered he could do that was quite a day.”

Gabriel recognized the biting tone of her voice, since he once again steeled his expression and directed his eyes away from her. Nathalie could only hope he would acknowledge that not keeping his promise to give up that day had been a mistake.

“A waste either way,” he grumbled. “They’re just as erratic and untrustworthy as the rest,” he turned to Nooroo, “even though you told me anyone I gave powers to would be “my devout servant”.”

“They were, Master, but humans are always driven by their emotions before anything else, and since we use those to power their magic, there’s nothing I can do.”

“Useless creature.”

“I don’t think your failure to achieve an impossible goal should be blamed on Nooroo,” the other Gabriel defended.

Gabriel gripped the armrests of his chair with white knuckles, clearly only restraining himself because of his exhaustion and Nathalie’s warning glare. “You know nothing about it. Besides, I might have not won against those brats but at least I haven’t lost to them either.”

“I’m just saying,” he lifted his hands in sign of surrender, “my allies have been nothing but reliable every time.”

“How? People’s stupid feelings are volatile and beyond anyone’s control, like Nooroo said.”

“If I may,” Nathalie interrupted. “I think it has to do with your approach. The anger or despair Hawk Moth used are much stronger emotions than others, but they shift focus quickly and are difficult to manage.” She took one of the books she had around and browsed it as she continued. “Positive emotions might not be immediately impactful or destructive but they can last for longer and can be effectively directed to a single target.”

“So what you’re saying,” alternate Gabriel said as he sat down next to her, “is that if we could draw from positive and negative emotions at once we could create a power that is both potent and stable?”

He looked at Nooroo towards the end of his question. The kwami explained that each butterfly can only latch on to one emotion, and emotions that are in the middle of the classification aren’t usually strong enough to actually fuel the magic.

“But what if there were two butterflies?” Gabriel asked.

Nooroo’s eyes widened as both men made eye contact for the first time. He seemed to have reservations about the idea, but he didn’t contradict it right away.

“It wouldn’t be the Ultimate Power, for sure,” Orikko cut in, looking pointedly at Gabriel, “and you wouldn’t be able to rewrite destiny, but…”

“But we could still create something mightier than anything we’ve seen before.” Gabriel’s face illuminated.

Before he could get any ideas, Nathalie reached out to take his hand and get his attention. “This is a unique chance, Gabriel. We shouldn’t risk it testing Ladybug’s luck. Let us try something first. I have an idea.”

Apparently Gabriel had learned from his mistake of the night before, or maybe his head was clearer now that he didn’t have all those miraculous on, because he held his breath and nodded. “I understand. I trust you.”

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