Chapter Text
He clutched his chest, feeling his lungs burn as his body started to give out beneath him. No. Not now. Not this time, when he was so close.
He wrenched his arm back, striking with the other as he called his sword to his hand, fire and lightning and ice tearing through his nerves as he did, but finally, finally, the resistance gave way and he stumbled backwards.
Without looking, he turned and ran, calling a portal to appear before him. He fell through it, landing on a cold, hard floor in utter darkness. He could still hear shouting over the rushing in his ears, every part of his body failing at once, and before he could be pursued, before he could collapse any further, he forced raspy words through his torn, aching throat.
"Plagg, Tikki, unify!"
The world went blessedly, eerily silent.
Gabriel had expected a feeling of power when he finally combined the Miraculous, a rush beyond anything he'd ever felt before. He'd also considered that the magic might overpower him, tearing him apart just as the others were trying to do when he combined them. Instead, he felt nothing. Emptiness, quietude, void.
He opened his eyes. He was in his basement, collapsed on the floor in front of Emilie's garden. The portal was still open to the battleground behind him, but no noise came through. The light in the room seemed to come from nowhere, enough to see without anything actually illuminated. Butterflies were frozen in midair, stopped in time at the moment he'd called for the final transformation.
"Ugh," said a voice. "Get on with it, then, asshole."
Gabriel staggered to his feet, whirling around to find the source of the voice but seeing nothing. It lingered in the air, in his brain, genderless and omnipresent and demanding attention.
"Your wish," the voice said, impatiently.
Gabriel turned again, and saw nothing but the familiar sights of the cavern below his home.
"Where are you?" he said. "Show yourself!"
"Tch," the voice said. Or was it voices? Multiple voices speaking as one, mocking him.
There wasn't a flash of light or a sound, but suddenly Gabriel became aware of a presence before him. A figure, tall and inhuman, nearly featureless except that it felt like everything he'd ever experienced at once, standing beside Emilie's body with an air of impatience. After a moment, his head splitting as he tried to wrap his brain around the sight, he noticed a second figure, on Emilie's other side, crouched low to the ground, exuding... exuding nothing. It was a lack of a presence, a black hole from which no light could enter or escape. The grass and flowers around it seemed to fade and rot, and while Gabriel could not see anything human or animal on either figure, the crouching one seemed to smile sharp teeth and glare with hundreds of invisible eyes.
"Aw," it said, and it was indeed both... beings... speaking as one. "Can your little human brain not handle us? After all you did to take us from our rightful place?"
Gabriel looked from one to the other, unable to focus long on either, but determined to show his authority before what he now knew must be the kwamis of the Ladybug and Black Cat Miraculous.
"Kwamis," he said, addressing them. He didn't understand how they could appear before him when he'd already activated their powers, but clearly the wish had to be done differently. "Your attempts at intimidation are-"
"Intimidation?" they repeated, mocking him. "This is us as we are. Did you think we were always cute little pocket friends, that we were something you could overpower and control?"
There was another shift, a twist in how the universe was perceived, and two creatures, black and red, in the forms Gabriel found more familiar appeared.
"We do this as a favor to humans," the red one, Tikki, said, her voice separate, high-pitched and childlike. "Because we like humans, and want to help them, to be their partners and friends."
"Do you really think you deserve that privilege?" Plagg drawled, his tail lashing in midair. "After everything you've done to our friends?"
Gabriel clenched his fists. "It does not matter what you think of me," he said. "I have combined your powers, and you will grant my wish."
"Oh, we will," Plagg said, and the world had shifted again, the kwami now wearing the visage of Chat Noir, face twisted in disgust in a way the actual human boy had never worn. "We're getting to that."
"The cost will be high," Tikki said, and she appeared as Ladybug to match.
"I will do anything to achieve my wish," Gabriel hissed. "It does not matter."
"We can tell," said Tikki, unimpressed. "How much blood is on your hands already, Monarch?"
"And we mean that literally," Plagg offered.
Gabriel glanced down at his hands. He was no longer transformed, the gloves of his costume disappeared, as were the Miraculous he had worn as he fought for his prize. The cat's ring was still on his finger, and both hands dripped with fresh red liquid, parts of it smeared orange up his arms or starting to dry into rusty brown. He turned his hands upwards, opening them to stare at his palms, and something tumbled to the ground.
Two fingers, ring finger and pinky, no longer black claws, severed from where Gabriel had slashed at Chat Noir's hand with the dragon's sword in a last ditch attempt to wrest the ring away.
The boy had charged him, ripping at Gabriel's arms, face, and chest, Cataclysm long since used but claws still sharp enough to stab through magical armor, blind with rage after Gabriel had torn the earrings from Ladybug's ears, paralyzed by Venom, falling to the ground as the magic left her and Gabriel turned to face the new threat.
"I did what I had to," Gabriel said harshly. He hadn't waited to see either of his enemies' disguises fall. They weren't important any more. "It won't even matter after the wish is made."
"No, I suppose not," said Tikki. Her hand brushed over Emilie's face, and Gabriel jerked forward, having not seen the chamber open.
"All this for her, huh?" Plagg said, shaking his head. "I should've known."
"You know," said Tikki, "It's a shame." She was no longer Ladybug, instead appearing as a young girl in pigtails, a jolt of familiarity rushing through Gabriel as he recognized her as one of his son's classmates. "If you had come to Ladybug and Chat Noir at the beginning, explained what you were fighting for, they probably would have helped you. They're good people like that. And the cost for a wish is much less, split three ways."
"Not that they wouldn't have had their own reasons to help you," Plagg teased, and Gabriel felt himself go numb as Adrien smiled at him, running a hand through his hair, smearing red into gold as his missing fingers leaked into his hair.
"Impossible," Gabriel said, and whirled around, staring at the portal behind him. Frozen in time, Adrien had his arms around the teenage girl, tears in both their eyes, another of their friends desperately trying to reach his bleeding hand, Nathalie still unconscious on the ground, Felix sprinting at the portal despite his injuries, the only one left with a Miraculous.
"Doesn't matter once the wish is made," Plagg mocked, stepping up behind him. "Now, will that be cash, credit, or memories?"
"Just kidding," said Tikki. "We don't take credit."
The world inverted.
"Memories. What memories?" Gabriel asked, desperate, his throat dry as he stared at the frozen scene.
"Oh, not yours," Plagg sneered. "You get to remember everything you did. But nobody else will remember you. No Monarch, no Hawk Moth, no Gabriel Agreste."
The world went dark.