Birth

1

Nathalie had been edgy and distant for a whole month     before she’d left, and even more strangely  she didn’t even offer once to help him as Mayura. Which had come as a relief, if he was honest, because she was a prideful stubborn woman, and he knew he was unable to stop her donning that Miraculous if she chose to. Even if she didn’t show it outward because of her often obedient and subservient behavior. When she decided to do something, she refused to return empty handed. So, her lack of will to be Mayura had been both a comfort and disconcerting at the same time. 

Then she'd resigned.

She’d waited  until the last minute possible to tell him. The very Monday morning her replacement came in.  It seemed obvious that, she would have waited more if the new girl’s presence wasn’t such a big give away that something was going on.

Nathalie didn’t come in the next Monday. Changed her cell phone number and address, and never provided him the new ones or any method of reaching her at all.

So, it was a surprised to get a call last night and discover he was still listed as her emergency contact and was the mandatary in her Procuration Médicale par Défaut.

That’s how   he'd ended up by her bed in this hospital, in another city, with a baby in his arms while Nathalie was wired up to one machine monitoring her vitals and another that blowing precious oxygen into her lungs through a tube, after no contact from her for seven months.

The doctors say the baby is healthy, thank God, but that Nathalie’s condition is delicate. She is after all a 38 years-old woman with a complicated medical history and that combination had led to a high-risk pregnancy.

A high risk pregnancy she'd gone through alone. And now that he did the math, and with this baby in his arms, it’s brutally clear why she’d felt the need to leave. 

Still, he wants to ask how could she?  It’s his son, for goodness’ sake!

It had only happened once while they were both drunk, after an exhausting fashion week was finally over but the timing fits exactly. They’d never spoken about it afterwards. He’d felt so guilty about having cheated on his wife that he sent akumas every day that week.

He’d called Adrien and told him to pack clothes for them both to last a week and to come to Toulouse immediately, preferably by air and then called his PA to make travel arrangements for them.

He couldn’t take care of Nathalie and a baby alone, and even though   it meant he’d have to confess to have broken the vows he’s made to his mother, there was no one else to call.

--

“Dad?”

He glanced in the direction of the door and was greeted with the sight of Adrien’s head coming in first, as if his son was confirming that he was definitely in the right place and on recognizing it was his father sat there, the rest of Adrien followed in.

Only Gabriel wasn’t alone. Adrien looked curiously at him, and Gabriel’s struck by how inexplicable his position in this chair with a baby in his arms must be to his son.

“Whose baby is this?” Adrien asked while he comes near to better see the bundle in his father's hands.

“It’s Nathalie’s”

And that’s when Adrien turned to see the person laying on the bed he could barely recognize as Nathalie.

“What happened to Nathalie?”

“She had complications during the birth due to her being ill last year.”

His son looked at Nathalie with such compassion and asked “But why did the hospital call you? Doesn’t she have family? Why didn’t they call her boyfriend?”