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It was like she was drowning, constantly trying to swim to the surface of a bottomless sea. Dark and cold and heavy, oppressive and crushing—there was just too much pulling her down for there to be any hope for escape.
Marinette wasn't sure when it had gotten so bad. A bad day here, a bad day there, until the bad days never left again and consumed her whole. She was just fifteen, and yet she had the fate of an entire city on her shoulders.
Marinette was tired.
So, so, tired.
What she wouldn't give to be allowed to lock the hatch to her room, drown out all the lights, and wrap herself into a ball of blankets until she felt alive again. It was so easy to lose herself in the silence, even with Tikki to keep her company.
It wasn't normal to see from behind your eyes and watch your hands move without your permission. To stare at a wall and lose yourself for hours, unresponsive until the trance broke and the emptiness was filled again.
Marinette was empty, and yet she was so full.
But Ladybug couldn't be weak little Marinette; not if she wanted to keep Paris standing. Not if she wanted to stop Hawk Moth, once and for all. For Ladybug to succeed, Marinette couldn't exist.
But honestly, Marinette already questioned whether or not she existed in the first place. Lila was winning, her friends; no, classmates were distancing from her; the lies were escalating in severity, and there was nothing she could do. She'd taken the high road, after all—and Marinette was a helper. She helped others and bent backwards to keep everyone happy, even at her own expense.
Marinette didn't exist.
Maybe she never had in the first place.
The end of the world always seemed to fall on a Monday. Both her parents had left for some prestigious event they'd been asked to cater to; some three-day-long marriage halfway across the country. The sheer payment they were being offered easily made up for the loss of business they would face by closing the bakery for a few days. Marinette, of course, couldn't come, but that was for the better; it was already harrowing to have to play human for her parents when the world was out of place and she'd ceased to exist. But just like Ladybug, Marinette had duties to keep to. People to help, to reassure.
The least she could do was save her parents the grief of knowing she'd lost herself.
So Marinette kissed them goodbye Sunday night, promising to keep the shop clean and doors locked and to remember to set her alarm each night, locked the front door, walked upstairs, and prepared for the end.
It came in the form of a liar, the liar, Lila herself. For those first few months, Marinette had fought—oh, had she fought, desperately trying to keep herself floating while the class turned against her, but she could only float for so long before beginning to drown. What was the point of fighting an endless battle? Of fighting a battle while losing hold on reality and slipping into the background? It was easier to give up, because when the days and faces blurred together and she watched the world unravel from the space behind her eyes, doing anything but giving up was impossible.
Which was why it took nearly fifteen silent seconds for Marinette to realize that the class was staring at her. Staring through her, as if they'd somehow figured out that she didn't exist.
Alya was the one to break the silence. "You have some nerve showing up today."
Lila wasn't in the class, she noticed. Neither was Adrien, but that wasn't anything new.
Had Alya figured it out, then? That she had no place in this world when she wasn't real, wasn't human, couldn't feel-- that this world was not for her. "What?"
"How could you?" Alya's words didn't make sense, though Marinette wasn't sure if it was because of her or not. "I know you're jealous, but to go this far?"
The rest of the class was silent, but she could feel their eyes on her; her skin crawled. Don't look. Please don't look, please. "I … don't understand," she said, unsure why her voice sounded so incredibly foreign. "What are you talking about?"
"There's no point in trying to lie." Kim, this time. "Lila told us already; she even showed us the bruises."
Bruises.
I didn't—
She wanted to argue; wanted to plead her innocence because she hadn't done anything. The only recollection and proof that she'd even been alive the night before was the memory of Tikki nuzzling and stroking her cheek. The smooth skin of the kwami and her soothing voice, reassuring her that this was real, you're real, you're in bed and it's a little after midnight. She didn't even remember waking up—or rather, despite being up for nearly two hours, it felt as if she hadn't even woken up in the first place.
But instead, all she could do was blink. Sigh, shrug, and take the seat at the back, because as terrible as it was, Marinette had woken up disconnected and lost her emotions along the way.
Classes were tense, and Marinette spent her lunch period staring down at her sketchbook, pencil in hand, willing her hand to move, to draw, to do something to fill the gaping emptiness that came without emotions. She was so tired; so, so, tired, she could sleep for days and never wake up. It would be a blessing; no more silence, no more heaviness, no more coexisting and losing herself.
Death was a reprieve.
But Hawk Moth was too large of an issue; Paris didn't need Marinette, but it needed Ladybug.
Her classmates didn't need— didn't want— Marinette, but they needed Ladybug.
Chat Noir didn't need Marinette, but he needed Ladybug.
I don't exist. I'm not real, I don't exist.
…
Who am I?
Class was like the morning, passing and yet not; a blurry montage of things that didn't feel real. It was habit that got her through, ignoring the feeling of eyes on her back and suspicion in the air. It was habit that got her to her room; habit that had her changed and curled up on her bed, one arm outstretched so she could run her fingers down the rough, bumpy texture of the wall. It was grounding, at least, to feel her hand touch something real. Even if she wasn't, at least the world was.
"Marinette," Tikki said, "Marinette … please, you can't keep going like this—it's not healthy."
"It's okay," she reassured, because that was what Marinette did. "Don't worry. … I'm fine." The words were slow, as if each one were its own, individual thought rather than a single, cohesive one. "I'm … just tired."
"You need help!" The kwami shook her arm frantically. The touch felt foreign; her skin felt wrong. "You can't keep doing this by yourself!"
Marinette hummed. "Really, I'm fine; I'll … be fine. I'm just tired."
But Hawk Moth didn't rest, and the frantic beeping of the burner phone she'd bought to keep in contact with Chat while out of costume forced Marinette to plaster on Ladybug and do what was needed.
"Is everything alright, m'lady?" Chat asked, once she'd cast her miracle cure. "You seem off today."
Ladybug would respond with something witty, playful—she would be alive; right now, she was Ladybug; she was alive, and she was happy. And yet it was so difficult to act when the world was faded and her head was empty, too numb to concentrate after the Akuma had been eliminated.
Breathe in, breathe out. Ladybug breathed in deeply, holding it in her chest, before exhaling. You are Ladybug.
"Yeah," she finally said, waving away his concerns with fake yet practiced ease, "don't worry, kitty; just tired. It's exam season, after all."
He grimaced. "Oh, yeah … that's right."
"My friends and I formed a study group." It was a miracle she didn't stutter over the words with her lie. "So lately, we've been up late cramming."
"Meowch. Sounds rough." He patted her shoulder reassuringly, and Ladybug lost track of the rest of the conversation.
Her body carried her home, and the walls became her friends once more.
There was a thump above her. She only faintly registered it, struggling to keep awake. Tired, so, so tired—
"Marinette?" There were words, but Marinette would be hard-pressed to understand what they were. "You awake?"
And wasn't that a silly question?
More than anything else, Marinette would have been content to let him assume she was asleep and leave. But it had been—she didn't know how long, really, since she'd laid down. Hours had passed in a second, and she couldn't remember what Tikki had been saying to her.
She unlocked the hatch, wincing at the cold air, and poked her head out. Chat stared back at her from his place on her balcony. "Sorry, I didn't wake you, did I?"
"No, I was awake." Not alive; just awake. "What's up? It's not every day a superhero—" she paused, losing the words, before picking up again after a few seconds, "calls in a personal visit."
Chat Noir had made a weird habit of visiting her civilian form, recently. It started up shortly after they dealt with Evillustrator and only grown in frequency since; and so here she was, nearly eleven months later, dealing with near-weekly visits from the superhero himself.
Back when she still remembered what it felt like to live, rather than simply exist, Marinette had been baffled by his sudden appearances. But time gave way to many things, numbness and exhaustion included, and eventually she'd stopped wondering why he was touching down on her balcony without warning.
He was too skinny, anyways. The impromptu visits offered a chance to force-feed cookies and pastries down his throat—
Or, at least, they had, until the world blinked to a stop.
"You wound me." Reluctantly, she dragged herself onto the balcony, despite how much she'd have rather closed the hatch and buried herself in her blankets. "Haven't you gotten used to our visits by now, princess?"
No. It was only a single word, and yet it felt so impossibly heavy on her tongue—oppressive and stifling in a way that it had no right to be. "Of course I have," Marinette said instead, the lie coming out as smooth as butter. "What scraps do you want today?"
He chuckled, tossing his baton up and down as he watched her. His tail flickered idly, and she saw how the piercing, cat-slit irises glow in the dark lightning. "What makes you think I'm here for food?"
She rolled her eyes. "We have leftover cookies."
"Ooh—!" Normally, his overdramatic, ridiculous, drawn-out gasp would have at least brought a smile to her face. But even stringing together the few sentences that she had thus far was a momentous effort; trying to pitch her expression into something genuine felt impossible—like scaling a perfectly vertical mountain face, with no cracks or crannies to slip her fingers into and haul herself upon. "Chocolate?"
"Mhm." Smile, she reminded herself, twitching her lips into a smile that felt wrong. "I'll go and grab them, so don't move. And leave the plant alone," she added on, when she saw his gaze flicker over to the little pot balanced on the railing.
Tikki drawled on about her worries of her emotional state and wellbeing the entire time they were inside, but it was easy to tune out her tinny little voice. Too easy, in fact; it was scary how little she felt. It'd been a very long time since Marinette felt like a walking corpse.
It was a good thing that Akumas were cultivated in negative emotions. She couldn't feel, so she wasn't a target for Hawk Moth—and that, perhaps, was the one positive outcome of the whole situation. She could strip off Marinette and pull on Ladybug as necessary; she could plaster on a smile that burned her cheeks; she could open her mouth and speak words that didn't feel real, and pretend that she felt emotions rather than emptiness—so long as things stayed how they were, she could suffer through this odd dichotomy for as long as necessary.
No matter what Tikki said about emotional stability and health, the alternative was to feel—and to feel strongly. But allowing those negative, putrid emotions to fester inside of her would simply spell out disaster.
Ladybug couldn't save the day if Marinette became akumatized, and without Ladybug, Hakwmoth would win. Without Ladybug, there would be no one to fight at Chat Noir's side, no one to cast the miracle cure, no one to help Paris' citizens—
For Ladybug to exist, Marinette could not.
For Ladybug to exist, her emotions could not.
Chat Noir said something to her once she returned, but the words flowed through her ears like water in a channel; fluid, roaring—
Marinette just nodded.
His lips curved into a frown, and another few seconds of silence stretched out between them, during which she wondered how long he would be there for. Each second outside was just another chance for the wind to come along and tear away another shard of her stability, after all.
How many minutes would it take before she lost it all?
"Is everything alright, Marinette?" She blinked, drawn back into reality by the sound of her own name—it was painfully foreign to hear from Tikki's mouth, much less Chat Noir's, which made the whole thing even weirder. "You seem kind of out of it. Did something happen?"
"Oh …" she shook her head, forcing that same bastardized smile onto her face as she replied, "nope! I'm fine; everything's fine. It's just been—well, it's been a long day." More, she needed more; needed something else to fend off his suspicion, because if Chat Noir tried to stay and analyze her, she'd fall apart. Her numbness held up in solitude, but every second she spent talking to him was another crack in a surface that she couldn't afford to let crack. "Exam season, you know?"
He stared at her oddly. For a second, she couldn't help but wonder what he saw, from his spot across from her. Did he see the little cracks that were webbed throughout her composure? Each hitch in her voice that she tried so desperately to swallow, lest she accidentally let him find out something that no one else could be allowed to know? Could he read her thoughts? Could he tell that her fingers weren't just trembling from the cold—
What do you see? She wished she could ask. But the cold winter air was a knife in her throat, and her brain was moving too slowly to even try. She'd exhausted so much of herself that day, it was likely she'd be paying the price for days to come.
Her parents weren't due to be home for another three, at least. Three days of recovery to make up for the disastrous one that had been today—it would be enough.
It had to be enough, because if it wasn't, then everything would fall apart like a tower of cards.
"Right," he finally replied. "It is pretty exhausting. Make sure you get enough rest, though—don't go neglecting your health, okay? Did you make a study group with your friends?"
She shrugged. "Not yet."
It was unlikely that anyone in their class would have any desire to form a study group with her, after whatever lie Lila came up with this time around.
She was too tired to care, honestly, but Chat Noir had no way of knowing that.
Their silence stretched on, and on, with seconds blurring into minutes as the night came to life. Her shoulders ached with exhaustion, and her eyes begged to close and rest—every part of her hurt. Every fibre of her being wished for nothing else but to let go, already; to lay down in bed, close her eyes, and fade away from the world. Why was he still here? Why hadn't he left yet?
She was just so tired.
Her grades would tank for sure, this time; it was impossible to study when you were barely alive to begin with, after all.
Marinette wished she was human enough to care. But Marinette didn't wake up to do well in school, or to make herself happy; Marinette woke up so that Ladybug could, too. Marinette woke up so that Tikki had someone to wake up to. Marinette woke up—
Marinette woke up, but for what? Time blurred together like a shattered pictogram, plastered into something incomprehensible and broken, just like her. Corners were shaped wrong, cemented like glue into the broken remains of her brain; impossible to ignore, but similarly impossible to put together.
Perhaps it would be better for everyone if Marinette simply—stopped. If Marinette stopped waking up, and Ladybug woke up, instead; would her brain untangle from the undergrowth if she discarded the part of herself that she hated? If she let go of weak, pitiful little Marinette, then what?
Would anyone mourn her? She didn't live anymore, so it wasn't like there was much to mourn. Lila had her class in an iron-clad grip and her parents had the bakery; Tikki and Chat Noir needed Ladybug, Paris needed Ladybug—but did anyone really need Marinette?
No, she realized, a sigh weighing heavy in her chest. No one needs me.
Was it too late to give back Ladybug to Master Fu, she wondered? Even her performance as a superhero had been subpar as of recent, after all. The broken reality of her life had begun to seep into places it couldn't afford to go, but she didn't know how to stop it. How could she stop the world from bleeding into nothingness when her world was made of nothing?
"Chat," she started, before she could think to stop herself, "what would you do if you woke up, one day, and the world was fake?"
"What do you mean?" He asked, "Like an Akuma?"
She hummed softly, shrugging, and when it became clear that she didn't intend to say anything else, he shifted. The cookie balanced precariously on his thigh, and he tossed his baton once more before saying, "I'd find Ladybug and get rid of the Akuma causing it, I guess. Still, if there was an Akuma that could make the entire world fake …"
He trailed off. "Are you sure you're okay, Marinette?"
"I'm okay." The lie was so, so easy, one that she'd repeated to her parents countless times by now. What was once more to her partner—to Ladybug's partner? "Thanks for worrying; sorry, that was a stupid question, wasn't it?"
If she were to attempt to think back on their conversation, later that night, she'd find that the remainder of it was simply a wall of static, run through a filter too many times. Unrecognizable, jarring, painful; words ceased being words, and actions became nothing more than a means to an end.
A way to end their conversation. What she'd said thus far hadn't felt real at all, after all.
The fractured pieces of her reality felt even more broken than ever before.
"Marinette …" Tikki's voice was low and sorrowful, mourning something that she couldn't understand. "You should tell your parents about this."
She sighed, raising her gaze to the cloudy sky one last time before slamming her hatch closed. "There's nothing to tell them about, Tikki. Everything is fine."
Yet another lie. But what else was there for her to say?
"I woke up wrong." No one would understand what she meant if she told the truth, and the walls were too fragile to hold up under even a modicum of questioning. "The world broke."
"I broke my world."
They were all such juvenile truths, and no one cared about the woes of a fifteen-year-old girl. So long as Ladybug could come out and do what she needed to do, the troubles of fifteen-year-old Marinette didn't matter.
Didn't matter, couldn't matter; would things ever change, or would the world just—continue to spiral until even Ladybug ceased to exist?
If it comes down to that, she thought, if it comes down to that, if it comes down to that—
If it came down to it, she'd simply do what she'd been doing. Lie, lie, and lie, until the truth stopped being something worth considering.
And if she pried open her ceiling and poured her woes into the wood panelling, then no one was any the wiser, because her lips didn't move. The words flowed like water in her head, sloshing against the walls and buffering the jagged edges into something soft and dull, but it was impossible to speak them into existence. The less people knew of her, the better; the less people knew of her sorrows, the better.
The less people remembered Marinette, the better.