Chapter Text
Chloe Bourgeois never imagined that being in solitary confinement would classify as a ‘refuge’ but, right now, any time that she was not amongst the other detainees at Club des Jacobines, Paris’s largest juvenile detention centre, the better.
Impudent rabble! Chloe ranted in her head. When this stupidity is done and behind me, I’ll make sure that they’ll all regret it! Not just these common-as-muck brats who think that they can strike at their betters like that either! I’ll get Adrien! I’ll get Dupain-Cheng! I’ll get Zoe! I’ll get Ladybug! I’ll get Daddy and Mummy too!
Shocked at the sudden pain in her palms, Chloe looked down to see that her fingernails had dug into her palms and drawn blood! An instinct was to scream for a doctor to tend to her but in the two weeks she’d been at Jacobines, she’d learned not to bother. They’d care for serious injuries but no-one seemed to understand who she was and realise that they had the duty to care for her every slight pain and discomfort! She was still in horror that they had cut-down her fingernails, destroying her €500 manicure! She felt even more enraged by their having shaved her head almost to the skin but, given how the little harpies in her wing insisted on pulling hair, she had to admit that it was a necessary safety precaution.
She was still plotting the destruction of the careers and lives of the so-called ‘guards’ who didn’t understand that she deserved 24/7 protection and service. Especially for their unwillingness to keep the rabble away from her. Didn’t they know who she was?
Chloe blew out her breath and dropped back on the board that they insisted was a bed (it was actually padded and had warm covers but, compared to the luxury that she’d got used to as her intrinsic right, it might as well be a stone slab)! Chloe was sure that, after the exhausting day with that blasted head-shrinker they’d set on her and that horrible school-work that they were forcing her to do without anyone to do it for her, she’d never relax enough to be able to rest, let alone sleep.
She was pretty surprised when it turned out that the exhaustion of a packed and far-from-enjoyable day was more than enough to overcome her sense of offence and outrage and, almost as soon as she closed her eyes, she was asleep.
However, it wasn’t an easy rest at all. In fact, she found herself in a nightmare that was all the worse for being a memory. A memory of what was beyond any doubt the worst day of her life.
~*~*~
Chloe watched in amazement as the fast-expanding dome of light expanded out from Agreste Mansion and consumed all around her. There was a ‘snap’ noise and, looking down, she realised that her Alliance Ring had broken in half and fallen to the ground, spitting dying sparks of electricity as it tarnished in a way that made her immediately think of the effects of Chat Noir’s Cataclysm.
Lying in front of her, Adrien groaned and opened his eyes. Chloe, as was her instinct, immediately started rapping out orders. “Adrikins! Don’t lie there you lazy fool! Get up and get back to work!” Chloe gestured around at the other kids from school that she’d ordered Adrien to round up and whom she’d been using the mind-control powers with which Monarch had rewarded her through her Ring (in exchange for exposing Adrien’s plots against his father) to force him to abuse (mostly verbal but, in a few cases, more deliciously physical) for all the times they’d disobeyed her or just displeased her with their simple existence. It had been so funny watching him and seeing the horror in his expression as he did so. Never mind, Adrikins! You’ll come to enjoy it and I’ll have my playmate back at last! She’d told herself.
Adrien didn't do as she said. Instead, he glared at her with a hatred that made her blood run cold. “Chloe, you are so sick,” Adrien spat, stepping back from Zoe whose injuries had all vanished. Was Ladybug responsible for this somehow?
At that point, Chloe realised that no ring = no powers but she wasn’t afraid. She was one of the natural leaders of the world and that gave her natural authority! She didn’t need a silly smartphone ring to use it! “Adrikins, there’s no need to be so crude! All I was doing was making you do what you should be doing, reminding the lesser folk of their place in the natural scheme of things! Don’t tell me that you aren’t happier now!”
Adrien’s hands clenched into fists and it was clear that it was only his essentially gentle nature that was stopping him from striking her. Chloe took a step back in fear at the look on his face. “SABRINA!” she shrieked. “Get over here and protect me!”
Sabrina, her face streaked with tears, stood up from where she’d been kneeling next to Rose and glared at her. “You shut up! I don’t know why I ever thought you were my friend! I never want to see you or hear your voice ever again!”
Chloe was more afraid at that moment than she’d ever been as everyone else stood up and glared at her. Some of them looked ready to physically attack her! Why? All she was doing was reinforcing the proper social order! She backpedalled fast and hit something that was behind her. She looked around to see her father behind her with Officer Raincomprix. She blew out a relieved breath. “Daddy! Thank goodness! Tell your man to protect me from these ruffians!” Chloe’s father looked at her and there was something new in his expression. Not fear but horror and disgust, as if he’d never really seen Chloe before and that now he had realised that there was something horrible there in place of his daughter. “Daddy?”
André swallowed. “Officer Raincomprix, place this woman under arrest for conspiracy with a known terrorist.”
Chloe’s mouth dropped open and she couldn’t even force an outraged squeak out as Raincomprix advanced on her, twisting her arms painfully behind her back and latching on the bracelets of a pair of handcuffs. Chloe’s mind raced. “Daddy, no! Why are you doing this?!?”
André scowled. “I remember everything girl! We were all there when you agreed to help Monarch to torment Ladybug’s former allies in exchange for your own power. I remember the names you called me, your mother and the things you were doing to your sister too!”
Chloe stuttered and struggled to think of something to say to regain control of the situation when two figures stepped out of the entrance to Agreste Mansion. At first, Chloe thought it was Ladybug but there the black parts of her costume had green spots instead of red, there were green-tipped cat ears on her head slitted green eyes behind her black-edged red mask and a red leather belt/tail. Next to her stood a battered and distraught Nathalie Sancoeur and, in the arms of …. Ladychat…? In her arms was the limp form of someone else who she’d often relied upon for help: Gabriel Agreste. Uncle Gabriel? No!
Ladychat stepped over to Adrien, who was frozen in horror. “I… I’m sorry, Adrien. I tried… I tried so hard but nothing I did was enough!”
“He had no Miraculous but he attacked Monarch nonetheless and fought him hand-to-hand.” Nathalie’s voice was as uninflected as usual but, now, it was the monotone of a woman devastated beyond feeling anything. “It gave Ladychat the time she needed to regain control of the Ultimate Miraculous Power and wish him out of existence but…”
“There is always a price,” Ladychat continued. “To undo all the evil acts of Monarch, something good had to be sacrificed; M Agreste… Your father… and whatever good he could have done in the future. From the start, he made it clear to me that he wanted to be the one who paid the price.”
Adrien stepped forwards, gently took his father’s lifeless body from the superheroine and laid him gently on the ground, kneeling beside him, his right hand resting gently on his father’s still chest. “Thank you for telling me the truth, Ladychat. Don’t blame yourself; father would have wanted his death to have meaning after everything he’d allowed to be done. At least he can face mama’s spirit in heaven with a clean conscience.” As impossible as it seemed, Ladychat began to weep even more than before. She looked over at Nathalie and the two women exchanged a look of profound guilt but also of sisterhood and understanding. Nathalie drew in a deep breath with her eyes closed and then she opened them again, nodding to the superheroine and allowing tears to finally roll down her cheeks.
“And the stolen Miraculous?” Chloe’s father demanded harshly.
The next person out of the door of the Mansion was the Gorilla, or whatever was the name of Adrien’s bodyguard (Chloe never bothered to learn the names of low-level minions). He had an open attaché case, in which the Miraculous, including the Butterfly and Peacock, were visible, unmarred and shining in the sunlight coming through the rapidly-clearing clouds.
With a shriek, Chloe launched herself towards the case; all she knew and cared about was to get to the Miraculous! After defeating Monarch, that idiot Ladybug would be too weak to fight off the return of the Miracle Queen! Monarch had given her the transformation phrases for all the gems so, this time, nothing would…
At that point, the ground rose up and smashed Chloe in the face. With blood streaming from her broken nose, the blonde looked up from the sneaker-clad foot that had just tripped her and then at her half-sister’s face as she glared down at her. “Just lie there, you blonde freak of nature,” Zoe hissed.
~*~*~
“Daddy! Get me out of here this minute!” That idiot Raincomprix still hadn’t released Chloe’s handcuffs. Worse, she was in this shabby little interview room sitting on a ridiculously hard wooden chair of a sort she’d never accept under most circumstances. Chloe blinked when she realised that her father wasn’t babbling apologies to her and shouting orders to the policemen to release her. “Daddy?”
“Chloe… Why?” Chloe blinked stupidly. “In front of the press! In front of the whole world! Not only did you openly side with Monarch, you tortured some of the most beloved people in Paris! WHY?”
Chloe pouted. “They weren’t doing what I wanted! Lila said that…”
André’s fist hit the interview room table hard and Chloe jumped, more in surprise than in fear. “Worse still, you used Adrien Agreste as your puppet! What were you thinking?!?”
Chloe tried to order her thoughts before replying. “Lila said that Adrien had been blinded by the fact he had so many so-called friends and that I needed to help him see the reality of what they were like and how below him they were! Once he saw that, he’d be my Adrikins again and we could be together, just how I’d always wanted.” The blonde scowled. “I’m just sorry that he couldn’t find Dupain-Cheng! That I would have enjoyed the most!”
“Dear God! Do you even hear yourself?” The Mayor shook his head. “Not only did you do this but you did it publicly!”
“Lila said that once it was all done, they’d be afraid of me and wouldn’t dare do anything! Just like how mummy always gets away with firing people and talking down to them!”
André sagged and groaned in disbelief and briefly covered his eyes. “Chloe, your mother is harsh and even a little theatrical in her behaviour but she never openly does anything illegal. If she wants to permanently remove people in any lasting way, she has discreet ways of doing it that no-one would ever be able to link to her! You did none of that; instead you just publicly and proudly helped Monarch launch a city-wide riot and used the power in those damned rings to get Adrien to start to beat his friends half-way to death in front of the press!” The heavily-built politician rubbed his temples. “Where the hell did we go wrong with you? How did you not learn the lesson to be discreet?”
“Daddy, I was just doing what you and mummy always…”
“We never do things like that, Chloe! You are either too perceptive for your own good or you're too stone-cold oblivious to notice that!” The man slumped down in the seat opposite his daughter. “I suppose that I can put off a criminal investigation by blaming everything on that Lila girl…” The mayor glared at his daughter “... and your obvious criminal imbecility.”
“Sir?” Everyone looked at Raincomprix who was reading a message off of his phone. “Regarding that, shortly before Monarch started what he called the ‘Last Day Riots’...? The two Signorina Rossis had reported their daughter missing. She hadn’t been seen for a day and they have just made another report that she hasn’t returned after Ladybug’s… Whatever it was that she did there. No-one seems to have a clue where she might be.”
André frowned. “Inconvenient.” He looked up at Chloe. “Well, it seems that I am checkmated then. I have nothing left I can do for you, Chloe. You were obviously acting under your own violation as ‘Queen Mayor’ and the two people that we might scapegoat are… unavailable.”
Chloe nearly jumped on the thought as it entered her mind. “Daddy, Uncle Gabriel was the one who said I should help Monarch and that he would see to it that Adrien became the person he should be! He encouraged me and put me in contact with Monarch! Can’t you blame him?”
The sneer on her father’s face was terrible to see. “Oh yes, let’s try to scapegoat the man that Ladybug’s public statement has framed as the saviour of Paris! That’s a wonderful idea, Chloe.” Chloe might be dense sometimes but she knew sarcasm when she heard it and flushed brightly in embarrassment. “No, there’s no way around this. We’ll have to allow this to go to trial, enter a plea of not guilty by way of diminished responsibility and then have you sentenced to a private rehabilitation centre for criminally insane children whose staff I can control.”
“Daddy!” Seeming not having heard Chloe’s outraged shout, André stood up and turned to leave the room. Chloe stood up too and her voice rose into a harsh and commanding tone that he was sure she’d learned from her mother. “Daddy! You will do what I say! Just the way that you do what mummy says!”
At that, Chloe’s father did stop his exit and actually snorted in amusement. His reply was offered without turning to face her. “Chloe, your mother is talented, waspishly intelligent and unutterably beautiful and perfect in every aspect of her form. You? You’re stupid, oafish, undeservingly demanding, mediocre in appearance without hundreds of euros of cosmetic work every week and without the slightest redeeming quality that makes you worth saving other than the fact that you are my only blood heir and because your outbursts reflect on me. However, this time, things have gone too far to cover up and you’ll have to take the consequences for your failure. Maybe you’ll benefit from this and maybe you won’t but, frankly, I don’t care anymore.” A policeman on the far side of the interview room door opened it for the mayor and André stepped through. “Don’t bother ever calling me again, Chloe. I'm no longer interested in averting your petulant hysterics and the threat of you becoming a public embarrassment if you're thwarted.” The man grunted. "I'll just have to find someone else to be my heir that doesn’t require such high levels of maintenance."
“Daddy? DADDY!” The door closed behind André as he left without looking back and Chloe’s voice rose to a scream as began to stamp her feet in futile rage. “Daddy! Daddy I demand that you get me out of here right now! Do you hear me? You can’t do this to me! Do you know who I am? I will make you sorry for this! You can’t get away with this! Do you know who my fa…” Chloe went pale and her throat closed up. She could barely squeak out: “My… father…?”
“Sorry, Princess,” Raincomprix said with a sneer. “I think that flush is busted.” The big policeman slammed Chloe back down into her seat making Chloe gasp in surprised pain. “That’s just the beginning of the payback for all the shit you’ve inflicted on my Sabrina. Now, Chloe Bourgeois, you are hereby charged with being accessory to acts of state terrorism, kidnap, criminal assault…”
~*~*~
“What are you doing here?”
On the opposite side of the Visitor’s Room table, Zoe Lee smiled at her older sister in a nervous way. “I wanted to make sure you were okay. If Juvie Hall over here is half as bad as it is in the States…” the bespectacled blonde (she’d been diagnosed with myopia just a month ago) with a pink streak in her hair grimaced in a way that ensured Chloe didn’t need her to elaborate any further.
“I’m surprised that you care. Aren’t I a ‘freak of nature’? Are you going to take those words back oh ‘good little sister’?”
If Chloe was expecting her vilely nice sister to apologise, take back her words or beg for forgiveness in an utterly ridiculous stutter, she was greatly mistaken. Zoe looked like she’d swallowed a whole peeled lemon but she managed to force out the words. “Chloe, the things that you did and said… they were disgusting beyond words. The way that you so obviously enjoyed doing it was… unforgivable.” Zoe looked up through her corrective lenses and sighed. “Chloe, I’m not going to water down your crimes in my head to make you feel better and I’m certainly not sorry for helping catch you. However… You’re my sister Chloe. I once told you that I’d always love you, no matter what you did or said to make the world hate you and, God help me, that’s still true.” The girl closed her eyes for a moment and sighed before opening them again and continuing. “I still love you and care for your future, Chloe. Please don’t cause any trouble. Try to work with the doctors that M Bourgeois is arranging for you. Try to get better!”
“Get better?” Chloe hooted derisively. “There is nothing wrong with me except the horrible, back-stabbing family and friends that I’d allowed to drag me down!” She looked around, her arms folded aggressively. “I’ll get out of here and you’ll all bitterly regret turning your backs on me.”
“Chloe, it’s over.” Chloe looked at her sister in surprise at hearing her shout. “You have no money, no powerful parents to invoke and no options left. You can’t even blame anyone but yourself.” The girl paused. “They found Lila’s clothes all neatly folded up at one of the jetties on the river this morning.” Chloe’s mind raced. Lila was dead? No, that didn’t sound right but she couldn’t think where the other girl would go if this was just some kind of ruse to cover her escape. “It isn’t hopeless, Chloe!” The girl looked at her sister’s hand touching hers and noted her hopeful smile. “You still can change things; be a better person and make a life for yourself. It will have to be without asking mom and your dad for help but…”
Chloe shook off Zoe’s touch. “Spare me your self-righteous sermons,” she spat. “I don’t need anyone’s help, I don’t need your pathetic, sentimental desire to see me 'redeemed' and I certainly don’t need to change anything except you and your friends’ belief that you’ve seen the last of me!”
Zoe ought to have looked devastated but, instead, her face lowered into a disgusted scowl. “Wow. Okay, is that your last word?” Chloe nodded angrily. “Well then, don’t say that I didn’t try; I’ll just take Socqueline’s advice then.” The girl sighed, “Don’t bother to ever contact me or Sabrina if you need anything… You know, when you get out of the asylum in about ten years’ time? Goodbye, Chloe.”
Zoe stood and strode away, her long, beautiful hair swishing behind her as she did so. Chloe was just feeling the first touch of satisfaction at having upset her when she saw something in her sister’s hair. Oh, it was well-camouflaged but when wasn’t it? However, it was a hair comb with a bee-shaped clip, enamelled in horribly clashing shades of pink, yellow and blue instead of solid platinum but still instantly recognisable to her: The Bee Miraculous. Her Miraculous. Suddenly, everything became terribly clear to Chloe and there was suddenly someone she hated even more than Dupain-Cheng or that back-stabber Ladybug: A girl who she now realised had been born to supplant her in every way.
“No! It’s mine! Give it back! You have no right to that! IT’S MIIINNNE!” Chloe tried to jump the table and tackle Zoe as she walked away without a hint of hurrying. However, before she’d even cleared the first obstacle, she was down and had two guards forcing her wrists into handcuffs. Zoe never looked back at her screaming and thrashing sister but Chloe wasn’t about to ever forget the sad look that Pollen shot her from where she was peeking out from under the rear brim of Zoe’s blue woollen hat.
~*~*~
With a gasp, Chloe was awake. In the blacked-out night-time cell, she could only see the dull glow of the infrared LEDs around the security cameras and the brighter green LEDs in the emergency lights. She blinked stupidly, trying to work out what was going on and why she was awake (not that she was sorry that she'd been roused from her nightmares that meant that she couldn't escape from her current circumstances even in her sleep).
Yeah, she knew why now. Normally, the floodlights in the exercise yard right outside her window kept the interior of her cell at least partially lit, even in the depths of night. Something was blocking that light.
Chloe looked at the window and looked into a pair of deep bluebell-shaded eyes looking right back at her from within a very familiar red-and-black mask. Chloe couldn't say how often she'd wished to see those eyes looking at her with love and devotion but she knew that it was a hopeless fantasy. Ladybug was too stuck-up with her pathetic morals to look at her with anything more than contempt. However, Chloe suddenly realised that she'd definitely prefer contempt to the look of pity being directed her way right now.
Chloe briefly considered shouting at the red-and-black-clad superheroine to go away but it wasn't as if she could force her to do anything in her current situation other than waste her time by shrieking like a lunatic or playing a sulky, silent girl. "You!" Chloe hissed at last. "I suppose that you've come to gloat?"
"That was the idea at first, yes." Ladybug acknowledged, much to Chloe's surprise. "Then Vesperia told me about what happened today."
Chloe felt so many things, especially rage but… Somehow, giving rein to those emotions hadn't helped her much recently, so she just let her exhaustion (what time of the morning was it anyway?) make her groan out a response. "You had to do it, didn't you? You had to give my Miraculous to the one person in the world that I'd resent the most for having it? I suppose I should be glad that you didn't give it to Dupain-Cheng!"
Ladybug smiled in a strange way and then whispered something under her breath. Much to Chloe's shock, she suddenly transmuted into a humanoid gust of wind that easily forced itself around the gaps between her window and its frame and then solidified in the middle of the cell. No, it wasn’t Ladybug; Chloe had seen this form before (and she never quite understood why everyone insisted that they couldn’t remember what happened when they were akumatised; more sign of her intrinsic superiority, she supposed). This was the form that Ladybug had used to fight Miracle Queen: Dragonbug.
"Won't your Jap lapdog resent you using her Miraculous?" Chloe snarked.
Oddly, Dragonbug took the question seriously. "Ryuuko has left Paris for the foreseeable future; she has her own mission elsewhere and her own destiny at another hero's side. So, the Dragon Miraculous has been returned to the Miracle Box to be granted to a Holder by the Guardian when it is needed." Dragonbug stepped right into Chloe's personal space and ran her gloved hand through the close-trimmed buzz-cut that was all that remained of her once-glorious hair. "They shouldn't have done that," the superheroine murmured. "That was just plain brutal revenge dressed up as prison discipline. You've made a lot of enemies in your fifteen short years, Chloe, and now you seem to be unprotected and helpless, they'll strike."
Chloe shrugged and set aside why she didn't flinch away from Dragonbug's touch just then. "Let them try; I'm ready for them but I doubt that they're ready for me!"
Dragonbug's expression had a lot of levels in it and Chloe wasn't sure she understood any of them. "Vesperia was right; you are in denial." The blonde spluttered a little. "So, let's start at the beginning. The Bee Miraculous is not 'yours'; it never was, even at the height of your putative reformation as Queen Bee. Now, it is being held and protected by Vesperia but it is no more 'hers' than the Ladybug is 'mine' or the Black Cat 'belongs to' Chat Noir. They are a trust, Chloe: A gift and an honour to bear in the protection of the Balance. They are not the property of any human's and they certainly are not anyone's to use for their own narrow interests." The black-haired superheroine sighed. "Take it from a subject-matter expert; I have made those mistakes and it only ever hurt me."
"Please," Chloe grunted. "There are two sorts of people in this world: The people who take what they want and the people that they take them from."
"Actually, you forgot those who give willingly and those who receive joyfully and gratefully."
"Weakness," Chloe hissed. "Weak choices from weak people who deserve only to be the servants of those who take power!"
Dragonbug shook her head. "So strange; literally everything that you're saying tonight is completely wrong in every way." Chloe opened her mouth and Dragonbug interrupted. "Just remember who is in the cell, Mlle Bourgeois. Consider very carefully where 'taking power' has led you and where those you damn as 'weak' stand relative to you." Chloe felt like throwing herself at Dragonbug to beat her into taking back those horrible words but she could see the Dragon Sabre strapped across the superheroine's back and had no desire to end her life tonight as a skewered piece of meat. "Vesperia was right, you know: You are alone, powerless and without any resources except for your self-belief. You would be far wiser to take this as a turning point."
Chloe's grin was malignant. "Oh, I am, Dragon-butt. This is the point where I start my ascension to taking all the power that I want."
There was a long pause before Dragonbug spoke again, in a genuinely appalled tone. “Chloe…? When did you get this stupid? Or were you always this way and I was just too wrapped up in myself to notice?” Chloe spluttered and tried to find a counter-jab but the superheroine was continuing. “The Chloe Bourgeois I knew, the young woman who became Queen Bee, would never just simply assume that she’d win because she wanted to! She’d see the real odds stacked against her and wonder if she needed to change her path, no matter the cost to her pride!”
Dragonbug took Chloe by the shoulders and began to shake her for emphasis. “You have nothing left, Chloe! No power, no money and no influential family to protect you! I know that the mayor has cut you loose! You sure as hell don’t have any friends left! Zoe and Sabrina won’t have anything to do with you anymore! I have no idea where Lila Rossi may have gone but I doubt she’d ever risk pretending to be your friend again! Adrien has ostracised you and, without Gabriel, you have no-one to coerce him to take you back!”
“You're lying! Mummy will…”
“Audrey Bourgeois doesn’t care whether you live or die! Open your eyes, Chloe! You’ve been trying to impress her since maternelle and she still amuses herself by pretending not to know your name! You’re a plaything to her, nothing else!” Tears began to well up in Chloe’s eyes. Realising what she was doing, Dragonbug released the other girl’s shoulders and stepped back. “She’s interested only in people who she can profit from. That’s all she ever saw in Marinette Dupain-Cheng and the only time she’ll pretend to be interested in you is if you did the same. Even then, it would only be for as long as you didn’t become an irritation by your need for attention!” There was a shocked pause. Chloe’s mouth was opening and closing silently but she couldn’t think of anything to say. How could she deny it when, in her heart, she knew it was true? “You’re at rock bottom, Chloe. I don’t think anyone would give you time of day right now unless they thought that they’d get something out of it and, really, what do you have left to offer?”
Chloe swallowed convulsively, thinking briefly of the women she’d watched at parties at the hotel, grotesquely offering themselves to people like her father, XY, Bob Roth and Jagged Stone. She’d not been able to hide her contempt and Stone had murmured to her: “It’s all they have to offer, luv. Frankly? No sale; got too much self-respect for that.” She’d die before she let herself cross that line to selling herself for some tiny drop of money, ease or privilege.
“I’m scared!” Chloe whispered at last. “I… I’m alone and I’m scared!”
“I wish I could help you, Chloe, but I don’t think I can. I’m not sure anyone can anymore; you’ve burned too many bridges.” Dragonbug blew out a long, frustrated breath before continuing. “You’ve never really known happiness, have you Chloe? Oh, you’ve found satisfaction by being the bully and getting away with it but… happiness? I don’t think that you've ever really known how to find that. No, as I said, this is the new start for you, Chloe. You're going to have to find your own path by raw effort, first to earn release and then earn a life uniquely of your own; learning to serve and receive rather than take." The red, black and gold-clad superheroine frowned. "You're going to have to do that in a world that has a variety of excellent causes to hate you, causes that were all given by you in your wrongheaded sense of impunity. That won't be easy and it won't be pain-free."
Chloe looked up at the figure that had moved away from her back to the cell window. Dragonbug actually smiled in a very warm and encouraging way before speaking again. "I honestly think that surmounting all those obstacles will be the path to a far greater happiness than just finding brief revenge for your sense of injured superiority. Goodbye, Chloe Bourgeois. Water Dragon."
Dragonbug turned into a translucent figure of water that struck the cell window and, as she had done so before, flowed through the gaps and outside into the sky over the exercise yard. Chloe barely heard the Thwip-Whizz as Dragonbug deployed her Yo-yo and swung off into the night; she was still lost inside the sudden revelation she’d had: No mummy and no daddy to help and protect her; no Miraculous and no Monarch to give her power; no peons to work for her and certainly no friends (she wondered if she’d ever really known what that was anyway). Nothing but her and the future that she wasn't sure she even could even visualise right now. Worse still, it was her fault that this had happened; there were only so many times she had to be told this by so many different people before she couldn't shrug it off any more.
Didn’t they know who she was? Actually, they did: She was the ex-Queen Bee, the ex-ally of Monarch; the estranged daughter of the mayor and the Style Queen who had been all-but-disowned because of the constant embarrassment she’d caused to her powerful parents. She was no-one and she had nothing.
Chloe felt like she'd been blind and was suddenly staring into the light for the first time. She had to find her future and she had to do it alone. Chloe had faced terrible threats in her time: Akumatised supervillains, angry superheroes and supervillains, Sentimonsters and even mundane people who had been given power over her by strength, law or money. Somehow, none of them had inspired true fear in her the way as did that simple sudden sight of what really lay ahead.