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Chapter Text

The first time Marinette hears about luck, she thinks it's the most magical thing in the world, right after Christmas and the knitting fairy.

An intangible force that can simply with its existence cause good things to happen, make you win a game or leave you in the arms of success - it sounds beautiful, happy, shiny.

Marinette wants to take luck everywhere she goes.

She's not much older when she realizes it doesn't work like that at all.

The universe is balanced and where good luck goes, bad luck follows. It's easy to see for her that rules are rules and where good people go, Marinette seems to follow.

Where her mother places her cup of tea, Marinette knocks it to the ground. Where her father places a well risen loaf of bread in the oven, Marinette fails to take it out in time. Where the nice kid in school hands her his half of their project, carefully prepared and written down, Marinette forgets all their notes on the day of the presentation.

"Marinette, I can tell you're smart, but I don't understand why you constantly neglect to do your homework."

She clenches her fists by her sides and feels her breathing turn to manual as she wills herself not to cry.

"I do my homework, I swear," she says, only partially lying. "I just forget it at home." Sometimes she forgets it even exists, other times she just can't bring herself to do it.

Her teacher looks sympathetic, but in the way that reminds Marinette of her father when she tells him the hot chocolate he made her is not at all too sweet, yet he knows she's only trying to make him feel better. "Have you tried writing down what you need to bring? Keeping a list will help you stay organized."

"But I'll forget to write it down."

"You need to try harder, Marinette." The words coil in her stomach and wrap around her chest. "Will you show me that you can do better?"

"Yeah, I'll try."

The frown that stares back at her makes her hate herself for promising to even try. She knows how this goes.

"Trying isn't enough. You won't always have people helping you, which is why I want you to learn to take care of things on your own instead of waiting for reminders. Understood?"

She vows to do better next year and the one after and she buys a planner and another one and her folders are new and shiny and colourful and she's painted them all nicely to make herself want to go to school at all, but it's not enough. It takes less than a month for her notes to be everywhere but their respective places and her planners to sit on her desk gathering dust, nothing more than a constant reminder of her laziness.

So, she draws and she spends her time in a fantasy world where homework doesn't exist and she can do anything. It's the only way to survive the long hours listening to lectures that make her want to pull out her hair and the only way to stamp down and bury the waves upon waves of staggering guilt that threaten to drown her.

Making friends has never been one of Marinette's strengths. She sits alone in most classes and she goes to the art room during her breaks. When it's lunch time she hides in the bathroom and she draws and draws and draws. It's fine, because she's independent and she knows just how to fill her time with ideas and projects and hobbies and if her mind still won't quiet down by the time she comes home, she helps out in the bakery to work all the painfully loud thoughts right to death.

And sometimes, as she lies in bed and stares up at the ceiling, she wishes for a little luck, to send to the people around her that she's touched and tainted and maybe for the night to last forever. She wakes up in the morning more tired than before and wonders if this is what she deserves.

Marinette is twelve when she makes her first big mistake, right after trusting luck to be good.

There's new class combinations and their teacher has made a seating arrangement to get everyone to mingle better and get to know even those students that are new to them. It's the first time in years she's had a desk neighbour and she would almost dare say she got lucky. Nino is the nicest anyone at school has been to her since she can remember and he shows her his favourite CD on his walkman and she even makes him an outfit design that he can wear as a famous dj once he makes it big, even though she doesn't quite feel confident enough to show him the finished version.

When Nino sits next to her, she almost feels like she can listen to their teacher's voice without feeling the urge to stare right off into space instead.

"Do you want to come to my birthday party? I brought you an invite."

It's a simple piece of paper, printed out on a home printer in colour, balloons and presents along the sides and all the necessary information square in the middle. Her name has been crudely inserted in the space after "Dear" and Nino has signed it personally. She doesn't have much to compare it to, but she thinks it looks really cool.

"I'll come," she says, impulsively, quickly. She hasn't even asked her parents for permission yet, but it's exciting and new and wonderful and the ugly feeling in her gut fades away for just a moment.

"Awesome," replies Nino, grinning at her happily. "You're going to be the only girl, but you're cool so it's okay."

She stands a little straighter at his words and hopes she can make up for it the way he expects her to. If none of the girls want to be her friends, maybe the boys will.

Secretly, Marinette thinks she could be a boy, easily. When the birthday party comes around, she wears her dark jeans, the ones that are just a little big on her. She doesn't have any shirts that feel boyish enough, so she puts a jacket on top and hopes it won't be too warm. If she's going to make more friends, she needs to be someone they'll like.

She needs to not be girly, clumsy, embarrassing Marinette.

Her parents are so excited for her to be going to a friend's house that they barely comment on her unusual choice of clothing. The gift in her hands feels heavy when they drop her off at Nino's and offer to accompany her inside.

"Please don't," she begs. "I don't want them to think I'm a baby."

Her mother looks pained. "You're not a baby. We just want to meet your friend and his parents."

"I'm already late, I should get going."

Marinette hears her sigh as she exits the car, throwing a "love you" over her shoulder. Her parents tell her to have fun and she wishes having fun was what she's here for.

But today is about making an impression and introducing the new Marinette. Her outfit is her foundation and as soon as Nino let's her cross the threshold to his home, she will lay her first brick.

"Marinette!" Nino grins at her, genuinely excited to see her as he opens the door. "You made it!"

She tries return a smile despite the coiling anxiety in her stomach making her feel ill. The nervous shake of her hands is barely concealed as she holds out her gift. "Sorry I'm late."

"It's fine. Come on, we were just going to start playing a game!"

She takes her shoes off and glares at her dotted socks. There's noise coming from what she assumes is Nino's room and there's ants crawling all over her skin. Her hair itches against her neck as she follows behind her friend, voices growing louder and some of them more recognizable. They look up when she comes into view.

"You have to wait this round, 'cause we only have four controllers," Nino explains, setting his gift down on his desk where she spots a bunch more, all still unopened.

"Okay."

"I'm waiting too," one boy speaks up and Marinette hesitantly moves over to sit more or less next to him on the ground with her legs crossed. She's seen him around school, she's pretty sure. "What's your name?"

"Marinette," she says, the word feeling sour on her tongue. Maybe she should have come up with something new, something untraceable.

The boy smiles. "I'm Nathaniel, I've known Nino since kindergarten! He told me he was inviting a new friend, but I didn't know who it would be."

Warmth spreads in her chest and suddenly Marinette feels hot. Nino has talked about her. "Oh. Sorry."

His eyebrows scrunch up slightly and Marinette wonders if she's already messed this up. Her lonesome brick is making it hard to stand on.

Then Nathaniel hands her a second one.

"Wanna team up next round?"

Glancing at the screen and realizing that the other boys are focused more on the game than looking at her in disgust, she feels herself relax just a tiny bit, feet apart and balancing on her two bricks, just barely.

"Yeah, okay," she says and finds that adding cement can be as easy as letting herself exist.

The birthday party passes and she almost forgets about old Marinette. Technically, Nino is having a sleepover, but the thought of staying the night as the only girl - even though she could totally be a boy - makes her sick to her stomach, and so her parents pick her up by eight. Her father doesn't comment on her and Nathaniel's matching little braids or the way Marinette is stalling with putting her shoes back on or how most of the other kids actually stop to say goodbye to her as she's leaving.

"Did Nino like your gift?" he asks once they're in the car.

"I think so."

"And you had fun? Everyone was nice to you?"

It's a funny question. Marinette gets the strange urge to lie, to say that she hated it, that she felt uncomfortable and that she never wants to hang out with anyone ever again. Maybe that's what she deserves, what her luck should cost.

Then she thinks about winning the game, about the way the others fought to have her in their team and how no one at all commented on her dotted pink and white socks next to their dinosaur ones.

"They were nice," she says. "Papa, can I have the game Nino has for my birthday?"

"I'll see what we can do."

The months that follow are a fever dream.

Marinette finds herself equal parts excited and terrified to go to school, waiting and waiting for the other shoe to drop and topple her two-brick wall. She's on borrowed luck and it's only a matter of time before she runs out and the world asks her to pay up.

Her breaks are spent with Nino, sometimes the others when he pulls her along, and she thinks they probably count as her friends now. It's stupid of her to think she wouldn't mess it up somehow.

They're assigned a project to work on in pairs and she doesn't even need to ask for Nino to write their names down together next to their topic. It's a stupid history presentation and they meet up to work on it together after school.

"We need to make sure we get equal slides to talk about," he tells her, even though she already knows she will stumble her way through half the sentences.

"Okay. Do you want to start?"

"I'll start, then you go over the content and I do the first real slide."

It doesn't happen like that.

It's Wednesday and they should be doing their presentation and Nino is home sick and Marinette doesn't know what to do. For once, she's actually remembered to bring the materials for the project and her teacher is glaring her down.

"But Nino is sick, sir, can't we do it tomorrow?"

"You know the rules, Marinette."

"Yes, but-"

"You can either do the presentation on your own, or I will assume you didn't prepare it properly. Wouldn't be the first time, would it?"

She thinks about Nino and how serious he was about splitting the work exactly and she thinks about her grades and the way people look at her like they're only waiting for her to say she forgot to do the work.

The presentation feels like an ice bath and she spends the entire break after hunched over a dirty toilet seat, wishing she could just throw up the ugly feeling in her stomach and be done with it.

She tells Nino when he comes back to school, while they're playing a game of tic-tac-toe on a napkin in the cafeteria and she doesn't miss the way he grows silent and bitter.

"I asked for my own presentation today," he tells her later, hands holding tightly onto his backpack straps. "You can't join."

"Okay," she says, mouth going dry. "I didn't mean to do it alone, but you were sick."

Nino shrugs and leaves and Marinette thinks she might cry so much the earth will flood and with it her two little bricks and her pathetic cement lining.

"I'm sitting next to Max now," Nino explains a week later. "I hope that's okay."

"Yeah, that's fine," she lies and sits down and hides her eyes with her hair and stomps down the feelings of disappointment. This is her fault, the luck debt has caught up with her and there's nothing left to pay. They take her bricks away instead.

She'd like to say she's better at it now, practiced in the way she avoids Nino's usual spots and the skill of filling up her time with daydreams and sketches. Sometimes she sees Nathaniel standing somewhere, looking at her and he'll wave and she'll look away. Friends are fine for those who need them, but Marinette knows she needs to learn to take care of things on her own.

Reminders are for those who fail and the rectangular imprints on her ground are more than enough for her.

Chapter Text

Chloé Bourgeois lives in a building so tall it swallows people like Marinette in its shadow.

There's bricks upon bricks and only the best materials holding it together, all paid for by her parents' success. Marinette doesn't think she could ever measure up to it, not in money or success or the art of being known.

It doesn't mean she slips under the radar.

A year of going unnoticed, sleeping silently under the heavy loneliness she has learned to carry, is broken up when she knocks over a beaker, shattering glass and spilling liquid.

She should be grateful for not getting expelled on the spot.

Instead, Marinette finds herself in a cycle of misery that is more prominent than anything she has dealt with before.

The first week after the incident, she opens her locker to a bunch of bugs crawling over a moldy sandwich that she knows she didn't leave inside. The school makes her clean it up and she can't stop dreaming about it for months. She tries to tape shut the slits in the door, but someone keeps ripping it off.

Next, her sports bag disappears during class and she's left having to play soccer in her daytime clothes, sweating and feeling uncomfortable for the rest of the day. Her parents buy her a new bag and clothes, but she can't bring herself to feel good about it.

It doesn't take long for Chloe's words to start infesting everyone around her. She tells them Marinette wears her hair in pigtails to hide how greasy it looks when it's down, so Marinette starts taking more showers than she should and wearing her hair differently. Chloé tells them she's too poor to afford real clothes and that's why Marinette runs around in hand knitted sweaters, so she hides her projects in the back of her closet and buys plain sweaters at the store. If anyone protests with the things she says or does, Chloé makes sure they stay in line. When Marinette stumbles into her in the hallways, Chloé laughs and she jabs and she makes sure Marinette knows just how worthless she is.

And it's fine, because at least now Marinette understands why Nino was so quick to leave her.

It's halfway through the school year that someone stands up to Chloé in her name.

The other girl is pretty, she thinks, with her hair in pigtails unapologetically and glasses framing her kind face. She's confident and smart and she doesn't leave Marinette's side for the rest of the day.

"Is your wrist better?"

Marinette glances down at her arm that she had to catch herself with when Chloé got one of her followers to push her against the school railing the day before.

"It's fine. It's just my left one."

Socqueline frowns and tries to take her wrist towards her, but Marinette tugs it away, pulling down her jacket sleeve to cover the bruising. "Did you have your parents take you to the doctor?"

"Yeah, she said it's fine," she lies, hates that she does it so often her mouth feels bitter no matter how sweet her intentions.

"Would you tell me if it wasn't?"

Marinette can't bring herself to reply.

A few months later, two kids from her grade start dating. It's the main gossip around the school for days and suddenly everyone is talking about crushes and dates and girls and boys. Marinette could care less about what everyone is saying, but she finds herself thinking about it regardless.

She imagines being asked on a date or asking someone else and funnily enough the first face that comes to mind is Socqueline - smart, confident, pretty Socqueline. And then Marinette thinks about the comments and the sneers and the chronic ache in her wrist and she pushes the idea deep into her mind, buried underneath her new layer of bricks and concrete. Someday, she thinks, the clawing fear will be something she can look back on without seizing up, but until then she will count her blessings and stay quiet in her practiced world of aches and lies.

So, she clings onto the first other person to be nice to her.

Kim isn't really her type at all and they've never interacted much since she stopped being friends with Nino, but he's a guy and he's shown her kindness when almost no one else has and so she asks him out, if just to prove that she's just like the other girls at school.

She supposes the regret that follows ignoring her friend's advice is well earned.

The heat that rushes to her head burns her from the inside out and the white hot shame curls inside her bones, dries and hardens like the concrete between her bricks and makes her unable to move a single muscle. She's frozen and with every step she takes in protest, something cracks inside her.

Socqueline is there to pick up the pieces of her broken walls, holding them in her arms as Marinette sobs and vows not to be so stupid ever again. But her debt of luck is still unpaid and as if Chloé hadn't done enough damage to her soul, she takes away the only true support Marinette has been leaning on.

It leaves her miserable and defeated and oh so lonely. She's left with no more walls to stand on and so she stumbles and falls and she decides it's not worth the effort anymore.

Her parents don't let her skip school the way she wishes they would and she can only pretend to be later than she actually is so often before the principal gives her yet another detention.

Her pigtails are uneven and the feeling is going to drive her crazy for the rest of the day if she doesn't fix it, but when she looks in the mirror it's the only thing that gives her the confidence to leave the house at all. She hopes people see her and think she looks just like Socqueline.

The door to the classroom is already closed when she arrives.

"Late again, Mademoiselle Dupain-Cheng," her teacher comments, monotone and with no empathy for her situation.

"I'm sorry, I overslept." Another lie for the sake of her sanity.

One of the other students laughs. "Or maybe she took too long to get her hair done."

Self consciously, she slides into her seat, humiliation flooding her face. Nathaniel looks like he wants to say something, but he ends up staying quiet, shuffling slightly under Chloé's strict gaze.

Marinette spends the class keeping her head down and playing with the ends of her hair, wondering if anything matters at all. She only tunes back in after the ringing of the school bell.

"Alright, don't forget your assignments for next week," her teacher calls out. "Dupain-Cheng, a word."

She's waiting by the teacher's desk, hugging her bag to her chest like it might protect her. Rose and Juleka pause in the room, looking at her the way they usually do, with pity and a weak attempt at protection that shatters with a light push.

"Is there anything you two need?"

Rose looks at her friend and then at Marinette and hesitates. "We just thought Marinette could use some support, that's all," she says softly and Juleka nods.

Their teacher shakes her head and gestures towards the door. "I'd like to have a private conversation with your classmate. Go on, both of you."

Marinette wants to tell them it's okay, but the words get stuck in her throat. Truth is, she really hates being alone with any of her teachers each time they scold or berate her, but the shame of being witnessed at her worst might be just as painful.

"Alright, see you tomorrow, Marinette."

Neither of them look back at her as they exit the room and close the door behind them.

Marinette stares after them until her teacher starts to speak.

"Mademoiselle Dupain-Cheng, would you be inclined to explain to me your constant tardiness?"

Squeezing her bag tighter, Marinette swallows, opens her mouth, closes it again in frustration.

Her teacher frowns. "No? Use your words, young lady. I don't want to have to punish you, but all I see in my class from you is laziness and an inability to be social with your fellow classmates."

A flash of anger makes her push the words out. "Madame, how do you expect me to be social when I don't even have a neighbour to sit with?"

With a shake of her head, her teacher crosses her arms. "It's not a surprise that the other students don't wish to sit next to you, given your general attitude during class. I would suggest trying a little harder, then we might see some results."

Marinette forces air into her lungs and holds it there for a moment. "Can I- Am I allowed to go?"

"Marinette," her teacher starts, but sighs and turns towards her bag instead, picking up her belongings. "I will see you next week - on time, I hope."

She doesn't stick around to reply, shuffling out of the room as fast as she can without full on running. She walks home as if in a trance. There's a constant buzzing in her ears and her blood rushes through her head as she holds in the tears that so desperately threaten to fall. The second she's alone in her room and the trapdoor falls shut, the dam breaks.

Her parents call her for dinner, but she can't bring herself to move from the bed. Limbs heavy and numb, she curls into herself when she hears the quiet squeak of a hinge and her mother's voice.

"Marinette? Are you alright?"

She probably should assure her, or say anything at all, but somehow not a word is leaving her lips. It's like her tongue is glued to the roof of her mouth, like someone has sewn shut her windpipe. It's a familiar feeling, comforting as it is frustrating and terrifying.

Her mother seems to register her heavy silence. "I'm coming up there," she warns, kindly, before making her way into her daughter's room and hesitantly climbing the ladder up to the loft. Marinette is hiding her face in her pillow, but she knows the exact moment her mother catches sight of her. "Oh," she breathes. "Marinette, come here."

She doesn't actually wait for Marinette to come to her at all, just pulling her into her arms and holding her like she has so many times before. There's a long time in which Marinette simply cries and cries and her mother asks what's wrong and there's nothing she can bring herself to say. Something breaks in her mother's eyes when Marinette wipes away the tear tracks on her face and musters a smile.

"I've just had a bad day," she says. "I think I'll skip dinner tonight, if that's okay and just go to sleep."

In the end, things continue as they are.

It's something she has learned, throughout the years. No matter how hard she tries, she can never seem to put in enough effort to fix any part of it. It's like there's something invisible holding her back, like she's trying to steer through the world without the mandatory driving lessons that everyone seems to have been given. It doesn't feel like a good enough excuse, anyway.

She goes to school, forgets her work, gets laughed at for her hair, her clothes, her social status, the way she trips over her feet or her words or Chloe's little hurdles. Every day scrapes at her defenses and leaves her heart closed off and bleeding inside.

One day, Marinette thinks, she will figure out how to be a better version of herself. One day, she will be something, anything worthwhile.

And she will give back all the luck she has wasted trying to be herself.

Chapter Text

The world is unfair, but Marinette supposes she shouldn't really complain.

She's been managing so far, anyways, her grades perfectly acceptable, good even, despite the constant disappointment she causes everyone around her. Her teachers regard her with this strange kind of fascination, like they're trying to figure out if she's lazy or just troubled, somehow.

"You're throwing away such great potential," they say. "I know you're intelligent, you do well when you apply yourself. Don't throw away your future, Marinette."

The words stick to her and sink into the cracks like rainwater. It doesn't feel like it's been making her grow at all, more like she's drowning over and over.

"Do you have a goal, Marinette?"

Not a real one. Not one she can reach, ever. She swallows it down.

"I want to be a fashion designer," she says, because she knows she's supposed to say something.

"There you go! Now work for that goal! I'm sure if you try, really try, you can achieve anything you want."

She nods and blinks away the dampness in her eyes, because she thinks she was already trying. "It's really hard," she admits, weakly.

It earns her a frown. "Work is supposed to be hard for everyone, Marinette. You think people achieve their dreams without putting in some energy? Think of your parents - the amount of effort and time they must have spent before getting to where they are now."

But she's already putting in energy, she thinks, so much of it that it leaves her gasping on the cold tiles of her bathroom, hands tangled in her hair at night, terrified because she can't seem to get herself to sit down and do her work and there's an exam in the morning and why can't she bring herself to-

"I'm trying."

"Well, try harder." It's said with a smile, but nothing about it feels good to her.

She does try harder, where she can. When the words in her textbooks blur together in front of her and the buzzing of her phone charger becomes too much she makes herself useful in any other way. She puts to use the skills her parents have passed onto her and she bakes and cooks and shows up to school like her lungs don't stutter when she enters the grounds and she basks in the moments of bright attention she gets when she offers up her gifts. Sometimes Chloé steps in and sometimes they reach towards her and then look at her a bit more and they remember who she is and they give her a smile that almost seems apologetic before they turn away. Marinette volunteers for the art club, she accepts commissions from the students that don't know her well enough to care, for a price that barely covers her expenses, she designs posters and writes poems for others to express their feelings.

She makes herself useful, barely.

It doesn't make the guilt go away and she knows, she knows so painfully, that her effort still isn't focused where it should be. But when she tries to steel herself, find the resolve to finally start a real school project early, to remember all her homework for the week, to raise her hand and participate without stumbling over her words or getting hot and cold flashes that make her nearly faint, she fails and she crashes to the ground so dramatically that she wishes she could stay there and wait for the world to bury her like a fossil - encased by time and stone and history.

Maybe then she'd finally be something of relevance, something people will look at and think - wow, that used to be a person. And she wouldn't have to tell them they'd be wrong at all.

Everything and nothing changes with the new school year.

Chloé is in her class, again, and so is Nino and a new girl who reminds her, sharply, of Socqueline. They don't look anything alike, but the way she jumps to Marinette's defense like she isn't scared of Chloé in the slightest sparks a flicker of recognition in her chest.

"I'm Alya," the girl says.

"Uh, Marinette."

Alya smiles, brightly. "Is she always this awful?"

"Huh?"

She nods her head towards Chloé. "Y'know, rich girl over there."

"Oh," Marinette says, blinking and clinging onto the ruined box of macarons in her arms. Half of them are somewhere on the front steps of the school, scattered on the ground from when she'd been knocked down. "Yeah. It's normal, honestly."

Her wrist aches and she has to take a deep breath to keep herself from trying to rub away the phantom pain. It mixes together with the burning scrapes on her elbow and the bruise on her hip.

"Marinette? Are you okay?" Alya is staring at her with concern and Marinette's mind is reeling to come up with the kind of response people should want to hear right now.

"Yeah- Yes. Just- Uh, first day of school, you know how it is!"

"Oh, well," Alya pauses, eyebrows scrunching together slightly, hands in the air, reaching - for something - for her? Maybe. "I just thought you might have hurt yourself, earlier."

"When I- tripped?"

She's out of her depth, the box crinkling in her arms.

Alya hesitates, then, stubbornly, she counters, "When you got pushed down the stairs." Marinette shakes her head, makes to head towards their classroom. "Wait, shouldn't we tell a teacher?"

Marinette stops to look at the girl, thinking of all the times she's tried to call out Chloé for her behaviour and how she's always had the school wrapped around her father's finger. "It's fine."

Not looking convinced at all, Alya seems to let it go and follows her instead, not knowing her way around the school yet.

When she moves to set her bag down next to Marinette's spot towards the back of the class, something tightens around her chest uncomfortably.

"What are you doing?"

Lowering herself into the seat awkwardly, Alya looks around before meeting her eyes again. "Sitting... down?"

"You can't sit there," Marinette says, numbly.

"Oh, sorry. Does someone already sit here?

"No, but-"

"Good," Alya says, grinning suddenly and Marinette drops onto the bench silently, wondering how long it will probably take for her to chase the girl away again. "I feel like we're gonna be good friends."

"We just met," she reminds her.

"So?"

For a short moment, she feels strangely calm, but everything in the world is balanced and where Marinette encounters something good, there's always disaster to follow. She just never thought it would come in the shape of some type of stone golem here to wreck the city.

When Marinette first heard about luck, she thought it was the most magical thing in the world.

Now, she's not sure if she should laugh or cry or do both and succumb to her hysterical thoughts.

There's a bug in front of her face and it's glowing and Marinette is pretty sure she's having a dream. Or a nightmare, maybe. It takes her a while to listen to a word the thing is saying and by then she might as well be having a full on panic attack.

She's dying, probably, but there's a pressure against her collarbone and whispered little words and tap-tap-taps that make her want to breathe along to them. The little creature is explaining things and telling her all these nice words and Marinette wants to listen to it so badly.

"You'll see, Marinette, just say the words."

There's not much rational thinking left in her, but she's always been impulsive and she's dying so there's nothing left to lose. Her voice is choked, hoarse, but she gasps out those three little words for the first time.

"Tikki, spots on."

Everything changes.

One moment she's nothing, the next she's soaring above the streets of Paris in black and red. She's still clumsy, still shaky, but the wind against her masked face feels- soothing, freeing.

It's wrong, she knows, it's selfish, even. Out of all the people she has met, she would be her last choice for saving just about anyone, but then she looks at those green eyes and she thinks she might have to make an exception for herself.

Because there's no way she's going to allow anyone else to risk their lives for this. She's been waiting, she realizes, day by day, year by year, for this.

She's going to give back the luck she's taken and if it means she gets to be someone for a while, gets to be worth something more than a failure, maybe she will be forgiven in the end.

And Ladybug is someone alright.

She's brave and strong and fast and confident. When Hawkmoth terrorizes their city, Ladybug and Chat Noir give them hope. She's part of a team, comes up with plans and sees them through. It's not easy, but she knows work is supposed to be hard and this is her job now and she's doing it well.

"Did you see Ladybug and Chat Noir today?"

It's the first words out of Alya's mouth as she shows up at Marinette's door, everpresent in her life since that first day of school. She hasn't been succeeding in taking on nearly as many commissions - poetry or design alike - ever since befriending the girl. Marinette feels like she's walking on a tightrope.

"Uh, no."

"Girl, do you even follow my blog?"

It's probably supposed to be a teasing remark, but the knife twists into her chest and leaves a rusty feeling between her ribs.

"I do," she says, quickly. "I just- um, I was really busy with-"

Alya laughs as she drops down onto the chaise in her room. "Relax, it's fine. Do you wanna see it now?"

She doesn't, really. Chat Noir got hurt during the fight and she's seen enough of that for a lifetime already.

But she nods. "Yeah, sure."

Alya's voice talks her through the entire incident from her phone's speakers and adds extra in-person commentary along the way. There's details Marinette gets to focus on that had escaped Ladybug entirely during the chaos of the fight and from a tactical perspective, this is exactly what she should be doing after every akuma attack. If it didn't also mean watching her partner get slammed into bricks and concrete or seeing her failed throws, she thinks she would even be up to doing this more regularly.

Alya might end up forcing her hand, anyway.

It's strange, having someone in her room so often who is not her parents or Tikki. It makes her feel naked and exposed, like she has to be careful what she leaves lying around, how she presents herself and her space. On a positive note, her room has never been this clean. The constant possibility of Alya's surprise visits is pressuring enough for her to make sure it's something close to spotless by the end of the day.

Except she forgot to put away her school supplies and Alya is glancing over and then she's frowning.

"Do you need help with any of that?" she asks.

"No, it's fine."

Alya gets up and takes a closer look anyway and it makes something itch under Marinette's skin. "I thought you already finished your essay during class?"

She had. It was gone when she looked for it at home.

"I must have lost it."

"Hm." Her friend takes a look around her room like she's never been in it before and her gaze catches onto her little board that she's collected a few things on - some of her designs, a newer photo of the two of them from a few weeks ago, a screenshot she printed out from the Ladyblog. "I didn't realize you had that picture on here," Alya says, tapping Ladybug's papery face.

"I thought it was cool."

"They look kind of in love, right?" Alya's narrowed eyes move from the picture over to her. "You're seeing it too, yeah?"

"Uh-" Marinette blinks. "I think they're, like, close-?"

"Hm." It's like her friend's thoughts are a little scattered today. She's not sure what to respond. "So, do you think someone took your essay?"

"What?"

Alya walked to stand in front of her, placing both hands on her shoulders.

"Marinette, girl, did you actually lose your essay or did someone take it and you didn't feel comfortable telling anyone?"

Pushing the hands off her shoulders, she gathers her papers and puts the half finished work away in her school drawer.

"It's not like it's unrealistic for me to lose my things," she points out. "I probably just left it somewhere and forgot." Turning back around to her friend she musters a smile. "Tell me more about Ladybug and Chat Noir?"

It's always just a little bit surreal, hearing people talk about Ladybug. Most of the time they speak of her like she's something greater than them, something important. She sees teenagers and kids on the street, students at school, wearing their hair in pigtails just like her and something inside her seethes at the knowledge of what people would say about her hair before Ladybug.

"I wish my hair was longer," Chat Noir says, once, as they're sitting on their favourite little rooftop, looking out over Paris for no other reason than their own enjoyment.

She looks up at him to study his side profile and the way his blonde hair sways in the wind. Gently, she lifts a hand to run it through the strands, enjoying the happy sigh she hears at the gesture.

"Your hair is pretty," she tells him and means it.

He hums, eyes closed. "But it's so short. It's boring."

"Why?"

"Well," he starts, opening his eyes to look directly at her and smile. "For one I can't tie it into into pigtails, like you."

With a roll of her eyes she tugs him closer to continue playing with his hair.

"Silly chaton, why would you want to copy my hairstyle?"

He lays his head on her shoulder, relaxed. "Because you're amazing, milady." He's silent for a moment. "Don't worry though, I'm no copycat. I probably couldn't pull it off as well as you do anyway."

She can't help laughing. Her chest feels so light when she's with him, her heart full and her smile real.

"People might look at you a little strange, if you actually did that," she says. "Maybe you could try something else though - when your hair is long enough, I mean."

Chat Noir sighs tiredly. "Yeah, I wouldn't count on it. I don't think my- uh, I'm not really allowed to grow out my hair."

Marinette imagines him with long hair, thinks about braiding it, his pretty face framed by a few stray hairs in the wind as he runs across Paris's rooftops.

For a moment, there's a spark of jealousy in her chest.

"I'm sorry," she tells him. "I, for one, think you'd look great with longer hair. I think a more androgynous style would really suit you."

He beams up at her and the jealousy fades.

It's after their conversation that looking at mirrors turns into a strange experience.

She gets dressed in the morning, checks her appearance and stops. With squinted eyes, she twists and turns and tries to catch a glimpse of Ladybug. The pink in her outfit feels glaringly bright suddenly, the colourful bracelets on her arm making too much noise. She wipes the lip gloss from her face and barely makes it to school on time.

There's an akuma attack later on that very same day.

She's on her way home from school, Alya in tow, when a car nearly misses her as it hurtles into the building she's next to. Her friend doesn't even blink before pulling out her phone to film the entire thing and Marinette almost passes out as she runs off to find a hidden corner to transform in.

"Oh my god," she gasps, stopping in a narrow alleyway and staring into Tikki's concerned eyes. "That was so close! I almost- Ladybug wouldn't have been able to-"

"Calm down, Marinette, everything is alright," Tikki reminds her. "Take a deep breath, you got this!"

Marinette nods and breathes in, then out. "Alright, okay. I'm fine. Let's go make sure Alya doesn't catch a car still."

She calls for her transformation and heads right into battle. The akumatized villain is big and strong, mostly, hurtling cars and other objects like they're baseballs and occasionally stomping the ground so hard it trembles and shudders. There's a crack at her feet when she looks down. She's pretty sure there's something kind of poetic about it.

"Milady, watch out!"

Her partner shoves her to the side just in time to avoid her second car that day. Clinging to one another briefly, they take a deep breath before he pulls away to check her over.

"I'm fine, thank you, kitty."

Chat Noir nods once, turns towards their opponent and readies himself, knees bent and baton in hand.

"Time to make him 'quake' in his boots, right, bug?"

She huffs a laugh. "You're terrifying."

The fight is straightforward in the way they dodge and attack and watch out for heavy projectile. Ladybug flips over cracks in the pavement, ducks elegantly between attacks and weaves around Chat Noir in a dance of flying yo-yo's and swinging staffs. Everything goes well until it doesn't.

She's just caught a glimpse of the akumatized object - a sort of trophy belt around the victim's midriff - when another car comes flying her way.

Third time's the charm, it seems, but the irony feels lost on her as she frantically jumps to the side, stumbling and in her panic missing the crack in the ground underneath her feet.

"Ladybug!"

They notice what's happening at the same time, her stomach dropping as her arms scramble to hold onto something. She just barely manages to get a grip on the corner of the small chasm, the sudden stop pulling harshly on her shoulder, right knee crashing painfully into a corner on the other side of the gap. It takes all her willpower not to let go.

The noise from the fight continues, the akuma's loud cackles ringing in her ears as she catches her breath and tries to reach her other hand up to the ledge.

"Bug?" Chat Noir's vaguely hysterical shouts sharpen her focus immediately. "Bug, are you okay?!"

Her voice comes out strained, her knee and shoulder pulsing even under the suit, which should have definitely taken part of the blow. "I'm good, keep him busy!"

She doesn't feel good, physical pain aside, but she'll have to deal with the acidic taste of her failures later. Throwing her yo-yo out, she uses the string to pull herself further out of the hole, slowly getting one knee over onto the ledge while trying to keep an eye out for any further attacks coming her way. Chat Noir seems to have it handled for now, effectively keeping their opponent's attention, but she can tell he's on edge and tiring - fast.

The telltale tingle in her fingers is her cue and she calls on her lucky charm, glad that her bad shoulder is not the one on her dominant side. Magical object in her hands, Ladybug gets to work. Neither she nor Chat Noir are at their best at this point, but they work together to keep their Miraculous safely on them. Hiding her stumbling from Alya's camera takes so much of her concentration that her partner ends up carrying most of the effort on his shoulders. By the time their opponent is finally caught in her string and his belt disintegrates from the magic of her partner's cataclysm, she thinks she could pass out right then and there.

The magic of her miraculous washes over the scene and dulls her pain enough to make her straighten her shoulders. She's pretty sure it'll hit her again once she detransforms, but it gives her the needed relief to hold out her fist to Chat Noir and smile through his concern.

"See you tomorrow night?"

"Yeah." He drops his hand, eyebrows drawing together and shoulders tense. "Do you- Um, will you be okay?"

She pulls him into a brief side hug, kissing his cheek. "I'll be fine, chaton."

His eyes follow her as she runs off, knowing she shouldn't go too far to transform back, needing to find Alya again to not raise any suspicion.

The moment she says the words, an exhausted Tikki dropping into her hands with a flash of light, she's overwhelmed with the urge to cry. Tears spring to her eyes and her throat closes up as she lets herself fall back to lean against the wall.

"Marinette?"

She blinks away the tears - or attempts to - and uses one hand to search blindly for something to eat in her bag. Her kwami doesn't even look at the offering when she hands it to her.

"I'm sorry I couldn't heal you all the way," Tikki tells her.

With a shake of her head, Marinette hopes to communicate that she's not upset with her. In fact, she's barely thinking about the ache in her body at all, shame pooling in her gut like an ocean of lava, melting her insides.

Tikki knows her too well by now.

"You did a great job, Marinette. The akuma was defeated!"

"I got hit," she argues. "The fight took so much longer because I wasn't looking where I was going! I'm too clumsy, I shouldn't even-"

"Marinette..."

She swallows and wipes her hands on the fabric of her pants, looking away from her floating friend.

"It's embarrassing. I'm so embarrassing!"

"No you're not. Paris loves you and so do I!"

Wiping her eyes, grateful that she hasn't been wearing make-up lately, Marinette takes another deep breath and pushes off the wall.

"It's fine, I'm fine. Let's go find Alya and get home."

Tikki sighs before hiding in her purse. Alya is so engrossed in ladyblog business that her mood goes unnoticed easily - or maybe Marinette has finally become something of a decent actor.

The ugly feeling in her stomach follows her home and clings to her like a leech. Her parents pile too much food onto her plate at dinner for her appetite and by the time she's forced herself to eat it all, she feels like she might throw up.

It's a pathetic look, she's sure, for Ladybug to sit in front of her toilet seat, waiting out the bubbling nausea and trying to listen to Tikki's kind words over the voice in her head. She wonders if Alya would still be a Ladybug fan if she knew it was her. She wonders if Chat Noir would recoil from her in embarrassment, laugh at her like they all laugh at Marinette.

Eyes clenched shut, she grabs the thoughts and presses them down, down down, until they're as dense as the bricks in her tiny little wall. She sets it on top, uses the pitch black self-hate to glue it down where it belongs and she climbs up to sit. If Marinette keeps pushing it all down, maybe Ladybug can find her footing in the world.

It's the least she can do, if not for herself, then for the world that is kind enough to tolerate her still.