Chapter Text
It’s happening again.
Her ears are ringing. That’s all she knows.
That, and her hair is too tight against her scalp, and it burns, and the desk on which her head lays buried in her arms is scratchy, cutting through her skin like knives—
—and the sound of her teacher talking about something she couldn’t care less about right now grates against her senses like nails on a chalkboard—
—the way everything around her is growing louder, growing stronger, growing sharper; it feels like there’s a sound amplifier with the sole purpose to torture her—
—pain, all she feels is pain, and she needs to leave, she needs to leave now—
Someone next to her—who’s next to her? she can’t remember who’s next to her—nudges her shoulder, and it feels like the bite of fifty venomous snakes all at once; she can’t take it anymore, she really can’t.
She uses all of her energy to lift her head up from its hiding place, but is immediately assaulted by the blinding fluorescent lights above her as they combine with all of the new colors and movements that she can see now that her head is up—and ugh, she didn’t think it could get worse—
She pushes herself up on shaky legs as her teacher pauses in confusion. But when she tries to open her mouth to make sounds—she really tries—it’s like an unmovable concrete wall has been built between her brain and her lips, and no words come out, but she needs to get out because everything hurts and—
There’s attention on her now, more than there was before, and she feels each and every stare stab into her skin with razor-sharp precision. She can hear every little whisper from the class, but they all blend together to make one large cacophony of sound that just scratches against her brain in the wrong way.
Her vocal cords having given up on her, she decides to abandon any hope of communicating her agony and sprints to the door. She fiddles with the handle, and her hands can’t seem to get a grip, but she opens it after a few tries and runs to her nearest safe place.
What’s wrong with her?
Ducking into the bathroom that nobody ever goes into and slamming a hand down onto the light switch to turn it off, Marinette lets herself collapse on the dirty tiled floor, too overwhelmed to get all the way into a stall, eyes squeezing shut and hands clamping over her ears. She pulls her knees up to her chest as she tries to take in deep breaths, but it still feels like the air is trying to strangle her from inside her throat.
She hates when this happens. She doesn’t even know why it happens or what it is.
She lets her body rock back and forth, trying to ignore the way she can hear the sharp, sharp buzzing of the now-turned-off ceiling lights and the air blasting from the vents—it sounds like someone is blowing a leaf blower right inside her brain, despite the way she’s squeezing the heels of her hands against her ears as hard as she possibly can—
The door opens with a loud bang; it rattles in her skull like a gong. Her pigtails feel like they’re pulling aggressively on her scalp, ripping her skin apart—her jacket sleeves are squeezing her arms like handcuffs closing tight, too tight—
She moves her hands to dig her nails into her hair, tensing her shoulders up to her ears as a replacement to hopefully block out the noise. The next thing she knows, she can tell someone’s in front of her—just by hearing their booming footsteps and seeing the stars light up behind her eyes from the blinding light turning back on.
“Marinette?” someone calls out. Loudly. She can hear it even through her covered ears. “Girl, are you in here?”
All she can respond with is a whine as she buries her head deeper into her knees; her voice is failing her again—
They’re kneeling down in front of her. She doesn’t know who they are. She needs to know— nobody can see her like this— she opens her eyes—
Bad decision.
The light blinds her vision, and she only sees flashes of color as her eyes burn in pain. It feels like the room is on fire.
She can’t make out who’s in front of her, but when they touch her shoulder, she flinches back violently—it stings, it stings like she’s just been touched by fire, and she doesn’t even know—
The person in front of her jumps back, surprised, and the loss of their touch is both a blessing and a curse at the same time. She closes her eyes shut and feels their presence beside her again, and she can hear them shuffle around for a few seconds before settling down. She’s glad they did—she doesn’t know how many more of those sounds she could take, of their clothing scratching and scraping against every surface—
—Wordlessly, a hand rests on her shoulder, and she winces for a split second before relaxing back against the wall. She rubs her finger back and forth across the gaps in between the tiles. Back and forth and back and forth and…
Back… and forth…
The silent and still pressure on her shoulder grounds her back to reality, and feeling the comforting, light sandpaper-like texture between the tiles gives her more control over her finger—her body—and she slowly feels her limbs come back to life from the void.
Marinette opens her eyes slightly, just slightly, trying to ignore the pounding headache the too-bright lights are giving her.
“Marinette?” the blurry figure, now in front of her, calls silently.
When she can’t bring her vocal cords to work, or her mouth to even open, Marinette hums in acknowledgement quickly and quietly, enough for the volume to not ring in her own ears.
“Are you gonna come back to class?” the person asks.
Just the thought of going back into that crowded, stuffy classroom has her shaking her head frantically as her headache pounds louder in her ears.
“Okay,” they whisper. “I’ll ask Mlle Bustier, but I don’t know if she’ll understand.”
Marinette can’t believe she just… freaked out like that in the middle of class. She’d disrupted the lesson, and now everyone would just hate her—
Why is she doing this?
Nobody— nobody else had ever flipped out over nothing like she just did. She doesn’t get it.
‘I’m sorry,’ Marinette wants to say. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’
But all she does is nod without a word. The presence leaves, and she feels like she has a chance to finally breathe as she curls up tighter into herself, letting the overwhelming shame at her outburst flood her conscience.