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Ladybug stood frozen in shock.
"What have you done?"
She did not have it in her to scream, to frantically attack the responsible for more loss than she had ever faced in all her time bearing the mask. The current panorama was taken straight out of her worst nightmares, the type she only ever had after a particularly bad akuma or a disastrously dangerous mistake.
"If I could let them all go home, please know that I would."
"Why don't you, if it's as easy as you say?"
"It would do more harm than good."
The calmness with which the other girl spoke sent chills creeping down her spine. She said it with the same tone one would use to announce a butterfly had just flown by, the same nonchalance and mundane surprise.
The same excitement.
"You're cornered," she spoke. "If you try to break the restraints, their minds will never be back.”
Ladybug looked at the glowing purple thread-like condensation that wrapped itself tightly around those she had once called friends. Those she had foolishly called into the team out of naive trust in her abilities and leadership…
What had it all led to? What had it been worth? The dozens of figures standing supported like some sickly limp shadows of who had they been?
It was quickly becoming way too much for her to take. Her Ladybug vision was completely obsolete with the amount of unfinished flashes of thoughts, possible plans, a never ending stream of self effacing accusations, all stacked on top of each other, all mutually overcrowding her very ability to think.
“If I let them go right now, what would you think would happen to the city right now? You’re so keen on keeping your precious little jewels from me that you’re willing to exchange the lives of everyone in this city in the process? Nobody in Paris has known a single day of peace from the moment you and your little friends showed up.” The girl spat out those last words with a particularly venomous tone, as if it were something disgusting to get off her tongue.
“Anywhere Ladybug and Chat Noir go, anywhere a so-called hero appears, what do they bring? Disturbance! Pain! You haven’t done any more good than harm anywhere. The Parisian heroes, almost causing an international war! The second you use your Lucky Charm, it’s as if nobody was able to remember anything you did. Erase the damage, erase the consequences, right? When are you heroes going to face any consequences?”
“I- I don’t-”
“Know? Of course you don’t know! Everyone loves the flashy magic so much, a bright light and third-rate gymnastics are enough to blind them!”
Ladybug felt herself crumble, any trace of an attempt to even try to formulate a coherent replica to those words vanished.
Upon any other villain, had this been a speech given to intimidate back in the day against Hawkmoth. Shadow Moth, Monarch, Gabriel Agreste himself, she would have taken it. Bounced right back like a spring, shooed the negative thoughts away like an obnoxious insect that kept buzzing in her ear non-stop as she tried to sleep at night.
Right then, though, she felt herself crumble back into a mirror of her younger self, head full of negative thoughts, of truths everyone assured her were mere imagination, all threatening to corrode her from the very inside.
Gabriel Agreste had been a corrupt man. After much time for consideration, she had realized there was likely nothing she could have done to change his ways. Despite the brief flashes of empathy she might have felt for him once as he spoke his dying wish and placed it onto the shoulders of someone too young to carry it, as time went by she had concluded on taking his words with a grain of salt. If he was willing to lie, or allow himself to be convinced that he was a good parent to his son, how much truth did his end actually hold?
That dissonance had haunted her for months on end, until she figured how if it crashed with everything else in her life, one side must be at least somewhat incorrect. And then, then she had fortunately landed on Gabriel’s as the mistaken. The words of a repéated, continuous liar that did not even know her on a day to day… lies of a liar.
She couldn’t assure with the same certainty this girl had as little idea of what she truly did. Gabriel’s words so long ago had sounded like a badly delivered punchline, nonsensical attempts at reframing himself to a non existent audience other than her and himself. Aggravation after exclamation, grandeur and diminishing carefully crafted to belittle; after a while, it all sounded like nothing other than something worthy of a showman. Which in a way, he was.
There was a certain element of fantasy and ridiculousness to the way he attempted to frame himself before the city and the heroes, empty sound. Easy enough to debunk with trusted words and reassurance from those who knew her best
What made this girl’s words hurt the most, was the fact that it was nothing she hadn’t thought before. Taken and unraveled from the tangled skein of her lowest points, as sharp and precise as those who had hurt her the most. Reminiscent of her softest spots. Directed and lethal.
Marinette had experienced that very same type of aim before, and it had not been easy to shake off. Who was she to confirm or refute the way in which others saw her? Who was she to determine what a likely to be citizen’s opinion should be? Even if the nameless being behind the mask assured her it wasn’t personal, she would have her doubts forever.
“The city is better off like this. It’s a necessary evil, don’t you think? I take the fall, and one day everyone will realize how wrong they were about you and your team of attempts at heroes. It’s necessary for you to fall.”
Ladybug could have easily lost her mask and not feel half as vulnerable as she did in that moment.
“Fall. Now.”