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The dream yells at her.
She is lying down on a bed when the face appears. It is her face, and it is angry. Or perhaps ‘angry’ is too mild a word for it, but she also cannot find a word that is strong enough.
“Why are you still here?” the dream yells through her face, and she twists together — until she realises she is bound, chained, to the bed, and it is no longer a bed but a table. It feels hard and cold against her bare shoulders.
The face before her grows a body. It is not her body. It is a body that is far too long, far too smooth, like her skin draped over snakes that twist and turn and bulge and slither, and it is stretched so thin she can see her own flesh underneath it. Except it is not her flesh, because it is the dream’s, and it is grotesque.
“Marinette Dupain-Cheng,” growls the dream, still using her face. “Why have you not disappeared? Why do you persist?”
The dream is not an akuma. It cannot be, because it does not want anything from her. It does not want the earrings, or the miracle box. Its skin peels and blood runs out like a squirming centipede from the holes. She does not feel sick, because her dreams are not sickening, but the blood’s crawling puts her hairs on end nonetheless.
“I have to persist,” she protests. “If I stop, the world will end. I am needed.”
“And yet,” speaks the dream, “you failed to apprehend Chrysalis today. The world continues to suffer through your ineptitude.” The dream’s voice is no longer just hers. It is the voice of five others layered underneath, a tapestry of complaints. Maybe the voices underneath are Gabriel’s, Nathalie’s, Félix’s, Chloé’s, Tomoe’s. Maybe they are her friends’ voices. Maybe they are voices that deserve to be listened to.
Maybe they are not. But the way the dream version of her’s face curls and rankles, she knows she does not want to listen.
“I need more than a day! Nobody could find her and defeat her in such a short span of time!”
“Excuses! Excuses!” The dream her spits at her with sopping rancour. The spit feels, looks, smells like blood against her face. “Every day is a new failure! Did you really think you were above the rules, Marinette Dupain-Cheng? Did you really believe you would be shown lenience, when you failed to show it to your predecessor?”
“I was told to be decisive!” she yells back. Maybe her real body, outside the dream, is also yelling. She feels sore-throated, but maybe dreams can make her feel things like that. The table underneath her feels even colder, and somehow sharp, like it is both flat and edged at the same time. “I followed the commands I was given!”
The dream her drives its face closer. Caterpillars crawl out of its eye sockets, cracked chitinous pieces of elytra shed off its cheeks like skin flakes from eczema. “Now tell me, Marinette Dupain-Cheng: who gave you these commands?”
She breathes in. But she chokes as she tries to breathe out her protest. She knows the answer, and she cannot deny it. A caterpillar peels off and lands on her face, her real face and not the evil and churned-up face that is taunting her. The caterpillar’s feet do not feel like an insect’s. They feel like a prickling from inside her, of blood that can’t move where it needs to.
She gives the only answer that is true. “Me —” it is a whisper but also a cry. The caterpillar crawls into her open mouth. She does not feel sick in her dreams, she never does. The caterpillar is colder than the table. And it crawls down her throat, as the dream her’s face smudges into a horrible grin.
“So you do understand,” it says. “How amusing. Just as you are about to die, you understand the thing that made you kill all the ones before you.”
She doesn’t say “Yes.” She just thinks it, as the dream fades into nothing before her eyes and she wakes up to pain.
She is lying in bed. But another her is also sitting astride on her own chest, a different body that is still her, still real. And the different her has her hands clutched tightly around true-her’s neck. Different-her is frowning intently, fervently, immensely, her gritted-together teeth barely visible through her slightly parted lips.
Just like every other night before… a Marinette kills her predecessor for failing to be perfect. For failing to win over all her demons in a single day. And thus, she creates yet another demon to haunt her.
She wonders, as the last of her breath leaves her, as the darkness once again claims her, if all her predecessors had the same dream as her. She thinks to each and every one of them, ‘I’m sorry.’
And then, she is gone.