Chapter Text
This was the second-worst day of Felix’s life.
It had been bad enough being forced to go to school instead of continuing with private tutoring. Bad enough that his escape from his escort had been foiled by that strange, old man in the garishly red shirt who’d crashed straight into him. Bad enough that he now seemed stuck with a magic ring that wouldn’t come off, a crass, floating kitten with an unhealthy cheese obsession, and a curse — yes, an actual curse — to become a magical, cat-themed super hero.
Worst of all, according to said kitten, the curse could only be lifted by a kiss from his supposed partner, a young lady calling herself Ladybug who seemed lucky but little else.
As if it weren’t already unbearable dealing with the loss of his mother - the only person he felt truly loved him - modeling for his cold, absentee father, and being smothered by people who truly believed a picture was worth a thousand words of meaningful understanding…now his life had become the plot of a Saturday morning cartoon!
To top it all off, that pampered, selfish show-off Chloe Bourgeois had been clinging to him like a Chanel-clad boa constrictor all day. And now, when he had finally gotten a moment’s peace, she was…
Placing chewed gum on another student’s seat?
“What do you think you’re doing, Ms. Bourgeois?” he asked, nearly regretting asking the moment the words left his mouth.
“Oh, nothing to worry you, Felichoux,” Chloe cooed, brushing her hands briskly on an alcohol wipe held out by her little lackey. What was the girl’s name again? Samantha? No. Sabrina. Neither name suited the adoring, vacuous expression she aimed at the society brat.
“Do stop calling me that,” Felix said through gritted teeth. “You know I don’t like it.”
Chloe merely flipped her ponytail in dismissal. She never listened to anyone but herself. Asking her to stop was pointless, but the nickname was as repulsive as her clinginess, and he’d had enough of both.
“I’m merely putting a peasant in their place,” Chloe said sweetly.
Felix rolled his eyes. “Ms. Bourgeois, are you aware that this is 21st century France and not medieval China?”
He knew he was walking a fine line. His father would be fuming if he knew Felix was speaking like this in public - especially to the mayor’s daughter. But Chloe’s cavalier attitude towards those she considered beneath her was repellent. He might not like most people, but he knew better than to treat them like they didn’t matter.
That kind of behavior was what got you in trouble.
Or poisoned, Felix thought. Or stabbed in the back.
The look of smug amusement on Chloe’s face was no comfort. “Oh, Felichoux. You’re so droll. No, this girl deserves it. She’s ridiculous and I will not have her ruining your first day with her scent of poverty and bread.”
That…was oddly specific.
“And what exactly has this girl done to deserve your ire?” he asked, his voice as cold as he could make it.
Chloe laughed and tossed her ponytail. “I don’t need a reason, Felixchoux. She just exists. Isn’t that right, Dupain-Cheng?”
“What is it now, Chloe?” came a frustrated voice from behind him.
Felix turned and saw a petit young woman with dark hair swept up into whimsical pigtails. She wore a dark gray blazer, white blouse, a pink pleated skirt - and a very tired frown.
The smile that bloomed across Chloe’s face was full of cruel glee. “I was merely telling Felix here how you shouldn’t pollute his environment. Poverty is quite toxic to us refined personalities.”
The brat snagged Felix’s arm again and pulled him back to their shared seat, her smile only widening.
“Really, Ms. Bourgeois, that isn’t—” Felix began, his face becoming uncomfortably hot at being manhandled into her prank.
The girl—Dupain-Cheng?—huffed and moved to sit down. Felix almost called out a warning, but the girl paused, eyes narrowing at the sticky, white blob that sat on her seat.
Lips pursed into a thin line, the girl pulled a package of tissues from her purse and used one to pull the gum off the wooden bench. Then, her eyes snapped to Felix and Chloe.
Felix felt his heart rate increase and he swallowed hard. He hadn’t known blue eyes could burn like that. It almost reminded him of that other girl. The lucky girl in red and black spots with a yoyo.
“Is this your idea of a joke?”
The words jerked Felix back to the present. Blazer girl—Dupain-Cheng—glared at him and Chloe, her voice simmering with barely controlled anger.
“Miss, I’m—” Felix began, but Chloe interrupted.
“And what if it is?” the brat taunted. “What are you going to do about it, Maritrash? Run away crying? Tell the teacher? You know all I have to do is call my Daddykins and everything goes my way.”
Still clinging to Felix’s arm, Chloe leaned towards the other girl with a venomous grin. “Face it, Dupain-Cheng, some of us are meant for the good life. Like Felix and me.” She stroked his arm so possessively that Felix felt bile rise in his throat. Chloe was the bulldozer of Paris high society and she was intent on running this girl into the ground. “You can only dream of the circles in which we walk. You are nothing but a filthy, little peasant. So take what we give you and be grateful.”
Now, those blue eyes didn’t just burn. They were as hard as diamonds and ready to cut.
“No,” the girl said, softly and firmly. The single word was spoken with far more authority than Chloe’s bullying could ever manage.
Chloe herself tensed beside him, and Felix could almost feel the hairs on the back of his neck rise—as if a storm was about to break upon them.
“Excuse me?” Chloe demanded, straightening in an attempt to cow her prey—prey that was now fighting back.
“I said no,” the girl repeated, louder this time. “I won’t accept what you give me and I will never be grateful. I won’t let you treat me like trash anymore. You have no right.”
“I have every—” Chloe began, but it was her turn to be interrupted.
“You have nothing but bad attitude and arrogance,” Ms. Dupain-Cheng snapped. “I have been dealing with your attitude and snide remarks and bullying ever since primary school, so I should know. And you know the worst part? I used to think it was me! I used to think that if I just kept my head down, minded my own business, didn’t fight back, then you would eventually leave me alone. That if I worked harder, let you have your way, didn’t make waves, then you would stop. But you didn’t.”
Her voice was calm and steady, but her fists clenched in trembling rage, and the way those eyes stabbed at him like diamond daggers? Felix had never felt smaller or more impotent. This girl had already shown incredible restraint, but any dam could burst under a flood, and this? This was clearly the flood of years. Ms. Dupain-Cheng had earnestly reached a breaking point and all he could do was brace himself for the hurricane.
The dainty valkyrie continued. “Now I’m done,” she said, fists shaking, but gaze never wavering. “You don’t scare me anymore.”
She turned to Felix then, eyes still burning, still accusing. Her lips twisted in a slight sneer.
“And you?” she said, her voice lowering once more but no less stern. “You can just stand there and be part of this? Insulting and harassing someone you don’t even know?”
Felix was frozen, as transfixed by her accusing glare as if he was a butterfly on a pin. He opened his mouth to defend himself, to apologize, to say something—anything—that would clear his name.
…but nothing came out.
“Fine,” Dupain-Cheng snapped. “Then you are just as bad as she is.”
With a soft, furious growl, the girl turned and stalked over to a seat on the far side of the room, where she sat down. Not just in defiance, but clarity, self-defense, and righteous wrath. The girl next to her—who had been watching the whole scene avidly from behind her glasses—put a kind hand on Dupain-Cheng’s shoulder and murmured something Felix couldn’t hear.
The short silence that followed was sharp and awkward. Sabrina shifted nervously and Chloe broke free of her shock with a soft exclamation of “Ridiculous. Utterly Ridiculous.”
Felix…couldn’t move. He had been tarred with the same brush as Chloe, publicly skewered, and roasted in the burning eyes of a strange, pretty, brave, and extremely angry young woman. Realistically, he could cross the divide and apologize. He could explain himself, say he’d had no part in the gum prank. But the truth of the matter was that he could have done more to stop Chloe and he hadn’t. For many solid, rational, and utterly specious reasons. He might not be at fault, but he was culpable nonetheless.
The girl had a right to hate him.
Just then, the teacher walked in, bustling about getting ready for the lesson to begin. Any chance Felix had to fix things was lost.
***
Marinette simmered through the day. The confrontation with Chloe—and that new boy—had left her angry, shaking, and tired.
As if yesterday hadn’t already wrecked me, she thought. There had been a strange bug creature in her room claiming she’d been chosen to be a hero. A brusque, arrogant partner who refused to help her unless goaded into it. A giant stone monster that she’d had to face down with nothing but magic words and a yoyo. Her whole world hadn’t just been turned upside down. It had done a 360 and crash-landed.
Chloe acting like she ruled the world was to be expected, but the new boy—Felix Agreste, the son of her favorite designer—-he had just stood there and let it happen. He hadn’t stopped Chloe, he hadn’t helped her, and he certainly hadn’t apologized for the whole mess with the gum. He had just stared at her with dark, cold eyes and a stiff, frozen expression as if he was nothing but a glacier waiting for the next ice age.
It’s not as if I expected to be friends with him, she thought, bitterly. But he can’t treat people like dirt just because he’s a rich model with a famous dad. Chloe is going to ruin what little good there is left in him—assuming there is any at all. Serves him right.
Marinette sighed. She needed to cool off before she did something she’d regret. She needed to calm down—especially if what Tikki said was true about the butterfly things being attracted to negative emotions.
Maybe a few minutes alone, she thought. It was the perfect time. Most of the students were either in the cafeteria or out to lunch, leaving many of the classrooms empty. She could find one and calm down. Maybe doodle in her sketchbook.
She turned down an empty hallway…and froze.
From somewhere down the hall, she heard a violin. Not the singing lilt or the melancholy brooding she normally associated with violin music. No. This? This was wild, fierce, angry. Like a summer storm and raging water and the cry of warriors on the front line. This wasn’t music. This was emotion; pure, unadulterated feeling poured into strings that could barely contain it or keep up.
Without meaning to, Marinette found herself following the sound to a door that stood open. There, in the room, violin seething in his hands, was Felix Agreste. He stood in a shaft of early afternoon sun that picked out his platinum hair in streaks of lightning. His eyes were shut tight with a deep crease between his pale brows and his jaw set firmly against the rest of his instrument. He was bowing as if his life depended on it.
The emotions struck her in the chest like repeated blows. Anger, disgust, self-loathing, annoyance, pride. They all swarmed in the air and through her on the wings of his music.
Then he stopped—-pausing as if for breath—before the tone changed.
Guilt. Powerlessness. Frustration. Loneliness. If the anger had swarmed through her before, these feelings cut. She knew them all too well. She had known their shape and taste for years, but to hear them like this? It was as if someone had pried her chest open and revealed the pulsing, aching heart of hers for all the world to see. A heart laid bare in music.
The violin wept and she wept with it, silently, painfully. It was a purging, a scouring of the anger, bitterness, and loneliness she had felt for so long that she had no memory of a time before.
Felix hadn’t just played the violin, and he hadn’t just played feelings.
He had played her as if it was her heartstrings under his bow. He was playing heartbreak—his heartbreak—and Marinette? Hers had answered.
Finally, with sweat dripping from his hair, Felix ended his torrent with a soft moan of the strings. He was panting, clearly exhausted by everything he had poured into the music.
Everything he had unintentionally poured into her.
Tucking his violin under his arm, he wiped his eyes with his sleeve. Then, opening slowly, those keen dark eyes pierced her in the doorway.
He just stared at her for a long moment. Neither moved, the only sound was his ragged breathing.
Finally, he broke the silence.
“What?” he sneered, though she could now tell he didn’t mean it to be as cold as it sounded. “Enjoy the show?”
It wasn’t cruelty, Marinette realized. It was pain. And I may have had a hand in it.
She had accused him without giving him a chance to defend himself. She had brushed him off with as much disregard for his feelings as Chloe would have.
Guilt caused her heart to thrash, her pulse to flutter around the lump in her throat. The tears burned as bad as the ache did.
Marinette bolted from the doorway with a little sob, tearing half blind down the hallway.
“What? Wait!” Felix cried from behind her. “I’m not—”
But she didn’t stop. She couldn’t.
She didn’t stop running until she reached the stairs leading down to the street outside the school. Her lungs burned, her throat ached, and tears blurred the edges of her vision. She ducked into the niche between the stairs and the wall, pressing herself against the stone and sliding down until her knees were tucked against her chest. Traffic, talk, and the symphony of city sounds swirled around her, oblivious to the storm that brewed inside.
She had misjudged him. Just like everyone did to her. That was awful, but what made it worse was the fact that she never gave him a chance to defend himself. To prove himself. She had just lumped him in with Chloe and all her baggage and left him there.
Just as she had been, time after time.
But his music had revealed what his face had kept hidden. He had been hurt. And then, like a coward, she had run away.
“Tikki,” Marinette whispered hoarsely, sniffling and rubbing at her eyes. “I really messed up.”
“It’s going to be okay, Marinette,” Tikki murmured, poking her head out of the side of Marinette’s purse. “It’s okay to cry. You’re allowed to feel hurt and you’re allowed to stand up for yourself.”
“But I was horrible,” Marinette moaned. “I should have been better. I should have at least been kind. How can I be a hero if I can’t even control my temper?”
“You’re learning,” said the kwami, patting her side with a tiny paw. “You can see where you need to work harder. That sounds like a hero to me.”
“I don’t know,” she whimpered. “He was so frozen, but then his music? It hit me right here.” She pressed her fist to her aching heart. “I just—”
All of a sudden, there was a roar and the ground shuddered violently under her. Having nothing to cling to, Marinette crouched as low as she could, covering her head with her hands. When the shaking had subsided, a scream echoed all around and a shadow fell over her.
She looked up and watched in horror as a familiar stone giant leapt overhead. In one hand was the tiny figure of Chloe, the source of the screams.
“Ivan?” Marinette gasped, feeling the blood drain from her face in dread. “But I saved him! How can he be like this again? I released the butterfly!
“Didn’t you purify the akuma?” Tikki asked, her eyes wide with worry.
“What?”
“No time,” Tikki said, now determined. “You need to go release the akuma again and purify it this time.”
“But how?” This was all feeling overwhelming. Guilt and fear churned harshly in her stomach.
“Catch it in the yoyo,” the kwami replied. “Now come on, Marinette. Ladybug is needed.”
Marinette was trembling from head to toe. Even a slow deep breath wasn’t enough to steady her.
But she had to try.
“S-S-Spots on!” she stammered.
***
Felix stood in the empty classroom, violin at his side, breath still ragged. He didn’t know how long he stared at the doorway after Dupain-Cheng had fled.
He had never had someone run away from him before. Not in tears. Not broken.
As if he was a monster.
Part of him wanted to storm out, grab her and shake her until she made sense and the world righted itself. Part of him wanted to smash something to alleviate the growing, aching sense of displacement in his chest. And the rest—the part he hated the most—wanted to run after the girl and apologize.
But that wasn’t him. He wasn’t that weak and fragile. Was he?
For a moment, he had been. It had all been there, in the music, and music didn’t lie. It could be a performance, a crafted show of talent, presence, and fingering, but the heart of it? What he poured into the music? That had been real.
And so had the pain in her eyes. He had hurt her. Without wit, without words, without fists. Not with cutting insults or pointed sneers. No. He had hurt her…the way he had been hurt for years now.
No one stepping in. No one stepping up. No comfort, no support, no strength to lean on when he felt the weight of it all was just too much.
She at least had the bravery to stand up for herself.
The truth of the matter—and it was an uncomfortable one—was that Felix wasn’t brave. In fact, he was a coward. He hadn’t stood up to his father’s silence and neglect. He hadn’t stopped Chloe from manhandling him or acting like an entitled brat around him. Just like he hadn’t stopped himself from hiding behind the walls his pain had built.
“You okay, kid?”
The little black cat hovered into view, a concerned frown on his tiny face. That was the most concern anyone had shown over Felix in a very long time.
“What do you care?” Felix asked, his voice hoarse as if he’d been shouting. He hadn’t been. The music had done it for him.
Those acid green eyes narrowed at him. “Because you’re hurting.”
“Why would that matter to you?”
“Because I understand pain,” Plagg said, and his gravelly voice held the sudden weight of years. “You’re wounded, kid, and pain makes you lash out. But sometimes even a wounded lion can let someone close to help.”
His eyes flicked to the doorway and back again. “I think that girl could help you remove the thorn.”
Felix sighed. Only years of demanded perfection kept him from hunching in on himself. “She wouldn’t want to. Not now. She hates me and…I can’t blame her.”
He turned and placed his violin safely in its case. It clicked shut with a sickening finality.
Felix was still standing there, stuck between guilt and inertia, when the floor shook beneath his feet. His hands shot out, one to steady himself on the desk and the other to protect his violin.
What was that?
A scream fractured his welter of self-pity. Then the shouting started.
Felix dashed to the window and saw them. The cloud of dark butterflies churning overhead, some fluttering down to people on the streets below. The victims were shrouded in darkness before emerging once more as stone giants. Near perfect copies of the thing he and the lucky girl had fought the day before. Crude statues brought to life, crushing everything in their path. Dozen of them, all identical, all angry, and all violent.
And the cloud of poisonous butterflies overhead ready to make dozens…hundreds…more.
And the lucky girl—Ladybug—was out there all alone to face the horde.
Felix’s fingers curled into a fist.
He had seen what happened when you just stood by and watched. What happened when you let cruelty win through silence. The memory of those tear-filled blue eyes was a painful reminder.
“I might not be able to fix things,” he said. “But I can’t let this happen again.”
Plagg zipped up beside him, paws crossed. “So, you’ve changed your mind? You’re really going to jump into that mess, voluntarily? I thought you weren’t a hero.”
Felix glowered. “I’m not. But I can’t be part of the problem.” He looked down at the ring that was now fused to his finger. “If I’m going to be forced to fight, then I want to do it on my terms. And Ladybug doesn’t deserve to be left to fight alone.”
Felix looked back down at the chaos below. “I have to stop hiding.”
Then, he cast a crooked half-grin at the kwami. “Don’t worry. I’m sure I’ll complain about it later.”
He held up his hand, and the kwami’s face lit up.
“Plagg, claws out!”