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It was supposed to be funny.
When Alya had learned Marinette would be getting her wisdom teeth removed, it had sounded like the perfect opportunity for some fun. People under the effects of the medication were usually suggestible and easily fooled. It would make for a hilarious prank. She could record it and share it with Marinette later once she was recovered. Maybe even post it online with the other fun photos. They would have a long laugh over it.
People did it all the time. So it was supposed to be okay, right?
Besides, Marinette was a good sport. She never complained about the things Alya posted about her to Instagram, after all. Regardless of what any of those lame self-righteous naysayers claimed. Besides, she gave Marinette permission to do the same to her, so that was fair. Those people didn’t know what they were talking about.
And this would just be another bit of harmless fun to add to the mix.
Oooo! And what if she got video of Marinette confessing her feelings for Adrien! People on the medication were often noted to lack a filter. Maybe she could use this to help her bestie. She could get Marinette to admit her feelings and then show the video to Adrien! It would be perfect!
Alya chuckled to herself as she made her way to Marinette’s room, giving a brief half-meant reassurance to Sabine as she told Alya that Marinette was resting and not to bother her too much. Not like recording for prosperity was really anything too strenuous.
Sure enough, when she made it into the room, Marinette was on her bed sleeping. And completely out of it. It wasn’t any trouble getting her to wake up and acknowledge Alya’s presence. No more than it was to have her camera out and at the ready.
“Alya…m’tired.”
“C’mon, Marinette! You need to wake up!”
“I want to sleep.”
“You need to answer a few questions first.”
“But ‘m supposed to rest?”
“Your mom said it was okay.” Well, technically anyway.
“Really?”
“Yes. So you have to.”
“Oh. Okay…” Marinette frowned, unhappily but forced herself into a sitting position.
Alya grinned, gleefully.
“So Marinette, what do you think of everyone in our class?”
Marinette smiled. Or at least as much as she could with the gauze. “They’re great. I l’ve ‘em lots.”
“Aww.” Alya cooed. “We love you too, Marinette.”
Marinette looked at Alya in surprise, her eyes welling up with tears. “Really?” She asked. Like this was actually a surprise.
“Of course!” Oh this was too sweet!
And…oh. Yeah, Marinette was crying now. And wiping away the tears that kept coming. “I wasn’t sure.” She sobbed. “Cause…cause we’ve all known each other for years but we’ve never been close. I mean, Chloe bullied me all the time and no one ever said anything. They just sorta…let her.” She hiccuped. “This is the first year any of us actually hung out or anything. And everyone has been so nice and I was scared.”
She wiped her nose. “S’why I do so much. And take on all the requests. And became Class Rep. Cause I want them all to like me and ‘m scared they don’t. Or they’ll stop. An…an maybe if I keep doing things for them, they’ll like me.” She looked up at Alya, eyes red and wet. “They love me?”
Alya swallowed. “Y…yeah.”
And Marinette started crying again.
…okay, this was a bit more uncomfortable than she’d been planning on. Time to switch gears.
She had originally planned on a joke about Adrien agreeing to date her, but given how much she was crying and already worked up, Alya reconsidered. She didn’t want to dehydrate the girl, after all.
But she could still help her.
“Hey, Marinette. You love us all, right?”
“Yeah.” Marinette agreed, nodding enthusiastically for a moment before the dizziness set in and she held her head.
Alya grinned. “That’s great! So what do you think of Adrien? You love him, right?”
“Y’huh…”
She had to hold back a cackle. “How much do you love him?”
Marinette hummed to herself at that. Her eyes were squinting and her face was scrunched up in thought.
Alya leaned forward eagerly, phone in perfect position to record every word.
“I wish I never met him.”
Alya’s eyes widened in shock. Her phone nearly slipped from her grasp.
“What?”
Marinette sniffled but didn’t answer.
Alya frowned, moving closer. “No. Come on, Mari. I need to know. You love Adrien, don’t you?”
“I do. And I hate it.”
She had stopped crying. Just…stared ahead blankly.
“I’ve…done a lot for him, y’know? I let him think my gift was from his father. I helped him with Kagami. Twice. And I don’t expect that I’m owed anything, because that’s not fair to him. But it’s just…I’ve already done so much but it’s like nothing I do is good enough. I can’t tell him how I feel without something going wrong. And he just…he never sees me. It’s like…maybe it’s the universe’s way of telling me we aren’t meant to be.”
She laughed, sadly.
“But what really hurts…is how little I matter to him.”
“What? Marinette, no! Of course you matter to him!” Alya insisted, trying to reassure her.
Marinette shook her head.
“Not as much as Chloe. Not as much as Lila. It’s like…he knows. He knows what they do. An how they treat me. But…I’m still the one in the wrong for being upset about it.”
Alya’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “Marinette, what do you mean by that?”
“It’s like…it’s like how Chloe was leaving! She was gonna leave! I was finally free!” Marinette exclaimed, waving her arms excitedly. “Everyone was happy about it! Not just me! But…he got so upset.”
She frowned at the memory. In sadness. Maybe even in anger.
“And…he just…was all ’poor Chloe’. And how can we be happy she was gone? I…wanted to say so much. But it felt wrong. And…did I really have to point out every horrible thing she’s done? How she hurt me an everyone else? It was obvious! But I couldn’t say it because it’d just make him feel bad for defending her.”
She sighed, hopelessly. “So the best reasoning I had was that she was ‘useless’ like…like that was the real problem and not that she was mean. Or that she made fun of me every day. Or stole my hat design. Or stole my diary. Or ruined my gift. Or blackmailed everyone. And...and the train!” Her eyes widened in horror at the memory. “I was on the train she tried to crash! My parents were on the train! We could have died! All because Chloe was tryin’ to show off!”
Marinette wilted, like she just didn’t have the energy anymore.
“But it was like…he just maybe forgot? And he started a guilt trip to make me feel bad for my bully until I had to be the one to admit being wrong and try to make her feel better.”
Marinette sobbed. “He never stood up for me like that. No matter what Chloe did to me.”
Alya bit her lip. Because no, she couldn’t argue that.
And what could she say? When the boy had chosen to be upset on behalf of what amounted to little more than a temper tantrum on Chloe’s part? Over simply being told she didn’t act like a hero, of all things! She hadn’t even seemed that upset when she announced she was leaving. She announced it from a helicopter and dropped fliers out of sheer spite!
Maybe Adrien hadn’t seen that? Maybe he was just loyal? But he knew better than anyone about her antics. He knew the depths she had sunk to. And while she was sure he must have at one point (hoped he had, at least, if he really considered them any sort of friends to him), Alya couldn’t recall a time he stood up for them to Chloe for any of the things she had done. Not for stealing Marinette’s design. Not for blackmailing and then turning around to bribe the entire class out of the elections. And certainly not for the train incident when she actively put lives at stake.
...she had to try very hard to ignore the creeping feeling of how close she had come to losing her best friend.
Marinette rubbed her eyes, unaware of the darker turn Alya’s thoughts had taken.
“What if we were dating?” She asked. ”What would really happen, do you think? Chloe wouldn’t just let it go. Would he defend me? Or would he lecture me again and take her side?” She clenched her eyes shut. “I have nightmares where we’re married and she just…keeps crashing our dates. And taking over our house. And taking Adrien away from me. And Adrien just lets her and I can’t say anything because then he’ll be upset with me. And it’s not fair, but that never seems to make a difference. I’m better so it’s expected so I have to always be better. But...maybe I don’t want to be the better person this time?”
She leaned her head back, the picture of exhaustion.
“And I’m just so tired. I try, y’know? And no matter what I do, he never sees me. It’s like I’m being punished every time. Punished for trying. Punished for not trying. I’m like…stuck in…in….”
“Limbo?” Alya suggested, weakly.
Marinette nodded. “Yeah! I’m stuck in limbo and I just want out. Just…just let him tell me no so I can move on already. Because…cause this…this hurts.” More tears fell. “This hurts a lot.”
“So you don’t care who Adrien ends up with?” Alya asked.
“I care. I can’t not care. I just…it depends? It’s okay if it’s Kagami because I know she loves him. Cause I still want him to be happy and in a good nice happy relationship and Kagami cares about him and wouldn’t let Chloe take over. Kagami can stand up for herself better than I can. S’why I’m really jealous of her.”
Okay. This was…not what she had been hoping for. But if Marinette was okay with Kagami dating Adrien, then that meant she had no reason to be upset with Lila, right?
Marinette was clearly out of it. But her current state was only one where she lacked a filter. That meant…everything she was saying…
What was that quote? Drunk words are sober thoughts?
“So you’d be okay with Adrien dating someone else?” Alya asked, leading up to the big question.
“It’d be a relief.” Marinette muttered.
“Even if it was Lila?”
Marinette froze. The tension in the room suddenly skyrocketed.
“Not Lila.” The words were biting despite her voice being muffled and the slurring of her words.
“Why?” Alya demanded angrily. How could she be okay with Kagami of all people but not Lila?
Marinette hummed to herself, seemingly absent-minded. Alya almost wanted to shake her.
And then…
“Lila threatened me.”
Alya froze, nearly losing her grip on the camera. “What?”
“She threatened me.” Marinette repeated. “In the restroom. That day she came back.”
Her thoughts were scrambling. Her mind racing to find an explanation.
“Maybe you misunderstood?” Alya suggested. Maybe Lila had been put off by Marinette’s attitude and was just warning her how she could push people away by acting like that? Marinette had been overly harsh on the girl after all.
But Marinette shook her head. “She said she tells people what they want to hear. Called everyone idiots for believing her.” Marinate curled in on herself, drawing her legs to her chest. “And then she said I could either let her or she’d turn everyone against me. Even Adrien. Though maybe I should’ve let her since he knows she’s lying and defends her anyway.”
Wait. What?
She burrowed her head into her knees.
“S’why I was upset. Why th’ akuma came.”
Alya’s eyes widened. “Akuma? You were almost akumatized?”
Marinette nodded, still not looking up. “M’hmm. But T’kki talked to me an made me feel better so it went away. Then Lila got ak’matized.”
Who was Turkey supposed to be?
“Wait. Hold on.” Alya cut her off. “Why didn’t you tell me this happened?”
Marinette lifted her head from her knees, looking at Alya blearily. “Y’o didn’t believe me when I told you before though?”
“That was because you didn’t have proof!” Alya replied, defensively. “But you didn’t say she threatened you!”
“I didn’t have proof then either.” Marinette pointed out, strangely logical. She turned her head away to look at a spot on the wall. “But I had the story with Adrien and Ladybug. An’ how I returned Adrien’s missing book.”
“Wait—what?”
“Yeah. Cause Lila stole it. S’how I got it.” Marinette said, pointing a finger at nothing in particular as if emphasizing the point. “She threw it in the trash when Adrien came. And she showed off a necklace…said it was the Fox Miraculous an that she was Volpina. Then ‘was Ladybug...and yelled at her for lying. But…” She wilted. “You didn’t believe me. An you didn’t listen to me.”
She looked back to Alya, genuinely sad. “You never listen to me.”
Alya jerked up, taken aback at that. “Of course I do! We’re friends, remember?”
“You sided with Lila right away.” Marinette noted, glumly. “Trusted her over me. Didn’t even ask Adrien about my story just to be sure before deciding Lila was right. Or ask me about Jagged Stone to confirm her ‘kitten on the runway’ story. You knew I returned the book to let Adrien come back but didn’t take my word on where it came from? You knew I helped Adrien on his date with K’gami but still said I was only jealous over Lila because of him? Did you…even consider how that hurt?” She clenched her fists. “That I was blown off? That you didn’t trust me?”
“Well…” Alya hesitated, glancing to the side in uncertainty. “You have done some wild stuff out of jealousy before.”
Alya loved her friend, but she had. Her focus did tend to narrow when it came to Adrien and her antics did get over the top at points.
Marinette blinked, staring at Alya in confusion. “I lied? I tried to hurt people? I lied about people to hurt them?”
“Well—no—I mean…” Because truthfully, Marinette hadn’t. Not intentionally or maliciously. And while there were a number of times she did hurt people’s feelings in her attempts to win Adrien’s heart, she always felt guilty for it and apologized once she realized it. She had often acted without consideration for the effects on other people, but she never acted with intent to cause harm. It wasn’t cruelty, just simple ignorance.
And she had always tried to make it up to people regardless of whether she was in the wrong. Even Chloe. So it didn’t make sense why she wouldn’t do the same for Lila.
“I know some things went too far.” Marinette admitted. “And I always apologized. But it’s like admitting I was wrong somehow meant I was always wrong. And I just kept apologizing even when it wasn’t my fault because I didn’t know what else to do.”
Marinette picked at a loose thread on her knee.
“My mind blanks and I panic a lot. And I’ve tried to do better but it feels like you don’t help with that and I have to always be the one to make up for it all.”
Wait, now she wasn’t making sense. “Marinette, what are you talking about?”
Marinette tilted her head to the side, taking a moment to think.
“During the modeling attempt with Juleka.” Marinette started, eyes unfocused as she recalled the incident. “I didn’t want Adrien there. You invited him anyway. S’wasn’t a good time. S’wasn’t a good place. But I couldn’t tell him no after he already agreed to you asking. When Juleka was upset, I tried to talk to her. And you…you pushed her out. To put me in. To force me with Adrien. I wasn’t okay with it either. It was distracting. I wanted to focus. I wanted to help Juleka. But you pushed about Adrien and put us on a time limit. We left her behind and she was aku…ak’ma…doll thingy.”
It was cute and silly and in any other situation, Alya would have laughed. But she couldn’t laugh about this.
“And when it was all over, I had to apologize. Even…even though it wasn’t my fault. Cause…cause I tried, at least? And at the end, I was the one left out cause of it. Like…like I had to make up for it all. An…an this seems to happen a lot. I think?”
“Marinette…”
“You push me a lot. I’m not ready. Not okay with it. Tell you no. But suddenly I’m there and he’s there and I feel like I have to do something because you’re watching and I know what’ll happen if I mess up. Then I panic and mess up anyway and you just…the way you look at me.” Tears started to fall again and she clenched her eyes shut. “It hurts. Like you’re disappointed and annoyed but not surprised cause you expected me to fail. But then like…why do you put me there? Why do you keep putting me there if you knew?”
She looked up at Alya.
“Is it…fun to you?”
Alya suddenly felt her mouth go dry. She couldn’t speak.
“Like…the instagram pic-tures. You got mad when people commented and said it was mean, but you never asked me how I felt anyway. I don’t complain cause I don’t want to make you feel bad but…like…you don’t know it’s embarrassing? Or you do and don’t care? I hafta watch anything I do when you’re around because I never know if you’re taking more pictures of me to post there and…you never ask.” She shrugged and looked away. “You say I can do the same, but y’know I won’t. I’d never. Cause I love you too much and…that’s what friends do, right? Look out for each other and not share things they don’t want shared? Keep secrets?”
Alya swallowed.
“But you told Nino.”
Alya flinched.
“You told him how I felt. Used him to put me in a position I will never not regret.” She gave a sob. “And I don’t know why anymore. Do you…do you like watching me fail?”
“I was…trying to help.” Alya explained, the claim sounding weak to her own ears.
“Then why does it hurt each time? Why do you talk down to me so much?” Marinette gripped her hair and pulled in clear agitation. “You get mad at me for talking about Adrien. You get mad at me for trying to confess to Adrien. You get mad at me if I don’t try to confess to Adrien. You get mad at me for trying to give up on Adrien. I don’t know what to do to make you not mad.”
“Marinette, it’s not like that! You know that!” Alya insisted, feeling her heard pounding. In fear? In hurt? It was hard to tell.
The bluenette paused, slowly lowering her hands and relaxing her shoulders.
“Sometimes…”Marinette murmured. “Sometimes I wonder if this is how friendship is supposed to be. But…y’re the first friend I ever had. So I don’t know. And I’m too scared to question it because what if it is and you get mad and leave me? And that…everything else hurts. But the thought of you leaving me hurts more. I don’t know if it’d be worse to give up.”
Alya felt her own eyes tear up.
She couldn’t answer that. There was no answer for that.
There was a long silence.
“’M really tired.” Marinette suddenly complained. “And my mouth hurts. Is the surgery done yet?” She asked, looking up at Alya in confusion. Like the entire conversation never happened.
“Y-yeah.” Alya said, nodding her head. “They…everything just finished up. Your mom said you could sleep now.”
“Oh. Kay.” Marinette mumbled. Recognizing that she was in her own bed, she went to lay down, only struggling a little with the covers.
Alya began backing away, reaching for the door.
“G’night, Alya. Thank you for watching out for me.”
She froze, her hand on the door handle.
“Of…of course.” Alya replied, slightly choked. Though whether it was from discomfort or guilt was hard to determine.
“That’s…what friends do, after all.”