Chapter Text
Two years ago - One year after the accident
Marinette Dupain-Cheng stared at the blank page, her pencil hovering above the paper like a bird afraid to land. The sketchbook sat open on her desk, the same one she'd been carrying for months but never using. The same one that had become a prop in her performance of being a normal teenager.
Her room felt different now. The pink walls that had once been cheerful now seemed garish in the dim light, so she'd covered most of them with dark posters and fabric. The sewing machine in the corner was draped with a black sheet, like furniture in a house where someone had died.
Which, she supposed, someone had.
She touched the pink streak in her bangs self-consciously. The hairdresser had been surprised when she'd asked for it—most girls her age wanted their whole head pink, not just a small section. But Marinette had been specific. Just enough color to prove she wasn't completely dead inside. Just enough to remember what she used to be.
The rest of her hair hung loose around her shoulders, no longer styled in the cheerful pigtails that had once been her signature. Those felt like they belonged to someone else now. Someone younger, more innocent, more naive.
Her reflection in the window showed a girl in black jeans and combat boots, a girl who looked like she was ready for war. Which was appropriate, since that's what school had become.
She looked back at the paper and forced her hand to move.
The first line was shaky, uncertain. Just a curve, really. Nothing specific. But it was something, and something was more than the nothing she'd been producing for over a year.
She added another line, then another. Slowly, without any real plan, shapes began to emerge. A figure, maybe. A girl in a dress, though the dress was barely more than a sketch of an outline.
The drawing was lifeless. Technically correct—her hand still remembered the mechanics of art, even if her soul had forgotten the passion—but empty. Like looking at a photograph of someone who'd died.
But it was a drawing. Her first in over a year. And maybe, just maybe, someone would see something beautiful in it, even when she couldn't see it herself.
She sat back and studied what she'd created. It wasn't good. It wasn't inspired. It was the artistic equivalent of a zombie—technically alive but missing all the essential parts that made it human.
But it was a drawing. Her first in over a year.
She signed it with today's date and closed the sketchbook.
The next morning, Marinette dressed carefully in her uniform of armor. Black jeans, black boots, black jacket over a grey t-shirt. The pink streak in her hair was the only spot of color, and she'd positioned it strategically to catch the light.
She was running late again—she was always running late now, not from disorganization but from the simple fact that she had to work up the courage to leave her room every morning. The prospect of facing another day of Chloé's escalating cruelty felt like preparing for battle.
As she hurried through the courtyard, she caught fragments of excited conversation from clusters of students.
"—can't believe he's actually here—"
"—a real model at our school—"
"—Gabriel brand, I think—"
Some model had apparently come to Lycée Françoise Dupont, judging by the buzz of excitement in the air. Two years ago, Marinette might have been curious, might have tried to catch a glimpse of someone from the fashion world. Now, she couldn't bring herself to care. The industry that had once represented her dreams felt as foreign and unreachable as the moon.
The hallways of Françoise Dupont felt different than they had two years ago. Darker, somehow, though the lighting hadn't changed. It was her perception that had shifted, turning familiar spaces into hostile territory.
"Well, well," Chloé Bourgeois's voice cut through the morning chatter like a blade. "Look what crawled out of the gutter."
Marinette didn't look up from her locker. She'd learned not to make eye contact, not to give Chloé any excuse to escalate. But ignoring her had never worked either.
"Nice streak," Chloé continued, moving closer. "Trying to look edgy? It's not working. You just look like you stuck your finger in an electrical socket."
"Sorry," Marinette said quietly, the word automatic.
She wasn't sorry. She was tired. Tired of this daily ritual, tired of being Chloé's favorite target, tired of existing in a world where she was fair game for anyone who needed someone to hurt.
Her grades were still good—she couldn't bear to disappoint her father any more than she already had—but her marks in art class had plummeted. How could she create anything when her hands felt disconnected from her heart? When every attempt at drawing or painting came out hollow and mechanical? Her art teacher had stopped calling on her, stopped expecting anything from the girl who had once shown such promise.
"Sorry?" Chloé laughed, the sound sharp and cruel. "You're sorry? For what, exactly? For being born? For breathing my air? For being such a pathetic little worm that you make everyone around you uncomfortable?"
Two years ago, Marinette would have said something back. Would have stood up for herself, or at least tried to deflect with humor. The old Marinette had been quick with comebacks, able to hold her own in verbal sparring matches.
But that girl was gone.
"Sorry," Marinette repeated, closing her locker and trying to walk away.
"Oh, I don't think so," Chloé said, stepping into her path. "I wasn't done talking to you."
Marinette felt her chest tighten. This was how it always started—with words, with blocking her path, with making her the center of attention she never wanted.
"Chloé," Alya Césaire's voice came from behind her. "Leave her alone."
Marinette's heart clenched. Alya was still trying, still stepping in to defend her, even though Marinette had spent the last year and a half pushing her away. Even though she'd made it clear she didn't want to be saved.
"Oh, look," Chloé said, her smile widening. "The pathetic little mouse has a defender. How sweet."
"I said leave her alone," Alya repeated, but there was something different in her voice now. Something tired. Like she was going through the motions rather than fighting from the heart.
"Or what?" Chloé asked. "You'll write a mean blog post about me? How terrifying."
Marinette closed her eyes. She could feel the attention of other students beginning to focus on them, could sense the familiar energy of a crowd gathering to watch a spectacle. This was what her life had become—a performance for other people's entertainment.
"I'm fine," she said quietly, not looking at Alya. "Just leave it."
"See?" Chloé said triumphantly. "She doesn't want your help. She knows where she belongs."
Marinette walked away, leaving Alya standing there with hurt and frustration written across her face. She'd learned it was better to retreat than to let things escalate. Better to be called a coward than to give Chloé more ammunition.
But Chloé wasn't done.
It happened during lunch, in the cafeteria where everyone could see. Marinette had found a quiet corner table, as far from the crowd as possible, and was picking at her food without really eating it. She'd lost weight over the past year, though she didn't think anyone had noticed. Food had become just another necessity to endure rather than something to enjoy.
She was staring at her textbook, trying to disappear into homework, when she felt something cold and wet hit her head.
Soup. Someone had poured soup over her head.
The liquid ran down her hair, soaking into her clothes, dripping onto her book and her lunch tray. The smell of tomato and herbs filled her nostrils, and she could hear the sudden silence that fell over the cafeteria as everyone turned to stare.
"Oops," said a boy she didn't recognize, though his voice held no trace of apology. He stood behind her with an empty bowl, his grin replaced by something uglier. "My hand slipped."
Marinette sat frozen, soup dripping from her hair, while the entire cafeteria watched. Some students looked shocked, others amused, a few appeared genuinely concerned. But no one moved to help.
"How clumsy of you, Louis," Chloé said, her voice dripping with fake sympathy. "Though I suppose it's an improvement. At least now she smells like food instead of... whatever that was before."
Marinette still didn't move. She stared at her ruined textbook, at the soup staining pages she'd need for class, and felt something inside her go very quiet and very still. She felt like she should cry—the old Marinette would have burst into tears from the humiliation, from the cruelty, from the way everyone was staring at her like she was entertainment. But the tears wouldn't come. They never came anymore, except in the sterile quiet of her mother's hospital room where no one could see her break.
Her eyes remained dry even as her chest ached with the familiar weight of shame.
"You should probably clean yourself up," Chloé continued. "You look even more pathetic than usual."
Finally, Marinette stood. Soup continued to drip from her hair and clothes, creating a small puddle on the floor. She picked up her ruined book and her bag, and walked out of the cafeteria without a word.
She didn't run. She didn't cry. She didn't make a scene. She just walked, leaving a trail of soup drops behind her, while the cafeteria slowly returned to its normal noise level.
In the bathroom, she stared at herself in the mirror. Her hair was matted with soup, her shirt stained beyond salvation, her textbook warped and unreadable. She looked like exactly what she was—a target, a victim, someone who'd been marked as acceptable to hurt.
She turned on the faucet and began trying to wash the soup out of her hair with hand soap. The water ran red-orange down the drain, and she thought absently that it looked like blood.
"Marinette."
She looked up to find Socqueline Wang standing in the doorway, her face creased with concern.
"Are you okay?" Socqueline asked, though it was obvious she wasn't.
"I'm fine," Marinette said automatically, continuing to rinse her hair.
"No, you're not," Socqueline said gently. "This isn't okay. What Chloé did, what Kim did—it's not okay."
"It's fine," Marinette repeated, because if she admitted it wasn't fine, she might have to admit how much it hurt. How much everything hurt. Her eyes felt dry and scratchy, like they'd forgotten how to produce tears for anything but her mother's bedside.
"It's not fine," Socqueline said, moving closer. "You shouldn't have to put up with this. You should report it, or let us help you, or—"
"There's no point," Marinette said, her voice flat. "It doesn't matter."
"It does matter," Socqueline said, and there was something desperate in her voice. "You matter. The girl you used to be—"
"Is gone," Marinette finished, meeting her eyes in the mirror. "She's gone, and she's not coming back."
Socqueline stared at her for a long moment, and Marinette saw something break in her expression. The hope that had been keeping her friend trying, fighting, believing in her recovery.
"I miss her," Socqueline said quietly. "I miss you."
"I know," Marinette said, returning to her hair. "I miss her too."
And she meant it. Looking at Socqueline's concerned face, seeing how hard her friend was still fighting for her, Marinette felt a stab of something that might have been gratitude mixed with self-loathing. Socqueline deserved better than this broken shell of a friend. Deserved someone who could appreciate her loyalty, her kindness, her refusal to give up.
But appreciation required emotional energy Marinette didn't have. Required the ability to feel things beyond the constant low-level ache of existing. And sometimes—in her darkest moments—she resented Socqueline's persistence. Resented being pulled back from the edge when falling would be so much easier.
She was poison, she knew that. Toxic to everyone who tried to love her. And someday, that toxicity was going to hurt someone who didn't deserve it.
She just didn't know yet how much damage she would cause.
The bullying continued, of course. Chloé had tasted blood in the water, and she wasn't going to stop now. The soup incident had been just the beginning.
There was the day someone—she never found out who—filled her locker with torn up pieces of her old sketches, the ones from before. Designs she'd thrown away months ago, somehow retrieved and shredded into confetti that spilled out onto the hallway floor when she opened the metal door.
There was the day Chloé's followers formed a circle around her in the hallway, not quite touching but close enough to make her claustrophobic, whispering things just loud enough for her to hear.
"Pathetic." "Worthless." "Nobody." "Waste of space."
And through it all, Marinette said nothing. Did nothing. Just took it, absorbed it, let it wash over her like she was a stone in a river. She'd learned that fighting back only made things worse, that defending herself gave Chloé more material to work with.
Although sometimes, while waiting at a crosswalk, She would catch herself wondering what it might feel like to step in front of a car. She would find herself staring too long at the dark water of the Seine, or quietly measuring the height of rooftops with her eyes, tracing the ledges like they were invitations. But she never moved. Not because she wanted to live—but because she believed she deserved to suffer.
So she became invisible. Or tried to. She perfected the art of moving through school like a ghost, taking up as little space as possible, drawing as little attention as possible, existing in the margins of other people's lives.
But even ghosts could be hurt, and some days the weight of being nobody was almost too much to bear.
Almost.
That night, Marinette sat at her desk with her sketchbook open to a fresh page. Her hair was clean now, though it still smelled faintly of tomato soup despite multiple washings. Her ruined textbook sat in the trash, along with her stained shirt.
She picked up her pencil and began to draw.
This time, the image came more easily. A girl in a bright pink dress, with elaborate pigtails tied with ribbons. A girl who was smiling, who looked excited about something, who radiated the kind of joy that came from believing the world was full of possibility.
The girl in the drawing looked like her. Or like she used to look, before everything went wrong.
She drew carefully, paying attention to details she hadn't thought about in months. The way her eyes used to crinkle when she smiled. The way she used to hold her shoulders back with confidence. The way she used to move through the world like she belonged in it.
When she was finished, she had created a portrait of a ghost. A memorial to the girl who used to exist, who used to create beautiful things, who used to believe in love and friendship and happy endings.
She stared at the drawing for a long time, feeling something she hadn't felt in over a year. Not happiness, exactly. Not hope. But a kind of... recognition. Like seeing an old friend from a distance, someone you used to know but couldn't quite remember how to talk to anymore.
She turned the page and drew another picture. This one was of herself as she was now—dark clothes, loose hair, the pink streak catching the light. But she drew this girl differently. Not defeated, exactly. Not broken. Just... different. Changed. Like someone who had survived something terrible and was still figuring out how to live with the aftermath.
The two drawings faced each other across the open sketchbook. Past and present. Before and after. The girl she'd been and the girl she'd become.
Both drawings were technically competent but emotionally hollow. Lifeless representations of life, like photographs of a sunset that captured the colors but none of the warmth. Her art teacher would probably give them a C+—adequate technique, no soul.
But they were something. And some nights, when the darkness felt too heavy to carry, something was enough to get her through until morning.
She signed both drawings with the same date and closed the book.
It wasn't much. It wasn't the return of her creativity or her passion or her ability to see beauty in the world. But it was an acknowledgment of what she'd lost, and maybe, just maybe, the beginning of figuring out what she might still be able to salvage.
She put the sketchbook away and got ready for bed, trying not to think about tomorrow, about facing Chloé again, about the long road ahead of her.
But that night, for the first time in months, she dreamed of drawing. Not the beautiful, inspired art she used to create, but something simpler. Something that was just about the act of putting pencil to paper, of creating something from nothing, of proving that even in the darkest places, something could still be made.
When she woke up, she couldn't remember the details of the dream. But she remembered the feeling of her hand moving across paper, and for just a moment, that was enough.
The drawings helped, though. Not much, but a little. Every night, she'd sit at her desk and sketch something—usually the same two girls, the before and after versions of herself. Sometimes she'd add details, or change the expressions, or experiment with different poses.
They were still lifeless. Still empty. Still the artistic equivalent of going through the motions.
But they were something. And some nights, when the darkness felt too heavy to carry, something was enough to get her through until morning.
She didn't know it yet, but she was learning to survive. Learning to exist in a world that had no place for her, learning to carry grief and guilt and shame without letting them completely crush her.
She was learning to be a ghost who could still hold a pencil.
It wasn't much. But it was a start.
And maybe someday, someone would look at her lifeless drawings and see beauty where she saw only emptiness. Maybe someone would understand that sometimes the most beautiful art came from the simple act of refusing to stop trying, even when trying felt impossible.
For now, that possibility existed only in her dreams. But dreams, she was learning, were sometimes enough to keep you breathing until morning.
But as she fell asleep that night, Marinette couldn't shake the image of Socqueline's face in the bathroom mirror. The way her friend had looked at her with such desperate hope, such unwavering loyalty, such stubborn refusal to give up on someone who was clearly beyond saving.
It was beautiful and terrible, that kind of devotion. The kind that made someone hold on even when letting go would be kinder. The kind that made someone keep reaching for you even when your very presence was toxic.
Marinette had become poison, she knew that. A black hole that sucked the light out of everyone around her. And someday, that darkness was going to destroy someone who deserved so much better.
She just prayed it wouldn't be someone like Socqueline, who saw beauty in broken things and refused to stop believing in impossible recoveries.
But in her heart, she already knew the truth. The people who loved you most were the ones most likely to be destroyed by your darkness. And Socqueline loved her far too much to save herself from what was coming.
The thought should have made her cry. Once upon a time, it would have. But her tears had dried up for everything except her mother's bedside, and all she could do was lie in her bed and feel the weight of inevitable tragedy pressing down on her chest like a stone.
She closed her eyes and tried to focus on the memory of her pencil moving across paper. Two girls facing each other—who she'd been and who she'd become. Both empty, both hollow, both technically alive but missing something essential.
But they existed. She had created them from nothing, breathed a kind of life into them with her own hands, given them form even when she couldn't give them soul.
It wasn't beautiful. It wasn't inspired. It wasn't the art she'd once dreamed of creating.
But for now, it was enough.