Princess Patissiere ( A Miraculous Ladybug Fanfic)

Alya, Please

"Hi, Alya... How long have you been standing there?" Marinette asked, trying to plaster a calm look on her face.

Alya stood next to Marinette's door, a hand still on the knob, with her mouth parted in shock. She blinked a couple of times and shook her head, not quite grasping what she had just seen. She stood there in her best friends room, frozen in place, piecing together information she hadn't even known she was collecting.

"M-m-Mari?" She asked, taking a deep breath. "You're... Ladybug." she said, struggling to spit the words out. Her hand falls from the knob and to her side, the small movement is all she could make at the moment.

"Alya please," Marinette started, "you have to listen to me. No one can know." She looked at her friend worriedly. "I haven't told anyone. Please. It's not just you."

Alya shook her head and looked down at her phone that was on the floor. She robotically bent down to pick it up, and stared at it for a minute, willing it to answer her questions. The silence of the room was unbearable as Marinette waited to see what she'd do. When the phones screen suddenly buzzed and brightened with a text, she flinched.

"I..." She looks up at Marinette, her eyes filled with sadness and confusion. "I have to go." She says, struggling to keep her voice from cracking. She turns to leave but Marinette is at her side in an instant, gripping her arm.

She looked to her friend with pleading eyes. "Alya, please understand I-"

"Mari. Let go of me." The betrayal was clear in her voice, as were the glistening tears on her cheeks, as she wrenched her arm out of Marinette's grasp. She quickly exited the room and sprinted down the hall, slamming the door behind her.

Marinette stood frozen in place. This was never supposed to happen. She thought, staring at the closed door in front of her, her arm still held out.

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"What do you mean you don't know, Nino?!" Marinette screamed angrily into the phone. "Someone has to know where she is!" His strangled reply is cut off as she hit the end button and threw her phone onto her bed.

I can't believe this, she thought, her energy rapidly dissolving until she felt limp. She sighed and sat at the edge of her bed with her head in her hands, and she didn't know the tears were coming until it was too late. She cried for a long time, and when her parents came to check on her a few minutes later, they found her with her head in her hands, completely wiped out.

"Marinette honey, what happened?" Her mother asked softly, sitting down on the bed next to her. Her father doing the same and placing a hand on her back. Marinette didn't move, but fresh, hot tears made their way down her face and collected at the bottom of her chin. Her father moved his hand in slow, comforting circles on her back, and her mother lifted up Marinette's face to meet hers.

"Mari, what's wrong?" The worried mother asks, but the only response she gets from her daughter is more tears and a slow shake of the head.

"I can't tell you..." She said quietly, her voice strained from all the crying. "I can't tell anyone."

Her mother brings her into a warm embrace and her father joins in. They sit like that for a while, before they are reminded by the jingle of the bell that they had customers to attend to.

"Sabine, stay with Marinette, I can take care of them." Her father says, getting up to leave. Sabine nodded, but Marinette is quick to protest.

"Mama, I'll be okay." She gave her a reassuring smile. "It's just a friend thing, no big deal." Sabine is unconvinced but nodded anyway, giving her daughter some space.