Papillon

Akumatisee by Maybelle

"Marinette?" Alya asked as she leaned against the chaise of the bluenette's room, which was situated atop a pink rug with a ruffled, black circumference. She kept her eye trained on one of the flags that populated a string, which was draped across the supporting beams of the smaller second floor.

"Yes?" Marinette replied. Her voice was muffled by the pillow in which she buried her head.

The faint rustling of trees could be heard from the park as wind continued to flood Paris, along with the rain, which pelted the boulangerie's walls with the fury of thunder.

"Have you ever had any strange dreams?"

"All the time, Alya," she laughed.

The ombré sighed. "No. I mean dreams you can't explain."

"What do you mean?"

"A while back, I had this one dream—or, at least, I think it was a dream—where we were on the train. Girl, you freaked out about how Adrien was standing right across from us, and you pressed your face up against the glass to stare at him as if he wasn't gonna notice," she giggled, "which he did."

"Wait—" Marinette cut in, the clarity in her words no longer eaten up by the fluffy muffler of a pillow. "But isn't this a normal dream? I'm always staring at him."

"You didn't let me finish," Alya said. She removed her gaze from the flags and looked down at her converse. Her heart beat faster, her chest tight, as she contemplated whether or not she should actually go through with saying it. But it had been on her mind a lot lately. No. I have to tell her. Maybe she can explain. She swallowed hard, pulling her knees to her chest, hugging them with her arms, and opened her mouth to speak. "W-Well," she began shakily, "I..." Her voice trailed off as the memory flooded her mind. She shook her head before continuing, and she squeezed her eyes shut. "While I was—y' know—just standing there, well, something, like, happened. To my feet, I mean."

The mattress of the backless couch jerked behind her head as she could feel Marinette twist around and stare at her, stiff as a deer caught in a pair of headlights.

But she continued nonetheless.

"This white stuff covered them, and it grew up my legs into these boots, and this—th-this purple stuff covered my thighs, and this whole time I was just freaking the flip out, because I didn't know what was happening. I couldn't seem to explain why, either, and none of the people who were flipping out around me couldn't either."

There was a long bout of silence during which a breeze cricketed, and she finally decided to speak again, voicing the rest of her unease.

"And I've also had dreams where I'm lost in familiar places, but at night, and I'm in this strange outfit that looks like it belongs to a supervillain, and all I know is that I want to uncover Ladybug's identity."

Drops streamed down the glass of the window, which held nothing but darkness at it's highest pitch and the faint outlines of buildings that could be picked out only with the most accustomed eye.

"Marinette?"

The bluenette startled as if awoken from a deep thought. She didn't answer.

Alya turned to look at her, and saw that her eyes were widened, and that she was biting her lip in some sort of apprehension for something. For a realization, maybe. "Mari, do you know anything about this?"

"U-Um... uh... well—"

The ombré furrowed her eyebrows and twisted around completely to face her. "Omg. You do, don't you?"

A multitude of emotions flooded her friend's face, but the most obvious was fear. Well, there was that, and then there was hesitation.

Marinette took a deep breath. "I'm sorry."

What? "What could you possibly be sorry for that could be related to this? And I'm guessing that this wasn't a dream, was it. You were there, weren't you?"

"No," she answered. "It wasn't a dream."

"You didn't answer my question. Girl, are you hiding something from me?"

"No. And Alya, we're best friends. You know that I tell you everything."

"Well, the guilt on your face after saying that doesn't tell me the same thing. Come on, please—what is it, Marinette?"

Wind whistled past the windows and rumbled down the street. Seconds passed. Minutes.

"You were... um... akumatized."

The expression on the ombré's face was nothing less than incredulous. "What?! I was taken control of and—and used and you didn't have the heart to say anything about it? Is there anything else you haven't told me, oh, dear bestfriend?"

"I don't get why you already didn't know. You're usually very observant, and not remembering a whole day of your life should have explained that to you, especially after seeing me and Chat Noir after I purified your—" A hand slapped itself over her mouth for it's betrayal. "Oh no," she murmured.

Alya stared at her. And stared at her. And stared at her. And she continued to stare for a very long time until her mind was presumably decided. A light twinkled in her eyes as she slowly began to gape at her, a smile tugging at the ends over lips and pulling them into a full-out grin as she gasped until she ran out of lung space. She squeaked. "No way. No flipping way. Oh my fosh. Oh my flipping gosh. Holy ladybugs. You. Omg," the fangirl rambled, and after hyperventilating for a bit, she opened her mouth to squeal.

"Wait, no! Not too loud, Alya. My parents still don't know."

She sealed her mouth and her face screwed itself into an elated bottling of her emotions. To say that she was containing her emotions with only a bit of difficulty would be an understatement. And she finally said it—in a teasing manner, but it was still said, nonetheless—after folding her arms atop the chaise and plopping her chin in the nook of her makeshift pillow—

"You're Ladybug."