Bug Bites

Chapter | One

Assumptions, that's what everyone had now a days about her character, but the reality was that they didn't know her. Did they really ever? The teenagers who sat in her class at Collège Françoise Dupont felt justified to judge her all based on one teenaged girl's lies. As the months went by, everything seemed to fade away into a hazed around Marinette Dupain-Cheng.

Alya was no longer her best friend, falling victim to the lies that left Lila's lips as if it were dripping honey. Lies that were so sweet to other's ears and venom to Marinette's heart.

Nino, her dear child hood friend, was supporting his girlfriend because that's just simply how those things worked. Most boyfriends would naturally do what it took to stay on the good side of their girlfriends. Marinette knew that, and she'd accepted that. She understood. She knew it didn't make it right, that it hurt her- but she understood.

Then there was Adrien, the sweet boy who wanted to play peace maker. The model that she found herself less infatuated with as the days went by. He would sit with Lila as she wrapped herself around him as if he were some prize to be won, as if he were an object and not a person. Marinette already accepted that she couldn't compete for Adrien's heart, because there was no point anymore. He didn't care for her enough to check on her, to see if she was okay because of Lila's lies.

No one did.

The whole purpose of her sitting in the back and letting the lies play themselves out were to expose Lila over time was supposed to eventually work right? That had been what Adrien had said, and over time it had just gotten worse. Waiting for Lila to expose herself, to shrink the possibility of her getting akumatized, was supposed to happen just like Adrien had said. Yet it never did, and now her lies had gotten so far out of hand that Marinette wasn't even sure Adrien knew the truth from the lie anymore that Lila thoughtlessly sputtered out.

Quite frankly, Marinette no longer cared. She no longer cared that Alya believed she was jealous over Lila and Adrien. No longer cared that Alya was willing to believe everything without fact checking like she used to swear by, becoming unauthentic. No longer did she care to have Adrien's pictures on her wall or worry about falling in front of him, because now she no longer felt anything. Not for Alya, or Nino, or Adrien or even the class that used to welcome her with open arms that now greeted her with icy stares and whispers in the air.

All this because of one girl, Lila Rossi.

Their insults still rattled inside Marinette's head every single waking moment of the day and haunted every nightmare she was plagued with at night. Words that felt like knives being stabbed through her heart and twisted by the people she once trusted so dearly enough to call her friends. People she continuously put her life on the line to keep safe, and ironically their idol they sang their praises too. 

An overwhelming pain that Marinette silently suffered in an internal agony. She wished she could scream out her frustrations, cry in the waves of her loneliness. Yet she could never waver, it was the one thing she could never do. No one understood the constant weight on her shoulders that threaten to suffocate her at time when it all just felt too overwhelming.  

The smiles for her parents were well rehearsed, perfected in the time she stood in front of her bathroom mirror while she wiped her tears away before Tikki could see. A smile she could only fake for a few seconds at a time, because the pain of forcing that one movement was just too much.

After all she was supposed to be the epitome of perfection, of love and justice and all things fair. She was supposed to be the ever loved Ladybug that everyone in Paris seemed to fawn over and adore. Marinette had absolutely came to hate Ladybug with a passion so fierce that it scared her sometimes. Yet, in a twisted sick joke fate pulled on her, Ladybug was the only thing she had. No one could see her for Marinette, but they saw Ladybug and put her on this ever unattainable pedal stool.