Chapter Text
When no one came to reclaim the Black Cat miraculous, she understood that her partner would no longer be in her life. She had sent Plagg to return the ring to the boy who had been wearing it for so long, but the kwami came back accompanied by a nervous Su Han, who had profusely apologized for the incident.
“I’m extremely sorry, Little Ladybug. It seems your companion won’t be able to help you anymore.”
Plagg seemed to be on the verge of tears. As she was standing on her balcony, she was just hoping that her parents wouldn’t hear their sniffles and cries.
“If I can help you, however, there’s someone who I can give it to, if needed.”
Ladybug was extremely grateful for that. The events that had taken place since that faithful day were devastating her. She was hanging by a thread.
“Thanks, Master. That would mean a lot.”
The man disappeared soon after, taking the black creature with him. Marinette was back in her civilian attire and had fallen to the floor. Silent tears were streaming down her face, and her entire figure trembled: Tikki didn’t know how to help her. The hero had lost her war and the miraculous of the butterfly was lost. Only the kwamis, God, or what else knew what Gabriel Agreste had wished before his demise. Probably, since he had been so obsessed with ruining her, she had wished for her to suffer, and he had succeded incredibly well: not only had her kitten disappeared, but Adrien had died. He had perished all alone, of starvation maybe, possibly of dehydration or for the coldness, in the containment room that his father had designed for him; she had yet to learn that in reality, he had been killed by his father when he vanished from the face of the Earth. The only thing that kept her sane was working in the bakery.
But that too, stopped working not much later. It was a peaceful day in Paris, and her birthday had just passed when she tiptoed down the stairs to reach the mailbox just outside the bakery. She was eagerly waiting for the mail that her school had sent, according to all her old classmates who would be attending her same high school, to inform them of the cultural exchange taking place during the first two weeks of school. She was candidly looking forward to the trip, what she wasn’t thrilled about was having to put up with her old classmates and her bully. When she looked through the insane amount of bills and commissions for the bakery, though, the only thing she found was a happy birthday card. The postage stamp displayed a watercolor rendition of a Gothic-style clocktower, and the sender’s address was 224, Park Drive, Gotham City, NJ, USA. Her name was the recipient.
‘Strange’ she thought, ‘I don’t know anyone from America outside of Aeon and Jessica, but they are from New York. Who could this be from?’
As she dropped clumsily the mail on the coffee table in the living room, her mother was just a few meters away cleaning the dishes that they had used for breakfast.
“Anything interesting, sweetie?” Asked Sabine, while drying up a plate.
“There’s a letter from America.”
Sabine let the dish unceremoniously plop back into the dirty water. But she didn’t manage to take off her rubber gloves quickly enough. Marinette had cut open the envelope and had taken out a fancy-looking birthday card, ornated by a golden border, and a logo that she didn’t recognize. Inside the card, the sender had written something by hand in a very elegant cursive.
Dear Marinette,
I hope this letter finds you well. I want to send you my best wishes for your recent birthday. I am sending you greetings on behalf of the entire Wayne household. In the hopes that I will see you soon and that you are doing well, I am looking forward to your (eventual) response.
Best wishes, Alfred Pennyworth.
Marinette was astonished, to say the least. Could it be a friend of a friend? Maybe one of Uncle Jagged’s, or even Nadja Chamack’s. But then again, why bother asking for an answer?
“Mom, do you know who a certain Alfred Pennyworth could be?”
The woman's eyes froze in an unnatural position, wide open and almost bulging. Sabine inhaled deeply. “Oh, God.”
Marinette had always been aware of the fact that Tom was not her biological father. He had always been extremely honest about that. He still loved her as such, seeing that he could not have any children himself. However, Sabine had never been too open about who her father truly was. Ever since she had seen Mamma Mia!, she was hesitant to ask, expecting the problem to be incredibly awkward to talk about. But what she didn’t expect was her mother being in a relationship with a billionaire, especially such a well-known one. She didn’t ask for any more details, however, as she was incredibly uncomfortable as it was already.
The next couple of days were spent investigating who this man was. According to the internet, her father, Bruce Wayne, was a truly remarkable individual: CEO of his parents’ company, Wayne Enterprises, he had more flings than one could keep track of, was known to be extravagant and self-absorbed at times - and, to be fair, from Marinette’s experience, rich people tended to be like that, - and an extremely active philanthropist. He had lost his parents at a young age and had been raised by his family’s butler. Rumors said that he was a pathological adopter, having taken under his care quite a large number of teens, alongside his only biological son, Damian Wayne.
The more she read about this man and the family he had created with his adoptees, the more Marinette came to a conclusion: she wanted absolutely nothing to do with any of them. Ever. She was incredibly happy that she was raised by her maman and papa, and she had seen with her own two eyes how incapable rich parents were, Audrey, Tomoe, and Gabriel being the prime example. The neglect suffered by Adrien was still fresh in her memories. Tom had been everything she ever wished for in a father. Well, almost everything.
So, when Sabine went to take the mail two weeks before the start of the school year, Marinette had stopped thinking about the letter she was still waiting to receive. The school had screwed up her mail, but she still managed to receive it, although almost too late. The first thing she saw was that the expiry date was two days later, but what definitively managed to make her heart go up to her mouth was the school they would be visiting for their trip: Gotham County High School. Her bad luck had just given her the fatal blow after months of suffering. She would be stuck with the compulsive liar, mostly unable to get back to Paris if needed, and also in a place where meeting her biological family was almost granted. She wanted nothing more than to melt down and fuse with her bed. Tikki didn’t know how to make her feel better anymore.
“It’s going to be alright, Marinette.”
The girl buried her head further down in her pillow. “No, it’s not. I should stay here and try to find the butterfly miraculous, not go to the other end of the world just to suffer.”
“But you have the horse miraculous! Also, maybe some new friends will help you feel a little bit better.”
She was right, Marinette had been miserable and alone for the best part of the summer. Not even her trip to Gina’s house on the north Italian seaside had managed to make her feel any less pathetic.
“I don’t want new friends, Tikki. I just want to go back to how it was before Lila came and ruined everything!”
Tikki pinched her cheek. “Are you forgetting how miserable Chloé made you feel back then?”
Once again, the voice of truth. Chloé had always targeted her for some reason, and back then, just like some months ago, no one ever sided with her. All her classmates had always been so accepting of her pain, that sometimes it felt like they didn’t care at all. Few had managed to see through the fox’s lies, but Juleka and Sabrina would never talk, too shy to even try to oppose. After the whole bathroom incident that caused Chloé to get expelled, most of her classmates had forgiven Lila - like it was their place to begin with, - with the honorable exception of Alix, who had been disillusioned when the whole Kim fiasco happened. But that was a story for another day. Now she had only a bit more than a week to organize, and some commissions to design.
Time had flown in a packed set of commissions and orders to the bakery. The first day of school had all the premises to be a nightmare. It was now Monday, they would be leaving Wednesday. She thought she could do it, she washed her teeth and dressed up as usual, carrying with her an almost empty backpack that only had a notebook and a pencil case, and went to the bus station to reach the new school. The bus was crammed, with people of all ages wobbling while trying to find something to hold, and mostly elderly people comfortably watching from their seats.
‘Why on Earth would anyone who is retired and has all the time in the world get up at these hours in the morning?’
As the age-old question of every student formed in her mind, she got off the bus. She almost missed it, trying to squeeze herself out of the vehicle.
Lycée Rodin was further away from her house than her collège had been, but it was incredibly different. The building seemed rather new and was colossal. Even if she wanted to, she couldn’t count how many windows she could see. Her old classmates were gathering around Lila beyond the gate that encased the school courtyard. Based on their enamored expressions, she was likely telling them a story about how she donated the desks they were going to use, or even of a fling she had with a senior. Marinette adjusted her earphones and raised the volume of the music.
She looked around and found mostly older students already knowing where to go. She then noticed Alix talking casually with a boy she had never seen before, with brown hair and blue eyes, and a striped shirt. Apparently, they had known each other for some time, since she seemed to laugh so viscerally at his jokes. She didn’t want to bother them, so she headed inside.
Marinette stopped right before the entrance, where a small group of teachers were re-reading the names that had been divided into different sections. When the bell rang, a dark-haired woman in her fifties started talking with a mic.
“Attention, students of the first year. Get closer to the entrance, please. We will call your name and you’ll be escorted to your class by your homeroom teacher. Please don’t talk over us.”
Thankfully, she had been sorted out in the first class: troisième A. Her class looked rather small, about sixteen people, abnormally few for a first-year classroom. Their homeroom teacher was a middle-aged woman with a brown bob cut, and a pair of square plastic glasses, that made her look both friendly and ridiculously silly. The fact that she was barely taller than Alix, the shortest girl she knew, was also adding to the character.
She was relieved to see that the people who happened to be in her same class were Alix and Nathaniel, who although still enchanted by the liar’s songs was not that pushy with her whatsoever. So it was all good. She noticed that the strange guy she had seen before out of school was with them.
Once in their physical classroom, Alix and Marinette got separated seats, since the first wanted at all costs a seat in the back. They resorted to getting seated in the same row near the windows. The seat next to her remained empty until the last student decided to seat down: it was him. Blonde and kind of long hair, eyes of steel, the complexion of a sickly Victorian child, and an outfit taken directly from Dead Poets Society. She was baffled and stared at him as he gently placed a copy of The White Nights by Dostoevsky on the desk. She immediately stopped staring once the boy crossed her gaze.
Behind her was seated a blonde girl with a brilliant smile on her face. Next to her was a dark-skinned boy, with a pair of giant black headphones, humming to a song she didn’t recognize. She noticed that in the middle seats, near the aforementioned boy, was sitting an awkward boy with dark brown hair and tired eyes.
“Sorry, don’t want to interrupt you… but what’s your name?”
It was the blonde girl who had asked her.
“Oh, hi. I’m Marinette.”
“I’m Allegra. Nice to meet you. Everyone seems so nervous, it’s almost embarrassing just to breathe.”
Marinette chuckled. “Yeah, everyone seems a bit strange, but this place looks gigantic compared to our middle school. Maybe it could be that.”
“You tell me. We were just eleven last year. But… I honestly expected people to want to make new friends.”
The boy next to Marinette who seemed to be avidly reading his book shifted in his place uncomfortably, like he had been called out.
“Give them a little time, they’ll open up eventually. If you want, the girl behind you is Alix.”
A hot pink cloud of hair waved in her direction. Before any of them could say anything, the homeroom teacher walked back into the class and started presenting herself. After learning that her name was Madame Le Fevre and that she was their maths teacher, Marinette zoned out. She had already read everything about the program for the new year online, she didn’t need another lecture about it. Her mind wandered off to where the butterfly miraculous could be, and who Su-Han might have chosen as the new holder of the cat miraculous, and the thoughts were almost overwhelming her when the woman fixed her glasses on her nose. She then read something on a piece of paper and proceeded to speak with her sweet voice.
“Well, speaking of this week, in two days you’re going to travel to our sister school in Gotham! This year’s a biggie, we will have their third year and they will meet our new entries. We thought it could be a good opportunity for our new students to socialize! You better get ready, though, you’ll still have your normal lessons most days. So come with a clear mind and a good amount of rest. Now, since you go away Wednesday, tomorrow we will have an entrance test to see at what level to start, does any of you have any questions or exercises you want to ask me about?”
Marinette wanted to go back to sleep. Thankfully, she had always aced her tests, so this one would not be a problem. A boy in the second row from the other side of the classroom raised his hand.
Half an hour later, as Madame Le Fevre got out of the classroom to let their French teacher in, she turned around towards her seatmate. She did not get his name, despite him being called before her when their teachers were taking attendance. She tried to smile politely.
“Sorry, I’m Marinette. I didn’t get your name.”
He stared at her blankly, his grey eyes making her feel a sense of emptiness in her stomach.
“Felix Culpa. I’m not here to make friends.”
Great. Two weeks of absolute hell were awaiting her.