Living With Agreste

Chapter 34- Emotions

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September 29th

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Marinette, for once, had a comfortable sleep in the Agreste house. Between the rumors and resulting paranoia, and the fact that she was away from home, it had been hard for the girl to get a good night's sleep. But with Tikki back by her side, sleep came almost as soon as she laid down.

Only the sound of the maids running around at five in the morning was enough to wake Marinette up at once. Tikki was the first to pull at Marinette's covers in an attempt to get her out of bed.

"Everybody's up, Marinette, I can hear them rushing around!"

Marinette sighed lightly as she rubbed her eyes, wriggling into a sitting position. She leaned toward to the end table, about to check her phone for the time before not to, instead glancing at the red numbered digital alarm clock beside it.

Tikki frowned. Marinette always checked her phone when she woke up. She would reply to any text she had received after going to bed-usually increasingly far-fetched ladybug conspiracies courtesy of Alya, or since moving into Adrien's house, messages from her parents when they forgot about the time difference.

"What's wrong?" The kwami asked, flying close to Marinette's face.

The bluenette climbed out of bed and walked over to the mirror, immediately pulling her hair into her usual pigtails.

"We didn't really have the time to talk last night. About what's been going on."

"Well, I know about the lies. What else happened?"

How was Marinette supposed to explain everything like this? From the girls showing up at school, to Luka cornering her, to how strangely Adrien and Alya had been acting? How she wanted to avoid him to keep him safe from the toxic aura that surrounded her?

It was too much for her to handle, let alone, a little kwami, whose life was meant to be by Marinette's side. But if she kept it from Tikki and got them both akumatizrf because of it... She knew that hiding this would only make things worse.

Trying to decide where to start, she walked to the closet, picking out the most inconspicuous outfit she could put together to wear to Adrien's photoshoot.

"You don't have to tell me-" Tikki spoke after a pause, only to have Marinette shake her head.

"I want to. I just-a lot has happened and I haven't really talked about it, so I need to figure out how to put it into words."

After getting dressed and brushing out the pigtails, Marinette walked over to the bed to tie her shoes and unplug her phone. Then, she took the time to tell her kwami all about what else had happened. With Luka and Adrian, and the press, and Alya.

She talked about how awful she'd felt when she realized Tikki was gone and how she still blamed herself, how scared she had been when Luka had cornered her, and how she felt like there was a new wall between her and Alya that Adrien had somehow been able to bypass. The red bug listened intently, nodding her head every once in a while with a determined and sympathetic look. Marinette felt at home once again, talking to her kwami as if they'd known each other their entire lives. Even if Marinette had only been involved in a tiny fraction of Tikki's millennia-long life, the little kwami the teen had made a huge mark on it.