Chapter Text
It had been six months since the Miracle Queen fiasco — six quiet, suffocating months. The world had moved on. Chloé hadn’t.
Once upon a time, she wore the crown of Queen Bee and mistook it for love. Now, she wore oversized hoodies and bruises — some faded, some fresh — and hid from the city that once applauded her just for existing.
Her father, the ever-spineless Andre Bourgeois, had finally grown a backbone. Unfortunately, it was only rigid enough to swing at his daughter when no one was watching. He no longer answered to her whiny demands or fake tears — instead, he answered them with silence or scorn, whichever was more convenient to his political calendar.
Paris loathed her. And for once, she couldn’t quite argue with them.
The headlines had stopped naming her months ago, but her name lived in hushed whispers, in every turned back, in every teacher’s deliberate glance past her raised hand. Her classmates walked around her like she was rot in the air — dangerous to acknowledge for too long, lest it cling to their skin.
Every outing was a masquerade now — a hoodie, sunglasses, and silence. The heiress was still very much alive, but Chloé Bourgeois was a ghost.
And yet, the real haunting had begun the night her father raised his hand and struck her.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?!”
His voice was raw — not the kind of rage that sputtered and flamed out, but the deep-bellied resentment of a man who realized too late that he’d raised a daughter in his own narcissistic image or what was worse, the image or his beloved wife.
She didn’t reply. Not fast enough.
His palm cracked across her cheek. Her breath stilled.
Andre Bourgeois — the man who used to buy out entire stores because she frowned once — was now the same man who shook her like a misbehaving pet. “You ruined my career!” he spat, like she hadn’t been ruined first.
He didn’t ask why she’d joined Hawkmoth. He didn’t want to hear the truth: that she was desperate to feel chosen.
He dragged her by the wrist like a criminal. Her cell became her suite. Her sentence: one week. Her jailer: Jean, the butler who once tucked her into bed when her mother forgot her birthday.
Her appetite vanished. Her reflection disappeared into a hollow-eyed wraith.
When Sabrina’s message came that same day— “Don’t call me. Don’t talk to me. We’re done.” — she read it out loud in the dark. Just to make it real.
It wasn’t betrayal. Not really. It was justice. She’d used Sabrina like a stepping stone with a pulse. Why mourn a friendship that never truly existed?
But then Adrien…
His silence lasted exactly seven days until she cracked and called him. Then came the dagger:
“Chloé, what you did was the last straw. Unless you change, we can’t be friends anymore.”
Adrien. Her childhood dream. The one person who still saw Chloé when everyone else saw a villain.
Gone.
And she understood.
Worse — she agreed.
It wasn’t until her nose bled and her lip split open in the school bathroom that she realized she was truly alone.
Four girls. No names, no faces. Just fists and laughter.
She didn’t cry until she got home. Then she didn’t stop.
The rampage in her suite was biblical — glass, perfume, designer clothes reduced to rubble. Her hand was gashed open from the mirror she punched. Her cheek stung. Her wrist throbbed.
But pain… pain was something she could finally control .
She stared at the blood pooling in her palm.
Still here, huh?
Her unhealthy habit started with a sliver of glass and a whisper of relief. A small cut, just enough to breathe.
She never called it self-harm. That sounded too dramatic, too desperate . This was maintenance. Like tuning an instrument.
She needed to bleed to remember that she wasn’t hollow. Not yet.
Sunday morning.
The city yawned. The sky was grey.
Chloé watched the sun rise like it owed her an apology. Her eyes were hollow. Her clothes hung off her thinner frame — baggy black pants, a hoodie with a smiling cartoon bee, and white shoes that hadn’t been white for weeks.
She chuckled at her reflection — humorless, broken. Her freckles showed now. No more foundation to hide them. Her mother had called them blemishes.
Audrey hadn’t called her at all.
She slipped out of the hotel through the kitchen trash route like a thief in her own home. Jean no longer stopped her. Maybe he finally realized she wasn’t trying to escape — she was just trying to breathe somewhere her father’s shadow didn’t reach.
She walked the Paris streets like a ghost. Head down. Invisible. Just the way everyone liked her.
Her destination: a park bench, and behind it, a cardboard box. A makeshift home made with her own two hands.
Inside: two cats — an orange mother and her kitten.
“Hello, Mama Cat. Morning, Little One,” she murmured, voice hoarse.
They meowed and purred, unburdened by public opinion. They didn’t care that she’d ruined Paris. They didn’t know she’d begged to be loved by a mother who couldn’t remember her name.
She scratched their ears. Her only real connection now was with two stray animals who didn’t flinch at her touch.
“You are lucky,” she whispered to the kitten, fiddling with the bluebell scarf she had tied around its neck weeks ago. “Your mum never abandoned you like mine did, I hope you continue together when you get adopted.”
Then she left for food for the three of them. Marinette’s parents’ bakery was open. They didn’t recognize her — just a hood, glasses, cash, and politeness.
“Thank you,” she said softly. Ms. Dupain-Cheng smiled politely.
Small victories.
The fallen heiress just finished the last of her honey macaroons, sitting cross-legged in the alley like a stray dog no one wanted, when a shadow glided overhead — too silent to be anything but miraculous.
She looked up.
Ladybug.
Red and black and radiant, landing with the grace of someone who never doubted their place in the world.
Chloé stared, breath caught like a punch to the chest.
And then it happened — the transformation faded. In a soft shimmer of light, Marinette Dupain-Cheng stood where Ladybug once flew.
Her.
It was her.
The girl she mocked. The girl she stepped on, belittled, dismissed like a stain. The girl who smiled anyway.
The girl who fought gods and monsters and still made time for her friends.
Of course it was her.
“Of course it’s you…” Chloé whispered aloud, her voice barely more than a ragged exhale.
At first, when she first discovered it some two months past, it made no sense. Then it made all the sense in the world.
The kindness. The courage. The way Marinette always threw herself into chaos with trembling hands and a steady heart.
Chloé laughed, quietly — but it came out crooked and sharp, almost a sob. “Great. My idol and my guilty crush. Life really knows how to kick you when you’re already on the floor, huh?”
She remembered every time she called Marinette a nobody, a klutz, a loser. Each insult was now a shard of glass in her throat.
And yet… somehow, knowing the truth didn’t make her hate Marinette more.
It made her ache for her.
There was something humiliating about it — loving someone you once tried to break, and knowing full well that if they knew, they’d flinch. That your name alone was a cautionary tale in their head.
But still, the heart is a stupid little organ.
She pressed her back against the alley wall and looked up at the quiet window Marinette had just climbed into.
The blush crept in slow and bitter.
“She’s ridiculous,” Chloé muttered to no one “Brave. Infuriating. Beautiful.”
She would never tell anyone the other girl’s secret.
Why would she? No one would believe her. Not after everything she’d done. Not after how she treated Marinette — both as classmate and competition.
And if, by some miracle, Marinette did find out about the heiress crush, she’d probably think it was a joke. Or worse — a trap.
No. Better to carry this particular shame alone.
Her heart — fragile, bruised, barely beating — would stay hidden, just like her face beneath the hood.
Chloé Bourgeois was in love with Paris’ brightest star.
And the tragedy was, that star would never even notice the dark little speck orbiting miles below her.
Later on, she was leaving the alley with some treats still left on her bag ready for her only companions in solitude but her phone buzzed.
Akuma Alert.
She sighed. “Can this guy get a hobby?”
She entered the Ladyblog, Alya’s livestream on the incident was just beginning.
Chat Noir was fighting a red Akuma… with a familiar bluebell scarf around its neck.
Her breath caught.
No. Please, no.
If the kitten was hurt — if she was the reason again…
She sprinted. Through alleyways, across streets.
Not to save Paris. Not for redemption.
But for one tiny life that had never judged her.
For the first time in months, Chloé Bourgeois ran toward the chaos.
Not because she was a hero.
But because it might be the only thing left she could save