"Why do you keep hanging out with me?" Chloe asks one weekend, a rare day where she isn't going into the flower shop and has nothing to do. She lies on the floor of her room, windows open, letting sunlight pour in and the humid breeze to fill the space around her. Chat lies on the floor too, claiming a large spot of sunlight a few feet away from her, sprawled out lazily.

"I don't have anything better to do," he says, stretching his arms out above his head, bumping against Chloe's head.

"Watch it," she grumbles, batting his hand away. "Anyways, shouldn't you be doing hero things? Or spending time with your friends since I'm clearly bad company if you visit me as a last resort."

"What! No! That's not what I said! Stop twisting my words around. And for your information, you are my friend, so I don't see why I can't hang out with you."

"Sure," Chloe drawls, "Whatever you say."

"I'll convince you one day."

Chat rolls onto his stomach, rests his head on his forearms, and sighs. His belt-tail (?) waves in the air above him, going back and forth slowly.

Chloe squints at it.

"Hey, Chat."

"Yeah?"

"You're not like, an actual cat, right?"

He blinks his eyes open to stare at her. "Why would you have to ask that? I thought it was pretty obvious that I'm a normal human."

"Besides the fact that you're a superhero."

"Yeah, besides that."

Chloe hums, considering. "So, your costume just looks like a cat, right? It's just a costume and you're not an actual cat."

"Yup!"

"So why is you belt acting like a tail?"

"Huh?" Chat actually looks confused, then turns his head to look over his shoulder to spot his belt-tail moving on it's own. "WHAT!" he screeches, then sits up and grabs it was an excited grin on his face.

Chloe rolls her eyes and rolls away from him, chasing the sunlight as the sun move across the sky.

"I love magic," Chat mumbles, inspecting his tail. He lets it go and watches it flick back and forth, then do a strange wiggle movement. "I can control my tail! Chloe, I am a cat!"

"Congratulations," is her dry reply, amused smile curling at the edge of her lips.

"This is like an anime!"
"Oh god, please tell me you're not a nerd like Adrien."

Chat looks strangely affronted. "What do you mean? There's nothing wrong with watching anime!"
"Only if it's good."

"My Hero Academia is good!"

"Please," she scoffs, "Majin Bone is top tier, and that's fact."

"You never even bothered to watch anything else!" Chat pouts, reaching out to smack her arm, grinning as Chloe grumbles and rolls even further away.

Chloe goes to argue about who has better taste when she fully processes that Chat's said. It doesn't fit, not really. How would he know that? They've never spoken about their interests are prefered shows, never really spoken about much of anything concerning their personal lives. They just don't have much an opportunity to talk to each other at all. But Chat speaks as though he knows more about her, as though they've been friends for years.

She pushes herself up to sit, remembering all the other times Chat has shown up when it was just too convenient, a flimsy excuse at the ready, knowing too much about her. Chloe remembers, suddenly, that he's not just Chat Noir. He's someone else underneath the mask. It's not something she thinks too much about (once upon a time, she would have done anything to know Ladybug's identity; these days, Chloe can only hope that she doesn't run into Ladybug at all).

"Chat…" she says, cautious. He picks up on the change in mood and sits up as well, head tilted curiously as he waits for her to continue. "How would you know if I don't watch anime?"

Even in the light, she can clearly see how he pales.

"Aha," he laughs awkwardly, looking away, "Lucky guess?"

"Adrien talking to you?" Chloe asks, testing something. In the back of her mind, an idea sparks, a suspicious she's scared to say out loud.

As expected, Chat latches onto the excuse. "Yeah! Exactly! We're good friends too!"

"You watch anime together?"

"Yep! All the time!"

Chloe smiles, knife sharp and blood thirsty. "Funny, seeing how Adrien's so busy and exhausted that he only has time to watch in the mornings or on long trips."

A frantic beeping comes from his baton before he can come up with another excuse. Chat leaps up and out the window, shouting about an akuma, and is gone the next moment. Chloe stares in the empty space he used to inhabit, and thinks, 'Gotcha.'

Now that she's thinking about it, Chloe can't focus on anything else. Even interaction with him is analyzed again, from Black Swan to the flower shop to the weekend lazing around. Even in class, Chloe can't help but peer around the heads of her classmates in hopes of catching a glimpse of him outside the windows.

She's desperate to track him down, find out of she's right or not, because if she is, she's kicking his ass.

Just before lunch, Chloe taps her pen against her desk and leans back, looking past Marinette to the windows again. She's not being subtle about it, not at all, but somehow, it's still a surprise when Marinette turns to hiss at her, "Pay attention."

The sudden scolding makes her jump. Swallowing around her heart in her throat, Chloe calls up a scowl and whispers back, "If it's bothering you so much, then ignore me."

"I would, if you would stop moving around so much and distracting me."

Marinette pointedly turns to face the front again. Chloe glares down at her notebook, empty of the day's notes, and starts to doodle to take her mind off of class, of Marinette, of Chat. It doesn't work at all, but she can at least say that she tried.

A feeling of dread starts to well up in her the moment class ends for lunch and Marinette shoves her things into her bag without care and grabs Chloe's arm.

"We need to have a talk," she says. It's without a threatening hiss, or a glare, or anything else that would make Chloe gear up to fight back. It's just said with seriousness, something that makes it clear that Marinette isn't going to take no for an answer.

"About what?"

"Come on," Marinette says instead of answering, guiding Chloe out past the desk and then pulling out through the halls of the school until they end up on the other side of the school outside the gym, far enough away from the cafeteria that it's deserted. Chloe feels her stomach roll with anxiety, two seconds away from puking. Her legs are shaking a bit and she hates that Marinette, someone known for her kindness, strikes such fear in her.

'Get it together,' she thinks to herself, 'You're not supposed to show any weakness.'

Well, maybe Chloe isn't showing any weakness. Maybe she's perfected the act of being uncaring and stone cold. Maybe fear on her isn't as visible. But even if it's not showing, it doesn't change that fact that Chloe feels afraid. It might be even worse than anything else. As easily as she can lie to others, Chloe can't lie to herself and her father's drilled it into her too many times for her to let it go: If you don't know how strong you are yourself, no one else will see it either. If you don't wield the power that is given to you, it will be taken away. Don't ever falter.

Chloe wants nothing more than to sink to her knees and collapse back against the ground to feel something steady holding her together. But it's also undignified, so she leans against the wall of the gym instead, letting it support her weight while pretending to be unphased by anything Marinette can throw her way.

"What is up with you?" is the not the question Chloe expects to hear, but it's what she gets. "You've been weird the school year started and you keep acting like you're planning something. If you're trying to humiliate me again, Chloe, I promise you that it won't work."

Immediately, the fear turns into indignant rage. Chloe scoffs. "Seriously? I haven't been bothering anyone at all, I've been leaving you alone as much as possible, and you still think I'm, what, plotting your demise?"

"That's all you ever do!"

"Maybe it was, once. But maybe you're just seeing things that aren't there because you can't let go of the image of who I was in college."

Marinette squares her shoulders. She really has changed a lot, from a quiet, nervous girl to a leader with a steel of spine. "It's not like you've changed! Everyone else just realized how awful you are, and now that even Sabrina's left you, you feel too powerless to do anything before you can find the perfect target to torment!"

The rage boils over. Chloe curls her hands into fists and pushes herself up completely. She's got a few good inches on Marinette, and the thunderous beat of her heart in her ears comes not from fear but for fury.

"Excuse me?" she hisses. "Talk shit about me all you want, but lay off of Sabrina. She knew me better than anyone and she cared for me more than anyone. She didn't leave because she suddenly decided I was the devil incarnate, but because her dad thought Paris was too dangerous with all the akuma we get! She had to leave for her own safety, and how dare you think of her as so shallow."

Marinette rears back, surprised. Without realizing it, Chloe had stepped closer to her, gotten in her face, itching for a fight.

"I didn't-"

"And how about instead of convincing the world that I'm evil, completely irredeemable, you work on getting your head out of your ass and realize that not everything revolves around you." Chloe steps back, keenly aware of how Marinette used to shrink back from her when Chloe was looking for someone to put down. Seeing it happen again leaves a bitter taste in her mouth. Marinette's eyes are wide, shocked, and Chloe, already so tired of everything falling apart, deflates.

"I'm not planning to humiliate you," she says, quiet now that her anger has left her. "I'm not looking for a new target to torment. All I've been doing is minding my own business. Maybe I just grew up some over summer. Maybe you should focus on yourself, and stop creating problems where there aren't any. I'm not going to hurt anyone, okay? I'm not."

Chloe leaves. She doesn't wait around for Marinette to find her voice again. She just walks away, something heavy on her chest, feeling strangely defeated.

She knows she was in the wrong for everything she did in college. But she had gotten better. Or at least, Chloe had thought she had gotten better. Maybe she was just deluding herself. Maybe it's just her nature to bring pain to others, and nothing is going to change that. Maybe Marinette's right; she would know how to be good better than anyone else.

It just really felt like she was becoming someone her mother would have been proud of. Someone deserving of love.

Chloe figures that she must be better at lying to herself than she thought.

What little appetite she had has left her. The residue of everything she said hangs bitter on her tongue.

She walks out of the school and looks out to the busy road. She wants to disappear.

Chloe collapses onto her bed and doesn't go back to school.

Occasionally, her phone buzzes on her nightstand. She can't find the energy to even turn her head to look at it. She just lies there in the quiet, thoughts too loud and suffocating, feeling weariness pull down at her bones until she thinks she can sink through the mattress.

When she falls asleep, the rumble of her stomach quiet after hours of ignoring it, the sun is just setting.

For a moment, before she slips away into the nightmares her mind so frequently conjures up for her, Chloe wishes that Chat were with her. She wishes Adrien were with her.

She wishes she wasn't so alone.