Marinette walks to school with her head down. The occasional trip not stopping her short walk across the street. She passes behind Alya's back without stopping, figuring it would be best not to see her until later. She moves mostly in a haze, not really paying attention to anything except to avoid people.

Once she finally reaches her destination she sags a little. Finally paying attention once more she looks around the library. She is only here for a few minutes till the bell rings but it's nice not to see too many people. She sits at an empty table out of view of the door and waits.

This wasn't how she liked to spend her mornings. She preferred to talk with her friends or even be early to class, but with the nerves from all the Akuma fights and her friends being upset with her, she didn't want to do anything else.

Tikki peaks out from her bag, a sad look in her eyes, "Are you going to talk to your friends about what happened?"

Marinette shakes her head, "No, I'm just going to stay here until the bell rings. Maybe I can sit in the back of the class to avoid Alya."

Tikki frowns deeply, "You can't avoid them forever."

"I know," she sighs, "I just don't want to have to deal with the angry looks right now. Everyone is convinced I'm the bad guy because of Lyla, I don't see a reason to try and fight it when it would just prove her right."

Tikki pokes out of her bag, "But that's wrong Marinette! You shouldn't be avoiding the problem, especially if it's hurting you."

Looking around Marinette gently pushes the kwami back into the bag, "It's not permanent. Besides, I might have to be ready for Chloe today and I'm not sure if I can handle it right now."

Tikki heaves a sigh much too big for her size, "Ok. But promise me you'll try talking to them?"

The blunette lets her shoulders fall, "I… ok. I promise to try talking to them at least once today."

The kwami smiles, "Thank you."

The bell rings and Marinette is off like a rocket. Ignoring any and all shouts as she makes her way to the classroom. She sneaks by a few of her classmates unseen and easily slides into the empty back seats in the corner. If she made herself small maybe no one would see her. For good measure, she lays her head down on the desk and sinks low in the chair.

Familiar voices fill the room, gradually getting louder as more students enter. On second thought, maybe she should just go home. If she wasn't here, then she wouldn't have to worry, but then Tikki would be mad. But if she went home she could make a plan to save Chat, but she might miss something important in class. What if an akuma DOES come today? Then she wouldn't be ready for it!

A yawn escapes her lips, she hadn't been able to sleep. Can't really sleep anymore. Her parents had noticed her eye bags and suggested a doctor or sleeping medicine but with her secret heroin job she had to refuse everything. If things were different, she definitely would have done it.

Someone clears their throat behind her but she ignores it. People did that all the time.

When it happens again, she realizes they were probably trying to get her attention. Turning her head over slowly, she looks up and tries not to squint when bright yellow assaults her eyes.

Chloe makes a face but quickly wipes it away. She gestures to the seat next to her, "Is this spot taken?"

The words slug their way through her brain, was the seat taken? No, these desk chairs were too heavy to lift. After a moment it clicks in her head and she pats the spot, "Oh, nope. It's unoccupied."

The blonde sits awkwardly, glancing this way and that. Finally, her eyes settle on something or someone and she sits up straighter, suddenly looking the part of a queen. Too tired to care Marinette just turns her head to get comfortable again, maybe laying down was a bad idea since it just made her realize how tired she was.

Ever so slowly, but faster than it had last night, sleep drags her back into its embrace, keeping her company as everything else fades away.

She wakes up later to gentle shaking, she doesn't want to get up but the touch has her snapping her head up like a box spring. Looking around wildly to see if there was an attack or something. Her eyes finally focus on their teacher, who stands next to her desk with a look of concern.

When she talks, it's softly, "Marinette, are you alright? You've slept through most of my class without moving a muscle."

She rubs her eyes fiercely, enough that she hopes it will make the blush on her face look like it's from that rather than embarrassment. Sadly, her words are just as slow and tired as she is, "I'm sorry Miss Bustier. I was napping in the work yesterday and haven't been home working at the bakery to swing a sleep in."

A few heads turn to look at her, ranging in concern to just straight up confused. Chloe places a hand on her own forehead, "Do you have any idea what you're saying?"

Marinette gives the blonde a confused look, "Yes?"

"Are you sure?"

"Not anymore."

Their teacher places a hand on her shoulder to get her attention, "Marinette, would you like to go home?"

Said blunette shakes her head, "No. I can't leave yet. That's for later when I can go looking for… that… thing?" The word won't come to mind.

Miss Bustier nods her head, "If you insist. Try to get more sleep tonight." Then she walks back to the front of the class.

Marinette keeps her eyes open long enough to see people turn away before letting her head drop to the desk. She was thankful when it made contact with the wood.

The next time she wakes up, it's to an alarm blaring in her ear. She jumps up, standing with her hand on her bag, nerves strung high as she looks around. Her classmates watch her in varying stages of packing their bags and it takes her a minute to understand that class was over.

Slumping heavily she takes a calming breath and tries to remember what class she had next. She thinks her next one was the akuma recovery class, that wasn't its name but she couldn't for the life of her remember the actual one. Luckily, she only shares that class with Max and Marc.

She walks down the stairs only to be stopped by a hand sticking a book in her face, her book to be exact.

"Um, you forgot something." The exasperation makes her look to the blonde holding said book.

"Oh. Thanks." She takes it wordlessly and starts walking again.

Chloe walks next to her, "Meet me outside during lunch."

She nods, a yawn interrupting the action and she rubs her face. A vague thought of needing to fix her concealer at lunch has her looking at her hand to see the damage. When her hand comes away clean she shrugs before entering into where she thinks her class is.

She has a hard time staying awake as the psychiatrist tries to work them through breathing exercises and helping those few who still needed help finding a good outlet. The teacher had tried to approach her about how tired she was but couldn't get any coherent words out of her.

By the time lunch rolls around, Marinette feels like an akuma attack would be better than having to pretend to be awake. She walks to the bathroom by habit only to stop when she sees Chloe by the entrance. Distantly remembering that they had talked but not why, she walks over to her.

"'Ey Chloe? We talked but I don't remember."

The blonde gives her a critical once over, for the first time in a while Sabrina isn't with her, "You look like a mess."

Marinette looks down at her outfit. She was still wearing her signature outfit but upon closer inspection, her jacket was inside out and she was wearing two different kinds of shoes.

"Oh, oops." She takes off her jacket and turns it right side out and takes a second to decide what to do about her shoes before shrugging, couldn't do anything about it here.

"That's not what I- oh whatever. Look we need to talk but I can't talk to you when you're like this."

She shrugs, "Why not? You talk to me when I have the same shoe on."

Chloe rolls her eyes before pulling out her compact, then proceeds to shove it in her face, "No, you look ridiculous! Utterly ridiculous! I can barely stand to look at you!"

Marinette looks in the small mirror before taking it. Her pigtails are loose, and hanging at odd angles, pieces of blue sticking out, and a bit of fabric fluff from her project stuck in her hair, "Oh, guess I forgot about my hair this morning." She hands the compact back before pulling a brush out of her bag. When she starts brushing her hair Chloe rips it out of her hand with a look of irritation.

"Chloe wha-?"

"You didn't even take out your pigtails! Ugh!" She turns the blunette around and shoved her towards the locker room. Once she is sat down, Chloe begins to get to work. Taking out her hair ties and fixing her disheveled hair into something nicer.

"Utterly ridiculous."

The brushing motions calm her, making her remember that exhaustion once more. Slowly she closes her eyes, figuring they don't need to be open. A sharp tug makes them open again but she ignores it and the ones that follow in favor of dozing off.

Finally the motions stop, "Ugh! Ok. This is the best I can do with you nodding off like that. It's not what you normally do but whatever."

Standing with a wobble, Marinette takes her brush back and puts it away, "Thanks, I should go eat someone." With that, she turns and walks out of the room.

Chloe catches up to her again, "You can hardly stand up straight and you're trying to go to the lunch room?"

Confused the blunette looks at her, "Uh, yeah?"

The blonde opens her mouth, only to snap it closed. Sighing heavily she pulls something out of her bag and holds it out to her, "Here. Eat this. It's a high fiber energy bar, 100% natural ingredients."

Taking it she tries to read the label, "What's in it?"

"Peanuts, honey, oats, a little bit of wheat grain and some kind of dried berries."

Nodding she opens the package and eats whatever it was. It was surprisingly good, "This isn't that bad."

"Of course it's not! I only have the best."

Marinette can hear people talking around them but she pays them no mind, the bar was really good and if she got to eat lunch at the same time, she might have enough energy to get through the rest of the day.

She hears Chloe talking behind her as she gets a tray of food. It looked particularly good today and she couldn't wait to dig in. She easily finds Nathan and sits with him, eating quietly as the noise picks up in the room.

Chloe suddenly leans into her line of sight, "Do you want to talk to any of these losers Marinette?"

Confused she shakes her head, "I don't really want to talk to anyone. Sorry."

The blonde moves away as quickly as she came, deciding that as long as the other leaves her alone it doesn't matter. She takes a bite of her apple and hardly flinches when something lightly hits her in the back of the head.

The room seems to freeze, senses peaked, she turns around to look behind her. What she sees has her super confused. Lyla stands in front of her class, Chloe the only thing keeping them from being right behind the blunette, shocked faces all around the make her wary.

"What?"

Alya bridges the gap between them, "Are you ok? How does your head feel? How many fingers am I holding up?"

Even more confused, Marinette leans away from the darker girl, "Um, I'm fine. I'm just eating."

A bewildered look replaces the concerned one, "You didn't feel anything hit you in the head?"

She shakes her head, "Not really, it was more like a light tap why?"

"A light tap?!" The shout in her face makes her flinch, "You just got hit with an elbow and it was a light tap?!"

Even more confused she touches the back of her head to check for damage, finding nothing she shrugs, "Yup. Light tap."

She begins eating once more while the brunette makes wild gestures next to her. Thinking about it, Marinette tries to figure out if it was the miraculous or her normal clumsiness that made it so she didn't feel the pain. Maybe she was that tired.

By the end of the day the blunette is completely ready to crash in bed at home. She didn't want to go on patrol yet and if she could just nap for awhile instead that would be best.

Chloe thwarts her effort to make a mad dash for her house with a hand on her shoulder, "I'm walk you."

Marinette nods her head, it was best to let Chloe do whatever she wanted. Made it easier to go home.

Their walk is short and they don't talk, but Chloe goes as far as the bakeries back door before saying goodbye and reminding her to rest for as long as possible. When the blonde leaves, Marinette has this feeling she forgot something but shrugs it off as her head hits the couch pillows.

She won't remember when she fell asleep on the couch later that night when all of the lights are out and the sky is dark.