A/N: This was originally written while Season 4 was still being produced, and we were still clinging to the coattails of Miracle Queen. This isn't mean to shit all over Lila's existence, much like how most of the fandom likes to do. Rather, this is to give her a bit more depth rather than paint her as a one-dimensional baddie (looking at Chloe here. Not her fault, rather her writing).
Content Warning: This discusses suicide and depression, so please tread carefully if either of those things are triggers for you.
This had to be Lila Rossi's best school year yet. She had amazing grades, she got to sit next to the boy she swore up and down would be her boyfriend before summer break, and she had a class full of people who hung on her every word. Everyone but Marinette, it seemed, but even she seemed to be bowing, breaking down her defenses, and Lila was sure that the girl would be eventually joining her soon.
If there was anyone Lila knew, it was Marinette. She knew the girl too well. After all, once upon a time, they had been two sides of the same coin.
All was great.
And then Marinette was gone.
All in a night, the girl slipped away from her life, leaving only threads that whispered, whispered to Lila about what still was.
Marinette was gone. Lila was still here.
They say that Chat Noir was the one who found her. The whole of Paris was startled awake early in the morning to a broken wail that rang across the dark. By sunrise, news outlets were beginning to report on the story of a local teenage collège student, driven to suicide by bullying-
Was... was that what she'd done?
Lila herself had awoken early that morning, rejuvenated and ready to spend another day drawing others to her side with more fanciful stories, when she reached for her phone and noticed that she had about sixteen missed calls, all from Alya. She called back immediately, only to be met by a heartbreaking cry, and the numbing words that sealed her fate.
"Marinette is dead, Lila. She killed herself last night."
Marinette was gone.
Lila was still here.
She could hardly hear Alya's hiccupping words and sniffling through the receiver. Her words rang in her head, as clearly as Noir's heart-wrenching scream.
Marinette was gone.
Threads of her remained.
Threads that wove themselves through the hearts and minds of their remaining classmates, looped around the fingers of their sorrowful substitute that morning (mentioning something about Bustier taking time off to mourn), wrapped and wrapped and wrapped around her lips until she could hardly breathe-
And all at once, for the first time in a long time, Lila Rossi was lost.
All of a sudden, the attention and adoration didn't matter anymore.
She'd driven a girl to suicide. A girl whose shoes she had been in, a long time ago, in memories far forgotten.
Lila was numb for the whole school day, dead to the cracks in her classmates' expressions.
Bustier was absent that day, as it seemed, and so was Adrien.
For once, she couldn't bring herself to care about the boy's whereabouts.
Rose clung to the other members of Kitty Section, sobbing like her entire soul had been broken beyond repair - and considering how she used to speak of Marinette, she guessed that it very much was. Juleka's eyes wept, yet she didn't speak a word.
Chloe sat ramrod straight in her chair, her once-icy blue eyes now unfocused, unseeing, her face blank as a sheet. She clenched and unclenched her hands, reaching for her ponytail, as if searching for something, before slowly lowering them back to her lap.
Whispers, threads of the girl wound themselves tightly around her in the way the teachers whispered when they thought the students couldn't hear.
She'd done it in the wee hours of the night, when her parents were gone and she thought no one would notice right away. She hadn't counted on one of Paris's heroes, someone she was good friends with apparently, going to check on her after...
She remembered. Alya and Marinette had gotten into a heated argument earlier in the day, at a class picnic in the park. Something about Jagged Stone's wedding - Marinette hadn't believed one of her little white lies that she'd been invited personally by the rock star. A harmless little lie, it had seemed, but it soon grew until it became a sharp stalactite, dropping from the roof of her reign and causing a divide between former friends. Marinette had stormed off in a teary huff, leaving the rest of the class to awkwardly finish the picnic. Adrien had tried to go after her, but Lila- Lila had held fast, insisting that she needed to cool off and that she'd come around.
Why had she done that? If she had let him go... for once, if she had been selfless... would Marinette still be here?
Now she doubted that the boy would ever glance in her direction again.
No, it wasn't her fault. It couldn't be her fault. Marinette was the one who got angry, Marinette was the one who caused her own friendship to break, Marinette...
Lila paused, noticing that the tip of the pencil in her hand had broken, causing an ugly black line to appear on her page.
The note. She'd left a note, in that disgustingly-Marinette way that was just so her, apologizing for the mess she had left. It was so disgustingly selfless, so annoyingly kind, but the spark of hatred deep in her heart had died down to bitter embers. Embers that would never be cultivated again.
Days had passed. For the first two, even Hawkmoth was eerily silent as Dupont mourned. Adrien didn't come back, even after akumas ravaged the streets once more, and Ladybug was noticeably absent.
And then, she came back. Or at least, another Ladybug surfaced, her voice strangled with emotion as she explained in a livestream on the Ladyblog that their Ladybug was gone, permanently retired. In her place was Ladybird, a girl with short pale-blonde hair that faded to a reddish-magenta shade at the ends. Her big blue eyes were tired and sad as she bade Paris farewell, Chat Noir silent and still at her side.
Silvery-fine threads remained, connecting her to everyone who had loved her. Even now, weeks after her death, people continued to glance at the empty spot in the classroom, as if to get her input on a new idea, or to remind themselves that she wasn't just running late like she always had.
No fresh boxes of sweets graced the classroom. No rippling laughter as she began to burn bright red in the face if she tried to speak to Adrien. No Marinette.
And they still clung to her. They still spoke of her softly, their eyes getting a faraway look as their words spun the story of a girl that might as well have strung the stars in the night sky herself.
Lila couldn't even bring herself to care that she no longer got the attention she'd fought so hard to rip away. There was a lingering feeling in the pit of her belly, a sickness that was poisoning her mind. She didn't eat, nor drink, for two days following the funeral, the service ripping open old wounds and re-scratching old scars that stubbornly refused to heal.
Even in sleep, the threads connected them. Dreams of her, so frustratingly real that she often awoke with tears on her lids, lips parted to call out to a girl that no longer got to be.
Was it worth it?
She got what she wanted. Marinette had lost her place.
So why wasn't she happy?
The shock of her death even affected her mother, who spent a whole week away from work at the embassy to comfort her. For days her mother held her close, and it made the sickness grow.
So it takes the death of someone to get her to care, an evil, toxic voice whispered in her mind. The only thing to pull her away from work to spend time with you was Marinette.
The irony was not lost on her. She wept bitterly the night she thought of it, writhing in the darkness of her room, locked away from the cruel outside world.
She had been lonely once. She had been in Marinette's shoes, lost, lonely, craving the warmth of others to fill the cold space in her own heart. The harshness of life had taught her from an early age that in order to get that warmth, sometimes you would have to sacrifice parts of yourself. Little things that kept you weak.
It was through the darkness of loneliness that Lila Rossi was forged, and it seemed that even now, all she could do was spread that darkness.
Weeks passed. A month. Two.
Hawkmoth resigned his miraculous only days after the new Ladybug made her appearance, with no other explanation other than "Perhaps I must do some soul-searching... for this was not what I ever wanted to happen."
Chat Noir disappeared shortly after that. And last of all, the new Ladybug made her final farewell. Just like that, Paris was heroless.
She'd been cut off from the Agreste family (and Adrien, her heart cried, aching) a few days after that. Adrien had seemingly blubbered to his assistant about what had been going on for the past few months, and Gabriel decided that she was not the face he wanted for his brand. The goodbye was swift, like freshly-sharpened scissors gliding through paper.
Slowly, people began to pull away from her. Nathanael. Juleka. Rose. Nino. Anyone who had been closest to the girl and realized just how much she'd meant to them, now suddenly ceased to exist inside her social circle.
Alya clung to her desperately for days afterwards, trying to find something, anything, left of her former friend in Lila. It wasn't long until she, too, pulled back, numb to the crippling pain that still hung about the room like a noxious cloud.
The whispers never stopped. Luka nearly drowned himself, they mocked. Juleka began to cut again, they hissed. Adrien hates you, Adrien HATES YOU.
Mrs. Rossi decided to move them both back to Italy to get away, get away from the memories that plagued the city and plunged it into monochrome.
And for the first time in her life, Lila Rossi had no direction.
In a different world... in a different life...
... could we have been friends?
"Every night I dream you're still here
The ghost by my side, so perfectly clear
When I awake, you'll disappear
Back to the shadows with all I hold dear..."