Adrien doesn't talk to her.
Chloe's not surprised. She had hoped he would ask her what was wrong (he knew how bad it had gotten before) but he laughs with Nino and doesn't even look her way when she enters the classroom.
Sabrina gently tugs on her arm and leads her to their desk.
Chloe takes a moment to breathe, then holds her head high, wearing the cold mask of a blood covered queen.
She has to separate herself from her classmates. While the path she's chosen leads to loneliness, it's better than pain and regret.
(What's to say she won't regret this choice? It's a thought that's plagued Chloe for years.)
Sabrina sits besides her silently and submissively. But when she looks at Chloe, she looks her in the eyes even though her head is bowed. Her blue eyes are bright and strong and Chloe wonders how anyone could view her as weak.
Exhaustion pulls at her and makes every movement slow and sluggish. The weight on her chest makes it hard to breathe, but Chloe tries anyways. She's suffocating slowly but it's a familiar feeling. It hasn't left her since the funeral.
She blinks when Sabrina nudges her. Chloe tunes back into reality, realizing she had drifted off into a faraway place. For a moment, she can't make out what's being said. It doesn't sound like any language she knows. But her head clears and the voices in the classroom become too loud.
They're talking about the future. About their future.
"What about you?" Sabrina asks. "What plans do you have for the future?"
Though they pretend otherwise, she knows her classmates are listening in. "A fashion designer of course. Or maybe a model. I definitely have the talent for both," she says. Marinette snorts and rolls her eyes. Chloe turns to her, sneering and hoping nobody notices how her hands shake. "What," she spits, "It's not like you have any talent to brag about."
Marinette's eyes turn hard as steel as she glares, venom in her voice. "At least I don't have to rely on my father for everything. Have you forgotten who won the design competition?"
"People clearly just don't see talent when it's right in front of them. That's the only reason you won."
"At least I can make my own clothes and designs. You just steal the credit from everyone else!"
Adrien frowns and looks between the two of them, but Chloe knows he supports Marinette. The clear disapproval on his face is enough to let her know who he sides with. Chloe isn't surprised; the entire class supports Marinette. She's everything Chloe wants to be. The difference is that Marinette has nothing to fear and Chloe is terrified of everything.
To Marinette, being herself meant being kind and being loved. To Chloe, being herself meant being shunned and hated and in danger of being one of the horror stories. She refused to let anyone make a warning out of her. Even if it meant living in the shadows until the day she died.
Chloe crosses her arms and digs her nails into her palms. "Whatever," she says, fixing a look of disgust on her face. "It's not like I need to work anyways. I have enough money to live comfortably for the rest of my life."
The class moves on, pointedly ignoring her and keeping her out of the conversation. That's alright; Chloe wouldn't know what to say anyways. Her cruel lies and insults would keep people from digging too deep.
There wasn't a future for her, in any case. She wouldn't become a fashion designer or model or anything else. She didn't plan to live past twenty. One way or another, she would die before she hit twenty-one, either by an outside force or by her own hand.
There was little that kept her around anyways.
Mme. Bustier enters the room then, and calls the class to order. All talk of the future are stopped in favor of beginning class. Chloe can't help but feel grateful, for thoughts of her life tended to stray down a dark path she only visited in the dead of night.
She takes slow breaths to slow her heart and lets Mme. Bustier's voice wash over her. The last week of school was going to be spent writing a series poems with a group. Poems that summed up the year, spoke of dreams and nightmares, that captured the beauty of the world around them; one last way to make students work together.
Her throat burns with the weight of the words she's said that brought out the monsters in people. She thinks of when she became a monster, a sorry copy of a hero. The only poems that live within her are dark and dangerous. They were not made to be seen, but made to dig their claws down your back in the shadows of parks.
There were no kind words for the misguided villain.
Beautiful things never come from darkness.
The class moves and speaks to each other with excitement coloring their voices. They begin to form their groups, of up to six, and she knew only Adrien would let her work with him. Sabrina waits for her to stand before following.
Chloe hides everything she is when she saunters over to her childhood friend. Marinette and Alya watch her move with fire in their eyes, burning her as she hops onto Adrien's desk. "Looks like we'll be working together, Ardikins," she coos, trying to ignore how he leans away from her.
"Aren't groups only supposed to be four members?" he asks, looking for a way to avoid her. Though it hurts, it's more a dull ache of a bruise than the pain of heartbreak. Chloe can't blame him though. She would have done the same thing.
She tosses her head and says, "The smallest a group can be is four, actually. And everyone else is in groups, so you have to work with me and Sabrina."
"Alright, Chloe." is all Adrien says, but his voice is that of a sigh a smile can't hide.
Alya and Marinette take control of the project quickly, though Marinette stutters through each sentence and can barely look at Adrien. A part of her wants to close her eyes and forget the world for a minute, but she won't do anything that will make people wonder. The only people who would notice and care are sitting next to her and the risk is too great. But her eyes still glaze over as she gets pulled into her thoughts, wanting to be jealous but only finding exhaustion instead.
Marinette would be good for Adrien, she knows, once she stopped being so scared of what he thought of her. She would be better than Chloe ever could, but that's only to be expected. She just wishes there was still a place for her in Adrien's life even if it's as the villain.
Alya claps her hands together and grabs Chloe's attention. "So!" she starts brightly, pointedly not looking in her direction, "We just have to write a few poems about ourselves. Our thoughts on things, memories from the year, things like that should be the main topics. Let's have a minimum of at least three poems each. Most of this is individual work, but we'll have to check each other's poems for spelling mistakes and figure out where to put in in the collection."
Both Adrien and Nino made murmurs of agreement and Marinette nods almost violently. Sabrina remains silent, though Chloe can feel her watching her from the corner of her eye.
She knows, her mind whispers. She smothers the thought but the damage is done. She tenses just slightly, and to the untrained eye she would look no different but Sabrina knew better than that.
Sometimes it scared Chloe, how well Sabrina knew her.
She digs her heel into her calf and focuses on breathing as she rolls her shoulders back and lifts her head higher. It was a facade of confidence she had perfected long ago. "Whatever," she says, voice bored and uninterested, "Let's just hurry up and finish this. I don't want to spend the last days of school with people like you ."
" Fine, " Alya snaps, baring her teeth in a harsh smile. "Good luck with your poems," she adds, her voice as sweet as poison. The four quickly go back to talking to each other, Chloe already forgotten as she heads back to her own desk with Sabrina trailing behind her.
Just the few minutes of talking left her drained and tired. Chloe wanted nothing more than to rest her head on her desk and sleep the day away, but she knew that would get people's attention.
She takes out a pen and notebook, the movement waking her up a little more. The pen is a comforting weight in her hands as she twirls it around her fingers. The paper of the notebook is smooth underneath her fingertips.
Sabrina presses her ankle against Chloe's.
It's a comfort she doesn't deserve.
Chloe doesn't write anything at first. She drags the pen along the paper instead and watches the flow of the ink.
There are words thrashing to escape, but she keeps a tight lock on them. They burn low in her chest. She's afraid that they'll burn through everything if she lets them out, puts them on paper and shows them to the world.
we were once young and innocent-
i had a future once, but all that lies ahead of me is an empty grave, waiting waiting waitingwaitingwaiting-
ghosts live besides us, hidden in the corners of our eyes-
i dont breathe anymore. i dont see or hear or feel. i dont live-
is this a dream? god, i hope so-
Every idea that crosses her mind comes from a dark and lonely place within her. Every word is one she has smothered and buried under mental walls for years. It wasn't something Chloe could show anyone.
There were no light topics or bright words.
"Can't think of anything to write?" Sabrina asks, leaning closer to speak in a hushed voice.
Chloe forces herself to smile and say, "Can't choose what I want to write, actually."
"Oh," she says, caught off guard by the response that didn't seem like something Chloe would say. "Well, that's better than no idea at all."
In a rare moment of truth, Chloe ducks her head and says, "That's debateable with my ideas."
When she braves a glance up, Sabrina is staring at her with soft eyes, bright with surprise. Her lips curve upwards in a pleased smile that carries a foreign gravity that draws Chloe in.
She finds that she doesn't need so many words with Sabrina.
The pen stops, and with it, the dark lines of ink scarring the paper. The haze in her head falls away under the blue of Sabrina's eyes and Chloe feels a calm settle within her that finally lets her breathe.