The poetry assignments is more that she thought it would be. Chloe expected it to be a struggle, stressing over how to put her ideas onto paper. But when the moon barely breaks through the darkness in her room well past midnight, the words won't stop coming.
They tumble and crash over her notebook, leaving it a mess of ink, smudged by a trembling hand. Many lines are scratched out, unreadable under the lines of blue ink. Thoughts written down trail off into empty space, unfinished; abandoned.
Chloe never remembers what followed those thoughts, but the abrupt end of ink leaves her throat closed up and tight. It gets harder to breathe with the endings of those poems rotting away in the gaps between her ribs.
She tears out those pages and tries to forget what she read.
Chloe tries to write about Paris, about love, about the way the clouds change color at sunset. Every word that's used feels fake, almost like plastic.
She gives up. Those poems are meant for the day, when she pretends to be okay and puts on confidence like war paint. But for now, every dark word that has ever rotten in her tears itself out of her.
These poems are wild and feral and dangerous. The truth they speak cut into her and Chloe wants nothing more than to bleed dry. When the moonlight hits the ink, sometimes, it looks like blood.
all i am is decay
all i touch rots alongside my body.
i am endings and death and silence
there has never been any hope for me.
fear is a shelter just as it is a weapon
a smile is the sharpest knife i have ever wielded
confidence is a lie no one looks past
no one ever cares for the heartless until you kill them
will anyone care when i cut myself to pieces?
Midnight poems were always loud neon warning signs. Chloe wants nothing more than to avoid them at all cost, and yet she finds herself clutching a notebook every night in desperation. Everything she's never said is revealed to the paper and it feels like a weight has been lifted. Chloe knows she will always been held down by something, but after writing her poems, the chains binding her feel a little lighter.
Half-lucid writing has taken over her nights. She rarely lies tossing and turning in bed, kicking off the covers and pulling them back up again. The mornings are rough, but that's nothing new, so she figures she can power through it like any other day.
No one notices the exhaustion pulling at her bones. She goes out more often to buy more concealer; it takes too much to cover up evidence of sleepless nights now.
At school, groups gather during Literature to work on complying their poems into a single project, choosing orders and figuring out formats. Chloe hasn't handed in anything yet. Alya and Marinette glare when she saunters up to them empty-handed, and Adrien regards her with a look of disappointment. Nino doesn't bother looking at her, and Chloe can only feel relieved by this.
"Have you really not written anything yet?" Sabrina asks as class ends one day.
Chloe shrugs. "It's nothing I want to give them."
Sabrina watches her with sharp eyes, and Chloe feels the panic flare up in her immediately. This was headed to a dangerous, unknown territory.
She changes the subject and tries to put up her best mask. "Never mind that," she says, tossing her head arrogantly, "This assignment in boring me. Let's go shopping. That'll make all this at least a little more fun." Her voice is a little too high, and she prays that Sabrina doesn't notice.
"Okay."
Chloe doesn't need to hear anything else, and spins on her heel to leave the school. She knows Sabrina is following, but still looks to the shadows on the sidewalk and takes comfort in Sabrina's figure.
It's a quiet walk to Beaugrenelle shopping center. Chloe pretends to be too focused on her phone to make conversation, and Sabrina remains silent. The streets get busier the closer they get, both from shoppers and tourists gaping at the Eiffel tower. They all part for her, as though they can sense her wealth and importance and don't want to upset her. For a moment, Chloe compares it to the way princesses are treated. She scoffs, and changes the images to a tyrant.
Much more fitting, she thinks, and walks into Beaugrenelle with her head high and her shoulders back. When she catches sight of their reflection in one of the store windows, she sees Sabrina scurrying after her, hunching into herself.
Chloe feels part of her heart break (how can a heart made of stone shatter so easily?) and turns on her heel to walk into a store. The image stays with her.
She grabs a dress without really looking at it and holds it up for Sabrina.
"What do you think?" she asks, holding the dress against herself.
She's hyper aware of Sabrina's blue eyes moving along the dress; it feels more like her gaze is trailing along the lines of her body and Chloe tries not to shiver at the sensation.
Sabrina hums and cocks her head to one side. "It looks really good Chloe!" she says, ever loyal and pleasing, "You'd look great in it!"
Chloe holds it back out, using it as a barrier between them, and actually looks at it. She immediately grimaces, taking in the blue and brown stripes on the white dress that wouldn't look good on her no matter what she did. Actually, it didn't look like something that would look good on anyone without the use of dark magic.
"It's not my color," she says, shoving it back onto the rack and walking away. Sabrina stammers out something too quiet to be heard, then rushes after her.
The store gets more crowded the deeper they go, filled with students just coming from school and adults who are lucky enough to be off work. They rarely pass each other, though Chloe isn't sure if it's because she's constantly looking for ways to avoid them or if they see her and figure it's better to go the other direction. She swears she can feel their eyes trailing her every move from across the clothing rack. The too familiar feeling of nausea rises up in her, but she swallows it down to keep her public image from crumbling in the face of the truth.
She holds out another dress, then another, looking at even the ones she likes with disgust or disinterest. Sabrina doesn't speak; she's traded words for the barely hidden concerned glances that make Chloe want to hide.
She lasts two hours before she's completely drained of energy. Sabrina understands this without needing to be told, and puts a gentle hand on Chloe's arm to guide her out of the store. They leave the bright lights and the cheerful tunes of Louane in favor of the quieter Parisian streets.
Sabrina's eyes burn through her every movements. Chloe wants to hide, so she does what she does best and buries everything she is under the public persona that's been her prison and sanctuary for so long.
"Ugh," she starts, tossing her head, "I can't believe there was nothing good! Has Paris lost all its fashion sense? Who would ever want to wear anything on those racks?"
"Right!" Sabrina agrees, though her voice is hesitant in a way that tells Chloe she thinks otherwise, "None of them were good enough for you, Chloe. Maybe next season will have better trends."
"It better, I refuse to wear anything that's from last year. Honestly, am the only one who knows how to be fashionable anymore?"
Sabrina makes a sound of agreement, but says nothing more, and the heavy beats of her heart wash over her completely; Chloe feels so fragile and human it makes her sick. She says a quick goodbye to Sabrina and makes her escape across the road, refusing to look back no matter how much she wants too.
Her hands shake as she gets to the hotel (she spends more time there than in her own home; wasn't that sad?) but years of experience let her hide it was ease as she breezes through the lobby to the elevator.
No one stops her.
No one even looks at her.
It hurts in a way she hates but knows she deserves. The ride up is silent, save the cheerful elevator music and the measured breaths she takes to keep from having a panic attack.
She wishes everything could just stop. She wishes she was never born. But there's nothing she can do besides breathe and try to get through another day.
There's something heavy that pulls at her limbs, making her movements slow and unsteady as she wanders down the hall to her room, the largest in the hotel. The heaviness pulls at her eyes when she closes the door behind her and slumps against it. As tempting as the soft bed is, Chloe stumbles to the desk, collapses into the seat, and writes.
Blurs of black and blue ink dance across her vision and stain her fingers; there's poetry in the lines she cannot read. There's poetry in herself. There is poetry.
There is a release in the words that hold no order or rhyme but sing all the same.
If she could die a poet, then perhaps her death would mean something. Her life would mean nothing.
Sabrina wouldn't understand. Not with any way Chloe could explain it. There was something both comforting and terrifying in that fact; here was something that belonged solely to her, not her family, not her reputation, not her pain. No one could take it from her. No one could know.
Part of it makes her feel lonelier, but it's a loneliness that is kind and comforting where her heart beats louder than the silence and the cold in her bones disappears under the comforts of the ever flowing ink.
That night, Chloe is able to sleep soundly for the first time in months.
The bruises under her eyes remain.