It was a waking nightmare. Monarch was keeping an eye on her . She felt gross. She felt dirty. She felt like she was going to throw up. She felt a chill run down her spine and wanted to go home. Go home, take a shower, and wash the entire idea of Monarch's eyes off of her. No, though, what if that was part of where he was watching her.

"I need to leave," she said, reply curt and decisive. "I can't be here, not with you." He wondered if she could hear his heart snap in half. She couldn't hear anything, though, not over the sound of her heart pounding in her chest and the bile rising in her stomach. "I knew trusting you was going to be a bad idea."

She knew that might have been too far, but she couldn't help herself. She placed her trust in him again, after already being betrayed once and she regretted it. She regretted trusting him as Marinette more than she'd regretted it as Ladybug. At least as Ladybug, she hadn't had a reason not to trust him in the beginning.

This time, though, she'd already experienced the regret she could feel because of him and still made the decision to trust him again. She was so upset. She was upset with him, but she was mostly upset with herself. She felt she shouldn't have believed him in the first place and she wanted to cry.

She knew, though, that crying could be difficult to explain to her parents when she knew she couldn't explain why. She stood up, knowing he had been saying words to her, but she wasn't willing to listen. She picked up her backpack and left him, sitting at the base of their statue.

"Salut, maman," she greeted when she walked in the door to the bakery. She wondered if she looked as tense as she felt. "Salut, papa." She gave her parents each a kiss on their cheeks. "I think that the lunch I had with Alya upset my stomach, so I'm gonna go take a rest."

It was a lie she'd told before. It was one of her most regular, but she couldn't be bothered to care. The person she'd given her trust to time and time again had betrayed her, hurt her, and there was nothing that she could do about it. Well, that wasn't necessarily true, and she knew that. The thing she could do was stop trusting him.

Sabine went over to her daughter and pulled her down to kiss her forehead, testing her daughter's temperature in the process. "Alright, bao bei. Go get some rest and I'll come check on you when we're done down here."

"Merci," Marinette said politely. She went through the back door to the bakery and had to stop herself from sprinting up the stairs to her bedroom. She wanted to disappear and stop thinking about the outside world, but she knew that if her father heard her running up the stairs, he wouldn't believe she was feeling unwell.

When she got up to her room, she began sobbing. She had no one to blame but herself. She had chosen to believe him and all it dis was set her up for failure, for disappointment. She was disappointed in him for betraying her, but she was more disappointed in herself for letting herself be betrayed by him.

She knew it would have been polite to hear him out, but she couldn't bring herself to do that. He'd let her down again and again. She wouldn't let him try to explain himself, try to build himself back up in her eyes, just to be let down by him again. She knew she deserved more than the sadness she got as a result from him, but she couldn't help herself.

He was her partner before he was anything else. Before he was Ladybug's friend, before he was Cat Walker, before he was Marinette's friend, he was her partner. He was the one person she should have been able to trust, more than anyone else. Some days, she regretted telling Alya her identity instead of Chat Noir, but today, she'd never been more glad.

He, apparently, was letting Monarch keep an eye on her and that notion made her want to throw up. She ran over to her trash can and dry heaved. Nothing came out, but she almost wished it did, so she would have more of an excuse to be left alone.

She heard Tikki talking to her, but she couldn't make out any words past the sound of her own panicked breathing. She hadn't felt so terrible since Chat Blanc. Cat Walker's reappearance was close, but she managed to convince herself that it wasn't going to be as bad as she expected it to be.

Now, though, it was. It wasn't just her partner disappearing, him joining the other side, it was him purposely involving a civilian in his life. Even though the civilian happened to be Ladybug, Chat (hopefully) didn't know that, but she couldn't be certain. Monarch was keeping an eye on her, she couldn't be certain what that meant for her identity.

For her identity, for her safety, or the safety of her family. Marinette had no idea how long she'd been panicking when she heard a quiet knock from the trapdoor that led to the apartment. "Marinette." Sabine's voice was quiet when it came through the floor. "Your friend dropped off some fabric of yours. It's in the living room whenever you want to get it."

Marinette was so stressed, she hadn't even realized she'd abandoned her newly bought fabric at the park. She appreciated it being dropped off, but she didn't want to think about it. He brought back her fabric. He was trying to be nice, regardless of what he had told her. She dreaded thinking if he'd left anything in the bag with the fabric for her when she had walked out without being willing to listen to him further.

"Merci, maman," she said simply. She heard her own voice crack as she responded, but her parents were good at giving her privacy when she needed it, so she was hopeful that her mom would let it go.

"Your papa and I are here if you need anything," Sabine replied. Marinette knew her mother was aware that there was something more serious going on than an upset stomach, but Sabine wouldn't make her talk about it unless she chose to. She heard footsteps descend back down the staircase and there was a small 'click' as Sabine walked out the front door back to the bakery.