Marinette couldn't sleep.

For long minutes, she stared at her skylight, watching the lights of cars move across her ceiling, distorted into eerie lines that crawled across her walls like ghosts.

She tried to distract herself by counting the lights as they slid over the foot of her bed and up the wall to vanish again, but nothing could distract her from the dark thoughts in her head.

Rolling over to her side, Marinette didn't need to fumble for her phone; she'd been staring at the darkness on the inside of her eyelids long before she'd finally opened them up to look at the dark walls. Her eyes had long since adjusted to the night's gloom, and the white charger cord that was plugged into her grey phone stood out like a silver beacon.

Unplugging her phone and turning the screen towards her, Marinette hit the power button and squinted against the glare as the numbers blinded her:

3:56 am

Dragging her thumb down the screen, Marinette tried to turn the brightness down, but it was already at the minimum setting.

Resolved to being overwhelmed by the dimmest of lights, Marinette looked at the red lights tracing across the foot of her bed and knew she couldn't stand lying in bed for another three hours before she had to get up for school.

Sitting up, Marinette pushed her blanket down to the foot of her bed, balled it up, and chucked it down over the side of the bed rail, so it landed next her ladder with a soft thwump.

Climbing down the ladder, Marinette scooped up her blanket and slung it under her desk, into the corner. Retrieving her diary from it's rudimentary lock box, Marinette double checked that the Miracle Box was secure and that only a kwami could see it, then stooped down, and crawled underneath her desk.

Pulling the blanket up over her head and wrapping it around her like a cocoon, Marinette settled into the cramped spaced in the corner, feeling more grounded.

Taking a deep breath to steady herself, Marinette opened up her diary, turned her phone screen towards it, and hit the power button. Light flooded out, illuminating the blue-lined pages, and the handwritten text within it. It was set to tomorrow's date, still blank, waiting for her to fill it in the next night.

But Marinette did not pull out the glitter pen that was slotted in the back cover and begin to write a new entry; instead, she flipped the pages backwards.

Back through time, seeing each date pass her by, certain phrases and sentences jumped out of the coded text that only she could decipher, as bold in the text as it was branded in her mind, going backwards, just snippets from much larger entries:

Two days ago:

Chat Noir. Just. Won't. Stop. I can still feel lips against mine, no matter what I do to scrub it away. He did it again, but in front of a crowd this time. My mind went blank, and I punched him, but he just joked with the crowd that I was embarrassed with PDA. I feel sick.

Luka was there, and he doesn't know it's me, and we're not even together, but that just makes it worse. I felt like I betrayed him, and I didn't even want it to happen. He was the only one that tried to stand up to Chat Noir and tell him to leave me alone, but Chat Noir just laughed again and told him to mind his own business.

I left before Chat Noir could do anything else, especially when I saw Luka was trying to come up to me. If he tried to comfort me, I would have broken down right there and told him everything. I got away before everyone saw me cry, but now I just can't stop. The kwami have tried to cheer me up but I just can't stop crying. Why? Why does it hurt so much?

Four days ago,

Chat Noir kissed me. After I had just finished telling him, again, to stop. Why won't he stop? I yelled at him and pushed him away, but he just laughed at me. I think I had an anxiety attack because I literally don't remember anything after that, except 'waking up' at home, standing in the shower.

Five days ago,

I broke up with Luka.

I got an F on the test at school.

Why does everything have to go wrong? Does the universe hate me?

I can't stop crying.

A week ago,

I'm getting really worried now. I thought I was just being more forgetful than normal because of stress, but this isn't normal. This is getting really, really bad. I keep… blacking out. I have hours at a time that are just… gone. First I'm in class and then I 'wake up' later, but I'm on a rooftop, and apparently I fought an akuma, but don't remember it at all? I checked the Ladyblog but it didn't mention the akuma having memory powers… Chat Noir was being snippity again, I guess I said something to him that he didn't like, because he was being really sarcastic and pouty about us not being a couple again. Good fucking riddance, maybe it'll stick this time, maybe he'll finally stop, and leave me alone.

Ten days ago:

I'm confused, apparently me and Luka arranged to go to the museum together today? He came to pick me up and we had a really nice time, I thought he was surprising me, but when we got to the Grande Halle de la Villette, he asked me where my ticket was, and when I asked him what he meant, Tikki snuck it into my hand. Apparently it's been in my wallet all month. It was fascinating to learn about and see Tutankhamen and learn about his life, but I was distracted, wondering how I could have forgotten we had this date planned. It's the last time Tutankhamen will be on exhibit outside of Egypt, and it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I'm glad I'm old enough to appreciate it, I just don't understand why I can't remember planning it, no matter how hard I try.

Twelve days ago,

I totally forgot we had a project due today. Ms. Bustier is going to let me do a make-up essay, but I'll be marked down a letter grade. My overall grades have dropped from As to barely Cs, I can't afford to lose more points! My life is way too complicated right now, I barely have time for anything between hero duties, family, friends and school, and apparently I can't even keep up with school! What else have I missed?

Mom and Dad grounded me for the next two days, no hanging out with friends until my homework is done, but Mom is helping me with the essay, so at least I can focus. I don't want to disappoint them. Dad wanted to ground me for three, but Mom said something about important plans on Tuesday they could never make me miss. I wanted to ask what they were talking about, but got distracted.

Two weeks ago,

I totally skipped out on Luka today! I feel so bad, we were hanging out at his house, but then the news came on with an emergency alert about an akuma and I came up with the lamest excuse to leave! It's so embarrassing, I had to tell him I had cramps, but he didn't get grossed out or awkward, he just said Juleka has supplies in the bathroom and offered to get me a hot water bottle, and he understood if I wanted to go home. That made me feel even worse about lying.

I just wish I didn't have to deal with all these secrets! I just want to tell him the truth, I know I can trust him, he's proven that as Viperion, but… I don't want to put him in more danger than he already is. I couldn't stand to see him hurt.

Marinette read backwards through her diary, flipping through the pages, confirming with her own eyes, her own hand-written accounts of events that…. Just didn't exist in her diary. She never wrote down that she made plans with Luka to visit the museum the day they apparently planned it, when she flipped back to the date that the school project was apparently handed out, she hadn't mentioned it at all on the list of homework she included each day.

And she was meticulous about writing everything down each night, and even throughout the day! It was how she had always organized her life, for years now!

So why did she suddenly have these gaps in her memory, and nothing in her diary to show for it?

At least she knew she wasn't somehow imagining it.

There was no diary entry she could have reread, no sticky note taped to her school binder, no record at all of any of her missed time.

If it hadn't been obvious that her loved ones had experienced the lost time, Marinette might have seriously considered that an akuma had put a spell over the city⏤ but no one else had lost time.

That meant it was only Marinette effected.

And she had only noticed problems with her memory after Master Fu had transferred his title of Guardian to her.

Had… Had Master Fu done the ritual wrong? He himself had admitted he wasn't a true Guardian, didn't really know the proper teachings, had gotten some scraps of vague knowledge and then had to improvise for a hundred years⏤ not to mention he had been under attack, at the point of defeat, when he transferred his Guardianship.

Was Marinette going to start losing all of her memories because she wasn't a real, proper Guardian? Because a spell had gone wrong? Because…

Because…

Because another adult had proven once again she couldn't rely on them, on anyone to protect her?

Tears fell down Mariette's face as she slowly flipped back to the most current page, the one she had filled in, right before she tried to go to bed at 10:26pm, already yesterday as the sun was going to rise in a scant few hours. The entry was the shortest she had ever written.

I don't know how much longer I can do this.