A/N: Trigger warnings for suicidal thoughts, suicidal attempts, blood, and strong language.

It turns out she hates the taste of chalk in her mouth.

She tastes it when she bites down on her lower lip. Iron should bloom on her tongue, but her blood has long since dried up from her veins. Her salivary glands have shriveled into nothing. She breathlessly anticipates the day her brain succumbs to the arid air.

Reminding herself that she should not bite down does not help. Even the fact that she has no blood to spare is ineffective. The memory of that sharp euphoric pain welling from her mouth chases her impulse to sink her canines into her dry, cracking skin.

There is no pain now. But she bites her lips anyway.

She first sees him out in the open. He's wandering the park in scraps of muddied fabric, dull colors meant to distract eyes like hers. He limps towards her, face set in a mulish template, heavy plastic tube raised in one hand and a knife in the other.

The knife will only allow the chalk to pour out of her. She'll be hollow and crumpled, but she'll live. The pipe, however, if properly used to liquefy her brain, would kill her. She stands and waits.

He approaches with slow, sweeping steps. The sound of the drag of the plastic rattling against the asphalt, the ragged breaths, and his vigorously pumping heart call to her like a siren song. She can feel the bloodlust sweeping over her, urging her to drink, drink, drink up the life-source and rejuvenate her body.

When he is close enough to throw the pipe, she realizes that his hair is blond like the merciless sun. His eyes are greener than the jar of pickles she last remembers eating. She hopes he won't leave her with a meal.

The plastic tube slams down on her head. Idly, she calculates the force and power of the swing. Bang! The pipe comes down again, and again, and she feels nothing. There are no dents on her head. She knows this from experience. Would it be faster to simply carve a hole inside her skull to liquefy her brain? Perhaps not.

The man's swings become progressively faster. He creates a beat, something she thinks that would be pleasant to listen to if her head weren't the drum. Bam! Bam! Bam-bam! Bam-bam-bam! Back and forth the rhythm goes. Her head stays the same.

She begins to whistle a tune in an effort to pass the time. Nothing classical; she hates Handel and detests Kabalevsky. Besides, classical music would assert a dignity to a life that has none, so she summons a pop tune and hums it idly. Mass commercialization and empty meaning seem fitting to herald the end to a life that isn't even human anymore, a life that's one of the many billions on the planet.

The zombie apocalypse has come, and all she wants to do is die.

The man, on the other hand, had a different idea.

He sets the bar down and offers his hand. "Adrien."

She looks at the pale, warm flesh, and back at him. The hunger, driven away by the desire to perish, has come back in full force. She feels the blood rushing through the vessels, smells the aroma of his skin, and hears the thumping of his heart where it stays lodged in his chest.

Her fangs punch out in full force, filling her mouth with chalk, and she chokes on it.

He gapes.

There are rotten scents in his backpack – she idly identifies the remains of fish, fermented fruit, and a hunk of raw meat.

Perfect. She stuffs the bloody package into her mouth in an attempt to defy the urges screaming at her to tear him apart. Her body sighs with relief as her stomach digests and distills the meat into blood. The vulgar liquid rushes along her veins. She bites her lip again. Blood flows out.

She hates him.

"Couldn't you have finished the job?" She snaps. His hand, pink and calloused under the dirt, hangs in the air. "Marinette." She snatches it in a quick handshake and drops it just as quickly. "It took me two weeks to dry myself out. Two weeks. I'll have to do it all over again."

Adrien blinks, shifts to the side. "Your skull was too thick."

"I know that. I thought that a strapping young man like you would've been strong enough."

He reaches out and raps the side of her head. The sheer audacity. She's tempted to rip his hand off, but the utter silence is startling. She sees his hands and the remnants of her hair shifting in the wind. Nothing else.

"Dried yourself out too many times, did you?"

She huffs. "Only twice."

"Once is enough for the body to create its own defenses." He taps her nose and her eyes. "The last two ways to liquefy your brain are through your eye sockets and your nose. A good hard crack and you'd shove the cartilage in, and, well – jiggle something though your eyes and you'd be good to go."

"Can't you do that for me?" This draining existence is not meant for her.

"I could, but I won't." He tosses a hunting knife at her, and she catches it with the unnaturally quick reflexes of a scrapper. "Do it yourself."

The knife is gold and green, emblazoned with the king's seal. It has a good heft to it, a weight that symbolizes its privilege and for an instant she is overcome with the inevitable regret.

"Stole this from the royal palace?" she says.

"It'll do the job." He gestures at her face. "Remember to drive it in deep."

Marinette spins the knife in her palm, and then pulls it out of its sheath. The blade sings through the air. She holds it out, thumb curled around the base of the handle, serrated edge facing outwards, and drives it, unblinking, into her left eye.

She can't.

The tip refuses to penetrate the golden haze surrounding her face. She prods the knife into the blur of light, and is greeted with tinkling instead of the soft ripping burst of flesh.

Foiled again. Marinette drops the knife and slips it back into its scabbard. "I'll be keeping this, if you don't mind." She waggles it back and forth. "As compensation for your failure."

He smiles. "Of course."

"I don't need it." She slips it back into his belt, quick as a flash, smirking at his ill-concealed shock. "You've failed to kill me, and I won't accept a knife as payment. But I want to find someone who will." She waves a hand at him. "You've been successful at keeping yourself alive, but you'll be better off if we travel together."

"Protection in return to find a murderer. And what shall I do when you are gone? Be dinner?"

She shrugs. "I'll last quite a time next to you. Besides, I doubt you'll go down without a fight. You've lasted quite a while already."

"I expect you'll be looking for a mage. A powerful one, if you want to leave this existence."

"I suppose. What are you looking for?"

His face stretches into a painful rictus. "A friend."

Adrien inspires no urge within her to eat him, a boon to their travels. His consideration of her needs – eating and drinking outside of her sight – endears him to her. She idly thinks that she'll miss him when she's gone.

However, she's still a scrapper. The smell of his bloody meat reminds her far too much of the rendering and tearing of human flesh in her own mouth and feeds to the bloodlust simmering underneath her skin. She's forced to drink excessive amounts of water whenever the thought of devouring her partner arises in her mind. Marinette massages her throat to accept the cold, futile liquid, its deathly properties all the more exacerbated by the presence of Adrien's blood pumping across the clearing. If her partner notices the wet shirt and heaving gasps, he doesn't comment.

Woodland animals are decimated between the two of them. Adrien, for his dietary needs, and Marinette, to keep up her energy. Being dried out had transformed her into a lethargic sloth, one small store of energy hiding in her muscles for the last act of defiance. If she was to hold up her end of the deal, she'd need to be prepared.

They get up early in the morning and sleep early at night. Her presence is good enough to keep the cougars at bay, and even the flies are deterred by her sickly sweet scent – they die once the odor hits them. Adrien doesn't mind, but she suspects that he isn't as normal as he claims to be.

She simply follows Adrien around. Although she resents the idea of herself as a lost puppy, the comparison wouldn't be lost here. She has absolutely no idea where they are going, although she has some sort of odd faith that Adrien would bring her to her destination. Perhaps she is a fool, but Adrien does not seem to be one to break promises.

However, she does detect a pattern in their travels. They've been spiraling. She's noticed the lack of wildlife and the artificial medicinal odor in the air. Sometimes the loops are larger, and sometimes the loops intersect with previous tracks. It reminds her of the orbits of Pluto and Neptune that intersect every so often. Maybe she's Pluto's little moon.

She hopes that she'll be burned by the sun.

Marinette toys with the dagger sometimes. The glinting gold handle, the smooth metal finish and the pale ringing blade – she thinks that she's seen it somewhere before, but then she also thinks that she was human once.

She has never been human. But she can die.

Adrien continues to loop. He doesn't ever run seem to run out of food – given the increasingly lack of animals in the area, it's not preposterous to deduce that he was the one eating them all.

The plants have begun to die in her presence. She can see the redwoods wilting.

One day, Adrien stops. The trees are green and fresh, an odd contrast to the ever present chill in the air. He knocks on the trunk, tentatively at first, and then progressively violently when it appears that whoever he is summoning refuses to appear.

They camp out in front of the tree, but not before he sets a wheel of fresh cheese on the ground.

The last time there was cheese was a year and a half ago. She remembers only because of the smell of mold in the flesh caused by the stinky product permeating the inside of the mouths she ate when she scrounged the leftovers from the eating frenzies. She'd endured the revolting flavor for two months before it dissipated.

By eating that, Adrien has ensured his own survival. She never wants to smell it again.

"Have some." He waves a knife towards the wheel, slicing off a sliver and handing it towards her. The rind is a creamy white, the inside a gooier, blue-speckled version of the rind.

The smell brings back the sense memories from the crunch of the hard palate and the stringy muscle fibers in the tongue. She nearly vomits from the phantom sensations but doesn't only because of her inability to.

"Thanks. I can't. You eat it." She shakes her head and turns off towards the nearest source of running water, dunking her head beneath the bubbles to shake the sensations out.

Eventually, they leave the clearing. Adrien seems satisfied when she came back.

Adrien repeats the same pattern multiple times. They move quite a distance from the clearing, always towards the purple mountains, and then circle in a formation around a central focal point wherein he settles down and knocks on something – a rock, patch of ground next to a fern, an abandoned bird's nest, before laying down a small parcel of food. Wherever he came from, he must have been rich or extraordinarily lucky. The ground is littered with dried fruits, cheese, wine, and crackers, all foods that disappeared within the first few months.

He used to invite her to partake of the meal. The first time, she heaved once and left, scrambling up a tree or into a nearby stream to sate the nauseous swirling in her stomach. Once, when she has successfully absolved herself of the nauseous feeling from the sight of food, she creeps back from the river and pauses by a tree. This is an opportune time to observe Adrien in his own environment. Perhaps his behavior could reveal a few weaknesses she could take advantage of.

Instead of the expected unrolling of a sleeping bag, she hears the high-pitched giggling once again. There's an inflated cartoon-like character with a furious smattering of black spots on its red body and two antennas circling Adrien's head. His hair is sparking in the dim light, bright gold dots of fire jumping up and down from his hair strands.

The pinpoints of light don't seem to be generated by the large bug – instead, the sparks are absorbed into a ball of light that Adrien throws up and down before coalescing into a jug of fresh clean water, which, along with the spread from before, serves to tempt four other bug-like characters into being.

Marinette trips and slashes her hand on the rough tree trunk, spilling a drop of blood into the air. She'd been devouring woodland creatures on the journey to stay alive as Adrien's protection. Carefully, presses the edges of her skin together, watching it slowly merge itself into a rough, red line.

Time to go back to the stream; she didn't want to dally around magical sprites any longer than she had to. As she stands, a stray twig penetrates her left eye.

Pain explodes into a white supernova. Furiously cursing her re-ignited nervous system, she barely manages to hold back a whimper and forces herself to breathe so she could think of what to do next. If she took the branch out, her eye might survive. But the blood bleeding into the various orifices – why did she just eat – would simply clog her vision. That – that was acceptable. She could stand to sacrifice some depth perception. Her left eye was a sacrifice that would be made.

She can see the crimson droplets trickling down into the foliage. One, two – why is there blood coming out of her body?

There is no golden barrier around her. If it was meant to prevent death-inducing harm, the barrier should've sprung up. She tentatively presses the twig further into her eye socket, gritting her teeth against the pain. When the wood reaches the back of her eyeball, she stops and pauses. Surely this was nearing the barrier towards death. A few more inches, and she'd have impaled herself thoroughly – or at the very least, caused herself both brain damage and invited in an infection that would eat her alive.

Perhaps it is because she didn't use the knife. The golden barrier was reminiscent of Adrien's hair – Adrien's magic. Her attempt in front of him must have been created not by her own body but by Adrien's.

Anger trickles in slowly, building in force and speed until the crashing waves in her body are barely tolerated by the cracking skin outside.

She could've left this miserable existence behind so long ago. Was watching her accompany him a laugh, something for him to be amused by? There the powerful wizard was, traveling next to the pathetic, suicidal zombie, stumbling along in its eagerness for the release that was constantly denied. Was watching her in pain fun? Was she a pet he pampered for his personal amusement? Was she a disposable meat shield that he preserved out of boredom?

She just has to play along with Adrien's ruse first. She's had enough of this miserable existence and staying alive for someone else's game was far too altruistic for her tastes. She'd simply give him the slip, preferably in a wooded area where she could impale herself neatly and quietly.

Keeping up her current appearance would require at least one animal a day. No more than two. If she could simply gradually cut down on her eating habits, she could slowly dry herself out to a husk. Having the excuse for a relatively long hunt, she would simply – disappear.

She takes the twig out. There's enough blood to fully repair her eye – clearly, she's been gorging on furry woodland creatures. She sends her apologies to Snow White.

Who was Snow White?

Much to her disgust, Adrien doesn't stop at any more clearings. They start building to a vigorous pace towards the mountains. The ground beneath their feet eventually slopes more and more steeply, the forest muck underfoot giving way to the shrubs of the grasslands and then the crumbling gravel and stubby plants in the hills.

They've broken out of the woods. Perhaps this is the branch of a new loop. The vast purple mountains pierce the sky, penetrating the pure cold blue expanse and the fat sheep clouds who float along secure in their arrogance. The plants cling to the bits of soil littering the crags, the animals to the inch-wide thresholds on the cliff face.

The struggle up takes weeks. Adrien is beginning to show signs of exhaustion, most likely from the punishing pace he has set upon himself. Even with her begging out of meals, his skin sags and sours against the dull brown earth. His hair bleaches itself white.

Her skin dries. A casual scrape against the rock leaves white scars, a cut remains raised and bruised for two weeks. Chalk eventually begins to pour out of the crevices – an abrasion here, a small trip there, and soon, she's leaving a fine cloudy mist behind her wherever she goes. Eventually, even the mist dissipates – she's back to the rattling old body she once had in the month or so before she met Adrien.

He doesn't notice. He's down to skin and bones, his lips stained jewel red in the sunlight, a crumbled dark brown at night. His white hair has thinned, his back is bowed, his joints audibly creak. It is pointless and useless to pretend that he is not dying, and she encounters a vague unknowingnesss when she broaches the topic within the confines of her own mind. His death means the death of the spell on her; his death means the loss of his friend and the bulbous bobblehead characters who come to comfort him every first and last quarter of the moon.

Occasionally she wonders about the bits and pieces of life signifying a before floating around in her brain. Rick and Morty is her favorite TV show; biology was her favorite subject. She is allergic to cats. Marinette has absolutely no idea what TV is, nor what biology is, nor what cats are. She simply knows these like how she knows two twos make four, and she does not know what a two is either. Marinette certainly hasn't read the Republic or Augustine during this life – what is a book? – but she has memories of doing so. She knows who Mechthild is, who Emma Bovary is. She can recite Labé and write about Du Bois's theory of the veil.

A thought flashes into her mind, unbidden: A humanities major? What am I going to do with that? Useless. Utterly useless. The economy's gone to the ground and she's entertaining the idea of majoring in religious studies? Has she lost her mind?

She blinks and she's sitting on a hard wooden chair, notebooks and pens spread in front of her; light streams in through the windows on her left while old painted men preside over the books on her right. Marinette is suddenly proud, despairing, depressed and drowning all at once; she feels the water draining from her body, swirling deep into the drain that has appeared at the bottom of her chair, and she allows herself to sink and be masticated by the monster underneath.

The sun is bleeding into the roots of the plants. Had the sun set before? She does not remember. What was she thinking about? Marinette does not know. But this happens, sometimes. Where are they? She turns her head slowly, carefully shifting her body to survey the land around her – dry, cracking, red.

Is Adrien still here?

He is. His face is tucked into his neck. The stark bone structure of his face cradles the remaining light of the sun. The eyes shuttered, flickering underneath the eyelids as he shifts his ears back and forth in a futile attempt to locate something she doesn't hear.

His eyes snap open.

"Run."

They run. Panting, desperate, clutching at the stitch in her side, Marinette fumbles for the dagger she filched off of Adrien's belt. She draws it in a crash of sound, a rough scraping of metal against metal. Curses! The blade in her hand is unusually warm; the emeralds glint in the sunset.

Loud dragging steps thump their way through desert. She can hear the loud sniffing snorts of a bull and the murderous shriek of an eagle. A monstrosity appears behind them – one composed of a myriad of animal faces sitting atop a human body mounted with cloven feet. Several tails lash behind the creature; its limbs are a mishmash of wings and legs protruding from its sides.

Adrien can no longer run. He's limping, steadily and slowly, dripping blood as he goes. She watches as he stumbles to a stop, dust flying in his wake.

She waits. Perhaps the creature would kill him. Perhaps the creature would kill her. Either way, she was guaranteed the escape she so dearly strove for.

He points at her. Marinette had stopped a few yards after he did. What did he want?

The creature is lumbering closer. Adrien's mouth had begin to move, frantically muttering a low humming rhythm that set the bones to rattle in her skin. She walks closer. Did he really want to go to his death? She moved a little closer to him, an eye on the monster behind. Surely he doesn't want to die. He hasn't found his friend yet.

One of the lion heads roars. The monster is now close enough to see in its gory glory. She can pick out little bits of chalk and the squirming heads of scrappers writhing atop the mass of heads. Crap. Fuck. Shit. Absolutely fucking shit.

The monster doesn't eat creatures. It absorbsthem.

Time to run.

She skids back to Adrien, fully intending on carrying him to safety. He is still croaking out the rhythm and pointing at her. They are not dying today. She will not let that monster devour both of them alive.

Adrien brightens. One hand lands on the dagger, the other on her waist. He drags himself up, and in the confusion between a snake head darting out, its jewel eyes and flat head coming closer, closer and closer, he kisses her. He tastes like chocolate.

She falls through the dirt as if there is nothing below – she can feel his hand on her waist, the other a little removed from her face. Only then does she realize he's stabbed her through the eye; the hilt pressed along her cornea. Death at last.

"Is it selfish to just – want to cease existing?" Her voice floats in front of her, bright, glinting bubbles popping upon contact.

She hears no response. Perhaps she was too quiet. She repeats herself.

Adrien shifts the bag on his back, conscious and uncomfortable. He opens his mouth and then closes it, choosing instead to stalk towards the nearby stream. The rustling of the grass does little to hide the violence of his behavior – his arms twitch and jerk, his teeth grind, his feet trample the grass with little mercy. The light-hearted gurgling of the stream does little to hide his scream.

Was it selfish to commit suicide? She certainly knows that there is no one who cares about her any longer; she has had little contact with the other scrappers in the area and had avoided the conspicuous signs of human presence in her earlier days. To Adrien, she is certain she is only a convenient meat shield. Her utility may have diminished in light of her question, simply all the more reason to find that mage sooner.

She owes herself nothing more. She has already attempted the scrapper life in good faith; the utterly boring existence fails to entertain her. She is disgusted with her inability to leave human dwellings alone and finds the remains of human organs in her stomach both revolting and fascinating. Her doomed existence as a predator of one of the most conscious animals alive amuses her – she cannot help but attempt to vomit the flesh and bones she has uncontrollably downed. There is no one in this life who she cares to live for – not that living for someone was any better than committing suicide. She, too, knows this in the same way she knows that film majors have fun.

Life is only as good as the quality of it redeems itself; Marinette has been dreaming of the day she would leave her wretched existence. She doesn't believe in an afterlife; which divine system would unleash such a scourge upon the world?

Augustine would know. Augustine would say that evil is the absence of God. Augustine knew what was going on. He knew there was a God. His problem was whether or not to believe in the Manicheans.

Marinette doesn't even know who Augustine is. No, she does. But why should she trust a man dead to the ages? Why should she trust someone who converted in a garden? Her earliest memory is of a garden, standing under the fig tree, bloody red-gold hair sticking to her hands. The body above her was drained and mutilated; scraps of a plaid shirt had fluttered down like autumn leaves, dappled in the rippling sunlight.

Jesus cursed a fig tree.

She was born under one.

Perhaps it is selfish to cease her own existence. Well, thank goodness she doesn't have to, then. Adrien already did it for her.

Marinette comes to in a bright sunny atrium. Surely this isn't hell. But if it was, it did a beautiful approximation of the dreams she tucked away in the depths of her brain, the only dream she could remember. This is home. Home with its steam and fragrance, the scent of sugar and molasses. That whole, spicy taste lingering in the back of the tongue, the smell of cigarettes floating in on the night air, the vibrant flowers dangling against the backdrop of white walls and plush brown couches. The glint of gold in the background and the shine of glass behind her.

When she blinks her eyes open, her hands are flesh and bone. Her skin is rosy and pink; her clothes are newly ironed. She can see her mother and her father standing in the bakery next to her; a fresh croissant has been left out on a plate in front of her.

Was this heaven?

Creatures like this didn't deserve heaven. She ate people. She ate them alive. She ate them dead. She ate them sick, starving, and full. She was the monster. Monsters don't get to live a happily ever after.

Fittingly enough, there's a whole fig at the center of her croissant. A whole ripe fig, unbaked and raw. She could see the smallest little wasp crawl out.

She looks up. Her parents have turned around. Black gaping maws frame their faces. Human teeth poke out of the black rotten flesh. She embraces them as she feels them descend onto her bones.

She wakes up again in the sunny atrium. She sees yet another croissant placed in front of her. Her parents turn around and are again eldritch abominations. She submits to being devoured.

By the fifth time she feels the teeth against her skin, she is bored. Was this really the best punishment they could think of? Perhaps humanity had overestimated the creativity of devils, because this punishment? It was getting old real fast. It would have been more creative if she had forgotten if she was dead each time and woke up in horror, or if she was unable to move from her seat, but instead, she let herself atrophy and die.

This is such a stupid waste of her time.

The next time she comes to, she snatches the croissant and ran. Food is food, after all. And besides, who knew if she needed to lob some artery clogging dough into the face of her next villain?

The streets are the same as those of her childhood. The massage shop, replaced a year ago with a boba tea shop, is back in its old stomping grounds. The macaron shop across the street that had begun to tank the bakery's pastry sales has disappeared. Even the streetlights are the same – oval and tall – before government environmental regulations forced an upgrade.

Everything is startingly similar – everything. From the people who moved to the shops that stayed to the pigeons that flapped through the air, life is just as she remembers from the day she moved out for college. Even the old man walking down the street is the same.

Even the old man down the street is the same.

He is glitching. He steps forward once, and then the world resets. One slow step, and then all of the world resets – all except for her.

Marinette runs. This is a much more creative punishment than she anticipated. What is the catch? Will she die? Will she stay alive, forever stuck in this rotten cycle?

The wasp flies out. It was still alive?

The world resets. She is still where she was. The man had moved along another step – she can see his cane raised when before it had just hit the ground. The other pedestrians had also moved another step – they were all coming towards her.

The wasp flies out again. The world reset. The people move closer again. The wasp flies out again. Closer and closer and closer until she can see their faces and the little white human teeth come out of their rotten faces and oh god she can't do this she can't live with the touch of their hands on her skin and their teeth on her face for all eternity she won't she will –

She stuffs the croissant into her mouth and bites into the fig; the wasp dissipates in her mouth.

She blinks. She is standing under a fig tree. Her skin is cracked and drying; she experiences a thirst like no other.

Fangs punch out of her bloody gums. There is a human nearby. Perfect. She pounces.

Blood drips off Marinette's chin. Who is she?

"Marinette!" She's shaken roughly. "Marinette!"

She can feel the dagger's hilt in her eye. The tip had pierced through her retina, but the hilt, angled downward, had missed her brain completely. She's simultaneously relieved and upset. What was the nightmare that she had just processed?

He shakes her again. "Marinette!" Her body is looser than a cloth puppet's. His shoves turn her back and forth, her skull rattling along the thin bones of her neck. "Wake up!"

Her gaze flickers. She sees Adrien kneeling in front of her in a hospital wing, and then the dirt cavern flicks itself back into place, shuttering itself over her eyes like a pair of dirt covered glasses.

Adrien shakes her again. "Marinette, Marinette, you've got to listen to me." His face flickers in and out of her vision; she spots the bright glaring lights of the hospital overhead.

"You've got to wake up, Marinette." She blinks once – and his face is the blackened horror with human teeth poking out. She blinks again. It's just Adrien, haggard and dying.

"I can't lose you again." She blinks and sees him in a cat mask. The earth rumbles around him; she could see the eldritch horror approaching.

No. She'd do anything but be one of those scrapper heads lolling about, teeth snapping and eyes crazed. The ground beneath her begins to shake; clumps of dirt begin to crumble and float upward. She could the blood rush to her head.

The horror approaches even faster. Its cloven hooves dig away at the dirt; its multitude of limbs bat away the insects and animals that have been uprooted from their homes. It snorts and huffs and inhales Adrien – his green eyes, wide open, are the last things that she sees.

She shuts her eyes after that and slaps herself. Wake up, he had told her. But wasn't she already awake? She probed the edges of her consciousness – no, no she wasn't. There was a thin film of something masking the brightest part of her mind, a dim little gloom that urged her to be complacent, to die and live and eat as her body wanted to. It told her to just relax and be calm. She could feel her body loosening. The constant flickering of her vision calmed; she no longer saw those bright lights and frantic nurses and scalpels when she blinked her eyes open. All she could see was the lumbering heads and limbs and feet of the monster. It had caught up to her and loomed over her. It was all she could see.

She feels so curiously calm and pleasant. The dim little film had grown; it was now whispering that she should allow herself to be absorbed as one of the many heads. It was an offering for the gods, after all. Such a simple thing to do.

Marinette could feel the creature's breath on her face. She opens her eyes, smiling, ready to be accepted – only to the greeted with petrified green eyes. Why was Adrien horrified? Surely there was something noble in being absorbed into a larger amalgamation? The head shakes itself frantically, and then bares its teeth. The tiniest of gold sparks flickers off of the hair and burns a patch of Marinette's skin.

Ack! That hurt! She slaps the head, slitting her skin on one of its teeth. The surrounding heads began to choke on her disintegrating hand; the dust flickers and she blinks – the hospital lights are back. She blinks again – and the lion head is poised over her neck, ready to snap her to death.

She doesn't want to go. She's not ready to go. The images burn her eyes faster now. The nurses are shouting – she can smell the lion's breath – an oxygen mask is forced over her mouth – the teeth are on her neck – she sees a scalpel hovering over her eye – and feels her head cracked from her shoulders – and flings herself towards the light.

She comes to on the ground, the sun spiraling high in the sky. Chat's green eyes loom over her.

"Found you." He grins.

"What an akuma," he sighs. It had been such a nightmare when the man had first landed. Dressed in a tattered suit and a dark halo, he'd sent Furies all over the place to perch on hearts and feast on a metaphysical representation of their brains. Some victims sprang back up quickly while others had stayed in a coma.

They'd quickly ascertained that Night Terror sent his victims into a coma composed of their darkest foes; when Ladybug had fallen prey, Chat followed her with the syringe she'd manage to summon before slumping over.

It seems the man had fallen onto his own sword. Several Furies, honking with delight, crowd around his body. His brain looks to be nearly pecked through.

"I wonder what makes him so delicious," she says dryly. She has half a mind to let his brain be eaten. Would the akuma fly away when the Furies were finished?

"Must be the angelic disposition," Chat quips.

She snorts. "Let's get this show on the road." Marinette quietly crushes the akumatized man's halo and purifies the butterfly, leaving the man in a torn angel costume behind. He's confused and disoriented, almost heartbreakingly so; his worst fears had come to life and he hadn't a friend to rescue him.

"It's going to be alright," she murmurs softly, and then escorts him to her therapist's office.

She sighs when she settles back into her beanbag at home. Hawkmoth had really outdone himself this time; sleep aids and melatonin tablets are flying off the shelves. When she swung around the city at night, more residential lights are on than usual. Her therapist had also sent her an email to schedule the next month's appointments when she could. She was too swamped to even contemplate therapy drop-in. That was just another thing to add to the list of headaches she had on her plate.

Summer is coming to an end. College starts in a week. Marinette shudders at the thought of going back to an empty dorm room. She doesn't even know her roommate this year; apart from a few scant texts they exchanged at the end of the last school year, they haven't talked. She hopes they get along.

It's a lonely life at school. She calls her parents and her close knit group of high school friends constantly; it's a miracle none of them have mentioned her lack of friends yet. For some reason, she's had so many problems making friends. It wasn't like this in high school. What was it with college? Is she the problem? It probably is her. Crap, is she the elephant in the room?

Maybe she is. Sometimes she just wants to sit and let herself wash away with the rain, schoolwork be damned. She's had so many depressing thoughts during the school year. Insomnia plagues her; fatigue nips at her heels. She's managed to embarrass herself in so many different ways – she's cried in a counselor's office, ranted about her bout of self-hatred to a professor, and quite literally got called out for laughing too nervously during lecture. Yeah. She also cried a lot at school. (And she thought Chloe was bad).

Someone once told her that she had to work hard to be happy. Well, she doesn't want to even work! When was the last time she was happy anyways?

She's probably burned out. Who wasn't? Between the schoolwork, the internships, and the constant search for something new, she's still surprised people have room for drama. It's a little bit like alright, okay, I'm really sorry you broke up with your long distance partner, or I'm really sorry you got turned down the other night, and this emotional stuff is taking up bandwidth that I really don't have.

Sometimes Chat swings through the window and into the dorm room. She hides him in there when he's mobbed or when he makes up some flimsy excuse to come swinging in halfway across Paris. She looks forward to seeing Chat swinging through her window and settling himself into the futon she places in her dorm room. Adrien, all too perceptive, had caught on early in the school year and swings through half the city to keep her company at night. He always manages to come just after patrol and right after she de-transformed; Marinette quietly suspects Tikki and Plagg had a hand in the matter. His fondness for hot chocolate and marshmallows, despite his side modeling job, and his catty commentary lights a warm fire in her heart. Life wasn't that bad then, was it? And if it was, well – she'll cross that bridge when she gets to it.

She probably won't though. She flings herself into the light in her dreams every single time.

Sometimes, when she thinks about it, it's really quite funny that she knows who Chat is and how he still doesn't know her. She wraps the memory of him around her when she'd cold; he's cracked open her ribs and made a place for himself next to her heart. She couldn't carve him out with a fork and knife even if he tried. She's so, so grateful he went in after her when a Fury had perched on her chest. She doesn't think she'd be awake without him otherwise.

Marinette thinks it's time for a change. One last hurrah for a better school year. A toast to the person she wants to be. The fact that she needs to work to be happy, and that she's happy to work hard.

That last day before school starts, she heads up to the Eiffel Tower, where Chat has been waiting all these years. Maybe it's time she took up the space in his ribs he's been inviting her to all along.

"Hi, Adrien," she tells him, and laughs when his eyes bug out as her mask disappears. Time for something new.

A/N: Haven't really posted or written anything in about a year and a half. Life updates I feel oddly compelled to post, as follows. Recently got hooked onto Doctor Who. Finished reading The Goldfinch and several other books I really should have read a long time ago. Will be studying abroad in a little bit - I've never lived with snow before, so this'll be interesting. Will be heading back to college tomorrow - yay CS and philosophy and ethics! Will also proceed to nerd out over school. I also can and will pass for a sophomore - in high school. Also did meet a Tosa - the puppy is literally larger than I am.

This one's a little different, I think, from what I've done before. Thoughts? Comments? Tell me about what's going on in your neck of the woods - or lake or savannah or tundra.