Chapter Text
“Inmate #8024 of Gotham Asylum Institution. State your name.”
“Marinette Dupain-Cheng.”
How had she come to this, you might wonder? Well, it was all thanks to one person. Well-
Okay, in all actuality, it was all thanks to nearly everyone in her entire life. Marinette could count on her hands how many people in the world she could trust, and only two of them had been in the country when this had all started.
They had come for her in the comfort of her own home.
Her parents had let them in.
Marinette knew that she had grown distant with her parents. Ever since she had become Ladybug she hadn’t been able to spend as much time with them, but she hadn’t realized it would cause such a strain on their relationship. By the time she realized, it was only because of Lila that she had actually noticed.
The girl had spread her lies all throughout Marinette’s life. Her own parents believed the silver-tongued sausage-link. With Chloe and Sabrina joining her side, it was easy for her to spread her lies to the Mayor and Commissioner of Paris.
This though? Marinette would have to admit- she was impressed. She told the girl as much when she paid witness to her arrest.
She had assumed before, but she had recently become certain. Lila was working with Hawkmoth.
She had noticed the strange actions of the girl when she was akumatized, and even when she wasn’t but was simply present during an attack. Lila would have a personal goal, similarly to all the other akumas, but she would never truly focus on it. She was always attacking Ladybug and Chat Noir- mainly Ladybug.
The odd part about this? Akumas rarely went after the Miraculous Team. Hawkmoth might send them after the heroes, but the akumas were usually so distracted with their own goals in mind that they only ever attacked once they saw Ladybug and her team becoming an obstacle. It showed truly just how much the akumas were victims- they didn’t want to defend Hawkmoth. They were given powers to act upon their upset, and Hawkmoth amplified their emotions to the point where they couldn’t act against them.
Lila though? She went to war with Ladybug. She rarely ever cared about Chat Noir even- her goal was to aim for Ladybug and it was an aim to kill .
So yeah, Marinette had suspected that Lila was up to something. She would usually only attack Ladybug, and half the time she never even mentioned wanting the Miraculous. After some time, Marinette wondered if Lila was becoming an akuma on purpose- especially when she would see the girl akumatized when Mairnette was certain she had not been emotionally upset before.
The day before her arrest though, Marinette knew she had been right.
She saw her- Lila grabbed an akuma, put it on her purse, and began to make a deal with Hawkmoth.
The other issue? From the sound of their deal; it had been going on for nearly a year now.
Marinette hadn’t confronted her though, so there should have been no reason Lila knew she found her out. But then again, this plan seemed to have been going on for a while. Everyone around her had been acting strange for the past week or two, and now she understood why.
She had been sitting in her room, preparing her bag for when she headed out to go visit Luka. The two of them were going to hang out for a while before he continued their lessons on the Bass. She wasn’t sure why she had put the Miracle Box in her backpack, but she would leave it up to her Guardian Intuition.
Even still though, she had been shocked and thrown off guard when she came down the ladder of her room to find police all waiting to jump her.
She was cuffed and dragged from her home(though she never put up any fuss), with Lila standing between Marinette's own parents, “comforting” them as they sobbed.
They just couldn’t believe their precious little girl had grown up to be a collaborator to the terrorist who had plagued their city.
Lila had noticed how often Marinette disappeared during akuma attacks, believing the girl was just a coward that ran and hid for her life all the time(thank you Quantum Masking). However, Lila knew that she was going to continue to be a thorn in her side, so she wanted to get rid of her. It also didn’t help her growing ire when Hawkmoth seemed to have favor for Marinette(though not like he did Lila)- the man was hellbent on akumatizing her. Using Marinette's constant disappearances, Lila found the perfect solution to get her out of Paris.
Hawkmoth hadn’t seemed too keen on her plan, but it also helped further protect his real identity. With Gabriel being closely tied with Lila as a mentor, and helping back her when she claimed Marinette as a civilian aid for Hawkmoth, it further pushed away any ideas that the man was connected to his supervillain mask.
Sure, he may have lost one of his most powerful akuma victims, but he knew it would help him in the long run. Marinette had been Multimouse in the past- one of Ladybugs most trusted and valued temporary heroes. She had lent Multimouse every Miraculous, including her own and Chat Noir’s. The girl had been of complete health as she wielded all of the Miraculous, and she had defeated the akuma all on her own. Not to mention the sheer power of her emotions, having been bottled up for all these years- if he had akumatized her, then Ladybug never would have stood a chance.
But, it was all in vain anyhow. The girl was hard as a steel tower, and she was adamant to never let her emotions get the better of her.
Hawkmoth never would have won in that battle of willpower.
So, giving up on this target, he allowed Lila to use Marinette as a scapegoat. Marinette was arrested, and to better convict her, he made sure to send an akuma to the courtroom while she was being tried.
The akuma wasn’t meant to infect anyone- he simply had it fly over and sit on the judges desk for a moment, facing Marinette before it flew away. The courtroom went into an uproar, and Marinette was sentenced in a heartbeat.
They couldn’t keep her in Paris- oh no , the girl would simply become a constant akuma now that they knew she was working with Hawkmoth. Her court appointed lawyer claimed she must be clinically ill, joining an emotional terrorist at such a young age. Hawkmoth must have coerced her into joining him, and Marinette was simply too mentally unstable to fight back against his gaslighting.
Marinette would be put into psychiatric care- but not in Paris.
Gotham City.
There in Arkham Asylum, she would be amongst others of her kind; those who had created city-wide offense and acts of terrorism, but were too unwell to truly understand their impact. It was better for everyone this way. Sure, Adrien looked disheartened and pitiful as he watched the news of his friend, but he would understand the sacrifice when Gabriel finished bringing back the boy's mother.
Besides, out of their entire class, Adrien was the only one who even seemed to care about the girls state. The others had all backed Lila up in her “investigation”, and Adrien hadn’t ever stepped up to refute it. Perhaps the reason his son looked so uncomfortable about all this was because he too believed Lila about Marinette?
And yet, as Marinette was loaded out of the security van and led towards the plane that was to take her to America, Gabriel noticed how odd it was.
He stood beside Lila, acting like a confidant as she put on a brave front against her abuser. He watched as Roger Raincomprix allowed Marinette to say some final words to Lila before she left. He had been bewildered by her calm facade, and the way she looked upon Lila as if she was nothing worth her time. The girl seemed almost unaffected by her present predicament, and Gabriel would never for the life of him understand why.
“I gotta admit, Liar-la, but I’m impressed,” Marinette stated, bored for one moment before she suddenly smirked. “Don’t get too cocky though. You may never realize your mistake here, but karma will come to haunt you soon enough.”
They hadn’t understood.
They knew this wasn’t just her trying to have the last word- her small speech had been short, but it sent goosebumps down both of their spines, making them shiver as a new feeling of cold dread hovered over them.
For some reason, the feeling only grew more intense when Marinette's plane left the borders of their city.
Gabriel tried to ignore it- it wasn’t like she could do anything now that she was gone. She had no allies anymore. Besides, it wasn’t like anything would truly change, right? He would just continue to send out akumas, Adrien would continue his modeling, and Lila would continue to annoy him as she manipulated everyone else around her.
Oh…
Oh how wrong he was…
Why was she calm, you might ask?
Why, when she was leaving behind her city to the hands of a magical emotional terrorist? Why, when she had the miracle box being moved to a secure storage in Gotham, while there were still three other Miraculous being used in Paris? Why, when she was the only one able to reverse the damage of her city, and she was being forced into a mental institution in a different continent with an entire ocean in between?
Because.
She was free.
She was finally free.
And yeah, when the plane finally left the country, Marinette burst into hysterical laughter, with tears streaming down her face all the same. Sure it helped prove their point that she might be insane, but could you really blame her?
For the first time in years - she was able to feel .
So, she laughed. She cried. She screamed.
She felt.
Marinette let her emotions leave her on the plane, eager to finally be free from the burden that Fu had forced onto her before she was even finished with puberty. She reveled in the knowledge that even if Chat Noir and Paris fell, that Hawkmoth couldn’t actually win without Marinette being there.
He would realize his mistake- he might not realize that Marinette was Ladybug, but he would realize that he had blessed and aided Lila in a terrible decision.
And yeah- Marinette was feeling a bit petty towards the city she was born and raised in, but who even cared?
Hawkmoth wasn’t her problem anymore.