When a liar gets you left behind

Chapter Forty-Seven: Comfort

The decision that had been made pushed huge levels of guilt into her stomach. There was no way of telling Damian that she had to cancel for the time being. She would just have to tell him later, If he was still at the park by the time she arrived.

"Turn around, please," her voice was quiet as she redirected the driver.

The driver arched an eyebrow, a questioning look appearing on his face, but he turned around nonetheless. They rode in silence. Waiting to finally reach their destination. Marinette was only about two minutes from her house before she received the phone call, so she knew it would be fine to wait till she got home to portal over.

She had the Horse Miraculous on her, but it was too risky to just transform in a car, even with the tinted windows, you never knew who was waiting to catch a glimpse of someone's life.

As soon as the car reached an abrupt stop, Marinette threw the door open, not bothering to wait as she set off into a run to get into the house. As soon as she was in, she locked herself in the bathroom and transformed.

Pulling her mind into a state of calm, mentally trying to prepare for the fact she was going into Akuma territory, she slowly dipped one foot into the portal, the other coming soon after.

Her heart was hammering against her chest, the fear that normally surrounded her when she experienced a bad dream bursting through her veins—amplified by the fact that Chloe of all people was in trouble.

She had a new—almost selfish, fear that also lingered in her, causing shame to bloom as she continued to run to her friend's location. Since she had told Adrien and Chloe her identity, she realized she did the one thing that Master Fu had told her not to do so constantly when she was still under his care. Even after talking to Tikki about it, she had to admit to being scared of the consequences of her choice if anything went wrong.

Though she had promised herself to focus her attention to finding out who Hawkmoth was; and that was still something she was going to stick to. However, she had only increased her efforts a few nights ago, which was not enough time to find hardly anything.

This meant that if something went wrong today, if Hawkmoth somehow figured out who she was under the mask, she would have nothing but the capabilities she already had to try and defeat him. She knew that he would have the upper hand if that happened.

She had allowed herself to slip from her job as a heroine a bit too much, perhaps it might have been unintentionally, but she just now realized how much work she could have done if she had focused on it a bit more. Imagine what improvements she could have if she had focused more on improving all those years ago when she had first received the Miraculous.

She shook her head at herself as she finally reached the destination. She quickly threw her thoughts that were shameful out of her mind, her friends suddenly ever taking everything in her mind as she tried to make her way over to where Chloe was.

She remembered what Adrien had said when she had asked him what he had done to help the situation a bit more, and looked down at the towel beneath the door, the towel was tucked so tightly that nothing but a human's hand would shake it out of its spot.

She hardened her gaze when it fell on the thing that was dearly clinging onto the fabric of the towel. An Akuma was sitting right on the towel, which was all that was stopping it from finding Chloe. A thin layer of fabric was what kept her from being Akumatized.

Marinette scooped up the Akuma in her yo-yo, having unified with the Ladybug and Horse Miraculous. She assumed she would have to get rid of some annoying Akumas before getting to Chloe—which was still her priority.

She wondered what made her crack, as Chloe was tough and not usual of the emotional type. It was unusual for her to have a panic attack in general, though she did sometimes let her emotions get the best of her. Chloe was someone who was honest with herself when it came to her emotions, and because of Hawkmoth, she constantly has to suppress them, the very thing that she still does not quite understand sometimes.