#progress is not linear

The room is too small. And normally she'd be happy for the darkness after a panic attack—she really has to thank Marinette again for helping her admit she has those—but right now it's too much like the darkness, like the black void of Akumatization. She can almost see her mother's face blank with apathy, without recognition, devoid of love. Something inside her chest is tearing, pulling apart, and God she just wants her sister right now.

Zoé is not the person who comes through the door.

"Chloé!" Lila gasps, bursting through the door of the sleeping room of the nurse's station, all false concern and smiles. "I heard you got Akumatized!"

Chloé's pain immediately twists beneath her ribcage into rage and confusion as the most unexpected person in Paris throws her arms around her shoulders. Lila--Lila was expelled, she's been banned from the building, what is she doing here? Chloé wants to pull away, to shove her off, to do something, but she's a deer in headlights, frozen, utterly unable to stop the horror that she's trapped in.

"Are you okay?" Lila asks.

Chloé's whole body contracts, as if making herself smaller will help her escape this. Her throat constricts, strangling her words into a choking whine.

Lila pulls back, holding Chloé at arms’ length. “I’m really impressed you were able to break the Akumatization,” she says with a smile that makes Chloé’s skin crawl. “You’ve been having such a hard time of it lately, you know, and, well…” Lila starts tearing up, wiping her eye with the heel of her hand. “I can’t believe Marinette did that to you,” she whimpers. "All we ever try to do is be nice to her, but—"

Something inside Chloé snaps.

"Nice?" she snarls.

Lila’s expression immediately changes—for a split second, Chloé can see the snake behind her carefully faked expression, and that snake is scared. Some part of Chloé, the part that still likes to hurt people, the part of her that is her mother, is happy with that, and she feels a brief burst of shame, but this is Lila. She deserves every bit of Chloé's vitriol and her own fear.

The rest of her, though? The rest of her is not happy. Another, primal, feral part of her, the part of her that spent ten years in love with Marinette Dupain-Cheng in spite of all her attempts to bury it, the part of her that remembers the day Marinette finally gave her Pollen permanently, the part of her that looks at her friends, her hive, and says protect with your life, rises up like a beast and burns in her muscles, her bones, her rage, and suddenly her palms slam into Lila's stomach, Lila is on the ground, stunned, and Chloé is standing over her like a wasp looming in the air above a doomed tarantula.

"I don't know how you got on campus," she spits. “And I don’t care.” She steps forward, her gaze beating Lila down into the ground. "You say one more word about Marinette and... and..."

Lila stares up at her, eyes wide and glistening. "I—I go here," she says, and for once, her voice sounds almost honest. "I—Chloé, we're friends, aren't we?"

Chloé’s brain goes white. "Friends?" Chloé shrieks. Oh, she’s about to get Akumatized again, isn’t she. But if her Akuma form goes after Lila? Worth it. "After what you did?" She bends down, grabs a fistful of Lila's tacky plastic orange lapels. "Marinette may have forgiven you but I. Have. Not."

Now Lila is the deer in the headlights, except she's not on a road or even on a highway, Chloé Bourgeois is a bullet train barrelling down on a fawn that has wandered onto the tracks and Chloé will not stop. "You are ridiculous, Lila," Chloé snarls, barely managing to stop herself from biting the other girl's face. "Utterly. Ridiculous."

"Hey!" Zoé says, forcing the two of them apart. "Break it up, you two!"

Huh, Chloé thinks, suddenly aware of her sister's hand on her chest. She'd been so pissed at Lila, she hadn't even noticed Zoé come in.

"She just..." Lila stammers, and the shock on her face—oh, Chloé hopes it's real. "She just—”

Than her eyes narrow. For a moment, a grin flashes across her face, before her teary shock returns… but with significantly less reality to it.

”You’re—you’re breaking up with me?” Lila sobs.

Zoé’s head snaps around, and Chloé can feel her sister tense. But she—oh, God, haha, Lila thought…

Lila doesn’t know she’s out.

Chloé starts to laugh.

It’s almost a cackle, more than anything. It bubbles up from her stomach, snatching her breath, doubling her over. She’s laughing so hard she fills the entire space of the tiny nap room, so hard that both Zoé and Lila are looking at her like she’s grown a second head.

”You think—” Chloé gasps, clutching at her stomach, “—I’d cheat on Kagami—” Oh, she can’t breathe. She can’t breathe. It’s too funny. “—with you?”

This is, very definitely, not the response Lila was expecting, given the shock on her face. Probably she was thinking Chloé would loudly deny being gay (when of course anyone with half a brain could have seen she was), thus confirming to Zoé their “secret relationship” and making herself look like the victim.

Whoopsie for her!

Chloé’s laughter slows down as she plops back into her cot, and she sighs, wiping tears out of her eyes. “You’re ridiculous,” she gasps through the largest grin she’s had all day. “Utterly, completely, and totally ridiculous.”

The look on Lila’s face is priceless. There are few things more satisfying than outmaneuvering smug assholes, and it’s so rare to catch the liar off-guard like this. Blindsiding Lila is a joy all its own, and Chloé intends to savor the memory of that face for years to come.

“Wait a minute,” Zoé says, breaking the moment. “You know?”

”Of—of course she knows,” Lila begins. “She and I—”

"Shut up," Chloé growls, flexing her perfectly-manicured fingers like claws. "And get. Out."

Lila swallows, frozen for half a second, then she spins and bolts for the door. It slams shut behind her, leaving Chloé alone with her sister.

Chloé collapses back onto her cot, her back slamming against the exposed white brick. Now that the adrenaline is gone, the encounter is starting to leave a really bad taste in her mouth, the way any encounter with Lila does. The bile is rising in her throat again, and she just wants to strip off her own skin and fling it somewhere far away where she doesn't have to live in it. "What is with everyone today?" she mumbles.

"What is with—what's with you?" Zoé says, slamming her hand onto the cot next to Chloé's leg. "First the Pollen thing, then the coffee prank, then…” She points out the door. “Lila is a nice person, who for some reason after all the bridges you've burned decided to be your friend, and you just—"

"She hurt Marinette," Chloé mumbles. "Nobody hurts Marinette."

“And then!” Zoé continues, heedless of Chloé’s interruption. “I’ve been trying to make you feel comfortable enough to admit to yourself that you’re gay for months, and then you just… casually? Out of spite?”

Admit that she's... what?

Wait. Something’s—something’s wrong. That's... not at all something she'd expect Zoé to say.

“I—I came out before we met,” Chloé says, haltingly. She's confused, and more than a little hurt. “You—you know that. You’ve met my girlfriend. We—” When she’d found out about Zoé, she’d been pissed enough for Akumatization—but afterwards, afterwards, it had been such a relief, such a joy, to have just one family member who accepted her as she was. “We went on double dates with you and Luka.” Had Zoé not known, all this time? Had she—had none of it mattered?

Zoé looks at her like she’s grown a second head. “Luka?” she says. “Marinette’s ex? I’ve barely even spoken to him, much less… been on dates!”

Chloé’s pulse is stabbing at her ears now. She has no idea what’s going on. Zoé’s confusion—has everyone else been feeling the same thing, today? Is that why they suddenly all hate her? Did some… Akuma or something wipe all their memories of her?

Except she was Akumatized, and Hawkmoth can’t have two out at once unless he’s Scarlet Moth, and that definitely didn’t happen today, and he’d never bother going Scarlet over her because he apparently still thinks of her as the nasty girl nobody cares about so he doesn’t think anyone would care about her the way they do about Marinette. A Sentimonster wouldn’t have this much reach, wouldn’t be able to make EVERYONE forget—

She can see Zoé going through the same mental calculations in her head. Something messed with someone’s memories. Hawkmoth is the most likely—okay, let's be real, only—candidate.

”You—you can’t be Akumatized, you rejected it,” Zoé says. “That means—” She turns pale. “You’re—you’re not my sister.”

Chloé’s heart stops. “W-what?” she manages.

Zoé backs away from her, eyes wide and immobile. “You’re a Sentimonster.”

The way she says the word—as if it's a swear, as if it's a curse—stabs straight through Chloé’s gut. She wants to vomit. Chloe is better at managing her anger when it comes to people she loves. Honestly, she is. But she never expected... from her own sister of all people... Don't get Akumatized, don't get Akumatized, don't get Akumatized—

Shut up and burn her, says the part of her that is her mother, and Chloé ignites.

She leaps to her feet, heedless of how Zoé is forced back, heedless of the terrified expression on her sister's face, barely aware of anything except her own rage. “OF COURSE I'M A FUCKING SENTIMONSTER!” she screams, reaching for her necklace. “You—you helped me steal my Amok from Mom! It was your plan! You—”

Instead of her mother’s wedding ring, Chloé’s fingers close on the necklace to find empty air.

Her entire body goes cold. She looks at the stunned, horrified Zoé, and suddenly she's in freefall. Part of her wonders if this is how Adrien felt when his bodyguard pitched him off the Montparnasse, but the rest is too caught up in the sickening drop of her gut, the fire in her extremities, the vacuum where her lungs are supposed to be.

"My..." she croaks, barely able to speak. "My Amok. It's—" She swallows as best she can around the lump that is digging spikes into her throat. "It's gone."