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The Charles de Gaulle airport is too quiet. Too unlike the airports of New York City.
Too unlike the place that Chloé had lived in for the last ten years of her life.
Which is how she finds herself sitting in a bar at eleven at night in her travel clothes, the stench of alcohol and sound of conversation swirling around her and intensifying her headache as she sips at her glass of water and clutches the handle of her single suitcase and wishes she’d never come back home.
She leans her head back against the wall, taking in deep breaths and trying to ground herself the way her therapist had taught her. She needs to get back to her hotel and sleep; then everything will be fine. She can figure things out tomorrow–
“Well, well, if it isn’t Chloé Bourgeois,” a melodic voice says above her. Chloé slowly opens her eyes to the strobe lights of the bar to see–
A vision clad in shimmering pink and a scarlet red skirt, looking for all the world like an angel sent to take Chloé away.
But Chloé’s attention is caught on the too-familiar blue eyes, on the hair curled in a style reminiscent to the pigtails a collège student would wear. On the face Chloé would never forget, a face she’d last seen tear-streaked, makeup running, through the holographic screen of an Alliance ring. “Marinette Dupain-Cheng?”
Marinette sighs and slides onto the bench beside her; Chloé notices with some degree of interest that she’s still taller than her, a fact which brings her back to their days in collège together. “What are you doing here?” Marinette asks. “I thought you moved to New York with your mother.”
“Living with Audrey Bourgeois isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be,” Chloé says bitterly. “So I left.”
Marinette blinks. “You left? When?”
Chloé bites her lip and glances down at her lap. “Yesterday,” she whispers, her voice cracking.
Getting a last-minute flight to Paris from New York had been child’s play for the daughter of international fashion icon Audrey Bourgeois. It’s just embarrassing how it had taken a decade of verbal abuse to leave.
No, Chloé corrects herself. Not embarrassing. Her therapist had warned her against using words like that to describe her relationship with her mother. More… more like she regrets not waking up to Audrey’s actions sooner and leaving the moment she was out of school, instead of staying for three extra years under Audrey’s thumb.
“That must have been hard,” Marinette says warmly, bringing Chloé back to reality. Then she wonders if she’s in a dream. In what universe would Marinette Dupain-Cheng, the woman that she’d proclaimed her ‘patsy’ and bullied for years, be comforting her?
When she says as much, Marinette only laughs. “I mean, I came over here ready to fight again,” she admits without a trace of shame or embarrassment, “but it really seems like your time in New York changed you for the better.”
Not knowing what to say to that, Chloé only nods.
“So if you’ve been here in Paris since yesterday–”
“Since, uh–” Chloé glances at her watch, a cheap child’s toy of a timepiece that she bought after hurling the expensive designer one she’d treated herself to with her mother’s money at the wall. “For three hours, actually.”
“For three–” Marinette looks alarmed, and a warm fuzzy feeling rises in Chloé’s chest to see that Marinette is worried for her. “Chloé, you’ve been in Paris for three hours and the first place you come to is a bar? Are you okay?”
“I can see how that sounds worrying,” Chloé placates. “I’m fine, though. I just– It was too quiet at the airport, and I didn’t want to walk around the city at night. Fear of pickpockets, you know?” When Marinette’s worried expression doesn’t change, she sighs and shoves her glass under Marinette’s nose. “Smell it. It’s just water, see?”
Marinette pushes the glass away. “Okay, I believe you,” she says. “Do you need a place to stay?”
“No, I have a hotel booked. I just need to…” Chloé sighs. “Go there. And sleep.”
“Well, if you’re gonna hang around here for a bit, we can talk some more,” Marinette offers.
Chloé smiles. “That sounds nice. So, what are you doing here so late? You never struck me as the type of person to go clubbing.”
“Oh, I’m here with Alya, but she had to go to the bathroom,” Marinette replies. “You probably don’t know this– oh, what am I saying, you definitely don’t know this– but after Adrien and I broke up–”
“You broke up?” Chloé asks incredulously. “I’m so sorry if it’s because of me, I was a stupid, bitter girl who cared about nothing but revenge–”
Marinette laughs. “It’s fine, the breakup had nothing to do with you.”
“Then why did you guys break up? You were so good together!” For some reason, though, Chloé is more relieved at the news than upset– she suspects it has something to do with her childhood crush on Marinette, one that she supposes had come back to life the moment she was in the other girl’s presence.
Marinette glances at the floor, and Chloé instantly regrets ruining the light atmosphere with her unthinking question. “Well, I guess we just wanted different things out of life,” Marinette explains. “It was a while ago, though. I’m over it. Last I saw, he was happy with Nino anyway, and–”
“Nino Lahiffe? What about Alya?”
Marinette nods. “Yeah, Alya and Nino broke up around the same time. So we were both there for each other, and after that and our years of friendship, falling in love seemed like the easiest thing in the world.”
“Falling in… love?” Chloé dreads Marinette’s next words.
And sure enough, they bring her nothing but heartbreak. “Yeah, Alya and I have been dating for a couple of years at this point. We actually came to this bar to celebrate our engagement.”
“Oh… congratulations,” she says, trying and failing to hide the lack of enthusiasm in her voice.
As if on cue, Chloé looks up to see a woman in an orange dress walking toward their table. It’s Alya Césaire.
“Hey, babe,” she says, sitting down beside Marinette and pressing a kiss to her cheek. “Who are you talking to?”
“You’ll never guess who I found,” Marinette replies. “Chloé Bourgeois! From collège!”
Alya stills, then takes a closer look at Chloé. “I thought you were in New York?” she asks, her tone slightly hostile.
Marinette notices. “It’s fine, she’s different now.”
“Okay,” Alya says, clearly not buying it.
Chloé stands up, her grip tightening on her suitcase. “I really should be heading out now,” she says quietly. “It’s late and I couldn’t sleep well on the plane. And, you know, jet lag.”
“Oh, good idea, we should probably be heading out too,” Marinette says. “Do you need a ride to your hotel?”
“I’m good, thank you,” Chloé refuses.
As she stands on the curb, waiting for a taxi, she feels even lonelier than before.