When a liar gets you left behind

Chapter Forty-Nine: Brother-Brother Time

Alya then said something that made the Marinette on camera's smile drop, any happiness from before gone as she slowly looked down, her hand nervously going to her collarbone as the two retreated, a feeble attempt to soothe herself.

The on camera Marinette continued on, oblivious to the fact that two mischievous people held her hard work. It was an event that was being twisted in Marinette's mind as she watched the video conclude, twisted to fill in the bits and pieces that she had not seen or understood before, anyway.

Marinette tried her best to not turn red, a variety of emotions that made the coloring in her cheeks amplify shooting through her. Anger, embarrassment at being tricked, and most of all, hurt, crashed through her.

Still, time and time again things happened to her, she still could not bother to get used to the fact that some people were less honest than others, which was a huge con for her—especially as a hero. She had no clue that they had stolen the sketchbook, she thought it had just slipped away some time throughout the day. That it did not matter—that it was not quite on purpose. To be fair, that had been when she had first started losing her friends, and a bit of disbelief still stunned her systems.

"What is there to explain?" she asked rhetorically, her voice holding an indifferent undercurrent in it, as if she was trying to push the video away dismissively.

Her uncle's eyes darkened, his normally relaxed form tense with a numerous amount of testy emotions. He flared his nose as he replied, "I think there's quite a few disgusting things to explain."

Marinette swallowed. What was there to say? She had been fooled just like they had—at least for a bit. Did he want her to explain that it was still going on? That she only had two friends left at the moment? Because she did not want to explain that, she did not want to accept that herself, no matter how long ago they had left her.

"It happened, not one of my particularly best moments—I didn't act that well when Lila arrived. That caused for some. . . unseeable consequences," she told him objectively, her voice sharper than it normally was.

Jagged shook his head in distaste. "Who are these two?" he pulled the phone away to show a picture of the two girls, both of them beaming at the camera.

"This is Lila Rossi, and this is uh," she felt her stomach bubble with nerves, "well that's Alya Cesaire."

"Do they do this often?" Her aunt jumped to ask, her voice hard.

Marinette looked down, her confidence in the situation lacking severely. She was uncomfortable, she always was when the topic was on Lila.

"They did," she conceded, "they can't be bothered to do much now that I'm thousands of miles away."

"Marinette," her uncle called to her, a fog of sadness filling his eyes, making them almost unreadable, "why didn't you say anything?"

"See the main problem with Lila in general is that it often comes to my word against hers," she drawled out, her voice trembling slightly, despite her best efforts to sound even and cool, "most people choose to go where the evidence is, even if they have had a longstanding friendship with the other person."

They were silent, comprehending the thing that Marinette hinted at. It was hard to believe that her class had changed so much in the last few years. They had used to be so close, making them one of the best classes in the whole school, participating left and right in tons of competitions to help win something extra for their class.

The change in schools was comforting to Marinette because of this, while she did not want to admit it, the class had grown apart to a point where Marinette could not see a way for them to come back together. For them all to be the friends they once were.