Henri strutted back into his classroom, riding high on his most recent victory, humming as he gathered his backpack and started going through his things, his attitude like he hadn't a care in the world.
"HENRI LEROI!"
He smirked at the familiar screech, knowing what it all all about. Just as he had predicted, Lila Rossi came storming inti the classroom, face flushed with red-hot fury and panting like an enraged bull in the ring.
"Someone said my name?", he said cockily, not even bothering to validate her anger by looking at her.
"How could you do this to me?!", she wailed, and Henri had to admit, she was good. She actually sounded a little bit hurt by his betrayal.
"Do what?!", asked Henri in an innocent tone, still not looking at her.
"You ratted me out! You sold me down the river!", she wailed, stomping her foot. Meanwhile, their other classmates slowly trickled into the room, eyes glued to the show starting in their classroom.
"Well, of course I did.", said Henri, still looking at his backpack, brushing off her rage like it was nothing. Like she was nothing. "You were hurting my Maribelle. I had no choice."
"Oh, so NOW you squeal on me?!", Lila scoffed. "Don't act dumb with me, LeRoi! Don't say you did this because I was hurting Marinette. Not when you knew what I was doing to her this whole time! Not when YOU'RE the one who promised to stay silent and encouraged me to keep going on your first day here!"
"Wait, WHAT?!", Alya shrieked, looking at Henri.
The handsome boy chuckled and finally turned around to look at Lila with a mocking smirk. "Oh?"
"Don't act all innocent, Henri LeRoi!", said Lila, folding her arms over her chest. "You and I both know what I'm talking about!" She turned to face the onlookers, pointing straight at Henri. "You made a deal with me on your first day at this school! You told me to keep doing what I was doing so that Marinette would lose all her other friends and you could have her all to yourself! And when Marinette refused to give up on her friends, you're the one who told me about your plan to make it look like they were bullying you so that she would lose faith in them and sever ties with them herself!"
Everyone gasped in horror. Lila faced Henri, folding her arms over her chest with a sneaky little smile. "I wonder how Marinette would react if she knew that you not only knew how to expose me from day one and just chose not to, but also that you teamed up with me to separate her from her friends!"
Lila's victory was dashed when Henri laughed—laughed!—deviously right in her face, as though everything she said was a joke. "You're gonna tell on me to Marinette?", he said between chuckles, hand on his head. He lowered it so she could see all the evil on his face. "And tell me—just what makes you think Marinette is gonna believe a word that comes out of your mouth?"
Lila's face went slack as his words registered. "I...I..."
"You think after everything you've done, all the lies you've told, every falsehood you've spread, she'll just take your word for anything?" Henri rolled his eyes and laughed. "Ha! At this point, I doubt Marinette would believe anything you say, even if you told her the sky is blue!"
"But she knows I know that she knows! That's why she knows that I wouldn't play her about anything in private!"
Henri walked up to her, hands on his hips as he leaned over Lila menacingly. "Be real, Rossi. Who do you really think that Marinette's going to believe, hm?" He pointed a finger, poking her right in her collarbone. "The pathological liar who tried to ruin her life?" He pointed at himself with a confident, fiendish grin. "Or her loving boyfriend who supported her in her darkest hour?"
Lila faltered, not used to not having the upper hand in a battle of wits and will.
"By all means, go ahead, tell Marinette the whole story.", said Henri, waving his hand to shoo her on. "I'd be surprised if she even lets you get halfway through before she accuses you of lying and brushes you off like the insignificant little insect you truly are."
As Henri taunted Lila, Adrien was still reeling from the shock of Henri's true intentions. He was well aware that Henri was selfish, manipulative, and cold-hearted. But to purposely strain things between Marinette and her friends, to deliberately destroy all her friendships, just so he could hoard her like an object? It was beyond any cruelty and greed Adrien had ever thought possible.
"Hold up!" Lila turned her head to see Alya snarling at her. "You...You were wirking with him the whole time?! You were helping him separate us from Marinette?!"
"Well, more like we were helping each other.", Henri shrugged. "We both wanted Marinette to be isolated, just for different reasons. It was a win-win. Lila got to take Marinette's spot as the most popular girl in school, and I didn't have to share my lovely Maribelle with anyone."
Alya's eyes zeroed in on Lila as she walked up closer. "So...if you were helping him out in secret all this time..." Her eyes widened in horrified realization. "Oh my god..." Alya pointed a trembling finger towards Lila. "It...It was you, wasn't it? You were the one who sent Marinette that video of me talking about Marinette in the art room. You knew I'd never suspect you, because I thought you were my friend."
Alya clutched her head in her hands as the full force of reality sunk in. "Oh my gosh, I thought you were my friend. I thought you were so nice. You seemed so nice...you were so kind and thoughtful and willing to help...it reminded me of Marinette. Marinette, who I ignored for you!" Tears ran diwn her cheeks. "And the whole time, you manipulated me! You destroyed my friendship with Marinette!"
That's when Lila finally dropped her innocent act for good. She narrowed her eyes and curled her upper lip in disdain. "I destroyed your friendship with Marinette?! I didn't make you say all that crap about her behind her back! That was all you!"
"But you manipulated me into saying all that stuff!"
"Did I?", Lila scoffed. "I didn't suggest that Henri's influence over her was Marinette's fault, or say anything bad about her other than she was wrapped around his finger. I didn't say she was acting like a hypocrite, or bring up her past behavior over her crushes. You brought that up all by yourself!"
Alya flinched backwards.
"Um, Alya? She's got a point."
Alya spun around, gaping at the source of the voice—a very sheepish Nino, bumping the tips of his fingers together and avoiding the burning angry gaze of his girlfriend.
"Et tu, Nino?", she asked, offended and hurt.
Nino still avoided Alya's intense gaze, which he could still feel directed at his face, scorching his skin like lasers. "Well, Lila's right there. I didn't wanna say anything, cause I knew that you'd get upset and all, but...what you said back there...about Marinette...it...it was...well, not cool."
"Not cool?", came Kim's sharp tone. "Thar's putting it mildly! Alya, you were a total jerk to Marinette!"
"The things you said about Marinette were so mean!", Rose cried, looking ashamed, equal parts at Alya and at herself for saying such.
"Yeah, it was really horrible of you to smack talk Marinette behind her back like that.", Juleka agreed.
Alya searched the faces of her friends for a little sympathy, but found not a trace of it in any of their expressions.
"Also...", came Nino's voice again, shaky and afraid to approach. "This isn't really the first time you've flown off the handle concerning Marinette. Remember when Lila first got back here, and Marinette tried to tell us about how she found out Lila was a liar? How you pretty much cut her off before she finished telling the story?"
"Hold up!", Alix but into the conversation, stepping forward. "Marinette tried to warn you about Lila, but you cut her off before she finished explaining?"
"She was telling us how she followed Adrien to the park! Not the best way to convince us that her grudge against Lila had nothing to do with jealousy!", Alya defended herself.
"Maybe...but...after a few months...I actually wondered if she may be onto something with Lila.", said Nino, still looking like he was waiting for something awful to happen. "Months passed, and she wasn't letting up on her beef with Lila. I mean, I've known Marinette since...well, since I could remember anything, really. She's not the type of person who holds a grudge this long unless it's for a good reason. I mean, even her beef with Kagami came and went, but it was never as solid as Lila."
"Wait, what?!" The glares were all on Nino now.
"If you had concerns, why didn't you say anything?", asked Alya, raising a brow.
Nino sighed. "Babe...you know I love how passionate you are about things. The way you get all hyped up." He glanced away. "But at the same time...that passion means you're not the easiest person to disagree with. When someone has a different opinion than you, you get all defensive and totally steamroll over them. You just talk over them until they agree with you. You never really listen to their side."
Nino threw up his arms, exasperated, as months worth of frustrations finally came flooding out after being bottled up for so long. "Honestly, it's made us all kind of afraid to say anything we feel that contrasts with what you say because we know you're just gonna talk and insist until we bend! We all pretty much just keep our own opinions to ourselves around you because we don't feel like it's worth the effort! It's easier to just keep our mouths shut and go along with you."
He shoved his hands in his pockets. "So yeah, when Marinette tried to warn us about Lila and you talked over her, I didn't jump in and say what I felt because I knew it was a losing battle, even two against one. I knew you would just talk over us until we both agreed with you."
Alya blinked owlishly at him, looking as if someone had dumped paint on her head, mouth closing and opening like a fish's. For a moment, everyone waited with baited breath for her reaction. And Alya could see the anxiety and fear on their faces as they waited, like they were expecting her to blow up, like a ticking time bomb.
And it sent a cannonball straight through her pride.
"Am...Am I really that bad?", she asked, looking over at the rest of her friends.
The class looked away, twiddling fingers and biting lips and hunching shoulders as they looked anywhere in the room but at Alya.
"Alya...you know we love you...", Mylene began. "But...Nino and Lila have a point. When you get caught up in something, you're not the easiest person to deal with."
"If we're being a hundred percent honest,", Max chimed in, holding up a finger. "The last few times you argued with us on opinions, before we learned to keep those to ourselves, we just lied to you and merely pretended to agree with you because we felt it was pointless and we just wanted the argument to end. Quite frankly, I'm not surprised that Nino didn't express hos own suspicions concerning Lila's honesty, or her lack thereof, to you out of fear of you, as they say, 'steamrolling' over him."
Alya looked closer at her friends, looking like a kicked puppy. "You...You all feel this way?"
"Pretty much."
"Unfortunately, yes."
"Sad, but true."
Alya felt guilt bubbling up inside her.
"And guess what?", came Henri's snide voice. "Turns out, Nino was right. When you got caught by that video, you refused to acknowledge you did anything wrong until Marinette insisted that you should say sorry. And even then, it was a flimsy apology. A half-hearted sorry. You just kept trying to brush off what you said like it was nothing. Even when you're caught red-handed, you refuse to admit that you're wrong about anything." He snorted. "And you wonder why Marinette ditched you."
The shame weighed down in Alya's stomach like a cold stone.
"Enough, Henri!", Adrien spoke up. He wasn't going to give the bad guy any leeway, not this time, least of all Henri LeJerk. "Even if Alya was wrong, that doesn't mean you or Lila were justified in doing what you did to her! Or to any of us! Especially since it turns out you weren't doing it for her like you claimed! You did it for yourself! So you could hoard her like a trophy! She's not a trophy! She's her own person!"
"So? What she doesn't know won't kill her. Besides, we're both getting what we want out of this deal. She wants a ride or die friend who will side with her immediately about everything, and I want a gorgeous, talented, popular high-status girl-candy. It's a win-win."
"Not for Marinette!", shouted Adrien. "Not for her! Not when you're treating her like she's some sort of object that you can just take from other people whenever you feel like it! It's not right! It's not fair! Marinette isn't some shiny medal that you can grab and hold over everyone's heads! She's a person! A person with thoughts and dreams and opinions of her own! You can't just iolate her from other people and hoard her like she's a dollar bill!"
Henri simply rolled his eyes. "I can do whatever I want with her. You all gave up the right to have any say in her lufe the day you all threw her away. You think you guys can just ignore her the way you did and just come back to tell her she can't be with me? Me, the boy who supported her and kept her company while you were all busy licking Lila's boots?"
He raised one eyebrow. "How do you think I was able to get her to trust me so fast? Why do you think Marinette was suddenly so protective of me, so ready to believe that you were all bullying me just like that? It's because you all turned on her! You all showed her how fickle and nasty you can be when you jumped to Lila's defense! After the way you all went from adoring her one day to accusing her the next, after how coldly you all treated her, it wasn't hard for me to convince her that you were capable of bullying me."
Adrien's mouth twisted into a sneer. "Well, if that ain't a load of hypocrisy! You claim to be a true friend to Marinette, but you knew Lila was lying about her and did nothing to help her! If you really cared about Marinette, you would have exposed Lila the moment you knew she was hurting her!"
"Why are you getting so upset, Adrien?", asked Henri, looking falsely innocent. "After all, like you said...her lies weren't hurting anyone."
Adrien's whole body went numb, his blood turning cold as ice at his rival's words. "What...how..."
"That's what you said, right?", asked Henri, his face innocent but his eyes all aglow with sinister glee as he stared Adrien down. "At least, that's what Marinette told me."
"Dude...what is he talking about?", asked Nino, his voice shaking. Adrien looked around to see all his classmates eying him warily, confused, silently demanding answers, save for Lila, who already knew the answer.
"He's talking about how your precious little Adrien knew I was lying from the day I moved to Paris,", she declared, flipping one of her ponytails over her shoulder. "And not only did he decide to not warn any of you, he asked Marinette to back off, too!"
"Shuddup, Liar-la!", snapped Kim. "You think that's gonna work on us? We know that's just another load!"
Henri quirked a brow, smirking. "Is it now? Then why don't you guys ask Adrien why he looks so guilty?"
Every gaze followed the line of direction where his thumb was pointing, falling upon the young Agreste, who had shrunken into himself, hanging his head, staring at his feet, not daring to look any of them in the eye, while anxiously shifting his hands together, remaining silent as stone. They waited for him to speak up, to defend himself, to deny Lila and Henri's words, to tell that no, he had never done such things, never knew about Lila until now, never asked Marinette to just roll over for her.
But he didn't.
Every second that ticked by without him saying anything made the cold realization sink further into the minds of the class, the shock, horror and betrayal manifesting into wide eyes and hanging jaws. Nino and Alya, in particular, looked as if they'd been slapped in the face.
Emotionally, they had been.
"Adrien...you...I... how could you?", croaked Nino, his voice cracking from the despair of being deceived and backstabbed by the boy he had once considered his brother from another mother. He looked like his favorite pet had just up and died suddenly right in front of him.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Alya was boiling over, his face twisting in livid fury. "Nino's right! How COULD you?!?!", she howled in his direction. "After everything we did for you! We took you in! We gave you a chance! We made every effort to include you in our class and in our social circles! We even overlooked your stupid friendship with Chloe!"
"Hey!"
"And after everything we did to be your friend, THIS is how you repay us?!", shouted Alya. "By lying to us?!"
"I didn't lie to you guys!"
"No, no, you just stood by and let other people do that.", scoffed Nathaneal. "God, I knew you were a doormat, Adrien, with the way you always vouched for Chloe, but this? This is a whole new low, even for you!"
"I didn't think it was such a big deal—"
"Not a big deal?!", barked Alix. "So Lila strings us along with fake promises and disabilities to get us to do her favors, and you don't think it's a big deal!"
"I thought she was just lying to fit in!", Adrien protested. "They were just stories about herself! I never thought she was hurting anyone!"
"Not even Marinette?", asked Rose in a small voice. She looked even more heartbroken and betrayed than when Henri had broken her glass dove.
"Exactly! You didn't think Marinette was getting hurt when Lila got her kicked out of her seat and made her look bad in front of all of us?", asked Ivan cynically.
Adrien frowned. "To be fair, you guys are the ones who kicked her to the back, not Lila."
"That's besides the point, Adrien!", shouted Alya, stomping her foot. "The point is, you saw firsthand how Lila's lies were hurting Marinette! It was the perfect time for you speak up and vouch for Marinette's claims that she was faking! But you didn't!"
"I didn't think embarassing her would solve anything!", Adrien pleaded. "I just thought she'd become bitter and angry! I didn't want to be mean and get her akumatized."
"What about Marinette?!", cried Mylene. "Were you not worried about her getting akumatized because of getting embarrassed in front of the class?"
"Marinette's always been so resilient.", Adrien explained. "I thought it would take more than one bad moment and a crazy story to get her upset enough to get akumatized."
"Okay, putting Marinette aside,", said Max calmly, his tone bordering on cold. "What about the rest of us? Were you not worried about any of us getting akumatized when she failed to deliver on any of her promises to hook us up with her 'celebrity connections'? Did it ever occur to you to warn us, if for nothing else, than to save us from the inevitable disappointment of having our hopes destroyed?"
"I thought she was just trying to make friends."
"Oh, right, because bragging about stuff you never did and promises you never intend to keep is such a solid foundation for friendship.", Alya drawled put sarcastically, rolling her eyes as she did. "You know what is a solid foundation for friendship? Telling your friends when they're being lied to!"
Nino shook his head. "I cannot believe you, dude. You're-You're no better than than Henri!"
Okay. That seriously hurt. Especially when the rest of them murmered in agreement. Especially when Henri smiled wider in response to that remark.
"I'm not like him at all!"
"But you did the exact same thing he did! You kept Lila's lies a secret and let her hurt Marinette because it was convenient for you! Because who cares about Marinette, as long as you stay out of the line of fire, right? No, everyone else was getting hurt by you, so it was perfectly okay for you just sit back and enjoy the show while she broke all of us like toys!"
"That's not true!", cried Adrien. "I—"
"Save it, Agreste!", snapped Alya. "I don't wanna hear it! I don't care what you have to say anymore! Not now that I know you never cared about us! Especially not Marinette! I mean, you say she's important you say you care about her, you say she's our everyday Ladybug—and then you turn around and allow some liar to hurt her! It's like—did you mean anything you said on Heroes Day? All those wonderful things you said about her? Or were they just like Lila's stories? Were they all just lies?"
She shook her head. "You're just like Henri LeRoi—a selfish, backstabbing liar who just pretends to be someone's friend to use them, and doesn't give two tater tots what happens to anybody else, as long as you can get what you want. Heck, this whole thing with Henri is your fault! If you had spoken up sooner, we could have avoided this whole mess!"
Adrien frowned. "I messed up, sure, but you guys aren't blameless!", he shot back, pointing at Alya. "Henri is a jerk, and I hate him, but he's not wrong that you ignored Marinette when she tried to warn you about Lila!"
"Oh, don't you dare pull that card, Agreste!", Alya retorted, pointing right back at him. "Don't compare yourself to us! I may have made a mistake, but I really thought Lila was innocent! If I had known the truth sooner, like you did, I would done anything and everything in my power to help her expose Lila! I never would have cut her loose and left her to the wolves the way you did!"
Her eyes teared up, and she removed her glasses to wipe them dry. Nino patted his girlfriend's should sympathetically, then lifted his head back up to openly glare at Adrien. "I can't believe Marinette ever loved you. I can't believe we ever wanted you two to be together."
"First Adrien, now Henri.", scoffed Chloe sourly. "I guess Dupain-Cheng is a pretty bad judge of character when it comes to boyfriends."
"Or maybe she has a preference for jerks who only pretend to be sweet and kind.", remarked Sabrina.
"To be fair, that would require her to know that the boy was merely pretending when she fell for him.", pointed out Max.
Henri's malicious chuckle drew everyone's attention. "Look at yourselves...hypocrites, all of you. You accuse me of treating Marinette badly and using her for my own gain, and yet every single one of you is guilty of hurting her in some way. Whether it was outright bullying her, or brushing her off as a jealous harpy, or enabling the people who were making her miserable, each and every person in this room has wronged her in one way." He shook his head as he descended the stairs. "The difference between is, at least Lila and Chloe and I knew what we were doing to her was wrong. We just didn't care. The rest of you, on the other hand, were dumb enough to believe that what you did wasn't hurting her."
He stopped just putside the door and looked ay the class with a smirk. "It really begs the question...am I really the villain here? Or am I just the lesser of the two evils?"
And with that, he walked put the door with his head held high.
The clashing sounds of his enemies' enraged shouts that followed his exit filled him with a euphoric glee.
Even more so that they weren't directed at him.
All that anger was for Adrien.