Marinette immediately opened the door with the key gina gave her as soon as steven drove off with the others. She walked inside and into the dark foyer, where gina immediately shot out of her seat on the couch as she ran over to her granddaughter.
"Marinetta, where have you been?" she immediately chose to ask, inching closer to the girl in concern. "Thank gods you made it home when you did or I would've lost my mind."
"I'm so sorry, granny, really," mari was quick to apologise. "I... I know I have no excuse, but I was studying at the library with some friends I just made today and...i lost track of time."
Gina nodded with understanding-her hands later reaching to her shoulders. "It's alright, leetle fairy..." she said. "But when you stay out-at least promise to me that you check in with me."
Mari unanimously nodded at the deal gently, and noiselessly escorted herself right up to her room without a second thought.
However, an overwhelming storm of thoughts constantly ran through her head as she walked upstairs.
Being a part of a coven was really the farthest thing she wanted to be. After all she went through, she just really wanted to be normal and that was her main desire-even though back in paris it had been so insufferably difficult for her, loosing her friends and parents to a bully that constantly torments her every chance her and her posse would get, and even going so far as to resolve to take her own life one point in time when the stress of the situation immediately overcame and got the best of her.
Was this really the fate that was going to become of her tumultuous life now?
The strong smell of cigarette ashes filled the normally numb air of steven's eerily silent room as the owner of the room in question dragged on a cigarette, his face a storm of emotions under his thick brows: nervousness and anger at the situation he went through with the others earlier. Light had since left his eyes long ago as his look was hard and cold, pointed up to the ceiling as he immersed himself in his thoughts.
Steven didn't want to believe it, not for a second-what if the other girls were right? What if marinette was really the fifth? This would've left steven to realise that he made a grave mistake in driving her away the way he did.
A long puff of smoke emerging from steven's lips and he pulled the cigarette away from his mouth, eyebrows furrowed at the thought. Who even cares about that pathetic goody-goody anyway? After all-he could see that she had no interest but to just belong somewhere either way. She was never qualified to devote herself to their makeshift coven either way.
Steven slightly sat up to take another drag, leaning back on his headboard.
The next morning eventually came, morning rituals before school came and went, where marinette found herself early for class once again.
A sparkly open notebook along with a larger textbook both sat atop her desk as she immediately resolved to get a jump on her homework to pass the time.
Steven, connie, sabrina and darcy suddenly arrived before her desk which startled the blunette, she was too immersed in studying to ever even notice them.
"Care to explain why everyone here's talking mad shit about you?" steven's arms were crossed levelling the small girl with an unreadable stare that expectedly didn't put marinette in ease.
Marinette's passive look dropped as she seemed to not know how to comprehend steven's sentence. The silence wasn't the only thing she noticed as she carefully examined the sad looks on darcy and connie's face, and the looks steven and sabrina shared-serious, grave-looking ones, that intimidated marinette a little.
"What do you mean?" she asked him.
"Marinette..." darcy said silently to her.
"Come one folks-let's take this outside." sabrina recommends.
The group later met out back. A feeling of dread and confusion filled marinette as she walked with the others as they followed steven.
"What's going on?" It was clear that the blunette wanted answers, and she wanted them now.
"There's this...concerning rumour....word got out that you've been...sleeping around." Darcy explained carefully.
A stab of adrenaline was taken to marinette's heart as her face immediately paled at that, where the feeling of dread magnified and spread to all over her body. Sweating bullets, she directly tried to speak up, trying to address this sudden accusation either way.
"I don't know where this is coming from?" she spat out immediately.
Steven's eyes simply shined ominously, as he proceeded to be the one to press the details of the damaging rumour further.
"There's this student who claimed that she knows you back in France....because she went around the whole school earlier this morning claiming that you stole her boyfriend away from her."
Her heart wrenched with utter shock-not by what the new student had told everyone, but the fact that she knew her identity. She felt like she was trapped into a living nightmare.
She later found her eyes pointed over to a duet of girls standing near the school, and immediately lost feeling in her body as she was met with flashbacks the second she glanced over to them; one was a girl of primarily Italian descent and with sausage-like hair, where another was a bespectacled darker-skinned girl with ombre hair, along with a bunch of other girls-no one could see the enraged look on darcy's cherubic face and she looked to a girl with a high ponytail flanking a fairly short one with auburn hair and a bow headband to accessorize.
The look the Italian girl branded into mari's soul had screamed of pure evil in the form of a shit-eating smirk and marinette immediately felt like throwing up the second she even bared to look at it.
"I think that's the prime suspect ogling you with four-eyes over there." Steven reminded.
Clutching onto the blazer of her recently retrieved uniform, all the blood rushed up to mari's head, in a way that made her feel feverish by the moment. She immediately retreated from the coven alone and headed straight to where no one would see her-which was a secluded area inside the school.
She kept walking and walking down further to try to be alone, until-
"Miss me?" a voice said.
Marinette stiffened by the voice in particular and turned around. There stood lila along with the rest of her little posse. She could see that alya wasn't around at the moment.
"What do you want from me?" the blunette asked her as she stood before her, eyes guarded as she eyes the group-particularly a smug lila.
"Seeing as I was told that it was you who started that rumour about me, I guess I'm not really surprised."
Lila's smirk grew wider with that, shrugging as soon as marinette vocally put two and two together in front of her. "So you think you've got me all figured out on that like before?" she said. "Yeah, I did it-and I have to admit-it's really fun riling you up the way I always do."
"Any particular reason why?'
"That didn't explain much for you?" Lila said. She stepped closer to the blunette in a menacing distance-particularly with them both nose to nose. "I've said it before and I'll say it again. It was fun. Making you suffer is pleasing for me. Just keep in mind that even though we're in a much different school in a much more different state-whatever you try to say against me, I'll gladly deny. Thanks to me-you're slowly becoming the biggest shame of this school. They won't believe you, especially those freaks you talked to earlier."
Marinette immediately leapt out of her shocked state-and seethed at the brunette with rage.
"Why can't you just leave me alone already lila?" she spat. "You already got what you've wanted from me-so just what more could you possibly want now? What will it ever take for you to get off my back for once?"
The last sentence managed to fully pique lila's interest where she innocently batted her eyelashes at the blunette before her.
"Oh honey, that's not compared to how much i'll how to officially make your life hell for you." Her ever so menacing smirk interlocked to marinette's cerulean eyes, up to a point. "What I did to you back in paris was only just the beginning. Nothing will ever prepare for what I'm about to do with you as soon as I get settled in-so get ready for it."
The blunette's blood boiled at the smug looks lila and the others collectively gave her. Lila took it to mean that her adversary had not a single to say against that, leaving the sausage-haired girl considering to herself that her work here was done and over with.
Lila simply motioned for her group of sycophants to leave, where the group later disappeared at the hall. She pushed past marinette, who's eyes were filled with tears as they unexpectedly proceeded to accumulate at the corners.
Marinette stared into space as lila and her posse left her behind, leaning to the metal lockers as her vision blurred before her considerably.
Again.
It's happening again.