Work Text:
“This is your fault, Audrey! She acts exactly like you when you’re jet lagged and caffeine deprived. She definitely got it from you.”
“Excuse me?” Audrey delicately slams her iced mocha down on the imported Rosewood table. “She got it from me? I’m not the one whose name Chloe has dropped in every one of her little school fights.”
“I just don’t understand.” Gianna Rossi nurses her head in her hand. The whiskey that was delivered to her didn’t have the opportunity for water to condense on the sides, so the table remains free of stains. “How did Lila end up this way? I’ve always tried to lead by example, and I spend as much time with her as I can!”
Audrey pats Gianna’s forearm with a gloved hand. “Maybe it’s just teenage rebellion, darling.”
“I wish,” Gianna says, glumly. “Do you think it’s because she grew up without one of her parents?”
“Nonsense,” Andre waves his hand, still wearing the pretentious ribbon that proclaims he is the mayor of Paris. “Chloe grew up with a mother, and she turned out exactly the same way.”
He mutters more quietly, “Though a mother that was gone so often she might as well not have even been there.”
Audrey smacks Andre on the arm. “You know very well that you were gone more often when she was a baby. We agreed that we would rotate focusing on our careers every few years.”
“Yes, honey, but I’ve been on Chloe duty for the past eight years. You only took care of her when she was a toddler.”
“Who was the one who had to change diapers Andre? The one who woke up at 3 AM to feed her? The one who taught her the goddamn alphabet? Tell me that, Andre, tell me that.”
Gianna motions for another drink to be brought over by the butler that Andre and Audrey employ. Audrey holds up a hand and shakes her head. “Don’t do it, Gianna. It’s almost 4:30. School is going to get out soon.”
Pressing her head up against the lacquered wood, Gianna sighs. “All the more reason for me to drink.”
“You don’t want to be inebriated when you have to deal with Lila, do you?”
“I do,” Gianna wails. “I have to be! Do you know that Lila makes me drink more than my job does? And I’m the one who has to file all of those awful akuma attacks that always end up targeting Italian tourists because some people are still not over what we did in World War II!”
“Italy did do a lot of awful things back then,” Andre mutters.
“Shut it! Whether it’s right or wrong, one akuma attack out of every twenty five deals specifically with the prejudice against Italy. Italian tourists get caught up in seven attacks out ten. I’ve had to issue so many incident reports that I think I’m going to get carpal tunnel soon.”
“I can’t believe you have the statistics on those.”
Gianna’s voice shoots up two octaves. “You’re the mayor of Paris. Shouldn’t you be keeping track of statistics like these?”
“Ah,” Andre laughs awkwardly. “Of course I am. But back on topic. Who do you think it’s going to be this time? Chloe or Lila?”
A moment of silence. Then, in tandem, all three of their phones buzz.
“You just had to jinx it, didn’t you, Andre?” Audrey pulls out a pocket mirror, reapplies her lipstick, then stands. “Let’s go see what our girls did this time, non?”
Placing her sunglasses over her eyes, Audrey continues, “A hundred euros that the Dupain-Cheng girl will be one of their targets.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, honey. That girl has too much of a spine for either of them to get her involved.”
Gianna sobs for the umpteenth time that afternoon. “If Lila was just a little bit more like Marinette, so many of my problems would be relieved! Do you think if I pay her enough, she’ll be friends with my daughter?”
Audrey and Andre exchange glasses. Andre shakes his head. “Friendship won’t work. We tried to get our Chloe to play with Adrien. He’s still as well-mannered as ever, but Chloe… In any case, I’ll raise your hundred euro bet to one fifty and say that Sabrina will be involved.”
“That’s no fun,” Audrey complains. “You always take the obvious bets.”
The three parents make their way to Andre’s limo. Gianna may or may not take two shots of vodka on her way there.
#
“Chloekins!” Andre stretches his arms out to his daughter. His bad knee pops twice as he gets down to kneel.
“I don’t know why he insists on playing good cop bad cop when it hasn’t worked once in the past five years,” Audrey says to Gianna.
“At least you have a significant other to make that work. I have to be the good cop and the bad cop, all in one person, and it hasn’t worked ever. Maybe I should try looking for other single parents. Adrien’s father is single, right? And Adrien is such a sweetheart. Maybe I should try--”
Audrey waves her clutch slightly in the air to cut her off. “Trust me when I say that is an awful idea. Not only does the man still believe Emilie is alive, but he also keeps an obscene amount of iconography of her in his bedroom in his manor. And even if he somehow gets over Emilie, wish isn’t going to happen anytime soon, that snake, Nathalie, has been waiting in the wings even before Adrien was born.”
Gianna’s shoulders slump. “I thought ‘the good ones are all taken’ is only a phrase that’s supposed to be used by students.”
“Daddy!” Chloe stomped her foot. “I demand that you deport this-- this miscreant from Paris at once!”
“Daddy’s so proud of you for learning a new big word.” Andre continues to fawn over his daughter while Chloe and Lila’s classmates look on disgustedly at the dual display of affection and undermining Chloe’s intelligence. Nino lets out something that sounds suspiciously like, “Sick burn, dude.”
“Daddy!” Chloe’s voice gets even higher, and Audrey counts at least five of Chloe’s classmates cover their ears and wince. Andre glances back at Audrey, clearly expecting her to come in and lay down the law. Audrey doesn’t even bother raising an eyebrow in disbelief, She just stays completely still until her husband gets the point and turns back to their daughter, shoulders slumped.
“Sweetheart, we can’t just deport Lila for no reason,” Andre tries to placate Chloe, unsuccessfully. Somehow, the classmates and the teacher have gotten a hold of popcorn, and are now sharing it amongst themselves.
“I told you. It’s not for no reason. It’s because she’s a miscreant!”
Andre falters. He’s always given into Chloe’s demands, and Audrey has always been the one to fix things after. He gives in. “Okay, sweetheart. Then we can--”
“Hold on.” Gianna steps in between Andre and Chloe. Audrey smells alcohol coming from her mouth. Gianna’s cheeks are slightly pink. Audrey, herself, doesn’t believe in midday drinking, or really, drinking at all-- she thinks that it ruins skin and that inebriated people simply aren’t attractive-- but perhaps if Audrey wasn’t so involved in the fashion world, she’d be a little more similar to Mme. Rossi. “How about we hear both sides of the story before deciding what needs to be done?”
Lila and Chloe lock eyes, then immediately turn away with each other, crossing their arms at the exact same time. If Audrey didn’t remember every detail of Chloe’s birth because it was so painful, she’d be inclined to believe that the two girls were twins, or siblings at the very least. They’re just too similar in their mannerisms to believe that they’re completely unrelated.
Fluttering her eyelashes and playing up the image of a false saint that precisely nobody in the school believes anymore, Lila, looks at Andre and Gianna through watery eyes. “Chloe was bullying people! I simply had to intervene.”
“That’s not true! She was the one who started it!”
Gianna sighs. If she were any less of a woman, she would immediately buckle to the ground. But she’s been dealing with the Italian-Parisian politics, which are often fraught with tension, for nearly three decades, and with one Lila Rossi for thirteen years. “Why don’t we hear from an impartial third party?”
The three parents turn on the rest of the classroom. Sometime during the chaos, Caline Bustier fainted, and was promptly escorted to the nurse’s office by Mylene and Ivan. No matter. Caline isn’t the most… impartial or intelligent person they have to choose from. Audrey does feel slightly responsible for her lack of intelligence, as Chloe beaned Caline in the head with objects of various size and weight throughout Ecole, which is why the woman isn’t out of a job.
“Marinette and Adrien. Why don’t the two of you tell us what happened?” Audrey points at the two teens that are whispering to each other. They certainly have an interesting dynamic. If Marinette was taller, she’d love to have the two of them model for some of her shoots, together. No matter. She still has time to grow, and she has it on good word that Sabine is doing all she can to make sure her daughter grows to at least Tom’s height.
Chloe gasps. “You remember Maritrash’s name, but not mine?”
Beneath her sunglasses, Audrey rolls her eyes. Really, she makes one attempt at the younger generation’s humor, and it backfires on her horribly. She fired the intern who recommended that joke to her, so there’s really nothing more to be done. This is why it’s just so much easier to be harsh.
Luckily, Adrien deescalates the situation before Chloe starts on a second tangent that will likely end in tears instead of a fit of rage. Audrey wonders if she’s really that emotional when she’s jetlagged and in need of a pick-me-up. She’ll have to ask her assistant, next time.
“Well, it really started as two separate issues at first.” Adrien rubs the back of his head and looks down at his feet. Maybe there’s a tradeoff. Indiscriminate rage in exchange for common sense. Confidence exchanged for timidity. “Chloe was… upset because she didn’t get a perfect on the last assignment Sabrina submitted for her.”
Audrey rolls her eyes again. What, there’s a reason she wears sunglasses everywhere she goes. She simply can’t deal with people’s stupidity, or when people make clearly exaggerated-- or in this case, very, very, almost criminally under exaggerated, judging by the bruises forming on Sabrina’s knees-- claims.
“And Lila was spinning another lie about Jagged Stone to Nino. Something about her being his lovechild,” Marinette finished. Now there’s a girl who has confidence, is more than confident at her craft, and is pretty. Really, the only negative things that she’s heard about the girl is that she’s sort of a clutz and rather bad at getting places on time, but both of those can be remedied. Etiquette class and a personal driver, and everything will be fixed.
There’s also the small matter about her apparently having the capability of picking locks and hyper fixating on whatever she likes, but Audrey has been trapped by men trying to get a ransom from Andre at least four separate times, and she wouldn’t be here today if she wasn’t a bit of a daredevil of lycee. As for the hyperfixation, so long as she’s able to move onto a new area of interest in time for each new collection, Audrey sees no reason why Marinette can’t excel in the fashion world.
“Lila Rossi! You know you are not the daughter of Jagged Stone! You’re going to be grounded for two weeks!”
Marinette nudges Adrien. “Excuse me, Mme. Rossi. Why don’t we finish the whole story before issuing any punishments? There’s… more.”
Adrien is associated with that good boy next door kind of aesthetic, but he pulls off unintentionally mildly ominous like he was born to do so.
“The short of it is that Chloe pushed Sabrina, Sabrina fell onto Lila, and that made Lila and Nino kiss. After that,” Marinette eyes Nino, who is wiping his mouth with his eighth wet wipe and being soothed by Alya with an arm on his shoulder. “Well, things kind of devolved from there.”
“You mean,” Chloe hisses. “That this wannabe pulled my hair, scratched my face, and knocked me to the ground!”
“You made me bleed!” Lila pulls her sleeve up. There aren’t actually any marks, but there aren’t any marks on Chloe, either.
“They did roll around on the floor for a while,” Alya admits, “But both of them were so up in each other’s business that it's difficult to make out who actually landed a hit on who, if either of them did manage to hurt each other. I have the footage, but even after we watched it a few times, it really just looks like the two of them are bear hugging each other on the floor.”
“Are you guys forgetting the real victims here?” Kim half shouts. “My beautiful face!”
Alix slaps him on the back. “Don’t worry about it. If it scars, it’ll just make you look mysterious. If it doesn’t… well I can’t say that your looks were ever good to begin with.”
Sabrina shuffles her feet. She’s definitely less injured than Kim’s nail scratches, with only bruising on one arm and on both of her knees.
“Chloe didn’t do anything bad,” she defends. “She’s perfect just the way she is!”
“That’s right, servant.”
Marinette turns to Adrien with a question in her eyes. He nods.
She bangs her head against his shoulder.
“Sorry about that, Chloe’s voice just really grates on me sometimes. I need to knock my head in order to get the ringing to stop.”
Lila shoots a smug look at the blonde girl. “See?”
“Lila’s too,” Marinette says, then bangs her head against Adrien’s shoulder one more time for good measure. “Adrien, Alya, do either of you want to continue?”
Adrien pulls Marinette into his chest. Alya steps forwards as the Champion of the Truth. “After their catfight, Kim and Sabrina broke them up. Sabrina took Chloe, Kim took Lila. After the two of them were separated, Mlle. Bustier went to M. Damocle’s office so all three of you were contacted. Chloe tried to go at Lila again once Sabrina loosened her hold, but Marinette geupplexed her.”
“Seriously,” Marinette stares at Chloe’s completely unruffled appearance. “What kind of hairspray does Chloe even use? Her hair is made of steel.”
“Her hairspray is made from venom and spite, dude.”
The tell tale sirens of a police car approach. “Oh, by the way, did M. Damocles not tell you that the police were going to take both of them in for questioning?”
“No,” Gianna Rossi says, curling in on herself. “No, he most definitely did not.”
Chloe and Lila are led away in handcuffs while the parents stand in a group, almost numbly.
“Why are our children like this?” Gianna pulls her hair. She’s had to take off so much time from her job this month alone in order to accommodate Lila’s ridiculous behaviors.
“Be comforted by the fact that they’re not working together. Can you imagine the kind of plans they’d think up?”
“Actually,” Alya interjects. “They have. Were you never contacted for the time they sent Marinette flying out the window?”
“WHAT?”