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Kindness doesn’t come easy to her.
It should, she thinks. It does for her classmates, for her father, for Sabrina and Adrien.
Rose and Marinette are kind without ever putting in any visible effort, in a way that makes Chloé’s mind itch. It comes easily to them. It must. They’re not like her, where it’s a struggle to hand out a compliment that doesn’t have barbs in it.
It’s probably not supposed to take an effort to be kind, whispers in the back of her mind. The voice sounds a little like Adrien, but mostly like her butler. Sometimes it sounds faintly like her dad.
It never sounds like her mom.
Chloé tries to be kind, and she can’t do it. She tries to be a hero instead, and she can’t do that, either.
She tries, and she fails, and she stops trying, because what use is it to try when she always fails? There’s no reward for this. There’s no gold at the end of the rainbow. All there is at the end of the rainbow is more rain.
“Chloé?” Sabrina offers her something in her clenched fist. “I, uh, I got us tickets to go see that movie you mentioned…” She trails off, looking at Chloé with something that Chloé tries hard to pretend isn’t apprehension. Isn’t fear.
It’s an expression Chloé’s intimately familiar with. It’s an expression she feels when she’s trying to talk to her mother.
“Ridiculous,” Chloé finds herself saying, even as she screams at herself internally to stop, to just accept the tickets and go.
(“I made you this, Mom!”
“Oh, a pot. You do know, of course, that we can’t possibly display it with the Dragon and Lotus vase? Such shoddy workmanship would tarnish its lustre. It would reflect badly on us.”
“Mom, I wrote this for you-”
“Not now, I’m busy. Leave it with the butler.”
“Mom? Can I show you something?”
“Can’t you see I’m in a hurry? Why would you waste my time on something so frivolous?” )
“Are you sure, Chloé?” Sabrina shifts her weight back, looking from Chloé to the tickets anxiously. “I didn’t think you wanted to go with the others.”
She hadn’t known the others were going. They’d stopped inviting her after one too many sharp rebukes.
They probably wouldn’t think that she wanted to go with them.
Kindness gets you hurt. Chloé knows that. She sees it in Adrien, every day. She takes advantage of it in Adrien without quite knowing how to stop. She doesn’t know how else to make sure she doesn’t lose her first friend. She doesn’t know how she hasn’t already lost him.
He’d needed to meet their classmates. They’ve never helped her, and deep down (really deep down), she can’t blame them for it, but that doesn’t mean they can’t help him.
Maybe. They’ve never helped Sabrina, either.
It’s not a good idea for Chloé to befriend people pleasers. It never was.
But she’s never learned how to keep anyone else.
(“You’re going to New York? How long will you be gone?”
“What does that concern you? I’ll be there as long as I need to be there.”)
“I said it was ridiculous,” Chloé forces out, her heart stuttering erratically as she tries, tries, to find the words. The right words, the ones that keep people close instead of pushing them away. Adrien would know them. Marinette would know them, or Rose would, or Sabrina herself. Chloé doesn’t. If she ever did, she can’t remember them now.
Sabrina’s lowering the tickets, her eyes turned away. Chloé doesn’t have to see her expression to know what it is.
Chloé breathes in, holds it, breathes out. “I said it was ridiculous. I didn’t say I wouldn’t go.”