[A/N:
You guys seeing the title: smolhat no
me, smiling brightly: smolhat yes]

She does not have it under control.

Marinette has it under control for approximately eighteen hours. Not even a full day. ChatNoir leaves a bit after lunchtime, and it's only nine in the morning when she walks into class, feeling happy with the recent episode, that she's alerted to the fact that no, she does not have this under control in any way, shape or form.

"My god," she says, immediately upon entering the room. "Alya, what's wrong?"

She's sitting in Adrien's seat - his dad took him out of school for two days to see his cousin in England - and Nino's got his arm around her.

"I'm fine," Alya says, stubborn as ever, even though she's clearly been crying. "Seriously, I'm okay."

Marinette would have laughed, if it wasn't her tough-as-nails best friend in tears.

"Nino, what's happened?"

Nino sighs heavily, but Alya swats him before he can tell her.

"I'm fine, honest!" she persists.

"LadyBug messaged her -" Nino interrupts, and Alya hits him as she starts crying again. But that's enough information to tell Marinette that something is very wrong.

"I always send her a message to congratulate her on the new chapter," Alya says, apparently deciding that Nino's let the cat out of the bag anyway, "because some people are horrid, and I think she should know that it's making someone happy. I've been doing it since Season 1 was first released, which is why she made me Lady WiFi and Trixx."

This, Marinette already knows. Alya sighs, and she nods understandingly to prompt her to continue.

"But... she sent me a message after Bakerix. It was vicious, Marinette, it was horrible."

"Seriously?" Marinette asks, but the cogs in her brain are whirring at double the speed. She loves Alya's messages, for the exact reason that Alya had just said. There was no way she'd ever send a malicious message to anyone, let alone her best friend and number one fan. "Can I see?"

"I guess," Alya says, pulling out her phone and opening Miraculous. She hands it to Marinette, who can see the messages for herself.

Marinette gasps aloud at what she sees. It's vile.

RenaRouge: hey ladybug, loved bakerix!! this season's been the best one yet, can't wait to see how it ends!!

LadyBug: can you shut up? your constant messages aren't cute or endearing. they're annoying. i was HOPING if i entertained you by making you an akuma and a kwami you'd get the message, but nope! you continue to pester me. i've dealt with it up until now, but i don't want the finale i've been waiting for for over a year to be ruined by your constant, annoying messages :)

Marinette just stares. She didn't send that. She'd never even think of sending anything like that. She loves Alya's messages. It isn't an episode of TP until RenaRouge congratulates her, telling her how much she loved the episode and how she's eager for the next one.

Her ending won't be ruined with messages from fans.

It isn't her ending at all. It's her fan's ending.

She has worked on this for over a year, and she doesn't quite know when it stopped being hers. In theory, it belongs to her and ChatNoir, but it truly belongs to the fans who refuse to let her stop writing. It belongs to every person who believes that the tiny comic she doodled in her bedroom had promise, that she could make it go places and take off. That it could inspire people. That it meant as much to the fans as it did to her.

Maybe it meant more.

And they deserved a spectacular ending - an ending they hadn't seen coming, that explained things deliberately added in and left out.

She would never do this.

"Yeah, I know," Alya says bitterly, taking the phone back and apparently not noticing Marinette's world crashing around her. "Two seasons, and she suddenly explodes on me. Would it have hurt her to just wait until she finished? Or say it nicely, at least?"

Words of protest, of defence, are on the tips of Marinette's tongue, before she realises that she can make no defence. She can't explain that those words aren't LadyBug's, because Marinette shouldn't know that.

But the distraught look on Alya's face makes her want to confess then and there, to tell her that her idol did not write or mean those words, that Marinette adores those messages of encouragement more than words can say.

"I thought she liked them."

Those words alone crush her.

Marinette desperately wants to deal with this situation immediately. Find out what the situation even is. But, of course, Alya comes first. Yes, she has responsibilities as LadyBug to deal with whatever's going on, but Alya needs Marinette first. She stays by her side the whole day, and it's that evening that Marinette is sitting in front of her laptop, finding the extent of the damage.

It's a disaster. An absolute mess. Someone's gone through every single one of her hundreds of messages, perfectly insulting every single one of her fans. And whoever it is has done it so passive-aggressively that it seems like it really could be her.

It isn't. She'd never do this to her fans. She loves her fans, every single one of them. When she posts an episode, their positive encouragement makes her glow inside.

She's going to miss them when the comic ends.

And then another, dreadful thought enters her head.

If this person has access to her messages, they have access to her comic.

She opens The Adventures of Tikki and Plagg, and the temporary relief she finds when all the episodes are where she left them is quickly erased. ChatNoir's been removed from the comic, and the latest episode isn't Bakerix.

Ladybug.

Another thought hits her. Have they gone through her other messages? Have they found the spoilers for the end of the series in her messages to ChatNoir? Has she gone through her messages to Viperion and...

Oh god. The most recent message.

no problem, marinette. can't wait for the next episode

This hacker knows her real name. This hacker could destroy TP forever, just by making a new chapter with the spoilers and her first name. Everyone in real life would know that it was her - how many Marinettes are there in Paris? Particularly ones who know Alya, Nino and Chloe.

She can almost feel the world crashing down around her ears.

Okay. She's had school all day, and, presumably, so has the hacker. That's why they haven't done much damage. But everything could happen from now.

She opens The Adventures of Tikki and Plagg, adds ChatNoir to the comic, and removes herself, before going into her messages and, before she can change her mind, she clicks her conversation with ChatNoir, goes into Settings, and clicks Delete.

It disappears before her eyes. Everything she's ever sent to ChatNoir, gone in a blink.

She knows she hasn't lost ChatNoir. It's stupid, really, but she misses their banter. The conversations she's had with him, not that she ever rereads them, but she might.

It just feels like a piece of her has been deleted.

She does the same with Viperion's messages, and takes a deep breath. She's got this under control. She can manage this.

ChatNoir's name pops up in her messages, and she's suddenly paranoid that it didn't delete, before she realises that it's a sent message. A message sent to ChatNoir, but not by her.

LadyBug: Hey ChatNoir! I accidentally deleted our conversation and want to start drawing the next episode. Can you resend me the episode plan?

He's going away. He's going away for several days and he won't be on Miraculous. She can contain this situation.

He replies.

ChatNoir: go away, hacker.

[A/N: blame my beta readers for not talking me out of this.]