BEFORE

EVERYONE LIES.

Lila had the privilege of learning that fact earlier than other children her age. Her mother, a powerful diplomat, often wedged between more powerful men with fat wallets and fatter weapons arsenals, lied constantly to keep the world in peacetime. Trade deals, strategic alliances, diplomacy—all lies that humanity depended on for its safety.

Then there were everyday lies—that dress looks great; I didn't see that text until now—and lies as a lifestyle—my big break awaits in Los Angeles, just you wait—and lies holding together families—I still love you. On the continuum from total destructive honesty to total destructive dishonesty, life was just a slider. (Thank goodness Lila also had laxer moral limits than other children her age. Her life would have been much less fun without it.)

Growing up, her mother was absent. Either she was in another country entirely, or she was leaving their hotel rooms or embassy suites early every morning to respond to ceaseless diplomatic crises. Through her, Lila met politicians, actors, oil barons, and she quickly learned how to construct the prettiest, most charming lies. She learned etiquette, banter, flirting, warfare—and very quickly, lies lost their taste on the tip of her tongue. After all, words were all tools; what was the difference if she believed one to be true or not? Maybe she believed all of them. Maybe she believed none of them.

In all her wide travels, Lila had never met her equal. No-one who understood her, or even had the capacity to do it. Then she met Adrien Agreste. He was like her. He was raised by a single parent, after the tragic early death of another. He ran in all the same elite circles. He was popular, beautiful, intelligent, and talented like herself. When she peered very closely at him, she felt that he was a liar, too. He laughed at all the right jokes in all the right ways, he spoke of his future plans like he was reading from a script, and he charmed every person he met. Most importantly, no-one else in his life seemed to sense this curated quality about him. They would be the only two in the world to truly see each other.

Finally, an equal in every way that mattered.

Lila fell rapidly in love, and she wanted desperately for him to love her back. After Adrien loved her, then she would crack him open and discover the secrets he kept guarded underneath his porcelain exterior.

A balmy afternoon. She and Adrien, talking in Places Des Vosges. Everything had been perfect. She knew Adrien was fascinated with superheroes, that he had an inner world kept away from the rest of their cohort. Volpina could have been their special space, a fantasy that would bring magic to both their mundane and suffocating lives.

Then Ladybug interferred.

The heroine seemed to literally fall from the sky, landing in front of the park bench in red and black.

"Well, hey, Lila. How's it going? Long time, no see," she greeted, a glint of something devious in her blue eyes. "I saw your interview on the Ladyblog. Awesome job."

Lila tried to defend herself, but she couldn't say anything with Adrien next to her. Her words, her only weapons, wouldn't come.

Ladybug planted her foot on the bench, right between Lila and Adrien and leaned her face down with a sneer. "Oh, sure, I remember our instant connection when I saved your life, and we've been really good friend ever since. Practically BFFs." Then she faked confusion and scratched her head. "Actually, when did I save your life again, Lila? I don't recall. Oh, yes. Of course. Now I remember. Never!"

It felt like someone reached a fist into the young woman's chest, deftly manoeuvring their fingers into the space between both ribcages, grabbing her windpipe and squeezing. Squeezing hard. Squeezing to kill her.

"And we're not friends, either." Ladybug turned to Adrien, smug. "Miss Show-Off here was trying to impress you and everyone around her."

Shame crawled up the back of her neck, embarrassment like a putrid layer of hot oil. Lila hated feeling stupid. All these years she'd been building her social intelligence increment by increment. She wasn't born a genius, she was simply born with eyes that watched and ears that listened, a mouth that could strum sweet melodies. Everything else—her manipulations, her position at the top of any given social ladder—was hard-won. She fought for her popularity. She had snatched the love of the people around her.

Who was Ladybug to take it away from her, to topple her?

Adrien turned to Lila, eyes wide, stunned and disappointed. "So, I'm guessing you're not a descendant of a superhero, either?"

Ladybug snorted. "She's more like a super-liar."

Tears poured from Lila's eyes. She pushed herself from the bench and sprinted away as fast as she could, vision blurred into a swirling palette of colour. She hated making mistakes, miscalculating, being caught in her pretenses.

She just hadn't counted on Ladybug being near omniscient, spying on every word uttered about her by mere teenagers, like a totalitarian dictator, storming into the Places Des Vosges for retribution like a classical goddess slighted, ego wounded, lightning bolts ready to destroy.

Didn't Ladybug have better things to do than rectify every harmless little white lie? People to save, villains to hunt down?

I hate her.

I fucking hate her.

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SEPTEMBER

Lila never gave up on winning Adrien back, nor on exacting revenge on Ladybug.

Adrien was personally and strategically valuable. His family was connected to film magnates on his mother's side, and connected to elite Parisian fashion society through his father. Lila would be served well by such connections and status, if she could insert herself in Adrien's world.

Now that she was old enough to look after herself, her mother didn't always take Lila with her on international trips. Lila would stay in Paris, unaccompanied, able to do as she liked. Sometimes she lied to her classmates and said she had gone abroad, uploading a fake background on her video calls to fool the idiots. Sometimes she left her apartment building and walked around the city, finding new people to watch and follow and inspect. Call it homework, for a mastermind.

One day, at sixteen years old, Lila ditched school and from the window of her apartment saw Nathalie Sancoeur leaving a private vehicle on the side of the street. She had grocery bags in her hands. Gabriel, Nathalie and other members of Adrien's household were her favourite people to stalk. Lila slid into the shadows and watched through the blinds. Nathalie entered an apartment building a few paces down the road. 38 Rue de la Moyenne Ronde. The woman was there only half an hour, and before the time ran out on the roadside parking she came downstairs and the car drove away.

Lila noted down the day of the week and the time, then went to paint her nails a new shade of beige.

Over the next two years, Nathalie would make sporadic trips to the apartment building—besieged by curiosity, Lila followed when she could, slipping into the foyer by following contractors or mailmen. No-one ever suspected a well-manicured teenager girl like herself to be up to anything nefarious. Lila watched the top of the elevator to see the floor Nathalie had gotten out on, then hid in the stairwell of the floor and watched through a crack in the door until the woman exited her secret abode: Nathalie rented 5J, but for what purpose?

Then, at eighteen years old, the news about Hawk Moth and Mayura hit primetime, and Lila understood. Suddenly she respected those two adults on a whole new level. Using their own lies and masks to achieve their goals. It was something she would have done herself.

No-one could find Mayura, she had gone into hiding. But Lila knew. She watched Nathalie's apartment closely that week, and followed the woman when she exited in disguise. She wore dark sunglasses and a maroon headscarf, while Lila wore no disguise at all. People never suspected the schoolgirl.

Nathalie walked to Quai de Bercy. She found a secluded underpass, litter compacted where the concrete met the ground, boats ambling slowly through the calm waters of the Seine. It was ten at night. Lila had been keeping to the shadows, certain that Nathalie's discerning eye would recognise her as Adrien's classmate.

Lila stopped behind a pillar and let Nathalie walk ahead. When she wagered to be out of earshot, she pulled her phone from her handbag. "Paris Police Prefecture," the answer came, after she had clicked all the appropriate redirecting numbers. "You've reached the anonymous hotline, would you like to make a report?"

"I know where Mayura is."

"Really," the operator said, her voice immediately sobering up, dubious but eager. In the background Lila heard frantic typing. "Can you tell us more?"

Lila saw Nathalie check her watch, and begin to wait. She must have been meeting an accomplice of some kind. "Yes. I was hired to get her a fake passport, but it doesn't feel right knowing what she did. All those people she hurt. All those lies she told."

Nathalie was discovered and arrested that night. The morning after, Lila tied her hair back, donned a hoodie and gloves, took her lock-picking set over, and broke in. She searched the apartment unhurriedly, with light touches, leaving no hair or fingerprints. When she found the Peacock Miraculous, perfect blue metal, glinting gemstones, her heart sang and her eyes gleamed. Finally.

The key to Ladybug's downfall, and her redemption.

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OCTOBER

As Adrien slowly shifted his life from the mansion to the hotel, Lila watched.

He was in one of those comfy suites, behind one of those full-length windows. Which one? She was among the crowd of fans in the streets, she was present during the protests, and she remained long after everyone lost interest. Whenever her mother travelled, she had free reign over Paris. She knew Ladybug and Chat Noir had joined the investigation. Time for them to taste their own medicine.

It was a chilly, windy day when she slipped into the throng of people screaming and waving hand-painted signed outside Le Grand Paris. Ladybug was swooping high above the heads of the people, attempting to placate their concerns.

"People of Paris," she said, "I am asking you to trust your heroes and your authorities."

Eat blindly out of your hand, more like, Lila thought.

Thankfully, not all of the protesters were so easily taken by the woman in red. People started screaming their legitimate concerns at Ladybug, perched on top of a lamp post, who didn't listen at all. Lila's fury was stirred and whipped so effectively by the action around her, the knowledge that not everyone believed Ladybug's lies, that when she saw a man light an oily rag stuffed into the neck of a wine bottle, she snatched the makeshift explosive and launched it herself. Fuck Ladybug. Her penance would come soon enough, as soon as she learned to master the full, adult powers of Emotion.

The explosion was wrapped in sounds of panic and shattering glass, but Lila had already turned around and was slipping through the crowd.

Back at her empty apartment, Lila snatched Duusu by the neck and hissed at him. "Tell me how to make it last. I can't do anything if I transform back into myself before the real fun begins."

She'd been turning into Pavona every day, sometimes sending emotive feelers through the city and languishing in her new abilities—other times, instead of concerning herself with people's feelings, she just revelled in being able to soar, run, leap like Ladybug. She had all the same agility and strength. No longer could Ladybug enjoy her position of supremacy over Paris.

But Amokisation was a useless power if she could only wield it for five minutes at a time.

"I— I can tell you, but you need to truly understand the nature of Emotion before you can wield its full power."

"Then teach me, Duusu."

It took two months of forcing Duusu to teach her while the investigation unfolded. The kwami was shivery and meek, so hesitant to say anything that could be used to hurt other people. Lila wanted Ladybug to feel the way she'd felt in Places Des Vosges, humiliated in front the person she cared about. Now Adrien was Ladybug's star witness, so stealing him away while terrorising the city would demonstrate to the people of Paris what an incompetent failure Ladybug was.

One stone, all the birds.

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NOVEMBER

Emotion needs no justification.

Lila had transcended the narrow, human framework of 'good' and 'bad' emotions. Is vengeance a bad emotion when applied to systems of oppression? Is compassion a good emotion when it drains the overly-compassionate? Every emotion has its uses. That is the lesson Duusu taught Lila.

People could try to rationalise their emotions into something more palatable. They could feel jealousy and tell themselves I am good enough in my own way and still have those consolations bounce off. They could feel anger and attempt to channel it into sports. They could feel limerence while knowing the object was a complete stranger. But Emotion persists. It refuses to be moderated.

She must persist. She must refuse to be moderated, made palatable, assuaged—because like feelings, the strongest will win out.

Lila understood now.

And when she had unlocked the powers of Emotion, Pavona finally took flight. She wore a form-fitting indigo coat with trailing tails shaped like peacock feathers. Black boots rose to her knee, exposing a slim band of skin covered in shimmery blue pantyhose. A cobalt hand fan limned with white accents and studded with pink diamonds was Pavona's weapon.

In November, Emelie was dug up from underneath the mansion.

"Gabriel Agreste's wife was reported missing five years ago in Tibet, and pronounced deceased one month later," Nadja Chamack said. Lila watched the broadcast on the living room TV screen—alone, as always, but she hardly felt her mother's absence after so many years. Maybe she did get lonely still. Maybe she didn't. Maybe her mother loved her. Maybe she didn't. Lies were just words.

"The beloved screen actress was found unconscious underneath the foundations of the Agreste mansion and has since been taken to the hospital. She is stable, but still unconscious."

With his mother's body brought to the surface, Adrien would be distraught, and vulnerable to her sweet offerings. In her bedroom, Lila transformed and cast out telepathic feelers into the city. If she had enjoyed people-watching before, this was a whole new ballpark. She had access to thoughts and feelings people didn't even recognise in themselves. Jealous wives and domineering bosses. Ungrateful children and resentful teachers.

A mourning boy, wracked with guilt and confusion about his mother's willing but ultimately final sacrifice. He was in the hospital, surrounded by other mourners.

Pavona opened her eyes and grinned into the dark. Bingo. "Wander, little feather, and find him."

But the first amok missed Adrien. "Fuck," she cursed, and detransformed. "Where is he?"

"I don't know," Duusu whimpered.

"Find out, and tell me."

Duusu zipped out of the apartment and returned with a report about Adrien peeling away in an SUV driven by Le Grand staff. A hurdle, admittedly, but surmountable. Lila perhaps needed to position herself closer to the hospital, lessen the distance her amok had to travel during the precious minutes Adrien had his scheduled visits.

"You need his consent to do anything with the amok," the kwami pointed out. "And Adrien is a good person. Why would he trust you?"

Lila's gaze snapped to Duusu. She took great pleasure when the blue kwami shivered and pasted an apologetic expression on his face. Gabriel had broken him in so well. "I just meant..."

"It's okay, Duusu. I appreciate you bring those concerns to my attention," she purred. "You're right. Adrien is good. But he is also lonely, getting lonelier every day thanks to Ladybug's idiotic witness policies."

And between morality and loneliness, she knew which of those two emotions always won out.

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DECEMBER

A little while after that false start, Miss Bustier's class started planning a Christmas party for Adrien. Ladybug, that bitch, would help transport him—but he needed a costume, and such a costume needed delivering. While the group kept deliberating like brainless monkeys, Lila went ahead and bought the materials and visited the hospital during a time she new Adrien would be there.

There were escorts outside Emelie's ward, and they said, "Sorry, miss. Private ward. Only authorised people are allowed to go in."

"I know Adrien is inside," Lila said sweetly. "He told me himself. I'm his girlfriend."

"Does he have a girlfriend?" one asked the other.

"We're keeping it secret from the media. You must know how intense the coverage of this investigation has been. But we miss each other so much, and I just want to see him for five minutes. Trust me—he'll be glad I'm here."

They let her in. Morons.

"Lila," Adrien stammered, surprised but glad to see her. "Hi."

"Adrien," she sighed, walking straight into embrace. "I've missed you so much."

"Thanks, Lila. Me, too," he said, caressing her shoulder. Lila's chest warmed with triumph. If the officers outside were watching, they would see Adrien holding her and their doubts would be assuaged. "How are you here?"

"I'm here to visit my grandmother. She's having hip surgery," Lila lied. "After hearing how close we are and how much we've missed each other, the officers outside were so kind to let me in for a short visit."

The talked for a short while, Lila gave over the Christmas party costume, and began planning how to get the next amok to touch him. On board the Liberty, two days before Christmas, Lila transformed in the bathroom and fished through the waters of Paris' collective psyche. Mothers burned out by holiday preparations. Children making last-minute behavioural efforts to end up on Santa's Nice List. Teenagers revelling, drunk and happy.

Someone grateful for their friends and this party, while feeling unseen and misunderstood.

"Wander, little feather," Pavona whispered victoriously, "and—"

A furious pounding came at the bathroom door. "Hello! Who's in there? I need to throw up real bad." Pavona gritted her teeth as Kim kept pleading to be let in.

"Duusu, fall my feathers." She transformed back into her civilian form and exited the bathroom.

"Lila," the kwami whined pathetically, probably to beg for release.

"Shut up," she warned. She held Duusu tight and covered him with the folds of her dress. "All yours, Kim," she said good-naturedly when she left the bathroom. "Take it easy, okay?"

"Thanks, Lila!"

She was increasingly impatient. She wanted Adrien to love her back. She wanted Ladybug's investigation to splutter and choke. She wanted the whole city to realise heroes couldn't protect them. All these things she wanted, and she wanted them now.

An idea. What if she used her own emotions to create a sentimonster? She could take Adrien from the hotel by her force instead of his choice—a monster with eight legs and venom to dissolve anything obstacle. She could invade his mind and rewrite his memories and desires to align with hers—a mist that would make everyone's minds as vapid and pliant as she liked, like molding child's plasticine. She could unleash the full expanse of her kwami's powers on him and bend him to obey his psychology—sending Duusu unchecked into the world.

Hmm. But could she really do that to him while he was already carrying so many other burdens?

Yes, Lila realized, with not an ounce of guilt. The absence of any dilemma surprised and intrigued her, cool and pleasant like bare feet in a clean lake.

Yes, she could, as much as she loved him.

Because she hated Ladybug more.

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JANUARY

Ladybug was proving herself a worthy adversary.

Lila found that a frustrating roadblock. She'd had tried to get access to Adrien through Arachne, the crawling spider at Le Grand Paris, but Vesperia's Venom had incapacitated the sentimonster. She wouldn't have been able to do anything else that day; nor would Ladybug and Chat Noir have been able to find her. She left no hints, no trace. Pavona wasn't stupid enough (like Hawk Moth) to announce her means and motives to the world. Impasse #1.

When Lila sent the Forgotten Fog to remove Adrien's objections to meeting with her (or at least remove his memories of the objections) Ladybug had gotten close enough to snare Pavona in her yo-yo string, but she'd managed to wriggle away and fall back into hiding. Impasse #2.

Then, just this morning, Pavona had sent Duusu to corrupt Adrien himself. She didn't have a highly-calibrated plan behind that huge risk, but she had several hopes, many possible threads that would all further her agenda. If Adrien was discovered by Ladybug having generated a sentimonster, he would be cast into a fresh wave of suspicion and further isolated from Ladybug and his friends. If the public found out, even better. If the judiciary suspended the trial to redirect the city's efforts into finding Pavona, then she would be able to play with Ladybug a bit longer. If Adrien simply was so shaken by Duusu's possession that he was more receptive to Pavona's future communications—well, the possibilities were endless.

Alas, Impasse #3. Ladybug had, again, saved the day and removed Adrien from danger. Lila didn't know how she did it. A kwami's powers were meant to be unstoppable. When she commanded Duusu back to her and pressed him for answers, he said, "Ladybug spoke to him. She was very kind."

Very kind. What bullshit.

So on one hand, Ladybug had managed to thwart Pavona's plans at every turn.

On the other hand, Lila still hadn't been discovered.

She was sitting in court by nine in the morning, wearing her best dress for the jury, squeezed in between several other witnesses intending to testify today. The President of the Court, some geriatric man who looked about to drop dead from a heart attack, coughed and wheezed his way through his usual opening remarks. Adrien was set to testify on the last day of the trial, along with Gabriel and Nathalie. He looked as handsome as ever in the first row, two rows in front of Lila, with his blond hair sitting picturesquely atop a crisp white collar and black suit.

Witness after witness, victim after victim took to the stand. They swore their oaths of honesty and launched into dramatic sob stories about being akumatised, or having a truck thrown at them, or being obliterated by a cosmic ray or glowing white energy orb or magical gun. Anxiety, nightmares, incessant symptoms of long-lasting PTSD. Boo-hoo-hoo. Lila was certain half of these witnesses were trying to get a larger settlement from the city by playing up their distress, and the other half didn't recognise the akumatisations for what they were. Opportunities. Abilities beyond their feeble human minds and brains. The power to shape their destinies for themselves.

She eyed Gabriel Agreste at the defendant's table, wearing another well-tailored suit—coloured deep purple, like those expensive Roman robes that people slaved to make—and thought, your only mistake was getting caught.

Such was the intensity of her derision, her disgust for the people filling the courtroom, her sympathy for Gabriel, her loathing of Ladybug. And, almost like old times, back when Adrien's father was powerful, her strong emotions were answered by a disembodied voice inside her own mind.

Hello, Lila, it greeted her calmly. I am Ladymoth.

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a / n:

I'm resurfacing! Thanks for all your patience with me and this fic. I hope the more chronological tone to this chapter helped reimmerse you in the plot and events up to this point.

Who guessed Lila? Congratulations - it was a challenge crafting a realistic but still mysterious villain. I hope this reveal (and cliffhanger) was worth it. In terms of characterization, I've taken some liberties, fleshed out her backstory, but tried to stay true to Lila's observant, strategic, manipulative and deeply emotional style of villainy.

I have not seen any of Season 5, so if her character has changed or there are better contenders for antagonists, PLEASE DON'T TELL ME. I don't want any spoilers till I watch, and this fic diverged from the canon timeline after Scarabella.