#Marinette and Damian get along like a house on fire | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

arty-shadow-morningstar · 3 years ago

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Sister of the Bat

[Masterlist]

I love siblings!Brucinette, especially Marinette being the older sibling. (Maybe I am projecting as the eldest child and enjoy bullying younger brothers in general.)

So hear me out.

Marinette is adopted by the Waynes when Bruce is like 9 or so.

She is older by like 2 years and her parents died. Bruce's parents took pity on her and took her in.

Gina takes Marinette with her as she travels around after Tom and Sabine dies in an accident and one of their stops is the Wayne Manor because Gina is good friends with Alfred.

Thomas and Martha offer to adopt Marinette to give her a stable home life and Gina accepts.

Bruce acts very much like Damian and demands her to get out of the mansion and insists that she is not family, much to his parents' dismay. He refuses to acknowledge her as a sister.

Marinette at least tries to be nice and be friends with him but her wellspring of patience can dry up and she later starts to call him 'demon brat.'

Marinette was there the night outside the cinema. The two siblings got a little closer after it and at least, stopped fighting each other on a daily basis. Alfred wishes it didn't take Thomas's and Martha's death for the two to get along.

Deep down, Marinette blames herself for what happened that night because how else can you explain why everyone she sees as a parental figure dies. Bruce doesn't blame her though.

So fast forward to when Marinette is 14 and she goes on an exchange program to Paris to visit her hometown. It took a lot to convince Bruce to let her leave Gotham and promises to come home for the holidays.

Hawkmoth happens. Bruce figures out that she's Ladybug when she refuses to come home for the holidays and investigate why.

He comes to Paris to help. Alfred follows to keep an eye on the two and also wants to know what the situation is since he used to be a miraculous holder.

Alfred had a 'talk' with Fu about putting responsibilities of a city on the shoulders of one of his wards. He also nearly got akumatized when Marinette was made Guardian and had more responsibilities on her young shoulders but managed to calm down.

Hilarious scene I thought of. Alfred cocks his shotgun, threatening to shoot Su-Han when he shows up and fires a warning shot to make a point.

They stayed in Paris for 2 years. Moving into Marinette's old house when the exchange program ended.

Bruce gets tempted to use the earrings and ring to bring his parents back but ultimately doesn't upon finding out about the consequences.

Of course Bruce is going to get a miraculous. I was thinking the rooster or the dog. And the weapon is a boomerang. Oh wait, how about the horse. It sorta works?

Hawkmoth gets defeated. Gabriel goes to jail. Adrien gets his mother back. The Wayne siblings and Alfred move back to good old Gotham.

(I realized that this got longer than I expected.)

Time skip to a few years later, when Marinette goes to Tibet to be trained as a Guardian and Bruce follows her not long after to learn how to fight and figured the Temple was a good place to start.

After she finishes her Guardian training, they both travel around, sometimes going their separate ways and meeting up again once a few months. Marinette only sometimes trains with some of the masters Bruce was learning under, she mainly goes around looking for lost Miraculous and righting the balance in places.

Of course, Marinette gets on the first plane to Nanda Parbat to knock some sense into her dumb brother, the moment she found out that Bruce was training with the League of Assassins.

"Okay, I left you alone for a week and the next thing I know you are in the League of Assassins. THE LEAGUE OF ASSASSINS LED BY RA'S AL GHUL. What the hell were you thinking, Bruce?! Does Alfred know about this?"

"Well, it is the League of Assassins. Assassins, Mari. I need to know every form of fighting so I can be Batman."

"I am sorry. Bat-what?"

"Batman. The identity I created so I can fight in my crusade against crime."

"Right.... That totally makes sense. But why a bat? I thought you were scared of those. I literally hung pictures of bats in my room so you would stay out. I even made a bat plushie named Terry. You remember Terry, right?"

"Yes and I hated him. The point is, I chose a bat as a sign of overcoming my fear and using it as a symbol to strike fear in the hearts of my enemies and as a symbol of hope for the innocent."

"Did- Did you just.. have an answer ready for when people ask you why you are dressed as a bat furry?"

She stuck around to pester Bruce into quitting the league and simultaneously mess with Ra's at the same time.

She used magic to keep herself hidden and succeeded to stay that way until Bruce left.

She's also the reason why Bruce hates magic.

Marinette went back to Gotham first and set up a fashion empire.

Bruce comes back and starts being Batman.

Marinette at first tries very hard to respect Bruce's decision to do this mostly on his own. Until an incident where he got stabbed and instead of resting, he goes out.

So tired older sister Marinette puts on a black kelver suit with bits of red as a homage to her time as Ladybug, a domino mask with white lenses and a cape with a red hood (Hawkmoth had ruined cowls and she later changed it into a kelver jacket with a hood because despite the dramatic effect it brings, she was not great at jumping around rooftops with a cape which made Bruce takes great pride in showing off how great his cape is any chance he gets)

She went out to make sure Bruce doesn't get killed. (No miraculous because she doesn't want people coming to already crime-filled Gotham for them)

People called her 'Red Hood'. (Joker uses that alias because he wants to taunt the Bat after hearing rumours that 'Red Hood' was dead. Jason took it because it's the name of the one person who pisses Bruce off and gets under his skin more than anyone.)

Batman has that deep and gruff voice to disguise his voice while Red Hood uses magic to distort her voice enough that it was still understandable but drove shivers down people’s spines.

She was there first hand and managed to record a lot of failed or dramatic moments Batman has. Blackmail...

Bruce is stubborn. He tells her that he has everything handled while getting his ass kicked. Mostly he gets the villain of the week tied up in an hour and Marinette leaves to go deal with something else in another neighbourhood.

Not very often there are cases where Bruce is obviously very tired and needs help but is too stubborn to ask for it. Marinette asks if he needs help and he says no. She lets the fight go on for like 15 minutes, casually leaning against the railing or wall and in one case, eating chips and sharing it with a barely conscious henchman before asking him again. And joining the fight whether he said no or not.

-------

The nature of their relationship is questioned as they are seen together often enough.

That came to light when Penguin was dangling Red Hood above a death trap and threatened Batman that he was going to kill his girlfriend unless he met the demands.

“Ew…” “What the-. No!” “Gross. I would rather die, thank you very much.” “She’s my sister.” “My standards are way higher than that.”

“Oh. My apologies. But still the same sentiment. Do it or she dies.”

“No.” Batman answered.

“Kwamis, if this is about the cookies, I said I was sorry, Baby Brother.”

“The sign clearly said ‘Do not Touch.’”

The two clearly adult, usually serious and fearsome vigilante bicker like children.

Penguin cleared his throat after being frustrated at being ignored, “Hello, still here by the way. And I thought he was the older one.”

“He wishes.” Red Hood snorted, already freed and ready to kick some Penguin’s ass.

“Oh no.”

------

Joker thinks he is Batman’s arch nemesis. And for the longest time, was the only Gotham Rouge who has never faced Red Hood. (Marinette knows about the Joker but due to the circumstances and dislike for the man’s fashion choices, has never met the ‘Clown prince’ in person.)

But Joker doesn’t pay attention to frivolous gossip of the Gotham underworld much. So as far as he knows, there was only one vigilante in town and that was the Batman who is his equal and vice versa or so he thought.

That illusion was shattered, the moment another figure appeared from the shadows while Batman was busy trying to deactivate the bombs on the hostages.

“Yo, Demon-Brat, Need help?”

“No.”

“Who is this, Batsy? Your sidekick?”

Red Hood looked offended, “I find that very offensive.”

Batman sighed, “The bane of my existence.”

It was Joker’s turn to be offended. He puts on a hurt face, “But I thought I was your arch nemesis, Batsy. What about all those fun times we had?”

“Sorry, Jester. But me and Bats have a longer history.”

“It’s the Joker. You nitwit.”

“Nitwit? Come up with better insults, you second-grade clown. I have seen birthday clowns scarier than you. And it’s the green wire that you need to cut.”

“Who are you anyway?”

Red Hood took a bow. “The name’s Hood. Red Hood. I am here to make sure the Demon-Brat over there doesn’t get killed, dressed as a bat furry. Now, any last words?” She aimed her guns at the Joker.

“Oh. I think I will like you.”

[Fight scene as Batman frees the hostages and then, they fight the Joker together.]

As Joker is led into the car that will take him to Arkham Asylum, “I don’t like you.” He said as he glared at Red Hood.

------(Time skip to so many years and after Marinette had left Gotham due to being unable to deal with Bruce's bullshit anymore)

Batman is working on his latest case in front of the Batcomputer when his phone rang from a number he wished never called.

He answered it.

“Hey, Bruce, I am going to be in town for the next few days. This is a heads-up, in case we ever ran into each other.”

“Understood. Is anyone new going to show up during your stay?”

“Maybe. That remains to be seen.”

“Tell me when it happens.”

A small laugh at the other end. “Same old Brucie.”

Alfred enters. “Is that Miss Marinette?”

“Hello, Alfred. Nice to know that you are well.”

“Miss Marinette, it would be nicer if you come by the manor. It’s rather empty without you.”

“I would love to, Alfred but my schedule is rather packed and I am pretty sure the manor is full of strays that Demon brat had brought home over the years.”

“They are not strays. They needed someone to train them properly and they agreed to be adopted.” Bruce still hasn’t figured out how he has so many kids. One day, it was just him and Dick and the next thing, kids come and go from his house. But he wasn’t going to let her know that.

“Sureee…”

“Miss Marinette, it’s been so long since we last saw you. I am confident that you and Master Bruce can remain civil for a few hours. Please come by.”

A short silence.

“Do it for me. Please.” Alfred added.

“For you Alfred, I will come over sometime in the afternoon tomorrow but I cannot promise anything else. Goodbye.”

“Good Day, Miss Marinette.”

---

The next morning, Bruce wasn’t in a good mood and the kids tried to figure out why. Bets on Jason or Damian.

Alfred on the other hand looked almost giddy with excitement, cleaning up the manor with a vigour.

When he was asked, he answered “Miss Marinette is back in Gotham. She’s coming over for a visit today.”

Dick and Jason seemed to understand what Alfred meant.

“Wait, she’s back. Does Bruce know she’s going to be here?”

“He and the Miss have agreed to be civil towards each other.”

“Well, I am going to the kitchen to make some popcorn. This is going to be good.” Jason said, gleefully rubbing his hands together as he walked away.

All the other kids looked confused. “Who’s Marinette?”

Dick answered,“She’s well...if there was anyone in the entire world who can drive Bruce mad, it’s her. I swear he came close to breaking the no-kill rule every time she visits. Last I heard she was in Australia.”

“Why does Father dislike her that much?” Damian asked.

“She was the original Red Hood.”

“I thought Jason stole that name from the Joker.” Tim scratched his head.

“Well, the Joker stole it from her to taunt B. When B started off, Batman had...um...a partner. This was way before my time. Her methods were a little conventional. She prioritizes the innocents but she broke the no-kill rule a few too many times. Nearly killed the Joker once.”

“So what happened?”

“They argued a lot. Fought nearly all the time. By the time B had Jason for like what? a year?, she moved out of Gotham and rarely came back. The last time was Jason’s fifteenth birthday before he died and we never heard back from her again, except for a few birthday presents”

“Why isn’t there any picture of her? Why have we never heard of her before?”

“Bruce likes to pretend that she doesn’t exist because...well... you’ll see.”

------

Jason to Dick later. “You didn’t tell them?”

“No. Would you tell them about her and Bruce?”

“I see your point. This is going to be epic. We are totally recording, right?”

“Way ahead of you. Cameras in nearly every angle of each room, plus hidden microphones for audio. Babs is making sure they are all in working order. Thank Bruce paranoia at times like this.”

Doorbell rings. “And Action.” Jason said as he and Dick took out their phones to get some first hand footage. Extra blackmail is always handy to have.

Alfred opens the door to reveal a woman in red, wearing sunglasses. Outside, a red and black motorbike was parked. Her hair was dark and hung loose down her back. She takes off her glasses to reveal bluebell eyes that held the same steely glint as Bruce but they softened at the sight of the old butler.

“Hey Alfred. Long time no see.” She warmly said as she hugged him.

“Miss Marinette. I must say that I miss having your charm around the manor.”

Seeing Dick and Jason in the hallway. “Boys, look at you. You have grown so much. Dick, I see you finally got rid of the mullet.(It wasn’t that bad, Dick said under his breath) Jason, see, I told you that you will get bigger than me one day.”

“Hey, M / Aunt Mari” They hug her.

“Jason.” Her tone changed and he froze, she sounded pissed. “You name stealer.”

“I wanted to make you proud. I was very mad at B back then and I thought why not use the name that pisses him off the most. And you were my favourite auntie.” He tried to explain himself. Maybe he should have asked her first before using her name.

Marinette thought about it for an antagonizing long time watching him squirm, “Hmm….Valid. In that case, you can be my successor.”

“Always knew I was your favourite nephew.”

“Hush, that’s our secret. Now where are all the other strays Brucie has.”

The other bat kids had appeared from where they were.

“Oh… are these the new strays that Brucie brought home over the years?”

“I am no stray. I am Father’s blood son and his heir. You will treat me as such, woman.”

Marinette mutters under her breath, “No doubt about it, you are Bruce’s son. Can’t believe that Demon brat actually got a kid with his DNA. I thought for sure that he was going to keep adopting kids with some resemblance to him.” Jason laughs.

“I am Tim. And the Demon spawn over there,” He gestured towards said kid, “is Damian.” At the nickname, she raised an eyebrow and looked at Dick. He nodded. She chuckled.

The excited blond woman hugged her next, “Hi, I am Stephanie, unlike the others, I came in and never got adopted.”

“Smart girl.”

Stephanie pointed towards Cass, “and this is Cass. She doesn’t talk much.” Cass settles for a wave.

“I am Duke. The family’s newest addition.”

“The only ones not here are Babara, Harper, Colin and Kate.”

“Kate as in Kate Kane?”

“The one and only.”

“Oh. I have to meet up with her at some point.”

“Come on now. Let’s not loiter in the hallway. I am sure Miss Marinette would like some tea. And remember your promise.”

“I promise my best.”

“I hope your best is enough. Master Bruce is currently in the study.”

“Great. I don’t have to deal with his annoying face.”

They moved to the living room. Marinette, Jason and Dick catch up on what happened over the years. Mostly on Jason’s and Dick’s part.

Bruce finally comes down the stairs and the room falls silent. The atmosphere suddenly felt thick and hard to breathe, the moment the two made eye contact with each other.

“Marinette. You are still here.”

“Disappointed, Demon Brat?”

Everyone looked shocked, except for Dick and Jason who had started recording on their phone the moment Bruce showed up.

Marinette stood up with folded arms and a murderous glare on her face when she saw what Bruce was wearing. Bruce on the other hand smirked, wearing clothes that clashed terribly and was an absolute eyesore, especially to a fashion designer’s eye.

WTF was happening???? Was running through most of the bat kids’ heads.

“You are doing this on purpose. You are trying to piss me off.”

“You started it by not leaving the moment the amount of time warranted for a visit has passed.”

“I didn’t come here to see you. I came here for Alfred and stayed for them.” She pointed her thumb in the kids’ direction. “You should have stayed in your little man cave, Bats.”

“How about you scurry back to Europe where you belong, Bug, before I eat you.”

“Aw...Look at the cute baby bat, baring his non-existent fangs.”

“I am a full-grown man. You onesie wearing imposter.”

“I was thirteen year old! Thirteen! If we are going to rip each other’s first suits, then let’s talk about that fashion disaster you wore when you first started out. That cape was a walking hazard, much less be used to run around rooftops. It’s a miracle that you can still walk after that accident. And the ears. You looked like a fucking Rabbit.”

“You are one to talk. That cloak incident in the winter gala of- .”

“That doesn’t count. I only fell down because you stepped on it. If memory serves, you embarrassed yourself in front of Miss Kyle by falling face first into the fountain and ran away from the gala, that same day.”

The insults and jabs went on and on. Stories full of blackmail were exchanged.

Jason and Dick are delighted at the blackmail material and grinning like maniacs.

The rest were still in shock at Bruce’s behaviour. This is way different from the Brucie Wayne persona and a far cry from the stoic Batman.

“Face it, Baby brother. You can’t just admit that I am wayyy better than you.”

‘Baby Brother’, Tim mouthed. He looked at the two eldest for answers but were of no help as they try to capture the best angle for their video.

He vaguely remembers the name Red Hood appearing in the news along with Batman and Robin and there being a second Wayne when he was younger.

He thought that they would be exes or something that worked together but the sibling rivalry in front of him made so much sense now.

“I can beat you in a fight any day, Brucie.”

“Well, I am Batman.”

“And I have been doing this hero shtick since I was 13. So weapons or no weapons?”

“No weapons. Alfred won’t appreciate new scratches in the living room. Freestyle, all out brawl, first one pinned or knocked out loses. right here, right now. No hitting the face or between the legs.” He said, taking off his silver glittery suit jacket.

“I like the sound of that.” She said as she took off her red coat and got into a fighting stance. “Give me all you got, demon brat.”

Dick and Jason made sure to clear out the room and continued filming from the stairs.

“She’s like our aunt?” Tim asked.

“Adopted. Like us.” Jason grinned, as Marinette got cornered and did a flip to get out “I like to think that the adoption genes from Thomas and Martha were passed down to B and doubled to explain why there are so many of us.”

“Why has Father never mentioned her to us before?”

“Would you talk about us to your pets if we were living far and far away?” Dick asked.

“You and maybe Cass and Thomas. The rest of you. No. I wouldn’t. You make a good point, Richard.”

The two siblings downstairs had abandoned fighting the proper way and were wrestling on the ground like five years old.

“Master Bruce. Miss Marinette. I expected better from both of you. You are supposed to set a good example for the children.” Alfred had arrived.

They both stopped and broke apart, looking sheepish under Alfred’s disappointed gaze.

“Sorry Alfred.” They both apologised and glared at each other.

“I guess I miss you,” Marinette said first, “Demon Brat.”

“You weren’t miss as much, Imposter.”

Alfred cleared his throat. The two siblings sighed.

“I am sorry for calling you an Imposter and that was very rude of me.” Bruce ‘apologised’ like he had recited that particular sentence too many times.

“I am sorry too for calling you a Demon Brat despite the accuracy of the statement and I endeavour to do less of it in the future, Bruce.”

“Well since dinner is nearly ready, both of you clean up the mess and come to the dining room.”

“Alfred, I really can’t stay-” Marinette started.

“You are staying, Miss Marinette. It has been years since you were here.”

“Fine, because I love your cooking nothing else and Brucie better change his clothes.”

“No.” Bruce replied childishly.

------

At the dinner table,

“So Aunty M, can I call you that?” Tim asked.

“It’s fine. What do you want to ask?”

“I heard you and Bruce talking about magical butterflies in Paris and you starting your um hero career when you were 13 because of it.”

“Oh.” Marinette’s hand on her fork tensed a little. “Wasn’t expecting that but I can see why you are curious.”

“Now that I thought about it, you never told Jason and me the entire story about it.” Dick said.

“You are right. It’s more of the entire incident left too heavy of a mark for me to talk freely about it.”

Bruce looked her with worry in his eyes, “M, you don’t have to say anything you don’t want to.”

Marinette took a bite first while she gathered her thoughts first. “When I was 13 years old, I went on a student exchange program to Paris so I can learn more about my home town….”

She told them about Hawkmoth and the magical earrings she received. The responsibility of the entire city that came with it.

“You don’t sound happy about having magic powers.”

“Well, it happens when you are a just kid with already enough trauma on her plate from four parents dying in front of her. Then, you get chosen to be a hero by some old man just because you decided to be a decent human being and help him cross the street. I repeat, chosen, no training, no information on what exactly was going on. Dropped some magic earrings. which the bad guy clearly wants, into the hands of a child and pushed her out the door to fight in a long tiring war. He got amnesia halfway through the entire thing and left for London. I was young back then but didn’t know any better. At first, it was really fun. Then... If Bruce wasn’t so stubborn and stayed in Gotham like I wanted him to, I might have came out of it way worse.” Her voice was soft as she seemed lost in some painful memories.

“I already lost my parents. I didn’t want to lose another family.” Bruce said.

Marinette smiled, “Yeah. I am thankful for your help. I couldn’t keep you out of superheroing if I tried and Alfred and I tried a lot.”

A few of the Batkids sent smirks towards Bruce to remind him of how they got adopted.

“So how did Bruce help you out?”

“Well, he was more of the Oracle in the situation, tracking down Hawkmoth. Alfred and me kept him from going out, no matter how much he wanted to join the fights. But…” Marinette smirked and Bruce stiffened as he realized what she was going to do.

Marinette moved forward and ‘whispered’, “You should know that you kids aren’t the only ones who parkoured around rooftops in brightly coloured bird-themed suits in your preteens.”

“No way...The Batman was like your Robin?!”

Bruce dropped his face into his hands. “Mari, stop.” He hissed.

“What? I am simply enlightening the children on their heritage.”

Alfred comes in to take away the plates, “I also recall the young Master sneaking out many times to accompany you on your night patrols.”

“Alfred!”

“Nearly forgot about that. There are times where he followed me in his pjamas and a table cloth as a cape when he can’t find where I hid the Miraculouses. Can’t keep him down even when he got sick and was loopy from the medication.”

“Is this the same Mr. Lecture-us-for-not-wearing-our-proper-uniform-when-we-patrol and sneaking out to patrol?”

“One time, I got sick so Bruce wore the earrings to be Ladybug and he had this entire speech prepared for when he take down an akuma that he did in front of the mirror.”

“I thought that you were asleep.” Bruce mumbled in embarrassment.

“You aren’t as quiet and sneaky as you thought you were. Also Chat showed me the video of you taking the akuma down and how he found you when you were practicing the yo-yo.”

“He what?!”

“I also told him to sent it to Alya.”

“No!” Bruce stood up and hurried towards the Batcave. “How did I know about this?”

“Who’s Alya?”

“My reporter friend. Back in the day, she ran the Ladyblog, where she posted information and videos about akuma attacks.”

“So you are saying that there is a video of a tiny Bruce in a red with black polka dot suit, running around Paris on the Internet.”

“I think there are a few featuring him in his Chick-lad suit too. It was the cutest thing ever. Wanna see?”

“Aren’t you worried about him deleting the blog off the internet?” Tim asked as Marinette looked through her phone.

“My brother may be good at hacking but he can’t reach the level of Max Kante who made an AI at fourteen and coded the Ladyblog. Besides, Alya has back-ups and I have back-ups too. Mostly footages of Chick-lad in action.”

“Show us.” they all demanded.

------

In the next JL meeting,

“So regarding the problem in the-” Batman was saying as the presentation screen blacked out.

“On it.” Cyborg said as he got up to make it work again but the screen flickered back on before he can do anything.

‘Batman.’ A voice that suspiciously sounded like Nightwing narrated as clips of Batman fighting on the streets of Gotham, driving the Batmobile, facing off many Gotham Rouges and posing with the other Justice League members played. ‘The Dark Knight of Gotham. The Caped Crusader. Thought to be smartest and most dangerous member of the Justice League.’

‘But all heroes made their start somewhere...’

A news clip played showing Paris being wrecked by an akuma and Nadja reporting the scene. English subtitles are inserted for those who don’t understand French. Most of the members are confused as Batman felt horror beginning to set in. He might not be able to show his face to the other heroes again after this stunt his children had pulled.

The camera zoomed in on the girl in red and black fighting the orange-skinned person with a rope weapon of some sort. Wonder Woman gasped as she recognised a Ladybug user. Then, a younger boy with yellow and red feather designs, slammed into the akuma. The video paused right before the boy made impact with his mouth wide open. A circle is drawn around the boy dressed as a rooster? and an arrow pointed towards him with the words ‘Batman, aged 11’ next to it. ‘Former alias: Chick-lad’ was under it.

Red Hood’s voice was soon heard. ‘This is the infamous Dark Knight in his humble beginning. Before Gotham, there was Paris. The city of Love had dark days upon it. The young boy took up the mantle of Chick-lad and fought the demons that plagued the cities in a rather startling bright yellow. He fought alongside Ladybug who is most known for being the leader of the team that lead the charge. But we are not focusing on her right now. We are going to show you the brave chicken who had feathers on his suit.’

“No. No. No.” Bruce said as he desperately tries to turn the documentary or whatever it was off. Green Arrow and Green Lantern had began recording on their phones. Superman tried not to laugh at his friend. Cyborg looked like he can’t comprehend the boy on the screen was the same dark, not as intimidating anymore, figure in front of him.

Cue clips of Chick-lad in action and dramatically saying a lot of cheesy one-liners and puns as he try to take down akumas by himself with his bow and arrows, much to Ladybug’s visible frustration. Some horrible attempts at trick shots with the bow.

Videos of Ladybug scolding a self-satisfied but bloody Chick-lad on irresponsibly using his powers to tie up citizens for simple crimes like littering.

------

An amused Ladybug filming herelf,

“Hi, Ladybug here, on the 17th June of 19**, Robin Hood over there decided that he was going to see how many cars he can carry.” (LB calls Chick-lad Robin Hood as a nickname in the suits because of the bow.)

Camera switches to said hero under a bus and 5 cars, struggling to hold it up.

“On a good day, he can’t lift 100lbs for two minutes. But with the added Miraculous strength we can lift more than a ton for over an hour. Let’s add more and see what the limit is, shall we?”

“Ladybug, no. Help me. I can’t carry it anymore.”

“No..*Laughs* oh shit. Wait. Hang on. I am coming. Don’t you dare drop that. The Miraculous Ladybug is not for fixing the things you broke.”

Scene Cut.

A masked boy in a black cat suit was filming this time. “Bonjour, beautiful City of Lights, Chat Noir here, LB is taking medical leave due to her illness but her replacement is filling in the meantime and unfortunately, he’s not..the best with the yo-yo.”

The camera move to show Chick-lad in a red and black form-fitting suit with some armour. He was suspended in mid-life, tangled up with strings and hanging from what looks like the structure of the Eiffel Tower like a bug trapped in a spider web. He was furiously trying to get free but gets more tangled up in the strings.

“Paris is doomed.” Chat Noir deadpanned before asking, “Should I be getting LB, little chick?”

“No. Do not get my sister. I told her that I can handle Paris while she is incacipated and I will....once I get out of these stupid things.”

“Don’t diss the yo-yo. It did nothing to you.”

“It’s a horrible choice for a weapon. Bows and arrows are way better.”

-----

Green Arrow laughed, “I have to get a recording of that.”

Batman had given up trying to turn the thing off (he cursed his decision to make the screen battery-powered so it didn’t turn off when he pulled the plug) and was face-down on the table with sympathetic pats from Wonder Woman while she fan-girled in the moments when Ladybug is on screen.

Flash had gone and gotten popcorn for everyone.

-----

Someone filming Chick-lad as he taunts the akuma and evading its attacks until a yo-yo wrapped around him and pulled him out of the akuma’s range. The camera followed his trajectory. There was a pissed Ladybug on a nearby rooftop, now holding Chick-lad by the back of his suit.

“CHICKEN-LAD FOGHORN LEGHORN THOMAS WA- BUG. You are in so much trouble.”

“There was an akuma.” He weakly said

“You were grounded by Al and I can handle the akuma.”

“Well, Ladybug.” The akuma said, “Prepare to be-”

“Shut it. Can’t you see that I am talking to this little superhero here who is supposed to be at home because he is grounded?” The akuma obeyed and awkwardly stood around.

“Al was worried when you disappeared. Stop being so reckless, you piece of drumsticks.”

“This is rich coming from the girl who lets herself get eaten by a T-Rex.”

“It was part of the plan and you mister are going home right now.”

“No.”

“Do it or you ain’t getting any of Al’s snickerdoodles.”

“Fine.”

-----

“Hey, Robin Hood! Whatcha thinking about?”

Chick-lad was in a familiar pose of Batman when he is in his brooding mood.

He didn’t look up, ignoring his sister. Ladybug placed an egg under him as the camera shakes from suppressed giggles.

“Are you brooding again? I swear it’s hard to...no way.” Ladybug said in faux surprise.

This got Chick-lad’s attention. “What?”

“There’s an egg under you. How is there an egg up here?!”

The tiny hero stood up, “Har Har, no way I am falling for that... Holy shit, that’s an egg. How is it here?”

“Unless…”

Chick-lad looked horrified. “No…I mean there is no feasible way that I..”

“You laid an egg!”

“No no no no….nuh uh...I did not lay an egg.”

“I mean you brood all the time and the pro-long use of the Miraculous does give certain characteristics to our human bodies.”

“Your weird craving of aphids is a way different territory than me laying an egg. I laid an egg, Ladybug! I can’t do that. I am a healthy male Rooster.”

“That’s your own child you are talking about.”

“I am not ready to be a father.” (The caption ‘said the man who proceeds to adopt a gazillion children’ appeared under Chick-lad.)

“Well, what do we do with it?” Chick-lad asked as he tentatively picked the egg up.

“We could eat it. Omelet for breakfast sounds good.” Ladybug suggested.

Chick-lad caressed the egg like it was a precious baby, “Help me hide it from Alfred. I will do anything.”

“No. We are not going to eat my kid.”

“So you decided to be a responsible father, then, little brother.”

“Deal.”

Screen cut to a dark screen like a camera was hidden inside a bag.

“-ONE WEEK! THAT’S SEVEN DAYS, 168 HOURS, 10080 MINUTES OR 604800 SECONDS!”

Someone was laughing very hard.

“THAT’S HOW LONG YOU WATCHED ME BABY THAT FAKE EGG AND MADE ME THINK I WAS THE FATHER. FOR AN ENTIRE WEEK, YOU WATCHED ME SING LULLUBIES AND TELL STORIES TO IT.”

“Fatherhood suited you.”

“I CAN’T BELIEVE THAT YOU EVEN GOT ALFRED IN ON IT!!! ALFRED!”

“He thought this might make you learn to be more responsible. And hush you don’t want to wake up little Eggbert.”

“You are the worst.”

Ladybug cackles, “I know.”

------

The compilation lasted 20 minutes before it ended with a side-by-side comparisons of the various poses by Chick-lad, next to a Batkid trying to recreate it.

Batman stood up with every shred of dignity he still had left, “None of you will breathe a word about what happened today.” and walked out of the room.

“How is it after being embarrassed like that he manages to still scare me?”

There are a few inside jokes made from that ‘presentation’. Phrases like ‘the chicken grew up to be a bat’ baffled other members’ who didn’t see it. Until Oliver and Hal did a movie night and showed them the video that Oracle emailed them.

Ollie got a recording of a young Bruce saying “Bow and arrows are better.” in French on his phone. It’s one of the phrases in French that he knows. He says it everytime Batman has a disagreement with him. (Bruce once took out a custom bat-bow and arrows in a meeting and did an awesome archery trick that narrowly missed Green Arrow by a millimetre and proceeds to say that his skills are ‘rusty’.)

Later, he would tell newbie heroes that Batman once said, “C'est un choix d'armes horrible. L'arc et les flèches sont meilleurs.” and that means, “It’s a horrible choice of weapons. Bow and arrows are better.” in French. Bruce walked by once and told the newbie that it was taken out of context and that the horrible weapon in question was a yo-yo.

Wonder Woman passed her number to Batman to give it to Ladybug in front of everyone.

“Hey, Supes, who’s that?”

“It’s Batman’s sister, apparently. Used to be a superheroine with some magic earrings about twenty years ago. And those earrings used to belong to Diana’s mother.”

“Batman has a sister? And there’s two of them?”

-----

Stephenie had tried to fight crime with a yo-yo. It went horribly for everyone involved.

Damian asked to spar with Marinette before she left. She beats him with a custom yo-yo since she rarely uses the Miraculous nowadays. She left it for Damian as a very late or early birthday present.

Damian had trained himself to use it as a weapon since if his aunt can do it, so can he and carries it around because it has benefits like ‘it’s a toy, Father. It’s to entertain myself in that boring prison they call school.’

He also learned how to do tricks with it. He took down some would-be kidnappers with the yo-yo as Damian Wayne. (Stephanie was jealous of how good Damian was and asked him to teach her.)

------

Marinette and Bruce finally made up (skipping over the angst plot) and there were more visits from Aunty M. She does turn down being a vigilante again, choosing to focus on her new role as co-CEO of Wayne Enterprise to lighten the load but made a special appearance on a very busy night.

“Eddie! How are you? I see you are still doing purple on green.”

That voice. Whoever said that Batman was scarier one was wrong. The OG Red Hood was the one who plagues his nightmares to this day.

The Riddler turned around, hoping he was wrong. The rumours said that she was dead. But dying meant nothing to the Bats since the second Robin came back to life and was the current Red Hood.

There was a chilling sound of metal against concrete walls. “Eddie…”

“You can’t be real. You can’t.” His men were looking at him like he had gone mad. They had never seen their boss this terrified before. A few older ones from the early days dropped their weapons and run off.

Out of the shadows, a figure in red stepped out and the metal of her gun glinted under fluorescent light.

“I left Gotham for a nice vacation and what do I see after 5 years of absence? Idiots like you who still pairs green with purple.”

Riddler gets on his knees and began begging for mercy. Riddler’s goons get knocked out by the other bats as OG Red Hood tore into his fashion choices.

-----

“I mean I don’t get why people is getting so worked up over this new Red Hood.” A newbie henchman said.

“There’s another one? Did the current up and one die again?” Penguin asked.

“No. I think they are sharing the name. The old one is still around but there’s another one with the same name. She’s the one without a helmet and wears an actual red hood. I heard rumours that she has a voice of a demon, literally. They also say that Riddler surrendered himself when she showed up on the scene. You okay, boss?” he asked a very pale Penguin.

“She’s back. I thought she left for good. Batman probably welcomed her back with open arms if she is back on the streets catching the likes of us. Pack your bags, boys. We are moving out of Gotham.”

“Why? And where to, boss?”

“Anywhere but here.”

“Come on, Boss. She’s just another Bat. More work for us but we can handle her.”

“You fools. That woman is the Red Hood. The Original before there were any Robins working for Batman. When the name Batman was nothing more than a myth, a bogeyman for criminals, she was Bloody Mary story. Say her name three times and she will show up to hunt you down. The Red Hood you know now is great at catching criminals yes but she is the predator and we are the prey. She will stop at nothing, I repeat nothing to catch us. With Batman, he will let us get away to save the innocents. With her, I once left her with a ticking time bomb stuck to several hostages and got on a train to Chicago. Do you know who I saw when the train pulled into the station? She was standing on the platform, with that red hood over her head, waiting for me.”

“Aren’t you a little old for campfire stories, Oswald?” The voice asked with amusement from behind him. The same voice that had Riddler screaming for the hills. Penguin turned very pale.

“You are not getting me this time.” Penguin snarled as he called for his men and activated the bomb under his club.

“None of that now.” She grabbed the remote and de-activated the bomb. She then grabbed his collar and put a gun to his head.

“You remember what happened to the old Black Mask the last time I was here, right? When Batman was less tolerant of people breaking his no-kill rule. I will make you join him if you don’t call off your men and give me the information I came here for. I will even spare you from paying for your medical bills if you cooperate nicely and turn yourself back into Arkham.”

Penguin agreed, begging for his life.

#maribat #siblings brucinette #oldersis! marinette #tired older sister Marinette

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miraculouspenta · 4 years ago

Text

Different Limits

Original Idea by @jinx-jade

Thanks to @moonlitceleste for beta reading :D

'What have I done,' Damian thought. Dick was lying on the floor with an arm that was clearly broken. He had surprised Damian with a hug from behind, triggering his instinct to attack. Damian had reacted by twisting his arm, resulting with Dick being on the floor. Jason entered the door when he heard Dick’s shriek of pain. "WHAT THE F*CK, DAMIAN!" he shouted when he saw Dick. His whole family had scolded him, Bruce had benched him for a whole two months, and Alfred had given him a disappointed stare.

Damian couldn't stand it. Not anymore.

He snapped.

He had tried, he really had.

But it was never enough.

As the heir to the Demon's Head, attacking at unknown touch has been burned into him. Touch had always meant danger. It was second nature to him now. Unfortunately, his family did not know nor do they understand. Two years of constant reminders that he had done terrible things. Two years of constant reminders that he was merely a killing machine. Two years of greater expectations, both in standard and amount. He had enough.

Damian said goodbye to his pets and ran.

After a good hour of running, he dropped into an alley and cried.

In his vulnerable state, he didn't see a man creep up. A man holding a gun. The unknown adult was planning to kidnap the boy, but as soon as his hands reached Damian, he reacted. He flipped the man over his shoulder like what he did to Dick earlier. But in his state, it didn't affect much. The man pulled out a knife and stabbed him in his side. It ended the fight.

The kidnapper ended up running away, leaving a heavily injured Damian to slowly watch the world as his vision turned black.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Marinette, who had just finished some business with Superman, decided to take a walk in Gotham before going home. Along the way, she spotted a boy covered in blood as she crossed an alleyway. He was already unconscious, and Marinette knew she couldn't just leave him there. So she opened a portal and went through it and carried the boy in her hands. She laid him down in her spare room and left to get her medical supplies.

Approximately six hours later, the boy woke up. His eyes scanned the room as he tried to up and leave. Limping, he tried to head to the window. "Hi sweetie, you need to calm down," Marinette’s soft voice said as she walked slowly to the boy., "You should be resting; moving might agitate your injuries." The boy just stared at her. Marinette stood up slowly and walked over. "May I?" she asked, reaching for his hand. When he nodded, she carefully took his hand and led him to the bed. Once there, she helped Damian into a comfortable position. "Do you have anyone you can call?" she questioned. When he didn't answer, she simply nodded her head and asked him what he would like to eat.

Damian ended up staying for three weeks because Marinette refused to let him leave until he was fully healed. The twelve year old grew closer to the woman. Once healed, he confessed that he has nowhere to stay. Marinette took the information in stride and told him he was more than welcome to stay with her. And stay he did.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Living with Marinette was incredible. Unlike his grandfather and his father, she didn't place any expectations on him. At one point, he slipped and called her mom. Damian had froze after he said that, scared of how she would react. It ended up with Marinette asking him whether or not he would mind her adopting him. Damian happily agreed and they soon got the paperwork done. (Chloe is conveniently Marinette’s lawyer). Damian wore the Dupain-Cheng name with pride. As Grand Guardian, Marinette took it upon herself to teach Damian magic. Starting with glamour, they covered the basics of magic.

Two weeks after the adoption, while reading the daily news, Damian came across an article on the front page.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Daily Planet

BREAKING NEWS!!

Not more than six weeks ago, twelve year old Damian Wayne was reported missing. The only biological child of Bruce Wayne was suspected to have ran away for an unknown reason. He was last seen running to his room before he left. “Maybe I was a little too harsh,” Bruce Wayne admitted, “But this isn’t the first time I had to ground him because he wasn’t able to control his strength.” The young boy had somehow managed to flip Richard John Grayson, Bruce Wayne’s eldest, when he had surprised him with a hug. “Damian and I may not get along, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care,” Tim Drake, co-CEO of Wayne Enterprises said.

Damian Wayne is a tan boy with dark hair and striking green eyes. He weighs around 90 lbs at 4’9 ft tall. Currently, he is twelve years old. Multiple search parties have been launched. I myself know Damian personally from all the times he has visited my son. If you find the boy, please contact xx-xxx-xxx-xxx and we will get to you as soon as possible.

- Clark Kent

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After reading, Damian had a breakdown. Marinette rushed in when she heard the sobs of her child. She didn’t say anything and instead she approached slowly wrapping him in her arms. She let him cry as she rubbed his back and once he calmed down, he told her his story and why he left.

“All these new expectations were just overwhelming,” he said, “‘No killing’, ‘justice not vengeance’—it’s like they were expecting me to turn back. I never wanted to hurt them, but it’s something that is a reflex now. It’s not easy to let go of a habit.” Marinette was silent throughout his whole rant. She knew how terrible Ra’s and Talia were but that didn’t make it better. She knew the Batman could be cold, but the fact that he didn’t listen and try to understand infuriated her.

“Ra’s and Talia should know not to mess with me, but if I ever see your father I can and will punch him,” she growled. Damian smiled as he nuzzled into his mother’s chest.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Three years passed. Damian and Marinette’s bond grew stronger while the search parties grew hopeless. The Justice League was also involved; so were the Titans and the Young Justice. They concluded that Damian was either dead or hiding really well. The former option was discarded when Zatara and Zatanna had almost managed to track him, but unfortunately the spell suddenly shattered when it was nearing.

Desperate, the batfamily decided to reach out to the Grand Guardian of the Miraculous. Imagine their surprise when they saw Damian on their way to her house. When they ran to him, Damian, now fifteen, went into an alley and disappeared. They rushed to Marinette’s house and knocked. They heard hard breathing and a gentle voice trying to calm the other party down. Leaning towards the door, Dick found that it was unlocked and tumbled in.

What they saw was Damian kneeling on the floor crying in the middle of a breakdown and Marinette trying to soothe him. “Out,” Marinette glared. The boys obeyed and waited anxiously. The person that they had been searching for was under the protection of the Guardian all this time. It made sense why even both Zatara and Zatanna couldn’t track him down.

An hour later, Marinette opened the door telling them to come in and wait. She took some water and placed them on her coffee table saying that Damian was taking a shower. As soon as she sat down the boys began to fire questions. They stopped after a good fifteen minutes and noticing that Marinette wasn’t saying anything. “I know why Damian ran away, yes, but it is not my place to say. I can ask him later, and I will not say anything without his permission. But I will say this,” Marinette said, voice colder than ice, “You f*cked up.” Marinette stood up to check on Damian. “By the way,” she stopped for a moment, “I adopted him three years ago.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Damian ended up being the one to tell them everything. Everything from why he ran away to why he decided to stay. The Waynes felt bad; they hadn’t even bothered thinking about his perspective. Looking back, Jason and Bruce realized what Damian had said about the League was true. “I’m- We’re sorry Damian,” Dick apologized. “Are you willing to come back?”

“No,” he said. The Waynes were visibly saddened.

“But I am willing to start over.”

1445 words

I had tons of fun writing this fic, hope you guys like it

~Leen

@animegirlweeb @battybatbat @crystalangelluna @dorkus-minimus @galaxylightmoon @iglowinggemma28 @insane-fangirl-of-everything @jayjayspixiepop @jjmjjktth @karukofox21 @lunathealphafemale @megaafangirl @miraculouslydumb @myazael @nickristus-dreamer @our-preciousss @samiamack @sh31bin0 @user00000003 @waffleyunsure

#maribat #mominette

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olivia-anderson-fanfic · 4 years ago

Text

Stalker X Stalker, Part 10

First

Perma tag: @nathleigh @peachmuses

Stalker x Stalker taglist: @aespades @jayjayspixiepop @blueslushgueen @fan-written @seraphichana @nerd-nowandforever @toodaloo-kangaroo

Marinette’s collection of vigilantes in her house was still growing, somehow. You’d think it would stop with just the ones that consistently lived in Gotham, but no.

Nightwing started dropping by whenever he was in town to try and teach her escrima. She wasn’t good with them because she wasn’t used to fighting people up close, but she didn’t really think that that was the reason why they were doing it.

Still, it was fun…

(Except for that one time they’d been heading back to her house and she dropped her phone down the drain and had to beg the rat-person -- she was pretty sure Nightwing had called them Ratcatcher? -- for help. It was very traumatizing. He’d given her a new phone but she was never going to recover emotionally from that day.)

And then, a few days before Thanksgiving, Flamebird had made an appearance.

The reason why was less fun, though.

She’d opened her blinds and stared at him for a few moments. He was leaning against her fire escape, hand pressed to his stomach.

“Hey, Robin, does Flamebird usually do the Napoleon pose?”

“The…? Oh, no, he does not.”

She sighed. “Yeah, I thought so.” She swung her window open. “Hi. Nice to meet you. What happened?”

“Got stabbed.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Okay, yeah, obviously, want to elaborate?”

“Got stabbed in the stomach,” he said, after a second’s thought.

So, no, then. She shrugged to herself and let him come inside.

“Right, Robin, go get the medkit out from under my sink,” she said, pulling a hairband from her wrist and tying her hair back.

Flamebird frowned. “Can’t you just undo everything with your magic?”

“Not magic,” supplied Tikki, popping her head out of Marinette’s pocket.

“FUCK,” yelped Flamebird.

Damian made the quiet clicking sound he made whenever he was about to say something rude but Marinette cut him off with a glare and pointed him towards the bathroom. Damian grumbled a little under his breath but obeyed for fear of being thrown out.

She turned back to Flamebird. “Also, that’s not how my ‘magic’ works. If I’m not involved in a fight…” She made a ‘poof’ motion with her hands. “No miracle cure.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “Man, if I’d known that I would’ve just dealt with this myself.”

“Well, it is too late for that,” said Damian, who had come back out with a medkit. “Now, sit down, we will tend to your wound.”

And they did.

(Or, rather, Marinette did. It didn’t matter if she knew, logically, that he already knew how wounds looked and how to treat them, she just didn’t feel comfortable making him help. She sent him off to play with the cat and worked on dressing it. She’d made a mistake here by doing the normal routine while stitching someone up: asking about things they liked to distract them. He said he was an ‘avid reader’, she’d laughed and said that she probably wouldn’t know any of the books he mentioned because she hardly ever read in English, and now she was apparently in a book club. That was on her, she supposed, but it was still a little irritating.)

And that was all the vigilantes. They all came over from time to time. Sometimes they’d see each other and give each other awkward smiles or actively ignore each other, but it became a constant part of her life.

But it all came to a head one seemingly regular day.

She had been walking up the stairs to her apartment with Tim, ten bags of groceries loaded onto her arms and five on his (he was to open the door), and had nearly bumped into him when he stopped suddenly.

“Cass?” He asked, confused.

She raised her eyebrows just slightly. She’d thought everyone knew about each other but, now that she thought about it, because of the scheduling Tim wouldn’t really be around when everyone else came by.

He took Cass’s arrival in stride, though, fishing his key out of his pocket and pushing the door open.

He did not take in stride the fact that Duke, Damian, and Nightwing were all inside her house already. Duke was sitting on her counter, wrapped in a blanket as he scrolled through his phone. Damian was playing with Vanelope. Nightwing was doing stretches on her floor.

“Hey, look, more people that don’t live here,” Marinette said with only a hint of bitterness.

Nightwing glanced up. “You’re out of chips.”

“Already --?!” She took a deep breath to steady herself. “Fine. Fine. I got more, anyways.”

Tim snapped out of it. He closed and locked the door quickly before sending Marinette a pout. “Alright, I can get you cheating on me with Cass, but come on,” he half joked.

Marinette rolled her eyes. “If one of the people I’m apparently cheating with is a five-year-old --.”

“TWELVE.”

“-- then I think you have more things to worry about than my serial adultery, darling.”

“... guess that’s true.”

“Also, I only buy groceries with you, so you’re clearly my favorite concubine.”

Duke grinned. “Actually --.”

“Except for that one time I asked Signal to go find ricotta because I’d forgotten it,” she conceded. “I guess he's my second favorite.”

Cass pouted and raised her hand.

“She makes a good case for herself. You’ve both been demoted,” she joked.

Tim was still pouting. Probably has something to do with going from favorite to second favorite. Who knows.

She rolled her eyes. She had bigger problems. Like her food. There were frozens and she was not going to lose her food to something as stupid and useless as the air. She waved him along as much as she could with the bags digging into her arms and started putting things away.

She tipped her head back after a second to squint at everyone. They were awkwardly staring at each other, for some reason… oh, right, they technically didn’t know each other.

“Uh, introductions, I guess. Signal, Robin, and Nightwing, meet my friends. Tim, Cass, meet my annoyances.”

Tim perked up a little at being called a friend rather than an annoyance. Problem solved. Kind of.

He set down his bags and leaned close to her ear. “So, they don’t know you know?”

“Duke does,” she mumbled back. “I’m not going to tell them about it, though, I want to see how long it takes them to notice.”

He snickered. “I can get behind that.”

“Good. You didn’t have a choice in the matter,” she joked, leaning forward to press a kiss to his nose.

She could hear Cass groan a little at the obvious affection and both Duke and Damian cringed. She fought the urge to laugh. It was just a little kiss on the nose, they didn’t have to act like it was scandalous or gross.

But, apparently, it was gross enough for Damian to grab her arm to try and pull her attention away from Tim (and physically pull her away from him, she noted, as she was forced to take a half-step back from him).

“Did you get more of my gummy bears?”

She rolled her eyes. “Did you ask for them? Did you tell me you were out?”

He looked a little put out and she felt bad enough to give up the act quickly:

“Yes, kid, I got you your weird vegan gummy bears.”

He beamed and started sifting through her bags.

She smiled fondly and ruffled his hair, ignoring the knife that was sent her way for the action with practiced ease, then started putting things away.

Everyone except Damian made their way over to help. There were no ulterior motives, they insisted, even as she watched Nightwing slip a bag of chips into Damian’s hoodie for safekeeping and Duke pocket an apple.

At least Cass and Tim were reasonably well-behaved, she thought right before she watched him split an orange with her.

Tim squinted at the three people below him.

Jon had come to visit because a) the no metas in Gotham rule had more or less stopped being enforced due to constant complaints from the Justice League, b) Damian needed friends his age, and c) it was Christmas and Jon was so sure that this year was going to be the year that Damian finally understood the holiday.

And, because Jon had come to visit, so had Conner. The worst part of being an older brother that Tim understood all too well.

But, now, he looked down at the three people gathered at the bottom of the stairs.

They were apparently competing to see who could be the stupidest. Steph was standing on a banister, Marinette was trying to sit on a vertical bo staff, and Conner was doing a handstand on both of their heads. It was a little shaky, what with Steph’s barely restrained laughter and the fact that bos are not meant to be balanced on and Conner trying to do tricks, but they were clearly having fun.

Tim crossed his arms over his chest, leaning against the entrance to the cave. Did he have a type?

Their comms crackled to life and all three went stock-still, grins wiped from their faces briefly as they listened to see what had happened.

“I am requesting the night off to have an outing with Superboy.”

Bruce gave the grunt that meant ‘fine’.

The three relaxed now that they knew that everything was okay, quickly going back to their game. Marinette had added a surfboard. Steph was struggling with an exercise ball. Conner was slowly taking off fingers.

Tim sighed to himself. Yep. Dumbasses who can only be serious for truly important things -- and, even then, only for a few seconds at a time. That was his type. Someone, please, save him.

It had been a while since Marinette had gone out on her own (with the intention of staying alone, leaving for patrols didn’t count). Really, she normally wouldn’t, but she needed to pick up a piece of fabric she’d forgotten to get the day before and it wasn’t even a meter’s worth. She didn’t need help for that.

Besides, going by herself was much quicker. She was able to go by rooftop as Ladybug.

Of course, going as Ladybug had a risk to it that she didn’t realize until it was too late: responsibilities.

She groaned to herself as she made to jump to the next roof and her eyes landed on a person getting mugged in the alleyway below her.

She looked down at the bag with her fabric inside it and wondered if it was even worth leaving it there while she got rid of the attacker. Most of the time the people mugging people in Gotham were using fake guns. Even if they weren’t, muggings were common enough that most people had little on them and were only slightly annoyed when people tried to rob them. The person below was no exception, it seemed. They scoffed when the gunman poked their back.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m going,” they said irritably.

Wait, shit, she knew that voice.

She squinted down into the darkness and, yep, she would recognize that almost unhealthily pale skin anywhere.

She dropped down into the alley between them and, to her slight surprise, it turned out the gun actually did have bullets in it. A shot rang out. She fell back a step, cradling her shoulder.

The gunman’s eyes widened. He hadn’t meant to shoot her. It had probably just been a split second reaction.

Unfortunately for him, getting shot really fucking hurts and she was going to take it out on him. Especially since he’d been trying to mug one of her friends. She glanced back at Tim, who was shaking and a little pale, and grit her teeth. Yeah, this guy was fucked.

Eventually, though, the pain in her shoulder, worsened by all the movement, got too unbearable and she rolled off of the mugger. She tied the man’s hands and feet behind his back with her yoyo and, after calling Miraculous Ladybug, called it a day. She’d get her yoyo back later.

For now, she pressed a hand to her ear. “Hey, Signal, I’ve got one for you.”

“You’re joining me for daytime patrols now?” He asked, his voice somehow brighter than the powers he had.

“Nah, just happened to come across…” She considered embarrassing Tim but decided against it when she saw her friend’s face. “... someone getting mugged while out today.”

He huffed a little but she ignored it in favor of relaying the address.

The perpetrator to be taken care of, she turned to the victim. She didn’t know whether the rules applied to people you knew, but she figured she might as well go through with the normal procedure. Tim liked procedure, it might help him.

So, step one: connect with the victim. She unzipped her hoodie and smiled brightly, making sure her eyes crinkled behind her mask.

Step two: check to make sure they aren’t going into shock.

Normally, she was able to skip this step. The miracle cure got rid of it if they had gone into it before the attack… but his eyes were somehow both fixed intensely on her like he was scared she’d disappear if he chanced a look away and extremely vacant.

She took slow, careful steps towards him, hand out to check his pulse.

Once she was close enough, he grabbed her hand and pulled her into a hug. Marinette didn’t quite know what to do. The part of her brain still doing the normal procedure told her to hug back because this was a scared victim that wanted comfort, but the other part was tempted to push him off to check for a concussion… even though, logically, he shouldn’t have one because she had cast Miraculous Ladybug so her arm wouldn’t have a bullet in it anymore --.

Oh. She was stupid.

He’d watched his friend get shot and now he was freaking out. Like people are supposed to do.

She hugged him back, bringing a hand up to run through his hair.

“Would you like me to take you home?” She asked.

“My… my friend lives near here,” said Tim quietly, mindful of the fact that the mugger was still within earshot.

She nodded. “I’m going to pick you up, okay?”

He bit his lip so hard that she worried he’d break the skin and nodded.

She took him home and, with only a brief stop to keep Vanelope from escaping, set him down on the couch. She kept a hand touching him at all times as she gathered the blankets and pillows strewn about by all the visits the bats made. For once, she was glad she never really had time to clean, she didn’t want to let go of him when he was clearly so concerned about her.

Less than five minutes later she’d wrapped them both up as tightly as she could with as many blankets as she could reach. He rested his head against her shoulder, arms loosely draped around her under the blankets. Vanelope settled on their laps and started to purr; she made a mental note to give her a bunch of treats later.

But, for now…

She cupped his cheeks in her hands and waited patiently as he struggled to pull himself together enough to actually be present.

“Darling, I said I wouldn’t go anywhere. I’m not breaking that promise. Okay?”

He nodded slightly, finally releasing his lip to speak: “Okay.”

She pressed a kiss to his nose. A half smile made its way across his face.

“Now, how do you feel about Big Fish?”

He squeezed her a little tighter. “The circus scene is cute.”

She nodded her agreement. “I like the daffodil scene better, personally, but it is pretty cute.”

She turned the movie on.

Tim was sure he was overreacting. Of course he was. She hadn’t died, she wasn’t even hurt any more. It clearly didn’t bother her, he had ‘accidentally’ chosen that shoulder to rest his head on and she hadn’t so much as winced when he had. No, the only worry she had was about him.

So, he should be fine.

But he wasn’t.

She’d been shot and, for a second, he’d feared it would be another Darla situation. And he couldn’t deal with another Darla situation. He couldn’t. He had to believe that he was better than that high school Tim that had let all his friends die. Because if he wasn’t better than that meant he couldn’t have friends and he couldn’t deal with that either.

He didn’t want to be alone again.

No, he wouldn’t let that happen. He could think of a plan, surely. He was a planner, he found problems and he dealt with them. That had been his coping mechanism pretty much since birth and (if you ignore all the workaholic tendencies, independence issues, and General Trauma) it was working out pretty well for him. Can’t be sad if there’s work to do, after all.

Yeah. Work. He was good at work.

He bit his lip.

Alright, so the problem stemmed from his fear of being alone… which wasn’t going to be fixed anytime soon. Good coping mechanisms? In this family? Please. Next.

Alright, so the problem stemmed from his fear of her getting hurt.

Simple solution! Don’t let her get hurt!

… not as simple a solution as it sounded on paper.

She wasn’t going to stop vigilantism anytime soon. He wouldn’t make her, and she wasn’t going to do it on her own accord. Even if she decided to at some point Tim didn’t have much hope for it. Every person in the family had tried that already, it never worked. They’d say that it would be fine, that they were going to stop for their mental health or even just permanently end it… but family was family and how could someone sit back and watch family get hurt when they could do something about it?

So, that wasn’t going to happen. What other answers were there?

Well, he supposed that she had left on her own and that was the main problem. If she hadn’t left on her own then he wouldn’t have followed after her in secret and he wouldn’t have gotten attacked in the first place.

But he couldn’t be around much more without it being weird unless he…

He couldn’t…

Could he?

He figured it was worth a shot. And he should ask now. If she said no he wouldn’t have to worry about her thinking him weird, she’d just assume it was a request made while in the middle of shock and forget about it.

He hesitantly let go of his lip.

“Hey, Bean?”

She stopped pretending to watch Big Fish for the sake of giving him privacy. “Yeah?”

“Remember when… I…” He bit his lip, trying to think of a better way to phrase it, but he couldn’t. There really was no casual way to ask. He took a deep breath to steady himself. “Can I, maybe, move in with you?”

She stared at him for a moment, eyes wide, before quickly shaking her head.

He must have looked pretty put out, because she rushed to explain herself:

"You’re under emotional duress, darling, it wouldn’t be right to say yes.”

He nodded his understanding and it was silent for a bit before he eventually said: “But, if I asked tomorrow… would you say yes?”

She looked at him for a while, her face unreadable, before she gave him a hesitant smile.

“Well, I already said that you basically lived here. I suppose there wouldn’t be anything wrong with making it official.”

#stalker x stalker #timari #timmari #maribat #timinette #shutterbug #marinette dupain cheng #ladybug #red robin #tim drake

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hateswifi · 5 years ago

Text

Duck Season

Don’t ask me about the title go ask @thecaptainthunder also it is they’re prompt.

The Master: Master List

----------------------------------------

“Good morning, class, as I mentioned last week we have a transfer student,” Madame Bustier greets the class, smiling wide as if it weren’t a Monday morning. Damian rolls his eyes, avoiding anyone who looked like they wanted to talk and headed up to the back corner desk, where no one was sitting.

It didn’t take long for someone to ignore the social cues he’d dropped because there stood a tan, green-eyed girl.

“You should come sit with me, the class bully sits back here and you don’t want to get mixed up with that,” the harlot says, batting her eyelashes.

“I’ll take my chances back here,” Damian grumbles back, but once again she doesn’t take the hint.

“Lila, you’re in my seat,” another, sweeter, voice says. The harlot’s smile falters before she retreats down the stairs to stew in anger in her seat.

“You’re late,” he reprimands, looking at the apparent ‘class bully’.

“Welcome to our class, I’m Marinette, the class president,” She smiles, it doesn’t reach her eyes, she’s faking it.

“So class bully and president? Interesting mix.”

“Interesting assumption,” Marinette shrugs, pulling out her classwork. He raises an eyebrow and does the same, who does she think she is to talk back to him.

Needless to say, their relationship didn’t start out the best but it got better.

“I can’t believe they’re such imbeciles,” Damian breaths out, an almost laugh, Marinette thinks to herself. Damian has been in the class for a week now and absolutely hates and loves the class. He hates how stupid the class, but again loves the class because of how idiotic they are.

“What’d she say this time?” Marinettes sighs, sliding into her seat. This was becoming a routine almost, she sits down right before the bell rings and usually has enough time to hear Lila’s amazing stories from Damian.

“It was a classic Jagged Stone story,” Damian sighs.

“I literally know Jagged, and they know that I know him, but yet, in the beginning, I was ‘too jealous’ and now they won’t even listen to anything I say,” Marinette shrugs.

“You know Jagged?” Damian asks, raising an eyebrow.

“That’s not important, they can look up any of the information she says without having a personal contact, now shhh, class is starting,” Marinette says, ending the conversation. She avoids talking about herself, almost as bad as he does. He doesn’t mind it too much because she doesn’t appear to be a threat, but yet again appearances can be deceiving.

A month into the hell that is his class, he ran into her during one of the many akuma attacks. She had just run into a closet he was running for, he was a bit worried about her because Lila likes to take action during the chaos. He was expecting to see some cliche scene of Lila corning her, but when he opened the door, there stood the Parisian hero.

“What the actual--” He was cut off by her quickly butting in.

“Oh my god! You can’t anything, I have to go, but-”

“I understand, go fight,” Damian says, effectively stopping her rambling.

They had an awkward conversation after her and Chat Noir defeated the akuma, she picked him up and dragged him to a secluded roof away from the public prying eyes, and the numbing idiocy of the class.

“So another way you knew she was lying is you’re Ladybug,” Damian says as soon as they touch down.

“I would’ve known it without being Ladybug, seriously a foreign girl comes in announcing that she’s best friends with a hero but she's been in the country like three days tops, it’s pretty obvious,” Ladybug huffs, dropping her transformation. “Why’d you follow me into the closet?”

“Ehh Lila likes to come up with lies during the chaos, so if you had an alibi I thought it would be helpful,” Damian shrugs.

“Aww, you care about my well being,” Marinette coos, nudging him.

“You’re bearable,” Damian mumbles, a hint of warmth spreading across his cheeks, must be the afternoon sun.

“That’s the nicest thing I’ve heard you say since you transferred,” Marinette points out.

“That doesn’t matter, now let’s leave,” he says, standing.

“You really want to go back to class?” Marinette asks, standing as well.

“No but I don’t want to sit in the sun, so let’s go somewhere else. Are going to get us down?”

“Sorry, I can’t at the moment, but we can climb down the fire escape,” Marinette says, rubbing the back of her neck.

“That will do,” Damian says, easily moving down the escape.

“Can we stop by my house real quick I want to grab a sketchbook, if that's ok with you,” She asks, pointing at the bakery that’s just down the street from the school.

“You live above the bakery?”

“Yeah, you hungry?”

“No, I don’t like sweets.”

“Your loss then,” Marinette shrugs, entering the back door. She appears a couple of minutes later, putting cookies in her purse. He raises an eyebrow but doesn’t question it. They walk over to the park and sit under a tree in the shade. He just sits in the shade and lets sounds of the birds singing, the breezing leaves, and the light trickling water take over his sense. It was a bit later when he hears her start humming if it were practically anyone else, he would’ve snapped at her to stop it, but her humming was calming.

He honestly should’ve seen it before he responded. It was a month after the revelation of her being the Parisian hero. They were walking around the Seine near evening after the defeat of another akuma and another day of drama with the harlot and sheep. Marinette had leave early due to the akuma and he was left to deal with the idiots by himself

“What’s the matter?” he questions.

“Oh, sorry, I have a lot on my mind,” Marinette says quietly. He steps in front of her and lifts her chin.

“What’s on your mind?” She looks up at him, his breath hitches in his throat, her eyes are glistening in the sunset.

“I… I don’t want things to change, but,” she pauses, taking a deep breath. “I really like you, you’re kind to me, even though you don’t try to show it and-”

“Enough,” Damian cuts her off, she stands in front of him, vulnerable. She’s trying to distract her self by rolling a rock underneath her foot. “If you don't want things to change, then don't change them.” He responds sternly.

“Umm, ok, I’m sorry, I’m just going to go home then. Umm! Good night!” She says, swinging her head up quickly, just enough to see her eyes glistening with tears before she turns her back and she rushing home.

“Why’d I say that?” Damian asks himself he watches her back and she rushes down the sidewalk. He has a strange urge to follow her, to pull her into a hug, and to, strangely enough, apologize for making her cry. “What’s the matter with me?” He sighs and agrees to talk to her tomorrow morning before class, as normal.

But that wasn’t the case, she slid into her seat just after the bell rung. Not only was that different, she was wearing make up, not enough for a majority of people to notice, but he knows her well, and her smile doesn’t reach her eyes again. He was going to try and talk to her during lunch, but conveniently Agreste calls for her attention as the bell rings before he could get a word out, they’re already out the door.

He feels weird, he knows he shouldn’t he also doesn’t understand why or what that feeling is. His feelings have been pretty abnormal since he got to know Marinette. When he met her, he hated her, but honestly, he hates everyone he meets so he didn’t expect to end up not hating her in the end. She was different than anyone he had ever met, she was kind, without knowing who he was, her smile was contagious. She beautiful but was humble and wasn’t a harlot like other women who had attempted to his attention.

“Grayson, I have a problem,” Damian says, sitting down in the library to eat his lunch in peace.

“What’s up, Birdie, you never call me,” Dick asks.

“This girl said that she likes me.”

“It’s not the first time, you’ve never had a problem rejecting girls before what’s up?”

“She’s my acquaintance.”

“So you like her? What's the problem?”

“Like her?”

“Do you have romantic feelings for her?”

“Explain.”

“Do you like it when she’s around? Is she apart of your life and it feels like a piece is missing if she’s not there?”

“But that could be platonic as well.”

“It could be, but do you ever have urges to hold her hand, if she is crying to wipe away the tears, or to hold her in a hug?” (I had no idea how to write this btw, almost asked for help but imma too awkward)

“She cried last night and all I wanted to do was hug her and apologize,” Damian sighs.

“You were going to apologize? She must be special.”

“She’s fantastic, a literal angel,” Damian sighs, slouching in his chair to look at the ceiling. “She takes care of and loves animals. She so good with kids, even with brats.”

“Talk to her, I’m sure she’ll understand,” Dick says, there a banging being him. “Sorry, I gotta go, Jason just walked in.” he says before hanging up.

“Talk to her?” Damian mutters to himself. “Do I have feelings for her?”

He heads back to class early, hoping to talk to her before class. There was one problem, she didn’t show up for afternoon classes along with Agreste.

He decides that he’ll take the work and notes to Marinette. He enters through the bakery, they had stopped there a couple of times before to pick up stuff sometimes a sketchbook and sometimes a snack. Sabine and Tom recognized him and let him in. He knocks on the trap door and hears a come in, he pushes it open and sees Agreste and Marinette in their pajamas, playing a video game.

“Agreste, Marinette,” Damian says, stepping into the room.

“Damian?” Marinette asks, turning surprisingly pale pretty quickly.

“I brought your stuff and I wanted to talk to you,” Damian says, rubbing the back of his neck, looking at the ground.

“Ummm… sure, Adrien can you give us a minute?” Marinette says, standing up from her spinning chair.

“You hurt her again, I’ll cataclysm you,” Adrien says, opening the trap door before disappearing underneath.

“Umm first, here’s your stuff and notes,” Damian says, handing her them. “Another thing, I’m going to guess you noticed, but I’m not good with emotions in general.”

“Yeah, I kinda figured.”

“It took me a bit, but I talked to my brother today,” Damian pauses, taking a deep breath.

“Where’s this going? I don’t want to get hurt again,” Marinette says, taking a seat of her chaise.

“I didn’t realize it before I talked to Grayson, he’s my brother, but I like you. I missed you in class and I don’t ever want to see you cry again. I want to be able to you without it being weird,” Damian says, rubbing the back of his neck, looking anywhere but her.

“You like me?” Marinette asks, standing up.

“I hate the fact that I made you cry, I never want to see sadness in your beautiful blue eyes ever again. You’re too good for me, you are an angel,” Damian says, taking a deep breath.

“I’m just me though,” Marinette says, looking at the ground. Damian steps forward, tipping her chin to look up at him.

“And you’re perfect,” Damian says, Marinette reaches on her tiptoes and kisses his cheek.

“And you owe me for playing my heart, I honestly thought you didn’t like me and I had a mini-crisis,” Marinette giggled.

“Would you like to go adopt a hamster?”

“That’s perfect if we can her name her Fluffy,” Marinette smiles.

“We’ll talk about the name,” Damian chuckles.

“I’m open to a discussion,” Marinette shrugs.

Bonus:

“I just had the weirdest conversation,” Dick says, hanging up his phone to look at Jason.

“What’d ya mean?” Jason asks, plopping down in a chair across from Dick before slouching to put his feet on the desk, taking a bite from his apple with a solid crunch.

“I think Damian in love,” Dick says, causing Jason to choke on his apple.

“What the fack did I miss?”

Bonus Bonus:

“Remember how Damian was in an emotional dilemma,” Dick asks, entering the dining room.

“Damian has emotions?” Tim asks, throwing his coffee back like a shot, or maybe it was a straight-up espresso shot, Dick wasn’t really paying attention.

“Yeah, not the point, not only does he have a girlfriend they have a hamster named Nightingale. Probably so Bruce can’t try and turn her into a bird,” Dick says, muttering the last bit.

“Hey I wouldn’t adopt Damian’s girlfriend, give me some credit,” Bruce says, taking the phone to look at the picture.

----------------------------------------

@mlbchaosqueen is this angst?

Permanent Tag List:

@ash-amg @bee-wrecker @damianette-is-life @mjisntme @i-will-be-your-ace @k-poplunardreams @chocolateherringtacofan @toodaloo-kangaroo @i-is-mysterious @zambie-trashart @imnotfluffy @nanakeid @animegirlweeb

Tag (from daminette group chat) list:

@long-lost-peace @iloveitwhen @kittykat24571

#maribat #marinette dupain cheng #batfam #damian x marinette #marinette x damian #damian wayne #ml x dc #damimari #angst

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icerosecrystal · 4 years ago

Text

Daminette - All The Kings’ Horses

Warning: This one-shot includes abuse, harassment, rape, child neglect meant, suicidal thoughts, and cursing. Read at your own risk!

Lila had done it. She had taken away all her friends. She no longer had any support from her parents either. Only her Grandma Gina, Grandpa Roland, Uncle Cheng, Jagged, Penny, and Clara loved or cared for her. But they had their own life to fulfill. They didn’t have the time to take care of a little nobody. But, what hurt Marinette the most was her parents’ betrayal. They knew and raised her for 16 years. Then, someone they had never met told them some petty lies and instead of believing their daughter, they believed a stranger.

I knock the ice from my bones Try not to feel the cold

She felt so numb. Now at the age of 17 almost 18, Lila had taken away her classmates 4 years ago, took away even her closest childhood friends 3 years ago, and had finally taken away her parents 2 years ago. She had no one left. She had no will to live. Yet, she endured it. Why? She doesn’t know herself. She prevailed through the words that were slamming around in her head, spoken by her classmates, “Bully, dumb, slut, attention-seeker, bitch, a fucking nobody.” She bore her parents’ words, “I can’t believe we gave birth to you, we should have given you away when you were a kid, what did we deserve you, you are such a bitchy, fucking daughter.” She ignored the beatings, the abuse she survived every day. At first, it started with her classmates taking away her things and destroying them. Then, it was kicking, punching, slapping, tripping. It finally escalated to stabbings and shootings. 9 months ago her parents started abusing her as well as purposefully neglecting her. The final thread snapped when they got Adrien to come and rape her as a way to set her straight.

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men

Couldn’t put me back together again

That’s when she decided to leave, run away. Her being raped was the final straw. She was suffering for no reason. Hawkmoth and Mayura had been defeated, there was nothing left for her in Paris anyways. She was close to breaking. She needed to get away from Paris before she decided to end her misery once and for all. There was no one coming to save her, she might as well save herself. So, she made a plan with the kwamis. She found a city where she could easily disappear in, she chose Gotham. She got in contact with Jagged and asked him to enroll her in Gotham Academy without telling her parents. Using her commission money from MDC and Netti, she got an apartment in Gotham. Glancing at the date, she realized that her parents wouldn’t be letting her out of her room for another week. So, she took that week to transport all of her belongings to her new apartment using the horse miraculous. On the day of, she looked around the room, reminiscing in the good memories that she had of the room and said a final goodbye, shutting the portal from her room and her old life.

Run with my hands on my eyes

Blind, but I’m still alive

She had made it. She had let go of the past and was walking into the future… well mostly. After her experiences in her old class, Marinette became a lot more hostile and guarded. She never talked in class, never brought attention to herself, and never displayed any emotions. People categorized her with another boy. Damian if she remembered correctly. He seemed to be as guarded as she was. But, instead, it developed a mutual respect for each other. Sure, Damian was still cautious of her, but during class and lunch, they would sit together in the back or in a little corner and would relish in the silence. Neither made an effort to get to know the other and they both appreciated it.

Free to go back on my own

Is it still a home

When you’re all alone?

Everything was okay for Marinette until the partner project her teacher assigned her. Thankfully, it was Damian, but she had to go to his house. She was awed by the sight of the manor and told him so, he just smiled lightly, in fact, it couldn’t be called a smile and walked in with her. None of the other family members were present at the moment except for Alfred Pennyworth the butler. She quietly introduced herself and Damian then dragged her upstairs to his room. Once the completed the project, it was dinner time and all the other family members had arrived. They insisted that she join them for dinner, not wanting to seem rude she agreed. They tried to get to know Marinette as much as possible. She answered all of their questions, but anyone could see how reserved she was. Then Jason asked a question that set her off, “Before you moved to Gotham where was your home?” She looked to be having a panic attack before saying, “Paris” and then muttering, “It is still home if you’re all alone?” This made all of the Waynes suspicious and concerned. They left the topic alone and continued on with their dinner, since that day Marinette and the Waynes started getting closer. They were all like her brother and Bruce like her father, except for Damian. She liked Damian, but didn’t want to in fear of having a repeat of Adrien, she vowed to never tell Damian. She lived by that vow until she got some news.

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men

Couldn’t put me back together again

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men

Couldn’t put me back together again

Ooh, ooh, ooh

Marinette was scrolling through her Instagram when her eye caught the name Alya Cesaire, she looked at the post and started hyperventilating. They were coming to Gotham in a month, they were going to see her, her parents were the chaperones. She didn’t know what she was doing, but she climbed onto her motorcycle and rode to Wayne Manor. She reached the Manor and threw off her helmet ringing the doorbell. When Alfred answered she started screaming, sobbing for Damian, “ALFRED, I NEED DAMIAN, I NEED HIM, PLEASE ALFRED BRING ME TO HIM!” hysteria clear in her voice. She needed him, she needed him to console her. Alfred quickly carried her inside once she collapsed from begging. He brought her to the family room where everyone was present. Marinette could discern all the eyes on her, but none of them counted except for the emerald eyes that softened once they examined at her. She clambered into his lap and continued sobbing and blabbering incoherent gibberish.

After about an hour once she quieted down she noticed the questioning, calculating, and compassionate eyes around her. She acknowledged that she wasn’t going to get out of an explanation and so sighed and told her story. What happened once Lila arrived, how everyone she knew reacted, and what prompted her to come to Gotham. By the end of her explanation, everyone was shaking with apparent fury. Jason then shouted, “I’M GOING TO KILL THAT FUCKING BITCH, YOUR PARENTS, AND THAT GUY WHO RAPED YOU! HOW DARE THEY TOUCH MY LITTLE SISTER!?” Everyone agreed, getting everything ready to plan a murderer and get away with it. Damian saw the anguish in Marinette’s eyes and told everyone to calm down, taking Marinette to his room. On the way, they heard a shout, “REMEMBER TO LEAVE THE DOOR OPEN!” They both flushed, Marinette ducking her head down.

Once they reached his room they sat down on the bed, Marinette avoiding his gaze. “Hey look at me”, he softly said. She looked up at him. “Why did you ask for me, why not Todd or Grayson?”

She blushed and looked at him. “I-I kinda have a crush on you a-and y-y-you don’t have to like me, I think I’m unlikable, w-wait no that’s not what I meant mmph”, her rambling was cut short by Damian pressing his lips to her incredibly soft ones. She melted into the kiss and deepened it, both of them moving their lips in sync. The kiss wasn’t hot or heavy, it was slow, loving, but also semi-passionate. It didn’t feel like fireworks, rather like a warm, homey fire along with a comforting spark. She moved her hands to his hair and tugged and he grabbed her waist pulling her even closer. They pulled away and stared into each other’s eyes, enjoying the moment.

He cleared his throat and stammered out, “Would you be willing to join me on a date?” She smiled and pecked his lips, “Yeah.” Three dates later and they were officially dating.

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men

Couldn’t put me back together again

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men

Couldn’t put me back together again

It was the day of the arrival of Marinette’s old class and she would be lying if she said that she wasn’t nervous. She wouldn’t be giving them any tours, thank god, but they would be going to Gotham Academy which meant that she would be seeing them. Just as expected later that week, they caught sight of her in Gotham Academy. The first thing they all did… they bullied her. Worse than ever before, asking why she left, she was their favorite little plaything after all. She tried her best to ignore it, but it was becoming all too much.

She rushed out of the classroom with Damian chasing behind her. She was having a panic attack, the weight of seeing everyone along with the memories was too much for her. She rushed to a bridge that she could jump off of to end her misery, but Damian caught her by the waist. He hugged her and mumbled reassurances into her hair. After a little bit, she calmed and saw Damian watching her, “Marinette, I love you and you have to stay on this Earth, please. Don’t listen to them. You are having a concert as Netti later tonight, sing your newest song, and reveal yourself. Tell your side of the story. I will be by your side every step of the way.” He gave her a tender smile and pulled her into a kiss that had Marinette forget all of her worries for now. Later that night as Netti, she got on the stage and started singing her newest song, All the Kings’ Horses.

(Play this song if you want to follow along with the lyrics)

I knock the ice from my bones

Try not to feel the cold

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men

Couldn’t put me back together again

Run with my hands on my eyes

Blind, but I’m still alive

Free to go back on my own

Is it still a home

When you’re all alone?

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men

Couldn’t put me back together again

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men

Couldn’t put me back together again

Ooh, ooh, ooh

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men

Couldn’t put me back together again

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men

Couldn’t put me back together again

Oh, oh

Couldn’t put me back together again

Oh, oh

Couldn’t put me back together again

She poured all of her emotions into the lyrics. It described her life perfectly and she sang it with all the despair and hurt she felt every single day when she was in Paris. This wasn’t just a song, no, this was the cry of a broken girl, who was slowly healing, a girl who couldn’t be put back together again, but she could try. By the last note, she pulled off her mask and heard the gasps of her classmates and parents, she saw tears in everyone’s eyes, disappointment in Adrien’s eyes, jealousy in Lila’s eyes, but most importantly the pride in Damian’s eyes.

She brought her mike back up and told her story, “This song was inspired by my own experiences. I had a great life, but then a girl came and took away everything that was mine and made me lonely in my own home. No one believed me, so I came to Gotham. I met my boyfriend Damian Wayne, he’s helping me heal little by little every day. I may not be able to be put back together again completely, but I’m going to try and Damian will be there to help me every step of the way. Thank you and good night, Gotham!”

Oh, oh

Couldn’t put me back together again

Oh, oh

Couldn’t put me back together again

After the reveal, everyone tried to be her friend again, her parents tried to apologize to her. She didn’t forgive anyone of them. They had to own up to their mistakes and see the consequences of believing a stranger over her. Two years after the reveal Damian proposed and they were married a year later, her Grandpa Roland and Bruce walked her down the aisle. Jon Kent was Damian’s best man and Dick, Tim, and Jason were groomsmen/ bridesmaids. Marinette and Damian said their vows. And as they kissed as husband and wife the one thing that crossed Marinette’s mind was that even though all the kings’ horses and all the kings’ men couldn’t put her back together again, her King Damian Wayne most certainly could.

#mlb x dc #miraculous ladybug #batman #maribat #daminette #damianette #marinette dupain cheng #damian wayne #marinette deserves better #salt #bruce wayne #dick grayson #jason todd #tim drake #alfred pennyworth #tom and sabine #lila rossi #song fic #adrien agreste

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ethelphantom · 5 years ago

Text

What’s a Soulmate?

Heeeeeyyy so I'm here again even though I'm totally supposed to be studying for my upcoming exam week (I've got seven exams coming once Thursday arrives on every single day except for the weekend. Oh well.

This is based on the What's a Soulmate? audio thing that went around a lot more before, and I've been wanting to write something based on it for years now. So. You're getting a Daminette fic based on it.

If you're still HOPEFULLY reading this, here's a little thing. This fic WILL get very angsty (like, heavy angst and grief and death and stuff) BUT it will also get way better later. There's a happy ending, their story will get a happy ending, and this will NOT end like Of Flowers and Strawberries, I swear, seriously. Pinky promise and all that. So, once you get there, just keep reading. You'll get your happy ending.

Ao3 || The audio

This is Maribat -- don’t like, don’t read.

________

“What's a soulmate?”

A girl with black hair leans against a boy around her age, his hair just as black as hers. He wraps his arms around her shoulders and kisses her forehead like the rest of the world didn’t matter. Their intertwined fingers bring them comfort as they watch the sunset on the horizon, painting the world in warm, calming tones of red, orange and yellow.

It doesn’t matter that they know their time is limited. They are together now, and that is all that mattered in the world.

After all, the memories they had together were everything.

“It's a… Well, it's like a best friend, but more.”

“I hope you two have a good explanation for this.”

The girl looks at the boy, both considering their next words carefully. They absolutely cannot let his older brother know how the kitchen and garden caught on fire at the same time as though on cue even though they weren’t even in the house, because everyone else is too scared to do such a thing. Especially with the butler still in the house, prepared to scold them and take away their rights to spend time together for a while.

Maybe they would deserve it and all, but it doesn’t matter. The children do not want to spend any less time together regardless of their actions.

“We have three, actually,” the girl says and tilts her head with feigned innocence. All of them know she’s responsible for whatever she’s being accused of this time, just like the boy is, but they don’t really care. If there’s anyone that could pull off looking innocent while covered in blood and then get away with murder, it would be her. No doubt.

“Pick your favourite,” the boy tells his older brother, only to make him exasperated and sigh as he buries his head in his hands. It seems they’re going to get away with it again. Like always. They never have the energy to deal with the both of them at once. Perhaps going over this with one of them at a time wouldn't be too much to him, but as it is, he tried to save time and scold both of them at once.

“Fine, you can go,” his brother finally tells them and leaves, muttering something about children being impossible and him not understanding how they keep succeeding.

The boy grabs the girl’s hand and squeezes it. “I told you, Malaki, didn’t I? We can do anything together, even survive my older brother’s intervention.”

“So you did, mon cœur. So you did.”

—

“What’s the plan for our next grand scheme?”

“I have an idea!”

“That’s wonderful. What is it?”

“Well, it involves fire—”

“Absolutely fucking not.”

After all, they ended up getting along like a house on fire.

“It's the one person in the world who knows you better than anyone else.”

If there was one place in the world where you’d least expect to find either of them, it would probably be under the table in a gala. Yet, times and times again, that was exactly where one of them always found the other. Usually, crying or at the very least uncomfortable with the situation around them.

The year they announced they were engaged to one another to the world was the first (and perhaps last) time this didn’t happen even though they weren’t comfortable in the least with the people around them. They weren’t even allowed to be with each other as people crowded each of them separately, asking how and when and why everything happened. After all, they had kept their relationship secret until now.

From the corner of his eye, Damian noticed the clear discomfort on his habibti’s face. No one was allowed to do that to her. None of them even noticed how horrible they were making her feel — she was on the brink of tears but kept smiling through it. They didn’t give her any personal space, not even space to breathe. His habibti was strong, but this wasn't a situation when she should need to be.

Damian made his way through the crowds to Marinette, not caring for a second if it meant having to push people out of his way with force, if it meant someone might get hurt because of him and his actions. All that mattered (and the only one that mattered) was his habibti and that she was not comfortable.

As he saw someone with a glass full of wine, he got a great idea. He made sure he walked into them, or that they walked into him, and that their drink would spill on him. He detested the feeling of being in wet clothing and smelling like alcohol more than he could even begin to explain, but what wouldn’t he do for his beloved.

The person began apologising over and over to Damian, him being his father’s heir and all, but he just glared at them and walked off to his fiancée.

“Malaki, I am afraid this imbecile spilled their drink on me, and you know how much I hate smelling like alcohol. Could you perhaps help me clean up and change into dry clothing?” he asked, knowing he sounded exactly like the rich, arrogant, self-centered, entitled brat he was raised to be and everyone thought he truly was. It was fine, as long as it was for her and she knew what he was doing.

“Look at him, forcing her to leave such a wonderful event for him. To help him when he could very well do so by himself. So selfish.”

“Shut it! If he hears you, you might get kicked out! He’s the son of Bruce Wayne!”

“Well, if he wanted his only biological son not to be bad-mouthed, he ought to not take him to this kind of places.”

Damian didn’t pay any attention to them and just held her hand, as though ready to drag her away with him. Both of them knew that was not what it was for, though. It was reassurement that he was there for her, that he was going to save her if she so wished.

The squeeze of his hand confirmed Marinette did want it.

“Of course I will. Let’s go. I’ll have Tim inform your father about this,” she said, trying not to look so relieved to get away, but the look in her eyes betrayed it to him easily.

Damian kissed her hand and led her away through the masses, ignoring any and all unpleasant comments directed at him. He knew she was uncomfortable, and for her, he would do anything, he could take anything, he could endure anything.

After all, Marinette was his everything.

“It's someone who makes you a better person.”

A long time ago, Damian thought he could get anything and everything at the snap of his fingers because he was the grandson of the Ra’s al Ghul, and then he thought he could have everyone at his every beck and call because he was the blood son and the legal heir of the Bruce Wayne. Of the Batman. They would start dancing to his music the second he told them so, that much was sure.

And he treated people like one would expect him to precisely because of that mindset no one ever helped him to lose.

He could get anything he wanted, and he was sure that even the most expensive things in the world where obtainable because he had the money. Or, his father had, but it wasn’t like he wouldn’t have gotten anything he wanted anyway.

Dying certainly didn’t ease things. After all, his father and mother had gone to great lengths only to resurrect him. That must have meant he was worth more than others. He was worth more than his brothers. Of course he was, he was his father’s true son. If they had died, the rest would have stayed dead; no one would have desperately tried to find a way to get them back.

People around him didn’t matter, no matter whether they were family or foe. If he didn’t need them, he could simply discard them and show them he didn’t care at all. Because he didn’t. Even if he needed them, he rarely spoke to them with much respect — the only ones that he thought deserved his respect were his father, Alfred, his mother and his grandfather. No one else mattered.

And then…

Then there was a girl.

No, there was the girl.

The girl who saw him.

Someone who took one look at him and decided that no, she was not going to do whatever he wanted her to no matter who he was because she was her own person and he did not own her. She did not belong to him, she did not owe him anything. She looked at him, truly looked at him, and saw how lonely his behaviour and actions made him.

“Marinette. My name is Marinette.”

Yes, Marinette was the first to actually see him and see through him. He kept trying to push her away, but she was determined to see things through as long as she didn’t make him uncomfortable — and she knew exactly when to back off even when he wasn’t able to express his discomfort. Every. Single. Time.

Slowly, as time passed by, they became friends. He started to see the value of his family, understand their lives were worth something. Marinette smiled when talked about his brothers with a hint of respect for the first time near her.

Then best friends. He knew he valued his family a lot, they were worth so much it didn’t take him even half of a second to go to their defense, even if he still hardly showed any of the care he held for his family to them. Marinette beamed when he admitted he loved them for the first time. She threw herself at him and hugged him tight when he made an offhand comment about other people he didn’t even know having some kind of a basic worth because they were human.

It took a long time, but as she snuggled closer to him and he kissed her forehead while they watched the fire dance in the hearth, he knew that there was something he could never obtain with money or fame. There was one thing more precious than any other, one thing that he could only get once he admitted he was only rich in the literal sense of the word.

Marinette had made him understand that he would only be rich once he had something he couldn’t buy with money — something that had a name, a face and feelings. Something that could walk away if he fucked up. Something that loved him and that he loved back with all his heart.

Or perhaps, someone rather than something.

Damian learnt that other people were valuable when he finally let Marinette show and teach him that the world was also a good place that held so many opportunities to learn from if he just knew to look for them.

And truly, Damian learnt that other people mattered, regardless of whether they were family or foe, because they were human. He wouldn’t need to like all of them and he could hold some people more dear to him than others, but no one was worth nothing.

But he knew that Marinette would still be the most precious and valuable thing he could ever have, and god forbid if he didn’t do his damnedest to make sure she knew that and that he wouldn’t lose her.

After all, Marinette was worth everything.

“Actually, they don't make you a better person,”

“I’m glad you came into Damian’s life, Teacup,” Dick told Marinette one day while they were watching Damian and Jason spar. Tim was working as a referee, Marinette and Dick were there simply to enjoy themselves and make sure Damian and Jason didn’t kill each other… or Tim. All of the three were a little too important to them for them to lose.

“What do you mean?” she asked in turn though she didn’t take her eyes off her boy. She was cheering for him, albeit quietly, because she knew there was a chance she could be a distraction and that meant Jason’s win.

“Your love for him is so…” Dick seemed to try and search for a fitting word as he tilted his head, “unconditional . No matter what he does, you still love him and accept him, so long as he understands how his actions may affect others and then does accordingly. You don’t let him push you away, but you also don’t let him walk over you or hurt you if you can help it. You’re good to him.”

“But you do that as well, don’t you?”

“No. I mean, yeah, I do, but it’s more out of obligation as his family. Even I might not be able to tolerate him as much as you have if I were not his older brother. But you, you came into his life and stayed. You’ve changed him and made him a better person.”

Marinette stayed quiet for a while after that, watching the boys solemnly. She rested her head in her hands and sighed before she closed her eyes. “No,” she said and shook her head. “I have not made him a better person.”

“But you—”

“Dick, no. He’s changed, yes, and I know he’s changed the most after I came into his life, but perhaps it’s just that he needed a different perspective to things. He kept pushing everyone away but he was lonely, so the least I could do was to be there and stay there. Or help him find someone else. All that’s changed in him… it was all him. People don’t change that much if they aren’t willing to, but he actively and consciously worked on himself to become a better person. Don’t take that credit away from him and give it to me,” she replied.

Dick huffed with a smile on his face. Marinette certainly was good for Damian. That boy better not fuck it up.

As Damian won and Jason lay on the ground, defeated, Marinette jumped up and cheered before she ran to Damian and tackled him on the ground with a hug. Dick smiled and walked to his family, congratulating both of his brothers. He was glad she was in their lives, in Damian’s life, because she had so much love to give, and while she was not good at taking, Damian was determined to make sure she couldn’t go without receiving a lot in return.

Because after all, she loved him with her everything, and he too loved her everything.

“you do that yourself…”

Changing oneself was more difficult than Damian wanted to admit. Everything had always been so easy to him (or at least it had been far less difficult than this was), so much had just been handed to him.

But this?

Yeah, no. He hated it and he didn’t want to do it. It was annoying, he didn’t want to change, and all of this was so horrible.

The thing was, it didn’t matter that he didn’t want it — for himself, at least. The reason as to why he needed to do it was because there was someone he couldn’t keep treating like he did now. That also meant having to change. He wanted to change for her, he wanted to be able to give her what she deserved — and she deserved so much good. Damian couldn’t let himself keep being like he was now.

Marinette loved and loved and loved, and she kept coming back to him no matter how he was like to her. She didn’t give up. That said, whenever he went too far, she didn’t hesitate to call him out, sometimes even in front of other people, even if she did it politely and didn’t try to insult or offend him in any way — no, she went out of her way to try and avoid it, because, to quote her, “no one, even you, should be treated like that, because everyone deserves being shown respect.”

Well, he was fairly sure she always mumbled something about a Lila not deserving respect, but he decided to ignore it… for now.

And so, he looked up what he could do to change and started doing those things actively. Or trying to do so, anyway.

He found himself biting his tongue more often than he ever had just to keep himself from saying something that Marinette deemed offensive or insulting to other people. He started reading people to find what were their weak points, not because he wanted to hurt them, but because he wanted to avoid doing so. And maybe it was a bit because if they dared to hurt his friends, he would know perfectly how and where to strike them.

Then, once he knew how to do that and didn’t need to pay as much attention to it as he had at the beginning, he started trying to do one kind thing to people every day — and someone other than Marinette, Jon or Colin. To them he managed to be an alright person more often than any other people. Sometimes it was helping them with their schoolwork, sometimes it was defending someone from harassment or bullying, sometimes it was as simple as being polite and thanking them. Like Marinette told him, he didn’t need to conquer the world for anyone — on the days he was too tired to do much, the simple “thank you” or holding a door open for someone was more than enough.

And slowly but surely, he started finding himself feeling better. It was easier to let go of anger, his relationships with other people improved, he didn’t snap at people all so easily. It was rather refreshing to, for once, hear other people say something positive about him instead of complaining about his actions.

All because he had once decided Marinette deserved better than him, but he still wanted to be the one beside her. That had meant working on himself to become the person he thought she deserved, a person worthy of her.

After all, she deserved everything.

“...because they inspire you.”

“Hey, Damian?”

“Yes, Malaki? What is it you’re thinking about?”

Marinette massaged Damian’s hand with her thumb, trying to decide how she wanted to voice her thoughts.

“I— I’m proud of you,” she finally decided. Marinette smiled at her boyfriend, happy she was able to spend time with him. “You’ve grown so much in the past few years and even months I’ve known you. I’m not sure what is the main reason for that, but that doesn’t matter, I’m just happy you seem to be doing better nowadays. Are you?”

Damian huffed and squeezed her hand. “Yes, I am. And you, sadiqti alhabiba (my beloved girlfriend), you were what drove me to change. You deserve so much and I wanted to be worthy of you and worthy of your love,” he replied, pressing a soft kiss on her lips. “And I thank you for that.”

Chuckling, Marinette leant against him and closed her eyes, knowing that she was safe as long as he was with her. She didn’t need to be on her guard all the time.

“You’re a fool.”

“A fool? Perhaps, but then I am a fool in love with the angel who decided I was worth fighting for.”

After all, she thought he was worth her time.

“A soulmate is someone who you can carry with you forever.”

His breathing got significantly faster as he frantically tried to look for his beloved, and once his eyes landed on her body some metres away, they widened in horror. He could only barely see her from the smoke that obscured his vision, but the blood staining the ground and her petite body was more than easy to spot.

He kicked the man in front of him away, with much more force than he knew was necessary, but it didn’t matter to him — he just needed to get to her. Nothing else mattered right at that moment.

Damian ran towards his beloved, coughing the smoke out of his lungs. He covered his mouth and nose to keep himself from breathing all of it, but his hand fell when he finally saw Marinette in front of him.

Dead.

Her eyes were wide open, red from all the impurities in the air, and the streams of her tears were still visible on her face as ash and dust had dyed them dark. Her mouth was still open in a silent scream that never got out of her lungs, because there was a clear bullet shot gone through the left side of her chest and a blade had impaled her throat.

Why, oh why hadn’t she worn her miraculous suit that day?

Why had he let her go out without it?

And why had he let her come with him — he knew they were up against the League of Assassins.

Damian gathered her small body in his arms, bringing her close to his chest and holding her tight. He’d be damned if he let anything worse happen to her, he’d be damned if he let her body be taken away from her.

“You—” Damian choked out the word and tried to keep his tears at bay, batting them away from his eyes. “You made me love you— you made me let you in and you—” He breathed in sharply and tried to regain his composure, but it was nearly impossible. He clutched her tighter in his arms as though she was just injured and he needed to get her away from there…

But he knew that wasn’t possible. “And then you died in my arms.” The last words were barely breathed out because he couldn’t— he wasn’t able to get his voice out. It was stuck in his throat along with the lump that made it so hard to breathe, so hard to stay up and standing when he would have rather crumbled then and there.

“You’re on your own!” he yelled to his comms, knowing he didn’t need to but he couldn’t help it right then and there. He could only hope Red Robin and Red Hood were alright with it, that they would survive without him and Marinette, because he knew he wouldn’t be able to fight longer than this without needing to kill the ones that were the reason his beloved was dead.

There was no doubt about it. If he stayed, he would kill the ones that were the reason they were even fighting to make them pay.

...And she would not be happy about it.

As it turned out, they won. Both his mother and grandfather were dead, the League was gone from the face of the earth (they would create it again one day, but they were gone for now and that was better than it had been for the longest time now. His beloved’s death wasn’t in vain.

Her funeral was a quiet affair.

It wouldn’t have even been necessary as she had wanted to be cremated, but he had insisted on it. Damian wouldn’t have wanted her to be cremated, but he knew it had been her request so he never attempted to not let it happen. That’s why the least he could do was to make sure there was at least a funeral for her. He dressed up in white and black for the funeral, which was the reason he stood out in the crowd, but he couldn't care less.

He was allowed to keep his wife’s ashes in their home, though he did spread some of them around the Wayne family’s lands since she had enjoyed spending time there a lot. Damian needed to make sure that her last place (or places, he supposed) of rest would be one she loved— no, had loved, because she was dead now — when she was still there in the world with him. She had been too young to die. They had barely graduated from university a few years earlier. She didn’t deserve it.

His brothers tried to console her. They really did. Cain tried her best as well, just staying there with him in silence while each of them did their own thing, letting the other one grieve. It was nice. If there was anything good about Marinette’s death, it was that he ended up getting closer with his family.

Not that he preferred having better relationships with them — he would have chosen his beloved over them any day.

On the first anniversary of her death he crumbled against their dinner table and tried to hold onto the table as he fell on his knees under the weight of his suppressed grief and agony. Damian could feel tears running down his face until he knew all he could do was to let it be, and so he sobbed.

“Oh god, why can’t you be here? I should have been the first of us to die, not— not you.”

He had trouble breathing and he could only take short, sharp breaths. All he needed was to be able to hold his wife, his beloved, but that was the only thing he would never be able to do anymore.

Later that night Drake — no, Timothy, because maybe he deserved that much for dealing with him that night without making fun of him even once — came over and just forced Damian to the sofa and gave him food he had bought before that. After that, he used Alfred’s recipe for an Irish coffee to calm him down a little.

Timothy let him set the pace — if Damian wanted to talk, he was allowed to and Timothy would sit there in silence, listening to him, unless it was clear he wanted Timothy’s thoughts on the matter, or they would both be quiet, and at some point Damian was rather sure they had watched a few movies without really sleeping. Eventually, the coffee had him rather tired and he fell asleep, leaning against Timothy’s shoulder.

Come the morning, and Timothy was still there. He even offered Damian rather sound advice, once he’d thought it over and realised Timothy was, in fact, right and didn’t deserve the blowing up he’d received from Damian.

“With the death of a loved one, you’ve got to let yourself grieve. Otherwise, you will not be able to get better. It’s just a sign there’s excess love inside you that you can’t give anyone because that bit of love was reserved for someone special. It’s… Well, it’s something you need to let yourself feel because otherwise it will make you come crashing down and you don’t want to collapse,” he told Damian after making him sit down and drink some water. It looked like Timothy hadn’t slept at all.

And he looked even worse than he usually did — he looked worse than Damian knew he himself had looked when Timothy had found him the day before.

“It’s unlikely you’ll ever be able to stop grieving, but… It will get better. One day. Slowly. And then sometimes it will hit you all over again, but on those days — well, every day, but especially on those days — I’m here. All of us, all of your family is. We won’t let you go through this alone. She was dear to us all, too.”

Later on (it must have taken some weeks, because by the time he heard it, Timothy had gone missing again) he heard from the rest of his family that it was amazing Timothy had come to him then. They still hadn’t gotten along well at that time (they’d gotten along on any level before his beloved’s death only for her sake as she’d expressed her utter sadness whenever they fought too much), but he’d come to help Damian specifically anyway. Because he cared.

And it turned out he’d been as much of a mess as Damian had, but he'd forced himself to get up and deal with Damian too. It had taken him a while to understand how Timothy could have been as bad as he had, but then it hit him — he and Marinette had been best friends, and losing her had been just as much of a tragedy to him as it had been to Damian.

That was something.

And it was certainly an act to be respected.

Fortunately, they found him within the next few months, alive, because even Damian had admitted he missed Timothy and he wouldn’t be able to take it if more of his family died. Losing Marinette had been enough.

On the fifth anniversary of her death, the entire family got together to remember her. Damian had baked her favourite pastries, fraisiers, for everyone. He had needed to do it — after all, it was her who taught him to bake them.

Every one of them loved them. The children — Grayson’s, Todd’s and Thomas’, though no one really knew where Thomas had gotten his (none of them questioned it because they were too used to Father’s antics, at least he wasn’t training them to be vigilantes) — were just happy they got to eat sweets, though the older ones did notice the sad presence in all of them. That, and there was no way they didn’t know they gathered together to keep the memory of Damian’s late wife alive. It was certain that Todd’s children all knew a lot about the happened and knew that Marinette Dupain-Cheng-Wayne had been close with all of them, but Damian wasn’t sure if they understood why everyone was like that.

He could only barely see it from the blurriness in his own vision, but there were tears in Richard’s eyes that he refused to shed. Timothy just smiled that sad smile of his at the dessert and looked like he was talking to himself, but there wasn’t even a trace of tears in his expression. He was doing better.

“It will get better,” he had told Damian years ago. “Not now, and the developement is going to be slow, but it will.”

Maybe that was what had Timothy smile.

Damian didn’t know whether he should be happy for him or bitter.

He decided to be happy for him, because that was what he knew his beloved would have wanted.

Years went by and yet Damian never forgot about her. He knew he could never. He was finally getting better, he could go about his everyday life easily, though sometimes he needed to take a day off when the grief surfaced and he couldn't handle it anymore.

Somehow, Timothy seemed to always know when those days hit (Damian wouldn’t put it past him to have all their siblings and even Father looking after him and reporting his moods to Timothy), and every single time he was there at some point, either offering a listening ear or something to watch or food or just his presence, even if both of them worked on their own projects in silence.

But he got better, and the pain and grief born from losing her loosened their grip on him.

Through all the years, Damian carried a picture of Marinette along with him. He made sure her legacy would stay alive in some way, and ended up founding the Marinette Foundation that technically offered help for young artists and those bullied in school. In reality, they helped anyone they could, because that was what Marinette would’ve done.

Jon and Colin told him he was nothing like the boy they knew at some point, that he had changed, and they were proud of him. They said Marinette would be proud of him too. Damian, in turn, told them that they could thank Marinette when they met her in the life after this one and themselves for showing him the way (and Marinette for getting tired of his antics and shoving him down and onto said way because he refused to step onto it himself.)

Even on his deathbed decades later, he held a picture of Marinette in his hands, refusing to forget her no matter what.

Because after all, she was the reason he was still there.

“It's the one person who knew you and accepted you…”

Damian swallowed — damnit, an al Ghul did not swallow when nervous or anxious, that was a sign of weakness and he wasn’t weak — as Marinette stared him down. He had to consciously keep himself from shifting in place where he was sitting on his bed. Marinette was on the other side of the room, leaning against the wall, her arms crossed over her chest.

The lights in the room were rather dim, the brightest light source being the daylight that made its way into the room through the windows Alfred had had them clean a few days earlier. Something about them needing to know how to do it and being able to be outside the window relatively safely compared to Alfred himself.

He didn’t dare to say a word after his confession, simply waiting for Marinette to speak up. For her to say something, anything. He’d told her everything he could remember, even things he had never told anyone else, and her opinion on it mattered so much, regardless of what he wanted to convince himself of. Her opinion always weighed more than others’ at this point.

Eventually, she opened her mouth. “Alright, so tell me if I got it right. You were born to the daughter of the leader of the league of Assassins, you were raised to become one, you actually killed tens and tens of people, then you were taken to your father at the age of ten to distract him from his work as Batman, tried to kill Tim — my best friend — multiple times, and you never told me until now? After we’ve known each other for seven years and having dated for four of them?”

Usually, Damian could read Marinette easily, but now her face was blank, and the only thing he could hear in her voice was a hint of exasperation and anger. A hint. That meant she was hiding something huge, because his beloved was never this emotionless unless she was actively hiding something from him.

And that was something that had him swallow his pride and admit to himself that he was frightened about what that meant for him, for her, for them and their relationship. He had no idea.

He nodded, drawing out a slow “yes, that’s pretty much it summarised.”

Marinette sighed and ran a hand down his face. For a second, there was a flash of absolute fury and sorrow visible on her face, but then it was already gone. Damian wasn’t sure what to make of it, but he was rather sure that this meant the end of their relationship.

“I am so furious right now.”

“I understand that you’re furious with me. I did hide it from you for a long time. I just thought you deserved to know, even if it came later rather than sooner. Better late than never, isn’t it?”

Yet another sigh. “Damian, love, mon cœur, I am not furious at you. I am furious at your mother and I am furious at your grandfather and so many others, but not you. And yes, I deserved to know that my boyfriend has killed people, multiple of them at that, but I can see why you hid it from me for so long. When was the last time you killed anyone?”

“A bit after I became Robin.”

“Well then, it’s long since that happened. I can’t promise I won’t be a little uncomfortable around you for a while, but I’ll work on it. Your mother and grandfather took your childhood away and it isn’t your fault you became an assassin — you didn’t know any better. You were a child. You aren’t supposed to have to know how to be at that age, especially if you’ve only ever seen one way of living, if you’ve only ever been told that way of living is the correct one. Instead, I’m ready to break this family’s “No kill” rule and go do that to your mother and grandfather. You didn’t deserve all of that. No child does.”

There were tears in his eyes that were threatening to spill, and Damian needed to think about breathing in order to be able to do so.

“I— What is wrong with you? Why do you care so much about me?!” he began with a broken voice, his tone borderline hysterical, but Marinette interrupted him by putting a finger on his lips. She’d crossed the room fast.

“Because you’re my friend above all else. You’re the one I love, and there’s nothing that can change that.”

Damian’s breath came to a halt. Tears burned in his eyes and suddenly he felt like a scared child, clinging onto anything that could save him. Marinette smiled at him so gently, so reassuringly as she reached out to him. She was truly an angel bringing light to his life, being the light in the darkness that was his life. “But I— I killed—”

“Oh love, I don’t blame you, so please, don’t do that either. Children cannot be blamed for the actions of their parents, and they can’t be held responsible for something they did because their mother and grandfather told them to do so. It took, what, ten years before you were even told you were allowed to not kill people. There’s no way I could ever blame you.” Marinette pulled rather limp Damian into her arms and squeezed him, and both of them tried to ignore the tears that were now flowing down from their eyes. Marinette hid her face in Damian’s hair, keeping Damian within her embrace in the way he’d once (surprisingly) admitted felt safe to him, his face buried in her shirt. Marinette said nothing about the tears staining the piece of clothing.

She never would, not with her dearest. Especially not when he was like this.

Marinette wasn’t surprised in the least that Damian had come crashing down like this. Keeping something a secret from your loved ones was tiring. The bigger the secret and the longer you kept it, the bigger the consequences would be once you let go of it.

All she could do now was to be there for him and prove that she wasn’t going to leave, even if it took her a long time. He deserved that much.

Because after all, he deserved the world.

“Believed in you before anyone else did…”

Marinette bend over and put her face in her arms and knees, sitting on her bed. Her sketchbook lied on the other side of the room, some of its pages crumbled next to it. She had no idea what to do. The only thing that could be heard in the room were her heavy breathing and sobs, at least until someone was at the door.

That someone knocked on the door three times, each knock the slightest bit different. She didn’t want to see anyone right now, but the knocks already told him it was either Damian or Tim on the other side of the door. They were the only two she’d told about how to knock on her door to make sure she knows it’s one of them if they needed to talk to her and she reacted to no other means of contact.

So, reluctantly, she stood up and walked to the door, opening it to reveal Damian standing there, wearing a worried expression on his face. Marinette stepped aside and motioned for him to come in before closing the door behind the two of them.

“What is—” she began but was interrupted before she got any further.

“What happened, habibti?”

Marinette snapped her mouth shut. This was not what she was expecting. Damian sounded worried.

“I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not. You don’t throw your sketchbook across the room and look like you’re about to cry when you are alright.”

That was enough to make her stop with the excuses. Damian had her figured out. She should have guessed. She swallowed, visibly deflated and dropped on the ground, hugging her knees. Damian was at her side within seconds.

“I just—” It was hard to talk about it and they fell into silence again. Damian put his hand on her shoulder hesitantly, as though he wasn’t sure if it was okay. As she didn’t move away or flinch at the touch, he just let it rest there. Marinette guessed he was trying his best at showing he was there by doing what he’d seen Tim and Dick do before.

“You can take your time, I am in no hurry,” he said, drawing a teary laugh out of her.

“Thanks, Dames.”

Marinette stared at the ground as she started speaking. “I— It’s just that I realised, I remembered that I didn’t want to be a designer, not to begin with. I do enjoy designing, it isn’t that, but… It’s kind of like video games. It was meant to be a hobby.”

“Why did you change your mind, then?”

“I think… I think it’s because of Mlle Bustier. She saw me designing clothes one day and she kept insisting I was good at it and telling me I should become a designer. I did tell her I didn’t want to, but she insisted I should become one for weeks, months, years. Eventually I— eventually I just thought that was what I wanted and should do, I guess.”

Damian growled, like, honest to god growled. “I am going to sue that disgusting, sorry excuse of a teacher,” he all but snarled, but didn’t go anywhere from where he was kneeling next to her.

“Please don’t. You don’t have any proof.”

“Tt. As you wish. At least she cannot do anything to you anymore as you’re now here. Then, what was it you wanted to do? Before that loathsome woman interfered, that is.”

Marinette smiled at him with teary eyes. “I wanted to be a baker, just like my parents. They loved their job and baking was so much fun. I loved trying new things and I always imagined how it would be to either take over our family bakery or start my own,” she said, chuckling. Then her smile disappeared from her face and she frowned a little. “But every time I mention this to someone now, they’re saying I shouldn’t abandon my “dream” of becoming a designer, that I don’t need to worry about whether I can make it. They think I’m just scared of whether my designs are good enough — I know they are — and I do want to do it as a side thing, but I… it’s not what I want from life. I want to be able to bake and make these amazing, wonderful creations and make people smile when they eat them!”

Damian reached his hands out to cup her face but hesitation made him jerk away. Why was he hesitating now? That was not something he usually did. But, when he watched her expressions carefully, the slightest bit of disappointment he could see on Marinette’s face had him reach out again and cup her face.

“Whatever it is you want to do, I support you, and I’m sure you’ll do great. If you want to be a baker and create a bakery, I say go for it. If it makes you happy, I want you to do it, and I’ll be there supporting you through every step of the way, if that pleases you.”

“Yes, it would. Thank you, Damian,” she said, and finally a smile graced her lips again. It was like it lit up the entire room, but Damian didn’t have long to think about it before Marinette had surged forwards and her lips were on his.

Just as soon as the kiss had started, it also ended. Marinette looked embarrassed and ashamed, letting her gaze fall to the side, averting Damian’s eyes. Her sudden movements had Damian lose his grasp on her.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that. I simply—”

And then she was interrupted by Damian cupping her face once more, pulling her forwards and claiming her lips in turn. Marinette melted into it and traced her hands along his body up until they found their place on his shoulders and behind his neck. When they broke the kiss off, Marinette simply let herself go limp against Damian who held her like she was the most precious thing in the world.

Perhaps she was.

“I meant that. I will always be here for you because I love you,” he whispered into her hair.

After all, it wasn’t like he wouldn’t fight the entire world for her.

“...or when no one else would.”

“Have I ever told you how I met one of my best friends, Damian Wayne?” Lila asked one day after school when they were all waiting for their lifts or friends on the school grounds. Alya immediately perked up and looked at her friend curiously. She already seemed ready to take out her phone and record Lila talking about it, but Lila simply laughed sweetly and told her that she needed to protect Damian’s privacy from the media. Alya understood and put her phone away.

Marinette mostly ignored it, still waiting for her lift — she didn’t like it when Lila lied about her friends, but as long as she wasn’t slandering their name, she had decided not to intervene because one, it’s not like her classmates would care, and two, why should she care about her ex-friends being lied to if they didn’t believe her when she said so? As long as Lila didn’t bully her or her ex-friends didn’t do it, she couldn’t care less.

“Alright, so it went like this. A few years ago, I was at the Wayne gala with my mother, when this woman spilled her drink on my dress. It was so unfortunate, I had gotten the dress from Prince Ali the last time I’d met him, and it was my favourite one,” Lila explained, making an effort to put shock and sadness in her voice, her expressions no doubt matching the story perfectly. Rose gasped in horror. Marinette was half-listening to the story, ready to start recording in case there was going to be any slander against any of her friends. After all, she would need proof if they wanted to take it to court.

“Oh girl, what happened then? Did she at least apologise and offer to get it cleaned up for you?” Alya asked, grabbing Lila by the shoulders. Marinette could almost imagine her concerned, angry face in her mind.

Marinette could find a slightly bitter taste in her mouth at the nickname but ignored it.

Lila tilted her head and furrowed her brows, looking away for a second as though she were sad. “No,” she sighed. “She was jealous about me and the beautiful dress I had. Then she smirked at me and tripped, ripping my dress. It couldn’t be repaired afterwards. The biggest problem was, when she— when she ripped my dress—”

Lila swallowed and stopped speaking and wiped a tear away from her eye before continuing. “When she ripped my dress, it revealed my undergarments, right there, in the middle of the gala,” she whispered. Marinette would be amazed at her acting skills because she sounded just like she were embarrassed for a second there if it wasn’t for the fact she didn’t like it when people lied.

“What happened then?” Mylène asked, holding her breath.

“Then Damian swooped in and shed his jacket quickly, giving it to me to be able to cover myself. Then he took me away from the ball and got me one of his sister’s dresses. He apologised that it wasn’t the same thing, but told me it was too unfortunate the woman had been like that. He then reassured me that his family would take her away so I could enjoy the rest of the gala. He still let me keep the jacket because I was cold.”

The girls around her cooed.

“Tell us more!”

“Well, alright,” Lila complied, looking like she didn’t want them asking more. Like hell she didn’t, she reveled in their attention. Lila Rossi loved the sound of her own voice more than she loved breathing. “So, a few days after that — as I hadn’t been able to find him at the end of the gala to be able to give his jacket back to him — I was walking outside using his jacket because it was so warm and that way I could return it to him or one of his family members should I see them there. The a dog ran past me without his owner. He clearly belonged to someone because he had a collar and he was groomed, but I couldn’t even see anyone running after him. So, obviously, I ran after the dog to catch him, hoping he had a name tag and the owner’s information so I could return him. It took me a while and my feet were so tired, but eventually I succeeded. That was about when I saw a young man running towards me. The dog visibly brightened and started wagging his tail just as when I was trying to check the nametag, so I guessed it was the owner.”

“Who was it, then?”

“Ooh, was it Damian?”

“Yes! It was indeed Damian! His dog had run away! He was so kind to me because I found his dog and thanked me so many times for it. He asked me if I wanted to come for a walk with him and his dog who was so sweet the entire time. It was so wonderful talking with him — he’s a great conversationalist!” Marinette did agree with her there. “Then I gave him his jacket back and he gave me his number so we could keep in contact. We kept talking even after I returned to Italy and he’s one of my dearest friends!”

Well, Lila had said nothing problematic about Damian or any of the other Wayne family members, so Marinette decided she couldn’t bother to get involved in it. At least she’d done her research for once, because while there were things you could check on the internet, it would be much harder unless you knew exactly where to look and who to ask.

Marinette pulled out her phone to call Tim as he was supposed to fetch her from school with Alfred. Tim was her best friend and they were going to take her to the States for the next few weeks so she could get a break from school and all the stress surrounding it. Well. She was going to go to school with Damian in Gotham to make sure she didn’t fall behind, but it wasn’t like it was the schoolwork stressing her out. It was Lila and all her lies and the lack of anyone she could talk to or rely on. In Gotham, none of those things would be a problem.

But, instead of Tim walking up to her, she got Tim and Damian, both heading straight her way. Once she got over her surprise, she smiled brightly and waved at them before running towards Tim and hugging him. He wrapped his arms around her and squeezed her tightly.

“I’m so glad that you’re coming over for the next few weeks, Cupcake! There’s so much I want to show you. Did I already mention that Lucius and Tam are both looking forward to seeing you at the office during your stay? Because they totally are. They want to show you around the company. You can’t let them down. Bart and Kon mentioned wanting to see you at some point during the week too.”

Marinette laughed and wriggled out of Tim’s grasp. “I’ll make sure I’ll have time for all of them. I do need to set time aside for you especially, but I’m reserving Dames for myself for at least a few days,” she told the two boys and smiled at Damian. She still wasn’t too close with him so she tried to keep away from hugging him or tried to keep the touch contact at minimum because he always seemed so uncomfortable with the rest of the family showing their affection by hugs or ruffling his hair and so on. She didn’t want to do it to him.

(So what if a bit of it was because she had the tiniest crush on him and didn’t want to ruin her relationship with him before she even had any kind of a chance.)

“Oh, Marinette, who’s your friend? Your boyfriend? Or boyfriends?” Lila asked with the slightest smirk hidden behind her smile, the tone of her voice sounding the slightest bit scandalised at the idea of multiple boyfriends. It seemed everyone else caught it too and with wide eyes, stared at Marinette. Marinette scowled, hoping Tim and Damian didn’t catch the mood change in the air.

A pointless wish because both were children of Bruce Wayne and raised by the greatest detective in the world, but a wish nonetheless.

“This is my best friend, Tim, and this is his little brother and also my dear friend, Dames,” she replied, gritting her teeth a little.

“Oh no, your best friend? Isn’t Alya your best friend?”

That drew the attention of the entire class still present to them. They smelled drama and they wanted to see it.

“No,” Marinette said coolly, pressing her nails into the skin of her palm to keep herself calm and grounded. Tim seemed to notice it and put a hand on her arm, rubbing circles on it with his thumb. “Alya was my best friend until she decided to believe you over me. We grew apart.”

“God, Marinette, this ploy of yours isn’t going to work. You’re still my friend, but I’m also friends with Lila! I don’t get where this jealousy and need to have people for yourself is coming from! Are you still mad that Adrien doesn’t like you as much as he likes Lila?”

Marinette inhaled deep. “I don’t even like Adrien anymore. I haven’t liked him in months! I’m not jealous, it’s that you all keep believing and choosing Lila — a girl you’ve known for a year or so — over me, someone some of you have known since we were in diapers! Have I ever lied to any of you? Proved you couldn’t trust me? Anything that could justify any of this?”

She was so irritated and done with them. They weren’t bullying her, but honestly, she would have preferred it over them saying they were still friends before doing a complete 180° and deciding to choose Lila over her every. Single. Time. Not once had they chosen her over Lila since she came into the picture permanently.

“Like hell you don’t like Adrien. You just told me over the phone you do!”

“Alya, we haven’t spoken over the phone in ages.”

That stopped Alya. She swallowed, pulled out her phone and frantically looked through it before paling.

“Well?” Marinette inquired. She knew perfectly well it had been a long time since because both of them were just “so busy” all the time.

“It’s— it’s been half a year since…” Alya choked out. Marinette settled for an expression and an arch of a brow that told her I told you so.

“Well then, that’s settled. Can we go now? I’d like to see the rest of the family as soon as possible,” Marinette said, already turning on her heel when Lila decided she needed to have the last word in. At least she had the good idea of speaking in French because every time Marinette spoke to the two boys, it was in English. Obviously, both of them knew at least some French as she used it around the Manor and they sometimes replied to her, but still. It wasn’t like Lila knew.

“Where are you even going? It’s the middle of the school year. There can’t be any good reason as to why you’re leaving now. It’s not like you’re good enough to just not be here.”

“I am leaving because of stress, not that it actually was any of your concern, and my schoolwork is doing just fine, thank you very much.”

“I haven’t even seen you study, you’re quiet in class — in fact, it seems like all you do is draw while you should focus on what Mlle Bustier is teaching us.”

Marinette sighed. She didn’t want to have to deal with this.

The others in class spoke up too, all of them spouting out similar “facts” that actually weren’t true. Marinette could feel tears burning in her eyes and the choking feeling in her throat was just too present, but she couldn’t do anything about it. Tim looked ready to go full Red Robin on them, but just before he opened his mouth, Damian was already in front of them and at it. Tim returned to Marinette’s side, rubbing comforting circles on her shoulders and arms, wiping her tears away.

“I’m not certain if any of you imbeciles have ears. She told you, her schoolwork is excellent. I have seen her grades, Father has seen her grades, her parents have seen her grades, Drake has seen them, and all of us have decided that it is of no problem for her to come with us. And if any of you were the friends you say you are, then you would not question this and be happy for her and trust she knows what she is doing. If none of you are able to do that simple thing, then I deem all of you unworthy of her,” he said, in perfect French, his tone of voice clearly telling them all his word was final. Some of the students paled and backed off when they caught it and understood there was no way for them out of this.

It seemed Lila didn’t.

“Who are you supposed to be? I’ll have you know, I’m the daughter of an ambassador, you can’t speak to me like that.”

“Oh, so you are the liar Malaki has mentioned every now and then.”

“Are you calling me a liar?”

“Well, to say what Jason would love to if he were here, I ain’t calling you a truther,” Tim chimed in, a smile on his face, though none of the others could see it as he was still focused on making sure Marinette was okay. Marinette’s snort mixed with her choked sob as she held onto Tim, watching the exchange take place in front of them.

Marinette could have cried out of joy. Her friends — these friends — were actually there for her and didn’t let her deal with all of it alone. And Damian, well. He believed in her. He didn’t doubt her words for a second about a liar and then the moment he met Lila, he stood with Marinette and didn’t let Lila’s sweet, sugary, false words change his mind.

It mattered more to her than she knew how to explain.

The glare he had on his face, directed at Lila and the rest of them, was definitely the perfect blend of Damian al Ghul Wayne and Robin. It was something all the Bats learnt from Bruce and Batman, but Damian had perfected it and turned it into something of his own. Marinette was glad she was never on the receiving end of it. The faintest ghost of a smile crept on her lips as she watched everything unravel in front of her very eyes.

“Wait. Aren’t you— Lila, do you not recognise him?”

That was Alya.

“Why should I?”

Lila.

“Because that right there is Damian Wayne and you were just telling us about how you met him.”

“According to the internet and my various sources, the two people with Marinette Dupain-Cheng are Damian Wayne and Timothy Drake-Wayne.”

Max and Markov.

“I can’t believe this is how you fall, Rossi. You don’t recognise your so called best friend? You definitely dug yourself into a deep hole. It’s ridiculous, utterly ridiculous.”

And Chloé.

That was all the rest of them needed to pull out their phones and start looking up the rest of the things — thoroughly — that Lila had claimed to be true. It didn’t take too long before Markov and Max started listing off things Lila had lied about.

Damian smirked and turned away, clearly satisfied with how things turned out. He led Marinette to the car with Tim, and once they were inside and had said hi to Alfred and apologised for how long it took, he turned to Marinette and actually, genuinely smiled at her.

“Remember, Malaki, you don’t need to do everything on your own. If anyone ever dares to disrespect you like that again or doesn’t believe you when you’re telling the truth, you can trust that I will be there if you need assistance. I will always be there when you need me. Asking for assistance isn’t a sign of weakness. Besides, isn’t that what Grayson always tries to remind us all of? That ‘asking for help and helping is what family does’, that ‘admitting to your flaws or not being able to do everything alone doesn’t mean a lack of strength’.”

“I agree with him, for once. We all care about you and you’re family. You could never be a bother. You can rely on us.”

Marinette wiped a tear out of her eye and smiled back. “You’re right. Thank you, Dami. For everything. You too, Timmers.” She grabbed the hands of both her friends and squeezed them, completely ignoring the warmth on her cheeks as Damian gave her a light squeeze back.

She would be fine.

Because after all, he wasn’t about to leave her fending for herself.

“And no matter what happens...”

“I’ll go with you.”

Marinette’s tone indicated her words were meant to be taken as final, but Damian wasn’t having it. He was not about to let his wife come with him to take down the League of Assassins for good because it wasn’t safe at all. That was the one fight where he wouldn’t be able to protect her because he’d be too caught up with fighting those who had gotten training nearly as good and tough as his. His beloved, as good as she was, was not comparable to the League because her training had been so different. His mother would be there, no doubt. Even if she liked Marinette, Mother was not above using her son’s wife against him if she thought it would work in her favour.

“No. You aren’t coming. I don’t want you to die there.”

Marinette groaned and threw a pillow at him with way too much force. It didn’t hurt — it was a pillow, after all—, but it did surprise him.

“Damian, ma raison de vivre, I will come with you. There’s no way I’ll be able to go on if you’re gone, so I will come and make sure you don’t die,” she snapped at him, scowling. It was a rare thing to see on her face.

“You are the one who needs to live if it comes down to that. The world and the family needs you more than they need me, habibti. I—” He was interrupted before he got any further.

“No! Don’t you dare start that! You are my — ugh, what’s the English term… whatever, let’s go with French — ma raison d’être and there’s no way I’m letting you die either! You aren’t disposable, you aren’t someone that I — or the family — can lose! I don’t care what it takes, and if I have to follow you from the shadows, hidden from you, to be able to come along, then that’s what I will do,” Marinette said, snarling.

“But this is the League of Assassins, they are there to kill. I might have to resort to that as well, if nothing else works. I will try not to for you, of course, but the chance still exists. They will definitely try to kill me, and if you’re there, you as well.”

“You know what, I’m coming and I’m telling the family of this as well. They won’t let you go alone either. None of us want you to die.”

She had already pulled out her phone and dialed someone by the time Damian had noticed and tried to stop her. It was too late.

“Fine,” he huffed and sat down at the table, watching as Marinette argued with someone on the phone until she finally put her phone away with a smug smile on her face.

“Tim said he’s coming, I reminded Bruce that he wouldn’t want to lose yet another son — especially not for the second time, yes, I know you died like fifteen years ago — so he’s in as well, Dick was in before I even finished trying to convince him, and Jason is coming as well because he cares about you all and wants to be there to protect you even if he’s horrible at saying it out loud.”

“I know.”

“Cass, Steph, Duke and Babs are in as well. So, you know, the whole family is going to be there. I’m pretty sure Jon and Colin would want to help as well if I asked.”

Marinette walked around the table to him, and slid her arms around him. “Dames, whatever happens, I will be there by your side, just like you told you’d be by my side. It goes both ways, love.” She pressed a kiss to his hair and took his hands in her own. “We are going to be fine, I promise. After all, you’re my other half, you complete me, and that means we’re going to survive and get through this as well.”

The day to fight came, and all the kwamii were tired, so Marinette wore kevlar, just like the rest of them. She smiled at him, holding his hand and chuckled, saying they matched. Damian smiled back and tucked some loose strands behind her ear. Yeah, just like his beloved said, they were going to be alright.

Because after all, they worked together better than any oiled machine.

“You will always love them.”

Those were the words he told her in front of both their families, their friends, but Damian couldn’t care less about them. All that mattered to him was that his angel was there, his angel had promised to give all of herself to him for the rest of their lives, until death do them part. In return, he gave her all that he was, all that he had, and he would never leave her side if it was up to him to decide.

He took her hands in his before bringing them up to kiss her fingers. Marinette laughed, the sound of it like music in his ears. It was the most beautiful sound in the world to him. The red of her dress was elegant and brought out her appearance’s best qualities, it made her eyes shine. The golden accents

When the “You may kiss the bride” came, he lifted her up by her waist, twirled them around and placed her back on the ground before he pressed a delicate kiss on her lips. It made her smile, and Damian was certain she could compete with the Sun itself for the place of the brightest and most beautiful thing in the world and win.

When they finally turned to face their closest people present, they were both smiling and happier than ever. Grayson cheered in the front row, Todd had a grin on his face, Father was smiling at them with such pride in his eyes, and Drake… Oh yeah, he was Marinette’s Man of Honor, so he wasn’t with the rest of the family — he had been standing at the side on Marinette’s side, with Brown, Tsurugi and Cain, who were her bridesmaids, and Couffaine, her bridesman, all standing behind him. Damian had given Colin and Jon the honour of being his Best Men (because he simply refused to choose only one of them.) Right now, Drake looked ready to run to Marinette and hug and congratulate her, but decided against it because he knew it was her and Damian’s day, and the right to be there by her side at the ceremony was Damian’s.

(It was clear he was going to spend as much time as possible with her at the wedding reception, though. Damian had no problem with that — his wife should be able to be with her friends, especially her best friend, as long as she didn’t forget him. He knew she wouldn’t. There was a reason she’d married him.)

Marinette smiled at him and gave his cheek a quick peck as they intertwined their fingers and walked down the aisle. It was strange and oh so wonderful how this amazing young woman had decided she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him, no matter what kind of a person he had been, no matter how many other suitable people that liked her were there, no matter how difficult life together would be because of how stubborn both of them were — she still had chosen him over everyone and everything else, and Damian would be damned if he didn’t treat her with all the respect she deserved and make her as happy as ever possible.

Because after all, if soulmates existed, she was definitely his.

“Nothing can ever change that.”

A woman perks up as she hears someone call her name, seeing the black hair and the tan skin of the one she’s always loved. The one she’s loved since the day she saw him and until the day her heartbeats ceased and even beyond death. The one she had loved, the one she still loves, the one she will always love. He’s standing there, shocked, tears in his eyes, but there’s so much adoration and love in his eyes that she doesn't even know how to react. Then she rushes to her feet and runs to him, throwing herself at him because it’s been too long since the day we lost each other.

Her treasure got to live a life decades longer than her own, he got to grow old, but she can’t find it in herself to be bitter about it — he always deserved to live a long life, and besides, even though she would have tried to be happy for him if it had happened, he never fell in love again or remarried after she was taken away from him. He’d stayed hers and hers only until death, and now they’re back together, finally. Even if it took nearly seven entire decades of separation first.

Basking in the warmth of sunlight, the young woman with black hair leans against the young man just about her age, his hair just as black as hers. He wraps his arms around her shoulders tightly and presses her against his chest, more than grateful he can hold her again after being separated for so very long. She chuckles and tilts her head backwards so he can give her a kiss on her forehead more easily.

The rest of the world no longer matters. It’s no longer “as though it doesn’t matter”, because now it is “it doesn’t matter”. They have both lived and they have both died, and now that they’re together again, they don’t need to care about the world. It isn’t like they can affect it anymore either.

They intertwine their fingers, a gesture that brings both of them comfort, a gesture that has brought both of them comfort for decades now, and they watch the sun set down below in the world they can only see as outsiders anymore. Even so, the sunset paints the world in warm tones, and the peaceful tones of red, orange and yellow fill their vision.

Their time is no longer limited, for they’ve found one another in the life beyond. They are together again, and that is all that matters to them. Their family is there as well, all of them are waiting to see them, and that’s why they don’t need to worry anymore.

The young woman stands up and offers her hand to the man, and the man takes it, letting the woman pull him to his feet. She cups his face and pulls him down to a kiss, smiling into it as she murmurs her confessions of love to him in all the languages she knows and even the languages she doesn’t. In return, he tells her how she is all that he needs, how she changed his life, and how he will keep his promise of staying by her side until the end of time in all the languages that have ever existed and even the languages that don’t yet exist.

After all, to one another, the two of them were everything.

Because what’s a soulmate, if not the one person you love more than anything, the one person your life would crash without, the one person that gives you strength in the darkest of times even when they aren’t there, if not the one you choose to love until you run out of air to breathe and until your heart ceases to beat?

What’s a soulmate, if not the one who will keep coming back to you over and over again, no matter what happens, until the end of time and will find you even beyond death?

________

@kris-pines04 @thethirdwheelfriend @daminett4life

_________

Did you find the only two connected scenes in this one because there's totally one scene that leads straight to another (and as the fic isn't in chronological order, the two scenes aren't either, it’s easy but not that easy.)

If you guess what were my favourite scenes to write or tell me what were yours to read, I'll give you a cookie.

#damian x marinette #maridami #daminette #maribat #Damian Wayne #damian al ghul #marinette dupain cheng #ml x dc #ML #miraculous ladybug #dc #fanfiction #fanfic #ethel's writing

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gloriafee4 · 5 years ago

Note

Drenched in twilight they stared

Dancing in Twilight

Damian could only watch as his angle stood in the star showers. Watching her laugh, watching her whole being just light up with joy. While being covered in the twilight sky.

Marinette, could only see her demon as he stood on guard in the Shadows of night. Watching him protect, watching him smile a small bit as a stray star lit up the shadows. While being drenched in the shadows of night.

Both Marinette and Damian, complete opposites, and yet get along like a house on fire. Harm the angle run from a demons wrath, harm the demon, no escape from divine judgement.

Drenched in twilight they looked to each other, reaching out for the other. Their hands meat and they pull each other together. Once close to their half, they started dancing. Dancing in Twilight they laughed, they smiled, they kissed, and the night was bright.

"Drenched in Twilight we dance in the night."

#daminette #sentence give away #pt 2 #Dancing in Twilight

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anjuschiffer · 5 years ago

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[Maribat] Ancient Magus’ Bride Au: Second Chance (2)

And I’m back with a second installation! Hope you enjoy this ^^ (Tags are at the bottom of this post, after the read more line.)

MASTERLIST | Concept 1 | Concept 2 (this one)

To clarify something [that I missed in the previous concept], the ring Marinette was ‘given’ was actually a tracking device Jason placed on Marinette when he found out where Damian was hiding for the past four years (Damian moved out of the House at the age of maybe 16, turning 17? I don’t know :D). The ring is then kept in a box in Damian’s study for safe keeping. The reason why Mari turned into a cat was also because Jason managed to throw an animal hide over Mari that allows her to shape shift. Also, the raven-like fae is Jason’s familiar.

Marinette’s mind is muddled as she walks along the side of the lake (that’s still part of Damian’s property). Titus is following her, making sure that she doesn’t get hurt.

“Aren’t you going to come back?” Titus asks her, Marinette wondering why she was surprised to hear Titus talk to her. She knew he could communicate with her, but hearing him actually talk to her made her smile.

“Back where?” She tells him, looking at the moon ripple in the lake.

“Home.” Marinette looks at Titus before her eyes widening, Marinette launching herself into a sprint, running back towards the cottage

She finds Jason and Damian physically fighting, but Titus pulled Jason back while Marinette (still a cat) threw herself at Damian, finding herself wrapping her arms around his neck.

Everyone stared at her. She turned back into a human.

“I’m back.”

“Welcome back.”

Jason is staring at the whole interaction before deciding to leave. That is, without saying “Glad to see you’re doing alright Demon Spawn. But don’t forget, we’re all going to be watching you from now on.” (His fae lingers around the property before later on leaving for a while)

After the incident, Damian believes that Mari should make a wand to help defend herself in times of trouble.

“As much as I hate doing this, I’m sending you off to Grayson.”

“Grayson?”

“Richard.” Damian states, Marinette wondering why he didn’t say Dick’s name with the same tone as Jason’s. Or rather, why he referred to Richard by his last name instead of his first.

A few hours later and a few things being packed, a dragon comes to pick Mari up, taking her to the dragon island

Richard welcomes her warmly, aka a squeezing hug and twirling involved.

“It’s been such a long time, mon oisillon.” Mari’s eyes widen

“You know french?”Marinette asked, Richard now wondering why she didn’t respond in French. She was from France after all, her records saying she was born and raised there. He thought she would, despite being- they forced her to forget.

“I thought it’d be better if we talked in your mother tongue, but it seems they’ve made you forget it, didn’t they?” Marinette hung her head, averting her eyes from Dick.

“Majority of my foster parents didn’t like the fact that I spoke French, doing whatever in their power to make me forget it. Although, thanks to them I also know Spanish and English now.” She looked at Richard with glossy eyes. “It makes speaking with you guys a bit easier.”

Cue Dick hugging her and telling her that she can lean on him if Damian ever becomes too much to handle.

While at the dragon island, Marinette is tasked to walk around the island to see which branch she wants to use. She spots a bonsai tree, a humming sound resonating from it. It was the same sound she heard the last time she was there. While she reaches out to touch a branch, she’s transported to a hazy world where she learns of Wayzz.

Wayzz, an uil dragon that once had a previous Master whom he adorned dearly.

“I want to fly again, to take flight alongside someone once again. However, not the flight that you think. Although the sky was liberating, a second home, learning and living with someone is the best adventure I was ever on.”

That sold Mari. Getting Wayzz’s consent, she used one of his branches to make her wand, gently sanding it as she carved the branch into her wand.

Upon completing it, she stares at it, feeling that something was missing from it.

“Not bad for your first time making it.” Dick says, taking the staff. “I’m also going to be taking some of your hair, if you don’t mind.”

“Can you do me a favor?” Mari points to her shoulder. “Can you trim it up to my shoulders? Having long hair is a bit of a hassle when making potions.” Dick grins

Dick then takes the staff, hair trims and some blue gems [that when the sun hits it as a certain angle, it turns green] to the middle of the lake, casting a water spell to finish making the staff.

Once she gets the staff back, Marinette gets taken back to the Haze where she speaks to Wayzz once again

“Seems like we’re heading to a new adventure. Make sure to have fun and to use your staff for when you feel like its right to use it, even when others think it’s wrong.”

Mari snaps back to reality, hugging Richard before casting her very first spell. Stepping towards the edge of the lake and managing to walk on it, water begins to engulf her

“Take me home.” Like a bullet, she quickly spews from the island to the ocean surrounding it, getting to the Mainland in mere seconds before she’s thrown into the air and gets the help of a fire fae, soaring thru the skies

Damain felt her warm magic close, scampering outside, stretching his arms out to welcome her

“Welcome back.”

“I’m back.” Marinette manages to whisper through her lips, her body limping into Damian’s arms.

Taglist: @daminett4life @moonlightstar64 @emo-elaine13

As always, thank you and if you wanna be tagged, don’t hesitate to ask! :D

#maribat second chance au #maribat #daminette

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icerosecrystal · 4 years ago

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Jasonette - A Second Chance Pt. 2: Reactions

A lot of people wanted a part 2 for my one-shot Jasonette - A Second Chance. Thank you to everyone who requested it. This is basically the reactions of the bat fam and Paris to the deaths and the revelations.

(The BatFam’s Reaction to Talia’s death)

Damian didn’t know what to think about his mother’s death. Yes, she was a horrible mother, but she still raised him. After everything she did to him, she was still his mother. He wanted to kill the girl, Marinette, for killing his mother. For taking away one of his parents. Even if she had bonded with him, her personality could be a facade. He was quite prepared to make her pay for actions. He had even grabbed his katana and was walking to Marinette’s room. He was about to enter and give her a piece of his mind when he heard sobbing. He put his ear against the door to listen better.

What he heard made him feel so guilty, “I made a promise that I wouldn’t kill anymore. I broke that promise. Deep down, I am a murderer.” He stumbled away from the door in shock. She thought that by killing Talia, she was a murderer. Marinette wasn’t blaming anyone for her actions but herself.

Damian went to his room and reflected on his own life. Now that he thought about it, he was much like her. They had both killed people. They also changed their ways after associating themselves with new people, in both cases the Waynes. Damian could still hear the despair in her voice as she talked to Todd. The heart-wrenching sobs. His family had given him another chance even though he had killed many. Even though he was a bratty child, he got a second chance. That was when Damian Wayne made up his mind. Marinette Dupain-Cheng was like his older sister. He would help her grow and would help her heal from her past. But most of all, he would give her a second chance.

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Bruce didn’t know what to think about Marinette killing Talia. He understood in this situation that it was an act of self-defense, but she could have easily disarmed Talia instead of killing her. Bruce rubbed his forehead in irritation. He never condoned killing, especially after what happened to his parents. His parents. He frowned in thought, did Marinette ever mention having parents? She mentioned the liar, the ex-partner, the villain, and the ex-classmates, but never her parents. Did she not have any?

Bruce went over to the Bat Computer and put in the name Marinette Dupain-Cheng. He found her record. She was obviously stated as dead. It seems like, at her funeral, her grandparents were present. But, her parents were nowhere to be seen which prompted a lot of questions out of the funeral attendees. When Bruce tried to find her parents, he found that they were very much alive. So why didn’t they attend her funeral? He tried to find something, but couldn’t. But something then caught his eye, some customers of the Dupain-Cheng bakery had commented that a couple of months before her death, Marinette wasn’t seen much at the bakery. Her parents, the owners, were also a lot more temperamental. A lot of customers suspected that Marinette was either being abused or neglected, although they couldn’t tell which. In Bruce’s opinion, both were rather concerning.

Bruce leaned back against the chair in thought, Marinette really had nobody left. She had a valid reason for revenge and took it. He thought back to his own parents’ death. It had been heartbreaking, but he had had people such as Alfred to comfort him, and help him. But Marinette, she had no one through all her heartbreak, no friends, no family, nothing. And now she had that chance, but it was ruined by her killing Talia. Bruce then decided that this would be the one instance that he condoned killing, and he would support Marinette and help her get her second chance at happiness and a family.

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Tim was still unsure whether or not everything was a hallucination. Once he realized it wasn’t he couldn’t believe it. Talia, the person who had somehow managed to escape death so many times was finally dead. She no longer had the ability to manipulate people. Tim didn’t really have a relationship with Talia, not the way Damian, Bruce, or even Jason did. But, he truly believed that life would be a bit easier without Talia Al-Ghul being a part of it. In terms of Marinette killing her, he was willing to give her a second chance, for he knew that she didn’t mean it.

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Dick was ecstatic the Talia was dead. She was a major bitch. Dick still remembered the night terrors that Damian experienced when he first came to the manor. He still experienced them, but they weren’t as drastic, thankfully. But, Dick would always hate Talia for pushing such a young boy to do so many bad things, that the moment he escaped those, he would experience vivid flashbacks of them. No, he was not sad or mad about Talia’s death. Not the way the other members of his family might be. And he didn’t blame Marinette in the slightest. He instead thought of her as a hero, but if she wanted to forget the fact that she was ever killed, he would respect that. He would give Marinette a second chance, the same way he did to Damian a few years ago.

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As Jason listened to his beloved pixie sobbing, it made his heart wrench. She didn’t deserve this, she didn’t deserve any of this. Yet, she had to experience things that many people don’t experience until much later in their life, or at all. He was mad at everyone who hurt her. He wanted to hurt them until they begged and said sorry to her. But, he knew that that wasn’t what Marinette would want. She would want to move on and start a new life and have a second chance as he suggested. As he rocked Marinette in his arms, he thought about Talia’s death. He didn’t think that Marinette killing Talia was bad. She was acting in self-defense, and he would rather it be that manipulative, prostitute of a bitch. His baby girl didn’t deserve to die after everything that she went through.

Besides, Talia had escaped death one too many times. Had she brought both him and Marinette back to life? Yes. Did they owe her anything because of that? No. She only brought them back to manipulate them into her little assassins. She wanted them to do all the dirty work for her. She and her father, Ra’s promised revenge, when really they were using their need for revenge as a leverage for them to stay in the league.

Jason looked down at the perfect little angel with a little bit of devil in his arms. She was beautiful. Her raven hair with navy highlights. Her beautiful heart-shaped face. Her pale skin with mildly flushed cheeks along with freckles sprinkled on said cheeks. Her pink pouty lips. But, his favorite part about her was her eyes. Her eyes were a beautiful almond-shaped, with long, dark eyelashes, and her shimmering blue-bell eyes. He loved the way her eyes held a different type of sparkle depending on her emotion. Yes, everything about her was perfect, and he’d be dammed if he didn’t give her a second chance to have a better life with him.

(Marinette’s Parents’ Reactions)

To anyone else, Marinette’s parents would be considered selfish and horrible parents. But to them, they thought that they were amazing parents. They always let Marinette do whatever she wants and never did ask her where she was because they trusted her so much. What they didn’t realize was that they were neglecting Marinette. When Lila came to their house along with some of her classmates and told them that they were bullying her, they thought that maybe Marinette was acting out because they were caring too much about her. So they stopped talking to her in hopes to give her more privacy and less of a reason to act out.

When she was revealed as the hero of Paris, they didn’t know what to think. And then she died. She looked so sad, but as she died, they saw a small glimmer of hope, as if she was excited to move on from her life. It was then that her parents realized that they were neglecting her. But it was too late to do anything. Their daughter, Marinette Dupain-Cheng, was already dead, and she wasn’t coming back. After that, they stopped doing anything. They didn’t attend her funeral. They didn’t open the bakery much anymore. They were mourning for the daughter they lost, they didn’t think that anything else could happen to make them feel worse until it did come.

The murderer of the Agreste’s except for Emilie and Lila, as well as the revelations that the Agreste’s were villains and that Lila was a liar, was a huge wake-up call for her parents. They then realized everything they did wrong. They started neglecting their daughter even more because of the word of a liar. They were horrible parents. And as they sat down on the couch replaying the murderer of Lila Rossi, they felt tears slip down their face, for they lost their daughter in the worst way possible. That was the day that they swore that if they ever had a second chance at being a parent, they would do everything in their power to be the best parents possible. They owed that much to their dead daughter.

(School/ School Board’s Reactions)

Both Mrs. Bustier and Principal Damocles were receiving a lot of backlash from Paris for being allies in Lila spreading her lies. Yet, they both claimed that it wasn’t their fault that Lila had tricked them. The only problem was that they claimed that in front of the school board who automatically decided to fire them. What school staff didn’t take responsibility for their students?

The bigger problem was when the school board realized that both Bustier and Damocles were probably neglecting the students and taking bribes. These actions should have them in jail. So, the school board started a case against both of them. They gathered evidence every time they took a bribe and every time they neglected a student. They turned the case in and received the news that a trial was being held against the two. All of the students and parents in Mrs. Bustier’s class were present during the trial. When Mrs. Bustier claimed that it wasn’t their fault that they believed Lila, Mrs. Rossi got out of her seat screaming and attacked the two. She was beating up both of them and screaming that if they had stopped her from lying or had told her, then her baby wouldn’t have been killed. It took four security guards to stop her. Once Mrs. Rossi had calmed down, she looked at the judge and announced, “I want to sue both of them.”

The judge agreed, seeing that they both had no remorse whatsoever and were more concerned about saving their own skins. In the end, they both got sued, hat to pay a fine of 200,000 dollars once they got out of jail. As for their jail time, they had to serve two years for educational negligence along with four more years of taking bribery. It wasn’t a good day for those two. What made it even worse was that once they were released from jail, they were forbidden from going back into the educational field. Unlike many others, Mrs. Bustier and Mr. Damocles were not getting a second chance, at least, not for a long time, and that satisfied everybody.

(Now for the best part, the class’s reactions)

The class was appalled by many things right now. They first found out that Lila was a liar and they betrayed and beat Marinette for no reason. Marinette was Ladybug and she was dead. Lila had worked with Hawkmoth, Mayura, and later Chat Noir to betray Ladybug. She was tortured by an unknown person and was later killed. They were each tortured, and it looked like they were tortured based on how loyal there were to Lila, seeing how Alya, Lila’s “best friend” was tortured the most. Mrs. Bustier and Mr. Damocles were going to jail for negligence and bribery, and they were never allowed to cheat again. The last thing they found out a couple of days later.

The whole class was meeting up, not to do anything, just to sit down in silence and look back at their friendship with Marinette. Suddenly, everyone’s phone beeped, which was weird because Hawkmoth had already won. When Alya turned on her phone to see the news, what they saw left them aghast.

There was a picture of a dead Adrien, Gabriel, and Natalie, they were bloody and looked to have been murdered. Then Emilie came into view with a somber look on her face, Gorilla following her. This surprised everyone, wasn’t Emilie supposed to be dead? Then Emilie took a deep breath and started talking.

“Hello Paris, if you don’t already know who I am, my name is Emile De Vanilly. The reason I am using my maiden name is that I found out that my ex-husband, dead son, and ex-best friend hurt Paris in many ways and I don’t want to associate myself with them anymore. If you are wondering what they did, they were the villains of Paris. That’s right, Gabriel Agreste was Hawkmoth, Adrien Agreste was Chat Noir, and Natalie Sancoeur was Mayura. Both Gabriel and Natalie terrorized Paris, and then later convinced Adrien to join them as Chat Noir and betray his partner Ladybug. Because of my family, Paris was terrorized and Ladybug, or rather Marinette Dupain-Cheng in her civilian identity is dead. And the reason why they did all of this was because of me, they were trying to bring me back”, Emilie cut herself off and started sobbing.

Gorilla moved his hand to her shoulder as a sign of support. He then continued where she left off, “No matter what Emilie says, this is not her fault. She didn’t force them to do this. I myself had no part in all of this. I had no knowledge of it either, but I am sorry Paris, I should have questioned Gabriel’s strange disappearances. I also noticed how aggressive Adrien had been getting and blamed it on hormones. I noticed that Natalie always looked sick, but whenever I asked she and Gabriel would exchanged looks, but not answer me. I am sorry Paris, I failed you because of my naive trust in the family I served and my colleague. This video was just Emilie and I saying thank you for fighting through everything and we’re sorry.”

The video then cut to Nadia Chamak discussing the video but nobody in the class was paying attention anymore. Not only was one person in their class a fake, but two. Adrien, he looked so sweet and innocent. But, he had broken their class apart. He must have known that Lila was lying and let it happen. He let them bully the girl who loved him. He betrayed Paris for his own selfish wants. He had broken every one. And now, he was dead along with Marinette’s other tormentors. But the end to their reign had a price, Marinette’s life.

Nino sobbed in the corner, why had he ever been the best friend of someone like that? Alya felt so guilty, she had betrayed her ex-best friend for a girl with pretty lies, and she would never be able to apologize. The rest of the class felt the same, all of them sobbing their heart out. From that day, Mrs. Busteir’s ex-class never trusted anyone. They were a lot more reserved and wary of others, and would always fact check. They always made sure that they weren’t seeing the mask of a person. Why? Because they owed that much to Marinette. If they couldn’t be there for her then, they would give themselves a second chance, and be there for their future friends.

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Guilt, happiness, wariness, surprise, sadness, satisfaction, regret, everyone that Marinette knew personally felt something different. But they all had one thing in common, they were going to give her a second chance, give themselves a second chance, stop others from having a second chance. For a first chance broke all of them to pieces, so why not have a second chance, for all of them to do what’s right and make a difference? Because Marinette deserved that much, they had broken her, so they were going to fix others. They were going to do what they couldn’t do for Marinette, for she was special, and she deserved a second chance, everyone deserves a second chance.

#mlb x dc #maribat #miraculous ladybug #batman #jasonette #jason x marinete #marinette x jason #batfam #post revenge #reactions #second chances #jason todd #marinette dupain cheng #mlb class

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