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plantsarefun06 · 2 years

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The Particular Abilities of Marinette, and Her Discovery of Them Chapter 30:Christmas

[Inspired By]

[First] [MasterPost] [AO3]

Marinette woke up to the faint echoes of activity from the living area downstairs. She lazily slung her arm around to the nightstand beside her bed, sliding her arm across the surface until it met a block she recognized as the alarm clock Bruce specifically bought for her, and pressed the button with two dots on the top, the clock reading out ‘9:07’ to her.

She groaned, rolling over and burning her face into the pillow.

She layed there for another five minutes before Tikki floated over and sat on the pillow just beside her head, waiting for her to be ready to get up.

She groaned and pulled herself up, rubbing her eyes as she grabbed a cardigan she had borrowed from Cass, not realizing how drafty it would be in the Manor and properly packing in Paris, and threw it over her shoulders, wrapping it tightly around herself and Tikki snuggling into her clavicle before navigating herself down the stairs, seeing that everyone but Stephanie and Cass had already left the family wing, both of which were getting ready in the later’s bathroom.

She slowly descended the stairs, making an effort not to jostle herself and Tikki.

It was a madhouse. She watched as Barbara came in, the moment she passed the threshold to the foyer Dick did a trick over her wheelchair before moving behind her and moving her onto the couch, babbling nonsense a mile a minute.

She saw as Tim is dragged in by Jason from the opposite end of the house, likely having been brought by Jason from the cave or the study where he had been working on cases. She had seen him go to bed late last night after patrolling with the others, but he must have woken up early to do some work, despite the ‘no work unless it’s a life or death during the holidays’ rule.

Following them was Damian, who looked as if he had been doing morning drills, despite everyone else having foregone them. He simply nodded at her before continuing into the foyer.

He nodded at her.

He acknowledged that she was there.

What?

Had their conversation last night finally broken through that barrier? Would Damian actually communicate with her?

“Are you going to continue standing there like an imbecilic fish, Dupain-Cheng?” Only furthering her into her confused stupor as he just rolled his eyes at her and sat on the far end of the couch, picking up the book on the end table.

Did he just… insult her?

She was brought out of her trance by her Maman and Papa as they walked in from the west wing where the guests’ quarters were, each kissing her on the cheek, and hugging her tightly before wishing her a Merry Christmas and heading to the kitchen right off the hall where Alfred, Selina, and Bruce were already.

She was jostled as Steph and Cass rushed down the stairs, Steph threw back a quick sorry and Merry Christmas at her before sliding to the foot of the Christmas tree and riffling through the presents. Cass found a blanket and sat down on the opposite end of the couch as Stephanie started rifling through the present before picking up a box that inside she couldn’t see any distinct detail, other than flickers of electricity from inside, something that she was just getting a grip on and was yet to be able to identify what it was beside it being an electronic of moderate size.

She smiled big at Cass before shaking it loudly.

“I really hope that this is the brand new, not yet released Wayne tech laptop I asked for for the spring semester at GU!” She yelled loud enough to be heard in the kitchen where Bruce was pouring his coffee. She saw as he rolled his eyes, fondly, before mouthing ‘it is’ to everyone as they chuckled at Steph’s antics.

She shivered a bit as a cold draft brushed in, she pulled the cardigan tighter around her before moving closer into the foyer to the fireplace, settling down on the floor in front of where Steph was sitting and leaned back on her legs. Steph only ran a couple of fingers through her hair as she rambled on to Babs about something she and Kara had done a couple of weeks ago when they had gone on patrol together in National City.

She listened to her while out of the corner of her vision watched as Alfred slid a couple of pans into the oven and him, along with her Maman, Papa, Bruce and Selina started heading towards them, Stephanie's story becoming much more ominous on certain details when her Maman and Papa came into the room, outright stopping when Bruce followed into the foyer last.

Bruce, as slowly as she believed the man could go, walked from the doorway with a cup of coffee in his hand in the empty armchair, Selina, with more grace than would be expected in the morning, pulled herself down beside him and curled into his side. Ace trotted down the stairs and went to sit at attention at Bruce’s feet, Bruce petting his head with his unattended hand as his muscles relaxed into the cushion.

“Okay,” he started, pulling himself up a bit, “Let’s get started on presents while breakfast is in the oven.” Bruce leaned forward and started sifting through the present under the Christmas tree, she could see what was held inside most of them. There was material that looked to be of clothing, some flickers of electricity in some, others she could see the faint outlines of bacteria on them. She had no clue as to who they belonged to. “As always, I’ll start with my gifts to you all first.”

He passed around his own gifts to each of them. To Dick, to Steph (who did in fact get the new, not yet released laptop), to Cass, and Barbara, to Tim, and then Damian (his present came in the form of an overly excited puppy who Damian had named Titus after some Shakespeare play), and then after all of that the only child left was herself.

Bruce pulled himself off the chair smiling at her before muttering one moment with a grin and walking out of the foyer and down to his study, she watched as he picked up something beside his desk, heaving it up as it was obviously heavy, and heading back up to the foyer.

Dick and Cass were both smiling cheekily at her, and she could tell they knew what Bruce was doing.

Bruce came back through the foyer door, having an awkward hold on the box due to its size, “Now, I wanted opening presents to be as much of a surprise to you as it is for everybody else, so this box has been sealed and doesn’t contain any bacterial life and I commissioned a magic user that I know through the Martha Wayne Foundation,” she internally noted to herself that he likely meant Zatanna, though he wouldn’t say that out right in front of her parents who they were trying to keep out of the know of the Wayne’s double lives, “To spell the box that you wouldn’t be able to see it. They said that they weren’t sure it was actually going to work, but I say we at least gave it a shot.”

A smile formed on her face as Bruce set the box in front of her before rejoining Selina.

Her smile grew as she saw what lay in the box, the magic not at all working: leotards, ones she could see with perfect clarity unlike the ones she commonly wore and some even resembling her competition leos, grips and wrist guards both visible to her as well, Dick must have helped Bruce pick them out. As well as what looked to be some sweatpants and fuzzy socks, something that Cass must have helped Bruce pick out. And at the very bottom, a little card sate. On it she read the braille through the box:

Come down to the cave tonight, we finished the safety proofing. Your other gift is down there.

She looked around at the people sitting around her, smiling brighter than she thought she ever had before. Cass could probably tell that she could see what was in the box, but she wouldn’t say a thing. She’d give this one to Bruce, though she’d have to text Zatanna that the spell didn’t work.

She looked up at everyone around her.

In Paris, she had her Team. Adrien, Alya, Nino, Kim, Alix, Luka, Kagami, Max, Chloe, even Tikki and the rest of the Kwamis, all of them. They were her best friends and most trusted allies. She had no doubt that no matter what, and no matter when, whether it be in five minutes or twenty years, they would be there for her.

And Paris, the place that she found when she was so utterly lost. The place that allowed her stability, and to heal. The place that protected her when The place where she found that happiness was possible. That would always be her home, no matter what.

But this? Right here, the people surrounding her. Stephanie, whose legs she was leaning against, Cassandra who was sitting right beside her on the ground, Dick and Babs who were cuddled up with each other on the end of the couch having stolen Damian’s spot when he had gotten up to great the puppy, Jason, Damian, who was now sitting on the ground beside the tree, trying to calm down the over-excited puppy on his lap as he looked at her expectantly a little smile adorning her face that she never thought she would see looking at her, Alfred standing up by the doorway, Selina curled up against Bruce—her Baba— who smiling down at her, and her Maman and Papa who had helped her through all the moments in her life and had made her their own the moment they had met her all those years ago.

This? This right here?

This was her family.

---

Notes:

That is the end of this story! But there is a sequel in the works.

---

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plantsarefun06 · 2 years

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The Particular Abilities of Marinette, and Her Discovery of Them Chapter 29:Akhi Alsaghir

[Inspired By]

[First] [MasterPost] [AO3]

She had been to America only once before, having gone to New York for a huge gymnastics convention in the city and staying in Chloe’s mom’s penthouse during the trip with Chloe. Never before she had been to Gotham City.

And, technically, she wasn’t in Gotham City, and wouldn’t be there at all during this trip at the least. Because apparently if you were rich enough, even if your life was completely centered in Gotham, you would never live in the city proper. While Gotham was an island, the mainland lining it belonged to Bristol township.

A.K.A. Rich-people Gotham.

Jason told her that it was mostly lawyers and businessmen that lived there, all of whom worked in Gotham, and that included Bruce.

Including the wealthy people themselves, Bristol township had just about anything a rich person may desire like: their own private schools, multiple country clubs, an airport filled exclusively with private planes. The same private planes that brought herself, her Maman and Papa across the Atlantic and to New Jersey, USA.

The moment the plane landed she met the family butler she had heard so much about (and according to just about everyone he was more than just a butler, but he himself would never allow you to address him as such), Alfred Pennyworth.

Alfred seemed incredibly polite, insisted on calling her ‘Mistress Marinette’ even if she told him he didn’t have too, and took all of her family's bags and packed them into the car himself. She had been wanting to meet Alfred for a while now, considering how much her siblings talked about him he seemed like a very important figure in the family despite never having met him before, but considering how infrequent and often unplanned their visits were and how busy Alfred always seemed to be from what her siblings said, they never got the chance to meet until now.

Bristol was incredibly cold, even for winter weather. The cold weather was not helped by the fact it was raining so heavily. Considering the types of trees she saw on the drive, and the state of the soil on the sides of the road it had to rain quite often and a lot, a complete contrast to normally bright and sunny Paris, but it seemed fitting for a place protected by Batman.

While she had gotten glimpses of places in Bristol on the drive from the airport, the first place she actually was able to see up close was the ever famous Wayne Manor she always heard about.

The Manor itself just felt extravagant. Nearly everything: banisters, stairs, the trimming on the walls, was done in beautifully carved wood, everything was done with grandiose she had never witnessed before.

Looking around the house she realized quite quickly it was possibly the largest mansion she had ever seen, even larger than Adrien’s home.

The first couple days she arrived here for her week-long stay for Christmas she explored the manor, often with the help of Tim. Together they rediscovered old tunnels and pathways that Tim hadn’t used in years since he himself was Robin, and they both discovered new ones with the help of her sight.

The first few days of that were fun, running around the manor and its grounds, but later on in the week Bruce mentioned the idea of her undergoing sensory training, as he had done with everyone he had trained before, including all her siblings.

She had welcomed the idea at first, not realizing how much she would regret it.

According to Tim, when they did sensory training it was typically them working with a blindfold completely removed from their sight, or in a room with quick flashing lights meant to disorient them.

With her, Bruce had to get more creative. He himself hadn’t really put her in training, the most being sending Cass and Dick to train her, and giving the giant Virtual Reality simulator and installing it into their base, which she only allowed because it was the Team’s Christmas gift and he had already given similar things to other Justice League members for training of themselves and their partners.

The simulator, sadly, did not work for her. The simulation worked by putting a crown-like object on your head, where it would then access the optical nerve and the parietal lobe (she had once asked Bruce exactly how the machine worked with the brain and she didn’t understand a thing he said after that). The optical nerve dealt with what the wearer saw, and the parietal lobe dealt with special relationships, along with the conception of pain and touch, giving a pretty seamless simulation for the average wearer.

Unfortunately for her, she was not the average wearer. Due to her optic nerves being fried and her sight existed as long as she was conscious, the simulation only gave her a headache, and after one try she wasn’t too keen on giving it another test run.

All of this forced Bruce to get more creative which landed her here, sitting on the foyer’s floor at two a.m. struggling with this god-forsaken puzzle while she waited for Bruce and the rest to come back from their patrol, her Maman and Papa were already long asleep.

Bruce had wanted to help train her to pick small things out in a crowd. He explained to her how his goal was for her to be able to find certain people, whether they needed to be saved or apprehended, out of a crowd as large as a . And what he planned for the first step of training her up to this was? To make a giant puzzle that was precisely 879 pieces (she would ask him why such an odd number, but she was just afraid he’d round it up to 1000 pieces and make her a new one).

According to Bruce, it was solvable, every single piece was different and all she had to do was find matching pieces in the box and put them together.

It was a nightmare. He told her he wanted her to get her time for building it under thirty minutes, which seemed impossible considering she had been sitting here for five hours now and she wasn’t even halfway done. It was like she was trying to find needles in a haystack. Trying to pull out one piece and then see in the box where the other piece was, only to stick her hand in the box to retrieve it and lose the placement of the piece as the others shifted around it.

It was frustrating. And she now understood why Stephanie said that being Batgirl was a way better gig than being Robin. She wouldn’t want to have this kind of training daily either. She wanted Dick back. He was nice and didn’t make her do super hard stuff. He just did flips with her, and since Kim’s time with Black Canary lined up with her time with Dick, he’d teach her how to turn the flips into kicks and then talk Black Canary into letting Kim and her spar so she could destroy Kim’s ass.

She wanted that now, not her staring in a box filled with ‘different’ (they all looked the same but Bruce insisted every single piece was unique) puzzle pieces and allowing her soul to slowly erode as she did it. So far she had three separate chunks with about four pieces each put together, so in other words, she was failing miserably.

She would at least have Tikki’s company but she was long asleep, and Marinette suspected the kwami was in a food coma with the amount of dessert she had eaten at Christmas Eve dinner that happened about eight hours ago.

She dropped her head in her hands and groaned from where she was laying on the floor over the puzzle as she noticed people starting floating very quickly into the huge open space below the house. She wasn’t allowed down there because it was apparently very dangerous, had little to no guardrails, and major drop-offs that would kill you. And because it was pretty much all metal so she wouldn’t be able to see any of it, but she could not explain the dread and relief that came when she saw them coming home.

Relief that she could finally end the torture that was working on this horrible puzzle, and dread that Bruce would come up here and see that she was doing a miserable job at the first practice he had given her. Yes, she was setting a wonderful precedent.

She quickly tried to make as much progress as possible before they started coming up. Digging her hand around the box and seeing if she coild snag a piece and it would fit.

About twenty minutes later her siblings, freshly showered, started passing the foyer and onto the family wing. Even Jason, who never stayed at the manor was with them and typically stayed at one of his many safe houses within the city proper, came up the stairway to the family wing accompanied by a plate with some fruit salad and leftover coffee cake from Christmas Eve dinner.

She put another piece down when Bruce ducked his head into the foyer to flick off the light and realized she was still sitting on the floor working on the puzzle.

“Marinette, habibti, what are you still doing awake?” He whispered groggily, making his way to the armchair beside where she was laying on the ground and sitting down, looking over her puzzle and analyzing what she had done.

She sighed in frustration, “Working on this puzzle… sorry I’m kind of struggling with it.” Marinette mumbled in response, digging her hand in the box and instantly losing the piece she had spotted as it shifted. She huffed and roughly pulled her arm out.

“Hey now,” Bruce laid a hand on her head, running her fingers through her hair. “This isn’t supposed to be easy, and it isn’t really something you pick up quickly, it’ll take a while to get down, and you did really good on what you have.” He picked up the box of pieces from the floor and moved it to the coffee table out of her immediate reach, then grabbed the small plate of fruit and coffee cake he had set on the armrest and set it down on the floor in front of her.

“Eat,” he whispered, closing his eyes, looking like he was about to fall asleep right there sitting up in the armchair, still stroking, his fingers through her hair.

“I had my fill of coffee cake at dinner, I don’t think I could eat anymore without exploding, and anyway that’s for you, you were just one patrol you need the calories,” She pushed the plate closer to his feet and went to grab at the box on the coffee table. Bruce quickly jolted up and shooed her hands away from the box.

“At least eat the fruit aziziti, I had a protein bar towards the end of patrol, I’m not that hungry '' he nudged the plate back, Leaning forward, away from the softness of the chair and towards her in an attempt to keep himself awake.

She picked at a grape and popped it into her mouth, practically oozing with sweetness when she bit into it, “Why don’t you go up to bed B, you look like you’re about to drop.” Marinette picked a small cube of melon dew and took a bite out of it.

“You need to go up too,” he rubbed his hand along the backs of her shoulders before resuming his ministrations with her hair. “I’m a bit wound-up,” she attempted to make an excuse for herself, “I probably will be up for another hour.”

“C’mon,” Bruce whispered, gently standning up and offering his hand, “I can brush your hair out? I used to do it every day for Cass when she first came to live with me, it still helps her calm down. You want me to do it for you?”

“No I’m good,” Marinette smiles despite herself, imagining the widely feared Batman brushing his daughter’s hair out for her to calm her down, and the funny thing being that she could picture it perfectly. “I think I’m just gonna hang out in here for a little longer, maybe go to the gym in the West Wing and work on some tricks.”

She pulled the plate closer and picked some more grapes to eat. Bruce just sighed behind her, “You know, for someone who didn’t know their biological father until they were fifteen, they sure picked up a lot of my mannerisms.” He smiled down at her, referencing his own habits, before picking her up around her waist quicker than she could realize what was happening and heaving her over his shoulder.

Marinette shrieked at the upheaval before groaning, “C’mon, put m’ down Br’ce.” She groaned through the grape in her mouth, starting to slap his back and trying to balance the plate so nothing would be dumped off, “C’mon B.”

“It’s late,” He reaffirmed, flipping off the light switch and shutting the foyer door, heading to the small staircase that led to the family wing, “You, little miss, need to go on up to bed.”

She sighed, too tired to fight him on the matter, not that she was going to admit to him she was tired at all. Once he got up the stairs he let her down and put a guiding hand on the small of her back with the intention of leading her to her new bedroom.

Her room was at the very end of the hall, the last one in the family wing, walking past everyone’s door. She noticed Bruce quickly and silently opening their door and checking on them before shutting them back, doing a last round to make sure everyone was okay before he went to bed. The second to last room in the hall, next to her own, belonged to Damian. She had made no progress with him, despite having known him for nine months and them actually knowing each other, as in her knowing his identity, for six.

All of her other siblings and she had formed relationships over the past several months, they had gone out in Paris innumerable times, sometimes even teleporting to different locations (often islands in the Pacific) around the world and spending the day out, often on the beach or shopping at local shops.

Despite living an ocean away they kept close, they at least texted if they hadn’t seen each other in a few days. She texted Jason frequently due to him always being out of the country with the Outlaws. Damian had never once said more than a few words to her, and anytime she joined a conversation he would leave it. He was discreet about it, but eventually, she realized what he was doing.

At first, she thought it was just shock. Different people process major events in their life, say finding out you have a sister who you never knew about in a possibly traumatic event, different ways, and Damian simply wanting to avoid the situation was quite a normal reaction, especially considering he was a child. But at this point, she didn’t think it was just that.

She kept trying and trying, not pushing too hard, simple things. Asking how his day was, asking him to pass her something at the dinner table, asking him about his art. And every time he would ignore her, and if he could, he would just pick up his stuff and leave the room.

She really wanted a good relationship with Damian. While she didn’t believe that blood relations were any more valid or significant than adopted relationships, she herself being adopted by the people who she considered her Maman and Papa, when she came into the family the one person she wanted a relationship with more than anyone was Damian.

She knew him.

Before she knew about Bruce, or Dick, or any of them, she knew about Damian. He had existed in her head as this nameless, faceless figure for over a decade, and when she found him again she wanted to make that more, she wanted to really know who he was. Though he didn’t seem to share that desire.

Which led to her noticing that Damian was still awake, seemingly putting a few things away in his desk before going to bed. Bruce opened his door quickly and silently checked on him, before shutting it and guiding Marinette into her own room.

The moment that Bruce left her and entered his own bedroom down the hall Marinette, as quietly and quickly as possible, opened her door and snuck out her room before entering Damian’s.

Damian was shutting the last drawers of his desks before standing up when she walked in, “What is it, Father? You usually don’t do your nightly checkups twice, nor do you step in for them.” Damian nonchalantly asked before turning his head to see he was mistaken, and it was Marinette and not his father standing on the other end of the bedroom. He scowled at her, “What are you doing here?” He sneered before quickly returning his eyes to his plate and walking over to his bed, peeling back the covers and pulling himself under, never once looking up at her.

It was possibly the most words together he had ever spoken to her.

“I wanted to talk to you.” She shut the door behind her and walked to sit beside where his feet lay under the blanket.

“It’s two in the morning, Grayson will wake us all up at six-thirty no doubt, we can resume the conversation then.” He sat the empty plate on the nightstand, and turned away from her, lifting himself onto the bed and pulling the duvet up to his shoulders.

“Nope,” If she didn’t get him to talk now she was never going to get him to talk. She pulled the comforter down a little bit until she knew Damian could see her, even if it was out of the corner of his eye. “We are talking about this now.”

He just huffed, “Make it quick, I wish for you to leave me so I may get some rest before everyone is here in the morning.”

She focused on him as he so subtly turned, just enough that he wouldn’t be able to see her at all.

“Why won’t you look at me?”

“Excuse me?” He sneered.

“I mean,” She stressed, “You won’t look at me, you barely talk to me, you avoid me if at all possible, the only times you ever came to visit me in Paris are the times I know you were forced.” Marinette listed. Damian's muscles gradually tensed the same way they did when Damian was preparing to fight, “So… just why?”

He didn’t answer her, stayed completely and utterly still and silent. She would have thought him asleep had she not been able to see that his heart rate was elevated.

He was panicking.

And then, within a moment, his heart rate plummeted, startling her. She nearly yelled for Bruce as she watched it spike down before it leveled off into a gradual decline into a smooth pattern, his muscles relaxing along with his heart rate, looking completely boneless in a way that was unnatural, realizing what he was doing and that there was nothing physically wrong. She watched him, making sure she wasn’t mistaken.

He was so still, his muscles were completely relaxed, but not in a natural way, but in a way that she knew he was consciously forcing it, only visible because she could see his exact muscles movements. She had never seen someone do something like it before. It was unnerving.

She knew he was awake, completely conscious, but the way he was just mimicking sleep like it was nothing. Mimicking it in such a way that had she not been able to see all his muscles at every moment she would have easily mistaken it as the boy had simply drifted off to sleep after a tiring patrol.

“Sometimes I think about the League, and what happened after the League,” Marinette started, changing tactics. Her sitting here trying to get him to talk to her wasn’t working, and it hadn’t been for the last several months, so she was simply going to talk to him and wait until he felt like responding.

“I would be lying if I said I remembered a lot about the League, I really don’t. A lot of it is fuzzy, a lot of it I was too young to even form a memory for, other stuff… is just blocked out. So many times I will wake up from a nightmare or suddenly remember in the middle of class a random memory from the League, so faint but so real at the same time. Sometimes I can’t tell if the memory is real or if I just conjured it up in my own mind.”

She let the words flow out of her as she focused on Damian. He seemed to be listening to her but hadn’t changed the position of his face in the pillow. Though his muscles no longer seem to be forcefully relaxed, now he seemed simply slack and she would tell he was listening to what she had to say. His heart rate remained the same regulated false-sleep rate he had managed to create himself, it was an improvement nonetheless, so she continued.

“What I do remember is what happened right before I left the League. I remember the pain of the acid, I remember waking up and realizing that my eyes weren’t working. I remember the feeling of dragging my hands over my face and feeling the wrinkles that were my scars for the first time.” She took a deep breath, calming herself. That memory, it haunted her to this day, lurked in her dreams and nightmares.

“Pretty much everything, after I got my abilities, is clear as day.” She thought back to those moments over a decade old, so distant, but so clear. Even now, years later, it was hard to pinpoint how she felt about her experiences. “I remember what it was like to be alone on the run. I remember finding clothes that had been left outside to dry, and grabbing them to wear. I remember looking for food, it was hard when I was going through forests, I could only ever find maybe a bush of fruit that I could eat maybe once a day, maybe every other day, sometimes I would resort to eating leaves because that’s all I-”

“Why don’t you hate me?” Damian blurted, slightly muffled from where his face was in the pillow.

“What?” She asked, confused, thinking she had heard him wrong from where his face was hidden.

He moved his face slightly out from the pillow, only uncovering the bottom of his face, but still not turning to her, “Why don’t you hate me?”

Excuse me?

“What?” She repeated, “What- why do you think I would hate you?” She focused on him as he subtly started playing with his hands under the covers, “It’s my fault, isn’t it?” He hissed, but it felt less like directed anger at her, and more a mask of other emotions that he was trying to prevent himself from expressing.

“What would be your fault?” She asked, befuddled by what Damian even meant. What was ‘his fault’.

“Everything that happened!” He raised his voice, clearly frustrated with her not understanding, “Everything that happened to you! Getting exiled! Living on the streets! Your- your eyes! It’s all my fault, so why have I found you so insistent on talking to me when I have ruined your life on multiple accounts!”

Marinette reared back on his outburst, looking at him with a nearly dazed expression.

Is that- is that what he truly thought?

“Damian-” She collected herself, setting a hand on his shoulder, “I- I don’t blame you. Damian, you were just born. You existed as a boy, if I were to ever condemn you for being that, I would be no better than Ra’s and Talia who condemned me for being a girl.”

She saw as he curled in a bit on himself, his face scrunching in what could be pain, or anger that was masking emotion that he didn’t understand, nor did he know how to process.

“You, and I want you to listen to me, you never are guilty of anything that happened back in the League, much less of what happened before you were even born, you were just a child, you are still simply a child. You cannot be guilty of the crimes that have been forced upon you. Damian, how could you be guilty? You didn’t even know I existed.” “But I should have!” Damian practically yelled, it only being for the sake that the rooms were soundproofed that they didn’t wake the whole house.

“How?” She asked, fighting him on his own innocence on an act that he didn’t even know occurred until years after the fact.

He gulped, fidgeting with his hands more and hiding his face deeper into the pillow before taking in a deep breath, “When I was nine, there was a private training seminar in Nanda Parbat. It was- well- Grandfather, he had planned it himself. It was supposed to last six weeks, trained by the best general the League had. Two nights in I woke up to chambermaids coming to clean my room- I pretended to be asleep so they would leave me alone. I- I remember them standing over my bed, and I thought they were assassins trying to take me out in my sleep- but they started talking about a girl. A girl I looked like, and they talked about how they hoped ‘I didn’t suffer the same fate.’”

He licked his lips and cleared his throat, “I asked Mother about it the next day she was so… so angry. In a way, I had never seen before, and I tried to look through the archives, I tried to find out who this ‘girl’ could be, but they caught me, and two hours later there was a fire in the archive room. It destroyed hundreds of files. They were willing to do all of that to get rid of your existence.” She had never realized, she had never even stopped to think she would be remembered in Nanda Parbat, that the moment she was thrown out that she would simply fade away, and in a way she did.

“I should have realized then that there was something more, I should have recognized when they talked about someone looking like me, and how angry Mother was, I should have known it wasn’t nothing, that there was something to be looked into, to be found. I should have asked-” “Stop Damian,” Marinette interrupted, gripping his shoulder lightly in her hand.

“Talia was right, there was nothing to be found. And if you did find anything, if you were to find old files, or were to come across more people who were a part of the League when I was a child that we're close enough to the Al Ghul’s to know of my existence, they would have all told you I was dead. That’s what everyone thought, that’s the only thing that protected me for those twelve years.”

“And I won’t lie,” Marinette whispered, brushing her hand up and down Damian’s exposed arm, “It took me a long long time to realize who was truly to blame in the entire situation, I blamed myself, I blamed you, I blamed the whole world before I finally came to realize that the only people to blame where Ra’s and Talia. And I so desperately didn’t want to blame them, I didn’t want to blame her, because I wanted her to want me so so much, I wanted her to love me. I wanted the woman who I thought my mother to love me and it took me so long to realize that her love was not something I wanted.”

“Does Mother love me?” Damian whispered quickly, breaking her thoughts and barely catching the fast, very quiet, English.

“What?” not even truly comprehending the weight of what he was asking her, and why Damian was asking her, “Why are you asking that?”

He swallowed, curling in on himself, and tensing as if waiting for a blow, he swallowed before answering, “Mother, she always said something to me, ‘We are loyal to blood, I am loyal to you as you are loyal to me.’ She always talked about the importance of loyalty to those we were family with- but then there was you. You just- you existed, and you are blood, yet you were tossed aside when you weren’t seen as useful anymore and you said… you said that Mother only provided love when it gave her power.” He stopped, he wanted to say more, but his throat wouldn’t make any noise.

Marinette was just sitting beside him, a look of slight horror and heartbrokenness at the state of him, “Damian-I…” She stopped, it was hard to say aloud, she had come to this on her own, had years and thousands of dollars in therapy to help her cope with it, to come to terms with it, “I- I don’t think Talia is capable of love.”

A certain pinched depression washed over his face, before melting into a look of anguish, with tears ever so silently rolling down his cheeks before seeping into the pillow below him. Marinette immediately forgot all about keeping personal space and laid herself alongside Damian and wrapped him up as tight as she could in the position, holding him as his chest silently heaved and tears were collected by the pillow.

“Damian, you need to understand one thing, no matter what, nothing that Talia, or Ra’s, or anyone, family or not, says or does, you are deserving of love,” She spoke into his ear, hoping that he was listening to her, “I know that sometimes it can be really hard to believe, sometimes all you can think is that if I’m not good enough for them I cannot be good enough for anybody, but it isn’t true.” She ran her finger against his cheek, collecting a few stray tears from his face.

“You, Damian, you are more than deserving of happiness, you are more than deserving of a family. One that you choose. One that may not be those who you share blood with, but the people you want to have for the rest of your life.” She squeezed him tighter as he tiredly released the pillow that was against his face and went limp against her, allowing her to draw him close.

“And Damian, I don’t want you to ever think that you are without love. Cassandra loves you, Barbara loves you, Steph loves you, Alfred loves you, even Tim and Jason, as much as you all antagonize each other, love you, Bruce, bless that emotionally stunted man, loves you, and by kwami I couldn’t begin to explain the love that Dick holds for you. To him, you are his child, you are his Robin, and I don’t think there is a single thing in this world that he wouldn’t do to make you happy, to make you feel loved.” His quiet sobs were evening out as he listened to her, muscles relaxing along with himself. All signs of distress fading into simple exhaustion.

“And Damian, you are my little brother. The only one. And I don’t want you to dare think for a second that I don’t love you.” She reached her hand up and dragged it across his cheek which was cold of tear stains, “Because I do, by kwami I do. And I want to know you. I want to know your likes, I want to know your dislikes, I want to know whether you’re a morning person or a night owl, I want to know the way in which you fight, I want to know what scares you, I want to know what makes you feel safe, I want to know you, Damian.” Marinette emphasized, kissing him against his hair on the back of his head, before releasing him and getting up, kissing him once again on the forehead.

“And nothing will change that. Neither will anything change the way our family loves you.” She held Damian in a long hug, simply holding him for several minutes before feeling herself nod off and realizing that Damian likely wouldn’t appreciate it if she stayed the night in his bed uninvited.

“I do believe you were right, it is late, and I need to get off to my own room.” She gently kissed him against his temple, running her hand along his cheek before getting up and grabbing Damian’s empty plate and her own half-empty plate off the nightstand to sit outside the door for when Alfred came to retrieve them.

Before she closed the door behind her she looked back to where Damian laid in his bed, now his head turning slightly to watch her as she left.

She gave a soft smile back to him, “Goodnight 'akhi alsaghir.”

[Next]

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[Notes:]

akhi alsaghir- my little brother; aziziti- my dear/my precious (feminine); habiti- my dear/my love/beloved (feminine)

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plantsarefun06 · 2 years

Text

The Particular Abilities of Marinette, and Her Discovery of Them Chapter 28: Justice League Meeting: Take Two

[Inspired By]

[First] [MasterPost] [AO3]

Breathe in. Breathe out. You are worthy. You are safe. You are strong.

She repeated the mantra in her head as she prepared to go up to the podium.

Breathe in. Breathe out. It is only the Justice League and the UN, the rest are cameras. Simply pieces of inanimate machinery. You’ve had a meeting with the Justice League, and Bruce promised that this one would go smoother.

The thought only helped her nerves slightly, her hands still trembling as she held a small deck of notecards with her speech points on them. The nerves were possibly less about having another meeting and public ceremony, those of which she had had dozens of before in Paris, albeit on a smaller scale, and more about the fact that this was the public announcement of her inauguration into the Justice League.

Inauguration… into the Justice League.

Yeah, that part was scary. Seven months ago when the first meeting occurred and went absolutely horribly, she would not have suspected that only a few short months later she would not even a year later become one of them.

Not only that, but she had to do a whole public ceremony. Because the charter that the Justice League International worked on was created and controlled by the United Nations, it was required that when new members were added onto the official roster they were to be a ceremony of sorts held at the Hall of Justice in Washington D.C., United States. Where the new member in question would formally meet the delegates of the UN members, and even some members in person. Along with the press conference that would come along with the meeting where she would be speaking with reporters for various news outlets across the world.

The whole ‘her becoming a member’ was crazy in it of itself. While the UN had no policies on who was able to join the Justice League, the JL did, and they made a huge exception for her. They typically didn’t allow anyone below the age of twenty-one to become a member, let alone someone who hadn’t worked in the field with the majority of the people on the roster. Not even sidekicks who had become eighteen had been allowed to join, most of which were Titans members anyway, having been on the ‘Teen Titans’ in their younger years.

The fact that they were welcoming a freshly sixteen teenager, who had previously never worked with any of them before. The only people she had worked with were Black Bat and Nightwing in small bits of training, neither of which were actual members of the Justice League despite both of them having the same amount of clearance and respect as any other member.

They had made the exception for a few reasons, one of which was because she was the leader of the Hawkmoth situation, a situation that her handling of had already earned her respect from many heroes around the world and those associated and a part of the Justice League, her having the experience of her past lives kind of bumped her up in the age of experience range, at least beyond just sixteen years old, another was because of her position as Guardian of the Mother Box.

The whole ‘you are in this for life’ deal with being Guardian pushed them to go ahead and make her a member which allowed her to get a lot more rights politically, which would make it easier when the enevitable of the entire world seeing just how big the situation in Paris was after it had been surprisingly kept quite because it really didn’t interfere too harshly with things like money, and didn’t cause casualties. Her becoming a member, and the huge ceremonial procedures that came with it would draw a lot of attention to the Paris situation.

Her being a member would at least show the world that she would be able to handle the situation and that if she needed help she had powerful allies, which would help combat those who would undoubtedly start to question her ability.

But she had prepared a speech with Alya that helped summarize a lot of everything and gave a good amount of information without giving out too much. She mainly talked about how the Miraculous Team and the Justice League would from there on out be working together to protect the world at large, yada yada, preserve justice, yada yada, pretty much the standard superhero speech.

It was a good speech, Alya was great at proofreading with how much she had to write for her blog, but it was a bit overwhelming. She kept hearing flutters and clicks of cameras and people yelling questions at her, about everything from if her Team supported her decision on becoming a part of the Justice League, to asking if she was doing this to scare Hawkmoth.

After the near debilitating Q&A portion of the program, she stood in front of a line up of the original seven holding her brand new JL membership card (she squealed when she first got a hold of it a couple of nights ago when Bruce had taken her out to dinner, just the two of them, and talked her through everything that would happen the day of), and smiled as she had for cameras before as Marinette.

Despite being accustomed to photographers and paparazzi, with her facing them with Adrien, and then herself in the past year, it was so overwhelming feeling all the eyes on her, not only in the crowd, but with the millions watching her around the globe. She was terrified of making one misstep, the faint trembling of her hands would be invisible through the camera but with how she could see Bruce was analyzing her from behind her he could probably see it.

She shook a few hands of UN representatives and world leaders around the globe that were present before she was guided back into the Hall of Justice in America (Bunnyx had teleported her there that morning, but she still felt a bit nauseous at the sudden change in pressure and climate that came with traveling that far). She pulled her bugphone off her hip and walked into one of the rooms that Bruce had promised her was completely everything-proofed and had no chance of anyone spying on her via bugs and took the opportunity to call her parents.

They had been so scared this morning. Bruce had gained their trust and they had actually become good friends over the past couple of months they had known him. Her parents had started joining the dinners that the entire family had every other week to get acquainted and had gained her siblings’ favor when they had brought them gifts in the form of fresh pastries. And while Bruce had gained their trust, that trust wasn’t exactly ‘ship my daughter across the globe with them via a magical portal and watch her while she becomes a member of one of the most powerful organizations in the world’ kind of trust.

They were under the impression that Bruce was waiting in one of the private rooms while the ceremony went on and then supervising her all other times, which was a half-lie, half-truth, and she had told them that immediately after the ceremony that she would call them and tell them she was fine.

After spending about ten minutes reassuring her parents that she was fine, and she was safe, and Bruce was in fact here, her parents let her go and they zeta’d up to ‘Watchtower’. Zeta-ing was very different from Miraculous travel. Zeta travel wasn’t painful, but imagine the feeling of dissolving and then being pierced back together one molecule at a time, and that was Zeta travel. Miraculous travel was like walking through a door. And while in certain ways Miraculous travel could be disorienting because of pressure and climate differences, it was nothing like her first time being sucked through the Zeta tube.

It was quite disorienting, and caused her to throw up the lunch her parents had made her before she left. They had apparently expected it, and had a bin ready for her. Wonder Woman who was standing behind her told her that most people got sick the first couple of times they used Zeta transport, and that it was expected for her to get sick.

Once she finally righted herself she realized that the room was full of heroes, mostly on the younger side, ready to greet her. It didn’t take her long to realize that the superhero community apparently just loved to gossip(she’d have to keep that knowledge a good distance away from Chloé), and gossip from the Batman and his family was a rarity, so within 24 hours of her confrontation between herself, Ra’s, and Talia, every single hero associated with the Justice League had seen a recorded tape of it.

Which had apparently been recorded from up here in Watchtower where they were watching from an old security camera and listening through the beacon that was currently sitting deactivated in her gymnastics bag, she would have at least liked to know directly after the fact that she had been recorded, but she guessed that they just forgot to tell her.

Most of them who didn’t know the Batfamily’s identity saw an edited version that kept her identity private, but pretty much everyone knew that Ladybug was the product of Batman and Talia al Ghul, much like Robin, and that she was blinded as a child by the two, which was just fabulous. Despite being mildly annoyed at the harassment from all sides, everyone was super nice and she couldn’t stay annoyed too long. It was amazing to meet all these superheroes from around the world. Before everyone was ushered away she got invited to at least five different parties being held in various bases, along with an open invitation to Titans Tower in New York City from a woman named Donna.

The moment everything calmed down everyone was ushered aside Batman led her into the ‘War Room’ as she heard Green Lantern refer to it and all the non-JL members were shut out.

The only thing that day that had rendered her speechless was when she got her own chair at the Justice League War Room table.

She got her own chair at the Justice League War Room table!

The table in which some of the most powerful people in the world—no, the universe—had decisions that could change the fate of the world. This was where they convened when everything went wrong and the world needed to be saved. And she had a chair at it. A nice cushy chair, that was attached to the floor, with the symbol of the guardians imprinted on the headrest, mirroring the other symbols imprinted on their own chairs.

It was a marvel in itself. Not even her siblings had one! Anytime they actually sat in on a meeting they either brought in a chair from another room or simply stood.

But she had her own seat!

Already sitting in the room was a woman she recognized as Zatanna from the meeting they held months ago, along with several other people who held various, very strong, magical signatures of their own. The rest introduced themselves and shook her hand.

She met Jason Blood who was bonded to a demon by the name of ‘Etrigan’, Doctor Fate, a lord of order, and ‘Hellblazer’ John Constantine a magician and occult detective who simply waved at her before continuing to smoke his cigarette.

She simply nodded and awkwardly waved back before taking a seat with everyone else and the meeting commencing.

The meeting mainly consisted of her reporting her Team’s procedures for akumas along with the ‘What if?’ scenarios that she and Chat Noir had been building on since they really formed a Team together and how they would handle those, but now getting the Justice League’s input on what they could do to better these procedures and scenarios and how they could help in the case these scenarios happen.

It also consisted of her really laying down that under no cases were any Justice League member to intervene during an Akuma unless specifically requested by a Team member, which they all surprisingly agreed to (she suspected Bruce was a part of the reason they were so easily agreeing). Along with procedures in case a world-threatening event occurred and how the Miraculous Team may help.

Along with that, she explained how the Miraculous worked. She went in-depth about the kwami, and the Móshù shī, supplementing what little Constantine and Zatanna had been able to dig up on the matter, and filling in the gaps of what the Lords of Order knew about the Miraculous.

She also got herself a very thick packet (in braille, thank you Batman) all about how to handle the new worldwide media she and her Team were going to get themselves. It also covered how the Justice League handled matters regarding humanitarian matters, more political matters, etc.

In other words, she was trying to find ways to delay going through the monstrosity, or potentially ‘accidentally’ set it on fire in her lab.

After about an hour and a half, they took a break and she was guided from the war room into another part of the Watchtower that seemed to be a kitchen or a cafeteria of sorts. An exorbitant amount of food was being made by Kryptonian robots (she was going to have to keep that bit of knowledge from Max, she just knew that once he got that idea in his head he would try and find a way to repurpose Markov’s software to make one).

She got the opportunity to talk in a more casual manner with the other heroes, more specifically she got to talk to Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman talked about what she had learned of the Miraculous when she went to Themyscira and talked to her mother about it.

Also, apparently, Wonder Woman’s given name is ‘Diana’, an adaptation of ‘Dianthe’ who she was named in honor of. The relationship between herself and Dianthe was hard to put into words, while she was really only dreaming old memories from a life that was not truly her own to her she was simply reliving it. It made a weird balance of feeling as if she were to really have experienced those events in Dianthe’s life and had relationships with them there. It made her smile to learn one of her oldest friends had named a child in their honor.

Diana also offered her to come to Themyscira for a few weeks, with the assurance that she could be teleported away during an Akuma. She was about to say that would be amazing. The idea of going to Themyscira, seeing Hippolyta, and going to a place she so vividly remembered from thousands of years ago sounded wonderful, then Bruce butted in about ‘school time’, ‘extracurriculars’ and ‘improper supervision’, but seemed more grouchy about the subject of her leaving for weeks at a time than concerned about the matters he was listing.

Diana shot back that if she was in the Justice League, supervision to go to a place like Themyscira, arguably the safest place in the world, should not be a concern. And that she would be with her, also mentioning that summer vacation existed in France too. Which earned grumbling from him back, Aquaman took the opportunity to speak up to ask his own questions about the Great War, fought between the Warrior Dianthe and Cassius the Conqueror, which was the conflict that sank Atlantis. She answered to the best of her ability with the memories she had, and she could see that he was interested in what she had to say.

After a little over half an hour, the meeting resumed and she got a briefing on Justice League matters, and a lot of secrets that were not to leave the Watchtower were said, on oath, that she would not tell a soul, not even her teammates.

Before she knew it she had spent over five hours in the Watchtower and it was reaching 8’o clock, Paris time, signing the end of the meeting and time for the next part of the night.

The Justice League’s visit to their base.

As well as the visit from her family, including Selina (who was apparently Catwoman?! She should have realized it when Bruce referred to her as ‘Cat’ on so many occasions). She didn’t even seem to care much about seeing the base, or meeting her entire Team, she just wanted to meet Chat Noir. Who seemed just as excited at the prospect of meeting each other.

Superman opened the door to let in the majority of the ‘Batfamily’, as she heard them jokingly dubbed, sans Robin who she was told had a project for school he was busy with, but she could tell they were lying in a feeble attempt to project her feeling (she still could not get him to talk to her) and she sent a message to Bunnyx telling her it was time to open the burrow. Bunnyx and Fluff had recently been practicing her opening portals based on where the GPS location of a person was, rather than on known landmarks like she had been doing to transport them down to the base before every patrol. She had pretty much become the Team’s designated taxi cab down to HQ because unlike Pegasus she didn’t need to detransform every time she burrowed, and if they were to get to the base through the Catacombs it would take at least half an hour.

Thankfully her worries for if Bunnyx would be able to open a portal in space were all for naught and she pulled through, a familiar hole leading to another place opening and outstepping a quietly snickering Alix.

It worried her as she and the others stepped through the portal and were led through another facet of the burrow. She immediately understood Alix’s snickering when she walked through the portal and saw the scene of Honey Bee whacking Chat with a broom.

Everyone other than the two of them had straightened up upon seeing them standing in the gymnasium, but both Honey and Chat hadn’t noticed they arrived were still squabbling.

“Get over here you mangy Chat!”

“BEE! Stop!”

“Not until you listen!”

“I cleaned the lab! I shouldn’t have to clean two rooms!”

“It’s your turn to clean the bathroom! Fair and square!”

“Then how come you're always ‘sick’ when it’s your turn!”

She cleared her throat and Chat Noir and Honey Bee finally realized who was in the room. Both of them looked shocked for a moment before composing themselves, Chat at least having the decency to look somewhat embarrassed, and Honey Bee throwing down the broom she was just beating Chat Noir with and sizing Superman up from across the room.

At the same time, all the Batfamily members started beeping, or rather something on their arm started beeping and they started messing with it, “Our location services aren’t working,” Red Robin muttered.

Batman grumbled, “Reboot the system.”

“They’re separate computers on separate servers, and they reboot automatically, they are rebooting and still say that.”

“Oh that’s because of the protection we have set up,” Pegasus cut in, “We have magical devices set up around our base that prevents someone from locating us, whether it be by coming across our base naturally, or setting up GPS devices on us. Our personal devices say the same things, don’t worry you can still make transmissions and get a connection to satellites, and nothing is broken or damaged, you just won’t be able to locate where you are while you are in here.”

She could see that Bruce was wary about the situation. She didn’t doubt that he trusted her, but she also knew that Batman liked to have about a dozen plans in any situation, and not knowing where he and his family were likely grating on him, he still nodded towards her, and gestured for them to continue.

Rena smiled and threw up her hands, “Let the tour commence!” she shouted before starting showing them around their gym and the equipment they had, which was admittedly little, but they made it work. Most of the stuff in there, other than the floor mats, were large structures that they used to give the illusion of an uneven plane to fight on and forced them to get a bit creative, along with some mock replicas of their weapons Chloé had managed to get them that were displayed on the back wall, which was mostly used by herself and Chat for demonstration purposes.

“We have a few plans for the gym,” Max started, “But funding is a bit tight and the ingredients that Ladybug has to get for the potion magic she uses can get expensive, along with the repairs and updates we’ve had to make to the base.”

Her father nodded, “The Justice League can funnel you some fund-” “No.” Ladybug cut him off, “We already discussed this, I’m not taking any of your money,” It had been an entire dinner-long conversation, where Bruce had tried to goad her into letting him fund both her gymnastics and her Team. He also tried to offer her parents money for the bakery, and they had firmly declined, but they said whether or not Marinette wanted funds for gymnastics and Ladybug from Bruce was up to her.

“You misunderstand me,” He continued, “All superheroes have the rights to their own brand. A lot of Justice League funding comes from us licensing out our brands to toy companies so they can produce toys. We get a certain percentage of profits from all Justice League merchandise, and all that money goes into funding, we can set you up with some deals with companies and start having a steady stream of money come in. Now that your Team is in the limelight with Ladybug just becoming an officially recognized member, there’s no better time than to start putting out merchandise.” Marinette through a questioning look at her Team, asking for their opinion.

“We would be able to get a lot of the updates down here that we wanted to,” Max said, looking like he was mentally listing off the things that they had talked about getting in the base. “New computers, some standard living quarters, all that new gym equipment we talked about, especially with the possibility of people coming in to train us.”

They all nodded along, Alya even voicing how it would be less of a stress on certain Team members (her, Chloé, Kagami, and Adrien) to funnel their own money into the updates.

Ladybug turned to Batman and just nodded, “That sounds great.” “Then I’ll get started on the contracts with some of our manufacturers tonight.” of course he would.

She rolled her eyes at him earning a quiet snicker from Black Bat who could probably figure she had done it despite the mask, and she walked down the hall into Ladybug’s laboratory and study.

“And this is where I spend most of my time down here.” She walked up to the wall that was lined with three separate, absolutely massive bookcases.

“First one on the left is the original copies of all the texts we have, some of them are in languages we don’t know who to translate, others are in ciphers, most of we have been able to solve, but some we haven’t, and pretty much all of them are written in riddles so that doesn’t help. The second one is the French translations, they’re really messy, and be careful if you pull one out because most of them have loose notes in them, Chat and Pegasus are the ones who do most of the translating and deciphering and if the notes fall out and get mixed up they are gonna get mad. Third-” she pointed at the last shelf. This one was bulging with everything on it, “is the shelf with all the French Braille translations, no one touches it. All of my journals and notes are on there, and I know exactly how it’s organized, so don’t think you can get away with it.”

She saw Viperion look back and mouth to them ‘Do not touch them!’ having had his own experience with trying to pull out one of her journals from the shelves, curious about what she had taken notes on for whatever magic he was curious about, but accidentally pulled a bunch off the shelf because they were so tightly packed, and having her yell at him for half an hour and treat him passive-aggressively for two weeks.

“May I?” asked Jason Blood, pointing at the first shelf full with the original copies.

“Go ahead.” Chat answered, walked over to see specifically what he had grabbed.

He pulled a few books off the shelf flipping through them, Chat adding his two bits on them and what they had in them.

“And that one is in a language none of us recognize. The kwami have the gift of tongues and would be able to recognize and translate it, but there’s this rule about them not being allowed to and they are sticklers for that rule, in particular, so we are pretty much lost, but we think it's probably an old dialect from a culture that is long dead.”

“I recognize it.” Monsieur Blood interjected, “You’re right, it’s an old dialect from Indigenous Americans. The language died a millennia ago, but I have one of these copies and a book that will translate this from the dialect to English.”

“You do!” Chat seemed shocked, he had had that book for months now and hadn’t been able to crack it.

“Yes, from what I can translate myself, this seems to talk about different healing spells, potions, and rituals of the sort.” He shut the book and replaced it on the shelf. “I’ll bring my translator and we can decipher it sometime.” Chat smiled and nodded, originally he only did the translations and ciphers because she couldn’t do them and he was the only person she really trusted with that stuff, but he seemed to really enjoy them over time.

Chat and Monsieur Blood talked about various texts for another fifteen minutes while showing the others her medical office that was connected to the lab via a folding wall they had installed themselves. She explained in depth what her healing could do, and more importantly what it could potentially do with enough practice and education about medicine.

“While my healing abilities and my ability to funnel creation into an organism are two different things, they are very much linked. I’m less ‘healing’ an injury and really more just accelerating the healing process. When someone breaks a bone, I have to set it before I heal it, or it will heal wrong. That’s why I can’t heal things like diseases, infections, etcetera. I haven’t really tested it out but more than likely I would only progress the illness, but I would be able to heal trauma injuries like punctured organs, torn muscles, fractured bones, etc.”

She moved over to the wall and pulled down a packet of notes (Chat had transcribed them from the computer for her earlier that week for her) and slid them over to where Flash was standing at the end of the table. “Those are notes on how I could potentially treat certain injuries that happened years ago, it’s never been tested before, but it would be a surgical procedure that would involve the surgical removal of scar tissue along with any long damaged tissue, and then me creating new tissue from magic. I haven’t worked out the kinks in it yet but I’m working on it, I’d need to learn a lot about surgical medicine before I ever put it into practice.”

Flash flipped through the entire packet faster than she could comprehend before handing it off to Batman to look over and telling her that if he could have a version of it on a hard drive he could bring it over to Star Labs, a laboratory that the Justice League worked with frequently and was where she would go when training her abilities that needed to be in a controlled environment, and they could look over it and work on it with her.

She nodded before taking them out of the lab, dragging Chat Noir away from his bookshelf, and continued the tour of the rest of the base.

She showed them the long hallway that led to a plethora of rooms that had been set aside for potential living quarters but they were bare of anything except dust considering they couldn’t really do the renovations necessary. She explained they would go pretty much unused but would be there in case of crisis and they needed a secure place to stay, or if they were too injured to leave and had to stay in the base for an extended amount of time. Which then prompted Bruce to ask about the stability of their structure, what forces it could withstand, if it was within a zone that was likely to get attacked. Which she responded with single-word answers to.

She could see he was frustrated, he had already tried to convince her to tell them her Team’s civilian identities and the location of her base for ‘safety purposes’. He very begrudgingly accepted, ‘I’m the only one who will know’, if not a good argument.

His finally accepting she wasn’t going to reveal certain things to him apparently didn’t include him asking various questions on the ‘safety of the structure, including asking if it was safe from bombs on the surface wherever they were. She didn’t exactly want to explain to them, ‘well we are about two hundred feet below ground, in a bunker built by the Nazis in World War II, so it probably is safe from a nuclear bomb on the surface, especially with the magical protections that this place is laced with, so she just went with a simple yes and let him conjure up all his other questions he would ask.

After she shut Batman down, she finally took them to the last place they were touring, the meeting room. Ladybug had told Chloé to go pick up a massive order of everything from her parent’s bakery under the guise of her father having a big meeting, then have Kim and Max teleport it down to the base. So it was either that the Justice League was gawking at the exorbitant amount of the best food and pastries in Paris on the table, or the invisible things that her teammates started picking up and bringing over to Diana.

Oh my god, they did not.

Rena Rena was jumping on her toes as she handed Diana what looked to be a writing utensil, and held out to her what Marinette was willing to bet Bruce’s entire fortune was the Wonder Woman plushie that was Alya’s prized possession and usually sat on a high enough shelf so her sisters couldn’t get to it.

She threw a deadpan glare at her, but Rena didn’t pay her any mind.

“I wanted to bring it to the meeting we had months ago, but we had to be serious and everything, so I couldn’t, but now,” Alya was beaming like a child, “Can you please sign this!”

She shoved the stuffed version of Diana in her face. Her namesake took it with grace and simply smiled good-naturedly and signed it.

Then, by god, one by one her other teammates started picking things up from that table and bringing them over to Diana.

Viperion picked up something from the table and held it to Diana, “Not you too!”

“It’s for my sister!” He yelled back at her.

“Don’t lie to me! I may be blind but I know you have a Wonder Woman poster on your side of the room.”

He stuck out his tongue at her before smiling at Wonder Woman and handing her whatever memorabilia he wanted her to sign.

Wonder Woman gave a gloating smile to both Bruce and an awkward Superman who were being ignored, before signing Luka’s thing.

“Well, I think everybody’s done right?” Ladybug gave a sharp smile to her Team as they all were sitting down in their chairs with their Wonder Woman stuff in their lap. They all just nodded.

“Good, now everyone may take what they please from the food on the table, it was made fresh this morning.” She sat down at the head of the table and slumped in her seat. Most of them were talking with the members about whatever feats they had behind them, Selina and Chat were talking with each other, and Chat looked just ecstatic.

Alix looked like she was trying to egg King Monkey into a food fight while he was talking to Green Lantern, Ladybug having to send Bunnyx a glare to get her to stop, it was not the time nor place for her and Kim’s antics. She stopped with a small pout before joining Alya in talking to Wonder Woman.

Bruce walked up to her and spoke quietly enough no one else could hear them, “You doing okay?”

“Yeah.” She muttered, “Just been a busy day. Between the ceremony, and the meeting, and this, I’m exhausted.”

He just laid her hand on her shoulder, giving her as much comfort in front of a room full of her Team who she couldn't tell of her relationship with Batman. Considering that the entire superhero community knew that Ladybug was Batman’s daughter if they ever did decide they wanted to become JL members or wanted to join the Titans, or even the Teen Titans they would likely figure out Bruce Wayne was Batman when someone mentioned that Ladybug was Batman’s daughter, but she had promised Bruce to keep his secret identity as low profile as possible.

“How about you get out of here and go home, I’m sure everyone would understand if you want to call it in early.”

She shook her head, “No, I have to clean up after we leave, and I’ve got patrol tonight, and I’ve-” “Got to get home.” Alix interrupted. “It’s fine Bug, we can worry about all of that, just go home and go to sleep, you’ve had a long day.”

“Bunnyx, don’t worry about me, I'm fine.” Alix rolled her eyes before offhandedly throwing a burrow up behind her that she could see led directly to her bedroom. “Now, go on. I’d rather not have opened up this burrow up for nothing.” Ladybug rolled her eyes before pulling herself up out of her chair, walking through the portal, hearing the sounds of conversations behind her and a couple of goodbyes thrown at her before the portal closed, and all that filled the air was blessed silence.

She yelled down to her parents that she was back. She was immediately bombarded with questions about how everything went, if everyone was nice, and so many questions she didn’t even register before they realized how tired she was and ushered her upstairs to her bed for some blessed sleep.

—

[Bonus:]

[From the Instagram Live of @honeybeeofficial]

[Ladybug is holding out her Justice League membership card, smiling to herself.

“The ceremony yesterday was nerve-wracking. I felt so afraid I was gonna mess up and make a fool of myself.” She flopped back in an office chair at what looked like a business meeting room, “But it went so well. And look at this card! Batman even put braille on it!” The camera zooms in on the membership card.

She pulls back the card to look at it, brushing her hand over it, “Oh, and Bee, just know you can’t post that video. JL members aren’t really allowed to have social media and that would include me being on yours. Really none of us should because the policy is for ‘Justice League members and associates’ but I got Batman to give you an exception to that, but you can only really post me if it’s for like a charity drive or something along those lines.” Ladybug said, never looking up from her card.

The once moving camera froze. Out of the corner of the camera Chat Noir mouths ‘Turn it off!’ While making a cut motion at his throat, King Monkey is frozen. Ladybug looks up, “That's just a video, right… HONEY BEE!”]

[Live video ended. 146.8k viewers]

[Next]

---

[Notes:]

Thank you for all the likes and comments, they make my day!

---

Tag List:

@frieddonutsweets @moon5608 @ihatecomingupwithusernameswtf @adrestar @galla02006 @bygge00 @alyssadeliv @toodaloo-kangaroo @iloontjeboontje @missanalysis

#maribat #dc x mlb #mlb x dc #bio dad bruce wayne

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plantsarefun06 · 2 years

Text

MasterPost

The Blindness of Marinette-Series

[INCOMPLETE]

Maribat, Biological Dad Bruce Wayne

The Particular Abilities of Marinette, and Her Discovery of Them ~ AO3

Main Story [Complete, Sequel in the works]

1 ~ 2 ~ 3 ~ 4 ~ 5 ~ 6 ~ 7 ~ 8 ~ 9 ~ 10 ~ 11 ~ 12 ~ 13 ~ 14 ~ 15 ~ 16 ~ 17 ~ 18 ~ 19 ~ 20 ~ 21 ~ 22 ~ 23 ~ 24 ~ 25 ~ 26 ~ 27 ~ 28 ~ 29 ~ 30

The Creation of Lazarus ~ AO3

[Prequel to ‘The Particular Abilities of Marinette’, but both works can be read independently]

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

One-Shots

They Were Wrong ~ AO3

Maribat, Daminette [TW: Suicide, Self-harm]

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plantsarefun06 · 2 years

Text

The Particular Abilities of Marinette, and Her Discovery of Them Chapter 27: Parent Meeting the Parents

[Inspired By]

[First] [MasterPost] [AO3]

It was strange, knowing their names. She had gotten so used to using little weird nicknames, dancing around the topic of not knowing their identities for the sake of not making the situation awkward. But now she knew them. Really knew them.

Barbara.

Cassandra.

Tim.

Stephanie.

Jason.

Damian.

Dick. (Which she thought was a derogatory English term, she must have been wrong. She’d have to look up what it really was later.)

Bruce.

And just learning their names had been so nice, sitting around the table in the private room of the brunch bistro just down the street from the bakery, and then Bruce had to ruin the whole thing.

“Marinette, you need to tell your parents about everything. Ladybug, about us, about, your ‘sight’ about the League.”

He told her she had no obligation to go into detail about the League, and that she just needed to tell them the bare minimum, mainly just about who Ra’s and Talia were, and her relation to them. They had all been worried about them coming back, Ra’s and Talia had been gone for a while, and hadn't heard a thing about any plans, despite them having multiple people having their ears to the ground on the situation. They likely knew that Marinette and her family were being heavily monitored and the odds of getting to her without the Bats being there for five minutes was unlikely. They would probably wait for another time when they let down their guard, which they were not, but it didn’t change that they needed to be somewhat in the know.

Which led to an hour afterward, everyone having zeta'd back to Gotham, and Bruce standing behind her as he entered her parent’s bakery which was currently empty as the lunch rush had likely just ended—thank god.

The bell above the door rang as she walked in, Bruce following behind her with a hand on her back. She heard her mother yell ‘Just a moment and I’ll be right with you!’ before she sat down a tray in the backroom and pushed aside the curtain separating the shop from the kitchen. The look of surprise that bloomed across her Mother’s face when she realized she was at the shop when right now she had told them she was over at Alya’s and wouldn’t see them until tonight when she came home from practice had her feel near nauseous and made her want to run out of the shop, her Papa came out from the back behind Maman and gave Bruce a pointed but confused look.

“Marinette- what are. Are you okay?” Her mother asked, shooting Bruce a look, probably of recognition. He had come into the bakery a few times to talk to Marinette and she had told her that he was one of the PR people for a brand she was partnering with and he handled a bunch of stuff with her.

She had more than once commented on how it was strange for a brand representative to come to see her directly and without one of Chloé’s assistants overseeing the interactions like they were supposed to, but Marinette had brushed her off multiple times and just had Bruce discreetly leave quicky.

“What’s going on?” Her Papa practically growled from behind the counter where he was standing.

The image that was being painted probably wasn’t a good one, they’re 15-year-old daughter who was visibly nervous as fuck being guided by a grown man that looked to be in his late thirties, early forties with his hand on her back. A man they recognized as someone they saw her with relatively often over the span of a few months- she didn’t want to think about what her Papa was thinking. He was very protective.

“I think we should go upstairs,” Bruce suggested.

Maybe some parents in a situation like this would have thought that it was their kid who had done something wrong. Like they tried to hotwire someone’s car and the owner walked them home so they could have a talk with their parents, but not her parents.

She was her Maman and Papa’s baby. She could do no wrong, she had been disciplined as a child, she was never raised spoiled, but they would go to hell fighting someone if anyone ever suggested their baby was in the wrong for something or had done something if she told them she hadn’t.

And right now, she could tell there was a very thin veil keeping Bruce from getting shish kabobed by her Maman.

They turned over the open sign and locked the front door before going upstairs in a very tense silence. Her Maman and Papa never took their eyes off Bruce, and she was afraid he was going to vaporize from the glares.

“I think I’ll wait outside,” Bruce said as he opened their apartment door, “and you can explain things yourself first, and when you want me to explain the rest, just call me in.” He suggested opening the apartment door and moving to allow them through.

She just nodded and passed Bruce into the apartment followed by her parents, who gave death glares to Bruce as they passed him. The moment she heard Bruce shut the door behind them her parents were on her.

“Mon chou he didn’t hurt you did he.” Her Maman asked, holding her head and raking her fingers through her hair like she did to check for knots when she was a kid and looked her up and down for bruises.

“I swear,” Papa said in a much kinder, but no less threatening, “If he did anything to you, we can deal with it. We’ll just have to explain it to Raincomprix, but he’ll get it and will help cover it up.”

“Papa, No!” She interrupted, rapidly shaking her head.

“Baobei,” her mother took her face in her hands and gave her a sincere look, “If you tell us he did something, we won’t question you, we will believe, we will take care of it.” Her Maman affirmed. Her papa just nodded along as if he agreed to murdering Bruce. Which Marinette knew was exactly what they were implying.

“Maman, Papa, no!” She grabbed Maman’s hands from where she was holding her face and moved them back down to her mother’s sides.

“Baobei.” Maman started, “No matter what you never have to hide from us. No matter what if anyone—ever—hurts you, you don’t have to worry, me and Papa will deal with it.” She assured, nodding as if to help Marinette understand.

Marinette was slightly horrified at the implication of her Maman’s words, “Bruce had done nothing to me, but… we do need to have a talk, and it’s one we need to sit down for. It’s… it’s about what happened before I met you.” It sobered them quickly. They had never really heard much about her life before, only ever dealing with the aftermath of nightmares, and while her therapist had told them that she was opening up some, they only ever got whatever prognosis or diagnosis the child psychiatrist reported.

“Okay, mon chou.” Her Papa said carefully as they walked her around to the couch where her Papa sat beside her with an arm around her back and her Maman sat on the coffee table holding her hands.

“Well-” She started, quickly ducking her head and playing with her hands, “I- umm.” She stopped again, her mouth unmoving. Unable to create words, form sentences, to speak what she had come here to tell.

“It’s okay baobei,” Her Maman petted her arm and looked at her with such sincerity, “No matter what it is we will never stop loving you.”

The dam of tears broke and she said it all.

Everything.

She told them of Talia and of Ra’s.

She told them of the accident with the acid. She told them it wasn’t an accident.

She told them of her sight. She told them of the streets. She told them of the fear.

She told them of Ladybug. Of the powers. Of the Guardianship. She told them of being a Huàshēn.

She told them of meeting her father, though a highly… edited narrative. Told her that the Justice League had asked for a blood sample for their databases and that when they put it in their system, it just happened to tell them who her biological father was.

She told them about how the past couple of months she had been getting to know her family. Going out to dinners and going on little shopping trips, she chose to omit the ventures she had with Jason.

Her parents were crying with her, angry at Ra’s and Talia, crying over her story of waking up without sight, crying over her tales of life with the League, telling her how much they loved her. She could tell it was a lot for them. They were sad about what she had gone through before they had met, they nearly yelled at her when they learned she was Ladybug, which yeah, understandable, and pretty much every other sentence she hugged.

They told her that they were mad that she didn’t tell them she was Ladybug, because she was putting herself in danger every day, but they were proud of all the things she had done for the community and the world at large as the superheroine.

They told her that, while they wished she told them sooner, they weren’t mad or disappointed that she didn’t tell them about her sight, about her being a Huàshēn, which was what she was really scared about. That had been the thing she had been hiding from them from day one. They said they understood her choice to keep it hidden, that being something akin to a metahuman was very dangerous and scary, and her fear was warranted.

And Marinette started crying with them. Because it was a lot. She had told her parents everything and they told her it was okay. That they loved her. That nothing would change that.

Once they calmed down Maman got up from where she was kneeling on the floor and welcomed Bruce in, smiling at him despite how she was sure her face was blotchy and Bruce could probably hear them cry from where he was standing beside the door.

They talked for a long while. Introducing themselves. And then Bruce immediately clarified one thing.

That he was not taking Marinette away.

The moment he said that it looked like something akin to relief washed over her Maman and Papa. He talked about how he wanted to have a relationship with Marinette, but true ‘co-parenting’ wasn’t an option, they lived too far away and Bruce told them he wouldn’t even dare to ask Marinette to come to Gotham, that her home was in Paris, but that he still wanted him and his family to have a relationship with Marinette.

---

Bruce left a couple of hours later after talking about visitations with Marinette, how he was avoiding them being publicly linked together, and potential times that Marinette could come to visit them (limited considering her responsibilities, potential times they would go on vacation and Marinette could go with them, etc. Once he left, Maman and Papa started to think about logistics behind the whole ‘she was Ladybug thing’, and put down some ground rules.

First thing was that she was dropping all of her work in the bakery, something that she did at least every other day. They said if they had to, they would hire an actual employee, and while they were already worried about her workload with both gymnastics and school along with work in the bakery, having Ladybug on top of them just tipped it over the edge.

The second was that she would be home by one o’clock in the morning unless there was akuma but she was to immediately come home after. This was a compromise on both their parts. Originally they suggested an eleven o’clock curfew, but Marinette flat out told them that wasn’t going to work. Really she didn’t even think one o’clock was going to work, but Bruce had offered to have some League members come to Paris via Zeta Tube and train the Team rather than her. Which, not only would give her hours of more free time, it would also allow the team to be taught fighting styles that suited them and their strengths, along with being taught from multiple people with different backgrounds. It would also allow them to diversify their fighting style, which was always preferred in any situation.

She had already taken up both Dick’s and Cass’ offers of teaching her martial arts. Dick had a huge background in acrobatics and pretty much made his own fighting style by merging his techniques with those Bruce had taught him, to fit in all of his specialties, and utilizing her gymnastic abilities both sounded fun and incredibly useful.

Cassandra had offered to teach her because she basically nullified the huge advantage she had over her opponents: the fact she could predict their muscle movements. Not because she couldn’t predict Cassandra’s muscle movements with ease, but because Cassandra could do it right back at her. She was just as quick and had far more skill. She knew more styles of martial arts than Marinette had fingers and toes, and was the best hand-to-hand combatant in the world. In short: she was excited to get training from her.

Cassandra had specifically told her that she wanted to start her on ‘Southern Praying Mantis’. A martial art that focuses on fast, powerful, and practical moves with a direct technique that delivers maximum force with minimum effort. She was really excited to learn it because according to legend the martial art was developed by a blind woman, and she suspected that Cassandra had suggested it for that specific reason.

And while Cassandra and Dick were far too busy with their own lives and cities to teach an entire team of young heroes, Bruce had told her that at the last meeting with the Justice League, he had mentioned having some of their members volunteer to do bi-weekly visits to their base, which he had heard her mention a few times, for lessons, and having some people come in and help train with the more magical aspects.

He had already told him he had people lined up to train her in the more spellcasting aspect of being a Guardian, and people to help her get control of her energy creation abilities that she had just discovered in a closed lab environment. And with tensions between the JL and the Miraculous Team dissipating, and they’re even being discussions of another JL summit, and maybe even a public announcement of the JLI being associated with them, having lessons from some members, with the clear boundary of absolutely no interference, sounded very nice. Having the weight of not training everyone was honestly, so relieving.

It would also probably be the difference between being able to comply with a one o’clock curfew, which was what Papa had originally proposed, but she had managed to negotiate him up to one in the morning.

Third, they had to be notified of her patrol and lab (the time she worked with her Grimoire) schedule, and anytime she left the city for Ladybug work, along with immediately after akumas she had to call them and tell them she was okay. Both things she agreed without much of a fuss.

Everything they agreed on was reasonable, everything was doable. They asked her who the other heroes were, which she immediately told them it wasn’t her place to say, and she had never been more grateful for the magic shrouding people’s identity, or they probably would have figured that the group of people who regularly were over at her house, who suspiciously all matched up with the local superhero team, were.

Lord knows they would immediately call Nino and Kim’s parents. They had been best friends as long as she, Kim, and Nino had been a trio. They had to be with the number of sleepovers and playdates the three of them had insisted on.

And Nino and Kim, and everyone else on her Team for that matter, had a right to tell who they wanted their secret identity. And they would always support those decisions.

They were a part of a Team. And Teams… well they don’t keep secrets from each other. And she had kept the one of her heritage long enough. Which found her later that night, at their pre-patrol meeting, telling them everything. About the League, about her lineage, about Ra’s and Talia finding her again after a decade. Against her greatest fears, it ended with her in Alya’s lap and everyone comforting her. Along with Kagami declaring she would go to Nanda Parbat, or Infinity Island, or wherever ‘that old codger’’ as Chloé had put, and skewer him through, which had earned muffled agreements from around the table.

Once everyone had ceased with the threats, she revealed the second piece of news.

“So… I met my father a few months ago.” She shifted in Alya’s lap.

“Oh really? Do we need to ‘deal’ with him too?” Chloé asked, with a bit too much enthusiasm.

“No, no.” She shook her head dismissing Chloé, “He’s a good guy. He didn’t really realize what kind of person Talia was at first, but we reconnected… and we actually really want to have a relationship… and my parents actually just met him today and they seem to like him.”

Luka seemed to be studying her intensely, he definitely noticed how nervous she was. She didn’t really know how they would react. Her mother had recognized him once he told her his full name, but her Papa hadn’t, and she herself had only recognized the name Bruce Wayne because she did research on all her partnership offers that Chloé told her were legit unless you kept up with American celebrities, or the latest in business and technology, the name ‘Bruce Wayne’ didn’t mean much.

“Well, his name is Bruce Wayne.” Kagami, Chloé, Adrien, and Max all perked up immediately.

“Like… Bruce Wayne, Bruce Wayne. From Gotham City Bruce Wayne?” Chloé asked, she looked… excited. Which was rare for her. She had a ‘resting bitch face’ as Alya had so kindly labeled it, and even when she was happy she usually didn’t show it.

“Uhh… yeah?” She and everybody else’s eardrums near burst with the squeal that Chloé emitted.

She sighed as she fell back into her seat, swooning, “Do you have any idea of the parties you could get into? And bring your bestest friends who are also your publicist as your plus one too? Bruce Wayne?! Oh my, you have no idea what this could mean for you!” Chloé nearly screamed with a huge grin across her face.

Kagami hummed, “I’ve met him before he seems-” “-like an idiot.” Adrien finished Kagami’s sentence. Adrien leaned forward and took a sip of the hot cocoa he brought for himself, “Thirty minutes into the party he was drunk and clumsily dancing with a Russian model. His kids seemed cool though, I met Tim Drake, we talked about cartoons and anime.”

“Shut up dork! We have more pressing matters. Like how this is going to affect Marinette’s career!” Chloé cheered.

Marinette cleared her throat to quiet Chloé from her excited ramblings, “Okay! One, my biological father isn’t an idiot, but he does masquerade as one to get out of doing stuff. Two, my siblings are cool. If you remember that one blond girl and Chinese girl with short black hair that came to pick me up after school two weeks ago are actually my sisters. Three, and this is to you Chloé, we are not publicizing who my father is. Is that clear?”

Chloé huffed and dejectedly slumped back in her chair. Marinette ignored the ‘You never let me have my fun.’ Chloé mumbled under her breath.

Max perked up at an opening to talk, “I’ve been fascinated about Bruce Wayne’s companies work. His head of R&D, Lucius Fox, is one of this age’s greatest minds! I’ve followed his work for years, do you think your father could get me a meeting with him? I’ve been hoping to ask about his new proposal on how matter interacts with time and his theory on the manipulation of it!”

“Umm, who even is this guy?” Nino asked. He, along with everyone but Adrien, Kagami, Max, and Chloé seemed completely clueless at the situation and confused at how they ‘knew’ who he was.

“You don’t know who Bruce Wayne is?” Chloé seemed genuinely offended.

“Take your phone out of your pocket,” Max told him. Nino pulled out his phone, though he did so in a confused manner.

“Turn it over.” he flipped his phone, just staring at Max with ‘is this what you want? Because it seems pretty stupid’ expression.

“What is the insignia on the back?”

“It’s the ‘W’ for Wayne Enterpr- ‘WAYNE’ AS IN THAT WAYNE!” Well, everyone seemed to know who she was talking about now because they were just bewildered.

“Just so you know,” Chloé started sitting up from where she had slouched back only a moment ago, “Because you have the whole blind thing going on and can’t see it, your dad’s fucking hot.”

“CHLOÉ!”

[Next]

---

[Notes:]

Like 10+ chapters ago, Pokypic, one of my readers, suggested that I have Marinette learn ‘Southern Praying Mantis’ as it was actually the fighting style Toph Beiphon used in Avatar, and I fell in love with the idea and from the get go had the idea of having Cassandra teach her it. Full credit to Pokypic though!

---

Tag List:

@frieddonutsweets @moon5608 @ihatecomingupwithusernameswtf @adrestar @galla02006 @bygge00 @alyssadeliv @toodaloo-kangaroo @iloontjeboontje @missanalysis

#maribat #mlb x dc #ml x dc #dc x mlb #bio!dad au #bio! dad bruce wayne

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plantsarefun06 · 2 years

Text

The Particular Abilities of Marinette, and Her Discovery of Them Chapter 26: Cinquefoil

[Inspired By]

[First] [MasterPost] [AO3]

It took two full months after the incident with Ra’s and Talia before Bruce trusted her.

His name was Bruce.

Something that felt so foreign and so strange. To know the name of her biological father. To know who he was.

She had actually gotten to know the entire family quite well in the following March, April, and beginning of May even if she didn’t know what their given names were.

Immediately after the incident, before she even got off the pavement to go home after seeing Ra’s and Talia for the first time in over a decade, Batman had pulled out a small empty vial and requested her to spit in it for the purposes of testing. She had spit in it with little to no fuss, if he wanted to have his own reassurances after this whole ordeal then he might as well have, not like he could see the miasma she could see one him.

Once she got home, she flopped down in her bed after sluggishly pulling off her clothing, trying to be quiet enough that her parents wouldn’t hear her and wake up. There was so much going on in her head. The world around her filled with the faint beeping of horns and the sound of people on the street, but her mind clouded with it screaming at itself. About Ra’s and Talia, about Batman and his family, about how she had used her powers on someone. There was too much. Too much to say too much to process, so she put it in a list to deal with in her head. With one thing at the top and everything else to be ignored until later.

The first and most important thing to her at the moment was to apologize to Tikki. In the years she had known Tikki she had heard stories of other kwami and Tikki herself being forced against their wills by Masters who had gone insane with power. Tikki had once described to her how it felt.

It’s like you’re a puppet. I’m supposed to be one of the most powerful beings in existence, I’m literally a force of nature, I know my power, I know my limits, and I have a responsibility to the entire universe to make sure those limits are never passed. And when they do it… no matter how hard I fight, it is never enough, and despite being the most powerful force in nature, I am reduced to a puppet. And the pain goes far beyond physical.

She had told Tikki it wasn’t her fault, that she had no control. She had promised Tikki that she would do everything in her power to make sure that never happened to her or the other kwami again, and she would do her best to defeat Hawkmoth and Mayura, not only to liberate Paris from their tyranny but to liberate Nooroo and Duusuu from their captors.

And she broke that promise.

And the only thing she could do was hold Tikki and apologize, telling her how sorry she was. Tikki told her it was okay, told her that she felt threatened by Ra’s, and at the moment she lost control. There were no excuses though, no ‘I was emotional’ or ‘I had lost control of myself’, she had hurt Tikki, she had broken her promise, and she was going to show Tikki how sorry she was, and find every way to make it up to Tikki, even if it took a lifetime.

She fell asleep telling Tikki how sorry she was, sorry about forcing her will on her, sorry about never telling her about who her family was, telling her that if she wanted to leave her, wanted to find a better user, she would understand, and she would help Tikki find someone who would protect her.

The kwami curled up to her shoulder, telling her that she forgave her, that she would never judge her for where she came from, telling her that she was her bug, and that she wouldn’t trade Marinette for anyone. She told her that she needed sleep, that so much had happened and emotions were high and everything would be clearer the next morning, the familiar weight of Tikki on her clavicle was enough to lull her to sleep.

The night after while she was on patrol Chat Noir informed her there was a figure that was on her balcony, late at night and he couldn’t identify who they were besides the fact that they couldn’t be her Maman or Papa. She told him to leave it to her and to cover her sector of patrol and she would go personally deal with it. By the time she got to the bakery the person who was there was long gone, but there was something on the balcony that wasn’t there before she left for patrol. An envelope, with a small pack of seeds attached.

With everything that had happened, she was weary to open it. She detransformed, having Tikki check it out and make sure there weren't any loose chemicals in the envelope meant for her to inhale, or the package wasn’t laced with poison, when she got the okay she opened the envelope to find a single page and a package of what looked like to be some plant seed she didn’t recognize.

Dear Marinette,

She dragged her finger along the paper printed in french braille. Reading as the letter went on, it was from him, Batman. Telling her about how he was unaware of her existence, and sorry he had not found her sooner. How he was sorry for what had happened to her, and how he wished he could do anything to help, and how he, more than anything, wished to pursue a relationship with her, but it was her choice, and if she wished to never see her again, and simply wanted to forget he ever existed, he would make it so, and that regardless of her decision he would ensure that she and her loved ones got protection from Ra’s and Talia, and he would ensure that no harm fell upon them. Along with a little note at the bottom, telling her he had a very close friend who enjoyed gardening too, and he had recommended a certain flower that she had likely not seen before, but shouldn’t interfere with the plants she has now.

Her choice.

It made her text Max who was running comms back at base that she had dealt with the issue but she was turning in early that night, before flopping on her bed and simply allowing her mind to clear entirely.

She hadn’t even begun to process what had happened last night. It had all been so much, it had been easier to push it back and try to ignore it. She wasn’t even sure what she was supposed to think. She had never truly been interested in who her biological father was, she left any thought of who he could possibly be way back in the League. It was pretty much a fool’s hope to ever think she could know who he was, and here she was with a letter asking her if she wanted to know him, saying that he wanted her, and even if she didn’t want him he would still protect her and her parents, that it wasn’t an ultimatum, it wasn’t a deal so that he may get what he wants at her expense, that no matter what he would help her, and she got a choice.

Her choice.

...she didn’t know what to think.

She grabbed the small little packet of seeds and flipped it between her hands, feeling along the package she met a small strip of french braille on the front of the package.

Cinquefoil.

A flower indigenous to North America, she had never seen one in person before but had read of them plenty of times in the textbooks she owned, detailing thousands of flowers from around the world. Cinquefoil were small, five-petal flowers, coming in a range of colors, but most popularly orange. But more significantly, it had symbolism behind it, most prominently it meant strength, power, honesty, and loyalty, but she had once read it had another symbolism.

Beloved daughter.

Everything changed rapidly after that. It seemed her entire life was turned on its side. And all she did was message the Justice League a simple ‘yes’. Just once, two weeks after she got the letter on the balcony, two weeks that were filled with thoughts of her future, and what she truly wanted it to look like, she simply messaged them one simple word while she was on morning patrol, and later that day when she went to the gym a certain someone was doing tricks on the Vault. That certain someone being the same man who fought with escrima sticks, and after some research, she learned was the ever famous leader of the Titans, Nightwing.

It had only been two hours earlier than she had sent that simple ‘yes’ with no context to the Justice League, hoping that it would find its way to a party that at least understood what she had meant, and suddenly Nightwing was just here.

She swallowed down her nerves and started on her basic stretches and warmups on the floor, going through the motions as she studied Nightwing on the Vault.

The brief research she did told her that Nightwing had exhibited a lot of advanced gymnastics skills when fighting and she would have to say they were right. He was actually quite impressive while practicing on the Vault, doing more and more complex skills, making it look as if it was easy.

When she went over to the water cooler to get herself a drink, he stopped his routine and followed her, smiling at her, introducing himself as ‘John’ though she doubted that was his real name, and telling her he was a ‘fan’ and asked for a picture together. Whether or not he wanted a picture because he was a fan, or because of her relation to Batman, she wasn’t exactly sure but she indulged him and gave no indication that she could recognize him.

She went back to the floor, working on her routine that had been meant for the French Olympic trials, but since they had been postponed due to an alien invasion in Tokyo that basically destroyed the arena and the Olympic village she was going to repurpose the routines for the European gymnastics championship in August, now with Nightwing or ‘John’, turning to watch her quite often.

Often enough to earn a couple of girls she knew coming up to her and offering her rides home or hailing and paying a cab for her because they were concerned. Which, she appreciated but was unnecessary, and she told them as such. The girls meant well, they all watched each other’s back in a sport where being preyed upon was common, and when she told them that she knew who he was and he was a friend she made while traveling and had invited him to their gym when she heard he was in town, they let it be.

Well, besides one of the coaches that she saw go over to him, and if she read her lips right, said, “Monsieur, I think it would be best if you would leave this establishment. We don’t allow grown men who ogle at fifteen-year-olds in without spraying mace on them afterward-” In short, Nightwing left.

Leaving the gym later that day she found Nightwing on her usual bus, despite it being hours after he had been not so kindly kicked out, she took a seat beside him. He smirked at her when she sat down and openly laughed when she revealed she knew exactly who he was, he decided to personally introduce himself, with the exclusion of his name because apparently, Batman was understandably apprehensive considering her association with Ra’s and Talia and they couldn’t be sure until further investigation into her.

Which was understandable, she knew what Ra’s and Talia were capable of, she would be wary of anything involving them as well, and even if she wasn’t involved with Ra’s or Talia, she could be involved with over nefarious organizations. She wouldn’t be telling Nightwing her name if he didn’t already know it, and he was literally the leader of a team with some of the world’s greatest superheroes.

She let it go, she had enough to be angry at the world about, she really didn’t want to add ‘daddy issues’ as Chloe and Adrien would deem them, to the list.

Nightwing’s first visit to the gym led to the beginning of her relationship with her biological family. Or- well, family that was related to her through adoption by people she was related to through blood, if that made any sense. Marinette was a bit… overwhelmed by all her siblings.

Yeah, she knew she had a little brother. It was a fact she had become normal to her years ago, but actually seeing him, in person. Entirely different experience. Then add not one, not two, but four adopted siblings, plus the two ‘family friends’ who might as well have been two more sisters. Along with her father’s girlfriend, who apparently came and went as she pleased, and an aunt, who was technically her cousin but they all referred to her as their aunt, who liked to show up occasionally.

Having this family was a bit different. There were a number of differences, between the fact that they lived across an ocean, or them also being superheroes, or the fact that it took over two months for them to get their names, but she wouldn’t change it for anything.

Despite everything going against them, they made a huge effort to see her.

‘John’ as she continued to call him, came to open gyms with her. She had to explain to the coach who had threatened him that she actually knew him, and that ‘she had met him at a convention in America when she was traveling to New York with Chloe, and he was a coach that had offered to teach her some stuff if he ever came to Paris, and he had recently come here to visit come, family.’ A half-lie, she traveled to New York with Chloe relatively often and he was technically coming to the city to visit family… her.

It had gotten some looks and a glare from her coach, but she eventually let it go but did keep a closer eye on them than she used to. Turned out Nightwing was a really good gymnast and an even better teacher. He never told her specifically what training he had, whether he had an upbringing in gymnastics or he learned it when he came into B’s (what they all taken to calling Batman) care. The way he moved reminded her less of an artistic gymnast and more of a rhythmic gymnast or maybe even an acrobat, though he seemed to have plenty of expertise in artistic gymnastics.

Her and missing-spleen-boy, who everyone just called ‘Red’ short for his actual code name but she mostly called him that out of pure enjoyment, on paper had less in common with each other but they got along really well. They would go out and try restaurants or food carts, as new ones were popping up constantly, and just talk for hours.

Both of them were leaders of a superhero team at a young age and had become superheroes at young ages, and were generally regarded as the ‘plan guy’, they talked about everything and nothing at the same time. He had talked about his boyfriend ‘Bernard’ a few times, saying that he didn’t know anything about their families 'nighttime activities’ and once she was clued in on everything that she would have to meet him, but they couldn’t do it before because they didn’t want him to figure out what they did.

Red Hood happened to match her in the ‘chaos’ department. He liked to show up at the most random times and whisk her away abruptly to do some of the most stupid, most of the time illegal, stuff she had ever done. He often joked that his goal was to ‘corrupt her’, but it didn’t take long for him to realize that no corruption was necessary and she was down to do whatever. He had taught her how to pick a lock, and disable a basic security system, taught her about how a lot of underground operations (mostly drug empires) worked and helped queue her in on some underground operations in Paris that she needed to watch out for. He was also a huge literature nerd (surprising, I know) and he had already given her braille versions of Jane Austen books that he told her to read so he could talk about them with her.

Batgirl, who used to be Spoiler, Black Bat, Oracle, and B’s girlfriend who just told her to call her Selina because apparently, she didn’t give a damn about B’s rules, she saw the most out of everyone. Because of how her school worked she had a forty-five-minute lunch period and was allowed to leave campus, which they took full advantage of, taking her out for lunch at least twice a week, along with all the other times they dragged her off outside of school hours. Always to nice, very expensive, restaurants that were along the line of where Chloe went on occasion, in other words, places where she would only ever go to on the occasional meeting with business partners.

They had once gone to a restaurant where you would go up to the front desk to pay for your meal, which led to her hearing as the host readout that the total was over €1200. She had expressed concern about it and told them it was too much and she could run to the bakery and grab some money she had tucked away and at least pay for a portion of it, but they had brushed aside her concerns and told her ‘they had a sponsor’ before taking her to a designer boutique and buying her a plethora of clothes because ‘she looked like someone who was blind and tasteless chose her outfit’.

She reminded them she was in fact blind, and according to them, that was ‘not an excuse’ (she was having flashbacks to going shopping with Chloe). She had to tell her Maman that the clothes she was getting were from one of those photoshoots that Chloe had managed to negotiate in her contract that she was allowed to keep the clothes.

And, to everyone's surprise, the blind girl and the partially mute girl became best friends. Though it should have been less of a surprise, with both of them having the ability to read a person’s body language with extreme ease. Black Bat apparently hadn’t grown up with language and while she had learned to understand English, she often struggled making her own words and stringing them into sentences, though she had had surgery to allow herself to understand spoken language.

She had apparently tried ASL for a while, and sometimes it worked better than her voice, and she would transition to it, but she still experienced the same issue of converting her thoughts into something she can communicate. However, Marinette started taking up ASL along with the other language courses she did in her free time so she at least would be able to understand her when words got a little too hard.

Black Bat also got her sense of style: whatever the hell is clean and comfortable. Though, she went along with the boutique trips as a form of torture for Marinette. She also went to the gym - the actual gym with weights and treadmills - with her. She always needed a partner because all the machinery was heavy metal and she was good at mending a broken ankle on a patrol gone wrong, but if she crushed her foot she wasn’t sure that she could actually set all those tiny bones properly so she could heal them properly. Black Bat and her had become gym buddies and went to the gym next to Le Grande Paris twice a week together.

B also tagged along on some of these ‘girls trips’. He became the bag holder when they went shopping and usually just trailed behind them while Marinette was being dragged around. He was… awkward, though he complimented her and told her ‘she looked absolutely lovely’ in about anything that Selina, Oracle, and Batgirl shoved her in. He really was like that anytime she saw him. He seemed to like to sit close to her, and if she ever breathed a word of needing or wanting anything she got it the next day in a nice little wrapped box on her balcony, but it seemed anytime he was about to talk to her he would stop himself, or when he did say something to her it was just him prompting her to say more.

“What has school been like?”

“Who are all your friends?”

“How have you taken all the attention you get from gymnastics?”

“What is gymnastics like for you?”

Etcetera, etcetera.

She had once asked Red Hood why that was, and he told her he was an oaf when it came to emotions, that was how she chose to word what he said in her mind, but he had said that he did genuinely care about her. Later on that night he told her that Bruce felt really guilty.

“When Robin first came, it was a huge shock- really a huge blow to him. If you think Robin is all angsty and angry now, you should have met him when he first came to B. It was a shitshow. And, while B never really talked about it with anyone, I think it really hurt B that he never knew about Damian. That his child grew up in the hellhole that is the League and he was completely oblivious to his existence, it hurt him in a way that I don’t think a lot of people will ever really understand. And to learn that it had happened before. That Robin was the second child and not the only one. Not only that but, thanks to your parents, you have a very detailed medical history from when you first came into their care and diagnosis of PTSD and social anxiety disorder all stemming from experiences he could have saved you from-”

“He couldn’t have saved me.” She cut Hood off, “he didn’t know I existed, Talia thought I was dead and I’m sure Ra’s did well to cover up my existence, and I never even revealed where I was from to anyone.”

“To B it doesn’t matter, he has the whole savior complex, survivors guilt, gaslighting himself, combo. Anything and everything that goes wrong inside his life is his own fault.”

“Why- I mean logically-” She started, but Hood cut her off, “Again, it just- it doesn’t matter. Not to him.”

He took another puff of his cigarette before pressing the bud on the edge of the concrete building they were sitting on, overlooking the city from hundreds of feet up.

“You know he does love you.” Red Hood spoke, a far gentler tone than the brash one she was used to from him. She hummed a question at what he meant.

“B, he loves you. Trust me, you can see it in the effort he puts in for a relationship with you, you can see it with how he’s a bit nervous around you, you can see it in how he looks at you. He loves you.” The longer he spoke the more sincere, and sadder, he sounded.

“You know, he loves you too.” She spoke so quietly that if the sound of the street below were any louder he wouldn’t be able to hear.

“He always seems sad when you leave.”

He gave the most painful snort she thought she had ever heard, “He misses who I was before my death. Before Lazarus. He’s all stuck on it and refuses to believe I’m not the same person I was when I was fifteen.”

“No, I don’t-” she paused a moment, trying to collect her thoughts, “I’ve got the whole, reading emotions thing going on, with body language, and you know, he gets really sad when you don’t show up for the big family stuff, or when someone brings you up and you’re not there. And the way he looks at you when you show up- I can tell- he gets really happy. I- he loves you too.”

They both sat there for a moment, complete silence, only faint car horns and sounds of conversation from below filling the void before Hood got up and hopped down to the alley below, got on his motorcycle, and sped off without a word.

---

The entire family had started planning to all have dinner in a restaurant in Paris at least once every two weeks, along with the times people would randomly pop up and drag her wherever and when they would always come and watch her competitions. It was one of the only occasions she got to see all of them together, and it was the only time she saw Robin.

It was nice being with the whole family, they were very… lively. The best way she could put it. It was always fun! For her at least, B seemed to always end up with a headache, but she enjoyed the chaos of the whole ordeal, she was pretty sure B tipped at least 80% on their ridiculously expensive meal to the poor waitress, despite tipping not being compulsory in France.

She had tried to communicate with Robin. While Black Bat, Red Hood, Nightwing, and Red Robin weren’t any less her siblings because they were adopted, but this was her little brother. The one she had known about for years. He was sitting across the table from her! She actually had quite a good relationship with all her other siblings, but Damian wouldn’t even look at her.

Anytime she asked him a question, he would give one-word replies and then try and start a conversation with someone else, which Marinette may be blind, but she could see he did that because he didn’t want to speak with her. When she would ever have a conversation she was in, he would leave it. While outside of their big dinners where everyone, even occasionally Jason, joined, she never saw him.

He didn’t even insult her! Which was the norm for him. In a single-family dinner, he threw at least three dozen insults around. Granted, most were thrown at missing-spleen-boy, but still! After months she hadn’t even been insulted. ONCE! At this point, she would have cried tears of joy if he taunted her. He was actually quite funny, even if he didn’t mean to be.

She really didn’t know what was up with the kid. Jason said that Damian’s ego had been crushed, and he was grumpy, but it didn’t seem like it was just that. Even after she had gained their trust and they had revealed their identities he still would avoid her like the plague, only attending when she knew he had been dragged there. She never did talk about it with Bruce, Marinette fully believed Jason about the whole ‘would give her anything because of the guilt’ and didn’t want to get him in trouble.

She’d just figure it out on her own.

But in the meantime, she needed to figure out how to approach a different situation. One that started with the dinner where it was revealed who they were.

Where she learned her siblings' names. Where she learned her father’s name.

Bruce.

It rang through her head. Over and over. Along with another thing he said at the end of the night before she left the restaurant.

Marinette… you need to tell your parents. You need to tell them everything.

[Next]

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[Notes:]

There were a couple concerns in last chapter’s comments about whether Bruce would be a good dad or not, and if it wasn’t clear in this update, Bruce is a good dad in this. I hate when Bruce is written as a bad dad (screw canon), I want him to be a good dad, and I am the author and have decided to play god and make him one.

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Tag List:

@frieddonutsweets @moon5608 @ihatecomingupwithusernameswtf @adrestar @galla02006 @bygge00 @alyssadeliv @toodaloo-kangaroo @iloontjeboontje @missanalysis

#maribat #mlb x dc #ml x dc #dc x mlb

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plantsarefun06 · 2 years

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What if the ring is the amok? Adrien Sentimonster theory.

Okay, so we see that Gabriel and Emilie's wedding rings are family heirlooms and while we haven't exactly seen anything from Emilie (because she's you know... comatose) we do see that this ring is very precious to Gabriel.

Now obviously this could just be because this is his wedding ring to the woman he loves dearly, to the point it is clearly unhealthy, but what if this is also because the ring is the amok that made Adrien?

We see in the beginning seasons that Adrien is very compliant towards Gabriel. Anything his father says he does without question, even if he doesn't want to and he is clearly dejected. But since the episode 'Felix' in S3, we see more and more Adrien being defiant, in even the smallest way. Clearly, he still follows a lot of his father's orders, but he is more willing to defy him and is more willing to go against his father's wishes knowing it would make him mad.

The reason that Gabriel s so willing to corner Felix to get back the ring, even as Gabriel Agreste, is because he knows he doesn't have total control over Adrien without it, it could also be why in 'Gabriel Agreste' in S4, he knew immediately that the ring was a fake, not because he simply recognized it wasn't his wedding ring but because he could tell that there was no magic on it.

Maybe someone has already said this, but I just thought it and I want to see if someone agreed with me.

#sentimonster adrien #sentimonster theory #ml sentimonster #miraculous theory #miraculous fandom #miraculous ladybug #adrien agreste #miraculous adrien #cat noir #ladybug #marinette #gabriel agreste #emilie agreste #emilie graham de vanily #mayura #hawkmoth #shadow moth #agreste family

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plantsarefun06 · 3 years

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AHHHHHH! I have officially requested from the entire fandom more Juleka Alix and Marinette trio content! I love their entire dynamic!

Con Man's daughter (5)

Didn't want to study. This is what I did instead. Now if you excuse me, I am going to cry.

[Masterlist]

(Part 1)(Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4)

-------

The Magic Trio (Marinette and Alix plus ‘honorary member’ Juleka) once appeared on an episode of Buzzfeed Unsolved while investigating a haunted house. Sort of.

After hours of searching, the house appears to be a fluke. As Marinette and Alix were going home, Shane and Ryan entered with the filming crew so the girls decided it was a good idea to fuck around and be the ghosts of this house. (Forgive me for inaccuracies because I only watched a few clips of them before.)

They started by using magic or simple things like strings and paint to make it seem as haunted as possible. Lowering the temperature in certain areas, high-pitched eerie giggles, paint to mimic a person with bloodied hands being dragged away, words like ‘GO AWAY’, ‘HELP’ in french, you know, fun stuff.

They also mess with the torches and equipment a bit. The magic making them flicker or glitch.

Juleka snuck in a while later through the back door, bringing some dresses and long hair wigs. They accidentally make the door banged shut, bringing attention to the rest of the occupants and nearly exposing the whole thing. Thankfully, they managed to stay off the crew’s radar.

Alix used her roller skates to make herself look like gliding and Marinette used her magic to make her look a little more ghostly and paler. She skated past the crew while they were in the kitchen, wearing a white dress and moaning.

Everyone thought it was just the creepy vibes getting to them and they were seeing things.

The crew was hoping to pick up ghost voices using a recorder thingy and Juleka’s faint voice was heard from the recorder asking, “Are you my Mommy?” in French over and over again to every question they ask, even the ones said in clumsy french. Until it sounds like it wasn’t coming from the recording but from behind them. They turned around to see Juleka briefly appeared wearing a black dress and holding a teddy bear, asking the question before the lights flickered and she was gone.

They were all freaked out, some of them were starting to suspect something and the rest wanted to get out of the house.

They went to the final room, the master bedroom, to get over the entire thing against their better judgment, to see a girl in a red dress facing the window.

In a soft French accent, she asked, “Mommy, Daddy, are you home?” before her neck turned 180 and her face had a too wide grin and hair covering her eyes.

Most of them ran out of the room at the sight and out of the house. To their relief, the door still was open.

The episode aired and after Marinette's neck turning around 180 degrees, the screen immediately went black and later said ‘After we got out of the house, this happened.’

The footage showed the three girls with long hair and each wearing the same dresses as the ghost had, sitting in front of the house. Shane and Ryan pulled off the girl’s wigs to show their faces. Ryan apologizes for pulling Juleka’s actual real long hair. They explained everything about the back door, the paint, etc.. Scooby-Doo style and how the girls were able to pull off this amazing prank.

They introduced themselves by variations of their first names like Mary, Alice and Jewel.

The girls later explained the parts Ryan and Shane missed of how they did it, cutting out information about the magic. Marinette mostly did the explanation since she was most proficient in English because of her father.

Marinette added a little fun by demonstrating how she turned her head with some explanation of her neck joint being more flexible when she actually used magic. She didn’t explain some of the stuff and just said that her father is a magician and she honours the magician code and won’t reveal some of the tricks.

They got a neat good photo later.

The episode ends with the girls saying, “We would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for you meddling adults.” in faux anger before giggling.

After the crew packed up everything onto the car, they turned towards the girls to ask if they wanted a ride home to find any sign of them gone like they disappeared into thin air. (It brought many questions like are they humans pretending to be ghosts as a prank or actual ghosts pretending to be humans pretending to be a ghost? They may never know the true answer and some mysteries are best left unknown)

However, Jalil did a spit take when he saw Alix and her friends on the newest episode of his favourite show. (He burst into her room while she was sleeping to demand answers and nearly fainted when he saw the picture she had taken with the Buzzfeed Unsolved co-hosts, which were also autographed, hanging on the wall.)

------

Good things come to an end sadly. When Hawkmoth appeared, not many supernatural creatures stuck around in Paris because of the Miraculouses being active and they are a natural deterrent for them.

Alix finds out about Marinette being Ladybug after 10 months when she sees Ladybug using a magic spell which she saw Marinette used before which she knew was complicated. There were also hints before that didn’t seem to click until she de-transformed in front of Alix who was waiting for Marinette in her bedroom to ask her about Ladybug possibly being a magic user.

She covers for Marinette with shitty excuses that everyone accepts because Marinette has done weirder stuff before like the time she skipped a class to spend it with her Monkey uncle who is apparently the King of all Monkeys or spend an entire day in the park looking for invisible people who apparently owe her money. (The fae now refuses to ever make deals with little girls wearing pigtails.)

They spend every weekend, looking for Hawkmoth’s identity or testing the limits of the Ladybug Miraculous.

They told Juleka because she is part of the Magic trio despite all her protests about being just an ‘honorary’ member.

When Marinette became Guardian (Master Fu passed it on due to old age), they tested out the other Miraculouses. They used Kalki and expanded their range of cases. They looked through everything for supernatural sightings in other countries, mainly in Europe.

John had to come out and help when demons or other ancient deities were involved. (After the incident with Sekhmat, the Egyptian lion goddess, they were added to the list of ‘things that we need to call Mari’s father for’ It’s a very long list. Marinette usually ignores it and tries to take care of the problem herself. Usually, she managed to do it through sheer stubbornness.)

------

When Hawkmoth started, Chloe accused Marinette of being him, even bringing in Officer Raincomprix to arrest her. It nearly worked but everyone just pointed out that Marinette does harmless magic tricks with her doing simple tricks like pulling a coin out of the officer’s ear to prove a point. Plus pointing out other logical things like Hawkmoth being a full grown male.

Too bad, Marinette can’t outright curse Chloe anymore because it just might backfire on her with Hawkmoth around creating akumas and someone might actually think she is Hawkie. Another reason why that butterfly coward must go.

John arrived a few days after the Stoneheart incident, and brought some texts about the Miraculous he could find, a few of which were ‘borrowed’.(read: stolen)

Tikki gave as much information as she could that might help against Hawkmoth.

John decides to talk to Wonder Woman when it is revealed that Hippolyta used to be a wielder.

That weekend consisted of the father and daughter duo finding ways to find the missing miraculouses to varying degrees of success.

The Miraculous are old magic and courtesy of this ‘Order’ that kept everything about it a closely guarded secret, there wasn’t much they could do, short of dealing with demons or other entities for help and that was completely off the table.

Tikki is of course not telling who chose Marinette so she used some magic to review the day Stoneheart happened and see the old man she helped.

“Tikki, did this man choose me?” Marinette asked, pointing at the picture of master Fu in her magic mirror.

“Kwami aren’t allowed to tell you who the Guardian is without his permission or unless it is an emergency.”

“Guess he is this Guardian, then.” she said, taking the non-answer as a yes. As Marinette continues to watch the mirror, showing the Guardian wearing the turtle miraculous and bypassing her wards in her room like it was nothing.

“Looks like I have to add new wards now.” She sighed.

“I don’t think they will work if he can get in that easily with your current ones. You might find something in these texts that will keep a lot of them out but if you are going to keep being Lady Rouge, it’s best you don’t so you don’t accidentally get locked out of your own room.” John pointed out.

“I will just find a way around that. I always do.” And she did.

The new wards will let her and anyone she allows to enter, into her room.

------

Tikki had told her that she was surprised to know that Marinette was well-versed in magic. Only for Marinette to raise an eyebrow because she thought that was the reason why she was chosen to be Ladybug, causing Tikki to backpedal on her mistake.

After some interrogation and withholding cookies on Marinette’s side, Tikki admits that the Guardian thought that she was a good match after observing her and setting a test which she passed.

Marinette finally meets this mysterious Guardian after Tikki gets sick.

She at first tried to cure on her own until Tikki said that the Guardian was the only one who could help her.

Marinette only relents to let Tikki take her to Master Fu so she can finally meet the person who thought it was a good idea to put the well-being of an entire city on the shoulders of two teenagers with minimal training. (And she would have eventually gotten Tikki better if she had more time but Ladybug being out of commission for a long time was not ideal.)

When she gets there, she waits until Tikki gets better to wreck things Constantine style. She off-handedly mentioned how she thought that the Temple of the Order was destroyed so long ago causing Master Fu to freeze and internally panic.

“You should really be careful about giving powerful artifacts to random teenagers, Monsieur. And I have some questions. Number one: Why did I get the Ladybug and not an adult?”

“Young minds are more flexible and not restrained like adults.” he stammered out. “Reasonable. But not a good excuse for your actions.”

Questions continued, and he automatically answered in shock while internally falling further down into a spiral as the current Ladybug revealed information about the Miraculous she somehow has and some of them are tightly guarded secrets the kwamis aren’t privy to and only Guardians should know about. A few he didn’t even know (Mari being a little shit, slipped in some misinformation. Girlboss, Gatekeep, Gaslight.)

Wyazz took over answering some of them after seeing his master in no state to answer properly.

The question about why Adrien Agreste has the Black Cat made Fu spiral down further because who the hell exactly was Marinette and how did she know this? The critiques about picking the boy with a famous face, the fact that he lacked professionalism and he has no real world experience from being so sheltered didn’t make him feel better about any of his decisions.

He felt worse when he found that he had no answers on how to find Hawkmoth and his efforts so far, when nothing had been done and he had been spying and 'shipping' them on both sides of the mask for the past months.

After finishing her 79 questions, she shook the frozen Master Fu’s hand, thanking him for his time, all smiles and none of the threatening aura from earlier. She left. Tikki followed her holder, looking a little worried for the Guardian.

A few days later, Fu was visited by the infamous Hellblazer with a strangely familiar smirk on his face. The rumours he had heard of the blond man put him in a state of terror.

"May I come in? I just want to have a little chat regarding the earrings that recently came into my daughter's hands."

"Your daughter?" Fu stuttered out.

"I suppose you know her as Lady Rouge."

The visit left Fu thoroughly shaken and regretting his choice in putting in too little effort into researching about the ones he chose. Lady Rouge’s father was not he should have angered.

He became a little more active and tried his best to translate the books on the Miraculous with his more abundant free time which Marinette brought to him once a week. (Some had bloodstains and he didn’t dare ask why.)

He taught her all he knew and told her about Feast way earlier. (The Rules instilled in him by the Order that he tried to pass on to her were largely ignored.)

------

As for the 'crush' on Adrien.

It’s mostly Alya with very rose-coloured glasses and dead set on pushing Marinette to ‘confess’ to Adrien despite her many protests that she doesn’t feel anything for him other than indifference. She somehow got the othere girls, exculding Alix and Juleka to help Marinette confess.

Invisibility charms are useful in avoiding Alya and her schemes of playing Cupid. If she doesn’t stop the match-making or finding out her identity as Lady Rouge, Marinette might have to take drastic measures.

The attempts eventually stopped after Marinette announced that she was dating Kagami, showing up to the class picnic holding hands with the stoic fencer. (bi! Marinette)

Alya pulls her hair out because Marinette is dating the wrong person with a strict parent who can fence and that her ship Adrienette had sunk.

-----

Ironically for Alya, it was with Adrien's help that they accidentally got together.

Adrien asked her to help with his ice rink date with Kagami to which she brought along Alix.

Kagami confronts Marinette for leading Adrien on, to only find out that Marinette doesn't like Adrien because he's not her type and came along because she wanted to meet Kagami.

The fencer left a blushing mess after Marinette kissed her hand and told her to change her target instead. Leaving with a wink and a smug smirk.

They meet up a few times after. Marinette coming by after she finishes fencing practice, sometimes giving her flowers with thoughtful meaning behind them or her favourite drinks. Marinette coming to tournaments wearing her colours with a handmade banner.

Then, Kagami stopping by the bakery for something to eat during lunch because she was curious about the girl trying to woo her.

It was during Ikarin Gozen, the Friendship Day treasure hunt that they had a impromtu first date. (which Marinette totally didn't use her hacking skill which Robin taught her so she ends up with Kagami. It was a total accident. Alya had told her that she had signed Marinette up for it as a set-up so she can confess to Adrien so she hacked in to remove herself from the system.)

Mari manage to charm Mdm. Tsurugi enough to let her spend some time with Kagami for their dates despite her strict schedule.

They dated for a while before a combination of Marinette's duties as Ladybug, Kagami's strict schedule gives them very limited time to continue their relationship so they split on good terms and remain friends.

------

Taglist: @vixen-uchiha, @laurcad123, @pale-lady-dreamer, @frieddonutsweets, @demonicbusiness, @iloontjeboontje, @plantsarefun06, @khneltea

#maribat #dc x mlb #mlb x dc

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plantsarefun06 · 3 years

Text

The Particular Abilities of Marinette, and Her Discovery of Them Chapter 25: When It Rains, It Pours

[Inspired By]

[First] [MasterPost] [AO3]

Ra’s and Talia. Hurry. GPS

Damian’s grounding had finally come to a close and he was allowed back into the cave and to return to his training and his place as Robin. Fox had dropped off new simulation technology that they were testing, suited up with Drake, Cain, and Father when a bright red emergency alert from Watchtower came over the Batcomputer, illuminating the emergency lights in the cave the same crimson.

The moment Red Robin read the alert aloud they immediately grabbed the nearest comm set and ran to the zeta-tube, pre-programmed to the zeta platform in the 20th arrondissement in Paris, France, where the beacon alert was, only located two minutes away from the old JLE base.

The moment the light from the zeta dimmed they met a frantic Nightwing who started climbing up the fire escape to the rooftop the moment he saw them come through.

“We’ve got a beacon alert from Ladybug.” He yelled back at them as they ascended the fire escape behind them. “We can’t get any picture from the beacon, but local traffic and surveillance cameras showed Ra’s and Talia were there.”

“I’ve connected the audio from the beacon to the comm line, and Watchtower has sent me the feed.” They heard Oracle’s quick typing through the comm line. “Imagery shows no change, they are all just standing there.”

“Then what the hell is going on?” Red Robin heaved himself onto the roof before catching up to Nightwing. “Is she in danger, or is this a setup?”

“I’m not sure, if Ra’s and Talia are there they most likely have a whole fleet of agents there with them. Try not to be spotted, be careful, we don’t know what you’re running into, I’ve got communication lines with the Birds of Prey ready if we get overwhelmed, but Batgirl and Catwoman are going dark on a recon mission, I can’t get into contact with them. It’ll be at least another hour before we can get their assistance.” Oracle relayed, her typing only getting faster.

If this wasn’t a setup, it was clear that Ladybug would need immediate assistance. Anything involving Ra’s or Talia, let alone together, could only lead to disasters. And while Ladybug and her Team had proved that they were able to handle Akumas and anything that Hawkmoth had thrown at them, it couldn’t truly compare to the carnage that the League of Shadows could bring.

The girl was right to set off the beacon if she really was just asking for help.

“Hey hey, I got the alert I’ll be there in five.” They heard Jason say through the call accompanied by some shuffling, probably putting on his suit. It was sheer luck that the rest of them were already in uniform and could immediately respond. While Red Hood typically wouldn’t respond to an emergency alert from Watchtower, he would respond to anything regarding the League of Shadows.

They were only one minute out when they heard Ra’s over the beacon, “I didn’t expect to see you here, Marinette.”

“Crosscheck girls between the age of thirteen and eighteen who are blind and the name ‘Marinette’ on French identification databases,” Batman ordered through the comm.

“Ra’s recognizes her, maybe she is actually affiliated with the League”, Red Robin suggested.

Nightwing huffed, “I think I know who she is, and if I’m right about it, I seriously doubt she’s affiliated with the Leag-” “Grandfather?” Ladybug stammered, cutting Nightwing off.

It was as if the world had stopped around them. Batman and Black Bat froze where they stood, Red Robin tripped over himself, Robin was mid-air over an alley and nearly missed the next building, and Nightwing started choking and nearly threw up over the side of the building. Oracle’s typing suddenly got quicker than before.

“I swear to fucking god Bruce,” Jason snarled over the comms, “You better pray that’s either Nyssa or Dusan’s child, or Talia has another baby daddy running around.” Everyone started running faster than before, trying to get there as soon as possible.

---

Marinette was frozen, staring at her Grandfather. With her Mother beside him.

How are they here?

What are they even doing in Paris?

He was taking slow steps towards her, though he was still a good ten feet away.

“My, my. Look at how you’ve grown.” He studied her, as close a smile as he could probably make bloomed across his face, it looked cruel. It sent an involuntary shiver down her spine, “When I got word from my scouts about the Justice League being involved with the Miraculous in Paris, I was surprised, shocked even, to learn that they had been active, and very publicly so, for over two years.” He evenly spoke, no emotion leaking into his voice.

It was a strange form of deja vu, how she felt like she knew his voice, yet how the calm no emotion tone was so different from the voice she had remembered he had used with her. Those memories being so old didn’t help either.

He took a near-silent step towards her “Naturally I sent operatives to observe the meeting and record it for my viewing pleasure. I learned that the Miraculous Team was not led by just a Ladybug, but a Huàshēn.” She saw as a small group of people approached them from the roofs a few buildings away, stopping just one a few feet over and a couple of stories up, on a much higher ledge than any of the people that came with Grandfather. She recognized two of the people immediately, the boy with the missing spleen (she needed to remember his name), and Batman, with the aura the same as Mother and Grandfather. As well as another with the same aura, a boy, maybe prepubescent, but not by much.

They came.

Relief, as well as dread, filled her chest.

She wasn’t alone.

They now know everything.

They believed her this time and they were coming to help her.

They were going to see that she truly was a monster, not for how she looked, but for the blood running through her veins.

They stood looming over them, likely just watching and taking in the scene. Possibly making plans before dropping in.

They are judging you. They see you are a monster, and they aren’t going to help a monster.

Quiet!

The thoughts rang through her head, consuming and reducing her to the quivering girl being faced with a man she hoped to never see again.

“Wha-What does that have to do with anything?” Marinette stuttered. She was doing a fabulous job of playing dumb.

“Oh, I think you know exactly what that has to do with everything,” He smiled at her menacingly, “Imagine my bafflement when I tracked down the Huàshēn of Creation and found a girl, whose name was ‘Marinette’ born on July 17th, found at four years of age after an unknown time of living on the streets, reportedly on trains for an extended amount of times. Imagine my surprise when I learned this ‘Marinette’ was declared completely blind due to double seared optic nerves caused by an unknown vitriolage attack that in addition to the seared nerves cause major scarring in the upper half of this ‘Marinette’s’ face.” Marinette gulped, unable to form a coherent thought beyond the tunneled fear of the man-her Grandfather-standing in front of her.

“But do you want to know something else about this ‘Marinette’? When she was brought to the hospital by local bakers who found her behind their bakery, they also saw something in their examination. Not only was this girl attacked by acid, but treated afterward. A treatment that was unknown to any doctor they had shown it to. A treatment unique to the ones used by the healers of Nanda Parbat.”

Marinette was taking shaky breaths as Grandfather got closer. He raised a single hand to cup her cheek. A gentle and kind gesture if Marinette was ignorant of the situation she was in.

Grandfather pinched the hinge of the sunglasses with the hand he was cupping her face in, and pulled them off, throwing them on the ground to a place till she couldn’t see where they were. Revealing her scars.

Wrinkled and misshapen. Eyes milky and distorted.

She saw as Batman and the people that had accompanied him, now including another person that wasn’t there before, all took a deep breath seeing the scars.

They knew.

She took half a step back to try and get away, though she cornered herself into the abandoned courtyard, and would not be able to get out of this easily.

Thunder rang loud in the air as the glasses hit the pavement below, along with the light rainfall, preparing them for the storm awaiting them.

“Matching a girl who I believed to be dead years ago.” Marinette choked back a sob.

This was not, NOT supposed to happen. He was supposed to continue to believe she was dead. He wasn’t supposed to be here- Mother wasn’t supposed to be here.

“I wasn’t sure. I believed it impossible.” he hummed to himself. “But a DNA analysis confirmed my suspicions.”

A DNA analysis… how did they get her DNA… Were they watching her? Did they steal something she touched? Did they drug her and draw blood? Oh god, they drugged her. They probably drugged her! In the middle of the night, they probably snuck into her room and drugged her!

She saw Tikki creep up in her duffel bag lying beside her, gesturing so she knew she was there, though even Tikki looked surprised.

You never told her, she knows who Ra’s al Ghul is, she knows what a horrible person your Grandfather is, and now she knows that he really is your Grandfather. She’s going to be horribly angry, she’s going to realize that you really are a monster. She is going to demand you renounce her and find someone worthy, someone, who isn’t a monster. And she’s going to tell everyone who you really are, and they are going to leave you. They are going to decide you really are unworthy and leave you too.

The thoughts of self-deprecation and shame rang in her head as Grandfather dropped his hand completely, studying her intensely as he leaned away from her, allowing a direct path to her mother to be open. A near-silent clicking of heels against the pavement could be heard over the light patter of rain as her Mother-oh god her Mother-walked closer to her.

And god, she was looking her in the eye. Directly at her, a soft smile even adorning her face.

She cupped her face, just as Grandfather had, but instead of the chills he gave her, it was like a breath of pure oxygen. It was kind and warm, and… it had been everything she wanted since she was a toddler.

“Look at how you’ve grown.” She admired. She didn’t remember Mother’s voice sounding like this. So kind, so warm. She felt like she could drown in the way it made her feel.

She dragged her thumb against her cheek below her scars, looking at her with deep admiration and pride as if she was proud-as if she was pleased with what she was seeing in her.

The thumb against her cheek filled her with so much contentment for the feeling of love she was receiving from a woman she had been so desperate for so long, and a deep want for more of it.

NO!

“NO!” She shoved her hand away and stumbled back several feet. Several tears fell down her face.

“No! Don’t-don’t do that!” She sobbed. She wiped the sleeve of her jacket over her face, collecting the tears. “Don’t you dare do that!” Thunder roared behind her as she grabbed her Mother’s wrist and shoved her back, stumbling as she did and whipping her runny nose with her sleeve.

“Marinette, what do you mean?” She whispered in a kind tone she had ever heard from her Mother before.

“You- you can’t do that! You can’t come back and- and just act like that! You can’t!” She screamed through the tears cascading down her face.

“Marinette, I don’t understand what you're saying?” Mother was pouting. God, she looked, hurt by her rejection.

She stepped back towards her and brushed loose strands of hair out of her face.

“Come home.”

What?

Mother gave her a small smile, “Come back to the League. Come back home with us.” She smiled so brightly at her with such a pretty smile. So warm and inviting. Directed at her. It made her want to melt.

“We can be a family again. Us.” Grabbed her hand and held it like she had wanted years ago, and god it felt so nice. “You can come back, go to Infinity Island, or back to Nanda Parbat if you want. You’ll be welcomed on a throne darling. Adorned with jewels and flowers. We can be together again.” Mother seemed so happy, so genuine, oh god how she wanted to say yes. If only to have Mother continue to be like this another five minutes. She never realized just how much she has yearned for her Mother in this way.

How she yearned for her to smile at her like she was. To cup her cheek. To welcome her with open arms.

“No.” Marinette nearly whimpered. That was possibly the hardest thing she ever had to do. To tell her Mother no. To turn down her open arms.

Your team has always welcomed you as their leader with open arms. Adrien has welcomed you as his best friend and partner both as himself and Chat Noir to both you as Ladybug and as Marinette. Paris has always welcomed your team with open arms. Maman and Papa welcomed you into their family with open arms when you were nothing more than a worthless street rat. They welcomed you because they wanted you, because they accepted you, not for what you brought them, but for you.

“I- you’re playing with me. You always have. You play with people until they bend to your will. I- I have a life, and I don’t need you in it.” She pulled her hand from her Mother’s grasp, a hurt look flashing across Mother’s face, shedding tears as she pulled away from her.

Mother never did that, Mother never welcomed you without expectation of something in return, and she’s not doing that to you now, don’t lie to yourself.

She took several steps back and wrapped her arms around herself and just shook her head, “I can’t. I’m sorry.” She sobbed, curling into herself.

It was only a moment. A flicker, between frustration and sympathy. That’s all she needed, it made her focus on her mother. And see her hand wrapped around something at her side, small… cylindrical.

She realized what it was when Mother raised her hand quicker than she could register, and drove her hand towards her neck.

It was pure reflexes and reflexes alone that stopped it from landing in her jugular and had her disarm the syringe from her hand and stomp on it till she heard a crack.

Those were sedatives... sedatives… THOSE WERE SEDATIVES!

The look on her mother’s face was pure fury. “You should have just come easily.” She hissed.

Everything happened as if it was in slow motion after that, the assassins lining the courtyard dropped down, Mother took a swipe to take out her legs, and the Bats dropped down from the highest ledge into the fight.

“TIKKI, SPOTS ON!” She yelled and Tikki was pulled out of her bag into her earrings, a bright light overcoming them before dying down and showing her- Ladybug.

It came to her mind then, they really knew. There was no hiding, no ‘I don’t know what you're talking about, I’m not Ladybug’. It was out.

She didn’t have time to contemplate what she had just done and the consequences of her actions before her Mother swung her leg back and lunged forward, arms outstretched, only narrowly avoiding being immediately tackled by ducking to the side. She was fast. Fast fast.

Ladybug swiftly pulled her yoyo off her hip and attempted to use it as a bola, locking the yoyo on a fixed length of string and swinging it overhead as she arched back away from her Mother to avoid a flying foot hitting her face, the foot fell into the string and the moment that Ladybug felt the tug as the yoyo and spun itself completely around her leg she pulled hard, yanking Mother’s leg down and destabilizing her grounded foot, but not powerful enough to pull her off balance entirely to fall on the ground.

Mother growled under breath and swiftly pulled the foot attached to the yoyo up with impressive strength, and brought it right back down on her face, despite being able to easily predict all of Mother’s movements with ease, her speed made it hard to avoid every one of her hits, and hard to get one of her own in, mostly relying on using her yoyo as a means of defense rather than offense.

They went back and forth, a mix of flurries of punches and kicks, dives and hits before Mother feigned an opening at her side and as her foot went to land just below her lungs on her diaphragm, hopefully knocking the wind out of Mother and allowing her enough time to gain an advantage, Mother grabbed her extended yoyo cord and wrapped it around her ankle, pulling quicker than she could process and destabilizing her, the ground being wet from the rain making it easier for her to lose footing, and in the brief moment she was caught off guard, Mother pulled the yoyo cord’s ring off her finger and managed to throw the yoyo out of the courtyard’s opening and into the street fifty feet away, too far away for her to run over and grab it without making herself an open target.

She looked around to see if someone else could grab it discreetly but everyone was occupied with their own fight of at least two dozen Leaguers alongside Grandfather and Mother, along with someone else seemed to have joined the fight though he seemed to be fighting with them, maybe another Bat, she knew there was at least a dozen of them, though this one seemed to be holding a gun, though she had heard no gunshots, maybe Red Hood, she vaguely recalled Alya mentioning an ‘anti-hero’ as she called him that sometimes worked with the Bats who used guns.

She quickly realized that there was no getting her yoyo back anytime soon and quickly twisted her hand against where Mother was grabbing her wrist when pulling off the ring, interlocking her hand tight around her Mother and pulling herself up along with her Mother down until her knee met her gut, sufficiently giving her time to recuperate while her Mother gained her breath. She was not afforded much time since it only took Mother half a moment to gain her breath before Mother pulled her elbow up and bashed it against her chin. Marinette took advantage of her Mother’s open back, barely even registering the blow to the chin, and grabbed her arm, holding her back open as she kicked hard at her spine, before jumping mid-air on her other leg and nailing her in the nose with her shin, causing Mother to stumble a step back, holding her nose as blood dripped down her face.

Without hesitation Mother took a swing at her hip, missing, but the next kick hooking against her knee and abruptly slamming her against the ground, Mother towering over her coughing figure before she slammed her down once against, her forearm against her collarbone, and straddling her waist preventing her from moving.

She muttered an Arabic curse before summoning her heightened strength and at roll Mother and herself over before using the force Mother was holding her down with as a springboard to flip up over her, one of Batman’s people taking over Mother for her as another larger man immediately approached her.

He was huge, had probably afoot, if not more on her, as well as about two hundred pounds, if she had her weapon it wouldn’t be too much of a problem but going hand to hand meant that the height a weight difference cause her a huge disadvantage, along with the fact she wasn’t used to fighting in this close of quarters with people trained this highly.

The moment he swung his fist down, she vaulted out of the way but not quick enough for her to miss him clipping her ankle sending a spire of pain in her leg, she knew she was in trouble. She diverted all her energy to simply avoiding the man’s hits, trying to see if she would be able to make him stumble over himself so she could gain the high ground and possibly get on his neck and suffocate him with her thighs, her go-to move when sparring with Kim on one of his good days in training.

She looked around to see if she could find something she could engineer as an impromptu weapon but she could conjure nothing, quickly diverting looking around at the people who Batman had brought to see if they possibly had an extra weapon she knew how to use well.

The girl that came with Batman was going hand-to-hand, so that was no help, the person who was taking on Mother seemed to be holding two separate things in their hands, and from how Mother was reacting and blocking them they were probably Escrima sticks, which she had never used before, Batman seemed like he was just going hand-to-hand and occasionally using projectiles, which she wasn’t great at unless they were attacked to a string, the younger boy was swinging his arms like one would use a sword, and she really wasn’t great with long blades, the next guy just seemed to be using the butt of a gun, which was admittedly direct, she respected it. The guy she focused on last was the one she had met in addition to Batman at the meeting, the one who was missing his spleen he was holding both hands around a straight rod, a bo staff. Something that she did know and worked with often.

She jumped and pulled her knees up to her chest, barely avoiding a kick meant for her abdomen, “Hey, you!” Shoot, she couldn’t remember his name. It was something… a color maybe? She couldn’t remember Alya told her what his name was but they were in the middle of Chemistry and she wasn’t really listening. The man didn’t seem to have the intuition to realize she was yelling at him and was still fighting his League guy without breaking focus.

“Hey! You- uh with the missing spleen!” He didn’t seem to hear her and she was still going at it with the guy, thank god for her super-strength. She only narrowly dodged a blow to her abdomen.

“BOY WITH THE MISSING SPLEEN!” She saw him look confused and hit the guy he was fighting with in the head, temporarily disorienting him.

“Are you referring to me?” He yelled back incredulously over the hoard of noise from fighting, taking his staff and driving it into the throat of one guy while simultaneously kicking the solar plexus of another.

“Yeah! You!” She yelled back, sliding under a punch and giving herself a moment while her gut refocused on where she was behind him, “I can’t remember your name! But you're missing your spleen!” The guy with the gun was cackling at him, and missing-spleen-boy was just staring at her deadpan while taking care of another League member who came at him.

“You got another one of those?” She yelled, taking a hit to her side to allow her to move out of the way of the more devastating ick he was about to throw with his opposite leg. “Bo staff-baton-stick-whatever the hell you call it?” He maneuvered himself and his fight until he was back to back with her and slipped a collapsed baton in her hand, which immediately hit her guy in the eye when she expanded it.

“Thanks, missing-spleen-boy!” He rolled his eyes, and the guy with the gun just started laughing harder as started swinging the staff and landed some hits on his arm before nailing him of the side of the head, disorienting him for only a moment, but long enough for her to get a clear hit on his neck, causing him to double over with a cough and her nail a kick on the back of his head, causing no real injury beyond a mild concussion but taking him out for at least a few minutes, before reevaluating the battle around her.

She quickly fought through two guys, and a woman and got to the boy she guessed was Robin. He sneered at her before going back to his battle while she guarded his back against another who was trying to sneak up on Robin and presumably overwhelm him.

Having her back guarded back by Robin allowed her a moment to completely evaluate everything while fighting the League guy with the borrowed bo staff with little to no thought behind it simply allowing reflexes to take over, and ignoring the miasma that seemed to be positively thrumming on Batman, Grandfather, Mother and the boy behind her and putting it off for later in favor of dealing with the current issue at hand.

Batman was getting some random League people, he seemed to have five or six on him at once, but was managing fine, missing-spleen-boy was fighting two people as well but was managing fine, they were saying stuff to each other, though they probably had comms and could hear each other, both the single girl who Batman brought and the guy with the gun who showed up later than everyone was on Grandfather, he seemed occupied with them and the guy slipped one of his guns into a holster before going hand-to-hand and helping the girl. The guy with Escrima sticks was struggling, Mother seemed to have gotten the upper hand with him, and knocked away his sticks like she had knocked away her yoyo. She'd pick them up for him but she couldn’t see them either.

Once she took care of the guy on Robin’s back and knocked him out for at least a free minute she fought her way over to Nightwing and started fighting with him. At this point, the rain had started and it was pouring harder than she remembered rain could pour, her body was protected with her suit, but he hair was soaking and she was cold sweating, he lungs hurt from breathing in the cold air but she persisted as her Mother went full on to her as another League guy came over and took Nightwing’s full attention.

She lept at her, arms extended trying to grab her, Ladybug managed to move her torso quick enough but Mother managed to make a last-ditch move with her kick and hook her foot under her knee and catching her off balance, taking advantage of it and throwing a flurry of punches and hits not allowing her to regain her footing, the bo staff the only thing allowing her to knock the harder hits away. “You can have it all Marinette.” Mother hissed over the torrent of rain.

“You can have riches, you can have the loyalty of the entire League at your beck and call, you can have us.” She tried to ignore what her Mother was saying and focus on the fight. The concrete was wet from rain, she tried to take a kick at her mother but her uneven footing didn’t allow her to put any real power into it, Mother easily dodged, and hit her open chest, knocking the breath out of her and forcing her to choke on the bitter cold air around her,

“Isn’t that what you want?”

She came all this way.

A voice in the darkest pit of her mind whispered.

All this way to ask for you to come back. She wants you.

She stopped in the middle of fighting, dropping her hands, simply allowing the fighting the pass around her and the near painful rain to soak her.

She wants you.

The words rang through her head as Mother grabbed the center of the bo staff, and twisted it out of her grasp, before hooking the back of her knee and slamming her on the ground. Loud thunder rumbled so loud it had to of been directly above them as her head met the wet concrete below her, her mother following her down and pinning her as she had only moments ago, she saw lightning strike the ground not a hundred feet away from where she lay, just outside the enclosed courtyard.

“You can have everything,” She towered over her, twisting her hands tighter over her wrists as Marinette writhed under her, “Marinette! You can have me. You can have your Mother back. Don’t you want that?”

YES!

“NO!” She cried, struggling under her mother, not seeming to remember that she had the strength to shove her off.

Everything, all of it, it was too much. The cold rain beating on her face as she tried to breathe in fresh air, only finding herself inhaling the cold harsh air filled with rain, threatening to drown her, her mother’s words, the stress of Ladybug, everything overwhelming her senses, and what in kwami’s name was the aura on all Mother, Grandfather, Batman, and Robi-

It- it can’t be-

Oh my god, it- it is.

She summoned her strength and shoved Mother off her and to the ground harder than she knew she should shove someone who was only human. Quicker than anyone registered ran to Red Hood she pulled his gun from the holster and held it at Grandfather’s head where he had just been flipped by the girl.

“EVERYONE STAYS WHERE THEY ARE OR A BULLET GOES IN HIS HEAD!” In that moment it was as if she had fired the fun, every motion halted and people stood deathly silent simply flicking looks from Grandfather to her, as she towered over his form laying on the ground propped up on one of his elbows, the only movement in the courtyard was her own chest rising.

She saw silent movement by a League member behind her and immediately flicked the safety off, an audible click echoed through the courtyard.

“I can see all of you! All of your movements, everything down to the muscle, don’t think you're going to be able to sneak up behind me!” The person behind her stopped, slowly standing at attention and stilling his muscles, staying as motionless as the rest of the agents and Bats in the courtyard.

Grandfather growled at her, “She won’t shoot.” He said, as if giving the go-ahead to his people, Marinette just raised her brow, “I’ve lived hundreds of lifetimes before me, and I relive them every night. I’ve done worse than blowing the brains out of a mad man who has killed thousands, ordered the deaths of tens of thousands, and ruined the lives of hundreds of thousands more.” There was an audible click that rang through the courtyard as she flipped off the safety, “I may not be able to see, but I can aim a gun, and I can sure as hell pull the trigger, so go ahead, call my bluff, I’d love to know if Lazarus will reassemble a brain.”

Grandfather yelled an Arabic order for them to stand down. Good, because if he had called her bluff, he would have been right. There was no way in hell she would have been able to kill him, even if he was a terrible man, not out of honor, but sheer ability to do such a thing. She wasn’t even sure she had the guts to pull the trigger.

She felt the cold rain biting her skin as she readjusted the gun in her hand, before standing perfectly still, staring down at where Grandfather laid on the ground.

“He’s my father, isn't he?” She whispered, the noise carrying and echoing off the courtyard walls, Grandfather just laid on the ground, Mother still only a few feet away from where she had thrown her, still crouched and motionless. “ISN’T HE?” She yelled, shaking the gun at him.

“I can see it in him,” She snarled, “You know, I saw it at the meeting, but I couldn’t recognize it, but it’s on you, and it’s on Mother, and it’s on the boy too.” She nodded at Robin, he was deathly still.

Batman’s diaphragm and abdominal muscles were contracting, he looked like he was about to puke.

Marinette stifled a sob before letting out a humorless laugh, thunder booming and two more lightning strikes just outside the courtyard. “Don’t tell me- Oh don’t tell me that’s my brother.” She continued laughing to herself.

“I honestly- I honestly don’t know which is more ironic? The fact that your little golden boy you were so eager for defected and is now playing Robin, or that you came crawling back? Isn’t that what happened?” She hissed, only met with silence. “ANSWER ME!” She roared. Grandfather flinched back, Mother seemed like she wanted to lurch forward in between them, all as thunder roared above them, and lightning struck again.

“Because I truly can’t figure it out?! It’s all too fucking hilarious! You’re crawling back, offering me a place with open arms, where was that behavior when I was a child?” Her laughs were becoming closer to sobs.

“Where was that!”

“It was necessary!” Grandfather growled.

“It was fucking necessary? I was three! You threw acid in my eyes and blinded me! Threw me on a mountain to die! You call that necessary!” The rain poured even harder, to the point it felt as if needles were poking through her skin.

“You would have never become what you are!”

“I had to realize I was going to die! I had to realize at three-fucking-years old that the only way the situation was going to end was with my death! I was three!”

“We were all children once! You learned to overcome! You got stronger! And for that, you are welcomed back! Come with us!” Mother yelled over the rolling thunder and too close lightning.

“Oh look at you,” Marinette growled, keeping the gun fixed on Grandfather’s head but facing her Mother, “Perfect little lap dog, so eager to make Daddy happy? Be honest with yourself Mother, you have no love in your heart. You’re cold and dead on the inside, you manipulate others until they are vying for your love and affection, and dangle it over them like a carrot on a stick so they may do what you want in return for the little cold affection you offer before sending them off to do your bidding once again, and I'm sick of it!” She yelled, “I’m so fucking sick of being bound to you! I’m so fucking sick of being so desperate for your love and attention, you’re my Mother I shouldn’t have to fight for it! I shouldn’t have to be some rare-magical-reincarnation shit for you to act like you love me!” She looked down at the earth beneath her feet, tears of anger and frustration cascading down her face.

“You have only ever cared for power!” She hissed between clenched teeth, “You have only cared for whatever it takes for you to be in Grandfather’s good graces! You only cared about me when you realized what I was! Don’t you dare act like it’s any different! Don’t you dare act like you view me as anything above skum, a variable, a chess piece for your little game of power that never seems to end!”

She detransformed, her mask leaving her face and her clothes soaking through, Tikki was now floating beside her worried, not that Marinette paid much mind.

She thrusted the gun in Grandfather’s direction, “Look at me! You blinded me!” “And you allowed it!” She screamed at her mother, “Look at me! You threw acid in my face, you disfigured my over a game for power and you’re gonna see the fucking result! I look like a monster, and I’ve been called such for years! Do you know what it’s like to go to an ice cream shop and realize the little boy crying and sitting on his Maman’s lap on the other side of the store is because of you?! Do you understand what that’s like to literally make children fucking cry!” Her fury was palpable in the air.

“That’s necessary? How in the hell is that necessary?! ANSWER ME!” She cried. “Don’t just sit there silent, I want a fucking answer!” She scoffed to herself a sad laugh at the only sound being the rain hitting the concrete below them, her anger palpable in the air “And you just expect me to fucking come to your open arms? Come back to the League? Do you honest to god think that is ever gonna happen? Get your fucking head checked, Lazarus Pit is making you delusional old man.” Marinette snarled, ignoring the cold water seeping through her clothes and biting at her skin.

He raised his eyebrow at her, challenging her despite it being her who had the gun in her hand pointed at his head and held his life in her hands, “Do you honestly believe you have a choice?” Grandfather hissed, “You are coming back to the League.”

“Did you not hear me?” Marinette growled, “You. are. fucking. delusional.”

“Can you truly stop me? Do you truly believe you can protect yourself? Do you truly believe that you can protect your loved ones?”

They could feel as the air shifted around them, whether it was her, or something else Marinette didn’t care.

Everything just poured off her.

How dare he insinuate.

He had destroyed her, taken everything from her all those years ago, and he dared to threaten to do it again.

She dropped her arm, clicked the safety on, and threw the gun to the side, no one stepped forward, no one moved a muscle.

If she had been in the right state of mind, she would have noticed the storm, the sudden silence. She would have noticed how the thunder stopped, she would have noticed that the only sound was the echo of her own foot slapping the pavement.

“MARINETTE! STOP-” “Tikki. Bag. Now.” If she had been in the right state of mind she would have realized that she just forced her will upon Tikki, something she had promised to never do.

If she was in the right state of mind she would have noticed the boy with the missing spleen look up to the now-empty sky and mutter through the communication device, ‘She was doing it. She was making the storm.’

If she was in the right state of mind she would have realized that she was allowing her anger to let her lose control.

“Let me give you a lesson Grandfather since you seem so interested in my being a Huàshēn. I may be Creation, but Creation always has a balance. No matter how much Creation I add to an object, Destruction will follow along with it, outside of my control. When I first tested it on a flower I was shocked. It didn’t grow to be four feet tall, it didn’t get massive leaves and petals, it died. When I feed Creation into a flower seed, before my sight I see it go seed, to a seedling, to a sprout, to a small plant, into its full adult form, and then its death. I don’t grow the flower, I age it.”

She took small steps toward Grandfather, the pat as her sneaker hit the pavement overpowering the sound of the rain, “And I’ve always wondered,” As she towered over him, as he had done to her all those years ago, she saw as the confusion and fear encroached her Grandfather’s features, and she could feel no sympathy for imposing those feelings, only a bitter glee boiling from the depth of her heart, a cruel smile growing on her face, “what would it do to a human?”

It was only a moment before she was straddling her Grandfather’s chest, her hands wrapped around his throat, and her forcing as much Creation as she could into him.

It was cathartic.

The looks on his face. The look of pure fear and terror.

She wanted to win.

All his muscles constricting and immobilizing him as she forcefully aged them decades within moments.

She wanted to win.

She watched as his muscles atrophied and started decomposition. Pain evident in his eyes.

She wanted to win, goddammit!

She reveled in the feeling of the Head of Demon, writhing in pain beneath her until a force tackled her from the size.

Her arms were pinned above her head and a large body was pinning her to the ground, while she tugged against them, no longer having her increased strength to simply toss them off.

It took only a moment for her to refocus and realize it was Batman-her father-on top of her.

“Get off!” She struggled, tugging harder and harder only getting Batman to readjust his grip on her.

“You’re killing him!” He growled above her, only holding her down harder when she increased her struggling.

Around her she saw as fights broke out again, Grandfather groaning on the ground, motionless.

“That’s the point!” She yelled, kneeing him in the gut but only hitting a hard metal-like surface she could not see before he forced his thigh on top of her leg and pinned her down even further.

“Let me go!” She contorted herself trying to pull her wrists from where they were pinned.

“Let me go!” Her voice cracked and she heaved a shaky breath, before trying to bend her torso to the side, but Batman shoved his elbow in her way.

“I deserve this! I deserve to win!” She cried, tears cascading across her face, and dirty water from the ground soaking into her clothing.

The fight around her were only blurs as she tried with all her might to fight against her father as he held her down.

“I deserve this!” She sobbed, choking on her own tears. She eased her fighting and limply laid on the ground, letting her cries overcome her, no longer even focusing on Batman, the world around her simply a blur. As things moved, the noises Arabic, English, whatever was being yelled, her mind was uncomprehending. Her world simply reduced to the force holding her down, and the emotion raking her body and mind.

Didn’t she deserve this!

They had hurt her, they had taken so much from her, and they had threatened to do it again.

Didn’t she deserve this!

Didn’t she deserve to show them how much they hurt her, didn’t she deserve to make them hurt like she did!

Didn’t she deserve this?

As the sobs overcame her and she was no longer able to muster up a fight for her to be released she felt the pressure holding her waist and wrists down decrease until she was able to sit up enough to draw her knees to her chest and hide her face behind her arms, giving herself the little privacy she could get.

She felt a hand stroking her back, and realized it was the man with Escrima sticks; she didn’t raise her head but quieted her sobs to focus on him.

“I lost everything when I was eight,” He spoke calmly, “My parents, my entire life, everything I knew was stripped from me in a single moment. I was angry and hurt, and all I wanted was for the people who did that to me to feel that way too. I wanted them to feel as horribly as I did. I wanted them to understand what they had done to me.”

He took a deep breath as if reassuring himself, “I wanted it so desperately, I was willing to lose myself in it. Batman-- he has saved me an innumerable amount of times in my life, but the one I am most grateful for is then. He saved me from myself. He saved me from becoming a revenge-hungry monster who allows nothing to get in the way of their goal. He made me realize that the worst thing that could happen was for them to make me lose who I was.”

He licked his lips, and looked up at the sky before a single tear rolled on the inside of his mask and seep through the glue binding it to his skin, “If I have learned one thing in my life, it is that if we allow ourselves to be consumed with anger and vengeance, if we allow ourselves to be consumed with the ideology that the only way to win is by more death and destruction, and claim it in the name of justice, we have only become worse than them.”

She was allowing herself to be consumed.

By the anger directed at Grandfather, by the anger directed at Mother. By the grief, she still struggled with herself. Over the grief of what could have been if they had accepted her all those years ago. By the anger of wanting so desperately for that reality to be true. By the anger over herself for wanting such a thing.

She was allowing herself to become what she fought against.

She was going to kill him…

She was going to kill him.

She had done something she had so fiercely banned in her own mind. She had allowed herself to force creation onto a conscience being.

She had forced her will onto Tikki, commanding her to know that she would not be able to refuse. Something she had sworn to never do. Thought to be so incredibly inhumane to a creature who was so kind and benevolent.

What was she allowing herself to become?

What was she allowing her anger and grief to turn her into?

If she was to kill Grandfather, destroy his League, and lose herself in the process, who truly wins?

She saw as they looked at her, from all around. The man who had spoken with her who fought with escrima sticks still sat beside her, his hand on her back. The only girl who had come with Batman was on her other side, simply sitting with her legs crossed on the ground observing her.

The boy—her little brother—Robin, simply stared at her with a look of a mix between confusion and discomfort. The man who was missing his spleen seemed to be typing something on his arm but was looking from there up at her every few moments, and the man who fought with guns, one of which she had taken from him, was just looking at her with concern.

And last but not least, Batman was looking at her with no expression on his face at all. Standing directly in front of her only five feet away her father was standing staring down at her, no emotion present at all. The same figure she had met at the meeting two weeks ago.

Everyone else was missing. The League agents, Mother, Grandfather, all of them had vanished while she had been pushed off of Grandfather, and struggling against Batman.

“They collected Ra’s al Ghul and left immediately,” her father spoke up, “They will be traveling to the location of the nearest Lazarus pit in Switzerland as soon as possible.”

They are gone.

She looked up to the sky, her face that was hot with tears meeting the chilly March air that was thick with mist from the rain that had just passed. Her lashes fluttered against her face, the gentle stinging of her dry from crying eyes giving a sense of reality and grounding, the water where they had soaked through her clothes cold against her skin, giving her a chill, normally making her uncomfortable but it was comforting, in a way. The way the breeze brushed against her felt akin to a wave of relief, or closer to a wave that remedied something deep within herself. Something that had felt so broken for so long that it had simply become a part of her.

In a soft murmur that only she could hear she spoke only to herself and the wind,

“Goodbye Ra’s. Goodbye Talia.”

[Next]

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[Notes:]

And this is the conclusion of Part 4, signalling the start of Part 5, the final and epilogue part, next chapter! I’m not sure how this will be received, whether it didn’t live up to expectations, or was just horrible writing, or was great, I really can’t tell. All I can say is that writing this has been a great learning experience for me, and I really enjoyed it even if some parts were frustrating(it is a very long, very complex chapter, especially writing the fight scene), and I thank everyone who has been so incredibly supportive of this story. Getting comments and seeing the kudos count go up always makes me really happy.

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Tag List:

@frieddonutsweets @moon5608 @ihatecomingupwithusernameswtf @adrestar @galla02006 @bygge00 @alyssadeliv @toodaloo-kangaroo @iloontjeboontje @missanalysis

#maribat #dc x mlb #mlb x batman #mlb x dc #ml x dc #bio dad bruce wayne

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plantsarefun06 · 3 years

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*post Bruce losing all his money

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plantsarefun06 · 3 years

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Maribat Recommendations no one asked for!

Batcat by Spectral_Aspen

A series based around Marinette who takes the physical form of a cat who has magic. We get to see adoptive dad Jason as well as some really good in character interaction between the batboys and between the rest of the Batfamily. [Collection of one-shots, so the series is incomplete but the actual works are complete]

Paris vs Gotham by @blueteehood

Another series, but not a long one at all. It's a twitter fic, and one done very well. We get a very typical Maribat plot, but done from a completely different angle in a very interesting way executed perfectly. [Complete]

A Ladybug in Smallville by @unmaskedagain

unmaskedagain Is possibly the best Maribat author, having multiple great Miraculous crossovers works even outside of MLB x DC that I would highly recommend. In this, we basically see the typical Lila pushes too far and gets Marinette gets kicked out and sent to America, but instead of to Gotham she is sent to Smallville to live with the Kent's. Three parts and a masterpiece. [Complete]

Marinette vs. Santa by @unmaskedagain

Another work by them, your typical Biodad! Bruce Wayne, it's not troupy at all and does a good job I think of doing a sibling relationship and a good job of Marinette entering the celebrity spotlight. Really cool take and perspective. [Complete]

Daddy's Little Villain by @unmaskedagain

What can I say, they are a good writer. Villain!Marinette done right never felt fake or forced like a lot of Villain!Marinette fics do. It is centered in the Young Justice Cartoon universe so if you haven't watched the cartoon (which you should because it's amazing) you may be confused on some bits, but I don't think it matters considering that so many people come into this fandom with little to no DC knowledge and do fine. [Complete]

Con Man's Daughter by @arty-shadow-morningstar

Brilliant. Amazing. Show-stopping, and whatever else Lady Gaga said in that one interview that turned into a meme. Biodad! John Constantine, completely original and just brilliant. They do this thing where every part they add half of it is like a flashback to when Marinette is little and it's a really cute story, and the other half is current day Marinette and her adventures with some friends and working under her dad (some Daminette is sprinkled in). It is completely troupe-free and I honestly wish their stuff would become troupes so I could read more stuff like it. [I'm pretty sure it's incomplete but I may be wrong (@arty-shadow-morningstar please post more this is like my favorite fic)]

@jaydoplayz 's works

There are a few, all twitter fics (if you can't tell I like social media fics). They are all really cool and give a fresh, really interesting perspective, and keep a really nice dynamic between the Batfamily, and keep them in character. 10/10 would read again (I literally do, all the time)

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Those are a few of my favorites, if y'all need more recs (I know no one asked me specifically but someone always needs recs) put it in my asks box and I'll put more. But like you could always check out my fic... please check out my fic I need the validation... and I hope you enjoy these fics as much as I have loved them!

#maribat #dc x mlb #mlb x batman #mlb x dc #ml x dc #daminette #bio dad bruce wayne #bio dad au #marinette x damian #undervalued works #ao3 recs #miraculous x dc #jasonette #dickinette #brucinette #timari #maridami

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plantsarefun06 · 3 years

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I did not open Tumblr today to feel this called out.

hi, my name is bitches

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plantsarefun06 · 3 years

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The Particular Abilities of Marinette, and Her Discovery of Them Chapter 24: When Paranoia Meets Reality

[Inspired By]

[First] [MasterPost] [AO3]

Salto backward, add a full twist, and just keep your body straight. All you got to do. Tricks you perfected years ago, all you have to do is put them together.

Jump back, twist, feet over head, twist, land, and… slip.

“Dammit.” Marinette muttered under her breath from laying on the floor beside the beam.

“Are you going to keep trying that over and over again until you twist your ankle, or are you going to move on to another trick?” Madame Garnier asked, standing over her form.

Marinette huffed and pulled herself back on the Beam, ignoring the Coaches comment. To be fair she had already twisted her ankle. Multiple times… But it took her two seconds flat to heal! And she really wanted to land a full Layout Backward Full Twist on the Beam and do it at a competition in two weeks. It was one of the riskiest tricks to do on the beam, and she was able to land it perfectly on a floor routine, but she was either not pivoting herself far enough to land straight on the beam, or she was pivoting herself too far, and in either case she would slip off the edge and fall on the ground, and for kwami’s sake it was getting frustrating.

It wasn’t helping that all of the instructors were wary about letting her even attempt such a move, out of fear she would hurt herself and be out of commission for the upcoming competitions. Nor was Chloé badgering her about when she will get it done since she brought up that she was attempting to perfect the trick after the meeting they had with the Justice League two weeks ago. Apparently her page needed ‘something fresh’ and ‘something that will scare all those second-rate gymnasts at the upcoming competitions so they don’t even think there is a chance that they could even compare to you’ and Chloé wanted that to be it.

And she was so close too! Her first foot always would land on the beam, but the second would miss and she’d topple off. She knew that she could have it down by tomorrow if she could just...

Jump back, twist, feet over head, twist, land, and… slip.

Coach sighed and shook her head before going over to her again, “C’mon Dupain-Cheng. Get up, let’s go work on your Vault routine. Your Beam’s good. It wins every competition, why don’t we focus on improving your Vault?”

Ugh. She hated the Vault. In Uneven Bars the actual bars were wood, and while the wood was heavily treated, when she performed on the bars and focused on them she saw them perfectly clearly. On both Beam and Floor Exercise the size she had to work with were ingrained in her, and she hadn’t had to truly think about it in years, but the Vault?

She had to count.

Every step she took running up to the mat was counted. Someone would have to position her at the chalk line they redrew every morning. Exactly eighty-two feet away from the horse.

And god forbid that she’s a couple of inches off because that entirely could mess up the entire skill. And while if she accidentally underestimated or overestimated on the floor or beam she could typically save herself and only get a couple of points reducted at most, but kwami forbid she incorrectly estimate the Vault.

Vault was by far her worst event. She practiced it as much as she was supposed to, but not a single moment more. Her open gym time was entirely spent on the other three events, the largest amount of time was spent on the Beam, despite it being the event that she needed the least practice on.

It was her favorite event! Sue her for enjoying practicing it.

Marinette walked over to the small table made of wood where the bowl of chalk always sat and put a fresh layer on his hands to keep from slipping on the horse before having Coach Garnier guide her to the chalk line.

She felt the faint feeling of the chalk against her toes when Garnier took her hand off her back in a silent motion indicating that she was where she needed to be.

She worked on her twists, which were quite frankly atrocious, for about an hour. Sometimes one of her teammates would walk past her and they would mutter under their breaths a curse to whoever the god of gymnastics was together before getting back to working on her twists until the clock hit 10:30, meaning the gym would close in thirty minutes and if she didn’t leave now she would get locked in the building for the night.

After saying her quick round of goodbyes she escaped the gym as fast as she could and started the three-block walk to the nearest subway station where she could get back home.

Marinette loved going on walks on spring nights. After being in the gym for over six hours there was nothing like it. Nothing like breathing in the air which was a touch chilly but felt so good in her lungs.

And filling them with that bitterly cold air was euphoria after being on that Vault for an hour. She only had that long a practice on Friday nights, her night off patrol duty. It was the one night a week that she had to herself which she gave up for time in the gym, but it was all worth it for those nighttime walks in spring, when she would go to the station alone. People occasionally walking by, deep in a conversation with a friend, or maybe holding hands with a lover.

There was nothing like these spring nights for Marinette. The thin sheen of sweat left on her skin chilling her, the soft breeze of a Paris night on the nape of her neck, and the gentle tug of the elastic band in her hair as it gently started loosening itself with the slight bob of her head. In those moments she could turn everything off. Everything outside was silent, turning all her senses on herself. Allowing the movements ingrained in her muscle carried her to the station as her mind closed everything in the world off and simply be. Not Marinette Dupain-Cheng, up and coming blind gymnast, not Ladybug, heroine of Paris with the fate of the world on her shoulders, just exist.

Maybe that’s why the walk always went by so fast. When she saw the station coming up she came out of that little place in her mind, the little place in her mind when she went on those walks, or on the patrols where she simply swung from building to building, or that place she went when she was on the Beam doing a routine she had done so often it was engraved in her muscles.

When coming out of it she would have to raise her defenses back, pull herself out of that sinking hole of nothingness that was so comforting and lovely but she couldn’t ever allow herself to truly get lost in.

It was when she raised those defenses, the hair on the back of her neck stood on end as well.

They are back.

It had gone over a week ago. ‘A good night’s sleep is all you need.’ That sense of being watched. That sense that something was there.

They are coming for you.

But it was different, it wasn’t like before, a week and a half ago. Before there was a warning. A warning that someone was watching, fueled by her own anxiety. This wasn’t like before, it wasn’t a warning, it was a premonition. Everything in her body was telling her to do one thing.

Run!

If Marinette had learned one thing in her life. If she could only give one piece of advice to someone, it would be to trust your instincts. Instincts, ‘gut feeling’, were simply all the things your mind subconsciously picked, everything in your view that you may not consciously think of but your mind still takes in. Instincts were telling her that something was wrong.

THIS IS ALL WRONG!

Run! Run! Run!

GET OUT!

Run! Run! Run!

RUN WHILE YOU CAN!

Run! Run! Run!

They are coming for you.

Who the hell was coming for her! She was just- paranoid, this was nothing! This was just two weeks before when she just had a small episode of paranoia, it was irrational! The gut feeling didn’t matter!

They are after you.

Who the hell is ‘they’!

THEM! RUN!

Another thing about Marinette, she was terrible at following her own advice. So despite her gut yelling at her to run, to hide, to get out while she could, she did something that even then she realized was one of the stupidest things she had ever done in her life.

So she came up to the subway station, the one she had taken dozens-hundreds-of times before, and passed it.

She couldn’t just lead them back to her Maman and Papa!

They already know about your parents. RUN!

She had to protect her loved ones with everything she could!

Save yourself. RUN!

She pulled her hood up higher, continuing to ignore the desperate want of her muscles to move quicker, faster, carry herself as far as her legs would take her, and calmly pulled her duffel bag from her elbow to her shoulder and pulled it closer to her back, and continued walking at the same menial speed.

It was like the paranoia. When she thought it was from the Justice League. Felt like they were coming. From the meeting that as of tomorrow would be two weeks ago. This… it was different.

They aren’t the Justice League. Run!

Then who the hell is it! Who are ‘they’! This feeling is the same. She knew it. Something deep inside her whispering, it’s back.

But this… before she wanted to watch, she wanted to evaluate every person she came across. She wanted to find what was off. Because the thing that was off… it wasn’t coming. But it was there.

But this time… it was different. This time everything was telling her to bolt, to run while she could. Everything was telling her, they’re coming. She didn’t know who. She didn’t know how. She just knew they were.

And for that reason, she didn’t run. For that reason, she knew they wouldn’t stop.

Get help.

She stopped herself from reaching into her pocket and pulling out her phone to call her Team to help her.

They are watching. Run!

They would see her call someone and ask for help. She would give away that she knew about them and there would be no way that they would be able to get here before she was attacked. There was no time. And whatever this was, she didn’t want her Team getting roped into it until she knew what was happening. (She ignored the voice in her head that sounded suspiciously like Alya telling her that they took on their burdens together.)

Get help. Run!

Suddenly, her duffle bag felt ten times heavier. The thing resting in the side zipper pocket being the culprit. She said nothing, simply slid her duffle bag down her shoulder, and unzipped the pocket just enough to move her hand past the collapsed white cane and to the other cylindrical object.

The beacon to the Justice League.

She flipped up the cap as quickly and silently as possible and hit the trigger before grabbing the white cane beside it and pulling it out of her bag, disguising her effort to contact help as she grabbed the walking stick from her bag, and resumed her walk down the street she had only ventured on during patrol.

Marinette uncollapsed the stick and allowed it to start guiding her, as she tried to find if people were actively following her, and as she searched for a place devoid of many people. She had patrolled this area of the city several times and knew that a couple of blocks up there was an area full of deserted buildings. Mainly old office buildings where businesses had eventually shut down and the buildings had just never been put on the market by the owners, but now, and especially at this time at night, no one would be there and she would be able to confront whoever was following her now, and she guessed followed her over a week ago.

One.

A woman. Two buildings behind her. Following on the roof.

She could tell from the way she was running across the roofs, completely silent, swift, invisible had it not been for her sight, that she was incredibly well trained.

Oh my god someone really is there!

It also occurred to her that if this woman was following her, she most likely wasn’t alone.

She probably brought a whole gang of people!

They are going to jump you and you’re going to be defenseless!

What if they are only after you because you’re Marinette Dupain-Cheng and don’t know about Ladybug? You can’t transform then and you won’t even be able to fight back!

The anxiety-ridden thoughts kept building in her head and she consciously had to move her feet in front of each other to keep up the normal pace. Walking forward, she saw the edge of the arrondissement where the group of uninhabited buildings were and kept the same pace. Best not to alert them that she knew they were there. Though… if they followed her that one day, and then were gone for over a week they most likely knew her routines and that she was supposed to get on the subway at the station she already passed…

This was getting complicated.

She had pressed the beacon for the Justice League. Frankly, she didn’t want them anywhere near her city, but this wasn’t an Akuma. In fact, she had no idea what this was. It was most likely related to being Ladybug, which meant that they would have to know her identity. If not, and they found her because she was a Huàshēn and didn’t know the relation between her being a Huàshēn and Ladybug, while unlikely, was bad as well.

The Justice League they could help, she may not like them, but she kicked them out of the city because she didn’t want them involved with akumas, this clearly wasn’t an Akuma, and if they were linked to the Justice League she wanted them to come and deal with it… god she just hoped they weren’t ignoring her. Hoped that someone was on the other side of the camera and microphones and decided to actually listen despite there not being any activity.

They probably just think you accidentally hit the beacon, and have already cut the communication.

NO. No. Don’t go to the worst-case scenario. They said they were going to do a better job in the future of deciphering which calls are fake and which ones are not. The beacon has a cap on it to prevent someone from mistakenly hitting it. They probably(hopefully) knew that.

What are they going to do? They never did anything before, you’re on your own, face it.

Shut up! You are Marinette Dupain-Cheng, the heroine Ladybug, leader of the Miraculous Team, Guardian of the Mother Box some of the most powerful artifacts in existence, you are the Huàshēn of Creation and have survived everything that has come at you, surpassed the expectations of everyone who has doubted them. These guys, you don’t even know who they are. They are probably second-rate mercenaries who you can take down from the training you have alone, no transformation needed.

And what if you can’t? What if this is the time you’re not good enough? It’s bound to happen one time or another.

Quiet! Remember your training, in any situation regarding opponents, you must isolate the situation for the safety of everyone involved.

She looked around the surroundings empty of any other life form before spotting a closed-off area.

She slipped into an alley that led into a small area, maybe a parking lot, that was walled off by four buildings. Hopefully giving her privacy from whatever was going to happen. She didn’t want anyone to come by and connect her, Marinette Dupain-Cheng, a very recognizable face that has been shown on TVs and magazines a lot recently, with where she was now. Especially if this ended in a fight of sorts.

Marinette collapsed her stick and dropped her duffle bag on the ground. Nothing truly important was in it. Tikki was sitting in a box in there but she could easily faze out, and everything else just held materialistic value.

Nothing that was worth lugging around if she had to make a quick escape.

She saw as the people started to file around, circling her from the tops of the buildings. They were moving fast, and in a way that made it hard for her to keep track of them to count, but there had to have been at least a dozen.

That’s when two other figures came in. One of which had the same ‘magic’ or ‘aura’ or whatever that Batman had had and the other… it was him.

The thing that had made her feel that way over a week ago.

The thing that was coming for her.

The thing that currently had her.

That was him.

He had the same ‘aura’ as Batman and the woman beside him, the woman’s matched Batman’s perfectly but the man’s was far less dense. And with that, he also had magic lingering on him. Miraculous magic that was. There wasn’t much of it, like a residue of sorts, but it was there.

Both he and the woman dropped down behind her.

The man with the mystery and magic aura took a single step closer to her, while she was still facing away. Taking as much time as she could to evaluate this situation.

The man was tall, clearly has Arab features, and was incredibly muscular, very much seeming like he had heavy combat training. She could tell he was surprisingly flexible, and likely a hard opponent, far harder than she has ever fought against in hand-to-hand, though she couldn’t pinpoint his age. It was completely ambiguous.

He glared at the back of her head, studying her as she was studying him. His glare alone sent shivers down her spine, it alone made her want to run more than anything else. The woman beside him looked at the back of her head with an expressionless face, simply watching her.

The low rumble of his voice pierced through the cold air, “I didn’t expect to see you here Marinette.”

The voice. A voice she never forgot. One that haunted her not only at night, in dreams of places she would never be again, but in times she found herself lacking. The voice that has rung through her head of inadequacy, and worthlessness for as long as she had known.

She turned to face a man that she had long thought would stay in those nightmares, that would stay a voice in her head.

She turned to face a man that she had long hoped she would never face again.

“Grandfather?”

---

He should have never made that bet with Cassandra, Nightwing cursed himself under his breath.

Everyone knew not to make a bet with Cass, and here he was, suffering the consequences.

He now had to do her Watchtower monitor shift for her. Thirty minutes in and he already wanted it to be over. He was working with Green Lantern Hal Jordan, which would usually lend itself to a nice story about whatever was going on way off-world, but he wanted to be here even less than him. He has been off-world fighting a huge invasion attempt in Sector 1476 that he had been drafted to fight a little over a week ago, and he had just gotten back only to be met with a shift at Watchtower and no one willing to cover for him.

He had been here for about an hour and a half and was about to switch off with Superman. And then he would spend the rest of the two-hour shift making small talk with Clark. Wouldn’t be too bad, but he would much rather not have monitor duty at all and be at the Batcave with Bruce, Cassandra, and Tim currently training with some new tech that Lucius had developed. Damian would probably have gotten back from school by now as well and would be working on it too.

Nightwing was mildly hoping that a world-ending event would occur so he could go deal with it rather than this. But life was unfair, and Cass was too good when it came to gambling.

A small beeping came from the monitor that snapped him out of his sulking.

BEACON C24 - ACTIVATED

There was a little dropbox to show pictures and a mic icon to hit for the audio. Whatever it was, he sincerely hoped it either took a few minutes to deal with or was detrimental enough that he got to leave. When beacons were activated, it usually meant that whoever was on duty would deal with it remotely until the issue was resolved… which could take hours to do.

“What is it?” Green Lantern asked.

“A beacon.”

“Ughh. If I’m stuck here a minute after my shift ends I’m going to lose it.” He groaned.

Nightwing ignored him and brought up the camera, finding it completely black. Hitting the microphone resulted in only shuffling being heard and a light tapping sound.

“Butt dial?” Lantern asked.

“I dunno. Located in Paris, France. 12th arrondissement. But there’s no picture.”

“Probably a butt dial,” Hal muttered.

Nightwing was prone to agreeing with him, “Check on the record who had the beacon. Several people go in and out of Paris, it may be important.”

Hal wordlessly pulled up the beacon log, and Nightwing saw out of the corner of his eye his bored expression turned to a shocked one.

“It’s from Ladybug.” He reported, typing on the computer. “The beacon Batman gave her at the meeting.”

Nightwing faced him, mirroring his shock, “The girl from Paris? The blind one that you had a not-so-good meeting with?”

“That’s the one,” Hal replied dryly. “Though she didn’t seem to want any form of help from us, so I have no idea as to why she would activate the beacon. She probably didn’t mean to.” Hal leaned back in his chair and closed the browser.

Nightwing turned back and just looked at the footage. It certainly seemed like she may have mistakenly hit the beacon, but…

“Look, with everything that happened and possible magic interference, and the whole ‘we completely ignored it for years’ maybe we should go out on a limb and investigate? What better do we have to do?” Hal just shrugged and pulled up the GPS on the monitor.

“They’re where the old JLE building was.” The map pinged in the most eastern part of Paris, “Not close enough for our cameras, if they're still active, to pick anything up, but the city may have some surveillance in the area.” Hal suggested.

Nightwing managed to hack into the city’s surveillance system, while he may not be as good as Tim or Barbara he was proficient at hacking and pulled up various cameras in the area, and both he and Hal were scanning them all for Ladybug.

It would be just past eleven P.M. in Paris time and was already pretty dark. The area didn’t have a lot of lights and trying to find a small figure in the about fifty cameras was hard.

“There!” Nightwing pointed a finger at a particular camera in the center of the screen. The figure was calmly walking along with a walking stick in her hand. Duffel bag thrown over her shoulder and hair in a ponytail, wearing what looked to be leggings and a black jacket, and a pair of large sunglasses.

“Is that her?” Nightwing asked.

“I’m not sure.” Hal muttered, enlarging the picture of Ladybug, “But considering that we have a beacon in Ladybug’s possession activated, we know that Ladybug is blind, and there is what looks to be a teenage girl with the same hair as Ladybug, I’m willing to bet that it is. And the beacon is probably in her bag.” Hal theorized.

“Well then… Why did she activate it? She seems fine. It’s late but she’s probably walking home.” Nightwing enquired, studying the now enlarged picture of her, changing the camera as she walked out of frame.

“Like I said, probably a misdial.” Hal just leaned in his chair and looked at the ceiling.

Nightwing wasn’t certain. “I don’t know. Something just doesn’t seem right.”

“You Bats always read way too deep into everything,” Hal muttered, rubbing his eyes.

Nightwing glared at him, before returning to scrutinize the tape. “Think about it. Didn’t she say that she didn't see with her eyes? Maybe she is seeing something that we are not?”

“Again, reading too deep.” Hal pushed back his chair and stared at the blank ceiling.

Nightwing huffed and rolled his eyes, still keeping focus on the footage.

“Huh?” Nightwing switched cameras to the one Ladybug was currently in frame of, an enclosed courtyard/parking lot to what looked like an abandoned building.

“What is it?” Green Lantern groaned.

Nightwing leaned closer to the screen “She just turned into a courtyard. Dead end.”

“The girl’s blind.” He bemoaned, “She probably just took a wrong turn.”

“Shut up and look at this!” Nightwing snapped. Hal Jordan looked at the footage and looked closer as well. Just as confused as Nightwing. She stood, her walking stick collapsed and laying on the ground beside a duffel bag, also lying on the ground. Standing stock straight still, her arms at her side, unmoving.

The audio was picking up nothing, and the footage was just her standing in the closed-off area, between abandoned buildings. The beacon didn’t seem as much of a buttdial anymore but there was no indication of what was going on.

Just the two figures dropped into frame.

Within moments a short message, containing only two names, had been sent to the Batcave and Oracle Tower with a GPS location before Nightwing ran to the zeta-tube and sent him to the old JLE zeta platform.

Only one thing on his mind.

What the hell were Ra’s and Talia doing in Paris?

[Next]

---

[Notes:]

It’s getting *spicy*

---

Tag List:

@frieddonutsweets @moon5608 @ihatecomingupwithusernameswtf @adrestar @galla02006 @bygge00 @alyssadeliv @toodaloo-kangaroo @iloontjeboontje @missanalysis

#maribat #dc x mlb #mlb x dc #bio dad bruce wayne

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plantsarefun06 · 3 years

Text

Can somebody give me some recs?

I'm struggling finding good fics, I feel like I've read them all. I'll read DC (not the live-action TV shows), PJO, or Maribat anything at this point. I'm desperate for some good reads.

(No batcest, pls it hurts me)

#dcu fic #dc x miraculous #maribat #batfamily #fic recs #batman #batman and robin #percy jackon and the olympians #bruce wayne #dick grayson #jason todd #damian #jon kent #percy jackson #annabeth chase

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plantsarefun06 · 3 years

Text

The Particular Abilities of Marinette, and Her Discovery of Them Chapter 23: Lemon Meringue Tartlets

[Inspired By]

[First] [MasterPost] [AO3]

“GAME OVER”

“Not again!” Adrien growled, pushing himself away from the computer as Marinette won the thirteenth consecutive round of Ultimate Mecha Strike III. She snickered beside him. Max had been developing new software as an ‘add-on’ of sorts to games that would assist visually impaired people and allow them to play video games.

When Max had brought up thinking about taking on the project she had initially told him that he didn’t have to do that just so she could play games with them, she was perfectly content watching her friends during their weekly tournament games. She absolutely loved watching Kim play, especially when it was against Alix, they always ended in some sort of a brawl.

Max said that it would be good practice for in the future if he was going to continue to develop video games, and he went on with the project. Recently he asked her to beta test the program, which simply required her to plug a USB into her system or her computer, and a modified controller and earbuds, which worked surprisingly well.

Max had asked Marinette to do it the day before the meeting with the Justice League, she was only now getting to try it out when Adrien snuck over to her house after escaping a photoshoot that was happening at the park. Currently, Tikki and Plagg were having a little picnic on the balcony complete with cookies and cream cheese croissants, while Marinette was discovering how much fun it was to absolutely demolish Adrien at UMS III without even trying.

The funniest thing was she was just sitting here, completely relaxed (Alya was right, a good night of sleep helped her a lot), while Adrien kept panicking and getting worked up while playing, only to inevitably lose.

“I’m done.” Adrien declared, throwing his controller on the desk, “I'm just gonna eat my Quiche in peace.” He picked up the half-eaten pan and his fork. “I was not expecting someone to be that good their first time.” She laughed at his grumbling while she closed out of the game and shut down her computer.

Between Adrien’s ‘model diet’ and his superhero activities, he wasn’t getting near enough calories or carbs in his diet. Frankly, his ‘model diet’ was rabbit food that added to 1,500 calories in total. And while they couldn’t blame Gabriel for not taking into account the number of calories he would burn as Chat Noir (which was nearly 2,000 calories on a daily average, but on busy days had been much more), Adrien participated in fencing daily and had an hour and a half long practices, along with the cardio he was required to do every morning by his father, not to mention that putting a fifteen year old boy on a calorie counting diet didn’t even remotely sound like a good idea.

The entire Team wanted to call ASE, Aide Sociale à l'enfance (Child Welfare). Max had even compiled an extensive file with non-disputable evidence of the abuse Adrien was suffering. Between the child labor laws that they had records of Gabriel breaking, and the ‘diets’ that even on paper people could tell would be incredibly damaging to a fifteen-year-old active boy’s health, it would be an open and shut case.

If they turned that in, the only thing that Gabriel would possibly be able to do was pay them off, though they had talked to Jagged, Luka’s father, about the situation, leaving out all names, and he said that he would make enough noise about the situation to make sure that that couldn’t happen.

The only thing was that if they did turn to call ASE, and they did get Adrien removed from Gabriel’s care, he would be moved into the care of Amilie Graham de Vanilly. Or in other words, the aunt that lived in the UK. Adrien had already argued with the entire Team about this. There was no reality where Adrien could live with his Aunt and continue being Chat Noir.

Having Max or Alix come to pick him up every Akuma attack wasn’t even remotely realistic, not to mention how he would be able to get out of his classes and his daily duties. Most of the time during Akuma attacks she would excuse herself, as she had permission to, and one of her teammates would come with her to ‘help her’ and the teachers would allow it. Most akuma attacks only really required her and maybe a couple of others, and if they needed specific people they would message them and they would find a way to get out of class, and when akumas were really bad and they needed everyone, class was usually dismissed during those.

In England, none of that would be the case, there would be no possible way for him to get out for akumas, they needed him for as nearly as many akumas as they needed herself. Not to mention that he was their leader, and was essential in making their team function properly. As well as the fact that they couldn’t have the Creation or Destruction Miraculous far away from one another, if Adrien was off in England even if they were able to get him to some akumas where he was absolutely needed him, they would start to have a major imbalance between the Ladybug Miraculous and the Black Cat Miraculous. Which was not something they wanted to deal with.

And there was no way Adrien’s aunt would ever move to Paris, and Marinette knew how custody court worked, it would be likely that the court would encourage a change of scene for Adrien and support the idea of moving.

It would only end with Adrien being stripped of his Miraculous, and then having to get a new Black Cat. Meaning they would have to do one of two things, bring in a completely new person, likely untrained, and do all their training from scratch. Giving them a weak point when Hawkmoth has been at his strong point likely to draw his attention and specifically target him.

The only other option would be one of her teammates to give up their current Miraculous, and start utilizing the Black Cat in Adrien’s stead, completely changing their team dynamic, and again giving Hawkmoth an opportunity to strike them when they would be very obviously weak.

All things Adrien argued when Max had brought up his 1.6 GB file on Gabriel to the attention of the Team and his intentions to turn it into ASE, and none of them could argue from a completely objective point that getting Adrien out of Gabriel’s care was worth the chance of Hawkmoth getting the upper hand and winning.

So now they were stuck feeding him calorie-dense meals every time they met outside of Gabriel’s watchful eye. And it had even seemed that their parents had picked up on what was happening and were in on it. Every time Adrien was over at one of their houses during dinner, lunch, or even snack all of their parents practically shoveled food down his throat.

Kind of funny, Adrien’s ‘Oh no, Mdm. Lê Chiên, I’m full.’ only for Kim’s Ma to simply respond ‘Nonsense, you’ll have another serving.’ Before getting him more Pho and making sure he ate it all.

Marinette was brought to the present when Adrien dropped a forkful of quiche on his shirt, she openly laughed at him as she hit the power down button.

“Shut up.” He groaned while trying without avail to wipe the stain off.

His phone dinged while he was still wiping and when he checked it he immediately started to panic and wipe faster.

“What’s wrong?” Marinette asked, kicking his shin lightly to get his attention.

“Damn it, Natalie just texted me. Someone contacted them when they couldn’t find me. I’m dead if they find this stain on my shirt. No doubt they can tell it’s a food stain.” He started wiping even harder while getting up and slipping on his shoes.

Marinette threw down her controller and started whipping at his shirt as well, “Shit. Maybe we can slip on one of my shirts or one of Nino’s shirts he had here and they won’t tell?”

“Marinette, unless you or Nino have a new, unreleased Gabriel’s men’s henley shirt tailored specifically for myself, they are going to know.” Adrien nearly growled while trying and failing to get the stain out.

“Okay, stop panicking,” She said, in fact panicking, “We are the leaders of Paris’ superhero Team that has to constantly come up with out-of-the-box ways to beat an akuma. We can figure out how to fix this. Uhhhh.” Marinette started frantically looking around her room, before landing on a potted Hyacinth on her balcony she had just practiced on this morning.

Her magical training had been going good, but recently she had just been working on stamina, she knew she was capable of more than growing flowers and healing her teammates when they decided to be particularly dumb on patrol, but Tikki didn’t want to get into a bunch of advanced magic with her in a big city where if anything went wrong she would be likely to hurt people. Especially when they were working with such raw and powerful magic, it wasn’t worth it and she was already so busy with school, gymnastics, and fighting Hawkmoth.

So right now she was just working on using her magic and not passing out directly afterward. Which is why only an hour ago she had grown her plant midday, meaning the soil would still be damp from the water she poured in the soil

“I’ve got an idea.” Marinette practically yelled before scrambling up her ladder and going up to the balcony.

“Hey, Plagg! Adrien’s leaving right now, finish up your croissant.” She said to the kwami as she grabbed the potted hyacinth on her balcony, before running back down to where Adrien is.

“What are you doing with that Marinette?” Adrien asked.

“You know how you put your full faith in me in battle. Not questioning my plans or my capability?” Marinette smiled at him, radiating confidence like she always did when she had a plan.

“Yeah?” He hesitated, she had that gleam to her right now that was kind of scaring him.

“Well, I need you to do that right now,” Marinette said before scooping some of the soil that was still a bit wet from her watering it this morning, and spreading it down the front of the shirt, making sure to rub it in.

“Marinette! What the hell! That’s not getting rid of the stain!” He shoved her away, looking at her as if she was insane before grabbing his napkin and resuming the frantic scrubbing.

“No, but you can’t see the food stain anymore!” Adrien just looked at her for a moment, Marinette smiling like an idiot. He blankly stared at her while Plagg came down, grumbling about ‘not getting to finish the last croissant’.

“That… might just work.” He said before running and grabbing his phone, and a last bite of quiche before running down the stairs.

“Bye Marinette! Thank your parents for the quiche for me!” He said before running out, slamming into Nino and Kim on the stair up to the apartment.

“Hi, Nino. Hi, Kim.” Adrien ran past them. “Bye Nino! Bye Kim!” Marinette slumped in her desk chair and checked her notifications from Chloé’s assistant that specifically worked with her, while Nino and Kim came up for their unexpected visit.

“Hey, Mari.” They both chimed when they came through the trapdoor. “What was Adrien here for?”

“Just running away from a photoshoot and grabbing something to eat. We tested out Max’s new video game software for visually impaired people.” She tossed down her phone, avoiding calling Markus about some photoshoot for an American Magazine that Chloé wanted her to do.

Kim walked over to the desk and grabbed the mostly eaten quiche and fork. “Oh, and how did that go?” He asked while taking a bite.

“It went well, ended up beating him thirteen times in a row,” She smiled before grimacing at Kim, “You realize that Adrien has been eating the quiche for the past forty-five minutes and it is cold, right?”

“It’s great that the software worked, you’ll have to tell Max on patrol tonight. And just so you know, the quince is still good, even if it's cold.” Kim retorted, before shoveling another bite into his mouth. Both Nino and Marinette grimaced at him.

Marinette spun her chair away from Kim, trying her best to lose focus of him and the quiche that at this point was disgusting “What are you doing here anyway? Why the surprise visit?” Marinette asked Nino.

“We are here to help you with the bakery while your parents cater some event across the city.”

“Since when?”

“We told you this last night on the video call.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“I’m pretty sure we did,” Kim responded with a full mouth. Before Kim finished chewing and went back to finishing the quiche.

“No you didn’t, since when have Maman and Papa had a catering gig?”

“Didn’t they tell you? They got it yesterday. Pretty last minute, but apparently it’s a meeting with a bunch of rich businessmen and they paid a lot. So they took it.”

“No I wasn’t told, I didn’t see Maman and Papa yesterday. I left early and had gymnastics then went to Alya’s.”

“Oh, that’s right! You watched Ella and Etta and we got you Steak Frites as payment. Well, Sabine and Tom are about to leave, and we need to go down and take over.”

Both Nino and Kim (with his quiche) started walking down the stairs, Marinette huffing and following.

“Why is it that I am always the last person to know about things? Seriously?” Marinette bemoaned as she shut and locked the apartment door.

“That’s not true,” Kim stated as he threw the now finished quiche tin in the trash by the stairwell.

“It isn’t? Tell me the last time I wasn’t the last person to know.”

“You weren’t the last person to know about Alya’s surprise party.” Nino pointed out to her.

“I planned it. That doesn’t count. Give me something that I didn’t plan or start.”

“Well…” Kim started. “When we went to the par- no, umm… Last week when we went to Andr- no you didn’t know about that. Umm…” Nino interrupted, “Maybe you are the last person to know about everything?”

“I know that Nino, you’re just now realizing it?” Marinette sassed him.

“Maybe it’s because you’re constantly busy?” Kim suggested, “I mean between school, your gymnastics, the media attention you’ve recently been getting, and our… umm… group things, you pretty much constantly have something to do.”

“He’s right there.” Nino added, “You often are doing something so just coming up to you and telling you about plans. Especially with all the increased gymnastics practice because Olympic Trials are coming up in a few months and your coaches are really being hard on you about practice.”

“We literally go to school together, and spend hours with each other every night.” Marinette deadpanned, glaring at both of them.

“And we’re all forgetful.” Kim shrugged, grabbing his apron and his name tag as they walked into the bakery. “Every single one of us is terrible at remembering to tell each other stuff, you’re just a common victim of it.”

“Kim isn’t wrong, dibs on the cash register!” Nino yelled when he saw Kim walking towards the counter, Kim immediately full-on sprinted to the register and got there before Nino, “I’m here first! I’m on cash register duty!”

“No, I called dibs,” Nino said as he shoved Kim to the side and put himself in front of the cash register.

“I was already walking over there, and I was there first!” Kim got back up and Nino and Kim started pushing against each other in an effort to get in front of the register.

“I was here first!” “I called dibs!”

“Now boys.” Her Papa’s voice came booming across the shop and stopped Kim and Nino’s fighting. He sighed, “You know the rules Kim, we made them years ago, whoever calls dibs gets it as long as someone wasn’t already there. Nino called dibs before you were at the counter, therefore he gets register duty.” Papa nodded and walked into the kitchen sealing up cases of pastries ready to be delivered, missing Nino giving Kim a shit-eating grin and for one final time shoving him away from the register.

Kim glared at him with a stare so dark it promised death, “It’s in moments like these in which I despise you Nino Lahiffe.

Nino’s grin didn’t even waver, just giving him a shooing motion over to the closest where they kept the broom, “Go on busboy, it’s time to get to your own job.” Kim stomped over to the closet as Marinette snickered at the both of them.

“You kids got everything taken care of?” Papa asked from the door to the alley where the van to get the order delivered most likely was.

“Yeah, Papa. We have everything under control. You don’t have to worry.” Marinette gave a thumbs up before grabbing her own apron and heading over to help a customer, her usual job.

“Okay mon chou, but I don’t want to come back and see a disaster like that one you three made a few Christmas’ ago!” “PAPA!” Marinette chasited “We all promised to never speak of that again!” The dreaded reason that she, Nino, and Kim were banned from entering the bakery together, or really any form of kitchen, for four whole years.

Papa chuckled, “Okay, but if there are any issues don’t hesitate to call.” He said before closing the door, loading everything in, and driving off.

“Alone at last!” Kim chanted, holding the broom above his head.

“Put that down hooligan! There are customers in the store.” Marinette chasisted, slapping his arm. They all just looked over to the three people milling around. Every single one of them was giving the three of them a look.

“Haha, don’t mind us. We’re just the staff. Uh… if you need any help you can ask one of us!” Nino, Kim, and Marinette put on their best-forced smiles. I.E. the most uncomfortable smile that you could ever see, while Kim slowly lowered his arms and started sweeping the store.

They went on like that for about an hour. Kim dealing with cleaning and stocking the shelves, Nino on the register, and Marinette talking with customers and helping them decide what they want. Their normal jobs when they worked the bakery. They weren’t left alone often, but typically when they were everything went smoothly.

Maman and Papa trusted the three of them. While Marinette couldn’t do the register, Nino or Kim could. Maman and Papa knew that neither of them would ever steal money out of the register. When they started occasionally working there they would try to pay Nino and Kim for the hours they put in, much to the displeasure of Marinette considering that she worked in the bakery all the time and not once had she ever got a dime.

Though Nino and Kim would both use all the money that was handed to them and just buy pastries with them because, as Kim had said “We’re right here, why wouldn’t we spend money on pastries?”. So now they just cut the middle man out and let them take home pastries. Really they should be less worried about them stealing money and more about them stealing the actual merchandise, which they most absolutely did.

But other than Kim and Nino occasionally plucking a macaron or an eclair from the display case when they shouldn’t, or when they were being bold taking a small cake and splitting it under the counter out of the view of customers, they were model employees.

Marinette would sit back and sip on some water, and when customers came in she would ask if they needed any assistance. Despite it not being a tourist season, the Boulangerie got a lot of customers. The locals usually never needed assistance when it came to choosing what they wanted unless they were planning for a party or event, but a lot of the time tourists did.

Currently, she was talking to this Brazilian (if she was getting his accent correct) man trying to pick out pastries for his wife. Apparently, they were here on their tenth anniversary. Considering the year they wanted to make it special and go on a trip. He was setting up a surprise dinner for her while she was at the spa, and he wanted to bring pastries for dessert.

The man seemed very particular about what his wife would want. Apparently, she liked fruits: strawberries, raspberries, etc., but didn’t like anything overly sweet, she was lactose intolerant, and on top of that, she didn’t like chocolate. That was the majority of what they offered, but after nearly half an hour of her suggesting things to him and him just replying “Mmn, I don’t think she’d like that.” They finally settled on some Lemon Meringue tartlets. It seemed to meet all of the requests he made and the man seemed to think so as well.

He bought a half dozen and tipped them, and if Nino’s jaw-dropping when the man slipped the money into the jar meant anything, it was a very lovely amount. The man was a bit endearing, if annoying. She kind of hated when customers were so picky and took up so much time, but it was clear the man loved his wife and wanted everything to be perfect. She didn’t mind too much.

She went to sit on the stool by the counter, making sure to grab the plastic water cup she set on it. One too many times she had gone to sit on her stool and spilled water all over the butt of her pants and the floor. Kim never failed to laugh at her misery when she did it.

“Goddammit.” She muttered under her breath as she dragged her hand across the stool, then the counter beside it.

“What is it?” Nino asked at her curse.

“My water. I can’t find it. Is it on the counter? You know, in the plastic cup?” In other words, the one she can’t see.

“Umm…” She saw Nino getting on his toes to look around the counter, moving a few signs around to look.

“No… Did you drink it all and throw it away?”

“No. I swear I sat it right here-” she stuck a finger at her stool, “-before I went to help that man. I swear!” She continued to swipe her hands around in a futile effort to find her cup.

“Maybe you knocked it in the trash?” Nino shrugged before attending to a lady who came up with Chouquettes.

Marinette huffed, she wasn’t digging through the trash for a single-use SOLO cup. “Kim~” She sang in an overly sweet tone that anyone who knew her could tell was fake.

“What Mari?” He asked, standing up from where he had just finished wiping up a small flour mess a customer made a few minutes ago.

“Can you get me another glass of water? Please?” Kim just cocked an eyebrow at her use of words. Marinette was never rude, but she didn’t typically add ‘please’ to the end of a question, especially when it was with him, Nino, or really any one of her friends.

“Can’t you just get one yourself? You have two working hands the last time I checked, and two working legs too.” He contended as if it was obvious before walking toward the trash and throwing his paper towel away.

“But Kim! I don’t have functioning eyes! You won’t make a poor defenseless blind girl have to go thirsty because she can’t get herself water, would you?”

“Marinette,” but she noticed he stopped when he noticed all the eyes on him. Nearly everyone in the store was giving him judgemental and disgusted looks and a few were sending Marinette sympathetic ones, all the while Nino was covering his mouth and trying to hold himself from dying of laughter behind the cash register.

Kim huffed, sending Marinette a harsh glare, “Let me go get that for you.” he said with a tight smile, before stomping off to the back. Marinette just smiled as she watched him through the wall stomp around mumbling, ‘defenseless blind girl my ass’ while pouring her some water from the water cooler.

Marinette just sent him a little smirk when he walked back in, “Here’s your water!” He shoved it into her hand passive-aggressively with more force than necessary, making a bit of water splash on her shirt.

She was probably perpetuating ableism and harmful stereotypes for all the people in the store. The average blind person was well able to make their own cup of water, and lord knows that if anyone insinuated to her she wasn’t able to do so to her they would learn that she was at least able to locate the nose on their face and demonstrate how she was able to break it with a single punch.

But watching Kim have to go pour her a glass of water because while it wouldn’t blow her cover as a blind girl who can’t see, everyone understood that no chances were to be taken. The vast majority of people (and if Marinette’s suspicions were correct, everyone but her teammates and now the Justice League) didn’t know that Huàshēns exist, but they do know that Metas do. And the entire team knew the implications of the world finding out she was ‘meta’.

So it was all the more pleasurable for her. “Thank you, Kim!” Marinette said, her voice dripping with fake cheer. She walked back and sat down on her stool by the counter and watched the customers mill around, while Kim huffed to himself and Nino finally composed himself enough to help customers.

Marinette just took a deep breath and gave a happy sigh to herself. Days like these, with Kim and Nino, just them in the shop, she never did get enough of them.

---

‘Did you retrieve the sample?’ he heard from the discrete communication earpiece inside his ear.

He coughed twice, indicating a ‘yes’. He looked over at his partner as he dumped the box of Lemon Meringue tartlets in a trash bin. It took him nearly half an hour to get this done because he couldn’t find an opening to discreetly grab the cup while his partner was distracting the girl, and the friend of hers was standing at the counter beside the stool.

‘Analyze it. Immediately.’ That was all he said before they heard the distinctive beep signaling the comm line had been disconnected.

[Next]

---

[Notes:]

Did I write this entire chapter solely because I wanted to give a dynamic between Kim, Nino, and Marinette? Yes, yes I did. And I take no criticism on that.

---

Tag List:

@frieddonutsweets @moon5608 @ihatecomingupwithusernameswtf @adrestar @galla02006 @bygge00 @alyssadeliv @toodaloo-kangaroo @iloontjeboontje @missanalysis

#maribat #mlb x dc #ml x dc #bio dad bruce wayne #dc x mlb #dc x miraculous

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plantsarefun06 · 3 years

Text

The Particular Abilities of Marinette, and Her Discovery of Them Chapter 22: Bugs Under My Skin

[Inspired By]

[First] [MasterPost] [AO3]

Marinette was going to lose her mind. She couldn’t help it either!

Ever since she woke up she felt like bugs were crawling on her skin, she was constantly analyzing everywhere she could.

They are coming.

She had always simply focused on the room she was in, and let everything fall back, but now she was sitting stock straight in her seat at the kitchen counter, completely neglecting the oatmeal sitting eight in front of her! And it was Maman’s oatmeal too. Everyone loved Maman’s oatmeal!

And it was all because of those damn Justice Leaguers!

Fuck triggers. And fuck that meeting for apparently being one.

She hadn’t had a paranoid episode since she was eleven. And that ended with her taking a four-day trip to a children’s institution where they could monitor her because she started scratching herself to the point she started bleeding, and her parents weren’t able to stop her from doing it. The trip absolutely sucked, she was pretty sure her roommate was clinically a sociopath. She woke up with her roommate just silently standing over and staring at her, but she got these sick grippy socks that she still had and after she left got her parents to buy her more pairs.

It had been a few days since the meeting with the Justice League too! And she had been completely fine, but this morning she woke up and everything felt wrong! She felt like people were watching her. She felt like she needed to focus on everything and make sure that she was in the clear.

They are coming.

Shut up!

There had been a few akumas since the meeting, two of them she and a couple of other various members dealt with, and one akuma she didn't help with at all. She just showed up at the end, purified the akuma, and cast the cure. She thought that if the Justice League was going to come and take over that they would have done so immediately, but when she thought about it, they would have to plan and regather to do that. It would probably take a few days, they definitely wouldn’t have come in immediately after the meeting.

They are coming.

And now, she was having a fucking episode over it! Maman and Papa were silently freaking out and trying to convince her to stay home, which she was turning down.

What if they found you and you were with Maman and Papa! What if they attacked them too!

Now she was watching the elderly couple that came into the bakery every morning to split a Pain au Chocolat. Like they were going to whip out capes and reveal they were Batman and Wonder Woman in disguise. She has known Monsieur and Madame Thomas since she was four!

God forbid the fact that the classroom down the hall had a substitute today. Rather than listening to the teacher talking about the House of Capet and whatever they did back when they ruled France in the like… the 1500s or something like that-god she was going to fail this class-Marinette spent the entire period scrutinizing the substitute literature teacher.

He was probably in his late 40s. He fractured his Ulna bone years ago. Based on how it was healed, Marinette guessed when he was a child. He was about 210 pounds in weight, and he was on the way to having a heart attack, he needed to improve his diet, and do some regular cardio. He didn’t have many calluses on the palms of his hands, probably didn’t do any handy work regularly, he only had some that suggested that he wrote with his right hand a lot.

But in that full hour of Marinette sewing her own failure of her French History class, not one thing about that teacher suggested he was anything more than an average citizen.

They are coming.

God, she was going insane.

The people around her were starting to notice too. Alya kept tapping lightly with her pencil in morse code if she was alright. She had subtly nodded to her, but she could tell Alya wasn’t convinced. Alya was pretty good at knowing her tells.

She evaded being harassed by Alya after school and booked it to the train. She had privates at the gym today. Thank god the interview and photoshoot calls had started calming down, and Chloe stopped harassing her all the time over appointments. If she got asked one more time “Have you ever felt like you wanted, or rather shouldn’t do gymnastics because of your disability?” someone was going to lose their larynx.

And now, her peaceful gymnastics time was ruined because she could not chill out enough. Which ended up biting her in the butt because her coach switched her usual day where she practiced more complex moves, into a run laps with weights and do flexibility exercises day. Which always sucked and she knew that she would be sore.

Usually, she was able to put the entire world away when she entered the gym. It was her time, not the world’s. Tikki would hide out in her bag with her phone, a pair of earbuds, and a box of macarons, and watch period dramas, then later complain to her about historical inaccuracy. If there was an Akuma while she was in the gym, all buildings in Paris were required to inform their staff and all personnel in the building of it, along with the location of the akuma. Most buildings, including the gym she was in right now, simply called over the intercom if there was an Akuma. She would make some dumb excuse to go to the bathroom and get out of there, handle the Akuma, then come back.

Most of her instructors knew she had some clinical anxiety issues, and some even knew that she had diagnosed PTSD and Social Anxiety Disorder, and allowed her with little to no consequence to ‘hide away’ in the private bathroom until the Akuma was defeated. No one really questioned when the announcement came over the intercom that an Akuma was loose in the 6th Arrondissement when she asked to go to the bathroom.

She felt a bit guilty about utilizing mental disorders to get out of class, and flat out lying to her teachers and using their sympathy for her own gain, and allow her to hide in the bathroom when in reality either Pegasus or Bunnix was opening a portal to the battle, or she jumped out into the alley adjacent to the gym and swung with her yoyo to the Akuma, but she felt she got a bit of leniency considering she was a superhero. She rationalized that if she was helping others, and the lie wouldn’t hurt anyone, then it was okay.

And right now, she was kind of hoping that an Akuma would pop up and she would take her leave of absence to the private bathroom and sneak out.

They are coming.

SHUT UP!

If gymnastics didn’t calm her down and get her to chill out, maybe some Ladybug time would?

Though, that often did the opposite. Ladybug always got her adrenaline pumping and got her all hyped up. That was in part because of the transformation. It acted as a sort of stimulant. Even if she just woke up, transforming could make her feel like she had been awake for hours.

That… probably wouldn’t help. She felt plenty awake. That was a bit of the problem. She was thinking about breaking Maman and Papa’s no alcohol rule and going over to Chloé’s and ‘stealing’ some of her father’s wine. (Chloé had a fridge full of her father’s wine in her room and offered her a glass every time she came over, though she rarely took it.) Maybe a glass of that stuff would calm her down.

She had to watch the Césaire twins tonight though, and watching the kids while slightly tipsy, even if Tikki said that being a Huàshēn may have given her some natural tolerances and if she did get tipsy she might not stay that way for long, was not the responsible babysitter thing to do.

Either way, that glass of wine was getting more and more appealing with every millimeter that her legs stretched farther. At this point, her legs were stretched at a 200-degree angle, and the instructor still wasn’t letting up.

Marinette had booked it out of there so quickly when the three hours were up. Faster than she had before. She hopped on the next train headed to the nearest station to the Césaire house.

The gym was on the opposite side of the city, though the train took about twenty-five minutes to the Césaires. The entirety of that twenty-five minutes, down to every last second, was spent evaluating every. single. person. who decided it was a good idea to ride in the same train car as her.

There was a woman who came up to her on the train, early twenties or late teens, who asked to take a picture of her. Apparently, her niece did gymnastics and was a fan of hers. She got people asking for a picture all the time, her face got plastered everywhere with so many news outlets milking the mildly insulting ‘Blind girl does gymnastics and beats the odds’ headline for months after the French championships, and her face was very recognizable and many people would ask her for selfies.

Well, apparently there was something different about this girl because she spent a solid five minutes solely studying her. She tried to stop herself! She did! She had made a practice of not studying people when unwarranted, but she couldn’t unfocus!

She felt like one of those true crime tapes with the creepy men who stalked the women they bumped into in an elevator, “I couldn’t help it! I just couldn’t stop following her! I couldn’t stop watching her!”

Well right now she couldn’t stop studying the girl, she seemed to have digestive issues and probably needed to start taking probiotics. She also seemed to have recently scraped her legs on something sharp because there was a 5-inch scar on her leg. Nothing deep, but probably caused by accidentally cutting herself with a knife, or scraped herself against a sharp metal object.

Marinette was going through all the ways that could be taken negatively.

Maybe it was a sword and she’s an assassin!

Maybe she has a knife on her to lure her to her death by posing as a fan!

Maybe she- okay she needs to stop. The girl got off the train two minutes ago.

NOTHING was going on.

They are coming.

Nobody is coming!

She was simply a girl who came up and asked for a picture for her sister. She didn’t deserve to be scrutinized like that. She was just wound up because it was very possible the Justice League was going to try and forcefully intervene.

Marinette got off the train at the stop only a ten-minute walk from the Césaire’s and made her way over. It was about 6:30 right now, meaning that in March she was bordering on sundown. While she could see anyone coming at her, she didn’t enjoy dealing with nasty men trying to get into a teenager's pants outside of transformation where she could ‘deal’ with them with some form of legal authority.

Or whatever kind of authority she had. She wasn’t really legal, but she often dealt with dangerous situations involving criminals and then called the police.

Thankfully, she had to deal with no creepy men on her way to the Césaire’s. When she knocked on the door she heard a couple of bangs from inside and something shattering before a frazzled Alya made her way to the door and opened it.

“OH! Marinette here!” Alya grabbed her hand and pulled her into the apartment before grabbing her bag off the bench by the door.

“OH! I got to go. Thank you so much for babysitting the twins today. I’d get you settled in but, you know I have a date to get to! I’m going to be late!”

Alya was moving around with s swiftness she had only seen used as Rena Rouge.

“Wha- Alya! Your date is at seven-fifteen, it’s six forty! You’re going to the bistro around the block, you’re not going to be late!” Marinette followed her to where Ayla was trying to close the door and forced it open before it could shut.

“OH! Yeah, me and Nino… moved the reservation up! We moved the reservation up.”Alya answered. Trying to shut the door despite Marinette’s fingers prying it open.

“What are you talking about? That place is always packed, it took the two of you six weeks to get a reservation there!”

“Well-uhh THEY HAD AN OPENING! And they called and asked if we would take it! We did!” Alya yelled as she shoved Marinette’s fingers off and slammed the door shut. She was sprinting to the stairs with a speed Marinette had never seen come from Alya before.

“What the-” At that moment, she heard giggling she was all too familiar with some from the other room. She saw two little girls walking in the hallway closer to her, but because of how the house was laid out, they couldn’t see her.

“Oh, Alya! There’s a little mess in here that needs-” Both little girls stopped immediately when they saw who was at the door. Both of them gasped and stopped in their tracks.

Marinette let the same smile that she used at competitions form on her face. People often told her it was a pretty smile, but she knew exactly what kind of reaction it would get out of these girls.

“Hello, girls. I’m babysitting you while Alya is off on her date with Nino! Now, what was it you two were talking about? A mess?”

The girls gave a little panicked look at one another before Etta spoke up. “Nothing Ms. Marinette. Just something me and Ella are going to clean up… right now!” Marinette saw as they both ran off to clean up whatever they had been doing to terrorize poor Alya. No wonder she was so quick to run out the door.

---

Alya came back about nine o’clock. The girls had gone to bed only about twenty minutes before, though they were both still awake. According to what Marinette had heard from Alya, it was a battle to get the twins in bed at their bedtime of nine o’clock and the girls would drag it on until ten-thirty if they could, but Marinette had mentioned to Ella and Etta getting ready for bed at eight thirty-ish, and both twins got ready all by themselves in less than twenty minutes and were now sitting in their beds quietly talking to one another.

Marinette didn’t mind, they were in bed, and it was clear they would just go to sleep when they could. Can’t exactly force a person to be tired, but she was able to scare them into actually getting into bed at the appropriate times.

They are coming.

QUIET!

She heard the front door shut and saw Alya set her bag aside and carry in a second bag of some really good-looking beef and potatoes if she was seeing it correctly.

“Girl! You gotta try these Steak Frites! I got it at the bistro, and I swear I’ve never had something so good.” Marinette got up and walked over to the island while Alya got out the bamboo utensils and stopped the bag from sliding over the edge when Alya pushed it towards her.

“So, the six-week wait, was it worth it?” Marinette asked.

“Definitely. You get the girls down?”

“Yeah, they’re in their room just talking in their beds. Got them there about twenty minutes ago.”

Alya chuckled, “It’s hilarious how terrified they are of you. They always beg my parents to not let you babysit, but you're the only one who can actually control them.” Alya slid the bamboo fork and the normal serrated knife across the counter towards Marinette.

“God, it’s hilarious. I feel a bit bad using the fear of young children as a source of amusement, but the moment I see them get scared when I come over, I honestly don’t care.” Both Marinette and Alya laughed at that.

“OH, everyone planned an MT video call during lunch now that everyone has cooled down over what happened at the Saturday meeting. They apparently made the plans while I was focused on trying to figure out what was wrong with you. Speaking of which, we are going to talk about that. The call is set for about ten o’clock, before patrol. Max is setting up some secure lines for us to make a private call without anyone hacking in.”

Marinette groaned, “Why am I always the last one to know about these things? I'm the guardian and somehow I’m the one who always gets informed about things last.”

“You and me both, girl.” Alya tried to reach over and grab one of the frites before Marinette slapped her hand away.

“So, back to what I wanted to ask you about before the twins ran me off, what was up with you today? You were really jumpy and didn’t seem to be… present?” Alya started focusing on her body language. Marinette was typically very guarded when it came to her body language, but when it was just them she tended to relax and be more open.

That’s why Alya noticed Marinette being very hesitant with her answer, “It was nothing. Just a bit of normal paranoia with the whole JL thing, you know?”

“Marinette…” Alya cautioned, “It seemed a bit more than ‘paranoia’, you weren’t paying attention at all today, or at least you weren’t paying attention in the five classes that we share.”

“I got pretty bad sleep last night, rolled my ankle at the end of patrol and it was bothering me.” She lied, cutting off a chunk of steak and pulling her to-go box with her Frites away from Alya’s wandering hands.

“Marinette, you seemed stressed. You were tense all day, and it seemed like if anyone were to accidentally sneak up on you you would go off. I know you have some… disorders that may cause you to thin-”

“Don’t use my disorders against me! I’m not crazy!” Marinette snarled.

“I’m not trying to Mari! And I don’t think you’re crazy! I’m just trying to say if something is happening if you are having an episode, or if it’s related to one of those things you need to talk with someone!”

“I told you, I am fine! Lay off!”

“Don’t do that!” Alya yelled back, “All the ‘it’s fine’ bullshit. It’s not fine! You always cover things up because you don’t like to burden others but at the same time you slowly kill yourself. Hellfire? Since when did you remember that? And don’t think you got away with mentioning that during the JL meeting and we didn’t notice, not to mention whatever the hell happened when you were a kid! Adrien gave us all of the notes that you have on Huàshēns. You had your abilities before you got your miraculous, meaning that some shit had to have happened before, and it doesn’t take a genius to guess when!”

Marinette had seen Alya snap before. Alya was very much a person that was not afraid of confrontation and absolutely would get in someone’s face if she believed that they were in the wrong. But Marinette had never had Alya snap at her.

Alya immediately felt guilty when she saw how alarmed Marinette was, “I’m sorry, I… I have no right to get mad at you about what happened to you before you got to Paris.” She buried her face in her hands, before running her fingers through her hair and taking a deep breath.

“That is your story, and if you don’t want to tell it, that’s okay. You don’t owe anyone that. And I’m sorry about snapping about Hellfire, I know how you are with things like this. You genuinely think that it's better if you take the full brunt of a situation if it means sparing others. Here’s the thing Marinette-” Alya grabbed her hands and made sure Marinette was completely focused on her, “-we’re best friends, partners, teammates, whatever you want to call it. We are always going to be here for you. We carry our burdens together. I’ve been thinking about what Black Canary said to us at the meeting, how we are a bunch of kids in this alone, and she was absolutely right. This war, this constant battle, the only people we have is each other. And if we are going to sit around hiding secrets because we think we are protecting each other, we are going to fall apart from the inside out.”

She walked around the island, sitting down on the stool beside Marinette, and pulled her over to half sit on her lap, “I sometimes think about this war we are in, how this is all going to win. Whether we will win, or will it be Hawkmoth? But I know one thing for sure, every single time we divide ourselves, we assure our loss. The only way we are ever going to make it through this is if we stick together. You are never alone Marinette. It is never just you against the world. No matter what, me, Adrien, Nino, Kim, all of us will be in it with you.”

Marinette turned her face away from Alya. A pretty foolish attempt to hide her tears when Alya was reading her like an open book. She buried her face into Alya’s shoulder and silently cried as Alya ran her hand up and down her back in a calming motion, allowing her to cry it out.

---

After Alya managed to calm Marinette down they turned on a reality television program, and Marinette ate her Steak Frites. Or, a better description of what happened would be that the television program was turned on, and Marinette had to fight off Alya thieving hands when she tried to steal all her frites. She had her own not an hour ago! She could leave her’s alone!

Once Marinette finished her food, they simply watched the television, Alya verbalizing some bits, before the alarm for 9:55 Alya had set went off and they accepted the private video call on the channel Max had set up.

“Hey everybody!” Marinette heard Adrien’s voice through the call.

Something was wrong.

They are coming.

They are here.

They are coming.

They are here.

Her skin was crawling and she started looking around the Césaire’s apartment building, frantically doing quick runovers of every room, trying to find something looking off.

“-inette. Marinette!” She heard Kim yell through the screen.

“OH! Hey, sorry just… zoned out there for a bit!” Marinette couldn’t actually see anyone on the screen, but the silence told her enough.

“Look, Marinette, we all noticed you were a bit… off earlier. Are you okay?” Nino asked.

“Nino, I’m fine.”

“Really?” Damn. If Alya could read her like an open book, Nino has already read the book multiple times and memorized it word for word.

“Look, it’s just…paranoia. I’m afraid the Justice League is going to come in and take over. Technically, if they do that the government can kick them out, but this has been going on for, what? Two and a half years now. We are children and solving this issue has already been going on for a long time, and it very may be likely to go on for more. We may plead our case, but if the National Assembly votes to allow the Justice League to function within Paris, we can do nothing. And I guess I’m just… freaked out by it? Maybe those fears triggered something? I don’t know… I’m expecting something to happen? I feel like someone is coming? I feel like they are coming right now! I feel like they are after me. I’m just...ugh!” Marinette slumped forward and put her face in her hands.

They are here.

She felt water trickling down her jaw and bugs crawling up her back.

They are here.

“Hey! It’s okay to be scared about that.” Adrien tried to comfort her through the screen. “I can’t promise the future, and I think we are all a bit scared about what the Justice League may do, but all we need to do right now is keep up what we are doing, taking down akumas, and doing our best to track down Hawkmoth and protect the Miraculous..”

“Even if they do come we wouldn’t be able to do anything,” Max added.

“Max!” She heard Kim chastised.

“Well, Marinette is correct. The charter the Justice League are currently under would allow for them to come unprompted under the conditions outlined in their charter, all of those conditions fit that of an Akuma attack. They would be allowed to come even if we are currently fighting. Afterward, France’s National Assembly would vote on whether or not to allow the Justice League to continue operations against Hawkmoth within France, and whether or not they would vote ‘yes’ or ‘no’ is completely out of our control.”

“Max shut the hell up!” She heard Kim attempt to chastise him again.

“I am simply stating fact. That is my job and position on the Team.”

She heard Kagami huff, a rare occurrence, “We’re not allowing those ableist buffoons to barge their way in here and act as if they know anything!”

“‘You’re children. Your leader’s blind. You need to sit down and let the adults deal with this.’” Adrien mocked, “I’ve never been more furious in my life.”

“They have no idea what they’re talking about. They act like they’re some big-shot know-all god that we must bow down to and follow their ‘gospel word’.” Never had Marinette heard Luka talk in such a nasty tone, about people no less.

“Some of them might as well be gods with all they can do! They have been working with governments for nearly two decades! We are technically vigilantes and illegal! The only reason they allow us to fight Hawkmoth is because they can’t! How are we supposed to combat them! They are gods, they would pummel us! Politically they have the upper hand too!” Alya leaned back in her chair and looked at the ceiling. She seemed to be contemplating her life decisions in these moments.

“Look-” Luka sounded a lot more relaxed than he did thirty seconds ago, “-Max is right. We really can’t do anything. It’s not worth the brainpower, the paranoia, the fear, we just have to cross that bridge when we come to it. They have not yet forcefully intervened, so it’s not worth it to get ourselves twisted up over it.” Luka, the voice of reason. As always.

After a few moments of silence where everyone simply contemplated what Luka said, Adrien spoke up, “On a completely, but somewhat related topic, what were you talking about at the meeting? Hellfire came up while talking to Green Lantern and if I remember correctly you said, ‘They don’t remember but I do.’”

“Yeah, I’ve been meaning to ask about that too.”

“Same here.”

“I too have been wondering about that.”

“Damn didn’t even notice she said that. Too busy fantasizing what it would be like to pummel Green Lantern.”

“I’ve been wanting to know about the meaning of that statement as well.”

Now, why did she say that? Stupid move really. If the camera wasn’t right there and she knew Alya would stop her, she’d start hitting her head against the table.

All because that stupid Lantern got under her skin.

“I don’t really know. I just…Adrien?”

“Yes.” He answered.

“Remember how after we used the lucky lucky charm to pop the tire that the Radwan family was on?”

“Mhm.”

“And then immediately afterward I cast the cure so that we could close the timeline and get rid of our double selves.”

“Kind of hard to forget one of the most relieving moments in my life.”

“Well… when the timeline closed, I don’t know? Maybe I merged with that timeline-self? I’m not sure because I only have memories of the day Hellfire happened and up till my death. Maybe It’s where I’m a Huàshēn? Maybe it’s got to deal with the fact that I would have reincarnated in that timeline? I honestly have no clue. Our knowledge on Huàshēns is practically nonexistent, so if it was because of that we’d never know. Maybe it's because I was the one to cast the cure?” She too was now staring at the ceiling contemplating her life decisions.

Why the hell did she decide to tell Lantern that? Dumbass move Marinette.

“I just… god I don’t know.”

“Why didn’t you tell us before? Hellfire was six months ago! Practically feels like a lifetime with how much everything has changed!” Adrien pried.

“I… I don’t know? I don’t remember much, but from what I did, it wasn’t good. A lot, and I mean a lot of people died. I was alive for about 36 hours, would be my guess, I remember all of us being exhausted. At least three-quarters of Paris’ inner-city population died when I was there, and whether or not the JL’s civilian rescue efforts worked after my death, I don’t remember seeing Arsenal, maybe they got more civilians out? Any time we made an effort to move people we were attacked. Not to mention the ash cloud Arsenal mentioned had spread all the way to Germany days before we found him, how that affected nearby population, and how far the actual fire spread… I don’t know. The first wave of Justice League came in, they were all dead within two hours. The second… I don’t think you realize. These people were the Justice League. The ones you see just swoop in and save the day. The ones that merchandise sit in every supermarket and toy store. The one children play pretend about, and they just… they couldn’t do it. They came in, didn’t listen to a word we said, and they couldn’t do it. I saw as their bodies slowly became nonexistent to me. I saw as they burned. I can never get the image of someone burning out of my mind. It haunts me. And I just… ignorance is bliss I guess?”

“Marinette…” Adrien sighed. “You don’t have to do that. Protect us. We are your team. So I have to spell it out for you. T - E - A - M. That means we work together. If we are going to actually defeat Hawkmoth, get the lost miraculous, and all make it out of it alive, we cannot go around hiding things because we believe we are protecting one another!”

Marinette started playing with her thumbs “I know I just-” Adrien cut her off. “NO! Don’t do this self-sacrifice bullshit that ends with you having a crippling mental state-” “My mental state is already crippling.” Marinette interrupted. “And we don’t want it to get worse! All because you think you are doing us a favor, you’re not! I don’t know about anyone else, but I refuse to sit by idly while you slowly break down! I cannot do that Marinette!” Adrien yelled over the call.

“I’m sorry.” Marinette practically whispered, making a feeble attempt to hide in her shoulders. “Marinette-” She felt Alya’s arms wrap around her, “-as I said earlier. We. Are. A. Team. We take on our burdens together. If we go around and hide everything that pains us because we believe that we are protecting one another, we are going to fall apart at the seams.”

“Alya is correct, Marinette.” Luka piped up. “If we want this to work, if we want us to be cohesive and in sync, we cannot hide things from one another. Do you get what we mean by that?”

“...yeah. I do.” She fiddled with the sleeves of her shirt. “God, you all always make me feel like a scolded child.”

She just heard a round of laughter coming from everyone and Alya’s arms shook as she chuckled too.

“Come on, it’s about time to start patrol,” she heard Kim say over the call, “Now that we have talked about everything we really needed to, and we can talk about anything else later, we need to head out, later!” She heard the ping as he disconnected.

“Yes, we should start patrol. I need to get my sector done soon, my mother is waking me up extra early for fencing drills.”

“Dang Madame Tsurugi on your ass?” Kim asked.

“Not the best way to word it, but yes. I guess she’s ‘On my ass.’”

She heard a round of goodbyes and pings, “Hey,” Luka spoke up, apparently, he hadn’t disconnected yet, “I know Wednesday is my night off, but why don’t I cover for you and Alya, and you take an early night?” Alya agreed before she had a chance to tell Luka that it was fine and he should take his night off, and disconnected the call.

“You doing okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. We don’t need to stay in, we can go on patrol, Luka shouldn’t have to cover for us, it’s his night off.”

“Girl, Luka was right. You need a night in and a good night's rest. Sleep will probably help you more than anything.” She grabbed her hand and pulled her from the stool. “C’mon, I’m pretty sure Nora accidentally threw away your toothbrush that you have here, but we have some more in the closet. Maybe you can text Dr. Varma and ask for an appointment tomorrow?”

“What? So I can sit in an office for an hour and not be able to talk about Ladybug, the thing that is literally causing my stress?”

“Maybe you could just manipulate the truth a little? Say it’s stress over school or gymnastics?”

“I don’t know…” Marinette mumbled, Alya rubbed her back as they greeted Mdm. Césaire when she walked into the apartment.

“Why don’t you just think about it?” Alya smiled.

They both took a shower and got ready for bed they found themselves laying down in Alya’s queen bed. Alya laying on the inside because ‘You always kick me off Marinette! Something just makes it incredibly easy for you to shove me off the side of the bed within an hour of being asleep!’ Alya was being dramatic, but then again every time she stayed the night and Alya slept on the outside Marinette woke up to an empty bed, and Alya angrily sleeping (who knew you could sleep angrily? Marinette didn’t until the first time she stayed at Alya’s) on the couch in the living room.

“Good night, Mari.” Alya whispered.

“Night, Als.” Alya wrapped her arms around Marinette and ducked her under her chin.

“You okay. Really?” Alya asked. Marinette watched as each of her own muscles slowly relaxed, losing all their tension from the day. The paranoia, and the voices telling her that someone was coming, that someone was there, that someone was after her, all being pushed in the back of her mind, ebbing away into nothingness.

“Yeah, yeah I am.” She pulled the blanket tighter around her before falling into a dreamless sleep.

---

“That’s her.” Ra’s al Ghul spoke to the assassin beside him. No after the untimely, and ‘unexpected’, death of the League’s top stealth squad, they were to be the best. Currently, they were running facial recognition on pictures taken of a girl they had been tracking all day.

She certainly moved fast and kept in crowds where it was hard to figure out who they were looking for, but they had eventually been able to find her in an apartment building located in the seventh arrondissement.

He looked at the screen in front of him as it brought up a complete profile, “Facial recognition has a 98.7% match. Fifteen-year-old French girl by the name of ‘Marinette Dupain-Cheng’. Date of birth: July 17th, place of birth unknown. Student at College Françoise Dupont. Professional Competitive Gymnast and social media influencer, 45.3 million followers on Instagram, and a total of 67.8 million followers across all platforms. Gained international attention last December after winning Gold in the all-around in the French National Gymnastics Championships. Also notable for advocacy for disability aid and mental health programs across Europe. Both optic nerves are seared, caused by an unknown acid attack, completely blinding her. Clinical diagnosis of PTSD and SAD. Adopted by Tom Dupain and Sabine Cheng at age four after they found her in the alley behind their building. Court documents show no record of a testimony done by the Dupain-Cheng girl on what happened before being found by Dupain and Cheng.” He read off the tablet. He looked up to see Ra’s al Ghul scrutinizing the window with the curtains opened across the street.

Marinette Dupain-Cheng with what is most likely a friend of hers on the computer in what was most likely the friend's bedroom. Based on how neither of them was touching the keyboard, and how they were talking they were probably on a call with someone, though their software wasn’t able to break into the computer and get a mirror image of what was on the screen.

He looked back up at the man who had not two days ago had called him for a mission that he was personally a part of, that had absolutely no information, and requested, or more told, to come along as his expertise was needed.

He saw disbelief on his master’s face before it returned to its usual marble facade. He saw his lips move and just barely heard the words he said under his breath, “I have a theory.”

[Next]

---

[Notes:]

To explain why Ra’s is connecting the dots now and not when he watched the meeting, it’s because of magic guarding her identity. She doesn’t have the protection magic now, so there is nothing stopping Ra’s connecting the dots.

Also, in case someone didn’t get it, Marinette was sensing Ra’s coming after her, but mistook the warnings in her mind as the Justice League coming.

I tried to add more mental health bits in this, it’s lightly implied throughout the story that Marinette has some issues regarding her mental health, and that would make sense because of the trauma she suffered as a very young child, but I wanted to make it more evident, and I wanted to implement it into her character more.

As I said, she has PTSD(nightmares, avoidance of talking about traumatic event, avoidance of anything bringing back memories of traumatic event(not eating strawberries bc they give her flashbacks)) and Social Anxiety Disorder(more of just what I’ve been thinking in my head, Marinette would probably suffer from social anxiety and it would present as her struggling with showing people her scars, but mainly in her earlier childhood, with very much therapy and anxiety medication they could be managed okay) I’ve kinda imagined that her PTSD would be more present in her day-to-day life.

---

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