The Heroes’ Game

Back at the Batcave, Robin was the first to change, sit through debrief, and go to sleep. Nobody questioned him, knowing full well his motives. The other vigilantes however, despite being back in their civvies, were not so quick to end the night.

“You all heard that, right?” Jason asked. Oracle, also known as Barbara Gordon, rolled her eyes. She backed up in her wheelchair and turned to face everyone else.

“What, the part where Marinette made you coo when she essentially defended you and said she still thought of you as a good person?”

Jason rolled his eyes. “I mean yeah, that part was pretty nice. But I’m talking about everything she said about Paris,” the man clarified, leaning back in a chair so that the front two legs lifted off the ground. “She was geared and ready to continue listing examples of Akumas. I doubt she even listed half of the ones that were centered around or targeting her. And having to go through all of her classmates becoming villains, even temporarily?” He shook his head. “That kinda shit doesn’t leave anybody unaffected.”

“Especially what she said about the mermaid monster Akuma,” Tim agreed, pulling up a story on the computer. “I’ve pulled up the reports from both the Ladyblog and the AkumaWatch app. They seem to agree on everything, so I think this was back when the Ladyblog was still reliable,” he pulled up a video taken by the girl who ran the Ladyblog, Alya Cesaire. Marinette’s former best friend and current classmate. The commentary was all in French, but Tim had went ahead and added quick English subtitles for everyone. The wonders of having a supercomputer. The video was taken from a high roof, and showed the water flowing so high that it completely covered most buildings. It would have definitely caused enough pressure to break open windows and fill those buildings on the inside too.

“Woah! It looks like they can transform!” The voice of the reporter said in French, pointing to the distance where two blues of red and black hopped onto a building. The girl zoomed in, her phone’s camera just barely able to show an out-of-focus Ladybug and Chat Noir with different patterns to their uniforms and fins. The cat-themed hero managed to pull an entire car, and as they soon sound out, temporary supervillain Syren, out of the water all on his own. “Aqua suits! That’s so cool!”

It was obvious, however, that the girl’s voice shook a bit. She kept the camera purposely pointed as high up as she could while still catching the heroes and the destruction of the possessed item on screen. There were blurred images all across the surface of the water, which the heroes knew to be censored bodies.

“Only a couple thousand out of two million Parisians survived, that’s what Marinette said,” Barbara breathed, eyes wide. “Seeing it like this really makes it all real,” she clenched her jaw. They all continued watching as what was simply dubbed as Ladybug’s Miracle swept through the city in a shockwave o ladybugs, and the water disappeared. They watched as Alya aimed the camera down and caught very alive people popping up in the streets or on top of cars, wherever they had been right before getting carried away by the vicious waves.

Every hero in the Cave saw people of all ages down there, shimmering back to life. From month-old babies to old men and women.

It was both wonderful and horrifying.

After the video ended, the entire cave was silent for a long moment. Jason was the one that spoke up, to no one's surprise.

“What the fuck?” He growled, no longer leaning back in his chair. Both of his fists were clenched. “This has been on the internet for almost three years! How did we not see this before? How did we never know?” He asked, to which nobody had an answer. But the Bat himself had a hand on his chin as he studied the freeze-frame that the video ended on. Chat Noir and Ladybug fist-bumping.

“Maybe,” Bruce said slowly, as if tasting the words. “It’s time one of us visits the Paris branch of Wayne Enterprises. Ladybug and Chat Noir have been protecting the city for almost four years, it’s likely they know something about why the news hasn’t spread,” he mused. “Meanwhile, I will look into the League records. I never heard about a supposed prank call from France, meaning another piece of the puzzle is there.”

“There’s a problem with that though,” Tim pointed out. “Paris is essentially being held emotionally hostage. Anyone we send will have to be extremely capable of pushing down their negative emotions or transforming them into something positive. The last thing Paris’s heroes need is a supervillain with years of combat experience. Besides that, HawkMoth can telepathically communicate with his Akumatized villains. It wouldn’t be a stretch to assume that he can read their minds.”

“So not only would Paris’s heroes have to fight someone much more experienced than them, but our identities would be exposed,” Dick completed the thought, arms crossed. “That rules out Jason or Damian for sure. Which of us would be the most capable of avoiding strong negative emotions?”

When the First Robin looked up, it was to a raised eyebrow from his adoptive father and three fingers pointing straight at him from his brothers and Barbara.

“We can set up a flight for you for the day after tomorrow,” Bruce said with a grin that seemed way too smug for Dick, who was still gaping at everyone in betrayal. “Ask for the time off, okay? I can smooth things over if you need me to.”

“Oh, come on!” Dick threw his hands up. “I can be broody and mean!”

He was thoroughly ignored as everyone left to sleep for the night.

“Guys! You know what, fine, Paris is a gorgeous city. It’ll be like a vacation! Oh my god I just proved them right.”

—*—*—*—*—*

That night in the Mindspace was… well, Marinette’s insomnia reared its head and she entered it around three AM to find a very unamused Robin waiting for her.

“Honestly?” He asked, gesturing to the Tv screen. “You couldn’t have put some of the work off for tomorrow?”

Suddenly Marinette was very glad she didn’t talk to Tikki while working on her dress. The little Kwami had passed right out after the stressful day they both had.

“I have trouble sleeping sometimes,” she admitted shyly, shifting from foot to foot. “Sewing helps me relax. I want to be a fashion designer,” she explained, letting a soft smile overtake her lips. “I’m actually making my own dress for the Wayne charity gala at the end of the month.”

Robin’s eyebrows shot up over his domino mask. Once again, he was in his normal pajamas besides the mask that he donned after entering the mindspace. “Really? That’s pretty ambitious,” he told her, eyes going back to the screen. Then again, the snippets that he saw on the screen looked incredibly well done. Marinette’s face twisted up a bit in apprehension.

“Maybe a little,” she conceded. “But I’ve designed for Jagged Stone and Clara Nightingale. Even Gabriel Agreste and Audrey Bourgeois have asked for me to collaborate with them for a few pieces. Jagged and Clara commission me pretty often nowadays, and Jagged is a lot like an uncle to me now. I also design for local newscasters and other minor celebrities around town, and my best friend’s band Kitty Section,” She rambled, getting more passionate as she went. Robin actually found himself pretty impressed. The elder Agreste and Bourgeois both were notoriously hard to please names in the fashion industry, so to gain not just one but both of their attention and respect was a huge accomplishment.

“Perhaps I was incorrect then,” Robin amended. “With a portfolio like that, designing for the Gala is just the next small step up. I will look forward to seeing what you create,” he said honestly. His soulmate blinked, obviously caught off guard, before blushing furiously.

“Oh, uh, um, th-thank you!” She blinked again, the blush fading as she focused on the second meaning behind his words rather than just the flattery. “Wait, you’ll be at the gala?”

Robin had to hold back a smile. “It is a month away. I suspect by then you will have earned my identity. Soulmates tend to move faster than unbonded couples.”

Marinette gaped again. “Well. Uh. Thank you? I think. Wanna spar?”

It was Robin’s turn to be caught off guard. “Excuse me?”

“Do you want to spar?” She repeated, speaking at a normal pace instead of a tongue-twisting one. “Part of the reason it took so long to fall asleep is the adrenaline. It didn’t, uh, completely fade yet. And I’m still a little angry, but not enough to be dangerous in a spar.”

“I know,” Robin soothed, his calm tone a direct contrast to Marinette’s flustered rambling. “I felt the vibration when you were angry, both at GothCorp and on the roof when you punched the wall. You calmed down considerably fast, but the initial anger you felt at the woman lasted quite a while. It was very odd,” he tilted his head. “It left me very on edge. I cannot say I enjoyed it very much, but it was quite effective in getting the message across.”

Marinette laughed, nodding. Her own buzz of warning from Robin earlier had been very brief and low, barely a blip on her radar but enough to be felt. He had most likely just been upset for a moment. Marinette, on the other hand, had been burning up with her own fury.

“So, spar?” She asked again, smiling widely. “Maman says a good spar is one of the best ways to get to know a person,” she coaxed, leaning forward a bit. “Please?”

Robin snorted, standing up and stretching his arms. “You did not need to plead, I was about to accept either way. I could perhaps benefit from a new sparring partner.”

Marinette whooped, going to her half of the room. To her slight surprise, a new pink punching bag hung off to the side along with a few high bars for gymnastics. Taking a second, she turned to see that Robin’s own half of the mental world also had a few new additions. Weights, probably just for the familiarity of it, a few training dummies, and a punching bag of his own.

Neat! The girl thought excitedly, the last vestiges of anger draining away to be replaced by wonder. Soulbonds are so cool!

Shaking her head, she walked around to her sewing station and thought for a second. Her pajamas weren’t exactly a good outfit for a spar.

“Uh, how do we change clothes in here?” She asked, turning her head to look back at her soulmate. He, unsurprisingly, had already figured it out. The teen was now in exercise shorts and a perfectly fitting black tank top.

Marinette’s brain momentarily fizzled out.

Those arms! No, the legs! No, oh Kwami, I can see his abs. Shirts that tight should be illegal! Ohhh He has broad shoulders. Am I dead? I think I’m dead.

“Marinette? Are you listening?” The girl jumped, her object of torment suddenly standing with his arms crossed a few feet away.

“Huh? Oh yeah, totally. Just, uh, zoned out for a second.”

“Yeah,” he said with a raised eyebrow that just screamed disbelief. “I was saying that you simply imagine yourself in the outfit you wish to wear. This world is molded by our minds, after all.”

“Right. Easy. Got it,” Marinette nodded a little too fast, closing her eyes and imagining her usual exercise clothes. Black basketball shorts trimmed in red and a red tank top shone into existence, replacing her pink-and-white polka-dotted pajamas. Her hair, which was down from her taking out her pigtails before bed, was up in a messy bun on the back of her neck er head. Once down, she opened her eyes and gasped in joy. She turned to look at herself in the full length mirror next to her sewing station.

Behind her, she had unknowingly left her soulmate in a situation he was wholly unaccustomed to.

Perhaps I should have expected this, he thought sluggishly, feeling really caught off guard. His mind flashed to the memory of her punch splintering odd a few shards of solid brick. But her arms didn’t look that toned in her blouse earlier. Then again, she was wearing long sleeves, he had to stubbornly keep his eyes respectfully above the hips. He knew if he didn’t, his gaze would linger far too long on her muscular thighs. Turn away. You are being indecent he scolded himself, deciding to retreat to the sparring mat first.

After a second to recover from having caught Robin staring at her in the mirror— well, we ARE soulmates. It would be awkward if the attraction wasn’t mutual— Marinette joined him. Seeing as their bodies were not actually physical at the moment, they could skip stretching. Any hits they took would hurt momentarily to simulate the real world, but no actual damage would be taken.

“Ready?” She asked first, receiving a predatory grin in response.

“Are you?”

They both stood at the ready, their legs braced shoulder width apart and their arms tended but at the ready. To his shock, Marinette moved first.

The petite girl lunged, a very familiar high kick brushing uncomfortably close to Robin’s nose as he side-stepped the strike and attempted to grab her ankle. Marinette pulled her leg back too quickly, though, easily going right back into a defensive stance. Robin took the moment to get in close, aiming rapid punches at Marinette’s chest and torso. The girl proved to be just as flexible as she was strong, however, twisting around the wider strikes and batting away the ones she couldn’t avoid with her open palm. Each blocked punch sent a sharp sting through her hand, letting her know in no uncertain terms that she could not let even a single of his hits land.

The second Marinette saw an opening, she grabbed Robin’s bicep and heaved him over her hip. Instead of hitting the mat hard though, the seasoned vigilante tucked into a roll and popped right back up, leaping straight back at his soulmate. One of her punches glanced off his shoulder, forcing him to quickly recover his footing before he stumbled.

There’s that strength she showed earlier he noted. If that had been a direct hit, she might have dislocated my shoulder.

Robin leapt over Marinette’s head, slamming one knee up towards her back. The smaller teen was able to avoid a direct kit, but Robin’s knee still managed to clip right under her left rib cage. Instantly, she felt herself gasp for air. Mon dieu, that’s ridiculous! She thought, quickly hand-springing back to gain some distance as she caught her breath. My body gets a little sturdier outside the suit the longer I use the Ladybug Miraculous, but if he had hit me straight on I would have been down!

Both teen heroes were already slightly out of breath, staring at each other from opposite sides of the mat. They didn’t notice right away, but they each had the same breathless smile overtaking their face. They jumped back in towards each other at the same time.

Their spar was a flurry of punches and high-kicks, flips and ankle-swipes. They landed hits and got hit. Marinette got hit less often than Robin, purely due to her acrobatics and flexibility, but Robin’s tolerance for punishment was leagues (ha, bad joke) higher than Marinette’s. Even though he took more hits, he was in better shape than she was. Therefore, even though each of their strikes carried roughly the same force, it was clear Marinette was the one slowly losing ground. Marinette didn’t have her indestructible suit or enhanced abilities to help her out, at least not beyond what prolonged use of the Ladybug enhanced, but she was holding her own very well despite it.

It was almost twenty minutes —the mindspace making normal stamina levels irrelevant— before Marinette finally managed to grapple Robin and send them both tumbling onto the mat. They wrestled for a long moment, finding their physical strengths almost matched, before Robin finally managed to wrap his arm around Marinette’s throat and pin her legs with his own.

They were both gasping for breath by that point and, even though she lost, Marinette found herself laughing in glee. Robin’s grip loosened briefly before he completely let go, unwinding himself from her and standing up. He didn’t laugh like she did, but he was grinning widely and let out a few soft chuckles. He extended his hand down to his still-giggling soulmate, who grabbed on and allowed him to help her up.

“That was great!” She gushed. “I mean, sure, it stinks that I lost. But I’ll get you next time!”

“I fear you might not be wrong,” Robin admitted with another soft chuckle. “Not all of that was martial arts,” he said, clearly questioning her fighting style casually. Marinette rubbed the back of her head sheepishly.

“Ah, yeah. I took gymnastics as a kid. And my friend Kagami has been trying to teach me how to fence, but I just end up using those movements in melee instead. I’m okay with a foil, but I’m nowhere near the best. Kagami says I’m a natural, but I think she’s just sparing my feelings. And, uh, the whole parkour thing I mentioned.”

“Right. Parkour,” Robin agreed with a nod that Marinette knew meant he didn’t believe her but wouldn’t push. For now.

Marinette’s lips slowly widened into a devilish grin. “Hey, do you play Ultimate Mecha Strike Five?” She asked slyly, and Robin narrowed his eyes through his mask.

“Why do I feel like agreeing would be a mistake?”

“That’s a yes!” Marinette cackled and dragged Robin over to his couch. “Come on, let’s play!”

Seeing as both of the were asleep and their other senses inaccessible through the Tv, it allowed them to load the game. Surprisingly enough, Robin actually put up a decent fight.

Unsurprisingly, Marinette still won. Five times in a row.

“Alright,” Robin put his controller down, glancing over at an all too smug Marinette, crossing his arms. “Let's recap; I’ve discovered the situation in Paris is bleaker than I thought, you are surprisingly strong for your frame, you are much better of a fighter than you let on, and you have a vengeful streak.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Marinette cooed, her hand over her chest as she fluttered her eyelashes with false innocence. Robin just deadpanned at her. “I am completely innocent! An angel! I would never stoop to petty revenge over losing a spar!”

“Uh huh,” Robin said blandly. “Let’s revisit this argument when you decide to be more truthful, ‘Angel’.”

“Anytime, birdboy.”

—*—*—*—*—*

Thankfully, the next few days weren’t as hectic as the first twenty-four hours. Robin did have school and vigilante business to see to, so he and Marinette only met in their Mindspace for the rest of the week. Which wasn’t bad, even on nights when one or the other stayed up so late that they only had three or four hours in the mental world. Somehow, despite their brains remaining constantly active, the magic is the soulbond always left them more refreshed when they awoke than they would normally feel after that amount of sleep. And Marinette had her own things to do with her class, which included a brief (and very therapeutic) two-day visit to Metropolis since it wasn’t far away, to broaden the sights they could see. When they got back, they had one full rest day where they and a buddy could visit anywhere they wanted, provided they stayed within three blocks of the hotel and called to check in with Bustier every two hours.

The class, used to recovering from terrifying circumstances, had almost completely recovered (as much as could be expected, anyway) from their GothCorp nightmare by the time they returned from Metropolis. Lila had quietly thanked Marinette the day after the attempted robbery, but followed the thanks with a threat to never make her look weak again.

So, suffice to say, the liar was back to her usual tricks after the brief reprieve of the Metropolis visit as well. Milder than usual, sure, but still back to normal.

Meanwhile, Richard Grayson had seemingly spontaneously asked for vacation time in order to help his adoptive father out with company business in Paris. He landed in the City of Lights the same day that the Parisians got back into Gotham. He quickly realized that this trip would take more than just a few days. In fact it wasn’t until Friday, exactly one week after Damian had met his Soulmate, that Dick found the ability to track down the Parisian heroes.

Akuma alert sirens rang all around the city, confirming for the experienced hero that the natives had gotten accustomed to the constant havoc. Those who had been around since the beginning of the Akuma terror ran towards shelters with practiced speed.

It was the perfect distraction for Dick to change into Nightwing and take to the rooftops. Upon reaching the Eiffel Tower, the blue clad hero saw a bizarre scene. A male dressed in an aqua colored, snake-themed uniform and a petite female in a red, black, and gold uniform with a spiral down one leg were facing off against…

A… Giant… Cat lady...

Not even a giant half-cat person. She was a legitimate fifteen-foot tall old lady in classic Cat Lady attire. Knitted cat-embroidered shawl, cat-eared knitted beanie, a crochet needle that she was using to hypnotize cats and change their size and species. Her skin was bright orange with shiny silver tiger stripes, and her face had giant black glasses in the shape of a domino mask.

It was really, really weird. She had two twenty-foot panthers and a lion that was half the size of the Eiffel Tower growling at the two heroes who, surprisingly, didn’t look very affected at all by the fever dream they were facing. Smaller house cats were all slinking out of the nearby streets to ominously surround the two heroes, their eyes all glowing bright gold.

“You know, Chat would be making so many puns right now,” The red hero, Ryujo if Dick remembered correctly, mused as the two analyzed their options.

“He would also be making a lot of ‘family shouldn’t fight’ jokes,” the surprisingly zen male replied, flipping up and out of the way onto a nearby roof. “This should be easy, but I will provide backup if you need it.”

“Don’t worry Viperion, I got this,” Ryuko brushed off. “Water dragon!”

The hero turned into water before Nightwing’s eyes, swirling around the square. The water scared off the smaller cats, and the lion recoiled slightly, but it and the panthers lunged anyway, trying to catch the stream of water. The floating river easily avoided every strike, winding around the old lady’s crochet needle when they weren’t looking and snapping it in half.

A purple butterfly, exactly like those Dick had seen in the videos he and the others watched as research and exactly how Marinette had described them, fluttered out of the broken object. A quick flash of yellow darted onto the scene, a bee-themed woman carrying an ornate pot with Chinese engravings on it flew over and trapped the butterfly in the pot.

“There!” She said triumphantly, smiling wide. The crazy cat woman faded away, shrinking down into a cute little, completely normal, old lady with her gray hair in a high bun.

“Oh dear,” she brought a hand to her cheek. “Where am I? What happened?”

Nightwing watched as the heroes comforted the victim, watching as Queen Bee and Viperion left in one direction and Ryuko, whose choker had started beeping, left in another.

He followed the two paired up heroes.

After Marinette was done emptying her stomach, she accepted a towel from one of the EMTs on site and wiped her mouth, rinsing it out with the water bottle also handed to her and taking a deep breath. The three vigilantes were still there, giving a brief report to the commissioner, who had escalated the situation earlier because of protocol. Marinette knew better than to be mad though, knowing he had done exactly what he should have had there not been such a thing as vigilantes.

Robin saw her recover, his gaze not really moving from her too often to begin with. He nodded to her once, a subtle jerk of his head asking if she wanted to join him and the other heroes. She shrugged and headed over. She knew she would have to give her own statement anyway, and the commissioner had already stated he wanted to talk to her personally.

The older man’s eyes lit up a bit in relief when he saw her, the softness in them relaxing something in Marinette. She gave him a lopsided smile.

“Hello. I’m commissioner Gordon, it’s nice to meet you. Although it would have been better under different circumstances,” he greeted politely. Marinette had to do her best to keep her eyes from straying to the ambulance that she knew held the corpse.

“Marinette Dupain-Cheng,” she introduced back, taking his hand in a brief bit firm shake. “I’m assuming you need my statement now?”

Soft eyes scanned hers, then flitted over to the vigilantes standing silently behind her for a second. “Only if you feel up to it,” he assured gently. “You were in a more precarious situation than any of the others, I understand if you need time to process and rest,” he was saying, but Marinette began to shake her head before he was even done speaking.

“I’m fine, Commissioner. I knew what I was risking when I decided to comfort Lila, the classmate who started having a panic attack, but I rather be the one in the dangerous position than sit back and let anyone else get hurt. Especially for something they can’t fully control,” Marinette let a little wry grin curl her lips. “This isn’t actually my first time being held hostage, just the first time guns were ever involved. France is much nicer than America in that respect, at the least. Not nearly so many firearms to worry about.”

Gordon snorted his agreement, and nodded over to a bench. “At least sit down, you’ve had a long day. And then we can start from the moment the bastards stormed in.”

Marinette’s nodded, turning to follow the commissioner.

“Cough once if you want us to pick you up after your statement,” Robin’s voice quietly filtered through their still active bond. Marinette coughed once. She didn’t think she would be getting a lot of comfort from her classmates, who were all silent or seeking comfort from their closest friend. She didn’t want to bother Alix, who was with Ivan and Kim. Besides, comfort wasn’t exactly what she needed right now. Not from them. If Chloe had been there, or Luka or Kagami, then she would have stuck to their side like glue— or like a koala, with how much hugging there was likely to be. But Marinette had become more closed off with her class over the years, and right then she just wanted some understanding silence.

Twenty minutes later found her, after a brief talk between Red Robin and Madam Bustier, on top of a rooftop with the three vigilantes. They had been really subtle about it, and she was pretty sure Bustier expected them to only escort her home. She knew the teacher wouldn’t check the hotel room when they got back, so she wasn’t really in any hurry.

The air was mostly silent that high up, onto the faint drone of usual city noise perforating the atmosphere.

“So,” Red Hood began conversationally. “Nightwing and Robin filled us all in on the Paris situation. Is that how you were able to remain so calm?” He asked, getting an elbow from Red Robin for being insensitive. To their surprise though, Marinette just chuckled.

“Unfortunately,” she responded with a grin. “Paris is a lot different than here, though, which I think my class forgot until tonight. They’re too used to everything bad being reversed by Ladybug,” she admitted, tilting her head back to look up at the sky. “I’m the only person in my class who has never been Akumatized. But for some reason, a lot of Akumas seem to be centered around me,” she closed her eyes and sighed. “I caused one on accident, when I snuck out to spend time with my friends instead of my Grandma who had come to visit and had a whole bunch of things planned. Her hurt from my decision got her Akumatized into a witch who tried to kill me,” she explained. “My dad got Akumatized once, and locked me up in a literal tower to protect me— that one was a bit weird,” she snorted again. “A classmate of mine got Akumatized after I rejected him. That one was… creepy. He forced me on a date and everything,” her nose wrinkled up. “I’ve become pretty careful about how I treat people, even more so than I already was,” she confessed. “Anything can set off negative emotions strong enough to get someone Akumatized. The only time I came close to getting possessed, my teacher pushed me out of the way and got Akumatized instead. That one was probably one of the most bizarre of the attacks,” she shuddered at the memory. “The worst part is that kids are actually the most at risk. I’ve had kids get Akumatized while I was babysitting them on several occasions, just because I didn’t let them stay up late or keep a toy they wanted. And—”

“Marinette, you’re rambling,” Robin interrupted gently. His voice made the girl open her eyes, and sit up straight from where she had been leaning back against the wall of the roof.

“Sorry,” she apologized. “I’m just— he can’t come back.”

“No, he can’t,” Red Robin agreed, the man plopping down to sit a few feet from her. Robin was still standing about a foot to Marinette’s right, keeping watch over everything. Red hood had actually been the first to sit down, legs out straight in front of him. He was to Marinette’s left. All three men knew exactly who Marinette meant when she said ‘he’, and focused on her as they prepared for the breakdown.

“I just— I don’t get it,” she started, staring down at her clenched fists as her eyebrows pulled down low over her eyes. “I’ve seen people die before. It happens a lot in Paris, surprisingly. One time, when a girl was Akumatized into a mermaid monster and flooded the whole city, I didn’t quite get to a high enough roof on time. I had to swim for a bit, straight through—“ she took a deep breath before continuing. “Straight through so many bodies. Only about a couple thousand people out of all of Paris survived that attack, but Ladybug won and everything was fixed. Nobody remembers dying. The survivors are the ones in therapy, and everyone else is confused as to why. But it wasn’t her fault. She was manipulated, used, brainwashed. I get that. I don’t blame her, nobody who understands the situation blames her for it. It’s all on HawkMoth. But this— today—“ she couldn’t help it, she swung one arm out and punched the short wall next to her. A few chips of brick broke off from the force. “She was a grown woman in her right mind, she wasn’t under magic and she took pride— I saw her eyes, she enjoyed it— she enjoyed killing him. She felt no remorse, she didn’t hesitate, as if she had been waiting for the chance to murder. And I can’t understand that. I’ll never understand that. That’s what made me sick. The thought that somebody can just not care,” Marinette’s next laugh was wet, and she could feel the warm tracks of tears down her cheeks. “Maybe that’s naive of me. Maybe I’m too idealistic. But I just can’t understand. I’m so used to understanding, sympathizing, knowing exactly why people do things. But I can’t. I can’t do that here—or maybe I can. Maybe the answer is just because she wanted to, and it sickens me.”

“Good,” Red Hood was the one that spoke up, his tone level and serious. “That makes you better than most of us. But you can’t let it keep you down. You can’t let it change who you are. Not understanding isn’t a weakness, it’s a strength. It means you’re that much less likely of ever becoming like her.”

Marinette took a deep breath again, letting her shoulders relax. “Maybe,” she agreed softly. “But I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to beat someone into a pulp as much as I did right after she shot him. I’m not typically a very violent person, but,” she looked over at the damage she caused to the wall next to her and wrinkled her nose with a small, self-deprecating grin. “I still have my moments.”

“... that high kick sated some of it, I hope,” Robin spoke up finally. Marinette looked up at him, and immediately frowned. His body language was much more withdrawn than when they first arrived at the roof and she didn’t know why. Was it something she said? “Any harder and you would have crushed his windpipe.”

“Yeah!” Red hood perked up again. “That was a thing of beauty! Perfect disarm of the bastard’s gun, too. A bit improvised, but very well done. Who taught you?”

Marinette rubbed the back of her neck shyly, letting out an embarrassed laugh. Years of spontaneous practice, she thought sarcastically. Aloud she said; “Not long after the Akuma attacks started, my mom decided I needed to learn self defense. She has three black belts, believe it or not, and took it upon herself to teach me,” Marinette told them. It wasn’t even a lie, though her mom had taken almost two years before starting to teach Marinette. “My dad is usually the one people expect to be the dangerous one. He’s huge and being a baker has given him some serious muscle,” she explained with a fond smile. “But whenever we have a rowdy customer? It’s not my dad that scares them off, I can assure you.”

All three of them chuckled or smiled a bit at that. Marinette stood up, stretching her arms and looking over the rooftops longingly. She still had energy to work out, adrenaline that hadn’t quite faded, but she figured going freerunning after everything that had just happened was probably not the best idea. Instead, she turned to Robin.

“Okay,” She wiped her face to clear any lingering tears and offered him a surprisingly bright smile for the kind of day she’d had. Robin found himself blinking at it. “Enough sobbing! I think I’m ready to go back to the hotel now,” she told him, earning a nod. Narrowing her eyes at his closed off mannerisms, she turned her head to the other two heroes, who had already stood up. “Can Robin take me back on his own? I don’t want to keep you guys from your patrols any longer than I already have.”

The two red-themed heroes shared a glance before shrugging. “We’ll be nearby,” Red Robin replies first. “But Robin’s not a kid anymore, so it should be fine.”

“Besides, we know better than to get in between soulmates,” Red hood added, swinging his arms to warm them up. “Just remember, we are all hooked up to the comms so if you’re gonna do anything, please shut them off fir—“

The helmeted hero was forced to duck under a katana swipe that nearly took his head off, Robin growling.

“Don’t be lewd!” He snapped, sliding his sword back into the sheath on his back. Marinette, poor girl, was overtaken with laughter.

She just laughed, new tears breaking out of the corner of her eyes from the force of the laughs. “W-we’ve barely known each other for a d-day!” She choked out between guffaws. “Oh god, it’s barely been twenty-four hours. What even is my life?” She stood up, getting control of herself and rubbing her forehead. She patted Robin’s arm in a show of confidence trust honestly surprised Red Robin and Red Hood.

Then again, the two of them had grown up believing that Damian’s soul mate would either be just as bloodthirsty as him, or scared off by him in less than five seconds. So. Marinette was honestly turning their whole worldviews topsy turvy. Her smile, wide and open and bright, contrasted Robin’s straightfaced brooding as he grunted and held a hand out to Marinette. She had just had one good, emotional rant before going completely sunny and energetic again.

And honestly? The two older heroes didn’t know whether that fact worried or impressed them more. If she hadn’t already admitted to being used to suppressing her emotions, they would have just figured it out.

—*—*—*—*—*

“Are you okay?” Marinette asked when they reached her hotel room, turning on the lights for him after they climbed through the window together. The boy in question raised an eyebrow over his domino mask, crossing his arms.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

The pigtailed girl rolled her eyes, gently setting her purse down on the couch in the room. Wayne had sprung to get everyone full blown suites for their month-long stay. Something about it being more comfortable for such a long trip.

It also softened the blow of everyone having to sign waivers for the trip. It was the reason Marinette knew the trip wouldn’t be canceled over the robbery mess at GothCorp. Everyone and their parents agreed that they would not cancel the whole trip if crime occurred around the students but none of them were hurt, though they could pull out individual students if they were injured or the parents were that worried.

“Ever since my little rant,” she started, Robin’s eyes narrowing at her downplay of what had happened. “You’ve been more closed off and subtly avoiding me. Did I say something insulting?”

Robin blinked, surprised she had caught it. “You could have waited until we slept to ask me,” he pointed out. One delicate eyebrow raised, blue eyes staring into his own green ones flatly.

“Oh yeah? Would you have gone to sleep at all tonight?” She asked. “Or would you have avoided me?”

Robin remained silent, making Marinette nod.

“It was…” Robin paused, thinking over what he wanted to say. “Red Hood has killed a lot of people,” he said instead, making his soulmate blink slowly at the rapid subject change. She tilted her head slowly, and then nodded knowing that Red Hood wasn’t the actual subject there.

“Yes… My research told me a bit about that, though it was pretty vague,” she admitted slowly. “But he doesn’t anymore.”

“He still uses guns.”

“Okay, Robin,” she sighed and sat down on the couch next to her bag heavily. “But Red Hood is still a hero now. He spends his nights fighting crime. Do I condone killing? Obviously not. But he’s trying to be a good person, and that’s what matters to me. He doesn’t confuse me like the girl earlier did.”

“Oh,” Robin said softly, unable to look away from her for a long moment. She just smiled back at him calmly, not knowing why her soulmate had needed to hear those words from her but somehow feeling like she understood anyway. Robin used a sword, and it was clear he was a master of it. It wasn’t a stretch to assume he might have killed before. “I see. Well, I’ll leave now. We will see each other again in a short while anyway.”

“Of course,” she agreed, still with that soft smile that Robin couldn’t quite look away from on her face. “See you in the Mindspace.”

Robin didn’t respond, just jumping out of her window.

“He seems nice,” Tikki’s voice piped up, making Marinette look over to her Kwami floating in the air a few feet away with a sly smile on her face. Marinette felt her cheeks heat up.

“H-he is…”

“You did good today, Marinette,” Tikki praises, patting her wielder’s hand with her own tiny one. “And not just with the attack. You did good with your Soulmate, I think he’s the kind that will need to be confronted about his emotions. He won’t talk about them first,” the Kwami informed the teen, who nodded and got ready for a much needed shower before bed.

“I know. I don’t even know how I know. It’s partly his body language, or his word choice, and I have gotten pretty good at reading people. But…” Marinette just shrugged. “I guess part of me just knows what I need to do.”

Tikki laughed. “Ah, to be young and soul-bonded~” Tikki teased.

“Tikkiiiiiii!”

“Sooo,” a familiar large form propped itself against the desk under the Batcomputer with one arm. “When do we get to meet Mrs. Demon Spawn, huh?”

“Go away, Todd,” Damian said dismissively, tapping away at the keyboard. “And if I have my way? Never. The last thing I need is for her to be corrupted by you simpletons.”

“What are you— is that your soulmate’s class?” Timothy Drake asked as soon as he came into the Batcave and laid eyes on what Damian was searching. “I thought we agreed that I would do her background check so that you didn’t risk losing her trust or making her mad, Damian,” Tim reminded the young Robin as he stalked over to join his two brothers at the large computer. Damian waved one hand carelessly.

“Yes, yes. But Marinette gave me permission to conduct my own investigation. She is entirely too worried about how said investigation may negatively impact her school and classmates, despite them being no better than chittering rats. But I managed to get her to agree that their treatment of her is inadequate and that I may go about fixing that inadequacy on my own terms.”

“You’re not allowed to murder a whole class,” Tim retorted easily. “Not even just the teacher, Dami.”

The raven haired teen spun around in his chair to nail his older brother with a fierce emerald glare. “Murder was never considered, Drake. It would only further compromise my soulmate’s mental health, and that is not an option. Complete and utter social annihilation and loss of occupation as a teacher, however, is still very much a viable route for me to consider. Possibly jail time, depending on what I find. Nobody is allowed to harass a future Wayne, much less someone the universe considers to be my perfect compliment. I shall make sure they are fully aware of their horrendous misstep in due time.”

Tim frowned, eyebrows furrowing. It was kind of cute, seeing the cold Damian acting like this, but… “Don’t you think that you’re being a little controlling? Or overprotective?”

“Not at all. It is in the best interest of both halves of a bond that their soulmate remains in good health. That is all.”

“So… you’re not treating this whole thing like a personal insult?”

“Isn’t it?”

Jason snorted, and Damian watched as Tim’s face twisted into something halfway between concerned and constipated.

“I thought B was bad with emotions,” Jason quipped, standing straighter and crossing his arms. “Would you like to commission some custom bubble wrap fashion with that smothering?”

“I am not… smothering,” Damian protested, practically spitting the last word. Tim sighed, shaking his head.

“Not yet, I’m sure she’s flattered by the whole protective thing you’ve got going on right now. But the way you’re handling it can easily get smothering. And even if you do find proof of negligence in the school, it will take time to get things done. And their class would need a substitute chaperone if we get their teacher deported, unless you want the whole class and your soulmate to join her.”

“I’m sure Father can arrange for one. He is the host for their trip after all, it would not be amiss.”

“You’re missing the point, Demon Spawn,” Jason interrupted. “This girl’s your soulmate, right? And Dickie-bird told me she had taken down two of the men almost before you guys got there to help. She’s obviously pretty independent, yeah? How would you feel if she tried to solve all of your problems for you without your input?”

“If she managed to do so before I could solve my own problems, I would be suitably impressed.”

Tim facepalmed, muttering something along the lines of ‘I don’t have enough coffee in my blood to deal with this right now.’ “Okay, let’s put it this way,” Tim said slowly as if he was talking to a child, instantly making Damian bristle. “Let’s imagine that a group of people kept escaping you and robin and left you a bit roughed up after each encounter. No, don’t argue about the unlikelihood of anyone handing you your ass because, contrary to what you might think, you aren’t invincible. Remember the whole you’ve-died-already thing? Anyway. These guys keep leaving you a bit roughed up and manage to escape over and over again, and your soulmate gets protective and taken them down for you without involving you in it. What would your reaction be?”

The young man opened his mouth, shut it, thought about it for another moment, and then slowly began to speak. “I think I would be impressed that she could do such a thing where I could not. However, if I am the one being bested— as unlikely as that is— I would want to teach those idiots my superiority personally. I do not need to be babied or protected like a liability.”

“There we go, I knew we’d get your brain to work eventually,” Jason snarked with a sharp smirk. Damian whipped out his foot like a snake, hooking it around Jason’s ankle and sending the larger male hurtling to the ground heavily. Unfortunately, the buff male had enough experience to break his fall with his palms and roll back up to standing without even getting the breath knocked out of him, but at least the maneuver kept Jason a few extra feet away.

“Do you think Marinette wants to be babied, Damian?”

That question came from the Father Figure himself, Bruce Wayne leaning against a wall a decent distance away from his sons. His sole biological spawn scowled, and spun back to the computer.

“I will not cease my research into her class,” he said stubbornly. There was a brief moment of silence before he continued; “I will, however, consult her on what she wants to do moving forward, the next time we speak.”

“Yeah, that reminds me. How did you talk to her?” Tim spoke up, eyebrows furrowed. “You left your phone here in the Cave last night, and I know for a fact that you didn’t sneak out.”

“Guess for yourself, supposed genius,” the youngest boy in the room retorted in an all too familiar bratty tone. “I don’t want to hand feed you the answers or you’ll lose brain cells you can’t spare.”

“Why you—“ Tim growled somewhere in the back of his throat.

“Boys.” Bruce intercepted before one of them could lunge and start a brawl. “Does your bond come with a mindspace, Damian? Or a mental connection?”

“Tch,” Damian decided to cut his losses, saving his progress in his research to his personal server before even entertaining the idea of answering. When he did, it was a simple; “We can go there when we meditate or sleep.”

Bruce nodded, seemingly deep in thought. “I see. That was how you and Marinette got your bond figured out so quickly, then. It’s odd for a mind space to have two ways to access it, though. Usually soul bonds that have mindspaces, already rare in their own right, have one sole way of access. Sleep, meditation, verbal agreement, and manual activation of a soul mark being the most common.”

“I’ve heard of soulmates only ending up in their mind space if one of them was in extreme danger, or even in a coma,” Jason offered helpfully. Damian glared at him, not appreciative of that addition.

“Enough,” the youngest hero barked, standing up and marching to the nearest exit. “I have indulged quite enough gossip about my soul bond. I’m going out on patrol, and if you don’t want me going alone then you better hurry up.”

Which was apparently not a good decision, since a crackle started up in Robin’s ears before noise filtered in. There was faint music, and fainter breathing. Robin furrowed his brows even as he began to dress in his uniform.

“Robin?” The sound of Marinette’s voice, the girl clearly talking to herself in an empty room, confirmed Damian’s suspicion that audio only mode had been turned on. “Are you okay?”

“Of course,” he replied easily, keeping his voice low lest his nuisance of a family catch him talking to empty air. “Is there something wrong? We agreed this mode would be for important situations only.”

“I know,” Marinette’s voice filtered crystal clear through their bond. “But I felt a buzz coming from you, like when your character takes damage in a game and the controller vibrates.”

“That’s odd,” Robin said aloud, inwardly exasperated at having such a convoluted, childish bond. Why couldn’t it have been something more practical? Even a complete body-switch bond would have been more tolerable than this complex mess. “I haven’t even gone on patrol yet, there is nothing that has caused me any physical damage.”

The silence on the other end was long, long enough for Robin to finish changing and arming himself. Long enough for him to grow curious. “What are you pondering?” He asked, knowing from the subtle background noises that were clearly not from his own surroundings that she had not yet changed the bond’s mode.

“I was just thinking,” she mused slowly. “I don’t think our bond is physical at all. No physical markings, we aren’t aware of one another’s physical state in any way that some other bonds are. It seems entirely based on free will and emotion. Seeing both of our perspectives at once, or seeing through the other person’s eyes while in our personal world—“ Marinette paused for a second, slightly stuttering as she tried to find the right wording in her third language. She gave up and switched to French, knowing he wouldn’t have a problem understanding. “It’s like a surveillance camera. It’s less like a mental connection, and more like a way for us to keep an eye out for one another. Like, protectiveness or worry given form,” she explained as best as she could. “Audio Only is a less drastic form of that, like reassurance. Privacy is, well, privacy. So maybe when one of us experiences a flash of extreme emotion—“

“It will translate as a game-related response through the bond,” Robin completed, eyebrows raised at the surprising insight from such a seemingly simple girl. Creative, too. “But there are too many emotions to encompass the small amount of signals a controller can give.”

“Maybe it’s just anger,” Marinette mused. “We both know how to fight, you obviously, and we have a sparring mat in our personal space. It would make sense for the bond to warn us if one or the other is angry enough for the other to have to be careful.”

“If only all soul bonds were that considerate,” Robin grumbled. Soul bonds were not infallible. Or rather, the people who bore them weren’t. A soul bond could only remain pure for as long as the person who had it didn’t corrupt into something dangerous to their soulmate. Addictions were the primary cause of this corruption, misuse of magic a second one. The bond could never be removed, but people thought so highly of them that those stuck in corrupted bonds couldn’t often escape. It was looked down upon, and extremely confusing to most of the population, for anyone to willingly renounce their soulmate.

So much could be solved if every bond offered warnings like his and Marinette’s.

“Hey, Demon Spawn! You’re the one who made a dramatic exit and said you were going on patrol, what’s taking you so damn long?!” Jason’s voice bellowed from the other side of the door, followed by harsh pounding of his fist on the metal. Robin grumbled, glad that Jason’s penchant for calling him demon-spawn at least served the purpose of protecting his identity.

“I’ll be right there, you impatient imbecile!” Damian barked back, before lowering his voice. “You need to turn Privacy back on now,” he hissed. It was the first time he had used a rude tone of voice to Marinette since their bond formed. Surprisingly, the girl wasn’t upset.

“Shh, I’m trying to meditate,” she whisper-yelled right back. It took almost a whole precious minute, but the sounds soon shut off and Damian— Robin— allowed himself to relax and jerk open the door before Jason could bang some more.

“Do you mind?” He seethed. “My soulmate called me, you almost gave away my identity!” Jason didn’t need to know the intricacies of his and Marinette's soul bond. Nobody did. Robin would not speak of the details to anyone other than his soulmate herself unless said detail(s) were vital to the situation at hand. Damian was just glad he had actually retrieved his phone and had kept it in his jean pockets even while changing into his uniform. It sat on top of his folded clothes now, a shining beacon of misdirection.

“Your soulmate heard you calling me an imbecile, then?” Jason snorted. His features weren’t exactly discernible under the helmet, but Damian didn’t need to see his face to know it was infuriating. “Did they at least defend me?”

“Of course not, they have no idea who I was speaking to.”

“Great, so they’ll let you insult anybody,” Jason shook his head. “If Dickie bird hadn’t already shown me a picture of her, I’d assume she was some overly buff assassin girl with coal for a soul.”

“Coal?” Damian repeated blandly, quickly heading for his motorcycle.

“Yeah. Black, made of dead things, and liable to light on fire or explode under the correct conditions. Horrible for the environment when burned as fuel.”

“I’m going to ignore that and attempt to save my intelligence from your nonsensical babbling,” Was all the notice Robin gave before speeding out of the Batcave as fast as his bike could take him. Unfortunately for him, Jason had more experience driving and easily caught up on his own motorcycle.

I hate this family.

—*—*—*—*—*

“... And obviously I think Wayne Enterprises is wayyyy better, because my Damiboo is going to inherit it and I totally support him, but it’s nice to scope out business competitors considering I’ll likely be running the whole thing by his side in the future,” Liar Rossi was at it again. Alix and Marinette shared a look.

“I don’t get how she still has everyone hooked on the idea that she’s dating Damian Wayne of all people,” the skater whispered. She was without her usual roller skates, but only because their current tour location didn’t allow them. Apparently Goth Corp was anti-fun. They didn’t even tour anywhere with anything dangerous, and if they saw any equipment it was from the other side of a thick wall of glass. A pro like Alix would never have caused an issue skating around everywhere, but Goth Corp was adamant in denying her. It was odd for Marinette, considering Alix was shorter than usual in normal sneakers and it threw the part-time hero off. “Especially when she’s still hanging off of Adrien like he’s her personal jungle gym,” the model in question looked so resigned and uncomfortable that Marinette ached for the poor guy.

The pigtailed girl sighed, shaking her head. She was five seconds away from doing her best to come up with a plan to temporarily separate the leech and her victim. Even if Adrien wasn’t there for her often in civilian personas, she knew he wasn’t a bad guy. She also had no idea what it was like to be him, live his life, have a father like Gabriel. She had no doubt he’d figure everything out eventually though, and she’d welcome him with open arms if he ever decided to go back to being the friend she once adored.

“I know,” she responded out loud in a soft whisper. “It’s almost like she’s got them all under a spell.”

“Think she’s a witch?” Alix asked curiously, studying the sausage-haired teen with narrowed eyes. Her friend shook her head.

“I don’t think so. Unless she’s just really bad at magic and can’t hypnotize us with everyone else for some reason.”

“So, failure witch?”

Marinette was about to laugh and respond, her whole class just filing into the lobby of Goth Corp after seeing everything their very short tour had to offer. They had been scheduled to tour for only an hour, and at the closest time to closing as possible. Damocles, Bustier, and Lila (no surprise there) had been so adamant about wanting to visit that their host had arranged the trip for them— but it was clear Wayne wanted them to spend as little time as possible there.

And suddenly, everyone agreed. Because not a second after Alix and Marinette, at the very back of the group, entered the lobby, the doors were kicked in and no less than twenty heavily armed individuals stormed into the room.

“Get the fuck down!” One man, presumably the one in charge, pointed a terrifying semiautomatic at the class as the others he had just broken into the building with surrounded the teacher, students, tour guides, and the few unlucky employees that were still there. “Hands on your heads, any phones or anything hand them over slowly. Nuh uh little lady, one hand only. You don’t need both of them to hand over a phone—good. Not a fucking word out of any of you, got it? Herman, Jake, get them all up against the wall,” he nodded to two men, who broke formation to prod the group of kids and adults towards one corner of the room.

“See here? You all are going to be the perfect fucking hostages or you’ll be the perfect fucking examples, capiche?” A woman broke from the ring of armed people to stand next to the leader guy, who nodded silently. The woman aimed her semi-automatic at one of the employees.

“Get up,” she barked, walking over to the man. Once he shakily stood up, the woman grabbed him roughly by the bicep and dragged him over to the front desk, where she shoved the desk phone into his hands. “Call the big boss. And watch your fingers,” she nodded to the several guys aiming straight at them with their guns, and propped her own on the table so that the muzzle pressed into the guy’s chest. “If you accidentally dial any emergency shit, then me or my buddies will accidentally fill you with lead. Got it?”

“I-I—I can’t! He went home for the day, and—“

“Then call his fucking cellphone, idiot,” she cut him off with a snarl, rattling off a number out loud. Gulping and deciding not to question how she knew Boyle’s number, he scrambled to punch it in.

Meanwhile, the French class in the corner was panicking. It had finally set in that they were not in Paris, which meant that any damage or deaths here would not be reversed. Alix was starting to hyperventilate despite the focus in her eyes. She wanted to do something. Marinette could see it, but Alix also knew the gravity of the situation and wouldn’t dare act. The contradiction was making her panic.

So Marinette whispered her name, making Alix’s eyes snap over to her. Blue eyes stared into hers, calm and steady and grounding.

“Deep breaths,” the Asian girl whispered firmly. “We can’t fight, but they want us to be scared. We can deny them that,” she looked over at her other classmates. The ones still lucid enough through their terror locked their eyes on her, her whispering attracting their adrenaline-heightened senses. “Everyone, meditate. Calm down and we’ll be fine.”

I’ll make sure of it, though I was really hoping to never have to use my bond like this, Marinette thought as she closed her eyes. “Breathe with me. One… two… three…” but I always have had the worst luck, haven’t I? Even if having Tikki has made it a lot better over the years, she felt her palm lightly brush her purse as she thought about Tikki. She couldn’t risk being Ladybug in Gotham, but the lucky Kwami wasn’t the only one she had with her. Still, she would only use a Miraculous as an absolute last resort.

She really hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

White surrounded Marinette for a brief second before familiar splashed of green and pink informed her that she had successfully reached her and Robin’s private world. She didn’t allow herself the usual few moments of admiring the fact that the space even existed like she had every other time she’s visited it over the past almost twenty-four hours, instead rushing over to the TV and thinning her lips.

The night before she had turned Robin’s volume on low and covered his viewpoint with the options screen until he went to sleep to join her, so that she wouldn't risk figuring out anything he didn’t want her to know. As long as the Tv was on, it was impossible to shut off the other person’s POV on the screen entirely. But now she turned the volume up, and watched through his eyes as he buried his fist into some thug’s face. As soon as it was apparent that he was in no immediate risk, which only took a second since apparently the now knocked out thus had been the last guy standing in that particular alleyway with Robin, she turned on Audio Only. Her own side of the split screen was black, but the sounds were still loud and clear considering she was still awake. She hadn’t noticed the other night on the empty rooftop, but now she could tell that even in meditation she could clearly hear her surroundings.

She saw the left side of the screen jerk slightly as Robin stiffened, and then let out a “shit! Oracle—“

Marinette ignored the rest of what he said, bringing herself out of meditation with Audio Only still on. She was pretty sure her soulmate would catch on to the fact that she wouldn’t be able to talk much in her current situation, but the guys holding the building at gunpoint were doing more than enough talking of their own to fill him in on the important bits.

“Cough once if you can see any identifying marks on their uniforms, twice if you can’t,” Robin’s soft but commanding voice filtered through their bond.

Marinette studied the group for a moment before coughing twice as subtly as she could.

“Okay, not a shock there. Oracle hacked into the surveillance cameras already but I was hoping it was something more easily seen in person. We’re on our way. Stay calm, stay down, don’t do anything stupid.”

Marinette allowed a soft growl as her response to that, getting only a short snort in reply.

But that plan only held for about five minutes. Marinette was keeping a very close eye on everything, her Ladybug mindset the only keeping her from being in the same mental state as her classmates. She let her eyes slide to the side, observing that Adrien was in his own Chat Noir mindset and just as eerily calm and focused as she was. She was at least glad that he wasn’t fingering his ring. He and Ladybug had had a long talk about both of them needing to only be sighted in Paris and nowhere else after the last time he left to go on a trip out of town and had taken his Miraculous for a little joy ride over the rooftops. She was just glad nobody got clear shots and just wrote him off as Catwoman.

And that was when Lila started having a violent panic attack that drew Marinette’s attention. She had no idea what set it off or if it was just the whole situation finally sinking in, but Marinette saw genuine tears for the first time flow down the girl’s face and leave her skin red and patchy. Her sobs weren’t loud, but her sudden begging and pleading were. Her eyes were dilated and crazed, and Marinette knew immediately that this was not faked. Lila was in full hysterics, and she was going to get herself shot.

Before the Asian girl could move, the leader of the group looked over with a scowl and a growl. “Shut her the fuck in, now!”

Nobody moved. Not even Madam Bustier. Nobody had the composure to calm themselves down, let alone someone else.

But, despite how much she despised Lila on a personal level, Marinette would never let anyone suffer through a panic attack by themselves, let alone get killed for it.

So she carefully rushed over before Adrien could do much more than shift in place. He had been about to help Lila too, but Marinette couldn’t allow that. Somehow the two had been separated, and she didn’t want to know how the armed men with short patience would react to a boy rushing out from the back of a group of hostages towards their leader.

But Marinette? They didn’t react. She kneeled by Lila, and spoke in soft English to her. She did her best to calm the girl down, but the Italian just wasn’t responding. She was too far in shock. So Marinette took a risk, and started speaking in French. Slowly and carefully, as if speaking to a baby. It took a few seconds, but Lila eventually came back to earth and focused on the classmate she tormented so often. Lila took a deep breath, and asked;

“What are we going to do?” In English. In soft, scared, but perfectly intelligible English.

Seeing movement out of the corner of her eye, Marinette started to talk faster to try and reassure her until a calloused hand gripped her around the arm and tugged her up.

“I told you to shut her up, not plot with her!” The leader growled into Marinette’s face. Blue eyes swung around until they met Adrien’s lime green ones, and she quickly shook her head.

“Stay down,” she told him, letting the leader drag her to the middle of the floor and out of the immediate range of her classmates. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Don’t just repeat my advice,” Robin’s voice came through the bond again, but Marinette could hear the tenseness to it. “ETA three minutes. Stay alive.”

“So what were you two talking about in that fancy language of yours, eh?” The leader asked, pressing a pistol to Marinette’s forehead. His finger wasn’t on the trigger, which helped the girl to keep her cool, but she knew exactly the kind of danger she was in. The Miraculous suits were indestructible, but she wasn’t.

“I was only calming her down, like you said,” she assured him, proud that her voice remained steady and strong. Her classmates were watching, and she had to make sure she didn’t do anything to make them break further. If remaining confident and looking unshakeable despite the internal urge to run and hide gave them the ability to stay strong and calm, then that’s what she would do. “She was not responding to English, so I had to use a language she could process easier. I don’t know Italian, so I had to use French.”

There, the subtle snark brought weak grins to a couple faces among the hostages but wasn’t enough to do more than make the man in front of her push the gun a bit more firmly against her head.

The small heroine found herself rugged against the man’s chest, and it took one long moment for her to realize hysterically that she was being used as a meat shield.

And there were bright lights shining in through the front windows. Marinette’s heart sunk. Normally police would be a good thing, but not when there was at least another minute or two before the vigilantes could arrive in silence and stealth. There was the crackle of a speaker coming to life, and then the projected voice of an older male.

“We have the building surrounded. We are willing to negotiate for you to release the hostages.”

“Who the fuck called the cops?” Marinette grimaced as she felt cold steel press harder against her head, this time at her temple because of the change in position. His team all aimed their guns at the group of hostages. The girl from earlier walked around the table, ducking down behind it for a second before looking at the receptionist she had dial the phone and releasing a full round into his chest.

Screams erupted from the sudden violence, but the pigtailed girl drowned it all out. Even her soulmate’s sudden sharp questioning in her mind’s ear.

Marinette’s eyes were glued to the man— the corpse— now on the ground with wide eyes. She felt herself stop breathing, she felt her veins go cold.

And then she felt a burning rage she had never experienced before.

“One of them tripped the silent alarm,” the woman— murderer, murderermurderermurderer— explained in such a casual tone that Marinette felt herself start to tremble. The man holding her chuckled darkly.

“Finally scared, little girl?”

Marinette did something she was sure she never would have done in any other circumstance. She turned her face, ignoring the muzzle of the gun now pressed to her forehead again, and let her eye meet the gaze of the man holding her.

“I’m angry,” she responded, shocked by the coldness in her own voice.

The man chuckled again, digging his gun in harder. Marinette was sure she’d have at least a red spot there in the morning if not a full bruise.

“Yeah? And what are you going to do about it, cutie?”

A flash of red, black, and green in the corner of her eye alerted her. Forcing her gaze to remain locked on the leader’s so she didn’t give anyone away, she opened her mouth.

“Nothing. I’m a tiny defenseless French girl that you’re using as a shield. Great plan, by the way, I’m not even big enough to completely cover your chest,” she saw his finger go to the trigger. “But I’m not the one you have to worry about. Your second in command is oddly silent.”

Eyes wide, the guy turned his head to see the woman—Killer killer killer— unconscious on the ground with her wrists in zip ties behind her back.

Four. Seven. Eleven, Marinette silently counted the thumps she heard around her as the guy took in the fact that his right hand thug was down. Really, Marinette had to struggle to count since the thuds were happening so quickly— they had to have at least three people to be working so fast and silently.

Once Marinette got to seventeen, she knocked man’s hand away by the wrist and spun in a tight circle before landing a harsh palm strike to the guy’s diaphragm. Kevlar he might have, but a precise and forceful enough slam still did the trick. He stumbled back for a second, giving Marinette the opening she needed to knock his gun fully out of his grasp and land a very nimble high kick straight to his completely unguarded throat. When he went down choking, she knocked his weapon away and turned to a room half-full of unconscious bodies, and the other half consisting of people in various stages of shock and awe as they stared at her.

Forcing down a very inappropriately timed blush at the attention, she looked over as a man in a red helmet finished the job of knocking out the armed group’s leader and snugly tightened zip ties around his wrists. If he pulled them slightly too tight, well, Marinette wouldn’t tell anyone. The helmeted man stood up then, crossing his arms and looking down at Marinette. She wriggled a bit under his gaze.

He was Red Hood, another vigilante and someone she seriously respected. The fact that he was much more experienced in the whole hero thing than she was really didn’t help the intimidation she was feeling with him just looking down at her silently like that. She fidgeted again.

“Uhhh… hi?”

She heard a sigh come from behind the helmet, and the guy made a show of rubbing his forehead.

“So. Not an assassin, but still a badass. Why am I not surprised?” She heard him grumble too lowly for anyone else to hear. She just blinked, utterly confused.

“Umm, huh?”

“Ignore him,” Robin said as he came over, giving Marinette a quick visual inspection. “You’ll have a mark on your forehead, but you look fine. Anything hurt?”

“No, but I still want to punch something,” she admitted sheepishly, rubbing the back of her neck. “My class, though—they need to be seen. At least half of them were having panic attacks, some are probably still in shock. The sooner they’re taken care of and at the hotel the better. I think I saw Ivan accidentally making his palms bleed,” she explained easily.

“Yeah,” Red Robin agreed gruffly, making Marinette slightly jump. She hadn’t seen him walk over. “Are you sure you’re okay? You’re still oddly calm about all this.”

Marinette just shrugged and offered a lopsided grin. “It’ll sink in eventually and I’ll probably cry myself to sleep, but I’m used to keeping my emotions in check. I won’t break down for a while yet,” she admitted. Her eyes strayed briefly back to the corpse laying in a puddle of blood as the cops came in and started to drape it in a white cloth. “Probably,” she amended once she was able to tear her eyes away. “But, uh, maybe I should go outside. I feel sick.”

She had seen corpses before. The floating bodies or the ones pinned underwater by debris during Syren’s attack. The people crushed by the chunks of rock Gigantitan knocked over while stumbling around the city. She wouldn’t throw up at the sight anymore, even if this corpse was the bloodiest she’d ever seen and the only one killed by bullets.

But the thought that she couldn’t reverse it? The knowledge that that man would never come back to life? That made her stomach turn with guilt. Her dinner from earlier almost seemed to rot in her stomach, and sure enough, as soon as the three vigilantes led her and her class outside, she vomited into a bush.

“I hate to say it,” Robin’s voice came from behind her, his nonchalance doing nothing to hide the subtle concern in his tone from his soulmate. “But welcome to Gotham.”

“So, did you kids figure it out?” Nightwing asked when the two soon-to-be lovebirds opened their eyes. As if reading his mind, Robin turned to glare darkly at the older hero. Ignoring the silent warning, Nightwing just continued to talk. “Because it’s been forty-ish minutes since you guys started meditating. If we wanna make it to the museum on time, we should leave soon.”

“Forty-ish?” Robin repeated incredulously, standing up. “Honestly. You can’t even keep proper track of time?”

“It’s fine, we figured everything out Monsieur Nightwing,” Marinette interrupted before an argument could spark up. “Our vision is back to normal for now. Oh, but,” she pulled her phone out of her purse, handing it to Robin. “Do you have a secure number you can give me? I can’t exactly wander around Gotham at night every time I want to meet up with you.”

Robin winced at the visual. “Yes, please don’t do that. I don’t need my job made even harder than it already is,” he grumbled before taking her phone from her casually, and creating a new contact for himself. Unbeknownst to him, she changed his contact name in her phone from ‘Robin’ to a simple green heart emoji the second he gave her the device back.

If he asks, I’ll just say it’s because a green heart is way more subtle than his superhero name, she decided silently.

“Alright, let’s get the smaller lovebird home,” Nightwing teases, successfully making Marinette’s entire face flush bright red.

“H-h-hey! W-w-we just met and I’m sure Robin doesn’t like me like that yet. I mean, sure our soul bond is romantic and everything, but the actual emotions take time to form and I’m pretty sure Robin doesn’t want to go too fast so really calling us lovebirds is just not accurate yet and really, really embarrassing so if you could not do that, I would really really appreciate it monsieur Nightwing, sir!” Luckily, Marinette’s flailing Arms of Denial provided the perfect opening for Robin to slide his arm around her waist and toss her over his back halfway through her ramble. Apparently being slung over the shoulder of her soulmate wasn’t enough to get her to stop though, since she didn’t even miss a beat and continued until she was done.

Nightwing only laughed, making Marinette’s blush deepen several shades.

“I’m never going to get silence again,” Robin groaned as they traveled over the rooftop.

“Hey, at least she isn’t scared of heights,” Nightwing offered, seeing as Marinette had barely reacted at all even during the steeper jumps and falls they had made. Robin briefly paused at that, turning his head to look back at the French girl as well as he could, given her angle in his fireman carry.

“That’s a surprisingly astute observation, Nightwing,” Robin begrudgingly complimented. “How are you so calm about this? Does Ladybug randomly take you freerunning, too?”

It took a solid five seconds of uncontrollable stutter before coherent language seemed to come back to the petite girl. “W-w-What?” Well, mostly. “N-n-no way! I mean, Ladybug would never compromise a c-civilian like that! I just have, a-a passion! Yep. A passion for parkour. Nobody expects it from me, really, but—“

“Okay, calm down,” Robin interrupted, rolling his eyes behind his domino mask as he and Nightwing resumed running. “You don’t have to tell me if you really don’t want to. It isn’t like it’s a bad thing. In fact considering who I am, you being afraid of heights at all would be really inconvenient for both of us.”

“Ha, ha, yeah,” Marinette agreed, her nervous laughter doing nothing to soothe the suspicion both vigilantes had now. Sure, she was Robin’s soulmate, but that didn’t suddenly make her trustworthy. In fact, some people (Jason and Tim) would argue that it made her extremely suspicious, because there was no way someone innocent could be soulmates with Demon Spawn. Robin himself, being the only one to see what exactly inhabited Marinette’s half of their mindspace, was of an entirely different mindset. Everything he saw there indicated she was completely innocent, and nobody had control over the first things to appear in their mindspace if they had one. The things that appeared always reflected the truest aspects of that individual.

No, Damian Wayne had a much different suspicion. A suspicion that came from the fact that Marinette knew far more intimate details about the villain situation in Paris than she should, from the fact that she had displayed such confidence fighting men twice her size, from the fact that their only shared object in their mindspace besides the TV was a sparring mat, of all things. From the fact that her body language had relaxed for a moment when she found out her soulmate was a vigilante.

Damian Wayne had a suspicion that his soulmate was a hero.

He only had to look through all of Paris’s heroes to find out which one.

All too soon, they arrived across the street from the Gotham Museum of History. Suddenly glad that she wore pants instead of the skirt she had been contemplating when they relaxed in the hotel, Marinette slid off of Robin’s shoulder and dusted herself off.

It had been nice, feeling the wind in her hair and the familiar adrenaline of leaping across buildings, of seeing the world flash by in a mesh of indistinguishable color. Even if she wasn’t the one doing the moving, it was still nice. She knew she wouldn’t be able to swing around as Ladybug while she was here, and she knew the month of reprieve of freerunning was going to take a mental toll on her.

Maybe I can convince Robin to take me with him sometime. Just a short run, that’s all. No crime fighting involved.

Yeah, fat chance in Gotham City, but a girl could hope.

It wasn’t long before a group of fourteen kids and one adult crossed the street, stopping right in front of where Marinette stood with her arms crossed. Having Robin and Nightwing at her side helped her confidence, but the anger and betrayal she felt didn’t hurt it either.

“Marinette!” Mlle. Bustier exclaimed, eyes wide. She continued rapidly speaking in French, “But— weren’t you with the class—“ she turned, only for a certain pink haired teen to skate forward with her hands on her hips.

“Uh, no Mlle. Bustier. Adrien and I tried to tell you that Marinette never made it on the bus!”

“But, Alya told me you three were lying because you didn’t want to go to a boring museum!” The teacher said in dismay. Then a frown overcame her face. “Well, regardless. We have departure time set for a reason, Marinette. I expect you, as the class president, to set a good example and arrive on time. Being late is very unbecoming of you, especially considering you weren’t responsible enough to even meet up for the tour. As the person who recommended the museum in the first place, Marinette, I expected more integrity out of you.”

“Excusez-moi?” Robin spoke up, hands clenched into fists at his side. The teacher jumped, clearly not having anticipating the Gotham hero to understand everything she said. The young Robin continued in perfectly fluent French; “It is not Marinette’s responsibility to take care of your class or to be flawless. It is your own failing as a teacher, neglecting your responsibility to ensure that all of the children under your care are safe and accounted for. While in Gotham, you are supposed to act as their caretaker and their parents are relying on you to do at least a halfway decent job. Instead, you allow your own class President, the only reason any of you are even here and able to visit anywhere, to get left behind and almost kidnapped in the most crime ridden city in the country!” The vigilante never raised his voice, the iciness of his tone easily carrying and showing how deadly serious every last word was. Caline Bustier could only freeze under Robin’s wrathful glare.

Nightwing’s hand on Robin’s shoulder stopped the tirade, though the older hero’s gaze never left the teacher either. “We will be keeping an ear out, madam,” he said in deceptively cheerful French. Bustier twitched again in surprise. There was still a threat under that cheerful tone. “Any kid left behind in this city, especially if they don’t know the city, is in a lot of danger. I suggest you do your job unless you want the police having a talk with you too, instead of us friendly vigilantes,” he warned. “Now then, try to have a good rest of your night Marinette. Stay safe. Hopefully you won’t have to see us anytime soon, yeah?” He switched back to English, earning a wry smile and small nod from Marinette.

Neither Gotham hero missed the way Marinette shrunk in on herself as soon as she realized they were leaving. Two sets of masked eyes narrowed, but otherwise they gave no sign of noticing. A brief wave from the friendlier of the two heroes later, and they were gone.

Marinette couldn’t help but feel like a sheep left in a pack of wolves.

Thankfully, her class at least had the decency to wait until they were all sat down and had finished ordering before pouncing.

“Honestly, Marinette?” Alya snapped, eyebrow raised and scowl on her lips. “I can’t believe you would waste the time of Gotham’s heroes just for attention. Look at how sad Mlle. Bustier is now!” She waved a hand to the teacher, who was still in obvious shock. “I can’t even imagine what you did to make them think you were about to get kidnapped. Probably some poor innocent guy in prison now because of your whining, and what if wasting time with you made Nightwing and Robin miss out on saving someone in actual trouble, huh, girl?”

Lila broke into tears. “I-I’m just so g-glad you’re safe, Marinette! When you told m-me you felt s-sick and wanted us to g-go without you, I h-hoped you wouldn’t c-c-cause any trouble,” a giant fake sob ripped itself from Lila’s lying throat. “But this is what I g-g-get for having faith in y-you!” Everyone quickly rushed to assure Lila that she had to reason to feel bad about Marinette’s behavior, it wasn’t her fault Marinette was an attention hog.

It was all the pigtailed girl could do, to sink down in her seat and thank every power in the universe that she hadn’t suggested moving onto Audio Only Mode with Robin yet. She had an odd suspicion that anger management wasn’t exactly one of his strengths.

Just take deep breaths, she thought, doing the best she could to keep herself calm while she ate. Alix leaned into her arm, offering comforting weight and silent support. Marinette just smiled at her gratefully. Speaking up would do nothing right now, not while everyone was so solidly against her and Adrien was stuck as Lila’s human teddy bear. He sent her an apologetic glance, but Marinette could only shrug. As much as she still liked having him around as Chat, she had long since gotten used to not getting help in class from Adrien.

Marinette sunk into her bed once they got back to the hotel, the silence of the room weighing on her. She was the odd student out, so she didn’t have a roommate.

“Maybe tomorrow will be better, Marinette,” Tikki tried to cheer her up, the tiny Kwami flying over and nestling next to Marinette’s face in a pseudo hug. The teen just hummed in halfhearted agreement, closing her eyes. It took a while, but she was eventually able to sink off into slumber.

—*—*—*—*—*

“You seem tired,” Robin remarked blandly, raising an eyebrow at Marinette’s dejected form just slumped half-on half-off of her loft bed. Her head was part of the half actually on the bed, and thus her expression was hidden from Robin as she let out a loud groan of despair. “Are you dying?”

“Noooo,” Marinette paused. “Maybe.”

“And why are you maybe dying?” Robin walked over to his weapons rack, where a brand new section of green wall was revealed over it boasting domino masks. Considering he had went to sleep, he obviously hadn’t been in uniform. Which, therefore, meant he wasn’t in uniform in the dreamspace. Quickly pulling on one of the masks, he turned back to the loft bed.

Marinette still hadn’t lifted her head.

“... is your identity safe now?”

“Yes, I have my mask on.”

Marinette wasted no time sitting up after that, exposing Robin to the absolutely dejected look on her face. Immediately his eyebrows shot up, the way her hair fell loose around her head instead of being held in pigtails only emphasizing the sorry state she was in.

It had really been a gamble, talking to himself when he reached his room to ask Marinette if she would do her best not to look at him when he first entered the mindspace. A gamble that apparently paid off. Apparently if one of them was asleep or meditating, they could still see through the other person’s eyes if they watched TV in the mindspace.

But now he couldn’t really care about his identity as much as usual, considering his stalling meant she had been left alone to wallow in whatever misery left her in this state.

“What happened?” That came out harsher than he intended it to, but Marinette Luckily didn’t seem to care. She just heaved a heavy sigh and slipped off her bed. She didn’t even use the ladder, just letting herself slide off and land surprisingly nimbly on her feet. Robin narrowed his eyes.

Parkour, he thought with a mental scoff. Sure. Wait, that doesn’t matter right now.

“It’s just my class,” Marinette confided, fiddling with the long sleeve of her pajama top. “It’s really stupid, and I know I should be strong enough to ignore the things they say, but it still hurts. A lot.”

A very unfamiliar feeling caused Robin to bristle and stand up straighter. “Things? What things do they say?” He watched as Marinette fidgeted nervously, and then went to his couch. She looked between it and him for a second, silently asking permission to sit on it considering it was a Green Item and therefore his by default. He simply nodded, moving over to sit next to her.

“It’s dumb, and you really don’t have to worry about it,” she started, but she also couldn’t fight the urge to confide in him. Maybe it was the mindspace, the aura of it heavily persuading the two inhabitants to speak nothing but the truth while there. Maybe it was the bond itself, trying to convince her that she could trust him. Whatever it was, she had never wanted to tell someone about her issues this badly before.

“I didn’t ask for reasons to not worry, I asked for what they said,” Robin retorted firmly. Marinette actually chuckled at that, the bluntness reassuring her.

I guess Chloe was right, huh?

So she explained. She stared down at the green floor under her feet or the couch cushions or the TV or the vast white expanse of their mindspace, but never Robin. She never looked at him as she recounted everything that happened after Lila Rossi joined the class, how she took her friends away and lied every chance she got to make Marinette look bad. How she had even managed to spin a lie that got the whole class believing that Marinette got left behind and almost kidnapped on purpose, for attention, despite Marinette having social anxiety and not liking having large amounts of attention on her to begin with.

She explained every harsh detail of Alya, her previous best friend, betraying her and turning into her second worst bully because of Lila. How only Alix remained by her side and her class as a whole ridiculed, isolated, and bullied her. If they didn’t bully her, they ignored that anything was happening. She explained how Adrien, also her friend, was given the ultimatum that if he didn’t keep Lila happy he would be withdrawn from school and effectively isolated at home again. She explained that he tried to help, but was often stopped from doing more than offering a warm glance by Lila’s grip around one of his arms (almost always his left arm nowadays, since even Lila knew better than to touch or obstruct someone’s soul mark without permission).

“And it’s really just dumb school drama,” Marinette was wrapping up, the sleeve of her nightshirt sporting several holes in it from how she had been worrying at it throughout her whole story. Normally she wouldn’t dare hurt her clothes in such a way, but here it didn’t matter. In the mindspace, nothing but their own consciousness actually existed. She could destroy her clothes all she wanted here, and they would be perfectly fine when she woke up. “I just need to suck it up and not let Lila’s words affec—“

Marinette almost bit her tongue when she was flicked on the forehead, her eyes crossing as she tried to spot the offending hand. Slowly coming out of her shock, she followed the hand to the wrist, then arm, then the face of a very frustrated Robin. His eyebrows were pulled down low over his masked eyes, the hand that hadn't just flicked her was clenched in a fist and shaking. Marinette was pretty sure that he would have been making his palm bleed if they had been in the physical world right then.

“No,” Robin’s voice was strained, as if he was doing his best not to raise his voice. It still trembled with anger. “The way they are treating you is incredibly uncalled for, unjustified and dishonorable. You should not be forced to manage your emotions even on the level that Hawkmoth forces all of Paris to do every day, let alone force yourself to cope with what is clearly serious harassment. They are taking advantage of you, Marinette. They are using you because they know you will provide things they favor— clothes, baked goods, and whatever else you might give them. They are not entitled to that, though. They are not entitled to your kindness or forgiveness, and they are not entitled to your patience. If they do not want to or are too dumb to acknowledge the truth of what is happening, that is their fault and the way they are treating you because of it is unacceptable. And your teacher! Nightwing and I were not bluffing when we threatened to get her investigated. I tried to research you after patrol today, but Red Robin pointed out that it may be seen as insensitive or intrusive of me. Perhaps you should allow me to do so anyway, so that we can take proper action if there is proof of your school being negligent.”

“Robin, that really isn’t necessary,” it said a lot that Marinette no longer had the energy to wave her hands in denial. She just spoke in a defeated tone.

Robin flicked her again.

“I am your soulmate, not your therapist. But it is wholly unacceptable for the person who is supposed to be by my side for the rest of my life to be mistreated or emotionally abused in such a way. The fact that you have not even been akumatized by that villain in Paris yet despite going through all of this is clear testimony that you have a strong mind and will, but everyone has their limits. When you feel yourself approaching said limits, you can meditate and turn on Audio Only Mode, so that I know you need to vent.”

“But I can’t let my emotions get out of control when I am back in Paris,” Marinette started to say, but was cut off by Robin already shaking his head.

“That does not count here. Very few magics can penetrate a soulbond mindspace, and I severely doubt an Akuma is one of them. You can go to sleep or meditate, and release all of your frustrations here where it is safe. Letting them build up will only cause more damage in the long run.”

The Asian girl shifted, looking first at the green floor beneath her and then up to Robin’s face. Her posture said that she was relaxed, at least a lot more than she had been during her entire confession, but her eyes held worry. He could see it swimming in those sapphire depths.

“Are you sure it’s okay?” She asked weakly in French. The slip back to her most commonly used language made Robin frown. He really was far from the best person to comfort anyone, even his own soulmate. He was flying blind here, and could only do what he saw as logical. Surely his soulmate, of all people, would accept that.

“I do not make it a habit of expressing many of my emotions very often,” he admitted slowly. “But I understand that you do not come from my circumstances. I will not be bothered.”

Insecurity wormed its way into her blue eyes l, pushing the normal worry away. “Even if we’re soulmates…” she started hesitantly, squirming in her seat. “You shouldn’t have to put up with me. I mean, I overreact a l—“

“No.”

Marinette was startled, eyes wide and uncomprehending. “Excusez moi?”

“No,” Robin repeated. “You are not overreacting. I will not allow you or anyone else to think that about yourself. If nothing else, everyone is entitled to their emotions,” he stubbornly pushed away unpleasant memories. This wasn’t about him. He could not have his soulmate in an unstable state of mind. It was not acceptable, even if he did not know or fully trust her yet. “You are my soulmate,” he said slowly, leaning forward and staring into her eyes to try and hammer in the words he spoke. “As such, I will not allow anyone to treat you as anything less than royalty. Not even yourself.”

Marinette was certain she would have passed out from forgetting to breathe, had they not been in a mental world separate from physical reality.

Oh, this is so much worse than fawning over Adrien.

“There has to be a way to turn this off,” Marinette seemed to be talking mostly to herself. After the bat boys made sure the three traffickers were picked up, they relocated Marinette to the empty rooftop of a building they owned. Not that she knew that, but it was the best way to insure nobody came up to see them. The smaller girl was pacing, despite the disorientation that came with seeing herself pace as she paced. Robin seemed to feel that same disorientation, rubbing his forehead in what could have been pain but was probably annoyance as well.

Batman and Nightwing could only watch as words tumbled out of the girl’s mouth faster than they could comprehend all of them. It was such an odd sight; a silent Robin brooding in place and rubbing his temples while the small Asian girl in pigtails rambled and paced.

They could hardly believe they were soulmates, but if Robin hadn’t denied it yet then it had to be true.

“At least it isn’t a physical mark,” Batman managed to interject into Marinette’s panic. She looked up at him, instantly cutting off her verbal vomit. “But how about you two explain exactly what your mark is so we can understand?”

“Yeah, don’t leave us hanging,” Nightwing agreed with a smile. Sure, it was incredibly inconvenient and not at all ideal for one of them to meet their soulmate in uniform. But, none of them exactly had a say in that. The best they could do was roll with the punches and Nightwing wasn’t gonna let a little right hook from Fate keep him down for long.

“It’s annoying,” Robin surprisingly answered first, lowering his hand to cross his arms over his broad chest again. Marinette turned to him, just then realizing that Robin hadn’t looked away from her for longer than a few seconds since their bond had first formed. “Our vision is cut in half, like a two-player game screen. One side is my usual point of view, the other side is the point of view through her eyes.”

Batman and Nightwing tensed, processing. Marinette didn’t notice, considering she had narrowed her focus back onto the concrete of the roof below her and decided to contribute to the explanation.

“I think that’s exactly what it is,” she agreed, unknowingly making everyone look over at her. “I didn’t notice it before, but— look, Robin. In the bottom left hand corners,” she pointed to something only Robin and herself could see. “It says Player One and Player Two. In red and—oh, those are hearts instead of colons.”

“So much for hoping this was at least platonic,” Batman groaned, running a hand over his face. He was happy that Robin had a match, sure, but that didn’t exactly make things easy. Nothing to do with superheroes and their soulmates was easy.

“I think…” Marinette narrowed her eyes as she focused on the red font. The spot after the colon had a flashing cursor. “I think it’s waiting for us to introduce ourselves,” she looked up to her newly found soulmate with expectation. He avoided meeting her eyes, and said nothing. Puffing out her cheeks, Marinette decided not to be put off by his behavior and straightened her spine. Taking several confident steps forward, she held out her hand to him. “Hello, Robin. My name is Marinette Dupain-Cheng, and I am from Paris, France. My class and I are here on a month-long field trip thanks to one of us winning the Wayne Enterprises scholastic competition last month.”

“Wait a second,” Nightwing interjected, eyes narrowed behind his mask. “Are you being humble? Because the guest speaker at the Wayne Gala at the end of the month is the winner of that competition and her name has already been released as Mari—“

Cue the frantic arm waving and full face blush. “Ah-Ah-Ah yeah, that’s me. But I don’t like to brag, so I didn’t want to say it! You know, I didn’t want to come off as full of myself or a-anything. It’s really embarrassing having to make a speech,” Marinette’s head dropped at the reminder. “Ohhhh, I’m gonna make a total fool out of myself! I should tell Monsieur Wayne I’m not comfortable making a speech. Yeah— oh, but how could I possibly just say; ‘sorry, Mister Wayne, But I am a chronic clutz prone to embarrassing myself and think that making a speech at one of your galas would be a huge mistake,’ oh I sound so lame—”

“Hey,” Robin’s voice cut through the rambling, and Marinette looked up. “Look. It has your name after Player One now. Stop thinking about useless things and focus on how to shut this off. Soulmate or not, we can’t have you finding out who we all are after only a day.”

Nightwing walked over and threw an arm over Robin’s shoulders, even though the older male was still focusing on Marinette out of the corner of his eye. Most people would be offended by the way Robin spoke, blunt and sharp at the same time. But Marinette hadn’t started rambling again, instead the girl stood calmly. Her breaths came slow and regular once more, and her eyes held a scarily familiar focus. Maybe they really do belong together. Huh. Who would have thought his soulmate would be so adorable? And humble. Kind of a mess though, but a cute mess. “Hey, the girl introduced herself and you didn’t even shake her hand. Come on, fill in your name Player

Two!”

Robin scowled. He had already deduced that being Player Two was likely due to the fact that Marinette had been the one to initiate the contact that awakened their soul bond. Didn’t mean he liked being second in any respect. His soulmate was also a wreck. All the rambling and random switches in and out of panic. It was aggravating, but…

But he watched the stern focus in her eyes as she thought about how to temporarily shut down the connection they had. And he had been watching her the whole time. Analyzing her body language. She was easy to rile up, sure, but her panic was never all consuming. Robin could see that her feet always remained firmly planted, her stance fluid and firm. She was always ready to defend herself, whether she knew it or not, regardless of the surface-level panic she might have been experiencing. Even after only twenty or so minutes of interaction, Robin could tell that Marinette Dupain-Cheng was not a 2-D character. She was layered, with secrets and complexities that he was willing to bet few people saw or knew about. Maybe that’s why he walked over to her, and extended a hand that she readily grasped after a brief moment of disbelief.

“... I’m Robin.”

He watched the twitch of her eyebrow in exasperation, hiding his amusement under a perfectly developed poker face. The writing on the bottom of his POV’s side filled in; PLAYER TWO: ROBIN.

“Great,” Marinette deadpanned, looking very unamused. “What if that never changes, huh? I’m not asking you to reveal your identity or anything. Soulmates or not, you don’t owe me something that important. Especially not right away. But you could have at least given me the first letter of your real name or something.”

“You’ll have to earn that,” Robin retorted with a cocky grin. To his pleasant surprise, Marinette responded by cracking her knuckles.

“You know, this layout looks suspiciously similar to a combat video game,” she hinted heavily. Robin adjusted his stance and his smirk widened into a grin.

“Oh? You’re right. Ready to lose?”

“No,” Batman interrupted, one heavy hand suddenly on both of their shoulders as the teenage soulmates snapped out of the challenging connection they had made. “Not today. Miss Dupain-Cheng—“

“Just Marinette, please, Monsieur Batman.”

“... Marinette. You said your class left you behind at the hotel, right? Any idea where they would be now?”

Marinette pulled out her phone to look at the time, frowning. “It’s been about an hour. They’ll probably stay at the museum for another hour, and then they said we would all get dinner at the restaurant across the street.”

Batman nodded, filing that information away. “Good. Then we have about an hour for the two of you to figure out your bond before we need to drop you off in front of the restaurant to rejoin your class.”

“And have a chat with your teacher about taking roll call and properly taking care of her students while in the most dangerous city in the world,” Nightwing agreed, furious at the fact that any student would be left behind to potentially wander such a dangerous city, like Marinette did. Though, considering who her soulmate was, she probably only felt safe to wander due to confidence in her ability to protect herself. Confidence that they all saw was fairly valid.

That being decided, the two soulmates sat down. Batman, knowing it was unnecessary for both him and Nightwing to watch over the teens, left to resume patrol. Nightwing stayed. Someone had to watch the teen’s backs as they focused on figuring out their bond.

And that led to Marinette and Robin both sitting cross-legged and staring at one another without a clue about what to do. After a minute of silent staring, Marinette shifted and her nose scrunched up.

“Uh,” she said as she was struck with her usual timidity at the awkward situation. Here she was, sitting and trying to figure out her soul bond with a guy she just met. One of Gotham’s heroes, no less, which really was more of a relief than anything. At least he would understand her once she eventually revealed herself as Ladybug to him, and she understood him. She shifted her weight again, unable to move her gaze from Robin’s emerald green eyes. “How about we just… start by meditating? That should help, right?” She watched as his green eyes widened slightly in disbelief, and saw herself fidget again from his point of view.

“You meditate?” He asked, clearly not having expected that. Marinette sighed, relaxing into the change in conversation.

“Yeah. I mean, most of Paris meditates now. When your emotions can be used to turn you into a temporary supervillain because of a crazed maniac with a magic artifact, you tend to look for ways to manage your emotions and keep yourself from being vulnerable.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Nightwing asked, and Marinette could tell that he was shocked even despite the mask. “What are you talking about?”

It was Marinette’s turn to be confused, her brows furrowing as she looked between the two males and realized mon dieu, neither of them know what I’m talking about!

“Oh my god,” she said in English. “Paris, we’ve been attacked by a supervillain for the last three years,” she said slowly, but still no recognition. In fact, that only seemed to shock the heroes more. Marinette’s face grew more grim as she decided to completely fill them in. “Three years ago, one of my classmates randomly turned into a huge rock monster. Because of it, Paris’s primary two heroes showed up for the first time to defeat him. When he turned back into a normal boy, the true villain projected himself in front of the Eiffel Tower. His name is HawkMoth. He got hold of a magical artifact called a Miraculous. His Miraculous allows him to corrupt something, in his case butterflies, and use that corrupted object to take advantage of people experiencing negative emotions. His corrupted object takes advantage of those negative emotions to turn the person into a supervillain, giving them powers and essentially brainwashing them into causing havoc. He bargains with them, convincing them that he’ll allow them to get their revenge in exchange for them bringing him what he wants,” Marinette took a breath. “The Miraculous That the two heroes of Paris use. It’s where the get their own powers,” she explained. “Ladybug, the leader, uses the Ladybug Miraculous. It holds the power of creation. Her partner, Chat Noir, uses the cat Miraculous, which holds the power of destruction. If you combine the powers of those two Miraculous, you can make a wish. They will literally manipulate reality in order to grant the wish,” Marinette looked down to her lap, clenching her hands into fists. Through her soul bond with Robin, she could see herself trembling in anger. “But it always comes with a price. The Miraculous uphold the balance of the world. If they grant a wish, they will also balance that wish. If you, for example, wish for the cure to an illness,” Marinette swallowed, “then maybe you will unleash a brand new illness that gets brought to your city by rats and wipes out around forty percent of the population in Europe.”

“The Black Plague,” Nightwing gasped. “That was from a wish made using these— Miraculous?”

Marinette nodded gravely. “Yes. A wish has also caused the sinking of Atlantis, the wipe out of most of the Native American population in North America from illness, it was the final straw to begin the First World War. You cannot make a wish without consequences,” she stressed. “That is why Ladybug and Chat Noir work so hard to keep their Miraculous away from HawkMoth. But they haven’t been able to discover his identity yet. Nobody has,” Marinette’s shoulders slumped. “Which means Paris can only endure as it gets hit every few days by a new supervillain and new powers. Luckily, one of Ladybug’s power is the ability to reverse any damage that happens due to a Miraculous. It will completely reverse environmental damage, magical effects, injuries, even deaths that occurred from misuse of a Miraculous,” Marinette didn’t notice how both men stiffened at that last admission. “But the most we can do is try to police our emotions as much as possible, keep ourselves from being overcome by negative emotions for very long, so that Hawk Moth doesn’t have the chance to use us. Thus, meditation.”

Silence reigned for a long moment before Nightwing punched the concrete under him, making Marinette jump. What—?

“How did we not know?” The older hero growled, making Marinette’s eyes shoot wide open. Huh?

“You really never heard about this?” She asked cautiously, frowning. “Ladybug called the Justice League for help back when this all first started, but she was waved off as if it was all a prank. She tried again later, only to get the same treatment. I thought you would have at least heard about that.”

Nightwing and Robin both shook their heads. “No,” the older of the two refuted. “Nobody from the League told any of us about a prank call, and usually we’d hear about that. Not many people risk prank calling the heroes of the world, after all. And that doesn’t explain how international news never covers that. Even if the effects are reversed, you’d think someone would report about villains in Paris.”

“Someone does,” Marinette said, tilting her head. “The Ladyblog used to be the only one, you can find it online. It started out as a really trustworthy source of information on everything happening in Paris with its heroes and Akumas—Which is what the temporary villains are called. But lately, the Ladyblog has been…” Marinette’s face twisted into a scowl. “...not the most reliable news source. But Ladybug herself started a new news app, AkumaWatch, that most of Paris has downloaded by now,” Marinette pulled out her phone to show them. Pulling the app up, she turned the screen so they could see. “This tab holds footage of past or currently occurring attacks. This tab holds resources for calming techniques, and sources for therapy or other emotional aid for anyone who needs it. This tab has self defense techniques and the location of all the Akuma Shelters in the city so people can evacuate as quickly as possible. And this tab,” she clicked on the second to last one, “is for anyone who sees an Akuma, which looks like a corrupt purple butterfly, to take a picture of it. This allows the Akuma Alert to narrow down the area that the attack begins in, so that people know where to avoid most,” she explained. “The last tab is for any PSAs or other public statements that any of Paris’s heroes or public figures have to say about the attacks.”

“You know a lot about this,” Robin mused slowly, Marinette fully aware of how his gaze remained on her face as she closed the app and put her phone away. Robin was equally aware of how she stubbornly looked anywhere other than his face. Marinette shrugged.

“I helped make the app. Besides, Ladybug occasionally lands on my terrace and we’ll talk when she doesn’t have something better to do. I wouldn’t say we’re friends, exactly, but I think she just likes having someone other than her teammates to talk to about everything with,” Marinette rubbed the back of her neck and smiled sheepishly. “I’m a pretty good listener.”

Robin and Nightwing traded glances, before they both looked back at her.

“Okay…” Robin said slowly. “Let’s try meditation.”

Eager to get away from the previous topic, Marinette easily agreed and both teens adjusted their posture, got comfortable, and closed their eyes.

As usual both of their visions went completely black, but only for a moment. Once they had both sunk into their meditation, their vision came back to show them in what they immediately, intrinsically knew was a shared mindspace.

No longer was their vision cut in half like a game. Instead they saw only from their own point of view, like normal, which was disorienting in and of itself after half an hour of seeing from two points of view at the same time.

The mindspace was mostly white, and it seemed to go on forever. But there were things there. Everything that belonged to Marinette was on pink space, like the floor or sometimes walls and ceiling of the area around that object decided to create a small piece of solidity to emphasize it. Solidity that happened to come in the form of pink. Pink floor in a patch of space, or a cube of pink floor, wall, and patch of ceiling. Likewise, the spots that belonged to Robin were backdropped by green. And the. There were spots that merged both colors, indicating that it was shared.

Like the giant sparring mat in the center of the room, where the floor beneath and around it was an attractive swirl of pink and green as if the two colors chased one another, creating a design that seemed wholly and completely right. Belonging just to Robin, though Marinette was able to walk over and gently run her hands over them, was a rack of weapons—primarily swords. There was also a couch, a computer, a large bookshelf, a wall of batarangs, and a TV that they apparently shared just like the sparring mat.

Amongst the pink items were things like a kitchen— a whole, fully stocked kitchen— a sewing station and matching rack of fabric, a computer of her own, a few potted plants, and a loft bed.

After taking the time to absorb their surroundings, Robin turned to Marinette to find, with relief, that they were both dressed exactly as they were in the physical world. Marinette wasted no time heading over to the shared television, a large flat screen, and sat down on the ground in front of Robin’s green-backdropped couch.

“What are you doing?” The boy asked in exasperation as Marinette turned on the piece of technology. “This isn’t the time to play around. We’re trying to figure out how to control this bond,” he reminded her. Marinette nodded, not looking back at him.

“That’s exactly what I’m doing. Look, our vision mimicked a video game, right? So where better to find clues than the mysterious TV in our mindspace. I mean, it technically doesn’t actually exist, since this isn’t the physical world, so it won’t have any normal channels or shows on it. The TV is connected to our minds. What better place to look for— I knew it!” She shouted in glee. Sure enough, when Robin walked up to her and sat down on the sofa that belonged to him, he saw it. The screen of the TV was split in half, but both sides were dark. In the bottom left of each side of the screen were the very familiar red words and heart-colons;

PLAYER ONE: MARINETTE DUPAIN-CHENG

PLAYER TWO: ROBIN

The TV showed the view from their eyes. It was the link between their mindspace and their vision in the real world.

“Okay…” Robin mused slowly, reaching forward to grab the green controller on the stand that held the TV. Marinette grabbed the matching pink controller. “So this works like a video game, after all.”

“At least partially,” his soulmate agreed. “It’s mostly a mind link, right? We share a mindspace, which isn’t too odd for soulmates,” even if it was on the rarer side of the spectrum, “But it looks like our minds are even connected through our physical vision. Here, let’s see if this game of life has any instructions,” the girl pressed the center button on her controller, which pulled up an Options tab on the screen. “Yes!”

“Here, let’s look at the list of controls,” Robin suggested, clicking the appropriate option on the screen. The “game title” was boasted in bright red at the top of the “controls” list;

Soul Team.

Marinette’s eyes widened at the title. “Oh,” she said, her voice surprisingly quiet. “It’s… like it’s saying that we’re each other’s backup, no matter what,” her soft voice echoed in the room, striking an odd chord in Robin. “We can always see when the other person is in danger, or what they’re facing, and go to help.”

“Look at this,” Robin pointed to one of the “controls” lines near the top. “Switch vision mode between Split Screen, Audio Only, Personal Mode, or Sleep Mode. It looks like we can only switch modes here, in the Mindspace,” he pointed out as he read. “We don’t have to agree on the setting, but aside from Sleep Mode, Which activates automatically when we fall asleep, any mode one of us chooses still affects us both.”

“Audio only just lets us hear what is going on around the other person,” Marinette read, humming in thought. “We can use that as a step two, right? Like, we can start on Personal Mode, where we only have our own Point of Views, but once we get more comfortable we can switch to audio mode every now and then.”

“Maybe,” Robin agreed reluctantly. Audio mode shouldn’t be too bad… possibly. Once again, his green eyes strayed to his soulmate. Completely unaware, for the first time in a half hour, of his stare, Marinette just continued reading about everything their soul bond entailed.

Analyzing her like this, Robin was just… calmed, in a way. Visually, Marinette was pretty. She had gorgeous sapphire eyes, clear like a pristine lake, and midnight black hair that shimmered blue in the right lighting. Sure, it was pulled into childish pigtails at the base of her neck, but it didn’t seem to detract from the surprising maturity in the girl’s posture. She was clearly a childish person at heart, and easy to excite if their interactions thus far were anything to go off of, but there was a hidden maturity there. A hidden knowledge, amongst her many subtle layers and complexities.

Perhaps that was the first similarity that Robin noticed between the two of them. She had what seemed like a very straightforward personality at first glance— the awkward, shy, clumsy, excitable girly girl, just like he was the cold, arrogant, mysterious bad boy on the surface. But she held more than that, secrets and deeper parts of herself that she kept hidden flawlessly. Robin doubted even her closest friends noticed much of what lies beyond the surface of her character.

“It seems like this bond is supposed to ease us into getting to know each other,” Marinette’s voice brought Robin out of his inner musings. “We can’t hear each other’s thoughts, no matter what, which is usually the feature that comes along with shared mindspaces. But we can adjust the level of privacy we allow one another, and we can meet here when we sleep. It’s less like the bond between gamers, and more like the bond is meant to act like an ice breaker. Like… an activity for us to get to know each other, almost.”

“Our soul bond is a team bonding activity,” Robin surmised in a deadpan tone, completely done with the logic of the universe and the way it liked to play with him. The laugh that Marinette let ring out only partially made up for his annoyance.

“Oui, Oui!” Marinette agreed emphatically before standing up frantically in realization. “Oh! I forgot to ask, do you speak French?”

Robin grinned and nodded. “I do, actually. I suppose that is at least convenient. My first language is Arabic, however. I don’t suppose you speak that, do you?”

Marinette’s shoulders slumped. “No. But I do speak Mandarin! And Cantonese, which is actually my first language. I’m still working on Mandarin, though. I’ve only been learning it for about two years, but I can hold a decent conversation.”

Damian nodded, tilting his head. “I am fluent in Mandarin, but my Cantonese can use some work. We can benefit each other in that respect, at least.”

“So we have plenty of languages to choose from!” Marinette said cheerfully, punctuating her words with an excited clap. “That should make it easy to keep people from eavesdropping on us all the time, at least. If we ever spoke to each other in front of my class, for example, Cantonese would be best to use. They all speak French, for obvious reasons, and several are fluent in English, and one of them is fluent in mandarin, but I don’t think any of them know Cantonese. After I help you get fluent, maybe you could teach me Arabic?”

And for the first time in Damian Wayne’s life, the sparkle of excitement in a girl’s eyes completely drained his will to argue. Grimacing, the boy agreed to teach her Arabic after they helped each other become fluent in the type of Chinese that they, respectively, needed help with.

This is a problem, Robin thought in despair. She’s already becoming a weakness.

Soulmates. That gooey, gushy, over-sentimentalized, overly relied-upon concept that was unfortunately (or fortunately, for romantics) very real. But unlike stories or movies, it was not uniform. There was not one universal soulmark or set type of soul bond. There were romantic soulmates, platonic soulmates, even familial soulmates (a subdivision of the above platonic, more specific yet stronger due to the distinction). But not only were the types of soul bonds broken into three separate categories, but the variety of types of soulmarks that a pair (or triad, in some rare cases) could end up with was still being discovered. Already, there were almost a hundred different catalogued forms that a soul bond could come in. All of them studied and confirmed by both science and magic as being valid. Even the timing that a soul bond chose to reveal itself could vary individual to individual.

Which led to the current dilemma.

A certain half-Asian girl with her blue-black hair up in pigtails was forced to watch as a blond boy and Japanese girl gaped at one another. As everyone present watched, bright spiraling designs that seemed to be made of light itself etched themselves on one arm of both teens, starting from where their hands gripped one another. The blond had tripped down the stairs, only for his hand to be caught by the smaller Asian girl and bright light to erupt from their palms.

The half-Asian, half-French girl at the bottom of the stairs could only observe in mute dismay as a swirling foil of pulsing maroon light sank itself into the right arm of Adrian Agreste, bright neon green markings adding detail to the stylized weapon. A matching symbol, orientation flipped and colors inverted, etched itself in glowing light on the right arm of Kagami Tsurugi.

They were soulmates.

The only person in Marinette’s class other than herself without a visible soul mark or completed bond (until now), the only person Marinette had believed herself capable of being with, had a soul mate. And by the way they stared into each other’s eyes even as Adrien continued to dangle perilously over the concrete steps, it wasn’t platonic.

Marinette felt cold, as if someone had stuffed a funnel down her throat just to dump ice directly into her stomach.

When Chat Noir immediately stopped hitting on Ladybug only to apologize in private and reveal he had met his soulmate, Marinette connected the dots. The magic of the Miraculous helped protect the identities of the wielders, but could not hold up against significant hard proof. That, and Marinette was getting more and more immune to the lesser Miraculous magic as she trained to become the next Guardian.

On the rooftops, Chat was still her partner. Despite showing up less often during Akuma attacks or nightly patrols due to having dates, he was still reliable whenever he showed up. But as Adrien Agreste, he and Marinette had never been further apart.

—*—*—*—*—*

“Still sulking?” The all-too-familiar voice of Chloe Bourgeois cut through Marinette’s intrusive thoughts, the usually haughty tone surprisingly gentle. After quite a bit of time, introspection, and character development, Chloe had become a good friend of Marinette’s. Still incredibly hard to tolerate at times, but dependable.

The black haired girl just groaned, dropping her face into her hands. “He was my first real crush, Chloe,” the girl complained, clearly still hurt. “I loved him. Or I thought I did, anyway. You can’t expect me to heal from it all that quickly.”

“Of course not,” The blond heiress agreed easily, shrugging even as she put a forkful of food in her mouth. Maybe trying to have girl talk with Marinette on the fourth floor of a five-star hotel wasn’t the best idea, her short friend being incredibly uncomfortable in the atmosphere despite her personally made clothing being more than acceptable for the environment. “But it’s been two months, Mari. It’s time to straighten your spine, and get out there looking again! You don’t need Adrien, just like you don’t need Alya or sausage-hair or any of the idiots that flock with them in our class,” the girl reasoned. “Adri-kins is sweet, but he has the entirely wrong approach to Lila, you know. Convincing you to stay quiet was the worst advice he could have given. Staying quiet would never have allowed me to change or see that what I was doing was wrong,” Chloe pointed out. “Why would it work for her?”

“Adrien is just being careful,” Marinette defended weakly, pushing her salad around her plate disinterestedly. Knowing he was Chat just made her sympathize with his motives even more. He didn’t know Ladybug was in his class to back him up instantly, after all. But still, Marinette knew Chloe was right. Adrien might have good intentions, but his execution of them left a lot to be desired. “He doesn’t want another Akuma.”

“We get Akumas every week, he should just suck it up. We get even more Akumas from her lies than we would if everyone knew what she was doing,” the blond girl continued easily, not giving in to her friend’s weak excuses. “Besides, telling you to be quiet just puts you at the most risk of Akumatization. He should know that. It’s a miracle it hasn’t happened to you yet,” Chloe’s perfect babydoll-pink lips thinned as she stabbed a piece of chicken on her plate. “Lucky for all of us, not that he knows that.”

Marinette just sighed in agreement. “Can we just, you know, stop talking about this?” The meeker of the two asked gently, finally managing a mouthful of greens. “This is supposed to be our girl time. Ever since you transferred schools, we’ve had less and less time to just hang out.”

Chloe frowned, but gave in with a nod. “Sure, sure. Oh! Daddy told me about how you won that Wayne Enterprises competition for your class!” Chloé suddenly perked up, leaning over the table in newfound enthusiasm, her suddenly exclamation making the rich crowd around them side-eye the two teenage girls. Marinette flailed her arms in an attempt to get her friend to calm down and be quiet, an attempt that she should have known would be futile. All Chloe did was lean slightly back towards her own chair. “Well?! Are you excited to be going to Gotham?”

“Of course I am,” Marinette finally stopped trying to calm down her excitable friend. “Being able to travel to America, study the fashion of Gotham City, be inspired by the foreign landscape—“ Marinette sighed dreamily, not unlike the way she used to sigh over Adrien. Her hands even cradled her cheeks as she lost herself momentarily to her daydreams. Her hands dropped as the illusion was ruined by the memory that— “The whole class is going though, so it’s going to be an uphill battle to avoid Liar Rossi spoiling the whole trip.”

“Nope, you said you didn’t want to talk about her. This conversation will be sausage-hair free until dinner is over, at the least,” Chloe chided lightly. “I heard Bruce Wayne himself is inviting your class to a charity gala at the end of the trip, and that you will be presenting a speech as an honored guest and owner of the winning submission!” Chloé gasped suddenly, dropping her fork onto her plate with a cacophonous clatter. “Oh. Em. Gee. You’re designing your own dress, aren’t you? Who am I kidding, of course you are!” Chloé squealed in delight. “MDC, strutting her skills overseas, it’s glorious!”

“Shh, Chloe!” Marinette went right back to flailing her arms uselessly. “There’s a reason I haven’t publicly come out as MDC yet! Someone will hear you!” The short blue-eyed girl was looking around the room frantically. The waiters wouldn’t dare kick out the mayor’s daughter, but other patrons were already leaving early or requesting a different floor in order to escape the infamous Chloe Bourgeois Chaos. On the bright side, none of them seemed to be paying any attention to what the young rich girl had actually said.

“Oooh,” Chloe leaned over the table again with a wide, mischievous grin. “What if you finally meet your soulmate?” Her smile widened impossibly. “Of course you’d have an American soulmate. Someone blunt, maybe, to combat your constant worrying. He’d have to always tell you upfront exactly how he feels or else you’d constantly be worried about misinterpreting them,” the girl mused, completely ignoring Marinette’s groaning and moaning about how embarrassing she was being. “And everyone knows that nobody does Blunt quite as well as Americans. Ooh, I wonder what your mark is gonna be!”

“Hopefully something invisible,” Marinette finally spoke up, her remark a mere grumble as her nose scrunched up. “It would kind of ruin the whole secret identity thing if it was noticeable, right? Do soul bonds even care about secret identities? Oh no,” Marinette blanched, spiraling in true Marinette Dupain-Cheng fashion. “What if it’s on my face? The magic can’t hide something that identifiable! Everyone will know who I am, and then Hawk Moth will attack my family and isolate me and attack me out of costume or akumatize me, and then he’ll make his wish, and then world war three will actually happen, and—“ The ramble was thankfully stopped by perfectly manicured hands slapping over Marinette’s mouth, one blond eyebrow raised at her as Chloe kept the word vomit from continuing stubbornly.

“No. Stop catastrophizing, the worst-case scenario doesn’t always happen, girl. La—“ Chloe glances around the suddenly half-empty room and lowered her voice. “You know who is such a deep part of you that there’s no way your soul bond will ignore that. I seriously doubt it will cause your identity to come out.”

Marinette’s shoulders slumped in relief. She waited until Chloe removed her hands and sat back down before saying softly; “I just wish you could come with me. Then it would be bearable.”

Chloé gave one of her oh-so-rare soft smiles to the smaller girl, nodding. “I know. I wish I could go too, but I can’t miss a whole month of school. But you’ll have Alix with you, which is better than nothing. And besides, everyone in Paris knows I’m Queen Bee,” Chloe flipped her hair haughtily, making Marinette grin. “I wouldn’t want to intimidate Gotham’s heroes.”

“In other words,” Marinette started slyly, a teasing grin overtaking her lips as she avoided Chloe’s gaze playfully. “You don’t want to risk attracting the attention of Gotham’s rogues because you couldn’t handle them, right?”

Chloe spluttered in denial, tossing her napkin at Marinette in false anger. “How dare you! The Queen Bee can handle any villain!” Chloe became serious again. “Be careful while you’re over there, yeah? Me, Ryuuko, and Viperion can keep Paris safe while you’re gone but you will only have Alix.”

And Chat, Marinette thought to herself, but Chloe doesn’t need to know that.

“It’s better if Ladybug doesn’t appear in Gotham at all,” Marinette agreed, “So I’ll be as careful as possible. The less evidence anyone has to connect me and Ladybug, the better.”

Chloe nodded. “Of course. Now, did you see Clara’s last music video?” The blond heiress/superhero was turned into a common teenager again as she squealed in delight. “It. Was. Fabulous. And the dress you made her for it? I want one.”

—*—*—*—*—*

Of course this would happen. Marinette stood in the lobby of the hotel where her and her class were staying while in Gotham, with no classmates or teachers in sight and the bus she was supposed to board already gone. At least I’m fluent in English, or else I’d be screwed, she thought to herself. Resigned to the fact that she wouldn’t be able to catch up to the bus, Marinette instead went over to the hotel information desk and asked for directions to the Gotham Museum of History, where her class had left to visit.

At least she had money for a cab.

A cab that apparently decided to kick her out two blocks from her destination in favor of picking up a couple that were positively dripping in expensive jewelry. Marinette dusted herself off, adjusting her purse on her shoulder with a frown. She couldn’t blame him for looking after his own finances, but he didn’t have to chase after tips that blatantly. The girl didn’t even bother arguing with the man, simply handing over the cash she owed him before turning in what she thought was the right direction, if she was reading the map on her phone correctly. It was already dark out, not surprising considering how their plane had arrived in the afternoon and they only got a few hours to rest before visiting the museum as their first activity of the trip.

Quickly memorizing what she thought was the right route, Marinette tucked her phone back into her purse and smiled at Tikki, who hid inside it. “Alright,” Marinette whispered to her Kwami. “I hope I haven’t missed too much!”

Quickly closing her bag, the girl started off towards her destination.

And promptly got lost.

“I thought I saw it this way…” she groaned to herself when she realized she didn’t recognize anything around her, and it had only gotten darker in the past half hour she had been walking. At least being Ladybug keeps me in shape.

Marinette straightened her shoulders, resigning herself to retracing her steps for the twentieth time. She turned on her heel, walking forward as her bright blue eyes scanned her surroundings for anything that might lead her to the museum.

Until she realized the street was oddly empty, and a soft crunch of glass sounded from behind her. Marinette had prepared for this, at least. I’m being followed. Careful to remain calm and keep on walking as if nothing was wrong, Marinette strained her ears and eyes. She managed to catch a glimpse of her tail in a window— tall, broad shouldered, biceps like hams. The girl frowned. She could easily outmaneuver someone twice her size, but it would draw a lot of attention.

Firmly in Ladybug Mode, Marinette slowed down just enough to let the guy come a bit closer, before she veered sharply into an alley. Risky? Yeah, but it would be much less likely to make a spectacle of herself when she handed the guy his ass.

Sure enough, it didn’t take long for the guy to attempt to grab her. As soon as she felt his hand reaching for her though, Marinette easily clamped onto his wrist and used her momentum to hurl the assailant over her shoulder. The large body hit the gravel roughly on his back, letting out a moan that was half pain and half anger. Marinette backed up just enough to stay out of the man’s immediate range, her eyes continuing to dart around.

He hadn’t been alone.

His boots are good quality, so are his cargo pants. No gun, but several knives on his belt. Professional, not out to kill. Capture? As soon as Marinette saw two other guys dressed identically to the man now pulling himself back up to a standing position come out to surround her in the alley, she put it all together. Each newcomer had a tranq gun trained on her. Traffickers.

Ever the improviser, Marinette quickly rolled out of the way of the first few darts shot at her and grabbed a misshapen hunk of wood from the ground to block the next two projectiles like a warped shield. Lunging to her feet, she whipped the chunk of wood at one man with deadly precision, the plank hitting him square across the forehead hard and fast enough to knock him out.

One down. The guy she had initially thrown over her shoulder took advantage of her distraction to wrap his large arms around her, trapping her own against her torso. Not one to be trapped for long, Marinette jumped up and flipped herself upside down so that her legs wrapped around the guy’s neck, and twisted so that her body weight unbalanced him. Combined with his sudden lack of oxygen and field of view, the guy stumbled just enough for Marinette to get one arm free and slam her elbow into his most sensitive area. The guy released her with a howl, and Marinette twisted into a three-point landing. She paused only long enough to slam the side of her arm into a pressure point on howling man’s neck that knocked him out before springing up to face the—

Marinette paused. The last attacker was already tied up, a much different muscular form holding the cursing man a few inches above the ground.

Batman.

“You know, you shouldn’t walk around Gotham at night,” a casual voice sounded from behind her, making Marinette swing around to face Nightwing. The blue vigilante was leaned against the wall, with the first guy Marinette had knocked out already tied up at his feet. “But that was pretty good fighting. You made a few unnecessary moves, but overall not half bad.”

A third figure dropped down from a nearby roof, making Marinette whip her head to the side for a third time. Ugh, I’ll get whiplash at this rate. How are they able to move so noiselessly? The last figure was Robin, who made short work of tying up the last guy before standing and staring straight at Marinette. He crossed his arms, and the French girl suddenly had the feeling she was about to be scolded.

“What were you thinking, leading them into an alley? Are you an idiot?” Were the first words Robin said, instantly making Marinette puff her cheeks out in indignation. How dare he?!

“Robin,” Batman interrupted whatever retort Marinette had been about to make. “Ducking into the alley made it less likely that anyone else would be caught in the fight. It was not necessarily bad a move. That being said,” the most experienced hero in the alley turned to the girl in pigtails. Marinette gulped. It was really intimidating, having Batman’s state focused solely on her. She forced herself to stand as straight as possible. “It was still incredibly reckless. You had no idea how many people were following you, or what their skill level was. I highly suggest you act with much more caution next time. Or better yet, don’t travel Gotham alone even during the day.”

“I’ll be careful,” Marinette agreed, the three heroes instantly picking up on her French accent. “This wasn’t exactly my choice. First, my class left the hotel without me even though I’m the one who applied for the contest that even allowed us to come here in the first place. Then, my cab driver kicks me out a few blocks from where I asked him to take me, and then I got lost. Merde!” Marinette threw her hands up. “It’s not my fault I have bad luck. And you,” she turned and pointed to Robin, about to give him her two cents about his critique of her. That is, until when fingertip actually made contact with his chest and both teens visibly jumped.

It was like static the moment they made contact, but nothing visual happened. Marinette was about to shrug it off as nothing when—

Her vision split in half, like a TV screen when someone was playing a two-player game. Suddenly she could see her normal perspective, with Batman to her left, Nightwing to her right, and her finger straight ahead pushing into Robin’s chest, but she could also see a second perspective.

A perspective where she stared straight at herself.

She watched as her own blue eyes widened in disbelief. She watched as she stumbled back a few shocked steps, and as Robin did the same in front of her.

“Mon dieu,” Marinette cursed breathily, unable to move her eyes from Robin or acknowledge the frantic questions being posed to both of them from Batman and Nightwing. The teens just stared at one another. “Of course my soulmate would be a vigilante.”

“Shit,” Marinette had no idea which of the three heroes said that, but they all seemed to share the sentiment. Shit, indeed.

Nightwing shifted and said; “At least all the traffickers are knocked out.”