I was thinking. What if dying is what saved Danny’s life at some other point
Context: (this is all based off my understanding of how my hematologist explained it and I didn’t bother googling stuff with my headache so feel free to correct any med stuff here)
My platelet levels are slightly above the normal range. Now, I’ve had dengue twice, and having too many platelets at a normal time means that I didn’t have to bleed from my gums or something when my platelet levels dropped due to dengue. The catch is that my platelets are high because my red something is a bit low (hemoglobin or rbc, i cannot remember sorry) which means i need iron supplements.
Now back to dpxdc
What if dying means that some hormone or health indicator or something was just permanently above or below average for Danny. It doesn’t affect anything, it’s just there- a fact of half-life.
Now Oracle is alarmed when during some routine city CCTV checks she sees some sketchy movement in the Botanical Gardens. A quick check from one of the bats reveals a skinny teenager with a basket of leaves and flowers.
An hour later, Selina is calling Bruce to say Ivy is annoyed his brood made “her kiddo” skip his “greens”
Dying means danny gets to enjoy veggies+ and tea+. They don’t make him hyper like realms-grown plant. Instead he gets vitamins or something from them like a human and non-Ivy-touched plants.
(I realize this kinda side tracked and is no longer saving danny’s half life but i would love to see if anyone writes a prompt or ficlet or something about more on the irony of “dying saved my life” instead of whatever my prompt evolved into)
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"A triple quad black eye but make it ristretto," Marinette mumbled with her eyes half closed, thrusting a ginormous tumbler into the hands of the aghast cashier.
She stumbled her way to a counter seat and promptly collapsed onto the marble surface. The chill of it was sharp enough to keep her on the knife-edge of lucidity while waiting for her dose of sweet, unforgivable addiction.
A chuckle rang through the vacant shop amidst the whirring of the espresso machine.
"Didn't think there'd be a free range one of you nutcases out there," a baritone voice said with undisguised mirth.
Normal Marinette would've ignored the weird voice. Normal Marinette was smart, usually. Even Sleepy Marinette knew better than to jeopardize everything. Unfortunately, the only Marinette left running the show was One-Foot-Into-A-Grave-Slash-Coma Marinette.
And this Marinette was a downright idiot.
She opened a striking blue eye for a moment before turning the other way and mumbling, "...Ngh bad stranger."
"Name's Julian. Not a stranger now, am I?"
Marinette's current slower-than-a-turtle brain took a hot second to process the words and string them together before slurring out, "Mah-ree-nettie," squinting at Julian afterward like a satisfied housecat.
"Well, Nettie, what brings you to Gotham? Secret Wayne? You have the looks for it, that's for sure." The barista couldn't help but let out a snort at that. If there was anything Gotham was known for, it must be the gaggle of black-haired blue-eyed children with wildly tragic backstories.
Marinette slow-blinked like a lagging computer at Julian before sluggishly reaching to the top of his head.
"Flatcap."
"It's Paper Boy Day, y'see."
"...Weird."
"Kid, this dude's one of the resident crazies. This," the barista gestured to all of Julian, "is what happens when you live here too long. God knows, the air here reeks of insanity."
"Don't forget the water too," Julian snickered.
He eyed her up and down before adding, "And you, kid, scream visitor. Your outfit is drab enough to pass for a gargoyle here, but your scent— It's a dead giveaway. You smell too nice to be here. All lavender and cinnamon and puppies."
Before Marinette could begin to muster up a response, the barista came back and placed her filled-to-the-brim tumbler down with practiced caution.
Marinette cared not for anything but her preferred dose of insanity, immediately gulping down the still steaming drink to the resigned and amused eyes of the duo.
"Even after all that, not even a hint of hesitation, huh? Just like that Tim kid, I swear."
"Uncannily so, indeed."
Three straight minutes of inhaling the more-caffeinated-than-should-be-legal drink later, Tired-As-All-Nine-Hells-But-Still-Pulling-Through Marinette took the stage.
With scrunched brows, she turned to look at Julian then the barista then back to Julian.
"...Wayne?"
Guffawing, Julian replied, "The growing brood of Bruce, Playboy Prince of Gotham. You one of his? Last name Wayne?"
With the caffeine charge belatedly rebooting her critical thinking skills, Semi-Dead-But-Not-Quite Marinette realized how much shit pre-coffee Marinette could have already landed herself in. Idle chatter with strangers was a privilege not granted to a newbie runaway.
"...No. And I- I think I have to go now."
Marinette rushed out of the coffee shop, tumbler clutched like it was her life, under the indecipherable gaze of the odd stranger.
"Hey, Nettie," the barista greeted, moving to make her drink the moment she walked in.
Over the course of a week, Marinette had kept running into the strange man on her coffee runs. After the second meeting, she indulged in the newfound paranoia her journey had encouraged. Under Tikki's disapproving gaze, she casted no less than thirty-seven different spells to be absolutely, beyond any doubt certain that he was in no way a threat to her. Her actions were morally ambiguous, sure, but that coffee shop was the only place in Gotham that didn't stink of corrupted energy.
Marinette could only either take the plunge or go coffee-free, and she's seen how well that would go.
"Hello again, little bean. Need another death drink already?"
Silently acquiescing to that, Marinette admired Julian's newest garb. "...National Bride Day?" she guessed.
He wore an ivory wedding gown, the skirt billowing out around his seat in heaps of tulle and lace. A white camellia rested on his right ear, pinning back part of his flowing blonde wig, pearls hanging from it like a star-lit waterfall.
"Tsk, tsk, Nettie, close but not quite." He bopped her on the head with a bouquet of fake carnations, eyes gleaming with an odd affection. "World Marriage Day, actually."
"What do you think, I'm rocking this one, aren't I?" he wiggled his eyebrows.
Marinette rolled her eyes at his antics. "Felix put it all together, didn't he? You and Mitch together can't measure up to a pinky of his fashion sense."
"How dare you speak to your father like that, young lady!" he gasped in mock offense.
"Thought you called me a Wayne, Jules," Marinette teased back, brow raised.
"You could be both," he joked. "I don't mind being called father-in-law."
"Ju-"
Her righteous indignation was interrupted by the clink of porcelain on marble and the chuckles the barista didn't bother holding back, much to her dismay.
"You- I- Just- No! You guys, no! Felix and I aren't anything even close to that," she exclaimed. But unfortunately for her, her reddening face hid nothing.
"...Sure, kid, sure. But hurry it up, will you? I've got a hundred bucks on the line."
"You bet on me?!"
"I want in. Twenty bucks Felix makes the first move." The barista held out a crisp fifty, adding, "Thirty Marinette avoids him after."
Julian grabbed the bill, pulling up a purse from his fake cleavage.
Before Marinette could protest more, a loud siren blasted from her phone speakers. Her eyes hardened instantly as if a switch was flicked, and without another word, she left like Cerberus himself was on her heels.
By the time Ladybug had arrived on the scene, half of Collège Françoise Dupont was up in flames. Chat Noir was nowhere to be found, but from a cursory glance, the students stayed a distance away from the burning building, seeming neither harmed nor controlled or otherwise affected aside from the bone-deep fright.
"Marinette! Where is Marinette!" the akuma—Manon—screeched.
"We don't know a Marinette," a student cried out in fear of the looming figure.
"Stop. Lying. To. Me!" She flung around her wand-holding arm in her rage of a tantrum.
Staunchly ignoring the rabbit hole of implications of Manon's demands, the heroine came up with her gamble of a plan. Trying to take the most efficient route, she cautiously approached a pastel pink Puppeteer, hand at the ready on her yoyo. From behind the akuma, she nabbed her wand and broke it in half on her knee.
But, nothing changed. Instead, her move only served to incense Manon, not unlike pouring water on sizzling oil.
"N-" Ladybug moved to shake her head, but the akuma was quick to cut her off. "You wouldn't lie to me, right? Not you, the perfect sweetheart of Paris, right? Our darling heroine would never lie to a little kid? Right?"
Marinette weighed her options. It was an innocent child versus the entire world. Faith against fate.
Manon stared at her with the same hope-filled gaze she had once had when she wanted her plush dolls. It plunged her into memories she once resolved to forget. It made her weak.
She bit her lip.
"No. I've never heard of a Marinette."
But not weak enough.
"LIAR," she screamed, flinging tiny pink sparks from her fingertips in all directions.
Spinning her yoyo into a shield, Ladybug managed to repel all but one, the littlest of the bunch. But that was enough to damn her.
With its landing point as the origin, it spread from the soles of her feet to the tip of her waist at an alarming speed. The heroine was protected by the magic of the suit, but even through that, she could feel the burn of the pink flame. It was beyond what words could describe. She felt like she was bathing in a hearth straight from Tartarus. She could feel the conflicting magics tearing her apart and putting her back together, tendon by tendon.
In her haze, she could hear Manon roaring out, "If you won't reveal the truth, then just go reveal everything else. Hmph!"
Manon shot out a pink beam from her index finger, but before it could hit her, someone jumped in the way.
Adrien.
Gritting her teeth, Ladybug aggressively blinked her way into focus. Her former friend was in a similar blazing state. His face was deathly pale and covered with a sheen of sweat. His brows were scrunched tight, but still, he held on.
"S-Storyteller! I- I-" he stuttered out, jaw clenched and eyes shut tight.
Looking closer at the school, the brightest flame within came not from the objects set ablaze but from a group of teenagers—her old classmates—writhing in pain on the ground yet unable to escape from the fires of akuma-delivered retribution. They were beneath a fallen column in the innermost part of the building, crawling like worms to hide from the akuma's line of sight.
"I never wanted to be a model." The confession was pulled from Adrien's throat, word by word. "But it's the only I can do to remember maman."
The heroine had seen plenty of gruesome scenes in her time. From a city drowned and silenced to the screams of young children being beheaded, there was no shortage of such scenes in Paris.
But Manon—Storyteller—was a first. She didn't kill, no. She kept everyone alive in a perpetual cycle of torture.
It was cruel.
And it was her fault that this happened at all.
"I have hundreds of pictures of Ladybug on my phone. My... friend says I'm obsessed. I imagine meeting her, dating her, kissing her." Words spilled from Adrien's mouth like air escaping a punctured balloon, and at that, the flames licking at his torso eased an inch.
A sliver of repulsion shot through her at the admission, but she put that aside at her newest theory.
"Manon!" she yelled, shielding Adrien behind her. "I have something to say."
Her eyes darted around, looking for the akumatized object, but her mouth never stopped.
"You want to hear secrets right? I'm adopted," she said, but there was no change to the pink flames.
"No, no!" Manon stomped her feet. "I don't want your secrets, I want Marinette! I'm not the liar, it's everyone else!"
"Manon..." Ladybug slowly approached, hands held out in appeasement.
"It's a consh-pirah-see," the child screamed, and the flames burned brighter at her rage.
As the child spun in her agitation, a flash of unblemished white caught the heroine's eye. It wasn't visible from the front, but a ribbon gleaming like arctic ice trailed from Manon's hair.
Ladybug's eyes flashed.
"Marinette..." she enunciated slowly, catching Manon's attention. She approached the child at a snail's pace, careful not to startle her. "Did she go to school here?"
Manon's eyes flashed brighter, "Yes, yes! Marinette is real. You believe me, right?"
The heroine inched her right hand to her side, but the motion attracted the akuma's attention.
"Liar! I hate you! Give me your miraculous!"
Faster than the beam could reach her, she moved to seize Manon's ribbon.
Ladybug felt words bubbling in her throat, but she resisted. Who knew what sorts of world-ending secrets could escape her lips? The list was far too long, and the risk, magnitudes too great.
With veins throbbing on her skin while her heart and lungs burned with the desire to reveal, she ripped the ribbon straight through the middle, releasing the akuma and leaving behind a child with stained cheeks and puffy eyes.
Gasping for breath, the heroine caught the akuma before collapsing onto the pavement. Her city burned around her, but for once, she wanted to take a small, selfish break. Even if only for a moment.
Sprawled out on the ground, her chest rising rapidly, she heard the whimpers of a child who couldn't know better. She tasted the flames of desperation in the air, smelled the burnt ashes of hope. She saw Manon's heart break, and she felt her lose her faith in the world.
Marinette closed her eyes.
Another failure.
Preventable, necessary, agonizing failure.
Later, she would get up and be the hero Paris needed her to be. Later, she would be Ladybug. Now, she just wanted to be what she was— a child.
Tim was banned from caffeine, and everyone knew. Alfred put his foot down. No coffee beans could be found in the manor, but Tim expected that when he hit all-nighter number fifteen. But the next day, he found that all his regular drinks in Wayne Enterprises were replaced with juice. Even the vending machines stopped supplying coffee. He made it through to the end of work with an energy drink he managed to snag off an employee's not-so-secret stash. The coffee substitute would hold him over till he could sneak over to a cafe. Right after work, however, he learned that all of the cafes in Gotham refused to sell him any caffeinated drinks. Not even tea was spared from the ban. Convenience stores were the same story. So were grocery stores. And restaurants. Even street-side stalls. Any and all establishments in Gotham wouldn't sell him his fix, and he had tried every single one in a zombie-like haze.
The same was the case for the neighboring cities. Everyone refused Tim Drake-Wayne his beloved coffee. He had no idea how Alfred pulled it off, but he would have been impressed if he wasn't so numbed out by the caffeine withdrawals.
That was how Tim found himself on a bus headed to a small town far enough from Gotham for no one to recognize him on sight. It helped that when he was deciding whether to give in to his family's demands of sleep or go out of the state, a faded-out poster of a minor, unknown coffee festival was blown by the wind towards him by chance. He was about to dodge the incoming paper, but the smell emanating from the poster made him snatch it instinctively. Coffee. The paper smelled of the heavenly drink, but somehow it was different. He didn't know how to describe it, but it just was. It was more than coffee. It was Coffee. It energized him like never before as if it was charging up his very soul. He was pumped up as if he had slept for a week straight. Tim absolutely had to get his hands on this beverage, ban be damned. If the scent alone did this, the drink had to be pure magic in his veins. If he can bring some of it home, maybe he can stay awake for a month on one cup.
On the bus, Tim blazed through his work for the next week in under an hour. It was when he was working on the next quarter's research budget for Wayne Technologies that he smelled it again - the heavenly coffee. It was only now that he realized that the hint he smelled on the poster was a mere fraction of the wonder that is its scent. Underneath the bold smell of coffee, there were hints of caramel and nuts and sugar and spice and cinnamon and apples. It was divine. There were even undertones that Tim couldn't describe as anything but liquid warmth and joy wrapped in a bow. It was the perfect scent, his perfect scent - his ambrosia. He had no other way to express it. It pulled him in like nothing ever before. One whiff and he was enslaved.
As the vehicle drew nearer to its final destination, the scent of his ambrosia only grew stronger. Once he stepped down at the bus stop, almost subconsciously, Tim made a beeline for the source of the smell, a stall with an insanely long line.
Tim kept fidgeting as he waited for the line to move, absorbed in the scent and longing to come nearer, but despite that, he couldn't ignore the obvious glances the locals threw his way. It wasn't surprising. He was a stranger in a small town. An alpha stranger and one without a pheromone isolator in a crowd at that. Nearly all alphas always had one on them, as their heightened senses can make a packed environment overwhelming to them. People's pheromones, especially, would shove themselves in their face, making them dizzy from the sensory overload. It was easier for alphas to go about their day with an isolator, but it was not unheard of for some to opt not to. Those types were usually either insane or genius. Neither was good news. Tim was part of a separate category, however. He was selectively anosmic, specifically towards secondary characteristic pheromones. It was rare but not unheard of in betas, especially. Alphas were a different story. He'd gotten pitying glances throughout his life - the poor alpha who couldn't smell pheromones, the one in a billion. Out of spite, he read all about the world of scents, saw the advertisements targetting alpha-omega pairs, and asked everyone he knew how they felt about the sense, but he could not come to a conclusion other than it was overrated and romanticized. How could you fall so hard for only a scent? How could it be so overwhelmingly divine? If anything, Tim was grateful he couldn't smell pheromones. He never had to suffer the discomfort of smelling an omega's heat scent or a fellow alpha's aggressive pheromone attack. He rarely fell prey to his more primitive instincts. His life was complete even without pheromones. He could never imagine what pheromones would smell like, but from how hyped up everyone made it out to be, maybe it would be a close second to the heavenly coffee ambrosia. That was the only way to explain everyone's fascination with it.
The line moved fairly quickly, and soon, Tim was at the front. There, the scent was the strongest it ever was. He could see a tall and slender blonde manning the register while a petite woman was at the back working the espresso machine.
"Hi, there! What size and caffeine level can I get you?" he gave a blinding beam.
"I'd like the largest cup of the strongest coffee you serve."
That made the cashier pause. "...You want the dare-spresso? An epic one at that? Are you sure?"
Tim looked him straight in the eye, "Absolutely."
"Alphas. Guess we need another ambulance," he muttered under his breath before turning to the bluenette behind him. "One epic dare-spresso, Mari!"
She groaned before looking at which idiot ordered it again. Tim was floored. Her eyes were like a wave that threatened to pull him under. There was this unexplainable magnetism pulling him to the girl, and all Tim wanted to do was surrender to the urge.
"Looks like we have another one, huh," Tim heard from behind him.
"Here's some advice, kid," an older gentleman spoke from beside the stall. "There are easier ways to impress a girl than dying of a coffee overdose."
"I'm really just here for the coffee," Tim tried to explain but the blush spreading on his cheeks and the way he had just stared at the barista made his statement doubtful.
"Sure, and I still have both arms," another man with a visible prosthetic said.
"There's nothing to be embarrassed about, everyone loves Mari. Though, hopefully, you won't pass out like the last challenger," said a woman with a stylish afro.
"Challenger?"
"You didn't know? It was on the festival poster. If you can gulp the drink down straight in under five minutes and keep your heart rate in check, you get a date with the barista."
"Oh?" Tim was definitely interested now. "Can I get another cup to-go then?"
"Oh, god, there's two of them," the cashier groaned. "Mari, make it two for loverboy here."
The bluenette in the back sputtered, "A-Adrien!"
"What?" the man looked back innocently. "If he's that confident, maybe he really can sweep you off your feet."
The girl glared at him while handing over an oversized cup, but it was hardly effective with how flustered she was.
"Bottoms up," the cashier passed over the cup.
Tim smelled the coffee, but it wasn't the scent he was looking for. It was great, better than any cup he had before, but the ambrosia he longed for wasn't coming from the drink. There was a hint of it, but Tim could tell it was from an indirect scenting.
He could think about that later. First, he had a date to win over.
He started gulping the hot coffee, but his tongue was well used to the burn. It tasted just as wonderful as Tim had imagined on the way there. It was like liquid fire in his veins and tasted like a godsend. It was perfect for him. It had all the right flavors, and although the aroma couldn't hold a candle to the scent of ambrosia, it was worlds apart from anything else he had smelled before.
In under three minutes, Tim had finished the gigantic coffee, and he had never felt more alive since he was six. From the outside, however, he looked the same - composed and unaffected.
"Looks like this one has a shot, huh," another passerby commented.
The cashier clipped a pulse oximeter to his finger, and the crowd that Tim hadn’t noticed gathered around him waited with bated breath.
"Seventy!" the blonde announced.
"What a legend," someone whispered.
"Guess Mari isn't the only one who can stomach the stuff," a second voice said.
The cashier pushed the bluenette toward Tim, causing her to stumble straight into his arms, "Adrien!"
Tim knew he should be helping her up, but he relished in the warmth of the girl against his chest.
"Sorry about that," she said, looking away from him. "I'm Marinette."
"Tim," he replied. He only now noticed that the heavenly coffee scent was stronger than ever, and it was coming straight from the girl still within his arms.
"You have a coffee-scented cologne?" The scent smelled too natural for a perfume, but Tim couldn't think of any other reason for the scent if it wasn't from the coffee beans.
"N-No, those are my pheromones," she squeaked, burying her face in Tim's chest and causing his heart to skip a beat.
"Pheromones? But I can't smell those," he said, bewildered.
"Maybe it's fate, huh, bug?" the cashier grinned wildly at the two. "How lucky."
Marinette burrowed further into Tim's chest at the comment, ears turning a brighter red.
If this was fate, then maybe Tim had used up all his life's luck for this chance, and he had zero regrets.
Jason's head was spinning, and his vision was going in and out of focus. It was making his killer headache worse, and he didn't even know why. It was like how some of the people down in Crime Alley described getting high and hungover.
Jason felt like shit.
He could see something vaguely grey on his right, and he tried to lean his unstable body onto it, but just as he placed his hand down, instead of the feel of something solid, his hand phased through the structure - a gravestone, now that he'd taken a proper look at it - and all he could feel was a bone-deep chill.
"Phantom, huh? It's been a while since that one last came up," a lilting voice said with a hint of nostalgia.
"Who's there?" Jason was on guard. He was disoriented and in an unknown location. Was he kidnapped again? No, wait, the Jo-
A melodic giggle brought him out of his thoughts.
"Silly Jay, meeting you is always like this, isn't it?"
Ethereal. That was the only way Jason could describe her. A small fairy in a crimson, swishy petal-styled dress flew in front of his eyes. She was a red rose. He was starting to think she was part of his hallucinations. Maybe from an induced coma. There was no way a face so perfect existed in this world. Neither did fairies, his mind quipped.
"Then again, you never seem to remember," she teased in a light-hearted tone but Jason could hear the loneliness hidden underneath.
Jason flushed under her bright smile. To distract himself, he looked around his surroundings, and that froze whatever banter he thought of to cheer her up.
Here lies Jason Todd. A son. A brother. A friend.
The thing- The gravestone his hand phased through before the fairy flurried into his life was his own.
Jason Todd was dead. He was dead.
That was why he couldn't touch the object, why his vision was blurry and mind hazy, why he could see a fucking fairy that never should have existed. He had died at the hands of the Joker. After taking on the beating of a lifetime, he had borne the full brunt of an explosion. Batman was too late. He couldn't save his Robin. He was dea-
Yellow. The pixie flew so close to his face that that was all Jason could focus on. A shade so brilliant and godlike, it was like all the stars nested in a soup of liquid gold. Her eyes held an otherworldly beauty that gave such an elusively familiar feeling that Jason would have thought he imagined it had the fairy not alluded to knowing him.
"...Who are you?" he whispered, unwilling to break the bubble of the moment they shared.
She gave a feathery laugh at that, "You always ask the same questions, don't you, Jay?"
The fairy pressed a light kiss to his forehead before pulling back, saying, "I'm Marie the Pixie."
Marie. The name unconsciously rolled off his tongue as if it was coming home. And Jason just knew that it suited the fairy - no, pixie - perfectly.
"Hello, I'm your soulmate," she said with a mischievous grin before breaking into giggles as he gave her a blank stare. Somehow, as dubious as her words were, he trusted them.
"Sorry Jay," she tried to hold back her laughter. "Last time, you told me to try it like this."
She grinned at him so vividly that Jason almost wished that moment would never pass. It was as if his very soul missed her smile even if he couldn't remember her.
"Welcome to the world of the dead! But don't worry, Jay, this is only temporary. Someday soon, you'll come back to the living," she reassured him, but that only served to baffle the boy.
"Temporary?" he asked, mind swirling with thoughts of never wanting to leave this girl - his girl - behind.
She gave him a small smile, "Fate hasn't cut your thread just yet. Phantoms are a form meant only for the few destined to return."
"And I was one before? We've met before?" he said out loud.
She hummed, caressing his gravestone. "James, a war hero stuck in a decade-long coma. That was the longest we were ever together."
Jason wanted to ask why she couldn't come back with him, but he held his tongue. "...And the other times?"
"Sometimes a shadow, sometimes a ghost, a couple of times, a vengeful spirit. But only one time a phantom. And yet, still always my beloved Jay," she had a distant look in her eyes as if seeing something that wasn't there.
"James was special," she grinned at him, but Jason could see the loss in her eyes. He felt a twinge of jealousy at that. "And so are you, Jason."
They sat like that in comfortable silence against his gravestone. Now that he could focus on it, he was able to come into contact with objects again. It seemed that his pixie had grounded his mind.
"So..." Jason started with caution. "How did we become soulmates?"
A flash of emotion too quick for the boy to catch appeared on the pixie's face.
"Wanna watch the sunrise? I know the best spot! Living a couple of centuries does that to you," she laughed artificially in obvious avoidance.
"Sure." Jason let her; she would talk when she was ready, he knew.
Grabbing his hand, the pixie let her ladybug wings extend completely for the first time. The way the light bounced off the crystal-clear wings was magical to Jason. It struck a chord deep in his soul that he felt always happened when they met again. So familiar yet so achingly warm. Like freshly baked bread, which was how his pixie smelled like, his mind supplied unnecessarily.
"Come on!" she cheered, fluttering her wings faster than her prior casual glides. The pair ascended high above the clouds, and Jason's breath was taken away. The mix of reds, purples, pinks, yellows, and oranges from up above was a more wondrous view than he could have ever imagined. It felt like a scene straight out of a classic. Only the best prose fit to describe the sight.
Wow.
"Right?" the pixie giggled. Jason hadn't realized he spoke out loud.
She leaned her head against his shadowy shoulder before sighing, "It never gets easier telling you this."
"You don't have to," he assured her. She gave a wistful smile at that response. "You always say that."
She took a deep breath before saying, "I was a hero. I was Ladybug, Protector of Paris. The whole city relied on me, but I-"
"I failed them," her voice broke. "I was too weak. I let Hawkmoth win, and when he made his wish, the universe demanded a price."
"What was the wish?" Jason breathed lightly.
She gave a defeated, wry smile at that. "He wanted his wife back."
Jason said nothing, only placing his arm around her shoulders, giving her his silent comfort.
She rubbed circles onto his hand for a while before continuing, "But Emilie Agreste's soul was damaged by a broken miraculous, and fixing that required pure creation magic."
"But to pour in creation, one must take from creation. And I had to pay the price," she let out a deep, sardonic laugh. "I was erased from existence and from everyone's memory. I lost my soul to become a pixie only able to meddle with the world when the scales were tipping the balance."
She looked him dead in the eye, "Until I met you."
"...Me?" Jason blurted, astonished.
"Yes, you," she gave him a soft grin with clear love in her eyes.
"No matter what, fate can't help but love her ladybugs," she played around with the clouds at her fingertips, not looking at Jason.
"But you died," he said accusingly.
"But I met you," she looked at him, and to Jason, everything just felt right in the world. Even if he was dead. "In a world without soulmates, fate had let me meet my destiny. How can I hate her when she led me straight into your arms?"
They didn't talk after that, choosing instead to bask in the other's presence.
"Do we only meet when I die?" he broke the silence after a long while.
She hummed in response. "You stay until the world calls your soul back. Sometimes that's a day. Sometimes, a few weeks. Occasionally, a few years. Four at most, usually."
"It depends on how badly the universe needs you," she teased. "I had James for a decade during his coma but only an hour when he died. It was the middle of a war, and your presence was immediately demanded back."
"Why? Why me?"
She peered at him so intently that Jason felt she was seeing through his very soul in more ways than one.
"Our connection. My eyes are golden now, but they used to be blue. After fate had taken me, some of their power couldn't help but bleed over into my soul, and in turn, yours too. Our presence in the world, one in the living and one in the dead, balances the world in a core-deep sense."
"Then you'll just be stuck here forever?" he asked, incredulously. That was shitty treatment for a heroine said to be loved by the fucking world itself.
"Well-" Before she could respond, the edges of Jason's soul turned a blinding yellow like the sun.
"It's time," Marie said with a sad smile. "Goodbye, Jason. Stay safe, I hope I don't see you again for a while."
"Marie," Jason was panicking. He couldn't leave. Not yet. Not without her. But the yellow was burning him, and he could see hints of toxic green in his vision that was quickly blurring out of focus.
"I'll always be waiting for you."
That was the last Jason heard before he was engulfed back into the dark abyss with crisp lime lines swirling around him.
~
Back in Gotham, Jason was irritated at the ache he could feel deep in his soul. He wanted to blame it on the Pit, but something in the back of his mind told him he was wrong. He felt like he was missing something - someone, his soul whispers - but he didn't know what - who - and it was driving him insane.
Lost in his thoughts, he failed to dodge the girl who tripped into him. A crack in the pavement was precisely in the middle of the pair.
"I- I'm so sorry, monsieur."
She looked up at him, and Jason froze. For a moment, he could swear there was a surge of gold in her eyes, but he blinked and it was gone.
Her crimson lipstick reminded him of something. Not blood, but something more... cheerful. Valentine roses, he mused.
He held her arms as she wobbled, unsteady on her feet, and at the contact, it felt like everything clicked into place for the man.
He gave the petite woman a dangerous smirk. He purred, "Enchantée, mademoiselle."
The girl in his arms - his girl, his mind corrected - froze at that, flushing a beautifully deep red. He gave a husky laugh at that reaction. It was so innocent.
"Marinette," she breathed airily.
"Jason." The twinkle in his eyes he never knew he was missing was back. "Care to grab a coffee with me?"
---
Big thanks to @verymuchimmortalcat for being my beta!
One moment Red Hood was giving his rundown of patrol to the rest of the team, and the next, sparkling purple-blue liquid suddenly flooded into the Batcave. Jason could see most of his family sinking under the weight of their armors that they were quick to shed in response. Nightwing seemed to fare the best with his light suit. The liquid felt no different from water, but no one wanted to risk it containing any toxins. Visually, though, it felt like what would happen if a magical unicorn herd simultaneously bled out in a lake.
The liquid was rushing in quickly, already almost to the ceiling in under three minutes. Jason could see the rest of his family holding their breaths while trying to look for an escape. Dick was diving towards the exit to the manor, and the others were attempting to move elsewhere too, but the undercurrent was too strong and constantly pushing them upwards, much to the illogicality of the fluid.
The water level was only getting higher, but right as the liquid was about to push them against the ceiling, they felt themselves hit a soft surface instead. It was like moving through cotton.
Pop.
They phased through the ceiling and somehow ended up in the middle of a lake. On the banks, Jason could spot a large unmoving white mass. Swimming closer, he noticed that it was a herd of dead unicorns, as crazy as that was.
What the actual fuck?
"Where are we?" one of his siblings asked. Jason knew he shouldn't know the answer to this, but there was a niggling feeling that he did.
He looked around to see looming dark pine trees surrounding the lake, but Jason's instincts told them the trees were edible. And that they were sweet. The place was fucking with his goddamn mind.
Suddenly, a bell-like giggle rang through the air.
Jason looked up to see a blue-haired pixie in a lavender petal dress flying toward them. She had one glittering blue-green wing while the other was a translucent pale lilac.
"Hi, Jason, remember me?" she said airily.
"Who the fuck are you? Where did you bring us?" he fired off at the thumb-sized girl floating above them. His family was on guard, silently reaching for whatever weapons they had left as they emerged from the lake.
"Here's a present~" she tinkled, not paying Jason any mind despite her initial acknowledgment of the boy. At her words, three blue-purple petals, the same color as the mysterious liquid in the lake, floated towards the group.
Everyone was wary of what magic the fairy had brought, but in Jason's mind, a word suddenly appeared. Pixie-pop. He didn't know what that meant or how he knew that was what those petals were, but he just knew. With the same mysterious sixth sense this whole place was giving him. Like some sort of déjà vu, except he's never been here before. He was fucking sure he'd remember if he was. It was hard to forget the dead unicorns, cotton candy tree bark, and magic pixie that his mind just seemed to know.
One suddenly sped up and reached Dick before it disappeared into purple sparkles with a pop. Everyone waited with bated breath but nothing happened.
Another flew straight for Damian. He tried to dodge but it followed him as if on a tracker. He threw a birdarang at the petal, but the throwing weapon poofed into pastel blue feathers before it could make contact. The petal caught him while he was mid-air, and his entire body was enveloped in blue smoke. When the wind blew the remains away, Damian was gone.
Tweet-tweet.
Jason looked down to see a small, chubby robin. Damian, his mind supplied. It occurred to him absentmindedly that the blue smoke was the color of a robin's eggshell.
Tweet! Twee-tweet! TWEET!
The small bird tried to fly from the ground but kept falling from the unfamiliarity with his new appendages. With a huff, he circled around in search of the target of his ire, the goddamn pixie.
But she was gone.
Magically, as if they were all suggested to forget, the last petal slipped past them unseen to tap softly on Batman's lips, leaving white particles the taste of sugar in its wake.
All of a sudden, Bruce turned paler, his eyes more slitted and glowing against the dark surroundings. His canines lengthened, and his lips turned a deep, blood red.
Vampire, Jason knew.
Right after he thought that, out of nowhere, a pale purple-blue circle appeared below where they were standing, and they all promptly fell through it.
Landing in a crouch on sky blue grass, Jason observed his new surroundings. The sky was dark forest green. They were still in a forest, but compared to the light-hearted fairytale vibe of the previous woodland, this place had a doom and gloom rivaling Gotham's. It might have been the lack of proper sunlight, but all the shadows had a sinister look to them. Jason felt he should be more cautious.
TWEET!
The literal robin jumped angrily on the ground, hidden by the tall grass. Dick lifted him up on his palm, and Jason could see Damian's feathers all puffed out and ruffled. It was hilariously adorable for the stabby Robin of the crime capital. A sibling, Stephanie probably, stifled a laugh at the sight.
The dark forest kept giving Jason a sense of déjà vu, but he couldn't recall from where.
Whoosh. Thud. Whoosh. Thud.
Jason felt called to the sound and approached slowly. In the distance, he could see a lumberjack chopping wood with a... lightsaber?
"Fuck!" he said under his breath. "I know where we are."
Everyone turned to him, waiting for an answer.
"We're in a fever dream. My fever dream. Back when I was ten."
"What the hell, Jason?"
"Twee-twee-tweet! Tweet!"
"Dead unicorns? Really, Jay?"
"Enough," Bruce silenced the bickering children. "What's important is finding an escape path."
"Red Hood, any ideas on how to leave?"
"Portals. I think. Yeah. Probably. Shit, it's been more than a decade, I don't know."
"Tell us what you do remember, Hood," Tim said.
"Magic, sci-fi, this place is just one huge mess. The petals from earlier are pixie-pops, a harmless but permanent prank. I don't know what's up with Nightwing, but Robin and B likely won't turn back until we get out."
"Shit."
"Yeah, shit."
"Is there really no way to reverse the... pixie-pop?" Barbara asked.
Jason groaned, he could barely remember this place.
"A test!" it suddenly came back to him. "There's a test to turn time back, but I don't know how to find it. It randomly moves places every hour."
Out of nowhere, a pink sun was shining brightly against the grass green sky. There was no need for sunrise or sunset in this place; time was relative and random. Everything was meant to occur as a surprise.
A hiss escaped Bruce's lips as the pink rays reached him. His pale skin turned a bruise-like purple. His red lips turned black. Jason couldn't see it, but he knew underneath the cowl, Bruce's hair was dyed a bright bubble gum pink.
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Two weeks later, speculations on the identity of Hawkmoth, Mayura, and the Parisian heroes were still splattered across the tabloids. Ladybug had only revealed that Hawkmoth and Mayura would be gone for good, refusing to admit their identities to anyone. Some were against her silence, claiming that the man should be brought to justice, but the protests eventually quieted down when the heroine revealed that fate had already enacted a just price; the man was dead.
The Justice League International had invited the team to join shortly after the announcement of Hawkmoth's defeat, but they had refused, citing that they were retiring permanently. Instead, Ladybug requested a private audience with Batman.
After three days, the twins found themselves in Metropolis as Ladybug and Colt in front of a quaint ice cream parlor, Sweet Justice, with a 'Closed for Renovations' sign on the entrance.
Ring-ding.
The room was visibly empty, aside from the Bat brooding in the shadows. However, Marinette could feel the force of life underneath her feet. There were people waiting in the basement.
"Why did you ask to meet?" the older vigilante asked.
"We had a... situation," she paused. Her twin moved to hold her hand.
"A civilian friend of ours learned about her biological father during an akuma attack. But when the fight suddenly ended, the only clue she had was the Bat-suit. We wanted to know if we could ask for help with finding their parents."
"Their?"
"Twins," Ladybug replied, taking two vials of blood out of her yoyo. "They don't have to meet if they don't wish to, but our friends would appreciate learning if their father, at least, knew they existed."
"Or if he abandoned them too," Colt muttered bitterly. His twin squeezed his hand in comfort.
"I'll see what I can do."
"Thank you, it would mean a lot to our friend."
Twelve hours later, in the middle of the night, Tikki woke the two siblings up.
"Marinette, Batman sent you a message."
Suiting up, both teens were tense.
I found their father. He's coming to meet them on the next flight to Paris. Where can I send him?
"He likely only found out about us from Batman," Lewis analyzed. "But we haven't said anything to maman and papa yet."
12 Rue Gotlib, 21st arrondissement. Tom and Sabine Boulangerie Patisserie. 1:00 PM, Wednesday? Ladybug hit send.
"We tell them first thing at breakfast."
"We found our birth father," Marinette blurted out. "Or, well, our birth father found us. We asked Chat Noir for help who asked Batman for help who then told our dad, and-"
"Sweetie, breathe," Tom said.
"And he's coming tomorrow!" she squeaked.
The entire time, Sabine was dead silent.
"Maman?" Lewis asked.
"Okay," she took a deep breath. "That is great news, petites étoiles, but we would have appreciated you saying something sooner."
"We just," Marinette hesitated. "We were just curious. We didn't expect him to fly out to meet us. We honestly just wanted a name and a face."
"We didn't mean to hurt you," Lewis continued.
"You didn't, sweethearts. Don't get us wrong, it's a wonderful thing that you two finally get to meet your birth father. We were just... surprised."
Tom pulled the family in for a bear hug before shooing the children off to their plans for the morning.
The next day, Bruce Wayne, billionaire playboy extraordinaire, was in the bakery with his waddle of children.
"Hello, Monsieur Dupain, Madame Cheng, I'm Bruce Wayne," the man greeted in fluent French.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Monsieur Wayne. We appreciate you flying out to meet the twins. This is Marinette and Lewis,” he gestured at the siblings standing together. “But, we just want to be clear. The children’s custody is to remain with us.”
“Of course,” he gave them a blinding smile that Lewis could tell was practiced. “I’m just here to meet the twins. Why don’t we chat alone outside? I saw a nice park on the drive here.”
One of the teens behind the man snorted, but Bruce ignored it. “It would be great to get to know you kiddos better.”
The walk to the park was filled with awkward silence. Marinette and Lewis had no clue what to do when their father had seemed so… fake at the bakery.
‘Did he not want them after all? Was he just here to make it clear to us to never bother him and his family again?’ Marinette wondered.
Scanning the empty park, the trio settled on one of the more secluded benches.
“I’m Bruce, your father,” he grinned at them with a smile neither of the twins believed. “Batman mentioned you had some questions?”
“Did you know?” Lewis asked aggressively.
“I didn't. Your mother, as I recently found out, was a model based in London who hid the pregnancy from everyone.”
“Are you still in contact with her?”
“No, it was, well, a one-night stand. I didn’t tell her I was meeting you two either. She’s not exactly a kids person, so to speak.”
"I have something for the both of you," Bruce removed two small pale yellow boxes secured with white ribbons from his jacket pocket.
The twins opened them to find a single tiny baby sock in both of their presents. Marinette's was a soft pink while the other was a light blue. Lewis flipped his sock over to find a shiny, blue-green half-wing embroidered onto it. Marinette found hers to be the same, but when put together, the pair formed a complete butterfly.
"It's an old Wayne family tradition to gift a sock to new members. Alfred, our butler, made that himself. It's a peacock butterfly, a symbol of celebration."
The siblings looked at the man sporting a small grimace; that was the most genuine they'd seen him so far. He opened his wallet to reveal a worn-out, pastel green sock. It was just like theirs, except it had an embroidered T-rex instead.
"We like to always keep the sock on us at all times, you see. Kind of like a good luck charm." The twins shared a knowing glance at his last words.
"Thank you."
Bruce had unknowingly passed one of his newest children's tests.
Ladybug had seen plenty of ridiculous akumas in her time. There was Frozone, a teenager who was cut off by their crush after being friend-zoned. There was Barber-que, a hairdresser who turned all men into sentient pork chops. And, Monsieur Ramier upgraded into Angry Bird on his one-hundredth akumatization.
In the past three years, Paris had dealt with a lot.
But this one definitely took the cake.
A young lady in a floor-length gown made up of glass shards stood in front of the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris. Her outfit consisted of tens of thousands of fragments. Each shard had what seemed to be a unique video playing, from animated styles to live-action films. Her limbs were encased in opera gloves and thigh-high boots formed by glued pieces of paper. Words flew across the pages too fast for anyone to read. The woman's flowing black hair was held back by a ragged ivory wedding veil, matching the streaks of ghost-white interspersed within her curls. The only intact item on the akuma was a single unfractured rectangular screen placed right above her heart.
Her name was Camellia. Her family was driving from Versailles for her wedding when a truck crashed into their vehicle. Her parents died on impact meanwhile her brother had amnesia; he didn't remember her at all. Three hours from her wedding, she had lost her entire family. It was hilarious! Her life was like the plot of a shitty morning soap opera.
"If I have to live like a drama, then so should everybody in Paris!" Drama Queen screeched.
She plucked three shards from her dress and threw them towards the panicked but amused crowd. It seemed like a fun, run-of-the-mill akuma to the Parisians. Nothing deadly or damaging.
One of them hit the mayor in the head. In a burst of golden light, André Bourgeois was suddenly dressed in a denim vest and ruffled jeans combo, belting out, "Mamma mia, here I go again. My, my, how can I resist you?"
Another shard struck Chloé Bourgeois' chest. After a pink light beam, she was running uncontrollably in a sailor schoolgirl uniform with a piece of toast in her mouth, her blonde hair in twintails.
The last brushed against Mme. Mendeleiev's hand before turning into a red bicycle underneath the science teacher, her palms stuck to the handlebars. An alien sat in the front basket and Mme. Mendeleiev started pedaling as if on auto-pilot. The human-alien duo started flew against an illusory moon in broad daylight.
It was pure chaos.
Marinette took advantage of the mayhem to slip away from her class to transform. Returning as Ladybug, she saw her twin being chased by a tall man and a floating bowler hat.
"Yes, I've been brokenhearted!" Mayor Bourgeois' voice cracked at the high pitch as he danced the song number. He had been joined by Ivan and Mme. Bustier.
"Blue since the day we parted! Why, why did I ever let you go?" they sang in chorus.
Drama Queen stood on the steps of the cathedral, throwing shards at the crowd below left and right. Ladybug tried to knock the one she held, but instead, it was absorbed into her yoyo.
Suddenly, it was night. Ladybug found that her vision turned grayscale, like in a movie flashback. A cloaked woman walked to her parents' bakery and set down a box. She knocked hard on the front door but ran away when the second-floor lights turned on. Ladybug approached the package. Inside were two babies wrapped in soft pink and blue blankets. The girl's hair was as dark as the night while her brother was a fair blonde like the sun. Both twins, however, shared the same bright blue eyes. She recognized those eyes; she saw them each time she looked in the mirror.
Ladybug knew. This was Marinette and her twin, Lewis, as infants.
But the heroine vehemently denied that! She and her brother were definitely not adopted. She had seen videos of her mother talking to her baby bump, ultrasound images, and even a picture of Sabine breastfeeding the two of them. This had to be some sort of plot! Right, plot. Ladybug was convinced this was just another scene in a movie.
As she thought that, her surroundings shifted. Everything was still monochrome, but this time, Ladybug was in an alley. A boy was crumpled over two bodies on the floor, blood pooling around the three figures. The kid looked up, and she froze.
That was her brother's face.
The boy was dark-haired, but it was the very same eyes and nose she saw every day. She couldn't be mistaken.
The environment blurred once more, and the first thing Marinette noticed was a gigantic green Tyrannosaurus rex. She jumped back, fists at the ready, thinking it was a sentimonster.
Click.
She spun around and saw someone with their back to her placing what looked to be Batman's suit into a glass case.
She was in the Batcave.
All of a sudden, the world started cracking like glass just as the man turned around. Before Marinette could get a good look at his face, she was back on the steps of Notre Dame. A broken phone lay next to her feet, and the akuma was flying away. On instinct, she captured the butterfly in her yoyo.
"Are you alright, bugaboo?" Chat Noir asked.
"I'm fine, just a little disoriented. What happened?"
"After your yoyo took the hit, you suddenly fell unconscious. Nothing could wake you, and you looked really pale. Sickly pale. Like you were on the verge of death," her partner looked like he had more to say but he was cut off by the beep of his ring.
Ladybug cast the cure before swinging off in the direction of home. Her class had dispersed. The rest of the field trip was likely canceled, and she had more important things to worry about.
Next
---
After more than two years, I’m back!
My headcanon is that Lewis is in Ms. Mendeleiev's class. Francesca Framagucci is the daughter of one of Gina's friends. She's childhood friends with the twins.
Also, did anyone get the reference to King of Drama hahaha
At ten, Marinette had thought that she would become a fashion designer. She dreamed that her brand would become a regular at Paris Fashion Week, her name right next to Gabriel Agreste and Audrey Bourgeois.
At thirteen, she became Ladybug, a hero who stood between Paris and its path to irreversible destruction. She had a weight placed on her shoulders that a child never should have had to bear.
At fifteen, she became the Guardian, protector of nineteen tiny gods. It was a lifelong role and shackle.
At eighteen, she defeated Hawk Moth, freeing the city at last from the magical terrorist. But in the now peaceful Paris, Marinette couldn't find her place.
So, she left.
Marinette and her twin Lewis had received scholarships to various universities after co-winning the Keep Fashion Forward competition held by Audrey Bourgeois. They had created an ethereal fae costume, complete with wings, that allowed its wearer to float half a foot above the ground via small acoustic propulsion devices in the heels.
All around the world, prestigious higher education institutions had sent the twins invitations for their fashion design and applied physics courses. They had even passed on Robinsons Academy, the most renowned college worldwide, much to the bewilderment of their family and friends, for Gotham University, located right in the center of the capital of crime. It was a mystery why the twins would want to settle there of all places.
And now, at thirty, Marinette was working at Wayne Enterprises with her brother in the Fabric Technology wing of the Applied Sciences department.
"Lu!" Marinette slammed open the door to her brother's office. "Your intern, Ellis, forgot to email us that the weight had to be increased! We have to adjust the fabric to be stiffer to compensate, but now, there's not enough time-" She paused when she noticed her twin's blank expression.
"Lu...? What's wrong?" Her brother stared at her with red eyes and the most heartbroken expression Marinette had ever seen him wear.
"Maman and Papa," Lewis took a shaky breath, as Marinette grew more concerned about what happened to rattle her ever-composed twin.
"What about maman and papa?"
"They're dead," he whispered brokenly. Marinette couldn't believe her ears. Her parents couldn't be, well, dead, right? She had just talked to them last night before bed. They had asked when she and Lewis would be flying back for Christmas. They couldn't be dead! Her twin had to be mistaken. Someone must have mixed up the news!
Her eyes widened and all she could croak out was a small, "No. No. No!" Marinette wanted to continue drowning in denial, but her twin's slight nod and dejected expression only threw the facts straight into her face. Her parents were dead. She was never going to hear them bake bread early in the morning or hear them ask her if work has been busy. She would never get to have her parents at her wedding or introduce her children to their grandparents. Her parents were dead, and she and her brother were well and truly alone now.
"The bakery burned in the middle of the night, an electrical accident. The firefighters got them out, but it was too late. They inhaled too much smoke and died on the way to the hospital," Lewis said robotically, turning to stare out the window into the gloom of Gotham.
"No! They can't, Lu," her voice cracked. "They can't be dead! They're okay! Perfectly fine! They have to be!"
"They wanted to know when we'll be back," Marinette whispered. "We were going home soon. We were going to see them again."
"No!" the woman broke into sobs on the floor, her twin pulling her in for a hug they both needed. The tiled floor was a startling chill on Marinette's bare legs, but she could barely notice the sensation over her grief.
The rest of the week passed by in a haze for Marinette. One moment she was in her brother's office, struggling to accept the news of her parents' death, the next moment, she was on a plane back to Paris for the wake.
One day blurred into the next in her numbness. The funeral was a foggy cloud of faces giving her their condolences, passing her hugs, whispering in her ear that things will get better. It was not.
Paris was as sunny as ever as if only good things could happen here, a stark contrast to the darkness of the city the twins previously called home. The world was shining in Paris, but Marinette was drowning.
Friends from Paris kept calling her phone, checking in on her and her brother, asking if they ate, if they slept, if they needed someone there. Alya and Nino were the ones the two saw the most, often visiting them with reheatable meals and forcing them out of the house for any number of reasons. Luka dropped by unannounced from time to time, dragging them to a ride down the Seine on his boat one time. Rose and Juleka would visit them too with beautiful bouquets neither of the twins had the energy to appreciate at the moment.
In contrast, communication from Gotham was silent, her co-workers blissfully unaware of how her life had suddenly turned upside down. They thought her brother and she took an early vacation; they couldn't be more wrong. They hadn't told anyone from Gotham the news, too drained to initiate any form of conversation with anyone, much less over the phone. However, soon, the city was catching up to them.
One month after their deaths, Lewis sat down with his sister in the living room of his grandfather's old house. They both had bags underneath their eyes, the past weeks had run the two ragged.
"What do we do now?" Marinette asked her older twin brother in a whisper. "It's just the two of us now."
Lewis squeezed her shoulder in support.
"Yeah, just us," his voice was hoarse. He cleared his throat before saying quietly, "I want to stay. In Paris, I mean."
