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Chapter Text

Marinette’s soulmate had always been a mystery to her. At least, she assumed that the dreams were his fault. 

She never saw enough to call them memories, but most nights when she fell asleep, Marinette got flashes, impressions of her soulmate’s life. When they were young his weren’t too different from hers: a mother’s smile, a warm meal, and the occasional glimpse of things like his toys, or the wallpaper in his bedroom. 

It seemed completely normal to Marinette for those early years. While some people’s soulmate bonds manifested differently, her experience was fairly normal. Her parents had had something similar up until they met each other.

Whenever she thought of her mystery soulmate (which was often), she wondered what he saw in his dreams. Did he see macarons and her first clumsy attempts at sewing? Did he see her best friends at school, or her dolls? Was he annoyed by how girly everything was?

Maman assured her that he would love her, no matter what, just like Papa had always loved Maman. That was enough for Marinette, and she spent her early years surrounded by love both near and far.

Everything changed in a single night. Marinette bid both of her parents goodnight before settling in for a peaceful sleep.

It was dark in the dream, and Marinette immediately felt uneasy. The dreams were usually full of light and fun, so this just felt… wrong.

Marinette felt like she was wandering through a hazy fog, and she was afraid to keep going, but she couldn’t stop. Nothing but the gray fog surrounded her until she reached a heavy door.

She thought that she would have struggled with the weight of the door, but it gave to her touch easily. Steeling herself, Marinette walked through.

Immediately a series of images flashed through her mind, all of them filled with blood. Blood spattered across the wall, blood seeping across kitchen linoleum, everywhere she looked there was blood.

There might have been more to see, but Marinette would never know. She was woken screaming and crying by two incredibly concerned parents.

“What’s wrong, darling?” Tom asked, rubbing her back. “Did you have a nightmare?”

“Something happened to my soulmate,” she cried, burying her face in her father’s chest. “All I saw was a lot of blood. Something is wrong.”

From then on the dreams changed. Understandably, Marinette was scared to sleep. Whenever she finally did, her dreams were of stale cigarette smoke, cold alleyways, and stolen wallets. While she got used to it, she wished she didn’t have to – it would have meant that her soulmate was safe.

But he needed help, and Marinette could only do so much through dreams. So she lived to be happy, surrounding herself with love and light so her soulmate had something to look forward to each night.

Sometimes it was painful for Tom and Sabine to watch. They knew what she was doing and why she was doing it, but that didn’t make it anymore fair for a ten-year-old to bear such a heavy burden.

***********

If you asked Jason, he would have complained that he dreamed only in pink. He knew that the dreams came from whatever his soulmate had seen that day, but it was always so… pink.

When he was younger, he hated it. Everything he dreamed about was girly, and he wanted nothing to do with it.

Then, his parents were killed, and his own world plunged into darkness. Jason found himself alone in the world, living each day only to sleep, to catch those precious few moments of the only constant in his life.

He found he couldn’t bring himself to care if everything was pink and frilly – that wasn’t what the dreams were for. Not the dreams were a sense of warmth, safety, and home. It didn’t matter if he went to bed hungry, because his mouth was filled with the taste of rich, amazing food that he couldn’t begin to identify or name. If he was forced to sleep shivering behind a dumpster, the dreams were always in perfect conditions, playing outside in a park, or standing near a warm oven.

Jason likely would have given up long ago if it weren’t for his soulmate. Yes, the dreams kept him sane, reminded him that he was human, not some feral beast the adults treated him like. But even more than that, Jason knew someone cared about him. He didn’t know if she experienced anything similar, but all of his dreams were accompanied by her predominant emotions of the day, and almost every day since his parents died, the dreams were absolutely drenched with concern.

Concern for him.

It was selfish, Jason knew. Whoever his soulmate was, she was practically a saint, and obviously a far better person than he could have possibly deserved. But he was determined that no one would have her except him – she wouldn’t have one of those soulmate tragedies where he died before they could ever meet. That was completely unacceptable. Sure, he wanted to be good enough for her and everything, but first he had to live long enough for all of that.

The day that Jason met the Batman, he was sure it would be the end of the line. He knew trying to steal the Bat’s tires was his stupidest move yet, but he also couldn’t bring himself to care until he actually got caught. Looking at Batman, all Jason could think was that he didn’t know what his soulmate’s name was, or what she even looked like. He knew that she was kind, generous, and a great baker. He couldn’t let things end this way!

In a move of supreme desperation, Jason savagely threw the tire iron into Batman’s stomach and ran like hell.

Batman caught him, of course, holding him by the scruff of his neck while Jason snapped and growled. He wondered what his soulmate’s last dream from him would be like. Would she feel his fear, his desperation, his regret at never meeting her, or his apology?

He couldn’t have possibly imagined how it would all actually end. A week later Jason found none other than Bruce Wayne driving him to Wayne Manor, spouting things about adoption and lawyers. It didn’t feel real, but once his future was undeniable, Jason found himself sinking into a softer bed than he knew existed. As sleep overtook him, he hoped his soulmate knew that she didn’t need to worry about him anymore.

Chapter Text

Jason didn’t think it was possible, but a few months after his fourteenth birthday it felt like he was beginning to be distanced from his soulmate.

It was insane, how do you become distanced from someone you share every dream, every night with? But here they were, it was happening. And he could pinpoint the very night it had started.

He’d had a lot on his mind that night – he was thinking about his parents, his soulmate, and after a particularly harsh lecture from Bruce, he was thinking about how he could not ever be Dick Grayson. Jason wanted to scream, he wanted to hit something, and so he had taken his anger out on some mugger that happened to be in the way. That led to an even worse lecture from Bruce, and Jason needed to feel like someone cared, or understood. He needed to feel his soulmate.

Sleep came easily – the world of his soulmate was one that was filled with light and joy, all of the things that Jason felt like he didn’t deserve, but was working for. But that night the dreams were tainted with sharp fear and filled with stone monsters terrorizing Paris. It felt like he was going to suffocate under the weight of new responsibility.

Startling awake, Jason was left with the rare experience of a sleepless night – he had always wanted to spend as much time in his soulmate’s head than usual. Had she just watched a scary movie? That stone monster couldn’t be real, not in Paris, could it? That kind of crazy seemed reserved exclusively for the likes of Gotham and Metropolis.

The next night was much the same, except there were even more stone monsters. They were everywhere, plaguing the streets and terrorizing citizens. In this dream something shifted. Instead of catching fragmented glimpses of things, Jason was watching them first hand from his soulmate’s perspective. He looked down and saw hands covered in some strange, red, spotted material, and briefly he caught a glimpse of her face. She wore a domino mask, not unlike the one he wore to be Robin, but it was red. Vibrant blue eyes contrasted the mask, and deep blue-black hair framed a small, pale face, tied into pigtails. Aside from obvious concern for her, Jason couldn’t bring himself to think of much other than the tiny face he saw so briefly.

That morning, as soon as he woke up he started researching furiously. Something like that should have been national news at least, if not international news, but it was almost impossible to find. He didn’t know French, but with the help of an online dictionary soon Jason had found footage of a stone villain’s attack on Paris, and the actions of Paris’s newest superheroes: a boy dressed in black leather who went by Chat Noir, and Ladybug.

Jason’s soulmate.

She was obviously worried and unprepared to be one of exactly two things standing between Paris and complete destruction. Jason wasn’t sure how he would handle pressure like that now, but Ladybug seemed to manage by closing herself to any extraneous feelings whatsoever. He couldn’t fault her when he was one of the sources of feeling she closed out on. He still felt the whispers of concern and attention to him, but she just couldn’t support him the way she used to, like he was the only other person in the world.

One day they would meet, Jason swore. He would occasionally try to convince Bruce that they should visit Paris for something or another, but it was always shot down.

So, Jason focused on other pursuits. When the truth about his mother came to light, Jason made up his mind to track his real mother down. He deserved to know where he came from, didn’t he?

*************

Marinette was always grateful that her soulmate never seemed to begrudge the fact that she had mostly closed herself off to him. He seemed to understand, giving her what encouragement he could. She didn’t know how much he had seen from her dreams, but his acceptance of the whole situation made it easier for her to compartmentalize everything that was going on.

He seemed to be busy with some sort of project, and Marinette did her best to encourage it from afar. She hadn’t seen much from his perspective for a while, but she knew it had something to do with his mother. It was confusing to Marinette, because she was sure that she remembered his mother being dead. Maybe he wanted to do something in memorial of her?

The last couple of days he’d been feeling like he was getting really close, and Marinette couldn’t be happier for him. She made sure to think about him frequently, so that he knew she still cared even if she hadn’t been as attentive as usual.

Things seemed to be working out for the two of them. She was figuring out how to be Ladybug, and he was pursuing something he really wanted to. It felt like everything was finally levelling out until Marinette’s world crashed around her.

She was sitting in class on a perfect day when it happened. Out of nowhere a searing pain knocked the wind out of her lungs until it hit her, again and again and again. She didn’t know that she fell out of her desk screaming from the pain, she didn’t know that her classmates all rushed to check on her, and she didn’t know that she was taken to the hospital in an ambulance, where she convulsed for no particular reason.

No, she was with her soulmate, witnessing a madman with green hair raise a crowbar again and again. Marinette only wished that she were actually there to hold her crumpled soulmate, to protect him from this man that reeked of insanity and malice. She wished that she could take away his pain, his suffering, but she stayed with him until the bitter end to give him the one thing she could. Marinette made sure that he wasn’t alone.

She wanted to scream and cry from the injustice of it all – they were still young, they hadn’t even met yet! But Marinette couldn’t even do that much, because if she allowed herself to feel any of it, Hawkmoth would have his most powerful akuma yet and there would be no one to stop her.

Everyone felt the death of a soulmate differently, but the worst of all was the soulmate that they had never met. It wasn’t painful for Marinette, at least not painful in the way that experiencing his death had been. When she finally woke up in the hospital, Marinette simply felt empty, left only with a gaping pit inside of herself and a name she couldn’t have known on her lips.

Chapter Text

Even with all of the pain she’d felt, the death of her soulmate didn’t leave any sort of mark on Marinette’s body – just on her mind. Unfortunately, it marked her as a social pariah in certain situations. Conversations about soulmates often turned into stilted whispers and looks of pity.

It was the strangest feeling. It wasn’t that Marinette felt incomplete without her soulmate – she’d been a complete person her whole life, and she’d never met him. Instead she was hit with the full pain of lost opportunities, lost joys.

A lost future.

But Marinette had her whole life to live – the least she could do was live it for both of them. She defeated Hawkmoth and continued protecting citizens from anything she could. She served as the class representative until they graduated and got into college on full scholarship. Marinette laughed, cried, fought, and bled, but she never loved again – at least, not like that. She resigned herself to it, and the thought of even trying to think of someone other than her soulmate in a romantic way felt… weird. Wrong. The word betrayal crossed her mind, but that seemed a touch overdramatic.

Most importantly, Marinette was happy. She didn’t need or want anything more from life. Now if only her friends would let her stay in her happiness.

Where was Alya? Marinette was at their favorite restaurant, at their normal table, and she’d made such a big deal about being on time that Marinette had gotten there ten minutes early. It had been fifteen minutes already, and there was no sign or word of her. Just as Marinette was getting ready to give her friend a call, someone sat at her table, directly across from her.

“Hi?” she said uncertainly. It was a boy around her age. His red hair was curly, and he wore a shirt that strained a bit over his stomach and glasses that desperately needed to be cleaned.

“I’m Enzo. I haven’t seen you at one of these things before so I thought you might have been here by accident, but then you stayed.”

“Oh, I’m not here by accident. I’m supposed to meet—”

“Shh, don’t worry about that. We’re all here for the same reason, there’s no shame in it, You’re among fellow rejects here.”

“Excuse me? I don’t—”

“So why did your soulmate abandon you?” Enzo interrupted before taking a long loud drink from the water that had been sitting in front of Marinette. “Mine complained that I never did anything for her, and that I acted like the fact that we’re soulmates doesn’t mean I don’t have to ‘put effort into our relationship.’”

He continued to complain about his soulmate, but Marinette shot up from her chair, eyes blazing. She barely processed that her hand had wrapped around her glass of water before she flung it in his face, hopefully cleaning his glasses a bit.

“Asking me anything about my soulmate is completely inappropriate, and disrespectful to my soulmate. I would give anything to have met him before he died, and you’re here trying to hit on other women because you’re too lazy to appreciate your soulmate? Grow a pair and talk to her, Enzo,” Marinette said before she stormed out.

A million arguments and complaints filtered through Marinette’s mind. Tomorrow she would talk to Alya about boundaries and make her promise never to set  Marinette up on another date. Tomorrow would try to decipher the gnawing worry and deep confusion she felt. But those were issues for tomorrow. That night, Marinette dreamed for the first time in years.

*********

There was no sense of self, no luxury of identity when the Pit first awoke him. There was only anger, violence, and so much blood. He was a feral beast fleeing or fighting everything that could be perceived as a threat. He ran and fought until he couldn’t stay awake any longer, collapsing in the first place he found with some semblance of shelter. Sleep overtook him the second he hit the ground.

His dreams were familiar, warm. He dreamt of people he vaguely recognized, but they were too old. He dreamt of fabric and designs, and a bakery that felt suspiciously like home.

The dream shifted to a restaurant where some unknown mand sat across the table. His words weren’t clear, but his intentions were – this man was flirting with Jason’s soulmate!

When his eyes opened, Jason’s mind rang with the word, “Mine.” He didn’t know who that man was, but Jason didn’t die and come back to life just to have his soulmate be stolen by a loser with bad skin and a weak chin. Based on the emotions he caught from his soulmate, that wasn’t going to be an issue, but Jason wasn’t taking any chances.

So, Jason went back to Gotham. It was time to become the person he thought his soulmate deserved, or die trying. There were lasting effects from the Lazarus Pits to be sure, but his dreams always brough him back from the brink of madness.

There was no way of knowing how much his soulmate saw in her dreams, but she never turned away from hi or reached with fear or disgust. Even when Bruce and the others didn’t, his soulmate seemed to understand. Even after she got glimpses of the darkest parts of his mind, she only had concern for him and overwhelming joy that he was alive.

There was no way she didn’t know he was Red Hood, just the same way he couldn’t not know she was Ladybug. It helped, understanding that she’d also had to stare the worst of humanity in the face and make unimaginably hard decisions – a part of Jason wondered what had finally gone down with Hawkmoth. He’d missed that chunk of his soulmate’s life, but she occasionally had some frankly traumatic flashbacks.

So he set himself to implementing his new justice for the sake of the citizens of Gotham. Even as he did it, though, Jason couldn’t deny that he had a bit of an ulterior motive. When he finally went to find his soulmate – and he would – there was a high chance that at some point in their lives, his soulmate would probably at least visit Gotham. The mere thought of her getting hurt was almost enough to send Jason into a bout of insanity. The city needed to be safer for her.

Jason Todd had been to hell and back once already. He’d be damned again before he let anything happen to his soulmate.

Chapter Text

Sleep had become a bland necessity in the past years, and Marinette wasn’t quite used to dreaming again yet. Every time she had a dream she couldn’t help but be shocked, and then scared it would be her last. But nothing could compare to the joy of knowing that somewhere, somehow, her soulmate was alive.

Her dreams were wild, bordering on feral. Whatever had brought her soulmate back to her had changed him. He was more violent, more angry than before, living a life filled with blood. Even with this extra wildness, though, Marinette could find glimpses of who he had always been. She dreamt snippets of whatever he was reading at the time, of video games, and of his family.

And though it seemed so different from everything she stood for, it didn’t bother Marinette to catch glimpses of the justice he was beginning to enact. She could feel his hatred for the vile men that built empires around using and abusing those who couldn’t fight for themselves, and she couldn’t help but feel the same way.

People could change, but sometimes they don’t. Marinette had lived her life harnessing the powers of creations and destruction, unleashing the might of literal gods on a daily basis. She’d made her share of impossible decisions, and she couldn’t help but respect  her soulmate from afar. At the very least, she knew he was firm in his convictions.

More and more she was finding that Paris no longer needed her. Hawkmoth was an issue of the past, and no one had dared to try to fill his place. All the problems thereafter were things that could and should be handled by the police – Paris needed to remember that Ladybug and Chat Noir were there for extenuating circumstances, not to replace law enforcement.

Freed from his father’s grasp, Adrien was also able to seek out his soulmate. So they both set out, leaving their city behind, at least for the time being. It was a sad decision, but a hopeful one as well. Both heroes were more than ready for a new chapter in their lives.

The search wasn’t terribly hard for Marinette, just… dangerous. She knew her soulmate lived in Gotham, and that he was Red Hood. She knew his name was Jason, but anything about his civilian life was vague and unconfirmed. Marinette had her suspicions, of course, but she decided it was best to go off of what she knew for a fact. The only problem was the danger that posed. She didn’t want to catch anyone’s attention as Ladybug, which meant that she had to seek out Red Hood as Marinette. This meant constantly putting herself in danger and pulling a lot of stunts that her friends would have killed her for if they knew about it. Now she just had to wait for something to pan out.

**********

Jason wasn’t sure if he should be elated or concerned that his soulmate started dreaming of Gotham. He knew that she didn’t control what he dreamt, but the dreams somehow felt coy, as if she were playing a game of cat and mouse with him, waiting to see which could find the other first.

He knew he probably should have had some sort of reservation about this – if it were anyone else, they would probably have a million emotions to deal with and categorize. Jason didn’t have time for any of that crap. He was too busy trying to track down his soulmate so he could put her in a protective bubble.

When she’d started dreaming of Gotham, Jason had altered his patrol route to cover every fabric store in the city of Gotham. He also patrolled during the day, hoping to catch a glimpse of her, but no dice. It didn’t help that he only had a vague idea of what she looked like. That was enough to drive him a little crazy, but that was only the beginning of Jason’s woes.

She was throwing herself headfirst into danger constantly. And the worst part was that Jason was never the hero that ended up saving her. He could tell his soulmate was looking for him, and this was somehow the best idea she came up with.

His family would come home with stories of the citizens they saved from Calendar Man, or Killer Croc, or the Riddler. Then Jason would get to see it all in great detail later that night as soon as he fell asleep. He felt her mounting frustration at not finding him yet, but Jason went wild every time he had to dream of her needlessly endangering herself. He was always two steps behind her in that regard.

After a particularly awful night filled with dreams of Oswald Cobblepot threatening to cut off his soulmate’s finger, Jason stalked angrily out of his bedroom ready to murder something. He steered away from Tim, unable to overcome his irrational anger that Red Robin had saved her, but only after being stuck with the criminal for a good twenty minutes.

Deciding that his family would only piss him off further, Jason ended up roaming the city as Red Hood for a while. He didn’t even realize he was doing it, but he soon found himself at the fabric store that he saw in his dreams most often. He was considering going into the café next door to get himself a donut, but that’s when he heard a scream interrupted by maniacal laughter.

People scattered as the tell-tale signs of the Joker overshadowed the street, the clown strolling up leisurely.

“What a lovely day to test some bombs,” he said, bouncing the explosive in his palm. “I thank you all in advance for the fun I’m going to have.”

Hunkering down, Jason was cocking his gun when one civilian rushed forward and punched the man in the face.

The world froze in shock as the Joker fell to the ground, bomb forgotten as he clutched his nose. Every nearby citizen simply stared at the tiny girl who’d had the balls to punch the Joker in the face and now seemed to be cussing him out in French.

French. Heroic actions.

“Oh, hell no,” Jason muttered, rushing forward. The tiny ball of rage was his soulmate. His soulmate just punched the Joker in the face and was now directly in the line of fire of whatever the madman had up his sleeve.

Before the clown could even reach into his suitcoat, the butt of Jason’s pistol was crashing into the top of his head. The Joker collapsed, unconscious, and with no remorse, he shot the one lackey Joker had brought in the shoulder.

“You,” he said, jabbing a finger at a random citizen, “call the police right now. I’m taking the girl with me for… protection.”

Grabbing the petite girl by her upper arm, Jason hauled her into the nearest secluded area he could find. “What the hell was that? You could have died just now, do you realize—”

“Can you at least take off the helmet while you lecture me?” she interrupted in accented English. It was adorable, and she’d just punched Joker in the face, and Jason was so close to losing all mental capability. Only his anger and fear of losing her kept him somewhat sane. But looking into those blue eyes, he found even that slowly crumbling.

“Fine,” Jason conceded, taking a moment to take off the helmet. All these years of dreaming didn’t prepare him for just how tiny she was. It almost felt like he was looking straight down to meet her eyes – but he had to focus! “That was reckless, and—”

Grasping his shirt in one hand, she pulled him down with a surprising strength and met his lips with hers. They were soft and insistent, and it relieved a need he hadn’t realized he’d had his entire life. He wasn’t ready for her to pull away, so when she did he stayed hunched over, the perfect height for her to murmur in his ear.

“I had to get revenge for dying on me, and revenge on the Joker for killing you.” Her blue eyes seemed fathomless as a gentle hand caressed his cheek. “I don’t think I’m finished with either yet, so you’re going to be stuck with me for a long time.”

Chapter Text

Marinette wasn’t sure how she was ever going to let her soulmate go. Feeling him under her hands, on her lips – it was a sensation she hadn’t allowed herself to think about, or pine for. Now that she was here, though? She wouldn’t give it up for the world.

“Jason,” she whispered, feeling his name on her lips for the first time since he’d died. “I finally found you.”

He withdrew slightly, but it was only to tuck her beneath his chin where she could feel his heartbeat hammering in his chest. “I don’t think that’s fair. You know my name, but I don’t know yours.”

Normally she would have teased him, but she felt an irrational need to hear him say her name, to know that they were both here – that this was real. So she whispered it to him, and he repeated it, whispering it like it was something sacred, like she was something sacred. “Marinette.”

Her soulmate was a hulking man, made of hard muscles and warmth that was instantly comforting to Marinette. She could and probably would have stayed there in that moment forever if they weren’t startled apart by a siren blaring in the distance.

“I guess right here isn’t the most secure place to be doing this,” Marinette said sheepishly, ducking her head a bit.

“Apparently not,” her soulmate rumbled, scratching the back of his head.

Even as they said this, Marinette couldn’t stop staring at him. This was the man she’d gotten to know through dreams for almost her entire life. She’d been completely clueless what he would look like, so she felt like she had to scrutinize every detail and commit it to memory.

His hair was messy from the helmet, and the white patch of hair among the black was a charming detail that made Marinette smile – somehow it fit him perfectly. He was almost as tall as her father, with shoulders just as broad, but every bit of him was hard, defined muscles that she was a little too happy to look at. He carried himself with a confidence that came from living on the streets as long as he had, and she saw evidence of his life even with the costume he wore. There was a small, almost unnoticeable scar through his left eyebrow from a batarang accident in his early days as Robin, as well as numerous tiny white lines on his hands that she doubted that anyone would have noticed if they hadn’t been looking for it. His eyes though, were an unexpectedly gentle sight, a soft blue that Marinette found infinitely relaxing.

Shaking her head, she lightly smacked her cheeks. “Right. We need to get out of here before someone notices us. Do you want to come to my apartment? Just to talk! I mean, not that I thought you would… I’m going to stop talking now.”

He smiled, and Marinette found herself nearly swooning at the crooked tilt of his lips. “Lead the way.”

***************

The only thing that was giving Jason the confidence to actually speak to his soulmate was the knowledge that she was just as nervous as he was. It was fairly obvious – she seemed ready to jump out of her skin at the smallest noise. That was grounding to him, but it also left him with the urge to wrap her in his arms and protect her from the world. He had no delusions that she was somehow weak or helpless – he’d seen plenty of her time as Ladybug in his dreams. But he knew better than anyone that sometimes the protectors needed to be saved as well.

Her apartment was strangely familiar to him, just like the girl in front of him. The place, he’d seen in his dreams. Marinette, though, he knew her as Ladybug. His family had decided he was some kind of Francophile, what with the amount of time he spent scouring the news for any sign of the heroine. They didn’t even know about his secret merchandise collection, and neither would Marinette for many, many years. (In reality it would only be a few months before she found his collection, only to reveal her own merchandise collection to him.)

There was a lot about Marinette that he couldn’t have anticipated, though. She was tiny, everything about her was just so… petite. Even more than that, though, was the way he felt just by standing near her. She radiated warmth and kindness, and Jason was so glad for his efforts to make the city a safer place for her, even if she had intentionally marched into danger looking for him.

“So now that you found me, are you going to stop throwing yourself in the middle of villains’ schemes?” Jason asked.

“That depends on if there are people that need my help,” she said, meeting his eyes. He felt slightly comforted knowing that this was just as strange for her as it was for him. Jason knew this woman better than anyone else in the world, but at the same time, he just learned her name. They belonged together, but they hadn’t made room for one another yet.

“I know you are a capable woman,” Jason said carefully – he had enough sisters to know that he was currently wading through a minefield. “But think about this from my perspective. What if I went to Paris and started throwing myself at every akuma I could find, and maybe got akumatized a few times just for good measure?”

“Okay, I get where you’re coming from. You’re a very effective guilt-tripper,” Marinette said, a smile quirking her lips.

“You have to be when you have as many siblings as I do,” he said with a wink.

They fell silent, content to just stare at each other – at least it was a mutual thing, because it made Jason feel a lot less creepy about the whole situation. He usually laughed at Dick for things like this, but Jason felt like he could have written poetry about the blue of her eyes, and the way that they shone in her apartment’s poorly lit kitchen.

Pulling himself from the depths of her eyes, Jason cleared his throat. “Would you want to get dinner with me tonight?”

“Like as a date?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“It can be whatever you want it to be,” Jason said in a hurry. “If you’re not ready for that yet, it doesn’t have to be a date. But I wouldn’t mind if it was.”

She considered it for a few moments before she smiled brightly at him. “A date sounds like a great place to start.”