Chapter Text
Marinette waited for the streetlight to turn red before crossing. Her mind was still racing from the events of the weekend. She had returned just in time to purify the akuma and then struggled to escape from the embrace of her partner. Chat had been worried when she first failed to show up for school on Friday and more so after failing to show for the attack.
He had been shocked to hear that she had been kidnapped by an order that they had all but thought eliminated. Even more so to learn her parents hadn’t reach out to him or her other friends when she had been missing for three days.
Marinette however, was not quite as surprised. Her parents stopped monitoring her whereabouts or caring what she did a while back. After they had deemed her no longer ‘trustworthy.’
Show up late for a couple of events or not be where you say you’ll be and suddenly they forget about the stellar grades, the successful small business, and the free help at the bakery. Unexpectedly, you become a social pariah acting out in teenage rebellion.
She lamented the fact that her relationship with her parents had become so fractured that they didn’t care or notice if she was missing for three days. Perhaps this was best for a superhero with civilian parents. At least they weren’t becoming stricter, but then she would have known they at least cared and not felt so neglected. No, the truth was she lost her relationship with her parents a long time ago, it just looked better to the outside observer than say Adrien’s.
She was so focused on her feelings; she failed to notice her pace slowing as she crossed the street. An impatient car swerved dangerously around her, honking their horn and yelling some colorful words out the window. She barely registered the disturbance as she maintained her sluggish stride towards school.
She often felt herself wishing she could talk about some of the burdens weighting her mind with her parents. Instead, she had to have conversations with them about bullying allegations, the bad things her old friend had suggested she took part in, even the results of a drug test she was forced to endure thanks to a tip from an ‘anonymous’ caller.
At some point her parents gave up trying to ‘get through’ to her and left her to do what she wanted.
The allegations of bullying stopped, as did the anonymous calls. She suspected it had to do with Lila trying other tactics when the results of her initial efforts were never permanent for Marinette, as no one could offer proof.
Little did Lila know how successful her schemes had been. The trust between Marinette and her parents had disintegrated and neither side moved to rebuild it.
Marinette wasn’t sure what they thought she did with her time now, but she knew it wasn’t what she actually did. They didn’t participate in her business with Jagged; the money she earned went into a different account and they never inquired about her commissions after the second album cover. They didn’t even know she was the anonymous designer Kaid –short for Kaiduan of Creation, because she never bothered to tell them. Marinette wasn’t even sure that they knew who she was still friends with. She was confident that since they didn’t know all that, they had no clue that she spent a large portion of her time swinging around the roof tops of Paris.
So, there was no way that she could unburden herself and let them know that she had been kidnap and married off. No, that was something she couldn’t share with anyone but her partner. Yet, she was having a hard time working up the nerves to even tell him that important detail.
As she approached the steps to the school, she spotted Nino and Alya sitting at one of the benches. They were sharing a pair of headphones, listening to something on Nino’s phone. She paused at the sight, not dwelling on the lost friendships, but jealous of the affectionate display between the couple. It put a small weight on her heart. She was attached to someone, even more so than the pair before her, and yet she may never get to share such moments with him.
She had returned to the temple after the akuma attack in search of her Demon. She found that her husband had not waited for her and had returned to his prior life without a way to contact him.
Talia, as she learned was her name, refused to give his identity until she shared hers. It left her baffled as to what the purpose of the marriage was if they would not learn each other’s identities. Both sides of the union didn’t seem in a hurry to have the teens together past the single night.
She was a wife with no husband! A constant bond that prevented her moving forward to choose another and yet prevented from being by his side. She was like a widow of yore, married in name only and no one was willing to answer her burning question, what…was…the…point?
She had felt loved for the evening and felt she could have been happy with him. But he had left her and as far she could tell he had no intention of a relationship beyond that night. The words he whispered sweetly into her hair as he held her head under his chin, were the result of the circumstances and perhaps the wine.
She could dwell on the fact or she could compartmentalize her feelings about it and focus on the here and now. She still had two missing miraculous, a duty to recover them and no time to spare in a search for someone who didn’t wish to be found.
Brought out of her stupor by an arm hooking around her own, she looked up to see the bright smile of one of her besties. She tried her best to return the smile, but it fell flat. She watched the icy blue eyes furrow in concern. She squeezed the arms of her friend hoping that she gave her some reassurance, but it failed too.
“Are you okay, Dupain-Cheng?” Chloe asked hesitantly, already knowing the answer and the lie that would be given.
Marinette started up the stairs dragging her friend with her. “You know how it is Chloe, just typical teenage drama.”
When the Batwing returned to the cave, Damian exited quickly and rushed to his room avoiding the concerned looks from his family. Once again he had been abandoned, feeling that someone loved him just for them to walk away without concern for his feelings.
The last thing he wanted was the hollow pity of his brothers.
Damian and Red Hood had sprinted through the halls after entering the empty room looking for his Angel, only for no one to know her whereabouts. She had been left in the room and no one had seen her since the reception the evening prior. She had simply vanished and apparently on her own accord.
Tears began to swell in his eyes. She had used him, just like his mother. He felt stupid for allowing himself to feel wanted and desired. Stupid for believing that someone who had simply been told to marry him could ever feel anything for him. Stupid for thinking that she was as much of a victim in this marriage, as he was. But most importantly, he was stupid for allowing himself to even care about these things.
As he fell onto his bed, he felt the tears slowly falling. His body contracted in on itself as the tears continued to stream down his face. He didn’t understand the tightness in his chest, but he suspected it was what others had called heartbreak.
Adrien looked up from his desk as Mari and Chloe stumbled into the classroom. One look at Mari and his concern from the previous day returned tenfold. She looked like a zombie. He had left her tucked into her bed around midnight, but here she was looking as if she hadn’t slept a wink.
It had taken time for Adrien and Mari’s relationship to get to the point where they could read each other. No, it hadn’t taken time, it took events. Beginning with him dating Kagami. He may have been oblivious before, but when the stuttering stopped and she appeared more comfortable around him, it didn’t take him long to recognize the cause of her changed behavior. Regardless of the unspoken acknowledgement, they became close friends quickly after. So quickly in fact, there was no surprise when they revealed their identities shortly after she became the Grand Guardian following Master Fu's death.
Adrien watched as Marinette literally fell into her seat. An unspoken weight acting like additional gravity on her form causing her shoulder to hunch and he neck to curl in. She had filled him in on the thirty-six hours she’d been missing, but the tension never left her shoulders. It concerned him.
He could tell she was hiding something in her story, something big. She wasn’t lying, she hated people that did. But she was strategically omitting something and whatever it was weighed on her conscious heavily.
He wouldn’t push her to tell him, it never ended well when he did. But, he hoped that she would tell him before it ate her away slowly, just as the Lila incident had done over four years ago.
As the warning bell rang, a loud and obnoxious voice filled the classroom. “Oh yes, I already talked to him about putting in a good word. After all we can’t count on Marinette’s essay actually having a shot. He wants us to win so he can see me, but it’s still his father’s decision.”
He watched as Marinette tensed further. A silent rage flashed in her eyes before it was extinguished just as quickly.
If he couldn’t help her with what was really bothering her, he could be there to help against the constant annoyances.
Tim was concerned. People that didn’t know Damian, thought him incapable of feelings, but his brothers knew better. Damian expressed his feelings through his actions. He showed fear by fighting harder, excitement in the spring of his steps and love through his protectiveness.
So the first time the emotionally constipated teen freely expressed any emotion, other than judgment - and it was of pure unfiltered pain - Tim was more than concerned.
“What happened?” Hood whipped his head from the direction his youngest brother had disappeared to look at Tim.
“She wasn’t there. No fight to get there, no ambush when we arrived and no one seemed to know where she went.” Jason removed his helmet and ran his hands through his hair.
“Did she leave on her own free will?” Tim was confused, how could she just disappear with no one in the League knowing her whereabouts? Such things don’t happen when the League is involved.
“Looks that way.” Jason leaned back in his chair, allowing his body to sag. “I have never seen Demon Spawn so edgy. He was desperate. When it became obvious that she left, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but he looked heartbroken.”
Tim nodded his head at the observation. He would even go as far as to say Damian still looked devastated.
Tim turned his chair to look at the computer behind him. He may not be able to help his brother process his emotions, but he could at least find out more about his ‘wife.’ “What do we know about her?”
“The few things I could piece together, she’s about his age. Known her by the name Ladybug. Her title is Grand Guardian of the Miraculous. And she has a slight French accent when speaking English.”
Not much, but Tim had done more with less.
A quick search of Ladybug and France produced no results outside of the normal insect articles. Adding the miraculous to his search he noticed a firewall. Changing his VPN settings to appear in France, more images populated. The new images were from personal social media accounts with the strictest privacy settings, featuring either a girl in red spandex with black dots, or the same girl accompanied with a boy in all black. All with location tags in Paris.
Switching the VPN settings to read in Paris, and suddenly the search returned thousands of images, articles, and videos of a local spotted hero known as Ladybug. Tim clicked on the first link, it was a blog called the Ladyblog. The newest post titled ‘The Chat Played Alone.’ A quick scan of the article and Tim could tell that it was more of a tabloid but he still clicked on the attached video.
A boy dressed in a skin tight black suit including cat ears and a…tail -Tim assumed him to be the Chat Noir the article referenced- was fighting off a woman wearing an atrocious ice blue ball gown with nothing more than a baton. The woman appeared to be using a scepter as a weapon, aiming it at people as it emitted a bright flash of blue light. The people hit seemed to age at an accelerated rate, it was scary to think what might happen to them if given an extended period of time. The woman screamed in French about age restrictions in beauty competitions, while Chat seemed to be goading her with age related puns. It successfully kept her focus and rage on him instead of the surrounding civilians.
The video, clearly edited to show the highlights of the battle continued with Chat narrowly evading the shots taken by the beauty queen. All the while trying and failing to get closer to her. Eventually her dress got caught by a bike rack Chat had thrown at her, causing her to be yanked back onto her bottom. He grabbed the necklace from around her neck before yelling something that sounded like ‘cataclysm.’ A black orb appeared in his right hand, crackling with some type of energy. He suddenly broke the necklace and a purple butterfly flew out. He looked as if he was about to touch it with the black orb when a yo-yo of all things, zipped past his shoulder and captured the butterfly. Chat appeared relieved as his shoulders sagged and he touched a nearby lamp. The Bats watched in awe as the lamp disintegrated into ash.
Quickly the video panned to show a second figure step beside Chat, releasing a white butterfly from her yo-yo and waving to it as it flew away. Throwing her yo-yo in the air, the screen went red as what looked to be ladybugs swarmed past the camera. In their wake all the damage from the battle was repaired. Chat then engulfed Ladybug in a hug just as the video ended.
“What the fuck did I just watch?” Jason turned to Bruce in shock.
“What time did we enter the temple?” Bruce interjected, as he studied the information in front of him.
Tim scrolled through the plane’s log, deducing the direction Bruce was heading.
“2220, Parisian time.” Tim opened the Ladyblog again, scanning the article quickly for a time stamp, “If we go ahead and assume that’s her, we at least know that she didn’t just leave Damian.”
Dick dramatically collapsed into his chair. “Oh thank god, he married a hero!”