Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Nothing could describe it but pain. A thousand pricks from a needle jabbed right into her heart. A million volts of lightning coursed through her muscles, roasting her alive from the inside out. Venom seeping into scrapes and scratches on her skin, burning lava down her body. Not a single tear dripped down her face, yet she felt the desert on her tongue and the iron in her mouth.

No, even then, it wasn't enough to describe the feeling. The definitive stab in her soul, the hollowness in her cheeks, the ache in every step and every twitch. Every heartbeat, knowing he wasn't waiting on the other end of their journal for a scribble in the ledgers, shooting back a witty retort or a pretentious quote from Hugo or Austen.

She didn't know when it began, nor when it ended. Couldn't remember what it felt like before the crash, before the lightbulb flicked in her head. Before he left for Ethiopia. Before he left his home. Before he left her, all alone, curled up in the corner clutching a blacked-out journal.

Did he know exactly what he left behind when he chose to go off on his own? Did he even consider it?

Maybe he was selfish like she always wish he'd be more of. That she should try to be as selfless as he was for the poor, for those he was once like.

For once, Marinette wanted to be the selfish one.

Ah, if she was being selfish, then it must be fine to allow herself to mourn. If she was selfless, she wouldn't allow herself to feel, to give in. To mourn the boy who lived on the streets and never grew up for himself. To let him be remembered, to etch out his very memory into paper so he may live on past the secret recesses of her fragile human mind, yet never exposed past the locked chains of her heart.

For once, she let herself be the selfish one without regret.

"He's gone." Nothing more than a whisper, trembling and brittle. "He's gone."

All those years ago, back when the journal first appeared on her seventh birthday, she met the most amazing person in her life. The world had soulmates, and she was part of the lucky majority that did have one. On a person's seventh birthday, they received a journal from the universe, a small book with a cover colored the same shade as their soulmate's eye color was. Each day, a person could write one entry into the journal, and it would send the entry to their soulmate, and vice versa. It didn't matter if it took one, two, or even twelve years for their soulmate to turn seven. The entries would stack, and they would have more to read.

Marinette woke up on her seventh birthday to find over two hundred entries, no skipped days, from a boy who called himself Red. Ever since then, she couldn't bear to go one day without reading his daily entry for that day and writing back to him. Looking back on it now, it was so obvious she fell in love with him from the moment he introduced himself to her.

But she didn't tell him. She didn't tell anyone.

Her mind tried to rationalize it. She was going to tell him. Lies. She was going to tell him when they were older when they were more sensible. That was a lie, she didn't have the guts.

Now, the once-blue journal lay charcoal black in her arms, the pages glued together, and she still couldn't tell him. How did love become the hardest words to say to a dead person?

Her mind blanked because there was no answer, not a true one for her anyway.

So, for once, Marinette, Ladybug, the fourteen-year-old Guardian, let herself go. She surrounded herself with memories of the boy with the cornflower blue eyes, once the same color as her soulmate journal. Wrapped the half-finished quilt she started patching for the boy who loved the kitchen from her written tales of the bakery and warm meals around her shoulders. Gripped the pressed red carnation she had gotten when he first told her his favorite book was Pride and Prejudice, with red carnations symbolizing pride, yet it also symbolized the feeling deep in her heart that she never told him. She let herself be selfish for the boy she never got to call by his true name, obscured by the magic of the journal. Her Red.

And she howled.

Chapter Text

"She's gone."

Kon cocked his head. "What do you mean, 'she's gone'? She can't have just vanished. I'm sure she's just caught up with something where there's no signal."

"No," Tim shook, fingers trembling from the caffeine juiced into his system. "No, she said she would be in Paris. She's not there, Kon. Where is she?"

"Have you tried your super computer thing?"

"Have I tried my super computer thing?" He scoffed, and glanced down. When he saw the tremor jittering across his digits, he ran a hand through his hair to stop himself. "Have I tried my super computer thing?"

"Well, have you?" Kon continued. He knew his best friend, and he knew how he could get when he was hooked on ore than four espresso shots in half an hour. Tim couldn't think straight when he was in that state.

Tim rounded at him, a dangerous glint sparked in his electric blue eyes. "Yes, and that's the problem. She doesn't exist."

"What do you mean, she doesn't exist? How the hell can someone just not exist?"

"I could think of five in the amount of time it took you to say that. None of them good." Tim's eyes darkened.

Oh, he knew ways. Plenty of ways to make someone disappear off the face of the earth. Dozens of ways to make even a person's closest family forget their name. Millions ways more to make sure no one even remembered they even lived. No trace, no body, no crime.

He discarded those thoughts. No, he needed to focus. He turned towards the Kryptonian.

“I was hoping you could find her for me.”

All it took was a wince if grey eyes, and Tim narrowed his eyes at his best friend, a menacing grip snaking around his prized coffee mug, a hand-painted terracotta mug with blue and red paint streaks. “Is there a problem?”

“Maybe...” Kon hesitated. “Maybe she doesn’t want to be found.”

“What do you mean by that?” Kon gulped at the danger creeping in his words.

“I mean, what if she doesn’t want to be found? You know who she is, you know... you know who her soulmate is.”

“Your soulmate doesn’t dictates who you are.”

“Yeah, but we’re not talking about just anyone—”

Tim cut him off, holding up his hand. “Save it. I don’t want to hear it. Every moment I spend arguing with you about this, the less time I’m spending trying to find her. So, are you helping me or not?”

Kon’s lips pressed together, and met Tim’s eyes. There was nothing but determination and something else. Something filled with longing and desperation. A hunger that he never knew could exist in the Wayne until they had met fifteen-year-old designer-hopeful with the most haunted bluebell eyes he had the pleasure of knowing. An instinct to stick tight to the “almost broken but not quite” girl with the blacked out soulmate journal. To fill the gaps with his own soul, not attached to anyone, a journal that never appeared on his seventh birthday. To say words Kon knew he'd never been able to say before, to take the leap, to cross the impossible chasm separating their empty hearts.

It was a deep pit in Tim’s heart that Kon hoped would not kill him one day.

Silently, he held a hand to his ear, trying to focus. One second, two seconds.

Kon blanched, and dread settled in Tim’s heart.

“What is it? Did you find her?”

Kon’s voiced turned grave. “I can’t hear her. No words, not her breathing. I can’t even hear her heartbeat.”

Tim’s coffee mug broke.

Hold on... just hold...

The lull of the dark called out to her, a viridian edge cutting clean into her bones. Where was she? She couldn’t see past the tips of her eyelashes. It was pure ebony, yet onyx glinted in swirls at the tips of her irises.

Take... take...

Who was that? The voice calling out to her, beckoning her forward into the inky depths. Ice chilled her bones, but song warmed her soul.

Take your place... beside the resurrected...

Gone was her shyness, her instinctual hesitance, her questions. Who cares if she didn’t know how she got there. She didn’t remember why she was so reluctant in the first place. Hell, she didn’t even remember her name anymore.

Find him... Find him.

The world woke up the next day to a world without Marinette Dupain-Cheng. All that was left was a blue-eyed wraith of obsession, longing, with only one directive.

Find Jason Todd.