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Chapter Text

Marinette Dupain-Cheng/ Ladybug

Day 0

My back meets the cold stone of the building behind me, I slide down into a tired mess. I rest my head on the hard wall and take in the uncomfortable silence of Paris.

Aches and pains remain as colorful ethereal ladybugs zip around Paris, returning it to its less than pristine state. I don't have the magic to spare healing minor wounds I can deal with.

A man steps over me; the world spins on. It's as if nothing even happened in the first place. I didn't say my catchphrase, there's no reason to, the akuma's victim needs no comforting, the city doesn't require words of hope. It's not like they remember what happened or would hear a word I say. At least I don't have to solve their petty problem.

I stop myself by rubbing my palms into my eyes until I saw stars. I sigh through the hot anger sitting heavy at the bottom of my throat. I can't think like this, so bitter.

Today's victim did not have a 'petty problem', Hawk Moth as been digging deeper. Waiting longer for the right tragedies to take advantage of. This person lost her family. I'm being unfair because it hits too close to home. I'm rational and self aware of my problems, meaning I don't really have problems! Everything is under control.

I stand up from my place on the ground and I enter the flow of people. An old woman bumps into me, then a kid my age, then a man in a full suit; all completely oblivious to my presence.

Ladybug and Hawk Moth, for all intents and purposes, don't exist. No one can see us, no one remembers we exist. As Ladybug I drift through life like a specter, pushing past people who don't so much as step out of my way. They don't notice or run from akumas either. Its all a blank space in their minds. At this very moment today's victim is walking back to the crime scene they were akumatized. Neither she nor the officers there won't find anything odd in her two hour absence.

I have to force myself to unclench my jaw and fists as I detransform away from sight. My body isn't reinforced with miraculous magic when I'm not Ladybug and I can't risk even small injuries like a cracked tooth or cut palm. Healing myself more than the bare minimun to keep me standing, will give a worse turn on my already sh- horrible luck.

While it started off small enough, tripping over air, picking an alarm clock with a manufacturing fault, or standing under the exact tree a flock of birds desides to use as their toilet. It devolved over the months of being the sole hero in Paris. Worsening with every use of my miraculous.

My half finished notes on Chat's spellbook disappearing overnight from a break-in, a motorbike brake failure, a blown out fuse in a dry bakery, Wonder Woman being delayed just late enough to not be able to help me stop Hawk Moth's ritual.

A ritual to empowering the glamor.

I had his face in my mind, his name was on my lips, and now it's gone, and nobody knows Ladybug exists because of my failure and some bad luck. Deep breaths.

By now my luck has leveled out. It's almost livable. But a hundred little misfortunes a day have eroded my love for this city and my place in it. My goal needs to be finished. The only thing pushing me forward now is spite. That's ok! Spite replaces anger. Spite isn't something Hawk Moth can target.

I can't falter. I can't let myself have weakness. The stronger and more deep seeded an emotion is, the harder an akuma is to fight, and the more Hawk Moth tries to get a hold of them. Marinette, for one reason or another has been on his radar for a while. Years maybe. Hawk Moth wasn't above hiring people to target children. No longer being in Dupont was an unexpected boon of... not having a home. Because not everything in my life is bad.

I stumble at the sudden pain of a football striking my back. Behind me a kid cries out a small apollogie before returning to his streetside game.

Like Adrien! He ran away and is living happily with his great uncle! That's great! His dad was a total ass!

Sure I may not see my friends anymore, but that's another good thing! Their lives were taking a downturn while I remained in them. Turning down Luka's hospitality is the best thing I've done since the fire.

My walk towards where I rest for the night slows to a halt. That can't be all right?

...

I found some spare change yesterday. I got to pet a dog this week. I already ate today. I still have- I-

I don't have her. Instinctually my thoughts had drifted to my closest companion, but she's not here. Tikki's sick.

I close my eyes and force myself to count to fifteen.

Every time I use my miraculous Tikki just gets worse, she retreated to the miraculous last week. But I can't stop. I need to keep going.

My limited experience into miraculous magic, before Fu discovered my total inability to so much as sense magic let alone wield it, isn't into remedies for Kwami. If Chat is using the black cat miraculous even a fifth of the times I am forced to, Tikki's sickness won't even alert him. And if anything has started to happen, Fu's band aid solutions would tide him over for Plagg’s health. He woudn't think anything is wrong with his other half, trapped halfway accross the world.

Chat is probably doing great while he rebuilds the Order of the Guardians with Fu. I'm happy for him. Really. Fu was confident that this is the best course of action.

He also was given imperfect training and has an unwillingness to listen to the kwami. He also was completely confident that despite the distance the black cat and ladybug would still balance each other out.

Deep breaths. Distance my mind from my emotions. Keep walking. Stop pinching your forearm. I can worry about Fu when the world isn't at stake.

Ok, I'll admit. My life is mostly bad.

I clear my head, I can't wallow, not now. Tonight I need to collect my things and look for someplace new to sleep. The empty building I have been squatting in for the last month was purchased seemingly on a whim by some investor so people are poking around. Unlucky. I just need to grab my remaining possessions and most importantly, my notes.

My one surviving tie to my life before my luck started compensating for Ladybug’s near daily heroics. My sketchbook, containing the only true weapon I still have against Hawk Moth, information.

I can't remember who was at the end of the road, what identity I saw when I put the pieces together. I know I fought them, I know I saw his face. It's right in front of me yet it's an infinite unswimmable ocean away. I was so close. Unclench your fists. Deep breaths.

I duck into an alley to escape a car splashing into a puddle, only to then trip on the cracked stone. I land in what can only be a puddle of urine, ruining the only clean clothes I have. Deep breaths. Push it down. It's fine, I'm washing clothes tonight, I can live with it.

Carefully I lift myself back onto my feet. I pause at when I experience a chill run down my back. Lila is looking at me in amusement.

“Oh my god Marinette? Is that you? Is this what you spend your time doing? Rolling around in cat piss in old rags!?” She takes on a condescending tone of voice, “Surely you are getting an online degree with that big head of yours now that you dropped out, right?” My hands are

I meet her eyes, and I turn away without a word. Leaving her to do whatever she does nowadays. I can’t still be the focus of her entire world. She huffs, muttering something under her breath. I keep walking away, she's just trying to rile me up.

I have bigger problems. Lila is completely irrelevant to me, she's not a part of my life. It was just some back luck to run into her, a complete coincidence. I brush off  a paranoid idea that clings to my mind. She isn't working with Hawk Moth, with him as affected with the empowered glamor, its impossible for him to get people to work for him anymore. She's nobody.

I've have plenty of practice calming down from near akumatization, letting my emotions fade after childish taunts is easy. I shake my head to brush off the encounter. Not even the worst that has happened to me this week.

Two blocks from the encounter I slip through the construction and into the derelict building I’ve made my home, avoiding walking under the new ladder inside the entryway. I touch the wooden railing on my way upstairs for some token good luck. Entering the seventh door on the left, I kneel down and gently pry open the boarded floor exposing the waterproof and fire resistant bag. Tension melts off my frame. It's still there. Floors are often the last steps in building renovations so it would be fine even in the worst case scenario. Something I always have to plan for.

I take out my sketch book turned mobile theory board, a pale shadow of what Mr. Chimpanzee was working towards with the rest of Justice League Dark. I note down the time and location of today's akuma and tuck it back safely. Every day, every location, every akuma, all of it is a data point bringing me a step closer to stopping him. I just need to put the pieces together again.

Next to it is the bag full of the clothes I cycle through. I have enough change on hand to wash them. Out the window I can see that the sky is getting dark so it's only logical to get out of these wet rags and into something warm before trekking across Paris in search of a new safe house. I can afford the time to clean my clothes before moving location, Lila's words are not getting to me.

For once the trip goes perfectly. The laundromat is close, well lit and warm. The people I pass don’t mug me. Nothing trip me on the walk there or back. I even got dinner from snatching an abandoned plate of Crepes some tourist left out. The calm air and cold meal in my belly restored my downtrodden mood after my bump into Lila into something even better than my sh- my lousy morning.

Avoid the ladder, touch wood- my steps falter. The soft crackle of fire meets me ears. My numb legs carry me the final steps into the open room as my mind falters.

Standing shamelessly, with a lighter and utility knife still in hand. Lila looks on as a fresh fire burns in a small metal trash bin. My hands dart into the flame careless of the roaring pain from the heat lapping at my grasp. The paper is unsalvageable, cut into strips and already blackened by the heat.

“What? I did you a favor,” She doesn't even play dumb. Her smile cuts an ugly line across her face. It's cold while she stays utterly satisfied with herself. "Some second class designs that eventually dissolve into actual gibberish. Clearly you're not mentally well."

I already can't remember the name from my last entry before the glamor was empowered, but now my memories of the locations of akumatizations are blurring along with the tears of frustration at my situation. Was me not noticing Lila trailing me bad luck? Did finding that meal delay me just enough? Is this just another misfortune to add to the list? Another cost I endure to wield a crystalized god alone?

no

Hot tears leak out of my eyes in overwhelming anger. That was everything. My only option left. I'm going to die as Ladybug. No Black Cat at my side. No League to back me up. Nobody.

"Really, Marinette? Are you going to cry to mama and papa? Oh gasp!” Lila mocks, “I'm so so sorry, I must have forgotten."

NO

I tried everything.

The messages I placed towards the Justice League were unnoticed, unanswered despite them standing with me before. Chat never received any request for help I sent them. I didn't had the magical strength to send a message to the Justice League Dark, not through the glamor, let alone dispel it without knowing its anchor.

NO!

I can't even leave Paris. I'm stuck here. No matter how obvious or pleading my notes to myself were, I just walked right back in a daze. Dozens of attempts I screamed out into the uncaring world around me went unheard.

I've tried everything I could think of. I'm out of plans.

NO!!

Pain blooms in my mouth as a molar cracks between my grinding jaws. My palms are bleeding in crescent moons from chewed down nails puncturing skin. My fists are pounding against my thighs. More cruel words I can't even comprehend are thrown at me.

My desperate attempt to repress the inferno of sheer rage that burst from my mental lockbox is failing. I'm going to be akumatized. Did Hawk Moth plan this? Or was it just luck? Is there a diffrence? Luck caused by Fu, Hawk Moth caused by Fu. Chat gone because of Fu.

NO!!

I Won't Let Him Win.

A butterfly lands on my shoulder / A flair of light arcs from the sky

I Can't Let Him Win.

I WON’T GIVE IN LIKE THIS!!!

Through wet eyes I look up, the air caught in my throat. The red haze in my vision isn't from a popped blood vessel, it's physical, tangible. A ring hovers at eye level in front of me bathing the room in toxic red light.

A voice cuts through my mind. ‘Marinette Dupain-Cheng of Earth. You have great rage in your heart. You belong to the Red Lantern Corps.’

A Lantern ring, a force multiplier powerful enough to raise a mortal man to the level of gods. It's not the awe inspiring green of the heroes that protect this world. The ring is searing red, like blood forged into metallic form. A circle adorned with two lines curving into hooks geometric are emblazoned on its face. Deep in my bones I know I am at a precipice. A deal with the devil.

I reach out. It meets me half way.

Paint greater than anything I’ve felt before. The rage coursing through me is fed into and given corporeal form. My blood boils in my veins, I vomit the escaping life blood onto the floor where it sizzles and reduces from the heat into a sticky mess. My earrings ignite and burn holes through my earlobe falling to the ground. With a final heave my empty veins are replaced with crackling plasma. The ringing in my ears has stopped alongside my pulse.

The human's eyes widen as if the world is coming into view. A haze leaves its vison, "Akuma? Oh my god I-," she lets out a terrified giggle, "I did it, the fox mir-."

Instinctively I kill them, the only thing I can do while frothing like an animal. It's easy, mundane even. Just an ounce of attention and its head is severed from its body. The blood landing on me boils in the heat.

I don't feel like myself. I don't want to feel like myself.

I want to rip and tear apart the people outside, then move on to the next and the next while I bathe in their blood. No rationality exists in my mind. All scraps of coherent thought have been seared out the moment the ring touched my skin. Unending rage directs me to destroy anything, to destroy everything.

Yet one point cuts through the madness in my mind. The very magic barring me from putting the pieces together was burned through with the caustic blood flowing through my veins. Spitefully I make myself pick up my miraculous.

I’m going to flay his flesh from his bones, tear out his heart and desecrate his living corpse.

I am going to FUCKING KILL GABRIEL AGRESTE!!

The goal now guiding me does nothing to dissipate the red rage tainting my vision and my clouding my thoughts. The world is a haze, I’m aware of little but movement and pain. The pain of being slammed through buildings from an enemy that is in my way of getting to the bastard that I need to kill.

The victim dressed in tacky orange overalls is pushed into the road and forcibly liberated of their curse. The monster of metal is torn in half and drained of energy till dissipation. A broach is added to my hand as Mayura is thrown away from me, broken, but alive. Not my targets.

The cowled man is my target. I cut through his monologue with a blast of scalding red plasma from my lips, it clings to Hawk Moth's face. Magical protection leached of its strength by my ring fails under the assault. I'm aware enough to know that the screams are the most beautiful sound I have ever heard.

Charred skin peels back revealing scant musculature clinging to the blackened skull of Gabriel Agreste. The brooch is palmed into my fist along with the rest of the jewelry. My empty hand plunges into his soft chest and retrieves a heart in its last fluttery beats. The end of an era is met with the comfortable silence of an uncaring living effigy of unrestrained rage.

The silence is cut through by a mental command comming from the ring on my finger. A location and master so deeply ingrained that I can't find anything odd in leaving this planet to bow before Atrocitus on a desolate world.

...No. NO. It's not ‘nothing wrong’. There is a butchery to my will warping my mind.

It's not willpower, rationality or the power of friendship that lets me drag my anger to a manageable level. It is the idea, the fucking gut feeling buried under the continent of eternal wrath, the feeling that another Master Fu is trying to use me as a weapon. Another uncaring bumbling master that will leave me to clean up their mess the moment it benefits him.

I refuse to be some fucking pawn.

Going against the core of my reforged being, I dig my feet in and refuse to buckle any further. My seething wrath batters into the artificial rage clinging to my throat like a parasitic louse.

Rage unmatched in its ferocity meets my indomitable human spirit and it blinks.

The red clears from my vision with a herculean effort. I sit down, my mind the calmest I have been in months despite the ring still feeding off and empowering anger. The view up here was always so pretty. I wish I took more time to just appreciate the view.

Wait.

When the hell did I get on top of the Eiffel Tower?

Oh my fucking god I'm still holding his heart.

Chapter Text

Marinette Dupain-Cheng

Day 0

My peace can't last forever. As the three miraculouses slip into my pocket I let out a full body groan. I feel angry, gross and weird. Even with the blood boiled off, in a scent that I hate finding pleasant, I can still feel the phantom stickiness on my skin. My body is brimming with enough energy to run a marathon and never get tired yet my mind is totally exhausted from the strain of ignoring the gnawing pull to some distant master.

It's an evil thought, but I wish I dragged out Gabriel's death. I checked on them, Nooroo is absolutely terrified to be out of his miraculous. His mouth is just gone. Ordered away in an act of meaningless cruelty.

Duusu is not any better, the constant overuse has exacerbated the damage. She can't focus on a conversation. Can't stop calling me names that arn't mine. She started with Mayura before flipping to Peacock in what feels like a foreign language. The oddest one is Peafowl, I scraped my brain and I can only recall the name of some Peacock themed hero in the 40s. Duusu flips between warring emotion and disjointed memories at a concerning rate and the longer she was out the worse she was getting. 

It hurts to brush against company and be alone again.

It's best to keep them all comfortable in their miraculous space until I can get them to some kind of magic healer. I’m going to have to start searching for a solution on my own, seeing as I can't possibly trust them in Fu’s incompetent hand. Someone versed in divine magic surely exists outside of the Order. I allow myself a humorless chuckle, in the end I still fulfilled my duty as the holder of the Ladybug miraculous and as a warrior of the Order. If that even matters to anyone. I hope it does.

I’m on a time limit for this. Eventually Chat will be using the miraculous more than I have for his duties. I know instinctually that I can't wear the ladybug miraculous, not like this. I can’t let him suffer through luck. Good or bad, unbalanced luck in either direction will lead to catastrophe. I need a solution, the nebulous word ‘searching’ won't get me anywhere. I’m left with no connections, no starting point. No knowledge on magic or the magical community besides the surface level. That's if I can even leave Paris, I don't even know for certain if the glamor has fallen fully.

Wouldn't that be unlucky? Steps away from my goal with the one thing holding me back happening to slip by. The very idea is driving a hot spike of anger through my skull. Fuck, what do I do?

Not for the first time I‘m left dead in the water, wanting advice from people not here. Chat or Tikki or Wonder Woman. Hell I’d even take Booster Gold. He seemed nice whenever he showed up with Bunnyx. I have so much to do without the willpower to actually stand up and do it. Just left sitting here with a slowly smoldering corpse. 

Watching the city is nice but I have responsibilities even without Hawk Moth. I'll put it off for just a few more minutes though. Then I’ll find my way down and recoup. Find where I need to go. I want to spend just a few more minutes with the comfort of no obligations.

I let out the biggest sigh of my life. Fourty seconds. It lasted a full fourty seconds before I was interrupted.

My comfortable peace is torn away from me by the glowing green light speeding towards me from the skyline. A radiant figure slows down in midair a dozen meters away. A cumbersomely large baseball bat constructed out of green light is balanced carelessly on his shoulder while arcs of green energy leak out of his ring in restless anticipation.

Oh god. 

Black bodysuit, green boots and a sleeveless coat with a clashing exaggeratedly large popped collar, white bulky gloves and stupidly large belt. No mask and with a mop of orange hair styled in an dumb undercut. One of the Green Lanterns, and specifically one of the few Justice League member with a public identity.

Guy Gardner. An asshole.

There goes my dreams of doing jack shit for any amount of time. From what I've heard he always ropes people into bullshit.

He snaps his fingers a few times in a rather demeaning manner and asks in a heavy American accent, “Cognizant?”

Really? I’m not some dog. "Fuck you Guy Gardner,” I bark. My harsh words surprisingly seem to calm him. His construct vanishes and he grins a wicked grin. His previously combat ready stance softens.

"Ah, 'scuse me for that, but the last thing I expected while being the first responder to a Red Lantern Ring's arrival on earth is only having one mildly mutilated corpse to clean up. Good job on the restraint Little Red." He pretentiously walks through the air on forged green steps towards me. With all the swagger of a drunk tourist.

Is he going to be my first contact with the Justice League in well over a year. HIM? I would rather take current day Booster Gold over this. Please open a portal to take over or something? Anything?!?

Shit.

I wish I did more research seeing as I have never heard the term before today. What's the capabilities and expectations of a Red Lantern ring? He seems so sure of there being a massacre from the ring's presence. The idea of this jackass having more information than me is pissing me off.

Ok Marinette, don't get ahead of yourself. Take this conversation logically and calmly. Find out the problem and find a solution. Knowledge is power. "I like your restraint too. It must have been so easy to ask your tailor 'just a few more inches to my collar please, I can pull it off.'"

His smile widens further. If he keeps going he might pull something. "Love the bite. I can see why it chose you." At this he enters striking distance if it comes down to it.

Chosen? Oh come on. Don't tell me the ring makes a 'chosen one'. I swear to god. Still, we're getting somewhere. Keep it going shitmouth.

“Great rage as so forth?“ I lead.

"Yep." Fantastic addition Gardner. Exactly what I was looking for. Asshole.

I click my tongue and concede my lack of knowledge, "I don't want anything to do with fate." Or luck.

"Not fate, just luck of the draw." God fucking damnit. "It picks the biggest, meanest, angriest person it can find, and bonds to them, gets them to go mad and kill anyone nearby. Where a green power ring is a tool, red is a weapon of mass destruction. Paris and its surrounding area have already been given an evacuation notice. Flash and Superman are a few minutes out from arrival. Few moments, if thigns go south." I feel my stomach drop.

They see me as a villain don't they? I'm standing right next to a body aren't I? I killed a civilian, they would be incompetent to let me home free.

"You're not fighting me, am I under arrest?" My fingers dent into the cool metal beneath me. I know my weight class. Superman or The Flash could beat me any day with their eyes closed. But a Green Lantern? A Green Lantern I can take. I can feel it in my bones, my blood. Drain his energy, split his jaw and burn him from the inside out.

A spectral notepad pops into his hands, "Any outstanding warrants within the blah blah legal preci-something of the JLE- who the fuck cares." Guy poorly attempts some humor. He tosses the notepad over his shoulder, "None of that matters. You're not about to go rampaging right?” He asks far too unseriously.

I shake my head.

”See, harmless as a kitten. You're a lantern, meaning you are under my jurisdiction above anyone elses."

"My biggest question right now, was he an asshole?" Guy immediately puts his hands up. “Of course he's an asshole. I mean look at his tie. I should be asking how big of an asshole he was,” His hands move apart like some beer bellied fisher measuring a fish they claim to have caught. “This big or this big?” he enunciates. 

Moment of truth. “He was Hawk Moth.” That earns me a low whistle. Well shit that's the nail in the coffin, the glamor was gone, possibly being tied to him. I wonder how Wonder Woman is doing?

“Damn, the supervillain I'm not allowed within one hundred miles of? Now that's a real big asshole.” Gardner voices.

"Glad I'm next to someone stupid enough to fight the angriest person a magic-science rage ring can find, in a city that he thought still had an emotion targeting supervillain, while being barred for what I assume is emotional instability bordering on clinical insanity. Grade A work there.” I could fucking clap.

His cheshire smile returns. "That's exactly why I'm here. Closest responder. Best to intercept any monsterification." He butchers.

"Are you always this big of a incompetent dick?” Fuck this guy. Why couldn't he have been John Stewart or the other Green Lanterns? Has he never comforted someone after hes done fighting the villain? Fucking amateur hour.

"Hey, that's unnecessarily harsh. I'm a blunt force object dealing with diplomacy when I expected a good slugging. I’m just a bit rusty." Guy emotes with his hand in a ‘what can you do’ motion. 

His eyes narrow at me in contemplation. “Shit.” Guy mutters. “The spots on your suit. You wouldn't happen to be that ladybug hero would you?" 

"Wow you have eyes you bastard." Idiot. Fucker. Dumbass. Any word fits.

“My ability to see is one of my best features," he pauses and whispers under his breath barely audible, “Dinah is going to be so pissed at me.”

He finally sits down beside me a few feet away on the cold metal. "How are you holding up uh- kid?" Guy attempts at, something. I know it can't possible be comfort.

“Bad. Lashed out and killed two people. What was that about having eyes?"

“Ah... Yeah.” he says dumbly.

He looks towards me in concern. “You know you're not in any real trouble right? I don't remember the specifics off the top of my head but I’m pretty sure the Justice League can't enforce law outside of its jurisdiction unless it's an emergency and France isn't part of the wider JL agreement. While people like Batman might be miffed, I'm not anal about killing bad guys. This isn't the end of the world for you. Clearly you're not a danger to anybody so you only have to deal with local law, you're practically a puppy with the lack of manslaughter you achieved." Guy rolls his eyes before pausing, he blinks "Two? I didn't miss one right?" He looks over the side of the Eiffel tower as if a corpse would reveal itself to him.

Fuck, this is what does me in. "I killed her earlier, Lila. Hawkmoth payed a girl to ruin my life, destroyed any friendship or connections I had. She made sure my reputation was bad enough I couldn't hold down a job. Everything in exchange for the potential of getting a miraculous from Hawk Moth. He wanted me as a akuma. I don't even think she remembered." My voice grows bitter, "And in the end she destroyed any chances of me ever catching him."

I can feel the metal of the Eiffel tower buckle further under my fingers. Good job Marinette, dig yourself a deeper hole by admitting to murder. He just almost left you off the hook for killing a villain. A civilian is not an acceptable target, that shouldn't even be in the question. The pit of anger grows at the knowledge that I should care more about her actual death rather than what she did to me. What's wrong with me?

"Yeah, this line of work has assholes. Henchmen, goons; it comes with the territory. People make bad choices for power. Really bad choices. Like setting off a Red Lantern."

He still sees me as a hero? And what, I just get free fucking reign to hurt people because I’m dangerous? Fuck off. This was better when he thought I was a big scary villain, the world made more sense. I took a life, and I would then pay for it.

“So you just let Red Lanterns slaughter people as long as they keep it to a small enough level? I killed a civilian, I'm not a hero. Heroes don't kill.” Do I want a fight? What am I doing? This should be bigger. I feel like I need to make this an issue. I have to make this argument.

“Red Lanterns are driven off or at to,es killed on sight, yes. But you seem to be a unique case.” He then looks to me with what might be sadness hidden in his eyes, “As for this ‘Lila’... Again it comes with the territory.” He dumms his fingers on his thigh. “Sometimes it's safer to put down the villain. Not everyone can be saved.” 

Guy Gardner bumps me on my shoulder, “I mean hey, It doesn't even sound like they were a civilian to me. Not even a henchman. Actively systematically destroying peoples life for magic powers is textbook supervillain in the making. I don't know the specifics of the situation but I doubt she wouldn't have stopped at you. Sounds like she had it coming. If she was still kicking I might have just handed you my ring and kicked her ass bare knuckle.” I force down my smile. That's horrible, there is something wrong with this man.

He continues, “I don't particularly favor killing people, I like making scum face the music of their actions. People like that often make a lot of people very angry,” He nods towards me. “Maybe she could have been rehabilitated if that's your thing, but if you live your lives with maybes you won't ever move forward. It happened, no matter how much you want it, you can't take it back.” 

And with that the ounce of will I was putting in to force myself to care for their deaths is gone. I feel like I should feel guilt, but my actions feels immutable. Like their deaths were a universal constant. The sun rises in the east, the sky is blue, and Lila and Gabriel are dead at my hands. There was nothing I could do to put them on a different path, not now atleast. No reason to feel anything but hate. Not people, just meat that was in my way.

I hate this feeling.

“Why don't I care?” I ask the air with eyes misting from nothing but sheer frustration. “What's wrong with me? I should care that I killed them.” 

Gardner brings his hand over my shoulder and pulls me into a firm side hug. Just sitting with me as I come to the shattering realization that I am different than I used to be. My very being has been rebuilt is hellfire and resurfaced missing something core to myself. This should be a soul shattering revelation, but it just drives me to frustration. Am I still my parents daughter?

My body collapses into the body comforting me. I haven't been embraced for so long. Even when my parents and Gina were alive, My constant disappearances had driven a wedge in our relationship. It's been so long since someone held me and whispered sweet nothings.

"There you go. You’re alright." He comforts.

My "Fuck you," is muffled in his side.

"Yeah I get it kid, I'm a bastard. You're alright, I got you. You're alright. Do you want some candy?" He slips a hand down to his seemingly functional belt and pulls out a caramel. 

"Stop fucking babying me you asshole," I snatch the candy out of his hand with a bite and I let the caramelized sugar melt and boil with the wrapper still encasing it. "I'll take your candy though. Bitch." My words slur under the bubbling treat.

It's been so long since someone has even looked at me like a person let alone held me. Not some dirty teen scrounging for food in a dumpster because she went from having an allowance big enough to cover any expense to homeless and lost. To not glance through her because the very magic that should have protected her was twisted in a fucking mockery of itself. Guy is the first person in so long that doesn't look through me like I'm not even there. 

"I gotcha kid."

I've been so lonely since Tikki retreated. This soul sucking pit of loneliness that I could only dump into my spite to keep going another day, another minute alone. It pains me to admit it but killing them is the best thing to have happened to me in so long, because it means someone is here. My rage sits in a comfortable bubble under my skin. Ever present yet not overpowering. A scalding hot comfort. Right now, in this moment, I am content.

His whispered words switch from comfort to quiet explanation as he talks to a hologram projected out of his ring. All while never leaving my side. 

After a good few minutes after I calmed, my head starts to droop down. He shift beside me. “Alright, you're done crying it out and I have a game to catch later today among other things, so we can't sit here all year.” Oh my god. He shifts as to stand me up on my own feet. My luck is still shit. Why else would public asshole number one approach me first instead of literally anyone else in the world. He just stopped comforting someone who was just in hysterics, because of some sports match?  One hundred miles wouldn't have been enough.

“I hate you, you inconsiderate ass.” I make sure he knows with my glare.

“Mmhmm. While I’m here, do you have a place to stay?” He asks.

“I’ll just squat.”

“Aaand that's a no. I got a couch, you'll be crashing at my place for a bit. Do you know how to fly?” He asks.

“Are you sure that won't cut into your precious game time you saint?”

Guy grins at my jab.

He flexes his ring hand while visibly trying to jog his memory. “How do you fly as a Red Lantern again?… Ah, right. Power rings are bullshit, whatever is keeping you on the ground isn’t gravity, it's all mental currently. Just pull away from whatever is tying you here. Or you can also get angry enough to do it without prerequisite. Pretty much everything becomes double thorough sheer anger at some point, but uh, focus of that first one.” 

What is tying me here? I have nowhere else to go. No family alive. Friends were barely my friends. No adults are close to me. I don't want to take Luka's offer and ruin his life. I have no tie to the city itself. And Chat is- with Fu, as much as I love him, as much as he's my best friend, I can't deal with that. What do I have? 

Nothing. No ties. No ties to the ground. 

My aura of smoldering anger invisibly pulses. My feet lift from the ground as my tie to gravity is decoupled. 

“Do you have hot water?” I ask. Please have a job paying enough to afford a water bill.

He grins, again, like he won something. “One of the fancy ones with a detachable head.”

Yes!

“If you use me as a tool I will kill you. I'll tear your tongue out through your neck.” I needle at him threateningly.

This is met with a bark of laughter. “Love me a good Colombian Necktie.”

He stands up and offers his hand in a shake. “What do you say sidekick?”

“What? No. Fuck off!” Absolutely not. Never in a million years.

He haggles it down. “Partners?”

I extend my hand. “Roommates.”

Chapter Text

Marinette Dupain-Cheng

Day 0

I look up from the crater in the asphalt I'm buried waist deep in, my eyes blinking exhaustedly at where Guy Gardner hovers above me. He lands besides me, clopping to the ground with the with the sound of a lame horse stumbling on concrete, provided by his stupid boots .

"You alright, kid?" He leans over the trench and stares down at me. A smug smirk dominates his face, betraying the fact he doesn't think I could actually be hurt. I give him a near incoherent mumble.

Landing is a lot harder when you are moving with your own generated speed instead of rolling with gravity like I'm used to. Years of experience betrayed me.

"I'd show some heart and talk about how 'I had trouble landing at first too' but nah. I'm a natural." He boasts.

He bends down, grabbing my outstretched forearm and dragging me out of the hole and onto my feet. My legs nearly give out. “Come on, don't fall asleep in the middle of the road. Let's get you inside, kid.” He keeps a hold of my arm while we make our way to the one story house at the top of the cul-de-sac. He supports my wobbly steps, his other hand on my upper shoulder to steady me. 

He stops in front of the door, plucking what looks like an envelope with a childlike drawing of him on the top taped to his door. Guy Gardner fans, what sad people. Instead of pulling out a key he creates one out of green energy, clicking it into the lock. I'm guided into the house.

I knew he had a public identity, but his home is known and both of us arriving was painfully visible. Is he not scared someone will kill him in his sleep? Or go after family? Is he stupid?

Green Lantern detransforms in the entryway, green suit flaring into bright cracking energy that fades into nothing. He's left in oddly normal casual wear, his tennis shoes are kicked off into a messy pile next to another pair, I would do the same but I’m pretty sure my boot's laces are just for show. I look down at my feet in confusion, I have boots? 

Guy returns to pushing me along, getting me off the wall I started slumping on. He takes us through the small hallway that leads from the entryway into a living room, it's conjoined with an open plan kitchen. He throws the letter aside, onto a heaping pile of unopened envelopes and papers stacked on a side table. The floor under me changes from cold tile to soft carpet. I frown and wiggle my toes, I can feel the carpet through the boots like they are my own skin, the sensation of touch permeating my suit. I brush it off and start walking to my destination. Laser focused on nirvana.

I barely take the house around me. It’s… lived in. Not unlivable or gross, just a bit unkempt and messy. In the kitchen there are plates in the sink, and the corner of his marble countertop is chipped. There are glasses sitting out without coasters and cans left out haphazardly, an old dusty jacket thrown on an unused chair. One of the walls is covered in small holes from where he failed it hit a beat up dartboard. 

Obstructing my path is a bowl of chips as well as a few empty beer cans siting on the coffee table. Gardner pauses in the middle of the room, looking around at the mess with his hands on his hips, he sighs. He turns to me, "I'll start the shower-“ I keep walking past him, throwing myself face first into the couch, knocking over some of the cans on the table in the process.

I let out a deep groan into the cushion.

I can hear him rattling around the cans as he picks them up. “Or not. A nap would do you good." It's not a nap, I'm practically an adult. This is stupid, I don’t even care. Goodnight.

"Sorry about the road. Not about calling you a bitch though." I mumble into the fabric. While I’m not physically tired I’m so emotionally exhausted.

The room's lights flip off leaving me in only my own gentle red glow. He starts saying something, but at this point I can barely make it out as the world fades around me.

With my last thread of consciousness- I think I wish the Kwami a peaceful night.

Day 1

Desperately I try to throw off the enemy smothering me. My claws tear into my attacker ripping through their body. I bare my teeth, acidic bile builds in the back of my throat, ready to scald and emaciate whoever is trying to kill me. It leaves me the familiar taste of blood.

But as my mind struggles into consciousness I become more ware of the truth of my situation, an enemy isn't what's choking me. Nothing is. Yet the feeling of being under attack doesn't recede. Shredding the thick quilt thrown over me did nothing to relieve the pressure on my chest. It did nothing to free me of my racing nerves and overwhelmed senses.

When I notice it's presence left out on the coffee table besides me, I nearly knock the glass to the floor as I fumble reaching for it. I down the glass of half melted ice water in a few scant gulps. It does nothing to relieve total disorientation I woke to.

The room is silent, and at the same time the loudest thing in the world. I hear every breath, every shift of fabric. My ears feel like they are clogged and hypersensitive, like I'm hearing every noise in the room through another person's ears at max volume. I can’t feel my own body, but everything touching my skin is overwhelming. Every breath is done short deep gasps, it still feels like I'm choking. Everything I see feels fake, an after image, like I'm still dreaming and the world is out of my reach.

I push through it. Standing up.

Moving isn't hard but it feels like I'm stuck outside my body. At the same time I'm distantly ware of the constant thrum of energy under my skin, flowing through my veins, leaving my lack of heartbeat an oppressive, seizing, demanding fact that won't leave my mind.

I push through it. Ghosting my way through his house. 

The fourth door I open is a quaint bedroom. I fail to focus of the environment, whatever is in his room is left as meaningless colors and shapes to me.

I force my attention to narrow on the attached door. Pushing it open reveals a bathroom. Unlike one of the doors I opened in the hall, this bathroom contains a shower. I turn the valve and leave it to warm up. 

I grab his toothbrush off the sink and I scrub the taste of my own blood from my mouth. For far too long I scrub my gums raw in repetitive heavy strokes. The whole time just trying to breathe. 

When the mirror starts to steam I step under the shower's spray. The sudden change in temperature shocks me out of my hyper awareness, I let out a chest deep gasp as the world around me finally feels real. My five senses return to normal, jarringly fast. I have to support my weight on the white tiled wall as the world focuses into pinpricks and ringing ears.

For minutes I sit under the warm shower. Just taking in the sensation. Letting the water pour over this suit. This second skin.

I revel in the satisfying pops as I let out a back cracking stretch. My body is beginning feels more in line to wearing my Miraculous. It's coming down from that overpowering tidal wave crushing me under its weight when I first put on the ring. Now left a pleasantly buzzing river of power flowing through me. 

“God.” That wasn't something from the ring. The hypersensitivity and horrible terror of existing in a body. No, some side effect or curse I would have to punch before wrapping up the day would be too simple. I’ve had little moments of that out of body derealization throughout my life, worsening in the last year. Just never as bad as that. Never something so intense that I felt like I was dying. 

I wonder what it could be? The fact that I uprooted whatever remained of my life? The fact I shouldn't be in America from a legal standpoint? The fact I probably should turn myself in to the police in Paris, but a Justice league member just let me walk? For murder? A murder I committed and yet feel nothing towards?

I squirt out way too much of his shitty five in one bottle of shampoo, detergent, and body wash on to my gloves. I clean my hair and scrub down every inch of my clothed body. My fingers working sudsy water into the faux leather and steel armor of the glowing suit. 

I sigh, a hand propped up against the tile. I've had the same thoughts during the fly over and it's getting exhausting. It feels like I’m thinking in circles, feeling the shadow of guilt, getting reassured, forgetting about it until the next emotional crisis. 

For over an hour I stand under the shower. Letting the warm water help me break down and processes.

All the rage, all the fury I had locked tightly down was thrown out into the world. Screamed into existence with blood and tears. And now it's quiet. It's so quiet, just like everyday in my life.

It’s quiet because Papa isn't going to wake me up or hug me as I squeeze past him in the hall, Mama isn't going to kiss me on the cheek as I run off to go to school. Grandma Gina isn't going to roll up for a visit with her bike and take me for a drive. She's never going to teach me how to ride like she does. The pain is the last thing I kept locked tight that still remains heavy in my chest. 

I take a deep breath and hold it impossibly long, my lungs never screaming for air. Just letting the pain of loosing them flow through me. For the first time in so long I just Feel.

Spite isn't an emotion, not in the way hate and rage are, things that can be preyed upon by the butterfly. It's a sentiment, a vindictive determination. A series of thoughts you make yourself live by. Spite is fleeting, you don't wake up in spite or go to sleep in spite. Trying to prop your whole life up by it is tiring. A bone deep tiredness that makes it hard to so much as get up in the morning.

Now alone with my thoughts in a place safe to feel, I don't curse or scream or beg. My family is gone, they have been gone for a while, I have known that. I feel anger and rage and this searing pain in my chest, yes. But under all of that, all those dominating emotions choking everything else even now, I feel sad. It's quiet. So quiet. 

I turn off the shower head. My hand rests on the miraculouses still in my pocket as the clinging water drips off me.

I am alone. I finally let out the air left in my unneeded lungs.

It's quiet.

Chapter Text

Marinette Dupain-Cheng

Day 1

A damp puddle forms under me as the last vestiges of water drip down my legs. I grasp the sides of the sink, lightening my grip as stress makes the material creak under my hands. Thick strands of wet hair obstruct my vision of my reflection. It's mack to my natural black instead of Ladybug's blue. I brush the wet hair out of my eyes. 

I've changed. I’ve known that the moment I was in control of my actions again, but not to this extent. 

My heart isn't beating. Where the rhythmic ringing of pumping blood should fill my ears, there is now an electric hum. It's like my veins are now a live wire.

My very being is glowing scarlet, every inch of me is cloaked in that searing haze that creeps into every corner of the room, dominating even a Green Lantern's glow. Yet my eyes still pierce through the aura. Blue as striking and bright as what I had when I was Ladybug. That unforgettable impossible shade. In fact my entire body feels closer to Ladybug than Marinette. Strong, flexible, dense. Something made for fighting.

I hook a gloved fingertip into my cheek, showing off my teeth. Hard and sharp, canines and molars looking like they are made to rip out throats. The toothbrush I stole from Gardner has had its bristles torn to useless shreds. I take it out of its cup and toss it in the trash.

I clench and unclench my fist. The movement of the gloves leaves me hyper aware that under them, the flesh of my hands have been burnt and healed into heavy scar tissue. The relatively minor injury of holding the scraps of my burning notebook has been amplified, exaggerated to the extent of creeping up my forearms. My nails are no longer bit down stumps, now left long and sharp, mirroring Chat’s. Bordering between out of fashion stiletto nails and hooked animalistic claws.

Where my Miraculous was burnt out of my body there are now two small holes in my earlobes. When you focus on them they don't quite looking like they were deliberately stretched with spacers, more that a circular chunk of flesh was taken out.

To me it makes a horrifying picture. My injuries enhanced and superimposed into my being. Teeth cracked and worn down from years of grinding, hands burnt black, nails drawing blood, and my body rejecting my own Miraculous. A mockery or reminder of what happened to me.

My attention finally turns to the thing dominating the back of my mind, something that violates everything I have done for the last three years. 

I have no mask. 

With a clearer head I can remember what happened yesterday. My glamor dropped and people saw me. People recorded me. They would have caught my face, and with a single google search people could put together who I am. I have been in front of a camera before. Hell, I'm in the Ladyblog multiple times as Marinette and Ladybug in the same recording. 

Knowing my luck they also caught me eating shit and crashing last night.

I know that in the end it doesn't matter, Hawk Moth is dead and my job is done. But it's… The sight of my bare face makes me feel like the rug was pulled out from under me yet again. The last bit of foundation that kept me stable has collapsed. The safety net that separated Marinette from Ladybug is gone alongside both their lives in their entirety.

I shake my head to clear my thoughts. "I need to get out of this headspace." I say out loud for myself, hearing it echo over the quiet sound of dribbling water. 

I’m constantly dragged back into thinking negatively, my emotions are all tinged with rage and hate that claws and cling to any source of emotion it can get its hand onto. But if I just stay in that little comfortable box of feeling like the world is shit then why did I do anything at all? I can't help but feel like for so long I’ve been standing still. 

Take his advice. No more maybes. Move forward.

I take a deep breath, pushing away the anger. I let out my breath and focus myself. With a cleared mind I find my solution. 

I turn my focus to my suit. Fashion, a good, simple, surface level subject to take my mind off the fact I feel like I have been hollowed out.

Unlike the, I'll admit, absolute design mess that the skin tight leotard was, the suit is far more practical and even armored. A main black under suit with shocking crimson red accents, a solid block of red paints my upper chest and shoulders. It's all made out of strong, hefty material. 

My chest is covered in what is almost a metal chest plate. The same mat material as the tall exposed metal of the steel tipped boots that extend to my mid calf.

Patches of five red spots are printed onto the sides of my upper thighs. Turning around shows black spots dotting my upper back over the scarlet that continues from the top half of my chest plate. The spots on my thighs extend to my waist to almost give the illusion of a belt. All of them small enough to not be overbearing. Something to break up the flat black monochrome that makes up the entire bottom half of my suit. 

Pockets and subtle pouches give dimension and utility to draw away from an overloaded upper half. The gloves remain separate from the suit, I know I could take them off. Red, extending to my mid forearm with black fingers, looking as if they were fingerless without actually exposing my hands. 

In the middle of my red chest is the same symbol of the Red Lantern ring. Two sharp forked lines housing a smaller circle.

It isn't the right symbol. I am not bound by the ring, it is a tool to be used.

I try willing the suit to change but it feels like pressing against a brick wall. I grow frustrated with it, and in turn that makes it pops into place. It shifts not my will, but with anger.

The Red Lantern symbol sparks into red light, so bright it's nearly white. An amorphous shape that molds almost subconsciously, feeling like liquid hot metal rippling on my chest. Warping into different ideas, different symbols and meanings. The Red Lantern symbol turned upside down with inverted colors, the Order of the Guardians symbol, the Chinese Zodiac, a simple Ladybug print. None the right fit.

With a final flash of frustration it coalesce into its final iteration. The glow dims, my hand rests under the new symbol on my chest. My Kwagatama. A black and red representation of the light side half yin yang, a symbol of my bond to Tikki and the Miraculous.

Something that I can't place still isn't right about the suit, maybe I still haven't got the right symbol or the pattern of what is red and what is black should have their ratio adjusted. For now it's good enough and I can workshop it later, maybe start a new sketchbook.

That brings a near giddy feeling to my chest. ‘Workshop it’. I can design and change it later. I’m not stuck with what I started with.

I laugh. A genuine, yet bitter laugh. My one piece mono-print bodysuit, an abomination of fashion that I have slowly grown to loathe, is gone. I’m moving, I’m making progress. It's small, an infinitely small step compared to what I did yesterday, but it finally sinks in for me.

I know it should have slapped me in the face, but just now does it finally sinks in. I’m not in Paris. Hawkmoth is gone. I am within spitting distance of healing and eventually rebalancing the miraculouses. I am moving forward. Holy shit.

HOLY SHIT.

“I’m free.” I whisper in that moment of realization. 

A muffled voice comes from behind the closed door, startling me. “Free? I know the feeling, kid. A red lantern ring chose me.” The voice speaks with this cocky bravado made ridiculously from being on the other side of plywood. 

The door opens, Guy Gardner leans on the frame, like a father desperate to show his son he's cool and didn’t peak in high school. Guy takes a stool from behind him, plops it on the ground and sits in the doorway. 

“What the fuck. Wait, were you listening in for me to say that? I swear I saw that stool all the way in the living room. Did you grab it and preplan an introduction so it's dramatic?” 

He completely ignores me, a far too serious look on his face. You know what? Might as well sit through this. My morning can't possibly get worse.

He sighs him he's burdened with wisdom, “After having most of the rage purged from your body you can finally think. But even with a clear mind the anger gets intoxicating, having the ring on at all leaves a stain, drains your empathy, your critical thinking.“

“Getting out of the red haze is hard. A constant uphill battle, one that you never stop facing.” He stands up from the stool. It seems to have served its fifteen seconds of purpose. 

He brings his hand to his chest, hovering over where his symbol would be if he wasn't in a shirt and jeans. His hand moves to my chest, tapping it where the Red Lantern symbol used to be, a stark change that he would be actively blind to miss. 

He continues. "I made a lot of decisions I regret and more that I wish I could regret. Don't beat yourself up over doing better than any Red Lantern before you."

He claps his hand heavily on my shoulder and squeezes. “Let's cook,” he pokes me again in the chest with his other hand, “Some fucking eggs.”

Guy reaches up, ruffling my wet hair. The action is so baffling that I don't even bat it out of the way.

"Wh- I feel like I missed half of a conversation there." I say faintly.

He abruptly ends his… inspirational speech? A weak attempt at human empathy? Guy turns away, once again not acknowledging what I said. God he's so weird.

He picks up a bag at the other end of his room and tosses it at me. I barely catch the backpack, still bewildered from him ruffling my hair. 

"Unlike someone, I woke up at a reasonable time and bought some stuff you might need. Toiletries and such. We’ll get you a phone tomorrow after you’ve settled in." 

Unzipped it revealed to be filled with generic necessities, hygiene products, an unreasonable amount of packaged snack food, a notebook, pens and other small things I would have to take time sorting through, and two pairs of casual clothes a size larger than I actually wear.

I grab a three pack of toothbrushes from the bag. A nail slices open the cardboard back and I place one of the toothbrushes in the cup to make up for destroying his. 

A place to sleep tonight, a non-leaky roof, clean clothes, food. All good things. After so long being stuck, I’m finally moving forward. Even if it's just a bit, it feels freeing.

I follow him out of the bathroom. Now able to actually take in my surroundings, his room is a mess, worse than the living room. On the nightstand by his bed is an oddly shaped solid green lantern glowing softly, adored with a peeling yellow and blue sticker proudly representing some place called University of Michigan.

The hallway, living room and kitchen have been cleaned, even the wall behind his dartboard has been spackled over. I still get the feeling that if I open a closet a room's worth of mess will spill out, like a teen ‘cleaning’ to get their parents off their back.

He cracks three eggs into a cold scratched up pan, he has to fish out little bits of shell because he cracked them open wrong.

I sigh. He doesn't know how to make eggs.

I sit down at the kitchen counter, overlooking Guy butcher cooking. I beguin honing out to the sound of some hockey game he turned on. Out of the corner of my eye I catch the letter I spotted last night now opened on the pile. I can't make out what it's saying from here but the writing is loopy, like someone with sloppy handwriting labored over making it neat.

“How do you deal with a public identity?” I ask something related to what's on my mind. A boon is that I have nobody to protect anymore by separating my lives, but I don't know how to live like he does. This casual disregard for hiding who he is behind a mask.

“Bask in the fame.” He responds instantly, a bit mindlessly while focusing on over stirring the watery eggs. Guy turns his head to the side and actually ponders over what I said. 

“For you? Don't let it get to you. You're still you, you don't have to be whatever you put the mask on for every moment of your life. I see upstarts make their heroics persona a persona, and then that persona takes over their life. That will wear you down. Especially when you have no mask. If you live a fake or idealized version of a hero, it fucking sucks.” He takes out salt and pepper from a cupboard and dusts the still cooking eggs, the worst time to season.

"You could also even consider getting a new secret identity. I don't have one but I heard it's nice to go out and not be recognized. Put on a wig or something." 

“The biggest thing, and it’s a bit cliche, but be yourself," Even without seeing it, I can just picture his smug self assured face like he just said something groundbreakingly meaningful. "Take breaks, make friends, have hobbies. Avoid letting your heroic identity consume your life.” That's- all around actually solid advice. I can't even really mock him. Basic, cookie cutter even, but solid.

“Thanks… You sound like you read self help books for the quotes without internalizing anything they say.”

The spatula in his hand dips as his grip slackens. "I am never going to get the last word in anymore am I? Not even in my very own home." He wipes a fake tear.

Guy shovels the scrambled eggs onto a plate and puts it in front of me alongside what looks like a stolen fork. "Egg."

"I'm not hungry?" It's not really a question pointed at him, I'm just confused. I should be hungry, I should be starving, but I feel nothing. Not sated, just nothing.

"You won't be," he tap-taps his ring, "The ring sustains you. Eggs are for enrichment."

I take a bite. The eggs are not rubbery. While they aren't good, he still stopped the stove while they were still wet so they finished cooking in the pan like you are supposed to. 

I swallow before I speak. “I replaced your toothbrush by the way. I used it and it needed to be thrown away.”

He looks at me like I’m an idiot. “I don't have a toothbrush? I clean my teeth with my power. I just own one to clean the toilet, spending money on a toilet brush is a waste when dentists hand out free ones.”

I stare him dead in the eye. He stabs the last piece of my egg with my fork and chews it while keeping eye contact. 

He speaks with his mouth full. “I'm fucking with you.”

"Die.”

“Make me.”

He breaks eye contact first meaning I win. “Ah, that's what I forgot.” Guy starts rooting through the fridge. Pulling out two six-packs of canned beer. He does the same with the freezer, pulling out a bottle of vodka. They all immediately get tossed in the overfilled trash can.

He answers my questioning look. "Baby proofing, I'm not drinking with a kid in the house." I maturely stick my tongue out at him.

“Right, rules. Nothing big. No drinking, tell me if someone comes over or you leave the house, I'll get you a phone tomorrow for that, and warn me if you want to or are going to kill someone. Use common sense. Oh and don’t touch my battery.” He lists them out on his fingers.

“I’ll clean out my spare room if you're staying longer, till then you have the couch. Help yourself to food or anything else around the house. If you want anything, ask. I’ll buy it for you.”

“Any rules for me, roommate?” He asks.

I count on a single finger. “If I get a room, knock before entering.”

“Done.”

I count on a second, third and fourth finger. “I want training. Help on being a Lantern. On handling- everything.”

He gives me a genuine smile. “Sure. We can start in two days when I’m free. I have some obligations still. Just know it will be a very very hard process for you in particular. Seeing as there is a you shaped hole in the pavement, crash test dummy." 

Yep, that's my limit. I get out of the chair, “I'm going to break something precious to you.” I say incredibly calmly.

He follows me as I walk back through the hall. “You're not going to fly with it are you? I'll trust you with things precious to me as long as you don't fly with it. You seem very predisposed to eating pavement.”

I start walking faster. He follows behind me, matching my hastened pace.

His room is a bust, nothing important looking is in any drawer or his closet. I avoid the battery. It's too important to actually mess with. Nothing except for a pool table in the room that might be an office. Finally I open the door to a spare room, converted to house any spare junk. Every little piece a person picks up through their life, as well as unusually being filled to the brim with sports equipment sized for children. I start rooting through the stuff. Guy gets on his knees with me and starts helping dig through his own junk.

He strikes up a conversation with me, seemingly uncaring of my destructive goal. “So. Do you have any hobbies?”

“Not a lot of time for that,” I frown as I pull out a bag of loose wooden blocks in a trash bag, “Designing and making my own clothing, I guess. Video games, art. Not that I have touched any of that in a year though.” I give an incomplete list, distracted by trying to find something juicy. 

I shift a generic mass produced painting of a naked woman's back, revealing an acoustic guitar hiding beneath. Well worn, with frayed metal strings. It has a matching sticker to his battery. That's what draws it to me as important enough to matter to him. I just stare at it, hesitating to touch it, let alone actually break it. My threat feeling empty now that I’ve brushed off my anger.

“Yeah I have none of that. What I do have is a guitar. This is the best thing to destroy. I have an incredibly deep emotional connection to it. I would be devastated to see it gone.” He picks it up by the neck, Guy guides my arms up and puts the acoustic guitar in my hands. He reaches behind me and tightens the strap.

I hold it uncomfortably. "Here, you're holding it wrong." He carefully readjusts how it's sitting on my body, resting it on my right leg. He moves my hands to show me how to hold the guitar. I still have no idea what to do.

“I haven't kept up with my hobbies either. I haven't played in what? Eight years?” He asks rhetorically. “I used to play in college,” Guy chuckles. “I thought it would get me a girlfriend.”

He starts pointing at parts of the guitar and naming them, “Head, tuning keys, nut, frets, fingerboard, your markers, pick guard, saddle, bridge.”

In a crackling flash of light Guy Gardner constructs his own guitar. A replica of the one in my hands, down to the minute details like the sticker.

He walks me through the cords starting with E major, third string at the first fret. Showing me how to hold the guitar and play a note. Correcting me when I pick up my arm off the side, using it's whole weight to play a cord. I mirror his actions to learn from him as he teaches me.

As I increase my pace and get into a rhythm, helped by my experience watching Luka, a string snaps under a nail. In anger I squeeze the neck, accidentally snapping it in two. I feel my stomach drop.

He clicks his tongue. “Damn shame.”

I take a deep breath, try to center myself- and in anger I throw the guitar at the wall. It explodes into splinters, my childish irrational action making everything worse. “FUCK!” 

I dig my claws into the old carpet floor to keep my hands from throttling something. They go through the carpet and punch holes in the wood beneath.

Guy just smiles. “You're angry. Good. Now, here's how you deal with it.”

He pokes me. I slap his hand away, not willing to look at him.

"You. Are a bucket." Great start.

"You get drops of anger at every slight, every misfortune or annoyance. You keep it tight to your chest. Eventually the bucket is going to fill up, and it will spill if you so much as jostle it.”

“You need to be a sieve, letting the anger flow through you. Experience it, feel it, process it, turn it into something else. Motivation, art, reasonable destruction. Doesn't matter. As long as you don't hold onto it.” He tries to poke me again and I slap his hand.

"I used to have these bursts when I was a Red Lantern, where I would be unreasonably angry. Instead of reasonably angry like I normally am. I was stuffing all my anger into a-" he struggles to find a word.

"A lockbox." I finish for him.

"That. I wasn't processing what I was feeling. And when the bucketbox got full. Boom." He moves his hands away from each other like he's miming an explosion “Unreasonable destruction instead of reasonable destruction.”

He points at the pile of broken guitar. “That right there. That's great. It's one of the first properly healthy things you've done here.” 

"What I was trying to tell you earlier, I've lived through what you have been through. If you need help, or even to just break something, please come to me." He bends down to look at me but I turn away again. “I’m not angry at you kid. The old thing was toast anyways'”

“I broke your guitar.”

He huffs. “Yeah, ok. Make me one then.”

“What?” I know next to nothing about Red Lanterns. But one very obvious thing to me is that we- they, don't make light constructs like Green and the rest. I can feel it in my blood, I can drain energy like a parasite, I can vomit my own caustic blood or send blasts of searing energy from my ring, I can use my strength to rip a man in half without a thought.

But I can't just will soemthing into existence.

He reiterates it like it's the simplest thing in the world. "Make it. Make a guitar. Get mad and make something."

I dig up the anger and frustration I feel at messing up. I scratch at the fresh wound of yesterday.

A spark of red light between my hands.

I seethe at how unfair it is that I haven't been able to have real fun in a year; and at losing all my friends; and that I pushed away the rest; and how stupid it is that I had a moment of happiness; and I messed it all up; and how frustrating it is that he's not even mad at me.

The spark grows into a flame.

I seethe because on the couch is a quilt that I shredded when I woke, and a pillow that was put under my head. He tucked me in.

I want to rub my eyes. That's lame and dumb. I haven't felt cold since I got the ring, not even flying over the Atlantic. 

What a sight that was. Flying against the setting sun over open water is a beautiful experience. Seeing the sky grow red and orange as the sun rose under my own power, my own flight.

And it makes me furious that I had to suffer so much to see it; and it was beautiful; and I wanted nothing more than to watch it with Chat at my side; and he's not here where I need him.

Gardner slowed down for me when I lagged behind, just to let me savor the sight. Lame. Dumb.

I press my hands to my eyes, blowing out a heavy breath between gritted teeth. All of my emotions are on a stupidly short fuse. 

And that makes me angry too. Everything makes me angry.

The spectral flame blooms, the wisps grow and twist. They take the rough shape of a guitar. I glare down at it, I focus every drop of frustration and anger on the light, magnifying my intent until it solidifies into smooth red light and sharp edges.

Not a dusty acoustic frat boy guitar, but an exaggerated bass similar to Luka’s or even Jagged’s. Sharper too, comically so, the strings would shred a person's fingers, any part of it could gouge out an eye or disembowel. Even with every ounce of my being demanding a tool, I am handed a weapon. It rests warmly in my hands.

Guy ruffles my still loose hair. I don't bat it away because I’m distracted by the sleek red construct in my hands, looking at it with awe filled eyes.

Instead of sitting opposite of me, Guy sits next to me like he's a friend and not some forty year old man I met yesterday. On his own green guitar in his hands, a mirror of the one now left a pile of mulch. He starts to go through the cords again.

The new guitar feels right tucked in my hands and against my body. Like a puzzle piece made to fit me. I made this. Out of anger, I made something instead of taking it away.

I have so much to do. But maybe for just today, I can take a break. Play some music, maybe a lazy melody I heard what feels like a lifetime ago.

Chapter Text

Marinette Dupain-Cheng

Day 2

Today I feel much more like myself. Meaning I have so much to do.

Step one, be presentable.

With a flex of focused anger my red glow dims from grasping at the edges of the room, to matching Green Lantern's intensity, to unperceptable, lingering only in a metaphorical weight in the air. My armored suit shifts into slightly formal casual wear still in a distinctly alien material and only in striking red and black. Two terribly limiting colors. I ponder if I could make it into a thin under suit and try wearing clothes over top of it.

This is good enough for now. I look away from the mirror and start going through his drawers and medicine cabinet, looking for something to deal with my awkward hands. If someone spends more than a few moments looking at me they would notice that my nails aren't painted black and styled pointy, but natural weapons.

The ring is still obvious. I couldn't figure out how to disguise it, if its even possible, and my entire body recoils at the thought of taking it off. But it's fine. Totally fine. Jewelry could be looked over. Burn marks can be looked over. Claws can't be.

"Ready?" I hear Guy shout from the other side of the house.

"One sec!"

I run to his office and struggle to get the stack of pages I left on the desk into the backpack he gave me without ripping either of them. I push past Guy in the hall and start rummaging through his kitchen drawers, finding little but cookware, dead batteries, and loose cords.

"What's that?" Glancing over my shoulder I can see him pointing at a loose page hanging out of the bag.

"I used your printer last night. You should really move the pool table in your office by the way. I had to run the power cord through one of the pockets. Where are your nail clippers? I can't seem to make ones that work.” I start looking through the other side of his kitchen.

“I don't really use that room. Or own nail clippers. Do you want to sit down? You seem a bit… high strung.”

I throw my hands up, not at all being over dramatic. This is serious. "I had my day off, that's plenty of rest. This isn't some vacation! No nail polish? Nothing?!" They wouldn't be my first pick, but anything is better than leaving them as is.

“You can rest plenty more, there's no rush. We could get the phone some other time if you aren't feeling it. Hell I could make us something instead of eating out.” Gardner doesn't seem to get it.

“I really can't rest. I can however reasonably get pizzas to people within thirty minutes, so that could probably get me a bonus with consistency,” I slam shut another useless drawer, “Are you sure you don't have anything? Wire cutters?”

He rubs the bridge of his nose, “Ok. I’m missing something. Talk to me, I can't fix it if I don't know what the problem is.” I spin around to glare at the man. He's looking at me incredulously. 

"I have to- and I would- I'm not even on step two-” I dig out and shove a heavily notated page that's detailing my plan to fix everything into his face.

"I need to fix the miraculouses. To do that I need to find magical healers or at least start looking for the direction of anyone magically inclined. I need money so I can finance that search!" I start running my hands through my undone hair. 

Guy turns his back to me. He opens his freezer and grabs something.

I continue, "I can't get money without a job, getting a job is already going to be hard, not to mention my luck and I can't possibly be employed if I have black fucking claws. Do I LOOK employable to you?!" I drop the page, grab Guy by his shoulders and shake him. "Are you SURE you don't have nail polish?!?"

In a single smooth motion Guy shrugs off both my hands and shoves an ice cube he retrieved between them. He holding my hands closed around the ice cube, squeezes firmly, holding on as I try to jolt away. The combination of the sudden temperature difference and his pressure breaks me out of my spiral.

“Breath.” I take a poor ratcheted breath, breaking out into coughing when I breathe too deep for my lungs. He move's one hand to my back.

My breathing joins his exaggerated rhythm as he guides me through calming breaths. “Slow down. Step back. Just breathe. It's only been two days.”

Guy smacks my back, "I'm going to help you and everything is going to turn out fine. I’ll make sure, kid." He sounds resolute. With the way he says it, the way he comforts me, I could almost believe him.

Gardner lets go of my now cold wet hands and takes one of my applications sticking out of my backpack. He glances down at it for just a moment. "First of all, 'thirty minutes or free pizza' hasn't been a thing since the nineties."

"Second of all, dumbass," He turns the page back towards me, "This is in french."

The backpack falls off my slack shoulder. I was doomed from the start.

"Let me do the worrying. Now is the time for you to kick back, relax, do things you like, and go behind my back to make bad choices that you will learn from. Teen stuff. Throw rocks at an abandoned building or something, I don't know. Just go be a kid." He says it like it’s easy.

And really? That's his idea of what kids do? "What kind of childhood did you have?" 

He leans against the countertop, "I was an amazingly behaved kid, believe it or not. My mom loved me."

Guy looks down for a moment, he brings his hand up, hesitating. It comes down to rest on my shoulder. His firm grasp feels important. It does come across oddly, seeing as he is still leaning against the counter like some moody teenager.

"Don't let the ring, or anything happening to your head, ruin your life. Ok? Please?” He's asking nicely. It sinks in how immensely important this seems to be to him.

"I'll try." I say honestly after a moment, "Bitch."

He rolls his eyes.

"Look, the magic side of the Justice League-" "Did not have a solution the first time.” I interject under my breath.

“Are you blaming them for what happened?” His question isn't accusatory, just curious. I remain silent.

He continues, "Maybe they don't have the solution in a tight little bow. But do you want to go to corner store mystics with only an untrained touch of the otherworldly mumbo jumbo?  Or would you try asking professionals that know how to find the solutions they don't yet know." I don't know how he manages to give advice in a way that makes his seem like such a dick. He is truly an artist.

It’s not like I want to spend the next year of my life digging through used book stores and crystal resellers only to find nothing. I’m really finding that I don't enjoy being around most magic. No offense to those napping in my pocket.

The JLD worked with me and Chat after the Paris situation started. Helping some untrained kids, one with no magical spark to even speak of, the best they could. They taught me almost everything I know that I didn't learn myself through the pavlovian pain response that Hawk Moth and my mistakes gave me.

I want a break. God do I want a break.

Just this once I'll say it. He's right. I give a whole body shiver at the thought.

I'm being irrational, I can acknowledge that. They helped me before and I know I can trust them to help me again. It just rubs me the wrong way to drop something I could be handling myself.

“Come on, let's sit down outside. I’ll tell you some embarrassing stories about my buddies in the Corps. It’ll be fun.” His dumb grin is nearly devilish. He really needs to do the world a service and stop smiling.

"Of course, that's after I alert the wizards, monkey, and Wonder Woman who's also there. For some reason." He holds his hand up, silencing me. "Don't tell me why she's there. I don't actually care."

"I was going to defend Detective Chimp's honor. He's an ape you fucking troglodyte."

"Uhuh. Sure." Gardner pushes me out of his front door and locks it behind us. My backpack, and with it my hand troubles lay forgotten inside.

He sits both of us down on the street curb overlooking the me-sized hole in the street. Now sporting traffic cones. “We aren't going today, huh?”

“Do you want to?” He asks.

I look down and pick at my nails to keep myself busy. “I don't want to talk to people right now.”

“Yeah, I didn't think so. We always have tomorrow.” It makes me mad that he's only kind of a dick. If he just called me a pussy to my face, I would feel justified. But he's putting up stupid respectful boundaries and has me take my own stupid time. What an asshole.

I look up from my lap and finally take in the outside world again. The air is refreshing. While the slowly wearing down suburbs block my view of the city proper, at night from above it was quite pretty. A dock surrounded by restaurants, parks, shops, and skyscrapers quaint in size like Paris’ sitting at its center. 

“Where are we by the way?” I ask.

“The great city of Baltimore. Smells like shit, but the view is nice, when the weather isn't also shit at least." He hums, "Lots of memories. A lot of those are shit too.” Despite the wording, he has a smile on his face.

Slowly deteriorating brickwork, wood paneling, wide roads, and Parisian amounts of litter. I see a raccoon knocks over a trash can. Spooking itself with the noise, it jumps a solid three feet in the air. Everything is dirty and it smells horrible, but I think if I get the right angle, I can just make out the water reflecting the morning light. It's surprisingly nice.

Hello Baltimore.

Day 3

I’m going to puke. It's so much worse. Baltimore sucks.

Apparently, Guy Gardner lives in the ‘historical district’. Which is a load of bullshit, this is America, it's incredibly new. So when we get downtown the roads are stupidly large.

Ridiculously wide. I was wrong about him living in suburbia. We passed actual suburbs on our way, it was horrifying. So much grass.

I shudder.

We both stand outside the phone store in the city center, waiting for something to happen. Guy breaks the silence with a mutter, “I genuinely can't tell if you're overreacting on purpose.”

He clears his throat and asks me a question, "Do you remember how to buy a phone?"

I barely turn to the man standing next to me. "What? No, my parents got mine. Don't you? You're the adult here."

"Nah, last time I bought one was in high school. I don't remember what the process was."

"How do you function without a phone? Do you never contact the Justice League yourself?” I'm not dumb enough to insinuate they never contact him. When he's not doing his space bullshit, Guy Gardner seems to pursue League work like it's the only thing he does. Which is likely true. Friendless cunt.

My eyes go wide. “Wait. Did you even call Dark?"

"Uhhh? Yeah? I did. My ring does everything I need from a phone, really,” He bumps his shoulder into mine, “Yours would too once it has been broken in. Like shoes."

I slowly turn to him. "It does phone stuff… Why are you getting me a phone?"

"Enrichment."

"For what? My enclosure? Like an animal?"

He condescendingly pats my shoulder. "Yes, kid. Like a zoo animal."

"Now I'm getting stressed out. This is your fault. If we walk in and don't know how to ask, they'll hate us."

He blinks at me slowly. "That's so dumb. Marionette, fast food workers won't remember you next shift if you aren't an asshole. Don't get all anxious because you think you will make their day worse buy ordering a sandwich. You won’t, it's literally their job."

“Marionette.”

Marionette?

“Marionette?”

Marionette!

“ Marionette?! ”

He never asked my name, and then he read it somewhere. Wrong. He read my name WRONG.

Oh my fucking god.

While I'm standing out here trying to blow him up with my mind, Guy leaves me outside. He walks in and just asks the person at the front how to buy a phone. Completely ignoring that I am staring daggers at the back of his head. 

Fucking Marionette. I follow him inside, intending to kick his shins the moment it's most inconvenient for him.

While neither of us know what we are doing, the lady is nice enough to walk us through it. It's delightfully mundane and slow. Like the walk here, it makes me feel like a normal person. Separated from the person who flies over oceans uncaring for the wake in the waves created behind her. Not to mention I only tripped once on walk over.

Before I know it, a black box is placed in my hand. Opening it reveals the glossy black screen. Completely brand new. An actual, current gen smartphone. One of the ones that have remained the same for the past five years, besides not being artificially slowed by the phone company.

Nothing like the cheap burners me and Chat used to talk with when we couldn't communicate using our Miraculouses. And what we used to send each other horribly compressed funny videos back and forth.

“Thanks. I guess. You really didn't have to.” I feel practically obligated to say, a new phone is a big deal.

“Of course I had to get you one. What if you went out on your own and got some shitty Apple or Wayne smartphone instead of a proper Android?" He scoffs.

“Look at this,” Guy starts messing with my phone over my shoulder, deleting half of the apps it came with, “I don't need an undeletable Wayne ‘Waytch(™)’ on my damn home screen.”

“I thought you didn't have a phone.”

He hands the phone back. “I’m allowed to have opinions.”

He concentrates on his ring for a moment, visible by the flexing his fist. He smiles at me. My phone buzzes, a message received from a number somehow already in the phone. I use my knuckle to slide down the little notification from the top.

'Stinky' Sent from Lantern Ring.

My eye twitches.

I show him a bras d'honneur. His smile widens. He knows what it means, likely getting dozens any time he stepped foot in Europe.

Fucking asshole.

Day 4

Carefully torn strips of crispy lettuce are placed in a nice layer over the freshly grilled hamburger patty. Salt is cautiously sprinkled onto the thin cut tomatoes, tamped down with a paper towel to remove moisture.

“Watching you is very amusing. You’re like a little creature.” Ignore him. Create the perfect American hamburger. Homemade and elevated over the tourist focused grease traps in Paris.

I carefully squeeze on the plastic ketchup bottle to drizzle onto the buns toasted on the grill by Guy. My eye twitches as the cap pops off. The entirety of the bottle spews onto my lap and burger, ruining both.

Guy Gardner slaps his knees and barks a laugh, “HAH! Oh my god that's perfect. Hold on let me make a camera."

I slowly screw back on the cap of the bottle. “I am going to scoop out YOUR FUCKING KNEECAPS!” I chuck the bottle at Gardner’s damn head. It bounces off with a hollow *thonk*.

“WHAT DID I DO?!?!” He ruins his own burger. Dumping it in favor of using the paper plate as a shield like I’m going to throw something else at him despite my empty hands.

“YOU LAUGHED, YOU OLD FUCK!”

“I’M NOT OLD!?” He struggles to defend himself from the truth.

“YOU'RE LIKE THIRTY!” We start to circle each other around the patio chairs.

“BATMAN’S FIFTY SOMETHING!!! HELL, GREEN ARROW SHOULD BE IN A DAMN NURSING HOME!!!!”

“I'LL CALL THEM OLD TOO, BITCH!”

Day 5

As engaging as it is, after a good two hours of sitting on the couch with Guy while he tries to teach me how to play a song, I need a distraction. I do the obvious thing and try to start an argument. “You have fans?” I point to the pile of mail.

“Yeah, it just doesn't usually get this bad when I'm on Earth duty. I’ve just been out of the house for a while. I’m stuck on overseas duties. Jesus, Europe has some weird villains.” He has been popping out almost every night, though I don't think his search has turned up much yet. I feel like he's the kind of person to brag horribly.

I shrug, “I just didn't think you were the type that had fans.”

“What? Every hero has some fans? You have a damn statue!” He throws up a hand in irritation.

“I don't see how that's relevant.” I stretch and loudly crack my back.

“Listen. I am a very well respected-” He's cut off as his ring starts to blink, catching both of our attention.

“They responded!” I jolt up and let my guitar dematerialize.

"Don't cut my-" Not before it manages to clip the coffee table as it falls, carving a deep groove.

"Fucker. Here.” Gardner gabs my hand and brings it up to press our rings together. The blinking transfers to the head of mine.

“Alright kid. So you- hey. Hey!”

I book it.

“I need some space for this!” I throw open the front door.

I've already started my way down the street. Behind me I hear him call after me, “Close the damn door next time! And call me when you get back!”

Mentally I accept the call. My ring projects multiple small translucent figures in front of me as I walk.

Good grief. They're naked.

Most of them at least. John Constantine is lying bare chested in bed, surrounded by loose pages and old leather-bound books. Zatanna just now finishes slipping on some formal attire while she sits at a desk. Bobo, the one and only Detective Chimp is without his suit, his hat and my mild familiarity with him is the only reason he doesn't look like any other chimpanzee wearing pants, surprisingly he looks fully sober. Wonder Woman is currently flying, not letting me get a good angle to look at her as whatever she is using to call is at an odd angle, at least she for one is clothed. And finally Captain Marvel is late again.

“Sorry we’re so late on the contact. John and I were stuck in a sliding time loop.” Zatanna gives what I think is a sympathetic smile. 

I look away as Constantine stands up to throw on his pants and a button up. “Gardner filled us in for most of it. Let's see. The magic isn't divine at least, it's more fundamental. The building blocks. Chaos and order. Soft divinity. It's slippery yet firm, chiral even. Out of most of our reaches.”

I nod like he's actually communicating something, like he's not just saying words that don't mean anything in this context. The moment he starts talking about magic my brain just shuts off. What's going over my head is likely something actually important, as everyone else is agreeing with him and adding on their own assessment.

Zatanna reaches over to grab his tan jacket and toss it to him, revealing that they are in the same room. I ignore the implications. "Very slippery, I ran into an artifact created based on the miraculous years ago. Completely resistant to being imposed upon. Casting magic on them is like trying to sift water out of mud."

Bobo slightly adjusts whatever the projection is getting its image from, likely a laptop based on how it lights his face. “Can't say I'm familiar with the magic, but I have been following the paper trail of one late Gabriel Agreste.”

“So far nothing has come of his purchases or interactions. Nothing that stands out as helping at least. Where he has acquired the ingredients for his obfuscation ritual was a dead end, but I’ve gotten close to uncovering where he found the miraculie in the first place. Figuring out how this man had gotten a hold of Peafowl’s object of power is as simple as following his bank statements.” 

He goes to grab a cigarette but puts his hand back when he catches himself. “In a weeks time I will be catching a flight to Tibet to follow up on where his expenses went liquid. Apart from that, and anything else I find to stick my nose in, I won't be of much help. Another psych profile and motive for a dead man wouldn’t do much now would it?”

The last person in call finally speaks up, having let everyone else speak their piece. “How are the Kwami doing? Are they feeling alright?” She breaks away from business.

Wonder Woman is a presence unlike any other. I should expect it by now, even having met her quite extensively, it's always shocking when she talks about anything less than saving the world. Like a story book hero asking you how you like your tea.

I answer her, “They're resting. Duusu is confused, damaged. Nooroo is not handling what happened well, even now he's still forced to be silent. I'm stuck. I don't know how to undo previous orders. Their command words don't work.”

“I’d have you bring them over but without a proper ritual my magic would likely not play well.” Zatanna looks behind her for John Constantine. 

“Wouldn’t want to make things worse.” I add. They nod at the comment. I am getting a good grade in magic.

Constantine leans over to grab bound pages set on his nightstand, it doesn't look old enough to be a tome, possibly a recent recreation or transcription. He flips through and points at a page that has already been circled with cheap marker. “Ah, here it is. Can't undo your luck problem, you'll have to wait them out. But at the very least, I could give that one his voice back. It's a simple enough curse to break.”

My eyes go wide, "Oh."

I have to sit down. My aimless walking having lead me to reach the waterfront.

Progress. Things are getting better because I let someone else handle the burden. I never would have been able to get his far within a week.

"Oh." It was really that easy? It's not everything, my problems still exist in force, but it's something.

Constantine sighs. “Yeah, it's great, but we have to be real. Our best bet is bringing them to the Order.”

"No." I shoot him down before he even finishes his sentence.

“You don't like them, I heard. And I get that. But sometimes to do this work, you have to be around shitty people. We have no clue how to fix the broken and unbalanced divinity containers." He motions to the pile of books surrounding him, "None of these books are going to have that silver bullet. They might.”

My nails carve into the concrete I’m sitting on. “I’m supposed to protect them. It's my job to protect them. I wont not trust them in the hands of the Order.” Not while the Order is in the hands of the incompetent. I won't fail.

My breath stands still, worried that the League demand I hand them over.

Wonder Woman cuts through the train of conversation, her words firm, “Then we will have to keep focusing on what we do have.”

I take a deep breath.

Wonder Woman continues, “I've had limited interaction with Miraculous in my life, Peafowl was never one to share his hand. I don't have them on me, but since the mental barrier dropped I have been collecting everything my mother knew about the Ladybug and Black Cat Miraculous. Stories, memories. They may not be a fix, but first hand accounts are a step closer."

The call goes silent, no one else having anymore input, “I think that's all, yes?” She receives nods of agreement, “Everyone knows the plan moving forward? The timeline?”

Constantine speaks up first, "We'll see what else we can find. Call in a few favors to see if anyone knows anything. It's a long shot, from what I can tell, the containers haven't been studied by outside hands more than two or maybe three times."

“Just judging from other accounts of luck manipulations, there's anywhere from one to three years for the luck lingering on Ladybug to dissipate. That's depending on how fast the luck recovers naturally and with the probable rate of Chat Noir’s use of his miraculie verses the year of her extended use.” Bobo quickly rattles off, a cigarette now held between his lips. He looks down at it in surprise like he doesn't know how it got there. The look morphs into agitation, he puts it out on an ashtray off screen.

“Perfect. Call if anything comes up.” She presses a button on a wristband and her feed cuts. She's quickly joined by the rest.

Wherever she is going is incredibly important to her if she's ending the call this early. Or she just doesn't want to talk to me. So much about the situation stands unvoiced until our next interaction. 

I take a deep breath and blink away tears. Just talking in the surrounding sounds of lapping water and the soft glare of the reflected sun.

The sharp sound of metal high-heeled greaves landing behind me cuts through the silence.

Wonder Woman sits to my side.

Chapter Text

Marinette Dupain-Cheng

Day 5

Wonder Woman's legs hang off the short concrete promenade. The difference in our height means the tips of her shoes touch the water whereas mine merely dangle. The slight ripple draws my attention down to the red light reflecting off the water beneath us.

I'm starting to get used to it. To the extent I forget it's there even when it paints everything around me. This series of thoughts are in no way a deflection from the fact Wonder Woman just sat next to me, or that I should really talk to her.

Ok be cool.

From beside me I grab a flat piece of black gravel chipped off from the road behind us. I skip it across the water, not putting any strength behind the throw. It bounces once before sinking into the bay, likely never to be touched by human hands again.

She doesn't react beyond superficially grabbing and throwing her own stone. Three skips. Not a real response, but that wasn't a real start to a conversation either. We continue to sit together in silence, both waiting for the other to make the first move. 

For the briefest moment when she arrived it crossed my mind that Wonder Woman could be here to take me in. But it was just that, a passing thought. The initial dread that someone was coming for me, created when I pulled away from the Ring’s madness, has faded. Meeting Guy and him being… Guy, threw the idea that the League is looking to lock me up out the window. 

The tension is getting to me. I feel uncomfortable in my skin. Avoiding confrontation till the last moment only makes it worse. I have years of experience ingraining that fact into my psyche. I need to talk to her. Ignoring my problems in the hope that they go away is the worst thing I could do. But knowing that logically doesn't make it any easier to act.

I focus my mind. I’m trying to dive head first when I can't even work up the nerve to look at her. Biting the bullet, I look away from the lapping water and peek at her through my loose hair.

Just looking at her makes me correct my posture. I would say she sits like a general, effortlessly regal and confident. With it comes a stillness, one that draws you in and makes her feel almost outside of time. She’s undeniably the tallest in the Justice League, taller than papa was and almost as broad. On her head a golden tiara emblazoned with a star. It holds back a lion's mane of black hair who's curls brush against tanned skin and metal armor brightly colored red, blue, and gold. Bunched up against her hip sits her lasso, the only tool on her faulds, her sword and shield missing from her ensemble. 

Besides coming unarmed, that's all backdrop. I’ve seen her dozens of times. The new scar painting her features is what stands out to me, it’s the first thing I notice. A healing splotch of burnt red skin around her eyes, joining the hundreds across her body. I don't doubt that she can see, she tracks my movement out of the side of her eye when I brush my hair back and to look at her without obstruction, yet they remain obviously injured, left a milky white. This isn’t important right now. Fuck, I’m stalling.

What is there to say about here that I haven't already? She's, as Americans say, 'pardon my french', fucking Wonder Woman. She has saved the world countless times, battled gods and liberated the tyrannized for nearing a century at this point. She has borrowed Atlas’s burden and held the very weight of the sky on her back.

More personally, she taught me and Chat. She taught us how to squeeze in time for your personal life, who to prioritize in a fight, how to handle search and rescue, how to take a fall, how to pull a punch. She taught us how to not collapse under the wait of a double life. Everything that Fu couldn't. Her lessons have permeated into every corner of my life. She didn't teach me how to be a hero, that's not something taught, she taught me how to live and survive being one.

I can list all these superficial things, but I don't know her. 

She's the person the Justice League sent to get us from hapless kids thrown in a situation we could barely handle to prepared teens. And that's the extent of our connection, we hold no love for each other. She was a distant teacher. I never got used to her, even still she's larger than life, her virtuousness feels untouchable. She feels perfect and- Fuck I’m still stalling.

I need to talk. We can't just sit here till the sun sets.

Be cool Marinette.

Fuck it. "So. What have you been up to?" I have to fight back the urge to cringe and bury my face in my hands. Not the words I want at all.

Not cool Marinette.

Wonder Woman fully turns to me. I don't know what expression I expected her to carry, disappointment maybe, but it's not the look painting her face. Soft eyes with a small turn to her lip. In my mind there are no words to describe it besides pure care directed towards me. 

"Since Tuesday?" She exhales through her nose slowly in a drawn out sigh, "Packed schedule. Earthquake in Chile, molemen trying to take over half of Phoenix. The usual. You?"

I shrug, "Not much." We're left staring at each other.

That went nowhere. We fall back into silence, still neither of us addressing the elephant in the room. I turn back to the water, opting instead to think about how nice it is for the largest body of water by me is not filled with literal shit. Can’t believe I’m praising Baltimore for crossing a very low bar, but I've swam in the seine too many times. The mid day glare and being far outside the city center means it’s not exactly a pretty view. I don't know how to articulate this, but it looks like if an eight lane freeway was a waterfront. 

Aaaand I'm stalling again.

"I…” Wonder Woman breaks the silence before trailing off. I see her hesitate, opening and closing her mouth trying but failing to voice something to me. The notion of her being uncertain, of hesitating at all, seems impossible. And after a moment, Wonder Woman gives up. She puts a hand on her knee to stand.

I’m not surprised or disappointed she’s leaving, I can’t be if I had no expectations in the first place. Wonder Woman wouldn't have me as her intended stop, I doubt I matter enough for that. Whatever danger I pose has obviously been mostly handled in the eyes of the League if they are letting Guy Fucking Gardner watch over me. They are already helping me solve my Miraculous problems from a distance. Wanting them to care any more than that is naive. 

I nearly jump out of my skin when a hand extends into my vision. "Apologies, I don't think I can convey what I want to say here and now,” Wonder Woman is reaching down to me, asking to pull me up, “Can I call you Marinette?" she asks.

"Oh." I think I psyched myself out again. I take her hand and give her a small nod in affirmation, "Yeah."

Wonder Woman helps me up. She holds my hand in hers, not letting go until I pull away. I can feel the deep calluses through my gloves. 

Wonder Woman smiles for the first time since I last saw her, well over a year at this point. "It might be out of line to ask you to do me a favor after what happened, but today is my day off and I’m visiting someone. I would like for you to come with me, Marinette."

I hesitate, but nod all the same. I want to hear what she has to say. I want to be there. For good or for worse. “I’ll go.” But something tells me, despite my doubts and fears, it's not for the worse.

White feather wings fold out and flutter from her shoes. Wonder Woman lifts inches off the ground, one leg raised slightly more than the other for stability. She hovers, waiting for me.

In an intensified flash of light I start to float. My thin undersuit disintegrates the sweater and sweatpants I threw over them this morning as it transforms back into its natural state of ready combat. My jaw sets but I give no other indication that ruining my clothes was an accident. I'm not going to let myself look like even more of an idiot in front of her. She's seen both me and Chat faceplant enough times already.

She taps my shoulder when I reach her elevation. "Don't worry, you could be back before dinner, it's not even two hundred miles out. I'll even help you land."

My face falls. This is Gardner's fault. I don't know how it is, but it's his fault. The next time I see him I am throwing him out of a god damn window.

Wonder Woman lifts further off the ground and flies off. I follow after her, not helping my attempt to stay cool when I initially overshoot her by flying too fast. 

Watching Wonder Woman fly is beautiful. Powerful. Between sudden bursts of speed that brush the sound barrier, she moves through the air like a hawk traveling with the air currents. It’s a rare sight. Anybody can tell she’s much more comfortable on the ground. I’ve only caught glimpses of it in person when she arrived or left Paris. 

Within ten minutes of leaving Baltimore she slows, our destination a two story tall building shaped like a large L, its facade almost entirely glass. She adjusts in the air and smoothly descends, her feet pointed towards the ground. 

Trying to slow my fall, I more resemble a first time driver. Lurching with every touch of the peddle. When we are thirty feet up she stops completely in the air. Wonder Woman puts her hand up towards me, likely in an attempt to instruct me how to land. I cut out my flight in its entirety, falling the distance and taking a rolled landing. The very same she drilled into me.

She laughs from above me as she descends. Her feet harmlessly meet the ground, “I was going to help.”

My shoulders raise. "I'm not used to powered flight. Transitioning from going with the fall and working with gravity, to fighting against it has been messing me up. I was trying to do both at the same time. I have to pick." I explain. I thank the universe itself that my heart isn't beating. If it still worked my face would be red from embarrassment. 

Circumventing it this way is probably a bad habit, so I amend my statement. “I’ll try learning to land using just flight when I’m not next to a hospital.” Now on the ground the building's purpose is clear. Wonder Woman brought me to a hospital.

She concedes with a tilt of her head and she leads us to the entrance. The automatic doors part and I follow behind her into the lobby. The main entrance room is so jarring compared to the cookie cutter corporate outside that I almost stumble. The entrance room’s ceiling is two stories high, a second floor balcony overlooks the entrance. The large glass windows let in natural light, illuminating colorful murals of forests and animals cover the walls. A load bearing central pillar is even disguised as a green minimalist tree. 

Everything is modern without being overbearingly sterile and white. A house built in the early 2000s looks more like a hospital than this. It doesn't even smell like chemical cleanliness. 

In a pastel orange the words ‘Oliver Queen Children's hospital’ are painted on one of the walls, pushed to the side in favor of making the space more inviting. I wrack my brain for where I’ve heard that name before. I think that's the guy that punched Bruce Wayne once. For that he is a noble man in my heart. Every living soul in France knows that Make it Wayne is the worst thing ever put to television. Every. Living. Soul.

The natural sounds of a waiting room dims. Turning heads is an understatement, the room cascades into silence as each new person turns to see what caught others' attention. Each and every eye falls to us. Consciously I pull back my glow.

I follow Wonder Woman towards a bespectacled man in his early twenties waiting at the side. He glances at me as we approach. The man meets us halfway, he reaches out to shake Wonder Woman’s hand for a touch too long, nodding to himself a bit nervously. “Hi. I’m Matt.”

“Nice to meet you Matt.” She responds in good humor. The smile on her lips grows with every second spent in this place.

“Right. Right, I'm here to take you to Kelly’s room.” He turns and leads us out of the lobby and deeper into the building.

We just walked past half a dozen children checking in or out without any running up or tackling Wonder Woman's legs. Not so much as a single nervous approach.

I’m not sure if no one approached her because she moves with confident strides like she has somewhere to go, or because I’m here.

Out of fear I haven't been checking the news, and Guy doesn’t watch it. Opting for the sports channel and heavily believing 'If it's important someone will tell me'.

I don't know what people know about me. I don’t know how prevalent my actions were, how far they reached. When I eat out with Guy, do people glance at me because of what I look like and who I’m with, or because of what I did?

He continues to guide us down a first floor hall. The forest murals slowly changes to that of a jungle. One populated with out of place common house pets. It’s cute. 

Two doors down from the back of the hall he stops. He turns to Wonder Woman. “She’s in here. I’ll check if Kelly's away first, and tell I'll her you're here to see her.” He disappears into the pastel blue door.

Reemerging a minute later, the guy leans out and signals to Wonder Woman with a nod. He widens the door to let a red headed woman in her late twenties pass him. She’s rubbing the sleep from tired eyes.

The woman freezes seeing Wonder Woman waiting in the hall. I can see tears well up in her eyes. "You actually-" Wonder Woman widens her arms, the woman readily accepts the hug. “You don't understand how much this means to her. Thank you.”

I sit down in one of the hallway chairs set against the wall. My eyes bore into the beagle painting across from me to avoid looking on at Wonder Woman. It feels off for me to be here, to watch something so deeply kind and empathetic.

After a long beat the woman half pulls away, her arms still clinging to Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman cups the woman's face as she wipes away her tears, “It’s no problem at all. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else in the world.” 

They break away. Wonder Woman gives her a wide smile and disappears into the waiting door. The tired lady collapses into the blue seat next to me. She shifts, turning to look at me despite my focus remaining off of her.

“Oh, hi. Sorry, I didn't introduce myself to you two. I’m Lisa." She says.

My hands fidget, not knowing what to do with themselves. I give her a nod when it's clear she's waiting for a response. 

Lisa continues with a questioning tilt in her voice, ”You're Wonder Girl, right?”

Won- "No? No."

She waves it off, “Ah figures, my bad. I never really paid attention to superheroes. Not like Kelly does, she loves them.”

"Gosh, it's all she wants to do. Lunch boxes, clothes, posters. I even bought that cowboy guy's autobiography to read to her at night. You know, last month we started listening to those old Super Friends' radio shows- and have you ever seen a six year old pour over decades old newspapers? It's adorable." Lisa stifles a laugh. The tightness in her shoulders starts to melt away.

I turn towards Lisa so she sees I'm giving her my fully attention. She talks faster with every sentence, gushing over her daughters every quirk. Her words spill off her tongue with evaporating sorrow.

"I mean I grew up with heroes myself, I was exposed to them, sure. But for as long as she could draw, Kelly was drawing heroes. Half of them I didn't even know existed. A couple years ago I helped her learn how to use our computer, she spends so much of computer time looking at all these articles and- and websites about heroes from all over the place." Lisa chuckles happily, "She wants to grow up to be a pilot so she could travel around the world meeting those superheros. She doesn't even want to be one. Kelly just wants to be their friends. I was going to take her to an aerospace museum for her birthday to see the planes." She swallows the wetness invading her words. 

I place a hand on her arm in an attempt to comfort her. It feels like the right thing to do. "She sounds like an amazing kid. You're a good mom." I say.

"She is. She really is," she says wetly. Lisa takes a moment before standing up from her seat, wiping tears from her eyes. She smiles tiredly, "I think I'm going to step away for a minute and grab some water. You’re a great kid, you know?"

I watch as Lisa leaves down the painted hall. I’m left feeling- something I can't quite pin down. It's dim, present but crushed under the weight of everything. I can’t quite tell if it's even a positive emotion. I don’t know how I can do anything but notice the feeling; to grab onto it with both hands. Because I think it’s the first time since I changed that not a drop of the emotion was tinged with anger. I feel light.

After a few minutes left in my own silence a knock against the wall brings me out of my head. The person from the charity is leaning out the open door. He waves to me, "If you feel up for it, they would like for you to join them."

I stand up. Crossing the threshold reveals that the room is themed around Wonder Woman. Everything is in blues, reds, and golds.The walls are plastered in posters of various heroes. One of the chairs is piled with various hero plushies. A decal of Wonder Woman and her symbol paints the wall adjacent to the large window that's letting in light, and sits mirror to the two people piled on the same medical bed.

Wonder Woman has lit up like I've never seen before. All her professional doctrine and that air of seriousness I associate with her has fallen away. Or maybe it's my false perception of her getting crushed under the weight of the childlike joy in her eyes. She's not larger than life, she's wearing a paper crown scribbled in with yellow crayon.

The girl in the bed has her vision obstructed by Wonder Woman’s tiara falling over her eyes. Like Wonder Woman, she sits crossed legged with paper in her lap. She looks tiny compared to the bed she’s in. Medical tape holds an IV to her arm, a cannula is framing her face. She's hooked up to so many tubes and machines that I lose track of their purpose. And still, Kelly smiles just as wide as Wonder Woman.

"Marinette, this my friend Kelly!"

The girl doesn't look up from her lap to wave, "Hi Marinette." She ignores me in favor of continuing to draw.

Wonder Woman chuckles in amusement and motions to the pile of loose crayons and paper on the bed, "Care to join us?"

Standing over the bed makes me feel, now more than ever, out of place here. Like a voyeur. I look down to see a half finished drawing of a little girl on Wonder Woman's shoulders, and a surprisingly detailed, for the medium used, sketch of Superman in flight. He just so happens to be wearing his strongman trunks over his head.

Wonder Woman leans over to hand me paper and a green crayon. I pull up a chair so I can sit beside the bed with them.

And then Kelly begins to talk. She talks, and talks, and talks. Rambling about different heroes and her friends at school and everything she finds cool in the world. I remain quiet, unaware of how to engage, I’ve never done something like this before. But Wonder Woman flows with her naturally. Speaking softly with her, telling her own stories and asking questions. Both of them seem so happy.

Paper after paper is added to the growing mess of a pile as the minutes pass by. 

It’s when I’m filling out my fourth drawing, a drawing of Guy Gardner getting hit with a brick, that I hear a gasp. Childlike and almost exaggerated with how long it lasts. I look up to see that had Kelly finally pulled back her oversized crown while yawning, letting her see more than what’s immediately in her lap. “You have spots!”

“I do.”

She rocks back and forth, "And you sound weird!"

Ah, a growing American. Already racist. "I’m French."

Kelly doesn't respond, not with words at least. She certainly doesn't fall silent, she sounds like a heating kettle. I stare nervously at the child shaped pressure cooker getting ready to burst.

Wonder Woman runs her hands through Kelly’s hair and helps her along, “Marinette can’t read your mind.” 

She finally explodes, "Are you Ladybug!?!"

"Good job detective. Yeah, I was Ladybug." It takes me a moment to find the words. I’m not sure how I feel. I don't regret being Ladybug. But I don't want to be her anymore either. "Not… Not anymore I guess." 

She gasps even louder, "You became a new hero! Like a Robin!” Isn't that some kind of lizard?

She stretches and struggles to reach the pile of old pictures on her nightstand. Wonder Woman reaches over to grab it for her. It takes her only a moment to shuffle them out on the bed. One drawing in particular is picked out by small hands and raised towards me. I take the paper in a delicate grasp, careful not to damage it.

It's a drawing of Chat Noir, and off to the side is Ladybug. Way off to the side, like I was drawn after the fact, and-

I fight the smile clawing its way onto me. I nearly laugh saying it out loud, "His head's really big." Chat looks ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous.

“Don’t laugh!” She whines.

“I’m not. Promise.” I lie.

"I added Ladybug when I remembered that I forgot to draw her and I think she's really cool and pretty. I drew Chat Noir's face because I like his ears. But I gave him a body now, that way you could hang out together!" She whispers, "And, um, hold hands." 

I reach out to pat her head.

“Thank you. I’ll cherish this forever.” I fold it twice and tuck it into my suit to keep it safe. I need to ensure it survives until I see Chat again. It’s going to be so funny.

“Mhmm.” Kelly yawns again and rubs her eyes, but her fading consciousness doesn’t stop her.

She asks me questions, and we talk. I tell her about Paris, and my own friends. The few heroes I’ve met and the many funny bad guys I fought. I talk about Chat. I like talking about Chat. She hangs on my every word. 

I feel light. I should feel more, deep emotions, missing ones even. I know that. But despite what I lack, this lightness in my chest is nice.

Wonder Woman places her picture on Kelly’s lap and points to an uncolored section. She then leans close to me and whispers, “She’s winding down. I’m going to stay with her until she falls asleep. How about you wait outside for a bit?”

I nod and extract myself from the bed. I pass the guy, Matt I believe, on the way out. The last thing I see before the door shuts behind me is him pulling closed the window’s curtains. 

Immediately my back meets the wall, resting on a mural of a tuxedo cat hiding under a fern.

Why did she take me here? 

I slide down the hallway wall. I sit there for minutes waiting for Wonder Woman. The door creaks back open. I glance up at her. She leaves the room smiling.

Wonder Woman turns to the man who shadowed her and waves Matt off, “Thank you so much Matt. I can find my way around from here.” I'm dimly aware of Kelly's mom slipping back into the room. I wasn't even aware she was in the hallway with me.

Wonder Woman sits down next to me, her legs splayed out and her back meeting the wall. “Are you alright?” 

I nod without having to think. I’m alright. I’m too alright. "Do you do this often?"

She nods, “There are about one hundred and twenty kids a year who request meeting Wonder Woman as their wish. I try to get to all of them during my rare time off. This happens to be my fourth hospital today."

“Maybe you should pick up a hobby.”

Wonder Woman laughs softly, “I like it. I find it cathartic to be around kids. And I still get to take care of myself. After I spend some time in the communal area, I’m headed to a spa.”

Her smile softens again, "What did you think of Kelly?"

"She's a good kid. There's too much is hooked up to her." I don’t know any other way of saying it. It doesn't tug at my heart like it should.

Wonder Woman agrees, "Things like that shouldn't happen to people. She will survive. Most of them here will." 

I begin slowly, “I should feel more. I should be crying over this, I might have before. But I feel next to nothing about her situation.” I have to stop myself from digging my nails into my palms from frustration, “It finally clicked. I know what’s wrong with me.“

I look down at the crimson ring adorning my finger. “Despite the ring, I can still feel happy, and sad, and every emotion of the rainbow. Despite all of them being tinged with anger and muted, I still feel them. But- I don’t think I feel empathy anymore.” Something about me is broken. This isn’t who I used to be. 

Wonder Woman tries but can’t get a word in before I move on, ”Why me? Why bring me here."

"For one, I heard she was a fan of yours. I thought you needed to see it, to remind you that you're still a hero to people." She pauses, “And I’ve been worrying about you. I wanted to see if you where ok."

She puts a hand on my shoulder. "I've been worrying. That is what I have been up to. Molemen? Natural disasters? Those I can handle in my sleep. My mind since Tuesday has only been on you, worrying. I’ve been worrying my head off."

"It's fine." I try brushing her off.

"I failed you, Marinette. I messed up and you had to deal with my mistake. You were alone. And I didn't even know.” I don't look at her. I’m not sure I can, “I forgot about you. You were my responsibility and I just forgot.”

Her words hit me like a brick to the chest. I turn to look at her. She meets my gaze with an intensity I don’t know what to make of.

Her voice is calm. It’s focused and intent, "I didn't teach you enough, I should have prepared you better. I was not much of a mentor." 

I have to break away from the eye contact. "You were never supposed to be our mentor. You did a good job." Me and Chat would have never gotten so far if she never taught us.

"I wasn't supposed to be a mentor, but you needed one. When your teacher left, where I should have stepped up, I didn't. This should have been avoidable. The whole thing. My absence was publicized. I should have known that he would make his move when I was occupied. I should have used a double and stayed behind, or-"

I cut over her, "It's over. It happened. I survived. I'm not angry at you, or the League, or anyone who could have been there but wasn't. I'm just pissed. At everything. The whole situation.”

"You should not have had to suffer through that. You should have never have had to survive on your own."

“Nom de dieu.” My face is spasming. I have to fight back my lips' attempt to pull back. It's as if my body wants me baring my teeth at an enemy.

“It was my responsibility-” 

I yell over her, “You were at a funeral! Your friend died!” I squeeze my eyes shut in a wince when I hear my shout echo back to me.

She pulls me into her chest and tucks my face into her neck. I go through a breathing exercise, feeling the anger run its way through my system. I don’t know who started it, but we end up rocking each other back and forth gently.

“I don't want to fight about Paris right now.” I have to fight to unclench my jaw just to get the words out. 

Wonder Woman whispers to me, "Ok.”

Wonder Woman lets me push her away after a moment. She has a sad smile as she brushes my hair behind my ear. "More than anything, I feel my biggest mistake was keeping you at a distance. Treating Paris like a duty instead of an opportunity. It's too late to rewrite history, but I would like to have a relationship with you. Not as a mentor, teacher, sidekick or anything else. A friend."

"A friend?"

She nods. "You can call me Diana. I prefer it between friends."

"Diana." The name fits her.

I return to my position with the wall being to my back. After a minute Diana begins to talk. She’s not smiling anymore. I feel my throat tighten.

“I feel like you might be blaming yourself in turn of someone else. It wasn't on you to see the faults in the authority around you," I pull my legs closer in to my chest.

She rests her hand on my shoulder, "You did better than anyone else in that circumstance. The fact you pulled out of it at all is a testament to your will, not a scathing criticism that you didn’t do it fast enough. You survived Marinette. You faced an unwinnable situation and got to the other side. Life kicked you down and you got back up. Not unscathed, not unscarred. But you alive.”

I choke out my words, “That’s the problem. Getting back up wasn’t hard. I don't care what happened. I killed them and I can’t feel anything. Yeah Hawk Moth ruined my life, and yeah Lila was not helping. But she was a girl my age. A horrible person to me, but she should have had the ability, the chance to change. To grow and become a better person.”

I inhale deeply. “That's part of the job, right? Giving people second chances? I'm not celebrating, but I shouldn't be vindictive about this. I'm supposed to be better than this. I shouldn't have to grab onto the idea that what I did was bad consciously." If I had to do it again, I would still kill them. That scares me. That's not the decision I would have made a week ago. 

I continue ranting, “And Gardner saying shit like 'seems like a villain' or whatever when I was fresh from a breakdown helped, sure. Thanks bud, great job. But looking back,” I throw my hands in front of me in exasperation, “He's such an dick. What kind of grown ass man has beef with a teenager he never met. He was probably bullied as a kid. That's what I’m putting my money on.” I cringe when my own childish tangent comes to an end, it's not something to say in this atmosphere.

Wonder Woman goes quiet to think for a moment. “I’m not happy about what happened. Every life has value, everyone deserves a chance to change. I've seen too many people that taking that path, intentionally or not, is easy. It never is."

"You killed those people Marinette. Your hands took their lives, you can never excape that," I don't look at her in fear of the look on her face. But her hand gently squeezes my shoulder, "And it is not your fault."

I flex my jaw.

"Some things have no satisfying scape, no soul at fault. More than anything I know that I can't blame you for what happened. It was an act of the gods, a natural disaster, an accidental turn of the universe. You weren't in the right mind, your hand was forced by an outside element. I couldn't put that on your shoulders. Subjecting you to man’s law or judgment would not help you.“ 

She hums, “I can see you are trying. You are talking to me when you have no obligation. You acknowledge where you struggle and seek understanding and help. That is the most important step. Among other reasons, I brought you here to prove Guy wrong-” Huzzah. “-in his thoughts about his time as a Red Lantern. You felt something for her, right?”

I nod. Shallow and small.

“Focus on it. Channel it. Even if you can’t feel empathy itself, that doesn't mean you can’t act on your desire for it. You just have another step to take, one that comes naturally to other people. You are not written off. It is not an end statement, this is not the final part of you're story. You lost something, but you are not a bad or broken person for not being at the same baseline as everybody else.”

Diana pulls me into another hug. She’s large, and strong. It reminds me of being wrapped up by my papa when I was young. I melt willingly into her embrace. 

She pauses for a minute. “Gardner is a… character. A good colleague and at the same time an…” She trails off.

“Asshole.” I supply.

She hums in agreement, “In a single word.” I furrow my brow in confusion. ‘Trou de cul’ is not one word. “I will be talking to him about his conversation with you.”

“Nooooo. Don’t hurt him, oh no. How terrible, I can’t stop you.” I mumble emotionlessly into Wonder Woman’s shoulder. She chuckles.

I sigh genuinely and pull away from her. "Maybe I’m not a bad person, but I don't think I’m a good one. I want to be a good person, Diana. I don't want to hurt people- No. I don't want to want to hurt people." 

"You can. I know you can. Gardner will help you, he's been through what you've been through. It won't be easy. Trying to recover will not be a straight path. You will second guess. You will mess up. You will backslide. Progress will feel hard earned one moment and meaningless the next. Recovery is not a simple thing, but I believe in you Marinette. And when you struggle, when you fall, you can always come to me or Gardner. We will always pick you back up.” 

"Thank you."

I take a minute to just sit there with her in the hall. It’s nice.

“How-” I stop. The words hang on my tongue, nearly coming out of nowhere, surprising even myself. 

“Hm?” Diana waits for me to pick up my sentence fragment. 

How is Chat doing?

“Never mind.” I’m not ready for that. Not yet.

I stand up. “Thanks. This has been great, Diana. I feel like I’ve been running on a band aid solution. This is what I needed. Thank you.”

She stands with me. Diana cradles the back of my head and presses her forehead to mine. “I hope we can meet again soon, Marinette. If you ever need me, I can always be called.”

I turn away from her, but I halt after barely a step. My hand hovers over my heart, right where I keep my most prized possessions safe. “I- I trust you." 

I turn to face Diana. I reach out my hand, it takes me a moment to open my shaking palm. The butterfly miraculous gleams in the gentle lighting. “Could you get this to John Constantine for me?“

She holds my gloved hand between her's comfortingly. They’re callused and warm. She nods deeply, “I’ll keep him safe. I promise.”

Letting go of Nooroo and turning away is hard. But I trust her. I really do. I like this feeling.

I walk away from the hospital, taking off from the parking lot. The kid's drawing and two miraculouses still tucked safely into my chest plate.