a collection of theories, prompts, shorts, and oneshots, with our favorite character and her interactions with various bats (and others!)
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Nathleigh: Can you do 22 and 75 with yoir ship of choice please?
22- "This isn't goodbye." 75- "What did you expect?"
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"This isn't goodbye." He whispers, her brother not in legal documents, but in every way that matters.
"I'll see you again." He says, ruffling her hair affectionately, just like he always did, before handing her the same package he gives her every week- food, money, and this time, a large hoodie too, because it is getting cold out and winter on the streets is hard.
She smiles and waves as he leaves the alley to find his real mother, knowing he will come back from Ethiopia, because he always comes back. He said he would see her again, and he always keeps his word.
The next week, he isn't there.
She's fine with that, really, she is. She had survived on the streets long before he started giving her those packages, she'd be fine.
She had forgotten that before those packages, she had him on the streets with her, that they would huddle together in the winter for added heat and team up to scavenge for food and supplies, because they always got more when working together.
It gets colder, and he hasn't returned. She starts to get worried, but he alway comes back, she tells herself. He always comes back.
She clings to that hope like a lifeline.
Then, one day, two weeks after his disappearance, she finds a newspaper in the trash proclaiming his death.
And Marinette mourns Jason Peter Todd-Wayne on the floor of a grimy alley in the heart of the Bowery, hands tugging at the strings of his red hoodie.
She gets sloppy, and gets adopted as a result.
Suddenly, she's in Paris, France, with a last name and a room above a bakery and... magical earrings that turn her into a superheroine.
Alright. Alright, she can deal with that.
Hawkmoth is defeated with time, she's been in Paris for years, and then she is invited to join the Teen Titans, of all things.
She accepts, and moves into a ridiculous building shaped like a T. The couple who adopted her have no idea, of course.
She was always good at leaving without a trace.
But here, back in America, the memories are worse, and as a result, the nightmares are too.
She wakes up at least five times a week screaming for her older brother as the Joker beats him to death, her imagination filling in what that newspaper clipping couldn't.
She spends those sleepless nights in the kitchen, baking, so that the others can at least wake up to wonderful treats.
On one of these nights, something is off, and she knows it the same way a street rat from Gotham knows when to stay, and when to run.
Tikki whispers that there's someone in the hallway just outside the kitchen, waiting to ambush her. Transforming is out of the question- it is too bright, too loud, and more importantly, the intruder would be expecting it.
So she grabs her rolling pin, the nearest object, and spins to block the gloved fist centimeters away from her head, staring defiantly up into a red helmet with emotionless white lenses, which widen.
"Mari?"
Even through the audio filter, the voice is so familiar, the perfect tone, the Crime Alley accent, everything.
There was only one person who sounded like that, and he's dead.
Or so she thought.
"Jay?" She asks, still gripping her rolling pin hard enough that her knuckles are bone white. Just in case, she tells herself.
The man reaches up and clicks something, the red helmet falling off with a soft hiss of air, revealing the same face she remembers, littered with new scars, eyes now bright green (?) and hair sporting a white streak, but it's still him.
It's still him.
She drops the rolling pin and throws herself into him, arms wrapping around his torso as he makes a small oof sound, inhaling the scent of Crime Alley and cigarette smoke that always reminded her of him.
"You're back." She says, the sound muffled by his leather jacket and her own tears. "You're back." He kept his word, after all.
She feels his laugh vibrate through her body as well, the sound hoarse but comforting. "What did you expect, Mari? I did say that it wasn't goodbye, and I always keep my word."
