Chapter Text
In the future, the air inside the Batcave did not circulate; it stagnated under the weight of an suffocating, absolute silence.
The Batmobile’s engine had cooled to a faint, rhythmic clicking, but the monitors above the central console remained a blinding array of chaotic data feeds. Quantum-chronal wavelengths spiked in erratic, violent violet lines across the screens.
Damian Wayne did not strip off his cowl. He moved like a localized hurricane, his heavy boots slamming against the steel grated walkways as he tore through the workstation. His gauntlets blurred over the keys, initiating sub-routines, firing up the Zeta-beam arrays, and calibrating the localized tracking grid to scan for temporal radiation signatures across the tri-state area.
"Damian. Stop."
The voice was older, raspy, and carried the weight of a century of shadows. Bruce Wayne sat in the customized life-support throne overlooking the tactical monitors, his hands gripped tightly around the cane that rested between his knees. His hair was completely silver now, his face lined with the deep, indelible scars of a lifetime spent fighting a war he could never truly win.
"I will not stop, Father," Damian hissed, his voice dropping into a guttural, dangerous register that echoed off the damp cavern walls. He didn't turn around. "Martha is scattered across the quantum foam. Chronos-Prime’s device was an unregulated singularity. Every second I waste spent staring at these useless telemetry logs is a second she spends drifting in the void."
"She isn't drifting," Bruce said, his tone infuriatingly level, though his knuckles were white against the obsidian handle of his cane. "Remember the protocol, Damian. Remember what happened twenty years ago."
Damian’s hand froze over the primary diagnostic terminal. The glowing blue light of the monitor cast a stark, jagged shadow across his jawline.
"The loop," Damian whispered, the word tasting like copper in his mouth.
"The loop," Bruce confirmed, leaning forward, his gaze fixed on the back of his son’s cowl. "We have the logs. We have the historical archives hidden in the secure vaults. Twenty-five years ago, during the early days of the Parisian Miraculous crisis, a displacement occurred. Your daughter is exactly where she needs to be—with her mother. In the past. She will be fine."
"You do not know that!" Damian roared, spinning around, his cape flaring out like the wings of a predatory bird. The sheer force of his voice sent a flock of mechanical bats fluttering in the high rafters of the cavern. "The timeline is plastic, Father! What if something changed? What if she landed ten seconds too late? Ten miles to the east? What if the anchor collapses before we can forge the path that leads her back?"
Bruce closed his eyes for a fraction of a second. Beneath his mask of perfect, calculated calm, the old man’s chest tightened. He didn't voice the thought that was currently eating at his own mind: What if this is the iteration where it doesn't play out the way we remember? Time travel was never a clean circle; it was a wound that bled across multiple realities. If Martha changed even a single detail of that fateful Tuesday in Paris, the future they currently stood in would dissolve into ash.
"We wait for the temporal resonance to stabilize," Bruce ordered, his voice cracking slightly with the strain of his old age. "And we do not panic."
Two levels below the main tactical deck, inside the secure trophies and artifacts vault, a far more illicit operation was underway.
"Hold the flashlight steady, Alfe," nine-year-old Thomas whispered, his hands shaking as he used a micro-laser cutter to bypass the biometric security lock on a heavy, lead-lined vault door. His tactical tunic was unzipped at the collar, sweat trickling down his forehead. "If the motion sensors trip, Oracle’s automated grid will lock us in here until the next century."
His twin brother, Alfred—possessing the exact same pale green eyes but a significantly more analytical frown—held the WayneTech luminescent baton with a steady, unmoving hand. "The cutting frequency is too high, Tom. Drop it by three gigahertz or you’ll trigger the thermal expansion alarms in the ventilation shafts. And for the record, this is a violation of at least fourteen separate Batcave safety protocols. Father will lock us in the simulation room until we're thirty."
"Martha is gone," Thomas snapped, his teeth gritting as the lock clicked, a soft green light blinking on the panel. "Dad is losing his mind up there, and the history logs say it takes weeks for the timeline to calibrate from the anchor end. We don't have weeks. We have the watch."
The heavy door slid back with a hiss of pressurized air. Resting on a velvet cushion inside a small, chronally-isolated stasis field was a simple, circular piece of jewelry: the Rabbit Miraculous.
Thomas reached through the stasis field, his fingers closing around the silver pocket watch. "Got it. Fluff, clockwise—"
"If you don't take me with you, I’m going to scream so loud the sound waves will trip the Batmobile’s proximity sensors."
The twins frozen solid.
Slowly, like two mechanical gears turning in unison, Thomas and Alfred turned their heads toward the entrance of the vault.
Standing in the shadow of a large, stuffed prehistoric bear was five-year-old Diana. She was wearing her oversized sleeping tunic, her dark blue-black pigtails slightly messy from crying, but her small jaw was set in an absolute, terrifying line of pure Wayne determination. In her small hands, she was gripping a plush robin doll like a weapon.
"Diana," Alfred hissed, dropping his voice to a frantic whisper. "Go back to bed! This is highly volatile quantum physics! You don't even know how to tie your boots yet!"
"I don't care," Diana said, taking a step forward into the vault light. Her lower lip trembled, but her eyes were fierce. "Mar-Mar went into the purple hole. You're going into the purple hole to get her. If you leave me here, I’ll tell Baba you stole the shiny watch. I’ll tell him right now."
"She’s blackmailing us," Thomas whispered to his brother, completely appalled. "She’s five! Where did she even learn that?"
"She spends three hours a week with Aunt Stephanie, what did you expect?" Alfred shot back, pinching his nose. "Tom, we don't have time to argue. If she screams, the gig is up."
Thomas looked at the pocket watch, then at his little sister, and finally groaned. "Fine! Grab my belt, Diana. Do not let go. If you fall off in the temporal stream, Mom will find a way to revive us just to kill us again."
Diana immediately stopped crying, her face turning into an expression of triumphant satisfaction that would have made her grandfather Bruce incredibly proud. She lunged forward, locking her tiny arms around Thomas’s waist like a vice.
Thomas clicked the watch face open. A small, round, rabbit-like kwami popped out, blinking sleepily. "Oh! The little Waynes! What are we doing?"
"Fluff, Burrow!" Thomas yelled, completely bypassing the proper introductory protocols.
"Wait, wait! You don't have the training for the trajectory—!" Fluff squeaked, but it was too late.
A massive, circular portal of pale blue and violet light ripped open in the center of the vault, howling with the sound of a thousand winds. The sheer gravitational pull of the unstable burrow caught Thomas by the collar, dragging him forward. Alfred grabbed his twin's hand, Diana gripped Thomas's waist, and with a collective, terrified scream, the three youngest Wayne children tumbled headfirst into the infinite corridors of time.
The temporal stream was not a smooth highway; it was a washing machine set to high spin, filled with the debris of history.
"WE’RE GOING THE WRONG WAY!" Alfred screamed, his voice completely lost in the roar of the chronal wind as his cape whipped violently around his head.
"AHHH!" Thomas yelled back, his thumb frantically mashing the button on the silver pocket watch as they tumbled through an endless white void lined with thousands of glowing, square windows showing different eras. "HOW DO YOU STEER A REALITY ANCHOR?!"
"THIS IS FUN!" Diana shouted cheerfully, entirely unbothered by the fact that they were currently inverted in the space-time continuum. She was enjoying the ride.
With a massive thud, the trio crashed through a glowing round window and slammed hard into a dense, humid pile of prehistoric ferns.
The air was thick, smelling of sulfur and giant primordial marshes. A shadow fell over them—a shadow that belonged to a three-story-tall Tyrannosaurus Rex that had been mid-bite into a giant cycad leaf. The massive reptile blinked its yellow eyes down at the three children dressed in advanced technological tunics.
"Is that... a genetic anomaly?" Alfred muttered, staring up at the rows of serrated teeth.
"RUN!" Thomas scrambled backward, accidentally hitting the watch face again, he pulls a frozen Diana into his arms.
The burrow opened beneath their feet like a trapdoor, dropping them out of the Mesozoic era just as the dinosaur's jaws snapped shut on thin air.
Pop.
They fell into a snowdrift. The temperature dropped by eighty degrees in a millisecond.
"OH MY GOD!" Alfred yelled through chattering teeth, his breath turning to instant ice as a massive, woolly mammoth trumpeted loudly three feet from his left ear, nearly crushing them beneath a foot the size of a boulder. "TOM ! TRANSORM AGAIN!"
"I AM TRYING! EAT FASTER FLUFF" Thomas cried, his fingers numb from the sudden arctic blast as he twisted the rim of the watch.
Zip.
The ice dissolved into a sunlit, marble-lined courtyard in Florence during the height of the Renaissance. A man with a long beard and a velvet cap stopped mid-sketch, his charcoal pencil snapping as three children materialised out of thin air, rolled across his fresco painting, and vanished into another blue portal before the paint could even smudge.
"We’re bouncing! where are we supposed to land ? .....how old is maman again?" Alfred yelled as they flew through a corridor of golden light.
Crash.
They tumbled out of the sky and landed with a coordinated, painful pile-up onto a wooden hay wagon.
The air smelled of smoke, mud, and wet iron. Rain was pouring down over a medieval camp filled with knights in rusted chainmail and tattered white surcoats bearing the red cross of France.
"Oof," Thomas groaned, rubbing his head as he sat up in the straw. "Where are we now? Alfred, check the atmospheric composition."
"Forget the atmosphere," Alfred whispered, his eyes wide as he looked over the edge of the wagon.
Standing at the center of the camp, surrounded by grizzled French generals who looked entirely exhausted, was a young woman in silver plate armor with a symbol of the ladybug on her armor . Her short, dark hair was plastered to her forehead by the rain, and a massive white standard lay across her knees as she sharpened a longsword. She stopped her whetstone, her sharp blue eyes locking onto the three strangely dressed children who had just materialised in her supply cart.
The knights immediately drew their swords, shouting in frantic medieval French. "Sorcellerie! Des démons du ciel!"
The woman in armor held up a hand, her voice ringing out with an authority that instantly silenced the entire camp. She walked over to the wagon, her heavy steel greaves clanking against the mud. She looked at Thomas’s uniform, her eyes lingering on the distinct, angular lines of the gear, and then she looked at Diana’s dark hair.
A soft, knowing smile broke through the grime on her face.
"You have the eyes of my friend Marinette, she once used that watch in your hands once to help me," the woman said, speaking in an older, archaic dialect of French that the children's WayneTech universal translators instantly picked up. "Are you her children, the little one especially looks like her."
"You... you know our mom?" Thomas asked, his voice small as he clutched the rabbit watch.
"Joan of Arc," Alfred breathed, his historical database finally clicking into place. "You operated with the primeval Miraculous team during the Lancastrian phase."
"I fought alongside a woman who once claimed she fell through time, she helped me with my miraculous the first time I got it. I did not belive your mother until Tikki verfied her story and a woman with that watch called bunnyx came to bring her to her own time ," Joan said, leaning her sword against the wagon and reaching out to gently pat Diana’s head. "You are lost in the great river of time, little ones. You should think of a place familiar to you rather than the fact that you are moving through time, then you will reach your destination."
She looked at Thomas, her hand wrapping gently over his smaller hands that held the silver watch. "The anchor is not a machine, child. It is a memory. To find your sister, you must stop looking at the numbers on the dial and look toward the place where your family’s foundation was built."
Thomas blinked, a sudden clarity washing over him. The Rabbit Miraculous wasn't just a directional engine; it responded to intent. To blood. To legacy.
"The Batcave," Thomas muttered.
"Go," Joan of Arc smiled, stepping back as the French generals watched in absolute bewilderment. "May the heavens guide you."
Thomas stood up in the wagon, his feet braced against the straw. He closed his eyes, ignoring the flashing digital alerts on his HUD. He thought of his father’s gruff, grounding voice. He thought of his mother’s warm, steady hands. He thought of the deep, dark caverns of Gotham where everything began.
"Fluff... take us home," Thomas said softly, clicking the watch thinking of Martha.
A portal opened—not an erratic, violent violet vortex, but a steady, deep blue ring that smelled of damp limestone and ancient stone. The three children fell forward, the temporal winds finally dropping to a gentle breeze as the portal swallowed them whole.
The Past. Ten years ago.
In the current era’s Batcave, the atmosphere was considerably more chaotic than usual, which was saying something given the family dynamic.
Damian Wayne—nineteen years old, currently operating as Robin—was standing in the center of the main deck, furiously arguing with Timothy Drake over the telemetry data of a recent League of Assassins weapon shipment.
"Your calculations are sloppy, Drake!" Damian snapped, his hands resting on his katana hilt. "The shipment didn't clear the docks via the northern channel. It was moved through—"
A massive, echoing crack shattered the air above the central computer terminal.
"What the—" Tim jumped back, his hand instantly dropping to his utility belt.
A pale blue portal materialized out of thin air, ten feet above the pristine steel walkway. It didn't just open; it sputtered, coughed, and then completely died with a shower of harmless, magical blue sparks.
Out of the collapsing ring fell a heap of limbs, capes, and advanced Kevlar plating.
Thud.
The three future Wayne children slammed onto the floor right at nineteen-year-old Damian’s boots. The silver pocket watch rolled out of Thomas’s hand, completely dark and drained of temporal energy, its gears clicking to a final stop.
The Batcave went dead silent.
Tim Drake stared. Damian stared. From the shadows near the training mats, Dick Grayson (Nightwing), Jason Todd (Red Hood), Stephanie Brown (Spoiler), and Cassandra Cain (Black Bat) all halted mid-motion. Even Bruce Wayne, who had been analyzing a chemical compound at the far console, slowly turned around.
The three children were completely exhausted, their faces pale from the extreme physiological toll of jumping through four different historical eras in less than ten minutes.
Before anyone could draw a weapon, five-year-old Diana opened her eyes. She looked up, her vision blurry, and saw the sharp, youthful, but unmistakably familiar face of her father looking down at her. He didn't have the lines around his eyes yet. His jaw was slightly less broad. But he was her dad.
"Baba..." Diana whimpered.
With the last ounce of her remaining energy, she scrambled across the cold steel floor, threw her tiny arms around nineteen-year-old Damian’s green-booted leg, and buried her face into his tunic. Within two seconds, the sheer exhaustion of time travel caught up to her, and her eyes rolled back as she passed out completely, her small body going limp against his shin.
Thomas pushed himself up onto his elbows, his green eyes blinking heavily as he looked at the bewildered teenagers surrounding them. "Temporal... entry... code: Omega-Time-Alpha-Displacement... anchor... stable..."
He fell forward, unconscious before his chin hit the floor.
Alfred managed to raise one finger toward nineteen-year-old Damian. "Report... Martha... was hit... we... stole... the watch..." Then, he too slumped into a deep, deep sleep of absolute exhaustion.
The silence that followed was broken only by the sound of the Batcave's water-dripping stalactites.
Nineteen-year-old Damian Wayne looked like his brain had just suffered a catastrophic hardware failure. His posture was stiff, his arms frozen at his sides. He looked down at the tiny girl with dark pigtails currently draped over his boot, then at the two nine-year-old boys passed out on the deck.
"What..." Damian’s voice cracked—a rare, completely uncharacteristic sound. "What is this? What did it just say to me?"
"Did..." Tim Drake’s jaw was practically on the floor. He pointed a shaking finger at the trio. "Did that baby just call you Baba?"
"Move, Replacement!" Jason Todd practically vaulted over the railing from the upper deck, landing with a loud crash, his face splitting into a wide, hysterical, unadulterated grin. "Oh, my God. Oh, this is the greatest day of my life. Someone tell me I'm not dreaming."
Before Damian could kick the unconscious child off his leg (which he wouldn't actually do, because some primal, deeply buried instinct was currently screaming at him to freeze), Tim Drake had already pulled a micro-syringe from his belt. He dropped to his knees, his eyes wide with analytical fervor as he quickly took a tiny blood prick from Thomas’s arm and ran it straight to the nearest chemical analyzer.
"Running standard DNA sequencing " Tim muttered, his fingers flying across the keys with the speed of a man possessed.
The monitor flashed a bright, mocking, crimson red.
[MATCH FOUND: PATERNAL MATCH: WAYNE, DAMIAN] [MATERNAL MATCH: UNKNOWN]
"It's a match," Tim whispered, looking up at the ceiling like he was waiting for God to explain the joke. "Damian... those are your kids. From the future. You have three kids. Wait, no, the kid said someone named Martha was hit—that means you have four kids."
The Batcave instantly erupted into absolute, unmitigated chaos.
"Four?!" Dick Grayson let out a sound that was half-sob, half-shriek. He clutched his chest, his eyes welling up with massive, glistening tears of pure, unadulterated joy. "My little Dami... a father! Four times over! Oh, look at them! They have your terrible aristocratic nose! They have the Wayne hair! I'm an uncle! I'm an uncle of four!" He grabbed a nearby tactical towel and began wiping his eyes furiously. "Bruce! You're a grandfather again! Look at the babies!"
"Shut up, Grayson!" Damian hissed, his face turning an unprecedented shade of dark crimson that matched his cape. He carefully, gingerly reached down, his hands trembling as he lifted the unconscious five-year-old Diana off his boot. He held her like she was a highly volatile thermal detonator, his elbows locked, his shoulders completely stiff. "This is an elaborate ruse! A temporal strike orchestrated by Ra's al Ghul! Or Cluemaster! Or—"
"Oh, give it a rest, kid," Jason Todd laughed, clapping Damian so hard on the shoulder that the nineteen-year-old nearly dropped the toddler. Jason leaned in, his eyes gleaming with malicious amusement. "Face it, brat. Somewhere out there, in the magical land of tomorrow, some poor, unfortunate, profoundly unhinged woman looked at your sour face, your terrible attitude, and your complete lack of social skills, and thought: 'Yes, I want to reproduce with that four separate times.'"
"I will castrate you, Todd!" Damian snarled, though he didn't move an inch because Diana had just let out a small snore and nuzzled her face deeper into his leather collar.
"Congrats," Cassandra Cain said, walking over with a tiny, incredibly rare smile. She reached out and gently booped Diana’s nose. "Adorable."
"See? Cass approves!" Stephanie Brown leaped over the console, her eyes bright with chaotic energy. She leaned over Thomas, inspecting his tactical tunic. "Wow, look at the tailoring on these suits! This is heavy-grade WayneTech micro-weave mixed with... wait, is that silk? And look at these little bird symbols! They're so sleek! Damian, who did you trick into marrying you? Is she a supervillain? Did you marry a warlord from the League of Assassins to seal a treaty? Tell us she’s a pirate. Please tell us you married a ninja pirate."
"I am nineteen!" Damian shouted, his voice echoing off the cavern walls as he tried to maintain his lethal dignity while cradling a tiny girl who was currently drooling on his Robin insignia. "I have no intention of marrying anyone! I am a weapon of efficiency!"
"Not according to this DNA report, you aren't," Tim Drake smirked, leaning back in his chair with his arms crossed, thoroughly enjoying the complete psychological collapse of his rival. "According to the generational spacing, you start having these kids in about six years. Which means you meet the mother very soon. Let’s place bets. Twenty bucks says she’s an international assassin who leaves the kids on the doorstep in a basket."
"Fifty bucks says she’s a high-society Gotham heiress who does it purely to spite her parents," Stephanie chimed in.
Suddenly, a gust of wind ruffled the papers on the console as a streak of blue and red descended from the upper entrance of the cave. Jon Kent (Superboy)—sixteen years old and currently visiting Gotham for a joint patrol—landed on the walkway, his jaw wide open, his super-vision clearly magnifying the genetic data on the screens.
"Damian?!" Jon cried, flying down until he was hovering two inches off the floor, his eyes darting from Thomas to Alfred to the little girl in Damian's arms. "You... you have a family?! In the future?! Who is the mom?! Is she nice? Does she let you eat ice cream? Do I get to be Uncle Jon?! Please tell me I'm Uncle Jon!"
"Kent, if you do not step back I will fashion a kryptonite shiv out of my belt and end your bloodline!" Damian growled, his eyes flashing with absolute fury.
"Now, now, Master Damian. Let us not threaten our guests while your arms are occupied with the future of the Wayne family."
The entire room shifted their attention to the foot of the medical bay stairs.
Alfred Pennyworth stood there, holding a silver tray with a pot of chamomile tea and several clean towels. He was the only person in the entire cavern who had not lost his mind. His expression was perfectly serene, though the slight, affectionate twinkle in his old eyes betrayed his true feelings.
"If I may," Alfred said, walking forward and gently taking the luminescent lumon-baton from the floor where it had rolled. "While the rest of the family engages in their usual theatrical speculations, perhaps we should address the actual condition of the young masters and mistress. They appear to have suffered severe exhaustion."
The old butler walked right past the sputtering Damian and looked down at the twin boys. "How and why they have managed to bypass the temporal boundaries of the universe remains a mystery, but they require medical evaluation. Not a interrogation by a comedy troupe."
Bruce Wayne finally stepped away from his console. He walked over, his heavy boots slow and deliberate. He looked down at the three children, his face completely unreadable, but when he looked at Damian—who was still holding the five-year-old like a delicate porcelain doll—a profound, quiet softness entered his eyes.
"Look at them, Damian," Bruce said softly. "You won't die alone. You built something."
Damian looked away, his jaw clenching, but his grip around Diana tightened just a fraction, keeping her safe against his chest.
"We don't even know their names, except that there is another called Martha," Tim noted, looking at the profile files which only listed them as 'Wayne Descendants'. "For now, I guess they're just... the Baby Waynes."
An hour later, the three future children had been moved into the auxiliary medical cots in the center of the cave. Intravenous lines of nutrient fluids were keeping their vitals stable, and the entire Batfamily—now joined by a thoroughly fascinated and slightly weeping Dick Grayson who refused to leave the room—sat in a circle of chairs around them.
The nine-year-old twins were the first to stir.
Thomas groaned, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. "Ugh...Lets never time travel again, I am so tired. The past smells like old copper and... is that Alfred’s tea?"
"It is indeed, young master," Alfred Pennyworth smiled, stepping forward with a cup of warm water. "Though I believe you have the advantage of me. I am Alfred."
The other twin, Alfred, sat up immediately, his green eyes snapping open as he took the cup. He looked at the old butler, his expression turning into a look of profound, quiet reverence. "We know who you are. "
He looked at nineteen-year-old Damian, who was sitting on the edge of the cot where Diana was still sleeping, his cowl removed, his dark hair messy.
"My name is Alfred," the nine-year-old boy said clearly. "But to avoid confusion in this era, you may call me Alfie. My brother is Thomas."
The older Alfred froze, his hand trembling slightly on the silver tray. A quiet, deep emotion crossed the old man's face as he bowed his head. "I am... deeply honored, Master Alfie."
"And the little one?" Bruce asked, stepping forward, his voice softer than any of the teenagers had ever heard it.
"Diana," Thomas said, stretching his arms. "She’s five. She’s the bossy one. And our older sister is Martha. She’s thirteen. She’s the Robin of our time."
Alfie looked directly at nineteen-year-old Damian, his tactical focus returning. "Baba—or, Damian er lets go with Robin, its weird to call you by your name, since you are nineteen right now—we have a temporal emergency. During a localized singularity containment breach at the Clocktower, Martha was struck by Chronos-Prime’s device. She was pulled into a primary anchor point in the past. We stole the Rabbit Miraculous from the secure vault to follow her, but the trajectory calculations were unstable for a bit."
The room went dead silent at the mention of the word. Miraculous.
Tim Drake leaned forward, his analytical mind instantly dropping the jokes. "Wait. The Rabbit Miraculous? As in the Parisian magical artifacts? The ones guarded by Ladybug?"
"Yes," Alfie nodded.
Jason Todd crossed his arms, his brow furrowing. "Hold on a minute. The Justice League has been trying to get an operative into Paris for four years. Ladybug flat-out refused to join the League, told Batman to stay out of her city, and keeps her jurisdiction completely locked down. She’s notorious for being incredibly secretive. How did a couple of Gotham kids manage to steal a prime artifact from the hero of paris?"
Before Thomas or Alfie could answer, a small voice broke through the conversation.
"Maman keeps them in the lower levels of the Batcave," Diana muttered, sitting up in her cot and rubbing her eyes. She climbed straight out of the medical bed, completely ignoring the IV line which Alfred Pennyworth deftly unclipped for her, and marched right back into nineteen-year-old Damian’s lap, curling up like a small cat. "She puts the shiny watch there because she thinks Thomas won't look there. But Thomas always looks there."
The entire Batfamily stopped breathing.
Dick Grayson’s jaw dropped. Jason’s eyes went wide. Tim’s pencil snapped in his hand. Stephanie let out a silent, theatrical gasp.
"Maman..." Tim whispered, his brain rapidly calculating the variables. "Ladybug is... your mom?"
"Yes," Thomas said, looking confused by their shock. "They’ve been married for sixteen years in our time."
Jason Todd let out a loud, barking laugh that echoed off the cave walls. "No way. No freaking way! The dark, broody, anti-social little assassin married the brightest, most colorful, most stubborn superhero in Europe?! The one who literally told Batman to his face that his tactical methods were outdated and he should mind his own business?!"
The memory hit the older members of the room like a physical wave.
Four years ago, the Justice League had attempted to establish a monitoring station in Europe to track the anomalous energy readings coming from Hawkmoth's akumas. Batman had personally flown the Batwing into Parisian airspace, intending to set up a localized grid without consulting the local authorities.
He had been met on the roof of the Grand Palais by Ladybug.
At the time, she was only thirteen years old. She was barely five-foot-two, absolutely tiny, with bright blue eyes, dark hair tied in short pigtails, and a suit covered in bright red-and-black polka dots. She had looked completely adorable—like a child playing dress-up.
Until she opened her mouth.
In front of Superman, Wonder Woman, and a dozen adult league members who usually cowered under Batman's terrifying glare, the tiny thirteen-year-old hero had marched right up to the dark knight, jabbed her small finger into his reinforced chest plate, and called him out on every single bit of his overreach.
"I don't care if you have a satellite in space, Monsieur Batman!" she had shouted in her fierce, melodic French accent, her yoyo spinning with a terrifying, high-velocity hum. "You refuse meta-humans and vigilantes in your city because you say it violates your boundaries, yet you do not respect mine! This is my city! These are my people! You stay out of Paris until you learn how to ask for a permit!"
Bruce had been thoroughly amused and secretly fond of her from that exact moment. His legendary adoption senses had been tingling wildly at the sight of the fierce, brilliantly stubborn black-haired child who refused to back down from the dark. He had respected her boundaries immediately, pulling the League back and ensuring Paris remained her sole jurisdiction. He is now glad, in the back of his mind, that she would eventually become a part of the family—though he had never expected it to happen through Damian.
(Damian had been away on an extended deep-space tracking mission with Superboy during that specific international incident, which meant he had never actually met Ladybug in person. He had only seen her files, which he had dismissed as 'frivolous foreign magic'.)
"She was an adorable fierce little thing with pigtails back them," Dick Grayson murmured. "When we did the joint simulation two years later, her tactical trap layouts were so complex even Tim couldn't find the loophole. She’s incredible."
"And she’s tiny!" Stephanie added, shaking Damian’s shoulder. "Damian, she was literally five-foot-two and adorable! She made your dad look like a giant grump and she didn't even flinch! Oh, you are so lucky. She is way out of your league."
"I have not met this person!" Damian shouted, his face hot as he tried to look anywhere but at the three future children who were currently staring at him with pure affection. "I am an operative of logic! This... this future is statistically anomalous!"
"It isn't an anomaly, Baba," Alfie said softly, his green eyes steady as he looked at his teenage father. "You meet her next year during the European summit. You try to steal her yoyo because you think it's an unregulated weapon. She throws you into a river."
Jason Todd collapsed onto the floor, laughing so hard he was literally crying. "She threw him in a river! Someone write this down! I need this framed on the wall of my safehouse!"
"But right now," Thomas interrupted, his face turning serious as he looked at his brother, "Martha is in the past. If we landed where the anchor stabilized for her...then she’s currently in Paris. Right now."
Bruce Wayne stepped back to the main console, his fingers instantly striking the keys to open a secure, encrypted line to the international satellite grid.
"If Martha is in Paris," Bruce said, his voice returning to its authoritative, tactical baseline, "then she has already made contact with the current era's heroes. Tim, monitor the Parisian police scanners. Dick, prep the Batwing. Damian..."
He looked at his son, who was still holding five-year-old Diana against his chest, the little girl having fallen back asleep under the safety of his shadow.
"It looks like you're going to Paris," Bruce smiled.
"Tomorrow Master Bruce, let the children rest today" Alfred instucted an ushered the kids up.
"Wait can we make her throw Damian into the river, please I have to see that"