Chapter Text
Marinette wakes to the purple-tinged darkness of predawn twilight and the sound of birdsong.
She lies still for some time—four minutes, maybe five, who knows—listening to it, breathing slowly, watching as the light suffuses with warmer tones of red and orange. It was almost mocking, she thinks, how cheerful, how utterly unconcerned that sound was, when the world around it was burning to the ground.
Eventually she finds the will to roll herself out of bed. She changes out of her sleep clothes, exchanging them for a close-fitting tee, loose jeans, and a loose jacket, and a few other accoutrements she scoops from a drawer, slipping them on with practiced ease.
Then, so armed and armored, she opens her trapdoor.
She freezes as she’s about to descend through the open portal—voices in the kitchen, calm ones. The same way the physician had been calm when she had diagnosed her grandfather with terminal renal failure a few years ago, and told all of them that there was nothing that could be done.
“I’ve checked the books two or three times now, Tom,” Sabine says. “I know that we’ve already made all the acceptable cuts that we can, but we’re still in the red.”
Marinette hears her Papa sigh. “How bad is it?”
“You’re not going to like this, Tom,” Sabine says.
“Give it to me gently, then,” Tom says, his tone dry.
“We can run on our savings for another four months or so,” Sabine says, “assuming that the situation doesn’t deteriorate further.”
“Assuming,” Tom says.
“Assuming,” Sabine echoes. “Maybe we can stretch it out to six months if we tighten our belts, but we’d need to dip into our investments, assuming they don’t drop too much more in value.”
Marinette hears her Papa swear under his breath. “I knew sales were down, but I was hoping that it wouldn’t be that bad.”
“Down by half ever since this mess started,” Sabine says. “At least we have most of the loans paid off, otherwise we’d be in even worse shape than this.”
Tom grunts; Marinette hears a chair creak as his weight settles onto it.
“I don’t get it, Sabine,” Tom says, his voice lost and weary. “I don’t. We’ve had attacks here before, but the city’s always bounced back. But now it just seems like—like all Paris is cowering. Like a beaten dog.”
“We’ve never had so many in so short a time,” Sabine says. “And they’ve never been so devastating, and at least then the authorities had leads. Clues. Some idea as to what was happening, who was doing it.”
Marinette hears a rustling of cloth as her Mama walks over to stand in front of her Papa. “People are scared, Tom. They know that there’s nothing anyone can do to protect them, and that even if there was, everyone with power enough and influence enough is too busy politicking and posturing to actually do anything, and they’re terrified. Regardless of how deep in denial they might be about it.”
Tom snorts. “Well, someone is certainly doing something.”
“They’re trying,” Sabine says. “But they can’t save everyone.”
Tom is quiet for a moment.
“No,” he says. “I suppose not.”
Marinette hears her Mama kiss her Papa on his brow. We’ll do what we can, then,” she says. “Go. See to the bakery, I’ll be down in a couple hours with a pot of tea for you and Jean and Iman.”
“More bad news there, I’m afraid,” Tom says. “Iman’s leaving. She gave me her notice yesterday.”
Sabine pauses. “Oh. Did she say why?”
“Not really,” Tom says. “Just that Paris didn’t feel welcome anymore, and that she was going to move back in with her parents.”
“I’ll put out a hiring notice, then,” Sabine says. “And don’t forget that Mari wants to you come to school today for that class thing they have going on.”
Tom grunts in the affirmative, rises with another creak of strained wood, and leaves, his steps clomping down the stairs.
Lose the bakery, Marinette thinks, stunned. They might lose the bakery. Lose her home. A place that she knew her parents cherished deeply, that they’d built almost literally from the ground up. And Iman—she’d been with her Papa since week one!
Marinette stays put until all she hears is the sound of her Mama clearing dirty dishes off of the dining table, then descends.
“Morning, Mama,” Marinette says. She manages to keep the tremble out of her voice.
“Good morning, dear,” Sabine says. “Sleep well?”
“Yes, Mama,” Marinette lies.
Sabine accepts the words at face value and nods to the counter, where half of one of yesterday’s baguettes lays next to a serrated bread knife and a few jars of jam.
“Eat up quick,” she says, “or you’re going to be late for school.”
“Yes, Mama,” Marinette says meekly.
She scarfs down half a dozen slices of toasted baguette, picks up her backpack from where she’d left it the night before, and scurries downstairs—
“Wait,” Sabine says.
Marinette pauses, one foot on the top step, and turns to look over her shoulder. “Yes, Mama?” she asks meekly.
“You brought the pepper spray?” Sabine says.
Marinette suppresses her incipient sigh of teenaged disillusionment and fishes the small tube from her pocket. She shows it to Sabine, dangling it between thumb and forefinger.
“Stunner?” Sabine asks.
Marinette puts the spray away, twitches aside her coat to reveal a holster on her belt, flicks it open, and pulls out a matte-black brick with the same rough dimensions as a smartphone, but several times thicker and with a molded plastic grip.
“You charged it?”
Marinette flicks off the safety and thumbs the activation stud; the kitchen immediately fills with a sharp, intermittent popping, bright blue light casting harsh, flickering shadows on the walls.
Sabine nods, unphased. “Baton?”
Marinette reholsters the stunner and hikes up her pantleg, revealing the collapsible steel baton in its nylon sheath, strapped to her leg.
“Mama,” Marinette says half-heartedly as Sabine nods her approval. “Do I really need all of this?”
“If you need it,” Sabine says, “then you’ll have it available. You have your ID?”
“Yes, Mama,” Marinette says.
Sabine gets up, walks to Marinette, and engulfs her in a hug.
“Be safe,” she whispers in both benediction and fervent hope. “I love you.”
“I love you too, Mama,” Marinette says, hugging her back.
Marinette scurries downstairs and across the street and runs smack into the queue at the checkpoint. It takes perhaps ten minutes for everyone to shuffle forwards; Marinette keeps her eyes down as she hands her ID to one of the men staffing the checkpoint, and tries not to curse when they inevitably ask her to step aside, call for a female gendarme, and pat her down, which takes another five minutes or so.
The “brief”, “spontaneous” interview they decide to have with her thereafter consumes another ten.
She hurries into school without much further incident, slips into the classroom, and gets two steps in before she’s nearly taken off of her feet by a hug from Alya.
“Sorry,” Alya says as she straightens, holding Marinette at arm’s-length by the shoulders. “You were late, I was getting worried.”
“I’m fine, Alya,” Marinette says with a smile as the two walk to their seats, then winces and holds a hand to her rib in mock agony. “At least, until you hugged me. I think you cracked a rib.”
“Oh hush.”
“Did they give you much trouble at the checkpoint today?” Marinette asks as she takes her seat.
“Not enough to worry about,” Alya says, waving a dismissive hand. “Not important. I wanted to show you this.”
She fishes out a folded, battered fragment of newspaper from her back pocket and places it flat on the desk in front of Marinette with a decisive air. Marinette reaches over, picks it up, and scans over its contents.
“So they found a dead man in the Seine,” she says. “Not to be callous, Alya, but what’s so important about that?”
Alya leans towards Marinette and lowers her voice to a near-whisper. “This article,” she says, pausing for emphasis—or possibly, Marinette thinks, merely for the purposes of drama, “was published two days before the first attacks happened.”
Marinette shrugs. “People die all the time, Alya. Someone being killed two days—“
“Four days,” Alya corrects. “I did some digging and they dated him as being two days dead when he was found.”
“—four days then,” Marinette continues, “before Papillon made his big speech and started murdering people doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s connected at all.”
“The timing is suspicious,” Alya insists.
“And so’s that burglary of that diamond store the day before,” Marinette says.
Alya rolls her eyes and leans in. “Different situations and you know it,” she says, jabbing a finger at the picture on the newspaper. “Anyways, I know some people who know some people who know some people who were around when they fished the guy out, and I’m going to go talk to them. Wanna come with?”
Marinette tries to look disappointed. “I really can’t, Alya, sorry. Mama and Papa want me back home right after school, you know how it is.”
“Mari, come on,” Alya pleads. “I’ve got a good feeling about this, really. It’s something big.”
“And you said that about the last lead you spent a week chasing down,” Marinette says as gently as she can. “And you ran into a wall with him, remember? And failed the history test.”
“Really, Mari?” Alya says. “History? History? There’s a mass-murdering monster running around loose and that’s what you’re worried about?”
“I’m worried about you, Alya,” Marinette says. “Ever since this—thing all started, you’ve become obsessed with it. You spend all your free time working on—on leads, and digging for videos, and getting your nose into business that’s literally killed people.” She looks down at her hands, which have knotted themselves in her lap at some point in the past minute. “I just don’t want you being one of them.”
“I’m not going to be,” Alya says.
“Even though we hope you are,” someone says sotto voce, shrilly and unpleasantly. Everyone ignores it.
“But you might,” Marinette says. “All it’ll take is just one piece of bad luck, Alya. One little bit of bad luck.”
“I’ve been careful,” Alya says.
“Luck isn’t exactly something that rewards ‘careful’, Alya,” Marinette says.
Alya snorts. “You’ve never heard of crisis being equal parts danger and opportunity then.”
“That’s a different situation entirely, and you know it, Alya.”
“Mari,” Alya says with a lofty air, “luck comes to those who are prepared enough to make a space for it to happen, and I am prepared enough, trust me.”
“No, I don’t care if you’re supposed to see your daughter at school today,” someone shouts just outside the classroom. Marinette’s attention snaps to the man, collecting details—tall, almost six feet, hair slicked back and silver-grey, face and body developing the classic pear shape that comes with too much rich food and too little exercise, complexion pallid. Chloe’s father, the mayor, in profile as he strides up and down the hallway outside of their class, shouting angrily into his cell.
“And it’s not like anyone’s going to try to kill me for following up on a lead,” Alya continues.
“No—I said I don’t care,” the mayor says. “You still have leads to follow, informants and whatnot to question, don’t you? What? I don’t care if the gendarmes aren’t being cooperative! What am I paying you for? Go talk to that Bruel boy again, apply pressure, whatever, just get it done! I need leads here, progress, anything, and if you want to keep your position you’ll damn well give me one instead of swanning around going to school events!”
“I, uh,” Marinette says, wrenching her attention back to Alya. “Look, are you sure about that? Papillon isn’t exactly afraid of hurting people to get what he wants.”
“The man’s a coward,” Alya says, her upper lip pulling back in a contemptuous sneer. “He hides behind proxies and meat-puppets the vulnerable into doing his dirty work. He’s not going to kill me, not a chance.”
“Unless he sends one of his meat puppets to do his dirty work,” Marinette says. “Or sends one of those black butterfly things to possess you and then tells you to, I don’t know, jump off of the Eiffel Tower or makes you do something that gets you put under house arrest like he did with Ivan.”
Alya pauses to think about this, and Marinette hears further shouting from the mayor outside.
“Of course it’s important, you moron! Even if there haven’t been any deaths recently, he’s still got a few thousand to answer for, and he could still cause thousands more! Need I remind you that the election is going to be soon, and if you don’t deliver anything I’m going to lose, and I doubt that the next mayor is going to be someone who’ll want to keep someone as incompetent as you in your position! Get me results!”
“Fair,” Alya admits. “I hadn’t considered that. But how’s he going to know that I’m investigating?”
“Oh, who cares,” the mayor says. “Just stay out of the gendarmes’ way—who cares about what they’re doing? Just stay out of their way and let them do their job and you do yours. No! Stay out of their way, that’s an order, Roger!” He ends the call and stuffs it furiously into a pocket, then straightens the lines of his suit, composing himself.
Marinette gives a helpless little shrug. “Same way he finds out about anything, I guess,” she says. “Maybe he can see what the butterflies see or something, or maybe he just watches the news.”
“Daddy!” someone shrills from off to the side as the door opens and Andre Bourgeois, mayor of Paris, walks into their class.
Alya and Marinette ignore it. Adrien, his head pillowed on his arms just in front of Marinette, fails to stir from his nap. Nino reaches down to his phone and turns up the volume on his music.
“I’m not going to be able to stop you, am I,” Marinette says quietly to Alya as someone behind her rushes down the steps to greet the mayor, jabbering happily about something unimportant.
“No,” Alya says.
“Alya, why,” Marinette groans. “This is dangerous business.”
“Because no one else is,” Alya says. She looks down at her hands, folded on her desk before her. “Marinette, look, I can’t just stand by and not do anything. No one else seems to be able to do anything. Maybe I can.”
“Alya,” Marinette says, “there are people working right now all over the country—all over the world, they’ve got international teams coming in to investigate this—who’ve got years of experience with this, and they have a lot more information to draw on. Do you really think exposing yourself to this kind of danger is really necessary?”
“Yes,” Alya says bluntly.
“I’m not saying that you can’t help,” Marinette says, “but I mean, how much do you think you can contribute to that?”
Alya heaves a sigh and pinches the bridge of her nose. “I’ll help as much as I can. Look, Mari, are you going to help me or not on this?”
Marinette looks at Alya’s expression and sighs. “Yes. I’ll go with you. I’m assuming we’re going after class?”
“Yeah.” Alya’s expression thaws a little. “We can take the metro. It’ll take maybe half an hour?”
“Okay,” Marinette says. “Do you mind if we take a few minutes to stop by my place so I can tell my parent’s what’s going on?”
“Fine.” Alya smirks. “Provided you pay me in croissants.”
“Croissant,” Marinette says. “One.”
“Two croissants,” Alya says.
“One pain au chocolat,” Marinette says.
“Done.” Alya reaches over and shakes Marinette’s hand with mock seriousness, then returns her attention to her phone.
“Wow, those guys suck,” Alya says in between pants. She and Marinette sprint down the steps and dive into the subway a half-second before the doors slide shut.
Marinette tugs her jacket from in between the doors, straightens it, and adjusts her stunner holster so that it sits more comfortably on her hip before she takes a seat. Alya collapses next to her.
“Like seriously,” Alya says, breathing hard, “it’s not like you’re going to use all that stuff to murder someone.” She pauses, then looks curiously at Marinette.
“Yes,” Marinette says, rolling her eyes as Alya opens her mouth to ask. “I could, in theory, kill someone. So could an eight-year-old with a brick, it doesn’t take years of martial arts to accomplish that.”
“So,” Alya says after a few seconds. She grabs a supporting bar as the train jerks forwards. “Years of martial arts?”
“Eight,” Marinette says, “this December. I started when I was six, it’s no big deal.”
“Six?” Alya frowns. “That’s really young, isn’t it?”
Marinette leans over, reaches down, and readjusts her baton until it sits more comfortably against her calf. “Well, not according to my master. I don’t go in as often as I used to, but there are still a lot of younger kids at the dojo and a lot of them stay on.”
“Six is young to be learning self-defense,” Alya muses after a minute. “But hey, the dojo must be doing good business, what with the whole ‘supervillains wreaking havoc left and right in the city’ going on.”
“For a lot of the young kids, it’s just to give them an outlet for their aggression or to learn discipline or whatever,” Marinette says. “But yeah, there were a lot of people who signed up for self-defense stuff after the first attacks, not like it’d actually help them.”
Alya turns and looks at Marinette, brows knit together in mild confusion. “Uh,” she says.
Marinette rolls her eyes at Alya as the metro jerks and sways. “Come on, Alya. It’s not like knowing how to throw a punch or how to kick properly is going to slow down someone who can throw around lightning bolts, or keep you from getting crushed beneath a bus when someone with super strength throws one at you.”
“What do you carry around all that stuff for then?”
“It gives Mama a sense of security,” Marinette says.
Alya waits a moment for the rest of the sentence. The train slows to a stop and the doors open and shut, admitting another few people before they speed off again, heading westward.
“And?” she says when Marinette fails to say anything.
Marinette makes a helpless little gesture with a hand. “And what?” she says. “Alya, I’m probably more physically capable than most people, and I know some fancy-looking martial arts. That’s it. I’m not some kind of superhero who magically doesn’t die when she gets shot. I’m just me.”
Everyone in the car—everyone, Marinette, Alya, the gaggle of university students giggling and snorting quietly about something at the other end, the old man sitting across from them, leaning on a wooden cane carved out of a single piece of gnarled wood, and a dozen others—jumps as their phones go off, filling the train with an endless howl of beeps and buzzes and snatches of pop music and electronic tones that dwindles by degrees as the alarms finish and shut down.
The next few seconds is filled with the sound of rustling, as people dig phones from pockets and purses in the vain hope that the notification on their screens will not be what they all know it is.
“Oh no,” Alya breathes.
Marinette doesn’t feel the need to elaborate; they can all read what it says, right there on their phones.
The police checkpoint at the metro entrance near Notre Dame had been attacked. No word on casualties, Marinette notes in some distant, analytical part of her mind, which wasn’t too unexpected, it was a developing situation and it’d just happened some thirty seconds ago.
Still, none of the other supervillains had hit the gendarmes directly. This was—dangerous. An escalation, a thrown gauntlet, an open declaration of war, however you wanted to put it.
It wasn’t going to end well for anyone.
The train brakes suddenly, throwing Marinette against Alya before she can brace herself. Alya swears under her breath as she grabs for an upright bar to keep herself from toppling over onto the seat next to her, echoed by the university students and a man at the end of the train, who goes sprawling on the floor, his phone clattering underneath a seat.
“We’re sorry for the inconvenience,” a professionally bland and measured voice says over the intercoms a second later. “Due to a situation developing near Notre Dame we’ll be standing here for a few minutes. We’ll update you with more information as we receive it, and we hope you’ll be patient with us.”
A massed muttering and rustling breaks out in the car as the intercom clicks off and everyone onboard starts checking Twitter and news sites, reflexively refreshing their phones every few seconds.
“Well,” Marinette says, looking around the car. “Looks like our plans for the rest of today have been derailed.”
She looks back to see Alya with an urgent expression.
“Mari,” Alya says, grabbing her by the arm. “We have to go.”
“Go where?” Marinette says. “The train’s stopped, we’re not going anywhere.”
Alya points with her free hand. “They have those ‘pull in case of emergency’ things in front of the door for a reason,” she says. “Come on, Mari, when else are we going to have this chance?”
Marinette stares at Alya for a second, trying to force some measure of understanding between them. “A chance for what?” she asks.
“Oh, come on,” Alya says. “The attack is going on less than a kilometer from where we are, I just checked. We could be there in five minutes if we hurry.”
“Wait, you want to go towards the active battle between the supervillain and the guys with submachine guns and assault rifles. What is this chance you’re talking about? The chance to get ourselves killed in the crossfire?”
“It’s a chance to get some up-close footage,” Alya says, “obviously. Come on, it might be useful.”
“Not if we’re dead, from getting in between—“
“Okay, fine,” Alya snaps, “whatever, stay if you want but I’m going.”
She gets up and marches over to the door, her lips pressed into a thin line, and with brusque motions reaches up and pulls the emergency release valve and forces open the doors. Then, before anyone can react, she hops out and starts jogging swiftly back the way they came.
Marinette stares at the open door.
Okay, so Alya was definitely being unreasonable. She was not only dragging herself into an insanely dangerous situation, she was attempting to drag her into the same mess, and even if she survived the gendarmes would definitely have some very pointed things to say about two teenagers running into the middle of their gunfight.
“Oh, hell,” Marinette mutters. “Alya! Alya, wait up!”
She clambers out of the car, carefully stepping over the third rail, and sprints after her friend.
A few minutes later, in a dark, hidden corner of the tunnel, actinic corpse-light blooms like lightning over the horizon.