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For being sponsored by the Goddess of Luck herself, Marinette sure is unlucky.
She thought her partnership (can she call it a partnership? a you’re here I’m here we might as well work together situation?) with Red Hood had been going well. They exchanged easy-going banter, were an efficient team, and she couldn’t help but feel like there was a mutual attraction there—that is, until she had to mess it all up by putting her foot in her big mouth.
After months of their initial acquaintanceship, they’re sitting on a rooftop, enjoying a small bout of reprieve from their earlier takedown of the same trafficking ring that had brought them together. Hood is sitting next to her, arms slung lazily over his spread legs. She’s never seen him so relaxed before, if she can even call it that.
He’s still tense, eyes darting around in a way that screams experience, but it’s a start.
They start hashing out the finer details of the mission to see if there are any leads they can use to take down a bigger organization. Somewhere along the way, it turns into simple conversation—nothing too personal, until they breach the topic of significant others.
Marinette doesn’t remember how they’d gotten there, but she hopes she doesn’t find out that he has one of his own. They discuss the logistics, the possible disadvantages and dangers of having either a hero or a civilian as a partner, until she decides she’d had enough of dancing around.
“What about you?”
“Huh?”
“Do you have a partner? A romantic one, I mean.” She tries not to sound too hopeful.
Hood snorts. “God no.” Marinette tilts her head but doesn’t ask.
“Do you?” The words roll off his tongue, smooth and rich.
“No, but—”
“But?”
And she can swear he’s leaning closer, and she does too, until she can practically feel warmth emanating from his solid figure. His voice is pitched low, lower than usual, and she breaths, “I’m in love with someone,” barely hearing her own words from the trance she’s in.
“Yeah? Who is it?”
Her brain short-circuits like it always does when she’s around people she likes, and all she has to do is say you, and then he’ll tell her he loves her too and kiss her like she’s always imagined. But the words that come out next aren’t it’s you, Hood, because the universe hates her.
“Marinette Dupain-Cheng!” she blurts, panicked and much too loud for the mood that had befallen.
Even though she can’t see through that red bucket of his, she can envision Hood’s bewilderment plastered across his face just as clearly. In fact, she’s similarly baffled at the words that had just come out of her mouth.
What. The. Fuck. That Marinette was supposed to be dead—gone, not-so-dearly departed, six feet under, cataclysmed into dust— not creating new messes for Current Marinette to clean up.
To Hood’s credit, he recovers faster than she does. “Marinette Dupain-Cheng? As in the famous designer? You know her?”
“So do you, apparently!” Okay, so she gets defensive when backed into a corner. So what.
“Well, yeah. Hard not to when her name is everywhere. Didn’t think she’d be your type, though.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Marinette squawks, indignant. Crush or not, she’ll defend her honor if she must. Red Hood seems to realize this too, because he chooses his next words carefully.
“She seems cool and all that, but she’s a civilian. Do you really want her to get tangled up in this life?” he questions, referencing their previous conversation.
“She’s not a civilian,” she sniffs, not bothering to cover up what’s probably Paris’s worst-kept secret. “She was a temporary hero when Hawkmoth was in power. Multimouse.”
“So you still keep in touch with her?”
“What gave you that idea?” she shoots back.
“You talk about her like you guys are close. It’s kinda obvious.” Yeah, we’re real close, she grumbles in her head.
“It’s whatever,” she replies, trying to change the subject before she has to pull even more lies out of her ass. Hood shrugs, and that’s that.
They chat a little more, come up with some semblance of a plan for their next stakeout, and part ways. Marinette goes home and double-checks her calendar before she goes to bed, looking at the name circled for tomorrow’s consultation. Jason Todd.
Jason Todd is, surprisingly, more like Jagged Stone than he is his own brother.
Okay, that’s not totally true—they both share the initial aloof demeanor, are somewhat reserved, but engage in clever conversation while remaining cautious of their own words. Much like Jagged, however, Jason seems to have a disregard for formality and a liking for motorcycle jackets.
Marinette knows he’s only meeting with her at his brother’s behest, but Tim had apparently been insistent on his consulting her for a new jacket. She does have somewhat of a reputation for working with unorthodox material, after all.
She chats with Jason as she gets his measurements as she does with the rest of her clients. It’s awfully awkward to do it in silence, so she avoids it whenever possible.
It starts off with small talk, then her moving from Paris to Gotham, until Jason asks what she thinks about the Miraculous Team. It catches her off-guard, but she supposes anyone would be curious.
“I appreciate what they’ve done for Paris. It’s nice to know there are heroes out there that will look after us. I just hope they won’t have to go active again,” she replies, giving the most generic answer she can as she measures around his waist.
“What about Ladybug?”
Marinette tries not to let anything show on her face at that, but she’s on edge now. She hasn’t done anything that might have clued him in on her identity, has she?
“I think she’s a decent hero. I just don’t think it’s fair that she overshadows the rest of the team, you know? The rest of them deserve recognition too.” Technically not a lie.
Jason looks down at her with regarding eyes. “Don’t you think she gets more praise because she’s their leader? No offense to the other heroes, but from what I’ve heard she’s the mind behind the team. And have you seen her in action? That roundhouse kick is something else.”
Marinette knows he’s not praising her directly, but her face still heats up. “Yeah, I suppose,” she says, trying to move on before he can say something else that will turn her pink.
He doesn’t bring it up again.
Marinette has at least enough self-awareness to admit that she can’t blame all her issues on the universe’s apparent problem with her. At least some of her plights can be attributed to her poor decision-making skills.
Is it a bad idea for her, a young woman, to go ambling around the streets of Gotham near midnight? Completely and utterly. Does she do it anyway? Yes, because she’s an idiot.
In her defense, she’d had minimal trouble the first dozen or so times she’d traveled from her apartment to the fabric shop a few blocks away and back.
Marinette leaves the store with a few bolts of fabric and a small bag of notions, and she’s stopped by a knife in her line of sight almost a minute after starting her walk home. There’s another glint of metal in her periphery, and she drops her fabric at their barked command.
It looks like surrender, but Marinette is far from ceding. With her purchases safely out of the way, she lets them gain on her before striking fast as a snake. She sweeps the first crook’s legs out from under him, making quick work. She doesn’t know what kind of weapon the other has, but it becomes apparent when a gunshot rings through the air and whizzes past her.
She gets on her feet and whirls around, keeping an eye on the downed crook in case he isn’t knocked out. It’s not her first encounter with such criminals, but she’s not in uniform this time. She can’t afford to get injured.
The heroine dodges the next barrage of bullets he sends her way, skillfully making her way closer to disarm him. She’s a few paces away when the first goon pops up, and it’s through pure luck that she avoids a bullet skimming her arm.
The two back her into an alley, their combined shadows looming over her.
“You’ll pay for that, bitch,” the one with the knife snarls, and she’s about to charge forward when a shot echoes through the air.
The two crooks turn their head slowly, suddenly alarmed, and Marinette takes the opportunity to jump into action. She goes for the one with the gun first, not bothering to hold back. He’s out cold in a few well-placed strikes, and by the time she turns back around, she’s met with a pool of blood.
She’d have been horrified at the sight of the spreading scarlet a few short months ago, but being partners with Red Hood had acclimated her to the sight.
Like a summons, she drags her gaze to the opening of the alley to see him drenched in torchlight, guns strapped to his side and bags of fabric in his hands. He lifts them in greeting.
“This yours?”
Jason wouldn’t claim to know Marinette very well, but the one that greets Red Hood seems to be from a different dimension than the one he knows in his civilian identity.
Her entire demeanor changes as soon as she spots him, stance going from confident to something significantly more klutzy than usual. She stumbles towards him as if she hadn’t just held her own against two of Black Mask's gang, eyes going comically wide.
“Red Hood!” She staggers over and leans her weight against him like he’s a fainting chair, and she’s lucky that he’s not Robin and doesn’t throw her off in revulsion.
It could simply be that he hasn’t seen this side of her before—starstruck and scared—but it reminds him of Bruce’s “Brucie Wayne” persona: well-meaning yet ditzy. Her indulgent praise is reminiscent of the vultures at the galas that try to cozy up to him while their husbands attempt to worm their way into Bruce’s good graces.
It’s a caricature, and he can’t help but wonder what she’s playing at.
Jason offers, or more so insists, on dropping her off at home. He swings them through the air “to avoid any more trouble,” which she giggles at. Curiously, Marinette doesn’t shriek as they go airborne or even seem fazed at all. He briefly entertains the thought that Ladybug might have swung her around but dismisses it just as fast. Ladybug isn’t so careless as to spend so much time with civilians, infatuation or not.
They make it to her apartment in no time, and Marinette thanks him profusely, gushing her gratitudes. When she closes the door, he sees her snort and roll her eyes through the window. Curious indeed.
The next time he meets the designer is at his fitting a week later. She’s flitting around him, pinning pieces into place and having him shrug his shoulders and move around. He cranes his neck and discreetly scans her apartment for something he can use to bring up the topic of, well, him, and—bingo. Next to a Robin-themed mug on the nearest desk, there’s a sketch with the bat insignia in the corner.
“I see you’re a fan,” he nods towards her drawings.
“Oh!” Marinette replies, looking embarrassed. “The mug is a gift from my best friend Alya. She’s really into superheroes, so I thought I’d make something for her. I mean, there’s nowhere better to make Batman things than Gotham.”
Jason nods, contemplating her words.
“It’s not that I don’t like them!” she tacks on. “What they do is… comment dit-on …admirable. I just think it’s dangerous to put heroes on a pedestal just because of what they do. At the end of the day, they’re just people too.”
It’s a surprisingly astute observation, but Jason supposes he shouldn’t be surprised by her intelligence. There isn’t a single trace of lie on her face, and if he hadn’t been sure yesterday, he is now. This Marinette, unlike the one he’d met yesterday, is genuine. For some reason or other, she’d been faking.
For some reason, people keep asking Marinette about herself.
She doesn’t know what the catalyst of this apparent trend is, but it seems not even Red Hood is immune, proven when he casually brings up her feelings for her civilian identity. She nearly jumps in shock when he mentions it—after weeks of agonizing over her lie, Marinette had started to forget she ever said it. She was hoping he’d forgotten too.
She laughs nervously at Hood and waves her hand in the air. “You know, I don’t like Marinette anymore! She’s actually not all that great.”
“But you told me you were in love with her?” he frowns.
“I did!” she nods, bobbing her head up and down frantically. “She’s smart, and nice, and…cute?” her voice pitches up in question.
“Yeah, she is.”
Wait, what?!
“...So are you still in love with her?”
“Yup!” she blurts.
Dear Kwami, again? All she’d needed to say was no. One simple word.
“Oh. Okay,” Hood replies, clearly holding back.
“What?”
“Nothing important. It's just that…from what she’s said, it doesn’t seem like Marinette is overly fond of superheroes. Not that she doesn’t like you. I could be wrong.”
Marinette frowns, turning his words over in her head. “Wait, have you been talking to her?”
“No,” Hood replies, but her mind is already whirring.
Wait. Super tall, has probably spoken to me as a civilian, and that build—“You’re Jason Todd.”
“What? No, I’m not!” Marinette barely hears his retort, busy pacing hysterically.
“Oh my god. You’re Jason Todd. Red Hood is Jason Todd.”
“Well, don’t go announcing it to everyone,” he hisses, then takes a step back when he realizes what he’d revealed. “Wait. How’d you figure it out?”
Marinette can see the moment he works it out from the shift in his body language, and she drops her transformation.
“Holy shit,” he gapes, then, “Why’d you tell me you were in love with yourself?”
His hysteria only heightens her own, and Marinette practically yells, “I panicked, okay?!”
“Why the hell would you panic?”
“Because I was too scared to say that I was in love with you!”
There’s a resounding silence in which both of them have to process the words she’d just said.
“Oh, thank God,” Jason slumps.
“What, that’s all you have to say?” Marinette says hotly.
“Yeah, well, I was worried I’d have to wingman the girl I’m in love with.”
Marinette bluescreens, sure she’d heard him wrong. Does he mean her?
As if in response, Jason takes off his helmet, revealing that familiar white streak of hair.
“Yes, I mean you.”
“Oops,” Marinette replies sheepishly, having said her words aloud.
“I think this is long overdue,” he steps closer, moving his hand beneath her chin. “Unless you’re in love with someone else?”
“No,” she breathes. “Just you.”
Their lips meet, and when Jason’s arms wrap around her waist, Marinette smiles. Maybe she is lucky after all.