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“I guess this is karma getting back at us for trying to quit.” Ladybug’s head tilted upwards and banged against the stone wall behind her.
“There’s no such thing as karma.”
She raised an eyebrow at the hooded man. He was slouched against the wall parallel to her, his arm rested on his raised knee, that hand hung freely whilst the other spun his switchblade in between his fingers.
Marinette pushed herself off the wall, her arms rested on the floor in front of her.
“So what would you call this then?”
“A series of unfortunate events, fate, cursed, hexed, heresy, chance, destiny. Many different words that all end up meaning the same thing.” He flicked his knife up and caught it as it clicked into its sheath. “But you’re smart enough to know that.”
“Wow thanks,” Marinette sarcastically replied with an incredulous look on her face. “Was that meant to be a complement?”
“Tsk. Figure it out.”
Silence returned to their small cavern. Their only light being her yo-yo which is trapped between a boulder that’s blocking their exit.
“Soooooo. . .” Her voice trailed off before she popped her lips. “If you won’t call it karma, then what would you say this is?” She saw his head shift in her direction, it was too dark to see but his white masked eyes seemed to glow. She smirked at him, “You never answered my question.”
Robin whistled, “A coincidence.”
“How is that any different from karma? It’s just another synonym.”
“Karma is the belief that if you do good in life, you’ll get good things in return, the same goes if you’ve been bad. Life doesn’t work like that. It is merely a coincidence that we’re here.” He clicked his tongue and went back to flicking his knife.
“So in your opinion; a coincidence is karma that lacks hope that what we do in life matters.”
He froze. He didn’t expect that. Women had always confused him but this was different. What confused him even more was, that she showed exceptional skills in her heroism work
“I resign”
The room froze. All eyes turned to stare at the scarlet bug. Her wary eyes scanned the room and her shoulders were hunched, she was expecting a fight.
Superman was the first to speak up, “What?”
“I’ll train my replacement, I’ll even supervise them!” Words spewed out of her mouth at lightning speed, even the two speedsters in the room had trouble keeping up. “But I just can’t do this anymore.” She opened her yo-yo and took out her Justice League badge. She walked towards the large steel meeting table and placed it down with a click.
The room was packed to the brim with heroes, sidekicks and support. They were discussing an upcoming intergalactic mission. The blue holograms paused and the papers spread across the table fluttered in the light fan breeze.
“My lady.” She spun to her right, blue pigtails swishing behind her. Chat’s green eyes were welled with sadness, he approached her with a claw cradling his chest. “Why.”
She tensed, pursing her lips. “I just can’t do this anymore.” She walked out the sliding conference room doors. Those with supersonic hearing, heard her call for Kaalki to teleport her away from here. The miraculous team said their quiet goodbyes before following their leader, shell shocked.
——————
“Can you believe that?” Red Robin exclaimed, “LB! Ladybug of all people is resigning from JL!” He flopped into his gaming chair that sat before the large bat computer. He reached over to sip his coffee, his hair was falling out of his man bun, making him look more of a lunatic than usual.
Red Hood whistled, agreeing that this was unexpected. The rest stayed in silence as Tim began to ramble his ‘2 days of no sleep’ rant.
Dick approached Damian, already half changed out of his uniform, spandex trailing behind him. He pulled his arm out with a pop and lowered his white singlet top. “What’s your opinion little D?”
Damian clicked his tongue, brooding over dick’s choice of nickname, ‘little D’. He was now taller than Dick yet he still got called condescending names.
“Good for her.” He succinctly said.
Tim’s rambling stopped.
“Damian?” Babs asked. She turned to look at her unofficial sibling to see what they made of Damian's reaction. She found Bruce, now dressed in loungewear, at the cave’s entrance. He raised a dark eyebrow at his youngest son, prompting him to continue, but Damian didn’t.
“Damian, do we need to have a discussion about this?”
“What’s there to discuss Father? She made a choice, and that choice is to leave heroism behind her.” He jumped up off the medical stretcher he was sitting on and walked over to the eldest Wayne. He took off his cape with one arm and placed it in his father’s hands. Bruce looked down then back to Damian, his perfect poker face masked his confusion. “Heroes and villains are being seen as black and white, grey is whatever Todd is but that’s not my point. I resign as well, Father.”
The teen tried to walk past and up the stairs but his biceps was caught. “Damian. . .” Bruce paused, licking his lips. His mouth had gone dry from all the words dying in his throat. “Out of all of you I never expected—“
“Expected me to quit?” Damian cut him off, a smirk appearing amongst the scratches on his face. “You're the Greatest Detective in the World, Father.” He stressed each syllable of Batman’s title, “Have fun figuring this out.”
——————
“What’s your favourite colour?”
“Blue.”
“Damn I had you pegged as a green guy.” Marinette chuckled, “Can I know why?”
“Tsk, who doesn’t like blue?”
She tilted her head, while his answer is correct it wasn’t his real answer; she was good at reading lies.
“True. But I asked why you liked blue.”
He clicked his tongue again. “It’s the colour of the sky.”
She smiled and settled back against her rock wall. Wiggling her body until she became comfortable, her suit kept some of the cold out but there still was discomfort.
“What’s yours?
After what felt like hours he finally was reciprocating questions back to her.
“Pink”
He clicked his tongue, “Knew it.”
Her smile scrunched up her face as she shook her head. “Of course you did, smart bird.”
She tapped her chin thinking of a new question but Robin beat her to it. “Why did you try to resign?”
“Why did you?” She teased back with a forced laugh.
“That’s classified—” he shifted, leaning towards her, arms crossed. She felt his body heat invade her personal space. “—and I asked you first.”
“I just couldn’t.”
“While that may be true, I’m asking for the reason why you resigned.”
His teasing tone went unnoticed as she drew her knees to her chest, curling up into a little ball. He had flipped her logic for the favourite colour question back onto her. “Well. . .” She broke away from her far away gaze pointed at the floor to make direct eye contact with him. His hood hung off his face now that he was leaning. She was right, his white mask eyes did seem to glow. “I never wanted to be a hero.”
He held his breath, once again caught off guard by her answer.
“I was thirteen and it was the first day back at school. Hawkmoth, Paris’ Supervillain, had manipulated one of my classmates into being an akuma. Uhhh, akumas are Hawkmoth’s minions that try to take away mine and Chat Noir’s miraculous. I found my miraculous and was forced into being Ladybug after the new student was almost crushed by a flying car.” Her chest heaved as she paused her diatribe, but Robin didn’t speak over her, he just sat there and listened.he had moved back to his original position. “There was a quote I read as a child; ‘Be the hero you needed as a child’, I was a child but I had to be the hero I needed. I couldn’t do this anymore because I already lost my childhood, I didn’t want to lose my life as well.”
“Same.”
“Huh?”
“I had the same reason for resigning.” Ladybug waited and he did indeed continue, “I was raised in the league of assassins, fighting was the first language I learnt. I know how to kill someone forty-seven ways with a spoon.” He reached down and felt along the floor between them, he cut his finger when he finally found what he was looking for. His katana was shattered into pieces, its hilt was still trapped somewhere against the boulder. “I’ve had this katana since I was ten, it was my grandfather’s last gift to be before he passed away from an assassination. Afterwards my mother took me to stay with my Father, she thought it would be safer for me. But then I became Robin.”
He let out a hollow chuckle. “All my brothers and siblings were vigilantes, some didn’t even have a background in combat, so I wanted to join them. I wanted to show them I was the best, that all the hard work I put in during my younger years didn’t go to waste.” He looked at the palms of his hands before he limply hung them again. “I guessed it did. All I wanted was for my father to be proud of me and he was, but I realised; it just wasn’t worth it anymore.”
She shifted to sit beside him, he looked down at her curiously. “May I?” She asked, and he nodded. She rested head on his shoulder and hugged his arm.
“You’re the first to ask.” He mumbled, that broke her heart.
“We both just wanted to live.” She whispered, not expecting a response.
“Yes. . .” His voice hissed, “There’s another saying I’ve heard ‘Either die a hero or live long enough to become a villain’.”
They settled into silence, their breaths evened out as they both fell asleep.
——
A blaring siren woke them up. Her yoyo’s screen was red and showing deprecating oxygen levels, ‘Warning oxygen levels below 40%’.
“We can’t wait here any more to be saved. We need to find a way out.” Damian’s rough voice still full of sleep resounded throughout the small space. He turned to her, herher eyes disoriented from the abrupt awakening. “You should detransform so you can get your yo-yo back then we can try to come up with a plan.”
“I can’t” her voice came out panicked, her breath caught in her chest “What if the cavern collapses without it?”
Damian shifted to stand on his knees, he looked up at the rock above them and the wire caught in between it and the crevasse’s wall. “A 15mm titanium cord being removed won’t do anything to that boulder ladybug.” He tilted his head and looked at her.
“I still can’t.” Her shaking hands waved in front of her.
“Would you rather we stay here and potentially die? We haven’t heard anything from the teams; they're not coming to find us anytime soon.”
“I’d rather we find another option that doesn’t involve me losing all my memories.” She yelled, her voice echoing and causing the rock to shake. Robin dove at her, his gloved hand covering her mouth, silencing her cries. He felt her tears soak onto his hand, he stared up at her in shock.
“What. . . What do you mean?” He slowly moved his hand to her jaw, keeping it near in case she screams again and causes another tremor.
“You reveal your identity, you lose your memories. It happened to the Grand Guardian and it’ll happen to me as well. I don’t want to take that risk.” She sobbed, her breathing started to hyperventilate.
“Well what about your lucky charm?”
“We’ll have five minutes to use it then find me a place to hide and recharge my kwami. I don’t think we’ll make it Robin!” She whisper-yelled at him, her voice breaking.
He removed his hood and used his other hand to clutch her two hands in his. “How about we make a deal?” She looked up at him, cheeks red and eyes blotchy. “We be each other’s last person to save, we be our own heroes.” He took of his cape and put it around her, “And if you do detransform I promise not to look.”
“Ok.”