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Act 1
She sits barefoot on the bench basking in the rare sunlight of Gotham, lightly swinging her legs as she waits for Damian to come back.
“Ah,” Someone behind her says, she’s not quite sure how they managed to sneak up on her so easily, “There you are.”
She grips onto her ice cream which had almost slipped out of her hand, it’s not exactly the voice that had startled her, but the way that the sentence had been said does it for her. It’s said in a weirdly formal, authoritative tone. When she turns, there's a man standing in familiar robes. She doesn’t know him, not really, but judging by his attire he seems to be from the order, probably a guardian if she had to take a guess.
She dips her head in greeting but doesn’t say anything.
She hasn’t seen anyone from the order in years.
“It’s time you gave up the mother box,” he says to her. By now she should have been used to, or at least expected the demanding tone of voice they used but she’s still stunned when she hears what he says. “It has been away from the order for a long time.”
“What?” she asks. She doesn’t like the order, not one bit, and they’ve never been the most supportive of her. She squares her shoulders and looks him in his eyes and says with confidence she doesn’t feel, “The mother box was entrusted to me. I am it’s guardian. You cannot dictate what I do with it.”
“You are not a guardian. You were given the box by a fraud, by a traitor in our ranks. You do not deserve the mother box, nor have you been trained for it. You are not even worthy of wielding its powers.”
“Can I keep the box if I get trained?” is the only thing she eventually manages to ask, after a flurry of emotions of her wanting to defend.
The older guardian looks almost offended by her suggestion, like she isn’t even worth considering.
“Let me say this clearly, you are not worthy of it. You took several years to retrieve the stolen miraculous and only managed to get one of them back, lost several others in the process, and there was a wish made. And to retrieve the second miraculous it took you even longer, there was a wish made again. In the end, you were shunned by the very city that you chose to protect. It was a mistake on our part that we let you keep the box for this long.”
She flinches back, “I couldn’t just leave the city to be destroyed.”
He glares at her, “Your first priority is always the mother box,” He looks above her and turns back, but not before saying, “You have two months.”
She freezes.
Her mind doesn’t register when Damian comes back to her, it doesn’t register when he slips a new and far more comfortable pair of shoes onto her feet, and it doesn’t register when he takes her hand as they continue through the zoo. Or maybe she does realize what is happening, although she doesn’t feel like it. Damian doesn’t act like anything’s wrong so she doesn’t know if she imagined it or if it was real.
When she returns home, she only feels numb, the memories of her past few hours being filled with dread, and the feeling of doom looming over her head.
The shadows inside her head wail.
Act 6
She feels numb.
There’s several unanswered calls and messages piled up in her inbox and the only thing that she’s managed to do for the past couple of days is get some food for herself and go back to bed.
Marinette looks at the miracle box sitting on her table, looks at its spotted design that she loathes now and feels her dread only grow. She looks at the damned thing, the thing that was supposed to be a ‘blessing’, the thing that gave her so much power and yet managed to strip everything else away from her. She looks at it for what feels like hours, she looks at the blessing— the curse of it all and she only feels like breaking down even days after the situation actually arose. It doesn’t feel like things are getting better, in fact, she only feels worse as the clock ticks by. She looks at the thing that had played so much part in her growth, in her life. She looks at the thing that’s about to rip away her life from her for the second time. She doesn’t want to throw away everything she has right now. She looks at the damned thing and feels like she wants to throw herself through the window.
She hasn’t touched the box in five years now.
Act 11
She’s curled up against Damian.
She likes staying at Damian’s. She likes lazing around with him as he reads something and she curls up with Alfred on the bed against him. She likes how he’s a grounding presence, she likes how the loudness of her brain is gone when he’s with her.
She tries to soak up all the warmth he’s offering her, she tries to ingrain the feeling into her memory knowing that it will all be gone regardless, if it came to her giving up the box. She doesn’t know if they can take the box by force, she doesn’t know what she’d do if the order could do that.
She loves him.
Act 23
Marinette sits at the table with the box in front of her for the fourth time this week.
It doesn’t change, like a picture from her past, perfectly still and something she looks at but doesn’t want to revisit.
She has to do it someday, she’s just not sure if that day is today, just like yesterday, and the day before yesterday and several other days that have passed.
But she has to.
The order isn’t going away, not this time. She’s seen so many of them trailing around her ever since they first approached her.
She’s just a tiny bit grateful they haven’t broken into her apartment yet.
The larger part of her is resentful because she didn’t ask for all this.
Marinette steadies herself with a breath and decides to bite the bullet. She presses the button in the middle before she can talk herself out of it. The box opens with a familiar click, and she squeaks just like the first time she had opened a miracle box when a flurry of bright lights burst open from the box.
She holds her breath as the kwami appear before her, opening their eyes and taking in the sight around them.
Act 34
Marinette feels like she’s floating through time, not really registering anything, just going through her days with little to no awareness. The only thing that remotely makes her happy are her dates with Damian.
“Have you decided?” Someone speaks across from her when she’s having breakfast.
She’s not really surprised that they’re in her home now, after a whole month of stalking her, and making sure they meet her eyes every time she spots a new one. But she is surprised they waited for her to sit down and start eating before asking.
It’s Celine, one of the, stalkers- for the lack of a better word, she’s one of the slightly tolerable ones.
She doesn’t interrupt Marinette’s routines, just silently shadows her most of the time.
“No,” She says as she sips down her tea.
“Well,” Celine blows her hair out of her face, “I suppose it doesn’t really matter anyway. It’s going to be in our hands by the end.”
“What?”
She looks at Marinette with something akin to pity, “They’re going to make you give up the mother box whether you like it or not, you know?”
“Oh.”
She feels like her day is ruined.
Act 41
“Do you think you would still love me if I became a white canvas?”
She’s not sure what possesses her to ask that. She doesn’t really know why she asked that, when she doesn’t even want to know the answer.
It’s just that Marinette doesn’t have a direction in life anymore. She’s not sure what will happen to her if she does end up giving her memories away. The order seemed pretty insistent on getting the box back, and she’s scared that they might end up forcing her in the end. She’s still not sure why she asks the question like she did.
Marinette is scared that she won’t be her anymore if they take her memories.
She’s scared that she’ll practically be erasing her present self, morphing into a shell of it because she won’t have a personality anymore other than her core self. She won’t have the same feelings, she won’t have the same hobbies, and she won’t have the experiences that shaped her into who she is today.
She knows.
She’s seen Master Fu turn into a completely different person, and she’s scared.
She doesn’t like it.
Damian doesn’t look at her when he asks back, “Are you flirting with me?”
Marinette lets a small smile slip onto her face, despite the growing wails of the shadows inside of her, “We’ve been dating for three years.”
“That wasn’t a no,” Damian cracks a smile when he looks at her.
He stares at her with fondness, and stays silent for a moment. Then, he tucks one of her stray hairs back and says, “I’d paint you with the most beautiful colors, you would be my most prized gift.”
She soars.
Marinette doesn’t know if he means that he’ll paint the canvas into what he wants it to be or if he’ll let the paint stay on his hands as he paints the canvas, letting the canvas and himself change together.
Act 53
“Greetings, Master.”
Marinette flinches. She had been the one to impose that, she had been the one to lash out, and she had been the one who had summoned the kwami now.
“Tikki.”
She hadn’t talked to the kwami in years, she doesn’t know how to feel about that.
She remembers the thrill of defeating the overpowered monsters, she remembers running across the rooftops when she felt overwhelmed. She remembers sneaking out just to see her best friend, just to sit with him and look at the city underneath them. She remembers being glorified, she remembers being praised.
But.
She also remembers buildings collapsing, the entire city being destroyed. She remembers the sleepless nights, the tiredness she felt after the battles kept happening after she kept failing to figure out who was behind the mask. She remembers the constant paranoia, the constant lying, and the immense fear. She remembers passing out from exhaustion several times, and she remembers being shunned from the city when they had realized everything was just because the miraculous were in the same city, and that she had lied to them for years. It shouldn’t have mattered to them, the only person whom the lie had affected didn’t even care in the end, so then why were the others so offended? She was only a kid. She shouldn’t have been chosen for the task, she shouldn’t have been made to bear the burden then it wouldn’t have come to this.
But it did.
“I don’t want to give up the box,” she swallows, “I don’t want to lose my memories.”
Tikki simply blinks at her, “Are you supposed to be giving up the box?”
“You’re not dense,” Marinette glares at the kwami before deflating, “Sorry.”
Tikki knows, Tikki had seen so many of the order lurking around her as long as she had been out of the box. Tikki knows, so there’s no need for her to pretend.
She repeats, regardless of that particular fact, “They want me to give up the box to them.”
“The mother box belongs to the order,” Tikki says, “And it is the right thing to do.”
She snarls, “I don’t care what the right thing to do is anymore, Tikki. I’ve already lost my life once, I’m not going to do it again.”
The kwami merely sighs like Marinette is the one that’s not understanding the situation, and it infuriates her. She knows, it’s her life. “You’re a good person Marinette. You do not deserve to carry its burden anymore,” Tikki says.
“Don’t,” She glares at the kwami who flinches back, “Don’t give me all that crap. I only have a few days left, and I don’t want to give the box to them. I can’t run away, and I don’t know what I’d do without my memories because I won’t have anything left by then. I don’t want to give up my memories. Can they take the box without me giving it up?”
Tikki’s gaze moves down in remorse, “I’m sorry.”
Marinette lets out a pained breath. That means that they do have a way.
“You should do what’s right, Marinette.”
She swallows, “What’s right for me or what’s right for them? Why can’t I choose myself for once?”
“Marinette,” Tikki starts, and Marinette cuts her off before she can get any further with whatever she was trying to pull.
“Don’t call me that,” She cuts, her voice draining out of all emotion, cutting sharp.
What did she even expect, talking to creatures who cannot feel emotions?
She wipes her face clean of all the tears threatening to spill, “Please leave.”
Act 60
Marinette stares at the velvet box that sits in Damian’s drawer.
She hadn’t meant to find it, she wasn’t meant to find it. But of course, this could only happen to her of all people. If she didn’t find it, things would be so much easier, then even if they force her to relinquish the guardianship, Damian could move on.
It had to be a ring.
She doesn’t want to look at the ring, because it would make things seem more real. It would give her hope. And hope is a bad, bad thing. It could give someone life, but it could also drain away their life. If she looks at it, and then ends up losing all her memories anyway, she wouldn’t be the same person, the person he wants anymore. He liked her now, and she wasn’t sure what she’d do if she found out that he doesn’t love her anymore, without all the memories. It shouldn’t matter because she wouldn’t even remember this relationship, but it does because she loves him, and she wants.
If it was a ring, then Damian was as sure of their relationship as she was.
She should feel happy, she should, but all she feels is dread crawling up her throat.
She wants to throw up, she wants to cry. She wants to lock herself up somewhere safe where no one could take her away. She wants to stay. She clutches the box in her hand and it feels like her soul is being torn apart.
She couldn’t do this.
She leaves the room feeling like the voices inside her are screaming in protest. She wants to kiss him, she wants to soak up all his warmth for the last time, because she doesn’t know if she’ll come back the same from this, with or without her memories. She wants to spend all the time she has with him, she wants to lay on his chest for hours, she wants to go out on all the dates they’ve planned, she wants to do everything with him before her time runs out, because it’s the end of the two months that they’ve given her and she doesn’t know what will happen now. But she doesn’t do any of that, instead she walks out of his apartment, ignoring Alfred pawing at her legs and Damian shooting her a confused look but letting her go with a warm hug when he realizes she’s not up for talking and that she really wants to leave.
She walks home in a daze, only when she’s in her own bed, she lets herself break.
She cries for all the missed chances, she cries for all the what-could-have-beens, and she cries for herself, the one she’s about to lose. She grieves for herself, and somehow, that feels worse.
She doesn’t think she could love him without all her memories.
It’s selfish of her.
But she doesn’t want to love him without all their shared moments ingrained in her heart.
Act 67
She’s sluggish when she wakes up, her body throbbing dully. She cannot move, and that's when she realizes that, oh, they took her.
Turns out that knowing that the world is going to end doesn’t make it any less scary.
“Hello,” says one of the guardians. If she had to guess, they ranked much much higher than her.
She almost misses Su-Han being in charge of her.
The guardian she had met first asks, “Are you going to give the box up?”
“No,” She vehemently states.
She swears that when she gets out of this place, the first thing she’ll do is burn this all to smithereens and then she’ll get that damn ring on her hand.
It’s only after several days pass that everything promptly goes to shit.
Act 68
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.
You don’t deserve this, you deserve better.
Damian must have read the note almost a dozen times now, and he still cannot make any sense of it. She wrote that, he’s sure, but he cannot make heads or tails of it. It doesn’t make sense. It’s her handwriting, and her apartment seems almost undisturbed, but it’s not the way she writes. She wouldn’t say that, not without explaining it to him first.
She wouldn’t leave.
“Damian?” Someone calls out, he’s not sure who. His mind completely blanks when he spots the ring on her desk, he missed it because he kept looking for something that’s off about the letter.
Oh, he thinks, she didn’t want to marry him.
He’s not even sure how she got the ring.
He thought they were happy.
And all this time, she must have been thinking of leaving when he was thinking of proposing.
That thought burns, it’s vicious and it hurts him.
She didn’t want him, he thinks as he runs away from the apartment like his legs are on fire.
She left, and she left without telling him.
He wouldn’t have forced her to marry him, he wouldn’t have. They could have worked it out, he would still be happy just staying by his side.
He stops at the creek that Marinette liked to visit and hurls the ring towards it.
It doesn’t hurt any less.
Act 75
Damian feels like the light inside him had been snuffed out the moment he heard that she had died.
He feels like drowning and it doesn’t make any sense, because he was just so mad at her a few days ago.
He has so many questions for her. Where did she go? Where did she end up, that she came back home dead? Why didn’t she ask for help? Did she truly not want him or was this some sort of skewed way of her trying to protect him? Marinette was a formidable fighter, it didn’t make sense. Why did she leave?
Damian stands alongside her parents as they cry their eyes out, he still can’t bring himself to cry.
He’s falling apart, and his emotions are falling behind, and he’s a complete mess. His father’s words continue ringing in his head the entire time the funeral goes on saying, It’s her Damian. I checked. No matter how badly he wants his mind to just fall silent. She looks so pale, so fragile when she was anything but. It hits him that this might be the last time he can see her, but he cannot get himself to walk up to the casket knowing that she’s dead. He just can’t. He doesn’t want to see her up close, he doesn’t think he could take it. So he doesn’t. Instead, he holds her mother close to him as her legs give out. She’s gone, he numbly thinks.
He misses Marinette so much. He misses her little smiles, weird little gestures and everything.
He wants her back.
A few hours later, when the skies are already dark, that’s when he bumps into Adrien.
His anger flares up, “You weren’t there,” He accuses.
He misses Marinette so much, he didn’t even get to say goodbye.
Adrien only looks mildly apologetic, “I’m sorry–”
Damian cuts him off, voice breaking when he speaks, “She was your best friend, and you didn’t go to her funeral.”
He has a million insults brewing varying from ‘How could you do this to her?’ and ‘Was your job really more important than the death of your closest friend?’ to ‘You didn’t deserve her.’ But before he can spew any of them out, Adrien scoffs.
“Damian,” Adrien snaps, “I just lost my best friend, I cannot do this right now.”
For some reason, his voice is filled with more pain than Damian’s voice had been. And the grief feels almost different, more heavy. Adrien huffs out a breath and he can only stare at the blond.
“I need to go.”
Adrien doesn’t apologize or offer any explanations when he leaves.
—
“What?” She gapes at them, paling rapidly.
Marinette hadn’t really thought that deeply when they brought her a missing poster with her face on it. The new poster in front of her, it's from the same batch of the prints from what she can tell, simply says found in red over the picture of her face. She knows it's real, probably picked off from the same place the last one she got was from. It doesn’t feel like a scare tactic, when all of the other guardians are looking at her with barely concealed glee in their smiles. It’s unnerving and eerie, and she feels her head spinning. How did— How did they do that?
“That,” one of the guardians starts as they turn on a video, not bothering to hide their glee this time, “Is your funeral.”
She swallows, “I’m not–”
“Dead? Yeah, we know,” They interrupt her, smiles growing wider, “That’s a senti monster in your coffin.”
She chokes on the blood in her mouth, “What?”
She panics, moving around blindly to somehow unclasp the chains binding her.
“They don’t expect you to come back either way. But, in a few hours,” someone hits her head, “It will go after them.”
“You can’t do that,” she freezes, “You can’t.”
They stare at her, amused, “We can do anything with the peacock miraculous, the wonders of the mother box never cease to amaze people it seems.”
“We could replace them with more senti monsters, I wonder how wealth feels.”
“Don’t,” she growls, “Don’t touch them.”
Marinette would rather freeze hell over than do anything that harms them.
“Give us the box.”
Her options are dwindling rapidly. She knows what danger the peacock possesses and she’s not sure she’s willing to risk that for her family. She doesn’t stand a chance against all of them combined, not without her suit. But they have the box with them, and she’s already tried to reach the box once. It did not go over well. No one knows she’s here, no one knows that they’re in danger, they’re severely overpowered by the peacock wielder and she cannot risk it.
Marinette knows she’s fighting a losing battle now.
“No,” she snarls back, “Not before I have a guarantee that you will not go anywhere near them after I give up the box.”
Letting out a shaky breath, she decides that if she really is going to do this, she’s going to do this her way and get the most out of it. Marinette straightens her back, a blank mask enveloping her features.
She refuses to give them anything more than what they’ve already taken from her.
“I know there’s a way to draft contracts in the grimoire, so here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to get me some paper, and I’m going to write up a contract which each and every one of you will sign,” someone tries to retort so she snaps at them, “Shut up.”
The guardian in the middle tilts her head, “Do your best.”
The other protests silence at her word.
She shakes her head, it stings, “Call off the senti monster.”
“You get four hours,” she narrows her eyes. Marinette swallows, that was do-able.
Drafting the contract only takes her an hour, but she reads it again at least three times before deeming it to be air tight. The order cannot touch her family now, no matter what happens to her in the future. They would stay away, and the contract would make sure of that. She knows. This is the only time in her life she’s glad the grimoire had so many spells and curses in it. They will be safe. Safe from all this madness.
Marinette sits in silence for the most part of the last hour. The memories were a part of her, despite having weighed her down for the past few years. She misses Damian, wishes she could hold him one last time before she fades away. Marinette knows that it could be a second birth for her, in a way, but she doesn’t like the idea. She won’t be Marinette anymore, she’ll just be a blank canvas. No memories, no opinions, and no past feelings. She reminisces about all the times she had cherished, the whole super hero gig with her friends, her parties with her classmates. Meeting Damian, falling for him. She wishes they had more time.
She mourns the person she’s about to lose.
“Seems fine,” Marinette lifts her gaze to the guardian, pulling herself away from her thoughts, “Okay.”
“Okay,” Marinette echoes.
Okay.
She signs the contract.
She wants to tell her friends that she loves them. She wants to tell Damian that she loves him. She wants to live her life as Marinette.
The contract is passed around, she keeps an eye on it to make sure every one of them signs it.
It feels all rather anticlimactic when the box is finally kept in front of her.
She recites the prayer.
Her mind feels like it’s being torn apart.
She wants Damian.
I’m sorry, she cries as the last memory she has is pulled away from her grasp.
Act 91
It’s a couple weeks after Marinette’s funeral when he goes back to patrol. He feels suffocated in his apartment, where there are so many traces of her. He doesn’t think he can stay there anymore, not after everything. Every time he looks at something, he thinks of her and it hurts.
He still doesn’t know what to feel, except the constant feeling of sadness trying to take him under.
Life keeps going, of course. The world didn't come crashing down when she went away, the world didn’t end when she died.
They say that grief gets easier with time, but he’s not really sure if it's just grief he’s dealing with. He feels angry, he feels lost, and he feels sad. Some days, he wakes up and forgets that she’s not— that she’s not there anymore. And those days are the hardest for him. He wakes up, and panics when he doesn’t find her, when she doesn’t answer his calls, and then he realizes and that makes him fall apart once again with a storm of emotions that threaten to break out of his chest. But he keeps them close, keeps them hidden away. Because that would mean accepting that she’s truly gone, that she left him behind.
He’s not sure if he wants that.
So he goes about his routine feeling like there’s water all around him, muffling everything else, and making it hard for him to breathe. He starts going to patrol more, and starts staying away from their neighborhoods.
He’s not sure what to do with the vacuum in his chest.
Act 97
Damian’s chasing down one of Black Mask’s old contacts as a favor for Jason when he spots the familiar silhouette from the corner of his eye.
He doesn’t know what compels him to follow, or what he expects, but he does follow.
He follows them to a dead end, and freezes.
“Marinette,” he whispers, voice filled with hope and relief. He feels like crying out of happiness, he feels so elated that he could shout from the rooftops.
It’s her, he just knows it’s her. The way she stands, the way she holds herself. She was gone, and now she’s back. She’s back and in front of him. She looks almost the same as she had a few weeks ago, bar from a few bandages on her. But she’s alive, and she’s here.
He moves towards her but his steps falter as she flinches back, away from him like he’s burned her.
Damian stands where he is, feet rooted in their place, as his arms fall unsure of what to do. He looks at her, trying to understand, trying to ignore the hurt pooling back in his chest.
He looks at her.
And she looks at him, but she doesn’t see him.
He looks at her, minutes feeling like hours, his brain working out the problem. He can hear his brothers’ footsteps coming to halt when they reach him. It feels like the rug is being pulled from underneath his feet.
He looks at her.
She doesn’t—
His voice breaks, “Marinette?”
Damian stares at the crystal blue eyes widened in fear as they stand only a few feet apart. It's not the fear that breaks him, no, it's the lack of recognition. Marinette is staring at him like he's someone that she's never seen, like she didn't love him for years and wasn't his for years. For the first time in years, Damian cries.
He doesn’t let anyone else see, he just turns on his heels and runs, ignoring the shouts from his brothers.
He runs away, away from the cracks spreading over his heart, away from the heartbreak, away from all the pain, and away from the hurt that he feels physically. Away from the feeling of falling into an abyss of sadness that threatens to swallow him whole. It felt like the feeling of drowning was only taken away from him for a few minutes before his head was dunked back into water and left to drown again. The water receding, receding and then gushing back into him, into him threatening to take him away along with the waves of grief.
Marinette is gone.
She’s gone and he will never get her back, because she doesn’t seem to recognize him, because she looks nothing like the woman he’s grown to love and care for anymore, she doesn’t look like the Marinette he’s prayed to have back for weeks now.
He should be happy that she’s alive, but he isn’t. He feels like the hole in his chest has only grown a thousand times worse.
He sits in the cold water and buries his head in the palms of his hands and cries.
That’s how Dick finds him a few hours later. Sitting in the creek, his lower body numb from the coldness of the water, staring away at nothing. His brother’s arms engulf his frame, but he doesn’t feel like he’s being saved like he does every time Dick hugs him. Instead, he only feels reality crashing into him.
“Dick, I can’t—” His voice breaks, “Dick. I can’t find the ring—”