Chapter Text
Marinette’s first memory is of Damian standing over her. Not in training or magic practice. Not even him waking her up for lessons in the morning. No, he had a tree behind him. They must have been doing some form of wilderness survival training and she decided to lay down under a tree.
None of her other memories of him are quiet so peaceful even though they’ve been betrothed their whole lives.
Now as he’s standing over her, she can see him screaming but not hear the words coming out of his mouth. Everything seems to blur together as she watches him look over his shoulder. He grabs her hand and drags her up. She stumbles after him, barely having time to look around at the chaos around them.
She tries to figure out what’s happening as he shoves her into a corner and pulls a plant in front of her. She shakes her head slightly, trying to clear the fog in her memory. As her hearing starts to come back, she hears someone yelling orders and tries to get up.
Nausea overtakes her and sends her back to her hiding place. Looking through the leaves of the plant. At only ten years old, she knows how to deal with a concussion like the one giving her a pounding headache.
But at this moment it feels more important to find Master Fu, Talia, or Damian.
Especially Damian.
He was here…
Where did he go?
The surrounding area is suddenly quiet. Not like her ears are ringing again, but like there is not a soul making any noise anywhere nearby. A singular pair of boots echo in the courtyard.
As they get closer, the noise makes her head feel as though it’s splitting in half.
Suddenly she’s being pulled in the air and it takes all of her power to keep her head from lolling to the side. She’s met face to face with Deathstroke and her eyes widen.
She remembers now, He staged a coup against the Demon head. He had always been mad that Ras wanted to combine the League of Shadows with the Order of the miraculous through her and Damian’s marriage.
“The stupid brat is already gone, his mom got him out while I was taking down Ras. If I can’t finish off that blood line, I might as well take out the order of the miraculous while I have the chance.” He growls in her face.
She tries to struggle out of his grip but every movement makes her feel like she’s going to pass out. She doesn’t have good enough control of her magic to pull it out with her head so full of fuzz.
“Your master is already gone. Took the miraculous box with him for all that he can’t open it.” He carries her under one arm as he makes his way through the compound, she had been raised in. “Luckily for you, I don’t actually need to kill you. I just need to make you an unappealing option for the wife of the Demon head.”
She isn’t sure what he means by that but it makes her want to struggle all the harder. The slight amount of movement she manages is all for nothing as he sees fit to shake her as punishment.
They enter a room that she’s sure she recognizes but can’t put her finger on. As he drops her to the ground and walks over to a shelf she realizes where they are. It’s a lab where the few scientists in the compound create poisons and other such destructive compounds.
She doesn’t know what he’s grabbing but she figures it’s not going to be good for her. She unsteadily makes her way to her feet and tries to stumble to the door. A hand grabs her from behind and throws her to the ground. Deathstroke looks down at her for a moment before raising his foot and slamming it down on her leg.
She can hear the snap more than feel it. It’s still somehow not as painful as her concussion. As he turns away again to rummage through the shelves, she tries to drag herself back towards the door.
She reaches it and realizes the mistake she made in her addled state. She can barely reach the door handle when she’s on her feet. She can’t reach it all from her prone position on the floor. That doesn’t stop her from trying though.
She falls a few times, no thanks to the unsteadiness caused by the pounding in her head. Finally, she has herself propped up on her good leg and trying to pull on the door handle only to find that the deadbolt another two feet up is locked.
Dread fills her as she realizes she can’t get out. If she were in perfect condition, maybe. But like this, no way.
She turns back towards the room and blanches. Deathstroke is leaning against a table behind her, just watching her struggle. He was just standing there, waiting for the moment she realized. In his hand is a vile of some liquid and she’s terrified of what it could be.
“Did you really think I was going to leave the door unlocked after you tried to escape the first time?” She can plainly feel how he is sneering at her, looking down on her.
She pulls on the door one more time in desperation and he laughs at her. A booming laugh that normally would mean nothing to her but in this moment, sends shivers up her spine.
He walks forward and reaches for her. She tries to throw a punch but with all the movement she’s seeing double and misses. He throws her to the ground and presses his foot down on her chest. Hard enough to keep her there, but not hard enough to really hurt her.
“Know that I’m sorry for this. You were a sweet girl.” his voice holds no remorse as he uncorks the vial.
She tries to decipher what the hell he could mean by that but right as she tilts her head to give him a questioning look, he tilts the vial and pours the liquid right in to her eyes.
The pain as the acid melts her skin is indescribable. She tries to close her eyes to keep it out of her eyes, but it’s not use. It already seeping into her eyes. As she screams and writhes, she watches her vision turn all to read and then go suddenly black in one eye. She tries to reach up to her face, to wipe away the liquid. To do anything to fix it, but Deathstroke has moved to have a foot on each wrist.
“Don’t touch it.” he commands. “Do you want to ruin your hands as well as your eyes?”
She doesn’t care what happens to her hands, she just needs to stop the melting in her eyes. The scorching fire on her face. She supposes she has found a pain worse than her head ache. Her screaming definitely doesn’t help her headache, but she couldn’t care less.
She screams until her voice is hoarse. She screams as he shifts to holding her down with him hands. She screeches as her second eye finally goes black. It feels like it’s been hours, but from what she knows about acid, it can’t have been more than minutes.
His hold eases slightly and she pulls her hand away and pulls it back. She slaps him as hard as she can across what she hopes is his face and she must have succeeded because he’s off of her.
She scrambles off the ground uncaring for her broken leg and stumbles in the direction she knows must be one of the sinks. As she feels the burning start to run down her face, she angles her head down so the liquid will fall to the ground instead of run down her skin. Behind her she hears him start screaming and the door slam open.
She couldn’t care less about what he’s doing. All she needs is water. She pushes countless bottles and vials off of shelves and desks and she runs her hands over everything looking for the sink.
She finally finds it and scrambles to turn on the faucet. Once the water is running, she shoves her face under it, leveraging her hips on top of the counter to keep her body in place.
Finally with some relief, she breaths out a sigh of relief. She stays there for who knows how long switching back and forth between which side of her face is up towards the running water.
Eventually, more delicate hands than before lay gently along her waist and she scrambles away from them as far as she can, not wanting to lose touch with the sink basin.
“Marinette, what happened?” Talia’s familiar voice comes. It brings both a sense of relief and anxiety. Talia isn’t exactly known for being merciful when things aren’t going her way.
“Deathstoke.” She manages to cough out, voice still sore from all the screaming. “Acid.” She adds as an afterthought.
“Yes, I can see that.” Talia responds and Marinette can tell only from her voice that she has that unimpressed look on her face.
“Damian.” She cringes at the rasp in her voice, doing her best to focus on Talia instead of the pain.
“The compound is not safe; he is being sent to a secure location. You will be moved to a separate secure location to live with a former member of the League.” There is moment of silence that Marinette isn’t sure what to do with. “She will teach you to overcome this issue. Luckily, like usual Deathstroke misjudged events. Loss of vision does not make you not of use. We don’t need your vision to accomplish our goals.”
Marinette lets out a sigh of relief and closes her eyes, this causes a flash of pain and she cries out. She finds herself being swooped up and her face is shoved back under the running faucet.
“We’ll need to get this treated before anything.” She can just barely hear Talia mutter to herself as she finally loses consciousness.
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Later, with her face bandaged and leg in a cast, she can only be glad for high strength pain killers.
She is on a plane with Talia.
When she asked where they were going all the other woman had said was ‘France’.
So she sat quietly in the plane and listened to the rumbling of the jet, to Talia’s breathing beside her, to the pilot shifting off to the left. Eventually the plane lands and Talia picks her up, placing Marinette on her hip.
Marinette is conflicted about the position. She knows that Damian would never allow himself to be carried like this, but Damian isn’t here and she’s afraid. Talia’s body warmth is comforting but also not needing to worry about tripping over things in her way is nice.
She is put into a car and buckled in. She doesn’t know how long the car drives for. Eventually they stop and she is pulled out of the car and back onto Talia’s hip. They go into some type of shop with a bell on the doorway.
“Is this her?” A woman asks in French.
“Yes.” Talia responds also in French. “She speaks French and Mandarin so you shouldn’t have any communication issues.”
“I’m sure we’ll be fine.” A man’s voice responds. “Why don’t you let me take her upstairs while you work out the paperwork.”
A large pair of hands pick her up off Talia’s arm and she resists the urge to flinch away from him, being reminded of Deathstroke holding her. But the man’s arms are gentle and he rests her on his forearm instead of under his arm.
The man takes her somewhere else in the building.
“My name is Tom.” he introduces himself. “My Wife Sabine and I are going to be takin care of you for a while.”
“Understood.” she replies in French, assuming the man was also an assassin with the league.
“Ah, you don’t need to be formal with me. I’m going to be your papa from now on.” He tells her. Placing her down on a couch. “I’m going to get our first aid kit so Sabine can change your bandages when she gets back, don’t move.” he instructs her as she hears his footsteps retreating.
For the first time since this whole mess started, she relaxes her shoulders and lets out a breath.
This is all going to such a pain.
She has a feeling that she’s not going to be allowed to speak Arabic for quite a while. French and Mandarin are likely the only languages that she’ll be able to get away with knowing as a 10-year-old. She’ll be lucky if she can get away with speaking English or German, but Arabic is probably going to be a big no no for a long time.
She slips her hands into her pockets and finds something she had forgotten was on her person.
A pair of earrings.
The Miraculous Ladybug earrings.