Beautiful Ghost - Maribat drabble
(Timari, enemies to lovers au, trope tussle)
“I can’t remember anything, Red Robin!” Marinette screamed, feeling her blood boil even as the cool, Gotham night breeze filled the air, “So follow me home! I wouldn’t know where to lead you!”
She punched him and dodged a kick, hair that had escaped from her bun sticking to her forehead, “All that I wanted, was to be wanted, okay? I’m too young to wander Gotham streets alone and haunted,”
He got in two hits with his staff so she put some distance between them. And, fuck, when he looked at her like that she just wanted to kiss him senseless. Or throw him off a bridge. Honestly either would do, as long as that stupid crease of worry that did weird things to her stomach would leave his forehead.
“We’re all haunted by something, it’s no excuse to commit crimes!” He retorted as he charged her and suddenly she was leaning considerably more to the throwing him off the bridge idea.
“I had nothing! They give me something to cling to, something to live for, something to remember,” she said as she went on the defensive, blocking his hits and matching him blow for blow.
“We can get you help! You don’t have to steal things to get what you want,” he snarled, pushing harder but she managed to kick his kegs out from under him. He jumped back up before she could pin him and they kept trading jabs.
“Look, out here? They’re taming the fear within me. I didn’t know I’d love this world they’ve let me into. I’ll never wander the streets again,” she said after she did a backflip onto a crate and pushed the stack next to her towards him.
He jumped back but the crates pinned him down. Marinette jumped to him, crouching next to where his head and shoulders stuck out from beneath the pile. It was enough to keep him down without seriously injuring him.
“It’s not what I thought it would be, but I feel so alive and I know it’s not safe but it’s wild and it’s free, Red. And that’s something I need right now. So if they ask me to steal a few tiny diamonds for them? I won’t hesitate. And neither you nor Batman’s ever gonna stop me,”
He glared at her from his position and she gave him a small smile. There was a smudge of dust on his cheek and his hair stood wildly. Her fingers itched to run through the dark strands that were longer than she remembered.
Marinette shook herself out of it and shot her grappling hook to her escape hatch on the roof, she pulled the trigger and flew onto the roof of the warehouse. She looked back down to him and met his gaze.
“Bye my beautiful ghost,” she whispered before running into the starless Gotham night, the wind dancing through her hair.
Sometimes she wondered if only remembering her enemy meant that they were once more than that.
Or maybe he just used to be more than that to her.
And maybe... maybe he still was.