CW: graphic depictions of violence (not enacted, just threatened)
Worst Ways to Die: Murder by Insulted Seamstress
Marinette was in her apartment, idly watching some reruns of Project Runway while tending to a recent commission when all of a sudden, a breaking news story interrupts her program.
The Waynes have been taken hostage again!! By the Joker of all villains!
Marinette had a healthy amount of concern about the situation. She actually liked the Waynes - beyond what they've offered for the community, it's people, and the general infrastructure of Gotham. They ordered some business suits from her a few months back and they were a lovely (if not incredibly chaotic) family to work with.
As she watched the newscasters discuss the current situation at the station, they switched the image from the reporter to a live feed coming from inside the warehouse, which the Joker sent out to various newstations so everyone could watch the carnage (she would [much much] later learn that it was so they couldn't use any of their "bat training" to escape while they had an audience).
The Waynes were fairly roughed up. Some moderately deep cuts and scrapes. Early signs of bruising and swelling. Even what looked like some broken bones! (Dick definitely had a broken nose - she silently prayed it was set right, afterwards).
But that is not what set her off.
They were wearing her suits.
She worked so hard on those suits! She spent so many sleepless nights designing and crafting those beauties. So many hours of frustrated crying sessions. So many "I wish coffee could be put in an I.V." nights. So many bandaids patching the holes in her hands and her spirit. It was her first big commission since Jagged.
So, she should be forgiven for her next actions.
She does not know how she got from her apartment to the warehouse. She does not know how she managed to get past the news crews and police and various goons and into the building itself. Everything was a blur.
All she knows is that one moment she was in her apartment and the next she was in the middle of the warehouse and standing in front of a large metal door.
With all the force of a tank shell ripping through tissue paper, she kicked down the door with two goons falling dramatically to the floor, unconscious, in the background behind her.
Marinette marches forward, all fluid grace and righteous anger. Her eyes honed in on the Joker, his one arm poised with a crowbar held high in the air toward the Waynes and the other twitching toward the gun hidden in his coat.
"You." She hisses, boiling steadily beneath the surface of her skin and finger pointing at the killer clown accusingly, threateningly... promisingly.
The Joker cracks out a laugh. "Me?" His tone is equal parts deranged and deranged, lilting high and with a light incredulous edge at the end.
"You." She repeats, continuing her one-person parade of vengeance into the room, undeterred by any components of the situation. "You vile, contemptuous, incompetent, fool." Her French accent does not dull the blade of her words.
(Damian is low-key impressed).
"Not so fast, Girlie." The Joker whips his hand from his coat, pulling out a previously hidden gun and aims it right at her head. "Now what would a sweet lookin thing like you want with lil' ole me?"
She says it so instantly, that it could truly be the only word running constant laps through her mind. She was certain. She was sure. Murder would happen simply because she said so.
That seemed to catch the Joker off guard. The Waynes too, if they were being honest. They visually recognized her as the designer and seamstress who they had commissioned semi-recently. She seemed sweet, endearing herself to them with her overall human-ness: polite, clumsy, relatable (for a civilian, and occasionally in unmistakably non-civilian ways).
And now she was on the warpath, with none other than the Joker, himself, in her sights.
She had briefly paused her steady strides momentarily when the gun was pulled, but she resumed them just as quickly when the Joker was distracted.
"I will burn you." She growls, unprompted. The fire in her eyes makes even the Joker take a quarter-step back. It was enough of a sign of weakness that the faintest of smirks began blooming at the corner of her mouth. She was a shark and she smelled blood in the water.
"I will eviscerate you." She continues, stalking ever-closer to her target. Even Bruce Wayne, the big bad bat himself, felt a bead of sweat trickle down his temple at the tension and the clearly-practiced glare directed at his greatest enemy. (He's not sure how he would react being at the end of the barrel of her metaphorical gun, and he's determined to avoid it).
"I will smother you so forcefully, it will leave an imprint of your death screams in make-up on the pillow." The Joker regained his senses and took aim again. Something told him that not even a full clip of bullets would stop this 5-foot tall freight train.
"I will disfigure you in ways that not even Batman would be able to tell your identity, leaving you as a forever-forgotten footnote in Gotham's sordid history." Her footfalls were silent and deafening.
"And I may not even do it all in that order." The Joker began to unload his gun in her direction. He watched, fascinated and horrified, as she deftly and effortlessly dodged the barrage. She took the shortest of steps out of the bullets' trajectories, never once halting her forward progression. Efficient and merciless. He emptied his clip.
"I will target your greatest fears about death and play them out, using your body as an example, over and over and over again." How is this slip of a woman positively looming over this once larger-than-life villain?
The Joker let out a frantic laugh. One might even call it nervous, if they thought he was capable of such an emotion.
She was mere feet away from him now. A proximity mine of unknowable destruction. The shrapnel was already hitting him in the form of her words hitting closer to his battered heart than any he's ever heard before. The scars would linger, sure as those on his face. And if he survived this encounter (as unlikely as it feels in this moment), he would never truly be able to forget the way this woman tore expertly at his seams. She pulled the fabric of his soul away and bared his insecurities to the world. She would be the monster under his bed for years to come.
The Joker began whipping his crowbar around, simultaneously leaning his torso forward to strike at her and taking backward steps to evade her approach.
Quick as lightening, her arm a blur in the air, she slammed her elbow into his forearm, causing a reflexive opening of his hand and dropping the crowbar into her waiting palm. She began tapping the hooked end of it into her other palm - the soft smacking sound would be the anthem of his funeral procession.
"Why? What do you want?!" He barked, having backed himself into a wall. The Joker's hands scrabbled along the surface, looking for purchase of anything he could swing at her. No such luck.
She smiled at him menacingly. He thought he cornered the market on grins that could curdle blood, but here he was bearing witness to its effects from someone else.
The woman ran her fingers through her hair, gently tugging it free of the ribbon holding up her once professional-looking bun.
The tips of her pristine low, black pumps tapped the front of his scuffed brown loafers as she finished her advance. She raised the crowbar high above her head as she leaned her head forward to his ear. He would never admit to flinching (but he didn't have to, as it was all caught on the live feed, broadcasting to all of Gotham).
He slammed his eyes shut as her smile suddenly plummeted off her face.
"You've committed a serious crime." And for once, he considered apologizing for kidnapping the Waynes. If only it meant she would leave him alone.
"You tore my suits." His eyes snapped open as she swung down the crowbar, effectively wedging it between pipes behind him, and expertly wrapping her hairband (which some might have noticed was made of paracord) around his wrists - tightly, immovably, with finality.
She stepped back from him with a polite smile on her face. It was in such stark contrast to her previous smile (almost genuine), that the Joker got whiplash as sure as he would have if she completed her blow to his head with his crowbar.
Marinette whipped around, assured that the threat was contained. (The Joker might have been offended at being brushed off like that, but he was mostly just glad to be out from her gunfire stare).
A charming smile lit up her face, which she aimed at the still tied up Waynes. "Are you guys okay? Besides the obvious, I mean?"
The Waynes were silent, still processing the recent events.
The police were clearly watching the feed and quickly entered the room, keeping a respectful, if not slightly fearful distance away from Marinette.
Jason, dumbfounded, but incredibly into the turn of events: "So... you single?"
The next day's headlines read:
New 'Vigilante' Single-handedly Takes Down Joker
The Woman, the Myth, the Legend that is Marinette's Roast Game
Seamstress Cuts Joker's Strings
Marinette Dupain-Cheng and Why You Should Love Her (and not just because she could snap you in half if you don't)
Commission Prices for Local Designer Skyrocket: 'Just so people will leave me alone'. Market Seems Undeterred
City Outcry: Make Her a Bat, You Cowards
Guard: So some random 5 foot tall foreign chick made you shit yourself, huh?
Joker: I can and will kill your whole family. You know that's a thing I do for fun, right?
Guard: Man, nobody is going to take you seriously after that. Like, the other villains in Gotham have disowned you, for real.
Joker: Did you not see her face?!
Guard: Your camera wasn't angled in that direction. We just heard her roast you, then you backed yourself into a corner, like an idiot.
