[8/?]
original prompt | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7
Marinette sometimes wonders why her family is awful at keeping secret identities.
Then she thinks of one reason: their excuses never line up. She witnesses it firsthand one day when Jason enters the living room, wearing a cast and an arm sling.
She fakes a gasp. "Jason! Your arm!"
"'Tis but a scratch, Pix." Jason waves it off. He picks up the jacket he's looking for and stretches one arm to ruffle her hair.
"What happened to it?" Marinette asks.
"It---" Jason's phone chimes before he can get an answer out. "Next time, I'll tell you. Gotta go now."
He exits the room quickly. Moments later, Damian appears with his sketchpad in one hand.
Marinette looks up from her phone. "Dames, do you know what happened to Jason?"
"Tt. He was being reckless as usual." The preoccupied Damian searches the room, perhaps for his pencil. "Fell down from his apartment."
Marinette blinks. "Why am I only hearing this now?"
He rolls his eyes. "It is no surprise for Todd to get injured often."
---
That afternoon, she sees Dick in the kitchen, looking around for home-baked snacks to eat. She opens the fridge to hand him a slice of cake that she already prepared.
"Do you know what happened to Jason's arm?" Marinette grabs a slice for herself.
Dick laughs out loud. "His arm? I bet him he can't catch an M&M in his mouth while doing a flip."
"Spoiler alert." The eldest smirks. "He can't."
Marinette hums, not bothering to question that this couldn't have happened the previous night because Dick just came back from a trip that morning. And she's seen Jason without a broken arm the day before.
---
Next, she manages to catches Tim on his laptop in the dining hall. She looks at the stack of papers on the table, checking if he hasn't messed up signing any of them due to sleep deprivation.
"I saw Jay today. His arm is broken," Marinette says. "Any clue what happened to him?"
Tim sips on his coffee, not even blinking once. "Space dinosaurs. They got him last night and sent him off to the moon, I'm sure. Apparently one of them was a robot hybrid and their leader's a pterodactyl. He's lucky he got away with just a broken arm."
---
At that point, the responses don't even surprise Marinette anymore. What's amusing to her is that none of her siblings realize that they've given her conflicting answers.
She runs into Cass in the city and she brings up Jason's arm.
With a deadpan face, Cass replies, "He was being an idiot."
And she offers no additional explanation.
---
"Do both of you happen to know why Jason's arm is broken?" Marinette raises an eyebrow.
"Jason's arm is what now?!" Duke nearly spits out his drink.
"Yeah, I saw him this morning. It looked pretty bad."
Duke mumbles something about getting extra work because of that. Marinette looks at him with a mixture of confusion and pity.
"I know why!" Stephanie sips loudly on her straw. "You won't believe it. This drunk girl attacked him out of nowhere last night and twisted his arm!"
" . . . What?"
"His ego is in a worse state, trust me."
---
Finally---finally---Marinette manages to talk to Jason herself. She corners her after dinner time and points to the cast.
"What happened to you, Jay?"
"This?" His face scrunches up in an effort to find the perfect story. He gives up and says, "I fell on the stairs."
"You fell on the stairs?"
"Yup. I slipped and fell."
Marinette nods in understanding. "Will you be okay?"
"Don't worry, I'll be fine." He reassures her with a smile.
---
Of course, Marinette knows the real reason.
She was there when Jason broke his arm.
Inari watches carefully as Red Hood grapples to another ledge. A stray cat shrieks out of the blue, startles him, and he wobbles in his swing, giving him a bad landing.
The vigilante lays face down on the ground, grunting in pain.
Inari grimaces. "Ouch."
She puts on her earpiece and sends a distress signal to the location.
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