Chapter Text
Marinette stared at the pile of bright red, yellow, and green clothes on the ground. It was all she’d done in the five-ish minutes since she’d portaled onto the scene. Just… stared.
It wasn’t like there was much else to do, anyways. Red Robin was currently beating the absolute fuck out of the person that had the audacity to disintegrate his brother right in front of him. It wasn’t like she could even fix it because the witch had been out cold before she had been able to pull Red Robin off to get a hit in so she could use her lucky charm.
So, she stared.
It was weird. She could almost feel a person inside the clothes but… maybe that was the residue or the ashes or whatever gets left behind when you zap a person out of existence? She didn’t really want to check, to be honest. Gross.
Eventually, though, she hesitantly leaned down and brushed her hand over it, trying to find the energy and get rid of it because it was really uncomfortable --.
… oh hell no that pile of clothes did not just fucking giggle at her.
She narrowed her eyes and carefully lifted up the bottom of the shirt, only to yelp and fall back. She scrabbled on the gross Gotham alley ground until her back hit Red Robin’s arm and he was forced to pause or risk hitting a meta (which would not have been good for his health).
“What?” He hissed.
She swallowed thickly. “That’s a child.”
“... what?” Red asked, all the anger bleeding from his tone in his confusion.
“We let Batman’s kid turn into a baby,” she whispered… then, it sunk in more. “We let Batman’s kid turn into a baby.”
He straightened on top of the thing that was really more bloody pulp than person at this point. “What do you mean ‘we let Batman’s kid turn into a baby’?”
But she didn’t really get a chance to answer because the baby chose that exact moment to be sick of being suffocated under all the armor and pushed it off.
Red Robin gulped. Because, yep, that was Robin as a baby. Batman was going to kill them.
Except he wasn’t going to kill them. Because Batman doesn't kill. No, Batman would find something even worse and that would suck.
The baby -- Robin? Should she still call him that mentally? -- giggled at their pain. Like an asshole.
They were so fucked.
~
He’d let B’s favorite kid get turned into a baby. Was there a way to get unadopted? Because if there was it was totally going to happen. Or maybe his dad would just cut him off because he was 19 now and could just get kicked out.
No. Nope! Not going to happen. No. He could fix this.
“Okay. Okay okay okay. We need a plan,” he heard himself saying.
Ladybug scoffed. “We? I was barely even here, this is on you.”
“Leave me alone to deal with this and I swear to god I will tell B that you did it.”
She paled. “You wouldn’t. No way.”
“Yes way. So, help me think of something.”
The baby giggled and started crawling over and both of them averted their eyes because, unfortunately, the child did not get baby clothes to go with his random transformation. Baby Damian didn't seem to care as he reached them and started climbing on Ladybug since she was closest. At least it wasn’t him. He did not want to see his adoptive brother’s… ew.
Ladybug made a gagging sound and then quickly summoned a lucky charm. She kept her face turned away as much as her neck would physically allow as she fumbled her way through swaddling the child in a polka-dotted blanket.
And then her shoulders slumped a little. “Great. Great. This is… great,” she muttered, picking up the bundle o’ baby.
He let himself look down now that it was safe.
“Alright, we need to go to another dimension where time moves faster,” Ladybug said after a few seconds. “And then we wait for him to age… fifteen-ish years. Best way to not make Batman notice.”
“... what about us? We also age.”
“Huh…? Oh. Right. You’re human.” She pulled off the glasses she was wearing and blinked a few times before handing them over. “Congrats on your upgrade. The tiny horse god is named Kaalki. She likes cake.”
“The tiny --?” He let out the world’s manliest screech as his eyes landed on the floating bug horse hybrid thing holy shit no no no no no the sci-fi movies didn’t prepare him for this shit.
Kaalki looked a little offended but then her eyes landed on the baby and she gasped. “Aw, baby humans are always so cute.”
“Great, Kaalki, you take it,” said Ladybug.
Kaalki did try, to her credit. It just so happened that the approximately one-year-old baby was a lot bigger than the… whatever she was. Tim was refusing to believe that this was a god. Too many implications. He already had something to have a breakdown over, he didn’t need another thing right now, thank you very much.
Tim rested his head in his hands but he had more things to worry about than the blood that he was accidentally streaking through his hair.
“Okay. Okay. We can go to another dimension and try and raise him. Maybe we can make it have a ratio of one month here for every year there so any differences could be blamed on that.”
“Ya!” Said baby Damian. He probably didn’t actually know what was going on but he sure seemed excited so that was cool.
Ladybug sighed and nodded. “Great. You get food and money and clothes and I’ll take this lady to the cops… and I guess I’ll watch the kid until you get back because your dad cannot know.”
They shook on it.
~
This may be the dumbest idea that she’d ever had, and that was saying something. She didn’t know if she could trust Red Robin on this one, they hardly ever worked together. What if he just left her alone with this kid and let her try and figure this out on her own?
No. He wouldn’t do that. He was the last person known to be with Robin. Robin going missing would be bad for him, too. And, besides, she was pretty sure that he was a duty-driven person based on what she’d heard, she just had to hope that he saw this as his duty, too.
She turned the baby in her arms to get more comfortable as she waited for him to (hopefully) come back.
Part of her wanted to try and find someone from this world to reverse this but she didn’t know any outside of her, Adrien, Alix, and (now) Red Robin. Not on a personal level. Not enough that she knew for sure that they wouldn’t blab to Batman about it.
So, no, this is what she was doing.
But she had things to do. So, she pulled out her yoyo-phone-hybrid-thingy and wedged it against her ear.
“Chaton,” she said the moment he picked up. “You’re alone, right?”
“Uh… yeah?”
“Great. I, Ladybug, relinquish the Miracle Box and name Chat Noir the new guardian.”
“WHAT --?!” He didn’t get to finish as a box dropped on his lap and knocked the wind out of him.
“Just for, like, a year and a half. Sorry. Bye!”
“DON’T JUST ‘BYE’ ME WHAT THE --?!”
She hung up and closed the yoyo, hooking it back to her belt and ignoring it when it started buzzing again.
She looked down at Robin, who was squinting up at her. She returned the squint. Why was this baby so quiet? She didn’t get it. Surely, he should have been crying at this point.
“Do you still… remember things?” She asked, hoping against all hope that maybe he had retained his memories at the very least.
Robin smiled at her, but it was the blank-eyed baby smile that meant he wasn’t really understanding her. She bit down a curse.
Great. So, she’d not only gotten a baby but she’d gotten a fucking weird one. Great.
~
Tim left a note for his family saying that he, Damian, and Ladybug were bored and were going dimension-hopping. His family would probably be suspicious but, hey, at least it wouldn’t be his problem for a good fifteen years on his end.
And, yeah, he knew this was probably one of his dumber plans but… it wasn’t the dumbest. And he was always one to commit when it came down to it. One time he had faked being shot and dealt with crutches for an entire year just to convince Vicki Vale that he wasn’t Red Robin. He had no fears that he couldn’t see this through.
Ladybug, though? A total mystery. She did nearly everything on a whim as far as he knew. She hopped from city to city fighting crime for absolutely no reason outside of boredom and made up all of her plans on the fly. No, he was a bit concerned about her ability to keep doing it.
So, he went as quickly as he possibly could. There was no rhyme or reason to what he was grabbing. He was just… putting stuff in there. There was money and three watches to help them move between dimensions, yes, but there was also a Fanta orange and a copy of Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy and exactly seven pairs of socks.
… yeah, he had the necessities. Probably.
He nearly got out the door before he realized he was still in his crime-fighting gear and he quickly shucked it all off and tossed it into the tub so the blood wouldn’t track any more than it already had. He did not need to avoid Batman’s wrath only to end up on the receiving end of Alfred’s.
He pulled on the first hoodie and jeans he could grab and looked around to make sure he hadn’t left anything of importance.
Okay. Now he was ready to go.
~
Marinette was awkwardly bouncing the baby when Red Robin finally showed up.
… not that she would have recognized him if she hadn’t felt Kaalki hovering in his pocket. In her eyes, he was just a random white guy wearing shades in the middle of the night.
She glanced up at him and gave him an awkward smile.
“Ready?”
He smiled back and held out two watches. Neither fit baby Robin so she prepared herself to choke out a literal baby holy fuck what even was her life.
“Which dimension should we go to?”
“Preferably one without miraculi,” Marinette said. “I don’t want to know what happens if there’s two of the same god in a dimension.”
He nodded slowly. “Probably best if Batman doesn’t exist, either, he’d probably notice my existence.”
“... so… no heroes at all?”
“Looks like we’re going cold turkey,” Red Robin said in a tone that was probably supposed to be joking but just came out flat.
She pushed herself to her feet and waited as he scrolled through the millions of dimensions.
Finally, he came upon one and she added the coordinates to her and Robin’s watches.
She readied Robin’s watch against his neck and tried to ignore the kid’s sudden squirminess.
“3… 2… 1…”
They were gone in a whirl of blue light.