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Anon: Can you write a fic we're Bruce adopts Marinette after her parents disowns her because they believed Lila lies and she is friends with Damian
Warning: mentions of child abuse.
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So I did some research and there is no legal way for Tom and Sabine to disown Marinette, which means that something would have to happen that made CPS declare them unfit parents and remove Marinette from their care, since her becoming an emancipated minor would kind of ruin the entire point of having Bruce adopt her in the first place.
The catalyst is Lila, as it usually is.
Her lies bring dirt to their bakery's pristine reputation, one that her parents had worked so hard to build up.
They lose customers, and slowly, their daily profit drops. And drops. And drops.
But the liar wasn't done, no.
She told Marinette's parents that she was bullying her, that Marinette was skipping class to see her 'secret boyfriend' who was a delinquent.
It didn't help that the rest of the class backed up Lila's claims, and that Marinette couldn't exactly explain that she occasionally missed class during potential world-ending events that required Ladybug to show. She also couldn't explain that she and Damian were actually just friends (wow does she sound like Adrien) and that Damian was in a happy relationship with Jon Kent. Nope, because then she'd also have to explain how on Earth she'd managed to befriend the youngest child of the world's richest man, who happens to live across the Atlantic Ocean in America.
And Marinette highly doubted 'he's an illegal vigilante from Gotham City whom I met while masquerading as the polka-dotted hero who's been saving this city for years because he was following a lead in Paris and I thought he was a new villain of some sort' would go over with her parents.
So she accepts it, when her parents start to use her as an outlet to vent their frustrations, because in a way, it is her fault.
If she hadn't antagonized Lila, they wouldn't be in this situation.
Of course, the first one to notice the bruises doesn't even normally live in France.
Damian is a Bat, after all, and the Bats can spot bruises covered by makeup from miles away, no matter how good one thinks their coverage is. It's what they're trained to do.
He sees the black eye she thought she hid quite well when she accepts his request to video chat, and masks his frown after a moment, but Marinette catches it.
It's what she's trained to do.
The next day, Damian is waiting for her when school ends, and he walks her back to the bakery before buying everything in the display cases and leaving a thousand dollars in the tip jar.
Her parents don't lay a finger on her for two weeks.
The next time he spots a bruise, he has Jon fly him over almost immediately. A familiar knocking pattern sounds on her skylight, and she quickly lets them in before anyone sees.
Damian demands to know the full extent of her injuries. Judging by Jon's poorly hidden facial expressions, he'd already scanned her.
Marinette sighs and takes off her shirt, knowing that there was nothing that Damian hadn't already seen because of various emergencies.
Besides, both Damian and Jon were gayer than a pair of rainbows. It was fine.
The next day, she is removed from Tom and Sabine's care, the process obviously sped up with Bruce Wayne's seemingly infinite wealth.
Marinette ends up living in the Manor with the Waynes, also a side effect of Bruce Wayne's immense wealth.
Though she was already familiar with the Bats, she is now fully incorporated into their dynamics, and after the third week, starts joining them on patrol with the Black Cat, her dark suit seemingly made of the shadows themselves. (Maybe they are. Magic is weird, and she chooses not to question it.)
Two months after she is temporarily placed in Bruce Wayne's care, she is asked if she would like to be adopted.
Marinette thinks of the bakery, of a lonely child who would do anything for affection, and then of Bruce, of Alfred, of Dick and Jason and Tim and Cass and Steph and Damian and Duke, all crammed into one wing of a Manor that could easily house over 100 people, of loud laughter and the feeling of leaping over rooftops with people at her back, of movie nights with warm bodies pressed against hers and of the one time she fell asleep in Cass' lap, and the other girl just sat there for six hours without moving a muscle, letting her sleep.
Marinette thinks of Paris, with her biological parents, then of Gotham, with people that feel more like family than Tom and Sabine have in a long time, and thinks that the answer is obvious.
She looks up into Bruce Wayne's blue eyes, hopefulness concealed by a neutral mask that would fool anyone else, but he has trained her to spot these things.
"Yes." Marinette says, and smiles when her siblings in everything but legal documents (and soon, those too) leap out of their half-hearted hiding places and cheer, piling onto them in one massive group hug, Bruce making an oof as Jason lands on top of him.
Damian ends up right next to her, and Marinette twists, blue eyes meeting green. She beams at him, and he smiles back, satisfied with the outcome.
Thank you, Damian. She mouths to him over Dick and Stephanie's excited squeals. Thank you.
