Chapter Text
It started out as a joke in the middle of a fight.
It was one of those world ending crises that seemed to happen every other week, and the justice league had called in available members to help out. As of the last few years that included a certain team of French superheroes, although only Chat Noir and Rena Rouge had been able to make it to this particular world saving event. It had been short notice after all, and was a come-if-you-can, not drop-everything-immediately kind of threat. The rest of the available roster included Green Arrow, Arsenal, and Captain Marvel.
The villain was making threats as they often liked to do. “Prepare to die,” he was saying. A very unoriginal threat indeed.
And of course Chat Noir had sassed back with a casual, “Been there done that.” Almost all the Paris heroes had died at least once. Hell, almost all of Paris had died at least once. All but Ladybug, who dutifully brought everyone back from the dead with her Miraculous Cure.
Which had of course led to Arsenal chiming in with, “Join the club.”
“There’s a club?” Captain Marvel had asked with an enthusiasm that didn’t match his mature appearance. “I’ve died. Can I join too?”
“Sure,” Rena Rouge had said sarcastically, “We meet every Saturday.”
As the fighting continued, the idea became more and more elaborate, with each previously dead hero chiming in to add a layer to the narrative.
“Assumed dead and faked deaths don’t count,” Green Arrow had joked.
“How come you get to make the rules?” Chat Noir asked playfully.
“Because I rent the club room and pay for the snacks,” he’d deadpanned.
This made Captain Marvel, who’d been reasonable sure they were all joking, start to doubt his assumption.
“Does getting stuck in the speed force for decades count as being dead?” The Flash had asked when he’d arrived towards the end of the fight.
“No, it doesn’t,” Arsenal decided, as that clearly fell under ‘assumed dead’ and not actually dead.
“Rude!”
After several more rules had been put in place for their imaginary club, the fight wrapped up and the Flash had run away with the subdued villain. The five heroes stood there, exchanging thoughtful glances.
“So … see you all Saturday?” Chat Noir asked with his signature grin.
And thus, the Dead Heroes Club was born.
———
Marinette Dupain-Cheng was an incredibly busy person. She had been a busy person since her early teens and that had not changed when she had become a young adult. While Hawkmoth had been unmasked and defeated in her last year of high school, her superhero duties had not ended. After all, how could someone as eager to help as Marinette turn down an invitation from the Justice League. She’d been a superhero through her formative years, she couldn’t just give it up because she’d defeated her nemesis.
Still, she would often question her decision to continue her heroism on evenings such as this when she had an essay due tomorrow morning for university, a commission to finish for her MDC fashion brand, and an alert from the Justice League about a supervillain placing bombs on all the worlds most famous monuments. Someone was going to have to double check the Eiffel Tower to see if it made the cut and, if it did, disarm a bomb.
She shut her laptop with a sigh and called Adrien. Hopefully, he could take this one for her. With the power of destruction, he’d be best equiped to get rid of a bomb anyway.
“My lady,” her kitty answered enthusiastically. There was a lot of background noise and Marinette heard Adrien shushing people around him. “What’s going on?”
“… Are you at a party?” Marinette asked incredulously.
“No!” He said, a little louder than necessary. “I’m just at a club meeting.”
“Have you been drinking?”
“A little,” he admitted, “But I’m sober enough if you need me?”
Marinette paused. After Hawkmoth had turned out to be Gabriel Agreste, Adrien had had a rough time. He’d had so much vitriol and suspicion thrown at him from Paris. Then there was his own guilt at not realising his father had been behind everything. Not to mention the emotional whiplash of discovering his father was the supervillain he had been fighting and that the mother he thought was dead was actually comatose in their basement.
They’d managed to use the miraculous to heal Emilie Agreste, which had helped, but Marinette could see that her best friend was still weighed down by everything that had happened. She hadn’t known Adrien had joined some kind of club, but if it was helping him let go of his problems for a bit then she didn’t want to interrupt. Between his superhero duties and trying to reform his father’s business, Adrien deserved his downtime.
“No,” she said. “Everything here is handled.”
“Are you sure, Bugaboo?” He asked, some concern leaking into his voice.
“Is that Ladybug?” Nino’s voice came through the phone. “Is there an emergency?”
“An emergency?” She heard Chloé’s voice as well.
“Everything is fine,” Marinette assured them with all her Ladybug confidence. How many of her friends were in this mysterious club? She was too secure in her friendships to feel insecure about being left out, but she did wonder why no one had thought to invite her. “You enjoy your club. I’ll talk to you later.”
Marinette hung up and looked at her phone for a second. She thought about calling one of the other heroes, but she didn’t want to waste anymore time calling people who may also be in that ‘club meeting’. Dropping her phone on her desk, she looked over at Tikki, who was already at the ready.
“Tikki, spots on.”
In a flash of light, Marinette was transformed into Ladybug. She wasted no time, diving out the window and swinging to the Eiffel Tower. Luckily she was able to find the bomb fairly quickly. It was counting down quickly, so she called for a Lucky Charm. She received a pair of wire cutters for her trouble. After opening the panel to expose the inner workings of the bomb, she was greeted with a dozen coloured wires.
Although Marinette had picked up several useful skills in her tenure as Ladybug, difusing a bomb was not one of those skills. However, after so many years as the embodiment of creation and luck she had something much better. Closing her eyes, she picked a wire at random and snipped it with the wire cutters. The bomb stopped counting down and went inactive. She threw the spotted wire cutters into the air, and the Miraculous Cure erased what remained of the bomb. It was too bad she could only use the Cure after she’d triumphed in some way with the object she’d received, otherwise she could have skipped defusing the bomb entirely.
With everything taken care of, Marinette returned home and dove back into the work she had to do. She’d completely forgot about Adrien’s mysterious club until Chat Noir arrived to check on her later that evening. After coming into her flat through her balcony, Adrien de-transformed and flopped onto her couch.
“Hey, Mari,” he greeted, still sounding a little tipsy. “Is everything still alright? I’m sorry I didn’t help earlier.”
“I told you everything was fine, and it was,” she reminded him. “There’s nothing to be sorry for.”
“I know, I just…” he trailed off.
“I know, kitty,” she said gently, dropping her work to sit beside him. “You always want to show up for me. But I really didn’t need you this time and it barely took ten minutes. I much prefer knowing that you were having fun.”
He smiled at her. “Thanks, bug.”
“Of course,” she said. Then she couldn’t help her curiosity anymore. “So what’s this club that everyone seems to be in?”
“We weren’t trying to exclude you,” he rushed to say, confirming her suspicions that a lot of her friends were probably in this mysterious club. “You just don’t meet the criteria so I didn’t think to tell you about it.”
“Well don’t leave me in suspense,” she said with a smile to show she wasn’t offended.
“It’s the Dead Heroes Club,” he told her with a silly grin. “For heroes who’ve died. We meet up every Saturday, but obviously not everyone shows up for every meeting. It’s just to have a bit of fun and talk about dying. It’s kind of therapeutic actually.”
Marinette snorted. “I’ve died, you know,” she said without thinking about it.
“What?” Adrien splutters. “No, you haven’t. You can’t have died. You’re the one who brings everyone back from the dead.”
“I really did die,” Marinette told him, trying to seem calm as she remembered Chat Blanc and the moon being destroyed. “But Bunnyx erased the entire timeline. When I became the guardian I started remembering it, as well as some of the moments Viperon erased. I’ve actually died a couple of times, just like the rest of you.”
Adrien looked somewhat alarmed by this new knowledge. “Oh.”
“Thank Kwami for time travel, right?” Marinette added in an attempt to lighten the mood. She hadn’t meant to divulge all this, but it had slipped out. Whatever happened, she resolved never to tell Adrien about Chat Blanc. She’d just have to be vague about the details if he asked further questions.
Adrien very deliberately shook off his concern in favour of a more positive realisation. “Well then,” he said, a Chat Noir smirk building on his face, “You’ve purr-sitively got to come to the Dead Heroes Club now. It’s paw-some.”
Marinette groaned.
———
“No. I’ve already told you, Arse. I’m not coming to your stupid club.”
“Come on,” Roy Harper, a.k.a. Arsenal, said. “It’ll be good for you.”
“No,” Jason Todd, a.k.a. Red Hood, repeated. “I may have been dead, but I’m certainly not a hero.”
“You help out the Justice League all the time,” Roy pointed out. “Besides, it’s just a name. Vigilantes and anti-heroes are members too. Even Robin came to one meeting.”
“Bullshit,” Jason said. “There’s no way Demon Spawn willingly did something social.”
“He did. He and Batman showed up a few weeks ago. Sure, they only stood in the corner for five minutes then left, but they were there.”
“If B’s approved it then I want to go even less. Why do you care so much anyway?”
“We’ve gotta catch ‘em all,” Roy said, completely serious. “Just come the one time so we can say you’re a member.”
Jason paused as if he were seriously considering it. He was not. “No.”
Neither of them said anything for a moment.
“… There’s free alcohol.”
“…”
“…”
“… Why didn’t you lead with that?”