Going home for the holidays had been both a blessing and a curse.

One one hand, Marinette got the opportunity to spend time with her siblings and best friend. On another, being back in the city of darkness definitely took its toll on her mind.

After returning to Paris, she'd wake up night after night with flashes of acid green water, emerald eyes and auburn hair, the flick of a whip, the sound of a sword cutting through her brother's body, Heretic's head rolling once, twice, three times before coming to a stop.

Gotham made her happy and simultaneously ruined her, dredging up all the bad memories as well as the good ones.

On the tenth night back, after being woken up by her own screams yet again, she gets out of bed instead of trying to go back to sleep. It would be a fruitless effort, anyway.

Tikki looks at her sadly from her perch on the bed that Marinette made her, and she feels a small pang of guilt for keeping the kwami from a good night's sleep as well.

"I would like to go for a rooftop run," She informs Tikki. "Would that be alright with you?"

The kwami nods, and she whispers her transformation words before slipping out onto the roof and leaping off, opting to test her physical limits rather than use her yoyo.

Her steps are featherlight, nearly silent, and wind rushes past her face as she runs and jumps and rolls, navigating the rooftops with ease and familiarity that can only come from continued patrol of the area.

She thinks she's being quiet, but apparently that's not enough.

A whoosh of air and a blur of red and blue stops her in her tracks as Superboy, the second one, lands in front of her.

"I could hear you from Metropolis," He quietly informs her, his blue eyes filled with an emotion that makes her want to cry and raises her hackles at the same time, because she does not need anyone to feel pity for her. She decides to stifle both those emotions. There is no need to bother Jon-El with either.

Ladybug cracks a small smile at the sight of her friend, not that he can see it (or can he? It depends on whether or not he's using x-ray vision) through the mask. "My heartbeat? It is rather difficult to control one's heartbeat while exercising, you know."

"No. Your screams," Jon-El says, and that tiny smile drops off her face. "Mari... Do you want to talk about it?"

"Code names," Ladybug reminds him, but it's half-hearted. She sits down on the roof, legs swinging over the edge, and Superboy follows her lead, doing the same.

"You can't keep this bottled up inside," He says gently, blue eyes piercing into her soul. "You have to let it out."

Ladybug sighs through her nose and looks up at the sky, where the stars are actually visible, so unlike home. "I know."

Jon-El follows her gaze. "The stars are beautiful, aren't they? You don't see them in Gotham, and Metropolis is only slightly better."

Her shoulders are straight, posture rigidly perfect to anyone who doesn't know her, but those who do would be able to tell that they slump under the weight of a city, secrets, loss, and her own memories.

"He was my brother," She whispers, barely even making a sound, but she knows he hears it. "He was my brother, the first person that I could really trust, the first person to truly understand me. When it seemed like nobody at the Manor wanted us around, we helped each other through it. He was my brother, and he was always there when I needed him. Why couldn't I save him? Why wasn't I there when he needed me?"

"You did everything that you could, Mari," Superboy says, wrapping a careful arm around her shoulder. "You did your best."

Ladybug doesn't even bother reminding him about the code names this time. "Yes. I did my best, and it wasn't enough. It's never enough." Cold emerald eyes and auburn hair, the lash of a whip against bare skin, acidic green water and pain pain pain so much pain, a voice, saying that she's not good enough a failure disappointment can't do anything right never enough couldn't even save her own brother more discipline shows too much emotion put her in the Pit wish I could die properly blood so much blood on a sword and around a body in a red tunic and black cape-

Her thoughts are interrupted when Jon-El, deciding that words aren't working, pulls her into a full-fledged hug, warm, strong arms wrapping around her and squeezing just tight enough to make her feel safe and secure and not have her senses scream dangerdangerdanger!

He was always good at knowing her limits and comfort zones.

She lets herself relax into the hug, embracing the warmth that always comes with hugging a Kryptonian and burying her face into his shoulder.

If the shoulder of his suit is wet when they finally pull away, neither of them mentions it.

.o0o.

Life goes on, as much as Marinette doesn't want it to.

She may want to curl up into a ball in her bedroom back in Gotham, the one with the bunk bed and the two desks, one covered in fabric and the other in artwork, but she can't.

Instead, she's on the other side of the world, pretending to be someone else and constantly on alert, ready to leap up and save her city at any moment.

She wants to go home.

But where is home?

Home isn't Nanda Parbat, hidden away in the mountains, beautiful on the outside until you hear the screams of agony within.

Home isn't Paris, where she has to pretend to be someone she's not, where she went to escape the darkest parts of her mind and had the burden of an entire city placed on her shoulders instead.

The logical conclusion then would be that home is Gotham.

Gotham, where the Manor is. Where her family, Alfred and Dick and Jason and Tim and Cass and Father are, but Gotham is also where Damian once was.

Where he will never step foot in again.

Marinette's hands curl over her balcony railing long after Superboy returns home and smiles bitterly at the stars above, letting the cool night breeze blow her dark hair out of her eyes. It's gotten much longer since she came to Paris. For some reason, she can't bring herself to cut it, despite the fact that the length is starting to get in her way.

She's never had hair that could brush her shoulders before, and she's very unused to it.

But she can't even think about chopping it short again, because in the past, it was always kept short for convenience. So she could fight, kill, even, and it wouldn't get in the way. Later, it was still so she could fight, but it was for a different cause.

Now, she has magic earrings that automatically shorten her hair when she transforms, so why bother?

(She refuses to admit that maybe she doesn't want to do it because the ends of her hair have been around since Damian was still alive, and that for some stupid reason, discarding them would be like erasing part of him.)

Above her, the stars twinkle in a way that the ones above Gotham never really seemed to manage, unhindered by the constant smog over the city that both brought her light and sucked it all away.

Marinette has never believed in any one religion, but tonight, she wonders as she looks up at the silver sparkling in the sky.

Where do people's souls go when they die? Do people have souls at all? Is there another realm, another life beyond this one? Would they become stars?

The scientific part of her brain knows that they cannot become stars, that stars are bright balls of burning gas, but the emotional part of her, the one not powered by logic and so rarely ever allowed to work, can hope.

She looks up, and she finds a star, smaller than the others around it, but burning fiercely bright, reminding her of a boy she once knew, filled with so much pride and anger and determination to do better, to be the best.

(A star only has so much fuel to burn. If it burns brighter, it will also use up all its fuel faster. And it will die, long before the others.)

She looks up at the tiny, bright star, and gives it a small smile and a wave.

"Hello, akhi."

The next day, she opens a hidden compartment in her desk and pulls out a katana that was once wielded by a masked boy in red and green and gold, before bringing the blade to her hair and watching as long, dark locks fall onto the floor at her feet.

(The fifth stage of grief is acceptance that the person is gone.)