Chapter Text
Dick didn't really have a clear idea of what he was looking for. He just wanted to take some time for himself, without seeming selfish. Being a hero was complicated, and tiring both physically and mentally. But he was the funny one, always with a big smile on his face, so he couldn't really admit he was tired. For years, all his thoughts had revolved around just three things: his family, his work as a hero and the countless responsibilities that were beginning to drown him.
He hadn't realized until it was too late that he never thought about himself, no, he always had to put other people's problems before his own, even if that meant repressing what he felt so as not to risk breaking down in front of his loved ones. Because if there was one thing he hated, it was showing his cracks, and he couldn't allow that. He was one of the heroes who was able to keep his cool when everyone else was rapidly losing theirs. Nobody asked him if he was okay because he made sure nobody ever had to ask that question. And fortunately so, because he honestly didn't know how he'd react if someone did.
So he decided that before he fell apart in front of everyone, he was going to take some kind of vacation. Away from hero work, away from responsibility, if only for a few weeks. There were plenty of heroes to take up the slack in the meantime, and besides, without being defeatist, he wasn't exactly one of the most essential. He wasn't exactly exceptional - sure, he was capable of defeating metas or people with abilities better than his own - but even so, he was just a simple human. If he was stabbed in one place, it was over for him. A fall from too great a height would lead to the same result. As would many other things. He didn't have superpowers like many other heroes, and although Bruce had proved that not having them didn't prevent justice from being done, well... there were still some enemies against whom they were useless.
He'd been part of many teams, some of which he'd even created himself - the Titans, Young Justice, the Justice League - but then again, between these various teams, his civilian work and Bludhaven, he was beginning to feel that perfect mask he'd spent years putting in place cracking.
So he'd been traveling aimlessly, keeping his head down and off the Bats' radar, because as much as he loved his family, he needed a little time for himself, which Alfred had understood when he'd explained that he wanted to take a 'vacation'. Besides, he knew Barbara well enough to know how she worked, and to know that even if Alfred asked her not to look for him for a few weeks, she'd still do it. So he'd had to find ways around her hacks and disappear off her radar. It made him feel a bit like a criminal on the run, which was kind of ironic.
Damian... Damian was a bit of a special case. Ever since the baby bird had come into their lives, Dick had done everything he could to look after him and teach him not to be the emotionless killer his grandfather and mother wanted him to be. He was helping him to open up more to the people around him, and he was sure that his absence for a few weeks wouldn't affect him too much. After all, it wasn't all that different from when he returned to Bludhaven.
The next problem on his list was where to go. Because he'd left on a whim without a clear destination in mind. He'd been to England, but had quickly decided he didn't want to stay there. So his next choice was France. One of the few countries where the JL didn't have to intervene regularly, as there was no major threat from supervillains. The perfect country for a vacation. So, decision made, he took the train from England, crossed the ‘Chunnel’ to get there. Buying a bus ticket, he headed for Paris, reputed to be one of the best-known and most-visited cities in the world, and one he'd never been to before.
And in all honesty, Paris was magnificent.
Where Ghotam and Bludhaven were dark and gloomy, reeking of crime and corruption, Paris was sunny, breathing with life, so much less corrosive. And that only strengthened his conviction that this was the perfect place for his vacation.
Walking through the streets, admiring everything he came across - the monuments, the food, the bridges - he began to look for a hotel to stay in for a few weeks - he had enough money for that - but was cut off from his thoughts when a strange noise echoed all around him. Quickly looking around, his hero instincts kicking in, he soon realized that everyone on the street and in the stores had their eyes glued to their phones, from which the strange notification resounded a second time.
Never in his life had he seen everyone on a street react in the same way simultaneously. They all tensed up, their faces pale and trembling. Parents were grabbing their children's hands so hard it must have hurt, but the children had this terrified look in their eyes. They all held on to their belongings as if preparing to throw them on the ground and run.
What the hell?
"Akuma alert. Red level alert. Inferno has been reakumatized. Please proceed immediately to the nearest anti-akuma bunker."
The robotic voice rang out from all the phones and Dick barely had time to understand what it meant before a column of fire appeared a little further away, accompanied by screams.
And then everyone started running.
As he thought, everyone had indeed dropped their bags and taken their children in their arms before running. The fear was so powerful and total that Dick could feel it himself despite his confusion. He too had no choice but to run in the same direction as everyone else to avoid being trampled, which he saw with horror was not the case for some poor unfortunates. Worst of all, the panic in all these people's eyes was such that none of them seemed to notice the people falling and being stepped on.
Despite the panic and the children's cries and screams, he could hear the sound of explosions in the distance, and that only worried him even more. What the hell was going on?!
Raising his eyes to the sky after a huge bang, he saw a huge fireball heading straight for them, smashing straight into a building and blowing it up. Hundreds of pieces of flaming debris and shards of glass tumbled down onto dozens of civilians running like him, and he was helpless, only able to watch as these innocent people were crushed and burned. But no one stopped, as if all these people hadn't just died in front of their eyes.
Dick had seen death often, being a hero, whether in Gotham or with the Young Justice, but this... this was horrific. To see a mother trying to pull her child out of the burning wreckage. He knew he wouldn't be able to forget the screams he was hearing. He realized with horror that another fireball was about to hit the street they were on and didn't even have time to cry out before his instincts made him jump to the side, saving him from being roasted alive. Dozens of people were not so lucky.
He winced as he realized that part of his calf had been hit by the flames and swallowed a cry, well accustomed to the pain, rising to his feet despite the pulsating pain in his leg. Limping back to his feet, he caught a little girl, who was trying to wake up her dead mom by shaking her, in his arms.
Shit, shit, shit.
What the hell was this nightmare?
And then he heard a roar, because there were no other words to describe it, and felt his blood run cold as he looked at the figure in the distance from which this awful noise came. Was that a demon? A huge scolopendre-like beast made of rock, lava and flame was climbing the buildings as if they were nothing more than twigs.
Realizing that he had frozen in place, he started to run again when the little girl in his arms began to scream at the top of her lungs. After twenty seconds or so, he realized that people were running down some stairs and into a kind of bunker with a butterfly sign on it. Entering too, he laid the little girl on the ground, quickly checking that she wasn't seriously hurt, before looking around. Hundreds of people were crammed into the same area, all trembling and screaming in fear with every new shock. He failed to recognize the material from which the shelter's walls were made, not that it mattered much now.
The bunker doors were closed as more people arrived, the shelter already full to bursting, and Dick couldn't describe the horror that made him tremble at the thought of abandoning these people, but before he could protest, the adrenaline began to drop enough for the pain of his burn to be felt again and he sat down, his back against the wall.
To his right, a father was doing his best to calm his daughter and son. Another tremor and Dick began to think that he'd never see his family again, that he'd be buried alive with hundreds of other people.
Unable to stand by in incomprehension for too long, he turned to the father of the family. "Would you mind explaining what's going on?"
"An Akuma, of course. Inferno. A real bastard that one."
Akuma? The Japanese word for demon. So this scolopendre thing was indeed a demon? But why hadn't the Justice League intervened yet? If this was about a demon then surely Dr. Fate would have been on the scene by now.
"Ladybug and her team have already beaten him once and they're going to do it again," said the little girl.
"Ladybug?"
The man looked at him as if trying to see if he was being stupid on purpose before his eyes widened. "You're not from around here, are you?"
"No. I've come here to spend a vacation of sorts."
"You've chosen your destination badly." he winced. "What's happening now is an akuma attack. For seven years Paris has been under the yoke of a magical terrorist who uses people's negative emotions to turn them into monsters. His name is Shadow Moth and he possesses the power to create what are known as Akumas, magically-charged butterflies that fuse with an object worn by a person displaying a powerful negative emotion, transforming them into a supervillain with powers. For several years now, this bastard has also been able to create sentimonsters with magical feathers called Amoks. He uses all the monsters he creates to fight the heroes of Paris, because he wants to seize their powers."
What the actual fucking hell? What the fuck. How could something so huge have slipped under the JL's radar? A magical terrorist able to create villains whenever an innocent feels a negative emotion? Everyone feels negative emotions. Seven years. The city's residents had been dealing with this kind of attack for seven years. No wonder they all seemed so ready to react. But how many victims had there been in all that time?
"Lady Noire is the best," exclaimed the little girl, snapping him out of his thoughts.
"No, it's Multimouse!"
"Nonsense, the best is Ladybug."
He ignored the bickering between the three children to turn back to the father, who had pulled out his phone on which he put a video that looked like it was being filmed live.
"After a few years, hundreds of cameras were placed all over the city, to find out where the akumas were, but we also use them to see how the battles are going."
Dick soon realized that most of the people who weren't reassuring their loved ones were looking at their phones in the same way as the man beside him, so he looked down to watch too. It was a vision of hell, some kind of humanoid monster made of flame and magma throwing huge fireballs everywhere, destroying whole streets, fighting against what must have been the heroes of Paris they'd been talking about earlier.
"The girl in red and black is Ladybug, the original heroine of Paris, who's been fighting to protect us for seven long years. Alongside her is Multimouse, in gray and pink, who has become a permanent heroine, as has Lady Noire in black and green. There used to be Chat Noir, but he's become a real asshole, so Ladybug took his Miraculous away from him and gave it to a real heroine. Then there are the temporary heroes, here you can see Kappa" he pointed to a woman in a dark green costume with a hood and what appeared to be some kind of shield, creating a kind of protective dome around Lady Noire who was about to be charred. "And finally there's Beyla, in yellow and black. There are other temporary heroes, but they're not here right now."
"And so, this...thing is an akuma?" He asked with confusion, so much information jostling in his head that he was starting to get a headache.
"Yes, Inferno, Red-class akuma. He'd already appeared once, but unlike last time, this time he's got a damn sentimonster, that devil bug thing."
"So there are different classes of Akuma?" The more information he could get, the better.
"That's right, there are 5. First of all, there's the Green Akuma, the ones that do almost no victims and are very easy to defeat, like Mr Pigeon. The most casualties the Green ones caused was 2 people when Gigantitan threw a car he was no longer interested in. Then there's the Yellow Akuma, a little harder to defeat and with more victims. Then there's the Orange, which do hundreds of victims. And then there are the Red Akuma, like Inferno, who cause the death of thousands of people and a lot of destruction. They are generally difficult to defeat and their powers are terrifying. And finally, there are the Purple Akuma." he stopped talking, a haunted look in his eyes that Dick knew all too well, before taking a deep breath and continuing in a very dark tone. "They're the worst. Monsters in the purest sense of the word, even if the people they are before they're akumatized don't know what they're doing. Fortunately, they are very rare, because they make hundreds of thousands of victims. What's more, they're almost impossible to defeat. In seven years, there have only been eight Purple Akuma, and they're all traumatic. None of them were worse than Jester ." He shook so violently that Dick was afraid he'd drop his phone, and saw that the name 'Jester' had provoked reactions of horror in many of the people who could hear their conversation. What the fuck? "Trust me, you don't want to know what this... this monster was capable of. There's an app called Akuma.Alert that warns of attacks and has a list, videos and lots of other Akuma info if you want."
Okay. That was a lot of information to swallow. He was definitely going to install this app when he got out of here and get to the bottom of this mess. That is, if he got out of here alive.
"It was noble what you did for that little girl." the man pointed with his chin at the little girl Dick had saved on the street. "Very few people would have saved her, too busy wanting to save their lives or the lives of their loved ones. After all, nobody wants to die again."
Wait. What ?!
"Again? What do you mean again?" He was afraid the situation here was even worse than he'd thought.
"Ah yes, I forgot you're not from around here. Ladybug has a special power called the Miraculous Cure that brings back the dead, heals the wounded and repairs all the damage caused by the battle when it's over. That's why it's vital that she stays alive and wins, otherwise there's no magical return."
Dick knew he was wide-mouthed and wide-eyed, but now he couldn't really react any other way.
"She can bring the dead back to life?" he asked in a slightly strangled voice.
"Only lives lost to Akumas or Sentimonsters."
Dick was flabbergasted. "Wait, does that mean you..." he didn't dare finish his question.
"Yes, I've already died. Four times, to be honest. The thing is, sure, you come back to life, but you don't forget how you died. It leaves scars. Everyone in Paris has died at least once in seven years."
It was ... horrific. Dick couldn't even imagine the trauma of all those people, dying and coming back to life again and again. He'd seen what dying had done to Jason, sure the Lazarus Pit was different, but dying was still an experience no one should remember.
"I... How could something like this... I mean, why wasn't the Justice League ever informed of what was going on here?" he couldn't help asking, which he immediately regretted when he saw the man's expression darken.
"The Justice League." he snorted. "Ladybug sent them a message calling for help after the first Akuma, Stoneheart, but she never got a reply. And then the French government and the mayor of Paris finally decided to block the release of information about the attacks. So as ‘not to panic the rest of our fellow citizens', they told us. What a joke. On top of that, apparently there's some kind of magical interference or something. All this to say that those bastards in tights suits never came to help us, and according to our heroes, that's for the better. Imagine an akumatized Superman. A real nightmare."
What the fuck? Dick had the impression that this was the only thing he'd been able to think since the beginning of this whole mess. But it was just... unbelievable. The JL had ignored a call for help? The French government was preventing the rest of the world from knowing what was really going on here? Bruce was going to be livid to learn that something this huge had been going on under everyone's noses for seven fucking years!
After that, they went back to watching the video of the Paris heroes against the two fire monsters, and Dick honestly knew that if he'd had to fight alongside them, he wouldn't have made it out alive. That's how formidable this enemy was.
After long minutes in which everyone seemed to be holding their breath, anticipation and fear coating the whole room like miasma, the fire monster finally disappeared, before the red-spotted heroine hurled an object he couldn't see into the sky and thousands of magical ladybugs exploded from it and set about repairing everything. Dick wouldn't exaggerate when he said that in all his life he'd never been so in awe of anything, it was just... impossible to believe and yet.
Those magical ladybugs eventually made their way into the bunker too, and Dick was more than a little surprised when the pain in his leg suddenly disappeared. He lifted his pants to see that the burn on his calf had completely disappeared, as if it had never been there in the first place.
It left him breathless, and he was sure he looked stupid touching his leg with a dumbfounded look on his face.
After that, everyone got out of the bunker and started on their way, as if nothing had happened, even if the signs of trauma could still be seen. The little girl he had saved ran quickly to jump into the arms of her mother, who was indeed alive as if nothing had happened, but with that haunted look in her eyes.
He tried to tell himself that he should continue on his way, and choose another city to relax in, but he knew perfectly well that he wasn't like that.
He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and thanked himself for having remembered to take his costume, even if he would have preferred not to have to put it on for a few more weeks.
One thing was for sure, he wasn't leaving this city without unmasking the bastard who'd been terrorizing millions of people for years.
He sighed. And him who wanted a vacation.