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There were stars in her eyes.
He hadn’t noticed during their first encounter. He had been too busy trying to make her feel like she deserved to be a hero, to erase that doubt from her gorgeous head, to notice.
In fact, he didn’t notice for months. Not until their first patrol.
That was the first time he had focus. Focus on something other than a monster rampaging the streets, or her lucky charm, or that civilian trapped under a car. Focus on her.
He saw it then, when she was debating whether or not they should go together, split it East-West, or split North-South.
He saw an intensity, a confidence in her gaze that lit up the skyline so much so that the dark threatening the sunset almost went without notice. He could almost forget how he had had to flake on his friends again just for another meeting with his father to make him regret he hadn’t been the one to have his mother’s fate.
He had always wondered why Paris seemed to favor the red over the black. They both showed up to all the fights and he used to believe he was just as important as Ladybug in the capture of Akumas.
Now, though, he understood.
It had taken him months. He was slow. He had always been slow. The citizens of Paris had noticed before he had, and they were not fighting beside her at least once a week.
But maybe it was a good thing that he was slow. Good, just this once.
It allowed him some months of peace before that nugget of understanding burrowed in his brain and curled up in its forever home.
It was because she was everything he could never be.
She was likable. Confident. Quick.
Now he understood why she had the stars in her eyes. Because she was everything he could never be. Because he was slow. Because he was the dark night sky there to bring danger, death, and chaos, while she fixed her bright blue eyes on the destruction he had caused, ready to fix it with a single smile.
Now he knew why Parisians preferred her.
And, in the end, he couldn’t complain.
Because he, too, found the stars more appealing than the black.