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The sun was setting. Deep red and rusty orange painted the horizon, the rest of the sky a dark gradient from purple and navy to black. Venus was visible, a bright speck peeking through the haze of clouds and smog that the stars couldn't pierce. Below them, lights flickered on, flooding the city orange and yellow and white. Paris was never really dark.
A cold breeze rushed through, almost enough to penetrate the magic of their suits. Instead it was a relief, balancing out the warmth from their linked arms as they leaned against each other, her head on his shoulder as they watched night fall over the city.
"Do you remember..." Ladybug asked quietly. Her voice was muted by the long stretch of silence that had preceded the question, and she cleared her throat before starting again. "Do you remember that... dream we shared?"
Chat Noir hummed as he thought, staring off into the distance. "Like 'hopes and dreams' or like a falling asleep dream?"
"Both," said Ladybug, and her arm clenched around his. "A 'Gift'."
He shut his eyes and leaned back against his hands. "Mr Damocles. I remember."
Mostly, he remembered the ache when it ended. The hot anger that coursed through him. Forcing down the bitter desire to avenge the loss of something he never had.
"I was just thinking," Ladybug continued. "Do you remember their names?"
Chat looked at her. She was still staring off into the distance, her face barely visible at his angle, obscured by her hair.
"Whose?"
"The children." Her voice was still soft, no emotion but vague curiosity. "There were five of them."
"I thought it got up to seven," said Chat. He looked up at the sky. Still no real stars visible. Just Venus and a sliver of the moon. "I'm not sure they had names. They were just... concepts. Possibilities."
"All of it was."
"Why do you ask?"
Ladybug didn't answer. After a moment, she pushed away from Chat's arm, getting to her feet and stretching her arms over her head. She strolled along the lattice, footsteps resonating through the metal and up Chat Noir's spine until she stopped, leaning against the tower, her body blocking a tiny part of the nightly light show, probably unnoticeable from the streets below.
"I've had names picked out for my future kids since I was a kid myself," said Ladybug. "I had it all planned out. Proposal, wedding, the number of children at what time in my life and what they would be called." She looked at him from the corner of her eye and smirked. "I only ever planned for three, though. I wonder where the other two-to-four came from."
Chat shrugged. He stood up as well, stretching and hearing his back and shoulders pop as he did. "Don't look at me. I never had a more specific idea than 'happily ever after.'"
"Really?"
"I wanted a life together. A kid, maybe more than one. A happy family that spent time together. Not much more than that."
Ladybug crossed her arms and stared into the distance.
"Since the Gift was playing off our love for each other, I guess that mixed with our other future wants and built on itself," said Chat.
"What about now?" Ladybug asked. "What are your 'future wants' now?"
"The same," he said. "Happily ever after."
He leaned next to her, blocking another set of lights.
"It seems as far away as ever, though."
They stood in silence once more. The sky became dark. The city lit up.
"I kind of like the name Marie," said Chat.
Ladybug hummed acknowledgement. "What about for a boy?"
"Toulouse," he said, "Or Berlioz."
"Toul-" Ladybug started to repeat, then blinked, eyes focusing back in the present, on Chat, and she shoved him playfully away. "Those are the Aristocats!"
Chat laughed, ducking under her hands as she swatted at him. "Maybe~" he sing-songed. He caught her wrists and pulled her away from the tower lights, into a semblance of a waltz. "Just seeing if you were paying attention."
She twisted a hand out of his grip, resting it on his shoulder instead. He responded in kind, putting his freed hand on her hip.
He was taller than her, now, and her head fell to rest against his chest as they swayed to inaudible music. He hummed part of Ev'rybody Wants To Be A Cat , eventually trailing back into silence when she didn't smack his face in protest.
"Are you okay, Buggaboo?"
"Yeah," she sighed.
"Everything's okay with your fiancé?"
"As fine as it can be," she whispered. The hand that still rested in his own squeezed in reassurance. "Between all the secrets and lies. Running off to fight another akuma. Again and again and again."
He squeezed her hand back, then dropped it to wrap around her waist, pulling her into a hug as they danced. Her arms wrapped around his shoulders.
"I know what you mean," he murmured into her hair.
"Part of me thought it would be over by now," said Ladybug. "Part of me wants it to be."
Chat tried not to let his body stiffen at that. He forced himself not to clench his hands around her, to refuse to let her go.
"...You don't have to, you know," he said. "You can pass it on to someone else. You can go back to a normal life, if you really want."
"I know," she said. She sniffed, then laughed harshly, her shaking shoulders digging into Chat's sides. "Believe me, I know. I've played with every option. Give everything up, lose the memories, be a normal girl who doesn't have to make excuses to her fiancé, get married and have three kids and never look back. Or just the earrings- keep being Guardian, pass the daily hero-ing to somebody else, have a bit of both."
She pulled away suddenly, wiping her eyes with the side of her wrist. Her face was a sad smile when she looked up, tears welling up against her eyelashes, shining jewels in the light of the Eiffel Tower.
"But I can't imagine it any more," she said. "I can't imagine being happy in a life without being Ladybug. I can't imagine having kids who don't know Tikki, who don't know you ."
"We've been doing this for almost half our lives, now," said Chat. "I don't know that I could do it either."
She looked out over the city.
He followed her gaze, over an endless sea of dark buildings and scattered, twinkling lights, making up for the lack of stars above them.
"The Gift started with defeating Monarch," said Ladybug.
"Same as ever."
"I don't want to stop being Ladybug. I don't want a 'normal' life any more, this is normal for me. I just wish we could stop fighting. Stop having secrets."
Her eyes shut, cutting off the glittering crystals that Chat loved. He'd always loved her eyes, since he was 13 and stupid and head over heels with a shallow crush, into adulthood through battle and respect and friendship and heartbreak and recovery. His heart still ached looking into them, but not for unrequited love. Instead, they made him think of Marinette, back at their apartment, shadows under her eyes from working on some project too late again, still vibrant with energy, the same bright blue he fell in love with. They made him think of all the lies he'd told her, all the secrets he still kept, even after his proposal and her acceptance and all the waiting she endured.
"I don't know how long he'll wait for me," Ladybug continued. "Are we just going to stay engaged forever, never taking another step? Are we ever going to move forward?"
"I wish I knew," Chat said. "I'm lucky, I guess, that my fiancée never asks. I'm terrified one day she'll get tired of waiting for me."
"Exactly," Ladybug said, voice back to a hushed whisper. She shook herself, back straightening, the heroic confidence she wore under her mask returning, and stepped forward into Chat's space. "But she won't. She'd be stupid to give up someone as good as you, just for a little secret identity."
"Same goes for you," he said, and flicked her forehead. Her nose scrunched up in a frown as she rubbed it. "He loves you. He'll wait for you. Talk to him, you'll see."
"I will if you will," she grumbled. She stopped massaging her head, glanced at her fingers as if expecting to find she'd wiped something off, then poked him squarely in the center of the chest. "You figure out your happily ever after, aristo-kittens and all."
"Yeah, yeah, I know," said Chat, and pushed her away the way she had done him. He looked out over the city again, eyes falling on the darkened neighborhoods around where he knew his old house was, unable to see it between the distance and the darkness.
"I think that's why I never thought about... kittens," he said. "Not really. Not when I'm so afraid of passing on my own family issues. There have been so many secrets and lies already. How can adding my own do anything but make it worse?"
"That's stupid," said Ladybug flatly. She stepped in front of him, forcing their eyes to meet, not letting him look away from her stern glare. "You're you. You're Chat Noir, and whoever you are when you aren't is just as strong and kind and good. You've never let your 'family issues' keep you down-"
"-I have," he interrupted. "It's caused a lot of trouble, both heroing and in normal life-"
"-Well then you've overcome it, every time," Ladybug insisted. "You're stronger than that. And you'll be a great dad, whenever you finally get hitched and have kittens. And a great babysitter, because I'm definitely going to dump mine on you when I need a break."
"I never agreed to that!"
"Too bad! As Guardian, I'm declaring being world's best babysitter part of Chat Noir's duties. You aren't allowed to refuse."
"Sure I am," he said, and wiggled his fingers in front of her face. "Maybe that's the turning point. Maybe that's enough to make me renounce my powers and go back to civilian life."
"You wouldn't dare."
"Hmm, I don't know, you said you're going to have at least three? That's a lot of ladybug larvae, I don't know if I can handle it."
"Don't call my theoretical children larvae!"
"Grubs! Wriggling grubs eating aphids and spider mites, squirming around on leaves-"
"Stooooop!" She pushed him backwards, and he caught her hands in his, twirling her around so they didn't stumble off the top of the tower.
"That dream would have been very different, wouldn't it," said Chat, and stuck his tongue out at her. "Larvae instead of babies. Squirmy worms in strollers."
"They were your dream-babies too," Ladybug countered. "Let's go back to kittens."
"Cat-erpillars!" he exclaimed delightedly.
"No!" Ladybug shoved him away again, but she was laughing. She stood on the edge of the tiny platform, looking up at the sky, shielding her eyes with a hand to block the intense floodlights at the very top of the tower.
"Feeling better?" Chat asked, joining her at the edge.
"Yeah," she said, and rocked backwards, not quite enough to fall down into the streets below. "Ugh. It's so late already."
"Your beau gonna be mad you're back late?"
"No," she said, with a dreamy sigh that once would have made his heart clench with jealousy. "Somehow, he understands. As long as I'm back safe, eventually."
"Yeah," he agreed. It was bittersweet.
It was always bittersweet, getting home. Shaking off his transformation, Plagg hiding in his pocket, jogging the last couple of blocks home so he was appropriately out of breath for someone hurrying home late. The way Marinette knew not to ask what kept him when he opened the door, hair messy and still in her pajamas like she’d just woken up, no matter how much he wanted to tell her. How he couldn’t share the only parts of his life as important as she was with her, even as he hugged her around the waist and swept her up to spin in a circle, her squealing and laughing and smacking his face almost hard enough to leave a bruise because she still wasn’t used to the hard metal ring on her finger.
“I totally lost track of time,” Marinette apologized, to him, instead of the other way around. He didn’t ask what she’d been working on. “Want to go out and have pizza instead of cooking?”
“Sounds great,” said Adrien, and kissed her forehead, making her face scrunch up as she rubbed at the spot.
They walked the bright streets under the darkened sky together, arms linked to warm each other against the cold.