In the beginning, there was only Energy.
Energy was restless, aimless, yearning and wanting and itching to do something but what, it wondered. But what?
Millennia passed. Energy, once all questions and no answers, had ideas now. It had ideas about creation, about giving form to all of that restlessness and watching it bloom. It had ideas about chaos, about decay and pain and death. And slowly, those ideas consumed Energy, became its every breath, every thought, every second until one day –
There was Creation, all endless energy and infinite ideas and a love for life.
There was Destruction, all restless energy and mischievous plans and a lust for chaos.
And Energy, having given every last bit of its infinite self over to its very first creations, faded into the background, content to watch Creation and Destruction while it regained its strength. There Energy remained for eternity, a quiet, watchful eye, feeding the continued existence of all things so that Creation and Destruction may carry out the endless ideas it had once called its own.
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In the beginning, Creation and Destruction were two halves of a disharmonious whole, unwanted but necessary counterparts to each other to maintain the balance of all things.
But where Creation walked, her endless energy sprung to life and bloomed before her very feet, taking shapes and forms faster than she could design them.
And where Destruction roamed, his restless energy spread like a plague and destroyed everything within his sight, bringing death and decay even when he did not wish for it.
There was no balance then, no harmony even between these primal forces and their own powers. They were restless, aimless energy made corporeal, and they were not meant to wield great power – they were great power. So it was decided, between Creation and Destruction, in a Universe that had seen so much life and so much death yet invariably crumbled into nothingness each and every time, that if they were not to be wielders of their own powers, they would create wielders of their own, avatars formed in their own images, hearts and minds guided by Creation and Destruction themselves.
Creation chose for her wielder a goddess with hair dark as the starless void and eyes blue as the lifeless seas, with a heart strong enough to give birth to a hundred thousand million stars and a mind vast enough to give life to a hundred thousand million creatures.
Destruction formed a wielder from mischief and chaos, a god with a heart wild as the untamed winds and eyes green as the destructive force that would be his to command, with a reluctant appreciation for organized, sustainable chaos and a secret admiration for Creation's avatar as ardent as Destruction's own hidden envy of Creation's power.
They placed the goddess in a lonely, isolated pocket of the void so that she may always watch her creations from afar, and they placed the god in the bustling heart of the Universe so that he may roam amongst all creatures and bring to them the death and decay that their mortal souls could not escape, the death and decay that was necessary to make way for more life and more creation.
And then Creation and Destruction met for the very last time, and agreed that their wielders could never, ever meet.
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In the beginning, all was as it was meant to be.
From her lonely throne, the goddess dreamed and designed and breathed life into millions of creations, millions and millions and millions more in the hopes that someday the Universe might be so densely populated even her isolated planet would crawl with life.
From his place amidst the creatures of the Universe, the god observed and interacted and came to understand the cycle of life and decay, to respect that all worked as it was meant to, to carry out his purpose without question or hesitation or regret for bringing about the end of all these beautiful, wondrous creatures his counterpart had lovingly brought into existence.
Creation and Destruction watched with pride as their wielders carried out their purposes, as they accomplished all that the primal forces had been meant to do and all that they had been unable to do.
And in the background, Energy observed it all unfold, quietly maintained the ever-moving, ever-multiplying cogs of Existence, and watched as everything that was ever meant to be came to pass.
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It is a Thursday when the god worshipped as Chat Noir first realizes that something is amiss.
He values each and every creature, no matter how insignificant or hideous or bothersome, even loves them a bit for being extensions of the wonderful, amazing counterpart he has come to love without ever laying eyes on. It matters not that he has never seen her, nor interacted with her in any way, shape, or form; they were created as two halves of a whole, and he feels it in his very being, feels her existence somewhere out there on the very edges of the Universe. He feels her dreams and her thoughts and her love, the pure, unconditional love she feels for all of her creations, and even if her creations don't know it, don't know to love her back, he knows and appreciates and loves.
Sometimes, he likes to think that maybe, just maybe, the bond between them allows her to feel his love, all the way out there on the very edges of the Universe.
Then again, he likes to believe a great many things, and his kwami is always quick to dismiss them. So it should come as no surprise when the small black cat – for that had been Destruction's very first idea, this tiny symbol of bad luck and chaos and mischief, and so it was the form he had taken when willed to take one – immediately waves away his unease over his counterpart's latest creations.
"Plagg, there's something wrong with these creatures. I can feel it," Chat Noir insists, perched high atop a hulking mountain of a skyscraper. "In every other creature, no matter how twisted or misguided or lost, there's a spark. There's something in their soul that says they were crafted with love, even if they've long since lost that love. There's a part of her in each and every one of them. But these new creatures… there is nothing in them. No aim, no purpose, no life. They were created only to be destroyed, brought to life only to race towards death with nothing in between. Something is wrong."
"Maybe she's having a bad week," His irreverent little companion shrugs, biting into a hunk of Camembert – the only worthwhile creation in all of Existence, according to him. "Look, kid, she's been at it for… pretty much forever, minus a few early millennia. She was bound to run out of good ideas eventually."
"This is Ladybug we're talking about," He frowns, his lips forming the syllables of his counterpart's cherished name with all the awe and love she is due. "She's not capable of bad ideas. Look at everything she has given us. Look at everything those creations have, in turn, given each other," He gestures at the city below them, one of his favorites in all the Universe. The city of love, they call it. Chat Noir's always been a bit of a hopeless romantic, with a hopeless love to go along with it. "There's no way she's responsible for these creatures, for breathing life into something only to condemn it to a short lifetime of pain and anguish and misery. Something must have happened to her, Plagg. Something very bad, if this is the kind of pain it seeks to spread. Something immensely powerful, if it can manipulate or force her into doing its bidding. Plagg, I know you said we can never meet, but-" He turns hopeful, pleading eyes on his kwami, on the source of all his power and the very reason for his existence.
"No," Plagg says gravely, going so far as to set aside his cheese. "Kid, I have given you the entire goddamn Universe to meddle with, all of Existence for you to toy with. I only asked for two things in return. What were those two things?"
"Maintain the cycle of life and death," Chat dutifully recites even as his hope and enthusiasm fades away.
"And?" His kwami demands impatiently.
Chat heaves out an exaggerated sigh. "Stay far, far away from Ladybug," He mutters reluctantly.
"Exactly. There we go. End of discussion," Plagg announces, already back to stuffing his face.
And that, it would seem, is the end of that.
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It is yet another nameless, indistinguishable moment that immediately blends into the millions of moments before it when the goddess known as Ladybug falls to her knees, hands pressed so tightly against either side of her head that a lesser being's skull would have collapsed under the pressure.
She used to be content with her lot in life, used to love that the whole Universe was a canvas that seemed to stretch on forever and that she was its sole Artist, used to craft every single one of her creations with love and out of love and imbue each and every one with a bit of that love they were born of.
They used to be enough for her, these beings she so lovingly nurtured in her thoughts and her heart before giving shape and life to. But now… now they are all wrong and not enough and not him.
"Where is he?" She screams at no one and nothing, her constant companions save for her kwami. "Where is he what is he who is he why is he haunting me why is he all wrong why can't I have him why why why," The goddess of creation wails, desperation and longing and madness seeping out of her to form all of the half-designed creatures in her mind in the hopes of finally finding the right one.
Her ladybug companion – for that had been Creation's very first idea, this tiny symbol of good luck and hope and life, and so it was the form she had taken when willed to take one – hovers anxiously around her, flits around her in circles and tries to ignore her own regret for mistakes made a long time ago, mistakes her wielder must now suffer the consequences of.
Ladybug's mind might be crowded with hundreds and thousands and millions of companions, but in reality she is alone, so alone, and it has finally destroyed her, this futile quest to create and create and create in the hopes of putting an end to an eternity of loneliness.
"Oh no," Tikki frets, wringing her small paws in concern as she watches Ladybug's endless, restless energy leak out of her every pore. "Please, shh, shh," She tries to soothe her wielder, tries to replicate the actions of parents everywhere. Her actions do not elicit the reflexive response they would have in any other creature, not in the goddess who was created to nurture and has never been nurtured in her entire existence.
There is very little that Tikki regrets, very few things she would regard as mistakes and wish to undo. The agreement between her and her other half, the existence she chose to sentence her wielder to - these are, in all her many, many years of existence, the two things she most regrets.
"Where is he?" Ladybug cries, her heart-wrenching sobs echoing off the seemingly endless walls of her lonely palace. "Where is everyone?" With every passing second, a new creature is born of pain and confusion and grief, born into a life that was never meant to be, born only to be reduced to ash as soon as nature takes its course.
"Ladybug, please," Tikki pleads, her own voice wavering with sobs. "Please, I can't bear to see you like this. Please, please," She tucks herself into the space where her wielder's neck meets her shoulder, tries to nuzzle into her skin to remind her that she isn't all alone, not completely. It takes a small eternity – it takes too many short-lived creatures, too many painful, pointless deaths – to calm the goddess down.
And even as Ladybug's tears subside, her magic is giving birth to creatures who will forever carry a lingering sense of sorrow within them, creatures who will live and love and laugh but never quite be able to cast off that lingering shadow of grief.
Tikki sees now that her wielder has been one of those creatures all along, that all the beauty and love she wills into existence cannot make up for the fear and loneliness within her. This was not her first breakdown, and the kwami fears that it will not be her last.
Later, once Ladybug is once again breathing life into beautiful, happy things, Tikki slips away and does the one thing she was never supposed to do again.
She reaches out across the universe, all the way to the bustling heart of Existence, and seeks out her other half.
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They meet on a desolate planet, the very first one they ever tried to populate.
"I can't believe you screamed in my head for four days just for this," Plagg grumbles, plopping himself down on a small hill of ash and bone.
"And I can't believe you tried to ignore something this serious," Tikki retorts, choosing to remain hovering. She can't bear to touch anything here, can't bear the possibility that she might once again bring life to this world only to watch it all die in front of her very eyes. They'd been so young then – so powerful, so excited, so utterly unprepared and clueless.
Tikki did everything in her power to prevent that from happening with their wielders, took every precaution and then some. And now, even as they speak, she can't be sure that her Ladybug isn't screaming and crying and breathing life into a million tortured souls.
"We made a mistake, Plagg," She tells her counterpart with a heavy sigh, floating a little closer to the ground as her shoulders sag. "I've done a terrible thing to my Ladybug."
Plagg scoffs. "Speak for yourself. My Chat Noir is doing just fine. If it weren't for all that pining and longing business, he'd be a perfect avatar of me," He carefully leaves out the part where the pining and longing is by design, the bit where he'd accidentally leaked a bit of himself into his wielder during his formation and done his best to fix it so that Chat Noir wouldn't learn to resent Ladybug the second they were created. Maybe he'd overdone it, but even primal forces aren't immune to bouts of panic every now and then.
"You always were a selfish, awful little imp," Tikki huffs, an uncharacteristic outburst. If Plagg had doubted the severity of her situation before this, her harsh words would have been enough to wake him up.
As it is, he's known since the second Tikki hesitantly called his name across the Universe that his wielder was right: something very, very bad has happened. He just… doesn't really care, is all. Organized chaos is good enough, but he is Destruction itself, chaos made manifest, and this is the most interesting thing that's happened to him in eons. So yes, he did try to ignore Tikki's summons for as long as possible.
"Fine," He groans with a roll of his eyes. "So you messed up your wielder. What do my kitten and I have to do with it?"
Tikki shoots three feet up into the air. "I did not mess- oh," She says quietly, antennae drooping. "Oh, but I did. I was the one who put her all the way at the edge of the Universe. I was the one who said they should never meet each other. Plagg," Her eyes are wide and pleading when she looks at him. "Plagg, we need to let them meet."
He loses his concentration for a second; that's all it takes for him to roll down the makeshift hill and into a pile of ashes. "Are you insane?" Plagg demands, voice shrill and shaky in disbelief.
"I know we had our reasons-"
"Yeah, reasons like maintaining the balance of the very Universe! They can't ever meet. My wielder's already a lovesick, sentimental fool; if he meets your bug he'll never be able to kill another creation of hers ever again. He already thinks of them as her kids, Tikki," He says with a desperate note in his voice, begging her to see reason. It's been hard enough to put up with Chat Noir for the last few centuries, ever since he was struck by an epiphany about Ladybug. He'll be insufferable once he actually knows her; the lovesick babbling will never stop. Ever.
"The balance of all things is already at stake!" Tikki points out heatedly. "At first her breakdowns would only last minutes, but now they're coming more and more frequently and they can last for hours at a time. If this keeps up, the Universe will end up no better than it did when we were in charge."
The reminder stings for the both of them.
Plagg flinches and floats away from the remnants of his destruction. Tikki looks down at the ground and see the tree she'd once planted in this very spot.
"So what made your bug snap?" Plagg finally asks, unusually subdued.
"At first it was just loneliness, but lately she's been focusing on one person in particular. She's been dreaming about him, I think, and it's driving her crazy that she can't remember him well enough to create him. Sometimes she searches the Universe through the looking glass, but she can never find him there either," She sighs sadly at the memory. "It's destroying her, Plagg. The look in her eyes… there is no life there, no hope. Only emptiness," Tikki shudders.
"Do you think, maybe…?"
Tikki shakes her head. "I thought it might be him too, at first, but wouldn't she have felt his existence by now? Especially if she's trying so hard. Whatever spells we put on them to keep them from discovering each other, it should not be able to separate them entirely."
"It doesn't; my wielder rambles on and on about how he can feel her existence," Plagg recalls. "He can feel her pain too, I think. Tried to warn me that something was wrong two weeks ago, but I thought, you know, if things were that bad… you'd call."
"They are that bad," Tikki admits quietly.
Plagg refuses to linger on the thought. "Okay, so he's probably not the one your bug's pining for. Which is gonna be a whole new can of worms, since he's pining for her. But if he's not the one, why introduce them? Why risk breaking both of them?"
"Because he's the only one in the entire Universe she can connect with. He is literally the other half of her soul," Tikki reminds him. "It's the only way I can think of to make her feel less lonely."
The wind, all that's left on this forgotten world, howls in their ears as it picks up speed, kicking up the ashes of their past and scattering them far and wide. The kwami remain unmoved by their creation; Tikki had given the wind strength and purpose but Plagg was the one who'd shaped it into a chaotic force of nature, one of their few successful collaborations.
Finally, Plagg speaks.
"Okay," He says as his image fades away.
"Thank you," Tikki murmurs to no one and nothing, right before she too allows her projection to flicker out of existence, leaving the planet alone and forgotten as it always has been, as it must always be.
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"I have built," Ladybug screams as she kicks down a towering wall of solid stone, "entire civilizations from one dream! Why can I not create one man from a thousand dreams?" She demands, picking up the rubble from her destruction and aimlessly, forcefully throwing chunks of stone out into the emptiness that lies beyond the palace walls.
"Ladybug, please-" Tikki says, weaving a path between the flying rocks. "You must calm yourself. Your powers, they-"
"I don't care!" Her wielder snaps, and Tikki knows then that she's truly losing herself. "What's the point of it all if I'm never going to be with them? What's the point of creating and making and loving if no one is ever going to care or love me?"
Tikki flies directly at her wielder, exercises all of her strength to put her small paws on Ladybug's cheeks and force her to hold still. "I care. I love you. You are, and will always be, my greatest pride and joy. You are the reason there is any love and life in this Universe at all. Ladybug, you have given so much. And you deserve every last bit of love in return."
Her wielder's face… it crumples, there's no other word for it. She falls to the ground, surrounded by her destruction, face still in the now-tender grasp of her kwami. "I'm so lonely," Ladybug says brokenly, tears streaming down her face. "It's so loud in my head but so quiet. My heart is so full of love but so empty. And I want, I need, I long but I don't know who or what it is I need so badly, I don't know who it is who's taken a part of me with them or how I can be whole again."
"I'm so sorry," Tikki whispers, pressing her head to Ladybug's forehead. "If I could find him for you, if I could bring him to life for you, I would in a heartbeat."
"I know," Ladybug gives her a small, shaky smile and holds out a palm for her, petting her lightly when she lands on the offered spot. "I just don't understand. He's out there somewhere, I can feel it, but it's like… it's like he's not completely him, the way I'm not completely me. And while he's something else, I just… I can't find him. I might never find him."
Plagg's hesitant, half-formed suggestion from their meeting two days ago comes back to her now, do you think, maybe…? ringing in her ears as she tries to make sense of what Ladybug is describing.
The magic she and Plagg had placed on their wielders isn't strong enough to hide them away from each other entirely, but perhaps it's magic of a different kind entirely that keeps Ladybug's other half hidden from her. The avatars had been created to become gods, but before they were gods they had been something else, for that brief first moment of their lives before Tikki and Plagg had filled them up with enough energy to burn away their mortality and forge them anew.
"Ladybug, maybe-"
She's interrupted before she can go on, Ladybug's hopeful eyes filling with fear and excitement and hope as something unprecedented happens.
From the other end of the palace comes a single knock on her door.
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"I'm about to meet Ladybug," Chat Noir announces rather unnecessarily as they finally land on the planet Plagg had described to him during their travels. It has been a long and tiring journey, travelling between the shadows from one world to the next, chasing death until they'd left behind all inhabited planets, chasing decay and chaos after that until finally they'd reached this, a tidal wave of grief and destruction and restless energy so strong it's been pulling him here even before they were anywhere near this part of the Universe.
"There's still time to back out, kid," Plagg reminds him, a familiar refrain from the past two days. "If Tikki's avatar is broken, that's her fault. She can fix her. I don't need you getting broken too. Think about where we'd be then. Facing Energy, probably. And Existence. I do not want to face them and their disapproval and disappointment and whatever," His kwami rambles on as Chat takes a good look at Ladybug's planet, his frown growing by the second.
"Why the hell did you leave her here?" He demands, cutting Plagg off mid-sentence. "Ladybug is life. This place… this place is nothing. This place is as close to the void as you can possibly get. She doesn't belong here. No one does."
Plagg sighs, taking a look at the empty planet himself. "I see that now," He says, shaking his head. "But back then… we thought her head was so filled with life that she wouldn't need any around her. And we had to keep her away from you somehow. Leaving her at the very edge of the Universe, at the very spot where the void begins… it was the only way to make sure you two would never run into each other."
"But why? Chat asks, nearly begs to know the one question Plagg has never answered. "Why did you have to keep us apart?"
He has spent eternity trying to avoid this question, trying to avoid what he believes to be the inevitable outcome of the meeting that lies ahead. Plagg figures there's no point in keeping it from his wielder any longer, not with his greatest fear lying in wait.
"Do you know how long it took you to fully understand how important death and decay is, that it's an awful but necessary part of life and growth? I know you get it now," He says before Chat can protest, "but it took centuries for you to stop asking me if we could just save this one, please or let this one have a bit longer. I created you to sow chaos and destruction and still you hesitated, still you questioned it. And I knew, from the very beginning, that there was only one person in the entirety of Existence who could undo everything I've taught you."
"Ladybug?"
"Kid, look," Plagg sighs. "Whatever's waiting on the other side of that door, however it is Ladybug greets you… we both know you're never going to stop loving her."
Chat drops his eyes to the ground.
"And once you've met her, once you've seen the love and care she puts into each and every single creation of hers… I don't think you'll ever be able to kill another one of those creations ever again," Plagg finally confesses.
"But…" Chat says after a moment, his brows furrowed in thought. "Plagg, I know why I have to do what I do. I know that in order for life and creation to go on forever, death and destruction must usher the cycle along. If I stopped taking things away, Ladybug would run out of space, out of souls. And if Ladybug stopped creating… what would Ladybug be, without creation guiding her every move?"
Plagg rolls his eyes. "Of course it's all about Ladybug," He mutters, but he allows himself a second of relief and knows that Chat understands what he really means.
With Plagg's unspoken blessing, Chat Noir knocks on Ladybug's door.
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Ladybug runs through the palace with Tikki close behind, stops ten feet away from the door and feels her blood sing at being in such proximity with another living being. She is the sun, the source of all life, but at the same time she has been a lost star spinning aimlessly, searching for an orbit to fall into, searching for something to be a part of.
Tikki realizes now that her wielder is as much a goddess as she is a human, even if she can't ever remember being one. Some part of her has remembered, all these years, and all the divinity in the world, all the energy in the universe, couldn't put out that small spark within her. She should have known better; after all, she was the one who'd created humans to be such sturdy things, the one who'd chosen a human to house all of her powers and potential.
"It's not locked," Ladybug says after an indeterminable length of time spent simply staring at the door. She's never had a reason to secure it, never had anyone or anything to keep out before.
When the door opens, a thousand dreams suddenly fall into place, like an image snapping into focus and a lost star falling into orbit and a broken heart knitting itself back together.
Long before they had been gods, for one brief, shining moment, they had been Adrien and Marinette, the only two humans in existence, two halves of one soul.
She remembers now.
"It's you," Ladybug breathes, her vision blurry with tears but an ancient image of Adrien – lost for eternity, returned to her in a split second – clear in her mind. "It was you all along."
"Ladybug," Chat Noir says. "Marinette," He amends as his feet start moving of their own accord, as he slowly but steadily chips away at the chasm between them, millions of years and thousands of worlds and a dozen footsteps.
When they fall into each other's arms, the Universe falls back into alignment.
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And Energy watches on as everything goes the way it was meant to be.
So this was... an Undertaking, with a capital U. I was hesitant to dive into all of the world-building and mythology that I knew this idea required, but at the same time I really, really wanted to write this story. It didn't turn out entirely as I'd hoped, but I'm happy enough with it for now.
As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this in the comments below.
P.S: I usually put this in the summary but I ran out of space this time so - title's from Florence + The Machine's "Bedroom Hymns".