She remembers the first time that it sprouted up there on her back, harsh spines of dark wings, fluttering slightly under the pressure of her anger, wonders if he felt it too.
Though her mind is fuzzy with other memories, the first gentle pressure on her back when someone else held her in his arms, encouraging and supporting her, letting soft white and brown build a layer on top of the black spiny bones that had pushed their way on to her back.
She remembers seeing them that day and breaking down, because it never could be both; was he her true other half or just the delicate buffer from her other one?
Marinette had found herself curled up in bed, hands trembling over her knees, tears falling, and remembers when her parents walked in with gentle hands, both had delicate curvings of wings on their back, remembers how she always looked up to them so much growing up.
Her mother's wings had a sturdy back that were just a hint darker, almost golden if seen in the right light, with soft, loving white feathers filling up down the rest of her wings.
Her father's had dark brown feathers, strong and unrelenting at the top yet not black, never black, that faded delicately to a slightly lighter brown shade all down the rest of his wings.
Marinette's parents weren't a complicated marriage, had never been, and yet she remembers the fear that clawed at her, realizing that her own wing decoration will become a flurry, a mess on her back of heartache and joy interwoven.
She can't help but cry into their embraces, warm and soft to the touch, and let her wings flutter.
"How long?" Her mother whispers.
Marinette can barely crack out a word in reply, "A few days."
She leans into her mother's steady embrace, biting back tears that manage to fall and drop anyway.
Marinette dreads knowing that her feathers may grow more complicated from here on out.
He's open and honest; Marinette falls a little for him when he hands his umbrella over to her as there was something in his honesty and his kindness, something in the joyous sound of his laugh when his umbrella traps her for a moment.
Her wings shift and dance on her back, her eyes locked on his, warm, soothing waves rushing up her back; she decides that her first soulmate is the one that she'll chase in that moment, because she can't fight back the desire to get to know him more, not after she'd fallen in love when he gave her his umbrella.
Marinette's smile is radiant when she takes her steps down those stairs long after he left, silently relieved to not be trapped in the umbrella while her wings grow and flourish.
She wonders if she's strong enough to balance the fact that Marinette has a soulmate and so does Ladybug; she can barely catch her breath as her smile blossoms further on her face.