Miraculous Ladybug - 1st draft
Plagg is an arrogant little nuisance.
After first having burst into Adrien's life abrupt and unapologetic, he settles into the lap of luxury suspiciously quick. Almost as if that had been the end goal when choosing someone to handle the responsibility of being Chat Noir. Those first few months the kwami suffered no grief when demanding his own body weight in cheese, being petty when the his wants weren't supplied and vague and frustrating even when they were.
But the camaraderie that was born from the unreal experience of being a superhero through his careless companion had been swift and surprising. Adrien knew that the cat wouldn't let him get seriously hurt, there was advice when he really needed it and sassy quips when it was a lesson he needed to learn himself. The ludicrous demands for cheese became almost comical over time and were well suffered with an eye roll and an offering of Camembert. Despite Plagg's personality being the physical embodiment of a prideful cat, (makes sense), he could tell he was cared for from the expressed concern when Chat Noir failed to land gracefully, or took a particularly punishing blast meant for Ladybug.
Plagg didn't take himself or his impressive power at all seriously. So Adrien learned not to either. Yeah the cat had been alive an undisclosed but expansive time, had watched the rise and fall of civilizations and seen awe-inspiring history through his own bored, green eyes. Of course Plagg had chosen his kittens; watched them fight, watched them grow to infamy, watched some of them corrupt, others die young, the rest left behind. But the best Adrien could figure, the Kwami was carefully desensitized to the loneliness of immortality or actually simply as flippant and juvenile as he seemed. He could assume from what scraps of information he had been thrown that Ladybug's kwami and his own worked as a match set. Their strengths and weaknesses too well balanced to not have been from design. Having another being as powerful and lonely as yourself must have eased the pain considerably. He didn't know to what extent he inherited characteristics from Plagg, but he could sometimes feel this desperate ache to keep his lady beside him, a trust and bond that ran deeper than two teenagers dashing around Paris.
Perhaps the black cat felt secure in the knowledge that Adrien was just a blip on his radar. That in the infinite stretch of miraculous wielders each one would eventually be replaced and reduced to a memory.
Because sometimes.
He would tell Adrien stories.
Circumstances had to be met, as it always was with the small, black cat. He would have to be content and stuffed with his favorite meal. Adrien would have to be obviously distressed from being up very, very, late and having to get up very, very, early for a photo shoot or benefit event that no teenager would be anticipating with anything but dread. Or optionally it sometimes would happen when Adrien had a rapidly healing but still wickedly painful scar that aided his insomnia in the effort to keep him awake. Then and only then would the kwami feel the well-known but not dulled squeeze from somewhere in his heart region that demanded he put aside his desire to snooze carelessly and do something to ease the pain his kitten was in.
Then came the aforementioned stories.
Plagg would curl close enough to Adrien's head that he could speak at volume levels that didn't risk exposure, sometimes hovering in the Plagg-shaped hollow created between the boy's shoulder and neck, and talk. Speaking softly in a tone of voice that failed to convey the weight behind his words. Adrien would close his eyes and listen obediently, sometimes silently pleased that he was afforded this attention from his partner, originally offered as a special allowance, but eventually expected.
"One time I had to deal with this obnoxious little Egyptian girl. Real full of herself, thought she was the greatest because her pops was the adviser of the Egypt king," Plagg started with his usual irreverence. "Pharaoh" supplied Adrien helpfully. "Hush kid, it's my story. She freaked out when I met her, kept bowing and saying something about Basket cats and her household being blessed," Adrien took the pause as a chance to interrupt again, "Do you mean Bast? Or were there actually things called basket cats?" Plagg doesn't bother acknowledging his kitten, choosing instead to curl closer against his head and continue. "I gave her the pep talk about being a superhero, Ladybug, miraculous, blah blah blah, and she stopped trying to pray to me and turned into a real deviant after she realized I wasn't actually one of her crazy sand gods. Apparently she already knew how to fight because a slave girl in her house taught her so she thought she was hot shit when she took down her first baddie." Plagg takes a pause long enough for Adrien to wonder if the cat wasn't going to bother to keep talking.
"Tikki, that's Ladybug's kwami by the way, hadn't gotten a new Ladybug yet so my girl had to do double the work until her partner was chosen. It was taking so long was because Tikki kept trying to get the martial arts servant chick to do it but she refused because some nonsense about not being worthy to wear the mask of a savior. Real dramatic stuff. She eventually caved when I pretended to be Bast and told her if she didn't do it I would bring cat wrath upon her. But for a long time my kitten refused to work as a team with Tikki's bug, she was really hung up on this honor stuff about how it was improper to treat her servant as an equal. I told her to stop being stupid and they ended up being great together, but it took a while and a lot of damage was caused from my Chat Noir being too stubborn."
Plagg can tell the kid is almost asleep but trying to stick around to hear the rest of his story. "You would have liked her, she was real bossy but smart and usually right, just like your Lady. The sand king dude eventually sent out a message that the saviors of his kingdom were to be treated as gods and a temple was made, that really inflated Chat's ego, she got cocky and careless, made a few mistakes she couldn't afford. Her partner had to pick up the pieces. But they worked out, miraculously, and trusted each other." Adrien is too far gone to call out the pun but still not quite asleep. "It's hard to tell but I think they might have loved each other. Tikki is really into all that mushy human emotion but sometimes it gets gross. They traveled together, discovered new land and visited old land. Made me ride in a hot sack when they went across that awful desert. People would freak out and start praying if they saw me so she gave me this real fine goat cheese, not as good as Camembert, but enough bribery for me to stop pretending to be their cat god."
Adrien is completely dead to the world and Plagg feels proud he got his Chat to sleep. He doesn't bother to keep talking and instead curls up tighter to get a cat nap himself. With his eyes shut tight and the cotton fabric pillowcase under him he can almost pretend the breaths puffing his fur are from a girl with black hair, caramel skin, and eyes a green barely lighter than his current kitten's. It hurts knowing what happened to her, knowing the same could happen to this one if he isn't careful. The current Ladybug is a good pair to his chosen. They work well together, better than most heroes do at this stage. Plagg falls asleep.