Sometimes it came in waves, like flickers of past experiences, stubborn, and surprising. Ladybug hated her past in the way that a job can become too familiar to be exciting anymore, in a way that distance sometimes bred contempt instead of longing. She loved the thrill of running on rooftops, loved flirting back even when she wasn't ready to take that leap, loved the thrill of knowing someone, but not knowing him.
In all those ways, she thrilled over being by his side, thrilled over saving the day, that last spike of adrenaline that kickstarts a series of chain reactions. She loved it, but she hated the color, purple, light as a feather, terribly enticing. It was the kind of color that conquered and took over what it had no right to. Marinette avoided designing purple clothes, nothing with butterflies or light purple. She thrived with bright red and mysterious black, loved pink in its light hues, found green eyecatching in its intensity, and despised light purple.
Dark was tolerable; light was torture. Just seeing the flicker of purple in the shape of a butterfly had her moving to protect her husband as if she were in the spots. "Adrien!" It didn't matter that life with him would never be as exciting or at least not adrenaline inducing as it would be with Chat.
Staring down into her husband's surprised green eyes and watching a decoration flutter briefly in the room, she was reminded where she was at, what she couldn't do, what she shouldn't do. "I'm sorry." It's as soft as countless love lorn letters that she'd written to her husband back when they were just dating, back when writing was as much of a distraction from Hawkmoth's disappearance, and when things felt new and so different than just being friends.
"It's fine." Adrien waved his hand, an instinct more intact now than years before, and he smiled up at her.
"I-I thought Hawkmoth was back. I didn't want you hurt." She hated this vulnerability, but she'd long learned how important honesty was, even with how difficult it could be.
"Oh," Adrien murmured, "I wish he was." His mood always became so much darker when Hawkmoth was mentioned, like a switch went off. It was almost as dark as when his father told him that he had an out of town modeling job when Marinette was super busy. He never wanted to leave her, alone, in Paris, when she should go with him. She never knew why, but credited it with being his wife, being the woman that he loved.
"Why?" She finally realized that laying on top of her husband in public looked a bit weird, and stood back up, offering her hand to the man that she'd married, that she loved, and yet never compared to Cat Noir with the rush of the old days.
"I want him gone for good." Adrien's tone was acid as he let her help him up, and there was that one wall that neither felt honest enough to bring up, that one wall that came up, and that they hid the answers from each other. You can't tell your husband that you're Ladybug, that you don't know where Hawkmoth is, and that you'd have to be one of the people that would deal with his reappearance if it happened.
"I'd like that security." Ladybug hated the threat of Hawkmoth just suddenly appearing, but she couldn't just tell her husband that she doesn't want that for the sake of not getting Akumatized or watching her loved ones get Akumatized, but instead so a part of her doesn't worry like Ladybug always has to.
"He's the worst," But Adrien smiled as he switched the topic, "So did you find your model?"
"Oh, no. Since Juan quit, I haven't found another one." She sighed, shaking her head; it was a better topic, but she hated having to hire Adrien for an informal gig as a model again. Modeling had never been his dream job, but he was stuck with it for now.
"I can help you out." It always felt cheap to have her husband model her clothes for shoots. Casual modeling clothes that she'd made at home never felt that awful. It just made it worse that Juan would have been modeling purple, dark purple, but still that dreaded color.
"I don't want to trouble you since you already have to work on modeling your father's clothes." Marinette insisted and found herself wondering how things would have been different if they'd just bridged those identity gaps years ago, if she still had the time and energy to run on rooftops, and swing from a yoyo. It was easier to transform when she needed to, not always when she wanted to.
"I'll do it for you. You're my wife, Mari." Adrien smiled at her and though there was love in the sparkle in his eyes, in his soft smile, it never reached as far as Cat's had, "I didn't just pick a random woman off the street to marry, you know?"
"I know." Mari sighed; somedays, never felt like they used to, when it wasn't Adrien that she was starting to fall for and wonder just how to make it all work. She couldn't always be Ladybug though, and she did love Adrien. She really did! Even if sometimes, she wanted that old thrill of jumping across rooftops and racing through Paris.