On Sunday morning, Sabine is woken up by the distinct scent of caramel and sugar, and she walks into the family kitchen, where Marinette is busy at work.
"What are you making, ma petite chouette?"
Marinette can't tell her mother that she's making a couple dozen caramel stuffed brown sugar cookies for a stray black cat she's expecting as a visitor later today, so she just says she's making them for a friend.
But Sabine is a perceptive woman, and she can tell from the sparkle in her daughter's eyes and the pretty pink flush underneath the freckles across her nose that Marinette's 'friend' is a special one.
She is a wise woman as well, so she doesn't ask any further details, even though she takes note of the cat shaped cookie cutter Marinette is clutching in her hands, as well as the fact that she's peeking at it fondly every few minutes and stroking the edges of its ears.
"Are you making anything else?" she asks instead, arms akimbo, ready to help.
Marinette considers. "Maybe some croissants? He likes those as well. Though I'm not sure if those will go well with the cookies—maybe some petit fours instead? Or maybe just some more cookies."
"Your friend is fond of sweet things, is he?" says Sabine with a laugh.
Marinette smiles. "He is! I think he likes caramel the best, though."
"It sounds like you know him well," says Sabine with a knowing smile.
"I'm beginning to, I think," replies Marinette, a little shy. "Better than before, anyway."
She thrums her fingers against the countertop before curling them into loose fists and pressing them against the edges as she leans towards her mother, barely containing her nervous energy.
"Hey, Maman, can I ask you a question?"
"Yes, Marinette?"
"How did you know that Papa was the one? Was there a moment that you just knew?"
Sabine smiles. "Well, you know, it's been such a long time that it's hard to remember! I can't speak for your father, of course, but I can't say that there was one specific moment for me where it all suddenly came together."
"So it wasn't love at first sight?"
"Love? No. Attraction, yes—your father has always been as charming and kind, and that was the first thing that made me notice him. But love, that takes time. You need to learn about your partner before you can truly say that you love them. To love them, you must know them. And to know your partner, you must be honest with each other, and to always communicate. Your needs, your wants, your problems—you must feel free and comfortable talking about all of those things with one another. And if you are, well—"
"Yes?"
"Well, you've found the one you love," concludes Sabine with a merry laugh. "Just like me and your Papa. Does that answer your question?"
Marinette smiles. "Yes. Yes, it does. Thank you, Maman."
"You're welcome, ma petite chouette."
It's a sleepy Sunday morning as the sun casts rays through the windows into Adrien's room, but he's been sitting awake in bed for hours, leaning against his headboard.
Plagg is still asleep, softly snoring on Adrien's pillow, and he smiles fondly at the little kwami, who looks grumpy even while asleep. Plagg purrs as Adrien gently strokes the top of his head, a quiet, rumbly and content sound that Adrien knows he would never admit to making while awake.
Adrien knows that his poor sleep schedule is bound to catch up with him soon, but for now, he's just letting the many emotions he's feeling wrap around him like a warm winter scarf.
It's time, he thinks, to talk to his mother.
He quietly slides off the bed, careful not to disturb Plagg, and walks over to his computer and turns the monitor on. He smiles at the desktop background of his mother at seventeen, calm and radiant even then.
It's one of Adrien's favorite pictures of his mother, but right now, he needs to talk to the woman he knows, so he navigates over to a folder containing pictures from a picnic they went on together at the Jardin du Luxembourg two years ago. He scrolls through the pictures until he finds one where she's sitting on a picnic blanket and looking straight into the camera, ever the natural model. Her eyes are filled with love and affection and it's exactly what Adrien needs right now, so he clicks on it and opens it up.
Adrien hugs his knees to his chest and takes a deep breath.
"Maman, I've met a girl. Well, I met her a long time ago, but I only just realized who she really is. And Maman, she's amazing. You've met her before—she came here once, to save me. Did you see how she has your smile?"
Adrien beams dreamily as he clasps his hands together.
"And today, I'm going to visit her and tell her how amazing she is. It's so funny—I think we figured out each other's identities at the same time. I don't know how it happened, but I just feel so lucky that it's her."
Adrien sighs and looks down.
"I think you would really like her. And I hope you get to meet her someday soon."
Adrien wipes away the tears that have risen unbidden to his eyes, and feels a slight pressure on his shoulder.
"Do you think she can hear me?" he asks quietly.
Adrien feels the tickle of Plagg's whiskers on his cheeks as the kwami nods.
"I'm sure she can."
Sabine watches with pride as her daughter puts the finishing touches on her caramel cat cookies and arranges them artistically on a fancy blue plate.
Marinette plucks one off the plate and hands it to her with a grin. "How do they taste, Maman?"
"Absolutely wonderful! You know, Marinette, if you make another batch of these, we can sell them as the Sunday Special today. What do you think? And your father can sleep in a little longer as well—won't that be a nice surprise?"
Marinette's eyes light up. "Yes! But—can we make them just a little differently? I want these cookies I made for my friend to be special ones, just for him."
"Of course, my dear."
In two hours, they've made three more batches of caramel cat cookies, and Marinette yawns as she trudges up the stairs to her room. Even though it's almost lunchtime, she's exhausted from making so many cookies, and combined with the three hours of sleep she got the night before, it's all starting to catch up to her.
As she plops onto her bed and buries her head in her cat pillow, Tikki zooms out of her hiding place and giggles.
"Marinette, it's almost time to eat, not to nap!"
"Tiiiiikkiii, I just want to sleeeeep."
"But what if you're asleep when Adrien comes to visit?"
Marinette stays facedown on her pillow, but shakes her head.
"It won't be Adrien. It's going to be Chat Noir. And he's going to come on the balcony like he did last time."
Tikki flies over to the pillow and looks down at her charge, laughing gently.
"And how do you know that?"
Marinette lifts her head off the pillow and turns to look at her kwami with an expression of absolute certainty, eyes twinkling.
"Just call it instinct."
As though on cue, a hard thud that is unmistakably the sound of steel toed boots lands on the balcony, and Marinette winks.
"See? I told you so!"
Tikki smiles and nuzzles Marinette's cheek with a fond sigh before diving into her purse. Today might be a day for reveals, but until that moment, she knows she has to stay out of sight.
Chat Noir soaks in the sunshine on Marinette's balcony as he waits for her to come outside.
He hadn't meant to come so early; he was going to come in the evening like he did last time, but after he finished talking to his mother, some inner instinct started pulling at him to go now, now, now.
Plagg, of course, had been resistant at first.
"But you don't even know if she's home! Wasn't she expecting you tonight?"
"We…we never really discussed it? And I never even said I was going to visit her. Even though I'm sure she knows. She must know, right? Oh god—what if she doesn't know, and I've been misreading everything this whole time?"
"Monsieur, I have been in charge of many young kittens such as yourself, and let me just say, you are in the top five for simultaneously most lovestruck and oblivious at the same time. Of course she knows. You both know, and we know too."
"And who is 'we'?"
"You'll see. But anyway, I still don't think you should go until tonight. I haven't even had my mid-morning snack yet, let alone lunch."
"Aaaand there it is. You just don't want me to transform because you haven't had your cheese yet! Will you go along with it if I give you three extra wheels for your mid-morning snack?"
"….Four. And two extra at dinner."
"Deal."
After Plagg finally got what he wanted, it wasn't difficult for Adrien to convince him to let him transform, and now he's here on Marinette's balcony.
And beginning to realize that he hasn't eaten anything all morning either, and his head is starting to spin a little bit.
Plagg might be filled to the brim with stinky camembert, but Chat Noir is running on an empty stomach, and it's rumbling through the magical leather.
Now that they're finally going to talk about each other's identities, Chat Noir thinks that perhaps once his conversation with Marinette is all said and done, he can come back in through the front entrance as Adrien and actually buy some cookies.
It would be nice to talk to Madame Cheng again as well; she's a very kind woman and a wonderful mother, and he always enjoys talking to her.
For now though, Chat Noir wants to focus on the task at hand, even though he's beginning to feel a little weak. He leans against the railing to support himself as Marinette walks onto the balcony with a smirk.
"You know, I wasn't sure if you would come in through the front door this time, but I had an instinct that you were going to come this way. And here you are."
"You know me well, ma princesse," says Chat Noir, raising an arm to rub the back of his neck with a nervous laugh.
Marinette's eyes first widen and then narrow as she stares at him keenly, taking in his pallid face.
"Wait. You…you haven't eaten anything at all today, have you?"
"What makes you say that?"
Marinette looks pointedly at his stomach as it lets out another alarmingly loud rumble, and he tries to grin at her bashfully.
"I was just too excited about visiting you to think about eating anything, you see."
Marinette sighs. "Chat Noir—"
She stops and shakes her head. "Well, I'm glad I made so many cookies for you today. You certainly need them."
At the word 'cookies', Chat Noir's ears twitch and his eyes light up.
"You made cookies for me, ma princesse?"
Marinette laughs and reaches up to ruffle his hair affectionately.
"Oh, mon chaton. Wait here. I'll be back in two minutes. We can talk after you eat."
Chat Noir smiles at Marinette's bouncing pigtails as she runs back into her room and disappears down the trap door. It feels a little unreal, sometimes, that she knows him so well. But then again, she is his lady and his partner—and even though only time will tell, he's pretty sure she's his soulmate too.
Marinette rushes down to the kitchen and picks up Chat Noir's cookies from the table and quickly warms them up in the microwave. When she takes them out, they're warm and gooey, the freshly baked scent curling into the air, and she knows that he's going to love them.
She can't believe that he hasn't eaten anything all day. She hasn't eaten much either, but she knows that she eats a lot more food than Adrien does on a daily basis, and she can only imagine how dizzy he feels right now.
Adrien is lucky that Marinette is a baker's daughter and not a carpenter's daughter, for if there's one thing that boy needs more than anything else in the world, it is food, affection, and warmth.
And sleep. Because from the looks of it, Chat Noir hasn't slept much either, and she imagines that all of this has been taking as much of an emotional toll on him as it has on her.
But they have each other now, and after their conversation, Marinette just knows that things can only go up for them from there.
Before she heads back up the stairs, she takes a quick peek at the bakery, and notices with a smile that Sabine has put the cat cookies on display with a fancy sign that says "Mother-Daughter Sunday Special".
She feels lucky to have a mother like her.
Luck, she thinks, has manifested itself for her in many different ways, and she wants to share it with Adrien—she wants to share that family warmth with Adrien, for she knows far too well that it's the main element missing from his life.
And she knows that Sabine has boundless amounts of love to give.
She can't replace Madame Agreste—nobody can—but at least they can do something to fill that void.
As she walks back onto the balcony, Chat Noir's eyes zero in on the plate of cookies, and Marinette can tell that he's barely resisting the urge to pounce upon them immediately.
She giggles as he eagerly approaches. "Careful, mon chaton! They're hot!"
He murmurs with pleasure as he sits down in between two potted plants, legs crossed, and starts wolfing them down.
"These are the best cookies I've ever had in my life," he mumbles through a mouthful of cookie. "I might be in heaven right now."
Marinette laughs and shrugs as she leans against the railing and watches him eat.
"Well, I know that caramel is your favorite, so—"
She pauses as Chat Noir stops eating to look at her.
And she realizes that the mention of this, such a specific detail about him, something that she wouldn't know unless she knew his civilian identity—signals the beginning of the conversation that is the real reason he's here to visit her.
"I'm sorry—you should finish eating first. We can talk after you're done."
Chat Noir shakes his head. "No—it's okay. I think we're both ready to talk about this."
Marinette nods. "You're right."
Downstairs, the bakery is surprisingly busy for a Sunday afternoon, and Sabine watches happily from the register as people crowd around the cat cookies. They're flying off the plates, and she feels very proud of Marinette for coming up with such a tasty and delicious recipe.
Within a half hour, the cookies are almost gone, and Sabine is excited to tell Marinette about their smashing success, when she notices another mother and daughter enter the bakery.
The girl looks to be about the same age as Marinette, perhaps a few years younger, and Sabine watches silently from the register as they walk around the floor. The girl's eyes light up as she spots the cat cookies and runs up to them.
"Maman! Look! Cat Cookies—and made of brown sugar, my favorite! Can we please get them? There are only a few left, and they're the Sunday Mother-Daughter Special! Please, Maman, please?"
The mother looks skeptically at the remaining cookies on the plate. They aren't the prettiest of the lot, but they are made with love, and the crooked whiskers and bright eyes would endear almost anyone else to them immediately.
Unfortunately, the woman curls her lips up in disgust, and mutters something about low quality food that Sabine can't quite make out. She tries to walk away, but her daughter is persistent, and finally, she rolls her eyes and agrees to purchase them.
Sabine smiles at the young girl, who looks surprised that her mother actually agreed to buy them, and packs the cookies in a pretty lavender cellophane bag with a ribbon tied around it before handing them back across the counter to her.
"There you go, my dear! My daughter made these cookies especially for the Sunday Special today. They're filled with caramel inside—very delicious!"
The mother looks up from her phone, eyes widening. "Pardon? Did you say caramel? Why was that not on the sign? We are not buying these cookies. They are going to rot your teeth. Put them down immediately, Louise. I won't ask again."
"But Maman—you promised—!"
"That was before I knew the kind of garbage that was in these. We are leaving right now."
The woman snatches the cookie bag out of her daughter's hand and roughly tosses it back on the edge of the counter before grabbing her daughter's arm and yanking her out the door. As she slams it shut, the bag falls to the ground before Sabine is able to catch it, and she runs around the counter to see the damage that's been done.
As Sabine leans down to pick up the bag, she doesn't even have to open it up. She can see right through the lavender cellophane that the cookies are crushed.
"So—" say Marinette and Chat Noir at the same time.
"You go first," they say, again in unison.
"No you—"
"No you!"
Chat Noir places a hand over his mouth and gestures at Marinette. Ladies first.
Marinette looks down at the plate of half eaten cookies and laughs. "Okay…so, wow…well, I've been building this up in my head for a long time now, but I feel so lucky that—"
The ground suddenly quivers underneath them, and a cold rush of something that feels both distinctly malicious and chaotic sweeps through the building, and Marinette immediately stops talking as her entire being fills with dread.
She looks over to Chat Noir and nods, and they both run back inside her room.
Marinette scrunches her eyebrows together as she presses her ears to the trap door and tries to hear what's happening below more clearly.
It's obvious that there's an akuma downstairs, but she wants to know what's happening before she transforms in front of Chat Noir for the first time.
It was going to happen at some point; Marinette thought that perhaps it would have happened at a calmer moment, after they actually had a chance to have a real conversation about identities and trust and acceptance—the kind of conversation they were about to have right now—but apparently the universe is more interested in action than it is in words.
And then Marinette's heart stops beating as she recognizes the shouting voice that's echoing through the trap door. It's unmistakably—
"Maman? Maman!"
Marinette turns in a panic to look at Chat Noir, who holds her gaze as he nods at her, calm and steady.
She doesn't have to say anything; she knows that he already understands everything.
Chat Noir holds out his hand, and Marinette takes it.
"Come on, my lady. Let's go save your mother."
