The storm that had been predicted eventually came in the late afternoon, effectively trapping Adrien in the bakery. Not that this would be a bad thing in itself, but once the order of macaroons was finished, her mother sent them upstairs to cook dinner. That meant that they'd be alone again and Marinette really had to get a grip. She just hoped that the cold wind from earlier had been an effective cover-up when it came to her probably very red cheeks. Especially when Adrien had handed her the planter with the red roses while knowing exactly what their meaning was.

Preparing dinner was surprisingly uncomplicated though. They talked about things Adrien had noticed at school that he found interesting or didn't quite understand yet. She was more than happy to explain to him that he had to ask a teacher's permission if he wanted to leave the classroom, or that if he was handed a stack of papers, that he should take one and pass it on. All these little things that she herself had never really thought much about were things that were new to him. He was, for example, ranting about the fact that classes could just spontaneously switch if a teacher was ill, so another class would be held in its place.

All the talk about school reminded her that she still had homework to do. So, when her mother came upstairs to take over dinner preparations, the two of them went back up to Marinette's room to start on the maths homework together. They almost got it done by the time dinner was ready. Dinner itself was a pleasant affair with the majority of the conversation being between her father and Adrien, who started having a pun-off at some point. At least until her mother put a stop to it.

When the storm let up shortly afterward, Adrien hesitantly went home. Or rather, he made it sound like some impossible mission crossed with a dramatic novel if his texts were any indication.

KitKat: on my way home through the streets still wet from the departed storm

Princess: get home safely! 3

KitKat: I sneak in the darkness! :3

Princess: it's like six in the evening you still got two hours until sunset

KitKat: irrelevant! D:

the darkness follows me around!

Princess: I swear to god if you say 'I'm the night' I'm gonna throw something at you the next time I see you

KitKat: ...the night is my domain! :3c

Princess: -_-

KitKat: shit the gate is closed

guess how I'll get in :3c

Princess: it just rained! you can't climb over a wall and through your bedroom window!

Adrien?

ADRIEN AGRESTE!

IF YOU DON'T REPLY IN 30 SECONDS I WILL CALL YOUR BROTHER!

KitKat: too late! I'm in my room! ^w^

Princess: …why are you like this?

KitKat: you know you love this dramatic dork! ;D

That text alone had driven her into a miniature freakout. Did that mean that he knew that she had a crush on him or was he just messing around?! No, it was probably just a joke. Those things were common for them…right? To be completely honest, Marinette didn't have the solidest of grips on what was normal anymore.

Princess: you're a dork alright

Eventually Marinette decided to put her phone aside and change the sheets on her bed. They needed changing anyways, and with the constant walking up and down Adrien and she had done earlier, it was more than overdue. Once that was done, she let herself fall face down on the fresh sheets and decided to stay like that for a few minutes. Yes, there was still homework to do, but she had time. After about one minute said peacefulness was disturbed though.

"Marinette?" Tikki piped up as she worriedly hovered over her.

"What?" Marinette replied, voice muffled by the pillow. She did not want to get up for at least two more minutes. Then she would start on her history homework.

"Chat Noir called."

She instantly shot up from her bed.

"What?!"

He had called?! How?! But when he knew her number, that meant that he knew her identity, which meant she had messed up big time! Who else knew?! Maybe it had even gotten to the press by now and—

"On your yo-yo," Tikki clarified, which snapped Marinette out of her panic.

"What?" She asked again, this time confused.

"Your weapons can act as communication devices. He called you while you were not transformed so I noticed it. I don't know what he said though so you'd have to transform and check."

"My yo-yo has a mailbox," Marinette stated flatly. At this point it seemed wise to just not question things anymore.

"You should check it as soon as possible. Maybe there's an Akuma and Chat Noir needs your help."

"Again?! It's only been two days since Stoneheart! I don't know if I can do that again so soon."

She bit her lip in worry and then climbed down the ladder from her bed to lock the hatch. The last thing she needed was for one of her parents to pop in while she was transformed.

"Maybe it's something different. Just checking for messages won't hurt, Marinette," Tikki said, clearly trying to calm her down.

"Okay. Okay, okay, okay," Marinette said and took a deep breath. She still was not used to this, but she guessed she'd have to get used to it at some point if she wanted to be any good as a superhero. She had gotten lucky—heh—last time, but she didn't know if she could do it again, despite her promise to all of Paris.

"Tikki, spots on."

The magic was warm and comforting, like being wrapped in a fluffy blanket in winter. Despite the alien feeling of it, Marinette couldn't help but admit that it also felt good. She regarded her reflection for a bit as Ladybug stared back. It still needed to settle in that she was a hero. Someone people looked up to and turned to when they needed help.

She jumped when her yo-yo gave a beeping noise, clearly a signal that there really was a message on it. The reminder instantly diminished the warm feeling she had felt before. With shivering hands, she plucked the weapon from her hip and opened it.

Just like Tikki had said, there was one new message from Chat Noir. She had to take another deep breath, her heart beating nervously, before she clicked on it and held the yo-yo to her ear like a phone.

Please don't be about an Akuma. Please don't be about an Akuma. Please don't be—

"Hello, my lady! You're probably not transformed right now, so you'll hear this later. I just wanted to ask if you can make it to the Eiffel Tower today at nine. Just thought we should talk a bit outside of battle. You don't have to of course, but I'll be waiting there until ten. Hopefully see you later!"

Marinette lowered the yo-yo from her ear and stared at it in relief. Not an Akuma, but just Chat Noir being friendly. She had to admit that meeting him and getting to know him outside of battle sounded like a good idea. They could talk strategy and maybe even practice fighting so that they were prepared for the next Akuma. The more she thought about it, the more she actually came to like the idea.

"Spots off," she said with a grin.

Maybe she should bring him something? Yes, the bakery would have plenty of leftovers from the day she could take with her. Her parents' pastries had yet to fail to break the ice and she had no idea what her partner would be like outside of battle. She would have to be considerate and take a few different pastries in case he had allergies. Maybe something he could take home for his kwami, too. Tikki liked cookies after all; maybe his kwami was similar.

"Hey Tikki, what is Chat Noir's kwami like?" she asked as she sat down at her desk, suddenly motivated to finish her homework as soon as possible.

"Plagg? Oh, he's a glutton and a lazy cat, but he has a good heart. He's my other half."

Marinette smiled. "Like a soulmate?"

Tikki nodded, then paused and shook her head. "Not exactly, but something similar. Soulmate is a word that has many different meanings. We're two halves of a whole. One wouldn't exist without the other. If that is your definition of soulmates, then I guess we are. Just a little more than that, too. Our holders are usually soulmates in that sense."

Marinette spluttered, the question about what Plagg would like to eat instantly forgotten.

"Chat Noir is my soulmate?!"

It took a lot of restraint not to screech it. Tikki seemed hesitant but nodded.

"I already told you that the Ladybug and the Black Cat Miraculous require certain traits from their holders. These traits compliment each other so that the two are a good match."

"B-but Chat can't be my soulmate! I'm in love with Adrien!" Marinette whisper-yelled. Warmth flooded her face when she realised that she had never really said those words out loud before and Tikki was the first to hear them. Not that she was afraid that her kwami would tell anyone, but even after two months she was still coming to terms with it. Being in love with her best friend was…complicated, to say the least.

For some reason, that revelation seemed to shock Tikki.

"I thought you two were friends?"

Marinette groaned and let her head sink down on her desk. "We are and that's the problem, Tikki! I don't know when I started to have a crush on him, I just realised it one day. But he doesn't know that so we're still friends and urgh it's a mess!"

Tikki didn't say anything and just quietly floated down to Marinette's desk.

"Marinette," she eventually said hesitantly. "Are you sure that Adrien is really your friend?"

"Oh, not you too!"

Marinette sat up and looked at her kwami in disapproval.

"I understand that Alya is suspicious because she doesn't know that Adrien and I have been friends for over a year, but I told you about that, Tikki."

"I know, I know," Tikki said and waved her arms in a placating motion. "Just…be careful, please."

"If this is about my secret identity then don't worry. I'm not going to tell anyone I'm Ladybug and that includes Adrien too."

Deeming the topic thoroughly discussed, Marinette took out her history textbook and started reading the chapter they had been assigned. She only spoke again when she was done taking notes and was about to switch to physics homework.

"Tikki, I know you're looking out for me, but please don't be too hard on Adrien and Félix. Their mother disappeared almost two years ago and their father is neglecting them. I don't even want to know what would have become of them if I wouldn't have met them when I did, but I know they're a lot happier now than they were before."

A small pause followed. "Alright," Tikki eventually said. "I'll take that into consideration."

That was not as reassuring as Marinette would have hoped, but she'd take it for now. Tikki just got to know her after all, so she would get plenty of opportunities to observe both Adrien and Félix and form her own opinion of them.

When Ladybug landed on the grass in the Champ du Mars, she breathed a sigh of relief. After thinking about how to transport a bag with pastries while swinging through the streets with her yo-yo, she had decided to take one of her old backpacks. It was a generic red one that wouldn't give much hints to her identity. Half of Paris probably had a backpack like that, after all.

She looked around, but Chat Noir was nowhere to be seen. Luckily, she had not been spotted by nosy reporters…yet.

Her yo-yo started ringing and made her jump. It took her a second to realise that Chat Noir was calling her.

"Good evening, my lady," he said with a laugh in his voice. Ladybug frowned.

"Where are you? You said at the Eiffel Tower."

Chat Noir snickered.

"What I meant was on the Eiffel Tower. Shall I climb down real quick and get you?"

Ladybug rolled her eyes. "Stay where you are, I'm coming up."

She hung up and looked up to the imposing structure in front of her. Time to find out if she had developed a fear of heights after jumping off of it mere days ago.

When she swung her yo-yo and let it catch on beams, she noticed a certain familiarity settling in. It was reassuring that she had done this before and that the tower was brightly lit at night. She still let out a huge sigh of relief when she arrived at the top platform where visitors were not able to go.

"Good evening again," a by-now familiar voice said.

"Seems like I'm not the only one who wants to check for a possible fear of heights," she said with a grin.

Chat snickered again as he emerged from the shadows. "I'm sorry to disappoint you, my lady, but I've risen above being afraid of heights. But since we are on the topic: Do you have a fear of heights?"

Ladybug shrugged. She had stubbornly not looked down yet. Suddenly her nerves returned and she instinctively took a step towards the centre of the platform, where she would be as far away from the edge as possible. Chat Noir noticed.

"Hey, it's okay. Let's just sit down here and talk for now," he said with a reassuring smile which Ladybug gratefully returned. Or at least she hoped it was grateful. In reality it was probably bordering on hysterical. She leaned her back against the centre structure and then remembered that she wore a backpack.

"I…uhm…brought you something," she stammered as she took it off and pulled out the bag with the pastries. Even with as little light as there was, she could see Chat Noir's pupils get comically large, not unlike those of a cat who had spotted something that captured their attention.

"Whatever it is, it smells delicious," he said and shuffled closer.

"I didn't know what you'd like, so I just brought a lot of different things. Are you allergic to anything? Because I also brought pastries without nuts and even a gluten free one and oh one with cheese because my kwami said yours likes cheese."

Chat Noir had a smile on his face as if Christmas had come early. "That's very sweet of you. Thank you, Ladybug."

They just sat there and ate the pastries for a while—it turned out Chat Noir was not allergic to anything she had brought, which was a huge relief. Eventually, it was him who broke the silence.

"This whole thing is pretty scary, isn't it?"

"It's terrifying," Ladybug agreed gravely and sighed. "I mean, even all the magic stuff aside, I held this big speech and made a promise to all of Paris…but we're just teenagers. How are we gonna be able to do this?"

"By doing just what we did earlier this week. And getting better at it too. I think the hardest part will be accepting how much things have changed from how they were before."

She hummed. "Tell me about it. There has been a lot of screaming into a pillow in the last few days," she said with an ironic grin while looking at her half-eaten croissant. It felt good to finally have someone else but Tikki to talk to about this.

"About the 'getting better' part though," Ladybug said and looked at Chat Noir who had gone back to stuffing his mouth with an éclair. He turned to look at her with his cheeks full, looking like a hamster. She almost snorted with how silly it looked.

"I thought that maybe we could meet up like this one or two times a week and train a little bit. You know, getting used to our weapons—so I don't accidentally hit you on the head with my yo-yo again—and learning how to fight."

Chat Noir finally managed to swallow his bite and gave her a wide grin.

"A marvellous idea, my lady!" he said and his ears twitched. That drew Ladybug's attention to them. Yes, they really seemed to be made out of fur. When she had seen Alya's videos and what had been on the news, she had first thought that she must have remembered something wrong because there, his ears looked like they were fake. The material looked leather-like and it was accompanied by a belt that was long enough to look like a tail. Now that she looked at both ears and tail, she realized that they did not look like they did in the videos at all.

"Ladybug? Is something wrong?" He asked, which made his tail lash. Didn't that mean that he was angry? She really wasn't good with cat body language.

"No, I was just thinking about how your ears and tail look different than in the videos. Or how people who have seen you describe them."

Chat Noir visibly tensed for a second. "I-it must be the glamour," he said with a slightly higher voice while looking anywhere but at her.

"Glamour?"

"Magic that keeps us from being recognised. I mean, with face recognition software and all that it would only be a question of minutes to find out our civilian identities otherwise. Maybe the glamour works different for us two since we both have a Miraculous."

"Yeah, that might be it," Ladybug said thoughtfully. "Do I look any different to you?"

Chat Noir grinned. "You're as radiant as the sun, my lady."

It was then that she found out that Adrien's constant comments of this nature had, in fact, not made her immune to them. She could feel a blush creep into her cheeks and she quickly looked away before her partner could see it. The last thing she needed was to give him any wrong ideas.

"Anyway, my kwami told me a bit about your powers and why you didn't use them in the last fights. Have you ever tried them out before?"

Chat's ears flattened and he looked away. "To be honest, it's quite scary to have magic that can destroy everything I touch. What if I make a mistake and it can't be fixed? And no, I haven't tried it out before."

Ladybug put a hand on his shoulder and gave him a reassuring smile.

"Maybe you should try it out on things that should be gone. Something no one would miss. Like…literal garbage? Or a pebble. You know, try it out in private so you get used to it in your own time. Then it'll be easier to use in battle when you have to."

She chuckled. "Let's just look at it this way: You can at least practice with your power. The most I can do is to randomly click through Amazon and see how different items would help me in different battle scenarios."

Chat Noir snorted and his ears perked up. "Yeah, I guess you're right, but let's bin that idea for now."

His face darkened again.

"This magic is scary though. I don't think Hawkmoth is prepared for the consequences it will have for him."

Ladybug paused at that. With all the screaming she had done about her own powers, she had thought way too little about this evil she was actually fighting, or better said, about the person behind it. A person she has never even seen except for a face made up of a swarm of magic evil butterflies.

"Consequences?"

Chat Noir gave a wry smile. "Magic always comes with a price, even ours. I don't even want to know what misusing a Miraculous would do to you."

"Wait, wait, wait! What do you mean it has consequences for us?!" Tikki had not said anything about consequences or any sort of price. Well, except for the part where she would spend her free time fighting supervillains.

Chat Noir turned around to her with concern and surprise written all over his face. "Tikki didn't tell you?"

"Tell me what?!"

He bit his lip—an action that allowed Ladybug to notice that he had fangs—and looked away for a moment before focusing back on her.

"The magic for the transformation and our powers is stored in our Miraculous. After a power is used, the magic that is left in a Miraculous will last for five minutes at most. If the transformation has to last beyond that time limit, it will not just be taxing on the kwami, but it will also transfer some of their magic into us. Plagg didn't go into detail, but in theory it would mean that a wielder of my Miraculous gets cat traits."

"So, I could get ladybug traits? What do ladybugs even do?!" Now there was a legitimate reason to panic. Why did Tikki not mention something important like this to her?! "Seriously, why didn't she tell me about this?! The next thing I know I'll find out that the earrings sucked out my soul or something!"

Chat Noir gave her a sympathetic smile. "Don't worry, your soul is safe, my lady."

"How do you know?!"

She was aware that her voice had breached the border to hysterical screeching now, but she couldn't bring herself to care. Finally, she could freak out with someone who shared her fate. Though why wasn't he freaking out like she was?!

"Plagg told me."

Oh yes, of course. His kwami was apparently more forthcoming with information than hers was. Or he had just used the last couple of days to ask them one question after another instead of spending that time screaming into a pillow. Maybe Tikki would have told her if she had just asked. Well, she would definitely ask once she got home. As thoroughly as possible!

"Sorry, this…it's just a little too much at once," Ladybug said.

"Hey, it's okay," Chat Noir said and nudged her reassuringly. "We're in this together."

She smiled. "Yeah, you're right."

He suddenly stood up, his movements much more graceful than that of a normal person, and offered her a clawed hand.

"Let's just take one step at a time," he said with a grin. Ladybug hesitated only a second before putting her hand in his and letting herself get pulled up. Contrary to her expectations, he didn't let go of her hand though.

"What's step one then?" she asked quietly. Chat Noir grinned.

"Well, you said something about a possible fear of heights earlier, so let's check if that is true and then we'll see where we can go from there."

Ladybug tensed. She had ignored the skyline all around them so far and especially a glance downwards. Her mind's eye did not hesitate to supply the image of how the height looked like from where she stood, showing her a falling Mylène.

She closed her eyes and shook her head.

No, don't think about it. She's safe. You saved her!

"Don't worry, my lady, I'm here," Chat Noir's voice said and his thumb stroked the back of her hand reassuringly.

It took not one but seven deep breaths until she successfully managed to will that image away and open her eyes again.

"Alright. Now we'll both look down on three," Chat Noir said and she nodded.

"One."

She was tempted to close her eyes again.

"Two."

Everything in her tensed.

"Three."

She looked down.

Paris at night greeted her in all its glory. From this vantage point there was no question as to why her home was called the city of lights. If she tried hard enough, she might even be able to spot her house.

"Wow," she said quietly. "It's so beautiful."

"This doesn't look like a fear of heights to me," Chat said with a chuckle and Ladybug let out a small laugh too.

"Seems like step one is complete then," she said with a grin and stretched her first out to him.

"And whatever step two will be, I'll be right there beside you," her partner said with a grin of his own and bumped her fist.

"Bien joué."