Love is a pretty, little, loaded word. It's rich with meaning, delicate in simplicity, and sturdier than people often expect. Marinette knew this, and yet, even words on a page had a hard time conveying just what it was. She knew as she felt exhaustion creep into her skin and stay, nestled in, nice and deep that this was hard to characterize. Her arms felt like lead, and only mornings like these seemed to drag her down and make her hate being Ladybug. Though the anxiety attacks, held usually in private, and scary moments also had a claim to making her hate her superhero status.
Right now, her arms were wool, and her legs were the cushion-y plush of velvet. Soft like butter, but not worth its salt, if she were to stand up. She'd only fall over then, stumble, and become a bigger klutz than she'd ever been. She sighed. Gym never wore her out like this as she peeked up, just to see her mother enter the room.
Marinette wonders vaguely if there is some sort of maternal alarm that gets fired off in her mother's head when it is far too difficult for Marinette to move forward. There has to be something, because she hadn't uttered a single word or a cry for help, and her mother was entering her room, sitting down beside her.
"Your father and I made tea." Sabine smiled, soft and reassuring, just there in a way that was hard to articulate.
"Thank you." Marinette reached out for the age old family cure. It always soothed sore muscles in a rush that floated down to rest in warm pools in her belly that spread outward to cover and relax muscles. The teenage superhero merely blinked her eyes shut as she sipped the hot beverage, nearly bitter, but not overly so.
"You're welcome." Sabine was calm even now, as if there were no need for theatrics as she reached out to her daughter and just loved her in a way that truly shown.
"I think I ran too much during the attack yesterday." She's too weary to clarify and state that she ran from the Akuma as though frightened, but it just doesn't seem right to lie to her mother, so she lets her words out, honest and vague. She did run and flip and fight and struggle during the entirety of the fight, and her muscles are killing her. Soreness was not really attributed to the Akuma fight in the same way that actual damages caused by the Akuma were, so she sometimes had to wake up and deal with sore muscles and burning limbs.
"I'm glad you're safe." Sabine murmured, and the truth to that sentence resonated with every syllable, and Marinette could melt within it. Just to know that someone with absolute sincerity and love just wanted your safety above all else during something potentially really bad without at least some superheroes to fix the problem and bring it back to normal is uplifting and nurtures the heart in delicate cadences.
"Me too." She wonders if the Akuma had worn Cat Noir out just as much, if each rush against it's quick blows and moving as much and as quickly as possible to both dodge and counter attack had worn him out. It was times like these that she wondered if he'd been better prepared for the superhero life than she was. Marinette could attribute her athletic training prior to being a superhero to lifting heavy bags of flour and gym class, which wasn't saying a whole lot other than the fact that she had upper arm strength.
She wanted to curl up into a ball though and wish the soreness away with a long nap. She barely recalled sore mornings after lifting flour or gym class, though she knew that they happened every now and again when she'd really pushed herself beyond what she knew prior to that that she could. Marinette stifled a yawn and realized that tiredness hadn't slipped out of her system yet.
It's only later as Sabine helps her daughter down the stairs, very carefully, to grab breakfast before class begins, that Marinette truly basked in the shared love of a mother and a daughter.