Disclaimer: Miraculous Ladybug does not belong to me. Poem is from e.e Cummings.

AN: The result of 4 AM drabbles because everything is so cute and how do I even do justice to it? (also I just really want that origins episode)

yours is the light by which my spirit's born

(yours is the darkness of my soul's return
-you are my sun, my moon, and all my stars)

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There is a boy whose hair glows golden in the sunlight and a girl whose eyes are the color of the sky.

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It begins like this: no one truly knows. There are humans and there is power and a greed to wield it. The first Ladybug is not called so and the first Chat Noir does not have a name. They just are, and there are voices in their heads urging them on and forcing magic unto their hands. Cataclysm is not yet thus (the first touch of the first Chat Noir brings a city to crumbling ruins) and Lucky Charm leaves its wielder befuddled and open to defeat.

It is the beginning and it does not last long. The first Ladybug and the first Chat Noir never meet, and all that is left of them are bones in the earth and the glint of metal amidst the remains.

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The second Ladybug is born as the second Chat Noir dies and so they do not meet either. The luck that the insect will centuries ahead in time be fabled for is not enough to bring down the entity lurking in the edges of humanity's nightmares (and this entity does not have a name yet, either) and there is a corpse on the bottom of an ocean floor, two red gems washing up on the beach until they are buried in the sand.

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Humanity has always been an emotional creature. It is only relatively recently that their desire for blood is tempered, their passions milder and less prone to result in death.

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It is a work of equality: one is not best without the other. They are two sides of the same coin, two halves of one soul. The Greek wrote a myth of the human self cut in two, forever searching for its lost partner. The story fits them to a T.

And when they are together it is glorious and as brilliant as the heat of a dying star, combusting silently in the embrace of that which is nothing and everything both at once.

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The third time's the charm, as the saying goes - they glimpse each other in the midst of conflict and their fates are written in starlight colors through the fabric of the universe.

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There is something about star crossed lovers that tugs at people's heartstrings.

(Oh, if only they knew of this millennia old tragedy.)

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There is not always a Ladybug, and not always a Chat Noir. Some centuries there is no need for them because there is no Hawk Moth, and some centuries there is simply no human born to wield the power of the Miraculous. Those are the dark years that the kwami do not discuss because the fate of the one Chosen who is unfortunate enough to exist alone is never favourable.

(It is typically the Chat Noirs who perish like a moth too close to a flame; the Ladybugs have more luck than to be born during a period so... empty.)

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It is not always a romantic sort of love. Sometimes it is platonic, familial, or even manipulative and greedy. (Love and hate share a very slim borderline.)

The love that is pure and true leads them to a partnership of success. A banished Hawk Moth, sent elsewhere until the time comes once again for the ancient greed to stir and hunger. The life after the masks and the magic is much the same as the partnership - golden in its perfection. It is long and full of joy and wonder. When Death comes, it is greeted as an old friend and met with welcoming smiles.

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Dying is always familiar to them, a brief split second sensation of oh, I've been here before before the nothingness swallows them whole.

The universe hums, expands, and waits to greet its old friends once more.

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And so this time, this is how it begins: there is a boy whose hair glows golden in the sunlight, and a girl whose eyes are the color of the sky. When he is born, a black cat outside the hospital flicks its tail and disappears under the bushes to the sound of a newborn's screaming. When she is born a month later, sunlight descends onto her smiling face and a ladybug rests on the swaddle keeping her warm.

They meet fourteen years later on a rooftop in Paris with the stars cooing above them. It is love at first sight, their souls burning in recognition until she realizes his eyes (bright green, so green, she thinks she's never truly seen the color until now) are too close and she fumbles with her suddenly clammy hands until they make contact with his chest and push him away.

(Something inside of her screams at the action, ancient and sleeping and ignored.

He feels as if he hasn't known how to breathe until her fingers make contact with the skin above his heart.)

They both haven't moved but are gasping for air. It's the shock, they tell themselves as they reel for an explanation.

"Who are you?" Is the first question (timeless) to be asked and is her prerogative this time around.

Her voice is the sound he never knew he was aching to hear. "Chat Noir," is the answer he gives and sweeps low in a bow, eyes straining as he refuses to take them away from this (his) girl in red and black. Every nerve in his body is on alert as her scent hits his newly developed senses, and she smells of vanilla and sweat and a hint of something (love, death) that makes his tongue stick to the roof of his mouth. "And who might my lovely lady be?"

Lady. My lady. The endearment echoes in her brain, a lapse in existence as hundreds of voices cradle her with their words. Hundreds yet one, always one. She blinks (her eyes watery, from the wind she tells herself and not from the fear that he will disappear the moment she's no longer looking at him) and the ancient thing inside of her recedes into itself. "L-ladybug." She stutters over the name so new to her, and then suddenly feels bold. She feels lucky, and right where she belongs. "Ladybug," she repeats with a confident tilt of her chin and sharing this rooftop with a strange boy in a leather suit and cat ears suddenly feels like the moment her entire life has been leading her to.

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When they are together it is glorious and as brilliant as the heat of a dying star, combusting silently in the embrace of that which is nothing and everything both at once. Their love is timeless and maddening, a warmth that never leaves their bones in all the seconds spent after their first glimpse of each other. Their existence together is exhilarating and breath taking and perfect, each a half of a soul travelling all of time and space until it finds itself again. It is nights under moonlight over Parisian streets and bloody battles against akumas and more than a few close calls. It is the hammering beating of their hearts against their chests and school classrooms, with too many daydreams and too much denial and too much emotion. There is always too much emotion and it renders them blind, this love that is not always accepted readily and with open arms.

But when it finally is it is with a quiet comfort and a soft realization, of flushed cheeks and a soft exhale of "oh, it's been you this whole time" (an echo of my darling, my dear, my sweet, it's you) and an embrace that occurs across centuries, across countries and continents (boundless and timeless and iridescent).

And so the universe sighs with them, and knows that this will be one of the good ones - one of the periods filled with light and goodness and nothing more right than the sight of a soul having found its lost half.