Tikki was expelled from her connection to Marinette's earrings in a rush of pink light.

Though they stood only a few inches apart, her chosen still kept her eyes shut tight. She was still so desperate to hold on to those precious few remaining seconds of blissful ignorance, weighing the long list of unasked questions in her mind before giving over to the pull of the inevitable.

It was only when he had gasped that Marinette's own eyes shot open. Blue eyes wide, her jaw dropped as recognition of her partner was immediate.

"Well, Tikki," Plagg smirked a fangy grin, his tiny black arms crossed over his tiny chest. "I think they're broken."

Tikki sighed, shooting a rueful and crooked smile to Marinette, before hovering over to his side. "You know as well as I that they need time. Just as so many chosen have over the years."

She bit her lip and waited, watching the two for the slightest hint of whether all of her hard work with either come to fruition or all of Plagg's machinations might turn things sour.

Their eyes met, unmasked with apprehension and the weight of a few millennia of fears.

It always came down to this crucial moment.

At least for their luckiest ones.

These were some of the days where it was hard to literally be the mother of invention.

In those earliest memories she carried, that was a title which she bore with the greatest pride.

Not long after she had come into being, she had sought out companionship, moving from tiny isolated village to village, until she'd found a creative mind to foster.

As language became more complex and nuanced, the humans she's interacted with could be made to understand her, and she'd absorbed the new knowledge easily.

But the lives of her companions were extinguished so quickly. So few last pasted a second decade, and women often less time than that with the pains and hazards of childbirth.

In her first thousand of years of existence, humanity had already come so far, creating fantastic things and ideas to improve human life and knowledge, to the works of art that made life all the more meaningful, creating words, and language and systems to understand the world around them.

And she took pride in having a tiny red hand in helping to drive that creative energy along, to bring those thoughts into being and action.

It wasn't until well into her second millennia that she had met Plagg.

He'd been cantankerous and lazy, gluttonous and bored. And he'd inspired the same in his human companions.

Not a lick of that bode well for her fostered times of peace and cooperation.

Just as Tikki had helped those civilizations build up, Plagg had taken great joy in letting all of those blocks fall, in strife and conflict. The devastation of war would in mere hours or days tear apart so much hard work that would set the young tribes back for years to recover from - if they ever did.

In those first years, Tikki had shuddered at the memories, focusing all of her wrath and ire at her opposite.

Who was he to take away what little they had in their short lives? Blinking away in hours what they had worked for months and years to create?

But even after the first century had passed, Tikki couldn't find fault in the results. The humans were prone to more creativity in the wake of his terror, finding better ways to fend off the attacks (and eventually the diseases). They were already living longer and stronger.

Yes, Plagg had been an evil.

But it seemed he was a necessary one.

Much to her unending sadness, her human partners would come and go. Plagg was the one true constant in her life.

And just like any other bane of her existence, he'd had a way to claw his way under her skin.

She grew to see that while Plagg was truly difficult, but not wholly bad. With the right persuasion, she'd thought he might be persuaded to see things her way.

She'd appealed to his boredom, to his gluttony helping to inspire whole festivals, plying him him with the freshest harvest, with song and dance. With the very best of all of her creations.

His glowing green eyes had sneered at the offerings. He'd complained and groused. He'd gagged on the food, spitting it away.

But each and every time she and her human companions had given him an offering in the next few centuries, Plagg kept coming back.

It took nearly half a century more just to find out that the just ripe foods were not quite to his tastes and to adjust their preparation methods accordingly.

After a half century more, Plagg had been willing - wanting - to tell her that she was just as necessary to him as he had become to her.

It hadn't taken long after that day for the pair of them to become virtually inseparable, sparring with wit and words rather than through humanity.

Sure. Life was no longer clean and easy, but messy and complex. And wasn't that far more interesting for them both?

On the day when Tikki had finally hugged Plagg, it became far more interesting than either of them had ever dreamed.

In retrospect, they were beings of true creation and true destruction given form, given voice. It was only inevitable that where they both touched, beings of chaos - the monsters of lore - came into being.

Humanity was always quick to fear what it did not recognize and did not understand, attacking and reviling them.

It had taken far too much time, and far too many mistakes on their part, before they had found that a truly symbiotic relationship with a miraculous holder was not only possible, but a necessary means to drive their misbegotten children away to live out the rest of their far too fleeting lives in safety.

She had long watched humans bear children with the mildest pangs of envy.

The fact that Plagg shared her instinct to protect them, only made her more fond of him.

While she and Plagg stayed forever in each other's orbit, they didn't dare touch. Especially not after their children had shuffled loose from the mortal coil naturally, but all too quickly. Those wounds were still too fresh in their minds.

They had warned their miraculous holders not to touch either, fearing the direst of consequences.

It was purely by chance that their chosen had no other choice but to touch, on the day the Ladybug fell over the edge of a rather wicked looking cliff.

The Cat had climbed down without reaching distance, rope at the ready to help pull her up to safety. But when the moment had come, they had both anxiously regarded the eventual meeting of their hands.

Indecision had only warred in those glowing green eyes for a second, before he took the chance, tugging her up into his side.

Relieved, Ladybug had pressed her lips to the Cat's cheek, turning to bow briefly, before she had wandered out of sight, identity kept secret.

That Cat was only the first of the truly lovelorn of Plagg's chosen, but neither Tikki nor her own Ladybug chosen were unaffected.

A half year later, when the Lord's daughter had wed the mostly humble squire - who managed to outwit and outfight even the best of the knights (including his own mentor) in combat - no one noticed the tiny red and black figures grinning down upon the festivities and merriment.

They were all far more aghast with how enamoured the newly married appeared to be with each other.

From that point on, their chosen had a noticeable tendency to hover. Even as the time often drew censure to male-female touch, their chosen would often skirt the bounds of acceptability.

The newly created Guardian quickly grew wise, opting to find soul mate pairs whenever possible.

Unfortunately, that didn't always meant that their chosen would always come to happy ends.

As the world grew wiser and more aware of their power, they had to conceal themselves and the identities of their chosen all the more to keep everyone safe from harm.

Plagg grinned down at the gaping pair, his eyes briefly straying to Tikki. Ever the romantic, she'd always loved to wax nostalgic whenever the big reveal eventually came, trusting everything to her own luck and well meaning advice.

But he'd always preferred to be more certain. Leaving anything to chance would often result in his own downfall.

Plagg had learned early on to lower all of the expectations on him beginning with the first meeting, so it was far easier to maneuver the situation to his benefit.

He had sniffed out Tikki's chosen on nearly the first day. If Tikki somehow failed to be aware of his ability after so long, really that was a failing of her own pride.

After all, he'd only intended to plant the seeds in Adrien's mind that might break through the glamour without outright breaking his long standing peace with Tikki.

But the kid had naively assured him that the girl was "just a friend".

Ah. What he didn't know...because he was so, so painfully oblivious.

It had taken all he had not to outright cackle every time Adrien started to sighed and moaned and mope over his Lady Love. It only fed into his own perverse amusement at the ever-growing absurdity of it all.

Especially after he'd detected all the hallmarks of Tikki's hand in encouraging the girl's feelings.

He smirked as his eyes registered Adrien slowly closing the gap that had grown between he and his girlfriend. A slow, deliberate smile grew on his chosen's face, as he'd tucked a stray lock behind her ear.

"See." He'd nodded his head down at the pair. "I knew things wouldn't stay broken for long."

Her lips quirked as she'd side-eyed him. "Oh? You knew, did you?"

His eyes widened, guilelessly. "You didn't?"

Shaking her head fondly, Tikki smiled down at the pair below.

Marinette looked up into Adrien's gaze, only the slightest nibble of her bottom lip betraying the anxiety the girl was surely feeling.

Plagg grinned. That girl would have next to no cause to be anxious soon enough.

If Ladybug's kiss had been enthusiastic enough just to save her partner when a curse was on the line, then her eagerness for kissing her crush on the regular was bound to knock the kid back on his heels.

Tossing a saucy wink at Tikki, he practically rubbed his paws together, anxious for the next time their chosen needed to transform.

Heck, he might even forgo the demand for Camembert.

But only this once.

Author's Notes:

Not beta read so please forgive any mild mistakes.

This is a prompt response for dragonfantasy90 on Tumblr and as a follower milestone thank you to my readers.

Thank you all again so much for your support! It means so much!