Chapter Text
Our souls paused like kites in the salt-grass & I'm sorry but what you said about me was always about you.
STANDING AT DAWN WITH MY MOTHER in Knock, Melissa Atkinson Mercer
One day, tens of millions of years from now, someone will find me rusted into the mud of a world they have never seen, and when they crumble me between their fingers, it will be you they find.
THE STONE GODS, Jeanette Winterson
A lover? Maybe. Something tender, anyway. But tender like a bruise.
THE WINNER'S KISS, Marie Rutkoski
Adora turns sixteen just as a snowstorm comes in. She sits propped up against some pillows and her palm cupping her chin, watching the snow billow by. She’s always liked winter and the cold that flushes her cheeks, that numbs the tip of her nose. Behind her, Mara is making hot chocolate, and Razz is sneaking marshmallows into her mouth, and the presents on the kitchen table are beginning to become too tempting to let sit any longer.
Her phone buzzes. hbd, writes Catra, short and to the point.
Wow you do care about me, Adora writes back. Catra’s response is almost immediate: ehhh idk.
She laughs, and the sound is clear and bright, and everything is perfect, and then her phone buzzes again. she-ra, says the text message from Catra. Adora blinks. Her sight goes fuzzy; the world splinters and glows purple and white at the edges. SHE-RA. She checks the text again, and it says, ur okay ig and she smiles warily, confusedly—
Adora gasps awake. She’s lying in tall grass, and she drags her hands down her face, trying to chase after her dream as it fades from her memory. She stills and thinks about it for a moment, feels her pounding head for a second, concentrating. What’s hot chocolate? She scrubs at her eyes and tries to focus on where she is.The sky is dark and starry; the detail makes her pause and narrow her eyes in thought.
She thinks she recognizes this place — the tower she built for Light Hope is somewhere near here; yet when she scans the area, there is something entirely unfamiliar about it. The shape of the clouds, the stars dotting the sky all lend to the eerie sense of a place she knows and doesn’t know, like she’s in a dreamscape, like she’s reimagining Etheria. Her brows furrow then —
Something is wrong. She isn’t dreaming. She pinches herself, sucks in a deep breath. MARA. Where is she? Her memory flickers: a force captain badge; Catra, distorted and half-destroyed by the void; the sword at the center of a vortex. SHE-RA. Why — what is going on? Why isn’t she with —
“Oh,” says Adora aloud to the empty space around her. It doesn’t even echo; once she’s said it, the landscape is silent again, like nothing has been said at all.
Her eyelids slide shut, and behind them, images continue to flash and fade in short bursts. Closing the portal, the alternate reality, Catra’s attack, Glimmer remembering her, knocking Catra out, going after the sword alone, claws at the last moment scraping her ankle, a final look before — not getting to say goodbye — not —
She sucks a breath in and stops herself there, concentrates on the here, like Bow taught her to do when she gets overwhelmed. It’s weirdly silent here. There is no birdsong. There aren’t any cicadas humming, or crickets chirping, just the faint rustling of the wind and her own breaths. “I’m alone,” she tries, just to see how it sounds. It sounds empty and unconvincing. “There’s nothing here,” she says instead, which feels just as much like a lie as before. It’s like she doesn’t believe herself, doesn’t believe her eyes or ears.
She stretches out in the field and looks up again. Stars. In the morning, she thinks, she will get up and go looking for food. Maybe in the morning she will learn a thing or two about this place and how to get home. Because there must be a way to get home. Her fingers clench at the grass and each pull up handfuls at the thought. She jerks them up and sprinkles them onto her stomach.
The stars twinkle above her, and the moon is bright and full.
How can anyone sleep with lights as bright as these? How can she sleep at all, having watched reality unfurl around her?
It doesn’t matter; she lies there and thinks and tries to sleep, and a couple sleepless hours later, she’s still awake, aching. Her back, her neck, her arms — all sore from the night in the grass, all sore from another lifetime ago. She’s bruised from her fight with Catra, from — she’s trying not to think about what.
She needs something to do. She needs a plan. Instead, she pulls herself up and shouts, “HELLO?” and listens for an echo, something, and gets nothing at all.
“This is what you get, Adora,” she tells herself, “for playing hero.” She gestures at the empty landscape. A stretch of nothingness. It’s ridiculous to be talking to herself, to be shouting to the world at large, to be doing anything other than moving. She needs water, food, a place to sleep.
She massages her neck and sits up. Her head rushes; she looks up at the sky and waits for the dots in her vision to fade. Her brows furrow as she begins to get inklings of a plan. Survival first, she thinks as she begins to stand and feels her knees wobble and realizes she has nothing to steady herself except her own determination.
Survival first and then processing. From what Entrapta said, Adora has an eternity to process. She tries a baby step — her right leg shakes underneath her weight and she has to will herself to stay upright. “Come on,” she chants to herself, “come on come on come on, you’re not going to starve here—”
Another step. Her eyes slide closed for a moment and she forces them back open. She doesn’t have another choice. Adora is good at this, at survival, has been trained to march since she was a baby — she can do this. She can do this. She takes a deep breath in and begins to walk.
Adora keeps walking. She gets more numb with each step; the further she walks, the more the world comes into focus. She’s certain that she’s in the field she travelled to and fixed for Light Hope — above her, stones with markings are floating through the air. A landmark, good — she knows where she is, knows where to go. With a stone shard, she makes a makeshift compass to check her trajectory, and then continues walking.
And keeps walking.
And keeps walking.
Dimly, she recognizes that nightfall is coming; she has felt neither a pang of hunger nor the dry scratchiness of insistent thirst in the back of her throat. Something is wrong — for a moment, an uneasy sense overtakes her, but she shakes it off. She needs to keep going; her feet are blistering, and she’s tired, but she needs to find shelter, something.
She needs to keep going. All Adora has left is this stupid plan. She has to stick to it. She has to.
“Hey, Adora,” says Catra, face half in shadow. Adora startles, then laughs as Catra steps into the light, completely normal, freckled, wearing cat ear headband and a matching tail. She’s got one eyebrow raised, a half-smile quirking up the left corner of her mouth. She’s holding a bottle of wine in her right hand.
“You made it!” She smiles. Her evening is perfect now — a halloween party with her favorite people.
“Like I wouldn’t have come,” Catra snorts, and pushes past Adora and into the party. “What’s your costume, by the way? She-Ra?”
The world stutters, stops — a flash of purple spiderweb cracks over reality —
“What did you say?”
“Thor knockoff? You need to get your ears checked.”
Adora laughs, hollow. “Right! The music’s just loud.” She looks down at her own costume. SHE-RA. The sandals, the white dress — MARA. What’s going on? Why is she — when she looks back up at Catra, there’s something wrong with her face shrouded in darkness, flickering, corrupted—
Catra lunges forward. “Adora, are you—”
MARA. SHE-RA. It’s happening again.
Adora gasps awake. She must have fallen asleep; she’s curled in on herself and the light is blinding. Halloween. Another weird dream. She cracks her neck, which is still sore. Everything still aches. “I hate it here,” she mumbles to no one in particular, and stretches out in the grass.
So much for her plan.
She tries to sit up again, and her vision swims with dots again. She doesn’t recognize where she is, which way she was going. She’s — she’s lost. It was so much easier to navigate from the air. Everything screams in protest as she tries to stand; she stumbles with the first step she’s trying to take.
She can’t do it. She can’t keep walking. Her own body is against her.
She crumples, curling onto the ground. Everything hurts. She can’t keep walking, and she can’t think of a better plan. It takes approximately ten days to die of dehydration; it takes less than that to lose her mind. She only has nine days left. She can’t move. Her fists curl, short nails digging into her palms.
Her memories return, unbidden. “This is all your fault,” snarls corrupted Catra.
She’s going to die. The thought is the clearest one she’s had since she got here, and it makes her throat constrict; she takes a balled fist and digs it against the ground to try and stop the tears. Her eyes screw up, body rocking rhythmically. She’s going to die, and she’s never going to see anyone she loves ever again.
“You did this to me,” Catra continues. “You destroyed the world.”
The feeling of her fist against Catra’s cheek; Catra’s nails scraping her ankle as she grasps the sword —
She’s never going to get to say goodbye.
That’s what does it: she melts into the ground and bursts into tears, even though she knows it will dehydrate her, even though she knows at this point she’s letting herself die. “I can’t do this anymore,” she sobs into the tall grass, rocking as she does so. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t.”
There’s no one to help her. There’s no one. She lies like that, sobbing, hysterical, alone, alone, alone.
Eventually she dries her tears, gets up, figures out which way she needs to go using her own shadow, and continues to walk. It’s all she can do.
The paint’s starting to chip on the window. Adora keeps saying she wants to paint it “sea foam” — not even a real color, in Catra’s opinion — to match the view outside. Catra wants to repaint it white. It’s a stupid argument they keep getting into over the takeout they eat on the dusty, bare living room floor.
Everything is simple, easy, perfect: the small town charm, the cheap house falling apart. The summer heat, coming in waves, and Adora in jean cut-offs and brandishing a hammer. Sweat rolls off Catra’s forehead. She ties up her bushy hair with a red bandana ‘cause her hair ties are stuck in some box somewhere.
At night, they lie out in the grass and look at the stars. Adora knows all the names for them. She points out the constellations, too, and tells Catra their stories, even though Catra’s heard them a thousand times by now. “What’s that one,” she says to Adora, pointing in no specific direction.
“She-Ra,” says Adora.
Chills down her spine. “What did you just say?”
“I said that I couldn’t tell where you were pointing.”
“Oh.” Catra shifts her gaze up and scrubs at her eyes before letting them focus again. The stars align to write MARA and her vision goes fuzzy for a moment. No. No no no. MARA. SHE-RA. No. No, everything is perfect, no—
Catra wakes up with a pounding heart, sore ribs, and a terrible headache. She has a brief coughing fit as sand falls into her mouth and reaches to grasp something solid, only to find that the ground is just dunes and loose gravel. She heaves a deep breath and scrubs at her eyes. She looks up; her vision is hazy and takes a moment to focus. When it does, though, she’s distracted by pinpricks of light in the sky: stars, Adora called them once, right before she left. Stars, she’d called them in her dream. Catra swallows.
Where is she?
Catra dusts herself off. Her cheek is bruising from where Adora punched her; the right side of her body is full of pins and needles. She flexes the claws in her right hand, watches as they shine in the moonlight, and, satisfied with the knowledge that she’s whole again, sits up and surveys the landscape.
It doesn’t flicker, nor crack — it stays steady in her line of sight. She gets up slowly, methodically: onto her knee, and then on two feet, and uses a nearby cliff face to steady herself when she sways. She’s pretty sure she’s in the Crimson Waste; funny that she’d end up here, alone —
She shakes her head to clear it and looks around. She’s pretty sure she knows the way back; with a decisive nod, she begins to walk.
Adora’s half-dead by the time she reaches the edge of the Whispering Woods, but to see them rejuvenates her all the same. She knows where she is. Where she’s going. Finally. Finally—
“Hey, Adora.”
She whirls and sure enough, above her is Catra, the only person she’s seen for miles — perhaps the only person on this whole planet — and something in her throat constricts again. Anger surges up inside her, makes her fingers curl. This is all your fault, Adora. “Catra,” she says, eyes narrowing.
Catra blinks, clearly surprised, but wipes the expression off her face as quickly as it’d flashed over it. “What’s wrong?” she purrs. “Upset that I’m stuck here with you?” She jumps down and stalks towards Adora, a half-smile over her lips, an almost-smirk. “Upset you finally lost for once?”
Adora swings her fist; it connects with Catra’s cheek with a CRACK and Catra stumbles, falls over. “Don’t you dare,” she hisses, and takes another step over Catra, throws another punch towards Catra’s side.
Catra tries to roll, but Adora catches her wrist and knees her in the stomach; Catra wheezes with an “oof,” eyes screwed up in pain, and doubles over. “You did this to me,” says Adora. “You did — you—” She swings her leg and hits Catra’s side in a single swift motion, still pinning Catra down. Another punch directed at Catra’s cheek. Another crack. Her knuckles are aching. Her whole body is aching. Vaguely, she knows that her eyes are welling up with tears. “How could you do this?”
Another punch, and this time Catra drags herself out of Adora’s grip and her expression is haunted, terrified, chest heaving with air. She has a black eye. “Stop, Adora,” she manages, and Adora advances. “Stop!”
A swipe at her cheek. Adora feels the blood well up from the scratches and snarls. “You don’t understand,” she hisses, and lurches forward again; Catra barely jumps out of the way of another punch and Adora slams against a tree, hard. The branches shake and leaves flutter to the ground. “Get out of my sight. I’ll kill you. I don’t care anymore. I will. You went too far.”
Catra gasps. Her pupils are blown wide. “Adora, wait—”
“I’m serious,” shouts Adora, and takes a menacing step forward. She’s scrambling for words, anything to make Catra feel her hurt, her anger, her pain. “Do you even know what kind of danger you put everyone I love in? Let me put this in words you can understand. You got what you wanted, didn’t you? I lost, and you won. And now I don’t care about you — some victory, isn’t it.” She’s breathing too heavily, but Catra’s turned her back now and scampering up a tree.
Something materializes in her hands, and before she knows it she’s shouting something, and the tell-tale tingle of her body expanding, changing —
“Adora,” Catra says, and her voice is broken, and for a moment She-Ra can’t remember who she is, who the girl above her is, only that she is an enemy.
“Enemy detected,” she says, voice blank, and the girl’s ears flatten as she backs into the foliage, past where She-Ra can see. A surge of violence comes through her: she stomps towards the base of the trunk and shakes it, listens as the girl cries out and clings to a branch.
“Please,” shouts Catra, “please.”
Catra. Her name is Catra. She-Ra’s form flickers. Her sword, pointed at Catra, wavers for a moment, and Catra takes the chance to jump onto another branch. She barely makes it — her claws slide as she grasps the other branch and she pulls herself up using her legs; She-Ra takes a menacing step forward and Catra yelps, disappears into the trees.
The moment the threat is gone, She-Ra sinks into Adora, panting and still bleeding from her scratch. She needs to clean it out. She needs to—
I’ll kill you. I don’t care anymore. Her words replay in her head, a loop, and the look on Catra’s face is seared into her memory. She can’t stop seeing it, can’t stop hearing herself. Adora glances down at her hands with sudden concern; she doesn’t have the sword. How could she have—
What did she—
She curls over, and for the second time in the past few days, dissolves into tears.
JUST MARRIED, says their car parked in the driveway. The beach house is falling apart. Adora smiles, regardless, because it’s there, because she can see Catra scrubbing the living room floor from the window, and waits for Catra’s head to tilt up and to catch her eye. As if on cue, Catra looks up and waves.
Adora lifts the paint — she’d ditched the “sea foam” and gone for white, like Catra initially wanted. Catra cocks her head for a moment, and Adora gestures, and then, with understanding, comes a smile that splits Catra’s face, triumphant, pleased, content. She walks up to the window and rests against it.
“She-Ra!” she shouts, and Adora’s heart stops.
“What?”
“I said, Adora?”
She blinks. Catra’s image flashes, overlaid over another Catra, a catlike Catra with half her face missing, split and splintered by light. SHE-RA. Her eye is blue-screen blue, her arm just a shadow, and the world is falling apart around them; Adora is panting, heart pounding, and Catra’s voice is —
She blinks. The world is normal again.
“Sorry,” she calls up to Catra, who shakes her head.
“Don’t drop the paint, babe. Can’t have you going back and changing your mind.”
Adora laughs and rolls her eyes, looks back to the car. MARA, it says, where it said JUST MARRIED before, and then there is no car, and the light is cracking open the world and the space between them, and she’s calling her wife’s name, again and again as they fall apart, and the ground crumbles away—
Catra wakes up. Her side aches. She’s pretty sure she’s bleeding. “Holy Hordak, Adora,” she groans, and shifts. She’d found this abandoned hut, clean and dry and warm enough to stay and recover in. When she peels off her shirt, her body is dotted with bruises and cuts. She inspects herself in the mirror — whole again, both sides of her face similar enough to be symmetrical, save for her eye color. She takes in a shaky breath, then lets it out.
Catra forces herself off the bed she’d found and towards the kitchen, where there are herbs still drying and berries in a wicker basket. She hasn’t seen any bugs, or birds, or animals. It seems — impossible that there are still plants, and yet, here they are. There’s a book, too, open on the kitchen, that she’d pulled out the night before; in it, there are drawings of plants and some kind of writing she doesn’t understand.
The illustrations are enough: pictures of wounds and what to do and how to apply it. She can figure out the steps in between. There’s an image of mint leaves in hot water; she boils the water in the pot over the hearth and finds a plant right outside in a garden, pulling off its leaves and dropping them into the pot.
Once she’s decided some time has passed, she pours herself some in a cup and waits for it to cool long enough to drink. It’s minty, like she’d expected, and soothing; she sits like that, in the kitchen, sipping her drink and trying to comb through her distorted memories of what she did do.
I’d rather see the world end than watch you win.
Interesting, she decides, holding her emotions at length. Look what she’s done; Etheria seems, at least to Catra, to be completely deserted of people. Food is left out, mid-preparation, in village homes. This very hut seems to be abandoned in the middle of a task — the broom is on the floor, and the house is half-swept.
This is all your fault. Her words, and now Adora’s.
Something is wrong here, and she can’t quite remember how she ended up stuck in an empty Etheria with Adora, who hates her, who can become She-Ra without her sword. She’s gotten what she wanted, too — she’s made Adora lose everything. It’s not satisfying, though, and a subtle itch in her heart makes her pause, rethink her situation.
Where is she?
She sips her drink, and sinks into her arms and presses her nose onto the table. Something is off, and she’s so, so tired. She reaches over and takes a handful of berries from the basket — still fresh — and a couple stain her claws and hand purple. They’re sweet on her tongue. Outside, the light is bright and warm, and for a moment Catra considers just staying here: alone, safe, unbothered, unaware of what’s wrong.
She considers it for another moment. And then another.
Adora drags herself to a stream and cleans out her scratch wound the best she can. She forces herself to drink, too, and finds herself thirsty for the first time in days, desperate. The water is sweet, and probably dirty, but she can’t find herself bothered. She strips out of her Horde uniform — the white shirt is ripped in places she doesn’t think a couple stitches will fix; she’ll probably have to get rid of it. She figures that there might be something she can wear in Bright Moon, assuming she makes it there.
She’s content again, now that she has another plan. It feels good, too, to watch the sweat off her and get her tight shirt off her bruising ribs. It takes a moment for her to get the confidence to rip it into thin ribbons, but once she has created a bandage for her aching sides, she does feel a bit better. Less tense. More...prepared.
She flexes; the sports bra fits well enough, and the bandages don’t come undone. Her eyes shutter closed for a moment, and flashes of her fight with Catra come back: I’ll kill you! Enemy detected. The words echo and she flinches, scrubs at her cheek with cold water. She’s tired, now; or rather, she’s been tired since she got here, and she turns away from Bright Moon.
First rest, and then answers, she decides, settling in against a tree and closing her eyes.
Catra walks into the Halloween party and grimaces. She doesn’t really like these things; she likes Adora, though, who’s grinning like a maniac and in that insipid Thor knockoff costume she probably picked up at a Halloween store, and though Catra thinks Halloween parties are cheesy, Adora’s smile makes the situation a whole lot more bearable.
“Do you want anything to drink?” asks Adora, collecting Catra’s bottle of wine and moving towards the kitchen to — presumably — open it. Catra can smell alcohol on her breath; she’s already tispy.
“No more than I want to know who you’re dressed as.” Red cape, white dress with a gold flower-star-thing on the chest, bicycle shorts, a crown with wings — all familiar in a way she can’t put her finger on. She likes Adora’s hair down, though; only Adora would look good in those cheap twenty-buck pre-packaged costumes.
“She-Ra?” says Adora, and—
Catra’s heart skips a beat. SHE-RA. She squeezes her eyes shut and when she reopens them, there are cracks at the edge of her vision, white light fading in. Her right side feels wrong, and when she looks down, her arm is just a shadow, and she has claws, and Adora is different, too, and—
“What did you say?” she manages faintly.
Light Hope stands across from Adora, and the familiarity is some kind of relief; someone else, even someone who isn’t real, in front of her — it makes her ache with something she can’t put her finger on it. It makes her want to stay here, alone in the company of a programmed hologram — something safe, somewhere safe. “Light Hope,” she says desperately, “where am I?”
Light Hope flickers and glitches. “You are in Etheria,” she says.
Adora groans in frustration. “Why can I become She-Ra without my sword?”
“I do not understand.”
“Where are we?”
“You have already asked that question.”
“What do portals do to people?”
Silence. And then, “That is not important.”
Adora clutches her side and stomps. “I think, since I am stuck inside a portal, that it is important information!” Light Hope stands above her, unmoving save for her glitches. Adora barrels on, suddenly annoyed at the situation, at Light Hope, at being stuck on an empty planet with just Catra, “How come you get to decide what’s important, anyway? You always decide for me — what to do, who to be, what I get to know!”
“I was programmed to determine what is important.”
Adora seethes. “It’s not fair! Catra’s here, and she’ll — I don’t know what she’ll do, but she’s going to — she could kill me, Light Hope, and I don’t know what to do!”
“I do not understand.”
“She could kill me, Light Hope. She’s dangerous, and unhinged, and I can’t control when I’m She-Ra and when I’m not, and I’m scared, and no one else is here, and I miss my friends.”
“You must let go.”
“I don’t want to let go!” she shouts, and realizes belatedly she’s crying. “I want to go home!”
“This is your home,” says Light Hope unhelpfully. “There is no way to leave it. I can help you train.”
“I don’t want to train anymore!” screams Adora, and her throat aches afterward, and Light Hope looks unbothered. “There’s no one here to protect! I did it! I saved everyone! What more do I have to do to please you?” She takes in a gulp of air and a shuddery sob runs through her.
Light Hope doesn’t say anything.
“WHAT MORE DO I HAVE TO DO?” bellows Adora.
“You must let go.”
Adora crumples onto the floor. “You would say that, wouldn’t you,” says she says grimly. She curls into a ball and pulls her head into her knees. “There’s nothing left for me to let go of,” she says, mostly to herself, muffled by her mouth pressed against her pant leg, and then, “There’s nothing left.”
Only her, Catra, and an empty Etheria.
There’s a snowstorm when Adora turns sixteen; Catra’s a little mad she can’t drive her dad’s pickup to come see her, but she’s placated by the knowledge Adora likes that kind of weather. It rains down underneath the mountains, closer to the coast, and Catra snapchats her pictures of tree trunks that have turned brown-black with water.
hbd, she texts, and the response comes barely a second after her message: Wow you do care about me. It makes her crack a smile, look out at the rainy weather and feel her cheeks heat a little.
i miss u, she types, and then deletes. ehhh idk, she writes instead, staring warmly down at her text messages. ur okay ig, she adds, because she knows it’ll make Adora smile, and everything is perfect—
A clap of thunder sounds through the house. She jumps, catches her reflection in the mirror, and for a second half her face is in shadow, splintered by purple-white light, and she has ears, a tail, and then she blinks, and she just looks scared. She sighs and presses the palms of her hands into her eyes until she sees shapes with her eyes closed.
Everything is fine. Everything is perfect. Don’t ruin it, Catra.
She peaks open an eye. She has a text from Adora. SHE-RA.
Her phone clatters to the floor, and she pulls in her knees. It’s happening again. It’s happening again, and she doesn’t want to go back, she wants to stay here, where everything is perfect, and Adora still loves her, and it’s raining and she’s happy, why can’t she be happy, and thunder booms again—
Adora, to her surprise, finds Catra passed out in Razz’s hut. She’s changed into a t-shirt, which has hitched up, and some shorts. Bruises pepper her back and side — bad bruises. Adora puts her hand to her mouth. She did that. It’s bad enough that Catra, always the light sleeper, hadn’t even stirred when Adora entered the kitchen.
Adora groans loudly and places her palms to her temples. She doesn’t have anything better to do; she’d tried to go to Bright Moon and broken down crying at the thought of it. She isn’t ready to go to the Horde. And Catra — she did this to Catra, and she’s not sure when the last time she ate was, and —
“Adora—” Catra’s awake. Adora startles, and then sees the look on Catra’s face — it’s hurt, first and foremost, but also terrified and angry. “I fucked off, didn’t I? Why are you here?”
Adora crosses her arms and huffs. Typical. “This isn’t your hut.”
“It sure isn’t yours, either, princess.”
“Yeah, but I know the owner. And didn’t I ask you—” Adora curls her fingers into a fist “—to get out of my sight?”
Catra flinches back, and then raises a clawed hand. “I found the hut first.” She slides off her chair, and hisses as she does so — she must really be in bad shape. Adora winces. “I’m not going to be bullied around by anyone. Especially not by you.” Scratches cover her face, and her cheek is purpling.
“There isn’t anyone else,” says Adora coldly.
“Sure there is. The owner, for example.”
Adora stops. “Catra,” she says, voice soft. “Do you know where we are?”
Catra frowns, fangs bared. “Of course I know where we are. This is my home.” She rolls her eyes and takes a step forward, and it would be threatening, if she wasn’t limping so badly, or clutching the side where Adora kicked her as she did so, or making that noise with each movement, like she’s sucking in a breath between her teeth. “And I ask you,” she raises her claw, “to get out.”
Adora catches Catra’s wrist as it comes down. “No, Catra, I — You know we’re in the portal, stuck between realities, right? There’s no one here, except for us.”
“Right,” says Catra, yanking her arm back. “Like I’d believe you.” She takes a step backward and has to clutch the table for support.
“There’s no one else,” repeats Adora.
“Stop being so dramatic, Adora,” shouts Catra, and she lunges forward. Adora jumps out of the way and Catra stumbles, usually so quick on her feet, and has to use a piece of furniture to right herself. Her movements are shaky, jolting. “Why are you still here? Wouldn’t Glitter or Bow be here by now?”
“They aren’t here!” Adora yells, “And you’re not in a state to be alone!”
“I don’t need you anymore,” Catra says coldly.
“I don’t care,” replies Adora. Her voice wavers for a moment, and then steadies. “We’re the only two people on this entire planet.”
Catra lurches forward again, reaching out to swipe at her arm. Adora blocks her and steps aside, panting heavily. “I don’t believe you,” says Catra, and her eyes are narrowed in that way that Adora hates, the way that means, I hate you I hate you I hate, the gaze that she never thought would be directed at her.
“Yes, you do,” replies Adora, but it comes out more gentle than she’s expecting. “You could always tell when I was lying.”
“I clearly don’t know you as well as I think,” says Catra under her breath, but it’s more hurt than unconvinced.
“Catra—”
“What happened to hating me, huh? What happened to never wanting to see my face?”
Adora’s shoulders slump. She wants to say that she’d never hate Catra, but she can’t bring herself to — instead, she just watches Catra’s expression fall, waiting for the denial that isn’t coming, and then twist into something ugly. “That’s what I thought,” spits Catra, reaching over to attack Adora once more.
“Catra, please.”
“Catra, please,” repeats Catra in a high-pitched, nasally voice. “You don’t care about me. Fuck off.”
“I — I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. You can walk.” She’s still clutching her side.
Adora groans into her hands and fixes Catra with a look. “I did this to you.”
“I know. I was there.”
“It’s my responsibility to—”
“We’re enemies, Adora. And this planet is deserted. You don’t have any responsibilities anymore.”
“So you admit it. I’m telling the truth.”
Catra flicks her ear back and her tail coils in annoyance. “Stop trying to be cute. I don’t care about you anymore.” Her brows are drawn together in anger, but something about the expression makes Adora step closer to Catra, suddenly achingly sad with the familiarity of Catra’s hurt expression.
“I know,” she says quietly. “I don’t know if I’ll forgive you, either.”
Catra’s expression twists, and Adora watches her fight back tears.
“But I did this to you. Let me at least—”
“I don’t want your pity, Adora! Stop trying to save me!”
“I’m not saving you, Catra! You made it pretty fucking clear that you have no intention of being saved! No. You made it pretty clear that you have no intention of letting me live and be happy. I don’t even know what I’m doing here. I thought — I just thought.” Adora takes a deep breath. “I don’t know what I thought.”
She picks up the broom lying on the floor and leans it against a nearby wall. “Goodbye, Catra. Have fun going crazy all alone.”
She storms out of the house, suddenly furious. She can never win with Catra. She’s never going to win. She kicks at a stone as she’s leaving, when—
“Adora, wait.”
She stops.
“Where are you going?”
She turns and glares at Catra. “Wouldn’t you like to know? What are you going to do, strangle me in my sleep? Kill me?” She can imagine a thousand different scenarios, but the real reason she doesn’t tell Catra is because she doesn’t know. She has no idea where to go now.
The look Catra gives her shatters her. “You know I couldn’t,” she says quietly. “You know I never could.”
“I’d like to think that,” says Adora softly, and wipes away another tear, “but evidence lately has been contrary.”
“Maybe,” says Catra lightly. “But I certainly can’t kill you now.”
“You might try to.”
“Maybe. I’ve already lost everything.” She studies her nails. “If you’re right, I don’t get another chance with Entrapta or Scorpia, anyway. It’s just me and you.” She gives Adora a grin, the first real smile Adora’s seen in a long time, but it’s too feral, too dangerous, too toothy.
“There hasn’t been a ‘me and you’ since — since—”
“Since I jumped into the void and then crawled back out?” Catra asks, and, seeing the look on Adora’s face, raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, I remember.” She flexes her right claw and Adora bites her lip. “Or maybe before that, when I left you in that First Ones temple thing. Or before that, when you left me all those months ago.”
“I tried to redo it. I tried to fix it. You didn’t want me to.”
“You don’t know what I want,” says Catra.
“I don’t think I ever did,” says Adora, and sighs. “I don’t think I ever will.”
She turns to leave. Catra doesn’t try and stop her this time.