#i guess catra and entrapta could be switched

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

scorpia, entrapta, catra and hordak in that order

#i guess catra and entrapta could be switched #but yeah wanted to post something involving catra that wasnt criticism #spop #she ra #catra #hordak #scorpia #entrapta #spop scorpia #spop entrapta #spop catra #spop hordak

[n7punk]

"As Many Lives As It Takes (To Be With You)" Fic Notes

After talking shit and increasing the chapter count like five times, AMLAIT is finally done at 13/5 chapters. You can maybe guess there’s a lot going on in these fic notes.

No playlist this time, I didn’t make one assuming it would be a quick fic and just listened to random shit, or watched baking videos, or put in earbuds and listened to silence when I had migraines.

Epilogue life:

So I pretty much put what would be this section in the fic’s actual epilogue, but Catra and Adora end up staying in the apartment for a while. After a couple months of living with a third wheel (who is more like the primary wheel they are tricycling considering who owns the place), it starts cramping on their couple moments. Adora gently prods Catra about the idea of getting their own place, which is an idea that takes several weeks to sink in before she’s willing to explore venturing beyond her safety bubble, but everything changed once and the world didn’t end, so she eventually decides she’s ready. Catra finally leaves that small room after four years. As scary as it is, it feels like the ultimate measure of her growth.

After a few years they move to the outskirts of Bright Moon when Adora switches hospitals, giving them a bit more air and the “best of both worlds” when it comes to being in the city but having a bit more of the freedom/relaxation from their childhood town back. They’re also closer to Thaymor which makes visiting a little easier, and closer to Glimbow and Scorfuma specifically, though they’re farther from some of their other friends.

They both learn to maintain their best friendships even not living together and they regularly visit Adora’s parents, though they never tell anyone else about Catra’s ability. Netossa seems like she suspects something at times, but she never directly implies or asks something, and whatever she suspects certainly couldn’t be the truth.

Chapter 1:

⦁ If you were expecting me to have ever forgotten that tweet ND made about Catra going through all nine of her lives over the course of She-ra and Adora healing her to reset them, then you’re wrong. In a way, this entire AU is ND’s fault. Did you think about that. I have No Responsibility for this.

⦁ Entrapta’s “nerd merchandise” is a premier ball from pokemon because for some reason that was the only thing I could picture for it. It’s not even a regular pokeball I don’t know why!! But that’s what they use.

⦁ Catra technically has binocular vision dysfunction in this due to her right eye being a little out of sync from her left.

⦁ Time paradox is, of course, a portal reference.

⦁ Entrapta’s blanket used to fall off her lap when she was working, which is how it ended up under the table the first few times, and then she noticed Catra balling up there and started leaving it there on purpose, even washing and rearranging it.

⦁ Entrapta’s room is always hot because of the equipment in it and the heat output from her computer and stuff. Luckily, all three occupants of the apartment like it when it’s warm.

Chapter 2:

⦁ Catra watching ice melt is a Booker reference. I love you Booker. But also a euphemism like “watching paint dry,” “watching grass grow,” etc.

⦁ The nightmares weren’t in the initial concept for the fic, but Entrapta helping Catra out with her “condition” was and I found they were a good way to showcase the backstory without actually showing flashbacks or having an entire prologue chapter of trauma after trauma that just would have felt miserable and spoiled everything.

⦁ Catra’s job isn’t necessarily real but is also heavily based on real things. Basically universities sometimes have special collections, archives, etc that are typically “open” during regular work hours, but only by appointment. They might have their own staff or just the librarians see to them. For this fic I basically made up something that might be real, where BMU also allows appointments after hours, but only from grad students, and then professors can come in after hours (or during hours) without appointment as long as there’s staff present. And of course they get away with that by hiring someone cheap so it doesn’t cost them a lot extra to keep it open. Catra has been paid more by other jobs, but she likes this one way better, and she doesn’t have a ton of money pressure living with Scorpia and Entrapta, so she’s planning to keep it. This is also heavily based on one of my first jobs where I did something similar for a university but it had nothing to do with collections or the library. Catra works the same hours I did then.

Chapter 3:

⦁ Bow would have offered Catra his own bed if he thought she would have taken it, but Entrapta — and Catra’s own reactions — made it pretty clear that she was going to make herself difficult to help, so he thought the couch might seem “less pitying,” but he didn’t account for the Adora factor. Everybody forgets about the Adora factor.

⦁ Scorpia mentioning “six years” immediately solidified in Adora’s subconscious that Catra’s injury was from the fall, which is why she jumped to saying she watched it happen. It didn’t even occur to Adora that Catra’s paralysis could have come from something other than the fall until she was in bed like two days later and thought, oh fuck, there could have been something worse.

⦁ Sneaking onto the school roof is the exact kind of shit Catra and Adora would do together, but since she was going up there to have A Moment™️ about one of her deaths, Catra wanted to be alone. It felt like this dark secret that she was harboring and would ruin her life at any moment.

Interlude:

⦁ “It helps a lot even without her talking back or looking at me” yeah sometimes Entrapta is listening and sometimes she isn’t even aware Scorpia is there. Scorpia can unload her whole problem, talk herself through a solution, say “Thanks!”, and then only after she has marched herself out of the room will Entrapta realize she has left and throw a goodbye through the door, still not looking away from her screens. The first time Catra witnesses this she immediately gets a clear picture of the apartment dynamic.

⦁ Catra wouldn’t say her name because it was part of her paranoia over being hunted down somehow.

⦁ “Maybe Scorpia isn’t used to people not immediately loving her.” Yeah could not be further from the truth she was kind of bullied in school, that’s how she and Entrapta became friends, because they were both bad at social cues and stuck together.

⦁ Obviously, Entrapta didn’t mean anything by her questions. When you don’t realize other people would treat someone differently over something, it can seem like innocent curiosity to ask about it. She learned very quickly after meeting Catra that those kinds of things have limits, it just wasn’t something that had come up in her life before and she hadn’t inferred it.

Chapter 4:

⦁ Honestly Adora had to have Mara as family to support her because any less and she might not have made it to be at all together after everything she thought happened with Catra.

⦁ Catra does wear her arm brace in other scenarios — when she’s going to be doing physical activity, for instance, though she might opt for a sling instead/in addition — but as far as wearing it while in the apartment, sleeping like that is the only one. The difficulty of putting it on by herself — and the pain of getting help — are why she almost never uses it, even though it would work for some (but not all) of the things the sling works for, and be less obtrusive too. That’s why Adora being able to help with it later is so helpful.

Chapter 5:

⦁ The thing Adora knows that Catra doesn’t is that she’s absolutely going to break and come back home with her, even if the driving thing was more up in the air.

⦁ I went back and forth on the language to use around Catra’s ears, specifically whether to refer to them as a pair or only reference her single fully-functional one. Ultimately I decided that Catra’s internal dialog would still think of it as her ears pinning back even if only one moves (at all for small movements, or all the way for larger). She spent her entire life thinking of them as a pair, and she can’t feel one not reacting, she just doesn’t feel anything over there, so she defaults to how she used to consider them unless she’s like, looking in the mirror and can see only one move. When it comes to other people addressing them, they see just one ear reacting for the most part and tend to refer to them singularly.

Chapter 6:

⦁ Scorpia got Adora’s number at the same event that she told her about arm-hugs, mostly to puff herself up when she realized Adora could pet Catra, however carefully.

⦁ Scorpia’s pillow said “Not to spoil the ending, but everything is going to be ok” which just irritated Catra every time she saw it, so she hid it. She can’t throw it out because Scorpia’s moms are the ones who got it, but she can do her damnedest to never see it again. It mysteriously reappears when Scorpia is moving out so she can take the dumb thing with her.

⦁ Like every chapter I had a scene that I was like “this is the most fun to write, I love this so much” (which like… really awesome from a writing perspective!) and the cuddling scene was that one for this chapter. I thought it was going to be the phone call, but Adora’s determination to cuddle, her diagram, and Catra’s fluster were just so fun to work with.

Chapter 7:

⦁ Mara calls her loved ones dear because Razz always called her dearie.

⦁ Mara and Adora went all-in on the driving thing because they know Catra well and knows she needs an excuse, or at least an extra push, whenever it comes to emotional stuff like coming home.

⦁ Originally the phone calls were outlined to be one singular phone call, with Catra eventually getting comfortable enough to turn on the video as the call went on, but spreading it out made a little more sense. In the version where it was all one call, though, Catra admitted that she didn’t want them to see her face paralyzed and Adora asked Mara to tell Catra that she didn’t care about her ear. Another reason I cut it is because I decided Catra wasn’t self-conscious about that aspect of her injury.

⦁ Entrapta is thorough. There were two-three months there were she was tracking and timing just about every single thing Catra did inside the apartment. She had monitoring devices she didn’t realize her roommates would want to know about because it just seemed more effective to her than following Catra around all day. Her presence would have skewed the experiment. It’s creepy, but it all came from a place of love and wanting to build a better understanding of what could be effecting Catra’s situation.

⦁ The restraint it took for me to not make a joke about Entrapta knowing when Catra… “takes time for herself” was immense but I kept reminding myself it was a T fic.

⦁ “I was there two months ago” Ha, yeah, this is set in December and… The anniversary……. Adora needed to be home. Her moms are the only ones who can really comfort her when she’s like that.

⦁ Mara really wanted a kid, and Hope did too but less so, and she had a lot more Concerns about it. When they started looking into adoption and found a kid who was human (so Hope was confident they were informed on taking care of her) and had been an orphan for ten years, Mara couldn’t stand to leave her there. They hadn’t really been intending on getting an older kid (I mean, ten is not old, but in Hope’s head they were looking for a baby because typically you Acquire Child at babyhood so that must be how it works) but Adora being older was another thing that made Hope go okay, we can do this (she’s also, to be quite honest, not a fan of babies or very small children). What that meant in the end though was that Mara, in her older twenties, had much less of an age gap with Adora then would be typical. Hope is like six years older and so her age gap with Adora is less noticeably off.

I think it’s a faceblind thing, but I’m absolutely awful with ages. You could tell me Mara is supposed to be early 20s or late 30s and I would have no choice believe you. Regardless, I roughly place Mara somewhere around the 20-30 mark in the show and as having a more “big sister”-like relationship with Adora, so that’s how things got set up in this AU.

⦁ It’s “Bow’s” senior year because Glimmer is a year younger and Adora’s college education was kind of weird so she doesn’t really consider herself as having anything but a freshmen year. Maybe sophmore.

Chapter 8:

⦁ Catra has two bags while Adora has one for two reasons: 1) Adora still has some stuff at home and doesn’t need to bring as much, and 2) Catra’s second bag was mostly dedicated to her adaptive devices and hybrid shit since she knew she might need them for any stuff Adora wanted to do and she couldn’t borrow the shampoo already at the house.

⦁ Perfuma’s nature hike actually originated in this chapter and then I added it in to chapter 6 since I was far enough ahead in writing to do that. Before that the vibe was just “Well obviously Scorpia got Adora’s number from Perfuma at some point,” but this gave a more solid throughline on that. Their interaction at the nature hike is also what led to Scorpia starting to turn around on Adora until she tested her with the phone call.

⦁ The “look” that passed over Adora’s face when Catra joked that she didn’t remember getting tangled in the ribbon was her briefly worrying that Catra actually didn’t remember due to her supposed memory issues following the fall.

⦁ The school where Catra fell is loosely based on the random high school I took my SATs at, where it was actually four buildings with a courtyard and a quad between the buildings and various sports fields. Adora was walking on one of the paths circling one of the buildings when she saw Catra fall from the roof of another.

⦁ Adora mentions hospitals plural because she checked every single one it was even semi-plausible for Catra to be taken to, though there was only one that made sense since it was more than twenty minutes closer than the next one.

⦁ Adora has her childhood twin bed at home and at the apartment Catra has a double bed to give her enough room to comfortably position her arm without worry. It also helps when she does have a nightmare bad enough for her to move around, and when she’s having a day where her fear of falling is intense. She can tuck into the corner between the bed and the wall and know there’s no way she’s going over the edge.

⦁ This fic was supposed to be set nebulously in the fall until I had the Winterfest ideas and lined everything up to make it happen. It still worked out with it starting literally right after Catra’s birthday, but I went back and edited in a line referring to it later so it would build the time of year out better before it got to the Winterfest stuff. Of course, that only matters if you reread chapter 2 after I did it or started reading the fic later on, but it’s there for rereads, at least. It’s one of those unique things about fanfic and how you (typically) post it as you write it, which doesn’t allow for much in the way of second drafts. I really like that about fanfic because of how it forces you to work the limitation (and also I hate rewriting), but I always have more ideas while I’m writing so sometimes it can get in the way of something good.

⦁ The original title of this fic was “As Many Lives As It Takes (To Be With You Again)” but at some point between creating the document and posting the “Again” got dropped. This isn’t relevant to chapter 8, I just happened to notice it while typing the notes for it.

Chapter 9:

⦁ There was a lot more stuff about Catra learning to drive in this chapter initially, but I wasn’t happy with it and found I was skipping right past it when I was trying to reread/edit what was going on in the chapter, so for the final version I cut it. Some things though: Catra’s entire first day of driving didn’t even involve leaving park, it was mostly spent on figuring out how to manage her arm (in the end, putting it in the arm brace was the best way to keep it still and out of the way, even though that was difficult with Adora helping her instead of Entrapta) and stuff like hitting the turn signal with her pinky while turning the wheel. The first day where they actually drove in the street Adora came along — just for fun and not in case you have a panic attack, promise! — but was sworn to being silent in the backseat. That lasted until Mara said Catra was learning faster than Adora did.

⦁ Adora’s not a bad driver, she’s just an anxious one, partially due to Catra’s accident making her all too aware of the dangers. She spent high school watching Catra deal with her paralysis which supposedly came from the car accident, after all, so she tends to be a meek driver.

⦁ When Catra sees things she wasn’t able to IRL in her dreams, like when she sees parts of the incidents that she was actually dead/unconscious for… sometimes that’s accurate. And that’s all I’ll say.

⦁ The dent stuff… with the bumper… might or might not have been inspired by the movie Underdog……… It’s a very comedic origin for something that is so traumatic in the fic but like. I saw that movie as a kid and never forgot that part.

⦁ Entrapta 100% hacked the DMV and canceled someone else’s permit test so Catra could be fit in immediately, she just didn’t tell Catra that. Not that she’s hiding it, exactly, but volunteering that information? No.

⦁ Oh that phone call from Adora’s perspective. Adora basically didn’t know shit about what they did in the logs. She was horrified by what Catra described, but also a little confused, and maybe even put out. Catra had never told her even half the details it was clear Entrapta knew off the top of her head, and she made it sound like it was all very clear and she remembered every second of what she was awake for. Which, well, she did. Because her body was totally fine. Adora was ruffled by Entrapta’s “bedside manner”, and then she heard the hacking stuff which had her like, wait, what? because Catra had mentioned Entrapta was a professional white hat hacker before (sometimes. Sometimes black hat. Sometimes she does other stuff and invents a new programming language) but the whole “instantly pulling up results from the DMV thing” threw her. She was very attentive when Entrapta was running diagnostics and stuff because she didn’t know about things like Catra still being able to slightly twitch her fingers or shoulder sometimes.

⦁ Catra specifies not mocking Scorpia during romcoms because there is no way, ever, no matter what she owes, that she won’t make fun of the dumb romance movie stuff that happens, especially het nonsense when that applies.

⦁ Catra’s fosters did get her “Winterfest gifts” but they were things like clothes and school supplies she would need anyway, just maybe a little nicer or at least less generic than usual.

⦁ Time to talk about what everybody thought happened to Catra! Obviously, people at school decided Catra had died within the first few weeks. At that time, Adora decided Catra must be in a coma or suffering memory loss, maybe awake but not lucid. She thought Catra’s condition being unstable might be why no one would talk to her, but she told herself she couldn’t be dead because then they would just say that. The longer it went with everyone remaining tight-lipped, however, the worse things Adora began to believe. About a year in, she came to “accept” that Catra was dead — outright, or brain dead even if her body was still breathing. Mara and Hope also didn’t know why anyone would “cover up” what was supposedly a very public suicide, so they also believed Catra “survived,” but knowing how far she fell and how bad it must have been, they knew pretty much right away she was likely to be brain dead or not remember anything. They didn’t really ever say what they thought, though, mostly focusing on comforting Adora when she went through disaster scenarios and occasionally reluctantly admitting which they thought was most likely when she got too frantic to be calmed by anything but an answer. Each member of the trio had a different opinion (each of which was an option that everyone else had considered individually): Kyle believed Catra was severely injured and sent away to a rehab facility to recover and perhaps help her overcome her “suicidal tendencies” but was basically cut off from them by the system, Rogelio believed she was in a coma and if she ever woke suffered memory loss (explaining why she never contacted them), and Lonnie thought that she was straight up brain dead before they eventually pulled the plug. Catra’s foster parents, knowing she had run from the hospital, thought she was dead in a ditch somewhere and after a few months decided they were just never informed when she was found.

⦁ Yes it’s late for chestnut season. No I do not care. Chestnut season is a few weeks later in Etheria, okay.

⦁ Both Mara and Hope cook usually, but around holidays Mara takes charge and it’s family recipes 24/7. Mara probably would have baked a pie for the final day of Winterfest anyway, but it wouldn’t have been that one. That one is the most special.

Chapter 10:

⦁ Even if Catra didn’t need her hand for the VR game, Bow’s headset wouldn’t have fit over her ears. There are headsets that would work, just not the one Bow built. It wasn’t a concern for him at the time.

⦁ Glimmer is terrified of horror games for herself, but she seems to forget that literally every time and is always really excited to play, just remembering the adrenaline rush and thinking this time she’ll redeem herself and be totally cool and composed.

⦁ The horror game was going to be the latest Resident Evil DLC (for the Village? I think? Or like the sequel?) but then I was like damn. I don’t know if that’s in VR. But it was literally the only horror game I could think of at the moment despite liking (let’s plays) of them, so I kind of co-opted and mangled the mom-mannequin-dolls section of that.

⦁ The Star siblings were actually at the barbecue in my first draft but it made the scene too crowded when half the attendees already didn’t have speaking roles.

⦁ I kept trying to figure out where to fit in Adora’s school shit and it just never didn’t slow the scene down. I’m not sure it doesn’t here, either, but somewhere in the fic proper I wanted to mention why Adora and Catra never bumped into each other on campus. I had already decided Adora’s school worked out this way before I decided on Catra’s job, but that just made it relevant. Basically, Adora came to Bright Moon intending to get a four year degree and then go into nursing. Mara and Hope were supportive, but a little insistent she go to a four-year instead of a community college for nursing because then she could explore more. They just didn’t want her to fall too into the martyr shit without them there as a support system, but Adora thought they were lowkey hoping she’d change her mind and decide to become a doctor instead of “just” a nurse. Adora was roommates with Glimmer freshmen year and met a few of their eventual friend group there, which she always says made it all worth it, but university was a disaster for her. She would have rather drop dead from exhaustion than drop out, but that was looking increasingly likely as her mental health combined with ADHD to make her a disaster. Her grades weren’t good, she spent time crying in the study rooms at the library, it was a mess. Eventually Glimmer called Mara to make sure she knew just how bad it was for Adora since she knew by then she would play it down. They’d only been friends for a few months and she was definitely overstepping, but Adora’s moms made her talk it out and they decided she would transfer to Bright Moon’s community college, where she could take one less class a semester and graduate with what she needed after only three years of school overall. Adora still kind of felt like a failure, but Glimmer just happened to decide at the same time that the dorms were insufferable and hey, we know we make good roommates already, why don’t we get an apartment between our campuses together? And living with Glimmer meant seeing Bow a lot too, so Adora didn’t have to “lose” the two good friends she had made at uni so far when she left (something she was really worried about). Glimmer and Bow wouldn’t let her hide in a shame corner over “not being cut out for it” either so she still saw their other friends from campus and even made more via mutual friends, eventually ending up with their current friend group, the exceptions being the Star Siblings (from community college), Frosta (from across the streets), and Netossa/Spinnerella (from work, Adora met Netossa during the course of her med studies).

⦁ Adora spent like an hour agonizing over her outfit and asking Glimmer for help, insisting it was just because she wanted to look nice for her birthday and not because she was thinking of putting the moves on someone or wanted to impress them. She undid the top two buttons, and then Glimmer undid two more and called it perfect.

⦁ Hey, guess what, this chapter was supposed to cover twice as much as it did (shocker) and then they took too long making out (shocker) ¯_(ツ)_/¯ This is where I had to update the chapter count AGAIN and when I did that I went back and filled out the scene during the party, which was only written in summary until that point, because apparently I had the fucking room for it in that chapter since the real confession clearly wasn’t happening.

Chapter 11:

⦁ Entrapta is playing Monster Hunter in the first scene, because I’ve had single monster fights last 40 fucking minutes in that game before. I was actually going to make it vaguely be like, a Souls game or something, but then I was like no, Monster Hunter is more her speed, leading to the jokes about how long the fight is.

⦁ Catra’s arm pain is both psychological and magic. Obviously the mechanics of how it hurts without her having any feeling are magic, but the pain comes from her mental state. The more comfortable she is with someone’s touch and the more she trusts them, the less it hurts. It also ties to her general emotional turmoil, which is why it’s still bad when she remembers stressful things, when waking up from a nightmare, etc and why it caused her such pain that first moment Adora touched her.

⦁ Tapetum lucidum is the thing that makes cats eyes glow in the dark (among other creatures) when hit correctly with light. Melog’s was not being hit correctly with light. I refuse to explain Melog.

⦁ The start of Catra’s speech was once the start of the fic, but instead of her telling it to someone, it was just the narration (“It all starts when Catra is eleven and decides to run away to find Adora, but she doesn’t understand it until later. Actually, she never understands it, but the first death she could pretend was a fluke.”). When I had this idea, I started just kind of writing with the idea of well, let me do a few paragraphs on each death and see how I feel about that. I had a few false starts, and then I wrote that beginning bit of Catra’s speech, and then it cut to a new scene to talk about the car. That paragraph ended up being heavily edited down and used in the scene in chapter 9 where she talks about the nightmare. I decided to change direction on that because 1) it wasn’t good, 2) it was wallowing, and 3) I wasn’t actually intending to start the fic that way anyway, it was just so much in its infancy that I was testing some stuff out to see what the backstory was and where I wanted to take it. Because of that false start, though, I then had trouble tracking what had been revealed/implied throughout the fic when it came to the later-revealed deaths and their fallout.

Chapter 12:

⦁ Adora lowkey moved in on a temporary basis, she just needed to be around Catra very badly between the new couple and “died four times” things. She did end up going back to (mostly) sleeping at her place and Glimmer and Bow were very insistent on them spending time together too when she relaxed again.

⦁ I didn’t want to do anything above a T rating with this fic, really, but I did kind of want to make allusions to other ways disability can effect intimacy, hence the allusions to Catra needing toy assistance since her left hand just can’t manage it and her insecurities about “contributing” when it’s time.

⦁ Catra’s ability was so unbelievable and confusing that it wasn’t the kind of thing Adora could just instantly accept as fact and help her work through, so a “trailing” ending was necessary to show Adora coming to that place of total belief with time, and trying hard to support Catra while she did so. And of course I wanted them to get time being totally honest with each other. I had a lot of the ideas for the Scorpia stuff and such that I thought would just be in the “epilogue” part of the fic notes, but then I went no, you know what, this is Important to how I envision the end here, so I made it an actual part of the fic, similarly to how I did the third fic in the Greys/Waiting For My Spaceship To Come Back For Me series. Why am I mentioning that here? Because all of the epilogue stuff was supposed to be part of chapter 12 too and then of course that didn’t work out. And I had to update the chapter count. Again.

⦁ It was really important to me that Catra’s disability didn’t magically get better. The only thing that changed was it caused her less pain, and even that is person-dependent. Her muscle response gets slightly better — sometimes — but that isn’t enough to hold a pen or be useful. There are temporary disabilities, of course, but that wasn’t the kind I was trying to show here and a disability doesn’t have to “go away” to get a happy ending. Catra’s happy ending was finding peace and love despite the things that haunt her, and she can have all that while still being disabled, she can just get hugs from at least one person now. The original outline had a point where Catra began kneading with both hands while cuddling with Adora around when she told her the truth, but I decided that was too much of a miraculous recovery. Even the sudden squeezing of the ball was something I was iffy on, but that was truly a once-in-a-lifetime thing, so I kept it and portrayed it as such, editing the kneading thing down to just twitching, because I did think it was cute.

Chapter 13:

⦁ WAILMER PAIL

⦁ I know I’ve talked a lot about how this fic ballooned, but I haven’t had fun on a project like I did this one, and Hurricane Adora, and the other smaller fics I’ve done recently, in a long time. Let Me Ride too, to a lesser degree, but I haven’t really had a project just flow out and build like this in the last year. The big difference on those last two was I just… did what I wanted. Which I know sounds obvious, but I didn’t sit and try to plot out okay, what is the whole arc for this fic going to be, what do I need to get done to get there. I did that a decent amount of Let Me Ride, which is why it’s a halfway fic here (and look at that, written slower than the others), but for these two I went well, they’re short fics, I don’t need to worry about that stuff and I can just let loose. And then neither ended up anywhere near where I thought they would, and I had an absolute blast. It’s hard to describe, but I just had a lot of fun and felt very liberated with my fics recently. I think I was treating them too much like novels, if that makes sense, and honestly the word count speaks for itself. I wrote less in November AND December combined than I did in January alone (working on LMR + oneshots), and that’s half as much as I’ve written for March alone (February being closer to March’s word count). I had my 4th highest ever word count day (since I started recording them in 2021) on this project at over 8k (for those curious, my highest ever was 12k the day I pumped out most of MNoHL in one sitting). Anyway, it ran away from me, but I was more than happy to go along on the ride, even if the fic notes alone are 7k.

Adora Interludes:

So, this fic was entirely from Catra’s perspective. Which was for three reasons: 1) Adora’s POV has no place in the first two chapters so at that point I was pretty committed, 2) she’s the most interesting POV by far for this fic, and 3) I thought this fic would be short. I don’t normally do long fics from just one character’s perspective, and you’re about to see why, but I thought it was only going to be 20k which was a fine amount for one POV. The longest fic I’ve done from one perspective before this was ASDLM, depending how you want to count it, and even then I included five fucking interludes of Adora’s POV. I don’t usually use one character POV since I find it interesting to go back and forth, but also, it’s so hard to stick to one POV. The reunion happened and I wanted to write Adora talking to Glimbow that night! Catra has her panic attack and I want to write out what Adora is thinking! But it doesn’t fit with the fic. So sometimes I did it anyway. None of these were fully written and polished and were more just me tracking where Adora was at with the big stuff, but I wanted to at least talk about them a little and they didn’t fit anywhere else in the fic notes. I just played it out in my head, sometimes, but I ended up writing down some rough scene outlines with intersperses of actual writing for:

Adora telling Glimmer and Bow everything Catra told her the night after she leaves. Glimmer starts off a little unsure of if they should be mad at Catra or not for never telling Adora she was alive, but eventually she “accepts” it (though she remains cautious of Catra for a few weeks).

Adora’s next call with her therapist, dumping the story onto her and talking a little about the guilt thing.

I don’t think I ever wrote anything down for the convo Adora had with her parents where she told them the story, but I sure thought about it a fucking lot.

Adora having a conversation with Hope over the break, while Catra and Mara are out driving. I would go into more detail, but there was a line that was originally drafted in a previous scene with Adora and Catra that didn’t end up happening, and then I put it in this scene that also wasn’t “real,” so…. At this point I’m just fucking sharing it. Because why not. The scene will be up tomorrow as a fic extra and linked in the meta section. Note that it is a detailed outline and NOT real writing, but I like it and can’t imagine just deleting it once this fic is done, so I’ll just post it here for anyone interested.

Original Outline:

I talked so much shit about the chapter count for this fic and it came back to haunt me. Here’s the thing: my initial chapter count wasn’t that wrong, which I know sounds insane when it was only like 5, but the contents for the fic I was imagining then did take up about 5 chapters. The intro, getting to the party, reintroduction, getting to know each other again, and then getting comfortable and confession.

The first two of those went exactly as I pictured. While I was writing chapter 3, though, the reintroduction went on longer than I imagined just because there was a lot to cover to do it right and it ended up taking up an entire chapter. Around then I started getting so many more ideas for the story. Initially it was supposed to be like, a nightmare/death per chapter, but then I started thinking about Adora telling her parents, and Catra going back home to visit them, and around then was when I accepted the vision for the fic expanded and bumped it to eight-ish with the vision that the visit would take two of those chapters roughly and another chapter would be fitted in for more bonding/growing closer before the confession.

Then I sat down and actually started doing my, like, one sentence outlines for scenes ([phone convo with Mara, rejects facetime], [entrapta/netossa collab], etc) and realized ohhhhh god this is more than three additional chapters worth of material. And maybe I always suspected that, because when I added more chapter headings to the document, I bumped it up to ten rather than eight. I had a detailed outline up to chapter nine, and by the time I was actually writing that far I was like this is going to be fucking eleven chapters isn’t it… but I was still unsure where it was going to fall in the 10-12 range. The epilogue was, once again, an addition, though a necessary one in my opinion, but those ideas weren’t part of the 10-12 chapter estimate.

I didn’t really have a strong vision for how the end was going to go until I got there, so the only thing about the final part of the fic that is different from the “original outline” is the remote log during the visit home (initially that was supposed to happen in person on a night when Adora slept over after they got back, but that just made less sense) and how they ran into the trio. My very initial idea for that was them driving (Catra driving, Adora teaching her, probably later on in the trip when maybe it isn’t all on Mara) and they drive past the trio walking on the sidewalk of a neighborhood and Catra nearly has a panic attack. Adora steers her through parking on the side of the road (ahead of where the trio are walking) and Catra gets ahold of herself as Adora glances back through the back window to see the trio eyeing the car, because they just saw it park a little erratically, and then they realize Adora is in the car. They can just barely see eartips around the headrest for Catra but can’t make much out.

They then watch Adora get out, wave to them sheepishly, make a motion for them to stay where they are, and then she walks around to the street side and opens up the backseat to get out the sling. This was before I had thought about anything and realized the arm brace was probably the best call for driving. Adora then opens Catra’s door, helps her put on the sling while still sitting in the driver’s seat, and holds her hand to help pull her to her feet out of the car, finally letting them see her. This made the conversation more of Catra’s choice, but when I pictured the whole exchange on the sidewalk, I had no intention of it actually being part of the fic. At that point, I hadn’t even decided if the Winterfest stuff was going to be part of it. But once I started writing that stuff, I decided the trio had to be in it too and switched it around to a run-in that made a little more sense and actually furthered Catra’s progression.

Meta:

Interlude: Three Years Ago

Fic Extra #2: Adora’s Interlude: A Conversation with Hope

Fic Extra #3: Timeline

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I had a plan for what fic was going to be next. Then another fic idea solidified and it was going to be that one. Then I had a new, but also returning, idea. What I’m saying is, I’m indecisive, but for the last month one AU in particular has been calling, and it’s honestly shocking I haven’t done it yet because I’m me and it's, well…

Up next is Superzero.

#amlait #ficmeta #fic notes

[lem-cup-rev]

4.10 | Fractures

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)

🌸🌸🌸

Wow, a lot going on for a pretty lackluster episode!

I may as well start with what I loved, which was Catra’s absolute breakdown. At first I thought even she might be falling a little flat in this one, but oh my God. This show loves its ghoulish, gratuitous yet well-earned scenes of helpless anguish, and so do I. What’s going on with her feels pitch-perfect. She’s trying to keep being a badass but something cracked and she’s just uncontrollably sliding into panic. Even though her goals are going so well, her body is catching up with the fact that everything in her life is painful and miserable. I absolutely love the idea that she was relying on Scorpia’s friendship way more than she realized, but I also think that might be stronger if we had seen her casually taking advantage of that friendship more rather than just seeming annoyed by her.

Most of the humor in this one left me pretty cold, but I definitely liked Double Trouble’s joke about laughing at children falling down.

Glimmer and Adora’s fighting made me 😐 the whole time. It just didn’t make sense to me that they would say all these things in the most mad, unreasonable tones possible. One way that I might really like it is… well, I guess exactly what it was a few episodes ago, where their rift manifests as them being uncomfortable, cold, and bitchy when together, and doing things increasingly behind each other’s backs. I will say I am totally into Glimmer fully becoming MOM QUEEN and Adora and Bow actually sneaking out against her orders. That's really really cool. I love seeing the way Glimmer’s own form of self-righteousness can turn into a demand for control that mirrors Angella’s. Speaking of Bow, I also think it’s a super cool idea for him to end up needing to take a really strong stance on what he believes and that being a harsh shock for Glimmer, but it felt like a bizarre jump for him compared to last episode!

The end of the episode actually struck a surprisingly good note for me with the superweapon conflict. I felt like I understood how each person has a really personal reason to be tied to their perspective, while feeling so bitter toward each other that they assume the other is just wrong. It felt like it could make an exciting, epic conflict going forward!

Oh hey Scorpia’s here! Oh my God how long were you just waiting there?

It was interesting what she said about wanting to learn friendship from Bright Moon! It’s like my take that the show is about the dichotomy between healthy and toxic social groups. I thought the tone was a little mismatched, though – we’re hearing that idea only in personal, childish terms, but we’re also in pretty serious epic battles territory, and she just defected her army. What does that mean to her? Or is she really supposed to be a psychopath like Entrapta who switched sides only because she wanted to make better friends?

Scorpia’s only soft and innocent now and it feels like there’s something missing. Remember when she threw Bow at a fan blade? We’re getting the cute pathos of her discovering kindness in the Rebellion, but I really want to see her grapple with her own worst actions and whatever led her to violence in the first place.

OMG. “Waste disposal zone – designation, Beast Island.” Aaaaaagh that kind of creepy little sci-fi detail is my catnip!

Next time: My favorite trope, the toxic jungle!

#review #no spoilers #episode #3⭐️ #spop #she-ra and the princesses of power #she ra and the princesses of power

[catrasredemption-moved]

Oh, maybe Catra confusing what's real and what isn't sometimes and not believing that this is real, because she thinks prime is still inside her head, messing with it and creating fake realities?

There were triggers.

It took them awhile to pick out the pattern, unfortunately. And the time in the interim did nothing to endear the princesses to Catra.

Netossa took the blame the first time, when she patted Catra’s head during the celebration party and Catra froze for a moment before whirling and lashing out. She missed, thankfully, her gaze distance and glazed over. She shook it off fast enough, stuttering an apology, but Netossa was easy going enough to apologize for surprising her.

Mermista was less accepting the second time it happened.

No one was really sure of the series of events - Mermista had found Catra and Melog in the hall, and Melog managed to knock Mermista out of the way before Catra struck. They’d pinned Catra down until reality reasserted itself, leaving her pale and shaken. There had been a rather pointed and cruel comment about Adora keeping her pet under control. And Bow had been forced to hold Adora back, lest she accidentally start a war with Salineas.

“What happened?” she asked Catra later, in the safety of their bedroom. Catra hadn’t had much to say in her own defense.

“I don’t know.” She was curled up against the wall, face hidden in her knees. Melog was encircled around her, shielding her from the world. “I felt... I felt like I wasn’t here, like... like this was a dream or something? I don’t know.”

Adora knelt in front of her, keeping her distance, hands up. “It’s okay. You didn’t sleep well last night, right? Maybe you’re just tired.”

She relaxed slightly, letting out a long breath. “Yeah. I guess. Maybe.”

The third time drove the point home that something was really wrong.

“Entrapta, are you sure you’re not going to break the table?” Glimmer asked tiredly, watching Entrapta rewire the war room table to connect it to one of her own machines.

“Absolutely! Ninety-nine-point-nine percent!”

“That’s not-”

“Here we go!”

The pink table flickered for a moment before turning a shade of lime green which lit up the walls in an eerie aura. Catra, who had been resting her head in her arms on the table, immediately shot up, wide-eyed.

“Sorry,” Entrapta said cheerfully. “This is from a hard drive Hordak helped extract from Horde Prime’s ship, it should give us a general idea of where to start with dismantling the rest of his empire and freeing the planets he’s taken over...”

Blood rushed through Catra’s ears, drowning out all external sound.

Little sister...

No. NononononononononononononoNO it couldn’t be, it couldn’t, he was dead-

Did you really think anyone would come for you? You said it yourself - your precious Adora doesn’t care about you. Your life is worthless. You don’t matter to anyone except me.

“No!”

Everyone jumped as Catra screamed, the noise almost immediately followed by her chair falling over as she staggered away from the table. Her back hit the wall and she dropped to her knees, entire body folding in on itself, eyes closed, hands against the back of her neck.

“Catra?” Adora stood, but was immediately blocked by Melog. Even the alien cat was keeping their distance, as if they knew Catra wasn’t in the right stand of mind.

She was back on the ship, listening to the sound of footsteps on metal floors, mechanical sounds whirring overhead, her hair slicked back against her scalp, the chip in the back of her neck-

It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real-

What’s not real? Horde Prime taunted her. Me? Or your friends?

“Entrapta, turn it off,” Glimmer snapped. The princess immediately listened, glipping off the switch and turning the room back to its regular color. Adora tried again to approach, but Melog growled, keeping her back.

“What’s wrong with her?” Frosta piped up from behind, almost sounding worried. Even Mermista couldn’t keep the shaken concern out of her expression. This wasn’t anything any of them had expected.

“I don’t...”

Catra had fallen asleep in Adora’s lap. Adora had panicked when she felt her (former?) friend’s grip loosen, but of course she was exhausted. The last few days must have been hell.

Bow and Glimmer set up a room for her, and Adora insisted on carrying her, refusing to let her go until she absolutely had to.

There was no warning before Catra woke, right as Adora was setting her down. Her eyes shot open, pupils immediately shrinking to pinpricks; Adora barely missed being clawed before Catra vaulted off the bed, hitting the floor with a painful thud.

“Catra-!”

“Shut up!” Her voice was surprisingly strong. She curled in on herself, hands clasped over the back of her neck. “What do you want?” The question baffled Adora into silence. “She’s not coming back, I already told you, she won’t, she wouldn’t, she...”

Catra drifted off into a dry sob. Adora tensed, teeth clenching together as realization set in.

Oh.

Adora straightened up, hands held out in surrender. “It’s okay,” she told Melog gently. They made a noise, ears falling against their skull, mane flaring purple. “I get it. Let me talk to her, please.”

Melog considered her for a moment before backing up and settling beside Catra. Adora took a few steps forward and knelt, still giving Catra space. She was whispering to herself, too soft to be fully heard, her claws digging into her neck almost enough to draw blood.

“Hey.” She kept her voice soft, noting the shudder that went through Catra’s body. “Catra, look at me.” She shook her head. “Please?” Another head shake. “This is real, I promise. It’s not a trick.”

“She wouldn’t come back for me.” The broken defeat in Catra’s voice was like a knife in Adora’s heart. She ignored it, forcing her laugh.

“And somehow I’m the dummy here.” Catra’s ears flicked slightly. “Do you really think Horde Prime would just fake his own death to trick you? We both know he’s way too egotistical for that.”

Catra choked out a little laughed, although her body didn’t relax. Adora took a chance, reaching out to rest a hand on Catra’s knee. It didn’t immediately spark an attack, which she took as a good sign.

“He’s not real.”

She’s not real.

“You’re here. You’re safe.”

She would never come back for you.

“I love you.”

She’s lying.

Catra shook, letting out a small sob. “Stop...”

Adora’s fingers tightened on her knee. “Focus on me, Catra. I’m here. I’m real. It’s okay.”

Melog’s pulsing mane slowly faded back to blue as Catra retracted her claws. Adora held her breath, waiting. “How do I know you’re real?” she finally whispered.

“Because I kicked Horde Prime’s ass and I’d do it again if I had a chance?”

One hand slowly slid down to rest over Adora’s. “Promise?”

“I promise.”

Catra unfurled a bit, allowing Adora to drag her into her arms and hug her tight.

They weren’t flashbacks, exactly - more like hallucinations. That was how the healer in Mystacor tried to explain it when Catra talked to her (after nearly three days of Glimmer trying to convince her that it would be good to talk to someone who understood mental trauma in a way that could help). They were things that hadn’t happened, but that Catra was afraid would happen - that she would wake up back on that ship, that Adora had never come to save her, that she was still Horde Prime’s willing little sister.

Melog helped as an active buffer; a third party who hadn’t been present at any point in Catra’s life before Prime, and something her mind couldn’t really make up. Adora learned a few ways to help Catra ground herself. The problem was that anything could be a possible trigger, and the only way they could learn what set Catra was off was by waiting. They figured out color and touch pretty quickly, but there were other things, like certain words or phrases that would put Catra right back on the ship like she had never left it.

“Maybe you should’ve just left me there,” she muttered dejectedly into her pillow one night. Adora immediately abandoned the map she was working on to sit with Catra, gently brushing her hair back.

“The fact that you thought I really would leave you there is a bit insulting, you know,” she joked.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to offend your hero complex.” There was no heat in the words. “What good am I if I can’t even keep reality straight?”

“You can’t judge yourself based on something that you have no control over.” Adora’s fingers paused over the back of her neck, inches from the scar left by the chip (now surrounded by several fresher, lighter scars from various flashbacks or hallucinations).

“Doesn’t make me any less dangerous.”

“The only person you’re a danger to is yourself.” Adora lightly traced one of the newer scars. Catra shivered slightly. “If I tell you I love you and it’s worth it, can you at least believe that I believe that?”

“Of course I believe you believe that. You have a bleeding heart.”

Rude, but fair. Adora lied beside her, pulling her into a hug. “Then believe that I can make my own choices and I don’t need you to protect me from you.”

Catra was still for a long moment before she leaned into the hug, relaxing. “Remember those stupid drawings we did on your bunk?”

“Our marks, you mean?”

“Yeah, something to remember us by when we were ruling the place as adults.” Catra smiled into her shoulder. “Which one was red and which was blue, again?”

“Uh, I was red, obviously.”

“Why obviously? Red isn’t exactly your color, princess.”

It was one of their small ways of grounding Catra. A lot of their memories had conflicting details despite being shared - even things as tiny as which of Octavia’s eyes Catra had scratched out (Adora swore it was the left eye, Catra would die thinking it was the right eye). Horde Prime’s illusions had never been detailed enough to think of Adora’s memories being different - Adora would have just agreed with anything Catra said. Possibly the most unrealistic thing of all.

“You don’t even know what red is.”

"Oh yeah? Did you hit your head hard enough to fix being colorblind at some point?”

“Are you asking me about brain damage? Seriously?”

They never did get around to figuring out who was what color, but it didn’t really matter - Catra had accomplished what she had wanted to do.

This was reality. No matter how much her brain tried to tell her otherwise.

#catradora #askbox fic #spop fic #Mystery Person #Sam Answers

[lillotte17]

Words to Fill Space

Whelp, I’m not going to finish this since the literal creator of the show sort of pulled the rug out from under me. (bless) But I liked what I got down, so I figured I might as well toss it out into the void. 

~

Catra knew who was on the other side of the door before it even finished opening. After all, she had hardly given her a moment to herself since rescuing her. Not that Catra minded the abundance of attention, exactly.

She didn't know how she felt about it, if she was being honest.

Any of it.

When she had been trapped on Prime's ship, some tiny quaking voice inside her had hoped against hope that Adora would come for her. That her inherent need to play the hero would override all the anger and resentment she must hold for her now. That a single shining thread of the promise they had made to take care of each other was still binding them to one another across the vast reaches of space and time, bitter words and bloodied hands.

Catra had hoped, but she hadn't really thought it would happen.

And yet, Adora was here, standing her the doorway with what seemed to be an armful of blankets and pillows, grinning from ear to ear like an idiot. 

She wasn't sure what feeling the image instilled in her, but it was more than a little overwhelming. Everything that involved Adora seemed to be like that. Too big. Too bright. Heart hammering behind her ribs.

"What do you want this time?" Catra grumbled, curling into herself on the thin mattress at the center of the room, hiding her face in the crook of her arm, "I apologized to Entrapta, and I played nice with your friends at dinner, what else do I have to do before you let me get some sleep?"

"I remembered that you get cold easily," Adora explained, not at all put off by the less than cordial greeting, "The ship only has a few bedrooms, but we found a bunch of extra blankets and things in storage, and I figured you might want some of it."

So saying, she tossed a blanket at Catra's head, burying her face in soft stifling fabric. Catra hissed, flailing at the unexpected darkness for a moment before managing to tug herself free. Adora snorted.

"Gee thanks," Catra snarled, "Now can I go to sleep?"

"Well, sure, but…um," Adora began, suddenly looking a bit sheepish.

"Yes, what else do you want?" Catra heaved a sigh, rolling onto her back and flinging an arm over her face.

"There aren't enough bedrooms to go around," Adora admitted, "The rest of us all agreed to double up, but we knew that you were still having a hard time adjusting to being around everyone so… It seemed like I was probably the best choice to send in here with you? After all, it's not like we've never shared a room before…"

Catra moved her arm just enough to take a long look at Adora's face. There was something unbearably soft about it. Uncertainty dancing along the fringes of hope. The dim lighting painting her pale blue eyes the color of storm clouds. Her mouth teetering on the edge of a smile.

"That was a long time ago," Catra reminded her, shifting her gaze away.

"It wasn't that long ago…" Adora insisted quietly, "We don't… You don't have to talk to me or anything. I'm just going to bed down on the floor."

"Do whatever you want," Catra replied with a huff, "It's your ship anyway. It's not like I could kick you out even if I wanted to."

"…do you want to?" Adora wondered.

"…no."

The mumbled admission was apparently enough consent for Adora to move fully into the room and start arranging her makeshift bedding in one corner, tucked up against the wall.

After a minute or two of shuffling around, Adora seemed to settle. The only sound in the room afterwards was the faint sound of even breaths. She smelled a little different than Catra remembered -probably some kind of fancy princess soap as opposed to the regulation bars the Horde passed out- but beneath all that, she was the same. A light honest scent, with the faintest tang of sweat. The smell of safety and trust, and home.

For the first time in ages, Catra felt something inside her unclench, just slightly.

"Do you ever wonder what would have happened…if you had let me come with you when you went back for the sword?" Carta asked, her voice low, and her eyes fix firmly on the ceiling.

The was a long stretch of silence, and for a moment she thought Adora might have already fallen asleep.

"Not anymore," Adora replied, soft and remorseful, "I used to, back at the beginning of all this. I drove myself crazy trying to think of what I could have done differently that would have made you change your mind and leave with me. How I could fix things between us so we could be friends again. But then…"

"Then I opened the portal," Catra guessed, sounding bitter, although mostly at herself, "And you gave up on me."

"I never gave up on you!" Adora insisted, sitting up from her pile of blankets to fix her with an intense look, "You just… You wouldn't let me help you! You wouldn't listen to anything I had to say! You kept hurting me, and my friends, and everyone around you, and then trying to push the blame somewhere else when things went wrong. We grew up together, I know you better than anyone else in the whole world. I always knew you could be better than that. I've seen you be better than that! But it's not like I could just punch you into being a good person, you know? I tried! A lot! You had to want it for yourself first. What else was I supposed to do for you, Catra?"

"I…I don't know," Catra whispered the admission into the dark. She felt her heart sinking in her chest. The same bleak helplessness that had been dogging her for months stealing back into her thoughts. Despair and shame and regret. Knowing that, once again, no matter how hard she worked for it, no matter how far she stretched out her hand, the things she wanted were still beyond her grasp.

"It…It's never going to be the same, is it?" she asked thickly, choking down all the other things she wanted to say. Not even having the words for half of them. "Between you and me?"

"…Probably not," Adora sighed.

Catra made a quiet strangled sound, biting back tears. She was so sick of crying. Sick of losing and being lost. Being left. But she didn't have it in her to lash out anymore.    

Her ears twitched at the sound of shifting blankets and bare feet padding across the room.

Adora sat at the foot of her bed, her expression uncharacteristically hard to make out. Catra sat up and stared back at her, trying to mask her own upset. After a few moments of contemplation, Adora finally reached out and touched her hand. Brief and gentle. Comforting.

"We can't go back to the way things were before," she said, "But maybe that's for the best. I don't think either of us were as good at being friends as we thought we were. The Horde wasn't really a great place to learn anything that didn't involve hitting things and yelling. We both made mistakes. We both hurt each other. Unintentionally, and…less than unintentionally, too. I don't want us to be like that again."

"I…understand," Carta replied. Her shoulders were shaking. Adora covered them with her hands, warm and steadying.

"But maybe, we can make something better?" Adora suggested, the corners of her mouth twitching upwards.  

"Better?" Catra repeated dumbly, momentarily at a loss.

"Yeah. Better." Adora confirmed, a full-blown smile blooming across her face this time, crinkling the corners of her eyes. The low-lit crystals in the room seemed to all agree to pool their light withing her gaze at once, making her eyes shine like starlight.

Catra almost wanted to cover them with her hands. She felt like Adora could melt her from the inside out with those eyes. Even without She-Ra's powers.

"I'm…not sure I know how to do that," she admitted instead, trying not to let out a very telling sniffle.

"Me neither," Adora huffed in wry amusement, "But I'm willing to try if you are."

"And you really think all your princess friends in the Rebellion are just going to accept that?" Catra wondered, disbelieving, "Accept me? Like nothing happened?"  

"Well…probably not at first," Adora conceded, "You did send an awful lot of bots and soldiers to shoot us. But they accepted Scorpia, and they forgave Entrapta, why should you be any different?"

"I've done a lot worse things than either of them," Catra pointed out.

"Alright, that's fair," Adora sighed, "But there's no way you've done worse things than Shadow Weaver, and she's part of the Rebellion now. I mean, nobody likes her or trusts her at all, but she's still there. Nobody tortured her, or suggested sending her off to Beast Island or something. The Rebellion isn't like the Horde; people who make mistakes can have a chance to fix them. It'll be hard, and I can't promise that all of them will like you, or decide to forgive you for what you did, but I know they'll at least give you a chance to try and make things right."

"Shadow Weaver never flipped a switch that nearly ripped the entire planet apart," Catra scoffed.

"No, you're right," Adora agreed, rolling her eyes, "She just spent twenty years or so helping Hordak manipulate orphans into destroying their own planet just to get back at the Sorcerer's Guild for throwing her out. She also poisoned Plumeria, tortured Glimmer, tried to wipe my mind, and almost destroyed Mystacor. And I mean…that's not even getting into everything she did to both of us while we were growing up."

"You don't have to try and make excuses," Catra said, looking away, "Shadow Weaver wasn't half as good at running the Horde as I was. I'm not sure if that says something impressive about me, or pathetic about her, but I don't think any kind of comparison between us is flattering. I'm not exactly proud that I was better at being awful than she was."

"You aren't?" Adora blinked.

"I know, right?" Catra chuckled dryly, "It surprised me, too."

Adora snorted. She caught her gaze again, and the air settled in silence between them for a few heartbeats. Not in anger or frustration or resentment, but something almost comfortable. Almost like friends.

Almost.

Adora smiled at her again, soft this time.

"You know, there is one huge thing you did that Shadow Weaver didn't," she said.

"Oh yeah?" Catra drawled, trying to act nonchalant, but feeling a touch apprehensive despite herself.

"Yeah," Adora continued, her smile curling up into more of a grin, "You said you were sorry."

#She-Ra #Catradora #Catra #Adora #catra x adora #fic #not sure i feel like i got their voices 100% right #but eh #it is what it's gonna be #this was also going to end with sleep snuggling #so Noelle legit just straight up came for my life #lmao #XD

[acephysicskarkat]

So I’m going to complain for a bit about S5′s handling of Hordak. I have complained a lot about S5, so nobody is going to be surprised by that part. That I’m addressing Hordak is a bit unusual, because usually I whinge about C/A being badly written, which just for the record it is, but I think it’s important.

I’m putting the rant under a readmore so nobody has to deal with it destroying their dashes.

So Hordak’s “redemption arc”* is pretty bad. To be fair all the redemption arcs in S5 are pretty bad, with Catra’s being rushed, weightless and a massive squandering of potential, and Shadow Weaver’s sudden change of heart being executed offscreen for no clear reason, but Hordak’s is particularly notable because both of the above at least seem to realise that they did something wrong at some point, even if, for example, Catra’s arc is so badly written that it’s not clear anyone concerned remembers what. Hordak? There’s never a point where he seems to regret spending two decades trying to conquer Etheria. He turns on Horde Prime, certainly, but there’s more to undergoing redemption than just switching sides.

Like, this is my problem with the Uwu Soft Chronically Ill Boy characterisation the fandom takes with Hordak: he is, per what we are told and shown, a chronically ill abuse victim desperate for love and a bloody-handed despot who sacks a major population centre onscreen. He is a victim of abuse and also the guy who tried to straight-up asphyxiate Catra at the end of season 2. He has sympathetic traits and is also directly or indirectly responsible for most of the suffering Etheria has endured in more time than most of the main cast has been alive.

(Seriously, y’all went apeshit when Glimmer gave Catra a fairly mild electrical shock while attempting to save her friends from Catra’s latest plan to murder everyone, but Hordak tries to kill her twice in a fairly short time and nobody seems to give a shit.)

Even his relative softening is entirely on the “Horde Prime” front. There’s no point in the show where he’s shown doubting Plan Kill Half Of Etheria And Enslave The Other Half. There’s never a point where he questions his status as a conquering warlord; he just reevaluates who he’s conquering for.

So how would I improve it? Well, I can see two major options for making it more compelling than “guess I’m good now lol”.

Option One: Have it start in season 4. Honestly a lot of the problems with S5′s redemption arcs could be alleviated by starting them in season 4 so they don’t feel like half-assed afterthoughts. I’m not asking for him to suddenly realise he’s spent his life making other people suffer, but at least put something in to illustrate that he may be learning to care about people beyond himself, Horde Prime, Imp and Entrapta. Maybe he interrogates someone who’s been separated from their loved ones in his sack of Salineas, and feels a moment of kinship relating to his own feelings of loss after Entrapta’s betrayal. Just a moment that indicates that he’s starting to view people outside of his very inner circle as people and not just tools to be exploited in his quest to regain Horde Prime’s favour, or when he wavers on that, tools to be exploited to get whatever else it is he wants.

Option Two: Have him realise not just that Horde Prime has treated him like shit, but that Horde Prime has treated him the same way he’s treated Etheria. This could really tie into the cycle-of-abuse thing that the show seemed to be trying to deal with before S5 hit and the writing took an immediate nosedive. Hordak could come to a realisation when he is treated with the same casual disdain for his autonomy, the same indifference to his personhood, that he has shown towards the entire population of Etheria save Entrapta.

Frankly, either or both could have made this more compelling than “guess I’m good now lol”.

This is the thing. I like Hordak. He is an interesting and compelling character. Uwu Soft Chronically Ill Boy Hordak is not an interesting and compelling character, he’s the same boring black-and-white sad-backstory-equals-lack-of-culpability bullshit that gave us Uwu Sad Kitten Catra Who Should Be Instantly Forgiven For All Her Bullshit. Let Hordak be both victim and victimiser. Let him be a character with depth who can sustain a compelling redemption arc. Let him be interesting.

“When I wrote ‘arc’ I put it in quotes to indicate my disdain.” - Jenny Nicholson

#s5 salt #spop spoilers

[maychup]

Part 1

“So, what’s this again?”

Glimmer eyed whatever Catra was holding; a fruit. The ex-horde soldier sniffed it, her tail twitching at the tip as she did so. It’s a wholesome sight. Like a child finding out the wonders of Etheria for the first time.

She picked the fruit from Catra’s hand and peeled off the skin. “We call them Oreng,” Glimmer finished and handed it back to Catra who gave it one more sniff. She cautiously glanced up at Glimmer, narrowing her eyes. Glimmer rolled hers. “Quit being a baby and try it.”

Catra snorted but obeyed. As soon as her fangs pierced the inner skin, Catra pulled back and frowned. “That tastes horrible,” she said.

Glimmer chuckled, taking the fruit away and eating it herself. She digs into the fruit basket and hands another one — a donana — to Catra.

“You have to peel the skin off,” Glimmer points out.

Catra stabs her nail right through it. “Like this?”

“No.”

“That’s how you peeled the oreng.”

“An oreng isn’t a donana.”

“This is annoying,” Catra handed her the donana with a growl.

Glimmer laughs and peels it for her. Catra tries it, and it seems like they found the right one. Catra‘s ears perk after the first bite.

Looks like donana’s the winner.

Glimmer watches her finish the whole fruit in seconds. She’s already digging for a new fruit by the time Catra started licking her nails clean.

It’s been a week since they returned from Horde Prime’s ship. They’ve been busy planning left and right; and Glimmer is in the middle of it all, figuring out what their next move should and shouldn’t be. They’re severly outnumbered. Severely outgunned. Severely out of their element.

Adora’s trying to figure out how to fix the problem on her own, and Glimmer had told her it’s better to work as a team rather than running off into the unknown.

Catra is still a ghost to most of everyone.

Scorpia started talking to her again, though she kept her distance more. Most likely to keep her heart safe. Entrapta, Frosta, and Mermista are still very wary. Hordak can’t even look at her. Perfuma seemed to like her, and Catra looked like she might dive into gardening. Bow is quite possibly the only one one starting to really warm up to her. And Adora—

Well, they talk on their own. Train on their own. Adora says they’re fine, and they’re trying to patch things up slowly but keep away from each other as well.

Catra doesn’t talk much about Adora.

How Catra is with Glimmer, though...

Glimmer wouldn’t call them ‘best’ friends. There was definitely something there, but friends didn’t fit it.

Glimmer found Catra’s favorite spot in the castle, and Glimmer would visit her from time to time to chat. On their free time, Glimmer would introduce Catra to Rebellion things. She can’t quite grasp the concept of ‘food’ just yet, but she’s getting the hang of it.

So far, though? Catra’s favorite is fish.

“Can you tell me more about the Horde?” Glimmer asked casually.

Catra paused, coiling her tail. “What, do you want my whole life story, sparkles?”

That’s another thing.

Catra’s usual spitfire is back.

“You wouldn’t tell me if I tried to torture it out of you,” Glimmer scoffed.

“You’re learning, your majesty,” A smile ghosted Catra’s lips. “Well, when I was a kid, Adora and I wouldn’t follow sleep curfew. I snuck her around the vents and we would stay out and watch the night guards do their thing. We’d prank them sometimes, but we were never caught.”

Glimmer hands her the next fruit. An Ebble. “You don’t have to peel this one.”

“Until one night,” Catra took a chomp out of the fruit, “Adora get stuck in the vent. I had to get Shadow Weaver for help and when we got her out, I got punished, but what else is new. She always hated me for some reason.”

Catra’s coice went low by the end there.

“Catra,” Glimmer said softly.

Catra waved her. “Adora told her that it wasn’t my fault, but she punished me anyway. So, there’s that.”

Glimmer sighs.

Catra’s trying to get into the habit of reminding herself on the little moments where Adora would help her. No matter how little Adora got involved, Catra tried to entwine her positively into her bad experiences.

It’s something her father — King Micah — encouraged Catra to start practicing. Apparently, he used to hold bad grudges on people who shouldn’t be blamed in the first place.

And he learned that from her mom...

Glimmer’s still upset about it. To this day, she’d find an image of her mom and feel a sense of denial, anger, sorrow, bargaining, before accepting that she can’t do anything about it.

She’s gone, and the woman responsible for it stood before Glimmer, living a decent life.

“What was growing up in a castle like for you?” Catra suddenly asked.

Glimmer laughed her thoughts away. “Absolutely boring. Mom was very protective of me so umm —“ her voice shook, and she could tell Catra picked up on it “—B-bow was the only friend I got so —“

“Look, if you want to talk about it —“

“No!” Glimmer said too forcefully. She gathers herself, and she tries again. “No. I’ve already yelled at you about it and punched you multiple times for it. I almost destroyed Etheria because of it, too. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

“...You sound like you want to.”

“I don’t. I’d... there’s no point staying angry over it when all that’s ever done is bad.”

A silence passed them before Catra broke it.

“We should start a club,” Catra casually said. “Almost-Destroy-Etheria-Because-Emotions-Suck Club.”

“Yeah,” Glimmer shrugged, “I guess we both went a little crazy.”

“A little? You wound me.”

“Yeah, no, you went insane. Off the rails.. I mean, you sent Entrapta — Entrapta — to Beast Island?”

“We can invite Horde Prime to if we somehow switch him around —“

“If Shadow Weaver can’t join, then he can’t join.”

Catra chuckled. She shook her head, a full smile on her face but not quite a laugh. “We’ll get better,” she said more to herself than she did to Glimmer.

Glimmer watched as Catra’s eyes fall to her. She found comfort it in, as well as fear of uncertainty. Her eyes held a wordless promise, and she... could trust it.

With a bit more time, she could see herself trusting Catra.

Glimmer could only nod, handing her another fruit. Pumgranites. “We’ll get better.”

#glitra #she ra #kinda lowkey making this a thing #a little ooc but glitra needs soft #glimmer #catra #spop 4 #spop spoilers #she ra spoilers

[lil-smolpubby]

Source call (?)

So hello, this is DT, also known as Double Trouble

I guess I’m looking for canon mates, or at least people interested in my source

So I wanted to tell some main parts of my timeline

So here goes:

A lot of the parts in canon stay true to my canon. I worked with the horde and the rebellion. The whole switching sides when it benefitted me. Yes I did disguise as Prince Peekablu blah blah all that

Though I wasn’t as cheerful as I was in my source when I worked for the horde. I was at first. It was quite fun. But Catra really ruined it for me. Over all, and the nicest way possible, she just wasn’t pleasant to be around at all. I just really wasn’t for her whole tragic struggling thing. I wasn’t her therapist, nor her friend.

I was there when Entrapta was present. Though I was mostly working in the shadows. She was pretty nice. Fun to hang around and eccentric. Didn’t always get what she was rambling about, but it was cute! Nice to see people genuinely enjoying themselves like that.

Oh and Scorpia. We were considered friends. Sweet lil thing. Got so much shit that she didn’t deserve good thing she escaped. Only reason I didn’t flat out leave was cause it was good pay. I didn’t engage with Catra more than necessary though.

I only sided with the rebellion for a bit and then left. Stole some stuff too that they didn’t really notice. Or cared really. Sold it off to get some money.

Went back to my regular jobs for the meantime. The usual conning and freelance jobs.

And oh, here’s something all the purists are going to lose it over: I was a sex worker! And it was a big part of my life! Oh the horror!

Aheh, aside from that. It was a big part of my life like I stated, and I considered it my ‘mundane’ job compared to my usual conning and heists.

I did go to see Prime, but I didn’t disguise myself as a clone. We made a deal. Did some spying for him for a bit, then was done with that job. Never saw him again.

After that it was the usual. I only helped the rebellion again to get them off my back and to get some extra pay since it was offered to me as compensation

After the whole war, I went back to my regular life. Conning and sex work, all that in my beautiful dramatic life

I stayed in contact with Entrapta and Hordak when I could. The two were pretty busy majority of the time

Didn’t really get to stay in contact with Scorpia though, didn’t really know where she went. Which is sad because I actually liked her.

And that’s all the main memories I have to share now lovely folks

If you’d like to discuss more of my canon, feel free to message us

Signing off,

Double Trouble 💖

-🎭

#🎭 tag #she ra fictive #fictive #canon call

[greatsweet98]

"She-Ra and The Princesses Of Power" Character Escape Game

starts now!

The 33 characters simultaneously woke up in a dark room, that turned out to be unexpected. But since it's a room, there'll be light. A lightbulb is hanged up at the ceiling, and it needs a light switch to turn it on. As the 33 characters woke up......

Catra: *screams* Where am I?

Adora: *gasps in shock* What? Catra?

The red-eyed Hordak: What in Etheria is the place?

Kyle: What the heck? Why is everyone? (notices Rogelio & Lonnie) Rogelio? Lonnie?

At this moment, everyone there start to notice each other by their voices and fearly shivers, until someone accidently flips the light switch that turns the lightbulb on, that made everyone there scream in surprise and shock.

Micah: Glimmer? Sister?

Glimmer: Dad?

Castaspella: Brother?

Micah's daughter & his sister found him and hugged him. He hughed them back, then they broke the hug.

Glimmer: Dad, where are we?

Micah: I don't know, babygirl.

The "wrong" Hordak: Why are we here in a room full of nothing but us?

Madame Razz: (halfly sees Adora while faces at look) Adora, is that you?

Catra: Ugh, (gets frustrated) is this gonna be another Horde Prime "expirement".

Scorpia: Um, I don't know, Adora told me that she and Catra already taken Horde Prime down. But luckily, one of Horde Prime's bots is regenerated into good affliation to have a lucky friend to Entrapta?

The Busgirl: Where are we, Baker?

Baker: I don't know. How about you, Soda Pop?

Soda Pop: Me neither.

Everyone start noticed each other by friends by known-people and start asking questions in the same topic of the unexpected place they're in.

Adora: May I have everyone's attention?

Swift Wind: Huh? (turns to Adora)

Double Trouble: *rolls his eyes* Ugh, what is it?

Adora stands in front of everyone else to preach everyone. And everyone else faced at Adora.

Adora: Ok, here we go again.

Frosta: Adora, where are we?

Starla: And how did we get here?

Huntara: And who brought us here?

George & Lance: Who?

Perfuma: Please answer the question, who?

Adora: Ok, everyone, be quiet!

Everyone else starts shutting their mouths, well not everyone since one of them don't have mouths (Emily only, because she's Entrapta's robot).

Adora: I know you all have been asking the same question, and also do I. I know you all have been finding the answer, and also do I. I also don't know where we are, but if anyone else brought us here the way in, the way in is also the way out. I don't where is it, but it's better if we work together as one huge team. If we work together, since there's many of us, we may be able to answer our questions during our route on finding our way out.

At this point, everyone else hesitated to respond. But,

Catra: I may also have something to add, guys.

Everyone "huh?-ed" and turned to Catra.

Catra: I think Adora is right. Although, we may don't know where we are right now, but we can still figure it out and answer the question you've all been asking if we worked together. They say that "teamwork makes the dream work". (turns and smiles to Adora as a support to her)

*Adora smiled back at her*

Adora: So, who's in?

Everyone else, other than Catra & Adora, hesitated again to respond.

Netossa: *after 4 seconds of thinking* I'm in.

Micah: *after 3 seconds* I'm also in.

Jewelstar: Me too.

Kyle: Me three.

*Rogelio roars in a talk way*

Entrapta: Me four!

Everyone else responded to join to be part of Adora's teamwork & responsibility "organization".

Adora: So, who's ready to work together?

*everyone cheered in triumph*

Adora: I'm glad.

Castaspella: Ok, we're now working together, but is there a door or a secret passage here?

Adora: (🤔) Hmmm....if we're in a room full of nothing. There should be an activation of a secret door or secret passage here.

While Scorpia is behind Bow at the "audience area facing Adora", Scorpia notices a note taped on Bow's back part of his "hero suit".

Scorpia: Um, Bow, is that a note behind you?

Bow: Huh? *tries to feel the note om his back by his hands* What the? No one noticed it the entire time?

Madame Razz: Oh, I think I barely did.

Adora: *gasps in surprise* Bow, you have a note there! (to Scorpia) Scorpia, take it off of him.

*Scorpia takes the note off of Bow and gives it to her*

Adora: (reads the message) Hmmmm....there's a message.

Castaspella: Can I read the message?

Adora: Um, *after 2 seconds of thinking* sure. I'll let you read this time.

Castaspella: Thanks. (smiles at her and reads the message)

Castaspella: "As you've wondering where you are right now, you're somewhere in Etheria but I'm sure you haven't found this nowhere in Etheria. At first, you'll be trapped in a dark room because you all gonna be play an escape game."

Glimmer: Escape game?

The "wrong" Hordak: Wait, we're playing a game?

Entrapta: But it's an escape game.

Glimmer: Aunt Casta, please continue reading.

Castaspella: Ok, Glimmer. (continues reading the message) "There are levels to go through to find your way out. Here's the worst part yet good later on, everytime all of you proceed to the next level, a number of you will be eliminated if you don't finish the level, challenge, or you're the last one to make it. You don't die in this reality and in this escape, once you're eliminated, you'll be put in a cage to wait for the last player uncaged to finish the last level to free all the eliminators and made your way out. For your first task, since you're trapped in a room, find a button. By, "the creator"."

Sea Hawk: Ok at first I thought we're gonna die here, but....we'll be put in a cage if we're eliminated?

Mermista: To be honest, that's kinda good and random and a bit scary.

Perfuma: I know.

Bow: (sees Adora thinking) Adora?

Adora: (🤔) Hmmm.....find a button?

*Emily (the robot) squeaking*

*Melog talks in his creature language that no one understands but Catra*

Entrapta: Ok everyone, find a button here!

Not to mention, the room isn't too small or too big for them, it's just like the size of a combination of the size of a house living room & the size of a house kitchen. As of by now, everyone tries to find a button around the room, possibly camouflaged, until Soda Pop accidently push something on the wall (which could be the button). As he does it, a trapdoor magically appeared in the middle of the room before everyone noticed it after a second, and the room starts to shrink by the ceiling going down. The distance from the "33" to the ceiling is 5 feet, and it goes down by 0.5 ft per 15 seconds (so it takes 150 s./2 min. & 30 s. to hit the ground). They saw the trapdoor and have no choice to do.

Adora: Quick, everyone at the trapdoor now!

Everyone listened to Adora and went on the trapdoor, but it's locked with a code keypad.

Frosta: (shouting) What? It's locked by a code? Come on!

Adora: (examines the keypad, turns it around as sees something written on the back of it) *gasps* Guys, here's a clue for the code.

Scorpia, Entrapta, Glimmer, Catra, & Kyle viewd the clue with Adora.

It turns out to be a math equation.

Castaspella: Hmmmm...four hundred twenty-six thousand, nine hundred seventeen.

Lance: Plus three hundred fifty-two thousand, one hundred thirty.

Lonnie: Subtracted by two hundred six thousand, nine hundred fourteen.

Frosta: Ok, I'm not that good at mathematics, but I can solve it. Anybody knows the answer?

Everybody else of the "33": (🤔)

After they're all thinking of their mathematic skills, they pawn out their answers.

Here are their answers:

Castaspella: Um...476,283

Frosta: Uh, 500 thousand something. Maybe like 572,133?

Micah: Hmmm...I might have the same answer as Frosta, '572,133'. Because I use my brain.

The "wrong" Hordak: I think I agree with that lady named Castaspella, I think? She said it was four hundred seventy-six thousand something.

Catra: I guess it's 572,133.

Adora: 572,133. Yep!

Glimmer: No, it couldn't be. It's 568,203. I think that's my answer. Oh wait, it could also be 572,133.

Baker, Soda Pop, & Busgirl: We agree with the majority, our answer is 572,133.

Swift Wind: 572,133.

Madame Razz: Maybe it's eight!

Kyle: My answer is around 600 thousand something.

Lonnie: Pffft, *chuckles teasingly as friend* it's 572,133! Use your math brain, Kyle!

*Rogelio roars talkatively agreeing within the majority*

The "red-eyed" Hordak: Wait, it could be 568,203. Glimmer's right!

Perfuma: 572,134?

Mermista: 572,133. My final answer.

Sea Hawk: I agree with my dearest love! Five hundred seventy two thousand, one hundred thirty-three! (puts his arm around Mermista's neck) Right, dearie?

Mermista: (rolls eyes) Ugh, yeah! And duh!

Double Trouble: I'm not good at math, but I'll take a guess. Promise, to be honest, I'm not cheating or copying anyone's answers, okay? My guess is the same with the minority, 572,133. I tried using my brain.

Spinnerella: 572,133?

Netossa: No, wait, I think it's 572,133. (to her wife) You're right, Spinny.

George & Lance: We kinda thought it's 572,133.

Huntara: Maybe I agree with Kyle, it's somewhere in the 600,000s.

Starla, Jewelstar, & Tallstar: Umm...we don't have an answer. But we guess you guys mostly have the same answer by most of you. We don't even know the answer.

Entrapta: Before the first person said their answer, T.B.H., my answer is exactly 572,133.

Scorpia: Uhhh...*puts her claws together side by side like this 👉👈*...maybe Kyle's right. It's in 600,000s. Probably 672,133.

Bow: I don't have an answer. I think my answer might be wrong, mine is 572,133.

*Melog & Emily shake their heads*

Entrapta: (notices Melog & Emily doing that) Looks like Melog & Emily don't know the answer but I do.

Catra: Okay, the majority goes for 572,133. *gets closer to the keypad* Should I type '572133' as the code?

Frosta, Micah, Adora, Baker, Soda Pop, Busgirl, Swift Wind, Lonnie, Mermista, Sea Hawk, Double Trouble, Spinnerella, Netossa, George, Lance, Entrapta, & Bow: YES!

Glimmer: No! Wait, yes, I think. *sighs* Just do it, Catra. Maybe my answer is wrong, *puts her finger on her mouth) but it could be right.

WHO GOT THE RIGHT ANSWER/ANSWERS TO THE MATH EQUATION?

SHOULD CATRA TYPE '572,133' AS THE CODE, OR REFUSE IT?

Because there's 2 minutes & 30 seconds left for the ceiling to squeeze them!

It's your decision in the comment section! Hurry!

You may reblog this if you want to!

#she ra #she ra season 5 #she ra s5 #she ra spop #she ra spoilers #she ra and the princesses of power #adora #glimmer #bow #catra #scorpia #entrapta #entraptdak #catradora #glimbow #glitra #spinnerella #netossa #spinnetossa #she ra and the princesses of power character escape game #perfuma #scorfuma #hordak #satpop #frosta #swift wind

[sheblah]

Plz give us the risky™️ post about shadow weaver being in the vibe check. Plz.

I was hoping and/or dreading that someone would ask lol

I might as well share my thoughts. This got long, sorry. Some of you may think this answer is a cop-out or I'm thinking about it too hard, but just hear me out.

Obviously Double Trouble was wrong about Catra "driving away" Shadow Weaver, and it's very messed up to say she did, being a victim of Shadow Weaver's abuse since childhood. But here's the thing.

I don't think Double Trouble knew the true nature of Catra and Shadow Weaver's relationship.

"But they're a spy!" I hear you saying. "Their whole thing is gathering information!"

Listen. They weren't there to see any interactions between Catra and SW - not a single one. By the time they came on the scene, SW had sodded off to Bright Moon quite some time ago. The only way they could have learned about Catra's abuse would be from someone else. And the only person who could have told them the whole truth was Catra, and she would never volunteer that information to anyone - she wouldn't willingly be that vulnerable. Heck, she even hid it from Adora when they were friends. And besides Catra, nobody else knew about it.

That's right, nobody knew the true nature of Catra and SW's relationship. Not Scorpia, not Adora, not even Shadow Weaver herself. Because nobody else saw it for what it was.

Scorpia knows a Catra who fought back against her unfair superior officer - who fearlessly beat SW, put her in a cell, and claimed her title. She knows that SW was important to Catra, to the extent that her leaving for Bright Moon devastated Catra. But she didn't know the innocent young girl who was helpless against a grown attacker. Honestly, if she had any idea how badly SW traumatized her wildcat? She wouldn't have been nearly as cordial as she was when she met SW in Bright Moon. (And even if she did piece it together, I don't think Scorpia ever got the chance to talk to DT directly before the secret mission.)

But if anyone knew the truth, it would be Adora, right? She was there! Well, yes... but also no. Adora saw what was happening, but never consciously comprehended that it was abuse. She's never shown anger or resentment toward SW for what she did to Catra specifically. That's because what she saw (or thought she saw) was punishment. Scary, painful punishment, sure - but not senseless cruelty. SW convinced her there was a reason for it. Catra was misbehaving. Adora didn't keep her in line well enough. It wasn't entirely undeserved, because Catra made a mistake! And whatever happened to Catra wasn't SW's fault - it was Adora's fault for not protecting her well enough. Adora was groomed to think Catra deserved the punishment, even if it hurt to see it happen. And then as they grew up, she saw Catra deliberately exhibiting behaviors that would upset SW, like being late for training and a general lack of ambition - seemingly giving SW more reason to treat her as the un-favorite. Plus, as I mentioned, Catra never gave Adora the full picture. She downplayed and minimized and suggested the worst thing she suffered in the Fright Zone was boredom. Adora saw it, she witnessed it - but she still doesn't truly Know.

Besides all that, I can't see Adora willingly talking about her childhood with Catra. Not to Flutterina, a brand new recruit, and not after the portal incident shattered the part of her that still considered Catra a friend. She was in no position to sympathize with Catra at the time Flutterina joined the Alliance.

And Shadow Weaver? Yeah, she should very well know that Catra never deserved anything she did to her. And yet! She doesn't even think she did anything wrong! She's never shown a single iota of remorse for her unfair and cruel treatment of Catra. Even if she did talk to Flutterina/DT at some point off screen, she wouldn't have revealed that she's an abuser, because she doesn't think she is one. Plus, of the three, she's by far the least likely to give Flutterina/DT any of her personal history.

No one else in the Alliance could have let it slip, because they didn't know anything. It doesn't seem like Adora has ever told her BFFs Glimmer or Bow about Catra in detail, much less the other princesses.

That's why I doubt DT could have known about the abuse, even with their intel gathering skills. For lack of firsthand observation, they could only know what everyone else knew, and nobody else knew the entire truth.

We also need to analyze the Vibe Check itself, and stay with me, because I feel this is the strongest evidence. In the moment they turn into SW, this is what they say:

"People have hurt you, haven't they? They didn't believe in you..."

...As if THAT'S the worst thing SW has ever done to hurt Catra. Just... not believing in her. The magical attacks, the threats, the manipulation? Nope! The most painful thing is that Mommy Thinks You're a Screwup. This tells me that, as far as DT knows, it IS the worst thing she's done. Because they're aiming to really hurt Catra here! They picked out all the most important people in her life and threw their most hurtful injustices in her face. Hordak, the highest authority figure in her life, didn't trust her... despite her clawing her way through hell to prove herself. Adora didn't need her, left her... despite supposedly being her closest friend since childhood. And Shadow Weaver...

...didn't believe in her. Like... okay, if DT knew what their relationship was really like, they would have done a lot better than that.

There's also the fact that it doesn't fit the pattern. Catra really did drive away the other three in one way or another. Hordak - she got rid of Entrapta and lied to him about it. Adora - gave up on Catra after she activated the portal. Scorpia - left because Catra was a bad friend. These are all true. They hurt Catra because they're true. So why would DT knowingly throw in one lie when they clearly know the truth hurts more? This tells me the falsehood was not deliberate.

They didn't know. They couldn't have known. I don't mean this in a "tHeY dIdN't MeAn To HuRt HeR!" way. They definitely did. They hurt her the best they knew how. And they could and would have done it way more effectively if they knew what SW did to Catra, which they didn't.

Here's what they did know. 1) Catra has a tendency to sabotage her most important relationships. 2) At least two of those relationships ended with the other person leaving her and joining the Alliance. 3) Shadow Weaver also left the Fright Zone and joined the Alliance.

They saw the pattern. The same thing happened with both Adora and Scorpia. They didn't know what Catra did to drive SW away, but it had to be something, because she's already driven two (2) people into the Alliance, and here's a third woman who fits the mold. They probably thought that Catra was such a terrible subordinate and problem child that SW preferred to switch sides and be with her star pupil rather than waste any more time on Catra. The trick is, even though that's objectively false, the punch still landed because part of Catra actually believes that.

They took what little knowledge they had about Catra + SW, put it all together, and came to a conclusion. It was the wrong conclusion, so their accusation was very messed up - but a different kind of messed up than they were going for.

If I'm right, then if and how this gets addressed in S5 is anybody's guess. What my dumb heart wants is for DT to learn the truth, go "ah crap, I wanted to devastate her but not with a LIE, that's beneath me," and then admit they were wrong about that part when they meet Catra again. But that's awfully hopeful lol

#ask #double trouble #vibe check tm #text #long post #meta #analysis

[toooldforfandom-liveblogs]

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power S02E05 - White Out

White Out makes me think of snow and blizzards but Google is telling me that it's also the name for the liquid used to fix mistakes when people wrote with pen on paper. Y'know, prehistory. So. It could be something related to Frosta or it could be someone trying to tape over a mistake? Or maybe both. Or none of those at all. I don't know, so let's do this!

This explains why neither of these two appeared in the previous episode. Apparently they are in... a mountain? Or one of the planet's poles?

When the... "beast" attacked the Best Friends Squad back in the first episode of the first season, I really thought they'd be more prevalent that they'd been. I think the horse has done more damage through the show than the local wildlife.

It makes sense that they'd mostly ignore that threat considering the focus of the show has been firmly in the confrontation between The Horde and The Rebellion, but now that Catra and Entrapta seem to be alone in the snow... what a perfect opportunity for a winter horror episode plot.

Hey, I think I already watched this episode! They are going to find an iceberg with a glowing kid inside.

Well, that's a coat.

They burned down and sank to the bottom of the ocean, Bow. Haven't you learned anything about Seahawk?

Yeah, have to agree, Fire would have been a better fate.

The only man in the entire alliance with a boat.

It's always surprising when a cartoon character shows up with different clothes because it's so uncommon.

oh no my continuity theories

I'll forgive the wonky eyes this time because they are very appropriate.

SCORPIA IS ASKING CATRA OUT IN A DATE.

To think all that effort and cute bumbling is being wasted on Catra.

oooh, evil virus shard is back

I'm not sure why that's a surprise.

I was hoping she wouldn't mention that tiny tidbit of info but nope. And I doubt Catra is going to have any doubts about using it

But She-Ra didn't lose her powers, she lost them because they had to take out the sword from her hands before she continued her rampage. Is the monster of this winter horror movie actually going to be She-Ra? Because I want to watch that. Good characters turned evil are always fun.

Also Scorpia being the protagonist of her own romcom is also very good.

no

Every time Sea Hawks appears I fear it'll be the episode where he starts getting annoying but nope, still great.

Now I'm thinking that Catra is going to disable She-Ra with the murder-virus and immediately after they'll all get attacked by a snow monster. Because, y'know, Catra can't win.

...I can't take them seriously when most of them look like marshmallows.

Adora's biggest character development moment in this show will be when she realizes that chasing Catra is always a bad idea.

There goes my theory from last episode that Scorpia didn't want to kill Glimmer. Dead, like Glimmer.

She's already falling to her death, there's no reason to stress over some creepy monster eyes.

sending thoughts and prayers

First meeting in person! I expected more from everyone else but I guess they are busy.

You know the writers have done a good job with a character when you hear something like that and you go "yup, that's entrapta"

Welp, now she'll have the guts to murder Catra. Unless she drops the sword.

As awesome as I hoped.

Catra right now.

I was thinking that this episode seemed to be moving a bit fast since they were already fighting a third into the episode but the teams separating could be interesting. I wish one of the "bad guys" was falling with them though, that dynamic is always fun.

She says, seconds before Mad She-Ra turns and notices them there.

And Entrapta is loving it, of course.

This could have some interesting consequences, if it shows Catra that she can only win against She-Ra because Adora can't avoid going easy on her. Catra knows this deep down, she even takes advantage of it but that doesn't mean that it wouldn't hurt her pride to actually lose.

"puny cat"

On one hand I'm loving this. On the other, I'm worried because the biggest reason why Adora feels so overwhelmed is because according to Light Hope, Mara went crazy and did a bunch of bad stuff. What if Adora starts feeling guilty about what's happening here? But, the virus could also provide an alternate explanation for Mara's rampage (if she indeed went crazy instead of just acting against Light Hope's orders because of attachment~)

what... what did you think she was?

Catra, excelling at shoving down traumatic experiences and hiding them with a devil-may-care attitude since... I dunno, how old is she again?

that's not good

Noo, don't destroy the murder-virus.

I'm glad they are actually talking about this possibility because it was the first thing that came to my mind after the episode the virus appeared. It's such a Catra plan.

Of course, the fact that they are talking about it probably means it won't happen, unless they are setting up the season finale early?

Is Scorpia going to get jealous and set Adora free?

I was starting to get a bit eye-rolly at Sea Hawk's weird issues but the shanty brought him back to awesome. Really walking the knife's edge with him.

I love angry hulking out She-Ra but Drunk Adora is the best side effect of that virus.

oh my god

You can see Scorpia's soul leaving her body.

Adora, the dignified and elegant owner of the sword of protection.

She did need a break

I don't know, Scorpia doesn't seem to be in the closet about anything.

Oh no, she's turning into the worst type of drunk: the weepy drunk

The monsters have been in the background of every fight scene, that's the opposite of a twist!

An example of how well this show nails the characters's expressions.

And one more. I complain sometimes about the animation and the wonky eyes but these jokes show how the animators can do a lot with very little.

Sadly, childhood friends always win, the one trope to beat them all.

I didn't sign up for Scorpia feels.

I didn't see this coming at all. Of course the two joke characters would empathize with each other.

WHY WOULD YOU TELL THAT TO ENTRAPTA? You're just giving her more ideas.

Light Hope did mention how everything in Etheria was part of their system. Does that include the fauna?

This is weirdly heartwarming.

getting real

That was way cuter than I expected. Nothing like getting some validation from a drunk lady to reboot their self-esteem.

They are getting slightly better about this but they still like some drastic mood swings between scenes.

Adora should always be drunk.

Can't wait for the fourth season episode where Adora struggles with her addiction to the virus, the one thing that lets her forget about her worries in a world consumed by war.

And now it's back to heavy. Does she save Catra, risking her anger? Or keep the disk? I think she's is going to destroy the disk, it's the right thing to do for Catra even if she can't see it right now, and that's the type of character Scorpia seems to be.

Wow, I didn't expect this. Catra is seeing Scorpia for the first time.

Right there with you, Sea Hawk.

Look at Scorpia's face! Look at her! She's so happy!

I'm not sure if it's because I haven't watched She-Ra in so long but this is the first episode I remember feeling long. Not in a bad way, it's not like I couldn't wait for it to end, but it's the first time that made me think "huh, only X minutes in." Part of it is probably because the first third/half felt like it could have been an early season 1 episode, with a setup, some chatting and a fight. Then the turn happened and it switched to something more complex.

The conversation between Sea Hawk and Scorpia was cute and wholesome, and I'm glad they both found someone who could understand them, but I'm not 100% happy with Scorpia's resolution to she won't leave Catra. It was very... I'm not sure how to explain it without making it sound way more problematic than I actually think it is. It shifts the responsibility about Catra treating her like crap to Scorpia.

It did work out by the end when she actually stood up to Catra and did what she thought was best, so maybe I'm worrying about nothing.

I'm somewhat sad by the death of the virus as a plot device, I liked the idea of the plan Catra had for a Mad She-Ra rampaging through the rebellion but at least we got a brief glimpse of what could happen. Curiously enough we didn't get to see the fallout for Adora so I hope it doesn't get glossed over the next episode. Losing control like that was a big deal last season and it should still be considering all the new baggage Adora is dealing now.

It was a great episode, it went places I didn't expect it to go and the show keeps building up the characters in interesting ways. Only two episodes left! Until next time!

#shera liveblog #shera #shera s02e05 #spop

[sir-phineas-lost]

She-Ra season 4

My usual thoughts. Beware of spoilers:

God I am glad they are back to doing full seasons again instead of splitting them in half.

Starts off great with Catra and Glimmer both stepping up. This sets the tone for their shared character-arc which is almost certainly going to pay off big next season.

One big advantage of this arc story-wise is that it leaves Glimmer’s spot on the team open so that the other princesses can switch in and shine for a while. A few of them were really non-characters until this point.

Shadow-Weaver is really interesting this season. I see people saying that she is trying to manipulate Glimmer, but I don’t see it. She provides advice and her (very ruthless) perspective, but Glimmer is making decissions all on her own, and Shadow-Weaver isn’t actually giving her bad advice. However, she is still a generally toxic person and you can really see how much her agenda is influencing Glimmer in a negative way, even as she is genuinelly trying to help. I can’t wait to see what happens now that Glimmer has both her and Micah to teach her.

Someone knocked it out of the park with Double-Trouble. The charisma, the chaotic energy, the sheer villanous pinash. They are designed to be likable, and it really shows in the fandom, but at the same time they are probably the most straight up evil person in the show right now barring Horde-Prime. Every other villain does bad things, but it is all in the service of something else. DT is the only character who takes genuine pleasure in tormenting others. God I love them so much, but I also want to punch them in their many stupid faces.

Catra’s downward spiral is haunting, and the payoff is amazing. I was doubtful about her getting a redemption arc after last season but now she is back on track so to speak. And I love that it seems to be coming from an unlikely source.

Oh God it is finally happening! Good things are finally happening to Scorpia! I never thought the phrase “You are a bad friend” could be so uplifting.

There is not enough Hordak and Entrapta in this season for my taste, but watching Hordak cry for his girl was something I didn’t know I needed. Entrapta better be part of the rescue-Glimmer mission. She has something to pick up in that spaceship.

I guess my one complaint is that I didn’t really feel Adora’s arc this season. She had her fight and falling out with Glimmer but that was so much more interesting from Glimmer’s side of things. The revelation about Light Hope and the First One’s was good though, and good God that episide with Madame Razz was well made.

Overall, another big winner for this show. Probably the strongest thing Netflix is putting out right now.

#She Ra #she-ra and the princesses of power #she-ra season 4 #she-ra s4 #srpop #she-ra meta #she-ra

[kumeko]

Title: ghost of you

A/N: For the @sheragiftexchange, for  @curiousscientistkae. You mentioned that you love hurt/comfort of people falling down and getting saved by others. Hope you like this!

…

…

…

i.

“We’re going to be force captains together!” Scorpia clicked her claws excitedly. It had been scary, at first, coming in from one of the Horde’s outposts after her promotion. A new place, new people, honestly it was more than just a little unnerving when they all stared at her and her tail. But now she had a friend. She glanced at the woman slowly walking next to her. A best friend, maybe, if she played her cards right. “This is so great! Gosh, wait till I tell everyone at home.”

 “Right. About that. You—what’s your name again?” Catra’s tail twitched as she tried to remember. Rounding a corner in the headquarters’ halls, she hesitantly guessed. “Scorpion?”

 Another really cute thing about Catra. Scorpia could spend days just watching her tail and ears move; it was absolutely adorable how they gave away her emotions. “Scorpia,” she corrected cheerfully, patting Catra on the back. “But that’s okay, everyone makes that mistake.”

“Oof.” Rubbing her shoulder, Catra scrutinized Scorpia’s claws. “Those are pretty strong. You good at fighting?”

 Was that a compliment? Scorpia puffed her chest with pride. “Oh definitely.” She jabbed the air in front of her quickly, giving her imaginary opponent the ol’ one two. “I can’t really use guns, but my fists of fury are great.” Curling her tail above her, she grinned. “I’m also good at opening jars and scratching hard to reach itches.”

 “That’s…something.” Speechless, Catra rounded a corner and pushed open door on her right. “This is the changeroom.”

 “We’re training today?” Scorpia bounced in after Catra. Lines of blue lockers lined the walls and this room was so much bigger than the one she was used to. And if the locker room was this impressive, just how cool was the training room?

 “Yeah.” Catra’s ears flattened as she stood in front of a locker, her hand curled around the lock. “I was going to skip but…I guess I might as well see how useful you are.”

 “Oh, this’ll be great,” Scorpia answered happily. Oh, she was having the best luck—the locker next to Catra’s didn’t have a lock. Opening the empty cubby confirmed what she already knew; the locker was free. “We can be locker buddies!”

 “Wha—” Catra cut herself off, staring at the locker. Her lips twisted, an expression Scorpia couldn’t read, and Catra peeked inside. “It’s empty.”

 “Yeah.” No clothes, no pictures, no nothing. Well, not for long—now that she’d claimed it, Scorpia was going to remodel. When Catra didn’t say anything else, still staring at the locker, Scorpia cocked her head. “Something wrong, Catra? Is someone using this?”

 “No.” Catra turned away. “No one is.”

    ii.

“Hey, Catra!” Scorpia waved a claw as she entered the war room. Immediately, she regretted the decision; the crate of apples in her arms started to tilt off balance. Quickly, she curled her claw underneath it again. “Whew, that was close.” She wiped her forehead with her tail. “Almost bruised the bunch.”

 “Bruised what…” Catra trailed off, looking up from her maps and at Scorpia’s arms. Her eyebrow raised. “This isn’t the kitchen.”

 “Of course it isn’t.” Scorpia snorted; that much was obvious. “It’s the war room.”

 “Yes, the war room.” Staring pointedly at the apples, Catra crossed her arms. “And those are?”

 “Oh, right, this.” Chuckling sheepishly, Scorpia walked next to Catra. “This is loot.” When Catra only gave her a blank look, Scorpia added, “From the village.”

 Realization dawned on her and Catra lightly brushed the apples with her claws. “You captured it?”

 “Yessir.” Scorpia’s tail rubbed her neck bashfully. “Took the whole town and all the roads, so Bright Moon should have trouble getting supplies.”

 “Huh.” Swiping an apple, Catra rolled it in her hands. She peeked up at Scorpia, then back at the apple, before taking a bite. “Good job.”

 Scorpia resisted the urge to drop the crate and hug her.

    iii.

 “Oohh, it’s kinda chilly out here.” Shivering, Scorpia pulled her jacket tighter around her. At least, she tried to—her claws were really useless at times like these. It was all she could do to move the fabric without tearing it.

 “Yeah.” Sitting on a railing, Catra turned away from the view of their metal city and back to Scorpia. Nonchalantly, she asked, “Why’re you here?”

 As though her tail and ears hadn’t stood up the second Scorpia stepped onto the balcony. It was adorable how she tried to hid that aspect of herself. Leaning on the railing, Scorpia glanced at her mysterious friend. For once, they were at the same height, and she could make out the flecks of gold in her left eye, the bald patch on the tip of her ear. “Saw you out here, boss. What about you?”

 Catra turned back to the city. She lowered her eyes, her tail wrapping around the railing. “Nothing.”

 “It’s pretty chilly for nothing.” Scorpia leaned in closer, bumping shoulders with Catra. When she didn’t pull away, Scorpia smiled wider.

 “I guess it is.” Still in a contemplative mood, Catra didn’t move. She scanned the buildings, her lips softly parting to take a breath. “I’ll rule this. All of it.”

 Scorpia had a feeling that Catra wasn’t talking to her, didn’t even realize she was there. Pushing down her unease, she nodded. “Definitely. And I’ll help out—I can get all the paperwork ready.”

 “Paperwork?” Catra’s ears twitched, and she shot her a curious look. “What do you mean?”

 “Well, we’re going to have to change street names and buildings and a lot of organization stuff.” Scorpia rolled her shoulders back, straightening her spine slightly. “I’m good at that now. Well, except for actually tapping the data pad, but Entrapta said she’d make a bigger one for me.”

 “Seriously?” Catra snorted, her shoulders shaking with laughter. “That’s so stupid.” Wiping her right eye, she bumped shoulders back. “Sure, alright. You can get that ready.”

    iv.

“Well.” Entraptra rubbed her chin with her hair, staring at her busted robots. Emily Mark 3, if Scorpia remembered correctly. Without even a moment’s disappointment, she pulled out her data pad and started tapping away. “I guess it’s back to the drawing board.”

 “I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” Scorpia cheered, patting Entrapta’s back encouragingly. Honestly, fighting had gotten so much easier since Catra had convinced the princess to switch sides. Maybe they could do that with the other ones. Then they could teleport and grow plants and use all sorts of cool powers to defeat Bright Moon quickly.

 “I will. The only question is when.” Somehow, despite her confidence, Entrapta never sounded smug or condescending. Sliding her goggles back on, she picked up a wrench. “I think I’ve almost used all the spare parts to make the Mark 5.”

 “Mark 5? What about the Mark 4?” Scorpia asked, staring at her friend bemused. Did she just skip a version number?

 “Oh, that one’s already out.” Turning back to her work station, Entrapta shrugged. “I’m sure they’re breaking it right now.”

 Ah, realism. Weakly, Scorpia shook her head. “Maybe they aren’t? Right Catra?” Turning to her right, she blinked in surprise at the empty space. “Where’d she go?”

 “Oh, she left a long time ago.” Entrapta’s hair gestured at the door. “She didn’t look happy.”

 “Of course she didn’t.” Scorpia hurried out into the hall, scanning tor an elusive tail. There were lizards and awkward boys and a whole lot of nothing. Well, that was fine. There weren’t too many places Catra would go.

 The training room was also empty, as was the locker room. Just in case, Scorpia peeked inside her locker, but Catra wasn’t squished in there. The canteen was full of soldiers eating dinner, Taco Tuesday was the most popular day. And Scorpia was almost salivating for one, but Catra wasn’t there either. As she turned toward the dorms, she bumped into someone. “Oops, sorry!”

 “Hey, watch it.” Leonie rubbed her forehead, frowning.

 “Oh! Leonie! I’m so glad to see you.” Scorpia leaned closer. “Have you seen Catra? I’ve been looking everywhere. She’s not in the kitchen or the training room or even the lab.”

 “No idea.” Leonie shrugged, shoving her hands in her pockets. “She’s probably off grid somewhere—Adora was the only who could find her.” Stepping around Scorpia, she added, “Just leave her be, she’ll be back eventually.”

    v.

Catra never kept personal, sentimental items. Not with her, not in her room, nowhere. Even her locker, which was devoid of everything except for a change of clothes. Which is why, when Scorpia saw a crumpled photograph under Catra’s pillow, she knew it had to be important.

 Hesitantly, she picked it up with her claw, careful not to tear it. A part of her knew she shouldn’t do this, that this would hurt and she should just put it back. She slowly unfolded it. A smaller Catra, her chubby cheeks pulled into a grin. Her arms around a blonde little girl.

 Adora.

 She didn’t have to ask to know who it was. Scorpia had seen her ghost too many times now to know that she would never stop being haunted by her.

     vi.

 “Hey, Entrapta.” Scorpia stepped into the lab, slowly making her way to Entrapta’s operating table. Spread across it were scraps of metal, pieces of a failed experiment or perhaps ingredients for a new one.

 “Scorpia!” Pulling her goggles off her face, Entrapta’s hair quickly walked her toward Scorpia. She had a wide grin, the kind when she was on the verge of discovering something new. “Wanna test Emily Mark 8?”

 “You’re already on 8? I thought we gave up on that.” Scorpia peeked at the original Emily, who sat still in a corner. Did it feel connected to these other robots?

 “No, Catra gave up on it. I still think there’s potential. Even if it’s just for me.” Pulling out a datapad, Entrapta pulled up the schematics. “You see—”

 Sensing several hours worth of discussion, Scorpia quickly shook her head. “No, no I believe you. I just have a favour to ask.”

 “A favour?” Entrapta looked up from the data pad.

 “Yeah.” Rubbing the back of her head, Scorpia gave a sheepish smile. “Could you take a photo later? Of me and Catra.”

 “That’s all?” Entrapta shrugged. “That’s easy. Ask me something harder next time.”

 Harder, huh. Scorpia bit her lip. “Could you also…get me a map of here?” When Entrapta looked at her in askance, she added in a rush, “Of every nook and cranny and hiding spot. A really good map.”

 “Well, that’s a little harder. Took me five days to get that done.” Entrapta started to scroll through her datapad for the relevant info. “What do you need it for?”

 “Just want to be prepared.” If Adora’s ghost was going to be everywhere, she’d just have to shake her off.

#catra #scorpia #shera #scorptra #catradora #spop #fanfic #could i resist traces of hurt comfort? #no #it would take a greater woman than i #kinda missing scenes #because this totally happened

[hellofromthe-otter-slide]

The Trials of Beast Island

Hello everyone! I tried my hand at writing something for She-Ra instead of my usual Supergirl, and I’m actually pretty proud of it.

So, without further ado, here you go!

Summary:

Catra wakes up again in a cell. Shadow Weaver’s cell. She feels disoriented, and when she tries to pull herself up off the floor, her arms are weak, and she falls right back down to the floor. “On your feet,” a voice says, and Catra turns her head to see Octavia standing in front of her cell, her lips pulled into a wicked smirk. “I have orders from Lord Hordak to send you to Beast Island,” Octavia says, “Effective immediately.”Catra gets sent to Beast Island for lying to Hordak, and Scorpia will do anything she can to save her best friend, even ask the Rebellion for help.

Read on AO3.

~

Catra can’t breathe. It’s like the air around her is completely sucked out, and she can only barely listen to Hordak as she desperately tries to take a deep breath.

All she hears before she sees black is, “This was a test, and you failed.” The last thing she sees is Hordak’s red eyes looking down on her.

She wakes up again in a cell.

Shadow Weaver’s cell.

She feels disoriented, and when she tries to pull herself up off the floor, her arms are weak, and she falls right back down to the floor.

Why am I alive? Catra thinks, rolling onto her back and looking up at the ceiling, I didn’t think I was going to be alive.

It didn’t seem like Hordak was going to have any mercy. He pulled the lever without any remorse, and he even bent down to watch her struggle for air.

The fact that she’s alive probably meant there is something bad coming for her soon.

And she has no way of escaping.

Catra doesn’t know how long she stares up at the ceiling, but it seems like a long time. Her body hurts too much to do anything besides lay there, so she counts the tiles, and then she counts them again, and then again, before she hears someone come up to the screen of her cell.

“On your feet,” the voice says, and Catra turns her head to see Octavia standing in front of her cell, her lips pulled into a wicked smirk.

Even without knowing what’s about to happen, Catra can already tell this isn’t going to go well for her. Octavia never liked her, especially not after the whole taking-out-her-eye incident (and it certainly didn’t help that she got Adora to call her a dumb face), and with that smirk, Catra only assumes Octavia is about to enjoy this.

“My body isn’t exactly cooperating,” Catra says lazily, “Come back when it does.”

Sarcasm probably isn’t her best bet, but if she’s going down, she’s going down noncompliant.

The screen blinks out, and Octavia comes into the cell and picks Catra up by her collar. Every limb in Catra’s body protests the movement, and she claws at Octavia’s wrist in an attempt to get Octavia to let her go.

“I have orders from Lord Hordak to send you to Beast Island,” Octavia says, “Effective immediately.” She seems to take pleasure in being the one to carry out Hordak’s orders.

Beast Island. It was meant to be Shadow Weaver’s punishment, and Catra is sure Hordak finds some sick irony in it being her fate now. He thinks Catra was the one to let Shadow Weaver go, and now Catra will be sent off to an essential death sentence for her mistake and dishonesty.

Octavia drops Catra and secures cuffs around Catra’s wrists and ankles before leading her from the cell.

~*~

Scorpia can’t believe it when she hears the news. Everybody is talking about it.

Catra, Hordak’s second-in-command, is being sent off to Beast Island for allowing Shadow Weaver to escape.

She doesn’t believe it the first time she hears it.

She grabs the nearest cadet with her claws, “What did you just say?”

“Force Captain Catra is being sent to Beast Island,” he replied, voice a bit shaky from fear, “Apparently Hordak figured out she was a traitor.”

Scorpia sets the Cadet down gently before running off in the direction of Catra’s room.

Everything was still as she remembered it. Papers are strewn around the room and Catra’s thin blue blanket is still bunched up from where Catra was curled up in it. And Catra isn’t there.

She tries the training rooms next.

Then the cafeteria.

The higher points of the Fright Zone where Catra likes to sulk.

Eventually, she finds herself in Entrapta’s lab.

“Oh, Scorpia! Excellent,” Entrapta spins around in her chair, “I need a lab assistant for this new experiment.”

“Have you seen Catra?” Scorpia doesn’t want to sound desperate, but with the rumors, she needs to find Catra now.

“Not since Lord Hordak asked her into his sanctum.” Entrapta says it offhandedly, going back to working over whatever robot she is building next.

“Why did he ask her there?”

“I don’t know, exactly,” Entrapta reaches out her hand, and Emily places something into it, “Something about Shadow Weaver and how Catra’s lax security meant Shadow Weaver could escape and then he turned on that machine that takes all of the air out of the room.” Entrapta keeps working on the robot in front of her as she talks, and she doesn’t seem bothered by anything she is saying.

Scorpia is very bothered though.

“Was Catra okay?”

“Oh, yeah! She collapsed, and Lord Hordak had her moved to one of the cells.”

Scorpia sighs with relief. Catra is okay.

Wait.

No.

Catra is being sent to Beast Island.

“We need to find Catra.”

This pulls Entrapta’s attention from her robot. “Why?”

“Because Hordak is sending her to Beast Island,” Scorpia says, “We need to save her before he gets the chance.”

Entrapta’s brows pull together in confusion, like she can’t quite understand the gravity of the situation. “They were Lord Hordak’s orders though.”

“Yeah, but this is Catra,” Scorpia says, “And Beast Island isn’t a good place.”

In fact, if what Catra said is true, Catra probably won’t come back if Scorpia doesn’t rescue her first.

Scorpia starts to pace. “Beast Island was this place they told us about as kids,” she says, and Entrapta watches her move back and forth, “And I thought it was always meant to scare us, like when they told us about princesses coming and taking naughty children, but then Catra told me that it was a real place, and that it was a death sentence for anyone to be sent there. We can’t let that happen to her.”

“So, we need to help her,” Entrapta says.

“Yes,” Scorpia smiles, stopping right in front of Entrapta.

“As I understand it though, that means we’ll get in trouble too.”

Scorpia, far more loyal to Catra than the Horde, doesn’t care. Catra didn’t treat her like the other princesses or like every other Horde soldier. She didn’t see her as a traitor or a Force Captain. Catra only saw her as Scorpia, and hopefully as her friend after the few times Catra actually opened up to her.

“I think it’s worth it.”

Entrapta doesn’t seem like she shares the sentiment. She looks away from Scorpia and down at the robot she’s working on.

Scorpia guesses what Entrapta is going to say before she says it.

“I want to stay here. I have a lot more resources here than with the Rebellion, and I want to keep figuring out everything’s potential.”

Even though Scorpia knew what Entrapta was going to say, she’s shocked. She expected Entrapta to agree with her, to want to do what they could to save Catra.

She should have known that Entrapta wouldn’t want to switch sides again, at least not right now.

“Okay,” Scorpia says softly, “I understand.”

Entrapta lights up a bit at that. Scorpia figures Entrapta was expecting to hear how she should defect to help Catra and why staying would be a bad idea. She’s sure Entrapta didn’t expect for Scorpia to understand that this is where she wanted to be for the moment.

“Could you at least tell me what cell they’re holding Catra in?”

“Of course!” Entrapta spun around and typed a few things into her computer before saying, “It seems like Lord Hordak put her into Shadow Weaver’s old cell, but—”

Scorpia is out the door before Entrapta can finish.

~*~

Scorpia is too late. The cell is completely empty where she gets there.

Catra is gone.

~*~

Octavia practically throws Catra off the ship onto the beach of Beast Island.

“Enjoy your time here, Force Captain,” Octavia says with a laugh, “I’m sure your days are numbered.”

The ship pulls away before Catra even thinks about trying to run back on, and then she’s left all alone.

She hears something move in the distance.

Well, mostly alone, Catra thinks as she pulls her knees to her chest and shivers against the cool sea breeze.

Catra tries not to focus on all the noises the island is making, and instead she thinks back to all of those survival classes she took growing up.

First step of survival in an unknown environment: find a water source. Every living thing needs water to survive.

The ocean wouldn’t do. Ocean water only enhances thirst, and it doesn’t have much use besides evaporating the water to get salt. Catra would need to go further into the thick woods to find a stream or river.

She looks at the trees and has a moment of panic. She can already hear rustling, things moving among the branches and through the leaves, and she knows that whatever is in there isn’t going to be friendly. She has no weapon, and her body still feels sore from oxygen deprivation.

She would be surprised if she made it through the night.

Catra gets up from the beach and tries shaking off the sand, but she can feel grains getting stuck deep in her fur. She doesn’t try and get it out, figuring she has bigger problems right now.

Namely, the glowing eyes watching her from the darkness of the forest.

She freezes, not knowing what else to do. Survival training didn’t tell her how she was meant to deal with whatever monsters lived on Beast Island.

Does she attack?

Even with her speed and claws, Catra is not as top fighting capability right now. She would probably lose, and in this moment, losing means dying.

She could run, but she is sure that whatever watching her is probably fast too. So, she chooses to stay on the beach.

“Um, hello?” Engaging probably isn’t the best idea, but it’s all she can think to do. It doesn’t move.

“Alright, well, I’m just going to go then.”

The eyes watch her move further down the beach.

And then there’s another pair of eyes where she plans on entering the woods. They look similar to the first pair, so Catra assumes they’re the same species.

There’s also something so familiar about those eyes.

She keeps walking down the beach, and every time she tries to enter the forest, there’s a new set of eyes watching her. It’s unsettling, but they have only watched her, nothing else.

“Okay,” she says to the newest pair of eyes, “Whatever you are, just come out and try and kill me already!”

She doesn’t expect for them to actually listen, but with some rustling, the creatures show themselves.

Catra’s eyes go wide.

Every single creature that stepped out of the trees look like her, with ears nestled into crazy manes of different lengths and tails that flicked ever so slightly.

One of them steps out from the crowd, a woman who is tall and stocky with a warrior’s build. Catra can see scars running up her arms, and she’s curious how the woman got them.

There’s a flash of recognition in the woman’s eyes that Catra doesn’t understand before the woman raises her sword.

“Who are you?”

After years of training, Catra’s name, rank, and identification number roll off her tongue without thinking.

“Catra, Force Captain, 2258464.”

The woman looks at her for a second, and another one from the group, this one an older man, comes up to her and whispers something in her ear. She nods, and Catra wonders how exactly they’re planning on killing her.

The woman drops her sword.

“Aren’t you going to kill me?” Catra asks, probably against better judgement.

Catra isn’t sure, but she thinks she sees the woman’s lips quirk up a bit.

“Come, Catra,” the woman says, turning away.

Catra follows without argument. What else did she have to do?

~*~

Scorpia looks up at the castle of Bright Moon and takes a deep breath.

This is really her only option. She knows this is her only option, but it doesn’t stop her from feeling anxious at the thought of princesses inside the castle who don’t view her in the best light.

Not to mention the sheer amount of guards patrolling. Scorpia wonders what could’ve happened to amp up security like that.

Scorpia takes a deep breath before stepping onto the bridge leading up to Bright Moon’s runestone.

“Halt!” One guard yells, “Stay where you are!”

Scorpia puts her claws up to show she’s not a threat, “I need to speak to Adora.”

Suddenly, every guards’ spear is trained on her.

“Please!” Scorpia tries, “It’s about Catra.”

Scorpia sees princesses leaving the castle and coming her way, and she’s relieved when she sees She-Ra is among them. All of them get into a fighting stance with Queen Angella at the front, She-Ra right behind her.

“Why are you here, Horde soldier?” Queen Angella demands more than asks.

“It’s Catra,” Scorpia says quickly, and she notices She-Ra’s face fall a bit, “I tried getting her out, but Hordak sent her to Beast Island. We need to rescue her.”

“And why would we rescue Hordak’s second-in-command?” Glimmer asks from behind her mother.

Scorpia doesn’t address Glimmer, or Queen Angella, or any of the other princesses with her next plea. It’s said directly to She-Ra.

“Please, Adora,” Scorpia almost begs, worry growing every minute since she heard Catra was sentenced, “If you ever cared for her at all, help me. You know the rumors about Beast Island. You know what’s waiting for her there.”

“Why was she sent there?” The question comes out steady, but Scorpia can see the little bit of worry start to build that mirrors her own.

“Hordak thinks that Catra allowed Shadow Weaver to escape,” Scorpia notices Bow, Glimmer, and She-Ra all share a look before going on, “Catra was supposed to ship Shadow Weaver off to Beast Island, but she didn’t want to. I guess when Shadow Weaver got out, Hordak decided to give Catra Shadow Weaver’s punishment for allowing it.”

It looks like She-Ra doesn’t know what to say. She looks to Bow and Glimmer, and then to Scorpia, before looking down.

“Why did you choose to come here?” Queen Angella breaks the silence.

“Because I couldn’t stay with the Horde after what they did to Catra,” Scorpia says, “And the Rebellion is the only way I could think to get her back.”

“Where’s Entrapta?” Bow asks.

“She chose not to leave.”

The answer doesn’t seem to make Bow feel any better, and he slumps a bit.

“Very well,” Queen Angella says, loud enough for everyone to hear her, “Force Captain Scorpia, we will allow you into Bright Moon, but you will be under constant supervision. Is that understood?”

Scorpia nods.

“I am choosing to trust you,” Queen Angella says, her voice losing just a bit of its harshness, “One misstep, and you will be thrown into a cell.”

The princesses start moving back into the castle, and the guards drop their spears. Scorpia is escorted into the castle by two guards on either side of her, and she’s curious whether they will put her in a cell, or whether she will have some small amount of free reign.

She-Ra gives Scorpia one last look before turning around and following the other princesses down the hall.

~*~

Catra follows the warrior woman deep into the forest, and she wonders if they’re just taking her somewhere better to kill her. It doesn’t seem that way, since none of the other cat people even have weapons trained on her. She can run away at any time, but she’s curious.

She’s never seen people who look like her before.

They reach a grouping of thick-stumped trees, and the group disperses and starts climbing. The warrior woman nods towards the one directly in front of her. “You first.”

“How do I not know that there isn’t someone waiting up there to do me in?”

“Honestly,” the woman scoffs, “If we wanted to kill you, we would’ve done it on the beach just like every other Horde soldier brought to this island.”

Catra is almost thrown off by the blunt acknowledgement of the fate of every other Horde soldier to be sent to Beast Island. “What makes me different?”

“Why don’t you just climb the tree and find out?”

For once, Catra does as she’s told. Her oxygen-deprived muscles protest as she climbs, but she finally makes it up, pulling herself onto some kind of platform.

When she stands, she notices that everyone around her has stopped to look at her. She starts to feel uncomfortable in her Horde-issued uniform, the Force Captain badge practically searing through the fabric.

As everyone stares at her, Catra gets the opportunity to watch them too. They’re all cat people of different shapes and sizes, but there’s no denying that whoever these people are, Catra is connected to them.

The woman pulls herself up easily behind Catra, gaining her footing easily against the platform. She looks around at all of the people stopped and staring, but at the sight of her, they all drop their gazes and scurry away.

“What is this place?” Catra asks.

“What’s left of our community,” the woman says, “After Hordak tried decimating my people.”

My people. Hordak never refers to the soldiers of the Fright Zone as his people. “My people” is reserved for queens and princesses speaking of their subjects.

That can only mean that this woman is one or the other.

“What’s my connection to this place?”

“I don’t know,” the woman moves from behind Catra to start walking down a pathway, pausing only to turn around and motion for Catra to follow her, “There has to be some connection though. You’re obviously a Magicat.”

In their lessons growing up, they learned about the many different species of people who walk Etheria. There were the Etherians, generally princesses and those connected to the throne. There were also humans, like Adora, who looked similar to Etherians, but lacked a few characteristics. Then there were the other mixes of species, like the half-Etherian, half-deer that live in the villages surrounding Bright Moon. There were also the species similar to her, lizard and octopus people who were generally a part of the Horde’s acquired army.

Catra had never heard of the Magicats before, though. She knows that if she did, she would’ve remembered learning about them.

About her species.

“How are you so sure?”

“Besides the fact that you look like us?” The woman sends a smirk over her shoulder to Catra, “You wouldn’t look like us if you were a half-cat, half-human hybrid. You would be lacking something.”

“I’m still a Horde soldier.”

“And a high ranking one at that,” they reach a door, and the woman opens it, motioning Catra inside, “You’re also young, and I assume you grew up in the Fright Zone.”

“How do you know that?”

The room is an office with one desk pushed into the corner and windows that let in natural light, even through the thick blanket of leaves outside.

The woman closes the door, “Let’s call it intuition.”

“Who even are you?”

The woman sits behind the desk and smirks again, “I’m surprised it took you this long to ask.”

Catra crosses her arms and scoffs, “I was distracted by other things.”

“Sure, kitten.”

The nickname comes off as lightly teasing, and Catra is reminded of Adora calling her the same thing when they were kids to annoy Catra when they roughhoused.

“My name is C’yra, Queen of Half Moon,” the woman, C’yra, looks outside with a look of hurt and longing, “Or what’s left of it, I guess.”

Catra doesn’t know how to respond. She heard somewhere that you are supposed to bow when introduced to royalty, but the distrust of queens and princesses that the Horde instilled in her stops her.

That, and she still doesn’t know what this queen wants with her.

“Come sit, Catra.”

Catra doesn’t.

C’yra leans back into her chair, “You don’t trust me.”

“Why should I? You blatantly stated that you’ve killed every single Horde soldier dropped onto that beach. The only thing apparently stopping you from doing that now is the possibility that I’m one of you.”

C’yra watches Catra flail her arms as she talks, her expression staying mostly blank. She allows a few moments of silence to pass before asking, “Do you know why the Magicats live on Beast Island?”

“Is this about to become a history lesson?”

C’yra rolls her eyes, and Catra feels a bit of satisfaction at annoying her, “Just answer the question, Catra.”

“No,” Catra says quietly, “The Horde never mentioned the Magicats.”

“We live here, because the Horde almost killed all of us,” C’yra says, her blank expression holding something deeper, sadder, “I had two options. Keep fighting and lose everything or surrender and take whoever survived here where the Horde wouldn’t bother us.” Pain creeps into her voice, and it sounds to Catra like coming here, surrendering, was the last thing C’yra wanted to do.

“I did what I had to do for my people,” C’yra says, “I already failed to keep them safe.”

“That doesn’t explain your leniency with me.”

C’yra sits up in her seat and starts moving around the office, “Well, the Horde wouldn’t let us go that easily. They needed a contingency, a way to know we wouldn’t fight back or use their good will against them.”

After incapacitating a village, the first step is to offer them amnesty with a price.

“They took all the children they could find, only leaving the ones they felt weren’t any worth,” C’yra stops in front of a picture on her bookcase, picking it up, and Catra sees a small smile pull at the lips, “The princess was among them.”

Catra tries to remember seeing other children like her around the Fright Zone, but she can’t. She’s never seen anyone like her until now.

C’yra places the picture back on the shelf, “Some of the kittens were able to escape their capture and get back to us. Others—” She looks down and away, but Catra knows.

An unwilling soldier is nothing to the Horde.

“You think I’m one of the stolen children,” Catra says.

“I don’t think, Catra. I know.” C’yra comes over to Catra and stands right in front of her, and Catra thinks for a moment that C’yra is going to hurt her, but C’yra just looks at her, blank expression back, and Catra wonders what that blank expression is hiding.

“I’m still a Horde soldier.”

“It’s all you’ve ever known. It was your only choice.”

Catra thinks of Adora on the battlefield, the first time she ever saw She-Ra, and Adora’s desperate, “Come with me. You don’t have to go back there. We can fix this.”

Catra could’ve left then, but she turned away and decided to stay.

“You don’t have to stay here,” C’yra says softly, “Even though the Horde named this Beast Island, it was mostly to keep anyone from helping us. There isn’t anything you can’t handle out there.”

Catra thinks about her sore muscles and the low throbbing in her head that was turning into a full migraine. C’yra isn’t forcing her to stay, though. For once, Catra has the option to choose.

“Maybe just one night.”

“Come on,” C’yra leads her out of the office, “I’ll show you where you can sleep.”

~*~

Scorpia is surprised when the two guards lead her to a small room and not a prison cell. She isn’t surprised when they take up guard right outside her door. She’s sure that trying to leave will be met with resistance.

Not that she is going to try. She knows that right now, this is the only place that will even think of helping Catra, and she will do anything to make sure Catra is safe.

She’s left on her own for longer than she expects. She passes the time by watching the clouds outside. They’re pink and fluffy, so different from the Fright Zone’s persisting smog, and they float by without care or worry.

Scorpia wonders how anyone can think the Rebellion is the enemy when they have skies like this.

The door opens, and Scorpia’s Force Captain training kicks in. She stands up, posture perfectly straight, like she is about to meet with a superior officer and not someone from the Rebellion.

It’s Adora.

She takes a moment to assure the guards that she’ll be fine alone with Scorpia before closing the door behind her.

Scorpia loses a bit of her posture, “You’re not afraid of me?”

“I remember a bit from when I was infected,” Adora smiles, “And I remember the hug. I know you’re not the rumors I heard when I still lived in the Fright Zone.”

Scorpia doesn’t know how to take that, especially coming from someone she’s fought on several occasions.

“Thank you,” Scorpia says, her posture completely softening now.

“Do you know when Catra was sent to Beast Island?”

Scorpia isn’t surprised when Adora decides to get right down to business. “I don’t know exactly when Octavia took her. I just know that she wasn’t in her cell when I got there last night.”

“So, she’s already been there for a day?”

“I think so.”

Something in Adora slumps, and she looks so exhausted. “I can’t leave Bright Moon right now, and no one else would want to go on this mission.”

Scorpia can’t believe what she’s hearing. “This is Catra—”

“Do you think I don’t know that?” Adora cuts her off, and she only looks angry for a second before something else takes its place. Scorpia sees sadness and hurt, and way deep down, even a little guilt.

“Why can’t you leave the castle?” Scorpia asks the questions quietly, because she isn’t sure how Adora will respond.

Adora sighs, “I woke up last night with Shadow Weaver standing over me. I thought it was just a nightmare at first, or like the shadows in Mystacor, but it was actually her.”

“She manipulated Catra to get to you.”

Adora turns away from Scorpia and grips the back of one of the chairs tightly, “Apparently.”

That’s why Scorpia sees guilt. She can practically hear what Adora is thinking. The only reason Catra is on Beast Island is because Shadow Weaver wanted to get to Adora.

Adora thinks it’s her fault.

“I can’t leave the castle, because I can’t leave it unguarded,” Adora answers before Scorpia gets a chance to ask again, “We have her in a cell right now, and Queen Angella is holding her with magic, but if she gets out for any reason, the castle needs She-Ra.”

“The castle may end up needing She-Ra, but right now, Catra needs you.”

Adora sits in the chair and puts her head in her hands. Scorpia doesn’t know what to do. She could comfort Adora. Comfort is something she’s very good at, but she doesn’t know how Adora will respond.

If she’s learned anything, though, it’s that Adora is a lot like Catra, and when Catra has to make a decision, she doesn’t like to be bothered.

So, Scorpia waits. She looks around the room and whistles softly to herself, even taking the chance to examine her claws and exoskeleton for scratches that may need to be buffed out later.

“Okay,” Adora lifts her head out of her hands, “You’re right. The castle is filled with princesses who can protect it.” Now that Adora has made her decision, her gets up and starts pacing, “We’ll need a plan and a map, and definitely a ship to get us out there.”

“We’re doing this?”

Adora stops pacing and smiles at Scorpia, “Yeah, we’re doing this.”

~*~

C’yra wakes Catra up the next morning with clothes thrown at her face. Catra splutters and shoots up ready for a fight, but all she finds is C’yra smirking down at her.

“Change,” C’yra commands, “I want to show you the rest of the village.”

“What’s wrong with my clothes?”

C’yra’s gaze falls to the Force Captain badge on Catra’s shoulder, then on the Horde insignia on her belt. “People are already uncomfortable with you being here,” C’yra says, “We don’t need to give them any reason to believe you’re still with them.”

Catra wants to argue and say she is still with the Horde. The only reason she is here is because she lied to Hordak. If it wasn’t for that, she would still be Force Captain, Hordak’s second-in-command, and trying to destroy the Rebellion.

And Adora.

C’yra notices her hesitation. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” Catra says defensively, “It just—” She trails off, not really knowing what to say.

“Catra.”

Catra throws the clothes off of herself and at C’yra. Every negative emotion she felt since Hordak pulled that lever and took all of the oxygen out of the room starts to manifest as anger, and she’s looking for a fight.

Fighting is the only thing she’s good at.

“I’m still a Horde soldier,” Catra says, swiping her claws at C’yra without thinking of any consequences, “I’m still Force Captain. Being here for a day doesn’t change that!”

C’yra dodges her attacks easily, and Catra’s thrown off a bit. Her one strength in battle is being faster than her opponent. If she isn’t faster, she doesn’t have any advantages.

Still, she keeps attacking until C’yra catches her wrists and holds tight.

“Catra, stop.” She holds on tighter when Catra tries to fight her grip.

“Why do you care?” Catra hisses, “Don’t you have more important things to care about than some lost-child-Horde-soldier thrown on the beach?”

C’yra doesn’t answer. She just lets Catra fight her hold until Catra tires herself out and stops.

“I should’ve said something with a bit more tact, and for that, I apologize,” C’yra says, lowering Catra’s wrists, “I know your loyalties wouldn’t switch overnight, but the new clothes are to keep you safe. Everyone here hates the Horde, and while they recognize you as one of the children who were taken, it will take them a while to see past how you were raised.”

“It wasn’t my fault I was raised there.” It feels weird to say that, but Catra has always been better at placing blame on anyone else.

“I know,” guilt flashes in C’yra’s eyes, and Catra can guess that she’s placing the blame on herself, “They just need time to see that, so please, get changed, and I’ll show you around.”

“Fine.” Catra pulls out of C’yra’s grasp, and C’yra lets her before turning around.

The clothes C’yra gave Catra aren’t much different than the Horde-issued outfit Catra already has on. It’s a bit looser, but it’s obviously meant for ease of movement. The material feels better against her fur, though. It doesn’t irritate it like she had gotten used to with her Horde uniform.

She actually feels comfortable in it.

She folds her Horde uniform and places it at the end of the bed, shoving her Force Captain badge within the fabric to hide it.

“Okay, I’m ready.”

C’yra turns around and smiles at Catra for the first time, “Come on. Let’s start with breakfast.”

~*~

“Adora, you can’t possibly be serious,” Glimmer whispers angrily, “The last time we saw Catra, she infected She-Ra and took you prisoner.”

They’re in the war room post-strategy meeting when Adora decides to tell Bow and Glimmer that she’s going to help Scorpia get Catra back.

“I know, I know. It’s just—” How is Adora supposed to explain why she has to do this?

Even after Catra refused to come with her.

Even after Catra cut the webbing and let her fall into the simulation.

Even after the Battle of Bright Moon.

Even after infecting the sword.

Adora has to save her.

It’s Adora fault that Catra was even sent to Beast Island. She can’t just leave Catra to face whatever she’s already facing there.

“I have to do this, Glimmer.”

Bow puts an arm around her and smiles, and Adora leans into him. “We get that, don’t we, Glimmer?” He gives Glimmer a pointed look, and she rolls her eyes.

“Fine.”

Bow throws a fist up and an excited, “Yeah!” and pulls Glimmer against his other side.

“Thank, you guys,” Adora says with a small smile.

Of all the people to find her out in the Whispering Woods, she is lucky it was these two.

“Of course!” Bow says, “What do you need from us?”

~*~

Everyone watches Catra as she follows C’yra through the camp. She feels uncomfortable with their gazes following her, but she knows she can’t say anything, so she keeps her head down and continues forward.

“This is part of the library,” C’yra says, opening yet another door, “You can get to the other parts through the next two doors.”

The library is completely empty besides one man hunched over a book at a back table.

C’yra crosses her arms and smirks, “So, this is where you’ve been.”

The man looks up, and the first thing she notices about him are his different colored eyes. One is blue, the other is green, and she wants to ask a million questions, because she’s never seen anyone, not even the other Magicats she’s seen since arriving, with two different eyes.

He smiles, “Well, my love, I’ve found something very interesting in one of the ancient texts.”

“And what could possible be so interesting in a text you’ve read a thousand times?” The words seem harsh, but C’yra’s tone is teasing and her tail flicks playfully.

“There are always new things to learn, even from a well-read text.” He returns her teasing tone, closing the book around a pencil and getting up from the table to come over to them.

His smile gets wider when he notices Catra right behind C’yra. “You must be the one I’ve heard whispers about.” He doesn’t regard her with the same hesitation Catra’s gotten from everyone else. He seems genuinely nice and curious.

It doesn’t stop her from strengthening her walls. She crosses her arms over her chest, “So what if I am?”

The man shares an amused look with C’yra.

“I didn’t mean to offend,” he tells Catra.

“Felix, this is Catra,” C’yra introduces, “Catra, this is my husband, King Felix.”

Felix bows, and Catra can tell that he’s doing it teasingly rather than seriously. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Catra,” he says in a fake royal tone.

These two are nothing like the royalty we learned about in the Fright Zone, Catra thinks, There’s nothing formal about them besides their title.

“It’s, um, nice to meet you too, I guess.”

Felix laughs, and Catra jumps because she wasn’t expecting it. “It’s always nice to be reminded of my place, right sweetie?” He winks at C’yra, and C’yra rolls her eyes and shoves him playfully.

“Felix likes to stay in the library most of the time,” C’yra explains, “Apparently ancient texts never grow dull.”

“I thought you all were supposed to be warriors,” Catra says, eyeing Felix’s clothes that would be impossible to fight in, “You don’t really look like a warrior.”

“I’m a warrior and a scholar,” Felix says, his amused smile never leaving his face no matter how insulting Catra tries to be, “The two aren’t mutually exclusive.”

Catra thinks about the greatest soldiers she knew in the Fright Zone. None of them were scholars, so she’s a bit hesitant to believe Felix could even hold a sword.

“If you want, I could show you around the library,” Felix offers.

Catra almost says yes, because he has that kind of hopefulness Scorpia has whenever she asks to hang out when they’re not on a mission.

The thought of Scorpia sends a wave of guilt through her. She has no idea if anything has happened to Scorpia since she stepped into Hordak’s sanctum. What if he realized Scorpia offered to help her find Shadow Weaver? What if he punishes her for it?

“Uh, no thanks,” Catra gets out, “I’ve never really been interested in books.”

“More like C’yra then,” he says, and C’yra shoots him a look Catra can’t quite decipher, “Has she shown you the training grounds yet?”

“That was our next stop,” C’yra turns to Catra, “We can go whenever you’re ready.”

“There’s training grounds here?” Catra asks, already turning to leave, “Why did we even come to the library?”

She hears Felix laugh behind her, and C’yra says goodbye before following Catra back outside.

~*~

Adora grabs as many maps from the library as she can before heading to the room they’re keeping Scorpia in. She doesn’t know if any of these maps will have Beast Island on them, but there’s no harm in trying.

The guards nod to her as she pushes in, almost losing her grip on the scrolls held in her arms.

Scorpia is sitting at the table when she comes in.

“Alright,” Adora says, laying the maps down onto the table with some effort, “Here’s every map I could find in Bright Moon’s library. One of them has to have Beast Island on it, right?”

“Definitely!”

They look through all the maps, but not a single one has Beast Island anywhere one it.

“How is this possible?” Scorpia asks with exasperation, “How do we have—” she takes a moment to count the maps, “—ten maps and none of them tell us where Beast Island is?”

Adora looks through the maps again and notices a pattern. All of these maps were dated before the Horde started trying to take over Etheria.

She tells Scorpia this, and ends with, “Beast Island must’ve had a different name before. We just need a map from after!”

“Do you think Bright Moon will have one?”

“I can go look again.”

Adora gathers the maps and tells Scorpia that she’ll be back as soon as she can before heading back to the castle library. She sets the maps down on a table before looking again. There has to be a map that I missed before, Adora thinks, I just have to find it.

“Do you need help finding something?”

Adora jumps at the voice, and she turns to see Queen Angella watching her.

“Um, no?” Adora knows she shouldn’t feel uncomfortable in the queen’s presence anymore, but she can’t help it. She’s sure Queen Angella only tolerates her because of She-Ra and the fact that the Rebellion needs She-Ra to win the war.

“Are you sure?” Queen Angella lifts an eyebrow, “Maybe you need help finding a map to show you where Beast Island is?”

“What? Beast Island? Pft, no,” Adora looks away from the queen to try and make her lie more believable, “I was just looking for—” she trails off as she looks for anything to help her, her eyes falling on a map of Bright Moon’s aqueduct system, “—this map here. You know, to learn more about the castle.”

Queen Angella doesn’t look like she believes Adora’s well-crafted lie.

“Well, if you were interested in helping Princess Scorpia with her mission, I believe there’s a map we gained from a Horde squadron there,” Queen Angella points to a shelf Adora didn’t think to look in, “It might have the location of Beast Island on it.”

Adora holds the map of aqueducts against her chest, “You’re not going to try and stop me?”

“No, Adora,” Queen Angella gives her a soft smile, one that Adora has only ever seen her give to Glimmer, “I understand that this is important to you. I just hope it goes well.”

Adora puts the map she is holding back and grabs the one Queen Angella pointed her to. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” Queen Angella nods, “Please, be safe.”

Adora nods before leaving the library and heading back to Scorpia’s room.

~*~

The training grounds are in a clearing near the trees they climbed to get to the village, and there are already people there, some sparring and others in lessons.

Catra feels the itch to train. It’s something she knows and understands, and it’s far more familiar to her than anything that has happened in the last day.

All of the warriors freeze as C’yra and Catra approach, and she isn’t sure if it’s because their queen has joined them or because the Horde soldier is here.

Probably a mix of both.

“My Queen,” one man says, bowing ever so slightly, “We didn’t know you were joining us today.”

“Please, Victor,” Catra can feel C’yra trying not to roll her eyes at the formality, “There’s no need to bow. I’m just showing Catra around the village today.”

Victor looks around C’yra and sizes Catra up. “Well, would she be interested in sparring?”

Catra notices some of his students looking at one another behind him, and she can see some trepidation. Their eyes are practically screaming, “Why is he asking the Horde soldier to spar?”

“She can speak for herself,” Catra snarks, “And she would love to spar.”

“Excellent,” Victor turns to his students and asks, “Which one of you would like to spar with Catra?”

“I would.” A rather large Magicat steps out from the group, and he smiles down at Catra like he’s already won.

“Bring it.”

Victor leads them to a sparring ring, and he hands both of them a staff. Catra twirls it a few times to get a feel for it, and she’s happy to learn it isn’t too different from the staffs she trained with back in the Fright Zone.

Catra watches her opponent, who Victor refers to as Alonzo as he explains the rules. She already knows his weaknesses before they get into stance. He’s big, which means he’s strong, so he’s going to rely on that during the fight. Based off of his cocky smile, he must also be the best fighter among his class, so he already thinks he’s won. That’ll be easy enough to exploit.

“Begin!”

Unsurprisingly, Alonzo makes the first move, and Catra dodges it easily. She keeps dodging until she finds an opening.

When he strikes, he doesn’t defend his ribcage.

As he raised his staff to attack again, Catra jabs quickly, and he goes down. After that, it doesn’t take too long to get his staff from his hands and pin him, her own staff held under his chin.

When Catra looks up, she sees that C’yra looks almost impressed, and Victor is shocked.

“Not bad,” C’yra calls to her, “That was close to record time.”

“I can’t believe it,” Victor says, eyes still wide.

Catra leaves Alonzo to get up on his own. Sparring made her feel more comfortable, but that feeling of not belonging starts to creep in when she sees that all of the other students are looking at her like she did something wrong.

But she didn’t do anything wrong. All she did was win.

“Here,” Catra throws the staff back at Victor before leaving the sparring circle. The looks she got from the other students start to remind her of the looks she would get from everyone else in her squadron whenever she did something better than them. They never congratulated her. They just looked at her like she was wrong.

Like she didn’t deserve to do something right or better.

The only person who ever congratulated her—

Catra cuts those thoughts off with a sharp shake of her head. What does it even matter? Even when she was better than Adora, Shadow Weaver would punish her.

A hand closes around her arm, and Catra acts quickly, swiping at whoever it is with her claws.

C’yra catches her hand. “You tend to act first and think second, don’t you?”

“Leave me alone,” Catra spits at her.

“I just wanted to tell you that you did well.”

“And?”

C’yra gives her a confused look. “There is no “and,” Catra.”

Catra pulls her hand out of C’yra’s grasp. “I’m not an idiot. I know that compliments only come with some backhanded comment about what I can do better, so just say it.”

Understanding washes over C’yra’s face. “That’s not how things work here, Catra. When I give you a compliment, it’s because I actually mean it.”

“Whatever.” Catra starts walking away again, and she hears C’yra following her. It pushes at her already-growing irritation, and she turns on her heels and says, “Can’t you just leave me alone?”

C’yra doesn’t get angry like Catra expects. “I figure you’d want some help getting back before brooding in your room all alone.”

“I’m not brooding. I’m just tired of being around self-righteous jerks like you.”

“Whatever you say,” C’yra starts walking, leaving Catra behind her. When she realizes Catra isn’t following, she turns around and asks, “Well, aren’t you coming?”

Catra follows, even if she doesn’t really want to.

~*~

The map Queen Angella pointed Adora to has Beast Island up in the corner in the middle of a vast expanse of water.

“Well, we already knew we were going to need a boat,” Scorpia says.

Adora smiles, “No problem. I know a guy.”

~*~

C’yra leaves Catra alone, and Catra spends the first few hours in her room thinking and overthinking everything from the last day. She doesn’t know why she expected anyone to welcome her.

She doesn’t even know if she wants them to welcome her.

She’s a Horde soldier, part of the army that destroyed them and forced them here for any sense of refuge, and she would still be a part of that army if she wasn’t sent here.

She realizes she doesn’t miss the Horde, though. Even with everyone’s distrust throughout the day, she feels like she belongs here among the Magicats. With the Horde, she was constantly having to achieve more and do more to prove her place there, and even then, it was never good enough. She overthrew Shadow Weaver, but she lost her place the second Entrapta became more useful to Hordak.

Here, it doesn’t feel like she needs to prove anything besides the fact that she doesn’t want to be a Horde soldier anymore.

Which, sure, she isn’t sure is true, but no one can blame her for wanting to hold onto the only thing she knew growing up.

Then there was C’yra. Catra doesn’t understand why the queen of the Magicats spent an entire day showing Catra around the village when anyone else could’ve done that.

Catra sits up in bed and looks down at the Force Captain badge she took out of her clothes once she got back to her room.

She was Hordak’s second-in-command, and the second she stopped being of use to him, he got rid of her without a second thought. He pulled the lever, and Catra thought he was going to kill her.

She wonders why he didn’t.

Catra picks up the badge and runs her thumb over the insignia.

The only reason she got Force Captain was because Adora left. If Adora had stayed with the Horde, she would’ve never been anything more than a foot soldier under someone else’s command.

Catra throws the badge, and it hits the wall with a loud crash. She wishes it shattered against the wall, but it just falls to the floor completely intact.

I can’t be in here anymore, Catra thinks, and she stands up and goes to leave.

She’s surprised that there aren’t any guards outside her room, but C’yra told her earlier that she wasn’t a prisoner here.

Even if she sort of feels like a prisoner.

Catra makes her way to the only place she remembers how to get to.

There are more people in the library now, but only one raises his head from his book when she enters.

“Catra!” Felix says excitedly, “What a surprise. I thought you said you aren’t interested in books.”

“I’m not.” She sits beside him and looks around at all the books opened up on the surface, “I just needed somewhere quiet to think, and my room was starting to feel claustrophobic.”

“Well, you’re always welcome here,” he smiles at her, his two-toned eyes sparkling ever so slightly, “Just let me know if you need anything.”

“Um, actually.” Catra trails off, a bit unsure of how to ask for what she wants.

“What is it?”

“Can I have some paper and a pencil?”

“Of course! One second.” Felix jumps up from the table and goes somewhere deeper in the library before returning with a stack of blank paper and a few pencils. “There you go. All yours.”

“Uh,” Catra takes the stack from him, “Thanks.”

“No problem.” He flashes her one last smile before returning to his reading, scribbling a few notes into the notebook at his side.

Catra takes a moment to sit in the quiet of the library. She can hear other Magicats shuffling around and the sound of pages being turned, even a hushed conversation from another table. The entire place smells like old books, and she didn’t really know she likes that smell until now.

She expects Felix to try and talk to her, but he seems happy to just sit in silence with her, and Catra appreciates it. She starts doodling on the paper Felix got for her, feeling her thoughts from earlier push to the back of her mind.

Catra doesn’t know how long she’s been sitting in the library when C’yra finds them

“You weren’t in your room,” C’yra says with some amusement, “I didn’t expect to find you here though.”

“I didn’t want to be in my room,” Catra explains, “And I guess the library isn’t the worst place in the world.”

“It’s small, but I’ll take any compliment about the library,” Felix jokes, then looks up at his wife, “Any particular reason you’re here, love?”

“To pull you away from your reading so that you can eat,” C’yra says with a smile, “And apparently to find Catra to bring her to dinner as well.”

“Well, you heard the queen,” Felix says to Catra, “Off to dinner we go.”

Catra lets Felix jokingly usher her out of the library. She even smiles when he dramatically opens the door for her and waves her out with an overdone, “M’lady.”

She doesn’t see C’yra watch them with a warm smile on her lips.

~*~

It takes Sea Hawk a few days to make it to Bright Moon. Apparently, he was out sailing somewhere dangerous and full of adventure and could only just now make it here.

Adora expects his dramatic greeting. What she doesn’t expect is for his excitement to grow when he notices Scorpia standing behind Adora, Bow, and Glimmer.

The two hug with shared exclamations of, “You’re great!”

Bow and Glimmer look to Adora for explanation, but Adora can only shrug and say, “I don’t remember a lot of it, but I’m pretty sure they bonded while we were in the Northern Reach.”

After explaining the plan and possible risks, Sea Hawk is onboard.

“It sounds like it will be filled with adventure!” Sea Hawk says the last part as an exclamation, standing up and putting one foot on the chair and a fist in the air. Bow is quick to join him, and they start singing some sea shanty about fighting monsters, Scorpia putting a claw around each of their shoulders and joining in.

Glimmer sighs, and Adora nudges her slightly.

“We actually have a plan, for the most part.”

“Aren’t you the one who says we need a solid plan since most of our plans end up failing?”

Adora laughs, “You’re the one who said we’re good at improvising.”

Glimmer watches Bow, Sea Hawk, and Scorpia start to sing even louder, and she has to fight back a smile. “Yeah, well, this is definitely going to be a disaster.”

~*~

Catra spends most of her days either with Felix in the library or with C’yra on the training grounds. She starts to learn more about the two as her stay with the Magicats grows longer.

She learns that most of C’yra’s scars weren’t actually from the Magicats’ battle with the Horde. Apparently, C’yra was well known for getting into fights, and a lot of them came from taking on opponents far bigger than her.

“I always won though,” C’yra said with a smirk, swinging her staff and catching Catra behind the knees, effectively pinning her.

She learns a lot of different things from Felix, mostly about Magicats history. He tells her stories of mythical heroes and queens throughout the ages while Catra draws, and she starts looking forward to seeing him every day to hear something new.

He also tells her the story of how he met C’yra.

“She was the princess, and I was just a student hoping she would pay attention to me,” he said, voice a bit dreamy and a dumb smile on his face as he remembers, “The first time we talked, she bested me in a fight, and from that day on, I was smitten.”

Catra finds herself looking forward to seeing them every day, and she doesn’t know how to feel about that.

Anytime she starts to put her faith in someone, they give her a reason why she shouldn’t.

Some of the other Magicats start warming up to her too.

One lunch where C’yra and Felix had different things they needed to attend to, Catra sat on her own at a table in the corner until Alonzo dropped down beside her, begging her to teach him one of the moves she used against him in their spar a few days before.

She’s even caught the attention of the younger kids. As she waited for C’yra on the training grounds one day, a few kittens came up to her and started asking questions.

“Why do you wear that thing on your face?” One asked, swatting at her tail.

“What is the Horde?” Another asked, looking up at her with wide glowing eyes.

“Why does everyone stare at you?” The last one asked from beside the second.

Catra didn’t answer their questions, instead telling them to scram, but they start finding her around the village to ask more and more questions.

It annoys Catra, but she answers them, hoping it will get them away from her.

She doesn’t admit that she kind of enjoys being around them.

Today, Catra waits for C’yra in her office before they head off to see a bit of the island. She’s looking through the books C’yra keeps in there, pulling one out every now and then to read about Magicats battle strategy or the Great Battle under Queen Selima.

She keeps moving along the shelves until she’s stopped in front of a frame. It’s the picture C’yra picked up on Catra’s first day in the village, the only time Catra has ever seen the queen genuinely smile.

Catra picks it up and looks at it.

It’s an old picture, and Catra recognizes a younger C’yra and Felix holding a small kitten, all three smiling like they’ve never been happier.

Catra freezes.

The kitten has orange fur with dark striped markings on her arm with eyes that are two different colors, one the same blue as Felix’s and one the gold of C’yra’s.

Catra remembers C’yra talking about the children that were taken. “The princess was among them,” she had said.

“Sorry about that, Catra,” C’yra comes into the room saying, “I don’t know how my advisor finds so much to talk about when there’s so little going on.”

C’yra freezes when she notices what Catra has in her hands.

“Catra—”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” The question comes out soft and hurt, and Catra wishes it held more anger, but it just doesn’t.

“You just got here. I didn’t want to overwhelm you.”

“Don’t you think I had a right to know?”

“Of course, but is that really the first thing you wanted to hear?”

Catra wants to throw the frame to the floor. She wants to be anywhere but in this office with C’yra.

Her mother.

“Catra,” C’yra tries to come closer, but she stops when she sees Catra tense, “I didn’t keep this from you because I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t tell you because I wanted you to feel like you fit here before telling you that you’re their princess.”

Catra sets the picture down on C’yra’s desk and runs. The last thing she hears is, “Catra, wait!” before climbing down the tree trunk and disappearing into the forest.

~*~

Adora, Glimmer, Bow, Scorpia, and Sea Hawk all sit around a table trying to come up with a plan.

“Why do we even need a plan?” Sea Hawk says, “The plan is adventure!”

Adora runs a hand over her face and tries not to snap at Sea Hawk. “We need a plan because Beast Island is rumored to be surrounded by monsters with even more monsters waiting for us if we make it to land.”

Bow’s expression fills with fear, “Yeah, I’m not really liking the idea of if we make it to land.”

“I’m just being realistic,” Adora says, “Every story they told us about Beast Island growing up talked about the island being impossible to live on because of the creatures that inhabit it. To rescue Catra, we’re going to need to protect ourselves so we can actually find her.”

Glimmer takes out the map and places it on the table between all of them. “It looks like it’ll only take us about a day to actually get there,” she places one marker on Bright Moon, the other on Beast Island, “I think the best plan is leaving a few people on the boat to protect it and having a few go on the island to find Catra.”

“I want to be one of the ones to find Catra,” Scorpia says.

“Me too,” Adora adds on.

“Alright then,” Bow takes out his mini figurines and places them at different points on the map, “This is Sea Hawk’s boat,” he places a boat figurine beside Beast Island, “So Sea Hawk should probably be one of the people to stay back.” He places mini-Adora on the island, “Adora and,” he digs around in his bag for a moment before pulling out the dragon figurine, “Scorpia—”

Scorpia picks up the dragon and says, “This looks nothing like me.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t have one of you since you’re new to the team. A dragon is the closest I have to a scorpion.”

Scorpia places the dragon beside Adora on Beast Island.

“They go off to find Catra,” he puts the cat figurine on the island as well, “Leaving Glimmer and me to help Sea Hawk watch the boat.” He places tiny-Bow and tiny-Glimmer beside the boat.

“That’s actually not a bad plan,” Glimmer says, giving Bow a smile.

“Do you think you two can handle the monsters on the island?” Bow asks Adora and Scorpia.

Adora smirks, “Oh please. I’m sure She-Ra can take down some monsters with no problem.”

“Plus, we’ve seen Scorpia fight, Bow,” Glimmer says, “I think she can handle herself.”

Scorpia smiles at the compliment, her cheeks turning red. “Well thanks, you guys.”

“Alright,” Adora says to the table, “Let’s start getting everything together.”

~*~

It’s Felix that finds Catra out in the forest. She’s sitting by a pond that she found, her knees pulled up to her chest as she watches the small aquatic creatures just beneath the surface.

“Leave me alone,” she tells him, “I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Then we don’t have to talk,” he says, his voice soft, “Do you mind if I sit here?”

“I’m not the boss of you. Sit wherever you want.”

Felix breathes out a laugh before sitting a few feet away from Catra. Instead of watching the pond, though, he looks up and watches the sky and the clouds moving overhead.

They sit in silence for a while, and Felix only breaks it to say, “I’m sorry, Catra.”

“For what?”

“A lot of things,” he says, and when Catra looks over at him, he’s still just watching the clouds, “I’m sorry that C’yra and I didn’t tell you sooner, and I’m sorry we didn’t do more to protect you. We thought we hid you well enough, but by the time we got back to our chambers to get you, you were gone.”

Catra stays silent, and Felix goes on.

“I’m sorry we didn’t try and rescue you.”

“If you would’ve tried, the Horde would’ve killed all of you.”

“I know,” Felix’s voice is soft, “It doesn’t mean I still can’t be sorry.”

“Being sorry doesn’t change what happened.”

“I know,��� Felix repeats.

“It doesn’t change that I grew up in the Horde.”

“I know,” Felix says again.

Catra rests her chin on her arms and watches a strange creature hop across the pond on leaves.

“Is the only reason they didn’t kill me because of who I am?”

“Of course not,” Felix sounds determined, “We would’ve spared any Magicat dropped on that beach.”

“I could’ve been anyone?”

Catra looks over to Felix and sees him nod. “You could’ve been any of the other children taken.”

That’s oddly comforting to Catra.

They sit in silence again, this one more comfortable than the last.

Felix is the one to break it again. “You don’t have to come back if you don’t want to.”

“Really?”

“Really,” he smiles that same smile Catra is starting to become so familiar with, “We don’t want to keep you somewhere you don’t want to be.”

Catra thinks for a moment before asking, “What if I want to be there?”

Felix’s smile gets softer, “You’re always welcome at home, Catra.”

Home. For so long Catra thought of the Fright Zone as her home. It’s where she grew up, where she met Adora, and the only place she really had. But then Adora left, and every horrible thing Adora’s presence shielded her from seemed to attack her from all sides, and the only way she seemed to fight back was by hating Adora and doing everything she could to take her down and destroy the Rebellion.

Now, though, Felix is offering her a new home, one among the community she never got to know growing up.

With parents who want her.

Catra knows she should be more wary of anyone offering any form of affection, but after Shadow Weaver, after thinking she finally gained her respect and getting manipulated yet again, Catra was desperate for anything, anywhere she felt at least okay.

“Can we go back now?” Catra asks, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Of course,” Felix stands and offers Catra a hand up, “Let’s go home.”

~*~

It takes them a few more days before they’re ready to go, but Adora, Glimmer, Bow, Sea Hawk, and Scorpia leave Bright Moon on a sunny day perfect for sailing. They have plenty of supplies and a backup plan for their backup plan.

Adora is starting to feel like this might go to plan.

“Okay,” Adora says to the group, “Just one more run-through of the plan.”

Sea Hawk groans, and Bow slumps a bit in his seat.

“Come on, Adora,” Bow whines, “Haven’t we gone over it enough?”

“I’m not letting anything go wrong. So, Sea Hawk?”

He sighs dramatically before pointing to a spot on the map, “This is where I drop you and Scorpia.” He seems to get some renewed energy, because he stands suddenly jumps and puts a foot on the side of the boat, raising a fist to the ocean. “Then I will help fight any monsters who try to board my boat!”

“Bow?”

Bow jumps up beside Sea Hawk and mirrors him. “I will fight alongside Sea Hawk to keep the boat safe!”

“Glimmer?”

Glimmer has her head in her hands. “My job is to make sure those two idiots don’t get killed fighting monsters,” Adora hears through Glimmer’s fingers.

Adora turns and watches Scorpia. She’s back towards the end of the boat, away from the Best Friend Squad + Sea Hawk, and she’s watching the waves picked up by the boat cutting through the water. Adora leaves her friends just as Bow makes a mock-offended comment at Glimmer, falling across her lap dramatically. Glimmer laughs and shoves him off, and all of them start laughing loudly.

Scorpia doesn’t regard Adora as Adora joins her.

“And your job?” Adora says it just loud enough to be heard over the wind and waves crashing.

“Rescue Catra.”

Scorpia doesn’t turn to face Adora as she says it. She just keeps watching the waves and the horizon.

Adora wonders what made Scorpia start caring for Catra so deeply. She knows Catra isn’t the most loving or open person, even if Catra was always so open with her before she left. She remembers bit and pieces of when she was infected, and one thing she remembers is Scorpia confidently talking about how much she cared about Catra and how she wouldn’t leave her.

Like Adora did.

“Catra’s lucky to have someone like you,” Adora says, watching Sea Hawk and Bow start up another sea shanty while Glimmer looks like she wants to teleport far, far away from here.

“I won’t leave her.”

“We’re going to find her.”

Scorpia finally looks at Adora then, and she sees the same emotions that she’s been trying to hide since Scorpia showed up in Bright Moon. There’s worry and fear, fear that they are too late, and something horrible has already happened to Catra.

“How are you so sure?”

Adora nudges Scorpia, “Well, she’s got you looking out for her.”

Scorpia smiles, “She has you too, even though you’ve been trying to kill each other since you left the Horde.”

“Hopefully she won’t try and kill me when we find her.”

“Guys!” Glimmer calls to them, cutting off their conversation, “We’re getting close.”

Adora nods and moves down the boat, hearing Scorpia whisper, “I’m coming, Wildcat.”

~*~

After Catra and Felix make it back to the village as the sun dips below the horizon, Catra spends the next few days avoiding Felix and C’yra completely. She hides where she thinks they won’t find her, first up high in the trees of the forest and then exploring the island. She finds rivers with more of the strange creatures she saw at the pond and a cave filled with gentle sleeping bats.

Felix and C’yra never find her.

Or maybe they’re waiting for Catra to come to them.

She enjoys her time by herself around the island. It’s really the first time in her life that she’s completely alone. Even when she was alone in the Fright Zone, there were always robots and soldiers doing rounds and Hordak’s little imp taking intel back to him.

Here among trees even greener than those in the Whispering Woods, Catra feels alone and at peace. She doesn’t have to look over her shoulder or worry about what she says.

Not that she has anyone around her to talk to, but still.

She sneaks in and out of the village for meals, and after the first day of looking over her shoulder and eating as fast as she can, Catra notices a small bundle at the end of the counter with her name written on a card. She grabs it and notices the head chef, Pisica, give her a wink and a smile, and Catra feels herself smile as she takes it and heads back into the forest.

As even more of the Magicats start to warm up to her, she bitterly wonders if it’s because they know who she is.

On the first day Catra decides to stay in the village, she hears the sound of chimes clanging. Her ears pick up warriors rushing to grab weapons and climb down the trunks.

She starts to follow the warriors from the treetops, curious what could be happening.

All of them stop at the line of trees along the beach, waiting.

Catra waits too, ready to pounce.

There are two people on the beach coming closer to the trees. Catra can’t make out who they are until they get just close enough to notice the glowing eyes of the Magicats warriors.

There’s no way, Catra thinks as she watches the two people freeze.

~*~

There aren’t any monsters, and Adora starts to think they somehow got off course.

“That isn’t possible,” Sea Hawk tells her when she brings it up, “My sailing is impeccable.”

“Then why haven’t we come across any monsters?”

“Maybe they’re sleeping?” Bow suggests, an arrow ready to fire.

Adora stops to think of the possibility, but that can’t be right. Every story she remembers about Beast Island talks about how it’s dangerous at any time of day, monsters ready to attack whoever comes close enough to challenge them.

They keep sailing, everyone ready for a fight, but there’s nothing.

Not even when Sea Hawk steers them to land and anchors.

Everything is quiet.

“Everyone remember the plan?” Adora asks.

She gets an affirmative from everyone.

Then she looks to Scorpia, “Ready?”

“Let’s do this.”

They both hop down onto the beach, Adora holding the She-Ra's sword and Scorpia with her claws ready for a fight. Adora looks up and sees Bow and Glimmer standing at the edge, arrows and magic ready to give them cover if necessary.

The beach is just as quiet as the waters surrounding it though. There are no monsters, nothing jumping out at them, and Adora wonders where those rumors of Beast Island even started if this is all it is.

Scorpia heads up the beach first, and Adora follows her, both of them moving slowly and constantly looking around themselves.

They reach the tree line without any resistance, and that’s when they see it. A dozen or more pairs of glowing eyes watching them from the shadows.

Scorpia and Adora freeze, neither of them speaking. They don’t want to spook whatever is beyond the forest.

Turns out they don’t need to worry about that, though. Within seconds the eyes turn into a group ready to attack. Scorpia sinks into the sand, ready to hold her ground, and Adora lifts her sword.

Before Adora can say, “For the honors of Grayskull!” though, she hears a shout of, “Wait!”

Someone runs in between Scorpia and Adora and the group ready to attack them.

“Wildcat!” Scorpia says excitedly.

It takes a moment for Adora to recognize Catra, because she isn’t wearing her Horde uniform. Something seems different about her too, but it’s undeniably Catra standing between them and danger.

“They’re not your enemy,” Catra tells the woman at the front.

“Are they not Horde soldiers?”

Adora looks down at her Horde-issued uniform she never had the heart to get rid of and realizes that yeah, even though she is sort of the face of the Rebellion now, she definitely still looks like a Horde soldier.

“I’m actually a part of the Rebellion,” Adora says, hoping to help, “And, uh, She-Ra.” She lifts the sword up a bit as proof.

“And I defected about, what was it?” Scorpia turns to Adora, “Was is a week and a half ago? I’m pretty sure it was a week and a half. I mean, we spent a long time making a plan and getting Sea Hawk and then making another plan—”

Adora is pretty certain that she sees Catra trying to fight off a small smile pulling at her lips.

“They’re not a threat,” Catra cuts Scorpia off.

The group backs off as the woman in front, the obvious leader, motions to back down. Adora is wondering how Catra has any sway with this group until she takes a closer look at their would-be attackers.

They’re all different sizes and shapes and colors, but they all look like Catra, with their ears nestled into manes and tails twitching according to their mood.

The leader comes over to them and looks at Adora and Scorpia before turning to Catra. “Are you sure we can trust them?”

“Yeah, they’re my—” Catra cuts herself off and looks at Adora, “Well, one of them is my friend.”

Usually those words would hurt Adora, but they aren’t said with the same bite Catra has gained towards her since she left.

I wonder what went on in the week and a half it took us to get here.

The leader nods, “They’re your responsibility then.” She leaves to join the group thinning out into the trees, and Adora wonders where they’re going.

Catra turns around. “What are you guys doing—”

Scorpia picks Catra up and hugs her close, “Oh, Wildcat, I’m so happy you’re okay! I was so worried when I heard what happened. I couldn’t believe it! And then I defected and joined the Rebellion and got Adora’s help, and I’m just so happy that you aren’t dead!” Catra spends the entire ramble pushing against Scorpia, but even Adora can see that it’s halfhearted.

Scorpia finally lets Catra go, and Catra falls back onto the sand, brushing herself off. “Yeah, obviously I’m fine. No need to bring a rescue party.”

“Beast Island is supposed to be a death sentence,” Adora says.

Catra looks at her, and Adora finds that her expression, usually so easy to read, is unreadable.

“Yeah, well, it isn’t the first time I’ve survived something I shouldn’t.” Catra holds eye contact with Adora, and Adora wants to look away, but she can’t.

There’s something so different in those mismatched eyes now.

“So,” Scorpia says, “Who were those people?”

Catra looks away, and Adora lets out the breath she didn’t know she was holding.

“The Magicats,” Catra answers, “Apparently almost decimated by the Horde and brought here to waste away.”

“You look like them," Scorpia thinks out loud.

Catra looks down and away, “I am one of them.” Adora notices the slight twitch in Catra’s tail that lets her know that there’s something more, something deeper that Catra isn’t telling them.

She chooses not to bring it up. It’s not like she has the right to ask.

“Are you two it for the rescue team?” Catra asks, regaining some of her usual snark.

“Bow and Glimmer are back on the boat with Sea Hawk,” Adora tells her.

Catra’s eyebrows pull together in confusion, “Who’s Sea Hawk?”

“Inspector Pirate!” Scorpia says, and Catra looks from her to Adora for a better explanation.

“He was at the Northern Reach with us,” Adora says, “He and Scorpia bonded.”

“I swear you could bond with a rock given enough time,” Catra says to Scorpia, and it sounds like it should come off insulting, but Scorpia smiles.

“Go get the others off the boat,” Catra tells Adora, “It’s too late for you guys to sail back, and there’s no reason to leave them waiting there.”

Adora expects some joke or some snide comment, but Catra just looks at her and waits for her to go back to the ship, so she does.

~*~

Getting all the non-Magicats up into the village is easier than expected. Catra climbs the tree with ease, Scorpia not far behind her, and Glimmer just teleports herself, Bow, Adora, and Sea Hawk instead of trying to make the climb.

“So, there were more of you,” the leader from earlier comes up to them and crosses her arms.

“You could at least introduce yourself,” Catra says, mirroring the pose, and Adora notices something, but she isn’t quite sure what.

“Oh, of course,” the woman bows dramatically, “Queen C’yra of Half Moon.” She comes back up from the bow with a flourish of her hand.

“Wait, I know you,” Glimmer says, “My mom knew you.”

C’yra squints her eyes at Glimmer and takes a few minutes to look her over before smirking. “Well, you definitely look more like Micah than Angella,” she says, her voice teasing, “Let’s just hope you don’t take after Angella in personality.”

“Hey!” Glimmer goes to move forward, and Bow stops her before she can do anything stupid, like punch the queen of Half Moon for insulting her mom.

C’yra laughs, “Yeah, you’re definitely Micah’s daughter.”

Catra’s watches C’yra tease the people she’s come to hate. She watches Bow try to control Glimmer while Adora hides a smile, and even Scorpia is laughing alongside the queen, and she realizes that she might have judged these people without really giving them a chance.

She only knew them as the people who Adora left her for. They were the reason Adora didn’t find that sword and just come back to the Fright Zone.

But they are different here in the village, being teased by one of the only adult figures to ever treat her like she was anything more than a tool.

Or maybe Catra just sees them differently.

Maybe Catra’s changed.

She shakes the thought out of her head as everyone around her starts introducing themselves.

“I’m Bow,” he extends his hand, and C’yra shakes it with amusement in her eyes, “I’m sort of the technology guy for the Rebellion.”

“I am Sea Hawk, Master of the Seas, Vanquisher of Monsters and Seeker of Adventure!”

C’yra looks over to Catra, and Catra shrugs, hoping it conveys, What do I know? He’s not my friend.

Scorpia hugs C’yra, and Catra has to hold in a laugh. “Oh, it’s just so nice to meet you,” C’yra fights the hug, but Catra knows well enough that she’s not getting out until Scorpia is done, “I’m Scorpia, Catra’s best friend, and I’m a hugger!” Scorpia finally lets C’yra go, and Catra has never seen the queen so disheveled.

C’yra looks at everyone around her and stops on Adora. “And we have the legendary She-Ra.”

“Oh, um,” Adora gets nervous all of a sudden, and Catra watches her do that thing she does where she looks everywhere except at the person she’s talking to, “Yeah, it’s, uh, it’s Adora. When I’m not She-Ra.”

C’yra notices the way Catra watches Adora. It’s different than the way she watches everyone else. She watches everyone else with disinterest, or, when she watches Scorpia, it’s with amusement and something deeper than tells C’yra that the two are friends.

Catra watches Adora with longing and guilt and betrayal. It’s no different than the way Adora watches Catra, only Adora’s gaze holds some sadness in it too.

“Well,” C’yra says to the group, “Welcome to my village. You’re free to stay for as long as you need.” She receives thanks from the group and then says, “If you’d like, I can show you where you can sleep.”

The group follows after C’yra, Bow and Glimmer talking excitedly and Scorpia pointing out different things to Sea Hawk. She glances back at Catra every now and then, though, just to make sure that she’s really there and alive.

Adora falls into step alongside Catra without meaning to. She snuck glances over at her ex-best friend every now and then and notices the differences. Her new clothes that seem to fit her better. How she looks comfortable here among the trees. The easy sway of her tail.

Adora doesn’t know what exactly Catra found here, but she thinks that it’s been really good for Catra.

“You can stop staring, you know.”

“Sorry. It’s just,” Adora thinks over what she wants to say, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you without a Horde uniform.”

“Maybe you should think of getting something new,” Catra says, “Why do you even still wear that when you’re a part of the Rebellion?”

“I don’t know,” Adora pulls at the collar of her jacket, “It’s comfortable, and they’re easy to fight in.”

“Yeah, because it was made for a soldier.”

“I am a soldier,” Adora says like it’s obvious, “Even as She-Ra, I’m still a soldier.”

C’yra stops at the first room and waves Bow and Sea Hawk in, and Catra sees the two run and immediately hop on one of the beds. Catra wonders why C’yra doesn’t stop them, but she just watches C’yra roll her eyes and move on.

She opens the next room and says, “Little-Micah and Adora-When-Not-She-Ra, this is you.”

Adora looks back at Catra before pulling a glaring Glimmer into their room. Catra can already hear the two talking, and one of them laughs.

“For you Scorpia, I figured you could room with Catra,” C’yra says, “Since we don’t exactly have unlimited space here.”

“That’s perfect!”

Catra glares at C’yra from behind Scorpia.

“Before you two go, could I have a word, Catra?”

Catra wants to say no. She’s been avoiding C’yra for days, and she still isn’t sure she’s even ready to talk about what she found out.

She’s not sure she will ever be ready to talk about it.

“Uh, yeah,” Catra moves from behind Scorpia, “Sure.”

C’yra pulls them off to the side, and Catra is worried until she sees C’yra smirk.

“You have nice friends.”

“They’re not my friends.”

“Yeah?” She smiles over Catra’s head at Scorpia, “Because I saw her hug you on the beach, and I’ve been sparring with you since you got here. I know you could’ve put more effort into getting out of her hold.”

Catra’s ears flatten against her head, “Yeah, well, the others aren’t my friends.”

“Then why did she ask for their help to rescue you?”

“Because—”

Actually, Catra isn’t exactly sure why Scorpia went to the Rebellion for help.

“I don’t know, but they’re not my friends.”

“Okay, kitten,” C’yra ruffles Catra’s hair, “I’ll come get you and your not-friends when it’s time for dinner.”

Catra didn’t even have time to protest before C’yra was halfway down the hall.

~*~

Felix joins them for dinner, happily introducing himself to everyone and apologizing for having not met them sooner, stating that, “There was a library emergency that needed attending to.”

C’yra rolls her eyes and tells him that finding a new book to read didn’t count as an emergency.

Conversation flows easily, and Catra sits on the edge trying not to pay attention.

She shouldn’t be surprised when the topic changes to the war between the Horde and the Rebellion.

Glimmer gushes about how the Rebellion has become so much more powerful with She-Ra on their side, and Catra gets that same sour feeling in her stomach anytime Adora’s powerful princess alter ego is mentioned.

She notices Adora watching her as Glimmer talks, but she doesn’t acknowledge it past a quick glance.

As they talk about the Battle of Bright Moon and other recent wins over the Horde, Catra pushes herself up from the table and leaves the dining area without looking back.

She finds the tallest branch she can find among the trees the village is built on and curls up, looking up at the clear blank night sky.

She’s left alone far longer than she expects to be before she years footsteps making their way up to her. She expects it to be Scorpia, or even Felix, but the footsteps that are climbing up the tree trunk are far too familiar.

Adora huffs out a breath as she pulls herself up onto the branch below Catra. “Do you think next time you could choose somewhere with less climbing?”

“What are you doing here?”

Adora straddles the branch and looks up at Catra, “You sort of stormed away from dinner. Felix and Scorpia offered to come find you, but I knew where you’d be, so I offered.”

“No, Adora. Why are you on Beast Island?”

“Oh.” Adora stands on the branch and jumps up to grasp the branch Catra is sitting on. She pulls herself up before straddling the branch facing Catra. “I don’t really know, I guess. Scorpia came to Bright Moon and told us you were here and that she needed help rescuing you, and I couldn’t say no.”

“Why?”

“Because, Catra, we may have spent the past few months on opposite sides of a war, but I didn’t stop caring about you,” Adora says like it’s obvious, “I wasn’t going to just leave you on Beast Island to die.”

Her words set something off in Catra, and she doesn’t know how she’s supposed to feel. Adora’s words make her feel warm, but Adora’s presence makes her still feel anger simmering just below the surface.

It’s a strange dichotomy to feel.

“Turns out you didn’t really need saving, huh?” Adora says, looking up at the sky.

“Guess not.”

They both watch the sky above them, neither really knowing what to say. Catra catches Adora sneaking glances at her every now and then, and she sneaks some glances of her own.

She already knew the Rebellion changed Adora, but she never really got to see just how much up close. Adora looks like she holds the weight of the world on her shoulders now, even without that dumb sword on her back, and Catra can see the signs of exhaustion everyone else probably misses.

Like the bags under Adora’s eyes and her posture that isn’t as ramrod straight as usual.

“I’m really sorry, Catra.”

“What for?”

“For being so selfish growing up.” Adora whispers, “And for making you feel like you were second best. And for not understanding why you couldn’t just drop all allegiances to come with me to the Rebellion.”

“That’s a lot of things.”

“I have a lot of things to be sorry for.”

“You’re not the only one.”

Adora pulls her eyes from the sky and watches Catra curl even further into herself.

“You were just so easy to blame. I mean, Shadow Weaver always needed you to be the best, and she always gave you all this praise. She treated you like you were actually her daughter. She treated me like I was the cat she didn’t want to take in.”

Catra still remembers her first memory of Shadow Weaver. She had messed up one small thing in a training simulation, and Shadow Weaver grabbed her by her scruff, pulled her down the hall, and threw her into one of the isolation chambers.

She spent an entire day in there.

She was only five.

“Right before I was sent here, I thought I finally gained her respect, and she manipulated me, just like she always does.” Catra can still feel Shadow Weaver’s hand on the fur under her ear, the only sort of affection Shadow Weaver ever offered her, and she wishes she could scrub the feeling away.

Catra should’ve known it was all just to use her.

“And I blamed you for everything she ever did to me, because you were her golden child.”

It isn’t exactly a sorry, but it’s a confession of what she did wrong.

Adora knows her well enough to know that sorry will come when it comes, if she just gives Catra a chance to speak.

“I hated you when you left, because it only got worse, but I shouldn’t have hated you. I should’ve hated Shadow Weaver. I do hate Shadow Weaver.”

Adora hand rests on Catra’s shoulder, and she starts rubbing up and down Catra’s arm like she used to do when they were younger. Catra sinks into the familiar comfort, closing her eyes and allowing a soft purr to rumble.

“You’ve had some week, haven’t you?”

Catra cracks an eye open to see Adora smiling at her for the first time since they were in the First Ones temple. “You have no idea.”

Adora moves her hand up to scratch behind Catra’s ear, and Catra can’t help leaning into the touch.

“Do you want to head back down? Everyone’s worried.”

“One more minute?”

“Okay,” Adora breathes out, “One more minute.”

~*~

Catra is almost asleep, curled up on the comfy mat C’yra gave her since there was only one bed, when Scorpia breaks the silence.

“So, Adora went to go find you after you left dinner.”

Catra hums a yes, hoping that Scorpia won’t continue her line of questioning.

She isn’t so lucky.

“Did you work things out?”

Catra rolls onto her back and finds Scorpia easily in the dark. She’s on her side, looking down at Catra with curiosity.

“I think we have a little more to work out than can be covered in half an hour.”

“Did you two at least start?”

Catra expects Scorpia to be angry or jealous or any other negative emotion, but when she looks at her friend, she sees a bit of hope underneath her caring expression.

“Yeah,” Catra finds herself feeling hopeful too, “I think we did.”

~*~

C’yra and Felix pull her away from everyone else during breakfast, and they lead her to C’yra’s office.

The same place she learned the truth about who she is.

They sit her down across the desk and she feels like a child being scolded.

She wonders if that’s what’s going to happen.

“Don’t look so worried, Catra,” C’yra says, “We just brought you in here because we figured you wouldn’t want to talk about this in front of everyone else.”

“Talk about what?”

“Well,” where C’yra keeps a blank, even expression, Felix’s face screams worry, “We know that your friends decided to stay a few days, but after that, they’re going to go back to Bright Moon or Salineas or wherever they live.”

“So?”

“We just want you to know,” Felix tapers off.

“We want you to know that if you want to go with them, you should,” C’yra said, smooth and steady, “We don’t want you to feel like you have to stay here on Beast Island just because of us and what you’ve learned about yourself.”

Catra looks at C’yra and Felix, one steady and the other filled with worry, and realizes that she’s going to have to make a choice.

If she goes back with Scorpia, Adora, and the rest of them, she knows she’s going to have to join the Rebellion. There’s no other option.

If she stays here, she has to admit to herself that she’s what the Horde raised her to hate.

She has to spend time with her parents.

How weird.

“Is that all you needed from me?”

C’yra and Felix look at one another before C’yra nods, “You’re free to go.”

Catra leaves without saying goodbye.

~*~

Catra isn’t surprised to find all of them at the training grounds. Adora is already facing off against Bow, and the group has gained the attention of the Magicat students who have never seen humans or Etherians before.

She sits on the sidelines and watches them, unwilling at that moment to join in.

Scorpia notices her and breaks away from the group, settling down beside her, definitely too close to follow Catra’s rule about personal space.

“You okay, Wildcat?”

Catra just turns away, her tail flicking in aggravation.

“I could go grab the blanket off your bed and swaddle you again.” Scorpia moves to get up, but Catra stops her with a hand on her claw.

“That really won’t be necessary.”

“You know, you could just open up without me forcing it out of you.”

Scorpia has a point. She’s never given Catra any reason not to trust her. In fact, she’s done nothing but work to earn Catra’s trust, even when Catra was mean and cold to her.

That doesn’t stop Catra from freezing. The last time she opened up to Scorpia, she ended up struggling for breath in Hordak’s sanctum.

That wasn’t Scorpia’s fault, though. That was Hordak’s little imp, and this isn’t the Fright Zone.

“Can I tell you something, and you promise not to tell anyone else?”

Scorpia’s smile looks like it might break her face, and she tries to calm it, but she just can’t stop. “I promise I will not tell a single soul.”

Catra’s sees nothing but trust and loyalty shining in Scorpia’s eyes. She sighs and pulls her knees to her chest.

“When the Horde conquered Half Moon, they took a bunch of the kids with them. One of those kids was C’yra and Felix’s daughter.”

“The princess?”

“Yeah,” Catra blows a piece of hair out of her face just for something to do, “Which is apparently me.”

Scorpia blinks her eyes at Catra a few times. Then, she starts to get excited. “Oh my gosh! You’re a—”

“Princess,” comes out warbled around the hand Catra pressed to Scorpia’s mouth to keep her quiet.

“Yeah, and I thought we agreed this was staying between us. Not the entire training yard.”

Scorpia’s sorry comes out muffled, and Catra removes her hand. “It’s just so exciting!” Scorpia says, quiet enough that she won’t draw any attention, “You and I have something in common that isn’t the Horde!”

Catra sinks back into her curled up position.

“You’re not excited about this, are you?” Scorpia asks, moving so that she’s even closer to Catra.

“I don’t really know how to feel about it right now.”

“Well, if you need someone to talk to, you’ve always got me,” Scorpia nudges Catra gently with a smile, “You know, your resident princess friend.”

Catra smiles despite trying to fight it off, “Yeah, whatever.”

It comforts her though, because Scorpia is a princess and still a now-former Force Captain and just herself.

If Scorpia can do it, it can’t that bad.

~*~

Catra finds herself alone with Adora again towards the end of the day. Bow and Glimmer decided to go off into the forest, and Sea Hawk and Scorpia were trading stories in the dining area, so Catra decides to spend some time in the library.

Apparently, Adora has the same idea.

Catra steadies Adora as she almost falls while trying to get a book off one of the higher shelves.

“You know, there are stools, so you don’t have to almost die reaching a book.”

“I thought I could reach it.” Adora goes and grabs a stool, reaching the book without any problem now.

“What are you even killing yourself over?”

Adora shows her the cover, “I asked Felix if the library has anything about She-Ra, and he told me about this book. Apparently, the Half Moon queen at the time was really good friends with She-Ra Mara, and this book is the queen’s journal.”

“Really? Which one?”

Adora opens the book and reads through it a bit before saying, “Queen Katriska.”

“Oh, Felix told me about her. Her nickname to those who knew her was the Peacekeeper.”

Adora takes the book over to one of the nearby tables to read it, and Catra follows.

“It might give me insight as to what happened with Mara,” Adora swings her legs over the bench and looks up at Catra still standing by the table, “What are you doing in the library? I never really thought you were much of a bookworm.”

Catra shrugs, “It’s quiet in here.”

Adora just nods and opens up the journal again. Catra sits down beside her and thinks of getting up to get some paper but decides to rest her head on the table and close her eyes instead.

She’s about half asleep when she feels Adora’s nails start to scratch right behind her ear absentmindedly.

It makes Catra feel nostalgic. Instead of being in the library in the Magicats’ village, she’s back in the Fright Zone, napping curled up next to Adora while Adora studies for a test or memorized new information. Adora would always get so focused that she would mindlessly reach out and scratch behind Catra’s ear to have something to do with her hands while she read.

For just a moment, it erases everything horrible thing that’s happened between them in the last few months, and they’re just like they used to be.

Catra lets it put her to sleep, only waking up when her subconscious feels the contact stop.

She lifts her head up to see Adora holding in laughter.

“What?” Catra asks, rubbing at her eyes.

“I forgot how loud you purr,” Adora says through silent laughter, “I’m pretty sure the entire library was shaking.”

Catra shoves Adora, “It’s your fault.”

“My fault?” Adora shoves her back playfully, “How is it my fault?”

“You did the ear thing!” Catra notices a few of the scholars glaring at them from the other tables and doesn’t shove Adora again. “You know the ear thing always makes me purr,” Catra accuses softly, “It was your evil plan all along.”

Adora rolls her eyes, “Right. My plan to take down Hordak’s big, bad, second-in-command was to scratch her behind her ears and make her start a mini-earthquake in a library on Beast Island.”

“I knew it!”

Catra gets shushed this time, and she sticks her tongue out at the scholar who did it.

When she looks back at Adora, she’s gone from teasing to worried. “Was that okay?” She asks, her fingers twisting, “I didn’t mean to. It’s just, I was reading and you were here and I guess my body ran on autopilot.”

Catra cuts off Adora’s growing ramble by grabbing onto Adora’s wrist. “When did we get so unsure around one another?”

“Probably right around the time I turned against the Horde in Thaymor.”

“Now look at us. The Traitor and the Disgraced.”

“I always thought we were going to be First and Second-in-Command.”

“You’d be my second, obviously.”

Adora rolls her eyes with a smile, “Obviously.”

Catra looks down and notices that she’s still holding onto Adora’s wrist, and Adora hasn’t pulled away.

She doesn’t want Adora to pull away.

She wants Adora closer.

She drops Adora’s wrist, “Plus, I’m the one who actually climbed through the ranks, and I didn’t have a magic sword to help.”

“Well, you were always the more impressive one.” Adora doesn’t say it as a joke. She’s completely sincere, and Catra looks at her in disbelief.

“You can’t actually believe that.”

“Of course, I do,” Adora doesn’t even look up from her book, “Climbing the ranks is easy when you’re constantly praised. It’s harder to do when you’re constantly being told you aren’t good enough, and you showed everyone else that you are good enough.” She looks up from her book then and smiles at a wide-eyed Catra, “Besides, you’re the one who actually took down Shadow Weaver. Even with She-Ra, the best I could do was defend myself.”

Something warm courses through Catra’s blood, and it tingles pleasantly at Adora’s words. She could do something about, maybe think about what the warmth’s meaning, but she just sets her head back down on the table, and Adora’s nails go back to scratching right behind her ear.

~*~

The next few days pass by quickly. Catra spends most of her time around Scorpia, letting the Best Friend Squad + Sea Hawk do their own thing.

Every day, though, her and Adora find themselves somewhere all on their own, and things don’t magically get better. They aren’t immediately back where they were before. They are still mess ups and fumbling questions of, “Is this okay?” and second guessing, but over the days, Catra starts to feel less angry, and Adora starts to feel less guilty.

The night before they’re set to leave, all of them are discussing their plans.

Catra doesn’t say anything as they talk about when to leave and what the weather is supposed to be like for their trip.

Not until Bow looks at her and asks, “You’re coming back with us, aren’t you, Catra?”

“No.”

“What?” Glimmer looks at Catra like Catra just said something impossible, “Why not?”

Catra can feel Scorpia beside her reel up to defend her, but it’s Adora who jumps in first.

“Just because Catra was sent here doesn’t mean she has to automatically join the Rebellion.”

Catra is surprised to hear Adora say that, especially since it was always Adora begging Catra to leave the Horde for the Rebellion.

They really had grown to understand one another again in such a short time.

“Will you stay here?” Bow asks, trying to simmer Glimmer’s frustration.

Catra nods, “I want to learn more about where I came from.” And more about what being a princess means.

Bow smiles, “I think that’s great.”

Scorpia wraps a claw around Catra’s shoulder, and Catra doesn’t even try to fight it. “It is great!”

Adora smiles across the table at her as she rolls her eyes at the sheer amount of cheer around her.

~*~

Scorpia hugs her tight and keeps her close the next morning.

“Oh, Wildcat, I’m going to miss you so much! I wish I could send you letters and tell you all about my new, thrilling adventures with the Rebellion. Sea Hawk and I are going to go on adventures all the time, and I think we can get Entrapta to re-switch sides too.”

Scorpia keeps rambling about all the new adventures the Rebellion has to offer, and Catra lets her.

If she’s being honest, she’s going to miss this. Maybe not the invasion of personal space, but Scorpia in general.

The person who was there for her when she couldn’t even be there for herself.

Catra returns the hug for the first time, and she can practically feel Scorpia’s happiness rolling off of her.

“Stay safe, okay?”

Scorpia lets her go, “You too.”

Catra rolls her eyes, “Yeah, because there are so many dangers on Beast Island.”

Scorpia gives her one last smile before going to help Sea Hawk load a few things onto the boat. Bow and Glimmer are working to untie the sails and get the boat ready to sail.

Adora is still left on the sand, watching her friends work.

Catra goes over to her, “Hey, Adora.”

Adora turns and smiles, “Hey, Catra.”

Catra nods to the forests that line the beach, “Can I talk to you for a sec?”

“Yeah, of course.”

She follows Catra just beyond the tree line, far enough away that her friends can’t hear or see them, but close enough that she can still see Sea Hawk struggling with something and Scorpia picking it up and hauling it onto the ship easily.

“What’s up?” Adora asks, because Catra looks nervous all of a sudden.

“It’s just, I realized that I never actually said sorry,” Catra says softly, “You said sorry for leaving and assuming, and I never said sorry for everything that I did.”

“Hey,” Adora rests her hands on Catra’s shoulders, “It’s okay, Catra.”

“Is it?”

Adora runs her thumb over the soft, short fur of Catra’s ear, “It will be.” She says it with unwavering doubt, and even though Catra’s afraid of something bad happening, in this moment, she believes Adora.

Adora keeps running her thumb over Catra’s ear, and that same warm feeling returns, the one she’s been getting anytime it’s just been her and Adora together, and Catra isn’t completely dense. She knows what this feeling means, but now isn’t the time or place.

Then again, Catra’s always been far too impulsive.

Catra pulls Adora closer and kisses her, and Adora immediately cups Catra’s face to bring her closer. The kiss only lasts a few seconds, but to them it feels like an eternity, and then only break apart because they hear Bow and Glimmer calling for Adora.

“Half Moon has a princess,” Catra says quickly before Adora’s friends can find them, “You’ll need her to complete the Princess Alliance, right?”

“Yeah, but who is she? Why didn’t we meet her?”

Catra takes the plunge. “You did. You came to Beast Island to save her.”

Adora’s eyes go wide at the confession.

“Give me time,” Catra says, watching over Adora’s shoulder as Bow and Glimmer start to wander closer to the forest’s edge, “When I’m ready, I’ll find a way to get back to you, okay?”

“Okay.”

Adora gives her one last kiss before coming out of the forest.

Catra takes a moment before coming down to sit on the sand. Scorpia waves to her as the boat starts to drift out, and Catra waves back until she can’t see them anymore.

“So,” C’yra says, and Catra turns to see her leaning up against one of the trees, Felix just behind her, “You decided to stay.”

“I did.”

“Why?” Felix asks, ever the curious scholar.

Catra smiles at them.

Her parents.

“This is just where I need to be right now.”

#she-ra #she ra #she-ra and the princesses of power #she fanfiction #catra #adora #catradora #catradora fanfiction #scorpia #bow #glimmer #sea hawk #magicats #queen angella #entrapta #queen c'yra of half moon #king felix of half moon #rescue mission fic #writing sea hawk is not an easy task #a lot of what he says is in the inflection #you can't really write that #and hello #we've reached the point in the tags #where i promise something #to whoever is still reading #(not you elena) #so my promise to you? #dear reader #i will answer one question you have about the fic #whatever it is

[catradora]

tfw you're a dumb gay who makes dumb gay AUs

“I’m not going home- not after what I’ve seen.” Adora said. Gunfire and screams rang through the woods, and yet Catra could hear nothing else. The whole world had stopped at that very moment.

I’m not going home.

After everything they’d been through together. Training, promises, late night escapades; she was going to be Force Captain, and now she was going to leave it all for- for what?

She wanted to scream. And cry. And pummel Adora in the face until some semblance of sense came back to her. Couldn’t she see that they were just being manipulated again? What made the Princesses so different from Shadow Weaver or Hordak? She was just running off be be someone else’s pet. Why couldn’t she just give this whole thing up and stay with her-

“Come with me! You don’t have to go back there!”

Could she?

“…Alright.”

_____

“I accept your allegiance, She-Ra, Princess of Power.”

Adora hardly had time to take the sword before the whole room burst into cheers, and Glimmer and Bow pulled her into a hug. Catra watched from a distance.

Of course. Second. Why did she expect anything to be different just because they had switched sides? Especially now. She wasn’t the one with a magical sword or amazing powers. No, just Catra. Insolent, disobedient-

Catra yelped as Bow’s hand suddenly wrapped around her arm, before pulling her into their weird little group huddle. Bow grinned when she glared at him.

“C’mon, you’re part of our team too!” He said. Glimmer and Adora nodded in agreement, and wrapped their arms around her.

Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.

_____

Glimmer woke up in her bed, as always. She yawned and stretched a bit before rolling to her side, and seeing…

Two Horde soldiers. In her bed.

_____

“We’re sorry! Really, truly, sorry!” Adora continued apologizing even after the initial screaming and panic that no doubt woke up everyone in the castle. Glimmer sighed.

“Just don’t do it again.” She grumbled. “And change out of those uniforms, you’re going to scare someone.”

“Can’t promise that, Sparkles.” Catra said snidely. Glimmer glared at her from the floor beneath her bed.

“What are you two even doing in here? You both have your own rooms.” Glimmer asked. 

“Well, yes, but,” Adora started, “I couldn’t sleep, and Catra couldn’t sleep, and we’ve never slept without other people around, and we ran into your mom, and then-“

“Wait. You didn’t have your own rooms?” Glimmer asked. At that, both Catra and Adora lacked for words.

“We did!” Catra insisted after a long pause. “We just… shared it. With 10 other people.”

“…that’s not your own room, Catra.”

_____

“Are you two animals, or do they teach you not have have manners in the Horde?” Glimmer asked dryly.

“Well, actually-“ Adora started.

“You know what they teach us in the Horde, Sparkles?” Catra asked. She stood up, grabbed the entire timpano and shoveled it onto her plate.

“You eat quickly or you don’t eat.”

_____

“Catra.” Adora whispered. Bow and Glimmer were fast asleep. Catra didn’t move.

“Catra. I know you’re awake. You snore when you sleep.” She said. Catra crooked her head the slightest bit so they were facing each other.

“I do not!” She whispered back.

“You do!”

Bow suddenly made some sort of gurgling noise and rolled over. Adora and Catra laughed. Quietly.

“…maybe we should keep it down.” Adora said in between snickers.

“Oh, you don’t say?”

They continued laughing and joking about stupid things, before settling into a long but not uneasy silence.

“Everything’s changed, huh?” Adora asked, to no one in particular. There was a small bit of wonder in her voice.

“Yeah.”

“We were fighting these two last week.”

“Mhmm.”

“…do you regret leaving?” Adora asked. Catra scoffed.

“What? Do I regret ditching those losers for a badass castle and actual food?” She asked.

“No, really.” Adora said, and suddenly the silence was much more tense. Catra sighed.

“…I guess not. It is nicer here. And you’re here, too.”

“What about the others, though? Don’t you miss them?“

“Look, Adora. They never liked me.” Catra said flatly. Adora sat up and looked at her.

“What do you mean, they never liked you? You were part of our squadron!”

“I was your sidekick, Adora. If you weren’t there, no one would even notice me.”

“What? No, that’s not-“

Catra abrupt laughing cut her off. God, Adora was so…

“You… you really don’t know, do you?” She asked.

“One little remark from Shadow Weaver doesn’t mean anything, Catra.“

“Is that what you think this is about?Nobody cared about me, Adora. They cared about you. You were Shadow Weaver’s personal project, you were future Force Captain, and I was the stupid little pet you dragged along with you.”

“It’s not-“

“And now we’re in Bright Moon with all your fancy new friends and your magical Princess powers and sword, and I guess no matter where I go, I’ll just be second to you forever!”

The words were out before she even realized she said them. They both stared at each other in the dark. The silence was deafening.

“I-“

“No. You know what? Forget I said anything-“

Adora is suddenly next to her, arms wrapped around her body, and Catra thinks that maybe her skills need sharpening if she didn’t even notice Adora getting out of her bed and walking over towards her.

“I’m sorry.”

“Adora, it’s not your fault.”

“But-“

“You don’t have to apologize.”

“Yes I do! You’ve been my best friend my entire life, and I never even knew you felt that way about me.”

Catra laughed, like she always does.

“It’s not that big of a deal.” She said dismissively. Instead of backing off, Adora pulled her closer.

“Yes, it is. I should’ve known.”

Neither of them knew what to say. They simply stared out the window.

“…if it’s worth anything to you, I don’t think you’re my sidekick.” Adora mumbled.

“Thanks.”

“No, I mean it.” She said, “I would be dead without you. And I’m sure you’ve helped the Rebellion a lot. And you don’t need a sword or destiny or whatever this is. You’ve been doing great on your own. I’m not so much better than anyone else here.”

“Sure. You just turn into an eight foot superhero and fix everyone’s problems.”

“I haven’t fixed anything. You guys have been doing all the hard work. I’m just… here. I don’t really know what I’m doing, but I know I couldn’t have gotten this far without any of you.” Adora nestled closer to her, “And I wouldn’t want to be here without you.”

“…thanks, Adora.”

_____

Glimmer woke up on the floor. Oh, right. They were having a sleepover. There was no way they were going to surprise her again this morning!

With that in her mind, Glimmer sat up and looked at Adora’s bed. Which was empty.

She looked around the room in a panic, before spotting Adora out of the corner of her eye, and Catra next to her. They were both sleeping peacefully together with a blanket wrapped around both of them.

Well, maybe she was wrong about the surprise thing.

——

“…And their leader is my Aunt Castaspella! You’ll love it there!”

“Great!” Adora said with a beaming smile. She leaned in towards Catra when Glimmer turned around.

“Catra.” She whispered, “What’s an ‘aunt’?”

_____

Catra sat motionlessly in the corner.

“Catra?” Catra sprung up and hissed at the sound of her name. Her eyes skirted around the room, before landing on Adora, bruised and shaken, but no worse for the wear.

“It’s me.” She came closer. “Are… are you okay?”

Catra put her hands down; when did she put them up? Adora watched with concern as she stumbled towards her before collapsing in her arms.

“Catra?”

“I couldn’t do anything.”

“…what?”

“I-I saw her. She didn’t get me, but I…”

“Catra, it’s okay, she’s gone now-“

“No it isn’t!” She yelled. “I should’ve listened to you! And I saw her back there in the Lunarium, but I ran away instead, and all of Mystacor almost got screwed up because of me, and…” Catra’s voice trailed off into deep, heaving breaths, and Adora suddenly noticed that her shoulders were wet. She pulled her closer.

“Catra. It’s okay.”

“I got scared. Everyone almost died because I was scared.”

“It’s fine. You’re fine.”

“I couldn’t do anything.”

“I was scared too.”

“But that didn’t stop you.” Catra sat up. “You saved Mystacor. And I was here, in a corner crying.”

“So what?” Adora asked. “That could’ve been any of us. This whole thing has been stressful, nobody would blame you for freaking out right there.”

“No, it wasn’t that, it’s…” she trailed off.

“Catra?”

“You don’t know about that, do you?”

“About what?” Adora asked. Catra paused for a long time before starting.

…

……

“She… she did that to you?” Adora asked. Catra scoffed.

“She did that to all of us. I just got the worst of it.” She replied nonchalantly. Adora was silent.

“I’m sorry.” She finally muttered. Catra looked at her strangely.

“For what?”

“I… you went through all of this, and I never even noticed.” Adora said. She was staring at the tiled floor between them. Catra sighed.

“It’s fine. Besides, you got rid of her, right?” Adora looked up at her, and for some reason it felt like they were both seeing each other for the first time again. Catra lifted herself off the ground, and then pulled Adora up with her.

“C’mon, let’s go.”

_____

“So…” Bow dragged out the word.

“So?” Catra asked, in a much less cheery tone, while chewing half a baked eggplant. Glimmer and Mermista looked rather disgusted with her.

“…how long have you and Adora been dating?” He asked. Catra and Adora suddenly stopped stuffing their faces with food to stare at him from across the table.

“How long have we beenwhatnow?” Adora asked bewilderedly.

“Oh, you know,” Glimmer said coyly, “dating? Holding hands, kissing, stuff like that?”

Mermista and Perfuma giggled, and Sea Hawk openly guffawed. Entrapta quite unsubtly muttered something about “new developments in their relationship” into her recorder. Bow, at least, had the decency to try and stifle his laugher, even if he was failing miserably.

“What’s dating?”

_____

The Snow Palace was crowded, despite its size.

“Wow.” Adora said breathlessly.

The trio walked towards the throne, which dramatically overlooked the rest of the ballroom. Catra whistled.

“…If she joins us, all the other Princesses are sure to follow.” Adora prattled on as they waited. For such a long line, it sure moved quickly; they all suddenly found themselves at the front. Adora took a deep breath. Catra herself was a bit nervous- not that she would show it.

“Here we go.” Adora whispered to herself. They did the customary bow. Catra could hear Adora counting. And then a gasp when she lifted her head.

“That’s Frosta? She’s-“

Catra elbowed her in the side. Hard. One of the guards gave them a scrutinizing look.

“Uh, she’s, um, impressive!” Glimmer stumbled through her words. Frosta didn’t move. Oh, she was really about to do this, wasn’t she?

“Revered hostess,” Catra drawled, “we come into your hall under the ancient rules of hospitality, bringing greetings from Bright Moon.”

“And from She-Ra, the legendary warrior.” Glimmer finished. Chatter and murmurs rose up from the hall. Good.

“You are welcome into the Kingdom of Snows under the ancient rules of hospitality. Leave conflict at the door. And please, enjoy the ball.” Frosta held a lot of composure for a ten year old. The trio nodded and began the walk down the stairs and out of earshot.

“That went… really well.”

____

“…and then he said, ‘Don’t worry about it, the rat’s a ventriloquist’!”

Their crowd of friends laughed. Personally, Catra wasn’t that interested, but Adora was also here, and, well…

She looked around the room looking for something that was more entertaining than small talk and Sea Hawk’s dumb jokes. People talking, people talking, more people talking, Entrapta up an ice pillar watching people with binoculars, people talking-

Wait.

_____

“You don’t spy on people that often, do you?” Catra asked. Entrapta turned her head to look at her with her creepy binoculars.

“No, not really.”

“Well, if you want a better view,” Catra motioned towards the empty balconies hovering over their heads, “I would recommend you go up there.”

“Really?”

“Yup. You can get a bird’s-eye view instead of jumping around between pillars like a demented monkey.”

“Oh, good idea! I’ll do that right now.” Entrapta continued climbing up up the pillars until she could hook one of her… hair… hand… things onto the railing and hop over and out of sight. Just like a demented monkey.

_____

Adora looked around the ballroom. Where was Catra…?

She turned towards the back of the room, where the entrance was. Droves of guests were still strolling in despite how late it was, but now they were more distinguishable from a distance. Like-

Oh.

Oh no.

“Oh, hey, Adora!” Force Captain Scorpia said from across the room. Adora marched over towards her.

“What are you doing here?” She asked between gritted teeth. Really, she should’ve reported her the second she saw her, but…

“Scorpia. You need to leave. Now.” Adora whispered, “You can’t come if you’re uninvited.”

“Hmm? Oh, I’m on the guest list.” Scorpia replied. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her own copy of the invitation, with her name highlighted near the bottom. Adora gawked, and then grabbed the invitation to get a closer look, as though that would’ve changed anything.

“How…?”

“What do you mean ‘how’? Didn’t they tell you in Force Captain Orientation?” She asked.

“What?”

“Oh, right, you left before you could get there, right? I’m a Princess.”

“You’rea Princess?!” Adora asked just below the socially unacceptable volume.

“Yeah. The Horde kinda crashed into our kingdom, and then we let them stay. We even gave them our runestone.” Scorpia explained. Adora tried to process what she was hearing.

“So… they just… let you come here?” She asked.

“Well, I don’t usually come, but,” Scorpia’s voice dropped down to a whisper, “Hordak gave me specifications to keep Shadow Weaver in line. Can you believe it? Shadow Weaver!”

“Wait, what? Why does that have anything to do with the prom?”

“Dude, Shadow Weaver freaked out when you left. She’s been, like, obsessively trying to get you back.”

“Well, I knew that, but-“ Something suddenly clicked in her mind. “You’re here to bring me back to the Horde?”

“Uh, no. I’m here to make sure Shadow Weaver doesn’t cause too much damage to the Horde following you around.”

“…oh.”

Silence fell over them, which was to be expected when Adora just accused her former(?) friend of planning to kidnap her. And then, finally-

“Hey, you wanna see who can eat the most food in one go?”

_____

“Hey, Adora,” Catra said. Adora and Scorpia looked up from the plate full of shrimp that they had in front of them.

“What are you up to this time?” Adora asked. 

“I was wondering if you’d like to dance with me.” Catra said.

“Dance?”

“Yes, Adora, the thing we’re here for.”

“But the rules-“

“Don’t say that we can’t.” Catra interrupted. She grabbed Adora by the hand and speed-walked her way towards the center of the ballroom. 

“Wha-wait!” Adora said louder than was necessary. Catra looked at her, as well as everyone around them.

“Is, uh, isn’t there another ceremony thing with this?” She asked tentatively. Catra looked at her blankly, before grinning.

“Oh, of course.” She said. Catra dropped to her knee.

“Princess Adora, may I have this dance?” She said. Sarcastic flair or not, everyone around them stopped what they were doing to watch. Adora flushed red when she realized that everyone’s eyes were on them.

“I…”

“Well?” Catra asked. Adora looked at her.

“You are so much sometimes, you know that?” She whispered, which did absolutely nothing to still the attention they were getting. Adora cleared her throat and pulled herself into a more poised position.

“I accept.” Catra grinned and got up. Adora shifted around a bit so they were directly facing each other.

“Okay, so- wait what are you doing Catra-“ Adora shrieked as Catra suddenly leaned forward. Her feet slid out beneath her, and she braced herself for impact.

Impact which never came, because Catra caught her in her arms. She grinned at her.

“Catra!” Adora hissed. “What are you doing-!?”

“I’m not a Princess, Adora,” Catra said, “and I’m sure as hell not going to dance like one.”

Catra stood back up, with her hands still firmly on Adora’s body. She hardly had a moment to fix her balance before Catra started moving. 

Adora clumsily followed Catra in a strangely familiar sequence- shifting between their bodies, hands moving in tandem- before gradually coming back into time. When she finally got the hang of it, Catra took the liberty of adding twirls and turns. It was quick, yet graceful, and-

And they were dancing. Actual dancing, which neither of them had done in years.

They hadn’t been dancing to the music, but they stopped when the song ended nonetheless. Adora was short of breath, mostly from dancing but partially from laughing. When she looked up, she saw that Catra was grinning. 

“That was fun.” She said. 

Catra opened her mouth to respond, but was cut off by the sound of clapping and somebody cheering. Adora looked up.

Oh. People were watching them. A crowd had gathered around, and now they were clapping. 

“That was awesome!” Bow yelled above the sound. Adora blushed.

“I- thanks but-“

“Yeah, of course it was.” Catra said dismissively. She leaned into Adora and nonchalantly wrapped her arms around her neck, and pulled her hand up to kiss it. That garnered delighted gasps and giggles. 

“Where’d you two learn how to dance like that?” Perfuma asked.

“Oh, they, um, teach us? In the Horde?”

“They what now.”

——

Happy 20BiTeen blease accept this sacrifice

#submission #anonymous #OH THIS WAS SO CUTE #i love the concept and the dialogue :') #thank u for sending this !! #catradora

[667-darkavenue]

pressurized (part two.)

Catra/Adora | (part one.)

“Today just keeps getting better.”

“Hang on, I saw a flashlight,” Adora mumbles in the dark.

She scoots along the edge of her seat and feels around for the excursion kit she first opened. It takes a while, but she eventually manages to fumble it open and seek out the familiar shape of a flashlight. Adora flicks the switch and the beam shines directly at Catra, who hisses and flings an arm across her eyes.

“Whoops! Didn’t see you there. Obviously.”

“Okay. Adora, get up.” “Uh, why?”

“You’re sitting on something I need, just switch with me.”

Adora complies, pivoting over to sit on the other crate while Catra drops to her knees in front of the box with the parachutey thing. She leans forward to watch, holding the flashlight with the beam pointing upward. The cockpit is so small that this narrow beam alone does a half-decent job at dimly illuminating the area.

Catra gives her a dry look. “You gonna point that over here and help or are you gonna tell me the story of the Weeping Princess?”

There’s couple seconds of confusion before Adora realizes what she means. The beam from below must be lighting her the way Lonnie held a flashlight beneath her chin when she told ghost stories at night.

She points the flashlight to the crate and suggests with a snort, “I have lots of new princess stories you’ve never even heard of. They’re super different from the ones we had. A nice, non-spooky variety.”

Catra opens the crate with a disinterested hum.

“There’s this one I just can’t get out of my head... It takes place way before the Princess Alliance was formed, when the realms were still establishing themselves. These two neighboring princesses, Melodiance and Lumina, were at war over—”

“Adora, this is so fucking boring.”

“No, shh, you’ll like this one—”

“Does a princess die?”

“Actually, yeah.”

“Okay, fine. Go.”

“Ugh, you made me ruin the ending!”

“Tragic.”

“It is! Basically, the two princesses meet for the first time on the battlefield. Melodiance stabbed her enemy and secured the victory, but…”

The word ‘stabbed’ actually gets Catra to look up from what she’s doing and pay attention. Adora makes sure to put a little extra ‘oomph’ in her retelling, going out of her way for dramatic pauses in all the right places.

“The moment Lumina collapsed into her arms, Melodiance said she saw a kindred spirit—another brave kid, proud and driven for glory. But Melodiance was so absorbed in proving herself that she realized it one crucial moment too late. She never married and spent the rest of her life writing about Lumina. Even though her reign was hundreds of years ago, her realm today is still packed with more monuments and memorials to Princess Lumina than to anyone who actually ruled.”

Catra laughs quietly, a little huff of breath through her nose. “You think I’d put up a statue of you?”

“That was not the point of the story.”

“It’s the point you ended on. A statue’s a little much, but I guess I could be generous when I tell your story for the princess books.”

Adora rolls her eyes, an action that surprisingly ticks Catra off during a moment Adora’s been assuming to be playful.

She prickles, ears pointing back. “What, you don’t think I could be a kind ruler?”

Adora has an answer she’s pretty sure Catra doesn’t want to hear. A long silence stretches between them.

It ends with Catra clicking her tongue. “I could be as fair as any princess alliance.”

“Then act like it.”

Catra gives her a look that’s disturbingly familiar and triggers some kind of flight-or-fight response at the back of Adora’s mind. It’s the look that suggests she understands something Adora doesn’t.

Whatever it is she knows, she keeps to herself. All Catra says in return is, “Hey, they killed their own kind on the battlefield.”

“That was not the point of the story.” Adora’s gaze floats down to what Catra’s taking out of the crate and she raises an eyebrow. “What’s that for?”

“This,” she unzips the front of the hazmat suit, “is the only way out of here.”

It looks sort of like a old space suit. Or sort of like something that belonged an old deep sea diver. Knowing Entrapta, she may have cobbled it together from a frankenstein mix of both things and any number of other things Adora wouldn’t even identify.

“I don’t get it.”

“It’s the only thing in here that can handle a little tar.” Catra shuts the crate’s lid again and drapes the suit over it. She tucks the helmet under one arm.

A chill drops like an ice cube running down Adora’s spine. “There’s only one.”

Catra looks her dead in the eye. “Yeah.”

She swallows hard, the inside of her throat suddenly feeling full of cotton. A spike of panic rises behind her ribcage, followed by a sharp drop of regret. After all they’ve been through, they’re going to kill each other over a fucking suit? Adora’s adrenaline pulses, preparing for another fight like the one when she first jumped in this tank. One with no interruption this time.

Then Catra adds, simple and sharp, “So, get in.”

The complete certainty in her stare shakes Adora to her core. “What…?”

“Put the suit on, stupid.”

“But,” Adora looks at the hatch, then up at the black windshield. “If one of us tries to open that hatch, the tank fills with tar, stupid.”

“You said you could push through it as She-Ra.”

“I mean, probably. Still, you can’t survive long enough for me—or, I guess, the Horde—to come back.”

Catra narrows her eyes. “Yeah, no duh. And how long can we keep re-breathing the same air in here before we both pass out and die? We’re not in a bunker. There’s a real short time limit to how long we can stay here.”

Adora hadn’t thought of that. They need to conserve air. She’s conscious of every breath, suddenly. She tries to hold her next inhale in just a few seconds longer before letting it out in a measured exhale. She can’t concentrate on this enough to keep it up while her mind scrambles for a quick fix. The flashlight’s beam roves wildly around the dark cockpit.

It does a double take over the compressor tank that caused the nasty bruise on her forehead. “There’s the huge air tank! Set it up and we’ll take turns breathing.”

Catra barely reacts to the revelation. “That’s not oxygen.”

“What?”

“This,” Catra shakes the suit’s sleeve to demonstrate, “is a HAB suit.”

“Um, what’s—”

“High-altitude balloon. Entrapta sends ‘em up for some kind of research. That’s the helium tank.”

Adora shakes her head. “Okay—Doesn’t matter.” She must look like Light Hope when she’s stuck on a loop, because she can’t seem to stop shaking her head. “No. I’m not—I’m not gonna—I can’t just—”

Catra lets out a long exhale that sounds a lot like a prayer for patience.

“You got my permission this time. You can go, for the sake of saving the world, or whatever.” The way she says it is stilted, each word painfully and reluctantly plucked out of her.

“If you cared so much about saving the world, why haven’t you been on my side?” Adora’s voice rises, not even trying to downplay her distress anymore.

“I don’t, okay! I don’t care. People suck and the world’s still gonna suck whether the Horde or the Princesses are in charge.” Catra’s arms cross over her chest. “Only reason I got so invested was to make a point. A point that becomes worthless if you die in a tank at the bottom of a tar pit.”

“You said your plan was to kill me.”

“Not like this.”

“More like…” Adora’s fingers reach out to brush their knuckles against Catra’s hand. “Melodiance?”

“Shut up.”

Beneath the grazing touch, Adora feels her hand unclench its grip around her own bicep. She takes the opportunity to slip her fingers underneath Catra’s. Catra lets Adora gently pull her hand away to hold it against her chest.

“Let me be the hero I’m supposed to be and you put the suit on,” Adora whispers, pleading.

Catra’s mouth twists and her brows furrow. “Yeah, and what about your big mission? Saving the princesses?”

“It doesn’t have to be me.” She clutches Catra’s palm between two trembling hands. “If I’m not there for you to go against, what will stop you from making the right choices?”

“Oh, Adora. You always think the world revolves around you.” Catra’s hand comes up to hook around Adora’s neck and slowly shift up the back of her head. “But you are, unfortunately, the one literally destined to save the princesses.”

“But you—Why are you doing this now?”

“The world’s bigger than the two of us. I can’t be the only person you look out for.”

Having her own words thrown back in her face like this cracks Adora’s resolve. The levee breaks and the tears well up. It’s a cruel wonder for this to be the time and place Catra takes her words to heart.

Catra goes on, “I already told you I don’t actually care what happens to the stupid princesses. I don’t even really care what happens to the Horde anymore. Maybe I want Hordak to eat shit.”

Adora nearly asks, What do you care about, then?

On second thought, the answer is obvious.

Catra’s fingers wind around Adora’s ponytail and use it to pull her forward. Their foreheads touch. Their eyes lock.There’s something secret, something heart-vexing, in Catra’s gaze. Adora hasn’t seen this look since they separated. They haven’t held each other in so long. They stay like this for a while, close enough that their eyelashes brush against the sides of each other’s noses. Bow calls that butterfly kisses.

Catra’s right, Adora realizes in a terrible lightning strike of self-honesty. She can’t do this to Bow. She can’t do this Glimmer. There are so many people counting on her to fix everything. People she cares about more than anything in the world. Yesterday, she was training to kill Catra.

Adora doesn’t need to speak it. Catra seems to have understood it long before she did. Catra’s the first to pull away from the embrace. She gets Adora to step into the suit. Helps her put it on. Zips her up, pulls her gloves on, hands her the helmet.

Blue eyes, still rimmed with shimmering tears that refuse to spill, stare down at it. “I can’t do this.”

Catra takes her face in both hands.

“Hey.” She forces Adora’s chin up. “Yeah, you will. You’ll be fine.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No. You’re not, really.” Catra holds her face still for the kiss she presses to her lips.

Adora makes a soft, wounded noise in the back of her throat.

“Okay,” Catra pulls away, panting—Almost sniffling? “C’mon, it’s time. Put that on.”

“Wait.”

“You can’t keep waiting.” Catra takes the helmet from Adora and attempts to put it on herself.

Adora bats it away. “Seriously, stop!”

The abrupt shout alarms Catra enough for her to actually pull back.

Gloved hands fumble with the suit, fighting to tear it off. “Take this—Get this off me—”

Catra stands still. “What is it?”

“The balloon! We have a giant balloon.” Adora’s out of breath, struggling to peel the gloves off without any help.

“Okay?”

“We—listen—We tape the bottom of the balloon around the hatch—and we fill the cockpit up with helium—”

“The balloon’s not big enough to float an entire war tank out of a tar pit.”

Adora grabs Catra by the arms. “It’ll make a little tunnel through the tar for us. We just need to hold our breath and crawl along the bottom.”

“That… Huh.” She watches hope dawn on Catra’s previously resigned expression. It’s beautiful. “We can do that.”

Catra swings around and flings open the HAB crate. Adora takes a minute to get out of the rest of the suit before bolting to the excursion kit and snatching the roll of black tape.

“Can’t believe I didn’t think of this,” Catra mutters to herself as they tape down the rim of the balloon all around the hatch door.

Adora snorts. “Yeah, ‘cause it was, like, so obvious.”

Together, they heave the helium tank beneath the balloon. Catra takes a deep breath and plugs her nose while Adora twists the handle to open up the flow all the way. The gas spills out with a loud hiss. Next, she drags the discarded HAB suit over to her and reaches inside for the gas mask. Adora holds the mouthpiece up to her face and—”Ouch!”

She cringes at the flare of pain when it touches against the gash across her nose. Holding it in front of her more gingerly this time, she takes a deep inhale. Exhales. Inhales, and holds it. She beckons Catra over and passes her the mask. Catra does the same. Inhales, exhales. Inhales, holds it, and passes the mask to Adora.

While Adora breathes, Catra crawls back beneath the balloon. It’s like disappearing behind a curtain. Adora hears the latch click. Catra grunts and metal creaks. In the next instant, the balloon is seemingly sucked up and out of the tank’s open hatch. Catra stands at the door, blinking in astonishment.

“Can’t believe that worked,” she says, but in the voice of a chipmunk.

Adora laughs, but the sound also comes out like a high pitched series of squeaks. It makes Catra laugh, just as high pitched, and now they’re stuck in a terrible feedback loop. Perhaps a little intoxicated with hope, they both share one last breath on the mask before they suffocate on helium. Adora, still in a giggle fit, struggles to hold that breath in.

Catra crawls out first, flashlight in hand. Adora follows, leaving the helium tank spilling behind them. Crawling inside the balloon isn’t at all like the fun play-tunnel experience she imagined. It’s more like being inside a water-wiggler toy. It’s squishy and warm on all sides, sort of collapsing around her. Feels gross, actually. Doesn’t smell awesome either.

Adora drags herself forward on her elbows, following the circle of light dancing ahead of her and the occasionally swish of Catra’s tail across her face. She can’t tell direction which direction they’re going in the pitch black balloon. Adora hopes they’re crawling along the floor of the pit and not like… up vertically, or else at the end of this they will find themselves still stuck in the middle of the tar pit.

The balloon seems to collapse more heavily around them the further they push forward. She hears Catra grunting as she tries to squeeze through the crushing pressure of tar all around her. Adora can’t even help push her, she’s stuck trying to wriggle herself forward. The water-wiggler experience turned into something more like seriously tight-space spelunking.

Out on the surface, the tar pit bubbles, seemingly undisturbed. A particularly large bubble rises up along the shoreline, then pops. A sword bursts through one side, a clawed hand on the other. Adora and Catra haul themselves out from the end of balloon, sweating and heaving.

They drag themselves a couple feet out over the soil and collapse at the edge of the Whispering Woods. Adora rolls onto her back, catching her breath. Daylight is painfully bright after the past hour or so of darkness, but she forces her eyes to stare up at the blue sky and white clouds. In a moment of bliss, her hand finds Catra’s and squeezes it.

“There you are!”

They both jolt upright at the shout from within the trees. Oh, no.

Branches rustle and a familiar face barrels out of the bushes. Scorpia runs at them with so much concentrated force that Adora reflexively braces herself for a tackle, fully expecting to be slammed to the dirt. That’s not what happens.

Instead, she swoops Catra off the ground and spins her around, hugging tight. “Iwasfreakingout, youhavenoidea!”

“Agh!” Catra tries to squirm out of the hug, but Scorpia seems way too adept at the art of hanging on.

“I followed your tracker and the location was in the middle of the Torpid Tar Pit!” She does set Catra back down, but only so she can use her free hand to point at Adora. “I thought this one threw you in!”

“She sorta did.”

“You wear a tracker?” Adora laughs. “What’s next, a collar?”

“Shut up, Adora.”

“Yeah, Adora,” Scorpia helpfully supplies. “The Horde search team I called will be here any minute now.”

Adora doesn’t wait for Catra’s permission to go this time. She hisses, “Fuck,” beneath her breath and darts into the trees without looking back. Scorpia lunges after her, but Catra’s arm across her chest stops her.

“She’s getting away. Again.”

“Just leave it. Don’t tell anyone she was here.”

“But—” She starts, then falters.

“Scorpia. I need you not to tell anyone she got away, so that I won’t have trouble.”

She’s already nodding before Catra finishes the sentence. “Well, yeah.”

“Cool.” Catra turns her face to stare at a nearby thornbush.

Scorpia’s been pretty good at keeping her mouth shut about momentary lapses in judgment when it comes to Adora. She’s lucky for that.

“Oh, wildcat,” Scorpia sighs, “you keep falling into the same old velvet ditches left and right.”

Catra’s sharp eyes snap to her. “Velvet what did you say?”

“A velvet ditch,” she repeats. “You know, a low place you fall into and don’t try to climb out of. Because you’re so comfortable there. It’s what my mom calls the Fright Zone.”

“I don’t fall into anything—Why’d you say ditches? Like I have more than one?”

“I think you do. But that’s okay. I’ll lend you a hand when you’re ready to climb out again. And I’ll help wash that tar off your arms.” With a spark of excitement in her eyes she adds, “It’ll probably take a while.”

Another thing Catra’s lucky for, is that Scorpia tells her the truth.

END.

#catradora #spop #catra #adora