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n7punk · 1 year

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As Many Lives As It Takes (To Be With You) - Interlude: Three Years Ago

This is an interlude/short companion fic for As Many Lives As It Takes (To Be With You), my Nine Lives AU. It's set three years before the main fic.

Main fic on AO3. Pairing: Catradora. Chapters: 3/? (probably 8-ish total). Word count: currently 17k. Rating: T.

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Interlude Summary: At nineteen, Catra finally accepts help, even if opening up to Scorpia feels like it might kill her. At least it wouldn't stick. Word count: 3.7k. Intended Order: After Chapter 3 (after Chapter 2 is fine too). Notes: This is "skippable" considering it wasn’t in the original outline, but I wrote it on a whim and liked it, so have it over here. The real chapter four will be back in present day and up in a day or two. (Reblogs are off because I don't want this further removed from the context of the original fic, where it won't make sense).

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Interlude: Three Years Ago

It’s warm by the stove, far warmer than Catra has been since the summer gave way to fall and then winter. Sometimes she curses Bright Moon for having a full season’s cycle. Other times she knows that it’s better than the constant heat or cold some other places have to deal with. The rain from being off the coast is a lot to contend with, though.

Catra stays on the opposite side of town from Bright Moon Bay if she can help it — the last thing she needs is to drown, again — but the tropical storm that blew in took the rain to her. Absently, she reaches up and scrunches her hand into her short hair. For being a pixie cut, it holds a lot of moisture, and water runs down her fingers. It’s worse than her clothes sometimes, especially right now when she has at least changed out of her top. She feels uncomfortable in the loose uniform shirt she is wearing over the pants she wrung out in the bathroom and then put back on, but it’s nice to have something dry on.

Catra huddles closer to the stove, hoping its warmth can work into her bones before the scorpioni slowly moving around the kitchen decides she’s done and heads home. Catra isn’t eager to go back out into the rain, but any time away from the downpour is worth it. It has to be for her to come inside like this. It always makes her feel cagey. She has stayed in shelters before, but they scare her, maybe even more than this small kitchen filled with the smell of baking does. Shelters felt like a place where people would look for her. No one would ever picture Catra of all people here, bedraggled on the floor of a small kitchen filled with cutesy pink things.

“Scorpia! Anyone come in yet?” Rose says, brightly, looking up from whatever she is brewing on one of the freestanding stovetops. Catra flinches as the younger of the women becomes visible, shuffling through the open doorway to the shop. No, they haven’t. Catra’s hearing is on overdrive trying to find the threats that surely must be lurking under the stacks of teacups. No one who had anywhere to go would be stupid enough to be out in this weather. Scorpia shakes her head, throwing her mom a smile.

“I put a notecard on the counter to yell to the back in case someone does come and we don’t hear them, but I doubt anyone is out.” Well, that’s the first smart thing Scorpia has said. “We should probably head out if there’s a lull. Otherwise I think we might end up stormed in. Mom’ll be so worried.” Make that two things, even if this one makes her ears pin back. Heading out means sending Catra out.

It will be miserable, but at least she’ll be out in the open again. Safe. She guesses. Nowhere feels safe with this storm all around them.

Rose sighs.

“We can once I finish prepping things for tomorrow. I don’t think it’s going to let up. If it looks like it’s about to get worse, then we should head home, but for now let’s just wait it out,” she agrees. Scorpia nods, her whole body bouncing with the motion.

Adora used to do that, Catra’s mind reminds her. Traitor.

As if she can hear her, Scorpia turns her attention on Catra. Catra shrinks back despite how she hates showing fear. She just wants to ball up here and sleep forever. Lay down a blanket and it would be perfect. No one would be stupid enough to let some random homeless person sleep in their family shop — she can’t believe Scorpia even came out to the alley when the storm started and invited her in, much less that she accepted — but it’s a nice fantasy.

She’s only entertaining it because she hates being wet. It reminds her of-

Fuck, does she have no options that don’t tug at one of her traumas? Outside is open and “safe” — except for how it’s definitely fucking not, even on an average day — being indoors is being trapped, being in the rain is drowning again, and she’s left with nothing. At least the stove is warm. Scorpia doesn’t take her tail tightly wrapping around her ankles for the hint that it is and shuffles closer. She stays out of striking distance even with her stinger, but Catra feels a growl rising in her throat and quickly looks away.

She’s only proving that they should tell her to go, but instead Scorpia just sits down on the floor with her for some reason.

“Quite the storm, huh? Like being inside a washing machine. Just woooosh,” Scorpia seems to mime clothes spinning around in a washing cycle by circling her pincers in front of her. Something in Catra feels warm. The stove is working, then. She grunts an acknowledgment. Speaking words is risky. She has learned to spit teeth at any who approach her, but she has to hold her tongue when someone is there to help. It stings her pride, but she wouldn’t have made it this long if she hadn’t learned to take some kindness. Scorpia gave her more of it than she deserved already when she let her in. The least she can do is not snap at her.

And listen to her ramble, apparently, because she goes, “Oh, this one time…” and then she’s off telling the story of how they got stuck in an awful storm like this while driving between towns and thought their car was going to get swept away. Catra grunts occasionally and shuffles to readjust her position so the other side of her can get more warmth before something she can’t feel starts getting burned. Scorpia’s story peters out around the time Catra is readjusting her arm, maneuvering it with her left hand and tucking it into her lap a couple of different ways before she finds something that she thinks works.

She can feel Scorpia staring. She can even see it out of her periphery. It doesn’t feel predatory or anything, like she’s cataloguing her weakness, but Catra still pulls her lip back to show her fangs. She doesn’t know why she bothers when Scorpia’s stinger could take her out before she even got close enough to land a hit, but Scorpia raises her pincers in surrender.

“Sorry, I’m not trying to be rude! It’s not my business. I was just wondering if there was anything I could do? I don’t know if a sling would help or…” She trails off, already looking around the kitchen as if she will magically see a medical station appear. Catra finally speaks just because she thinks Scorpia is five seconds away from standing and rushing around to find something. Tracking her all over the restaurant again is going to start wearing on her nerves.

“It’s paralyzed. Nothing is going to make it better,” Catra grits back. She can tell Rose is listening, even if she isn’t looking at her. Rose seems just as nice as her daughter, but they could both be deceiving her. Catra is almost sold on Scorpia. Rose… Well, Rose doesn’t directly remind her of anyone she already trusts, so she’s on thin ice. That might as well be the Catra equivalent of a golden pedestal, though.

“A sling could keep it from getting in the way!” Scorpia pipes up, like Catra hasn’t thought of that. She has tried, once or twice, with an improvised scarf or something. It actually just puts her arm in the way and makes her feel more helplessness. It certainly makes her look it.

“It’s fine. It doesn’t hurt, anyway,” she mutters back. Except when people touch it, she doesn’t add. That doesn’t happen a lot unless someone happens to bump into her, so it might as well not be weakness. She shifts to tuck in her arm a little more, like hiding it from view will change the subject. Scorpia just keeps looking at her.

“If you want to talk about it-” Catra growls, “-not that I’m asking! We’re going to be here a while is all, and… I get the feeling you’ve never talked about it. Talking about things usually makes me feel better. Sometimes my roommate will just sit and listen to me while I unload and it helps a lot even without her talking back or even looking at me,” Scorpia hurries to placate her before losing the plot. Catra grumbles, tucking her face down into her arms. Yeah, she doesn’t think talking is going to be anything like that for her.

She doesn’t usually even acknowledge it’s paralyzed. She has had to say it a few times, but the closest she has ever come to addressing anything that happened was when she ran into her old classmate, and even thinking about that makes her throat tight. The way he looked at her- How is she ever supposed to tell someone what happened when she’s just opening herself up to that? Scorpia isn’t looking at her with sick fascination, though. Her eyes are just big and soft, like A-

“I fell,” Catra replies, cutting that thought off before it can finish. Watching Scorpia light up when she realizes that she’s telling her and then her expression fall as she remembers what they’re talking about is kind of funny. Scorpia always seems so open and warm. The light in her heart felt near blinding the first few weeks that Catra ran into her. Okay, maybe she just reminded her of someone and it felt like someone pulling her ribs out of her chest when she looked at her.

“That’s, uh, quite the fall. I’m really sorry about that, Wildcat,” Scorpia says. Catra feels something that might be a trill rise in her chest and swallows it down, tucking in a little tighter. She didn’t realize she was starting to uncurl. It’s just a stupid nickname, she doesn’t know why it makes her feel anything. It isn’t even a nickname, just what Scorpia started calling her when Catra wouldn’t give her a name at first. She knows it now, and her moms use it, but Scorpia still calls her Wildcat. No matter what, Scorpia keeps trying.

She doesn’t know why. Catra knows their family helps out other people who come around here – that’s how she found out about them in the first place – and yet Scorpia latched onto her for some reason and seems determined to fix her. Maybe she’s the most broken person that comes around. Maybe Scorpia isn’t used to people not immediately loving her. Maybe Catra is just her age. For some reason, she keeps trying to get Catra to open up to her.

I get the feeling you’ve never talked about it before. Is that all it takes? To look at her, see she’s alone, and want to fix that? Why? She has been alone for years. No one has ever really tried to help before. Give her a few dollars here, let her sneak into the bathrooms there, but in general, she has been by herself. Not that she has ever asked for help, but why would she do that? They wouldn’t give it to her.

Most people wouldn’t, anyway. Most people wouldn’t get hissed and snarled at and still come running to the back door to hand out food and try to make small talk while claws were flashed at them. Not that Catra ever raised her hand in a real threat at Scorpia, but she has certainly prepped her claws when Scorpia looked like she might get closer or got too chummy. Catra doesn’t know why she’s still trying, still being nice when Catra has never shown that kind of grace back. Adora’s mom used to talk about putting back out into the world what you wanted to be given. Catra has only ever given back what she got.

And right now, she isn’t even doing that. She wraps her tail tightly around herself and runs her fingers down her arm. Her fur is completely dry there. She probably showed it to the oven too long.

“I can’t feel it except when other people touch it. And then it just hurts,” Catra murmurs. She doesn’t know why. She just told Scorpia how to hurt her with explicit instructions, but all Scorpia does is nod with a sympathetic look on her face.

“Is that… normal for paralysis? Is that what phantom pain is?” Scorpia asks. Catra actually laughs, a dark chuckle that feels foreign in her chest. Yeah, big Adora energ-

She clears her throat.

“No, I’m pretty sure that’s just a me thing,” she replies. Scorpia looks concerned and it makes Catra’s chest hurt, but for once, it kind of feels good? She’s used to hollowness, or angry buzzing, or bitter regret, but this feels more like stepping outside for the first time on a cold night, a shock to her system and tightness in her lungs. Eventually the numbness sets in, but in this moment? It feels good.

There’s a warm oven right next to her. Frostbite doesn’t have to creep into her fingers.

“That doesn’t sound good. When was the last time you saw a doctor? I know it’s probably hard to, but there has to be a free clinic or something, right?” Scorpia asks. Catra snorts, her hand still on her arm. She squeezes. She doesn’t really know why. It’s lax beneath her fingers, no muscles flexing to harden it.

“Never,” she replies. Rose stops pretending to be busy, freezing as Scorpia’s jaw drops. Suddenly self-conscious, Catra hunches her shoulders. “I was- I was homeless right after- Actually because of-” She cuts off. She doesn’t owe them an explanation. So why does she feel like she should have one? Why are tears burning at the back of her eyes?

She doesn’t want a doctor. She knows this. Any time she gets near a medical professional, it’s dangerous and panics her. How much could they suspect this long after the fall, though, when everything would be healed over? When she can just tell them whatever she wants about what happened? They wouldn’t be able to help, she always tells herself, and she’s right, but the fantasy of someone being able to is so alluring. A fantasy of being cared for, and things getting better, and more warm ovens while she’s at it.

“I- You need to. I know you probably can’t afford it, but it can’t be that expensive, right? Just for an appointment?” Scorpia asks, twisting around to look at her mom as she asks. Her mom turns around and looks just as stressed. Catra’s throat tightens. No. No, she can’t even let them suggest spending their money on something that would never help.

“No. Once it’s paralyzed there’s nothing you can really do. Any money I’ve ever had has been better served going towards food, or new clothes, or a room for the night. Things that keep me alive,” Catra replies, shaking her head. Food, clothes, things they’ve already done for her. They don’t need to do more.

She isn’t expecting Rose to turn to her, looking like she is about to cry.

“You’re so young. How did this happen to you?” she asks, her tone distraught enough for Catra to know it isn’t a real question, just internal horror making itself known, but still her mouth opens and closes a few times.

There are tears in her eyes. That realization is the last wall crumbling down as she buries her face in her knees and allows herself to cry for the first time in a long, long time.

Catra hasn’t really been in a car in the last three years. Scorpia doesn’t question it when she curls up in the backseat, dripping again from the rain that came down on them as they made the run from the shop to the car. Catra is still wearing the employee t-shirt, her bag that never leaves her side on the floor of the car beside her. Rose said her clothes were still soaked and Scorpia could just wash the shirt and bring it back when it was time.

Catra isn’t sure when is going to be the time. She isn’t sure where they’re going really, or how long she’s supposed to stay there, or how long she’s going to stay there, but she’s so exhausted that she just couldn’t fight it or find a reason to say no when Scorpia offered for her to stay with her while she got herself sorted out. She thinks the offer is a few days, with the condition that she actually do something about improving her life.

She isn’t sure where to start. She isn’t sure she’s ready to start. But she is sure she’s tired of this. If she walks away from this opportunity, she isn’t likely to ever get another one, or at least not one as kind as this. She doesn’t know there could be someone kinder after she cried on their floor for two hours and unloaded horrific shit on them as she went through what she could – first the fall, and then the homelessness, and then further back with the “near” drowning, and by then they got the picture but they still flinched when she mentioned the window, and Rose was crying as hard as she was when she talked about Weaver.

She doesn’t know why they let her do that. She depressed them, she knows, but instead of telling her it was time to go, they started workshopping solutions together, looking at her for input and approval while she just sat there, stunned.

Her toe claws flex against the floor of the car and she watches them almost snag on the car mats. She doesn’t trust this, but she has lived every day of the last three years in fear anyway. Might as well be indoors while she stews in her discomfort, right? As long as they’re willing to offer it. If this can last just long enough for her to get in a program or something like they suggested, maybe she can get somewhere that she trusts is safe. She’s scared to exist again, but she keeps telling herself it has been three years. She has the paralysis to show as “proof” of injury from the accident. She can sell this lie. She had it half-formed in her mind already, from times when she has had to brush up against the story before, but she put together something coherent on the floor of that shop, she thinks.

They offered her a home, so apparently it was good enough. She just has to hope that whatever government employee gets saddled with her case thinks so too.

She tenses when they finally park. Scorpia’s apartment block is pretty big, but nondescript. She can’t really tell what it’s going to be like from the lobby or hallway, but when Scorpia opens the door for her, the apartment is in good shape. Nothing fancy or expensive except maybe the TV, but nothing is broken or stained at first glance, and they have enough furniture to fill out the space. The couch looks like it will probably be the most comfortable place she has slept since last winter, so she doesn’t really care what Scorpia’s roommate is like as long as she doesn’t try to make her leave.

“Entrapta! We’re home! I brought a friend,” Scorpia calls, her booming voice forcing Catra to pin her ears back. Friend is a bit of a stretch, but it seems to interest Entrapta enough for her to emerge from down the hall after a few moments. She cocks her head as Scorpia busies herself with closing the door and putting away her shoes. Catra considers waving and ends up grimacing instead as she drops her bag from her shoulder and cautiously bends to set it beside where Scorpia put her shoes. The thing is filthy.

Catra straightens up and leaps in the air when she turns around and finds the girl with pigtails right behind her. She hisses, her tail shot straight out and her fur fluffing up, but Entrapta doesn’t even look at Catra’s claws snapping out and her left hand stiffening into an attack position, she just bends way too close to inspect Catra’s arm, which obviously swung as she moved.

“Fascinating! How long has it been like that? Can you feel it?” Entrapta asks, pulling a fucking wrench out of her pocket. Scorpia steps up beside Catra on her left, waving her pincers a little frantically.

“Entrapta, you can’t ask that! It’s rude!” Scorpia tries to stop her. Entrapta looks up, blinking at her. Scorpia throws Catra an apologetic look. “Sorry, she really doesn’t mean anything by it, she just doesn’t interact with a lot of people-”

Then Entrapta touches Catra’s arm. She screams into her teeth, buckling until one of Scorpia’s pincers catches her on her left side and she manages to stumble onto her feet again. Entrapta watches her with fascination.

It isn’t a great first meeting.

#amlait #writing tag #fic extra #ficmeta #tbh im still undecided on sharing it this way so like. this is where it is for now #it may remain here forever. it may not. but it was not part of My Vision(TM) for the fic #and felt like it pulled it down as part of the main thing so. over here #no one look at my indecision just take the sad words #people who mostly post fic on tumblr how the hell do you format #this is hell #okay i've futzed with this for too long just fucking take it

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