Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

On the first day of April, at four o’clock in the afternoon, Adora surveyed those seated around the conference table and concluded that this was one of the tensest interactions she’d experienced in this room. And that was saying something, as once she’d had to physically hold Glimmer back from throwing hands with a witness during a deposition. Moreover, the strangeness of the situation was exacerbated by the fact that Adora was not present in her usual capacity; that is, she sat there as client, not lawyer. So instead of reviewing notes or organizing her casefile, she was left silently staring at her own shredded cuticles as Bow arranged paperwork beside her.

“Now,” Bow said, then lightly cleared his throat. “Thank you, everybody, for joining us today. Especially Starla, who managed to clear her calendar this afternoon, and so last-minute, to meet with us in person.”

The woman across the table, whose already affable features were widening with a grin, batted her hand wantonly in the air. “It’s no big deal! It barely took one phone call.”

“Well, we appreciate it anyway. So, Catra—” Bow swiveled somewhat in his chair to face Catra more directly. Catra, meanwhile, stared blankly at the wall behind his head; she didn’t nod, or blink, or otherwise make any indication that she’d heard him. “—Starla here is an old friend of ours from law school. She’s the me at her firm—I mean, she does adoptions. I’m sure Adora already told you, but—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Catra interrupted, although the intensity with which she stared at the wall did not falter. “She’s here to cover Adora’s ass if I try to sue her for anything.”

Bow opened his mouth to respond (Adora, meanwhile, could only wince), but Starla beat him to the punch as she spun in her seat to address Catra head-on. “Not at all,” she said matter-of-factly. “I’m here to make sure that you understand the legal consequences of placing your child for adoption and that, if you do so, you do so nothing short of one-hundred percent voluntarily. Adora might be an old buddy, but in the event that you decide to not go through with an adoption, I am here to support you, not her.” With an additional mischievous smirk at Adora, Starla finished, “We ain’t that close, anyway.”

Adora tried to acknowledge the joke with a smile. If the way it felt on her face was any indication, it probably came off more like another wince. Regardless, Bow sighed and said, “Exactly. It’s to protect both of you, not just Adora. Now—” He began distributing packets to each of his three companions, keeping a fourth for himself. “—these are the consents that I drafted. I thought we’d go over everything as a group, and then—”

But Catra cut him off again, an edge of irritation to her tone. “Why? I mean, I’m going to sign it anyway, whatever it says, right? Can’t I just sign it now and be done?”

There was a long pause as Bow and Starla exchanged glances and Adora dropped her gaze to her lap. Eventually, Bow said with a grimace, “I mean, no? Legally, you can’t sign anything until three days after the baby’s born, anyway, or else it wouldn’t be enforceable. But also it’s, like, pretty important that you understand what you’re signing?”

“I understand what I’m signing,” Catra snapped. Then she closed her eyes and took in a long, deep breath. On the exhale, and in a much softer voice, she continued, “I sign it, the kid stays with her—” She gestured her hand in Adora’s direction. “—and I walk away without another word. Am I right?”

“Catra,” Starla said, not unkindly, but firmly. “We need to at least read what Bow prepared. It would be really irresponsible, otherwise.”

Catra rolled her eyes. “Which I also don’t get, by the way. As if Arrow Boy has it in him to try to take advantage of anyone ever. Like, I’m pretty sure I’m not going to unknowingly sign away my kidney rights, too, right?”

“Thanks?” Bow muttered under his breath.

Meanwhile, Starla was thumbing through the pages in front of her. “Of course he wouldn’t, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t something in here that could disadvantage you because of state law, so it’s important you understand every potential risk. Like, here.” She folded a sheet back and pushed the packet in front of Catra, pointing to the passage in question and reading along, “Pursuant to title eight, chapter one, section one-seventeen, I acknowledge that I remain legally responsible for supporting my child until the adoption is final, regardless of any assurances made by the adoptive parent otherwise. That means that, until the whole thing’s done, Adora has the right to sue you for child support.”

Catra scoffed. “Yeah, but she wouldn’t.” Then, meeting eyes with Adora—for the first time since they’d all entered the room—with something approaching smugness, she added, “Would you, Adora?”

Adora’s answer was immediate, if a bit hoarse. “Of course not.”

Catra looked back at Starla with narrowed eyes that clearly spelled, See? Eat it. But Starla soldiered valiantly on. “Listen, you can accept the risks, or not care about them, or whatever you want. But you still need to know them.”

“I can read, can’t I?” Catra uncrossed her arms to take the untouched packet in front of her—gingerly, almost, like she was concerned it might burn her—and began scanning the first page.

“Maybe we should…” Bow trailed off. He began to gather his effects and made a somber face at Adora until she made a delayed effort to do the same. “We’ll give you a minute?”

Before Starla could even acknowledge the offer, Catra said, “No need,” reached across the table to pluck a pen from a mug at its center, flipped to the back page of the packet, and signed her name on the dotted line. After that, she simply pushed herself back from the table and onto her feet. It was not without a significant amount of effort, as her bulging stomach inhibited her ability to bend or to maneuver herself around the conference room easily. To be frank, without the usual fluidity of movement, the dramatic effect was dampened somewhat. But that didn’t stop Catra from casting a last look over her shoulder as she grabbed the door handle. “Sorry to waste your time,” she told Starla with a deadpan expression, narrowed her eyes at Adora for good measure, and exited the room.

After a moment, Adora released the breath she’d been holding. Bow, in the meantime, lifted the papers that Catra had carelessly tossed aside. 

“But. . . I told her not to sign them yet,” Bow grumbled, sounding almost dazed. “We— We didn’t even— Perfuma didn’t have the chance to notarize them. She wasn’t supposed to— Not today. . .”

Ignoring Bow’s crisis, Adora looked to Starla with a sheepish smile. “Sorry about that. Just send me the bill, okay?”

Starla rolled her eyes, but goodnaturedly. “For what? Trying to force legal advice on someone?”

“For your time, at least,” Adora urged. “I’m really sorry. Catra had said she didn’t want to meet you—not that she didn’t want to meet you. Or meet you. She just—” She took a long breath with which she intended to steady herself. Instead, it made her feel kind of light-headed. “She doesn’t understand why we need all the lawyers.”

“I get it,” Starla said, reaching across the table to tap Adora’s knuckles; without realizing it, Adora had curled her hands into tight fists that relaxed under Starla’s kind touch. “These conversations are awkward in the best of circumstances. Accounting for what’s going on between you two, I understand that she’s going to take a while—maybe a long while—to let down her guard a bit.”

Adora nodded along dumbly until, suddenly, she didn’t. “How do you know what’s going on between us?” she asked.

“Uh,” was the only answer Starla verbally gave. But, as she slowly withdrew her hand, as if afraid that Adora might bite her if she moved too swiftly, her eyes glanced helplessly to Adora’s left.

“Bow!” Adora almost squeaked in her fury. “What the hell?”

“I’m sorry!” Bow said, raising his portfolio to shield his face from Adora’s hands, which beat across it with open palms. “It’s not my fault, she weaseled it out of me!”

“Hah!” Starla barked out, so shocked it was like she’d just been slapped. “Are you serious, Bow? I weaseled it out of you? How, by menacingly asking you to tell me a little bit about my potential client?”

“I said it was complicated! And you kept needling me—”

“I asked you, How so?”

“Enough!” Adora snapped, retreating from her attempted assault on Bow. “Bow, my—you know—with—you know! That’s an incredibly private piece of my life to share with somebody else without permission!”

“I know, and I’m so sorry,” Bow replied—and to his defense, he looked it. “I didn’t tell her everything, I just, you know.” He shrugged doggedly. “I felt like she needed to be prepared, in case Catra said something to her.”

“I told you everything I told you in confidence, Bow. That’s a betrayal of attorney-client privilege, I could report you to the bar for that!”

Bow’s face fell even further. “Adora.”

“I obviously wouldn’t!” Adora said flippantly, flailing her hand in the air out of frustration. “But I could, and—”

“Actually,” Bow said as his mouth set in a tight line, “you couldn’t. You told me what you told me as your friend, not your lawyer.”

Starla cut in then. “Plus, I mean, let’s be real. Even if Bow hadn’t said anything I would’ve figured it out anyway.”

Turning onto Starla instead, Adora spluttered, “Wh— No, come— What makes you—"

“Oh, please, Adora. With those heart eyes?”

“I wasn’t— I don’t—”

“Oh, yes you do, Adora,” Perfuma’s voice—suddenly appearing between where Adora and Bow sat—chided musically. With a tinkle of a laugh as she collected Bow’s and Catra’s (now-crumpled) copies of the consent forms from where Bow had let them fall onto the table, she added, “Now, do you want me to file your copy away, too? Or did you want to hold onto that?”

Adora gaped open-mouthed at her, then at Bow.

Bow automatically brought his portfolio up again. “I didn’t tell her anything!”

“He didn’t have to,” Perfuma hummed. “Everyone’s suspected it for a while now, ever since Adora left Catra here alone that one time.”

“That’s not even true,” added Mermista, who had materialized by the door as Perfuma had done by Adora’s shoulder. She leant against the doorframe with her hip and said, “I was the first one to say anything, and that was because of when they babysat Pearl together, and that was after that time Adora left Catra here alone.”

Perfuma frowned and tipped her chin a little higher. “Well, I figured it out that time Adora left Catra here alone. I could sense the way she reacted when Adora walked in the room. I just didn’t say anything.”

Mermista rolled her eyes, hard. “Suuure you did.”

“Okay,” Adora groaned, twisting her neck to look at everybody in turn. “How could all of you—? Not that there’s— No.” She shook her head, like a horse trying to shake off a fly. “There’s no way Bow or Glimmer didn’t tell you anything.”

“Actually,” Glimmer said as she, too, poked her head in from the hallway, “Frosta told me a few weeks ago. Not that I didn’t already know since that dinner—”

“What dinner?” came Micah’s disembodied voice from, Adora suspected, his own office across the hall.

Wordlessly, Adora scooted her chair back, stood, and left the room. “I hate you guys,” she muttered at Glimmer on the way out.

Glimmer smiled cheekily and hooked her hand around Adora’s bicep, effectively halting her escape. “Come on, Adora. You know you weren’t exactly subtle, right? Bow and I didn’t say anything to anyone—”

“Anyone but Starla,” Adora interrupted with a pout.

“We didn’t say anything to anyone but Starla,” Glimmer confirmed, then pressed, “who needed to know a little as a professional courtesy. You get that, right?”

Adora huffed, but didn’t disagree.

“Right.” Glimmer nodded and gave Adora’s arm an extra squeeze before releasing her. “Everybody here loves you, you know.”

“I know,” Adora half-grumbled, half-sighed. “I just don’t appreciate everybody talking about me behind my back.”

Once again, Perfuma popped into existence from nothing, this time her head bobbing up over Glimmer’s shoulder. “You know, it’s funny that you say that, because I was just saying to Scorpia the other day—”

For the second time in as many minutes—and both times owed to Perfuma—Adora’s jaw dropped to her chest. “You told Scorpia.”

“Uh huh!” Perfuma said around a wide smile.

Adora could feel the blood drain from her face, leaving it cold and clammy.  “Why? Why would you do that?”

Unbothered, Perfuma stepped around Glimmer with a delicate wave of her wrist. “Oh, we tell each other everything. We agreed that that’s rule number one in our relationship: total candor and transparency. I think it’s really something you and Catra could benefit from! I’ve got a great recommendation for a relationship guide, they really—”

“Perfuma,” Adora moaned, eyes wide and unbelieving. “How could you? She’s obviously going to tell Catra everything.”

“No, she won’t!” Perfuma beamed. “That’s a subpart to rule number one: don’t share with others what we share with each other in confidence.”

“Sounds fake, but okay,” Adora spat, side-eyeing Glimmer.

Glimmer ignored her. “So, does that mean Scorpia tells you stuff that Catra says about Adora?”

Perfuma’s eyes widened with excitement. “Oh, yes, of course!”

“Yeah?” Glimmer said far too casually. “But are you sure she tells you everything?”

“I’m pretty sure—” Perfuma replied, but her gaze drifted to the ceiling in soft contemplation. “At least, I’m sure I know everything Catra told Scorpia, but Catra’s not the most forthcoming with information, we must admit. I know she told Scorpia about a few weeks ago, but—”

But Adora—within whose brain a loud buzz had begun droning—couldn’t help herself, just as any remnant irritation she’d had with Perfuma dissipated into the air. “A few weeks ago?” she interrupted, trying (and clearly failing) to achieve Glimmer’s mock disinterest. “What was it Catra said about a few weeks ago?”

At first, Perfuma opened her mouth to respond, her finger absentmindedly tracing the point of her chin in thought. Too quickly, however, she snapped it shut again and flung that finger into Adora’s face accusingly. “No, ma’am! I’m not falling for that so easily!”

“I mean,” Glimmer said with a smirk, “to be fair, you almost did.”

“I—!” is all Perfuma managed to retort before she seemed to reach the official end of her rope. Instead, she spun on her heel and marched down the hallway away from them, the forefingers of each hand touching the thumbs next to them as she hummed some affirmation or another under her breath.

“It was worth a shot,” Glimmer said airily, shrugging.

Just then, a different buzz against her thigh caught Adora’s attention. She pulled out her phone from her pocket and chewed on her lip as she reviewed the text she’d received. “I gotta go,” she answered Glimmer’s curious expression. “Catra’s sick of waiting for me.”

“What, is she your ride?”

“Isn’t she always?”

“Yeah, but—” Glimmer bit her own lip in an obvious attempt not to smile. “Didn’t she just make a super dramatic exit?”

“She tried, at least,” Adora replied as a smile of her own—albeit a weak one—made the corner of her mouth twitch.

“So, where did she dramatically exit to, then?”

“The parking lot.” With a grimace, she added, “Apologize to Bow for me?”

Glimmer heaved a great sigh before reaching forward to give Adora’s arm a final, loving pat. “I will. Godspeed.”

- - - 

The ride home, like the day preceding it, was spent in stony silence, and that silence would persist until the record set by their six-word exchange in the conference room was shattered the next morning, having been wholly outdone by two additional words.

“Just leave me here,” is what Catra bit out just before heaving herself out of the car, blocks away from the Fright Zone Cafe, to start walking to work.

“It’s fifty-five degrees out!” Adora had called after her, but Catra’s only answer was to slam the passenger door in her roommate’s face.

Impressively, this new record managed to keep its title for another two weeks until, finally, Adora was forced to knock on Catra’s door one evening just before bed—that is, until the last possible second. The door swung open somewhat; unlatched, as it normally was, permitting Melog to have easy access to their litter box. “Yes?” came Catra’s sharp reply almost at once, and Adora plucked up the courage to push the door open fully.

“Hey,” she said, feeling inexplicably breathless. She nodded at Catra, who lounged on her side around one of those long maternity pillows, her phone propped lazily between her hand and the mattress.

“Hey,” Catra answered, though her attention did not waver from the screen, which reflected in her dark eyes as neon-white rings. “What’s up, boss?”

Adora cleared her throat. “I—uh. I got us—you. I got you a prenatal appointment booked at the, um—” She hooked her thumb uselessly over her shoulder. “—the hospital.”

Catra blinked over her stilled eyes. “Okay. When?”

“Tomorrow, actually, right after you’re off work.”

“Ugh,” Catra grunted, her lip curled. “I’m getting cut early tomorrow. I’ll get home and have to turn right back around.”

Adora could feel herself deflate, like a big, stupid balloon with a slow leak. “Oh, jeez. I can call them back, I think, maybe get an earlier appointment? I have a client coming in right after lunch but I could reschedule him if—”

“Don’t bother,” Catra announced with a put-upon air. “It’s fine.”

“Are—are you sure?”

Catra groaned aloud and rolled onto her other side. Or, rather, she tried to. She’d rolled onto her back with a deal more force than Adora was sure she intended, and after a couple jerkily attempted crunches she appeared to give up the rest of the roll as a bad job.  “I said it’s fine, Adora!” she snapped, scowling into the phone now held above her face. “Good night!”

Those ninety-two words were the last they shared until they walked into the women’s center annex, barely half a parking lot away from where they’d rushed Catra to the emergency room only months before, the next day. Adora checked them in with the bored-looking young gentleman at the front desk (“It’s Catra Toussaint.” “Sigh, no Toussaint here. I have a Catra Stevenson?” “Oh. Uh. Sure.”) only to be whisked into an exam room before Catra could get too far into her lengthy sitting-down procedure. Greeting them upon their entry was a familiar face.

“Dearies!” gushed Razz, the world’s oldest sonographer. “It is so nice to see you again! Come here, matushka.” She patted the arm of the exam chair and held out an arthritic hand for Catra to take. “Come sit down.”

Catra did so, albeit with a moment’s hesitation, and Razz angled herself towards a swivel chair. As both Razz and Catra struggled to lower themselves into their seats, the door opened just behind Adora’s back, making her leap aside to avoid a collision.

“My apologies,” said another familiar voice, pleasant and calming in its monotony. “I did not mean to frighten you.”

“No, it’s okay! I was in the way,” Adora replied with a self-deprecating smile. “Light Hope, right?”

“That’s right,” Light Hope answered as she closed the door behind herself. “I was pleased to see that we would be meeting again. Although, I must confess, I am somewhat confused. I thought Dr. Hordak was your established OB-GYN. Has that changed?”

Adora could feel the abrupt change in temperature whose source could only be Catra’s cold fury, but fearing that she would find herself the object of its ire Adora kept her attention solely fixed on the doctor. “It’s a long story, but yeah. We—she lost services kind of suddenly a couple weeks ago? So there haven’t been any prenatal appointments since we—she was at twenty-two weeks. We’d scheduled the next one for twenty-six weeks but, well. . .”

“Yes, I wondered about that, as well,” Light Hope said, though not quite as unemotively as usual as the thinnest of lines appeared between her eyebrows. The line vanished quickly, however, and Light Hope continued, “But it is of no matter. You would have had to be seen again at twenty-eight weeks anyway, so two weeks will have made little difference.”

“I only have appointments once a month,” Catra cut in suddenly, her tone not quite (but close to) knife-sharp.

Light Hope nodded. “That is true until you reach twenty-eight weeks’ gestation. From my notes I gather that you reached twenty-eight weeks yesterday, so now the recommendation is typically for biweekly appointments.”

There was a long pause before Catra pressed, sounding very much like she was exerting a great amount of restraint, “Is that biweekly as in every other week? Or biweekly as in twice a week?”

Light Hope, clearly ignorant of Catra’s irritation, moved across the room to where she sat, unwinding a stethoscope from around her neck as she did so. “Every other week.” Catra was given only moments to look somewhat relieved before Light Hope added, “Although at thirty-six weeks’ gestation you will have to begin coming in weekly until you give birth.”

“Peachy,” Catra gritted out as she flopped onto her back against the exam chair. Light Hope’s hand followed as she pressed the diaphragm of her stethoscope against Catra’s sternum.

“Deep breath, please,” Light Hope instructed.

Vitals were taken, ultrasound jelly was gooped, and before Adora knew it there they were, smack dab in the middle of the monitor on the table next to Catra.

“The head on this one,” Razz chuckled, grinning good-naturedly at Adora—who, for once, did not have to try too hard to give her an equally warm grin in return. “Takes up the whole picture, doesn’t it?”

“She is joking,” Light Hope said as she leaned across Catra to examine the sonogram. “Your child is within the anticipated range of head circumference at this stage of pregnancy.” After a pause and a thoughtful tilt of her head, she tacked on, “Perhaps in an upper percentile of the anticipated range, but in the anticipated range all the same.”

“Oh, look here,” cooed Razz as she glided her probe down Catra’s abdomen. “See their foot right there? Five whole toes!”

Adora couldn’t help the giggle that bubbled up her throat—her first in a while—and without thinking about it she tried to meet Catra’s eyes. She didn’t know what to expect, necessarily. To share in the moment, maybe? To connect somehow? Either way, it didn’t matter, as Catra had turned her head away from the monitor entirely. Instead, she stared aimlessly behind Light Hope’s shoulder at a poster demonstrating a proper, medically approved hand-washing technique.

Adora didn’t look at Catra again for the rest of the appointment, preferring to try committing the image of her future child to memory until, too soon, it was taken away. As Razz packed away her equipment, Adora stared at her own shoes instead until the promised sonogram was placed in her fingers.

“We will see you both in two weeks,” Light Hope promised, and Adora and Catra were waved politely out of the room.

In the car on the way home, Adora made her first attempt at an actual conversation in seventeen days. “Did you see how weird their head looked?” Adora asked aloud, forcing a casual tone that just ended up sounding tight. “So big. You know, like, in proportion with their body.”

“Not really,” Catra replied around a yawn.

Adora smirked a bit. “You didn’t think they looked kind of like a cake pop?”

Catra leaned her forehead against the passenger window. “I don’t know. I didn’t look at it.”

Adora nodded and said, “Oh.” After that, the silence reclaimed its rightful place.

- - -

The following Wednesday, Adora was less than pleasantly surprised to stumble upon Scorpia in her office’s break room.

“Uh,” Adora said by way of greeting.

Scorpia—who was cramped into a chair at the table, a sunflower-patterned lunch box clutched between her meaty hands—looked quite as taken aback to see Adora as Adora was to see Scorpia. Soon, though, the wide-eyed surprise fell sharply into a steely, purposefully disinterested expression. “Oh. Hello, Adora,” Scorpia said in a clipped, professional tone. “Funny running into you here.”

Adora glanced helplessly around the kitchen space. “I—I work here.”

“I know you do,” Scorpia quipped. She pulled a fistful of protein bars out of her lunch box and placed them on the table in a line. “Perfuma works here, too.”

“Yes. I know that.” With nothing else to do, Adora walked to the fridge to retrieve her tupperware packed with grilled chicken and steamed broccoli. She had resolved herself to eat it cold—a hot meal would not be worth the ninety seconds it would take to microwave it in the same room where Scorpia sat not-so-subtly side-eyeing her—and turned to leave the breakroom when Scorpia spoke up.

“That your lunch?”

“Uh,” Adora, eloquent as ever, said again. She tapped one hand against the container’s side. “Yep.” Then, for some reason, she added, “Brought it from home.”

“Hm,” Scorpia hummed, her eyes focused on her task of unwrapping one of her protein bars—which was astonishingly difficult to do, if the warped-but-unbroken creases of the wrapper were any indication. But it was a bit too airily that she said, “That’s funny.”

A little, hot spike of irritation flashed up Adora’s spine, and she couldn’t help snapping a bit in return.“What’s funny?”

“Your tupperware,” Scorpia said with a knowing smirk. “You put your name on it.”

“So?”

Scorpia looked up at Adora sharply, eyes narrowed. “So, I just think it’s funny how you, like, make a huge deal out of staking your claim on something that’s obviously already yours regardless of how it makes anyone else feel.”

Adora spent the stunned silence that followed racking her brain for any clue to the mystery of what the hell Scorpia meant. Finding no help in there, though, Adora finally responded, “Wait, what?”

But Perfuma walked in just then. “Oh, hello, Adora!” she beamed. Holding up a cloth grocery bag, she asked, “Would you like to have lunch with Scorpia and me? I brought some things from my home garden, and I thought I’d whip up a fresh cucumber-tomato salad. I brought plenty to share!”

“Uh,” Adora said for a third time. She glanced at Scorpia, back to Perfuma—but then back at Scorpia. Because she noticed something changed about Scorpia now that Perfuma was in the room, and that something was, like, everything? Gone was her uncomfortable and rigid posture and stern features. Instead, Scorpia leaned her chin heavily on one hand, and she was staring doe-eyed up at Perfuma with the same level of slobbering intensity Adora had only really seen before from Sea Hawk, directed at Mermista.

Adora couldn’t explain why that filled her with a deep, aching sadness. (Or, perhaps she could, if pressed. But she didn’t want to.)

“I’m okay,” she said after a second. “Thanks, though.” And then she tucked her tail and fled directly to Glimmer’s office.

Glimmer was on the phone when Adora pushed open her door without knocking. “I was waiting on the county attorney’s offer before I came to see you,” she said into the mic of her earphones, rolling it back and forth between her fingertips. As she listened to her conversational partner’s reply, she cocked her head to the side, wrinkled her brow, and mouthed the words, You okay?

Adora made a so-so gesture with her hand, and Glimmer nodded sagely. The nod transformed swiftly into an exaggerated eye roll as Glimmer said aloud, “Well, there’s not exactly any point in you paying me to drive there and back just for the pleasure of asking you how’s prison, is there? If I’ve got news, I’ll come see you, okay?” And after only a few more listen-I’ve-gotta-let-you-gos and yes-you-can-call-anytimes, Glimmer tore her earphones from her ears. “Jesus, this guy. I’m sorry. Hi, lady. You look like ass. What’s wrong?”

“Thanks,” Adora grumbled as she slumped into the plushy, postmodern chair in front of Glimmer’s desk. “Scorpia’s in the breakroom.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“I’m not.” Adora peeled the top off her tupperware, pointedly ignored the bubble letters spelling her name drawn across it, and speared a piece of chicken with her fork. “She’s visiting Perfuma.”

“Oh, man,” Glimmer gushed excitedly. “We should corner her when Perfuma goes to the bathroom next. Something in me tells me she’s terrible with secrets. I bet we can get her to break and tell us everything Catra’s told her.”

“I doubt it,” Adora said around her mouthful of food. “I couldn’t understand a word she was saying even when she was talking to me voluntarily.”

“Well, what’d she say?”

Adora shrugged. “I couldn’t even say it back to you, it was that. . . convoluted. She had a problem with me writing my name on my lunch, though?”

Glimmer snickered. “In all fairness, it’s not like anyone here would confuse your lunch for theirs without your name on it. Nobody treats their body like a temple in quite the same Adora fashion as the original.”

“Perfuma’s really healthy, though.”

“Yeah, but Perfuma’s vegan. I don’t think she’s going to see chicken and mistake it for tofu.”

“Regardless!” Adora speared another bite, though perhaps a little more violently than intended as her fork’s strike displaced a broccoli and it tumbled over the side of its container onto Adora’s lap. She plucked it from her slacks—black, thank god—and popped it into her mouth instead. As she chewed, she continued, “Scorpia was being weird, Perfuma came in, and I left.” She stopped chewing to screw up her face a bit. “Broccoli is not great cold.”

Glimmer frowned. “Well, why are you eating it cold then, huh? Did they kick you out, or something?”

“Not exactly,” Adora sighed, still eating. “I mean, I definitely wasn’t welcome in there. Like, Perfuma did invite me to join, I guess. But Scorpia certainly didn’t want me there. Not with those goo-goo eyes.”

Barking out a laugh, Glimmer asked, “Goo-goo eyes? What do you mean by goo-goo eyes?”

“You know! Like—” Adora placed her tupperware on the chair beside her, propped her chin onto her hand as she rested her elbow upon Glimmer’s desk, and batted her eyelashes in a caricature of a cartoon ingenue. “Like this. Goo-goo eyes!”

“I think the kids call those heart eyes these days, Adora,” Glimmer said.

“Ugh,” Adora replied with a groan and slumped back into her chair. “Starla said that.”

“She told you the kids call those heart eyes?”

“No, she told me I had heart eyes.”

As soon as she said it, Adora wished she hadn’t. This wish was intensified as she watched a wicked grin stretch across Glimmer’s face. “Oh, she did? What ever about?”

“I don’t remember?” Adora lied less-than-convincingly.

“Uh huh,” Glimmer said, nodding. “Couldn’t have possibly been about—oh, I don’t know. Her client, perhaps?”

“Dunno. Couldn’t tell you.”

As Adora reached for her previously discarded food, Glimmer released a smug little hmph. “I’m just saying, it’s pretty rich of you to judge Scorpia for her little heart eyes when you’ve had your own pining baby blues on display for the last seven months.”

Privately, Adora saw Glimmer’s point. Although if she had ever so openly looked at Catra the way Scorpia looked at Perfuma, Adora decided she’d much rather be ejected from a moving vehicle than meet Catra’s eye again. But out loud she replied, “It hasn’t been seven months.”

“You’re right,” Glimmer conceded. On her fingers, she counted. “I guess you were sunk from the second you saw her in that binder. So. . . more like eight months? Nine?”

“You know,” said Adora in exasperation, placing her lunch right back onto the chair next to her, this time with a little more force, “I think it’s kind of mean to tease me about Catra now, don’t you? With how weird everything’s been?”

Glimmer squinted her eyes. “Uh, no? Because you’ve never, like, actually communicated to her about the major things that you’re thinking or feeling? So it’s. . . kind of your fault?”

“That’s not true!” was Adora’s knee-jerk reaction. After saying it though, she closed her mouth with an audible click of her teeth, thought hard, and tried again. “I mean. . . That’s not entirely true. I did talk to her that one time about how I didn’t like it when she referred to what we’re doing as baby-buying.”

“Uh huh. Was that the time you almost kissed her? And then ran away? And then never talked about it again?”

“Stooooop,” Adora whined, then crossed her arms over Glimmer’s desk and laid her forehead upon them. “Why are you like this?”

“Because I love you, Adora,” said Glimmer. At her friend’s earnest tone, Adora picked up her head the slightest bit to see that Glimmer had rested her chin on her own folded arms and was looking right back at her. “And, as much as I hate to admit it, I think that maybe Perfuma and Scorpia might possibly have a little tiny point about—what was it? Candor and forthright-ness? Or whatever that word is.”

“So, what?” Adora exhaled. “I just waltz right up to her, tell her I’m in love with her, and then tell her nothing could ever happen between us? I know you’re supposed to communicate feelings in a direct way, but that seems a little. . . much?”

Glimmer gave her head a little shake. “No, no, no, of course not.” But before Adora could be too relieved by that, Glimmer added, “You waltz right up to her, tell her you’re in love with her, and then give her the choice to take you or leave you, baby et al.”

Adora’s only response for a while was to blink at her best friend, mouth agape. When she collected herself, she managed, “You’re a basketcase.”

“Perhaps,” Glimmer said with a fond and knowing smile. “But that’s basically what I did with Bow, if you replace the word ‘baby’ with ‘my sweet, overbearing, still-actively-grieving-at-the-time father.’ And you can’t say that didn’t work out.”

“Nope,” Adora agreed, swallowing hard over the lump of deep, aching sadness that filled her once more. “Can’t say that it didn’t.”

- - -

A little over a week later, Adora sat on a stool across from Catra, who was reclined on an exam chair, staring blankly at the ceiling above her. Light Hope withdrew a blood-pressure cuff from Catra’s bicep and made a note on a chart, crouched over the too-short counter.

“Today is thirty weeks and one day, correct?” she asked Catra, who ignored her entirely.

After a few, long seconds, Adora answered instead, “Yep, that’s right.”

Stepping back to her patient, Light Hope pressed her stethoscope first against Catra’s sternum and next against her ballooned midsection. “And have you experienced anything that feels like contractions? Braxton-Hicks is very common at this stage. False contractions might not necessarily be painful, but they would feel like a generalized tightening of your uterus. Some patients identify the experience as feeling as if their babies had done a somersault.”

Again, Catra said nothing. When Light Hope looked to Adora, Adora could only shrug. “She hasn’t told me if she’s experienced anything like that. And I feel like she would have if she did. So. . .”

Light Hope looked at Adora for an extra beat, and then nodded. “All right. Well. . . If Catra ever did describe an experience like that to you, you should tell her to lie down on her side and slowly drink some water for at least one hour.  Braxton-Hicks contractions occur most frequently after exercise or sexual activity, when pregnant parents are tired or dehydrated. If they’re true contractions, they’ll last longer than an hour, or you might have four or more within an hour. In that case, you should call me immediately, and we can arrange to meet at the hospital for a closer examination.”

“Okay,” Adora said with a nod. “Anything else to be on the lookout for?”

“Perhaps heartburn,” Light Hope replied as she stepped away from Catra and back to her clipboard. “Shortness of breath, swelling, trouble sleeping, general discomfort.” With a few more scratches of her pen, she added, “Your child has not yet settled into a head-down position, but it would be slightly early for that anyway. If they are still breech at your next appointment, however, I will send you home with a list of exercises to encourage the ideal cephalic presentation.” Then she returned to Catra’s side once more, this time feeling around her abdomen with enough force to make the otherwise stoic woman wince. “This might also be the weekend to prepare your, as they say, go bag. You are still weeks out from full term, but you can never be too prepared. In the unlikely event of preterm labor, especially, having one ready at hand will be helpful in getting to the hospital as expeditiously as possible.”

“Okay,” Adora said again. “Do you have any suggestions for must-brings? Like, I figure an extra change of clothes, but what else?”

“Actually,” Light Hope replied as she retrieved her clipboard once more, “I have a list for that as well. Plus another one for designing birthing plans, if you are interested.”

Adora smiled with relief. “Yes, please.”

“All right.” With a swish of her white coat, Light Hope strode across the room. “I shall return with those in a minute, and you can review them and ask any questions you might have while I conduct a brief internal examination.”

“Super,” Catra finally contributed, albeit with a sneer.

And with a click of the door closing behind Light Hope, Adora and Catra were left alone.

“You know,” Adora said, looking down at her hands, which were wringing one another nervously in her lap. “It might be easier if you answered a couple of these questions for yourself.”

Catra scoffed. But that was all that she managed to get out of her.

Adora frowned and looked directly at Catra instead. Perhaps it was the way that she was pointedly not looking back at her, or maybe (though she’d never admit it aloud) the way she so achingly missed hearing her voice. Either way, Catra’s nonresponse spurred Adora to snap, “So, what, are we just never going to talk again?”

Catra’s eyes narrowed a fraction, though the rest of her expression remained impassive. “What do you mean?” she answered flatly. “We talked this morning.”

“I reminded you we had this appointment today, if that’s what you mean.”

“Well,” Catra said, crossing her arms across her chest and closing her eyes. “What else is there to talk about?”

Sighing heavily, Adora leaned forward to cradle her chin in her hands. Scanning the room, her eyes landed on some model on a shelf by the door. A series of nine figures, ranging in size and shape from a teeny, tiny marble to something with the proportions of an actual human baby, were suspended on metal pegs attached to white, plastic bases. Each base was labeled with a number, and automatically Adora’s gaze fell upon the seventh. “You know what they are this week?”

Catra’s eyes remained closed, but her brow furrowed over them. “I have no idea what you mean.”

“Yes, you do,” Adora responded. “You know, their size in, like, produce terms. Do you know what they are this week?”

Catra didn’t reply that time, unless one counted the way in which her entire body seemed to tighten at once, or how the exam room became suddenly and almost eerily quiet.

Carefully examining Catra’s pinched face, Adora said, “A zucchini.” Then, when Catra still didn’t say anything, she added, “Bow sent me a screenshot of that app you guys use.”

Eyes still firmly closed, Catra hissed, “I deleted it.”

Which only served to make Adora unexpectedly, and passionately, irritated. “Oh!” she announced in the fakest, most jovial tone she could muster as she pulled her phone from her back pocket. “Well, you’re missing out. Here, Bow sent me the little blurb, too. I’ll read it to you.”

“Adora,” Catra growled under her breath.

“At thirty weeks pregnant,” Adora read after a few swipes of her thumb, “baby is the size of a zucchini! They are now growing at the rate of half a pound and half an inch per week. Yikes, that’s fast, isn’t it?”

Catra’s hands moved to massage her fingertips against her temples, and the line between her eyebrows grew progressively deeper. “Adora,” she said again. “Stop it.”

“Between the hormones and the pre-baby stress—only ten weeks to go, after all!—you’re probably experiencing symptoms that you might mistake for generalized panic. But rest assured, Mommy—” Adora broke off mid-sentence and squinted at her phone. “Mommy? That’s not particularly inclusive.”

“Adora, stop.”

But Adora didn’t stop; she just read a little louder. “But rest assured, Mommy,” she continued, “it’s not panic. At least, it’s not all panic!”

“Adora.”

“Get ready for some weird dreams, if you can even sleep between bouts of tossing and turning—”

“Adora.”

“—not to mention your aching back, hips, and feet. Your organs are likely becoming a bit crowded, too, including your lungs, which might make it feel like you’ve just walked up several flights of stairs, even if all you’ve done is sat up!”

“Enough!” Catra’s eyes snapped open and—as if on cue—she sat up onto her elbows and wheeled her upper body around as best as she was able to stare back at Adora head-on.

Adora, meanwhile, might have been at least somewhat pleased to have Catra’s undivided attention except for the fact that her face and eyes were bright red. Instead, Adora felt a cold weight drop painfully into her gut.

Blinking rapidly, Catra seethed, “What the fuck is wrong with you? Why are you being like this?”

“I—I—” Adora stammered, mouth opening and closing uselessly like a trout out of water. “I just—”

“You—You—You just—” Catra mimicked. “You just what, Adora? You just want to sit around in Perfect Adora World and pretend like everything is hunky dory? And you just want me to play along because if everything’s not perfect—well, that’s just not acceptable, is it?” Then she laughed this awful, cold, cruel laugh that was enough to make Adora feel sick. “No,” Catra soldiered on, as if she was gaining momentum, as if every mean thought in her head over the last month was gushing out of her like she was a broken dam. “Not for you, it’s not! Not for Adora Big-Headed, Savior-Complex, I-Get-Everything-I-Want Stevenson!”

“Hey,” Adora croaked out, wincing.

But Catra either didn’t hear her, or didn’t care. With a wide, toothy, bone-chilling smile, she pushed on. “Well, guess what! I actually hate this. I hate feeling tired, and crappy, and huge. I hate how many people ask me every single goddamn day about my due date, and if I’ve thought of names, and if I’ve decorated the nursery yet, and what theme, and just other complete and utter bullshit that is not my bullshit. So forgive me if I don’t wear a party hat and blow on one of those—those little paper blower things, okay?”

“Catra, I—”

“Save it,” Catra interrupted, slicing her hand through the air and settling onto her back again, arms once more crossed above her bump. She sniffed and, perhaps a bit less heatedly, she said, “Just. . . save it, okay?”

“I—” Adora choked. Then she swallowed, and nodded, and slid her phone back into her pocket. “Okay.”

The silence between them then was, in Adora’s humble opinion, the worst of the many awkward bouts of silences they’d experienced since they met—even if it was the briefest. Catra was back to staring at the ceiling, but in another moment she’d huffed and turned her head to regard Adora. “This is for you. Don’t you get that?”

Adora, stunned, froze in place. “Uh,” she coughed, “I don’t— No? What?”

“This,” Catra bit out, gesturing down at herself. “Them. They—” Then she just kind of groaned, and her arms fell limply to her sides. “They. . . aren’t mine. You know,” she grumbled, biting down on her own lip as she finished, “to get excited about.”

Before Adora could even try to formulate a response to that, the door handle turned with a creak, and Light Hope re-entered the room. Blissfully unaware of the tension still hanging between the occupants, she moved to hand Adora a plain manila folder. “There,” she happily announced. “The lists I previously described—plus a few additional lists that I thought you might find helpful.”

“Oh,” Adora said, somewhat dazed, as she stared at the folder for a minute before exactly what it was she was looking at clicked. “Oh! Uh, thank you.”

“It is no trouble,” Light Hope said. As soon as Adora took the folder, the doctor then swept across the floor to Catra’s exam table, from which she unfolded stirrups. “Now, while I measure Catra’s cervix, please allow me to give you some information on something that is called the mucus plug.”

- - -

Once they’d been caught at six red lights in a row, Adora tightened her grip on the steering wheel and finally mustered up the courage to say, “Hey, uh, can we talk for a minute?”

Catra maybe straightened up a little bit from where she leaned against the window, but otherwise didn’t give much away. “U-uh,” she replied, her voice catching on the word. “Sure?”

Adora’s chest, which had already been squirming in anticipation, writhed more violently under her skin. She hooked a finger under the collar of her shirt and gave it an anxious tug. “Sure. Cool. Um, thank you.”

There was a pause, which was eventually filled by Catra saying, “No biggie, I guess?”

“Cool,” Adora repeated. Then, after clearing her throat a touch, she said, “Well, first—obviously—was that I wanted to apologize for, uh, for negging you back there. That wasn’t okay. I mean, again, obviously. But I’m really sorry, Catra.”

Catra had the good grace to turn her head, at least, even if the face with which she greeted Adora was a deeply embarrassed wince. “Oh. Uh. We’re cool.”

“Okay. Good.” Trying for a warm smile, she added, “If it’s okay, I kind of. . . I guess I kind of wanted to explain where that was coming from. Not to try to make any excuses for it, I swear. Just to, you know. . .” Adora swallowed a small, manageable lump that had crept up her throat. “To tell you something I feel like you should know.”

Catra said, “Okay,” and the light turned green.

As she accelerated, Adora took a steadying breath and began: “So, I never told you I used to be a cop, right?”

The gobsmacked look on Catra’s face was answer enough.

“Right, of course not.” Adora cleared her throat again. “So, I mean, I wasn’t really a cop. Not yet, at least. I had finished the academy and gotten my first job. But during my last week of training I was sort of second-chairing this senior detective—”

But then Adora remembered something.

“Son of a—” she groaned, looking into the rearview mirror to confirm that she’d missed the turn. “Actually, sorry, I just remembered I’ve got to drop off a check at the stables. Do you mind if I swing by there? It’ll only take a minute.”

This time, the gobsmacked look was insufficient.

“Catra?”

“I—” Catra started before cutting herself off, her face screwing itself up into a pucker. “Wait. What?”

Adora suppressed the urge to giggle, of all things, and clarified, “I need to go pay rent for my horse?”

“Yeah— I mean, no— I mean, yes, that’s fine.” Catra slumped back into her seat. “Sorry, I was stuck on the cop thing?”

“Yeah, well,” Adora signed, pulling the car around in a U-turn, “that’s understandable.” Once they were on the right street, she pressed on. “Anyway, I was shadowing this detective. And one day, while we were driving around what would’ve been my beat, we got an APB on a DV report nearby. We were the closest, so we responded.”

As they exited the central area of town and continued north, the structures became progressively fewer and farther between. Instead, the desert landscape came to the forefront, beautifully displaying the yellow wildflowers that were in that most perfect stage where it was warm enough for them to bloom but not yet so hot that they shriveled up and died.

“Trying to make a long story short, I barely started getting out of the car before the front door of the house we were at opened, and. . .” Adora took another steadying breath, but despite her best effort her voice broke the slightest bit as she shrugged lamely and said, “A-and I kind of got shot.”

There was a long pause before Catra—whose face had gone totally slack—repeated, “You got shot.”

Adora’s chin bobbed up and down once. “Yep.”

“You got shot. Like, with a gun.”

“I did indeed. Twice, actually.”

“Twice?”

“Same time, though! Not, like, separately.”

“Jesus.” Brow wrinkling, Catra asked, “How old were you?”

Adora sighed, then answered, “Twenty-one.”

“Jesus,” Catra said again.

“Yeah,” Adora replied. When Catra didn’t say anything else, she continued, “I don’t remember what happened after that, except maybe Huntara hovering over me in the ambulance, but she says she didn’t go in the ambulance with me? So, who knows. Shock can be weird.”

“I bet,” Catra affirmed in a dazed kind of voice.

At the tall saguaro with what looked like a thousand arms, Adora maneuvered the car to the left down a dirt road. Despite slowing down, loose gravel hit the undercarriage with a shower of metallic plinks. “But I patched together what happened between what the hospital and Huntara told me later. Shot twice, first here—” She released the steering wheel to tap the bottom of her right knee cap. “—then here.” She brushed her hand against her lower belly, and gripped the wheel again. “Weirdly, the knee hurt way more. I guess it was messier, like it ricocheted around and kind of shattered—”

“The scar,” Catra said softly, suddenly.

Adora hummed in assent. “Yeah.”

At that point, Adora turned them to the right, over a cattle guard, and onto a sprawling property. A large stable bordered the ranch to the east, and in between were outdoor paddocks, a large turnout, a round pen, and, in the southwest corner, a small trailer. Adora parked close to the turnout, and as she opened the door she heard from its far end a sharp, high whinny. Adora pinched her bottom lip and whistled back.

“Hey,” Adora said, already standing from the cabin and turning to lean her arm on her car’s roof. She peered inward and asked, “Not purposefully trying to change the subject from my, like, tragic backstory. But. . . do you want to meet Swift Wind?”

Catra blinked at her. “Um. Okay.”

Adora rushed around the hood to lend Catra a hand as she pulled herself laboriously from the car. When their skin touched, and it felt like the way Adora imagined magnets felt when they finally found each other again, she didn’t say anything. Adora just closed the door behind Catra, let her go, and turned back in time to watch a tall, white horse approach the fence closest to them, nickering excitedly under its breath.

“Hey, horsey,” she crooned, stepping up to the metal bars and wrapping a hand around the great beast’s muzzle. She planted a noisy kiss against his nose and asked, “How you doing?”

Swift Wind pressed himself against Adora’s touch and shuddered.

“Aw, that’s good. Who’s a good boy?”

From behind Adora’s shoulder, Catra muttered, “He’s big.”

Glancing over at her, Adora rolled her eyes. “A big baby, maybe.” Then, after a moment, she held out her hand for Catra to take. “Come here,” Adora said. “You can pet him.”

Catra visibly hesitated before placing one hand at the top of her stomach and the other hand in Adora’s own. Adora guided her to hold her hand out for Swift Wind to sniff.

“He’s gonna think you have a treat, but he’s not gonna bite you.”

“What do you mean he’s not—eep!” Catra squeaked as Swift Wind flapped his lips over her palm.

Adora held her hand steady, despite Catra’s automatic attempt to withdraw. “He’s not gonna bite you,” she said again, chuckling. She was right, too; quickly upon realizing there was no apple slice or granola bar for his taking, Swift Wind tucked his chin and huffed irritably. “Okay, stop,” she admonished, releasing Catra’s hand just to stoop, pull up a handful of long grass, and place it into Catra’s still-open fingers. “You can have this.”

Once more, Catra tried to pull her hand away from Swift Wind’s investigation. “I don’t—”

“Palm open,” Adora instructed—and, despite a groan of reluctance, Catra acquiesced. As soon as Swift Wind had swept the grass into his eager maw, Adora’s hand led Catra’s to his forelock. “Scratch him here, and he’s your best friend for life.”

As directed, Catra dug her fingernails into the hair sprouting between Swift Wind’s ears—lightly, at first, but as Swift Wind stopped chewing and his eyes slowly drifted closed, with a little more force. “It’s rougher than I thought it’d be,” Catra announced, running her fingers through Swift Wind’s fringe as she finally pulled away.

Adora opened her mouth to respond, but at that moment Catra turned her head, and Adora realized just how close they were. So close, in fact, that she could tell when Catra made the same realization; her breath stopped, her lips parted, her eyes widened a fraction. 

Before Adora could even think of stepping back, however, a voice called out from the trailer. “Hey, you! Kid!”

Catra jumped, which made Swift Wind jump, which made Catra jump again. “God damn,” she wheezed, holding her hand to her chest and moving to perch herself on the hood of the car. Swift Wind, meanwhile, slowed his bolt halfway across the turnout and rotated on the spot to stare warily back at them.

At the same time, Adora turned to appraise the muscular woman now approaching them. “Hey back!” she yelled, and then walked past Catra to reach inside the car. Once she retrieved her checkbook and closed the door behind her, she added, at normal volume, “I’ve got money for you.”

“Good,” the woman grunted as she reached Adora and leaned her full weight against the side of the car, which buckled under her. “Lord knows that lazy little shit doesn’t do a goddamned thing to pull his own weight.”

“But he’sh sho handshome,” Adora offered, with a slight lisp, as she uncapped a pen with her teeth to fill out a check.

The woman scoffed. “Handsome doesn’t pay my mortgage.” Then, looking up from what Adora was doing, she seemed to notice Catra for the first time. With a grin of the shit-eating variety and a glance at Catra’s bump, she asked, “Well, well, well. Who’s this?”

Adora spat the cap from between her teeth. “Oh! Uh, this is my Cat— I mean, my roommate. Catra. This is Catra, my roommate.” 

“Smooth,” the woman whispered as she stood upright and moved past Adora to hold a beefy arm out to Catra instead. “Well, hello, Roommate Catra. I’m Huntara. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Catra, who had been making a brave attempt at a “politely interested” facial expression as she allowed the woman’s fist to engulf her own, paled. Adora ripped a check from its book and shoved it into Huntara’s face, all while she stared at the tips of her boots. “Stop. Texting. Perfuma,” she groaned.

Huntara dropped Catra’s hand to snatch the check from Adora’s fingers. “It’s all platonic since she hooked up with the big girl,” she teased, making a great show of crossing her heart with the check before folding it and stuffing it into her back pocket. “Girl Scout promise. What’s with the face?”

That last part was directed at Catra, whose face was a dead giveaway that her mind was currently racing. “You dated Perfuma?” she eventually asked with thinly veiled disgust.

Chuckling lasciviously, Huntara replied, “I wouldn’t call what we did dating, necessarily—”

“Gross,” mumbled Catra.

“Stop,” moaned Adora at the same time.

“But say that again,” said Catra, whose focus seemed to be split between the two people in front of her. “You’re Huntara?”

“That’s my name,” Huntara assented, crossing her arms over her chest so that her biceps strained against her flannel.

“Huntara?” Catra repeated, now staring solely at Adora as she hooked her thumb in Huntara’s direction.

Adora gave her a sheepish grin. “To my defense, I didn’t think she’d be here.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Huntara pouted in a very boyish sort of way.

To Huntara, Adora said, “Nothing.” To Catra, she said, “You ready?”

“Leaving so soon?” Huntara nudged an elbow into Adora’s side. “But I wanted to ask Roommate Catra what you told her about me.”

“It’s not a big deal.”

Unfortunately, the lie was swiftly undercut by Catra announcing with a forced, upbeat lilt, “Nah, for sure, no big deal. Getting shot, hah! What’s so scary about that?”

Huntara whipped her head around to gape at Adora. Suddenly quite serious, she asked, “You told her you got shot?”

“Kind of,” Adora answered.

There was a brief pause, and then Huntara huffed. “Wow. You don’t tell anyone that story.”

Heat seared across Adora’s cheeks. “That’s not true at all. Glimmer and Bow know.”

“Uh huh. How about everyone else at the office? You’ve known them almost as long, after all,” Huntara pressed as her eyebrows steadily crept up her forehead.

Adora hesitated before answering, “They know most of it.”

“They all know about the you got shot part?”

“Yes?” Adora said, cringing.

“Okay. So, if I texted Perfuma, she’d—”

“Stop!” Adora snapped. “Texting! Perfuma!”

Huntara raised her hands in mock surrender. “Oh, no! What’re gonna do, sue me?”

“Bye, Swifty!” Adora called to the horse—who was now happily rolling in the dirt, ignorant of her departure—as she sidestepped the woman to cross to the driver’s side.

“I guess that’s my cue,” Huntara said to Catra in a hushed, conspiratorial tone. As Adora ducked into her seat, Huntara opened the passenger door and helped Catra into the car by lending a steady hand. “Text me next time you come by,” Huntara told Adora after throwing Catra a final wink. “I’ll come out to say hello. Seems like we’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

“Fat chance,” Adora grumbled as she and Catra finally pulled away.

They sat in something close to companionable silence until they turned at the many-armed saguaro. Catra spoke first. “So. . . The second one.” Frowning, she pointed to her own abdomen, then rested her palm against it. “Is that why— You know?”

Adora smirked a sad little smirk. “Yeah. That’s why.”

Catra nodded, then said no more.

Half an hour later, when they pulled into the driveway at home, Adora turned the car off. She was about to rise out of her seat when Catra spoke again.

“Why’d you tell me this?” she asked. “Now, I mean. Why now?”

Adora would prefer to be crushed by a falling piano than answer the full and complete truth; no matter how much Glimmer pushed her, she wasn’t ready for that (nor was she sure she’d ever be ready for that). Ultimately, she gave Catra an abridged version. “This is a big deal to me,” Adora explained. Then rolled her eyes. “I mean, obviously. But this is sort of it for me, especially now that it’s so close. I need this to work. And. . .” She trailed off briefly as she met Catra’s eyes before promptly looking away. “And I can’t really risk complicating it more than it already has been. And it’s been, like, really complicated lately.”

Catra’s brow sloped low over her eyes. “I don’t understand,” she said.

Adora’s guts squirmed uncomfortably, and her heartbeat took up a frantic ratatattat. “Oh. . . Um— Well, I sort of mean. . . us?”

“Us?” Catra repeated, straightening up in her seat.

“Us.” Adora winced and diverted her gaze to her knuckles, which had gone white from clinging to the steering wheel for dear life. “I’m worried that I— that we got complicated. And so I’ve been acting weird, trying to pretend it’s. . . You know. Not complicated.” She took a deep breath then, and unclenched her grip. “So, that’s why I told you, because I think you deserve to know where I’m coming from, why I’ve been so. . . Well, like I said. Weird.”

Catra didn’t respond. Risking a glance at her, Adora found her staring blankly into space.

“Please tell me you get it,” Adora pleaded, cracking a self-deprecating smile as a last-ditch resort. “I’m not very good at this.”

Catra blinked, then turned her head to meet Adora’s eyes. It was an immediate relief that Catra was smiling, too—most of all because Adora didn’t notice how the smile did not quite reach Catra’s eyes. “Yeah,” she said on an exhale. “I get it. It’s cool.”

“Cool,” Adora agreed with a quick dip of her chin.

A minute later, as they walked up the drive together, Catra asked, “Are you gonna be home tonight?”

Adora cocked her head to her shoulder. “Yeah, I think so. I don’t have any other plans.” After she’d unlocked the door and let them in, she added, “Why do you ask?”

“Eh, no reason,” Catra answered a little too quickly, and a little too casually. “Well. I’m, um, gonna go take a nap.”

“Sounds good,” Adora said absentmindedly, focusing on hanging her keys on the hook by the door. “When you’re up, wanna order something for dinner?”

Catra, who was already halfway down the hallway to her bedroom, stopped. “Uh. . . Yeah. Sure,” she said.

“Okay. Sweet dreams, then.”

Without replying, Catra disappeared around the corner, and her door closed with an audible click.

- - -

It was after dark before Catra resurfaced. Adora was seated upright against the headboard of her bed, one pillow supporting her lower back and one pillow supporting the laptop humming away on her lap. The folder Light Hope had given her laid open-faced beside her thigh, and Adora ran her index finger down the list that was on top.

“Toiletries,” she read under her breath. “Snacks. Sanitary pads.” Moving her hand to her laptop, she typed post-labor sanitary pads into the search bar of the site she was on, and added one pack—then two, just to be safe—to her cart. Returning to the list, she continued whispering to herself and, after reading eyemask and earplugs, added those to the cart as well.

There was the lightest of knocks on her bedroom door just then, and—ignoring the way her heart skipped a beat—Adora called out, somewhat distractedly, “You can come in.”

The door creaked open, and Catra’s head popped into view. “Is Melog in here?”

“Slippers?” Adora read, and then looked up. “Melog?”

“Yeah,” Catra said. “Are they in here?”

“I don’t think so?” Adora responded, leaning over the edge of her bed to peer beneath it. “I can’t see all the way under there, though.”

Catra grumbled something incoherent underneath her breath and entered Adora’s room fully. “I’ll check,” she said out loud, and placed her hands at the edge of the mattress to begin a (somewhat) controlled descent to her knees.

Adora pushed her laptop off her lap and jumped to her feet. “No, no! Please, let me—”

“It’s fine, I can—”

“You really shouldn’t, not with—”

“Your knee, though—”

Adora won out by lying flat on the ground before Catra could even touch her knees to the carpet. Meanwhile, under Adora’s bed was a pair of bright-colored socks she thought she’d lost and what must’ve been a week-old hairball, but no Melog.

“Nope,” Adora announced, rising back to her feet. Watching Catra struggle to do the same, she held out her hands for Catra to take. “When’s the last time you saw them?”

“This morning,” Catra answered with a groan. She waved Adora’s hands away at first but, after tilting a bit too far forward, clasped them like a life preserver. “Thanks,” she said awkwardly as she came to her full height.

“They’re probably behind the dryer again,” Adora hummed. Releasing Catra’s hands, albeit with some hesitation, she moved across the room to enter the hallway. “I’ll go see.”

Behind Adora, Catra’s voice rang out, suddenly alarmed, “No! It’s fine! They’ll come out eventually, I just—”

“It’s no big deal,” Adora replied with a flippant wave of her hand. “Have you thought about dinner at all? I’m starting to get a little. . .”

But Adora petered off mid-sentence as she passed Catra’s room and noticed its wide-open door. Beyond that wide-open door, Catra’s backpack, which was stuffed nearly to breaking point, sat on the made-up bed next to Melog’s open carrier.

“Hungry,” Adora finished lamely as she came to a full stop. First pointing at Catra’s bed, then rotating on the spot to point at Catra instead, Adora asked, “What’s going on? Where are you going?”

Catra’s eyes were trained on the floor beneath her feet (her shoed feet, Adora just spotted). “I’m. . . going to Scorpia’s for a little bit.”

Adora’s eyes narrowed as an ice-cold feeling swept through her guts. “How long’s a little bit?”

Catra didn’t answer immediately. She did pick her chin up to meet Adora’s stare, at least, and after holding that for a long second she grimaced and finally said, “I wasn’t supposed to stay here forever. We both knew that.”

“Oh,” Adora said, shuddering. She wrapped her arms around herself and leant against the wall across from Catra’s room. “So. . . you’re leaving leaving.”

“Yeah. Just— I thought it was time, you know?”

Yeah, no, for sure, was the disingenuously casual reply that reached the tip of Adora’s tongue. She bit that back, though, and without a second thought said instead, “Not really, no.”

Catra gave Adora a confused look. “I mean, you’re the one who said this was getting too complicated.”

Flabbergasted, Adora had difficulty reigning in an unforeseen flash of anger. “I didn’t say I wanted you to leave,” she said, her voice shaking despite her best efforts. “I— I don’t want you to leave.”

Catra responded with an exponentially greater amount of irritation. “Well,” she scoffed, brushing roughly past Adora and into the laundry room. “It’s too complicated for me, then.”

“Catra, hold on,” Adora pleaded, sliding on her socked feet to follow behind her. “Can we talk about this for a minute?”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Catra replied airily. When she got to the dryer, though, she kicked it. From behind it burst forth Melog, who scrambled on the floor for purchase for a second, and then bolted past both Catra and Adora. With an impressively executed, sharp turn to the left, Melog vanished down the end of the hallway and sprinted towards the living room.

“God damn it, Melog!” Catra shouted, shouldering Adora for a second time as she attempted to pursue the cat. “Get back here, you idiot!”

Adora caught Catra by the shoulders before she could move past her, though. “Catra, wait. Come on, please talk to me.”

Catra twisted out of Adora’s grasp, but she did at least stay where she’d been blocked. “Adora, stop,” she huffed, a little red in the face.

“No,” Adora snapped. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong!” Catra yelled.

“Then why are you yelling?” Adora yelled back.

With a gulp of air, Catra pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m not trying to yell,” she said in a calm kind of way that teetered on the precipice of yelling again. “I’m just frustrated, okay?”

“Okay.” Adora propped one hand on her hip and nervously carded her other hand through her ponytail. “I’m just. . . I’m trying to understand what’s happening. Will you just. . . tell me what’s happening, please?”

Catra groaned wordlessly at the ceiling, and then explained, slowly, “I just don’t want to stay here anymore. Can’t that be enough?”

Adora chewed on her response for a second before settling on: “Of course it’s enough. I’m not going to—to beg you to stay if you don’t want to be here. I just—” Eyes stinging, she heaved a great sigh. “Did I do something wrong?”

Instantly, Catra visibly deflated. “No, dummy,” she sighed, too. “You’re. . . perfect as usual. It’s. . .”

“Complicated,” Adora quietly finished for her.

“Yeah.” Catra tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and gave Adora a tight-lipped smile. “Like I said, you know? Me being here was temporary anyway.”

Adora grunted, “It still seems so soon.”

Catra’s smile loosened, then dropped entirely. “Yeah, well,” she said, peering down the hallway as she leaned against the wall opposite Adora. “We can still talk, I guess. You can still come to the appointments, and I can still send you updates. Like before.”

Adora managed a chuckle, even if it sounds a little strangled to her own ears. “You didn’t update me a whole lot before, though.”

“I will this time,” Catra said, so seriously that Adora had no choice but to believe her.

“All right.” Throwing caution to the wind, Adora closed the distance between them to wrap Catra in a hug. Catra stood frozen for a long second before winding her own arms around Adora’s back. “Someone coming to get you?” Adora asked Catra’s hair, into which she’d dug her face.

She could feel the vibrations of Catra’s response in the place where her neck and shoulder met. “Scorpia. She’s just waiting for me to text her.”

Just then, something lightly prodded her lower stomach, and Adora stiffened.

“Wasn’t me,” Catra mumbled into Adora’s collarbone.

Still grasping one of Catra’s arms, Adora stepped back just enough to touch her hand to Catra’s belly. From her vantage point, she could watch the ripples undulate Catra’s front and press into her palm.

Again, more forcefully than before, Adora’s eyes burned. “I’m going to miss you so much,” she whispered.

“You get them back in two months,” Catra snarked halfheartedly. “Hold yourself together.”

Adora blinked, and a stray tear cascaded down her cheek. She withdrew her hand and wiped her forearm across her face. “I’m going to miss them, too,” she explained, a semi-maniacal laugh bubbling up her throat. “But I meant you.”

The way that Catra looked at her then was unnerving. She stared unabashedly into Adora’s face, her eyes wide, her brow nearly disappearing underneath her wild fringe. Meanwhile, the heat that stung Adora’s eyes crept further across her face, and it occurred to her that, after Catra left, their relationship—whether as friends, or as something more—would literally never be the same, would never be as close. The baby would arrive, Catra would vanish, and Adora would be too busy beginning her life as a parent to expend the energy that would almost certainly be required to stay in regular contact with Catra; undeniably, it would wane and, eventually, fizzle out entirely.

Resisting the urge to cut the tension, crack a joke, or something else equally stupid, Adora opened her mouth. She’d meant to say something meaningful, or to express to Catra how much she meant to her. Briefly, she even entertained the idea of grabbing Catra by the shoulders like they did in old, romantic movies, begging her to stay, and punctuating her plea with a first, desperate kiss.

Unfortunately, across the house, there was a great crash, the unmistakable sound of glass shattering, and a yowl. And just like that, the moment had passed.

“I think Melog got into the kitchen cabinet again,” Adora muttered.

With a wearisome moan and a squeeze of Adora’s bicep, Catra said, “I’ll clean that.”

“Nah,” Adora said, fixing a bright smile onto her face as she stepped away at last. Her hands fell away from Catra’s arm and belly at the same time, and Adora couldn’t help but feel a little like a child who lost their grip on a balloon. “I’ve got it. You go track them down.”

Catra nodded and wiped the back of her hand under her nose. “Okay, I’ll. . . I’ll let you know when I actually. . . you know.”

Trying her best to keep her voice steady, Adora replied, “I know.”

And then they parted ways.

- - -

It was only fifteen minutes later that, once again, Catra popped her head into Adora’s bedroom. 

“Hey,” Adora greeted her brightly (because dying stars shine brightest right before they collapse in on themselves, too). She ran her fingers across the mousepad of the laptop so that the screen would come back to life and Adora could maintain some semblance of the facade that she hadn’t just been staring blankly into its black, finger-smudged screen. “Did you get them yet?”

“Uh—” Catra replied, looking quite surprised, as if it had been Adora who’d sought her out unexpectedly. “Melog? Um, no. Not yet.”

Adora tilted her head to the side. “Okay. . . So, what’s up?”

Catra opened her mouth like she was about to answer, but then she closed it again. Instead, she stood in the doorway, examining Adora like one might an animal at the zoo.

Adora sat up straighter. “Are you okay?” she asked. When Catra did the same thing—open mouth, close mouth, dead stare—Adora pushed her laptop and folder aside. “Catra, you’re freaking me out.”

Finally, Catra seemed to come to. She blinked once, twice, and her face flooded with pink. “Sorry,” she said before stepping more fully into the room and wrapping her arms around herself (as best as she could, at least). “I— Can I ask you something?”

Relief swept through Adora, and she said, “Of course. What’s up?”

“That night you felt the baby kick the first time,” Catra said, gaze level and incisive. “Did you almost kiss me?”

Adora’s heart gave one great thump against her sternum, then stopped entirely, before she answered, unequivocally, “Yes.”

Catra inhaled deeply—gasping, almost—and Adora wondered whether she’d been holding her breath. Before she could ruminate on that too long, however, Catra said, “Oh. Okay.”

A moment later, Catra lunged forward and, without being fully conscious of it, Adora got to her feet. In the short amount of time before Catra reached her, clasped her hands behind her neck, and dragged her face down to meet her own, Adora barely managed to close her eyes. But, as if she was on autopilot, her searching hands wound around Catra’s back to pull her in the rest of the way.

It was only a moment after that, when their lips pressed together and every nerve ending in Adora’s body was ignited and all she could taste was warmth and something salty and Catra, Catra, Catra, Catra’s hands slid down Adora’s front to grab the hem of her hoodie and pull it over her head.

Their kiss broke just long enough to do so, at which point Adora seized the opportunity to ask, in a huskier voice than she thought she’d ever produced before in her life, “What are we—?”

“Shhh,” Catra replied, and enveloped Adora’s lips with hers once more before her hand dove into the front of her sweatpants.

After that point, very few words were exchanged.

- - -

But hours later, Adora awoke to a still-dark room. Groggily patting the mattress beside her, she found  the crumpled sheets empty and cold. In fact, like never before, a deafening silence rang throughout the house.