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✧･ﾟ: *
“So let me get this straight,” Catra says, growing frustration evident in her voice. “This thing’s not letting us go until we pass some sort of test or whatever.”
Adora yanks hard on the band. The iridescent material stretches, then snaps back with a sharp recoil. Their wrists bump together with a force that could shatter rocks. Break arms, in this case. “It looks … like it,” she acknowledges bitterly, and Catra lets out a growl.
Her eyes narrow. Her lips curl into a thin smirk. “Oh, look. Great. Perfect. Exactly what I needed,” she says coldly, body quivering as she gets out those sentences, and even though Adora is in agreement, it in no way lessens the sting of Catra’s words.
Could it only have been a few months since they’d gone their separate ways, and not—a lifetime ago?
They’re in a cave of crystals located deep beneath the earth, and an unidentifiable interval of time has elapsed since all this happened: Adora trying to locate a mystical aegis, and Catra following her, tracking her to this place.
Adora had thought it would be easy. Get in, get out, done. Well—the thing is, there’s a reason no one has ever attempted this before; they say it’s cursed. They say the aegis finds the seeker, not the other way around. The more one tries, the more they lose themselves.
Looks like the sayings were all true. Nothing like getting them confirmed by waking up chained to your enemy.
And then hearing voices in your head.
“Just so we’re clear, I don’t like this any more than you do,” Adora says. Her words come out low, a whisper in the dark. They quiver in the space between them, charged with tension.
Catra laughs harshly. It’s a bitter sound, sanded rough at the edges. So at odds with the one she once had. And to think Adora had loved it, once upon a time. “So we’re on the same page for the very first time,” she says, and then silence is falling, heavy as a spill of syrup. “If only I hadn’t knocked us both out by accident.”
Adora looks down at their hands. At the too-short length of magical string connecting them. Funny, at how they would’ve had a good laugh at it together if it weren’t for the Whispering Woods, for the horrors Adora has seen. For the things Catra has done. The things she is about to do. (Again.)
It saddens Adora to consider herself and Catra this way. Warrior-princess and Horde soldier. Best-friends turned enemies. Two people of two separate worlds.
Memories are fragile. It is why Adora has always allowed herself to indulge in them, to store them up. Because at any given moment, Adora is sure to be missing one. Trying to relive it even in monochrome dreams.
The colour of a twilight sky. The warmth of sunshine on a blue day. The smell of petrichor after the rain has cleared. Bow’s huge grins, and Glimmer’s bear hugs. Honey glistening on your fingers. Moonlight reflecting off of ocean water.
Catra’s real smile—bright, and wide, and true. Catra looking at her with an emotion the opposite of hate.
They promised each other things would never get this bad when they were kids. But people get older. They change. Promises once immutable turn elastic. Breakable.
At the end of their shared world, they made different choices.
✧･ﾟ: *
Two hours later—or so Adora assumes, on the premise of guesswork—they find themselves in what seems to be an underground forest. Here, the soil is flush with gem-like flowers—some shaped like stars, even, the colour of the petals richer than real, opalescent —most everything illuminated by glowing crystals inset into the cave walls.
It’s a beautiful place. It would give the seagardens Adora has seen back at Mermista’s kingdom a run for their money. The centrepiece tree alone would suffice: tall and thick and wide, the foliage improbably lush and white-gold.
But Adora doesn’t understand. Yes, she and Catra have to figure their own way out—this part of the trial is known. But how are they going to solve a problem that they don’t even know the specifics of?
“Beats me,” Catra says, sprawling down besides a bush the colour of dusk-lit clouds. She crosses her arms, rests her head on a single hand.
Impossible. “Are you kidding me, Catra? Thought you’d be here going over in a panic, trying harder to get yourself out,” Adora says, barely repressed irritation lacing her voice as she watches Catra pluck leaves, before tossing them aside.
Those two-toned eyes blink. Lazily. “Do you even hear yourself, Adora?” Catra muses. “Since when it was yourself or myself instead of us?” The leaves crunch underneath her grip. “Oh, that’s right—when you left. When you chose them over me. People you never even knew before then.”
Glimmer. Bow. The Rebellion. The Princesses.
Three leaves. Four leaves. Somehow, they’ve turned into something like stardust dust in her hold. It scatters in the air, and gets in Adora’s face. She brushes it away. Her fingers come off silver. “Horde soldiers hurt civilians, Catra. They’ve already taken so many innocent lives, people who aren’t capable of fighting back. I couldn’t stand by and just let them get away with it. What kind of a person would that make me? I’d be no better than them,” Adora says, and her hands are shaking, so is her voice.
“Than me, you mean.” Cold fury. Catra’s tongue is laced with it. Barbed. “Surely you aren’t forgetting than I’m one of them. That you were, too.”
“Were. That’s the keyword. But now? Not anymore. I don’t think I could ever live with myself, knowing that it was under my nose the whole time.” A lump forms in Adora’s throat. She’s getting worked up. Frustration builds, and builds, and builds.
Catra’s jaw clenches. She looks away. The anger ebbs, and in its place simmers something less volatile. All of a sudden she just seems tired. “That was the only time that you knew.” The sentence is clipped, cryptic. But before Adora can question it, Catra’s gone off on another line of thought. “Even if you stayed, you’d be still be better than me, anyway. Not only in the ethical sense, which is clearly your primary concern—the being-righteous-towards-others thing. That’s how that song has gone since forever. Everyone always thought you were the best.”
Adora stares. “You were also at the top of the class.”
“But you were the summit. You were the peak. I still had to look up at you, at the end of the day.” Catra’s tone goes bitter, flat. “Shadow Weaver primed you to be Force Captain since the very beginning. There wasn’t anyone else in her sphere of considerations. Me, I was peripheral. Negligible mass.” At the confused sound Adora lets slip, Catra scoffs. “And you never knew that, too. Always saw the world around you as a level playing field. Lucky that you could afford to. Well, it isn’t what you thought it was.”
Adora finds herself stunned into silence by the revelations Catra has wrought upon her. She had expected a different kind of confrontation—a fight discussing the Rebellion and the Horde—and not this at all, at a topic that is hitting too close to home, that is entirely more personal than Catra meant it to be, she’s sure.
Adora doesn’t realize that she hasn’t spoken another word until she senses Catra’s gaze piercing right through her. They’ve both said what they wanted to say. What they wanted the other to hear. All that’s left is the processing. The final thoughts.
“I want to hate you, Adora,” suddenly Catra is speaking up. She’s moved herself into a sitting position. Her voice is hollow, and her body still. “So badly.”
Adora’s stomach squeezes. Her chest fills with crushed glass. So many terrible truths, and yet this one hurts the most. Close to home indeed; it lands like a punch, then settles under her skin like dynamite. Ready to burst. “Do you?”
Catra doesn’t speak for a long time. But when she finally does, her response is so quiet, so weak, that Adora nearly misses it: “I don’t think I ever could."
✧･ﾟ: *
There is something dangerous within these parts. Something out to get them.
They make it through the forest as fast as their feet are able, the minute Adora voices her concerns. If one gets done for the other does too. None of them can go their separate ways, not while the link is still intact.
They find a shelter a considerable distance away from where they were originally. Underneath a canopy of overlapping branches, between two slim trees. There’s an opening of a tunnel nearby, but at present time it’s not worth risking the venture; danger is sure to lurk in that place. Not until Adora has figured out at least a vague idea of how they’re going to escape, how the puzzle might be solved.
While Catra still isn’t on the best speaking terms with her, they’ve implicitly agreed on a temporary truce, seeing as they’re stuck with each other. As far as arrangements go, this one has been one of the most ideal, going by relative terms. No one’s trying to thwart or hurt or fight each other.
It’s a step forward, all things considered; at rock bottom, Adora—as She Ra—was sighting along the barrel of a tank gun to look at Catra, Catra with war in her eyes, Catra with fury in her veins.
This’ll never be anything like the old times, but still. It’s manageable. Not a step towards reconciliation, but better than a regression.
It’s only when they’re slumped against the tree trunks that Adora recognizes the first signs of trouble.
First of all, the forest is too peaceful, too quiet. In theory, it should be a good sign. But from experience, it only portends bad news. Secondly, Adora is getting a really bad hunch from all this. Again, it’s never bad to trust instinct. Often it accounts for variables logic can’t explain.
Thirdly, there’s a pair of glowing eyes staring at them where ground gives way to a chasm down below.
“Adora,” Catra says in a low voice. “What the hell is that?”
That. Good question.
Before Adora can respond, the thing—the creature lashes out. Claws flashing. Jaw unhinging. Black drool crusted all over its yellowing teeth. So fast, Adora just barely manages to roll over to the side—just narrowly avoiding impalement.
The movement drags Catra along. She gets yanked forward.
Acid in her mouth, Adora looks up at the creature after regaining her bearings. Her heart drops to her feet. It’s—big, and it’s not even drawn up to its full height just sitting there on its haunches, a low growl reverberating in its throat.
Adora thinks Catra calls out her name over the din of her hearing. Adora thinks she lifts up her hand, lifts up her sword and starts the transformation process.
She does not know much about what else happens. Because one moment there is this—her calling up her power, driven by defence—and the next there is just blurriness, the slowing of a pulse.
Then silence.
✧･ﾟ: *
Memory grass, wind, water. Blue skies, a chill just cold enough to temper the weather. All around, memory people walk, forever lovely, forever perfect. And right in the middle, there’s a bloodied-up Catra, holding her sword—Adora’s sword—to her chest, frenzied—
When Adora comes to, her first thought is that she’s done for.
“Easy,” a steady voice murmurs into her ear, a hand gripping her shoulder, and then Adora is trying to fight them off, what if they finish her off, and then she realizes it’s just Catra, once the fog in her vision subsides by a considerable amount. Not enough that she can see with full clarity, but at least she won’t be stumbling along blind.
“Catra?” she croaks out, throat raspy. Relieved. Relieved that her friend is here, around her, with her, but then quickly the emotion is somewhat stifled by the reminder that they aren’t friends anymore, that they’ve long since parted ways, that there’s no way she can truly trust Catra. Especially with all that bad blood that has rusted between them. History turned red. “What—what just happened?”
“You vanquished the monster thing with that sword of yours,” Catra says, relaxing her grip, and if Adora isn’t mistaken, there’s a worried, hoarse texture to her voice. “But not before it got a few good hits in. Holy, you should’ve seen the way it tried to pummel us. Kill you. And for one second, I thought—I thought I watched you die.” Her voice catches, wavers.
Die. Death. Such permanence in those ugly words.
Adora blinks, trying to see for any traces of a joke on Catra’s face, but—nothing. There isn’t none to be found. Just unrepressed sorrow, clear as day, as truth. But it soon clears, quick as the toss of a coin.
“Explains the headache,” Adora says, bringing her fingers to her forehead where a bruise has formed.
Then, there’s a hand nudging her elbow. “Adora. Just. Go to sleep. You’ll be fine.” Those mismatched eyes hold her gaze without blinking.
Adora raises an eyebrow. “Are you sure you won’t secretly turn against me if I do?”
A huff. “If I’d wanted you dead, I’d have done so by now.”
Adora shuts her eyes.
✧･ﾟ: *
Sliced fruit glistens on Catra’s hand. Unevenly divided cerulean flesh, with the seeds still intact. Up above, the crystals embedded into the cave ceiling glow, made to resemble constellations. Nearby, a frothing stream bubbles, and flowers of a phosphorescent purple stretch high, high up.
A cosmic, alien ecosystem, thriving in the dark.
Adora sits up and warily eyes the slice Catra is offering her. “You don’t even know if it’s poisonous,” she points out.
Liquid drips down her palm. “Well, what’s the worst that could happen? Dying? Please, we already survived it,” Catra huffs, taking a bite of her portion of fruit.
Adora rolls her eyes. “Yeah, why not come to its doorstep, instead? Y’know, like any other normal person.”
“Knock, knock, Grim Reaper. Please open up,” Catra says dryly, and Adora accepts the fruit, against her better wishes.
And it tastes like sun, sand, and salt. Summertime blooming on her tongue.
(It’s an acquired taste.)
✧･ﾟ: *
Adora is shivering. She’s cold, so cold all over. For whatever reason, she thinks a fever may have set in. Which not only makes zero sense, but is also incredibly bad news; there’s no fire, no blanket, nothing. Her only hope is that she doesn’t freeze to death by the end of their time here.
A hand sets down on her arm. Catra says, “Adora, you’re shivering,” before curling up besides her. Like she used to do whenever they were kids, whenever either of them were lonely.
Warm—Catra is so warm. She feels like firelight on a cold day, candlelight on a starless night.
But wait. “Hold on. Are you sure you’re even supposed to be doing that?” Adora says, as Catra makes herself comfortable.
“In my defence, you were cold. So.” Catra’s face is only a foot away from hers. And her eyes are already fluttering shut, features relaxing. Her lashes are casting spidery shadows on the curve of her freckled cheekbones. One would think there’d be at least active mistrust and hostility between them, after everything they’ve been through, the events of earlier on notwithstanding.
But for now, the animosity lies dormant, weak as dying flames.
Adora whispers, “We’re supposed to hate each other.”
“I know,” Catra says.
“We’re supposed to be sworn enemies.”
“I know.”
“This constitutes as enemy fraternization on more counts than one.”
"Well, what should I do about it? Kiss you to seal the deal?” Catra yawns, teasing her. It’s part of her nature. Jokes, witticisms, subtle hints here and there. All parts of her charm. Easy to fall into.
Adora blushes. “Then you’ll get sick, and we’ll both die.”
Catra snorts. “Poetic tragedy. Death by a kiss. Charming.”
✧･ﾟ: *
When they wake up, the link is gone. Meaning they’ve somehow passed the test. And Adora feels all better now, good as new—no, better, actually. Much, much better.
Adora’s only regret is her failure in finding the aegis. It would’ve made the hassle a lot more worthwhile.
She and Catra make their way to what looks to be the exit of the crystal cave labyrinth. A terribly narrow fissure gouged into a tunnel wall, feathery white light softening its edges.
Finally. This is it. The moment they have been waiting for. They’ve gotten rid of the link. Now there are no longer any obstructions. Stupid voices? Gone. Stupid test? Done.
So why, oh why, is this proving to be so difficult?
Adora glances at Catra. Catra, her enemy. Catra, her ex-best friend. Catra, the Horde soldier.
Catra, whom she cannot ever seem to let go of.
But Catra—she isn’t looking at Adora. Her fists are clenched at her sides, features impassive, unyielding, every inch a hardened warrior. That steely gaze is focused forward, on the exit. Onwards.
Ah. Adora sees. She ducks down her head, tries her best to push down the disappointment in her stomach.
But before Adora manages to take a step forward, there are fingers wrapping around Adora’s wrist. Pulling gently. And then Catra is looking at her—truly looking at her. Eyes wide. Lips parted. Desperation written across her features.
This close, Adora can count each individual freckle on Catra’s cheeks. This close, Adora can make out her reflection in Catra’s irises. And here, while they are still in this cave, those eyes seem to hold the light of all the crystals glowing overhead. Jewels glistening in a midnight sky.
“Adora,” Catra says hoarsely, and this, the plea buried in the sound of her name on Catra’s mouth, just about breaks Adora. Throws her entire axis off-balance. “Stay. I don’t—I don’t want to feel so alone.”
Please, choose me. Even for just this once. Adora practically hears this, in every waver of Catra’s voice. Every drag of her breaths.
And then Adora’s hand is lifting up. Cupping Catra’s cheek. She can’t leave Catra now—not while Catra needs her. Because at the end of the day, they’re still children, lost and misguided children fighting in a war much too big for their bodies and souls.
None of this excuses what Catra has done. To her, or anyone else. But that’s the thing; Catra needs the help. To learn from her mistakes, and gain the strength to move on. To leave her past— their past —behind.
The past cannot be rewritten. But the future can be made.
Trust is a flighty, weighty thing. Easily breakable. Adora doesn’t know how much of it she can spare on Catra, but she knows this: regardless of Catra’s true intentions, she believes that Catra has the potential to change for the better. One hundred percent.
“I’m not leaving you, okay?” Adora says, and she means it, and hopes Catra fully realizes her words.
Then, Adora pulls her into a hug. At first, Catra stiffens—but eventually, she melts into it.
And behind them, the fissure glows, then splits wider into a bigger exit.