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“Hey…Adora?” Catra nestles her face deeper against Adora’s shoulder, the brush of whiskers against the exposed skin of her neck makes Adora giggle and she snuggles closer so the warmth of Catra’s silky fur seeps into her skin.
“Yea?” She asks.
“We’ll be together forever, right?”
Adora beams; it shows off her two missing teeth proudly stuffed under her pillow. There are four teeth under their, all neatly arranged in a row so the tooth fairy won’t miss them. Adora had to wait an extra, agonizing month for Catra’s teeth to fall out.
“Of course!” She reaches for Catra’s hand, joins them together and presses it against her chest and Catra relaxes at the familiar rhythm of Adora’s heartbeat. “You’re my best friend - I won’t ever leave you!”
Catra pulls from the memory with a shiver, she crashes roughly against Adora’s torso and feels Adora groan beneath her.
For a brief second, she feels the ghost of Adora’s fingers hovering above her arms; Adora stiffens and slowly lowers her arms as if burned.
“What a lie that turned out to be, huh?” Catra scoffs – she shoves Adora away and ignores the dull, veteran ache settling in her chest.
Adora lowers her gaze, “I meant that, you know.”
Catra laughs, it comes out bitter and tastes wrong even in her own mouth. “Oh yea, I’m sure you did. That’s why we’re trapped here in some stupid mystical sword fortress, when we could be safe in the Horde!”
“It’s not safe!” Adora throws up her arms – Catra jumps.
Adora stills; her arms still waver halfway in the air and Catra watches grief develop in the blue eyes which once held so much love Catra drowned in it.
“I…I wouldn’t hurt you.” Adora mumbles, “I could never hurt you,” She affirms; and Catra sees a lingering look she hasn’t seen on Adora for months now.
“You’re a princess.” Catra snarls, “And I’m the Horde. Wake up, Adora, we’re enemies now! You’re the stubborn one who won’t come back,”
The pain in Adora’s eyes grows, she looks down at her own hands – Catra watches them tremble. The hurt that fills Adora’s eyes matches the sorrow settled into Catra’s chest. Catra wonders if it swallows her with that same, bone-rattling pain that squeezes Catra’s heart in the middle of the night. Perhaps Adora also stares up at an empty top bunk in a room far too cold without the heat of another body tucked beside her.
But Adora’s ceiling doesn’t have the tally marks keeping track of all the sparring contests, or the empty promises carved in Catra’s messy scrawl. The claw on her left pinky is still blunted from all the times she’s used it; yet it grows sharper each day and soon it’ll look as if she never carved with it at all.
“It’s the wrong side, Catra.” Adora says firmly. Her voice quivers, her eyes look wet with unfallen tears and it only makes the dazzling blue burn brighter, and the fiery hot gaze that Adora pins her with ignites a pain so shattering in Catra’s heart that she feels it finally start to break. She feels the pieces fall away one by one, and she wonders if Adora will wait for both of their hearts to fall apart completely before she buries away the pieces.
They always did things together, after all.
“You know what? You’re just power hungry,” Catra snaps, the words hurt like needles coming out of her mouth, but she forces them out anyway. “So, kill me – this is your chance isn’t it? We’re in your zone, on your playing field, so take your dumb magic sword of princess goodness and kill me if I’m on the wrong side!”
Adora shivers and closes her eyes, the tears begin to fall in small drops. She opens them again and glares at Catra with such fierceness that Catra’s breath catches in her throat and it feels like she’s suffocating. “I won’t do that.”
Catra snaps; she lunges and pins Adora to the floor. The temple rattles and Adora looks at her startled, but not afraid. Catra digs her claws into Adora’s wrist; they get wet with blood and Adora bites her lip to hold in the pain but still; she is not afraid.
It hurts Catra in a way she’s never felt; she dealt with the Shadow Weaver’s wrath. She remembers crying alone behind a trash can, waiting for the sweet gift of death. She starved on the streets; a small little cat girl with no place to call home; no hope for salvation and she thought no pain could ever hurt her more than that.
Catra realizes she was stupid – the only thing worse than that pain is watching the salvation that comes ripped away from you bit by bit. Her salvation was a five-year-old girl with messy blonde hair and blue eyes that rivaled the ocean.
And here comes the universe; stealing that away one heartstring at a time.
“You’ll regret that,” Catra hisses. “I’ll make sure that you do.”
Catra releases her but Adora does not stand – she simply stares up at the broken ceiling of the temple, lost in another memory.
Catra sighs; she pushes her back against the wall and runs her trembling claws through her hair. She watches the entranced look cloud over Adora; she could slit her throat in an instant. Catra chooses to watch instead; she watches Adora breathe and it feels so familiar that Catra fears she is trapped in a memory herself.
A memory of lying next to Adora on rainy nights, curling against her chest and listening to the soft heartbeat and watching the gentle rise and fall of her chest. Lightning would strike and Adora would scratch just beneath Catra’s ear and whisper away the tears.
Catra fights dirty; she fights for survival. So Catra knows, the best way to stop a bleeding wound is to cauterize it.
The best way to mend an aching heart is to break it.
Adora returns to consciousness gasping for air and reaching out for a fur-covered hand that won’t be offered to her.
Catra is gone.