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She wakes up in the Fright Zone; she wakes up in a panic. She falls out of bed, the blankets tangled around her legs, her heartbeat in her ears as she tries to disentangle herself. She shouldn’t be here. How did she get here?
“Adora?”
She freezes. She knows that voice, better than anything else. She could pick that voice out of a crowd of thousands. But it’s different; there is no vitriol in it, no anger, no betrayal. It sounds… young. Not innocent, never innocent, but… whole.
Catra gets out of her bed, and she is young. Eleven or so, maybe. Adora runs her hands over her body and discovers that she’s the same age.
“I’m okay,” she says, even though she isn’t. “I think I just had a nightmare. Did I wake you?”
Catra shakes her head. “Wasn’t asleep.”
What time is it? Where was everyone else? This is wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong.
“Why not?” She asks. She is eleven and life still makes sense; she is eleven and she is one of the good guys.
Catra looks away, like she doesn’t want to tell Adora, which isn’t right, because they tell each other everything. There are no secrets between them.
“You can tell me,” Adora prompts. Catra wipes at her eyes.
“I keep having bad dreams,” she says. Adora reaches out and grabs her hand.
“About what?”
Catra sniffs. “You leave me,” she says. “You keep leaving me.”
Adora opens her mouth. I’ll never leave you, she wants to say, but she can’t. The words won’t leave her mouth. They sit heavy on her tongue, because she knows they’re a lie. “I’m sorry,” she says instead, and it isn’t enough. It will never be enough.
“Don’t apologize,” Catra says. “Just don’t leave. Tell me you won’t leave.”
But she can’t, she can’t. Catra starts getting agitated at Adora’s silence.
“Adora. Just tell me you won’t leave.”
“I can’t,” she says quietly. She looks up at Catra, meets her eyes. Catra’s face flickers, half of it becoming darkness, and Adora screams.
She wakes up.
She’s in her bed, in Bright Moon. It was a dream. Nothing but a dream.
It happens again the next night.
She’s in the locker room. She runs her hands down her body, finds a mirror. She’s older now. Fifteen maybe.
A face appears behind her in the mirror.
“You missed the test. Again.”
Catra waves this off, like it is unimportant. Adora sighs. “Catra. You can’t keep doing this. They’re going to…” She trails off. Catra snorts.
“I’m not afraid of them,” she says, with the easy confidence of a fifteen year old. “I’m their best soldier.”
“ Second best,” Adora teases. Catra looks at her, and there is no more friendliness on her face.
“Not for long,” she says. “You’re going to leave.”
“I --”
“You don’t have to,” Catra says. She is not mad, she is insistent and hopeful. “You don’t have to leave, Adora. You can stay. You can stay with me.” She crowds Adora up against the lockers and takes her hands, claws digging ever so slightly into Adora’s skin. A reminder. A threat. Adora has had those nails pressed to her throat. (No she hasn’t. Not yet. Not at fifteen.)
“Please,” Catra says. Has she ever been this vulnerable? Has she ever shown anyone else this side of her? It’s a gift, placed delicately in Adora’s hands.
And she is going to smash it.
“You can stay,” Catra pleads. “You don’t have to do this.”
“Yes I do,” Adora says, begging her to understand.
Catra snarls and throws her walls back up. “Guess I’m just easy to leave.”
Adora shakes her head; Catra is gripping her hands tighter, the tips of her nails digging harshly into Adora’s skin. She’s doing it on purpose, Adora knows.
“It’s not about you,” Adora says. “It’s about what’s right.”
Catra releases Adora’s hands and cups her cheek. It’s intimate in a way they’ve never before been, and Adora feels her cheeks burn. She opens her mouth to say -- something ( I love you, I’m sorry) but Catra moves her hand to Adora’s neck, claws pressing into her jugular.
“I don’t care about what’s right,” she says. “I’ve only ever cared about you.”
Her hand on Adora’s neck squeezes, and Adora screams.
She wakes up.
That night she doesn’t go to bed. She wanders the castle, offering her help to guards on duty, raiding the kitchen, working out and practicing with the sword. The next day she falls asleep in the council meeting.
Bow and Glimmer pull her aside after.
“Are you okay?” Bow’s voice is thick with worry. Adora nods.
“I just… I haven’t been sleeping well.”
Glimmer nods in understanding. There are circles under her eyes, and she holds herself differently, now that her mother is gone. Adora feels guilty every time she looks at her. Bow looks between the two of them, and it is clear that he doesn’t know what to do. Adora hates herself a little bit. She was supposed to be powerful. She was supposed to protect them. She was supposed to close the portal.
“You don’t have to worry about me,” she says, putting on a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “I can handle this.” She puts a hand on Glimmer’s shoulder. “Are you okay?”
Glimmer shrugs. She’s subdued now, in personality and in colour. She doesn’t shine as bright. Adora’s heart breaks for her every time she sees her. Adora failed, and Glimmer paid the price.
“Why don’t you head to bed early,” Bow suggests. “And maybe you’ll be so tired that you sleep better tonight.”
She nods. She needs to be at the top of her game; she needs to be better than this. She needs to be prepared in case an attack comes. Instead she’s falling asleep in the war room.
“Adora,” Glimmers says as she's walking away. Adora waits. Eventually Glimmer says, “Be kind to yourself.”
She isn’t sure why, but the idea makes her feel sick.
“Do you ever feel like a failure?”
They are up on the roof, sitting beside each other, thigh pressed against thigh. She knows, somehow, that it is the day before her eighteenth birthday.
Catra considers this. This is how Adora knows it is a dream.
“Sometimes,” Catra admits. “Shadow Weaver is pretty good at making you feel worthless.”
Except she wasn’t. Not to Adora. Shadow Weaver never treated her the way she treated Catra. Adora looks away.
“But there’s no reason for you to feel like a failure,” Catra says. “I don’t think you could fail at anything.”
“I failed you,” Adora says. Catra sighs.
“You don’t have to.”
“Please don’t ask me to stay,” Adora says, voice mournful. She’s afraid that if Catra keeps asking, she’ll cave. And she can’t. She can’t stay. These dreams don’t make sense but that much she knows: she can’t stay.
“You can’t leave this place. You can’t leave me. I know you can’t leave me.”
That annoys Adora. Catra speaks with such confidence, and her voice is almost mocking. Like she knows something Adora doesn’t.
“You don’t know that,” she says. “I can leave. I will leave.”
Catra cocks her head and smiles, not kindly, and then she leans forward and presses her lips against Adora’s, who freezes up in surprise.
“Oh, Adora,” Catra says, and she sounds more like herself, the mocking, lilting way she says it. “Then why are you dreaming about me?”
She sits up in bed, shaking and sweating. She’s in Bright Moon still, where she is supposed to be. She puts a shaking hand to her lips.
It had felt so real. Catra’s lips on hers… it hadn’t felt like a dream.
She thought about what Catra had said. But it wasn’t her fault that she kept dreaming about this. She didn’t want this to be happening! She didn’t want to see Catra every night. She didn’t want… she didn’t want that. That kiss…
Adora buries her face in her hands and screams. How long is she going to have to do this?
“Are you having nightmares?” She asks Glimmer. Glimmer shrugs.
“Not technically,” she says. Adora doesn’t understand this.
“What do you mean??”
Glimmer sighs. “They aren’t bad dreams. It’s just that she’s always there.”
Adora doesn’t speak. She knows exactly what Glimmer means, because her dreams aren’t nightmares. They aren’t scary, not really. Adora is only afraid of them because -- because --
She doesn’t even want to think about, refuses to admit it to herself. There has to be another reason why Catra is invading her dreams. It isn’t because some part of Adora misses her. It isn’t because some part of her wishes she had stayed. This is where she’s supposed to be.
“I can’t stop dreaming about Catra,” she admits. Glimmer’s face hardens.
“She had better hope we never cross paths again,” she says fiercely. “I swear, Adora -- I’m going to kill her.”
“Glimmer --”
“No,” Glimmer says. “I’m sorry. I know she was your friend. But she’s the reason my mom is gone, and I can’t -- I can’t forgive that. I won’t. She was the one who opened the portal. She’s the reason my mother is dead.”
No, Adora thinks. I am. I wasn’t strong enough.
“Your friend wants to kill me,” Catra says mildly. Adora is lying with her head on Catra’s stomach, eyes closed as Catra runs her fingers through Adora’s hair. Occasionally she lets her claws scratch against Adora’s scalp, and it sends a shiver through her each time.
“How do you know that?” She wills herself to sit up, that it’s inappropriate, but she can’t do it. Catra playing with her hair feels so good. She remembers the kiss.
Catra laughs. “I’m not real, Adora. I only exist in your head, which means I know everything you know.”
I’m not real. Well, that she could believe. The real Catra, her Catra, would never do this, would never lie like this, so close and intimate, her fingers smoothing over Adora’s hair.
“She has every right to kill you,” Adora says, even though it leaves a bad taste in her mouth. “You opened up the portal. You almost killed all of us. You’re the reason she lost her mother.”
“Hmm,” Catra says, finger tracing the shell of Adora’s ear. “Will you let her do it?”
“I -- I don’t want to kill anybody.”
“So will you stop her? If she tries to kill me? Will you protect me? Turn against your friends to save me?”
“I… I don’t know,” Adora admits. Catra cackles.
“Even after everything I’ve done, you’d still save me?”
“You were my…” Her what? What was Catra to her? Her best friend? At one point, not anymore. Her rival? They meant more than that to each other.
My everything, some traitorous part of her brain supplies. You were everything to me.
“That’s your problem, Adora,” Catra says, as if Adora hadn’t spoken. “You’re greedy. You want everything.” There is a blur of movement, and Adora is straddling Catra, a knife in her hand pressed against Catra’s neck. She doesn’t know how she got there; there had been no movement, just the blurred logic of a dream. Catra grins up at her. “Both of us aren’t going to make it out of this,” she teases. “You’re going to have to watch me die.”
“No,” Adora says. She feels like she’s teetering on the edge, like any minute now she’s going to fall. Panic builds inside of her as Catra leans into the knife.
A blink, and they have switched positions. Catra is perched above her, holding Adora’s hand so the knife remains pressed to her neck. “You can’t have it all, Adora,” she says. “You can’t leave me behind and still expect to save me. Will you let your friends kill me? Or will you kill me yourself?”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
Catra laughs, loud and cold. “It’s a little late for that, Adora.”
“It doesn’t have to be like this,” Adora pleads. Catra throws the knife way and leans forward, pushing their foreheads together.
“Then stay with me,” she says. “You can make it stop.”
Adora tilts her head and kisses her. Catra kisses her back.
“Stay,” she whispers. “Stay or watch me die.”
“I’m sorry,” Adora says. It’s the only thing she can ever say, and it is still not enough.
Catra grabs the knife again and holds it at her own throat. Her grin is wide and deranged. “No you’re not,” she says. Adora closes her eyes.
She opens them again, staring at the ceiling of her room. There are tears making tracks down her cheeks and she wipes them away impatiently.
She finds Bow. She can’t talk about this with Glimmer. She doesn’t blame Glimmer for her anger, but she also can’t tell her everything that’s going on. Glimmer won’t understand.
What she really wants is to talk to an adult, someone who knows and understands more than she does. Someone who could tell her if these dreams mean she’s a bad person. She wants Angella. But Angella isn’t here, and that’s her fault, and she doesn’t trust anyone else enough to tell them what’s going on.
So she goes to Bow, because he’s her friend and he loves her and he’s supportive and even if he thinks she’s a horrible person, he probably won’t let it show. She finds him and she sits him down and she says, “I can’t stop dreaming about Catra.”
“Oh,” he says, but he doesn’t sound concerned. “I think that’s probably normal. Do you dream about fighting her?”
Adora shakes her head.
“So what happens in the dream?”
She feels like she might cry. She is so, so afraid. “I can’t tell you,” she says meekly. Bow looks at her in concern.
“Adora, you can tell me anything.”
“You won’t look at me the same.”
Bow takes her hands. “I will. Please tell me. It will make you feel better.”
“You can’t tell Glimmer,” she says miserably, hating herself for doing this, driving a wedge between the three of them with her secrets. “Promise.”
Bow blanches at this at first, but eventually he nods. “Okay.”
Adora takes a breath and realizes she doesn’t know where to start. So she picks the easiest starting point, the fact she had realized one night when she was sixteen, a fact that had sat heavy in her heart since that day. She hadn’t wanted to admit it even then. Maybe she’d always known she was going to leave.
“I loved her, you know,” she says, keeping her eyes trained on the ground so she doesn’t have to see the disgust on Bow’s face. “We were going to run the Horde together. We were going to be unstoppable.”
“I -- that’s okay. You didn’t know.”
“No, you don’t -- it doesn’t just go away, Bow. It doesn’t just stop. You can’t turn off love, and every night… every night I dream about her and she…” She cuts off, burying her face in her hands. She feels Bow’s gentle touch on her wrists.
“You can’t always control your feelings,” he says. “And dreams are just dreams.”
How can she explain it? How can she tell him that she doesn’t want these dreams, but she’s almost happy she has them? Happy isn’t the right word, but she can’t think of how else to describe the feeling she gets in her chest, lying in bed at night, with the knowledge that she’s going to see Catra again.
“Glimmer wants to kill her,” Adora says. Bow sighs.
“I understand it, even if I don’t support it,” he says. “Catra is the reason she lost her mother.”
“No,” Adora says, louder than she had wanted. “ I’m the reason. I wasn’t strong enough. I should have stopped Catra. I should have stopped Angella. What’s the point of me, what is the point of She-Ra, if I can’t save people? Why was I given this stupid sword?”
“Hey,” Bow says, surprisingly vehement. “You have saved so many people. You are one of the best, bravest people I know. You turned your back on everything you were raised on and you became a hero and you have -- you have done so much. I don’t know where we would be without you. Where any of us would be.”
Adora sniffs. Bow’s words should make her feel better, but underneath what he’s saying is the knowledge that she knows what Catra tastes like.
“Thank you, Bow,” she says, because she needs to say something. He gives her a hug.
“I know you’re just saying that,” he says, because he knows her. “But I mean every word of it.”
“They’ll never know you better than I do,” Catra says.
“I know,” Adora says, and kisses her.
The next night is the worst.
They are in some kind of house. Adora wakes up in a lush, comfortable bed that’s almost a struggle to get out of. She wanders into the kitchen and finds Catra rummaging through the cupboards. She is much older than she is now; she looks almost thirty.
“I was wondering when you were going to get up,” she says amiably. “You’re getting old, taking afternoon naps like this.”
“Where are we?” Adora asks, voice full of suspicion.
“We’re at home, Adora. Our home.”
“We don’t have a home,” Adora says. Catra laughs.
“But we can. This can be ours, Adora.” She walks over and grabs Adora by the waist, spinning them around in a kind of dance and pinning Adora against the counter. She leans forward and presses her lips to Adora’s jaw. “We won, Adora. The princesses are dead. The rebellion has been defeated. All of this is ours, now.”
Adora shakes her head. “No. That’s not right. Hordak wouldn’t stop. He wouldn’t let us… he wouldn’t let this happen.”
“But it did,” Catra says, pulling back and giving Adora a smile that is almost… tender. “This is our future, Adora. This is what we can have if you stay.” Catra kisses her, holding Adora close, and for one moment Adora lets herself sink into it. Sink into this life that can never be, this domesticity that she had never even let herself imagine. This home that was theirs, this life that was theirs together. For one moment, Adora lets herself have it.
Then she pulls away.
“This would never happen. Even if I stayed.”
“It could. ” Catra is almost pleading. “You think I’m the one who needs redemption but it’s you. You’re the one who needs to be saved, Adora.”
“It’s not right,” Adora says, cupping Catra’s cheek.
“It’s the only thing that is. You and me, together. What’s not right about that?”
Adora fights back the tears threatening to spill. “This was never ours, Catra. It never could be.”
“Stay,” Catra whispers. “Stay with me.”
Adora lets a sob escape. “You were never real,” she says. “This isn’t you. You’re a figment of my mind, Catra. You would never be happy like this.”
“I can be happy with you.”
Adora looks around at the home around her. “I think I understand,” she says. “I think I understand why I keep dreaming you.”
“Adora --”
Adora leans in and kisses her. “This is my goodbye, Catra. I’m not sorry I left, but I’m sorry I couldn’t make you see why.”
One last kiss, because she is greedy. One last kiss and then she pushes Catra away.
“You were a gift to myself. I thought you were a nightmare, but you’re not.” She smiles. “Maybe I can’t save everyone, but I can damn well try. And if you get in my way…” She kisses Catra’s cheek. “I’ll take you out.”
“I don’t think you could,” Catra says.
“Please don’t make me find out,” Adora tells her.
She turns to go and Catra reaches out to grab her hand. “Why won’t you ever just stay?”
Adora’s smile is sad. “Why won’t you ever come with?”
Catra snarls. "I'll kill you. You know that, right?"
Adora shakes her head. "We created each other. But I won't lose to you."
Bow smiles at her the next morning. “You look refreshed. Did your nightmares stop?”
Adora doesn’t bother to tell him that they weren’t nightmares. Instead she just loops her arm through his, wrapping her other arm around Glimmer.
“Do you want to know something?” She says confidently. “We’re going to win.”
For the first time in a while, a smile spreads across Glimmer’s face. “Yeah,” she says. “We are.”
Bow lets out a whoop. “Yes! The Best Friend Squad is going to win!”
Glimmer lets out a laugh and Adora knows she made the right choice.
(In the Fright Zone, Catra wakes with a scream, images of a home and a kiss and Adora leaving her behind again fresh in her mind. She wipes her tears and gets out of bed. She hasn’t slept properly in weeks.)