Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Oh darling, that performance was to die for!”

Standing at the far end of the room Adora rolls her tired eyes, a small smile breaking on her face at what once would’ve been a slathering of vicious sarcasm from the life of the party. Now the words bounce around the room echoing with genuine joy, the kind that came with a secure sense of belonging denied to so many sitting around the fireside laughing along with Double Trouble. 

Hmm, Adora shakes her head before leaning it against the nearest tent pole, who knew that all they really wanted was a home, too. Or in this case a captive audience. Guess money can’t buy everything.

Tonight’s party is courtesy of some of Bright Moon’s farmers and it goes on for miles, hillsides lit up with campfires and decorated in starlight as the surviving Etherians from all lands dance and sing to escape their wounds- both physical and emotional- if only for a brief and fleeting moment. Faint music hits Adora’s ears even from within the clothed pink walls of the tent and the clashing sounds of strings, flutes and horns quiets the burden of worry she’s carried in her heart from the second she limped off that spaceship and back onto the solid ground of the planet. When she breathes in, the scent of roasting meats and vegetables parried with smoking sweets engulfs her senses and her mouth waters. It doesn’t really matter that she’s stuffed herself and is burping the taste of Perfuma’s famous grilled asparagus and whatever kind of mystery cake Rogelio made that tasted suspiciously like ration bars. The hunger in her is never satisfied. Never. But, if Adora can indulge herself on anything, it’s the joy this party brings her and the warmth it leaves her with.

It won’t stay. It won’t last. But if there’s any moment worth being in the now for, worth immersing herself fully in the present for, it’s this one. 

“Uh, thanks I guess?” Kyle, ever the stranger to praise, rubs his neck as his scene partner sends another wink his way.

“Anytime, love!” Double Trouble sings out with a clasp of their hands, “Okay, who’s next? Small blond boy couldn’t beat me, but I bet one of you novices can surely best my abilities! C’mon, no one? I mean I am a champion-”

Adora watches as Mermista downs her drink in one go, pushes Sea Hawk off her lap with a strong umph! and stands at present, leaving Sea Hawk to rub his butt at her feet. “I’ll go! I’ve never told any of you this, but when I was nine I was in the Salineas Theatre troupe and I killed it as Dolphin #3!” 

“Princess, please! Save it for the stage! Now now, behind the curtain!” Double Trouble twirls their finger, gesturing Mermista out the flap door and Perfuma breaks away from giggling with Scorpia to shout out they have three minutes.

The party may stretch over the hills and into the Etherian horizon, but the only place worth being is right where Adora is now. A game has broken out among them as Rebellion and Horde, enemies and friends alike have gathered by invitation of Queen Glimmer to eat dinner and lose themselves in reckless frivolity. Besides, it’s not like those alliances of good and evil have any meaning now; no, the war left the ground for the skies and with it the fragile structures that defined Etheria. And so, the citizens did what was best for everyone by example of their de facto leaders of the Rebellion and the Horde set for them. Adora had no idea that coming together to stop the facist rule of Horde Prime would mean Sea Hawk would be singing sea shanties arm in arm with a seriously tipsy Lonnie, or Scorpia sharing a dessert plate with Perfuma, but after countless brawls and battles she wasn’t about to complain about the change of pace. At some point in the evening after dinner was long forgotten and desert was becoming a passing thought, Frosta- being the kind of cocky that came with being twelve- bet Double Trouble a whole gold piece they couldn’t fool the rest of the gang with an impression of her and money hungry eyes lit up all around the room. 

Double Trouble was good, Adora has to give them that. It stings her pride to a certain degree to watch someone use the same skills they had used to tear one of her most important relationships apart like it was a piece of paper to entertain and captivate all her friends. Oh get over yourself Adora. A harsher part of her silences that petty resentment. They’d all messed up, they all had done wrong, and if the “bad guys” didn’t get a second chance at being someone beyond the confines war, then there was no point in the “good guys” getting one either. Razz had always said that She Ra’s duty wasn’t to a side, wasn’t to alliance or allegiance, but to them- the people in this room, the people celebrating victory in spite of heavy grief all over the fields of Bright Moon. All of them. And Adora had to let go of her unbecoming animosity towards those like Double Trouble so she could be the She Ra they all deserved.

“Time,” Perfuma shouts out and Adora is ripped from the stray musings of her thoughts.

Where one Mermista and one Double Trouble walked out, now two Mermistas step into the tent and a definite, maybe slightly forced hush falls over the room. Adora rolls her eyes once more and sighs, fighting a smile as she curls her thin pink shawl- one of Castaspella’s presents- around her arms tighter. “Okay, so remember the rules,” Scorpia starts, summoning an air of gentle authority “no saying mean things about the person or anyone in the room, no secret signals and make sure the impressions are tasteful. Huh, tasteful, kinda like this pastry I’m eating here- what is in this, is it cinnamon-”

“Can we start?” one of the Mermista’s flails her arms about and stares with determination at Scorpia.

“Three more minutes on the clock!” Scorpia, mouth full of pastry, shouts out and Perfuma giggles, leaning into her shoulder. Adora’s heart aches against her healing ribs as she catches the brief, casual intimacy between the two of them and she forces herself to look somewhere else in the room. Anywhere else in the room. “Go!”

“My name is Mermista, and I am the epic, beautiful Princess of Salineas-” the Mermista on the left flings her hair back over her shoulder and starts off just before the Mermista on her left can stomp her foot and pick right up.

“I control the oceans and like, everything in them and that kinda makes me the most important Princess in Etheria, so-” 

From the front of the audience on the grass where she lies, Frosta gives her a thumbs down and yells “Boo!”

  A couple grunts from Rogelio, who lies next to her with a snout covered in barbeque sauce, and Frosta’s shoulders fall. “Right, no heckling. Sorry.”

“Scorpia forgot to mention that as a rule,” Entrapta’s loud whispers echo off the tent walls as she pops another tiny cupcake from her mountain of miniscule food into her mouth, “is this a presumed thing or must each rule be established at the beginning of each round? And if each rule is not established, does that disqualify Double Trouble?”

“Guys, we already had this conversation when they did me! No more heckling! I’m not cleaning up anymore thrown fizzy beverages tonight.” Bow reiterates with a yawn, sending a wave of agreement through the rest of them. Adora bites her teeth into her lip despite the protest of pain from her healing jaw at the sight of her best friends cuddled up in Bow’s sleeping bag near the radiating warmth of the campfire. Envy joins the ache in her heart like an old familiar friend; Glimmer looks the most peaceful Adora’s maybe ever seen her resting against Bow’s steady shoulders, her heavy eyelids struggling to stay open. Tonight her crown is gone and safe in throne room under the watch of her reunited parents. Tonight, she’s free of her duties as Queen. Tonight, she has one last chance to be young and free before the work of rebuilding the future begins. 

“Uh, can we please get back to what we were doing?” drawls one Mermista, gazing at her fingernails and rolling her eyes. 

“Yeah, I’m not done showing all of you losers up.” the other gestures with her finger over the crowd. 

“Oh, I fear this may be too much,” squeals Sea Hawk, hiccuping booze at a volume that sends Spinerella backing up into the arms of her wife, and throwing his head back, he bemoans “I cannot tell the two apart. What kind of man does this make me? Am I good enough for Mermista even if I can’t even pick her apart from an imposter?!”

“Calm down, drama queen!” Lonnie shouts and a hefty whack! reverberates through the tent. 

“Who said you were good enough for me anyway, Sea Hawk?” smirks one Mermista.

“Ohhhhh…” Scorpia trails off as Perfuma gasps, hand over her mouth. In tandem, Bow and Adora roll their eyes in good faith. 

But such a stark statement gets Sea Hawk off his butt and onto his knees, shaking an accusatory finger in the direction of the Mermista who dared to usurp their off and on again relationship. “That one, that one is the imposter of my dear Mermista! See, I told you all I could tell them apart!”

“Actually, you just said you couldn’t-”

“Shut up, Kyle!” Whack!

“But I have succeeded in telling them apart! And that makes me,” Sea Hawk takes a deep breath, pulling a child’s accordion from out of nowhere, and it is only by the good grace of one of the Mermistas that they are all spared from drunken, lovesick, operatic two keys off and ten minutes too long. 

“Oh are you sure about that Sea Hawk? Because if you get this wrong, I am dumping you so hard.”she leans forward, her arms crossed and confidence written on her expression, sending Sea Hawk wailing into the grass like a spazzy and forlorn elemental.

“Gross,” Frosta declares. She scoots back away from him and curls herself up into Rogelio’s wool blanket as if she’s found another perfect older sibling figure to add to her ever growing list of found family members. The young princess always had a knack for that. That, and creating potential friends out of would be potential enemies. 

“I think this is the closest we’ve ever had,” muses Scorpia.

“I believe this is the worst we’ve ever had!” wails Sea Hawk.

“Uh, oh my gods Sea Hawk. You’re like, straight up embarrassing me right now.” the Mermistas both lean their heads back and say together, right before flying right back up to gawk at each other for their timing. Whatever one is Double Trouble- the left one- is sure having a run for their money. Who thought Mermista would even be good at this? She’s as drunk as Sea Hawk! Oh, that’s why she’s so good at this.

Perfuma giggles again and the ache in Adora’s heart grows with each beat as she watches Pefuma’s hand come to rest on Scorpia’s pincer. “Woah… Scorpia, what do you think?”

Okay, Adora decides with a defeated sigh, I think that’s enough. As much as she loves her friends- both new and old- there’s only so much their antics she can take on four staggered hours of sleep. In her opinion the game piqued with Double Trouble’s impression- sorry, performance- of Kyle; between the ex-Horde cadet tripping over his own feet and Double Trouble’s practically perfect voice breaks that had Lonnie laughing so hard spiked fizzy beverage came out her nose, Adora would’ve voted that as the best place to stop. But it was hardly her right to rob them of joy when her thoughtless actions almost cost them everything they knew. And because... there was something else calling to her. Something beyond the walls of the tent. So Adora backs out and lets them continue with their arguing, their competition, let them stay safe in the arms of the ones they love. The sounds of their collective amusement filter out of the tent as she opens the flap and walks into the cool night air. 

Although she is pulled just a few steps further, Adora makes herself stop if only just for a moment. She wants to take in the view of the brilliant night sky, to drink in its power and its beauty and to let it silence the hunger raging inside her for one or two beats of her aching heart. Her bare feet tickled by the soft grass, Adora throws her head up with abandon and makes another childish attempt to count, to map and to memorize the millions upon millions of individual lights dancing across the never ending dark blue canvas. 

I brought those back. The thought is a double edged sword and it pierces her soul just as brutally as the sight of a sky full of stars. Adora’s breathes in through her nose trying to hold onto the sensations that surround her here on the ground; if she fails to ground herself right here and now she’ll be lost to the memory of the raging and violent power the Heart of Etheria tore through her very molecules for a whole lasting lifetime with. And she’ll be reminded not just of pain that came with raw power, but of the mistakes she made with it, of the lives she cost and ruined, of the blood soaked into the skin of her hands. 

Adora gets lucky. As for right now, the gravity of her destiny and the gravity of the worlds she brought into preview are simply not a worthy contestant for the gravity tugging her at her heart. She pulls the shawl around her to protect her from the chill in the air, takes a deep breath and then a few steps forward to close the infinite distance.

Her breath catches in her throat just as she approaches the center of her universe, leaving Adora stranded without words. Oh great, now I’m out here and I’m totally chickening out! I can’t- I can’t think of anything to say to her. Way to look like a total idiot. Adora’s never been good at this part, never been good at explaining what she feels and why; if she was good at this, if this was a potential skill from She Ra, she never would’ve lost Glimmer to Shadow Weaver’s poisonous positions of power or to the Heart. She never would’ve lost Entrapta to the Horde or Beast Island. And she never would’ve lost what she was standing in front now, trying so hard to come home to. 

Maybe this was a bad idea. No, this was for sure a bad idea. A terrible idea. I just didn’t want to be in that stupid party without her! I should, you know what, I’m just gonna go back inside and hopefully she’ll never know I was out here-

“Are you really gonna just stand there and not say anything?” Catra’s words shatter her shame into shards of glass, her silhouette unmoving against the starry backdrop except a few flicks of her left ear. Right. The whole superior hearing thing. Gods, Adora could be so stupid sometimes.

“I just-” Adora stops herself when her words come back to her scared and frightened. No. That’s not what she wanted to be for the person in front of her. So she takes another breath, another step, and tries again by steeling herself and her voice, “I just wanted to see how you were doing. That’s- that’s all.”

Glimmer was right. Adora is a terrible actress.

Catra’s right ear flicks again and the ache trembles in Adora’s chest. She wished, gods she pleaded, for the right to remember what that little tick of hers meant. But it had been so long since they ran side by side unbeknownst to the paths they were running toward, and how those paths would split them apart in the cruelest way, so Adora doesn’t remember. But she wishes she does.

There comes a point where Adora can fight her desire to no longer, just a helpless star pulled toward the center of everything, and she settles near Catra. Crossing her feet under her, Adora waits for Catra to respond as she stares at Catra’s empty dinner plate that rests atop the bolder the ex-Horde Force Captain leans upon. 

She ate. That’s good. That’s- that’s really good. 

“M’fine.” Catra whispers into the crook of her arm. She says that a lot lately, almost as if she’s an old First Ones Hologram caught on tragic repeat. Adora thinks- guesses- that it’s because it’s just easier to say than to reveal the truth that Catra carries, that weighs her whole body down. Catra’s always been the kind to wear a mask; whether it was a piece of scrap metal that so beautifully fit her face, an outfit that framed her striking figure and disguised the breaking woman underneath, the lies of composure that left her bloodied tongue with practiced ease. Of course Catra’s not “fine.” No expects her to be after what happened on Horde Prime’s ship, after the lights went out and came back in a blazing rage of gold. Catra shouldn’t be fine after that. 

But Adora doesn’t need her to be. 

“Mmm.” Adora nods.

“Just needed some air.” adds Catra, her claw dragging into the uneven surface of her impromptu table.

“Me too.” 

“What, Double Trouble’s performances not living up to their hype?” A smile breaks on Catra’s tired face and she turns her gaze away from the starlight to gaze at Adora. 

Suppressing a giggle, Adora shakes her head, “Oh no, how come you haven’t talked them up more? They’ve absolutely stole the show in there, like without anyone asking them too. I knew they were good, but I think they may be too good.” she winks as Catra’s small smile turns into genuine laughter that fills her ears like music more beautiful than anything that’s being played on the hills. It’s strange, though. To be back in a place where her sarcastic quips aren’t another tactic to distract Catra on the battlefield. Adora, desperate as she is to know what they are since enemies they are no longer, struggles still not to push the other woman, struggles to break the habit of getting a rise out of her just so her guard comes down for a fatal second. 

Fatal. Grimacing, her fingers burl deeper into her shawl. I shouldn’t use that word. Don’t go there Adora. Not tonight, if you can.

Catra’s laughter fades and Adora watches as a for a split second, her smile does too. Just the sight is a stab in Adora’s side. Turning back away from her, Catra resumes tracing the edges of the rock, handing off a heavy silence off to Adora she’s not quite sure how to juggle or alleviate. There’s a thousand things she wants to say, messages to pass on, thoughts she possessed that she would’ve killed to share with Catra when they were apart. How could all those pent up words and feelings just betray her now by walking out on her when they needed them the most? How could she be so bad at this?

“I am not a weapon!” her shrill, shaking voice had screamed at Light Hope as she hung on desperately to the bare, unraveling thread that was becoming consciousness. Funny, since all Adora was ever good for was breaking things when she needed to fix them.

Adora’s lack of insight is not the only thing that betrays her in that moment. Her eyes, no longer persuaded in getting drunk off starlight, has nowhere left to fall but the bandages peeking out to taunt her from a small window of Catra’s tunic (Horde Prime’s blade tore the sleeved Horde uniform to shreds, condemning the fiber to a state of crimson permanence; a symbolic end. The memory of bringing new clothes, made by the hand of a Bright Moon seamstress by order of the Queen, to Catra’s bedside lived fresh in Adora’s mind. She could still remember the feel of material as she laid them down: a charcoal colored tunic, a golden belt- much like the one Adora wore, the seamstress must’ve been low on inspiration- and soft maroon leggings. No shoes. No mask.) and she swallows- hard- but makes no move to look away. Over and over and over, Adora has tried to imagine the pain from the wound, to muster up the sensation of injury. Over and over and over, she falls so completely short.

“How’s this?” Adora reaches out without thinking, poking the escaping bandage with her finger and Catra yelps. 

Her fur flying on end, she swats Adora’s hand away and squeaks loud enough for the whole party hear, “Don’t touch it!” 

“Sorry! Sorry-” Adora begins to flail as Catra covers the wound with both her hands, an unamused scowl on her face. “I- that was stupid, I shouldn’t have-”

“Gods, Adora, I’m never gonna heal at this rate. Are you always so stupid when it comes medicinal practice?” Her words themselves have a naturally mean bite, but there’s no menace in her voice, no cruelty in her tone despite the obvious pain Adora just inflicted.

“Hmm,” she smiles and sighs, leaning back on her ankles, reassessing her previous nerves. Old patterns have begun to emerge between them, old patterns Adora thought she would never get to be apart of ever again. Yes, her fears of never truly knowing Catra haunt her in the depths of night as she paces and panics- sleep evaded her and she evaded it for reasons her friends for once understood, having witnessed the same horrors Adora relives every time her eyes close- yes, what was between them was unnamed, delicate like a wound and tender like a bruise, but something between them was coming alive again. A spark burnt out and blown away reignited by the pressure of a shared enemy and the confines of a space warcraft.   

It was never going to be what it was, what Adora and Catra had, never again. The war had seen to that. Even in this very moment Adora struggles to accept that knowledge, only pushed forward by the desire to create something new that is equally important and just as equally beautiful. The universe has given Adora a second chance with Catra, a chance to do better than she did the first time around. A second chance that the Princess of Power will not make a careless mess of. Not when so much is at stake. 

Because like Etheria thought to be lost forever to the cosmos and stranded in the empty dimension Despondos, Adora is so lost without Catra. But Etheria has returned to its rightful place, its home, and she has returned to hers.

A ruffling noise startles her train of thought, and when Adora looks back up, a quiet slip of laughter escapes her lips. Her home is currently scratching the back of her head with her leg with furious speed, digging into her teeth with a claw to remove a piece of food at the same time. Wow, she snickers loud enough for a ear to twitch in recognition and Catra’s split eyes send her a sideways glare. At least she’s feeling well enough to do- well, that. “Uh huh, laugh it up Adora. But which one of us is flexible enough to put her leg behind her head again? Oh yeah, me, Princess Muscles Are My Defining Trait.”

“I’m not laughing-” Adora giggles, then snorts when Catra thwacks Adora’s leg with the swish of her tail. 

“It’s this stupid pin thing Glimmer put in my hair!” growls Catra, her leg settling down. She gestures with a clawed finger to the back of her wild mane to the golden flower holding the unruly strands of hair- the ones usually held back by her old mask- back. The same golden pin that held Adora’s hair that night in Frosta’s glacier palace as she danced with jealousy and lust and betrayal. The same golden pin that saved her skin, that kept her hanging to the cliff as Catra laid her unsheathed claws with a taunting gentleness over the skin of her unconscious friends.

Up until now, Adora has had no premonitions of how the pin made it from her desk in her room at the Bright Moon Castle to the back of Catra’s hair. All she was aware of when she walked back into her room doing her best to stay awake as she listened to Bow rate and list all of his trick arrows was that there was going to be a party that night, the first of many Bright Moon would be having since the retreat of Horde Prime, and that despite her own personal, selfish wishes, Catra was not about to let “a minor stab wound”- it was not minor and wound was an understatement- keep her from attending. Considering the magnitude of the Catra’s sacrifice at the feet of the facist madman, no one was about to argue that she needed to stay still in bed while everyone indulged in fun, especially since she’d been able to walk for several days now and the mention of a party was the only time anyone that wasn’t Adora had seen her smile. 

“Ta-dah!” Glimmer, tips of her fingers sparkling purple, had announced when Adora and Bow walked unsuspecting into the room and Catra was standing next to the Queen, bandage and body dressed for a night beyond the castle’s walls. “I present to you, Party Catra! Look, look what I did!” 

“Ow, easy, Queen Sparkles-” grimaced Catra as Glimmer turned her around and Adora took an instinctive, protective step forward. 

“Oh right, sorry!” Glimmer winced, hands flying off Catra’s body before Adora could make any reckless moves. “So, what do you guys think?”

“Uh, what’s different, exactly?” Bow, almost afraid of his words as he spoke them, had mustered up the courage to ask. Glimmer’s patchwork of a friendship with the person who had been, up until three weeks ago, her sworn enemy was perhaps the strangest and most perplexing turn of the “end” the war. Not unlike watching Kyle acquire Mer-Mystery recommendations from Mermista yet somehow a page out of a completely different novel, the solidarity Glimmer and Catra shared seemed so beyond Adora and Bow’s grasps. Afterall, they were not in that cell on Horde Prime’s ship. How the two leaders could go from tearing each other’s hair out with claws and sparkles galore, from ripping the people they loved out of eachothers lives, to Catra joining Glimmer for afternoon tea once she was well enough and Glimmer doing her hair for a party was like having assimilated to darkness only to blink and open your eyes to a new bright sunlight. 

“I did her hair!” 

Yeah, Adora remembered thinking with a certain air of shameful bitterness, that’s the least you can do considering what she did for you. But she had shoved that thought deep down in the recesses of her mind and hoped it withered there where it belonged, for the sake of her duties and for the sake of her friendships. And instead of choosing to dwell, Adora brought her line of sight back to the other two woman and took Catra in, her breath and heart catching almost painfully.

“You… you did?”

“She looks beautiful,” the words broke away from Adora’s tongue before her mind could process them, and in the blink of an eye, three pairs of eyes are staring wide at her and the cold heat of embarrassment was washing through her blood and turning her cheeks pink. Oh no. Oh noooo.    

Glimmer, a cocky grin blossoming on her face, locked eyes with Bow. “Well then, I dare say my work here is done. Let’s go party, Bow!”

"Milady,” Bow, apparently in on the ultimate betrayal of the Best Friend Squad, winked in Adora’s general direction and extended his arm. Had- had they been plotting this? Orchestrating it like some kind of child’s game behind her back?

“Mi’lord.” Glimmer took it without skipping a beat.

Or worse, had they seen an opportunity to capitalize on and left Adora to the pits of her feelings- and the woman her feelings where for- arm in arm in state of the kind of jovial amour that kept slipping from her shaking fingers?

Adora could only watch as they practically skipped out of the room, giggling wickedly, leaving her to the awkwardness she created and entangled herself in out of her own stupidity and the wild, treacherous beating of her heart.

Split eyes caught wandering ocean ones, and teasing grin broke out on Catra’s face. “Beautiful, Princess? Really?”

“Shut up.” Adora had scoffed, whirling around to avoid the cloying claws of her self consciousness, to wait a few eternal seconds before following Bow and Glimmer, only to feel padded fur meet her palm as Catra intertwined her fingers with Adora’s.

It was enough to give Adora the strength needed to tear her gaze away from the floor, to see Catra’s teasing was only that- teasing, and to find her standing at her side with no shame in the expression of her face or body. Squeezing Adora’s hand, Catra had said, “C’mon, take me to this party, would ya? I wanna see what all the fuss is about.”

Now the sting of regret pokes and prods Adora’s stomach as she sits next to Catra in the embers of the party the other woman wanted nothing more in the world to see, to be apart of. Adora watches as Catra’s shoulders sink with the familiar weight of exhaustion and notices at the same time that the light so blaring and bright earlier that night, earlier in her room when she asked to be accompanied, in her eyes has dimmed and faded. Maybe it was too soon, again Adora glances beyond her better judgment to the soft cotton on Catra’s chest not hidden well enough, maybe I pushed her beyond her limits. I mean not me- her, I didn’t even want this party to even be happening until she was completely healed but no one would listen to me! But... I could’ve been a better date. That was in my control. I could’ve kept a better eye on her so I’d know that she was getting tired or that she was in pain. Was Catra in pain? Could Adora ask that? I just didn’t want to crowd her or be clingy! 

And I don’t want to crowd her now. One part of her steadies its resolves while the other grabs her by the shoulders, shakes and screams in her face, then why did you come out here, you idiot?

“I know you princesses have that thing about accepting everyone and all,” Catra’s voice suspends any notion of Adora’s self pity in its tracks, and once again she is a planet pulled back into Catra’s orbit. There is nothing out here in the universe that is them beyond the words that come next, “but I don’t think they’re coming around.” Her split gaze stays glued to the surface of the rock, but her right ear betrays her, flickering back towards the tent behind them and Adora wonders for a moment if someone round kicked her heart.

Pulling the shawl tighter around her arms, Adora steels herself as she asks, “What do you mean?”

“I shouldn’t have come tonight. It was a mistake for you to bring me.” Catra explains. There is no fluctuation in her voice, no bitter pain or harsh resolve. Just a stale surrender into defeat.

And Adora won’t stand for it. Not for one second.

“No it wasn’t!” She insists, the volume of her voice getting away from her faster than she can make a move to control it, “You have just as much of a right to be in there as everyone else! Catra… do you really think you haven’t earned their trust after what you did? For them… for me?”   

Something in the way she phrases her question triggers the sharp pain in her healing jaw, as if the memory her words brings is stored in her scar and not her mind where it should be, and Adora’s hand flies to the throbbing ache.

Catra whirls around, teeth bared and droplets of tears form in her split eyes, and the throb in Adora’s jaw pulses unforgivingly.“It’s not about that, Adora! You think I don’t see the way they act around me? You think I don’t notice how Scorpia always stays at the other end of the room from me or- or that Entrapta flinches when we make eye contact or that the only person who wants me there isn’t even the two-faced mercenary I hired but the person I was held captive with?! Who, by the way, is too busy making googly eyes at Bow to notice that I’m standing in the center of the room by myself!” 

In a violent wave of motions, a sob escapes Catra’s lips and she rips out the pin from her hair before Adora can make any steps to stop her. It sits there, in the tight grip of her shaking hand, as Catra holds back tears, unable to let herself move for fear of tearing open her wound. Repentance is a cruel medicine, and it has torn through the other woman’s psyche faster than any sharpened blade every could. Adora has watched every night and every day as Catra struggles under the weight of actions committed voluntarily, flounders within her guilt at a loss for how to make her wrongs into rights, isolates herself behind the knowledge that there is an ever growing list of things she did but can’t fix. Apologies are nothing without changed behavior, Adora knows this better than any living soul, but change is a passive process and one that is not achieved easily at the whim of mandated bed rest.

Adora has watched Catra every night and every day since returning from the skies because Catra is not the only sinner in this story. And as Catra is torn to pieces by her inability to achieve her atonement (it would help if she could move, to go see the people she is literally dying to apologize too but not even Glimmer can convince those unnamed individuals that there is genuine growth behind the apology to go to med bay), Adora is torn by a ravaging desire to fix the situation, and the suffocating knowledge that it is not hers to fix. So she stands by and watches, does her best to learn and decipher the moments where Catra needs her. The moments where Catra wants her. 

Sitting here in the grass watching Catra hold back waves of emotion so deep they come from an ocean that would drown Adora if she ever dared to swim in it, Adora is caught again. Caught up in hesitation, caught up in naturally selfish thoughts like “You don’t think I wanted you here tonight? That I wanted to be with you?” caught up in that worry that this is a moment wherein Catra does not need or want her. 

“Catra…” she whispers as response, moved into action out of fear that Catra will hurt herself if she does not speak. Adora’s hand comes to rest on the other woman’s wrist, and her fingers squeeze into muscle without permission. Physical contact. A sign of unspoken support that Adora has learned over the past few weeks is something that helps Catra feel seen in her pain and not torn away from it for the sake of someone else’s guilty excuses. The tips of her fingers linger before Adora traces that light, soft fur until she has found the pin quivering in Catra’s grip of iron. As the stars engulf them and the party continues without them, Adora covers Catra’s hand with her own, guides it with forgiveness to the edge of her aching jaw. The pin drops to the ground. 

Catra lets out a tormented sigh just as Adora’s fingers intertwine with her own, just before their hands reach the deep scratches kissing the edge of her face. When Catra squeezes her hand and takes in a real deep breath, then another and another and another, Adora knows that she has succeeded in doing her part to help Catra calm down. Catra must do the rest of the work. However, Adora has no plans to abandon her to the confusing emotional landscape of her tortured and tired soul. It might not be much, but it is definitely not too much, to sit here with her under the vast night sky and to be with her as she navigates new mindful territory.

Now if only the ability to preserve the atmosphere and not ruin it so characteristically by opening her big mouth was a celestial one gifted to her by the stars.   

A few minutes go by in the blink of an eye while they sit there hand in hand. Adora chews her lip, hoping the dark masks enough of her face and that Catra won’t notice the frantic desperation in her expression, hopes the shadows of nearby fires will mask her shame of not knowing what to say. Her never ending appetite for perfection damages her strides and improvement in speaking to heal and not to hurt, and her embarrassment at not being perfect but also at wanting to be perfect runs so deep it lives within the very core of her alien being. Adora is so paralyzed by fear she worries she might sit beside Catra in silence as the world passes them by, but when split eyes look up from their locked fingers and meet ocean ones, the words spill past the edge of her lips because thinking has never truly been Adora’s forte. “I don’t know what to say- about the party and about- about Scorpia and Entrapta and Glimmer.” As much as shame floors her in the next couple of seconds at the realization that she has not stopped speaking or mumbling on like a complete idiot, Adora experiences a brief flicker of hope at the recognition she has not tried to take responsibility. Well for every moving piece that is. “I did kind of leave you alone ‘cause I… I just thought you might have wanted to spend time with someone else since it’s just been me like 24/7. Sorry… about that.”

Catra scoffs, a small smile dancing on her lips. “Anyone ever tell you your actually getting better at apologizing?”

“No,” laughs Adora, “but your constructive criticism over the past few weeks has helped a lot.” Constructive criticism, or throwing projectiles in fits of rage because Bright Moon sedatives are no match for Catra’s unresolved issues with Adora, or collapsing into Adora’s arms as sobs wrack her body because words, even when they’re “I’m so sorry,” could never dream of rewriting the past when they are barely enough to promise a future. 

“Glad I could be of use for something. ” for a brief moment, the self deprecation eclipses her face and her expression falls. The ache in Adora’s heart grows as she watches, scrambling for something to say that isn’t the epitome of selfish penance and once again her only move is to squeeze the hand that hold hers.

Catra speaks before Adora can. “I just thought… when the war was won- over- that the party would be… I dunno, more fun?”

Fun like the party in the Crimson Waste where you held me prisoner? Oh Adora doesn’t dare say that; the guilt comes as a side effect of the memory and Adora can see the pain in the way Catra brings her knees closer to her body and her gaze skirts away. Instead of pouring gasoline on the fire, she smiles and rubs Catra’s thumb upwards against the grain of fur, adding in agreement “Yeah, no, it’s pretty lame in there. I get that it’s probably the best they can do right now, but I always pictured something more haughty and in grand hall or ballroom and not… a bunch of tents and Swift Wind hitting me in the face repeatedly with his tail during a game of charades.” And personally, I always wanted something… something with dancing.

“You didn’t enjoy that? ‘Cause I enjoyed watching you get hit.” Catra snorts, a wicked little grin on her face, and Adora rolls her eyes. She didn’t know Catra had been around for that part. She had figured- hoped- she had made her quiet exit before Adora ended up in the dirt flat on her back with a mouthful of horsehair. Oh well. At least her gross demise was enough to make Catra smile in the midst of her smothering pain. 

“Of course you did.” 

Adora’s annoyance is enough to keep Catra cackling for about half a minute, and in that thirty second space of time the Princess of Power indulges in her quiet, asphyxiating hunger to take in the other woman, to memorize her as she has tried so many times to memorize the newly birthed stars that now watch over them. As the seconds pass and Catra’s fading laughter guides them right back into the previous silence, Adora charts the stars in the two different universes that are her split eyes, in her smile that has so seldom shown its beauty since the war waged a battle on their relationship and her soul, in the freckles kissing her face. A heat pools in Adora’s stomach when her thoughts turn from the stars of her freckles to the selfish daydream where she is a part of their universe, her lips caressing the feel of her cheek and fingers tracing the uncharted territory of her jaw. 

Adora wonders if this makes her a greedy voyeur, to think thoughts like this and to stare at Catra when she is not looking, when the language of her body shows that she wishes to be invisible because she harbors fears she is not worthy. (Adora only knows this, is only aware of this because she sees herself in the shattered mirror that is Catra.) Shadow Weaver’s weaponized wisdom had been that it was rude to stare and Adora had better close her mouth, put her head down and mind her business, lest she come to meet an unfortunate fate. But Adora has been stealing glimpses like this for weeks now; she simply can’t deny herself the view after having a taste just as she can’t stop the shameful thoughts that accompany dreaming selfish things. 

She wonders, in that quiet calm moment, if the Etherians who wandered the planet when Mara stranded them and paid the price of their survival in stars were still here would feel when she brought the celestial balls of energy back to their skies. She wonders if they would stare at what they had lost, what they had missed in the darkest and most emptiest of nights, and if they could ever stop staring.

Because Adora spends most of her free time at Catra’s bedside, she spends most of that time staring, mapping, memorizing, relearning what she had forgotten. Yes, Adora has a long list of duties- to the princesses, to the soldiers, to the civilians- as both herself and as She Ra, but if she is being honest herself, Adora would say her first duty is there at Catra’s bedside, staring as Catra’s tail flicked back and forth while she chose a card to put down in the game they were playing. 

Catra’s lonely, the thought flickers in Adora’s head like a tiny flame gasping for air. Catra’s lonely because only Glimmer and me come to see her, and we’re both so busy all the time so it’s basically nothing. The tiny flame burns up and through Adora’s chest, turning the ache in her heart into a smoking anger. She knows- yes, she’s been made aware- of the terrible and unforgivable things Catra did when she was left to the devices of her own explosive emotions back in the Horde, and no Adora won’t justify the hurt Catra caused by making excuses, but would it kill Scorpia or Lonnie to stop by? For just a hello… or a definitive goodbye?

Because it had almost killed Adora to have come back to the med bay to tell Catra that Lonnie politely declined that and any future invitations to see her and Scorpia saw a homemade “get well” card to carry the same weight as a personal visit. 

“I understand.” Catra’s head had dropped when Adora handed her the card, her eyes glossing over and her body falling limp back to her bed 

“This isn’t because she doesn’t want to see you,” Lie. “She’s just- she’s busy with all the post-war stuff the Princess Alliance is doing-” Lie.

“I said,” Catra emphasized as the paper crumpled under the grip of her fingers, “I understand.”   

Adora had thought Catra would destroy the card, that she would tear it to shreds in a silent moment under the increasing weight of her loneliness, but it stayed upright by her bedside in the medical tent, still there everytime Adora came back to see her. Weeks went by and the card remained at her bedside table, the only remnant left of an old friend turned stranger in Catra’s increasingly small world. 

And now here Catra sits, rejected on sight by her former friends and the Princess Alliance alike, her sacrifice for Queen Glimmer and actions defending them on Horde Prime’s ship flukes that did not fall in line with her unchanging, abhorrent personality and not worthy of the group’s hospitality in any shape or form. The price of Catra’s life was not expensive enough to buy their trust or their loyalty and Adora might’ve have understood where they were coming from had she not met a different person on the ship, had not come to befriend and love that person who so still intrinsically the person she’d loved before. To this point Adora had been content to lead by example with Glimmer by her side, making a case for Catra by extending her own trust and patience, wishing on the stars that greeted her every night that Princess Alliance and Horde Members alike could cast aside their convictions and see the broken parts for the whole. 

Now the party has brought Adora conclusive proof that her methods are not working.

Maybe they just need time. Adora holds to that thought like a skinny thread and hopes it will not break or unravel under the strain of rumination. Maybe I should try telling her that.

“You know,” Adora starts, doing her best to force a nonchalant sound, and Catra’s tail swishes as she looks up, “I’m sure that Scorpia will come around with time. They all will. I mean, if I did-” and you tasered me, ruined my back, manipulated me, imprisoned me, threw me over to Hordak, beat me up in an alternative reality, electrocuted me like Shadow Weaver and on multiple occasions kidnapped my friends, “then I don’t see why they can’t either.” 

Catra scoffs, “I think it’s safe to say you’re an outlier, Princess. Besides, Scorpia feels at home with you guys and I don’t want to threaten that. I… I want her to be happy. Even if she doesn’t, you know, ever wanna see me again, at least she has new friends who treat her right… and that flower princess.”    

“Hmm, who knows? Perfuma’s all positive influence and positive energy, so Scorpia might come around faster. I mean, they do spend a lot of time together.” Adora tells her, leaning back on her free hand. This Adora only knows from proximity. Perfuma and Scorpia’s blossoming relationship, however a blissful development, is one of the many things besides Adora’s duties and her quests for triumph over trauma that keeps her at arm’s length from the others. Watching the two princesses interact is like pressing down on a bruise just to evocate the painful emotions within.

Seems there is never a time where the sight of Scorpia does not turn Adora’s blue eyes green.

“Oh yeah, they’re totally gonna bang.”

“Catra!”

“Ugh, spare me your false sense of modesty, Adora. You know it, I know it, everyone in that tent knows it. And pfft, they’re not the only ones! Little ice princess in there was the only person who did not have a boner for some other bozo in that room, obviously. Her and Swift Wind, who has like, a weird horse boner for himself.”

Adora’s face has turned as red as the Black Garnet. A weird, uncomfortable cocktail of embarrassment and arousal replaces the blood in Adora’s veins with pure, adulterated feelings as images of horse boners- belgh- collides with her own curiosity about the curves and bends of that particular universe she sits in the orbital energy of in now, and it’s all she can do to stutter past her own dirty thoughts “Catra- Catra, get your mind out of the gutter!”

“Aww,” Catra purrs, excerbarating Adora’s blush, “did Bow and Glimmer not give you The Talk?”

“Are you kidding?” Adora’s stutters turn to scoffs and shudders, “Did you see the way they were looking at each other? I’m gonna have to give them the Talk.”

“Mmm, good luck with that, Princess.” Sharpened claws tease calloused skin, and a spark flies up through the veins in Adora’s hand. The sensation scares her heart into the deepest recesses of her ribcage, as though it is hiding from the mere enormity of her feelings for Catra, yet Adora sighs in surrender. This feeling is not an enemy on the battlefield she can punch and kick and beat. This feeling cannot be defeated by the swing of a sword. This feeling cannot be defeated at all. The hunger that aches within Adora begs for more of Catra’s touch, for the feel of claws trailing old wounds and healed scars and lips trailing the most vulnerable parts of her neck, for more of her, but the hunger Catra herself instilled is washed away by Adora’s will in the moment. Having practiced pushing past the hunger, Adora steadies herself in seconds. Her yearning is not what she wants to focus on now, despite Catra’s mention of sexual tension among members of the party. 

No, she’s caught up in the feel of Catra on her skin because it means Catra is here. Catra is real. She’s breathing, she’s smiling, she’s laughing. Every moment since the lights went out and came back on of Catra speaking, screaming, sobbing is a physical reminder that Adora brought back the most important entity in her entire galaxy and that that entity is burning brighter every day like a sun that refuses to be silent. And the hunger Adora suffers is a distant worry compared to the reality that the other half of her soul is in front of her, the reality that no longer is there anything that stands in between them. There is no longer anything that keeps them apart. 

Adora throws her head back, laughing. Laughing at Catra’s joke about Glimmer and Bow or about that fact that they fought a war and it didn’t tear them apart beyond repair, she doesn’t know. It’s a truth the universe keeps hidden from her as she pulls Catra’s hand closer to her beating heart, eyes absorbing the celestial light, and whispers a quiet but true declaration “This is nice.”   

“It’s weird, is what it is.” Catra remarks, her right ear twitching, “Being in Bright Moon and not trying to destroy it is weird. Is there always this much music playing when you’re not being fired at?”

Oh.

“Not usually. That’s- that’s a party thing.” Adora does her best to swallow any feelings of hurt pride that follows in the footsteps of Catra’s words. She pushes past the lingering disappointment that her presence does not carry the same weight in Catra’s life as Catra’s does in hers with the best of her stubborn ability. To ask that Catra exchange her attention for the things she’s been denied her whole life to give that same attention to Adora might be her most selfish request and that’s saying something. She’s been racking up a heavy tab of selfish requests lately. 

“Party thing... “ she fades off, “Isn’t it weird that we never had music in the Fright Zone? Like, none at all?”

Adora’s eyes widen, “I guess- I guess I never thought about it.” I never thought about a lot of things when we were in the Horde. 

“I kinda remember older cadets singing when we were little, but the- the stuff you make music on, what are they called-” Adora raises an eyebrow unable to give her the word she chases after. Just because the year she spent with the Rebellion has given her an impressive leg up on what’s what and what wasn’t, does not mean her conditioned lack of knowledge, courtesy of the Fright Zone, has not stalked her like it stalks Catra now, “-C’mon you know! The funny looking things you blow into and snap your fingers on.” Catra gestures back to the sound coming from the hills with an air of with an air of frustration, her tail flicking impatiently and her ears flattening soft against her head. “You mean... instruments?”

“Yeah, instruments!” she nods, “Those… those are new. Newish. Weren’t there fancy ones at Frosta’s- you know what, nevermind.” Catra drops the sentence and the feverish excitement with which she speaks all at once. Hanging her head down, she spends a few lonely seconds in combat against her guilt before the ache in Adora’s heart forces her hand. Now was not one of those times they needed to make room so that the past could be in their present, was not one of those times when they needed to their actions committed during the war needed to be out in the honest open. Too many times had those discussions ended in a brutal exchange of words that sent them back to their lonely corners of the world licking their wounds only to return to each other the next day, apologies already formed on their lips. Too many times had those conversations ended in an exhausted plight of tears and snot that made the once strong and distant Horde Soldiers vulnerable and defenseless, even in each other’s arms and in each other’s beds.

“Do you,” Adora knows she needs to steer Catra away from this downward spiral, know she needs to salvage this party as a joyful experience for the both of them, but she does not know why she inches closer in the grass until her knees bump Catra’s; all that’s to blame is gravity, “do you like them? The instruments?”

“Eh, they’re okay. Some people with ‘em are truly terrible, it’s honestly the most entertaining part of the party.” As Catra speaks, the ghost of a smile on her lips forming on her lips, and it’s the prettiest thing Adora’s seen all night. “But weirdly it hasn’t gotten annoying yet.”

“Well you left the tent before Sea Hawk could pull out his baby accordion, so,” replies Adora and Catra throws her head back cackling.

“Pfft, no one else left after that?” her laughter turns to squeaks, ears lying down, and she wipes away a spare tear from her blue eye. Adora’s heart skips a beat as she looks on, wondering how she has known Catra for almost all twenty years of her life, yet lately it feels like she falls for her every twenty seconds. 

“Surprisingly no,” Adora clicks her tongue, “it became this big thing and Swifty started singing along and then Bow had to join in to make it a performance. Plus they’re all drunk off that purple stuff Perfuma brought-” and each other “so it was so loud, oh my Gods, Catra. I’m surprised all of Bright Moon hasn’t chased out with pitchforks! I almost chased them out with pitchforks, for the First One’s sake.”

Hugging her chest, Catra hiccups laughing “Wow, guess my decision to leave wasn’t totally a bad idea.”

“You didn’t miss anything.” Adora waves her off, her words about to betray her, “I’m just hitting myself for not leaving earlier.”

“Oh.” Catra’s voice drops, “Good to know my company is at least better than theirs.” her voice is filled to the brim with self-loathing, leaking bitterness and resentment designed to the last cutting edge chase Adora away. Catra’s body deflates in a familiar way; the sparse confidence taken by force that she had the Horde has been purged from her body- literally- and all she’s been left with is a pendulum that swings so chaotically and unforgivingly between a rotting self hatred and a childlike wonder. But since walking out of the tent and coming to Catra’s side, confidence has returned to Adora. Where once she saw herself as so unprepared and unworthy to help this other woman, saw herself as a newborn foal just learning to walk only to stumble, crash, make a mess of things, she remembers in this moment on the other side of Catra’s words how the past weeks of relearning her has taught her a valuable perspective, and she feels prepared for this. She feels worthy.  

“It is.” Adora says with no hesitation. Yes, she may not have meant to imply that escaping to her side only brought her freedom from drunken ballads of exaggerated tales from the battlefield, but there is a part in her psyche that is finally beginning to grasp that Catra’s reaction is not in her field of control. And beyond that, there is an even smaller part of her gasping for air that is okay with that. 

Catra’s ears perk up slow, curious yet determined to scout any danger Adora might present. For a few beats of Adora’s heart, Catra stares at her with wide, vulnerable eyes that search for hidden traps and double meanings. Adora wills herself to be as transparent as the new Etherian sky and waits out this test in a painful, patient silence. Then, Catra squeezes her hand in surrender. “You’re really not sick of me yet, Princess?”

This question hits so hard Adora swears she hears a crack in her ribcage. Definitely does she feel it. How can I be sick of you when we spent a year apart? How can I be sick of you when you saved my life and Glimmer’s and Bow’s up there on Prime’s ship? When you saved everyone by bringing She Ra back? How can I be sick of you when I’m pretty sure even after everything that happened you’re still my best friend and I think…more? “No, I don’t think I am. Are you… are you sick of me?”

“Of course I’m not, duh. What kind of stupid question is that, Adora?”

“Oh.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Biting back a smile that Adora knows Catra would call “dorky,” Adora lets her eyes wander to keep them from revealing the bright burning that has become her truth inside her to the edges of the party that travels up and down the soft green hills. No need to be too transparent. 

Campfires have dwindled to embers and the children, once energetic and spirited, have returned to the safety of the parents. Some have fallen asleep in their protective arms. Gone is the lively frivolity and joyous celebration; peaceful calm has laid itself over the valley like gentle blanket. Adora can still hear the voices of Double Trouble and Frosta, can still hear the protests of Netossa and Rogelio, the bostroisous drunken melodies of Sea Hawk and Swift Wind. Yet her heart is not pulled to the pink tent, but wanders in search of a more heavenly sound: the instruments Catra brought up moments earlier. 

Adora’s swells when she catches pretty notes of the Plumerian flute traveling along the wind, the strumming of an Elberon guitar following the sound. The songs of the Etherians have not fallen asleep with the rest of the party, rather they stand on protective guard, singing precious lullabies as if they were ancient prayers. 

Music. Stars. Catra. Three things Adora never had before the war.

Just the realization is enough to spark the ache in her heart, to make her face her fears for the sake of her wishes. Because at any moment she can lose these precious, beautiful things that have come into her life; with Horde Prime having declared his work to be far from over, Adora knows tomorrow is far from a given. So she really only has now, to satisfy her hunger and to be selfish. The dawn of something else is coming and that knowledge alone makes her brave enough, for just one or two beats of her aching heart, to seize the moment back from fear and to give it to someone she cares for more than anything in the universe. Adora turns to Catra. “So,” she starts, her voice a shaky embarrassment, “this is gonna be a weird question, but can I ask you something?”  

“Huh?” Catra makes a face.

“And before I ask it, I want you to know you can totally say no if you don’t want too or if you’re not feeling well enough of course, I would understand and I don’t want to push you to do something you’re uncomfortable with-”

“Adora,” Catra squeezes her hand and interrupts her rambling, “just ask me, I’m not gonna bite your head off.”

“...Do you want to dance with me?”

Catra’s ears fly right up and her split eyes widen to the size of saucers. “Are you serious?”

“Well,” stutters Adora. Regret slams her chest like Catra’s kicked her chest and slammed her on the back, just when Adora thought they were out of the woods with that particular nasty sentiment. It’s not a place she ever wanted to be back in. But what should she have expected asking such an idiotic question. Not in any universe could Catra fathom being in her embrace, not after an eternity spent at the end of her blade, and nothing in the past weeks has changed that reality, of course. Nothing that happened on the ship out of desperation did either. Adora has an answer now, she can stop wasting time and wasting space in her brain dedicated to a child’s fantasy. They’re not children. And Catra does not want her. Not the way Adora wants her. 

Wow, I’m such an idiot.

But then something shifts. The constellations change. Catra, rendered to wobbling and robbed of her spritely movements by Prime’s blade, struggles to stand but she does to the best of her abilities, holding tightly to Adora’s hand and pulling her up alongside.

Dumbfounded, Adora’s mouth hangs open. “What?”

“You said you wanted to dance,” whispers Catra, her eyes falling to the grass beneath their bare feet, her arms falling around Adora’s neck, “this is me saying yes.”

“Oh- oh. ” Yeah. Idiot. Realizing her childish wish has led her to the edge of this, and that now she has to put her hands on Catra’s frame- her hips to be exact and just the thought is enough to make all in energy in Adora’s body combust into pure stardust- Adora lets Castaspella’s shawl fall to the earth. Adora is careful that her shaking fingers don’t brush bandages or scrape scars. She takes a deep breath and a step closer, hands on Catra’s hips, and commits to swaying gently to the music swelling in the hills.

“Don’t think anything of it, okay?” Catra’s whispers into her neck, a need so apparent in her voice that it’s like something Adora has to promise her. Adora, thick as she might be, thinks- hopes- this might not because this a rejection of the way their bodies and souls move together, but that Catra cannot give herself fully to it because she believes she is not worthy of it.

But to Adora, she is worthy. She always was. Even in her darkness, Catra never ceased to be worthy. She has just lost herself along the way. Adora will wait until she has found herself and worth once more and prays this dance on the bare grass brings her a step closer to coming home.

“Why,” Adora laughs a little, “because this doesn’t mean you like me?”

“I do like you.”

Well that’s progress.

Adora allows herself to savor those words for a few steps of their feet, a few beats of the drum. Afterall, twenty years she has waited in Catra’s mysterious ways for those three words to be uttered, to be meant. She couldn’t even speak them in an alternate reality of her own making. But now… they must mean something. 

They mean something has changed between them, and for the first time, it’s for the better.

“I like you, too.” Adora’s hand leaves Catra’s hip and finds the claws that rest gently against the back of her neck. Delicately, she weaves her fingers with Catra’s, extending their arms and guiding their feet as the melody behind them crescendos into a beautiful cascade, as if it’s the only sound in the universe and it’s being played for the two of them and the two of them alone. 

Their dance is different this time around. It’s not just that they’re on a farmer’s spare land in Bright Moon instead of formal icy terrain, or that there is no black tie affair, or that there is no grand scheme being plotted against the dance as a whole. Less moving parts surround Adora and Catra. Not as many friends or guests or princesses or enemies. Feelings of betrayal and anger and spite have turned to dust in the wake of their reunion and as their toes touch dirt, knees bump together, and split eyes meet ocean ones, not even the dust of those harboured, hard feelings can cloud the light that takes their place. The light of hope and trust. 

And love. 

The pin they’ve both worn on two separate occasions lies on the ground near their feet and Adora guides them away so neither of them will step on it’s sharpened point. Behind them, the music changes. Goodbye to the gentle lullabies of slow and gentle pacce. Hello to folksy and triumphant beat that flies over the hills and meets their dancing bodies in the valley. 

Catra’s laughter joins the new sparkling melody and she swings herself up on her toes, pushing their arms out and in as she pulls away she before kissing Adora’s forehead. A gesture Adora has known only once before, but Catra’s hand the connotations are so much different. This kiss is a promise, not a goodbye, a renewal of old but not yet broken vow that they are in this together, forever and always so long as the stars continue to burn. This is amazing, Adora thinks as Catra throws up her hand and twirls Adora’s, the stars and planets of the universes in her eyes dancing along with them, this is ours. 

Coming out of the twirl and colliding with Catra’s chest, Adora tries to speak around the way she’s trying to catch her breath, “Someone’s having fun,” she teases, enjoying to the fullest the way Catra grins up at her. In that fleeting moment, Adora is torn by the urge to run her fingers through the soft gray tufts that adorn the sides of Catra’s head, regrown in her comatose and healing state, yet she cannot bring herself to drop Catra’s hand just for a physical pleasure.

“Yeah, well, someone might’ve had a good idea.” Catra returns the tease with a wink. Giggling, Adora’s falls back onto her knowledge of? physics, waits for another swell in the music, and with a small hop spins Catra out the length of her arm. I’ve been waiting to do that since Princess Prom. Catra yelps when she’s pulled back into Adora’s gravity, her back against Adora’s chest before their arms untwist and Catra’s feet catch the grass, her breath catching in her throat. Now if they could only be this close, unhindered and vulnerable, for the rest of their lives. Adora could live with that.

“I’m not hurting you, am I?” Adora is compelled to ask when she sees Catra winces in the slightest and stumbles just a little as she falls back into her arms. Their feet resume the waltz they’ve invented just for this precious moment as Adora mentally takes a knife to her careless romantic ambition. Okay, swinging Catra around like a sword wasn’t the best idea when her healing was still a progressing state. Maybe dancing wasn’t either. Leave it to Adora to get so caught up in her joy she forgets the pain of others. Typical.

But Catra brushes her off, continuing to move her body almost recklessly despite the presence of pain, “Only when you step on my feet, you clutz. I don’t remember you being so bad at this.”   

“Oh,” Adora sighs in relief, her forehead knocking Catra’s. “sorry about that.”

“S’fine.” Catra looks up and grins. 

Echoing beats of the drum direct the movement of their bodies against each other. As the strings take on an otherworldly sound, short lived touches are stolen, meant to hold over starving souls like an oasis of water in the desert land. Catra brushes up against Adora with no hesitation or fear in her unbridled motions, and Adora revels selfishly in the feel of her soft downy fur on her exposed skin as she breathes in the comforting scent of her dance partner. A scent of cinnamon from the pastries at the party- Catra’s favorite- and smoke ingrained from a life spent in an exoskeleton of moving mechanical parts. It’s everything perfect about Catra that Adora loves. It’s everything about Catra that Adora came so close to losing.  

The music changes. Adora falls for Catra again. Okay, focus on your feet. Focus on your feet. Focus on your feet, you can do this “ Adora?”

“Huh?” 

“You- you okay?” inquires Catra, lacing her fingers with Adora’s once again as if it's the safest place in the cosmos. She purrs, the quiet vibration of her vocal chords a perfect harmony to the new melody introduced by the musicians of sweet chimes and strings.

“Yeah, yeah, just trying to focus-” on not hurting you “on, you know, the dance.”

Catra laughs under her breath. With the hand that is free, she guides her fingers down the incline of Adora’s jaw, pausing when her claws arrive the deep cuts that rest there long free of any bandaging. Adora watches her face, watches the flicker of shame in her multicolored irises that turns in a blink to a smoldering anger as they continue to sway to the slow tempo that has now joined them. Because Adora knows the deep, black rotting rage that threatens to poison her soul like the back of her hand, because Adora knows she has a responsibility to show Catra that that anger is not? a healing force, but a destructive one. She places her own hand over Catra’s and presses their foreheads together. A quiet promise, but a promise none the less. 

I’m here. I’m okay. And I’m not going anywhere. 

“How’s this?” Catra whispers. Her voice is haunted and hoarse. 

“Um, it’s…” Adora’s words fade away as she tries to manifest memories of the pain to give Catra an accurate yet calming affirmation. But as she tries to move past the healing magic that numbs her face, as she tries to grasp at a sentence that conveys assurity, the feel of Catra’s hand on her wound guides her body to another memory. One that threatens to swallow her, steal the sound of the music out of the air, and take Catra from her again. “It’s…”

“Go, Adora!” shouts Catra, the sounds of a Prime clone falling to the cold metal that is floor breaking concentration as her old enemy comes flying from behind her head and onto the assailant’s shoulders. The force of Catra’s body is enough to take the young clone down and it is enough to make sure it doesn’t get back up. “I’ve got Glimmer’s back, but you need to get up there!”

“I can’t-” Adora tries to protest, interrupted as another clone charged at Catra’s open back and she drops to the floor, swinging her leg out to catch the flimsy limbs before they can fire a single blast from their weapon. Jumping on instinct, Catra moves out of the line of fire, flipping back as Adora takes the clone out. “I can’t face Prime. Not without-”

“Adora, for the last time, you don’t need She Ra! We don’t need She Ra!”  Catra’s catapults off her hand in a wind of grace as her feet kick out the attacking clone coming for Adora’s throat and she lands on her feet in front of the former princess. Adora catches the look in her eye, her elbow colliding with the Prime defect coming up from behind her, and swallows. Claws dig into the fabric of her shoulders, Catra looking at her and smiling, “We need you.”

“I can’t do it, Catra. I’m- I’m not strong enough! We need another plan, one where-” Adora starts but doesn’t finish.

Catra’s fist flies past her head, just missing the strands of her hair, right into nasty flesh of a clone Adora sees a second too late. But it doesn’t matter. For the first time in over a year, the playing field has evened, and Catra’s got her six. For the first time in over a year, they’re fighting side by side, on the same side. “Adora, I didn’t get my ass kicked by you every day in the Horde for you to waste our time thinking you’re not stronger than She Ra. How many times did She Ra beat me in a fight?”

“Uh, what is that supposed to mean-” WHAM. Adora yanks a laser pistol from the iron grip of a comatose clone and fires it over Catra’s shoulder, hitting one straight in it’s extra eye. Like a ripple effect, it stumbles onto the body of the next and the next, till the whole swarm of them is falling left and right off the unguarded edges of the platform.

“Now how many times did Adora?” Catra’s words hang heavy in the tense air but Adora’s mind can’t form an answer. Instead, her fingers tangle in the hair that now falls free of any binding and she looks around in an ever encompassing panic. Every inch of the ship, every level, is the marching ground of Prime’s disposable and deadly army, and it’s only the four of them to hold these mindless soldiers off while the rest of the Princess Alliance is spread farse and thin over the remaining armada battleships. Glimmer’s battle cry echoes throughout the synthesized gravity, matched by the fierce roar of Horde Prime himself. An arrow soars across the station and behind it a rope. Bow is making his way to Glimmer’s aid. They’re following through with Catra’s plan. 

And Adora is here, a hero stripped of her power like an angel stripped of her wings, frozen in a catonic state of fear and paralyzed by the stakes at hand. She can’t, she can’t do it. She can’t face Prime in hand to hand combat. Not when he has decimated Hordak in the blink of an eye, not when he as an army that can obey orders he doesn’t even speak. Not with the sword in shatters, it’s pieces left carelessly about in the War Room back in the Bright Moon Castle. With She Ra she had more power than she could ever dream of holding in her hand; all she ever wanted to do with it was help her friends.

Without She Ra… she’s just Adora. She understands that now. She’s just Adora. She’s just... powerless and thoughtless and… and weak.

“Bow’s not gonna have very long to disable Prime’s network and you need to be there to take that son of a bitch down when the lights go off. You’re only gonna have seconds, you have to go Adora! Bow and Glimmer need you!” Catra grabs Adora by her shoulders, claws digging deep into fabric, and shakes her, the strength and confidence in her voice failing her as she looks up at her, an unknown flicker of vulnerability and want in her split eyes. “I need you, Adora.”

You do? Adora’s heart skips a beat. For the past rotation of Etheria’s moons Adora has strived and sacrificed to be the hero, the She Ra, her planet and people needed, if not for the forsaking of every truth and the only real love she’d known until she stumbled across the sword. For the past year, Adora learned everything and nothing for this moment. From the moment she tore Mara’s greatest sacrifice from the dirt like a whimsical child, all Adora ever wanted to be was good enough. Worthy enough.

And she had thought… she had planned, place all her cards on one bet, that taking down Hordak, then Horde Prime, and saving her friends would be the moment that proved her worth once and for all, that once the skies of this dimension were safe, she’d fall prey to her doubts every again. 

But it wasn’t. This is. Catra standing in front her, a look of wonder and hope and faith beyond what Adora had ever witnessed in her- in anybody- telling her that she is what they need, not She Ra for once, that’s everything. Everything she’s ever waited for. 

“I-okay. Get Glimmer’s six, I’ll go to Bow.” Adora nods. There is a newfound type of strength- type of power- running through her veins despite her beating fearful heart, given to her by Catra’s words. To Catra, She Ra was never the hero. She was the enemy, the entity, that ripped them apart and drove Catra to a state of mad purpose and power. Adora was Catra’s hero. Way before the superior strength or superior speed, way before the gifts of healing and light were granted to her by a stone in a sword. 

Adora was Catra’s world, and she was hers. And it is that thought- plus the dawning reality that off the confines of Etheria magical system that they chances of them all making it out of here were dwindling and dwindling fast- that strikes Adora’s nerves like lightening and forces her quick hand. Right as Catra begins to walk away from her, right before she can turn that walk into a run and then into a sprint, Adora grabs her by  the arm and desperately pulls her back into her embrace. 

“Adora, what are you doing-” but this confused question is stopped midway when Adora hands collide with her jawand her lips meet Catra’s in a move of reckless abandon. Adora doesn’t know what she’s doing by kissing Catra. Her fingers curling into wild curls held back by a metal mask, Adora doesn’t know what she’s doing standing there wasting precious time kissing Catra. All she knows as Catra’s lips reciprocate hers is that she’s been thinking about doing this for weeks after they came to rescue Glimmer from Prime’s grasp. All she knows as she stands there wasting precious time, the sounds of battle raging around them, is that they’re probably gonna die… and that Catra is kissing her back. 

Catra’s kissing her back, claws in Adora’s neck and in Adora’s hair, until neither of them can dare to breathe, like it’s the end of the world. Because it is. If they don’t succeed, it’s the end of everything.   

Every molecule is screaming at Adora not to let go, to never let go again because she had to fight not one but two wars to realize this was what she was fighting for, but tears prick her eyes as she realizes she can draw this brief moment of happiness out no longer. She has to win this war. For Etheria. For the Alliance. For them. 

“Go,” Adora whispers to Catra as she finally breaks away, hand cradling the one that rests on her cheek. “I’ll come back to you.”

Of all the promises Adora has made Catra, this one was made to be broken. 

“You better.” A confident and beautiful smile on her face, Catra backs away into a run and Adora stands, watching as she gets a speedy start and jumps off the ledge onto a rising platform. Adora stands and watches as the platform reaches the level where Glimmer holds off Prime with the magic her father has gifted her, Shadow Weaver’s shriveled husk of a body at their feet. Catra launches herself up, flips backwards through the air and lands Prime’s shoulders before the extended blade of his arm can fly upwards to catch her. 

Adora starts her running ascent when the screams of Prime reverberate through air, his clones faltering as Catra’s blows to the cords running through his head interrupts the command over his telepathy. Dodging a limping hoard of the pitiful creatures, Adora takes a running jump onto the next level, her flailing limbs meeting metal as her fingers manage to grab the ledge. She’s ready and swinging her legs to boast herself up, but a steady hand takes hers and is pulling her up before can make a next move. 

“Bow!” Once her feet have found ground, she runs into her friend’s arms.

“Where have you been? The plan started five minutes ago! What, were you and Catra making out?” 

When Adora doesn’t matter, when her face turns red for a reason other than the heat of the battle, Bow’s mouth drops open and his eyes widen twice their normal size. For someone so keen on making fun of her, he doesn’t catch the irony in his accusation the way he’s caught on to the chemistry that’s been annoying him for weeks on end. “Wait, really? That’s amazing- I’m so happy for you!”

“Bow? The plan to save the universe?” 

“Oh, right!” He unsheaths his quiver, Entrapta’s rigged arrow catching a glimmer of light like a precious jewel, and pulls out the rope he’s been using to navigate the many levels and platforms of the maze that is Prime’s gigantic ship. As Bow ties it around another arrow with a perfect knot, Adora counts the seconds by the beat of her heart, her traveling mind freed only from thoughts about Catra and Glimmer and the sounds of their struggling fight below her feet when he grabs her and encircles his arm around her waist. “Alright?” he asks, the arrow notched and string pulled taut, his target moving above them at a racing speed as if it is determined to be the most important hit of the master archer’s career, “Ready?” 

“Let’s end this.” Adora smiles. 

A swish sounds in her ear as the arrow flies above them and Adora’s heart flies into her mouth as she is lifted from the level and pulled into the ship’s atmosphere. As they soar through the air, Adora can’t help but let her eyes fall to where Catra and Glimmer hold off Prime and the armies that gather at his feet. Catra guards the Queen’s back during the creation of tired and sloppy spells, protecting her busy hands right before she can fire, an odd representation of the awkward friendship formed as cellmates. Hybrid and superior senses, along with an eye trained for survival, allow her to see any forceful blow delivered at Prime’s hand coming, and she eludes him like a trained dancer. For now.

Adora can see, every from elevated heights, his frustration mounting and his strikes losing grace faster than he can deliver them. “I thought I squashed the last of your annoying kind!” 

A blast of purple energy sends Prime teetering, tripping on his robes, right before he can land a hit on Catra’s moving body, right as Bow’s arrow finds it target and he and Adora are thrown on to the ship’s highest level. They land in a pile of limbs, wrestling to separate and stand before time runs out.

“He’s tired.” Adora, out of breath, says with her hands resting on her knees.

“I think we all are.” replies Bow.

“No,” wiping the sweat off her brow, she shakes her head, “Prime is losing his edge. So are the clones.”

“Then maybe we stand a chance.” Bow’s voice is too hopeful for his own good.

“Don’t underestimate him.” 

Giving her a curt nod, Bow raises his arrow once more, “I’m sending the signal to Glimmer. She’ll teleport up here and get you. You’re sure Catra can hold Prime off that long?”

“I dunno,” a deep dread fills every inch of Adora’s body, “it was her idea.”

“Then here goes nothing,” Bow mutter, taking a deep focused breath. Adora’s hand closes around her wrist, the phantom weight of where she used to carry the sword heavy enough to block the blood flow but not the painful sensation. Her breath falters. Everything rides on this. 

Bow releases his strained arm with immaculate, practiced precision, and the tension of the string sends the flare arrow flying through the time and space that surrounds them. As red sparks entrance the weak attention span of Prime’s most liable and defective clones, causing a break in the raging noises of chaos, Adora dares to peak over the edge and sees that it is not only the feral affront that is Prime’s army that has let their defensives down right as the arrow hit the other end of the ship in an explosive chain reaction.

The Queen’s magic faltering as her hope ascends, Glimmer looks up and away from the enemy to the red sparks signaling oncoming aid, and relieved smile breaks on her tired face, “Catra’s, that’s the flare! Bow and Adora, they made it-”

"Sparkles- Glimmer! Look out-”

It happens so fast. So brutally fast is Adora’s world torn away from her in the cruelest possible way. Prime’s violent roar echoes through the very fabric of the structure like the war cry of a slandered god,  just as bright purple lights fades and takes its protective, angelic strength away with it. In Glimmer’s moment of fleeting distraction, Adora is forced to stand in frozen horror as Prime sees his chance to squish out the life of the last piece standing in the way of him and eternal glory, his strike winding up and the light of his blade catching in the artificial light of space station. Adora is forced to stand in frozen as Catra sees it too.

“Catra!” Someone calls out her name- maybe Adora in desperation, maybe Bow in warning, maybe Glimmer in protest- but it’s too late. It’s an eternity too late. She’s made her decision. Prime’s blade  spares no mercy through her chest as it tearing through the skin and bone of her chest, but the ship is empty of Catra’s cries. Nothing more than the satisfied growl of cruel, pathetic man having slain his prey, having silenced forever the voice of someone who dared to placate the falsified ego of his glory. The brilliant stars in the separate universes of Catra’s split eyes widen one last desperate time as if they are screaming out all the pain and all the hurt for her because the scarlet dripping from her lips hs made peace with the weight of this irreversible choice. An infinite hell Adora is forced to watch her first friend and her last love die, the body and soul she cared for so deeply defiled violently by an unholy creature drunk on power, the brightest star in her known universe erased, abandoning her in deep and cutting darkness. The sickening sound of the emperor calling back his blade hits Adora’s ears, but it is not enough to save her from the black void that threatens to envelope her. Her screams cut through the atmosphere.

“No!”

Catra’s body drops to the floor and there is nothing Adora can do to have prevented any other outcome. The truth of this weighs heavy on her shoulders, the new and cruel sensation of grief suffocating her lungs and her heart.

A seeping crimson spreads beneath Catra’s unmoving form like a tragic halo, but for a heathen as savage and unforgiving as Horde Prime, her blood on his floor is not payment enough. Adora, her mind refusing to believe this more than a terrifying dream- she’ll wake up! she’ll wake up! she has to wake up!- crumbles into Bow’s arms, weighed down by shock and grief and denial, as the monster steps forward, a scowl brandished and his weapon dripping, and raises it to deliver the final blow before,

“Stay away from her!” Glimmer’s strangled cry is far way from Adora. The blast of magic fired from her hands is far away from the reality Adora won’t agree to. 

“They need our help,” Bow’s quiet voice resounds, but stifling sobs, Adora buries her face into neck as refusal to answer, a refusal to all of this! She didn’t ask for this! She didn’t ask for this destiny, this unrelenting burden of taking on an enemy of this stature, this pain! She didn’t ask for her best friend to die right before her eyes just after she gave up the only power in the cosmos that could bring her back! She didn’t ask for any of this!

“I- I- she’s gone-”

“Adora, we have to help Glimmer. We have to go to her.”

Adora is aware of the way his arm comes around her waist the way a child trapped in a nightmare knows there is a waking, although, the blood rushing through her ears and the beating of her heart that has become a vicious ache is a promise that there is no rising beyond this terror. Catra sacrificed herself. It’s the only real thought Adora can cling to as she clings to Bow, their bodies gliding down the rope to the platform. 

Catra sacrificed herself for Glimmer. For Bow. For me. For all of us. Adora tries to blink the tears away but they’re flying away from her as they speed to her deepest fear come to pass.  

By the time Bow throws his body in front of Adora’s so that she lands on him instead of the unforgiving floor, Glimmer is the only thing holding off Prime and what remains of his barbaric servants. Blast of purple and pink pulverize against blows of green and grey; the Queen, having accessed a kind of primal rage in her own unending and exhausted grief, charges forward with a strained battle cry. Her colors are brighter now. “You son of bitch!”

On her hands and knees, Adora swallows another round of tears and keeps herself anchored to the sound of Glimmer’s final siege. Her fingers curl into fists and it takes every whim of force within her being to keep breathing. Because Adora isn’t ready to see Catra’s dead body. Adora isn’t ready to see her chest not breathing and her eyes not blinking. She isn’t ready to see the wide eyed and spunky little girl who slept at the edge of her bed every night, cleaned her wounds after training, and passed away so many sunsets there of that rooftop with her just another casualty of this neverending war.

“Catra,” Adora’s voice is weak and foreign to her ears, Catra’s name on her lips an admittance of her ultimate and most unforgivable failure. Above, there sounds another distant explosion of magic and metal colliding, Glimmer grunting as her body falls to the floor. But she gets back up, spits the blood from her teeth and holds back out her staff because Glimmer is doing what Adora cannot; Glimmer does not wait for the warmth of Catra’s body to leave her before she thrusts herself into an avenging charge against her murderer, her own life be damned. She is doing what a queen would do.

  Bow comes to Adora’s side as she sucks in another vain attempt at a breath, too overcome by the rawness of loss and too deafened by the cacophony of batter above her. Maybe listening to Glimmer fight tooth and nail for their only small chance at survival is where Adora dies. She fades away here, with nothing left to live for. Adora dies here, having made it almost to the end, having almost won the cosmic battle for universal equilibrium, but when it comes down to it, nothing she ever did was enough. Not for the galaxy, not for Etheria, not for Catra, her almost ruined to a corpse only a few feet from her. Adora might not be a hero, but she can die next to one. 

“Adora, look!” In the end, it’s Bow who sees to it that she will not be dying here, and that she will not be dying today. He see that no more of them will. Pulling Adora forward by the elbow when a gasp of air escapes Catra’s mouth, he is quickly pushed away so that she can be by Catra’s side. If even for the last moments. 

Adora is moved to her side not by fear or by desperation, but by something beyond logic and something beyond emotion. She is pulled in by gravity and by the physics that demand she be by her other side. The staggered breath Catra takes in commands Adora to her. She comes to her aid despite the agony in her breaking every bone and straining the walls of her heart, cradles Catra’s head whispering soft empty affirmations. Their kiss from earlier, their promise to each other, seems a millenia old now. As the fabric of Adora’s clothes sucks up crimson, her free hand comes right to press with all the force she has on the wound in the center of Catra’s chest in an act of ill bargaining. Right below her heart. “Hey, Catra, I’m here, it’s gonna- it’s be okay-” Every word is a plea to keep the darkness at bay, to keep the light in her eyes. Stay with me. 

“Adora,” she coughs, red dripping from her chin and eyes falling back in her skull, “Adora.”

“I’m here, Catra.” Adora tastes salt on her lips as she speaks, “I got you. We got you. It’s gonna be okay, I-”

“Promise?” Catra finishes. The corner of her mouth curves up, shaking as the light in her eyes drains.

Adora nods, pressing her hand to Catra’s cheek, and her forehead to hers. Clawed fingers take her own where her hand presses down in a vain attempt to stop the bleeding and moves it with the last strength she possesses, like she is giving her permission to let go as Adora sobs. Let go, Catra tells her, it’s okay, squeezing her hand with the last of her strength. Adora's response is nothing but a hollow echo. But it means everything. 

“I promise.”

The darkness wins. Catra’s shaking hand steadies and her eyes fall back, reflecting the shape of the false sky of the spaceship that seems to go on for miles and miles, Adora’s tears hitting her face. Adora, hands shaking, removes the mask that crowns her head, stiffling a breath that is both a scream and a sob. The mask falls to the floor to rest in the pool of Catra’s life force. She’s gone. She’s really gone.  

Resting her forehead on Catra’s, Adora is reduced from a princess with all the power in the world to nothing more than human being suffering the permanent loss of love. Gone is the weight of saving the universe and saving every star in it. Gone is every heartbreak that has defined her for the last tormented year. Next to her, Bow whispers something, but the words settle in her ears before they are gone. Gone like She Ra. Gone like Catra. It’s just all gone. Like a light struck out in its brightest moment, everything in Adora is gone. 

Everything, except for the love she held for the woman who died in her arms.    

As Bow fires Entrapta’s arrow up towards the center of the ship, the one she designed to disable Prime’s basic network that connected everything on the ship- everything, including Prime and his clones- Adora is lost to a sea of memories so deep she starts to drown. Revenant images held deep inside her mind coming to her aid in her darkest hour. Like far away whispers of a dream, they bring an echoing moment of peace, warmth to the cold she holds in her arms.

A young girl, different from her and from the others. “A freak with ears and a tail!” A strange enigma of fun and silly, with a heart that refuses to be broken, a soul that refuses to be tamed, but wants to sit at the same table during lunch. Running young and careless and free, before Shadow Weaver put a target on one pupil’s back and a halo on the head of the other, Adora’s new friend Catra.

Hours in a constructed battlefield, wearing masks that tally scores. Backbreaking days pinning each other to right matts and facing each other armed with electrocuted staves. The training of two bright young soldiers into competitors instead of just friends. First and second place. Showers in the locker room and showers of red sparks. Tears cried in supply closets, bruises hidden, injuries downplayed. Because, “Admit it! You love being her favorite!”

Chopped bangs and undercuts. Stupid, silly pranks that end with “You better watch out for her, cadet!” Growth spurts that accompany an uncomfortable array of feelings. Sparring matches that become tinged with something more and late nights laughing with pauses that fall naturally, split eyes catching ocean ones. Rooftops rendezvous after fights and hurt feelings. 

“We’re gonna see the world!” A shiny badge that means everything and nothing. Missed trainings, stolen glances, dirty thoughts, scandalous dreams. But before them lay a future where they can be together, future Catra and Adora, as they sail through the unknown on the skiff. As it crashes into a tree and that future crashes too. A bright light and a sword. The awaiting call of destiny.

Two sides to the story, two sides to the war: the light and the dark. The gold and the red. Princess versus Horde Soldier- no, Horde Force Captain in a battle that will only end in pain. New friends, new allies, new enemies. A never ending series of foiled plans and poorly handled espionage. And somehow they always come together on the one place they were always meant to be together: the battlefield. Rising stakes. Lower blows. Sharpened words like sharpened knives thrust into vulnerable backs because, “I will never go with you!”

“I get it… if you don’t trust me.” Her head hung, Catra tells her from the other side of a prison cell. Admissions whispered in outer space where no one can hear them. Pieces of a long burned bridge rescued from the river and put back into place. Laughter over old stories, laughter over new ones. The rush of being together, of fighting together, without She Ra or the Horde to keep them apart. Unspoken chemistry. Hands brushing. Promises forged into vows during pre-battle pep talks. A rushed and desperate kiss that says everything they can’t say. A love killed, reborn amongst the stars.  “We don’t need She Ra, we need you. I need you.”

I need you too, Catra.

Bow’s arrow lands on its target. Prime lets out a deafening scream of excruciation, his army of thoughtless abominations collapsing at his feet and on platforms everywhere on the ship, as the lights flicker once, twice, and then they’re gone, abandoning them all to a deep darkness while every piece of machinery in the station falls victim to Entrapta’s impenetrable override code. Still, memories take precedent in Adora’s fracturing mind forcing out the pain- “Are you brain damaged? Oh please don’t be brain damaged!” “I don’t miss you!” “Hey, I’ve missed this. I’ve missed you.” “Promise you’ll come back in one piece, you dork.” “You better.”- love flowing through her once golden veins like ichor. Love she wears like an army. 

Does she dare try? Does she dare to say the very words that ripped them so brutally apart when it might do nothing at all? 

Glimmer cries out, her teleported being colliding with Bow’s in the dark. For a brief moment, the darkness is illuminated by purple glory, and Adora watches as a tear falls onto Catra’s unmoving face.

“For the honor of Grayskull.” 

It’s a quiet prayer that no one else in the cosmos hears. It is a declaration of hopelessness and an acceptance of that hopelessness. It is a shot in the dark that has overcome them, overcome her.

And then it’s golden.

Every memory of Catra is rotating in Adora’s mind; every smile, every laugh, every kick and scratch, every backstab and every apology, her chapped lips that tasted like smoke, her smile after they parted- all images gaining speed in Adora’s disintegrating consciousness until there is nothing left but Catra, and that’s when her stomach lurches in a familiar response. What? As if they are remembering the steps to an old forgotten dance, Adora’s arms begin to tingle with a frightening amount of power, her entire beginning to illuminate the black void they’ve been suspended in. Shock and disbelief hammering against her heart, she catches the surprised looks from Bow, Glimmer, and their enemy on his knees as her light grows brighter, and brighter, and brighter until…

Colors begin to escape her crimson covered hands, vibrant reds and purples, unforgiving yellows and greens, and her neck is thrown back by a force so ancient and eternal it’s as if the Heart has seized her body once more. This is not like the first time. This transformation is not like any time. The colors build, emitting pure power and energy that threatens to burst within her molecules, until the celestial wavelengths collide in a brilliant and blinding flash of light that sends those who remain alive back, clinging to the nearest solid surfaces and throwing their arms over  their eyes. And when they dare to uncover their eyes, left in Adora’s place is not a princess, but a goddess.

“Is that-”

“She Ra’s back!” Glimmer shouts out in joy.

There is no time for Adora to meander in surprise. There is no time to marvel at this victory and shout a prayer of gratitude. She doesn't even have to think about what needs to be done, or if she can even do it. No. Where normally there would be doubts and an affliction of anxiety, there is a unique strength and certainness given to her by her love for Catra. All her memories and affection are still summoned, beating against her ribcage in place of where her heart used to be. So, the celestial energy in her being wastes no time as another blinding golden glow appears, builds, burns and-

“Hnngg!”

Split eyes widen, reanimated by something more powerful than lightning, and Catra’s head rights itself as she sucks in a deep, painful breath, her claws squeezing deep into the hand of Adora’s that rest over her now closed wound.

“Catra!” Adora lets out a sob joy, squeezing her hand back. A cocky smile appears as if she never once doubted this impossible resurrection. 

“Hey Adora.” she whispers and Adora laughs in spite of herself. For once the famous greeting is not poisoned with malicious intent, but the proof of a promise unbroken.

“She’s okay!” Glimmer’s voice rings out, breaking their moment but it doesn’t what anyone else does for one second matter when Catra’s lungs rise and fall continuously in Adora’s hold. Running to where they stay together, Glimmer and Bow, in their excitement, let it escape their minds Catra’s wounded state as the tackle her in a move of unforeseen friendship.

“You scared us,” Bow tells her through tears that prick closed eyes.

“Ha! That’s an understatement,” laughs Glimmer when they pull away, the Queen taking her newest ally- and friend’s- hand as she takes a few staggered breaths.

"You bleeding heart types,” Catra smiles as she coughs, and Adora comes closer when she spits up blood, “are such suckers.”

Bow wipes tears from his eyes, “Yeah, that’s us. The bleeding hearts.”

Catra, her eyes rolling in a great contradiction to the grin on her face, catches Adora’s ocean gaze and lingers there for a few beats of the heart that pumps under the feel of She Ra’s hand.

“Uh guys,” Glimmer interrupts again, “Prime’s getting up. Ugh, that bastard! I thought Entrapta’s arrow would totally take him out!”

“It was only designed to buy us time until the rest of the Etherian Army got here. I was supposed to get a signal on my trackpad from Double Trouble when they breached orbit but-” Bow lowers his head, a look of hopelessness so unlike his usual demeanor clouding his face, before Glimmer’s gloved hand comes to rest on his. A brief second passes as they allow themselves to look into each other’s eyes, to be honest, to be open and vulnerable. To relish in the somber fact that this may be it. This may be their final stand together.

Catra squeezes Adora’s hand, claws curling around her fingers. The feel of her damp fur on Adora’s skin shocks her like cadet’s taser to the back. No! This isn’t it! I won’t let it be! Because in their darkest moment when they assumed all hope to be vacant and lost, Adora’s love for Catra brought She Ra back and now she breathes in the face of a mortal wound in the arms of a celestial. Beyond were they of the point of anything left to lose. So the army might not be at their doorstep to grant them the force needed to take the ship and to take them home. 

Adora’s love kept her from giving up then and it will keep her from succumbing to the same fate now. 

“I’ll take care of Prime,” her voice rings out with the confidence of a woman who is no longer striving to earn the title of hero, but has become one through the strength of love, and they all glance up her way “Glimmer, you stay with Catra. Bow, I need you to get on your tracker pad and find us a way home!”

“Got it.” Bow nods. A strong determination has replaced the defeat in his eyes. As he whips out his trackpad, Glimmer’s grip abandons Bow’s and lands on Adora’s hand, trapping her before she can go anywhere or make any rash decisions. And rash decisions the queen would know. Adora looks up and sees regret so potent on her tired face. If there is anyone on this ship that can’t afford another loss, another heartbreak plagued with grief, it’s Glimmer. 

“Are you sure about this?” 

Adora pauses and her gaze falters, looking back down to Catra. Nothing left to lose, her thoughts echo. “Ugh, please go beat the shit out of him for me before I die again.” Catra lets out in a hoarse whisper that interrupts their contemplation, the pained smile on her face growing. Her movements weak, she reaches out and lays a shaking hand on Adora’s cheek like it is the most natural thing in the cosmos. Adora’s- or She Ra’s- hand is there to meet her. The gesture resonates with a simple message: come back to me, you idiot.

“Woah, what happened between you two?” snickers Glimmer, slipping back into to the easy demeanor of teasing their chemistry like she and Bow had been doing to entertain themselves for last weeks, ignoring the aggravated roar of the pissed off warlord bellowing behind them. Three eyes slashed- oh his “aesthetic” was so ruined- and oozing emerald, left leg limping, Prime flashes his teeth as Adora catches his remaining good eye. Well, this wasn’t going to be much of a fight.

“Stay with her.” commands Adora. 

As Glimmer comes around to take Adora’s place propping Catra’s injured being up, Adora stands and begins a confident stride towards Horde Prime. She doesn’t look back. She doesn’t falter. No, she marches toward the monster that killed her best friend like it is only purpose to bring him to his weak knees. Naked she feels without the sword, untethered she is now that the first one’s control over her is gone, but it is time for Adora to embrace this lack of control, this raw power flowing through her veins channeled unto nothing but her molecules. It is time to rain down a fire of light upon this being of darkness. Chaos was now the master; not order.

“I didn’t know,” a sadistic smile on his bruised face, Horde Prime licks his lips, “that I was in the presence of a Master.”

“This ends now, Prime! The genocide, the enslavement, the wars you rage! I’ve come to put a stop to it! You will pay for the pain you have caused this universe and every world in it!” And you will pay for what you have done to my friends. For what you did to Catra.

Adora is ready for the way he launches at her. Ready for his sloppy swing, his frustrated groan, tripping over his once grateful feet. She, in a quite cat like move, dodges his blows- again and again and again- without breaking so much as a sweat on her brow. She Ra has the advantage. Because while Prime has been at the forefront of this battle for every unending moment, Adora has been strategically placed at the back for the sole purpose of saving her strength. That was Catra’s plan even before the reappearance of Princess of Power and her godlike abilities. Catra’s plan unwound him, stripped him clean of his defenses, and exposed the vulnerable flesh underneath the composed exoskeleton. All She Ra to do is deliver the final blow. And bringing a person back from the dead? Well, that did even leave her the least bit drained. 

The fight drags on. Every semblance of training Adora has ever absorbed in her twenty years comes back to her- every day in the Horde, every session with Light Hope, every hour with the Rebellion- it all comes back to aid in her in this critical moment that will determine the fate of the universe. All those fights with Catra, both by her side and against, returns to her psyche, granting her herculean form a type of grace. Guess they were for something after all.

Prime throws another punch. Adora blocks it. His blade swings. A blast of prismic light renders the metal to pure dust. Prime falters. She Ra takes the upper hand. 

Tired and burdened with the knowledge he is losing, he winds back once more, but Adora is first to the finish line. Her hands pulsate with power, and before she can blink, bright and pure violent light bursts from the line of her fingertips sending his body flying across the platform. The pathetic way he lands should be satisfying. A greedy king reduced to a writhing worm. But to Adora, this is not a satisfying sight. The fall of Horde Prime carried the weight of her destiny fulfilled. Catra proved that to Adora what feels like an eternity ago when she told Adora that she needed her, not She Ra. The sight of Prime- his edge having betrayed him, his empire catatonic, his superior body failing him- on the ground below, is nothing compared to the feel of Catra’s lips on hers. 

For a millenia, She Ra has been the saving grace that her planet called upon when evil shook its core. She came and bestowed her form and powers on a deserving but always scared young woman. She laid upon that woman a destiny so grand it was almost unbearable. A destiny of bringing peace where there was war, hope where there was fear, and darkness where there was light. Adora has carried that destiny from the moment it was cast upon her shoulders and believed that it was her own. But this- ending this reign of pain and cruelty and death that has threatened her home and her friends and her love- this is not She Ra’s destiny. 

It’s Adora’s.

“We don’t need She Ra. We need you.”

The words of her first and last love resounding like a melody in her mind, Adora lets She Ra go, lets her light fade, and returns to her meek human form. Then, she falls to her knees and stares down the cancerous center of hate that has defined the galaxy she takes her power from. 

"Adora, what are you doing?” She hears Glimmer cry out. “Finish him!”

“Guys, I almost got it- a signal! We’re getting you out of here, Catra!” Bow’s words resonate throughout the ship. They are the final permission for Adora to deliver Prime his last rites.

“It will not end. You kill me, it keeps coming. Order will always overtake chaos!” spits Prime as he struggles to lift himself on his elbows, struggles to take another breath.

“Maybe it keeps coming,” Adora whispers, looking her hands, “I’m actually pretty used that by now. See, I was born from an empire like this one, one that destroyed itself looking for power. My whole purpose has been to end that destruction, and if doesn’t end with you- if it keeps coming, then I am ready. We can take it! And you will be nothing more than a forgotten though in history, so long as I live.”

Green eyes meet blue ones. 

“You and I will both be remembered… the universe is not yet done with you,” he growls in his laughter, “She Ra.”

Bow’s yell echoes through the station, off the platforms and mountains of silenced clones, and Adora whirls around on one knee. “Guys, they’re here! Entrapta is overriding the overhead doors-”

Distracted, Adora isn’t aware of the hand reaching out one last pitiful attempt to strike, isn’t aware of the hit until the pain screams within the nerves of her face as claws dig and rip without mercy. She tastes the familiar essence of copper as a scream escapes her throat. Prime lacerates the skin all the way down to her jaw before raw and raging instinct takes over. It’s happening and then it isn’t.

“Adora,” she can hear Catra call out.

Her first land square in the center of his face, sending him back and rendering him just still body on the floor-

“Adora!” she can hear Catra cry out.

- Adora back aways in suspended state of shock and fury. She touches her hand to her jaw and cries out again. She gears up to take her bloodied hand and use it to end Prime where he lays, but Bow is calling her name, begging she leaves him where he lays before Entrapta sends the beam out-

“Adora!” she can hear Catra cry out.

- “It is not over.” mutters Prime before slipping into unconsciousness. He’s there and then he isn’t. 

“Adora!”

“Adora.”  

“What- huh?” Adora blinks, stranded in the space between her panicked breathing and her rapidly beating heart. Her eyes unfocus. Nothing- nothing is matching up. They were there, there were on his ship and he was dying and Catra wasn’t and- oh. Oh no. A deep sense of dread washes over her like a downpour of rain as she looks up, straight into the stars of two separate universes, and remembers she is not running, blood of her mouth and jaw dripping onto her clothes and metal surfaces, turning her back on the greatest evil the universe had ever known to the waiting arms of her injured and tired friends, but she is in the arms of her almost lover, barefoot in the spring grass of Etheria and dancing to the ethereal melodies that wind over the planet’s hill. On the ground lies her shawl, gifted to her by her best friend’s overbearing and spellbinding aunt, and the golden flower pin. A soft warm hand rests on her cheek. Adora leans into the touch. Because unlike her rapid firing memories and her untethered emotions, this is real. This is right.

“Welcome back,” Catra, her forehead resting on Adora’s, whispers. The princess’s heart constricts when she notices the touch of guilt in her words. No . Catra can’t carry the weight of Adora’s trauma, not when she has to carry her own. Catra can’t carry those memories- her death, her resurrection, Adora’s fight with Prime- and she can’t carry the way they haunt and torment Adora even in moments that are meant to be defined by joy. 

Suspended in shame, Adora stiffles a sob. Because this is what she sees every time she closes her eyes; not the smart, snarky, beautiful woman she loves so much it hurts , but her lifeless corpse destroyed by the blade of a power hungry man. There on the floor as her blood runs cold, Adora’s dreams are soured by the nightmares that her powers do not return, that Catra never takes that breath, that her sacrifice is all in vain. Prime’s last- they were his last, right?- words torment her already tormented soul, echoing as she cries over Catra’s dead body, “it is not over.”

Because regardless of whether or not Prime’s armada ever returns to their starry skies, by killing Catra, Adora and Prime’s conflict will never be over. She will continue to have to fight this mental image of him, his rage and hatred wiping out the light of the people she loves, so long as she lives. So long as she lives, someone will always remember Prime- in the middle of the night, in the unrelenting light of day- and in that, he was right. And that thought tears Adora atom by atom, when she sobs in her bed in the wake of the dawn resisting the urge to check on Catra in the med bay. 

“Hey,” Catra coaxes, a purr vibrating in her throat, “hey Adora, stay with me okay?”

“I lose. I lose you every time. ” Adora’s voice falters and she squeezes her eyes shut to rid herself of the tears. All this time spent away from the Horde, throwing off its traditions and values, and she still cannot cry in front of someone with the backlash of internal shame. 

“I know, Adora. But I’m here. I’m here because you were too stubborn to give up on me, okay?” nudging her head, Catra forces Adora’s eyes back open. She is hit with the smell of cinnamon and smoke and it makes her take a deep breath. And another. And another. And another. “Oh good, you still know how to breathe.”

The snark sneaking into her voice has Adora snorting despite her tears. “Yeah, yeah. I still know how to breathe.” Adora rolls her eyes. She still catches the relieved look on Catra’s face, and the way her mouth turns up in the slightest. “I-”

This start earns Adora the look. The look that is both a plead and a scorn, a message packed with the sentiment of “you better not be about to apologize because I swear to every Princess of this damn planet I will choke that apology out of you and stick the words “I’m sorry” so deep in your bangs it’ll bring your dumb little hairpoof back!” Disintegrating on her tongue, those exact words give up the ghost as she smiles, sniffling gross snot back. Adora keeps her mouth shut as per the threat even if the lack of an apology leaves with her with an itch she can’t scratch. Catra gives a little “hmmph” of victory and drapes her hands once more over Adora’s shoulders.

Well I have to say something! What does she expect me to do just stand here in silence and guilt and snot and not take some sort of responsibility for bringing down the mood and ruining the whole night- WHY do I have the urge to tear off my face right now?! Pushing against it with all her will, Adora ignores the itch and takes another deep breath. And another. And another. It’s not like there’s absolutely no course forward here and that she’s stuck gaping like a Salineas sunfish; the last weeks talking to that mind expert from Bow’s Dad’s universities have helped to correct and contain any spiraling thoughts and it’s Adora’s responsibility to lasso this panic before it grows beyond her control. Tormenting flashbacks aside, this beautiful night remains intact despite the shattering force of her fear. Catra’s body bumps against hers as the other woman is still lazily commanded to move by the now dim songs of the Etherian hills. Adora responds in kind, and she hums to melody to the best of poor ability. 

Then, Catra does something unforeseen, something so out of character Adora wonders if she has stumbled from a nightmare to a daydream. She yawns, pulling away from Adora’s forehead to rest her head on her shoulder. Her fingers find Adora’s, entangling themselves and squeezing as if this simple gesture is routine one, as if this a normal action she engages in to soothe herself and to bring them closer.

Oh.

Every day Catra builds back up her walls, and every day, Adora comes back prepared to knock them down. When she succeeds, Catra starts over out of habit -and sometimes spite- and it is all Adora can do to just let her existence in Catra’s life persuade her to build the wall up just a few bricks smaller the next time around. The work of personal change is tedious and messy and frustrating, the final and finished state so staggeringly far away that it appears almost non existent, yet even in the depths of her isolation and the enormity of her pain Catra has trudged forward, claws out, in search of a better self. But this, her head on Adora’s shoulders, their bodies closer and their souls more intimate than they’d ever been before- than Adora even dreamed was possible- was just so... vulnerable .

She feels comfortable enough with me to be this way. She trusts me.

For someone who has chased trophies painted in fool’s gold and awards made of chrome instead of silver, Adora thinks that in this moment she might have stumbled onto the best accomplishment. Catra’s trust- and love language of touch-  are better than any praise Adora could hope to receive, gentler than any gratification she could collect. Everything she’s ever wanted, here in the person scraping her toes with her bare claws as they sway to the music of the stars. 

And in that unyielding and peaceful moment Adora, the emotional klutz, disaster of a friend, and blessed with the power to destroy everything she touches, fell right into the perfect- and right- thing to say. Heart beating like a gentle flutter, the ache in her chest suspends itself as she whispers into the night “Thank you. For being with me.” Catra looks up at her, squinting her eyes for a brief second, and Adora sees her tail flick behind her back. “During that.” She does elaborate on what “that” is. Not when Catra has stood by her side, laid by her in the same bed, and held her through “that” one too many times before.

“Thank you. For… being with me, too.” A single fang catches her lip as Catra’s eyes falter. Adora smiles, the flutter of heart echoing with a quiet understanding of this response. Words were never Catra’s forte, speaking her truth was never an element she stood comfortable in. In that way, Adora and Catra were the same. Actions spoke her volumes. In the past, her actions had spoken at a deafening frequency but Adora still could not hear the words the hands of abuse and trauma kept locked in her mouth. Now, beyond the past weeks that have redefined them and redefined their… friendship, Adora can decipher the vulnerabilities that hang beneath her gratitude. This thank you is for coming to her when the party chewed her up and spit her out, but it isn’t just for that. This thank you is for letting her sneak into Adora’s bed in the castle when the med bay cleared out all the other patients, leaving her the only one in a dark empty tent. This thank you is for the visits spared between demands of bureaucracy, for sneaking back sweets in between mealtimes, for the conversations about what Catra was what without her badge and without the war. This is a thank you for a promise made that was kept. 

Adora doesn’t know what to expect to happen next. For once, she’s content. She’s calm. She’s in Catra’s arms. She always promised whatever empty sky was listening that she’d never want for anything more, never make another selfish request if she just had Catra back. There is no need to expect anything when she has everything she wants.

Too lost in fulfilling this silent vow, Adora definitely isn’t expecting the gentle feel of Catra’s lips on hers when she blinks next, their orbits entangled suddenly and her hand back, caressing on her gently her scarred cheek.

Whaaaaaaat is happening?!

Adora, acting on her first response of shock, almost ruins it with a crude yelp and jump backward. It is only by the pull of Catra’s gravity that is she held there long enough for Adora’s brain to jumpstart and compel her to kiss Catra back before she loses her like she loses everything else. Adora’s eyes flutter shut and she swallows her heart in her throat. She begs her inner energy to stay in the present, to reciprocate the intoxicating sweetness Catra gives her so freely, to show her through this action what is being shown to her. And she tries so vehemently to not let her thoughts wander in the “Am I even a good kisser?” territory.

Because Catra… Catra has not kissed Adora again since the lights went out. To distraught with the task of her healing, Adora presumes- out of desperate self preservation- the injury simply overtook the memory of their first kiss during the battle on Horde Prime’s ship. Dwelling on the way her lips kissed her that day with so much uninhibited devotion when Catra risks hemorrhaging and infection not just within the wound but within her whole body was a cruel selfishness Adora did not want to be guilty of. So, when the Best Friend Squad brought Catra’s torn body back to Etheria and Adora watched over her as Mystacore’s healers put her in a protective comatose state (“For at least three weeks,” Castaspella told Adora as the healers and Glimmer tore her away from Catra’s bedside so that someone could look at the lacerations on her face, “the magic we’ve used will strengthen her bodies natural healing abilities and lessen the damage to her internal organs. This will help her, I assure you.”) she shoved any images and any sensations and any notions of love that accompanied that impulsive kiss to the deepest, most secluded parts of her conscious. And she did so again, every day for three weeks, and then every day after that that she came to use She Ra’s powers until Catra’s wound mended to scar tissue. This mental dowry was required of her every night and every day as traumatic flashbacks were her only given; often- because the celestial gods above so fit to punish her for allowing Catra’s blood to spill in the first place- she relived their kiss in sick and cruel dreams. 

There existed no proof that Catra had even wanted to kiss Adora. Chances were staggering she acted on adrenaline rather than feeling, and was simply mirroring Adora’s own energy. These thoughts were somehow more tortuous than the notion Catra didn’t remember the stolen moment at all. If someone kisses you back with so much fervor and warmth does that mean they wanted to kiss you- or are they just being nice? Adora sometimes found herself tempted to ask of Bow or Glimmer. Sometimes this temptation spread and Adora almost acted out of such desperation she almost asked Mermista. And Sea Hawk after he brought it up three times verbally and once by song. (News of her and Catra’s heat-of-the-moment kiss spread like wildfire in the Whispering Woods after a nasty Horde bot attack; despite Adora’s desire to bury what amounted to nothing more than a fluke carried about by the certainty they were all going to die at Prime’s hand, her refusal to- combined with Catra’s literal inability to- talk about the kiss meant Bow didn’t know the story was off limits and he told Glimmer as soon as any of them had a minute to breathe, and by the same mouth all of Bright Moon was enlightened. To make her nauseating swirl of emotions surrounding the topic worse, Adora was in the room when the story reached Scorpia’s ears, and the way the Princess had looked at her was akin to a slap clean across her bandaged face). In one really dark and particular unpleasant moment of anxiety exacerbated by Razz’s throwing of pots and pans everywhere looking for hairbrush- Adora came dangerously close to asking Swift Wind. 

As for the one person who could gift her with the definite answer… 

Adora sighs into the kiss, her form resting against Catra’s. This kiss is a universe away from being their last kiss. That stolen moment was hurried and spontaneous and it was supposed to be their last. But this kiss is a first. It is delicate and slow and sweet. It is a new beginning, the start of the answer Adora has so selfishly craved, has come so close to when they lie in bed together, laughing in secret at their stupid exchanges, when Adora helps Catra redo her bandages despite her raging blush and shaking hands as the other woman flicks her with her tail and pesters “ughhhh, do it right Adora!” It tastes like cinnamon and smoke and starlight.

How do I make this happen all the time?  

For need of air they pull apart. Every atom within Adora’s skin vibrates with a new intensity; an excitement that begs to be back in the atmosphere of her other half secured not by the force of destiny, but by the gravity of love. Quelling this excitement for fear of looking like an over eager moron, Adora runs her tongue over her lip and braves a look up. Split eyes meet ocean ones before flicking away and gazing toward the ground beneath them where the golden flower pin lies. As they make no show of catching their breath, neither speak.

Adora coughs and the words tumble out of Catra’s mouth, “Some party, huh?”

“Yeah,” Adora bites down on her tongue. Her stomach feels as if it holding a sun- the center of the universe that she is- and it burns a tender fire within her that ravishes her heart as she tries not to linger over the ghost of Catra’s mouth on hers. “Some party.”

She waits. For a reply, yes, but in truth, the next thirty seconds are dedicated to bracing herself for the emotion that has followed her from birth in the shape of a shadow. Adora is, in the wake of their kiss, waiting for fear. Fear that this, again, is nothing more than a mistake Catra will wake up the next morning and harbor nothing but regret over. Fear that Catra could not have possibly meant to kiss someone like her- someone who only true skills time can speak to is failure and destruction. Fear that wrestles violently on the floor of her soul with the happiness Catra has sparked in her. Fear that because of this internal struggle that is rapidly becoming the physiological type, she is going to ruin this once in a lifetime moment by hurling on the grass next to where they dance.

It is the last fear that prompts Adora to turn her eyes upward. She returns her gaze to the infinite, deeply blue skyline, and drinks in the quasi-new sky like an infant seeing the multitudes of worlds splattered across the top of their world for the very first time. The grass tickles her bare feet. And she wonders, if only for one beat of her heart, if anyone else on any of those worlds that have been freed by not one, but two totalitarian reigns is dancing with their almost lovers in the afterthought of a party that is both parts celebration and funeral, looking up at the same sky. Will she ever see them, ever meet them, ever get a chance to ask this specific question? Prime’s final warnings haunt her; the universe is not done with She Ra. It’s not done with her. 

I came from somewhere up there, is just one of the many questions that wraps Adora up and threatens to suffocate her, Will I ever learn why I ended up… here?  

Swaying there still with Catra, her tail wrapped around her waist, the universe imparts on Adora- its’ guardian celestial- a thank you gift. As she stares into the vast void sending her internal questions up towards the heavens, the stars begin to blur like the remnants of smeared paint, to run, to fly in streaks of white a silver. Adora gasps, shaking her dance partner “Catra, look!”

“Huh- what- what is going on?” Claws dig into Adora’s arms and into her toes. “Are the stars raining? Fuck, Adora, do we need to get out of here-”

“No, no,” Adora assures her by rubbing her arm, watching her pupils gradually return to their normal size, “We’re fine. This- this is called a meteor shower. Well, most people call them shooting stars. Or- or they did, when stars were a thing. George explained them to me the last time this happened. You were, uh, you weren’t awake yet.” Adora answers when she sees the confused look written on her face. 

“Oh... Um, what on Etheria is a meteor? ”

Adora giggles. “It’s uh, it’s rocks basically flying through space.”

“So glad you took us out Despondos, Princess.” smirks Catra. Her gaze leaves Adora in favor of the show the cosmos has put on seemingly just for them, and like the selfish voyeur she has become, Adora seizes this moment to marvel at the wonder in her expression, and feels within her soul a drop of deja vu. How many evenings had they killed perched lazily on rooftops watching skies of reds and yellows become dark blues and blacks, pretending they were the planet’s future overlords and making haughty plans of how to achieve such stature? How many nights had they snuck out of the barracks to lie next to one another, staring upwards at the void that hung over their world, pretending whatever pain Shadow Weaver had inflicted on Catra hadn’t happened and making secretive plans to steal glances whenever the other wasn’t looking? Under a starless sky, when everything was different, they were different people. Children, built for war, yet to be shaped by it. 

And now the stars have returned. To save each woman. To force them from bitter rivals nursing grudges to unlikely allies to lovers in a dance. 

George told me that people make wishes on the stars when they fall like this. Or, they used to. Adora fights a careless smile as she stares at Catra. Stares at this amazing woman, thrown with so much hate straight into the ground, triumphant in the face of twenty years of never ending pain. Her best friend, who sacrificed her life for the better of the planet, for the universe.  Her past. Her present. Her future.

Behind them, the music is fading and the songs of Etheria are coming to a bittersweet end. Flutes and chimes are placed gently back on tables, guitars are returned to their cases, drums set back down on the ground. Musicians, having given their gift to the people, end their lullabies one by one. Once the instruments are packed away with reverence, they will follow the other members of the party back to their makeshift homes and sleep underneath this new sky, knowing- finally- the peace that comes after generations of war. Even from behind the walls of the pink tent, the party animals that have taken the place of Adora’s friends and new allies are falling quiet, no more plays or parts to put on in front of a found family disguised as a captive audience. The shooting stars will give the final performance of tonight.

The music ends. Adora falls for Catra again.

“Hey Adora,” Catra’s quiet whisper breaks Adora’s stupor. Right. She can totally and mindlessly in love  her best friend and savior of the universe in another place and time. But for right now, in this time and this place, paying attention to her next request was the most important thing. There is nothing out here in the universe that is them beyond the words that come next. “Wanna get out of here?”

Adora nods. “Yeah.” Hand falling from where it has made a home on Catra’s hip, Adora takes Catra’s, squeezing once, then twice. As Catra turns, she flashes Adora a beautiful and brilliant toothy smile that has the Princess of Power falling in love all over again. With the stars hanging above to guide them, Adora follows Catra as she pulls her towards the direction of the Whispering Woods. Laughter spills from her lips the faster Catra pulls her until they are both laughing wildly and without any cares. Two more joyous melodies heard by the cosmos this night. 

It didn't matter where they were going. From this moment on, Adora swore to go wherever Catra did, to be this close. Forever and ever. 

I guess I have nothing to wish on the stars for, Adora thinks. Where once this realization might have been so sharp, like a clean cut to the heart- or to the jaw- enough to break Adora’s already breaking spirit, she is burdened with no pain with her hand in Catra’s. The stars have already given (or, she took this with her own hands from the new constellations) her what she has so desperately prayed to an empty sky for since she was a little girl. A love that was really something, not just the idea of something. A love she was worthy of.

It was never going to be what it was, what Adora and Catra had, never again. No.

It was going to be even better.