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All that’s left of Force Captain Catra’s invasion team is a pathetic, soaked, limping mass of retreating soldiers. She wrings out another section of her shirt and shivers on the back of Scorpia and Entrapta’s hovercycle that’s speeding towards the cover of the forest.
Defeated, again.
Catra bites her cheek until it bleeds. It wasn’t supposed to end like this.
They had planned it all perfectly: The foot troops to draw attention away, Catra’s showdown with Adora, Entrapta’s high-tech gadgets. This was Catra’s chance to be the winner, her chance to finally come out on top. She would win, Adora would come home, and life would go back to normal.
How naive.
When they reach the safety of the trees, she makes Scorpia pull over to let her off. After a few curt orders to have one of the infantry leave her a hovercraft a quarter mile in — she’ll return alone — she starts to brush by them. They share a look, but ultimately let her go. Whatever; what they think is of no concern to her. All that matters is that she has time to let off some steam before she reports back to Hordak.
Once she’s finally alone, Catra closes her eyes. Growing up as Night Weaver’s punching bag, she learned that the time you had not being punished was precious, to be savored. She’d stay awake the nights before having to report for lashes just breathing, pressing her soul into every pain-free moment before time dragged her into hell.
It feels the same now but in reverse. Every moment she’s apart from Adora burns, doubly so because the longer her best friend refuses to see reason, the stronger that poisonous voice inside tells her she’s been replaced. Abandoned.
The evidence is plain, it says, acrid and inevitable. Sure, Adora’s been misled, but there’s no way those sniveling princesses pose a threat, right? Princesses didn’t stay up late with her when she was sick and delirious, mopping sweat from her brow with a cloth dampened by the last of Catra’s drinking water ration. Princesses didn’t explore the Fright Zone with her, sneaking out late to try locked doors and pilfer ration bars from the kitchen; Princesses didn’t spend hours urging her up decrepit roofs and rusty pipes only to collapse, breathless, at the top of their world. The voice waits.
Catra realizes she’s shaking and takes a breath. It’s time to go. But for a reason she can't explain -- though she can explain it, really, if she lets herself think of how good it feels to let the voice be right, how good it feels to guide the knife home -- she looks back. Looks back at Adora falling into a two-armed hug with that glittering princess and her bowman, wiping blood off their faces the way she used to clean Catra up after a particularly grueling practice, and it isn’t fair that these strangers get her affection for a fraction of the emotional price.
That was supposed to be her standing next to Adora, her celebrating a hard-fought victory with the person who promised that nothing bad would ever happen as long as they were together.
The world goes white and then red. She sinks into the mindlessness of destruction with an almost starving desperation and breathes in the peace it allows her, the way everything becomes simple: all that matters is the blood in her veins and the overwhelming urge to hurt.
So she does.
Wood chips fly as she slashes the nearest tree trunk with her claws, pivots and slams her shin into another. Adora is her best friend. A few shiny princesses and a sword can’t be worth more than Catra’s love and loyalty.
So why isn’t she coming home?
A low hanging branch clips her shoulder and she rends it in an instant, hands full of splinters that she ignores in favor of breaking anything in reach. She doesn’t want to think about the ugly seed of truth to what Adora said about the Horde, doesn’t want to think about the reason she didn’t follow Adora into the Rebellion was because Adora only asked her after she had made up her mind to choose princesses over her best friend.
Catra shouldn’t have to be an afterthought.
Her vision blurs and the pressure in her chest deflates, replaced by a keening emptiness. Home. She needs to go home. If she can just focus on that, not her wounds or the crushing nature of their defeat or how Adora isn’t hers anymore, maybe never was —
Catra digs her thumb into a fresh bruise. None of that. No more weakness. Only what comes next.
With care, she straightens and follows the path left behind by her retreating battalion. Just as she had directed, there is a hovercraft waiting for her at the base of a gleaming tree. She limps aboard and sets a course for the Fright Zone, wincing every time she needs to steer or shift or breathe too deeply. In a perfect world, she’d be in too much pain to think, but it appears she didn’t destroy enough because her thoughts flit like flies around the issue of Adora.
Why was Catra so easy to let go? Why were Adora’s sympathies so easily distracted, her loyalties so easily misled? Would anything have been different if Catra had ignored Adora’s request to cover for her and gone with her instead?
Maybe if she’d followed Adora, she would have been standing beside her before. Catra can see it all, if not clearly, then with just a little imagination: they find the sword together, Catra tries it out too because no friend worth her mettle as a Force Captain would turn down the chance to mess with a strange weapon; Catra teases Adora for being such a princess, maybe cuffs her on the arm for good measure, or shoulder checks her and relishes the warmth of her body for that split second; they face whatever princesses found her that day together, as a team, sending them off with the same treatment they gave the simulations every day in training.
Catra grips the sides of the hovercraft. Then — what? They’d have come home, shown Night Weaver the sword, been praised for their efforts and perhaps figured out a way to use that power to rid the planet of princesses once and for all.
Except.
Except Adora would have been the hero again. She would have remained Night Weaver’s favorite, still first in line to be promoted to force leader, still the teacher’s pet. Catra would have been relegated to the sidelines again , a bargaining chip for the ever-shining Adora in case she needed a reminder about what was at stake.
Catra’s wounds throb. Her throat is dry, and she licks chapped lips. Perhaps it’s better that things worked out this way. Now she has a chance to be the hero.
The idea is appealing. She turns it over in her mind, tests its weight against the darkest corners of her heart. Coming home to accolades and applause, the bitter vindication of watching Night Weaver try and fail to fault her for a successful mission. Perhaps then Adora will see that she is worthy.
The pressure returns to her chest but spreads to her gut this time, a creeping, drowning sensation: no wonder Adora broke her promise. Who wants a failure for a best friend?
Tears slide down her cheeks hot and bittersweet. She should have known better than to trust a promise from the one person who had no incentive not to walk away.
Inhale, exhale. It will be fine, because though Adora broke her promise, Catra will reforge it. She will return stronger, faster, more cunning than Adora has ever dreamed and make her come back.
Catra scrubs away her tears and takes an aching breath. But the next time they make their promise, she’ll be sure to seal it with blood.