Work Text:
Catra and Glimmer still haven’t exchanged a word.
Glimmer keeps shooting Catra careful glares, almost daring to say something. For the most part, Catra pretends that Glimmer doesn’t exist. Every few hours, Prime’s clones escort one of them out for questioning. They return, haggard and weary-looking, but they don’t talk about it. Meals are eaten in such silence that chewing produces an incredible amount of noise. It was ironic, considering the sheer abundance they had to talk about.
Some of the silence is due to fear. They are alone in their cell, but that doesn’t mean Prime isn’t listening in. Any escape plans or attack strategies would never be safe to discuss out loud. Another part is exhaustion. Between the bright halogen lights that never turn off, the frequent clunking of metal clones and the nerves that never seem to let up, Catra and Glimmer aren’t sleeping much.
On the whole, though, the two don’t even know what to say to one another.
Both are consumed with guilt, for wildly different reasons. Catra hears Glimmer crying when they lie down and attempt to sleep, and does her best to pretend that she doesn’t. In return, Glimmer does the same when Catra thrashes from nightmares. They both know that at some point, one of them is bound to break, they just don’t want to be the one to do it.
On the third day, though, something changes. Maybe it was the clone who pushed Glimmer a little too hard when he shoved her back inside the cell. Or perhaps it was the morning’s meal, too revolting for either of them to stomach. On the third day, Glimmer breaks.
“You could say something, you know.”
Catra blinks. She’d been lying on the floor, counting all the specks she could in the ceiling when Glimmer spoke. Instead of getting up, she just lets her eyes glaze over. “What do you want me to say, Sparkles?”
“It’s not what I want you to say,” Glimmer scoffs. She looks down at her hands, balls them into fists, and glares back at Catra. “Don’t you have anything you want to say?”
“Not really.” She pulls a loose thread from her glove and tosses it away. It’s stupid, how both true and overwhelmingly false that statement is.
Glimmer narrows her eyes, waiting for Catra to continue. When she doesn’t, Glimmer lets out a frustrated sigh, leaning her head back against the wall. “I shouldn’t be surprised.” If it were anyone else in here with her, this would be easier. So much easier. She closes her eyes and takes a slow, careful breath before opening them and looking at Catra once more. “I guess I’m just tired of the silence.”
Catra understands. The silence grates on her too, so much that sometimes she thinks she’s hearing voices. Adora’s voice, mostly. She doesn’t pull herself up just yet, but she figures talking couldn’t hurt. “Me too.”
It takes a few days for them to learn how to talk to each other. They start slow at first. Saying goodnight before attempting to get some sleep. Asking if the other is okay when they return from a questioning session. When they grow comfortable with their own voices, they go a little deeper.
Glimmer tells Catra what she misses at Bright Moon. She talks about the gardens, Bow, and Adora. Catra ignores the way her heart clenches whenever she says Adora’s name, but it isn’t too terrible to listen to Glimmer talk. She doesn’t have much to offer in return, but she can tell that Glimmer is grateful that she’s trying.
“If you could eat anything right now, what would it be?” Glimmer asks, trying to ignore her stomach’s incessant growling. The most recent rations were orange, and hairy. Catra had braved through most of it, but the texture made Glimmer dry-heave to the point where she’d take being hungry over trying to finish it.
Catra shrugs. “Gray ration bars, I guess.”
“...Ration bars?”
“The Horde doesn’t exactly believe in real food.” She pauses, pulling her knees to her chest. “I had an apple, once.” After she’d taken the civilians in Elberon hostage, she’d snatched the fruit from a bowl on the table. It tasted great at first, much better than anything she’d eaten in the Horde. But after a few bites, the sweetness turned cloying and she had to toss it away.
Glimmer hums, brushing her hair back from her face. “Apples are good.” She pauses, and smiles. “I’d eat pancakes.”
“Sounds weird.”
“Maybe, if you’ve never had them before.”
Silly as it was, Catra couldn’t deny that she was interested. She doesn’t think too much about food, but the more Glimmer talks to her about Bright Moon, the more she realizes how little she knew about the world outside of the Fright Zone. “Explain it, then.”
“Okay.” Glimmer props herself up, crossing her legs underneath as she gets comfortable. “You mix eggs, flour, and milk in a big bowl. If you’re feeling really fancy, you can add some spices.”
Catra raises a brow. “What are spices?”
“They’re… I don’t know, like, powders you put in your food to add more flavor,” she does her best to explain, waving her hand around as she does so.
“Weird.”
“It’s not — You know what, it doesn’t matter. You combine everything, pour it out into a hot pan, and then you get like these little cakes.”
It’s a terrible explanation, but Catra’s mouth still waters. She couldn’t even deny it, the thought of hot, tasty food sounded incredible. “I’d take some pancakes right now,” she admits, doing her best not to look at the remnants of the fuzzy orange thing on her tray.
“Yeah, me too.” Glimmer lets her mind wander, back to a happier memory. “My mom and I would always make them on my birthday. She’d let the cooks make a whole feast for breakfast, but at night, when it was just me and her, we’d go into the kitchen and make them together. It was kind of our thing.”
Her face dims along with her tone, so much that even Catra notices. She tosses up a wadded napkin at her foot so that she looks at her. “Hey,” she says once she’s gotten her attention. “You’ll make them with her again.”
Glimmer shakes her head, letting out a shaky breath. “She got trapped in the portal, Catra. She’s not coming back.”
The contents of Catra's stomach nearly comes up at Glimmer’s words, and it takes everything she has to shove it back down. The sick, clenching feeling remains and grasps at her chest for the remainder of the day.
Something is wrong.
The clones took Catra before their first meal, and now the third has passed and she still isn’t back. Glimmer paces for most of the day, trying to make sense of things. Would Catra leave her here? Probably. There’s a small part of her that would like to think better, but Glimmer can’t deny that it’s entirely plausible that she would. She attempts to get the attention of the clones when they pass by, but no one heeds her any mind.
She’s just about to fall asleep when the cell opens, and Catra is tossed inside. She’s physically unharmed— wounds and bruises aren’t Prime’s style— but her eyes are wide, and she’s trembling with such a ferocity that Glimmer knows Prime did something terrible to her. When the clones leave, she doesn’t think twice before scrambling to her side.
“What did he do to you?” she demands, her voice hardly above a whisper.
Catra brushes her off, shaking her head. “I’m fine.” Her voice comes out hoarse, and they both know she’s lying.
Prime didn’t believe in physically torturing them; no, his tactics were more subtle, mental. When he calls Glimmer to his side, it’s under the guise of questioning. She tells him what she can, but the limited answers are never enough for him; when he wants something important, he places her in illusions, painful scenarios that cause her to question everything. She and Catra don’t talk about what happens to them in their time apart, but it’s clear that this time, he did something worse.
“Was it… the illusions?” she asks, careful not to touch her. Catra doesn’t meet her eyes. “He does those to me, too.”
Catra keeps her gaze tilted towards the floor, her mouth curling into an ugly sneer. “What do you have to hurt over?”
Glimmer knows that she shouldn’t accept the bait. She knows that Catra is hurting and shaken and she’s acting in defense like she always does. But she’s also tired, and frustrated, and scared, and it’s all too easy to succumb to the raw emotions vying for her attention. “You want to go there?” she retorts, her heart pounding as she does so, ready for a confrontation.
But it doesn’t come.
She expects Catra to shoot back, but she doesn’t. Instead, she sinks down further into herself, holding her arms so hard that her fingernails are digging into them. “How does he know?” she whispers, finally looking at Glimmer. “How does he know about… everything?”
Any anger Glimmer has immediately drains. She sits beside her, wishing that she knew the answer. “I don’t know.” Catra doesn’t say anything else, so the two sit in silence. It feels like hours until Catra stops trembling. When she does, she picks herself up and lies down in the farthest corner of the room, her back to Glimmer.
Sleep won’t come so easily to Glimmer again, so she remains seated, trying to make sense of her thoughts. She wonders what Prime has to show Catra to get her so shaken up like that. Before they were locked up together, she wasn’t sure that Catra even had the emotional capacity to be afraid, or hurt.
“Glimmer?”
She glances at Catra’s body, still turned away from her. She thought she’d gone to sleep. “Yeah?”
“About your mom…” Her ears fall, and she’s unable to finish right away. Glimmer’s breath catches in her throat, and the room is so silent that she’s able to hear her heart pounding in her chest. “...You don’t need to forgive me for that. Ever.”
It’s not an apology, but Glimmer thinks it’s the closest she’ll probably get. And for now, it’s enough. She lies down on the floor, using her arms as a pillow and closes her eyes.
“Okay.”
“Why did you do it?” Glimmer asks, on a day where she’d been taken instead of Catra. The brunette looks at her, her eyes wide with apprehension, but Glimmer holds her hands up in a sign of peace. “I’ve just… always wanted to know.”
She doesn’t answer right away. Her tail swishes around as she mulls the question over. Eventually, it curls by her side and she sighs. “It’s complicated. I don’t think I really know the answer myself.”
It wasn’t the answer Glimmer wanted, but she could accept it.
“If it means anything,” Catra continues, “It wasn’t personal. I didn’t mean for so much to happen.”
“Did you do it to hurt Adora?”
Glimmer doesn’t think she’ll answer. She expects her to hiss, turn away, and ignore her until the clones come to separate them. But she does none of that. Catra just takes a shaky breath and nods.
She won’t go into it; not with Glimmer, at least. Adora is all she seems to be able to think about, lately. When Prime puts her in the illusions, she sees her. They wrestle together, like they used to. Adora will pull her hair, and Catra playfully scratches her, light enough to make Adora shriek without leaving a mark. They lay in bed together, holding each other.
And then it all changes. Adora will suddenly stop, and start choking for air. Catra’s hands will feel wet, and she looks down to find they’re covered in her blood. Tears will blur her vision, and Adora’s blue eyes turn lighter as she asks Catra why, over and over until the illusions finally stop and Catra is shaken to her core.
She misses her. More than anything, she misses her, and wants to see her again. Even if she hates her.
Glimmer pokes her food around with her fork, turning the lump of blue sludge that’s supposed to be their meal into a runny mishmash. “Do you think they know we’re here?”
“She’ll do anything to save you,” Catra says without missing a beat. As for her, she doesn’t know. Odds are that she’d forgotten all about her. And she deserved that. More than deserved that. “I’m sure her and arrow-boy are working on a plan to bring you home as we speak.”
“What about you?”
Catra shrugs. “What about me?” Her ears fall and her tail stops swishing as she feels her stomach sink. “She’ll probably leave me here to rot.”
“Then you must not know Adora as well as you think.” Glimmer wasn’t blind. Despite everything that had gone down between Adora and Catra, she knows that Adora still harbors feelings for her. “You can come home with us.”
“And do what? Do you really think sh—anyone will forgive me?” she scoffs, her cheeks tinting pink from the slip up. “Do me a favor, Sparkles, let me know when you return from Dreamland.” She stretches and lays on her side, facing away so that Glimmer can’t see her face.
A soft smile stretches across Glimmer’s face. “Maybe not now. But give it time… I think she would.”
Catra hisses and shoves her tray at Glimmer, but her tail swishes around behind her. Glimmer hides a giggle with a cough, pushing her own tray away. Maybe, with enough time, she’d be able to forgive her too.