Chapter Text
She watched as her best friend was pushed off the slide and laughed at by the fourth-grader standing over her. Adora ran to her side, listening as small sobs came from the girl. She sat her up and wiped the strayed tears from her face and gave her a small smile.
“I’ll never let them hurt you again Catra,” She brushed Catra’s wild mane of hair from her eyes and placed a hand on her cheek.
“Promise?” She said at almost a whisper
“I promise,” Adora brought her in for a hug as if sealing their fates together.
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Although forgetful of many things, Adora never forgot the promise she’d made to Catra all those years ago. It had been some time since the two of them were separated, but every time she was asked to make one, she was still reminded of the wild child she had called her best friend.
Sometimes she missed her, regretted what she had said all those years ago; what she had said to her the last time she saw her before leaving everything behind. She would do anything to say sorry, anything to get back the girl she once loved, but it was too late for that now. Too late to earn the forgiveness of someone who was too far gone, someone who by now would have forgotten her.
It was freshman year when Adora got the news that her family was moving to Brightmoon, hours away from Horde, hours away from the girl she had called her best friend for so long. She was too afraid to tell Catra and silently hoped that something would go wrong, that they would be given a reason to stay, but they never did.
Her promise to Catra always came back to her, especially since in the end the only person she needed protection from was herself. It had been three years since she had last spoken to Catra, or at least spoken to her and gotten a response. After about six months of trying, she stopped trying, stopped trying to win Catra back.
The rest is history, Adora moved and made friends quickly, tried to forget the sad look she’d seen on her best friend’s face, the best friend who thought she was being abandoned. Adora tried to surround herself with things that she enjoyed. Joining Brightmoon High’s Girls Soccer team, focusing heavily in her classes, anything that she could do to forget the girl that didn’t want anything to do with her.
She somehow did or at least had convinced herself that she did. Anything that reminded her of Catra was pushed out of her mind, who had made it easy by blocking anyway that Adora could see her on social media. Pictures and videos were deleted, anything that had some type of sentimental value connect to Catra was uprooted from her life and either thrown away or shoved to a very dark part of her mind.
Her life soon became Catra-free and surrounded by people that she soon found to love with her entire heart. Bow and Glimmer were the first ones to want to be friends with her, the ones who showed her around on her first day and ultimately became her new best friends. People who she wanted in her life until the very end, but in a different way that she wanted Catra. Maybe it was better that way.
Adora never thought that after all this time, seeing Catra would affect her. That she would stop dead in her tracks, jaw dropped to the floor, frozen with nervousness. That after all this time she would still get butterflies in her stomach reminding her that she always saw Catra as more than just a friend. That no one ever made her feel the same way that Catra did. That somehow the two of them would end up at the same university.
But there she saw her, and she was too scared to do anything at all, too scared that the feelings she had once had for her would come rushing back. Adora feared they already had.