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There’s this newfound excitement inside Glimmer that comes from Etheria’s freed magic. It sends a tingle down into her veins, amplifies her in a way she didn’t know she had been missing. She feels more untethered than she ever has before, completely free to disappear and reappear at a moment’s notice. Her time in space had been the longest she had gone without magic in her life and she had never felt so helpless. People get along fine without teleporting, she knows that, but for Glimmer it was like tying bricks to her feet. Now it was like she was made out of clouds, like nothing could take her power away.
The other princesses report similar sensations. Like a new type of energy inside of them that, to a degree, has them learning to control their magic all over again. Frosta throws out ice shards every time she laughs and Perfuma makes flowers without thinking when Scorpia looks at her. It’s a small learning curve.
But they agree that that all can wait.
After She-Ra destroys Prime for good, it’s like the entire world breathes a sigh. People hug and cry and it doesn’t take long for a party to start up.
The party goes long and hard. People play music and bring food. Crowds show up and Glimmer is happy to celebrate with all of them. She plays games with Frosta, dances with Sea Hawk, eats food with her dad (who sighs in relief when he sees her eat cake, which she thinks to ask him about later). She spends a good chunk of the party sneaking up on Catra and latching on to tease her. Adora and her hug and cry more than either of them ever thought they could. She teleports from person to person, trying to find everyone she can.
Except Bow.
Bow, more often, finds her. He’s always been good at that, she knows. He comes up and hugs her, long and hard, before his tracker pad goes off and his dads are yelling and congratulating and asking where he is. He walks by her and grabs her hand, squeezes it once, and then gets dragged off by Sea Hawk to sing shanties. He looks at her from the other side of the bonfire, light dancing off his face, and smiles.
Her heart patters in her chest each time. He loves. He loves, he loves her–
He loves her .
Before everything went wrong– before she messed up and almost destroyed them for good– she knew that as a fact. Her love for Bow felt so obvious before then. She knew, he knew. When her mother died and she took the throne, the air between them felt like it was just waiting. Glimmer needed a bit of time to get the war more under control, get her leadership in, and then they would make it work. It felt inevitable.
But when he ripped his hand from hers– no, when she made him rip his hand from hers, she thought that had all broken. Suddenly, she didn’t know the world around them anymore. She was sure that everything had been ruined, lost forever. After he rescued her, when he wouldn’t even look at her, she thought he would never love her like she loved him again.
He does, though. He loves her. She knows that now.
The feeling is better than any magic in her blood.
They lose each other in the crowds and the party doesn’t end until it’s almost time for the sun to come up. Adora and Catra hang off each other and go back to where they all had set up some tents to get to sleep. Her dad kisses her forehead and goes to take a well deserved rest. Glimmer carries a passed out Frosta and puts her in her cot, eyes heavy and smile wide as the younger girl snores.
The air outside is romantic; the new magic so fresh and potent. It’s amazing to see. She considers walking to her tent and then nearly laughs at herself before teleporting away.
When she appears, she’s almost ready to just fall face first into the pillow, but she jumps when she hears a startled, “Ah!” from behind her.
And of course Bow is there. Of course he is sitting on a cushion in her tent, arrows in his lap, waiting for her. Of course he is.
She’s still so tired, but she doesn’t care. Glimmer pushes that aside and smiles at him.
He smiles back.
“I was getting worried about you,” he says, standing to his feet and stretching out his back. “I thought you maybe passed out on the grass.”
“Ha! No way.” She holds back a yawn and flexes her fingers. “I’m still a Queen, you know. I do have to keep up some appearances.”
Bow’s eyes are tired and soft, his smile small and just for her. She practically glows under his affection. She takes a step closer the same time he does.
“I wondered where you ran off to,” she says, just to give herself something to do as her heart begins to beat louder in her ears. “Didn’t even think to check in here.”
He chuckles, his fingers twitching at his sides. “George and Lance wanted to go home, so I walked them part of the way there. Then I was just gonna go to my tent and sleep, but…” He brings his hands up, but they grab onto each other instead of hers. Glimmer can see the small flush on his cheeks.
Glimmer loves him. She loves him. Her head spins with the thought.
“But?”
The first time Bow grabbed Glimmer’s hand, they were newly acquainted. Some young boy with arrows who had appeared in her castle’s garden. She watched how far he could shoot them with stars in her eyes. He grabbed her by the hand at some point and she never questioned it.
He grabs her hands now, slowly, curling his fingers around hers. His hands are warm and he holds her tight. She feels her own cheeks heat up.
“I didn’t want you to think I was, like, avoiding you at the party,” he says.
“Never,” she replies.
His lips twitch, a small smile. He smooths his thumb over her own. “Okay, good.”
She watches him, bemused at the nervous twitch to his features. He looks at her, looks away, bites his lip, smiles, repeats. She squeezes his hands and he calms down a little, looks her more in the eye, smile more sure.
“Tell me,” she says.
Bow takes in a breath before he speaks. “Glimmer,” he starts, and she’s reminded of how much he’s grown, how deep his voice is now, how rarely it cracks. He swallows and starts again. “Glimmer, I’ve wanted to kiss you for a long time. Like, a really long time.”
She feels like her heart could explode.
“But I didn’t want the first time we kissed to be during a battle. I knew we would win so I wanted to save it. And then we won, but I didn’t want our first kiss to be in front of everyone– like your dad was there and you were meeting him and it just seemed like a weird thing to do. And then the party started and everyone was around and both kept getting pulled away–”
“But you always found me.”
Glimmer feels so light, completely inflated by her love for Bow and Bow’s love for her. Of course he would worry– would want their first kiss to be something just for them. They have so much tied up into each other, so many secrets and memories. Glimmer doesn’t want to share this with anyone else. She wants to keep it with them, place it in her heart and let it live there.
She steps closer, let’s their joined hands be the only thing between them, and looks up at Bow, tears sitting in the corners of her eyes. “You’ve always found me, Bow. Ever since we were kids. You manage to find me, even when I don’t know I need to be found.”
One of his hands lets go, but comes up to cradle her face. He wipes his thumb under her eye and catches the tear before it even falls. She grabs his wrist and keeps him there, holds him in place, has him close.
“I’ve wanted to kiss you, too, Bow.”
His eyes go wide and she almost laughs, joy buzzing in her body.
There isn’t room for laughing, though. Bow’s wide eyes go confident, sure. He looks at her and butterflies grow and beat their wings in her stomach. Her heart vibrates and her breathing stutters. He leans in and Glimmer waits until the last second to close her own eyes, right before he kisses her.
At one point she thought them inevitable. She thought it was so sure that they would get together that she had pictured them kissing a thousand times over. Every part of it was planned out in her mind. Through the power of thought, she assured herself she would be ready and know what it would feel like.
There isn’t any part that was right. Every bit of happiness she’s ever felt is stronger, higher, and louder than she thought possible. Bow kisses her and Glimmer feels like that last link between them locks into place. Her body buzzes and calms all at once, because Bow makes her feel giddy as well as safe. He kisses her and Glimmer feels light. Tethered to nothing but him.
He pulls away, a small inch, and Glimmer feels his absence. She opens her eyes, but immediately has to squint as the sunlight shocks her.
Which, what–
“Uh, Glimmer,” Bow says, sounding as confused as she feels. “Are we in the Bright Moon garden?”
She looks around and, sure enough, despite the place being overgrown with new Etherian magic and plants, she recognizes these bushes and the flowers as the ones she grew up in. The ones she played in as a kid. Where she first met Bow–
“Oh my god!” She groans and buries her face in Bow’s chest, feeling an embarrassed flush reach all the way to her ears. The rising sun hits on her side and yup, this is her learning curve. “The magic is so much stronger now and everyone’s having trouble and I guess I’m back to not have ANY control over my teleportation. This is so embarrassing.”
Glimmer can feel Bow shaking, his chest rumbling and the hands on her shoulders are trembling. It takes a second, but he finally loses his composure and lets out a hard, uproaring laugh.
She smiles. Her cheeks are still red but she looks up from his chest and sees the big, dopey smile he has. She can’t help– she ends up laughing, too.
“Accidentally teleporting us to where we met during our first kiss is so cheesy, Glimmer.”
She sticks out her tongue and pinches his arm, but there’s nothing to it. He doesn’t pull away and neither does she.
They’re both still tired, she knows that. They’re exhausted and need to sleep. A lot is ahead of them when they wake up, a whole new world to tend to, a kingdom she has to restructure. She knows that, he knows that.
But this sunrise is new and the garden smells sweet and, for a moment, she doesn’t have to worry about all those moving parts. She doesn’t need to be Queen right now. She can just be Glimmer and he can just be Bow.
She tilts her head up and he leans down. They’ll take on the learning curve, together.