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Glimmer’s sleep schedule wasn’t exactly the most regular during the war, but since Horde Prime’s defeat it’s been completely shot to shit. She’s grateful to have her dad back for so, so many reasons, not the least of which is having someone to take care of royal business while she sleeps the afternoons away after staying up all night.
It’s easier to work when everyone else is asleep, she tells herself, leaving Bow snoring softly to go through the stacks of paperwork in her—in the study that used to be her mom’s. Frosta wants to codify the Princess Alliance into a formal planet-wide governing body so Etheria can present a united front to the rest of the universe, and it’s not a contentious process by any means, but it’s turning out to be more complicated than anyone expected to get all the bits and pieces down in writing.
Glimmer sighs and closes a report comparing and contrasting the criminal codes of Salineas and the Kingdom of Snows and suggesting different ways they could be merged. It feels kind of petty and selfish to wish her mother were here over this, just because Angella’s centuries of political experience would be a convenient resource—but Glimmer misses her fiercely nonetheless.
The thought brings her to a decision. Enough paperwork, she decides. It’s a nice night, and no one should be around since it’s so late. She’s going to take a walk outside.
Her mother isn’t buried there, obviously, but there’s a memorial for Angella in the small cemetery on the palace grounds. It’s next to the one they raised for Micah almost 20 years ago, which nobody’s really sure what to do with now. It’s been covered by a pale violet shroud for the time being. Glimmer supposes it could be put in storage until—well, hopefully they won’t need it again for decades—but she’s going to leave the final decision to Micah himself.
She doesn’t come out here often. Glimmer doesn’t feel any closer to Angella at the memorial than she does anywhere else. But it’s a very pretty statue and an excellent likeness, carved from iridescent stone by her mother’s favourite sculptor, and Glimmer likes that her mom would have liked it. Angella looks both majestic and tender, just as she was in life.
Glimmer tried talking to the statue once, like it really was her mom, but it felt weird and unsatisfying. Now, on the occasions she does visit, she just kind of… hangs out for a couple of minutes.
She supposes she’s still learning how to mourn.
It’s cool and humid out tonight, and the air smells like rain and earth and fresh blossoms. Glimmer decides she’ll stop by the kitchen for a cup of tea, or maybe hot cocoa, and try to finish reading a few more reports before sunrise. But as she turns to leave the cemetery, she sees someone standing just a few feet away.
Catra.
This was one of Catra’s dumber ideas. She couldn’t sleep, again, so she decided to go for another walk—outdoors this time, following a few paths left where she’d previously turned right. When she stumbles upon the cemetery, she doesn’t think much of it, until she notices that one of the monuments is shrouded. Then, in quick succession, she realizes that the shrouded statue must be King Micah, the taller one next to it must be Queen Angella—and that’s Glimmer, the real flesh-and-blood Glimmer, standing in front of them both.
Standing in front of the monument to her mother. The monument that’s there because of Catra.
She wants to leave. She needs to leave. But her feet feel stuck to the ground, and before she can get them unstuck, Glimmer turns around and sees her. Catra flinches and feels the blood drain from her face.
“Oh,” says Glimmer softly. “Catra. Hi.”
“I’m sorry,” Catra says quickly, meaning sorry for interrupting, I’ll be going now, but her words seem to hit Glimmer like a body blow, and Catra suddenly realizes Glimmer thinks she’s apologizing for…
Damn it. Gods damn it to all twenty-seven islands of Hell. It seems incomprehensibly stupid now that Catra thought she could avoid talking to Glimmer about this. After the rescue from Horde Prime, the trip home, the final battle, the past couple of weeks of friendly co-existence and escalating sexual tension, it had just… never happened.
But Catra sees the naked emotion on Glimmer’s face, and she understands that it needs to happen. Now.
So she says it again, “I’m sorry,” more fervently this time, glancing at the statue of Angella and then back to Glimmer. Catra never had a mom—her best guess is it’s sort of like having Shadow Weaver around, but kind and caretaking instead of cruel and manipulative. She thinks about that for a minute, the magnitude of what she took away from Glimmer slowly coming to light.
Glimmer smiles weakly. “I know, Catra.”
“I—I—” Catra shakes her head. It feels like she should say more, but nothing that comes to mind seems remotely adequate.
She’s about to just say sorry a third time when Glimmer speaks again. “It’s okay,” she says softly. “I forgive you.”
Her words are kind, and her smile is a clear attempt at reassurance, but Catra can see the pain crimping the corners of her expression, and her own self-loathing boils over. “How?! How is it okay? How—how can you forgive me for what I did? Tell me! Tell me how!”
The softness in Glimmer’s demeanour evaporates. “You really want to do this, Catra?” she snarls. “Fine!” There’s that Glimmer temper, Catra thinks, and then her feet lose contact with the ground as Glimmer uses her entire body weight to shove Catra to the lawn. It’s a gentle landing on soft grass, but it’s also the most violent Glimmer’s been with her since—since everything. Catra hates it and welcomes it simultaneously.
Glimmer stands over her now, fists clenched, incandescent with fury under the light of the moons. “You’re the reason my mom is gone,” she spits. “You were selfish, and toxic, and you didn’t care who you hurt. My mom sacrificed herself to save everyone—from you. To save Adora from you. I am never going to see my mother again because you couldn’t get your fucking shit together, Catra!”
The tears in Glimmer’s eyes don’t make her look any less fearsome. Catra stares up at her, forcing herself to feel every single stab of guilt and regret in her heart, so many they blur together into a constantly disintegrating and reintegrating ache.
Everything Glimmer is saying, everything she’s said, is true. She seems to have finished for the moment, but she’s still scowling darkly at Catra.
“You’re right,” whispers Catra from the ground. “You’re right. About all of it. I’m s—I’m sorry.” Glimmer’s face contorts in a fresh surge of emotion and Catra has to look away. She remembers what Perfuma said about vulnerability and keeping her heart open. To this? she thinks. How am I supposed to bear this?
Glimmer still doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t even move. Catra’s afraid to look at her, expecting anything from a kick in the jaw to an eviction notice from Bright Moon. As badly as she wants to run away, she realizes she’d prefer the kick.
It’s silent for so long Catra loses track of time. She could have been sitting here on the grass, avoiding Glimmer’s gaze, for five minutes or an hour. When Glimmer finally tries to speak, it’s in a shaky, uneven voice—Catra can hear the immense effort she’s making to stay calm.
“Do you know what I’m the most angry about right now?” Glimmer says carefully, oh so carefully. Catra shakes her lowered head.
“I wish that Catra were here.” Even in a hushed tone, the contempt in Glimmer’s voice is devastating. Catra shakes her head again, in confusion this time. She is here. She’s right in front of Glimmer, isn’t she?
Catra dares to look up. Glimmer’s face is less angry and more… distant. Her purple eyes fix with laser focus on Catra’s yellow and blue ones. Catra shakes her head again, a silent plea for an explanation she knows she has no right to.
“The toxic Catra. The selfish one. The—the stupid self-destructive asshole who opened that portal. If she were here, I’d—” Glimmer looks down at her fists, opens and closes them once. Then she looks back at Catra, her face set in stone.
“I’d fucking kill her.”
Catra freezes.
Then Glimmer stops. Her shoulders slump, her fists relax, her face falls. She looks at Catra, her eyes brimming with pain.
“But you already killed her, didn’t you,” she says, and the pain is in her voice too, overwriting the vengeful edge of a moment ago. “On Horde Prime’s ship. And… after.”
That’s… metaphorically resonant, Catra supposes, from a certain point of view. It doesn’t feel true.
“This Catra,” Glimmer gestures to her and sighs deeply. “This Catra saved my life. And Bow’s. And Adora’s. And everyone else on Etheria. This Catra helped save the whole universe.” A shadow passes across her face. “That doesn’t make up for what you did. It doesn’t bring my mom back. But it happened too.”
Glimmer looks away for a minute, chewing her bottom lip. Then she turns back. “Would you do it again?” she asks abruptly.
“W-what,” Catra manages.
“Would you open the portal? If we were back in Hordak’s lab, right now, everything set up and ready to go—would you pull that switch again?”
Catra looks like Glimmer just asked if she’d drink raw sewage. “What?! No! Absolutely not!” she all but shrieks. A shiver of trauma courses through her body, impossible to hide, and she scrambles to pull her knees up to her chest. For a disorienting second she thinks she smells ozone. Or maybe it’s blood.
Something changes in Glimmer’s body language. She walks past Catra and Catra thinks that’s it, she’s leaving, probably forever. She ducks her head in sorrow and shame so she doesn’t have to watch her go. But Glimmer stops after just a couple of steps, and sits down on the grass, back to back with Catra.
“Is this okay?” she whispers.
Catra doesn’t think she can speak, but she leans a little into Glimmer and nods her head vigorously, hoping she’ll feel it through her back. Glimmer doesn’t move away, so she probably understands.
“I almost activated the Heart of Etheria,” Glimmer says. “Adora and Bow tried to stop me, but I pretty much told them to fuck off, and I went for it anyway. I—I’m the reason Horde Prime found us. And if I had managed to activate the Heart… I would have killed an awful lot of moms too.”
Catra makes a strangled cough of protest. It doesn’t sound like a fair comparison to her at all.
“I know it’s different,” Glimmer says, like she can read Catra’s mind. “But it’s not completely different. And if I want people to forgive me for my massive, idiotic, almost-end-of-the-world fuckups… I kind of have to forgive yours too, don’t I?” She leans back into Catra for a brief, friendly moment. Catra, who thought the “affectionate contact” era of her relationship with Glimmer was over for good, almost bursts into tears.
“Come on,” says Glimmer. “Let’s go to the kitchen. You can help me make cocoa.”
She stands up and takes Catra’s hand to help the other woman to her feet. Catra almost chokes on how unworthy of it she feels, but manages to stop short of yanking her hand away, rising carefully and trying to take deep, even breaths. Once they’re both standing, Glimmer doesn’t let go. Her hand is smaller than Adora’s, a little chubbier, much softer.
“Nobody said it was going to be easy,” Glimmer says with a gentle squeeze.
Catra almost laughs. Glimmer must have picked that saying up from Adora. She sighs at the truth of it, like she always does.
“No,” she agrees. “They sure didn’t.”