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Catra lies on the mat but doesn’t bother trying to sleep. She stares at the blue-purple glow of First Ones’ writing on Adora’s chest, watches it rise and fall as Adora breathes. Even in her sleep, Adora seems weary and restless. She clutches at the failsafe, rolls over, and rolls back before lying still again.
The failsafe. Of course Adora would take it even if she knew it would kill her. Of course Adora picks her stupid destiny and the entire fucking world over herself. Over Catra.
She has a morbid curiosity about what it must feel like to hold the key to that much power inside you, to know that it could deactivate and free an entire planet’s worth of magic at once, and kill you slowly and painfully at the same time. She supposes Adora must be familiar with at least a smaller version of that, now that she can magically become She-Ra without the sword, but Catra’s only ever fought with her body and any weapons she could get her hands on. She’d never rely on something as unruly and unpredictable as magic - not before Melog, anyway, but he’s different.
She reaches one hand toward the glow, wondering if it feels as palpable in the space above Adora’s chest as it looks, but stops. Don’t be weird, she admonishes herself. Adora stirs and her body tenses, hands balled into fists.
“It’s okay,” Catra whispers. She can’t resist her need to be gentle with Adora anymore. Not when she doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to do it again. She pushes some of Adora’s hair out of her face and tucks it behind her ear, and Adora slowly relaxes and opens her eyes.
“Did I kick you?” Adora mumbles. “Sorry.” She squints at Catra. “Why are you awake?”
Catra ignores the question and stares back. “What does it feel like?” she asks, gesturing toward the failsafe that has made its home in her best friend’s body.
Adora frowns and looks down. “Warm, I guess,” she says slowly, “and light, surprisingly. Sometimes I feel a little tingling, but mostly it’s just kind of… there.” She reaches out, takes Catra’s hand, and puts it on her own chest as if it belongs there. “See?”
Catra moves to retract her hand, but Adora doesn’t let go. “Catra,” she begins, clasping her hand tight, “I know you’re upset—”
“Don’t tell me how I feel,” Catra snaps, but she hates that Adora’s right. “You didn’t have to do it. I told you not to do it. But you always listen to her.”
“That’s not true,” Adora immediately replies. “It’s not because of her, Catra, don’t you get it? There’s no other way.”
“Yes there is,” Catra insists, barely keeping her voice to a whisper. “Shadow Weaver could’ve taken it—”
“It would kill her!” says Adora.
“Oh, but it’s okay to let it kill you?” Catra retorts, her voice breaking. “Adora, you can’t guarantee that you’ll be able to transform into She-Ra, and even if you can, who knows if She-Ra can even handle it?” She hates the familiar tears that begin to well up. “Why are you doing this?” she asks, too scared to ask, why are you doing this to me?
Adora bites her lip, and fuck, it kills Catra inside to see her so sad, but at the same time she gets some twisted satisfaction from knowing she can still hurt Adora as much as Adora hurts her. “I have to do this, Catra,” she says. “I have to protect you. And Glimmer, and Bow, and everyone else. It’ll be okay. You’ll all be safe. It’ll be worth it.”
“That’s not how it’s supposed to be, though!” Catra cries. Somehow it’s even worse when Adora already talks as if she’s sure she won’t make it. As if she’s already decided she’s okay with dying and leaving Catra behind to pick up the pieces for the thousandth, final time. “I look out for you, and you look out for me. It’s not supposed to be only you looking out for me all the time!”
“Catra…” Adora trails off. Catra’s crying for real now, and she doesn’t care. Adora finally lets go of her hand to wipe the tears from Catra’s face.
“What happened to nothing really bad can happen as long as we have each other?” Catra demands. “What am I supposed to do if you die? Did you ever think about that?”
Adora is silent, her thumb still resting on Catra’s face. Tears leak from her blue eyes down her cheeks, but Catra refuses to wipe them away the way Adora did for her. “I’m sorry, Catra,” she says, finally, “but I’m doing this for you—”
“No, you’re not.” Catra knows she sounds childish, but she has nothing left to lose. “Don’t fucking apologize if you don’t mean it,” she says. “You’re not sorry, and you’re not doing this for me. Why do you always have to play the fucking hero? I told you— I begged you not to do it.”
“No one else can take it and stand a chance,” Adora says, restrained. “Etheria needs She-Ra.”
“I don’t give a shit about She-Ra,” Catra sobs. “I just want you, Adora.”
They both go quiet, save the sound of Catra sniffing and wiping away her tears. Adora finally whispers, again, “I’m sorry, Catra.”
“Stop apologizing,” Catra says, but it’s hard to put the usual bite in her words when her throat is nearly hoarse from crying. “I’m the one who should be apologizing to you, anyways,” she adds. “I… I was awful to you, and I still have so much to make up to you.”
“No, you don’t—” Adora begins, stupidly, desperately earnest, and Catra swears she’ll fucking lose it if Adora starts being all perfect again.
“Shut up, Adora, and just listen to me,” Catra snaps. Then she pauses, takes a deep breath, and tries again, more gently. “I’m sorry I got mad, and I’m sorry for interrupting you.” She sighs. “And I’m sorry for not believing you, and kidnapping you and your friends, multiple times, and attacking Salineas and the other kingdoms, and opening the portal, and getting Glimmer’s mom stuck in it, and blaming you for the portal, and trying to kill you, and leaving you for dead in the castle, and not coming with you before, and…”
Adora takes her hands again. “I know,” she says. “I… I don’t know if I can say it’s all okay. But it’s in the past, and what matters is that you’re here now, right? And you’re trying, and—”
“And you’re going to die trying to save the fucking world before I can even start to make it up to you,” Catra says. She stares at Adora’s hands, clenched tightly around her own, and wishes they could lie together, face to face, holding hands, in any situation except the one where Catra tries to talk Adora out of letting an entire planet’s magic tear her apart and fails.
“That’s not true,” Adora argues. “You gave yourself up to save Glimmer. You’ve already changed so much.”
“It wasn’t for Glimmer,” Catra sighs, and she wonders— when will Adora get it? “It was for you, Adora. I just— I just wanted to save you , for once, and you wouldn’t let me. You always get yourself hurt to save everyone else. Why can’t you let anyone protect you?” Why can’t you let me protect you?
Adora stares at her, and Catra hopelessly searches her watery blue eyes for some sort of sign that Adora will finally change her mind and choose herself. And choose Catra. But she knows she won’t. Adora cares too much about everyone except herself, and it’s the thing Catra both loves and hates the most about her.
“Catra,” Adora whispers at last. She frames Catra’s face with her hands and moves so close that their noses brush. Catra’s breath catches in her throat. She hates how she can still see the glow of the failsafe reflected on Adora’s cheeks and chin, an ever-present reminder of Adora’s stupid fucking destiny. “Catra,” she says again, her voice so soft Catra can barely make it out despite their proximity, “I love you, so, so much.”
Catra resists the urge to scream, no you fucking don’t, because if you did, you wouldn’t leave me again. She waits quietly for the but, because she knows it’s coming. For a long time, Catra thought Adora was the only one whose love for her was, or should be, unconditional. But she knows better now. Adora’s love for Catra, no matter how great it is, will always come second to her need to save the entire world. And maybe it’s time for Catra to accept that.
“Listen to me, Catra,” Adora says. Her voice breaks. Even when she cries, Adora is beautiful, so much so that it hurts. “Are you listening?”
Catra nods, wipes away a tear from Adora’s face.
“After I joined the Rebellion, all I wanted was for you to come with me. For us to be back together.” Adora pauses, takes a deep breath. “Even when we were… when we were at our worst, I never stopped hoping that you’d change. That you’d come back. And you did, finally, and you’re here now, and I’m— happy," she whispers, her voice breaking. "So no matter what happens, it’ll be okay. I just need you to have some faith in me, because I need to do this, and I… I need you here, too.”
Adora never said but, Catra realizes. She wants both: the world, and Catra, and she doesn’t want to choose between the two. But she can’t have them both. And maybe that was the great tragedy of the two of them all along; that as much as they might want each other, Adora’s need to save everyone would always override however much she wanted Catra. That Adora’s godforsaken destiny was always going to end like this, with Adora disappearing as Catra begged hopelessly for her to stay.
Catra pulls Adora’s hands away from her face, but Adora still holds them tight in front of her chest. “No, you don’t,” Catra says, after a long silence. Adora’s eyes widen, and Catra continues, “You need to be She-Ra, not because of Shadow Weaver or the world. Because of who you are, Adora. You need to fix everything and be the hero. You’ve never needed me for any of that.” She sniffs. “You want to die your noble fucking death. So do it. I can’t stop you.”
“Catra,” Adora says, pained.
“Save your breath, Adora,” Catra replies curtly. “Just go to sleep. You should at least be well-rested for tomorrow.” She tries to soften the blow by halfheartedly ruffling Adora’s hair.
Adora, finally seeming to understand that it’s useless to argue, only says, “Okay, but you’ll stay, right?”
“I’m here,” Catra says, but makes no promises. Adora doesn’t seem to notice. She nestles into her blankets, still clutching Catra’s hand tightly to her chest.
Catra lets Adora hold her hand till the blonde finally falls asleep, unsure if she’s indulging Adora or herself. When she’s certain that Adora is sound asleep— or as close to it as Adora can get, anyways— she slowly lets go of her hand, takes her bag, and gets up to leave.
Melog protests. Catra looks back, once, and sees the light from the failsafe even from beneath Adora’s blankets. Her face hardens.
She lets the tent flap drop behind her and doesn’t look back again.