Chapter Text
Adora couldn't sleep. She stared up at the ceiling of the darkened room. The only sounds out here in deep space were the hum of Darla's engines and the soft breathing of Catra, fast asleep beside her.
Adora swung her legs off the edge of the bed, getting up as carefully as she could to avoid waking Catra. She left the room, padding into the ship's main corridor. From the front of the ship, she could hear Entrapta talking to herself, or rather into her recorder, about whatever aspects of Darla's performance she was fixated on at the moment. Adora turned instead to the rear of the ship, toward the cargo hold.
The only light as Adora entered the hold was the dim, color-shifting glow of the artificial runestone. Entrapta and Hordak had constructed it to carry magical energy from Etheria to be used to kick-start the natural magic of any worlds they found where it lay dormant. Adora sat on one of the nearby crates containing a portal beacon, another device Entrapta and Hordak had whipped up that allowed Darla to teleport instantly between Etheria and any friendly planets where they set one up, and lost herself in thought, staring vacantly at the runestone and feeling the magic radiating from it.
The adventures in space had already been many. The Best Friends Squad had restored magic to several worlds, made friends on several more, and had many battles with strange creatures, hostile aliens, and space pirates. Through all of it, a long unanswered question had begun nagging at Adora's mind, something she'd written off as irrelevant, but as time went on, she found it occupying her thoughts more and more…
I thought the First Ones were all gone, but clearly some faction remains…
"Hey, Adora," Catra's voice pulled Adora from her reverie.
"Catra?" she said. "I'm sorry, I tried not to wake you…"
"You didn't," Catra replied. She crossed the room and sat down on the crate next to Adora. “What are you doing in here, anyway?”
“I couldn’t sleep,” Adora confessed.
“Obviously,” Catra said with a smirk as she slipped her arm around Adora’s waist. “So what’s bothering you?”
Adora looked back up at the runestone’s glow, considering how to put it into words.
“Do you ever think about where we came from?” she said at last. “You know, before the Horde?”
“Not really, no,” Catra replied. “I mean, I don’t really remember anything before the Fright Zone. It never really mattered to me, I guess.”
“I guess it didn’t matter to me either for a long time, but…”
“But now it does?”
Adora nodded.
“I told you about how Light Hope kidnapped me,” Adora continued, “about how she used Hordak’s portal to bring me to Etheria.”
Catra nodded.
“Well, I can’t help but wonder, now that we’re out exploring the universe, if the people she took me from are still out there somewhere. If they are, I’d like to know who they are and to let them know that I’m safe,” Adora took Catra’s hand in hers. “That I’m happy.”
They sat there in the dark for a moment, Catra running her thumb over Adora’s knuckles. At last, Catra reached up and turned Adora’s face to look at her.
“Hey,” she smiled, “then we’ll find them.
“How?” Adora asked, though unable to stop herself smiling back. “There are so many worlds out here. It’ll be like looking for a needle in the world’s biggest haystack.”
“Entrapta,” Catra said after a moment’s thought. “I’ll bet she can find something in this ship's old databanks. Or maybe the Horde had information that could point us in the right direction.” She shrugged, “At least maybe we can narrow it down?”
“That’s a great idea! Adora exclaimed. She pulled Catra into a tight hug. “Thank you for understanding.”
“Of course,” Catra said. “You want to find out where you came from, then we’ll find where you came from. Together.”
“I love you,” said Adora with a warm smile.
Catra kissed her.
“I love you, too.”
They sat in the hold a while longer, Adora resting her head on Catra’s shoulder, until Adora’s eyes finally grew heavy, and at last they went back to bed.
=======
“I thought you’d never ask!” Entrapta cried.
Everyone blinked at her for a moment. Adora had brought up the idea of looking for her homeworld once she, Catra, Entrapta, Glimmer, and Bow had all met in the kitchen that morning while Wrong Hordak busied himself preparing breakfast.
“Wait, what?” asked Glimmer.
“I’ve been cross-referencing Horde Prime’s star charts with those I’d salvaged from First Ones databanks for months! ” Entrapta explained, excitedly.
“Why didn’t you say anything before now?” Catra asked.
“I...” Entrapta stopped short. “I thought the whole being-kidnapped thing might be a painful subject for Adora, so I didn’t want to say anything unless she asked. Did I...get that wrong?”
“No, no, it’s fine,” Adora said. “Did you find anything?”
“ Did I!? ” Entrapta sprang from her seat, sweeping the scattering of dishes from the table with her hair and quickly setting up a hologram projector. “The information from the First Ones’ ruins on Etheria is degraded and incomplete, not to mention a thousand years out of date, so the first step was to figure out reference points to align Prime’s star charts with those of the First Ones.”
The projector filled the space above the table with countless tiny pinpricks of light: a representation of the galaxy. Some of the dots were green while others were pink. As Entrapta continued, the pink dots shifted to align with the green, turning yellow on contact.
“Once I had the star charts synced, then came the tricky part! I had to look for things that weren’t in the Horde’s files. Obviously, Adora was born on a First Ones colony world that Prime didn’t know about or else he would have attacked and destroyed it years ago. So after controlling for all the variables I could, I was left with...one!”
The display zoomed in on a single point of light, the only one that remained pink. First Ones text appeared beside it.
“The First Ones called this planet-” Entrapta began.
“Eternia,” Adora read. She stood up, “That has to be it! ‘Eternia’ was the password to get into the Crystal Castle!”
“Adora, we can’t know that for sure,” Bow said.
“But Bow,” said Glimmer, “it’s a planet the First Ones knew about that Horde Prime didn’t. That’s got to mean something.”
“Even if it’s not the right place,” said Catra, “it’s obviously connected to Adora’s people. And it’s our only lead, so I say it’s worth a shot.”
Adora looked around the table, smiling at the excitement and support of her friends.
“Alright,” Bow said with a grin, “then let’s do this!”