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The toilet is basically covered in red. The rest of her is fine, thankfully, besides a little red dot on her underwear (though, comparing that to the carnage she’s left in the facilities makes her wonder if it even could have come from the same place). She steps back a bit in knee-jerk horror and allows herself exactly one point five seconds to process the feeling of fear. Then she starts quickly checking herself over for wounds. It wouldn’t be the first time she’s missed one and made a mess later when it reopened, she scolds herself. She checks again, thoroughly—Adora is very thorough, always, with everything. But she can’t find anything out of the ordinary scrapes and bruises she’d already assessed today. She can’t possibly be missing one big enough to leave all this. She needs a second opinion.
So, not panicking whatsoever, she stuffs some paper into her underwear just in case and tries her level best to get any drops of blood up off the seat with some spit and scrubbing, and, heaven help her, she flushes (even though she’s really, really, really not supposed to when it’s just number one) because she absolutely cannot and will not let anyone in the barracks catch that something is wrong with her.
Except one person.
“Catra,” she whispers through the cacophony of ragged breaths and soldiers’ snoring, rousing her bedmate from what must be a very deep sleep because Catra just keeps her eyes closed and even starts snoring, too, actually, when Adora nudges her which sounds fake but whatever. “ Catra ,” She insists, “Catra, I need you, wake up for a second!”
“Uuughhh,” Catra groans, “What is it?” Adora watches her rub the sleep from her eyes and opens her mouth to say something, but Catra sneers, “Did baby have a nightmare?”
“No!” Adora shoves her and she giggles. Adora whisper-shouts, “C’mon, Catra, this is serious!”
Catra sits up in bed and lowers her voice, “Okay, okay, what?”
Adora says, “I’m bleeding from somewhere?” and tries not to look or sound as pathetic as she thinks she probably does.
“...Okay, and?”
“No, like,” Adora swallows and starts to kind of talk with her hands like she does when she’s stressed out. “Like, I got up to pee? But there was just blood?” She can hear the question marks after each thought and finds it very annoying.
Catra just blinks sleepily. Some gears, somewhere, maybe, start creaking to a turn in Catras head, though, and she says, bluntly, “Oh,” and clicks her teeth, “Man, you got yours first, then. As usual.”
Adora must look incredibly confused; Catra stretches and adds, “Yeah, that’s normal.”
“ What .” Adora snaps. “Catra randomly bleeding from your butthole is so not normal!”
Catra snorts a little too loud, catches herself, and whispers back, “It doesn’t come from your butthole, dipshit.”
Adora just looks at her, completely lost, and Catra pulls out a leg from under the covers, says, “It comes from here ,” and kicks her in the crotch.
Adora doubles over and grabs her privates in half-pain, half-indignance. Struggling to keep quiet, she seeths through gritted teeth, “ Fucking ! Ow , Catra!”
Catra’s just snickering. “Relax, okay?” She leans back against the wall. “Seriously, that stuff just happens when you get older.” She says, very maturely, with a dismissive wave of her hand.
“Wait, what?” Adora says, crawling up to sit next to her like a big baby. Then, actively putting forth effort to not be quite so naive, “How would you know?”
Catra blushes. “I’ve… heard some of the older guys talking about that kind of thing a couple times.”
Adora nods. “So it just… happens? Randomly?”
Catra bounces back easy. Proud to be knowledgeable once again, she says, smugly, “Once a month! Like clockwork, bay-bee.”
That's sort of reassuring. Adora breathes in a little bit of relief. "Well… What is it?"
"I dunno. When you bleed down there, it's for, like, having sex and making babies and stuff."
"Sex?!" Adora almost shouts. Why would she need to have sex?! Why would she need to make a baby right now?! “Ew!” She adds.
“I know, dude. I know.” Catra nods sagely. “But, hey, it means you’re really a grown-up now.”
Adora grimaces. “I don’t feel any different. My stomach just kinda hurts. Also, it’s gross.”
Catra nods again. “Yeah, it sounds pretty gross.”
Adora chews on her lip a little and shifts how she’s sitting. The wad of paper in her pants is getting pretty uncomfortable. And the feeling of blood between her legs is really unsettling. “Does everybody get it? I don’t get how that would make a baby.” To Adora’s knowledge, babies show up in boxes on the balconies of the Fright Zone. Well, actually, she does figure by now that sex has something to do with it. Honestly, she’s never really had the time to think about it.
“Nah,” Catra says, “I think it’s just for people with pussies.”
“Ew, ew, ew, ew, don’t call it that-- that’s so gross!!” Adora shoves her away again and Catra cackles like a witch. “ Shhhh! ” Adora presses a finger to her lip hard . She swears, if anyone wakes up and hears about this, she’s bolting and leaving Catra for dead for real.
“Oh, come on , Adora, you think anybody in this barrack is gonna care that you’ve hit puberty?”
Adora squeezes her eyes shut and just says, “ Shhhhhhh! ” louder, which probably doesn’t help her case.
Catra keeps teasing, “ Outside , though, someone’ll have to worry about protecting your virtue--”
Adora pounces on Catra, face absolutely glowing red, and covers Catra’s mouth with both her hands. She whispers as quietly as possible, “Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up…”
Catra licks her hands, and when Adora pulls away in disgust, Catra coos, “Don’t worry, my sweet, innocent Adora, I’ll protect it for you!” and wraps her arms around Adora’s neck. Adora just slumps in defeat and buries her flushed face in Catra’s shoulder. “Noooo,” Adora mumbles, and Catra is giggling and purring some, now.
They flip over and lay together on their sides for a while, tangled up. Adora is so uncomfortable, but she keeps quiet because she likes hugging Catra a lot, and Catra seems to be finally done teasing her. Catra’s gone a little still, actually.
Adora lets herself be in the quiet and the dark, breathing in mouthfuls of Catra’s hair and doing her best not to think about anything at all. It’s not that she actually worries for her virtue, or whatever, but she’s… Well, she is kind of scared. If everybody gets this thing, how do they keep it so secret? Isn’t it still a liability? She’s in more pain than usual, she feels all squishy and like she can’t move right anymore. Like she couldn’t run if she needed to. Couldn’t summon as much strength if she needed to. That’s probably what’s on Catra’s mind, too. The Horde eliminates the weak. Eliminates the undesirable. They’re built to be hungry. They’re trained for culling. There’s some animal in the ocean-- hardwired to start hunting at the smell of blood. And if the Horde doesn’t want her anymore, and if she isn’t just killed on the spot for no longer being any good, she’ll be left out in the elements. Out in the woods, or out in the open, or somewhere else where everything is too-much-too-bright-too-loud, and any horrible princesses with horrible intentions could find her and pick this terrible, vulnerable, useless body clean.
That’s it. That’s it, she’s no longer any good. She’ll be picked apart. That’s it. And then she actually starts racking her brain trying to come up with anything, anything she could do to keep being useful, keep being good, keep some sort of value on her head, so she can keep herself protected, so she can keep protecting Catra.
She squeezes her eyes shut real tight again. And Catra says, “Stop thinking so loud, dummy. Geez, it’s gonna be alright.”
Adora nods.
“As long as we’re together, right? Nothing really bad can happen.” Catra pulls back to look at her face and uses a claw to push some hair out of her eyes. The hair’s wet, for some reason. Her eyes must be wet.
Adora nods.
“What’s something that makes you smile?”
Adora, trying to stop thinking, says the first thing that comes to her head: “You do, most of the time.”
Catra fake-gags. “Okay, weirdo... Think about me, then.”
Adora does.
And after a moment, Adora says, “So you’re gonna start randomly bleeding one day, too?”
“Holy crap, why are you so hung up on this?”
“It’s freaky! You don’t know, you knew about it before-- and by the way, you could have said something!” Adora pushes her head down and into Catra’s chest, almost aggressively. “I thought I was dying .”
“Oh, so traumatic.”
Adora bonks her head against Catra’s chest for good measure. “Answer me.”
“I don’t know?! I… I guess?” Catra sounds embarrassed. Adora smirks. “Maybe?” Catra continues, “I mean, I’m not exactly… like you,” Catra swings her tail around and slaps Adora in the head with it. “I don’t know if it happens to cat-people or, y’know, whatever I am.”
“Weeeelllll…” Adora drawls, scooching further and further into Catra’s arms. “If you do… we could have a baby, then, right?”
“ What? ” Catra shouts, and gets the first W out before the rest is muffled by Adora’s preemptive hand over her mouth.
Adora’s giggling and giggling and says, “You said it’s for making babies! And you would make such cute babies, Catra!”
Catra’s front teeth gnaw on the skin of Adora’s hand, and it tickles, so she pulls it away and laughs more, and more, and more.
Catra hisses, “That’s so weird! Adora, that’s so weird-- that’s the weirdest thing anyone’s ever said! Why would you say that! Do you even know what you’re talking about?” She’s slapping Adora more with her tail and squishing her face between her hands, fully poised to spring into a noogie if necessary. “Why would you want a baby anyway? Do you even-- Ugh, You’re so weird! ”
Through gasping breaths, Adora manages, “Heheh-- I dunno, heh, I liked it when you were a baby, so,” She thinks about it, genuinely. “I think I like babies.”
Catra narrows her eyes. “There is absolutely no way you remember when I was a baby.”
“Yeah-huh. I remember you being cute and soft and fluffy,” Adora sticks her tongue out, “And having no brain.”
Catra narrows her eyes more and scrunches her nose up. Adora’s face is still squished. “I am not nor have I ever been cute.”
“You were super, super, very, extremely cute,”
Catra squishes harder. “I’ll claw your tongue out.” And Adora blows a raspberry and says, squishedly, “Yer definitely noht kyute anhymore d’ough,” and Catra growls, headbutts her (their foreheads smash together with an audible clunk ), kicks her feet out and starts pummeling her-- right in the lower-stomach where all the organs feel like they’re sloughing out of her.
She immediately tucks and rolls like she’s under genuine attack-- and that’s pretty reassuring, that she can do that, actually-- and groans out, “Ow, ow, ow, ow-ow-ow-ow-ow,”
“Oh, shit, sorry,” Catra gasps. And finally, another voice in the darkness rattles, “Shut the fuck up, brats,” uncaring whether it wakes anyone up or not.
Adora clamps a hand over her own mouth, now, and cradles her stomach with the other. She must look like she’s in real pain. Catra maneuvers to crouch next to Adora’s side of the bed and lay a hand on her back. “Hey,” she whispers, “Come on, let’s go take a shower. Maybe we’ll get lucky and it’ll be warm. That’ll help.” She considers it for a second and adds, “And if it’s not warm, well, it’ll clean you off, yeah?”
Adora swallows and slowly, slowly, gets up. Catra lets her lean on her a little and starts walking with an arm around her waist. “We’ll get you some fresh clothes, too.” Adora doesn’t even bother to ask, Catra probably plans on stealing some from somewhere. She just hopes she doesn’t get herself into trouble for her sake. She lets her eyes go slack and thinks fuzzily about Baby-Catra, all warm and fat and little, smelling like milk and sunshine-- (Her brow furrows. She wouldn’t know what sunshine smells like, would she?)-- like the spots of sunshine that break through the dust here sometimes, she guesses. She has a hard time remembering much, and she doesn’t remember anything before Catra. But she wasn’t lying. She does remember, at least dreamily, the baby Catra used to be. And if she had to have a baby, she’d want one like that. But not here. Not now. Maybe when they’re older. Maybe when she and Catra have taken over, and the world can be whatever they want it to be. And all three of them will be protected.
Catra helps her shower and doesn’t even wrinkle her nose at all the blood. Adora still doesn’t understand where it’s all coming from, how she can even lose that much without being seriously injured. She finds new briefs for Adora from somewhere and even a cloth to lay inside them. And she comes back with them unscathed, so Adora thinks it’s probably okay.
They crawl back into bed, and Adora asks if Catra can scratch her back until she falls asleep. Catra says, “Boy, when I get whatever this disease is, you better pamper me just as much.” And Adora nods, fervently. She lets the back-and-forth motion and the feeling of Catra’s nails lull her, and her brain finally (kind of, for like a freaking second) shuts up, and she sleeps.