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After the endless field of grass, the spaceship is a hollow body with cold floors and no breeze. Catra wanted to never leave all that grass. She slept on every warm patch she could find, her fingers intertwined with Adora’s, their cheeks touching, the soft, soft skin. She didn’t go inside once during those long days preparing for the trip. She didn’t say anything, but she was apprehensive; it sat coiled tightly in her stomach during the departure from Etheria. Even without her saying anything, Adora noticed; she stood beside Catra at the control panel and pointed toward the stars, saying, Look, look.
She drew constellations in the air for Catra out of the sky’s glittering patterns while the light of the sun faded behind them.
“How do you know all this?” Catra asked her.
“I don’t know. I just do.”
But the ship’s lights are familiar, its steady patterns and ancient writing. Catra has held that light inside her, Adora’s light twice in her body, her whole body warm and electric and more wonderful than anything she’s ever known.
She is trying not to take its coldness for cruelty. After all, it feels wrong to be living out of a First Ones’ ship, to shudder with it, after everything that happened, but the only First One here is Adora, and, after all, she built her destiny from the ground up. The ship is Adora’s, which means it’s Catra’s, and they’re safe at last.
Mostly space is a dark void, glittering with pinpricks of light Catra is trying not to see as claw marks, spots of blood she’s left on too many people’s arms. Mostly the stars are far away, looking at them dispassionately. Catra spends a lot of her time on the windowsills, their surfaces cold and still, drinking in Adora’s constellations and imagining some of her own. Even though the sky doesn’t change for days at a time, Catra never tires of it.
The rest of her time Catra spends beside Adora. Hand in hand, head on shoulder. She has half a lifetime to make up for.
Adora keeps her hair down for Catra to play with. When Glimmer decides to pull it into long plait, there on the floor of the main room, Adora protests, but she never pulls away.
“I’ve always wanted someone whose hair I could do,” Glimmer says.
When she’s done, Adora stands and models the new style for Catra, dirty blonde hair pulled back in sophisticated waves and tapering beneath her shoulder blades. Catra stares.
“Woah,” whispers Catra. “You look—”
“Embarrassing?” teases Adora.
“I was going to say ‘stunning,’ actually, but have it your way.”
Adora doesn’t take it out for days.
Often, days pass without contact from Etheria. They have each other for company, and Melog, and they laugh enough that the whole ship feels electric. Catra is learning, slowly, what it means to have friends who stay. That a hand on her shoulder doesn’t mean the war is coming. She smiles more than she has in her whole life, lets herself laugh real laughs, doesn’t take the hands from her shoulders and hands and hair. She smiles until she cries, and then, wiping her eyes, turns away.
And someone’s hand touches her back. Someone is telling her, Stay.
And it is all of them.
Catra finds new hiding spots every day, but she doesn’t need to use them.
There is magic everywhere here, even in this close capsule. Catra spends at least an hour every day play-fighting with Melog, because she doesn’t like to be still, or maybe doesn’t know how. On the floor of any spare room, her claws go straight through Melog and her palms land firmly on their chest. So there is one thing, at least, that she will not ever hurt. And she is trying not to hurt people.
The door slides open and harsh light comes in. Melog’s glow dims in its onslaught.
“There you are,” says Adora. At first she is a shadowed figure, haloed, not Adora at all but She-Ra. Then Adora steps into the room.
“Don’t laugh at me,” says Catra, but there is no malice in it. She rolls over onto her back, arms splayed, and looks up at Adora.
Grinning, Adora stretches down a hand, her palm soft. Something burns in Catra’s heart, something she falls into every day. “If you wanted some exercise, you could have told me. If you recall, I have a magic sword and I know every one of your moves.”
“Do not!”
“Do too,” says Adora, and giggles when Catra takes her hand and pulls herself up.
For a second, they stand there, staring at each other in the light, Adora’s grin brighter than every star they’ve ever passed, her eyes scrunched up, the dimples in her cheeks deep.
“You’re beautiful,” Catra says. And Catra doesn’t know how, but that grin grows wider, Adora’s eyes like deep oceans in her face. “Stop doing that to me!”
“What am I doing?” says Adora, and her grin goes teasing. “I’m not doing anything.”
“You’re—you know!”
Adora waggles her eyebrows, and Catra huffs. “Oh yeah?”
Long ago, Catra wouldn’t say it, but now she doesn’t want to leave a single word unsaid between her and Adora. “You’re not allowed to be—to be cute like that when we’re fighting.”
Adora releases Catra’s hand and slides her arms around Catra’s waist. Catra shivers. Her hands come up and rest on Adora’s chest, the place where the failsafe, like a sigil, sat. A rune, a heart, a promise. But Catra’s knuckles rest against the fabric of her shirt, the heat of her skin, the pounding of her heart underneath. Catra closes her eyes and puts her forehead against Adora’s cheek.
Adora’s breath stirs Catra’s hair when she says, “I love you. And I am absolutely going to use these eyes against you in a fight.”
And Catra is, of course, no match for She-Ra, this new She-Ra stronger than anything. She-Ra fills the whole ship with light, not just the room she’s inside of. Bow, in his spacesuit on the outside of the hull, tells them they’re glowing like a star. Once they would have been afraid, an enemy armada hiding in the dark void of space, but the universe is a wondrous place. It dazzles; it breathes. It pulses against them, warm the way a home should be.
The way a home is, now. These metal walls, with their pulsing veins of light and Adora’s warmth and resolve all through them; and these people, Bow in his helmet and his voice scratchy on their comm and Glimmer practicing her magic as the universe comes alive with it; well, they’re the best home Catra has ever had.
When She-Ra holds her, Catra melts.
Every communication back to Etheria shows the planet vibrant with growth and many-eyed creatures that glow from within. Already Catra is thinking about home, about putting down her roots, about finding a place in the forest with Adora near everyone she loves and sleeping under the stars, the stars. She is thinking of following Melog and meeting every new creature — putting out her hand for them, touching their sides, listening to their ancient and unfathomable languages. Every call, she asks Perfuma or Mermista to turn the screen, to let her see the whole world, blue-skied and breathtaking.
“You miss it,” says Adora. Catra is in her lap, and Adora’s hands are stroking the soft fur on Catra’s chin. Perfuma’s face fills the large screen at the front of the ship, flowers all around her, her expression gentle and awed.
Catra says, “Yeah, well. There’s a lot to miss, thanks to you.”
“I know. I miss it, too. But the rest of the universe feels like home to me, too. Do you feel the same?”
Catra sighs, reaching up a hand to loosely hold Adora’s wrist. “I’m not a First One. But everything I need is right here. You, and good friends, and I guess the short of it is I needed to get off that planet anyway. And nothing can hurt me now.” The last part sounds like a mantra, like a promise she chants to herself.
Perfuma says, “Even the Crimson Waste. I went back to visit Huntara. Things are different there, you know? Kinder. She smiled more. You should’ve seen. All the cacti are still there, but there are green, growing things, too. It’s not a waste anymore. And Scorpia says—” she blushes “—it’s beautiful. And she needs to see beautiful things more than just about anyone.”
“You and Scorpia, huh?” says Catra. She is aware of how her voice sounds, every hidden melancholy. She is learning not to wait for a hidden well of hatred behind everyone’s kind eyes. Some days it is harder than others, but today it isn’t hard at all.
“Me and Scorpia.” The warmth in Perfuma’s voice, the way she can’t stop herself from smiling. Catra wonders if Scorpia smiles the same way, and knows that she does.
“I’m happy for you.”
“Thank you, Catra. I never thought magic like this was possible,” Perfuma tell them. “Watching the world come alive when it was once just me and the other princesses. I know I’m whole on my own, but it makes me feel fulfilled, somehow.”
Adora says, “I’m glad.”
A voice says, “Are you gonna yap all day or do I get a turn?”
Catra goes very still. Something slides like ice through her body, chilling her. Adora can’t see her face, but her arms slide from Catra’s chin and encircle her body. The fur on Catra’s arms stands up, and Adora strokes it with one hand. Perfuma is still in the frame, but the comm is shifting. Catra is tense and cold all over, but Adora holds her securely. Catra takes a deep breath, feels it slide through her body. She can do this.
The figure that comes into frame has pale, blasted irises and scleras as dark as Etheria’s thousand-year night. The pile of hair on its head is star-white, while its long ears stretch toward the edges of the screen. Its skin is green as every new leaf in Etheria. Perfuma is still there, just off-screen, which means she knows about Double Trouble, their true form, which means when they said they chose the winning side, they meant they had the old rebellion around their finger.
Catra can feel herself shaking hard in Adora’s lap, her elbow propped against the sharp edges of the administrator’s seat. Her voice is a breath between her teeth. “Double Trouble.”
The shapeshifter’s eyes rake over Catra’s body, shameless.
“Hey, kitten,” drawls Double Trouble. “Love the new look.”
“You don’t get to talk to me,” snarls Catra.
“Oh, woah, still so bitter.” Those sharp, white teeth; those ears twitching; that confident pose, hip thrust out, a glee that can only be manufactured.
“I’m not playing your games anymore. Got it?”
“Aw,” says Double Trouble. “But I’m with all your friends now. Give a person a second chance?”
Catra laughs. She shudders with it, but fortunately, blessedly, Adora doesn’t say anything. She keeps pressure on Catra’s arms, rests her cheek on Catra’s shoulder. “You’ve had plenty of chances. I don’t care who you’re with.”
Hordak with his blaster aimed at Catra’s face, the shining light of annihilation. Her nadir, the lowest point of desperate self-destruction. And Double Trouble’s voice through it all, silvery-sweet, touching Catra as though the body was nothing more than the site of her demise.
Everyone with hope between their teeth except Double Trouble, who laughed and laughed in Adora’s voice.
It knots in Catra’s gut, spiraling out like a portal she once opened to prove she would never back down. She can feel gooesbumps on her legs, her arms everywhere Adora is not touching.
She is in a river, drowning. Every part of her is put together wrong; every part of her is nauseous.
But Double Trouble looks at her with wide, innocent eyes. “What’s wrong?” they say, as though they don’t know, their palms in the air. “Can’t we put the past behind us?”
Catra gets up, Adora’s hands sliding off her arms. “I’m not talking to you,” Catra tells them. “Come on, Melog.” She stalks through the wide door, Melog a few paces behind her, and the door closes behind them.
Melog’s glowing mane flickers red as Catra stomps down the corridor. Melog whimpers at Catra, so Catra puts her hand in their mane.
In the room Catra shares with Adora, Catra curls up under the covers. When Melog hops up, the mattress sinks. They lay down between Catra and the wall; they rest their head on their paws and look at Catra, their eyes steady. Catra extracts a hand from the blanket and encircles Melog’s neck. She presses her forehead against Melog’s chin, and Melog licks her hair. For a second, Catra giggles. The room is dark, the door closed, and she is not alone. But Adora is still talking to Double Trouble, and it makes Catra uneasy.
Melog grooms Catra’s hair, and even though Catra’s whole body is tense and cold, she gives herself in to the feeling.
“It’s not fair,” she whispers. Melog mews. “I know, I know. It doesn’t help me to hold onto it. But I can’t rationalize everything away. I can’t just tell me it doesn’t hurt and it’ll stop hurting.” She pulls her legs closer to her chest and closes her eyes. “I’m sorry, Melog. I’ll—we’ll—be okay.”
Melog just mews and shifts closer to Catra, a soft comfort.
After a few minutes, the door slides open with a soft click. “Catra?” Adora’s voice is soft, clear, open, and this is what brings the first sob to Catra’s lips. Catra’s back is to the door, and she tenses as it opens.
“Hey,” says Adora. “Are you okay?”
Catra shifts closer to Melog. “I don’t want to talk.” She doesn’t want to put her bad thoughts in the air. She doesn’t want to make it real. She wants to keep it inside herself until she can conquer it, come to terms with it. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me.”
“You’re doing that thing again.” Catra imagines Adora standing beside the bed, looking down at the intertwined shapes of Catra and Melog.
“What thing?”
Adora sighs. The bed shifts when she sits. “That thing where you act like you’re not important because you think other people are more important than you. The thing where you feel like you don’t have a place in the world. You do, Catra; you are.”
“Oh, you mean your thing. That’s not what I do.”
“You’re not bringing me down. I understand why you wouldn’t want to talk to Double Trouble.”
Even with her eyes closed, Catra can feel the weight of Adora’s gaze on her. She wants to say, You don’t understand, but talk like that is how she pushes people away, and she is trying not to do that to Adora. “It’s stupid, anyway.” She doesn’t want Adora to say, You thought I betrayed you once, for a very long time, and so give Double Trouble a chance, too. Adora doesn’t know those blank eyes, that voice devoid of everything but sadistic glee. Double Trouble looming there on every screen, in every window, their voice sweet as a white lie.
She wants to be allowed her anger. She wants to let it go of her own volition. She wants to withhold her apologies from those who haven’t tried to change.
Adora touches Catra’s knee, warm even though the blanket. “You can tell me.”
“I know,” Catra mumbles. Behind her eyelids, Melog’s glow goes from a flickering red to a soft, gentle blue. Catra shifts toward them, leaving space for Adora behind her.
“Can I?” asks Adora, and Catra nods. The bed shifts as Adora lays down behind Catra, her knees slotting in behind Catra’s. She rests one hand under Catra’s neck and the other around her waist. She strokes Catra’s arm, her breath hot on the back of Catra’s head. Catra holds Melog and breathes.
“Are they still on the comm?” Catra says.
“No. No. I hung up the moment you left.”
Catra sighs. “Thank you.”
“Are you going to tell me?”
Haltingly, Catra says, “I don’t know. I’m working on believing that people aren’t going to betray me, that the past is just the past. I’m working on not holding people a distance because of it.”
Adora’s fingers on Catra’s neck circle the scar there. Catra feels pressure, but nothing else. The wound healed since Entrapta removed the chip, but because of how deeply it was embedded, all the nerves in the area were too damaged to pick up any feeling. It formed a raised keloid, red against her skin and fading to white. Clothes that cover her neck keep Catra from touching it during the day, though sometimes she does anyway, just to be sure the chip is gone. She is glad to feel flesh there of any kind, rather than that cold, blinking metal.
When Adora touches undamaged skin, it sends a thrill through Catra. She shivers.
She rolls over so she faces Adora. Adora readjusts her arms — one over Catra’s waist, touching the small of her back, pressing Catra closer to herself; the other touching Catra’s chin, her lips. Catra arches her back. Adora’s eyes are pale in Melog’s glow and steady. Catra looks into those eyes, so close, so intent on her. This closeness is a marvel every time, a blessing she once thought she would never deserve.
“You’re doing an amazing job,” Adora whispers. “You’re trying harder than anyone I’ve ever seen, and, can I just say, it’s incredible to watch you succeed. I’m so proud of you.”
Catra closes her eyes and lets out a sob. “You are?” Her lips brush Adora’s fingers.
“Yes. Yes.” It’s a whisper, a promise.
“I know the past doesn’t define me.” She says it twice. “But it hurts.”
“I know,” says Adora, and they are not talking about Double Trouble anymore, not entirely. There are too many damaged pasts. “It might take some time. If you want to forgive them, I’ll support you in that, but if you don’t want to, I’ll support you there, too.”
Catra smiles, and Adora smiles back, that dazzling, ocean-eyed expression. Catra can’t drink in enough of it. Her voice is still watery when she says, “What do you think I should do?”
“You’re hurt,” says Adora. “And I don’t know your history with them, but I do know that just because they joined the rebellion doesn’t mean what they did to you wasn’t real. It’s okay for it to be messy. But you’re wonderful, and I love you, and if I know anything about you, nothing in the world can stop you from being the person you want to be. So, who do you want to be?”
Past Catra would have shot back, Who do you want me to be? But she knows more, now. She knows how to stand on her own feet. She knows how to own her thoughts. She is learning to believe she is just as valuable for who she is as for who other people want her to be. She holds her breath inside herself while she fits her words together.
Instead, Catra sighs. “I should talk to them.”
Adora leans forward and kisses Catra with teeth and lips pulled back in a grin. Her mouth soft, the warm sensation that burns in Catra’s chest. There aren’t fireworks anymore, not like the first time, but every touch makes Catra yearn to be closer. Adora is warm and comfortable and home, in every sense.
“I’m proud of you,” Adora whispers again into Catra’s mouth.
“Don’t be proud yet.”
“I’ll be there with you the whole time, and you can hang up whenever you need to.”
“Thank you,” says Catra.
They go to the control room together, hand-in-hand. Catra launches the communicator and notifies Perfuma. She isn’t shaking, but she has to convince her body to move every step of the way. Adora wraps her arms around Catra’s waist and rests her chin on Catra’s shoulder.
When the screen fills with Perfuma’s face, the green, green desert behind her, Catra says, “Is Double Trouble still there?” It takes everything in her to keep her voice steady on the name.
In her sweet, soft voice, Perfuma says, “I’ll get them.”
“You’re friends?” Catra asks.
“They’re helping me and Scorpia out here in the Crimson Waste.”
Scorpia. No. Catra doesn’t want to address that.
“You give a lot of second chances,” Catra says.
“Being open doesn’t mean letting yourself get hurt, but if someone wants to change, it doesn’t help anyone not letting them.”
There’s a jostling in the background, a low, trilling voice calling Perfuma’s name. Catra wants to ask, You think they’ve changed? But a green shoulder enters the screen, and Perfuma tilts the screen until she and Double Trouble fill up the window, side by side. Catra shivers.
“Hey,” says Catra. It’s low and rough, but she raises a hand in a wave.
There’s a pronounced confusion on Double Trouble’s face, but they mask it quickly.
Catra says, “How’s the winning side looking now? I see you’re buddy-buddy with the old rebellion, now.”
Double Trouble laughs. It crawls under Catra’s skin. “It’s not that simple, kitten.”
“Don’t call me that.” Catra squeezes Adora’s hand on her shoulder, and Adora squeezes back. Catra can hear Adora’s breath on her cheek, its warmth sliding through her.
Double Trouble throws up an arm, grinning their surrender. “Got it, got it.”
“What are you doing with Perfuma?”
The shapeshifter pulls their hair forward and rakes their hand through its long locks, glancing away from the screen toward an imaginary audience. “These people fought with everything they had. It’s not my style, but there’s something worth admiring in it. And there aren’t exactly sides, anymore. Besides, this is home,” says Double Trouble, confusion quirking their brow.
“You’re getting paid?”
“Hardly. There’s no one left to spy on with the big, bad Horde out of commission.” They sound wistful.
And though there are many questions this answer opens up, Catra says, “Are you sorry?”
A long pause, those big, green eyes. Moss on stone, the noontime sky. Double Trouble is as much a creature of Etheria as any of them, born of its magic, given shape by it. “Am I… what?”
“Sorry,” says Catra. “You know. Regretful, repentant.”
To Double Trouble’s credit, they don’t laugh. Their steady eyes unsettle Catra, but she holds them anyway. To be soft does not mean to let the world devour you. “I am what I am, darling. You, of everyone, should know that.”
“Oh, I know. I just hoped… you were better than it.”
Something changes in those eyes, those big eyes filling up the front window, the stars through green skin like water on moss. Which means Catra is looking at a slice of home. If Perfuma is okay with Double Trouble, then Catra needs a better reason to hate them than an old grudge carried over from her darkest moment.
Catra turns her head so she can see, in periphery, Adora’s eyes. “There are things I want to say, but I don’t know if I should say them.” She is standing on the border between catharsis and kindness, and the world needs more of both.
Double Trouble says, “You won’t hurt my feelings, you know.” Catra closes her eyes when she turns back. You don’t have feelings to hurt: catharsis. Millions of miles away, where Double Trouble’s tricks can’t deceive her, Catra could say it. Could open her mouth and let all the anger out, hot as fire in her hands.
“I know,” Catra tells them. “I guess there’s no getting through to you.”
And Double Trouble smiles, those teeth bright as any sun. “No, I guess not.”
“I’m better than you remember me,” Catra tells them. She looks past their transparent face to the stars, to the wild and wonderful blackness, to a universe filled with magic.
“Of course you are, darling,” they say. “I saw you at your lowest point — and I knew it was, too.”
Catra’s lips pull back in a snarl, and Double Trouble’s grin goes wider.
“But for what it’s worth, I truly enjoyed working with you.”
“Catra, remember,” Adora says. And there are a hundred cracks Double Trouble could sink their claws into, a hundred strings to pull, a hundred ways to twist and tear Catra up. But they just look on, calm, their inner eyelids sliding closed, that green, starry black. Catra keeps waiting.
And then she stops. Everything drops away, Adora’s body against her, Double Trouble’s face looming above her, the lurching movements of the ship, and Catra is calm and cold inside herself. She is standing in a black void, and it is cushioning her, and every breath sends anger out of her body. The world is waiting for her but she doesn’t need to go to it yet.
To choose catharsis.
“If I ask if you’re on our side, I won’t be able to believe you,” says Catra to her hands on the control panel.
“There are no sides anymore.” That awful drawl, that voice so quick to emote. Once, Catra thought she could control the shapeshifter, could harness their power without giving anything in return. She is learning that giving doesn’t mean giving herself up. “I can do whatever I want. And I’m doing it.”
And Catra shrugs. Her voice calm, cool, the bitter coil of anger dropping out of it. “Suit yourself. It’s a new world. We all deserve the chance to be happy, huh? Thank you, Double Trouble.” Catharsis or kindness.
They blink their eyes wide, their face less of a green mask and more like a kid’s. Catra knows it’s a trick, but for once she isn’t in danger of falling for it.
When Catra cuts the call and the screen goes blank, she sinks cross-legged to the floor, one hand trailing off the control panel. Adora sits beside her and doesn’t ask questions, doesn’t ask Catra to explain the meaning behind her words. They both know what Catra has chosen, what she always wants to choose, now and forever.
Catra rasps, “Thank you,” and she’s talking to Adora.
And Adora says, “It was all you.”