Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

God I want you in some primal, wild way animals want each other. Untamed and full of teeth. God I want you, in some chaste, Victorian way. A glimpse of your ankle just kills me. 
"WANT," Clementine von Radics

Sometimes, when I look out of your mirror at you, I think that I am looking at a piece of my own soul, torn loose and tossed into the world. Not because you belong to me, but because you are familiar and strange at the same time.
"MABEL," Becca de la Rosa & Mabel Martin

At the center of the desolated open field, Adora turns. Her prayer gown, faded a sickly yellow with time and caked with sweat and soot and dirt, clings to her figure. The billowing smoke surrounding them in thick plumes burns her eyes. The deathly dark storm clouds had parted with the absorption of Prime into the spirit realm where he will spend centuries recovering, building his power till he rises again just as Adora will too one day pass and reincarnate; just as the hero will fall, whether by blade, or illness, or age, and live once her time comes. A dance the three of them have moved through for centuries, steps coordinated and learned. The exhaustion pressing on her bones bears not the hundred years locked together in battle with an ageless nemesis, but the weight of thousands of lifetimes. 

The hero stands before her, Bow of Light still in hand. Her ponytail falls lopsided, tumbling locks of dark curling hair escaping in frizzing tendrils. Dirt and soot and drying blood streaks her face, her clothes. The expression she wears marks her a stranger residing inside the body of the girl Adora knew so long ago. 

“Tell me,” she says, voice wavering, “do you remember me?” 

Catra says nothing and that is answer enough. 

___________________________

In the century prior to the Calamity, Catra walked into the Whispering Woods and returned with the prophesied sword. At only sixteen years old, she became the youngest knight sworn into the royal guard. Queen Regent Light Hope appointed Catra as the princess’ personal guard. Whilst Catra stood in silent watch, resentment radiating off of her, Adora prayed. She prayed to the Goddess, to the long line of She-Ras she descended from, to the power she was meant to wield alongside the chosen hero. 

In return, she heard nothing. 

Magic never came easy to her, not like it had the women who carried the She-Ra mantle before her. Etheria depended on her. It had yet to recover from the failure of the She-Ra who lived her previous life and oozing, poisonous bits of calamity scourged the land, a prelude to the disaster that should strike if Adora did not awaken the power she supposedly held within. A lifetime of prayer with no results to be shown. Catra simply walked into a forest and found her calling. 

Adora tried, once, to question her about it. On a return trip from the Spring of Courage, after hours spent standing waist deep in water before the statue of the Goddess, Adora gathered the strength to turn to her knight and ask, “How were you able to access your power?” 

Catra, in the middle of brushing her horse’s coat, paused. She rarely spoke; most often flicked ireful looks to the princess, as if destiny handed her the worst of the Goddess’s descendants to fight alongside. She said, “I listened to the trees,” and turned back to Melog. 

The frustration that welled up inside Adora would’ve brought anyone to their knees, but it was a feeling that had long ago made itself her companion. So she continued to pray, and when she didn’t pray, she trained. On the days she managed to escape her knight’s watch she could be found on the training grounds sparring against the knights she’d known since she was a child. The Queen Regent resented Adora’s sword fighting; found it distracting and unbecoming of the princess destined to banish Calamity Prime, yet she did little to stop Adora from indulging in the rigorous practice. A simple gift to prevent Adora from outright rebelling against her. Adora understood little of diplomacy and politics in ways that would definitely work against her once she took the throne on the eve of her eighteenth birthday, but even she recognized that play at manipulation. 

She prayed, and she trained, and she traveled across Etheria with a silent, eerily familiar knight who resented her for reasons unknown; who looked at her with a fiery frustration refreshingly in contrast to the cool indifference her guardian expressed every time Adora stepped into the privacy of her study and said, “I’m trying, I promise I am, but I can’t―” 

___________________________

The home in Thaymor stands sturdy and alone. It lives secluded from the rest of the village, its stretch of land cut off by a bubbling stream with only a small, narrow wooden bridge to connect the two. It's a modest building: Two stories high with a connected horse stable surrounded by tall apple trees and mountains. It overlooks the land they painstakingly crossed on horseback for the past day with an easy view of the Thaymor Tower still glowing brilliant blue. The First Ones Towers were but a speculation during Etheria’s prime that the scientists enjoyed trading between one another, Adora remembers. Before the Calamity struck, they had found the very peak of one buried within the depths of the Great Plateau and had just begun their excavation of it for further study. 

She stares at the clear image of the tower now, throat tight. It’s not until Catra touches Adora’s knee from where she stands on the ground that Adora looks away and meets her knight’s eyes. She asks, voice gentle and soft, “Do you need help getting down?” nodding at the horse, and it would be insulting, really, if Adora actually remembered how to use her body. A century keeping a monster prison with no physical form erased that knowledge. She feels foreign inside of her body now, like a puppeteer tangled in her possession’s strings. 

“Sure,” she answers, and Catra’s hands settle on Adora’s waist. She easily helps her down. It used to be that Catra faltered with Adora’s weight, far more nimble and agile than Adora’s pure brute strength. In the worst of times, before she and Catra reached an understanding, Adora used to question the Goddess; used to wonder why Adora was not the hero rather than the princess. It seems that years facing trial after trial built Catra’s strength enough that she hardly strains in helping Adora inside the home she’s somehow come to own.  

The two of them are filthy and Adora imagines smell just as awful. Barefoot and in a tattered blood-and-dirt caked gown, she hardly feels right stepping inside Catra’s home. The inside is just as modest as the outside: a dining table cluttered with cooking ingredients and books, the walls lined with mantles of rare weapons she’s collected throughout her journey, and a simple single flight of wooden stairs leading to the flat above. It’s cozy and warm, a stark contrast to the ruins of Castle Grayskull. 

She stops at the entrance, one hand holding onto the door frame. “Where can I bathe?” 

Unbuckling her belts and dropping it along with the attached swords and knives, Catra snorts. “There’s a pond out back.” She pulls at her hair tie and locks of brown hair tumble down her back past her waist, longer than Adora’s ever seen it, curls caked filthily together with the physical remnants of battle and travel. Her hair was short when they first met. She had only just begun to grow it out after she was knighted and it had just started to brush past the line of her shoulders when the Calamity stuck. 

Adora flushes warm for reasons unknown. “No tub?” 

“Oh, forgive me, Your Royal Highness. Are you too good to splash around in some pond water like your loyal subjects?”

“That’s not what I meant.” She leans her weight against the doorframe, knees shaking with the strain of carrying a body for the first time in a century. The familiar annoyance on Catra’s face flashes to concern, and she rushes to help Adora to sit at the table, kneeling once Adora’s seated, hand on her leg. 

“Sorry,” Catra says softly. “I forgot. It takes some getting used to, doesn’t it?” At Adora’s inquisitive look, she continues: “I could barely stand when I first woke up. The weakest Bokoblins could kick my ass in seconds. It was embarrassing.” 

Adora’s mouth quirks up in a smile. “I remember,” she breathes. “I―I saw a bit. What I could, I mean. You fell out of trees a lot.” 

“Spying on me, Your Highness?” 

And Adora knows a joke when she hears one, but she can’t stop herself from admitting: “You kept me grounded.” 

“Princess―”

“You used to call me by name.” She looks down at the hand on her cloth covered knee, her own tracing over the knuckles of long, slender fingers.  “And I you. We were friends.” 

A lengthy pause aches between them. Catra says, “I believe I’m no longer the person you once knew.” 

“Well...You’re certainly nicer.” Adora’s mouth lifts, less a smile than she means it to be. “How much do you remember?” 

Catra stares down at their joined hands, mouth thinned into a line. Her hair falls over her shoulders and she still wears the royal red Champion’s tunic Adora had been forced to painstakingly sew together for the fallen group. Its color has unsurprisingly faded over the years with stray loose threads of fabric at the collar of the shirt and the very edges of the shirt sleeves. She looks so very different to the girl Adora slowly befriended long ago. It will take time, she knows, to reconcile this new version of her knight to the old. 

“I remember flashes,” Catra answers, finally, pensively. “But they aren’t mine― At least, most of them aren’t.” She frowns down at their hands, then lifts herself to sit at the chair beside Adora’s. Dragging a hand over her face, smearing the soot until a blur of black smudges her face from forehead to chin, she sighs and leans against the back of her chair. “They’re yours. Your memories of me―of us.” 

Adora nods. The pictures on her old First Ones slate captured the memories of the moment. She’s never particularly understood the magic that powers the thing she’d kept on her at all times before the Calamity, but she knows that much. Ignoring the warmth spreading from her chest to her face, she clears her throat. “Entrapta said that was the most likely outcome.” 

“Entrapta,” repeats Catra, smiling. “We’ll have to visit her sometime. You won’t believe what she’s managed to do to herself.” 

A complicated rush of emotion floods through her: overwhelming relief that a dear friend still lives; panic at what that might mean; guilt at the long wait she has lived through. Adora pauses; mulls over what she wants to say before settling on “She’s still alive?” 

“Is that really a surprise?” 

Adora laughs. “No. No, I guess not.” She almost reaches for Catra once more. She keeps her hands folded on her lap. Light Hope would be proud of her restraint, she thinks, then resents herself for it. “I’m sorry that you don’t remember more. You can ask me anything you like. Any way that I can help, I will.” 

Catra smiles. The gesture crinkles the corners of her eyes. Battered and bruised and injured from hours of rigorous battle, she is the most beautiful thing Adora’s ever laid eyes on. “You can start by cleaning up. You stink, princess.”

Adora laughs. “So do you.” She runs a hand through her loose hair and finds she can barely comb through the locks without her fingers catching on a knot or mat. “I don’t mind the pond. I just―” she pauses; gnaws at the inside of her cheek as she considers her words. “It’s fine. I’ll head out now while it’s still daylight.” She uses the edge of the dining table to push herself up, legs trembling beneath her weight. 

“Princess,” says Catra, and she rushes to help Adora up once more, this time slinging an arm over her shoulder. “You can ask for help, you know.” 

“I’m fine.” 

“You can barely walk.” 

“Well, I’m not going to ask for you to bathe me, am I?” 

Catra begins to lead her outside, an arm around her waist, her cheeks curiously darker. “That’s not part of my job description, no.” 

The pond, small and fairly shallow with water so clear Adora can easily see its depths, rests near a cluster of apple trees. Between the trees, the house itself, the mountain wrapping behind them it’s hidden enough that Adora feels safe in cleaning herself up here. Catra eases her to sit on a flat rock by the pond and steps back, saying, “I’ll get you some clothes,” before rushing back inside. 

And then Adora sits alone, in a village that had not existed in the time she grew up in, still dressed in the tattered mess of the most hated gown from her past. The sun rests low enough to the horizon to paint their land in vivid pinks and oranges. No chill haunts the air around them, the summer heat so pointedly lingering even this late in the evening. She undresses quickly, uncareful in pulling the once white fabric over her head, then dumps it somewhere behind her. She slides off the rock and splashes into the tepid water. She soaks in its depth, committing to memory the slide of water over her skin, its faint pressure, the sensation of drops rolling from the very top of her head down her face. Her first bath in over a century. 

She blinks back the tears burning at her eyes and decides to work through the mess of her hair. Without any products or soaps the best she can do is try to comb through as many knots as she can. It’s a futile task and she ignores it the rest of her bath, opting to clean herself up and enjoy the water as much as she can. The water reflects the faint silvery glow of the Failsafe still pulsing at the very center of her chest.

A throat clears behind her. Adora looks over her shoulder and finds Catra standing at the edge of the pond, dark folded fabrics in her hands as she stares off to the side. Her belt rests loose on her hips again along with her sword. 

“These might be a little tight,” she says, still not looking in Adora’s direction. She sets them down at the rock she had left Adora on. “But they should fit.” 

Adora smiles. “Thanks.” She waits until Catra turns to head back inside before saying, “Can I ask of you one more favor?” 

“I’m not brushing your hair,” she says. 

Adora responds, “As if you ever have in the past.” Catra stops and looks back at her with her arms crossed over her chest, the posture achingly recognizable. Adora clears her throat, pulling her sopping hair over her shoulder, and continues, “I want you to cut it.”

She scowls; says, “But your hair is, y’know, your whole thing,” while gesturing to her own mane.

“I want it gone,” she answers. 

Catra eyes her, gaze searching her face, then flitting to the length of golden hair slung over Adora’s bare shoulder. She pointedly looks up at the slowly darkening sky. “Get dressed. I’ll go get a knife or something.”

“Can’t you just use your sword?” 

The corner of Catra’s mouth twitches up in a familiar gesture, one that Adora had seen countless times in the year leading up to the Calamity. “Wouldn’t want to accidentally decapitate you, would I?” 

The laugh that escapes Adora surprises her. She nearly clamps a hand over her mouth; her hand twitches up in the learned move. She says, instead, “Prime would throw a party in your honor in the afterlife, I’m sure.” 

Catra snorts, turning to head back inside. “Get dressed, Your Highness. I’ll be right back.” 

Later, after she’s dressed in one of Catra’s tunics and a pair of her leggings, her hair thankfully chopped short enough that the ends graze her jaw, she sits at the steps of the stairs, watching as Catra, freshly washed from her own dip in the pond, putters around the kitchen. She chops at vegetables, seasons and cooks the meat, all while clearing one half of the table for the two of them. 

Outside the sun has sunken well below the horizon. Adora instinctively knows that tonight a blood moon should rise―that if Prime lingers, red will tint the sky and monsters throughout the land will reawaken. A residual awareness she gleaned in the bodiless chasm she and Prime harbored in for so long still touches the very edges of her mind: If she focuses she can sense the rain sweeping across Salineas, the chill over the mountains of Bright Moon, even the beginnings of the land around Castle Grayskull healing. When she closes her eyes, she can visualize a faint staticy image of Catra as she is now, leaning in to taste at the stew collected in her wooden spoon, the following smile brightening her face. The hazy edges of the vision are familiar; comforting. She had fallen into the depths of her mind often in the century fighting Prime alone. 

They eat in relative silence, only with occasional breaks when Adora pays Catra compliment on the food. Adora finds she can eat little, entirely unlike the rabid frenzy she used to eat in before. Her stomach swells uncomfortably after only a few spoonfuls of food, but she tries to push past, to really luxuriate in the taste of the strew, the first bit of food in so long. It’s only once she feels that she’s unfairly close to returning the meal all over the table that she stops and stares down at the nearly full bowl. 

“You can have the rest tomorrow,” says Catra, taking the bowl. She clears the table, and Adora tries to help, except she accidentally drops a mug onto the floor. Catra cleans up the shards, shaking her head as Adora apologizes, and then she’s sitting at the table once more, watching Catra go about her kitchen with a relaxed ease she’s never witnessed before. Like she’s at peace. Like she’s shed the battle ready tension her body carried so well for years. Like she’s safe here. 

The tiny home at the very edge of Thaymor Village cradles its occupants in a cozy warmth. Adora, shaken with the jarring reality of occupying a physical form, needs help climbing the stairs to the small flat on the second story and Catra hardly hesitates in offering it. She falls into a boneless heap on the small twin bed pressed against the wall; curls into a tiny ball when Catra pulls a soft cotton blanket over her form. It’s not until Catra steps back that Adora reaches for her, a learned gesture from times past. 

“Stay,” she whispers, like she would back then; like she and Catra used to breathe to one another. How often in the few moments Prime recoiled to recuperate and allowed her the same courtesy she craved the familiar comfort of Catra’s back molded to her front, the two of them curled together in ways they knew they shouldn’t. A princess taken by her knight―what a cliche she’s always been. 

But this is not then. Catra blinks at her, her expression unreadable. Her eyes flit from Adora’s outstretched hand, the very tips of her fingers grazing her wrist, to Adora’s face. She looks unmoored. The silence that followed Adora’s question at the very center of the Etheria Fields wraps around them now. Adora, a ghost of the past. Catra, a hero turned stranger. 

Adora draws her hand back. “I’m sorry.” She tucks her hands beneath the pillow, staring down at the mattress. Her face warms. She clenches her eyes shut. She thinks herself stupid. She thinks herself a fool. To expect Catra, after a century healing for her resurrection, to remember her, let alone want her. “I’m sorry,” she repeats. 

The faint touch of fingers brushing her hair away from her face jostles her back to reality. She blinks up at Catra and finds her staring back just as surprised, palm resting against Adora’s cheek. Her hand flinches back as if burnt and she says, softly, “Good night, princess,” before rushing off downstairs. 

Adora touches the lingering warmth where Catra’s hand had laid. It takes her very long to fall into a dreamless slumber. 

___________________________

They rarely stayed at the stables scattered throughout the land for weary travelers. Light Hope’s orders, of course. A princess required better accommodations, even if they were just a tent propped secluded from her subjects with her knight to keep watch. It was during one of those nights, with the full moon at its peak above them, that Adora stepped out of her tent and found Catra sketching in a small leather notebook resting on her knees. 

They had spent time alone for months now and yet her knight rarely honored Adora with any words. She remained silent; a mystery. She got along with Entrapta who tinkered with the First Ones guardians that the others had scavenged. She gifted her horse with a gentle affection she afforded no one else. To the best of Adora’s knowledge, there existed no one else that could breach the barriers Catra built and held. 

In all that time, the persistent itch at the back of her skull whenever she laid eyes on Catra never ceased: It lingered, neverending, screaming that she knew her; knew her face, her voice, the freckles dotting her face, the bend of her knees. An effect of the reincarnation cycle, surely, but when Adora searched through the literature detailing the legends of She-Ra, and the hero, and Horde Prime, she found little about the actual experience of their reunions. None of the texts put to paper the blaring sense of I know you that had haunted Adora since their meeting. 

Catra sat with her back to the tent, the Master Sword in its scabbard at her back. The line of her back curved as she hunched over the notebook, so clearly relying on the bright beams of moonlight and the faint flickers of fire still crackling from the wood Adora collected earlier. The only sign that she noticed Adora was the faint twitch of her ears as they straightened up. Her tail ceased swaying gently, now ruffled and tense. 

What Adora did to make her hate her so, she could hardly guess. 

“You should get some rest,” she offered. Lingering at the lip of the tent, she watched as Catra’s ears swiveled. “We have a long journey to Bright Moon.”

Still no response. Catra’s silence grated harsher than any reprimand from Light Hope. Adora could only imagine she hated the hand she’d been dealt with: a powerful hero forced into the company of the least powerful She-Ra in all of their world’s history. A destiny on course to failure due to error out of her control. 

Were the positions reversed, perhaps Adora would resent Catra the same. Now, watching as Catra tensely returned to her drawing, Adora wondered why it was she cast in the role of the princess rather than the knight. She was taller, stronger. She hardly possessed the patience for the repeated prayers and studying her guardian and tutors forced upon her. She tried, and she tried, and she failed, and it must be because the Goddess chose unwisely. Were anyone to glean her doubts they’d rightly accuse her of blasphemy. Even more embarrassing, really, when she remembered that she was supposedly the Goddess reincarnated―just another mortal iteration of She-Ra. She believed in the Goddess as much as she believed in herself. 

Adora returned to her tent and slept a fretful sleep. She dreamt of blood red skies and monsters overtaking the lands; dreamt of Catra, battered and bruised, knelt on the ground with her back to Adora, shoulders shaking and barely holding herself up with the sword as a beam of red began to illuminate the area; dreamt of Castle Grayskull in ruins; dreamt of herself, hair falling past her waist, taller than she was now, walking barefoot into the throne room. 

She woke with a gasp. She woke up to a knife to her throat. 

A Horde soldier leaned over her, a sickly green visor covering their face. The blade softly kissed the thin skin of her neck, hardly enough pressure to inflict a lasting wound, but sharp enough that a bead of blood welled up and trickled down the column. 

“Where’s my knight?” she asked, voice strained. 

The soldier laughed. “The traitor’s being taken care of.” 

Adora’s brows furrowed. She asked, “Traitor?” right as the sounds of battle erupted outside the tent. 

The soldier startled, head jerking towards the tent’s opening, and Adora grabbed their wrist, twisting the joint back hard enough that it cracked, then grabbed for the blade. They screamed. She brought her legs up and kicked at their chest, sending them flying to the side of the tent, hard enough that the entire structure collapsed. The soldier managed to throw the fabric off them after Adora did and she tackled them back to the ground, holding their smaller frame down with her weight straddled over their stomach, and slit their throat. She rolled off them. She turned to the battle; caught sight of Catra, wielding the Master Sword, holding back over five soldiers, two of which towered over her, built looming large.  

Adora tore at the long ends of her nightgown. Careful not to look at the stream of blood staining the green Horde uniform and pooling on the ground, she searched the body and stole their long, thin eightfold blade. She twirled it in her hand, got used to its weight, then charged into battle. 

Catra screeched, “What are you doing? Get back!” and Adora ignored her, hitting one of the larger soldiers right atop the head with the blunt end of the blade’s hilt, then grabbing their arm and throwing their weight at one of the leaner soldiers. Catra moved fast and swift, her movements jarringly familiar, weaving between the soldiers, predicting when they’d disappear in quick puffs of smoke and then where they’d appear, striking them with quick slashes of her sword. 

Only once they were all defeated did Catra turn back to Adora, sword sheathed, and shoved at her shoulders hard enough that Adora stumbled back in shock. “Are you an idiot? You should’ve ran away.” 

Adora dropped her own weapon. “And leave you to die?” 

“I had it!” 

“There were too many of them. They would’ve killed you.” 

“I was fine. It’s my fucking job to keep you safe and you make it impossible!” 

“As if you actually care about me,” Adora threw back. “My apologies for saving your life!” 

Catra shoved her again, her lips curled in a snarl, but this time Adora held her ground, hardly budging, and grabbed Catra’s wrists, forcing her to stumble forward, the two of them standing practically chest-to-chest. “You just had to play the hero, huh? Can’t stand it, can you, that it’s me and not you?” said Catra. Adora dropped her hands, face burning, and Catra laughed. “I see the way you look at the sword―at me. You aren’t subtle, princess.” 

“Neither are you, hero,” Adora said. “I see the way you look at me.”

Catra laughed again. She was too close, the warmth of her overwhelming. “Oh, Your Highness, I barely even notice you.” She backed away. It did nothing to lessen the humiliating ache radiating throughout Adora’s body. “Clean up. We have to reach Bright Moon before nightfall.” 

___________________________

Adora wakes up two days later with the warmth of the evening setting sun streaming through the open window. It’s not until later, after Catra helps her down the stairs and fixes her a meal, that Adora even realizes how long she’d slept. 

“Honestly,” says Catra, picking at her food, “I expected you to be out a bit more. It’s been a century. You deserve your rest.” 

The days following her return to the physical realm follow the same pattern: she sleeps more often than she wakes, her body falling victim to its needs. Adora knows little of what Catra does during this time. All she knows is that finally, one hundred years later, she sleeps dreamless. When she finally rises out of bed, Catra simply hands her a kitchen knife and teaches her how to prepare a seafood fry. There are far too many things that Adora wants to tell her; far too many things she wants to ask her―not ask of her, knowing she already has for far too long. She remembers Catra’s limp body in her arms, the way Catra’s head lolled against her shoulder, the way her claws caught on Adora’s dress when the sorcerers began to lift her away to carry her to the Shrine of Resurrection, her quiet, trembling voice muttering, “No, no, please, Adora, Adora―” She resolves to keep quiet about the past until Catra finds it fit to dredge it up. 

Catra takes her to the town. She buys Adora a new set of clothes, waving off Adora’s insistence that she’ll eventually pay Catra back, and she buys dye to stain the fabric Adora’s favorite shade of red, and as they explore the town its occupants wave and greet Catra with a familiarity that speaks volumes of how long she has lived among them. A few of the children running around the town stop to tug at Catra’s pants and ask about her friend, but otherwise no one questions Adora’s presence. It’s overwhelmingly different to a lifetime of people staring in reverence once they’ve taken stock of the diadem adorning her head and the royal fabrics weighing her down. 

The two of them sit beneath the shade of one of the many apple trees behind Catra’s home, nibbling at a plate of wildberry crepes that she prepared earlier in the day, when she says, “I was awful to you.” 

The instinct to protest and defend Catra against herself rises so viciously that Adora forces herself to bite her tongue; to remain seated with her back against the rough bark of the tree trunk and watch Catra stare off at the distant peak of the Thaymor Tower. She sets her crepe back down on the plate and replies, “You were.” Catra flinches and Adora continues: “In the beginning, you were. I forgave you long ago.” 

Catra’s jaw clenches. It takes everything in Adora not to reach over and smooth at the wrinkled skin between her furrowed brows. The look Catra sends her way says little. She reaches for her belt and pulls out the familiar shape of the First Ones slate. 

“This is yours,” she says. 

Adora takes it. It’s as light as she remembers it to be. A tablet that the scientists of her time hardly understood with a screen that lights up at the press of a finger, able to hold any object its wielder deemed fit to keep and then conjure them back up with a press of a button, and compatible with runes that had once been seen as lost to legend. When it had first been discovered, Adora couldn’t even pretend that she understood an ounce about it. She’d held onto it more out of favor to Entrapta’s curiosity than anything else. 

She drags a fingertip across the screen and smiles as it comes to life. “I’m guessing it has some of my old pictures.” Catra nods and Adora’s face warms. She hands the slate back to Catra. “It’s yours now. I only ever used it for runes and awful pictures. Entrapta understood it better than I ever did.” 

Catra hesitates for a moment, then accepts it. “She lives up on the mountain overlooking the town. We can visit her tomorrow if you feel up to it.”

If she feels up to it. Adora feels many things. Adora feels nothing. The future beyond saving the world stretches out before her, unknowable in its inky abyss. The body of the woman sitting next to her contains both the past and the future and Adora knows little of what to do now save eating and sleeping and waking to see the next day. She had not been raised to live in the aftermath of her destiny. 

No one in the town knows her. No one in the town expects anything of her. Adora stares at Catra and wonders, not for the first time, why she stayed with her. 

“I don’t know,” she answers. She picks up the half-eaten crepe and bites into it, then gestures towards Catra with it. “Can you teach me how to make these?” 

The two of them spend the rest of the day baking, Catra ever patient and laughing at Adora’s failed attempts, at the way Adora splatters flour all over herself, and maybe in another life Adora might’ve been embarrassed, but she thinks she’d do anything for that laugh. 

___________________________

Adora dreamt. She dreamt blood red skies; dreamt fallen swords and whispering trees and a familiar voice calling to her as she stepped barefoot into the green-lit throne room: 

You are the heir to ruin. 

The scrolls and tomes and books in the castle’s library offered no answers. In the weeks she spent holed up at the castle, she stayed up later and later till eventually it became a habit to fall to slumber over the texts in corners of the large library. Here, in the safe walls of the only home she had ever known, her knight was allowed a larger breadth of space from her and the two of them took to it like the first sip of water after days walking the expanse of the Crimson Waste. Catra traded shifts with other knights in the castle and Adora found little resentment to the fact; welcomed it, really, with a spite she had never known herself to carry. 

The weeks since their fight fell to a lull. Adora studied and prayed and trained and researched what she could for Entrapta’s sake. The evenings where she was forced out of the library and into the dining hall to sit opposite of Light Hope were so far and few that Adora found no need to dread it. 

At times like these, tucked away all alone with no one but her thoughts to entertain herself, she wished fervently for the family lost to her so long ago. The mother and father whose portraits decorated the grand hall. The twin brother she did not remember, an ache she learned to tend to the whole of her life. They were all lost to her before she could even comprehend their existence; succumbed to a plague that tore through the kingdom when she was barely even a year old, and now here she was, the orphaned princess destined to fight a disaster worse than the one that already shredded her life apart. 

Would her mother comfort her; guide her? Would her father have loved her? She read stories on twins and their connections and she wondered about the other baby in the sole family portrait adorning one of the walls of her room. Would he have understood the hand she was dealt? The destiny she burdened? 

The legends of the princess, the hero, and the Calamity wove epics about courage and triumph and power yet shared little about the cracks in between. No She-Ra written in history lived a quiet life. No She-Ra worthy of having her tale turned legend knew peace. She traced the lines of the drawn figure of a past She-Ra and prayed for them all. She wondered if her predecessors ever did the same. 

In her dreams, the floors of the green-lit throne room burned the soles of her feet. Adora, hair falling past her waist, stared up at a figure she could not yet see and smiled, blood on her teeth. The First Ones symbol for heart glowed iridescent white on her chest. 

She wandered the halls of the castle. It was late at night, the full moon hanging bright in the sky and casting a silver glow through the glass windows. The Castletown was quiet this late; she’d need to actually leave her home and step onto its streets to hear the bustle of the few bars that were no doubt the only activity at this hour. 

She wandered the halls of the castle. She ran the very tips of her fingers over the stone walls, every so often grazing the fabrics of curtains, of banners, of portraits. She swayed with every step, her head heavy, her eyelids even heavier. She was so tired. 

A hand settled onto her shoulder. Adora stopped; nearly tripped over her own feet and the ends of the long skirt of her nightgown as she turned on her heel. She blinked at a scowling Catra. 

“You’re supposed to be resting,” she said, and Adora laughed. 

“I think,” she said, mouth curling into a twisted mockery of a smile, “I’m supposed to be praying to a non-existent Goddess.” 

The scowl on Catra’s face deepened. “Not at this hour.” 

She let go of Adora and it was then that Adora realized she was dressed not in her Champion’s tunic, but in dark sleeping clothes, so loose on her frame that she nearly drowned in them. She was so small. She was so young. In the dark, her eyes glowed bright and everything in Adora ached. 

Adora grasped the sleeve of Catra’s shirt, leaning in close. “I dreamt of you,” she said, just barely taking stock of the way Catra’s breath hitched. “I dream of you.” 

Catra gripped Adora’s wrist. She did not move away, staring up at Adora with her brows furrowed. “At least buy me dinner first.” 

“We’re going to lose,” she continued as if Catra hadn’t spoken, and she smiled, all teeth, laughter bubbling in her throat. Her knees trembled; she was only kept upright by the tight grip of Catra’s other hand on her shoulder. “That’s why you hate me. You know it too. You know it’ll be my fault.” 

Nails dug into her shoulder. “When was the last time you slept, princess?” 

“I don’t know. I don’t―” Adora heaved a strangled sob. She leaned into Catra, folded herself into her arms. She pressed her face to the crook of her neck, eyes clenched shut, and knew, distantly, that she shouldn’t seek comfort in her arms. “I’m sorry.”

Catra remained still, then pressed a hand to the curve of Adora’s skull, claws gently grazing her scalp. “I’m taking you to your room. Can you help me with that?” 

Adora nodded; allowed Catra to maneuver her so that she clung to her side, just barely able to hold her weight up. She hardly took note of the halls they crossed. She felt as if she could barely contain herself. It was not until Catra guided her to her bed that Adora even noticed they were in her room with its tightly drawn together curtains, illuminated only by a half-melted candle at her bedside that Catra must’ve lit at some point. 

Adora sat at the very edge of her bed, staring up at a hesitant Catra, and said, “They called you a traitor that night.” 

Catra looked back at her as though she were the guillotine before its blade fell. She was so small. She was so young. Both of them were, Adora reminded herself. She was only ten months older. 

She spoke the truth neither of them wanted to admit, “You’re from the Horde.” 

“Yes,” Catra whispered. 

Adora nodded. She smoothed at the long skirt of her nightgown, hand trembling. “You defected,” she said. 

Catra hesitated, then nodded. 

“The court can never find out. Especially Light Hope. Destiny or not, you’ll be beheaded.” 

“You―” Surprise slackened Catra’s face. It was the most untethered Adora had ever witnessed her. “You aren’t telling?

“No.” 

“I could kill you. I could turn you in to the Horde.” 

“If you had planned to, you would’ve done so already ten times over. We’ve traveled together for months now,” Adora explained. 

Catra hugged her arms to herself. “I’ve been horrible to you.” 

“Yes,” Adora said, “you have. I’m not expecting a friendship, but we’re bound together. Calamity Prime won’t care where you came from. All that matters is that you and I learn to work together to defeat him.” 

“Why go through all that effort with me when you believe we’ll lose?” 

Adora shut her eyes. She remembered her dreams in vivid detail; could paint the delicately sharp lines of Catra’s face as she laid dead in Adora’s arms, blood spilling from her hair to the collar of her shirt. The despair of Adora’s own screams were unlike anything she ever felt in the whole of her life. 

“We have to try,” she answered. “We have to.” 

___________________________

“Oh,” Adora says the moment she walks into the lab, more than a week since Catra first suggested so. 

“Adora!” yells Entrapta, grin bright and warm, not a wrinkle or gray hair in sight. If anything, she looks younger than she had when Adora first met her. She doesn’t look a day over twelve.  

At her side, Catra chuckles. She nudges Adora with her shoulder, then plops down onto the first seat by the nearest worktable. She picks up the first bit of machinery she can lay hands on and tinkers with it as Entrapta hops off her stool and rushes to Adora on thick purple tendrils of hair. 

“It’s great to see you. You don’t look any older at all!” She nods to herself and pulls out a tape recorder from the pocket of her overalls. “Day twenty since the Calamity’s disappearance: Adora has returned and, just like Catra, seems to have remained the same age as the day the Calamity struck. Will update with further data once acquired.” She clicks off the tape recorder, looking up at Adora with her head tilted to the side. “How do you feel about needles? Catra refused them when I asked, but you’ve always been compliant in the name of science.” 

Behind her, Catra shakes her head. Adora copies the gesture. “Sorry. Not feeling too great about needles.” 

“Oh, disappointing.” Entrapta pouts, the expression familiar except Adora was used to it on the face of a woman in her thirties―not that of a child. “Well, have a seat anywhere. Harold! Can you get us some snacks?” 

A crash from the kitchen answers her. 

“Harold?” asks Adora, sitting on the stool nearest Catra. 

“Wrong Hordak,” says Catra as if that were an answer. 

“I thought Hordak was dead.” 

“Yes, he perished during the Calamity,” Entrapta says, sitting back down and pulling her welding visor over her face as she pulls out a blowtorch. She gets to work on a droid on the worktable. “It appears that you aren’t suffering from amnesia like Catra is. Do you remember the events of the Calamity?” 

Adora frowns. “Unfortunately.” 

“Excellent. Further evidence for my hypothesis that the Shrine of Resurrection wiped your memories, Catra.” Entrapta continues tinkering with the bot. Even her hair is shorter than it was before, though still long enough to fall past her feet. “Well, as you know, Hordak perished and Calamity Prime created many clones. Around fifty or so years ago I found Harold wandering around all lost and alone and I couldn’t just leave him. There was so much data to collect! So much to understand about how he was created and how he and the other clones function. I deprogrammed him and he’s been working as my assistant ever since.” 

Something in the kitchen dings and a delighted voice calls out, “The cupcakes are ready, Brother Entrapta!” 

“Is that...safe?” asks Adora. 

Catra waves a dismissive hand, leaning back on her seat so that it balances on its back legs, her feet propped on the table. “He’s harmless. He cries every time I visit.” 

“To be fair,” Adora says, “you’ve made plenty of people cry.” 

Catra aims a crude gesture in her direction. She grins. 

“Here they are!” 

A man easily over six feet tall enters the main room, dressed in gray overalls and sporting a yellow apron with “Kiss the Cook” written in First Ones over it. He’d be a perfect mirror to the Hordak Adora remembers if it weren’t for the green eyes, the slicked back white hair, the easy smile on his face. He even carries himself differently than the former leader of the Horde did. 

“Brother Catra, greetings! I see you’ve brought along a friend. Hello!” He sets down the tray full of cupcakes and offers a mitten-covered hand towards Adora. “You may call me Harold, brother.” 

“Adora,” she says. 

His eyes widen so large they practically overtake his face. “The Princess,” he breathes. “You are not as repulsive as the Hivemind taught us to believe.” 

“...Thank you?” Beside her, Catra’s shoulders shake with silent laughter. Adora elbows her, holding back her own. 

He smiles as he hands her a miniature cupcake with lavender frosting. “You’re very welcome, Brother Adora.” 

Entrapta pulls up her visor and sets down her tools, accepting Harold’s cupcakes with a grin. “Excellent. Thank you, Harold.” She pops one into her mouth; turns to Catra and Adora as she chews, staring at them both with the same inquisitive expression Adora witnessed for years in the Castletown lab she was once the head of. “So, how long until you begin repairing the castle? I’d love to build a lab in there―the underground passages are still unexplored to the best of my knowledge and I’d love to get to work as soon as I can―but I’m rather attached to this lab here. I’d have to divide my time between the two. I’m sure you understand.” 

Adora pauses. “What?” 

“The castle reparations. For when you’re crowned Queen. You’ll want to do that soon. You don’t know how long Harold’s been keeping me back from the castle, but now that the Calamity is gone the only danger is the ruins.” Entrapta sighs. “I’ve been waiting so long.” 

The drumbeat of Adora’s heart sings a warning. “I― I’m not sure,” she says. She can barely hear herself over the rush of blood in her ears. “I haven’t thought―How would I even be crowned? Everyone thinks I’m dead.” 

“Well, I’m sure you’ll get the other kingdoms’ support. Catra’s friends with all the leaders and they know she was on her way to save you, so it stands to reason that they’re aware of you now. It’s just a matter of time.” With a clap of her hands, she turns to Catra. “Did you talk to Scorpia about the gems?” 

“Yeah,” answers Catra, her voice far. “She said you’re fine to visit whenever. She gave me a bunch of Fireproof Elixir so you can make the trip to the Scorpikingdom to get them.” 

Entrapta says something in response; she sounds excited, over the moon, and Catra’s voice is patient and kind as she continues the conversation. It could be a picture of one hundred years past. Adora has sat in this moment before. She has. Except she has never felt bile rise in her throat while sitting in the background of their amiable chatter; has never felt the entirety of her arm go numb, the sensation spreading to her chest while in their company. The sensation is familiar, just not around them. 

“I’m going to step outside,” she hears herself say. 

The next thing she knows she is on all fours outside, fingers gripping the tall grass. Leftover early morning dew on the grass wets the knees of her pants and she thinks, faintly, that it’ll be a hassle to wash the stains away later. Her chest aches. The ends of her freshly cut hair graze her jaw. She feels she can barely contain herself, the tightly spun panic unraveling and spilling into the space around her. 

Queen Adora, she thinks to herself. She can imagine the crown. She can imagine the cloak and the coronation and the knights falling to their knees and Light Hope smiling as she hands her the scepter; Light Hope smiling, finally proud of her. Light Hope, with her careful hands, the stern line of her mouth gentle for once, renouncing her title as Queen Regent. 

It is a fantasy Adora often spun throughout her childhood. It is a fantasy fit for a child. Adora never wanted to rule, not really. She wanted the only maternal figure she’d ever known to look at her with pride, with joy, with something other than mild disappointment or complete apathy. 

Prime had laughed at her for it often. He had mocked her; peered into the very depths of her wants and laughed. In that magical chasm she created in the throne room, the two of them each others’ company for a century, he laughed and he struck blow after blow. “Strike me down and you will still be nothing. Defeat me and I will still have won,” he’d say. “There is no future. Not for you.” 

“Adora?” 

She shakes her head; presses her forehead to the grass, fingers digging into the soil. 

“Hey. Hey.” A shadow falls over her, and she looks up to find Catra on her knees before her, backlit by the gentle morning sun. “Can I touch you?” 

Adora drags in a heavy breath; nods her head slowly and Catra tentatively reaches out to brush locks of golden hair away from her damp face. Her hand settles on her cheek. The pad of her thumb wipes away a tear. 

“Breathe with me,” she says, and Adora follows. She forces her breathing to match Catra’s; focuses on the sensation of her lungs filling with air, on the soil beneath her palms, on the wet grass beneath her knees. The air has already begun to warm, even this high up in the mountains. She catalogues the way the morning sun beats over her back and the press of Catra’s hand still resting on her face, fingers spread over cheek. She breathes until she no longer aches; until only exhaustion lingers down to her very bones. 

Catra lets go of Adora’s face and helps her sit up. The trembling is gone. The tears have dried. Adora tilts her face up to the sky and shuts her eyes. 

“Thank you,” she whispers. 

She hears as Catra settles in the spot next to her, legs crossed just like hers. Their knees press together. 

“Anytime,” Catra says. “You look out for me, I look out for you, right?”

The faint pang of shock hits Adora and then it’s gone, lost to the exhaustion weighing her under. She had said those words to Adora before under such different circumstances and she hadn’t known what they meant then. She wonders if Catra knows the full weight of them now. She looks at Catra. 

“I forgot that promise, you know,” she admits gently. “A long time ago. Do you remember that?” 

Catra frowns; she looks down at the grass by her feet as she begins to pick at it. “I...I remember your memory of it. We were traveling to the Scorpikingdom,” she starts, the skin between her brows crinkling. “We were up in the mountains, not close enough to need the fireproof elixirs yet, and you got injured fighting off a few monsters.” 

“You were so annoyed with me.” 

Catra laughs humorlessly. “I was supposed to be protecting you, right? That’s my job.” 

Adora bites her tongue; stops herself from saying was.  

“I said it to you then,” Catra continues, and Adora remembers it as if it happened only hours ago: The heat pressing up against them; the sweat collecting at the nape of her neck, sticking strands of hair to her skin, rolling down her back and staining her shirt; the way Catra pulled her beneath the shade of a rocky ledge, concern creasing her face as she bandaged Adora’s bleeding leg. She had been so close to her, her head bent as she worked tenderly over the wound, the warmth of her nearly unbearable. “You were so confused and I was―I was so mad at you. I don’t know why I was mad at you.” 

Adora swallows thickly and looks straight forward. The mountain Entrapta’s lab rests on overlooks the town perfectly. She watches the faint dots of people moving about and says, “It must be strange―seeing my version of what happened.” She pauses; considers what she really wants to ask, and settles for, “Did you recover any of your own memories?” 

“Bits and pieces,” she says. “I remember Angella and Micah. Before the Calamity, that is. They were...kind to me, even though they knew about me.” Catra ceases picking at the grass; Adora can hear her stilling, going stock still the way she always did when she prepared for a strike. “Shadow Weaver,” she starts, then stops. Adora looks at her and finds her expression tortured, jaw clenched and eyes shining. “She was still alive, somehow. I, uh,” she wrings her hands, pulling at her fingers, “I had to sneak into the Fright Zone and get back the Black Garnet and she was―there.” 

Adora’s mouth dries. She reaches for her; cradles her hands in her own and Catra exhales a trembling breath. 

“I barely remember anything about my life,” she continues. “I can’t remember where I was born or my parents or when I defected the Horde. Not even you,” she chokes off, pulling one hand free to wipe at her eyes. “So why did I have to remember her?”  

“I don’t know,” Adora answers. 

Catra shakes her head; wipes at her face again, and when she turns to face Adora once more it is as if she never shed any tears to begin with. “I don’t know where we go from here.” 

Adora wants to say, We go home. She wants to say, We go home, and I help you prepare lunch until I mess up so badly you laugh and send me off to chop vegetables, and we eat, and we go out and pick apples, and you share stories of your adventures, and I share stories of ours, and I pretend I’m not watching you pretend not to notice me, and we stay here. We stay. We’re home. 

Adora says, “We start looking into rebuilding the castle.” She squeezes Catra’s hand; tries to force a reassuring smile on her face. Catra looks back at her, disbelieving. She could never fool her. “We go home.” 

“It’d be quicker to warp to Mystacor,” Catra tells her the night before they’re set to leave, and Adora shakes her head. 

“I like the journey,” she responds. 

The horse Catra gives her resembles Swift Wind so closely that Adora blinks back tears when she’s tasked with prepping the horses that morning. Catra’s indoors, prepping a few quick meals before they’re set to leave, leaving Adora to feed and saddle their houses. Hers, affectionately named Horsey of all things towers over her, easily as tall as Swift Wind had been. His coat is just as pure white, his mane just as red, and somehow―somehow―he’s fitted with the same royal gear. 

She had hardly taken stock of him when they first traveled from Central Etheria to Thaymor, nearly delirious with exhaustion. Now, on their way to Mystacor, she can’t stop noting the similarities between Horsey and Swift Wind, and wondering how. 

Mystacor is only a day’s journey from Thaymor. With the guardians and the clones defeated, it is a quiet journey. The two of them set out on a trot, the silence only occasionally broken by Catra pointing at some landmark and regaling her with a tale from when she’s fought some monster or helped some traveler. Adora smiles when she can, laughs when she should, and otherwise stays quiet. The hours slough past. The journey from Central Etheria to Mystacor had always been a short one when only taken by a pair, though it had taken longer when Light Hope assigned an entire group to accompany her. She remembers the frustration. She remembers the nights spent away from the warmth of friends sat by the bonfire; nights spent, instead, on her knees praying to a Goddess that seemed with each passing day further and further out of reach. 

Micah had been from Mystacor. So had Shadow Weaver, though she was known by a different name then. When Adora was younger, before the threat of the Calamity loomed over them all, she had spent her summers in the small village chasing after loose chickens and training her own magic under Castaspella and wishing that she had been born there instead. It had been more a home than Castle Grayskull had ever been. She cannot imagine what the village means to Catra, who had been raised by its darkest shame. 

They arrive late evening, masked by the night sky. Catra leaves their horses by the inn and buys them two beds rather than taking her to the Head Sorcerer’s house. Adora doesn’t question it. She doesn’t question her. Catra has always understood her best even without knowing what it was she wanted. 

The following morning, Catra cooks them breakfast outside the shop. They sit in silence at the tables near the looming waterfall and when the time comes, Catra grabs Adora’s hand and leads her to the largest building in the village. 

The guards part for them and Adora feels their lingering stares at her back as they climb the steps to the house. Catra keeps a hold of her hand, their fingers intertwined. She opens the set of double doors and the inside is just as Adora remembers: Dark with its pulled closed curtains, the smoke of incense twirling in the air, cushions set in rows on the floor facing the lone figure sat at the center of the room. 

“Adora,” the small figure says, curled in small at her seat. She wears a set of heavy purple cloaks and her hair is long and snow white, but when she looks up, the easy affection on her face is familiar. 

“Casta,” breathes Adora. 

“Your hair’s shorter,” she says, grinning. Catra tugs gently at Adora’s hand, pulling her further into the room until they stand before Casta, only letting go once Casta reaches for Adora’s other hand. Adora can’t tear her eyes away from Casta, not even as she hears Catra step out the main room and shut the doors. “Oh, you’re just as lovely as I remember. I’ve told my Glimmer time and time again, and of course she didn’t believe me.” She tsk s, patting the back of Adora’s hand. “I’m so proud of you, dear.” 

Adora swallows back the lump in her throat. “I’m sorry. About Angella. About Micah.” She wipes at her face. “I should’ve saved them.” 

“Oh, Adora.” Casta strokes the skin of Adora’s hand, her fingers wrinkled and thin in contrast to her own, and it’s that that pulls a high, keening noise from Adora. “They knew the risks. They were adults, Adora, and it was their job to protect you. They accomplished that. Look at you now. I know in my heart they’d be just as proud as I am.” She shushes Adora once more, reaching up to wipe at her face. “Come here, child. Let it out.” 

Adora falls to her knees. She rests her face in Casta’s lap and weeps. She weeps for Angella. She weeps for Micah. For Light Hope. For Spinnerella and Netossa. For the members of the Princess Alliance, all lost to a battle they were ill prepared for. For Catra, a ghost with no memory, born anew.  

Casta strokes Adora’s hair and whispers meaningless comforts. For once, Adora allows it. 

They dine in the main house. Casta tells them both about her niece, Glimmer, the current ruler of Bright Moon so far away. Adora remembers her. She had been a baby when she first met Angella and Micah, the spitting image of them both with her cloud of sparkly pink hair, her glittering lilac eyes, her round nose and delighted smiles. She hadn’t spent too much time around her then. Babies terrified her at the time. They were so small and soft and loud. Glimmer used to take one look at Adora and start screaming. 

“I sent out word to her last night when you both arrived,” says Casta, pouring Catra a cup of tea. “She should arrive within the week.” 

“Is she bringing Bow?” asks Catra. 

“I don’t see why not.” 

“Is Bow her husband?” Adora asks, then frowns when both Casta and Catra burst into laughter. “What?” 

“Well, Glimmer’s half-immortal―because of Angella, you know,” explains Casta. “So physically, she’s around the same age as you, actually. Every time I or another elder advise her to take a spouse she rebels and insists that she’s too young.” She chuckles and takes a sip of her tea, eyes crinkled in amusement. “I’m fairly sure that she and Bow are already a couple and have just been hiding it, but Catra here seems to believe that they’re―”

“Oblivious idiots,” interrupts Catra.

Casta shakes her head, lips still curved in a smile. “As far as I recall, you weren’t eager to marry either, Adora.” 

“I mean, there was no point, right? I wasn’t Queen,” she says, failing at keeping any bitterness from seeping out, “and I wasn’t going to be unless I defeated Prime. So.” 

Catra flicks a questioning look in Adora’s direction. She ignores her. Her eighteenth birthday had been a joke, another black mark on her track record. Heir to ruin, heir to nothing. She wonders what Light Hope would think of her now. 

Casta steeples her fingers together and leans forward. “I didn’t want to bring it up so early, not until you caught your bearings, but are you planning on taking the throne, dear?” 

Adora hesitates; stares down at the steam rising from her untouched cup of tea and nods a moment too late. “It’s what must be done, right?” She lifts her gaze and catches the look Casta exchanges with Catra. “That’s part of why we came here. To talk to you and discuss the steps we’d need to take. I’m not exactly caught up on current politics.” 

“It’s a good thing you have Catra. She’ll be a great asset to you during this time. She’s met with many of the princesses. They all formed another Princess Alliance after she helped them reconnect with their runestones.” 

Adora blinks once, twice. “Really?”

“I didn’t really do anything,” says Catra, cheeks dark. “They’re the ones that got together and got all sentimental. I just did my job.” 

Casta smiles and tilts her chin up at Adora. “Ask her about a small town in Dryl sometime. It’s quite a sweet tale.” 

Catra’s scoffs, face still red. “Whatever. I’ll catch you up before Sparkles gets here. Does that sound like a plan, princess?” 

Adora nods. She reaches for her mug with a shaking hand, then pulls the limb back, wringing her hands on her lap beneath the table instead. She smiles, face tight. “Sounds like a plan.” 

___________________________

“Your birthday is soon,” Catra said to Adora. 

They were traveling to the Great Plateau, Catra carefree on Melog while Adora rode miserably on Swift Wind. The past several weeks were marked by her sour mood. Everyone at the castle steered clear of her except whatever guard was assigned to her at the time and, surprisingly, Catra even when she was off duty.

Adora scowled deeply at the reminder. Her grip on the reins tightened. “Yeah. It is.” 

Catra glanced at her, brows furrowed. She looked at Adora that way often: not out of concern or pity, but like she was trying to work out whatever swirl of thoughts tangled in Adora’s head. 

“Well,” she said after a lengthy silence, “don’t expect a gift from me.” 

Adora paused, her horse slowing to a stop. Now ahead of her, Catra looked over her shoulder with a grin, face bright and eyes warm. A lock of brown hair escaped the red bandana she’d taken to wearing as a headband ever since her bangs had grown too long and, now, it stuck to her cheek. She wore the red champion’s tunic Adora painstakingly sewed rather than the typical Etherian Knight’s armor the guards were made to wear at the castle and she wore it comfortably, like there was no one better suited to wear it than her, like there was no other hero in history grander than she. 

She was so pretty, Adora thought, then shook her head. She nudged Swift Wind and he took off in a trot after Catra and Melog. “That’s not fair! Catra. Catra! I got you a present and we didn’t even like each other then!” 

“Who says I like you, princess?” Catra called out and snapped the reins, Melog taking off. Adora sputtered and followed suit. 

The trip passed uneventfully, Adora told Light Hope when they returned a day later. Light Hope sat at her desk, scrawling a letter that Adora couldn’t make out from where she stood several feet behind her. She hardly inclined her head to indicate she heard Adora speaking. It was typical; part of their routine. 

Adora smoothed at the skirts of her gown and turned to leave Light Hope’s chambers, except Light Hope, voice uncharacteristically hesitant, called out of her name. Adora stopped at the door, hand on the handle, and turned to face the Queen Regent looking back at her from her seat with what she could only describe as sympathy. 

“The council,” she started, then stopped. Adora scowled. Light Hope never faltered; never hesitated. Her reign was marked by rigid stability. “The council has made a decision regarding your coronation.” 

The drumbeat of Adora’s heart in her throat was that of a warning; the call before battle. She said, “Yes?” and watched as the only mother she’s ever known swallowed thickly in hesitation before squaring her shoulders and lifting her chin to meet Adora’s eyes. 

“The signs of Calamity Prime’s return are undeniable,” she said. “It is no longer a matter of if he’ll arrive, but when. You have yet to unlock She-Ra’s magic.” Adora opened her mouth to protest and Light Hope silenced her simply by lifting a hand. “You will do so. There is no other choice but to do so. But you cannot focus on your duty while also ruling a kingdom.” 

Adora couldn’t speak; her jaw felt wired shut, her tongue too thick in her mouth. Her heartbeat roared in her ears. She was shaking, she realized. She couldn’t stop. 

“There won’t be a coronation, Adora. I will remain Queen Regent until after Calamity Prime has been defeated. His defeat will be a cause for celebration. Your coronation will be a mark of victory in history. You understand, don’t you?”

Adora had no other choice but to respond, “Of course, Your Majesty.” 

“It’s not fair,” Catra told her. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Adora responded in kind. She sat on the daybed by the window, staring out at the distant lines of mountains on the horizon. She hugged her knees to her chest as though she were a child. Nearly eighteen, nearly grown enough to rule, only to be deemed unfit. Her crown sat on another’s head and she was meant to take it with grace. “It’s what needed to be done.” 

Her birthday passed and she did not take the throne. 

There was a celebration, just as there was every year. The beloved crown princess’s birthday was always an occasion even though Adora spent the whole of her life dreading the attention, the strangers that would reach out to touch her and stroke her meticulously kept shoulder-length hair as if she were a familiar loved one. She supposed she was. She was She-Ra. She was the Goddess reincarnate, made flesh and bone and just as mortal as the people she was meant to protect. 

She bore it with a smile as she always did. 

Catra watched her. She stood at her back, her presence steady. In the crowd of hundreds, she kept Adora grounded. She pulled people away when they got too familiar; she guided Adora through the masses congregated at the Castletown; she leveled a glare when needed. 

They danced that night. The eager court encouraged it; demanded that the hero and the princess share a dance before they were to defeat Calamity Prime. They cheered when Catra stepped forward and offered Adora a hand. When she settled a hand on the small of Adora’s back, Adora’s breath hitched. Her nimble fingers clutched at the fabric of Adora’s gown. Adora could not read the expression on Catra’s face. She didn’t want to imagine the expression on her own. It was the closest they had been to each other in the months since the night Adora stumbled into her arms in the dark. 

“Chin up, princess,” whispered Catra. 

Adora followed her lead. 

It was the only dance they would share. They did not know it at the time. The night ended and Adora retreated back to her chambers, with no new title, with no crown, with just the impression of Light Hope’s disappointment trailing after her, like it always did. A night lost to silly happenings when Adora could’ve spent it preparing for the end of the world, instead. 

She kept her head down as Catra walked her to her chambers. She wrung her hands together. She counted her steps. Only once they paused outside her door did she stop and raise her chin to meet Catra’s gaze. 

“I’m old enough to finally visit the Spring of Wisdom,” she said. “We’ll set out tomorrow.” 

Catra’s eyes searched her face. “It’s a two week’s journey. Does the Queen―”

The title struck, a slap to the face. Adora’s mouth thinned. “The Queen,” she said, “encouraged it. She all but packed my bags for me.” The conversation had been a short one: curt, to the point, as all their talks had been since Adora were a child. She often wondered how Light Hope had been her father’s most trusted advisor when she lacked any humanity to her. The brief hesitation before the sting of the blow in snatching Adora’s title was the most humane Adora had ever seen her. With a tense exhalation, Adora continued: “Pack for the journey. The horses will be ready come morning. The slate can hold all your belongings.” 

“Finally figured out how to use it without Entrapta, did you?” 

The corners of Adora’s mouth twitched. She shoved at Catra’s shoulder. “Shut up. You didn’t get it either.” 

“I used the runes last time we saw her,” said Catra, that easy smirk on her face. Her hair was finally long enough to be pulled back into a short ponytail at the nape of her neck. The bandana holding back her bangs drew attention to the sharp line of her jaw, the elegant bump of her nose. She was really so pretty, Adora thought. 

“Whatever,” she responded, forcing herself to turn to her door. Two weeks just to reach the Spring, two weeks to travel back. A month alone with just her knight as company, the two of them away from the all-seeing eyes of the court. 

“We leave at dawn,” she said, then looked over her shoulder to catch Catra’s face soft. The expression fell, Catra retreating to the indifferent mask she wore day in and out. Adora swallowed, mouth dry. “Good night, Catra.” 

___________________________

Glimmer arrives the following week. 

Adora expected―she’s not sure what she expected. A grand campaign, probably. What arrives, instead, is a party of three: Glimmer, the perfect mirror match to both her parents; Bow, her advisor with a kind smile, even kinder eyes, and an exposed midriff; and Frosta, the orphaned princess to the Snow Kingdom, Catra informs her, who was all but legally Glimmer’s younger sister. They’re a loud trio with no sense of boundary as they tackle Catra to the ground and pull Castaspella into tight hugs. 

It’s only when it comes to her that any of them hesitate. 

“You’re shorter than I expected,” says Frosta. Glimmer elbows her immediately and she yelps. “What? She’s She-Ra. Isn’t she supposed to be eight feet tall?”

“I’m technically her mortal form,” Adora answers, rubbing at the back of her neck with a blush spreading over her face. “So, no?” 

Bow, plopped onto one of the cushions in the main room, adds: “Mara was nearly seven feet tall, according to some texts. She was one of the tallest She-Ras. She had a dragon companion too.”

“She did?” Adora leans forward in her seat so abruptly that it takes Catra gripping the back of her shirt and pulling her back to prevent her from face planting onto the ground. “I want a dragon!” 

“How do you not know this?” Catra smooths the wrinkled fabric of Adora’s shirt, frowning. “Didn’t you connect to her once?” 

“We didn’t exactly have a lot of time to catch up. It was the end of the world.”

Bow nods sagely. “I can’t imagine she thought of that as a priority then.” He grins at Adora and she finds herself relaxing, shoulders falling from their tense hold. “It’s great to finally meet you, Adora.”

Adora smiles back. “It’s great to meet you.” 

“Aunt Casta wrote that you’re interested in reinstating a central monarchy to Etheria,” says Glimmer. She sits on the ground, leaning comfortably against Bow. Her hair’s a short, curly bob, the diadem resting at her crown the same as the one Angella wore. She looks at Adora with curiosity. 

This time, Adora doesn’t hesitate. She replies, “It’d be wise to get a grasp on what Etheria is like now before anything else. It’s been over a century; I highly doubt anyone would take kindly to me just claiming the crown for myself, especially when everyone thinks I’m dead.” 

Glimmer hums in approval. “The Crimson Waste is completely out of the question, especially since Catra left the throne.” 

Adora pauses; turns to look at Catra reclining comfortably in her seat, inspecting her claws. Catra says, “Huntara’s reasonable. If she thinks the princess is worth following, she will,” without looking up. 

Bow looks delighted by her. Glimmer less so. It’s easy to get a read on them; to pinpoint the ease in which the two of them communicate with one another, verbally and nonverbally. It’s a connection forged from years of closeness. The slightest tilt of Glimmer’s head; the quirk of Bow’s brow; a brush of the hands―all purposeful, all understood. It is a familiar sight, even if mirrored on strangers. 

Eventually, the trio retreats to the second story of the house to rest. Casta’s out visiting one of the village elders, the pumpkin seller out near the entrance. It’s far too early in the evening for any ounce of tiredness to seep in yet, and so Catra drags Adora out to the forest up one of the mountains enclosing the village. She shows her the fairy fountain; teaches her how to catch the shimmering tiny fairies surrounding the dormant water. Adora points at the foliage growing near it: the endurance carrots poking out of the ground; the hearty mushrooms as big as their heads resting several feet away from the trees hiding the fountain; the silent shrooms glowing the same shade of iridescent white as the Failsafe still pulsing at the very center of Adora’s chest. They wade into the shallow, ankle-deep water surrounding the giant petals of the pink fountain resembling a flower and pick the silent princesses growing at its edges.

“It’s funny how many of them are growing here,” Adora comments, tracing the petals of the flower. It’s a lovely thing, simple in its elegance: five long petals, blue at its center and fading into a glimmering white as it reaches the very edges. They’re rare―or at least they were during Adora’s time. No one could figure out how to grow them in their gardens. They only thrived in the wild. When Adora went through a brief botany phase (the cause of many of Light Hope’s headaches; the charts and figures Adora put up around the castle grew excessive and the castle’s garden had been expanded immensely after an impassioned speech) she tried and tried and tried to grow them on her own and failed repeatedly. 

She explains this all to Catra, still wading barefoot through the water, the bottom of her trousers rolled up. “It’s the fountain, I’m pretty sure,” she continues. “The magic seeping from it must be feeding all the plant life around it.” She looks up and finds Catra smiling at her, expression soft. “What?” 

Catra shakes her head. “I don’t know how I could’ve forgotten what a nerd you are.” 

Adora kicks at the water, splashing at Catra’s legs. Catra shrieks, then splashes Adora back. They chase each other around the water until Adora catches Catra by the waist and tackles her to the ground, laughing loudly, stomach aching from the force of her giggles. Catra lies beneath her, giggling just as earnest, long hair wet and half fallen from its ponytail, fanning out in a spread of brown curls in the water, and her eyes are scrunched up, her shirt riding up to her ribs and exposing the flat expanse of her belly. She’s so pretty; somehow even prettier than Adora remembers. Joy suits her better than the rage she had worn so comfortably for years. 

“Do I have something on my face?” asks Catra, rubbing at her cheek with the heel of her palm. 

Adora shakes her head. She sits back on her haunches, mouth dry. Catra pushes herself to sit up, looking back at Adora curiously, and she must know. After everything, she must. Adora could never hide anything from Catra as well as she hid it from herself. 

But this Catra is relearning her. To her, now, Adora is a stranger. Another task to check off. Another bit of responsibility given to her by a higher power. They do not know one another as they once did. How terrible to want someone you once could have had; to know that the opportunity was lost before it ever peaked. Adora recognizes the pang she felt witnessing Bow and Glimmer and she does what she knows best: She retreats. She stands up and brushes back her own damp hair from her face. She collects herself; pushes back her shoulders and brushes off the grass on her clothes. 

“It’s getting late,” she says distantly. She chances a look at Catra and finds her staring back. “I can make dinner tonight. Pumpkin stew. That’s easy enough, right?” 

“Yeah, that’s fine,” Catra answers, pulling out the slate and scrolling through its screen. She speaks the whole way back to the village, only falling silent once they cross the threshold from wild to civilization. She tucks the slate back at her belt. Touches the pommel of the sword strapped to it. She carries herself differently outside the illusionary privacy of the fairy fountain, like she knows people are watching the confident sway of her walk and taking note of her power. And that―that is familiar.  

Adora says nothing. She had thought she’d known loneliness before in that castle, but she thinks it a palpable thing now; a visceral thing, cut out and left bleeding at her feet. She pities it. She steps over it. 

“We’ll travel with you,” announces Glimmer the following morning. She stands by Casta’s side, standing tall and sure. At her side, Frosta pouts with her arms crossed.  “Frosta’s to stay here with my aunt. It’s a long journey and Goddess knows you’ll need more than just Catra to figure things out.” 

Catra flicks an obscene gesture at the Queen who promptly returns it with a bright smile. 

A map of the entirety of Etheria hangs on the eastern wall of the main room. Adora turns away to examine it. Bright Moon and the Kingdom of Snows are neighbors at the uppermost western regions of the kingdom. Mystacor is a week’s away if only it were a small group crossing the distance and especially if they hardly took breaks. The Crimson Waste’s at the southernmost western region and its very center would easily consume over days if not weeks of travel once they reached its outermost edges. That’s not taking into consideration the rest of the map: The Scorpikingdom, Plumeria, Salineas, even Dryl. She’s traveled so little of Etheria in her time before the Calamity. She misses the connection between her and Etheria. She misses reaching out and feeling the beat of rain against the soil as far out as Plumeria; misses wishing for the dizzying heat of the desert in the brief moments of respite in that magical chasm and sensing the sunbeams scathing the Crimson Waste. Her imprisonment granted her greater freedom to the lands she grew up in than life ever had. 

She idly traces the shape of Castle Grayskull at the very center of the map. “It’ll take years. The kingdoms are spread so far apart. Are you sure you’re okay to leave Bright Moon for so long?” 

“We have a council, just like the Etherian monarchy did,” answers Glimmer. “My people are strong and independent. The two of you defeating Prime eliminates a lot of the danger we all feared.” 

Adora looks back; catches Catra’s eye. “What about the Horde?” 

“Disbanded.” Catra leans against a table, arms crossed. “With Shadow Weaver gone―and now Prime defeated―they have no one to stand behind. They weren’t a large group when I raided their headquarters. It looked like they were on their last leg.” 

“We should keep an eye out for them; make sure that they don’t try to reform,” says Bow, scribbling on a notepad. “They never made it to Bright Moon before, so they were never a concern to us, but we’ll want to offer any news about them to the other princesses. It’ll help put us in their good graces.” 

Adora nods. She nods again. The very tips of her fingers are numb. 

“Okay,” she hears her own voice say, distant. “It’s a plan then.” 

She doesn’t stick around to hear the rest of what they say. She steps outside, stuffing her hands into the pockets of her large wool sweater, and follows the path of the winding porch until she’s behind the main house in full view of the large waterfall. The sound of it is overwhelming, loud, and she tilts her head up to focus on it, pushing back thoughts of crowns, and castles, and destiny, always about destiny. 

“We need to stop meeting like this.” 

Adora opens her eyes and turns to meet Catra’s. “You’re right. I’m getting predictable. I have to keep you guessing.”

“Adora,” says Catra, her voice barely above a whisper, and Adora looks back at her as though she were both the knife and the wound. “You don’t want to be Queen, do you?” 

“It’s not about want.” 

“Isn’t it? You’re doing what Light Hope wanted for you. You’re doing what Castaspella and Glimmer expect of you.”

Adora clenches her hands into fists. “Stop.” 

“No,” Catra says, stepping closer. “What do you want, Adora? When do you get to choose?”

She nearly laughs. She bites her tongue and the taste of copper floods her mouth. 

“It’s been a century, Adora. These people― they’ve had no choice but to carry on without Light Hope and without you. They can continue to fend for themselves.” 

“I’m supposed to just abandon everyone just because it’s what I want? I can’t just do that.” 

“Why not? You’ve fought for them for over a hundred years. You’ve kept them safe. You did your part. We both did. Don’t we deserve to rest? Don’t we deserve peace?” 

Adora shakes her head. “It’s not about deserve. It’s―It’s about duty, and mine isn’t done. Not yet.” 

The open vulnerability on Catra’s face falls, almost as if it were never there. She is close enough that Adora can see her throat work when she swallows. “Fine,” she says. “Fine. You’ll be Queen, and I’ll be your knight, and it won’t ever matter what we want, won’t it?” She tilts her head up. “Your Majesty.” 

Adora flinches back as if slapped. “Catra,” she says, voice trembling. 

She shakes her head. She steps back from Adora, the space between them cooling, and she walks away without another word.