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The first thing Catra does after Entrapta cuts the chip out of her neck - she is never allowing power tools that close to her face ever again if she can help it- is drag herself to the shower room. Her first few tries fail at the getting up stage, her legs giving out from exhaustion or from her brain struggling to rewire itself or maybe both. This is probably why Adora had told her to rest, not that she had a lot of ground to stand on there.
Eventually she manages to pull herself up on a shelf, her whole body shaking from the effort, and stumble her way across the hall. She silently thanks whichever shipwright had decided to put the showers next to the storage room instead of somewhere that would actually make sense. Even with the chip gone, she can’t shake the feeling that something of prime is still with her. It’s not until she goes to feel for the scar on the back of her neck that she realizes what’s wrong, her eyes shooting wide at the feeling.
A look in the mirror confirms her worst fear. Everything else is still recognizably her . Bruised, nearly broken, fur matted down and covered in blood, but it’s still her own body, her own eyes staring back at her in shock. But her hair was shiny and slick, tapered back into a low ponytail at the base of her head and hanging down to her waist. Her face screws up in disgust as she runs a quivering hand through it, wondering if she’ll ever be able to get whatever awful product those bastards had used out of it. Somehow she had almost preferred being literally controlled. At least she didn’t have to be aware of that.
Catra closed her eyes and steadied herself on the sink as her hands searched for whatever was holding her hair together, forcing herself to take deep breaths like Adora had told her a few hours ago. After about 5, she finally managed to slip a claw under the small loop of white cord that they had forced onto her after she came out of the pool.
The pool . Catra shivers remembering the feeling. Water so cold that it burned somehow, losing her ability to tell whether she was rising or sinking as her vision faded. It wasn’t until a distinct crack snapped her back to reality that she realized her entire body had gone tense, claws digging into the sink enough to take a chunk out of the corner.
She conjures Adora’s voice in her head again
Breath with me, okay? I’m here. Out
Slowly but steadily, she lets the tension out of her body, straightening her claws out and letting the cold metal of the sink against her palms ground her
In
Catra draws in air through her nose as her shoulders drop, appreciating the feeling of being fully in control of her own body again.
Out
The last of her shaking finally recedes as the air slowly leaves her lungs. Her arms sink back to her sides as she moves to turn the shower on, cranking the water all the way. Finally, after everything that’s happened to her in the last two weeks, Catra allows herself to cry just a little, her tears disappearing as she tilts her head up to feel the warm water on her face.
She doesn’t know how long she stays there. At some point she realizes that someone has slipped a fresh towel through the door, something she had neglected to check for. The magicat had always hated water, even before getting nearly drowned a surprising number of times over the past 3 years, but this was different. She methodically scrubs out every inch of her fur, letting the water burn away everything that had been done to her. All but one.
This is the part that she had been dreading. Her hair had already picked up a fair amount of water but it was still holding its shape. It was a darkly amusing thought that prime might have an entire planet dedicated to engineering and producing industrial strength hair gel. Gritting her teeth, she pulls the mass over her shoulder and sets to work, massaging and rinsing and scrubbing over and over again.
It isn’t until the bottle of shampoo runs dry that the panic starts to set in. What if it’s permanent? Of course Prime wouldn’t want to waste time with getting his clones presentable every morning, why wouldn’t it be? Catra’s heart sinks at the thought. Her hair is one of the few aspects of her appearance that she’s been able to exert control over for most of her life. By anyone’s standards, it was an awful mess, frizzed out and full of tangles without anyone to take care of it, but it’s her awful mess. Touching it has always been a quick ticket to the infirmary for anyone other than Adora, and she can’t stand the thought of everyone seeing it like this. Presentable, elegant, contained, everything that she’s always pointedly refused to be. She barely manages to turn the shower off before she stumbles out and collapses to the floor.
Catra’s claws leave deep scratches in the blue tile as she drags herself across the room, wrapping herself in the towel and backing into the corner as far as she can to hold herself upright. She feels like she’s drowning again, her vision going black as she sinks back into the abyss that she’s been to so many times before. It wasn’t enough for Prime to literally kill her, he just had to take this from her too. And she was going to take back control the only way she knew how. She takes in as much air as she can, tangles one claw into her hair about halfway down, and pulls .
She lets the pain consume her, pull her back into her body when she cries out. She shuts her eyes tight as she releases the clump of hair from her hand. She doesn’t even want to think about what she looks like now. Doing her best to ignore the trickle of blood that she can feel coming down from her scalp, she brings her hand back up to find another chunk of hair and braces herself to do this as many times as it takes.
Adora feels like she might actually die if she stops moving. This is somewhat of a problem when you’re confined to a tiny spaceship with nothing else to do. Even moreso when she’s confined herself to just the corridor that runs from the room that was now Catra’s quarters to the front of the ship. She knows that Catra needs space to herself, needs time to rest after everything that had happened. But she couldn’t bear to be too far away if Catra needed something. So she settled on this, pacing up and down the hallway for the millionth time, trying to concentrate on the rhythm of her footsteps on the metal. She was doing a pretty good job of it too, so good that she almost didn’t register the small cry of pain coming from the showers. Almost. It doesn’t even reach her brain before some switch deep inside her flips and her feet are carrying her back down the corridor as fast as she’s ever gone, pressing herself against the door to the bathroom. She was halfway through winding up to kick it down when she realized that that might not be the best idea.
“Catra?” she says, her head pressed to the door “hey. I’m here, can I come in?”
The muffled sob that she gets in return is all the answer that she needs. Fuck it. Adora stands, places one hand over the other on the doorknob, and levers down on it with as much force as she can until the lock snaps. Making a mental note to apologize to Entrapta later, she gently nudged the door open, bracing herself for what she might find on the other side
The first thing that Adora’s eyes find is the trickles of blood staining the pale tile, trailing up through the scattered pieces of brown hair and finally to Catra’s slender form, wrapped in the grey towel like it would protect her from the entire world if she could just hide herself away in it. The magicat, either not noticing or not believing Adora’s presence, reached up to tangle her hands in yet another chunk of hair before Adora gently reached out and grabbed her by the wrist, trying to hide her own shaking for Catra’s sake.
“Hey. I’ve got you, they can’t hurt you now,” she said, lacing the fingers of her free hand through Catra’s as the smaller girl leaned into the grounding touch. “Can you talk?”, she rubbed the hand she was holding with her thumb, trying to give her something more to focus on. Catra shook her head. “Okay, can I take you back to your room? We should clean this up, at least.” One squeeze Yes where their hands were joined. A signal they had established years ago, when Catra went nonverbal for the first time after a particularly bad encounter with Shadow Weaver.
Adora rose, and Catra slowly followed, both hands now clinging to the sleeve of Adora’s jacket as she buried her face in the shoulder. For the first time, Adora realized how much height she had gained on Catra in the 3 years they had been apart.
And so Catra once again made the journey across the corridor, this time with Adora to stabilize her instead of flinging herself at walls (a much more pleasant experience in a number of ways, she thought). A few staggering steps later Adora set Catra down on the bed they had set up, leaving her side for only a second to retrieve the first aid kit from the box in the corner. She hadn’t worked with one of these in a long time, but her magic was spent so it’d have to do.
Sitting down perpendicular to Catra, Adora let the girl lean into her lap as she laid out her supplies. She slid a hand under Catra’s head and nudged her gently. Catra got the message, tilting her head up so that Adora could get a clearer look at what she had done. Thankfully, it wasn’t as bad as Adora had feared. There was a fair amount of blood, but it didn’t look like she had managed to pull any of the roots out. Adora didn’t need to ask to know what had happened. The first time that she could remember Catra getting yelled at was because she had scratched Kyle bad for sticking a hand in her hair after all, and playing with it was one of Shadow Weaver’s favorite ways to agitate her. That gave her an idea, actually, but that could come later.
Carefully, Adora placed one of the pads over the bottle of disinfectant and turned it over, counting to 3 while the liquid saturated the cloth.
“This is gonna sting a bit okay? Two if you need me to stop,” She said, scratching lightly at Catra’s neck as she brought the pad up to one of the worse spots on her scalp and started to wipe the blood away. Catra winced, tightening her grip on Adora’s leg but never giving a second squeeze. If it weren’t for the pain, Catra thinks, she could fall asleep like this. Eventually Adora shifts under Catra so that their legs are laying on top of eachother. Four parallel scratches run up Catra’s thigh, a pattern Adora has seen all too many times before. As she examines the wounds she can hear Catra try to choke out an apology.
“Hey, look at me,” Adora says, meeting Catra’s fearful gaze from the pillow and taking her hand, “This isn’t something you have to apologize for. And it’s not something you have to do alone ever again, okay?” Catra nods, pushing herself up on shaky hands just enough to fall forward into Adora’s arms. It takes Catra a few minutes to realize that Adora is crying just as much as she is, each clinging to the other like this hug might just be enough to make up for every time they couldn’t be there for each other in the past three years. When they finally separate, Catra catches that familiar I have an idea gleam in Adora’s blue eyes, which can only mean the best kind of trouble.
“Now then, let’s see what we can do about that hair,” she says with a grin, producing a small black bag of tools.
THE FRIGHT ZONE, 8 YEARS AGO
Adora is in the hallway playing lookout and trying to act innocent when Catra comes tumbling out of the vent clutching their prize. Stealing from one of the older force captains was risky, but this was worth it. Besides, it’s not like hair care supplies were exactly abundant in a place like this. Catra took Adora’s hand and pulled herself up, both of them already giggling like idiots. Making sure to stay out of view, they hide the clippers in Catra’s bag. Catra shoots her friend a mischievous look, and they line up at the edge of the hall as Adora counts off on her fingers.
And then they take off, chasing each other down the Fright Zone’s endless service tunnels, yelling and laughing as soon as they know they’re out of earshot. Catra rounds the last corner a few seconds ahead of Adora but has disappeared by the time she catches up. Adora barely has time to look for her before something jumps at her from the shadows of a high pipe. Adora yelps, raising her arms to protect her face as she’s taken to the ground.
“Beat you there!” a familiar voice proclaims. Catra always beats her, in truth, but getting to see Catra like this is the better prize anyway, Adora thinks as Catra helps her up. Together, they move aside the debris they’ve used to disguise the entrance and crawl inside.
By all rights, the room isn’t much to an outside observer. Just a forgotten storage room, 8 feet square with concrete floors. But look closer and you’ll see the scratches in the door frame with dates written next to them, marking their heights through the years. You’ll see the pairs of crudely drawn faces littering the walls, the stack of ration bars that they’ve traded for, the blankets that they managed to steal from laundry duty. It would be unremarkable for anyone else, but for Catra and Adora it’s home.
Adora moves across the room, grabbing the mirror they had swiped last week as Catra sets down her bag and retrieves the rest of the supplies. Adora kneels behind Catra, experimentally pulling parts of her hair out of view so she can see how it would look in the mirror.
Adora takes another chunk of Catra’s hair back, lays it out between her fingers, and cuts, letting it fall into her lap. Thankfully it looks like everything above her neck should be salvageable, at least. She leans back to take a look at her work. Even this short, it's definitely Catra’s hair, sticking out funny in all the ways it always has been. Catra has clearly noticed this too, tilting her head back and forth and running a hand past her ears.
“Hey Adora?” Catra asks, shifting slightly between Adora’s legs.
“Hmm? What’s up?” Adora responds, pausing her finishing touches to meet the nervous eyes in the mirror.
“I was thinking I - I might wanna try something different. Instead of just growing it back out the same way” she says. Adora nods, considering the image of Catra without her familiar mane for the first time she’s ever seen.
“Show me?” Adora asks, and Catra runs a hand up the hair behind her head, eventually finding a point just a few a few inches away from her head.
“There,” she says, the very act of vocalizing it making her more confident in the decision. She’s changed so much in the last few weeks that her wild, untamed mess of hair now felt just as wrong as the ponytail that had been forced on her,
Catra grits her teeth as the buzzing clippers run along her sensitive ear, knowing that trying to leap out of the way would be the worst possible decision. Besides, she trusts Adora more than anyone else to understand how important this is to her. So she shuts her eyes and tries to concentrate on Adora’s heartbeat pressed so close to her. The familiar rhythm slows her own, and before she knows it the grey tufts of hair are hitting the floor at her sides. She feels like a weight has been lifted, one more part of her no longer stained by Shadow Weavers touch.
Catra leans back into Adora’s touch as she cleans up some of the parts of her hair that had gotten particularly matted, eventually leaving her with something which resembles her previous style, but slimmed down a bit to fit how much she’s grown recently. Finally, Adora reaches back and pulls the hair tie out of her ponytail, holding it between her teeth as she gathers Catra’s brown hair in one hand before wrapping it.
“Done!” she proclaims, tucking a few loose strands in before leaning back to admire her work. “How does it look?” Catra is too busy thinking about how nice Adora looks with her hair down like that to give an answer at first, not that she would ever admit it
“It looks great,” She says, grinning and baring her fangs in the mirror before she turns and tackles Adora in a tight hug.
“Now come on, we should get these back before anyone notices that they’re gone”
Carefully, Adora runs the clippers down the side of Catra’s head from the midpoint of her ear, more and more hair gathering in piles around them. It was easier this time, Adora’s steady hand and calming touch making Catra feel more at home than she had in years.
Adora gently tilts Catra’s head to the other side and sets to work on the other side of the asymmetrical undercut she had asked for, about a quarter of the way up the ear this time. Adora wasn’t sure where the idea had come from, but she wasn’t going to complain. She had always thought an undercut would look good on Catra. Then again, she thought that about a lot of things.
Catra opens her eyes as Adora is sweeping up the mess. For the first time in what feels like years, she looks in the mirror and sees herself staring back at her. She turns around and wraps Adora in a tight hug, purring as strong hands run through the freshly cut hair. This time, they stay wrapped in eachothers arms, breathing together, savoring the feeling of being home.