Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dear Graunt Raz,

Is that how you spell that? Great + Aunt? I keep reading it as “Gront” which kind of makes you sound like a 10,000 year old tree woman, or maybe some kind of fungus. But “Grant” is definitely spelled wrong, so.. maybe I’ll just stick with Razz?

I never realized that after calling you my Graunt or whatever for so long, I’ve never once seen it in writing! Not even in frosting – weird. Guess there really hasn’t been a reason to, until now.

How are things at home? Are you eating well? I left at least a week’s worth of meals in the ice cellar, (Peanut Butter and Tuna Empanadas, your favorite,) and plenty of sweets too. Remember: 45 minutes at 350 does NOT mean 1 minute at 10,000 ! How you get our ancient stone oven to the literal surface temperature of the sun, I will never understand. Or how we’ve never burned down the cottage for that matter. Just promise me you’ll ask Loo-Kee if you need help!

Not that you can respond to a letter. Or that this will even get to our mailbox before I drive back to the Woods on Sunday, but some of us are yet to embrace the magic of modern technology! Suppose I just miss you, so. However you can, and I know you have your ways, please let me know you’re okay.

Everything’s going really great so far on my end! No major screw ups, thankfully. Well, I am having a bit of trouble finding this motel the producers are setting everybody up in. Kinda wish you’d let me at least visit the city, or you know, anywhere, when I was younger, now that our livelihood hinges on my ability to navigate it. But not to worry! My new phone comes with a GPS and my new baker friend Glimmer (!!!) showed me how to use it. A couple times, actually – did you know phones don’t even have buttons anymore? 

Otherwise, my first day in Brightmoon has been full of wonders. So, so very full. For example, just how freaking tall they make buildings these days! Glimmer says most of them aren’t even for living in – they’re all industrial assets and liquidated complexes, or something, I didn’t really follow. Oh, but get this: they don’t have stars here. Why on Etheria would 9 million people want to live in a place where you can’t even see the sky?! The first night I thought it was just extremely cloudy, just a few of the brighter bodies peeking out to say goodnight, but nope! That’s it, that’s what cityfolk think stars are. Maybe that’s why they call the city Brightmoon – because that’s the only thing left up there you can see.

I know you tried to warn me about this place, about how different it is from the Woods. Honestly, I only kind of believed you when you said most people didn’t have magic out here, but the ones I’ve talked to don’t even believe in it! How can you not believe in something all around you, all the time? And they look at me like I’m the crazy one.

Did you know then? That nothing could have possibly prepared me for how different it really is? How different it’s all becoming…

I’m going to win this competition, for both of us. I know I only barely made it this far, and I’ve got a lot to prove, but I can feel it in my bones, Raz. Sure, $100,000 prize might be throwing around money for some of the folks out here, (I saw a plain red purse in a store window that cost $8,000! I had to ask to make sure they didn’t mark it wrong – what kind of purse is worth two used tractors? or 10 horses! It wasn’t even very big, what are you going to hold in it? Feels more like the purse should be the thing worth protecting now…) But imagine what we could do with it! I could pay for culinary school, or buy you that fancy walking stick you I saw you sniffing at the Surplus. We could even reopen mom’s bakery. Hypothetically, anyway.

Well, it’s probably time I start looking for the motel again. Not gonna get very far idling ol’ Swiftwind in the Taco King McBurger Zone (???????) parking lot all night.

I miss you, Raz. Hope even from out here, in the city with no stars where magic is a myth, that you can still feel that. Because I’m feeling it plenty for the both of us.

All my love,

Adora paused, pen resting against her lower lip. She considered adding a playful “(Not Mara)” to her signoff, but didn’t want to risk confusing her great aunt or triggering any relapses. Goddess only knows if Razz had realized she’s gone yet.

Either of them.

Letter folded, sealed, and stamped with a kiss, (and, you now, an actual stamp. Adora’s wistful, not stupid.) She stepped out of the purring vehicle and onto the asphalt. A jagged cup reading “MEGASLURP” in ooze green stencil lay dead in the snowbank. Something Adora still hadn’t been able to wrap her head around – how people in the city would just throw their trash literally anywhere and everywhere, as if the skyscrapers were the shiny wire walls of a waste basket, and the entire ground floor was nothing but one big perpetual dump. She tried to spruce the place up at first, leave it better than she found it like Razz had taught her. Honest! She did her best to stop at every wayward Twinx wrapper or scuttling shopping bag to cross her path. She drew the line at rotting food and, a shiver runs down her spine, loose contraceptives, but an effort was made. But after so long, the enormity of this place, the malaise of cruelty that sucked in everyone who inhabited it, was starting to get to her.

‘Great. A full 8 hours after coming to the big city, and you’re already too good to care for mother Etheria, hm?’

Sometimes Adora really hated being right. She stooped to excavate the cup, pausing to find a point of contact with as little “city grime” as possible, but this only uncovered another piece of trash, and then another and another until her arms were overflowing with a waterfall of streetcrap. The public mailbox sat patiently on the other side of the intersection. At least there was one thing here she already knew how to operate. Adora waddled over to the nearest trash bin, feeling like she finally understood how those kids in her homeschool math textbooks could wind up carrying a dozen apples and 6 watermelons at any given moment.

Finally, having disposed of every plastic cup shard, used napkin, and crumb of Styrofoam – her absolute least favorite discovery about city life, right up there with catcalling, light pollution, and rich ladies who walk their children on leashes – she took a satisfied look at the snowbank.

“Only 300,000,000 to go,” she sighed.

Doesn’t matter. All she had to do tonight was make good on her promise to write home, find someone to give her directions, and it was off to rest up before her first day of competition. Truth be told, there weren’t too many souls around she felt comfortable asking a favor from. A couple folks in makeshift tents huddled around a street grate, arguing or perhaps softly chanting? They seemed busy. The dead eyed McBurger clerk looked just as likely to help Adora as they did to stick their own head into the deep fryer.

She’d been so lost in her homesickness, any anxiety about her first night in the city, her first night on her own since she’d had a home worth missing, had been swiftly crammed into the unlit corners of her mind. Sort of like packing a suitcase; if her constant baseline anxiety were the regular clothes, rolled tight and militaristically neat like a firm cot for her Razz-related worries, the fancy stuff she’d break out for her first time on television, then her fear of the city was like the handheld back massager wedged even further below the bedrock, just in case her luggage spilled open or one of the bellhops decided to go the extra mile and unpack all her belongings for her.

Or something.

Regardless, between the twitching light of the streetlamps and the hiss of neon behind her, something about this abandoned parking lot was really starting to get on her heeby-jeebies. Probably best to head towards a different area – if Adora had any idea where she was or how to get literally anywhere else. What if she wasted another 40 minutes driving aimlessly only to end up somewhere worse? Like a drug den, or one of those restaurants that clearly implies having a cute owl theme, but it’s actually just women in tiny clothing serving hot wings! Although, she really hadn’t had a chance to eat since she drove in…

Before she could finish the thought, a phantom flicked through the streetlight, wavering just a moment before darting behind the corner of her eye.

Which, like, okay. That’s fine. Normal city things, she’s sure.

Adora cocked her head, heartrate peaking at the sudden movement, but found the street corner empty. Silent. She breathed slow, muscling her brain back to reality. It was probably a trick of the light, or another person just trying to get home. Even if it was… not that, which there’s no evidence that it was anything at all, Adora was hardly an ideal victim. If the behemoth farmhands she grew up with couldn’t best her head-to-head, odds are your average mugger wouldn’t stand a chance. Maybe even if there were a couple of them, but probably not more than 3 on 1. Or if they had guns – oh Goddess, why does Adora keep forgetting about guns?

Because, though she was in fact less than an hour’s drive from the wilderness' edge, she couldn’t be further from home. Couldn’t be less prepared, save for waking up a speck on the very moon that glared, unblinking down at her. Her histories were moot. Her instincts strangled by fear – the city, the dark, the people, how it surrounded her, how it closed her in. All of it.

Alone.

The sound of knuckles on glass was all it took to send her running. She scanned the area, played the noise over and over again in her head. No chimes of glass shards, no click of a weapon, just three sharp raps against what must have been her car window – plink plink plink. The echoes skid across the parking lot to reach her. They were close by. Waiting for her.

Bolting behind a dumpster, her breathing could steady, though the acrid stench of a grease trap infesting her nostrils made her wish it hadn’t. Her breath curled out in fine white tufts. Hands jittered, raw from the cold, so she muzzled them in her coat pockets. No sudden movements. No unnecessary noise. Focus.

A blonde head slunk around the side of the dumpster. Car still running, seemingly unjacked. McBurger person still inside, not adding themself to the menu, that’s good. Enormous rat snickering beside her earlobe… that was new.

It wasn’t the first scream that floored her.

Wasn’t even the rat, really – under Raz’s watchful eye, she’d taken creepier crawlers than that in as pets. Knit them little sweaters and dressed them up for Solstice cards. Super cute, totally worth the rabies shot. But as Adora yelped at the sudden furball, and the furball screeched at her flailing, it was actually the third scream that sent Adora tumbling to the ground like a bear in a trap.

The one that came from right behind her.

“AAAAEEIIEE!” The cloaked figure shrieked as Adora collapsed on top of them.

Panting, aching, Adora propped her weight against her elbow. She winced as it dug into the frigid asphalt. Her mind was pretty dazed, but that definitely wasn’t a rat that snuck up behind her this time. Also not a rat that broke her fall, laying still and semi-conscious beneath her, but a person. A really, really, breathtaking person – oh, wow. They were groaning hard but still breathing, (‘Thank Goddess,’) haloed by the glistening black fur of their hood. And just beneath that, two radiant, moonstruck eyes fluttered back to life. One the color of sunlight and sweet ichor, the other deep and tumultuous as the ocean. The moon and the stars.

Her stars. How terribly she missed them.

*                                                                      *                                                                             *

It couldn’t matter less what Catra was good at; only that she was the best. She and Adora had grown up baking together, playing Frankenstein in their orphanage’s communal kitchen with whatever loose trimmings they had access too. Expired breadcrumbs, blackened bananas. Most of the foodstuffs were locked tight to ensure the kids at least had something to eat at mealtime, and, as Catra was so often and so confoundingly reminded, to deter thieves.

Adora excelled. It’s what she did best. At baking, to be sure, but also studying and friend-making, artsing and crafting and piano, trombone, drums, banjo, and she was even the best at play, which Catra maintains shouldn’t really be possible. As a born athlete, she simply dominated in any activity that involved running or throwing or putting balls into places balls go. (Catra, a born asthmatic, managed to excel in making Adora laugh by saying “Hrm, yes, good throwing, excellent thrust,” in a funny little accent.)

It seemed to Catra that, early on, Adora had been let in on some great secret about the order of the universe. Here’s a hint: she was on top. Obviously, she worked hard. Harder than anyone, actually, and especially any 6-year-old (but also an alarming number of grownups) Catra had ever seen. But it couldn’t have hurt to know what Adora did. That her efforts would always be rewarded and rewarded handsomely. That she would never be laughed off or discarded or, heavens forbid, punished for her attempts. That her mistakes would always be brushed away and her victories heralded as proof of her dogmatic brilliance. That her path to greatness had been written in the stars themselves, and all she ever had to do was follow it.

Yes, Adora excelled at everything she tried, but most importantly, she excelled generally. With their teachers and nuns, the other desperate children and sympathetic parents-to-be. With total strangers. With luck and nature and beauty and virtue. With God. Sometimes Catra would lie awake at the foot of her bed, eyes wide with the terror that Adora had only remained unadopted so she could watch over her. Protect her. That, no matter how violently ill the thought made her or how many times she pushed Adora away, no matter how hard she worked to make sure her deepest fears remained just that, just fears, Catra existed solely to drag the girl down.

They may have been raised in a nunnery, but those in-between hours, the little world of wax paper chef hats and gummy bear brownies which are really mostly crushed almonds and bits of Choc-o-Wolf cereal; of scrunched noses and cheesy voices and damming, midnight laughter that starts in the eyes but flies wild like an unkept balloon; their own transcendent kingdom they would build and destroy nightly in that kitchen, kept secret and sacred as prayer, often tied at the hip under Adora’s blue and white star blanket with palms close over the burners for extra heat; only there did communion come easy. No one to provoke them like the starving dogs they were made to be, sure. But mostly, simply, there was nothing else worth competing for. They had everything they wanted.

On the eve on Adora’s 12^th birthday, her last year as a technical child and, as the other orphans so kindly reminded her, the last year she could ever really hope to be adopted, the girls slept in the same bed for the last time. It shouldn’t have been allowed to begin with. A violation of state policy, some sort of fire hazard, and of course the issue of Catra not being seen for the girl she and Adora had only recently discovered her to be. But there were always too many children and never enough beds – more pressing hazards to wag fingers at. So, until someone who mattered (see: someone with money) said something about it, the two lived as they pleased, as they’d always done, as they’d promised up and down they always would.

Ophelia Weaver paid for her children in cash. No contract, no interview, just the bloody chime of a telephone in the middle of the night and a 45-minute window shopping the next morning. The nuns had made sure to instill an extra helping of the fear of God with breakfast that day. Also toaster strudel. Catra never listened, though she enjoyed the strudel rapturously. The moment she’d heard some all-important grown-up was swinging by to adopt, she knew this was it for her. Adora was going to get snatched up and taken away to the fairytale life she deserved. Catra would be forgotten, as she secretly hoped Adora would forget every part of the inevitable social services lawsuit that was their mutual childhood, this life which dragged on Adora like a secondhand suit. The one fitted to Catra like a choke lead.

And hoped, even more secretly, one that Adora wouldn’t trade for a sky full of stars.

Catra couldn’t have imagined her surprise, then, when one of the motherlier nuns shook her from her sleep that night. She was to assemble her things: 2 outfits (Adora’s, borrowed,) a small rock collection (Catra’s, foraged,) most of a barbecue corn chip blondie, (Adora’s, stolen,) and a vintage boudoir style photograph of two women in a comically small tin bathtub, (Sister Octavia’s, stolen, but with an unspoken agreement to pretend didn’t exist.)

Her sleep-addled brain swam with the implications. Was she finally getting the boot? Being executed? Perhaps they’d assembled some sort of kennel or outdoor shack for her to sleep in. As Catra dragged the overnight bag (Sister Swen’s, given with a warm look of pity that made Catra shiver to the bone,) down each step of the main stairs, she only found herself hoping that whatever chain they’d have her tied to was long enough to reach the kitchen. Or at least smelling-distance from the window.

She never even bothered to ask. Not when Swen had led, but not pulled her by the wrist out and down the house’s stone front steps. Minutes later, as the headlights of a towncar first shone over the hillside. After the beast had arrived, black and dazzling like a well-polished shoe, her bags packed, the doors opened. No, not until she was nearly inside the car itself did she even think to wonder why?

Maybe she had, in the last look to her caretaker, pupils blown out from sleep, searching her lightless face for any shred of hatred, sadness, forgiveness, anything. Anything but more pity. Something must have prompted the round, tearless woman to spare a few choked words.

“It’s better this way,” she whispered through the mask of her habit. Her eyes cast over her shoulder to the dormitory window, and Catra’s quickly followed suit. She tried to bring the young girl’s gaze back, if only for a moment, but she was unreachable. The fangs of reality had been bared to Catra countless times, but she’ll never forget feeling of them sinking into that brief, fleshy, foolish exposure of her soul. How quick the blood fled her face. How terrible the sky when the world is pulled out from under you.

“It’ll be better, for both of you.”

Blood pounded in her ears like a deerskin drum, merciless heartbeat ordering her to ‘RUN. RUN. RUN. RUN. RUN.’ Her hands shook like they always have just before she gets sick, but this fever wasn’t breaking. This is real. What was she doing just standing here, letting them steal her? Like she was a thing?

Toes buried in gravel, her body braced to push off like a sprinter. Failing that, she’ll just dig deeper and deeper into the earth until her captors have no choice but to either let her meld with the foundation like a weed, or bring her to her damnation in halves. She kicks up a pock of dirt as quick hands raise her by the armpits. Before her legs could carry her back to that warm, unexpecting place at the foot of her best friend’s bed, the car doors had already closed around her.

Her boots slammed against the window, muddy prints layering over Swen’s tinted expression. She wanted to claw at the upholstery, punch her lights out, rip the roof off from its tendons and drown the world in its bleeding.

For an instant, Catra dreamed of sailing, of staying afloat, just her and Adora. A big house with a bunkbed and a family she chose.

The only thing she’s ever chosen.

“Now,” a voice drawls from behind her, fine as razorwire, thick with venom. It shocks the young Magicat from her rampage. “That’s not how a proper young woman behaves herself, is it.”

‘It is if their properly fucking FURIOUS,’ Catra buried the retort in her throat. This voice was a woman’s, ice in her veins. Years of experience had trained her to tune out all the sugarcoating and backhanded language – a byproduct of living with nuns. But there wasn’t enough sweetener on Etheria to expunge the bitter, petty violence festering under her kidnapper’s tongue.

Slowly, she met the faceless woman. Catra found herself wishing she hadn’t wasted her strength on a stupid window. Not when more palpable threats were watching just over her shoulder.

“Who are you?” Her eye’s fell, fixed on the bits of leather and dirt beneath her jagged nails. Exactly how sharp were they, she wondered…

“Well. Seems they weren’t joking about keeping the smart one then, hm? Fair enough.” The words plucked at her nerves like they were a violin in need of tuning. Plain spoken, as if the fact were beyond obvious; sizing up the child how one might consider a generic brand of house cleaner, an impulse purchase, deciding if it was worth going back to the store for returns. For an instant Catra hoped she might, but the thought of Adora winding up with… whatever this woman’s deal is, it was out of the question. Her eyes were wet, furious, but she stayed silent.

“No matter,” she continued, “you’re going to surpass her one day. You’re going to surpass them all.”

The sounds of ignition went off like twin gunshots. She snapped her head up, then slowly back to the cloaked woman in front of her. As the tires rolled over the gravel driveway, she felt what remaining hope she’d held on to get crushed under their treads. Keeping her breathing steady was a challenge. She had to dam her tears up quickly. No way in hell was she letting this monster see her cry, or thinking she’d be broken so easily. And Catra never would, even through those next words which fused a shiver to her spine, a cold she’s kept inside her all this time. The very first time she saw a faceless woman smile.

“I’ll make sure of it.”

Chapter Text

“Catra?”

Adora’s voice shook; understandable. The sky was coming down on top of her.

She felt like a cartoon character; seeing stars and faeries and childhood bestfriends who disappeared one night without a word. And was it the ground that was trembling or just her legs? It all quivered in the periphery, skyline loose and twisting, folding in on itself faster and faster until her whole world was spinning madly out of orbit, and every hearthlit window and stoplight and even her own pallid breath had dissolved into a blur. Then all around it went dark. There was only her and Catra and a blink of white moonlight.

Was she feeling this too? This need to strike her hands into the earth? Lash against its engine, gum the cosmic gears and levee the universe against her shoulders? Anything to keep her from disappearing, or flying out into the bottomless dusk that surrounded them.

Was she feeling anything?

Adora closed her eyes, unsure of just how long she’d been staring into those clear, celestial bodies shining back at her. The world shut out and for an instant she could breathe.

In all those nights she’d laid awake, sometimes climbing up the thatch and vinery that snaked the ancient stone of Raz’s cottage, and pressed her body up into the belly of the sky, kneading its cool, dark fur and teething winds, she’d dare the moon to blink and wonder. But no number of scenarios, no matter how elaborate, could prepare her for the raw confusion and joy and- and something else filling her eyes just from laying them on this bygone sight. From knowing her friend was okay. Were they okay?

“Are you okay?” Adora lifted herself with a single arm, nearly curling Catra up into the other. She prayed in small gasps on the absence of daylight, the imposing shadow; anything to mask her rushing, red heat.

“I’m fine.” She pressed her palms down, rising to at least eye-level with Adora. At least she could maintain that dignity. “Despite your best efforts.”

This wasn’t going to work; a fact she should have been privy to, given how nothing ever works out for Catra. She could barely even see Adora in the dark, but the sheer volume of emotion on her face was blinding. Was it too late to run? Pretend this was a freak accident? How likely was Adora to believe she just happened to live in that dumpster…

The blonde shook out her skull, unjumbling whatever hearthache and dopamine smoothie her brain had just turned into.

“I just- I can’t believe it’s… I mean, you’re here. You’re alive, and you’re here, and you’re -you’re…”

“Yeah?”

Adora shot her eyes down, not wanting to scare off the woman she’d been oh-so-casually fantasizing about for the last decade. But a subtle twinge in their silence told her she was better off finishing that sentence, remembering how her friend could conjure up a scroll of endings far less kind than what Adora intended.

“You’re just as beautiful as I remember.”

Catra’s eyes stung from the cold. That’s why she was wiping them against her sleeve. There must’ve been some ice shards or loose gravel jammed up in there somewhere, real gnarly stuff. Also, her back still hurt from the fall. Shut up.

“Only just?” The brunette prodded.

She plotted her next move while Adora floundered to compliment her. They couldn’t talk how they needed to in front of some moldy dumpster in the middle of the slums. What they needed was somewhere warm and secure where no one would overhear, interrupt, or show any indication they cared if either of them lived or died. Thankfully, there was some such place just 30 feet from Adora’s (somehow still unstolen???) car. Catra dusted off her cloak and turned back to the hulking blonde.

“Hey. You hungry?”

*                                                                      *                                                                         *

Adora wasn’t the first tourist to have stumbled into the Taco King McBurger Zone, but she was definitely the first one there to tour the Taco King McBurger Zone. She’d bought the smartphone all of two weeks ago, and was about to snap its 12^th ever photo, (the restaurant’s beloved mascot, an anthropomorphic taco regent named Zonelord Spalding,) when Catra gave a quick yoink to her ponytail. Even after a decade apart, Adora knew a call to order when she saw one. “That means NOW you quarterback-shaped goldfish.”

The cashier, a hologram nametagged L. Hope, informed them they had 42 remaining seconds to order before Brightmoon PD would be called to execute them off the premises. Adora laughed, thinking the machine meant to say “escort,” but Catra’s spitfire ordering told her that wasn’t an assumption worth maintaining.

Her side of the story went like this:

1. Catra needed to talk to Adora about some super-secret something that apparently couldn’t wait until their first day of competition.

2. After their briefing at the studio, she waited outside the motel, but Adora never showed.

3. Fearing the worst, (which apparently meant having their talk postponed, not, as Adora maintained, her abduction and torturous dismemberment,) she drove around the city searching for a lost and/or murdered Adora…

4. …who she found, “rummaging through street trash like a feral gazelle.” Catra hops out of her car, bolting to catch up to her, but Adora runs away. Also not unlike a feral gazelle.

5. She screams, they both scream, at one point a giant rat seemed to be screaming? Then Adora hulks out, insults Catra-

“I meant it as a compliment! How is beautiful not a compliment?”

Adora picked at her chicken fries, (not chicken and fries, but some unholy congregation of the two; the mind boggles,) eyes trained solely on Catra, who had been horrified that Adora would ever imagine her eating here and instead swirled the Diet MEGASLURP in her clutches like a fine cabernet.

“So we agree you hulked out.” She jabbed the half-gallon forward, Adora batting it humorlessly.

“Well, why were you sneaking up behind me, in a dark alley, while wearing a cloak?”

“Adora, honestly,” Catra toyed with the hem of her fingerless leather dress glove, “I thought you knew me.”

Silence pricked them each second somewhere new and increasingly ugly. Like stumbling face-first into a pillar of mating horseflies; Adora knows. Words pitched and failed against the backs of her teeth. Where could she even start?

‘That I thought I knew you too?’ ‘I thought you would’ve written or visited or come back for me, somehow, anything to let me know that woman didn’t have you tied up in a basement somewhere, or worse?’ ‘That I knew you inside-out, Cat. I know we were just kids, but I believed you when you told me we we’re everything, that nobody could stop us as long as we were together, so what reason would we ever have to tear ourselves apart?’

‘Or that I’d believe you all over again, if you told me right now that you still…” Her jaw throbbed, weary with the weight of so many unborn confessions raging to be set free.

“Catra, where have you been?”

“Let’s see, Salineas, Thaymor, just got out of my last year at L’Atlier L’effroi in The Fright Zone-”

“You know that’s not what I mean! Where did you go? How did every trace of my best friend’s existence get wiped from the face of the planet like some effed up magic trick?” Catra dismissed her theatrics with a wave, sending a blip of brown scud sloshing onto their table. Adora scowled at it. “And why would you purchase 64 oz of perfectly drinkable sugar fizz if you were just going to use it as a prop!”

“Do- do you mean soda? Do you not know the word soda? Goddess, how deep in the Whispering Woods are you hoveling these days?” Adora raised an eyebrow. “Oh, as if you didn’t look me up the second they announced the contestants publicly.”

“I- no, what? Do people do that?” Adora’s frustration quickly keeled over to fear. “I mean, wh-what can people even see about you on the internet? What did you find?!”

She was practically shouting again – either Adora was 10 times as inept with the internet as Catra had assumed, or murdered somebody. Maybe she just had some weird kink?

“Um, just your Glimstagram?” She flashed a devilish smirk, testing the waters. “And your search history, obviously. Everybody online can see that.”

“WHAT?!”

Wow, that could not have possibly gone better. Catra did her best to halt the wheel of juicy secrets Adora might be keeping, if only to keep the girl from having a heart attack. For now, at least.

“Joking! Damn, you really are from bumblefuck now, huh?” The blonde was beet red under Catra’s knowing gaze.

“…I’m from where you’re from.”

She didn’t mean for it to come out so broken. Her strong shoulders folded in on themselves, as if some massive, oppressive ghost were crushing her between his hands. Ugh, why did people always get like this when Catra exposed their weaknesses?

‘Right,’ Catra remembered, ‘it was always fun until Adora imploded.’

“Breathe, princess,” she offered a sympathetic chuckle, “you’re about as safe on the internet as they come. I barely even found your socials. Kinda had to dig for a while actually…”

She averted her eyes. Just to make Adora feel better – best to really sell the idea that she was embarrassed. And if her ears started to burn a little, intentionally or otherwise, then all the more convincing. Catra must just be a better actress than she realized.

“…you really looked for me?” Adora whispered.

“Well, duh. You saying you didn’t look for me?”

Note for future Catra: look up how to make your voice stop shaking at will. Is there a pill she can take? Maybe some kind of out-patient surgery? Much to consider.

“I maybe did a little, um,” Adora’s smile betrayed her, “a little perusing.”

“Ew. Don’t make it sound like you were window shopping.”

“You were hard to find!”

“I was hard to find? I have 800,000 followers, I’m verified, fuck, I’ve been on the cover of cooking magazines since I was 15! You’re the one who’s all off the grid and junk.”

“I am not off the grid! I have a Glimstagram account, an electronic mail address-”

“Electronic mail?!”

“And I was on TV one time after the junior softball championships in the Kingdom of Snows.”

“Uh, and how was I possibly supposed to find that? It’s not like I have any photographs to go off of.” An edge was rising in Catra’s voice – sudden, twisting, uglier if she hadn’t been trained to handle this sort of emotional derailing. But where was it coming from? Why was she getting so angry?

“Oh come on, I look exactly the same.”

“Exactly the- you’re 6 feet tall! You’re a freaking bodybuilder, I haven’t seen you since we were 12!”

“Well,” Adora flustered, finally registering just how close she and Catra were inching, “why are you wearing contacts in all of your pictures?”

Fire. Fire and steel and blaring red alarms. Catra discovered too late that it wasn’t an edge in her voice that was twisting, but a knife deep in her belly that had finally turned too tight.

“What the fuck do you care?! You could’ve found me if you wanted to, it’s not like I was hiding! I couldn’t even look up your fucking adoption records if I wanted to, Adora Gray. Is that how badly you wanted to make sure I couldn’t get a hold of you? Dropping a whole ‘-skøl’?!”

“What? I didn’t, that’s not-”

“Yeah, it is! You literally changed your name so-”

“Well you changed yours!”

Adora knocked her leg against the table as she stood. The cup buckled, spun, then died with a flourish. Its skull cracked and burst on the hard surface. Dark liquid gushed off the sides. They stayed motionless until it had formed a steady drip.

Catra still jumped at the first sign of movement. They were still again, watching each other, just for a second or two.

“I’m gonna- I wasn’t,” Adora could barely articulate, her face a stone against the emotional rapids beneath. The ones Catra had stirred. She struggled to keep it from turning over. They both seemed ready to cry or run, or say fuck it and let their fists do the talking for them. Fighting was always easier anyway. 

She turned towards a nook in the wall, a smart little display that probably used to hold ketchup packets and plastic cutlery, but had all been ransacked or just never refilled. One downside of intangible cashiers, Adora supposed. She hastily wadded some napkins out of the dispenser, which was miraculously full.

“Ah.”

They sopped it all up in silence. Once their area was clean, or clean enough for a basically abandoned fast food place that had autonomously threatened to kill them both, Adora chucked the napkins, cup, and her slurp-covered chicken abominations into the trash.

Neither saw much point in staying put, plus the thousand-yard stare they were getting from L. Hope could mean anything from “order more food” to “or become the food.” Without a word, they settled into Adora’s car for the same reason it had been ruled out in the first place – it was intimate. Catra hovered like a museum patron, or maybe more like one of the statues. She sat straight as a pin. Hands tucked, feet crossed, cloak clutched as though its fringes were an extension of her nervous system. Adora had imagined her in that seat once or twice, or daily, but never would’ve thought she’d be this… unnatural. Then again, there are probably a couple things about this picture she wouldn’t have guessed. Not on her first try, anyway.

“You want to know where I’ve been?” Catra broke the silence, as if a sixth sense was whispering to her that Adora was 15 seconds away from putting on a Goddess damn country station, of all things.

Adora just nodded. She looked surprised, but only at her feet. Just shook her head up and down like she was scared speaking would break whatever spell was prompting her ex best friend to open up. Catra took a breath, and spoke very clear, very soft, and with so much constraint it almost pained Adora to listen. She feared her own throat may start closing up in sympathy.

“I haven’t. I haven’t been anywhere. Shadow Weaver’s prized baking prodigy daughter? Oh, that bitch has been around – competition circuits, culinary school, interviews and photo ops and… but I’m buried somewhere underneath the orphanage, far as I can tell.”

Quiet followed; an awful, self-flagellating quiet which Adora spent wishing she’d bought that book from Loo-Kee about deciphering social cues, instead of the one she did buy, a graphic novel about sailing knots. But no, no, knots are good too. Hopefully it would just slowly become clear that she needed a little more explanation, and Adora could someday repay the kindness by ensuring Catra’s sheet bend didn’t come loose. Assuming Catra sails or, y’know, ever talks to her again.

“I, uh, I’m not sure I-“

“Did you think Shadow Weaver actually wanted to adopt me?”

The words came faster now, less restrained. It was promising to see Catra loosen the reigns like this. Unnerving, too.

“Like she could take care of anyone other than herself. She doesn’t want children, even “pets” might be too affectionate. She wants furniture she can train. Something to show off to her board of directors in between cocktail hours and whatever dominatrix hypno-magic she pulls to make people give her promotions. I mean seriously, Adora, how long have you been in this city?”

“Uh,” Adora was not expecting the Q&A portion of the trauma rant to come this early on. “Like 9-10 hours?”

“Okay, and in all that time have you seen another Magicat anywhere around here? On the street, on a billboard, on fucking Hordeflix, literally anywhere?”

Adora thought before answering – a rarity for her, but a courtesy Catra definitely deserved. And she hadn’t, of course. Never in her life had she met another Magicat, or even seen one, besides Catra.

She’d learned about the kingdom of Half-Moon in her ancient civilizations class, but it was a shallow unearthing. So far as her textbooks were concerned, and the rest of the world apparently, Half-Moon was there, it fell, and the Magicats went with it. Some still existed, obviously, but they were treated like some ancient brand of mythology. Not a kingdom of living, breathing people with families, traditions, shitty jobs and little ornate boxes full of paw-shaped recipe cards. At least, that’s where Adora assumed Magicats might keep their recipes catalogued. Perhaps they were an oral society?

Adora snapped to attention, berating herself for doing the exact thing she was just criticizing others for. But she didn’t have time to admonish. This was about Catra.

“No, I haven’t.”

“I know.” Her voice was frayed. Catra didn’t even look up to respond. “At best, I’m some kind of dangerous, exotic animal she can brag about keeping tamed. ‘Look, everyone, I made the snow leopard balance a sausage on its nose! Isn’t it just so endangered?’”

Adora shrank at the confirmation of her nightmares. This wasn’t the worst-case scenario she’d imagined Catra being in, especially under that woman’s charge, but still definitely not on the “I was secretly recruited to an elite force of teenage superspies, and saving you is my next mission” side of things.

A memory nipped at her heels. Something she’d said recently, something she was rapidly coming to regret.

“Contacts.”

Adora’s chicken fries were running headless around her stomach. Heterochromia wasn’t a giveaway in and of itself, and Catra could probably pass herself off as a halfling or maybe even some kind of Fae folk, if she kept her claws sheathed. But the people of Halfmoon prided themselves on their eyes. There was plenty of folklore as to how an entire civilization ended up  with such a recessive trait, but mostly the Magicats just kept to themselves. If Adora remembered correctly, it was considered good luck to find partners who had at least one matching eye, and a blessing if they each connected one eye to the other. Like a bridge between souls. Or a reminder to keep one eye open.

“Ha, yeah. You like ‘em? They’re not cheap but they are also extremely uncomfortable, so, kind of a win-win.”

Oh. Oh, sweet Catra, kind Catra, Catra who is putting her own feelings aside to protect Adora from her own careless insults. She tries to force a smile, but it only barely makes it out of grimace territory. She puts her teeth away and sighs.

“Does she make you wear them?”

The silence is definite, if only cut a little short.

"Family secret. Only a privileged few get to know, collectors, rich creeps, and all of them are forced to sign NDA's on their way out. Apparently I'm quite the little bargaining chip."

“But why,” Adora flinched, berating herself for always needing to ask the obvious question, the stupid question, for how desperately she needed to hear it from Catra in her own words, “why would stay with her?”

“Uh, I was 12?” She tried to say it as neutral as possible, not wanting to press against the clearly open nerve. “She had just legally adopted me, dragged me halfway across the country, yada yada, isolated me from everyone I’d ever known, one of the most powerful women in Etheria, etc etc. Mostly, it was just business. I could provide something she wanted, and in exchange, she gave me everything I needed. Nothing personal.”

It really wasn’t. Adora had questions, endless and endless, but of this she was sure. Whatever mess Catra had gotten in, she was handling it.

Had it handled.

Without her.

At least Catra had gotten the kind of care she needed most. And, though Adora would agonize over the least offensive way to articulate this later that evening, (and possibly all evening,) whatever she was doing was definitely working. Even from under the baggy cloak, Adora had reflexively zeroed in on just how much her childhood friend had… developed, over the years. Catra had been growing her mane out since they were four, but now it had flourished into a lustrous floor length lush. Her short, tawny fur glistened under the overheads. And her body… well.

 Adora already had enough to agonize over as it stood.

She had questions, endless and endless, some she might find the courage to ask and others to bury even from herself, but of this she was sure. Catra was right; Adora was wrong.

She was so much more beautiful than she remembered.

“Look,” Catra started. It wasn’t a command, but Adora followed without hesitation. Blue eyes flicked up to meet the mismatched ones ahead of her, and finally noticed they were swimming. How Catra’s head was bobbing, just slightly, and how stiff she’d set her jaw, probably to keep from yawning. Stars, she was so sweet. Adora tore away to check the dashboard; it was nearly 2 AM.

“We both have a ridiculously long day tomorrow. Today? Whatever, I need to- I mean, we should…”

How long was Adora holding her breath like this? Or had her heart simply tired of beating. Weird, either way. Maybe she really was sleep deprived. Deprived of something, definitely.

“I don’t…” Catra nearly growled trying to find the words. It tugged at something in Adora’s chest she usually tried to keep dormant. Fluttered electric – like each time she turned a cake over in its pan, petrified that it would stick. A challenge of heat and gravity she had no power but to submit to.

“Yes?”

“Just promise you won’t tell anyone about me. If anyone, the producers, the contestants, especially press, finds out I’m the last remaining asterisk keeping Magicats from extinction, then I’ll never see the end of it. No matter where I went or how far I ran, people would only ever see what made me collectible. I mean everyone. I’d be a thing, Adora. Do you understand?”

Oh.

Yes, Adora understood. She nodded her head to prove it. Catra had clearly been waiting all night to ask this, maybe since she found out Adora was going to be on the show with her. Best just to give her what she wants now and cry about the rest later. Now was not the time for how much of an idiot Adora had been to think this magnificent creature would want to reconnect with her for her own sake. She said it herself: Catra was famous, gorgeous, a rising star still millions of miles from its peak. Empires were built around people like that, and in the decade they’d been separated Catra had gone and built her own. And Adora, bless her heart, had been busy learning about boat rope. She was lucky to be a footnote in this woman’s biography. Her hick friend from childhood she’d been forced to arrange a meeting with, just to make sure she didn’t screw anything up too badly.

“Okay,” Catra sighed with her whole body, “okay, perfect.” Shoulders slouched, dreary eyed, Catra looked infinitely more real. Touchable, almost. Like someone had torn down the red rope and swept up the plexiglass, and all that stood between her fingers and the masterpiece was nerve.

If Adora had ever driven a funeral procession, she might be able to compare what that late drive to their motel took out of her. She tried the radio. Jazz is fucking awful for wallowing in. Thank Goddess for the country/western channel. Adora wasn’t much for twangs or trucking or having sex on your wedding night in blue denim lingerie or whatever the hell. But nobody, nobody, sings sorrow like a cowboy.

I fall to pieces / Each time I see you again

I fall to pieces / How can I just be your friend?

The motel looked newer in bad lighting. Bleak yellow streaks accented the otherwise whitegray building, the door to Adora's room brought with it the only pop of color in sight: cherry red. Catra rolled down the window to say goodbye. No numbers were swapped – Adora practically slammed her own foot on Catra’s gas pedal, badgering about her “circadian rhythm” and “let’s both do our best tomorrow!”  

It wasn’t lost on her, though, how she could hear the engine running until well after she’d closed herself into the unlit space. Or how she could still here Patsy crooning as her blonde head met the pillow.

Bluelight seared her – she wanted to recede into the cave of blankets, but slept atop the bed with clothes on. Alarms set, double checked and checked again. Tomorrow required focus and it had already begun. Nothing would get past her.

Not even the blip of text that popped up on her phone, breaking her hours or maybe minutes long consumption. She didn’t even mean to check it – a budding reflex she was already growing to despise. Until her eyes had focused just enough to read the notification, and her callousing heart burned, as if flowers were blooming in its cracks.

Sure, it wasn't great that neither of the them was getting any sleep that night, and Adora could already feel her mind racing to create blanks just to have something to fill. But, hey, at least she’d finally have something to write home about.

*3:38 AM - @ughcatrafr has started following you!*