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Take coffee order, make coffee order. Take coffee order, make coffee order. Take coffee order, make coffee order.
It’s an easy routine to fall into. One Catra has been rinsing and repeating for as long as she can remember. Faceless customer after faceless customer.
Today is no different. Sun shining through the dusty windows of the coffee shop just like every other day. So bright that the outside world looks like nothing but a wall of piercing light. It never rains.
Rather than muse on the weather, Catra focuses herself back on her job when another customer approaches the till. Take coffee order, make coffee order. Like clockwork, her hands move on their own accord to make drink after drink.
As the queue stretches on, her work continues. On, and on, and on, seemingly neverending. Customer after customer. It’s fine. Catra never minds. The queue keeps her mind occupied, focused on the present rather than wandering too far and seeking out what she shouldn’t find.
When the queue slows, Catra takes a moment to allow her working hands a reprieve from their unconscious movements, one reaching up to scratch at the irritating tingle on the back of her neck.
She scratches, and scratches, and scratches until her claws come away bloody. She’s dug too deep. She expects to feel the trickle of blood down her spine, anticipates it. But it never comes. Catra brushes her fingertips through the fuzz on the back of her neck, only to be greeted with smooth skin and downy hair.
Strange.
When she pulls her hand back into her field of view, her claws are clean.
Very strange.
Catra stares at her claws, confused. She stares, and stares and—
The bell over the door rings. Catra feels her gaze being drawn away from her hand like an outside force is moving her head back into focus. She comes face-to-face with a customer.
“Hi, what can I get you?” she asks. Her voice sounds empty to her own ears.
They reply. And she makes their coffee. And then they are gone.
Is she the only person who works here?
The bell rings again. Another customer. Another order. Focusing on the present.
An empty shop. Empty tables. There are so many customers. Why are they all empty?
The bell rings. Her gaze moves of its own accord back to the customer. A customer with a face.
Did all the other customers not have faces?
Pink and purple hair stands out against the bland background behind her. Her clothes matching. All inviting pastels and glitter that shines in the glint of the blinding sun.
Is that really the sun?
“Hi, what can I get you?” she hears herself ask.
“Hey, Catra. Just a medium latte for me, please.”
How does she know my name?
Catra smiles politely. “Sure.”
Moving along the empty counter, Catra starts to make their drink.
Has anyone ever paid?
“I so need a coffee this morning,” the woman says absently, her hair glistening in the light with each movement of her head. “I really need the wake-up call. ”
Catra pauses. “Huh?”
She looks over to the customer. Her eyes are wide with worry, a crease denting her brow.
“Catra — wake up. ”
“What?”
Catra blinks. The woman is gone. A faceless customer in her place. It was always a faceless customer.
So Catra carries on. She makes their drink, hands it to them, and they go and sit down. When she blinks again, all the tables are empty.
Everything is perfect again, and the queue builds up. So Catra takes orders and makes orders. Over and over and over and—
“Hey, Wildcat!”
Catra’s head snaps up from the till. The woman in front of her is tall and muscular. She has short white hair and claws for hands. The sight of her makes guilt rise like bile in her throat.
Except the feeling isn’t figurative. Catra coughs and feels wetness hit her hand. When she draws her palm back, Catra finds a tiny pool of green-tinted liquid in her palm.
“What the—”
“Catra? Can I uh — Can I order?”
Foregoing the mystery she’s just coughed up, Catra wipes her hand on her apron and smiles tightly.
This woman has called me by two different names. Should I know her?
“Hi, what can I get you?”
“I will have…” Catra watches as the woman ponders, looking at the boards above her head in an attempt to make a decision, “ Ah — I dunno WIldcat. There’s too much choice! Why don’t you decide for me?”
“Sure.” Catra shrugs. She’s taken the order, now she has to make the order.
Catra moves over to the coffee station and freezes when she turns to the boards behind her, to the menu that should be there . She finds it blank.
What is Scorpia looking at?
“Scorpia…” It gives her pause. She knows the woman’s name. How does she know the woman’s name? She’s just a customer. She’s never seen her before in her life she’s—
“Yeah, Catra?”
“Um…”
“Catra are you there?” The woman — Scorpia — leans over the counter, claw reaching out toward her. “Catra you need to come back to us. It’s not too late, okay? We’re—”
A glitch. Scorpia is gone. And Catra coughs.
Green liquid, again.
Her vision blurs, and the liquid is gone. Back into focus, and there’s a queue. She needs to do her job. Catra steps back to the till.
“Hi, what can I get you?” She takes an order.
Her hands are moving. She makes an order.
And onto the next. Because everything is perfect. The back of her neck itches but everything is perfect.
It takes Catra a while to notice when something about the coffee shop changes. The colours aren’t the same as they were before. Now, a very specific tint hits every piece of furniture. So she glances outside.
Was the sun always green?
The bright white walls of sunlight have morphed into a sickly green that spills into the coffee shop, leaving no surface untouched, no shadow safe.
Catra looks to the customer in front of her, running clawed fingertips through long hair. “Hey, are you seeing this too?” she asks, nodding toward the outside.
“I only see what you want me to see.” It’s the first time she’s heard a faceless customer speak. Their voice sounds familiar, but not familiar at all. Like she’s heard the same voice from the same face a thousand different times. But that can’t be possible?
The bell above the door rings.
“Hey, Catra!”
Now that is a voice Catra knows.
The customer that was in front of her is gone now, dispersing into dust as they are replaced by the person that has just walked through the door.
At the sight, relief runs through Catra and when she speaks, green liquid dribbles out her mouth.
“Hello, Adora.”
She wipes her chin with the back of her hand. What the hell is that?
Adora. She’s been in before. She’s been in the coffee shop so many times before. She always comes back. But she always leaves without Catra. But this is Catra’s job. She’s supposed to stay. So why is she always sad when Adora leaves? Without her. Over and over and over and—
“Catra?”
“Hm?”
“Can I order?” Adora asks.
“Of course.” Catra replies. “What would you like?”
There’s a long pause, and Catra watches as something in Adora’s expression changes. Sadness.
“You.”
Catra’s breath hitches. “What?”
“You have to fight it, Catra!” Adora sounds desperate, she doesn’t understand why. All Catra feels now is serene.
“My place is with Horde Prime, Adora. I don’t want to leave.” The words sound wrong as they roll off her tongue like they aren’t hers. Why did I say that?
“No Catra, you need to leave here. With me.” Adora outstretches a hand.
And isn’t that what Catra’s always wanted? Every single time Adora shows up, she leaves without Catra, but maybe that doesn’t have to be the case. Not this time. Catra could just go with her. Leave the coffee shop. If only she could move. Her limbs feel weighed down like an unknown force is holding them in place. The same force that has moved her vision and forced words out of her mouth. The same one that—
“I’m happy here.” No, I’m not. “You could be happy, too.”
Adora reaches across the counter and her hand clamps around Catra’s wrist. The coffee shop rocks like an earthquake, rumbling in its foundations. Adora pulls, and Catra stumbles, falling forward and catching herself on the counter that separates them as her hair falls limply in her face.
The coffee shop glitches.
“Catra,” Adora’s voice is strong, though she fails to hide the terror underneath. Why are you so scared? “Listen to me.”
Another tug closer and they both lock eyes as the coffee shop starts crumbling at the corners, breaking apart brick by brick as it’s swallowed into the luminous abyss. In a way, it’s almost tempting.
“I know you’re still in there,” Adora speaks with earnest, “I’m not leaving without you. It’s gonna be okay.”
As a splintering pain shoots up the arm Adora grips, Catra hears herself talking in the faraway distance. Her voice echoes through the abyss, its infinite reverb muffling their voices into something indecipherable as Adora replies back, yet in her present, neither of their lips move.
The sickly green light that pulses outside the safety of the crumbling coffee shop mutates, bathing the interior in a deepening hue until a toxic glow encapsulates the entire shop and engulfs them both.
When the coffee shop rocks again they both stumble, and when Catra meets Adora’s eyes, she knows what she must do. She nods — and climbs over the counter. Beneath their feet, the ground cracks and the foundations shake, forcing Catra to lose her footing and smack the back of her neck against the counter before slumping to the ground. A laugh that sounds nothing like her own, something warped and distorted, falls past her lips. From above, she hears Adora call for her desperately as her hand reaches out once again for Catra to take.
Pushing herself forward, Catra grabs it, stumbling with the effort as the ground rocks and the shop falls apart around them. With every step closer to the exit bricks fall and glass shatters, the perfect, mundane world falling apart and exposing its falsities to Catra, the only real thing clinging to her like a lifeline towards home.
With freedom at a touching distance, Catra’s whole world goes white. Briefly, and using her own eyes, she bares fleeting witness to Adora’s fear-stricken face in front of her before losing it. Seconds later, she’s thrown back into a coffee shop on the brink of collapse. Breath knocked out of her after being flung between realities, Catra stumbles, one knee slamming into the ground as the floorboard gives beneath her weight.
“Adora?” Catra breathes, “You’re really here?”
Not losing her focus, eyes glued in determination to their destination, to Catra’s freedom, Adora yanks Catra up from the ground and forces her forward.
“I’m not giving up on you Catra.”
A part of Catra wants to disagree, and she knows that on another plane, she does. Then you’re a fool. But not here. Here — she fights. So Catra follows Adora, takes those final few steps as the exit gets closer and the light gets whiter and brighter. She can feel its warmth now, and the familiarity of the warmth that flows through.
Adora.
With one last step the coffee shop explodes behind her, and this time Catra’s world goes black.
Lids fluttering open, Catra is greeted with the disbelieving sight of Adora gazing down at her with wet eyes and damp cheeks, blonde hair falling loosely around her face as she grips at Catra like she’s scared she’ll disappear if she lets go.
Upon seeing her old friends face after so long, the real Adora, Catra says the first thing that comes to mind.
“Adora, why did you come back? We both know I don’t matter.”