Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

11 months after the war.

Palming one of the crisp, ripe Bright Moon fruits from the breakfast buffet table, it struck Catra again. The sheer unlikeliness of where she was. Who she was with. What she was doing. It had been almost a year now since the end of the war, and the fall of Horde Prime, and Catra had become gradually more and more used to the palace routine and her tasks within it. The first few months had felt so, so numb, and there had been lashings of anger and hollow despair tearing through her at odd intervals from then on. One night in particular, when she couldn’t sleep at all for the crippling anxiety, she reached the conclusion that these moments might never go entirely.

But there was a light to guide her through those dark tunnels. Adora.

These days, those fits of panic were really quite rare. Usually, a different feeling hit her, one of… Surprise, almost. A bit of detachment, some floating feeling of just how bizarre it was that she was here, of all places, after so long trying to tear it down, after long giving up on even the smallest dream that she and Adora would find each other again.

And here, now, she was enjoying delicious, fresh breakfast food, joining Glimmer and Bow at their table even with Adora out for the morning and not available to use as a crutch. She didn’t need her for that. Not today.

She was woken from the fleeting stab of that crawling, unlikely feeling by Glimmer’s voice from across the room.

“Catra!” she waved over, and Catra raised an eyebrow at the scene before her. Glimmer was snacking daintily on one of those very thin, dry savoury pancakes that Catra still couldn’t get her head around, but next to her, Bow was engaged in the opposite. Catra didn’t bother to suppress her smirk as she watched him stacking sausage back inside a towering sandwich, as it threatened to fall out onto his plate with how overstuffed the roll was.

Glimmer followed her gaze and rolled her eyes at her boyfriend, who carried a lustful gleam in his eyes for his feast, and missed the interaction entirely.

It was actually one of the (actually quite numerous!) areas in which Glimmer and Catra had stumbled across common ground - their partners both had stomachs to be reckoned with, and interrupting a meal was never a good idea.

Catra slunk over to join them, draping herself over the waiting armchair, legs hoisted up over its edge, and threw the last piece of fruit playfully in the air and caught it.

“What’s up, Sparkles?”

“I’m glad you’re down, I might actually get some conversation from someone this morning…” she threw a half-glower at Bow, who again, didn’t react, but did finally glance up from his sandwich to finally clock Catra at the table.

“Oh, hey, Catra!” he beamed, before stuffing the edge greedily into his mouth. Glimmer only half-stifled a groan.

“Anyway,” she set her cutlery down and turned her focus to Catra. “I wanted to find you today, actually. Bow found that book we were talking about, the one - Bow? Could you please engage?”

Bow, busily stuffing his face, felt himself jabbed neatly in the side and took a second’s pause to catch up with the conversation.

“Book? Oh, yeah! The book!” his face lit up for a moment. “Yeah, I can go pick it up from my Dads’ place tomorrow, we’re going round in the evening.”

“Book?” Catra frowned, tossing the fruit to herself one more time before sinking the final bite, taking the time, as always, to enjoy its zesty crunch. The Horde did not have food like this.

“Yeah, you remember the other week when we were talking about… You know, you wanting to find out more about magicats?”

“Oh…” Catra swallowed, confident that despite the sudden pang in her chest, she looked collected and detached as always. “Sure.”

Catra was almost always in command of herself, and exactly which of her emotions were revealed to those around her. It was a skill in the Horde, but sometimes an obstacle here at Bright Moon, and it had taken a bit of cultivating over the last year. Especially when it came to the long-overdue communication with her open-book girlfriend, who it’s safe to say was the exact opposite.

But she was apprehensive. Nervous. In the Horde, she’d never exactly been educated on her people, and she’d never really stopped to think about it, truth be told. It hadn’t really mattered. And honestly? It still didn’t. She didn’t feel too much of a connection at all to other magicats, and she didn’t have any hidden longings to reconnect with her missing kin. But there were one or two things she’d found cropping up in her mind lately - just a few questions about how magicats worked , really, that she’d rather have died than admitted to, but needed answering.

Questions about, for example, partnership. Maybe even… Family. And how that might work for her.

The Horde would never have approached any of this. And Catra didn’t have any specific ideas in mind, just… A curiosity. She found prickling little curiosities awakening in her a lot these days, even when she tried to push them down. Now that she was safe. Now that she could have a future , even.

And not just any future. A future with Adora.

“...will probably cover a lot about the larger magicat tribes.” Glimmer concluded, and Catra blinked, hard, as she realised she’d tuned out totally from what the queen had been saying.

“Oh… Great.” Catra paused a moment, tail idly swinging as she fell into thought. “Thanks, I just… I don’t know too much about where I’m from, I guess.”

Glimmer smiled and nodded, good naturedly.

“Well, hopefully there’ll be enough in there to give you a few clues. About which tribe you go back to, or something. You could even try and -”

Catra waved a hand, warily.

“I’m not interested in finding them. I just kinda wanna know more about me , I guess.”

“Facts about magicats?” Bow spat out between chomps, Glimmer wrinkling her nose, but with a slight fondness creeping in around the edges. “Yeah, you guys are actually super interesting. One of the oldest races to find Etheria, but definitely alien in origin.”

“Alien…” Catra mused, shrugging. “OK. How do we know that?”

“Mainly the, uh, breeding ,” Bow chuckled, turning back to his food. Catra felt her ears prick up a little, and cursed them for being, as usual, entire traitors to her aloof appearance.

“So… It’s not like how it goes down with Etherians?” Catra followed on, with as much nonchalance as she could muster. “With the whole magic schtick?”

“They’re one of the few races left on Etheria that can actually reproduce, uh, sexually,” Glimmer explained, twisting her mouth a little slyly.

Catra snorted.

“What, like…?”

“Hey, it’s a whole biology thing, don’t grill me!” Glimmer held up both hands in surrender.

“It’s actually the way it works on a lot of worlds without magic,” Bow added, still not taking his eyes off the large sub he’d barely made a dent in. “My Dads told me. There are -” he paused to (ineffectively) swipe some sauce off his jaw, “- writings and stuff. From when the First Ones came.”

“Right…” Catra shook her head a little, a disbelieving smirk on her face as she reached for some of the tasty lemon water from the centre of the table.

“It only works with opposite sex pairings, though,” Glimmer went on, “and I’m not sure about different species, so you and Adora couldn’t -”

Catra almost spat her drink out, choked for a moment, and started smacking her own chest, spluttering.

“WOAH, easy there, Sparkles!” she managed to cough out, weakly. “I’m not exactly in the market for any reproducing right now…”

Glimmer snorted back at her, casting a glance over to Bow next to her to share in the hilarity, but he was still very much occupied with his sandwich. She rolled her eyes easily.

“Well, it’ll be the good old-fashioned Etherian way for you when you do.”

Catra glowered at her for a moment, then turned back to thought.

“That just seems… Ugh. I mean, if that’s how they do it, then -”

“They can actually have kids all the time by accident,” Bow clarified, eyes closed in appreciation for his latest bite. “Yeah, that’s why magicats have a bit of a reputation for being- OW!”

Bow’s words were jerked back down again by Glimmer’s foot nabbing him solidly in the shin beneath the table. Catra observed the dull blow and flinched, but not from the adjacent impact.

Unwanted .

She finished the sentence in her head and felt her ears shiver. Before any more involuntary reactions could give her away, she leapt up and flashed away before them.

“Thanks for the info, guys. Later.”

Behind her as she hurried off, she could just about make out Glimmer’s voice behind her, hissing along sharply.

“ Great work , Bow.”

“Sorry! I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking…”

Catra let the voices fade behind her as a dull haze took over in her head. A thumping set of blows inside her skull that didn’t let up, even after she’d slammed her and Adora’s bedroom door shut behind her and trapped herself, alone in the darkness.

***

“Catra?”

Adora’s voice, soft, came sidling in over the slight creak of the door, letting a crack of light in from the gleaming corridor beyond.

Catra made herself sit up slightly from where she’d lain, hunched into herself, curled up at the foot of the bed. It was a position she didn’t take often at all these days, only in the moments where she felt most insecure, most in need of a long-forgotten comfort.

“Hey, Adora,” her voice croaked out of her, rough around the edges, and Catra tried to control a wince as she heard how much venom had leaked its way in there. Adora approached cautiously.

“I couldn’t find you…” she shook her head a little. “All day.”

“I’ve been around.”

“Catra... “ Adora sighed, and squeezed her eyes shut for a second, before reaching behind herself to close the door and returning a searching gaze to Catra’s folded form. “We’ve talked about this. When you just run off -”

“Oh, please , you were out all morning, you’ve missed me for what, a few hours?” Catra shuffled around, hiding her face. “Big deal.”

“It is a big deal, Catra,” Adora told her, a little exasperation in her voice, “I ran into Glimmer and she said you might be upset -”

Catra let out a small hiss and glowered back over towards Adora.

“I am not upset.”

“Oh, great, that was convincing.”

Catra narrowed her eyes, but twisted herself around a little to open a space up on the edge of the bed, next to her. With a sigh, Adora perched down beside her.

“Come on, Catra. Will you try and talk to me? Please?”

Catra checked herself and realised how tightly her jaw was clenched. She let out a sigh and rocked her head forward, resting it on its side on her knees, turning away from Adora. Sometimes it was easier to calm herself down without that piercing eye contact. It wasn’t that Adora made her angry - she just made her… More . Of whatever it was she was feeling. But she didn’t deserve to face this constant backlash. It wasn’t her fault, what she did to Catra. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. It was just… Something to deal with.

“I just… I’m trying to be better, Adora.”

“I know.”

“It’s just hard thinking that… That I’m just a waste to begin with.”

“ Catra …”

Catra flinched hearing the torn quality in Adora’s voice, but it was the warm hand lain against her shoulder that tipped her over the scale into too much and sent her leaping up off the other side of the bed.

“Catra, wait!”

“I know, I know! Just… Give me a minute.”

Adora felt that sharp, splitting sensation tearing through her chest as she watched Catra shiver away from her, standing with her arms wrapped tightly around herself, as thought she was trying to hold herself together. She forced herself not to move after her immediately, but give her space for a moment.

“OK. Sorry.”

“No… No, don’t be sorry.”

Catra’s shoulders rose and slumped again in a deep breath. She moved uncharacteristically slowly, pacing towards the window, and still not facing Adora. Adora twisted on her perched seat on the edge of the bed, frightened of moving and setting things back again. So she waited.

“I just… I wanted to find out more about… Like, what I am. Any stuff about magicats, you know. It’s not like the Horde really filled us in. Except… Except all the stuff they used to say - all the bad stuff.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, come on , Adora, you’re not that naive, there’s no way you missed all of it.” Catra finally turned to face her, arms still wrapped tightly around herself, her glowing eyes softly wide with a vulnerability Adora recognised from a series of rare moments in their lives. Rare, intense, and for her, heartbreaking.

“I…”

“That we’re dirty. Unclean. Unwanted. Just… Vermin.”

Adora couldn’t stop herself from jumping up.

“That’s not you, Catra!” The words rushed out of her mouth before she could stop them, but this time Catra didn’t flinch away. “That’s not you at all! You don’t think that, do you?”

Catra suddenly seemed small. Adora knew she wasn’t that much taller than her girlfriend, maybe a few inches - but sometimes, Catra just seemed to… Shrink.

“Not on purpose.”

Adora bit her lip for a moment and scanned Catra, seeking, trying to figure out if it was safe to approach. After a tentative moment, the small amount of self restraint she’d managed to muster was shot through, and she wrapped Catra into a sudden hug. She felt her girlfriend tighten in her arms, but didn’t fight her. Not this time.

“You’re great , Catra. I don’t know any other magicats, but I know you… You’re so warm . And quick, and clever…”

“I just wanted to know more from somewhere else… Just to find out what we’re really like. But it turns out most of us just… Happen by accident .”

Adora squeezed a little tighter for a moment, and heard a caught kind of sound choking through Catra’s closed mouth, almost a sob. She almost felt one of her own in response.

“I just wanted to know… Just in case…”

“Just in case what?”

Catra didn’t answer, but flinched away, breaking out of Adora’s arms, and Adora let her go. Catra turned back away from her, staring hardly out towards the stars of the fresh nightfall.

“It’s not all magicats,” Adora reasoned, when no reply came back to her. “Some definitely aren’t born by accident, and even the ones that are, I mean… It definitely doesn’t mean their parents don’t love them or want them!”

“Well, good for them,” Catra seethed. “But we all know how my story goes. I was abandoned to the Horde, Adora! So quit trying so hard to tell me all about how other kids were loved …”

“Look, Catra,” Adora pressed on, reaching desperately, but Catra flinched away again, leaping up to the sill and folding herself up, hugging her knees and staring out towards the clear sky. “Catra, I know, I’m the same, I only had the Horde -”

“You’re not the same, Adora! You got pulled out from wherever you were by that portal! At least you know you were wanted.” Catra spat, shuffling her back around towards Adora, blocking her from view.

Adora felt something in her momentarily snap.

“Yeah! And somewhere out there my family might still be grieving the child they lost! And I’ll never get to meet them! Ever!”

She glared at Catra’s suddenly still, unmoving back, tail wound tightly around her. The only movement was a slow, but unmistakable droop of her ears.

Adora sighed, and fell to her left, leaning heavily against the wall, her heart thumping. She determinedly pointed her gaze away from Catra while an all-too-familiar hollow feeling began carving out a determined place in her chest. It felt like old scars being ripped aside and open again. With nothing underneath but emptiness.

Catra was quiet next to her.

All of a sudden, a warm flicker teased at her fingertips. She looked down, eyebrow raised, at Catra’s tail tickling against her, and groaned her defeat.

Adora turned, and stepped up close, wrapping her arms around Catra’s folded form, which always seemed so impossibly little, somehow smaller than she actually was. A warm pang sounded cleanly through her chest as she felt the edge of her arm wet with tears next to Catra’s head, now suddenly buried against her knees.

“I’m sorry.” Catra still couldn’t get over how easy it had become to say those words to Adora. Even to herself. She shifted slightly, turning around to bury her face in Adora’s neck.

“Me too,” Adora said, pulling Catra in closer to her chest.

She sighed into the purrs that began just below her jaw, snuggled into her neck, that quickly grew and surrounded her.

“You’re not an accident, Catra,” she said firmly, with a gentle squeeze. “I know that much. The universe wouldn’t make sense to me without you in it. There’s no world for me without you.”

Catra squeezed her eyes shut, tight, and leaned into Adora’s strong, comforting strokes.

“Do you ever think about…” Catra’s voice came out so small, even before it tailed off into nothing.

Adora waited, and after a moment, her hand stilled.

“Think about what?”

“Never mind.”

Adora lifted Catra away from her, gently, studying her mystifying eyes, but there was evasion there. Catra looked back at her with an almost shy kind of look, no less magnetic in how it caught her and fixed her, fast.

With another moment gone by, Adora nodded, and pressed Catra back into the nook along her neck. She wouldn’t push her. Not today.

They remained still for a while, holding onto each other in their shared moment of grief.

Chapter Text

3 years after the war

Summer had fallen back onto Bright Moon with a vengeance; the hot sun beat down on the palace grounds without relent on the one day Glimmer had chosen to put out a picnic for the Princess Alliance. It had not passed without comment from Catra.

“Don’t you princesses have, like, those floaty sun umbrellas?”

“Parasols, Catra. They’re called parasols.” Adora had groaned into the sun, eyes shrouded in shadow from her hand, raised above her face as they leaned back against the sparkling white bench beneath them.

“Well if you know what they’re called, why don’t we have any?”

“You’ll get used to it, Catra. Summers here see more sun than the Fright Zone. This one’s just… A little brighter than usual.”

“Easy for you to say,” Catra had muttered. “You’re not covered in fur .”

The whole event had been put together to celebrate - Spinnerella and Netossa were rejoining the group for their very first thing on the social calendar since welcoming their newborn.

Sky was a few months old, beautiful, and loud . Usually. The new family were holding up well today, though, and to everyone’s surprise, a big reason behind that today had been Catra.

Once the evening had cut in slightly, the sun sinking behind a few pearly, pink-streaked clouds, the gang had managed to gather for a classic game of Ice-ball. Catra had barely joined them, though.

Adora had stolen a glance, mid-laugh, back over her shoulder to find her girlfriend at one point - who was supposed to be covering left field - only to find her off, away from the action, sat beneath the picnic table, scrunched over and gently teasing Sky with her tail.

It had been a very stilling moment, catching Adora right off guard, which is probably how she ended up with that ice ball to the face a second later.

Later, after a glowing burst of She-Ra healing magic to tend the bump on the side of her head, Adora lay in her bed with Catra, who was relatively exhausted from the toll of the day in heat. Adora wasn’t ready to sleep yet, though.

“Catra?”

“Mmm… Yeah?” Catra replied in a grunt, without turning around to face her.

“I, uh…” Adora fidgeted with her words, trying to figure out what to say. “You were really sweet today.”

“Ugh. I am not sweet.”

Adora let out a light laugh, rolling onto her side, lifting a hand to lightly drift her fingers up and down Catra’s arm.

“Aw, come on, you can be, you know, and it doesn’t make you any less badass…”

“ Ughh , what are you talking about?”

Adora’s hand flicked away as Catra finally rolled onto her back, eyeballing her girlfriend through one half-open, luminous eye that lit that familiar, wondering glow inside Adora. “And why are you ruining this moment? Where I get to lie here? With you not talking?”

Adora beamed at her, dropping her hand down again to repeat the trailing motions against Catra’s stomach.

“Sorry, you’re gonna have to talk to me sometimes. It’s just a part of being my girlfriend. No takesie-backsies.”

Catra groaned outwardly, but Adora noticed the flicker of a smirk in her jaw.

“Exactly which part was sweet, was it when I tripped Bow when he ran for the ball?”

“OK, OK, not with us ... “ Adora took a breath, and Catra opened both eyes in response to the pause, a slight question there behind them. “I meant… With the baby. You were really sweet.”

The burning blue and amber narrowed straight away as Catra’s eyes thinned to a slight glare.

“Well, whaddya know? Maybe I just prefer princesses when they don’t know how to talk yet .”

She rocked back around onto her side, away from Adora, leaving Adora’s hand trailing round to the edge of her waist. Adora left it there for a moment, unsure whether or not to press, but decided against it. Catra was tired. She wasn’t even sure what point she was making. She pulled her hand away and lay there, on her back, staring at the ceiling, until she started to slip away into a light doze.

“Adora?”

Adora’s eyes crinkled back open as Catra’s uncharacteristically soft tone breached her ears. She leaned her head round and grinned, slyly.

“Oh, can I talk now?”

“Shut up.”

“Ha, sorry. What?”

“Never mind.”

“Aw, no, sorry! Tell me! What is it?”

“Nothing.”

“Catra!”

Catra leaned back, lifting her head up to squint at Adora over her shoulder, one eyebrow firmly raised.

“You are infuriating.”

“It’s such a shame you’re totally in love with me.”

“It really is.” Catra sighed, but her eyes were free of any kind of irritation as she studied her girlfriend’s love-basked face. “Night, Adora.”

She fell back around onto the pillow, and Adora watched the slight movement of Catra’s shoulders as she took in deep, sleepful breaths.

“Catra?” came Adora’s voice from behind her. Catra’s first instinct was to laugh, but she smothered it down in favour of a terse irritation at having nearly finally got to sleep.

“ Really? What is it now?”

“Do you want kids?”

Catra was officially awake.

“What, now!? What the hell, Adora!” she squeaked, whirling round to face that innocent, wide-eyed expression that was fixed on her so unabashedly.

“Look, I just -”

“You don’t, do you?” Catra shot out, the traces of a scowl framing her eyes.

Adora felt her heart thudding slightly louder in her chest. She bit her lip and reached a hand out to Catra’s side again.

“I don’t know, I’ve never really -”

“You don’t.”

“Do you?”

Catra swiped Adora’s hand off her and lowered herself back around into a new sleeping position, all curled up on herself and small. “Catra? Catra, come on, talk to me…”

“About what? I don’t act totally freaked out by some kid one time, and all of a sudden you’re looking for a reason to break up with me?”

“ What? Catra!”

“Stop telling me what I want.”

“OK! OK… Sorry. You just -”

“I just what ?”

“You looked happy.” Adora sighed. She waited a moment, and when Catra didn’t respond, she leaned over and lifted herself up onto her side, peering around over Catra’s shoulder, closing some of the distance between them. “Listen to me. I never want to break up with you.”

She watched as Catra’s scrunched up, tightened eyes loosened a little. She didn’t open them, but a tension in her brow was released as that clever face Adora loved so well softened beneath her. Catra let out a sigh.

Adora watched her mouth twitch as she mumbled something, too quiet to hear.

“What?”

Catra’s eyes flicked gently open, already tilted up towards her, and it stopped Adora’s breath for a moment to see them there, that gaze floating up at her from that precious little place beneath her.

“I was happy. I… I feel happy a lot these days.”

Adora smiled down at her, and shifted up against Catra’s back, snaking an arm beneath her and wrapping the other over her, tight.

“I love that you’re happy. Makes me happy, too.”

Catra sighed contentedly and leaned back into her, grabbing Adora’s arm and pressing it deeply against her.

“OK, so… Quit trying to break up with me.”

“I am not , and you know it! Ughh, Catraaaa…”

“You might kill me with sleep deprivation first, of course, so you don’t have to…”

“ Alright , I get it! Goodnight, Catra.”

Adora smiled to herself as she pressed a kiss into Catra’s hair and relaxed back down onto the pillow, holding her girlfriend, the most precious thing she’d ever found. Catra stilled, calmly and peacefully in her arms, and Adora felt the familiar buzz of her purrs humming against her arms.

Adora drifted back towards sleep again, lulled to a deep contentment in the full, musky scent of Catra’s hair.

After the longest moment, a small, but deliberately clear, whisper sounded before her.

“I’m happy with you, Adora. You make me happy.”

“You make me happy, too. I love you.”

“ This is what I want, OK?”

“Catra, do you… Do you think about...”

“Goodnight, Adora.”

Adora squeezed Catra against her for a moment, and heard a small, contented hum in response. She breathed in deeply one last time, filling her senses with Catra, before settling back in to finally get some rest.

One last, gentle interruption tipped against her ear.

“I love you, too.”

***

One week later

Catra adjusted her hair a little around her face before gathering it up behind her head. It had grown back out so quickly since it… Got cut. Years ago, now. Catra never wanted it short again. But it had a bit of a life of its own, to say the least. After a while, she’d had to admit defeat and concede to doing something to keep it a little more out of the way.

She couldn’t help but smile to herself as she remembered the glint in Adora’s eye, that day, the day of her victory.

“I’ve got an idea…”

“Adora, what are you -”

“Hold still…”

“Adora! Put that hair-tie back! I’m not having your stupid pony-tail -”

“Come on, Catra, you’ll look so cuuuute…”

“We are not doing this!”

“You’ll look hot!”

“We can’t have matching hairstyles! What, are you crazy -”

“Well hey… You have mine. Come on, just try it, you won’t hate it, I promise. And you prefer my hair down, right?”

“I… I like your hair down.”

“OK then. Why don’t we try swapping? Come here, let me…”

If anyone else would have tried anything like it, Catra would have had their head. But Adora has always just done things to her. She’d do anything she could to make her smile. The only thing that had ever stood in her way was pride, anger… And she was working hard on cutting those out.

She finished off with tying her hair up and pulled out a few tufty cowlicks to frame the sides of her face. One little piece of wilderness, just to remind her. She’s neater. But she’s still her .

“Hey, Catra, are you nearly -”

“I’m ready , Adora, OK? What’s the big rush?”

Catra spun round, not without snark, only to stop in her tracks at the sight of Adora.

There had been at least a thousand separate moments in which Catra had felt the world stand still as their eyes connected; the subtle sounds of evening vanishing into nothingness, the tides stilling in the distance and her very blood freezing in her veins. Not a single one of them ever prepared her for the next one. Not a single moment her heart fluttered into a deep, dense well of time had ever cured her of the shock her body went into. It was just another moment of sheer wonderment at where she stood, closer than anyone could possibly deserve, to Adora’s shining, smiling form in front of her.

In short, the dress was nice, and it took a moment for Catra to catch herself gaping.

“You OK there?” Adora asked her, coyly, and Catra snatched her eyes away and groaned inwardly.

“I’m fine …”

“Oh, OK…” Adora laughed a tinkling laugh that tickled up Catra’s sides, warming them before Adora’s hands found their way to her waist in its place. “You looked a little lost there, for a second…”

“I know exactly where I am,” Catra muttered, flicking her eyes around the room over Adora’s shoulder to avoid those grey-blue gems in front of her.

Adora hummed for a moment, and Catra managed to meet her eyes again to find them scooping up and down her outfit greedily.

“Catra, you look amazing ,” Adora near whispered at her, and Catra relaxed within her hold, reaching her own arms up around Adora’s shoulders, pulling her in.

“This coming from you …” she mumbled, drawing the longest breath in through her nose that she possibly could. Adora smelled, as well as looked, incredible.

“Alright, come on, then,” Catra sighed, pulling back gently. “Looks like we’re both ready to go, and you’ve been nagging me all afternoon about making sure we were on time …”

“I have not been nagging!” Adora playfully shoved her. “You have no idea what real nagging is if you think I’m nagging…”

“Guess I’m still just used to being the one in charge,” Catra smirked. “You’re ordering me around a lot this weekend, Adora.”

“I’ve made plans , OK?”

Catra let out a light, breezy laugh. “Remember when we were kids? You never really made plans … You waited for me to come up with something, and then you went along with it. Always with the following orders for you - look how the tables have turned now.”

Adora bit her lip.

“Catra, I wish I’d been… Stronger, when we were kids.”

“What are you talking about?” Catra gently pushed a strand of golden hair back behind Adora’s ear - it wasn’t in the way, it was just begging to be touched. “You were always plenty strong.”

“I mean, not so much with the always following orders …”

“Adora,” Catra said, firmly. “Let’s not start up one of those spirals tonight, right? We didn’t have the most perfect childhood.” Catra snarked, but made a real effort to cut any bitter edge away from her words. “Let’s not let it in tonight, OK? We don’t have to have a whole catalogue of perfect time. This moment is good. Yeah?”

“True,” Adora reasoned, and looked lost for a moment. Not upset, but… Almost as if she was considering something. After a moment, Catra stepped up to her and waved, right in front of her glazed eyes.

“Um, Etheria to Adora? You still in there?”

The light behind Adora’s eyes flicked back on again and she met Catra’s gaze with a lopsided grin, the one that always made Catra’s heart slide up into her throat and beat there. She took one of Catra’s hands into both of her own and brought it up to her lips, pressing a gentle touch against her knuckles.

“I was just thinking how far we’ve come, you know?”

Catra allowed herself the moment, and felt a small, very real, smile warm her face.

“Yeah. I guess we have.”

“Like… You’ve broken your cycle, Catra. You know?”

Catra’s glowing eyes flickered.

“Um, what? What cycle?”

Adora blushed, and Catra found herself all at once entirely enchanted by the rosy flush against her love’s cheeks.

“I just… If you had a kid, your kid would have the best childhood.”

Catra’s heart sank straight away and she snatched her hand away.

“I don’t have a kid, Adora, as we’ve established before!”

“Catra -”

“Why would you bring this up? Spoil the night before it’s even begun?” Catra ran an exasperated hand through her hair, noticing the sharp touch of her claws, bared slightly from the buzz of anxiety. “I just wanna relax and have a nice dinner with my girlfriend!”

“What? Catra, we’re going to have a great night, it was supposed to be a compliment!” Adora reached out towards her, but Catra had already spun around and began to pace away.

“Stop talking like you’re gonna have to deal with my kid when this kid doesn’t exist - I know you find them weird and creepy, why would you bring this up again?”

“Hey!” Adora finally stepped up and gently, but firmly, grabbed Catra’s shoulders, speaking softly behind her in almost a sigh. “Stop deciding for me.”

Catra felt her shoulders slump into a sigh as well. She twisted, and Adora let her hands fall away momentarily, letting Catra turn to face her, before laying them back down again.

“I know you, Adora.” Catra flinched at the bleeding tone to her sad whisper. Once upon a time she could charge through any situation, even if her life depended on it, and remain cool, cold, calculating. But Adora had always messed her head up in ways she still couldn’t entirely explain. Adora could draw feelings out of her she never knew existed. All at once, Catra felt a spark of tears behind her eyes and felt instantly ashamed. She wasn’t even sure what she was feeling so emotional about.

“Yeah, you know me real well. You also have this knack for convincing yourself that… That this … Won’t last.” Adora leaned in, closing more space between them, and Catra caught her breath and without realising, held it. Adora’s eyes, that trusting grey-blue, pored over her face, trapping Catra’s every reaction, every sight and sound. In the slight pause between her words, Catra felt the dull ache in her chest that she’d long realised was the particular brand of heartache that appreciated just how beautiful Adora was. Adora had no idea, Catra knew, the effect she had...

“It frightens me, sometimes, Catra. I need you to know…”

Catra sighed, and threaded her own arms around Adora’s waist, leaning in to rest their foreheads together. She saw Adora’s eyes close, thankfully, as she leaned into the contact, and Catra closed her own as well, breathing in Adora’s scent.

“Hey… I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to -”

“I’m getting better.” Catra told Adora as well as herself. It was true. It was. She knew it was. Suddenly, the air seemed less tense. She noticed that her tail had relaxed to her side, waving around lazily as she pulled in closer to Adora.

“I know. I’m so proud of you.”

Catra leaned out and stroked her thumb across Adora’s cheek. Adora took a second to open her eyes and return Catra’s gaze, and in that blind moment, Catra got to witness the purest little smile tickle in Adora’s jaw.

When she did look back at Catra, Catra knew all she wanted was to silence that part of her that always told her she was unwanted. She just wanted to give herself to Adora, the best version of herself that she could, forever.

But there were still flickers of doubt, that spilled from her mouth in a hushed, broken whisper.

“Do you… Do you really mean it?”

“ Yes .” Adora’s hands slid up the sides of Catra’s neck, starting a shudder that rolled down her back, to rest gently against the edges of her face. “You’re going to make an amazing mother, Catra. You are. How could you possibly think I would ever miss that?”

“You mean…” Catra swallowed. “You mean you’d want…”

Something seemed to shift in Adora, then. Something just changed, or switched, in that moment, and she cut Catra off with a full-bodied kiss, burning out into her and snatching their hearts together.

It was a bold, burning but brief kiss, and Adora stepped back away from Catra quickly, taking both her hands and squeezing them before her. There was an almost playful smirk on her face, and Catra, still dazed from the lingering print of Adora’s lips against her own, struggled to keep up with what was happening in front of her. She opened her mouth to say something, but closed it again just as readily. Adora watched her for a moment before speaking.

“You know what? I had a whole plan this morning.”

Her voice sounded so sure, so bright , and Catra felt a laugh spark up in spite of herself.

“Back to this whole plan , hm? Doesn’t sound like you.”

“Hey! I did, you know. I had this whole plan, and I checked with the experts, and I came up with this whole… Thing , and it’s all stupid. ”

Catra felt one eyebrow raise quizzically, a challenging smirk appearing in a glint at her lips.

“What’s stupid? What’s this plan for?”

“It’s dumb, and I’m gonna ignore it.”

“Riiiight, OK…” Catra shook her head. Clearly, Adora was off in some weird mood now, and if she wasn’t going to get to the point… “Are we going, now, or…?”

“Wait! Hang on.”

Adora dropped Catra’s hands, suddenly and briskly, and started patting about herself as if to feel for pockets if she’d lost something. Catra watched with a slight teasing of concern.

“Adora?”

“Hang on!”

Adora dived back towards the dresser, and laid her hands on her belt, slung over the back of the chair in front of it.

“Uh…” She grabbed it up, back to Catra now, and started fidgeting with it. “Yeah, this works.”

“Adora, we’re gonna be -”

“Catra,” Adora said, firmly, ignoring her completely, and something in the firmament of her tone held Catra still. There was some change in Adora, some kind of gravity that was holding her there, pulling her to the spot. She turned to face Catra, holding something in closed, cupped hands, and lit Catra up with a burnished, blazing look, behind which the rest of the world melted cleanly away.

“I had this whole stupid plan about how I was gonna do this,” Adora continued, slowly stepping back up towards her. “But… We’ve never gone according to plan. Ever. I don’t even know if we can . I didn’t plan to be so in love with you, but… It’s the most natural thing that’s ever happened to me. I never needed any stupid plan.”

“Adora,” Catra’s breath hitched around that precious name, with a fluttering starting up against her ribcage that ran straight out down her arms and stayed there, prickling against her skin. If Catra hadn’t known better, she would have mistaken it for fear, this feeling started under the intensity of Adora’s closest gaze. There was a time where she certainly had. “What are you -”

“The other night, you said… You said this was what you wanted. And that you’re happy. I’m so happy, Catra. Because of you. I feel… Better. Like, a better person. I’m better to myself when I’m with you. I want you to be better to your self. You should be happy all the time.”

Adora’s eyes dropped to her hands, clasped up in front of her chest, and Catra followed them to see Adora’s classic, golden pin, beneath her fingers, a wing cresting her palm.

Distantly, her mind clicked a few things together at once, and all of a sudden Catra felt like she couldn’t breathe. But oh… In the best possible way.

Adora seemed breathless herself as she flicked her eyes back up to Catra’s, shivering slightly as she delivered her next words against Catra’s stunned silence.

“I want this, too. I want this forever. A whole future together and everything that comes with it. I want to have kids with you. I want to see the look on your face when you hold them every day. I don’t want us to have any more stupid fights about something we both want . Catra…”

She clasped a hand around Catra’s and raised the pin in the other. It was a purer gold, to Catra, than any of the stars they’d flown past as they stretched across the universe to find each other.

“Here’s something of mine, to keep, if you want it. That’s how they do things here, and I want to do things right with you.”

Catra felt herself fill up with a tender amazement, and as she met Adora’s love-filled look again, she could make out the edges of tears framing her eyes as she shaped her next wonderful words.

“Will you marry me?”

…

“...Catra?”

Without meaning to, without making the conscious decision to do so at all, Catra crushed herself into Adora, melting against her, finding her lips and catching her in the richest kiss she’d ever managed. She didn’t choose to curl an arm around her, tightly, possessively. She didn’t choose to clutch Adora’s hand with the other, pressing it, and the pin, safely to her chest. She chose any of these movements as much as she’d chosen to love Adora - which is to say, not at all. It happened like breathing. It happened like the stars shining above them, so impossibly bright, but next to this moment, dim and unremarkable. Adora was the realest light.

She found herself tucked against Adora, wrapped into a warm embrace, her lips freed up and practically leaning on Adora’s ear.

In a daze, without choosing to do so, but knowing it went beyond anything she could ever do for herself on purpose, she heard herself breathe out a shaky reply that made Adora shudder into her at once.

“Of course I’ll marry you, dummy.”

Chapter Text

8 years after the war

A hiss of white-hot, electric energy shot past Catra’s face and she jumped backwards with a small yowl. Her head flicked around to see the culprit - a smooth, shining cannon nozzle was pointed at her from between two of the larger trees in her nearby vicinity.

The forest was electric with the sounds of churning machinery, the hums and zaps of their guns charging the air around Catra with a kind of metallic scent that was setting her on edge even more than the thundering adrenaline.

She hissed and curled around to her side, unsheathed claws shooting into the nearest tree as she raced up into its branches.

The peaceable planet of Urdon had come under attack by the inter-planetary militia, Semprum. Their advanced technology had bred a hubris and aggression, a drive to have each of their surrounding systems under their thumb. Ever since the return of Etheria to the rest of the galaxy - not to mention the return of magic, courtesy of She-Ra - the Princess Alliance had taken on the unofficial role of peacekeepers, and defenders of the small, rural planets who couldn’t quite defend themselves.

It was important work, and work that Catra had found more and more that she really believed in. Every now and then, though, it did get a little annoying that it wasn’t enough just to save one world anymore… Now that she finally had it in her to relax, there didn’t seem to be any time for it anymore - especially when you’re married to the protector of the known universe herself.

“Gah!” Catra let out a startled cry against her will, and cursed herself for showing any weakness, as another beam of dark energy shot over her shoulder and made her tail quiver and her fur stand on end. She curled around the tree, trunk between her and the alien exo-suit that was now bearing down on her as she scanned for any kind of weapon she could use from any kind of range.

With a hot bang, there was an even brighter flash of light, and suddenly Catra felt herself lurching to the side. The tree had a hole blown in it, and started leaning dangerously over to the right.

Catra groaned and clawed in deeper - her hiding place was going down, and it was going down quickly. She could hear, with her intense senses, the whirring charging up of that same cannon, seconds away from felling her makeshift shield.

She squeezed her eyes shut and waited for the blow that never came. A metallic crunch reverberated out and permeated the forest around her.

“Catra!”

That powerful voice whipped through her and warmed her right through to the very marrow of her bones. Catra shot around to a better vantage point, to find the glowing warrior princess herself, frozen in the immediate afterglow of cleaving the offending machine in two.

She looked up to Catra in the tree and grinned a beaming grin.

“Don’t worry, I got it.”

Catra scowled down the edge of her nose.

“Uh, I had it handled!”

“Oh yeah, sure looks like it.”

Catra opened her mouth for an angry retort, but they were both cut off by the distant cries for back-up coming from the rest of their squad.

“ ADORA! THEY’RE MOVING!”

She-Ra whipped her head round, her hard ‘mission face’ returning to the set of her jaw, while her gleaming ponytail blew out restlessly behind her.

Catra alternated, in moments like these, between being stunned by her wife being a literal goddess, or mild amusement at the demonstrative way her hair seemed to defy gravity, simply for the pure sake of style. She was in one of the latter moments, today.

Adora looked back up at her and nudged her head to one side as a prompt. Catra rolled her eyes, but didn’t pause in leaping down from the tree and following, the two of them racing through the forest towards where Bow’s voice had sounded.

They reached a large clearing, the cause of which was immediately apparent - the Semprum army were retreating, their gunships hanging as low as possible, picking up as many ground troops as they could salvage.

“They’re getting away!” Bow called out from across the way, pressed up behind a sheltering rock with Frosta. “Scorpia and Perfuma are helping the Urdonians! Once they’re clear, they can blow this whole forest!”

“Got it!” Catra yelled back, turning quickly back in the direction of the forested Urdonian village - - Bow was right, with all that firepower they could easily level the whole area in no time at all. She glanced back over her shoulder and hesitated. “Adora?”

Adora - She-Ra, really - had that blazing look on her face, that hardened, narrowed, laser focus that Catra recognised from years of fighting against, and then alongside, her and her iconic sword. Her knuckles were clenched white over its hilt, and there was no flicker in her concentration as their allies finally raced over to meet them.

“Come on, this way!” Frosta yelled, blasting another rock out of the way with a sharp onslaught of ice, leaving a clear path back the way they’d arrived from.

Catra didn’t follow straight away, watching the hard glare of She-Ra’s eyes, up towards the ships.

“Adora!” Catra yelled, and something finally seemed to crack through. She-Ra’s glare softened a little, and she wrenched her head around to finally meet Catra’s eyes.

Catra shook her head.

“Don’t even think about it. You jump up there, you’ll only get yourself hurt.”

“In their dreams.”

“Adora!” Catra panicked. “We have to help the villagers, right? That’s why we’re here!”

“If they get away, they’ll just be back! I can take out the control ship -”

Catra felt her insides clench with the dullness of familiarity. Her every vein was screaming with panic and anxiety for the person she loved more than anything, but she’d long since had to get used to Adora charging into danger, throwing herself into harm’s way.

“Fine, well I’m going to help our friends .” Catra spat back at her, whipping around onto the trail Frosta had cleared and taking off running, her eyes stinging a little as she went - from the blasts of wind from the circling ships, or from the tears that could well be building behind them, she wasn’t sure. And she’d never admit.

After a moment, she felt the thuds behind her as the white-gold sheen of She-Ra’s armour matched pace and caught up with her. In her surprise, Catra almost hit a tree, but managed to jerk out of the way and avoid it as they reached the edges of the village.

Chaos, flame and rubble were the sights that met their eyes, with worried shrieks streaming against their ears. Their companions were nearly done with the evacuation, Perfuma’s powerful hold on nature protecting the fleeing Urdonian villagers from harm under a thick canopy of vines and bloom. In the distance, Catra could make out the last trailing victims of the siege, Scorpia shepherding them forward, some kid with a bloodied leg wrapped up around her shoulders.

“Come on!” came She-Ra’s intense voice at her side, and Catra found herself reverting so quickly back to that other feeling - reverence and awe at her wife’s killer form.

Adora had heard her. She’d really heard her.

Catra watched Adora, in She-Ra’s body, scoop up another little one, crying and calling out for his parents, and rock him back and forth a moment, before charging along into the exodus.

“Hey, come on, now, Wildcat!” Scorpia shouted over to her, shattering her frozen moment of wonder, “we’re in a bit of a time sensitive situation over here!”

Catra shook herself, hard, and ran over to help clear the last remaining stragglers from the village. Scorpia was right. Any moment, they could all be razed to the ground.

But not if the Etherians had anything to say about it.

It wasn’t too long later, though to Catra's screaming muscles it certainly felt like hours, that Entrapta brought their ship down, right to the edge of the nearest city, where citizens were ready to receive the forest refugees.

Shock and bewilderment had momentarily wiped the devastation from their eyes, as each of the villagers embraced each other, glad to be alive and safe, regardless of the cost. There had been no casualties, none at all.

Bow clapped Catra on the back.

“Ready to head in? Everything’s under control here now.”

Catra grumbled. “Do we have to head straight back to Etheria? We can’t have, like, five minutes first?”

Bow’s brow creased a little.

“Non-stop tonight, Catra. Glimmer’s expecting us back by midnight, Bright Moon time.”

“Which is?”

“About three hours from now.”

Catra groaned even more audibly and Bow let out an unsteady laugh.

“You’ll be glad to be able to wake up in your own bed tomorrow, Catra. I know you hate sleeping in space.”

Catra muttered something about sleeping under a pile of burning exosuit sounding nice right about now, but cut off quickly as Adora, newly transformed Adora, her Adora, stumbled to her side.

“See you back on the ship,” Bow smiled, with a mock salute to Adora that she awkwardly mistook for a high five. Catra couldn’t help herself. She laughed at her dumb friends. It was too much effort not to.

Adora was waving Bow off as Catra snaked up behind her and wrapped her arms around her wife’s waist, tightly, her tail curling around Adora’s leg. She felt an immediate ease fall into Adora, some tension leave her as she relaxed back into Catra’s grip, letting out a low sigh.

“Adora… Thanks.” Catra lifted her chin up onto Adora’s shoulder and nuzzled into her side.

“For what?” Adora leaned into her touch, and Catra could feel the sore smile as Adora’s cheek brushed hers.

“I know that was hard for you. To let them go.”

“I…”

“You did the right thing,” Catra told her, loosening her grip for a moment to circle around to Adora’s side and stare over at that precious face she loved so well. The one she always felt a little hungry for after a few hours with Adora’s taller double. She-Ra wasn’t quite the same, all sharpness and angles. Adora was… Softer. A specially gentle sort of beautiful.

“Right,” Adora replied quietly, not meeting her gaze straight away. Catra bit her lip uncertainly.

“Don’t you think?”

Adora sighed again, and shook her head a little, her smile building as she finally looked around to meet Catra’s burning eyes.

“I did. You’re right.”

Catra grinned straight away, leaning up to place a firm kiss into Adora’s cheek. Adora’s eyes lit up with the contact, and Catra felt a strong arm twist firmly, possessively, around her.

“My turn to be proud of you,” Catra hummed into her ear, nuzzling against Adora’s cheek.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve gotten better. So much better. At… Not doing stupid stuff. Sacrificing yourself every five minutes.”

Adora pulled Catra around to face her, a serious kind of thoughtfulness behind her eyes. She looked tired, Catra saw, just a little bit - everyone was still riding on the adrenaline of the battle, and it took Adora a little while longer to come down from She-Ra, but the strain of all the action looked like it was finally catching up. She would probably need a nap on the ship on the way back to Etheria, and Catra resolved then and there that she’d be curled up around Adora as she slept, whether she felt tired herself or not.

“Well,” Adora started, slowly, picking her words out very deliberately, “maybe I just know what I have to lose now.”

“You can’t lose me,” Catra said automatically, squeezing in tight to Adora before nuzzling into her shoulder, Adora’s arms warmly around her back. She felt a flutter of that old panic at any thought of losing Adora, and her voice came out tighter than she’d liked. She put a teasing voice on next, easing the conversation away from that dark, painful place.

“We’re wifed up, remember?” Catra batted at Adora’s back with her tail. “You’re stuck with me.”

“Ah, I am.” Adora laughed a little, and Catra could barely suppress the purrs that started to rumble through her chest in response.

“Yeah. You’re just gonna have to live a long, happy, healthy life.”

“Ugh. If I have to…”

It was Catra’s turn to laugh, as she lay a final kiss on the edge of Adora’s neck, before pulling away and taking Adora’s hand.

“Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up. Then we’ve got some food on the ship.”

“Food?”

“See?” Catra smirked. “I knew that would get you moving.”

Adora was battling with the post-battle fatigue as they all hung around, crashed out around the floor of Darla’s cockpit, trading snacks and leaning happily against the walls, each other, whatever was handy. She wasn’t giving in, though, Catra noted, as she watched her wife smile around at her magical friends as she sat with Catra’s head in her lap, stroking breezily behind her ear. Usually not the kind of affection Catra would take in front of others, but today felt comfortable. It had been a while since danger had snapped quite so closely at their heels, and it was obvious that everyone felt grateful to be back, to be OK, and to be together. Something about the air, abuzz with easy conversation, felt warm and comforting.

Catra felt a pleasant pang as the word for what was surrounding her came to her as a shaky whisper in her mind.

Family.

“You know what I think?” Adora muttered to her lightly, breaking Catra out of her heartfelt reverie.

“What?”

“I think we’ve both grown up.”

They both watched as Scorpia sliced some cake up with her pincers, to Frosta’s crowing praise, before passing out pieces to her and Perfuma. Frosta in particular was riding the sugar rush hard .

“Yeah, I think so, too,” Catra agreed, her tail wafting contentedly around beside them.

“I think… Catra, I think we should talk later.”

“Aren’t we talking now?”

“Like… More private talking.” Adora said, in a suddenly plain voice that Catra recognised instantly as her mission voice. “Grown up talking.”

Catra rolled her eyes and sat up, wearily clocking Adora with an eyebrow raised.

“Sounds fun.”

Adora’s eyebrow hitched itself up slightly higher as she pressed her lips together. After a moment, she leaned over to Catra’s shoulder and mumbled, in the lowest voice she could, into her wife’s ear.

“ I love you and I want to have a baby with you talking.”

Catra’s eyes popped right open.

“Oh…”

“Still sound fun ?”

The tickle of her love’s intimate promise in her ear, and the sprawled out mess of their shared friends in front of her, Catra had to breathe in, sharply, to fill her suddenly suspiciously empty lungs. When she spoke, it was barely more than a cracked whisper.

“...Yeah.”

***

3 days later

Adora felt herself pause as she reached their bedroom door. Her hand stilled at the handle, and a kind of cool calm washed over her. For a second, she stopped there and wasn’t sure why. It was just like her body decided to mark the moment, so she’d remember it. Remember the kind of dazed excitement pressing her into the door, just before she leaned over the moment, opening it to find her wife inside, sitting in the centre of their bed, hugging her knees and smiling coyly over at her.

“Hey, Adora.”

“Hey, Catra,” she smiled, closing the door behind her and shrugging off her jacket.

“You took your time.” Catra smiled at her lazily across the darkened room, her eyes glowing like firelight, her tail swishing breezily around behind her.

“I had to pick up the map after I got back.” Adora had, in fact, needed a quick trip to the palace library en route back from Spinnerella and Netossa’s, after their conversation. It wasn’t the first time Adora had gone to the older couple for clarity on something that came so naturally to any non-Horde-reared Etherians, and it might not be the last. At first it was embarrassing, but it was worth it, Adora reasoned. For her, for Catra. And for…

“Map?” Catra’s tail twitched with curiosity, and Adora smiled. They’d known each other their whole lives, for better and worse, and she was confident that she was the only person out there who could decode all the unwitting movements of Catra’s tail - like a little language they shared together, evidence of all the hours spent taking special notice of Catra, even before she understood why.

She sat down, gently, on the edge of the bed and dropped her tracker pad down, its screen on dim. It was the only real light in the room, save the cool moonlight and Catra’s softly gleaming gaze. Maybe she should have turned a light on as she came in, but Adora knew that Catra could see just fine without it. Besides, the soft darkness felt comforting, in a way. Intimate.

“Yeah, of where all the magical ley lines cross over. That’s where the birthing pools are.”

Catra’s nose twitched a little, in tandem with her tail. She didn’t shift from her position, all wound up on herself in the centre of the bed, but it wasn’t an anxious nervousness, Adora knew. It was a careful excitement.

“Right,” Catra started slowly, and Adora felt a pang at how soft her voice came out, “so we have to go to a special place?”

Adora tapped the screen between them and it flickered to life, their faces suddenly alight with a detailed neon map of Etheria, freckled with urgent, red dots.

“Yeah, there’s hundreds, dotted around all over Etheria. I downloaded all of them, the coordinates and stuff. So we decide where we want to go, and then we find the cave. I got a briefing from Netossa -”

She was cut off by a snarky snort from Catra.

“ Briefing?”

“Hey! Cut it out!”

“I’m sorry,” Catra spluttered slightly, genuinely trying to contain the laughter. After a second under Adora’s pointed gaze, she unfolded herself, unwinding her arms from around her tightly tucked knees, and draped her head and shoulders into Adora’s lap. Adora blinked and her wife’s mischievous face was grinning up at her. She could feel Catra’s tail playfully batting at her back. “I’ve missed mission Adora. She’s cute.”

“I am not cute!” Adora shot back, and immediately Catra dissolved back into her tickling laugh, just as the role reversal occurred to Adora a second too late. “OK, OK, I heard it… I heard the irony…”

Catra went on laughing, her eyes clamped shut, but her face still seeming to light up all the same. Adora caught herself watching fondly, before lightly bumping Catra’s cheek and clearing her throat.

“Are you quite done?”

Those luminous eyes flicked open once more and captured Adora. Catra’s laughs faded into a sly smile as she reached up with one hand to trace along Adora’s jaw.

“Pretty much. Go on.”

Adora rolled her eyes, and not without regret, shifted her legs, turfing Catra up out of her spot. Catra sat up, facing her, as Adora shifted around to mirror her position, cross-legged on the bed, with the tracker pad lit up in between them.

“OK, so these places collect magic, right? The real raw, pure kind. The kind… You know, the sort of stuff that powers She-Ra. Like in the Heart.”

“Right, so… Love , right?” Catra said, leaning down to lie out along the bed, arching her back in a lazy stretch.

“Yeah.”

“Ugh. Mushy.”

Adora tilted her head to face Catra, narrowing her eyes at her lounging form from her upright position of tensed concentration.

“Are we gonna be able to get through this without your wise-ass comments? Can we put our responsible heads on for, like, two minutes?”

Catra dropped the cheeky smirk and let her eyes fall to the tracker pad.

“Right, right, sorry.”

Adora nodded and resumed the state of command.

“Anyway… We basically go there, and we have to stay there for at least one full day, a rotation of the sun, until all of Etheria’s moons have been lit in the sky.”

“So…” Catra glanced up at her. “We camp in a cave for a night?”

“Pretty much.”

“And then -?”

Adora breathed in a deep sigh.

“Then we wake up and there’s a baby in the pool. Our baby.”

Catra’s nose twitched again.

“Right…” Catra's voice sounded chalky somehow, there was friction beneath it.

“What?”

“Well, it just… It can’t be as simple as that.”

“It’s not simple, it’s deep magic.”

“Adora, we’re talking about a camping trip.”

“With deep magic!” Adora snapped, poking at Catra’s exposed side, eliciting a small hiss. “Besides, Netossa said that the success rates are low. Especially on a first try. She said ‘everything has to be in the right place’ with us.”

Catra rolled onto her stomach, propping her head up on her hands and glaring imploringly at Adora. “Meaning?”

“Meaning, according to Etherian custom, we have to go in there with love for each other , love for ourselves , and love for the baby.” Adora recited, all but checking the list off on her fingers, trying to recount it exactly as Spinnerella had told her.

Catra looked thoughtful for a moment. Even after years together, and years together , Adora still found her hard to read at times.

“OK.”

“You have to really want it.”

“OK.”

Adora reached out her hand, trailing the backs of her fingers against Catra’s cheek and resting there, in her hair, behind her ear, with a gentle stroke.

“I really want this, Catra.”

Deep blue and amber starlights blinked up at her, and she felt Catra lean very purposefully into her touch, tilting her head back into Adora’s palm.

“So do I.”

“And I love you.”

“And I love you .” Catra slid up, quickly, up onto her knees at Adora’s side, leaning her head to rest gently on Adora’s shoulder. “And we’ve gotten much better at the whole loving-ourselves thing.”

“Yeah. We kick ass at loving ourselves.”

“Yeah, sure we do.”

Adora beamed back at her with a small turn of her head, to see a full, eager smile on Catra’s face.

“We can do this,” she told Catra, reaching an arm around her waist.

“Yeah. I think we can.”

“OK.” Adora paused just for a moment to relish in the warmth of Catra nuzzling into her cheek, then pulled back to meet her eyes again properly.

“When do we go?”

Chapter Text

9 years after the war

“Finn? Finn?”

“Yeah!”

“You mean, like, on a fish?”

“It’s cute!”

“It’s an animal part.”

“It’s everything you said, right? It’s short, it sounds good -”

“Nah.”

“OK then Catra, if you’re so great at naming kids, what do you have, then?”

“Uh…”

“Exactly.”

“Ugghhh, we should have decided this already.”

Catra growled lightly through gritted teeth as she dodged yet another low-hanging vine. It was a strangely rich, dense, jungled area they were picking through on their way up across the Southern Fells. Their drop off point had been hours ago, the temperature seeming to rise with every inch further up they rose, but Adora had insisted they take the long route. Outwardly, Catra was grunting her discomfort every now and then, but not putting up too much of a fight. They both knew that she agreed. This one was certainly a journey worth hurting for.

Adora leaned ahead and whipped down one of the longer vines in their path, the sword of protection taking a much shorter, more hike-friendly machete shape to aid their trip.

“You’ve shot down every name I’ve come up with!”

Catra grunted again.

“They were dumb.”

She flicked her eyes lazily around the dense green around them, an almost infinite collection of deep, living hues that had slowly started to make her sensitive eyes hurt. After a brief second, she noticed Adora had stopped walking and whipped her head around, eyes wide.

“Catra -”

Catra shot back immediately to Adora’s side to press a gentle hand against the worry she saw setting firmly in her jaw. She held her gaze for a moment, reaching back into a more serious tone of communication, and paused just briefly to bow her head and press a light kiss onto Adora’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” she met Adora’s eyes again and scanned for any hurt there. “Hey, maybe it’ll make sense when we meet them.”

Adora’s lip stretched tightly into half a smile, to Catra’s relief. She wasn’t upset. Catra knew that. She was… 

Catra shook her head just a little. She knew how Adora was feeling, she was feeling it herself. She just didn’t know how to describe it.

“Yeah, maybe,” Adora replied. There was a quiet excitement printed in her voice.

Catra tried for an encouraging smile, and gently lowered her hand again.

“I’m sorry I shoot everything down,” she told Adora, and she felt her over-stimulated eyes relax a little in the cool, familiar blue of Adora’s. Adora smiled and stepped up towards her, to her side, reaching out a hand to hold.

Catra took it and they walked on, a calmer, soothing pace.

“That’s OK,” Adora nudged into her side slightly, weaving their fingers tightly together, “I trust your instinct on this one. You’re… You’re better at this kid stuff than me.”

Catra squeezed at her hand and stopped dead in her tracks.

“Woah, Adora -”

“It’s OK.” Adora said, in a small voice that even Catra was only trusted with every once in a long while. “I don’t mind.”

“Hey, listen here, dummy,” Catra swivelled, grabbing Adora’s other hand and shaking the magical makeshift machete to the mossy floor. Adora watched it drop with a hint of bewilderment, and Catra leaned in close to get her attention back again. “Don’t think like that! You’re just overthinking it.”

“Catra, you just -”

“You’re just better at seeing the good in me than you are at seeing anything else.” Catra told her, firmly, her eyes narrowed a little. She paused, and heard her voice back again inside her own head. It was coming out harsh, maybe. Tense.

Catra sighed, and dodged more words for a moment the best way she could. She caught Adora’s stumbling lips with her own and tried to kiss her with every thrill she’d had about where they were going together, letting their hands fall apart to wrap her arms tightly around Adora’s waist. A moment of rush and reconciliation later and Adora’s hand was at the back of her neck, fingernails carding through her hair in a motion so well practiced by now it was a moving memory.

A sudden, shrill cry split across their ears and Catra jolted away in shock, whipping her head around to the source of the sound to find a large, tropical looking bird eyeballing them with its beak aloft.

It let out another shrieking caw and Catra rolled back around to find Adora pressing back laughter behind the signature smirk she reserved completely for her wife.

“ What? ” Catra jerked away from her slightly, only to find Adora catching her arms and fixing her in place as she let out a small, tinkling laugh.

“You did the puffy thing…” she giggled. “You know, where your fur goes all -”

“Shut up , I did not -”

“You did .”

“Adora! Stop trying to dodge talking about this.”

Adora raised a smug eyebrow and leaned further in against her.

“Says you .”

“Hey, I mean it!” Catra groaned. “Why are you like this? I’m trying to communicate or whatever.”

“Sorry, sorry…”

Catra huffed a little through her nose, squirming apart from Adora to drop to the ground and pick up the fallen sword.

“You know what? Maybe it’s my fault. You’ve told me before I’ll make an amazing mother, and I’ve never told you.” She straightened up, handing the small blade back to Adora, who met her gaze with round, attentive eyes. “And you will , you know. There’s no one braver, stronger, or kinder in the whole universe. You’re golden, Adora. This kid is gonna be so lucky to get to have you as a mom.”

Adora’s cheeks gleamed a sunset pink, and her gaze dropped to the gleaming machete blade held out in her hand.

“It just… It doesn’t seem as natural, to me.”

Catra followed her eyes’ path along the blade’s edge for a moment, before reaching out and gently closing her hand around Adora’s, the sword handle in the centre, and as she did, she watched it shimmer away beneath Adora’s closed fingers, until only a little sparkling trace of its magic was left.

“Remember when you asked me to marry you?” Catra began, slowly, brow furrowed slightly with concentration. All she wanted was to get the words right - get some words right.

So she decided to borrow Adora’s.

“You said loving me was the most natural thing that ever happened to you,” she reminded her wife, reaching up to her face again to stroke at the last embers of blush with the pad of her thumb. “You’re focusing on the wrong things, Adora, you’re thinking about this like it’s a job role where you have to be the best at all these different tasks … It’s not a position, or a title, or anything, it’s who you already are. Loving our kid is gonna be the most natural thing in the world. That’s all it is, right?”

She smiled, and Adora bit her lip.

“When did you get good at all this feelings stuff?”

Catra laughed, and it felt suddenly so easy to do so.

“It’s taken a long time, Adora! You’ve just been really patient.”

“Well, you’ve been patient with me.”

“OK, princess,” Catra said as she rolled her eyes, stealing back her hand and taking a demonstrative step back along the path ahead. “This isn’t a competition.”

Adora bounded ahead all of a sudden, around her, overtaking her, narrowly avoiding tripping on a sodden, twisting tree trunk before whirling around to face her.

“Or is it?” she grinned. “It’s not much further. Race you to the top?”

A flicker of challenge sparkled in Catra’s bright eyes, before she tamed it and her expression reworked into a gentle smile.

“I love you so much,” she all but whispered through the forest heat, and Adora’s hard expression softened at once as she stepped back down again, reaching out a hand.

“I love you to- HEY! Catraaa! That’s cheating! ”

Catra let out a quick laugh as she sprung away from her wife, who she’d speedily dashed onto the floor behind her with a well-placed fling of one arm. Adora’s voice snapped angrily at Catra’s heels as she darted further up the fellside into her striding lead.

“You are so dead! ”

“Careful, Adoraaa…” Catra as much as sang over her shoulder. “We have to love each other up here, remember…”

“ SO dead! ”

The carefree tickle of Catra’s answering laugh washed through the branches around them like a cool evening breeze.

The orange glow of the sunset warmed Adora’s back. It spilled into the cave, the burning light the only witness to their freshly inhabited destination.

It did feel like a special place. It felt remote, personal.

The ground was oddly soft beneath the simple sleeping mat they’d brought with them, Adora could feel it, kneading against it with the heels of her hands as she pressed down further, laying herself against Catra, deepening the long, twisting kiss she’d started a while ago. She had no idea how long that while was. She didn’t care.

Catra’s hands reached up, fingers trailing a slow pressure into her back, and her breath caught in her throat.

Adora broke away for a moment, pulling her head back, matching Catra’s hazy, breathless expression with a dazed one of her own. She grinned down at her wife, chasing the starlight behind those magical eyes of hers, before lowering her lips back down towards her...

“Wait.”

Catra’s fingers stilled on Adora’s back, and she pushed herself back up again.

“What? Are you OK?”

Catra grimaced a little.

“Yeah, I just… I don’t want us to… I don’t want to do it like this,” she mumbled, lowering her eyes off to the side, towards the cave wall.

“Oh, um… OK.” Adora paused, with a slight nod. She shifted onto her elbow, propping herself up hesitantly over Catra. “Do you… Do you wanna be on top?”

“No! I mean, no, I just don’t want us to have a kid this way.” Catra cringed a little again at the words coming out of her mouth, but pushed herself on, still not meeting Adora’s eyes. “I don’t want it to be the same way it just… Happens by accident.”

“Catra, this whole thing is very much on purpose.”

“I know, I know! Just…”

Adora rolled away, onto her elbow, onto her side next to Catra, and reached up to smooth Catra’s cheek with her free hand.

“Hey, shh… It’s OK. I didn’t mean it to sound like you have to explain yourself.” She waited for a second, for Catra to slowly pick her eyes back up and meet Adora’s gaze. “We’ll do this however you want,” she assured her, smiling and tucking Catra’s hair behind her ear.

Catra let out a little smile, a small, timid one that only Adora would ever see. She let out a light breath and tried to cut past her racing pulse, to collect the words she needed.

She let her heart slow into a lower, comfortable thrill, reaching out and wrapping an arm round Adora’s waist.

“Adora, I… When we… Ugh. I hate talking about sex.”

Adora smirked.

“Yeah, you prefer doing it.”

“I can’t think of anything I would prefer to doing it.”

“Not tonight though?”

“Not tonight.”

Catra pulled Adora in against her, laying her wife down against her chest, tousling fingers through her long hair. They lay there, quietly content, until Catra spoke again.

“It’s… Kind of beautiful.”

Adora nuzzled into Catra’s chest with a full smile, closing her eyes against the distant glow of the fading sun.

“More than kind of. It’s me and you.”

“I just want to do this without it, though. I don’t want to do this like a magicat, or like a… Wait, what are you again?”

“I think technically I’m an alien,” Adora mused.

“OK, sorry I asked,” Catra muttered, then went on. “I want to… I want to do this like… Like we don’t need any help.” She squeezed her eyes shut tight, until she could see stars. “URGH! I know that doesn’t make sense.”

“It made more sense than you think it did,” Adora said calmly, opening her eyes and peering up into Catra’s, “and you didn’t need to make any sense at all. You still want me to hold you, right?”

Catra’s face lit up in a golden smile, basking in the reflected glow of the Etherian sunset from her love’s adoring face.

“Right,” she said, softly, and Adora lifted herself up, rolling onto her back and pulling Catra onto her, reversing their positions and clutching warmly at the back of Catra’s head.

“How’s this?”

Catra buried her head into Adora’s neck, and Adora felt, a second before she heard, her very favourite sound in the world - the deep purrs buzzing up against her through every place Catra was touching her, lain across her in the closest way she could manage.

“Perfect.”

“Hey, Catra… This could be our last night just the two of us.”

"It could," Catra replied, her voice an almost inaudible hush. 

"Wow." 

“Yeah, wow,” Catra agreed, softly. “You nervous?”

“Not as long as I’ve got you.”

“Of course you have me, dummy. You always have me.”

Adora let her eyes close again, leaning her head back with a light chuckle.

“Will you still call me ‘dummy’ when the baby comes?”

“Will you still be a dummy when the baby comes?”

Adora swatted playfully at the back of Catra’s head, with a small snort in response. Catra echoed her laugh for a moment, and curled her tail fondly around Adora’s thigh.

“Yeah, thought so.”

***

4 nights later

“I don’t get it .” Catra grunted again. “Are we sure -”

“ Yes , Catra, for the last time!” Adora moaned. “This is definitely the right place. And you know it.”

Catra flinched away from her and perched down against the mouth of the cave. She stared out, towards the sunset.

Their fifth one.

Adora sighed, and sat down heavily on the sleeping mat behind her. “Remember what Netossa and Spinnerella said, it takes some people a few… A few tries.”

Catra shook her head.

“Not us.”

“Well…” Adora gestured helplessly around her. “Maybe us! We’ve been here four nights now -”

“We’re not giving up that quickly.”

“Catra, we’re not giving up, period!” Adora closed her eyes and dabbed her arm against her forehead. “Maybe it’s just not our time.”

Catra opened her mouth to say something, but couldn’t find what it was she wanted to say.

They both sat there, in an empty pause, until she let the painful words tip out of her.

“It feels like it is.”

“I know. I know.” Adora lay back, holding her arms out for Catra to join her. “One more night?”

Catra crawled over and curled up against her, letting herself be taken into the warm protection of Adora’s arms, nuzzling her forehead against the underside of Adora’s jaw.

“One more night.”

It was later, the distant buzz of the forest insects dulled down into a peaceful hum beneath Etheria’s three moons, and Adora was still painfully awake.

“Hey,” she whispered against the back of Catra’s neck, “do you think our kid would have powers?”

Catra’s back bristled against her as she shifted within Adora’s arms.

“What, you mean the power to annoy me out of a good night’s sleep? Yeah, kid’ll probably pick it up from you.”

“Hey!”

“Knowing my luck.”

“Shut up . No, I meant… Like, She-Ra powers,” Adora mused, before her attention was caught as Catra went weirdly still.

“...Why?” Catra’s voice slid from beneath partly clenched teeth, some kind of edge around it. Adora frowned, unfolding her arm from around Catra’s waist to run her hand along Catra’s suddenly still side.

“Well, I don’t know, I mean, I don’t know what the rules are if She-Ra has children -”

“Right, but I’m not having children with She-Ra .” Catra shifted, rolling back and flashing a dark frown over her shoulder. “I’m having a baby with Adora . My wife .”

Adora squeezed her eyes shut, an icy tension settling into her temples.

“Catra…”

“What?”

“This is it.” Adora bit her lip and gazed out imploringly at her wife.

“This is what?”

“Everything has to be in the right place…”

Catra rolled her eyes.

“Stop talking in riddles, please, Adora, I’m trying to slee -” She jerked suddenly away in surprise as the cool flash swept up along her body in bright, dancing tingles. Catra wheeled around to find a fully transformed Adora staring back at her, a set and serious expression on her face.

“Woah, what was that for?” Catra was up, sitting suddenly alert.

“I am Adora. And She-Ra. She-Ra is me.”

“ No , She-Ra is an eight-foot warrior lady who takes over every now and then when you need an impressive bench press.”

Adora groaned, her alternate, ice-blue eyes ticking around the darkened cave around them.

“Come on, Catra! I thought we were done with this!” she threw up a hand in frustration and sat up so they were facing each other, height difference clattering between them.

“Done with what?”

“Tell me you love me. Say it.”

Catra shook her head in disbelief, her pupils shrinking into a beady glare.

“What? I’ve said ‘I love you’ before when you’re She-Ra. Adora, we’ve… We’ve done stuff when you’ve been She-Ra…” she tailed off through gritted teeth, searching the altered, sharper face sometimes worn by the woman she loved.

Adora - She-Ra - leaned forward intensely into their burning eye contact.

“You need to say it, and you need to mean me , as I am, right now.” She hesitated for a second, sighing against Catra’s still somewhat hostile expression. “Look, I know what you mean. She-Ra wasn’t me at first in my head, either. Not until I broke the sword, but then…”

“What, you got her to wear a stupid pony-tail?” Catra snapped, but Adora kept her still, attentive calm. She collected her voice in her throat for a moment before speaking, slowly and deliberately.

“Catra, on… On Horde Prime’s ship, that was the first time I transformed. Like… As me. And it came from me. You did it. You brought it out of me. You’ve always brought more out of me than I ever thought would be in there.”

Catra reeled for a moment, before taking a breath and forcing herself to meet Adora on her level, forcing herself to speak calmly and slowly.

“ Adora ,” she began in a burnt, sour tone, before grunting in frustration and trying to correct it. “I really don’t think this is the issue here…”

“Would you let me hold the baby as She-Ra?” The deeper, blunter voice of Adora as She-Ra jabbed against Catra’s tensed ears.

“What? Ugh, shut up.”

“ Would you let me hold the baby as She-Ra?” she repeated, eyes still gripping onto Catra like iron and frost.

“I…” Catra felt her voice fall away suddenly, her words caving in on her.

For a moment, there was nothing but silence hanging in the darkness between them. A space that suddenly seemed a little larger than it should be.

Under the unwitting helplessness of Catra’s luminous eyes, She-Ra lit up, a hollow, shallow light carving into the space around them, before Adora was sat there in front of her with a heavy defeat hanging against her tired face.

“Look…” her eyes dropped to the ground. “Maybe we should come back some other time.”

“No!” Catra shifted forwards, reaching out towards Adora. Beneath her touch, Adora didn’t shrink away - but she didn’t connect to her, attach straight away in the way Catra could usually feel her do so instantly.

“You’re not ready,” Adora said, in a voice that was all at once so gentle and so deafening, as Catra’s eyes prickled with tears and startled noises started up in her dry throat.

“I am! I am ready, Adora, I… I really want this. I want them, I want our kid , I want… With you.”

Adora nodded and smiled a little, but her face was still wrung with some deep sadness that sunk into Catra like a stone.

“Look, Catra…” she began, and then stopped. She let her eyes wander off, out of the mouth of the cave and into the Etherian sky beyond, the midnight blue veil painted over the universe beyond. Catra kept silent, and watched.

Eventually, Adora smiled at her again, and lay slowly back down, leaving the ghosts of a dozen lost expressions against her face.

“We said one more night, right? Let’s just… Let’s just sleep, OK?”

Catra opened her mouth, but found nothing inside it. After a weak moment, she tried again.

“I… OK.”

Adora nodded, her eyes closing with a tight finality, as she shifted a little against their sleep mat. Catra watched her until she was perfectly still, not even the faintest tremble of breath visible against her lips, then lowered herself down as well, so achingly not enclosed in Adora’s waiting arms like she had been just minutes ago.

She bundled herself up, head ringing, so close, but somehow so, so far from Adora, and wondered how she’d ever get to sleep.

***

Crying .

Someone is crying. Someone small. Someone… Little.

Catra turns, everything so hazy around her, but that one sound still calling out to her. She can’t tell where it’s coming from, somehow… Every time she adjusts her ears, her sharp, excellent ears, the sound darts away from her.

“Uh… Hello?”

Crying .

Tiny little sobs rake against her like a blunted saw. It feels like more than just one sound, because it is , it definitely is, crying is so much more than one sound, crying is… Crying is fear, the pinpricks of anxiety and other people’s unkindness. All at once. But it is also something much deeper, something more personal, an outpouring that can only come from the deepest well a person can keep. It is jagged, it is breathless, it is bleeding out towards her from every direction at once and she just needs to find it and stop it , because nothing should hurt like this...

Catra spins around, again and again, scratching and searching through nothing until she finally finds what she’s looking for.

A small bundle on the floor before her, some creature beneath some raggedy old blanket, some child or something, it can’t be anything dangerous...

Catra reaches out.

“Hey, hey there, it’s OK…”

The blanket falls away completely against her ginger touch. Catra falls to her knees in front of the shrunken, sniffling kid in front of her, who turns around, still hunched into herself, to meet Catra’s blue and amber eyes with an identical set of her own.

“Oh, hey.” Catra greets her much younger self. “I’m dreaming.”

It seems suddenly obvious.

Catra waits, breath hitched, as she is studied, scanned , by herself. A much more innocent version. Her heart clenches for a moment. An innocent version of her. Who’s done nothing wrong, nothing. Who’s only a little kid. But who feels so much more poisonous, and so much more unwanted , than she does now in her life all these years later on.

What makes sense about that?

Young Catra blinks at her, but doesn’t look all that surprised to see her.

“You look like me.”

“Uh, yeah. Yeah I do.”

“You’re tall.”

Catra smirks a little, shifting to her side, crumpling herself further down onto the floor.

“I’m not that tall.”

“Yes you are,” young Catra jabs, “you’re taller than me.”

“Hey, you’re a kid . Of course I’m taller than you.” Catra rolls her eyes, then remembers herself, and softens her gaze. “Wanna tell me why you’ve been crying?”

She sees the ghost of some little spike of anger, darting so quickly behind those little, round eyes - not enough to take hold, not yet.

Give it another year , Catra thinks to herself, bitterly.

“No.” Young Catra decides. “You wouldn’t get it.”

“I definitely would.” Catra tutts. She leans back around and shifts, tucking her knees up under her chin and wrapping her arms around them, folding up on herself in the time-turning mirror image of the sniffling child in front of her.

“Is it Adora?”

Young Catra eyes her suspiciously, then nods.

“You want her all to yourself, don’t you?”

Another nod, faster this time.

“You don’t know why.”

Her younger self narrows her eyes into a blurry little pout, but she doesn’t say anything. Catra tries again, a prompt she knows they both know is true.

“She’s kind to you, isn’t she?”

All at once, the mousy little voice pipes up, much louder.

“I hate -”

“No… No, shh… No you don’t.” Catra reaches out, warmly clamping a hand on top of the child’s little knees, cutting her off before she can continue. “You just don’t . Look, I know you’re just a kid… There are a lot of things that aren’t your fault. Not yet, anyway. But you should know… You’re the biggest thing standing in your way. Just… Don’t give yourself such a hard time, OK?”

One rogue, errant little tear drops carefully down from those shining eyes and onto the back of Catra’s hand.

So real .

She can feel its cruel salt seeping into her skin.

“Why do you care about me?” the little voice asks her, miserably.

“I didn’t used to.” Catra takes her hand back, staring, without knowing why, at that little spot from that tiny tear. “I do now.”

A sniffling snort grabs her attention back again.

“You’re weird,” the little version of herself shoots at her.

“Hey, takes one to know one, kid!” she snaps back, ruffled.

Little Catra’s head tilts a little, suspiciously.

“You’re pretty.”

Catra frowns.

“Thanks. Hey… Do you wanna go and find Adora?”

"You're too pretty to be a magicat." 

"Magicats can be pretty,” Catra tells her, leaning into her own words, or maybe someone else’s, rocking forwards where she sat. “And warm . And quick, and clever -" 

"Whatever."

The tiny magicat puffs out her cheeks dismissively and lazily flicks her eyes away, off into the distance.

"It's true!” Catra snaps, shaking her head. “Ughhh, why is it so difficult to get you to hear this?" 

Tiny Catra shoots a glare back at her through narrowed eyes and one partly bared fang.

"Takes one to know one,” she quotes back in a teasing voice.

Catra smirks a little.

Fair enough.

"OK, kid. I get it. Are you gonna go find Adora? I think you should try again to find her."

Young Catra sees to curl into herself just a little more tightly, her shoulders tensing up.

“Maybe,” she says, so quietly it’s hard to make out.

Catra smiles, really smiles. Some kind of feeling washes through her, then and there, like a kind of secret release.

She springs up onto her feet and holds out a confident, leading hand towards the tiny, sad version of herself she’d never be able to protect.

But she can still do right by her.

“Hey,” she offers in a gentle voice, “shall we go together?”

Little Catra is on her feet at once, with a squeak.

“No! I don’t need you, I can do it myself!”

Catra holds up her hands in mock surrender, trying to suppress a quiet chuckle.

“So you can, kid. Hey… Tell Adora I say hey.”

She smiles, and it’s that real smile again. Some kind of deep, pure smile that rolls out from somewhere deep in her older, stronger chest. A chest that’s breathed through a lot of tiny tears and then some. A chest that isn’t small anymore… But she can still protect it.

Little Catra doesn’t wait around to absorb this revelation. Her tail twitches shakily behind her as she furiously dabs her eyes, then she turns with a slight growl to leave.

Catra feels herself shout out again, more words she hasn’t anticipated spilling forward, meeting herself before her time.

“Wait! Tell her… Tell her she’s right. And I get it, now. And… I see how it’s a part of her, now.”

Young Catra blinks.

“Nah. I can’t remember how to say all that.”

Catra laughs, and shuts her eyes against a sudden blur of light. The kid is gone. Tiny Catra is gone.

But there’s still a crying. It’s distant, it’s somewhere, it’s…

Catra?

“Adora? Adora, is that -”

Catra! Catra, wake up!

“Adora?”

Catra!

***

There was . There really was. Crying. Tiny, perfect, crying. Not raging, not jagged, not bleeding. Just a little cry, a little calling out. Calling out towards them, towards Catra as her ears pricked up and her mind tore its way back to consciousness.

Her eyes shot open in a sudden flare to see Adora, coated in the dusky, rosy highlight of a veiled sunrise, looking practically petrified, her hand squeezing so tightly around Catra’s wrist it was a miracle she could still feel her fingers.

“Catra…” Adora let out a small, strangled whisper.

Catra followed her eyes over to the pool, to where the cries seemed to suddenly just… Stop.

Catra launched herself forward, and felt Adora moving at once behind her, at her side, right up to the pool’s edge. They grasped at its edges, their fingers dipping urgently into the sparkling, tingling waters.

Their eyes fell at once, desperately, hungrily, onto the small, wonderful creature whose eyes had opened perfectly with the dawn.

Catra felt herself shake, and clutched a hand out towards Adora, grabbing her arm and squeezing it tight, all without being even slightly able to tear her eyes away.

“I… Adora…” she managed to choke out.

“They’re perfect .” Adora’s voice stumbled out almost like a sob, so alike, but so impossibly different to those hammering crying sounds that were fading fast from her memory.

Their baby closed and opened one fist, quietly staring around.

Catra felt her heart stop and start again with that tiny motion. That tiny fist.

“They’re us .” Catra pulled Adora’s arm closer, pulling Adora into her until she could feel her, close at her side. “I mean, not just us. They’re… Them . But… You’re in here.”

Adora laughed weakly.

“So are you.”

Catra managed a low chuckle as her voice slowly came back to her.

“Yeah, I figured they didn’t get the tail from your side.”

“Catra, shut up, I mean -”

“No, no, I know what you mean. And hey… No ‘shut up’ in front of the baby.”

Adora gasped and butted against Catra, who finally pulled her eyes up for a moment to see the startling glow of Adora’s face beaming wickedly against her.

“I never thought I’d see the day! I can’t believe you’re lecturing me on -”

The crunch of Adora’s faster, louder voice bore down on the pool before them, and again the baby started crying out in small, frightened whines.

Adora jumped as though electrified and ripped her arm from Catra’s grasp, as Catra stretched out her other hand towards those little, flailing arms.

“Oh hey, hey! Don’t worry, buddy…” she coaxed, leaning over to stroke against them, as Adora whispered madly at her side.

“Sorry!”

Catra glanced to her right, at Adora’s panicked face, and everything felt so automatic. So natural. So obvious.

She reached over, in a movement she’d remember forever, into the gentle pool, and scooped up their infant as easy as breathing, both arms beneath them in support.

Adora watched with achingly wide eyes as Catra turned, but she didn’t curl the baby up in her arms. She kept that one, swift movement going, shifting into Adora’s side, pressing their baby into her wife’s terrified arms.

“ Catra…”

Catra pressed Adora’s hands into a tight cradle. She finished handing her the baby and leaned back slightly, ducking her head down to meet her child, humming softly in their ear over their sharp, stuttering whines.

“Hey…” Catra’s calmest voice sang out towards them, soothing their cries. “Your mommy’s got you, so you don’t need to worry.”

She glanced up at Adora’s stunned, frozen expression. She stared down, mouth hanging open, arms closed so delicately around their child. The baby’s cries died down again in their little chest, and Catra carried on, gently as she could, to soothe the fear in her wife’s eyes as best she could.

“She’s one of the two most amazing parts of the universe. I thought she was the only one, until today. Look how wrong I was.”

“Catra…” Adora looked back up at her, but after a moment her mouth closed, clumsily, no words left in it. She tipped her head back down again slightly, towards their newborn - their newborn - and the slight movement was enough for the building tears to finally topple out and spill down both of her cheeks. 

Catra tried to calm her bursting heart, and gently brushed one hand up against Adora's cheek, lifting the wetness away.

“Adora… You had a name.”

“But… But you -”

“No. You were right. You were definitely right.” She nudged her gently, leaning up to nuzzle her nose into Adora’s cheek for a moment, feeling the precious wetness of her very happiest tears. “Go on.”

Adora stifled another small sob, then took a breath to clear out her voice so she could name their baby properly.

“Welcome to the world, Finn. I can’t believe you’re here.”

“I can’t believe we’re here,” Catra mumbled, winding her arm around Adora’s waist and leaning her head against her shoulder.

“I can,” Adora beamed at her. “And we’re not going anywhere, ever again.”

“No. We’ve got you forever, Finn.”

“Absolutely we do.”

Their child lay there, wrapped up by their two mothers, two bright, luminous blue eyes shining up around them, filled with the most beautiful wonder they never could have imagined for themselves. Their tiny little scruffy tail prodded delicately around, tickling under Adora's jaw. Catra reached out a few fingers to smooth the licks of blonde hair twirling up off Finn's precious little head. They looked back at her, only for a second, and in that moment of eye contact, Catra felt the rest of her life fall away behind them forever. The past was drowned forever in the depths of those glowing blue eyes. Catra squeezed against Adora, sharing a small look with her beautiful wife as they held their beautiful child together.

And all at once, the world beyond the building sunrise felt a little bit more whole. A little bit less broken. A little bit more fixed. And all the magic of Etheria faded to the background behind those tiny little heartbeats in Adora's loving arms.