Chapter Text
“I don’t care, I love you anyhow. It is too late to turn you out of my heart. Part of you lives here.” - Anne Sexton
Adora found herself wheezing less than five minutes into merely existing in Razz’s attic, and she hadn’t even gotten a chance to crack open any of the boxes yet. She was being paid somewhere between three to five chocolate chip oatmeal cookies per hour to clean through what felt like every artifact of her life, hidden out of sight and out of mind in her grandmother’s home. When she started university, what couldn’t fit in her dorm made its way up into the upper catacombs of their home. It was a mismatched combination of clothing she had long forgotten she ever had the displeasure of wearing and memories she ever had the displeasure of having.
It was bittersweet in a way. Razz was downsizing, finally, after years battling with Adora that she could handle the space, but it came at the cost of her childhood home. She thought she made her peace with it the first time Razz called her Mara instead of her own name, but seeing it slowly gutted and empty left her feeling hollow herself.
She found a cardboard box with a familiar crease in the side, crinkled around the shape of her own right hand as she lifted, and she read in her own handwriting on the side - Catra.
Where Catra fit into the story of her life was as convoluted and painful as it was simple. They had spent so much of their lives utterly fused to each other’s sides, that at times, Adora didn’t know what parts of herself were her own or what belonged to Catra. For a long time, that didn’t matter. Catra was the most steady aspect of her life, until one day she wasn’t. Like a switch had been flipped, they lost each other.
It was still so jarring, that sometimes Adora would wake up and forget. She would make it through the usual motions of her mornings and find herself wondering how Catra would fit into it. It felt so silly. It was like the trajectory of who they were to each other and who they could become was so overwhelming and vast, that she couldn’t wrap her head around there being nothing left to it. Like years out, she was still running off of the fumes of their friendship, like she had hoarded all that attention in the back of her mind to dole out to herself in the moments she found herself forgetting. Glimmer joked that Catra was haunting her without even doing her the favor of dying. Adora didn’t like that one. It made her stomach sour and her chest tighten, like the hope of one day speaking to Catra again still existed on some far off horizon. Like that hope still living was something worth holding onto. Like she didn’t lose her forever.
There was something missing to it all. Catra was a person of reason and logic. Adora once watched her plot the perfect revenge for three months on someone who forgot to return her pencil in third period. Doing something for the sake of doing it wasn’t like her. Her actions had a purpose and a motive, Adora just couldn’t find it. She searched through everything she could, through her own words and through it all, and she came up short. Catra cut her out, and she didn’t know why.
Bow always argued that she could just ask. If that missing something between the two of them that went wrong was the only thing keeping her from being back in Catra’s life, then why not just ask? Adora couldn’t do it. If she didn’t know well enough what she did wrong, then who was to say she wouldn’t do it again? She obviously hurt Catra in a way that she never intended. If she managed to do that again, she could never live with herself. And secondly, just because Adora couldn’t find it with certainty didn’t mean she didn’t have ideas.
Catra was the most steady thing in Adora’s life, the second being Adora’s feelings for her. She didn’t know that they were there, but they were, just lingering in the background. She struggled to put them into words, like Schrödinger's emotions, both there and not. Entrapta tried to tell her once that comparing being gay to quantum super disposition made no sense, so she stopped trying to drunkenly explain her mess of a situation for the rest of that summer. She supposed that Entrapta was right in the end, because looking back they were always there, like a stupid cat in a box staring back and waiting to be seen. She just hoped she was the one to see them first. Asking Catra meant finding out the answer, but what if she didn’t like what she learned? What if it was what she feared? Thinking about it all made her head spin.
Adora slumped down against the wall of the attic, the box open between her knees. She watched the dust swirl through the light cutting in from the only window as she pried open the cardboard flaps, ripping through years old packing tape, and resisted the urge to cough. On the top was a collection of letters, notes passed between the two of them, drawings of each other, any piece of paper Adora could find and shove into the furthest corner of her mind. She picked out the friendship bracelet they made together their freshman year of highschool, her nail slipping into the crack on the broken red bead. She was reminded and countless hours twirling it over and over again during class, mind halfway out of reality, comforted by the motion. She was reminded of how much of herself came to be by knowing Catra. She had molded herself together in the full span of Catra’s undivided attention.
In the bottom of the box was a series of books. Adora picked up the one closest to her hand, the spine cracking as it opened. She ran the pad of her thumb over the folded corner of the page, a well loved dog-ear.
They had a tradition that spanned back so far back into their childhood, Adora couldn’t pinpoint the origin if she tried. What Adora read, Catra read, constantly trading and sharing, like a secret book club for just the two of them, but entirely unspoken. Each time Adora came across a fold on the bottom corner of the page, it read like a secret code - you’ll like this part. They had a system, a dog ear on the bottom for Adora, and one on the upper for Catra. The books sat like annals to their friendship, a shared history. It was like a game, getting to search through the page to find whatever little part reminded them of the other. Sometimes it was a particularly well placed line, or a fight that was exciting, or a moment so soft that neither wanted to admit how much it made them smile in the stupid way that made their cheeks hurt and their hearts race.
Adora trailed her finger up to the top of the page and started from there. It was a book of poetry, something that got passed back and forth between them a lot near the end. She was never as fond of it as Catra was, but she never complained. Poetry always took a moment for Adora, kind of like a puzzle, peering into the deep parts to gleam what it could mean. It didn’t always click with her like calculus did, but she always tried for Catra.
As she read the beginning lines, her heart sank from recognition. When she closed her eyes, she could still see Catra’s face as she handed it to her, the last book they shared before things crumbled apart in her hands. She didn’t give the time it deserved. Everything had been so much at the moment - scholarships, Mara, friends, what the fuck she was doing with her life. Things just kept falling away. Adora’s head fell back, hitting against a cardboard edge. She wiggled for a second, settling further into her spot in-between the tower of boxes. She had the time now, she thought.
She worked her way through the text, weaving through her head the gentle tale of a girl, and the things that come with it, the ups, the downs, and most of all, the longing. The girl making her way through the story in front of Adora’s eyes existed on an axis of yearning and want. It was ironic to her, how much she saw her past self in it. She flipped to the next folded corner, storing that emotion, longing, into a catalogue. She flipped and flipped, consuming each poem at a sickening pace. They flowed into one another, like a linear story told of cobbled pieces, and Adora was tasked to paste them all together.
It was funny, she thought to herself. That common thread winding through each piece that brought Catra back to Adora, each marked page, was a story of love. The realization sunk in her stomach like a rock, to the deepest depths of her core and regret spread its way out to her finger tips, lighting her body on fire. Many emotions flickered through her mind: denial, anger, sadness. It was all so confusing, her head spun. A piece of notebook paper folded into a square fell from the last page of the book. Her name was written in Catra’s neat handwriting across the front. Her hands shook as her eyes ran across the lines. Adora’s breathing picked up, and she quickly closed the book, that missing piece sitting in the packaged remains of who they were for so long. Too long. She could only hope that things hadn’t changed. She knew at least they hadn’t for her.
Her sneakers squeaked against the linoleum of the kitchen as she ran towards the backdoor. She could hear Razz calling out something, but her tunnel vision had taken over. She kept running, her feet taking her through the broken panel of Razz’s fencing, through the brush behind the house, over a long overgrown path worn away from years of use.
Adora quickly knocked on the door before keeling over with her hands on her knees, the dust from the attic catching up to her lungs, legs pricked and bleeding from the thorns in the undergrowth. She stood in the silent, sticky air of the summer, her overdue heart on her sleeve. The door cracked open, and Adora’s heart stopped.
“Adora?”