Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Adora, what is going to happen to you?”

There it was. The question she had dreaded since coming back from Mystacor, the failsafe finally obtained at an expensive price.

Turning away from the cat, Adora spoke, her voice wavering with every word.

“Without She-Ra, the magic will destroy me. I’m sorry Catra.”

Tears began to pool in her eyes and run down her scarred cheeks after she had stopped. Opening her mouth to speak again, she looked directly at her childhood friend.

“I’m so sorry.. but there’s no more time. It has to end here.”

Catra wanted to object, to shout at her, yelling over and over that it didn’t always have to be her. She didn’t have to do it alone. Not anymore. But nothing came out.

Because of the beam of energy that suddenly appeared beneath her feet, lighting up and engulfing her with ease before she could get any words out.

It was not unlike the teleportation platform that she had used back on Prime’s ship to save Glimmer. The last thing she saw before being ported back up to the surface and everyone else was Adora’s sad smile tugging at her heartstrings, willing her to call out her name and stop this madness.

“Adora!”

The beam dissipated. Catra was gone.

“ADORA!”

The blonde willed herself to stay still, to focus, and keep a clear head. Her mind was cloudy and swirling with panic, fear, and unsaid thoughts. Her wounds stung once more as the virus struck her nerves, sending her to the floor in an instant.

“Come on.. no no no!” Adora was cut off by a pained gasp as the virus attacked the failsafe again.

It had to work. It must’ve been locked or something.. like it needed a password of some sort. She tried ‘Eternia’. She tried ‘She-Ra’. She tried every single word even related to the First Ones, in the hope that it would activate the failsafe. Nothing.

Then it struck her. Adora looked down at the symbol on her chest, everything clear as day now.

“I’m so sorry guys..”

The failsafe glowed brightly as it activated almost immediately, finally free. It covered her in light as it destroyed the Heart of Etheria, taking her with it.

Back on the surface, everything went still. The rebels stopped fighting. The clones ceased to attack. It felt as though Etheria itself had stopped time.

Before Horde Prime could give any more orders, the magical rushing waves of foliage shocked him to the point where he dropped the violet hair of the princess he was holding hostage. The Heart was gone.

As for the rebels themselves, they scanned the rapidly changing scene for a sign of her, whether it be her glowing presence, imperious blue eyes, or her powerful Sword.

Nothing.

The land continued to heal itself, surrounding the remaining fighters and clones with its greenery fueled by sacrifice. Prime couldn’t take it anymore. His plan had crumbled to dust at the hands of a few imperfect rebels and their so-called ‘savior’. He turned on his heel and retreated immediately. The clones did the same, bumping past each other before any of the princesses could pulverize them.

It took Bow, Glimmer, and Catra merely a minute to process everything. Realization hit Glimmer as she grabbed the two and held them close to her as she whisked them all down to the depths of their planet in a flurry of sparkles.

Catra couldn’t feel the familiar wave of nausea as their feet hit the crystal floor. All that mattered was getting to Adora as soon as possible. They passed corridor after corridor, room after room, and picked up the pace after crossing the empty room with nothing but the broken remains of Shadow Weaver’s mask.

They were close. So close.

They stopped. They had finally arrived at Etheria’s core. However, there must have been some mistake.

Because Adora was nowhere to be seen.

All that was left of their best friend was her Rebellion belt clip, lying on the floor as if it were a mere toy for a child. 

A quick look around the large space wasn’t needed, but they were clinging to the smallest bit of hope that Adora had just left, and wasn’t destroyed by the failsafe that they let her take on.

It didn’t matter. She was gone.

Chapter Text

Darkness.

So much darkness.

Adora could barely see her hands in front of her. She had no clue as to what was happening to her. Bringing her hands closer to her face, they looked unscathed and as clean as ever. Strange, she could’ve sworn there was something on them.

It hit her.

Everything came rushing back. The failsafe, making it to the Heart, Catra..

It didn’t matter. It must have worked, right? She wouldn’t be standing in this cold, dark void if it hadn’t. Etheria was fine.

But how could she know for sure? What if it was in worse shape than before? She had to go back, she had to find everyone-

“Adora?”

The girl whipped her head around to face the sound. She was met with pitch black and a wave of confusion. Was she dreaming? Could she even dream up sounds?

“Adora.”

There it was again. She turned to the sound once again and this time, she was met with two familiar faces.

A former queen who sacrificed her life in Etheria to save it. Her translucent wings still looking as majestic as ever, Queen Angella stood before her with a serene smile on her face.

The next face had Adora surprised. Chestnut brown hair and tan skin. Before Adora could comprehend anything, Mara was next to Angella, looking much less sadder than Adora had seen her in the Crystal Castle only moments earlier.

Their presence was welcoming of course, but there was something about them that confused her and alarmed her greatly. They were dead, weren’t they? Somewhat anyways.

“Queen Angella..? Mara-?”

Nothing was making any sense. Why were they here? Did they bring her here? Could they send her back?

“..Not exactly. We’re not real.”

Mara reached out a hand for Adora to try and take. Adora’s hand went through hers immediately upon contact.

“So.. what are you?”

“Not even we know, Adora. All we know is just that you were supposed to be here, and.. that was all.”

Angella wasn’t exactly lying, and neither was Mara. The three stood awkwardly in the darkness, until the blonde finally decided to speak what was on her mind.

“If you’re not- then am I- what? I..”

Or at least, tried to. Her mind couldn’t focus on just one thing. She needed answers to the questions eating her up from the inside. Angella must have picked up on her panicking, and nodded to Mara.

The First One stepped closer to Adora.

“Adora. We may still be gone, or trapped, but you’re not. You’re not really dead, but not really alive either.”

This confused Adora even more. She should’ve be destroyed by the full power of the Failsafe. Why wasn’t she fully-

Oh.

“It’s She-Ra. She’s still in there, isn’t she? Keeping me from- not dying.”

Mara nodded.

“This means that- I can go back. I can go back to Etheria right? I’m not- I’m not dead. I have a chance.”

Attempting to keep the desperation out of her tone, Adora looked up at the two. Horde Prime could still be alive. He could be trying to take over the planet again. There wasn’t anything stopping him now, wasn’t there? He might’ve already, as there was nothing that could’ve told Adora the time of day on Etheria.

“Yes.”

The other two women were taken aback by Mara’s sudden answer.

“The next She-Ra may not surface at all this time. It’s been about a thousand years since you became the most recent one.”

The three were silent once more, stuck within their own thoughts.

“Okay then. What do I have to do?”

A blink, a flash, and what felt like a million years later, Adora opened her eyes again.

Trees towered over her in every direction. Their twisting vines, stretching branches and thick trunks were terribly familiar. The grass, the plants, everything felt too familiar and real to be a dream.

She was in the Whispering Woods.

She had returned.

Chapter Text

Step after step. Breath after breath. Just keep moving forward, she told herself as she struggled to walk further.

Adora had been stuck in the woods for a while now. The terrain was supposed to be familiar to her, wasn’t it? All of those patrols and those missions in the Rebellion seemed to amount to nothing now if she could barely find the edge of the forest, let alone her way out of it.

It felt as though a part of her memory had been taken from her.

Looking up at the dark sky dotted with stars on every side, she paused for a while. To think she was up there once, during what felt like many years ago. Squinting, she could make out a blobbed shape among the constellations.

“A ship?” She mumbled, mostly to herself before jerking herself back to Etheria.

She was probably seeing things. Shaking her head a little to get rid of the growing fatigue creeping up on her, she carried on.

After about an hour or so, Adora finally managed to reach a town, guarded by high walls and a moat. It wasn’t Bright Moon, but at least she could rest for a while before continuing on her journey.

The paths were completely deserted; it was late, so Adora gave it no notice. What she did notice, however, was the statue lying in the heart of the village’s square.

Was that... her?

Stumbling to the figure, Adora inspected it closer. The ponytail. The jacket. Even her signature hair poof was there. It was her. Not She-Ra, the one who had freed them from Prime’s control. Just her.

A small plaque lay under statue Adora’s smiling expression. Quickly reading the text that bore itself into the stone, she gasped softly in shock.

She looked around, the memories flooding back. This was Erelandia. No, this was Erelandia five months after Horde Prime. Five months after she’d used the Failsafe.

She’d been ‘dead’ for five whole months.

No. She couldn’t have. She couldn’t have spent that long with Angella and Mara. But then again, how could she have been so sure about that?

Adora had to confirm it. A part of her refused to believe that five months had passed. But stopping at the outskirts of the town, she’d stopped. She didn’t know who to turn to, or even where to go.

If she’d tried to visit Bright Moon right now, in the dead of night, who knows what could happen? She snickered slightly at the thought.

The Princess of Power, breaking into her best friend’s home under the cover of darkness and trying to brush it off as a normal day? Glimmer was much older than when they first met and all, but Adora couldn’t shake the image of her and Bow comically yelling at her as if she was some sort of timid creature. Just like last time.

Her soft smile dropped as she was once again reminded of the fact that she hadn’t seen either of them in months. The humor slipped out of her thoughts as she brainstormed again, disregarding where she was going. Could she go to Mystacor? Another village?

As she thought of place after place, she tripped over a tree root into the foliage in front of her. Before she could get up completely, an all too familiar voice rang above her, freezing her to the soft grass.

“It’s been a while, Adora dearie!”

Her head shot up from the ground and her eyes flew to the source of the voice. Madame Razz was grinning above her, wild hair and all.

Chapter Text

Bow hadn’t seen the Rebellion in such a devastating - or devastated? - state after everyone had been freed from the chips’ control.

After Prime was bested by the failsafe’s power, and driven into a dark corner of Etheria where no one could find him.

After he, Glimmer, and Catra lost their best friend to the deep, twisted magic of their planet.

To be honest, he thought he was taking all of this pretty well despite everything. If he didn’t, who’d be helping the affected villagers rebuild their homes? The destruction had spread like a sickness even before they left Etheria, and had greatly worsened as more and more of their friends were taken and chipped by Prime.

The chips themselves were also a huge problem on their own, what with how long it took to break the hive-mind connection earlier. A great deal of the devices had remained intact after they were disconnected from their hosts, but the Rebellion wasn’t able to recover all of them in time before Prime’s forces retreated.

Just another problem that Bow could handle.

Probably.

Even though he still saw some of the princesses in Bright Moon from time to time - they had their own kingdoms to look after, anyway - there was still a deep fracture in between them every time they came by. It definitely wasn’t physical, but it was obvious regardless.

He could offer comforting words, help with whatever was needed, and check up on his friends every now and then - be a sturdy shoulder to lean on, especially during a time like this.

He couldn’t, however, fix the fracture left by the death of his friend. Not when he was suffering from the products of the same thing.

On slower days - a rarity, considering the tyrant who had kidnapped his girlfriend, possessed his friends, essentially killed one of them, and nearly destroyed his home was still on the planet somewhere - his mind would drift to simpler times before colors of all hues dotted the night sky with flimsy promises of company, stars winking back at him as he navigated the woods on a single thread.

(Sure they were still at war, but at least it was confined to just Etheria.)

The times when the trees would shake comfortably at the sound of joyous laughter under a blank sky, a familiar trio falling into step as they triumphantly returned to an exasperated but well-meaning queen.

A time of friendship.

Bow just wants his friend back.

To say that Queen Glimmer was busy would be an understatement, though it wasn’t like she inherently hated it. If anything, she actually welcomed the distractions, even if they kept her shut up in the palace - something she would have absolutely hated during her first weeks as queen of Bright Moon.

She knew that she was being a hypocrite, guilt lacing her words as she made excuses of meeting a Salineas ambassador or another council member. Bow surely would’ve called her out on it if they saw each other more often than before.

(How could she pretend that everything was fine now?)

If not him, then someone else would’ve if they could actually catch her. Catra was usually good at that. Confronting her.

However, this had far surpassed her duties as queen, even if it did present itself that way.

There were new people to meet with, updates on both the kingdoms’ and towns’ recoveries, - the princesses once again flourishing on their home turf - as well as negotiations to make and maintain; all but pushing the memory of that day to the back of her mind despite her best efforts.

She hadn’t been back since the land split open, lighting its violent, jagged cracks with the unhealthy green she grew to detest on Prime’s ship.

Even the comforting, gentle fields it soon replaced weren’t enough to make her go back.

Scouts would return to Bright Moon to inform her on anything they could find, whether it be news on Prime’s army, or any traces left of the hero who drove him off - her best friend.

She got half of what she wished for - scouts constantly returned with news of Prime, but never about Adora.

It made her want to scream. She hated how she halfheartedly expected this outcome, no matter how hard she prayed to whoever she could think of for something else.

(She’s dead, and Glimmer can’t change that, she can’t raise the dead no matter how badly she wanted them back.)

She could work with what she already had, however. Never really abandoning the subject of Adora - she couldn’t give up on her so easily - she funneled more attention into locating Prime and his troops. They kept circling through different areas in the Crimson Waste; never going past its borders, but getting real damn close.

Those cowards.

Despite that, she couldn’t act rashly - even if every fiber of her body screamed at her to track him down herself and blast the bastard to bits, for everything he’d done to those other worlds, her home, her friends.

The sour thoughts only ushered in more resentment with the floodgates now open, and Glimmer caught herself remembering a different version of her somedays - a stubborn, harsh caricature of her guided by the very person Adora warned her against.

She should have listened to Adora.

That stupid Heart.

The way she had woven her words - made her think she was doing the right thing - made Glimmer’s blood spark and boil.

To say that Queen Glimmer was able to brush away the guilt and regret would almost be an insult. Her attempts to shove it underneath her rulership were almost laughable as she stacked obligations on top of each other over the heavy feeling in her heart.

Glimmer shouldn’t have pushed her best friend away.

Catra couldn’t do this.

She was there when Adora had traded her life for the world. She held her shaking hands as the failsafe destroyed her from the inside, wracking her with such a terrifying pain that Catra could only feel as a crack across her heart.

Not that it didn’t hurt as much as the real thing.

(Maybe it hurt more when Adora had pushed her away in her final moments.)

She was technically supposed to be living in Bright Moon with Bow and Glimmer since Prime had retreated with the rest of his troops, but she rarely stuck around the kingdom. The Fright Zone wasn’t that functional since the Horde itself was pretty much dismantled, but it was a better alternative to the overly complex and lavish rooms of the castle the others seemed to be so comfortable with.

(Not that the Fright Zone was any good on its own. The familiar halls just added more salt to the wound the more she looked at them.)

Besides, it wasn’t like she was completely cutting herself off or anything. The others could still find her, it’s not like she went and disappeared off the map when no one was looking - not that she could actually do that either, with Scorpia coming by ever so often. The two were on slightly better terms now, but there were still a few hurdles to overcome. Regardless, Scorpia still considered Catra a friend, and Catra was rather close to reciprocating that bond.

She was still trying to be better now.

(Did she really think so, or did that part die at the Heart with the girl she had loved so much?)

What was left of the Horde had definitely scattered far from the Fright Zone, but it was a small burst of what was probably relief looking back - Catra didn’t want to run into any other old faces right now. Most of the tech was either waterlogged or completely destroyed in the fight against the chipped princesses, but the more essential mechanisms weren’t too damaged to completely give up on according to Entrapta.

Catra couldn’t understand why she came back in the first place. Surely the Fright Zone would’ve had better resources to track down Prime, but she was sorely mistaken as bays and outposts she knew like second nature were reduced to rubble or disrepair - whether it be from the fight or Prime’s arrival itself.

She wished his ship blew up with him in it on the way here.

(She wanted to tear his face to shreds like a meaningless scrap of paper, his words like lit matches in her head as he taunted her that night while she fought for her life - gloating at Adora’s coming demise as if he’d already won.)

Catra hadn’t seen the worthless speck of a dictator since that night topside - she barely even paid attention to him at all as he ran with his tail between his legs.

She was more focused on Adora.

(She was always playing the hero, wasn’t she? Like some lamb to the slaughter, of course she’d sacrifice herself like the martyr she was if it meant the world wouldn’t stop spinning.)

So she did.

And Catra’s still here.