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The ship gets cold at nighttime.
Back in the Horde, it was never cold. Sweltering hot, maybe, almost blistering, the way that made Catra think maybe she was somewhere hellish after all, or that maybe somewhere hellish would be preferable. In summer, her fur would become slick with sweat, her hair matted because she never bothered to brush it, and Adora’s touch, somehow always cool, would be even more welcome. After Adora, there was nothing to cool her down, so Catra just boiled: the dry heat and hum of machinery absorbing itself into her system, Scorpia’s eager babbling chatter fading into the background as Catra focused on something. The perfect plan to beat Adora, the way she’d next take Adora down, what they’d do when they saw Adora. Always her, because what else was there to do? Who else was there to think about? Herself—but that never led anywhere good. Scorpia, or Entrapta, but they were just distractions—it wasn’t like she could care about anyone anyway, not really, not truly, not without being abandoned or ruining it or somehow being so fucking unloveable that no one would ever consider staying—
Because, really, how hard was it to stay? They would’ve run ages ago if it had been up to Catra, she’d been dying to get out of that dump, but it never was up to Catra, was it? Second in command at best, bedraggled and destructive sidekick holding Adora back at most. No matter how hard she worked, how smart she felt, how much she tried— nothing . Fuck all. And maybe it was her fault, because it was easy to slip into being the problem cadet when that’s all you’d ever been, easy to bite when you’ve been called a bad dog—or cat, as it was. But, then again, maybe it was Adora ’s fault—always so fucking perfect, so good, so full of, “ No, Catra, Shadow Weaver’s just trying to help ,” and “ Catra, don’t do that! ” and “ Well, Catra, you do make her mad— ”
What the fuck did Adora expect? It was like she thought if Catra just tried a little harder, behaved a little better , everything would be fixed. Like whatever was wrong with her—the overblown reactions that always ended with someone in pain and probably something smashed, the inability to listen or focus or concentrate or do anything right—could just be fixed, like that, with a bit of elbow grease and commitment and hard work. Jokes on Adora, because fuck if she didn’t try, fuck if she didn’t stay when she could’ve tried to run, fuck if she didn’t stay with Adora because that was what Catra did back then, she was loyal, she stayed, she was Adora’s and Adora was hers. The fucking end.
Then—
Then Adora left. Then everything went to shit.
Catra shivers, tapping her fingers lightly—too lightly, it feels unnatural—against the glass (plastic?) panes of the ship. Reminiscing never makes her feel any better. The glass is purple tinged, a colour that makes her think of the possibly too-forgiving Entrapta and the incredibly infuriating teleporting, destruction-causing, Catra-with-a-bad-aesthetic-adjacent Glimmer (maiden name Sparkles). Through them, the darkness of space almost seems to take on a colour, flushes of galaxy in the sky like powder spilt on cold dead metal. The ship gets cold at what some would call nighttime, but it’s always night, and it’s always cold. The tufts of hair that used to get so tiresome in the Horde’s sick heat are gone, now, and so is the rest of Catra’s hair, and she ruffles an absent minded hand through the tufts at the base of her skull where it reaches her neck. Where the chip used to be is cold. Colder than the rest of her.
She wishes Adora was here, and then, like a fucking genie—
“Catra?”
Adora is the best person Catra has ever met and the worst at the same time.
Catra looks up, looks at the blonde girl approaching her, brows furrowed in concern and head a little tilted. Adora looking concerned for her is so utterly rare these days that Catra almost starts crying again. “Catra, what are you doing here?”
“What does it look like?” she snaps, and, fuck, no , that’s wrong, that’s how she would’ve treated Scorpia, but she’s trying to be better these days, she really is, and instead she’s being mean, because isn’t that all she knows how to be? “Sorry,” she adds, hoping it sounds like an afterthought. “Force of habit.”
Adora nods like she gets it and sits down, cross-legged, on the floor by Catra’s feet. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“D’oh,” Catra says, and she sits down next to Adora in a quick, sharp movement that makes her think of easier times. “You’ve never been an easy sleeper. Remember back at the Horde, when—”
She stops. It’s still a difficult topic for her, any reminder of the home Adora left long ago, the home she stayed in far after outgrowing it, still painful. But Adora picks up the thread, finishing, “Every morning, I’d wake up, and there you’d be, complaining that I thrashed about too much in my sleep. Still fighting even then.” She sighs, a little quietly, a little ruefully. “Glimmer does the same thing, but I still missed you saying it.”
It sounds so easy for her. The admittance, the acceptance—all of it. Catra feels so guilty that she sometimes feels like she won’t ever be able to hate anything ever again, and this goes doubly so for Adora, but sometimes how much she cares about her almost flickers over into the too-familiar sensation of hatred. Catra’s eyes start to prick, and she blinks angrily, and Adora, looking at her in concern, says, “Catra—”
Catra’s name said by Adora in that tone will never fail to make her feel better and worse at the same time.
“You know you were the reason for everything?” Catra says.
Something shutters in Adora’s eyes and she says, “That doesn’t excuse it.”
Panic swims up in Catra’s chest. “I just mean— It’s not your fault, I never said that, I just meant— I’m sorry, okay?”
Adora is quiet.
“I did a lot of bad things,” Catra continues, and the words feel true in her mouth. “I did— I hurt people. I hurt a lot of people.” She closes her eyes. “I’m responsible for— everything. I didn’t mean—”
“It’s okay, Catra,” Adora says, and everything in the ship suddenly feels too hot all of a sudden, and why did Adora even come back for her , and how is it hot when it was so cold just a minute ago, and it’s also too small, and where are Bow, and Glimmer, and Entrapta, and why is everyone being so nice to her, and why does Adora keep —
“Stop saying my name like that!”
“Like what?”
“Like— Like you’ve forgiven me!”
“What?” Adora says, and Catra doesn’t blame her. Why is she so confusing ?
“I just mean—” Catra says. Nothing she says is coming out right again, and her eyes are pricking again. “It’s not true, is it? I know you’re angry at me, so you might as well say it.”
Adora sighs, tipping her head away. “That’s not—”
Adora, Catra realises with a start, is crying a little bit too. Her eyes are glistening, salty with tears, and she’s still perfect the way Catra never could be, the way Catra tried so hard to not care about being, flawless and neat and effortlessly muscular and athletic and smart and blonde, with that shiny sleek straight bob Shadow Weaver loved so much, and she’s everything Catra never could be, and Catra tries, she really does, but it comes bursting out anyway, a dam of salty water and betrayal-tinged seaweed, and she asks, in one sharp burst—
“Adora, do you think I’m bad?”
Adora doesn’t answer right away. Her moon-pale shoulders shake, her neck still tilted softly down, vulnerable and exposed and Catra could pounce right now, she could, rip her claws into the delicate tendons of Adora’s neck and pull them out and tie a noose with them, gouge into the gentle flesh there and kill and hurt and maim and destroy destroy destroy and—
Adora doesn’t answer right away, and she doesn’t need to, because Catra knows the answer, and she doesn’t need a goody-two-shoes blonde princess who used to mean the world to her but now just symbolises it to tell her it. Adora doesn’t answer because Catra knows the answer and the world has told her the answer because she is bad bad bad bad to the core bad to the bone bad to the fragile tendons lurking inside her own neck bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad—
“Catra,” Adora says, and she looks the smaller girl in the eyes, retinas meeting like strangers in a crowded room, and she opens her arms and Catra stays stiff.
“Do you think— I mean, am I bad?” she repeats. Casual. This is casual. “I mean— Scorpia, Lonnie, your— stupid friends, Glimmer, Bow. Entrapta. They all— think I’m bad.”
“They don’t think that!” Adora protests. “Well, maybe Glimmer does sometimes, on a bad day, but she has a black and white viewpoint, abandonment issues, possessive tendencies, and destructive impulses.” She cocks an eyebrow, smirking a little. “Kind of like you, actually.”
“This isn’t about Sparkles,” Catra snaps. “This is— You haven’t answered the question.”
Catra presses the pads of her fingers to the very outside of her eye sockets and pushes as hard as she feasibly can without causing Adora to notice and reprimand her for it, careful not to dig her claws in the way she wouldn’t have been a few weeks ago. Her fur is a little bumpy there—half formed scars, scratches, things picked at. Remnants of long-gone anger. “You can say it,” she says, and it comes out angry, sharp, cruel, the way so much of what she says comes out these days. “I just—”
“You’re not bad,” Adora says softly. “You’re just— hurt.”
“Yeah, and I hurt you!” Catra snaps. “I— Aren’t you angry about that?”
“I’ve spent the past year being angry at you, Catra,” Adora says, and even though it’s meant as a comfort it almost makes angry tears prickle up in Catra’s eyes. “I don’t need that anymore.”
“So— so what?” Catra snaps, and why is she getting angry? Why is she saying any of this? “You’re not mad at me because you’re tired of it? That’s not— You can be mad at me. You should be. I’m—”
I’m bad, okay?
Because Catra knows she is. Knows it to her core. It’s always there, clawing at the inside of her, that inherent villainy, even far before she even did anything really bad. Adora’s presence, bright and comforting and constant, alleviated that for years, rubbed off on her, and when she left Catra fell into the descent into cruelty it was always obvious she’d fall into. It was—
See, but there she goes again, excusing her own actions. She keeps doing this—to herself, to everyone, even as she swears she regrets it, maybe because if she lets herself consider the fact that she’s the only one responsible for her own reactions and impulses and destruction, she really will be bad. Because there’s no coming back from the things she did. You can’t—
Catra allows herself a moment to think about the possibility that all of her problems have always been her own fault. It’s not a pleasant thought. It’s not even that true, doesn’t feel like it—that hot pure anger she gets at injustice bursts up when she thinks of the way Shadow Weaver treated her, or even the way Adora did at times—but it feels comforting to take that responsibility. If she could just know that everything she’d done was a choice, her choice, she could rest easy knowing she wouldn’t choose it again.
The issue came with the fact that none of it had felt very much like a choice at all.
“I can be mad at you,” Adora says. “It just— it doesn’t feel productive, but fine —I can be mad, Catra, it’s not like I’m not letting myself feel that. It’s just not my first priority when I see you like this. I thought—” She cuts herself off, takes a shaky breath. “I— I gave up on you, but I didn’t really. I had to let go before you dragged me down with you, but the second you showed me you could change, made that call from the ship— I realised I could have you back. And, Catra, I’ve been— I still don’t think that’s fully hit me. So— I’m not angry with you, not now, because it’s like— The original you, the girl I knew who was fiery and impulsive and terrible with authority, but most of all kind to me, she— I didn’t see her for a while. Then she came back. I’m not angry with her. I’ve never been—”
“But that’s me!” Catra burst out. “That’s— you’re separating the version of me that sent Entrapta to Beast Island and got Glimmer’s mom killed from the version you’ve always known because it’s simple for you, but I don’t get that luxury, okay? Maybe I’m not— that same person, the Horde leader, anymore, but I still have to deal with the consequences of her actions, carry her guilt, bear her scars, because she was me up until the ship. And you still haven’t answered the question! Just— I know you think I’m a bad person. Just say it already! ”
“You always make things so dramatic,” Adora says, voice soft, and it would be funny if it wasn’t so tone deaf, which makes it actually a little funny. Catra starts to laugh, horrible hiccuping sounds escaping her, until they build and they build in her throat, the tickling feeling choking her, and they build and they build and, gradually, she starts to sob instead, curling her head into a ball.
“Catra,” she makes out Adora saying, looking at her, eyes furrowed in concern, despite the way the world is blurry around her. “Catra, I didn’t— Of course I don’t think you’re bad, that’s not even— Catra, look at me. Look at me.”
Catra does.
“I have known you,” Adora says softly, “for as long as I can remember. And you’ve always been a lot, but I can’t ever remember a time where I cared about you any less for it. I could be an idiot, caring too much about what Shadow Weaver thought and— choosing to see things the black and white way that characterised our childhoods, unable to get that Shadow Weaver was evil without reason so you had to be somehow bringing it onto yourself. I think you’re still— Catra, I think you’ve thought you were bad since you were four years old.”
Catra hiccups, suddenly shamefully embarrassed, and says, “Well, to be fair, I did steal Kyle’s ration bars a lot.”
“Because you were a kid and nobody was feeding you enough,” Adora says through partially gritted teeth, obviously not taking as lightly to Catra’s joke as she would’ve liked. “Nobody was feeding any of us enough. You’re— You deserve a happy ending as much as anyone.”
No I fucking don’t, Catra thinks but doesn’t say. I deserve to rot in the ground like Shadow Weaver or Horde Prime. You don’t do the things I did and come back from it . “Don’t you think there’s a certain point where someone’s past saving?” she says, a little dryly.
Adora shakes her head, and says, “You’re missing the point if you think it’s about saving. I can’t— No one can just save someone, redeem them single-handedly. I learnt that with you.”
And that stings , it does, no matter how hard Catra wants it not to. She bites back the acidic response on her tongue and says, instead, “You did save me.”
“No, I didn’t!” Adora says. “You attribute everything to me, good and bad! I didn’t force you to hate me, to join the Horde, you made that choice.” I know, Catra thinks, and Adora must see it on her face because she hurries, “I didn’t save you, pull you back to the good side or— make you good, either. That was all you , Catra. I’m not— I’m not in control of you.”
“Yeah, well, you’re She-Ra,” Catra says, a little crossly. “You were the God of my teen years. I’ve— yeah, okay, I’ve always perceived you as in control of everything. Someone had to be, right?” She barks a laugh. “Because I’m sure as hell not.”
Adora winces. “And— look, I get it. Shadow Weaver always made us feel like I was the one in control of you, or at least that it was my duty to control you. Your failures were down to my failures to control you. That— I guess we’ve both borne the effect of that. It makes it easier for you to blame me, and easier for me to agree. Easier for me to resent you, easier for you to agree.”
I know , Catra thinks. I’m sorry , Catra thinks. I never wanted to hurt anyone, Catra thinks. I’ll be good, I promise. I can be good. If it’s a choice, if it’s her choice, it should be simple, right? Just be good, kinder, better. Nevermind if it runs counternature or counternurture. Just be— good.
“I don’t think I can be good,” she says.
Adora sighs again. A little pained. “For what it’s worth, I think you can be,” she says. “Scorpia thought so too—”
The reminder of Scorpia makes Catra want to kill herself. Adora must sense this in her eyes, because she hurriedly continues— “but even if you don’t think so, there’s a whole other dimension to everything— nobody’s good all the time, everybody makes mistakes— and just because you don’t think you’re good doesn’t mean you have to be bad . There’s okay , you know?”
“I guess,” Catra murmurs, and maybe Adora is right about her always making everything so dramatic . It’s like she processes everything through an amplifier. Like a layer of skin that everyone else has got peeled off her when she was very little, or maybe that she was born without it, making scratches everyone else gets over do everlasting damage. Adora leaving her to play with someone who bullied her when they were seven. Adora leaving her to become Force Captain, try as she did to push that resentment, that hurt down. Adora leaving her, full stop. She’d never wanted to become dependent, had never meant to rely on Adora. Adora had tricked her into it with false promises and sweet talk—but no, that’s crazy Catra talking again, because Adora quite obviously hadn’t , because if she didn’t care about Catra she wouldn’t even be here right now— and there she went again with the dramatics. Things start to feel simpler when it’s just her and Adora in the night; it starts to feel like, if Catra can’t be good, maybe she can be okay.
“I missed you, you know?” Adora says, and it’s honest, and it’s painful, and it’s true.
Tomorrow, Catra will be crazy again. Undoubtedly she will be. She’s always been too much, and too raw, and, yeah , dramatic. It’s not like Adora has fundamentally changed her perception of herself, and not like Catra thinks she ever will, not like she thinks there’s anything to change. Now, though, in the cold, in the nighttime, not really nighttime but still, nonetheless, night—with Adora telling her she missed her —
“Yeah, yeah, I missed you too,” Catra grouches, and she turns her face away, and nudges into Adora a little. And she isn’t ‘fixed’, not at all. And she hasn’t repented and she isn’t redeemed, and she isn’t even really happy. She certainly isn’t good, no matter what Adora says.
But she’s alive, isn’t she? Alive and pleased with it. Admittedly, pleased with it because she has Adora, her human security blanket, which Catra is self-aware enough to realise doesn’t solve the issue. The issues aren’t solved. If it was hot, now, Catra would still be sweltering. She would still burn. She’s always on fire.
But she’s alive, and there’s Adora, and there’s everyone, everything, and it’s okay. She can be okay, maybe. Everything could be okay .