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It was cold, wet and windy and Catra hated every second of it.
Ever since they arrived at the northern reach, she felt grumpier than usual. The fact that she couldn’t even find a blanket just made things worse. Yet somehow the other two girls she came with didn’t even seem to mind the circumstances and worst of all, Scorpia had decided to be weirder than usual about this assignment.
It irked her, just as Entraptas whole excitement about this place irked her. All Catra wanted was to not feel cold. She couldn’t even sleep without her toes feeling frozen when she woke up. She could’ve just worn shoes to fix that issue but Catra hadn’t worn a pair of boots in her life and she wasn’t going to start now, no matter how reasonable it might’ve seemed.
So really, all Catra wanted was to leave this shit place.
In a turn of twisted luck though, She-ra and her band of merry morons decided to pop up just in time for a little excitement and to turn Catra’s luck around.
Once the feline had managed to corrupt She-ra and get the sword, Catra was feeling much better about this place altogether.
Sure, she was still cold but at least she had just gotten an express ticket off of this frozen glacier without pissing off Hordak in the process. In fact, she would even be able to show him just how useful she was to his cause, with She-ra as their new weapon against the Rebels.
She was just kneeling over Adoras unconscious body when an alarm decided to flare up about something. She stood up from her crouch and was about to speak up when she heard Scorpias voice, laden with uncertainty and a strong hint of something else that Catra didn’t bother to further think about: “Hey, that sounds like a job for me. Why don’t you all just stay here, enjoy each others company and I will head out alone and check this out.”
Catra was surprised to say the least but wasn’t going to object to it.
She was looking forward to having a bit of peace and quiet after all that excitement and Scorpia was capable enough to take care of whatever that alarm was about. “Sure, go ahead. I’ll get this one properly secured, so we can head out in a few hours.” she said while pointing towards Adora.
Scorpia nodded quickly and headed out.
Catra noticed the taller woman not looking her in the eye and she could’ve sworn that she spotted a hint of wetness in the taller woman’s eyes just before she left. Catra’s mouth was agape for a second as she looked after Scorpia, wondering what was up with all that.
She shrugged and turned back towards Adora, who had now disappeared from the floor without a trace.
Surprised that she hadn’t noticed someone as stompy and ungraceful as Adora disappear from literally beside her, had Catra stumped as she looked towards Entrapta, who was in turn focussed on a computer screen and had her back towards Catra.
Her hair pointed in a direction and the quirky girls voice chimed up “She went that way.”
Catra followed suit without saying a word, while heading into one of the various storage closets they had constructed here.
Catra entered the storage closet and looked around, she couldn’t see Adora but she knew she was here. In an environment so devoid of any organic smell such as this closet, Adoras unique scent was easy to spot for Catra. After all, it was a scent she knew like the back of her hand.
Once it reminded her of satey, friendship, even love and most importantly a place to belong, home.
Now it only hurt and caused her ire to flare up further.
She sighed audibly. “Come out Adora, I know you are in here.”
Catra heard the other girl run around behind some crates before there was a noise like a metal door. and the blonde suddenly charged at her with a mop.
Catra blocked the vicious surprise attack easily and twisted the mop out of the blondes hands before dropping it with a loud noise on the ground. All the while the blonde was laughing in a way and tone Catra had never heard before. She seemed to enjoy herself in all of this.
“That was weak, even for your standards.” she said to which Adora could only giggle and snort.
It reminded Catra of older times, better times and the thought caused a pain to flare up in her chest. She did what she always did when that happened, she ignored it.
“I’ve almost had you. Just wait til my next surprise attack.” Adora mumbled out with a wild and goofy smile towards Catra, while attempting to grab the mop on the floor again.
Catra leisurely put her foot on a part of the mop while Adora attempted to heave it off the ground before giving up and proclaiming loudly “’s glued to the ground! Mus be magic!”
Even Catra had to fight a chuckle at that. The catgirl smiled as she said “Whats this? Did corrupting She-ra cause you to be even more of an idiot than usual?”. Adora wobbled while seemingly barely keeping her balance, a wide and content grin plastered on her face. “No, I’m the idiot!” Adora said, which caused her to giggle hard before sinking to the floor and crawling over to Catra.
Adora attempted to grab one of the other girls’ legs, causing Catra to immediately want to take a step away from her. Unfortunately, whatever speed Adora had while under the influence of the artifact, seemed to be superhuman as she had wrapped both her arms and legs around Catras leg before Catra could even react. Now that Catra attempted to step back, there was suddenly a whole nother girls’ weight on one of her legs, which made her stumble backwards and land harshly on her butt while Adora kept clinging to her leg like it was a lifeline. The sword that Catra still held fell audibly on the ground a few feet away before coming to a rest.
“Ow! What the fuck, Adora.”
“You’re warm” Adora said lazily while rubbing her cheek on Catras thigh. The action immediately forced a small blush into Catra’s face.
“Stop it! We are enemies!” the catgirl hissed while trying to somehow loosen Adoras iron grip on her.
Her attempts to free herself went on for about half a second when she heard Adora sniffle with tears in her eyes.
“But you’re my Catra!” she exclaimed sweetly and on the brink of tears.
The sight caused something in Catra to quiet.
Ever since Adora changed sides to the Rebellion, Catra had only felt a gaping wound inside her chest. Time had dulled the pain, made it possible for Catra to get used to it but whenever she saw Adora, whenever she saw her new friends, the pain and the wound would throb and hurt as it had on the first day that Adora inflicted it on her.
For the first time since the day Adora left, she didn’t feel it.
Catra looked wide eyed at the blonde girl.
Adora had closed her eyes now and traces of wetness around her eyes were clear for Catra to see.
Despite her better judgement, Catra moved her hands to the other girls face to wipe at her eyes, in an attempt to dry and sooth which caused Adora to open her eyes again, looking straight into Catra’s. The felines breath hitched for a second, her mouth slightly open and dry as the tales claimed the crimson waste was.
Adora unwound completely from Catras leg before climbing higher on the catgirl, she moved until their faces were only a feet apart before a “hey, Catraaa” left her mouth and the stupid grin returned to her face. The words caused Catra to recover from her shock and her inner musings but what happened next still took her off guard, as Adora suddenly put her head down between Catras shoulder and neck. A moment later Adora had slung an arm around Catra and the other suddenly appeared behind one of Catra’s ears.
Instantly, with practised movements, Adora scratched behind the other girls ear and Catra could feel herself melt into it. As if no time had passed between them whatsoever, as if they weren’t enemies that had caused each other hurt time and again, Catra began to purr involuntarily.
It took a second for her to even notice that it was happening. With the sound of her purring, Adora had started to giggle and hum contently.
Catra didn’t know how to react to that, as her inner workings were torn completely. On one hand, she was too proud, too hurt by Adora in the past to accept this and it felt demeaning now that they were enemies. But on the other hand, she had missed Adora a lot, even if she would never admit it to anyone.
She had missed their talks, she had missed her scent, she had missed the feeling of her hand behind Catra’s ear. She had missed the hum the other girl did alongside her purr. She had missed the other girls warmth. She had just missed everything about Adora.
And with that, Catra threw caution into the wind. Adora wasn’t quite herself right now anyway, so she could let her defenses down, just a little, just this once. They had fought for so long, Catra deserved to feel good about herself just this once.
She reached her arms around Adora who had now fallen asleep and was lightly snoring. Catra didn’t mind, she didn’t mind any of it.
Instead, she put her nose closer to the other girls hair and inhaled deeply, flooding her system with that old and familiar scent. With the scent of home, safety and love. All the while, the other girls warm body was pressed against her and Catra noticed how for the first time since they came to the northern reach, she wasn’t feeling cold.
Catra could feel tears sting her eyes and she silently begged whatever was out there that she could enjoy this feeling just a little longer.
Seconds stretched into minutes and minutes might’ve even turned into hours, who was to say how much time had passed while they remained like that. Eventually though, Catra saw the angry red tendrils retract from the sword and she knew her time was up.
She sighed quietly and quickly untangled herself from Adora, leaving her and the sword in the storage closet behind.
Catra quickly found Scorpia and Entrapta, both preparing to flee the northern reach.
“Oh, there you are Catra! I’m so sorry, I couldn’t defend the Artifact from the rebels.” Scorpia said, seeming crestfallen and heartbroken about this fact.
Catra merely nodded and mumbled “You did good, Scorpia.” towards the other woman, before dropping down into the boat.
Funnily enough, she found a blanket inside the boat that she quickly tugged over herself.
Already she missed the Adoras presence but knew that it would never be like that again.
The warmth of the blanket proved a poor replacement, Catra started shivering again.
She couldn’t help but look back to the station on the northern reach that quickly disappeared into the distance and the one place in it, in which she didn’t feel the cold.