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Chapter Text

“FC-301, report in.”

In front of her was arid wasteland.  Sheets of smooth dust, slivers of it curling into the wind above a canvas of red, brimming her eye up until the horizon.

“Three-oh-one?”

Steam gushed from behind her as she dismounted her pod, seething into the air until it melded with the breeze.

“Come in, three-”

“Yeah, yeah, keep your britches on,” she grunted, heaving her satchel onto her back by the straps. 

Thick garments wrapped about the length of her, the ends of them billowing lightly as she trudged away from the landing site.  Sand spilled away from the sides of her boots with each step she took.

Catra wasn’t the romantic sort. Her life up until now necessitated careful parceling of every moment, of every bit of color that she kept under lock and key, that she selfishly huddled against and covered from view.

But she could admit that the planet had a quiet dignity to it. 

It was a sea of crimson.  Behind her, footprints embedded into the dunes, the trail of it silent.  Small.  She was a slip of a thing, swallowed by her ragged cloak as she walked. 

The wind whispered.  Sunlight washed over the earth, seeped into it, bled between the grains until it bore down upon her, this tiny thing that moved inconsequentially among the sand.

If she hadn’t touched down on the surface, there would be no difference. 

“Topographical scans indicate your objective is approximately 150 miles out.  Northeast.”

“Sheesh.  Navigation really couldn’t land me any closer?”

“Dense atmospheric conditions posed some difficulty.  Additionally, an unidentifiable protective layering around the planet resulted in interference spaceside.”

“We’re good now though, huh?”

“Made possible by the grounding unit you carry.  It acts as an anchor so our satellites can transmit signals via astronomical radio waves, honed in on your-”

“Okay, okay.  God.”

Her finger tapped incessantly against her earpiece, as if it could be stifled.

She moved through mounds like they were underbrush, sand cascading about her, skirting her shoulders and falling away like limp tendrils.

The air was pinched.  Oppressive heat pressed down like something tangible, had squeezed her vision until Catra could pick up squirming shimmers, crags in the distance made dun blurs, smeared against a scarlet plain. 

She felt rather than saw the vapors that tinged open space.  It sighed along her arm, ruffled her cloak so gently she was sure it hadn’t been real.

For a moment, it drifted like snow, a swirl of scattered crystal.  Needles along her torso, breaths mingling with her own.

And still she walked.

“There’s something.”

“Repeat, 301.”

“I said there’s something.  In the air.  I can’t see it, but I dunno.  It’s tugging at me.”

“Precautions are recommended against adverse climate.  It is not uncommon while traversing such terrain to experience heatstroke.  To the near west is an outcrop that can provide shade.”

“It ain’t a mirage,” she rolled her eyes.  “I can feel it.”

“Sending coordinates.”

“Appreciate the vote of confidence,” she muttered darkly.

By the time Catra arrived, night had fallen.  What had been found for her was a sharp cliff inclined inward, stalwartly towering above what was otherwise low, eroded plateaus and even land stretched across for miles.

Catra called it night only for lack of a better term.  What passed for darkness was grey mist, a pale, mottled light suffusing the surface.  Still a canvas of red, still curtained heat clutching at the earth.

She dragged herself over to the base of the cliff, collapsing unceremoniously against its column.

She peered up at the sky.  Fog, clouded and looming.  Churning into itself, looking as if it would descend continuously, like she had descended, but instead remaining suspended over the gravel.

“301, protocol dictates check-ins at least once every scheduled interval, barring allocated sleeping hours.”

The voice in her ear was as smooth as the desert surrounding her.  Inherently melodious, it was nonetheless pulled taut by propriety. 

“I read the mission report like anyone else would, so don’t worry, if I don’t check in you’ll know it was deliberate.”

“Force Captain,” it was almost like the device itself produced static to the same cadence as the sudden waspishness that belabored her ear.  “I must insist you treat the mission with the appropriate gravity as is expected of an assignment personally assigned by Lord Prime himself.  To serve in this capacity is a great honor that would be a shame to squander with idle irreverence.”

Something in Catra strung together like corded wire.  Her teeth became clenched.

“My bad,” her words honeyed, dripping with something caustic, something torn from the stem.  “Let me adjust my attitude and take in the majesty of what Lord Prime so graciously offered me as recompense for my years of unwavering service.”

She looked left and right, a perfunctory gesture in her solitude. 

It was still earth.  Hollow, moaning wind, dust so settled Catra could imagine it was the residue of a corpse if she tried hard enough.

“You know,” the roof of her mouth still bitter.  “You sound a lot like my old supervisor.  Thank heavens I made Force Captain so I don’t have to deal with her anymore.  You know what we called her?”

There wasn’t a response.

“Shadow Weaver.  Yeah, we weren’t great at names but you get the gist.  That honor you speak of.  That grandeur, she’d harp on about nothing else, and I tried to make her happy.  All was for the glory of Prime, and I did it all.”

Catra closed her eyes.

“What’d I get for it, huh?  I gave myself over ‘til nothing was left, ‘til bone showed, like she told me to, like you’re telling me to.  And what’d I get?”

Shades of it flashed in the annals of her mind, in its shifting corridors and rusty door hinges, of thrumming black and bolts of crimson, like the sand she walked, like the blood bubbling under her skin.

She shook herself, ending the reverie in smoke.

“Whatever.  I don’t know why I’m telling you this.  Log off, I’m good here.”

She heard nothing.

She woke up to much of the same. 

Rising slowly to her feet, she grasped her hands together, a lattice of clawed fingers, and stretched until she heard her bones pop.

“Ah.  Fuck.”

She shook herself free of loose sand caught in the crevices of her cloak, before tapping her earpiece.

“Up and at ‘em.”

Silence. She frowned.

“Operator?  I need coordinates.  I can’t account for this detour’s margin of error from where I am.”

The telltale static of radio silence.

“Operator.”

Whirring to life, her ear was flooded with melody.

“Apologies, FC-301.”

“What, couldn’t find coffee?”

“Sending coordinates.”

“Good morning to you too,” Catra scoffed.

For miles, Catra walked.  The earth was spread before her like rust, like tarnished steel, exposed and corrupted, a sheen of red.

“I didn’t mean to presume.”

Startled, Catra shook herself from listlessness.

“Huh?”

“Before.  Yesterday.  I apologize.”

Catra blinked, gloved fingers coming up to absently brush aside strands of hair come loose from where they’d been tucked.

Then she snapped her jaw shut before she could consider herself gawking.

“I…”  Some errant specks blew into her eye and she spluttered, using the corner of her knuckle to dig it out.  “Were you sitting on that the entire day?  It’s already forgotten, whatever.”

“Regardless, I do not know your circumstances and it was improper for me to offer judgment.”

Catra laughed.

“You’re a weird one.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve had plenty of people in my ear telling me what to do.  At best, they’d direct me as necessary, no nonsense or fuss, and they’d hang up without another word.  Those were my  favorite.  At worst, well…”

Catra wiggled her boot, dislodging some gravel lodged between the grooves on its sole. 

“Anyway, not a one of them would do something like that.  Apologize, I mean.”

“It is only right.  If nothing else, I know of standard procedure.”

Catra detected a faint hint of pride.

“Not in the Horde it isn’t,” but she couldn’t help a brief smile.

For another evening, Catra settled against an unassuming crag.  Sheets of sand had nearly buried it, such was its diminutive stature.

She cupped her palms into a makeshift sieve.  Grains slowly trickled from it, dwindling from gaps between her fingers.

“Hey.  You there?”

“You require assistance?”

“Nah, just…here.  Look.”

“I cannot.”

“Right, I’m dumb.  But I poked around a bit, and under this patch of sand I found something peculiar.”

“Elaborate, please.”

“I’m getting to it, come on.  It’s grass.”

Her fingers brushed over small, wilted sprigs of rotted foliage. 

“Not much of it, and what I found’s just a couple dead strands, but the fact that it’s here at all, when-”

Her eyes flitted from one end of the horizon to the other.  Her periphery was lined with crimson, with bulging heat and splotches of jagged canyon.

“From when I first landed, I’ve seen no signs of life.  None at all, until now.  I thought the planet just couldn’t sustain it.  There’s air, clearly.  But surely other conditions were too harsh, or I’d have seen something.”

She withdrew her hands, briefly wringing them airborne before clasping them behind her head.

“Well, now I have.  What happened to this place?”

“Is that an official inquiry?”

“Are you telling me we actually know something?  Thought I was here to scout the planet in the first place, but it’s not like they told me shit.”

Nothing but a faded clacking, garbled by interference.

Then: “Restricted access.”

Catra arched her brow.

“Anything further, Force Captain?”

She shook her head.  Then, in realization, she murmured out loud, “No. I was just wondering.”

Catra frowned, the corners of her eyes sunken, her visage furrowed in thought.

Her dreams that night were plagued with verdant fields and dunes running red, their amalgamation stocky and uneven, riddled with protrusion, bloody with grime.

She found more.

Her fingers ran gently over the faded vestiges of a tree trunk, now withered and gray.  Nothing but the shriveled countenance of a stump, shrunken and wrinkled.

“It’s weird.”

“Clarify, Force Captain?”

Catra blinked, still not quite used to an operator indulging her musings.

“I mean, maybe you can attribute it to…y’know, the passage of time.  Maybe the planet was just past its due.”

She frowned.

“But it’s too even.”

“Meaning?”

“Like death paid a visit one day.  Swept over the land then left.”

She looked around and noted some of the more salient reminders that a forest once stood.  Drowned in sand, but cleaved feebly to the surface were specks of corroded matter.  Oxidized wood, undoubtedly once stalwart branches made powdery.  Crisp fringes of leaves mottling the ground as they once mottled sunlight.

“There’s nothing in the database?  About what might have happened?  A name, even?”

“Classified.”

“Yeah,” Catra sighed. “Yeah.”

She stretched.

“Guess it doesn’t matter.  I’m here to do to my job, huh?”

“Correct.”

She hefted her satchel more securely to her person and continued, leaving the ashes behind her.

“So, what’s your day to day?”

She’d found the most intact piece of greenery she could and sat herself under it.  A tree, curved and decrepit, sallow and naked, but a tree nonetheless. 

“What?”

“I mean you’ve listened to me yap and yap and haven’t offered anything about yourself.”

“That would be the height of unprofessionalism.”

“Come on,” Catra persisted.

“There is a distance we must not broach.  We are jointly responsible for the success of this mission, and to be frank, I cannot imagine you asking the same of your previous operators.”

“Well, no, but,” Catra let herself fall back on a bed of sand.  “They were all sticks in the mud.  I mean, you are too, but you know.  You cared about what I thought.  Or pretended to, I dunno.  Just returning the favor.”

“There is no need.”

“Fine.  Whatever.”

She flopped on her side and closed her eyes for the night.

Almost about to drift off to slumber, Catra blinked at a familiar melody.

“I have a horse.”

It was so unexpected her lips contorted as she spluttered, almost choking on her saliva.

“You…what?  One more time?”

“Good night, Force Captain.”

“No, no no no.  I forbid you from hanging up.  You’ve got a horse?”

“That is what I said.”

“What, uh…” her efforts to stifle her laughter were so ostensible she felt her outer wrappings wrinkle from how firmly she grasped them .  “What’s its name?”

“This conversation has run its course.”

“No, I promise, I’ll be good.”

“Unlikely.  His name is Swift Wind.”

Very predictably, Catra could not help herself.

“Are you finished?”

“No, wait, I-” She was wheezing, clutching her sides.  “Sorry.  I’m sorry.  Swift Wind?”

“I will speak to you in the morning.”

“No, I apologize, I do!  Please stay.”

Catra wiped a tear from the corner of her eye.

“It’s just not what I was picturing at all.”

“And what, pray tell, were you picturing?”

“Definitely not that,” she rasped.  “Where do you keep Swift Wind?  I can’t imagine ship barracks being a healthy environment for him.”

“I have not seen him in a long time.  Not since I was deployed to Communications.  He is back home.”

“And where would that be?”

Catra was dismayed when her operator’s clinical veneer resumed.

“It is forbidden to exchange personal or identifying information between units.  Subordinates are to follow the terms of martial decorum,” was what was rattled off.

She sighed.

“Right.  Can I at least know your name?”

“Negative.”

“Hardly fair.  You know mine.”

“A consequence of your stature and renown that cannot be helped.  The least I can do is refer to you by your proper rank instead.”

“And we were just getting somewhere, too.” Catra grumbled.

“A momentary lapse from my end.  I apologize.”

“No, come on, I…”

Catra groaned, knowing it was futile.

“Alright.  Thanks for the talk.”

The voice hesitated.

“You’re welcome.  Pleasant dreams, Force Captain.”

The whine of her earpiece shutting down.

Despite it, Catra managed a small smile before she turned in for the night.

Through sheer resilience, Catra wheedled until the walls thinned.

“Any other pets?”

“No.”

“Dogs?  Cats?”

“No.”

Something bubbled at the surface, until, almost petulantly:

“Swift Wind is not a pet.  He is family.”

Catra grinned.

“That so?  My bad.”

She carefully stepped over some drooping cacti, yellowed but speckled with thorns.

“What about your other family?  Got any besides Swiftie waiting for you?”

A long, languid moment stretched across the expanse like the columns of heat berating her every movement, punctuated by a deafening silence, ringing with it, the other end an oppressive stillness uninterrupted even by static.

“Uh, sorry.  I get it.  Too personal.”

“I never knew my real parents.  They were…gone since before I was born.”

A chill ran through Catra; thrummed through her system like wherever it went left her bereft of sensation.

She had no way of knowing.  Her operator had provided no timeframe and the empire had likely left thousands of planets hollow and dead.  And perhaps it was abandonment.  An unrelated accident.  Something none of her business, clearly.  Yet, something in Catra, the part of her that years of conditioning and abuse still couldn’t tamp down, still scraped against and left not subdued but raw and crimson instead, rattled her until she spoke.

“Were they First Ones?”

The warble of something falling over from her earpiece, the crumpling of paper, before a stretch of silence.

“Were you taken from a place being razed to the ground in Prime’s name?  Being made to work for the very people that-”

“I would remind you, Force Captain, that we are on a monitored frequency.  Our line is within the Horde’s shared network, and might I assert, again, that insubordination is not tolerated.”

The tone was harsh, meant to admonish, but Catra couldn’t help but note how hastily she was cut off.  Strung not by acidic strands of intent but instead the dire thread of prudence.  A warning meant genuinely.

“Sorry.”

She changed tact.

“I know what’s it’s like.”

“Excuse me?” Catra could practically hear the frown.

“I mean I know how it is, growing up alone.  I’m an orphan, too.”

“Were they also-”

It was astonishing how quickly her operator screeched to a halt.

“Do you know what happened to them?” was the rephrasing.

 “No clue.  It’s always been just me.”

What had previously been obfuscated by the harsh contours of heat shimmers now came into sharp relief.  Catra felt the inclines of firmer gravel, her steps coasting across sediment instead of sand.  The debris of fossilized flora more saliently dotted the horizon.

Until, suddenly, it loomed in front of her, casting small shadows, but casting them nonetheless.

“A forest.”

Her voice was tinged with awe.

Foliage sprinkled the landscape, appearing in bowers of drooping green.  Perhaps it could hardly be known as a forest, sparsely decorating the plains with smatterings of plant life and the occasional copse of enclosed trees sprouting distantly from one another. 

To Catra it was nothing less than sprawling verdant fields, to her it was the first breath of Spring taken after storms and suffocation, taken amidst the tension of suffocating seas and constricting squalls.

“We are nearing the objective.”

“Uh huh.  Wish you could see this.”

“Twenty miles out.”

“Maybe we should just vacation here after all’s said and done.”

Her operator fell silent.  Catra chuckled, before she abruptly halted her stride.  Whispers along her arm, her cloak billowing gently with them.  Again, the telltale spidering of crystal, a breath of frost ghosting her ear.  Serpentine wind curled about her frame.

“It’s here again.”

“Apologies,” came from her, muffled amidst the garble of shuffling parchment and something thumping against a desk.  “One more time, FC-301.”

“That feeling from before.  The…tingling in the air.”

“301, I insist you search for shelter from the heat.  Incidentally, your destination has fitting terrain in which you could find respite-”

“I’m not imagining it,” she said, voice lined with gravel.  “Can’t you just believe me?  I get that it’s practically your job to write me off, but I…”

She sighed.  Images of her former supervisor bubbled to the surface.  They were mired in red, the sight of them feebly composed like sludge spattered on a wall.  A mask, leering down at her. Then a back turned, tall and towering, casting its shadow so wide she swam in it.  She was shouting, babbling, small hands supplicated in furious gestures, if you could just listen, if you could just know me, I’m right here.  I’ve always meant something, if you turned around and saw.

Catra, my dear.  Not now.

“Never mind.  You’re right, I’m gonna head deeper in.”

Her boot had just risen with the gait of her step before her receiver whined. 

“Can you describe it more fully?”

“No, it’s fine.  Forget I said anything, really.”

“Please, Force Captain.  Elucidate.”

Catra stared down at the sand.  She continued walking.  Her ankles had begun to be tickled by faint, creeping vines.

“I guess it’s as if I’m just short of…of reaching out and touching it.  Like if you close your eyes, that shimmer in your periphery.  You can tell it’s there, you know so, but the second you try to catch it it’s gone.”

As if to demonstrate, Catra closed her eyes.  Her breath stilled.

“But at the same time, it’s all around me.”

The sensation of it became a cluster.  Something whisked off of her shoulder, a noticeable weight cascading away from where she stood.

She blinked.  The rush of wind at her back, of color made tactile, like stardust pulled together from the fringes of space.

“301?  Come in.”

“Hm.”

“Yes?”

“Okay, now I won’t blame you if you think I’m crazy.”

In front of her was a cat.  Not like any cat she’d ever seen, but a cat nonetheless.  Eyes akin to lightning, mane a coursing river shrouding its neckline, its gait wary and measured.

She raised her palms, deliberately relaxing her stance.

“Not gonna hurt you.  See?  Just passing through.”

“Who are you talking to?”

“Shush.”

It didn’t move save for its tail, languidly swaying like a pendulum.  The air itself pushed at Catra’s back in tune with her heartbeat. 

It stared at Catra, sat primly on its haunches, its paws folded beneath.

The edges of her vision warped with color.  Her breaths thrummed with electricity, motes of burred light faded in and out of her sight, drifted around them like dandruff.

“I know what it is I felt.”

“Force Captain, are you alright?”

“You’re gonna have to humor me.”

There was a measurable pause, her ear ringing with the lapse of sound.

“Okay.”

“It’s magic.”

Their name was Melog, Catra learned.  She supposed she should have been more shocked that it could speak directly into her mind, but traveling alone on this planet had been so surreal it seemed not so out of place.

Perhaps her operator was right.  Perhaps the isolation was getting to her.

It wasn’t as if Melog spoke much regardless.  Just once, to tell her their name.  And twice, to stop her from freaking out at the voice in her head.

Catra had ventured deeper in the foliage, closer to her destination.  Melog followed, but always on the fringes of her periphery.  Enough to have her question whether they were there at all.

A coat of magenta wrapped around a sapling.  Lightning blue from the gap in between curled moss.

But when she turned to look, only the remnants of static, like old fluorescent lighting, buzzing from disrepair.

“I highly advise against allowing some mysterious creature – what is in all likelihood a dangerous predator native to this planet -  trail behind you.”

“I’m just glad you believe me at all,” Catra hummed.

“301, now is not the time for irreverence, particularly so close to the end of the mission.  It could be stalking you, considering you for its next meal.”

“Melog isn’t a threat.  Not to me, at least.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Can’t really explain it.  This whole planet has me dizzy.”

“Believe it or not, that is not the endorsement of sanity you might think it is,” her operator’s dry tenor came clearly even through the dubious reception.

“Was that sarcasm? You’re really warming up to me.”

“I am still doubtful of your claim.  Telepathy is not something that occurs naturally, according to conventional wisdom.  The only instance known is Lord Prime’s connection with his clones. A manufactured exception.”

“Conventional wisdom in the Horde.  The universe is vast, and our supreme commander doesn’t want us to understand that.  But you knew that, didn’t you?”

Her operator did not respond.

“You really can’t dredge up the files on this place?”

The clacking of a keyboard.

“I don’t have the clearance.  Access is strictly prohibited on a scale I don’t see very often.”

“And you can’t force your way through?”

“Force Captain.”

“For me?”

“Even if what you are saying was not the height of treason, it would take most people years to broach such multifaceted security.”

Catra smirked.  Up ahead was, at long last, the mouth of a cave.  Deposits of sediment had formed jagged surfaces, upon which flowers bloomed.

“‘Most people,’ huh?”

The top of the cavern hung like a maw, the stone chipped and weathered.  Catra paused at its entrance.  The damp walls felt like breath, the ceiling like teeth, its rows of tapered rock glistening with moisture.  Briefly, as Catra stepped in, she thought that it might close on her.

“Testing.”

“No interference as of yet.  Likely to change as you head down into the depths.  I’ll try to adjust frequency as you go.”

“You’re a peach.”

Catra’s calves began to burn as she continued her descent.  Spires jutted out from where she had to step over. 

Where she thought she’d struggle to see, Catra instead found her path brightly lit by luminescent moss gathered surreptitiously in corners, bunched against itself in layers.  Briefly, purple curled against the contours of limestone where she had briefly rounded the corner earlier.  Melog seemed to be more comfortable than before, daring to linger closer.

“It’s not just a spark, or a…a fading thought anymore.”

“What isn’t?”

“I feel it fully.  The magic.  The sensation’s everywhere, like it’s hugging the breadth of what I barely can’t see.”

“Be careful, 301.”

“It’s not malicious or anything.  It’s like spots of warmth, draped over my skin every now and then.”

“I have a bad feeling.”

Catra smiled. 

“Careful, you almost sound worried about me.”

“I am.  Something isn’t right.”

“Gee, what do you know.  Turns out ol’ Catra’s been around the block a few times and might actually know what she’s talking about from time to time.”

Her operator audibly huffed.  Then the rattle of a keyboard.

“You did not imply anything of the sort,” was said amongst vigorous typing.  “All you suggested was a lack of knowledge that might have been important towards explaining your strange findings across the planet’s surface.”

“Potato tomato,” Catra yawned.  “I thought something was weird from the start.  Keep up, huh?”

Her operator said nothing, but Catra could practically feel the disdainful eye roll from her earpiece.

She chuckled.

That night – not that she could tell in the pale, near sickly luster, casting shadows away from its melancholy sheen – Catra slept on a particularly soft bed of moss.

“Thanks, though.”

What little path there was now slanted sharply, an incline so sheer Catra’s boots stumbled along loose bits of gravel tumbling alongside her as she essentially skidded along the pebbled throat of the cavern.

She trudged her way now through darkness.  Long gone were the natural, perhaps magical, sources of light that had once guided her. 

“For what?”

“I dunno. Actually giving a shit about me. It’s been kind of refreshing.”

“Force Captain, it isn’t like you deserve any less.  If…”

Catra craned her neck as if it would help her listen with more clarity.  Over comms, a throat cleared.

“If the people you used to work with have implied any differently, that isn’t your fault.  You shouldn’t have to earn the right to have others care about your well being.”

Catra closed her eyes.  The gaping tunnels below her wound themselves like open wounds in and between what sparse ground on which she could find purchase.

“For most of my life,” she murmured.  “I’ve had to claw my way up, had to bloody every inch of myself to earn even a modicum of respect.  No one would look twice at this wayward kid picked up off the streets, so raggedy and useless it might have been kinder to have left her there to die instead of keeping her here, in the Horde, worthless and still.  There wasn’t anyone to tell her to be strong.  Wasn’t anyone to dab her bruises and let her know it would all be worth it one day.  Instead, she had to convince herself of those things.”

She winced as her elbow scuffed harshly against some protruding rock.

“My old boss, the one I mentioned before.  She was worse.  Because she pretended she did care.  I’d enact her schemes and ambitions, helped her soar up the ranks, and she told me, rarely, how proud she was.  Then I’d go off killing myself for conquests in her name, drag back what was left of me, a corpse collapsed in her doorway, and she’d send me away without a backward glance.  I put myself through a hell worse than what I knew scrounging for food as a child just for the slim chance of having her tell me I was doing a good job.  Most of the time, she beat me.  Electrocuted me for daring to speak out that she was working us too hard.”

When Catra opened her eyes, she noticed no difference.  What stared back at her was so profoundly dark that it swallowed her small frame.  Depths ink black, tangible like falling down into starless night.

“But that wasn’t what was worst.  It was knowing that no matter what I did, it was never enough.  I was never enough.”

Behind her, she felt Melog.  The fiction of something pressing at her back.  So feather light she must have imagined it.

“When the dust settles, I don’t recognize who I am half the time.  Whatever’s come crawling out the end of the sewage, filth daubed over my cheeks, I don’t know which Catra’s emerged.  But I think I wouldn’t mind if it’s the one that’s talked to you.  The one you cared about.”

“Force Captain, I…”

“Nah, you don’t have to say anything.  Just know that even if I don’t make it back, it was worth it having you listening at the end.”

“Don’t make it b-  301, don’t speak nonsense.  Once the mission is over, you are to report to me its results, and – and in person if need be, if that’s what it takes for me to ascertain your status.”

Catra said nothing.

"301, It's just a scouting mission."

The words were quick and darting.  Tinged slightly shrill.  Catra pursed her lips.

"You said so yourself.  You did!"

“You and I both know there’s more to it than that.  Whatever I’m supposed to do here, I’m not meant to make it back.”

“Force-”

The earth shook.  Catra scrabbled for purchase as cracks splintered the ground beneath her, as they slithered up and along the walls so what little foundation there was crumbled.  Her knee clattered under her and she cried out as magma spurted between the openings.  Molten and liquid, it hungrily seethed across broken flooring as Catra tried grasping a nearby pillar for balance.

“301!  Come in, Force Captain!”

The floor of the cave collapsed, fell out beneath her completely as her claws screeched across stone until abruptly they clutched only air.

“Force Captain, please respond!  Catra!  Catra!!”

As Catra plunged through darkness, her body limp, limbs suspended above as if from strings, her last thought was how her name had never sounded so pleasant coming from anyone else.

Chapter Text

She awoke to the glow of heat.  Pain lanced through her ankle while she struggled to her hands and knees, breaths rattling the length of her chest as she slowly inspected the damage.

Countless bruises along her arms, but she could barely see them for the charcoal remnants of where she’d been scorched.  Her wrappings fell about her, the ends of them blackened and covered with soot.

Around her, she observed, stretched a molten lake.  It lapped against sparse shores of bedrock almost serenely, punctuated occasionally by the odd drifting unmelted column.  She herself was on a narrow strip of land, more continuous than any other yet still alarmingly thin, the sides of it already breaking loose among the magma.

She tapped at her ear.

“Come in.  Operator?”

Nothing.

The pressure was suffocating.  It pressed in on her so relentlessly she stumbled over just as she managed to stand.  It confined her in tandem with her injuries, and she could barely breathe.  Her lungs burned with the effort.

Something glimmered along her skin so thinly it was invisible.  But she felt it.  A lucent veil that made the hairs on her arm stand on end.

“Come in.”

Silence.

So she was to die here, alone.  Crushed by the planet itself as the land beneath her fell away and let the flames lick at her until she was eaten.  It wasn’t the worst way to go, she mused.

The finger at her ear clicked again.  A perfunctory sort of gesture.

“Anyone there?” She hummed, her voice feeble and parched.  Her eyes were about to close.

“..tra.  Catra?  Please respond.”

She blinked.

“Hello?”

There was a pause, then a blistering crackle, as if the tenuous connection didn’t know how to process the speed of papers and machinery being crammed forcefully aside.

“Force Captain?  Report, Force Captain.”

“Hey.”

“You’re alive.”

Every other syllable came coupled with friction, sundered by static, but even amidst the poor reception Catra discerned her operator’s breathless relief.

“Are you alright?  What happened?”

“Cavern was unstable.  Earthquake sent everything to shit and I fell.”

“You…fell?”

“Yeah.  A long drop, I imagine.  I’m somewhere below the crust, surrounded by magma.  Feel like I’m about to be squeezed ‘til I’m nothing.”

“How are you even breathing?  The heat and pressure should have…”

The thought went unfinished, as if her operator was afraid to speak it into being.

On cue, a light feathering against her side.  A tail wrapped gently about her waist.

“Oh.  I get it.  Melog saved me.”

“The…cat?”

“The fall should’ve made me paste.  And even if I somehow miraculously lived it, I should’ve died instantly down here.  But Melog’s put some sort of shield around me.  I still feel like I’m seconds away from having my bones welded together, though.”

Astonishingly, behind her was her pack.

“You were busy, huh?” She murmured, rubbing Melog’s ear absentmindedly.

She rummaged through its contents.

“Ah, there we go.”

She slowly, painfully splayed out her findings and began looping her arm through a socket.  A vague shuffling commenced of folded fabric, distended support rings, and joints layered with ribbed mechanical structuring.

“Force Captain, what-”

“It’s a compression suit.  I was meant to come down here for my mission anyway, just less catastrophically.  This was how I was supposed to cope with the pressure.”

When she finished putting it on, she sighed, breathing easier.  She had no mirror, but imagined she looked ridiculous, arms ballooned out by gas, the rest of her funneling it along bulky rings along pockets of abrupt volume.

Even taking a few steps in it was exhausting.

“Your mission?  Force Captain, you-”

Her ear whispered a shaky breath.

“You should retreat, Force Captain.  Attempt this another time, appeal for mercy.  I can vouch for the unforeseen circumstances. They won’t consider it a failure and punish you if I-”

“Means a lot,” It strained Catra to smirk.  “Really, it does.  Honestly, I’m with you.  Risking my hide, and I don’t even know for what.  I’d get out if I could.”

She looked around, letting her shoulders fall.

“But it looks like they got me in a fix.  I’ve come this far. Might as well see for myself what’s got ‘em so spooked they had to send me into these godforsaken depths.”

Catra limped along the narrow path, the bulk of her suit causing her to sway precariously.  She gingerly attempted to avoid putting weight on her ankle but it burned nonetheless.

“Hey.  How close am I?”

“Are you sure you shouldn’t…recuperate somewhere?”

“The longer I’m idle the worse it’ll be.  How close?”

“The connection is too muddled to tell.  I’m sorry.”

“But I’m going the right way?  It’s there in front?”

“Yes.”

Sweat trailed her chin, coated her trembling fingers, clung to her brow as she put one foot in front of the other.

“God, it’s itchy in this thing,” Catra chuckled, shoulders wracked in discomfort.  Her hand, bloated by fibers, went up to bump against silicone padding, her fingers on the inside twitching at phantoms, unable to broach the material.

She’d slowly but surely reached an opening.  A crack, sifting up to the ceiling, split just widely enough that Catra could force the extremities of her suit through.

It spilled into what seemed a reminder of the caverns she’d fallen from.  Stone enclosed the space so what little illumination was only afforded by the slivers of magma that leaked from cavities dispersed over darkened surfaces.

The heat did not relent.  Even through the suit, pressure carved into her back, clenched her musculature until she hunched over, hands clasped like steel over her knees.

She gasped quietly, gulping in what fetid air the suit allowed.

“Force Captain, please, you can’t…this isn’t sustainable.”

“Can you call me Catra?”

“What?  I…”

“It’s okay if not.”

Catra panted for moments more, but then grimly firmed her stance and trudged further in.

Her operator’s voice came in short flares, worn and distorted.  But to Catra, it was still melody.

“Catra, then.”

Catra smiled, even as her vision began to blur.

She’d descended the length of the inner caves through naught but sheer will.

The suit hung heavy on her frame, the plastic of her faceplate fogged with breath.

Panting sharply, she slowly lifted her gaze towards what loomed before her.

A spire of metal. 

Unlike everything she had seen thus far upon landing, it was unnatural.

Hard edges and sheets of steel folded in on themselves to form the main features of the structure, poised high by its foundation of metal roots, spidering out from where it was welded to the ground. 

A dull thud resounded every now and then from the defunct ridges harshly slung together to form a chamber.  It sounded like a heartbeat.

Catra dragged herself to what appeared to be the main console, a series of dials and levers protruding over the surface of it like crumpled newspaper.

“So this is it, huh?  The reason I’m here.”

Her vision swam.  It was getting harder to breathe.

She gave the controls a cursory glance, running her fingers along telltale bumps, long rusted over.

She thought of her vague mission parameters.  What little they told her.  Before this, all she knew was that she was to scout her objective, and further, when she reached it-

“Maintenance,” She whispered.

She fiddled with the dials.  The interface hummed to life, muted sparks igniting along worn wiring, the screen a pale, sickly green.  A waterfall of text cascaded down its center alignment.

Catra’s pupils darted quickly along with the information, bouncing from one periphery to the other in rapid succession.

The scorch marks adorning her cheeks stretched as it slowly dawned on her, weariness warring with dread.  Seams were all that held her together.

“Catra, what is it?”

“It’s this planet.”

When Catra offered nothing more, her operator tentatively spoke.

“I’ve finished…probing a little further.  Into the archives.”

Nebulously, Catra recalled a conversation in which she flippantly attempted coaxing her operator to use her full talents.  The latent expertise that Catra could tell was being coyly concealed.  It seemed so far way.  A dream, perhaps.  Color that had once slashed across her heart like torn drapes, smile dark, an ocean spilling into the annals of her mind and the gleam of red, of melody she could touch only with eyes closed. 

She was adrift.  Her foot stumbled along nearly nothing.

“Catra?”

“Sorry.”

She’d murmured it faintly.

“Go ahead.”

“Y-Yes.  Well, I’ve managed to access those files we’d…um, talked about earlier.”

Yes.  Restricted access.  She knew her operator was good.

“This planet is…was once called Krytis.  Much of what was blotted out by clearance has been erased, but I can at least tell that the reason for it being held so close to the chest is, like you’ve confirmed, magic.”

Catra didn’t respond.

“Force Captain?”

“I’m here.”

“We are on a monitored frequency,” her operator repeated from a time, to Catra, far bygone.  “So I will tell you that according to these files, Lord Prime had a particular disdain for magic.  It was beneath him.”

Ah.  His weakness.  She wanted to laugh.  She wanted for her operator to have that.  To know that Catra understood and shared in it, how clever her operator was.  How cunning.

“Once, Krytis was brimmed with magic.  It swelled with it.  No, the planet itself breathed it.  Its ecosystem, its native life, they were fundamentally composed of it.  Krytis was magic itself.”

“What happened?”

“Well, it…” there was alarm mingled with the melody.  Catra’s reply had grown feeble. 

“I’m afraid from then on the records were wiped.  I don’t know how it became the wasteland you crossed.”

“I do.”

Her operator gave a softly startled sort of hum.

“While I was on this mission,” Catra’s voice had diminished to a whisper.  “I wondered for the longest time what I was meant to do.  How could I know, once I arrived, with such listless instructions that told me essentially nothing?”

Her fingers trailed the console sluggishly, arriving near the bottom of it, which panned out its edges to a dull rim.

“But it can’t be clearer to me now.  I’ve read through the basic systems of the machine in front of me.  Its directives come from something known as the Heart of Eternia Project.”

“Eter- what did you say?”

“Yeah.  Pretty fitting you’re here with me, somewhat.  Or maybe ironic.  Prime’s genocide of the First Ones was always murky.  Forever another notch on his belt, another smear on his chalkboard of violent colonizations. It was easy to discount it as such and sweep it under the rug of all the other civilizations he’d conquered.  Yet another neck beneath his heel, and who’s to question how it happened?  I assume even you don’t have the details.”

“I…I don’t follow.”

For a moment, black encroached the screen’s bile.  Catra blinked rapidly, trying to ward it off another moment longer.

“I’m mostly guessing, based on this thing’s schematics.  Eternia, your homeworld, was the first place Prime tested it.  He’d stolen the technology from your people.  Weaponized magic.  Technology that bound it, encased it, repurposed the natural inclinations that magic trailed through.  The Heart of Eternia.  It siphoned it all.  Every drop of magic was drawn into the planet’s core, or perhaps like here on Krytis, closer to the crust.  You must have been off world, because nothing could survive the devastation that followed.  Eternia, wiped clean with what was once its native processes.”

Catra’s knees gave out and she had to clutch at the console to struggle to keep upright.

“Catra!”

“‘m fine.  I’m fine.  It happened here, too.  But prematurely.  Still mostly did its job.  Like I’ve seen, there’s nothing out there.  Well, almost.”

She glanced at Melog, fondness traced imperceptibly along her charcoal grimace. 

“Ever since, this Heart has laid dormant.  Biding its time.  Gathering up what was left of Krytis’ natural resources within this chamber.  For years it’s been quietly stealing it.”

“Surely, L-Lord Prime wouldn’t just let it go off like that?  What’s to gain from wasting this power that could help him cement control over whoever still resists him?”

Catra grunted, using the last of her energy to heave herself level with the controls.

“He fears it.”

She’d spoken it softly, like grains of sand to a sieve, like something black sprouting from a ribcage, a lake languidly stained with a ripple of mist that spread to its shores.

“He doesn’t understand it.  It’s alien to him.  He craves control, but despite the Heart, from the little I’ve seen of this world-”

Melog lapped at the char on her face somberly.  Their tongue was rough, but electricity was left idly where Catra was touched.

“You can’t control magic.  The forces of nature, they’re something vast and unknowable, meant for us to live among, for us to grow with and return to. For Prime, that is meaningless.”

Catra forced herself into motion.  Her fingers ran across the keyboard, adjusted parameters, settled gauges into new positions.

“What are you doing?”  Catra was surprised her operator could even hear it, the sounds of her work so faint.

“I was wrong.  It appears I’m allowed to make it off and back to base.  My objective is to reactivate the Heart so the planet can finish what it started years ago and devour itself.  The accumulated magic will implode, just like with Eternia.  Prime won’t have to worry about magic threatening him ever again.  When I do, a beacon will be sent to the nearest Horde satellite to let them know the job is done.  I guess it’s a lot of misplaced faith at that point but if they feel like it, whoever’s close enough can pick me up before the planet combusts.”

“Oh.” 

Catra’s ear brimmed with something no less lyrical, yet something askance with relief, yet something mixed with turmoil.

“That’s…good.  You’ll live.  I’ll need that report, after all.”

A struggle to impart, but there was sincerity to it.

Catra smiled.  Slits of burnished gold, of storming seawater, peered behind nearly closed lids. 

“Thank you.  For being with me.”

“There’s no need to-”

The machine whirred.

An eclectic cascade of paper from Catra’s ear.  A maelstrom, and if Catra could hear fear, perhaps in her delirium, this was it.

“Catra, what did you do?”

Consciousness began to lapse. The Heart loomed like something pale, grey, corpselike, clouded at its edges, a fog picking at her extremities.

“May I know your name, at least?”

“Catra, stay awake.  Talk to me!”

“Is that a no?”

A distinct noise.  So faint it could’ve been wind.  Could’ve been the traces of lingering magic.  A sob.

“My name is Adora.”

“Adora.”

The contours of her lips formed around every syllable.  Traced them like they were precious.  Something vast gliding among deserts, oceans crawling at the behest of moons, starlight in her blood, a fragile thing cocooned in the gale, thrumming along the warmth of her skin and the squirming magma, small enough to be cradled in her palms.  Adora.

Through her earpiece, Catra heard Adora crying.  Still, it was music.

“Catra, hang in there.  Please.  You need to…please.”

“I couldn’t do it, Adora.  I’m sorry.  The timer’s been set to release the magic instead.  Back into Krytis.  Give it a chance to be.  The chance I wasn’t given.”

And as she collapsed, it was broaching darkness.  Nothing else.

“All I wanted,” a shuddering breath.  “Was to know I meant something.”

“You do.  You mean everything.  Catra.”

A click.  Gears groaning from years of disuse.  The cavern began to tremble.

“Catra.  Catra, Catra!”

Adora was screaming, and idly, Catra thought it must have been so embarrassing for her, back in the office.  What would her coworkers think?

Magma pooled.  The Heart throbbed.  Its lacings of metal burst at its seams, gushing steam. 

No longer was there melody.  For Catra.

“Melog,” Adora sobbed.  “If you’re there, if you can hear me.  If you care about Catra at all.  I’m begging you, Melog.”

Amidst the wide, cavernous area it was but a pinprick of sound.  A quiver of subdued static from the tip of the prone visitor, slumped on a strip of land as magma poured through the cracks.

And then, blue.  Sundering, deafening blue.

The first thing Catra understood was blue.  Her fringes were awash with it.  A looming, steely blue that came into focus, like the parting of clouds.   

Framing it were threads of gold, wisps drifting gently across disheveled features and frayed cloth, across a collarbone defined by the strain of leaning over.

Catra’s vision coasted between acuteness and the bleary clutches of sleep, until she blinked away the haze.

There was blue, curled in the corner on polished floor.  Melog. 

But the color that woke her belonged to a woman.

“You’re awake.”

Oh.  That voice.  Even unmired by static or the sludge of distance, she would recognize it anywhere.

The gaze from above her was unreadable.  Brows furrowed, perhaps.  A shadow cast by her operator’s body, hands gripping metal rails on either side of Catra so she was boxed in.  An intensity to the stare that had Catra shivering from spine to toe.

She took in other things.  Gauze over her cheeks.  Her ankle in a cast, suspended by an elastic sash hung on an extension of the rails that pressed against the ceiling.  Her entire body confined in heavy sheets to the wide mattress beneath her.

Her surroundings were that sort of spartan that came with devoted travel.  The telltale clinical sheen of something built for efficiency.  Walls so starkly pale they seemed to close in on her.  A ceiling of artificial, bulbous lighting at once too bright yet dimly flickering so it washed over her face and painted it akin to a corpse.

“Adora?”

Adora’s lips quivered, but she tamped it down.  She stood straight, giving Catra more space to breathe.

“You are such an idiot.”

If Catra thought her voice was melody before, now she was enraptured.  Blonde tresses fell clumsily about Adora’s shoulder as she collapsed into a folding chair set up by the bed.

“Wow, rude.”

“Such, such, such an idiot.  What were you thinking?  Oh, you weren’t.  Such an idiot.”

“Hey, hey,” Catra was offended.  “I’m not sure how I’m alive, but that’s the first thing you’re gonna say to me?  I’m not one to brag – sincerely, at least.  I mean, I thought I was being kinda noble?”

“Noble?  Noble?”

Catra swore she saw steam billow from Adora’s nostrils. 

“You plunge into the depths of a dead planet without so much as a consultation,”

“That wasn’t my fault!”

“You crawl, half-dead, to the Heart, not telling me anything until it’s already up and running and you’ve done the deed,”

“Adora, what was I supposed to-”

“You reject the one possible thing that could save your life,”

“I couldn’t let them-”

“And commit treason.”

That stopped Catra in her tracks.

Of course.  She forgot, in her emotional throes, that she and Adora were strangers.  Adora was her operator.  Even by whatever miracle Catra lived, Adora was duty bound to report her, and Catra’s ultimate defiance would not go unpunished.  The Horde would claim her, as it did so many across the universe.

“I get it,” Catra was somber.  “Do what you have to do.  I meant what I said.  I’m grateful you’re here with me at the end, and dying having knew you is about as good as I can wish for.”

Adora looked at her.

And she seethed.

“Idiot.”

“Okay, if you need me to lend you a thesaurus-”

“Do you really think that by coming here, saving your sorry self from yourself, I haven’t also committed treason?”

Catra’s throat went dry.  Oh, but this was so much worse.

“No, Adora, I’m sure you could put in an appeal,” some desperation creeped into her rasp.  “I’ll talk to them.  Say you didn’t know anything until it was too late, you were just following protocol-”

She’d stolen Adora’s livelihood. 

“Our entire correspondence is in their records,” Adora responded grimly. 

Catra floundered, sitting up.

“But your entire life.”

“The Horde is all I knew,” Adora nodded. 

“I don’t what to say.  I’m sorry.  Adora, I’m sorry.”

Adora bit her lip.

“You still don’t get it.”

But Catra did.  If it weren’t for her…

Adora drew herself up.  She marched over, the prim gray of her uniform almost indistinguishable from the drab walls.

Catra winced, bracing herself.

Until she was bewildered by warmth.  Enveloped in it.  Adora was clutching her so tightly that Catra couldn’t tell where she began.  What flesh was hers.  Strands of hair wafted over her, and with it, a whiff of cinnamon and sweat. 

They were pressed so closely together Catra caught the scent of salt.  Could follow minutely the trail of tears streaming down Adora’s cheeks without even turning to look.

“Catra, I don’t care about that.”

She hiccupped.

“Do you have any idea how scared I was?  How terrifying it was when you stopped responding?”

Catra’s arms were cinderblocks.  She wanted desperately to reach with them and return the embrace.

“Do you have an inkling of what you put me through?  All I could do was listen.  I was helpless to do anything but hear your death.”

Catra swallowed.

Very painfully, she bent one arm enough to touch Adora with her pinky.

“I’m sorry, Adora.”

Adora let go, sighing.  Surreptitiously turning around to run her sleeve over her face. 

Perhaps unwisely, Catra attempted humor.

“You really broke procedure into smithereens for me?  A stickler like you?”

Adora glared at her. 

“What I did was sever myself from the Horde entirely, because to do anything else would be to let you actually die.  This ship we’re in right now is standard issue, stolen right out of the cargo bay.  I’m sure word has already spread of our sedition and they’re probably scrambling the scouts as we speak to find us.”

“You did that.  For me.”

 Catra echoed her sentiment sincerely.

“Of course I did,” Adora sniffed.  “It’s not like my doubts about the Horde came from nowhere.  Talking to you just further put things in perspective.  I wasn’t ready, maybe, to do something like this.  Maybe I wouldn’t ever be.  But it doesn’t matter.”

Adora looked at her then, and Catra felt like she was back in the cavern, the ground falling away beneath her, she was suspended, heat closing in and her heart became dust, the rest of her twisted by pressure, such was the fever of Adora’s gaze.  It was scalding, an incandescence that threatened to undo Catra by the thread that made her, and for a fleeting moment she remembered the feeling of magic.  For a moment, Adora was the cinders of a distant star made tangible.

“All that mattered was you.”

Catra was dumbstruck.

Seeing as Catra couldn’t muster words, Adora continued.

“As your operator, I was the only one with access to your grounding unit and its coordinates.  It would stay this way until I reported in.  Well, that wouldn’t happen.  I was panicking, so I bolted to the bay, disconnected the ship from the network so they couldn’t track us, and set a course to Krytis with the thrusters on max.  Thankfully the ship came supplied with food and I didn’t just doom myself to drifting through space as a corpse.”

“But,” Catra’s jaw finally worked.  “It takes days to get here from base.  The only way someone could get here in time was the Heart’s beacon to the nearest-”

“I know.  It took days.  Really, it wasn’t I who saved you.”

She looked behind her.

“Melog either heard me through your earpiece or they already decided they were going to help you.”

On cue, Melog lumbered over and stretched contentedly beneath Adora’s gentle touch.

“I don’t know what exactly they did.  All I could hear was this great bundle of static.  The connection afterwards vanished so, honestly, I just became more scared.  Somehow, by the time I touched down, you were above ground where the coordinates indicated, unconscious but alive.  And encased in some sort of barrier, probably the same one you mentioned back in the caves.”

Whenever Catra regained feeling in her fingers, she was going to spoil Melog rotten.

Adora shuffled over, pressing a button at the foot of the bed Catra couldn’t crane far enough to see.

The bed shifted, its rails folding over as wheels sprouted from below, screeching lightly against the alloy plating of the floor.

“Uh, are we going somewhere?”

“Thought you’d like to see the fruits of your nobility.”

Adora said it snidely, still clearly stung by Catra’s recklessness.

Hands pushing at the rails, Adora wheeled her patient over to the shuttle doors, which seethed open for them in a rush of steam.

And Catra nearly started crying herself.

Before her was a meadow.  Not the sparse swaths of yellowing shrubs that she attempted to pass off as a forest, but the unfolding of green before her.  Flowers, blooming profusely, a cavalcade of deep crimson hues that rippled in the breeze, gleaming like jewelry.  Thickets of undergrowth where trees cast long fingered shadows, and most astonishingly, the burrowing of creatures among mounds of fresh dirt.

Not many of them, and desert still clearly loomed past the horizon, the sheen of red coating the earth like she remembered it, but to have this at all, to have it unfurl before her like this, like color had bled from where she touched the Heart-

It was overwhelming.

For the first time, Adora smiled, choosing not to comment on Catra’s unshed tears.

“I could kill you for what you did to yourself,” Adora grumbled.  “But you did this, Catra.  You.  You are the most amazing person I know.”

Catra forced her shoulder back with a pop, alarming Adora. 

“Hey-”

Her hand clutched at Adora’s firmly.  Fervently, like if she let go Adora and the sight before her would melt away into her dreams.

“What now?” Catra asked quietly, not trusting herself to say more.

Adora fell silent.  Clearly having pondered this question for however many days she was left to her own thoughts while caring for Catra.

“Well,” she mused.  “Obviously, we can’t go back to the Horde.  And we can’t stay here.  They’re probably already on their way, even if they don’t know exactly where on the planet we are.”

A moment of panic swelled, slick as heat within Catra’s chest.

“But…Krytis.  They’re going to-”

“It’s okay,” Adora stroked her hair with calming gestures.  “The Heart is gone, you made sure of that.  Maybe L-”

She rapidly shook her head as if to dislodge what was within.

“Maybe Prime is afraid enough of this place that he tries something else.  Eventually.  But there’s time, and I’ve heard rumors of there being people willing to stand up to the Horde.  I guess they’re our best bet if we want to save this place.”

Catra frowned.

“You mean Etheria?” She had heard the same, but it was a myth.  Children’s folk tales meant to instill feeble hope in the scattered remnants of those left in the wake of the Horde’s bloodshed.  For the Horde itself, it was propaganda.  Insects to be quashed, to be piled upon the other, maggots feasting on their cadavers, the nigh-immutable idea that the only resistance possible was a fairy tale.

“Adora, if it even exists, we’d never find them in our lifetime.”

Abruptly, Catra realized what else Adora had said.

“And, ‘we’?” Catra’s blood had long since thrummed with Krytis’ blood.  She knew this planet had transformed her, imbibed her as she had it.  She was left changed by walking its earth, and its death was as much hers.  “You’d be willing to help me protect Krytis?”

“Catra,” Adora was almost exasperated.  “You’re not going anywhere without me.  Not again.”

“You hardly know me.”

Adora fisted her knuckles into Catra’s shirt until they were white.

“I know you.”

Catra scoffed, but allowed herself to slide up and lean back into Adora’s grasp.  

“It’s a long shot,” murmured Adora.  “We could scour the ends of the universe and it might not exist.  But at least I’d do it with you.”

As they stepped among waist length reeds, Catra caught Adora’s figure against the dying sun.  It was staunch against the backdrop of dunes and mountains and the sky severed by storms and glistening crimson banks. Red rimmed like a tearstained eye, bleeding into the earth.  Heat, swelling beneath the tongue like a sordid orchestra.  Words coursed to her, cleaved almost painfully beneath the skin by melody among the dust where her heart had been dashed to ash, where it fell upon her bones like drifting snow.

That she mattered.  That Catra meant more.

She clutched the hand in hers tighter, and Adora continued to walk.