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“I know you’re not a bad person, Catra. You don’t belong with the Horde.”
But Catra ignores her. She lags behind, actually, as Adora leads them through yet more corridors lined with glowing epic poetry – and, at some point, the sound of her footsteps stops altogether, and when Adora looks back, Catra’s leaning against the wall again.
Irritated, Adora marches over and crosses her arms.
“What are you doing?”
“What’d’s it look like?”, Catra says bluntly. “I’m not just going to keep moving ‘til I drop. That’s a you thing.”
“I thought you wanted to get out of here.”, Adora challenges, taking another step forward so she’s practically hovering over Catra now. Slanted wall be darned. The proximity’s making her feel a little odd – it’s probably anger. Yeah, of course it is. Catra’s holding them both back from where they ought to be.
“Fuck, Adora, two minutes is not going to make a single difference.”
On the other hand, Catra seems entirely unaffected – she even elbows herself up a bit to get closer to Adora.
“Especially since I’ve got no idea this is the way out. I’m just trusting you for some insane reason. And you know what? I’m pretty sure you know jack shit about navigating this place, too!”
“All the more reason we should stick together and keep moving, instead of hanging around being lazy!”
Sighing sharply, Adora does a smart left-turn and heads off back down the corridor, making a great show of not checking whether Catra’s following.
That strategy lasts all of about ten seconds, and then Adora stops and turns around again.
The illumination of the words on the walls seems to be following just Adora, and behind her she’s left Catra in an ominous sort of semi-darkness, still leaning against the wall, tail flicking boredly. It’s a full moment before she deigns to even glance at Adora – and her eyes go all reflective when she does. She shrugs.
“I said already, stop telling me what to do. I've got what I came for, and truth be told you’re more likely to get me killed than get me out of here.”
“What’d’you mean, what you came for?”, Adora demands, crossing her arms back again and doing her best to glare intimidatingly.
Catra snickers, and taps her Force Captain badge with one claw.
“My life doesn’t revolve around you, Adora. I’m not some kind of wind-up toy that stops moving once you’re done with me.”
From her pocket, she pulls out a small crystal, and throws it up in the air so it sparkles in the thin light, and catches it in the other hand. And then smirks at Adora.
“That belongs to the Beacon. Put it back where you found it. Now.”
Nervous suddenly, instead of just annoyed, Adora starts hurrying back towards Catra.
“It’s – uh – it’s an ancient technology, and – seriously – you have no-“
“I have no idea what kind of power I’m messing with?”, Catra asks. “Wow. Cliché much? I know what First Ones tech is, and I know what it’ll do for the Horde.”
She tucks the crystal back into her pocket, and strides in the other direction, back toward the destroyed room.
So Adora doesn’t have much choice but to sprint the last distance and tackle her to the floor.
“Oh, fuck you!”
Catra shoves and kicks and elbows – but she seems weirdly reluctant to use her claws, even though the both of them know they’re Catra’s edge over Adora’s raw strength in unarmed combat.
Eventually, therefore, Catra ends up pinned to the ground under Adora. She’s somehow managed to keep the supremely bored/smug expression, and that only serves to stoke the definitely-anger that seems to have settled low in Adora’s abdomen.
Adora gives Catra one hand free, but braces a forearm across her collarbones, so she can’t escape.
“Give me back the thingy.”
“No.”
“Gimme.”
“No.”
“Fine. We can just wait here ‘til the spiders come get us.”
“Fine.”
… Well. They seem to have reached an impasse. The thought of actually searching Catra’s pockets kind of weirds Adora out, so she just stays where she is, staring down at Catra, plotting the next move.
Annoyingly, Catra’s started purring; inaudibly, but Adora can feel it vibrating just slightly through her chest. She yawns without covering her mouth. Rude.
Maybe a minute passes. Maybe another.
Eventually, Adora feels just a fraction more relaxed, and she re-adjusts, putting a little less pressure on Catra.
“Give me the thingy back?”
“No.”
Well. Hm, okay. Adora’s pretty sure she can see a lost cause when it’s staring her in the face.
Onto other topics, then, because she’s really not used to protracted silences with Catra.
“I meant it when I said you don’t belong with the Horde. Please, Catra, you can j-“
Catra slaps Adora. Not hard, but not playfully, either. In the following silence, it’s all too obvious that her purr’s stopped.
Shocked, Adora sits back. She touches her stinging cheek, and feels thin scratches, and her fingers come away with a matching pattern of blood.
“I said already, stop telling me what to do.”, Catra snaps, scrambling out from under Adora and getting to her feet.
And Adora stands up, too, but as soon as she does, the corridor around them blurs and becomes another simulation of a memory – the Fright Zone again, with the distant noise of two little kids giggling. Two all-too-familiar little kids.
Catra groans.
“Let’s just get this over with.”
When it’s obviously Scorpia’s frame in the doorway and not another, equally tall, one, Catra hisses. More to make the point that she’s irritated than anything else, because she knows it won’t be taken for the warning it is.
“I know, I know,” Scorpia says placatingly, “personal space.”
It doesn’t do to look like a sulky child, so Catra unfurls from the comfortable ball she’s in, and stretches out her legs, and crosses them with a nonchalance contrary to the pain that starts crawling up one side of her back.
“If you knew, you wouldn’t be here.”
“Yeah.”
There’s a brief pause, during which Scorpia does no more in the direction of leaving than rock on her heels.
“Yeah, but… you seemed pretty down, earlier. You know? So. Um.”
Catra raises one eyebrow.
“Scorpia, if the phrase ‘upsetti spaghetti’ is about to make a re-appearance, I swear I will eviscerate you.”
Completely uninvited, as tends to be the fashion with her, Scorpia comes and sits down on Catra’s bed.
“You wanna talk, Wildcat?”
To her credit, though, she does choose to stay out of Catra’s immediate reach.
“Never less.”, Catra mutters.
“… Okay.”
Nodding sagely, Scorpia gets up – a little reluctantly, it must be noted – and heads back toward the door.
“Wait.”
There’s another, too-long, pause, before Scorpia turns around again.
“M-hm?”
“… Have a… nice evening.”
Catra’s claws curl into the blanket underneath her hands.
At that, Scorpia beams – “You too, Wildcat!” – and for a second it seems as though she’s about to leap forward and hug Catra, but then apparently she thinks better of it, and nods a bit more sombrely, and finally leaves.
Catra pulls her knees back up to her chest, and rests her aching forehead on them.