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Glimmer always considered herself an intelligent girl.
Sure, she was friends with some geniuses, even found herself dating one, but when it came down to reading people and social situations, she thought she did better than most. These skills were given more attention than even her magic growing up, often seen as crucial for anyone wanting to run a kingdom.
So yes, she was good at ‘getting people’, which is why she was so surprised to find out that Catra and Adora had in fact not always just been rivals.
Really, it wasn’t her fault for assuming so.
Glimmer caught on to the fact that they knew each other, she had vaguely been able to see Catra not taking Adora’s whole ‘switching to the good side’ very well, but not much more (she was in the middle of battle, give her a break).
Their first interaction Glimmer actually saw happened a few days later at the Seagate. While she was kind of preoccupied again (another battle, hello!), the brief encounter said enough.
She realised Adora wasn’t doing much against Catra who was perched on her sword, taunting the blonde with a new badge and generally doing everything in her power to get on her nerves. It almost seemed like Adora was… used to it?
Annoyed, yes, but lacking the deep hurt of losing an ex-close friend.
So Glimmer assumed this was how they always had been.
Clearly, they were just lifelong rivals.
The following months only seemed to confirm this assumption.
The taunting ‘Hey, Adora’ that Glimmer heard more than her own name didn’t seem to be something new, and Catra was more focused on defeating Adora than the Rebellion as a whole most of the time.
After a while, Glimmer figured she had it right and stored the information away.
The first time she ever doubted her judgement on Catra and Adora’s past, was after she was saved by Catra.
She had had some talks with Catra while she was on the ship about how it was growing up with Adora, but, again, she quickly categorized them as moments that grew sweeter with time, memories of a rivalry that felt like nothing in the face of the danger they now faced.
And then Catra saved her, sacrificed herself so that Glimmer could escape, but not for Glimmer. No, Catra did it for Adora.
And then suddenly nothing made sense anymore. Suddenly, she was back with her friends and Adora was desperate to get Catra back, acting in ways Glimmer had never seen her act before. She was able to fully transform into She-ra again and literally revive the other girl for goodness sake!
It was all just a little more… intense than she and Bow had expected. This was certainly not how former rivals usually acted.
Glimmer was finishing off the dishes when she heard Bow slowly enter the room. She was left feeling quite optimistic after dinner, finally making some progress after Catra ate with them.
She dried her hands on a towel and turned to him, flashing a sleepy smile in greeting.
“Thanks for the meal,” he said while making his way over. Glimmer nodded with a hum. Bow was shifting his weight, clearly nervous.
“What’s up?”
Bow rocked back and forth before sighing and leaning on the counter.
“Did you also notice something… different about Catra and Adora?”
Glimmer perked up at this, realizing she might not be the only one to have noticed. “You mean how they act around each other?”
“Yeah,” Bow responded quickly, obviously relieved to not have to explain what he meant further.
Glimmer paused to think for a moment, carefully weighing over her words. “They seem a lot… closer than I thought.”
Bow nodded at this. “I guess we actually don’t know much about them together, huh?” he says while looking over.
This made Glimmer pause again. She really thought she had it figured out, I mean, everything made sense.
“Yeah, I guess not,” she said, but she was already making a new list of observations in her head:
- Adora and Catra really care about each other.
If things had stayed that way, Glimmer would’ve just accepted that her previous assumptions were wrong and that the two actually used to be close friends.
Things however did not stay that way.
The morning after Bow and Glimmer’s talk the trio found themselves in the cockpit, much to Adora’s demise. Glimmer was giving Adora some amazing advice, something about ‘distractions’, when Catra strolled in.
“What’s going on? Ooh, are we messing with Adora?”
Last night was apparently exactly what Catra needed, because she was suddenly back to acting like her old self again. No, seriously, she was acting exactly like she used to.
Catra jumped right into Adora’s lap, clearly finding some delight in distracting the frazzled blonde, and the taunting started right back up.
“Catra, do you have to sit right there?”
“What, I’m not doing anything,” Catra said with a grin.
“Adora, concentrate!” Glimmer interrupted. They didn’t have time for silly distractions.
Catra, ever so helpful, jumped in.
“Yeah Adora, concentrate.”
This was closely followed by a flick of the tail in Adora’s face.
Now in the past, Adora would have maybe thrown a punch or lunged at Catra next, but obviously that didn’t happen now. Instead Adora just moved her hands to hold Catra, bridal-style.
Wait, what? Glimmer did a double take.
Yeah, Adora’s hands were definitely not under Catra’s legs two seconds ago.
Glimmer pushed this information to the side, instead focusing on encouraging her best friend.
Later on she added a second observation to her list:
- Adora and Catra still taunt each other
None of this made sense. The second item on her list brought her right back to square one.
There was a clear solution to her problem: simply ask Adora how she and Catra were as kids.
So that’s what she did.
It was harder than Glimmer thought, getting Adora alone on that ship. Every second Adora could be with Catra, she was. Which made sense, making up for lost time and all that, but it also made Glimmer itch to ask her question that much more.
She finally was able to catch Adora alone a few hours before they landed on Krytis. Adora was sitting on her bed, sword on her lap, when Glimmer came in.
“Hey Glimmer,” Adora said looking up.
“Hey,” Glimmer responded while closing the door behind her.
Adora tilted her head slightly, noticing something was on Glimmer’s mind. “What’s up?”
“I was wondering, and you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, I was just curious really,” Glimmer rambled before taking a breath, “What were you and Catra back in the Horde?”
“Um, well cadets,” Adora answered, looking slightly confused.
Glimmer quickly jumped in to clarify. “No, I meant like, to each other. How close were you guys growing up?”
“Oh,” Adora said, visibly relaxing, “we were really close. She was my best friend.” She seemed to be lost in thought for a second before snapping back. “Why?”
“Well, I always thought you guys had been sort of rivals in the Horde, you know, in some sort of constant competition.”
“What?” Adora laughs, “Why would you think that?”
“I don’t know, you guys seemed to naturally fall into arguing and fighting when we ran into Catra,” Glimmer said, “I kind of assumed that was the norm for you guys.”
Adora thinks for a second. “I mean, I guess it kind of was. It was easy to forget that me and Catra were on separate sides sometimes… And then something would happen that would remind us.”
Glimmer’s silent for a second, giving Adora a moment to get through the painful memories.
“So, you guys were always like that, even as friends?” Glimmer finally asks.
“Yeah, that’s just how we are I think.”
Glimmer hums at this, her brain working to try to make sense of it all.
“It’s kind of our thing,” Adora adds.
And that’s when it clicks. Sure, Catra has a tendency to taunt people, but never as much, or in the same way, she does with Adora. And even with how close Adora has gotten with Bow, Glimmer and all their other friends, she has never acted how she does with Catra.
Because all this time Glimmer has spent trying to figure out their taunts, jabs and smirks, she was blind to the subtle blushes or flustered faces. Those could easily be written off as anger, but Glimmer knew then that that was not what was going on here.
All this time they had been flirting.
Now, a wave of stupidity washed over her. The only saving grace was the fact that she was pretty sure that Adora and Catra hadn’t noticed yet either. She wasn’t about to break it to them that they had probably (most definitely) been flirting for most of their lives, so she decided to keep her findings to herself.
At least, that was the plan.
It was as if her breakthrough had opened the floodgates. Suddenly, all she could notice was the blatant flirting, blushing and bantering going on right in front of her.
She needed to discuss it with someone, just to make sure that she wasn’t hallucinating due to a lack of sleep.
Really, it was for her safety when she brought it up to Bow.
They were walking around the strange hallways of the odd planet and Glimmer found herself walking next to Bow. Catra and Adora were walking a little behind them, already in their own world.
With a quick glance behind her, Glimmer turned to Bow. “Bow, remember the other night, when you asked if I had noticed anything different about Catra and Adora?”
“Yeah… I mean, it seems like they’re back to normal now though,” he answered.
“Well, I talked to Adora earlier, and apparently she and Catra have always been really close growing up.”
“Okay…” Bow answered, sensing Glimmer wasn’t done yet.
Glimmer paused: there really was no subtle way to say this. With a quick glance behind her, that only revealed Adora almost tripping twice (the second time because she was too busy admiring Catra laughing at her for the first trip), she turned to Bow again and dropped her voice to a lower, more serious pitch.
“Bow. They weren’t rivals. They weren’t even just friends, like we are with Adora. They’ve always been like this.”
Bow looked more confused, so Glimmer rolled her eyes and said with a huff, “They’re flirting. They have been for years.”
Bow froze. He blinked once. Twice. Glimmer could practically see the cogs turning. Then finally.
“Holy crap.”
“Yup.”
“Oh my god, holy shit.”
“I know.”
Bow’s jaw dropped even further as a montage of the last 2 years flashed before his eyes.
“The nicknames, the smirking… Oh gosh and the whole ‘Hey Adora’ thing… it was all flirting.”
“All of it.”
“I just… It’s so obvious isn’t it?”
“Apparently not obvious enough, those two idiots haven’t figured it out yet.”
Bow froze for the second time, this time his face filled with dread.
“You’re joking.”
“Unfortunately not, Adora’s convinced that’s just how she and Catra are.”
Bow dragged his hands along his face with a dramatic mix of a groan and a sigh.
“What are the chances they magically figure it out soon? Like, as soon as possible.”
Glimmer huffed a laugh. “Seeing as they have managed to stay oblivious all these years, I would say incredibly low.”
Bow looked ahead with glazed over eyes. “We are not going to survive these next few days huh?”
Glimmer mirrored his expression, already imagining the special kind of torture they would have to endure. “Nope.”