Chapter Text
Catra knows why Adora expected her to pull away anytime. From the moment she rescued her from the clones and those three minutes of death, to when she was digging her claws through her red jacket.
It's not only about not showing her emotions or feeling angry, empty, alone.
She does feel that, but at the same time she thinks she is past that anytime.
Cause Adora offered her choice to go, to never see her again.
So Catra realizes now more than anytime before how much thinking it's different from feeling.
Feeling can be mutual and can be alone, it can be done even when you can't think because you're just a child.
Like they were back then.
It can be felt after a strong emotion or something that matters to you or that you think it matters to you.
She sees the red burgundy pants and orange corset staring at her on the bed.
Entrapta told her she would've made her new clothes. She did, yet... Catra knew what was it about.
She knew the genius inventor and scientist, remembered the last bits before Beast Island about her.
Scorpia's offer to wear one of her earliest suits, so she could feel more permanent in her post and confident.
Catra had reacted badly to that offer and even if it was before the Crimson Waste, Scorpia didn't make a single gasp at the time.
Entrapta remembered the color of the pants but not the top. Right.
Cause she wasn't with them anymore when she changed suit... she just.
Remembered the idea.
Scorpia's idea.
Maybe in her mind she still refused to see Catra changed in any way.
And yet.
That forsaken orange top had in itself memories she would've never want to try and understand again.
That time she didn't like the color orange when she was a child.
And that other one, when she did.
In the back of her mind, portal Catra died. That Catra before too and the other one a lot. Either.
Why would she should have been forced to cope with that?
For Adora? Yeah. It was a right reason. Maybe she deserved it.
Maybe it was just.
That after years of trying to avoide the very single succession of things not to end up like her or like the worst parody of the Horde ever done, it was fair she should've be just that.
After so many years of fighting from scratch and searching and sleepless night and starving herself, that she didn't deserve.
Once. At the time.
But now?
Prime's breathing tube crammed down her throat while he held her screams down, the thic burning green metal and leather tearing her back and thighs open, were still nothing to the idea that in some twisted ways, in some corners of the universe, someone or something would still have punished her for what she had done to the Rebellion.
It was simply carved in her heart.
In herself from a very young age.
From...
"You disgraced little beast! Look what you done to Adora!"
"It wasn't me!"
"It's never you! Look at what a curse you are, this is how you repay me, Catra?"
"No, Shadow Weaver, please! It was just me being clumsy, it wasn't Catra's fa..."
Adora standing next to her before all felt down, like her tears, her screams.
Her tights, her nights.
In the same dark, scary corridor.
The same prison.
And she was only 14.
"I should declaw you this very instant!
You should thank Adora. Perhaps I'll consider 10 lashes less and not three whole nights down there this time."
"No, please! No! I'm sorry!"
"I said: Come. Here."
"Catra, no! Please, take me! She won't do it again!"
"Y-Yes! No! I won't do it again, please, I swear I won't do it! I won't! Adora! Adora!"
"Of course you won't. You never mean it, don't you?
Adora. Stand aside, please.
Catra and I need to go for a walk."
It wasn't fair.
It never had been.
From the very moment she was compared to other kids, not only Adora, not only Lonnie or the others.
And she was the one at stake on the torture wheel. Not that it mattered.
It was always orange to her.
Never a strong, never a bold color.
It was disgust and holding and dungeons. And punishment.
Crime.
It was written on her very outside.
Thus, it was the first thing Catra hated.
And killed.
When she first wore that top, after the usual Horde tee everyone got grey for being distinguished from the senior Cadets and young Force Captains, it was her 17th birthday.
She remembered it all to well.
The year before her and Adora had made a bet.
The first one taking out all the bots in the simulation after the race, which was a very difficult, impossible task, would've picked her new outfit and the one of the other for the rest of the years and kinda forever.
Turned out none of them expected to be punished that last year after that, for something so stupid as stealing ration bars for each other.
Or well, not that Adora had done it for her at the time.
She had for her.
When she was whipped at the stake.
"I don't... feel well... I I'm sorry! Adora, I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"
"Shhh, shh. It doesn't matter now, don't talk. It's gonna be ok! I promise!"
She had said, despite her fever.
Even if it wasn't.
But it didn't matter, what did was that Catra still remembered why she had got rid of the orange the first day of her overthrowing Hordak away after the portal.
"M-My shirt... I ... I-It's ruined! It was m-my favourite..."
"I'm gonna buy you an orange top, Catra. From the pieces the older Cadets bring"
"But the rules! Ow! I thought you cared and ... and ..."
"I care about you, Catra. Not the rules.
I care about you."
Still.
The red had always captured her eyes. Legends used to say Magicats couldn't even see it.
Actually, Catra saw all of the color spectrum now and even more sometimes, cause what those legends forgot, was always that she was half human.
Or if scientists put it, half Etherian.
She was even supposed to have magic according to them.
Those library rats weren't cats, anyway.
They would've never known cats couldn't exactly see in the dark but only in the dim light, as well as the color thing.
Seeing every color, feeling every sense, in a sobbed melancholy of alone perceived sadness.
Growing up with the gift of thousand times the normal perception and yet no one like her to love. No one to tell.
The fear of ruining the only light she had in Adora.
She didn't had magic.
But oh, how she wished to have red.
Gross, anyway.
But red... it was safe.
It kinda was something like the stars for Adora.
Catra knew when Adora watched the new stars in the sky she felt better.
She always longed for stars since they were children.
As she came from those stars.
Well, Catra knew she did anyway, but it wasn't the point.
Red mattered for her, not for the Horde, not for Adora.
So when she could first pick she picked blood, even if she wished not to with all her soul.
Red her new mask, stealing the paint from the old weapons caskets and without Shadow Weaver whip on her rear, the rare dusts of old leaves potion in the Black Garnet chamber, black water, a single molded moldy berry to make it more purple, more like a dark dying rose in the nights near the river next to the Fright Zone.
Shiney and new like meds on her ribs after the Battle of Brightmoon.
Even the Fright Zone sky now was more burgundy than orange.
Well, recently, at least.
She still didn't know if it was still april or may.
Judging from the stars it could've been any season. There wasn't time in wider space. And at the same time there was everytime.
She knew that mask mattered for her, that color did.
Shadow Weaver staring at it from her own shattering one, as she hit her with bare claws.
The hair mattered for her, since the very first time Shadow Weaver had tried to cut it. But couldn't.
But what mattered to her always used to be bargained at higher costs in her painful state of living.
"Again!" For the 25th time the nerb cracked on the skin under her back, another hit tore her right thigh open, Catra emptied her lungs out like some kind of magic was tearing her apart.
"Don't make me lose all day, Cadet."
The menace hung openly over her bare flesh, like an execution promise, but only when the sorceress placed both her hands on her, burning with red jolts Catra remembered it was just a memory.
"I am sorry!! I'm sorry! I said it ..."
And now...
"You have to say it again!"
Catra whipped her foot on the prisoner's back, Shadow Weaver's face closer to the scattered ration bar on the cell's floor.
"I would rather die at my own hand than onto your madness, Catra! I should've drowned you away 17 years ago!"
But the new second in command was strong, reckless and ruthless cause that sorceress always forgot Norwyn's first lesson:
if you teach water how to burn keep the fire away from becoming an ocean.
"18." Catra spit in her face.
"I turned 18 when the Rebels had your precious defected. She won the battle, but I won you."
The old woman watched the cat playing with the prey.
"What do you want from me, Catra? Haven't you said you are happy to see me in this place?"
"Oh no!" The girl grinned, purring while shoving Shadow Weaver on the ground till her very neck.
"Oh, no, mother. Not yet!"
"You have to let go of this past life,
Little Sister."
White claws shoved her back as the green fluid filled her lungs.
"No! No! Please! No!"
Back in the cell, the rat was rotting, the lost red princess chanting her glories.
"Tomorrow it'll be one year Adora is gone.
For now I lost a battle but you'll never have anything to lose."
She kicked the witch's shoulder while the old woman hissed.
"What have you done to yourself?!"
The coughs shocked a wave of vomit out of her throat, but her old ward's revenge was more important.
"Kneel! And eat like you made me do 6 years ago! On the ground!"
She composedly screatched, tasting her ashamed growls.
"For every fuckin time I had to kneel in this very cell in front of you and your whip with my trousers down and for your stupid whired cables and your belt!"
The sorceress hanfed a dull plead but she wasn't heard.
"For every fuckin time you closed me in this cell, while Adora was crying, for every fuckin time you beat me and threatened me and screamed in my face!"
Shadow Weaver collapsed as Catra yanked her up by the hair, spelling every word with a claw mark on her masked frame.
"For every fuckin time you gave me tortures at night with a stan baton and not a toy or a fairytale.
For calling me bastard and mistake, while you whipped me on my bare ass in front of the platoons. For breaking my fuckin tail!"
She shoved her down harder.
"With electricity when Adora was slower than me on the races!"
"I was doing you a favour ... ahh! I should've spanked you harder when I still could, aahh!!"
Shadow Weaver striked but Catra was too high to hear. And she was tired.
"For the stake... and the scars i have on my back. And Adora too. For what you did to me when I came in your stupid cave without permission while Adora was watching."
Her voice trembled and the witch grinded her teeth.
"For slapping my bare hip at 7.
For every elecrocution and prison night. For everyday you made me starve. For what you been for Adora but not for me."
Behind the scars on her mask, Beatrix smiled, knowing and remembering how the last sorcerer using that tone on her ended.
"Oh... "
She laughed through the pain, sweet pain. It still worked to strenghten her. She spit blood and looked at her ward.
"But you really are like me in the end... you approve my methods, you still need Scorpia's tea to sleep..."
She coughed, as Catra's eyes flickered like flames.
"You still owe me your life, Cadet."
With a last stretch of her neck Catra turned around and slapped her mask away.
Hearing Scorpia's steps outside, she inhaled and smiled.
Red.
"Thanks, I needed this."
The deep melodic growl bit her like the ninth tail of the whip.
"You owe me your life."
And now...
Now thanks to Horde Prime she was starting to believe Shadow Weaver was right.
Life? What life?
Catra never had one and Prime wanted to take it?
Her mask, hair, blood... the bad things and the good ones she ever did.
It was simply too much.
She had a bad life, they usually took good ones.
It had been a whole misunderstanding.
There had to be.
The red mattered.
The orange didn't, cause she got that top after grievous, agonizing lashes were opened in her back and shoulders.
Adora had visited her in the infirmary, before they had to sneek in there.
It had been forbidden anyway.
The hag's rules.
"She's faking it.
The infirmary is for brave soldiers."
"Please! Help her! She lost a lot of blood, s-she won't make it!"
"I'm ok, Adora..."
"I can't help you kids, I'm gonna get in trouble. Shadow Weaver forbade us to perform medications on Cadets after punishments."
"It wasn't a punishment, she fell!"
"Adora?"
"On on the broken bots! Please! You have to help her!"
That had been the first time Adora had lied for her.
They had sneeked out.
They had made it.
The first time she admitted she needed Adora. She needed to be held, like the child she never could have been.
And in many ways, Adora too.
"Noo! No shot, noo... no ... no" a feverish Catra clingy on her shoulders as the medplace alarm stopped at midnight.
"Y-You gonna get in tr-trouble for m-me ... that's s-sap, Adora ... "
The blonde took the iron heater from the flame so the syringe could get cold, opening the red glowy vial like Norma showed her.
Catra tried to scamper away when the needle was ready but the gashes in her back were too bad to let space to fear. A single tear left the azul eye as Adora slid her blanket up a bit.
"Noo ... no, I'll never do it, I'll be good, I'll never make her mad again, please, Adora... aaah ... ahh..."
"Shh, shhh! It's ok! You won't even feel it, it's ok! You lost too much blood and the fever's high. You need it, Cat!"
"'M gonna ... make you p-pay this, Adora ..."
she hissed again for the burn in her shoulders as her friend kissed her cheek.
"Come on, turn around."
Catra exhaled.
"Look, I'm gonna get that orange top you want after this is all gone.
I swear. But you have to take the shot now, you have to be better, you're gonna be better, Catra! You can't leave me.
We have to rule together. Remember?"
"I-I... I'm c-cold..."
The other cadet took off her red jacket to drop it gently on the brunette's shoulders.
"Shhh! Take it."
"But your jacket? Adora! No! The blood st-stains and ... ahh... fuck!"
Catra shivered.
"Just go. You need it more than I do now."
Then, Adora tested the syringe in the air and smiled at her.
Catra groaned a high pitched "no" as Adora brushed her hair, holding her hand.
"Come on, turn around! Don't be a kitten."
She growled until Adora caressed her ear, whispering the pain away from Catra.
"I hate you..."
Adora held her close.
"I know how brave you are."
"Y-You really gonna... bring me that top if... if I'm gonna do it, Adora?"
"I promise."
And she had simply forgotten now.
In that sense that Catra was dead.
And the most powerful version of herself.
One of the last ghosts she was seeing now, staring at her from the little shower glass in front of her on the ship.
She didn't even want to know how Entrapta managed to fit a shower glass cabin into a space ship. With the glass and all ... she could still remember that piece in her hands when her and Adora were in front of that crystal wall and ...
Suddenly, she held her breath too much and her head started to spin out.
She sat on the bed, out of instinct and jumped up out immediately as if it was made of lava.
But it wasn't the bed the problem.
She turned around, hips and arms still trembling from their last talks.
The "I'm gonna be better" promises and "why did you saved me" ones.
She slowly and carefully rolled and pulled down the grey top and the grey pants Adora had let her take.
They were soft and larger.
But still too much of a kindness for what she had done.
Catra turned around towards the long mirror next to the shower and for the first time since the chipping the night and moments before and the battle, she saw the gashes.
She saw her body for what it was, for how raw and bitter and weak.
Just like...
Catra held the tears in her eyes shut tight as they were waters threatening to break and spill everhwhere.
All of her upper back and lower hips from behind to across her legs, curves and thighs, were barely visible: long green and burgundy lines, still mixed her blood with the green liquid from the pool and the pain she had been through during the last 25 hours.
Or more.
Again, she didn't know the time in there.
She touched the back of her short hair with a trembling left hand as with the right she was holding her back and hips.
She slowly crawled up with the second and down with the first, tip toeing and trying stretching out.
She gasped.
Even her agility was shattered, even her talent.
A shy yawn picted on the small of her lips, instead of a loud scream.
Same as the one she had swallowed hard when he cut her hair.
Or maybe Catra didn't remember.
Maybe she did cry out loud.
She was hoping so.
Yet she simply... let the shower handset fall on the ground hitting a tool on the side who fell broken in thousand pieces of glasses.
She cut her right hand on the side, but it was just a scratch, at least till she saw her right thigh.
The inner part of the other one.
How soaked they were.
And she couldn't take it anymore.
"A-A.. Adora?" She tried.
"Adora? Adora, Adora!!"
She tried again but it was as calling names to help you waking up from a nightmare.
In the nightmare, your voice always sounded so loud. In the nightmare you ran, you could move, could escape.
In reality you would barely made it through a weakened hiss.
You would barely move.
And then it came the worst part, just as she was starting to admit it.
To hear it finally coming for her.
It was like reliving the tragedy in her head over and over.
"Catra? Oh my stars, Catra! Catra, what happened, what why did you do it again, you're bleeding and..."
Adora.
Adora was in the visions.
Adora always came for her in the visions.
So what was now?
What she felt? Now?
"I didn't... mean it, Adora... I ... I didn't mean it!"
In reality it was like she really said bad things to her. That she was disappointed, that she would punish her, that SheRa would.
But she never was, she never did, Catra knew it.
Even when she screamed at the top of her lungs a liberating and exhausted: "Leave me alone! Leave me the fuck alone!"
that was heard all through the ship's walls and roofs and engines, Catra knew Adora was just there.
Was just holding her.
It was like nothing really happened anyway.
Like she knew her secret and she woul've been holding her hand anyway.
Not that she ever came close to second place in all her life before however, Catra thought.
It was still a thought, not a feeling, not a need.
But whatever the reason, it was a certainty, that Adora always came first saving her.
That she came first to things than her.
And maybe, this time was a good thing. Cause otherwise she really would've been alone explaining how her ghost from months before was telling her to "Get it together" or "getting it over with" while she was destroying a shower made of glass after being almost killed by an old psycho alien fanatic.
Adora knew the cut on her thigh was nothing compared to those on her back and still she said nothing.
Adora knew they both had contraceptives implants in their arms but also that gladly Catra would have ripped it out when she was finally free.
Cause she did it too.
And how frightening it had been the first time for her.
It had been a violence done to both under the garnments of a right for them at a so tender age that they didn't even knew what meant to be women.
But maybe, maybe she also knew what could happen to that if you stressed yourself out a lot.
And now that she thought about it, Catra never seemed to know nothing about it before or rest or relax. Before.
Or maybe she did? She didn't really talk about herself anyway.
Not even to her anymore.
Not since Thaymor or.
Forever.
So when now they were holding onto each other's naked frame in a warm shower, far away from past and future, from their worlds and those of the one who was hunting them, Adora didn't know what to say. And Catra didn't know either.
They just needed to be like this.
To live again that part. That was ripped out years before.
That now was like Catra's body.
Like the life inside her dead body.
Bleeding out, anyway.
And it was good that it was.
But good didn't always meant painless.
Good, didn't meant that she wanted it yet.
"I... thought you would've kicked me out. And I didn't know what to do. So I called you because... I-I took the implant out years ago and then.. and then I never got it back so I... I..." Catra flinched, barely starting it.
"It's ok! It was me telling you could call me, anyway. It's all good now, Cat, here"
"Fuck..."
"Here. Let me wash it again.
You know I've been there. Here."
"Yeah no, I I mean, as long as you don't push it too much it's ok. I just... "
Catra covered her eyes with a hand.
"Of course not" Adora smiled a bit.
"I remember! 90 degrees all over the wall and barely the steam and little drops touching your fur.
See? I studied!"
"Of course you did" Catra stared back, not holding back a smile, even though her head still felt heavy and throbbing. Like her all thoughts and brain still wanted to burst out in flames.
To hurt her.
"Come here you!" Adora cooed, in her stupid habit of disassemble situations into several pieces when it came to others and simply laughing it out if it was her or Catra.
Or at least it was what Catra used to think.
"I thought it was fine, I mean... it happened to me long ago." She kept it on.
"Uhu.. you ripped it too?" Catra said, turning around and licking some wounds on her foreharm and wrist.
"Shit, I think it's a bit twisted! Those washed-up hacks! Couldn't have me held down any better. Tiny white lab rats! Suckers."
Adora hugged her back, blinking.
"What now?"
Then she took her hand.
"Let me see!"
"No."
"Catra?"
"I don't need it again, ok?! Go. Now!"
"Where should I go?" Adora chuckled.
"I don't know, go SheRa someone else or I don't know Sparkles! She's been there way worse than myself all this time and you barely even touched her. She needs it more! Ouch." she held her finger to her mouth when it was bleeding again and Adora opened the cabin to take some towels.
"Come on, you're just being your usual stubborn brat self now."
"What did you called me again?"
"I said what I said, come on. You want me to look at those or just rot under the water?"
She smirked, looking at her shoulders.
And Catra was huffing and falling again.
On one side she was glad Adora kept her from falling inside the deeps of her aching mind.
On the other, what if Adora didn't really mean that? What if she was just enduring Catra, telling her what to do or helping so they could lock her out the first step they'd land on Etheria?
Thus she was uncertain.
And with her legs crossed and shoulders tight and hissing face out, she was lashing again.
Eyes wide open.
"Ok, fine, as you wish... but like, it gets cold anyway after some time so, I'll warn you just in case Sp eh I mean Glimmer woud want to do it."
"What?"
It was at that moment she started pulling one slow step and a tiny foot outside.
"You idiots" Catra swallowed hard, out of fear and embarassement, realizing now truly that her and Adora were naked in a dark room on a spaceship talking about sap things.
Not to mention feelings.
"You idiots shower together??"
Adora said nothing for a couple of seconds, then she took her time to handle her the towel, and bursted in a sincere laugh, almost with her eyes full of tears all of a sudden.
"Yeah ahm Catra ah! Shower together, sure!" She said.
Catra said nothing, dragging the towel around her body and tying it over her breasts.
Adora smirked her way out towards Catra, she held her hands behind her back, then without further warning she scooped her up in her arms, making the cat girl squeak, just so she could take her to her room and put her with delicacy on her bed, tummy down, to look after her wounds better.
It wasn't a feeling yet, for Catra.
There were many doors still unlocked and many things they should have to ponder on their paths anyway.
There was the war, Prime still on her back, or both of them, there was what she had done to Etheria.
Even that old hag of Shadow Weaver. Now that she thought about it, that she was seeing the world whole again, having "problem Adora" solved on her side, Catra saw many things she left unset. Not changed.
She promised she needed to change them. Yet she didn't.
Her only worry.
Had been Adora. And the war.
Her war. Not the real one.
Cause the real one had been different for everyone of them.
And yet it wasn't Prime's one.
Maybe at the end none of them was guilty? Maybe all of them were?
She had Adora, so it seemed.
Maybe she could conceive the slight dissonance between the orange and the burgundy in her heart, in her gashes and bruises, still Adora had left on her.
"You know, selfishly sometimes I almost wished you came here before, I mean not only to try food, but because I remembered how you and me always joked around being injured worst. When we were Cadets, remember?"
She played with her claws on the pillow as Adora was healing her cuts with some kind of water and her glow.
Again.
Despite all her protests.
"You joked around it, Adora.
Uhmm..." she breathed all the pain out and some trembling swearing nonsense. Then when SheRa almost disappeared she managed to speak.
"And why did you have to transform again anyway, I thought you couldn't... ouch! Would you just stop? I'm ok, I told you"
"You're clearly not" Adora started being obnoxious one more time.
"Did you ever treated your skin regularly after injuring every spot, Cat? Did you even care?!"
"Adora, I swear to fuck!"
"Did you put retinol on the gashes and did you eat eggs after battle and rest enough and drink enough water? Your skin texture is as bad as someone who ..."
"Came back from the death?!"
Catra heavily answered, as she was crawling on the bed to escape Adora's overwhelming attitude.
"Catra? Come back, I have to disinfect you!"
"Your mom, Adora, it burns!"
"Catra, get back here!"
"I told you I'm ok, I even let you use SheRa again and your idiotic friends help me..."
"Catra, stop crawling over the bed and everywhere..."
"I told you I can take care of myswlf! So what's the problem to you? You feel guilty? Y-You wished you could've just leave me there, don't ya? Maybe... maybe you will whenever we're back or if we're gonna be and... nevermind."
Catra pulled out from her and the bed and went to the clothes Entrapta had settled nearby.
She put the thigh high socks on her sore feet and legs, whining a bit when they touched the gashes and then she buttoned the pants behind her back, hissing again.
When it was the top turn, Adora got it and went back near her, trying to hold her from doing it.
"Catra, I'm.. I'm just sorry, I didn't mean to disturb you like that"
"Then don't come behind me! Ah? I can't... uh. L-Listen, princess.
I... it's been rough in there and I'm still waiting for things to get back to..."
"Yeah. I know."
"How could you know?! Adora?
How?!" And with that she tugged the towel down, raised her neck and hugged her throat, where signs from her scratching her white suit and chipping out and even the breathing tube on the inside, were still visible.
"How could you know?! Uh?"
"Catrina, I... "
The feline gasped and hissed back at her.
Adora didn't know if she was supposed to tell. To say that secret, her real name, her old name.
Out loud like that. To judge her like that after all had been.
If it was even fair.
But she acted out and tough most of the times.
Well all of them.
She didn't want to go to bed mad at her that night again or waiting for her not to suffer anymore or even regret not telling her everything.
So cruel or not, maybe Catra needed it.
"When I broke the sword I couldn't know anything about me anymore. And I agree with that. With you being disappointed and even offended with me whining about something so vain."
"Oh. So now you're vain, you admit it? After three fucking years, Adora?!
After you broke my heart..."
"Because of what you've been through!" She almost cried.
"What could I possibly say with you almost dying out there, Cat?! Why am I even wrong and where?!
At least tell me. Tell me."
"I can't! I can't."
"Ok. Ok, I... I can take that.."
"Then why you keep coming back, pretending you care, Adora?!"
"Because I care, Catra!" She held her shoulders making her tremble again.
"Sorry, I... ah... I didn't mean to, Catra, I..."
She smiled.
Broken.
"As I said." Catra turned to the door.
Adora ran towards it, stopping her.
"When I broke it I didn't know if I could survive! And ... if I could have her back." Adora started to tear up even though she didn't want to.
"And I needed her! Even though I couldn't have her back... I needed her to save you. To have you... b-back."
Adora sniffled.
"To make good on that.
That's why I came there even if I didn't know what I was doing.
It was broken, Catra. I was."
Catra nodded a bit, having the vague certainty that what she said to her about her plan was true.
That shit.
She didn't know how to transform when she went to Prime.
Catra wanted to slap her.
To choke her, to bite her throat and then push and hold and hold it still, in the skin of her teeth, tearing apart Adora until she couldn't breath shit anymore.
Like with the very first mouse she had caught.
But...
She was feeling now.
She was feeling again.
After the chipping and the ritual and the Corridors and all and couldn't deny it.
Not this time.
Not with her Adora.
She held her and Adora held her again.
Until one single, lonely, unfollowed sob broke the silence.
"Hey... uhm, Adora?"
"Cat?"
"Would you... when we're done I mean... if we'll ever get back ..."
"Of course we will get back!" She held her and kissed a tear away of her temple.
"I promised you."
"Yeah me too... I promised you a lot of things, but never made good on ahm... I need you to do something for me.
'Dor."
Adora bent her head over Catra's neck and right shoulder and smiled.
"What is it?"
"Would you keep me from hurting people again back home and like... if I ever... If it gets too much for both sides, promise me you won't hold it only for me. Because you like me, you know."
"I don't l.."
"Adora? Promise me?"
Adora wanted to say her a lot of things.
And while Catra was still hurt from the lashing she had been through, it was impossible telling her a no.
With those eyes.
Even though she needed to set some things on the table.
Cause of course Adora would hold it for her. Always.
And forever.
And when Frosta would've hit her she would.
When Shadow Weaver would've threatened them, she would.
When Perfuma would blame her to have pushed Scorpia aside.
She would hold it for Catra.
And when the Heart would explode behind them on the whole dying fucking planet, she would.
Because only Catra would be there for her, in anytime.
Any red.
Any star.
But now that she still didn't know those things, Adora guided her to the bed, helped her sit in a way it wouldn't hurt her and kept on slowly bathing her wounds in ointments and magic.
She had turned back to her mortal form half an hour before.
Catra didn't even notice it, cause she still had a problem she needed to tell someone.
And given Entrapta was out of sight, as always and that she would have need to tell Adora and not feeling that throbbing pain in some ways anymore, she did it.
She pushed her bad self away and said Adora that she was scared, that she had nightmares and what she needed again.
How she hated that top, what the orange reminded her.
That thank you she wanted to say after that night in the infirmary.
That nod or smile or sap thing.
She wouldn't tell all, that night anyway.
But she owed it to Adora.
It was a start.
"I was trying to reach away and out, but... they wouldn't let me and wouldn't leave me. At the same time.
So it was... appealing. 'Dora.
Painfully enticing."
"You mean in the water? When he threw you in there? Or hit you with that thing? Which one was before?
I'm so sorry. I'm so mad everytime I think about it and..."
Catra closed her eyes.
"Yeah. And it was like.. like it was always a dream. Like a bad dream.
My mind wasn't really there, it's like it didn't happen. But it did.
As well as the chip."
"Mh. When did it start? The dream, I mean, if the pain was still there or.."
Catra closed her eyes, barely reaching for her hand under the blanket, curling on her side, sore, winching.
"I'm just glad Glimmer made it.
She couldn't have done it anyway, I... I know how old is she.
It was in the files, Adora."
She gulped, never having heard Catra calling the queen by name before.
"The pain came back later.
I never... thought I could welcome pain like gasping in there."
She repeated, in her arms.
Eyeing the wall besides them.
Those walls so far yet so tightening in their blue.
Like that old, raspy and still soft blanket.
Blue was so far from red.
Yet Adora's eyes were there.
"Mh.
It doesn't matter now... they're healing, but you will feel them for a while. Just tell me if it gets too much, Cat.
You can tell me when you want."
"I will. Thanks.
Tsk. Retinol!" She laughed it out.
"Come on, Adora. You turned into a princess a day after I left you with them, uh?"
"Seems like. I kinda need my girl to teach me back Horde games.
Maybe"
"You do?"
"Tell me what he did before I came back.
If you want to, of course!"
"Tsk! Dork."
Catra let her closer and closer to her face, lounging over Adora's boobs.
It was cold with her new thights, the blonde had only her shirt on and their legs were crossed.
But no one was ashamed, they grew up like this.
They'd be of kissing each other, not of this.
"After I saved Sparkles he was pissed off he couldn't find you."
"That bastard."
"Well, to be honest, Adora, I think knowing all or not he knew I was gonna help her doing something or that this would happen.
He set the trap. He told me he had plans for me even before and... Her cell was unguarded so that I could easily take Hordak or the other clones down to make her escape."
"Hordak. Yes. You told me he's been chipped before ahm I'm sorry, I didn't mean to..."
"It's fine. Then uhm ow! Shit..." Catra flinched, turning around again, holding her lower side.
"Be careful down there, you."
"Always am, idiot... anyway, then I think he wasn't really expecting for me to do something so... stupid.
It's your field, you know that?"
"What?"
"It's very you. To do something stupid.
I mean. I'm dishonest, Adora.
And a dishonest you can always trust to be dishonest. Honestly, the... heroes ones, you want to watch out for, because you can never predict when they're going to do something incredibly stupid.
No logic. No course.
Just stupid."
"Mh."
"I think it was that.
He said I was beloved in his sight.
Not I ah... after I told him your position.
He would've never expected it."
Catra waited for Adora lashing out on her. But she never did.
Adora only turned facing her.
"You being stupid?"
Catra didn't hesitate.
"Me being you."
Adora didn't know what getting hurt meant years before.
And still then, she didn't know she could get hurt by Catra's sarcastic cynicism even now.
But what got her the most were the girl's eyes.
She would've swore years long from then that whenever she saw Catra's freckles and heterochromatic gaze it was horizon, or stars.
Or ... infinite bursting hope away, itself.
Like an eternal flame burning there and there. And in the past and always.
Now Adora looked her in those shinings and she couldn't see it.
Still there was a flame, still there was something.
But like those stars far away. Gone.
Already broken and bursted a million lightyears away from her.
She could only see their fading light.
Away. Far. From having been broken.
"Hey, Adora? Uhm... You ok? Look, about the never seein you again stuff and my leave me on an asteroid shit, I wanted to say..."
She could blink the hate away only when Catra made her notice, more than before she noticed how beautiful she still looked despite all.
More. She looked hurt, broken.
Adora closed her eyes and roared.
"I wouldn't mind."
Catra turned around.
"What?"
"I said I wouldn't mind, Catra."
She slowly put a finger on the catgirl's plumpy lips, taking a little red drop with her.
"Turning him into dust for what he did to you."
"Mh. Thanks. Me neither...but I still don't wanna talk about it.
Adora..."
Catra snuggled closer to her collarbone and if her gashes weren't killing her she would've considered the offer of sleepin alone, cool down.
But they weren't on Etheria and she wasn't sure to be alive yet.
"Forget tonight. Forget it, now."
Adora pushed her feet more onto the catgirl's ones.
"It's ok, just when you're ready I..."
Catra's breath heavied with what Adora could swear was a lingering kiss on her neck.
"I don't want to, dummy."
"Mh."
"But he did ... make me rememeber the bitch. And when she took me in the dungeons, Adora, I never... I should've told you."
She wanted to scream like she did in the dungeons, to Shadow Weaver, she wanted to tell everything to Adora, but ...
"Look, we need to rest now. And none of us is going anyway." Catra raised an eyebrow as Adora interrupted her.
"Ouch... I thought we were done with the hairbrush. Problem's I need to be able to sit down to help you drive this sh... I mean Darla."
The blonde smiled, touched.
It wasn't very Catra to remember Entrapta's updates. She was really working on it.
And making her blush.
"I know who you used to be, Cat, but here I am the Commander."
Adora succeeded because for the first time Catra's eyes lit up again and she laughed.
"Well, so nothing for me and my suicidal plans?"
Adora chuckled back.
"Nu-uh, it's a counterorder."
Catra closed her eyes and shook her head.
"Mh.
It still burns like space how you suck at my job, princess, but... thank you, you stupid idiot, I guess."
Catra bit her claw but Adora lowered her hand away from her mouth to put it on her own heart.
"My pleasure, milady!"
"I can't get over how Brightmoon fucked you up, Adora, and I ... ow ow ow!"
she cursed when she hit the blanket on the bed too hard, until Adora got her.
"You know I kinda like this new vulnerable side of you..."
"Don't play with fire, Adora!"
"Got it"
She hugged her and Catra purred.
But as for her eyes, the glow was away again.
"I really mean it, Catra.
They'gonna pay."
Catra cracked one eye open.
"They?!"
Adora looked at her.
And when she saw something that anxiety of hers almost finally decided to leave, she knew if SheRa was really coming back, it wouldn't be far.
She remembered Shadow Weaver's words on that forsaken 19th january during the last war. When she came to Brightmoon in her room cause she was dying.
She hated herself for still relying on that past, after all Catra had been through, but she couldn't deny her magic was rage, power and fire as much as healing, life and light.
Love came breaking out and through a thousand cuts in a gashed poisoned heart, it turned into the color of the gone battle, it went into anger and fear and strenght.
But she wasn't afraid. Not of her, not this time.
Not for them both.
She felt red, Adora.
She saw red.
She wanted vengeance.
But it wasn't a good one.
And for the first time she felt ok with it being bad.
"My offer stands."
"I know. I ... the old hag's scars still feel like that time and for Prime I ... uh ... I just don't feel like talking.
As long as I can... feel." Catra smiled, catching her breath.
Adora opened her eyes and touched the feline's nose with hers.
"But you know you could. Or you feel you could... mh?"
She blinked a kitten kiss.
"You want me to stay tonight, does it hurt a lot, won't you get nightm..."
Catra gave the medicine back to her, a finger shushing Adora's peachy scratched lips.
"Yeah, Dummy. Yeah."
Red.
Wasn't orange, repulse or dying.
Catra.
Was Red.