Chapter Text
Act I
All Catra had wanted was for her final year of high school to be normal. Her previous seventeen years had contained enough drama for a lifetime, but, finally, things had started to calm down. A little over three years ago, the foster home where she had spent most of her life had been shut down, and while most of the kids had found new homes in other towns or states, Catra had, for reasons she could not understand, been taken in by Scorpia’s family and been able to stay in Brightmoon. A little after that she’d worked up the courage to come out to Scorpia’s moms’, and they’d been fully supportive of her transition – even the part where she wanted to transfer to a different school an hour away to begin the process; a fresh start.
Now, three years later, she had a new name and looked like a completely different person (if hormones themselves weren’t, strictly, magic, her skill with a makeup brush definitely was.) And with her final year and college applications ahead of her, the two hour commute every week day suddenly felt like an unnecessary hindrance. So she transferred back to Brightmoon High. Her plan had worked; no one recognised her, Scorpia kept her secret diligently, and she got on with the business of being a teenager.
Until fucking Adora had to ruin everything, the way she always did. Adora, who had grown up in the same damn foster house as Catra, who had been her best and only friend for the first twelve years of her life, who had been the golden child, the only one of the five kids at that house to ever get nice things, new clothes. And who, even after having it better than the rest of them, still got to have it even better when, five years ago, some long lost half-sister moved to town and took her away.
Any conversation between the two of them in the year after that Catra either immediately shut down, or broke out into a screaming match. Adora simply had nothing to say that Catra wanted to hear. They’d already been drifting, Adora had made new friends at school, Catra only ever saw her at home, and, well, their home life was fraught. Once she left, any hope for reconciliation left with her. And if the previous twelve years in Weaver’s house had been bad, the next two had been a living hell.
Eventually Adora stopped trying to mend things. Even when the foster home was very publicly exposed as a den of abuse and shut down, Adora didn’t reach out. Then, Catra moved schools and she hadn’t even seen Adora in the years since transferring, despite still living in the same town.
Until, three weeks into senior year, she had to turn Catra’s life upside down all over again. After successfully avoiding her since the semester had started, Catra had finally found herself stuck in a room alone with Adora. She’d been fixing her mascara when Adora had come out of one of the bathroom stalls, had had the nerve to compliment Catra’s makeup in that fake-friendly voice of hers. Catra had choked out a thanks, only after narrowly avoiding poking herself in the eye, and avoided looking in her direction. But Adora just had to stare, just a moment too long. Catra looked up to see the shock of recognition on her face, knew what was coming before Adora even opened her mouth.
She’d barely even gotten more than a few letters into Catra’s deadname before she was interrupted by a loud smack. Truthfully, it probably took Catra longer to realise she’d just slapped her than it took Adora. It hadn’t been hard, Catra’s frankly pathetic noodle arms could not have allowed for that, but she had a set of nails on her and after a moment a matching set of narrow scratches bloomed on Adora’s cheek. There was silence between them for a few seconds, surprise written on both their faces, but as tears began to well in Catra’s eyes her expression quickly shifted to anger. When Adora’s mouth finally began to move again, Catra had screamed at her to just shut the fuck up and stormed out of the room.
And that? That wasn’t even the reason Catra had been losing sleep over Adora. That had come later that same evening when, a little after ten, Scorpia’s mom had received a phone call from Mara. Because Scorpia and Adora were both on the football team, and her sister had been calling everyone she knew – because that night, Adora had never made it home.
Queue typical small town uproar. Its front page news, someone sets up a hotline, search parties are formed. The high school has to hire an additional counsellor on a temporary basis, school hallways, locker rooms, class rooms, all are now fair ground for spontaneous sobbing outbursts. Anything fun or festive gets cancelled or postponed, the entire town grinds to a halt over one missing girl.
And she doesn’t fucking deserve it, Catra tells herself. She probably just ran away. She’s good at that. But as the days drag on, become a week, then two, a sick feeling begins to build in her own stomach, and the worry grows in her own heart. The thought that Adora might actually be gone, that Catra might never see her again, not even to yell at her, to scream, all the lengthy and entirely-too-dramatic speeches that play out in her head when she’s too tired to stop them. And she doesn’t cry, but she throws up a few times, when that sick feeling swells to a crushing weight that she just has to get out of her. And she just wants to be alone.
She finds places to do that, like the rocky bank of the river just round the bend from Scorpia’s home, out on the edge of town. That’s where she finds her.
The shape catches Catra’s eye about a hundred meters off. It stands out amongst the pale gray of the rocky bank, although, frankly, not nearly as much as a human body should stand out from the pale gray of a rocky bank. She starts to run towards it almost as quickly as her mind starts begging, pleading, to whatever cosmic entity will hear her that what she’s seeing is not the thing she already knows it is. Her face is already red and wet with tears as she collapses beside Adora, takes her cold hand in her own shaking one, tries and fails to find a pulse.
Her hospital gown – she’s wearing a hospital gown, for some reason – is soaked through with blood, has several neat circular holes, but Catra doesn’t see any injuries. Lines ring her wrists, pale pink, shiny - scar tissue – and the same lines run up the inside of her arms. Catra’s not really thinking about that. She’s not thinking anything when she decides to begin chest compressions. She doesn’t know if its hope, or maybe just denial. She does, admittedly, look mostly dead. But only mostly. Her body is cold but maybe just because she’s been in the river. If she drowned, maybe it was only minutes ago. Maybe, maybe, maybe. She has to try.
No sooner has she positioned her hands to begin CPR than she’s thrown back violently when Adora suddenly stands up, as though Catra hadn’t even been there leaning her full body weight against her chest. There’s no deep gasping breath, no coughing up water like in the movies. She just takes one look around, eyes bloodshot and glazed over, barely registering that Catra is there, then sprints off into the forest. She’s gone so quickly that as Catra lays on the ground in shock, trying to process this string of events, she briefly thinks she imagined the whole thing. The sharp pain in her hand where she cut herself falling against a sharp rock pulls her back to reality. Adora’s alive. She’s here. And god, there’s like, something really, really wrong with her.
Catra races after her, stray branches swatting at her face as she pushes through the trees and deeper into the woods, voice cracking as she calls Adora’s name. Maybe Adora hears her, finally registers something, because Catra finds her standing in a clearing, turned to face her, arms hanging limp, head lolled to one side. Her eyes flick up as Catra approaches and they’re just as red and distant as before, staring straight through her. Like she’s drugged. Or like a wild animal.
Catra approaches slowly, tries to keep her voice steady. “Adora, please. You’re safe now. We- we can get you help. Everyone’s worried about you. Just come with me, okay? It’s okay.” She holds out her hand, offers it gently. It’s bloody from where she cut it in the fall, deep enough the blood is still flowing darkly, dripping quietly against the leaf litter that covers the ground. Adora stares at it for a long time and, finally, reaches back, takes her hand, pulls it toward her more suddenly than Catra was ready for, and bites.
Catra howls, tries to pull her hand away, but Adora holds her fast, teeth sunk into the fleshy part of her palm. At least she’s not going to lose any fingers. Christ, how is that now the upside to her day. That and, she’s so full of adrenaline right now that she barely feels the pain. She tries to fight back, hits Adora over the head with her free hand, kicks at her, all to no avail. Blood is streaming down her arm when she finally feels Adora release and Catra shoves her away, cradles her hand - deeply wounded, but in one piece - to her chest.
Adora stumbles back, looking almost drunk. She falls back against a tree, one arm reaching out behind her to steady herself, head thrown back, panting for breath as blood, Catra’s blood, covers her face and drips down her chin. She wipes her mouth with one hand, licks the mess slowly from her fingers.
“Adora, what the fuck,” Catra says, the fear obvious in her voice and yet insufficient to make her turn and run. Adora’s head rolls downward to regard her. There’s real color in her cheeks now, her eyes no longer bloodshot, recognition dawning in them as she glances between Catra's bewildered expression and mauled hand, panic rushing to take the place of the numbness that had filled her chest only minutes ago.
“C-Catra?”
“Okay, you got my name right this time,” is all she can think to say back, fear quickly being replaced by familiar anger and, buried within it, a single flicker of joy, as Adora again begins to resemble the girl she’s known her entire life.
“I- I, uh,” is all Adora can stutter out as her breath rises and catches in her throat, heartbeat accelerating out of control, darkness clouding the edge of her vision. She clutches at her head as the rush of blood in her ears drowns out all other sound. Somewhere distant she hears Catra’s voice calling out to her. She runs blindly in the opposite direction.
Catra quickly considers her options. Option one, go and get help. Option two, continue to chase Adora through the woods.
Compelling reasons for option one abound. Reason one, she's out of her depth, reason two, she needs medical attention, reason three she's already not totally sure where in the woods she is, and going any deeper doesn’t seem particularly smart. And reason four, it’s Adora. She hates Adora. Let someone else risk life and limb to get her home safely. The sheriff, her sister, the fire department, another search party, anyone.
And yet. Option two, and the only reason Catra has ever really needed. It’s Adora. She doesn’t hesitate another second.
She’s searching for hours. Apparently, Adora doesn’t want to be found this time. At some point she tears strips off her shirt to make a crude bandage for her hand, which mostly stops the bleeding. Doesn’t stop the pain though, which finally settles in once the adrenaline wears off. She’s still kind of struggling to process the fact that her ex-friend, ace student, head jock in charge and star player of the football team, bit her. She tries to chalk it up to shock, delirium, fight or flight induced temporary psychosis, any of that stuff. It just didn’t feel like any of that. It felt hungry. She licked the blood from her lips, for god’s sake.
Around the time it starts to get dark is when Catra spots the old abandoned bus. Completely dilapidated, it had to have been there for decades. Long enough for someone to have driven it in here when this was still logging forest, and for all the trees to have grown back to block its path back out. This is encouraging for two reasons; firstly, because it implies Catra isn’t too deep in the woods, and secondly, because it’s the only kind of shelter she’s seen in hours, and maybe if Adora had seen it too, and maybe if she’d been thinking straight, (admittedly a stretch) she, maybe, might have made the sensible decision to shelter there for the night. And for the second time in one day, one of Catra’s hopeful maybe, maybe, maybe’s turns out to be right.
She doesn’t see her right away as she climbs onto the bus. Only as she makes her way towards the back does she hear a voice behind her, causing her to spin around. And there’s Adora, leaned up against the wall in the foot well of the front most seat, concealed from the entrance by the barrier that separates driver from passengers.
“Heyy, Catra.”
Adora looks haggard. But like, normal haggard, not just-found-you-dead-on-a-beach haggard.
“Hey, Adora.” Catra doesn’t know what else to say. Well, except maybe some basic precautions. “You’re not gonna run again?”
Adora shakes her head slowly. “Too tired.”
“And… you’re not gonna bite me again, are you?”
It takes Adora longer to respond this time. Her face is in shadow, but Catra thinks she’s maybe trying not to cry. Again. She’s clearly been crying. Eventually, she shakes her head again.
Catra lets out a sigh of relief. “Okay.” She slides down the wall to sit opposite Adora. They’re silent for a long time. Catra breaks it in the worst possible way.
“Adora, what the hell happened to you?”
Adora’s crying again. Fuck. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry, alright? You don’t have to talk about it.” The crying continues for another couple minutes. “C’mon Adora, please stop crying? You must be super dehydrated already.” That provokes a bubbly snort of laughter, and after a little longer Adora wipes her eyes and seems to calm down.
“Okay,” Catra continues, “I’m trying to think of priorities here. What do you need right now?”
“Um,” Adora mumbles, wiping her nose on the back of her arm, “Water. Food.”
“Clothes?” Catra suggests, casting a wary glance at Adora’s tattered and bloody hospital gown.
Adora laughs again. “Uh, yeah.”
“Okay, look. I’m pretty sure I mostly chased you in circles, so obviously neither of us is that great at navigation but I don't think we're actually that far from town right now. See, look -” Catra pulls out her phone and they’re even close enough to town that she has a wifi signal. “I can figure out where we are, get you home? That has to be better than staying out here in some abandoned bus.”
Adora shakes her head furiously. “It’s not safe in town Catra. The people who took me, they’re- they’re still out there . I don’t know who’s involved. They might be watching my house. You can’t tell anyone.”
Catra takes a deep, steadying breath. She promised not to pry. She promised not to pry. “Okay, well,” she knows she’ll regret what she says next before she even says it. “What about my place, then. I live on the edge of town, we can get there through the woods. No one will know you’re there.”
Adora hesitates longer than makes sense to consider her only real option. “Okay. Um, where are you living these days, Catra?”
Catra shoots Adora a dirty look. As if Adora has any right to wonder, to worry about her. It’s not like this was some big opportunity for the two of them to catch up. Catra was just... doing the right thing. Helping someone in need.
“Okay… sorry.”
“We should probably get going. My… my guardians are gonna start worrying about where I am. Especially given… y’know.” Catra gestures vaguely at Adora. “You can walk, right?”
“Uh, yup.”
Catra makes Adora wait out beyond the trees while she makes sure the coast is clear. First stop is her room, detached from the rest of the house, for a change of clothes. She looks decidedly… woodsy. Also, the blood. Catra’s accommodation had once been a detached studio used by Scorpia’s Mom, but when Catra moved in they’d renovated it to give Catra her own space, with its own bathroom, kitchenette, etc. It had been a deeply thoughtful gesture which Catra nevertheless had to spend several months convincing herself wasn’t just an attempt to keep her “out of the way.”
She takes her makeshift bandage off and grimaces at the wound. It doesn’t look infected, but it definitely doesn’t look good. Her stomach flip-flops as she washes the blood away to reveal clear, deep, tooth-shaped incisions in her palm and the back of her hand. That’s… unsettling. She washes the rest of the blood off her arm and dabs iodine on the wound, then redresses it in a proper bandage. Might need stitches. Not tonight, though. With a pair of fingerless gloves on and a long sleeve shirt, nobody can even tell.
Okay, now she just needs to play it cool for a couple minutes while she checks in, lets everyone know she’s okay, and makes sure they won’t be disturbed. She lets herself into the main house by the sliding glass back door and makes her way to the living room.
“Hey, I’m home,” she announces herself. Her, well, her family, are arranged on the couch watching some program or other. Scorpia turns, smiles, waves. Catra waves back.
“Hey sweetie,” one of Scorpia’s moms greets her back. “You were out a while, everything okay?”
“Uh, yeah. Yeah I just uh, needed some space, y’know. Sorry I didn’t text.”
“As long as you’re safe honey, that’s what matters. Dinner’s in the fridge, you can heat it up whenever you get hungry.”
“Yeah uh, I wasn’t very far from home even. Thanks for dinner.”
Catra grabs the plate out the fridge, she has a microwave in her unit, goes to the cupboard, stuffs a couple protein and chocolate bars in her pockets, grabs a pack of chips, and then lets herself back outside. She tries to cover her bases, isn’t exactly sure what Adora wants to eat. Not that that was like, the priority right now. She looks out towards the trees, catches sight of Adora peeking out from behind one and motions with her head for her to follow.
As soon as she’s dropped her haul on the counter and shut the door and blinds behind her, Catra collapses onto the couch.
“Holy fuck I’m tired,” she exhales, letting her head hang in her hands for a few moments. When she looks up she finds Adora still standing awkwardly by the door, looking suddenly out of place in her hospital attire as she rubs nervously at one arm with the other. Not that she’d looked exactly at home in the woods but, well, there was a certain grizzly aesthetic to it.
“Oh. Um, I’ll get you some clothes, I guess. Shower’s there, if you want.” Catra points towards the bathroom, not that it’s particularly hard to spot. She excuses herself to her room and rifles through draws for a while, comes back with a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt. Adora’s gulping down a glass of water. “These are big on me, so they should fit you, I think.”
“Th-thanks,” Adora says, taking the clothes, her brow starting to knit together and the corners of her mouth starting to twitch again.
“Okay, if you’re going to cry again, you can do that in the shower. Great spot for it.”
Adora just nods and shuffles off into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her. Catra collapses back onto the couch. She doesn’t move from that spot until she hears the water stop half an hour later. Maybe she fell asleep, maybe she just fugued out, she isn’t sure.
When Adora returns wearing her clothes Catra sets about busying herself, chucking dinner in the microwave (some kind of bolognese) and boiling water for tea. Because that’s what normal people do, right? She's being normal. She's trying to be normal.
“What happened to your eyes?” Adora, refusing to be normal.
“Is that really the most important question right now?”
“It’s all I could think about. While I was...” she trails off, shuts her eyes, works her jaw. Catra tries not to read into any of it.
“Well there’s no great mystery. I wear contacts now. They’re colored, but they’re also, y’know, prescription.”
“You need glasses?” Adora asks, again fixating on the least important thing going on right now, but she sounds sad, somehow.
“Shocker, I know. But... yeah, I was trying to blend in, to... be someone else. Figured blue and yellow eyes would’ve given me away pretty quickly.”
“I liked your eyes...” Adora says, shutting hers again, wobbling on her feet. She’s just out of it, Catra tells herself.
“Eat,” she says, shoving the plate of spaghetti in Adora’s direction and pointing her to the couch.
Catra grabs a fork from the draw and hands it to her, putting herself in an armchair in the corner. Adora seems to regard the food warily for a while before picking up the plate and taking a small bite.
“Uh, the food’s usually pretty good, if that’s what you’re worried about. Not that I was expecting you to be so fussy…”
“Sorry,” Adora says, averting her eyes. “My um, my food tolerance has been… weird, lately. Been having um, trouble keeping things down.”
“Oh.”
“But uh, I think this is fine.” Adora smiles, picking up the plate again and continuing to pick at the chunks of meat in the sauce, leaving the noodles mostly untouched.
As Adora eats, Catra’s eyes are drawn back to the markings on Adora’s arms. Scars that neatly circle her wrists and elbows, then run up the length of her forearm and all the way to her shoulder, or at least as far as Catra can see. The shirt Catra gave her is looser at the neck than her hospital get up, and Catra can see the same scars running around the base there. How much further did they extend? And how the hell did she get them? And who the fuck gave them to her.
When Adora looks up, Catra is clenching her fists so hard her arms are shaking.
“Catra… what’s wrong?”
“I… I know you don’t want to talk about it. But I am freaking out here Adora. What the hell is going on? How- how did you get those scars? Why were you in the river? You… you were dead! You were cold, you had no pulse, and then you were just, alive again. And- And then you bit me, but it’s like it wasn’t even you, you weren’t even there until… until after. And then you were normal again. What the fuck is that. I… I deserve to know. If I’m going to help you, I deserve to know what’s going on.”
Adora takes a deep, shuddering breath, puts down the plate, braces herself with her hands on her knees. “The- um, the people, who took me, they weren’t like, petty criminals, or anything. There was uh. There was a lab. Um, it was horrible, dirty, rusted. They did experiments. S-” her voice breaks, she regathers herself. “Surgical. Experiments. That’s why, um, the scars. They did- other – experiments after that. I escaped. Um. They- they caught up to me, Catra. I fell in the river, I lost consciousness. I guess I just, drifted down stream. Then you found me."
“But- but you were dead. And you bit me. None of this explains that," Catra says, which is probably not the most sensitive reaction.
“Um, obviously I wasn’t, dead. I don’t know what to say Catra! I’m sorry I scared you. And- and, you can’t even imagine, Catra. What it was like, the state I was in when I got away. I didn’t know where I was, who I was, who you were. I was just panicking. For all I know they- they scrambled my brain in there, you know? So… I’m sorry. That I got… y’know, a little bitey…”
A little bitey, Catra mouths silently, incredulously to herself as she leans back in her chair. There was more to this, she knows it, but she also knows she isn’t going to get any further with it tonight. Also, maybe she just doesn’t care. None of her business, really. She just needs to figure out how to make things safe again so Adora can leave and things can go back to normal. Forget this whole freakish incident ever happened. Tomorrow. She will do that tomorrow. God, she’s tired. She needs to sleep. They both do.
“Yeah, okay. Sure. Fine. Um, I’m going to bed. I’ll grab you a blanket for the couch.”
“Okay. Thanks, Catra.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Passing by the bathroom, Catra once again catches sight of the bloody hospital clothes, thrown haphazardly in a corner. Whose blood is that? Adora doesn’t have a scratch on her. She grabs the spare blanket, chucks it at Adora’s head, and puts herself to bed.
Adora wakes the next morning to the loud smack of a heavy local atlas being dropped on the coffee table by her makeshift bedside.
“So!” Catra declares. “I had an idea. We’re gonna find the place you were being kept, and we’re gonna get it shut down. That way you’ll be safe, and you won’t have to keep hiding.”
“Uh, okay?” Adora mumbles, sitting up groggily, keeping the blanket wrapped around her. “But I don’t know where I was, Catra.”
“We’re gonna figure that out. For starters, you said you fell in the river, which means the place is upstream from here. When you escaped, did you have to run far to get to the river?”
“Uh, no, actually.” Adora says, fully awake now. “A couple hundred meters, maybe.”
“Cool, that narrows it down a lot. And, I know this is tough for you, but can you give any kind of description of it?”
Adora shuts her eyes tight, tries to recall. “We were underground most of the time, but... when I got out it was like… I never turned back, but I ran past a bunch of big sheds, I think. Like, metal buildings. It looked industrial, gravel on the ground and all that. There were lots of fences, I climbed over at least three of them, razor wire, huge warning signs of danger, that kind of thing. But Catra, even if we can find this place, what can we do? They had armed guards.”
“Mm, okay. And these guards… what were they wearing?”
“Uh, black? Idunno.”
“Like… military uniforms? Any kind of insignias?”
“No, no, like… idunno, just security. Their uniforms were blank.”
“Good.”
“Good?”
“Uh, yeah? If we were talking US Military here we’d be fucked. But if it’s a private company… there’s hope.”
“Hope for what, Catra? We just call the police, say these guys are performing human experiments? How’s that going to go.”
“No. No, we call the feds, we say they’re manufacturing drugs. Or – or bombs. We don’t even mention you. The cops investigate, they find what’s really going on, and once we’re in the clear, you show back up with just, some other story about some random criminals and how you got away, or you got lost in the woods, or whatever the hell you want to say.”
“And what if the government doesn’t investigate? What if the government already knows, what if they don’t care.”
Catra sighs, shrugs. “That’s why we make the tip off anonymously. If nothing happens, we’re back at square one, but we haven’t lost anything. But… I don’t think this is some super organised huge secret government-connected evil corporation we’re talking about here. I mean the labs you described, these guys had shit for budget. They let you escape. And, what, they just snatched up some girl from a neighbouring town? That’s desperate. That’s not how you operate when you’re backed by billions of dollars. You’d at least go further afield.”
Adora nods. “Okay. It’s a good plan. Now we just have to find the place.”
“Mhm. What about those signs you saw? Can you remember anything specific?”
“Um… Just lots of “Danger” “Stay out” type stuff, but uh, also these triangular yellow ones, like…”
Catra pulls out her phone, shows a picture of an industrial hazard warning sign. “Like this?”
“Yes! Exactly that. Lots of skulls too, warnings about dangerous chemicals.”
Catra grins. “I think I know the place, then. I already had it in mind but, there’s an old chemical plant 40 miles up river from here. Meant to be shut down, but...”
“Then that has to be it. Let’s do it.” Adora stands up, shrugs the blanket off of her, immediately regrets it when she sees Catra’s shocked expression.
“Adora, what the hell?” Her clothes are covered in dirt, her arms and hands are clean so she obviously washed up, but not very well. There’s dirt beneath her fingernails, and Catra thinks there’s… well, let’s just say there’s more dirt. Just, strangely red dirt, that’s all.
Adora glances down, suddenly remembering why she’d been trying to remain covered. “I, um, last night, I just needed fresh air.”
“And you tried digging for it?”
“No, I just went for a walk. And uh, I fell. That’s all! Please stop freaking out over every little thing,” she says, pulling the blanket back around her.
Catra scoffs. “I am 100% not the freak in this situation. The sooner we deal with your shit and you can get out of here, the better. I’m gonna drive a town over, find a payphone and make the call. Do you need breakfast before I go?”
Adora shakes her head. “Uh, nope. Not hungry.”
“Yeah, that figures,” Catra mutters to herself as she walks out.
Catra ends up convincing Scorpia that they should drive to Farrville, to a little donut shop that makes them better than anywhere in Brightmoon. Scorpia doesn’t take that much convincing, she’s usually the one coming to Catra looking to do stuff together. Scorpia ends up bringing her girlfriend, which is… fine. Perfuma’s nice enough. She’s one of the few people who know Catra’s whole gender deal, and she’s chill about it but she’s a little too positive, too supportive for Catra’s tastes. In the middle of breakfast Catra excuses herself to use the bathroom, then sneaks out the back to use the payphone in the alley.
Things move remarkably quickly after that. Catra opts for the “they’re building bombs” lie and by that very evening there’s a special bulletin about a swat raid that took place that day. Catra’s on her couch watching tv, pointedly trying to avoid the furtive glances Adora keeps shooting her way to try to catch her attention. She’s eating popcorn – which Adora had refused – when the news comes on interrupting the soapy teen drama that had barely been holding her attention.
As soon as the broadcast jumps to location - just the outer fence, all razor wire and warning signs, a long gravel road curving off into the trees behind, just like she’d described, - Adora’s eyes go wide. “That’s the place.”
“Hm.” Catra acknowledges. That razor wire was no joke. And Adora said she climbed three of these fences? Again, not a scratch on her.
The news report goes on, all details they already knew. The location, how it used to be an agricultural research lab, someone calling in a threat.
“But when the FBI arrived, what they found wasn’t bombs.” The reporter says. Catra’s ears perk up. The feed cuts to some official looking guy at a press conference, speaking to reporters. “Currently we believe the site was being used as part of some kind of organ harvesting operation. We found refrigerators and containers for storage, surgical theaters, holding cells. It’s, uh, it’s quite horrifying. We haven’t found any bodies but there were incinerator facilities on site.”
“They weren’t organ harvesters.” Adora mutters under her breath. Catra glances at her.
“Currently, twenty-three people have been arrested in association with the site, including eight men who were contracted from a private security firm. That firm is now under investigation.”
When the special report ends, Catra shuts the tv off and turns to Adora. “Well? Good result, right?”
Adora nods slowly, attempts a weak smile. “Yeah. Thank you, for everything you’ve done. I’ll um, I’ll be out of your hair soon.”
Catra’s expression turns stony. “Yeah, well, good.” She averts her eyes, Adora does the same.
“You know, we don’t… we don’t have to go back to the way things were. We could be friends? Again?”
Catra flinches at that. “Yeah, no thanks. I’m not actually dying to be friends with the girl who bit me. I’m not that desperate.” It's reflexive. She regrets it as soon as she's said it.
Adora feels the heat building in her face as well. She doesn’t want this, it doesn’t have to be like this every time they talk. But Catra’s always like this, always pushes things to this point. “Would you stop bringing that up? It- it was an accident. I wasn’t myself! Just shut up about it!” That last part comes out more forceful than she intended.
Stop, Catra tells herself. But her heart's beating fast, her adrenaline spiked. “And what if I don’t, Adora. What if I tell everyone? What are you gonna do?”
Adora’s fuming, and she’s scared. She’s already facing months or years of excruciating reintegration as is. She knows how these things go. She’s marked by tragedy now. Literally, in her case. It’s all love and support when you’re the perfect, absent victim. Then suddenly everyone’s just uncomfortable about the fact you survived, what you survived. No need to give them anything else to talk about.
“Yeah, you do that Catra. And then I’ll tell them it was self-defence. I’ll say that you-”
“Oh you evil bitch,” Catra screams, no regrets this time. "Fuck you."
Adora thinks she maybe deserves that. It was desperate. Cruel.
“Get out of my house.” Catra articulates forcefully.
“I-” Adora tries to say, tries to backtrack. It’s too late.
“GET OUT.”
She lingers by the door a moment longer. Tries to think of anything that can take back what she said, tries to make things not just over. Again. The only hope she receives is a bunched up flannel thrown in her face.
“For your fucked up arms,” Catra spits. “Now go.”
Adora does. Catra really, really wishes she didn’t cry about that.
Adora doesn’t cry till she gets home. She knocks, Mara answers the door, drops her mug of tea – no, of something stronger – which shatters on the doorstep, pulls Adora into a sobbing hug. Hours later, Adora’s lying in bed listening to Mara talk to the sheriff on the phone downstairs. Making sure the right people know she’s alright, calling off the search and cancelling the missing person report. Reassurances that Adora doesn’t have to give her account right away, just to let her sleep. They send a deputy around who spends the night parked across the street, just in case.
Eventually, Mara goes to bed. Pokes her head in but Adora pretends to be sleeping. Except she can’t. She’s thinking about Catra, like she’s thought about her every night since their fucked up reunion the day she was taken. Even fearing for her life, even terrified of the strange new changes happening to her body, she’d thought about Catra. About their lives together before circumstance and Catra’s own infuriating stubbornness tore them apart. About how she was back, about how maybe if Adora survived this, she could finally, finally fix things. About how Catra was so different now, but, in a good way, in a way that suited her, a way that finally seemed to make Catra make sense, make Adora make sense, in some other strange and arcane way she can’t express or even think about right now. About how happy Adora was about that. About how she’d immediately fucked that up.
And now, new to this cacophony of hope and grief, another thought. One that mixes with the others, colors them anew, taints them and heightens them. She thinks about the hot, metallic taste of Catra’s blood splashing across her tongue and down her throat, dripping down her chin, the subtle give and resistance of the flesh of her palm between her teeth, the temptation to bite through, to tear, to chew.
Her bed’s a swimming pool of sweat by the time she drags herself downstairs to the fridge, throws it open, pulls out a raw steak and rips into it sitting on the kitchen floor. Catra’s right. There’s something very, very wrong with Adora Grayskull.