Chapter Text
Light Hope
Everything is going according to plan.
Light Hope watches as Catra approaches the ledge from which Adora is hanging, Sword of Protection in hand. Everything in her bearing suggests a positive outcome—a conclusion drawn from analysing 156.675 hours of archival memory footage. In a moment, she will deliver an ultimatum that will form the final step of severing Adora’s attachments.
But the Heart of Etheria project is old. Though the Crystal Castle and the miles of technology spanning around the globe and threading into the planet’s core survived scavengers, earthquakes and worse, nothing is infallible.
A rogue electrical charge; a somewhat-loose data disk; a faulty line of circuitry; a slightly-misaligned receiver: it all comes together by happenstance, and the result is an error that turns a one into a zero.
And before Light Hope can stop it, before she can even realise what is happening before her very sensors, one final memory plays out.
Catra
She is running away.
Problems have a way of finding Catra, whether she likes it or not. In this instance, punching Lonnie in the face is firmly rooted on the side of being her fault, but she isn’t ready to admit that. After all, that’s why she’s running away.
She doesn’t even fully understand it. All she did was what seemed right. In plain view, Lonnie was stealing Adora away from her, and it was easy to guess what would happen next. Catra had worried herself to death night after night over this exact scenario. Adora would realise Catra isn’t that great of a friend, that Catra is a difficult mongrel of a child, that she can do better, and the thought of Adora not being by her side anymore leaves Catra with a hole in her stomach and a cloud of pressure in her head so heavy and painful she can’t help but lash out.
It doesn’t matter now. Catra did what she did and ruined it for herself, and she knows it. So when Adora chases after her and finds her and tells her everything will be okay because she’s so stupid and hopeful, Catra can barely hear her for the rage and fear pulsing in her temples.
And then Catra ruins it even more.
The red marks on Adora’s face left by her claw don’t elicit any sense of triumph. Instead, there is regret, burning deep within her chest. She assumes that’s it—that that’s the last of it.
So why does Adora keep coming back?
“Just go! Eat with your new best friend, Lonnie!”
“Is that why you hit her?
“I know you like her better than me!”
The weight of loneliness is crushing, so Catra—selfish as Shadow Weaver has always said she was—turns to Adora.
“You’re supposed to be my friend.”
But Adora’s face lights up like the furnaces of the Fright Zone’s foundries, breaking through Catra’s misery and casting all her doubt and worry and self-loathing aside like it meant nothing at all.
Because no matter what happened, no matter how many times Catra would lash out and hurt Adora, Adora would come back to her.
“I am your friend, Catra.” She leans in, the gap between her teeth poking through her smile. “I’m always gonna be your friend.”
The blanketing warmth of Adora’s embrace is everything. Catra doesn’t forget the feeling of it, not even when Adora tries to convince her to befriend Lonnie and Catra hurts Adora again and they chase one another through the bowels of the Fright Zone.
…
Catra opens her eyes.
“Catra?” a voice calls ahead, below.
Catra steps closer, looking over the edge to find…
Adora.
“Catra,” she breathes out in happy relief. “Help me, please.”
Catra stares at her, the thoughts of her seven-year-old self still fresh in her mind. A pit of darkness with no discernible end to it awaited Adora. She tries to remember what she was planning before this fucked-up place jammed another memory into her head, but she comes up short. Something about the sword, about letting Adora fall…
Catra freezes, the sword clattering to the floor. Dim on her ears, she can hear the sticky webbing that Adora holds onto for dear life straining, starting to tear. A thought plays over and over in her head, arresting her into inaction.
Adora’s about to die.
Catra’s friend, her best friend, maybe her only friend. The one who was always there for her when Catra needed her, who always came back for her, her entire world—
The realisation of it leaves her cold all over.
“Oh, fuck,” she swears.
“Catra?” Adora’s voice is questioning, uncertain of what she is looking at, of what she is hearing. The webbing stretches thinner.
It doesn’t take much else. Catra kicks the sword aside and crouches down by the ledge, reaching out. Adora’s hand clamps around hers, and Catra secures her grip in turn, the both of them magnetic, locked in place like they were always meant to be.
The effort it takes to haul Adora up enough for her to be able to dig her feet in and crab over the edge to safety leaves Catra huffing quietly on the floor. Adora crawls over on her knees and lies down next to her, panting.
“For a second, I thought you were gonna leave me hanging,” Adora admits, once she’s gotten her breathing back under control. She doesn’t move just yet, though, and neither does Catra.
“We’ve been over this. You never did have too much faith in me.” But even as Catra said the words, she knew they weren’t right.
She isn’t looking at Adora, so it is hard to discern her tone of voice when she replies, “Clearly I was wrong.”
Catra sighs, pushing herself into a sitting position. Adora props herself up in tandem.
“What do we do now?”
Catra shrugs. “I guess… I guess we keep looking for the exit.”
Adora looks at her a fraction of a second longer, and with it leaves a question hanging in the air between them, unspoken.
And after that?
Adora picks up the discarded sword. They make it about ten steps before the light in the room changes, and they both instinctively brace for the onset of another holographic hallucination. However, instead of being transported back into their childhood, the hologram of a woman fizzles into being and blocks their path.
“Light Hope?” Adora looks worryingly excited. “I’ve finally found you!”
“Another one of your new friends, huh,” Catra mutters.
The hologram remains silent, though Catra can feel her eyes on her, examining her, and the ensuing expression of disapproval is one Catra knows harrowingly well.
“This was a mistake,” the hologram intones.
“What? No, look, I’ve got the sword right here.” Adora takes a step towards the hologram, showing off the sword. “I’m She-Ra. The sword chose me. So you can, heh, you know, stop setting spiders on us and, uh, messing with our heads.”
“In order to begin your training as She-Ra,” and Catra once again feels the hologram’s eyes on her, judging, calculating, coming to same the nasty conclusions everyone else did, “you must let go of your past.”
“What? You mean—” Adora errs, glancing aside. “—Catra? No, we’re not— she doesn’t— she isn’t here to hurt me.”
Debatable, Catra luckily doesn’t vocalise.
“She’s my friend. She’ll always be my friend.”
Catra’s breath hitches. As the world spins around her and she struggles to catch up, she notices Adora has moved even closer to the hologram.
And in front of her.
“That is not permitted,” the hologram says, not harshly, but still largely devoid of emotion. “Please move aside, Adora.”
“What? No, she…”
“This attachment cannot be allowed. Adora, if you wish to learn how to heal your friend and save the planet, you must let go.”
Something changes in Adora, then. She squares her shoulders, readjusts her grip on the sword so that it hangs ready by her side. From the angle Catra is looking at her, she can see how Adora’s jaw tenses, resolute in that stubborn way of hers that could move heaven and hell.
“No, I won’t.”
Catra’s claws dig into her palms. She can’t believe what she’s hearing. She can’t believe what she’s seeing. She earnestly thought that memory of Adora stepping in front of Shadow Weaver was the last time she would ever see its like.
And somehow the pain doesn’t snatch her out of this mystical dream she finds herself in.
“Adora—” the hologram tries.
“There has to be another way,” Adora protests. “One that doesn’t involve me letting go of… the people I care about.”
Catra’s heart does a strange little flutter, something it hasn’t done in a long, long time.
“I mean, I came here in order to heal my friend, and now you’re saying I need to let go? My friends are what brought me here in the first place!”
“That is not the same,” the hologram says. “Catra is part of the Horde, and a danger to your mission of balancing the planet.”
Adora seems to hesitate, and Catra instinctively hunches, bracing for that moment where Adora inevitably does step aside, because it’s Adora, and she’ll always try do the right thing, and Catra knows she isn’t the right thing—
“No.” Adora shakes her head. “If that’s the case, then let me talk to her. And without these memories you’re constantly making us see. I’ll get her to leave the Horde!” Adora glances at her, and somehow Catra stops herself from looking away. “Just let me try!”
The hologram’s eyes move from Adora to Catra, and back again.
She vanishes.
“Light Hope?” Adora calls out to the empty chamber.
“You know,” Catra says, tail swishing low against the ground, “not to rain on your parade and all, but I’m not leaving the Horde just because I saved your life.”
Adora looks at Catra, a little exasperated. “Maybe don’t say that while we’re still in here? I’m trying to make sure you make it out of here in one piece!”
That prickles Catra. She draws up behind old, familiar walls. “Uh, good thing I didn’t ask for you to do that.”
“No, all you did was steal from this place and start this whole mess in the first place!”
“So I’m supposed to thank you for trying to evaporate me the moment you saw me? All I did was steal a fucking disk, you’re the one who started blasting the place apart!”
Adora presses a hand to her forehead and groans, a move which ticks Catra off supremely well. “No, I just wish you’d be a little more cooperative in not ruining it for the both of us!”
“Oh, right, I forgot.” Catra forces her laugh out, sardonic and derisive as sin. “That’s my problem isn’t it? I’m far too uncooperative, unmotivated, insolent, disobedient, useless, hopeless—”
She takes a deep breath, then, all the air strangely gone from her lungs. She didn’t know when or where she had stopped speaking and Shadow Weaver’s voice had taken over for her.
“That’s not what I’m saying, Catra.” Adora’s shoulders droop a little, the fight leaving her body, replaced with weary regret and confusion. “Just—throw me a bone, because I really do wanna get out of here.”
“Eager to get back to your dumb friends, huh?”
“You’d like them if you got to know them!” Adora immediately shouts, but it’s angry and the goodwill is hard to find. “You’d like Bright Moon! Or any place that isn’t the Fright Zone!”
Catra bristles. “That’s not happening—”
On cue, the room lights up red, and Catra can see the damning shape of spiders skitter out from the nearby aperture.
“Look what you’ve done!” Adora yells in frustration.
“I’m pretty sure Lightbulb was gonna do that regardless!” Catra grates back.
“You don’t know that— look out!”
Catra shouldn’t be surprised when Adora leaps to her defence, fending off the hewing limb of a spider, because she’s admittedly been trying to keep her safe since they got stuck in this hellhole. Still, she is, and she only manages to shake the shock of it off and join the fray once Adora raises the sword high above her head and yells the same phrase she did when she left Catra behind in the Fright Zone, again.
“For the honour of Grayskull!”
The blinding light of her transformation casts out every shadow in sight, and even succeeds in keeping the spiders at bay, though Catra isn’t sure whether their measure of sentience allows for them to be stunned. Adora glances over her shoulder, meeting Catra’s eyes. The smile she gives Catra feels entirely wrong, because it’s She-Ra who is smiling her and She-Ra is the parasite who took Adora away.
So why does it feel like Adora’s smile, and why does Catra have to consciously stop herself from mirroring it?
They tear into the spiders after that. Adora with a reckless abandon, cutting the castle’s guardians apart like a hot knife through butter; Catra with a calculated efficiency, taking out the ones that stray too far from Adora’s periphery and beeline for their true target: her.
It’s reminiscent of their days training together in a squad, but not. Adora’s frantic stare checks on Catra more than once, and Catra can’t decide if it’s care or wariness that prompts it. Catra keeps her distance from Adora, flinching whenever She-Ra’s light or her sword come too close to comfort and threaten to drag her back into a spiral.
The exit from which the spiders appeared closes as they fight their way towards it, but Adora is undeterred. A single energy blast is enough to reopen the way and lead them… wherever. Deeper, maybe, but moving forward is always preferable to standing still, when a holographic entity with the ability to conjure spiders out of thin air is trying to murder you.
Wisdom for the ages, that.
“Adora.” Light Hope apparates back into being, hovering in front of Adora and Catra as they run through the corridor. “This is highly illogical. She-Ra cannot have any attachments that will distract her from her duty.”
Distraction, Shadow Weaver’s voice echoes in the recesses of Catra’s mind. Don’t think I will allow you to drag Adora down with you.
“So your idea is to kill us both!?” Adora retorts, not even breaking a sweat in her princess form. “Good luck finding another She-Ra!”
“You leave me no choice.”
“No, you leave us no choice—”
Whatever Adora was going to say next doesn’t matter anymore. Catra can see the electricity rippling up and down her flesh before the pain of it flares up all over her body, frying all her senses to a crisp, and she is plunged into a world of nothingness.
…
The pain is still there when she comes to. In fact, there is nothing but pain. Not until she opens her eyes, and finds herself staring at Adora.
Adora isn’t looking at her, face set with rigid determination. As Catra’s other senses return, she becomes aware of the fact she is being dragged. Adora has a firm hold of her armpits, and what little wherewithal Catra has is dedicated to the faint, futile hope that the corridor she is being ferried through is familiar to her.
…
It is the acrid smell of burnt flesh and fur that reels her back into the waking world next. She’s lying on something soft—grass—and what little she can see through her heavy eyelids that ache when she tries to open them is equally reassuring—trees.
Adora is somewhere beside her. Catra can hear her heaving for air, but she can also hear a tremor rumbling through the ground, steadily increasing in intensity and reminiscent of all the wrong things.
“Adora, we’ve got incoming,” she tries to warn, but the words come out in a breathless croak, her lips numb, her tongue a slab of lead that doesn’t feel like it belongs in her own mouth. Adora glances at her, alerted by her gurgle, but it’s futile and once the Horde tanks and skiffs crash through the treeline behind Adora she’s far too caught off-guard to do anything but rage.
Catra tries to scream the inane order to stand down as the Horde soldiers flooding into the clearing catch Adora with several well-aimed bolas, but again all she manages is a pitiful gurgle, the fresh onsets of pain shooting up and down her limbs and spine robbing away whatever hope for coherency she might have had—the numbness of getting shocked silly notwithstanding.
Octavia appears in the darkening edges of her vision, joined by a few aides. “Prepare the princess for prisoner transport!” she barks, gesturing with a vicious air. “And somebody get Catra on a skiff!”
Catra claws at the ground, consciousness slipping away.
“We’re taking ‘em back to the Fright Zone!”