Chapter Text
Prologue
The sky is full of light. That’s the first thing I notice: the entire world is glowing like someone set dandelions seeds on fire. It’s almost headache-inducing and I’m sure it’ll get annoying eventually, but right now it’s just... beautiful. There’s no other word for it. It’s like someone took the sensation I get when Adora smiles at me and filled the world with it. And I guess that’s… kind of what happened, I think wryly.
The light has always gone where Adora goes. Even when we were growing up in the Horde (before she had a magic space alter-ego who literally glowed) the light followed Adora. The memories I have of Horde Prime’s ship are shadowy, full of the perpetual darkness of space, but Adora brought her own light when she came back for me.
I flinch away from those memories instinctively — too much pain, too much everything — but the light all around me, Adora’s light, grounds me back in my body. Here and whole (more or less) because of her.
For so long I thought I was the moth and she was the campfire — I would chase her forever, destroying myself in the process. But that wasn’t right, not anymore.
I’m running, running through this new super-glow world (trust a princess to make things as sparkly as possible) ignoring everything that gets in my way, just looking for one stupid grin. Everything is going completely off the rails around me — Hordak is back and actually cocooned in Entrapta’s hair like a caterpillar — but I only have room for one thought.
Adora. Where. Is. Adora?
I finally, finally see her, glowing like the sun, hair gleaming behind her as she surveys Etheria. Who knows — I could still be that stupid moth. But I’m going to run to her fire as fast as I can.
“Adora!” I’ve said her name so many times over the last few years, and almost every time it’s been full of resentment or hatred or a grief so big it feels like killing rage. I still feel the echo of that feeling inside me, like the emptiness that fills your chest after a breakdown. But I’m so happy to see her that it overwhelms everything before this moment.
“Catra!” she says, catching sight of me, shifting from her eight-foot-tall space warrior form into Adora, my Adora. Her voice is so happy it almost makes me break down right there in front of her.
But I can’t dwell on that for long. Before I know it, my legs have carried me to her and she’s holding me, and I’m holding her, and if I didn’t know better I would think that the lights filling the air are my brain shorting out because of how happy I am.
“It’s over,” she says. “He’s gone.”
“Good riddance,” I say. It would be cool and aloof except I’m pressing my forehead against hers and I don’t think I can ever move, unless moving means getting closer to her.
And then her friends — my friends? Nothing makes sense anymore — are here and everything is a jumble again, but for the next few confused moments and hours, I hold onto Adora’s hand and onto the fact that I have her right here with me, for now and maybe even for whatever comes next.
Chapter 1: The Cat and the Scorpion (or, The Big Stupid Grin Squad)
I finally get new clothes. That’s the first time I feel fully sane again, fully back on Etheria, fully free of Prime’s long reach. My hand instinctively goes to the scar at the back of my neck. It feels like there’s still something in there, wires or something, but Entrapta says it’s okay and it’s healing and Adora says to leave it alone.
The clothes help, though. There’s not a very wide selection — apparently Adora has been wearing the same thing every day since she left the Horde? — but the princess castle has some kind of army stock for castoffs like me and I’m able to find a shirt and pants that fit and suit me fine. I wish I could stand in the scalding water of the Fright Zone showers until I finally feel clean again, but for now, a change of clothes will do.
I walk from the supply room through the corridors of Bright Moon, most of them empty except for the occasional armed guard. It’s not that I want to be a prisoner, but it feels weird to walk around free in a place I’ve been trying to take over and/or burn to the ground for the last three years. My feet pad quietly against the stones, claws retracted to make as little sound as possible. I feel the guards’ eyes following me — but that’s their job, I guess. It almost makes me feel better that someone is watching out just in case I fall back into the worst of what I’m capable of.
The castle is big, but it’s no endless-clone-corridor-nightmare, and before I know it I’m back where I came from: some kind of a sitting room (which is apparently exactly what it sounds like, a room where you wait around and talk to people and don’t do anything in particular — princesses). After the general chaos and crying and hugging and kissing of our victory, the princesses all ended up here for what I assumed is some kind of council but what seems more like a bunch of people lying around sighing hugely and laughing in disbelief.
I hesitate with my hand on the doorknob. Until now, whenever I’ve seen the princesses, Adora’s arm has been wrapped around me like a shield. Walking back now, I’m going in alone.
But Adora’s there, I think to myself. I vaguely remember her saying something about hiding from the people I hurt, back when my brain was so fractured by Prime’s control that all I could think about was causing pain and hiding from it. There is a moment outside that door where I really seriously consider leaving, just walking away into the Whispering Woods and never seeing a princess again.
Melog materializes next to me so suddenly I feel all my fur stand on end.
Why are you standing at the door? they ask, sounding impatient. You have been gone for long enough.
“Melog!” I hiss, “I told you to stay with Adora!”
I did, they say, unperturbed. And then I felt you coming back and I thought I would rejoin you. Unless you have decided to leave again.
“I haven’t,” I growl. “I’m going in now.”
Melog cocks their head at me, expressing a world of sardonic disbelief with just that gesture. My irritation is what finally gives me the courage to yank the door open and stalk into the room, and as I do I catch a glimpse of Melog’s smug face. Damn that cat, I think, but I’m still glad when they twine around my ankles. It makes me feel a little more safe when everyone in the room turns to look at me. At least if things go south the two of us can get out of here.
They won’t go south, I tell myself stubbornly. Things are different now.
You sure about that? a snide voice cuts in. You always mess things up. Why should this time be any different?
“Oh,” says the water princess in a voice that could dissolve steel, “She’s still here.”
“Catra!” Adora says, breaking into a smile like the sunrise. “You look great.”
“I look like a soldier,” I grumble. “A rebellion soldier.”
She grins at me, a mischievous sparkle in her eyes. “It suits you.”
Melog shoves my calves from behind and I half-trip towards where Adora is sitting on the sill of a gigantic arched window. Sparkles and Arrow Boy are hovering in the vicinity, but it seems like they’re hanging back for now and I’m too grateful for the space to question it.
“Hi,” I say quietly, angling my hip onto the window next to Adora. “Looks like some people aren’t too happy to see me.”
Adora’s eyes narrow and she shoots the water princess a fearsome glare. I feel my cheeks heat up as she takes her hand in mine. “They’ll get used to it,” she promises in a voice of dark certainty. “You saved us, Catra. You belong here.” Her eyes go back to me and I feel a warm fuzzy feeling run from my heart to my toes. “You belong with me.”
Her bright blue eyes are fixed on mine and for a moment I get lost in them. There was a time when I thought I would never see her eyes look at me again with anything close to love — but now here she is, looking at me like I’m the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen. A blush rises to her cheeks.
“Sorry,” she laughs, “I didn’t mean to be so… yeah.”
My hand goes to her jaw instinctively, tracing the line of her cheekbone. “I… I do belong with you.” I don’t know how to talk to her yet, how to respond to her gesture, but for Adora I can learn.
“So we’re all okay with that?” The water princess’s voice breaks through my focus. I step back from Adora, wrapping my arms around myself protectively. Sparkles and her boyfriend are still flirting in the corner like nothing’s wrong, but the rest of the room is fixed on me. Mermista is next to a glowering ten-year-old, the flower princess, and Entrapta. None of them have any reason to like me, I think. Although Entrapta gives me a little wave with the end of one of her pigtails.
My hand goes to Adora’s instinctively, looking for the bit of comfort I’ve always held onto. I find it and she squeezes my hand, stepping up next to me like she’s about to say something.
But she doesn’t have the chance. Before she can, another voice erupts from behind the cluster of hostile princesses.
“I for one am okay with that,” says Scorpia, barrelling past Mermista with all the confidence of a fighter jet. I can’t believe I didn’t see her there before, towering behind the flower princess — but then, I was focused on the impending threat of watery violence. “You can think whatever you want. I won’t tell you what to do.” Scorpia hesitates, her eyes going to me and then across the faces of the princesses. “I was a Horde soldier too, and I fought against you. But you let me in.”
She holds her pincers out to Perfuma, and with a numb shock I see Perfuma take one in both her hands. That’s new .
“Catra saved us. She saved all of us. And she… she has a good heart.” Scorpia looks at me then, half-smiling, her eyes brighter than they have any right to be. “If not for Catra, none of us would be here right now. So I for one think she’s earned her place.”
Scorpia looks across the princesses and seems to deflate a little. “That’s all I wanted to say,” she says with an uncertain grin, stepping in next to Perfuma. I see the flower princess squeeze her arm and then, to my shock, direct a tentative smile my way.
“Well, that’s settled,” Bow says, stepping forward and putting his hand on my shoulder. I fight not to jump or snarl at him, and maybe he senses my tension because he removes his hand a moment later. “Glimmer?”
“Thanks,” she says, stepping past me. I can’t help but notice how much Sparkles has changed, in some hard-to-define but unignorable way. She talks with a self-assurance that was emphatically absent in the kid I tried to drown. Now, people listen when she speaks. In a weird way, it’s good to see. “I want to go over the new ecology of the planet, gather reports on what everyone has seen of the new magic and how it’s impacted your kingdoms —”
I’m not listening. Scorpia says something in Perfuma’s ear that makes her smile a little and squeeze her arm again — I guess it’s a good arm, muscular and everything — and Scorpia slips out the door with a stealthiness I didn’t know she had. Everyone is looking at Glimmer as she goes on about inter-kingdom collaboration and post-war assistance and I slip out after Scorpia without anyone noticing.
Anyone but Adora, that is. I look back and see her watching me go with a worried expression. “I’m fine,” I mouth. “Be right back.”
This doesn’t seem to make her less worried, but she nods and looks back at Glimmer. The fact that she has faith that I’ll return fills my chest with a warm feeling I’m not entirely sure I deserve. I want to go back to Adora and wrap my arms around her and stay there — but Scorpia is moving down the hallway away from me and I push those thoughts down for now.
“Scorpia,” I yell, running to catch up. She stops in a beam of light streaming from one of the enormous windows and actually smiles at me.
“Everything okay, there?”
I skid to a stop next to her, momentarily at a loss for words. I expected her to be cold, cruel even — that would be no more than I deserve. But she was just waiting for me to speak with an expectant expression.
“I —” I start, then stutter to a stop, not sure what to say. “I was terrible to you,” I shoulder on. “I yelled at you, and I hurt you, and Entrapta — I could have done that to you. I could’ve done worse —”
Scorpia holds out a claw to stop me. “Wildcat,” she says gently, “I didn’t forget.”
“Then why…?” I scrub at my eyes, furious to feel tears on my cheeks. Cry one time and all of a sudden you’re a damn faucet.
Scorpia studies me. I notice that she’s careful to leave me space. It makes me feel even worse.
“I always saw who you could be,” Scorpia says. “How strong you are — not because you shut everyone out,” she adds, maybe seeing the way my face twists. “You might not see it now, you’re so dang stubborn I’m sure it’ll take you a long time. But you are good.”
I look up at Scorpia. “But you left me,” I say in a whisper, before I can stop myself. “And I deserved it. Scorpia… I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. For hurting you. And… for not seeing you. I’m going to do better.”
Then Scorpia succumbs to her fundamental instincts and wraps me in a hug, lifting my feet off the ground. “You were being a bad friend,” she agrees, sounding almost happy . “But you’re trying to do better. And conquering trauma, Hordak, Shadow Weaver? You were playing with the worst hand in the world.”
I twist in her iron grip, smirking up at her. “‘Conquering trauma’?” I echo, “Who gave you that?”
Scorpia smiles back at me sheepishly. “I may have been talking to Perfuma. A lot,” she admits, blushing. “Just, you know, she’s really easy to talk to!”
“Let me down,” I demand, smiling to make sure she knows I’m not angry, and thankfully she does. With my feet on the ground, she stops for a second, pincers on my shoulders.
“I’m so glad you joined us, wildcat,” she says, and for some reason the tone of her voice makes me want to start crying again.
“Yeah,” I grumble. “Me too.” And then I remember what I saw in the sitting room and grin wickedly. “It sounds like you and Perfuma have been doing a lot of talking lately.”
“Oh, we have!” Scorpia says earnestly. “She’s really great at working through this stuff, it’s made me feel so much better —”
“Shut up,” I growl playfully. “We both know it’s not just her stimulating conversation you’re after.”
Scorpia sputters, face turning as red as her carapace, and I take the opportunity to make my exit. When I turn the corner of the long Bright Moon corridor, I catch a glimpse of Scorpia still standing on the same flagstone, pinching her claws mutely in indignation, with a big lovey grin splashed across her face.
Looks like there’s a lot of that going around , I think, and can’t quite stop myself from breaking into a stupid grin of my own.