Chapter Text
The sun shone on Bright Moon Castle with an intensity it had no business possessing at such an early hour. Or at least, that’s what Catra thought. The magicat stirred with a quiet groan as a ray of sunlight landed gently on her still-tired eyelids. Careful not to wake the woman sleeping next to her, Catra gently uncurled from the ball she had slept in, stretching her arms above her head and relishing the dull ache in her muscles as sleep surrendered its hold on her.
Like many things in Bright Moon, Catra’s relationship with mornings was complicated. Compared to Adora—who had gained a reputation for arriving late to any meeting scheduled before noon with a half-eaten breakfast in hand—Catra was the epitome of a morning person. But even though she didn’t share Adora’s crippling addiction to the snooze button, Catra had spent decades harboring hostility toward anything resembling authority. And that included celestial bodies like the sun, with its irritating tendency to demand wakefulness from those who would much rather remain asleep.
In the first weeks after the war, waking up next to Adora had placed mornings firmly in Catra’s good graces. She had been more than happy to rise with the sun, sacrificing countless hours of sleep just to watch over Adora’s sleeping form. But as weeks turned into months, the reconstruction efforts took their toll. Days spent on physical labor to undo the destruction brought by the war stretched into nights sleeping rough in tents pitched on bare ground.
After a rare night back in Bright Moon, Catra had hoped to make up for her sleep deficit. The bed in Adora’s room—their room now, Catra supposed—was the most comfortable one they had ever shared, far eclipsing the hard ground outside half a dozen reconstruction sites and the brick-like mattresses issued to Horde soldiers. It should have been the perfect recipe for recovery, if not for the white-hot ball of fusion casting its light directly through a useless curtain onto Catra’s face. Suffice to say, mornings and Catra were no longer on speaking terms.
Adora, however, was a different story. It would take far more than the blinding glare of sunlight to wake her. For a while, Catra let her sleep. Adora had spent much of the reconstruction effort as She-Ra, hauling rubble out and bringing construction materials into villages across Etheria. While She-Ra’s magic usually insulated Adora from the worst of her fatigue, after she transformed back, the tiredness often lingered.
By the time Adora finally began to stir, the sun’s rays had mercifully retreated from the bed. Catra set aside the nail file she’d been idly using and draped an arm over Adora, gently pulling her into an embrace as she rocked her back to consciousness.
“Hey, Adora,” Catra said softly as blue eyes blinked open to meet hers. Adora mumbled something that vaguely sounded like “morning” before burying her face into an oversized pillow. Catra rolled her eyes and decided to adopt a new strategy.
“Come on, Adora, it’s 9:45,” she said, adding just a hint of manufactured concern.
Adora snapped upright, blue eyes flying wide open.
“What?” she exclaimed, pillows and blankets scattering as she leapt out of bed. “I have a meeting in 15 minutes! There’s no way I’ll have time to shower. I’ve got to at least brush my hair.” She raced around the room between the dresser and wardrobe, frantically gathering items. “I’ll wear my workout clothes and say I just got out of training. Do you think they’ll believe it? Maybe I won’t be smelly enough...”
The bathroom door slammed behind her, muffling the rest of her frantic muttering.
Barely two minutes later, the door slammed open again. Adora emerged in gray gym clothes, one hand frantically scrubbing with a toothbrush while the other clutched her tracker pad.
“Cahm on, Cathra, leth’s go!” she called, grabbing Catra by the wrist and nearly toppling her as she pulled them toward the door.
“Adora!” Catra shrieked.
“Wha?” Adora asked, her toothbrush still lodged firmly between her teeth.
Catra sighed. “Put the toothbrush down.”
Adora complied, finally intelligible again. “Alright, but come on, Catra. We really need to go!”
“No, you don’t,” Catra replied, causing Adora to look at her quizzically.
Catra sighed again before coming clean. “Glimmer was tired of you missing breakfast, so she asked me to change the meeting time in your calendar. It doesn’t actually start until noon.”
“How’d you change my calendar? I have a password on that!”
“Maybe you should have chosen something other than ‘Adora.’”
Adora’s face flushed as she sheepishly broke eye contact.
“Now that you’re actually awake, can we please eat something?”
“Well, look what the cat dragged in!” Bow called, grinning as Catra and Adora pushed through the towering double doors into the dining room. He wiggled his eyebrows, clearly pleased with himself. Catra shot him a scowl in response.
Breakfast together had become a daily occurrence for the Best Friends Squad—at least on days when Adora and Catra managed to wake up in time. After the war, a hot meal in the bustling dining hall of Bright Moon was a reminder that the fighting had ended and the spoils of peace could be enjoyed. But as the reconstruction efforts began, breakfast often became the only time all four would be together before scattering across different jobs in different villages. On the rare occasions when everyone found themselves back in Bright Moon, the energetic dining hall, which fed the entire castle staff, became more of an annoyance than a comfort.
It was Glimmer’s idea to reset the Royal Dining Room to provide a more peaceful place for her friends to eat. The long hardwood table and its dozens of chairs, previously reserved for state dinners, had been pushed against the wall and covered with a cloth. In its place sat a small four-person table, seemingly out of place in the cavernous room and barely larger than the chandelier hanging above it.
“So, Adora, tough workout this morning?” Glimmer asked, cocking an eyebrow in her direction.
“Oh yeah, you know me, always working hard,” Adora said, throwing two half-hearted punches in a futile attempt to sell the lie.
“Interesting,” Glimmer replied with a smirk. “Because the gym was closed this morning for the castle guards’ qualification exams.”
Adora’s nervous laugh did nothing to cover her discomfort. “Well, yeah, I knew that. I was, um, working out somewhere else!”
Thankfully for Adora, the interrogation was interrupted by a member of Bright Moon’s kitchen staff, who carried a tray of plates. He placed one in front of each of the four friends. Bow and Glimmer received identical plates of scrambled eggs, toast, and fruit. Catra rolled her eyes, wondering whether they genuinely liked the same breakfast or if they were just being disgustingly cute for the fun of it. She figured it could go either way.
Catra abandoned the thought and focused on her own meal—a lox bagel with a fried egg on the side. Fish, or anything resembling it, had been nearly impossible to come by in the Horde. While anything could be found on the black market, luxuries like salmon were rarely affordable, no matter how tempting.
She was almost irritated when the sight of Adora’s plate nearly caused her to choke on a bite of her fish. The server carefully lowered Adora’s plate, which was stacked with a menagerie of breakfast meats nearly as high as physics would allow. Catra suspected that a pile of eggs and hash browns lurked somewhere beneath the unholy pyramid of bacon and sausage.
“Let me guess,” Catra said, suppressing a laugh. “You think it doesn’t count as sleeping through a week of breakfasts if you eat them all today?”
“Exthactly!” Adora responded, her mouth full of breakfast sausage and completely unashamed. That was the punchline Catra needed, and soon, Bow and Glimmer both broke into laughter. Catra liked that.
Six months after the war, Catra still struggled to understand why Bow and Glimmer had so easily accepted her back into their group. While Adora taking her back hadn’t been a surprise, Catra often found herself questioning the genuine warmth Bow and Glimmer showed her. There had been, after all, three years of attempted murder between them. Shouldn’t that have put a bigger strain on their relationship? Until she could figure it out, Catra contented herself with being a little subdued around the Best Friends Squad, trying not too hard to earn the laughs and smiles that hinted they might actually enjoy her company.
As breakfast concluded, the Best Friends Squad made their way to the War Room for the real reason they had come to Bright Moon—a meeting of the Princess Alliance. Catra didn’t exactly resent these meetings, but she did find them mostly pointless. She also found it strange that, as the girlfriend of a princess, she was obligated to attend. Stranger still, Bow never seemed to voice any objections to his involvement.
Catra tuned out as Glimmer opened the meeting with formal words she didn’t care about. Her attention drifted further when Entrapta took the floor, excitedly rattling off something about “wonderful opportunities... but also danger!” from the millions of newly discovered star systems surrounding Etheria. Admittedly, that sounded like a problem. Still, Catra assumed it was one better handled by someone with actual voting power—a princess.
From what she gathered, Glimmer and Entrapta were advocating for the Princess Alliance to act as a confederation, presenting a unified front to any curious galactic neighbors. It was, Catra had to admit, a surprisingly good plan.
“The former Fright Zone in the New Scorpioni Kingdom is the perfect location for military and civilian tech research for all members of the Alliance!” Entrapta said.
Catra’s eyes snapped wide at the mention of the Fright Zone. It was another complicated memory. The place had stolen her childhood and had carefully shaped her into a monster it couldn’t control. And yet, it had also given her the closest thing to a family a war-torn orphan could hope for. In that regard, Catra thought as she glanced at Adora beside her, she had been luckier than most.
“If the motion passes, Hordak and I will move our lab from Dryl to the Fright Zone and begin distributing tech to the kingdoms immediately,” Entrapta added.
Catra winced at that one. Hordak was far less complicated.
They were voting now. Glimmer led the vote while Bow recorded the results on his tracker pad.
“All in favor?” Glimmer asked. Nine hands, including hers, raised around the table. Adora, Frosta, Mermista, Perfuma, Netossa, Spinnerella, and Scorpia all threw their support behind the proposal.
“Seeing a unanimous vote, the motion passes,” Glimmer announced. “The Princess Alliance is now officially the united front for all of our kingdoms.”
Mermista spoke up. “Look, I like this whole unification idea, but we need to talk about the humpback whale in the room.” Heads turned in her direction. “There are like a hundred thousand clones working in the reconstruction programs right now. What happens when that ends? I’ve got a bunch of people whose houses got blown up”—she shot a brief glare at Catra—“who want to lock them all up.”
Catra shrunk into her seat, hoping to remain unnoticed for the rest of the meeting. Adora, however, responded firmly.
“No. This is a refugee crisis, not a criminal one. The clones, and everyone from the Horde, deserve a chance to start over. No one who wants to change is going to jail.”
“Adora, people died,” Mermista replied. “Someone needs to answer for this. Apparently, Hordak is just going to get a cushy tech job in the kingdom he used to run? Then who pays for what the Horde did? We already let her get away with it because she saved the world or whatever.” Mermista stared directly at Catra now.
Catra abandoned her plan to remain unnoticed. Her tail bristled as she stood up, planting her palms on the table and leaning toward Mermista. “If you have something to say to me, Princess Tuna, I’m right here.”
“Oh yeah, give the Horde a second chance. What could go wrong?” Mermista said, rolling her eyes.
“They all deserve another chance. Just like Catra did. Even Hordak,” Adora said, trying to calm the room.
Catra’s head whipped toward Adora, her growing anger redirected. She stared at Adora in disbelief.
“You just want to let Hordak go?” Catra asked, her voice sharp.
“I—” Adora began but was cut off.
“After everything he did to us? You think he didn’t know what Shadow Weaver was doing? He let it happen, Adora.” Catra’s voice trembled with a mix of fury and pain. “Do you remember how old we were the first time he sent us into battle? We were twelve. He stole our childhood, and we’ll never get it back.”
“I’m not doing anything I didn’t do for you!” Adora blurted out, her voice rising with frustration.
Catra’s face hardened, and tears welled in her eyes. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I am nothing like him.”
Without another word, Catra turned on her heel and stormed out of the room. The door slammed behind her.
Adora stood up to follow, but by the time she reached the door, she knew it was too late. Catra was already gone.
The remaining members of the Princess Alliance sat in stunned silence.
“So, maybe we table the clone discussion until the next meeting?” Bow suggested sheepishly. Nods and murmured agreement quickly followed, and Frosta was the first to leave, breaking the uncomfortable silence that hung over the room. The others followed quickly behind her.
One of the architectural curiosities of Bright Moon Castle was a turret completely closed off and inaccessible from the rest of the building. A visual trick made it appear larger from the ground than it actually was, contributing to the castle’s impressive facade while using fewer materials than a full-sized tower. The tower contained an equally small room, barely big enough for two people, whose entire purpose was to sell the illusion to observers on the ground—or at least, it was until Bright Moon’s resident magicat discovered it.
Adora had a hunch she’d find Catra there, and she was right. With She-Ra’s help, Adora scaled the outside of the tower—far less nimbly than Catra could—and found herself perched at one of the open windows to Catra’s makeshift retreat. Transforming back, she poked her head through the window.
“Mind if I come in?” she asked.
Catra didn’t turn to acknowledge her but gently patted the stone floor next to her. Adora climbed in, sitting down and lazily draping an arm over Catra’s shoulder.
“I know what you’re going to say,” Catra said coldly. “I shouldn’t lash out like that. I have to keep my emotions in check. So spare me the lecture.”
“No,” Adora replied softly, her voice reassuring. “I wanted to say I’m sorry.”
Catra’s ears perked up at that.
“You’re right to be mad at him. I shouldn’t have made you feel like you weren’t.”
Catra looked down at the floor. “Thanks, Adora. But it really wasn’t your fault. I was just taking it out on you because—”
“Because of Mermista,” Adora finished knowingly. Catra nodded.
“You don’t have to listen to her, Cat,” Adora continued, meeting Catra’s heterochromatic eyes. “You saved me. You saved all of us. I’m so proud of you. Bow and Glimmer are proud of you. If Mermista can’t see who you really are, that’s her problem, not yours.”
“You really think that?”
“I know it,” Adora said, her voice resolute.
Catra blushed lightly, though she knew Adora was wrong. Still, Adora was a terrible liar, which meant even though she was wrong, she truly believed it. And for that, Catra was grateful.
It was several moments before she spoke again.
“So, you really want to give them another chance? Everyone in the Horde?” Catra asked.
“Yeah, I think so,” Adora answered.
“Even after everything they did?”
“I know, Catra. If I thought there was any other way to unite Etheria again, I’d do it.”
Catra paused. “Okay,” she said finally. “Let’s do it.”
Adora cocked her head, clearly confused by Catra’s sudden change of heart.
“I still don’t like it,” Catra quickly added, “but I trust you. If you think it’s the only way, then I’m behind you. I’ll figure out how to live with it.”
Adora smiled, pulling Catra into a full-on embrace. A smile cracked across Catra’s face as she whispered into Adora’s ear, “Just don’t make me sit through another one of your damn meetings.”