WHAT: The Crystal Castle is glitching so they go to fix it - but its programming refuses to make it easy, and has them walk through some old memories (and Catra redeems herself from 'Promise')
WHERE: The Crystal Castle in Vallo Forest WHEN: Today WARNINGS: FTB at the end STATUS: Complete
Which meant it was creepy as fuck; a towering crystallized structure with vines winding around it settled deep within Vallo’s forest. They weren’t fans of this place. It had been a base of operations for the Heart of Etheria project and home to an artificial intelligence that had been hellbent on manipulating Adora for some bullshit ‘greater purpose.’ It had played out some of their toughest memories back at them like scenes from a film to intentionally widen the existing rift between them. In a twisted way, it served as Shadow Weaver’s resting place.
Adora had almost died here, too. Limp in Catra’s arms, infected by a bright green venom that cut through her skin as the Heart pulsed above them. They would have died together if it hadn’t been the miraculous timing of her confession (in which Catra cried while spilling her fucking guts out). So, like - maybe that was the one good thing?
She still voted that it be burned down. Blowing it up would be super neat. Bulldoze it? Catra would spend all their money finding one with the capabilities for it. It was nice to fantasize about as they gazed upon the castle.
Realistically speaking, though, the fuck were they going to do with it?
“So we - fix its glitching issue,” Catra addressed warily, the slow and sharp swish of her tail expressing utmost annoyance of this thing’s goddamn existence. Her ensemble today was perfect for combat - leather leggings with stylish rips, a skin-tight top that left little to the imagination (maybe not perfect for other people in combat but perfect for her, okay). “And we screw off away from this place forever? Is that the plan?”
Adora wasn’t particularly fond of this place anymore.
The Crystal Castle. Once, it had been one of her most frequented haunts - a place that was She-Ra’s, or at least She-Ra-related. She’d thought it was a safe haven for a little while, even after she and Catra had been plummeted through tumultuous memories and she’d been left to hang off a cliff’s edge while Catra stalked away.
It had been Light Hope’s attempt to make Adora let go. She had tried to alter Adora’s perception, to re-color Catra as ‘enemy’ instead of ‘rebel hopeful’. It hadn’t worked; she’d never given up, not entirely. But then she’d been pulled into the mission Mara had abandoned - to restore balance to Etheria, with no idea what that meant or what it would do, and only just barely able to stop it in the end.
But Light Hope was gone now. At peace in whatever way an artificially intelligent being that had been programmed to fulfill a purpose could be. Now seeing the Crystal Castle flooded her with memories of what had happened at the Heart, the end of Prime, how close to the brink of death she’d been not so long ago. Or maybe forever ago? It was hard to tell around here. Vallo had thoroughly screwed with their experience of time, especially back home.
She had been avoiding this place for as long as she could possibly manage. Adam had told her it was here a month (or more) ago and she’d just kept putting it off. It wasn’t like her to drag her feet, but she just wasn’t ready to face it yet - or to ask Catra to face it with her, because she knew she couldn’t handle it herself. Knowing she would be walking right into a memory-pulling landmine didn’t help. She’d never had a really pleasant experience with that tech - aside from that one little moment, seeing Catra when she was sure she never would again. It had kept her strong on her way to the Heart that day.
But it sounded like Adam’s experience had leaned toward the unpleasant, too, and if it had taken them in when they were in the control room, then something was wrong. Without Light Hope, after being pulled into an entirely different universe, it didn’t surprise her that it would be jumbled enough to start glitching. She could really only hope She-Ra’s influence was enough to set it right, at least long enough for her to pull whatever data she could from the interface.
Then - well, she wasn’t against Catra’s bulldozing suggestion. An empty castle, like the empty Fright Zone, would do none of them any good.
“That’s the plan,” she agreed, looking up at the castle with her arms crossed over her chest. She could only hope they would be able to walk through whatever they encountered without any trouble, but she’d dressed for the occasion that she might not as well. She never went quite as tight or ripped up as Catra (the rips in her old Horde jacket had been all her wife’s doing, in an attempt to make her look cool), but she was in leggings, her old boots, and a sleeveless shirt, the sword ever-present and wrapped around her wrist in its bracer form.
She offered Catra her hand, flashing her a small smile. “You ready?”
Catra took it. Her own was gloved, albeit fingerless. Leather too, the sleeve of it stopping right at her elbow. It was slightly dominatrix-esque - a shame she didn’t have a whip equipped to her waist. “Ready to get it over with,” she retorted, locking her fingers with Adora’s and making sure the grip was secure. They weren’t getting separated here again. Not this time. “We’ll be okay. It can’t mess with us any worse than it already has.”
Famous last words. But she was pretty confident in that, and they knew its tricks and what to expect. “If it throws memories at us then I’ll just…” Catra looked at her wife - or her arm, exposed and muscled, and she dragged her eyes up the length of it without a lick of shame. “Ogle you instead to deflect. The tits and ass technique.”
Smirking at her oh so salaciously, she tugged Adora along towards the entrance.
Adora nodded, hoping with every fiber of her being what Catra said was true. She had never really understood the purpose of the memory-pulling technology the Crystal Castle employed. She liked to think it couldn’t be just to isolate She-Ra and re-train her to balance Etheria and activate the Heart, but that might be too naive of her. The First Ones’ goal had been pretty damn clear.
But now, it was just running wild, apparently. And it had gotten to Teela, who was possibly one of the toughest people Adora had ever met — reminded her of Huntara, a bit. Going into this with Catra, though, instead of against her, on opposite sides, kept that small flame burning. She was right. They would be okay. She wasn’t sure ogling would be the key, but she wasn’t protesting, either.
“I like that technique,” she replied with a grin, turning her head to get a good look at Catra’s ass, which she very much appreciated. She pressed a kiss to her wife’s cheek, then let herself be tugged forward, searching the ground as they walked. Adam had said he’d found a panel in the ground with a picture of a sword on it and it had let him in with the Sword of Power. She’d always used a password to get through the main doors before, but surely if the Sword of Power worked, the Sword of Protection would, too. This was She-Ra’s place, after all.
Sure enough, before long, she came across that panel. It lit up pink when she pressed her boot into it, and she grabbed the sword off her left wrist with her right hand, sliding it into the sword-sized slot. The panel sank down into the ground, creating a ramp underground (and a furrow to Adora’s brow), but she pulled the sword free by its pommel and squeezed the hand still joined with Catra’s.
“Here we go,” she breathed, and then proceeded downwards.
It’s, what - the third time Catra’s been in this thing? The moment the ramp came forth and paved the pathway inside, her stomach sank. They were willingly walking into some haunted house of malfunctioning memories once rigged to fuck them over. Gauging from Teela’s experience it could still needle them where it hurt the most. Each other.
But also? Fuck it, let it. This place wouldn’t show them anything new. Every mistake they’ve made down the road, they’ve laid bare out to one another - there were no secrets, no judgments, no more grudges.
Catra’s grip on her hand was more or less as they ventured in. It was… mostly quiet, for now. Their steps hit the floor, echoing through crystallized halls. Part of her wished she’d taken Melog’s offer for them to tag along but this whole thing felt deeply personal, maybe too much for a third passenger.
Then, the walls took on imagery and voices, unfolding like a theatrical film all around them.
“Can I say something?”
It was them. Adora’s Morningside apartment. The one that became theirs. Catra had been Big Spoon in this moment, face hidden.
“Yeah, of course,” came the sound of Adora’s voice. “You can say anything you want.”
This was the night they first saw each other in Vallo. The night they made up, more or less. Catra didn’t stop walking - they really shouldn’t - but she did little to fight the smirk her lips wanted to make. “Our first Christmas Eve. We looked like shit.”
“Yeah,” Adora chuckled. “We’d been there barely a week. I don’t think we even really knew it was Christmas Eve.” She certainly hadn’t, nor had she known what that entailed. They had winter celebrations back on Etheria, but Christmas was more specific to Earth, and whatever amalgamation of worlds had converged in Vallo. She’d spent most of the day of that Christmas Eve literally scrambling up mountains. It was a fruitless exercise, but she’d had to do something - had to get back to home and Darla and deal with Prime.
But having Catra with her, even if they weren’t quite matching on the timeline, had been a comfort. They’d had to talk about some tough things and still weren’t exactly perfect in the moment playing as they walked. Getting there, though. Working on it or at least starting, making the effort.
Catra’s voice continued, echoing despite the whisper it had been back then. “I know I don’t remember, or just - haven’t gone through what you have, but thank you. For coming to get me. And I know saying sorry doesn’t fix anything. I know I fucked up, a lot. I’m going to try to work on not doing that so much. But if you ever want me to just go away and leave you alone, tell me. I’ll go. You don’t owe me anything.”
There was a pause, then. The sound of shifting, and even though Adora wasn’t watching the memory play out, she remembered exactly what had happened that night: taking Catra into her arms and tucking her head under her chin. She’d wanted to make her feel safe and protected, after everything they’d talked about, because she was and she deserved to be.
“I don’t want you to go anywhere,” she said quietly, in-sync with the memory-image of her. Her hand squeezed around Catra’s. “C’mon,” she encouraged her. Before they get worse.
Cool. Fuck. No. This wasn’t a bad memory but it was somewhat of an emotional punch to the throat anyway - because it ached, dry with the sensation of barbed wire lining it. That night had been rough. It had also been the start of them, a pitiful entanglement of limbs and whispered apologies. She was fine while the memory unraveled around them, but it wasn’t until Adora spoke parallel to it that it got her.
Really got her.
But she was fine, and hid that wobble of her bottom lip by holding their hands up and pressing a firm kiss to the back of her wife’s hand as they moved forward. That particular memory eventually stopped only for a kaleidoscope of older ones to take its place.
It varied in stuttering, broken pieces of a much larger puzzle. Their dance at the Princess Prom. The dip, the moment where their eyes met at the edge of the cliff. The Battle of Bright Moon. Catra’s claws shredding She-Ra’s back. Then came the memories they didn’t share - the ones where they dealt with hardships away from one another.
On one side of the tunnel was Adora, realizing Light Hope’s plans. How she was bursting with power in a way that had to be painful. “I won’t be controlled. I am not a piece of their machine. I am not a weapon. And I’m going to end this now.”
On the other side was Catra, wounded and on her knees, giving up before Glimmer and begging for death. “What are you waiting for? Do it.”
Both events happened almost at the exact same time, right before Horde Prime’s arrival.
“Not my proudest moment,” Catra lightly quipped, trying to not let all of that get under her skin. “You, though? I’m proud of you. Also - how badly did that hurt you and is it too late to fight Light Hope?”
Adora was doing her best to power through without comment. This tunnel seemed like it would never end, but they had to be going somewhere, right? There had to be an end goal. She’d once had this place mapped out in her memory - as much of it as she could reach, anyway - but this felt unfamiliar. She wondered if it was the castle’s way of throwing more psychological torture at them, keeping them walking down an endless hallway of some of their hardest memories playing around them.
Hard as she tried to remain steadfast, there was no missing Catra begging for death, from Glimmer, of all people. Tears began to fall and she hurriedly wiped them away with her right wrist, hand still occupied by the Sword of Protection. The real one, not the fake one her memory-mirror had just destroyed to stop the Heart of Etheria Project in its tracks. She squeezed the hilt and lowered it back to her side, trying to pull some of its strength.
“I survived,” she replied, her tone much darker than Catra’s - unintentionally so. That moment had been such a mix of emotions for her. She knew she’d done the right thing, chosen the right path. But she’d lost She-Ra - or thought she had, at least - and her feelings of self-worth had been so wrapped up in her alter ego that she hadn’t really known how to handle that loss. Being just Adora hadn’t felt good enough.
Sometimes, it still didn’t, but that was a hurdle to deal with at another time.
“Yeah,” was Catra’s response, softer and scratchier than the norm. She wanted to halt their movements to take a breather, wipe those tears from her cheeks herself but not now. They could focus on comfort later. The sooner they handled this, the sooner it would be over - keep on walking.
So they walked. The walls around them continued to shift, phasing from one scene to another in non-linear points of time. Catra, handing the Sword of Protection back to Adora, “This isn’t because I like you.” Flashes of white and lavender, the memory of reality cracking and falling all around them like distorted snow. A switch that was flipped. Unfolded notes with Mara’s name on them. Angella, pressing her forehead to Adora’s. “You made your choice, now live with it!” Claws searing marks over their childhood doodle. Shadow Weaver’s words cut with cruelty, whispering “It was you she left, she didn’t want you after all.” Anguished cries muffled into an old, white shirt that distinctly did not belong to Catra.
The hallway came to an end to a room. It was a space of pitch-black darkness but, of course, it didn’t stay that way. Another scene began to stitch together before them, pixels of a green that was too bright piecing a picture; a glowing pool, a set of robes, chunks of hair that had been cut off. It was brief. It was enough; a small glimpse of torture that neither of them could stomach if they saw it roll out. Thankfully, it didn’t last long.
“I’m so over this bu -”
Around them the scene shifted, again; same walls and white arches, different floors. Something fell off from the platform. It was a body - hers - short-haired, freshly zapped, and with a sickening crack of bones once her back hit the ground. Catra let out a startled shout because she didn’t recognize or expect this.
She also didn’t expect to see Adora’s body follow suit, and hear another set of bones breaking. Adora’s bones. Because Adora had jumped off after her. “You,” Catra squinted her eyes shut, “are such an idiot. Don’t ever do that again. Now can we stab our way out of here?? Tell me we can stab our way out of here.”
A room, finally. It was better than the endless tunnel, at least for that momentary bout of relief. It didn’t take Adora long to realize that this was the actual memory room. Which meant that maze of hallways wasn’t just torture, so that was something. It took all of her willpower to keep from watching at certain points, even more to keep from stopping them mid-step to apologize. She would be apologizing tonight, that was for sure. If not for those incidents, then certainly for ever dragging Catra to this place to begin with. It wasn’t her problem; Adora should have handled this herself.
This time, the memory surrounded them, placed them on the floor beneath the platform on Prime’s enormous ship. They weren’t just snippets of their lives playing on either side of them, like an old-fashioned film projector, but they weren’t being forced to relive it all, either, not exactly. Watching Catra fall first made her heart lurch, but when her memory-self followed suit and let her legs shatter as she hit the floor, she cringed, looking shamefaced before looking away.
(Hadn’t she told Catra about that? Maybe she hadn’t. It wasn’t the most important thing that had happened at that moment. That had been Catra, struggling to breathe and nearly losing her life, and this was one of those things Adora wouldn’t apologize for. Her legs had healed, and Catra was alive, and all was right with the world, no matter how stupid her wife may think she was for what she’d done.)
She dropped Catra’s hand for the first time, grabbed the hilt of the sword with both hands and stepped forward, jabbing it down into the floor in front of them. For all she knew, she’d be sawing into nothing, but it seemed to grip onto something - stone, maybe crystal? - and as she dragged it forward, the room began to shake and the gouge in the floor she’d created began to crack and spread.
In retrospect, Catra should have been paying more attention.
Things began to flicker around them like a television about to go out. The earth beneath them began to quake but her eyes were glued to a memory that wasn’t hers. Couldn’t be hers - she was close to death in Adora’s arms when the clones circled her. Maybe seconds away from it when she saw Adora stand (legs healed by the sudden rush of magic), eyes glowing and furious. Catra could vaguely remember taking a last, shuddering breath and She-Ra being the last thing she saw before her body finally shut down.
Bones were broken again. None of it was theirs. Then - a deadly stare, a cold voice. Catra shuddered. “You miscalculated.”
The imagery died. It faded to normal walls. Quaking walls. Everything began to shift. Plates of stone and crystal slid towards each other, and then split apart and by the time her hand flew to reach Adora’s it was too late.
“Adora!” Catra lost balance (they were separated, how could they be so stupid??) and used her claws to anchor herself against rock, keeping her from tumbling down the sudden creation of deep crevices. This room was fucking massive, and it was hard to tell if everything around them was actually crumbling or if this was some kind of simulation designed to mess with them for the millionth goddamn time.
Adora was almost certain it was a simulation. Everything was happening too fast, escalating from a gouge in the floor to essentially an avalanche in a matter of minutes. It had to be a simulation, but that didn’t make it any less real - just like those memories, pulled out of their heads and displayed before their eyes, intended to create this pit of despair in their stomachs that Adora was desperately trying to stay out of.
Ignorance, unfortunately, was not bliss in this particular situation. Ignoring the memories and trying to just charge in had failed. She’d fed into the castle’s tricks by simply stabbing, like Catra said, because she was angry and hurt and scared but bottling it all up, not thinking things through like she should be. This whole thing had been a mistake, the biggest mistake. They should have destroyed it without setting foot inside and washed their hands of it entirely.
Instead, as she was prone to do, Adora got clumsy. She pried the sword out of the ground, in the hopes that the abyss forming between them would stop. Instead, the room simply shook again, and she stumbled down into the crevice, thrusting the sword forward just in time to stop from completely falling away. But it wasn’t holding, slipping slowly with her entire weight hanging on.
“Shit,” she hissed, angry at herself for letting this happen again. She hated this place - deeply, completely loathed it, and as soon as she got herself free, they were leaving. Richie could set the place on fire, or the explodey people could throw dynamite at it. She didn’t care anymore. She took a breath, tried to steel herself, and looked up to see Catra looking down on her.
But not her Catra. Not the girl that was her wife now, older and filled out, dark hair sleek but long (almost untenably so, they were overdue haircuts again). Younger Catra, expression contorted with hurt and bitterness and anger of her own, with kitten tufts and the First Ones’ Sword of Protection in her hand.
“Bye Adora. I really am going to miss you.”
Adora closed her eyes against the tears that began falling, but she couldn’t stop them this time. She heard the sword clanging down beside her, thrown by Catra before she walked away, but she told herself it wasn’t real. She knew it wasn’t real, could feel the hilt of her sword, She-Ra’s sword, digging into her hands while she clung, trying to find the strength to push up. Last time, falling had brought her back to reality, proven this was all a simulation, but things had changed enough, jumbled and glitching, that she didn’t trust she would get the same result.
“Catra!” she called out, raising one hand off the hilt to dig into the crumbling wall before her with her fingers. “Help me!”
Rock debris had been falling from the ceiling, and the few chunks that clonked her on the head felt real. It took some acrobatic maneuvering (plus a lot of whispered fuck fuck fucks) to evade the larger ones that were dropping like flies and shattering into the ground. Catra knew how this place reacted to intruders. It had defense mechanisms set in place to protect itself and it had been designed to not see Adora as that.
But, as always, her presence had a habit of screwing that up for her. Catra with Adora meant that this castle would see her as an intruder too, and would hurt her if allowed. Back then she could trust this place to actually not kill Adora if all she had to was walk away except this place was now tits up and going haywire. Nothing could be trusted.
Neither could the image that manifested right in front of her eyes. Her heart felt like it stopped and fell right out of her ass at the sight of Adora slipping through the cracks. And then she saw herself - this scrawny, scruffed up and young version that appeared out of nowhere like a ghost. Back turned to her. Sword in hand (but not the real one, this wasn’t real). She let it go; let it fall through the darkness as if it was the easiest thing to do.
She let Adora go too.
Her words had an edge of smugness to them; an air of nonchalance and indifference meant to prove that she didn’t care what happened to Adora. But the words rang empty and hollow, and she recognized the tired (maybe even haunted) look in her eyes as she witnessed herself turn around.
That projection of this younger Catra walked away. It passed through her, and for a split second she was one with her past-self - the incensed rage, the heartache, the lies she told herself in order to survive (Adora would be fine, Adora didn’t need her, Catra didn’t need Adora either, they didn’t need to hold each other back anymore, it’s better this way, hero and villain). The sensation felt like ice, goosebumps dotting across her skin. A second later and she was gone, code and data absorbed back into the castle.
Catra felt a tremor under her feet that snapped her attention back to reality - shit. “Adora!” she called out, and the quakes and sudden tilts didn’t do any favors for her balance so she threw herself to the ground stomach-first, let the momentum of it all slide her towards the edge until half of her body was dangling far enough to reach for her.
Her claws had been extended at first, scrabbling at her skin but she forced herself to retract them in the heat of the moment. She refused to hurt her while trying to save her. “I’ve got you! Don’t let go!” Catra blurted, and realized she couldn’t pull her up with just one arm. Adora’s muscle mass was a lot, more than what Catra was used to lifting. Her other hand shot up to grab her too as clawed toes managed to sink into stone to keep herself anchored.
Catra pulled and pulled and pulled, adrenaline and desperation providing an extra kick in strength.
Don’t let go!
Gods, Adora needed to hear those words more than she’d realized. It hadn’t been Light Hope, not yet, just that hologram - maybe the version before Light Hope, a predecessor. But the words still echoed in her brain. You are not ready yet. You must let go. She knew now what they’d meant and that they were wrong, that letting go was the last thing she should have done. And this time, she wouldn’t. She refused.
She barely noticed Catra’s claws scraping across her skin when she reached for her; she wrapped her hand around her wife’s forearm in her effort to drag herself upward. But it wasn’t enough - even both of Catra’s hands on her arm weren’t quite enough. But the hole she’d created, although not very deep and just the size of her fist, was the leverage she needed. She gritted her teeth, using all of her strength to push into the pulling on her arm.
The sword was yanked out of the wall, flashing gold as it reconnected to Adora’s wrist in its bracer form. Just a split second later, she managed to stick her right foot into that little space and fling herself upward, pushing Catra backward with the sudden onslaught of weight as she made contact with (somewhat) solid ground. She was breathing heavily, her heart pounding in her ears, but after a long, drawn-out moment to recover, she realized the room had gone still.
When she looked up, the room was black again, undamaged - no fallen stones, no crumbling abyss just beyond her feet. Just the darkness of this godsforsaken room, and a crystal blue light illuminating a gigantic door no more than a few yards from them.
“I hate it here,” she muttered, pushing herself to her feet and reaching out for Catra. She pulled her into her arms, holding onto her tightly for a few moments. Not too long, though; who knew how long that door would be there if they didn’t take it now. “We better go.”
It didn’t make sense for them to simply lay there when the castle was collapsing all around them but she didn’t care - Adora’s weight on her was a relief, and she also needed a moment or two to process. Breathe, let her racing heart level out. Her lashes felt damp every time she blinked. Catra wasn’t crying.
Probably. (She didn’t want to talk about it if she was.)
They knew this could happen going in. They expected it. Everything they saw and heard - they discussed in lengths, apologized and moved forward. It was their history. It was part of them. Sometimes, it still stung.
But they lived it and survived it, and they were going to be fine. Catra was sure of that when Adora helped her up and wrapped herself around her, and she held her back just as tightly. She wasn’t too keen on letting go so she clung kind of stubbornly for a few extra seconds longer. Adora was here, and safe, and she wasn’t going to walk away from her ever again.
“Fine,” she growled, the sound rumbling from her chest. A stark contrast from the feather-like kiss she left to her throat before pulling away, but their hands found each other again and she wasn’t losing it a second time. “Lead the way, princess.”
Adora didn’t want to lead the way. She didn’t want to keep going. She wanted to turn back time to when they’d been standing in front of this cursed building and turn around, say ‘forget it’. There was nothing in here she couldn’t live without - but she’d brought the person she couldn’t live without into this place, knowing what it had done last time, and she had regrets. Many of them. The castle may not have unleashed spiderbots on everyone who set foot inside this time, but the memories were worse.
They would be okay, of course. She believed that. Nothing she and Catra had seen here today were things they hadn’t already discussed and worked through. That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt like hell to be inundated with it all over again.
She held onto Catra’s hand again and guided them both to the door, pressing her hand to the center and giving it a hefty shove. It opened right into the control room, spacious and open like Darla, with huge pillars from floor to ceiling leading them down to the main computer. It seemed eerily still, and the pathway here had been so scrambled and wrong, but Adora wasn’t going to question it.
“I’ll just grab what data I can, then we’re gone,” she promised quietly. As much as she’d love to find a way to rush out of here, she might as well get what she’d come for now that they’d finally arrived. She didn’t want everything they’d gone through to be for absolutely nothing.
She kept Catra’s hand in hers even as she shifted into her alter ego’s form. Everything seemed to remain calm, even as she laid the sword across a panel similar to the one they’d used at the entrance. Again, it lit up pink, and slowly, without her saying a word, three long data crystals emerged at the edges of the hilt. She had no idea if there would be anything useful there (or what they’d do with that information here in Vallo if there was something), but it was done now.
A sense of peace hit her. She’d accomplished what she needed to accomplish, and even the castle seemed to sense that, lighting up the path to one of the doors for them as they stepped down. It looked much more familiar, like the hallway she’d walked every single time she’d come in and out of here to train with Light Hope. Hopefully, this time, it would let them go free without a hassle.
Oh. Hello, extra tall and extra buff wife. It was like Adora was putting on an extra show of power to push against the castle just in case it started shit with them again. She-Ra’s hand swallowed hers in sheer size, and she honestly looked pretty menacing right now - like the whole You miscalculated vibe that had gotten her, uh…
Wrong time to feel like a useless lesbian right now. Wrong time. (Haha, unless…)
“So, that’s…” Catra gestured back towards the computer with her hand while also refusing to stop moving her feet. The exit was right there. “That’s it then? This place is going to stop trying to emotionally terrorize anyone walking into it?”
It was a genius defense mechanism. Shitty to endure, but what a way to ward off intruders by really putting them through an emotional ringer. Bravo, First Ones.
Catra was exactly right - She-Ra remained as a layer of extra protection, even as they made their way down the hall to the exit out of this place. She may not have been the First Ones’ version of She-Ra anymore, but she was still a First One and She-Ra to boot. She could only hope the castle had decided to recognize that and let them go free. They’d been through enough to get this far. If it was a challenge, they’d won, fair and square.
“That’s the hope,” she replied, giving Catra’s hand a squeeze. The other clutched all three memory crystals, just loose enough to keep from shattering them. When they finally came to the door (which she shoved open with one shoulder), she felt herself relax. And with that, she shrunk back to her normal self - and lost a crystal to the grass below them in the process.
All she could do was laugh, breathless and tired and relieved, as she bent down to scoop it up. The sword came off her wrist and was promptly transformed into a shoulder bag - one just big enough to contain the memory crystals Adora could no longer hold. Damn leggings with their lack of pockets; she needed to do some shopping.
Oh fuck yeah. Freedom. The outdoors. Catra took in a deep breath, inhaling the fresh air of the forest and didn’t even look behind her to confirm the entrance sliding shut. The sound was good enough for her. While Adora finagled with the crystals and sword-turned-bag, she took a few more steps forward and put her hands on her hips and just - let out the biggest sigh.
She was tired. She was wired. It wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling. Exhaustion and restlessness mingled together, robbing her of the ability to relax. Her muscles were wound up so tight with tension she was sure was going to stick around for a bit.
“Hey, um.” Catra turned around some to look at her wife, a deep crease appearing between her eyebrows. “You gonna be okay? I know that…” A deep breath, another sigh. “That was rough. But it wasn’t anything we haven’t already lived through.” Or forgiven each other for, which was what she wanted to add but what if - ??
Nope. Nope. Not going down that rabbit hole. She wouldn’t let Adora throw herself into it either.
Adora was on that same ride. She was exhausted, but she was also wide awake, restless in this way that she knew she wouldn’t really feel how tired she was until it hit her like a ton of bricks later on. The Crystal Castle had put them on yet another roller coaster ride - physically and emotionally - and it was going to take them both time to really recover from it. Thankfully, they had all the time they needed here. No war to go back to, no more hurting while apart.
For now, she wrapped Catra up in her arm and placed a kiss right to that crease between her eyebrows. “I’m okay,” she assured her, dipping her head so their eyes met. “It was…a lot, yeah. And I’m so sorry I hurt you so much, but…you’re right. We’ve dealt with a lot of that already. We’re gonna be fine, as long as you’re not hating me again for making you cry and stuff.”
Catra’s face colored so quick. Literally beet red. It would have been funny if the context didn’t suck. This didn’t come from an exchange of cute, flirtatious quips though - it was shame. Some of those moments were a little more private. It’s one thing for her to admit that yes, fine, she was kind of a wreck in the beginning without Adora (which she hid, a lot) but it’s another to see it play out.
“Okay but - no, no apologizing,” she huffed out and slapped a hand over Adora’s mouth before a but slipped out in protest. “We’ve been there and done that. We’re not turning this into a circle-jerk of constantly saying sorry for all that’s said and done. It’s dumb. I never hated you even when I told myself I did and how could I ever when you just - jumped off a ledge after my mostly-dead ass anyway and broke your legs? Then your stupid face summoned She-Ra all new and hot, basically telling Prime to fuck off because you love me? I don’t need apologies when I have that.”
Her eyes were glaring up at her wife (pupils wide, too), full of determination and Adora and. Uh, something else. Maybe. After a moment passed so the words could sink into her wife’s brain, Catra’s hand slowly dropped. It caressed her neck, and went to rest against her chest - on that spot she knew where the Failsafe scar was. “So how about… whenever you feel the need to apologize about old baggage,” she continued as her voice settled into a whisper, gaze flickering to her lips for a second. “You just kiss me instead?”
Adora started grinning as soon as Catra’s face changed colors - she always enjoyed making Catra blush - but it tempered when she started speaking. She was downright frowning when her wife’s hand slapped over her mouth, wanting to protest (because she should apologize, especially for dragging Catra back into a situation she should have known would turn out the way it had). But she dutifully kept quiet and listened to what she had to say instead.
Of course she made a good point. As much as Adora wanted to apologize - for today and especially for how heartbroken she’d been, for the way Shadow Weaver had ripped into her when she’d left the Fright Zone - it wasn’t going to do anything but dig up old wounds. She didn’t want that, for herself or for Catra. They deserved to be at peace and move forward without dwelling on the past. Being who she was, however, meant there would be moments she wanted to apologize more than anything, guaranteed.
This seemed like a good compromise. If there were new dumb things she did that pissed off or hurt Catra, then she would apologize. But for the old dumb things, instead of rehashing it and sinking into that emotion like it was brand new, making that apology through a kiss was a great idea. It also increased the amount of kisses she got to give Catra in a day (probably not exponentially, but there was likely to be a rate increase on rougher days) which was a win in her eyes.
She nodded slowly and leaned into Catra’s touch, heart racing against the palm on her chest. “I think you’re gonna be getting kissed way more. Starting now,” she murmured, and she leaned in to seal her lips to her wife’s. It was full of apologies, yes, but also something a little more heated. The restless energy pummeling her body had ideas of its own on how they should work out these inflamed tensions.
Catra made a sound. It was this low, throaty noise when their mouths met - and she kissed back hard, pouring her own apologies into it. The rule applied to her too. There wasn’t a day that passed where she didn’t want to apologize about something. Like the scars on her back, or for giving Adora the feelings she wrote about in that notebook; for taking her friend’s mother away from her (a fact that weighed on her heavily with Glimmer around now), for every spiteful word she ever said.
This method was better.
Her hand slipped up again, fingers losing themselves in all that blonde hair as her fangs bit needily at her lips. And her other set of claws, they were beginning to present themselves as a real threat to Adora’s clothes when the tips snagged onto the fabric of her shirt. “Better tell me now,” she said after a moment, breathless with sultry eyes and a tickle of purr. “If you’ve got a problem being out in the open like this.”
She didn’t want to stop. They were wound up and maybe, kind of, a little desperate and she gave little fucks about ravishing her wife in the forest.
Sex in the middle of the forest, where anyone could stumble upon them (theoretically, anyway) wasn’t usually something Adora would indulge. While she wasn’t shy about PDA, she was a little more modest about the much more intimate aspects of her relationship with Catra. She preferred to keep her ravishing on Darla, or at least somewhere contained where they couldn’t be found.
Here, with the Crystal Castle towering over them? Well, it wouldn’t have been her first thought, but there was something appealing about it as a sort of ‘screw you, First Ones’ gesture. They were well-hidden here, too. She hadn’t seen any flattened grass, any signs that there had been anyone around here in the time that had passed since Adam and Teela had first come across it ages ago. Risk of being caught was probably pretty low.
“No problems,” she murmured, lips turning up in a playful little smirk. She pulled back just for a moment, tossing her sword-turned-bag off to the side, before wrapping Catra back up in her arms. Her fingers slipped up the back of her shirt, pressing through her fur to feel some of the scars left there over the years. “Bring it on.”