Adora had suspected something was a bit off with her wife when she woke up this morning. She seemed distracted in a way she typically wasn’t in the morning, but she had been around only briefly, one figure among the chaos of the household. Questioning it hadn’t been in the cards, not when the first thing Catra had done was annihilate yet another batch of butterscotch pudding cups before hustling off to work at the studio.
She had a day of her own to move through, anyway. Darla was always pretty populated lately, and she loved it. She loved spending time with her parents, with Adam, with Teela – they were her family, and they’d all come here (or back, in Teela’s case) in such quick succession. Adam had joked it was an early birthday gift, maybe some kind of Christmas miracle, and it truly felt like that.
Every day she wasn’t on patrol was some sort of event, even if it was just something small. She was happy but tired, all the time. She savored her work shifts all the more for the quiet, but she never complained or said no to them either, especially not her mom and dad. She felt like time with them was precious in a way it wasn’t with Adam and Teela; they didn’t come with the same sense of permanence that other Outlanders did. She was doing everything she could to make the most of their time here.
Everyone was still buzzing when Catra came home, brushing past the crowd in the living room with smiles and claims of a headache. Adora was quick to excuse herself, too; she had suspected something might be up with Catra this morning, and this was enough of a reason for her to prod further. Maybe she just needed a break from all the noise – social battery was a very real thing, and even she felt the burnout sometimes – but she didn’t think that was it, not this time.
She made sure to activate the lock behind her as she entered the Captain’s Quarters, smiling when she saw her wife pulling off her boots at the end of the bed. She crossed over to join her, kneeling on the ground to help her pull her feet free.
“Real headache or I-need-a-break headache?”
“Real headache,” Catra croaked out with a tired smile. She was beat and it showed; in her face, her posture, the low dip of her ears. Her body may have slept like a rock but her mind hadn’t, considering…
Yeah. Considering.
It had been, what–a dream? A waking dream, because it was actually real and actually Shadow Weaver. Catra woke from it like it was any other morning. There wasn’t a shock to her system that caused her body to jolt, and her eyes hadn’t snapped open in alarm. She got up. Washed up. Dressed up. Ate pudding. Kissed her wife. Then she went to work to be surrounded by children–and all she could do was think of her.
Catra saw her everywhere.
She saw her in a parent that picked up her children today (long black hair, like shadows). She saw her outside, walking past a restaurant with outdoor seating where a woman sipped her wine (there was a breeze, she could smell it, she hated it). She saw her as she stopped at a coffee shop for a pick-me-up, standing behind a woman in a dress (it wasn’t even long, just the same shade of red).
For months, months, her memory was a fleeting ghost; she was someone they worked hard to move past and let go, all the hard lessons learned. Catra thought of her less and less with time. Then she was there, somewhere between life and death, a ghost, and she couldn’t escape. Etheria wasn’t on the verge of collapsing around them and for the first time, Catra was able to say all things she never could before. It had been cathartic. It had also broken her heart for the last time.
“Didn’t drink enough water today,” she admitted once her feet were freed, fist rubbing beneath her blue eye. All she wanted to do was flop into bed and put on something mind-numbing so she wouldn’t feel, but that could wait. Adora followed her for a few reasons. She knew what the most pressing one was. “Gimme a water bottle?”
They had a mini-fridge in their room now; the trek to the kitchen was long, and they had stored some essentials for nearby convenience. Catra wouldn’t be leaving this room for the rest of the day.
“Catra,” Adora chided, her tone gentle and her expression both sympathetic and concerned. She crossed over to the mini-fridge, pulled out a chilled bottle of water, and returned with the cap twisted off before she pressed it into her wife’s hand. She sat down beside her, raising her hand to stroke those low-hanging ears with a little frown.
“Drink, then I’ll let you rest,” she encouraged. She still had questions – her gut told her there was something else going on – but it was possible the signs she’d been reading truly were just of the headache Catra was suffering. She was happy to make sure she was hydrated, tuck her in, then go entertain the family for dinner before coming back to join her later.
Yeah, yeah. Catra should have hydrated more. Should have probably snacked more, too, but the day had been busy and she was just–distracted, and her body was giving her signals to slow down. She took the bottle gratefully and sipped from it, allowing herself a moment to enjoy the pets to her ears. It felt nice.
She didn’t immediately break out into a conversation, though. Sipping water again, she thought, and thought, and wondered if it was even worth bringing up. Adora didn’t need to hear it. She had her family here; a mother who loved her in a way Shadow Weaver wasn’t capable of, a father who smiled at her with pride merely because she existed. Her wife was enjoying herself and she didn’t want to tarnish the experience by bringing her up.
But she also knew Adora would be more upset about her withholding this than the actual act of talking about Shadow Weaver, so–fessing up was inevitable. Catra felt as if she was in a better mindset to talk about it after the hours had passed, anyway.
“Got a minute?” she asked, fingers pressing against the plastic of the bottle and making it crinkle. “Now or later is fine, it’s not–really urgent or anything.”
“I’ve got plenty of minutes for you. Is this a sitting up or lying down conversation?” Adora’s fingers moved to her wife’s hair, stroking gently through the tangle of curls. The concern in her expression hadn’t faded; if anything, she was more concerned now, after allowing herself to believe she was misreading the situation. “Or I can brush your hair?”
Whatever it was, Catra didn’t seem overly nervous, so she hoped it wasn’t anything too bad. They had gotten good at not hiding things, sharing what was going on with each other to avoid miscommunication conflicts. Over two years as a couple, all of it spent cohabitating as a couple, and they’d done pretty well smoothing out wrinkles.
“Sitting,” Catra decided. Her limbs might be tired jelly but she felt too restless to lay back into the bed at the moment. Later, maybe. “And you can brush my hair, if you want. Had a kid get their sticky fingers in it and tell me how soft it felt.”
The beauty of children and their lack of boundaries, sigh. She smiled about it regardless. Not that they weren’t trying; they had a lot to learn, it wasn’t some grand offense and they’d been cute about it. If it had been her putting sticky hands in Shadow Weaver’s hair at that age, then–
Shit. Fuck. Catra took another sip and slid into the bed more until she was at the center, legs crossed. “How was today?”
Adora was often responsible for Catra’s hair care. She enjoyed it, and it made Catra content and melty to the point of purring, so it had become a habit. Not every day but every few. Most of the time, her wife woke up and her hair was a little scraggly but fine, nothing a hand through it wouldn’t fix. Sticky was another story, though; luckily, they kept all the hair care stuff in Catra’s nightstand drawer, for the sake of ease.
She pulled out a bottle of detangler along with the brush before settling on the bed behind Catra, cross-legged as well, and spraying just enough of the liquid in to encourage removal of whatever stickiness could linger on a child’s fingers. She was well-practiced at this, starting from the bottom to slowly work her way up.
“It was good. We just went out shopping for a little while, me, Teela, and Mom. Adam and Dad went out on their own.” She assumed the two of them were talking, maybe trying to repair a bond that had always been fractured, but she hadn’t pried. Adam would tell her when he was ready; secrets weren’t exactly his strong point.
“How was yours? Aside from sticky fingers kid.”
Catra chuckled, plucking at the label wrapped around the water bottle. Mom and Dad. It was cute; she was glad to see Adora was adjusting to those titles as foreign as it might be rolling off the tongue. Her resolve almost cracked, because she could shut up about this. Let Adora carry on in this perfect, amazing new normal of hers without mentioning Shadow Weaver. It’s one thing to reminisce about her.
Having an actual, fresh encounter was different.
“Fine,” she shrugged. It wasn’t a lie, and when it came to work standards the day went smoothly–or as smoothly as it could go with tiny, chaotic beings going mad with power when it came to glitter glue and crayons. But her mind had fixated on these awful hypotheticals when she was with them, like what if it was Shadow Weaver doing this instead of me, she would have lost it, she would have hated–
Or maybe she wouldn’t have. Maybe it was just Catra that she hated.
“Do you…” Catra bit the inside of her cheek, pausing for a handful of seconds before continuing, “remember when we had that dream visit with Finn? And it was–real, in the sense that it was actually Finn but where we were wasn’t real, because it was a dream?”
Adora nodded, then said, “Yeah, I remember,” because Catra couldn’t hear her head moving. She knew her well enough to know the answer, anyway.
And she did remember that dream, months before the second timeslip. Finn, still no more than five, had pounced on them from a tree. They’d ended up playing Princess and Monsters for what felt like a full, wonderful day before waking up. It had been a little bittersweet, but it was less so now that Finn was on their way.
“Is that what’s got you distracted? You saw Finn? Are they okay?” That last part was getting slightly frantic.
“Finn’s fine, babe, they’re fine,” Catra corrected hurriedly, sighing. Gods no, if something had been wrong with Finn then waking up would have been completely different. Her hand went to stroke her stomach; it was jutting out like a (cute, supposedly) beer belly. “It wasn’t Finn. It was–”
Ugh. She blew a raspberry through her lips, and took another gulp of her water, and then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand before finally saying (rip the bandaid), “It was Shadow Weaver. We were in the Fright Zone. I found her in her office and she’s still dead but, you know. Vallo, I guess. She knows we survived the Heart, knows that we’re–with child, she could see I was pregnant. I told her to get fucked.”
Those exact words, actually, but the encounter was more complex than that. It did sum it up nicely though.
The calm that hit Adora with Catra’s reassurance was quickly replaced with a pit of dread when she went on to clarify that she’d dreamt of Shadow Weaver. They hadn’t spoken of her in months – she genuinely couldn’t remember when last. She was a part of their past that they’d tucked as far behind them as they could manage, mostly for the sake of their sanity.
Even the Catra Prime incident was more recent than any talk of their old commanding officer. That was really weird to think about.
“Oh,” was how she responded. The brushing had stilled, and she leaned forward to perch her chin on Catra’s shoulder while she processed that. “I mean…good, telling her to get fucked. She deserves that.” It still sent a little pang through her – that old sense of obligation and guilt gripping her heart – but she meant that. The only good Shadow Weaver had ever done was keep them alive, and she’d barely done that.
“Yep,” she responded, popping the p and that was when her jaw tensed. All of her tensed. There was a wave of this feeling–no, it was plural, it was feelings, so many stupid feelings that hit her at once because it was never just one emotion. It was always a cocktail of them that often conflicted; it was complicated, messy but none of them were remorseful. Catra didn’t feel regret about what she said.
She deserved to say it. Shadow Weaver deserved to hear it.
Catra inhaled sharply, counted to three, and let it go. It was a simple breathing technique from yoga that she put into practice daily. The tension eased, but it didn’t make her feel any less raw–like she was just this bundle of exposed nerves for the world to poke at. “Anyway, that’s it in a nutshell. Saw her, had some words, told her to get fucked and that made my sleep weird.”
Adora didn’t need to know how upset Shadow Weaver had been; how she cried, how she didn’t want to be left alone, the sick relief in her voice when she discovered Adora had lived. Catra could protect her from that, maybe. God knows how she failed to do that the times Shadow Weaver invaded her mind and did what she pleased with it.
Adora lifted her head again and kissed the side of Catra’s, just below her ear. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. She had questions – gods, so many questions – but she knew better than to poke at that wasp’s nest of emotion. If she didn’t pry further, she wouldn’t dwell on it as much, and maybe Catra could just put it behind her. She shouldn’t have to be tortured by a dream like that. She shouldn’t have to deal with Shadow Weaver at all, not anymore.
“You sure you don’t want to come downstairs and hang out? Maybe being around everyone after that would be good for you?” She wasn’t going to push, but it was a sincere offer. She worried that Catra would just lay up here by herself and keep thinking about it. She wasn’t as prone to vicious circle thoughts, but she wasn’t immune to them either.
Catra briefly closed her eyes at that kiss. “Knew that was coming–don’t apologize, dummy,” she told her. Vallo did what it did and as fucked as it was, it had given her this chance to say things that had been pent up since her death. She could have said more; she could have addressed every known slight from her earliest memories to the moment of her death but she’d have been stuck there forever. There would have been screaming, probably from both sides, and Shadow Weaver just wasn’t worth her time.
She wasn’t worth Adora’s time, either.
Pressing her back to her chest, she snaked her hand up to rest on the back of her neck. Catra turned her head slightly, and met her lips for a kiss. “You should be with mom and dad,” she gently teased, smiling. “I’m fine up here. Got water, got a dumb cooking show begging to be watched, a soft bed. Go enjoy them, princess.”
The burnout was real, and she felt it everywhere–from her heart to her bones, and she felt old. But she was at peace with what she’d said, and she knew those weird feelings would fade.
Adora wasn’t that easily persuaded to leave her side, especially when a warm body leaned back into her like that. She opened her legs, adjusting Catra to lean more fully against her and wrapped her arms around her, hands dropping to rest over her belly. She kissed her back and stole another, nudging their noses together, and let her eyes close for a moment.
“They’ll be there in ten minutes.” She didn’t know that they would be here forever, but she felt confident that in that small amount of time, neither of her parents would be sucked back to Eternia. “I wanna stay with you, I missed you all day.”
She felt protective of her wife – not that she didn’t always, but it had gotten a boost hearing that Shadow Weaver was involved. They had both suffered at the sorceress’s hands, but Catra had always gotten it worse. “You wanna talk feelings about…that? You’re not gonna sleep any better if you’re holding onto something.”
Catra settled in, then, cozying up to her more. She bent her knees and refrained from instinctively curling into a ball. It wasn’t an impossible position right now–stomach wasn’t the size where it got in the way of everything yet–but it was a classic self-soothing technique she didn’t need. Adora’s arms were around her. That was enough.
It was a half-curl at best, though. It always made her seem that much smaller.
“Don’t know where to start,” she frowned, examining her own hand. “It’s never just a feeling. They’re hard to separate, and it’s always… so much.” Catra hated that about herself. Her heart always bled; she felt too much and she felt it all so hard. Hadn’t that been why she almost took down the world with the flip of a switch? There were times where it had gotten so intense she couldn’t stand the sight of her own reflection, and the mirror of her Force Captain quarters paid the price several times over. It had been replaced just as many times, too.
Turning her hand over, she looked to where the faint scars on her knuckles rested. Catra’s reactions when it came to too much had always been violent–claws against steel, broken glass, destruction that could bring down kingdoms. Now, she could control it. She could talk about it. It wasn’t always easy, but gods did she always try. “I think what gets me the most is that she didn’t disagree with the things I said to her. It’s like–she accepted it, you know? She knew she hurt us, and being aware of it didn’t warrant an apology because she thinks she’s the reason why we have what we have now. Why I have you.”
Her voice trembled at the end of that. Catra tensed her jaw on purpose this time, and stuck her tongue up against her teeth as if that helped keep those goddamn stupid feelings from breaking through the dam she had built. “I told her she’s why I almost lost you and I might have gotten loud or whatever. I can blame hormones for everything, right?"
“Probably,” Adora hummed softly. There had certainly been some rolling emotions coming with Catra’s pregnancy hormones. When she snapped about something small, something that usually didn’t phase her, Adora blamed that on hormones. But something like this was much more complicated.
Shadow Weaver never had been and never would be a one-and-done subject for the two of them, no matter how much they might hope otherwise. They might go months without giving her a passing thought, maybe even years, but she had formed them – and not in a manner that was very positive.
“But it can also just be, like you said, she stirs up a lot of feelings. And most of them are bad ones, hard ones to sort through. With everything we went through, getting loud and telling her the truth, I think you’re allowed to do that just because she deserves it. Hormones not necessary. Nothing you said to her was wrong.”
It was because of Shadow Weaver that Adora dealt with so many of the complexes that plagued her today. It was because of her that she was sure the only way to save Etheria (and the universe) had been to sacrifice her life. She used to hope that Shadow Weaver wasn’t all bad – she had shown some glimmers of kindness while with the Rebellion – but she didn’t think that anymore. She couldn’t, or she would never be able to let it go.
“What we have is ours,” she went on, lifting her knees to bracket around Catra properly in her half-curled position. “We built that together, in spite of her, not because of her. She can take credit for our PTSD if she wants but not for our relationship and not for our kid.”
Catra breathed in. It sounded suspiciously like a shuddering gasp right before launching into a rant. “I know, and I told her as much, but she’s so dead set on us being grateful and I know she was thinking about all the ways she could justify what she did because I know how she thinks, and that makes me feel gross. So I told her she wasn’t missed, and she wasn’t a hero, and that dying didn’t change what she did to us, that it’s too late–and then she had the nerve to ask me to sit with her? I didn’t. I just left her there, dead and alone because she’s left me to die alone. Hordak almost killed me because I helped her and she didn’t care. Am I the worst if I said that I’m glad she knows what that feels like now?”
For fuck’s sake, she had been fine several minutes ago. Catra held it together and went through the day committing non-violent acts, and she hadn’t lashed out at anyone, she hadn’t cried, hadn’t she been fine? Shadow Weaver had gotten tears out of her that fateful day–she wasn’t getting any more from her.
She might be sniffling. She might sound hoarse. Her eyes might be looking a little red. But she wasn’t about to let herself cry.
“No,” Adora murmured, tucking her face against Catra’s head. She squeezed her gently. “No, you’re not the worst. No one but her deserves that title. Well, Prime, too.” She pressed a gentle kiss to the crown of Catra’s head and began gently rocking back and forth.
That was a lot, everything Catra had said to Shadow Weaver. But she stuck by what she’d said before – it was nothing but the truth. Not one of them here missed Shadow Weaver, and she felt like it was a safe assumption that they didn’t back on Etheria either. Sure, she had helped them in the end, but that didn’t negate what she’d done. Even Hordak was, somehow, more forgivable in her eyes, but he hadn’t had a direct hand in hurting them the way Shadow Weaver did. Maybe that was why.
“You can cry.” She heard the hitch in Catra’s throat, like she was trying so hard to keep it back; there was no mistaking that sound for anything else. “She may not deserve your tears, but you deserve to let it out. I’m right here, okay? I’m not going anywhere.”
“Crying’s stupid, Adora,” she protested, and it was soft and pitiful and–there it was, fuck, the tears. The stupid tears. The small, stupid, rattling sob. Maybe she hadn’t been fine, and maybe she would have ended up crying anyway if Adora had gone back to everyone else. Catra would have been alone to deal with it and that would have made her feel worse.
So, fuck it. Catra cried, covering her eyes with her palms, and told herself it wasn’t for Shadow Weaver. It was for herself; for the kid that kept wanting her approval and love despite all the harm she had done to them, for the kid that Shadow Weaver was never proud of despite what she had claimed during those last moments. That had proved to be as cathartic as telling her off.
It didn’t last long. Catra hoped it didn’t, anyway, and it all eventually dwindled down to the sound of sniffling. “Finn,” she hiccuped, “is going to be so fucking spoiled–and it’s probably going to be annoying but we’re going to it love it, and they’re never going to meet her, ever.”
“Never ever,” Adora assured her fiercely. “She’s gone, and she’s never coming back. Finn’s not gonna grow up like us, I promise. Nowhere close to it.”
They probably would be spoiled – the slightly older Finn they’d encountered back on Halloween certainly gave off the vibe that they were rarely refused. But Adora was okay with that. Finn deserved all the good things, and both she and Catra wanted to give them that. It was nice to have good parental role models around Darla now. Randor and Marlena weren’t perfect, but they were a far cry better than Shadow Weaver, and they loved her and Adam (and Teela and Catra) so much.
“I’m sorry you had to see her again. I wish I could have been there.” Maybe it was better she wasn’t, though. She’d always been weaker when it came to Shadow Weaver. She might not have pulled through for her wife the way she deserved.
“It’s better that you didn’t,” Catra told her, wiping beneath her eyes. She knew better than to expect Adora to protect her, and, yeah, that sounded bad but it wasn’t for petty, resentful reasons. At least, not anymore. As a child she wished someone had protected her, and she put that expectation on Adora–also a child–unfairly.
That had grown into resentment. But it was displaced, and it had taken her longer than she cared to admit to realize that. “You need to focus on your actual mom,” she sniffed, twisting her body more sideways so she could see her better. One of her hands went to toy with the collar of her shirt. “I can handle Shadow Weaver.”
Adora didn’t need to know the rest of the gritty details.
“Promise me you’ll tell me if you see her again.” Adora met Catra’s eyes seriously, lifting one hand to clasp her chin gently between her thumb and forefinger. “I know how tough you are, but you’re my wife. You gotta let me be here for you, okay?”
She knew Catra could handle Shadow Weaver, but she shouldn’t have to, not by herself. She was supposed to be dead and gone, no more than a lingering bad memory. She shouldn't still be popping in to visit in their dreams. The timing was weird, too, but that could just be a coincidence. Or it could be Vallo being Vallo, it was hard to say.
“If I see her again then that means we have a problem,” Catra snorted, leaning up to gently bump their foreheads together. Her eyes fell shut, exhausted from that stupid crying. “But I promise. Sorry I didn’t tell you right away. I was just… figuring out, I guess. I’m okay.”
Her hands slipped around her neck, thumbs tenderly rubbing against the sides of her throat. “I think…” Deep, deep breath through her nose. Catra’s eyes opened, and she pressed a light kiss to her lips. “I think I needed to word vomit more than I realized. So–thank you. For staying.”
For being the right kind of patient, and the right kind of pushy. Gentle, strong; that was her Adora.
“Always,” Adora murmured. Catra had asked her to stay – a long time ago, it felt like – and she was bound and determined to do just that. She had failed once or twice, walked away when an argument got too big, but she always came back. She was never going to leave her again, no matter the circumstances.
She kissed Catra’s forehead, thumb grazing across her cheek as she smiled at her. “Are you okay with me staying up here with you? I think I’d like the evening just for us. I mean, you can sleep, but I want to stay next to you. I can tuck you in, go put on Netflix for my parents, and come right back. If that’s okay with you?”
“If,” she sighed and sheepishly winced, “that’s what you want.”
The last thing Catra wanted to do was intrude on that quality time. It was important, and she more often than not joined in on that too–she had even let Marlena touch the tiny belly (she had never asked but she wore her feelings on her face, mother like daughter). Quality time was serious. But she was spent, and her eyes were red, and she didn’t want to be looked at funny or be questioned. That was all her. She didn’t want to be the one to hold Adora back.
“I promise I’m okay if you feel like being with them,” Catra assured her, turning her head to press kisses to her palm. For the first time today, she purred. “Though I’m not going to really fight against you being with me. I missed you too, all day.”
“I feel like being with you.” Adora’s tone was insistent, leaving no room for further protest. She wanted to stay here with her, especially when she finally heard Catra start purring; no way was she leaving. She was glad she wanted her here, instead of trying to keep dealing entirely on her own.
The kisses to her palm made her smile, and she slipped that hand back to her face to coax her into a proper kiss. It was nothing deep and passionate, not leading to anything more. It was tender and lingering, filled with silent reassurances. Whatever happened, they were in this together. Catra would always be her most important person, just like she’d told her.
It didn’t need to be tender and passionate, that kiss—but she did deepen in, and wrapped her arms around Adora’s neck, and she pulled and pulled until they both fell back into the bed (with her wife mostly on top of her, that was always nice). Catra let out a playful giggle into the kiss, and then sniffed, and then got a little self-conscious.
“Sorry,” she mumbled when she pulled away, wiping her nose. “Don’t wanna snot all over you, princess.” Her face was still blotchy and teary but she was smiling up at her anyway. “Bring me up that bag of grapes, please? I’m hungry.”
Adora grinned as she was released from her wife’s hold, pressing a few more kisses across her freckled cheeks, snot be damned. “Grapes coming right up,” she agreed. She pushed herself up and onto her feet beside the bed. “I love you, be back in five!”