WHAT: Scorpia has reservations about going out to fight monsters, and Perfuma helps talk her through it WHERE: Castle Brightmoon WHEN: During the Aeor plot WARNINGS: Nothing too explicit STATUS: Complete
Scorpia hated this. She always hated this. She hated hiding away and avoiding the conflicts, but she hated the idea of going out and fighting even more. And so, whenever these sorts of events happened, monsters attacking the city and all her friends going out and doing something about it, while she stayed serving tea at Looking Glass Teas or beelining it back to Bright Moon, she was always a little on edge.
Not in the way most people got on edge. She wasn’t snappish, or irate. No, if anything, she was extra cheerful. She smiled more widely, her voice was just a little more high as she chriped her greetings, her step had more pep. And she tried, very hard, to avoid the topic of monsters or strange goings on at all.
“Hello, Butterfly,” she chirped when she saw Perfuma, and bent to kiss her on the cheek. “How was the shop today?”
Perfuma smiled, but it had a tinge of anxiety to it, though the kiss warmed her a bit. "I closed up today. The snow is too much and the monsters are getting stronger." She looked down at her nails and saw the tale-tell signs that she'd chewed them a little bit. But no more, she could control that, just needed to focus a bit. Steady her mind.
"Adora is out there without Catra for backup. I should go help her, right?"
Scorpia followed Perfuma’s gaze, and then took her hands in her pincers, not quite closing them – her pincers could cut through anything, and she made sure to be extra gentle whenever she took Perfuma’s hands in them. She chewed her lower lip.
It wasn’t that she didn’t think that Perfuma could handle herself. Perfuma was strong, and capable, and honestly was kind of scary when she got her plants going. She could still remember her Plant Golem and how much fun it absolutely was not to fight opposite Perfuma in the war.
But she didn’t want her going out there by herself. And oh, sure, she’d have Adora watching her back, but she’d still be out of Scorpia’s sight, and that was somehow worse than just about anything.
“Well, Adora does have Adam,” Scorpia said, uncertainly. “You know, She-Ra and He-Man, fighting monsters together! I bet they work really well together.”
"In my experience, siblings rarely do anything well together," offered Perfuma, accompanied with a weak smile. Though it struck her that most everyone she knew was an only child and that seemed rather odd when she thought about it. She'd seen siblings arguing and bickering constantly on the network here in Vallo, though, and so she'd kind of started thinking that was normal.
"But why can't we go help her? There are plenty of plants that survive in winter conditions and you're amazing in any weather!"
“Oh,” Scorpia said, stiffening. She looked up, bringing a claw to her face, as though thinking about it. “Well, you know, Adora really… she can handle herself, right? She-Ra’s just so strong. And I’d probably just get in her way, too. Catra was always saying…” she grimaced. No, that wasn’t fair. “Not that Catra says anything anymore,” Scorpia corrected hastily, “but I probably would get in the way, and you know me, always so clumsy, I’d probably hurt you or Adora more than any monster.”
Perfuma didn't believe any of that, well the parts about Scorpia, at least. She frowned and knitted her eyebrows together before reaching for a cup to pour herself some tea. It gave her a few moments to think of how she wanted to respond. She didn't immediately understand why Scorpia was making excuses, especially since she was such a skilled fighter that could really help out there.
"Scorpia," she began, hesitantly, before turning to look at her girlfriend. "Do you not want to go out and help?"
“I do,” Scorpia said, and then winced at the lie of it. “I mean, I do want to go help people. But… I don’t want to hurt people, Perfuma.”
Brightening slightly, Perfuma reached to place her hand on Scorpia's pincer. "Well, then it's good that these things aren't people!"
Scorpia pulled her pincer away from Perfuma, her eyebrows climbing upwards to a peak in the middle of her brow. She couldn’t look at Perfuma. “But what if I do hurt someone?” she asked. “Ever since I touched the Black Garnet and got these powers, I’ve only ever used them to hurt people.”
Well, that wasn’t exactly true. There’d been the first couple of months, when she’d been fighting against Horde Prime’s clones with the rest of the Rebellion, she’d done some good. But that had all been overshadowed by the weeks she’d spent chipped, hurting innocent people. Hurting the people she’d cared about.
She’d used her powers since, a zap here or there to add a bit of a charge to something, nothing that would do more than anything than shock someone if it hit them, but no big discharges. Except…
“Even when the Black Garnet arrived here, I nearly fried Catra! I totally destroyed Catra and Adora’s television. It’s not safe. I’m not safe.”
That was a lot for Perfuma to process. It hurt to see Scorpia hurting. She'd had no idea that all of this had been eating at her for, well, for a pretty long time, all things considered. One thing she was definitely not going to do was tell Scorpia that she was wrong and that it would be okay. Because Scorpia wasn't wrong, but that didn't mean it was a bad thing.
Instead, she tried again to reach out to her and just started talking, trying to offer some kind of bridge. "When I was first learning to control my powers, I destroyed my mother's favorite garden and nearly choked our neighbor to death," she noted. "Both times, I was just trying to help. And those are only two examples. There's countless other times where I just struggled to understand what I was doing, but thankfully no one was hurt. Other than my patience. You saw me struggling with cacti, it was a lot like that, every day!"
She smiled softly and tried very hard to be reassuring, but Perfuma was a neurotic mess even on her best days. "I know it's not exactly the same thing, but I love you and I need you to know that it's okay to be scared. But it'll get better with practice. And you know none of us hold you accountable for what Horde Prime made you do, right?"
“You did?” Scorpia asked, letting Perfuma take her pincers again. Her entire life, Scorpia had known the princesses to have full control of their powers. The Horde told horror stories of the devastation that the Princesses wrought, and whenever Scorpia had fought them, later in her life, Glimmer had always been able to teleport where she wanted (except that time Shadow Weaver had gotten ahold of her), and Mermista had always been able to control the seas against them, and Frosta had always been able to hit them with ice, all without any danger to their comrades.
It had never occurred to her that maybe they had had to practice with their powers, when they were young, before they had control of them. That in the same way Scorpia had accidentally hurt her friends growing up because she hadn’t been able to control her strength when she was excited or emotional, that Perfuma might have hurt her neighbours. And that even though the power that came with the Black Garnet felt like a piece of her, that maybe she needed to practice with it so she could control it, like her strength.
“And I know,” she added. She and Catra had talked about it once, back when Catra was still trying to apologize for how she’d treated her when they’d both been in the Horde. It didn’t mean that Scorpia had quite forgiven herself for it; she couldn’t help but wonder, sometimes, why she couldn’t have been strong enough to resist him. “I love you too,” she added, with a small, almost shy, smile. “Thank you.”
Perfuma just smiled happily, she didn't think any thanks was needed but she also knew that it helped Scorpia so she was more than willing to accept it. "Your chance to learn to control your powers when you were young is just one more thing that the Horde took away from you. But it's not too late, and I'm behind you every step of the way. I just want you to accept yourself as being as wonderful as I do."
Scorpia lowered her head, resting her forehead on Perfuma’s. “I am the luckiest woman in the world,” Scorpia said, feeling it. Who else had such an amazingly patient and supportive girlfriend? “I’ll try,” she promised.
"I may have to fight you on that one," Perfuma answered, still smiling. "Because I think I'm the luckiest woman in the world." She turned her head upwards to give Scorpia a kiss on the tip of her nose and then lowered her head back down.
"Now! Why don't we have some tea? I'm thinking something with peppermint will help deal with all of this cold weather."
Scorpia smiled. “Tea sounds great,” Scorpia said, her voice softer than it might normally be. It was comforting to know that no matter what happened, Perfuma would be there. Knowing that her amazing girlfriend would be there to support her when she needed it was soothing, and with Perfuma by her side, maybe she didn’t have to worry about hurting people so much either: she knew that Perfuma wouldn’t let that happen.
“And then, maybe, we can see if Adora needs any help.”