WHAT: Recovered and waiting for a prosthetic, Catra has a one-on-one with Leon about Melog's death WHERE: Outside of Darla WHEN: 2029, several weeks after the Melog Incident WARNINGS: Permanent injury, talks of death, some descriptions of violence STATUS: Complete
The past few weeks were a blur, and Catra could hardly remember what day it even was, and – oh, yeah. Melog was dead, and now she was missing a one whole arm.
One of the last vivid memories she had of them was their jaw – giant, because in their thrall, Melog was a massive predator – on her arm, jagged teeth sinking in. The way they savagely pulled on it, over and over, until it separated from her body. That last part was fuzzy. She heard a roar and a scream and a gun before it went dark.
Turns out, she almost bled out.
Healers at La Nina kept her stable. They had closed the wound just enough to make the bleeding stop, but that was all the magic that could be spared – the rest of the recovery had to happen the slow, hard way. Her body slept hard from the blood loss. There were some options for pain management that kept her so out of it that she decided it was best to save them for when it became unbearable, although handling (and even hiding) pain had always been one of Catra’s strengths.
She could swallow it. Push through it. Resting was a luxury she couldn’t afford when she had to work on her balance and how to handle things one-handed while Viktor worked on the prosthetic they had commissioned. Finn had been terrified, Adora had been terrified, and they had family here that chipped in and helped out when she couldn’t.
Catra hated it. This feeling – that she fucked up, and there was no taking it back. Her actions paved the way to this tragedy, and she couldn’t complain or let herself cry about it when she did this. She went after Melog. She tried to get through to them. They died. She almost died.
But she didn’t, thanks to Leon.
He and Revy stuck close to lend a hand. They helped gather food. Occasionally with the kids, the animals. Things were finally beginning to settle, and Catra was up more. Adora hovered slightly less, but that wasn’t saying much. At night, they took shifts on watch, making sure that their hidden safe haven remained a hidden safe haven.
When she knew it was Leon’s turn, Catra caught him outside with a jar of unopened moonshine in her – currently – one and only hand. The crickets were loudly chirping. That was a good thing; if they went quiet, it would be a cause for concern.
“Hey,” she greeted, eyes gleaming in the dark. “Can I sit with you?”
Leon felt like shit.
He didn’t regret what he did. He would never regret saving Catra’s life. There’d been one time in his life when he’d hesitated to pull the trigger when he knew he had to, and it had cost him the lives of his partner and of his childhood best friend. He’d known then that he wouldn’t hesitate again.
It didn’t make it easier. Regret and guilt weren’t always the same thing. He’d tried to tell himself that it wasn’t Melog, not anymore, but that didn’t help much. He tried to tell himself that they would have killed Catra if Leon hadn’t intervened, but they’d almost lost Catra anyway.
Leon had visited her a few times in La Nina, but he’d tried to avoid times when he knew she’d be awake and lucid. Right up until Revy had yelled at him and told him what an idiot he was being.
He didn’t try to avoid Catra anymore, and Catra had never made him feel like he’d made the wrong choice. That didn’t stop the guilt much though, even if Revy told him he was being dumb. He should have been there sooner. He should have stopped Catra from going out at all, somehow. What if he’d been just a few minutes later?
He turned when he heard Catra. He was chewing on a length of straw, a way to help with the cigarette cravings. “Yeah, of course,” he said, patting the section of Darla’s roof next to him. “Everything alright?”
“Restless,” Catra admitted, although the exhaustion could be heard in the way she uttered that one lone word. She lowered herself onto that spot, criss-crossing her legs and setting the moonshine within the gap. They always made sure to have some of this in stock for whenever Leon and Revy came by – like an extra thank you gesture for supplying what they did.
Darla housed a good bit of people from time to time. There were a lot of mouths to feed.
With a fierce look of concentration, she squeezed the jar with her thighs to keep it in place and tried to twist it open with the one hand. She had trouble. She knew she might, but she wanted to try anyway, and she knew Leon wouldn’t, like, mock her. But after some unsuccessful attempts, and these grunts that were veering into what might have actually been a tired, rare mewl…
She just handed it to Leon. “Open it for me? I’m crippled.”
Leon clenched his hands into fists as he watched Catra so that he wouldn’t reach out and grab the jar from her, frustrated watching her, frustrated for her, but also knowing that it was something she needed to do for herself. Or, at least, something she needed to try for herself.
He took the jar from Catra and, with a light grunt of effort, opened it and handed it back to her. She probably needed a drink more than he did right now.
“You got any of those rubber grippy pads around here for jars?” he asked. “Revy and I can keep an eye out for something that’ll work next time we head out, if not.”
“Don’t even know what those are,” Catra replied with a lazy shrug. “Never had much of a problem with jars before.”
Being down a whole damn limb was an adjustment. She never thought she’d look back at her life and say something like, wow, I took having two arms for granted but here she was, wishing she hadn’t taken it for granted. Day-to-day life proved to be a challenge. Things like getting dressed, making food, washing her fucking hair – easy thing she’d done all her life.
They were hard. Adora helped, and she accepted it without fighting back, and she wished she didn’t have to but she tried not to bitch about it, either. Catra had done this to herself.
No one could convince her otherwise.
“That prosthetic is being worked on,” she added, swirling the moonshine to mix it a bit. The last round of pain medication was out of her system. It was safe to drink, and she was feeling an ache that was more of an inconvenience than anything. Getting a nice buzz going on would take the edge off. “So it’s fine, this won’t be permanent. Thanks, though. You wanna share this with me? I’m not expecting you to get shitfaced or anything.”
Despite what Catra said, Leon made a mental note to keep an eye out for anything that might be used for a grip. It couldn’t hurt to have around anyway.
“Yeah, I’ll share. You know me, I’m never one to pass up a drink,” Leon said, shooting her a grin. But the grin faded quickly. “The prosthetic will be a lot to adjust to too, I think. I’m… sorry. Sorry I wasn’t faster.”
Catra let out a heavy, deep breath from her nose. Then, she took a nice, healthy gulp of booze and fuck was it not pleasant, but she didn’t let it show. It warmed her insides, made her a little tingly. Like goosebumps.
“Don’t,” she said afterwards, passing him the jar. There wasn’t a trace of harshness in how she spoke. No annoyance. Just – softness, with some defeat and a lot of exhaustion. She had an inkling that Leon had guilt, and that wasn’t his burden to carry. “You’re the reason why Adora isn’t a widow. Why Finn still has both their moms. You don’t get to say sorry when I need to be thanking you, moron. You saved me.”
And even put Melog out of their misery.
Leon took a healthy gulp from the jar, grimacing as it burned its way down his throat. He’d long ago come to enjoy that feeling, and while it was stronger than the whiskey he’d enjoyed in his twenties and thirties, he still enjoyed the feeling of it settling into his stomach.
He managed a tired smile. “Well, of course I did,” he said. “You’re family. I’ll always save you.”
That didn’t mean he couldn’t have saved her better, but he wasn’t going to press the point. Doing so felt like a lot of self-pity, and he was pretty sure Revy would have kicked his ass if she heard him going on about it.
“You don’t need to thank me for that.”
“But I do,” Catra protested, lifting her knees up to curl inward. It was a self-soothing pose - Adora would recognize it instantly, and she hoped Leon never noticed enough to know. Her tail curled around her ankles. “You shouldn’t have… had to be put in that position. I’m usually the smart one, you know?”
Not that Adora wasn’t. Her wife was brilliant in ways Catra was not but she had a history of wanting to solve things with her fist and sword – and Catra would always reel her back, trying to talk her through a better plan. That’s what she was good at. Plans. Strategy. She knew when to take a deep breath, take a step back, and look at the situation at every angle.
They had dealt with Interitus the first time. Catra remembered Adora – She-Ra – under his thrall. How nothing she did or said could get through to her. Love was a magic that could flourish and win on Etheria, but here? It wasn’t guaranteed. Adora had cracked her ribs that time, and could have easily killed her then.
“I knew it was pointless, deep down,” she whispered, her one arm wrapped over her midsection. “But after what happened with Keith – with Kosmo – and then I kept hearing Finn crying about how much they missed them, and I just… went for it. It was a bad plan, and I knew it. That didn’t stop me.”
Leon noticed more than people expected him to: he could be a clueless idiot at times, but he was observant and was generally good at reading body language. It wasn’t a pose Leon had seen much of before everything went to hell in a handbasket. Still, it didn’t take a genius to recognize it for what it was. He shifted closer to Catra, and moved to put an arm around her shoulders.
“I think being stupid when the people we love are in danger or are in pain is part of what makes us human,” Leon said after a moment. “Or, I guess, part of what makes us have humanity.” There were enough people who weren’t entirely human, like Catra herself, that the distinction seemed necessary. “Even if, deep down, we know what we’re doing is hopeless, to not even make the attempt is…” He groped for the word. “Is too cold. When shit’s like this, if you only ever play it smart, you’re going to spend your entire life wondering if maybe things could have been different if you took the risk.”
Catra didn’t hesitate to lean into him, acting as a little ball tucked into his side. The years didn’t have her as touch-averse as she was when she first arrived. There were people here she trusted and loved. People that she could lose at any given moment in time now. Vallo used to make them feel invincible because, fuck, what crazy shit didn’t happen that they couldn’t survive?
Then came this, and that security shattered.
“That’s it,” she blinked, mildly surprised to have what she was feeling put into actual words that she could hear. Leon nailed it. “I wanted to–how am I not supposed to fight? But what if…” Catra’s jaw tensed. “What if this is fixed one day, and what if they can get back to normal, and I robbed Melog of that chance?”
Torturing herself with hypotheticals wasn’t productive. She knew that. Catra knew that. She wouldn’t recommend that route to anyone else but here she was, stewing exactly in that. In this hopeful hypothetical that somewhere down the line, all this could be fixed. Adora didn’t have the hope for it anymore.
And there was a part of her that still… kind of did. Wasn’t that stupid?
Leon was silent, mulling over the question. “You knew them better than I did,” he said after a moment. “But I think they would have wanted you to make the attempt. And I think they would have tried the same if it had been you that was taken.”
He grimaced. “I don’t know if this helps at all. But if Interitus ever managed to make me one of his thralls, I’d want someone to put me down. Before… before I could hurt too many of the people I care about. If it’s between stopping me from destroying the people I love, and some far off maybe cure, I’d want to be stopped. I can’t say that Melog felt the same way. I didn’t have that same connection you guys did. But in the end, I was the one that made that choice, and I chose to save you.”
Catra’s ears took a low dip. Some far off maybe cure. That flicker of hope waned into embers. To think that this was it, to have to accept that this was how Melog’s story just ended - controlled to hurt the people they always protected, and then killed - made her stomach knot up. It was over. She’s known that since she regained consciousness.
But it’s like she had to keep telling herself over, and over, and over.
“You made the right choice,” she told him, head dropping onto his shoulder. “I know,” a pause, then she swallowed, “I knew Melog enough to know they would have thought the same. So - thank you. I mean it.”
Leon dropped his head so his cheek rested on Catra’s hair. “You’re welcome.” He gave her shoulder a squeeze.
It was a shitty thing to be thanked for, but it was necessary. He wouldn’t regret doing what needed to be done, but there had been weight that was sitting on his shoulders that had been lifted. He hoped he’d managed to do the same for Catra, a little.
Because in the end, there wasn’t a thing in this world that he wouldn’t do to protect the family he’d found here in Vallo.