WHAT: Catra talks Teela down from doing a stupid thing WHERE: Forest, the ruins of Castle Grayskull WHEN: April 1st, 2033 WARNINGS: Death talk, grief, a bit of blood, language STATUS: Complete
A fucked up, dystopian future had reverted Catra back into an early riser. Tragic, wasn’t it?
Not that they (the adults, the kids slept whenever) had the pleasure of solid, interrupted sleep. There were rotations of night watches, sometimes also even during the day when activity popped up in the area - they’ve been doing well staying concealed, the forest shifting enough to keep things off their track. Regardless of shift, she and Adora tackled the kitchen as a team in the morning. Making meals required creativity with an assortment of random items gathered from the outside, and sometimes they had to make the decision of whether or not to use appliances.
It was imperative they save as much energy on Darla as possible. They didn’t have an infinite source of fuel crystals, and the supply that had sparingly lasted them these past few years was running low. Vallo’s generous gifts had stopped coming. A decision about what to do when the lights finally went out was something to tackle soon, and it was a shame their resident scientist was–
God, she thought grimly. I need to check up on Kara soon.
They had found a treasure of an apple tree not far from them that produced fruit – they gathered as much of what they could, so homemade applesauce was part of breakfast. A few joints had been traded for a carton of eggs. Some of Finn’s old baby items (which she hated parting with, ever the not-so-secret sentimental fool) were traded for a small tank of propane that helped fuel a little grill (to avoid draining the crystals with their actual stove).
They had some deer meat to cook up from what Leon and Revy brought them, hence the attempt at deer sausage. It wasn’t dinosaur-shaped pancakes or cinnamon rolls, but it was something. Plates were made for everyone.
But they were missing someone. Two someones. Adam was dead. Teela was… just not present,
C’yra, she heard Clawdeen – a faint, almost ghostly voice in her head. Their connection wasn’t as strong as it used to be thanks to Interitus, but hadn’t completed faded. The pink lion strolled in, brushing up against her. She went towards the old castle.
That was how she ended up tailing Teela. It was better for her to do it – she was quiet and stealthy, all grace and light limbs despite the added metal. From branch to branch, Catra hopped, claws leaving marks against tree trunks with every grip. She used to be able to see the castle from a distance, the exterior dreadfully ominous despite the inside having become a home.
Now, it was a ruin.
“The fuck are you doing, Red,” she mumbled to herself, hidden by the shadows of foliage – but if someone looked, really looked, they could see the gleam of blue and gold watching. This was a potential hot spot of bad shit. They had said bits of magic lingered, like some arcane layer of dust that hadn’t quite been wiped clean from the space.
So why the hell was she–
No.
In the same second that the epiphany hit Catra like a bag of bricks, she also immediately lunged – tackling Teela into fallen stone and dirt.
Teela was broken.
She thought she’d been broken before, years and years ago when Adam had first died. When her dad revealed that Adam and He-Man had been the same person all along. That she’d been lied to, tricked, and kept away from a truth about her best friend that no one had felt she needed to know.
Everyone – nearly, at least – had known the truth before her. Even Marlena had been suspicious and never spoke a word of it. Only she and Randor had been in the dark, and she couldn’t even commiserate with him because he had been wrong, too. He had been so hard on Adam, and maybe if he hadn’t, the truth could have come out and he would have still been with them.
She’d turned hard and cold, and she’d thought she’d never recover.
But everything had changed. Adam had come back. She’d accepted her magic. Fresh from that, she’d ended up in Vallo and saw him again, met his twin, disappeared, and came back – but this time, it stuck. It had taken her time to forgive him for lying to her, but she had, and they’d made this life together that, truth be told, she’d wanted for a long time.
Now, though? It was over. It was really over. Adam was dead – again – and this time there was no getting him back. Her magic was as good as gone, as was Adora’s. There was no Preternia here. There was only death and depression, an endless cycle of it. She’d resisted it for ages, done what she could to help the Rebels, stepped up when Interitus took Vallo and it spiraled into a place even more hellish than Subternia.
Her husband’s death changed all of that.
She knew she hadn’t been acting right. She knew her sisters-in-law were concerned about her. She knew she had a beautiful little boy at home who’d lost his dad and was hurting, too. But she couldn’t focus on that. What she wanted was revenge, and she knew of one surefire way to get it. The Thralls were attracted to magic, small as it may be, and what was left of Grayskull was enough to do the job.
Remnants of the Power still clung to the ruins of what had once been Castle Grayskull, the Hall of Wisdom, transplanted to Vallo a decade ago. She could connect to it, set off just a little spark and see who she got – it was worth the attempt if she got even the smallest chance to destroy Murderbot once and for all. His fucking name was Murderbot, what were they ever thinking?
Before she could focus, though, she was skidding across the forest floor, cutting her cheek on a piece of rubble, as a solid weight impacted her. It didn’t take a genius to know who was responsible – she’d sparred with this woman more times than she could count, and lived most of her Vallo life with her.
“Catra, what the hell!”
“Exactly – what the hell?” Catra shot back, all hisses and stiff tail and fangs bared. A snarl was seconds away from ripping up her throat, and she kept Teela’s face pushed into the fucking dirt. It might not last long – Teela had more muscle over her – but as lean as she was, Catra was a force to be reckoned with.
Her ears pinned back against her head, listening for a rustle around them. Anything that gave her an inclination that a thrall might have caught a whiff of what Teela was conjuring up. They were in the clear, for now.
“This,” she went on, and there it was – like gravel and glass grinding together, that snarl, “is stupid, Teela, you know it is. You know you’ve got a kid back home that was wondering where his mom was for breakfast, right?”
“Of course I know. Get off me.” Teela shoved her shoulder back – not hard but with more than enough force to make it clear she wanted Catra dislodged – and pushed herself back to her feet. She crossed her arms over her chest as she rose to her full height, eyes blazing as she looked at Catra.
“Dare is the reason I’m here,” she snapped. “Adam is dead, and his killer’s still out there, Catra. I’m taking care of it.”
She was unreasonably sure she could handle this. Part of her knew it was absurd – even without He-Man, Adam had been a force to be reckoned with and Murderbot had finished him without hesitation. She would likely go the same way. But she was angry and hurting enough that she felt invulnerable. Surely she’d get through this, find some satisfaction, and go back home to Dare. It wouldn’t rectify what had happened to her son’s father, but it would be a step in that direction.
“You don’t have to be here,” she continued, eyes fixed on Catra. “I’ve got it.”
Catra relented at being moved, fine. Teela could have that. She visibly bristled, every muscle in her body tense – this was not the ideal location to pow-wow this out but she doubted dragging her sister-in-law out of here by the hair was going to be an option.
Here they were, then.
“This isn’t – handling it,” she sighed in frustration, gesturing to the ruins around them. The home Teela and Adam had made out of the spookiest structure she’d seen, and it had worked for them; for Dare, and Cringer, and Clawdeen and their cubs. Now it was in pieces beneath their feet, and Adam was dead, and Catra’s experience with grief taught her what stage this was.
This was the rage. The thirst for vengeance. Catra couldn’t blame her. Gods, if she had lost Adora? If Adora had been killed – which was a fear that had gnarled its way into her heart, making a dwelling there – she’d be on the same path. She’d want an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Something to make her think that the scales could be balanced.
That prosthetic hand pushed her bangs back into the wild mane of her hair, and she flipped it all behind her shoulder. “This is just dumb,” Catra continued, softly this time, pleading. “To come out here, by yourself, to just bank on the fact that you’re pissed and hurting thinking it’ll be enough to win? That’s not clarity, Teela. That’s just how you lose.”
Teela had never claimed and never would claim that this was clarity. She was enraged, in so much pain that it felt like she could fall apart any second, but she knew that wasn’t clarity. She’d thought it was years and years ago, the first time she’d lost Adam and felt so betrayed by him on Eternia, but she knew better now.
She just wanted justice, revenge – whatever you wanted to call it. The person she loved most in any universe had been taken from her, and she wanted to rip apart the person who’d taken him. He wasn’t even a person, really – a machine, made for exactly the purpose he’d been used for. Maybe he’d been a somewhat-friendly face once upon a time, but that time had long passed.
The rage settled for the moment, though, as she listened to and watched her sister-in-law plead with her. Her logic was sound, and Teela knew she was right. It didn’t mean she liked it. It didn’t mean she wanted to stop. It was, however, enough to make her think a little harder about the choices she was making.
She raised her hand to her cheek, finally feeling the sting from where she’d been cut after Catra’s leap onto her. Blood spotted the tips of her index and middle finger, and she stared at it for a moment before raising her gaze back to Catra.
“Is Dare okay?”
Catra had come at her hard, she knew she did – and there was a twinge of guilt from the gash on her cheek, knowing that her knee-jerk reaction to make Teela hit the ground did that. But they were seasoned to take big hits, and it wasn’t personal, and maybe a little bit of loving violence helped sober her up from her plan.
Softness had that same effect, too. The first war she endured, that had hardened her - sharpened her edges, taught her not to trust, to shove down whatever love she had to give because what’s the point if she was left behind? This one had done the opposite. Catra was capable of brutality, and that wasn’t changing; she was fast, she was vicious, she clawed enemies and snapped necks and had, once, shoved the fist of her whole prosthetic into a demon’s eye socket for a killing blow.
The soft parts came because of the people she had in this war. The ones she could lose. The ones she was losing. Lila and Lena had been made into thralls. Vi was dead. Adam and Melog and Kosmo were dead. The list went on. And if they weren’t careful–
Teela could be next. War was so much easier to endure when you didn’t have anything to lose.
“With Adora,” she answered after a moment, arm dropping back to her side. Catra searched her face for – something. A sign that she maybe realized that this wasn’t the smartest plan. The space between her brows wrinkled as she scrutinized her, and then she said, “He misses you. He gets scared, you know. When you’re gone. He doesn’t know if this is the time when you don’t come back home.”
And fuck, that hurt to say. Dare was her little dude, her nephew. All the best parts of Adam and Teela made into one perfect little First One. They tried to keep the kids as innocent as they could but that also might hurt them more in the end and it killed her, knowing this was the hand they got.
This wasn’t the future she promised Finn or any child that came into their family.
“I know it’s different,” Catra sniffed, regaining some firmness in her voice. “I can’t compare wanting to get back on Adora for leaving me all those years ago to you losing Adam. But I know revenge. I know wanting some kind of retribution, and thinking that if you finally, finally got it, you’d maybe break even. That the feeling you get from it feels so much better than what you’re feeling now. Hell, it even might. But it’s not permanent. It’s just a bandaid that’s going to fall off.”
Teela knew from Catra’s tone that revealing that information pained her. It hurt like hell to hear, too, even though a part of her knew it already. Her sweet boy, barely six and already without a dad, growing up in a world that was debatably worse than Subternia could ever fathom being. It hadn’t felt so bad when Adam was still alive and they were surrounded by the family they’d made, but it felt like the ground had been ripped out from beneath her feet now.
It hadn’t. She still had Catra, easily the woman who had been her closest friend outside of Adam since she’d arrived in Vallo. She still had Adora. She still had Dare, and her son was more important than anyone else in the world to her. She should be acting like it. She shouldn’t be running off without a word, letting him fear for her life when he’d already witnessed his father’s being taken away.
For the first time, what she’d been doing felt like exactly what Catra was saying: a bandaid. Maybe it would be better. Maybe it would give her the satisfaction or revenge she wanted. But it wouldn’t bring Adam back, even if she succeeded without losing her own life. It wasn’t a fix, and deep down, that was all she wanted.
Her mouth quivered and her fists clenched tight at her sides, her eyes squeezing shut for a moment as she trembled with the urge to cry.
“I’m sorry,” she said at last, turning to look at Catra. “He’d… He’d hate what I’m doing, wouldn’t he? I’m letting down our kid, scaring him, I just… I wasn’t prepared to lose him again, Catra. I need him back.”
In just a few steps, the distance was closed and Catra wound her arms around her tight – because fuck this, how was this not the time for a damn hug? Adam was gone. The wound of his absence was still fresh. It still bled. Teela lost her husband. Adora lost her twin. Dare, his father. Finn, their uncle. Her brother-in-law.
Pieces of her heart threatened to break off, and all she could do was hold them together - even if it was just by a thread.
“I know,” she whispered, sucking in this deep, shuddering breath that only had her squeeze Teela tighter. If only she were taller; she would tuck her friend’s head under her chin and hold her better. Catra did what she could, standing on her tiptoes. “I know. It isn’t fair–none of it is, but he wouldn’t want you out here doing this, Red. He’d want you safe, with your son.”
That’s what Adam died for, didn’t he? To save Teela and Dare?
That did it – Catra flinging herself into her arms and squeezing her so hard she lost her breath for just a moment. Any composure Teela had held onto, most of which was rage-fueled and fading, to begin with, evaporated. She wrapped her arms tight around her sister-in-law, dropping her face against the top of her head and letting out a cracked sob.
She would feel guilty for this later, letting loose on Catra, but in that moment, with everything that was being said, she couldn’t help herself. She hadn’t really allowed herself to mourn her husband’s loss before jumping right to revenge. She’d gone right from shock and horror to unbelievable anger, and there’d been no in-between. No consideration for what this really meant – not just for her but their entire family.
This is what Teela needed to do.
Not scrounge up the last reservoirs of what magic was left here. Not act as bait for what might not even be Murderbot. Catra wasn’t a fan of crying your eyes out until there was nothing left but sometimes, sometimes, that’s what needed to happen. Cry it out to the point of dehydration. Scream if you have to. Let the dam break in a way that doesn't put you in the crosshairs of danger.
It didn’t fix shit, but it was a better route than bottling it all up for the sake of revenge.
“We need to get you back home, okay?” Catra urged, sounding so in control of it – like she was hiding the fact that the thread was finally beginning to snap, and that these little pieces of her heart were beginning to crumble. The love she had for her family was infinite; they were hers, and she wanted to keep them all safe and protected but she felt so helpless. The clock was ticking. It wasn’t a matter of if when it came to the chances of them being picked off.
It was when. No one was safe. Not even the kids. And if nothing got fixed, then they were all going to lose each other.
Her arms still held on tight. She let Teela cry, smoothing her disheveled hair down her back in a way she hoped was soothing. “But we can take a detour,” she told her, swallowing all her feelings down until they were buried. “Take a little time and find something to bring home to Dare.”
There were a few hidden gems around the forests. Bushes that had an abundance of berries for snacks, cottages that had been abandoned but not fully raided. If they got lucky they could find a toy, or a board game - or even clothes that could be salvaged so the kids could play pretend.
Teela wasn’t entirely certain how long she stood there, letting every bit of stifled emotion finally flow free. She sobbed, sniffled, and struggled to right her breathing, clutching onto Catra’s shoulders all the while. She felt awful putting all of this on her – she had easily become the backbone of the family a long time ago, more so than ever now that Adam was gone, and she had taken it all so gracefully.
Goddess, she deserved more than Teela breaking down on her after all she’d done. She deserved to scream and yell and explode at her for acting so recklessly. Instead, she stood there, taking it all in, empathizing and offering comfort that Teela felt she barely deserved.
But she took it. She soaked it up. And by the time she pulled back, face red and soaked with tears and the slow trickle of blood from her cut, she looked deeply remorseful, a tiny, apologetic smile pulling at the corners of her lips.
“I’m sorry,” she offered softly, squeezing Catra’s shoulders one last time. “Yeah, I… A treat sounds good, for the kids. I think that farm down the way had some citrus trees that still bloom. Dare loves those mandarins.”
There. That was a little more focused. A little more reasonable. Teela’s face was wet and a little bloody from that cut, and Catra did her best to carefully wipe them dry with her flesh hand. “Don’t say sorry,” she snorted, solidifying the firmness of her own demeanor. Yeah - this was hard, it was the worst, but fuck if she didn’t have this. For Teela and the rest of them. “You want violence. You’ll get it. With a better plan than this, and a clearer head.”
As if she’d stop Teela from wanting to let loose. Finding catharsis in killing the things responsible for taking so much from you was expected – it was allowed. But going at it stupidly, blinded by your own emotions, didn’t yield a good result. She relearned that lesson the hard way with Melog.
“But Dare needs you first,” Catra reminded. “He’ll be happy to see you bring home mandarins. We’re always going to be there for him, and we’re always going to help you take care of him. He just needs Mom right now, okay? You need him too. And if there’s days it’s… too hard, and it’s better to take a break for a minute, we got you. The both of you.”
“You’re right,” Teela conceded. She knew better. She’d known the whole time, but she’d let her emotions lead her, and of course it had led to this result. She should have known better than to expect her sisters-in-law would just let this slide, and now she was glad they hadn’t. The very real risks of her decision-making and the results it could have led to her were finally hitting her.
“I’ll be better,” she promised. “I might need you guys to help, but I’ll be better. For Dare and for Finn. I hope I wasn’t scaring them, too.” She adored her little nibling just as much as her son; they had been the best playmate to her little boy since the day he was born, and she was so glad the two cousins got along so well.
The tough part was accepting that Adam wouldn’t be here to see them grow up more. Finn was going-on ten, and Dare was closing in on seven. There was so much more life left ahead of them.
If they were exceptionally lucky, anyway.
“Finn will be okay,” Catra told her, hoping to convince herself about that too. They’ve been… quiet. They observed a lot. She’d been like that too as a kid, and she didn’t like that they had the time to just watch the adults around them. Sometimes she caught them trying to suppress their anxious purrs, like they were trying to toughen themselves up and – gods, she hated that. More than anything. “They miss you. They could use a hug when we get back.”
Adora would handle them until then. Even when her wife was lost in her own mess of a head – something Catra was beginning to fear that she couldn’t pull her out of anymore – she held steady for Finn and Dare.
Giving the area another quick glance, listening for any disturbances, she gave Teela’s elbow a quick squeeze. “We got lucky. Let’s get moving,” she urged. “Mandarins, then home.”
Home might not be the same without Adam, but it still had the people they loved. People that still needed Teela alive.