InsaneJournal

“Catra, hold still,” Adora huffed, fixing her wife with a fondly exasperated look.

They were currently gathered around the kitchen table with Catra’s prosthetic laid out on the surface. It was still fairly new, and she knew Catra wasn’t entirely comfortable with it yet. She was only just getting to a place where she was comfortable having Adora touch it after her insistence that the coolness of the metal truly didn’t bother her. She knew she wasn’t keen to be sitting here having it worked on, but she’d given in.

Over the years, Lena had taught her some of the finer aspects of taking care of Darla. She’d never treated her ship badly, but she wasn’t Entrapta and neither was Catra – she didn’t know the ins and outs of the mechanics. She wasn’t naturally inclined toward that sort of thing, but Lena was, and Adora was very willing to be taught. She knew their friend couldn’t stay here often, not with the work she was doing, so she’d taken advantage of the times she was free to learn and have some independence there.

Now, with Catra’s arm, she had a whole new set of mechanics to learn about and attempt to master. She would never get to full mastery, not like Lena or Brigitte or even Kara, who had ridiculously science-minded brains, but she could manage. She had a feeling on the occasions Catra’s arm needed any work done to it, she would feel more comfortable if Adora took care of it over anyone else.

“Okay, so if I move this wire–” She carefully shifted a blue wire with a tiny pair of pliers and jumped back when it set off a little electric shock. Her eyes went wide and she quickly pulled back, turning a very surprised, apologetic gaze to her wife. “Shit, I’m sorry! Are you okay, baby?”

“Peachy,” came Catra’s breezy reply, not all that enthused about that reaction but she hadn’t jumped. Gave a funny, scrunched up little face instead, craning her neck away from it all as much as she could. This would never… not be weird. “Not like I can feel anything.”

Lena was supervising, you see - she could be something of a control freak, and she didn’t want to bulldoze Adora while she was doing her best to learn. There was a visible cringe at the sparking but at least it hadn’t led to anything dangerous. The prosthetics were safe, for the most part.

They really did have to put together scraps and fudge the wiring a bit and the most complex part was the surgical process where it all attached to the nerves, but back then a procedure like this didn’t have the challenges they were facing. They had more resources available to them. More technology. More chances to perfect it. Viktor was a genius – his work was unique. Sometimes even unparalleled. But all the combat endured would cause some wear and tear, and manual tuneups were required.

“That’s not supposed to do that,” she observed, a hand on her chin. “It’s going to need replacing. Also - you need to wear safety glasses.”

Catra smirked lazily. “That’s hot.”

“Keep it in your pants, ladies,” Lena chuckled, taking an old pair of safety glasses from her kit and offering it. There was a spare for her, too. “We’ll have to disconnect it with some rubber gloves. The blue helps facilitate control over the fingers, which is… not working quite well, because…?”

“Shoved my fist into a demon’s eye socket.”

“And it went through the skull…?”

“I got excited.”

Right, safety glasses. Adora accepted them with a sheepish smile and slipped them over her ears, fixing them firmly onto her nose. She had gotten a little excited herself and jumped right in there once she’d gotten the arm’s control panel open. She may not be technologically savvy, but she knew enough to get by now. She had figured it would be easily fixable, but that was a naive thought.

“It was impressive,” she admitted, having witnessed the incident herself during a scuffle not far from where Darla had last been grounded. “Terrifying but impressive.” They’d had to shift positions earlier than anticipated because of that particular attack, but they’d been good since that move, and she figured they had another week or two before another.

She was just glad they’d managed to deal with the situation before picking up the kids from Wanda’s. She hated having to deal with these things in front of them.

“And why it’s good to learn how to do this,” Lena added, grabbing some rubber gloves to slip on and handing Adora a pair as well. “We’re trying to basically advance all the tech we have from scratch, but it’s slow going – we know everything we need. Getting it is just…”

Impossible. Well - dangerous. So much of what they could use was in the city. In several laboratories, including hers. It was all literal treasure just sitting pretty in the center of Vallo City and they couldn’t get to it, not without proper transportation or heavy losses.

Taking a deep breath, Lena forced a strained smile and went on. “Anyway, you’re going to have to disconnect it from near the port - so up top, by the shoulder. Fingers only. I’ve got a new one we can try out and maybe I can work on repairing this one so it doesn’t go to total waste.”

Catra was here out of necessity; she’d let them babble but she did lean in to give Adora a kiss on the nose. The safety glasses thing? On her wife? Yeah, hot.

“I’ll also teach you how to do that, if you want. In the scenario you’ve got faulty wires and no backups available. And don’t you dare use duct tape on any part of this - you know better.”

Adora gave Lena a sympathetic look. She knew how much the techy types had to struggle in this, too. Interitus may have sucked the life out of everyone with even a degree of magic, but the destruction he’d wrought had affected those who didn’t, too. His forces occupying the city meant any chance of jumping right back into the high-end technology they’d been accustomed to here was next to impossible. There were some brave enough to scavenge the city, but it was a risk that was taken rarely for obvious reasons.

Basically, everything sucked, but Adora wasn’t focusing on that now.

“No duct tape, I promise,” she vowed solemnly. She was still of the mind that duct tape would suffice for most things, especially in this time when resources were miniscule, but she knew the look Lena would give her. No one relished being on the receiving end of that look. She pulled on the rubber gloves, scrunching her fingers into a fist then stretching them out again before she reached for the aforementioned port.

She did at least know this part – detaching the arm from the port near the shoulder. Catra mostly kept the arm on, but there were times when it would feel like it was pinching and she needed a break. She knew it tended to make her a little self-conscious, but she seemed to be doing her best to ignore that feeling right now.

Catra made another face. The arm, it… helped keep her balanced. She had done some exercises when she was rocking just the one, trying to find a new equilibrium when her weight just felt all wrong but having the prosthetic helped. It added weight to the other side – and while it was a little more than she was used to, it was better than just having a whole limb missing.

It was temporary. But she felt useless just sitting around watching, and she knew she had a penchant for distracting Adora (again, the safety glasses, how could she be so damn cute, she needed another stupid kiss), so… “I’m gonna flop,” she said. They’d call her back when it was ready to be tested. Kara had the kids occupied - hers included - and the couch was empty, and she dragged herself to it.

“We’ll make sure it’s all disinfected when we pop it back in,” said Lena, taking a chair next to Adora. “On the bright side, none of it looks dented? If it was, it would probably be purely cosmetic - but you never know.”

There was a rare mug of pure black coffee she nursed, too. They had gotten some beans in not long ago and Lena tried not to hog all of it but, gods, the fuel was necessary. She could handle the lack of sugar and cream. That bitterness could really wake the dead. “It’s sweet that you’re so willing to learn this,” she smirked, pulling out some tools. “I take it that it helps keep you occupied, too?”

“Yeah, it helps,” Adora confirmed. With the arm now free, she picked it up to examine it and be sure there were no dents, but it looked like Lena was right. She was sure it would take force greater than that demon to really cause any damage, to be honest – it had been Catra putting forth most of the force that caused the fingers to start short-circuiting.

“It pulls me out of my head,” she admitted. “We had a tough talk a couple weeks ago, and we’re okay, but…it sucks. Neither of us want to think about it much.”

We’re okay. Lena hummed, opening up a few other boxes of equipment - some screws, a heat-gun, heat-shrink tubing. We’re okay was always a debatable statement. She spared a glance up towards the couch, catching a glimpse of what she knew was a sleepy Magicat. (She had a look to her that screamed tired, she figured napping was going to happen very soon.)

So she quieted her voice, snatching up a magnifying lens.

“Never a shortage of tough talks lately,” she sympathized – god knows she and Kara have had their fair share of it. “Should I inquire about the kind of tough talk, or is it too soon?”

Adora went for the screws, taking to arranging them in little piles until she was given more explicit instructions on what to do. Her overeager approach had led to that little shock – which also might be due to the equipment being damaged but still – so she could keep occupied with busy work until Lena was fully prepared.

She took a quiet breath through her nose at Lena’s question, focusing on her task for a quiet moment longer. She trusted Lena. They had become close enough over the years that she knew she could talk to her. It just wasn’t an easy topic; she hadn’t even wanted to broach it with Catra, knowing it would hurt them both.

“We were told ages ago, when things were still normal, that after Finn, we’d have twins. We were planning to try for them, but with the world the way it is…” She sighed, brushing a lock of hair back from her face. “We decided we didn’t want to bring them into this.”

Ah.

That kind of tough talk.

“That’s a… difficult decision,” Lena acknowledged, using her gloved fingers to wiggle the blue wire free from one of the ends it was connected to. “A responsible one. And–a heartbreaking one. I’m sorry.”

To spend the years imagining, expecting to have your family a certain way, only for it to be robbed from you – a lot of people could relate, she supposed, but to make the decision to actively give it up despite it still being possible was a different angle.

Adora nodded and gave Lena an appreciative look. She didn’t say it’s okay because it wasn’t. It was both of those things – responsible, absolutely, but utterly heartbreaking. The conversation had been painful, and there had been tears, and she was never really going to be okay with it. But she knew it was the best thing they could do with Vallo the way it was right now, so she’d pushed for it and broken both their hearts in the process.

“I think that’s…why she really pummeled that demon,” Adora admitted quietly. “I didn’t think she’d gone hard enough to cause this kind of damage, though.”

Right. The eye socket. Then through the skull. Lena wasn’t in the front of the lines when it came to combat. She did okay, enough to defend herself and find an escape. But to be the one in the thick of it? No. She had been around enough and seen them in a fight to clearly picture it, though: a gruesome takedown, the blood and the guts and mess.

“It held up well for the most part,” she said, offering Adora a new wire to install in the arm. It wasn’t a refurbished one – she trusted it to work – and then they could focus on the steps of what it takes to repair a damaged one. “Some people can channel their feelings into some kind of calculative violence. And then there’s… blind rage, which is dangerous, I don’t have to beat the dead horse and explain that. I’m not sure what that pummeling falls under but this is an easier, quicker fix than broken bones. I hope you landed a good hit of your own, too.”

The monsters were an extension of Interitus, and when Interitus took away their friends, their families, their futures - it was reasonable to take that personally, and fight like it.

“Plenty,” Adora replied, taking the wire and carefully leaning down to begin the installation process. She may not have She-Ra to back her up anymore, but she had trained to fight long before She-Ra and had continued on even without her. She could handle herself, and her punches packed no less power, but Catra had definitely taken control in these circumstances.

Plus, she’d always had a habit of hitting things when she was upset. Her headspace was a roller coaster these days, so having a very worthy target on those bad days never hurt her feelings.

“How’s everything with Kara?” she asked, shifting the subject back to Lena. “You guys doing okay?”

Not much around here was a secret; she knew Kara and Lena had struggles of their own with life and what had become of it in Vallo these days. Lena was busy, and Kara missed her, as did the kids. It wasn’t an easy situation to be in, even if they were all just trying to do their best.

Lena did her best to keep her expression neutral at the mention of Kara. Her partner–wife, in every sense of the word but legalities. Not like official documents made a difference in anything these days.

“We’re fine,” she answered, cutting into the wire cover to expose the threads of copper on the inside. They were fried, just as she suspected. “In the sense that we don’t really… deviate from the topic of our occasional arguments. I hate having to leave every time.”

It was hard. It always was.

Adora nodded, moving her hands out of the way to give Lena more room to snip away. She wasn’t entirely certain how truthful we’re fine really was, just like we’re okay was a debatable statement between her and Catra. They weren’t arguing, and they did have the gift of neither of them being away for extended periods of time, but nothing had been easy lately. Nothing had been easy for a long time, really.

“Well, we’re here whenever you want to come stay a while,” she offered. “It’s nice having you around. I can always walk you back when I’m up at the Outpost.”

“I always like it here,” Lena mentioned softly, making a soft murmur with the comment of pay attention to this so Adora could see how she was pulling at the copper threads. The burnt ones were pushed to the side before grabbing new ones. “I know the kids love it here. It’s… not a makeshift room in a cave, you know?”

Oh, they had worked miracles to make the Outpost what it was today. Everyone had poured their resources together and had gotten creative - it was a labor of love for those trying to create shelter for their friends, their family. It housed everyone that had lost a home.

And maybe that’s why she struggled with it sometimes. It wasn’t home. Darla wasn’t, either, but the ship had stayed a sturdy constant throughout the years. It was familiar. It had all the makings of a home - even if she didn’t call it hers.

“I’m just not an idle person,” she expressed with a sigh, adjusting her glasses. “I’ve always strived towards making a change back home and before this? There wasn’t much to change about Vallo. It wasn’t perfect but, god, close to it. Now it’s – complete and utter shit, and so many people can’t rely on magic anymore to fix things. Science can do so much in its place but only with the proper resources. Team Nerd has always been small and it’s only gotten more so throughout the years. We’re stretched thin, but we’re needed. It’s exhausting.”

Lena was exhausted.

“And I just…” Gods, she hated to say this, and her voice went even quieter, like she was afraid someone else might eavesdrop on their conversation. “I don’t think there’s a balance between work or home. It’s one or the other.”

That was definitely one of the positives of holding onto Darla. Their ship was a fortress in its own right – they’d had to be careful with how they used energy, sure, but for the most part, their lives hadn’t had to change too much since Vallo had gone to hell under Interitus’ rule. They still had to move to avoid detection, but inside Darla, they were comfortable. The kids had space to roam, the adults had space to themselves, and everyone was content.

Not happy, really. Maybe sometimes, maybe in front of the little ones, but any true happiness was hard to come by these days.

“I understand,” Adora said quietly, a hand falling to Lena’s shoulder to squeeze. “You guys especially… it’s hard to step away and put distance there.” She knew Lena had always had workaholic tendencies, but those were easy to temper back when the world had been a good place, not marred by death, destruction, and a general feeling of doom and gloom even on days that weren’t terrible. The luxury of stepping back for a day and letting things roll on was long past any of them.

It was why she’d chosen home. She spent time checking in at the Outpost, but her priority was her family. Her people. Lena was one of her people, and as much as she might wish she felt she could be more balanced, all she could do was support her.

“Everyone appreciates what you’re doing,” she added. “And I appreciate you taking a break to come help me out with this.”

“Thank you, but I don't do it for the praise,” Lena chuckled, trying to lighten up the mood just a smidge. “This is just – how I take care of people, I guess.” Through science and what she could teach them, and what she could provide for them. During her times away from home, even during those breaks that were used to refuel and nap before continuing on a project, she would keep tinkering.

Often, they were toys for the kids. Some little robot vehicle for them to control with a remote. The design wasn’t complex, but having the spare equipment for it was the biggest lock.

She’d fix lighters so people wouldn’t have to resort to old-fashioned stick rubbing.

Sometimes she’d find an old tablet, and find a power source to charge it with. The online connection was weak but sometimes they had little games to play.

“And I know that’s what you like to be able to take care of your own too,” she continued, threading new wire through the open blue tubing. “So I’m happy to teach you this. You being able to do this helps us as much as it helps you.”

Adora knew Lena wasn’t in this for the praise, but Adora meant it and, as far as she was concerned, it was well-deserved. Everything the tech team did was an important step for them, she believed that. There were times their entire situation felt hopeless and she felt so close to giving up, but the little things Lena did – especially the toys for the kids, however small and simple – helped buoy that hope a bit longer.

“Then let’s get into it,” she agreed. If she could take one more thing off Lena’s plate by learning to maintain Catra’s arm, then she was even more determined to do it. “Tell me what you need me to do next.”