Adora sat perched on top of Darla, arms wrapped around her knees and pulled up to her chest, staring up at the night sky while her mind raced.
She didn’t do this often anymore. It was asking for trouble, for something to break, or go wrong, or for Darla’s camouflage to fall. Outside of shift hours, she did her best to stay hidden. Socialization outside of her little family (their pod, Kara called it) was rare for her, especially with the more recent losses they’d been dealt.
They kept fighting and fighting and fighting, and for what? They were losing. It didn’t matter how many battles they fought, how meticulously they planned, how much they hoped. Nothing was changing. Nothing was getting better. Outlanders and their allies had been thinned to the smallest herd, and those who hadn’t died were Thralled.
Wanda, Thralled last year.
Lena, Thralled just a few months ago.
They weren’t dead, sure. But they were as good as dead – lost beyond their grasp, unable to feel any emotion, to be reasoned with, to recognize the people who loved them and wanted them back. Even now, ten years after she’d been Thralled before Interitus had been shoved (temporarily, they knew now) back into the bottle, she could remember what it felt like.
But she’d heard Catra. She’d stood a chance. There was this tiny spark of her that was still drawn to her wife even drained to near nothingness. This Thrall was far more powerful than that. Interitus was at the peak of his power, and there was nothing they could do to stop him.
Darla was full but quiet. Adora had first watch while Catra, Adam, Teela, Kara, and the kids slept inside. Normally, she’d watch the cameras from the Captain’s chair, comfortably situated and set up to sound the alarms if the worst should happen. Tonight, though, she’d needed space and air, and if that attracted a Thrall or a wraith, she would deal with it.
What she didn’t expect was to hear the hatch opening behind her. She turned back and her lips quirked briefly upward when she saw her brother stepping out.
“You should be asleep,” she told him. “Told you I’d wake you on my way to bed.”
This wasn’t the way that things were supposed to go. The heroes were supposed to win. That was the way things had always gone, and it was the hope that Adam clung to. Things might have been bad, they might have been bad for a long time, but they weren’t hopeless. Never hopeless. Not so long as people were willing to keep up the fight.
Not that Adam could do much in the fight. Not as much as he could have done if he still could have become He-Man. He could fight, had only become better at fighting, but Interitus’ forces seemed indomitable. There was some magic on their side, but it was weak and secret, and Interitus…
He couldn’t sleep. He itched to do something, to do anything, and while some nights sleep came to him, others, like tonight, left him feeling restless and useless. After a few hours, Adam knew there wasn’t any sense in laying around in bed. He wasn’t going to be getting any sleep. So he brushed the hair off of Teela’s forehead to plant a soft kiss there, went to check on Dare and Finn and watch them sleep for a little while, and then went to find his sister. She wasn’t in the control room, but it wasn’t hard to spot her on the monitors.
“Couldn’t sleep,” he said, sitting down next to her. “Pretty sure all I’d manage to do if I stayed in bed was wake up Teela, and one of us should get some sleep. How are things looking out here?”
“A little bit like we’re not living in a world that’s rotting and terrible,” Adora sighed. The stars helped with that. They were still pretty to look at, enough to take away from some of the rubble around them, but still impossible to touch. And gods, she wished they could; she would have Darla take them as far away as they could get, somewhere good again even if it wasn’t home.
She turned to look at her brother, taking him in through her remaining good eye. Ten years ago, her expression would clearly have been a mask of stoicism, an attempt to stay cool and keep collected from the outside in. Now, it was such a permanent expression that the frown lines that had always threatened to form in her twenties were deep and prominent between her eyebrows.
“I miss Mom and Dad, Adam,” she whispered.
“Me too,” Adam admitted. It had been a long time since the last time they’d seen their parents. They’d popped in sporadically in the early years, usually at happy moments – Finn’s birth, Adam and Teela’s wedding, the birth of Dare. But they hadn’t come since then. He worried his lower lip.
“Most of the time, I think that’s for the best. It’s nice to think of them back home, where it’s… well, maybe not safe –” There were threats back home, too. Skeletor always lurked somewhere in the dark, and while Adora had vanquished Horde Prime, there were other threats in their world, but none of them had been like this. “But safer. But sometimes I miss them so much it hurts. But if they were here, there would only be more people I was constantly worrying about.”
He winced. That sounded more callous than he’d intended, however true the sentiment might have been. Adam wasn’t sure he had much more room for worrying.
It did sound callous, but the sad part was that it was completely valid, too. Adora understood. There was so little good in this world now, and people were dying most days, if not every day. Randor and Marlena could certainly handle themselves, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t be worrying if they had become permanent residents in Vallo, only for it to lead to this. She worried constantly, endlessly, anyway – she always had, but these past few years had been The Bad Years, and it was all so much worse.
“I’m glad the last time we saw them, they got to see Dare,” she said, flashing her twin a soft smile. “That’s a good last memory to have of them.” She wanted more memories, whatever she could have to make up for the two decades they’d missed when she was taken to Etheria, but if there had to be a last, that was one worth savoring. “I just… I wish they’d taken us with them.”
Vallo wasn’t the home it had once been for her. Now it was just a godsforsaken wasteland that she truly felt couldn’t be saved. It had taken Grayskull from them, Melog, Wanda, even Lena most recently. There was good in their lives as much as anything could be good these days, but it was hard to hold onto those moments when everything around them seemed so hopeless.
Adam fell silent as he considered that. Did he wish that they could have taken them with them? He wished they could have taken Teela and Dare, Catra and Adora and Finn. But he couldn’t leave, wouldn’t want to, not when things were like this.
His hands tightened into fists, his chin dropped to his chest. He couldn’t do what he once had been able to. If he’d had He-Man’s strength… Well, there was no sense in worrying about it. The fact of the matter was he didn’t have He-Man’s strength, hadn’t in years, and he’d been able to help in other ways. He could still fight, even without magic. Could still help the Rebellion figure out what steps it needed to take.
He still had hope. Hope that someday they’d be able to beat Interitus and take back Vallo. Things looked bleak now, had looked bleak for nearly five years now, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t still win, somehow. He needed to see it through.
Besides…
He looked at his sister. She’d changed these last few years. The lines on her face were deeper, and not only the scars. He worried about her, and not just because of Interitus.
“Well, who knows if we’d find each other again if we got sent back home,” he said, bumping his shoulder lightly against her. “I wouldn’t give up meeting you and Catra for anything, Sis.”
“I wouldn’t either,” Adora chuckled, leaning her shoulder against her brother’s. She remembered when they’d first discovered they were twins, how hesitant she’d been to embrace a sibling she’d never expected to have. As far as she’d ever known she’d been born and raised an orphan, then suddenly, she had a twin and a whole family and legacy that came with him. It had been a lot back then. But now, Adam was so intrinsically a part of her that she couldn’t imagine her life without him.
But she wouldn’t say that out loud, not now. It was like asking Vallo to take it away at this point, and as painful as the losses they’d already suffered had been, Adam or Teela would be up there as the worst if they were taken from her. Catra and Finn, of course, would top that list, and fuck, no, she couldn’t think about that.
“Maybe if we could have been guaranteed we’d all go home together and remember. Or maybe we’d go off to another world that isn’t trying to actively exterminate us, all together. Maybe we still will.”
“That is something people do, isn’t it?” Adam asked, a touch of wistfulness in his voice. “Jump worlds together, I mean.” It sounded nice, really. The idea of getting to explore the multiverse with his family. All of his family.
“Vallo’s worth saving though,” Adam said after a moment. “I know things have been rough these last few years. We’ll pull through, somehow.”
Adora would kill to have jumped to another part of the multiverse with her family, to just be spared this darkness they had been living through for years now. Plenty of people had been blipped. No one knew where they ended up, but the possibility of a new world was there. At this point, she’d go back home without complaint, even if it meant she was twenty-two again and Etheria was just rejoining the universe.
She wouldn’t remember the life she’d had here, so what could it hurt? She could find Eternia there – find out her origins, have a relationship with Adam, Teela, Marlena, and Randor. She could settle down with Catra, just like she had here, and they could make their family again – Finn, the two little girls they’d taken off the list last year, not wanting to make them suffer in this atrocity of a world.
Anything would be better than here.
Five years ago, Adora would have nodded along with her brother and tried to think positive. Tonight, she scoffed, fixed him with an unimpressed look, and said, “We’re screwed, little brother.”
“We’re only defeated once we start acting like we’re defeated, sister,” Adam said firmly. He hated seeing Adora like this. Hated that he had to argue with her at all. “There’s always hope as long as we can keep fighting.”
“I wish I could still believe that,” Adora replied. Gods, how she wished. She tried as hard as she could, but she had lost the will to believe Vallo would get better these days. All she could focus on was keeping her family as safe and their lives as normal as they could be. But the faith she’d clung to for so long had started dying when they lost Melog to the Thrall.
Vallo was unfixable.
Adam wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her in closer, and for a long time. He sat in silence for a time, watching the stars. It was strange to think that no one on Vallo had ever come close to those stars, but right now he was glad for it: they sat in the sky, unchanged, a promise that not everything was lost.
“I’ll believe enough for both of us then,” he promised her.
Adora didn’t fight Adam’s embrace. She never would. She sunk into his grip, laid her head on her shoulder, and let her eyes fall closed for a few moments before she peered up at the stars. They really did bring comfort, as much as they could, anyway. And having her twin beside her helped, too.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
Adam rested his head on top of Adora’s and gave her shoulders a squeeze. “Any time, sis,” he said. And he would. As long as there was breath in his body, he would be there to lend strength to his twin sister.