WHAT: A photo album with pictures of their life on Etheria shows up and brings up some mixed feelings WHERE: Darla WHEN: This morning WARNINGS: None STATUS: Complete
Adora hadn’t begrudged Catra going through the portal – she’d expected it when, during a standard family breakfast, every one of the attendees had vanished before their eyes. She’d nearly gone herself, but she’d decided to stay home for her mom and Finn; the baby had witnessed everyone’s disappearance and gotten scared enough to cry for hours once they’d realized they weren’t playing a very elaborate game of peek-a-boo.
With Kara gone, she’d done her best to step up at the DOA and help control things there however she could. How effective she’d been was a different discussion, but these incidents seemed to come with an inherent feeling of helplessness. All they could do was ensure nothing worsened in the others’ absence, and they had at least succeeded there.
And then she’d spent a good twelve hours velcroed to Catra’s side after she’d returned home from that adventure. She’d made sure to heal her despite no signs of serious injury. It seemed they’d had enough magic to keep her wife in good shape despite their confrontations with sentient trees, so she was thankful.
Everyone had been home safe for a couple of days when Adora woke to a strange weight on her chest. She let out a groggy sigh, furrowing her brows down at the object, then extracted herself from her wife’s arm around her waist to push herself up into a sitting position. The object flopped into her lap, and she reached out to pick it up.
It was easy to tell it was a photo album – it didn’t look too dissimilar from the small collection Catra had put together in their time in Vallo. Except for the color, theirs were all red, but this one was a buttery gold. Add the fact that it hadn’t been there when she’d fallen asleep, and the whole thing was odd.
But at least it wasn’t that purple Rebellion journal stuffed with angry letters she’d written to Catra. Maybe the Vallo powers-that-be were smiling down on them for once.
“Babe,” she murmured, gently jostling her wife’s shoulder. “Vallo’s leaving presents again, wake up.”
Catra heard the words, raised her head, squinted at her wife through the blurry haze of sleep – and then flopped her head back down onto the pillow.
“Ten more minutes before you make me face whatever horrors it brought us,” she mumbled, pulling the blanket more over herself. That was what it probably was, right? A horror. The last time a present from home landed in Darla, it made its way home into their closet in the form of ritualistic white robes, ones they burned not even ten minutes after discovering it. She couldn’t fathom a gift being anything good.
Finn was in their nursery. They were slowly making that transition now they were older, getting actual use of the crib overnight. And judging by the lack of noise coming through the baby monitor they had on their nightstand, they were sound asleep. Like a good baby.
“Come cuddle me before we’re crippled by depression and the sins of our pastt,” Catra offered, the words said around the sound of a yawn. All that was visible from under the blankets right now was a wild mess of hair - and ears.
Adora couldn’t really blame Catra for thinking any gifts Vallo gave them would be horrific, especially after it had been so long since they’d received anything. She couldn’t help but feel curious about this album but was too afraid to open it alone. Maybe whatever pictures were in there were things she didn’t want to see—but then, who would fill a photo album with bad pictures?
She was overthinking again, so she moved it to her nightstand and sank back down into the bed, reaching out to pull Catra into her arms again.
“I hope it’s not bad,” she murmured, kissing the top of her wife’s head. That would be so disappointing. It looked like a nice album, something not unlike what Catra put together herself. Maybe that’s what it was—something Catra had put together herself, and Vallo had just given it to them early.
Or was it from home? Something good from home would be a nice surprise.
That was Catra’s expectation, always. Something bad. Except she didn’t really know what Adora had woken up to - she hadn’t focused on anything but what she’d said and, oh, face-planting back into the pillow and engaging into full-burrito mode.
“What is it,” was her mumbled, rumbly question, the first set of purrs starting for the day as she burrowed into Adora’s arms. Warm, soft wife in the morning was best wife right now. “You’re not righteously getting up to start another morning fire, so.”
“Looks like a photo album,” Adora told her. “Sort of like the ones you put together but different color cover. Gold, not red.” She wasn’t in such a hurry to see what was inside that she removed herself from the cuddles, though. It was early – she was always the early riser of the two of them – and no matter how much the questions tickled at her mind, she was content cuddling up to Catra.
That caught Catra’s attention. “A – what,” she grumbled now, not sure how that could possibly be some sort of malicious item unless it held snapshots of their lowest moments. In retrospect, the concept sounded stupid, and logic told her that it was most likely benign and (hopefully) not traumatizing.
Curiosity didn’t kill the cat, but it had her sitting up - and then sitting on Adora, it wasn’t rude, they were married - so she could grab the strange album from the nightstand. The first thing she did was sniff it, her morning hair sticking up in all wild directions and making her look a little crazy.
“No lavender,” was what she pointed out first, a scent that usually gave anything from Brightmoon away. It smelled somewhat like Darla, which meant there were traces of them. Of – Finn, who smelled like warmed honey and baby powder and something else that made her think of Hope and Mara, but that couldn’t be right. “It smells like… us.”
The words brought her back to the moment they met Finn for the first time, five-years-old and armed with a wooden sword, somehow a stranger to them but made of their flesh and blood and magic. They smell like us.
Adora let out a quiet oof when Catra shifted unexpectedly to sit on her, but she didn’t stop her from grabbing the album to sniff it. It made her smile, pushing herself into a sitting position to get in on the examination, too. Hearing it smelled like them made her light up, brows raising with interest.
“Well, should we open it?” she asked, tapping the cover with one hand. “I think it probably won’t be bad stuff because who puts actual bad stuff in a photo album, right? Unless Vallo’s playing some really mean trick on us.” Which was an unfortunate possibility that required some concern, but she had to hope Vallo had been cruel enough to them with past gifts to let them off easy for once.
Vallo had played some really mean tricks on them. Their caution felt reasonable. But, yes, compiling a photo album of terrible pictures to remind them of terrible memories felt too far-fetched for even this place, so she was willing to let her guard down about it. Especially with the way Adora smiled.
“Fine,” Catra sighed, unmounting her wife’s lap - entirely tragic, it was terrible, she hated it - to sit beside her, arms flush and album settled on their thighs. She busied her hands for a moment to smooth down the mess that she knew her hair was, and she regretted not letting Adora braid it the night before so it wouldn’t be so floof. “Wanna do the honors?”
Adora hesitated for a moment before she nodded and said, “Sure.” The nerves were still a little present, but she reached out to pull the cover open. A breath of relief escaped her in a whoosh when she saw the very first page—a doodle of her, Catra, Finn, and the girls, not unlike similar ones she’d drawn here.
“Okay, that’s a good sign,” she decided, much more confidently.
Huh. Well, shit. That gave Catra feelings.
Relieved ones, for starters. She didn’t think anything with that kind of art could be anything awful. There was this – vague memory she had, one where she was older and felt imbalanced thanks to a metal arm, with her sketchbook on her lap and the art looking back at her was what she’d put together when she was pregnant with Finn. Art for the girls, ones they’d never have in that timeline. One of them looked exactly like this.
“So is this…” Catra squinted, taking it upon herself to begin separating her hair into three parts to braid it over her shoulder. It would keep that nervous energy her hands were channeling contained. “Some future thing, you think?”
“It has to be,” Adora agreed. Whether it was Vallo’s future or Etheria’s future was yet to be determined, but the doodle assured her enough to flip a page further to see what awaited them. Her heart immediately jumped in her throat at the sight of the photo fastened to the top of the page.
“‘Finn meets Aunt Glimmer and Uncle Bow!’” she read the caption in her own handwriting below. It was, in fact, a picture of Finn, as a newborn, no more than a day or two old. They had similar pictures in the photo album that Catta had presented to her this past Christmas. They were so tiny, held in Bow’s hands while Glimmer looked on with a smile.
“They look older,” were the first words out of Catra’s mouth, not excited but - quiet, in this contemplative sort of way. Obviously she was referencing Bow and Glimmer, who they hadn’t seen since Vallo took them away. She didn’t miss them the way Adora did. Her friendships with them were very green, and they grated her nerves in the same ways Scorpia and Entrapta grated Adora’s nerves, but–
They would have been important to Finn if they were here. It sucked that they weren’t.
“This is on Etheria, then,” she murmured, studying the picture with slitted eyes. “I don’t recognize the background.”
“Yeah, it must be,” Adora agreed. Because Catra was right – the background wasn’t Bright Moon or any other place she recognized, but her best friends looked a good decade older than when she’d last seen them. Their faces were just more mature, and Glimmer was looking even more queenly than usual. Her eyes tracked down to the next picture on the page, this one of Finn in Catra’s arms. “You look older, too. But not as older as your last future visit here.”
“I mean, you’ve been saying you wished we were a little older to have them,” Catra snorted, but it all came out with a little more emotion than intended. This was… not what she had expected for their morning. It wasn’t bad by any means - they’ve openly wondered about their lives on Etheria, about how weird that time there would carry on when they had split off from that timeline to exist here.
But to see that Finn - and judging from her doodle, Hope and Mara - existed there too hit her with relief. And a lot of odd feelings, but relief was at the top. All three existed across more than one universe. That was –
“I’m gonna go wash my face,” Catra announced, scooting off the bed because she was five seconds away from looking blotchy as fuck.
Adora felt a pang of guilt for a moment there. She had said that, once or twice. She loved Finn, and she’d wanted them desperately. She didn’t regret anything about how they’d come to be here in Vallo. But somewhere toward the end of Catra’s pregnancy, she had started to wish they were a bit older before having a baby. That they’d had a bit more time together, just the two of them, before expanding the family. She didn’t like having those thoughts, which were few and far between, but now she couldn’t help worrying that Catra had taken them much more seriously than intended.
She frowned when Catra got up, turning her attention away from the photo album and sliding out of bed to follow after her. Now may have been one of those times that space was more of what her wife needed, but sometimes instinct overruled logic in Adora’s head, and this was definitely one of those times.
“Hey, you’re not upset, are you?” She caught Catra’s wrist in one hand and slipped it down the next moment to hold her hand. “Can you talk to me?”
Catra had to bite the inside of her cheek before she snapped. She didn’t snap nowadays, not really - especially not Adora, always careful about how she expressed her temper. God knows that she’d been on the receiving end of that most of their lives, but she had hoped for a moment to compose herself from whatever was brewing inside her.
“I’m not–” breathe in, “upset,” breathe out.
She stayed at the edge of the bed, giving Adora’s hand a squeeze.
“It’s good to know we have them there too, you know? All of them. They’re not just because of Vallo. They’re because of us.”
Oh, so this was a good kind of overwhelming. Adora could handle that; she knew all about it from personal experience and from seeing it in Catra. She fondly remembered a night when Catra was still pregnant when Adora had brought her inside, fed her cookies, and waxed poetic about how much she loved her and wanted to keep marrying her forever. She remembered how she’d teared up, called her an idiot, then demanded a sandwich.
She grinned and took Catra’s hands, tugging her in closer. “It’s the best, right?” There was something so reassuring knowing that Finn (and Hope and Mara) would come to be no matter what world they were in. She had always hoped as much and told herself they were inevitable no matter what, but having concrete proof of that hope handed to them was worthy of feeling so overwhelmed.
It was the best, yeah. It was also a bit of the other thing, the sting that her comments brought even if they weren’t intended to be malicious. And maybe a little bit of this sudden worry that the more they flipped through the pages, the more Adora would think something like oh, I wish my life was more like this instead. There was Bow. There was Glimmer. They had waited.
But they still had Finn and the girls and – that was something to be happy about. She was happy about it. So she could choke down the rest with another breath and let Adora pull her in again, turning to bump their foreheads together. “Safe to say we made it there too?”
Adora shifted to wrap her arms around her wife’s back, hands pressing gently into her lower back. “We’re gonna make it everywhere,” she declared, kissing one of Catra’s freckled cheeks. She was sure there was still a morning breath thing going on, so she was being considerate. She was excited, and she could tell Catra was genuinely happy, too, but something still wasn’t right.
“What are you really thinking?” she asked, blue eyes meeting blue and gold. “I know this is good, but it’s okay if you have other feelings.”
Catra would argue they were beyond morning breath; she’d kiss her now if she had the confidence to do it without coming undone. She smoothed a hand down Adora’s side until she reached her hips to squeeze before pressing her lips against her ear for a quick peck. “It’s fine, princess. I’ll take a photo album that tells us how things panned out back home any day. I know you’re dying to look through it more, so -”
She pulled away, canting her chin towards it.
“Come on, go get it.”
Adora wasn’t sure how to take that. She could tell Catra was sincere in her willingness to keep looking, but whatever else was going on in her head was a mystery to Adora—and one Catra had refused to reveal to her. It was hard not to press more and not to dwell on all the possibilities her mind could come up with, but she tried to put it aside.
“Come back to bed,” she suggested instead, taking Catra’s hand. “We can save the book for later. I think you need cuddles more than we need to look at that right now.”
“You don’t have the patience to save it for later,” Catra teased, the corner of her mouth tipped into a tired smirk. That album was going to sate their curiosities and answer a lot of questions. It was their life, or what could have been if they hadn’t split off from that universe. “I think I just need a minute to feel like a person? I’m up, and my hair’s probably–”
She tugged on her loose, untied braid she tried to bind her hair into to make a point.
“Gotta get into hot girl mode, Adora. At least somewhat.”
That was half-true. Adora would happily find the patience, if that was what Catra needed, and offers for cuddles were always genuine. But she couldn’t say she wasn’t excited. Maybe the album contained some spoilers further down the line, but with their visits from the future, they had been spoiled in this world, too. It would just be nice to know they were on a good path at home; that didn’t mean she was unhappy here. Vallo had its tough periods, but Etheria always had, too.
“You’re always in hot girl mode to me,” she retorted with a playful grin. “But seriously, I can wait on the album. You wanna shower? Together or separately, I’m open.”
Catra wanted to say yes, shower with me. They did it often before Finn came into the picture. Now it was just… sometimes, and if they could swing it. Trying to remember the last time they indulged in that was hard and she didn’t know if it had been that long since the last time or if her brain was still submerged in the morning haze to properly recall.
But, hey, maybe if they had waited–
“I think one of us has to be on standby in case Finn wakes up,” she said, pressing a big, grand kiss against Adora’s forehead. She didn’t want to dwell. She didn’t hold grudges over lines Adora didn’t mean to needle her with. Catra would have a moment of weakness in the shower, and get over it, and they’d continue their day. “I bet your mom’s gonna be stoked to see the photos too.”
She gave her wife another kiss, this one a fat, lingering one to her cheek before making her way to their bathroom.
Adora accepted the kisses with a smile, sitting back on the end of the bed to watch Catra go. That feeling that something wasn’t right wouldn’t stop niggling at the back of her mind. The signs weren’t red and glaring, but they were there. Whatever Catra had in her head clearly wasn’t all positive, and that same urge to push kept coming back to Adora. This time, though, she didn’t let it win. She had chased after Catra once, and if she needed alone time to handle whatever was on her mind, the least she could do was let her be.
Spirit perked up from his bed beside the door when she rose to her feet again. She circled the bed to grab the video baby monitor and hook it to her waistband before she returned to scratch her puppy’s ears when he waited for her, tail wagging. “Come on, buddy. I’ll take you outside while Mom gets ready for the day.”
Part of her regretted turning Adora down. The shower, aside from the running water, was lonely and quiet - and maybe that’s what Catra needed to sort her thoughts and feelings out and have her stupid, irrational, shaky moment before attempting to function like an actual put-together person in front of other people. Adora loved her and loved Finn, and their lives might be different here but she doubted Adora would regret it after seeing everything that could have been.
The shower went on longer than usual. So did getting ready for the day, but she was determined to have her hair neat with fresh clothes - because looking better at least made her feel better. And then she went to grab the album, finally acknowledging the weight and how heavy it felt in her hands (a good thing because that meant a lot of good memories) before meeting everyone at a lower deck.
Finn was already in their high chair with breakfast: a plate of soft scrambled eggs they were putting in their mouths with their fingers, a sippy cup of whole milk cut with breastmilk, and blueberries that were cut up in half. A joint effort between Marlena and Adora, she guessed.
“I have the goods,” Catra announced, holding up the album. “I just need coffee first.”
In the time Catra had spent getting ready, Adora had gotten about half ready herself. She’d returned to the bedroom to pull on sweatpants after Spirit’s run around the yard and brushed her teeth in the hallway bathroom to keep from disturbing her wife. By the time Finn woke up, Marlena had woken, too, and the three of them had made their way down to the kitchen to start breakfast for the day.
The morning was always a flurry of activity, so Adora hadn’t mentioned the surprise new album to her mom yet. Instead, she’d focused on the eggs and putting together waffle batter while Marlena worked on the fruit and milk for Finn. She turned away from the waffle maker when Catra emerged, announcing her presence with the album in her hand, and beamed at her.
“Coffee’s almost done,” she said, nodding toward the machine on the kitchen counter. “Should we eat first before we go through that?”
“What is that?” Marlena questioned, wiping her hands on a dish towel after having helped Finn with their breakfast. She wasn’t always present for the morning routines – sometimes she went into the shop very early – but she had time before her shift, and was eager to participate with the little chores. And baby breakfast, which she was happy to do.
Catra offered the album to her mother-in-law. “Photo album from home,” she answered simply, and then moved around to see Finn first. They were bright-eyed and smiley, and she leaned down and nuzzled their little face. She purred, and so did they.
Blinking, Marlena turned the album in her hands to look at the cover - and then at Adora. “Is this one of those things that Vallo just drops from back home?”
“It seems like it,” Adora confirmed. “I woke up with it literally on top of me, and it wasn’t there last night.” She had never had something drop on her so directly—memories of the end of the war came to mind, but even those had been almost dream-like in the way it happened. “We haven’t had great luck with those things, but this one is different.”
She turned back when the waffle maker beeped and raised the lid, grabbing a spatula to pry it off and onto a plate. “Butter and syrup, babe?” she asked, calling out to her wife as she doted on Finn.
While Catra had called out a go for it, Marlena looked at the album with amazement. And a little bit of confusion, since she assumed the two of them would be perusing through the pages like eager mad women. Had they done that already? “This is - fantastic,” she breathed. “And I have time before work, if you don’t mind sharing.”
“Nope,” Catra told her, giving Finn’s cheek a flurry of kisses that gave them a fit of giggles. She was grinning - because how could she not, look at this damn baby - and fought the urge to unbuckle them from their high chair to carry around on her hip. They had to eat first, and she needed that coffee. She went for that next. “We’ve seen some pictures but not all of them.”
“Just the first couple,” Adora clarified. Really, it was just the first two pages they’d seen before Catra seemed to have gotten overwhelmed. There was so much more to go through, and though her excitement had tempered in the morning busyness, she was still intrigued and hopeful to see what their life had turned out like back home. It was a window of reassurance she needed, and she hoped it could be for Catra and Marlena, too.
“Next waffle’s for you, Mom,” she told Marlena. She leaned over to Catra beside her to kiss her cheek, pushing the plate toward her to take back with her.
Catra made sure to interrupt Adora’s waffle-making streak for a few seconds by cradling the back of her neck, and distracting her with a kiss to the lips - something sweet but definitely meaningful - before gathering her plate and mug.
“Thank you!” Marlena called out, sliding into the kitchen nook. Finn was at the end of it, having a fantastic time squishing eggs with their fingers before shoving them into their mouth. “I’m going to see the first page and – oh, it’s the little comic, with all of you! Tell me I will get to see pictures of the girls when they’re babies.”
She’d be thrilled. It was a gift to be able to be around Finn right now - especially so close to their birthday - but she worried she’d miss this sort of thing with Hope and Mara, too. To know that her daughter carried on their twin legacy in her own children was something she’d love to witness from the beginning.
“We think so,” came Adora’s answer, coming over to put down a plate for Marlena. “We didn’t get very far looking into it. Responsibilities and stuff.” She had high hopes, though, and the smile she wore showed as much. She couldn’t imagine there would be a doodle of five of them if they twins didn’t make some appearances.
It was a few more minutes before they all had food in front of them and Adora came to sit down, squeezing herself between her wife and her mom so Catra remained within Finn’s reach and she got the prime viewing spot to start going through the album. “Maybe we’ll see pictures of you guys, too,” she suggested. “You, and Adam, and Dad, and Teela.” That would make things even better.
“I’m going to consider this as spring Christmas,” Marlena smiled, though when she thought about it – that would be somewhat like the whole Easter holiday back home. Anyway, her excitement was a palpable wave, and she cut into her waffle while eagerly elbowing her daughter. “Open it, I’m ready.”
Finn slapped the tray of their high chair with a pitchy squeal, also ready for whatever the hell was happening. Catra tore off little pieces of her waffle, sprinkling them on the baby’s plate for an extra breakfast bonus.
“Okay, okay,” Adora laughed, smiling at their squealy baby in their high chair before she reached for the album. She briefly wished they’d held off until after they finished eating, but she could probably multitask. She turned the cover open, showing that same first page with the doodle, then turned to the next, the only page she and Catra had absorbed so far—baby Finn, newly born and meeting Glimmer and Bow, then being held by Catra directly below.
When she turned to the next mysterious page, the top picture was of Catra and Adora with infant Finn sharing their laps. A sticky note on their blanket read, in Catra’s handwriting, Look what we made!
“You’re the cutest throughout every universe,” Catra said to Finn, the wry smile her lips quirked into bordering a gentle smirk. She unbuckled them from their highchair (she couldn’t resist) and brought them to sit on the table, and they grinned with all four of their front teeth.
Meanwhile, Marlena had that ache to her face that came from grinning so broadly. “Too precious,” she crooned. She had recognized Bow and Glimmer in the background of these photos; there were a few pictures of them in the albums they compiled here, but already she could tell they were prominent figures in their lives. And the fact that they were all a handful of years older didn’t go unnoticed. “How old do you think you’re in these pictures?”
Catra shrugged, offering Finn some more pieces of waffle to put in their mouths. She didn’t think it mattered.
“A little older,” Adora offered, “but I’m not sure how much. Maybe not a lot?” It didn’t matter in the end. She would be happy at whatever age they had Finn, as long as she was having them with Catra—which, she was pretty sure, was the only possible way to have them. “Should we see if we can find some of the girls?”
She didn’t wait for an answer before she started flipping through the pages. She wanted to look through them all, savor them, but this was here now, so she had to assume there would be plenty of time for that later. Right now, she wanted to be sure all of their children were in this book so she could eat and be content in knowing their family was complete in their universe.
It didn’t take long for those pages to be found. Catra could appreciate the eagerness but also found herself wanting to stare at a few – and then also encouraged Adora to flip faster when they encountered a few maternity photos in sundresses that were all too familiar. She felt her face flush. She’d gone through it already, but seeing herself pregnant was a weird thing for her eyes to consume - and in those, pregnant with twins - so she was happy to fast forward.
And then they fast-forwarded way too fast.
“Wait, wait, two pages back,” Catra insisted, not letting her eyes linger on the current page to avoid distractions. One hand held Finn on the table, and the other pushed her wife’s to the side so she could rewind the pages and — “They’re tiny.”
Smaller than Finn had been. Two little girls, wrapped in blankets with a distinguishing pattern on each one - sun and moon.
“Adam and Adora were small too,” Marlena whispered, diluting her glee because otherwise she’d be blubbering over her breakfast. “Only so much space in the oven. Adora was a little bigger by a few ounces. Adam would have probably called her an overachiever there.”
“It was meant to be,” Adora replied with a grin. Overachiever was one of the nicer qualities that had been attributed to her, and it was one she didn’t mind hearing. It was funny to think being a little bit bigger as a newborn could fall under that umbrella, but she’d called Finn an overachiever when they started crawling, so it was fair. She let Catra turn the pages at her leisure so she could take a couple of minutes to put away her neglected waffle.
“I’m glad they’re there, too,” she said after a moment, smiling at her wife and gently nudging her shoulder. “Turn the page again. Let’s see if there are any with Mom.”
The doodle was one thing. This was everything. Catra let out a breath, marveling at their little faces and comparing them to the older ones they’d met several months ago – their voices, the soft blues of their eyes (Adora’s blue, hers was much harsher, leaning more towards that turquoise pallet), the expressions they made. She barely registered the nudge on her shoulder and slowly turned the page.
Marlena wasn’t who they saw with the kids next. It was Randor, silver in his hair and beard, with Finn who was closer to the age of small child versus toddler. The walls in the picture didn’t look anything like Brightmoon castle walls, but something more humble. More residential.
In his arms were two bundles, a few weeks beyond the fresh newborn stage. The girls had two bows on their hands and underneath the picture, Catra’s handwriting that spelled out the bows were grandma’s idea, sigh.
“I’m going to buy bows in bulk,” Marlena whispered again, but the awe and that glee she was trying to cover up surfaced. Seeing Randor’s face like this with their grandchildren caused her heart to ache – in a good way and in a sad way. “I’m coming home with bags.”
Adora had to pause on the last bite of her waffle, holding the fork between two fingers and staring with awestruck wide eyes at the babies in her father’s arms. Her father. She hadn’t seen him in such a long time, and part of her was scared it was for a bad reason. Eternia had its share of enemies as much as Etheria did, and Randor was a warrior – their family was chock full of those. She hadn’t mentioned that fear to anyone because she knew it was irrational. Seeing him now was reassurance she hadn’t known she needed so badly.
“Bows are a good idea,” she murmured, dropping her fork to her plate and pushing it out of the way. She could worry about her void of a stomach later. “This is just…” Her eyes were watering, and her throat got tight for a moment before she managed to clear it. “I’m so glad we all get to be together there. I mean, it looks like we are, right?”
“We are, and I knew we would be,” Marlena said, reaching over to squeeze Adora’s shoulders and giving them a light, victorious shake. The revelation was a balm to all the stings she felt being here, away from Eternia and her husband and son – because somewhere out there, they’d all find each other.
And selfishly, it was as if this gave her permission to experience all she could here guilt-free. Would it be so terrible, then, that she wanted to stay here with this part of her family?
Catra quietly excused herself – something about Finn needing a diaper change already – and left the mother-daughter duo to sit and process.
Marlena tilted her head into Adora’s. “It all works out, darling. See?”
Adora tried to reach out to catch Catra, but she missed her by a second, and that was enough for guilt to settle into her chest again. She was so glad to have this moment with her mom, to know that her family wasn’t some fluke of Vallo and wishful thinking. It was real back home, too. Her mom, her dad, her brother, and her sister-in-law were all real and hers. It was an amazing feeling.
But this was supposed to be a moment she shared with Catra, too, and it felt like this had all gone wrong since they woke up. She didn’t know how or why, but there was a small part of her still worrying and wondering. She just tried not to focus on it and instead twisted to give her mom a proper hug, head dropping onto her shoulder.
“It all works out,” she repeated softly. That was a good thing to focus on.
Marlena suspected there was something brewing in her daughter. A storm of feelings, perhaps, which she could understand - so she chose to provide comfort, rubbing a soothing hand up and down her arm, and taking the initiative to turn the page. The array of pictures on the spread warmed her heart. Randor, with Finn hugging his head, and him cradling the girls in the crook of each elbow with a look she hadn’t seen in quite awhile.
He had loved Adam, of course - with every fiber of his being, with every beat of his heart. But loss had shadowed what their ideal version of parenthood should have looked like, and she saw a glimpse of that spark she only saw when their twins were born. He’d held Adora and Adam the same way during their short time together.
“If you think I’m wrapped around their little fingers,” she mused, tapping her finger against a photo of her husband. “I’m betting your father’s building a castle for each of them back on Eternia. He looks so handsome. What’s the term for this sort of thing again - GILF?”
She shouldn’t say that around her daughter, probably, but she thought it was something to chuckle about and help bring some lightness to all the heavy emotions.
Adora chuckled, though it wasn’t without making a playfully grossed-out face at her mom. “I don’t know if GILF is specific enough. It could be grandma or grandpa, right?”
She turned her attention to the new page, smiling at the sight of Finn, who couldn’t have been more than three or so, hanging around their grandfather’s head. They flashed the camera a big smile, which made her heart swell. They were going to be a little ham, she knew that much already. She liked seeing them close in age like that, but from what older Catra had told her, the gap was a bit bigger here – Finn was already living out of the ship while the girls were just entering their teenage years. Just as long as she had all three of them, she didn’t care what their ages were.
“Do you ever wish you’d had more kids?” she asked Marlena. “After Adam. Or, well, me and Adam.”
Marlena’s answer to that was a simple and breezy, “No.”
It wasn’t as if she hadn’t thought about it. When she’d gotten pregnant, she expected to have a single birth and when the discovery of twins came into their lives it changed a lot of things - in all the best, incredible ways. “If you hadn’t been taken, I would have been content with just the two of you. Anything more after you were taken away would have made me afraid of wanting a replacement for losing you, and the feelings of grief around that were too complex to navigate on top of everything else. And having two kids destined to harness the power of Grayskull is a handful enough. I’ve no regrets.”
“Maybe a third would’ve been normal,” Adora joked. She didn’t know if such a thing was possible in their family. She had been normal for eighteen years, and she didn’t miss it. She knew now that the path her life had taken was how it had meant to go. “Thanks, though. For not replacing me.”
“You’re irreplaceable,” Marlena insisted fiercely, pressing a kiss to the top of that blonde hair. “And I do intend to look more closely into these pictures, I’m going to be addicted tonight - but I’m going to have to head out for work,” she tacked on to explain, giving her daughter one last squeeze before withdrawing her arms. “Enjoy the pictures, though. Both of you. This – knowing what path our lives take, even if it doesn’t show the end – is a gift.”
A gift was exactly what it was, and Adora nodded, pulling back to let Marlena slip away. “I’ll have it waiting on the coffee table for you later,” she promised. That was if she set it aside by then, but she would make the effort. She wanted Marlena to be able to take in every photo, too.
Marlena picked up her plate. “Don’t wait for me to look at them,” she scolded gently, taking whatever other unused utensils or glass on the table with her. She left anything for Finn untouched. Catra was just stepping back into the vicinity with the baby in a fresh diaper, and she was gunning for that sippy cup of milk for them to gulp down. “And send me pictures of Finn while I’m gone!”
“Have a good day!” Adora called back. As they returned, her attention shifted to Catra and Finn, and she reached out with both hands to take their little one from her wife if she wanted the assistance. “Are you sparkly clean now, baby?”
Finn was happy to switch over. They were purring into their cup, a little arm going around their mom’s neck to cling to. “The shiniest butt you’ve ever seen,” Catra concurred, kissing the back of their head. “Are you doing okay?”
It didn’t feel great to step away from Adora when she knew she was welling up with some kind of feeling, but she also felt like – well, maybe Marlena was just suited better for some things. They had a lifetime to catch up on, and the last thing Catra wanted to do was to get in the middle of that.
“Are you?” Adora countered with concern. “I feel like you keep disappearing on me today.” Maybe it wasn’t completely fair, but she didn’t want to internalize and dwell anymore. It wasn’t a perfect process, but she was trying to be better at just saying what she needed to say.
Catra blinked. She hadn’t expected to have a question get volleyed back at her, and her mouth opened to attempt words. Words that she ultimately decided wouldn’t satisfy her wife, so she paused. Closed it. Flattened her lips into a line, and then rubbed them together as if she had any lipstick to evenly spread across them.
“Parsing through some thoughts,” she admitted, failing to add and feelings after that. “Sometimes I have to step away before I get – you know.” Catra gestured vaguely before slipping her hand behind her neck, scratching her scar. “Overwhelmed. I’m always afraid I’m gonna blurt out something wrong when I’m feeling too much.”
Adora nodded slowly. She knew that feeling; it was one of the ways she and Catra were so much alike, worrying about saying the wrong thing. Sometimes it felt like a neverending battle, but it was one Adora was doing her best to get through on her end. Bottling up didn’t do anyone any good, especially not her. Maybe that was her therapy at work, though – Catra had always refused to go, but Adora still went once a month. It felt helpful.
“I think,” she said, brushing her fingers through Finn’s wild blonde mane as she held them, “that I’d rather you say the wrong thing than say nothing at all. But I don’t want to push you either. So, I guess thank you for telling me what you can.”
“When I take time to figure things out,” Catra carefully leveled, the scratching having stopped but she kept her fingers pressed against that weird patch of skin, like the feel of it was a reminder of all they had gone through and all the moments that led them to here and now; in their kitchen with a baby glued to Adora’s side, “it’s not because I plan to shut you out. I don’t want say the wrong thing, or say the first thing that comes to mind without thinking about it. Because I’ve done it enough, with you, and you deserve something more thought out from me than some knee-jerk word vomit that can come across some kind of way.”
Or say something without thinking through how it could upset her or hurt her feelings — which was what happened with that whole forehead incident that had probably stung her as much as it stung Adora.
“I am happy about that album, for the record,” she made sure to point out truthfully, a small smile curling her lips.
“Yeah?” Adora’s return smile was pleased. “That’s good. I was worried.” Despite telling her she wasn't, it had certainly come off like Catra was upset about the album. She’d decided to take the words at face value and assume something else was wrong—which was apparently true—but it made her feel better to hear it confirmed anyway. It kept her mind from going down the paths of what Catra wanted to say that could potentially hurt her, at least for now.
“I love being with you in every universe,” Catra promised, and closed the distance to sweep Adora into a kiss that was deep. In the end, all other accompanying feelings aside, that was a truth that triumphed over any other bullshit detail. That was the kind of sentiment that saved their universe, and something that would never change.
When the kiss slowed and she pulled away — but not by much, she enjoyed the closeness with Adora and Finn, their child wedged between them while they purred up the sweetest storm, she added quietly and with a little guilt, “but I was worried, too.”
Adora returned that kiss in kind, though her hands remained firmly on Finn instead of moving to cup Catra’s face like usual. It was worth it. The kiss seemed to stir up just the right mood for purrs from both of her Magicat babies and when Catra pulled away, she made sure to turn her head for just a moment to give Finn a little kiss on the cheek, too. The responding little giggle made her smile broadly.
But her brows furrowed together with concern at Catra’s reveal, and she asked, “What were you worried about? The album?”
It was Catra cupping Adora’s cheek this time, palm pressed against the textured skin where her scars rested, the turkey ones, when they were working with the fresh label of girlfriends and Adora’s memory was briefly scrambled to the point she saw her as an enemy again.
She loved those scars. They were part of their story here.
“That you’d see what life might be like if we waited,” Catra admitted, worrying her bottom teeth with the savage point of her fang. Maybe it wasn’t so much about hurting Adora’s feelings. Maybe it was about her own being hurt with comments made in passing coming back to haunt her, because gods forbid she’d ever willingly say that she’d been stung. “That you’d see a life where you have everything you’re missing here and want that more and—how could I blame you for that? You’d have Glimmer and Bow. Your whole family. And it looks great, and I know, I know you’re happy here. But I worry this might not be enough one day now that you know what you’re missing.”
There were a few things Adora had to absorb about what Catra said before she could speak up. Her eyebrows remained knitted together, and her mouth turned downward—not sadly, though, just thoughtfully.
It was clear that the passing comments about being older to start a family that she’d worried Catra had taken too seriously earlier had, in fact, been taken too seriously. She really hadn’t thought that would happen; Catra was the one who had mentioned being older, giving them more time before babies long before Finn came. Adora had thought she was just agreeing. It was a little late, but she had just seen where it could have been a benefit. Sometimes, she missed having just her wife and didn’t think that was so bad, but it had been taken to heart, and she needed to figure out how to fix it.
Maybe she could soothe all those hurts if she thought about how best to answer.
“It’s not about… missing anything for me,” she explained. “It’s just different. That’s literally a whole different world and a whole different life, and I’m glad it’s working out, but I’m not worried about having exactly that. Nothing is missing in my life here. I have you, and I have Finn, and even if something awful happens, as long as I have you two, I’m gonna be happy, Catra. So happy. You two are so much more than enough for me at any age. We could have had them in twenty years, and I still would feel just the same.”
“I know,” Catra replied, because she did know - at least after self-soothing herself in the shower, and while she’d taken a moment to change Finn’s diaper. “I know, Adora, it’s just–”
Finn went to fling their sippy cup. Her reflexes worked quickly, hand shooting out to catch it before it fell to the ground - seriously, mom reflexes were an actual fucking super power - so she could set it on the table. They were babbling their repetitive melody of mamamama now, twisting their fingers into Adora’s hair.
“It was a lot,” she shrugged, ears struggling to stay upright. “I usually know we’re enough. But when we’re shown that – the doubt creeps in, and I don’t want it to. So I talked myself out of it. Constantly. In my head.”
She spent all her life being not enough. Not enough for the Horde, not enough for Shadow Weaver, and to an extent, not enough for Adora. Not enough to leave for. Not enough to stay for. Now she was pretty sure she was enough these days. What they had was solid. What they built was steel. And maybe she took that we could have waited too personally, as if giving Adora what she wanted still wasn’t enough somehow, and Catra knew that wasn’t right.
But those insecurities could be stubborn. They clung. Sometimes their hooks went in deep, though they never went as deep as they once did.
Adora was definitely going to need to wash her hair after all this twisting and turning Finn was doing—which was painful when the tugs pulled at her scalp, but only kind of. She gently extracted their little hands, setting them on her lap and tossing her messy blonde hair down her back and out of their reach. She occupied their hands with her arm instead, freeing one hand to reach out and take Catra’s.
“Come kiss me so I don’t say the ‘S’ word,” she said, because she wanted to. This felt like something she should apologize for. Catra monitored what she said, especially after Adora still felt guilty about the whole forehead incident. But she was terrible at doing the same. She either overthought to the point where she was afraid to say anything or underthought to the point she let out every stray thought. Maybe therapy still had some work to do.
Catra was happy to oblige. She didn’t want Adora to say sorry. Someone could bump into her wife and she’d be the one spewing an awkward apology first. The arrangement worked because there didn’t exist a world where she didn’t want to kiss Adora, and it was a way to express acceptance and forgiveness for whatever spat came between them, old and new.
So she kissed her, lingering with it. Finn giggled about something in between them, a melodious little coo that was too sweet to ignore. It made Catra smile against her lips. “We’re okay, dummy,” she promised, kissing the corner of her mouth next. “My turn to get all sensitive.”
Adora loved this tradition of theirs—kisses instead of sorries. It wasn’t perfect, but it stopped a lot of the unnecessary apologies habit she’d fallen into over the years. She doubted she’d ever live without some guilt on her conscience, for so many things, but like this, it was a bearable burden.
“At least you do it gracefully,” she chuckled, stealing another soft kiss from her wife’s lips.
“I did it ungracefully for plenty of years,” Catra reminded while scenting her cheek, but she had to admit: that was nice to hear. It was nice to have that confirmation that she could handle her feelings to an extent and not lash out of hurt. Not that she had a perfect record always, but she put in the effort. “I do regret not taking you up on your shower offer, though.”
She grinned toothily, doing Adora a favor by smoothing out some of that morning frizz and baby-induced knots from her hair. “Would have washed your hair for you and everything.”
“Next time I’ll insist,” Adora countered. She had left well enough alone because it felt like what Catra needed, but that just meant she got to be a little pushy next time. She would make sure to store this away and remember. “I’d say I’ll wait until tomorrow, but I feel gross. Are you okay to take this one and let me wash up?”
“Please insist,” Catra groaned, mentally kicking herself even more for giving up the chance to share a small, hot space with her naked wife – next time her stupid feelings could go fuck themselves. She took Finn off Adora’s lap and stood with them, holding the baby up against her hip. “I got Finn and kitchen clean up duty. We’ll look at the album more when your ass is as clean as this baby’s.”