Chapter Text
When Catra wakes up she isn't in the Fright Zone anymore.
She groans as she tries to stretch, her body heavy and slow. She can't move her limbs. The cuffs bite into her skin when she moves her hands and feet. She's slumped down on the metal floor, the rumbling of an engine vibrating through her. Cargo boxes fill the familiar belly of the Horde airship.
No no no no no.
She bolts upright and pain flares through her wrists where they're handcuffed behind her back. She twists her head and sees the bright green energy cable connecting her cuffs looped through a bar on the wall.
They couldn't even move her like a regular prisoner. No, they had to bring her there with the supplies, like she's someone's damn property. Like she's as important as a sack of fucking potatoes.
Her anger almost overwhelms her fear, but she still feels it. Deep and consuming, making her stomach churn. If her last meal hadn't been two days ago she would have thrown up.
They're taking her to Beast Island.
Catra always teased Adora for being scared of it. "It's just a stupid lie Shadow Weaver tells us to keep us in line, quit being such a dummy," she used to tell her. Not because she believed it, but because she needed it to be true. It had been just another lie, just another front Catra had put up so she didn't feel so weak. Beast Island had been Shadow Weaver's favourite weapon against her, the hidden dagger she'd pull out when Catra had been particularly troublesome.
"A useless little pet like you will fit right in at Beast Island," she'd snarl as she gripped Catra's arm hard enough to leave marks.
She slumps against the wall. Her arms hurt but she doesn't care. Guess that damn witch was right about something.
Her eyes burn with unshed tears and she grits her teeth, biting them back. She can hear all of Shadow Weaver’s taunts replaying in her head. Worthless, insolent, lazy, pathetic, failure.
Failure, failure, failure.
She screws her eyes shut, but it does nothing to stop the voice in her head. Her palms sting and she realizes she dug her claws in them hard enough to break the skin.
She wants to fight against the voices. She wants to scream, cry, tear something - anything - to shreds just so she can prove to them they are wrong.
But they aren’t, are they? Because Catra failed. She failed to defeat the princesses. She failed to gain Hordak’s trust or Shadow Weaver’s praise. She failed to keep Adora close to her.
She just wasn’t good enough.
And she tried to be. Time and time and time again, but it never did the trick. No matter what she did, she always fell, made a mistake. One mistake too many, apparently.
She almost laughs at the situation. Somewhere across Etheria, Adora is in a big shiny castle, with a magic sword and perfect new friends, and she's in a dirty cargo plane, being shipped off to a dingy little cell to die in. Who would have thought?
“Do you think she’s awake back there?” She hears a man say from the front of the plane.
“Nah,” another one answers. Two pilots, standard procedure. “The drug should keep her under until we reach Beast Island.”
The first pilot says something Catra can’t quite make out. The second one laughs.
“You’re scared of her? Please, like she could even get out of those chains. She’s just a little girl who got way ahead of herself and then failed epically.” Catra bares her teeth unconsciously. Her chest rumbles, a growl waiting to come out. “And besides, even if she did manage to escape, we could beat her in like, five minutes tops.”
The pilot's tone is painfully familiar to Catra. Dismissive, almost bored. Like she's but a bug on his arm that he could flick away without even thinking about it.
She's heard that tone one too many times. It echoes, bounces off the crates full of supplies, amplified. You're as important as a damn ration bar.
And Catra is so tired of it. So royally, fucking tired of people constantly shoving her failures and weakness in her face. Saying you’re pathetic, you’re useless, you’ll never amount to anything.
She doesn't realize she's grinding her teeth until they start hurting. You know what? Screw them!
She traces the handcuffs around her wrists with the pads of her fingers. The Horde's restraints work so well because it's impossible to find a weak spot on them and break them. Or it's impossible for normal humans. The pads of Catra's fingers have always been more sensitive, and it doesn't take her long before she finds the hairline seam along the metal. She unsheathes her claws and digs them in. This is the worst part. She's broken her claws plenty of times trying to get out of this kind of handcuffs whenever Shadow Weaver used them on her.
A faint click is Catra’s only indication that the handcuff is off. She pulls the cord free from the bar in the wall and breaks off the other cuff. She holds onto it as she approaches the pilots. Thankfully she’s always been light on her feet and the steady buzz of the plane’s engine hides any noise she does make.
She climbs on top of the crates and gets close enough to the front to see the controls. A map of the terrain underneath them glows green on the dashboard, their plane a blinking red dot on it. She recognises the patterns on the map from the ones back in the Force Captains' quarters. They are nearing the tallest mountain in the southern region of Etheria. She still has time.
A plan forming in her head, she jumps down from her perch. She grabs one of the emergency backpacks leaning against the wall, as per procedure. Maybe going through all that paperwork wasn’t such a bad thing after all. She cuts off a button from it and flicks at the opposite direction. A sharp and clear sound rings through the plane as metal hits metal. The pilots’ heads turn and Catra watches them from behind the crates.
“What was that?” the pilot on the right asks. Catra recognises his voice as the first one who spoke before.
“Eh, something probably just fell off, I’m sure it’s nothing,” the one on the left says.
“I’m gonna check just in case.” The right pilot gets up, moving towards the cargo hold. He’s not tall, barely an inch taller than Kyle, with light blue scales scattered over his cheeks. Judging from how he speaks he won’t be any harder to take down either.
The moment he passes by her hiding place, Catra pounces. She catches the man by surprise and within seconds she has him in a chokehold. Four, five, six…
“Help…” His voice comes out a whisper due to Catra choking him, but it’s loud enough to be audible. Shit.
… seven, eight, nine.
The man goes limp in her arms and Catra lets him drop unconscious to the floor. “What’s going on back there?” She hears the other pilot’s steps as he comes closer. The plane is on autopilot, then.
“How did you-” the man starts to say when he sees her, but Catra reacts fast. She throws her handcuffs at him and the cord wraps around his legs. He comes crashing down and Catra would be lying if she said she didn’t enjoy the sound of his face hitting the floor. She takes his stunt baton from his belt and kicks him in the stomach. He skids across the ground, hitting the crates with a cry of pain, his dark hair flying everywhere.
Catra runs to the dashboard. Flying standard issue Horde planes like this one was part of their basic training, and while Catra is by no means an expert, she knows the important stuff. In this case, how to bring this plane down.
She buries her claws in the metal and rips part of the controls out. The raw edges hurt her fingers and she feels blood flowing from a cut, but she ignores it. The lights in the cockpit turn red as the warning siren shrieks. Catra is weightless for a moment, her stomach rising up all the way to her chest, and then they're falling.
“What the hell are you doing?” The pilot comes charging at her, arm raised to punch her. Catra almost wants to roll her eyes; this guy telegraphs his moves way too early on. She grabs him by the arm before he manages to hit her and flips him onto the ruined dashboard. He yells in pain as Catra grabs the emergency backpack from where she left it and runs to the back of the plane.
Crates and sacks of supplies are moving all around her as the plane is rapidly losing altitude. Thankfully the parachutes are still by the door. With the emergency backpack strapped to her front and the parachute in one hand, she punches the button to open the door. It cricks as it opens and the wind whips at Catra’s face.
The sound of footsteps is her only warning before a kick connects with her side and sends her stumbling to the side. The left pilot is behind her, his dark hair falling in his face and an ugly cut across his cheek from where he hit the ruined dashboard.
"You're not escaping that easily," he says. If he's here, then that means the other pilot woke up and is trying to right the plane. But then again, Catra didn't stop his airflow enough to knock him out for long. The dark-haired man in front of her pulls a knife out of his boot. "Did you really think you could pull this off?"
“Yes, actually.” Catra pounces at him but he dodges. The door is almost fully open now and the wind is roaring around them, harsh and cold. It makes it hard to fight, but Catra avoids each one of the pilot’s attacks. He aims a punch to her head and she dodges, swiping her claws across his face. He moves blindly towards her Catra jumps out of the way with the grace of an acrobat. The second parachute flies out of the plane.
The pilot’s hand is covering the new scratches on his face, blood dripping between his fingers as he glares at her. Catra smirks. “What was that about beating me in less than five minutes?”
He roars as he attacks her. Catra jumps out of the way, but she’s not fast enough and his knife manages to tear at her parachute. She hisses under her breath. Have to wrap this up fast.
“Ha! Guess you can’t escape with a torn parachute!” The pilot gloats, despite the many more wounds on him than on Catra. She doesn’t bother to reply to him. She lands a spinning kick to his ribs and he flies into one of the crates. Boxes fall on him and Catra runs to the open door, the parachute on her back.
The plane has fallen enough for Catra to clearly make out the trees on the mountain below them. It's not a small fall by any means, but it won't be deadly. Probably.
With the emergency backpack on her front and the parachute on her back, Catra jumps.
The air is deafening as she falls, slashing at her like a sharp knife. It brings tears to her eyes and she fights to keep them open. The ground is coming closer and closer. Catra may have jumped off a cliff when Sparkles and Arrow took her hostage, but that was with the knowledge that the princess wouldn't let her plummet to her death. This is different. This is uncontrollable freefall, with nothing but a flimsy piece of cloth to save her life.
Catra grabs the parachute's string and pulls. It bursts open, yanking Catra back into the air hard enough to knock the wind out of her lungs. Her relief lasts all of ten seconds before she hears the dreadful sound of the fabric tearing. She looks above her and sees the hole the pilot cut widening under the unforgiving onslaught of wind. She can make out the individual branches in the trees as she's falling faster and faster towards the ground.
She barely gets her arms up to protect her face before she’s hit the treeline. It feels like she hits every single branch on her way down. Her clothes snug against the wood and she’s sure she heard something tearing. She desperately tries to right herself but it only results in a branch hitting her in the eye. How did people get the idea cats always land on their feet?
The parachute catches on a branch, the sudden stop leaving her breathless. The force of it rips the remaining parachute and Catra falls the last several dozen feet to the ground.
Pain flares through her. She cries out, startling the small animals around her. Shit. Her right leg lies broken beneath her. When she sits up to look at it better, something warm runs down her face. She pokes around her left eye and hisses in pain. Her fingers come away bloodied.
Great.
She takes off the emergency backpack and gets to work. These things are packed with enough supplies to help a soldier survive for several days in case of a crash, until the rescue team reaches them. She’ll have to make them last.
She treats her eye first. She can't open it properly when she tries and she doesn't see clearly out of it, but at least most of the blood seems to be coming from the area around it. The disinfectant stings as it hits her wounds and Catra hisses. Once her eye is all bandaged up, she moves to her leg.
It seems to be what has suffered the most damage by the fall. It hurts like fucking shit, but at least she can't see bone, so she'll count that as a win. She breathes deeply and takes hold of her leg on either side of the break. She doesn't bother with a countdown and snaps the bone back in place.
She's surprised she didn't scream; it sure hurt enough to. She's doubled over, panting through the pain, when she realizes she's biting her lips enough to taste blood. Spitting it out, she looks around her for something to brace her leg with. Thankfully she broke quite a few tree branches while falling down and she ties a sturdy looking one to her leg.
Standing up is a pain. Catra puts all her weight on her good leg and a thick branch-turned-impromptu-crutch and even then she crashes into a tree. After a good few minutes of stumbling, more pain and swearing she manages to right herself.
Through the gaps in the trees and the branches she crushed in her wake, Catra watches the Horde plane fly away, continuing on it’s route to Beast Island.
Well, at least that part of the plan worked.
Catra sits on the ground, her broken leg spread out before her as she scoops up water from the stream and does her best to drink it without having an accidental shower. Turns out not being able to see out of one eye screws with your depth perception. Isn't that lovely?
It’s been a week since her escape. She’s managed to survive - well, not ‘fine’, but she’s survived. It definitely hasn’t been easy. Between her limited eyesight and broken leg, the last several days have been a challenge, to say the least.
The Horde plane never came back. And why would it? She jumped off a plane with a torn parachute. It’s logical to assume she’s dead. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time someone being taken to Beast Island decided to off themselves before that, or try and take the soldiers in charge of them with them. Why waste time and resources looking for a corpse when Hordak would punish them for running late on their supply delivery?
A fish swims down the stream, splashing in the water without a care in the world. The logical thing to do would be to catch it. The food inside her emergency backpack was meant to last for two or three days, four at most. It’s a miracle Catra managed to make them last until now, but they were always going to run out. Now she’ll have to find food on her own and with her leg as it is, hunting is out of the question.
Fishing was her next best solution - in fact, that was partly why she made her camp in a cave near this stream - but nooo, that had to fail too! Only being able to see out of one eye makes it almost impossible to catch any fish and no matter how hard she has tried she hasn’t caught anything.
Catra slashes at the water, scaring the fish away, but it does nothing to calm her anger. “Stupid fish…”
She pulls her hair away from her face with a groan. Her mask is stored safely away in her backpack - she fell down a lot while getting used to walking without one of her legs and the mask was too important to her to let it be damaged by that. She gets up, her cloak swishing against her frame. Her leg doesn't hurt anymore when she moves it, but she still can't put any weight on it. Her makeshift crutch is the only reason why she has been able to get around.
The sky above her is growing dark. Washes of orange and pink still cling to the sky near the west, but it won’t be long before they too are swallowed by the night sky. Etheria’s three moons have already started their climb, all of them full, shining above the treeline. Catra pulls her hood over her head. She should get moving if she wants to make it before any nocturnal predators come out.
She makes her way next to the river. Soon, the village comes into view. Or, well, it used to be a village. The buildings are all burnt down and ravaged. In some places, the only thing letting Catra know there used to be a house there is a knee-high pile of bricks. She knows, logically, that she should be creeped out by this. But everything here- the charred skeletons of houses, the darker stains against the brick, the fact she's walking on the place someone died - nothing about it fazes her.
Places like this exist all around Etheria. They’re not special. Thaymor was well on its way of being just like this that day, and had Catra stayed in the Horde longer she would have surely created some as well.
She crosses the stream on its narrower point and moves farther into the forest. The sky is fully black now and only Catra’s night vision and the light of the moons allows her to move through the trees. She finds the rabbit burrows soon enough. There’s so many around here Catra is sure it must have been a farm of sorts back when the village was still standing. The rabbits must have never moved their nest since then. The force of habit is a strong one, after all.
She slowly moves towards one of the nests. With the rabbits asleep, it won’t be hard for her to grab one and kill it quickly. It’s a good thing she found this place, otherwise who knows what she’d do for food. Her stomach is already screaming at her as it is and if she doesn’t eat something more filling than half a ration bar she thinks she’s going to pass out.
She’s holding a rabbit in her hands, about to snap its neck, when her ears twitch under her hood. Something is approaching behinds her. She freezes where she’s standing and focuses on her hearing. There’s a lot of footsteps, but they’re quite and much softer than a human’s would be. The footsteps quicken, like they’re running, and Catra barely has enough time to turn toward the sound before they reach her.
Two beasts emerge from the other side of the clearing. Catra recognises them as some kind of feline, but she can’t pinpoint an exact kind. They’re large enough to be cougars or leopards, but their coloration, from what Catra can make out in the dark, is completely random. She’s never heard about felines that look like these.
But the kind of predator before her is the last of her worries, especially when the two cats are glaring at her with glowing gold and green eyes, their lips pulled over their large teeth as they snarl. And, oh yeah, she can’t run.
She tries to anyway. She moves surprisingly fast for someone with a crutch and a rabbit in her hand - she’s not about to give up her food. Still, the beasts come after her, decidedly more agile than Catra, and even with her lead start and gap between them, they’re closing in on her.
Shit, shit. Catra's pulse beats frantically in her neck, so hard it's almost painful. She moves quicker, reaching farther away with her crutch, jumping more with her good leg. Fear courses through her body, raw and primitive. Being killed by two big cats, after everything she's gone through, would be almost funny if she wasn't terrified to her core of dying.
Her foot catches against a root. For a single moment, she's weightless, her heart skipping a beat and stopping inside her chest. An ice-cold certainty washes over her - I’m going to die here.
She crashes onto the forest floor. The rabbit in her hand breaks free and rushes away. She hears the footsteps of the beasts behind her, slow and steady as they stalk towards her. Catra’s their prey, a sorry excuse of a person who can’t even run away. That rabbit would be harder to catch than she is.
Failure, failure, failure.
Anger flares up in Catra's chest, hot and all-consuming. She is not going to die. She is not going to prove Shadow Weaver, Hordak, anyone who ever called her weak right. She's going to survive this and relish in the look on their faces when she takes them down with her own two hands.
She rolls onto her back and growls at the two beasts in front of her. Her teeth are bared, her claws extended, ready to tear the beasts to shreds if she needs to. Distantly, she notes that her hood has fallen, exposing her folded back ears. She pays it no mind, keeping her eyes trained to her predators, waiting for them to either attack her or go away.
But they do neither of those things. Instead, the beasts' eyes are glued on her head, blown wide in a look that almost resembles shock. Their eyes move down her body, from her ears to her eye, to her claws and tail. The golden-eyed animal is in front, its ears pinned back against its tan fur. It turns to the second one, its white coat covered in black and orange spots. If Catra didn't know any better she'd think they were holding a conversation.
Just as Catra is about to take a shot and attack, the beasts shift. Their backs arch and their fur recedes back into their body. Where there used to be fur, now there's clothes and a short layer of fuzz. They stand on two legs and their features rearrange from animalistic to human.
But their animal characteristics don’t disappear fully. Cat ears sprout from the sides of each of their heads, their pupils are black slits against their eyes and tails swish behind their backs.
They are like her.
"How…" the golden-eyed one says, her voice wavering, trailing off in a question Catra doesn't know. Her light hair is pulled back, more a puff of hair than a ponytail, and in the moonlight, it creates a halo around her head. The girl takes a step towards her, hand out. Catra immediately tenses.
"Stay back!" She raises her clawed hand, which had relaxed in her surprise. Catra is so confused to see these people, with their cat ears and tails so like her own. There are a million questions swarming around in her head: who are these people, what are they doing here, why do they look like me? Her thoughts are so loud she doesn’t know what to do. Her training kicks in.
The girl freezes at the sound of Catra’s voice. Catra wanted her to be scared of her, intimidated, and while there’s horror in her eyes, there’s also sadness, like Catra is a wounded animal.
The girl turns to her companion, a boy shorter than her in loose clothes. He calms the shocked look in his eyes as he approaches Catra.
“Don’t come any closer!” She yells at him. He stops, but he doesn’t have the same despaired expression as the girl. For a moment, he reminds her of Adora’s gentle touch after Catra had a nightmare.
He raises his hands, empty palms towards her, his claws retracted. "I won't." He kneels down, sitting on his folded legs. It's a horrible position to be in front of a hostile enemy - if Catra chooses to attack he wouldn't be able to get away fast enough. He's making himself vulnerable. Maybe that's the point.
“I’m Nino,” he says, like this is the most normal situation he’s ever been in. “What’s your name?”
Catra ignores him. “Why do you look like me?”
“You’ve never seen another Magicat?” There’s something in his tone, halfway between hope and sorrow.
Catra frowns at the unfamiliar term.“If that means someone else with cat ears and a tail, then no. I was the only one in the Horde.”
The hope disappears from his face, and the girl standing a little ways behind him clenches her fists. At the mention of the Horde, both their eyes are pulled down to the force captain badge on her shirt. Why she never took it off, Catra doesn’t know, but the sight of it makes the golden-eyed girl growl.
She turns away from Catra and Nino and starts hacking at the first tree she sees, roaring like a beast. “Those bastards!”
“Maya, calm down!” Nino hisses at his friend. Although he doesn’t say “you’re scaring her”, Catra still hears it.
She spins around to him, incredulous and furious. When she speaks her arms wave around in large gestures. She probably would have slapped someone by accident if they were standing too close. “How? They stole her away and then they made her one of their fucking soldiers! I swear I’m going to rip Hordak’s throat!”
Despite how bizarre this situation is, Catra barks out a laugh. “Take a number for that, there’s a line.”
Nino snickers at that and Maya grins in satisfaction. “And I take it you’re first in that line?”
Catra snarls. “Hordak is gonna get what he deserves.”
Nino and Maya exchange a look. Honestly, Catra is getting a bit creeped out by this whole ‘silent communication’ thing. “Do you want to come with us?” Nino asks.
Catra’s instinctive, training-influence answer is no. But this is the first time in her life she’s ever met someone like her and the pull, the curiosity to find out more is impossible to ignore. Plus, these two don’t look like they’ve been slipping in the dirt, so she’ll probably have better chances of survival with them than she would on her own.
Catra nods. Nino’s smile is so wide Catra can’t help but wonder how it even fits on his face. Soon, he and Maya have lifted her off the ground and with one arm wrapped around each of their shoulders, they make their way out of the forest. None of them speak, which seems to be awkward for them if the way Maya keeps stealing glances at her is anything to go by.
They’re walking through the burnt down village when Maya finally speaks up. “So, uh, we never got your name.”
Catra almost rolls her eyes. This really doesn’t seem like the time for pleasantries. “It’s Catra.”
Maya makes a weird sound, kind of like a huff and a snicker mixed together. “The Horde isn’t that creative with names, huh?”
Catra thinks back to Princess Prom and all of the princess' ridiculous names. "I think most of Etheria isn't." They've stopped at the end of the village, right where the mountain starts its steep rise. "Uh, there's nothing here."
Nino slips away from under her arm, but thankfully Maya seems strong enough to support her weight anyway. Damn, her muscles are almost as big as Scorpia’s or She-ra’s.
Nino gives Catra a mischievous grin. Catra’s hair stands on edge. Maybe I shouldn’t have trusted the two strangers I found in the woods after all. But Nino doesn't attack her. Instead, he lays his hand against the rock, his fingers spread wide, and unsheathes his claws.
Warm light glows from within the rock, right under his fingertips. It grows bigger, extending more and more until the glow has taken the shape of a large arched doorway. Catra turns her head, shielding her eyes from the light. When it subsides, she looks back.
“What the hell?”
There's nothing there. That weird light is gone, and so is the rock Nino had touched. In its place is a gap, like the opening of a cave, yet its sides are too smooth to be natural. From beyond the opening, Catra sees a path winding its way deeper into the mountain, torches against the wall lighting up the way.
“Come on, let’s go,” Maya says, nudging Catra in the side and pulling her from her daze. She seems completely unfazed by what just happened.
They walk into the tunnel and with one touch from Nino the rock is back in its place like it had never moved. He takes his place back at her side and they keep going.
“It’s enchanted,” Nino says, like he knew the question Catra hadn’t asked. “The Gate, I mean.”
“By who?”
“Our first queen. It’s made so only a Magicat can open it.”
Catra nods, silent. It’s weird to be given information so freely. In the Horde, you were always told only what you needed to know and nothing more. You learn not to ask useless questions.
They descend deeper into the mountain, accompanied only by the sound of their footsteps and the light of the torches. When Catra looks closer she realizes they don't have a flame. Instead, there's a clear, iridescent crystal at their tip, bathing the tunnel in soft shades of blue and purple.
They’ve passed twenty-two torches when Maya speaks up.
“We’re almost there. Nino, go get the healers ready and get the queen.”
Nino nods and takes off running. Before Catra can even say anything, he’s out of sight.
They take a turn and Catra hits her foot on a rock. She stumbles, but Maya rashes to catch her and right her up again. Catra nods at her. She doesn't say thanks. Being carried around like this is humiliating. If she didn't know that this will be beneficial for her survival she would have pushed Maya away from her long ago.
This doesn’t make me weak, this doesn’t make me weak.
“So how did you break your leg, anyway?” Maya asks. Catra searches for it, but there’s nothing condescending in her tone. She sounds genuinely interested.
"I jumped off the plane transporting me to Beast Island."
Maya stumbles in her surprise. “Wait, you jumped off a plane?”
Catra nods.
Maya's roaring laughter echos through the tunnel. "Damn, you're hardcore!"
Catra isn’t sure what to say to that. Whatever she might have been thinking flies out of her mind as the tunnel starts widening. Light streams in, much brighter than the torches. They exit the tunnel onto a landing overlooking the cavern. Catra gasps.
It's huge. She knows they're underground, yet this space is so large it feels open, like they're out under the sky and not underneath the largest mountain this side of Etheria. A town spreads out in front of her, dozens and dozens of houses, all clustered around a wide central road. The palace at the end of it looks like it wasn't built but rather carved out of the rock. Its towers rise up in the air, sharp and menacing like claws, touching the roof of the cavern.
Clear light washes over everything. Catra looks up. The entire ceiling is covered in the same shining crystals that lit up the tunnel. It's as if someone broke Etheria's moons in tiny pieces and hung them here.
It’s beautiful.
Maya smirks beside her. "Pretty cool, right?"
Catra closes her mouth - she didn’t realize she was gaping. “What is this place?”
“This,” Maya says, “is Halfmoon.”
They make their way down towards the central road. Catra’s brain is running, trying to comprehend that apparently there’s a town of cat-people under a mountain that she never knew about.
“I never heard about this place in the Horde,” she muses. All the windows are shut, the people inside sleeping peacefully.
Maya’s laugh is dry and humorless. “Huh, I would have thought they’d love to parade their atrocities.”
Maya’s gold eyes are hard. She looks like a soldier before battle. “What do you mean?”
Maya adjusts her hold on Catra. “You really never heard of Halfmoon?” There’s a sadness in her voice, the kind you hold for someone that never knew something you took for granted.
Catra shakes her head.
Maya breathes deeply and steeles her gaze on the path in front of them. "This is all that's left of Halfmoon now, but it used to be just the city's center. What we passed before making it here was the rest."
Catra startles. There’s a sick feeling in her stomach. “The ruins?”
They pass by what looks to be a bakery. Maya nods. “Yeah. And that’s only what’s left standing. Dad says that it used to be much larger.”
Maya’s words from the forest ring in Catra’s mind. She knows the answer already, but she still asks. “What happened?”
"The Horde attacked. Halfmoon was their first massacre in the war." With her arm around her shoulders, Catra feels Maya's growl vibrate in her chest. "They destroyed everything in their path. They burnt our city, they killed us like we were nothing but animals. They stole away our children," Maya says, looking at Catra. "They even took our princess and the crown."
Catra lived her whole life as an orphan. Shadow Weaver was the closest thing to a mother she ever knew, and she was horrible to her. Time and time again, when Shadow Weaver punished her, Catra wondered where she came from. Did she have parents? Who were they? Why did they leave her?
Guess they never left me.
“I never knew about this.” Her voice is only a whisper. If the town wasn’t so quiet, Maya wouldn’t have heard it.
Catra finally got the answers to the questions she’s had all her life and they make her sick to her stomach.
“The Horde killed my mother,” Maya snarls. “They killed Nino’s parents and his siblings. Everyone in Halfmoon has lost someone to the Horde. But I guess their lives aren’t worth remembering to Hordak.”
The palace doors are open when they reach them. Just inside the entrance is a group of Magicats, along with Nino. Most of them wear white - medical uniforms, Catra realizes. They stare at her like she's a ghost, and for them she might as well be. At the center is a plump woman a little taller than Catra, with warm tan fur. Her lips tremble as she looks at Catra.
She must be the queen.
The woman comes closer. Her steps are slow, hesitant, as if Catra will disappear if she’s not careful. Her eyes dart from Catra’s eye to her ears, the stripes on her arms to her tail. A sob rips out of her throat and she covers her mouth with shaking hands.
"Get her to the infirmary," the woman says. The Magicats in white nod and two take off down a hallway. When the woman turns back to Catra there are tears in her eyes.
“Welcome home.”