Chapter Text
Catra had bitten her the first time they’d met. Canines barely sharp enough to pierce the skin of Adora’s arm as a growl rumbled from her throat. A babyish and angry sound. But Adora hadn’t flinched, hadn’t run away or squealed as Catra expected. She’d just laughed, and to Catra’s ears, the noise was a melody as sweet as honey.
It was such a quiet memory, they’d been so young then, and time had turned the images dim like a flame through the sooted window of a lantern. Pieces missing, fragments hazy.
What little remained was jerked back into her periphery the moment she felt the sting around her wrist, because apparently, for the two of them, Cupid had never bothered to use an arrow.
He’d used teeth.
Earlier
Being home was nice, Catra thought.
The stillness of the universe had welcomed them back each time; Darla floating through a silent and empty ocean of obsidian, starlight like dust across the horizon. And a peace that seemed to reach into the most shadowed corners of her soul, infinite, calming.
Catra could breathe out here.
It had called to them all - for a while. The adventure of it, the longing to discover what lived beyond the second star on the right, always more, always further. To worlds that had needed them, and to worlds that had not.
Catra found forgiveness in the faces of those who did know what she’d done, only what she was doing - it was healing. And it was beautiful.
Years had passed that way, and it had been serene. Lazy mornings waking amongst linen and nestled against the warm body of the women she loved. The galaxies outside held thousands of dazzling playgrounds to explore, but it was this, Catra acknowledged, the quiet moments amongst rumpled bedsheets, that she found herself waiting for at the end of every day.
They had no commitments to return to. Glimmer left her kingdom in the hands of her father; the weight of a monarchy could be relieved until she was a little older, Micah had explained. He’d been king once before, he could do it again.
Adora had done her best to map their travels, whole constellations immortalised on paper in pencil and ink. Catra tried her hardest not to smudge the notes, but the desk just seemed so much more appealing to sprawl over with Adora working at it.
Eventually, home always pulled them back. Voyages spanning months turning into weeks, discoveries becoming visits as less and less new become available to them. Their feet returned to the soil of a planet that had raised them. Home. For the first time returning with a nostalgia that sat like a weight in her chest.
And Catra wasn’t certain at what point it had happened, their last trip? Or maybe a handful ago? But with the cosmos in harmony again, and the binding fraying from the last pages of Adora’s cartography journal, the wanderlust had simply left their veins.
And being home was nice, Catra thought.
The farmers market was vibrant.
Adora let herself breath it in, the moment flooding her senses, the air spiced with cardamom and cinnamon and a hundred other things. The sound of conversations, but too entangled to make out individual notes, like the buzzing of cicadas in the early evening. Crimson sand under her feet making its way between her toes through the open gaps of her sandals, and an audacious sun overhead that had repainted the blue of the sky into something pale and dusty. But pretty somehow, like a lazy summer’s day.
And it was goddamn hot, though Catra had chosen a much harsher expletive. The temperature seemingly the one thing about this place that had stayed the same.
The Crimson Waste had become a misnomer, over time.
The Horde had released its tendrils like the vines of a creeper ripped down from a choking tree; Etheria was healing now. Water had returned to the canyons, slowly at first, in trickles, until the rain had fallen - the sky slashed open as if in retribution to the memory of what the land had once been. Flowers were growing on battlefields. The land was no longer starving, and so the people weren’t either.
Adora was keenly aware of the hand in hers. The feel of it familiar, fingers entwined and a thumb tapping over her knuckles, absentminded, to whatever it was her wife was humming along to. The term still gave Adora butterflies, which was foolish, she knew. But what did it matter, really, now that she could say it as often as she liked and have it be true.
Adora followed the gentle tug of Catra’s arm as she wove a path through those wandering between stalls and display tables. The makeshift pavilions overhead kept away the fiercest sunbeams as they walked. Their pace languid, exploratory.
Catra had allowed her hair to grow out. Only a little. It was… fluffier this way, better for running her hands through, Adora had learned. The dark waves mostly hidden now under something she’d picked up to keep the sun out of her eyes.
Adora wasn’t sure how Bow would react to the sight of Catra wearing a ribboned summer hat. Ears poking through holes her claws had created. But Adora hoped he’d be restrained enough not to cause her wife to yank the thing off her head.
Catra was getting better, still learning to allow her softer side out. She’d spent too much of her life building a fortress of walls, and teasing that out of her system was like hands working over painfully knotted muscles.
She did look adorable. But that was a sentiment better not shared out loud for now.
Adora let herself smile.
It almost seemed unfair, when she thought about it, and it was such a small thing, found between woven fingers and easy glances, for it to be so capable of overflowing her heart. Because who in all Etheria had decided that she deserved to have all this? It was like someone had gone word by word through the diary of what she'd wished her life could be, and then manifested that vision into something she could reach - something she could touch.
It had been magnificent when they finally had. Clumsy at first, until she found a taste of divinity amongst the brush of fingertips against skin, warm flesh under her tongue, and the noise of elevated keening close against her ear.
Her mind floated amongst constellations for days.
It was not a thought that ignored her, dragging her from sleep with sharp claws amid darkness and crinkled bed sheets; that maybe Prime had won, that maybe this was all a fantasy playing through their minds to keep them docile. Trapped. In a world that was too good to be true.
Catra brought her back from that ledge every time. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes just by being there. Unaware, but grounding.
Catra had stopped walking. Adora realised as she collided into her, noticing alert ears, a tail twitching and her attention fixed on the soft shadows behind a stall to their right.
“Everything okay?” Adora inquired, a slight wrinkled over her forehead as she reclaimed her balance.
“I… I think so,” Catra replied, her eyes scanning, narrowed, attention lost to something only accessible to inhuman senses. “I just… I feel like someone might be following us.”
Adora followed her line of sight, finding nothing. Her hand shifting to her belt as a reminder of the dagger that lived there. A sword was good for She-Ra, but this was more practical for just being Adora, she’d found. “Is it Glimmer and Bow?”
“No,” Her tone of voice wasn’t alert, more curious than anything. Most here had been indifferent to Adora’s presence, and those that weren’t hadn’t been shy in saying hello or asking for autographs, but attempting to sneak up on She-Ra and her wife was pretty ballsy for anyone. “I would know if it was them, they’re not exactly quiet.”
“Maybe it’s Huntara?” Adora offered.
Catra shook her head, distant. “Smaller. A lot smaller.”
Adora contemplated, before asking playfully. “Glimmer small, or Rosie small?” Scorpia and Perfuma’s daughter was barely at hip height yet. But she’s also pretty certain Catra owned the title of the shortest in their friend group. Adora felt no need to point that out.
Catra’s shoulders lifted for a beat. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s nothing, the heat is making me see things - probably a mirage or... something.” She didn’t sound convinced, but there were very few forms of trouble they couldn’t handle by now, and what little apprehension had grown in her chest fizzled away as Catra took her hand again. The contact a silent request to stay at her side. A little bit guarded, Adora recognised, but the crowd was quieter here, they could afford to take up the space of walking side by side.
Adora wondered if Catra was missing Melog. The cat had placed one tentative paw onto the sand beneath the ships loading dock before refusing the heat altogether, crawling back to the cool and shaded metal.
When it came to claws and punches there was no contest that Catra had nothing to worry about, but being around people just being people - weapons laid down on the ground, created a kind of vulnerability she was not as practised with. And her shield had stayed behind.
“How sunburnt do you think Frosta’s going to be?” Adora asked, a distraction. “I can’t believe she asked to come all the way out here for her birthday to find it’s not nearly as ‘awesomely savage’ as it used to -”
Catra noticed before Adora did. The weight of the dagger shifting from her belt with such immeasurable skill that it would have gone unknown to Adora had she not witnessed Catra’s eyes snapping down toward it.
And the little hand trying to take it.
Her wife’s grip caught around a scrawny arm, claws purposefully, carefully, retracted. The dagger fell, relinquished, to the dust by their feet. The tiny thief letting out a startled squeak before straining uselessly against Catra’s grip. She wasn’t even holding that tight.
They both blinked in unison, dumfounded.
“You really thought you’d get away with that?” Catra raised an eyebrow, amusement colouring her voice. It would have hardly mattered; Adora could summon the sword at will. You’d have better luck trying to steal the shadow of an oak tree.
But it was just a kid.
Adora faltered, noticing her wife troubling with the same hesitation. They were smaller than Rosie - the last time Adora had seen her at least, but only by a fraction. A feral little thing, dressed in tattered and dusty clothing, blue eyes peeking through the shadow of a hood that was so frayed it might as well have been poorly torn burlap.
And they had sharp teeth, evidently, as their jaw widened to bite down around Catra’s wrist. Reactive, a panic response.
Catra yelped, releasing quick enough that the child stumbled backwards, hitting the ground with an ‘oof’. Watching as the impact dislodged the hood from the little scamp’s head to reveal messy blonde hair and feline-like ears.
Like Catra’s, Adora noted, bewildered - they’d never met anyone else like that on Etheria before.
Adora stammered before asking. “What do you want with my sword?”
The answer came after a delay, the child’s chest rising and falling, eyes like a cornered lamb’s as they braced on arms that were well beyond unfairly lean. Jeez, when was the last time you had anything to eat?
“I need it for my friend.” It sounded like an apology, a plea, spoken with a voice far younger than Adora had expected. The realisation tugging a cord in her heart. What was a young kid doing out here seemingly surviving off pickpocketing for scraps and shiny things?
“And why does your friend need it?” Catra asked, placating, her hand soothing over the pinkening marks on her wrist. Despite them, her voice a shade of gentle Adora hadn’t heard from her before.
It wasn’t logical, she knew, but Adora was debating simply handing it over. The poor thing could play around with She-Ra’s sword for a while if they wanted, what harm could that possibly do?
A lot, she rationalised.
They hadn’t answered Catra’s question, so Adora offered an easier one, after retrieving the dagger off the ground. “What’s your name?”
That was not, apparently, an easier question.
“Hey, wait a second, we’re not gonna hurt you.” Catra began futilely, as they scurried back onto their feet. In a blink, pushing through and escaping into the packed alleyway of market stalls and startled people.
What on Etheria was that all about?
Adora turned to Catra, finding her ears flickering as though in surprise at having discovered their replica on someone else's head, before she sent a bemused shrug.
Adora returned the gesture. But the decision needed no agreement - they’d travelled to enough planets, worlds, and places to know every translation of an ask for help.
And Catra had already begun to follow.