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Sometimes Catra wakes and she doesn’t remember anything at all. There’s a split second where the Fright Zone doesn’t exist and neither do the night patrols nor the spot tests, nor even the gullible relief in an outsider’s eyes when she tells them they’re safe. 

That kind of bliss only ever lasts for a moment. It’s never enough for her; never long enough before Catra’s memories slam into her body. No matter how hard she tries, she still can’t shake the memory of Adora’s stoic facade when the first tendrils of lurid lime began to push through the taut muscle of her sternum, and how stupid everyone else had been to agree that leaving was the best thing that Adora could do.

It hadn’t mattered how many times Catra begged her to stay. When it came to keeping her people safe, Adora couldn’t compromise no matter how much Catra wished that she would. Her tears hadn’t been enough to stop Adora from leaving their bed or to convince her wife to share one final kiss. It shouldn’t have surprised Catra at all really - the softness of their bellies pressed together never stopped Adora from carrying out any of Glimmer’s risky missions before. When she’d decided to leave for the colonies and unite with her new kind, what else could Catra do in her hopelessness but watch?

Every once in a while, Catra manages to convince herself it’s all for the best. There’s no-one else left from their old Alliance unit, and if Catra hadn’t defected - hadn’t been coaxed into a routine of hoarded cigarettes and subtle nods beckoning less subtle bullets - she doesn’t know if there’d be anything left of her either. 

It’s nearly ten years since when Catra gets bitten. It’s a child, and she usually isn’t swayed by sentimentality (no one is, after spending so long in this job) but this daughter of the wilderness has her own warm skin and split eyes, and Catra doesn’t notice the tiny hand reaching out before her flesh is broken. But a week after the girl is gone, her body lost to a turret of smoke in the sky, Catra’s still the same as she always was. 

There’s only one thing she’s wanted to do for a decade and now, miraculously, she can do it. Catra waits for the dead of night before she tucks her gun into her belt and creeps towards the Fright Zone walls. 

“Adora,” she says when she reaches the edge of the Whispering Woods, her breath unfurling in white against the inky sky, “I’m coming to find you.”

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The very first time Catra saw Adora, she thought she was hallucinating. They’d both been new to the Alliance, drawn into Glimmer’s underground squad after ageing out of the Fright Zone’s punitive orphanages. It was ludicrous that they’d never met before, really. Nevertheless, Catra could have sworn they’d always known each other somehow. Maybe in some curious celestial way like she’d read about in old books stolen from the city’s abandoned library and shared covertly between bunkmates.

That day she met Adora, Catra had never seen moonlight ripple on silky hair like stardust or noticed how golden sun could slip over the curves of a muscular bicep. She’d thought Adora looked to be from another planet, like she’d descended from somewhere better than infected Etheria. Somewhere people smiled at their neighbours and hosted barbecues in their gardens and borrowed cups of sugar. It was a total fantasy, of course. Neither of them were old enough to remember who they’d been before the virus seized humanity. They were isolated blips in a cold metal city, their quarantined status being the only reason they still existed at all. Yet the first time Catra felt Adora’s fingers settle on her forearm, and later when she sighed as the blonde’s pink-pillowed lips brushed the scarred tissue of her jaw, Catra felt like she belonged anyway. 

You and me against the world, right?

This time when Catra sees her wife through thickets of overgrown roots and wild branches, her heart stops, same same but different. The other woman is still sinewy, thin ropes coursing like narrow rivers under Adora’s skin, but Catra can’t be sure if it’s muscle or mushroom flexing around her bones. Catra holds her breath and tiptoes forward, squinting in the darkness to see if her mind is playing tricks on her. 

Surprisingly, Adora’s face is completely unchanged, save for the newfound wrinkles softening its edges. Her cheeks have the same slender slope and her lips jut out into the cold night sky. Yet her chest is an explosion of life, fungi and flora bursting from her ribcage and crawling outwards. Tawny vines wind around Adora’s waist and shoulders, splitting into petals of curdling green as they bend. Catra gasps before she can stop herself - she’s never seen a bloater like this. 

The second she hears her own breath draw, she clamps her palms over her mouth. Immediately, there’s rustling; heavy steps and yearning howls cut through the sky. Catra isn’t sure panic has ever risen from her toes to her gullet this fast before, not even during Alliance missions. For a moment, she’s frozen, incapable of executive function. 

She watches as Adora’s head turns, unnaturally swift and smooth. It’s not a cautious movement as much as it is calculated - it’s nothing like the hurried glances that Adora would throw over her shoulder towards Catra on missions a decade ago, nor the lazy gaze that would wander over Catra’s naked torso when they woke from their bedslumber in the early dawn. Catra drops her hands from her face and darts behind an oak tree that somehow seems to shift away from rather than towards her; she has to stretch further and jump farther to hide herself. 

Still, she isn’t fast enough.

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Jagged teeth sink into Catra’s shoulder from behind as the ticklish scrape of matted hair and overgrown fingernails capsize her arm. Her heart leaps, dread washing over her body. Even if it weren’t for her immunity, Catra knows that she’s more likely to be ripped apart before she can be turned. There’s nothing she can do but struggle against her assailant, the vibrations of rancid breath and a keening groan pushing against her skin. Catra thinks it’s all over, that maybe this sharp end is more bearable than spending eternity in the Fright Zone anyway. There’s closure in staring at the woman she loves while she dies anyway, even if she isn’t recognised.

Except Adora doesn’t seem to agree. 

As fast as Catra admits defeat, Adora lunges at the clicker, her hands ripping into them mercilessly. There’s a tussle of infected against infected, that Catra hears a little better than she sees. It only takes a few short moments before Adora screeches defiantly, flesh and bone broken at her feet, and she turns towards Catra’s bewildered gaze. 

“Catra?” she says with devastation as she fixates on Catra’s stinging wounds, her voice rough and reedy as if she hasn’t spoken once in the decade they’ve been apart, “I should’ve been faster. I could have saved you.”

Adora recoils when their eyes finally meet, and Catra can’t tell if it’s the fresh blood trickling down her arm or the years of hardship evident on her face that makes Adora look at her with such horror. She wants to tell Adora she’s fine, that she’s immune, that all she cares about is that she’s found her. But Catra’s heart speaks before her head.

“I never wanted you to save me. I wanted you to stay.”

Adora sighs and holds herself back cautiously. There’s guilt etched on her curiously unblemished face as well as fear, and other things that aren’t as obvious as they would have been if they hadn’t been apart for quite so many years. So Catra steps forward tentatively, hand outstretched as if there’s no such thing as cordyceps at all.

“You can’t hurt me, Adora. I promise.”

“Didn’t I already?”

Adora’s clearly surprised by her own admission, if the flash of dismay in her irises is anything to go by. Her eyes harden quickly when they sweep over Catra’s bloodied shirt.

“Nothing’s going to happen to me,” Catra hurries to tell her, “I won’t turn.”

The blonde sighs bitterly. “You might feel okay now but it’s only a matter of time-”

“No,” Catra takes a chance and lunges forward, pushing her sleeve up her forearm to reveal mottled raised skin, “I got bitten over a week ago.”

She waits for laughter, or maybe even an embrace - something akin to excitement or joy like they felt on their wedding day. Yet there’s only silence. Adora stares at her blankly and Catra can’t help but worry she’s made an irreversible mistake.

“That’s why I came to find you,” Catra blurts out in desperation for Adora to respond, “I- I’m immune. I think.”

“Immune?” 

It’s been too long. Catra can’t envision Adora’s interior life like she used to; she’s no idea what her dazed tone of voice could mean. She can’t stop her disappointment from seeping into her voice.

“I was hoping… I thought maybe we could…”

Catra realises how silly it is when she sees the pain on her wife’s face. Who had ever loved an infected once the fungi took hold? 

“Catra,” Adora says hesitantly, her eloquence defying the growths that should have capsized her entirely, “I don’t know what you expected, but…”

“You,” Catra exhales jaggedly, pushing the outlandishness of her delusions aside, “All I expected was you.”

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They repeat the same conversation a billion different ways while the moon swells in the sky.

You’re leaving everything behind? 

You really want to be with me?

You’re sure it’s safe?

You still love me?

“Of course, dummy,” Catra responds without hesitation every time - and even if Adora doesn’t always seem to believe it, she lets Catra stay night after night.

When she’s nestled under Adora’s arm, Catra likes to take advantage of the chance to study her while she sleeps. As Adora’s chest rises and falls, Catra watches how the flora and fungi bristle, their glowing edges fluttering against dewy skin. It goes against everything she knows about the cordyceps infection but Catra isn’t sure she’s ever seen Adora look so alive. 

She lifts a finger carefully and traces the growths, pressing gently into their soft pads once she’s sure it won’t wake Adora. It’s impossible not to gasp when she feels a life force teeming under her touch. The growth inside her forearm always seems to crackle with electricity as it strives to communicate with its own kind. Catra watches vines squirm over and around her pulse towards Adora’s chest. They’re drawn together by a power stronger than magnets and chemistry now; they’re two halves of the same whole in biology as well as in marriage. At least, Catra likes to think of it that way.

Thankfully, it's this thought that finally convinces Adora they’re safe to stay together. How could she deny kin to kin when even the earth is trying so hard to bring them back together?

Every time Adora touches her now, Catra’s flesh is aflame. There’s so much she’d trade for this woman - so much she has already traded - that the dangers circling them fade impossibly to the back of her mind. There’s no pandemic when their bodies meld to one another, nor desperate infected ready to pounce. This blissful ignorance is everything Catra’s wanted for years: to feel precious when Adora’s arms tighten around her protectively, fragility humming in her veins; like she’s not as dispensable as Glimmer’s missions or her Fright Zone overlords suggested. It’s typical, Catra supposes, despite the absurdity of their circumstances. This vulnerability has always been Adora’s effect on her, even if she hasn’t always appreciated it. 

The satisfaction of Adora’s attention is enough to override the growling that roars from Catra’s empty belly - or Catra wishes it was. Every time Adora frowns at the creaking in her abdomen, Catra shrugs and tells her that she ate some of her packed rucksack rations while Adora slept. It’s all a performance. They both know the truth, that she hasn’t had anything to eat for days. 

Is it ridiculous to say I’m not hungry, Catra wonders, because being with Adora makes me feel more nourished than I have in years?

Either way, Catra doesn’t protest when Adora tells her they’ve got to keep moving to stay safe and find food. She’s no intention of repeating history - wherever Adora goes, Catra will go too.

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For ten long years, Adora coaxed herself to sleep by wrapping her arms around her torso, willing herself to imagine that the foreign growths spilling from her chest were something - someone - different altogether. Yet now there’s no need to pretend, the euphoria that had so quickly grown from a fearful simmer to a blazing flame within her is already turning to smoke.

The short month she’s had with Catra feels like a stolen gift. Despite her own abnormal affliction, Adora never knew it was possible for someone to be entirely immune to the cordyceps virus. Still, it doesn’t surprise her that if anyone would be, it’s Catra. Afterall, Adora’s never met anyone as extraordinary as Catra, or who made her feel as extraordinary as Catra once did. She thinks about it often as they trek through barren wilds, scavenging for food in abandoned cabins and overgrown gardens. Catra has always held her own but it’s obvious to Adora how little she now depends on others. The infected track them down relentlessly as they traverse the woodlands, and Catra’s almost always the first to make a hit. She’s ruthless and completely unforgiving in her approach to survival. Adora wonders whether it’s her fault Catra has hardened so much, or if the pandemic had always made it inevitable. 

Should I have left? Was it ever possible for me to stay like she wanted me to?

It’s a silly question. Adora has no doubt she did the right thing, even if her chest has literally ripped open in the process. Yet she doesn’t dare to tell Catra the true reason for her certainty: that Adora has tirelessly resisted every internal command to bite and gorge; that she fights to suppress a desperate urge to tear flesh from bone in her weakest moments. There’s no way Adora can share that the frenzied attacks they’ve overcome from stalkers and clickers are hardly the biggest danger they face. 

Maybe I really am as monstrous as I always feared.

Clinging to her humanity, Adora devours her wife in every other way she can, exploring Catra like a map her life depends on knowing. Adora can see every freckle and mole of Catra’s golden terrain when she closes her eyes. It’s almost as arresting as the fervency with which vines curl towards one another under their skin.

She’s so dazzled by Catra’s presence that it’s shocking when Adora notices the wheeze in Catra’s lungs is deepening, and that her cheeks hollow into wells as time passes. Adora wants so badly to go along with the pretence that they can save each other; that she’s capable of saving Catra for good. She fumbles through her fruitless pleas for Catra to go back to the Fright Zone and fill her stomach repeatedly, even if it empties their souls. Of course, it’s no use. While Catra starves, stars reflecting in her pupils as she gazes into Adora’s own eyes, Adora only gets surer that their reunion is a suicide mission. 

“I couldn’t save you now even if you’d wanted me to, could I?” Adora whispers shakily, her thumb pressing against the edge of Catra’s weakening smile, “But I promise you I’ll stay.”

The Whispering Woods seem quieter than ever when Catra’s breath stills and Adora’s heart breaks.  

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Death comes slowly for Adora but she’s grateful it comes at all. For a few moments - the first she’s ever felt truly alone in the world, like her soul was never really solitary as long as Catra lived - she can’t do anything but stare at a chest that no longer rises and falls. Adora wishes she could feel something. She’d known it was coming, that the world they’d been trapped in would force this outcome in one way or another. 

The moon makes its appearance, spilling silver over the lifeless body in her arms, and Adora wonders if she’s ever seen anything more beautiful than the sight of Catra finally at peace. Memories of her flood Adora’s mind, rifling through the wrinkle of Catra’s brow when she’s angry to her open-mouthed cackle, head thrown back and hair flying in joy. And then Adora feels the shiver that swept through her when she saw Catra for the very first time ripple through her again, back when she’d never known that Fright Zone-issued shampoo could smell like fresh watermelon and coconut, or that a mere glance across a littered courtyard could make her gut flip into oblivion. 

Now, though, the cordyceps growths that have thrashed around Adora’s bones for a decade are eerily quiet; the sour green doilies that burst from her ribcage wilt like they were never driven by viral hunger at all. She doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry when she realises it: Catra was right all along; the earth only ever wanted them bound together.

It’s no surprise to Adora that Catra turns out to be her start and her end. She’s only ever lived in greyscale without her. Everything slows to half-time when her tears finally fall over Catra’s body. The saltwater is the only part of Adora that remains purely human - and once she’s spent, her pulse stoppered by heartbreak, there’s nothing but rotting fungi left of her at all. 

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Strains of mycelium seek reunion beyond their decaying hosts like they know it’s the only thing that can finally save Etheria. Through the night, cords thicken and wrap around the lovers’ bones, desperate to bind them together in death as much as they were bound in life.

When the fungi finally unite and sink into the soil, Adora doesn’t feel the remains of her ribcage crack and splinter. Nor does Catra see how the white beam bursting from the new cavity in Adora’s chest drenches the Whispering Woods in light. Fruitless fields bloom in seconds under the warmth of its false daylight; resurrection spreads at lightning speed until there’s no inch of earth left untouched. 

Struck by awe, no one notices a lofty tree sprout above Catra and Adora’s unmarked grave for weeks, twisting curiously out of a stump that was  consumed by cordyceps years before. It’s even longer before anyone makes the link between the weakening of the virus and the spread of gold-tinged blossoms along the tree’s branches, or that immunity drifts from one end of the Woods to the other and beyond via its pollen. Slowly, Etheria starts to heal; to become a place where people smile at their neighbours and host barbecues in their gardens and borrow cups of sugar.

Centuries later, when the cordyceps virus is hardly more than a myth, the wind still whistles between tree trunks like it’s asking if love really was all the earth needed to be saved. The crickets always chitter loudly enough for everyone to hear the answer.

Of course, dummy.