Archive of Our Own ^beta

I walk Catra back to her room without asking.

If I’m being entirely honest, I’m scared of this thing breaking. This fragile peace she’s seemed to make with the world, with Bow and Glimmer and Entrapta… with me.

She’s not coming at the world with fists anymore. Her teeth are bared and her hackles are raised, but she’s not starting out swinging. I think she’s ready to fight or run away at the first sign of it being needed, but she’s trying. She’s trying and that’s all I need.

She’s trying and from her, that’s all I could ask.

Her footsteps are silent but mine tromp with every step. Just like old times.

It’s bizarre, the things that can feel normal. We’re on a spaceship, hurtling through the middle of nowhere. Etheria is being destroyed by a power hungry alien whose plan for world domination includes mind controlling millions of beings. I’m walking next to someone who was my enemy for years.

But before that, she was my friend.

I think she’s always going to be my friend.

We stop at the doorway to her room.

We stop on opposite sides of the doorframe.

Catra avoids my eyes. That only makes me want to look at her more. She clutches her right arm with the other and looks down, like she’s trying to shrink away from this moment. I don’t know if she’s ashamed of our relationship or the fact that we had to save her or if she’s just feeling awkward. Or if she’s getting angry again.

“You can-” She coughs. She’s speaking like each word is being squeezed out of her, like when she was trying to explain how she could spy on Horde Prime earlier. “You can, uh, stay.” She looks at me. “If you want to.” A beat of silence, then she turns into her room with bravado that wasn’t there moments before. “Don’t make a big deal of this!” She calls over her shoulder.

I can feel the smile that splits my face. It almost hurts. In a good way. Only Catra can make me smile like this. “You like me!” I almost trip over my own feet getting into her room.

She scoffs. “No, I do not. That's ridiculous, Adora.” And then she laughs. It’s a laugh I haven’t heard in years. I haven’t heard it since our time in the Horde, living in the Fright Zone and sharing the same bunk even though hers was three feet away.

It’s not the cruel laugh I learned in battle. That laugh came with a fist or claws or with the reveal of a terrifying scheme. It’s not the way she laughed when things fell apart. The way she would laugh after a particularly bad meeting with Shadow Weaver or the way she laughed in the castle when we relived our childhood memories or the way she laughed in the portal reality.

It’s the way she laughed when things were good. It was the way she used to laugh when I ran into something by accident, or Kyle did something dumb but harmless.

It was the laugh I grew so accustomed to that I stopped appreciating it properly. It’s the laugh I didn’t know I missed until now.

But I don’t say any of that. I know she needs some normalcy after the day she’s had.

So I snark back. Our old routine.

“Are you laughing at me?!” I ask indignantly.

“Pfft- yes! You just almost fell flat on your face, because of your own feet. That deserves to be laughed at, Adora.”

I cross my arms and frown, even though I know she can barely see me in the dark room. I lean against the wall while she plops criss-cross onto her bed. She raises an eyebrow at me.

This definitely is our old routine. Even before… everything, I could never think of any good retorts when she made fun of me.

Apparently, that hasn’t changed.

She cackles. “You should see your face! You still haven’t gotten better at this, have you?

“No- I- You’re impossible!”

“Is that really the best you’ve got?”

I know better than to fuel her glee with another failed retort.

But you know what? Maybe I don’t. I should keep this good thing going.

Her tail is swishing behind her.

It always swishes when she’s about to ask something.

It’s amazing, everything I remember about her. About our friendship. It’s not supposed to be this easy to just… stop being enemies.

But what’s the point of being enemies? We were on opposite sides in a war. Opposite sides in a war that wasn’t ours. And she did bad things, she made terrible decisions that made a lot of people. But before all of that, she was my friend. And I think I can still see my friend in her.

I know my friend is still here because of the way her tail swishes and the way she laughs and the way she asked me to stay when she was scared.
Her voice is rough when she finally speaks.

“Did you-” She swallows. “Did you really mean it?”

A beat of silence.

I try to slow the beating of my heart, as if just thinking about it slowing will make it happen. I try to keep my voice as even as possible. I said a lot of things. A lot I meant. A lot I didn’t. I swallow hard. “What?”

“That you-” She places her left hand over her neck and looks down. “That you… uh… never hated me.”

A wave of relief breaks over me. God, I should’ve known this was coming. This is Catra I’m talking too. She’s so stubborn, for better or worse, and we’ve had this conversation before.

I laugh, I just can’t help it.

That startles her.

She looks up, and her eyes look a bit wild. A bit like she’s a little ready to fight or to run. And I know this part. I know this part, and she’s still who she always was and probably will always be. For better or for worse.

“Of course I didn’t!”

I know that’s not the answer she wants. She wants to know why. She wants me to explain. But I’m not going to say why until she asks. She has to say what she wants, just like how she has to apologize and make amends.

Much to my surprise, after a couple beats of silence and hard swallows, she does.

“Because…” I start. I try to gather my thoughts.

How do you put something so intangible into words? It’s because of things like this. Because she still asks me the same questions, even if they’re in different words, year after year. Because I know where she got that stupid little scar on her leg (playing on broken training equipment) and that she taught Kyle to whistle to annoy Lonni.
“Because you were my friend first.”

She slowly takes her hand off her neck. It drops to her lap. She looks at me from the corner of her eye.

“Because, Catra, I know you. Even when we were fighting, under everything, you were still my friend. Yeah, you were a friend who went off the rails, but… you know me, right?”

She snorts. “Yeah, sadly. You can’t ever resist a hopeless case.”

I shake my head. “No! Well- I mean, yeah. But you know that you’re my friend. And my friends are important to me. I try my hardest not to break promises.”

I try to emphasize that last part, and I know she hears it. I can see the tears well up in her eyes. She looks away.

And that’s when I realize something.

“Do you believe me?”

My heart is in my throat and my stomach on the floor when she shrugs.

“Did you ever believe me?”

Her tail swishes. “I don’t- I don’t know.”

That’s been our problem all these years.

“Why?”

She shrugs and laughs, but it's sounds like she's choking. It’s the way she used to laugh as a kid when she was about to get into trouble for something she did by accident. “Shadow Weaver. Who else?”

I know her so well, and at the same time, it’s like I don’t know her at all. I desperately want to ask her the things Shadow Weaver told her, to find out what her childhood was like and compare it to mine. I want to compare notes and see where we went wrong, and see how we can fix it from here.

But we’ve talked enough seriousness for the night.

I sigh and slide down to the floor, until I’m lying down. Catra does the same on her bed, until we’re staring at each other. “She really did a number on us, huh?”

Catra huffs a laugh. “Yeah.”

I roll onto my back. I’m starting to notice that she talks more if we’re not staring at each other.

And she talks again. “Remember that time we caught Kyle and Rogelio in the training room when we got up early to train?”

That was nowhere near what I was expecting.

I grown and cover my eyes with my hands. “Oh, god, Catra! Why’d you have to remind me of that?”

She bares her teeth and they glint in the hint of starlight.

“And remember? We were so proud to get extra training time. We so thought we were gonna whip everyone’s butts in competition later.”

“And instead, we had to see Rogelio’s tongue done Kyle’s throat.”

“Remember how you tried to give it to Rogelio but he just pelted you with the brown food blocks until you admitted defeat?”

It's Catra's turn to groan in embarrassment. “I thought we were done talking about that.”

“You were done talking about that. I will never be. That was the one time Kyle has ever beaten anyone in a fight, food or otherwise.”

“You’re the worst.”

“Do you think we should’ve made him a medal? I bet it would’ve made his day.”

“Probably. I bet he would’ve hung the medal in his bunk.”

“I bet he would’ve worn it until it fell apart.”

“I bet he would’ve talked about how proud of it he was without realizing we were all making fun of him.”

“Do you think we should’ve been nicer to Kyle?”

“Nah.”

We fall into a comfortable silence. I never realized how much I missed the steady beat of Catra’s breathing. I wonder if it feels weird to her to sleep without another person in her bed.

I want to keep this good thing going. This time, I will break the silence. “Remember when you intentionally messed with Octavia and she almost beat both of us up?”
She laughs again and it’s a good laugh.

The hard stuff will still be there in the morning. In the morning, we will have to learn how to stop Horde Prime, a crazed alien warlord. We’ll have to figure out how to keep our ship together until we land. We’ll have to figure out how to de-chip everyone.

We’ll have to figure out how to explain to everyone why we have Catra in tow. I’ll have to figure out what to do about my relationship with Catra. Catra will have to learn to make amends and live with what she’s done.

But for now, where only the stars can see us? We laugh.