Chapter Text
Catra wakes to the sound of the world ending.
Or, at least, it’s the best description her sleep-addled mind can come up with. She jolts in her seat, eyes wide, pulse racing with nauseating adrenaline. It’s an ear-piercing, nails-on-metal, hair-raising screech, seemingly coming from every direction at once and yet nowhere specific at all. For five time-stopping seconds, all Catra can do is sit there, frozen in pure terror.
And then, as suddenly as it’d started, it stops.
The report of the sound echoes in her ears, a faint ringing that she’s pretty sure isn’t about to fade any time soon.
Heart still hammering in her chest, she stands gingerly. The control room is empty, blissfully so. Her neck hurts, probably because she’d dozed off sitting at the main controls. She’d not meant to fall asleep; she technically hasn’t been sleeping at all lately, but, well. Clearly that decision had caught up with her. A glance at the screens shows her it’s been at most a quarter of an hour. Maybe that’s why she feels like a literal toxic wasteland of a person right now.
She runs a hand over the controls, switching the screens to the Fright Zone surveillance. Everyone is standing in place, clearly stopped in the middle of their usual activities. She spots a few quizzical tilts of the heads, and some confused gestures.
Despite herself, she breathes a sigh of relief. At least it means everyone heard the sound — that it wasn’t just in her head.
For a second, she hadn’t been so sure. It’d been too familiar, is the thing. Her unconscious mind had recognized it as the end of the world, because…
Because she knows what the end of the world sounds like. She’s heard it — the horrifying crack of reality splitting apart to reveal all-consuming, purple-tinged energy that hissed and shrieked and devoured everything in its path, bringing only one certainty: the knowledge that it was all her fault.
An alarm sounds and Catra shrieks, jumping about a foot in the air before she recognizes the sound as an incoming communication — Hordak. With a deep breath, she tries to get herself together, straightens her shoulders, and pushes the button to accept the call.
As expected, Hordak’s face fills the screen. “Force Captain.”
Catra nods shortly, and keeps her hands behind her back so he doesn’t notice the way they’re shaking. “Hordak.”
“Our sensors have picked up an unconventional energy signature, emitted just a few minutes ago.”
If by sensors, you mean everyone with ears, then yeah, Catra thinks, but does not say. Instead, she settles for a laconic “I’m aware.”
“The source was traced to the outskirts of the Whispering Woods, right alongside the edge of the Crimson Waste. It’s still emitting now, though along different frequencies, and it’s showing tremendous amounts of power.”
A prickle of unease runs through Catra. “Still emitting?” she repeats.
Hordak ignores her. “Based on the emission spectrum, it’s likely coming from a First Ones’ artifact. Recon data from the original planetary surveys confirms the location corresponds to a collapsed ruin.”
Catra is pretty sure she knows where this is going, and no fucking thanks. “So?”
“The ruin was believed to be destroyed and without interest, but this shows that’s not the case. There’s at least some technology that is still functional.”
“And again: so?” Catra can hear her pitch rising, but she can’t quite keep it under control. “We don’t need that technology anymore. With Horde Prime on the way—”
“With Horde Prime on the way,” Hordak interrupts sharply, “we must be ready to demonstrate complete and utter mastery of this planet and its technology. We cannot afford to let any advantage fall at the hands of the rebels while we are so close to success.”
There’s bullshit, and then there’s whatever Hordak is trying to sell her right now. She narrows her eyes. “An old dusty alarm in the desert doesn’t exactly count as an advantage.”
“Enough,” Hordak snaps, and Catra digs her claws into her palms to keep herself quiet. “Local outpost teams have already been deployed to the site. You’ll put together a strike team and head to the coordinates immediately. I want that artifact retrieved, or, if retrieval is impossible, destroyed before the rebels can get their hands on it. Is that understood?”
Yeah, so: fuck that. “I’m not dropping everything to go blow up a pile of rocks in the desert,” Catra seethes. “The technology isn’t important, and the operations we’re currently leading are—”
“— under my command until you return,” Hordak cuts her off, and if she wasn’t so pissed off, Catra might laugh. Of course.
Now that Horde Prime’s arrival could come any day, now that Catra’s served him the Rebellion on a fucking platter, now that Catra’s all but wrapped up Etheria in a starsdamned bow after Salineas’ destruction — Hordak’s realised what it’ll look like to Horde Prime. He’s swooping in, trying to take her command, trying to take credit for her work. Trying to get rid of her, now that he’s got no use for her anymore.
She knows how that goes very, very well.
“This is stupid,” she starts, resisting the urge to hiss. “I won’t—”
“Yes, you will.” Hordak’s eyes glow, the menacing red that’s haunted her childhood. “You are under my command, Force Captain, and this is a direct order.” His gaze, even through the screen, feels like a weapon trained on her. “And if there is one thing Horde Prime won’t take to, it is insubordination. If you wish to return to your operations, I suggest you handle this situation rapidly.”
And on that, he cuts the communication.
With a shout of frustration, Catra kicks out, sending a stray chair clattering a few feet away. But she’s too exhausted to hang on to her rage for long, and leans forward, hands braced on the edge of a console, head bowed.
Fine. Hordak wants to play those kinds of games? Let him. She’s spent four years playing every game they all threw at her — Adora, Shadow Weaver, Hordak himself — and she might not have won every round, but in the end? She’s still here. She knows how to play the long game, and she’s worked too hard, lost too much, and given way too much of herself to give up now.
He wants to play? Fine. She’ll play to win.
*
The ruin is more ‘pile of rocks’ than ‘actual building’. Wedged at the bottom of a sandy, red-rock ravine, it’s a ragged, chipped square thing, a few stories tall at the most; nothing like the towering spires of the Beacon. Really, it’s no wonder they’d not explored it before, what with how it’s half buried under sand, tree roots from the few desert plants that grow this far East, and collapsed boulders from the rock walls surrounding it.
It’s also, as expected, crawling with rebels.
Catra had given orders to the local teams to secure the building, and by the time the military transport she shares with her team makes it within view of the ruin, that vanguard is well occupied — but definitely not securing anything. As she watches the images transmitted by the outside cameras, soldiers and bots battle local Etherians, sheets of ice, and flowering vines and ugh. Ugh.
This is not how she wanted today to go.
“How do you want to play this?” Lonnie’s tone is cooly professional, which is for the better because Catra is not in the mood to deal with — well, anything, really. Her head is pounding, she feels nauseous from the journey in the awful enclosed military transport, and she’s still seething over this entire thing.
She nods sharply towards the doors of the transport. “You take the lead on the ground troops. Keep the rebels distracted for as long as possible. When I give the signal, full immediate retreat.”
One of Lonnie’s eyebrows goes up, presumably at the ‘retreat’ part, but she wisely decides against commenting, probably because Catra’s bad mood has been obvious enough on the way here. Scorpia wouldn’t have—
Catra viciously stomps the thought out of existence.
“What are you going to do?” Lonnie asks.
With a thrill of vindictive satisfaction, Catra wrenches open the metal container strapped to the wall of the transport. She picks up a block of explosives and tosses it up, snatching it out of the air before it can fall.
“I,” she says with a grin, “am going to blow this fucking rock out of the sky.”
*
On top of being really impractical for tanks to access, the location of the ruin also offers absolutely no starsdamned cover: it’s one long, narrow open space, closed off on three sides by steep rock walls and the building itself on the fourth. There’s almost no space to maneuver, and so projectiles and magic blasts fly everywhere in the chaos of the fight, slamming into rocks and dried out dead trees and sandy outcrops. The mess is made even worse with the way the whole place is constantly wracked with tremors — Catra isn’t sure where that’s coming from, though she assumes the building is to blame somehow. Each quake seems stronger than the last in intensity, and she’d swear she can see some cracks opening in the dried out ground.
Once again: ugh.
The only good thing about this is that the fight is so dense it ironically provides Catra some approximation of cover as she makes her way through the combatants and towards the actual building. She dodges and sprints and ducks, clutching the bomb to her chest.
Hordak had said to retrieve the technology if possible. Well, her expert opinion is that it is not. There’s no way she’s going to waste any more time by actually trying to find out what’s emitting the signal — which, much to her dismay, had continued transmitting during the entire journey. If anything, it had increased in strength.
Whatever. It doesn’t matter what it is; they don’t need it.
She could have sat this one out; supervised the actual offense from the transport and sent someone at least semi-competent to set up the explosive, but she hadn’t wanted to take any chances. She doesn’t want to have to spend so much as one superfluous second on this.
The plan is simple: get in, cross the battlefield without getting shot at by either side, set up the bomb, and get the hell out of dodge. No complications, no unnecessary delays, no—
Catra sighs. No complications, no delays — except for a glowy, much-too-tall, flowy-haired princess with a magic sword and a superiority complex.
She stops, her way blocked as Adora — no, She-Ra — makes quick work of dispatching four Horde soldiers in one go, tracing a wide arc of magic with her sword that sends them flying. Catra sighs; Adora's always been such a starsdamned show-off.
There’s something tight in Catra’s throat, or maybe in her chest, or at the pit of her stomach. Her arm itches under her sleeve as she watches the cold determination on her former friend’s face. She’s not seen Adora — She-Ra — since Elberon. That had gone well, all things considered: she’d fallen for the Evil Trap trick, hook, line, and sinker.
But there’d been something, in the way she’d looked at Catra, something Catra hadn’t seen before. She’d been cold.
I’m done playing your games, Catra.
Of course Adora would think it was a game — when had she ever taken Catra seriously? When had anyone? Even Hordak doesn’t, when he’s the one who’s been profiting from her successes this entire time.
Adora tosses another soldier aside like a ragdoll and Catra sighs again.
Fuck but she does not want to do this.
But there are rules to this, and so when She-Ra’s gaze falls on her, her eyes narrowing, Catra forces a corner of her mouth up in an approximation of her usual smirk.
“Hey, Adora,” she drawls.
Her answer is a sword blast. Which, rude, honestly, but whatever. She leaps out of the way, and just like that, it’s their same old dance.
There’s something about fighting Adora that’s always — that always will be — familiar; they trained together for too long for it not to be the case. Catra can anticipate where Adora will strike based on nothing more than a glance or the ghost of a gesture. It’s not even conscious, just something she knows, the same way she knows how to use her claws. And she can tell it’s the same for Adora, because no one can get quite so close to getting the jump on Catra as she can.
So close, but never quite there. Catra had spent more time than she’d ever willingly admit wondering whether that was because Catra was just a little bit too fast, or because Adora didn’t quite have it in her to actually take her out and so held back every time. The only thing she’d known for sure was that either way? She probably didn’t want to know the answer.
Unfortunately, she gets the feeling she’s about to.
There’s nothing held back about the way Adora is fighting her right now. Her strikes are powered by her usual righteous anger, of course, but there’s something else behind them too: that same cold that Catra had glimpsed in Elberon. It rings wrong in a way that has Catra off balance.
Adora always burns hot during a fight. Catra’s accustomed to the searing heat of her fury, the amusing warmth of her irritation, the scorching touch of her glares. But this? This is ice cold.
You made your choice. Now live with it.
The echo of Adora’s voice, unbidden and unescapable, throws her balance. Catra hesitates, just for a second — but it’s enough.
A burning, slicing pain traces itself along her forearm. Catra yelps and leaps back, almost crashing to the ground before she can regain her balance. She glances down to find blood running down her arm from a long, narrow gash in her skin. When she looks up, Adora’s sword is wearing a matching red along its blade.
Frozen in shock more than pain, Catra meets Adora’s gaze.
Her eyes, blue and glowing and utterly alien, show no hesitation when she lunges at Catra again, forcing her to keep up best as she can.
Just as Catra is starting to wonder how she’s going to get out of this, the ground rocks with an explosion, the sound of which makes her reach for her ears. Soldiers and rebels scatter around them and Catra looks up to find the upper floor of the building collapsing in a deafening screech of stone. Blocks the size of tanks crash into the ground, sending up dust clouds, and Catra scrambles back, just in time to avoid being crushed by what looks like a metric ton of dusty old rock.
By the time the collapse is over, she’s sitting on the ground, coughing up dust and sand, the closest bit of debris a whopping five inches away from her legs.
She looks over her shoulder and finds a Horde tank with its missile launcher still smoking. One moment later, the top hatch opens and Kyle pops his head out, scratching at his forehead with a wince.
Fucking Kyle.
Kyle’s incompetence has one silver lining, which is that in the chaos, She-Ra’s glowy stature is nowhere to be seen. Without wasting one more second, Catra springs to her feet and takes off at a sprint, dodging the last shots and rolling fragments of stone to finally, finally reach the starsdamned building.
There’s something that might be a door, traced into the facade, but no obvious way to open it. Thankfully, that doesn’t matter, because there’s no way in hell Catra is going inside a collapsing ruin. She doesn’t need to, anyhow — the explosive she has should be enough to bring down the entire ravine. It’s a variant on what they’d used with their new bots, one of Entrapta’s last—
Catra cleaves the thought in half and, with maybe a bit more force than necessary, sticks the explosive onto the maybe-door. All she has to do now is set up a five minute countdown and then she can finally be done with this stupid day.
A blast of pink sparkly energy slams into the wall, leaving a scorch mark just above her head.
Catra resists the urge to scream — just barely.
She spins on her heel, just in time to dive out of the way of another glitter blast as the starsdamned new queen of Brightmoon barrels towards her with way too much determination for Catra’s taste. She hasn’t seen Sparkles since the incident at the Whispering Woods base, which ended with Catra half crushed under a collapsed metal strut, and frankly, she’s not keen on repeating any of that.
Glimmer narrows her eyes at her. “What?” she says, fists aglow with building magic. “Didn’t get enough last time?”
“Oh you know me, Sparkles,” Catra drawls, trying to conceal the way she’s pressing her fingers into the device at her back as she programs the detonator, “I never get enough.” She feels the click of the countdown starting and grins. “Thanks for all the victories you guys have been handing us, lately, by the way. We couldn’t have gotten Salineas without your help, you know?”
Apparently done with the talking part of this interaction, Glimmer throws out both hands in her direction, shooting out a beam more powerful than anything Catra’s ever seen from the princess. It’s all Catra can do to scramble back, trying to duck out of the way, managing it just about — she can feel the heat of the energy on the back of her neck. Eyes wide, Catra looks up to find Glimmer bringing her arms back, clearly raring for another go, and she steps back —
Her back hits the sun-warmed stone of the wall. She has nowhere to go.
Three things happen at once:
Glimmer, eyes narrowed into something ruthlessly victorious, shoots another blast of energy in Catra’s direction.
Catra braces herself for the searing impact.
At Catra’s back, deep within the building, she feels more than hears the coming explosion.
It’s that last thing that steals all her focus. Even Glimmer’s very imminent threat can do nothing in the face of the dread that fills her at the sensation, because, again, it is familiar. She glances at the explosive device she’s just set, but is unsurprised to find it still cheerily counting down. Whatever this is, it’s not something any old bomb can create. It's coming from the building itself, or whatever is inside it.
It’s a cuh-thunk, a click, a tremor; it’s a void, the split second before a crack opens itself straight down the middle of reality.
It’s the end of the world, just like she knew it would be from the moment she’d woken up that morning.
Catra squeezes her eyes shut, but it’s too late — the world fills with light, bright, and blinding, and searing reality away into nothing.
*
Catra wakes to the sound of the world ending.
She jerks back, the movement so violent it sends her out of her chair and crashing into the floor. She scrambles to right herself, claws screeching against the metal plating, pulse thundering in her ears, her body still braced for the explosion. It takes her a moment to realize it’s not coming, and a few more to understand what she’s looking at.
She’s… in the control room? In the Fright Zone?
What the fuck.
She stays there, sitting on the floor, eyes wide, breathing still ragged, trying to comprehend what the hell just happened. She was at the ruin — she’d set up the explosive — Sparkles had showed up — and…
And the ruin had exploded. She’s sure of it.
But now she’s… here? She reaches for her arm, looking for the gash Adora’s sword had cut into her skin — but there’s nothing.
She stares blankly at the unmarred skin, trying to understand what she’s looking at. Had she… dreamt the whole thing? She must have, but…
With a shiver, she remembers the feeling of the incoming explosion at her back: the split second of deathly calm, the certainty of what was coming.
No. It’d been real. She knows it had.
The communications alarm trills and she jumps, biting back a shriek. Trying to blink away adrenaline induced bright spots, Catra stands on shaky legs and, hesitantly, accepts the call.
Hordak’s face fills the screen. “Force Captain,” he says, like everything is normal.
“Hordak,” she starts. “What just—”
“Our sensors have picked up an unconventional energy signature, emitted just a few minutes ago,” he speaks over her and um. What?
She blinks. Did she somehow survive the explosion but concuss herself so bad she’s hallucinating? “Uh,” she says slowly, “yeah. Yeah, I know…?”
“The source was traced to the outskirts of the Whispering Woods, right alongside the edge of the Crimson Waste. It’s still emitting—”
Ok, that’s enough. Catra speaks up, cutting him off. “What are you talking about? We just stormed that thing.”
Hordak pauses. His face isn’t easy to read, but it looks like Catra’s thrown him. “... Excuse me?”
Catra’s skull feels like it’s about to implode any second. She digs the heel of her hand into her eye, trying to make sense of… any of this. “The ruin in the desert? You asked me to lead a recovery or destruction mission. We got there, found a pile of worthless rocks, and…” She trails off, unsure what exactly had happened at that point. Whatever, the only thing that matters is the result, and that’s simple enough: “And the whole thing blew up.”
Hordak’s eyes narrow. “You’ve already investigated the signal?”
“Because you asked me to.” There’s a slightly hysterical lilt to her voice, but she can’t help it.
“I issued no such order.”
What? “Of course you—”
Hordak lifts a hand to cut her off. “I’m not interested in your delusions, Force Captain. Your assignment is to investigate and retrieve or, if retrieval is impossible, destroy the First Ones artifact. All relevant information has been forwarded, and local teams have been dispatched to the site. Report to me once it is done.” Without further ceremony, he cuts the connection, leaving Catra to stare incredulously at a blank screen.
Hordak’s a pain in the ass on a good day, but he’s not exactly the pranking type. It makes no sense for him to pretend not to remember an assignment, much less to send her on it twice in a row.
Her hand finds her arm — her smooth, uninjured arm — and a pit of unease starts churning in her stomach. Swallowing hard, she spins on her heel and marches out of the room, towards the training grounds.
Soldiers and cadets stop as she passes, straightening up and saluting in a show of respect she’d normally bask in, but this time she doesn’t even see them, instead barrelling through the halls until she finds who she’s looking for.
Lonnie’s standing at the control console for the training circuit, intently monitoring the progress of a few cadets — just like she’d been the day before, when Catra had found her and told her to start assembling a team. The déjà vu only serves to turn Catra’s unease into lead.
Lonnie blinks up at Catra’s approach, chin coming up as she prepares to salute, but Catra doesn’t give her the time, instead nearly sprinting the remaining distance to grab her arm.
“Tell me you remember yesterday,” she hisses.
“Uh—” Lonnie says, and trails off into a wince.
Catra realizes she’s digging her claws into the girl’s skin and forces herself to retract them with more effort than usually required. “Well?” she pushes through gritted teeth.
Lonnie looks severely freaked out, but responds: “Yeah…? You had us go through everything the recovery teams brought back from Salineas, and then we reviewed the equipment in Skiff bay 3.” She gives Catra a once-over. “Are… you feeling okay? You look a little… revved up.”
Catra resists the urge to shake her — barely. “Tell me you remember that First Ones’ ruin,” she growls out. “Tell me you remember the fight with the rebels, and the explosion.”
“A ruin?” Lonnie repeats slowly. “Would that be the ruin that Hordak mentions in the assembly order he sent out, about that weird noise we just had? I was waiting for your orders on that.”
Catra lets go of her, taking a step back. “Fuck,” she mutters. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“Catra, are you sure you’re alright?” Lonnie glances around, like she’s hoping someone else will appear to handle… whatever this is. “Do you… need me to take over on this one? You can sit it out.”
“No,” Catra snaps, sharp enough that Lonnie flinches.
She raises her hands. “I was just saying—”
“I know what you were saying.” Catra forces a deep breath and tries to summon some fucking self-control like the fucking commander she is supposed to be. Is she losing her mind? Maybe. But that’s not a reason to let anyone else know, and it’s certainly not a reason to give anyone an excuse to get rid of her. “I’m fine. Assemble a team and be ready. We leave in fifteen.”
She stalks out of the room, not bothering to wait for Lonnie’s answer. Dream or not, real or not — the answers must lie with that stupid pile of rocks in the desert.
And even if they don’t, at least she’ll get to blow it up again.
*
Catra’s determination takes a hit when they get to the ruin’s site.
It’s exactly as she remembers it, down to the chaos of the fight taking place for control of the building. She clutches the explosive device she’s not let out of her sight for the whole trip, and tries to ignore the way the transport seems to spin around her.
She’s vaguely aware of Lonnie asking her for the plan, but she can’t look away from the screens. This can’t be happening. It can’t be.
“O—kay,” Lonnie says eventually, when it becomes clear Catra isn’t going to answer. “Uh, I guess, everyone follow me? We need to retake control of that building.” She glances at Catra’s bomb. “Um, Catra, do you know the range on that thing, or…?” She clicks her tongue in the face of Catra’s silence, and then addresses the others. “Okay, so, when that thing goes off, everyone retreat. I guess.” She waits one more second with a glance at Catra, and then shrugs. “Alright, move out everyone.”
The rear doors of the transport open, letting in a gust of hot, dry desert wind, heavy with grit and sand. Lonnie’s team files out and, feeling not quite fully in control of her own legs, Catra follows.
She pauses, taking in the fight, the building, the way the sun reflects off the red rocks. Back in the Fright Zone, she’d almost managed to convince herself the whole thing was just a weird set of déjà vu, a product of her sleep-deprived mind, but here… With the sound of the fighting and the heat of the sun and the rumbles of impacts and tremors under her feet?
This isn’t déjà vu. She’s done this.
She marches into the fray, half dazed, feeling like she’s stuck in some kind of dream. More than once, she comes perilously close to getting hit by a stray projectile or magic blast, too stunned to properly keep track of her surroundings.
“Catra.”
The voice, always so horribly familiar, snaps her out of it, at least partly. She blinks, and turns to find Adora in all her She-Ra flowing-cape glory glowering at her, hands braced on her sword. Her eyes are blazing blue, and her stance is one that spells business.
A burning, slicing echo of pain resonates through Catra’s arm, and she takes a half step back reflexively. Yeah — Adora means business alright.
But something in Catra’s expression, or maybe her lack of retort, seems to throw Adora. She pauses, sword lowering a fraction, expression confused but still a little wary, like she’s wondering if this is some kind of trap.
“We’ve done this,” Catra says, even though she isn’t sure why she bothers — maybe it’s just that she’s always had so much trouble lying to Adora. Her voice cracks, but she continues anyway: “Don’t you remember?”
Adora’s mouth falls open, brow creasing. “What?”
Suddenly, the absurdity of the situation is too much to bear. Catra lifts her hands, gesturing at the chaos around them. “This,” she shouts. “We’ve done this. Hello? Why does no one remember this?”
There’s a flash of something Catra can’t decode on Adora’s face, but before either of them can say anything else, a deafening crack splits the silence as a Horde missile crashes into the upper floor of the ruin, collapsing it. Dust and sand fill the air as everyone scrambles to get out of the way of the massive stone chunks, each of them impacting the ground with so much strength the whole ravine seems to shake.
Catra doesn’t need to turn around. Kyle.
Adora’s vanished in the chaos, but this time, Catra doesn’t move. She stands there, amidst fighters, staring up at the ruin, unbothered by the smoke and the sand and the wind. She stands there, and she counts.
When she reaches 200, the ground under her feet shivers, and then stills, just enough that she can feel it, only barely.
Cuh-thunk.
This time, when the air fills with blinding light, she doesn’t close her eyes.
*
Catra wakes to the sound of the world ending.
She doesn’t move; keeps her head where it is, resting on her bent arm, over the surface of the desk. Her neck aches, her back hurts, and her head pounds. The air of the control room is cold and clean and clinical, sharp with the Fright Zone’s metallic scent.
Okay.
So.
This might be a problem.
*
By the end of the sixth loop, she’s worked out that the ruin’s explosion is inevitable, and, most likely, responsible for the way time is repeating.
By the end of the ninth loop, she’s worked out that there’s nowhere she can go that’s out of its reach.
By the end of the fifteenth — or is it sixteenth? — loop, she’s starting to think she might be in real trouble.