Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chapter I. The Rocky Road

So far from home to have a stranger call you, "Darling"

And have your guarded heart be lifted like a child up by the hand

In some town that just means "Home" to them

With no translator left to sound

A butchered tongue still singin' here above the ground

— Butchered Tongue, Hozier

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Rain is not an unnatural occurrence for the city of Brightmoon. It is ever present and familiar, like a slightly annoying acquaintance that you see every day or a sore blister on the ankle after standing up for endless hours on the subterranean train. 

As with any city, rain also makes it look slightly more miserable than it usually is. The streets, though clean, are always unchanging and made of cement and plain gray floor. The tall, tall buildings with their thousand and one windows are always decorated by heavy screens of bright lights that play city ads and commercials day and night no matter the weather of the time. 

There are trees, of course because that is how the blue screens of the city was designed once many years ago, when the city gave away from a simple Brightmoon village to progress and in the way it lost all the colors that the natural trees of Etheria brought with them. 

Most people in the city don´t like rain because why would day? It´s cold and it gets under the clothes no matter how many layers you wear. It doesn´t allow them to enjoy the cheerful colors of the lamps and screens, it makes the streets slippery for the endless cars and it kills the joy of a buzzing nightlife. 

Still, it's nice, it's familiar for the foreign of this city walking through careful steps towards her destination. Like a picture taken on the phone or the rain pouring down on the stores and apartments, making puddles and dripping freezing water through the cracks of the ceilings. It's known, and annoying. 

Like the rain too, sometimes people are annoying too. They walk too slow and drive too fast; they frown the entire time and curse at their soaking shoes and socks and at the inconvenient weather. The tourists bunker on the already packed stores and the locals sneer at them from above their nose. 

More than once someone will end in an altercation with somebody else, and more than once, by the time night falls, everybody will be angry with the world and begging either to pack their bags and elope or for a strong drink, the second more realistic than the first. 

Lawyer Light Hope has realized all these previous points in the few hours she has been in Brightmoon from the moment she stepped off the plane to now. And indeed, her socks are soaked, her hijab is sticking to the sides of her cheeks and she is pretty sure her umbrella got stolen three alleys ago, but for her this rain is also reminiscing something familiar, in a different way than for the people of the city.

She agrees, however, with the drinking part because a good pint of Guinness would come as welcome as sitting to enjoy this rain and shake away the cold from her bones. Alas, she is in front of the pub she has been looking for the entire day yet her working day is barely about to start. 

She walks past the heavy doors of the Crimson Waste and is immediately greeted by the heat and also by a myriad of people of all kinds, quietly speaking to each other inside this orange smelling place so unusually calm in comparison to others pubs she has ever known, or to the bustle still happening beyond the closed doors. 

It´s a clean place, well taken care off after obvious years of hard effort. There are dozens of tables everywhere, live music playing loudly but cheerfully somewhere on the very back and the candid artificial light that keeps away the shadows of the thick night. 

It looks like the kind of place college students and young adults come to hang after a long week, yet again there are many kind of people in here and it is full to the brim, sparkling with pretty makeup from almost everyone inside and accompanying the light´s colors with the even more colorful flags hang everywhere on the walls and in the wood of the ceiling where plants hang. 

In a way, it reminds the lawyer of home and it takes her by surprise for a second as quickly as it goes away again. She shakes herself off the feeling and approaches the long bar on the left side of the pub with her head held up, a smile already falling on her mouth when she catches sight of one of the bartenders approaching her.  

The woman is tall and clearly strong. Her hair has been cut very short, making the white waves curl over her forehead, and she is as pale as a candle, her skin shimmering with left over glitter as she bends to the side to look at Light Hope in the face, never once stopping from cleaning a glass with her towel. 

“Heya” She greets, pointing at her with her sharp chin. “What can I help you with? 

“Good evening, lad.” She greets just as cheerfully, tilting her head.. “I’m looking for Niamh D’Riluth. I was told by my firm that I could find her here.” 

The woman looks at her blankly for a good couple of seconds, confusion taking over her face before she finally falls into something as pleasantly calm as before. 

“Can I know why you are looking for her?”

“It's regarding some inheritance matters, I´m afraid that is all I can say.” Light Hope collects a presentation card off her coat, handing it to the woman so she can take faith in her words. “I could not find any information about her lawyer, but this pub´s address was listed alongside other personal matters. I hoped I could find her in here”

“Um, no sorry.” The white haired woman says again, tilting her head to the side as if the name ringed something on her head but she just could not place it fully. “Niamh, you said?” 

“She died.” A third voice comes from behind Light Hope, exalting her and the woman with the third woman´s sudden presence. “I'm her daughter.”

Lawyer Light Hope turns around to look her in the eye but loses her words as soon as she actually looks at her. 

It's uncanny, the similarities. She knew Niamh had a daughter, that her birth had been one of her reasons for leaving her home, but somewhere inside Light Hope´s mind she thought her daughter would resemble her more than it did the side of her father. 

Instead, she is all different and yet at the very same time so much like her is dizzying. Where Niamh was red haired her daughter's hair is of oak color; the loose curls give her away immediately though, bouncing over her forehead like springs. 

Her skin is dark and scattered in freckles, just as Niamh´s was, but instead of green eyes hers are mingled like spilled paint, hazel and of a blue so deep that is like looking at the morning sea from the bay. Just like her grandmother´s, even though Catra doesn't know that, and with which she is looking at the lawyer with an impatient expression on her face. 

“I´m Catra.” The young woman greets her, placing the heavy wood books of bottles with ease on the counter of the bar, turning around to face the lawyer again. “Or Katherine if you want to stick with professionalism.”

“Oh, pleased to meet you, Miss Katherine. I´m Light Hope, I´m with the Alwyn law firm.” she rushes to say, still tangling with her own tongue. She offers her hand to her who looks slightly dubious for a moment before taking it, shaking it once and letting go from it right after. 

“Niamh was your mom, of course,” the tall woman mutters next to them, slightly mortified. “I´m sorry, Wildcat, it went over my head, but I knew it sounded familiar.”

“It´s alright, Scorp.” Catra reassures her gently, patting the back of the woman's hand. “It´s been a while”

There is something deeply sad in her when she says it, the depth of grief wrapped around her bones no matter how many months have gone by since it happened.  It's something any child that has lost her mother goes through, earlier in life from which should be deemed normal and not for that less tragic. 

“So tell me, Lawyer Light Hope, to what I owe the pleasure of your visit on this cold rainy night,” Catra asks, trying very hard not to sound sarcastic even if it slips a little on the edges. She has recognized the same of the village and with it all her demeanor has changed too, from pleasant to immediately guarded.

“It´s about—” she stops herself, eyeing Scorpia and the customers quickly before lowering her voice. “It´s about your father's matters, Miss Katherine. I´m– not sure if you know by now.”

“I do, I received the letter at my mother's house. I know he is dead too.” She wrinkles her nose. “Didn´t bother to answer back, as you might realize.”

“I understand. However, I´m afraid there are a lot of things he left unresolved, and– they are now yours to take upon.”

Catra´s face remains blank but there is an obvious sharp edge in her eyes when the lawyer pronounces the words. It seems like she was already expecting her to come sooner or later but that didn't mean she didn't find it less annoying. 

“Of course they are.” She mumbles under her breath, absently pinching the skin of her cuticles when she looks away. “I thought everything that had to do with him had been properly dispensed from. Including him”

Lawyer Hope´s first instinct is to throw her head back and cackle, but she remains composed and calm even though she is suddenly overwhelmed by amusement. Is a dark thing to joke about and, after all, she was but an employee of the late man. But that didn´t mean Light Hope didn´t find him any bit less of the asshole everyone knew he was. 

“He was cremated as was his wish, yes.” She mutters, clearing his throat around a fake cough. 

“So? Is there something more to say about him?” 

Catra is wearing a black shirt and comfortable pants, going through the bottles of booze that he hands her friend Scorpia without getting distracted from her conversation with him. It seems like a grounding motion, almost, to keep herself from spiralling down. And Light Hope feels for her, for a second, for being burdened by a weight it wasn't hers to begin with. 

“Quite a deal more, I´m afraid.” She assures her with a deep sighs, finally meeting Catra´s eyes again when she catches the serious undertone of her voice. “Do you think we could discuss this somewhere quieter, miss D’Riluth? I promise it is important.”

Catra stares at her in silence for a long time, weighing his words and her options. She finally gives in after a couple of minutes, dropping her shoulders and nodding.

“Alright.” she turns around to face her friend Scorpia, who is already looking nervously between the lawyer and Catra. “Scorp, do you mind covering the bar for a little? You can go home earlier after I´m done”

“No need, we live together anyway,” Scorpia reassures her, slightly louder than usual as if she wanted to let everybody know Catra is looked after and not alone. Then she drops her tone a little, leaning over the counter to speak to Catra only. “Are you sure about this? Don´t you want me to call Netossa?”

“It´s a Friday night, Scorp. My nice and calm lawyer must be out on a date with her wife already. And I don't really feel like getting a scolding or paying her extra now, not with our debt. And I´m a big girl, Scorp, I can take care of myself.” Catra palms her gently on her broad shoulders, smiling though slightly strained still. “We´ll be in the office. If I take too long you can send Huntara.”

Scorpia throws a swift look at their security guard, just as tall and even broader, already taking an eye on everything, including them. She nods too and Scorpia finally deflates too, tilting her head towards her friend. 

“´kay”

“This way then,” Catra says to the lawyer this time, guiding her across the corridors of the pub until they reach a small pair of shell staircases. 

The second floor is quieter than the first, with only the sound of the music echoing through the floor. It's warm too but the course of rain has started to make its way here now, water dripping from errand cracks on the ceiling and into buckets already placed over the carpets. 

Catra dodges them with practiced knowledge, reaching the crystal door of her office. It´s mostly clean and organized but still filled to the brim with papers. There are bills and inventory lists over her laptop and even more catalogs scattered across the surface of her old desk.

The light is warm and the window is closed, and there is a dusty music player somewhere in the corner playing soft music that sounds all too familiar to the lawyer when Catra invites her to sit down on the chair in front of the desk. 

“Alrighty,” Catra chews, wrinkling her nose as she cleans the papers and frees the desk so they can properly talk. And she looks so much like Niamh in that moment that Light Hope almost feels like weeping. 

“First of all, I´d like to offer my condolences, Miss Katherine.” She says, strained through her teeth. “Your mother´s death, it was unknown to us. And I´m really sorry.”

“Yeah, well, I was not expecting it either.” Catra shuffles with her clothes and with her nails, looking everywhere but at him. “And it was just her and me, there was nobody else so I didn´t let anybody know but close friends. And they are all here.”

“May I know what happened?”

“Bad luck,” Catra cuts, slightly sharp on her tongue. “That's what one of the doctors told me. An aneurysm while she slept, four years ago. It wasn't painful and she was at peace. And she knew I loved her to the very end, so that must matter for something.”

The way she says it, it sounds heartbroken, heavy with sorrow. Catra is at peace, too, but losing a mother so young can break anyone and it has broken her in a way she will never be able to repair, not like she wants them to be fixed in the first place. Those are the cracks that come from loving her mother so deeply and she bares them with pride, knowing her mother loved her sincerely to the very end too. 

“I´m sorry,” The lawyer says again, looking down at the wood.

Catra´s old chair creaks when she leans towards her, regarding her with a curious eye. “Did you know my mother? From before she left that village of yours?”

“I knew her since childhood,” she admits, seeing the immediate surprise in this young woman´s eye. “You´ll see, my village is very close, we all know each other. We shared classrooms and I was there when she— when she married your father.”

“Oh,” Catra frowns, the matter of her father making her sour again. 

She looks calmer and more emotionally intelligent than Light Hope could have ever predicted, but such are the results of being raised by a loving single mother and from losing her young. She is thirty too, and a businesswoman, no longer a teen yet still slightly lost in her identity. 

“Mom never spoke about any of you,” Catra chuckles, looking at her hands. “In fact, she never spoke about anything of her life there or about the place. She wanted us to start fresh, she wanted me to find myself here.”

“And did you find yourself, Miss Katherine?” She is unable to hold back, biting her own tongue when Catra´s smart eyes bore on her again. 

“What did you want to discuss with me?” She answers instead, drumming her fingers over the restholds of her chair. 

Light Hope nods to herself, catching the not so subtle indirect to drop the matter, and opens her folder, picking up all the papers inside. 

“As you know by now, your father died three months ago. He left no will as his death was quite sudden so your mother´s and his wedding certificate and the lack of divorce paperwork would have made her the next in kin to inherit, but as your honorable mother has laid in peace now too, those benefits reside now on you.” Light Hope hands Catra the thick bunch of paper, huffing. “You are his only daughter, so that makes you the sole heiress to him.”

“I´m surprised he had no other kids laying around in the village”

“He was not very popular among the locals and he quite honestly wouldn´t have cared to recognized them as his anyway.”

“Great.” Catra mutters but she doesn´t sounds happy at all. “More debts I guess?”

“There were debts, yes, but they were covered with a good part of his money once he died. By this point everything he owed has already been reabsorbed by the banks, which means on the good side you have no debts from him, but on the other hand more than half his fortune was lost.”

“Ain´t that just great?” Catra chews, running her eyes through endless bank paperwork. “Silly bastard never found it in himself to help my mamma and he still dies in debt. What a fucking loser.”

Light Hope bites back a chuckle, again, finding the last statement of the bank and handing it to her with a steady hand. “After all that deduction, this is the total money of your inheritance, miss Katherine.”

Catra stares at the extended paper as if it was to suddenly explode in her hand before finally taking it, unfolding it reluctantly. Whatever she was expecting to find inside is nowhere near what really is because she burst into giggles, shaking her head. 

“Nah.” Catra chuckles, leaving the paper back on the table. “That's good, that's a good one, Miss Hope, but it´s also a bit of a fucked up taste, not going to lie to you.”

“Whatever you mean, miss Katherine?” Light Hope asks, actually confused.

“Your joke.” Catra says with a roll of her eyes, pointing at the paper with her chin. “The amount on the paper.”

“Oh, I´m not joking.” Light Hope reassures her, suddenly understanding. “I assure you, what is in that paper is what is meant to be.”

Catra takes the paper again, shaking it softly in front of Light Hope´s face. “Lawyer Hope, it says a million euros in here,” Catra points out progressively paler. “So I need you to tell me you are joking.”

“I´m not joking,” Light Hope repeats, suddenly worried Catra is going to pass out so she just rushes through the rest, picking up another loose paper from the batch. “Um, here it is. The small remaining–”

“Small”

“Small remaining, yes, of your father´s fortune, the cash accounts left on Galway´s Bay and all the physical assets that were not taken to pay off his debts have been legally passed on in their entirety to his next of kin, who would be you Katherine D’Riluth.” Light Hope is aware that Catra is staring at her as if she had grown a second head but she finishes reading, reaching the matter that presses her the most. “Of these last it includes the rights to the land of the Valley of the Lost. As of today, that would mean you're also the sole owner of Castle Grayskull and all in it.”

Catra does not look— happy, which in some part of Light Hope´s heart comes as deep relief. She has seen many things on her line of work and she knows how most heirs and heiresses react to this kind of news, which most of the time does not augur anything good. 

Catra, however, leans her face away to wipe away angry tears from her eyes, pressing her lips together into a thin line. When she turns to look back at Light Hope her face is still pale but calmer, a certain kind of rage hidden deep within her pretty factions. 

“Jeez,” she mutters through gritted teeth, barely managing to contain the grudge in it. “And he lost most of it?”

Light Hope grimaces and nods, shrugging. “I know”

“What a fucking dick.” Catra spats, staring at the papers flat on her desk without really looking at them at all. “You said Castle Grayskull. It´s, it´s an actual castle?” 

“Yes.” Light Hope ruffles right back up at her words, adrenaline coursing through her veins as she grabs the bundle of photographs and the very old scriptures of the castle, placing them in Catra´s work worn hands. “Oh, it's a magnificent building, old now, but it was and still is of great importance for the people of Alwyn. It contains much of our history through the war and about our ancestors.”

“If it's so important, why does it have an owner? Shouldn't it belong to the village?” Catra inquiries with a frown, chewing on the inside of her cheek as she gazes quickly at the yellowed parchment of the scriptures. 

“It should but there was a tragedy many years ago in Alwyn. A hurricane almost erased the village from the island, many buildings were destroyed and lives were lost.” 

Light Hope chews on the words, tapping her nails against the old wood. 

“The village put up the castle on auction to collect enough money to help everyone. They were hoping the neighboring villages could help, so one day Alwyn could buy Greyskull back. And it worked, many people were helped buy— your father bought it and took it for himself.” Light Hope clicks her tongue against the back of her teeth, trying to hide the displeasure on her face and failing miserably at it. “He lived there”

Catra stares at her for a long second, and for a moment is Light Hope the one that feels studied and not the other way around. Then Catra takes her eyes away just to stare at the ceiling of the office, following the drops of freezing rain that are falling from the leak on the roof and into a tiny bucket next to her. 

“Okay.” Catra, still not looking at her.

Light Hope shifts on her chair, suddenly nervous. “Okay?”

“Okay.” When Catra looks back at her she looks every bit of Niamh and nothing like her father. “Give it back”

Light Hope blinks, speechless. “What?”

“Give it back. You´re a lawyer, you live there, give it to the village, I give my permission. It was not his to begin with and I don't want it.” Catra says in a breath, trying to give the scriptures back. 

Light Hope has been left speechless; she expected to come here and explain to Niamh what had happened, after all nobody knew better that castle than her. And then she had imagined her trying to convince her smart daughter to understand the importance of the castle to a village she could not remember. 

She had not thought it would be this easy, and she had not thought it would be this selfless. It´s a relief, it is also deeply confusing. 

“Miss Katherine, I— admire your selflessness, but if I may, it's not so simple.” Light Hope starts, trying to calm the excitement in her own voice. “If you renounce the ownership of it like this, the castle will fall as an intestate asset and anybody could go and snatch it again, especially the company your father was making deals with, and then we would lose it for good. Castle Grayskull is too important for the valley to risk it”

Catra narrows her eyes, nibbling into her bottom lips nervously. She leans over the desk and stares at Light Hope directly in the eyes.

“So, what do you suggest I do?” She asks, obviously nervous but still holding herself away. “You didn't only come here to speak about the inheritance, did you? You came to vouch for the Castle, so what do you want me to do?”

She is tense and strong willed but she is not being purposely mean. In fact, she looks scared, about a life completely alien to her until thirty minutes ago. She is a child of Alwyn who was taken away before she could even begin to remember it and she knows nothing of it yet for some reason looks eager, almost as if just waiting for anyone to give her an excuse. 

Light Hope grins at her, tilting her head. She reaches inside the pockets of her coat and picks up the rusty key of Castle Grayskull´s gates, leaving it in the space between the paperwork and Catra´s trembling fingers. 

“Please take the time to know the land you were born in. Then, you can make a decision about what you can do. I promise I´ll help you whatever you choose.” Light Hope hums, watching herself being stared by Razz´s eyes on her granddaughter´s conflicted face. “I promise you, you won't regret it.”

᯽ 

“So, that's it? You're going?”

Scorpia is walking nervously from side to side of the room, which frankly is getting a little bit in Catra´s nerves. She can see her pacing from the window to the door and back out of the corner of her eye, still halfway buried in all the pillows scattered over her bed. 

“Yeah, I guess so.” Catra shrugs, throwing her arm over her eyes. There is more movement inside the room coming from Perfuma, Scorpia´s fiance, walking from the closet to the suitcases on the bed instead. “Perfuma, those are a lot of clothes”

Perfuma grins, excited for Catra and at the same time slightly secretive, as if for some reason she knew something nobody else did and it made her eager to kick Catra out of the house already. 

“You should take something warm, darling. Ireland is very cold this time of the year.” Perfuma chirps, throwing yet again another sweater into the already packed suitcase. 

“On your own?” Scorpia continues, tapping her fingers and palms together nervously. 

“I mean, yeah.” Catra scrambles back up, cross legged over the warm mattress. “That lawyer said it was something I needed to see for myself and I'm kind of curious after all these years.” Catra scrunches her nose, a thought suddenly crossing her mind. “She said my father used to live there which is disgusting as it is. If I let the castle get lost the village might actually come hunt me down themselves”

Catra flops back into the bed, burying her head into another spare pillow she finds on her way. She feels the mattress sinking below another weight when Scorpia sits next to her,still fumbling nervously with her bare feet. 

“But you don't know anyone there.” She points out, grabbing one of Catra´s loose curls and pulling from it restless. “Or maybe there is still family from your mom's side?”

“I don´t think so but to be honest I have no fucking idea.” Catra kicks her feet into the air, staring at her toes through crossed eyes.  “Mom never spoke about anything or anyone there, but I know my grandparents were already dead by the time she left and she was an only child like me.”

“Maybe in her things then?”

“I already looked.” Catra narrows her eyes, this time looking at her friend's face. “There are no documents, no diaries, no photographs. All she has goes from the moment we arrived here. And when I asked her about it, she said she wanted me to have all the opportunities I could get in Brightmoon without worrying about the past. She— she didn't even teach me the language.”

Catra´s breath catches on her throat and she doesn´t say it or show it but she suddenly feels like she is about to burst into tears. It´s not something she talks about, at all, not even to her friends though she knows they care for her, they have proved it to her many times. But the weight of being a child without a root, without even being allowed to know it to begin with, still hovers over her with all the weight of the world. 

She does not blame her mother and she doesn´t hold a grudge with her, she never did. But still, very few people speak about the weight of children that have grown up feeling like they don´t belong anywhere at all. 

“I think this is the correct thing to do.” Perfuma joins in the little bundle on the bed, sitting at the other side of Catra. She combs the loose loops of Catra´s hair into a braid, the lavender smell of her perfume calming her down immediately. “It´ll help you close this circle too”

“I don´t even know if the circle started at all, ´Fuma” Catra mumbles, allowing herself to fall heavily over her friend´s lap. “But thank you”

The golden chain of her necklace pools on the hollow space between her collarbones, making the cold metal of the pendants raise goosebumps on her skin. Scorpia follows the movement with her eyes, playing with Catra´s pinky over her lap. 

“But—” Scorpia starts, unsure on how to say the words. “What if—?”

“I'm on my meds and I haven´t had a crisis in years.” Catra takes Scorpia´s nervous hand fully, tangling her fingers with her friend´s. “I'll be fine.”

Scorpia still hesitates, throwing a glance towards Perfuma while a silent conversation goes between them. There must be something in Perfuma´s face that she cannot see because Scorpia´s shoulders drop, her face still sour with worry. 

“We can still go with you”

“And who is going to take care of Crimson´s? Dee? It would be a theater club when we get back, which I wouldn't mind if it wasn't because they would demolish the poor building.” Catra rolls her eyes, trying to fake annoyance to hide just how nervous she truly is. “I just— need to sort all that Castle stuff before it drives me up the wall. And I need ya both here to look after our business.”

Catra shoots back up, crossing her legs over the bed. She looks between both of her friends, their dark eyes regarding her both with worrisome and certain kind of pride that Catra does not know how to react to. 

“We can finally pay the mortgage and do all those renovations we had talked about with the money.” Catra insists, looking through the window of the apartment at the closed doors of their pub, quiet now that the dawn has started to roll on.

“I mean yeah— But still. That is making me nervous too, you are giving us a lot, Wildcat.”

Catra crosses her arms over her chest, tapping nervously on the bed. “We opened the Crimson together, Scorpia. Paying off the mortgage of the pub and investing on it is part of my obligations.”

“But, the Crimson´s was my dream Cat, not yours. You helped me because you´re my best friend and I'll forever be grateful but I know that's not what you really wanted to do.” Scorpia wrinkles her nose, her eyes watering. “All that money, you should use it to have the life you truly want, Wildcat.”

“I don't even know what I want.” Catra mutters, shaking her head from darker thoughts. “And just say it yourself anyway. You are my best friend, I don´t mind giving that money to the Crimson´s. At least that way all that money that man had can be used for something good.”

Scorpia opens and closes her mouth, nibbling on her bottom lip. “And— the other money—?”

“Oh.” Catra´s pupils go wide, looking between Scorpia and Perfuma this time. “Consider it a thank you for letting me crash here without charging me rent”

“We did that because we love you, darling.” Perfuma chips in, cradling Catra´s face between her palms. “And you needed to get out of that house.”

Catra wrinkles her nose, making a monumental effort to push those memories away. She doesn't want to think about herself after her mom passed away, she doesn't want to remember the long and cold days and nights curled up on the floors and the carpets of that house. Doesn´t want to recall the morning she arrived to visit her, like every single day to have breakfast together and her mom was already asleep and gone. 

She can't think about it and doing it would break her all over again, so instead she holds herself into her friends hands, 

“Then think of it as a wedding present.” Catra shrugs, pulling from both Scorpia´s and Perfuma´s cheeks until they are both laughing, easing a bit the tension in the air. “From the maid of honor of course”

“Of course you are, ouch.” Scorpia nods, rubbing her sore cheek as she turns around to study Catra´s face again.   “Are you sure you´ll be alright?”

“Really sure.” Catra chews on the inside of her cheek until she forces herself to stop. “Maybe it'll help with all that peace stuff. ”

“It will, sweetie.” Perfuma claps her palms together, closing the clasps of the suitcase.  “And whatever you need we are right here. You just need to call us and we´ll go”

“I know, I know,” Catra huffs, groaning when Perfuma leans down and kisses her on the cheek loudly and purposely. “Ugh, get off me”

“By the way, are you taking a plane there?” Scorpia asks, leaning over Catra´s legs to take a better look at the papers Light Hope had given her before leaving back to her village.

“I guess so. That lawyer got me tickets.” Catra flops back into the warm blankets of the bed, trusting her friends to look out for her. “I sure damn hope is has nothing to do with the sea”

᯽

It's a boat. It´s a goddamn boat.  

It's actually a ferry, but in Catra´s book they both fall into the same category of means of transportation designed by the devil. 

And it´s not the ferry itself the problem, in fact it is one of the nicest places Catra has been, neat and spacious and clearly made to enjoy the scenery going on beyond the railing. No, the real problem falls in the fact that the ferry is in the sea and the sea is made of fucking water which terrifies Catra. And that water also makes tides that in return are moving the entire huge ferry from side to side like a rollercoaster and that are making Catra feel like she was a cracked egg yolk thrown into a blender and spun around violently. 

In fact, Catra would very much prefer jumping into the silver waters if that would mean escaping the claws of the next wave, tilting the entire ferry dangerously to the side while Catra leans over the railing like a drunk and tries not to throw up. 

“Oh, dear—” Catra groan, almost on her knees as she tries to focus on a point of the irish sea and falls miserably at it, “fucking— Light Hope.”  She spats, closing her eyes until she sees sparks. “I'm going to kill her”

She is exhausted already and she is not even near to finishing her travel, which makes her think even more of throwing herself into the damn sea. She already had to go through to train until she reached Holyhead and from there the murderous four hours on this moving death machine all the way to the port of Dublin where she would have to take yet another train to cross all the way to Galway Bay and one last bus to Alwyn. 

It wouldn´t be as bad if it wasn´t for the damn sea tides and because Catra has been up since three in the morning and by the time she´d finally make it there it´d be actual nighttime and even if she tried to convince Scorpia she was cool and collected, she actually knew nothing on the damn village but that lawyer and she was nervous as fuck. 

Still, leaving behind the fact that her breakfast had abandoned her stomach fifteen minutes ago, it was a nice trip when sitting down. Or when the ferry was not moving at all.

Her mother had never done any kind of effort to try and take Catra back to the land they had been born into, and after her death the possibility of visiting it by her own accord had never occurred to Catra or it had lacked importance at all. In fact, if it wasn't for her father's sudden death, Catra is almost sure that she had never wandered back to Alwyn at all, forever rooted in Brightmoon and in the city.  

Catra truly hopes, deep within her bones, that this trip will actually be worth something. Not about money or an inheritance that she neither sought nor wanted, but something for herself. Maybe it was a beautiful but foolish dream, or maybe Perfuma was rubbing way too much on her, but Catra was almost sure that going back to a place she could not even remember was meant to be for something, even if she could not even begin to imagine for what. 

Catra sits in the furthest chair on the center of the ferry and stares at the immense expanse of sea passing them by, losing herself in thought. There are seagulls fluttering over the roof of the ferry and stealing the food of the distracted guests of the ferry, but they also fly high and free back towards their homes on land, uncaring of the things that keep humans from returning to the places where they truly want to go. 

She can hear several people, friends and families and even strangers chattering among each other, some with the familiar accent of Etheria and other´s with the clear accent of the irish lands, sharing stories in a language that Catra cannot understand no matter how long she sits there on her own and tries to. 

She watches them in silence and listens as the words in gaeilge bounce easily from their lips, adults and children the same, smiling and laughing at the words, as they come easy and native to them for that is their home and they have been nurtured by it and what it means to belong. 

Catra knows nothing about it. She is a stranger in her warm clothes, like someone that so desperately wants to feel herself part of something, part of these pretty words she can barely make sense of but that only feels like she is walking in borrowed shoes towards a land that she knows nothing about and that might not even want her back. 

In a way, she feels like one of the loose pebbles stuck to the bottom of the ferry, taken back and forth and never truly belonging anywhere. She feels herself a bit like a butchered tongue, fallen from a mother's mouth, attached to nothing and still seeking to hold herself into something.

She knows she is not the only one in this world that feels like this and she doesn´t flatter herself of that thought. She is not and will not be the first person that is taken away from her home trying to find some wish for a better future; she is not the first one feeling adrift; she is not the first one wishing with every birthday candle to come back, just once until the candles became many and the wish fewer.

She is not the only one coming back knowing that she knows nothing about this land, this language, this sun hidden behind thick clouds. Even this moving water, alive as it moves with the tide, making her slightly sick. 

Catra rolls her head back, still looking at the myriad of people walking past her without regarding her once. She lets it rest over the freezing cold of the ferry´s metal. She feels colder the more they approach the shore of Dublin, her cheeks pinching with deep red even below the thick material of the scarf Perfuma had wrapped around her before sailing. 

She is so distracted by the people that she barely notices when the ferry finally stops moving like a sardine can in the middle of the sea and they park on the busy bridges of the Dublin Port. 

It´s a already past midday by now and even though it's cold, the sky is a beautiful bright blue above Catra´s head. There is already a lot of movement all around her, knocking accidentally on her suitcase when she doesn´t move. The rise of sounds make her skin crawl beneath her clothes, like every single time she steps on the streets of Brightmoon. 

Catra chews down the urgent need of stimming her anxiety down and starts walking until she finds a cab willing to take her on the short journey between the port and the Dublin Heuston station. 

She absently wonders if she looks just as lost as she truly feels right now, hoping she at least is able to save herself some kind of dignity by following the carefully detailed directions Light Hope had sent her that morning when she hadn´t been able to pick her up. 

Instead Catra stares at the tall roofs of the Heuston Station and barely manages to reach inside in time for her train. The wagon is calm and almost empty and it gives Catra just enough time to lose herself inside her thoughts and in the landscapes running by just outside her window. 

Much like the ferry, the travel is long, but at least she is on steady ground now and there is nobody talking around her anymore, which is sadder than she can even begin to imagine it should be in the first place. 

Her phone starts vibrating on the inside of her pocket, ripping her from spiraling thoughts. Light Hope´s tiny name pops up on the screen, making Catra´s stomach already twisted into knots to squirm around itself even more violently. 

“Hello?”

“Miss Katherine,” Light Hope´s deeply professional voice tumbles from the other side. “Are you in Dublin?”

“I´m on the train to Galway now,” Catra says, squirming uncomfortably on her own skin. “Is something wrong?”

“Not at all but I´m afraid I won't be able to meet you at Alwyn after all,” Light Hope answers, apologetic. “I´m barely out of Liverpool, it will take me a bit longer to reach you from what I thought.”

“Great.” Catra drops her head into her palm, pinching the bridge of her nose with her nails. 

“I´m very sorry. You can try to find the road to the Castle but I would suggest you stay in the village´s hostal and rest. The path can get treacherous during rain time if you don't know it well.” The lawyer´s words are well meant but Catra cannot help but to flinch and the sudden reminder that she doesn't really know where she is going. “Is that alright?”

“Yeah, okay,” Catra mutters, sinking into her seat. 

“I´ll give you a call the moment I arrive in Alwyn.” Light Hope´s voice sounds a little further away now, distracted by something else. “Don´t worry, the people of Alwyn are very nice to visitors.”

“Sure,” Catra mutters, wrinkling her nose against a newfound rush of tears. “Thanks.”

Visitors, Catra thinks to herself, biting into her cuticles until she feels them bleeding. That's right, she is only that, one more visitor on the stone paths of that place. Maybe, truly, no matter how hard Catra tries she will never be able to be something else but a stranger. 

Catra is still not sure if she is allowed to want for more but gosh sometimes she wishes. 

The trees and beautiful hills of Galway are already greeting her back but she has never felt as far away from them as now. She doesn't know if they are meant for her at all but she does know that she cannot turn back, not now. She has made it this far and Catra will be damn if her own fear drowns her now. 

“Why can't we go?” Catra had asked her mother, just once, when her curiosity for the village that had seen her be born was stronger than anything else in her young body. 

And Niamh had answered, kind still but fir, unmoving as a stone in the middle of a river. “ There is nothing in there that could give you anything better from what we can get here. We don't need any of it, trust me.”

I´m sorry, mamma. Catra thinks, to herself and to her mother maybe, if she is truly in some better place looking at her. I need to see it for myself. I just need to know. 

She rests her forehead over the cold glass of the window, playing with the tiny seahorse her mother gifted her once as she stares at the Irish landscapes surrounding the train tracks. Here everything is quiet, calm in a different way to the pub and a hundred miles away from Brightmoon, so close to where she lived her entire life yet so far away from there. 

Here the neon lights are replaced by the golden shimmer of the sun through the thick clouds. Here smells like damp earth and the rain that slips sometimes through her coat feels more familiar to her than any other rain she felt before.  Here there is something in the air, for Catra, who's trying to find reasons to be able to leave. 

She hears someone speaking in gaeilge on the neighbors seats of the wagon and when she turns around she sees a small child with her family that looks a little bit like her; loose curls and warm skin and bright eyes. And somehow she doesn't feel completely like she is a stranger.

𑁍

In a strange occurrence for this time of the year, it is not raining in Alwyn. It is both a small blessing and slightly inconvenient, depending who you´re asking. 

The rain waters crops and gardens but it also, most likely than not, makes the paths slippery with water and mud. The absence of rain makes the sticky heat crawl beneath wool sweaters but also allows the kids to play around on the puddles on the ground, so instead of the endless drops of rain against the tiles of the roofs, their overjoyed laughter is what fills the stores and the homes. 

Rain brings cold breeze but also clear skies; rain creates treacherous meadows but also sprouts colorful flowers on the edges of the paths. Rain once almost broke this village but today it makes it flourish, grow around it like a motivation and not a barrier.

As with most of the things that have changed Adora´s life forever, rain brings her to the doorsteps of their homeland on an unusually clear evening. 

Adora is sitting on the precarious benches of the hostal´s bar. If she is truly honest, more than a bar it´s in reality a glorified breakfast and dinner that everyone gravitates into after a long day of rain and work. 

Adora is here after the worn out of her work day, first of all, because she loves this place. As with most things in Alwyn, it hasn´t changed at all in her thirty years of life, or at least since Adora was old enough to remember it, and the familiarity of being constant is societies the only thing that keeps Adora sane. 

Second of all, she is here because every single muscle in her body is screaming, exhausted after being close to eighteen hours out on the sea pulling from nets and being under the scorching sun of november. She feels like one of the fishes she helped Adam deboned for their dinner on high seas and she is pretty sure if she were to lean anywhere else but on the counter of this bar, she would pretty much pass out. 

Third of all, and maybe of most importance for Adora, she is annoyed. She has been pretty much annoyed for the good part of the day, though her friends would probably suggest it is more like years by now. And because she is annoyed, she has a headache, so she is dire need of the most awful whiskey that Mara can give to her and stop thinking for five fucking minutes. 

Much like being in high seas with her own thoughts, being here tonight is not helping her ignore the entire situation that has made her annoyed in the first place. Everyone here seems incapable of talking about anything else and is getting into Adora´s nerves. 

“Are you sure she is coming today?”

“Mara said so,” a few people chatter among themselves, not even trying to be quiet. “It seems she is coming to know the village”

“She is coming to see the castle,” someone else adds, as sour as Adora feels when she listens to the words. “Apple doesn't fall far from the tree.”

A couple of murmurs agreeing, glasses clinking with each other and long puffs of cigarettes. Adora takes a smoke too, wrinkling her nose around the acid taste. 

“But she is Niamh´s daughter,” a fourth party adds, almost as if they were trying very hard to hold onto trust. “She was not raised by him, he didn't even recognize her as his..”

“Niamh left,” the first one interrupts, dropping the glass against the table. “We have no idea what she learned in the city. But to love this fishing village? I doubt it.”

Adora dabs the cigarette off against the astray next to her elbow, resting her forehead over her knuckles. It's not fair, it's really not fair and it fucking sucks. 

Losing Castle Grayskull to that man had been massively fucked up but at least it was in a way expected. They knew who he was, they knew the kind of person that he had become outside Alwyn, betraying his own family for money. And the moment he was found dead and rotting inside the castle, quietly, the entire village took a breath. Adora knows at least she did, no matter how fucked up it was, to be relieved that he was finally gone. 

This? This was a bad joke of a legal system that failed Adora´s home. And it is humiliating. 

Adora knows that it is kind of irrational to be this mad. Adam has told her countless of times that she had to fucking relax, but is just that Adam doesn´t understand or maybe he doesn´t remember. Maybe nobody in the village truly remembers that Castle Grayskull was the reason why they survived that storm. 

Maybe they remember but they don´t know, they cannot know, that for Adora it was also her playground and her safe space; her only spot in the world where the sounds would go quiet and the rain was a friend not a motive to be afraid. 

They cannot possibly know that it is also the last place she saw her parents alive. And it´s important, for Adora. 

Being sold to a man that did not understand nor respect how weird and beautiful that place is, was sorrowful. Being passed down from his greedy hands to his strained daughter like a piece of candy made Adora want to scream her lungs out. 

Adora wasn't like this, before . So filled with resentment, with barely contained anger, with dread. Or maybe she was and she just tried to supreme it for so long that now that it was out in the open it only made her sour. However it was, 

Adora is not sweet and candid now, she is pretty much done and she is tired and she wants to be mad, she should be allowed to be mad, more than anyone else in this village because she has lost it all and no matter what she did it was not enough. 

She thinks she is allowed to be mad, because it's not fair. The rain did not scare her before.

“It's that her?” A curious voice rips her out of her thoughts, tumbling her to reality like a comet against the sea. 

“I guess so.” There are people slowly gathering on the old windows of the hostal, people Adora has known her whole life, staring as if the doors of Tí na nÓg had suddenly sprouted out of the bare ground in the middle of the street. “She's the only one looking like she is completely lost” 

“Well she doesn't pass as a tourist” 

“She's still a city girl, lower your expectations” 

Hushed murmurs of agreement. Adora cannot help herself; before she even realizes what she is doing she is already standing up and reaching one of the empty windows, leaning against the cracking wood of the frame and stained glass to stare outside.  

“She looks like a soaked cat” 

“A little.” A chuckle, then a marveled gasp. Adora narrows her eyes. “She is cute though”

She is not cute.

She is a typhoon, a cloudburst, a thunderstorm clothed in soft clothes and sharp eyes. 

She looks like the rain, flickering, ever changing yet somehow constant. She looks like the meadows, filled with water lilies and cold. She looks like the Irish spring and the start of the winter, scattered in freckles like pebbles on the floor.

She looks like the sea washing on their shore, fickle, arriving and then leaving again; seafoam and coral and sharp rocks. She looks like the cliffs of Moher, everlasting and dizzying towards the blue, blue sea. 

She looks like a fairytale, meant to warn Adora from the Sídhe. She looks like Fionnuala, like a swan, turned back into a human princess by some love spell. She looks like Áine, a summer sun walking through the stone pavement of Alwyn. She looks like Deirdre, like old love and promised sorrow that will break Adora´s heart.

Adora thinks it´s not fair, how deeply beautiful she is and how much Adora already hates her.

 ᯽ 

The warmth of the hostal´s bar is so familiar for Catra that for a second she feels like she is back on the Crimson, surrounded by the clank of glass vases and the chattering of Scorpia in the corner. 

It is, however, so truthfully and fundamentally different from their pub in the city that once that the surprise washes out of Catra´s body she finds herself slightly speechless, staring only at the scenery in front of her. 

The place is old, that is quite obvious. Old but well taken care of and obviously deeply loved. The wood smells like it has lived many decades but the ceilings are new. And while the floor creaks every once in a while where people stand, the warm lights of the chandeliers come from the spotlights and not from candles as it once did. 

There are tables and chairs scattered around the space, each different to the other and all so familiar that it gives them some kind of charming sight that doesn't go missing for Catra as she watches the myriad of people chattering among themselves, sharing a drink and meals and barely flinching every single time someone opens the door and lets the cold breeze of the after rain slip inside. 

Everything is strangely familiar and it hits Catra directly like a fist on the face except for the fact that every single head inside the hostal turns around to stare at her the moment she sets foot past the door. 

They aren´t even trying to be discreet about it, which would make Catra extremely annoyed and mutter something about manners if it wasn´t because she is as nervous as the day Dee and Huntara took her boongie jumping from the city´s bridge. 

Her stomach feels like it has been turned upside down and her throat itches like a swarm of bees released inside her mouth and lungs. She is also wet, her hair sticking to the sides of her face and her coat spotted by the heavy drops of rain that had caught her in Galway before finally arriving at the village. She is aware she doesn´t look nearly as good and in control as she would have liked it and it is doing horrid for her already nervous head. 

Catra gulps heavily and steps inside the hostal fully, refusing to meet anyone´s eyes for more than a split of a second and ignoring as hard as she can the chattering following her behind while she approaches the counter of the bar, backpack and suitcase dragging behind. 

There is a woman behind the counter, tall and with deeply gray eyes, so clear that they make Catra dizzy for a second. She is cleaning glasses with a clean towel and humming under her breath in a way that reminds Catra a lot of Scorpia. 

She is a bit older than Catra too, her dark hair falling into a heavy braid behind her back, and she smiles at Catra the moment she gets near, trying to breathe some kind of normality into the situation. 

Catra appreciates it, especially because she cannot shake the feeling that someone is staring intently at her from one of the old windows. 

“Hey there, lassie,” the woman greets her with a huge smile, pointing at her with her chin. “What can I help ya with?”

“Hey,” Catra croaks out, sore from traveling the entire fucking day. She feels worn to the bone and her body is aching, already asking for any kind of rest even if it comes at the cost of stares. “I think I have a room booked for the Hostal? Lawyer Light Hope set it of for me”

The woman smiles, something tiny and secretive that tells Catra she already knew. “You are miss D'Riluth, right?”

Catra blinks, wrinkling her nose. “Uh, yeah”

“Don´t worry,” the woman says when she catches Catra´s hesitation. “Hope is my wife. She asked me to set the room for you.” The woman finishes with the glasses and leans over the counter, offering her hand to Catra. “I´m Mara.”

“Oh, hi”

Catra answers the greeting equally, shaking her hand once before dropping it completely. She fights it but she cannot help but to flinch, her nerves at the very edge as the chattering all around keeps going. She isn't even sure if they are talking about her at all and she doesn´t want to flatter herself they do, but she cannot understand what they are saying to each other and she is suddenly all over again on the ferry, surrounded by uncertainty. 

“Ya can leave your suitcase here, lassie,” Mara keeps saying, seemingly not noticing Catra´s nervousness or being too kind to point it out. “Can I offer you a drink to warm you up?”

“Um, no thanks I can't drink,” it slips out of Catra without even thinking about it. The grumble in her stomach distracts her enough as to not catch the curious expression in Mara´s face. “Maybe something to eat?”

“Sure thing! Pick a seat and I'll bring it to you.” Mara´s attitude is honestly refreshing for Catra´s anxiety, in the way that she doesn't treat her exactly like she is a complete stranger. But then again it can be a Light Hope thing, asking her wife to not scare off the new girl. “Anything else.”

“No, thanks.” Catra mutters under her breath, feeling the back of her neck suddenly rising on point. Like goosebumps running through her entire body. 

She curls her hands in a fist inside her pocket and feels the paper sheet with the description of the castle wrinkling around her fingers, reminding her of it. 

“Oh, actually—” Catra rushes to say, but by the moment she pulls the paper out and tilts her head back up, Mara is already gone, busy with the rest of the dinner and greeting other incoming guests easily in their shared native tongue. 

Catra grumbles under her breath, falling back into her ankles. She knows Light Hope asked her to stay put in the hostal until her arrival but if Catra has always been something, it is naturally curious even if it leaves her all beaten up in the end. And now that she is here, right at the center of the village where her mother grew up, she is as nervous as she is restless to go out and drink the life out of it fully. 

Catra runs her eyes sideways towards the people gathered on the tables and corners of the old dinner, and who avoid her eyes quickly when she meets theirs. It makes whatever confidence Catra is trying to hold inside to almost collapse inside her chest, making her grumpy all of sudden. 

Catra takes a sharp step back, not looking where she is going or stepping into when she turns around, fully decided to find a single person in this place that dares to look at her in the face for five seconds so she can ask where this damn castle is. 

She crashes against someone's chest as soon as she turns around, making her stumble dangerously to the side. Catra is not looking where she is going but this person is also standing right behind her like a damn creep so Catra yelps, both surprised and deeply annoyed. 

“Ow,” Catra grunts, rubbing her aching nose where it crashes against the person´s bicep. Catra stomps against the ground, leaning back to face the person and yell at them properly. “Hey!”

Catra loves the rain. Unlike most of the people she has ever known in the city, including Scorpia and even Perfuma, rain does not represent a nuisance for her, or a setback. She loves the drops of rain, the tiny ones like needles, the quick ones like breeze and the big ones like heavy cotton balls. 

The woman standing behind her, she is a monsoon. 

She is breathtaking , that's Catra´s first train of thought. Gorgeous comes right in second, followed by a devastating handsome like a freaking train wreck going on in Catra´s inside. She is lucky she doesn't babbles them all out like verbal vomit the second her eyes meet hers. 

And I mean, she knew Ireland was famous for its folklore and its stories of beautiful creatures but gosh. God fucking damnit actually, because Catra is soaked like a stray cat, exhausted too the bone and probably looks absolutely awful. 

And here it's this beautiful woman in front of her, tall and broad like a damn forest and with the kind of face fairytales have been written around. 

Her jaw is very sharp and her chin elegant, followed up by a strong nose that gives her character. Soft strands of strawberry blonde hair fall just slightly matted across her temples, brushing the edge of her chin, as if she had just stepped out of some kind of hard work or had run an entire mile. 

She is wearing a thick red sweater with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows and the deep blue lines of a tattoo that travels from the slim bone of her right wrist and all the way to the side of her neck. Catra cannot make sense of the shape but she is immediately fascinated by it. 

And there are sun freckles scattered all over her flushed cheeks and around the tiny moles around her peach like lips, like stars circling inside galaxies where the corners of her mouth pull down into something very little pleasant and only then Catra realizes that she has been staring without speaking for an awfully long time.

“Oh.” Catra repeats in a whisper and then, for her absolute bewilderment, she hears herself giggle , she actually giggles, red like a tomato on fire. “Hey”

The entire thing is honestly quite humiliating for Catra. This is not her first time crushing on a handsome woman, this is not her first time trying to flirt with someone. This is, however, the first time she is so at loss of words she acts like a dumb teen and not like a thirty year old woman, owner of a successful business and in complete control of herself. And she is giggling.

And the thing is, for some reason, Catra wants to trust this stranger amongst strangers. Even though she looks like she wrestles bears in her free time. Catra never feels like this, she is always the one that needs to be in control of the situation but today she is tired and she needs this. 

Catra blinks several times and locks eyes with hers, the most beautiful blue eyes she has ever seen in her entire life, clear like the mist curling around the trees she just traveled through, and wild like the tumultuous sea swirling at the shores of the village. There is black eyeliner smudged on the waterline of her beautiful eyes and she is looking at Catra in such a terrible way that it makes Catra´s heart stop in its tracks. 

“Can I help you?” The woman spats, accent heavy and angry . 

Catra takes a shuddering breath, taken completely aback by the heated expression in the handsome woman's beautiful eyes. Anybody else, Catra would have flipped them off extremely fast, but she is stuck where she is, her hands coated in cold sweat under the intensity of the woman´s stare, as if the hindrance to begin with was Catra . 

“Um.” Catra stutters, holding her breath. “Yes. Yes, actually. I'm looking for directions.” Catra tries to deviate from the tension of the whole shitty situation, trying to unfold Light Hope´s paper from her pocket. “I'm heading to—”

“Castle Grayskull, I know.” The woman cuts her off, the way in which her lip retracts over her front lip giving away how angry she truly is. “Everyone here knows” 

Oh. Well, that makes more sense. Catra sinks into herself a little, trying not to show it off but still looking away, at all the people that are now openly staring at the both of them.

“Great.” Catra grumbles, shifting nervously on her feet. “Is that why everyone is staring at me?’ 

The woman has not stopped watching her even once, narrowing her eyes at Catra´s voice. “The man that bought the land was not kind to it” 

Another massively fuck for Catra from a man she never even knew. She kind of wants to scream her lungs out. 

“I´ve heard so.” Catra drops her voice, equal parts apologetic and annoyed, wrinkling her nose. “He was my father”

“I know. ” The woman growls again, as if Catra still talking to her was pushing her out of her marbles. She smells like salt and a little bit like whiskey and cigarettes and also somehow like lemons, and she is still looking at Catra in a way that is making the latter want to burst into tears. “Is that all or do you want more things from us?”

Catra gulps, her voice breaking when she speaks. “What?”

The woman stares at her for a solid second and starts chuckling, first under her breath and then loudly, without mirth, running her hand angrily across the strands of her hair. 

“You don't even know what you're doing, do ya?” She grunts and when she says it, it sounds exasperated, disappointment even, maybe. “This is just another trip for you and the worst thing is that you don't even know how much you´re affecting others. At least your father had the decency to act like what he was.”

Catra closes her mouth so fast she accidentally bites herself, feeling the sting across her entire jaw and chest. She is hyper aware that everyone is watching them now and she can feel movement behind her too, as if Mara had come back and was also staring in silence. 

“I— I haven't done anything.” Catra chokes out, so low she doesn't think anybody can hear her. The woman hears her. “I was taken away from here,” Catra says this time louder, closing her hands into tight fists until her nails are digging inside the soft flesh of her palms. 

“Exactly.” The woman answers to her between grinding teeth, tasting the poisonous words and spitting them out in her face. “You don't belong here”

Catra stops breathing, acid and sore inside her lungs, stuck in place. The gives a single step away from her, back towards the counter of the bar where she grabs an errand glass with a brown liquid inside and takes a swift and angry gulp. 

Catra watches her hair fall behind her back when she moves, almost as if she were to step away completely and towards the exit door. There are moles scattered down the columns of her neck, copper over her pale skin, and for some reason the sight of them is what sets Catra in motion, exploding the growing anger inside her chest. 

She steps up and grabs the woman's forearm, pulling back from her so she forcefully has to look at her in the face again.   

“Excuse me.” This time Catra is the one that grunts the words out, chewing inside her mouth when the woman turns her eyes lazily back to her. “Are you always this stuck up? Or you´re doing me some kind of honor today being an absolute asshole?”

The woman's beautiful eyes harden immediately, seemingly not expecting Catra to confront her even though she had already done it to her. She bares her teeth to her, turning around on her ankles. She towers over Catra but Catra does not flinch again, frowning deeply when the woman leans towards her, hovering their faces in front of each other. 

“Let me be clear with ya.” The woman breathes against her face, and Catra has never wanted to both kiss and punch the lights out of someone more in her entire life. “I don´t trust you, I don't want you here and I don't care about you.” The woman grins, something a little bit crooked like the bridge of her nose, taunting Catra out of her wits. “Is that enough for you?”

Catra stares at her, furious, basically blowing steam from her mouth and ears with the force of her anger. She grinds her front teeth together, too focused inside the angry tension between this stranger and her to notice the thick silence that has fallen into the Diner. 

“You don´t know anything about me,” Catra spits out, something that sounds like a drowned scream, cursing the start of tears that pinch on her eyes. The inside of her cheeks have started to bleed with her nervous chewing, the sting of pain fueling her need to defend herself past her need to cry in front of this unfamiliar place. “I did not choose to leave. But it was my choice to come back here and learn for myself”

Catra loses her voice for a second, her words stumbling with each other. She is angry but worse than all for her, she is disappointed, overwhelmingly like a warhammer to the chest. The woman is still looking at her intently but Catra has no desire to look at her anymore, snapping her eyes away. 

“I just wanted—” Catra tries, more to herself than to anybody else in this godforsaken place. She closes her mouth with an audible click, quieting herself and the storm rising inside her chest.  “It was clearly a mistake.” 

Catra grabs the handle of her suitcase and storms right past the beautiful woman, slamming her shoulder against her side hard. The worst of all, is that the woman is right, Catra does not belong here; her mother is dead, she never had a father and she knows nobody here. 

She just wants to get out of here, she cannot be here a single second more. The walls are closing on themselves all around her and the air is failing her. And she refuses to break in front of all of them.

The door of the hostal makes a creaking sound when she slams it behind her, the tiny bells held over the frame jingling and effectively breaking down towards the wooden floor. 

Inside the hostal, everybody seems to take a single breath at the same time, still staring without talking at the tall woman shifting on her boots as she stares hard at the closed door. 

Slowly, little by little, the catering picks up again, dissolving the tension into something more familiar, but the woman still doesn´t move, stuck in place where she saw the wisp of dark hair disappear beyond the windows. And she cannot help but feel sick with herself, foreign to her own body and her mind that is still angry and still thinks she has the right to be, but that at the same time feels the deeply, thickly rooted guilt for what she just said.  

Mara approaches her with her hands inside her pockets, clicking her tongue against the back of her teeth like a disappointed older sister that just saw someone she has known since diapers massively fuck up in two minutes or less. She rests her elbow over Adora´s shoulder and leans on her side, also looking at the closed door instead of at her. 

“ Great job, Dora,” Mara hums, and Adora has known her enough years to know the tone of her voice. “Ya know, this is not what we meant when we told you to meet new girls.” 

Adora opens and closes her hands at her sides, breathing slowly through her nose. Mara palms her strongly on the back and walks away, leaving her alone in the middle of the hostal´s floor.

Rain has started to fall again.

᯽ 

Catra cries the entire damn road to the damn castle and she gets lost. Thrice

She goes on foot, much to Light Hope´s warning, because she will be damned if she is caught asking anybody else's help today. And she is not going to stay in that hostel even if the entire bank of clouds of Ireland pours over her head. 

Halfway through the journey she is almost tempted to give up and actually go back, but then she remembers the face of that goddamned woman and stubbornly keeps going. 

Her shoes and pants are immediately soaked and gathered with mud, her hair is stuck to her face with the rain and there is no signal on her phone to help herself with directions. She walks across the village and into the meadows with only the help of the wooden directions long ago scribbled in there. 

They are mostly written in gaeilge, which doesn´t help Catra at all, but she is able to understand the name of Castle Grayskull and walk the long kilometers up towards the hills at the skirts of the village. 

There are twigs and leaves stuck to her hair and cheeks and she falls on her knees so many times that by the time she finally catches a glimpse of plain land her eyelashes are smudged together with rain and tears and her knees are scraped and bloodied. 

She comes into a slow stop suddenly, the light of the day slowly lowering down into the night. The strong rain has stopped but it is still drizzling over Catra and all over the forest. 

The trees are beautiful like this, leaves heavy and bark dark with the humidity. There is mud around her boots but mostly moss, at least in this patch of land she has stepped into. 

There are a bunch of tree branches that have leaned to the side all together, heavy with their leaves and their small fruits and seeds. They gather together and curve in an almost perfect circle, right in front of the stone steps right behind them. 

The steps go nowhere really, besides a taller patch of land and moss, leading further up. Catra stares at them, weary for a second, looking everywhere around her. Here, so far away now from the village, it is only her and the trees and the rain. 

It´s almost too pretty and too magical, here under the drizzle, and it looks all kind of like a trap, so Catra steps below the branches anyway because she has nothing else to lose and she is already soaked to the bone. She might also snap her ankle if she falls into another mud puddle trying to go around it. 

She climbs the stone steps alost on her hands and knees, dragging her suitcase behind her over the moss and finally steps into the open patch of earth right behind the trunks of the trees, looking up with a heavy huff.

The place that opens up to her eyes is the most terrible thing she has ever seen in her entire life. Terrible in such a beautiful way that it brings tears to Catra´s already weep-sore eyes. 

Where the forest surrounds this meadow as some kind of natural barrier, protecting it from the external world, the grass and weeds are overgrown by the rain, tall enough to reach Catra´s waist. They are scattered by tiny wildflowers, multi-colored and ever blooming, twisting their stems around the thick leaves, like a green sea here, right on this hill that hovers above the ocean itself.  

Far away from Catra yet almost at reach, Castle Grayskull remains in all its past glory. Tall and old and living a hundred lives already before Catra was even born. The roof is coated in thick moss and bindweed and the stone is worn out yet it remains as it was when it was first built up for queens and kings and nobles many, many years ago. 

A part of the castle has collapsed, leaving tall stones eroded by time like humongous statues, but Catra can tell is happened a long time ago, so it is now surrounded by the life of nature, from the grass cloves to the small animals like foxes making their homes around the remains. 

There are more structures around the castle itself, crooked stones around a lonely willow on the hill that Catra recognizes as an old graveyard after a second. Shapeless forms she cannot make off and the sight of places where trees were chopped off to make space for cars, already rusting by the sea breeze and time. 

And then, beyond the castle itself, the sea. The height of the cliff that leads all the way down to the powerful tide should be enough to make anybody in their right mind to be afraid. But Catra has never been one to approach what she must do with fear,even if it scares her.

Maybe that's why she doesn't immediately go to the gates of the castle once she crosses the green sea of grass. Maybe that's why she stands precariously at the edge of the cliff, old enough to be a dormant god  where a tiny and insignificant human now stands. 

Catra tiptoes at the edge of the cliff and instead of looking down, at the stones washed up by the sea or at the dark water now that the sun has fallen, she looks straight forward, at the horizon. At the line where the sky and the sea become one and where once the world was thought to end because what else could be more beautiful than the pale sun cradling back into the arms of a rain filled sea. 

And Catra doesn't know this, she could never possibly know this, but where she now stands her own mother once stood,watching at the same horizon as if the distance between her body — alive and beating where it carried Catra inside of her — and the sunset was the answer she needed. To get away. 

Catra, however, has always been different to both of her parents. 

This castle, this forest, this land, it speaks of time, it sings of history, of importance, of something somehow sacred, of a weight beyond Catra´s comprehension at least for now. Like a song, long ago heard for Catra, where the words have been lost and she can only remember the tune. And it makes Catra mad knowing her father took it for himself. It also makes her slightly aware that she cannot be completely mad with the woman at the hostel. 

Standing right here, with grass around her shoes and sea ist stuck to her nose, Catra knows the woman of the hostel was right. She does not belong. Still she chooses to stay, it is a thing Catra does. She belongs nowhere and she always stays. 

Catra pushes the heavy doors of the castle and steps inside, a shiver locking her in almost immediately when the cold of the main chamber greets her almost as freezing as the outside. 

The place is slightly more miserable than she thought it was, dark and humid. It doesn´t seem like the kind of place she ought Prime Kurr living in, but then again she knows but the surface of what he wanted to do with this weird and beautiful place. 

There are more leaks on the roofs here than at the Crimson back at Brightmoon, and the water is freezing cold when Catra accidentally steps right below one and the drop travels down her spine like a cube of ice. There is dust everywhere and all the windows are closed and covered by sheets, from the frames to the furniture, filling all the space she can see from here with strange shapes. 

“Great,” Catra mutters between her teeth, shifting on her feet. Her eyes are sore and exhausted after walking for hours and crying almost as much so she has to squint her eyes at the figures around her, her voice echoing loudly when she speaks again. “If there is any ghost here, come out now before I kick you!”

She waits for a long minute, the open doors casting a violet light behind her where noon is coming to an end. She rolls her eyes to herself and is about to move forward when she feels the change in the pressure of the air behind, reaching her before she even has time to turn around completely. 

“Katherine”

“Ahh!!” Catra pretty much jumps out of her skin, tripping with her own suitcase and almost falling on her face. She turns around sharply to stare at Light Hope, standing with her head tilted to the side. “Light Hope!”

“I´m sorry.” Light Hope says, hands laced in front of her. “I didn't mean to scare you”

She is kind of odd, Catra realizes, a bit robotic in the way she speaks but she is still honest, looking at Catra with some kind of hidden amusement as Catra scrambles back to her feet. 

“Were you here all this time?” Catra croaks out, running her hands across her face to try and hide the fact that her eyes are swollen and red. 

Light Hope blinks, obviously not fooled, but she remains calm and does not point it out. “I arrived a few minutes ago and heard you arrive, miss Katherine.” 

“Did you walk too?”

“I drove up the hill through the path.” Light Hope points out, shrugging.

“Oh.” Catra mutters, rumbling to herself where she feels the mud sticking to her pants. “Great.”

Light Hope blinks, something rawly human crossing her eyes for a second. 

“I went to the hostel, Mara told me you had left”

“Ah, I see,” Catra wrinkles her nose, looking at the old staircase next to her instead of Light Hope. “I—”

“I´ve brought you some blankets from the hostel,” Light Hope says, nodding towards a few clothes neatly folded over furniture. There are a few dishes there too, steaming hot and incredibly smelling. “Mara sent you food from the diner too, I know she told you she is my wife so I´d hope you know is worthy of trust.”

Catra grunts, digging her hands deeper inside her pockets to hide her trembling. “Okay,” then after a beat. “Thank you, really. Or whatever. I guess I'm here now.”

They stare at each other quietly, inside the dark chamber of the castle, hearing the light drizzle that has started to fall slightly strongly over them. Catra looks at the chandeliers collecting dust and the portraits covered by old rags and sinks into herself, suddenly feeling so very small in here. 

“Yes, I´m here,” Catra whispers under her breath,her eyes narrowing sadly. “What am I supposed to do now?” Catra asks, more to herself than to her. It sounds broken and it sounds wrong, like when she was six and the thunder used to make her hide between the bed and the floor. 

Light Hope opens her mouth, closes it again, her stoic yet calm expression cracking a little under the tone of Catra´s voice. She gives a couple steps forward, approaching her in a way that remembers Catra of Mara a little. It's in the little turn of her hands when she reaches for her, resting her cold hands over Catra´s shoulders. 

It also reminds Catra a little bit of the woman of the hostel, but much more gentler. Her smell, ike the soaked earth outside, is still stuck in Catra´s nose.

“It is not for me to decide what your path will be.” Light Hope says, smiling at her for the very first time. “But whatever you choose, I really do hope it's for good.” 

Light Hope hesitates, almost considering something, then says in a very gentle voice, the softer Catra has heard her so far. 

“I know you didn´t get to grew up in Alwyn, but we have a saying here. A small blessing if you will now that you are back home.” 

After this Light Hope will go back into her village, her land, her childhood and adulthood home and Catra will remain here, among dust portraits and the sea. Yet in a way, her words feel like a first welcome.

“May the winds be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face and rains fall soft upon your fields. And may the road rise and meet you, until we meet again.”

The heavy gates of the castle make a muted sound when they close, leaving Catra, blessing or not, all on her own. 

Chapter Text

Chapter II. Wild Mountain Thyme

I'm a map of the world and the ones before

One foot in sea and one on shore

Every step, every hope flung high

I'm a map of them all with my Irish eyes

— Irish Eyes, Rose Betts

𑁍

It's the third hour into the dawn and, as it had come to be a habit for her, Adora is feeling sorry for herself. 

She leans over the metal railing of the fishing boat and blows mist clouds into the freezing cold air on the sea. She stares at the movement of the tide, calmer now that its moon lover has sunken back into its arms, and counts one by one all the seagulls she sees fluttering around to try and not lose her goddamn mind. 

Fishing had never been what Adora wanted to do for her life. It was good and honest job, it had been her father´s job and latter her brother´s who loved to be on the sea almost as much as he loved being at home from the hand of his wife, but it had never crossed Adora´s mind that this would be it, her future on the family boat in the middle of high seas. 

It sucks a little bit, but after three years of being here, Adora has found herself with much less strength to complain and has chosen to conform herself with this life, never changing and still. Stuck

Wake up at the dark of the dawn, load up the boat, pull from the ropes, sail, fish, carry back, sell to the market. Over and over again until Adora stopped thinking and stopped feeling whatever pain remained inside of her and she could work hard and feel the burn of her muscles instead of feeling pathetic. 

Still, she can feel sorry for herself. She thinks she is allowed to.

Adora wasn´t even sure she had dreamed of being anything else at any point of her life. All this time she had just followed the lead of the people she loved, their dreams, their wishes, their aspirations. Their desires and their selfishness too. 

If you asked her then and even if you asked her now, she wouldn't know what she wants. She simply doesn´t know. 

For a long time, Adora thought this was what gave her life purpose, a meaning, a reason for existing after her mother and father had died. For a long time she thought it was what meant to love another person, smile and follow behind, nod your head and lay down, on different shoes, on different clothes, on a bed not hers. She thought it made her worthy of being loved. 

Now it just makes her mad. 

This is how Adora´s life goes. She works with her brother and sinks knee and elbow deep in water. Carries the heavy baskets with fish nobody else can carry from the boat to the market. Sit in the hostel´s diner after work to eat, drink and smoke just so she can pass out on her bed until another day begins. 

And she is mad. The entire time, from dusk to dawn, she is mad. She doesn't think she has stopped being mad since she was a teen and lost almost everything. She thinks she has remained like this since three years ago to now. She believes maybe Serenia actually broke her fully and only makes her angrier. 

It 's exhausting. 

Adora takes a deep breath of her cigarette and lets the smoke swirl inside her nostrils and off her mouth,wrinkling at the sour taste. She has been hours wearing herself down with work and yet this time instead of her head falling into something numb she cannot take the city girl out of her mind. 

She is right there, beneath Adora´s eyelids, stuck like a feather below her shirt. Itchy, maddening and deeply annoying. She cannot take her words out of her mind and she cannot pull Mara´s words out either, even though she knows her cousin might be right. 

In another time, when Adora was younger, she might have reacted differently, trying to trust whatever change that was to come would be for good. She is not that person anymore. 

The last time Adora saw Serenia, the latter told her she was stuck. Stuck in this place, like its stones, like its shore, like its people. Stuck and unchanging and incapable of being more of what she needed. And it was just is, wasn´t it? The reason she had left, the reason Adora had not been enough. Being stuck to Alwyn, not wanting to leave, that was what had been wrong. 

Adora being stuck killed her mother and her father. 

So now Adora leaves. She hops in her brother's fishing boat and spends her life away in high seas instead of the village. She was too ordinary to be loved so she is nothing at all now, just a shadow, sea salt smelling and angry. 

She doesn´t trust and she doesn´t hope, doesn´t wish anymore. She doesn´t fall in love. 

Staying never brought her anything so she rather leave now, to the middle of the sea where she can see the shape of Castle Grayskull from the distance and can be purely angry instead of losing it all over again.

᯽ 

Catra's first night in Castle Grayskull is miserable. 

She doesn´t dare to go up the infinite staircase and explore the livable sides of the castle where all the rooms lie. She is aware there must be at least one with a bed where she can crash out for the night, but that also would mean facing the reality of her father´s existence in this place and last night she was definitely not ready for that. 

Instead, Catra grabs the blankets Light Hope had brought her from the hostel and folds them neatly over the expensive looking couch of one of the huge chambers of the lower level. There is a cold fireplace in front of the couch, blackened by time and a long time ago lit up. 

The couch is nice and far too modern to truly belong in this place, but still is hard to lay into and it makes Catra´s ribs and waist ache. She is way too restless to truly fall into anything close to a good sleep, legs aching from walking too much and body sore from the rain. 

There are several leaks around the castle and the sounds of the old wood and humidity creak every once in a while as if threatening her to crumble the entire damn place over her head if it doesn´t like her well enough. 

Of course it doesn´t happen but Catra still can´t help herself from looking at the cold drops of water falling over worn out stone floors and the rains falling steadily beyond the fogged windows. She doesn´t even bother to change, she lies over the obviously expensive upholstery of the couch with her mud-soiled jeans and soaked hair and stares at the empty fireplace the entire night until sleep finally knocks her out.

By the time she finally wakes up again the sky is completely clear outside and the rain has stopped all together. Her entire body is aching and she is sure she pulled several muscles during the night. She strokes the cold metal of the tiny seahorse held to her necklace and drops her face into her hands, feeling the first strands of a panic attack closing around her throat trying to choke her out. 

Now that she is here everything is real, more real than she could have ever noticed before. She is in a village that considers her a stranger, alone in the middle of a forsaken land and with the ownership of a historical castle that up to five days ago she had no idea existed in the first place. 

The people that live here must consider her either a visitor, a newcomer curiosity or plainly an uninvited stranger as the woman of the hostel had very kindly let her know. And worst of all, Catra still doesn´t know what she is supposed to do with all of these. 

Sooner or later though, at some point in the morning, Catra gets sick of feeling sorry about herself and stands up from the couch, feet bare over the freezing cold floor, gulping down the sudden need to throw up.  

She vows to herself that, however long she has to stay in this place, the last thing she will do is feeling bad about herself no matter how much she is reminded she shouldn't be here or how much it costs her to learn about the place where she was born. 

She wants to know and nobody can take that from her. Not her mother's wish for something different, not her father´s absence, not weary looks from strangers. And specially not even stuck up hot women she doesn't even know. 

She also vows from that moment on to sleep in the beat up truck Light Hope had told her she could use. The one that was once from the gardeners that used to come here and that now lays abandoned in the small hut somewhere among all the weeds outside. 

Now in the broad daylight Catra can see just how truly humongous this place is. There are three central huge chambers on the lower floor, open space with no division from each other but the stone and wood arches hovering tall above her head. 

First is the chamber she stepped in when she first came into the Castle, with tall windows and spiral staircases leading up. Then, there is the chamber where Catra slept last night, surrounded by lavishing couches, rich wood tables and many treasures over the covered furniture. From tall vases that Catra can say are expensive but also pretty obviously brought here from somewhere else. 

Catra thinks the most impressive thing of them all, are the heavy tapestries hung from the wall right above the fireplace, beautifully embroidered with images Catra cannot exactly make of. They are the ones that call Catra´s attention the most, not the tables rimmed with gold plates. 

The third chamber might be the biggest of them all, tall and beautiful with its wood beams on the ceilings and chandeliers made of glass crystals that reflect tethering rainbows over the huge oak table below them, even with all the dust the last weeks have managed to collect inside. 

There are no leaks here and it was quite obvious a preferred chamber, if the horrible white mosaic with which the entire floor has been covered has something to say about it. Catra stares at it for some well five minutes until the horror of its presence over the old flooring finally settles inside her. 

“Jeez,” Catra mutters under her breath, wrinkling her nose when she looks up and realizes a good part of the beautiful stained glass windows were halfway on their way to be covered with heinous neon green film. “Well no wonder people fucking hate me. You were a fucking idiot, for real.”

The back of the banquet room has a small wood and iron door on the side, leading to the kitchens that have also been ripped off completely until any sight of the old castle in here is the stone on the ceiling and everything else has been made to look as sterile and soulless as it could possible be done. 

Catra slips on her boots over the polished floor, risking getting a concussion against the hard mosaic. She curses the entire time like a damn sailor too, looking disgusted at the modifications made to the once beautiful kitchens. 

Anger starts to pool inside Catra´s chest, turning around and walking away before daring to open the doors towards the basements. She is not nearly prepared to even watch whatever is down there. She does get a kick of purposely leaving mud stains over the polished floor as she walks away.  

The castle´s staircases are a whole other thing of their own. They are made of stone and marble, obscured by their color by time and by all the people that have walked over them in hundreds of years. It has pillars at the side, carved and sculpted with dragons and in which the, also, stone railings spiral around themselves up to the castle. 

It was just starting to be demolished too, the railing of the upper level surrounded by warning tape where someone has already taken measures to replace the stone into something modern like glass. Catra can only imagine. 

She is already chewing angrily into her own cheek by the time she finally makes it to the second level, finding herself face to face with the taxidermied face of a lion. It´s poor body lays flat over the floor of the corridor, from nose to tail ripped from its life to satisfy the need of one single man to feel superior to other beings. 

Catra leans against the wall, over plain white wallpaper and covered paintings with golden frames. She has to take several breaths, pressing her palm flat over her chest to try and push down the wave of panic gathering on the back of her throat. 

All in here is horrible, sterile and plain like the corridor of a hospital guard. It smells old but even that seems wrong, as if it didn´t truly belong at all with the stones and wood of the castle below them. 

She never knew her father but somewhere inside of her she at least thought he would have some sense to respect the bones of a castle much older than their bloodline itself. As she has come to realize the more and more she stays in this place, she was deadly wrong. 

She opens the doors of the bedrooms once by one and closes them down again almost as quickly. Mostly are abandoned, used as some kind of store to keep wood and a portion of the real treasures of the castle. Others are painfully empty and then there are others that were halfway into some kind of horrid transformation into something modern, with lines of paint over the stones and blueprints scattered over tables. 

Catra takes a look at them and has to bite back a curse, pinching the bridge of her nose. Catra was never one for architecture but Scorpia was a lot into history and interior designing once, which was why not only they bought the last old and not altered building in all of Brightmoon but also why she took charge into designing the Crimson Waste. 

She knows a thing or two about historical houses and the horrid stories of their changes into modern times, especially living in a city like Brightmoon, where everything is too loud and too neon bright for Catra´s liking or health. She is pretty sure what was going on in Castle Grayskull before her father, not so unfortunately, passed away. 

By the time Catra makes it to the Castle´s tower, the biggest and most imposing side of the entire castle, Catra is already sick and dizzy from walking so long and through so many stairs and doors. From the outside the Castle is deceiving on just how immense it is on the inside. 

The doors of the tower have not been changed from the original wood, but the lockets and the handles have been changed into white gold, cold to the touch when Catra grabs them and pushes them heavily to the side, walking inside her father's room. 

It is strangely empty. Cold like everything else in here and frightfully calculated. There are computer screens everywhere in a very different way to Entrapta´s apartment back in college. While these ones are turned off they are obviously even more expensive and so many that Catra wonders exactly what was he watching in them the entire day. Maybe the land he had ratted out of the hands of the villagers at a vulnerable moment, which is more likely for Catra as the seconds go by. 

The bed and the frame of the same where Prime´s body was taken away at some point alongside his already decomposing body, and the empty space left in the chamber is uneasy enough to send creeps up and down Catra´s cold arms. 

She heard from Netossa and later from Light Hope the way in which he had been found, already rotting into the bedsheets after several weeks had gone by and he hadn't been found. It was kind of morbid and all kinds of horrid, for Catra, to learn that nobody had gone for him, nobody has noticed his absence, nobody had cared because he had broken everything around him and thus he had died surrounded by stolen riches and completely alone until his only company were the the flies feasting on his decomposing body. 

Catra remembers reading the forensic report, running her eyes to his cause of death, closing the file and throwing it to the trash. Right now, standing in the middle of a chamber where everything is soulless and nothing is like her, she cannot imagine anything good about him and yet she knows they share the same blood. 

She walks inside the huge tower, looking at the stained glass replaced by plain windows and at all the lavish things her father kept as trophies of all he had taken from others. And deep within she knows she is looking for something, anything, the smallest of things that would let her know that somewhere within him he still thought about her mother and maybe even about her. 

A photograph maybe, a memory, a writing. Catra was born in Alwyn, she breathed this air first than anything else, it left its footprint on her even after she was gone. So surely there must be something, anything at all. 

There is a portrait. Huge, bigger even than the old paintings downstairs or scattered in the endless rooms. It is covered by a plain sheet but even here Cattra can see the disgustingly thick frame, glimmering a little under the cold light of the morning. 

Catra takes a breath and grips the end of the sheet, pulling from it until it tumbles down and she can see the portrait fully. This is the only personal matter in this entire place, not a single writing or photograph or memory. Everything else is clinic, documents and bank reports and real estate unfinished contracts, so she hopes a little bit. 

The portrait is of himself. Plain, simple. Just him. 

He sits in one of the chambers of the castle surrounded by white and stares directly at the lens of the camera that took the picture, face blank, eyes impossible cold. Catra never knew him,she is just learning him right now outside of the imaginary portraits inside her mind and he is nothing like her and nothing like she thought he would be. 

The dark of his skin contrasts against the white of his suit, perfectly tailored around the shoulders and the torso. He leans straight and proudly over the heavy white wood chair that Catra can see on the corner of the room even now, very short pale white hair neatly brushed slick and tight across his head. 

There is nothing about Catra´s curls or her freckles on him, and when she looks closer she sees he used to have green eyes. Not blue, not hazel mingled in one like Catra's, just green like everything that is not white in here. 

It's him, up there alone, the only place where he lives now, and there is not a single trace of Catra or her mother's existence in here, not even a passing thought, as if they had never existed for him to begin with. 

There is an urn on the table right below the portrait, quite small from what Catra would have thought would be his ashes. In fact, if it wasn´t on its own, with his name carved on a golden font at the side, she would have confused him with just another piece of expensive junk decorating the white halls of the abused castle. 

Catra steps right in front of the marble box and stares down at him, silent and so deeply insignificant now that he is gone. None of his riches would save him and so he is stranded here, right under the sight of a daughter he never even bothered to meet. 

Catra wonders if he knew that Catra´s mom had passed years before him; if he knew everything they went through, jumping from place to place without a home, the long nights at hospitals, the fights, the fears; all the hardships, all the pain. She wonders if he cared. 

“Why?” Catra asks and she surprised herself by how tiny her voice sounds, sore and low like a little child stranded alone in the middle of a strange castle. “Why couldn't you love us, just a little bit?”

The white marble box looks back at her and says nothing, still and cold. Catra grunts, biting into her own tongue when she closes her hands into fists and her nails break shallow lines on her palms. 

“Seriously, fuck you,” Catra gasps, wrinkling her nose. “Me? I understand you didn't even know me. But my mom?”

Silence. The dribble of the rain against the old tiles of the rooftop and nothing else. There is a storm happening inside Catra´s heart, it has been there, brewing like a boiling sea, like a tornado, a monsoon, a typhoon, rising up and down like the tides beyond the Grayskull cliff. 

“Did you know what happened to us after we left? To me? Did you even care?”

It gathers on the back of her throat like a thousand and one critters, spiders and beetles and wasps fighting each other to find their way up her mouth, stinging her in the tongue and the gums and making her breath and saliva acid with all that she has been chewing and biting back through thirty years. 

She doesn´t think she knew about them until she was much older, but they were there, waiting, for this moment where Catra would stare at her father´s cold face so void of any kind of guilt or resentment for the pain he had caused her and her mouth, for being the reason they had to go away, for never bothering to ask them to stay, that they explode on the low of her tongue and fall like rain inside the castle. 

“Fuck you.” Catra spits, rageful when her own reflection looks at her from the surface of the urn. “Fuck you, did you hear me? Fuck you.” 

Catra is breathing hard, looking from the urn to the portrait to the white chamber around her, still chlorine and chemical smelling from the forensic cleaners. She chokes on her own breath and feels her head pounding as the tight knot around her throat finally comes undone. 

“Fuck you,” she repeats, shaking so bad it´s only when the tears tumble down her eyes is that she notice she has started to cry. “Fuck you! Fuck you!” 

Catra grabs the end of the portrait and pulls from it, not even caring that it weighs almost as much as her. It falls into the ground loudly, the glass covering breaking into a million pieces. She stares at it rolling around on her feet, the sharp pieces way too close to her mud covered jeans and still bare feet, the portrait face up where it has broken in half.

Prime´s green eyes look up to nothing, mocking Catra even beyond death. Catra yells and stomps into the portrait until it completely breaks, her mind going numb with the overwhelming feelings bubbling into the surface. 

“Fuck you!” Catra turns around, this time towards the bedroom, facing it with the entire strength if her fury, “FUCK YOU”

Catra breaks. She tears and pushes and rips everything in front of her, everything that is white and golden and new and expensive not even giving a fuck about what it is or what it could have meant for him. 

Screens fall to the ground and get broken in half. Delicate vases turn into a thousand pieces under her angry and heartbroken outburst, grinding them to dust under bruised soles and aching hands. She doesn´t even notice it but she becomes a thunderstorm herself, more than the ones that could possibly be going on in the sea beyond the cliff. 

She slams the heavy gates of the tower´s chamber open and storms outside, taking her anger and her grudge for his absence. She takes everything she can see or reach and starts throwing it all around until all the noise inside this old castle is not rain or ghosts but the sore yells of her own throat as she throws it all down the stone stairs and to the floor, taking faux joy on hearing them crashing into pieces. 

It is strangely healing, in a way, in a bad way that would've make Perfuma wrinkled her nose and Scorpia to fumble nervously. But neither of them are here right now, it's just Catra in an unknown place surrounded by all the soulless things her father deemed more important than her mother. Or her. 

Catra grabs the poor skin of the animal on the floor and tosses it away. Grabs the wood frame of more photographs of Prime and throws them down. Turns tables around and kicks furniture until her muscles are screaming with effort and she is breathless. 

And when there is no possible other thing here, expensive and new and not belonging to this castle like she is, she bends down on palms and knees and still bare feet and grabs the scattered pieces, dragging ugly carpets of nylon and fur, expensive clothes from the closets and boxes filled with luxurious watches and car keys down the long way downstairs, grunting and cursing her lungs out the entire time. 

She doesn´t give herself the time to think about it before she throws the castle´s doors open and throws everything dragging behind her outside, into the damp and muddy meadow surrounding the castle for the soft earth and the rain to cover them completely.

Catra stares at the, for a very long second and turns around on her ankles, firmly stomping into the chambers of the first floor and doing exactly the same she just did upstairs, destroying her father´s things like a rageful tornado and dragging every single one outside,  

The sound of chairs being knocked over, glasses breaking and banging from the modern furniture being toppled over by her mental breakdown makes Catra´s eardrums to ring painfully, draining her energy until the next thing she knows is herself standing in the middle of the meadow with her knees trembling violently and her breath painful on her vocal cords.

She looks down at the small marble box with her father's ashes, tilted to the side where she had just thrown him over with the rest of his junk. She did not think she was this angry, she always told herself she was alright, that she didn´t care, that it didn´t mean anything to her. 

She looks like when she looks at her mother's tombstone on the countryside of Brightmoon, the closest thing to what Catra could find to be like Niamh´s homeland. She didn´t even get to bury her in her old hometown, didn´t even get to prepare herself for her departure, thinking she would have all the time in the world and not getting to enjoy a single second of it either. 

Always biting back feeling and being in control, trying to be brave and strong for her mother´s sake. Always pretending she was not mad with her for denying her the gift of knowing this place. Always and forever angry with him for never coming for them, for breaking whatever this was.

Catra looks down and then turns around from him until she stands in the very edge of the cliff, looking at her tired feet and then beyond, at the sharp stones and the angry sea beyond, just like outside but this time angrier instead of sadder or maybe all of it at the very same time. 

The weight of her mother´s decisions and her father´s mistakes weighs heavy over her when she takes a deep breath and screams. 

It echoes across the entire shore, sore, heartbreaking. It scares the puffins and birds off the cliffs and shakes the foundations of this land to the core, and yet buried with the sound of the endless drizzle falling over the grass and over her head. 

Catra lets herself fall into her knees, face down against the damp moss that covers the mighty stones. She breathes deep against them, sobs breaking through her entire body until almost every single drop of sadness gathered inside her sips into the ground instead of her own cheeks. 

“I wouldn't have asked anything from you.” Catra mumbles around the soreness of her throat. “Not the money, or the luxury, not this ”

Catra sits back over her ankles, letting her head roll back towards the sky, drizzle falling over her face like its own kind of tears. All the expensive things on the ground are getting soaked and ruined but Catra doesn't care about them at all; instead she frowns and chew into her own mouth until she tastes blood,

“But you were just fucking asshole, weren´t you?” She says, to him wherever he is, and to herself, tampering a part of herself that already knew that but that now clear for her to see, like the irish sea just below her. “Deadbeat motherfucker”

Catra stares at the broken stuff behind her, narrowing her eyes. The castle looms over her like a huge shadow under the now midday sun but somehow not even that is as overwhelming and frustrating as all the expensive shit and the marble urn laying on the damp grass of the meadow. 

“Fuck this,”  Catra spits under her breath. “Fuck it, I´m not fixing any of your shit.”

She stands up in a swirl and marches directly back towards the castle. She is not staying, she is not remaining a single second more in this place. She doesn´t care what Light Hope told her, what the castle means, whatever that is supposed to be important from here for her. 

She storms inside the main chamber of the castle and picks up her things without even thinking about it, dropping everything inside wrinkled and full of mud. If she leaves things behind her she doesn´t care about it, she wraps herself inside her coat and walks right outside, not looking back. 

She follows the same path Light Hope did when she left last night, towards the small building where the old car waits. It is right beside an immense patch of land, almost covered completely by the tall leaves and stems of grass. The dark stone of the tombs right between the moss and wildflowers are the only signs for Catra to know this used to be once the graveyard, guarded by the wide trunk of the willow tree right in the middle of it. 

Catra steps over the precarious earth, barely managing not to fall down in more freezing cold mud. The small storage building is collapsing on itself when Catra finally reaches it close enough to see it fully. There are logs and pieces of broken wood fallen everywhere, letting the rain fall inside and rot everything else that was once saved here. 

Next to it though is the old and beaten up car Light Hope had mentioned, an ancient once red pick up with the paint half washed out and the corners rusted, filthy as it can possibly be after who knows how long abandoned here. 

Catra huffs and throws herself over the pilot door, still riding the wave of her anger. She pulls from the handle but the car doesn´t open for her, tightly locked. 

“Fuck!” Catra yells, deeply frustrated as she kicks the door. 

The crumbling storage room is her only hope to find the damn keys right now. She throws her bag into the back of the truck and climbs up the broken steps of the door, avoiding broken pieces of wood and glass as best as she can. 

If there are places of the castle that are abandoned, this shed is even in a worse state. There are spiderwebs and dust everywhere and Catra is sure she steps over more mud and puddles of cold water than hiking the forests the day before. 

Catra looks everywhere, on the broken vases, rusted buckets and wet card-boxes until she finally finds what she is looking for, the car´s keys hidden deep inside an old leather pouch that most definitely does not have a spider inside but that gives Catra half a heart attack when she has to dip her hand inside to get the keys.

She is just about to turn around and leave this godforsaken place for good when she hears a small sound right in front of her. Catra holds her breath, staring at the mess of junk and boxes on the floor, waiting for the sound to happen again. 

This time movement comes, tiny and quick but definitely there, moving around a few boxes fallen upside down on the dirty floor. Catra shrieks and gives a single step back, recoiling with the possibility of a mouse or an entire family of them wandering just a few meters in front of her. 

She is just about to turn on her ankles and run away when the tiny sound of a, this time completely clear, meow stops her right where she is. Catra´s eyes go wide, her jaw going slack when another definitely insistent meow calls for her again. 

Catra is on her knees before she even had time to think it through. She grabs the edge of the old apple's card-box and moves it away, biting back a small yelp of surprise. 

“Oh,” Catra gasps,her anger immediately evaporating. “Hey, baby”

The tiny kitten below the box curls around themself and hisses at her menacingly, the fur on their back rising on top and their tiny whiskers bristling with anxiety. They look terrified of Catra´s presence above them, tiny but fierce as they throw their claws towards her in silent warning. 

"It 's okay.” Catra coos the little kitten, absently extending her hand towards the baby. “I´m not going to hurt you”

She waits patiently, unmoving so as to not scare the little kitten until the latter finally steps towards her. They´re still obviously tense, their little body shivering, but they dare to take a quick sniff of Catra´s fingers, studying her face with still weary blue eyes. 

“There we go,” Catra murmurs, daring to very lightly pet the soft fur on their head. 

They are very young still, no more than maybe a month, with dark gray fur scattered on the tip but a striking shade of white, almost as if someone has frosted powdered sugar over their tiny body. Catra hums, caressing the soft fever coat with shivering fingers. 

They look slightly too thin too, and soiled in both damp and drying mud. And they are alone in the middle of this crumbling place, clearly scared and shy when Catra pets under their chin, slightly running her eyes over their lil body to make sure they are not harmed.

The kitten steps away from her and trots right back into the fallen boxes, fighting their way among the wet cardboard and meowing insistently at whatever is in there. 

Catra bites into her bottom lip, holding her breath as she helps the baby kitten lift the fallen box. In a way, she knows that deep inside she already knew what she was going to find there, but it still breaks her heart. 

“Oh no.” Catra whispers mostly to herself. 

She pets the fur of the mother cat very, very gently, feeling her very cold and long gone underneath her fingertips. She sees as the kitten curls around her mother´s body and starts purring loudly next to her chest, bringing tears to Catra´s eyes immediately. 

“I´m sorry sweetie,” Catra whispers, voice broken in half. "She's gone.” She blinks, suddenly confused why the world has gone blurry and damp out of sudden. The kitten keeps purring and Catra keeps crying. “She´s gone, she´s— oh .”

It reminds her of herself. It reminds her of herself curling up next to the body of her mom the last night she saw her and the day she found her again. It reminds her of long nights in the house curled up in the blankets before Scorpia and Perfuma went to get her. And it reminds her of realizing she was now alone, that was it, there was nobody else.

“Come here.” 

Catra gathers the kitten quickly against her chest, allowing them from one last sniffle to their mother's cold nuzzle before climbing inside the warm fabric of her sweater. Something in Catra´s tears must have let the baby know they could trust her, because they curl around her neck and start purring against her skin. 

Leaving for Catra is now forgotten, no matter how heartbroken she still is. It's not a new feeling to her. She spends instead the next hour finding a proper wooden box and carrying the mamma cat, gently placing her inside with trembling hands. 

She does it all while holding the kitten against her neck, carrying the box gently in her hands as she walks outside and starts picking up tiny pebbles coated in moss and colorful wildflowers and letting them fall inside one by one.

She is not going to let her stay there, alone with the rotten wood. Not when she is still holding her kitten against her chest, not when she can feel her peek towards their mom and meow softly at her as if they still were waiting for her to wake up. 

Catra might not belong here, but this beautiful cat once did. She was born on these hills, on these cliffs; she stepped over the moss of these land and ate from it too. She belongs more than Catra ever did and she deserves to go back into its soft earth with dignity. 

Catra turns around to stare at the quiet graveyard, silent tombstones of generations past looking at her from below the willow branches and she hopes very deeply and under her breath that they allow her to do this.

“She is part of you, I promise,” Catra mumbles, crossing the old wood fence so she can kneel into an empty spot in the ground. “I´m sorry, please don´t haunt me”

By the time Catra is done and heading back to the truck, she is already exhausted and her nails are busted and coated with dirt. 

She needs to go this time for a very different reason than trying to run away. The little kitten is still curled over her chest and they are frightfully cold. Catra never got to have any pets growing up, and when she was older she never could find the time, so she knows next to nothing about the care of them but she is quite sure such a little kitten should not be this cold. 

She´ll have to drive back into the village and ask for help, and while she deeply dreads it and would rather throw herself off the cliff right now than have another interaction like last time, she has no choice right now. 

The engine of the old car comes back to life with a lazy roar. She takes off her coat and folds it into a bundle to place the baby kitten inside. She hopes into the other side, on the copilot's seat and starts driving downhill into the path. 

The road is so treacherous with the past rain that by the time she finally makes it fully into the path she is holding the wheel of the car with her entire strength, her knuckles pale with anxiety where she is really trying not to lose control of the entire thing. 

There is too much mud in here after all the rain, wet and pliable and getting everywhere into the rims and tires of the car. It splashes on the windshield and makes the already rusty car to creak even more. 

Catra is not a very good driver. She had to learn, living in Brightmoon where everyone is always going fast and driving even faster. But she never really practiced it, not with so many lights and sounds and movements triggering Catra´s headaches. 

There are no neon lights nor honks here but Catra starts to get a new kind of headache when the truck catches something on the mud and comes into a definitive stop, stranding her in the middle of the hills. 

“Oh, come the fuck on,” Catra complains, slamming her hands against the old wheel when neither the pedal nor the engine go on anymore. “Seriously?”

It´s not raining anymore but the weather is just miserable for Catra to be hiking her way down to the village all over. She considers for a very strong second to just drop the entire matter and crawl her way back somewhere dry. When she turns around though she sees the young face of the kitten licking their paws with hunger after too long without eating and cannot bring herself to run away. 

She carries the kitten wrapped up inside her coat and jumps off the old car, grunting her way down the path on foot. 

She does get lost a few times and she weeps just as many times too, overwhelmed by her own emotions, by the rain and by the baby kitten, but she pushes through. She is sure she rolls her ankle at least twice and she has a nasty fall on a hole in the ground hidden by twigs and leaves and mud that she cannot even see until she is knee deep inside. 

 The kitten holds onto her neck with their razor sharp nails the entire time too, purring a storm when Catra starts sobbing openly in the middle of the Irish forest as she finds her way back into the stoned streets of Alwyn. 

It must be late, at least past lunch time, because there are not many people in the square when Catra finally steps out of the thick line of forests and into the village. She sees people going around inside the stores and diners, sharing a meal through the windows and completely unaware of Catra's presence like an errand spirit in the middle of the village. 

It´s still drizzling, very lightly, falling over Catra´s messed up face. She can see the pretty front of the hostel right in front of her, the golden light of the already lit street lamps casting colorful shadows over the windows with pretty frames and cheerful music coming from the half opened door. 

It looks inviting, to step inside and enjoy the heat of the food and people chattering around; to ask for a bed and throw herself on a mattress that doesn´t smell like dust and doesn´t kill her back with weird positions trying to sleep through the night. 

But Catra is quite sure that if she encounters that beautiful and absolutely arsehole stranger again and has a problem with her again, she is going to burst into tears. And her pride can take just too much humiliation for her first two times in Alwyn. 

Then again, the little kitten has started to suckle on her earlobe, absently trying to find any source of food now that the heat coming from Catra's body has opened their appetite again. They still smell like baby kitten and rain and if this single kitty doesn't make it Catra is probably going to lose her entire goddamn mind. 

She also knows Mara probably is working in the diner today, and she was as nice as a stranger can be. So Catra can possibly do this. 

The little bell above the door rings when Catra steps inside, and just as it happened last evening, almost every single pair of eyes inside the hostel turn around to stare at her walking inside. 

Unlike yesterday though, this time Catra is not as calm and composed as before. In fact, she looks like a mess and not a completely hot one. There is something wet dribbling from her left knee and her face is soiled with mud and rain and tear tracks, making her sniffle hard as she studies every single face inside. 

The surprise of yesterday is still there, so is the curiosity. The weariness lingers right behind but something else has taken the lead on everyone's eyes when they look at her, something a little bit like pity and a little closer to worry.

“Oh, darling.” Mara, god bless her, rushes from behind the counter of the bar, cleaning her hands dry on the sides of her jeans before stretching them forwards, reaching for Catra´s trembling body. “Are you alright?”

“Um.” Catra blinks, feeling deeply uncomfortable as the thick chunks of mascara and tears obstruct her vision from Mara's worried face in front of her.  A little bit too close too. "I'm looking for a vet”

Other people have stood up now, staring at her and speaking among themselves in gaeilge. Their sudden presence all around her almost sends Catra in another episode and she is about to step away and run away when someone steps in front of everyone else, shushing them all with a loud voice. 

“Alrighty everyone, that´s it! You're freaking her out!” The woman exclaims, stomping her foot on the ground. “If yer going to help then help, if not then mind yer fucking business.”

Catra blinks, staring at her confused as Mara keeps hovering around the cut on her knee. The new woman  must be around Catra´s age if just one or two years younger, and she is everything Catra would expect walking out of a fashion parade in Brightmoon, not in the middle of Alwyn´s hostel. 

Her hair is very short, pixie cut around her ears and dyed hot pink, with small strands of sparkling purple on the base of her nape. She is also short, almost Catra's height, unlike Mara who towers in front of her when she too turns around to face the incoming sparkling woman. 

The woman´s clothes are funky and colorful, a knitted pink sweater with big granny squares on the bottom, thick lilac leggings and hot pink leather boots for the rain. Her bracelets look like something pulled from a 2000´s magazine and she is wearing strikingly black lipstick, curling into an honest smile when she stands in front of Catra´s bewildered face. 

“Hey you,” She greets her and she is as if an unicorn had puked a sparkling rainbow, a very sailor mouthed rainbow. “Oh! A kitten!”

Catra blinks away, standing in the middle of the well loved floor of the hostel with her mud soaked boots. She is now just making herself aware that she is wearing the exact same clothes as yesterday. 

"She's so small.” the sparkling woman murmurs in wonder, smiling at the little kitten that curls fiercely protective around Catra's collarbones, hissing yet with her entire little body trembling uncontrollably. 

“I found her,” Catra mumbles, her mouth heavy like cotton and honey stuffed. “I need to get her checked out, do you know a vet?”

The woman shoots her lilac eyes back to Catra, slightly taken aback by the soreness of her voice. Catra knows she must look horrible and also that she is a little bit in shock, but there is no need to stare so much. That´s rude. 

“Wait but what about you?” The sparkling woman asks, sharing a look with Mara, who is already on her way of taking her own coat off the rack and placing it gently over Catra's damp shoulders. 

“I think you are bleeding,” Mara murmurs, pointing towards her knee with her chin. 

It is difficult to say with all the mud and dirt stuck to the denim, but it is quite obvious that the fabric of the pants has broken off by the fall on the mud and if the horrid sting Catra is feeling right now has anything to do with it then Mara is probably right. It´s a damn pity, Catra loves these jeans. 

“My car got stuck” Catra sniffles, absently cleaning tears tracks from her eyes. “Do you know a vet? I need a vet”. I can go look for one if you don´t.

Mara and the sparkling woman share a heavy look, full of meaning, carrying a silent conversation between the both of them before turning to look at Catra again. 

“My fiance is the vet here.” The sparkling woman says, leaning towards one of the seats of the tables to grab her, also, purple and cheerful bag. “Come, I´ll take you. If you promise to come back after and let my mom take a look to your knee”

Catra makes a face, turning her eyes towards Mara. The latter seems to have to take a second to understand Catra´s silent questions because she shakes her head, chuckling under her breath. 

“I´m not her mom. Angella is the village´s doctor.” Mara explains, the grey hairs born on her temples shimmering silver under the light of the lamps. She speaks lighthearted but after a second she seems to catch the anxiety hidden in Catra´s eyes, so her entire face softens, reassuring Catra with her words. “But I´ll be here too”

Catra shuffles on her feet and nods, giving up. “Kay”

“Okay then, let's go!” The woman announces, skipping her way towards the door. She says goodbye to everyone and everyone says goodbye to her right back, still eyeing Catra following the woman behind. 

It has stopped raining completely outside and there is only sultriness now, sticking to catra´s smudged cheeks and the short hairs at the base of the woman's head. The latter walks easily across the streets and corridors of the village, whistling under her breath though still staring at Catra sideways out of the corner of her eye. 

“I´m Glimmer by the way, Glimmer Mooney. I don´t think I said that before, I got distracted. You make quite an impression when you walk somewhere, did you know that?” The sparkling woman, Glimmer, says, laughing at her own joke. Catra turns to look at her but her attention is not on the comment but on something else completely, staring at Glimmer as if she had suddenly grown a second head. “What?”

“Really?” Catra mutters, unable to hold back a dry chuckle. “Is your name really Glimmer?”

For a moment Catra recoils, beating herself internally for once again speaking without thinking. But Glimmer doesn´t seem to take offense to it, in fact, she throws her head back and laughs outloud, the thick accent on her voice slipping into something high and cheerful. 

“Yup, my dad´s idea.” Glimmer shakes her jewelry adorned wrists in front of her, shrugging. “I´m living up to it and everything”

“Yeah, you are.” Catra agrees, relaxing a little again. “I guess you already know my name”

“I do.” Glimmer nods, slowing in her walk. She seems to be thinking something very deeply because she takes a minute and then tilts her head towards Catra, shrugging. "I'd still like to know if from you, if I may”

Catra holds her breath, slightly surprised. “Catra”

“Catra.” Glimmer repeats, nodding to herself before her mouth splits into a huge shit eating grin. “And I'm the one with the weird name”

Glimmer nudges Catra with her shoulder and Catra doesn´t even flinch away, sharing a quick laugh with her. This is weird for Catra, she neither likes nor is used to strangers treating her lighthearted but it´s a nice change. Maybe that´s what both Scorpia and Perfuma meant by meeting new people. 

“I like it. It was my friend's idea.” The stores all around them are bursting with life now that the noon is closer, people sharing a meal and a talk that don´t even look at Catra weirdly as she walks downstreet with Glimmer and a baby cat. “My first name is boring and my second name is weird, so Catra it is”

“Uhu. What about Cathy?”

“I might push you off the road”

“That´s a no, then.” Glimmer laughs, Catra laughs too. They walk in comfortable silence for a little longer though it is obvious when Glimmer loses the war of her own curiosity, chewing on the inside of her cheek. “Did you really walk all the way from Castle Grayskull to here? On foot?”

“Yeah.” 

“It´s like— Ten kilometers”

“I don´t mind walking.” Catra reassures her even though she can definitely start to feel those kilometers on the pull of her knee and the exhaustion on her legs. “I don't like walking in mud though”

They reach one of the outskirts of the village, where the white shore of the Alwyn coast is closer to them than the forests around them. The buildings here look older than the stores before and the line of houses is now in full sight, each one with their own colors and pots of flowers hanging from the balconies. 

Glimmer, however, guides Catra towards the very corner of one of the streets, where the buildings narrow into a tight alley. It looks kind of cold and kind of not inviting and Catra hesitates on her feet, nervously rubbing the kitten´s back. 

“Um.” Catra hums, looking weary from the dark corner to Glimmer's face. 

Glimmer doesn´t seem to understand at first why Catra has stopped until she realizes with a small “oh”, grinning at Catra a little bit too mischievous for her liking. 

“I promise I'm not luring you anywhere to kill you.” Glimmer says with a wink, waiting for Catra at the corner of the street.

“That´s not alarming at all,” Catra mumbles, still not moving. She, after all, did grow up in the city. She knows better.

“I wouldn´t dare with a kitten in the picture. Cross my heart.” Glimmer promises, raising her hand and bringing the other one over her chest. “The door of clinic is just around the corner, I promise”

As it turns out, Catra maybe does not know better. She follows Glimmer, holding herself to the baby kitten and clenching her teeth. 

What she thought was a dark alley is actually more of a corridor between lines of houses, and there is actually a blue door on the side, leading to a broad and clean space that Catra recognizes as the veterinary clinic immediately. 

The temperature inside is just perfect, with waiting chairs on the side and a counter right in front of the door. There is a woman sitting there with her round glass slipping down her nose, turning to look at Glimmer and Catra as they walk inside.

“Tallstar!” Glimmer exclaims, rushing across the waiting room and throwing herself almost in half over the counter. The woman grins at her, leaning on her chair to throw Glimmer a cheeky stare. 

“Glimmer.” Tallstar greets her and then she follows by a long string of words that Catra cannot recognize. 

Glimmer and Tallstar share a long minute of conversation in gaeilge, chattering with each other with such failiarit and speed that even if Catra tried she would be lost in the conversation immediately. 

Instead she stands awkwardly on the side, her knee throbbing and her kitten purring until Tallstar finally realizes about her presence, changing her conversation back to something Catra can actually understand. 

“Oh, who´s this?”

Glimmer gasps excitedly, rushing back towards Catra and almost dragging her with her towards the counter. “This is my friend, Catra”

“We are not friends,” Catra mumbles under her breath but Glimmer just shakes her softly, shaking her head. 

“This is my new friend Catra.” Glimmer points at the little cat, nodding to herself. “She found a baby kitten”

Tallstar is halfway out of her chair when another voice comes from the back of the clinic, quickly approaching them. 

“Is that the sweet voice of my beautiful cupcake princess—? Oh, um.” A man also around Catra and Glimmer´s age stops on his tracks the second he notices Catra´s presence next to his fiance. He is tall and broad, with his coily hair held over his head and the start of a beard on his chin. “Hey.”

“Bow!” Glimmer exclaims, jumping up and down into the still confused arms of her beloved. “ Mo ghrá”

“Mo ghrá ” Bow answers back but he is still distracted by Catra´s presence and Catra wishes more than anything else that she had at least changed her clothes before venturing into the woods and the village again. 

“I brought you a kitten and a Catra!” Glimmer announces, nudging her fiance with her hip. Yet, she is looking at Bow as if Catra´s presence was something much more important than first meetings; she even wiggles her eyebrows at Bow, her face splitting in a smile. “This is Catra , Bow. She is new in town”

“Yeah. I heard something about it.” Bow says with a sigh, throwing an intelligible look at Glimmer yet still smiling, kind and honest to Catra. 

“We both did.” Glimmer rolls her eyes, groaning under her breath. “I swear Adora is giving me a headache”

“Hi, I´m Bow. Bow Collins.” He introduces himself to Catra over Glimmer´s words, offering his hand to her.

“Catra,” she shakes his hand, less tense than before. “Are you the vet?”

“Yup!” Bow's eyes go from Catra's messed up face to the little cat curled inside her hands, and his eyes almost seem to actually sparkle at the sight, a gasp ripped out of his throat when he drops his voice into something baby-like for the kitten alone. “So who do we have here?”

It's kind of ridiculous and kind of dumb. Catra can see why he is getting married to Glimmer. And Catra trusts him. 

“I found her near the graveyard of the castle.” Catra passes the kitten into Bow's hands, nervously rubbing her own arm right after. “Her mother passed away. I think from the cold.”

“Oh, I´m so sorry.” Bow whispers, truthfully, running his fingertips over the kitten's head as he turns towards the rooms at the back. “Let´s get her checked up, okay?”

“I´ll wait here! You guys get to know each other better!” Glimmer says, nudging Catra forwards when she turns to look at her slightly alarmed. 

The doctor, Bow, guides Catra into an equally clean and big room, quiet and calm as he closes the door behind them and places the little kitten on the examination table. Catra sits on a chair on the side of the table, looking as he grabs a stethoscope from the wall. 

“Let´s see”

It´s a quiet examination, fast and carefully done. This is the first time Catra does any of this so she just sits in silence and watches the doctor's every movement around the kitten, taking on the way he checks up their little paws, their eyes and the inside of their mouth. 

“She´s a girl,” Bow announces happily, softly palpating over the kittens belly. “She is about four weeks old too. She is still very young so you´ll need to feed her for a while.”

“Okay, I can do that.” Catra shifts on the chair, restless. “Is she okay?”

“She looks healthy, if a little scrawny. She'll need to be dewormed and as soon as she is weaned we can start her shots. I don´t think the fever coat will cause her any problems either.” Catra nods to everything, looking as the kitten bites playfully with Bow´s hands. “Does she have a name already?”

“Melog.” Catra says immediately, smiling despite her best efforts. She begged for years to her mother for a pet, and she always had the name ready to use at the top of her head. 

“What a pretty name for a pretty girl.” Bow baby-says, laughing when Melog looks at him with huge blue eyes and meows loudly. “Can I ask if you´re going to keep her?”

“I will.” Catra doesn´t even think about it, or that she doesn´t actually have a house to bring Melog into or that she is still slightly freaking out. 

Melog is hers now and Catra will look out for her from now on. That´s a promise she intends to keep.

“Great!” Bow hands Melog back into Catra´s hands, pulling out a bundle of papers from the second table behind him. "What's the name I should put then, for the tutoring documentation?”

“Um. Katherine N. D'Riluth.” Catra dictates, wrinkling her nose.

“Nice.” Bow frowns a little, looking at Catra curiously. “What´s the N for?”

“Nuala.” Catra admits with an annoyed sigh, pressing on Melog´s pink paws when she starts making biscuits on her palms.

“Nuala.” Bow repeats, his eyes softening as he lowers the papers. For some reason he seems to be looking at Catra in a different kind of light than before, still kind but somehow fonder. “That´s also a very special name”

That calls Catra´s attention. She looks from Melog to Bow, her eyebrows rising in her head. “Really?”

“Yes. It comes from a legend from here, the legend of Princess Fionnuala, do you know it?”

“No, I don´t.” Catra whispers, her voice dropping. “My mother never told me about fairytales from here.” There is a long second of uncomfortable silence where Catra knows immediately that Bow is pitying her so before he says anything else she shakes her head, looking at Melog´s sleepy face only. “I don´t really use my legal name. Catra is alright”

Bow looks like he wants to say something else. He most definitely is about to say something else when the loud alarm in Catra´s phone goes off, startling them both and Melog with the high chime. 

“Sorry,” Catra says between her teeth, turning it off as quickly as she can. “Can I have a glass of water?”

“Sure!” Bow turns around and picks up a paper cup from the side of the room filling it with clear water to the brim. When he lends it to Catra he runs his eyes across her face, her slightly shaky hands and the little seahorse pendant also smudge with mud, so quickly Catra doesn´t even notices it before he is leaning away again. “I´ll leave you for a moment to get everything ready. Be right back in a second”

Catra watches him go with her lips pressed into a thigh line, making sure he is well gone and nobody else is walking inside before taking the small plastic box with her medicines from the side pocket of her coat. As always the pills taste horrible and their run across her throat with the cold water makes her want to puck but it´s a small inconvenience she bears to be able to exist like any other being. 

When she looks down she catches baby Melog looking at her with her huge blue eyes, staring at the box and the water and Catra´s face as if she in her four weeks of life somehow understood something is not totally right with her either. 

“I´m alright.” Catra reassures her kitten with a sore whisper, caressing the edge of her little ear inside her fingertips. “You'll come to find out I need some extra help too”

Bow walks back inside with his arms filled with things. There are plastic jars with baby formula, baby bottles, deworming syrup, blankets, a small and comfortable looking cat bed and even a few toys scattered on top. It would be kind of ridiculous but Catra is sure that she would have asked for all of these things anyway. 

“Very well then, Catra, I think this is everything you can need to start taking care of baby Melog.” Bow announces happily, helping her save everything inside bags, and giving her all the paperwork for Melog´s ownership. It's official now, Catra has a cat. “You are all set”

“Thanks”

“Thanks to you.” Bow leans against the table, looking a Catra with some kind of kindness that she cannot quite place. “It´s good to finally meet you, face to face.”

That calls Catra´s attention back to the fact that she remains a newcomer in this place. A novelty for curious eyes, for the new owner of a castle in their ancient lands. 

Catra cannot help but to make a face, squirming on the chair with Melog still on her lap. Bow notices, raising his hands quickly to try and water down the sudden tension between them.

 “I´m sorry I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable”

Catra sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose as she fights waves of her own anxiety. “Guess I won't be able to help it for a while”

“I guess not.” Bow shakes his head, absently running his fingers over the embroidered hearts on his lilac scrubs. “People are just curious, I think most of us didn´t even know Niamh had a daughter. Or, you know, that man”

The half assed mention of Prime makes Catra's skin crawl and she knows so does for Bow so she plainly ignores it, focusing on something much more important to her. “Was my mom well known?”

“Everyone knows everyone here,” Bow whispers, grinning at her a little mysteriously. “You'll get used to it with time”

“Oh, I'm not— planning to stay” Catra denies immediately, shutting him right off. “I´m just settling unfinished affairs and then I´m gone”

“Ah, I see.” For some reason Bow looks disappointed at that, sad even, throwing Catra completely off. “Well, it was very nice to meet you any way”

“Thanks.” Catra chews up, wishing she could crawl up the wall and run away from this moment. “You too”

They walk out in silence but it's somehow not as uncomfortable as before. Glimmer is already waiting for them, tapping nervously and for some reason excited on the floor with her boots and shrieking when she sees them walk out again. 

“Ready?!”

“All set!” Bow nods, looking between both of them. “Are you two beautiful lassies spending the evening together.?”

“No” Catra deadpans.

“Yes.” Glimmer shuts her up. “She is having dinner and sleeping at the hostel tonight.” When Catra opens her mouth to protest, Glimmer turns towards her, pointing at her with her finger. “You promised to Mara, no take backs”

Catra clicks her teeth together so hard they hurt, mumbling annoyed under her breath. “The sleeping part was not part of it” 

“Too late. You´re going to want to sleep in after you try Mara´s pot pie anyway. I´ll even lend you some clothes”

“No thanks.” Catra wheezes, unable to contain herself when she looks at Glimmer´s fairy-like clothes. “Pink is not my color”

“Pfff” Glimmer huffs, chuckling instead of offended. She has Catra´s sense of humor and is refreshing. “Oh darling, believe me. Pink is a hundred percent your color”

Glimmer turns to kiss Bow loudly on the cheek, smearing pink chapstick all over his cheek. He just laughs, squeezing her gently in his arms. 

“See ya tonight baby”

“See ya.” Bow presses his own kiss over Glimmer´s forehead, looking at Catra standing on the side of the door. “I hope I´ll see you later too, Catra.”

“Sure, whatever.” Catra whispers, slipping off the clinic right behind Glimmer. 

The walk back to the hostel seems quicker than the one before, or maybe is a trick of the light now that the noon has fallen completely over them, washing everything in gold and red, and the rain has stopped all together. 

There are a lot more people here than before and at least a good part of them wave Glimmer hello when they pass them by. Most of them are also still in their raincoats, shoulder wet where the last drizzle caught them on the way to the village´s square. So much for the wettest country in Europe. 

The dinner of the hostel is buzzing with activity, just last night, and it smells delicious the second Catra steps back inside. She feels nervous for a solid second, with so many eyes and an unknown language all around her, but Glimmer grabs her firmly from the wrist and drags her all the way across a more private table on the side. 

Catra looks nervously around her, holding herself to Melog´s sweet purr as a source of comfort. She half expects for someone else to come to confront her or to ask her things about herself but nobody seems to be paying attention to her right now and if they do they do an excellent job of hiding it. Or maybe they are just scared of Glimmer. Whichever it is, it works for Catra.

Mara approaches them as soon as she sees them, balancing two plates filled to the brim with a smoking hot stew. 

“Welcome back ladies,” Mara greets, leaving the plates in front of them and if Catra is filled with a little extra food nobody says anything. “Here, my famous beef and guinness stew. Don´t worry any alcohol was cooked right off but the sauce flavor is to die for. It'll heat you right up, and you Glimmer”

“Thanks!” Glimmer leaves Catra´s bags from the clinic and her own bag on the side, shooting up quickly when a new thought comes into play. “Oh! There are a few blankets on the back let me bring you one” 

She rushes into a swinging door of the hostel before Catra has an opportunity to say anything. Mara is still hovering all around her, placing plate after plate of foot and warm tea in front of her. 

“Bread too. And some sweets. Do you like sweets?” Mara adds some chocolate whoopies pies and millionaire shortbread in front of her, making Catra´s mouth water when she cannot help but nod. “Good. By the way, I asked a few friends to get your truck unstuck from the road, they will bring it to the hostel”

Catra snaps her eyes back to her, opening wide with the surprise of her statement. “Really?”

“Yeah! And given you´re spending the night, it´ll give time for the mud to dry a little. That path towards Castle Grayskull is always a problem, your car will get stuck in the mud when you most need it”

Glimmer comes back with the coziest possible blanket known to human kind, a quilt pink thing that looks made by the gods of comfort themselves and that makes Catra hum pleasantly much to her own metal exhaustion when Glimmer places it over her lap. 

Melog is fast asleep on the crook of Catra´s legs, drowsy with milk after Bow helped Catra feed her for the first time before leaving the clinic. She makes tiny biscuits and purrs on her sleep, letting calmness fall over Catra´s buzzing head. 

Glimmer is back sitting and Mara is awkwardly standing by the side, both of them waiting for Catra to begrudgingly take a spoonful of stew in front of them. 

This is Catra´s first real Irish food made and surrounded by locals that have lived generations here. This is quite literally her first bite of what her mother used to eat when she was young. And before her, her grandmother, and her great grandmother before and so and so, generations of people Catra doesn´t know for their last descendant to eat her first meal at her thirty years of age. 

She takes a huge spoonful of stew and bites down on it, holding her breath. 

Catra starts weeping, quite embarrassingly, almost immediately. 

“Oh, my,” Mara gasps, rushing to another table to grab a couple of napkins. 

Catra wants to ask her absolutely not to do it because the last thing she wants to do is calling everyone's attention to her weeping but the moment she opens her mouth another stream of tears falls down her face and into the warm stew, choking her fully. 

“Ugh”

“Here.” Glimmer whispers, lending the napkins from Mara´s nervous hands to hers to Catra´s. 

“Thanks”

“Welcome”

Catra takes them, pressing them against her eyes to try and soak them all out of her eyes. When she speaks her voice sounds sore and clogged and she half hates it but it also feels a little bit good, like loosening a knot in the middle of her chest. 

Mara and Glimmer share a meaningful look and a quick word in gaeilge before Mara scatters away, throwing a swift and honest smile towards Catra as she slips to the upper floor of the hostel. 

Glimmer is still looking gently at Catra but the latter avoids her eyes like the very plague, fixed on staring at her stew and eating between tears, 

“Does everyone speak Gaeilge here?” Catra sniffles, her nose congested. 

“Most of us, yes. It's more a habit than anything else, we still all learnt english as our first language.” Glimmer rolls her eyes, dipping her bread on the stew and drinking a long sip of her creamy beer. “Do you know gaeilge?”

“No”

“Oh. I thought maybe your mom—”

“My mom never wanted me to learn things that could bring me back here.” Catra deadpans, looking at the stone walls and the small windows of the building. “I think it was her way of protecting me, from feeling bad from my father's rejection. I think it was also a way to protect herself.”

The sound of the cutlery clicking against the plates and the gaeilge murmur around the is welcome, like a barrier keeping Catra´s spiraling mood from everyone else. Glimmer clears her throat, totally trying not to sound nervous, as she speaks whatever is going on in her mind right now.  

“Catra? Can I say something about your father?”

Catra lowers down her spoon, looking at Glimmer curiously through damp eyelashes.  At least she has stopped crying. “Sure”

“He was a dick” Catra snorts, wet and tearful but actually laughs , snorting when Glimmer looks at her both lighthearted and exasperated. “Really”

“Yeah, I know.” Catra nods, leaning back on the chair. “I think I know first row how much of a dick he was”

“Good, cause he really was a fucking motherfucker.” Glimmer says around a mouthful of food, stomping angrily on the ground with her food. 

Catra wiggles, suddenly seeing her opening to ask something she had meant to for a while now. “Do you know what he planned for the land? When he bought it”

“What every single foreign wants from us. Money and ownership but not us or our culture.” Glimmer spats the words angrily, followed by a string of curse words that Catra doesn´t know how to translate but that she still understands. “I don´t know all of it but I know he did a lot of damage to the history of the castle. We all saw that he got rid of many things, it was a bad day. But I was younger then and I never got to see the inside”

“He did.” Catra affairs, cringing when Glimmer's eyes flash with anger. “Some avant garde futuristic shit redesign”

Glimmer drops her spoon back into the plate, looking at nothing. “Ah”

Catra weighs her own words for a second, considering if she should speak them at all to begin with before spilling out of her mouth with uncanny sincerity from her.

“If it makes you feel better I destroyed it all.”

Glimmer looks at her surprised and also a little taken aback, eyeing Catra´s messed up clothes and bruised knees. “Really?”

“Yeah. I had a mental breakdown and vandalized his junk stuff.” Wow, way more honest than what Catra was going for. Glimmer is definitely going to think she is sick on the head, which is not really far enough from the truth. “I didn´t hurt the castle though”

Glimmer remains speechless for a second and then throws her head back and laughs outloud, shaking from head to toe with the strength of her laughter. “It does makes me feel better, thank you”

Catra smiles, slightly pleased with herself if she is completely honest. She is starting to feel the exhaustion of the day weighing over her bones and making her eyes droopy. 

The bell of the door chimes again with the entrance of two new people. Catra doesn´t even need a proper introduction to know immediately that these are Glimmer´s parents, if the pink hair of the tallest woman has ever seen in her life and the sparkling clothes of the shorter man walking holding her waist, have anything to say about it.  

“Mom!” Glimmer calls, waving her hand excited as the two walk over their table. “Dad!”

“Hi, princess!” The man exclaims right back, almost yanking Glimmer off her seat with the strength of her hug. The tall woman leans too to kiss Glimmer´s cheek, pinching her on the side when Glimmer giggles. 

It´s all kind of endearing, Glimmer´s parents already have grey hairs on their heads and happy wrinkles around their eyes and they treat each other with obvious kindness, if a little annoyed sometimes from Glimmer by all the kisses, coated with complete fondness. 

It doesn´t help Catra feel any better. 

“Mom, Dad, this is Catra,” Glimmer presents them, smiling when Catra blushes trying to hide the obvious tear tracks from her face. “Mamma, I told ya about her knee on the phone. If you can.”

“Sure,” the woman nods, her accent very heavy and more used to speaking in gaeilge than in english. “Angella Mooney, good to meet you.”

“Good to meet you too,” Catra mutters, dropping her hands below the table so they don´t see her stim nervously. 

Glimmer´s dad definitely doesn´t seem to notice because she barges between them all to smile brightly at Catra's face, pointing at himself with fingerguns. 

“Good to meet ya, lassie. I´m Micah!” He erupts, tapping on the ground happily. Only now Catra realizes his shoes are coated with mud. “You´ll be happy to know that we brought your car with us too.”

“Really?” Catra gasps, peeking through the windows to realize that it's right, the old and mud covered truck is actually parked outside the hostel, waiting for her. “Thank you, you didn´t have to.” 

“Nah, it´s all good. I´m the best mechanic around here, no offense to my neighbours.” Micah winks, making Catra chuckle besides herself. “I replaced your tires too so you should be good for the next months”

“Thank you,” Catra breathes, suddenly overwhelmed. “I— let me pay you.”

“Not at all. Mara asked us and it´s a favor to you. Neighborhood stuff.” Micah dismisses, crossing his arms around Angella´s waist, who gives a little step forward. 

“Let´s get that knee checked up, alright? Maybe somewhere cleaner?” The last question is more to the air to Catra as Angella looks around the dinner trying to find a quieter corner. 

“Her room is ready now,” Mara appears out of nowhere behind Catra´s chair, grinning as she hands her a key. “Very last of the second floor. I put some fresh blankets for you on the bed and fresh towels on your bathroom.”

“Do you want me to bring you clothes? I can run up to my house very quickly” Glimmer chimes in, also standing up. 

This is all very nice and absolutely overwhelming for Catra. She is about to scream. 

“I have clothes.” Catra croaks out, standing up and giving a small step back. Everyone is looking at her and suddenly the little hostel is very warm, too warm. They are also all too nice, which is good but Catra needs to breathe. “I left my suitcase in the back of the car. I´ll bring it.”

“Do you want us to help ya?” Mara asks but Catra is already shaking her head as Angella places her hand over Mara´s and Glimmer´s look, giving them a pointy look that Catra appreciates immediately. 

“Let her pick up her thing, we can help here,” Angella says with her thick voice, nodding to Catra. Catra answers the nods back, exhaling. 

“Do you want me to hold her?” Glimmer asks very softly, stretching her arms softly towards Melog. Catra hadn´t even noticed she was squeezing her against her chest. 

“Uh, yes.” Catra agrees, relieved when she hands her baby kitten into Glimmer´s ready hands, missing her immediately but also relieved to have her arms free for a second. “Thank you”

“Sure!” Glimmer chimes but her entire attention is already, thankfully, fully on Melog. “Aren´t you the cutest kitten even”

“I´ll prepare everything and see ya in your room.” Angella tells Catra, already turning on her ankles. 

“Okay”

“Take your time, kiddo.” Micah winks, following his wife behind.

“´Kay”

The cold air of the outside is a welcome slap in the face for Catra. It burns her nostrils and her nose and immediately freezes any kind of panic that had started to rise on Catra´s chest inside the hostel. 

There are also a lot of freaking seagulls outside. They are flying everywhere, standing on the top of roofs, chasing people for their food and threatening to poo on them otherwise. They are also very noisy, which any other day would make Catra annoyed but today is almost funny to her. 

She rushes to the truck and rests her forehead over the cold metal of the door, breathing deeply through her nose. The meds also made her a little bit nauseous so she is glass when the salt smell from the sea hits her, distracting from the need to puke. 

Catra tilts her head to the side, staring at the pretty streets of Alwyn. Now that it´s not raining she can actually enjoy them. Their stone paths, their corners with bushes filled with flowers; the houses facades with fairy lights and colorful doors. 

People walking up and down the street, talking to each other and laughing. Belonging somewhere, knowing who they are. 

It is, truly, a beautiful place

Catra leans over the truck to grab a hold of her suitcase, huffing where she has to jump in her tippy toes to fetch the heavy thing from the bottom of the truck. 

“Uff”

“Here, let me help ya.” A new voice rushes towards her, right out of line of sight. 

Catra tilts her head to the side to try and catch a glimpse or yet another stranger, strangely itchy with the sudden feeling of something quite familiar in them. 

The first thing she sees is a long hand, calloused and covered in small bandaids, trying to help Catra carry the suitcase in front of their faces. 

Then the soft material of a fishing sweater, thick wool and unique embroidery. The blue edge of a tattoo on the forearm and steel rings on the fingers. 

Finally the strawberry blonde of shoulder length hair and it clicks for Catra at the very same time her entire body recoils with anger. 

“Oh, absolutely not”

Catra slams her palm against the metal of the car, quite literally yanking the whole suitcase off the person's hand, turning her back to them immediately after. 

“Umm”

“ Umm, umm. What? Are you surprised?” Catra spats, stomping in the ground with the entire strength of her rage. “Listen, miss perfect , you cannot go through life being a fucking arsehole and getting surprised when they tell you to go fuck yourself after you flip them off first. That´s plainly stupid and it annoys me. You annoy me.” 

It feels good, oh, it feels great actually. Catra has been on a horrid mood since yesterday, she is angry and above anything else she is annoyed the hell out of herself because who does this person think she is to treat Catra like this. Everyone else has been dizzyingly nice so it has to be a “stick on the asshole” kind of thing with this one. 

That's good, Catra can be a fucking asshole too. She needs to actually, god fucking bless her for allowing her to tell this person to go fuck herself. 

“How was that, yesterday? I don't trust you, I don't want you here and I don't care about you? Well, I want nothing to do with you either so very kindly go straight to fucking hell— oh .” Catra’s voice dies on her throat, suddenly extremely confused. “The hell—?”

One one hand, this one is shorter, that´s Catra´s first train of thought. Still taller than her but shorter than the absolute monstrosity of yesterday. On the other hand, he has a beard. 

“I assume you've met my sister first then.” The man says, half between an apologetic stare and half between a chuckle.

Catra opens and closes her mouth several times like a damn fish out of the sea, trying with all her strength to find her words and not keep looking like an absolute idiot. “Your sister.” 

“Yes.” The man chirps, extending his hand towards her. “I'm Adam Quinn. I'm Adora's brother”

Catra stares at his extended hand and can´t find it in herself to hold it. They are the same, same high cheekbones, same jaw even under the blonde beard, same intensely beautiful eyes. The same but also different, in the height, the broad of their shoulders and the way they both looked at her, and Catra is having a visceral reaction of wanting to bury herself on the shore and never come out again.

“This is creepy.” Catra mutters, not taking his hand. 

He seems slightly disappointed but not annoyed, nodding in agreement as he lowers his arm back down. 

“I agree. We are twins! Identical so we look the same. It can be weird.” Adam shrugs, running his hand across his hair. It's shoulder length too but slightly blonder and loose instead of held back. “You get to distinguish us with time. For example, I'm the better looking one and she is always on a mood”

Catra makes a face, rubbing her upper arm. She knows first hand how true the first statement can be. “Okay” 

Adam must notice the tension on her voice because his lighthearted demeanor drops into something more intelligent, seemingly finally catching a sense of what Catra had said just moments before turning around. 

“Did she offend you?” He questions, giving a single step forward to catch a better look of Catra´s face. Catra steps back immediately, accidentally biting on her tongue when she shakes her head in negative. 

“No.”

“Oh. That's definitely a yes.” Adam rebuts, frowning nervously. Now that, that annoys Catra. 

“I thought this village gossips everything to everyone.” Catra spats, venomous with her still lingering anger. She doesn´t mean to lash out against him but she is also most definitely not happy with his sister or with anything right now. 

“Eh, I´m not much for gossip and I work the entire day at the sea.” Adam mumbles, rubbing the back of his neck with his open palm. 

Catra looks at him as if he was full of bullshit – because he is — waiting until he gives up and his shoulders drop, an ashamed look clouding his face. 

“Alright, I might have heard a thing or two about yesterday”

“Great.” Catra spats, turning around on her ankles with her suitcase dragging behind. 

“Hey, hey.” Adam rushes next to her, raising his hands in front of him, trying to calm the storm. He is wearing a strange looking ring on his left hand, silver hands surrounding a crowned heart with the base pointing towards him. “Sorry. I'm sorry, alright? Adora is not a bad person, I promise. She has a bad temper and she lacks touch most time, but she means well”

“Oh, she means well?” Catra stops suddenly, almost making Adam trip down with his own feet. 

“She does.” Catra is looking at him furiously and Adam knows it, looking right back at her pleading. ”She just doesn't trust you for, um, you father´s side”

“Fucking—” Catra starts, her voice watering down as she looks away. She knew there was going to be a very real possibility that she would be taken as her father´s daughter and not her own person, but still, it sucked absolutely ass to know this is how most of the people of Alwyn would look at her before even knowing her. “Well, as you can clearly see I´m not Prime Kurr”

“I can see that.” Adam agrees immediately, opening and closing his hands nervously at his sides. “My condolences, by the way.“

“Not needed.” Catra fumes, grinding her teeth. “I didn't know him. And I didn't care for him. I'm just here because there is nobody else and as I´m learning today he fucked up massively a lot of things here” 

“He did.” Adam nods, almost apologetic but calmer now that Catra has stopped storming away from him. He looks down at her heavy suitcase next to her feet, offering himself again. “Let me help you?”

“No.” Catra grunts, biting her tongue immediately after. She doesn´t mean to be a dick with someone that doesn't deserve it but her nerves are on fire today. Still, she tries. “I can do it”

“Okay.” Adam agrees, smiling tiny. 

They walk back together into the hostel, gaining yet again a sea of stares towards them. Catra huffs and this time she returns the stare of every single person looking at her until they look painfully embarrassingly away. 

Catra´s knee is on fire now too and she only wants to get it cleaned up and crash out for the rest of the night. 

“Adam!” Glimmer rushes from her table towards them in a swirl of sparkles, still holding a sleepy Melog safely inside her hands. 

“Heya, Glimmer!” Adam greets her almost as if they hadn´t seen each other for a long time and not just hours. 

He wraps his arms around her and lifts her off the ground with the strength of his hug, gaining an angry yell from Melog after being woken up. She might actually be Catra´s daughter after all. 

“You smell rancid.” Glimmer points out with a laugh, resting her left hand over his shoulder.Just now Catra realizes she is wearing a very similar ring to Adam´s except that this one is upside down with a lilac gem on the heart´s middle. 

“Adora smells worse.” Adam jokes with a grin, something slightly heavy hanging from the corners of his mouth. Glimmer's demeanor drops too, suddenly stressed from one moment to the other. 

“Awesome.” Glimmer chews under her breath, definitely not happy. She looks nervously behind Adam, towards Catra and back to him, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. “Is she—?”

“No, but she is in a horrible mood. I can't stand her anymore.” Adam sighs, taking a glass of whiskey from the counter and downing it all down in one go. “She went home”

“Great.”

“She is not drunk.” Adam cringes, lowering his voice. “Yet”

“Double great.” Glimmer jumps nervously on her spot, turning around to look for her bag. “I think I'll go keep an eye on her, just in case”

“Ya, that´d be good.”

Catra hears it all with her mouth pressed into a tight line, running her eyes across their slightly annoyed but also worried faces. 

Glimmer´s face relaxes when she turns towards Catra, gently handing her back a fuzz Melog. 

“Bye, Catra. See ya soon.” Glimmer waves her goodbye, already rushing across the hostel. 

Catra grumbles but nods. “Bye, Sparkles”

“Hey! That´s not my name!”

“It´s cute though.” Angella comments, walking down the stairs towards the upper floor. 

Glimmer gasps, faking deep offense. “Mom?!”

Catra looks away from the bidding goodbye to each other for today. She cannot handle looking at them anymore and not thinking about her mother and that is one thing that Catra cannot handle today. 

She starts walking up the wood steps of the stairs, Adam following her close behind. He doesn´t try to take the suitcase again but it´s obvious that he is keeping an eye on her, balancing precariously between carrying it and holding Melog against her chest. 

She kind of wants to kick him.

“Did Glimmer explain to you why Castle Grayskull is so important to us?” Adam asks, dipping his hands in his pockets. 

“Not really.” Catra sighs, stopping at the resthold of the stairs. “I read a bit before coming here, about it belonging to old lines of kings and queens and being important during the civil wars.”

She is nervous, approaching the matter with care. She doesn´t want to overstep where she can offend for her ignorance, no matter how much she wishes she knew this part of the history of her ancestors as well as everybody else. 

Adam is patient though, unlike his damn sister. He smiles and nods, leaning against the wall of the corridor. He looks through the small window shrugging to himself. 

“Yes, that's right. Castle Grayskull it's all of that, an important piece of our history, a testimony that we are still here even after all that people tried to erase us completely, us and our language and our culture. But it also became a refugee, for us.”

Adam rolls a loose stone with the sole of his boot, chewing on the inside of his cheek. He looks tired, slightly worn out after hours of working or after carrying the weight of something else over his shoulders and back. 

“There was a storm, thirteen years ago. I was seventeen. Storms like that are so weird here but this one, it raised the sea against the village and flooded everything. It was terrible, many buildings that you see today had to be reconstructed, many things were broken and— lives were lost.” Adam makes a face, something Catra almost recognizes on her own. “The only reason the rest of the village made it was because we evacuated to Castle Grayskull and it held its own against the tide and against the storm. It saved us.”

Catra holds her breath, listening intently. This is important and she knows Adam knows she owns the castle now and that is why he is telling her all this. A place so important for all of them that had been ripped from their hands after a moment of vulnerability and sorrow. 

“Your— no. Prime, after the storm. He slipped below our noses and took Grayskull for himself. And for a moment we thought it would be for good because he was once one of us, he was born here even if his father took him to grow up abroad. We thought he would remember but he didn´t. He forbade any of us to go back there even to visit our dead, and he took it for himself.” Adam wrinkles his nose, looking at Catra through ashy eyelashes. “Did you know that?”

“I did,” Catra croaks out, unable to say more, but Adam just nods.

“I— My sister and I used to play there all the time. The castle, the meadow, the graveyard, and the very forest was our playground. The Castle belonged to its village and its people so it was our safe spot in the world when our entire universe was crumbling down. Adora— ” He stops, studies Catra´s face for a second, looking for something very important in her eyes, in her face. If he finds it or not Catra does not know, but she hopes he does. “The Castle means a lot to my sister. For all of us, but, for my sister more than anyone else.”

Catra is breathing hard now, her entire chest and heart pulled in every single direction. 

She feels a lot of things right now. Anger mostly, yes, with her father and with life and a little bit with herself. Sadness too and comprehension. Catra knows, first hand, what is to be ripped off from a home, what is to wander from place to place without ever belonging all the while feeling deep in her bones that she had something and it had been stolen from her. 

She could never presume to equal the feelings Adam is trying to explain to her, but she knows. 

“I don´t want to cause harm.” Catra whispers to Adam, cringing where her voice comes sore and tired. “And I didn´t come to steal anything from you. I just want to make things right”

Adam studies her face for a second longer and nods, visibly relaxing against the wall. 

“That´s good to know.” He smiles warmly at her, nodding to himself.  “Well, I'm afraid I must bid ya goodnight, I have a date with a lovely lady and I cannot miss it.” Adam sprints to his feet, grabbing Catra´s suitcase before she can even begin to stop him and placing it inside her assigned room. “It was good knowing you”

“Seems like a shared feeling today.” Catra says between her teeth, peeking inside the room. It´s clean and homey, with the same quilted blanket from before and the single window that allows her to look into the square of the village and at the all colorful buildings around them

“Because it´s true.” Adam grins, split and cheeky and full of honesty. “I hope you get to love this place as much as we love it too”

“Oh, I´m not staying—”

“Good night, Catra!”

He rushes downstairs before Catra can start explaining herself, whistling the entire time. 

Catra looks at his blonde head go, all happy and wise. He is nice, Catra even thinks she could tolerate him as long as she doesn´t have to see his sister ever again. 

Melog rubs her little head below Catra´s chin and purrs, fast asleep again. The colorful streets and ever green meadows and all that they mean for their people still feel so far away from her but least to this little kitten Catra can belong. 

It´s a beginning. 

“Good night”

Chapter Text

Chapter III. Whiskey in the Jar

But you see, it's not me

It's not my family

In your head, they are fighting

With their tanks and their bombs, and their guns

In your head, they are crying

— Zombie , The Cranberries

᯽ 

“Mamma?”

“Yes, baby?”

“Why can´t we go see grandmamma?”

Niamh sighs, sitting at the edge of her daughter´s bed. The bedroom is small, smaller than anything Niamh ever had growing up, but it´s a better change than before. 

At least Catra can have her own room right now and not the one bedroom they had in their previous apartment. Still, this house is as small as a shoebox and closer to a burrow than an actual house. But it's theirs, actually theirs, and it must be worth something. 

“Grandmamma is very far away, sweetheart.” Niamh whispers, running her fingers gently over the silk curls on her daughter´s head, oh so similar to hers that it makes her smile. “It wouldn't be good for you”

“But—” Young Catra sniffles, rubbing the back of her head against her runny nose. She looks tired, her tiny voice still sore after so many days in the hospital. There are still bruises on her hands from catheters and they break Niamh's heart. “I want to meet her.”

Niamh watches her daughter in silence, trying to guard her own heart from the pain her words raise. She is so little still, six years old and tiny like a bloom. Just as frail too. 

“Maybe one day.” Niamh says after some minutes, watching her daughter play absently with the golden seahorse hanging from her neck. A small gift sent from a far away island by a grandmother that Catra is, even this small, so desperate to meet. “But right now there is nothing there that you cannot have here, darling, and I need you to stay here where your doctors can see you.”

She is still too little and Niamh thinks she doesn´t understand completely. She doesn't realise Catra understands things so much deeper than what she could possibly think. 

“But I want to know her.” Catra whispers, her eyelids heavy. “I want to go.”

“When you are better, alright? Not now.” Niamh wishes but at the very same time, part of her, the one that is selfish and that doesn´t want to ever know about Alwyn ever again, never wants her daughter to step foot there again. “Do you understand, baby?”

“Yes, mommy”

“Alright then, time to sleep.” 

Niamh tucks Catra back into the covers, covering her gently until she is well warm and drowsy inside the blankets. Niamh turns on the night lamp and leans to kiss her daughter's forehead lovingly, smiling when Catra nuzzles against her happily. 

She is alright again, she is calmer. Everything will be alright now. The meds are working and if Niamh has to pray or to beg or to move, how far or how separated from their once hometown, wherever she needs to go for Catra to be alright, she will do it. 

“Mommy?”

“Yes?”

“Can I go there? One day?” She asks, shy and sleepy. “To your home?”

Niamh breaths deeply through her nose, biting back her tears. “One day”

“Promise?”

“I promise”

𑁍

“WAKEY, WAKEY, ADORA!”

“AH!”

Adora jolts out of bed with a yell, losing the edge of the bed and falling with a loud thud. 

The bedsheets are eating her. They wrap around her limbs and face and put on a very good fight against her where she struggles until she manages to rip them off and take a breath of cold fresh air. 

“WAKEY, WAKEY, ADORA!”

Adora groans, blinking awake at the light of the sun stumbling across the curtains. Bright, definitely way too bright. It burns on Adora´s sore and aching eyes and makes her already pounding head swim with another wave of pain. 

“WAKEY, WAKEY, ADORA!”

Adora groans, resting her forehead over the side of her mattress at the same time she tries to blindly find her phone still ringing loudly over the night table. As much as she tries, the alarm sound Glimmer had recorded for her specially for mornings like this keeps ringing like the bells of hell itself, slamming against her temples furiously. 

“WAKEY, WAKE—”

BAM

Adora sighs, looking at her phone  where it had landed at the other side of the room after throwing it angrily as far away as she could from her. She cringes with annoyance but it does the trick though; it might have crashed her screen and fried the battery but it also managed to shut it up for good which is all Adora cares about right now.

The floor is very cold where she is, even though she is covered in the defeated bodies of the sheet, and absently she realizes someone must have forgotten to turn the heat on last night before leaving. That or she plainly did it on purpose knowing Adora would end up down here sooner or later. 

It makes her grumble but still she lowers down, her cheek against the old wood where she stretches like a six feet tall unmoving log. It's cold and miserable but so is Adora so falling right back to sleep is not entirely the end of the world. At least it is quiet and the light of the sun is not nagging on her hungover head anymore. 

RING, RING, RING… .

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Adora grunts, crawling on the floor to reach the cursed phone screaming its wires out with the incoming call. 

She could throw her phone again, in fact, she is closer to the room´s restroom so she could probably throw it inside the toilet and flush it down. But she knows what´s next after this, if she doesn´t answer then the pounding on the poor old door of her parent's house will follow and then a full bucket of freezing cold water to the face. 

Adora knows, she has been subjected to the torture of the person calling her before and today she doesn´t really feel like gambling her chances. 

Adora grabs the phone and presses the green button on the shimmering screen, barking at the speaker with a sore voice. “What?”

“Are you awake?” Glimmer´s way-too-pleased-with-herself voice stumbles from the other side of the line, her devil smile clear even though Adora cannot see her face 

“What do you think?” Adora grunts, lowering back-flat on the ground. 

They speak in Gaeilge only to each other, as does almost everyone in Alwyn, the words pretty even if Adora feels both like puking and like throwing a fit for waking up at all. 

“Oh, don´t be like that,” Glimmer cheers, music coming from her end. It's too early to be this awake. “Don´t you like my alarm for you?”

“No”

“Well, too bad. Hi Miss Thaymor!” Adora wrinkles  her nose, failing to escape the loud sounds. “This is all your own fault, you know? You're a lightweight, you cannot pretend to be a drunk when even a Guinness could make you tipsy.”

“That´s not true,” Adora grumbles, kicking loosely on the sheets. 

“Adora, I have known you since diapers. I know you since you drank for the first time when you were fifteen and stole a Guinness from your dad's fridge and you got wasted. You cannot come to me with that bullshit.”

Adora listens but she doesn´t answer, she doesn´t feel like it. Adora knows Glimmer reminisces it as something funny, a fond memory of teenage years where they reunited in the Castle to live their own kind of fantasy adventures. 

For Adora though it's a reminder. Of her father, scolding her with an expression that tried to be disciplinary and slipped into fond laughter. Of someone else too, someone Adora once loved, the reason Adora drank that day to begin with. What she thought was a lighthearted bet but was only hidden coercion. 

For Adora those memories are bitten and they burn on the base of her throat and she doesn´t want to think about them because it hurts. 

“Adora”

“I´m awake,” Adora bites, curling around herself immediately the moment they come out of her mouth. She doesn´t mean to be a dick, most of the time. “You won´t let me drink and you won't let me sleep in either, what do you want Glimm?”

“I want you to get up your ass.” Glimmer spats, and Adora is sure she is stomping on the ground like every single time she gets annoyed and looks like she wants to transport Adora somewhere far. “And I want my best friend sober enough so she can be at my wedding. Is that good enough for you?”

Adora covers her face with her hand and sighs, pushing back the blush of shame that crawls over her clammy cheeks. The wedding, of course. A month from now, her two best friends are going to get married because they loved each other more than anything else in the world. 

How lovely, how absolutely devastating. Adora loves them very much and she hopes they are happy but also kind of wants to die. 

“Yeah, okay.” Adora mumbles, trying not to sound as heartbroken as she feels. Glimmer and Bow don´t have to carry with the weight of her own heartbreak, is not on them, is not on nobody else but on herself. 

“Okay?” Glimmer repeats, almost as if making sure Adora actually means it. 

“Yes.” Then after a second. “I´m sorry”

“It´s alright, sweetheart.” Glimmer´s tone drops, from proud and mother-like nagging to something softer. They are, after all, best friends and they were there when Adora's world came crumbling down. They are still here now. “I understand”

“I know you do.” Adora whispers to the phone between her teeth, feeling the unwanted sting of tears on the corner of her eyes. “That´s why I´m apologizing.”

They take a second of silence, not awkward but needed. Adora needs a lot of silence sometimes, that´s why she hopped into her brother's fishing boat to begin with. Glimmer and Bow know too, they learned after a long time but they learned. 

For them it was new, Adora´s silence, but Adora was always like this, she was always asked to remain silent so it stuck with her. That´s a thing, with Adora, being stuck even to the things that hurt her, even if she always hated the silence. It´s better than the thunderstorm. 

“Listen, you are on vacation! This is your last free time before the big fish trip. You should take advantage of it as much as you can!” Glimmer´s cheerfulness picks up, causing Adora´s delicate eardrums to throb. “I am demanding your presence for three months and after that you can become one with the mollusks on the high seas if you want.”

Adora chuckles, unable to contain a weak grin. She is not as excited for the damn fishing trip as she ought to be. In fact, it is Adam´s idea, not hers, but there is nothing else for Adora to do and if she stays here while he goes to seal across the entire island the one that is going to throw herself from a cliff is not some swan princess but herself. 

“Yeah, alright.” Adora accepts, this time surer than before. “I´ll do my best”

“With you being here is enough, Dora.” Glimmer smiles at the phone. “We´ve missed you”

“I haven´t gone anywhere.”

“Yes, you have.” Glimmer says sadly and Adora knows what she means and she knows she is right. Fucking off to the sea the entire day is not the only way in which Adora has detached herself from her friends and her town, her heart lost from it too. 

“I´ve missed you too,” Adora whispers, and she means it. 

The sun is much brighter now, slipping inside Adora´s bedroom fully. It´s the very same room she has had since she was a child, shared with her brother all through childhood until he finally got kicked out into a different one. 

The very same room Adora knows and loves and that is familiar to her, known and safe. The main room of the house is still empty and locked, unable to be set foot on again. 

“Will we see you tonight at Mara´s?”

“Sure, yeah.” Adora exhales heavily, slowly burying her face into the fallen pillows below the bed. “I could have some stew”

“But no whiskey”

“Yeah, no whiskey.” Adora grumbles. If she is honest, she doesn´t even like alcohol besides Mara´s Guinnesses. But she has a bad habit of self destructing herself. 

“I left you a sandwich in the kitchen. Eat”

“Okay” 

“It's an order, from your best friend” 

“I don't even know who you are,” Adora tries the pathetic try of a joke, at least smiling a little at Glimmer’s exaggerated gasp. “See ya, Glimmer”

“Bye, Adora!”

The room is quiet once again, blissfully quiet. Adora can hear the drops of last night rain dripping from the roof of the house to the windchimes to the floor, creating sweet and jiggling sounds that calm Adora's rising heart immediately. 

The cold of the dawn slips inside even through the closed window of the room, making Adora's skin crawl with goosebumps. She liked to sleep with the windows open before, even with rain or thunder. Liked to snuggle on the bed with her head towards the glass and see the rush of rain across the evergreen land of her parents and sleep counting the seconds between the thunder and the lightning. 

She cannot do that anymore but she appreciates the morning dew clinging on the wood. 

Life has spiraled Adora around like a tornado for the past decade, up and down and to every single side, mangling her and bruising her beyond her control and beyond what she could handle at all. So maybe Glimmer is right, maybe she does need some firm land for a while. Deserving it is an entirely different matter though. 

For a solid second Adora thinks that she might actually get away with falling asleep again, even for the smallest of seconds, when another sound barges just outside the room, heavy like a wolf galloping directly towards her. 

“No.” Adora groans under her breath, already bracing for the impact.

The hundred fifty pound wolfhound barges inside the bedroom with his entire strength, almost bursting the hinges off the door with the hit as it rushes the small meters between the door and Adora and throws himself fully over her. 

“Swifty!”

The humongous dog barks loudly on her face, all grey fur and wet nose, licking her cheek from the chin to the temple until any kind of thought about falling asleep again flies away. 

“Swifty, no.” Adora complains, pushing their head as big as hers or more away from her. “Stop it, no”

Swifty leans back for a second, considering her and the command for a moment so long that Adora thinks he might actually obey. But this is her dog after all,and he is a spoiled brat and never ever listens to anything she has to say. 

Swift Wind barks again and this time nips the collar of Adora´s shirt, pulling from it until he is quite literally dragging Adora across half of the room, knocking her against everything scattered on the floor like her clothes, unceremoniously thrown to the side, and the chair of her desk. 

“Uff” Adora grunts, covering her face with her hands at the same time she tries to push her dog away. Swifty huffs and drops her shirt only so he can climb into her chest and throw himself and his entire weight over her, effectively pinning her against the floor. “Oh, come on. Seriously?”

He barks again, pushing his nose against hers, his heavy tail slashing against the ground. He is way too awake to be five in the morning and even though Adora loves him she also has the worst headache of her entire life.  

“Ugh,” Adora drops her head back against the floor, grumbling annoyed. “You and Glimmer, you are both conspirating against me.”

Swift grunts, smacking his mouth together as he stares at Adora's face defeated over the ground. He stands up again out of sudden, his butt still over Adora´s lap and his bear-like paws over his chest, staring down at her under a new light. 

Adora knows this expression, eyes casted down and ears perked up. It´s the very same one he gives her when she takes just a little bit longer to feed him or when she doesn´t let him go out to play in the middle of the godforsaken rain. Like a grumpy old grandpa, judging her. 

“What?” Adora mutters, frowning at him. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Swift Wind huffs, pawing her on the face hard, not even trying to be gentle at all. He is not the kind of dog to snuggle with someone or cuddle them at night. He is the kind that is a little bit a dick and loyal as fuck and the only one that has managed to put up with Adora´s shit for more than a few hours a day. 

“You are such an old man.” Adora complains, rubbing the back of Swifty´s ears. It gains her an approving grunt but Swifty paws her again in the middle of the face, this time more insisting than before. “Yeah, alright. Let´s go wake up everybody else.”

Swifty throws his head back and howls excitedly, jumping right off her and galloping her happily towards right out the door. It´s kind of creepy and kind of funny how he sometimes seems to understand Adora perfectly. 

Adora takes a very deep breath and finally manages to push herself off the floor, holding the mattress and her night lamp as leverage. She feels gross and she is very sure she looks gross too; she is still wearing the same pants she used to go fishing with Adam and they stink like fish and shrimp. 

Someone, most probably Glimmer, helped her pull her sweater off and she is only on her compression shirt now, sticking to her face with night sweat and the remains of her pathetic drunken state of last night. She doesn't feel proud about it but she also doesn't care about it either. 

All of her hair is loose, tangling in painful knots and clinging to the soft skin of her undercut. There is sweat on her neck, there are tears tracks dug on her cheeks, clogging her eyelashes into black cloths where the mascara has run down her face. 

It´s early enough to be absolutely beautiful inside but the pretty light still makes Adora cringe when it falls over her face. She walks slowly towards the kitchen and picks up Swift Wind´s bowl, filling it for him before the dog that feels himself horse, nips her on the ribs again. The last thing she needs is another bruised ribcage. 

Showering takes her a full five minutes, not a single longer under the freezing cold of the spray of the shower. She washes off the dirt and the sweat and rest of any alcohol lingering to her body and rests her weight against the wall of the shower, taking several deep breaths. 

Her hair smells heavy with the chemicals she uses to keep the strands straight, and it burns her scalp every single time but she doesn´t seem to be able to stop doing it even after so long.  

The cold water helps her head fall numb, in a much different way that she tries with the whiskey. It shuts the buzzing in her head and brings her spiraling thoughts into a stop, if not forever at least for just enough for her to be able to exist without hating herself completely. 

Out of the shower she refuses to look at herself in the mirror. She combs her head and holds her soaked hair into a ponytail above her head but never meets her own eye through the reflection. She might be able to do it again one day, like she did before Serenia and her parents and all the years before that. 

For now though Adora dresses herself in the solitude of her room and tends the bed like she always does, tight on the surface and tucked on the corners of the mattress. A single pillow, never two, the quilted blue blanket her mother sewn herself when she was little, one for her and one for Adam. 

It´s been a long time since Adora takes the time to actually be at home instead of rushing her way across every single morning. Working on a fishing boat means waking up every single day at three in the morning, showering as quickly as she can, feeding everyone here and then jumping into her brother´s truck already waiting for her to depart to the sea. 

All her days are spent on the sea, all her evenings in the hostel before crashing into bed at unholy hours of the night. All her free days, as much as she rejects them and Adam always obliges her to take them, are used to clean the farm, the house and try to rot into herself. 

At least these months will mean that she'll be able to stay here. It also means she will most definitely drive herself mad but nothing can be done about that. 

Swift Wind is already done by the time Adora walks out of her room, waiting patiently for her next to the old wooden door of the back, his big face split into a huge and goofy grin. 

The house is as it has always been since Adora was a small child. A single floor with the floor of wood tiles and beams on the ceiling; the main room, closed but with the sight towards the meadows of their farm, and two other ones that once were Adora and Adam´s growing up. 

The walls are still made of stone, insulated and covered with beautiful floral wallpaper that Adora remembers learning before she even knew what flowers looked like. There is a chimney she has not turned on in many years in the living room and a small kitchen that still has the pretty blue mosaic on the wall that her mother always loved. 

The stairs towards the attic are still carpeted and the third step still creaks, no matter how much Adora's father tried to fix it, all the time. There are pictures hanging from the walls and cushions on the couches. She loves this house, she loves this land, it has not changed in many years and yet Adora has changed, completely. 

“Okay, Swifty, let's go.” Adora whispers, opening the door so they can both walk out. 

The lands of her parents are evergreen, beautiful and kind. There is grass and cloves on the ground, surrounding the house of her childhood and the barn several meters beyond them until it looks like a sea of green, gently moved in waves by the breeze. 

It´s slightly damp when she walks across the fields, sticking with leaves and soft earth to the soles of her boots and the knees of her overalls. Swifty jumps up and down like a little hare across the moss and grass, turning around to make sure she is actually following him and barking excitedly when he realizes she does. 

It´s nice, at least one of them is having fun. 

The barn is huge, it was bigger when Adora was younger or maybe she was just a child, but it is still big now, wood and metal and warmth when Adora opens the heavy sliding door. 

“Alright everyone, time to wake up,” Adora calls, leaning down to pick the buckets from the floor. 

When she was younger too there were many more animals than now. Her parents were farmers, seasoned and prolific, with many heads for dairy, poultry and even goats for cheese. They once had beehives filled with honey and stables full of horses where kids of Adora´s age could ride across the fields of Alwyn and look at the Irish sea from the hills of the cliffs. 

Once upon a time there used to be so many animals on these lands that Adora learned how to count by picking them all one by one. Once upon a time the fields were not only green but also used for the crops and the flowers they´d sell on the Sunday markets and the buses to Dublin. 

And she loved it, from childhood to her teenage years, she loved the work and the early hours and her hands coated with earth. Adam belonged to the sea tides but Adora belonged here. So many things and so much life in here that her parents were always tired but they were also always happy, and it was a nice life, a kind one, when Adora´s parents were alive. 

Now it´s just Adora and there are not nearly as many animals as there were before. There are no bees and the fields of flowers died and she is on her own. And she still loves them all, in a way that aches, where she was not nearly enough to keep it all from slipping from her grasp. 

“Good morning, Millie. Dorothy. Ruth,” Adora says hello to the only three milk cows she was able to keep. All of their sisters had to be sold to friends and neighbors to pay for the tragedy of that night´s storm. 

They moo at her as if they recognized her and she rubs the space between their filed horns, smiling where the pink knitted earmuffs makes them look a little bit like goblins gathering on their stables and eating the fresh crop, the hay and the seeds that Adora puts for them on their feeders. 

They smell also a little bit like the molasses she gives them at night when she grabs the small stool from the corner and sides at their sides, milking them one by one. She cheers at them during the process, rubbing them on the side of their bellies and smiling when they answer at her with a swift lash of their tails against her face. 

The buckets are filled by the time she is done and she knows Miss Thaymor will be delighted when she brings them to her later on the day, after all, the old lady has been making the best cheese of the village for the last sixty years and, for some reason, she refuses to use any other milk than the one that comes from Adora´s farm. 

Adora carries the closed buckets towards the back of her truck already parked on the back of the car, like every single morning, huffing with the first layer of sweat already coating her forehead. 

It´s a very good car, her parents gifted it to her when she was old enough to drive around Alwyn without ending up in a ditch and she has devotedly taken care of it for ten years now. It has not failed her, not even once. 

The chicken´s coop is Adam's most proud building of the entire farm, designed and made entirely by him when most of their cows had to go and he knew Adora would get depressed if she had nothing to take care of. He painted the wood himself and put the wind vane as the shape of a rooster with a goblin´s hat on the very top of the ceiling. 

It is ridiculously well made, taller than Adora, protected from the rain and cozy and closer to a chicken's hotel than an actual coop but Adora appreciates it all the same. She walks past the grid door and walks inside the wood building, squatting over the chips bed on the floor. 

“Morning, ladies” Adora greets, her accent heavy where her head is still slightly pounding even after downing two ibuprofens and an entire liter of water. “Barbara, you better not have stolen anybody´s eggs today.”

An entire fluff of brown and black feathers hit her on the face, followed by an offended cackle. She would laugh if the chickens weren´t little assholes nipping at the skin of her hands as collects the dozens of unfertilized eggs from nests and the floor, taking a little pleasure in knowing she will also be able to give them to the bakery shop today. She doesn´t need any anyway. 

Adora doesn't eat at home. She eats whatever lunch Adam packs for both of them at the ship because he knows Adora has and would go entire long hours without eating; and at night she eats at Mara´s and doesn´t think about whatever she gives her as long as it comes with the golden of whiskey in a glass. 

That´s her routine most days, except yesterday because she was not in a mood to have to deal with the entire village throwing side glances at her and makes tiny questions about a person Adora does not give three fucks about. So in return she ate nothing and both her hungover and her hunger this morning are making her quickly irritable. 

Adora places every single egg inside cardboard boxes and also puts them on the back of the truck, right next to the milk and everything else she is to take downtown. She hears loud commotion coming from the coop and turns around, ready to yell at Bárbara and coming face to face with a huge black goat instead, slamming his horns against the grille around the coop. 

“Son of a bitch,” Adora spat, jumping off the truck with a string of curses that would alarm a sailor or a pirate. “Skeletor! The fuck you think you´re doing here?!”

The buck stops freaking out Adora´s poor chickens just so he can turn with barbed face towards her, tilting it at the side so he can stare at her directly in the eyes with his creepy amber ones. He is an asshole and a weirdo and he isn´t even Adora´s but he likes to escape from time off the neighbor farm to try and steal the chickens eggs from their nests. 

“Get out! I mean it!” Adora yells, rolling the sleeves of her sweater up her elbows, ready to drag him from the horns if needed. The deep blue ink of the unfinished tattoo is a striking contrast against the pale of her arm. “I warn you, Skeletor”

The goat huffs, actually huffs at her and turns on his hoofs, skipping his way inside Adora´s meadows and eating from the crops, scaring the shit out of Adora´s cows where she had released them so they could enjoy the sun and eat. 

“Dick,” Adora mutters between her teeth, turning around to find Swifty again. 

He's about five meters away, also on the meadow, chasing yellow butterflies and actually catching them inside his mouth before spitting them right out. Over and over again, several times. 

“Swifty,” Adora calls, chuckling when he rolls on his huge back over the ground and looks at her with his ear crooked and his tongue hanging from the side of his mouth. “Keep an eye on him, alright? I'm going for the horses.”

Swift Wind barks and stands up in a mess of huge limbs, finding the goat immediately and following it intently with his eyes. He is not going to get close, he has almost gotten horned one too many times, but he follows behind him growling under his breath. 

The horse's stable is warm when Adora walks inside, already alive with the huffing of her two horses looking at her walking inside. For a long time Adora did not have horses, not after her parents' passing; but then Serenia happened and Adora thought she would drive mad with heartbreak and the two horses she brought home on an impulse were some of the few things that kept her from throwing herself off the cliffs. 

“Baron,” Adora smiles, resting her palm over the bridge of the stallion, tall and buckskin, his mane and tail still brushed into the braids Adora did for him to avoid knots. 

He snorts at her in recognition and presses the side of his muzzle against her temple, his ears relaxed and powerful limbs ready to start the day around their lands. 

Adora tilts her head to the side, focusing on the second stable right next to Baron´s. The quiet mare is deep inside her space, partially hidden by the shadows cast from the stable´s windows. She is silent and frail, much like she has been for the last couple of months. 

Adora sighs, palming Baron´s neck before walking towards her second horse, lowering her voice into something tender and careful. 

“Hey, Sweetheart.” That´s actually her mare´s name, it began with a joke and then stuck around because never has Adora met such a loyal and kind horse as this one, sweet and patient with everyone that would get near. She wore her heart bare on her chest and trusted freely as she had never known violence or fear. And yet, she has changed too, she has gone through pain too, a kind that Adora could not protect her from. “Do you want to try walking outside?”

Adora walks inside Sweetheart´s cubicle, approaching her safe space with calm steps. She is beautiful, slightly shorter than Baron yet still tall, Appaloosa and beautiful blue eyes. Adora remembers thinking that she looked a little bit like a dawn when she saw her for the first time. 

Sweetheart looks at her and relaxes her ears, recognizing her and accepting her, but she remains inside her space, safe on her corner where she has not wanted to part from in a long time. 

She is a good horse, a sweet friend, a kind animal. She was once an excellent mother. 

“I know, love.” Adora whispers, embracing her from the side, letting her forehead fall against Sweetheart´s neck and holding her there. “I miss him too.”

Baron and Sweetheart had a foal, once. The gestation was quite the surprise for Adora, much to Bow´s amusement when he diagnosed Sweetheart and let Adora know that her mare was actually not dying and not having colic, but carrying a baby. 

It was terrifying, exciting and absolutely nerve wracking. During the eleventh months that Sweetheart was pregnant, Adora even lowered her time on the sea to be more and more with her, ready to accompany her when the new horse would arrive into these lands that were also theirs. 

As most things with Adora's life, it was not enough. An accident, Bow called it, or more like bad luck from Adora's end. It was sudden, none of them noticed because how could they — except that Adora was convinced she should have — a little twisting on the umbilical cord and loss of blood flow and by the time the foal arrived at its home he was already long gone. 

Adora called him Dawn and buried him in the old blackberry field. Sweetheart never wanted to walk out of her stable again. 

“Stay here and keep warm then,” Adora whispers when Sweetheart doesn´t move, making sure the blanket is well placed over her back and serving her a good amount of breakfast. “I´m going to take Baron for a little bit. I´ll bring him to you in the blink of an eye. Don´t worry.”

Baron and Sweetheart neigh goodbye to each other for now and then Adora is out, climbing over Baron´s already excited back and guiding him towards the invisible paths of the meadows that only Adora knows. 

Swift Wind has managed to corner the goat into a reduced space of Adora´s meadows, between a cluster of rocks and tall grass. The goat however doesn´t look intimidated at all, he looks at Swifty directly on the face and snorts at him, digging his hooves on the ground. 

The damn goat is not afraid of anything except for Baron, and it´s most definitely either because the goat has some kind of metal issues and because he is not neutered.

“ Tsk, Tsk. Let´s go, Baron. Let´s get the devil´s spawn out of here.”

Adora never feels like herself unless she is riding. She lost everything about herself, it got mangled, broken and stained, her hair, her body, her desires, her dreams. But riding was for some reason spared for her and it´s the only golden moment in her life that she feels like what she was before, like what she thought she would be for the rest of her life.

The wind is freezing cold on her face, flushing her cheeks and tearing tiny tears from the corner of her eyes. It tangles the straight strands of her hair below the hair tie and makes her breath come in puffs of steam when she exhales, her eyes clear and wide awake as she looks at the beautiful expansion of the greeners that made her home. 

Her head is not aching anymore. 

The Gilmore´s farm is very much like the Quinn´s, huge and headed much more to the harvest than the Quinn's ever was. It's also a little closer to the line of houses of the countryside, unlike Adora's home that sometimes looks like a phantom home in the middle of the meadows of the Alwyn’s cliffs. 

Adora has also known this place for a long time now, the Gilmore's marriage and their single daughter, years younger than Adam and Adora themselves. 

She is the one that walks out of the two store house to greet Adora as she enters the Gilmore's lands, herding the complaining goat with Baron and with Swifty jumping up and down behind their heels. 

The young woman must have seen Adora from the windows because she is not surprised to see her there. She is also not surprised at all when she realizes exactly what she is doing there too. 

“Adora! Is that Skeletor?” Frosta exclaims, covering her eyes from the pale morning sun to look at her menace of a goat grunting at her in recognition. 

“Yeah.” Adora grumbles, folding her arms over Baron's neck and leaning her torso a little bit forwards. 

Frosta’s entire face splits into a huge grin, rushing to greet her imp back home. He isn't even a productive member of the farm, the Gilmore's don't have other goats, he is actually just a pet, spoiled and a brat. 

"Don't tell me he escaped to your barn again.” Frosta says between a chuckle, petting the back of the buck's head.

“He did.” Adora frowns, clicking her tongue against the back of her teeth. “Keep it inside, Frosta, I'm serious” 

“Yeah, yeah.” Frosta dismisses her, looking at her through her eyelashes. Her hair is dyed electric blue and she has several piercings on her face, but Adora still remembers her from when she was a wobbling kid trying to jump the fence of the farm to chase the cows in winter. “You know, you could've just called. You didn't have to come all the way here at the crack of dawn like Mr Darcy.” 

Adora blinks, suddenly confused. “I have no idea what you're talking about” 

Frosta rolls her eyes, somehow annoyed as she crosses her arms over her chest. “Do you realize how hot you look riding like that?” 

Adora's mouth drops open, she cannot even avoid it, immediately flushing red not with the cold but with surprise. “Frosta, I'm older than you” 

“Just for nine years and seven months,” she shrugs, waving her hand in front of her as if that wasn´t long enough. Adora shakes her head, incredulous. 

“You're a kid, Frosta.” She mutters, frowning deeply. “You're like, nine” 

Frosta´s entire face falls with annoyance, slightly baring her teeth at her as she stomps on the ground. “I’m twenty one, Adora” 

“Well, damn.” Adora blinks, taken aback by the slap of realization that it is not that Frosta is no longer a teen but that Adora is officially old in her eyes now. “I have to go”

“Yeah, whatever.” Frosta grumbles with another roll of her eyes, not even paying attention when the godforsaken goat escapes her hold and starts to jump loops around her house.  

Adora stares at him with dread, the corners of her mouth pulling down as she points at him firmly. “Watch him” 

“No promises” 

Adora guides Baron to turn around back to their meadows, speaking over her shoulder with a malevolent glint in her eyes. “If I catch him bothering my chickens again I'm going to cook it!”

“Yeah, sure.” Frosta mumbles as an after thought, already walking back towards her house. She stops suddenly on her tracks though, turning around sharply to look at Adora´s back already galloping away. “It´s a joke, right?!”

Adora laughs and waves her hand unceremoniously at her, riding away. 

Now that the sun is slowly rising across the sky the meadows are stunning, washed by a gentle shade of golden and pink. The fields of grass move like waves, from side to side and strongly with the autumn air slowly melting into winter. 

And Adora can see everything from here, from the meadows and fields that shaped her childhood and later her entire life for good and for bad too. She can see the expanse of the lilac and blue sky just above her head, hovering like a celestial dome where the stars are twinkling even if she cannot see them now. She can see the hills with forever green on the ground and trees with twisted branches like fairytales. 

She can see the faraway lakes and the stone path that leads back into the village, with its colorful houses and tiny windows and triangle shaped roofs covered in rain washed tiles. All the stores and houses and places that Adora grew up knowing, that she played and learnt better than herself and that she thought would be right to love her entire life. To build her dreams around this town. 

Now Adora steps foot in the lands she loves and cannot help but to feel dread against herself and to realize maybe her dreams were inadequate after all. No matter how many years have gone by or how much Adam and her friends have tried to convince her otherwise, Serenia´s words still cut deep, bleeding inside the middle of her very heart. 

Adora stops Baron in the middle of her meadows, where her parents before grew multicolored flowers and now there's only mud and weed. Right at the edge of the cliff that leads to Adora´s sight of the Galway's shore, with its white sand and stones like monuments for old and forgotten gods. With the cold ocean washing over their lands, both so peaceful and capable of so much destruction. 

Adora is so afraid of it all and she loves it so deeply too, it´s maddening and it breaks her heart. 

Adora´s blue eyes roam to the side, towards a known sight for her just as everything else. There, right over the highest cliff in the Alwyn's sea shore, raising like praying hands towards the sea and the sky that have endured everything, war and hunger and stolen culture and tragedies, the cut of the wind and the hand of the ocean against the earth. Castle Grayskull watches over the shores and over them, a monument and another stolen treasure, teasing Adora´s anger and her grief with its sorrowful sight. 

It´s a straight path from Adora´s home to the Castle, barely two kilometers without distraction, all the way up the hills and across the moss meadows filled with fairy circles, up and up the treacherous path filled with mud that has made every single car in Alwyn to get stuck in there except for Adora´s. 

She doesn´t even have to cross the forest, she could go on foot for an hour if the possibility of rain catching her by surprise didn´t scare her to the bone. It is an extension of the lands that once were her parents, an arm, a vein, a ley line from the place where Adora stands alone to the twin towers and stone walls of the castle. 

From where she now stands, quiet over Baron´s back with the golden light of the new dawn washing over her face, she can see the glimmer of the windows. If she closes her eyes she can see the hidden corners on the corridors and the stained glass spelling their history through the windows. She breathes deep through her nose and she can smell the salt of the sea woven to the very foundations of the stone and the rock. 

This place, this land, this castle, is embroidered to Adora´s bones, to her very soul. She was born of this soil and she wept all of her tears on this stone. And it´s gone, teared away from her like everything else, unable to even step inside the sacred clove meadows. 

It makes Adora want to run all the way up the mud and the grass and scream at closed doors. For the split of a second, one rotten and poisonous, it makes her desire she had heard Serenia and left with her after all. 

“What a fucking joke.” Adora spits to the wind and to nothing, looking at the Grayskull shape through a sheet of tears already gathering in her eyes. 

She doesn´t mean to cry, in fact, she has not cried in such a long time. Three years, on her knees begging a woman she used to love to stay with her, to wait for her. Those were her last tears and she promised to herself never to spill a single more, nor for the faux promise of happiness and not even for sorrow. 

She sometimes absently wonders if there is anything else left in the world capable of bringing her to tears. 

Adora grunts and pulls from Baron's reins, turning sharply back. She has much to do back home, things to clean, animals to feed and care for; an entire life Adora lives alone but that is on her to maintain. And she might not care that much about herself and she might have hit bottom and doesn´t know how to swim back to the surface, but they count on her. 

She rides fast and angrily across the meadows this time. Quick, fast, so fast that her tears go dry without spilling from her eyes. She has no time to waste and she has no interest in getting herself lost in spiraling thoughts so she gallops across the green, grinding her teeth until they almost crack. 

She gets to be angry, because her memories of a place she loved have been tainted by the greed of a man and the injustice of being too young and too poor and not being able to do anything. 

Angry because when she closes her eyes she sees the corners and the stone walls and the old paintings but she also sees the oak colored strands of loops bouncing across freckled cheekbones. She sees the blue sea and the moss and mud but she also sees eyes like split ice over seaweed. 

It makes her angry, the reach of that woman´s eyes, of her presence and her smell, already covering the Castle within the palm of her hand. And Adora cannot give herself permission to think or lose herself inside that.

So Adora gets to cross the expansion of her own lands and try to seek for any kind solace before she hides herself inside her room all over again. After all there is nothing she fears more than an angry best friend, especially her angry best friend just about to get married and getting on her own nerves. 

Adora has much better things to do than thinking about someone she doesn't wish to even care about.

᯽

“I think we should bury it,” Catra says, staring at the poor taxidermied lion´s skin lying sadly over the floor of the castle. 

The first floor is a mess, couches pushed to the side, curtains on the floor and things displaced everywhere as she tries to make sense about what was dragged here by Prime´s absolutely horrible design decisions and what actually belongs to this castle. 

It´s been long work, and worse, it´s for some reason hot as hell inside this place now that rain has decided to stop altogether and the heat has started to rise inside the stone walls. She almost understand how people of ol´were able to live inside this kind of places without heating because it´s almost the start of winter and Catra is for some reason sweating through her shirt.  

It might also be because she is juggling between absolutely tearing the castle apart and carrying the little bundle of soft blankets against her chest like a baby monkey or a kangaroo inside a pouch. There is movement inside of the blankets, wrapped right around her chest, the Melog´s tiny whiskers coming out to peek at her. 

Catra huffs, resting her hands on the sides of her waist, looking down at Melog too. Her baby kitten face is slightly smudged with her nap, fur everywhere and whiskers wrinkled where she ate from the bottle Catra gave her and immediately fell asleep again in the middle of grooming her clean. 

It's funny how easily Catra slipped into caring for Melog. She has not slept properly the entire day and she is sure she will not have one complete restful night until Melog is grown enough to eat by herself, but she does not mind. 

It´s good actually, it keeps her on her toes enough time for her not to spiral into darker thoughts, even if she is exhausted all the time and her muscles are already aching as she tears the castle apart. 

No, not the castle, just those parts of it that carry Prime´s hand. She has blisters on her hands and she is still low key begging to some outer power that she did not actually destroy the gas connections because blowing up to the sky is not exactly the way in which she wants to die. 

Three knocks come from the thick gates of the Castle, rumbling inside the entire place like a thunderstorm just swirling outside the door. Catra turns around with her frown wrinkled, biting into her mouth nervously. 

Nobody is supposed to come here for now, not that she knows. Mara and Light Hope offered to help her drive the truck up the hills so she didn´t get stuck again in the middle of the mud. And from the little she heard about Glimmer when she went to the hostel to have breakfast, she was going to be occupied the entire day with matters of her wedding that were none of Catra´s business. 

Adam then,maybe, but then dread falls over Catra´s shoulder because if it is in fact Adam his dreadful sister might just be right next to him and that´s the last thing Catra needs right now. She doesn´t need her angry face looking down at her sweaty face, and she doesn't need her bright eyes judging every single movement inside the castle. No, thank you very much, but no. 

Catra grabs the cold metal of the handle as the knocks keep coming and coming, thinning her patience dangerously quick. She breathes deep once, thrice, and pulls from the heavy wood, making sure Melog is well covered against her chest as the freezing cold and sticky sunlight slips inside from the entrance, making her skin raise into goosebumps immediately. 

There are several people standing outside, waiting for her with unnerving smiles plastered on their faces. For a second Catra thinks they might be villagers, and she braces herself for another unfortunate confrontation, but when she takes a better look at them she realizes that they are not only all men but also that they look like cut off from the very same fabric. 

They are all tall and spotless clean, hair brushed flat and square over their heads, not a single strand moving out of place not even by the harsh wind. It´s all kinds of unnerving, the way they all wear the exact same suit, white and light gray, and green ties of a shade that has nothing to do with the sage and the jade of the grass outside but something closer to the neon lights outside Catra´s apartment on the city. 

And they all look down at her, not even trying to hide their disdain behind their soulless grins or how little they truly think of her. As if they believed her as nothing but a teenager that had stumbled upon an unfortunate bundle of fortune and she knew nothing about what it meant or what to do with it. 

It bothers Catra, deeply, especially because she is far from a child and she already knows everything that there is to be about business. She knows why these men are here. 

“Can I help you?” Catra barks, not even bothering with a Good evening or a Come in. She steps unmoving right at the limits of the door like guarding the castle from a pack of vampires and refuses to even flinch. 

The main man of them, the one all the way up front with his blue hair and absolutely too weird red mouth, smiles at her all white teeth, giving a single step closer to her way too close for Catra´s. 

“Miss Kurr.” He drawls with none of the accent Catra has started to become accustomed to in the last couple of days. “I´m Hordak, I represent the Fright Zone district.” He presents himself with an equally plastic smile on his face as it is on his voice, looking at Catra up and down several times. “I was colleagues with your father”

He extends his hand in front of him, offering her his hand, boney and long and completely unnerving. It gives Catra the heebie-jeebies, making her frown so deeply her head starts aching. 

“I know who you are.” Catra snaps, looking back up. Of course she knows, she saw the sharp logo of their company in Prime´s documents, she saw the photograph of them closing deals, taking sacred places and turning them into nothing but money laundry and ruins. So she ignores his hand completely, barely holding back the need to slap it away from her. “What do you want?”

Hordak grimaces, slowly lowering his hand back down as the fake expression in his eyes starts to become all too annoyed and all the more honest. 

“May we come in?” He asks, tight between grinded teeth as he peaks past Catra´s shoulder, directly inside the messed up castle. 

He definitely catches Catra's breakthrough against the chambers, the pulled down wallpapers, thrown away metal chairs and computer screens, because his eyebrows rise on the pale skin of his forehead. 

Catra grunts giving one step forwards between the open door and him, her jaw clenching until the joints ache,

“No.” It´s not only annoying, it is also weird as fuck. She almost feels like she would be granted permission to a pack of fucking vampires if she allows them to walk past the frame. “Whatever you have to say you can say it here”

Now all false pretenses wash away. Hordak's face sours as if Catra had squirted lemons directly on his eyes. He taps on the stone floor with the point of his lustrous shoe, clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth in a way that makes Catra lose her damn nerves.  

“Your father and us were in the middle of a very good contract when he unfortunately passed away. A deal regarding this.. old Castle.” He says, running his eyes around the pretty arches of the gates and the worn out stone on the walls, like a predator already imagining what he is going to do with this place once he gets his hands on it. “Your father did this poor fishing village a great favor taking the debt of this place out of their hands, and now we want to honor his work and his life of course by doing the same.”

Silence falls between them, tenser than anything else Catra has felt on the last three days here. Hordak clears his throat barely glancing away as another one of his almost perfect copies lends him a thick folder filled with expensive looking documents inside. 

Hordak hands it to Catra with a sly grin stuck to teeth. flashing the deep yellow and sour breath coming from his mouth. 

“Here is the contract, your father had already gone through it all so it is more than ready. You just need to sign it.” He opens it quickly, finding the exact page he is looking for and tapping it with his yellow nail finger right over the thick signature line. “Right there”

Catra is too busy staring disgustingly at his finger, the corners of her mouth pulling down deeply. She has always been able to put on a blank face to everything but she is not exactly sure what expression she is doing right now. 

Catra is a business woman, she has been in this world for a long time for her own merit. She dealt with one too many persons like Hordak, some more pathetic and some much worse when Scorpia and she were opening the Crimson Waste. She knows how they work, she knows how they think.

“Right there, Miss Kurr.” Hordak presses on, clearly more nervous as the minutes go by and Catra makes no attempt to move at all. 

Instead Catra clicks her tongue and tilts her head to the side, staring at him directly in the pale eyes when she speaks. “What exactly is your line of business?”

“Tourism, miss Kurr.” He chews out, snapping his eyes from Catra to the castle again and then towards the cold and damp meadows all around them. “Just think all it could do for this little place and their economy. Visitors, photographers, night life. There will be hordes of people coming to these very hills, staying in this place, hell, even buying land and moving here. Modernization for a town that is stuck living in the last century. Technology, roads without mud, all of that on the palm of their hands.”

Catra grinds her molars together until her jaw aches, clenching her entire face with her contempt. “Did you ask the villagers if that is what they want.”

“Miss Kurr, please, you know how people are from places like this.They won´t admit they need to change until we show them that this is for the best.” Hordak says, very clearly losing his patience. “We´ve already helped so many other places both in Dublin and Galway so they would be joining a powerful house of business. And of course, don't think I have forgotten, your investment would be highly rewarded.”

Catra chuckles, dry and void of any kind of real mirth. 

“I don´t think any of these people want to change.” She spats, thinking of all the people she has known in the past hours. Mara, Glimmer, Bow, Adam. Even his dreadful sister, she was furious because she thought Catra was exactly like Prime, just as these people think she is like him just for being his biological daughter.  “And I don´t see why they should.”

Hordak closes his mouth so quickly he accidentally bites his tongue. He turns around to give a quick look to the men around them, a wave of tension crossing through all of them. They are starting to get nervous and that might be dangerous. 

“Miss, please, just read the contract. I assure you none of that will matter after that.” Hordak gives her a sly smile, leaning his arm over the old wood of the frame and this entire torso towards her, hovering like a heavy wall suctioning all the air around Catra and almost making her choke. “We heard you had some money problems with your business at Brightmoon. And this is a lot of money, Miss Kurr”

Well. Motherfucker. 

“Hordak,” Catra says, tilting her waist to the side and smiling. Over her chest, Melog stirs awake and hisses at the man in front of them, her tiny nails digging over Catra´s shirt.

Hordak's eyes flash, once again interested at Catra's sudden change of tone, not even realizing he is way too close and Catra´s eyes are way too cold. “Yes, Miss Kurr?”

Still holding baby Melog firmly against her chest, Catra grabs the folder from Hordak´s yellowed nails and promptly throws it towards the puddles of mud behind him, watching in satisfaction as every single of the man´s mouths falls open with incredulity while the expensive papersheets soak in the dirty water. 

“It´s Miss D'Riluth. Not Kurr.” Catra spats, stepping forwards and forwards until Hordak has to forcefully lean back from the frame, tripping backwards and almost falling on his ass over the same dirty water. “And the answer is no”

Hordak sputters, looking all parts horrified and furious at the ruined deal as he turns violently towards Catra, his saliva splattering everywhere when he spats. 

“What?”

“No.” Catra repeats, her annoyance and her own anger clear in her voice. “Do you want me to spell it? No”

Catra rushes back inside the hallway of the castle, ready to grab the handle of the heavy door and slam it right against their noses. Hordak straightens up on his place, dropping the facade of the nice business man into something completely more unpleasant, eyes dark and hands curling into fists. 

“I don't think you know what you are talking about, girl.” He grunts, stepping with his nice shoes over the ruined papers to try and get closer. 

“The castle and the land are now in my name. I signed them, it's every bit official as you probably know by now.” Catra bites back the need to yell at them, holding herself to the wood with so much strength that her hand starts to tremble with the effort. “I´m not giving them to you or any of your like. So you can kindly fuck off already.”

“So you are keeping it for yourself?” Hordak cackles, incredulous and sarcastic. “You are just a girl, at least the pathetic one of your father was a man with far more experience. What do you think you can do differently? I don't even believe you know how to manage everything that involves this place”

Every single word that just came out of his mouth is wrong and is not only giving her a headache but also an immediate need to either puke or scream. She doesn´t feel up to it though, in fact, there is nothing Catra wants more in the world than to finish this conversation and kick them all out one by one. 

“What I can do or will do is none of your business. What is of your business is getting the fuck out of here and never coming back again.” Catra says very, very calmly, breathing the anger out of her body through her nose. 

Hordak starts losing his marbles, scrambling on the dark pebbles and softened mud of the ground, highly aware that whatever plans and money he had counted to win from the Prime´s deal is not only slipping through his fingers but is none existence at all now that Catra is truly in charge. 

“I´ll do you a much better offer than I did to your father.” he rushes out, his throat closing on itself making him sound even more pathetic than what he already is to Catra's eyes. “Fifty, no, sixty percent more”

Catra doesn't even want to stay in this place but good god she would rather throw herself off the cliffs outside than having to imagine these kinds of people getting their hands on the old walls or the carpets coated by dirt. 

“I´m not my father.” Catra manages, sour and tingling in her mouth like the venom of a serpent she wants to spit out. “Get out”

She is already halfway from slamming the door back closed when Hordak rushes towards her, making her hold her breath in both surprise and anger as she holds herself to the wood for dear life. Still, she doesn't flinch or move away, she stands her ground with her back straight 

“You will fail.” He speaks against her face, breathing sour. “You think the boring people of this miserable village will help you or want you here even if you somehow manage to save this boring land? You will be a failure and you will end up crawling back when you can't handle the weight of this place”

“Get out,” Catra spats, all kinds of a scream barely hidden on the forceful breathing coming from her lungs. She is not even sure how she holds herself back from howling at him or from calling him a little bitch. “You are the only failure I see here. Take your men, your fucking papers and your sorry as and get out.”

Hordak opens his mouth to say, or maybe even yell himself, something more, but Catra does slam the door on them this time. She stands frozen at the other side, her freezing bones aching a little as the warmth of the castle starts to cradle inside her again. 

She stands still with Melog firmly pressed against her until she hears all and every single one of the cars roar to life and drive at hell speed back down the muddy path. She half heartedly hopes the mud will be a pain in the ass to clean from their white paints later but above all she takes a shaking break and walks back, sitting precariously in the armrest of one of the old couches. 

So that´s it, she absolutely blew off the deal Prime had with these people, and she is pretty sure that this ain´t the last she is going to hear from them but she is also pretty sure on the posture she stands on today. 

She is also slowly coming to realization that she might have also fucked herself a little there, because while she knows she actually can do this, she is also very much aware the castle is half modern shit and half falling into pieces and she truly doesn´t really know how to do this . 

And yet, she is sure now, there is no other option for her and even if there are, she doesn't want the kind of person she would be if she´d accept them. So there is just this. 

“Okay.” She speaks to nothing and mostly to herself trying not to send herself in a panic. A tiny paw digs their claws on the skin of her cheek and when she looks down Melog is already looking back at her with her huge blue eyes, considering her like she had some deep wisdom beyond her few weeks of life. “Guess we are doing it, Melog”

Catra looks around her and the absolute destruction she has risen on the castle, wrinkling her nose. 

“We are fixing what my— what Primefucked up.” Catra mumbles, letting herself fall backwards across the couch. “Just great”

There are so many leaks on the roofs that Catra has lost count by now, holes on the walls, and crumbling tapestries and she is pretty sure that she fucked up the wiring on the kitchen ripping the stainless steel cabinets from their hinges. 

And Catra, well, she is a business woman and a hell of a creative person and she has a lot of spirit but also knows next to nothing about fixing buildings, less than all goddamning castles. 

“I'm gonna need to call Scorpia”

𑁍

“So what do you think?” Glimmer exclaims, twirling in the carpet of the old bridalshop. 

Adora shifts on the white couch she is sitting on, still partially stressed about ruining the owner´s upholstery with the soles of her boots. 

Instead she focuses on her best friend, jumping on her tippy toes in excitement as she looks at herself in the huge mirror and waits for Adora´s brain to catch up. 

“It´s pretty.” Adora manages, blinking slowly. 

It´s not a lie, it´s actually very pretty. It looks like it was pulled out of the cover of one of the tales they used to read as kids, with the Fairy Queen dressed in soft tulles and flowing wings behind her back, dripping sparkles everywhere. 

The skirt of Gimmer´s dress is huge, fluffy in a way that somehow doesn´t look like a cake topper and on the other side she also looks like Glinda the good witch puked magic on her which is a good thing all things considered. 

The top of her dress is shaped like the wings on her family's crest and the seamstresses have sewn actual wings-looking pieces of fabric that fall all across her back and brush the floor, mingling with the trail. 

And it is also, obnoxiously and unironically pink. Pink like the lotus blooms Glimmer so much likes, pink like roses and sparkling golden from the head to the toes. So pink and so far away from white that it almost gave Angella an aneurysm the first time she saw it but Adora finds it amusing, especially because Glimmer likes it which is all Adora cares about. 

Glimmer´s face right now, though, falls into an incredulous stare towards her friend, raising her lilac eyebrows as she crosses her arms. 

“Seriously? Just that?” Glimmer grunts, tapping her bare feet over the floor. 

Adora shifts on her seat nervously, tugging from her hands and picking at her cuticles without even looking at them as she tries to find the right words she is supposed to be saying to her best friend about her wedding dress. 

“It´s really pretty.” Wow, Adora wants to slap herself in the face. “I´m serious”

“I know you are, dearie.” Glimmer says, her voice dropping into something softer. 

Adora fights against her own face and her own feelings, trying to keep from getting mad at herself. She is all but an open book and she doesn´t want to sour the mood of the day just because her brain decided she should for some reason feel sad the rest of the day. 

“I'm not good with words, Glimm.”

“I know, it´s alright.” Of course she knows, she is Adora's best friend as Bow is too and they both know her, they will not judge her for her lack of words. Even if Adora will judge herself about it much later. Glimmer spins back towards the mirror, resting her palms over her hips. “I need a spectacular though.” 

Adora gulps heavily, shaking herself a little off the brain fog as she looks at the pink dress even closer. 

“Maybe if you add more fabric right there? On the back?” Adora suggests, pointing at the trail of the dress where the skirt falls a little too flat in comparison to the rest. 

Glimmer´s eyebrows shoot forward in her forehead, her face brightening like a newborn star all over again. 

“Yes! It could work!” She agrees, already looking for the seamstress when another thought seems to cross her mind. She turns to look at Adora from under her pink eyelashes, nibbling on the inside of her mouth uncharacteristically nervous. “Are you sure though? I know it´s already a lot and don't want to get over the budget”

“There is no budget, Glimm, it's a gift from me.” Adora answers, easier than compliments, shrugging. “Just ask for the fabric”

Glimmer looks at her firmly for a couple of seconds, deciding on Adora´s sincerity, before her mouth splits into a grin and nods. “Alright then!”

When Glimmer asked Adora to be her bridesmaid, Adora panicked. Not because she didn´t actually want to or because she didn´t love her friends, in fact their wedding was one of the last sources of true happiness for Adora. But because in accepting it there came a compromise that Adora was terrified to fail to. 

She was never in the village anymore, she spent all her time at sea or hidden inside her parents cottage. There was no space in her mind for white tulle and flowers and the plantation of the party of all parties where everyone would be invited. 

She might have been like that, once, avid for the thrill of the plan, excited for making sure every single thing came perfect for her friends, taking control and guiding everything as it should. But Adora is not that person anymore, and if it is still there it is well buried inside of herself, choked from air and incapable of breathing at all. 

So instead of trying and failing, Adora simply shook her head and took a step back, letting someone else step on the place where she could not. Glimmer had understood, because of course, and Mermista had become just an equal of a worthy maid of honor, if not even more in control of what Adora even could dream of. 

And as to not fail her completely, Adora had offered to pay for Glimmer's dress, full, no matter how big or sparkling or fluffy. Because it´d be a gift born of her love for her friend where her words could not reach, not just yet. Adora will pay for whatever yard of pink tulle Glimmer might want and she will do it gladly. 

“What´s the theme again?” Adora asks, leaning back on the couch now that her own anxiety has started to crawl back inside her chest. 

“Hmm,” Glimmer wonders, raising her arms to the sides while the cheerful seamstress pins the new fabric to the back. “Think— Swan Lake ballet meets Midsummer Night's Dream and they have a love baby”

Adora chuckles, scratching the side of her right cheek where an old scar from a fishing accident left its pink mark over her skin. 

“So who's gonna be the donkey?” Adora jokes, resting her arms over her knees to catch her friend´s eye, mischeviously. 

Glimmer looks at her sideways, poking her tongue out at her with all the annoyance of someone that is very seriously considering throwing a vase with flowers at her. 

“You, Adora.” 

Adora is still laughing loudly when the door of the private changing room opens again and Adam walks inside, dripping sunflowers and sunshine from his face instead of the salty and slightly seaweed smell that always accompanies him at the sea. 

It´s more than obvious that Teela has finally gotten her hand on him, is the freshly cut hair and still white sunscreen on his nose have anything to say about it. 

“Hello, beautiful ladies. Glimmer! You look like a pom-pom, it´s fantastic!” Adam greets with his characteristic cheer, nodding at Glimmer, who gives an honest cheer at his words, and the seamstress before turning towards Adora. “Hey, goldfish”

“Hey, flounder,” Adora greets back, rolling her eyes when he laughs. He is wearing sandals, out of all things; sandals with socks which are worse. Adora cannot stand him. 

“Adam,” Glimmer greets back, delighted even though her eyes are frantically looking at a point beyond Adam´s shoulder, where the corridor leading to the rest of the bridal shop is free to see. “Is—”

"Don't worry, Bow didn't walk in with me. You forbade him from seeing your dress and believe me, all of us know better.” Adam reassures her, running his fingers through his blonde beard like some kind of charming sea knight, in sandals. "He's being dutifully babysat by Sea Hawk back at the car”

Glimmer sighs, more of a groan actually, looking at the ceiling of the room as she pinches the bridge of her nose. “They are singing shanties, aren´t they?”

“They are”

“Fantastic”

Adam skips his way towards the couch while Glimmer twirls around in her dress, letting himself fall against the soft cushions right next to Adora, obnoxiously resting his head over her shoulder. 

Adora groans, pushing his face away from her with her palm when he tries to evolve the embrace from sticky to full octopus-like, wrapping his arms around the burgundy fabric of Adora´s sweater. Adora grunts again and quite literally dabs him on the side of the ribs when she tries to obnoxiously kiss her cheek.

"Don't be like that, let me love you.” Adam complains, pressing his mouth like an actually goddamn fish out of the water.

“Get away from me, worm.” Adora pokes her tongue at him, chuckling even through her mild annoyance towards her twin. Adam sighs and finally gives up, slumping over the couch; now that he is not being a pain in the ass Adora can see that his skin is shining like someone either exfoliated him or scrubbed him clean against the rocks, and he smells a lot like oranges and coconuts. “Did Teela manage to bathe you after all?”

Adam snaps his eyes towards her immediately, mouth opening around an offended gasp. “Excuse me, I shower every day”

“Doesn´t show”

“Very funny, seaweed face.” 

“We are literally twins.”

“And I´m the handsome one.” Adam mutters, kicking her in the shin. He smiles at himself, running his fingers through the slightly reddish sprouts on his chin. “My beard is hot” 

“Uhu, if you say so,” Adora mumbles with a roll of her eyes,chuckling under her breath when Adam kicks her again. 

Sometimes, when Adora sees Adam out of the corner of her eye, she sees their father instead. It´s the beard, but she is sure that Adam doesn´t know that and if he does it might be the reason he holds onto it with so much strength, even though Teela and Adora tease him about it all the time.

“Well, I think we are done for today.” Glimmer chirps, jumping off the small platform to reach her friends. She falls between Adam and Adora with a huge sigh, bridal dress and pins on the skirt.

“Are you gonna green light it?” Adora asks gently, playing with the sparkling fabric between her fingers. 

“Not yet. It´s close but not just right yet.” Glimmer shrugs, happily though as she points at both twins with her eyes narrowed. “I do hope you are also thinking about your clothes by now”

“Yes, ma´a we are. Well, I am.” Adam grins, ignoring Adora flipping him off from the other side. “Teela is very excited too. I hope you know she took the fae-like part of your wedding invitation pretty seriously”

“Uh, as she should!” Glimmer nods, satisfied enough. “We all have to behave a little on the ceremony so my mom doesn't faint again, but once we get to the reception we are a hundred percent throwing that through the windows”

Adam rolls his eyes,poking Glimmer in the ribs where he knows she cannot help but to laugh. “Are you and Bow going to give us another Irish goodbye like at your engagement party?”

Glimmer snorts, shrugging with a wicked grin. “If I tell ya it wouldn't be Irish, would it?”

Waiting for Glimmer to finish changing from her wedding dress takes almost as much time as the entire appointment with the seamstress because by the time she happily hopes off the building it is already midday and Adora is quite literally famished. 

They are all gathered around the cars, Bow, Mermista and Adam standing next to Glimmer's bubble gum pink moving bubble, Sea Hawk for some reason hopping on the roof of Adam's truck and Adora leaning against the door. 

It's familiar, this kind of thing between Adora´s friends. They talk loudly and make plans, rest from the tiresome work or studies, go drinking and enjoy their lives together. Adora has always been some kind of quiet though, not shy but out of words, being because Serenia had them all or because she lost her own, but never was one to talk too much. 

She likes to see them, though. Likes to lean on the car and watch them have fun with each other, laugh and be unapologetically themselves, that's something Adora can love without aching. Too much. 

“Are you two coming with us?” Adam asks Glimmer and Bow, already skipping towards the truck. 

“Not this time. We've missed a few date nights for the wedding preparation.” Bow says, smiling apologetic as he leans to absently kiss Glimmer's head. Adora gulps hard and looks away.  “Next time though”

“Alright then. Have a good time lovebirds!” Adam turns around, Sea Hawk and Mermista already climbing on the back of the truck when he turns again, something new crossing his mind. “Hey, Glimmer, Bow. Did you hear anything today about— you know?”

Glimmer sighs, throwing a glance towards Adora so quickly that she almost doesn´t notice it. “Not today but I know she is not at the village” 

“And, did you tell her?” Adam asks in a whisper, this time looking at Bow only.

The latter shakes his head too, shrugging softly. “Too soon. We´ll see later”

“Okay then.” Adam nods, slipping back into his usual charm. “Bye!”

“See ya!” Bow chirps, biding goodbyes to everyone and slipping inside the copilot seat.

Glimmer turns towards Adora in the middle of her walk to the other door, pointing at her with her eyebrows furrowed. “Behave Adora”

Adora sighs, arms crossed over her chest. “Yes, Glimmer”

“No whiskey”

“I don't even like to drink,” Adora mutters under her breath, knowing damn well is equal parts a lie and a misshapen truth.

“Easy job then.” Glimmer grins, a little strained in the edges but all kinds of honest as she swings the door open.  “Love you, Dora”

“Yeah, me too.” Adora mutters, and she means it. 

The pink bubble drives away and with it Adora is able to take a shallow breath, kicking on the ground with her boot. She kind of feels like if she doesn´t have a cigarette right now she will scream but she knows Adam and Mermista will scream at her even louder so she just sucks it up and climbs next to her brother, grumbling the entire way.

“What was that?” Adora asks, pointing with her chin at the pink car. Adam just shrugs, chewing on the inside of his cheek. 

“I´ll tell you later.” He mumbles, tilting his face towards her with a shit eating smile. “When I'm sure you'll behave”

Adora´s face falls, slumping against the seat with a grunt. “Great”

The village is alive, like always at these hours, golden and colorful in all the right ways that makes Adora to think about gentle times and good memories still raw and painful to fully remember. 

It´s filled with children and families and lovers and young and older people that Adora has known her entire life. There are no tourists here, the occasional maybe, but a simple fishing village of Galway is not really into the biggest attractions for outsiders, so the peace and quiet remains as it has always been. So unapologetically themself that Adora cannot help but to fall in love with it over and over again. 

Adora loves this place, this weird and old place from its stone walls to the smallest of crevices, she loves it. She loves the safety, the comfort, the unchanging tides, the pass of time on the walls; the way it might love her back and not turn away. 

Serenia resented it all. Too small, too little, too boring. Not enough. 

It´s a part of why she left, it´s a part of why she dropped Adora´s hand. Her uncapability of changing, her need for something Adora could not reach, like this town.

Adora loves this place, but even now years later, she cannot help but to feel a grudge against it and against herself. If she had been just a little better then maybe, just maybe.

The diner is busy as always when they drop on their favorite table, the one that you have the entire place so Adam can greet everyone with a smile and a cheer, and tucked away between the wood in the walls so Adora doesn´t have to greet no one. 

It is so busy that Adora doesn´t even notice herself doing it, it´s a bit like instinct actually when she runs her eyes across every single person inside, taking absently on their faces before quickly going to the next, somehow unsatisfied. 

“Looking for someone?” Mara jumps from thin air, leaning her hip against the side of Adora´s chair. It´s a miracle she doesn´t fucking scream.

Adora stares at her out of the corner of her eye and snaps her head away, looking at the wall instead. “No”

“I see.” Mara mutters, grinning between her teeth as she looks at the rest of the table. “Same as usual, everyone?”

“Yes, please Mara!” Adam nods with a huge grin, throwing an all knowing stare at Adora.

“Great.” Mara chirps, hitting Adora´s shoulder with her fist before walking back into the kitchen. “Behave”

Adora kicks the carpeted floor with her foot, now completely annoyed as she crosses her arms over her chest. “Why is everyone asking me that?”

Mermista and Adam share a look, the first a thousand times more annoyed than Adora´s twin but all the same knowing. 

Mermista gets distracted by Sea Hawk, who is talking a hundred per hour about the new boat they are planning to buy for their sea angling trip. He is very excited – mostly for the far away possibility of burning the old one which is getting into Adora´s nerves a little — and so is everyone else. 

Adora doesn´t feel a particular way about it, neither good or bad. It´s just another day, another couple of days that mingle into weeks and months on the high sea of the Irish Coast. It is Adam's dream, by all means, and he doesn´t even need her to go but Adora has nowhere else to go, nothing to look for, and more importantly, even though she loves this place with her entire heart, she doesn´t have a reason to stay. 

So she'll go, and maybe this way she will manage to be a little different from what she is, a little less stuck like Serenia wanted for her. Maybe like this it´ll be enough for it to stop aching. 

Like this she won´t have to look at that woman again, who for some reason seems to have taken root inside her mind like dandelion seeds.

“She is nice, you know?” Adam says, ripping Adora from her thoughts. 

There is warm food in front of everyone, including her. The lamb ribs Adam and Sea Hawk love, coddle for Mermista and Adora´s favorite beef and guinnesses stew. There is also Guinness beer for everyone and a huge vase with water near Adora´s knuckles. 

Mara must have come back at some point and left it all for them, damn, she might have even talked to Adora but the latter was too inside her head to pay attention at all. No wonder everyone treats her like walking eggshells sometimes. Adora fucking hates it. 

“I know, we´ve known Mara since diapers.” Adora mutters, trying to diffuse her sudden loss of words by grabbing the fork like a sword. 

“Not Mara and you know it.” Adam sighs, looking at her stabbing at the stew. “Catra”

Adora makes a face, like taking a huge bite on a sour lemon, refusing to meet his eye. “Who´s that?”

“She is the woman you fought with the other day!” Sea Hawk chimes in, loudly, making Adora choke on a damn potato.  “Quite a scandal my dearest Mermista said it was. Everyone was talking about that”

Adora looks, incredulous, from his ever happy face to Mermista´s, still a bit red on the nose from their long days fishing under the ray of the sun. Unlike Sea Hawk's unaware face she returns Adora's accusating eyes, clicking her tongue on the roof of her mouth.

“What? I'm not lying, you made a little show here.” Mermista grunts, pointing at Adora with her fork. She has never been one to put up with Adora´s bullshit and the latter is grateful for that. Most times. “Fighting like cats and dogs.”

Adora grinds her teeth, deeply annoyed. “ We didn´t fight”

“Sure.” Mermista rolls her eyes, focusing on something else.

“You antagonized her though.” That´s very Adam to do, not dropping the damn conversation even though Adora sends him furious eyes. She cannot correct him this time though, and he knows it, because he grins from ear to ear even if a little sad. “See? This is what happens when you are a stubborn brat”

“Ugh.” Adora grabs the biggest spoonful she humanly can and chugs it out fully, absently hoping it´ll choke her.

Adam smiles, shaking his shoulder in victory. “I on the other side, had the time to meet her a little and I can tell ya she is not that bad”

“Wow.” Adora chews out, quite literally stabbing the stew. 

“Wow indeed. She is smart, a little freaked out and just as fucking stubborn as you.” Adam leans on the table, poking Adora on the forehead in the way he knows she hates.“You might even be a match”

“I´d rather drown, thanks.” Adora growls around a huge chunk of meat, wrinkling her nose. Adam drums his fingers over the table, considering his sister heavily. 

“I don´t think she wants to harm us or the castle.” Adam drops his voice into a whisper, only for both of them in the middle of the evening sounds.“I don't think she even knew about everything that happened before she arrived. In fact, I talked to her and she was just telling me—”

“I´m sorry, which side are you on again?” Adam cuts him off, dropping the spoon inside the plate.

Adam rolls his eyes, leaning back on the chair. “None cause there are no sides to this”

“There aren´t?” Adora snaps. “Her family fucked off this place like nothing which i wouldn´t give a fuck about if it wasn´t because they decided to steal our history, our land, our last safe place—” Adora´s voice fails her, straining in the edges when she looks away, towards some empty point in the wall. “You speak as if you didn´t know about this”

“I do, Adora. As well as you do.” Adam rests his warm palm over Adora´s, brushing the slightly burnt and bruised skin of her knuckles from working with the ropes for so long. “But she is not Prime Kurr, Adora.”

Adora squirms on her place, meeting his twin's eyes.“Whatever”

“She told me herself, she doesn't mean harm”

“Aww.” Adora coos with a sly smile, retreating back into her same defensive barriers of always, something that sounds like sarcasm and tastes like chewing nails.  “Did she pinky promise you, and everything?”

Adam stares at her in silence for a long second, sighing like a tired grandpa, “Sometimes you are a dick, did you know that?”

“Yeah, well,” Adora shrugs, biting inside her cheek until it hurts. “Color me impressed” 

The meal goes mostly in silence after that, especially from Adora´s side. Adam, Sea Hawk and Mermista are happily talking about the sea angling trip and making sure they run over all the things they´ll need to bring and go through for three entire months on high seas. 

Adora half listens, half nods at the right moments, her heart not entirely in the moment. Her head is wandering through her own grudge and anger and Adam´s words when Sea Hawk´s excited voice climbs another ten octaves again, pressing his entire face over the cold glass of the tiny window that leads to the square outside. 

“Hey! Talking about the king of Rome!” He exclaims, moustache and nose pressed on the glass. “Are ya seeing this?” 

Mermista leans over her boyfriend's shoulder, taking a swift look too at whatever Sea Hawk is staring at. She drops back on the seat with a tiny evil smile, leaning over the table to grab her beer. 

“My, oh my.” She chants, sly as she looks at Adora above the rim of the glass. “Adora, your city girl seems to have found a passion project”

Chopping her own tongue would have been a very good idea ten minutes ago. But Adora can do a very good try right now by chewing into it so hard she cringes with the spark of pain as she leans forward to stare outside too.

The woman of the other day, Prime Kurr´s daughter, is standing in the opposite store to them. The one of old Mr Thaymor who has sold construction materials for as long as Adora remembers and some twenty years more than that.

That is not the most surprising thing of them all. The most surprising thing is that Kurr´s daughter, no, Catra, is carrying a bunch of wood planks in her arms from the store to the back of her old truck, successfully placing them inside without so much as breaking a sweat from the effort. 

It´s quite impressive and it will also fuck her back for good sooner or later with the way she is carrying those things. She is still doing it though, back and forth on her sweater and strangely crossed blanket over the chest. Smiling at Mr Thaymor with her dimples on her cheeks and curls everywhere around her face even though she has held it on a ponytail above her head. 

Incredible. Adora really can't stand her. 

“You have to give it to her that she is trying.” Adam murmurs next to Adora, crossing his arms over his chest.

Adora snaps at him, closing her mouth back shut so fast her teeth crash together with a little click. “I don´t have to do anything, Adam. I don´t give a fuck”

“If you say so.” Adam shrugs, stretching out of the chair as he stands up. “Well, I'll be right back”

“Where are you going?” Adora says, holding her breath equal parts disbelief and equal parts anger. 

“I´m going to say hello.” Adam calls, turning around one more time so he can look at her directly in the eyes. “Mom taught me manners” 

Pretty much the entire diner hears him and it falls like a bucket filled with ice over Adora´s head. It feels worse than the damn hungover Adora never seems to be able to shake herself from and it hurts like a motherfucking bitch, right against her ribcage. 

And the worst thing is that she knows that Adam is doing it on purpose because he knows her deeply and from the inside out, with all the nasty shit she has drowned herself into since their parents died. He knows her better than anyone else, including when to call her out.

“Hey Catra!” Adam´s voice fades away as he opens and closes the door, rushing across the square as the woman turns around towards him. 

“Adora, you do look like you have a stick up yer ass.” Mermista giggles, grinning even bigger when Adora flips her off. 

“Shut up, Mermista”

“Yeah, yeah.” She looks back towards the window, where Adam is for some reason nodding his head as the woman speaks at full speed next to him. “What do you think they are talking about?”

“Maybe he'll bring her to the boat” Sea Hawk offers nodding excitedly, much to Adora´s horror.

“Hell no.” Mermista sips on her beer,shrugging. “We don't want mister Adora having a stroke, do we?”

“You know what Mermista? Why don´t you take the boat bait and stick it up your—”

“I´m back!” Adam waltz back inside the diner with a little swirl, his face flushed right below the moustache of his beard as he leans over the table and scrambles for something on his jacket. 

Adora looks at him through her eyelashes, resting her cheek over her closed fist as he stares at him with a small sense of victory already swirling on her chest. “No luck for the friendly boy?”

“On the contrary.” He chirps, turning around with biggest fucking grin plastered on his face. “I'm taking the truck”

Adora chokes on her plain water, staring at her brother as he happily slips inside his jacket and leaves enough money on the table to pay for everyone´s dinner. “What?” 

“I'm going with her.” Adam repeats, resting his fists at either side of his waist. “She is fixing the castle. And, quite honestly, I don't think she knows what she is doing so I'll help her before she kills herself” 

Adora opens and closes her mouth like a dying fish, unable to hold back an incredulous laughter.

“You are not serious”

“I am. I have three months of vacation before we go sea angling. If I do nothing I´ll rot so I better help her out.” Adam slips his hands in his pockets, already walking backwards towards the door.  “Are you in?”

“No”

“I want to go!” Sea Hawk quite literally jumps off the table, also gathering all his things and rushing next to Adam´s side, excited for whatever he is up to that might give him an excellent fun time. 

“Come on then!” Adam smiles, tilting his head towards the side. “Mermista?”

“Ugh, I guess,” Mermista complains but she is already halfway standing up, refusing to stay alone with Adora´s sad ass. 

Adam smiles at his friends, looking at them going ahead towards the square before turning his head towards Adora one more time, holding her eyes in expectation.

“No.” Adora deadpans, digging her nails on the wood of the table.

“Be my guest, sis.” Adam shrugs but there is a small expression on his face, sadder and more honest than all the rest.  “You know, you are not the only one that lost something. I know it hurts but— it's on you if you decide that is going to hurt forever.” He murmurs, for her and just for her, giving her a tiny smile. “Think about it”

There is a rush of sound inside Adora's ear drums when the door closes behind Adam. It sounds like the sea water rushing inside Adora ears that one time she lost her foot on the boat and fell against the tide, terrifying and almost too strong to fight against. 

She sits alone in the middle of the busy diner and stares at the empty glasses of beer and whiskey around her, how much she hates the alcohol smell of them and how much she hates the silence she has brought upon herself. 

Outside, Adam sprints on his feet, reaching Catra again with Sea Hawk and Mermista by their side. 

“Catra! Hope you don´t mind but the rest of my float wants to join your quest.” Adam announces loudly, all the way looking like a shepherd puppy about to do something equal parts exciting and incredibly worrying.

Catra stares at the new faces slightly trying to hide the sudden knot of apprehension in her chest, tight around her throat. 

“Oh. Alright.” She tries to clear her throat, unused to talking to so many new people so quickly. She is a bit exhausted, if she is honest. “Hey”

The tall woman that comes with them is handsome and has electric blue hair. She is wearing comfortable clothes that you could see both in a yoga studio or in a fashion show and the gold of her jewelry from her nose  piercing and the chandbalis in her ears give her some kind of seaside royalty feeling that Catra has no choice but to respect. 

The woman greets her, smiling smartass and maybe a tad flirty as she looks at Catra up and down. “How ya doing?”

“This is Mermista.” Adam presents them, nodding excited. “Sailor expert, tide tamer and a real life mermaid on a good day”

Catra chuckles, raising her eyebrows at her. “Because you sing and swim well?”

Mermista´s grin only grows in size, tilting her face to the side. “Because I lure men to their doom”

Catra can´t help the surprised chuckle leaving her mouth, melting away a little of the freezing apprehension of before. “Nice”

Adam claps his hands together excitedly, turning around towards the man standing next to him, all sailor from the boots with buckles, jeans with dolphin and anchor patches and sleeveless white shirt, even with the evening cold of Ireland. There is a worn out navigation jacket crossed over his shoulder and funny looking red handkerchief around his neck matches the even funnier looking moustache, shining and well taken care of. 

“Now, this is—”

“Sea Hawk at your service madame!” The man chants, loud like a boat's horn. He takes a step forwards, raises his arms and gives a flamboyant bow in front of Catra that tells her immediately that he was once a theater kid and never stopped actually being one. It´s silly and kind of nice. 

Catra blinks several times, trying to hold her blank facade and not laugh. “Uh, hi”

“Sea Hawk is our boat guy. He knows everything about fixing old things.” Adam nods proudly, looking at both Mermista and Sea Hawk like he was a proud father with a very thick beard.  

“That's great.” Catra mutters, resting her hands over the bundle over her chest.  

“Oh yes. I´ll do everything for a new adventure!” Sea Hawk exclaims, jumping happily on his toes. “And I love a good fire” 

“Yeah, maybe just not touching the electric wires, alrighty?” Adam adds nervously, grinning when Mermista rolls her eyes and grabs Sea Hawk hand in a, poorly, attempt of calming him down.  “Okay then! This is it today, but I have more friends also on break that will probably want to come and help, what do you think?”

“Um.” Catra's tongue tangles, scrambling her brain for a second. “Thanks.” A bit and then, “Really.” There, much better. Catra really is trying. 

“Sure!” Adam turns towards his friends, swiftly tossing the keys to a quickly alert Mermista. “Mermista, Sea Hawk, why don't you take our truck? I´ll drive with Catra”

“If you say so.” Mermista agrees with a shrug, already dragging Sea Hawk through the stone ground. “Let's go, menace”

“Adventure!”

“Yes, whatever”

Catra stands next to Adam, both of them looking at the strangely endearing couple reach the white truck, Mermista holding back a fondly exasperated sigh and Sea Hawk speaking at a hundred miles. They are nice.

“Is his name really Sea Hawk?” Catra asks in a whisper, raising her eyebrows as Adam cackles. 

“Nah. We call him that because it's cool for him and sounds way better than his actual name” 

Catra chews on her lips, curiosity winning. “Can I know—?”

“Sean Bonner”

“No way”

“Yes ma'am’ 

They stare at each other for a tiny second and break immediately after into loud, barely contained laughter. Ugly snorts passed back and forth as Catra tries very hard to hold it together and Adam just bends into himself and wheezes, weeping a little as he giggles. 

It´s stupid, it truly is stupid but Catra has not laughed like this in weeks, much less with an almost complete stranger, but it´s also nice and it´s funny as fuck. 

“Adam”

Another voice interrupts their childhood giggling, right behind them and absolutely a thousand times more serious than they are being.  

Adam turns around at the same time as Catra does, coming face to face with the handsome and annoyingly thigh up face of Adam's twins, staring at both of them with an expression like carved out of steel or a piece of coal.

“Sis!” Adam exclaims, the complete opposite of his sister´s stone cold face. “Did you make up your mind after all?” 

The stuck up woman, Adora, makes a grunting noise, wrinkling her nose as she focuses her eyes on Catra only. She has such strong and beautiful eyes, pale like her skin and stormy, still looking down at Catra with that distrustful expression of the other day but at least not confronting her anymore, not immediately. 

Whatever it's going on inside her head it does not reflect on her eyes and it makes Catra equal parts intrigued and deeply annoyed, huffing without being able to contain it as she crosses her arms over her chest. 

“You again.” Catra mutters, clicking her tongue against her teeth. 

Adora narrows her eyes and holds Catra´s stare for exactly three seconds before looking sharply away, her cheek spotting with red. “Ugh”

Oh, she truly must hate Catra´s guts, which against it is not a surprise but it has also managed to get in Catra´s nerves for far too long.  

“Eloquent.” Catra mutters with a sneer, throwing her head back so she can face Adora fully even if she doesn´t look back at her. “I get Adam is the nice twin in this equation”

“It´s because I'm older,” Adam chimes, grinning from ear to ear as his sister snaps her head towards him, some nerve struck inside her. 

“For two minutes, Adam.” She spats, flushing furiously when his brother grins like the cat that got the mouse, humming under his breath as he shrugs and skips his way towards the copilot door of Catra´s truck. 

Adora follows his annoying ass and then snaps her eyes back to Catra, looking at her almost as if with defiance, her mouth red and slightly chapped by the cold breeze, curling into a light scowl the more Adora goes on just standing in the middle of the street without saying anything. 

Annoying.

“Why are you carrying that?” Adora resolves, the first thing that comes to mind actually, which is the strange bundle held to Catra's chest, squared fabric and warm but certainly strange. 

“Oh, didn't you know?” Catra raises her eyebrows, the start of an evil chuckle already curling in her dimples. “I´m a mother”

Adora goes all kinds of pale possible even for her who is already ghostly white sometimes. Next to the red truck Adam cackles loudly, clearly enjoying the entire thing. “Oh, um—”

A tiny meow breaks the uncomfortable silence before Adora can keep making an idiot of herself, which would go with no effort at all. Adora looks directly at Catra´s face as her mouth splits into something deeply amused, reaching inside the bundle of fabric only to pick up a tiny baby kitten, fur matted and spiteful as they look directly into Adora´s eyes and hisses at her. 

“Aren´t we identical?” Catra smiles, resting her cheek against the kitten's little ears. “Fresh out of the womb”

Adam is not the only one laughing now, Mermista and Sea Hawk are also chuckling at the entire thing from the fishing truck, the first throwing Adora a devilish and way too knowing grin. 

Adam drums his fingers over the roof of the car where he is leaning into, his chin over his folded arms as her looks at Adora full of quiet laughter. 

“Don´t feel bad, Melog doesn't know you yet. She hisses at what she doesn´t know.” He chuckles, pointing at the little kitten with his chin while Catra returns her inside the bundle of blankets. “Not to me though, but it's because I'm the better looking too”

“It´s the beard,” Catra mumbles, checking on the stuff in the back of the truck, now completely uninterested in Adora again. 

Adam turns towards her with huge sparkling eyes, already smiling. “You like my beard?”

“Sure,” Catra shrugs absently, watching as Adam jumps on his shoes like a small kid, pointing at Adora with a triumphant laughter. 

“Ha! Told you!”

Adora stares at him incredulous and then back to Catra, grinding her molars together until her jaw hurts. She doesn´t know what she is madder about as she looks up and down Catra´s face, but she is quite definitely deeply annoyed now. 

“My brother is married. ” She spats, thrown aback when Catra cackles in her face, half mirth half need to slap Adora in the face. 

“And I'm a lesbian.” Catra drops down with a deep scowl, like a glitter bomb of apocalyptic proportions. “Fork found in kitchen. Don't you see me trying to fix a castle and adopting a cat?”

Adora stares dumb founded at her until she realizes she is not only frozen over the pavement but also that everyone around her is preparing to leave, letting her stay there under the gray sky and cold air with her bad mood and thunderous heartbeat. 

“We are fishermen.” Adora tells to the empty space around her and to her brother and friends, Sea Hawk already singing some shanty about side quests before adventures. “Not builders” 

“If you don't know what you're doing you can just say it.” Catra spats, loudly enough that everyone around can hear her yet Adora cannot help but to stare at her with her mouth open and pride wounded.  

“Nobody knows Castle Grayskull like I do,“ she manages to croak out, looming over Catra as the latter raises her eyebrows at her, unimpressed.  

“Ah.” Catra opens the door of her car, smiling so sweetly it feels dangerous. “Well then, wouldn't it be a tragedy to miss the joy of your presence?”

She slips inside the pilot seat and slams the door closed before giving Adora the time to even react. Adam leans towards her over the border of the box of the truck, complicit in Adora´s demise. 

“This is exciting, isn't it?”

“No”

“Well, to me it is. I miss going to the castle.” Adam drops, looking at his sister out of the corner of his eyes. What a little bitch, he truly knows her better than anyone else. “Oh, I want the copilot's seat! Can I hold Melog?”

He jumps into the seat just as Catra brings the engine roaring back to life. The window of the truck rolls down sharply right in front of Adora's grumpy and sour face, music coming loudly from the speakers. 

Catra peeks from the inside, leaning over the frame to look at Adora from below the rim of her dark sunglasses. It´s not even sunny.

“If you wanna come, get on already.” She says, grinning from ear to ear all sharp teeth and striking smart eyes. “If not, stay there so I can run you over, please”

From the other side of the seat Adam leans too grinning like a golden retriever even though his eyes are serious when he meets his sister´s sour face.

“A chance.” He mouths, begging to her. “Come on”

Adora could say no. She could chew her pride and ignore her brother. Dwell in her anger like she has done every single day for the last years; ignore whatever horribly unknown feeling the woman sitting next to her brother is making her feel. 

Return to the dinner, return to the empty house down the tall hills of the castle, taste the whiskey on the back of her mouth. Not take the leap. 

“I´m going to make sure you don't destroy the place.” Adora says and it feels like falling from the green irish hills, spiralling towards the open seas. 

Catra rolls her eyes, facing back towards the path. “Nice. Get on the back.” 

The open back of the car is filled with Mr. Thaymor´s wood, kitten's supplies from Bow´s clinic and bags filled with food. It hasn't even been three days but the woman on the pilot's seat seems to have already managed to slip into the cracks of Adora´s home. She watches with a glint in her eye through the rear mirror as Adora tries to make herself a seat squished on the pick up's back.  

“With a little luck you'll fall in the mud. Adora. ”

With a little luck, Adora is going to be able to walk inside the place she once called the last safe spot in the world. 

With a little luck she will be able to restore it to a little of what it was before, when the stained glass was still there and Adora was young.

With a little luck, once this is over Adora is not going to have to see this woman´s face anymore. 

But then again, she somehow smells like everything Adora once used to love.