Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It's been flesh for less than a day when it first sees her. It doesn't know how long it was a sword, before it woke up with lungs and a heart that beats, but it doesn't think it matters. The creature is still working to understand everything its eyes see, but this visitor is less immediately aggressive than the other three humans it has seen so far, the ones that panicked when they found a body where the sword should be. It's not entirely sure the visitor is human, with the triangle ears on her head and tail flicking behind her, but she's a person at least.

Claws glint on her fingers when she drops a tray into the cell. The mush on it is gray, and it splatters a little when the tray hits the floor. She closes the door to the room loudly when she leaves. When the creature trails its new fingers through the mush, it's gritty under its fingers. Textures are new, in general, but it knows this one from the whetstone that used to grind along its blade, back when there was someone who cared to keep it sharp.

It doesn't know how long it was a sword. Long enough to understand how the world works. Humans yearn for power. When they see it, they thirst to have it for themselves. The sword had always been a gatekeeper to power, holding it for one of its creators' kind to do what needed to be done, but none of them have existed in centuries. Heroes picked it up and used its power to incapacitate and intimidate and, too rarely, to mend, but that was a long time ago.

For the last century it has been a battery, fueling something deep in the heart of Etheria, and on the day it becomes something else, little changes. After a brief discussion that it can only mostly follow, it switches from a tool propped on a stand to a tool kept in a cage, and soon enough the people who found it are back with needles and tubes for the power they were collecting through the wires that used to wrap around its hilt.

The visitor comes back later, with more mush, and wrinkles her nose at the old tray on the floor. "What, you're too good for rations?"

It blinks. The visitor sits in front of the bars, picking up the spoon on the tray, scooping the mush into it and putting it in her mouth. The creature has seen eating before, and it tries with the rations it has, though it gets as much grit on the skin around its mouth as it gets in. The visitor grimaces, but she wipes at its lips with a cloth when it has no more to eat, like it used to be wiped clean of blood after a battle. It knows enough to know that the movements of her face mean something about the thoughts turning inside her head, but it can't make sense of them.

In the quiet, dark except for the glow of the tubes full of its magic, it tries to mimic what her face did, form words in its mouth. It tries until it bites its tongue and the taste of blood is rich, just the way the sword remembers.

A few days later, the visitor comes in different, fists clenched and lips a flat line. The creature puts the sludge in its mouth as she paces across the floor. "Nobody respects me here," she says, voice boiling angry. "The rest of the squad got combat assignments - they sent Kyle to combat - but I'm here babysitting. I always get the jobs no one wants, because they're all fucking idiots and they're going to hope they live to regret it."

The mush feels thicker than usual on its tongue. Heroes always wanted something from the sword, asking how to unlock that door, energize that runestone, heal that human, and the visitor has the same frustrated need around her, but it doesn't know what she wants. It doesn't know what's in its power to give, at this point.

The visitor kicks the wall and winces. "I'm going to run this place. Or burn it to the ground. Something has to change. I'm not going to put up with their shit anymore."

The creature that used to be a sword listens. That is something it has long been good at. The person seems calmer when she stands, tail curling behind her. "Thank-" she starts to say, and then lets out a sigh, shakes her head. "Stupid."

The visitor keeps coming back and she keeps talking more. The creature starts eating its meals slower and slower, because she always stays to the end. "They don't give me a chance," she says one day, voice strange. "Someone decided everything is my fault and I don't know why. I hate it here, I hate it. There's nothing in the Fright Zone for me."

As it eats, it feels a prickle on its skin, too faint to be real touch, and when it looks up, the visitor is watching it with eyes that shine too much. "Maybe it's pathetic to pretend you're a person," the visitor says, "but I'm going to anyway."

Hours later, the creature holds that thought to its chest when it lays down to sleep. It doesn't know why that makes it feel so warm.

The creature practices a face for the visitor, when she comes, and her mouth arches in a smile to match. The visitor still talks about how frustrated and trapped and alone she feels, but she complains about having to look after the creature far less. She starts to say thanks for listening before she leaves. She's the only person the creature ever sees who lingers around it instead of doing her job brusque and quiet.

One day, when she comes in and greets it with a voice full and bright, the creature says, "Hello," and she jumps like the sword grazed her instead. "Sorry," it says, something heavy in its gut.

"No, don't - oh my god, don't apologize." She takes breaths, and the creature watches her throat change while she swallows. "You can talk?"

It shrugs its shoulders up. Its cheeks are warm. "Not well."

"I don't care," the visitor says. Her eyes are big. "I didn't know for sure that you were sentient, speak however you want. Have you been able to talk this whole time?"

"No. I'm - learning."

She asks more questions, about what the creature is, how it got here, and it realizes that it doesn't really know the answers. Details didn't matter, when it was a weapon. Someone was going to pick it up, and its edge or its magic was going to do what needed to be done. It's been so long since then, and something spikes piercing in its chest when it tries to answer.

The creature has to clear its throat to speak. "I don't know."

"That's okay," the visitor says, something soft in her voice. She stops asking, and the creature has to force itself to eat. The visitor keeps looking at it with a twist to her mouth that it doesn't recognize.

When there's no more grey on the tray, the visitor says, "Just one more, okay? It's an important question."

It nods, something full and hot behind its eyes.

"What's your name?"

"I was named the Sword of Protection," the creature says. A shiver crawls down its spine.

"No, you need a name for a person. What do you want to be called?"

The creature shakes its head. It has barely grasped speech, let alone names. "What would you like to call me?"

The visitor looks at it for a moment. Her expression is even harder to interpret than usual. "Adora," she says. "And you can call me Catra. I never told you my name, did I?"

Adora shapes the names in its mouth. Adora. Catra. It likes how they sound together in its head.

The door opens and one of the people who harvests the magic comes in, and Catra leaves. She goes before he changes the tubes that wind into it, that make Adora flinch sometimes with replacing, and it's glad she isn't there for that part. It isn't sure why.

"Were you outside? Before here, I mean."

Adora nods. Its voice rasps less as it gets more practice with speech. "I went to many places."

Catra rests her chin on her pulled-up knees. "What is it like?"

Adora thinks, tries to sum up everything it's ever seen. It talks about the snows, ice crunching under boots, cold putting gloves on hands and making metal weak. The waste, wide and dry, dust seeping into the fine details of its hilt. The coastline, with salt in the air that had to be cleaned well off its steel lest it rust. Catra listens this time, tail curled around her legs.

"What was your favorite?" she asks, quieter than before.

Adora doesn't understand the question, and Catra must see that on its face, because she says, "If you could go anywhere again, where would it be?"

"The woods," Adora says, without hesitation. Bark giving way under its blade, to mark a path or to burn; footfalls soft on leaves; rain on a tent in the night. It thinks it spent a lot of time in the woods.

Catra looks at something past it, even though there's nothing there. "It might be nice to go, someday."

"Someday," it echoes. It thinks about the woods again, after she has to leave. It wonders about the senses it didn't have, the last time it was there. The woods are probably beautiful.

Eventually, Catra is given more tasks for its maintenance. She is less efficient at managing the various magical equipment than the others and her hands are awkward when they reach through the bars, but Adora still prefers her.

"Fuck," Catra says, after missing a vein again. She came in angry today, and her hands aren't steady. She glares through the bars like she can make them disappear that way. "Maybe I should get someone who actually knows what they're doing."

Adora shakes its head, heartbeat picking up. It's valuable, so everyone is careful with it, but Catra is different. She says what she's doing, asks if Adora's okay when she pokes too hard. Catra is careful like it matters if Adora hurts, even if it isn't damaged.

She squints and tries again. "This shit would be so much easier if I didn't have to do this half-blind." Her skin has a fine fuzz. It has come to appreciate many textures and that is one of its favorites.

The red wells up on Adora's skin instead of in the tube where it's supposed to be, and Catra jerks her hands away. "Fuck!" She slams her fist on the ground next to her and winces hard.

"Sorry," Adora says. It recognizes the gut twist as guilt, now. Its only purpose was to channel magic, and here it is, useless.

"I'm sorry, I keep fucking up. You shouldn't even be in here, it's so-" Catra makes a frustrated noise in her throat. "The Horde's evil, that's not news, but literally keeping a person in a cage is a new low."

"I'm not a person," Adora says. It doesn't know much, but it knows that.

"Bullshit," Catra says, teeth flashing. "Got an explanation for that one?"

Adora opens its mouth, and stops. It isn't a weapon anymore. It breathes, eats, sleeps, just as Catra does. It has blood and skin and pain that a sword never had. It has always had some awareness - perhaps fueled by the magic it channels - but muted, compared to now. It has thoughts. It's learning about feelings. "Because," Adora says, and something in its voice convinces Catra to let the matter go.

Catra doesn't get someone else. She tries once more, and this time the needle finds where it's supposed to go. She turns down the machine, before she leaves. She says Adora might feel better if the device takes less. Adora hadn't known it felt bad, but apparently people usually have more energy and less nausea than it does.

A technician comes later, turns a dial, and leaves, never saying a word, and Adora feels the magic seep out. It could probably remove the tubes itself, if it wanted. Maybe Catra would have to come back. The rubber is warm under its fingers, glowing with white light, the way the sword used to. It doesn't want to risk someone else coming instead, so it lies down as best it can and thinks about the woods and Catra's soft fingers on its face.

Time passes. Adora doesn't notice the shift until one day when Catra says something about other people and Adora realizes that she's started to think of herself as one. Catra's gotten better at maintenance, even as her mood gets worse and worse.

"Is everything okay?" Adora asks one day.

Catra huffs air through her lips. "They're pushing the combat troops harder. Means everyone left behind has more to do, keeping them supplied. Something big is coming, but they wouldn't tell a cadet what it is."

Adora thinks about Catra in combat, clattering biting metal and the dense smell of blood. Blood had always been neutral to her, as a sword. She doesn't feel neutral about Catra's blood. "You aren't going," she says, without meaning to.

Catra's face hardens. "No. I'm not trustworthy enough for that, apparently."

Adora can't put her hands as far out of the bars as Catra can reach in, with the attachments on her arms, but she can reach fingers that are about to unwrap a dressing. "Good."

Catra waits a long moment before she moves away. "You're stuck with me, all right."

Adora is new to being a person. A sword needs very little, once crafted - a whetstone and a cleaning cloth and someone to wield it. A person needs air and food and a place to rest and a thousand other things Adora still doesn't understand. Adora doesn't know if the demand in her chest is one of those things or not.

Catra brings her rations again the next day and she has something else as well. "It's a fruit," she says. "From the forest outside the Fright Zone."

"How did you get this?" Adora asks, holding the fruit in her hands. It's small, nestling in the center of her palm, a little bigger than her eye.

"Had blackmail on someone who was headed out there." Catra shifts on her feet. "You can get a lot of things in the Horde if you know the right people."

"Fruit is for eating, right?"

"Yeah, dummy," Catra says, but she smiles like it's a good thing.

The fruit bursts like skin breaking when she bites it, juice richer than blood underneath, stone hard against her teeth. "Sorry," Catra says, wincing even though her teeth are fine. "I didn't think about whether it had a seed. Are you okay?"

She doesn't know. Her mouth feels better already, but something aches, deep under her ribs. Catra gives her the cloth for her face and their hands brushing make it worse. A while ago, Adora learned that the gnawing in her stomach in the hours before she ate was hunger. This feels the same, but rations don't make it ease.

Catra asks, "How was it?"

"Beautiful," Adora says, and Catra grins when she explains the kinds of words people use for food, and Adora holds the tiny stone in her palm. She keeps holding it, juice staining her skin. Later, when she grows too worried that it will be discovered, she swallows it, but its absence only makes the hunger worse.

Adora realizes the bars can be opened when someone she hasn't met before opens them. She doesn't know that she prefers it. She definitely does not prefer the new tubes that embed into her shoulders and back, wider through holes cut into her shirt, and the new sound the machine makes as it churns faster. The new technician tilts his head when he examines her, too many eyes when he blinks. "That should be sufficient," he says to himself. Only one person speaks to Adora, and she isn't here.

She grows weaker quickly, exhaustion falling like darkness. By the time the door opens again, Adora is lying down as best she can, knees propped against the bars, eyes slitted against dizziness.

Catra turns the machine down, helps Adora lie on her side. Her hands linger too long. "What happened," Catra says, frantic note in her voice.

Adora breathes as magic pools by the ports, a respite. "They must have needed more."

"No," Catra says. "They can't - they're going to kill you if they keep that up."

Adora hadn't thought about whether or not she could die. It had never mattered before. Heroes and enemies could have broken her, when she was a sword, but a body has a thousand more points of failure. "Oh."

Catra adjusts Adora's hair where it spills on the floor. "Yeah, oh."

Catra's face has changed, mouth and jaw tight, movements jerky instead of jittery. Adora has known her long enough to know what that means. "You're angry," Adora says.

"Of course I'm fucking angry." Catra retracts her hands back through the bars. "They can't just do this."

Adora has compared the way Catra acts to the technicians, and she has drawn conclusions. "You like me," she says. "You don't want me to die."

Catra stiffens. "They're being stupid. You've spent forever powering the Heart, which is running half this place. If you die, the Horde will fall."

Catra does nothing but complain about the Horde. She dreams about crushing her commanders under her boots, exploding the Fright Zone from the inside before she vanishes into the wastes. "Better to be alone than to put up with this shit," she says, but she doesn't meet Adora's eyes when she does.

"You want the Horde to fall," Adora says.

Catra jolts, face snarling. "You don't know anything."

"You hate the Horde. They aren't kind to you."

"The world isn't kind," Catra spits, angrier than Adora thought she could make her. "If you think it's better anywhere else, you're dumber than I thought."

Adora can't make sense of this. "You've never been anywhere else, how would you know?"

The door slams when Catra leaves. The rations are still there on the tray where she left them when she came in. Adora can't use the spoon from this angle, but her fingers can reach the gray mush, and the grittiness is even less bearable than usual. Someone comes soon after to turn the machine back up, and the hum pounds at Adora's head.

Catra comes back, too soon for it to be the next day already. Her face twists when she cleans the ration smear that Adora missed by her mouth, because Adora's too tired to move. "It's okay," she says, "you're going to be okay."

Catra removes the needles she can reach, focusing more on speed than comfort. As they drop off, magic collects in Adora's core again and she could gasp with the reprieve. Catra presses something into Adora's hand before she leaves and Adora would know the shape of a hilt anywhere. "I'll find you," she says, fingers squeezing before they pull away. "I promise."

Adora doesn't have to wait long. One technician checks the machine and leaves. The one with extra eyes returns, opens the bars, moves her body to inspect where the ports used to be, muttering to himself, hands rough with frustration. He doesn't notice what Adora hides under her thigh.

The sword Adora used to be was wielded by many people, over the centuries. Some took to the blade easily, others always hesitated before they struck. Adora plunges the dagger into the technician's heart with precision, without pause, and he doesn't make a sound as he drops. The blood on her face is familiar.

The tubes on her back burn when she pulls them out, and the legs she's never used are unsteady. She opens the door to a room that stretches out on both sides, covered in a dozen more doors, and Adora closes the door before she can be seen, panic crashing in her chest. A moment later the door starts to open and Adora shoves against it with all the strength she has left, breath sobbing.

"Adora, it's me," Catra's voice says, and when Adora opens the door and sways backwards Catra catches her. The touch, more than she's ever had, makes her lightheaded and alive all at once. Catra takes Adora's hand in hers to guide her through the shadows, and it's better than a solid grip behind a crossbar.

They don't stop walking until they're surrounded by woods, breathing hard. Adora knows the forest by how many swings it used to take her to chop a tree down, but now she can drink in the colors and the smell and the feeling of Catra's hand in hers. They sit for a time on a log, and when Adora's head slumps, Catra's shoulder is right there.

"What do we do now?" Adora asks, skin tingling pleasantly for once.

Catra squeezes her hand. "Get you somewhere safe. There are stories about you - what you were. The Horde never got inside your temples, I'm sure you could stay in one of them."

Adora remembers doors that only open for her, surrounded by the whispers of the woods. Somewhere safe. Catra's voice sounds wrong, and it takes Adora a moment to figure out why. "What about you?"

"Don't worry about me," Catra says, muscles going stiff. "I'll figure out something, I always do."

Adora still doesn't understand names very well, but she knows a lot more words than she used to. She knows what adore means, now, and she knows the name of the feeling in her heart that never goes away. "I want to stay with you," Adora says.

She can feel Catra's swallow as if in her own throat. "Then that's what we'll do."

Chapter Text

Catra had braced herself to sneak past the fortresses and encampments that the map shows strewn through the woods, but the rebellion doesn't seem to know how to do basic fortifications. She scans the odd round buildings that bubble out of the ground in clusters, but she hasn't seen any weapons, let alone guards.

So, hours after leaving the Fright Zone, when Adora watches the strangers from the trees, Catra can't bring herself to try to stop her.

Adora blinks as a large animal walks down the path through the Whispering Woods, rider jostling on its back. She still forgets to do expressions when she's distracted, but Catra can feel her awe anyway.

"What is that?" Adora asks.

"A horse," Catra says. She thinks so, anyway. They look bigger in real life than in books.

Adora's lips part slightly, and Catra turns her thoughts away as quick as she can. They're supposed to be friends. Catra doesn't have a lot of experience with friendship, but she's pretty sure it's not supposed to make her heart race like she's run for miles, and make her skin hum when they brush past each other, and pull her attention to Adora's tiniest, most meaningless details. It feels like getting hit by a bot. It feels like being alive for the first time.

It doesn't matter. Adora doesn't like her, not the way Catra does. Adora asked her friend to stay with her, so that's what Catra will be, at least until Adora realizes that she deserves better. Which she will, once she meets more than one person who actually talks to her. A friend would tell Adora about berries and trees and horses, and catch her arm when she stumbles over branches, and kill the thing in her head that remembers how holding Adora's hand feels.

"I think I rode a horse, before," Adora says. "They bounce too much on the ground." There's disapproval in Adora's usual monotone. "They're better when they fly."

Catra doesn't know much about horses, but- "They can't fly."

Adora's eyebrow twitches down. "Some can." The rider is disappearing around a bend, and Adora's gaze follows him until he's gone. She shifts her shoulders, adjusting her pack, and her hair flashes gold among the leaves.

"Are you coming?" Adora asks.

"Yeah," Catra says, clearing her throat, clearing her head. "Yeah, of course."

Catra hasn't used a map since her junior cadet orienteering course, but she does her best. They make it another few hours towards what she hopes is one of Adora's temples, and they wrap up in their bedrolls when it's too dark for Adora to see. It takes a long time for Catra to sleep, not used to the breeze on her skin, and when she looks over, Adora's gazing at the sky like she's searching for something. Catra doesn't know if she can't read her face because Adora isn't using it right now, or because it's not an emotion she's ever seen on a person before.

For years, Catra didn't know that the Heart existed. She'd been too focused on training, like everyone else, spending endless hours in battle sims and drills and sparring bouts. Then she stood in the promotion ceremony while the crowd of cadets around her slowly dwindled, until she was the last one left. That's when she realized she was never going to leave.

"The Horde needs field soldiers who can be trusted to perform," Shadow Weaver said, disgust clear in her voice over the buzzing in Catra's ears. "There are no more chances to prove yourself to me."

"You never gave me any chances," Catra spat back, barely keeping herself from lunging, and Shadow Weaver just looked at her like she wasn't worth the air it would take to respond. Shadow Weaver left without a word, and Catra thought about flames engulfing her mask, eating through to the bone, reducing her to ash.

So when Catra was given her assignment to clean machinery and replace loose screws, she did the bare minimum when anyone was watching and nothing when they weren't. If the Horde thought she was useless, she would be. Fuck them.

Catra didn't hate the sword, though. Weapons in the Horde were simple, functional, but someone spent time on this just to make it beautiful. Scrolled gold, polished steel, gemstone that glowed blue among the wires that wrapped it - a relic from a place that Catra could never visit. Maybe it had been nice there, before it was conquered by the Horde.

She didn't hate the being that replaced the sword either. It couldn't be any more alive than a bot, but it didn't have the curl to its lip that meant it knew that she'd flunked out of combat. It looked at her when she talked like it was capable of listening, even when Catra was sure it wasn't, and it was probably the closest Catra was ever going to get to a girl that liked her, so she pretended that it was less pathetic to rant to an empty shell than to fume alone.

Then it spoke.

Catra steals shoes on their second day in the woods, after Adora starts to limp. Catra should have thought about shoes when she pillaged the survival supply, but she'd only thought of things like canteens and rations and blankets, and what she might find when she went back to the room with the cage. She'd never had to think about what a human might need before.

So once darkness falls, Catra searches through the outpost that very obviously isn't a rebellion base, no matter what the map says. If rebellion military positions are really this poorly guarded and disorganized and ill-trained, every member of the Horde has wasted years on training they didn't need. Her squad of cadets could've taken this place in less than an hour, and that's with Kyle along.

She checks every building in town, but the only shoes she can find that she thinks might fit are boots. Adora manages to get them on, but Catra holds the laces in her hands and tries to remember how the knots looked on other people. She hasn't done knots since the orienteering course, either.

"What are they for?" Adora asks.

Catra's pretty sure there were loops involved. "Making sure the shoes don't fall off your damn feet."

"No," Adora says. "What are the shoes for?"

Two loops, maybe. "So the rocks and stuff don't mess up your weak human skin." At least Catra can pick apart her tangled attempts with the tip of her claw. "You didn't get good feet like mine."

"They're not supposed to hurt." Adora says it like she's making sure she understands, tentative.

Catra pauses until she thinks she can sound normal when she speaks. "No. I don't think anything is supposed to hurt, in general. So, shoes."

In Catra's periphery, Adora nods. "Shoes."

Catra finally fights the laces into something that looks right and she absolutely will not be able to replicate ever again. "Okay," she says. "Ready to give them a try?"

Adora stops messing with her sleeve, and Catra realizes with a jolt that she'd been picking at the dried blood around one of the holes that the techs had punched through the fabric. Catra doesn't think she'd live enough years to stop wanting to kill each one of the techs who'd looked at Adora and only seen more magic to take.

"Does that still hurt?" Catra asks, gesturing at a spot where she'd ripped out a drain, bruised dark.

Adora tilts her head a little, looking at it, and as her eyes light up, the bruise fades. "Not now," she says, something odd in her voice.

Catra laughs with surprise, and it almost disperses the itch under her skin. "What?"

"The Sword of Protection could heal. Plants, runestones, people. Heroes wanted that a lot." Adora flexes her fingers. "I didn't know I still had it."

Because the Horde had stolen that from her for so long. Because it had been powering the Fright Zone instead, lighting barracks and projecting battle sims and running factories that churned out tank munitions. Because Catra hadn't stopped any of it until it was almost too late.

And Catra wants to tell herself that she cares about Adora. When she did nothing for months but take more from her.

"I'm glad you have it back," Catra manages. "How are the shoes?"

Adora takes a step, and makes a face. "Walking is better when you can feel the ground."

Catra tries to exhale her guilt, and her fear, and her utter certainty that she's in over her head. It works as poorly as it ever has. "Tell me about it."

Months of pricking veins in the Fright Zone didn't prepare Catra to keep Adora alive outside, where they hear animals rustling in the dark. Catra keeps her claws unsheathed all night, jolting awake whenever she hears a noise.

It's not that Catra doesn't think that Adora can defend herself - there's a dead man in a Horde sub-basement that proves that she can. But Catra can't close her eyes without seeing the gray Adora on the other side of the bars, seeming less surprised about dying than about Catra being upset about it.

Catra wakes to the warmth over a body reaching over hers. The scent of blood hits second.

Adora braces one hand on the ground by Catra's arm, dark stain on her torn white shirt. Her eyes glow with a familiar blue. In her other hand, a knife catches a sliver of moonlight.

It has to be the one that Catra slipped through her cage bars. Catra didn't know that Adora still had it.

Adora drops the knife and runs gentle, blood-streaked fingers over Catra's shoulder. Catra's skin burns. "Good," Adora says, quiet enough that Catra isn't sure the word is for her.

"What-"

Adora rocks back to sit next to her. The carcass in her hands fits the stories Catra's heard about the dangers in the Whispering Woods - nothing should have that many legs - and it weeps dark where it's been gashed open. It isn't small. Catra can't believe she didn't hear the fucker.

"Did it bite you?" Adora asks, voice almost too flat for a question.

Catra shakes her head. It doesn't help her feel less dizzy. "No." The light in Adora's eyes starts to fade, along with the tension in her shoulders. "No, I'm okay."

Adora tosses the carcass away and flops back down on her bedroll. "Good," she says again, staring at the tree canopy overhead. "That's good."

Catra scrapes herself up to sit. She's not willing to test their luck on trying to eat the thing, but she's not too stupid to recognize how many other creatures in the woods would want a piece. "We should move before-"

"Nothing else is coming." Adora's eyes are almost normal when they close. "It'll be calm."

Catra didn't expect the certainty in Adora's voice. She still asks, "Are you sure?"

Adora nods. "They know better now," she says, almost a mumble.

Lifetimes ago, Adora had spent years in these woods. Maybe she does know these things that are quick and quiet enough to get within stabbing distance of them, that are apparently dangerous enough that it scared Adora. Catra hadn't known that she'd figured out fear yet.

Adora's eye opens slightly, sliver of blue bright in the darkness. She reaches over to slip something to Catra's hand, and in the split second it takes Catra to identify it as the knife hilt, Adora's eyes are closed again, chest rising and falling in the slow rhythm of sleep.

The grip is soft leather. Catra trained in how to use blades, but she hadn't held one in years when she snuck that one out of the armory. She hadn't been thinking about anything but Adora, then. It's still hard to do anything else.

"You're the one who heard anything coming, idiot," Catra mutters, but Adora's apparently incredible hearing doesn't seem to pick that up. It shouldn't be easier to sleep with the weight of the knife against her palm - Catra's claws are better weapons, and she's been using them since she was old enough to move her arms - but she opens her eyes next to dawn splashing across the sky overhead.

Adora doesn't wake up when Catra puts the knife back in her hand, breathing barely audible under the chirps that Catra is coming to learn are birds. Catra would give a week's rations to freeze time.

"I didn't know people came so small," Adora says, watching a group tend their garden at the edge of the woods.

"They're children," Catra says. "They're growing still."

Catra hadn't seen many children in the Horde, not since she was one. She has vague memories of being in the nursery and hissing at anyone new enough or stupid enough to mess with her tail, but not much since then. But civilians clearly have lower standards. No Horde cadet would risk the punishment they'd get for dropping leaves down another cadet's shirt.

Adora's face doesn't change as she watches them. "So people are something else, before they're people."

"Children are people too. They just haven't existed as long."

"I was something else, before the sword," Adora says. Her voice is as flat as ever. "Something in the ground, I think. I don't know if it had a name. And then the forge and - and then I was useful."

Catra folds her questions away for later, to join the hundreds she'll probably never ask. She has plenty she wouldn't want Adora to ask, either. The kid with the leaves down their shirt throws dirt in the other's face, and they run around the garden plot until their commanding officer raises her voice. The tone is too familiar, sharp, and Catra doesn't want to stay here any longer than she needs to.

"Let's keep moving," Catra says. "We have a few miles to go before sundown."

Adora's quiet for the rest of the evening, with the pinch in her eyes like she's thinking. After they settle in their bedrolls for the night, Adora's still frowning.

"What is it?" Catra asks. It's probably one of the questions she shouldn't ask, but the words slip away from her like soap.

Adora blinks up at the branches. "You helped with maintenance, when I was a sword."

"Right."

"Because if a weapon's idle too long, it rusts." Adora rolls to face Catra, eyes wide and colorless in the dimness. "I don't have a use anymore."

Catra won't either, once she gets Adora where she needs to go. She's still trying not to let herself think that far.

"We've been walking for days," Catra says. "I wouldn't call that idle."

Adora holds her gaze, and she doesn't even need words to call Catra on her bullshit.

"Right now," Catra says, "your purpose is to sleep. I'm not carrying you if you're too tired to walk tomorrow."

"I don't get tired," Adora says, and it's refreshing to confirm that she still doesn't know how to sound like she isn't lying. "I can definitely carry you."

Catra puts that thought as far away as possible. She doesn't know how much Adora can actually see in the dark, with her magic shit, but hopefully she can't make out the flush in Catra's cheeks. Her voice is definitely rougher than usual when she says, "Sleep, dummy."

Catra closes her eyes then, because Adora says they shine in the dark, and listens for Adora's breathing to even out. She slips into a dream before she gets the chance, and when Adora asks about her sleep in the morning, Catra's better at lying than Adora is.

Bizarrely, Adora loves the river.

She walks right in, running her hand through the knee-deep water as Catra assesses the branches overhead for a path across. It takes her three seconds to figure out how to splash, and Catra slides further up the bank to stay out of the way.

Adora looks back and straightens. "Oh," she says, water dripping from her fingers. "It isn't safe?"

It's been years since Catra had a basic survival course. In the simulations, they were supposed to avoid water that might be too deep or move too fast. This river is clear enough to see how shallow it is - it doesn't look like it'll even get to Adora's waist at the deepest point - and it's too slow to see it move.

"No, you're fine." There are a few branches that are close enough together that Catra could probably jump. It's hard to tell from here whether or not they could hold her weight, but-

"You're afraid of the water."

Catra looks back at Adora, tamping down on the hiss that rises almost on instinct. "I'm not. I just don't want this dumb fur to get wet, it takes forever to dry. Once you know how miserable wet clothes feel, you'll get it."

Adora shakes her head, slight, like she doesn't know she's doing it. She gestures at Catra. "I thought that was what afraid looked like. What feeling is that, then?"

It's stupid. Catra knows it's stupid. There are a thousand reasonable things to be scared of - well-trained opponents, angry officers, injuries that'll fester and kill if she can't get them under control. There are earthquakes and sporestorms and rockslides, and wild creatures with reflexes faster than her own. The Horde could still burst out of the trees, stun batons blazing. She'd have to lie down in this water to drown in it, it's safe, it's stupid.

"It's the feeling of not liking water," Catra says, and if her arms cross defensively across her chest, hopefully Adora doesn't know enough yet to call her on that. "Obviously not like, drinking water. I don't like being in it."

Adora looks at the opposite bank. "How are you getting across?"

Catra unfolds an arm to point to her branches. "Climb 'n jump."

The water makes hushed sounds when Adora walks, until she's out of the water and close enough for Catra to see the beads caught in the fine hairs on the back of her arms. Adora rubs a hand on her shirt to dry it. "I said I can carry you. I won't drop you."

Catra wants that more than anything in the world. It would be so easy. Rogelio had carried everyone else in the unit at one point or another, and he was only dating two out of the three of them. It doesn't have to be-

"No," Catra says, smothering all of her bad ideas. "Race you!"

She almost makes it, too. It was harder to see the branches on the other side, and she doesn't have quite enough time to turn her fall into a jump, and she's braced to hit the water when she hits Adora's arms instead.

Adora shifts to hold Catra closer, and it's like when Rogelio caught her after she fucked up a backflip off the top of a bot. He gave her shit about being an idiot, and she gave him shit for barely being able to touch his toes, and it wasn't weird. They weren't even friends, really. She can be hyperaware of Adora's solid arms under her and chest rising when she breathes, and still be her friend.

Adora carries her for far too long and not long enough. After she puts Catra down, she says, "I won." When Catra stares at her, she adds, "The race. Falling is against the rules."

"That wasn't a real - we didn't even have rules."

"Dis-qual-i-fied," Adora says, so distorted that it takes Catra a second to figure out what she's saying. But she's grinning, eyes bright, like she thinks something's funny.

Thank Hordak that Adora put her down first. "Was - was that a joke?"

Catra's never heard Adora laugh before. It's bubbly, full, and it might be the best thing Catra's ever heard.

"We'll keep working on that," Catra says, but she can feel Adora's smile echoed on her own lips. "I can't let you loose on the world if you think that's funny."

Adora laughs again, snorting this time, and Catra's glad that Adora isn't looking at her. If Adora asked her to name the emotion that she can't keep off her face, she wouldn't be able to answer.

When Catra had dreamed about destroying the Horde, she'd imagined fire - metal walls melting, munitions exploding, banners disappearing in flames. On her most miserable days, she scripted out what Hordak and Shadow Weaver and all her other superiors would say when they begged for their lives, and what Catra would say before she killed them anyway.

In reality, the Horde falls quietly.

The forest paths are full of people murmuring about how quickly the Horde forces withdrew from their positions, how inactive their borders have been, how dark the Fright Zone looks from a distance. It isn't as good as seeing it herself, but Catra still has a vivid imagination.

That also means that she can imagine how it might go if someone spots the insignia on Adora's back. Or what can be seen of it, anyway, around the jagged-cut holes. So when Catra sees clothes clipped to a rope while she's out looking for somewhere to refill their canteens, she has good reason to take them.

"I got my own, but these are yours," Catra says, dropping a red tunic and a pair of pants on Adora's bedroll. Civilian clothes don't have size labels like factory-made Horde uniforms, but at least now Catra can pretend that she had a good reason to know Adora's dimensions by heart.

Adora blinks at them, pinching the hem of the tunic between her fingers.

"Clothes," Catra says, before Adora asks the question. "They don't actually have to be covered in holes and blood and dirt."

Adora picks at her sleeve, watching the fabric pull, grime flaking off as it stretches. "Oh," she says, like she hadn't realized it wasn't part of her. Maybe she hadn't.

"Just one of the many inconveniences of personhood," Catra says, breezier than she feels. "Gotta change clothes sometimes. I'll-"

Adora strips her shirt before Catra can react. Luckily, she has one of the standard-issue bras on underneath. Unluckily, she has way too much muscle definition for someone who could barely sit up straight a week ago.

Blood rushes to Catra's face. "Gonna check the perimeter," she babbles, as if they have a fucking perimeter, and she runs. She can't breathe again until she's at least thirty paces past the edge of the clearing. She presses her hands to her hot face and wishes that screaming was an option.

Okay. Okay. That reaction definitely wasn't friendship. Fuck.

She's been through this. Adora doesn't like her the same way, might not like women at all, might not like anyone. And they only have so many rations, and whatever's left of the Horde might still be looking for her, and Catra has no way of knowing if they're even on the map that she can barely read - Adora doesn't need this right now. Catra's just as bad as the technicians, wanting something that isn't hers to-

Twigs snap under Adora's feet as she walks up behind her. Catra plasters her normal face back on before she turns around. "All clear," she says.

Maybe it's just the way the tunic hangs on Adora's frame, but she looks smaller. She gestures to the fabric clenched in Catra's fist. "Are you going to-"

"Yeah," Catra says, too fast. "I'm gonna - I'm just gonna go over there, okay? I'll meet you back at camp."

Catra's spent her entire life undressing in front of other people - there was no privacy in the Fright Zone, and it had never occurred to her that she might want any - but now the idea of Adora looking at her body with the intensity with which she examines everything new makes Catra want to die, in a good way and a bad way and a thousand other ways that she can't pick apart right now.

Adora's brows are furrowed when she nods, and Catra rushes behind the thickest tree trunk she can find. The tail slit she slices isn't centered, but even with that nagging discomfort, it's worth it to be done. Her old uniform is stiff with sweat and grime, and Catra can only think of one thing she wants to do with it.

Catra flies back to camp, and Adora stops studying the leaf in her hand to look up. "You picked yellow," she says.

"I picked whatever fit." Catra grabs her pack and digs out the tiny book of matches that she'd been too wary to open before now. This feels worth the risk of being spotted.

"C'mon," Catra says, only breathless from running. "Let's find out if those things are as fireproof as the Horde said they were."

It takes a long time and more wood than Catra expected, but eventually flames eat through the failed cadet's uniform and the tattered insignia that used to stretch across Adora's back. Watching fire's never felt this good before.

"You said delicious was a word for how food tastes, before." Adora says. She's been quiet since the sun went down. "And beautiful was for other things."

"Yeah." One of the logs in the fire falls, sending up a small spray of sparks. "Like, the sight of this shit burning is beautiful. Like that."

"Then," Adora says, slow, "you're beautiful. When your clothes match your eyes and - and when they don't. That's the right word?"

Catra swallows. "Not if you want to tell the truth. But grammatically, sure."

Adora frowns. "That is the truth." She's firm, insistent. Either she doesn't know what the word means, or she's finally figured out how to lie. Catra doesn't know which is worse.

The fire's almost burned down, no trace left of the uniforms. Catra grabs the closest canteen and upends it over the flames, and when it sizzles and splutters, it almost makes her not want to punch a tree anymore. "I'll be a minute," she says, grabbing a stick to stir the embers. "Don't wait up."

Adora doesn't move for so long that Catra's about to ask her if she needs help. Then she says, "I'm sorry. I thought beautiful was - good."

Catra stabs the coals again. She pushes air through her lips before she speaks. "It is."

"But you're angry."

No one in the Horde ever did this. When Catra got pissy, people ignored her or avoided her or sent her to run extra laps until she could get her attitude back under control. And that's if she was lucky.

But Adora tries to figure out why, like that matters.

"Yeah," Catra says, as calm as she can manage. "Because I've been me for a hell of a lot longer than you've known me, and I know what I fucking look like. So don't bullshit me."

Adora nods, face blank, and walks to her bedroll. The moon is high by the time Catra stops raking the stick through the coals, long past dead and cold.

The next day, they're three miles in when it starts to rain. Adora quickly lifts her pack over Catra's head and nudges her under a tree, blocking the rain before it can do more than spot Catra's shirt.

Catra puts up her own pack, and Adora shifts so the two bags can cover as much as they can. Adora's eyelashes are already clumped with water, rivulets running down her arms.

"You're going to be soaked," Catra says, pushing Adora's pack back towards her.

Adora doesn't budge. "I don't rust anymore. I like it."

"Well," Catra says, already itchy where raindrops have made it to her, "you're entitled to your opinion. Even when it's terrible."

Something sparks in Adora's eyes. "So I can think you're beautiful, if that's my opinion."

Catra's going to die. Water is pooling in the hollow of Adora's collarbone, inches away, and Catra drags her eyes anywhere else. Last night's rage is gone, and Catra doesn't want to try to figure out why. She doesn't really want to figure out what she does feel, either.

"I guess," Catra says. At the base of the tree a few steps away, glowing mushrooms sizzle and smoke with every raindrop. "Congratulations. You have at least two terrible opinions now. I'm sure there will be more."

Adora smiles big enough to see out of the corner of Catra's eye, and Catra doesn't brush away the lock of hair that sticks to Adora's damp face, no matter how much she wants to.

It takes Catra way too long to recognize the tiny sounds off to their right. By the time she matches them with cadets shirking duties in a supply closet, Adora's already peering at the couple making out through the trees.

"What-"

Catra grabs Adora's arm and very pointedly ignores the muscles that shift under her fingers. "Not now. Keep moving."

To Adora's credit, she does. She frowns while she walks, puzzling over it in her head so loud that Catra can almost hear it. She's going to ask again, at some point, and as much as Catra doesn't want to have that conversation with her, it isn't fair not to. Adora might want someone, someday. She should know.

"Kissing," Catra finally says, letting go of Adora's arm. If she keeps her tone casual enough, maybe Adora won't notice that Catra can't look at her. "That's what they were doing. It's a thing people do."

In her peripheral vision, Adora's head tilts. "Why?"

One of the worst possible questions. "Because they want to. They like each other, I guess." Catra and Lonnie didn't like each other when they squeezed into a corner that the surveillance cameras didn't cover, but teenage hormones were messy and options were limited in the Horde. Adora's not going to have that problem.

Adora's quiet for a moment as she digests that. "People want to kiss."

Leaves crunch under their feet. "Not everyone. But a lot of people."

"And I'm a person, you said."

"Yeah. You don't have to, but you can, um, kiss someone someday." The idea of Adora's lips on anyone's makes Catra's stomach wrench. "But only if you want to, and they do too. Both people have to want to, okay? That's really important. Everyone gets to make their own choices about their body and stuff."

Adora squints in thought, and Catra's stupidity hits her like a tank. The shredded shirt is gone, and so are the holes in Adora's skin, but that's not an excuse for Catra to forget.

Catra stops walking and faces her. It's not easy to meet Adora's intense gaze, but it's the least Catra can do. "Which means that it wasn't okay, in the Fright Zone. I shouldn't've done the - with the needles and everything. I'm sorry."

Adora doesn't blink. "It was better when it was you."

"My competition was pretty shit, that doesn't mean anything I did was okay."

A bird calls in the trees, and Adora doesn't look for it like she usually would. "You brought me fruit."

Catra has to ungrit her teeth to speak. "So, for the future," she says, fighting to keep her voice level, "just because someone gives you something doesn't mean they're allowed to nearly fucking kill you. I need you to get that through your head right now."

"No, I-" Adora pauses, crease between her eyes as she thinks. Catra forces a slow breath, in, out. It's not Adora's fault that she's only had shit examples for how people should treat each other. If Catra had pried that damn cage open the instant she saw it, then Adora would know better than to defend her.

Eventually Adora says, "Time with you was different. I preferred that to everything. I preferred you to everything."

It's not even a real compliment - it couldn't take much to beat magical anemia and cold indifference and solitary confinement. No normal person would take that as anything else.

"I still do." Adora says. Catra doesn't remember them standing this close together a minute ago. "I-"

Catra's going to do something stupid if she doesn't get out of this right now. "Just accept the apology," she says, mouth dry as she steps back. She can't keep the edge out of her voice.

Adora does blink, then. The blankness on her face feels fragile, like a thin sheet of ice, and Catra can't tell what's under it. She should fucking apologize for snapping now, but she doesn't know what she'll do if Adora refuses to forgive her for that too.

"Or - or don't, I can't tell you what to do. Take all the time you need to think about it."

"Yes." Tension bleeds out of Adora's face. "Time."

"I'm really shit with this map," Catra says. "So we might be out here a while."

There's a smile on Adora's face, then, and like every time, Catra wants to do whatever she can to keep it there. "I can read it. I'll be worse."

"If we run into another fucking body of water that isn't supposed to be there," Catra says, "I'll take you up on that."

"And I'll take you over it." Adora's voice is flat enough that Catra might not have known it was a joke if she didn't know her. Catra hates that she likes it.

Catra adjusts her pack, and turns back to the path ahead of them, snaking off into the trees. "You'd have to catch me first," she says, before breaking into a run. Adora calls after her between her laughs, and Catra doesn't feel as bad as she should for outrunning someone with less than a month of experience on her feet.

Catra's about to give up on the fucking map when they find it.

Even if she hadn't known what they were looking for, she'd know the building was powerful right away. A paved clearing, leading up to a tower of crystal that stretches into the sky, clear and blue and purple. It's more breathtaking than anything Catra had ever seen in the Fright Zone. Almost anything.

They've both stopped just before the dirt gives way to stone. Adora's eyes are wide, like when she healed her bruises.

Catra has to swallow before she can speak. "You okay?"

Adora's eyes tighten. "When I was here before, I was with whoever wielded me," she says. There's a rasp in her voice. "I was never alone."

Adora's hand is right there, limp by her side, and she doesn't pull away when Catra takes it.

"You're not," Catra says, and Adora nods while she squeezes her hand.

The door opens to Adora's voice, and it takes a moment for Catra's eyes to adjust to the darkness behind it. She isn't sure what she expected from an ancient magical temple, but it wasn't a pitch-black ruin crawling with moss. "Is it always-"

"It's still asleep." Adora walks through the door, eyes already starting to glow, and only Catra's reflexes get her inside before the door slides shut behind them.

Even in the deepest parts of the Fright Zone, Catra could still see the space around her, even if it was colorless and fuzzy. Here, she keeps her grip on Adora's hand tighter than she wants to, because the walls dissolve into the dark just feet in front of her. She has the irrational thought that, if she lets go, Adora might fade away too.

"There are lights," Adora says. "I just need to find the terminal."

Catra hates this fucking place already. "The terminal?'

Adora gestures down the hallway, or the blackness past the point where Catra's vision fails. "It's down there somewhere."

There's a buzz at the edge of Catra's hearing that she can't place, and it makes the fur on the back of her neck stand on end. She tries to smile past her nerves. "This isn't a great tour."

Adora laughs, and it's still Catra's favorite sound. "I'll show you."

They stop in front of a mural, stretching up onto the wall above them with tall long lines. Catra doesn't really care about most of it - rays of light, cape, whatever - but she would recognize the sword anywhere.

"She-Ra," Adora breathes, odd tang in her voice.

Catra winces when the lights come up, spilling through the crystal around them, but Adora doesn't react. She stares past the hologram in front of them. "The Princess of Power," Adora says. The smudges of dirt on her skin have melted away, hair smoothing, and the blue in her eyes still shines. Even now, tunic hanging loose from her frame, Adora looks every inch the powerful creature she is. "She wields the Sword of Protection."

"She used to," Catra says, too close to a hiss. Whoever this bitch was, she had to be long gone by now. Catra still wants to impale her on her own tiara.

Adora nods. "She used to." She touches the platform under the mural with her fingertips, the way Catra's seen her explore a hundred new things. "We did so many important things together. There's no one to restore balance to Etheria now."

Catra opens her mouth to say that she can help Adora do whatever she needs to do, that she doesn't need some stupid princess, but the words stay stuck. Catra doesn't have magic, and she doesn't have any other useful skills to offer either. She's lucky she was able to get them this far, she isn't going to be able to help Adora heal volcanoes or whatever the fuck she used to do.

As much as Catra hates the caped bitch, she should probably be the one here. Maybe Adora wouldn't worry about being useless if she was with the princess.

"It's been a long time," Catra says, and it sounds fake even to her. She plants a hand on the wall to lean into Adora's vision. "Maybe-"

The hologram turns red.

"Unauthorized presence detected. Security protocol-"

Catra knows an alarm when she hears one. She'd been the fastest cadet in her division, and she dives under the doors when they start to smash closed. Adora is saying something to the hologram, too fast for how monotone she sounds, but it won't matter. Catra doesn't belong here, and Adora's the only one who doesn't know it.

She barely makes it through the last door, rolling out onto the leaf-strewn stone. It glows red in the sun, uncomfortably warm as she runs, and the dirt is a relief when she tumbles over a bush at the edge of the clearing. She's only breathing hard from running. The damp in her eyes is only from-

A body slams down next to hers. Adora pants, face flushed, tiny hair frizzing along her hairline. The swipe of dirt across her cheek is back, skin dull and human.

"Are you okay?" Adora asks.

Catra swipes at her eyes and nods. She's fine. Her body complains as she climbs to her feet, and what little rations they had left are in Adora's pack, but Catra will figure something out. She always does.

She makes it less than a foot before Adora catches her wrist. "Where are you going?"

Catra doesn't have to tug hard for Adora to let her go. "Out of this stupid fucking forest."

Adora's eyebrows furrow. "I thought you liked it here."

Catra had liked it. She didn't like skulking around villages looking for unwatched rations, or listening for monsters in the night, or walking until her feet ached - but she was with Adora, and she was good for something. Somewhere between that promotion ceremony and giving Adora a knife, she stopped wanting more than that. Pathetic.

"Well, I don't." Catra squares her shoulders. "So, enjoy yourself in there."

Adora shakes her head. "You said you would stay," she says, all in a rush. Her hands reach towards Catra before stopping. "That's what you said."

Catra gestures at the temple. "Didn't you hear it? I'm not supposed to be there. You are."

Adora's jaw sets. "I don't want to."

"We've just spent the last-" Catra told herself she wasn't going to yell at Adora ever again. "Look, I saw you in there. You belong there. You'll be safe there."

Adora's eyes narrow, sullen as a child, and Catra's voice raises without her. "Did you want to be a fucking battery again? I can walk you right back into the Fright Zone if you miss that cage so damn-"

"I know what my name means," Adora says, too fast, too loud.

Catra freezes. She knew the name was stupid even as she was giving it - she barely knew Adora, then. But she'd never looked forward to seeing someone like she looked forward to seeing Adora, and no one had ever listened like Adora listens, and she'd gone blank. She told herself that anything would be better than the name she'd had.

"It doesn't mean anything," Catra says. Her heart beats in her ears.

"It means love, and it means you love me." Adora's unblinking gaze almost hurts. Catra still can't look away. "I love you, too. So I'm not going back if you can't come with me."

"You don't - you didn't even know what shoes were." Catra's dry throat catches when she swallows. "Plus you've only met, like, one person ever. You don't-"

"I had nine technicians," Adora says. That look on her face is back, the one Catra hasn't been able to place. "And She-Ra brought me to hundreds of places with thousands of people. I've known many people. None of them are you."

The Catra of a year ago would be disgusted that she's still standing here, that she isn't telling Adora that she's full of shit when she has to be. Maybe some future Catra will hate herself for it too. Maybe she'd hate herself more for wanting to believe what Adora's saying.

Adora clears her throat. "I'm still figuring out a lot of things. Feelings are... complicated. But I know this one."

The strap of Catra's pack is rough where she holds it. "I don't know any of that," she gestures vaguely, "magic shit. I can't help you save the planet or whatever the fuck. And whatever's left of the Horde - they're going to be looking for you. It's insane to walk away from that place, I don't know where to fucking go from here."

Adora stands, not bothering to brush the twigs from her tunic. "You said that people make choices." She holds out her hand. "We get to make our own choices, you said."

Catra should run now. If Adora can't follow her, she'll have to go back inside, where it's safe. If Catra actually loved Adora back, that's what she should do. But her feet are glued to the leaf-strewn ground.

"Yeah." When Adora's hand comes close enough, she can't stop herself from grabbing it. It's exactly like she remembers. "I did say that."

"I want to kiss you," Adora says, slow but certain. "Can I-"

Catra had more lines ready, about how Adora's decisions are worse than her opinions, but they disappear into the kiss, and when that's over, Catra doesn't remember what they had been.

Adora's forehead rests on Catra's like it belongs there, and Catra unsticks her tongue long enough to say, "You're actually beautiful, for the record."

"Oh," Adora says, grin in her voice, "you like me."

"I literally just-" Catra stops as Adora shifts to giggle into her shoulder. Catra never wants her to stop. "We're going to work on the whole jokes thing."

Adora keeps laughing, greasy hair pressed against Catra's cheek, before she lifts her head to kiss her again. She giggles harder when they break apart, and if something in Catra's brain is calculating how long she deserves to keep this, Adora's snorting laughter drowns it out.