Under the Stars
Catra sighs, staring up at the stars from the roof of Bright Moon. She still hasn't gotten tired of looking at them—it's only been a few weeks since they'd gotten out of the Despondos dimension. Which is still something she tries not to think about. Her entire planet hidden from the rest of the universe in a dark dimension with no starlight? It sounds like a fairy tale. Catra barely believes it, and she's the one who opened the portal that brought them out.
But, stars. Wasn't much time for looking at them when you were fighting a war, so here she is. After the war, sitting on top of a Princess's palace. With Adora sleeping somewhere below her.
That might be the nicest part. Nicer than the stars. Sometimes Catra still catches herself looking away when Adora looks at her, or nearly spitting out an insult, or, or anything, before she remembers that she is allowed , now. To love Adora like that. Openly.
"Catra?"
She jumps, spinning around, already on her feet. Adora is standing on the roof, still in her stupid Horde uniform. Catra makes a mental note to get her some new clothes. Then she forces herself to stop bristling and lets herself smile a little.
"Hey, Adora."
Adora smiles back. "What're you doing up here? It's late, you should be asleep."
Catra slides back down into a crouch. "Could say the same to you."
"Hey, I was asleep, till I woke up and you weren't there," Adora says, coming over to sit next to her.
"I sleep in a different room, idiot, how'd you even know I wasn't there?"
Adora looks down, and in the darkness Catra thinks she might be blushing, but it's hard to tell. "I...wake up, in the middle of the night sometimes, and...it's stupid. But it helps, to go to your room. Helps me remember that it's over now, and you're, you know. Here."
Catra bumps her with her shoulder, says, "Course I'm here, stupid," so that she doesn't say anything embarrassing or stupidly sweet.
"Yeah," Adora says softly. "Why are you up here, though, really? You never answered."
Catra shrugs. "Can't sleep. Looking at the stars."
She doesn't say why she can't sleep. Adora doesn't need to worry about her any more than she already does. She really doesn't need to listen to Catra whine about how she was a terrible person for all of her life and how she doesn't know if she can ever really fix any of it and she doesn't deserve to be sitting here, free as a bird, in Bright Moon. Not after all that she's done.
"Catra?" Adora asks, softly, and she jumps. From the way Adora's looking at her, she missed a question.
"What?" she grunts, shifting and pulling her knees up to her chest.
"Are you thinking about the Horde?"
Catra sighs. "Yeah. Among other things."
Adora leans against her. "You're not doing your downward spiral of self-loathing again, are you?" When Catra just grunts in response, she adds, "Hey, at least this time I'm allowed to be within five feet of you. That's progress."
Catra gives a halfhearted snort. "Sure."
"Seriously, though," Adora says, leaning back to look at Catra. Her blue eyes are round. "You aren't doing that, are you?"
Catra doesn't even try to lie or hide from it. She's trying to get better at that. The hiding, the running. So she just stares at the sky and waits for whatever Adora is going to say about it.
"Catra. You know you're better than the things you did in the Horde. And if I had stayed, if I'd even tried to talk to you instead of running away with the stupid sword to join the rebellion-"
Okay, no. Catra is the villain, here, redeemed as she might (or might not) be, and Adora is the hero. That's how the story works. She pushes at Adora. "Shut up. You had the whole…" she waves a hand vaguely, not sure if she's trying to encompass just Bright Moon or all the stars above them, as well. "The whole princess thing."
"But I still could've-"
" No, " Catra says. "It is not your job to take care of everything in the entire universe just because you're She-Ra, okay?"
Adora shakes her head, her stupid, perpetual ponytail whipping through the air. "But if I'm She-Ra, and I can do all these things, then I have to be the hero, that's how it works."
"You can't do everything though, Adora!" Catra yells before she can think about it, and they both freeze, listening for sounds in the palace below them. Quieter, she says, "You don't always have to be the noble sacrifice all the time. You're allowed to take things, sometimes. You can't…" she turns away so her back is to Adora. "You can't help anyone if you're broken into pieces trying to help everyone ."
"Then what am I supposed to do?" Adora asks, her voice rising loudly. "Just...let people get hurt? When I could stop it?"
"Let other people do the rescuing for a change!" Catra hisses, twisting back around. "You're worth more than what She-Ra can give people. You're allowed to stop . We're kids , Adora."
Adora flops back onto the roof. "Not for much longer. There's a whole universe out there now. This is bigger than us, bigger than Etheria."
"You already saved the universe, idiot," Catra tells her. "Horde Prime is gone now, remember?"
She doesn't think about the fact that she's the reason they had to fight him at all. The reason everyone on Etheria nearly died.
"Yeah," Adora says softly. "I just...gotta work on it. Not being a soldier, y'know? First the Horde, and then the rebellion, and now...I'm just me."
" Just you, is that all?" Catra asks before she can stop herself, and Adora smiles a little. Then it slides sideways off her face and she tips her head at Catra.
"This isn't what we were supposed to be talking about. I know you aren't up here to look at stars."
Catra groans, though it's more of a sigh, and hangs her head between her knees. She's not getting out of this one without a proper talk. Still, she waits a moment anyway, trying to find the right words. She's never had the right words when it mattered. More suited to hissing and claws and stupid banter.
"I...I keep thinking about the Horde. And everything I did there. And it's not your fault, okay, because I chose it, and I hurt so many people, and Scorpia won't even look at me-" She breaks off, tearing a hand through her hair.
And then she just stops, because her hair is so much shorter now (longer, growing bit by bit), but it is still a constant reminder of being on Horde Prime's ship, of being turned into his slave, beating at the walls of her own mind. Trying to hold onto Adora and then watching as her own claws turned an embrace into a mess of bloody gashes. And it was her fault . Her choices that put her there, and no one else's, and somehow she still gets to be here, looking at the stars, next to Adora.
"You are not the same girl you were, Catra," Adora says fiercely. "You made bad choices, sure, but we all did, and you were hurt and alone and there was no one around to help you"
"Because I pushed everyone away!" Catra shouts, and has to force herself to subside again. "Because I pushed everyone away. And maybe if I hadn't opened that stupid portal…"
Adora puts a hand on her shoulder. "Horde Prime would have found us eventually anyway, or someone else would've opened the portal. You made mistakes , Catra, because like you said: We're just kids. And the difference between you and people like Horde Prime is that you know that what you did was wrong, and you're trying to fix it. That makes you a hero, I think."
Catra snorts, and then has to hide her face because it comes out a lot less derisive and a lot more vulnerable than she wanted. "Okay, sure."
"Catra," Adora says, and it's her serious voice, her hero voice, her dumb I'm-She-Ra-so-listen-up-voice. Catra turns to look at her. "You are worth more than what you've done."
That's...that's not fair . How is Catra supposed to stand here and do anything in response to Adora's stupid earnest face and her serious eyes and the way she's somehow managed to get both of Catra's hands in hers? Eventually she just swallows hard and manages a nod.
"Yeah," she says softly. "I'm working on believing that."
What she really means is she's working toward making that true, but saying that would probably start another not-fight, and, well, Catra is kind of tired. So she leans against Adora and neither of them ends up saying anything for a while. They just look at the stars. Catra, for her part, is seriously considering becoming nocturnal just so she can look at them as much as possible. She's got about eighteen years to make up for, after all.
"We should really go to sleep," Adora murmurs, some indeterminable amount of time later.
"Mmph." Catra isn't totally sure how she ended up mostly asleep against Adora's shoulder, but she does not want to move. "M'kay then. Go to sleep."
"We're still on the roof, Catra."
She shifts a little, frowns. "Melog makes a good pillow, and we can just use your dumb jacket as a blanket. Not like the bunks in the Horde were much softer than this."
She sort of...thinks about asking him to come—the bond between her and Melog is a strange one, and he doesn't always listen to her—and the strange magic cat bounds onto the roof easily. He purrs as she pets him and toys with his ears, and then stretches out on the roof behind them. Catra lays down, wriggling on the hard surface of the roof for a minute before she gets to some degree of comfortable. Adora sighs above her, and then the Horde jacket is settling over her shoulders as Adora lies down too.
"This isn't the last time we're talking about this, you know," she says.
Catra huddles a little closer to her. Just because the jacket isn't that big. They have to be close, for it to work as a blanket. That's all.
"Yeah," she says, "I know."
Adora isn't going to quit with her self-sacrificing routine anytime soon, especially not with an entire universe to feel responsible for, instead of just a whole planet. It'll take way more than one rooftop conversation to make Adora see she's worth something, inherently.
Catra also recognizes that she is probably not going to be convinced of her Innate Goodness or whatever it is Adora wants her to see in the foreseeable future. Somehow she doesn't exactly mind the thought of doing this again.
Slowly, tentatively, she curls around Adora so they're touching pretty much all along their bodies. Melog purrs, his body rumbling under them, and Adora smiles. "You know I know he responds to your emotions."
Catra feels her face heat and nearly moves away, but Adora wraps an arm around her so she can't go anywhere.
She doesn't really mind.
"I love you," Adora whispers. "Even when you get stupid and try to paint yourself as this big bad villain."
"I love you too," Catra whispers back. "Even when you're an idiot who doesn't know what a breaking point is."
Adora laughs, softly, and rests her forehead on Catra's.
"Adora?" Catra whispers, in the dark, a few moments later when she's half-certain Adora's asleep anyway.
Her eyes open, bare inches from Catra's own. "Hm?"
"Can you...promise me something?" she asks, and they're still entangled, heads touching, so the best Catra can do is avert her eyes while she curses herself mentally for being an embarrassing idiot.
Adora rubs a comforting hand along her back. "What?"
"Just...please never leave. Not without, without saying something, or unless you have to. Promise me you'll never leave. Not this time. Not anymore."
Adora smiles, soft and a little sad, and somehow manages to pull Catra closer. "I swear," she murmurs. "As long as you promise me something too."
Catra nods, mostly into Adora's neck and chest. "Anything."
"Promise me you'll try. To, to get better, to not blame yourself for everything, to...not push everyone away so much. Just try, " Adora says softly.
Actually doing it, that's not a thing Catra can promise, not yet. But trying? "Yeah. Yeah, I promise. I can do that."
"Thank you." Adora presses a kiss to her forehead and Catra resolutely does not blush. Melog rumbles violently with a purr and twists to lick Adora's face. She snorts.
"Good night ," Catra tells them both, turning around so her back is to Adora. Melog takes the opportunity to snack her in the face with his tail. Adora wraps her arms around her and snuggles in closer.
"Aww, you love us. Doesn't she, Melog?"
Melog purrs louder and meows.
Catra reaches up to lace her fingers with Adora's. "Yeah," she says softly. "Yeah, I do."
They stay there, just like that, for the rest of the night. Tucked into half-moons, fingers curled together, staring at the stars. Catra stays awake long after Adora drifts off, reveling in this one endless moment, when there's no one in the whole world but the two of them. Three of them. She has a home now, and she has Adora. They're together.
Together, under the stars.