Chapter Text
She-Ra: In The Wake
Episode 27: Catra. Catra! Catra?
“CATRA.”
The feline girl tensed at the sound of Glimmer’s voice. Gripping her arms, she turned away from the balcony and stepped toward the elegant arches that led back into Castle Bright Moon.
“Catra, wait!” Glimmer pleaded.
The other girl froze, still facing away from her. Catra’s dark, messy hair fell across the side of her face, grazing the tops of her shoulders and obscuring her face. Glimmer couldn’t tell what feelings hid behind that curtain, but she’d finally managed to corner the brunette after a solid week of pursuit, and she refused to let this opening slip away.
“Listen,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I don’t want to waste your time. You’re... you’re really busy, I guess? We haven’t talked about what you’re doing, but I barely see—uh. Anyway, you’re doing stuff. I just...”
Glimmer pressed her hands against her face, wiping at her cheeks and breathing sharply out through her nose. She turned to face the rich purple skyline, watching as the last traces of orange sunset glow crept over the canopy of the Whispering Woods. Down below spanned the glassy waters and flickering firelight glows of Bright Moon and its people. Her people, bundled away in their homes and enjoying the first peace they’d known in all of Glimmer’s life.
“Nobody down there knows,” she said quietly, watching the lamplights. “The Horde is gone, and they think that’s the end. They believe no more troubles are on the way, and they trust me to keep it that way.”
If Catra heard Glimmer’s words, she didn’t show it. The feline girl continued to stand, still and silent and facing the light that spilled out from the castle. Glimmer kept her eyes turned toward the landscape below, but from the very corner of her vision, she thought she saw the dark-haired girl turn almost imperceptibly toward the balcony view.
“Nobody else can be queen for me,” she confessed. “Nobody else can know what I know or make the decisions that I make. Not Adora, not you, not my mom—” she cut herself off as Catra moved for the first time, shrinking her shoulders and taking another step for the archway. Glimmer drew herself upright and kept her eyes locked on the horizon, quickly speaking again to interrupt the feline girl’s exit. “I can’t know what you know, either. I can’t be Catra.
“But I miss you.” And now came the tears. “I miss you a lot. When I had nobody else in the whole world on that ship, in that cell, I had you.” Her voice broke. “And I don’t know what I did wrong, but if you just tell me I promise I’ll do anything to—”
Glimmer’s words stopped as, suddenly, the taller girl turned around and sank to her knees. Catra fell forward and clutched at the hem of the queen’s dress, tears of her own spilling over and staining the soft fabric.
“Don’t,” the brunette croaked. “Don’t say that.”
Glimmer sank down herself, taking hold of Catra’s shoulders and pulling her into the tightest hug she could manage amidst her own trembling. “I want us to be friends again. I want you with me. With all of us.”
She almost missed the soft, hoarse reply. “I don’t deserve it.”
“I don’t, either,” Glimmer said. “So tell me what’s wrong.”
“You won’t want me.”
Glimmer took Catra’s face and gently forced her to meet eyes. “We will. And I can prove it. All you have to do is talk to me.”
---
“Catra!” The blonde rolled over on the dirt and cried out again. “Catra, no. I didn’t mean to— I couldn’t— I—!” She sat up, breathing hard as her eyes snapped open. Her fair hair tumbled down over her shoulders in a dusty mess, flyaways and staticky strands sticking out in a tangled halo.
A few feet away, Mara drew her knees up to her chest and folded her arms over them. “Nightmare?”
The blonde—Adora, she’d called herself—blinked and locked her gaze onto the older girl. Then, realizing where she was, Adora seemed to calm down a little bit. “Yeah. Something like that.”
“Who’s Catra?” Mara asked.
“My...” Adora paused. “She, uh. We...”
Mara laughed. “Ah, one of those.” She leaned back, propping herself up with her arms and extending her legs out in front of her on the grass.
As the blonde extricated herself from the twisted mass of bedroll she’d gotten stuck in, Mara looked up at the shimmering stars that freckled the entirety of the night sky above. She sighed deeply, closing her eyes and trying to imagine herself transported back in time, to her first night on Etheria. Back when it was just her, Light Hope, and Madame Razz coming over to steal their rations for her pies. Back before the rest of the Eternian Armada arrived and started setting up a base on the planet for Apophine to complete her mysterious “project” she claimed would win them the war, once and for all.
“How’s your friend doing?” Mara asked, trying her hardest to forget that said ‘friend’ was in fact a Horde clone.
Adora settled down next to the dark-haired woman and huddled up into a ball. “Better. I don’t know what Razz did, but he’s stopped yelling. She said he’ll be okay in the morning.”
“I’m glad she could help.”
Adora nodded. “She’s a lifesaver. I don’t know what I would do without her help.”
A hard knot settled further in Mara’s gut as she remembered the look on Razz’s face the last time they’d spoken. The hurt and the fear. “Yes.”
“You’re not sleeping either,” Adora noted, scratching at her head. “I guess I’m not the only one with bad dreams?”
“You’re not wrong,” Mara sighed. “I love my friends and I can always ask them for help, but...” She closed her eyes. “I shouldn’t complain. I took on a responsibility and I don’t regret my choice.”
“But most days you still feel like you’re the only one holding the whole planet together,” the blonde finished.
Mara laughed quietly. “Yes. More or less.”
Adora laid back on the grass. “Being She-Ra is hard.”
“You can say that again.”
Then, Mara’s eyes narrowed as she processed the blonde’s words fully.
“Wait.” She pushed herself to her feet. “How did you know who I am?”
“What?” Adora asked, sitting up.
The dark-skinned woman stood over her, one hand reaching for the magic bracer on her other arm. Her eyes glinted with a hard light. “That is the third time you’ve spoken of something I haven't told you about. You know my name, you know my powers, and you know my oath. Who are you, Adora? Why has Madame Razz called me by your name ever since I first met her?” In a flash of light, the metal bracer melted and sprang into her hand, transforming into the Sword of Protection in all its glory.
“I’m just traveling,” Adora stammered, lifting her hands defensively and shrinking back from the shining blade. “I’m passing through and I want to go home.”
“Stop lying to me,” Mara ordered, bringing the blade to bear and transforming into the Princess of Power in a flash of white light. “Who. Are. You?”
Adora hesitated at the swordpoint... and then slowly closed her eyes. When she opened them again, all fear had left her face and her mouth was set in a determined line. She pushed herself to her feet and stood upright, staring into She-Ra’s eyes.
“For the honor of Grayskull.”
In the shimmering blaze of color that followed, the blonde warrior grew in stature, strength, and magic. An instant later, the fearsome and stunning form of another Princess of Power stood across from her counterpart. Her rainbow aura cast dancing light through the deep purples and blues of the night sky, and the Sword of Protection dropped from She-Ra’s grasp as she collapsed to her knees, transforming back into young Mara.
The other She-Ra released her transformation as well, and again stood Adora, silhouetted against the stars. The blonde princess slowly breathed out through her teeth.
“I didn’t want to have to do that, but I guess I should introduce myself again.” She stepped forward and extended a hand to Mara. “I am Princess Adora of Etheria. I am She-Ra.”
Mara stared blankly at the proffered hand. She blinked. “Yes. Me too.”
---
“Catra?”
Entrapta flipped her facemask up, cutting the blowtorch power off and scanning the darkness of the basement workshop around her. All remained still and quiet as her gaze traced the area beyond the mostly-assembled portal.
“Catra? Scorpia?” she called out again. “Is that you?”
After a moment, she shrugged and pulled out her voice recorder. “Bright Moon log, day fifteen. There seems to be a minor infestation within the workspace, as I continue to experience disturbances in my work. However, I have yet to catch sight of the creatures in question.” She paused, and hummed quietly to herself, scratching her head with a lone lock of hair. “Alternate hypothesis: I am beginning to experience vivid auditory hallucinations. This could provide fascinating subject matter for self-experimentation...”
The geek princess was about to reignite her blowtorch when she heard the clattering sound once again, followed by the soft whoosh of wings.
Entrapta dropped her tools and leapt up from her workstation. “Aha!”
Startled, the shape burst from the pile of components and flapped quickly for the exit, coasting just below the rafters and ducking through one of the far doorways out of sight.
“Come on, Emily,” Entrapta called, pushing herself up onto a seat of hair and quickly pursuing the avian intruder. “Let’s catch it and do some SCIENCE! AHAHAHAHA!”
With a groggy whirrrrr-blip, Emily’s lights blinked on and she pulled herself onto her metal legs, clattering after Entrapta through the cluttered workshop with somewhat less grace than usual as her systems continued to boot up. As she went, she knocked a large canister of sinister-looking blue sludge off of a table. The container landed with a clunk next to Wrong Hordak’s head—but the clone simply burbled in his sleep and turned over in his bedroll. Despite the danger of sleeping amidst Entrapta’s mechanics, nobody had yet managed to persuade him to take one of the guest rooms.
As Emily caught up with Entrapta’s fast pace, the geek princess shifted herself backward to take a seat on the robot’s head, repurposing her prehensile hair to snatch at the flying creature as it swooped frantically through the air. Entrapta pulled her shiny purple goggles down over her eyes and cackled again as their chase took them down several smaller corridors beneath the castle, into a region neither engineer nor robot had explored yet.
“AHAhahaha...” Entrapta’s laughter slowly faded as she and Emily came to a stop outside a tall, sturdy-looking autodoor cracked barely open on one side. Entrapta lifted her goggles and eyed the entryway. “Hmmm. Did it go in there?”
Emily whirred in confirmation—but took an abrupt step backward as a loud THUD sounded from beyond the door, followed by a throaty groan.
Slowly, Entrapta slipped off of Emily’s back and took a tentative step toward the tiny, cracked opening. “Hello?”
No answer came from beyond, except more groaning. Emily whistled nervously, but Entrapta continued to slowly approach the opening, leaning forward to peek through the entranceway. As her eyes peered through the crack, they opened wide. The birdlike creature had indeed entered the room, and now perched carefully on a red, fleshy arm extended for it.
“Fascinating...” the princess murmured, pressing her hands to the wall to look closer—and accidentally triggering the door to open wide, allowing the light to spill through.
Entrapta took a startled couple of steps back as the thing inside the room suddenly turned to stare at her. A strange, multiformed shadow fell over the geek princess’s small form as she looked up at the creature that cast it.
“Good evening,” the thing said, in two voices at once. “I do regret you had to see this. And especially what I’m going to have to do now.”