Chapter Text
The day starts off normally enough.
Catra’s out on her own, tracking down a small cluster of clones that have taken it upon themselves to continue following Horde Prime, even though he’s fucking dead . It’s stupid and dumb and Catra hates that she has to do this, but somebody has to, so it might as well be her.
Adora hates that it has to be her.
But….Catra can’t help with the rebuilding efforts. She just can’t. She wants to, desperately. She wants to fix everything that she broke, damn what happens to her and how long it takes.
The people of Etheria though….they don’t want that.
They already knew that sending Catra to Salineas to help rebuild was a no-go, so that wasn’t even considered. They tried sending her to Plumeria, but even they wouldn’t let her within the town limits. They tried to send her to the smaller towns to help rebuild - Adora by her side - but after two close calls with potential riots, they decided that wasn’t an option either.
The Fright Zone was the last resort, but after one too many panic attacks - one too many panic attacks that Adora found out about - it was crossed off the list too.
The other option was sitting in Bright Moon with Glimmer and helping her with strategy and planning out where to send resources and supplies, but that’s just….Catra’s smart, and she can do that stuff, but she can’t do it in this specific situation.
She needs to do manual labour. She needs something that will hurt if she pushes at it a bit too long, to remind her of all the shit that she did, and that she deserves to hurt because of what she’s done.
Yes, she knows that that’s wildly unhealthy and that Adora would toss her over her shoulder and bring her right to Perfuma if she found out.
So Catra made up some bullshit about feeling restless and feeling cooped up and anxious in Bright Moon - not a complete lie - and because of that, the Princesses found something else for her to do.
Which is tracking down the last of the clones who are still trying to bring about Horde Prime’s reign of terror.
Adora wanted to come with her, but she’s obviously needed elsewhere. She’s far far too important to the rebuilding efforts to be out here with Catra, so with plenty of tears from Adora, and a decent amount from Catra, she was seen on her way, all by her lonesome.
They tried to get some of the guards or soldiers to come with her, but they all feared for their life being with the former leader of the Horde. Which Catra understands, and is, honestly, thankful for.
She likes the silence, and she needs to think right now.
She just….she’s been freaking the fuck out for the past month.
She loves Adora, fully and completely. She knows this, and has known this, and knows that it’s never going to change. Even when Adora comes to her senses and breaks up with Catra, she’s still going to love Adora.
She just….doesn’t love the things that Adora loves. Not all of them.
She doesn’t love Bright Moon. She likes the comfort and the food, and that Adora likes it, but she doesn’t feel comfortable there. There’s too much brightness, not enough places to hide. The people there hate her, no matter how many times Bow and Glimmer try to show the guards and the staff that Catra’s on their side now.
Which again, she understands and she isn’t pissed at them for it, because she gets it , but she just…..it’s one thing on top of all of the other ways that Bright Moon doesn’t fit for her.
She tells herself that she’ll figure it out. With time, she’ll love it like Adora does, and she’ll be happy there. She’ll stop waking up every morning with the fear that she’ll be kicked out, or that one of the guards will slit her throat in her sleep.
She tells herself that she’ll be able to have a life with Adora there.
And it’s not like she hates it completely. Adora’s there, which is a big plus, as are Bow and Glimmer. She’s eating better than she ever has, and her fur has finally been able to receive the treatment that it should have had this whole time (because obviously Shadow Weaver gave her cleaning products for skin, not fur).
But….it’s not enough. So when this mission was an option for her, she leapt at it.
A chance to be away from Bright Moon, and a chance to think. She can still talk to Adora, and Bow and Glimmer, with the trackpad she has, so she’s not completely alone. It’s nice. It’s what she needed, she thinks.
She obviously wishes Adora was here, and she misses kisses, but she’s managing.
She’s managed to track the group of clones down to a cave not far from the Fright Zone. Close enough that she can see the remnants of the Fright Zone, but not close enough that she’ll risk running into Scorpia or any of the ex-Horde soldiers that are living in and helping rebuild the Fright Zone.
She’s honestly kind of impressed that the clones even managed to find the cave, considering she barely did.
The clones aren’t used to Etheria though, or the Whispering Woods, so even though they tried to cover their tracks, Catra’s a better tracker than they are at being secretive.
So she finds herself perched up in one of the trees outside the cave entrance, just out of sight. The clones don’t expect her - don’t expect anyone - nor do they think that there’s anyone else in the Whispering Woods. So while they aren’t being overt or noisy, they aren’t being as secretive as Catra would be, and that’s let her get a lay of the land over the past thirty minutes.
There’s no more than ten of them, by her count. They don’t have any weapons, and they’re not any more well-trained than Horde cadets.
In other words, a piece of cake.
Still, Catra plans to wait until night. From what she could tell from her time on Horde Prime’s ship and during the various battles on Etheria, they can’t see in the dark any more than Adora or Bow can, while she obviously far exceeds them there.
Even if she could probably take them all out during the day, she does have some sense of self-preservation.
Massive shocker, she knows.
So, having scoped it out as much as she wants to, she leans back on the tree branch and closes her eyes, quickly drifting off to sleep.
She wakes up to the sound of crickets.
It takes her a couple seconds to get situated and to remember where she is as she stretches out on the tree branch, but once she has, she moves quickly.
There’s no light coming from the cave opening, but she doesn’t need it. She slinks in, silent as night, keeping her back against the wall of the cave as she looks around. The clones are all sleeping, huddled up against the opposite corner of the cave, and Catra might not even need to get her claws out for this.
She has her pack on her back, and about fifteen pairs of Entrapta’s latest handcuffs inside it, ready to go. They’re a recent invention of hers, some kind of First Ones tech in them to make sure that the person who’s wearing them can’t break out of. Catra can’t even begin to understand it, and honestly doesn’t really care to, as long as they work.
So, as quietly as she can, she takes out all of the cuffs - more than she needs, but better safe than sorry - and with them in hand, quietly makes her way over to the sleeping clones.
And with the dexterity that she’s known for, she snaps the handcuffs on the clones one after the other. The ones on their backs are obviously easier, and although there are a couple that stir a little bit as she moves them so that she can snap the cuffs on, she’s able to do it without any of them waking up.
“Not bad,” she hums to herself as she steps back, putting the last couple cuffs into her pack. As she does though, she’s hit with a sudden whiff of something. She’s not sure what it is, but she just….it’s weird.
It connects with a part of her brain that recognizes it as familiar, but she couldn’t tell you from where or when. She doesn’t think she’s ever been in this cave before, and it’s not a smell that she can trace back to anywhere else in the Whispering Woods.
It’s…huh.
“What the fuck….” Catra mutters to herself she sniffs at the air, smelling it coming from further inside the cave. She had assumed that it wasn’t very deep, but a quick look back lets her know that, even though the cave does narrow, it still goes back a decent ways.
So, Catra decides to do something stupid.
She does drop a pin at her location for Bow so that they can send people to pick up the clones, but after that’s done, she turns and makes her way into the cave.
The smell gets stronger the further back she goes, and she just knows that it’s familiar. She’s not sure why, but it just….she feels happy, the more she smells it. She doesn’t know why, or what it is, or why something this close to the Fright Zone would possibly make her happy, but she just….fuck, it makes her smile.
She knows this is an awful idea. That it’s probably some monster that lives in the Whispering Woods, and because of her sense of smell, she’s gotten a whiff of it and it’s hitting something in her brain that’s making her come closer.
She’s not a brain expert, so she doesn’t know how that would work. Whatever.
Who cares?
The point is that Catra can’t stop herself from following it, crouching lower and lower until eventually, she has to crawl on her stomach to get through the cave. It never completely stops though, and eventually Catra feels grass beneath her paws.
She’s still in the cave when she feels it, but it’s opening up into a clearing, so with one final push, Catra escapes and stumbles into a tuft of high grass.
She spits out what gets in her mouth, yelping as she bats at it.
She’s thankful that no one is there to see it.
Once she realizes that it’s just grass though, Catra pops to her feet, running her hands through her mane as she gets a sense of her surroundings.
It’s….huh.
She’s been here before.
The visuals hit the same part of her brain that the smell did, where she just…she just knows.
She knows what this is.
She doesn’t want to think about what that means, so she pushes it down, as deep down as she possibly can.
Ignores the fact that she now knows that the smell is coming from the berries hanging from the branches overhanging the cave entrance.
Ignores the fact that she knows that those berries are edible, and that she’s eaten them before.
Ignores the fact that she knows that someone ground them up or squeezed them into a smoothie for her, so that she could drink it at the young age that she was.
She ignores more things as she looks around as well.
Ignores the helmet with the Horde logo emblazoned on it, stepping over it as she slowly makes her way forward.
Ignores the first building she passes, knowing that it was some sort of….knowing that she’s been there before.
It’s eerie, and even though she’s internally freaking the fuck out, she always feels….calm, almost.
She can’t quite explain it.
She just knows what this place is, and knowing that, just on its own, is going to clear up a part of her life that she has no memories of.
Or didn’t, before she got here.
She always wondered, deep down. She knows that she got to the Horde when she was a kitten, around the time that Adora was around two years old. They know that because Adora - somehow - has memories of seeing Catra from her crib, and apparently Shadow Weaver moved Adora to a bed not long after that.
That’s Adora’s memory though, and even then, Catra wouldn’t be entirely surprised if it’s a false memory - she’s been spending plenty of time reading (hiding) in the library - but it gives her a starting point for when she first got to the Horde.
She’s always assumed that one of two things happened to her memories. Firstly, that she just straight up didn’t have parents. That they left her or died when she was a newborn - the most kitten of kittens - and that she wandered into the Fright Zone by herself, only to be found by Shadow Weaver and tossed in a crib beside Adora.
She never much liked that option.
The second option is that she had parents. She had a family that loved her and cared for her and treated her like you should treat a child. That she lived in a community and had friends - or whatever a newborn kitten can have that would be considered friends - but that the Horde had found them, killed everyone, and took her.
Apparently, she was right on the money with option two.
She just knows that this is where she’s from.
She doesn’t know what house was hers, and she’s not sure if there’s any way for her to really know. There might be journals about a child, but they wouldn’t include her name, because it’s not really Catra.
Or, well her name is Catra now , but her birth name probably wasn’t. So there’d be no documentation with the name Catra in it to go off of, and she suspects that if they were able to take photos here - she doesn’t know how advanced they were - that they would have probably been destroyed in the Horde’s attack.
Not that she’d have any photos to compare it to from when she arrived at the Horde, so would’t help in the fucking least anyways.
She finds herself wandering into one of the buildings at the centre of town, through the opening where one of the two large half-doors would have been before it was blown down. There's shit everywhere, no doubt from the looting and the assault that took place, but the one thing that Catra notes is that there’s no bodies.
She doesn’t know what to make of that, and at the moment, she chooses not to think about it.
Instead, she just looks around and takes everything in. Everything is wooden - she’s shocked that it's all still standing, honestly - but it’s clearly expertly made. This was a communal building of sorts, judging by the rows of cracked and broken tables that are in the main space, all of it leading up to what looks like a stage against the wall.
Catra lets her claws drag against the top of one of the unbroken tables - she doesn’t quite know when her claws came out, but they have - as she walks forward, not really processing any of it. She’s been in a fog ever since she stepped in here, and she’s positive that when it all hits, she’s going to have the breakdown to end all breakdowns.
And one of her breakdowns involved her almost ending the world, so, you know.
She’s looking around as she approaches though, and as soon as she sees a crib beside one of the tables near the front, she has to turn and immediately run out of there, on all fours.
Maybe the breakdown is coming sooner than she expected.
She does what Perfuma taught her to though, and takes a series of deep breaths, one after the other. As much as she says that Perfuma’s techniques don’t work, they really do, and before long she can feel herself calming, claws retracting.
She knows that Perfuma means it figuratively, but she feels like she can sense the bad energy leaving her body. She doesn’t pretend to understand how it works, but she does know that she’s had less outbursts since she started talking with Perfuma.
Not zero outbursts, because she’s still a fucking mess and has yelled at Adora far more times than she deserves.
Regardless, it works, and she takes a second to look around and take in all the facts.
This is where she’s from, that’s not up for debate. There’s too many things about this place that are hitting those synapses in her brain that tell her that this is something she recognizes.
The fact that she’s having those senses of recollection, and still she can’t remember anything, also tells her that Shadow Weaver did something to her. Something to her memory.
Catra feels like she should be able to remember something .
Remember which house was hers, what her parents' names are. Remember where she used to play, or what used to go on in that communal building she was just in.
There’s no way that Shadow Weaver didn’t do anything. Wipe her memory so that she couldn’t tell Adora about what it was like here. So she could talk about what the Horde had done to her, how they had - presumably - killed her parents.
She says presumably, because there’s no bodies here anywhere , so there’s a chance, however small, that they survived.
That her parents are still out there, somewhere, without her.
She doesn’t think it’s very likely though. There’s twenty buildings here, so at minimum that would mean there’s twenty other people like her on Etheria. Probably more, considering she was a child, and she assumes there were others, so there were definitely couples.
So, conservatively, if they were alive that would mean there’s thirty other people who look like her on Etheria.
She doesn’t buy it.
She’s never ever seen someone that looks like her. Neither has Adora, or Bow, or Glimmer, or Double Trouble, or anyone.
So, in Catra’s mind, it's far more likely that there’s a mass grave around here or something happens to her species’ body when they die that she just doesn’t know about yet.
Which, honestly, she’s not necessarily fine with, but she’ll accept.
It’s a lot easier to deal with than the thought that her parents heard about the woman that looks like them that was leading the Horde and torching villages in her wake.
She knows that’s fucked up, she does. Her entire life is a massive fuckup though, so it’s not like it’s anything new to her.
She doesn’t really want to find a mass grave though, so she chooses to continue her exploration, making her way to the house right next to the communal hall.
Just like the hall, the door is blown wide open, and Catra steps inside. This place doesn’t appear to be looted, at least not to her eyes, and she doesn’t think any fight went on in here because, outside of the layer of dust covering everything, it’s completely untouched. Which means one thing.
This is how Catra’s people lived.
The door leads right into what Catra’s learned recently is a ‘sitting room’ - Bright Moon has five of them - a couch set up across from two chairs with a table in the middle. They’re made of different materials than the Bright Moon couches though, being finely crafted wood with cushions for sitting on. Catra’s not sure what the cushions are made out of, but she’s even more unsure how her people were such good carpenters, because she sure as shit wouldn’t be.
She’s so different from anyone in her village ever was, or she was ever meant to be.
She’s not breaking down, though, not right now.
Deep breaths.
She continues her way through the house, picking up a drawing from the table in the sitting room as she moves to the back of the house. She dreads looking at it, but breathes a sigh of relief when she looks at it, confirming what she was desperately hoping.
This isn’t her house, because she’s not sure that Perfuma’s deep breaths would have stopped a breakdown at that.
The drawing has five people on it, all looking very much like her. The two taller ones are obviously the parents - a man and a woman, she thinks - with three children between them. Two of them kind of look like her, at the age she is now, one a female while she thinks the other is male.
She’s never seen a male of her species, so she can only guess based on the bone structure of their face.
The third child is younger, just up to the older children’s waists. They look male as well though, so she knows that it’s not her. They’re too old too, probably five if she had to guess, and that’s too old for what Adora remembers as their first meeting.
There’s names above them too, names that she couldn’t even begin to pronounce, and, she suspects, aren’t meant to be spoken in base Etherian. There’s apostrophes and commas, and it feels like saying it would sound deeply guttural.
Once again, it only confirms that her name isn’t Catra, because Catra would not fit with these letters and the spelling of names like these.
As she puts the paper down, she’s hit with a sudden wave of nausea, and she has to steady her hand on the wall as she takes a deep breath. It’s not a new feeling, but it’s stronger than it’s been before, and she has a sudden urge to lie down and just sleep .
And to that end, she stumbles through the house into one of the backrooms, into what she imagines was the parent’s bedroom. She doesn’t even bother looking around, just falling into the bed, ignoring the dust that floats up into the air after the impact.
All she thinks is that the bed is the most comfortable bed she’s ever slept in, and a second later, she’s out.
“She dropped the beacon here?”
“Around here,” Bow comments, Adora biting the inside of her cheek as she looks around. She doesn’t see Catra anywhere, and she can feel the nerves bubbling up, the feeling that something has gone terribly wrong.
She knows that Catra could take down any of the clones without an issue, but something still might have happened.
They could have a weapon that Bright Moon doesn’t know about, or they could have sprung a trap, or some Etherian’s could be working with them.
Perfuma always tells her to not catastrophize, that things generally aren’t as bad as her head makes them out to be, but she finds that a lot easier to say and a lot harder to do.
The beacon came in late last night, but there was no message from Catra with it. Adora was already asleep by the time it came in - life is a lot less fun without Catra - but as soon as Bow brought it to her this morning, she was suiting up and ready to go out and get Catra.
She hates that Catra was the one that had to do this, but she also understands that there was nothing else she could do.
Well, that’s not true. She could stay in Bright Moon with Glimmer and strategize the rebuilding efforts. That would be a lot safer, and she would be home, and they could work on getting people to realize just how great Catra is.
They could do all that, but Catra didn’t want to.
Which Adora gets. She understands the reasoning.
It’s fine. It’s good.
Ugh.
So instead, Catra’s out here somewhere, with Adora, Bow, Glimmer, and a small group of Bright Moon’s guards ready to take in the clones.
“She couldn’t have picked somewhere less swampy to catch them?” Glimmer groans, teleporting to Adora’s side.
Adora just shrugs, still biting the inside of her cheek as she follows Bow, his eyes flitting from the tracker-pad to somewhere in front of him.
“She’s going to be fine,” Adora hears Glimmer say and she just sighs, nodding her head.
“I…I know. I know!” She gets out, and yeah, judging by Glimmer’s raised eyebrow, that sounded as crazy as it felt. “She knows we’re coming. She should be outside waiting for us. That’s all.”
Glimmer hums a response, which Adora’s learned is her way of agreeing, but not wanting to say something since she knows that it’ll just freak Adora out more.
Adora wants to say something, ask what Glimmer thinks, but before she can, her eyes are pulled forward by the loud yelp that escapes Bow.
“Cave!” He gets out as he points forward, Adora’s eyes quickly spotting the dark mouth of the cave right in front of them. She races forward, quickly catching up with Bow, and when they reach the mouth of it, it’s not hard to see that it’s the right place.
All of the clones are still on the ground, cuffed, with no Catra in sight.
“Catra!?” Adora calls, before being shushed by Glimmer, who points no less than ten times at the clones. She quickly looks back at the guards and gets them to rush forward, gathering up the clones so they can be teleported back to Bright Moon.
“We’ll lock them up in Bright Moon, and then I’ll come back to pick you guys up?” Glimmer looks back, Bow nodding as he goes through the pile of things against the wall. Adora doesn’t pay much attention to it, but there’s definitely weapons there, although Bow’s focused more on the scraps of paper that he puts in his pack to inspect later.
“Sounds good!” He grins at Glimmer before looking back at the weapons and then back at her. “Maybe get Entrapta too? So she can look at these.”
Glimmer hums at that before she starts teleporting the clones and guards back, Adora far too focused on something else.
Or the lack of something else.
“Where’s Catra?” She gets out, eyes flitting around the cave, even if it’s obvious that there’s no one here. “Catra’s not here.”
“She was,” Bow reasons, clearly seeing that this is far more important than the weapons as he makes his way over to Adora. “I don’t think she was kidnapped though. She would have put up a fight, and there’s no signs of a struggle. Plus, if it were clones that took her, they wouldn’t have left those ones handcuffed!”
He ends on a cheery note, and Adora breathes a sigh of relief, because he’s right. It doesn’t look like there was a fight, and the clones are still here too. So Catra went somewhere of her own free will, they just don’t know where.
Adora’s no good at tracking though, so she just takes a breath, looking around as she tries to find something, anything that tells them where Catra is.
“That’s weird……”
“What!!?!” Adora gets out, whipping around at Bow fast enough that he yelps, jumping off the ground, just a little bit.
“There’s um….there’s a breeze,” Bow comments, putting his finger in his mouth before holding it up in the air. “Try it.”
Adora narrows her eyes, finding it a little weird that he wants her to suck on her thumb, but she tries it anyway, because she knows that Bow is earnest to a fault. So she trusts him, and her eyes widen as she feels the side of her finger closest to the back of the cave is cooler than the other side.
“There’s something back there!” Adora gets out, breathing a sigh of relief as she practically vaults forward. She thankfully doesn’t hit her head on the wall when she does - she can hear Bow let out a yelp of fear behind her - but she can feel the air getting cooler, letting her know that she’s closer to whatever this entranceway is.
Adora can hear Bow crawling behind her as she makes her way forward, but all she can think about is Catra. She doesn’t think that she was taken at this point, because there’s no evidence of that and Catra would be smart enough to leave some kind of clue, but something did happen.
Something that made Catra stay the night back here, in whatever is behind this cave.
That might honestly be more scary, in Adora’s mind.
Because this means that it’s probably something mental that kept Catra back here, not some physical.
They’re close to the Fright Zone, but this cave isn’t familiar to Adora, and Catra wouldn’t have been here before if Adora hadn't been here. She knows that Catra never left the Fright Zone between the time she met Adora and the time Adora left the Horde.
With that in mind, the first thought that goes through Adora’s mind is
Shadow Weaver
. That whatever is back here has something to do with her, and it freaked Catra out and she just…decided to stay.
And even though Adora hates the fact that Catra likely chose to stay here alone, in this little area in the back of this cave - she wishes Catra would just come home and talk to her - she still knows that Catra needs her.
So even if she still won't talk to Adora about things, Adora needs to give her the opportunity to, and make sure it’s there when Catra’s willing to share.
She knows that Catra doesn’t like Bright Moon. That there’s something about it that doesn’t agree with her, and she’d likely rather be anywhere else.
She doesn’t tell Adora these things though, and when Adora tries to bring it up, Catra shuts down.
So, they’re in this holding pattern, and Adora hates it.
Right now though, all she wants is to see the woman she loves and make sure that she's okay.
Right now, that’s enough.
She keeps pushing - just barely avoiding kicking Bow in the face as he keeps going behind her - and eventually she sees light, which only makes her push faster.
“We’re…this is weird.”
Bow says that as soon as they’ve made their way out into the grass at the other end of the cave, Adora letting out a breath as she lays there on the ground. The first thing that hits her is the smell….it’s something she doesn’t think she’s ever smelt before. It’s weird, she can’t quite explain it.
The next thing she notices is that she’s not looking at the sky, but rather at the ceiling of what must be the back of the cave. There’s still light though, from some form of luminous plant that is pretty much all across the ‘roof’. It makes it seem like they’re outside, in a way that almost feels planned.
Adora’s confused a lot of the time, but she’s extra confused right now.
“Where are we?” She gets out, letting out a soft groan as she gets up to her knees, blowing out a puff of air to move the loose strands of hair that have fallen out of her ponytail away from her face.
“A village, I think.”
Adora’s head whips around at that, because she hasn’t seen anything that remotely resembles a village. She’s about to ask Bow why he would think that, but as she turns around, she’s suddenly greeted with the sight of a village.
“Oh.”
“Or it’s an um…an old village,” Bow continues, biting the inside of his cheeks as they step through the high grass, Adora’s brain moving a mile a minute as she thinks.
“But why would Catra stay here if it’s just an old village?”
“Adora….” Bow continues, in that way that he does when he knows something and is trying to relay it to Adora without sounding too mean about it. “Do you know where Catra came from? Before the Horde?”
“Wha…..”
“I…” Adora starts again, not quite sure where the question is coming from, but assuming Bow’s asking it for some reason. “We’ve known each other since I was a baby, so I assumed that she was like me. That the Horde took her from somewhere, but I don’t know where. Why are you….”
“Adora…”
Bow points down at something on the ground at that point, Adora’s brow furrowing as she follows his gaze to a piece of metal….a piece of metal that looks exactly like a Horde helmet.
And judging by the logo on the side, it is a Horde helmet.
And it all hits her.
“Oh.”
This is where Catra’s from.
“That's why she stayed here.”
“Yeah,” Bow agrees, although he’s clearly concerned by how monotone Adora is, given he turns around to look at her. “She’ll be okay now that you’re here though!” He chirps up, and Adora can’t help her blush at the implication, even if she’s still nervous.
“I hope so,” she sighs, taking one last breath. Even if the fact that she’s here and that she’ll be able to help Catra through whatever she’s feeling does spark some hope and security in Adora, it doesn’t do anything to quell the feeling that Catra was all alone for the entire night.
All alone in - apparently - the place that she was born and that the Horde took her from.
It really makes so much sense, that it’s kind of sad that Adora never considered it as an option until now.
Even though she’s the one that left, Adora never really got her mind wrapped around how evil the Horde was in the way that Catra did. Even with Catra not remembering this place - and she’s pretty sure that Catra didn’t, because there’s no way that she wouldn’t have shared it with Adora if she did - she always knew that there was something not quite right with the Horde.
Maybe it was because of Shadow Weaver, or maybe it was because she had some faint remembrance of how she got brought to the Horde. Adora isn’t sure about any of that. All she knows is that she desperately wants to find Catra, hold her tight, and make sure that she’s okay, now and forever.
They go through multiple buildings before they find Catra.
Bow suggests that they start in the big hall first, because even if Catra’s not here, she probably was at some point, so they should be able to follow her tracks.
Unfortunately, Catra didn’t touch much, because everything is covered in a firm layer of dust.
Bow comments that he doesn’t think he’s seen anywhere as pretty as this, and Adora can’t help but agree.
The Fright Zone was obviously the farthest thing from pretty, and although Bright Moon is nice to look at, it still feels clearly built and manufactured, in Adora’s mind. Bow’s Dad’s library is the place that comes closest, but this is just….it’s clearly had so much effort and care put into it, that Adora can’t describe it as anything other than pretty.
It makes her think about what Catra would have done if the Horde had never found this place.
She would have been happier, Adora thinks.
She knows that she makes Catra happy - she can’t hide her purrs anymore, or the way her tail swishes - but she would have had a happier overall life if she stayed here. She would have had her parents, and her siblings, maybe, and she probably would have been an academic - because she’s just so smart - and never had to fight.
Sure, she never would have met Adora, but overall, she thinks that Catra would have had a happier life.
She’s not sure how she feels about the idea that the love of her life would have been happier if they never met.
They try two other houses after that, finding no signs of Catra. They’re all the same, beautiful and hand crafted, and it doesn’t surprise Adora for a second that Catra’s people were this smart and crafty.
There also doesn’t look to be much evidence of a fight in any of the houses either, which Adora can tell that Bow notices.
“There’s no bodies,” he comments as they’re going to the fourth house, Adora humming, because she realized the same thing. “Obviously it would have been years ago, but there’s no bones. There would still be bones.”
“Maybe they’re still alive,” Adora reasons, hoping against hope. Catra deserves that, for there to be at least one person like her still alive on Etheria.
Growing up, there was so much that they didn’t know about Catra. How to take care of her fur, how to maintain her claws. What to do when she started teething. Even simple things like what fabric of clothes she could wear or how to best accommodate her tail.
Catra could have all those things now, if there’s someone else like her out there.
“Maybe,” Bow reasons, and even if he’s an optimist, Adora knows he means well when he talks her down, not wanting to inspire false hope.
“You don’t think there is.”
“I think,” Bow talks slowly, clearly choosing his words very carefully. “We’ve been to a lot of places on Etheria. So has Catra. And neither of us have ever seen anyone like her.”
“Which means that either there’s something that happens to Catra’s species when they die that we don’t know about….or if there’s others that are alive, they don’t want to be found.”
“Yeah,” Adora sighs, because that makes more sense. “And if they weren’t hiding, they would have heard about her.”
Which would probably break Catra’s heart, her parents knowing what she did.
She doesn’t want to think about that anymore though, so Adora pushes it deep down as they enter the next house.
And as soon as they enter the sitting room, Adora can tell that Catra was here.
The table in the middle of the sitting room is covered in dust….except for the corner of it. There’s a space, about the size of a piece of paper, where it’s dust free, so someone must have moved something. There’s no doubt in Adora’s mind.
“Catra!”
Adora doesn’t get a response as she makes her way through the house, although she does see Bow pick up a piece of paper that he finds on the floor.
Adora couldn’t be less concerned about that though, because she’s rampaging through the house, until she stumbles upon a bedroom with her girlfriend lying in a dusty bed.
“Catra!”
“Hey Adora,” she gets in response, Catra turning over onto her other side to face her girlfriend. It doesn’t look like she’s been crying, at least to Adora’s eyes, but she’s obviously exhausted.
“Are…are you…..”
“I’m okay. Just tired.”
It sounds so unlike Catra, that Adora’s somehow even more terrified than she was a couple minutes ago. “Bow’s here too. He’s just in the sitting room.”
“Okay,” Catra hums, and Adora inwardly winces, because she doesn’t think that Catra really needed to hear about Bow just then when she’s clearly working through so much.
“This wasn’t my home.”
“I….um….what?”
“This wasn’t my home,” Catra reiterates, voice as calm and monotone as it’s been this whole time. “There’s a picture. The kids aren’t the right age or gender. This isn’t my home.”
“But one of them is,” Adora reasons, and Catra just nods her head, letting out a sigh.
“But one of them is,” she agrees before closing her eyes again, taking another deep breath.
Adora hates seeing her like this, so completely not herself. Catra’s usually so undeniably Catra that when she’s not, it always freaks Adora out.
“We can leave if you want. Glimmer’s going to come back after they deal with the clones. She can take us back to Bright Moon, where you can sleep…..and then, we can do whatever you want.”
“Yeah?” She asks, and Adora just hums in agreement, Catra taking another deep breath followed by a stuttery nod. “Yeah, let's do that. I need to come back to just…..to know, but I don’t know ifI can do it right now.”
“And that’s okay,” Adora grins, because it fully, one hundred percent is. “We’ll come back whenever you want. And it can be just you, or us, or us, Bow and Glimmer….it’s up to you.”
“Okay…okay. Thanks Adora.”
“Of course,” Adora smiles, doing her best to make it real, because internally, she’s terrified.
And judging by Catra’s face, she feels the same way.