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“Force Captains!” Adora strikes her spoon against the rim of her glass, a tinny clink piercing the hall. The captains seated around the table snap to attention, save for Catra, who continues picking at her claws. “The past few months have not gone without challenge. Our plan to annex Salineas was thwarted when they joined the Rebellion, which grows in numbers every day. And the Queen is has moved more troops out to the Woods, where they have made what looks to be permanent bases.” Adora plants both palms against the table, fingers scraping against the metal. The usual placid blue of her eyes is warmed by the burning flames set on torches around the room. “But we will meet resistance with resistance. We will rain fire on those who think they can come any closer to the Fright Zone.”
Her gaze goes around the table, meeting everyone else’s before it finally lands on Catra, seated at the other end.
Catra smirks.
“The Kingdom of Snows has fallen. Thanks go to Force Captain Lonnie for leading the mission.” Adora nods to her left where Lonnie sits; the Force Captain nods back. “We seize Salineas next. I trust you will all come prepared for tomorrow’s council meeting. Know that I say this with every confidence I have: in the end, the Horde shall prevail. Etheria and worlds beyond will be freed from Rebel clutches.”
She straightens. “And with that I would like to make a toast.” Lord Adora lifts her glass, dark liquid swirling inside. “To the Horde.”
The Force Captains stand. Catra does too, belatedly and less gracefully. They raise their glasses.
“To the Horde!”
—
“That was splendid.” Adora isn’t really listening, too focused on reaching the zipper of her suit. Without thinking Catra sweeps her hair aside and undoes it for her, fingers skittering over scarred skin. “You were very ‘I command your attention’ tonight.”
Adora shakes the last clips out of her hair and places them on the vanity. “Really? I tried my best.” She sighs through her nose, then narrows her eyes at Catra. “Wait. Are you being serious or sarcastic?”
Catra flops onto the bed, stretching her long limbs with a half-hearted yawn. “As serious as you were, Lord Adora,” she replies. She tips her head in a mocking bow.
“Ugh.” Adora rolls her eyes. “It’s not like you”—she rushes forward and launches herself at Catra, who shrieks in surprise—“wanted to help me with giving a speech anyway!”
Catra pushes her off, climbing over Adora as she lands on her back and bracketing Adora’s head with her arms. “You know I can’t be bothered with the boring stuff.”
“Yeah?” Adora mumbles. “Then you’d better just cut to the chase already.”
Catra shakes her head with a grin and ducks down to kiss her.
—
It's far from Adora's intention to be secretive. She tells herself Catra can’t really blame her for sneaking out of their room in the middle of the night, not when Adora doesn't even know why she keeps doing so in the first place.
It used to be a clandestine thing. Catra and Adora had the whole place mapped out by the time they were twelve. Of course, it was the former who had taught the latter. Catra spent a lot of her childhood running away from people. She knew all the good hiding spots, where you could go if you just wanted a few minutes to yourself. Where you could find the best views. She knew where you could tell your best friend you loved them for the first time, and kiss them without the fear of getting caught, or with just enough fear that you think Screw it and do it anyway because, hell, you’ve been staring at this girl for eighteen years.
Then it became a sort of therapy. They wound up somewhere up there when Shadow Weaver was sent to Beast Island (mostly it was Adora rambling about how terribly she raised them and Catra digging claws into her own arms and burning holes in the sky with her eyes). Then again after the fall of Hordak, where Catra and Adora contemplated what laid ahead, although it wasn’t too difficult to work out when they had been planning to take over since they could think. They fell into their thrones naturally.
And here she is again. Adora can see the whole base, every limb of gangly metal framework of the Fright Zone. While perpetually ablaze during the day, the sky is pitch black at night; it would be impossible to see if it weren’t for the moons, twelve blood red satellites flaming in the endless dark.
She stares at them and the sprawling junkyard maze they called home, and she wonders what is out there. No, she knows what’s out there—she’s been through the Whispering Woods countless times, has surveyed all six kingdoms and led sieges on almost every village.
But there is something else. Maybe it’s physical, maybe it isn’t, and that's part of the problem. The not knowing kills her. Adora needs to be in control at all times, and this is the one thing that always feels just out of reach, inexplicably calling on her, pulling her out here. It’s why she woke up from the same dream for the tenth night in a row, why she slung her jacket over her shoulders and glanced at a sleeping Catra before heading out.
Maybe she’s just brain damaged, she thinks with a huffing laugh. It’s what Catra would tell her. They trained their asses off to get where they were now, and they were finally the ones in charge. Isn’t this what you’ve always wanted? Catra always said, tossing Adora her lazy smile.
Yes. Well, it’s what everyone told her she wanted. Catra, Shadow Weaver, Adora’s whole team, and in the end, she supposed, it was all there was. She didn’t know to want anything else but that single point of success at the end.
It’s in her palm now. And yet.
Balance must be restored. The voice isn’t quite as cold and mechanical as it was whenever she jolted awake, but the words it always utters are just as clear. Etheria must seek a hero.
I’m trying, Adora wants to respond, the Horde is trying. Just give us more time.
Somewhere, though, some distant place in her knows that she’s wrong. There has to be something missing because the voice won’t stop, and neither will the force calling her to the edge of the Fright Zone, and neither will that hollow growing in her chest. There has to be something.
Adora looks down at her hands, clenched in her lap. It’s inane. It’s inane, right? Why would she give into this—this thing, whatever it was—when she had everything?
What more could I possibly want?
She blinks, shakes her head, shivers in spite of the warm night wind.
Adora climbs down and goes back home.
—
The Queen is angry.
Hasn’t she every right to be? They killed her father, then her mother, and with them the last of her spirit. They shoved her into this when she was hardly a teenager. So she grew—much like her kingdom—hard, brittle, unmoving.
Today she yelled at Castaspella, shoved her to the ground with a sudden burst of magic, and found herself alone again in one of the long, empty hallways of the castle.
She stands in front of the same mural. Etheria’s saviour, larger than life, poised with her sword in hand.
Glimmer glares at the faceless warrior, wondering if her beacon of hope has become just another empty promise.
“Glimmer.” A familiar voice. Tired and rough, but still soft enough to remind her she is not alone. Still, Glimmer does not turn. “I was looking for you.”
“We’ve fought more battles than she ever has,” Glimmer grits out. Her eyes burn with the threat of tears. She can’t help it. She hates her as much as she needs her. “We’ve seen so much more loss and suffering than she ever will.”
Bow sighs, stopping beside his wife and blinking up at She-Ra.
“Have we been blind this entire time, hoping and praying that one day She-Ra would rise?” She faces him, arms crossed tightly over her chest. “It’s all fable. Something to put the children to bed with. Not for actual war councils to believe.” Bow watches Glimmer when she laughs, a flowering sound thorned all over.
It’s strange, how their roles began to reverse when they crowned Glimmer as Queen. She became the pragmatic one, and Bow—he still seems caught up in a hopeful dream.
“I hope not,” he says, finally. He puts an arm around her shoulders and pulls her in close. “Come on. Let’s go to bed.”
She lets him lead her away.
—
Adora has this thing she likes to say out on the battlefield: Onward and onward. It is how she lives her life. It is how she would like her soldiers to lead theirs.
Which is why this feels like a mistake and a violation. Under her direction the three tanks rumble ahead of her, heading to the next village. The last one, flanked by operatives, burns behind her.
She takes a breath in and turns the skiff around, entering the depths of the Whispering Woods.