When She-Ra fought, there was a kind of inspirational glory to it. The brilliant glow, the flowing hair, the radiating sense of strength and power and confidence—she fought with a kind of powerful cleanliness, wreaking destruction with fists and powerful blasts of magic that cleared the field without leaving behind the sort of distasteful, bloody wreckage that war necessitated. She may have carried a sword, but she never used its blade.
At least, that's how it usually went.
A nameless Horde soldier charged forward with a raised blaster and desperate cry. She-Ra didn't even try to dodge the green energy blast, absorbing it into her glowing skin without so much as a stumble backwards. Her blade swung and the blaster split in two. So did the soldier holding it.
There was no trace of satisfaction on She-Ra's face. No fear, no relief, no anger, no… anything. She no longer caused destruction. She was destruction.
Adora lifted a Horde tank with She-Ra's strength and threw it into another, the force of the impact skidding the twisted hunks of metal into a weapons platform and tipping it over. It fired wildly into the ground and then exploded in a mass of green energy. Adora smiled, taking the advantage of the brief lull caused by the chaos of the explosion to support her hands on her knees and catch her breath.
A voice—not quite a voice, a feeling—thrummed in the back of her head. "You're tired," it told her. "You don't need to be tired. You could be so much more. So much stronger."
She shook her head in a futile effort to dispel the thoughts. "No," she thought, forcefully. As her training had progressed, Adora reached a point where becoming She-Ra was almost… frightening. There was incredible power locked away in that form. She could sense it every time she transformed now: a deep, swirling pool of energy far beneath her feet. It offered invincibility, immortality, the total assurance of victory.
It terrified her.
She'd turned away from it the first time she stood at that precipice, and every time after. Somehow, some deep, unspoken fear within her knew that if she jumped, she could lose herself forever.
Still the voice whispered; coaxed, pleaded.
"Let go."
It took the concentrated firepower of five Horde tanks just to get She-Ra's attention. They realized their mistake when She-Ra fell to one knee and the first, terrifying glimpse of emotion showed on her face: anger.
With a scowl, she lifted her sword overhead and thrust it into the ground. Stone rippled outward like a pebble tossed into a pond. Tanks overturned, half-swallowed by the earth; the screams and shouts of soldiers suddenly cut off as the ground enveloped them.
She-Ra flickered, stumbled, blinked, and for the briefest of moments looked down at her hands in horror.
Then her footing became sure again, all traces of emotion disappearing from her face. She marched forward.
The battle was going badly. Very badly.
Adora leaned on her sword, panting for breath. The Horde's second assault on Bright Moon had clearly learned from the first: they had more armor, more troops, more firepower, more everything. Everywhere she looked the ground either stained red or charred black, and littered with the fallen—some Horde, mostly rebellion; every so often one of those few untrained civilians so desperate to protect their home. And the smell—oh stars, the smell.
She scanned the field and felt desperation rise in her chest. The Horde was everywhere. Pockets of resistance still pushed forward, but the Horde's advantage was clear. She was reminded of the python she'd seen once in the Whispering Woods, and how she watched in horror as it slowly, inexorably squeezed the life from its prey before swallowing it whole.
You could stop this, the voice reminded her. It would be easy. You don't need to hold back anymore.
Adora groaned, bringing her fists to her head. Keeping the voice at bay was sapping away energy she didn't have to spare, but it was necessary.
Wasn't it?
The shimmering pool of energy appeared far below her again, beckoning. Turning away from the edge took more effort this time.
By the time their second battalion fell, the Horde was forced to acknowledge its defeat. Some companies kept fighting, unaware of or unwilling to acknowledge the call to retreat. Those closest to She-Ra showed no hesitation in following the order. Most of them had started running before the call came.
She-Ra faltered for a moment, her glow dimming then returning to full, blinding strength.
When Adora spotted the sniper, it was already too late.
She-Ra's strength let her cross the distance in practically a single leap, but he had already fired into the small knot of soldiers surrounding Glimmer and Bow. Glimmer looked up at her scream of warning too late. She teleported too late. Everything was too late.
The green bolt of energy rippled through Glimmer's body just as she began to teleport. Her scream was cut off and she reappeared a short distance up in the air, her body limp as it hit the ground.
Adora's mind blanked. She didn't know what she had done to the sniper, but it was a long way down off the cliff face.
"She's alive," Bow said, as Adora skidded to her knees at their side, his voice choked with concern and anxious relief. Adora looked down at the way the bolt had left smoldering, stuttering marks in her friend's back and similar marks at its exit on her chest. Somehow, the partial teleport had saved her life. For now.
Adora reached inside for her connection to Swift Wind and yanked. A startled whinny came from the edge of the battlefield, and Swift Wind arrived in a hasty flurry of wings seconds later.
"What's wrong? What—" he stopped short as his eyes fell on Glimmer.
"Take her to the castle. Now. Bow, make sure she gets there."
As the three flew out of sight, Adora returned her attention to the battlefield, feeling a white-hot anger boil to the surface.
"You could have protected her," the voice said. "How many more must fall?"
Adora's fists clenched at her sides. "Shut up," she hissed. "Shut up. I've already made my decision."
In her mind, she stood at the precipice above the glowing pool of energy that both promised certain victory and filled her with a nameless dread.
And she jumped.
The battle had long passed the point where one person could turn its tide, no matter their strength, but She-Ra wasn't one person.
She was an army.
Even an army will lose strength, eventually.
She-Ra strode toward one of the last pockets of fighting, but her steps had been slowly losing their surety; her powerful movements tinged with a lethargic slowness, her emotionless mask colored with a slight frown. She stumbled, regained her footing for a few steps, then clutched her fists to her head as if fighting against some unseen force.
She-Ra stuttered and faded.
Adora fell to her knees, panting like she had run a great distance or woken from a terrible nightmare. Slowly, she forced her eyes across the expanse of the battlefield, processing the death and destruction that lay before her. Her vision blurred as tears filled her eyes. The nightmare was real, then. She pitched forward and retched.
A familiar snarl of anger rose up from the fighting below her and filtered through her muddled mind. She wiped her mouth with a shaking hand and shifted to peer over the edge of the rocky outcropping where She-Ra had led her. The figure below her jumped with a lithe grace from opponent to opponent, ducking under the swoop of bladed weapons, dodging, striking, and winning in a personal battle against multiple Rebellion soldiers.
Catra.
If She-Ra hadn't faded when she did…
From the corner of her eye, Adora saw movement. Another rebellion solider had crept up under the cover of fallen rock, only visible from Adora's higher vantage point. She glanced to Catra. Only two of the soldiers she fought remained standing, but she hadn't seen him. She couldn't see him. The hidden rebel raised his spear in preparation to strike.
No. No no no. Not again. No. It didn't matter what Catra was to her now—she was a friend. Had been a friend. Was still a friend.
Adora couldn't risk losing more than one person she cared about in the same day.
She pushed aside the roiling nausea at the thought of touching the sword again and forcibly pulled She-Ra back to her, ready to turn away from the pool of energy the moment it presented itself—but when she looked, it had faded to nothing more than the faintest glimmer of golden light at the bottom of a deep, black pit. She ran from it anyway.
In an instant Adora was on the ground behind Catra, stone cracking from the force of her landing, the last ounces of She-Ra's energy pouring into her body as she rolled up with her shield in place to block the thrust of the spear. It was almost perfect.
Almost.
Catra took advantage of the distraction to dispatch the last of her opponents and whirled to face the spear-wielding rebel, using her depleted blaster to strike him unconscious. She spun again, a snarl on her lips and her weapon raised to fight She-Ra—and found Adora instead.
She was expecting to confront She-Ra; the real She-Ra, the glowing specter of death that had decimated her forces and destroyed people they once knew. She wasn't expecting to see her former best friend looking like she was going to fall face-first into the dirt at any second, holding her side from a spear wound meant for her. She wasn't expecting to see Adora crying.
Adora's eyes wandered up and down Catra's body as if searching for injury, but from her unfocused gaze Catra doubted she could process anything she saw.
"I… I'm sorry." The words were little more than a broken whisper. With human ears, Catra might not have heard them at all.
When Adora fell, she wasn't quite sure why she caught her.
hahHA guilt time
Adora is not going to have a fun time in this. I'm sorry.
I wanted to write something about Adora's need to "take every bullet" for her friends, but then I started playing with the fan theory of She-Ra basically being its own entity that eventually overrides (or tries to override) its host, and things…. kinda got away from me. So now Adora has to deal with the guilt of failing to protect her friend and also essentially turning into a weapon of mass destruction, so that's cool.
But it's okay! I'm sure she'll handle it in a healthy way! Right?
Let me know what you think!