Adora shuffled tiredly into the castle kitchens, massaging her sore neck with one hand. Moonlight from tall windows painted long silvery shadows across the dark room, and the silence of deep night blanketed the castle. The soft tapping of her quiet footsteps was the only sound she could hear.
She dragged a hand down in face and sighed in frustration. She couldn't sleep. Hours of training and meetings had left her body exhausted, but her mind buzzing with information, theories, questions—and over it all, a tune she had heard at a festival last week playing on loop through her mind. Not the whole tune, mind you; just about five seconds of it. Endlessly. Adora groaned as she reached for a clean mug and started to fill it with water. If this tea Glimmer recommended didn't work, she was seriously considering banging her head into a wall until her brain finally decided to shut up.
"Hey, Adora."
Adora shouted in surprise, grabbing the nearest implement and raising it like a weapon as she whirled to face the unseen intruder—who just laughed, jumping off a shadowed counter into the moonlight. Catra dragged a claw across the length of the kitchen implement Adora held in front of her like a sword.
"A spatula, Adora? I feel so threatened. What are you going to do, say 'For the honor of pancakes' and turn into an eight-foot-tall bottle of syrup?"
Adora sagged against the counter with a heavy sigh, tossing the spatula back onto its surface.
"Catra. How long have you been there?"
"Since before you walked in." Catra lifted the mug from where Adora had dropped it in the sink and filled it again with water.
"Why didn't you say something?"
Catra smiled. "It was funnier to watch you shuffle around like a zombie."
"Ugh." Adora took the full mug from Catra and dumped its contents into a kettle, turning up the heat.
"See, you've got the vocabulary down too," Catra teased.
"Catraaa," Adora complained, leaning against the counter and tilting her head back with her eyes closed. "I'm too tired for this."
Catra gave her an appraising glance. "You look too tired for anything." Adora grunted in assent.
"What are you even doing in here?" Adora asked a moment later.
"Woke up hungry, decided to look for a snack," The explanation seemed to remind Catra of her quest, and she started rooting through the cupboards again in search of food. The fact that they could eat whenever they felt like it was one of the things about life outside the Horde that Catra had adapted to very quickly.
"Mm." Adora pulled a drawer labeled Tea open and felt her jaw go slack. How in the world were there this many varieties of tea? She lifted a box and stared at it, reading the list of its contents in helpless confusion. Wasn't tea just supposed to be made of… tea? She replaced the box and dug around for a moment, eventually finding something that looked dark and smelled plain instead fruity or flowery. It probably wasn't what Glimmer recommended, but it was the closest thing she could find to the only type of tea she'd known.
Then she heard a small yelp of surprise from behind her, followed by the unmistakable sound of things falling.
"Whoever stocked that cabinet did a lousy job," Catra said sullenly. "All I did was open the door and a bunch of junk fell on me."
"Wouldn't that make a great epitaph," Adora teased. "Here lies the mighty Catra, finally defeated when a box of crackers fell on her head."
Catra disguised her smile with a hiss, throwing the box at Adora. She dodged it easily and laughed. "You'll have to pick that up, you know."
"Yeah, yeah," Catra grumbled. She poked at a bag of white things that had split open after the fall and spilled some of its contents onto the counter.
"Hey, what are these?" Catra asked.
Adora glanced over. "Oh. Marshmallows."
Marshmallows? What a weird name.
Catra picked up one of the soft candies and gave it an experimental squeeze between thumb and forefinger. It squished and (mostly) returned back to its shape in an oddly satisfactory way, and she squeezed it a few more times for good measure. Her claw punctured its soft shell on the last squeeze and stuck, so she extended her finger and waved the marshmallow at Adora.
"What do you do with them?"
"Eat them, I guess? Some people put chocolate on them, or cook them over a fire until they get all gooey inside. They catch fire easily though."
Catra sniffed at it. Ugh. Way too sweet.
"I heard there's a game you can play with it too," Adora continued casually. "A contest to see how many you can fit in your mouth, or something like that."
Catra's eyes flashed. "Huh. Sounds pretty dumb."
"Yeah."
Catra's tail flicked. She bent and extended her finger a couple times, watching the marshmallow still stuck to the end of her claw move. Adora's eyes followed it.
"Do you wanna see who can-"
"Yes."
It hadn't taken long for Adora to evenly split the bag between two bowls, utterly focused on keeping accurate count of the confections as she did so. Now that they were on the same side again, it was almost endearing how Adora treated every task like it was the most important thing in the world.
Then Adora had about a dozen marshmallows stuffed in her mouth and Catra almost fell over laughing at how ridiculous she looked. Adora, determined as ever, kept going—albeit with her back to Catra so she didn't accidentally join in her laughter and choke to death on a marshmallow.
Eventually, however, she reached her limit and freed her mouth of its sugary occupants.
"Fourteen!" she said triumphantly, handing Catra her own half of the marshmallows. "Beat that."
"Oh, I will," Catra promised. She took the bowl and set it on the counter behind her, back turned to Adora as she calmly picked up the first marshmallow.
"Hey, you should at least start where I can see you," Adora objected.
"You were drooling, Adora," Catra said.
"You try closing your mouth around fourteen marshmallows!" came Adora's indignant retort.
"The point is, it was gross. Perhaps I'd like to keep some semblance of dignity?"
Adora snorted. "Uh-huh. Remember fish day at the Horde?" she teased.
Catra flushed, remembering the most delightful scent her younger self had ever smelled and the way her mouth had filled in anticipation. "It's an autonomic response," came Catra's haughty defense.
"Cat."
"Princess."
Adora threw her hands in the air. "Fine. But how am I supposed to keep count if I can't see you?"
"You know exactly how many marshmallows are in the bowl—Just count however many are left when I'm done. It's not hard."
Adora gave her another suspicious glance. "Alright. But don't try anything."
"Adora!" Catra raised a clawed hand to her chest, a dramatically pained look across her face. "I'm hurt at the very implication."
"Uh-huh." Adora pointed at the bowl. "Fifteen, or I win."
Catra flashed her canines in a predatory smile. "Oh, there's no way you're going to win." She turned her back again, and Adora watched her go through the motions of stuffing the first few marshmallows in her mouth. Adora's stomach turned a bit as she ran her tongue over her teeth, tasting the sugary remnants of her own attempt. She enjoyed most of the sweet desserts of Bright Moon, but marshmallows… bleh. They were just too sweet. And in these quantities, they were downright nauseating. Giving one more suspicious look toward Catra—who chose that moment to glance over her shoulder with a baleful side-eye and comically stuffed mouth—Adora decided to finish preparing her tea. A moment later she clutched a steaming mug in her hands and took a warming sip, enjoying the bitter flavor of the tea as it chased the cloying sweetness from her mouth.
"mf-Ha!" A victorious sound came from Catra, somewhat muffled by by the incredible amount of marshmallows crammed in her mouth. She leaned over the waste bin and emptied her mouth, wiping her lips with the back of her hand and a slight grimace. She crossed her arms and gave Adora a triumphant smile.
"I win."
"What? No way!" Adora set her cup down and strode over, looking into Catra's bowl. A quick mental tally, and—yes, there were definitely fewer sweets remaining in Catra's bow than in her own. Adora gave her a suspicious glance. "You cheated."
"I would never."
Now she was extra suspicious.
Catra leaned over to peer into the waste bin. "I mean, you're welcome to try and count, but..." she pulled a face.
Adora returned the expression with more than a hint of annoyance. "Gross."
Catra shrugged. "Or you could just trust me."
An odd shape in Catra's sleeve caught her gaze, and Adora looked more closely. Normally Catra preferred sleeveless shirts, but the tall ceilings and stone floors of Bright Moon provided a much cooler environment than the constant, humming warmth of Horde machinery that pervaded the Fright Zone. To compensate, she'd started wearing a sleeved shirt to bed—and now, one of those sleeves looked… lumpy.
Why, you...
"Fine, you win," Adora said. "You officially have the biggest mouth in the rebellion."
"Thank y—Hey!"
Adora extended her hand, and Catra regarded it suspiciously. "What are you doing?"
"It's a handshake. To congratulate the winner," she explained.
Catra narrowed her eyes, but tentatively clasped the offered hand. Adora immediately tightened her grip on Catra and pulled her forward, yanking up Catra's sleeve with her other hand. Marshmallows spilled out onto the floor as Catra broke free a moment too late.
"Ha!" Adora exclaimed victoriously. "I knew it—cheater!"
"Oh, Adora," Catra said calmly, as though lecturing a small, wayward child. "You should know there's no such thing as a cheater. Just a winner… and a loser." She picked up Adora's abandoned tea, taking a long sip before starting to walk past her toward the door.
"'Night, loser."
A dozen possible replies sprang to Adora's mind, but instead, in a strange reversal of how this situation normally went, Adora found herself launching forward to tackle Catra. They hit the ground together, Catra giving a surprised oof at the impact. She immediately pulled her legs up and forcefully pushed Adora off to the side, scrambling to her feet.
"I'm kind of curious what your plan was he—oof!" Adora swept her legs out from under her and she hit the ground with considerably less grace than she would have liked. She rolled to the side as Adora tried to twist her arm behind her back, preparing her own counterattack.
"Honestly, attacking someone over marshmallows is so immature."
"So is cheating at a kid's game!" came Adora's reply, but Catra could hear the levity in her tone. Adora didn't care about her cheating—not enough to make this a remotely serious fight. This was just… part of how they communicated. Catra flipped easily out of another attempted joint lock, the momentum crashing them into the supports of a counter. A counter that, apparently, held a lot of precariously placed cookware. A lot of precariously placed cookware that was now raining down around their heads like a coppery avalanche. The deafening crash of ringing metal finally subsided, followed by the final quiet sound of something rolling across a counter, a half-second of silence, and the sound of ceramic shattering onto the floor.
They stared with open mouths at the mess.
"Wow."
"...Wow."
"Way to go, Adora."
"Me? You pushed me into the counter!"
"I don't know what you're talking about, I'm entirely innocent in thi—hey!"
When guards burst into the kitchens a few short moments later, spears at the ready to address the unknown threat, all they found was two girls frozen mid-fight amid the carnage of fallen pots, pans, and kitchen utensils. Catra was partially pinned to the ground by Adora, who crouched over her with one hand pulling a clump of Catra's hair; Catra had one hand fisted in Adora's shirt and the other cocked back in preparation for a blow. Both had frozen stock still at the sound of the guards entering the room, and now returned the guards' confused and alarmed expressions with a slightly panicked stare.
For a moment, no one moved.
Adora gulped.
"Um… I can explain?"
Some nights, guard shifts were uneventful. Some nights, you found yourself escorting a Princess of Power and one of the most feared former officers of the Horde into the throne room after finding them fighting in the kitchens.
Adora made a deep bow to Queen Angella, her face flushing red in embarrassment. "I'm so sorry to have woken you, your majesty."
Angella sat on the throne with her head propped against one hand, slouched in a decidedly un-regal fashion. "Perhaps you could inform me why the face of the rebellion and a former Horde general were fighting in my castle in the middle of the night?"
"It was… a misunderstanding," Adora said. "I'm sorry. It won't happen again."
"I should hope not," Angella said tiredly. "But since I am now awake at this" – she glanced toward the nearest timepiece and grimaced— "horrendous hour of the night, I would rather like to know why."
A small, almost gleeful smile spread across Catra's face, and she crossed her arms. "Yeah, Adora, why were we fighting?"
Adora shot her a glare, then returned her gaze to the Queen—or, more accurately, anywhere but the Queen.
"We uh, had a disagreement about, er… who could… fitmoremashmallowsintheirmouth."
Angella blinked.
"Pardon?"
"We were fighting over who could fit more marshmallows in their mouth," Adora repeated, miserably.
A choked sort of sound came from the direction of the Queen, and Adora risked a glance at her face. The Queen's eyes were wide with both disbelief and... amusement? One hand had risen to cover her mouth, the corners of which were curling up in—yes, that was definitely amusement. Adora wasn't quite sure what she had been expecting—disappointment, perhaps anger—but mirth certainly hadn't been on the list.
Somehow, the knowledge that the Queen found this funny it didn't stop Adora from wishing she could sink through the floor and disappear. (Catra shaking at her side with barely controlled laughter was not helping. She seemed to have conveniently forgotten her own role in this mess.)
"I see," Angella replied, her voice wavering with barely contained laughter. "Do see that it doesn't happen again."
"Of course, your majesty." Adora bowed again—a little less deeply this time—and grabbed Catra's arm, practically sprinting for the nearest exit.
Angella sighed, shaking her head and allowing herself a smile as she began to step down from the throne. The sound of laughter drew her gaze back to the pair as they neared the doors of the room. They were too far away for her to discern words, but she watched as Catra doubled over laughing, then suddenly drew herself up in a clear imitation of of Adora to deliver some mocking remark—at which point Adora tackled her with an arm around the neck, bringing her down to pull at Catra's hair as Catra brought up her arms in half-hearted defense. Suddenly Adora cast a glace backward, as if remembering they were still in Angella's sight, turning a visible shade of red as she quickly released Catra and started to walk more rapidly toward the exit. Catra laughed and came abreast of Adora, lightly punching her in the shoulder as if to say you idiot.
When one had lived as long as Angella, there was a tendency to see nearly all other beings as children. However, she thought, giving the pair a fond glance as they left the room, in their case, it was true in the eyes of the world as well. The heavy burdens of their responsibilities and their past may have added years to their bearing (in most situations), but underneath it all… they were still so young. Angella was glad they finally had the chance to act like it.
Although she might have to see about hiding the marshmallows.
The tumblr post that inspired it all: post/182313118051/adroa-now-has-a-reputation-around-bright-moon-for
This is so ridiculous, but I really enjoyed writing it. xD Let me know if you liked it!