If there was a thing Adora missed the most, it was the mornings. She missed the silence-not silence, the hums and whirs and of course the gentle purrs from the foot of her cot, the pooling warmth of a crinkled figure tucked into a ball that made waking up okay.

She missed the cattiness (excusing the pun) that came with her presence too. Glimmer and Bow…. they were warm and kind and sweet. The best friends Adora could ever have wished for. But, everything aside, they were Bright mooner's through and through. They'd been given a choice between soldier and civilian, something Adora had never had, and had never even realised was a possibility (Adora would dryly wonder if she even would have chosen the peaceful path given a choice, or whether she only had herself to blame for her place on the battlefield). Catra was sharp and scathing and cynical and grumpy, but Adora saw through the guise because damn it, when you knew someone all your aware life, you knew the taunting prods and jabs meant nothing at all.

Not until they did.

And Adora could try to pretend it wasn't her fault. She could try to believe that Catra made her own choices, and she could try to believe she deserved any punishment she received, but quite frankly? If there was one skill she'd failed to please Shadow Weaver with, it was the art of lying.

Adora had heard an expression since arriving at Bright moon, a gentle comment tossed by Angela to her daughter after yet another mishap.

"You reap what you sow."

Adora questioned the logic of the phrase until Glimmer, awoken by her incessant tossing and turning come bedtime, had tapped her on the shoulder, cautious and quiet in the stillness of the night.

"So, "you reap what you sow" is the saying, right?"

Glimmer nodded before raising an eyebrow. "Do I have to explain what farming is or~

"-I'm good, I know!" Adora hissed protesting, and Glimmer narrowed her eyes. "For real, I'm good! You do know we actually ate food in the Horde, right?"

"We?"

Fuck.

"They, you know I mean they." Adora scowled and winced. "Anyway, "you reap what you sow" The idea is you do something, an action that affects the world, and then you receive the consequences, correct?"

"Sure." Glimmer pointed to Bow's resting figure. "Like if I stole Bow's sweets, he wouldn't talk to me all day."

"But that's just it!" Adora sighed, gazing at the ceiling. "It's so variable. Maybe if Bow were feeling generous that day, he wouldn't mind, despite the fact that if you'd done the exact same thing the day before, the consequences would have been much worse. The idea behind the phrase "you reap what you sow" is that you get what you deserve, for better or for worse."

"But, like…" Adora played with the thread of her uniform. "Nobody ever seems to get what they deserve. Or at least, not the right people."

"Totally, I get that, sort of. My Dad was brave, and he tried with all his heart to protect us, but that didn't stop him from dying." Glimmer dipped her head, pausing briefly before continuing. "Bow's the kindest person we know, but that doesn't mean he's never faced hardship, or that he was just given his talents on a plate! We rarely get what we deserve Adora, we can only strive to be kind." Glimmer placed a hand on her friend's knee. "How comes you're so worked up about it?"

"Uh." Adora began scratching her arm, playing for time. "It's like, eh…"

Glimmer raised her gaze and smiled encouragingly. "Go on."

Adora exhaled, feeling the flush of her cheeks against the cool air. The jarring luminous clock Bow insisted on keeping clicked with each passing second, and Adora ran a hand through her hair.

"Alright, soooo, um…say you left someone" Best to stay vague. Emotions were easier to handle at an arm's length.

"You did it because you had to for whatever reason you had. And you ask them to come with you (Adora asked every. Fucking. Time), but suddenly, everything's changed, and they say no because you hurt them by… not being there to stop somebody else hurting them." A tall dark shadow hovering over their beds at lights out, steadying guns held in fingers just outgrowing a toddler's strength, forcing them still with cold, piercing glares as terror filled sobs echoed-

"You want them back, but now they seem so different, and you know that if they just stopped and came to you, the two of you could be happy, but they're mad at you, and you want to be mad at them but it's your fault really, so everything they do is because of you, and now everybody thinks that they're a bad person because of it, so it's like they're the ones reaping what you sowed." Adora broke off, breathless, shoulders tense at the silence that followed.

"Oh boooy."

Adora grimaced at the reaction, blushed. The words had fallen away without her usual processing, the mechanical action of thinking through what she said before the words left her lips all but forgotten. But of course, of bloody course, speaking about how she felt always went this way, awkward and too much and best left to people like Glimmer and Bow who knew what they were feeling. Fucking idiot.

Glimmer puffed out her cheeks, shuffling closer to Adora. "Remind me to ask how you're doing more often, gosh." Shaking her head, the Princess wrapped her arm around Adora, feeling the stiff hunch of the warrior's shoulders. "You've really been keeping all that to yourself?"

Adora released a gentle shudder of surprise, (Catra's arm, Catra's claws, soft fur and tassled hair and glinting pupils and telling fanged grins fuelling a feeling of elevation in Adora's chest), before leaning down to better accommodate her friend.

"Glimmer, I was raised in a military camp. We didn't talk about the stuff that upset us, we hit the stuff that upset us." Adora grinned at Glimmer, because yes, as Mermista had mentioned, you were meant to smile after telling a joke, so people didn't think you were going to bash their brains out. Whatever Adora's intention, Glimmer remained frowning.

"It's fine though!" Adora hastily added. "Doesn't even matter really! Just purely hypothetical, don't worry!"

Glimmer blinked at her, before her brows furrowed, and the hand resting on Adora's arm tightened with considerable strength as Adora made to lie back down.

"Oh no, no, no, I don't think so, missy"

"Glimmer-" Too much too soon, and knowing Glimmer it'd be question after well-meaning question, oh shit-

"It's not my intention to make you uncomfortable Adora." Glimmer cut into the silence and Adora shuddered (crack slash rip). Glimmer relaxed her grip as her gaze met Adora's, eyes still glimmering despite the shadows, just like everything else about her.

"I'm betting you've had enough of struggle for a lifetime. I won't force you to go into details. That can be hard and tiring and pretty confusing most days.

"I just really hope you know that I'm your friend." Adora swallowed at that, because yes, Glimmer was worthier of that word then she could ever hope to be.

"I'm here for the messy talk. The Horde raised you as a soldier? I want to help you grow into a happy person."

Why was her throat constricting? Had her dinner been poisoned? Maybe the Horde had-

"I'M YOUR FRIEND TOO ADORAAAA" A body lunged at Adora, and both Princesses felt themselves topple backwards as Bow wrapped them in a tearful embrace.

"BOW, HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN LISTENING!?" Glimmer swatted at Bow, and Adora felt anxieties ease just a little as her friends wrestled on the carpeted floor.

The conversation had been dropped through distraction and silence, tactics of war. It was always tactics, tactics, tactics, winning her way through her days and being engulfed by the enormity of the night, where magic words and swords held no influence.

The Horde never gave up, never stopped coming, no matter how many soldiers she dispatched (injured, crippled, bruised, drowned, killed), no matter how many machines she tore apart, tearing and slashing her way forwards, they were always there. Time and time again she let herself believe she would be there on the other side of the next door, the next wave of infantry, the next mile of forest, waiting. It was an endless game of cat and mouse (Catra might have snarled playfully at that, revealed a fanged grin as she tossed herself at Adora). Every time she thought she got close enough, every time it seemed the beast had been calmed, it pounced at her again, and Adora would scurry back home to hide.

And then there was She-Ra. A convenient disguise she could slip on at any given moment, a suit of unstoppable strength and brute force. Adora liked that idea-it was simplistic. Scream about honour (was she a hypocrite for fighting in honours name?) then wave a sword about until people were safe. She-Ra was Bright moon's glowing hero, the poster woman for the rebellion, Adora yet…not Adora.

She-Ra had thoughts and feelings of her own, gentle urges that, when Adora strained, pricked upon the surface of her consciousness. She-Ra was experience brought to life by centuries of warriors, pain and turmoil amalgamated into a being, generations of warriors who had gripped the same blade that Adora did now and fought until they no longer could. Their thoughts pinched Adora's skin, plucked at her aching mind wherever she went, a fleeting flicker of light across the sword the only hint of their communications.

The sword jittered and sparked when Catra was near, and it had nothing to do with Adora's trembling hands. Way to be subtle.

Subtle was something Catra had never been. Or perhaps, as Adora would later reflect, subtle was something Catra was actually excellent at, brilliant at disguising her fear and abuse, allowing Adora to only see the parts of herself that she wished to reveal.

Still, actions screamed their agony where words would only whisper it. Two sets of four, red slashes made scars where Catra's claws had met her back and pierced the skin there. Perhaps every line represented the months she'd been gone, the universes usual way of twisting every single event in its ironic grasp.

Adora woke up, panting as fiery breaths clawed their way into a howl that echoed within her room. Bow and Glimmer had long since gone back to their own rooms, and Adora had assured them that yes, she was "fine".

The scars seared like the image of Catra in her mind. Catra the best-friend, the comrade in training, Catra the enemy, Catra- grabbing hold of her, Catra- letting her go.

"Nothing bad can really happen as long as we have each other"

Naïve idiocy.

"I never wanted to leave you"

Why did the truth mean so little when it mattered the most?

"I didn't want you to come back, Adora"

Adora slammed her back against a bedroom wall, allowing the coolness to seep in, hot sweat turning cold and causing shivers that trembled throughout her sobbing frame.

It hadn't mattered what they'd wanted in the end. If things had been even slightly different, If Catra had gone with her that night, if Catra hadn't been in such pain and if Adora had noticed, would they have been allowed to be happy?

"You reap what you sow."

There was never a crueller lie. You could make choices, choose a vague path to walk down, sure, but even then, you lacked control. The very ground beneath you swayed you from your destination, howling winds and raging storms causing you to lose sight of your goal. The Horde had offered an easier path, terrible and vicious as it was. You trained, ranked up, trained, ranked up, fought, died. Life had seemed clear cut within classroom chalk boards and textbooks. You lived, then you died, and that was it.

Escaping from the Horde was like being given the ability to see for the first time. It offered Adora everything she'd never known, and that was the best and worst thing about it. Not everything was beautiful. It was the actions between birth and death that mattered, the trembling red path you created in the world, scars on your back from your friend? enemy? love? a sweep of a sword that protected many at the cost of a few, the grin of your friends as you teased them over morning tea, and the setting sun on another day lived within.

You could sow as many seeds as you liked, but there was no guarantee that what you planted, cherished, and cared for would grow into what you wanted.