Chapter 4: Unlikely Allies

Glimmer wasn't sure how many hours she had passed pacing around the table in the cell after her return, all she knew was Catra had been gone too long. So long in fact, she had started to fear Horde Prime really had killed her in that chair back on the observation tower.

Finally, at long last, the doors slid open and two Prime clones dumped her body inside the threshold like a sack of bricks. They left without a second glance back, and Glimmer rushed to kneel at her side.

"Catra? Catra wake up. It's me, Glimmer."

For a second time, Glimmer feared she was dead—feared Prime had decided to play a cruel joke on her by dumping her cell-mate's dead body back in there with her instead of disposing of it. Catra was already malnourished and dehydrated to begin with. Adding the dried blood caked into her face and the sweat and grime matting the rest of her fur, she was near indiscernible from a corpse. Glimmer watched her carefully, searching for the rise and fall of her chest.

Finally, Catra moaned and Glimmer breathed a sigh of relief. Catra's eyes peeled open and she looked up at her. Her inner eyelids refused to pull back all the way. Glimmer could see her pupils trying to focus, see Catra's mind begin to piece together where she was and what was going on.

"Get away from me!" Catra unsheathed claws and swiped at her, forcing Glimmer back. "I told you I don't know anything. Get out of my head! No more hallucinations. I'm sorry! I don't know anything, just…no more. Please. Haven't you taken enough?"

Catra scurried to a corner of the room, wincing with every movement as if her whole body itself was an open sore, and Glimmer felt her heart break. Even with all the adrenaline coursing through her veins, Catra could still feel the pain. This wasn't the Horde Commander that nearly destroyed Bright Moon all those years ago, wasn't the Horde Commander that Adora obsessed over being outsmarted by, and definitely wasn't the same Horde Commander that opened a portal in the Fright Zone that took her mother from her. This was a broken shell of a person, pressing herself into the corner like she thought it was the only way to survive.

"Catra, I'm not a hallucination," Glimmer said, inching forward on her knees and holding an open palm to her. "It's me, Glimmer—the real Glimmer. You're back in our cell, and Horde Prime isn't here. He can't hurt you anymore, okay? It's just you and me."

Catra pushed further into the wall as Glimmer approached. Her pupils narrowed to hairline slits and she hissed, although she stopped short of lashing out again. Glimmer continued to close the distance inch by inch, until she was finally close enough to touch her. Catra flinched and hissed again when Glimmer lay the back of her hand gently against her forehead, but from there seemed to calm.

"My god, you are burning up," Glimmer said.

Hearing her voice in conjunction with the touch seemed to do the trick. The tension in Catra's shoulders relaxed and she stopped baring fangs at her. Glimmer adjusted herself so their knees touched, and move to stroke Catra's cheek instead of her forehead. Catra's tail thrashed less with each caress, and some form of recognition seemed to return to the look in her eyes.

"It's…really cold," Catra said, voice dipping low into a rasp. A shiver ran down her body and, nodding, Glimmer took her hand away and slowly scooted backward.

Catra tracked her as she crossed the cell to their bunk bed and yanked a pillow and sheets from the bottom bunk. She came back around and, after taking a second look at her, thought of something else.

"I'm going to grab some stuff from the bathroom and try and clean you up a bit, okay?" Glimmer chose to lean down and placed the bedding on the floor next to Catra rather than tossing it, in case the sudden movement startled her. When she glimpsed the uncertain look in Catra's eyes, she said, "I'm not leaving. I'll be just behind that door over there for like, two seconds and I'll be right back."

She pointed to their bathroom and edged toward it. Catra gave a jerky nod as she pulled the blankets closer to her.

Glimmer slipped into the bathroom as quickly as she could. Even if Catra watched her walk in here, she didn't want to risk her lapsing into another paranoid episode being left alone outside. So, she did the only thing she could do, and talked to her in the other room.

"I'm surprised we have such a nice bathroom," she said, throwing open the linen cabinet and scooping as many towels as she could into her arms. "Horde Prime is such a bastard, but at least there's stuff in here we can use." She grabbed a wash basin and shoved it under the sink, turning the faucet on full blast. A first aid kit sat in the medicine cabinet when she opened it and she nabbed that as well. "It's kind of like the 'cell' we have at Bright Moon, except our place is nice. We don't like treating people badly, even if they're an enemy, so our 'prison' just seems like any other room in the castle." Glimmer had a feeling Prime only gave his prisoners nice things to instill a false sense of security.

She hurried out of the bathroom, balancing the linens in one hand and the full wash basin in the other. Catra had propped her pillow behind her in the corner where Glimmer had left her, and had pulled her blankets up half-heartedly over her lap. She likely didn't have the strength to do much more than that, now that the adrenaline had left her.

Glimmer knelt back down in front of her. "I'm going to try and get as much of the blood off you as I can, okay?" She held up the rag to show Catra she wasn't planning on doing anything threatening. "You'll feel better once I get you cleaned up a bit."

Catra eyed her and the washcloth, but didn't refuse. Taking that as permission to proceed, Glimmer dipped the first towel in the water and dabbed at Catra's temple, where the freshest and nastiest wound lay. Catra flinched, hissing and baring her teeth once again. Glimmer paused but didn't move away, and when Catra stilled, she resumed dabbing at the wound.

The rag came away almost immediately soaked through in blood, and Glimmer wasn't sure whether or not she was just making it worse. She dipped the cloth back in the basin and watched as her hand underneath the water disappeared into a sea of red. Fortunately, this time when she resumed cleaning, the blood seemed to clear up some. By the time she felt she had done as much as she could on the first wound and moved on to the second at her other temple, Catra had calmed enough to lie in a fetal position, sideways with her head resting on Glimmer's lap.

"They went on for a while after they took you away," Catra said in a low voice. "I have no idea how long. It felt like forever."

Glimmer looked away out of guilt and paused her dabbing. "I'm sorry I couldn't be there. They grabbed me and I just…I fought, but I couldn't get away."

Catra shrugged. "It's not like you could have done anything even if you had. Those clones are strong—I'm pretty sure I have a bruised rib or two from where they slugged me." She paused, and when Glimmer glanced back at her, she saw Catra looking up at her out the corner of her eye. "Thanks for trying though."

"Why did you volunteer to take my place?" Glimmer hated how resigned to it all Catra sounded. She exchanged the rag for a fresh one and worked at the grime and blood elsewhere on Catra's face. The injuries at her temples looked as clean as she thought she were going to get them, and now it was time to move on to the rest of her.

"What do you mean? I was strapped down to a chair, so it's not like I really had a choice."

"That's not what I meant," Glimmer said. "Horde Prime was going to take just me at first. You were the one that jumped in and convinced him to start with you. Why?"

Catra cracked a smile. "Can't a girl just do something nice for once? You're welcome."

"You and I have very different ideas of 'nice,' " Glimmer said, making a face. "Volunteering for torture in lieu of someone else is called 'masochistic' in my book."

"Ain't that the truth." Catra closed her eyes and chuckled when her face suddenly contorted in pain. She curled into herself on Glimmer's lap as deep, hacking coughs wracked her body.

"Hey, come on now." Glimmer dropped the rag, tilted Catra further forward to gain better access to her back, and rubbed at the knots there with firm, smoothing gestures. "I know for you it's probably impossible to resist, but don't go making smart-ass comments if you're just going to end up hurting yourself."

Catra made several high-pitched gasps for air between coughs, but steadily relaxed against Glimmer's movements. Her breathing evened out until, finally, the tension in her body released. She gave another shiver under the blankets, and Glimmer pulled them up to better insulate her.

"You're hopeless," Glimmer said. Without even thinking about it, she moved her hands from Catra's back and began running her fingers through her mane instead.

"Mmm shut up." A purr rumbled out from her. "You sound like Adora."

Glimmer froze, her fingers halfway down the length of Catra's hair. Under normal circumstances, she wouldn't have thought twice if someone compared her to Adora—it was a compliment. But these were far from normal circumstances, and Catra's relationship both to her and to Adora was complicated at best. Had Catra meant that in a positive way? Even if she hadn't, did it really matter? Glimmer shrugged and decided it really didn't, and resumed combing her fingers through Catra's hair.

"I have a little more experience with mind probes than I'm guessing you do," Catra said, looking at her again after a long moment of silence.

"After what happened up there with Prime and those mages? No doubt about it." Glimmer was surprised to hear Catra speak at all. She thought she had fallen asleep in her lap.

"I'm answering your question, stupid." Catra and averted her eyes. "I wasn't lying when I told Prime earlier that I already had prior experience. I figured, out of the two of us, I'd break less easily and…well…I didn't want to take the chance things wouldn't go well for you. So, I stepped up."

Glimmer fought to keep the anger out of her voice when she next spoke. "When were you mind probed before?" Catra squeezed her eyes shut and tensed her shoulders, and Glimmer gave voice to the guess that had first popped into her head. "Shadow Weaver did that to you? Why?"

"I've been trying to figure that one out for as long as I can remember," Catra said, her voice small. "I just figured that, since I already know what it's like, I might do better going first. Prime would be less likely to push your limits if he already pushed mine."

"Did you really just asked him to test drive you first?" Glimmer asked. "So he'd be less likely to break me on accident the second time around?" She pulled her hands out of Catra's hair before she started inadvertently fisting it in anger. "That's it? That was your genius idea?"

"I just didn't expect it to hurt as much…or go on as long."

Catra spoke as if admitting the words to herself. As if everything she said were merely an afterthought and not a confession of pure martyrdom to Glimmer's ears.

"I thought you had some sort of plan, Catra." All the fight had left Glimmer in a rush, like someone had exorcised it from her, leaving behind only the sadness she felt for the body curled against her. "You always had plans when we fought. Why is it now that we're just trying to survive together that you throw yourself forward like some kind of sacrifice?"

"I did have a plan" Catra said, opening her eyes and glaring up at her again. Some of the fight that had abandoned Glimmer seemed to have seeped into her instead. "Wanting to keep you from getting hurt was the main reason, but I didn't just throw myself forward at him."

"Alright, and what was this grand plan of yours then?"

Catra huffed again. "Shadow Weaver never told me about this—it definitely wasn't something she wanted me to know. But if you were probed enough times, you'd eventually pick up on the fact those probes are a two-way street. Prime went digging in my head for answers about the Heart, but I was also able to feel about a little in his head as well."

Glimmer's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "You were? What did you find?" Separately, she wondered in the back of her mind how many probes Catra had been subjected to for her to have learned that little trick, and resolved to revisit Shadow Weaver's license to freely roam Bright Moon if she ever made it home.

"That woman," Catra said. "The one that contacted him right before you were taken away—I think Prime called her Taline…he's afraid of her." Catra swallowed, as if telling of Prime's thoughts forced her to revisit the torture session anew. "He's afraid of her, and he's afraid of her order—the Enclave. He bottles it up so it doesn't show outwardly, but it's there."

Glimmer furrowed her brow. "Afraid as in like, she's the true power behind the throne or…?"

Catra shook her head. "I can't tell for sure, but I don't think so. That's not what it felt like. He doesn't fear her necessarily, he hates her. But he fears what her coming here means…fears what she represents." She growled, as if frustrated she couldn't find the right words. "I don't know how to describe it better than that."

"It's okay," Glimmer said. She wrung the water out of yet another rag and resumed dabbing at Catra's forehead with it. Sometime during their conversation, she remembered how nasty of a fever Catra had, and Glimmer wanted to do what she could to bring it down quickly. "Whoever this Taline person is—and whatever it is she's coming to do—we'll get through it together. I don't care if those clones dislocate my arm trying to hold me back or cart me off somewhere, I'm not getting separated from you again."

Catra hummed at that and closed her eyes while Glimmer worked on her. Within moments she fell into a deep sleep.

Glimmer woke at some point, not having realized she had closed her eyes at all to begin with.

Her back ached sitting against the wall, even with the pillow propped behind her. Catra was pulling out of her lap, and Glimmer quickly shook the grogginess from her mind to get up and help her stand. She half expected Catra to shy away from her touch and argue with her, and when she didn't, Glimmer helped support her to the bathroom, leaving her be after handing over one of the unused towels from earlier and a fresh set of clothes from the storage bin under their bunk.

The clones brought food while she was sat next to the closed bathroom doorway, ready in case Catra needed help and actually called for it. They came in and left the trays on the table like they always had, never speaking a word. Today was a big bowl of soup for each of them.

Before long, Catra stepped out of the bathroom with a cloud of steam and heat billowing out behind her. The clean clothes Glimmer had given her hung off her bones, already soaked almost all the way through as she stood there and dripped bath water on the floor: she hadn't had the strength or energy to fully dry herself off, and instead merely draped the towel around her neck and over her shoulders.

She bared her teeth at Glimmer when she stood up to help her. "Don't touch me," Catra said, pulling away from her and clung to the wall as she skirted the perimeter of the cell toward the bunk. She lost her balance and would have fallen to the floor if Glimmer hadn't darted in and held her up.

Catra grumbled but didn't fight her as she guided them the rest of the way and eased her into a sitting position on the bed. When Glimmer took the towel from her shoulders and moved to dry her off, Catra hissed and said, "I can do it myself!"

Glimmer huffed and dropped the towel in her lap. She had no idea why Catra was suddenly so prickly. Did the humidity from her shower make her forget that Glimmer had cleaned her wounds, practically petted her to sleep, and then helped her into the bathroom in the first place? She slogged back to the table and sat, gritting her teeth as she watched Catra's pitiful attempt to dry off without her help. She eventually shoved the towel to the floor with a snarl after giving up, and Glimmer picked up one of the trays of soup to bring over to her, refusing to utter a single word.

"I'm not hungry," Catra said, glaring at her approach.

"We aren't doing this again." Glimmer scowled at her. "Stop being stubborn and just eat."

Catra scoffed and Glimmer slammed the tray down hard onto her lap. Soup sloshed out and scalded her knees and thighs, and she bit back another hiss with her eyes screwed shut. Glimmer didn't even try to hide how satisfied shutting Catra up made her feel as she spooned a bit of soup and held it in front of her face for her to sip on.

"Okay, okay, I get it," Catra said, leaning away from the spoon. "I was wrong. Maybe you wouldn't be gentler than the clones. Let me at least feed myself?"

Glimmer shrugged and dropped the spoon back into the bowl, splashing more soup and sending Catra into another hissing fit. She was far past the point of caring. If Catra wanted to go back to being a stubborn pain in the ass, then she'd respond in kind. It made no difference to her.

Catra fished spoon out of the bowl with shaky fingers and, when she realized she couldn't grip them strong enough, resorted to palming the handle between the heels of both her hands. The spoon rattled against the bowl and shook violently as she slowly tried to bring it to her mouth. She grew increasingly frustrated the longer she tried. Even Glimmer winced watching her struggle.

She ultimately stopped her, shooting out an arm to grab both Catra's wrists before she made an even larger mess all over the bed. She suppressed the urge to smack Catra upside the head when she gave her another glare and, instead, pulled the chair around in front of her to sit on, scooped up a healthier portion of soup, and held it up a second time with steady hands for her to eat from.

"Well?" Glimmer said after watching Catra's gaze dart between her and the spoon. When Catra inched forward and took a bite, Glimmer smirked. "See? That wasn't so hard now, was it?" Catra refused to look her in the eyes, but continued to dutifully eat every spoonful Glimmer presented her with.

"Why are you doing this?" Catra asked after a while.

"You think someone else is going to step up and make sure you get food in you if you can't do it yourself? Last I checked, it's just us two in here."

"That's not what I meant," Catra said, taking another bite. Again, she sounded small rather than combative, and Glimmer wondered when this roller coaster of hot and cold between them would level out. "I meant…why are you helping me at all? Why go to all this trouble when I've been such an asshole to you and all your precious princess friends?"

"Isn't that just the question of the century?"

Glimmer gave a derisive laugh, only to let it die out after seeing the stony look Catra returned her. She was being serious, but Glimmer had no idea how to respond. It was a lot to unpack—what the heck was she supposed to say?

"I don't know," she said at last. "I'm just doing what I can to help. Not really thinking about the 'why' behind anything right now."

"I opened the portal."

Glimmer grit her teeth. "I know." This was where she wanted to go with this?

"It nearly destroyed the entire planet." Catra didn't break eye contact with Glimmer, as if to say 'yeah, we're having this conversation and we're having it now.'Her tail thrashed about behind her. "It allowed Hordak to send a message to Horde Prime. He's here because of me."

"I know." Glimmer felt the metal from the spoon handle cut into her fingers because she gripped it so tight.

"You're not a princess anymore, you're a queen. That happened right after the portal closed and your mom didn't come back. I'm not stupid, I know what happened." Catra hugged herself and shivered. She seemed to physically buckle under the weight of her words. "Hordak mentioned she's not dead so much as she's just floating out there in the nothingness. But unless Entrapta's figured out some way to access the space between realities, then she's as good as gone, right? I killed her, Sparkles. I killed your mom."

Glimmer saw red and she swore she'd already have magic at her fingertips ready to strike were they back on Etheria. She thought her mom had well and truly died. Finding out she was instead likely just lost in a pocket dimension—dead for all intents and purposes rather than actually killed—had taken her by surprise as much as it had rekindled her anger and plunged her back into grief.

"What's your point?" she asked, not bothering to mask the acid in her voice.

"You shouldn't be helping me. You should be mad. You should be murderous."

"And do you seriously think that this"—she balled her free hand into a fist and raised it as if she were about to pummel Catra in the face—"doesn't look like I'm not on the verge of literally drowning you in your soup?"

Catra didn't flinch away. "You could do it, you know," she said, breaking eye contact only to look purposefully at Glimmer's hands. "I'm too weak to put up much of a fight. None of your friends would have to find out. We both know I'd deserve it…"

Something in the way Catra looked at her fist and spoke as if she were hoping Glimmer would make good on her threats jolted her, and her brain pump the breaks, hard. All the tension flushed from her body. She placed the spoon back in the bowl and moved the whole tray to the table behind her. All her movements were purposeful and robotic, as if she were controlling someone else's hands instead of her own.

It wasn't until she went to clasp Catra's hands in her own that she finally flinched—as if that gesture above all others was the one that would harm her. Glimmer held firm and didn't let her go when she tried to pull away. Instead, she guided her hands forward, closer to her.

"I know all that," she said. "Well, not the part about my mom being stuck instead of dead, but I have a feeling that doesn't matter very much in the end." She waited, and when Catra only let out a strangled sound instead of a real response, she said, "You and I beat each other pretty bad at that secret outpost back in the Whispering Woods. If it were that Catra stuck with me in this cell, then maybe I'd have it in me to really do something to you."

Catra gulped and looked away. "It is the same person. I'm right in front of you."

"But you're not though." Glimmer ran her thumbs along Catra's knuckles and kept the pressure on when Catra gave another scoff. "I'm serious, Catra. As cheesy as it sounds, you aren't the same crazy idiot that wanted to destroy the world not all that long ago. Am I supposed to believe that's the same person who let themselves get strapped to a chair and mind probed in my place?"

"What do you even know?" Catra said, muttering under her.

"More than you give me credit for, that's for sure," Glimmer said. "Why did you volunteer in my place?"

Catra paused and looked at her as if she had gone crazy. "We've already had this conversation, stupid. Or did Prime come grab you and scramble your brains while I was passed out on top of you?"

"You hoped going first would make it easier for me to survive going second, and you made some joke about being 'nice' for once. But that's the thing—why even do that in the first place?"

Catra's expression faltered, as if she realized she was slowly being cornered into a trap, and she redoubled her efforts to pull away. "I don't need a reason. And even if I did have one, I'm not required to tell."

Glimmer held tighter to Catra's hands and refused to let her escape. "Horde Prime very nearly killed me the moment he teleported me onto this citadel. It was because you stepped in that he didn't. And then I almost died again a few days later in this cell until you cried loud enough and long enough at that"—she gestured to the camera mounted at the ceiling corner opposite them—"until they took me to the medical bay."

Now Catra really struggled, panic evident on her face as she tried to yank out of Glimmer's iron grip. "No, I'm not…I didn't—"

"Look at me and tell me you did all those things for selfish reasons, Catra." Glimmer pulled hard enough that Catra had no choice but to face her. "Look at me and tell me that it's all some secret ulterior plan you've dreamt up I just haven't figured out yet. Look me in the eyes and swear to me that it isn't because you're trying to change and do the right thing for once. Swear it on every happy memory you've ever had growing up with Adora in the Horde."

Catra froze and stared at her with giant, glassy eyes. Glimmer knew from what Adora had shared with her that her memories with Catra were one of the few things she considered 'happy' growing up in the Fright Zone, and judging by Catra's reaction, the same was true for her. Glimmer's gamble invoking Adora's name had paid off.

"I….I…" Catra started twice before cutting off and taking in choked breaths. "I've hurt too many people. It's all I do…all I'm good at. I can't bring your mom back to you…I can't make up for all the mistakes I made."

"No," Glimmer said. "No, you can't. But that's not really the point, is it?"

Catra swallowed, and her voice was thick with emotion when she spoke again. "I can't make up for it, but I want to do everything I can."

Glimmer sighed and finally let Catra's hands go. She pulled them back, sluggish and despondent.

"I'm not completely blameless either, to be honest with you," Glimmer said. "I said some…pretty horrible things to Adora and to Bow before I got picked up by Prime. I almost finished what you started after activating the Heart, despite literally everyone warning me not to. I got so blinded by winning, by beating you and the rest of the Horde, that I hurt my friends and nearly killed everyone."

Catra watched her through watery eyes, and Glimmer gripped the fabric of her pants to try and steady herself. She still wasn't sure she had the courage to say what was coming next.

"I can't express how sorry I am to them, and I'm even more terrified they're going to turn me away when I try and apologize, but the point is that I understand. It doesn't make the things you did right, but I understand where they came from. Shadow Weaver abused you growing up, Adora leaving the Horde probably felt like the biggest betrayal from someone you never imagined getting that from. Heck, even Double Trouble screwed you. So, I get it—life sucked for you, just like it sucked for me when my mom disappeared. You wanted to stand on top of the world and be able to tell it that you had beaten it, even for a moment."

Glimmer realized she had gone off on a tangent when she noticed Catra's gaze turn from fearful to curious, and she coughed, suddenly embarrassed. "That last part could apply to either of us, by the way. In any case, the point I was trying to make is that even if you can't fix all your mistakes, the fact you're trying to be better is all the proof I need that the Catra who opened the portal and the Catra sitting across from me right now, barely choking down alien soup are different people. You may have burned a heck of a lot of bridges, but you haven't completely burned away your bridge with me. Not yet."

Catra stared at her, unblinking, for a long moment. "Are you sure Horde Prime didn't steal you away while I was sleeping and turn you into someone too forgiving for your own good?" She sounded like she privately couldn't believe what she heard, but happy about it nonetheless, and Glimmer smiled in response.

"How can I face Bow and Adora and hope they'll forgive me if I can't even do that for you?" Glimmer paused and frowned as she hit upon a realization. "You uh…don't have a secret ulterior plan I haven't figured out yet, right? You never did answer my question earlier."

Catra shook her head so hard Glimmer thought she'd give herself a concussion. "No secret plan, no hidden agenda, I swear. I know I can't make up for everything, but if I can do something—anything—to help make it better, I want to try."

Glimmer nodded and pulled Catra's bowl of soup back into her lap. "Good. First order of business is somehow getting off this station. And you can't do that or help fix anything afterward if you die from starvation. So, let's focus on staying alive, yeah?"

She spooned more soup and held it up. Catra nodded and took a bite, then waited for Glimmer to scoop another with an eager gleam in her eyes.

Hours later, and Glimmer listened to the tiny snores Catra let out while she was fast asleep, splayed out on the bottom bunk with a full belly. Glimmer was sat at the table, spooning her portion of now cold soup into her mouth while she thought on her conversation with Catra from earlier.

A starship blinked into existence outside their viewport and she turned to look. Several dozen more followed the first, cascaded into existence outside. Each had a single insignia stamped onto the side of their hulls—one which was different from Prime's Imperial Horde motif. Glimmer didn't recognize the pattern, but she knew what it represented.

Taline had arrived.