It begins a little like this.
The Heart of Etheria beats, and Adora's eyes are shut, and then—
Catra wakes up.
Sudden—jolting—as though she never closed her eyes to the encroaching light that sought to consume even the darkest parts of her. Sudden, as though she had never fallen to her knees to clutch onto the only thing left being good for, as though she had never huddled over Adora to shield her from the magic of the world itself set free in all its glorious, impartial chaos.
Sudden, disorienting, as though she stood up too fast—
She is standing and the walls are different. There's a different kind of ruin surrounding her, draped in drab grays and darkness, so much darkness that her eyes fought to adjust beyond even the change of scenery—
Catra flexes her hand.
"Please, please—Catra, don't do it!"
Her head shoots up. She squints with her slit pupils dilating, and she sees her then, Adora, She-Ra, surrounded by broken machinery, twisted pipes, but—
A nauseating sense of déjà vu prevails over her as she hears Adora, sees Hordak, and—and Shadow Weaver—
"W-what is this?"
Quiet. It's suddenly too quiet.
She flexes her hand again, looks down, and goes still.
This is a nightmare, she realizes suddenly.
The switch. The switch is in her hands. White noise chokes out all sound, though she can tell mouths are moving as her eyes fly around, wide and glowing in the muted light. Hordak. Adora. The wrong She-Ra. Shadow Weaver.
The switch.
Hordak roars again. It's muffled, but she knows his demand. She still doesn't pull the switch. She can't, even, too shocked, too confused, because she's back here, back to where her greatest mistake is about to be made, back to where no one cares for her, and Adora, her Adora, is not here.
The world has ended, begun again, and Catra's about to start the countdown to its inevitable destruction once more.
Adora's destruction.
Catra hears Adora voice something. She doesn't know what. All she can hear is the blood in her veins and her heartbeat like thunder given an erratic rhythm in her ears. This is all her fault. Catra's fault.
I have never hated you!
This has to be a nightmare.
The feeling of being displaced, disconnected, and grieving all at once make Catra gasp and tremble. She flinches away from the lever and her breath comes out in frightened pants. She still can't hear whatever they're saying to her, but her wild eyes see the confusion in their postures, the rage in Hordak's. She grips at her hair and feels the length; long, proud, a mane untouched and untamed by Horde Prime and his resurrection of her into his Little Sister. She feels unmade all over again, though, as she takes in Adora, who stares her down, unrecognizable, and—
Catra doesn't pull the switch.
But the switch must have flipped anyways because a shockwave knocks everyone off their feet. Catra lays in the debris, eyes clenched shut, unbalanced in all ways as her ears pin back, before picking up a familiar noise. A portal. As if this, in itself, being returned to her most despicable point, wasn't enough. The sound of it opening, the rush of wind as the mouth sucks in air to fill its void, and then—
Silence.
When she has enough of the dark, she peeks.
She sees with one eye open the switch still untouched. Hordak is struggling with a pipe, Shadow Weaver crumpled on the ground with a cracked mask, and Adora, staring at her—no, not her—
Melog warbles at her.
I'm here.
Catra barely kept herself from crying.
"Catra!"
Across the room, Adora reaches out as though she can touch Catra. Catra wants to say something, anything, but her voice catches in her throat. Melog interrupts her view of Adora, butting Catra's head with their own.
Melog is the only thing Catra truly recognizes in this strange illusion. When their forehead rests on hers some deeply imbedded instinct tells Catra she can trust them, memory made into a nightmare or not. Catra grasps onto their neck weakly in a hug when they bow low before her and Melog purrs at her embrace. Their body is bristling, though, in response to Catra's distress.
We will be okay. We will figure this out. Together, is what she gets from the reassurance Melog mewls at her.
Catra can't function well enough to even think about being okay, let alone putting a name to whatever this is. But she is grateful.
"Get me away from here," Catra begs, instead of saying thank you.
Melog listens.
And all who remain in the room can only watch as the beast that came from the portal takes Catra and disappears. Left behind, the portal, with another debilitating shockwave that smashes Hordak into the wall and Adora and Shadow Weaver into more debris, closes.
Where Melog takes her to, Catra doesn't know, doesn't care. She clings to them, body taut, and just knows she wants away. She wants to wake up. She wants—
Catra wants Adora. Her Adora. She wants home even if she isn't sure what home is. She knows she was close to finding out what home was for her.
But now Catra doesn't know where she is. Either way, it doesn't take a genius to know she is not where she's supposed to be. The wind tugs at her, a howl in her pinned ears that she can't understand. The trees rustle, a great crackling of branches as the breath of the world gusts over its surface in a roar. She feels its breath against her skin and beneath her fur.
Catra is alive, or at least she thinks she is, even if she doesn't know how.
More importantly, Etheria is alive.
But the Heart of Etheria took Adora from her, or maybe Catra from Adora—or maybe she's really dead, they're all dead, and this is her punishment for all the evil she's wrought in the wrath borne of the worst of her jealousy and insecurities. Perhaps hell is just the acceptance of one's own guilt, and then made to literally relive every single crime while intimately aware of the damage they've caused whilst committing them.
Stop, Melog implores when sensing her emotions, and they stop themselves, a cluttered bed of vines and odd plants and a wall of trees isolating them from the rest of this starless world yet to be broken by her. This is Catra's away, Melog has decided. Somewhere where there is only still life and no undue noise. Catra has enough going on in her head to fill in any silence, anyways.
Catra tries to stop her downward spiral, but, "It's . . . it's hard. Everything is—is wrong, Melog. I-I don't even know if you're real, or if any of this is real, and if it is—"
Melog meows plaintively as Catra claws at them unconsciously. Catra shuts her eyes, assailed by thoughts she should be used to, the self-deprecating kind that tear her down to that small stray that only ever got to stick around because Adora cared about her. It's so hard to put her thoughts together.
If is the operative word here. If it is real, then all of Catra's efforts, all the genuine work she put into—to even begin redeeming herself has been undone, and she's back to being the bad guy, the person who hurts Adora, who hurts Scorpia, who hurts Entrapta, who hurts—
Who hurts everyone. Especially herself.
Catra exhales. The wind pulls at her fur, an audible whisper now. She freezes as the breeze carries this whisper into her ears.
"Perhaps that was true, once. But now you're the only one who can save them."
"What—who's there?!" Catra shoots up, off of Melog. Melog vibrates harshly with a growl at the voice that echoes all around them. There is no obvious speaker as Catra breathes shakily and looks everywhere while Melog looks everywhere else. There are no shadows behind the trees and no disturbances in the grass. She can't see anything at all to give her a direction as to where the voice came from.
But Melog heard it too. She's not hallucinating.
She's not.
"Whoever you are, I'm really not in the mood for hide and seek! So come out, or else. . ." she trails off, letting the threat hang there.
There is no immediate reply.
The night is starless. There are no glitches, and everything is not perfect. Whatever this is, she doesn't think it's a rerun of the portal at least. She knows the smell of magic, of a broken reality; you don't come out of an error in the universe like that unscathed, with nothing to show for it after embracing the wreckage. But whoever is speaking to her is something beyond her, beyond her sense of smell and sight. She couldn't be losing her mind.
But everything is broken. Has she already lost it and just hasn't realized it? How else could one explain her situation and the voices she hears?
"This is real. I am real, child."
Catra clenches her jaw as the voice finally resounds again. It's everywhere and nowhere and she spins in a circle in her search. Melog paces around her in a protective circle while their form grows and distorts with angry jagged edges.
Still, there is nothing.
She tries to make sense of everything. The Heart of Etheria exploded, and the world, well, who knows. But she's hearing voices now, and the voices can hear her thoughts. She must have broken her mind, finally snapped, and is punishing herself the way she deserves, because it's the only explanation for this, the torment of a phantom whispering to her and her being displaced in time.
It's all in her head.
"If you were meant to relive your mistakes you would have pulled the lever."
Catra blinks, narrows her eyes. So maybe she's a little off. But. "The portal still opened," she points out sourly to the voice in her head.
"Not 'the' portal but a portal, yes. One of my own making, not yours."
"Okay, but who even are you?" Catra demands, straining in the dark to see, as if her mind would give her a face to this voice. "And why am I here? What is here, even?"
"You know who I am. You were with me but a few moments but I know your face, and that of your love's. As to why you're here . . . you're the only one who can make a difference."
Catra's fur stands on end as she hisses. "What the hell do you mean, love? And how is that supposed to be an answer? I don't know you!"
"Your love, our She-Ra, who released me. You, who were born on my face, who feels me breathe, who sought both my destruction and salvation, you should know my name. You have seen my heart and have been made a part of it. Tell me, who do you think I am?"
Oh.
Catra's tail freezes, and she can't even protest the blatant accusation (reveal) of her having feelings for her best friend, because it comes to her then.
Oh.
"Etheria," Catra breathes.
"Indeed."
"B-but why me, why are you talking to me? What do you mean a part of you?" Catra struggles to grasp all the questions spinning in her head. Melog settles against her, brushing up against her as their coat shifts to something not quite placid but neither was it angry. Catra draws a blank. "And why am I here, and not Adora? She's the one who tried to save you! You can't really think I can—can make a difference, right? I-I only ever make things worse!"
The air warms as though to combat the cold that had stricken Catra, but she's always been her own worst enemy, and she swallows thickly, hunching over until she drops to the ground to fist the grass to steady herself, voice of Etheria be damned. "Because of me, Horde Prime tried to take your heart for himself. Because of me, Adora—!"
"Because of you, she will survive."
Catra's pauses, swallows. Something flickers in her peripherals. "What do you mean?"
"Here we are, before the stars have returned to the empty vault of the sky. What can one do with knowledge of events that have yet to occur, but change the story?"
Catra sucks in a harsh breath, raising her head as the flickering intensifies. Her pupils shrink at the lights that have sprinkled the clearing like tiny lanterns. Fireflies. Melog bats at the ones who drift too close curiously. They float around, but in an obvious sort of way, as though guided, or with a direction in mind, and it proves true when they develop into a bright swarm of lights that form the vague outline of a woman.
Etheria, in a shape better understood by Catra, inclines her head, a torch in the dark. There's something about seeing, feeling even, the presence and magic of the world before you that changes the way you see things. Catra understands that now, even if before she never knew it was something to comprehend.
"How?" Catra whispers, and suddenly there's no doubt in her mind that this is real. The very soul of Etheria is before her, kind and pure in a way she knows mothers should be, and forgiving in a way Shadow Weaver never was.
The world extends her hand to Catra, and Catra stares at it owlishly.
"With your help. There is good in you, Catra. That good will save lives that were thought lost, if you'd only believe in it. In yourself. Believe that I chose you, because you are the one who is most capable of changing this sad tale of ours."
Melog paws at the glowing hand and tilts their head at Catra. Catra doesn't know whether it's in question or encouragement because Melog is giving off both ideas in equal measure.
At least they trust this. Catra herself still isn't sure because it goes against everything she thinks of herself, to think that she could make things better. Shadow Weaver made monsters of the doubts in her head; she knows this, but knowing doesn't stop them from existing.
But she doesn't have anything else to go off of, and has no words, because there's another part of her—small, tiny, scared, wrapped up in the comfort of a gap-toothed Adora hugging her—that hopes for better. Because this, this is beyond her ability to describe. To think that the world itself, who Catra knows she has hurt terribly, has decided that Catra is the one who will save it. To think that the world, Etheria, believes in her, will even give her the chance to make things right.
That's one point to this being just a hallucination, Catra ticks off bitterly, because she knows she shouldn't be trusted with the fate of the world and the future.
"But why, if you were set free?"
The light that personifies the world itself dims. "She-Ra and you had fallen. Horde Prime was free to continue his tyranny, for I was too weak even in my fresh freedom to fend him off alone and he too many steps ahead for me to mitigate what he had stolen from me."
Right. The Heart of Etheria had beat again but Horde Prime had already begun corrupting it. Catra knows deep down that the guardian had hurt Adora too badly for even her, for She-ra, to survive its reemergence. Catra knows that alongside Adora she must have gone as well. Should have.
But instead she's here, in the past, back to the beginning, or what amounts to it, anyway, in the end of the world scheme of things, if what she's hearing is really the truth.
Was I really given a second chance and not Adora? she asks herself, hesitating as she begins to lift her hand to the light of nature. Do I even deserve it?
The answer was a resounding no, in Catra's mind, but somehow, Catra can hear, deep in the burrows of the earth, Etheria answer her in her entirety, and it must have been from her proximity to the heart unleashing, because she can hear the soul and heart of the planet in her ears as if it were the mother Shadow Weaver never was, and her strained heartbeat begging Catra to set her free once more, but why Catra—
"Adora may have seemed the obvious option, but she's already shouldered so, so much, and to take you and not her would have rendered you the same as before, and your suffering only ever expounded hers." Etheria explains, Catra's mind open to the world.
And Catra gets it, gets that if Adora were the one to go back, then Catra, the Catra who only ever understood betrayal and rage and abuse, would still be a major antagonist, one who expedited the downfall of the hero.
"You caused so much damage in your desire to hurt her," and it hurts to hear that, but it is true, so Catra only grits her teeth for once and continues to listen, Melog agitated at her side."But reverse that and think of what you can protect in your desire to save her."
And what goes unsaid is this—
Who else would break reality to spite Adora, to make a wish in the fragments just so that Adora would stay? Who would go against the conqueror of galaxies, sacrifice herself, to keep Adora safe? Who else would stay, when Adora went, and who else would give her life to save Adora when Adora was too busy saving everyone else?
Because where Adora was selfishly selfless, incapable of thinking of herself outside of the unit, and what martyring herself meant to those who cared for her (namely Catra), Catra only cared to be selflessly selfish, because—
Because what would Etheria be without Adora?
What would Catra be without Adora?
Nothing.
And with the profound quickening of her heartbeat, Catra knows this is real.
Because she understands now. Catra can save Adora. She can stop the failsafe from claiming Adora, stop the backlash from the Heart from killing her, and if she has to save the world to save Adora too, then, well, it happens if it happens.
And maybe, just maybe, if Catra felt like it, she can be a better person this time around, while she's at it.
"What do I do?"
The head of the glowing silhouette only nods to her hand.
Catra reaches out, standing. She takes the hand of the world, and she feels Etheria's kiss on her forehead like the missing sun breaking through the void. Slowly, as Catra remains frozen from the affection of an entire world, the fireflies disperse into the night. Soon she and Melog are alone save for a few stray fireflies.
The wind whispers one more time, but only Catra understands the faith it whistles into her ears.
"You are the keeper of my heart, now, but you must follow your own. Only it can tell you what must be done."
And then there is silence.
Catra stares unseeingly into the Whispering Woods.
Really? That's it?
She kind of expected more, and Etheria must know that was stupidly vague, but Catra feels the departure of Etheria in both mind and soul. She knows questioning further will result in her just talking to the empty air.
So what is she supposed to do with that? What did any of it mean?
Catra's the keeper of Etheria's heart?
She stands there disconnected for a time untold before blinking and looking to her companion. "Huh. Melog."
Melog tilts their head curiously, pausing in their pursuit of the remaining fireflies.
"Thank you. For coming, and for staying." Catra begins, haltingly. Melog trills, almost seeming to smile, but Catra doesn't stop there. "And Melog?"
Melog mrrumphs questioningly.
"I've got a lot of making up to do. And I think I know where to start."
Melog tilts their head but trots after Catra when she starts to retrace their trail back to the Fright Zone. Catra looks ahead, her eyes two glowing beacons in the dark as she considers her first move and her first act in redeeming herself.
Adora has the Best Friends Squad, but Catra has her own trio she needs to put back together.
"You think if I bring Emily it'll make it easier?" Catra asks Melog. Melog gives the equivalent of a mental shrug. "Yeah, you never knew her, did you. Ah, well. We'll see."