Ow. That had to be like the 10th time he'd nicked himself in just the last five minutes alone. Bow stuck his finger in his mouth, hoping the metallic taste of blood would somehow wake him up. He was too tired to be doing this. He kept screwing it up but there was no telling what tomorrow would bring and the last thing he wanted was to be caught without arrows if Prime's forces found them.

When they found them.

He went back to trying to jam the tiny bronze point onto the shaft. There hadn't been time to restock in the chaos of leaving Bright Moon and the arrowheads that Elberonian archer had lent him were a little smaller than what he usually used. But he was going to have to make due. Without arrows he was no good to anybody, and the last thing he wanted to be right now was useless.

"Hey." Adora crawled into the tent and he shifted himself back up against the cloth wall to give her room to get herself maneuvered. It was going to be pretty crammed with the two of them in here. Micah had tried to insist they each take their own tents or at least shared one of the large ones but they had so many people with them, it seemed ridiculous for the two of them to take a bigger tent when there were whole families who could make better use of them.

Adora slumped down onto her bedroll, then seemed to register what he was doing. "Why are you still up? I told you to get some rest an hour ago!"

"We don't know what we're facing tomorrow. I just want to be ready." He didn't bother elaborating. Adora had been there for that desperate run through the woods, Prime's forces raining fire down from above. The first place they'd tried to stop was overrun with bots before they'd even broken camp. They wouldn't have made it out alive if Mermista and Sea Hawk hadn't shown up when they did and helped even the odds.

Even then, it was running and hiding and saving and almost dying over and over until they finally found this place. Safe enough, it seemed. But for how long?

"Come on, Bow. At least I got some sleep back home before... everything." Adora grabbed a handful of shafts and starting assembling arrows. She was kind of terrible at it and he had to fix most of the ones she did when she wasn't looking, but he appreciated that she always at least tried to help. It reminded him of how it used to be, before everything, when he and Glimmer would—no. He wasn't doing that to himself right now. He jabbed another finished arrow into the quiver hard enough he heard the point thunk into the leather bottom.

"When was the last time you rested? The night before we left for Beast Island?" Adora wasn't having much more luck with the smaller arrowheads than he was. "Have you even eaten?"

"I'm fine." He probably eaten at some point. He was too tired to be hungry, anyway.

"You're the worst liar." She bumped him with her shoulder and then just kind of left it there, leaning into him. They both smelled pretty terrible, but considering they'd been running and fighting for their lives for about fifty hours straight, that wasn't surprising. "I talked to Entrapta about the ship. She says we can do it. We can go get her."

"Yeah." After about a million upgrades and hours of work repairing ancient equipment. And even then it's not like they even know where she was or if she was even—the wood of the shaft bent under his fingers and nearly snapped. He forced himself to breathe and loosen his grip. He couldn't afford to break what little materials he had because he couldn't keep it together.

He'd talked to Entrapta too. She'd seemed pretty confident they could do it. He exhaled, his breath making the fletching tremble. Well, she was smarter than he was by a long shot. Maybe he should find that comforting.

"Do you think Glimmer—"

"Damn it!" He'd nicked himself again.

"OK, you're too tired to do this now. I'm calling it. You've got enough arrows. We can do this tomorrow or something. Pack it up. We're going to sleep."

"Not yet. What if..." Adora glared at him and he could see the dark circles under her eyes even in the dark. She wouldn't go to bed unless he did. And he really was too tired to do any more. "Fine."

He watched vacantly as Adora wrapped up the rest of his materials and tucked them into his quiver, dimly aware that he should do that but too exhausted to protest. Not that she didn't know how to do it. She'd helped him clean up almost as many times as—

He rubbed his face. Please. Not now. It was… too much.

He wedged his bow and quiver alongside the edge of his sleeping roll so he'd be able to grab them immediately if there was an attack. It didn't leave him a lot of room for actually sleeping. He settled back onto the bedroll. It wasn't exactly comfortable, laying there with all his armor on and his bow jabbing into his back, but he'd rather be ready.

He tried to stretch out his legs, but his boot hit the corner tent stake. He turned onto his side, tucking his legs up a little. Adora had crammed herself as far to the side as she could to give him more room, but this tent wasn't made for two people and all their gear. Adora was close enough that he could see her eyes open in the dark, staring at the purple canvas above them. She had her battle staff in her hand like she planned to sleep that way. Outside, he could hear quiet voices, tense conversation and what sounded like the watch changing over.

"Worst sleepover ever," Adora said, and even tired as he was, he let out a small laugh. It was good to see her smile, even if it was a tired one. "Micah said Casta is sending sorcerers to shield the camp. Maybe that will help. Maybe we can hide here for a while, let everyone catch their breath."

"Maybe." He wasn't really in the mood for conversation but he knew it helped Adora to make plans out loud. It let her feel in control of the situation, even when it was clearly out of hand like this. He shifted, trying to find a position where his spaulder wasn't completely digging into his shoulder, and accidentally kicked Adora. "Sorry."

"It's fine." She shifted a little closer to the side to give him more space, but there wasn't that much room to go. Guess they really were growing up. It hadn't been that long ago that they'd been kids using one of these tents to camp in the courtyard. Back then the two of them fit just fine, though he was a lot wider now and Adora was much taller than—

He tried to focus on the sliver of moonlight coming in from the tent flaps, but the problem was that the moon, the stars, the whole vastness of space made him think of her too. Everything was a minefield where he could barely touch on even the simplest things and BOOM, a burst of complicated emotions. He hadn't realized how much his entire life had revolved around her until she was gone, leaving a vacuum so strong it hurt.

"Promise me you won't do that thing you do." Adora turned to look at him. He'd almost forgotten she was there. "Where you completely ignore all your needs because you're too busy taking care of everyone else?"

"I don't do that. YOU do that."

"That's because I have to! Queen Angella told me I had to take care of you two! Her last words, Bow!" Her voice faltered on the last word. She sniffed and rubbed at her eyes. Should he be crying too? He just didn't have the energy.

"Us two? I thought you said she told you to take care of Glimmer?" He asked it softly into the silence. That's what she'd been telling them for the last year anyway. With her dying breath, Queen Angella told Adora she had to take care of Glimmer. Adora. Like he hadn't already been doing that for half his life? Comforting to know Glimmer's mom had no faith in him. Though apparently she was right, because where was Glimmer now?

He rubbed his eyes. Maybe he wasn't too tired to cry after all.

"She said... take care of each other." Adora's eyes were glistening, and she was staring past the ceiling of the tent, probably all the way back to that moment in the portal when she'd seen the queen for the last time.

"Well, that's totally different!"

"It's not! It's—" Adora shook her head, closing her eyes. "I just… I have to rescue Glimmer. I have to fix this."

"We're both…" He exhaled and then let it go. He was too drained to talk Adora out of her savior complex right now. "You're not doing it alone."

She made a vague non-committal noise and then it was quiet for long enough that he almost fell asleep, but then Adora spoke again, in a very tiny voice. "Bow?"

"Yeah?" He could feel sleep dragging him down, like those dark tendrils at Beast Island that felt like another lifetime ago.

"What happened at Bright Moon today... We've never faced anything like this, you know? This is BAD." She exhaled and grabbed at her head. "And in case we'd don't, like, make it... I just wanted you to know-"

"We're going to make it," he said quickly because it was hard enough to not let the hopelessness consume him when it was only in his head, it would be impossible if she was going to put it out in the open like that.

"Just… let me say this, OK?" She turned onto her side and looked at him as serious as he'd ever seen her. "You know that girl who works in the gardens? The one with the braids?"

There were a lot of girls who worked at the castle, and many of them had braids. He had no idea which one she meant specifically, but he nodded because he had a feeling it didn't really matter.

"Before she.. she couldn't find her sisters. And I was helping her, and… and we found them, eventually. They'd been in the south wing when the attack happened because—anyway, it's not important." Adora took a deep breath and Bow realized she was really crying now, tears streaming down her face so fast she wasn't even bothering to wipe them away. "But there was a while there, when it seemed like maybe they hadn't made it the girl was… anyway, I was just really glad we found them. It was like… they lost their house and all, but that didn't matter because they were home to her, you know?"

Adora stopped a moment, closing her eyes like she was trying to get herself under control. They were so close to together already, Bow wasn't sure if it would be weird to reach out of her or not, so he just put his hand in the small space between them so it was there if she wanted it.

"Anyway, I've never had… I mean, obviously there was Shadow Weaver, but that's like…" She made a frustrated sound. "But you and Glimmer… you're… I mean I love all our friends, of course I do, but there's no one else… except maybe Catra but that's, whoo, SO different…"

She let the sentence hang there, but he knew she was thinking about her former friend. And his feelings towards Catra were not particularly warm considering how many times she'd tried to kill all of them on top of the complete disaster of the last year. Nobody denied that Angella being gone and all that extra pressure on Glimmer directly resulted from Catra's actions with the portal. But he'd have to be an idiot to not know that, despite everything, the girl was still incredibly important to Adora.

"Anyway, just… I love you. Both of you. You're my… I don't know. I mean, we're not related or anything and you've both already got like actual dads and aunts and siblings and stuff but…"

"I know what you mean. And we love you too. Both of us." He wasn't sure if it was weird that he was answering for Glimmer, especially after the contentious year the two of them had, but he knew it was true. And, heck, these last few years he was closer to Adora than he was any of his actual sisters. But he didn't like the way she was making this sound like goodbye. "We're all in this together, Adora. You're not getting rid of us that easy."

She laughed. "Well… good. So… don't you dare die on me!"

"I'll try not to." He gave her a grin. She grabbed his hand and gave it two tight squeezes before shifting onto her side. In a moment, she was sleeping, her back rising and falling in a steady rhythm. He closed his eyes too and tried to sleep over the buzz of his own thoughts.

Adora felt like family. That part was right. But there was something about the way she'd talked about them, like he and Glimmer were her brother and sister… that didn't sit right. And maybe it was silly, he'd known her since he was a kid after all, but even now when he was as annoyed at her as he'd ever been with any of his siblings, thinking of Glimmer as his sister felt entirely wrong. Like trying to cram the wrong arrowhead on where it didn't fit.

And that was weird, wasn't it?

He'd almost worked it out when exhaustion finally caught up with him and dragged him under into restless sleep.