Chapter 33: Eden
Opened packets littered the floor and a fine sheen of food-prep dust blanketed the countertops of the Dzivia's tiny kitchen by the time Adora finally succeeded in preparing a second meal. The feast Kal had put in front of her normally would have sufficed, but something about waking up still injured after three days unconscious had made her ravenous. That, and she had grasped onto any excuse she could to stall having to see him again on account of how guilty she felt for their previous interaction.
Finally, with a second full-course meal in her stomach, Adora could prolong things no further—she had to go find Kal. She found him in the same place from the first time, in the cockpit, except this time he lounged in the pilot's chair with his feet up on the forward console, seat reclined all the way back, staring blank-faced out the view screen at the warp tunnel.
He didn't say anything to her. Didn't even turn around when she came in, even though she knew he had heard her. The doors slid shut. She chewed her lip and shifted her weight from one foot to the other, unsure what to say.
"Just tell me one thing, Kal," she said, when the silence between them grew too much for her to stand.
He didn't immediately respond, and Adora swallowed the lump growing in her throat. He leaned back further, enough to look at her upside down in the chair, over the top of his raised brow and through the wispy strands of his hair.
"Are you here to help?"
"I told you I'm not you're enemy," he said. "I'm not lying about that. I'm trying to help."
Adora looked him in the eyes when he said it. She imagined he were Catra telling her three years ago that they were on the same side. She tried to walk herself through the motions of denying his words, tried to convince herself that he was lying to her and she was only being quick to trust as was in her nature. Despite her best efforts, she couldn't bring herself to believe that; not only did everything since their skirmish in the castle indicate he wasn't trying to hurt her, even her own gut instinct urged to not see him as an enemy, although she couldn't for the life of her understand why.
"I'm sorry for earlier," she said, rubbing her shoulders even though there was no chill in the cockpit. "I…I think this is all starting to get too much for me. She Ra was gone entirely in the castle when we fought…I couldn't…" she stopped and grabbed a breath, her train of thought already slipping away. "Then she all of a sudden comes back and I leap four stories onto your ship to stop you? It's just…" She huffed. "That crystal of yours? That apeiron? I couldn't feel anything more than a tiny hint of something in there when I reached…I lied when I said I gleaned a lot of information from it."
He looked surprised at her words, and Adora didn't want to give him the time to interject out of fear she'd lose it entirely if she was even slightly derailed.
"I'm on some mysterious ship with a mysterious person who, up until a few weeks ago, was sneaking around Etheria and breaking into First One's vaults without anyone knowing. I just feel so far out of my element, I…you said you wanted to leave me behind. Please don't leave me behind on the ship when we get to…well, wherever we're going."
Her words hung between them for a beat, then two, before Kal gestured toward the co-pilot seat. Adora shuffled forward, stretching a leg out to awkwardly straddle-hover over the center console, and tried not to wince too pitifully as she lowered herself into the chair. Her muscles and injuries screamed murder at her, but it was a small price to pay considering the alternative was falling to her death back on Etheria.
Dials and levers and sleek diagnostic readouts were built into the control panel before and around her. They seemed to vie for her attention, each one of them, and the hyperspace tunnel encompassing everything else on top of it nearly gave Adora sensory overload. She thought she might have to shut her eyes to keep from going insane, and there was a feeling she was moments away from being sucked out of the cockpit entirely and into the void beyond.
"You'll get used to it," Kal said, watching her adjust. "Hyperspace is something that takes the brain some time to acclimate to. Now that I think about it, it's probably a good metaphor for everything else you'll encounter soon, out in the wider galaxy."
"Does the 'getting used to it' part of that metaphor apply to the 'everything out in the galaxy' too?" she asked. "Or just to this tunnel?"
Kal laughed, and it struck Adora that this was the first time she had ever heard him do so. It was light and casual and entirely at odds, again, with the image she had in her head of this interloper.
"I sure hope you acclimate to the rest of the galaxy too," he said. "I'm guessing there was a time when you weren't used to She Ra either, back when you could use her a little more readily. You got used to her after a time too, didn't you?"
"My powers are…a larger issue," she said, tamping down on the urge to already lash out at him for bringing it up. "I've always been able to feel her, even when I couldn't draw her out. She was always there, under the surface." A deep breath. "But, when we fought in the castle and you told me to bring her out, she was…she was…"
"Gone?"
Adora whirled in the chair to face him, barely able to keep from yelling and asking him how he knew. Kal must have read her question from her expression, because he reached up to the overhead controls and grabbed something dangling there she hadn't noticed earlier. It was the circular manacles he had cuffed her with back when they fought.
"Don't worry," he said, a smile flickering across his face. He held them out for her and she shied away from them. "I'm not going to put them on you. Just…take them and try and reach for your power."
Adora did so. Holding both cuffs, one in each hand, she reached for She Ra and felt…nothing. Frowning, she pushed harder and still felt no answer. There was no wall pushing back against her or blocking her from reaching for it, either. It was as if her powers weren't there and had never been there at all to begin with. She placed the manacles up on the console off to her left and reached again, now that she wasn't holding them. She Ra bubbled there under the surface like she had never left. Adora tried it again, just to be sure.
"You're taking it better than most," Kal said, watching her expression as she experimented. "Most magically-inclined have a complete meltdown the first time something like that happens to them."
"Full disclosure, I did have a meltdown the first time it happened," she said. "I almost freaked out on you just now, right when you brought it up." She held up the cuffs by one manacle, letting the second one dangle and swing freely off the chain connecting it to the first. "What is this thing?"
"Ignominite cuffs. Extremely expensive. Slap one of those on someone and even a Battlemage like Taline wouldn't be able to so much as light one of the candles at your Induction Ceremonies with her magic."
"I thought ignominite was only imbued into crystals to trap the Beast," Adora said, handing the manacles back to Kal and watching him hook them up on the overhead console again. "Like an apeiron, no?"
"That and forging them into bullets are the most common uses, yes," he said. "They're also used to restrain rogue mages, since physically touching the stuff blocks any use of magic. You didn't lose your connection to She Ra back in the castle, I cut you off."
"You egged me on," Adora said, remembering what happened. "You told me to reach for She Ra after slapping those on me, knowing what would happen. You played me."
"Yep," he said, grinning. "At the time, I just wanted to bring your attention to the fact she was gone, rather than you trying to reach on your own and finding something wrong. Figured you'd freak out worse and make it harder for me to work if it were the latter. Sorry about that. It was mean."
"It was mean," Adora said, agreeing. To her surprise, relief flooded through instead of anger. Nothing was wrong with her connection, at least not any more wrong than it had been in the past. Kal still had that grin on his face as if the whole thing were a practical joke and, to her even greater surprise, she found it kind of funny too.
"My god," she said, unable to keep a smile of her own from forming. "You damn near gave me a heart attack. You are such a jerk, I thought I lost her for good!" She felt so happy she almost reached over and slugged him in the arm, hard enough to bruise.
"Yeah, very jerk-like of me, I fully admit it," he said. "Although I did pay for that bit of fun, in the end."
"What do you mean?"
"There's nothing wrong with your powers. If anything, you seem to be coming back into them, slowly. When you managed to call on some of it and catch me, you put a giant hole in my ship that I spent forever repairing."
"Serves you right," she said with a smirk.
Adora didn't tell him she was still worried, though. There were many times since waking up where she had quietly tried to transform, where she had tried thinking of her friends while reaching for her powers since that's what had worked back at the castle. But despite her best efforts, she still couldn't wield her powers at will. In fact, if Kal hadn't just confirmed what had happened, she might have started to think that multi-story jump, sword in hand, was just a fever dream.
"I'm sorry too, by the way," Kal said, shaking her from her thoughts.
'You're…sorry? I'm the one that accused you of being a spy."
"You did, but I wasn't exactly being very understanding either. I can't imagine how strange it would have felt to be in your shoes, waking up on some random person's ship bound for who knows where after fighting them for stealing something out of your castle? And I did steal from you—I won't deny that." He sighed. "Not the best introduction, I'll admit."
"Not really, no," Adora said. It felt strange hearing him so openly acknowledge this. It almost made her want to drop her guard, although she knew better than that. Naïve Adora was a thing of the past.
"I was a member of the Enclave once," he said. "That was the first thing you asked, and I said that I wasn't, though I didn't give you the full context."
Adora considered that. "Why did you leave?"
Kal shrugged and turned back to stare at the warp tunnel, his grin long since faded into a stony expression. "I served for a handful of years during the first Beast war as a Battlemage. Saw too many of my friends and squad mates die, as is the case in war. I decided I was done with it all after the Daiamid emerged and I saw what a clusterfuck that caused."
Adora barely kept her surprise from showing on her face. She had half expected Kal to admit to being kicked out of the order, her having asked why he left having been a loaded question. This, however, was a far more interesting development.
"Were you there in person when it happened?" she asked, "The trial where they revealed themselves? Or were you talking, like, more in a general sense? I was told news of the fighting that day reached all corners of the empire, pretty much."
"I was there in person, just like Salas was," Kal said. "In fact, I remember seeing him. And Prime. I watched the emperor put his ego ahead of the safety of his people and I watched the Enclave go along with it. About the only admirable thing I saw was watching Taline's Sentinels jump literally into the heat of battle and pull her out—save her life before she lost it fighting against the Daiamid when they escaped. Although that wasn't enough to stop me from leaving the Enclave as a whole after." He glanced sidelong at her. "Hearing you accuse me of being a spy for the emperor after what he started…I didn't react to it well."
That made sense, but suddenly there were a million other things in her head that didn't. He knew Salas? What did it say that Salas hadn't seemed to recognize him when his face showed up tied to all the security breaches? Did Kal know of Salas but Salas didn't know of Kal? And why was Kal avoiding the Enclave if their goals aligned? Everyone on Etheria, including the Enclave, were trying to find a way to stop the Beast. Was there something stopping them from working together, even if Kal was no longer one of them?
It was hard enough keeping the food she had eaten still inside her while sitting so close to the viewscreen. Deciding which question to ask next was another matter entirely, and it made her even more nauseous with anxiety. To keep from agonizing over it any longer, she picked the most straightforward thing she could ask.
"Is that what you were doing at the Induction Ceremony?" She remembered seeing him standing there before their graves with anguish on his face while she had a breakdown in Angella's arms. "Paying respects to Narre and Miri because you admired what they did for Taline that day?"
"I visited all three times and did the same thing," he said, voice light. "Honestly, I was surprised you didn't notice until the last one."
"I've been kind of unable to focus on anything at all except She Ra ever since Prime invaded," Adora said. She cringed—that sounded so much more concerning out loud than it did in her head. "You seem to know a lot, so I'm sure you're already well aware of how…single-minded I've been while you were wandering around the kingdoms."
Kal's silence was answer enough. Suddenly, she no longer wanted to ask any of the burning questions knocking about in her head. She felt too ashamed thinking back on how she had spent the past few years, and feared getting her questions answered might only exacerbate that for some reason.
There was a good reason for her wanting to get back in touch with She Ra, of course. No one could dispute that. But, still…three whole years doing nothing but training and agonizing over powers that never came to her? Her relationship with everyone but Bow and Glimmer had deteriorated, and as embarrassing as it was to admit, she only had herself to blame. Angella's speech at the ceremony couldn't have come sooner.
Kal took his feet off the dash and leaned forward. "We're here," he said.
He released a lock somewhere, and the throttle on the center console between them jumped back to a neutral position. The hyperspace tunnel fell away and a massive, yellow star filled the viewscreen, bathing them in a near-unbearable blinding light. Adora pushed herself into the back of the chair trying to get away from its brilliance, shielding her eyes with her hands.
"Should have put this up first," Kal said, pressing another button. "Sorry about that." The view screen polarized, muting the light of the star into a calming yellow glow.
Adora lowered her jaw followed. The surface of the star before her rippled and burst like a massive, singular plane of magma. The fact it covered nearly the entire viewscreen only added to her sense of awe.
"That's Arcturus, by the way," Kal said, steering the ship so the bow pointed toward the edge of the star rather than its center.
"We're not landing on the star, are we?" Adora asked "That's not a thing, right?"
Kal chuckled. "No, not quite."
A small speck of darkness against the star-scape came into focus. Adora watched it grow larger and larger until she realized what they were approaching was actually a small, rocky planet.
"How has that thing not been pulled into its gravity?" Adora asked.
"That's the least surprising thing about this place, believe it or not. Just wait until we get to the other side."
Adora was about to ask what he meant by that when the ship's computer blared at them. Two fighters off in the distance had locked onto them and were hailing to open a channel. Kal obliged, and a ragged looking fellow, a sheet of polished metal covering a portion of his face and an eye patch covering one of his six eyes, appeared on an opaqued section of the viewscreen.
"Attention unidentified craft," he said. "You are entering a restricted Imperial no-fly zone. Provide identification immediately or turn away. Refusal will be met with deadly force."
Adora tensed, but Kal reached out and pressed another button on the console without batting an eye.
"Sending identification codes now," he said as he input another set of commands. The person on the other line glanced down.
"Identification checks out," he said after a moment. "You can continue on."
Kal smiled. "'Checks out' isn't standard Imperial comms language, you know."
The man grumbled and cut the line.
"The outpost is built here specifically to deter people from stumbling across it by accident," Kal said when Adora looked at him, confused. "Every now and then, the planet will still pop up on someone's sensors and a curious explorer will come looking. They send out two or so fighters in unmarked warbirds to pretend this is an Imperial black-site."
"It's not?" Adora was a little ashamed to admit to herself that, for a brief moment, she imagined Kal having lied, her being right, and them being moments away from actually landing on a military outpost to meet Horde Prime as she had originally accused.
"No," Kal said. "It's the opposite actually."
They shot past the planet. Jumping so close to a star might have startled Adora, but what she saw when Kal turned them around to face the sun side of the planet was jaw dropping.
A shimmering dome, made of what looked to Adora like a lattice of diamonds, covered the whole surface, protecting an enormous green landmass underneath. There was a glistening blue sea, what looked to be a beach, and the towering skyscrapers and winding highways of a megalopolis built nearby.
"Welcome to Eden," Kal said to her. All Adora could do was gape.
The crackle of comms chatter opened up in the cockpit as they drew closer, and someone identifying themself as 'Tower Control' greeted them with a static-filled voice.
"Acknowledged Tower Control," Kal said, responding to them. "This is the starship Dzivia coming in on heading four-seven-nine. Requesting approach vectors for landing."
"Transmitting approach vectors for bay three now," the voice said. "Prepare to release manual controls to your autopilot on my mark."
"Negative Tower Control, my autopilot is malfunctioning." Kal shot Adora a look as if to say 'you broke it when you cut my ship,' and she had the good manners to at least look sheepish. "I'll take her in manually."
There was a pause, as if they had to double check to make sure they heard Kal correctly, before:
"Acknowledged, Dzivia. Approach vector transmission complete. Follow those coordinates as best you can—we'll keep an eye on you from here."
A set of multi-digit coordinates broken up by decimals and dashes appeared onscreen. Kal guided the ship gently through the barrier and to one of the open landing platforms below. A team of marshallers, each wearing a reflective orange vest and hardhat, stood atop the landing bay and guided them in with glowing batons and exaggerated motions. When Kal touched them down and powered off, he leapt from the pilot's seat and went to the workbench at the rear of the cockpit.
"They're going to scan us when we get off the ship," Kal said, taking the crystal still there and stuffing it into a small field bag. "You'll be fine, but they're going to spook when they get to me. Whatever you do, don't provoke them and don't get defensive. Just stay where you are and do whatever they tell you to do. You don't have any weapons on you, do you?"
"What?" Adora glanced out the view screen and saw a small troop of armed guards dressed in brown already marching up to the craft in formation. "No, I don't have anything on me. Why are they going to get aggressive?"
"It's a long story," he said, walking out the cockpit and through the halls to the back of the ship while she followed. "Whatever you do, just don't give them any reason to shoot us."
"That doesn't make me feel any better at all," Adora said. She suppressed a high-pitched whine of anxiety when she waited for more of an explanation and he didn't give her one.
When they reached the cargo bay, Kal pulled a lever next to the exit ramp and it descended in a flurry of steam and pneumatic groans. When the metal of the ship's ramp touched the floor of the landing bay, he strode down and out to the soldiers waiting there. Adora matched his pace on his right. A shiver ran through her body at the cold air that kissed her skin. Despite being on a planet so close to the sun, the air was cool?
"Nothing to declare," Kal said stopping just shy of the soldiers. "No weapons."
"We still need to scan you," the nearest soldier said, holding up a portable device. "Imperial presence in the sector is heightened. The Beast is seeping through into the Kaloshi border, so we aren't letting anyone go without one."
Kal shrugged and the soldier gestured for Adora to step forward first. She did, spreading her arms and her legs when they asked her to as they ran the scanner across her
"Clean," the soldier said, jerking his thumb in a 'get going' gesture over his shoulder when they finished with her. Adora didn't know where he wanted her to go, so she stayed put.
Kal took the same pose as her when they moved on to him, albeit with a lazier posture and a bored look on his face. The machine screamed as soon as they started the scan, and every guard on the platform suddenly jumped and trained their weapons on the both of them.
"Who the fuck are you?" the soldier said, jumping back a fair distance from the both of them.
"I'm Kal," he said, tone placid.
"Don't give me that bullshit." The soldier pulled a sidearm from his holster and trained its barrel on him. "These magazines are loaded with full ignominite rounds. You either tell me who you are and what you're doing here, or I'm going to put a bullet between your eyes."
Kal's unassuming expression shifted into something steely and dangerous. Adora's body urged her to move, but her mind reminded her of what he said moments before—to give them no reason to shoot them. She didn't move a muscle.
"You will do no such thing," Kal said in a low voice. "Because in about five seconds, someone is going to walk through the doors to this hangar and order you to stand down. And you are going to listen to them."
The soldier furrowed his brow. "I'm not going to entertain anything an Abomination says to me. My job is to keep this landing port safe." He nodded to the rest of the squad. "Shoot them. Both of them."
Weapons primed to fire, and for the second time in recent memory, Adora could feel the imminent approach of death. Then, a baritone voice blared over the hangar's intercom.
"Belay that order."
The soldiers looked to each other and then their leader in confusion. The voice spoke again, thick with an accent Adora couldn't place, not that she was surprised.
"Lower your weapons, damnit!"
The soldiers complied, albeit warily, and the doors to the ground floor of what Adora assumed was the hangar's security office in the far corner flew open. A burly man with a scarred face and a thick fur-collared jacket marched out and toward them. A smaller team of soldiers, dressed in sharp, blue uniforms that set them distinctly apart from the brown of the security soldiers before them, flanked him on either side.
"V-Vasher?" the first soldier said, turning to him and offering a shaky salute.
"Put that shit away, son," Vasher said, voice gruff and face equal parts irritated and weary. "My guys and I will take it from here. Go on to your next security check—I think a transport just pulled into the bay next door."
"But sir, this person tripped the scanner." The soldier pointed at Kal, who just smiled and gave a cheeky wave. "We can't let an Abo—"
"I've tried to be civil about this, Captain, but you don't seem to get the hint." Vasher's tone grew more divorced from a human voice and more akin to a feral growl with every syllable. "Get the fuck off my landing platform."
The captain saluted again, barked out orders to his men, and within a handful of seconds had them double-timing away. When the blast doors at the far end leading out of the hangar slid shut behind them, Vasher turned to regard Kal with a severe expression.
"Hey, man," Kal said with all the tact of someone who hadn't just been moments from death.
Vasher just blinked at him, incredulous. "I almost couldn't believe my ears when I heard that the Dzivia was transmitting a landing request to Tower Control," he said. "I was certain someone had somehow killed you and took your ship. Either that, or I was trapped in some nightmare where you actually thought it was a good idea to show up here again."
"So, you're saying that you aren't happy to see me?" Kal asked, sounding as if he were trying to solve an incredible challenge of a puzzle.
Vasher grunted. "Yeah, that has to be you. No one else I know could be nearly as cheeky after having half a dozen rifles shoved in their face." He glanced in Adora's direction, and she gave him a wave and a nervous smile. Vasher only rolled his eyes and harrumphed again before turning his attention back to Kal. Adora tried not let her disappointment at having been so thoroughly ignored show on her face.
"So?" Vasher asked. "Three years and no word, not even a goodbye. What brings you back?"
"I need to see Ly."
Vasher choked out a laugh. "Oh, like hell you do."
Kal crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow at him. "I'm serious. I wouldn't be here if it weren't for a good reason, just like I wouldn't have left in the first place if it weren't for a good reason either."
"You ask for too much, Kal. Too much." Vasher shook his head. "Do you realize how long it took me to calm her down after you left? She was disconsolate for months. I mean, hell, she doesn't even know you're here right now or else those warbirds would have blasted you to pieces without even hailing first."
"That mad, huh?"
"Yes!" Vasher threw his arms up and waved them in aggressive, sweeping gestures. "You left, Kal. In the middle of a job. We were lucky to make it back here alive and doubly lucky that our employers didn't mount our heads on spikes. How else are we supposed to feel?"
"You weren't ever in any danger," Kal said, frowning. "I wouldn't have left if I thought either of you had the slightest chance of getting caught, and the deal we negotiated with the Vestamid was airtight. They wouldn't have killed you."
Vasher's troops grew nervous at the mention of the Vestamid, and Vasher himself spoke with more restraint.
"We're still paying off the debt from losing all their product," he said.
"I know," Kal said. "I'm sorry. You have every right to be angry, I'm not trying to dismiss that. But, please…I wouldn't have done it if it weren't absolutely necessary." He held up the sling bag in one hand for Vasher to get a good look at, and his eyes nearly bugged out of his head.
"Is that…?"
Kal only nodded.
"Then does that mean—"
"No," Kal said, cutting him off. "Something went wrong with Pip and I need to talk to Ly, see if she can do anything about it. I haven't been able to make any progress on my end."
"You must be really desperate if you've come to ask her for that," Vasher said. "How do you even know she'd be able to fix her?"
"I am desperate," Kal said. "And I don't know that she'd be able to fix anything, but she's the best chance we have." He slung the bag around his shoulder again. "Will you help me? Or am I going to have to hunt her down myself?"
Vasher looked him in the eyes for several moments before deflating. "She's got a performance late tonight," he said. "You won't be able to get ahold of her before then, but I can put you both up in a room and get you a meeting after the show is done."
"Same place?"
"Same place," Vasher said nodding.
"Alright, thank you." Kal pushed past Vasher and his guards, glancing briefly in Adora's direction for her to follow. Adora power-walked to catch up and stuck close as they made their way to the blast doors at the back of the hangar—the same doors the security team that had first greeted them had fled through.
"Kal," Vasher said, calling after them from behind loud enough for his voice to echo. When Kal stopped and turned to look at him, he said, "it's good to see you again. I'm glad you're back safe."
"Me too," he said. "Me too. And thank you for your help. I mean it."
No more words were exchanged, and Adora followed him out the hangar, her mind scrambling to make sense of the whole exchange.
AN:
My favorite part of this scene has to be when Adora gets so put out after meeting Vasher. The first friendly new face she's scene in years, finally off Etheria and exploring the wider galaxy, and the dude straight up ignores her and just, woosh. All the wind out of her sails T.T Even though she's not your typical egotistical person who thinks the world revolves around them because they are awesome, she still has a bit of that "I have to do everything and save everyone" in her, and it's always a fun time slapping her with a bit of a reality check. That's it. That's Adora's arc.
We're at about the halfway mark for this fic, and have a Catra chapter coming up next. Been a while since we've seen her.
Another fun fact about this story is, before I started posting, I considered making the chapters just absolutely huge. Like, 10-12k word chapters each, and releasing one a month or so. The story would have concluded around the ~30ish chapter mark (around here), but I decided to break the chapters up into smaller, more "traditionally published sci-fi/fantasy novel length" chapters. It was easier for me to proofread in smaller chunks before posting, and after doing the math, I realized you would get more story (and we would get to the end) faster with weekly updates and smaller uploads than monthly updates and larger uploads. Plus, I wrote the whole thing with the current chapter breaks in mind, so trying to figure out a flow for larger chapters would have added onto the work.
Thank you as always for reading and following along!
