It took two hours, one roll of makeshift bandages, and the last of Catra's patience before Adora finally woke.
After Catra realized that she apparently couldn't leave Adora behind, however much her mind screamed that she should, she was left with two options: one, sit there and watch Adora die; or two, try to figure out some way to bandage her wounds. There wasn't much point to it, she told herself. After all, was the main issue her injuries, or the jarring split in that stupid runestone? If it was the latter, it made no difference whether she bothered to stop Adora from bleeding all over the canyon floor—she still might never wake up.
The cold thing in Catra's stomach chilled slightly.
It took some careful maneuvering around Adora's injuries and her own bad shoulder, but she managed to pull Adora's arms free of the sleeves of her jacket. Adora was not making a convincing argument for her own survival, remaining a limp and silent weight throughout the whole process. Catra was starting to breathe heavily from the effort of moving her dead weight by the time she finally worked the jacket out from under Adora's shoulders. She pressed one hand to her aching ribs, a ripple of pain passing through her shoulder. That fall had taken a lot out of her.
She held up the red Horde jacket, then looked down at Adora's unmoving form.
"If you don't want me to tear this to shreds, now's the time to say something."
Adora, unsurprisingly, was silent.
Catra shrugged with one shoulder. Good. She had no idea why Adora had insisted on wearing this jacket so long anyway—it belonged to the Horde, and she didn't. Not anymore.
It was a frustrating process to shred the jacket into long strips. Catra's claws were meant to puncture and tear, not cut evenly through dense fabric. Eventually, though, she was left with a pile of something that resembled bandages, and a distant sense of vindication.
"You wouldn't be in this mess if it wasn't for your massive, stupid hero complex, you know," she said conversationally as she looked up and down Adora's body to assess her visible injuries. Multiple small cuts; nothing to be done about them now.
"'Look at me,'" she mocked, "'I'm the mighty She-Ra.'" Three familiar, jagged cuts that traced across Adora's forearm and slowly oozed lines of blood into her sleeve. Those would have to be wrapped.
"'I can catch tank shells in my teeth and still come out of it sparkling,'" she continued. Adora's side, covered in a rapidly growing stain of red. Clearly, something had cut deep, but the wound was hidden by a shirt that remained wholly intact. Apparently clothes had not factored in when She-Ra's wounds were somehow transferred to Adora.
Magic was weird.
"Not everyone needs to be saved all the time, moron," she finished. Except… if the tank had been aiming for Catra… well. There wouldn't have been anything left of her to patch up, if it hadn't been for a stupid, glowing idiot and her even stupider, glowing sword.
She pulled up the bottom of Adora's shirt with more force than strictly necessary and surveyed the wound. A small, jagged shard of metal from a very exploded tank had embedded itself in Adora's abdomen. Part of the shard poked above the skin, blood pooling around it and dripping in a sluggish but steady trickle down Adora's now-exposed skin and into the grass below. Despite her anger, Catra winced.
"I should just leave that there, you know," she deadpanned to Adora's still form. "Maybe you'd finally learn something."
Ha. Adora, learn something? Unless it came out of a training manual or tactical plan, not likely. Adora would be an obnoxious, self-sacrificing idiot until the day she died.
Catra released her hold on the shirt, and it accidentally snapped down near the wound. Adora's unsteady breath caught in her throat before evening out again.
Which might be today, if Catra didn't do something.
Ugh.
Delaying the inevitable, Catra used one claw to cut off the soaked length of Adora's sleeve that covered the marks Catra scratched into her arm when she was in She-Ra's form. She bound the wounds with a length of jacket-bandage and tied it off tightly, a motion rewarded with a spasm of the muscles in Adora's arm and a slight whimper. She looked up to see Adora's brows pinched together. Now she was deciding to wake up? Wonderful. Fantastic timing.
Reluctantly, her eyes slid down to what she had been avoiding: the growing stain at Adora's side. The trickle of blood had not slowed, issuing forth from the small pool around the wound that pulsed in tandem with Adora's heartbeat. One of Catra's ears flicked toward her. The steady, rhythmic sound that had lulled her to sleep in the Fright Zone now came too weak, each beat too far apart.
Catra put two fingers near the wound and pulled slightly, more blood rushing in to fill the gap she created. Adora made a quiet sound and rolled her head to one side. The wound was relatively small, but it appeared to go deeper than she had hoped.
For someone who had been ready to kill She-Ra just a few hours ago, she really was not looking forward to this.
The claws of her thumb and forefinger hovered over the wound, a hairsbreadth away from touching the exposed corner of metal.
"I hope this hurts," she hissed, willing her fingers to stop trembling.
Catra took a deep breath and committed, grasping the shard and starting to pull. She resisted the urge to yank it free in one swift motion—that would get it over with quickly, sure, but create even more damage in the process. Adora moaned softly, face twisted in pain, before rolling her head to the side and back again. Her eyelids fluttered and one arm twitched toward her side.
Absurdly, Catra felt a growing urge to apologize. She stifled it and concentrated. Almost… there. The muscles in Adora's abdomen tensed, almost arching her back off the ground as the bloodied shard finally came free. Catra tossed it into the woods. What was once a steady trickle was now a free flowing stream of red, and Catra snatched up a wad of makeshift bandages and shoved it into the wound, pressing down hard. Adora gasped, eyes flying fully open. Her unfocused gaze landed on Catra and she cried out again, managing to raise one arm enough to thrash weakly at her.
"Hey—stop it," Catra bit out. Both of her hands were occupied trying to prevent Adora from, you know, bleeding out all over the ground, but Adora didn't seem to care about that. She writhed weakly on the ground, trying to push her away. "Cut it out," Catra repeated. All this movement wasn't going to do anything except worsen Adora's injury, and Catra wasn't about to have her time wasted.
"I'm trying to help you, you idiot!" She finally yelled.
Adora's arm dropped limply, her hand managing to close on Catra's wrist as her elbow hit the ground. Her unfocused eyes found Catra's and cleared for a brief moment.
"Catra?" she whispered. The hand on Catra's wrist tightened, and she felt a ripple of unwelcome concern at the weakness of the grip. Then, as if confused, repeating Catra's words in a tone that made her unsure if it was a question or a plea: "Help."