"Glimmer."
Glimmer staunchly ignored the call, marching determinedly forward.
"Glimmer." Bow ran a step forward and caught her arm. She whirled on him angrily.
"I know what you're going to say, Bow, and I don't want to hear it."
"Glimmer, please..." Bow sighed, pinching his brow. "I'm just as worried as you, but we have to go back. You need to recharge."
She yanked her arm from Bow's grasp. "No." Her arm shook, and she grasped it with her other hand to still it. It didn't work very well, since her hand was shaking too.
"No," she repeated. "That soldier said he saw Adora fighting someone right on the edge of the canyon before she disappeared, and if—if she was fighting Catra and they fell down there, we have to find her now—""
"We don't even know if it was her!" Bow protested weakly.
"Look around you!" she gestured wildly to the ground in front of them, littered with claw marks, clean-cut gouges into the rock that could have only come from Adora's sword, and two deep craters from explosions. "Look at that!" she thrust an arm toward the canyon below, where something large and heavy had carved a path of destruction into the forest. Its final resting place was hidden by the dense canopy, but stark fissures in the earth and a trail of broken trees showed its path. "She's down there, Bow. We have to get her."
"Okay. Okay," Bow interrupted. She could tell he was trying to sound logical, but stress bled into his voice. "I want to find Adora just as badly as you, but what will you do if she's down there? The walls are way too steep to climb, the only safe access point is half an hour away, and if you teleported down, you wouldn't even be able to walk—which means you wouldn't be able to find her, you wouldn't be able to teleport yourself back out, and you definitely wouldn't be able to teleport her, too."
Glimmer ground her teeth. Swift Wind. Why had that stupid flying horse chosen now of all times to be away on another one of his "liberation missions"? Adora was supposed to be able to call him back when he was needed, but if she couldn't…
"I don't care." Her eyes were starting to fill, and she angrily blinked the moisture away. "I have to do something."
"We are doing something," Bow insisted, gently. He laid a comforting hand on Glimmer's shoulder, and this time she didn't pull away. "We'll send anyone we can spare down to the canyon to check for her, and then we'll come back the second you've recharged. We might even make it down there before they do!"
Glimmer opened her mouth to speak, closed it, then gave a look over her shoulder at the canyon before slumping her shoulders in defeat.
"Fine," she said, finally, voice trembling as she stared at the ground.
Bow's arms wrapped around her and she clung to him in response, feeling her tears soak a damp patch into the fabric of his shirt.
"We'll find her," he reassured, gently. "I promise."
Adora was 87.6% sure she wasn't dead.
The point-six percent was very important. She wasn't quite sure how, it just was.
A few things factored into her calculation: one, everything hurt. Everything hurt a lot. If this was what being dead was like, she really, really hoped it would hurt a lot less.
Two, she was almost certain she had seen Catra at some point, and Catra was not dead. Adora had made absolutely certain that if it was the last thing she did, Catra would not be dead.
The final, most significant reason for her not being dead was that someone…. something was telling her she wasn't. It felt vaguely like her connection with the sword, that strange feeling that had pulled her from her bed in the Fright Zone and into the Whispering Woods so long ago, but now it was… twisted, somehow. Slipping away from her, blurry. It buzzed with a strange energy, pulsing with an uneven vibration that shouted wrong, wrong, wrong.
And it hurt. More than the wounds and bruises she could distantly feel, this cracked, wrong energy flooded her body and pulsed with a staticy, unrelenting pain that refused to fade, muddling her mind. Still, it managed to communicate one, simple message: she wasn't dead.
Not yet.
Adora floated for a while, hovering near the edge of reality but not quite surfacing, until eventually her senses managed to process movement. Her movement. There was a familiar, wiry arm wrapped around her back, supporting her, and—she blinked, trying to clear fuzzy vision—a… thing… coming toward her. She blinked again. A canteen?
"Catra?" She croaked.
"Oh," came Catra's voice, utterly flat. "Awake this time?"
Her eyes roamed their surroundings—trees, rocks, more trees, more rocks—then landed back on the canteen, and finally back on Catra.
"Where did you get…?"
"Tank," Catra answered, shortly.
Adora raised an inquiring eyebrow—or tried to. Her muscles weren't responding quite the way she intended, but Catra sighed and lowered the canteen anyway.
"We're at the bottom of a canyon," she explained, annoyance coloring every word. "The second shot knocked us down here. The first one hit a wrecked tank. Part of it ended up there," Catra jabbed a finger toward the searing pain in Adora's abdomen, "and the rest of it ended up about fifteen minutes that way." Catra glanced down at the canteen and a small, Horde-issue canvas bag that lay off to the side. "I managed to pull some supplies out of it."
Adora's eyes wandered in the direction that Catra had pointed, noting the trail of broken trees, cracked rock, and deep gouges cut into the earth. Huh. Must've been a strong blast to knock something that heavy down here.
A thunderous crack resounded in her mind and spread through her body, so sudden, so wrong that even the bone-shattering impact that followed seemed insignificant by comparison. She shuddered. Her sword…
She tried to sit fully upright, then fell back with a cry at the sharp, blinding pain in her side.
"Idiot!" Catra hissed, dropping the canteen for a moment so she could use her free hand to tighten the bandage. "Don't move."
Adora swallowed a whimper at the motion. Pathetic, some distant part of her thought.
"Sword?" she managed, dreading the answer. Catra's eyes flicked to the side, and Adora's gaze followed. She almost didn't have to see it to know, but confirmation came with a flood of panic. The sword lay in the grass, shining in the afternoon light, and the runestone… the runestone was thoroughly, unmistakably, irreparably cracked.
No sword.
No She-Ra.
The rebellion would fall, the Horde would win, all of Etheria would be lost, and it would be her fault—
The arm tightened around her back, and a familiar, impatient voice brought her back to the present. "Drink." The canteen pressed to her lips.
Adora made a face as water trickled into her mouth—it was warm, and tasted like dirt, steel, and blood. The last part came probably came from her.
She managed to gasp out something that sounded vaguely like "thanks" when Catra finally pulled the canteen away. Catra grunted in acknowledgment, then tilted what was left of the contents into her own mouth.
"Shouldn't… have saved that?" Adora asked weakly, but Catra just shrugged.
"Doesn't really matter if we die of dehydration now or later."
"Catra."
Things were getting blurry, but she was pretty sure Catra rolled her eyes, "Relax. I think I heard a stream out there somewhere."
Oh. Good. They'd have to find it… later.
Things were definitely getting blurry now; dark, too.
Catra's eyes were on her now, and she dimly registered concern. Her mouth was moving, but she couldn't hear it. Couldn't answer.
She gave in and closed her eyes.
The next time Adora woke, the day's moon had moved noticeably lower in the sky, and she felt… better.
Well, about as "better" as she could feel with a bleeding hole in her side, more cuts and scrapes than she could count, what felt like at least a couple of cracked ribs and a magical headache the size of—
Correction: She no longer felt like she was about to die.
The fuzzy, pulsing feeling from her magical connection with the sword seemed to have faded somewhat. Whether that was a good thing or a bad thing remained to be seen, but for now, it meant that her head had cleared and some of the strange, debilitating pain that came after the runestone cracked had faded with it.
One hand inched toward the hilt of the sword, curious if physical contact would do anything to restore the connection, but she thought better of it. As much as she wanted—needed—to see if her connection to She-Ra could be restored, her body needed a reprieve from whatever happened to the sword's magic.
Her hand closed on a small pebble instead, and she launched it toward where Catra sat a short distance away, head propped on her hand and elbow resting on her knee, eyes apparently closed.
Her shaky aim and weak arm meant the pebble skittered across the ground in front of Catra instead of actually hitting her, but her eyes flew open at the sound. They shot toward the pebble, then Adora, one eyebrow arched.
"Did you just… throw a rock at me?" she asked, incredulous.
"Wh—" the word caught in Adora's dry throat, and she coughed. A wave of intense regret shot through her as the pain in her side multiplied. Something warm trickled down away from the bandage and she pressed her hand to her side, wincing.
"What does it look like?" she finished, voice far weaker than she would have preferred.
Adora's eyes found Catra again just in time to see a faint look of concern fade into annoyance. "It looks like there's an idiot trying to make sure she bleeds to death by offending the only other person in this pit," Catra replied.
"It's a canyon."
"What?"
"It's a canyon, not a pit."
"Oh, thank you, Adora, I truly had no idea."
"Maybe you should've actually paid attention during tactical geography."
The corner of Catra's mouth curled in a faint grin. "Please. If I wanted to gain a better understanding of rocks, all I'd have to do is examine your head." She picked up the pebble and launched it back, but it sailed harmlessly overhead to land in the grass near Adora's shoulder.
Adora's hand closed on another pebble, and she managed to bounce this one off of Catra's shoulder. Catra flinched and hissed.
"Would you cut that out?"
Okay, there was no way that her pathetically weak throw possibly could have hurt enough for Catra to react. Unless…
"What did you do to your shoulder?" Adora asked.
Catra scoffed. "What did I do? More like what did you do."
Adora's brow creased. "What?"
"A tank landed on it," she explained, mockingly. "Except this one was wearing a cape and a tiara."
Annoyance flared in Adora's chest. "Oh, well excuse me if saving your life made your shoulder hurt a little bit."
A wave of incredulity crossed Catra's face, and she laughed aloud. Adora didn't like the sound. "You saved my life? Why do you think you're still breathing right now, princess?"
"You did try to kill me right before that."
Catra huffed, rolling her eyes and turning away. "Yeah, and I'm starting to think I had the right idea."
Another pebble flew through the air. This one bounced off Catra's thick mane of hair and landed in the dirt, and Catra whirled, slamming one hand into the ground.
"Would you quit it!"
"No," Adora said, helpfully. "Not until you help me up."
"Help you-you gotta be kidding me."
"No."
"In case it's escaped your notice, Adora, there's a hole in your side."
Adora nodded, staring as though she'd said something incredibly stupid. "Um, yes. That's why I need help getting up."
Catra brought up a hand to her brow and closed her eyes. "Why are you trying to get up at all?"
Adora continued to stare. "... so we can get to Bright Moon and fix… this." Adora made an all-encompassing gesture to her bandaged side and the damaged sword. She looked up at the late afternoon sky. "It's not getting any earlier."
"Yes, and you're not getting any more capable of standing in the next five minutes."
"Fine," Adora huffed. "I'll get up myself." She drew her arms up and pushed her palms to the ground in preparation to rise, but Catra's firm hand on her shoulder effectively pinned her to the earth.
"I'm pretty sure the person who has been conscious for most of the past three hours and is also not bleeding all over should be the one making decisions," she said, staring at Adora through narrowed eyes. Her tail lashed impatiently behind her.
Adora sighed-shallowly. Taking deep breaths did not feel good at the moment. "Fine," she said, raising her hands slightly in a show of defeat. "You win. We'll just sit here, and I can bleed all over this particular patch of grass instead of the other perfectly good grass that's on the way, you know, out of this pit."
"Canyon," Catra corrected.
"Canyon," Adora seethed.
The corner of Catra's mouth twitched slightly.
"That needs re-wrapping anyway," she said, turning away and reaching into the canvas bag. "If you're still awake after, then maybe-"
Adora wasn't listening. As soon as Catra turned her back, she started to push herself up off the ground, trembling with the effort-but the moment her stomach muscles tensed, the blinding pain returned and she fell back, gasping. Strong arms caught her just before she hit the ground, then one yanked back as Catra swore loudly.
She could feel more warmth flowing away from the wound. Catra was leaning over her, one hand shoving Adora's shoulder back into the ground and her other arm clutched across her own chest.
"I told you not to move!"
Adora waited until her vision cleared and her breathing evened out.
"How…" she took a breath, "How bad is your shoulder?"
Catra glared, releasing her grip on Adora and slowly forcing her arm back down to her side. Her face was pulled taut in an expression of suppressed pain that Adora had seen many times over the years.
"It's fine."
"Right." Adora narrowed her eyes. "Who's the idiot now?"
"The one who tried to sit up, on her own, with a hole in her side," Catra supplied, exasperated.
"I did ask for help." Adora glanced to Catra's shoulder. "Although maybe I shouldn't have."
Catra's tail lashed behind her again, and there was a low sound in her throat. "Don't."
"Don't what?" Adora asked, confused.
"Don't do that. I can take care of myself. I can more than take care of myself. I don't need you sitting there-laying there, completely useless, acting like you need to protect me."
"I'm not-"
Catra broke away with a short huff of empty laughter. "Save it, Adora." She pushed to her feet, snatching up the canteen from the ground before turning to walk away. "It's not worth either of our time."
Before Adora could say anything else, she faded into the trees.
Adora screwed her eyes shut and lifted her head off the ground just enough to slam it back down in frustration, stars sparking across her vision as her headache grew a couple levels in intensity.
"Well," she said to herself, scraping her fingers through the dirt and throwing a rock as hard as she could into the woods. It landed about five feet away, and her side twinged painfully at the effort.
"That went great."
A/N: REWROTE THE END SCENE THREE DANG TIMES but here, have another chapter! XD Let me know if you're liking it / hating it / bored to tears