Amid the many tanks, robots, and armored vehicles retreating back to the Fright Zone, one stood out: larger, more heavily armored, more powerful. The heavy, thick-plated trailer pulled behind it stood out even more. It jerked from side to side with an occasional metallic bang that had nothing to do with the uneven terrain, and emanated occasional low, reverberating sounds that had nothing to do with the Horde engines that strained to pull its weight. The carrier moved, constantly, against the motion of the rocks that jostled its wheels. Like something was inside of it. Something alive.

Something angry.

Octavia stood confidently in the center of the vehicle pulling the carrier, tentacles curled around thick metal bars that braced the interior to hold her steady against the violent jostling of the vehicle as it rumbled along its path. It was an intimidating sight, heightened by her perpetual scowl and the unnatural tint of her one opaque eye, split down the middle by a white line of scar tissue.

In a way, it was that scar that brought her here. The loss of vision in her eye made her a liability in combat. She was allowed to keep her title of Force Captain, but with the opportunity to prove herself in combat gone, the rank was empty. Meaningless.

"I have created a new title for you, Octavia," Shadow Weaver said, as though imparting a royal gift. "You will be the Horde's Beast-master." Octavia stood at attention before her, damaged eye still bandaged. "Training these creatures was one of my personal projects, but defects in the raw material have left results… lacking," Shadow Weaver continued. "I have moved on to more promising endeavors." A screen flickered on to show three enormous beasts straining against their chains, slavering as they threw themselves against the thick bars of their cages. "It is now your responsibility to turn them into an asset for the Horde."

Octavia stared, slack-jawed. "But—ma'am," she protested, "I have no experience with—"

"You question my decision?" Shadows grew in the room, swallowing the weak green light and thickening the air.

"N-no," Octavia choked out. It was a lesson learned early on in the Horde: You don't contradict Shadow Weaver, or if you do, you do so exactly once. Octavia had scoffed at the notion, years ago. Bowing to a skinny sorceress from Mystacor? Not likely.

She'd changed her mind.

The shadows receded.

"This will be good for you," Shadow Weaver crooned. The white slits of her eyes turned to the bandage covering Octavia's damaged eye, and cruel amusement dripped from her tone. "After all, it is clear you require more practice with handling wild beasts."

Octavia's nails dug into her palms until they drew blue-black blood, and she bowed her head to hide her grimace of rage.

"Yes, Shadow Weaver."

The beasts, unsurprisingly, proved thoroughly untamable. Wild and violent, the shock of an enhanced stun baton was just as likely to prod them in the desired direction as throw them into a blind rage, using razor-sharp teeth to sever and swallow both baton and the arm wielding it. At times, Octavia caught glimpses of strange scars arcing like lighting underneath matted fur. If the slightest chance of taming these beasts ever existed, it had been lost after whatever Shadow Weaver did to them.

Octavia would have been lost, too, had she not managed to come up with a plan to salvage her failure. Too savage to deploy in battle without risking their own forces, the beasts were perfect for another use: terror. They could be unleashed on villages, cities that the Horde wished to destroy without wasting a single soldier. Devices already implanted in the beasts' brains for "training purposes" were repurposed to shock them into unconsciousness after each rampage, allowing easy recapture.

It worked well. Horrifyingly well. The title of "Beast-master," once only spoken in derision, slowly began to take on a tone of respect within the Horde.

Today, however, at a city near Bright Moon defended by a large, glowing, and exceedingly troublesome princess, the plan had failed.

"We were forced to retreat, Lord Hordak," Octavia reported to a small viewscreen within the armored vehicle. "Our carriers were unable to breach the city. The beasts were not deployed."

The flickering screen showed Hordak's red eyes narrowing. "And She-Ra?"

"Catra," Octavia spat the name, "betrayed the Horde. She had She-Ra in her grasp, yet failed to make the killing strike. One of our own tanks was forced to fire on her to finish the job."

"And?" Hordak's lack of reaction to Catra's betrayal took Octavia by surprise, and she fumbled for a moment.

"The blast knocked both of them into a canyon, my lord, it seems unlikely that either of them would have survived such a—"

"Unlikely," Hordak hissed. "I do not deal in uncertainties, Force Captain. I require confirmation."

"Yes, my lord."

There was silence for a moment. "Release your beasts into the canyon. Verify for yourself that She-Ra is dead. Then, and only then, you may return."

Octavia ground her teeth. Unable to return to the Fright Zone until She-Ra was dead? How had Catra's failure become her punishment? She seethed, tamping down the fires of her rage and bowing to the flickering viewscreen.

"It will be done."

Catra took a deep breath as she plunged the uncapped canteen into the stream, trying to force her anger down from "fuming" to "mild simmer."

Of course Adora would try to get up as soon as she could keep her eyes open for more than a minute. Of course she would try to take charge, even when she could hardly move. Of course she would barely even acknowledge that Catra saved her life. Of course.

That last thought trickled through her mind as the stream flowed across her fingers, half-dried blood coloring the water a muddy red as it trailed away.

Catra saved her life.

Why did she do that?

Why was she still doing it?

It wasn't the easy choice. The easy choice would be to leave her. Let her die. (She still would, if Catra never came back. They had both seen wounds like that before, but when it came to her own injuries, Adora always seemed to filter things through a dense cloud of denial.)

It wasn't just one choice, either. Every moment Catra stayed in the canyon was another decision against what made sense—but she kept making the same choice, over and over, even though her head ached and stomach churned with it. She should leave. Leave, like Adora left her. But every time she thought about turning around and walking out, alone, her feet turned to lead.

She thought of Adora stretched out on the ground under the pale light of the night moons, deathly white, not moving. Never moving again. Reporting her success back to the Horde. Taking Hordak's place, commanding respect, ruling Etheria—

—alone.

Her fingers had gone numb from the cool water of the stream. She pulled the canteen from the water and capped it, then plunged her hands back into the stream and scrubbed viciously, shoulder aching with the motion. Another murky red cloud filled the water until all the blood had been washed away from the cracks in her palms, the skin around her claws.

Maybe staying with Adora was the easy choice, after all.

Maybe it always had been.

The thing was, it used to feel like the easy choice.

A sound pierced her thoughts, rolling through the canyon, low and wild and menacing. Her ears twitched involuntarily toward the sound as a second, then a third voice joined, growing to a distant crescendo before fading. The echoes faded, too, leaving nothing behind but silence and an icy pit of recognition in her stomach.

She knew that sound.

Every cadet in the Fright Zone knew that sound.

And out here, in the wild…

That sound meant death.

"Rise and shine, princess," she announced blandly as she returned to the small clearing where she'd left Adora. "You got your wish. Let's get moving."

Adora, somehow, had managed to pull herself to a mostly seated position with her back supported by a nearby boulder. It looked uncomfortable. Her head, tilted back to rest against the rock, snapped forward and her eyes met Catra's.

"Catra," she greeted, relief coloring her voice. "I didn't—I didn't know if you were coming back."

"Yeah, well." Catra grabbed the canvas bag of supplies, then the sword, ignoring the unsettling buzz of broken magic that raced through her arm as she shoved it through a strap of the bag and slung the whole contraption across her back. "You never did have much faith in me, did you?" The words fell from her mouth before she could stop them, bitter and familiar.

Adora opened her mouth to respond, then closed it, a conflicted expression on her face.

"You look like you swallowed a toad." Adora gave her a withering glance as Catra knelt by her side. "C'mon. Let's go."

"Not that I'm complaining, but," Adora asked, hesitantly, "Why the change of heart?"

Because the Horde unleashed the most terrifying weapon they have to kill you.

Because they unleashed it on me, too.

Because you might die if we leave now, but we'll both die if we stay.

"Tired of the scenery." She nodded her head toward the identical, forested expanse shading a path that slanted slightly upward, eventually—hopefully—leading out of the canyon. "The trees over there look way more interesting."

Adora rolled her eyes, but didn't press the issue. "Fine." She shifted, wincing. "Help me up?"

Catra knelt by her side, taking Adora's arm and positioning it over her shoulders. A hiss caught in her throat as Adora's wrist knocked against her bad shoulder.

"Ready?" The muscles in Adora's cheek tensed as she clenched her teeth, forgoing speech for a short nod.

They rose in one very not-fluid motion, a sound between a grunt and a whimper escaping through her friend's teeth as she shakily positioned her feet beneath her. Then they were standing, barely. Adora's head was bowed, her tightly shut eyes half-covered by loose strands of hair and her face as white as her shirt.

"You good?" Catra asked, annoyed by the concerned tightness she was unable to keep from her tone.

"Peachy," Adora breathed. Then her face went slack and she pitched forward. Catra's arm shot out to support Adora's other shoulder and she stumbled under their shift in weight, a curse escaping her lips as fire lanced yet again through her abused shoulder. In the next instant Adora's eyes flickered open and she leaned back, half her weight across Catra's shoulders and the other half supported by her own shaking legs.

"'m fine," she mumbled, before Catra could say anything.

"Yeah," Catra said, sarcasm dripping from her tone as she caught her breath. "I can tell."

"Oh, shut up," Adora said in a weak, exasperated voice. "You know we have to get out of here."

She did. Far better than Adora, actually. The pallor of Adora's face, the sweat that had formed on her brow after rising from the ground, the trembling she could feel in the arm looped across her shoulders—it all told her they should stay put, but her thoughts were drowned out by the memory of that distant, haunting, wild cry. A sound that meant fear and death. The reason she would never be able to return to the Horde.

She glanced to the figure at her side.

One of them, anyway.

She took Adora's wrist and repositioned her arm more securely across her own shoulders.

"Yeah, whatever." They took a slow step forward. "I'm only dragging you along so I can feed you to the first wild animal I find."

A weak snort, followed by a wince Catra could feel. Another step. "Liar."

"Nah. I figure I'll be able to get away while it's choking on your massive hero complex."

Adora sputtered indignantly, trying out the starts to a few different sentences before settling for a sulky, "I hate you."

Catra gave a derisive snort. "No, you don't."

There was no response for a moment, and Catra glanced over to see Adora looking at her, something unreadable in her eyes. Regret? Sadness? She flushed under the unexpected gaze.

"No," Adora said seriously. "I don't."

Catra decided that her time would be far better spent evaluating the terrain in front of them for rough patches than trying to make idle conversation.

Another step. She didn't look to the side, but Catra could feel Adora's eyes boring into her skull.

Oh, yeah.

This was going to be fun.

A/N: Ha, so this is pretty late! The start of the semester hit like a truck this year.

In an incredible twist, I received ART for this fic! If you want to see it, it's on my tumblr (adoras-last-braincell) if you search for "unbroken" (unfortunately, this website hates links with a burning passion).

Thank you to the lovely people who reviewed last chapter!