She would have avoided Loo-Kee for the next several days if it weren't basically her only lifeline to cheap and hearty victuals.
She didn't want to see Mara—or whatever her real name was—after the moment they'd shared. The moment she'd ruined. She didn't want to see the repercussions of yet another one of her screwups. She couldn't bear to look at the other girl's face for fear of what she would find.
Too bad Razz seemed bent on making their paths cross one way or the other. Claiming sickness, the old woman bowed out of running the shop that weekend, leaving Mara to work the kitchen in her stead. Catra knew it was bullshit. Razz hadn't missed a day of work for the entire time she'd known her. The woman didn't get sick. Catra was convinced that she was at least magic in that regard.
So now her poorly concealed attempts to force the two of them together only served to make Catra feel worse. Why couldn't she ever get a break, even from the people she didn't happen to hate yet? Couldn't Razz just accept that she'd been wrong for once? This not-Mara girl was not her soulmate, or whatever she seemed to believe. Catra didn't have a soulmate, because she didn't deserve one. She'd learned at least that much from her shitty run of life. She was destined to live out her days alone in a haze of alcohol, má and suffering and she might as well make peace with that.
Currently, Catra was doing just that. She was slumped at her usual table in the corner next to two empty bottles of baijiu, drifting in and out of a restless doze. She kept her head down both to block out the irritating ambient light and to avoid even the possibility of catching Mara's passing eye. She could feel the girl trying, though; apparently bent on making Catra suffer more than was already necessary.
Catra didn't know how long she sat there, unable to be bothered to relocate to her nighttime haunt (it couldn't really be called a home) for a more comfortable rest. The baijiu loosened her tightly-wound nerves and almost allowed her to forget that the object of her anxiety was in the same room with her at all.
She didn't come to her senses until an unexpected hand on her shoulder ripped her into consciousness with a started gasp.
When she looked up wildly, her gaze locked on familiar gray-blue, and the first thing out of her mouth was, "Shit."
The set of Mara's jaw was obviously an attempt not to appear hurt by that. "We closed early tonight," she said, a waver in her voice anyway. "You're the last one here."
Closed early? Loo-Kee never closed early! Razz was as much a creature of habit as she was a cryptic possessor of possible supernatural power. Catra doubted that her shop had closed early since the very first day it'd opened.
It didn't matter. Today Mara was in charge, and she apparently ran things differently. Looking around, Catra could see that all the other patrons had already taken their leave. And now she was left alone in a very uncomfortable situation.
She had to go. Now.
"Sorry," she muttered hastily, rising from her chair so fast that she banged her hip on the table and her head swam with spots. But before she could shoulder by Mara and hurry to the exit, the girl moved to block her path.
Catra bristled instantly. She could not stand feeling trapped. "Move," she growled, fingers clenching into fists..
Mara raised her palms. "Wait. I just wanted to talk to you. Maybe we could—"
"No," Catra cut her off. "Now move."
With an exasperated sigh the girl stepped aside, but as Catra passed she kept pressing, an almost desperate note in her voice, "Please, I want to talk about the other night. I didn't mean to scare you off—"
Catra whirled halfway to the door, knowing her eyes were blazing in anger by the way Mara flinched. "I'm not scared," she snarled, "I'm a realist. And I can already tell that 'you and me' is a bad idea. So leave me alone."
Mara's mouth worked for a moment before any sound came out. "But Razz—"
"—was wrong!" Catra finished sharply, shaking her head. "We aren't magically connected. We aren't soulmates. We're just strangers." Pausing for breath, she had time to wonder, "Why do you care so much about it anyway?"
The golden-haired girl wore a twisted mask of regret. "Because I feel something different," she cried. It was a good thing they were the only ones left in the shop, because their voices were rising louder and louder. "I didn't choose to. It's not my fault I feel drawn to you. But I do and what Razz said made it make sense and I don't see why you won't just give it a chance!"
"Because it's not worth a chance!" Catra fired back instantly, feeling her neck prickle hotly with her growing anger. "I'm not worth it. If I let you get to know me, you'll figure that out too. That's why I'm scared. I don't need any more people against me in this world."
She snapped her mouth shut abruptly, shocked that she'd let such a vulnerable detail slip free. She blamed the two bottles of alcohol she'd downed, but that didn't make it any more bearable.
"I wouldn't turn against you," Mara tried to protest softly, but Catra was already snapping, "I've got to go," and resuming her path to the door. She ignored the other girl's attempts to call after her and shouldered her way out into the darkness.
She stepped down off Loo Kee's stoop and onto cold pavement, walking fast. She was halfway down the alley before she heard the door bang open again behind her. She didn't have to throw a quick glance over her shoulder to know that she'd see the glint of golden hair pursuing her. For spirits' sake. Her heartbeat picked up and her blood rushed in her ears. Deep down she was fairly certain that this girl didn't mean her any harm, but her instincts screamed louder than that knowledge. She broke into a run.
When she reached the nearest twist in the street, she skipped down it into a deeper, dingier darkness, where she would have an easy time blending in. Her bare feet slapped quietly against the dirty ground as she turned another corner, and another, trusting her mental map of the city to guide her toward sanctuary. She hoped Mara was far enough behind that she wouldn't be able to pick up her trail.
Hope wasn't a strategy, so she kept moving anyway. The shadows, which sometimes seemed to smother her like an unseen enemy, were her comfort tonight, cloaking her in the safety of anonymity. Her blood ran hot enough that the cold didn't bother her now.
After sufficiently losing herself in a virtual maze of city paths, Catra slowed, trying to steady her breath enough to listen for sounds of pursuit. She found none.
Apparently she knew these streets better than Mara.
Relieved, she finally let herself come to a halt, breathing deeply but silently, and looked around to gauge her surroundings.
She was at a narrow crossroads with a single streetlamp flickering above it. The building ahead and to the right was streaked with graffiti—a triad tag. A common occurrence, but this particular one was familiar. She knew where she was. It wasn't far from the little hole in the wall she called her own (by squatter's rights, but still).
It also wasn't far from the place she usually met her dealer, Shady Shin, for her week's supply of má. She'd let her usual appointment pass her by while she dozed at Loo-Kee tonight, but she wondered if he would still be loitering close by. She could use a restock.
Though she knew it would be safer to make straight for her sanctuary, the prospect of more má tugged her in a different direction. She only paused momentarily before striking off at a brisk but easier pace toward their meeting spot. The fear of Mara catching up to her largely faded into the back of her mind as the draw of leaf preoccupied her.
She followed the familiar route, trying not to focus too much on the way her feet carried her toward her vices so effortlessly.
When she turned the last corner, she could tell even before she got to the spot that Shady Shin was not there. The shadowed alcove behind the nearby bar was devoid of the telltale darker shape of his figure.
The discovery bothered her more than she wanted to admit.
She could feel the flicker of hope in her chest dying out as she approached the spot anyway, anxiously considering that maybe she'd just overlooked him. When she reached it and stopped at the edge of the deeper shadow, a hollow feeling replaced where it had burned.
Of fucking course. Why would anything ever chance to go right for her?
She turned away with an angry sigh, hands twitching at her sides as she fought down the urge to hit something. This was all Mara's fault. If she hadn't screwed with Catra's emotions the other night, Catra wouldn't have felt the need to sink herself into drunkenness tonight and she wouldn't have missed her arrangement with Shin. Now she was out a week's worth of má and she'd have to deal with the consequences later. Surely Shin would raise his prices as she got more desperate, and it would cost her a full day's pay instead of half, and she wouldn't be able to afford her dinner at Loo-Kee, and she'd smoke more to distract herself from the hunger, and—
"Shit!" she snarled and lashed out, unable to hold back anymore as her thoughts spiralled. Her fist hit the bricks beside her and her knuckles exploded in pain. She stood there for a moment, head lowered to watch the blood well from the white scratches she'd just acquired, breathing hard and deep.
When she'd recovered what little composure she possessed as a baseline, she set off toward her place, letting the throbbing in her hand smother any other awareness. She didn't want to feel anything else right now.
The darkness closed behind her as she slunk into the mouth of the next alley.
…
An hour found her slumped into the dirty, threadbare cushions of the couch she called her own. Technically this whole tiny basement haunt was abandoned—once a drug den beneath a run-down bar called the Fright Zone, long since busted by the Republic City police force—but no one had cared enough to kick her out of it since she started squatting here, so it was as close to home as Catra had ever known.
The corners were black with mold and the carpet that used to cover the dirt floor was thin enough to see through. Cushions from furniture long since deteriorated littered the floor near the walls, and a table with only three legs left sagged by the couch. There had once been trash and used drug paraphernalia scattered between them, but the police had confiscated that. The shelves in the alcove behind her couch, meant to act as cellar space for the bar above but actually once full of má and white powder, were now empty too.
The only real light source would have been a naked bulb over the cellar alcove, but it hadn't worked as long as she'd been here. She made do with the faded glow of the nearest streetlight filtering in through the largely dirt-smeared windows high on the streetside wall.
She only needed to see well enough to light her joint, so it didn't matter much.
She was halfway through one now, having decided to wallow in her self-pity tonight rather than ration her supply until she saw Shin next. It was worth the sacrifice; she knew her emotions would be deep enough to drown in otherwise.
Now instead, she lounged against the cushions feeling like she was floating six inches out of her body, her brain too mellowed to care. She'd been staring at the weakly glowing end of her cigarette for what seemed like hours, mesmerized by the sight. Every time it threatened to go out, she lit it again with a flick of her fingers just so she could keep watching. Her concerns of the future and Mara and Shin seemed far away and small.
She breathed and stared and existed for an indeterminate amount of time, letting everything else fade away.
Naturally, the universe couldn't leave her alone for too long.
Catra jumped out of her skin as the splintered door rattled.
"No!" she blurted, scrambling off the couch—rather, trying to but instead ending up on her ass on the dirty ground—to curl up and present a smaller target to the police officers she knew had finally found her. A flame licked up in her palm in preparation to defend herself.
Why does shit always have to go wrong?
The intruder succeeded in bypassing the door's rusted-out lock. The old planks swung inward, revealing the dark silhouette of a figure with broad shoulders and—
Catra threw out her hand and a frantic jet of flame with it. The stream twisted across the room, illuminating the small space; the intruder's wide-eyed expression of shock; her golden ponytail—
Oh, no.
Mara's reflexes allowed her to lean aside to avoid the brunt of the blast, but the trailing edge of the fire caught her shoulder and she cried out, grasping at the seared skin.
"Mara?" Catra cried incredulously, surprise and confusion and guilt all crashing through her much harder than usual, thanks to the má. She was virtually swept away by the force of it, but managed to ground herself by clutching onto the nearby leg of the couch. Her eyes struggled to focus on the other girl's face, not fully convinced that it was really her and not just a hallucination.
But the voice that was now swearing and griping in pain certainly sounded like her. Combined with that telltale gleaming hair, it was unmistakable, even with Catra as compromised as she was.
"How did you find me?" she gasped, not sure if this was better or worse than having the police break down the door to find her baked by a pile of má. Now she was trapped in an enclosed space with the last person she wanted to see between her and the door, her wits gone and her intruder already provoked by the burn to her shoulder.
But when Mara raised her eyes to meet Catra's with a grimace, there was no anger behind them. She looked slightly bewildered, concerned, and hurt in every sense of the word, but not angry. She gripped her injured shoulder gingerly and, rather than answer Catra's question, said between her teeth, "You're a bender."
Catra's momentary relief flipped right back into dread. Shit! Of course she'd blown her cover in a matter of days. Of course she'd been unable to preserve her secret and, by association, her safety. Please don't be an Equalist. Please don't. Please— "You aren't going to turn me over to those chi blocker nutcases, are you?" She tried to make it sound offhand, but she couldn't keep the nervousness out of her voice in the vulnerable state she was in.
Mara's back stiffened, but Catra couldn't discern why in the moment. "Of course not. Not for that," she assured Catra, "but—" She looked around the dank, dark room, taking in the horrific condition of the commodities and the still-smoldering joint on the table, and raised one palm. "What is this?"
Catra slowly levered herself off the floor and settled back on the couch. She felt better there; safer, more grounded. Like maybe the words she knew were coming would hurt less if she was surrounded by cushions. Mara waited impatiently as she adjusted and readjusted herself on the couch before answering. "I know your secret," Catra finally drawled with a slow shrug. "I guess now you know mine." All of mine. She reached for her joint again and saw Mara watch the motion in agitation.
"But why? This stuff can ruin your life!"
Catra raised the cigarette and took a pull, letting the smoke billow out her nostrils on the exhale. "You see anything around here worth living for?" she croaked, waving an arm to indicate her filthy den and the city beyond.
Mara's jaw tightened. "Look, this is bad for you. You could start to depend on it. People throw away everything they have just to get their hands on their next hit, and before you know it—"
"You have no idea what you're talking about. You don't know me." Catra stopped looking at her, trying to dismiss her with the force of her will alone. When it didn't work, she grunted out, "If you're just going to lecture me, leave."
"I'm trying to help you," Mara shot back, gesturing for emphasis and then clutching her shoulder when it hurt.
"This is the only thing that helps!" Catra shouted, her own voice seeming to rattle in her eardrums. At Mara's stunned pause, a flood of words pushed their way free, loosened by the smoke in the air: "Don't you get it? I'm already there. I already depend on it." Her volume rose as all her buried resentment came bubbling up from its buried depths. "Without a hit, I can't do my job. Without a hit, I can't face my manager without wanting to claw her ugly face off. Without a hit, I can't live my shitshow of a life without breaking down every other minute because it's all fucking pointless. This is what lets me live." Her voice cracked and she had to stop to swallow down tears. Why tears? You shouldn't cry. She wanted to cry. She sniffed the urge back. "So don't tell me what's bad for me, Mara. There's no question that it's bad. Everything else is just worse." She felt vaguely that she'd given away too much, but it didn't seem important now—now that the truth was already out there. Now it was up to Mara to react. Catra glared into those gray-blue eyes with her own unfocused ones and dared her to argue. "And don't tell me you're sorry, either," she tacked on bitterly.
And so Mara didn't. She just stood there, expression torn between disapproval and something dangerously close to pity, searching Catra's face with her sharp eyes. Catra wondered if she found what she was looking for.
Probably not.
At length, the sun-haired girl sighed and lowered her head in defeat, as if knowing that she didn't stand a chance of coming between Catra and her má. She would have been right. Catra clutched her joint tighter in her hand, suddenly afraid that the other girl would try to take it from her by force.
But Mara didn't. Instead she rubbed her burned shoulder again and raised her head, and this time the look on her face was resigned, but with something else underneath it. Catra narrowed her eyes, trying to place it, but her vision would not cooperate. It didn't seem bad; that was all she could determine before her focus slipped.
Mara let out another sigh. "At least let me stay here with you while you…finish," she said finally, flicking a hand at the last inch or so of Catra's joint.
Catra found that she didn't want to refuse her. Still, just to be difficult (as was her natural inclination), she retorted, "What, as my babysitter?"
"As someone who thinks you have more to live for than just má," Mara returned seriously.
And, Catra figured that even if she did want Mara to leave, the other girl would be tough to convince. Catra would probably have to burn her again to send her on her way, but she very much did not want to do that. She eyed the black smear on Mara's tunic with a flicker of regret. She was lucky the other girl hadn't called the police on her as soon as she made that mistake. She couldn't count on getting let off the hook a second time. Plus, she'd never had company while she smoked before. It might be…better, this way. Or maybe it was just better because it was Mara.
Maybe that was just the má talking.
Catra wasn't sure how long she sat there staring at the taller girl, but as long as she watched, Mara never moved. Catra didn't hate that as much as she wanted to.
"Fine," she said eventually, softly. She wriggled up further on the couch so she was curled into one creaking armrest and there was room enough for Mara at the other end.
The other girl sat down a safe distance from her (maybe to give Catra space; maybe because she wasn't anxious to be burned again), coughing on the cloud of smoke and mold scent that puffed up from the cushion. She waved it out of her face and twisted her mouth into a frown to express her displeasure, but didn't say anything. She gave Catra that much.
The two settled back into opposite ends of the couch to wait while Catra smoked to the end of her joint. Little by little, Catra relaxed again, content that Mara seemed unlikely to make any dangerous moves on her while she was unguarded. The girl simply sat and watched, her eyes soft and her jaw tight, fingers gently prodding around the graze on her shoulder.
"Sorry about that," Catra murmured at length.
Mara shrugged her unmarked shoulder dismissively. "I shouldn't have surprised you."
Catra fell silent, not knowing what to say to that. Her mind wandered through the events of the night, catching on a few choice points—usually an image of Mara, gold hair shining, emotion flashing, always a step behind her even when Catra didn't want her to be. Thought she didn't. Told herself she didn't. But—
"How did you find me?" The question suddenly occurred to her with fresh urgency. Hadn't she lost Mara in the alleys? Surely she'd outpaced her well enough to make it away scot-free. And the streets were dark; no way Mara had picked up any kind of trail to track her.
Mara pursed her lips and paused contemplatively. "You won't believe me," she said, but continued anyway: "I could feel you."
Catra's first instinct was to laugh, because that was ridiculous. No way Mara could feel her somehow, like…
Like maybe their energies were intertwined.
She shook her head sharply.
"I told you," Mara mumbled, looking away, "but it's true. It was like a pull. And it brought me here." Her brows lowered. "For all the good that did."
Catra felt along the backs of her teeth with her tongue. Her joint was spent; she let the blackened stub fall from her fingers to the tabletop. "Why?" she wondered—assuming, for the moment, that Mara really was telling the truth. Why would they be spiritually connected? Why would any supernatural forces want to bring them together? Why were they concerned with Catra's and Mara's lives anyway? What did it all mean?
Mara shrugged one shoulder again, and it distracted Catra from her train of thought. All of that would only matter if the spirits were real and gave a shit about her, both of which were unlikely on their own; together, it was downright impossible. Mara had probably just followed the sound of her footsteps, heard her blow up over Shin's absence and wandered the rest of the way to the most likely destination. Probably.
She was getting too tired to care. All she knew was that right now Mara was here and that was a constant she could depend on for the moment. An island of temporary certainty in the midst of the chaotic ocean of her life. She didn't understand how or why, but right now she felt like just accepting it.
She shuffled closer to Mara on the couch.
The night wore on, and as Catra slowly sank deeper into the haze that numbed the pain, she slumped unknowingly toward the other girl. Mara didn't move away.
By the time Catra was beginning to nod off into unconsciousness, her head was resting on her shoulder. She felt more at peace than she had in a long time. And still, Mara let her.
"This is not because I like you," Catra blurted in an abrupt moment of clarity, somewhere in the twilight between waking and sleeping. Then she sank back under, sighing out her tension as she leaned into Mara's warmth. She hadn't realized how cold it always was, alone. That was her last semi-coherent thought.
She figured the feeling of fingers combing through her tangled hair after that must have been a dream.
That and the soft, whispered answer of, "I know. But I like you."
…