The double doors were flung open, the screech of it deafening the throne room.
Mites of dust trickled into vision, muted slats of light tracing their slow descent.
Eyes, three of them peppered along one scarred half of the face, slowly blinked. Their shade, a sickly green as Horde Prime drew himself up out of his decorated seat.
"And what is the meaning of this, Commander Catra?"
His tone was soft. The undercurrent of poison, sifting its way along arid ground, hissing as it brimmed the cracks.
Opposite him, Catra had to tilt her gaze higher to meet his. She fixed him with it, but it wasn't resolve. There was no golden steel as one would expect, no torrent of unyielding ocean crashing against the gates.
Just muted amber. Just blue, pouring in and around her vision like she was swimming in it, like she could easily tread water but she chose to drown.
Dark circles pressed in around her eyes, an exhaustion deep-seated, running along her bones like spidering rain drops.
Her shoulders were slack, large pauldrons dipping with them as she gestured towards the doors from which she came. Her small frame nearly swallowed by her sweeping, ragged cloak.
"I would think it's obvious," she spoke like the rattle of a typewriter. "Give up quietly and it'll be quick."
He laughed.
A sharp, cruel sort of thing, pitched so it rang across the walls, so it loomed like curved red-tarnished metal.
Flanking Catra on either side were her lieutenants, one of whom unconsciously stepped until her body partially shielded her commander, crimson claw poised until it was at Catra's front.
Catra reached out and gently patted the claw.
"It's okay, Scorpia."
Scorpia bit her lip but nodded, letting her arm go slack.
"This has crossed the boundary of absurdity right back into being funny," Prime's lip curled. "Retreat to your quarters in the next two seconds and be infinitely grateful I will pass this farce off as a joke."
Catra sighed.
"Yep," she popped her lips. "I figured. Scorpia, you're up."
And Prime's soft poison was suddenly hard, his face contorted as he bellowed.
"Then so be it. Weaver!"
To his immediate left, a woman clothed in shadow sneered. Her wrappings were indistinguishable from strands of blood as they floated along with her.
"I had hoped you'd be foolish enough to persist," a grin split Weaver's face like a scar.
Red lightning coursed from fingertip to fingertip as she drew closer.
Scorpia, however, held out her claw, her eyes suddenly glowing, brimming with the power that Weaver had only just commanded. And Weaver herself dropped, a muffled thud as she collapsed to the floor, her wrappings splayed around her like tendrils.
"What…" she stared at her hands, mask askew. "What is-"
"The Runestone's not yours anymore, hag," Catra explained, picking at her nails. "Scorpia's got her connection back. What, you didn't think we knew she was a princess?"
"You insolent wretch!" Weaver snarled, her gnarled hands darting towards Catra's throat.
But Scorpia was already there, picking Weaver up like a bale of hay, holding her at arms' length as she spat and howled.
"You were always pathetic! Worthless! A shriveled excuse for an animal we've let roam too far outside its cage-"
One zap from Scorpia and Weaver went limp.
Prime watched this all, his expression unconcerned.
"Well done," his tone mundane. "It must not have been easy, accessing the runestone without being discovered by the hive network. Your little rebellion is admirable. It's no wonder I picked you to lead my forces."
He sighed.
"It ends here. I will extend to you one final chance. Return to your barracks and I will overlook this transgression. Please do not confuse yourself any further into thinking you'll get anywhere with clones at every corridor."
Catra shrugged.
"The ones right outside we've dealt with."
Prime put his hand to his temple, chuckling.
"One thought from me and the hive mind will strangle all three of you where you stand in an inst-"
"Okay."
"Pardon?" he frowned.
"Okay. Try it," Catra itched at her pauldrons, her cloak flourishing around her ankles with every movement. "Call them in now."
Prime seethed between his teeth.
"It is a shame. You were a good commander. I'll have trouble replacing a mind like yours."
His eyes, that sickly green, narrowed as he seemed to focus.
He blinked.
Narrowed them again.
Catra had still not even looked at him once from the moment she had flung the doors open.
She inclined her head towards her other lieutenant, whose hair – matted, purple, nearly ensconcing her like a surrounding forest – was gleefully tapping away at a small device in front of her like bullets pelting a surface.
"Entrapta here finally cracked the hive mind. Took us months but yeah. Your system is hers."
Prime bristled, his visage no longer so pale as his jaw unhinged like a skull, each finger a polished white dagger, his full height dwarfing Catra as he screamed.
"RETURN. To your quarters. This instant. And I will not have to pick your flesh from your rotted, ungrateful corpse!"
"Your access is gone," Catra finally looked at him, the steel of her scabbard glinting in the nonetheless dim lighting.
"My clones," he emphasized with one trembling finger. "will come loyally to my side. My clones are-"
"Headless chickens without you," Catra was no longer slouched. Her gaze burned. A low flame, tinged with the smoke of weariness, but a flame yet.
"Kill this body, and I will simply be born again in a new one!" his knees had backed into the throne even as spittle flew from his mouth.
Catra moved so quickly, for a moment her cloak was shadow. She was shadow. An inky blotch ahead of where once she stood.
And then she was there, both feet planted on either of Prime's kneecaps, blade held at his throat.
Her cloak billowed out around them, enshrouded them both until Prime could see nothing but the gleam of two predatory slits.
"What part of cut off don't you understand?" came the lilting whisper.
For Prime, death came in colors.
"Glimmer, what's happening?"
Adora hadn't sat down at the council table quite yet, still slightly alarmed.
When Glimmer said nothing, just continued to clutch some parchment in her hand, Adora noticed an opened envelope where her queen sat, the large table otherwise pristine.
"Why did you call an emergency council so early in the morning?" Adora tried again. "The other princesses won't get here until-"
Glimmer smoothed the crumpled parchment in front of her – Adora noted that it had been folded and unfolded several times – and sighed.
"The Horde is under new management."
Adora blinked.
"New management?"
Glimmer nodded.
"But what about Prime? There's no way he'd just let-"
"Prime is dead."
And Adora almost staggered into her seat, so shocked by this that she had to press her palm to the table for balance.
"Dead?" she whispered.
Flashes of countless battles ran through the corridors of her mind. Clones and machines tearing down the plains as she led her own troops to meet them in the middle. Screams from both sides as lasers and magic alike screeched and rent the air.
She thought of all those she'd led to their deaths. She thought of scorched earth.
"It was a coup," Glimmer said. "By his former commander-in-chief of his military."
"Oh," Adora frowned. "Commander Catra?"
Adora remembered her. How could she not, when most of the battles she'd lost were whenever her regiment faced off against the commander herself. When the reason the Alliance had been so pushed to the brink was because of the feared commander whose strategies had lay waste to their forces more times than she could count.
"Adora," Glimmer steepled her fingers. "It's time to be honest with ourselves. We're losing. We've been losing. Badly. It's all we can do to hold our heads above water at this point. All we can do to stop our citizens from catching wind of just how closely the Horde is to encroaching Brightmoon borders."
Glimmer looked so tired she seemed about to collapse where she sat.
"And much of that is because of Commander- or, Warlord Catra now, I guess. Which is why you can appreciate my concern for how dangerous this has become. She's run circles around us as just the chief of strategy, but now that she's in charge? We might as well change our moonstone to a white flag."
"No!" Adora gritted her teeth. "It's not over, Glimmer. I won't let it be. She-ra will stop-"
"Like she's done so many times before?" Glimmer snapped, but almost immediately her eyes widened.
Adora closed her eyes, her hands clutching the rim of the table.
"Adora, I just meant-"
"No, you're right," Adora drew a shuddering breath. "I've failed you. I've done nothing but fail you since I became She-ra."
Glimmer's chair screeched as she stood and walked over to her friend.
She drew Adora into an embrace, propping her chin on Adora's shoulder.
"Without you, Brightmoon and all the other kingdoms would be in ruin by now. I'm sorry, okay? I didn't mean it."
She withdrew and gave Adora a tentative smile.
Adora returned it. Still, she sighed.
"I have to face facts. You're right. Catra's knack for war is terrifying. It's something I could never replicate or even try to understand."
Glimmer bit her lip.
"Yes. The thing is…the thing is, this letter is from her."
"What?" Adora gaped.
"She says she wants an armistice."
Adora stood, windows as tall as she was at her back, uncurtained sunbeams casting her form in shadow.
"It's a trap," she arrived, musing. "It has to be. It doesn't make sense for her to want a truce when they're winning by so much."
"That was my first thought too. But it seems she's accounted for our suspicions because…"
Glimmer trailed off.
"Because…?" Adora prompted.
"She claims that she understands a baseless ceasefire has no merit on its own. So she is proposing a solution. Marriage."
"Marriage?" Adora exclaimed, aghast. "She's out of her mind. After all she's done, all the Horde's done, the villages they've razed, the people they've-"
Adora's eyes were a maelstrom. Blue like a storm, rainwater churning against harsh ocean tide.
"I won't allow it. I know we're in a bad spot, but suggesting something like this when they've taken so much from us, and …and it's unfair to you! You've got Bow. No, absolutely not, under no circumstances will their new warlord think she can just take advantage of-"
"Not to me."
"Huh?"
"Catra isn't suggesting I do it. The marriage would be between her and She-ra."
The color drained from Adora's face. The blue had become shallow water lapping weakly at shore.
"I…We'll find another way, Adora."
Adora had sagged into her chair, arm flung across the bridge of her nose.
She heard in Glimmer's voice what her queen would not mention.
That there was no other way. That what ways they had had long since crumbled with Catra's repeated victories.
She'd seen it, too. In the shadows of the other princesses' gaunt features. In how her queen always seemed on the verge of crying.
Even now, Glimmer seemed as if stitched together from odds and ends of who she used to be. Like one breath of wind would knock her over and she'd stay there.
And as Adora was wont to think, she herself was nothing. Nothing except what she could devote to the waning kingdom that had given her purpose.
"We'll strengthen the borders," Glimmer babbled. "Give every intermittent post along the Whispering Woods magical reinforcement-"
"I'll do it."
Glimmer froze, fingers still encompassed in parchment.
Adora's words were muffled by her arm, but the room was so empty that she might as well have shouted it.
"Write her back. Tell her I'll marry her."
Author's Note:
I've had this idea brewing for a while. Chapter 1 seems sort of intense, but much of this will be Adora and Catra nonchalantly becoming fond of each other. I just wanted an excuse to write badass Catra handling shit like she does. heheh. I know Stardust has been languishing for more than a month now, I promise chapter 2 is in the works, and now I have the nerve to start another story?! Such is my self-sabotage.
Cross-posted on AO3 under bottledfairy.
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