Catra gets into a fight. Adora takes the punishment.

There was an unspoken rule within the Horde; don't stick your neck out against superiors. It always ended badly for the unfortunate soul. Depending on what you stuck your neck out for depended on your punishment

If it were as simple as correcting a misunderstanding, you'd either get Latrine duty or be starved for a week and be rewarded with an extra week of ration bars for sticking by your teammates. If you openly rebelled against your superior, as Catra often did in private, you'd get beaten for five minutes. The biggest one was if you stuck your neck out for somebody already in trouble.

Not only did you receive their punishment, you'd receive yours as well. Oftentimes, they'd either wipe the slate clean and beat you for two lots of five minutes or if you had particularly irritated a superior, you'd be lashed before the other cadets. Every cry of pain you made resulted in another lashing. That was a hard lesson. Catra had only ever been lashed once and that was enough. She hated Shadow Weaver and her "methods of teaching" with a burning passion and made the fatal mistake of voicing her protests at the tender age of seven. She'd been lashed five times for that.

Surprisingly, she was the only person in their squadron who'd been lashed the least. Kyle took next with three lashings, Lonnie next with four, Rogelio with five and Adora took the top spot for a record eleven lashings.

Damn, Adora. She always stuck her neck out on the line for her squadron mates. Had she not, Adora would've never received a lashing. More often than not, she took the blame when Kyle fucked something up (though somewhere around the fifth lashing, she stopped) she took two for Rogelio, three for Lonnie and one for Catra.

Adora was too good to upset a superior.
Until she wasn't.

Catra had found herself arguing with a cadet from Ocatvaia's squadron over a performance they did. As senior cadets, the higher performers had to sometimes teach the junior cadets when the Force Captain was otherwise engaged. But Catra had argued with a mouthy cadet over their crap performance, and when Adora stepped in to help, took a punch to the nose aimed at Catra.

Catra, of course, tackled the cadet to the ground, scratched his eye out and tore his lip.

Adora's nose was a bloody and bruised mess for several days, verging on two weeks before it began to heal.

Catra had been given a lashing date for severe damage to a fellow cadet, but Adora, stupid Adora, said she instigated the fight and "pussied out" before she could fight the cadet. Nobody believed it, but the rule was pretty much set in stone. And so, Catra's lashing date became Adora's.

As per the rules, Adora had to sleep in solitary for the duration up to her lashing, only being released for simulation training and circuit runs. The ration bars were cut to twice a day instead of the usual three, and a thin scratchy blanket on the ground, with no mattress.

...

All of this ran through Catra's head as she sat on the viewing deck, as forced to by Shadow Weaver. The Sergeant brought the whip down onto Adora's back, harshly and quickly. Each echoey crack left a welt in its wake, bleeding sluggishly into her pants as more welts crisscrossed across her spine.

Twenty-five lashes.
That was the punishment.

The most had only ever been twenty.
But that was the problem when you stuck your neck out for other people.

You always got it cut.

After Adora's night in the infirmary to prevent infection, she was released to the barracks again. She, along with the others, was barred from training and simulation training for one week. Even the Horde knew after a lashing like that, you wouldn't be back up again within several weeks, which is why they gave only one week as healing time. Every four hours, Catra would smoother ointment onto the angry welts, clean up the infection and blood, and rebandage. Lonnie helped Catra try to fight the fever that so desperately tried to take hold, while Kyle and Rogelio tried to sneak more ration bars for Adora to gather her health back up.

Adora was... silent... the entire week. No sound of pain when the wounds were cleaned, or when they were bandaged up, nothing. Just... silence.

Somehow that was more unnerving than the screams of agony.