Sunset ^beta

Glimmer doesn't know how long she's been in the cell before the Horde soldier shows up. There's no sun here, just metal and those horrible humming lights the Horde uses. Robots have been by twice, delivering rock-hard bread and sour water. Bow said that he'd been brought food by one of the soldiers but maybe that was because he wasn't a princess.

The woman doesn't look as tall as she did back when Glimmer woke up on the floor bound and stung by Shadow Weaver's magic. When Glimmer stands, she finds herself eye to eye with the soldier. "Hey," the woman says, her tail coiling around in the air like a snake. "Princess Glimmer."

"You're... You're Catra."

"Force Captain Catra," she corrects, smilingly lazily. "Now second-in-command to Lord Hordak himself. That's the great thing about the Horde. You were born a princess, you'll die a princess, but here, titles are something earned."

"Something you lie about," Glimmer retorts. "I heard Shadow Weaver, you're not a captain."

The woman's smile is replaced by a glare like a laser gun. "Lord Hordak had no interest in replacing me, whatever Shadow Weaver thought."

"Adora won't fight for you, will she? No matter what you do to her."

Glimmer is hoping this'll upset the woman further, give her some chink she might be able to use, but instead Catra laughs. "Is that how you think the world works, Princess? No, Lord Hordak doesn't want some weak-willed liability running around." The woman sneers at Glimmer. "Adora's never going to be a force captain now you and your friend wrecked that for her. After what happened with Kyle - really glad we didn't send anyone competent or that could've actually mattered, ha - I figured it was safer to just not let anyone talk to you.

"You're talking to me."

"I'm not really friendship material, am I?" the woman says. "And unlike Kyle, I'm smart enough to know that. Good luck making 'friends' with Entrapta's new bots."

It's like getting punched in the chest. "Those were - Entrapta's alive?!"

"You thought she was dead?!" It's sick, how the woman mirrors Glimmer's tone, like Glimmer's feelings are just the punchline to a joke she keeps missing.

"What did you do to her? What - " Glimmer starts, but the woman has turned her back and is pacing, ignoring her.

"Wow. Wow wow wow wow wow. Of course. Of. Course!" she raves, as if somehow she's the injured party. Her tail thrashes about like a flame. "Everyone shows up for you and the other one after we captured you, everyone's willing to do that. Of course someone like you gets a rescue party anyway, but you lose sight of your tech wiz who spends her time behind the wall panels and oh, whatever, she's dead let's just go." She flings a hand out and the nails spark against the stinging force field between her and Glimmer. "I figured you'd just ditched her, but no, you have to have an excuse for it. You never wanted her in your little princess party."

"Stop it! That's not true! You have no idea how much she meant to us!" What sort of a person is this woman, that she would think something like that? Is that what she'd do?

"I wonder if Adora thought the same about me? Maybe that's why she was so surprised when I showed up to get her. And here I thought it was the tank." She gives a theatrical sigh, turns back with a sickly smile on her face. "Well, it's for the best, isn't it?"

"What are you talking about? Tell me where Entrapta is!"

"Aren't you so happy to know she's safe here, since you care so much? I mean..." And she laughs again. "Things aren't really looking so hot for all the rebels, are they? The only safe place in the entire world is the Horde, and" - she leans in another inch - "between me and you? The Horde can be pretty unsafe too, if you've got the wrong commander. What a lucky break for her!"

"Tell me what you did to Entrapta right -!" Glimmer screams, and then she screams louder as everything turns pinkish-red and it feels like being torn apart. She curls up on the floor.

The woman says casually, "That must hurt."

Glimmer tries not to cry. It's getting worse every time.

"Well, I got more good news for you there. It'll probably stop when Shadow Weaver dies and she is noooooooot looking too great at the moment, so I'm betting she dies faster than you do. She's off in a cell of her own right now and without her magic - oh, I meant to ask, do you know if it was the Black Garnet that messed her up so bad, or did you guys do all that to her and she was using the Black Garnet to cover it up and pretend she just liked spooky-floating all the time? Because we're messing with it now and -"

"What?" Glimmer manages. She pushes herself up to see that the woman has crouched down into a squat, putting them at near eye level again. "Did what? Does she need magic to live?"

"Apparently? That's why she's dying? It's pretty hilarious?"

"How can you say that?"

The woman leans forward even more, stopping just shy of the force field. Her tail wobbles from side to side like a cobra preparing to strike. "You remember exactly whose fault it is you're getting slowly electrocuted to death, right?"

"This happened," Glimmer says slowly, "because my powers got messed up when I burst out of her containment field. It isn't like Shadow Weaver expected that."

Catra laughs like a barking dog. "I can really see why you got along so great with Adora! Sure! Shadow Weaver didn't mean for it to shock you if you managed to get loose, it's not like she's a horrible person who does this to people for fun!" The woman pauses, stands. "Did, anyway." She strolls almost out of Glimmers vision and leans against the wall.

"Adora just said...she said Shadow Weaver did mind games," Glimmer says finally. But then, Adora hadn't even mentioned Shadow Weaver until Mystacor.

"She did, did she. She worked that out."

"I knew Shadow Weaver did bad things, but I didn't think even the Horde..." Adora had been so scared. And Glimmer hadn't really listened, even though she'd known Adora kept quiet about things, hadn't realized how awful it really was. Glimmer had thought she understood, but how could she really? No matter how bad things had ever been between her and her mother, she'd never expected her mom to hurt her.

"Oh, so Adora didn't tell you about that part of it." The woman is still lounging against the wall, staring down the corridor rather than looking at Glimmer. She makes a sound Glimmer isn't sure how to classify, somewhere between a sigh and a huff. "Wasn't expecting her to be ashamed."

"She doesn't have anything to be ashamed of!" Glimmer shouts. "It's not her fault if Shadow Weaver hurt her!"

"Shadow Weaver didn't hurt her!" And there's so much hate in her voice it makes Glimmer sick just hearing it. Her voice drops to a viper's hiss. "Adora never got punished when she did something wrong."

"How can you be angry about that?" Glimmer asks. "How - weren't you on the same team? Just because - just because she couldn't be perfect every time, you're mad she wasn't hurt more? You wanted her to be in pain over making some stupid mistake? Weren't you ever friends?"

The woman slashes the force field in front of Glimmer, sending sparks and smoke everywhere. "I did more for her than she ever did for me!"

It's terrifying, but it's also the closest Glimmer's been to a chance at escape. "That's not how it works!" Glimmer insists. "You don't tally up what your friends do for you! If you were ever really her friend -"

To Glimmer's surprise, all the anger vanishes again. The woman gives a weird smile and crouches down again to be at eye level with Glimmer, tail flat and limp on the ground like a dead thing. Smoke rises from both hands. "No. No, you're right. We were never friends."

She keeps staring at Glimmer. After a moment, she repeats, "We were never friends. You guys were friends." There's a bead of blood forming on one finger, where the claw broke striking the force field. "But. Who cares, right? If none of this had happened, if Adora had stayed here with me and never met you, then after we conquered Bright Moon and locked you up, Adora and I would be standing here together. And you guys would talk. And you'd be friends and I'd never see it coming and she'd come back to break you out and get herself killed with you. Maybe she'd get me killed over it. Entrapta would definitely end up dead for real without you guys abandoning her here. A building that's just piles of mobile weapons with a princess in the center? That's what artillery's for. I guess," she says with a sneer, "it might've taken a little longer before we captured you, more time to hang out in your palace. More deaths from opposing the Horde, until we finally destroyed all those cute little villages and reached you hiding in the back."

"We weren't hiding!"

The woman cackles, her mouth wide and fanged like a slavering wolf. "Bright Moon's Horde territory now. I've seen the sort of life a princess lives. And. I guess you could hold that against Adora, how you don't have quite so many pillows in your cell or a little waterfall and shiny crystals, but friends don't keep a tally of that stuff, right? And you got to have Adora for a while! That's not nothing. You got to have Adora, and She-Ra, and to imagine for a little bit that your stupid little rebellion could actually win. And because Adora was gone, I ended up in charge, and then I took out your rebellion nice and clean. This is really the best it could've gone for you, you know?" Her smile has so many teeth and there's such venom in her eyes. "The best it could've gone for everyone. You know, I'm not even going to conquer Frosta's kingdom. We're going to take everyone around them, all the little ones, and then I'm going to stroll into her fancy palace and make her sign a treaty giving us her territory and her people and her stupid magic stone and her, just like Scorpia's kingdom did."

"Frosta will never join you," Glimmer says. She doesn't even need to try for bravado. It's so laughably off base, the sort of thing only someone too evil to understand the goodness of others could ever believe. "She'd never do that to her kingdom," Glimmer continues with certainty. "She's not evil like they were."

Catra shrugs, like this doesn't particularly matter. "Maybe. But I think she'd decide it's better to 'be evil like they were'. When we blew up her party, she rushed off to do her princess thing and keep the roof from falling in on people instead of like, trying to fight us like Adora. So that's going to be my official recommendation, letting her unconditionally surrender. I think we'll find she's evil enough. And think, if you guys hadn't gone to that ball and I hadn't showed up to kidnap you to get Adora, I'd just think she was yet another princess too dangerous to leave alive! Plus Scorpia and I really enjoyed the party. You see? Adora leaving worked out great for everyone in the end."

Glimmer doesn't answer.

"Don't you agree?" the woman insists, her smile just fangs now.

"No."

"Think about what a disaster it'd have been if it happened any other way! It's so good you became friends with Adora, that she threw away everything for you. I'm only a force captain now because she wouldn't come home for me, and Shadow Weaver's locked up and dying now, and you've got a chance you won't die and then you and that one with the bow and smart ones like Frosta will get to be on the winning side for the first time. Far away from each other and Adora, obviously. But still a better deal than you'd have gotten!"

"I'll never join the evil Horde and neither will Bow and neither will any of the other princesses! We'll never be Horde scum like you."

"Yeah you will," Catra says.

"Won't."

"Will."

"Won't."

"Will."

"Won't."

"Will."

The woman doesn't seem to care at all that she's been pulled into such a childish back and forth. She's smiling, even, like there's nothing wrong, like she isn't standing in front of a prisoner talking about all the horrible things she wants to do next, like she's actually having fun with all this, and so Glimmer blurts out, "I will never, ever help you kill innocent people!"

"Uh, duh? You suck at fighting," the woman says, and rolls her eyes dramatically. "I was there, Sparkles. There's other stuff that has to get done. We'll figure out what you'll be doing once the whole you-dying thing is resolved and Entrapta finishes looking over that runestone of yours. I'm still thinking about where Adora will go, besides nowhere near you." She smirks, then says in a lazy drawl, "Adora obviously can't be trusted in the field, so that's out. And there's a lot of menial support roles that go into running an army, you know? Ha, what am I saying, of course you don't know. Maybe you will if it turns out you can't do anything else. But it seems like a waste for Adora when she was so good at fighting. So I figure, I'll put her in charge of the little kids, have her train them up. I think she'll be pretty good at it, don't you? All nice and 'it'll be okay, shhh, don't cry' but never so much as to be insubordinate. They'll screw up sometimes, and Adora will say oh no she didn't mean it don't hurt her please don't hurt her, and she'll be told they gotta be punished anyway, and she'll say okay, but the kids will be so happy to feel like there's someone in their corner. She'll make their day a little better than it would've been without actually doing a thing for them! It's the perfect job for her."

"She'd never!" Glimmer yells. "She'd never let you hurt kids -" And maybe it's the emotion or that she's jumped to her feet, but everything is red and she's being pulled apart strand by strand with burning hooks and she crumples again, her eyes squeezed shut.

"Oh please," the woman says over her sobs. "I think I know Adora a little better than you."