Chapter Text
"Hey, we made it," Bow says as they pass through the last of the trees. There's a glittering expanse before them.
"Welcome to Bright Moon," Glimmer says, with more energy than Adora's heard from her in hours.
Bright Moon is indescribable, a riot of glowing and water and gold and green. "It's so beautiful," Adora breathes.
"It's so bright," Catra says, putting a hand out to shade her eyes.
Glimmer's straightened up on the horse's back. At the reminder Adora double-checks her own posture - correct - and Catra's - less bad than usual! "I just need to go in there, recharge, and deal with my mom." She sighs. "This will be fun." Then Glimmer pauses and looks to Bow. "Uh, Bow? Maybe you should take them in the back way?"
"Oh. Yeah. Good call."
"What's the back way?" Adora asks.
Adora always tries to look at things positively. Like right now, Catra's keeping one hand stuffed in her mouth to muffle her shrieks of laughter as Adora struggles up the rope, which is great because Adora's starting to think anyone hearing them climb up a sheer palace wall like they're an assault force would be bad.
Catra's really taking this way more seriously than usual, probably because it's real for once, and Adora realizes she's still cataloguing all this to report back to Shadow Weaver, how Catra could be a real asset in the field and her scores don't reflect what a good job she'd do when it counts and it's a waste to keep giving her more training she doesn't need when she's ready to start paying it back serving the Horde.
Only she'll never talk to Shadow Weaver again. It's just like Catra said, what they've done is unforgivable. Betraying the Horde...Shadow Weaver would kill them if she ever sees them again.
And...maybe she won't need to argue about Catra either. If they can just make a good first impression this time, then everything will be okay.
"How are you so bad at this?" Catra hisses between bursts of laughter. "Didn't I give you enough practice?"
This is completely different than climbing up to wherever Catra's decided to wedge herself. Back home there's all sorts of juts and protrusions to use as footholds, and the walls themselves are rough enough that she can keep her feet on them most of the time. Clinging to a rope with her feet dangling over an abyss is completely different.
"It might seem weird, but we totally come in this way all the time," Bow tells her, putting out his hand and pulling her up the last foot.
"Oh, here, robes! For you guys! No reason!"
Adora barely has time to take in the room, which is more glittering but now with purple, before some sort of drape covers her head. From the yowl to her left, Catra's experiencing something similar.
"You're trying to hide me," Adora says, getting it clear of her eyes in time to catch Catra rolling her own.
"What?" Bow squeaks. "Nooo."
"You have some plan," Catra tells him. All the humor's gone from her like it never was and her voice is tightening up the way it always does before - before something goes wrong. "You didn't lie to Adora about Sparkle-Mom knowing about the sword just so we'd both follow you here to be killed because we could've gone in the front way for that."
Bow laughs anxiously in a way that really isn't reassuring. "Haha no one's getting killed who said anything about getting killed?"
"Me!" Catra hops down from the seat by the window and stalks toward him. "And it's going to be YOU if you don't tell me what the plan is right now!"
"Catra, calm down! It's going to be fine!"
"It's absolutely fine!" Bow agrees.
"Adora, get a clue for once! The only way out of here is rapelling back down that wall. Which you just proved you suck at! Is your magic sword going to let you fly when they cut the rope with you halfway down?!"
"There's also a door! Which we will be using. But not right now!" He edges toward the door. "In fact. I should just. Check that. To make sure it's ready to, do door things, later!"
Adora watches him open it tentatively, stare out, and shut it. And again. And again.
Adora sighs. "Okay. I get it," she says. It's uncomfortable looking at the tension in his shoulders, so reminiscent of Lonnie before every training mission, so she picks up a lumpy pink thing set by the window to stare at instead. It's like a pillow but with eyes. "I'm guessing the people of Bright Moon are going to be a little less welcoming of Horde soldiers than you led me to believe."
"Maybe a little," he squeaks.
"Maybe! Wow really!" Catra growls, pacing. "You're so smart Adora!"
"I get it, Catra. How little?"
Bow winces. "Think...pitchforks and torches."
"Auwwwwwww," Adora whimpers.
"What's a pitchfork?" Catra asks.
Adora groans again and covers her face. "Don't tell me." Wasn't pitch the nasty sticky black stuff? What did forks have to do with it? Were the torches to set them on fire afterward or would they light the pitch first?
She hears the door shut and looks back up to see Bow has turned to them again. "It's just that… People of Bright Moon have been really hurt by the Horde. Everyone here has lost someone in the war. You can't blame them for being a little suspicious."
"Sorry," Adora says.
"Hey, it's not your fault."
"Yeah, it's mine," Catra says. "Right?"
"No, that's…"
"You were only there because I went missing," Adora says. "Shadow Weaver wasn't even going to send you out at all before I screwed everything up. It's not your fault what happened."
"It's not," Bow agrees. "Neither of you knew this was going on." He smiles reassuringly and puts a hand on Adora's shoulder. "And once they get to know you, the people of Bright Moon are going to trust you, just like Glimmer and I already-" He yelps as the room explodes in light. Catra screeches and jumps backward.
"I'm here!" Glimmer shouts. "Okay. My mom's on her way, but, no one panic."
"What?!" Adora shouts.
Catra grabs onto Adora's ponytail and drags. "Back out the window!" she orders.
"I said no one panic!" Glimmer shrieks, looking even more frantic than Adora feels. Her voice keeps speeding up. "Don't worry. She'll love you. All you have to do is use the sword to transform into She-Ra before she gets here." She ends with an awkward laugh.
"I thought you had a plan!" Catra screeches from the windowsill. Her tail sticks straight up and has puffed to resemble a scouring brush.
"It's a great plan!"
"Wait, we're jumping straight to She-Ra with your mom?" Bow says, and oh no even he doesn't think this is a good idea, it isn't just Catra being Catra, this isn't going to work. "Are you sure?"
"Uh, yeah. I don't think my mom is going to buy, 'Hey Mom, we found a Horde soldier and then she found another Horde soldier, let's collect them all!'"
It...it doesn't matter that they left. Adora was still a part of that, a part of something that hurt people, hurt every person here, and that's what matters.
"My mom is going to love She-Ra!" Glimmer continues. "And then...She-Ra can say her magic just tells her Catra's a good person!"
"And I'll just never turn back!"
"No, well, actually, can you do that?" Glimmer asks.
"Maybe!" Adora squeaks. "Yes! Probably!"
"Not a chance," says Catra.
"You don't know that for sure!"
"I thought you had a plan," Catra repeats.
"I promise, this will work!" Glimmer insists. "We just need to ease Mom into the whole Horde thing. Once you're here, and nothing bad happens, then she'll know you're not enemy spies pretending to be nice people in order to scope out our defenses and weak points so you can lead the Evil Horde in a final strike against Bright Moon to decapitate the rebellion and kill us all and she won't be mad!"
Catra slouches back against the wall. "But that's exactly why we're here."
"Don't joke! No jokes around Mom! Adora, just turn into She-Ra MOM IS ON HER WAY UP ALREADY."
Adora looks between smiling Glimmer's hopeful face and a scowling Catra who won't meet her eyes. "Uh, Glimmer, look, I don't know if…"
No. No, she can do this. She has to be able to do this. She'll turn into She-Ra, she'll lie to Glimmer's mom about Catra, and then she'll stay She-Ra, forever, and no one will ever find out and she won't let everyone down.
"Right! She-Ra." Glimmer stares at her expectantly. "But, uh, I'm still figuring out how all of this stuff works."
"How hard can it be? Sword, magic words, poof!" Glimmer teleports to one of the weird bowls hanging from the ceiling and spreads her arms. "She-Ra."
Adora stares at the sword. "Right."
"Hey. You're gonna do great, okay? Bow and I will go buy you some time. Just hang out here with the sword and think She-Ra thoughts." Glimmer grins and grabs Bow. "Ibelieveinyou!" Then they're both gone.
"Alright," Catra says, grabbing her by the hair again. "Your new friends are idiots but that should buy enough time. Out the window."
"No, no, I've got this. Glimmer's right. It's not hard. I will." Adora manages to extract her ponytail from Catra's grasp and straightens up. "Okay, Sword. Let's do this."
She swings the sword upward and it catches in some sort of cloth net hanging from the ceiling. Adora overbalances, slips, hits the wall, knocks some strange shiny things off a shelf above, then flings herself down catching them.
"That was hilarious but not dying over hilarious," Catra says.
"It'll work."
"Come on, let's just run for it already."
"We don't have anywhere to run!"
"We will once we're outside!" Catra shouts, grabbing her. Adora can feel Catra's claws digging into her shoulders. "You already left once, what's one more time! Why is staying here so important?!"
"I can do this. I can do this. It'll be okay." Adora takes a breath. Outside, Horsey whinnies. She looks past Catra and sees him standing on a field far below. He looks so happy, with so much wide open space and without tiny things everywhere to knock over or into or people he's going to get killed and absolutely no ceiling with weird scarf nets. "But. Yeah, let's go outside first. I think I just need more space. Go out, turn into She-Ra, come back." She pulls the cloak on and holds the other out to Catra. "Here, put this on."
"Seriously?" Catra says, staring at the purple cloth.
"So they won't know who we are if anyone sees us."
"Seriously?!"
"Glimmer did it back at Thaymor. As long as we cover our uniforms, nobody will pay any attention to us."
"Right, like they don't have passwords," Catra says sarcastically, but she pulls it on over her head. She shudders. "Ugh, I don't like it!"
"I know, it's weird. But it'll work. We're not going to go up to anyone. If they only see us at a distance they'll think we're doing something we're supposed to. They can't have time to interrogate everybody."
"Fine. But when this goes wrong, we run, okay?"
"Sure. But it won't. You'll see. I'll turn into She-Ra and everything will be fine."
Everything is not fine. The only part of it that goes right is that Horsey lets her hug him again. Then it's a lot of waving the sword in the air and shouting and occasionally falling while nothing happens.
"Ugh," Catra groans from a rock. "Watching you mess up was only funny the first thousand times."
"I can do this!" Adora insists.
"Maybe you're not really a princess," Catra suggests. "You said the princess is the sword, right? Maybe the sword just really hates tanks."
"I told you, it said my name. And, back in Thaymor, that wasn't the first time. We were attacked by a giant bug when I found the sword. And this voice said, 'Adora, will you fight for the honor of Greyskull?' and that's when it happened."
"So maybe it'd have said that to whoever was holding it."
Adora hadn't thought of that. "Maybe." After all, hadn't the last day proven she wasn't any good at telling when people were lying to her? "Well, do you want to try then?"
"Nope," Catra says, still lying on the rock. "It's not going to matter if you get it working anyway. They hate us because we're from the Horde, just like everyone told us they would, and turning big and glowy isn't going to change that."
"But we're not just that," Adora says. It couldn't be. The sword had been waiting for her. It'd called for her and it knew her and it knew things about who she really was. It couldn't have been lying. "I - I'm not nothing."
"Of course not! We never were! But nobody cares!"
"Glimmer believes in us."
"In you," Catra mutters. "But it'll hardly be the first time you let someone down."
Like Catra right now, still in danger just because Adora can't get one single thing right.
"She-Ra's a princess. And everyone knows the princesses fight the Horde, so they'll know She-Ra isn't with the Horde. I just have to figure out how to make She-Ra appear." There has to be something they're missing. "It happened when we were attacked by the bug. And then when the Horde was attacking people. But there was also the old building, and I think that wanted She-Ra as well, but nothing attacked us there until after Bow and Glimmer tried to talk to the hologram. I don't think there needs to be people getting attacked, it just needs there to be a point to She-Ra. I just need to focus on how we really need She-Ra to show up."
"Sure," Catra says, rolling onto her belly so she's completely facing away from Adora.
"It'll work. Glimmer -"
"They lied to you, moron."
"She just doesn't know how this works! They don't know anything about the sword."
Catra sits up sharply and glares. "But her mom totally does, right?" she snaps. "That's what your best friend Glimmer told you. 'Oh Adora, don't go back to the Horde like you promised you would, come live in my princess country instead, my mom knows everything about your magic sword!' Except for that it's She-Ra's sword, because just having the sword isn't good enough, or what She-Ra's powers are, because the plan is to lie about that. Just like how Glimmer got us here by saying we'd be safe and after Bow gets you stuck in their room we find out once we're seen everyone kills us."
"That's not Glimmer's fault, it's because they're scared, it's because the Horde hurt them first. And...and anybody could just pick up the sword! Even if she knows it's She-Ra's sword that doesn't mean she'd believe it works for me. I could just have stolen it."
Catra turns her back again. "Whatever."
"I'm sorry! I get it, okay! It's scary and everything's wrong and everyone's mad, but once I turn into She-Ra I can fix it."
"Whatever."
Adora stares at the sword. "Come on," she whispers. "Everyone's counting on me." She takes a deep breath and tries again, focusing on Glimmer and Catra and pitch and Glimmer's mother and how they really really need her to be She-Ra. "For the honor of Greyskull!"
The stone finally lights up. Too much. Beams of light start to shoot out. One narrowly misses Catra, who yowls and jumps into the tree above. Another does not miss Horsey.
"Horsey! No!"
Horsey lights up like a strip of magnesium and Adora's sure she's just murdered him. Then the glow fades and...he's a bird.
Adora stares at him, taking in his magnificent rainbow wings and golden horn.
Then Horsey takes in those things and starts screaming.
"What did you do, Adora?" Catra yells as Horsey throws himself around the clearing and begins to flail around on the ground like he expects the wings to come off with enough banging. "Turn it off!"
"I don't know how! Horsey! Come back! Stop!" She tries to chase after him.
"Adora, no!"
Oh wow there are a lot of people out here. But she can talk her way out of this, no one knows who she is or what she's done, she just has to catch Horsey and calm him down, somehow, even as he's flying away. "Catra, can you jump that high?"
"Duh," Catra says beside her, and leaps onto his back.
Horsey screams even louder and flips around in midair, sending Catra's cloak flying, and then he plummets, nearly crushing Catra under him. For a second Adora thinks she's gotten Catra killed, but she moves slightly and groans.
"Horde soldier," someone whispers, and then it's a shout.
Beside Adora, a woman draws a sword and charges.