Chapter Text
Adora finds focusing on preparing for 'prom' a welcome task but no one else seems interested. Glimmer won't stop fussing over Bow going with someone else. It makes it hard to pay attention to her planning board.
"Catra," Glimmer is saying, grabbing her by the shoulders. "Why don't people like me?"
"Of course people like you," Adora says. "You're really nice."
"Please, Catra," Glimmer begs. "You're mean! You'll tell me the truth!"
"How would I know!"
Glimmer whines, "Well, why don't you like me?" Adora winces.
"You ask annoying questions!"
"Okay, okay, what else?"
"Look it's not - I don't care you're asking questions. All I think about you is what your mom's going to do to me if anything goes wrong! Look, I don't know why people like people, okay? Everybody but Adora's always hated me."
"I don't hate you," Glimmer says.
Catra laughs. "Oh so this honesty thing is one-way, huh?"
"I don't hate you!" Glimmer insists. "Okay, I don't, I don't really like you. I barely know you! And you're awful to Adora a lot."
"She's really not awful - " Adora tries.
Glimmer ignores her yet again and continues, "But you're risking your life fighting the Horde. You're not a princess. It's not your responsibility. You don't have special powers. And you think everyone hates you. But you're there every time, for Adora, and for everybody, even when you're scared."
"I'm not scared!"
"You're scared of everything that isn't food or Adora," Glimmer retorts. "And I saw that time you jumped when you turned and saw a banana."
"I was surprised, not scared," Catra says sourly. "And you're scared of dead mice! That's way stupider because they're dead!"
Adora bangs her head on her planning board. "Please let's prepare for the party."
"You dropped a weasel on me!"
"Well I didn't mean to, obviously! I wouldn't waste a mouse on you!"
"Pleeeeeeeeease," Adora begs.
And maybe if they'd listened to her and helped her prepare, she wouldn't have been surprised to see a kid greeting them from the throne and wouldn't have then blurted out how surprised she was and then eleven-and-three-quarters Frosta wouldn't hate her already.
"You're really off your game," Catra mutters as they walk away. "Normally people love you."
"It's fine," Adora says, like her heart isn't pounding hard enough to crack her ribs. "There's time to win her over. And there's lots of other princesses here too."
"...yeah," Catra says, eyeing the crowd. "Never really realized there's this many."
And it's Glimmer who actually knows them, but Glimmer doesn't want to help run introductions because she's still fretting over Bow, who isn't even here yet, but Adora can handle - since when are force captains invited?
She sprints back to the throne. "Revered hostess, she's from the Horde!"
The force captain tries to wave. "Hi, Catra, Adora."
"What are you and Shadow Weaver planning?" Adora demands. "I won't let you get away with this!"
"I - I just -" the force captain stammers. "I figured you guys…you'd be here, and..."
"And you could attack us?!" Adora shouts. Why were they thinking, refusing to let her bring She-Ra's sword in?
Frosta just glowers at her. "Princess Adora," Frosta says. "Princess Scorpia was invited. The rules state clearly that all princesses are welcome."
"She's not -" Adora comes up short. Because Shadow Weaver wasn't the princess, was she? She was a sorceress, one who'd needed to carve and gut a runestone to get it to work for her. So the Horde's princess is...this person? Some random force captain Adora never heard of, who didn't even have her own team? "But she's with the Horde," Adora repeats helplessly. "They're the enemy."
"Your enemies," Frosta corrects. "The All-Princess Ball is neutral ground. I will not dishonor that legacy."
"The Horde is everyone's enemy," Adora tells her, baffled. She looks back to Princess Scorpia and feels another burst of anger. "You attacked Salineas! You attacked us!"
"Yeah. But we're…" Princess Scorpia says, "we're not allowed to fight here, so we don't have to fight." She looks so sad and somehow small despite the enormous space she and her poofy dress take up.
Well, good. She should be sad. She's a bad person who helps other, worse people.
By her side, Catra sighs. She says, "You'll probably blab some important stuff if I let you hang out and talk to me, right?"
Princess Scorpia straightens up again and grins. "I can never keep track of what's important!" She claps her claws together.
Catra looks at Adora. "Now I won't be underfoot while you're doing serious princess talks, and maybe I'll learn something the rebellion can use."
"Alright," Adora tells her. "Be careful, though." And she leans close to whisper, "And please don't get out of sight. I get you can beat her but knows how big of an ambush she means to lead you into? I'm sure she's up to something."
"No worries," Catra says. "All the food's here anyway." She saunters over to Princess Scorpia only to misjudge the woman's reflexes and end up in another hug. "Ack! Personal space!"
And Adora retreats back to Glimmer and cajoles her into talking to other princesses.
It...it doesn't go badly, exactly. The princesses are polite, and they don't seem pleased by Princess Force Captain Scorpia being around, but they don't seem to understand what Glimmer's saying. They're giving non-answers and shifting away from the topic and Adora doesn't get why. Of course, they also make it clear Adora's only an -
"- honorary princess!?" Catra snarls, and there's a nasty clatter as the plate she hit out of someone's hand goes flying across the floor. Adora wishes this was Princess Scorpia's fault but the woman looks as terrified as Adora feels. "What exactly makes you better than Adora, Princess? All the nothing you've been doing for Etheria?"
Frosta's voice is like a lash. "Catra!"
"Oh!" Catra says, throwing her hands to the side of her face theatrically. "You're right. What am I doing, knocking over a dish?"
She upends the table.
Adora runs toward her.
"Catra, you can't," Scorpia is hissing. "The rules - "
"Who cares! Did that upset you, Frosta? What will you do? Stay up doing double shifts of sitting around? Maybe you can join the Horde, that'd really show us for caring!"
"Catra, stop it," Adora says. Ice surges up under Catra's feet.
But Catra just jumps away. "Oh, so you're not like Perfuma, you can do stuff!" she calls from the other table she's landed on. "You just choose not to!"
"Your behavior is completely inappropriate!" fumes the hostess of the entire party of all the princesses everywhere.
"So what?" Catra demands. "Better than being a selfish coward! Glimmer has no idea why nobody wants to join up, you know? She thinks it's because you aren't friends or something! But if anyone wanted to fight the Horde, you'd do it! You don't have to join us to fight them! You just don't care!"
Adora grabs her shoulder. "Catra, it's not like that, Bow said, he said everyone's lost somebody to the Horde."
"Well we lost everything!" Catra screams at her. "Where are our parents, Adora? Our aunts? Our brothers?"
The Horde…
...they were orphans.
Catra waves her hand over the ballroom. "They're supposed to protect Etheria! Look at all of them! They didn't keep the Horde from killing our families, they didn't stop the Horde from taking us, they never came to save us! And we'll die slowing the Horde down and they'll sit here and talk about what fools we were for trying, for caring at all, while the Horde burns through the next village." She stares out at them and shouts, "Well you idiots think you're safe? You think you're special? The Horde doesn't care, they'll tear you apart too!"
"Of course a Horde soldier would say that," says a princess.
Adora'd been nothing when the Horde found her.
She'd never wondered at how they could be so sure.
"Of course I would!" Catra snarls back. "Apparently being born a princess makes you too stupid to know what death is! You think any of you are exceptions? Hey, Mermista, you ever notice your gate's only worth anything because Bright Moon's guarding your flank? Perfuma, you'll be the first one down soon as they know She-Ra's dead! Don't think I missed how nobody else showed up, you think the Horde's too stupid to notice that!"
Entrapta pops above the crowd, lifted up by half her hair The other side waves in the air like she's raising a hand. "Me! What about me?"
"Did you do anything about the ventilation like I said?"
"Oh, right. No." She slides back down.
"Then it's still mustard gas. And Frosta! Hey, Frosta! I used to wonder what heat bombs were for and now I know!"
"Enough!" Ice engulfs the entire table, but Catra is moving again.
"You didn't care when the Horde ate up Scorpia's kingdom, did you?" Catra calls, jumping along the walls just ahead of the jutting ice. "You don't like her, you don't like her parents, so who cares what happened to literally everyone else in the country! They deserve it for being born in the wrong place! Well the Horde will kill you too, no matter how many villages and bodies you hide behind! And I'm glad!" Catra howls. "I wish I could see it! You're the only ones in all Etheria who deserve it! I wish you'd all kill each other and leave the rest of us alone!"
Frosta tears out a massive chunk of the wall and Catra goes flying. She twists to get her arms and legs under her but Frosta's already growing walls and she's caged in by ice before she even touches the ground again.
Razz had said, the princesses protected Etheria.
"Go on and kill me!" Catra screams at her. "I'm going to die because of all of you, so just do it! You think sitting around makes it not your fault, you think you're any better -"
The ice grows and thickens, cutting her off. Adora can hear a muffled howl, see Catra clawing furiously at the wall in front of her.
Adora runs out of the palace.
By the door is where she had to hand over the sword. She vaults across the counter, driving her forearm into the guard's neck, and they just go down like they've never fought in their life. Her hand grasps She-Ra's sword.
And it's funny, after all the fuss about how she couldn't go in armed, how easy it is to just push past the other guards. They barely even try.
Frosta is livid when She-Ra enters. "There are no weapons allowed at -"
What's the point of the rule, anyway, when all the real princesses have magic in their fingertips.
She smashes the hilt of the sword into the ball of ice around Catra, cracking the top apart. She grabs Catra's hand and pulls her out.
"It's just like it was at the start," she tells Catra. "I get caught up in caring about if people hated me instead of about what was needed, but it's not about me, it's not about them." And she looks around at the wrecked party, at all these princesses. "You know what's going on. You know what the Horde does, what they do to people. Why did I keep acting like it was all on me to tell you?" And she looks back to Catra. "We'll find another way," she promises. "We'll win in the end."