behold! another thing i banged out and didn’t edit! kjjdnjjhdn this was fun! i decided to call it hello, my old heart after this song because i am cruel
(also... i think after i write the sequel bc i can’t just leave it like that i might expand this at some point or maybe write multiple versions? i like this a lot jejtnjrtnrnnm)
Adora doesn’t remember most of her childhood. Or much after that, really.
Everything up to the age of 18 is a... haze. Memories of life, of friends, of her identity, are either buried so deep she has to struggle to find them, or gone entirely. Faces, names, places, all gone somewhere she can’t follow.
It’s a given at this point, another piece of the debris of a life her carers left her with. She can’t fix it, and she can function without knowing her neighbour’s favourite colour, so why does it matter? It doesn’t hinder her too much, nor does it really make an impact on her functionality. It does annoy her, though, for reasons she can’t really explain.
There are things left behind in the fog of memory she... needs. Things that might explain this hole in heart, this deadening sense of loss that seems to follow her everywhere now. Things that might make everything make sense again.
Specifically, there’s... a memory of the traces of a memory. Someone Adora hurt, or someone who hurt Adora, or maybe both. And the girl who walked by her side for the first 18 years of her life, the girl who vanished at the drop of a hat, the girl she didn’t allow herself to grieve for.
She knows how important the girl was to her. And missing her, dreaming about her without knowing why, hurts more than the loss. There’s something... something between them she has to fix. And it might hold the key to everything.
If she could remember, if she could find those shattered memories and piece them back together, she might remember why they took her past from her, and why Catra vanished. Why Catra died.
She doesn’t know exactly why she came here, to the shell of the abandoned home on the hillside. Maybe because it holds her last memory of a memory of Catra, alive and standing in front of her, laughing as she turns to push the door open. Maybe because it’s where she feels her memories... return, in whatever capacity they are able to,
It’s darker than she remembers it. The hole in the roof has since been covered with tarpaulin and framed with a web of crumbling scaffolding, leaving dark, angular shadows climbing the walls and forming ominous shapes on the floor. Adora couldn’t begin to try and decipher the patterns there if she tried.
If she focuses, she can trace the paths they left in the dust together as kids, winding around battered marble columns and up the staircases and back down again, like trails in the snow.
Like...
Adora pushes back the tears. Why am I crying? What is it about this place that-
Oh.
A memory. Of... her.
“You’re trying to remember me, aren’t you? Stars, I’m so sorry, Adora.”
If she focuses, she can remember the first day they came here together, a pair of awkward 14 year olds with too much energy and too little time, and hid in the shadow of the stairs on the left, waiting for the night to pass. The details are blurred together, half-buried under a white haze, but if Adora tries, maybe she can -
She can’t.
“You can. If you want, you can. What they did to you - it isn’t permanent. You can break out of it if you try. It’ll hurt, but you can. I did.”
She shakes the - the memory (a memory, nothing else - something she’ll have to sit and examine later) off.
Adora picks her way across the floor, careful not to disturb the spiderweb of shadows. It feels... familiar, instinctual. Something more than muscle memory. Almost... almost like she’s being guided by the past she can’t reach.
There are memories here. Adora can feel them in the back of her mind, pushing her gently forwards, urging her on.
She makes her way into the centre of the main hall of the building - it was a mansion once, she realises - and tries to picture it as it was before - well-lit, grand, beautiful. She tries to see it how Catra would have (because she knows how much she loved this place, even if she doesn’t remember it), filled with stars and candles.
Adora switches off the torch and stretches out her hands, as though feeling her way forward, except there’s nothing to touch but air. And it feels... heavy. Like she’s being watched.
Except there’s no-one here. She’s alone.
I’m alone. I’m alone... right?
“No.”
A growing feeling of terror rises, unbidden, in her chest, and she whirls around, brandishing the torch in front of her like some sort of sword, doing her best to clamp down on the cry building in her throat.
Nobody. Nobody’s there.
“I am. I’m right here. Adora, I’m right here -”
Adora lets her shoulders drop. She feels... defeated, for some reason. Empty.
But the feeling doesn’t go away. And she can’t leave until something happens. She can’t leave until - until she gets her answers.
“What answers do you want, princess?”
Okay, the voice was definitely real that time.
Adora spins around again, nearly dropping the torch, and - there she is. Or rather, a memory of her - a girl no older than seven, with a tangle of dark hair and vivid heterochromatic eyes, her outline flickering and fading and -
She reaches out to touch her - and is met with empty air. The girl meets her eyes, and something in them looks so desperate that it makes her breath catch in her lungs, and then she just - vanishes. Melts into nothing.
She almost cries out. Almost fucking sobs. Because she was right there, all the answers could have been within her reach, and she just watched the girl she almost remembers melt into dust-
“Not her,” the voice tells her gently. “She’s not real. She used to be, but she isn’t now.”
Adora shakes her head and doesn’t answer.
“There are more of them here. Memories. Kinda.”
“What happened to her?” Adora whispers. They’re the first words she’s spoken in a while, and her voice sounds disjointed and out of place, echoing over and over down the hallways.
Something settles on her shoulder (at least, she thinks it does). “She’s... a fragment. That’s the only way I can think of describing it.” A laugh, one she... recognises. “I think they’re all part of the memories they took from you. They’re shadows. I’m the only real one. Well, real-ish.”
“What do you mean?”
“Turn around.”
Her limbs don’t want to co-operate. Because I’m afraid of what I might see.
It takes a monumental effort to get to herself to rise, turn inch by inch, raise her eyes past the cracked floorboards. It takes even more to comprehend what she’s seeing.
“Hey, Adora.”
Catra. It’s - Catra.
Catra - but not. Not quite the girl she watched disappear from her memories three years ago. Her eyes are slightly hollower, her hair is shorter, and she’s... dead.
Very obviously dead, too. It’s not like Adora could miss a stab wound in the front of her shirt.
But... but she’s there, she’s standing right in front of her, wearing an infuriatingly familiar half-smile, and she wants to cry -
“Ca... Catra?”
Her smile widens. “That’s me.”
“You’re here,” she whispers, and it comes out as more of a sob. She’s here she’s here she’s here she’s here -
“You’re here,” Catra - Catra - echoes, beaming. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”
And Adora can’t do anything except let out a small sobbing noise in response.
“Do you... remember?” she asks softly, hesitantly, hands toying with the fraying hem of her shirt.
Adora shakes her head. “Not... much. I remember knowing you.”
Catra nods carefully. Her form has this odd translucent quality to it; she wonders if touching it would cause her to flicker like a hologram and vanish, only to re-materialise again in another place. “That’s something,” she offers. “Better than I’d hoped for, to be honest.”
Her eyes fix on the torch in Adora’s hand, then flick back up. “I’d put that away if I were you. Light kind of... uh, dispels ghosts. That’s what I am. A ghost.” A smile. “I think.”
Adora stuffs it into her pocket without registering the movement. “H-how -”
“How do ghosts work?” Catra guesses. “Not sure. How am I a ghost? Again, not sure.” She shrugs, as though brushing it off. “It’s been... a long time.”
“I missed you,” she says, in a much smaller voice than she expected. “I missed you so much. I missed - I missed knowing you. I-”
Catra smiles, and the movement causes her face to flicker at the edges, like static. “I missed you too. A lot.”
Adora bites back a sob. “Wha- What happened to you? How did you- ?”
She shakes her head, shrugs. “Long story.”
There’s a long moment of silence. Adora catches herself staring at the outline of her form, the trails of half-shadows it leaves on the floorboards. In the half-light, she could almost be real. Alive.
She’s dead. She’s dead.
It would hurt less if it wasn’t so clearly her fault.
“And - what about you?” Catra asks, breaking into her thoughts (which is a relief). There’s genuine concern in her eyes, she realises.
She really cares about me. I must’ve cared about her, too - I do care about her. I just - why?
“I... also a long story. I think you know most of it already.” She huffs a laugh, blinking back tears. “More than me, at least.”
Catra nods again, slowly. Her eyes flick up and down, taking everything in like she’s seeing it for the first time. And some sort of realisation crosses them, then fades away as quickly as it came.
“Do you want to... come back?” she asks.
“Come back?”
“Come back. To the house. I could... I could show you what happened. If you want. It’s getting late, and Glimmer’ll be worried about you.”
Despite herself, Adora almost laughs. “You’re worried about me getting in trouble with my roommate for coming home late?”
Catra grins. “I’ve interacted with Sparkles before. She’ll be pissed, trust me.”
Adora smiles too, and for a moment, it could almost be - before again. Before her memories cut off and leave her with a white wall of nothing. Before Catra died.
“I don’t know if I can,” she says softly. “I might be... I might be dreaming, or you’ll be gone when I come back, or -”
“Trust me, I’m not going anywhere,” Catra cuts in. “I kind of can’t.”
She sits down on the floor and crosses her legs, a clear request for Adora to join her. “It’d be easier if I show you now, but I don’t want to make you pass out and have to figure out how to cart your ass back home.”
“Show me what?” Adora breathes. This is it. This is it. I might be able to... to fix things. Finally.
“What happened to me. And what happened to you. It’s a long story, like I said.” She smiles at her, a little sadly, and presses her palms flat against the floorboards as she sits down. Adora wonders vacantly if she can feel it, if her hands are passing through the wood right now, if she’s solid or just a... a ghost.
If she’s really gone.
Thinking about it fills her with an even deeper sense of loss, somehow. She can’t shake the feeling that it’s her fault, even if she knows that’s not true. And it hurts.
For a moment, they sit facing each other under the shattered skylight, and it could almost be - a memory she can’t quite reach. It could almost be just them again, like she knows they were.
“Are you sure you’ll be able handle this now?”
She nods. Once.
Catra gives her a small, sad smile. Her eyes are transparent, filled with guilt and an emotion she can’t quite place.
The room starts to fill with a soft blue light. It creeps up through the floorboards, making the shadows stand upright and wheel towards the fractured ceiling, making Catra seem to glow from within. Adora has to force herself not to stare (then wonders why).
Smoke tendrils begin curling up through the floor beneath them, wrapping around their legs. She swallows her panic in time to see Catra lift her hands from the wood, leaving scorch marks in their wake, and glance encouragingly up at her. It’s... comforting. Familiar.
“Try to relax, okay?”
Adora nods again. “Okay,” she whispers. It’s all she can manage.
The smoke curls up around her torso and expands, filling the entire room with a blue haze. She narrows her eyes against the strengthening glow, closes them entirely - and opens them again when the door swings open and nearly flies off its hinges.
Before she can move, before she can do anything but cry out, Catra’s hands - Catra’s solid, real hands - clamp as gently as possible down on her shoulders. “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s not real,” she whispers. “They can’t hurt us again.”
“Again?”
She turns to meet Catra’s eyes, and for the first time since they saw each other, she looks... serious.
“Again.”
And two kids come running through the door.
Adora almost gasps again, because... because it’s her. Her and Catra, covered in mud and soaking wet and shivering, hair in disarray, eyes filled with sheer terror.
As soon as Catra skids in, past Adora slams the door shut, hinges screaming in protest. She watches it happen as though underwater. It feels... it feels familiar. That fear in their eyes - it’s real, and she remembers it. Except she doesn’t.
“Are you okay?”
Past Catra nods, clutching her wrist to her chest. “I’m fine. Are they gone?”
“I don’t think so.” Past Adora jogs over to her and helps her to her feet, smiling faintly. Despite everything, despite the wound at her temple and the blood caked on the hem of her shirt, despite the rain and the terror in her eyes, she’s smiling.
And Adora... remembers.
She remembers everything at once, a hail of flashing images and thoughts and words and feelings. She remembers emotions she didn’t even know she had experienced - burning, horrific grief, loss, missing her so badly she wants to scream at the sky and quite literally burst into flame, choking on sobs in bed - sheer, unending terror, pushed deep down into the centre of her chest, the need to protect, protect her, keep her safe, because she can’t be scared if Catra is -
Someone is calling her name.
Someone is... Catra is calling for her, holding her against her chest as she trembles, whispering her name over and over again in her ear.
“Adora, Adora - “
And Past Catra... Past Catra is bent over on the wood, coughing and crying her name, letting out choking sobs, a hand pressed over the wound in the centre of her chest. The door has been blown open again, letting in the wind and the rain, and Past Adora is gone.
“I’m-” She sits up, which is much more of a struggle than it should be. “I’m here. What happened?”
Catra gives her a concerned look. “You- passed out, I think. I mean, I know I said you would, but I didn’t expect.... this.”
Her voice has begun to distort again, fading into a soft, static hum. The vision, or whatever it was, has begun to flicker and die into nothing, the threads fraying and unravelling until all that’s left is the girl bleeding out in the middle of the room.
Adora detaches herself from Catra’s fading grip as carefully as possible. Because, fuck, the things she remembers-
“You didn’t see half of that, did you?”
She shakes her head. “I didn’t.”
Catra’s face falls slightly. Adora can’t even imagine what the experience was like for her, having to relive her death again for the sake of her memory.
“But I did...” She clears her throat, rests a hand inches away from Catra’s. “I did remember. Everything.”
Her eyes light up from within, something that has nothing to do with the faded blue glow sinking back through the floorboards. “You did?”
Adora nods. The movement makes her head spin. She remembers... everything. Especially falling in love with the girl sitting opposite her, watching her with wide eyes. Especially the - the magic they tried to wield on her to make her forget, to make her immune to loving. And the way she tried to escape, to take Catra with her to keep her out of their reach, and it backfired in the worst way possible. She remembers her memories being stolen from her one by one, sucking the grief out of her until there was nothing left.
Most importantly, she remembers waking up in her bed and feeling for the space where Catra should have been the day after they told her she was dead.
“I did,” she whispers.
Silence stretches out between them, and Adora wonders if they could possibly be thinking about the same thing.
Without saying anything, without thinking twice, she blurts, “I love you.”
Catra’s eyes widen.
“We never said that. When you were alive. I always regretted that. I wanted to tell you, and I never got to, and I’m sorry for that. But, stars, Catra, I love you. I love you.”
She’s staring at her like she’s never seen her before, like she did the night - the night they kissed for the first time, the night she can remember with almost perfect clarity now, the night that was hidden from her for so long -
“Adora -”
“I know it’s been - wow, it’s been years - and I know so much has changed, but I just - I have to tell you that. I have to -”
And Catra laughs. Softly. Her hand comes down and through Adora’s, leaving a wave of - of warmth in its wake, and settles against her palm, and it feels so close to getting to hold her again she swears she could cry again.
hi hello yes first off i would like to say i love your emojis SO much!! they're amazing and so well drawn!! second, since requests are open, can i please request a knuckle cracking stim emoji? thank you!!
id love to be able to do this one but i honest to god cant think of how to like, do this? so can you maybe be more specific (maybe submit a ref pic?) or something so i can do it? :D im glad you like my emojis though thank you!
