Chapter Text
When Catra was thirteen years old, her mother took them on vacation. Maybe it was supposed to help them bond, or something - her mom was reading a lot of books about how to raise a willful teenager, then - but having to spend every hour of the day together made the tension between them worse. Her mom booked activities, and at least if there was a guide rambling in front of them, it was something to focus on other than each other.
There was a cave, on the fourth day. They walked through the dimly lit paths, and her mother's hand latched tight on her wrist after the guide said they couldn't touch anything, as if Catra was still a child who snuck away with anything that fit in her pockets. The air was odd and stale, and one of the other women on the tour had a floral perfume strong enough to make Catra feel sick. Catra grit her teeth and counted seconds until she could find a bathroom to lock herself in.
The guide told them to stand still, and then he turned off the lights.
Catra saw well in the dark, much better than she'd ever admit. But this was an ink-black that she didn't even know could exist. People were still breathing, quietly murmuring, but it didn't feel as loud, in the dark. A cool gust blew over them, carrying the cool smell of stone. Catra had never felt so calm, even with her mother's grip growing tighter the longer the lights stayed out.
She can find it again when she turns out her light, deep in the earth, nothing to hear but the rap of her own heartbeat and nothing to see but the velvet blackness that goes on and on. The hollow ache under her ribs is muted just like everything else.
Scorpia shifts next to her, shuffle loud in the void. "Ready, Wildcat?"
Catra switches on her headlamp, flooding light into the small stone room, and Catra slams back into her body so hard it hurts.
Scorpia is a practical caver - she likes the difficulty of setting ropes on pitches, navigating tight areas, mapping. When Catra showed up at the shop with a handful of cash and lists of caving equipment pulled up on her phone, Scorpia jumped at the chance to have a new climbing partner. And she didn't bail after the first time they went climbing together, when Catra hung back to turn off her light.
This cave wasn't supposed to be that bad. A couple spots that are narrow for Scorpia, a couple areas they have to rope. There's a sound Catra keeps hearing at the edge of her awareness, though. A rhythm, like waves.
The last squeeze isn't wide enough for Scorpia's shoulders to slide through. "We gotta turn back," Scorpia says, wrapping the rope around her claw to head back to the upper level.
Catra creeps up to it, examines the cave walls in the unsteady light of her headlamp. It's tight, and she'll have to contort a little, but- "I can fit."
"But I can't," Scorpia says, and she's right that they're supposed to stay together. There are all sorts of dangers in an unknown cave, and separating is dangerous. But the hum pulls at her, like a line with something at the other end. Scorpia isn't reacting, so it's one of those things that Catra's too sensitive to, that normal people wouldn't even notice.
Catra crouches. She can smell water on the other side of the squeeze, and it's been months since she's seen a good lake. "There's water," she says, "I'll be quick."
She can hear the sound, high-pitched and wavering, over Scorpia's half-hearted protests. Scorpia's easy to read, and the pull is stronger than her worry about breaking their rules.
"Be careful," Scorpia says, and Catra barely makes it out under the noise.
Catra switches off her lamp as soon as she gets in. Some cavefish avoid light, and she prefers her natural vision anyway. There's only the glow from Scorpia's headlamp on the other side of the squeeze, maybe fifty feet back, but that's enough to see the shimmer on the surface of the water. It smells like cave, cold and stone and wet. The noise is louder, echoing on the walls, enough to make the spot between Catra's shoulderblades go tight. Catra can't see colors well, in the dark, but she's very good at movement. The water is definitely moving, surface surging as it shifts.
"What do you see?" Scorpia calls. "Gosh, it's gotta be awesome, right?"
"Quiet," Catra says, crouching by the edge of the water, squinting, trying to listen past the wail. "There's something-"
Cavefish, in Catra's experience, are small and sightless and slow. Whatever breaks the surface of the water is something else entirely.
Catra slams the button on the side of her headlamp as she scrambles back. The creature recoils from the light, but not before Catra sees its eyes, huge behind stringy pale hair. Its skin is bright silver, oddly human skull outlined sharp underneath. Needle teeth flash from behind purpled lips when it grimaces. A hand, halfway to Catra's ankle, disappears back into the water along with the rest of it. A moment later, ripples are the only sign that anything had been there at all.
Catra's been told before that she's crazy. Maybe this is proof. But circles widen on the surface of the lake, and her heart still races.
"Catra, if you fell into a lake without me-"
"I'm alive," Catra says, and she's good at making her voice sound normal while her breath still gasps. "Thought I saw something."
"What? What did you see?"
The surface of the water has stilled, glassy as a mirror, but water droplets lie scattered on the stone. The noise is louder now, howling like a siren. She'd have to cover her ears if they weren't already under her helmet.
Scorpia's voice cuts through. "You'd better be okay because I have no idea what I'm supposed to tell your girlfriend if-"
"I'm coming," Catra says. She'd rather take her chances with the monster than have the argument that will happen if Octavia knows she was here. She pushes back through the squeeze, brushes the chips off her coveralls when she gets to the other side. If she moves quick enough, maybe Scorpia won't see how her hands shake.
"What was back there?" Scorpia asks.
"Just a lake," Catra says, lie slipping from her lips as easy as breathing. "Maybe fish."
The noise flares again and Catra grits her teeth so she doesn't wince. "C'mon," she says. "I gotta be at work at 5:30, and I think I've got mud to clean off."
Catra locks every turn out of this cave in her mind tighter than usual. After she hides her climbing gear at the bottom of her car, after she finishes cleaning the kitchen at the end of her shift, after Octavia falls asleep on the other side of the bed, she closes her eyes to see the monster's wide ones instead.
Catra's always known something was wrong with her, but the way she can't stop thinking about the creature in the cave has to be the biggest sign. Something's fucked up there, but something fucked up in Catra must match, because even days later, it haunts her through the dinner rush. The hum must be in her head, but her ears flick towards it so often the tiny muscles start to complain.
"Table?"
Catra blinks at Lonnie on the other side of the window. Her hand is still on the plate, ceramic warm under her fingers.
Lonnie raises her eyebrows. "What table is that for?" she asks, dragging it out slow like Catra's completely stupid.
Which she might be, because when she reaches for that answer in her own head she comes up empty. When she scans over the tickets, Lonnie's smile starts to grow. "Seven," Catra spits, sliding the plate towards her. "Not my fault you can't remember your own section."
Lonnie's smile doesn't fade. Like everyone, she's just waiting for Catra to fuck up, and Catra doesn't break something no matter how much she wants to.
Bow puts a plate in the window next to her, one of his frilly chocolate things. Catra doesn't keep track of the part of the menu that she doesn't have taste receptors for. "You feeling okay?"
Catra checks the ticket this time before she throws green beans in her pan. It's loud enough in the kitchen that if it wasn't Bow, she could pretend she hadn't heard him. Bow caught on to her hearing a long time ago. "What are you, a cop?"
Bow lifts his hands in surrender. "Just a concerned citizen."
Catra rolls her eyes before she stirs the pan that does not need stirring. "Go burn sugar or whatever it is you do."
Bow disappears into the pastry station, and when Catra grits her teeth, blue glows in the corner of her vision.
She keeps thinking about it while she scrubs the stove, while she drives home, while she curls up on the couch with Octavia and watches television that she only half-listens to on a good day. She stays up late researching - a handful of people have gone missing in the area in the last several years, but there were bears and mountain lions and coyotes out there too, and hikers went missing sometimes. Scorpia never would have agreed to explore there if there was any reason to believe the system itself was dangerous. No one talks about fish monsters, here or anywhere else. There's only one way to learn anything more.
Scorpia would never climb with Catra again if she knew how bad her judgment was. Octavia already doesn't want her anywhere near caves. So, when Catra's checking the kitchen the following night, she shoves a pound of just-expired tilapia under her apron and runs the math on how to get down the difficult parts of the climb by herself.
The next time she faces the squeeze, she hears the hum louder, layering over the drips and rustles of rope and echo of every move she makes. It worms into an old part of her brain that probably should have been lost to natural selection a hundred generations ago.
It's even darker at the lake today, with no one on the other side of the squeeze. The walls of the room yawn out around her. Catra crouches almost a yard away from the edge of the water, which should be too far for the grasping hand to be able to reach her. Still, her breath comes almost fast enough to make her dizzy until she manages to swallow the danger down.
She blinks into the dark. She doesn't hear anything but the siren. Maybe she's too far from the edge. She wonders what the wet, probably cold hand would have felt like around her ankle, dragging her into the water. She doesn't know what she's doing here.
Something comes up loud out of the water and Catra jumps, shoving herself backwards. Nothing grabs her, but water splatters up onto her face, the only part of her not covered in coveralls or boots or helmet. The hum swells so loud that she winces.
If she turns on her lamp, the creature will disappear. If it disappears, she'll never learn what it is.
The creature makes a sound that's too close to human frustration, something rasping on the stone. There's a thud as it pounds the floor once. The whining drone stutters when it groans.
Catra takes the package of fish and peels the plastic wrap off before she gently tosses it within the creature's reach. The noises the creature makes are ravenous. That sound must be its nails against the limestone, scraping as it claws for more. Catra saw a documentary about piranhas, once, turning a carcass to bones in minutes, and all her mind can picture is those pointed teeth stripping off her flesh in chunks.
She half-thought she'd find at least a legend, when she researched, but there was nothing. That's only possible if no one's ever walked away from here. She pulls her feet in a little closer, but she doesn't turn her lamp on.
When it's done, the creature breathes hard. A gravel-rough voice says, "Thank you."
Catra blinks, heart jumping. Her arms and tail tighten around her legs. "Um, no problem? Glad you like it? I didn't, um, know you could talk. My name's-"
The creature clears its throat loud. "You shouldn't be here." The hoarseness grates away as it speaks, like rust flaking off, and it doesn't quite sound like a threat.
"Not to tell you how to live," Catra says, putting a confidence in her voice that she doesn't feel, "but scaring food away seems like a bad idea."
The creature says, "I didn't know you were an expert."
It's probably not a great idea to laugh at the carnivorous monster six feet from her, but it steals out of her anyway. "My mistake," Catra says. "I didn't realize you had a master plan, here. I should have given you more credit."
"You don't know me," the creature says, tone softening, teasing. Catra can almost hear the smile on its face, wry, an expression she has no reason to believe a monster has. Catra wears all sorts of expressions that someone like her has no reason to have, either.
Catra takes off her helmet. "My name's Catra. What's yours?"
"Why are you here?" the creature counters.
Catra doesn't have an answer. It's right, she really shouldn't be here. She should be at home, doing one of the chores that she never seems to do right the first time. "You seemed hungry," she says instead. "And I'm not going to - I don't know, call the x-files or whatever. You don't want to be known about. I get it."
The creature is quiet, for a long moment, before it says, "You're not human."
Catra's tail flicks. It can probably see her eyes, reflecting in the dark. "Nope." Normally it pisses her off when someone points that out, as if she hadn't noticed, as if she hadn't spent her whole life trying to figure out how to fit into clothes and twitching away from hands that thought fur existed to be pet. It sounds different when the creature says it, though, like it's a compliment.
Two blue lights appear in the dark, catching on the surface of the water. It's not bright enough to see much, but Catra can make out the crags and angles around the creature's eyes. Glowing pinpricks start to trickle along what must be its shoulders. Catra's eyes reflect, but this glow is from the inside, bioluminescent, like the worms on the walls of the cave in Half Moon that Catra couldn't look away from when she first saw them.
"What's your name?" Catra finds herself asking again, and she couldn't hide the wonder in her voice if she tried.
The lights blink out. It was already cold, in the cavern, but now the chill settles into Catra's bones. When she turns on the light, even the ripples are gone.
Catra asked Octavia out in the spring, just as the cherry blossoms were starting to float off the trees and into the wind. Catra hadn't seen someone like Octavia before, tentacles snaking out from under her clothes, green tones so different from the warm spectrum of the humans they work with. Her teeth pointed jagged in her mouth like Catra's did.
"So," Octavia said, brushing pizza crumbs from her hands, upper arms flexing in her sleeveless shirt. It was warm out, and Catra wasn't covering her arms either, but she suddenly wanted to. "When did you move to town?"
"Maybe I've always lived here." The crust was growing cold under her fingers, but her stomach fizzed too much to eat.
Octavia laughed, all impossibly white teeth. "I would have remembered you. We didn't have anyone as interesting as you when I was in school."
Interesting. Catra usually got called different things. "Sounds boring."
"Yeah," Octavia said. Something brushed Catra's leg, and she suppressed her jolt before Octavia's smile and the tentacle's caress answered her question. "It really was."
Catra knew where to go from there. She put down the slice of pizza with a tiny bite from the end. When she asked Octavia if she wanted to get out of here, her voice barely distorted at all.
Sex with Octavia was easy. It had always been easy, no matter who she was with, because Catra was good at being one step ahead. She could figure out what people want, and giving it to them before they have a chance to think about whether they can do better was a better challenge than any chess game she'd ever played. It bought her time until the downsides of having her around outweighed the benefits.
Octavia brushed her fingers through her hair, afterwards. Tentacles wrapped tight around her back. "Catra," she breathed, and Catra wanted to preserve in amber the way that she said it. "Where have you been."
They went back to work in the morning, and Catra's wrinkled clothes were mostly hidden by her apron, and Octavia hung out by her station whenever she was waiting on her table's order. Catra thought about the darker splotches running down Octavia's smooth skin, and the stupid wistful part of her head placed them next to her own messy stripes and said that they matched.
They went to a bookstore and read each other dumb lines in romance novels. They went to a soccer game at Octavia's old high school, where she pointed out where she'd kissed girls under the bleachers, where Catra pretended she didn't care and Octavia smiled wide because she knew that she did. They went to one or the other's apartments, and beds, and when Catra's racing heart woke her silent in the middle of the night, she focused on the warm green skin around her and told herself to enjoy it while it lasted.
They had a fight, a few weeks in. Catra wasn't sure what they were fighting about, after a while. She was too distracted by the itch on her neck and prickle down her spine that said shut up before she makes you. Her awareness swelled out to every corner and every sound and every shift of Octavia's weight as she spoke. One movement came too fast and Catra jolted back because her body was an idiot that couldn't realize that delaying the hit wouldn't stop it.
Octavia frowned before her mouth made an O. "I'm not going to hurt you," she said.
Catra's face went from numb to hot. "Wow," she ground between her teeth, "do you want a medal?"
Octavia stepped closer and Catra's feet moved back on their own. Her tail shifted where it had wrapped itself around her leg. "Calm down," Octavia said. "It's okay."
Catra's claws had come out and she couldn't force them back in. She balled her fists, claws on the inside where they could dig into calluses instead of lashing out.
Octavia put out her arms. "Come here," she said, and her face was sad, and Catra didn't know what would happen if she didn't move. Her skin crawled even thinking about touching someone right now, letting someone close enough to punch or kick or slam her into the wall. It wouldn't matter if Octavia hit her. It had never mattered with anyone else. All that mattered is that Octavia didn't leave.
"Catra," Octavia said, and her face was even more scrunched now. "Don't be like this."
Making Octavia upset was more dangerous than handing her a knife. Catra walked to her, trying to melt her stiff muscles, and managed not to flinch when Octavia pulled her close, tentacles closing tight around her back, hand on the back of her head tucking it against Octavia's chest.
"People have hurt you," Octavia said, "haven't they?"
"No," Catra muttered against her shirt, and she'd never sounded less convincing in her life. "It doesn't matter."
"I'm not like them," Octavia said, edge of insistence to it. She gripped tighter, and maybe if Catra had been normal it would feel comforting instead of restraining. "I care about you. You're safe with me, don't be scared."
She could hear Octavia's heartbeat, much slower than her own. Fingers rippled through her hair, smoothed the fur on the back of her neck that's still standing up. She wanted it to calm her down. Whatever part of her that's supposed to be comforted by this died, or maybe it never existed.
"I've got you," Octavia said, muffled, and Catra concentrated on relaxing each tensed muscle. By the time Octavia pulled back to kiss her, she'd gone fluid enough to kiss back.
Octavia's birthday was that summer. Catra baked cookies, iced with her favorite shade of green, and Octavia took what felt like a hundred pictures. "So I can show off what a great girlfriend I have," she said. Catra rolled her eyes, but she held that like a coal next to her heart, small and glowing.
On the way home from work that night, Octavia told Catra that her favorite band was coming to town, face full of excitement, and Catra made her breath stay even and normal. "Two floor tickets," Octavia bubbled from the passenger seat.
"Wow," Catra's mouth said. She had a lifetime of school dances and assemblies and neighbors who liked to turn up the music to know what loud noises did to her - panic seizing in her chest, muscles cinched tight, fighting not to cover her ears or run or both. She hadn't had one of those breakdowns in front of Octavia yet.
Don't be weird right now, the voice in the back of her head said. Shit like this is why everyone leaves, because no one wants someone that can't-
Catra was watching the road, but she could feel Octavia's eyes on her. "You want to go," Octavia said, slow, "right?"
She nodded, because she wanted to want to. She just had to try harder, focus better, not let her useless brain and heart and body ruin things for her again.
"I don't like it when you lie," Octavia said. "I want you to trust me."
Catra studied the car ahead of them, and imagined it swiveling and smashing into their car hard enough to avoid this conversation. "I'm, um. I'm not great with-" she gestured towards an ear with her right hand, stomach twisting, "loud stuff. So maybe we could do something else."
Octavia took her hand before it came down, cool on Catra's clammy skin. "This is important to me."
"I don't-" shut up shut up, "do well. With the crowds and the lights and the noise. Maybe you can go with someone else."
Octavia was quiet for a moment, fingers tracing on the back of Catra's hand where the bones lay right under the skin. "I didn't want to say anything," she said, "but it really bothers me when you make this relationship about you."
Catra blinked away the static so she could still see the road.
"It's all the time, Catra, and I'm getting close to my limit for it, honestly. I was hoping it would change on its own, and I want it to, but it's not."
Stupid piece of shit idiot, you ruined it, you ruined everything, you're a cancer and a monster and someone should do the world a favor and just put you out of your misery already-
"I care about you," Octavia said, "but I just don't think you understand how difficult it is to be in a relationship with you."
"No one's making you keep me around," Catra forced out, biting her tears back and carving disdain into her face instead. She'd known this wasn't going to last, it never did. At least this time she might get kicked out without a concussion. "I don't have a gun to your head. Go ahead and tell me to fuck off if it's that bad."
"I don't want you to leave," Octavia said, squeezing her hand. "I just want you to see that what I need matters too."
She didn't know what Octavia was talking about. It didn't matter. All that mattered was being something Octavia wanted, so Catra wouldn't be left alone to be eaten by the voice in her head and the black hole in her chest.
"Catra. It's okay." Octavia's fingers reached up to pet the soft patch behind her ears, the one that melted the tension out of her shoulders. Catra pressed her tongue against the roof of her mouth so she didn't cry on the freeway. "I want us to stay together. We just need to find a better way forward."
At the concert, Catra didn't curl into the fetal position if she wore her earplugs and closed her eyes when the lights strobed and drank and kept drinking. Octavia smiled and caught her when she was unsteady, and after the show they kissed against the car. Octavia's laugh sounded affectionate when Catra couldn't keep the purr in her chest. She held Catra close enough to hear her heart beat steady under her bones and she stroked Catra's fur like she wanted to keep her.
"I love you," Octavia said against her ear, and Catra echoed it back, Crimson Waste courage thick in her blood.
When she comes back, Catra sits in the dark by the edge of the lake for long enough that her teeth start to grit. She's played this game enough times to fucking get it by now. She made the creature upset enough that even food isn't enough to be worth being around her. Whatever. Catra doesn't care.
The creature surfaces, and relief crashes heavy on Catra's head, and she should hate that it can affect her this strongly. It's already glowing, this time. Catra has the crazy urge to reach out and touch the dots of light scattered across its shoulders. She wonders if scales dapple over the skin, like the ones she scrapes off fish at the restaurant.
"Hey," Catra says, and she can't quite keep the smile out of her voice.
"You came back." The creature says, raspy again.
Catra shoves the plastic packets closer to the edge of the water. "Can't get rid of me that easy."
Light flickers when the creature blinks. "You don't have anywhere better to be?"
Catra's chest fills with ice fast enough to white out her vision for a moment. She's not completely stupid. She knows when she's being told to go away. "Your food's there," she grinds out, blinking back her angry tears and getting to her feet. "Bon appetit or whatever."
"Are you leaving?" the creature asks, a frantic edge in its voice. "I'm sorry, I didn't - I wasn't trying to make you upset."
Catra pauses, ten steps from the water's edge. In one of their fights, Octavia said that Catra always assumes the worst of people, that she always hears the wrong thing. She squeezes her eyes shut against the blackness, swallows the glass in her throat like she's done a thousand times before.
The creature's still talking. "I mean, if you have to go, that's-"
"What did you mean, then," Catra says, and she sounds strangled up and tense.
"That I don't know why you're here." The blue outline of the creature's shoulders are closer to its head, bunched up in a way that's too familiar. "If it was just to feed me, you wouldn't talk, you wouldn't ask me questions. You want more than that."
Catra doesn't know what she wants. "I like to learn things," she finally says. "I want to know more about you, I guess."
The creature's voice turns cold. "I'm not a specimen."
"No." Catra remembers kids crowding around, asking where she got her fur and ears and tail, trying to catch the tail that puffed and whipped behind her. They looked at her the same way they did when they found a cool bug on the playground, before they squished it to find out what was inside. Of course Catra wants to know how the creature could exist, but it's not the same. "I want to know more about you, specifically."
The creature laughs, hollow. "And you said I had bad ideas."
Catra sits back down. "Try me."
"You first," the creature says, peeling the plastic open. "Tell me about you."
"Ask a question," Catra says. "We'll trade off."
The creature's questions are mostly about the surface. What does it look like, is it warm or cold, who lives there. It seems to drink in every word, and Catra speaks for longer than each question really needs. She tries to describe things in detail, so it can understand things it's never experienced before, and she doesn't know if it's working or not. She keeps finding herself saying colors, or doing comparisons to something else that doesn't exist in a cave, but the creature doesn't seem to mind.
Catra keeps her questions narrow, and she gets a yes or a no or, sometimes, nothing at all. She learns a few things that way - the creature is a she, it's further from the surface to the bottom of the lake than to the ceiling of the room, it doesn't flood in the fall when the rains start. Catra's been on the other end of what happened to your family? enough times to know not to ask, and the creature doesn't say.
Eventually, Catra runs out of questions the creature will answer, so she just talks. She explains what a job is, and what a line cook is, and how she got to the lake in the first place. She could talk about her gear forever. It's more difficult in the dark, but she describes it with as much detail as she can, and the creature listens. It's been a long time since someone listened to Catra talk for that long, and she has to keep pushing away the voice in her head that says shut up, everyone's sick of you.
She's reaching in her backpack for her water bottle, but the smooth surface she finds is her phone. It doesn't have service, but it has a clock. Octavia finished work an hour ago.
"I have to go," Catra says, cold huddling in her core.
"Why?" The creature asks, as Catra shoves everything back in her bag. It's too fucking dark, she's going to forget something, and she should be focused on that instead of the argument that's going to happen when she gets home
I love you, Octavia said a couple months ago, but one of these days, that's not going to be enough anymore.
Then Catra said she was sorry, tensing her toes in her shoes so she could force her voice to be even and normal and not be manipulative the way Octavia hates, and Octavia said the more apologies I hear from you, the less they mean.
The creature repeats her question. Catra says, "I have to go home. I'm late. I'll come back, um, tomorrow, okay?"
"Okay," the creature says. The glow in her eyes is softer than it had been. "I'm not going anywhere."
Catra doesn't have time, and she should know better, but she has to know.
"Can you tell me what to call you?" she asks. "If you don't have a name and you don't want one, that's fine, I'll call you whatever you want. But if you have a name, I'd like to use it."
The creature is quiet for long enough that Catra thinks about telling her that they'll talk about it tomorrow. If it wasn't for the glow, Catra would have thought she slipped under the surface of the water. "Adora," she finally says, voice crackling on the consonants.
"Hey Adora," Catra says, smiling even though Adora probably can't see it. "I'm Catra."
She can't see Adora smile either, but when she says hey back, Catra can hear it.
Catra comes back, and keeps coming back. She tries to only go when she'll beat Octavia home, but more and more often she loses track of time and has to tell Octavia that she got caught up at work. When her lies are for Adora, they come out even smoother.
Catra brings three packages of ground beef that the restaurant was going to throw away, one day past their expiration, and Adora gets sick halfway through the second one. Catra angles her head away, even though she can hear it more than see it anyway. She doesn't like people to watch her when she drinks too much. It always feels like judgment.
"I'm so sorry," Adora mumbles, spitting out bile.
Catra shakes her head, though she's not sure if Adora can see it. "No, I'm the one who fucking poisoned you or some shit. They expired yesterday but I thought-"
"It's not that." Adora takes a ragged breath. "I went too fast. It also happened when - it doesn't matter. If I rush, I get sick. It's not your fault."
Catra laces her fingers in front of her, watching the glow off Adora's eyes and muscular shoulders reflect back on the water. Adora's beautiful. Catra's probably not supposed to think that about someone who would eat her if she got the chance. She's probably not supposed to think that about anyone when she has a-
"What do you usually eat?" Catra asks, even though they haven't said they were doing a question trade yet. "When I'm not bringing you the plague or whatever."
Adora laughs, short. "Not a lot. But I can last a long time without eating anything, I don't - I think I would starve, eventually. But mostly I just get..."
"Hungry," Catra finishes, when she trails off.
Plastic crinkles as Adora takes the remaining meat and puts it aside. "Yeah."
There's a species of fish that lives in cave systems along the Salinean Coast that can go for a year without eating. They're a lot smaller than Adora is, and they move slower too.
Catra says, "Is there - I mean, I can get different food. If you want. Something - easier on your stomach? I don't even know what that would be."
The bright spots of Adora's eyes disappear when she closes them, and the water sloshes when she shifts. "I can eat almost anything - this stuff, fish, beetles, centipedes." Her tone drops. "People."
"I mean, if I could get my boss down here-"
"It's not like you think it is." Adora's shoulders have sunk into the water, and without the glow from her eyes, the only way Catra knows she's there is the faint glimmer of blue under the surface. Catra can hear her breathe out long. "It's - messy. They bleed less, when they're already dead, but it's still - the water tastes like blood for the longest time, after."
Catra swallows. "Good thing he's too heavy to carry, then," she says, careful. The high tone is starting to crawl into her ears again, filing against her nerves.
"They don't even scream," Adora says, voice spinning dark. Her eyes are open now, staring at Catra. "They barely fight when they drown. I guess they go into shock, between the surprise and the cold. And I just hold them down until they go still, and sometimes I don't even wait that long. And the worst part-" Adora keeps looking at Catra, eyes empty of pupils, voice climbing, "-is that, in the moment, I don't even care. Not until I'm pulling hair out of my teeth. All I care about is myself and being hungry and not the - I don't even know how many people would be alive now if I wasn't-" Adora makes a sound of frustration, skin scrunching around her eyes. Her shoulders inch too close to where her head must be. "If I wasn't this," she hisses. "It's - I'm-"
Catra recognizes the edge in Adora's voice. It's the same one she hears in what's wrong with you, fucking stupid - everyone leaves, because everyone can tell you're just a-
"-monster," Adora seethes, quiet enough that Catra probably isn't supposed to hear, almost drowned out by the echoes off the walls that rise to a shriek.
It's dark, so Catra's allowed to put her hands over her ears. "Adora," she says, and she can't quite keep the pain out of her voice.
The piercing noise cuts off sharp. Adora's glowing eyes are hollow circles. She's silent, now. Catra wishes she could see the details of her face, get another window into what's happening in her head. It's not the only reason why she wants to see Adora's face, but it's the only reason that matters.
"Listen." Catra takes a breath, wraps her arms across her stomach as if that will ease the cold in her gut. "You were made this way. You don't have another choice."
There's a pause, Adora's eyes boring into her. "I tried to kill you," Adora says. "Twice. If you get too close I'll try again."
"Yeah, but-" Catra scrambles to think of a metaphor that might make sense to someone who's spent her whole life in this cave. "Bats eat insects and lizards and stuff, right? They don't feel bad about that." That's what Catra told herself too, when she stole pain meds off a drugstore shelf, when she took money out of her mother's purse, when she pulled bread out of a dumpster. "You've got to do whatever you've got to do to survive."
"They weren't bugs." Adora's voice is a growl, the kind of sound Catra would have expected to hear from the dark corner of a cave. "People are dead."
"Yeah," Catra said, "but you're not."
Adora closes her eyes. The lights in her skin stay. "I think it's almost time for you to go," Adora says. The hum has disappeared, and its absence is as loud as its presence had been.
Catra sets alarms for when she has to leave, now, so she knows she still has time. She'll sit in her car and scroll through her phone, probably, until the time she told Octavia her shift ended. She doesn't want to go home. She'd thought she was done with that feeling, once, but her mother hadn't been the problem after all. Catra can't run away from herself.
"I'm coming back tomorrow," she says. "And I'll bring you something better than raw cow."
"Sure." Adora clears her throat. "If you want to."
Catra makes sure Adora's looking at her before she says, "I want to."
Rain patters against the roof of the car in the parking lot where Catra pulls over, so Octavia doesn't see her in the marked spots for their apartment. She reads about those fish from Salineas, but no research can tell her what it feels like to go a year between meals, or to hold a body until its life is gone. Catra doesn't need anything to tell her how regret tastes. She's had enough experience with that already.
Five months in, Octavia came over a lot. Catra's apartment was shitty, but she would put up with mice and leaking sinks to not need a roommate. They were watching TV, or at least, the TV was on in the background while they made out.
Octavia kissed Catra's jaw again, angled against her neck. Catra's purr rattled embarrassingly loud - a previous mistake had compared it to an engine without a muffler. Octavia hummed approvingly every time, and it made Catra want to cry.
"That's it, kitten," Octavia murmured, and Catra's muscles seized up.
Catra forced her claws to stay sheathed. She closed her eyes, tried to find where she'd been a moment ago, warm and relaxed and happy, but it was gone. Her voice was smaller than she wanted when she said, "Don't call me that."
Octavia pulled away, and Catra pried her eyes open. A frown tugged Octavia's smile down. "Why?"
Hands grabbing at her tail, sobs when her claws escaped, I just wanted to pet the kitty, why's it so mean? Hands bruising on her hips, snicker in her ear, I'm ready to play, kitten, are you? Hands gripping her arms, magic sizzling, insolent child, don't you know what happens to an unwanted-
"I don't like it," Catra said.
Octavia pinched her lips, looked down. "One of your exes called you that, right?"
Catra made her face neutral, because Octavia didn't like to talk about Catra's exes. Catra didn't either. "I just don't like it."
Octavia's eyebrows drew together when she said, "I love you, remember?"
Catra nodded, throat closing up, cheeks warming. She didn't know when those words would stop coming as a shock.
"And they didn't. So you know I don't mean it the way they did, right?"
She nodded again, as the pit dug in her stomach. She wasn't scared of Octavia, so there was no reason why her ears wouldn't turn forward again, why she had to keep pulling her shoulders back down where they belonged.
Octavia pet the fur on the side of her face, and Catra forced the tension out of her jaw. Octavia brushed along her temple and said, "Don't punish me for something I didn't do, kitten."
Octavia meant something else, when she said it. She didn't mean subhuman and mewling and weak and worthless and easy to drown. She didn't push Catra around, or grab at her, or touch her like she was more body than person. Octavia loved her.
So it was okay. It was just a word. Octavia was already upset enough, voice tight, eyes shining, and it made something in Catra's chest curl up. She wasn't going to let her fucking idiot brain ruin the first good relationship she had.
Octavia came in for a kiss and Catra met her. If she focused on how Octavia's lips moved with hers, how her gentle hands stroked and dipped, she almost didn't feel the crawling under her skin anymore. After Octavia fell asleep, Catra snaked away from the breathing and heat and skin brushing her fur the wrong way. The kitchen floor was dark, and quiet, and if she pretended she could taste cave air her mind went dark and quiet too.
Catra moved into Octavia's apartment as soon as her lease ended. A week later, Octavia sat on the couch and said they needed to talk.
"I don't like the whole cave thing," Octavia said.
Catra didn't panic. "Why not?"
Octavia took Catra's hand where it rested on the couch next to her. "You're going to fall, or get hit by something, or get trapped and die. It scares the hell out of me."
Catra squeezed her hand. "That's why I have safety equipment. The ropes and helmet and stuff, that's to make sure I don't get hurt. That's why I climb with a partner."
Octavia's face spasmed at that, but it was gone as soon as Catra registered it. "You don't know how much I worry about you." Octavia swallowed. Her voice was heavy. "I love you so much, kitten, I don't want anything to happen to you."
Someday, hopefully, those words wouldn't make Catra's eyes burn. "I've been doing this for a long time, nothing's going to happen."
"I know thinking about other people is hard for you." Octavia sniffed, wiped at her face. Her hand tugged Catra's closer. "That's why I'm telling you how much it hurts me. I'm just asking you to listen to what I'm saying."
"It's safe," Catra said again. She grit her teeth. "If you could just - trust me-"
"I want to." Octavia stroked a thumb over the back of Catra's hand, over and over, and it was hard to focus on anything else. "You know why I can't."
Lying is something Catra couldn't stop doing. It must have been something in the way she was built, a wire that didn't connect where it was supposed to. She forced her tail to go still. "It's - lots of people do this, Scorpia could tell you about-"
"Not everything can revolve around you, Catra. I'm only asking you for this one thing." Octavia's hand touched the side of Catra's chin to make her look up, the way she did when she was going to say something serious. "Promise me you'll stop."
"It's important to me," Catra said, quiet enough that she didn't know if Octavia could hear her.
"If we can't compromise," Octavia said, "this relationship is never going to last."
And that made Catra's heart skitter, breath freeze, gut flip as the back of her head hammered useless sack of shit and no one wants you and no no no no no I can't do it again.
Octavia stroked the underside of her chin, the place that would have drawn out a purr if she had air. "I love you," Octavia said, holding eye contact, "that's why I want us to work this out."
Catra got out of bed hours later, once Octavia was snoring next to her, to fish her equipment out of the dumpster and hide it under the floor of her trunk where they never replaced the spare tire. It would be smarter to sell it, and Octavia would understand when Catra showed her how much it had been worth.
Catra doesn't even believe her own lies, most days.
The next time Scorpia asked if she wanted to explore a new location that was supposed to have gypsum formations, Catra agreed even though it left a film on her tongue. The echo in her mind that said this is why no one trusts you, this is why everyone leaves you only went quiet when they got deep and Scorpia said it was safe to turn out their lamps.
Catra takes advantage of every window of time she gets, no matter how small. She brings chips and nuts and those tiny pebbled candies that humans like so much but taste like mud to Catra's tongue, and she keeps to portions that are small enough not to make Adora sick. It's hard. She wants to show Adora everything now, bring her every piece of the surface that she can carry with her into the depths.
Adora loves it all. Sometimes Catra strains her eyes to try to make out Adora's expression when she gives her things like jalapeño popcorn and vinegar chips, wishing she could see better in the dark than she can, but the glimpses she gets in the glow of Adora's eyes are more than she deserves.
Two months after Catra first squirmed into the lake room, they've long since run dry on questions Adora will answer. Catra knows better than to continue to push, so she talks. She's run through the plots of movies and television shows and books, described her job in detail, explained what she would cook with whatever she'd brought - anything she can think of. Adora doesn't seem to care what she says, as long as it's about the surface.
"You said you lived somewhere," Adora says. She's been drifting closer, over the weeks, and she could probably reach Catra with those grasping hands and long teeth if she tried. It makes Catra's heart race with something that isn't fear. "With someone."
Catra's face heats for no reason at all. "Yeah."
"Who is it?"
"She's my - do you have partners, where you come from?"
Adora's eyes move when she nods. There's an angle to her shoulders that Catra doesn't recognize.
"Well, she's mine." Catra hasn't been a good partner, lately, if ever, but that's not what Adora asked.
"How did you meet her?"
"We worked at the same restaurant," Catra says. "I noticed she was hanging around the kitchen until the end of my shift, even though hers ended before mine. She would - watch me, sometimes, when she thought I couldn't see, and she kept trying to talk to me. So I thought she would say yes, if I asked her."
Catra recognized the way Octavia watched her move, and she knew how to use it. That was a form of wanting too.
"Do you love her?" Adora asks, voice soft, the way it is when the question is important.
Catra bites her lip, because she knows the answer, but something traps it in her mouth.
"Yeah," Catra forces out, and her voice scrapes. "Do you, um-"
"How did you know?" Adora's close enough now for Catra to just make out her lips moving in the dim blue light, bright teeth flickering. There's the edge of desperation in her voice that hits Catra with a stab of recognition.
Catra can never turn down Adora's hunger for anything, food or words. "I, um, she-"
-doesn't hate me, she can't say. There aren't many things more pathetic than she exists and she touches me like something she likes and she wants to keep me.
Catra can clench her shoulders as tightly as she needs to, in the dark. "She's there for me. When I need her. And - she wants me to be better," Catra says. "And that's how I know."
Adora's quiet, for a moment, blue light blinking. "Better how?"
At least it's too dark for Adora to see her flinch. Catra licks her chapped lips, but her mouth is even drier. "Don't I get questions too?"
"Of course," Adora says, and maybe Catra's making up the tinge in her voice.
Catra thinks wildly and asks her how cave crickets taste, and Adora's description is vivid and colorful enough to let the fur on her back lie flat again, pressure easing in her chest. The lights of Adora's eyes squint when she smiles widely enough.
"And there was one dumb bug," Adora says, "and I swear it knew how long my arms were, because it kept coming closer and then hopping away, like this was a game or something, and the only one of these things that have ever tasted good was that one, once I caught it."
Catra grins. "So you like the taste of victory best."
"No." Catra can see the glint of teeth in Adora's smile. "Onion chips are better."
When the alarm on Catra's plastic watch goes off, Adora asks if Catra has one more minute. "Sure," Catra says, and if she sounds casual enough she can pretend that one minute is all she would give.
"You have a light on your helmet, right?" Adora's voice is out of tune. "You can turn it on, real quick. If you want to."
Catra's thought a thousand times about that single glimpse of Adora in the light, all eyes and teeth and lunging muscles, mostly when she's trying to remind herself why she should sit further from the water's edge than she does. "It seemed like it hurt you last time."
"It's okay," Adora says. "My eyes will adjust."
Catra thinks about earplugs and squinted eyes and trying to numb herself until her senses went dull. The idea of Adora doing that makes a pit open in Catra's stomach.
"If it's going to hurt you-"
"I want to see you," Adora says. "For a moment. Please."
Catra focuses on fishing out something to dim the headlamp with so she doesn't think too much about that sentence. She wraps her spare shirt over the light before she turns it on.
Adora's silvery skin is layered in scales, rippling and shimmering, and Catra's prepared enough fish on the line to know how they would feel under her fingertips. It's almost translucent, lavender lines running underneath that Catra immediately wants to trace. Her teeth are longer and sharper than Catra's, but they don't feel dangerous from where they peek out of Adora's parted lips. Her hair slips over the patches of blue on her shoulders, catching the light with more gold than Catra remembers.
"You have stripes," Adora says, and she can't quite keep the fascination out of her voice, eyes bright even in the lamplight.
Catra looks at where she'd rolled up the sleeves of her coveralls. "Yeah," she says, stupid. "Um, I've always had them. It's a-"
Catra's never known what to call the kind of creature she is. She's seen maybe a dozen others over the years, and presumably her birth parents were the same, but her mother never gave her a word for what she is that she could live with. She could have looked it up, probably, but she doesn't want to run into another word for herself that makes her skin crawl. It doesn't matter. She's never had to talk about it before, because everyone else who commented on the ways that she wasn't normal got her snapping teeth and biting tongue, and Catra never likes to draw attention to her strangeness if she can help it.
Adora's not human either, and no one talks to Catra the way she does.
Catra says, "It's a non-human thing."
"They're beautiful," Adora says, lying because she has to be, and Catra should be too smart to fall for it.
"I bet you tell all the girls that," Catra says. If she focuses on keeping her face normal, she doesn't think about anything else.
"I do," Adora says, and Catra can see the smirk that she's heard in her voice dozens of times now, quirking her bluish lips. "Every cute girl that dares to enter my lair gets the same set of lines. You got me."
Catra's laugh echoes on the walls, sounding bigger than it is, and it feels bigger too, like an explosion in her chest. "Well, I recap ten seasons of Star Journey to every mermaid I meet too, so. I guess we're even."
Adora jolts at mermaid, something flickering on her face too fast to see, before she lets out a breath. "I don't want you to be late," Adora says, "but I'll catch you a cricket for when you come back. We'll trade."
Catra stands up, brushes off dust that isn't there. "The exchange rate of crickets for junk food has to be high." She's going to be late even if she rushes up the pitch, but she doesn't want to leave. Octavia's going to be upset, and maybe cry, and say that she doesn't deserve to be treated like this. It all feels far away, now. "Before you try to stiff me, remember that I know where you live."
"You do," Adora says, and Catra tries to memorize that smile, small and real. "I'll see you tomorrow?"
"Yes." Catra's backpack is heavier than she remembers. "Tomorrow."
She's at work the next day, juggling pans, hot and tired and playing Adora's face over and over in her head, when she realizes that Adora's hair had been tangled when they met. She'd picked that mess apart at some point, before she asked for the light. There's no reason that should put a stupid smile on Catra's face, so she shifts to cover it before someone sees.