#misc cast

—

“Glimmer! Bow!” Adora shouted before Swift Wind had even finished landing. Her friends were there to greet her, looking excited and relieved to see her back in one piece.

“Adora!” came twin shouts in return, the two of them immediately tackling her into a hug before her feet touched the soil.

“We’ve been so worried about you!” said Bow, not an admonishment, just the truth.

“Did you find a way to help Catra?” Glimmer asked, pink eyebrows knit in worry.

“I did,” Adora said, pulling out the tablet she’d borrowed from Bow and pulling up the photo she’d taken. “But I need your help. This is going to take… some convincing.”

Bow and Glimmer looked at each other, a conversation passing between their eyes, and then they smiled at her. “You can count on us,” Glimmer promised.

—

The traditions of Brightmoon were very different from the traditions of the Horde, which were mostly just the stripped-down basics of the traditions of the Desert Throne that Hordak had half-accepted as a way to keep the peace among people who remembered the time before he landed in Etheria. Adora had expected some differences, since everything was different here, but wow. There was a lot more tradition involved than she had planned on.

Even so. Step one was the most crucial part of all, and that part? That part transcended cultures.

First came the question.

“Catra,” Adora said. The sound didn’t reverberate down empty, stone halls like it would in the Fright Zone’s prison. Bright Moon’s was, like everything else in this place, pretty. Pretty, clean, pastel. Catra didn’t look up from her prisoner’s mat, which Adora recognized was completely indistinguishable from her own bed. It would’ve been funny, to know that Glimmer and Bow had gotten her bed from one of Bright Moon’s literal jail cells. But as it was, as Catra would see it, it was just a normal bed in a pretty room that served as further mockery to Catra’s situation.

Adora wasn’t good at reading others. Even her best friend. Even her Catra. But from what she’d learned in the terrible, wonderful years since leaving Catra’s side, she knew that Catra would look around and see the pretty walls and floors and bed and gate and feel them as an insult.

“Catra, it’s me,” Adora said, not knowing what else to say.

“Hey, Adora.” Catra’s voice was flat. No mockery, no coy charm, nothing. Two words like dead rocks hitting the ground, thunk thunk.

The gate didn’t creak when it swung open. Didn’t even squeak a little at the end of the hinge. It glided smoothly, soundlessly, and Adora’s footsteps were the only sounds to make Catra’s ears twitch.

“I found a loophole,” Adora said. “A way for you to avoid execution.”

Catra lifted her chin from her knees and her eyes from the mat, fixing Adora with a blank stare. Adora pressed her lips thin, then continued.

“I know… you’re doubting me. I know that every time I’ve tried to protect you or save you or help you, I’ve either made it worse, or I didn’t actually manage to do it. I couldn’t protect you from Shadow Weaver. I couldn’t—I didn’t, help you in training. I kept getting your hopes up only to let you down, and I’m sorry.”

Catra’s ears were forward, her eyes unblinking, all of her attention fixed with devastating, unwavering intensity on Adora.

“And… I know you don’t need saving. That you’re capable, and you’re so, so smart, and you’re a survivor and ambitious and a menace and you’ve probably got at least two plans on how you’re going to get out of here and run off into the wild and lead a new life with all your crazy ambitious awesomeness. I know you don’t need my help. But, I want to give it to you. I want to keep you safe, safe for real, and I want you here with me, and to show you all the cool things I’ve discovered and introduce you to my friends and to show everyone how amazing you are and come home to you at night.” Adora took a deep breath. Why was this the hard part? “Because I love you.”

Fluffed fur, mirror blushes, the words finally said where neither of them could take them back.

“So,” Adora said, her knees slowly sinking down to the mat in front of her best friend, “Catra,” Adora said, her hands reaching out and folding over the scarred and clawed hand of her first and only love, “will you marry me?”

—

Apparently ceremonies happened before legal signings, in Bright Moon, but since this was a special case the two were flipped. Adora and Catra didn’t actually care, since in the Horde the only things that happened were the legal signings. With Catra freed from Shadow Weaver, the Horde, prison, and death itself, she set right into her natural way of making her presence everybody else’s problem. Everybody but Adora, who was too happy to have her best friend back, to have her best friend love her back, to get mad at her antics.

The wedding of She-ra was a world-wide hot topic. Everyone had contributions they wanted to make and advice they wanted to give. Perfuma and her people sent over gargantuan floral displays of every conceivable type and arrangement, calling them “samples” and asking which ones Catra and The She-ra liked best. Mermista offered catering, Frosta sent warm regards (which Adora had to explain was A Big Deal), Netossa and Spinnerella helped decorate, Castaspella and the other mages sent blessing after magical blessing, and even Scorpia, despite the new pressures of her place as ruler of the Desert Throne, sent assistance and a long comic depicting her absolute joy at their upcoming union.

Planning, preparing, and gathering everything and everyone took months, and Catra basked in the attention. Force Captain Catra, bride of She-ra, the unkillable, the desirable, the bold. Despite She-ra initiating the world’s attention, it was Catra who seized and kept it. Adora, better suited to her place at her lover’s side, watched on with pride and happiness.

—

Scorpia and Entrapta stood on one side of the patio, Bow and Glimmer on the other. The Moonstone of Bright Moon hovered high above them, and before them stretched the crystalline lake they’d once fought in years ago. Flowers bobbed gently in the still waters, too multitudinous to even attempt to count, and all along the palace exterior and shore of the lake stood happy faces, watching the ceremony of She-ra—who was really just Adora—and Catra. Bow and Scorpia were already crying. Their girlfriends held their hands (or, well, claw, in Scopria’s case). With the hand not holding Bow’s, Glimmer reached up and the Moonstone began to glow.

“By the authority of the Moonstone,” Glimmer said as Catra and Adora approached the steps leading down into the lake, “I bind these souls together. To love, to hold, to cherish and protect. To stand beside and value, and always to respect.” As Glimmer spoke, Adora and Catra walked, hand and hand, into the cheery waters, flowers parting as they passed, the folds of Adora’s dress and Catra’s robe rippling as they dragged through the water. “In hardship and in wealth, in sickness and in health, when the heart is sweet or har’d, your souls nevermore to part.”

Adora and Catra’s heads submerged, holding their breaths, and they smiled with puffed up cheeks at each other. The water was so clear, they could see each other just as well as they might above the surface. Adora turned to rise back up the steps, but Catra did not release her hand. Instead, she tugged on it sharply, darting forward and kissing Adora beneath the surface, light shimmering through the dancing waters and shadows passing over them beneath the flowers. Adora kissed back with surprise, and their laughter literally bubbled out of them. They rose to the surface still smiling, both pairs of hands held fast, and their foreheads fell together as natural as they had all their lives.

“Catra and Adora rise from the waters with fresh hearts and fresh eyes,” Glimmer called out, her crisp voice booming out to the distant crowd. “No longer one and another, but two souls intertwined; rejoice!”

The crowd burst into raucous cheers, Netossa even throwing up a few magical nets that burst into color before fading midair. Scorpia and Glimmer helped Catra and Adora out of the pool, Scorpia immediately pulling Catra into a weepy, bone-crushing hug.

“Aaa, I can’t believe I remembered all that!” Glimmer exclaimed as she and Bow—also still definitely crying—hugged Adora just as viciously. Entrapta perched on Scorpia’s shoulder and her thick pigtails began shaking water from Catra’s hair as she babbled on about the fascinating implications of Bright Moon’s traditions, comparing them to Dryl’s.

“You did great,” Adora praised, feeling like she could be literally glowing, with how good she felt. A sharp claw tapped lightly on her shoulder and she pulled out of the hug just enough to see Catra grinning at her, a full show of fangs and sharp eyes.