#not when

There are people out there who are going to see season 5, rewatch the show from the beginning, see the FIRST. SCENE. of the characters and see the clip they forgot about of tiny Byler, who they now know to fall in love, saying "Hey, Mike, it was a seven" and go "ohhhh! awwww"

Folks tend to forget that this isn’t how it went - that Adora didn’t immediately transition from (finally) recognizing Shadow Weaver’s ongoing abuse of Catra to trying to get Catra to escape with her.

No, the first thing Adora says isn’t “come with me.”

It’s “How could you be okay with that?”

And that’s. Hrm.

Let’s reword this for illustrative purposes.

Catra: “Shadow Weaver has been openly abusing me for years, how did you not notice?”

Adora: “Oh no! Your abuse makes me very sad! Tell me it’s all okay so I don’t have to be sad.”

That is what Adora is asking for - for Catra to tell her that she is okay with it, that her abuse is trivial, that it’s manageable, that Adora does not have to feel sad or helpless or guilty about it.

The first thing Adora does, when she is finally forced to acknowledge that Catra is being hurt is not to try and fix that hurt - it is to demand that Catra manage her emotions about it.

Which Catra does! Immediately, reflexively, with a certainty that tells us that this is a well established part of their relationship. That Catra is used to saying she’s okay with utterly not okay situations for the sake of making Adora feel better.

And once you understand that. That Adora habitually demands Catra make her feel better by having Catra dismiss her own suffering -

(so that they can keep moving towards the goal of power and safety)

Well, it make it hard not to parse Adora’s failure to be soothed as a sort of punishment. That Catra didn’t lie enough, wasn’t convincing enough, didn’t debase herself enough to make Adora happy.