#scorptrapta

Catra did her level best not to cry, first and foremost because she hated crying. But Clawdeen had just finally calmed down and fallen asleep and Catra didn’t want to wake her.

After all, it was Catra’s fault Clawdeen had been upset in the first place.

She curled up tighter into a little ball of misery and shoved her face into the mattress to hide the few traitorous tears that leaked out. Entrapta’s hair ran soothingly over her arms so Catra tucked them in and under to get away from the touch. She didn’t want to be comforted. She wanted to just be miserable alone but neither Scorpia nor Entrapta had let her leave. 

“It’s okay Catra.” Scorpia whispered, actually whispered as she curled around Catra’s body. “She’s okay.”

Yeah. And that was good, it was just…

“Catra, you need to breathe.” Entrapta instructed as gently as she could. “You need at least seven liters of air per minute.”

Her chest hurt as she held her breath but eventually she was forced to exhale, the hiss of air stuttering as she fought for some control.

“There we go,” Scorpia kissed her shoulder blade and that did it.

Catra sobbed, “I’m- I’m a ba-bad mom!”

“No!” Scorpia squeezed tighter at the same time Entrapta said, “Well THAT'S just factually incorrect.”

“Then, then why does she cry every time I hold her!? She just- she can tell! I shouldn’t b-be here, she hates me!” Catra shook violently as she wailed and gasped, desperately wishing she would just stop talking.

The baby hated her. She wasn’t even old enough to walk and she hated Catra just like everyone else. Why did she think she could do this? She should just go back to being a Commander and leave before she really fucked the kid up irrevocably.

“It’s okay that she only wants her mama.” Scorpia kissed the back of her neck before continuing. “That doesn’t make you a bad com-mom-der.”

The stupid name almost got a watery giggle from her, Catra’s insistence on Commander had been overruled by two enthusiastic dorks who then chose the dumbest thing. But at least it wasn’t mommy or cat mom.

Entrapta’s hair wiggled until she could wrap it around Catra’s arms again and Scorpia continued to nuzzle at the back of her neck. Disgusting. When had they gotten this domestic and ooey-gooey soft? Probably around month three, that was when the sleep deprivation had really started to kick their asses and created the poison rat pile situation.

She tried to sit with Scorpia’s reasoning. She did. But she had to voice her own traitorous fear. “But what if it does?”

“Catra, if we literally took this exact situation and then totally changed major contextual parts of it, we could make it mean anything we want it to. But that is literally changing the situation which we can’t do! …or maybe we could? It would be more portal work though to try and reach an alternate dimension where you weren’t a good mom. And while I would be THRILLED to work on the portal again, you said not to and the simulations were less than optimal, what with the everyone dying thing. Which is a lot of effort to go through to prove that you are a good mom compared to the bad mom alternate reality version of you. So, instead, I propose that you accept our word for it because your brain seems to like lying to you, like, a lot.” Entrapta topped this grand declaration off by essentially slapping Catra’s head in an imitation of a gentle pat.

Had her and Scorpia been talking? They had to have been talking and trading methods behind her back. It was very Scorpiaesque.

But it also did work a little. Catra almost unwillingly felt her body relaxing a little bit. “Okay. But what if-”

“Do you want me to tinker with Hordak’s portal machine?” Entrapta cut her off. “Because what I’m hearing is you want me to tinker with Hordak’s portal machine.”

“Please don’t!” Scorpia squeaked.

“Okay, but if Catra’s gonna be stupid about this, and the only way to prove it-”

Scorpia pleaded, “Sweetie bean, do not open a deadly portal!”

“We don’t know that it’s deadly!” There was a long pause before Entrapta deflated and collapsed over both of them. “I mean, we have a lot of evidence from the predictive trials. So it’s only probably deadly.”

“Yeah, that’s, uh, not good.” Catra finally managed to mutter, and after having her moping ball so disrespected she finally gave up and uncurled fully. Instantly she gained a large claw around her middle and Entrapta’s knee under her chin. It wasn’t comfortable but it was…it was nice. She guessed.

“So you believe us?” Entrapta asked excitedly.

“No. But I can try. I guess.”

“That’s all we’re asking, Clawdeen loves you! You’ll see!” Scorpia cheered, and then winced as she realized how loud she’d been.

They all held their breath but Clawdeen remained snoozing peacefully in her little infant pod.