SHEETCAKE PARTY #1

[goneawaymod]

SHEET CAKE MEETUP

“Who the fuck is Linda?”

The question pops up every few minutes, a little tack of punctuation above the offensively-inoffensive music being piped in*. The room the hires have been ushered into is clearly just a conference room, with a layout that requires either sitting at awkwardly-spaced intervals around a giant table or milling and scooting around the smaller folding table, where the “big surprise” the corporate officers promised them is on display: a sheet cake.

A sheet cake that that still bears HAPPY BIRTH DAY LINDA in blue icing across the top, although someone has, at least, gone to the effort of writing welcome, to the team new hires in Sharpie on a purple flashcard and used a Popsicle stick and tape to plant it like a dismal flag right in the middle of Linda’s “DAY”. Dedication aside, the cake itself looks pretty suspect too, not as if it were poisoned but more like if it were salvaged. The cake part looks dry, and the frosting seems strangely...sweaty. No one’s eating yet, and yet there’s already a piece missing.

However, there’s no lack of enthusiasm around the room. A projector hooked up to a laptop casts an off-center, warped rectangle of WELCOME TO, THE BEST TEAM. NEW HIRES!! onto a wall. The many paper plates have a festive print, although they all seem to be Christmas themed. The table cloth looks as if it came from both 4th of July and potentially a war, given the scuffs and tears. The shot-glass sized paper cups are inadequate to hold a satisfying amount of sparkling cider, but at least they don’t leak. There are many more plastic knives than forks, which could prompt some hires to give in to their animal instincts and just use their hands, or perhaps start a barter economy for the better utensils.

“I’m so jealous,” a corporate employee keeps saying as she ushers hires into the room. “We haven’t had a good party in this office since Kelly’s baby shower, and that little girl practically has teeth now!”

(An eagle-eyed hire may suspect that the box of donuts next to the sheet cake might have come from said baby shower, on account of the fact that the few stale hunks of donut remaining have Pepto-Bismol pink strawberry icing and that there’s still the paper envelope for a gift card with ITS A GIRL written on it.)

Most of corporate slips out after the hires get set up - this is clearly an event for the hires to do some “team building” and work on “rapport” in addition to filling their bellies with cake that tastes remarkably like sand. There’s a karaoke machine in the corner, but hires are instructed not to touch it because, as an employee points out, last year’s Christmas party demonstrated that karaoke is the worst thing in the entire world for morale (“in any world! even before this one got eaten away by the bombs!”).

There’s an additional big glass jar filled with scraps of paper, which the hires are informed are filled with prompts for ice breakers and activities in case the party needs a pick-me-up. Any hire who investigates will find that most of the ice breaker activities start with three benign questions (“what’s your name?” “where are you from?” “what’s your favorite animal?”) and somehow, always a fourth question that feels a little invasive (“what are your feelings on unions?” “under what circumstances would you kill an innocent person?” “do you use the same passwords for all your accounts?”).

“Please enjoy yourselves and all the desserts Jorgmund has generously supplied you with,” one of the employees says on her way out, “and don’t worry about making a mess, janitorial gets paid too much to sit around as is.”

*All music that can be summarized as ’grocerycore’.

Comments

[heterochrocatic]

"...So what?" Catra isn't following this conclusion. "I should just forget about it?"

She stares at Saturday, her whole body aflame with anxious tension. She wants to run. Or fight. Or both at the same time. She doesn't know. Her usual angry yelling at Adora has been cut off and she doesn't know what that means for her in the moment.

"So Shadow Weaver hurt both of us. So what?" She knows. She knows that's why they're both this way, both so hurt and angry and she can't make herself say anything else. To come to this truth would mean confronting deeper hurts and deeper issues between the pair of them.

[princesspower]

"We both knew Shadow Weaver was a problem," Adora responds to Saturday, "That's not the problem! We both had a hard time in the Fright Zone - but we also fought each other in a war."

She's not sure where this is going. That they both had messed up childhoods? Absolutely. But that doesn't mean she can forget about everything Catra has done. At least, not without Catra genuinely wanting to make amends, anyway.

[wheyoftheadept]

"Because," Saturday tells Adora, choosing for the moment to ignore the vast understatement about the Fright Zone (god, these names), "whatever is going on back home, here and now, we need to stick together or we'll all drown separately. Which means getting to a place where you can work together, at least on the same team if not side by side."

She drops her arm.

"The other night, I told Catra that there's a difference between something bein' your fault and something bein' your responsibility. What happened between you two isn't your fault," she nods to Adora, "or yours," a nod to Catra. "Hell, it might not even be Hordak or Shadow Weaver's. Now, I know Catra has some things she wants to say to you that ain't yelling or blaming, and I bet you feel the same. So. Where does that leave the two of you, d'you think?"

She's asking them both.

[heterochrocatic]

What is Catra supposed to say here? She's already doing her best, isn't she? She's trying and she already lost everything and it hurts so much. Why does it have to keep hurting? She's not even sure she remembers what being really, actually happy felt like in this moment.

"...I..." Catra hesitates. Clenches a fist.

"I'm sorry." Her voice is flat, quiet, subdued. In essence, entirely un-Catra. "I was--I am really hurt. And angry. All that stuff I did wasn't... good. Or right. And I'm sorry." Hesitation. She tries to remember the words she had said to Saturday the other night.

"I don't want to be enemies anymore, but. I don't know if we can be friends again. Right now. I don't know." It hurts. All of it hurts. She wants to just disappear into a hole in the ground or scream or just start running but she can't escape from this and Saturday is right there, a silent pressure for her to do something.

"I felt weak and helpless and scared all the time except for the times you were there." She trails off into uncomfortable silence. What else is there to say?

[princesspower]

Adora is fully prepared to walk away from this or keep arguing, whatever she needs to do. She's a little irritated with Saturday, honestly. But she reigns it all in, face set in an annoyed, grim expression. She's wary. She's been burned too many times, she spent too long trying to pull Catra out to think this time will be any different. Until it is. She's not even sure she's hearing this right. Catra's apologizing. She's opening up. It's practically the first time she's ever heard her do that and she's floored.

"Catra..." She says and she has no idea what to say next.

"It's..." She can't say "OK", because none of it was OK. None of what is or will be fine. It's a giant mess of emotions and she doesn't know what to think or how to sort it out and make it right in her head.

"I'm not going to lie. You hurt me a lot, Catra. You threatened and tortured me. My friends. You hurt a lot of people. And... I don't know. I have to - I have to think about that. I have to figure that out..." She trails off and she stares hard at the ground between her feet.

"Catra - I don't know how to say this - this is - I'm surprised."

Ugh. She runs her hands through her hair, acutely aware that she might be making a mistake. But this feels different.

"...I've never stopped caring about you Catra. Ever. I've always missed you. I've always wanted you to be OK and I've always wanted you to be... I don't know. Happy, I guess. So-"

She wants to hug her. Desperately. But she doesn't know if she can handle that or if it would even be a good idea. There's a lot of hurt there, even if she cares about her. Loves her, even.

"...I guess this is a really long way of saying I don't want to be enemies, either."

[wheyoftheadept]

This is the moment Saturday chooses to try and quietly withdraw, while they're both looking at each other and not her. The thing Catra wanted to say has been said and the anger between them is leeching away, for now, which means her job is done. For now. Good luck to those two crazy kids.

[heterochrocatic]

Catra hates standing here and listening. She knows what Adora has to say is true. And valid. And it hurts. She hates that Saturday is making her listen and that she has to endure this instead of just... hiding. She's always been good at hiding, right? She swallows, arms tightening a little around herself.

"Okay." She doesn't notice Saturday slipping off to leave her alone with Adora. Probably for the best, honestly. Catra finds herself wishing she was a kid again. That Adora could hug her and they'd go run off to do something stupid together. But that can't happen. Not anymore. She tries to steady herself internally, processing what Adora says. It all hurts. It hurts more than she wants it to. But Adora says she always cared? She missed Catra? That... okay. She's not sure how to feel about that. Or if it's real. But it's something, she guesses. She misses Adora.

She misses her so much.

"Now what?"

[princesspower]

Adora does notice the way Saturday fades into the background, but her attention is definitely more on Catra than anything else. She's imagined this scenario before. The two of them coming back together and everything being able to be OK again, but her imagination always glossed over the hard part. Or how weird it feels, because now when she sees her friend, she wants to be happy again, she wants to be glad that Catra is trying, but there's also wariness and scar tissue from where she's been hurt. How does she reconcile those two things?

"I... don't know."

Adora doesn't have a good answer. Maybe if they were home that would be different. Here? Everything's weird.

"Like I said, I'm still trying to figure out a lot of things when it comes to you, but... could we start by trying to be friends again? Take it slow, I guess?"

[heterochrocatic]

"...I guess." Catra doesn't know how to feel about those words. We can try being friends again? What does that mean? Does she want to be friends with Adora? Yes.

Yes, that's all she's ever wanted in her life is to have Adora nearby, to support the other girl and hold her up and watch her go be amazing. It's just that when it actually happened, it wasn't the way it was supposed to happen. Catra had been left behind and it had hurt (and it had been her own fault, in some ways) but she had hurt so much. Seeing Adora care for other people when Catra had been there, hurting, the whole time--it had been a betrayal. Or it had felt like one.

"Yeah. I... I guess we can try that? I don't know what that means, though." Do either of them? Part of her wants to grab Adora, shake her, hug her. Demand that she never leave. Another wants her to run now, before it all falls apart again and Catra is left alone and hurting again. It will happen. Might happen. She doesn't know what the next step is going to be and that scares her the most.

[princesspower]

"I'm not sure I know either," Adora says and that... somehow makes her feel guilty. She's the one who's been hoping that Catra would come around one day, even as that possibility grew more and more remote. Shouldn't she have a better idea of what to do now? Should she take the lead? Try to make it happen?

She's not sure.

"But... we should at least not yell at each other anymore. Right?"

[heterochrocatic]

Somehow Catra had hoped this might make things okay again. Or that it might reveal to her some sort of of truth or enlightenment, a realization of what she should do now or how she was supposed to be. Instead, this awkward, messy reunion just felt exactly that. Things were supposed to be better now, right?

So why didn't Catra feel better?

"Yeah. Or you know, fight each other?" Physically. In an attempt to hurt or kill each other.

"Um... Yeah." Catra focuses her attention on the cake for a moment, pretending to be deeply engage in the frosting. "This place sucks."

[princesspower]

It's never quite that easy. There's too much hurt, too much pain. They're going to have to work through it a little slowly, aren't they? Adora breathes out in a long, slow sigh. At least that's a relatively safe topic. Even if they both feel raw and wary.

"I mean... yeah. It's like the Fright Zone except somehow worse."

[heterochrocatic]

Catra hurts. Everything hurts. Admitting what she had done, hurt the most, though. Recognizing that she had hurt people, hurt Adora. And she still hurt! It wasn't fair, it felt. When would she stop hurting? She looked away from Adora, feeling suddenly and distinctly uncomfortable beneath the other's gaze.

"...At least there's no Shadow Weaver."

[princesspower]

"True," Adora grumbles, "I still don't know why Glimmer thought we should trust her."

Well, she does, but she doesn't like thinking about it. Shadow Weaver's magic had been useful. Sort of. And grumbling about her captured friend makes her feel a little guilty so she tries to change the subject.

"So, uh, I think we should... talk... when we're not stuck in a room full of other people."

[heterochrocatic]

"Yeah. That... sounds good." Catra hesitates for a moment, then vaguely gestures across the room.

"Um. I'm gonna go... Yeah."

[princesspower]

Adora's expression twists into something and then she finally settles on a smile. A little sad, a little relieved. This is a step, isn't it? They can make this work. They'll figure this out.

"I - OK. I'll be around. We can talk!"