HARK! How the bells, sweet silver bells...

[piper90npcs]

Who: Everyone
What: Holiday Events
Where: Piper 90 - The Rig
When: Post-Rose Tattoo
Warnings/Notes: Holiday cheer, smooches, tactical snowball action

It's the Holiday Season in the Gone Away World and on the Rig in particular! Though they claim to be open to any cultural celebration of this time of year, the dominance of Santa Claus, reindeer, and elves in decorating really kind of blunt that claim. But the PA system, when not blaring alarms or fuzzy announcements for working party C to show up at the maintenance bay, play Christmas tunes of all sorts at inconvenient volumes. Decorations hang limply from the walls. And every worker with children has been issued a shotgun and a bandoleer of shells loaded with pellets of cold iron.

Just in case.

Comments

[71lines]

"There are worse places, at least?" Not many, but still. She smiles, opening her mouth to toss out another flippant little comment, when Catra's tone stops her short. She's quiet for a moment, then folds her arms under her chest and looks away, leaning against... Oh, an actual wall, not just the invisible one from the Mistletoe. Handy.

So, Catra had seen through her at last. She thought she'd been doing a better job at covering, but the stress of the situation-No excuses. "I guess you've already figured it out, if you're saying it like that."

She takes a deep, shuddering breath and that shinobi mask falls into place. Emotionally neutral, totally steeled for rejection. This would be a quick bandage, a fast kiss, and then they'd just go back to being co-workers. Maybe friends again, someday, but Catra wasn't the type to forgive and forget. Tenten locks her eye with Catra's, her left eye simply sliding shut. "I've been in love with you for months now, Catra. Sorry." Her tone, even the apology, is perfectly neutral, like delivering a financial report. No hint of affection. Why hadn't she been trying as hard as this to cover that earlier?

If only making her stomach cease its twisting could be as easy as schooling her face.

This wasn't the confession she wanted to give.

[heterochrocatic]

Catra looks back at Tenten with a cool gaze. The sort a cat regards someone with when it's waiting. Because that's exactly what's happening right now. Her tail continues it's agitated motion, then pauses in its arc as Tenten speaks. The cold, impersonal mask settling over what should have been an emotional moment... it annoys Catra more than anything. It reminds her of Adora and her need to give up on things she wants for the greater good, in a way. It also just makes her laugh. What a way to tell someone you loved them. All cool and business like when Catra knew for a fact that wasn't how Tenten was feeling. So she laughs. It's not meant to be cruel, but she laughs, bends over to put her hands on her knees and laughs again.

"You're such an idiot, Tenten," it's said with a degree of affection. She straightens up.

"I said be honest. That bullshit," she waves a hand towards Tenten, "where you bottle up what you feel and try to act all cool and detached? That's not honest." She turns her gaze away for a moment, focuses on the mistletoe overhead, then lets her gaze drop back down towards Ten.

"Loving me? Okay, maybe Adora can because she knows all the fucked up crap I've done but you really don't want to get in that deep with me. I'm not worth it." If Adora was here, she'd probably not say that. She's trying to be better but there are still times when she feels worthless, where she feels that the care and affection others are showing her means nothing because she doesn't matter to anyone. Or shouldn't. Maybe she matters to Adora, but that's different.

"It's not like I..." Ugh. Now she has to talk about her own feelings and this still feels awful. Exposing herself means being hurt and it stings every time she does it, just waiting for the blow to fall in response.

"...It's not like I don't like you. I do," her expression softens, falls away into something thoughtful.

"You're a good person. You're kind and thoughtful. You're fit. Your cooking is amazing! I just don't know if I can say I love you, though. I love Adora. I've always loved her. She's--look, she and I have so much history and I never thought I could be with her this way." Catra feels raw in a disgustingly vulnerable way. She's not used to this and it feels like she's showing off her vulnerabilities just so someone can shove a knife into them later. Her hands clasp together, tighten, then separate again as she tries to find something to do with them. Even if this is hard, though, she finds that she doesn't want to hurt Tenten, if she can avoid it. She cares, aggravatingly so.

"I don't want to promise you something the same as what she and I have because that's just... It can't happen. Who fucking knows when we're getting out of here, right? And I can't say I can try to give you something else, but different, without talking to her about it. And besides that I don't even know if I'm ready for that with someone else, too. But I do like you. A lot. Probably more than I've let on." She looks aside, the fur on the back of her neck bristling a little with the embarrassed, awkward energy of it all.

"Sorry. That's probably not what you want to hear. But you're my friend." She hasn't said that before to anyone besides Adora. Be honored at least in that, Tenten.

"I don't want that to change."

[71lines]

As Catra talks, Tenten looks down, her mouth twisting as she tries, and doesn't quite succeed, at maintaining the mask. This was-it was harder than she'd expected. She knew it would happen, and even if it was a better result than expected-

Her fingers tighten their grip on her arms, sending a fresh burst of pain through her nerves. The last few words hit like hammer blows, even though a part of her expected something like them.

"The first time we met, you offered to keep perverts from spying on me. In the showers, I mean. I wasn't in love with you then, but even at your prickliest, you were... Nice." She clears her throat, hating how thick her voice sounds. "I never felt like I had to compete with you. I didn't feel like I was trailing behind, like I was... inadequate. Or primitive for not having spaceboats or whatever. You never made me feel convenient, either."

Why didn't people get that her skills were convenient, not her?

"And a lot of the things you say about me are just-Have you seen yourself, Catra? You're beautiful, you're fit even by my standards, you've got this..." She stops, then waves a hand at Catra. "Gracefulness about you, even though you practically stomp through the floor half the time you're going somewhere, you're exposing yourself even though you hate it to try to make me feel better about all this. I want to just take your cheeks in my hands when you start getting down on yourself and tell you that you're so much better than you think you are."

She shudders, not even trying to hide it, but at least she's not crying. As much as she'd like to. But a shinobi never, ever, shows their tears. "I thought I might stand a chance against Adora once, but..." Her hand rises to her face, pressing down on her left eye, still closed. "I lied to everyone when I said my memory of that night is fuzzy. I could tell you every gesture she made. I know what you did when you came and found me with Saturday. Ever since then, I've known that I would never be as important as Adora. I never hated her for it. Tried to, but I like her too much. She's the hero, after all."

Another shuddery breath. She's not leaning against the wall anymore, more pressing herself against it, trying to push through it. She hates being open like this. Raw. It goes against everything she's tried to raise herself to be.

It's honestly pathetic, in her opinion.

"And then you got hurt. Trying to-" Her voice cracks and she struggles for a moment before managing to continue. "Trying to visit me. And She-Ra saved you. And listening to the two of you. I looked up, and she was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen. And your smile was as bright as her. I realized then that I'd never stood a chance." She sniffs, pressing her hand to her mouth for a moment, then drops it back down to gripping her arm. "I knew this was only temporary, that we'd go home again sometime, possibly even tomorrow. But if I had just a sliver of your heart to take with me, that would've been fine. And then you two finally told each other what's been obvious for forever and I decided that even just being your friend would be okay."

Finally, she looks up, hurt and vulnerable, but mostly through her own doings. "I don't want to stop being your friend, Catra. I'll take whatever I can get. But even though it hurts that I can't have you, I can't stop loving you."

[heterochrocatic]

Catra smiles. It's weak. Sad. She doesn't understand this. Not why Adora loves her, exactly. Definitely not why Tenten has somehow managed to fall for her in this short span of time when she has done her best to shove everyone back from her and to keep herself from being vulnerable to whatever comes. Clearly, it hadn't worked. She wraps an arm around herself. They were opening themselves, the both of them--and the least she could for Tenten was to listen. It's what Adora would do, right? She swallows.

"Yeah. That's her. Always the hero. Always trying to put herself in danger for other people because she thinks if she doesn't, she won't be any good to anyone." She laughs, mirthless.

"She's an idiot and I love her. I tried to stop loving her for a long time, because I hated her too. I hated her for leaving me behind and then hated her for asking me to go with her. Thinking of her hurt so much." This is more that she's never told anyone. It's a glimpse into the depths of her soul and she knows, just knows this is going to come back and bite her in the ass. She takes a step forward. It's a shuttering thing, half-hesitant.

"You can love more than one person," she says after a moment more of long, awkward silence. "I don't know if I can. Or if I'm ready to do that. I just--I thought no one left in the whole damn universe still loved me or cared that I lived or died. And all you idiots here that I just met keep proving me wrong. Adora proved me wrong." She struggles to try and find the words again. It aches, like prodding at an open wound.

"If you can love me as a friend then I guess that's okay. Don't..." She tries to find the right words. Maybe the words she would have said to her younger self at some point.

"Don't think this makes you worthless. You're not. You're a good friend and--" She swallows, unsure of what she wants to say next, but presses on.

"I wish I could give you what you wanted, Ten."

[71lines]

Baring their souls to one another hadn't been quite so painful when Tenten considered the possibility before. Idle fantasies of intertwined fingers and whispered comforts.

This just sucks. It's not as bad as it could be, but she's not enjoying it and Catra's definitely not enjoying it.

"I wish you could, too," she sighs. "But I've known for a little while now that friendship is the best I could hope for. I'm not-this isn't a value judgement against me. I know what I'm good at, and I know what people will remember me for. It just won't..."

It just won't be anything she initially wanted. Tenten doesn't know why she was ever surprised. When had her dreams ever managed to come true?

"It would be so much easier to dislike Adora if she didn't know what she had. But she clearly does. And maybe, someday, you'll realize the value of what she has, too." Because Catra is worthy of the affections she receives. It's just that, apparently, someone way back in her past convinced her otherwise and no one's bothered to try to fix that until Adora came along.

A breath heaves out of her, almost in a hiccup, and she pushes away from the wall. Her expression is miserable. Honestly, even though she's technically further ahead now that their feelings have been aired, it feels more like she's suffered just to end up right back where she was when this all began. "Sorry, if that didn't set us free, could you just. Call Adora or something so she could get you out, please?"

Tenten really kind of feels like she'd rather be alone at the moment.

[heterochrocatic]

Catra finds herself wanting to hug Tenten, but knows from experience that invading someone's personal space sucks. She never liked unsolicited touch, so why inflict it on someone else? Besides, she has the feeling that it might just make Tenten feel worse than she already does. She glances down the corridor and reaches out a hand--to find no barrier remaining.

"I think it worked." She's quiet for a moment.

"I'll see you around, okay?"

[71lines]

No, a hug wouldn't have been good. Not because she wouldn't have welcomed the comfort, but more because there's no way Tenten could keep her composure after all that.

Tenten half-raises a hand to wave. "Yeah. Sure." She's a little toneless now. Drained. But at any moment, her composure's going to crumble.

That's probably why Tenten just blurs out and vanishes, rather than trying to walk off at a normal pace. Forget the gym. She needs somewhere to be by herself for now.