Revenge Solves Everything (closed)

[wheyoftheadept]

Who: Saturday and Catra
What: Video games!
Where: A lounge on the rig
When: Between the sheetcake party and the next big event
Warnings/Notes: Spoilers for an older video game? Probably they will talk about their shitty childhoods at some point

Saturday does not recognize any of the recreational equipment in the weird little boxy lounges scattered across the dorm level, but that’s not a problem because neither does Catra.

“Oh, this sounds neat,” Saturday says, reading the back of a box. “You are the once-trusted bodyguard of the beloved Empress. Framed for her murder, you become an infamous assassin, known only by a disturbing mask, blah blah blah - oooh, a city besieged by plague and ruled by an oppressive government armed with neo-industrial technologies. What do you think?”

She shows the box to Catra. It’s very goth, with a dude in a long coat and a hood with a fairly cool skull mask on the front.

“What do you think? It says Playstation on the thing, and one of the boxes under the tv says the same. Probably it’ll work.”

Comments

[wheyoftheadept]

"Don't give yourself too much credit. I'd run with you any day." Saturday means it, too. Catra is young, but she's got grit and drive, or she wouldn't be alive. Rough around the edges, but she can handle tech and handle herself in a fight, and there's many a runner that started with less.

"An' that's a wise philosophy if you can do it without burning too many bridges."

[heterochrocatic]

"Pff. You like me now," Catra says. Meaning that Saturday has yet to let herself be pushed away by Catra's unceasing efforts to drive off emotional vulnerability.

"I burned pretty much every bridge I had," Catra admits frankly as the game started into another cutscene. Time to meet Corvo's helpers, it seems.

"I had this one friend--" Friend. Sure. "--or she wanted to be my friend. I wouldn't let her in. So she left me too. For Adora."

[wheyoftheadept]

"Oh, tough gal," Saturday teases. "You think you're hard, you shoulda met Kell Indril. She'd break you like a rock wall does a wave."

She watches Corvo ride with the boat man for a while. The admiral guy is immediately too nice to be trustworthy.

"They're awfully eager to help," she mutters, then pays attention to Catra. "Well - you can rebuild them. Gotta eat some crow and take your time, but you can get people back. Or build new bridges."

[heterochrocatic]

"Who the hell is Kell Indril? I'll fight her. Bet I win." She sticks her tongue out at Saturday without making eye contact.

"These guys are shady. No one is that happy to help you. Ever." Catra opines.

"And yeah, I don't think that's happening..."

[wheyoftheadept]

"Troll lady I met on a job. About ten feet tall, muscles you could build a fucking house on, and sneaky as hell even with her size. She'd pick you up in one hand and toss you over the fence before you knew she was there."

"Okay, this Piero guy is very creepy," Saturday nods, convinced. "I don't like him. Anyway, you seemed to be doing all right at the party, even with the friction."

[heterochrocatic]

"Whatever. I fought Hordak, I fought Adora. I could fight her." Catra seems unshaken by the revelation that this woman is twice her size in a quite literal sense.

"Yeah, he's obviously up to nothing good. How do you end up trusting someone like that? Ugh." Never mind that she trusted someone just as slimy. That's not important right now.

"I guess. Adora's different though."

[wheyoftheadept]

Saturday just shakes her head. Catra could not fight Kell, but also, Kell wouldn't fight Catra. Well, not unless Catra really pushed it. The big troll woman was an angry, bitter bitch, but she'd had the strongest set of ethics Saturday'd ever met.

"She seemed to really miss you," is what she says instead, meaning Adora.

[heterochrocatic]

"Yeah, well, what is she going to do? Her new friends all hate me. What is she going to do? Leave behind being a fancy frilly princess and live in the Crimson Wastes with me or something? Just give up all her specialness? Sure. She doesn't even know if she wants to be my friend again." Catra scoffs, bitterness seeping into her voice.

"Not gonna happen."

[wheyoftheadept]

"Oh fiddle-dee-dee," Saturday says. "Don't go borrowing trouble, Cats. A lot can happen between now and the future, an' didn't you just say there's a much bigger threat than little old you on the horizon?"

She is distracted from what she's saying by Corvo waking up in the Void. "Dude, the fuck is this game?"

Little too close to home, there.

[heterochrocatic]

"Just because Horde Prime is around doesn't mean they stop hating me for the stuff I did." The awful things she did. The people she hurt. Her grip on the controller gets tighter and tighter. Almost white knuckled.

"Wait, what?" This is freaky. Really freaky.

"This is freakin' weird."

[wheyoftheadept]

"Did we just get superpowers from Satan?" Saturday stares at the screen as Catra moves through the introduction to the Outsider's gift. "That's actually kinda cool..."

"An' they might hate you," she says, switching gears, "but they're also gonna need you. You know the Horde; you know it in a way Adora doesn't, because she left. And most importantly, you're Glimmer's best chance of getting out alive. Helping someone when they need it against a much bigger threat goes a long way to wiping out debt. I never thought I'd forgive Solomon ever, but I did."

[heterochrocatic]

"He said his name was the Outsider, not Satan. Were you listening?" Catra asks, looking askance at Saturday as she speaks. Catra's lips purse for a moment.

"...I guess. Maybe." She slouches back against the couch, looking sullen and unhappy. "I did some bad stuff."

[wheyoftheadept]

"Oh, sorry." Her attention is pretty riveted on the screen. "Satan is like - where I come from there's this popular religion, and Satan is the super bad guy in it. Since it was a really big deal for centuries everyone kinda uses that to mean evil supernatural stuff, even if it's not really Satan and they're not Christians. That kinda thing."

"You'll see," she adds, continuing the second of their entwining conversations. "It works like this: if they're good people and you're really trying, they'll see that and it'll matter, even if they're real fucking pissed. And if they're not good people, fuck 'em and the high horse they rode in on."

[heterochrocatic]

"Oh. That's... eh. I hate that people keep saying all this stuff I'm just supposed to understand and then acting all confused when I don't agree or get what they mean..." She sighs and shakes her head. "At least I got cool teleportation powers out of it."

The other conversation continues, strange and a bit awkward.

"I could just be bad forever. That's what they think already. No reason for them to think otherwise, right?"

[wheyoftheadept]

"It's hard to get used to being in other worlds and not having a common language or culture or like... concept of reality," Saturday observes, with the air of an expert. "You just gotta learn to be really open and not judge someone by what they know... unless you mean in the game, I think that's just that we're supposed to be paying more attention to those books and stuff you can read than we are."

Saturday continues, sandwiching the hard things between random bullshitting; it's a familiar routine.

"Sure, unless you give them one. The thing about good people is they can't help it. If someone is really trying hard, they gotta give them another chance. It's the rules."

Saturday says this as someone who keeps ending up a good person despite knowing better.

[heterochrocatic]

"I don't think there are rules like that," Catra retorts as she begins the set-up for her first real excursion into the rancid streets of Dunwall.

"Pretty sure Sparkles was gonna put me out of my misery until she realized I wasn't gonna fight back." A little tug of a smile, though not really a very happy one.

"I wonder if it would've been better if she had, you know?" Catra laughs after that. Like the smile, it is not actually happy or amused. It's a sound meant to vent emotion when she has no idea how else to do so.

[wheyoftheadept]

"Nah, there's rules. Maybe people don't say 'em the same way or put them in the same order, but there's rules about how you treat people, if you wanna be a good person. And the rules apply even to people you hate and who hurt you. You don't have to like 'em any to be fair and just to them."

Saturday's quiet for a long moment, watching as Samuel rows Corvo to the muddy riverbank below a bridge where guards are tossing bodies into the river. "Why do you say that?" she asks, when Catra makes her confession.

[heterochrocatic]

"Yeah, but why would they be fair and just?" As she begins her stealthy creep through the streets of Dunwall, she stays quiet, focused on the game for a long few minutes. The question has been asked and she must answer, even if she doesn't know how she's going to do that. She regrets saying anything, but she's stuck--she 's not prickly enough to lash out at Saturday and the only thing she can do is answer honestly.

"I don't have anything left." She finally speaks. And that's it. That's all she can muster in a sullen, quiet voice.

[wheyoftheadept]

After a few abortive attempts up the main road, Catra tries a side alley. Saturday watches as Corvo creeps around, stealing the rune from Granny Rags and then coming to a halt over the scene of the gangsters shaking down the shopkeeper as Catra speaks.

"You got your health," Saturday says in response. "Two strong arms, sharp claws. Your mind, your heart. As long as you're alive, that's somethin' to work with."

It's not a lie. It's not the whole truth, but it's not a lie; it's a true thing, something you can live on in hard times. She's lived on it. That's why Saturday radiates certainty as she speaks.

"And like I said - if they're not good people, not into being fair and just, then fuck them."

[heterochrocatic]

Catra watches the gangsters shake down the poor shopkeep, her her grip on the controller as tight as ever. It hurts to think about going forward without anyone, without Adora, without anything to hold her up. She knows she lost all of those things because of her own anger and stubborn refusal to listen to Adora instead of her broken heart.

"I--" She stares at the screen, not really seeing what's happening. She's more staring through it, beyond it, trying to make sense of the taut emotions boiling in her chest.

"But I'll be alone." That's what this has always been about. Catra fearing loneliness, fearing the loss of the only friend she has ever truly had.

[wheyoftheadept]

"..."

Saturday risks putting a hand on Catra's bent back.

"You ain't alone right now, are you? If I see something good, then other people will, too. Might take a long while, but it'll happen. People are - more flexible than you think."

She thinks of her rage at her brother, and how much she'd wanted to hold to it even as it slipped through her fingers; he'd tried so hard to make it right that all her righteousness had turned to ash in her mouth. And she thought about Bit lying there, bleeding out, Scylla's throat cut, and both of them forgiving, never even really blaming her -

Saturday inhales a sharp breath.

"...it ain't all or nothin', Cats."

[heterochrocatic]

"If it's not all or nothing why am I the one who ended up alone? Why do I have be the one who's wrong?" She knows why. She knows that what she has done is wrong, that she has hurt people and done it all because of anger and spite. She has to ask though, maybe because she hope Saturday has an answer. Catra tenses at the touch of Saturday's hand but she doesn't hiss or spit or snap at Saturday to get away from her. Maybe a good sign? Maybe. Catra's shoulders are tight, drawn in as if she's trying to force herself into the smallest space possible.

"I don't want to be alone," she says in a quiet, almost child-like voice. She swallows and her throat feels thick and she doesn't want to cry, she doesn't, but she feels as if she must. She can remember anger too, still feel the embers of it smoldering in her, wafted now and then by fresh feelings of grievance.

[wheyoftheadept]

"Cause sometimes people fuck up." Saturday pats her softly. "Even good people fuck up. It's not the end of the world. And you won't be alone forever. You said yourself, people want to be with you, and you push them away. So why would people stop seeing someone worth caring about?"

She sighs, not sure how much comfort to give. If this was home, she could promise a lot of things, easily.

"You're not gonna be alone here," is all she can promise. "I'll get both of us out, one way or another. That's a promise."

She'll get more than just them out, she realizes with a certain resignation, or die trying.

[heterochrocatic]

Catra feels so alone in this moment. Like there's nothing left for her. There is the potential of reconciliation with Adora, though it seems just out of her reach. She takes a breath. Saturday is talking, saying that she isn't going to be alone. Catra tenses. She doesn't want to believe Saturday.

And yet she so desperately needs to.

The controller shakes in her hands and she stares at the screen as she feels fat tears starting to spill out of her eyes. Why? WhySaturday who she's known like a week. But she can't stop. The controller drops out of her hands and she leans forward, trying to cover her face with her hands.

"No. No no no no."

[wheyoftheadept]

"All right, kid, let it out." Saturday keeps up the patting. "There you go. No shame in it, sometimes you gotta."

She shouldn't invest herself like this, in a stranger in a strange place, but - Maggie would forgive her, for caring about more than just herself. Would expect this from her, frankly. And it's not like everyone doesn't stand a better chance together than apart. And Catra needs someone in her corner, and Saturday can't not be who she is.

"It's gonna be okay. Might suck for a long while, but it'll be okay in the end."