patchwork satellite

When his claws brushed the bare skin between her shoulder blades he stopped with a sharp inhale and drew back, his voice bruised and tender with ingrown rage. “Who did this to you?”

She didn’t understand at first, and then she did. The scar was a year old, the memories around it warped by what came after: another reality, a dream world with a nightmare vortex at its center, and the stranger world in which she had found herself waking, alone and exposed to the elements, fully occupied at first by the necessities of her own survival. By the time she had a moment to reflect, the livid marks had faded with the shock.

“It’s okay.” She leaned back into him, her head to his sternum, his ribs sharp through the gown he had borrowed from the field hospital to replace the loathsome familiarity of that uniform, that all-erasing whiteness. She wrapped her hair around his waist and pulled him closer, drawing his arms around her. Dusk had fallen and a chill swept the overgrown battlefield below the ledge where they had gone to escape the chaos and the aftermath of Prime’s defeat. Wisps of feral magic pulsed and flickered in the twilight, mirroring the patterns in the stars above. She took a deep breath and exhaled, letting her eyelids fall. “It happened a long time ago.”

He made a soft sound, a wordless utterance between a purr and a growl. “Has it been so long? Since ….”

Entrapta swallowed. They did have a lot to talk about—more than she could begin to fathom now, let alone parse into words. Instead she slipped a lock of her hair around his skull and guided his head to rest on hers, bringing all of him closer. It still hurt to see him like this, the bleached green of his eyes and mouth a reminder of what Prime had done to him, what Prime had taken from them both. (Would the green fade like a scar or would he bear it forever?) To her other senses he was the same as before, the syncopation of his pulse and cybernetic life support a lullaby she had strained to recall during her year in exile, the scent that had lingered in her gloves and her hair for weeks after her banishment, a trace of their last contact and the only proof she had that the memory wasn’t just another figment of the false world of the portal. Despite all they had done to erase his aberration, Hordak remained, alone of his brothers, the one she had gone beyond the stars and back to bring home. Hers.

“Entrapta.” His voice strained again, tight as the wasted strands of muscle in his arms or the marbled skin stretched taut over his ribs. “It is my fault you were banished to Beast Island. My ignorance alone—”

“Don’t.” Her back and shoulders stiffened, but she didn’t pull away. The hard metallic lip of his clavicle port pressed into the base of her neck. “You didn’t know. You couldn’t have.”

“I am no fool. But I allowed myself to be taken for one. And in so doing, prolonged your suffering indefinitely. The ultimate responsibility was mine, as it was for all of this.” He lifted one hand to describe the verdant silhouettes of Horde spires against the dimming horizon.

Her hair twined along his outstretched arm and meshed itself with his fingers, drawing his hand back to her side. “You suffered too. And I’d be hurt more if you were still punishing yourself, blaming yourself for what happened to me.”

He made a pained noise and shifted in discomfort, seeing no way out of this that didn’t entail some grudging acceptance of forgiveness. “I knew myself to be unworthy, and that is why I believed you were …. Why I doubted your loyalty. But to you it must have seemed that I abandoned you out of spite. That you were simply no longer … of use to me.” She felt him recoil from the sound of his own voice, the turn of Prime’s phrase on his tongue like a sickly aftertaste.

“I didn’t think that,” she said, more anxious to reassure him than to blurt out the other half of the truth. “Not at first. Or not at all, really, except when the signal ….”

She hesitated, then decided against explaining how she had learned to tolerate rather than attempt to block out the island’s voice, how she had tempered her resilience each day against the infrasonic drone that echoed into her deepest doubts and amplified her failures and sounded out every reason she had to give up. The signal had caught her off guard only once, near the center of the island, just before she left with Bow and Adora. Sometimes, in the silent void of space or in the hush of the rebel encampment before dawn, she found herself growing anxious for its absence. It had functioned as a check on her confidence for so long that she forgot how she had trusted herself without it.

“I guess I always knew you’d come for me if you could, as soon as you realized I was missing. And when you … didn’t, I thought …” The confession stuck in her throat. She had never dared commit to words what had been her sole overriding fear until she found him again. Even now she was afraid for him, with his fate on Etheria undecided and her allies wary of his return.

“You thought something had happened when the princesses arrived to stop the portal.”

She nodded, swallowing. The glow of stray magic across the valley blurred through the burning in her eyes. “I knew your armor was malfunctioning, and if they managed to get into your sanctum while you were ….” She wiped her eyes with a lock of hair and coiled skeins of it around both of his hands, drawing them to hers. “I couldn’t stand to think about it. So instead I thought about how the other princesses left me in the Fright Zone, and how Catra … About all my other failures, and how I must have done something wrong and disappointed you too. I mean, my portal almost unraveled the fabric of space-time, so ….”

“Our portal.” He gripped her hands through her hair. They quaked without his armor to stabilize them, now that the physical conditioning he had received in the hivemind began to wear off. “You were the one who tried to stop it. Tried to warn me. You are not to blame for its activation.”

“It was my data. Our research.” Turning over one of his hands, she examined the gashes on his palm where the First Ones’ crystal had sliced into it. Somehow he had held onto the crystal even in the throes of possession, after Horde Prime invaded his body—or Prime had held him to it, crushing Hordak’s fist around the source of his strength and the emblem of Prime’s fatal weakness, that the agony they shared would punish them both. Perhaps Horde Prime had meant to grind the crystal into dust as a prelude to annihilating the universe, but Hordak, already nearing exhaustion after their confrontation in the throne room, had proved too weak to shatter it. Entrapta had it now, tucked inside a pocket on her overalls. Safe. As soon as she had access to a proper lab she’d start building him another exoskeleton, this one incorporating the upgrades she had drawn up in her spare time with the Rebellion. In the meantime, she was the only armor he had.

“We were both at fault for our part in it,” he said, in a halting attempt at diplomacy. “However—”

“Yeah, but neither one of you pulled the lever.”

Hordak tensed, a growl rising in his chest. Entrapta loosened her hair from around him and peered over her shoulder along the outcrop, back in the direction of the rebel camp.

“That was all on me.” Catra’s eyes gleamed in the dusk, and the tip of her tail flicked back and forth with restless ambivalence as she padded over the ridge. “Sorry, were you doing something private?”

“That is none of your concern, Catra.” For a moment indignation flared in Hordak’s tone, a reflex as quickly smoothed over as he stood. Catra averted her eyes on instinct from his humiliated appearance. The borrowed gown fit poorly, stretched tight across the hip and shoulder, but at least the sleeves concealed the gaps in his arms. Between the thin fabric and his own emaciation he’d been shivering before Entrapta offered to sit with him, to wrap him in her hair and keep him warm. “However, as you have already seen fit to invite yourself, you are welcome to stay. If Entrapta will allow it.”

Catra flinched as if he had shouted at her. She appeared more dismayed at the pale and weary specter of her former overlord than she would have been at his accustomed snarl of rebuke. “You’re serious?”

“I have never not been serious.” He wasn’t shivering now, but his breathing was tight and shallow and he held himself with pained rigidity, his jaw clenched.

“I’ll allow it.” Entrapta bounced to her feet beside him, weaving a loop of her hair into his arms for support in case standing made him lose his balance. “Come sit with us.”

“Okay.” Catra sat down at the edge of the outcrop, hugging her knees and looking out across the valley. “You don’t mind if I just … chill here for a minute?”

“I don’t mind.” Entrapta lowered herself on her hair to Catra’s level, with a gentle tug at Hordak’s arms to bring him to her side. He folded to his knees like a collapsed ladder, heavy with inertia. She would have to drag him back to the field hospital at some point before they broke camp, but he had only acquiesced the first time for the promise of a change of clothes, and even then he had been less than gracious, hissing at the medic who tried to take his vitals. He seemed unwilling or unable to care for himself in this state, wavering in and out of clarity and struggling to gloss over the lapses. Their conversation in the last half hour had been the most lucid she had seen him since he broke from Prime’s control. Was he still in shock or had he suffered some kind of neurological trauma, something permanent?

All she wanted was to take him somewhere safe, away from here and from the consequences of the war. Home. But the Fright Zone was gone now, or at least transfigured beyond recognition. Dryl? Would he go with her to Dryl?

Catra was murmuring half to herself, the tip of her tail thrashing at the ground to the cadence of her words. “I just … you know, they’re having some big victory party back in the camp tonight and ….” Her ears twitched and flattened. “I just wanted to spend the night with Adora, just the two of us, alone. But she’s the one they’re celebrating—well, supposedly all of us, but everyone knows it’s really about She-Ra. She deserves this. And I don’t want to ruin it for her. Not after I’ve ruined so much.” Her face crinkled, and she pawed at her nose in irritation.

“I think I know what you mean,” Entrapta said. “An impromptu celebration of this magnitude doesn’t happen every day. It’s an extraordinarily rare opportunity to gather social and behavioral data under conditions I couldn’t possibly duplicate or synthesize! But … I also get really overwhelmed in crowds. People are fascinating to observe from a distance, but confusing up close. Anyway, I want to be with Hordak now. Does that make sense?”

Catra stared at her with an unreadable expression, and Entrapta bit her own tongue. That look meant she had been Unintentionally Rude, had said a Wrong Thing and now Catra would be Angry with her. But Catra’s gaze softened, and she narrowed her eyes in a slow half-blink. “Yeah. Yeah, it makes sense.”

People were confusing up close—and the closer she got, the more they confused her. So many variables, so much conflicting data. Entrapta tried to mimic the slow blink, but Catra had already looked away.

“I think … maybe, I’m a little bit jealous of you.”

“I know,” said Entrapta, rocking back on her hair in satisfied relief. “There are lots of things I envy about you too.”

“Oh.” Catra pulled her knees in tighter, curling her tail around her ankles. “Look, I … when I said I was sorry for everything, I meant it. Everything. And I know, I know that’s not enough. I know just being sorry isn’t enough. I’ll make it up for real somehow, or I’ll be sorry for the rest of my life. But in the meantime, I just wanted you to know that. You too, Hordak.”

He drew a stilted breath. “I … appreciate the apology. And I believe you are owed mine as well.”

For a second time she looked at him as if he had been replaced with an impostor. “Entrapta, are you sure this Hordak’s the right one? Has anyone seen Double Trouble around?”

“Do not mock me, Force Captain Catra.” Now his voice held an edge, a two-tongued blade of authority and menace. Straightening his back, he managed to loom over her without moving from where he sat. “Ex-Force Captain.”

Catra’s hair bristled. “Yeah, okay, that’s convincing.” She reached back to probe absently at the scar on her neck, a web of dendritic weals radiating from the top of her spine. All of Horde Prime’s Etherian victims would carry the same mark. “So we’re even now?”

“I was unaware that we were keeping score,” said Hordak, easing his tone and posture. “You may consider it settled.”

“… Thanks.” She blinked and wiped her eyes again and swallowed, and abruptly stood. “I better go check on Adora. Don’t want her to think I bailed on her.”

Entrapta lifted herself off the ground with her hair. “Tell her we said congratulations! Oh, and if you see Bow around, would you let him know I ran some calculations based on the local ambient readings around the Heart of Etheria, and I’m in the process of developing an algorithm he can use to recalibrate his Tracker Pad to adjust for the wildly fluctuating levels of background magic we’ve been seeing since the—”

“You know, you could just come to the party with us. It’s your party too. We couldn’t have saved the universe without your help.”

“Oh, um ….” She exchanged glances with Hordak. The Rebellion had already welcomed several former Horde soldiers into its ranks, but their supreme commander? She had seen the way the princesses eyed him with distrust, even after She-Ra spared his life. It would take more than an apology, more than a mere pardon or a single act of mercy to atone for his years of trespass against the beings of Etheria. And until he did, he would remain an uninvited and unwelcome presence among Etherian royalty. Entrapta shook her head. “We’ll be fine here. But thank you for inviting us.”

“No problem.” She turned to head back down the ridge but paused to look over her shoulder. “Uh, did you guys have anything to eat today? They just got done serving dinner when I left, but there should be a ton of leftovers if you want me to bring you some. Besides, that’ll give me an excuse to duck out again if I need to.”

Entrapta held a gloved hand to her stomach. It didn’t hurt, and she hadn’t felt hungry in a while, but she often forgot to eat when she was working or otherwise fixated on a special interest, and she couldn’t remember anything she had eaten in the last twenty-four hours other than a few bites of some stale and crumbling ration bars she had stowed about her person. She pressed her fingertips together under her chin. “Did you happen to notice if they had any tiny food?”

Catra’s eyes brightened. “Oh, yeah. Perfuma even made these miniature red cabbage, beetroot, and turnip sliders in your honor—you know, because purple?—and decorated them to look like little robots, and hardly anyone touched them.” She laughed. “The punch is fizzy, too. You’d love it.”

“Yes, I think I would,” said Entrapta. “And maybe just some water or warm tea for Hordak? Thank you!”

After Catra left, Entrapta slid herself closer to Hordak, draping her hair over his exposed limbs and rubbing lightly against the skin to stimulate warmth. A shiver left him and he relaxed around her, letting his shoulders fall. She tucked her head against his collarbone and curled into the hollow space his posture described.

“Why do you envy her?”

“Hm?” Entrapta lifted her head. She had begun to drift off without realizing she was exhausted.

“You said you envied Catra. What is it you envy?”

“Oh ….” She craned to see down the ridge in case Catra was still loitering in earshot. “She’s just so much better at people things.”

Hordak almost choked. “Catra? Is better? At what?”

“No, I mean ….” She squirmed against him, repositioning herself on his lap with her back to his chest as before. “I know she can be rude sometimes … okay, most of the time, but that’s why I’m so jealous! People like her. How she treats them doesn’t really factor into their affection. If anything, it makes them like her more. Proceeding from the assumption that a mutually beneficial relationship should entail some nonzero quantity of emotional reciprocity … well, it just doesn’t compute. Scorpia and I were constantly trying to be friends with her back in the Horde. But she always looked so unhappy, so disappointed in us, and she was always preoccupied with other things. And instead of giving up, we kept trying harder to make her feel better. I can’t explain it in math, but something about her makes you want her to like you. That’s just how she is.”

Hordak nodded into her hair. “And you are … jealous of that?”

“Nnno, not that part exactly. I’m worried that’s how I come off to other people, except they stop trying to get my attention after the first time I scare them away. People just give up on me when they figure out I’m weird. Or I hurt them without realizing it, and then I don’t understand why they hate me.”

His claws flexed. “Who hates you? Fools.”

“I don’t know. I mean, I think they hate me, but it’s so hard to tell.” She yawned and stretched her arms over her head, arching her back against him. “I think a lot of them never forgave me for working with the Horde. But Catra … she’s so easy to forgive. Everyone accepted her right away, so I felt like I should, too. And I did. At least until I realized what she did to you after I was gone.”

He sucked in a hiss through gritted teeth, as if he had experienced a sudden flare of pain.

Entrapta bit into her lip. “Sorry, do you not want me to talk about that? I shouldn’t have mentioned it. I’m sorry.”

“No, continue.” His breathing had grown shallow again, and his tremors intensified as he held her.

“Are you sure?”

“Entirely.” He moved to indicate he wanted to lie down. Entrapta repositioned herself and rearranged her hair to accommodate his doing so. (How much longer could he manage like this? She didn’t want to think about it.) Resting his head in her lap, he had an unbroken view of the night sky and its long-forgotten stars, and somewhere in the upper limits of the atmosphere, a forest sprung from the bones of the Velvet Glove stretched newly verdant arms toward countless worlds. Yet with all the universe before him, he never glanced away from her face.

Meeting his eyes now, she observed the green fading out of them, the membranes growing murky and occluded. His jaws and tongue were pale. She didn’t know enough about his biology to tell if that was a bad thing or just his former pigmentation reasserting itself. Maybe the other clones would know, but he had shown no inclination to fraternize with them once released from the hivemind. He seemed more ashamed of himself in their presence than he did among the Etherians whose kingdoms he had menaced or destroyed. Even if his brothers could help him, she didn’t think he would allow it.

“It is good to hear your voice again, Entrapta.” His eyelids had begun to fall shut, the hollows around them almost as dark as the black wings he used to paint over them. He looked like a washed-out version of her Hordak, a shade of himself. “I had missed the sound of it.”

“I missed you too,” she said in a tight voice, squinting back tears. “I missed you so much.” Another part of her, the part that rarely ever got to speak without being called unreasonable or annoying or childish because a princess should comport herself with dignity and a grown woman should know better—that part wanted to scream, Look what they tried to take from us. How they used us and threw us away like we were nothing. Made us think we were failures. How dare they.

She didn’t realize that part of her had spoken aloud until his hand moved over hers and he willed his eyes back open. “They will come to know your worth. I will do all that remains within my power to ensure that you are never discounted again.”

Entrapta smiled in spite of herself, mopping her eyes with the cuff of her glove. “Is that supposed to be a threat?”

The corners of his mouth stabbed upward, exposing a reddening pallor at the gumline. “If necessary.”

She laughed, and he did likewise after a fashion, in a soft low rumble that gathered and swelled like thunder, more tactile than audible. It’s going to be okay, she told herself. We’re going to be okay. Mid-laugh, Hordak inhaled through his nasal cavity and abruptly fell silent.

Entrapta stopped as well and stared at him. “Did you ….”

A flush spread across his cheekbones to the drooping tips of his ears. “Do not—”

“… did you just snort?”

“Gah!” He bolted upright and doused his face in his hands. His ears, still glowing, lay flat against his head. “Not a word of this leaves here.”

“Oh, I would never.” Cackling, she leaned over his shoulder. “That was so cute! Can you do it again?”

“No!” He lowered his hands. The blush made his eyes seem redder somehow, even as it faded.

“Well, I guess we’ll just have to replicate the experiment later. In private,” she added with a flick of her brows, but he was no longer looking at her. His ears lifted as he scanned the ridge.

“Who is it?” he barked. “Identify yourself or leave.”

In reply came a sequence of beeps and a muffled clanking and a purple glow that blurred and sputtered as the bot hobbled along the outcrop.

“Emily!” Entrapta clicked her tongue and made a scolding gesture with her hair. “What are you doing away from your bot-sitter? Don’t tell me you tricked Scorpia and wandered off again. I know I programmed you better than that.” Emily buzzed in affront and shook her janky left leg at a second figure approaching behind her.

“Oh, good,” said Catra, waving over her shoulder in turn, “they’re still here. Hurry up, you guys.”

Hordak swayed to his feet, and Entrapta sprang after him, reaching toward him with her hair but stopping short of touching him. “What is the meaning of this, Catra?”

“Relax, we’re ….” Catra broke off with a gasp when she saw his eyes. They were decidedly closer to red now, with a subtle shift toward the violet end of the spectrum. “Wow. Okay. You look … like Hordak. I mean. More than you did.”

“You brought them here?” Entrapta peered past Catra at the figures gathering along the ridge, a line of familiar silhouettes against the smear of light from the encampment. “But you’ll miss the rest of the party. You didn’t have to ….”

“Couldn’t be much of a party with only two-thirds of the Super Pal Trio present and accounted for,” said Scorpia, jogging the last few yards to Catra’s side with a covered tray balanced between her claws.

Bow trudged up behind her, carrying a roll of blankets on his shoulder and what appeared to be a small portable telescope. “Can the Super Pal Trio and the Best Friends Squad go stargazing together?”

Glimmer appeared beside him in a dazzle of iridescent light. “Isn’t Catra technically a member of both? How does that work, exactly?”

“I hope you don’t mind us bothering you,” said Adora, slipping an arm around Catra’s shoulders. Catra nestled her head into the side of Adora’s neck, purring. “We all just felt really bad about leaving you behind.”

“Oh.” Entrapta sawed her bottom lip between her teeth. “Well, you don’t have to feel bad, because I ….” She stopped, grasping at words that slipped her tongue. No matter what she said they’d just get mad at her again. Why had they gone to the trouble of rescuing her from Beast Island if she was just going to run off and flirt with the enemy? Why did they keep pretending they cared about her if they only needed her for tech? She took a step toward them, drawing her hair around herself like a barrier. “I don’t want you to feel bad for me. To feel sorry for me. That’s the last thing I need! Why can’t you understand that? Why can’t you understand me?”

She slammed her mask down over her face and surveyed their reactions from behind it. Bow and Scorpia looked crestfallen. Catra and Glimmer were more difficult to read. Disappointed, maybe. Angry. Hurt. Entrapta was hurt too, and angry and disappointed and tired and afraid of losing everything all over again. It didn’t matter. It never mattered.

Adora took a steadying breath. Withdrawing her arm from Catra’s shoulders, she approached Entrapta and stopped at arm’s length from the boundary of coiled hair. The locks bristled like barbed wire, warning her to come no closer.

“Entrapta, we ….”

“It’s fine,” Entrapta said flatly, enunciating every syllable so they couldn’t possibly misunderstand. “We don’t need anything. Just go back to your friends.”

Adora shook her head, causing her ponytail to swing from side to side. “No … no, you’re right. We didn’t understand your way of thinking, how you felt, or why you chose to do the things you did. If we had, we might’ve ended the war sooner. Maybe we wouldn’t have had to sacrifice so much. But that’s beside the point. And the point is ….” She paused for another breath. “The point is the Rebellion treated you like an asset while we expected you to treat us as your friends. And that wasn’t fair.”

“No. It wasn’t.” Her voice remained toneless, without affect. Robots didn’t need feelings, and neither did she right now. The statement was merely an acknowledgment of fact.

“Before I could activate the failsafe,” Adora went on, unfazed by Entrapta’s response, “someone had to remind me that I was worth more than what I could give to other people, that I was worthy of love for my own sake. And, Entrapta … so are you.”

“Yeah.” Catra moved to Adora’s side. “You’re more than just the sum of your successes or failures.”

“And that’s true no matter what other people think of you, or how they treat you,” said Scorpia. “Although, for the record, I do think you’re pretty amazing. Just … you know, just putting that out there.”

“We’re not here because we feel sorry for you,” said Bow. “We’re here because we want to be better friends.”

Glimmer nodded. “And now that the war is over, we’ll have more time to get to know each other for real. We still have a lot of work to do, but we can’t rebuild Etheria without friendship and cooperation, and that starts here, with us.”

Entrapta kept her hands bunched in fists at her sides. “Yes. Okay. Thank you. That’s fine, and I appreciate it. But ….”

But.

But Hordak. They would never accept him, even if they could somehow learn to accept Entrapta. They didn’t want to understand him. They wouldn’t try. And he had known her better than anyone, had understood her and accepted her and valued her when no one else did. How could they pretend to care for her if they would never dream of extending the same courtesy to him?

“You deserve to be loved too,” said Adora, gazing past the domed compound lenses in Entrapta’s mask. “And I hope someday you’ll be able to forgive yourself the way I forgive you.”

Hordak made a choked sound behind her. Entrapta pushed back her mask and turned as he folded to his knees again, his mouth wrenched open in anguish. She dropped to his side, instinctively shielding him with her hair. “Are you—”

“I—I do not ….” He opened his hands in his lap and stared at them, at the purpling cuts across his palm and the undersides of his claws. His shoulders quaked, but it wasn’t the same as the tremors before. “She … I ….”

Entrapta slipped the crystal from her pocket and pressed it into his hand. It was warm from lying close to her skin, and its luminescence matched the brightening magenta of his eyes.

She had wondered how the gashes healed so quickly. By the time she had wrangled him into the infirmary tent, the seams had already knitted and the scars looked weeks old beneath a crust of drying blood. Now the answer stood before them—how could she forget? She-Ra. She-Ra could heal.

I forgive you.

Hordak closed his hand over the crystal. (Had he ever worked out what the glyphs spelled? Somehow, Entrapta thought he knew.) The other hand he offered to Entrapta and they both rose, fingers clasped.

“In all gratitude,” said Hordak, facing Adora, “I must disagree: I do not deserve this. It is a debt I can never hope to clear, and yet … I will devote the remainder of my life to its redress. It is the least I owe to Etheria, and to you.”

Glimmer managed an uneasy smile. “We can work out the debt part later. I have some ideas. And none of them involve letting the Horde’s logistical and engineering mastermind sit idle in a prison cell.”

His lips parted on a flash of crimson. “Is that a threat, Your Majesty?”

“It can be,” said Glimmer. “Though I’d prefer to consider it an official appointment, Lord Hordak.”

Catra swished her tail. “Can the royal business wait? This party stinks.”

“Oh, uh, I think that’s actually the cabbage turnip whatevers.” Scorpia lifted the tray and wrinkled her nose. “I’m sure they’re … ehh … nutritious? Well, I know Perfuma put a lot of thought into them, and that’s what counts.” She whistled. Emily trundled over to her, and Scorpia set the tray down carefully on the bot’s upper hull. “Good girl.” Straightening, she turned to Entrapta. “I’m sorry we made you feel like you didn’t fit in. Would a hug help?”

Entrapta considered the offer. After Beast Island, she and Scorpia had drifted apart in ways neither of them had fully registered at the time. Scorpia had been eager for the other princesses to accept her—after all, she was one of them now—and that meant overlooking their disdain for Entrapta until it crossed the line into abuse. But even in the others’ absence, their interactions had been fraught with unspoken guilt. Scorpia never explained why she had waited so long to defect from the Horde and plead for Entrapta’s rescue, and Entrapta knew better than to ask. She thought she knew why, and she didn’t exactly blame Scorpia for it—but she had never asked.

I forgive you.

Entrapta nodded. “I think it would help, yes.”

“Great!” Before Entrapta could brace for it, Scorpia swept her off the ground in her arms. The constrictive pressure had a soothing effect, like being rolled up tightly in a weighted blanket. When Scorpia finally set her back on her feet, Entrapta wished the hug had lasted longer. Beaming, Scorpia ruffled Entrapta’s hair with the teeth of her claw. “Whew! I think I needed that too. What about Hordak? Does he do hugs now?”

“Does he …?” Entrapta’s ears were ringing, and she couldn’t have heard what she thought she heard.

“I have been acquainted with the practice,” he said, “briefly. It is an Etherian ritual whose implications I do not entirely understand. As such, it may be reasoned that I do not, generally speaking, ‘do hugs.'”

“Okay, cool, just checking. Didn’t want to leave you out.” Scorpia held up her claws and backed off, looking both disappointed and relieved. “You ever change your mind, you know who to ask.”

“I shall take it under advisement,” he said in a tone that indicated he would entertain no such notion.

“Anyone want to help me set up the observatory?” said Bow, setting down the telescope and blankets in a level spot on the outcrop, a few yards from where the others stood.

“Are we still doing that? Ooh, lemme help!” Scorpia bounded over and began laying out the blankets while Bow fiddled with the telescope. Glimmer, Catra, and Adora soon joined them. Emily puttered in their midst, beeping in singsong and balancing the tray on her dome with precarious abandon.

Facing Hordak, Entrapta raised herself on her hair until their eyes were level, only inches apart. “Are you sure you’re up for this? We can tell them if you need to rest. I think they’ll understand now.”

“I will manage. Under these circumstances, my condition should remain satisfactory for another few days without intervention.”

She eyed him sidelong, knowing his definition of satisfactory encompassed everything short of debilitating agony. “All right. But will you at least consider going back to the infirmary tomorrow? Just for a checkup? I’d feel better if I knew you were … stable.”

Hordak sighed. “If I must.” He held out his hand to Entrapta. The crystal flashed in his palm.

“Thank you.” She tucked the crystal back inside the pocket. It was still warm. Slipping her gloved hand into his newly scarred one, she draped her hair around his shoulders and walked with him to the place where their friends had gathered to watch the stars together.