The sand runs through her fingers easily enough, the fine grains transfixed in a pale, bluish hue by the moonlight that wanes in the sky. She regards them both quietly, then the ocean. It is vast and dark, surface reflecting even as it idly laps at the shore. It is vast, and yet was once her prison. The sand her fingers sift through and the glow of the moon feel like familiar wardens as the watery depths she once knew slosh through her head.
Sometimes her mind yearns as she stares at the sea, the horizon shaking hands with the sky in the distance, stars twinkling like eyes that see right through her, into every crevice of herself. She instantly recoils every time, Malachite still a recent memory stiffening her muscles, illusionary as they may be. Stockholm syndrome had taken hold during her time fused, drowning her more than any bottomless ocean trench ever could.
Sand in the distance shifts as feet unsettle it, and Lapis instantly closes off, arms herding her legs to her chest.
"Lapis," Pearl begins, but Lapis pointedly does not look at her.
"I told you to leave me alone." One month since she had been released from Malachite, one month she had been coming out to the shore at night to dread her own existence. One month since she had first told the Crystal Gem off, yet Pearl still insisted on bothering her.
Pearl halts momentarily, hands raised in poised surprise. It wasn't often Lapis answered so quickly. But she soon recovers, warily taking a seat on the sand a good distance from Lapis.
There is a terse silence following, pulling the space between them taut with something unseen, crawling and burrowing under Lapis' skin the longer Pearl sits there.
She sees Pearl begin to move from the corner of her eye, a pale gaggle of limbs that sets into motion like a windup toy. Her teeth clench.
"You know," Pearl begins, hands gesticulating in that unconscious way of hers, cutting through the air and through the silence, "Earth isn't quite so bad! Er, well, when you get used to it. The people are... strange, and I will admit I'm not a fan of the highly unstable weather conditions, but uh." She trails off a bit, expression straining as her mind reaches for a place to go with this. She falters instead, and sends an awkward smile Lapis' way that makes Lapis think she looks in pain holding it.
Lapis stares at her a moment, eyes hard and jaw set in irritation. She then blows what Steven calls a raspberry and throws sand at Pearl. Pearl squawks in indignation.
"You think I care what you have to say? I said leave me alone." Lapis reclines now, deciding she is already done with this weird confrontation or whatever it is. Pearl huffs above her, face blue in frustration.
"Look, I'm just trying to be helpful! I just don't want you feeling like this is another prison or-" Pearl's hands flail around a moment, "-Or whatever!"
"I already said I don't care, stop talking to me." She flicks more sand at Pearl.
"Would you stop that!" Pearl's hands ball into fists, shaking roughly in front of her as she tries to regain composure. "I swear, you're almost as bad as Amethyst!"
"Hah." Lapis says this mirthlessly. "Talking bad about your own friend? You sound really helpful."
"No, wait, that's not what I meant I-" She takes a deep breath, fists lowering slightly. "I just meant you brush me off when I'm genuinely trying to help!"
Lapis scoffs. "Yeah, ok. Sure. What exactly are you trying to help me with here? Why do you even care?" Lapis begins to count the stars, names of worlds long past flickering through her mind.
"Well, you keep coming out here at night, and…" Pearl seems to bite her tongue, hands coming together as if to steady herself, "Steven may or may not have asked me to come and talk to you. You have him concerned." Lapis looks at her.
"But it doesn't concern you." It wasn't a question.
"No, of course it concerns me! It's just, well-"
"You're only doing this because Steven told you to." Lapis cuts her off, head falling back to the sand. She's not sure why she expected anything else from the pearl. She was just a pearl after all. Her reaction just seems to frustrate the other gem more.
"Well, yes, but I am coming out here on my own behalf as well!" Pearl's arms strain at her sides as if they were glued there and she was trying desperately to rip them away. Lapis almost laughs at her pathetic display of self-restraint.
"So, what is this, some weird guilt pity-party thing? Are you trying to make up for thousands of years of imprisonment or something?" Lapis rolls over to her side this time, perching her head on an upraised hand. She stares directly at Pearl, eyes lidded in unimpressed boredom. She wonders how much more she'll have to do this night to really force the point forward she isn't moved by Pearl's actions.
"No! I mean, yes, but I just-" Pearl begins to splutter, her fluster turning her face a very particular tint of turquoise in the light of the moon. Lapis only feels an agitated heat begin to build in her head, sitting up as she firmly plants her hands in the sand.
"Well, guess what?" Her fingers curl around the fine grains, imagining soft flesh giving instead of silky sediment. "I don't need your pity. And tell Steven he doesn't have to worry about me." She hates this. She hates this planet, she hates this loathsome beach, and she hates her. This pathetic pearl who thinks she can give any semblance of comfort. The same pearl who didn't even know Lapis was trapped in a mirror for hundreds of years, years that just kept piling on top of her until she had almost lost any sense of who she once was.
Pearl's body shakes, the tension in the air seeming to have wormed its way under her skin as well and taken hold of her being. Her eyes clench shut, and Lapis doesn't expect the outburst that boils beneath the surface.
"Yes, I feel guilty! And yes, maybe Steven spurred that on at first! But I, I-" There she goes, searching for words again, "-I don't know what it is you're feeling, but I know it has to do with me! And I'm… I'm sorry." Her voice teeters off from the volume she worked herself up to as she speaks, the ocean breeze carrying it far away as her tone becomes too light and too meek. Lapis almost doesn't catch the last part.
They're silent for a moment. Lapis curls into herself again, though her arms hug more loosely this time around. She rests her chin on her knees and mumbles, "What makes you think it has to do with you, specifically?"
Pearl bites her lip, fiddles with her fingers. The blue heat still hums beneath her skin, melting away rather slowly. "You've been getting along quite well with the others. But not with me. I don't think I've even seen you express one positive emotion towards me this entire month."
Something in Lapis' gut twinges. She averts her eyes, and instead looks to her reflection in the water that ebbs back and forth at her feet.
"Maybe. If you had said sorry earlier and weren't just exuding this pitiful awkwardness every time you were around me, things would have been… different." It had truthfully been suffocating to be around her. Her voice was too familiar, too ingrained in her mind, something she knew even more intimately than her own self for a time when that became lost in an interlude of gulping down years of listlessness behind glass. A deep pitted, rotting ache would set in every time she spoke. It was like being in the mirror all over again. Lapis casts a gaze her way, seeing if Pearl would catch it.
Pearl almost takes the bait, face working up, but she holds her tongue at the last second. Lapis watches as her eyes shift about, contemplating a response in the voiceless silence. The ocean gently tugs at their feet.
"Well, your own… reaction to my approaches did not help in the matter." Lapis shoots her a sharp stare, and Pearl shuts up once more. She reaches a hand to her neck, daintily rubbing as the skin flushes again. "I'm sorry."
Lapis says nothing. Pearl lowers her hand to the sand, placing it midway between them. Lapis eyes it, but does not move. Pearl's voice is soft as she repeats herself. "I'm sorry. I really am."
Lapis lingers on Pearl's hand a moment, before reaching her own out. Pearl seems taken aback before making a disgusted sound as Lapis grabs a handful of wet sand and smothers Pearl's fingers with it. Lapis then promptly gets up, brushing the gritty residue from her palms before running them along the smooth billows of her skirt.
"Uhm," Pearl begins. Lapis tilts her head her way, hair catching on the sea breeze and tousling from the frame of her face.
"I accept your apology. Doesn't mean I forgive you, though." Lapis stretches her arms above her head, hands grasping at stars, feeling closer to home than she's felt in a long time.
"I...Ok?" Pearl gets up as well, caution in her limbs and uncertainty clipping her voice. "So…?"
"So, you can tell Steven that he can stop sending you out here at night. You can come out here on your own accord just fine." Lapis sends Pearl a smile, just a small upturn of the lips that could easily be missed in the hovering shroud of night. Pearl catches it.
"Oh, uh, of course!" Pearl stands to her full height now, hands tapping at her sides as she stands there before clasping together in front of her. The top of Lapis' head barely reaches past her shoulders, yet Pearl is the one who seems small in comparison.
"Well." Pearl takes a few unsure steps back, and Lapis does the same, turning to face the beach house. Pearl takes the hint and does so as well. "I suppose I'll…bid you goodnight, Lapis. Hm." Pearl begins to walk forward, feet taking her across the sand even as she keeps her head turned towards the ocean. "See you in the morning." Her pace quickens as if the night itself is grasping at her shoulders, dragging her back down to the beach, into the waiting maw of the sea. Lapis feels the tug, too.
She does a little twirl as she steps away from the insisting shore, smile still clinging to her face. She lets out a little breath of air, adding to the gentle caress of the wind as it passes over the beach. Humming to herself, she kicks up a small flurry of sand, the wind taking it to the glassy surface now behind her, breaking it in a flourish of small ripples.
She still hates this planet and this beach, and maybe she even still hates her. But maybe she could bring herself to hate a little less.