She sleeps for what seems to be eons, at least to her, hemmed in on all sides with pressure and cold that she barely feels anymore. Does not move, does not think, just lets her thoughts drift aimlessly as her constituents rage back and forth like the tides during a cyclone. She knows that they, like all storms, will pass and leave her be in time.
She knew this to be true even before she could feel the truth for herself, knew it in her strange, solid bones, knew it just like she knew that she was not wanted and that her birth was an embarrassment, an abomination-
Oh great, you're both out? And you're fused again? Why? Fusion is just a cheap tactic to make weak Gems stronger. Quit embarrassing yourselves!
I'm done being everyone's prisoner. Now you're my prisoner, and I'm never letting you go! Let's stay on this miserable planet... together!
To the two individuals that should have delighted in her existance the most.
Nevertheless, the disgust and hate and defiance have faded, and she isn't quite sure how to feel about that yet. She knows, in the same way that she knew that jasperandlapis would eventually fade into Malachite and that she was born of hate (not love, she almost sings), that she shouldn't exist any longer, and a part of her wants to embrace that, to pick up the chains that still wrap around her thorax and rear limbs in a parody of the not-alone feeling that half of her seeks, and use them to end everything and complete what jasperandlapis never could.
For a moment she almost concedes defeat to the thought and moves, years worth of built up sand billowing up and off her body in a sandy veil as she drags herself to stand. Her bulk is supported somewhat by the water and her body burns with exertion that it is unused to. She grasps blindly at the chains with her forearms, fingers clumsy from lack of use, and tightens her grip around them. They're smooth, and feel colder than the water around her against her skin. She wonders what they look like, and this thought is what stops her cold.
She knows the ocean, can feel the water and currents surging for miles around her resting place. She knows that tiny fish nibble at the algae that grows on her skin and that sometimes bigger fish will lay in wait for those smaller fish amongst her hair, and how sometimes it tangles and snags and is made clumpy by blood when they struggle violently for life. She knows that the spongey, porous substance near her middle limbs is the wooden remains of a shipwreck, and how it feels to be bitten by a shark, or used as a climbing post for an octopus' tiny suckers.
But she does not know what her chains look like.
She does not know, and that is important because what else might she not know if she decides to end everything here?
For such a long time, she has been silent and pretended as though she didn't exist, like a child hiding from her arguing parents. She had hidden herself far, far away from the hatespitecruelty of their warring minds as they used her body as a battleground, one tightening her chains out of spite while the other sent lances of pain arcing aimlessly throughout her body.
She stands still for a moment and dares a thought, one that would have earned a lash of rage were she to venture it just a short time before.
Why should she act like them?
.
.
.
There is no answering lash of rage, no acknowledgement of her presence, and she answers her own question.
There is no reason why
I do not need to act like them.
And then, finally, physical lips moving silently along with her thoughts.
"I do not want to hurt myself".
She drops her chains as if they had burnt her and they vanish with a burst of cold, leaving all six limbs free to move. For a moment, the burning of unused muscles discourages her, but the stretch beneath the burn encourages her to keep moving, if tentatively.
It is a novel feeling, movement, and she flexes her thorax and rolls the wrists of her rear and central arms one at a time, relishing the crackling noise that they make and the relief such movement brought to her body. She rolls her head and shoulders, and cracks her fore-wrists once, then again to savor the sensation of cramped musculature being stretched, even through the burn brought about by lack of use.
She hadn't realized the difference between discomfort and pleasure before this point, but she quite likes the new feeling, and doesn't quite understand why jasperandlapis never acted upon it before. Then again, very little that they did makes sense to her, and she is only just beginning to comprehend a variety of things, now that she is alone in her body and allowed to think freely.
She settles back down onto the sand, splaying herself out in a jumble of awkward limbs and long, thick hair. She is safe in the deeps, where the world is her weapon and no one exists to force her to act contrary to her wishes, or scream at her, or hurt her when she doesn't deserve punishment.
She feels no need to venture up quite yet, no matter the memories of her parts urging her to seek out StevenPeridotSafetyHomeworld. She will, in her own time.
It is enough, for now, to know that if she wants to, she can.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.
Crossposted from Ao3