Protect You
A Lapidot Oneshot
A/N: Once more, trying to get myself in a writing mood. Here's some human AU Lapidot for you.
Lapis was alone for the day. She wasn't entirely sure how she felt about that. Peridot was at school, and her swim therapy for the day had been cancelled due to the snowstorm that was about to roll in. Her PTSD had been mostly manageable recently, so her psychologist had told her to just hang out at home; it probably was not the best idea for her to be out among people, he'd explained, and she would be fine if left home alone for a day.
Television wasn't interesting to her, and she'd watched Peridot play all of the games in the apartment. She'd read all the books, and no ideas were going through her head for poetry or playing her violin. Just lying in bed wasn't stimulating enough to keep her occupied for more than four or five minutes. Lapis had resorted to just sitting across a chair and watching the ceiling fan go around and around, the radio providing a faint babble in the background.
She sighed heavily and turned over so that she was laying down, her stomach an inch or so above the cushion of the chair. She kicked her legs slightly, thinking about what there was to do for the next three or four hours until her girlfriend got home. The petite eighteen-year-old hopped to her bare feet and straightened out her nightgown, padding out into the hallway of the apartment.
Wandering around the place was as good a tactic to waste time as any other, and something Lapis certainly needed to do was waste time. She rested her fingertips against the wall and began walking down the stretch, humming softly to herself and thinking quietly. She was familiar with all of the rooms, of course, but she rarely if ever was allowed time to herself. Her mental state was very unstable, and last time she had been left alone she nearly drowned herself in the bathtub.
Lapis passed the bedroom she and Peridot shared. It was empty, of course, the bed neatly made and the Xbox and television off and blank. The curtains were closed; this was a habit her girlfriend had that she really didn't understand. No matter if anyone was inside, no matter the time of day, it had to be dark.
The study was silent as well. She stepped inside this time and walked over to the desk, picking up a couple of packets of paper that were neatly piled by Peridot's laptop. Mostly if not completely schoolwork; calculus, boring sciencey stuff. She passed a piece of paper with her own name on the top of it, finding that it was a medical bill for her therapy. Lapis winced at the hefty number at the bottom. Perhaps she didn't really need all this help. Maybe she could just drop it, and then they wouldn't be in so much crippling debt.
However, she also recognized that Peridot wouldn't fall for that. She knew Lapis better than anyone else in the world; she had seen the petite girl at her best and at her worst, was the first one to see her after she'd escaped being kept as a prisoner and would probably be the last person that saw her alive. Begrudgingly, Lapis had to admit that Peridot was just too smart to let her drop therapy.
She shrugged and set the papers down, walking out of the room and further down the hall. Her breath caught in her throat when her royal blue eyes looked up from the light tan colored carpet and were met with a direct reflection. The hallway mirror hung just at her facial level, the circular surface taunting her with her own face. She saw herself in a slight flash, bound and crying, blood pooling on the wooden ground from multiple torture wounds in her arms and stomach and face.
It was impossible to snap herself out of it. In that moment, she felt all the pain and the terror of being a prisoner of war flooding back to her. Her chest beat rapidly in her chest, her hands cold and clammy, her tan face going almost completely pale as her breath nearly stopped. The walls were closing in. She was close to collapse. The faint whispers she heard in her head frequently and had learned to ignore had elevated in volume to a metallic screeching that left anything else inaudible.
She almost didn't notice that her hand had closed into a fist. Lapis had lost complete track of herself as aforementioned fist smashed into the reflective surface of the mirror, completely breaking through its center and making spiderweb cracks across the rest of it. She pulled her hand out, numb to the pain of dozens of shards piercing her knuckles and forearm and the blood almost gushing out of the wounds.
Lapis slowly collapsed to her knees, and then to a bowing position in which her head rested on the carpet. She entered a state where she couldn't tell if she was awake or asleep, or alive or dead. She could hear nothing but the screaming in her head, could feel absolutely nothing but the intense fear that her encounter with her past had left her with.
In that moment, it appeared as though she was just as broken as the household object she had just broken.
Peridot sighed heavily as she entered the apartment, unlocking the door rather quickly and stepping inside. She fully expected to hear the radio, which she did, but there was still a sort of atmosphere to the place that left her feeling uneasy. She glanced around and took off her jacket, hanging it on a hook by the door.
"Lapis, I'm home." She announced loudly. Her girlfriend had texted her earlier that swim therapy was cancelled, but she had been too busy trying to focus on what her professor was saying to be as worried as she probably should have been.
When she took a few more steps inside, she realized that the other girl was not on the couch or the chair. Her brow furrowed in confusion, and she walked into the bedroom. No, she wasn't in bed either.
Peridot did not allow herself to enter a frantic panic. She simply frowned deeply and looked around the room, under the bed and in the closet. She wouldn't put it past Lapis to have planned a prank to frighten her; such was the Hawaiian beauty's nature, of course.
Upon finding nothing in the living quarters, however, she bit her lip. This was definitely worrying. She quickly stepped out of the room and into the hallway.
Her heart certainly skipped a beat at the sight that awaited her. There was Lapis, collapsed on the ground in a small puddle of blood, pieces of mirror sticking out of her hand and arm. The student sprinted over and put her hands on Lapis's back, shaking her a little in an attempt to snap her out of it. Upon glancing up, she found her own horrified expression staring back at her in the broken mirror.
Why hadn't she gotten rid of that damned mirror? Lapis had said it wasn't necessary, but Peridot of all people should've known better—
No, there was no time for that. She struggled to remember the doctor's advice for how to snap Lapis out of a non-lucid state. It was very difficult in her panic, to put it lightly. She carefully lifted her girlfriend into a standing position supported against the wall; it wasn't very hard, as Lapis was very light and Peridot was stronger than she liked to let on.
Pale hands rested against dark cheeks, and she made sure that her lover was looking directly into her bright green eyes. It hurt her physically to see her like this. Lapis's eyes were wide and glazed over, her lips parted slightly; she looked almost dead, but the warmth emanating from her skin made it clear she was still very much alive.
Peridot struggled to remember what little of her girlfriend's native language she had learned back when they were children. "Aloha au la 'oe." She murmured softly, resting their foreheads together.
The contact and the familiar sound seemed to calm Lapis ever so slightly. Enough to grab onto her girlfriend with a death grip, anyway. Peridot flinched slightly when she felt the other's blood against her otherwise paper-white skin.
"You're safe. You're okay." The slightly shorter girl murmured softly, gently kissing her girlfriend's cheek. She held her and waited patiently for her to come back from wherever she'd gone, murmuring soothing phrases in both English and Hawaiian as the other girl slowly entered a more relaxed state. Not perfect, but it was a start, and Peridot couldn't afford to be a perfectionist.
"We need to get you to the hospital." She stated gently but sternly once she was sure that Lapis could hear and understand her.
Lapis glanced down at her hands and winced, then looked back at the broken mirror. "Sorry…" She murmured softly, biting her lip. "I had a flashback, and-"
"Don't worry about it." Peridot responded with a heavy sigh. "You've probably lost a lot of blood. Do you need me to carry you?"
The slightly taller girl hesitated before nodding. "If you don't mind… I feel kind of light-headed…"
Peridot carefully lifted her and began carrying her out of the apartment and to their car, now almost worryingly good at ignoring the blood. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have kept the mirror in the hallway, I should've thrown it out…"
Lapis's non-mauled hand rested against her lips. "Shut up. I said to keep it, so it's my fault. Don't blame yourself for my freaky brain."
"Your brain's not—"
"Yes, it is."
She was too smart to argue. The way out of the building was silent, as was Peridot carefully laying her girlfriend down across the backseat and driving to the small hospital. When she went to lift the other girl again, Lapis grabbed onto her hand and showed no signs of letting go.
"If we see another mirror, you'll protect me, right?"
"Of course. I'll be with you the entire time."
"Promise?"
"Promise."