Another War

Chapter One: After Raising the Barn

Just letting you guys know that this story is going to be a slow burn, because really there's no other way to tell a Lapis-centric story. Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy.

Flying.

Lapis just focuses on flying.

She knows she can't look back at what she was leaving again or she might actually end up staying.

And she can't stay.

There's just no way.

Lapis looks all around her and she sees nothing but the vast darkness of space glinting occasionally with a few lights from distant stars. The blue gem swallows air and finally braves up enough to look behind. She's not sure what she was expecting but when she looked back she saw nothing. Not the blue and green planet, not Steven,

And not Peridot.

Lapis breathed a sigh of relief.

"I'm not getting caught up in another war. I'm not. It doesn't make any sense to stay on Earth when The Diamonds could come back at any day."

Lapis turns back to the barn.

"But I am protecting my home. No one is going to take me away from my home ever again."

The blue gem beats her water wings and lets herself into the bubbled barn. Everything inside the bubble feels eerie and unpleasant when juxtaposition-ed with the vast emptiness of space just a water bubble away from leaking in. Still Lapis lands her feet on the familiar ground and looks around and smiles.

"I just have to maintain this bubble and make sure we don't crash into any space debris for the rest of forever. Simple"

Lapis' write-off of the insanely complicated and daunting task in front of her was something that completely didn't enter into Lapis' scope at all. She was living off an adrenaline of escaping the possibility of war while at the same time trying to focus on something that didn't make her sad or regretful.

Anything to distract her from the utter pain she saw on Peridot's face when she was flying away.

Lapis yawns.

"I think I'll just relax in the hammock for a little bit. Nothing too major."

Lapis enters into the now dreadfully empty barn and takes her spot in her hammock and closes her eyes.

In minutes snores fill the air. Time passes meaninglessly in the water bubble for what felt like days but could have just as well been a couple hours or even, just a few minutes. Lapis after an ambiguous amount of time finally manages to stir herself up from her slumber. Her voice weakly echoes in the barn,

"Peridot?"

The blue gem calls out for her green counterpart, but finds she is met with no response. Curiously, the water gem rises out of her favorite (and only) hammock to check outside. Lapis is taken aback when she see herself floating through space in a giant water bubble. Seconds later it all comes flooding back to her.

"So this is actually real."

Lapis leans against the doorway of the barn.

"At least I'm safe now. As long as I keep moving the Diamonds can't get me, I won't become a prisoner again, and-"

Lapis looks over into the grain silo turned-water-tower and sees the bowtie-less alien plushy pass by. Lapis' expression sours and comes from off the door frame of the barn.

"I have all the time in the galaxy, so what should I do first?", The blue gem thought to herself.

"Oh, I know!"

Water wings sprout from Lapis' gem and she flies up to the loft-area of the barn and heads towards a large, rustic white fridge. Lapis opened the fridge and was met with a blast of cool air, but only for a few moments then there was nothing. Lapis paid this no mind and grabs a small blue cooler from inside of the room temperature appliance. Lapis shuts the door behind her and flies the cooler back downstairs.

Landing softly, the blue gem starts approaching "Occupied", her and Peridot's collaborative meep morp.

"I've always had an idea for a morp, but Peridot never thought it was a great idea so I never tried it. I suppose now that Peridot isn't here then there's no harm in trying it," Lapis announces to no one in particular.

Lapis opens up the cooler revealing a mass of orange, congealed pumpkin seeds. The blue gem carries on to each of the toilets and starts distributing the seeds in each of the bathroom fixtures as evenly as possible. Lapis wears a sly little smile the entire time she goes about this process.

"I can't wait to see how this goes. It's been a while since I made a meep morp."

Lapis stands off to the side where she normally would when demonstrating this morp and closes her eyes to focus and clenching her hands. She then slowly releases the tension in her hands and she can hear the water bursting out of the toilets as it normal would. In mere moments she also feels wet clumps hitting her, which causes her to open her eyes and see wet clumps of pumpkin seeds flying all over the barn getting in and on everything.

Lapis quickly stops using her powers and the water sloppily recedes back into the toilets with only a few scattered seeds left in the toilets themselves. The lonesome gem looked down at herself and then at the rest of the barn seeing all the wet pumpkin seeds scattered everywhere. She sighs.

Lapis uses her hydrokinetic abilities and douses herself removing all the pumpkin seeds off of her. She gently places the water back in the toilets.

"Maybe Peridot was right about the seeds in the toilet after all. That did make a huge mess everywhere."

Lapis surveys the inside of the barn one last time before making the effort to go outside. Lapis' petite, blue feet squashed the grass walking out of the barn. Something about flying through space made this seemingly insignificant action so much more poignant and powerful. Lapis had rather grown accustomed to life on Earth. Never fully safe and never fully comfortable, but there were a lot of things she liked about the Earth.

The feeling of grass on her feet.

Making morps of all types.

Camp Pining Hearts.

Lapis sat down on the grass and pull her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them.

Steven.

Pumpkin.

Lapis gulps.

Peridot.

"I'll only do this for 1,000 years. After 1,000 years I'll check to see how everything is. If it's gone then I was right to leave, but if it is still there then maybe Peridot will have forgiven me after 1,000 years."

Lapis looks all around her at the vast emptiness of space, then to the barn.

Lapis couldn't shake this eerily familiar feeling, a strange sense of Déjà vu about her life and the direction it's taken her.