Note: spoilers for the unaired episode Barn Mates!
Warning for bad dreams and vague mentions of abuse and trauma.
"And then you close your eyes, and your brain makes up feelings and shapes and stuff, and when you wake up, sometimes you remember them!" Steven completes their explanation, gesturing animatedly. "Usually not, though. And you can have nightmares. Those are not very fun," they add, less excitedly.
"That sounds terrible," Lapis tells them. "Also, I don't have a brain."
"Well, your gem can make stuff up too," says Steven. "Give it a try. I really think you'll like it. Napping always makes me feel better."
Lapis purses her lips and breathes in through her nose. "Okay." She nods once. "I trust you, Steven."
Steven hugs her around the middle. She strokes their head, and her face makes a smile of its own accord.
"Thanks, Lapis," says Steven, voice muffled in her torso. "I trust you too. Have fun!"
She goes back to the barn and draws the large shower curtain haphazardly erected in the approximate middle of the space, ignoring Peridot's overeager greeting. The curtain has Earth starfish and sea cucumbers on it. Its rod is attached the barn's ceiling with duct tape and the curtain hangs several fingers above the floor, but Steven was very earnest about it, and Lapis can't say she doesn't prefer having this flimsy buffer to no buffer at all.
Lapis tucks herself as far into the corner of her half of the barn as possible, wriggling her hips to align her back somewhat comfortably on the floor. She isn't sure she enjoys spending significant stretches of times motionless – she's rather sure she doesn't, actually – but she seems to be doing it a lot, anyway. From Steven's explanation, it appears immobility is a necessary part of the napping process.
She follows Steven's steps: even breaths, shallow thoughts, lax muscles, eyes closed. She doubts this will work, but she isn't worried either way; she's indifferent and lethargic. She drifts.
She's cold, and shivering, and angry, and blind. No, she says, over and over, silently, in someone else's voice, somehow. This is over. It's not like this anymore.
There is pressure inside her and pressure outside, equal so she doesn't burst or collapse, but what if it changes, what if it tips one way or the other – and what if it doesn't, what if she'll always, always –
"I don't like this," Lapis says in her own voice. She opens her eyes and sits up.
"Lazuli?" says Peridot, suddenly very close by, the tiny, nosy, insecure little – "Ow!"
She's shoved at Peridot, she realizes. "Sorry," she mutters, materializing her wings.
"Hey!" Peridot calls after her. "Are you okay?"
Lapis flaps over to the top of the water tower. Water, water, water everywhere.
"I want you to make up things that aren't terrible," she says. "Do you hear me, brain?"
She thinks about tree leaves turning orange. That's a nice thing that happens. Would Homeworld ever think of making such pointless, cyclical changes? Or maybe they aren't pointless. She'll ask Steven about it later.
"I want something like that," Lapis says firmly to herself. "A story about something like leaves changing color for possibly no reason."
She closes her eyes. Deep, unnecessary breaths. Maybe here on this planet, nothing is planned out. Maybe Steven can trust their brain with their dreams. But it's not like that for her.
Give me something like leaves turning orange, she thinks, and falls asleep again.
Orange, orange with stripes and bared teeth, falling away. Seasons are changing.
She isn't green anymore; not orange either. She walks on her hands – no. She can't swim, doesn't want to. She can finally speak. She's always been the one telling stories, seeing things and giving them back, altered as little as possible. This is nothing new.
Lapis, says Steven. Please let me help you.
"I don't need your help!" Lapis snaps, and tumbles off the water tower on her side, catching herself midair. She carries herself back to the top and presses her face to the sun heated metal. The smell of iron reacting with her sweat fills her nose, nostalgic and unpleasant.
She turns over on her side, her cheek smooshing against the hard surface of the tower, and starts laughing, and laughs, and laughs. She's kind of amazing! She's amazingly, unnecessarily tough.
"Yeah. I'm here, torturing myself of my own volition." She snickers into her loosely clenched fist. "I've just completed the most terrifying human ritual, twice. What have you done today?"
She doesn't know whom she's asking. Whoever they are, Lapis is sure they would not be able to face a human nap.
She stays unmoving as the sun goes down, disappearing beneath the ocean line. The steel beneath her cheek cools by degrees.
Steven is waiting for her at the foot of their mountain by the time she glides over. Maybe not waiting for her, but waiting, anyway, and they smile and wave very enthusiastically until she's close enough to talk.
"So? How did it go? Did you have a good nap?" Steven asks, loud with excitement for the possibility of Lapis enjoying herself.
"I had two," Lapis tells them. "They were awful. Thank you, Steven."
Steven blinks. "Oh," they say, their smile becoming more tentative, but still present. "You're… welcome?"
Lapis hugs them very gently. Humans are a little fragile. Steven's smile is back in full capacity as she flies back to the barn.
Peridot has her back conspicuously facing the door, and she conspicuously doesn't turn around when Lapis enters the barn.
Lapis smiles a little bit. "Good night, Peridot," she says as she draws the curtain closed between them.
There's a loud metallic crash on the other side of the curtain. "Wh–" More adversarial metallic noises. "Ahem. Yes. Happy temporary obfuscation of the sun to you too, Lazuli."
Lapis rolls her eyes. A puff of air escapes between her lips; her shoulders shake with a disobedient laugh.
She fishes the hastily repaired tape recorder from behind the pile of paint. "I took a nap today," she says softly into its clumsy, simple mechanism. "I'm in no hurry to repeat the experience. But." Her lip twitches. Not in a bad way. "Steven was right. I do feel… better."
She puts the recorder back in its halfhearted hiding spot and folds herself on top of a discarded giant robot leg. She listens to the compounded voices of the group of crickets presumably living in the barn's vicinity. They are all in perfect, inexplicable harmony.
Maybe nothing is planned out on this planet. But it seems to be working out okay, anyway.