Chapter 21: Regret

Form destabilisation is painful. Your body explodes, it bursts, or it collapses. You feel it. You feel it all, in incredible horrible detail. Every inch of you is hyper-aware of the way it's all falling apart, a thousand horrors in a single second- or two or more if you're unlucky.

I don't remember what it felt like, but I remember that it was horrible. I think that, for once, I'm grateful not to remember something if it was as horrible as that.

I don't know how it happened, but I seem to be nowhere, so I must be in my own gem, in the safety and prison of what is the core of my being. My inner world, never before explored, is empty. A vast expanse of starless space, and if I try to look at my body, all I see is white light. Well, no, it's not quite white. It's yellow and orange, but very, very pale. I can't remember the details, but I know this isn't what I look like.

I can feel everything I've ever experienced inside me all at once, but I can't separate it out into anything that makes sense. There's no timeline, only thought and feeling and experience from every instance of my life layered over top each other. I can feel it all like a constant droning buzz: this is my life. My memories. But I could no more pick out a single one that tells me how I got here than I could make them all stop playing or have the torrential tide slow for just a moment. It's all or nothing..

My inner world is empty, but my mind is full- so full that I can't contain every experience separately. A black abyss and a sinkhole of worthless knowledge. I wonder what that says about me. For all these memories that are inside me, my world is that of nothingness and disorder.

I don't know how long I've been here. I may as well have always been here, and I may as well always be here from now on. I see no way of leaving. I'm here forever. Nowhere, forever.

Until I'm not.

Reforming is the opposite of losing your form. It's like breathing in sunlight for the first time, like stretching after staying still for two days working on a horrendously large project without taking even a single break, like smiling after a week of frowns. It's a thousand and one tiny blisses all rolled into one: and suddenly you're real again. Suddenly there's a world beyond the dark little corner of everything that is your own mind.

But it's also a crash, a sudden jarring halt of everything I've ever experienced all at once into a singular continuous moment of 'now'. Everything rushes out from under me: my understanding of myself dissipating as I try to comprehend the 'here' and 'now'. Memories are swept away in trying to process the 'present', and it leaves me utterly confused.

I hardly register that I'm back, I'm real again- a person in the actual world- before I'm tumbling to my knees, barely catching myself from falling on my face. I feel like I'm being twisted in every direction at once, trying to hold onto something for more than a second, but it's all gone as quick as it's here. I wait for the flood of thoughts to pass, unable to do anything more than hold steady while it goes.

But it does. It does pass.

And I'm alone in a room that is not my mind, a room I do not recognize and do not feel comfortable in. But I can't question where this room is, to whom it belongs, and therefore where I am, before something latches onto my face, around my mouth, clamping hard around the lower half of my face. When I reach up to pry the thing off, something else, but similar, bites into my wrists, binding them together, and then that thing shoots out a chain that connects to the floor. Cuffs- I'm trapped.

I attempt to scream, but with both my mouth and nose sealed behind this metal faceguard thing, I can only get out so much sound with so much air, and then that's it. I can't breathe in to try to scream again, and trying to breathe out any more only increases the internal vacuum and its strain on my form. It aches already- if I were to try to breathe anymore, I'd just destabilize myself again.

I writhe and pull and struggle, but the cold, hard metal has shaped itself perfectly to my face and wrists, and refuses to come off. Similarly, the chain, which is really more like a thick wire, is bonded perfectly to the floor, and refuses to budge. I give up after what must be half an hour, but it's a bitter, tiresome half an hour.

I come to rest against a wall, unsure which is the back, as there's no windows or doors. I feel like I've traded my internal prison for an external one, and I'm probably not wrong. The only problem is, I don't know why I'm here.

The last thing I distinctly remember is heading somewhere for a meeting of some sort. It was important. I don't know what it was about. I was in my formal wear, though, and now I'm.. in a space suit. It's nice, don't get me wrong, but gems like me never wear form-fitting attire even when we're travelling, which I've never done eith-

Oh.

Oh no, no I remember now.

I remember the outcome of that meeting. I remember running away, and being caught again, and 4OS, and Phantom, and then-

And now I'm here. And I'm alone again. Likely going to be executed whenever whoever's captured me has deemed it convenient.

Fine. I've got no more tears to shed on that matter. But I've plenty left to cry about everything else, and how that list has grown since the last time I can remember crying. I cry until I can't cry anymore, when the horrible ache in my chest from trying to breathe is too much, and I'm dizzy with emotions, and my sadness turns into silence.

I sit in the quiet, solitary room, anxiously awaiting whatever's going to happen to me. For how long, I don't know. Time is meaningless when nothing happens and you're by yourself. My nerves never deaden, but the stillness seems to muffle them as the moment drags on, unknowingly long and never ending.

But I open my eyes at the sound of a door forming and opening, and slowly look up at the deliverer of my destruction.

Phantom Fluorite.

[X]

((Earlier))

It's back to grating, horrible silence. She makes no sound, no movement, and I am painfully aware of it. It's been days.

I hate it. I hate her.

How dare she acclimate me to noise and talk and laughter only to do something like this to me? To take it all away, to return me so harshly and eventfully back to anger and misery and Diamonds' damned silence- how dare she?

'But you did this', a tiny voice reminds me. No, no I did not. She touched me. She should not have. I did not invite her to, did not express that it was safe or fair or well for her to do so. She shouldn't have- she had no right.

'You shouldn't have yelled like that'. She shouldn't have touched me.

'She didn't know'. So? SO? She should have. She should have known better. When did I ever invite her to? Or imply it was alright to? When?

'You didn't need to say those other things. She cares-' Cared, now. Past tense, and she shouldn't have done even that much. What a farce! How painful it is to 'care'! What's the use?

It's as I told her. There's no use.

So why do I still care? Why do I yet argue with myself? Why do I care at all? Why does the silence offend me so much? And why can I not bring myself to do anything more than fume about it?

I'm so invested in this line of thought that I don't notice the first four seconds after the massive shape comes into existence right behind us. When I do notice, when I finally feel the large shape that suddenly exists that shouldn't, I have no time to either study it or react- our ship is simply run through with electricity, and the heat and energy of it is so great that it almost doesn't hurt.

Almost. Not quite.

My form is destroyed, imploding painfully, and the next thing I am aware of, I'm in my gem. My inner world looks like my asteroid did, complete in detail from red glow of the dying sun to the dust of the asteroids swirling around me- everything. If it's possible, though, there is somehow less sound than normal. My footsteps on the imagined dusty rock is softer than physics should allow.

I ought to be terrified, and on some level, I think I am. But I've been here so many times in the exact same way that it's lost its novelty. I don't want to die, but in here, I have no options, no choices, no power. I can only wait to have enough energy to reform, or experience death at last while still inside myself.

What would it feel like, I wonder, to die in here? As that Quartz did, not far from where I stand, albeit many actual miles away.. Would I see my world crumble, or would we all simply.. disappear?

Well, I might as well reminisce while I'm here, with whatever time I might have. I let myself surge through the surface, down to the hollowed core of the asteroid where I made my home. I found it partially hollow, but I carved my own system into it, and made it mine. What few possessions I deigned to keep from my vessel or made myself, I kept there, along with myself.

I never left these halls if I could help it. I hoped the rock would conceal me well enough that I'd never be found, and up until Sardonyx, I was right. I only ever came out to destroy those who happened upon the system, and it was routine when my orange fr-

No. No, no. She's not- I- we were not-

But she was. She was my friend. And now.. Now she's likely shattered, or soon to be. They were going to execute her on the ship, and she only survived because I stepped in. My reformation rate is so slow; it's unlikely she'll still be intact when I reform.

She's gone, then. And the last thing I did was insult and harass her.

But she touched me. How could she do that, and how could I let her do it- when it hurt so badly?

She didn't know. She didn't know, and I still blamed her like she'd done it on purpose. I blamed her, and insulted her, and let her cry, and now she's gone.

Did it even hurt? I run through the memory and- it was certainly startling, but the touch itself was not painful. It was memories of past interactions that hurt so much, that jarred and jilted me to such cruel heights. It was a flash of insensitive hands on my form, of blades and whips and bludgeons, of tenderness turned sour, but her touch- her hand on my form was fine. It was only memories that hurt- and yet I was so cruel to her.

I'm dizzy from the realization: Sorrow. This is sorrow. This is loss. This is guilt, and regret, and a tangle of a number of other things.

I try not to feel anything, but the harder I try, the more I feel and, well, it feels bad. I wish I had her curse- it would be a gift right now- but I don't, and the misery is trying to consume me. I hear myself screeching at her over and over, and I can't help but watch as the memory repeats itself around me.

There I am, there she is. I yell and- and she starts to cry- how could it not have torn me apart even in that moment? Everything is so much worse now that I know she's gone and that I can make no repairs to this horrible damage, but how could I stand to let her cry like this in the first place? Where did my heart go?

I find myself crying too, even if it's a figment of my resting mind inside my gem, but the image of her tear stroked face is too much, and I can't make it go away. The only thing to do is to cry with her, in here and in memory, if nothing else, and if for no one other than myself.

I've never lost anyone before. I've never cared. Even when I had other Fluorites- I never got to know them. It was certainly sad when they were shattered, tragic, even- but I never felt this deep, resounding sorrow. It is pain incarnate, and I understand how Sardonyx felt after her sister's execution. I suddenly understand how she could just freeze up, and be consumed by this feeling entirely- going so far as to cry for days, and not even realize it. I could spend a thousand years in this hole, and never unbury myself.

When did it happen? When did caring about her become so.. so big? So important? When did she start to mean so much?

And why did I let myself trash it all in the end?

Because it was her end. It was the last thing between us- the very final thing we experienced together before-

I don't know. I don't know when I came to care for her so earnestly. It's not like I can't remember exactly what happened, but somewhere along the way I stopped keeping track of what everything meant. I forgot the significance of talking, because it was easy. I forgot the agony of silence, because it was filled talking, and doing, and listening. I forgot what it was like to be alone, and to not care for anyone, because I-

Because I had her. And now I don't.