Sky Blue, Ocean Blue

by purplegirl761

When a reformed mad scientist befriends a stranger to Earth who's also haunted by the past, neither of them suspects that their blossoming relationship will carry them through everything from ice cream to intergalactic warfare. Welcome aboard a little ship I like to call Drakkis.

33. Irrigation

~Greeting once again, all! :D This will probably be my last update of the year (at least on this story) - so Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year to everyone! And a big thanks for all the love and support. ~

She stands before you now, the Gem who broke your body with a single swing of her fist, her arms dangling limply at her sides, her eyes regarding you with wariness, as though she is afraid you will hurt her.

You will not lie: part of you wants to do so. Yet the greatest vengeance of all will be proving her wrong about you.

Bismuth rubs the shining silver metal that shields her elbow. Her movements are tense, yet they do not bristle with war, with the desire to strike the first blow. Dr. Drakken leans at your side in a hero's crouch, and his eyes are not frenzied but cool – a look you are unaccustomed to, a look that fits more easily in Kanatar's ocean than in his eyes. Despite this, he doesn't seem to want to strike the first blow either.

There can be no fight without a first blow.

You draw your knees up in front of you to make more room and pat the couch, somewhat enjoying Bismuth's look of trepidation as she sits down across from you. She presses her knuckles firmly against her opposite palm. When Drakken does this, it is usually accompanied by the sound of creaking joint-fluid, and it is strange how its absence disquiets you. "So…it looks like I owe you an apology," Bismuth says.

She does not glance your way. She is serious.

Her words are tiny, pathetic, Pebbles volunteering where Agates are needed. The urge to laugh at them swells in your gem yet never reaches the surface.

"Actually, you owe me your life," you tell her instead, "but an apology's not a bad place to start."

Bismuth stares at you, and a suggestion of a smile peeks out, nothing at all like the vicious one you remember distorting in your nightmares. This smile holds soft surprise, similar to the kind you saw in Drakken's little pink Commodore-wolf when he realized you meant no harm to him. You, in turn, were soothed when his sharp squeaking barks faded away; oddly, you feel much the same now.

"You did me a good turn out there," Bismuth says, addressing you yet looking at her quiet knuckles. "Not a lot of Eli – not a lot of Gems would've done that for me if I'd done to them what I did to you. And I'm sorry." Her hands clasp in her lap. "If it means anything, I didn't know they were gonna put you in a mirror."

Something hides in her voice, a creature regaining form, uncertain of which shape to take.

You raise an eyebrow at her. "Would you have still done it if you had?"

She flinches. "I don't know."

"At least you're honest," you mutter back.

Drakken's gentle, awkward fingers haven't left yours.

You face Bismuth, not as the Gem who cannot decide which of you she fears more, but as the Gem Blue Diamond was not able to force to her knees. "You probably already know what I'm going to say to you," you say. "Don't like you, probably never will like you, hurt me, hurt Steven, assumed I was a jerk because every other Lapis you met was a jerk, blah-blah-blah." You let the words roll out of you like waves – the common, placid type that humans can ride to the beach on plastic planks, not the kind that ensnare swimmers or tear boats apart.

Drakken's shoulder shakes against yours.

"But you didn't think I deserved to be shattered?" You see, then, what Bismuth looks like when she is confused: forehead tilled into rows like the soil Peridot once prepared to seed and the corners of her mouth atilt.

The room falls into a silent well of lingering uncertainty and subsiding anger.

At one time, you let someone else's hatred encircle and engulf your own fury, orange and blue mottled together into miry, indistinguishable green. You might as well have walked back into the mirror of your own volition. You will not become a prisoner again, even of yourself.

"No, I thought you deserved it," you say. Your voice hushes, and it is not from timidity at all. "But – that isn't my call."

Because, you realize now, if it were your call then it could have been someone else's call, probably Kim's or Ron's, mere years ago when dealing with Dr. Drakken, and then he would never have gotten the chance to be so wonderful.

Bismuth looks at you as though you have swept a wave over her entire arsenal and abandoned the weapons she forged herself to rust and ruin. She is awaiting a pronouncement, as though you are a Zirconium messenger arriving to deliver the Diamonds' verdict.

The facets of you that prompted you to run away from Earth and the facets that prompted you to return collide, a hot disagreement, a gulf in your gemstone.

A small, pink face that has never known hate and never sought retribution bridges that gulf. A reflection appears that only you can see, one you did not summon, of Bismuth's arm swinging in front of Steven to protect Steven from the savage side of Blue Diamond, embodied in the smooth flat energy particles shooting off her fingertips. The one responsible for your captivity's beginning has chosen to stand with the one responsible for its ending.

You find Bismuth's eyes. "Do you have Steven's back now?" you ask her.

She nods. You search her face for dishonesty, finding none. She pulls her chin in so that a shallow ditch appears on either side of her neck.

"Then I've got yours. In a battle," you say.

Bismuth doesn't seem to have the means to nod this time. Her eyes gleam. If you are not mistaken, she seems…impressed.

Impressed by you.

You have always wondered how the Extraction process feels for the Diamonds, when they let their excess vitality run off them and leach into the ground to nourish and animate their next batch of Gems. Now you know: it is as much a release of pressure as it is a fulfillment of duty, the surety that you are creating new life the more you let go. It is one of the most powerful and one of the most relaxing sensations that has ever flitted through your physical form.

Even when Bismuth speaks again, the peace shivers without crumbling, cracks without shattering. "Can I ask you something? Uh – did you say the other Lapises were jerks?"

"Yeah!" The reply deserves to be snorted, yet you are not comfortable enough around Bismuth to snort in front of her. "I was the one who had to hang out with them all the time. I got a pretty good picture of what they were like!" A twinge of guilt trails down your back. "Well, most of them, at least.

"But I don't hate every other Bismuth because of what you did to me," you add. You hug your knees, startled to feel flexible fabric rather than the gauze of your skirt.

"Do you hate me?" Bismuth asks.

Beside you, you hear the sword's edge on the breath Dr. Drakken draws. Inside and outside you, a deep ache like the bruise Jasper once imprinted on your wrist, mines through your gem until it touches the center. The pain spreads everywhere, and every impulse you have cries out at you to end it, to drown it in ice water.

You gaze across those waters, though, and you see no shore. If you wade into them, there will never be a place where they end.

"I don't want to," you say, and you squeeze Dr. Drakken's fingers until his gloves bite into your superficial flesh.

Bismuth nods again. "Fair enough." Her voice sounds full, as if she needs to strain something out of it before she can say her next words. "Just so you know, I'm not gonna hurt you."

She raises her hands in the air as though to demonstrate she is unarmed. She will never be unarmed, though, not when you can still envision the glow at the end of her wrist, imagine her fist twisting into a hammer, and feel the pain from that hammer plunging into your rib cage. You fold your arms over your middle before you even realize the memory has returned to you.

"You all right?" Dr. Drakken asks. It surprises you to see no trace of plant life anywhere on his body.

"Yeah," you say.

"Great. I've got to crack my back."

This sounds like a painful task to you, though Drakken states it cheerfully enough. He lies down on the floor only after he has taken his two longest fingers, drawn them into straight lines in front of both eyes, and then swiveled them to point directly at Bismuth. She seems amused.

Bismuth bends her head closer to yours, close enough that you can smell the metal on her. Your fear runs down your spine and then disappears when she whispers to you, sharing a secret rather than a threat. "By the way – your boyfriend really loves you."

This is not anything you did not know before, and yet your powers light up inside you the way they always do when you discover something important about your new life. "Really?" you say. You mean for your tone to be dry, but it is not.

"Uh-huh. He wasn't lettin' me talk any smack about you when he first got here. I tried to explain to him how I needed to do it for the rebellion and all, and he was just having none of it. He got all up in my Bismuth."

You blink at her.

"Sorry." Bismuth repeats the word that you never imagined hearing from her even once. "It's a thing I do."

You tilt your head to the side, comforted by the swing of your bob across your cheeks. "It's okay. I like it better than those other things you do," you say.

The hollows appear on the sides of Bismuth's neck again. You realize what you are looking at now: not the only parts of her body that are soft, but the only parts she cannot guard or steel when necessary.

From the floor below you, you hear an abrupt pop like the snapping of Amethyst's whip, followed by a rapid release of breath. You creep to the edge of the couch and peer down at your boyfriend. "Are you all right?" you ask – you can imagine quite well all the injuries the Diamonds could inflict on his newly built, inexpert body, whether in parts or in whole, though Drakken has never been one to hide his wounds.

"Better than all right," Drakken responds. "That was a good crack."

Never once in your life have you heard of a good crack, but on his face you can see pain relieved, so you decide to trust his word. You pull your knees up and tuck them beneath your chin again, still surprised by the solid, forceful weight of your pants; you take care not to disturb the tiny, triangular green gemstone that sits on the middle cushion of the couch, stiller and quieter than you ever have known Peridot to be. Bismuth, too, adopts a position of avoidance, keeping her distance, as though she worries she will accidentally crush Peridot as easily as she once purposefully crushed you.

In a moment, smoke and dust surround you and you are back on the battlefield, barefoot and open to assailment, in the grasp of Bismuth's hard fingers, watching her draw back her arm. You start to close your eyes, but the image is more clearly defined in your mind's reflection than in the sight of the burly, cautious-eyed figure reclining across from you.

You lean forward instead and stare at Bismuth the way you have been staring at mirrors for over an Earth-year now: with a head angled high, a jaw set, and a silent proclamation that you are their prisoner no more. It is not that you have stopped being afraid; a molten layer of fear still resides in you, but now it is the Earth's mantle, buttressed by a thin crust above, cleaving to a rocky core beneath. Unlike the humans in the books Connie once lent you, who turned staring into a competition and were frustrated when the little boy wizard used magic to win, you do not keep track of who blinks first. You only watch as an understanding forms in Bismuth's eyes. Without words or movement, you each become a twist on the same rope, a rope that stretches around the planet and secures it to its moorings.

Despite this, you still feel better when Dr. Drakken flits upright and alights on the sofa between you, nestling Peridot's gem in his lap with a fond pat. You creep closer to him and rest your head against his shoulder. Its padding has slipped sideways, leaving a stiff, bony surface behind; you do not mind. There is a warmth native to every Earth creature, yet there is also a warmth entirely unique to Dr. Drakken – thick and tangled like his hair, deep like his voice, stitched imprecisely together. You press still closer, and you let it wrap you, banishing the cold that had begun to rule your life.

"Are we really all okay?" you ask him.

Drakken nods, his ponytail a choppy wave against the side of your face. You have no doubt it would tickle if you were organic. "We really are," he says.

Your back straightens as bravery soars down its length. Before it can be swept away with whatever is to come, you say, "Then where's Steven?"

The smile Drakken sends you in return is nervous, but not stupefied with terror as you have seen it before. "Steven? He's safe and sound and on his way to – actually, by now he probably –" he rolls up his sleeve to consult the portable timepiece on his wrist, and then he growls. "Well, my watch is broken, but they may have made it to Homeworld by now."

At that name, you lose contact with the crust and the core. You become mantle. It is a name that once filled you with pride and glory, one that once justified everything you stole from other worlds, and one that eventually led you to ache with longing. Now, the reaction is much stronger – the edges of your gem seem to pull on themselves, shriveling, and not even fear provokes that in you.

Grief does.

"Homeworld?" you cry. "The Diamonds took him to Homeworld?"

Your wings shoot upward, whispering beneath the surface of your gem, ready for your command to soar away. Drakken calms them with a hand on your arm, a light squeeze. You look into his gentle face.

"He went willingly, Lapis!" Drakken blurts. "Yes, with the Diamonds, but also with Garnet, Amethyst, Pearl and – and someone else –"

"The little sword girl," Bismuth says.

"Connie! Yes!" Drakken holds up a finger and continues smiling. "They declared a truce on the beach while you were…errr…resting. Steven told them about the Corrupted Gems – even showed them a couple! And – you'll never believe this – but the Diamonds actually felt bad about it! At least, Blue Diamond did."

His buoy-words bob; you have never known them to be anything but honest. Drakken rocks back and forth in his seat, heels touching the floor and then coiling back, stirring sand off his lab coat and into your eyes. When you blink, what you see is not the Corruption Bomb hurtling toward Earth, not the eons of mindless torture suffered by every Gem caught in its path regardless of their loyalties, but Blue Diamond with her head bowed, her cloak swinging forward in mourning, tears slipping out from under the hood.

What you see is Blue Diamond – gracious and merciful as you once believed her to be.

The knob in Drakken's throat shifts as he swallows. You copy him, because it feels strangely like a knob has settled in your throat, as well. "Really?" you say.

Over Drakken's shoulder, Bismuth rubs the back of one hand across her lips. With a start, you remember Bismuth's tough, unbending skin and your own, sensitive but not nearly as delicate as it used to be, are simply two strains of blue.

"Really-really!" Drakken's nods come so quickly they blur together. "Steven asked if they could help him, you know, cure the Corruptions, as it were. And they could – sort of – but not entirely, so it was determined that they would set a course for Homeworld and enlist White Diamond – who knew she was a thing, right? – to help them!"

He has fallen into his grand, dramatic manner of speaking, his eyes bright and important. You pull back from his wildly gesticulating arms before one of them can graze you, and you pull back from the information he has just given you while your mouth can still move. "Are you serious? They're actually going to try talking to White Diamond?" you say as the numbness flows over you.

Drakken's eyebrow rumples in the middle. "Is there something…something wrong with that plan?"

There is something very wrong with that plan. Blue Diamond is coercive, Yellow Diamond vociferous, but White Diamond is something else altogether. She is symmetrical, faultless, the example of Gem purity against whom everyone else is measured. Every time you walked past her at one of Pink Diamond's balls, you curtsied outwardly and shivered inwardly at her curved, authoritarian fingernails, black as the ink your people were soon to stop using, and at the hollowed smile on her matching lips. Contact with her has been an impossibility ever since the shards of Pink Diamond's gem hit the soil.

Now Steven is requesting an audience with her?

You spread your fingers on your knees and examine the unchanged fingerprints, your thoughts whirlpools in your mind. "Nobody except the other Diamonds has seen White Diamond since the war. And even they get turned away sometimes when they try to go to her. She's like a crab, except instead of a shell, she just stays holed up in her head," you say.

Drakken's one large eyebrow lifts and sharpens in the middle, the ends more reminiscent of a smudge of bark than ever. "Her head?"

You start to answer him but halt at the prospect of putting White Diamond's enigma into words for a human who has never known anything but the charming imperfections of this planet.

"I got this one," Bismuth says to you, and then she turns to address Drakken. "You were right, down on the beach, when you asked if all the ships could fuse together into one giant ship. They do. And White Diamond's got the head and the –" She casts an arm from her neck to her waist – "what do you call this part?"

You shrug. When your body is but an apparition of light, the terms do not come as readily to you, though you are sure you could find it if you searched hard enough.

Dr. Drakken, though, rushes to answer with his usual zeal. "Torso! Thorax! Abdomen!" he barks, and then pauses. "No, wait – one of those is just for bugs…"

You laugh out loud, and Bismuth echoes you in confusion. Without thinking, you try to meet her eyes, yet whatever connection that could have been made is hastily absorbed into the old tension that divides the two of you, like the force fields on a ship's containment rooms, and you can tell she feels it too. For a moment, brief and silent, you allow yourself to lament what the war accomplished: the splitting of the Gems, the splitting you never wanted, the splitting that saved Earth and tarnished Homeworld. You drop your gaze to your lap; you would rather project shyness than bitterness.

The next glance you spare is at Dr. Drakken, who is presently stroking his plump chin. For the first time since you emerged from your gem, you notice how tired he looks, his cheeks wan and his eyes sagging beneath a ship's prow of a forehead, their black circles smeared thicker than you have ever seen them. They remind you of bruises, and you wish you could place your hands on them and shapeshift them away as you do with your own surface injuries.

"She's a hermit," he says.

You frown. "I don't think it matters what type of crab she is."

The delightful sound of Drakken's chuckle reverberates off the razed walls and warms the room even more. "No, that's what humans call it when someone lives far away by themselves and basically never comes out, not even to say hi," he says.

"Oh." Your empty insides shiver again, as though you stand at the base of White Diamond's throne even now. At one point in your existence, the perfectly carved replication of her head stood on the tallest hill on Homeworld, and it was affirming, if not comforting, to know she watched over you and that the most powerful creature in the universe was one of your own. Now your spine ices with terror at the thought of her. "That sounds like White Diamond, all right."

"Steven really seemed to think it would work, though," Bismuth adds. A desperate hope overwhelms her eyes, so that there is no room for anything else. You think of the Gems you once envied from the mirror for their freedom, and how one decision by the Diamonds quickly made you, trapped, the fortunate one.

"Did Blue Diamond? And Yellow?" you ask.

Drakken makes an uncertain little noise in his throat, the type that demonstrates a lack of words but an inability to remain quiet. "Blue Diamond seemed like she wanted to hope," he says at last. "Yellow Diamond – I don't know. I can't read her very well. She just seems like she's ticked off all the time."

You and Bismuth nod, separately, agreeing but not in sync. You are contained once again, this time within the image of Blue Diamond hoping for hope and healing. It becomes more painful the longer you look at it, and you think you understand then what it is for a human to stare directly into the sun.

Bismuth focuses on an untended bruise on the hilt of her fist. Whatever she last attacked with it must have proved to be more resistant than your body.

You change the subject; you turn to Drakken. "But you didn't even know I was going to come back. I didn't even know I was coming back. So what were you doing here?"

"Well, actually, I received an invitation to a – to an event, of sorts." Drakken swings a foot back and forth, hardly touching the floor, somehow finding energy even in his weariness. "It turns out Ruby and Sapphire got married –"

The memory of Pearl's words at the harvest festival starts deepest in your back and spreads, more shallowly, to the rest of you: Being born, getting married, dying…

A fusion of sorrow and fear tries to descend on your gemstone, but it doesn't get far. The current of Dr. Drakken's voice is cheery and, by his standards, calm. You know he would never speak that way about the shattering of two Gems, even ones he doesn't know apart from each other.

You give your head a casual tilt. "So – I'm guessing marriage isn't the thing that ends your life?"

"Heh-heh. There are so many one-liners I could quote here, but I can't recall any of them," Drakken says with a sheepish grin, "and they'd be of no help to you anyway, so forget it! No – marriage is a big ceremony where two people make promises in front of everyone they know and pledge the rest of their lives to each other."

"Oh," you say. It seems to you that Ruby and Sapphire have already done that, but then, fusion can illustrate many different things. You still don't know quite how to explain what held you and Jasper together as her. "You've probably never gotten married, have you?"

"No," Drakken says, but there is more to his answer; you can tell by the slipping pink in his face. "I – uh – there was a woman I asked once if she wanted to marry me – proposed, the humans call it." His voice picks up speed. "Because she was very nice to me and made good cookies and had the most heavenly lab known to mankind and loved science and even flirted with me, so I proposed! After forty-eight hours."

"Wow." You blink. "That seems fast. Even for humans."

Drakken's face grows pinker still. "Yes, well, that's what she thought, too. Plus, it turned out that she was actually in love with someone else, and she didn't think our flirting was anything serious, so I suppose I took her quite by surprise. At any rate, she turned me down."

The black bruises under his eyes fold upward. You don't know exactly what it looks like when humans devote their lives to each other, but you know his pain when you see it. You reach your hand out until it touches his and picture flooding the house of the woman who threw his care away.

"So I made a vow, just to myself," Drakken continues, "that I wouldn't be making that mistake again!" He smiles again, though it is laced with hurt. "That I'd slow down and make sure to get it right…next time. Of course, back then I didn't think there would be a next time."

Whatever marriage is to humans, you are fairly sure you have just been paid a compliment.

You smile back at Drakken. The tremor in your gem and the ice in your spine have gone. He is here beside you on the couch, and Greg waves a greeting at you from the eating-room, and even Bismuth considers you with a different expression. Five thousand years can change a Gem, as you know too well.

Strangely, she appears to know it, too. She doesn't look at you like you are a friend, but she also doesn't look at you as if you are just another spoiled Lapis Lazuli from Homeworld's upper echelon. What remains of your fear of her begins to shrink.

A crescendo rings out minutes later from Drakken's lap. He leaps to his feet, startled, propelling the gem that was resting on his lab coat into the air. Nobody moves to catch it.

Nobody needs to. It floats on its own across the room. A beam of light sparks from its center and begins to spread outward, into the only green softer and more evocative of home to you than the grass.

You hug your legs to your chest.

This won't take long.

Greg steps into the room to watch as Peridot's gem glows still brighter, and the tiny body begins to take shape: the legs half the length of your own, the outward-spread arms, the smug, grinning face. The yellow pane of her visor has shortened to include only the areas immediately around her eyes, and it has sharpened, the ends peaks that burst from both sides of her forehead in two slim rays. Her legs are wrapped tightly in green pants that stop short above boots far less elegant than the ones Homeworld granted her at her Emergence. As you expected, the black parallel lines that mark a Gem laborer are gone, along with the insignia that swore its loyalty to Yellow Diamond. In its place, a star blazes from the center of her shirt, two more from her knees, begging for attention.

She looks ridiculous.

She looks perfect.

The gabbling begins before Peridot's feet have even touched the floor, as does the swinging of the fists. She thrusts her arms back and forth in perfect synchronization, as though taking aim at a Corruption turned invisible. "Take that, you Diamonds! And that!" she cries. "You thought you could take Peridot down, didn't you? Well, you thought wrong! Now get away from my friends!"

"Easy there, Slugger." Greg bends over Peridot and curls his heavy hands with their light touch around her small fingers. "No Diamonds here anymore. It's just us."

Peridot blinks, and you watch her round green eyes regain sight, wide and calculating as she looks around in that engaged, enthused way she has only recently learned. They roam the room until they find you – and joy ignites them.

"Lapis!" Peridot cries as if you are the only one in the room, the only one in the galaxy. You brace yourself, the bottoms of your new shoes gripping the floor beneath you; it is the only reason you do not collapse when Peridot's hug hits you.

"You're back! You're back!" Peridot repeats it until she appears to have emptied herself of the words. She nestles her head against the small inlet of skin bared between your top and your pants, and she sighs, a moist, contented sigh, the kind Dr. Drakken emits in his sleep.

Your throat feels soft, and it makes all your movements easier. It is easy to wrap your own arms around Peridot; it is easy to lose your chin in her hair. It is even easy to say, "I'm so sorry I left."

"Forgiveness granted," Peridot says, and you smile a little. She can still sound so much like a machine, though you know by now your roommate is anything but mechanical. "I – I'm sorry I couldn't go with you."

You still remember the pain of that decision, but distantly. It is a memory that needs your permission to linger, a reflection that can never again form without help from you. "Are you serious?" you say. "You're fine."

Peridot lets out her crackling giggle, and then pulls back to take a second look at you. Realization springs to her eyes. "New clothes? Did – did they get you, too?"

"Yeah," you say. "Yellow Diamond Destabilized me almost as soon as you were gone."

Peridot scowls as fiercely as her immature face possibly can. "I don't like her anymore," she declares. Just as suddenly, her ferocity disappears, and she bats at the thin gold rope around your waist. "I love these clothes, though! You even have size-adjustment twines!"

Dr. Drakken steps closer and squints until his eyelashes flatten against his pointed cheekbones. "Oh," he says. "Oh, you're wearing pants now!"

"Yeah." You laugh and gesture at the flaring spots above the ankles. "Do you like?"

He nods. "Yes. Absolutely. Those are cute."

"Cool," you say.

Drakken chuckles and then his mouth splits into that bellowing, suckling sound that you associate with human fatigue; Drakken does it more loudly than any other human you have met. Gently, you place your hand over his to make up for all the time you were beyond reach. "Are you okay?" you ask. "Do you need sleep now?"

The sky is dark outside the window. You are sure, then, that he has been awake for tides, waiting for you to return.

"That'd be great." Drakken bellows once more. His voice is a piece of thread when he speaks again. "But I don't want to leave you – here –"

He stops, his bottom lip caught between his teeth. You know he was going to say "with Bismuth" and stopped himself with only seconds to spare.

You cannot predict what Bismuth's reaction to that will be, and you don't care enough to turn around and find out. "It's all right," you say to Drakken's shaking hands. "I'll be fine. I've got Greg here – and Peridot. They'll look out for me."

This time you do turn to face Bismuth, holding up your hand before she can speak. "I know you won't hurt me again," you say. "But it's gonna take me a while to get used to that." You tilt your head at her. "I mean, it'll probably take you a while to get used to trusting an Elite, won't it?"

Bismuth nods. Her face is more placid than you have ever seen it.

Peridot, however, glares at Bismuth and stomps up the steps to Steven's room. You fly up after her and find her gazing out Steven's window with raging eyes. Seeing her this way is more painful than remembering how dull and distant her eyes were in the Interrogation Room back on Homeworld. Peridot is clear water that allows someone to look straight down to the riverbed beneath; you do not want to see her muddied.

You perch beside her, tucking your feet beneath you, secure with the hook between the toes and the thin cushion underneath. "You know, Bismuth's on our side now," you tell Peridot. "And she apologized to me."

"Apologized!" Peridot gripes. "As if that makes up for what she did to you!"

A fluffy, vaporous feeling encircles your powers, relaxing your wings and turning them to clouds. "No," you say. "It doesn't. And I swear I'm not trying to protect her." You pause and consider swallowing the truth, as you have done so many times in the past, but you have also had great success offering honesty to Peridot. "I'm trying to protect you."

"Me?"

"Yeah, you." You lean forward and hold Peridot's eyes with your own. "Because hate sucks. And you don't deserve to feel that."

Peridot shifts her gaze upward, searching you. You can still feel Bismuth's blow, but only in your stomach; it does not spread to the rest of your body, and it certainly does not encompass your gemstone. In its place, the reality of how much Peridot trusts you laps over you facet by facet.

"Oh! That reminds me! There's someone else who wants to see you!" Peridot says. She throws herself onto Steven's bed, sticks a hand underneath, and rummages around until she produces a small lump of brown fur. It's a teddy bear who wears an artificial blue gemstone between the flat wings stitched onto her back.

Plastic Lazuli Hope.

You don't say a word or make a sound. You simply reach out your arms, and a moment later they are filled with the comforting weight you never thought you would feel again. Plastic's skirt rubs against your nose, and it doesn't bother you that the two of you don't match anymore. As grateful as you are to have changed and grown, you do not want to forget the person you used to be, either.

"I believe she found me an adequate substitute." Peridot's words are once again organized data reports, yet she no longer broadcasts them to the Diamond who tore apart her physical form on the beach. "But I could tell you were the one she really wanted."

You can't help but smile. "She looks great," you say, even more quietly than usual. You lift Plastic's arm and make her wave it, and your voice shifts into the squeaking teddy bear pitch you always use when you and Peridot are playing with pretend animals. "'Thanks, Peridot! You can babysit for me anytime!'"

Peridot grins, and you can see all the way to the bottom of the riverbed again.

That is when you hear a shrill yip followed by a series of rapid scratching sounds, as if someone is attempting to scale the sheer, slicked cliffs that towered over one of the Kindergarten Bases you helped set up. You don't remember the numbers anymore.

Peridot pops up like the blade of a Ruby's knife and bolts down the stairs, past Greg and Bismuth and Drakken, stopping in front of the door to the bathroom, where you know she once lived after she lost her limb enhancers and before she found her identity. She grabs the doorknob, twists it once, and then gasps. "Pumpkin!"

Pumpkin wiggles forward and places her front two feet on Peridot's knees, her vine of a tail swaying. She bumps her head against Peridot's leg, asking as politely as she can to be stroked. "Who shut you in there?" Peridot asks as she runs her hands over Pumpkin's head.

"Probably someone trying to keep her safe when the Diamonds started attacking," you reply.

As soon as you speak, Pumpkin's eyes, the color of Topaz and brimming with affection, shift toward you. For an Earth-second, she freezes – and then she noses past Peridot and leaps into your arms, wedging her stem between your fingers so you can pick up where you left off. Her happy yips pause only long enough for her to drench your cheeks with her tongue. It is pressed smooth with only the smallest suggestion of roughness underneath, the texture of wet sand, and if you had any last doubts about this being your true home, they evaporate now. Earth has welcomed you back like Homeworld never has.

You shift Plastic Lazuli beneath your arm and fold your arms so that Pumpkin can nest in their crossing the way she loves to do. She still smells of changing leaves, falling leaves, even though the time has come for new leaves to bud on the trees. "Yeah, Pumpkin, I'm back. I'm back to stay," you say, and even though you whisper it to Pumpkin, it is a promise to everyone in the house, including Bismuth.

Warmth gushes over your gem. You expect it to dull the pain, the anger, the fear, and all the other broken edges that were never part of your Purpose, but it does not; it transforms and transcends them, throwing them into absolute clarity. It is the same thing you experienced when you reformed, only rather than fading as your physical form fell into place, this shifts downward and digs inward, reaching a place that before has known only emptiness.

You hear something from over your shoulder – a rumbling sound, like a distant waterfall – and turn toward the couch, where Dr. Drakken lies haphazardly sprawled, half on his side and half on his stomach area, the part of the ship that White Diamond commands. One arm rolls off the couch, its fingers bent just above the floor. The long, thin column of his body moves up and down with sighs, the couch pads pressing creases into his soft, kindly face. He does not look capable of Bismuth's feats of strength or Jasper's brutality, but you know him to be strong when he needs to be. A faint smile tiptoes across his face in his sleep, as though whatever dreams in which he is immersed bring him pleasure.

For a moment, you cannot recall what it is to be numb.

Peridot abruptly gasps and throws herself against your leg, and for the first time in so long, you feel the vibration of someone else's fear, stronger than your own. "Gadzooks!" she cries. "Where's Steven?"

Gadzooks? You have to force down a laugh. She must have picked up that one while you were away.

You cannot let her panic for long, though. You place your hands on her tiny shoulders. "Steven's okay, Peridot. He's on his way to Homeworld."

The green parts of Peridot's eyes slide toward each other, and you can imagine her brain fretting over that, trying to determine how those two pieces of information can both be true. She has reason to be suspicious – Homeworld is not the safe haven to which you once fought so hard to return, especially not to a boy with a Rose Quartz gem – yet somehow your terror remains at low tide. Steven is traveling with Garnet, Amethyst, Pearl, and Connie.

And maybe – just maybe – a shadow of the person you once believed Blue Diamond to be.

"He's not alone, Peridot," you tell her. "The others are with him. Even Connie. Even Blue and Yellow Diamond."

"How is this possible?" Peridot says, the peak of her hair leaning precariously.

"I guess the fighting on the beach stopped after I got Destabilized." Beside you, you see Bismuth grimace, as though remembering an old wound she needs to tend, but she says nothing. "Steven showed the Corruptions to the Diamonds and asked them to help him heal them. They wanted to, so now they're going to Homeworld to see if White Diamond will help."

Peridot's eyes grow wider still. "There really is a White Diamond?"

"Uh, yeah," you say. Bismuth nods. Greg stands still, like a painting.

"I thought they just made her up to scare us!" Peridot says.

Her voice, the voice that used to annoy you so, rings with surprise, young and naïve. This time, you cannot resist laughing. "Really?"

Peridot's voice drops and sobers. "It was widely speculated among the Peridots."

"Peridot, I've met White Diamond. It was weird," you say.

Bismuth is grinning at your elbow. Her eyes touch Peridot's head with fondness.

"Really?" Peridot lurches forward in a lobster's walk, almost falling into your lap. "What was she like?"

She has no way of knowing what that question will do to you. Memories creep over you, the ravaged little beach house replaced by brilliant lights, faultless ballrooms occupied by faultless Gems, and the placid, ever-smiling calm you once inhabited, mistaking it for happiness. You remember standing before the leader of the Diamond Authority, all white except for the places where she was black, no gradients and no nuance, and your gem cools. You do not take your eyes from Peridot's, though; you can trust her with whatever is in yours.

"I don't know. That's what was so weird. I went over to her and I curtsied, and I said, 'Oh, White Diamond. How radiant. How luminous.'" The long-forgotten words resist taking shape in your mouth. "And then she just…stared at me until I left." You shiver despite the mild seaside air around you. "Blue Diamond would smile at you. And Yellow would at least nod or raise an eyebrow or something."

The room falls silent. You follow Peridot's gaze out the window into the night not yet completely darkened. The signs of warfare still litter the beach in glass and metal, stripped cables and overturned earth. Someone has arranged a wide circle of stumpy wooden steps that seem to have been cut free from a staircase; stretched from stair to stair is a yellow ribbon with "CAUTION" written in angry black letters.

You get up and walk to the other side of the room when you notice splintered traces of red boards.

Peridot and Bismuth follow you, Peridot still stunned into uncharacteristic silence by White Diamond's existence. Bismuth looks thoughtful – a strange expression to see on her face.

"There's just one thing about the story that didn't make sense to me," Bismuth says.

You frown. "Story? What story?"

"Your story. The one your boyfriend told me while you were puttin' yourself back together." Bismuth's big hands fan across her lap. "He told me all about Jasper – and the fusion –"

Without meaning to, you draw Pumpkin tighter, loosening your grip only when she yelps. You draw in a breath. You do not need one, but you want one, because you had none when you crouched in a grotto on the seabed, inside her, salt water mingling with her tears, Jasper's thoughts beginning to make sense to her. The fusion was an affront to both Homeworld mores and Crystal Gem ideals. Shame would rush your cheeks if not for Bismuth's rumpled forehead and your boyfriend's snores tumbling from the couch.

"Yeah? What about it?" You say it lightly, with a shrug, but Peridot crosses over and stands in front of you anyway. If she had a shield, she would be pulling it now, you know.

"You said you couldn't go back to Homeworld after what you did to Jasper," Bismuth says. "Did you really think they'd punish you?"

You blink at her. Jasper is swept out of your mind and replaced by a formless, nameless void you do not recognize. Bismuth's lips are parted and curled back, and you can feel Malachite's lips do the same as your words fell from them:

"I'm through being everyone's prisoner. Now you're my prisoner! And I'm never letting you go!"

"Let's stay on this miserable planet – together!"

They were the fiercest words you ever spoke.

They speak for themselves.

"Of course," you say now. "I withheld information from the Gems in command. I deceived Jasper. I sabotaged the mission by assisting her captives. I fused inappropriately, and I used it to hold her prisoner until someone dragged us apart." Your throat barely aches as you recite your crimes, although a mist of uncertainty lingers over your gem. You are still not entirely certain of the rightness or wrongness of what you did. "It would only be fair."

Bismuth lets out a dark chuckle. "Fair? Since when was 'fair' the game Homeworld played?"

Pain flares. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying," Bismuth says, voice pitched upward, "imagine if that went to trial before the Diamonds. An Elite versus a Quartz? No contest."

You stare at Bismuth. She is too angry to be lying, and you do not appear to be the target as much as you were simply in the way. With a numb spine you warp back through the millennia. You see the sneer on Holly Blue Agate's face when she speaks of the Quartzes who work at the Human Zoo. You hear the disdain thrown around the Elite's quarters for the rebellion and their lowly Earth-made leader. You see Jasper's Kindergarten, constructed with less care than the sand castle you and Dr. Drakken once built. You always assumed haste made them sloppy, but is it possible that they would have been more attentive if that Kindergarten produced Aquamarines – or Lapises?

The faceless, nameless void gapes back at you, as if there has been a black hole at the center of your home planet all along, just out of your sight until now.

"Peridot?" you say. "Is that true?"

Peridot squirms on the floor in front of you, the way Dr. Drakken does during a long movie right before he asks you to pause and excuse him to the bathroom. "Technically, you would have both gotten a chance to tell your sides of the story," she says, her words barely keeping their balance. "But –" she glances sideways at you out of embarrassed eyes – "the odds would have been heavily weighted in your favor."

The floor beneath you turns to frost. You do not close your eyes; you are not ready to reflect on a time and place less forgiving than this one. You have sifted through Malachite, through her, in the time since you were liberated, trying to sort out the layers of consent, compliance, and conspiracy, and you haven't yet been able to ascertain to what extent you were given a choice to make and what amount of the blame for her tormented existence falls on you. Perhaps you never will. Now the idea that justice on Homeworld might be decided by something entirely unrelated to that – by the planet on which you were created or by the number of other Gems who share your likeness – looms over you, heavy and dangerous as a Diamond's shadow.

The falseness of your former life rivets you to the floor and then, somehow, it strengthens you in a way you would never have anticipated. It is nothing more than an impurity to be sloughed off and never again touched.

"No wonder you hated us," you say, softly, to Bismuth.

It's Peridot who responds, however, her voice thoughtful and almost wise. "Maybe there shouldn't be an 'us,'" she suggests.

Bismuth's eyes seem to slip deeper into her face. "Yeah, well, it's not that easy for me. Not after all those –"

Peridot cuts her off. "Peridots aren't exactly high-ranking on Homeworld, either! Do you believe I never walked past a group of Elite and heard them snickering and knew it was about me? Do you believe I never wished I had the direct access to the Diamonds that they did? Do you believe I never got screamed at by an Agate?

"If you do believe that, you are misinformed, because all of those things did, in fact, happen!" Peridot pauses dramatically, the way Dr. Drakken loves to do, her eyes clamped on Bismuth's. "I made myself feel better by deciding they were a bunch of prissy little clods who weren't smart enough to do the dirty work themselves! And then…and then I met Lapis. And she's something amazing!" You feel your cheeks flush. "I didn't know she was something amazing at first. But I didn't even know I was something amazing yet!

"Maybe we're all something amazing. When you get right down to it," Peridot concludes. Her chin snaps up and down, and you almost laugh, remembering the artificially tall Gem who spoke without emotion, without anything other than what Homeworld had Taught her. But a row of faces identical to yours crowds your mind, and a recognizing pain stirs in your back.

Bismuth shrugs and stands up, still eying you. "I really do hope you'll be able to forgive me someday," she says.

You look at her – at her strong, hardened gaze and the hunch to her back similar to the one in Drakken's most days. Centuries of hard labor do not stoop a Gem the way they would a human, and yet you know something has been bent inside Bismuth, probably long before that moment on the battlefield where she ended your pampered life. You are not sure if she is a better Gem than she was five thousand years ago, but you know you are. If she meets you under the Crystal Gems' Rosy flag, you are not going to ostracize her. She has been left out of too much already.

"Me too," you say.

Bismuth pulls open the front door with caution and glances up at the holes in the ceiling. "I'm gonna go on out and see if I can't get this place fixed up."

You see it in her in that moment before she leaves: the desperate desire to mend something.

Only after she has walked out onto the porch does her hand light up. You wrench away from the sight, your midsection flinching, yet as Peridot jumps in front of you and rests her hand on your knee, you know she is not the only one who tried to shield you just now. You don't know if you are ready to forgive Bismuth.

But you are willing.

Peridot slips her head beneath your arm and resumes her chatter, catching you up on everything that has happened while you were gone. She has gotten four new "followers" on Chirpsy. Garnet, you hear, has adopted a kitten – a small, tamed version of Lion. Connie has had the hair on her scalp clipped because it will grow again, something Peridot finds fascinating. A few of the kind young people you know from Beach City, including Sadie the donut master, have started a rock band. It's not made up of rocks, Peridot explains to you. It refers to a genre of music entirely unrelated to Gems or other stones.

You already know this – Drakken told you the first week you met – but you let her go on and on anyway, because there were no overzealous, obnoxious voices on Kanatar.

Through the broken windows, you hear Bismuth gathering her supplies. Like Drakken, she grunts when she works.

Pumpkin stands on her back legs and rests her front paws in your lap. It reminds you of her curling up at your feet in the hammock on a dry summer afternoon. Your throat aches unexpectedly as you imagine that fabric twisted and ripped, flapping in the night wind.

This time, you do not run away from the ache. You don't even bother to set your jaw as you turn to Peridot. "I'm sorry about the barn," you say. "I know you're going to miss it."

"Affirmative," Peridot says. "But minimally in proportion to how much I missed you."

"Yeah, well, you know what they say. A planet without a Peridot is way too quiet." You look down at her and close one eye the way Steven does when he is joking.

She doesn't pick up on it. "Do they really?" Peridot asks, the sharp edges of her new visors centimeters from your nose.

You laugh. "No. But they should."

Peridot nestles back into you, and although neither of you have body heat, you are somehow warmer for it.

Greg comes over a few minutes later, holding a stack of small reinforced papers, tougher than the sheets that Steven uses for his drawings, but not as tough as the matchboxes out of which Peridot once assembled her very own land rover. He calls them "cards" and teaches the two of you to play a game called "Go Fish," where the letters or numbers in your hands need to find matching companions so they can go off together and not be your responsibility anymore. You can ask another player if they have a card you need, but if they don't, you have to draw from the remaining pile – a "deck," Greg calls it, though it bears no resemblance to a deck or any other part of a ship. Despite the name, it has nothing to do with the ocean or fishing, something Greg tells Peridot when she starts for the door, calling over her shoulder to you for help retrieving fish for the game. It's a metaphor for casting your hand out into the deck and hoping you reel in a match.

You cast and reel in, cast and reel in, stopping every now and then to glance at Dr. Drakken's snoring form and to make sure his dreams remain friendly.

They do, up until the moment when he is awakened by the percussion of metal against wood and a flurry of powder that falls from the ceiling like water from a human shower. You and Peridot both jump, and Drakken pops up, muttering, "I didn't do it, Officer! I'm not a supervillain anymore!" with plaster in his hair and confusion in his eyes that relaxes only when they find you. His cheeks appear to have inflated in his sleep, and the hairs in his eyebrow project in all directions. Drakken breaks into the distant smile that you remember from when his temperature ran too high and you sang to him.

"Sorry – did that make something happen in there?" Bismuth calls from outside.

"Yeah!" Peridot replies. Greg kneels on the floor, his face mild as he retrieves the cards you and Peridot scattered across the floor.

"Then you guys had probably better come out. 'Cause it's only going to get worse from here."

You exit the house with Peridot's hand in yours and Pumpkin panting in the crook of your other arm. Greg and Drakken follow closely behind. A gentle breeze whisks past, salted with your sea. The smell will always haunt you but never accuse you.

But the beach is still littered with debris, some of which was once precious to you. You can't approach it yet, even with the star on your top and the assertive flare of your pant legs. Instead, you lead Dr. Drakken away from the wreckage and toward a quiet patch of sand and beach grass. He still seems somewhat disorientated from having woken up to a starry sky. Most creatures on Earth, you have learned, fashion their sleep cycle around the time when the planet is kind enough to not face the sun. You, by contrast, nap whenever you need to turn off and are familiar with rising to the hurried songs of night insects and the slow, patient calls of night birds.

Drakken sinks down beside you, his fingers wrapped around a glass of water, from which he takes a long, heavy drink before sighing. Moments later, the cracked scar beneath his eye begins to flinch, and something flattened, fluffy, and yellow pokes out of his neck. It comes out the way Drakken's speech does when he is flustered: stuttering forward and then withdrawing, shaking all the while, unable to right itself.

The first kindling of fear since your regeneration ignites in you, as if a Ruby has stalked across it. "Are you hurt?" you ask him.

"No, no!" Drakken says, but the answer is automatic and he must then twist his mouth as he considers whether or not it's true. "Well…I'm not hurt. Just my flowers. Although I guess technically, they're part of me now. I – I can feel that they're hurt, but I'm not in pain myself. If that makes any sense."

"It does," you say. With the scent of the ocean around you, you once again remember being her, feeling pain that was not yours to feel – pain strong and sulfuric, pain enmeshed in fury. It did not belong to you, but you could always sense its nettles positioned just under her skin.

"How'd your flowers get hurt?" Peridot cranes forward, seemingly unaware that she is driving Pumpkin's stem into the star on her shirt.

Dr. Drakken's grin returns, a comet-tail of white against the brackish darkness. "Yellow Diamond. I kind of went berserk on her after…" He blinks and then shivers. "After whatever happened to Lapis…happened to Lapis."

"Destabilization," you tell him. The word crackles in your chest, but the pain no longer accompanies it.

"Right. That. So, I was tying Yellow Diamond up with some vines and hitting her with other vines. You know, just really beating her up," Drakken says. Jasper would laugh at the idea of Drakken, with his thin arms and fragile grip, beating up anyone, much less the Diamond who inherited her, but any powers that could defeat a Lorwardian armada surely can hold their own against the Diamonds. "And then I wasn't paying enough attention, I guess, because she scorched my vine with that same energy she used to do whatever-it-was."

"She did?" you gasp. The image has barely formed in your head before a cascade of other, more peaceful images rushes it downriver, and it disappears into the memory of Steven's sticky healing touch on your broken gem, the intelligent gleam in Pearl's eyes, the two ice cream cones held in Drakken's hands, the smile almost too big for Peridot's face.

"And you survived?" Peridot adds.

Drakken drops his gaze to his lap. "Only because Bismuth jumped in and yanked my vine out of the way before it could reach me."

"Bismuth?" Peridot says. Her eyes are rounder than sand dollars, and you are sure yours aren't much smaller.

You turn back toward the porch, where Bismuth is tapping against Steven's house with the mallet that ruined your body and rescued your boyfriend. So many facets on a single, inward-pulling gemstone, you muse.

Drakken nods. "We've – err – we've spent the time since getting to know each other. I think I'd really like her if it weren't for her – ahem! – past record." He stares up at the spread of stars overhead for a minute before giving his straggling tail of hair a shake. "Then again, how many times have I tried to…to hurt Kim Possible? And she still finds it in herself to care about me."

You can still feel the anger within you, clinging to you like an octopus, resistant to every attempt to shake it free. "I wish I could forgive like that," you murmur.

"Hel-loo-oo!" Drakken says. His fingers mimic starbursts in the small space between the two of you. "She's been here for, like, five seconds –"

"Forty-one Earth hours," Peridot corrects. You giggle despite the weight on your back.

"Whatever. She just got here, and you just had your first ever conversation with her. These things take time," Drakken says sagely. "You've already given up your right to hurt her back, and my shrink says that's half the battle right there!"

You giggle again; nothing he has said is comical, but you have so missed his warm, unpolished ways.

Drakken tilts his head in the direction of the porch once more. "Did you know she's the official nicknamer of the Crystal Gems, too?" he says.

"She gave me a nickname," Peridot says, her voice bewildered. "She called me 'Tiny.'"

"That means she likes you!" Drakken says.

At their continuing whispers, your wings harden inside you, stiff and uncomfortable. You draw in a breath of Earth air and speak the words you were never courageous enough to say before: "Can we stop talking about her behind her back?"

The reproving expressions you dreaded from your fellow Lapises never finds a place to rest on your friends' faces. Peridot's cheekbones take on an Emerald blush, and Drakken gives an embarrassed chuckle. "Oh. Right. Yes, indeed, of course," he blusters.

You did not feel powerful when Bismuth told you that the Diamonds would rule unquestioningly in your favor, but you feel powerful now, even in the dark, from the vantage point you had no choice but to lie in for thousands of years in the mirror. The stars' patterns have changed; they appear less harsh and foreboding than they did when this planet was unfamiliar to you. Yet you can still see Homeworld, a dull shine lightyears away, and it still bruises your back to look upon it. By now, Amethyst has set foot on its soil for the first time, Steven has returned as a guest rather than a prisoner, and Garnet and Pearl are being reintroduced to the culture and the standards they jettisoned millennia ago. Will anyone, you wonder, see them for who they really are, or will your old friends still gape in disgust at the fusion who should never have happened and the Pearl who should never have picked up a sword?

"So – are your flowers okay?" you say. It is by far the easiest question living in your mind.

Even in their fabric enhancers, Drakken's shoulders sag. "I don't know," he says. "Ever since they took the hit, they've been really hard to grow. All floppy and droopsitive."

You have never heard that last word before – you suspect he simply fabricated it on the spot – but it well fits the flower that emerges from his neck in rough, eking intervals, its lavender pedals lolling toward the ground. Drakken grinds his teeth together, and the vine unravels to its full length, spilling across his chest and lying there, limp as a worm drowned in a puddle. You don't dare put your fingers on it and you don't need to; you already know that it would be hot and dry, the way Drakken's skin was when he was sick.

The sight of it makes your own gem feel like it lies in the desert sands. It must do something similar to Peridot, because a frown knots her lips. "Aww, the poor little thing," she coos. "It needs to be tenderly nursed back to health."

She says this with such authority that you almost laugh again. She might not even realize that she is quoting Paulette from the one-hour special Camp Pining Hearts episode where the campers discover a wounded bird in the forest. You counter with Percy's next line – "But, like, we're not doctors, dudette –" and then roll your eyes at yourself.

"Du-uh," you say. "It needs water."

Drakken's face brightens. "Good thing I grabbed my glass!" he cries, triumphant, as though he has beaten back all three of the remaining Diamonds with the same vine. He holds the glass beneath the flower, but only a shallow pool rims the bottom of the glass, far out of the flower's reach. Despite Drakken's slightly exasperated urgings to "Come on, come on!" and Pumpkin's whimpers of concern, it is clearly too injured to go any farther on its own.

You remember how that feels.

"It just needs some help. Don't you?" you ask, addressing a flower for the first time in your existence. You fan your fingers and slowly raise them, and the water ascends from the glass to hover between you and Drakken. The responsibility of such a meager amount of water is tiny, but it is still there, coordinating your every movement.

This is what water can do, you remember now. It can erode, flood, and destroy. It can also irrigate, cleanse, and replenish.

Nothing native to Earth can survive without it, Drakken thunders in the back of your mind.

With fluttering fingers, you instruct the water forward until it touches the flower's petals. You hear the sizzle of rain meeting flame, a sound that echoes through the curves of your gemstone. Vibrancy is restored to the flower's grayed purple petals as a sigh bleats from Drakken's throat.

The flower creeps toward you, tilted slightly to one side, asking for more, the same way Dr. Drakken will do when he eats at his mother's table. You frown and tap your chin. You could lift water from the ocean, but it will not nourish a dry flower any more than it would a parched human tongue.

There is fresh water here on the beach, though – Peridot's smaller-than-average lake, which currently lies amidst the tangled remains of the barn.

With your back turned, you pull the lake up and call it over to you; you cannot bear to look back and see it among the broken boards that once held everything you knew of reassurance and companionship. The lake would be gone soon anyway, soaked into the sand and forgotten, and strengthening Drakken's flowers is the worthiest task to which it could give itself. As the lake passes over your head, you catch sight of Peridot. Her mouth is open in awe, not horror, and her eyes do not object. The two of you are in agreement.

The lake stops in front of the flower. It bends and sips, slowly and gratefully, so different from every other Earth plant you have ever seen, which has to drink water through its roots. You watch as the stringing vine takes on firm, green tone once again, as the burnt patches fall away and are replaced with immaculate new growth, and as vitality flows into the leaves and they perk to match their human's ponytail. The flower hangs there in plain sight, something that has been bettered by your power and by what you chose to do with it.

A smile, once an alien visitor, lands on your lips and makes its home there.

At first you are not sure how you will be able to heal the rest of Dr. Drakken's plants, but it does not take long to see that this vine here is the keystone of their operation. Other vines poke out long enough to stretch and display hearty flowers. The yellow petals that have become so dear to you unfurl from his neck to frame his face in silken health, the only smooth parts on his long, disheveled body. Even in the dark, you see Drakken's expression relax, and he eases back against the outcropping of stone at the base of the temple, his flowers full of your water, brought back from the drought by it.

Although you two do not touch, it is closer than you ever felt to Jasper.

"Holy Toledo!" Peridot says. "It's a perfectly legitimate exclamation!" she adds when you laugh. "It's from a serial known as 'Gumby' that Steven introduced to me while you were away."

"Really now? What it's like?" you say, surprising even yourself with the genuine interest in your voice. You scoot over beside Drakken, and he rests his head against yours.

"It's 'old.' Like from sixty years ago." Peridot titters. "Only on Earth would sixty years qualify as 'old.' It is a species of animation known as 'Claymation,' in which the characters are textured and rendered in the form of…"

On and on she goes. You don't understand half of what she is saying, as always, but you don't mind.

Somewhere around Peridot's description of the red, square-headed bad guys which are "like Rubies, only taller and smarter – don't tell Sapphire I said that," you realize Drakken has stopped chuckling with you, and when you carefully tip your head to the side to study him, you see that his eyes have fallen shut. "Shhh, Peridot," you say. "He fell asleep again."

"Fascinating business, this 'sleep.'" Peridot pads toward Drakken on her hands and knees. You recognize the look of captivation in her eyes.

Drakken's breathing is much more even-keeled than it is when he is awake. His side gently sails in and out against yours, the rhythm somehow soothing. Your vision thins, a burden tugging at its edges. You let yourself blink, and the next thing you know, you are awakening to suggestions of sunlight trickling through fogged clouds, Dr. Drakken trailing saliva onto the strap of your top. Peridot crouches in front of the two of you. Her eyes are sharp and diligent as they scan the horizon, as if she is your escort, your guardian.

You smile again.

In the near distance, you can hear Bismuth hammering at the house, and while you know you are no longer a target to her, the sound still tenses you. It seems silly, Peridot's watching over you, but you have seen her poof Corruptions before; like you, she is tougher than she looks.

You don't know how long it is before Dr. Drakken also jerks awake and groans as his back makes odd popping sounds. He smacks his lips together and greets you both with a bellow of, "Morning, ladies."

The three of you then enter Steven's house, which is still battered but not nearly as ravaged as it looked last night, where Dr. Drakken paws through packages of prepared human foods in the cabinets. He selects a box of cereal and drenches it in a bowl, Peridot watching in fascination. Only he can be loud enough to mask Bismuth's labor outside, and you are happy to listen to him. He sprays milk across the kitchen as he recounts the spooky dream he had last night, where he was swimming in a small regulated lake known as a "public pool" and had trouble keeping himself afloat when he realized his swimming costume was weighted down with enormous diamonds, in carats so rare and pure they couldn't be from Earth. The lifeguard on duty was a crocodile – an Earth creature which you have always avoided, with shark's teeth and without a shark's limitation to the ocean. "Seemed a bit friendlier than most crocodiles," Drakken sums up, "but she'd already swallowed her whistle, and I had no idea whether or not she would help me.

"No idea how I knew she was a 'she,'" he adds after a pause.

As he speaks, his spoon absentmindedly churns the milk in his bowl. It is strange to look at a liquid and not feel a connection to it; although there are millions of liquid substances in the universe, water makes up the bulk of it on Earth, and you have grown accustomed to it and its ability to help you down here. You did not have any dreams yourself last night, which signifies that you were blessed with a good night's sleep. Peaceful dreams for you are still endangered, like those varieties of coral that have been overharvested, and you would have thought that yesterday, tasking as it was, would have brought night visions of Destabilizing energy, collapsing homes, and disapproval etched onto Blue Diamond's forehead. Yet you don't recall any and, stranger still, you can only see the fear as a distant island on which you are no longer marooned.

After Drakken is done with his breakfast, the three of you return to your cozy nook outside, away from fragments of glass and wood. Peridot pulls out her tablet and finds clips from Gumby on the Internet.

"This web-warp," she says, using the term she will always use even after being told multiple times that humans call it a website, "is called Tube-Tube. Although I have perused a great deal of its content and have yet to locate a single tube. No test tubes. No potatoes, which can be known as 'tubers.' No underground plumbing. Anyway, here's the stuff Steven showed me!"

"Ooh, I think I remember these!" Drakken says when a green character shaped like a ragged piece of driftwood appears.

You peek over his shoulder at the screen. You can understand how the animation got its name; the characters appear to be formed out of kinetic clay that never stiffens. The timid horse character especially reminds you of the red-orange walls of the Jasper Beta Kindergarten – a thought which no longer frightens you when you remember that it produced dozens of malformed, kindly misfits and only one unflawed warrior. Unlike Camp Pining Hearts and its jerky animation, this show has a ripe, moist look to it, the texture of a sea sponge still alive in a tide pool. The characters possess facial features even more flexible than Drakken's, and many of the same powers as Gems: shapeshifting, regrowth after their bodies have been sliced into pieces, and a Quartz's ability to fold themselves up into balls and roll away.

"Oh, and then this part is sooooooo funny!" Peridot squeals. She reaches for her tablet, stops, and then pulls her little fingers back. "Except – I won't show it to you, Lapis, because it kind of, sort of implies fusion, in a way."

You are trying to decide whether to be exasperated or pleased when a cry of fear erupts from further up the beach, and your back goes numb. Even now, after Steven has long since repaired both of you, you recognize it as Greg. Bismuth, too, grows still on the deck, her hammering hand cocked in midair, her head tilted lightly to one side, unsure how to respond to the soft-fleshed human running toward her. Even caution looks predatory on her, but you are glad to see it in her stance nevertheless.

Jewels of sweat shine on Greg's face. In his arms, he cradles an Earth fruit that you believe is called a watermelon. You scarcely notice its overripe scent bursting in the air, because it has a crude, roughly formed body: stumping arms and legs, a thick middle, and no neck. Its head is crowned with ridges and slopes like a rocky coastline – or a full head of curly hair. Its eyes are black seeds, and even so simplified, you can see the unadulterated goodness in them.

For a moment, your wings turn to ice. You have seen these creatures before.

Correction: she has seen these creatures before, through green eyes where blue was rapidly losing the battle to yellow. You remember the scene unbidden, as though in a trance – how Jasper's voice growled through your shared mouth, and how Steven risked entering a body even more breakable than his half-human one in order to keep watch over his friends, including you.

Greg thrusts the watermelon toward Bismuth. She recoils, her face twisted. Beside you, Dr. Drakken's hand lands on yours. He begins to stammer, and you answer him before his mouth can find the question.

"It's Steven," you say.

"How – how – how?" is all that comes out before Drakken is once again reduced to splintering syllables.

Greg sets the watermelon with his son's soul inside down in front of him; it lists to one side, as though beaten by a strong wind that strikes only it. Its drooping arms wave as it pips frantic, high-pitched noises that remind you of intermittent static on a broken speech transmitter.

Drakken gawps at the watermelon before he squats beside it. "What's that you say? 'Help'? Well, yes, absolutely! Just tell us what you need, and we'll do whatever we can!"

Bismuth is no longer the only one with a bewildered face. Everyone turns wide stares on Drakken, and you join them, your fingers sunken tightly into your upper arms to remind yourself that you alone inhabit this small streak of light projected by your gem. At long last, Peridot squeaks, "Exactly what just happened?"

"What? Is it – is it not speaking English?" Drakken scratches at his neck, displacing a yellow petal, confusion momentarily addling him when you shake your head. "No? Well, that's…new!"

Greg makes a sound that would be a chuckle were it not drenched in fear. "Must be a plant thing."

The watermelon begins to jibber again.

Drakken glances backward, and you watch him try to hold his chin firm. "Bismuth?" he calls.

"Yeah?" Bismuth's brow is pleated, her lips contorted, softening the places on her where harshness still peeks through.

"He says to tell you specifically that the Crystal Gems need backup!"

"That's all I need to hear! I'll be there as soon…" Bismuth's voice halts, and she gazes from you to Peridot to Drakken. "We'll be there as soon as we possibly can."

You give her the thumb's-up you would give anyone else.

All at once, she becomes nothing to you, nothing compared to the Great Diamond Authority and its influence that hangs over Homeworld like a toxic gas. Steven stands under it now, and in spite of the fright that runs down your back, you stand ready, shoulders back, feet apart, head filled with the roar of the ocean.

Drakken snaps back to the watermelon. "Did you catch all of that, Stevemelon?"

The watermelon nods, its mouth parted as if in laughter, and then falls, head hitting the sand. Steven begins to seep out of the black seed eyes as they shut.

You throw out your consciousness like a fishhook, catching Steven's before it can slip away. You close your physical eyes, but another pair inside of you opens and there you stand, across from Steven. Sky and sea have disappeared, and what few boundaries remain cycle through colors, the way Peridot's tablet does when it gets bored from lack of attention.

Steven blinks at the blank setting. His gaze finds you and lights up. "Lapis! Oh, good, you're back! Nice pants!" he exclaims, as though this were the only thing worth noting.

"Steven? Are you hurt?" you say.

"No, they didn't hurt me. They just locked me in a room," Steven says, and you know it to be the truth, because there is no torture behind his words. He frowns. "The other Crystal Gems are poofed, though, so if you can get up here fast, we'd all really appreciate it."

He speaks in a calm, measured tone, a tone that has given up on expressing what he has been through because it knows it will never be able to do so, and he doesn't seem to be especially eager to leave you. You reach fingers without substance out to him. "How did the fight on the beach stop?" you ask. "How are we not all dead?"

"Oh. That. I talked to the Diamonds."

You snort. "Of course you did. Blue, maybe – but Yellow?"

"I just showed them that Pink Diamond is still around." Steven squirms as if he is wearing something in real life that does not match his body as well as the shirt and denims you see here in the dreamscape.

The ground shifts under you where there is no ground to shift. "She is?" you say. "Sheesh, I miss everything. Where is she?"

Steven pulls in a long breath, and you can tell by its weight that it pains him. He swallows against pressure and nothing else and then speaks again. "Pink Diamond shapeshifted into Rose Quartz and lived as Rose Quartz for five thousand years until she had…a son."

The colors stop cycling, and a magenta mist rises around the two of you.

All else vanishes – Bismuth and her nearness, the memory of Jasper's violent embrace, even the danger awaiting you on Homeworld. You stare forward. Somewhere inside you, you see a Kindergarten hole open up and Pink Diamond break through. You see yourself bowing before Rose Quartz where she sits on the smallest of the thrones with a Pearl on either side – one wearing an empty smile on her grayed, smashed face; the other gripping a sword as quiet intensity hums beneath her white skin.

You see shards of pink rain to the ground, and when you slap your hands over your mouth, you know are doing it in reality as well.

Steven lifts his shirt and gestures to the surface of his gem. The enormity of the realization creeps over you slowly, like the sunrays on the horizon: if you could see its opposite side, it would be not a mirror of the front but the wide, then tapering angles of a cone. Those angles were always associated with fierceness in your mind. "Lapis…I'm Pink Diamond."

Your hands drop, and something almost unrecognizable spreads through every facet of you, just as it did when Steven applied his healing spit to the crack on your back. You are not as confident in identifying it as you are the watermelon, but you think it might be called peace. All this time, you were so terrified of those who wore Diamond gemstones – and one of those stones was with you all along, hidden in the flesh of the least terrifying creature in either galaxy.

The fear that clutched for so long releases and you fly away from it; there is safety inside you, in a place the Diamonds will never be able to touch. You smile, a smile more content than any you have ever worn, even before the war.

"No, you're not," you say, your voice as gentle as drifting leaves. "You're Steven."

The answering smile that shimmers in Steven's eyes is the last thing you see before you open your own.

Earth has swept closer to the sun than you had realized, the light rushing toward you, illuminating everything. You are returning to Homeworld as an insurrectionary. The thought should petrify you.

Soon enough, it probably will – but not yet.

Your hands rise to your cheeks and you bend over double. Head in the sand, you laugh and laugh and laugh. You laugh so forcefully the artificial muscles in your stomach ache; you laugh as feet speed back and forth around you, preparing for the rescue in which you will participate; you laugh until there is no more air to form laughter.

The tide rolls in and collects around your knees and elbows, tiny pools of the ocean celebrating with you.