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.

45. Together

~Okay, so this chapter is ridiculously long, but should be worth the wait (*crosses fingers*). Anyway, love to my readers and I hope you all are having a great summer! Better than 2020, at least... :/~

"No, Peridot." You meet her pleading eyes with a stare of iron pyrite, firm but not hardened. "You turned over the card with the purple blob on it, and that means you have to go back to the square where the purple blob hangs out."

"But, Lapis, look!" Peridot lifts the green, human-shaped plastic token and pokes at the space beneath it. "I'm on a square the same color as my representative character here, and that magnifies my powers so that I become invincible!"

You refuse to smile. "Nope. Not how the game works."

"Is too!"

"Is not."

"Yes, it is!"

"It really isn't."

A tapping at the front door distracts you from your argument. Peridot runs to the window crusted in Opal frost and peers out. The sky leaks a strange hybrid of ice and cold water, as though Sapphire has passed over the clouds in a temper, but Peridot must still be able to see who waits at the door, for she cries, "Mail call!" as if she is the messenger on Camp Pining Hearts bringing letters from home to the campers.

You pull open the door. "Hi, Butterfly," you say to the Gem hovering there, an Aquamarine who immigrated from Homeworld several tides ago. "What are you doing here?"

Butterfly pulls an envelope from her pocket with a flap of her wings, fuller and denser than yours; they surround her body just like on the Earth insect that inspired Bismuth's nickname for her. "I have mail for Lapis Lazuli." Her voice is high, moist, and charming – the same as every other Aquamarine's you have ever known, except nothing false hides in the sweet notes.

"Mail? For me?" Ever since Amethyst found a job for Butterfly, some of the Gems have begun sending letters, practicing marking envelopes with names and addresses that tell the people who run Earth's mail system where to take them. Most of their letters went to Steven or to friends still living on Homeworld, and often they receive replies. You never wrote any. There is no one on Homeworld who misses you. "Are you sure?"

Butterfly nods. When you look at the front of the envelope, you can read your name, followed by the words Little Homeworld, Beach City in script both jaunty and competent. It does not look familiar.

You reach out your hand and accept it. "Okay, that's weird. But thanks, Butterfly. Have a good day."

"Same to you, of course. Hello there, Peridot," Butterfly says as Peridot waves wildly at her from the window. "Nice day for staying inside if you're not a mail carrier, am I right?" She titters at her own joke in the manner of a Gem who is still trying to absorb the idea of humor.

From behind, you watch her tiny figure flit out of view. She no longer wears a ribbon-wand secured to her neat curve of hair, a change to which you have not yet adjusted but which you find a great relief.

You sit down on the rug and turn the envelope over. On its back the paper converges into a triangular knot that reminds you of Peridot's lips. With her springing up and down beside you, you guide your fingers under the two sloping sides, slide them to the meeting point, and tug; the envelope lifts with only a mild tearing of paper.

A square only a few shades darker than the frost outside falls from the envelope and into your lap. Its edges are corrugated like those of Homeworld's ancient buildings, and you run your fingers over its waves as you would those familiar rippled walls. Words scroll across its center, pristine formal shapes that tell you they were written by a machine.

You read them aloud: "You are cordially invited to the wedding of Kimberly Ann Possible and Ronald Daniel Stoppable." You frown momentarily at the names until you recognize them inside the new forms they've assumed. "Oh – Kim and Ron!"

"Who-o-a. Ooh. Lucky Lapis." Peridot leans over your lap to examine the card with her big inquisitive eyes, splashed with the softest, most benevolent streak of envy.

The air fills with beauty, soaking you. Your gem takes on the feel of warm water as it does when it releases your wings, and one hand shifts from the rug to brush over wood that still feels smooth and smells fresh after half a rotation around the sun.

You already knew that Kim and Ron were to be married. They announced it on Friendbook during their Christmas break. The memory pulls at your mind, and you allow your thoughts to dock there.

Dr. Drakken was at the computer in his kitchen, checking on a website where people discuss their lives with their friends, a way that Homeworld would never have thought to use its connective data system. One hand twirled his mouse to prompt the screen to move, while the other scouted around in a desk drawer for a set of batteries. You sat at the table, feet hooked beneath you, reading the book about mermaids Peridot got you for Christmas, when Drakken suddenly made a sound shrill and vaporous and very uncharacteristic of him.

You let the book drop to the table and circled around him, searching his face for signs of distress. "Drakken? Are you okay?"

"Lapis! Look – oh my gosh – look at – ohhhh – you've got to look at this!" Drakken gestured frantically at the computer screen.

You followed the point of his bony shaking finger as well as the white arrow, now still on the screen. It rested beside a picture of Kim, the same picture that accompanies every piece of her life that she shares: dressed like she was on a mission to save the planet, grinning back over her shoulder at the camera, her hands wrapped around a red object that you know can shoot out a rope with a hook on the end for when she needs to travel to otherwise inaccessible places. In small letters, it read, Kim Possible updated her relationship status.

In even smaller letters, it added, Engaged.

"Engaged?" you said, looking at Drakken. You had heard the word before, but only applied to weapons and emergency protocols, never people. "What does that mean?"

Despite the alarming noise he had made, Drakken didn't appear frightened; though his skin was the color of old snow, a flimsy smile pushed its way across his mouth and his arms flapped happily at his sides. "Engaged to be married!" he said, his buoy-words vibrating at the same speed as the rest of him. "It means she's getting married!"

"To Ron?" As soon as you asked, you knew it was a silly question. From what little you have heard about marriage, you know Kim would never give it to anyone other than Ron.

Drakken nodded. "They're getting married!" he repeated.

You blinked at the screen. "Right now?"

"Oh, no, no, no. Not right now." Drakken's chuckle, ordinarily rich and thunderous, emerged in slivers. "It takes months to plan a wedding!

"A wedding – that's what they call the ceremony when humans get married," he added when you wrinkled your forehead at him. "Oh, Lapis, is this such wonderful news!" Drakken beamed at you, and despite the clouded, shadowed sky seeming to permeate even the inside of his house, a light caught in his eyes, held in place between the long eyelashes. "I always knew they were meant for each other!"

His body wavered as if attempting to remain upright on the dock of a boat thrashed by waves. You reached over and helped him sit in his chair before he could fall. He pressed his fists to his mouth and uttered nonsensical syllables, his feet beating the floor.

"So what is being married like?" you asked him after he had calmed as much as he could. "I mean, I know humans don't fuse and then live the rest of their lives as one being."

"No, that's anglerfish." Drakken's fingertips tapped. "Well, obviously I've never been married, and I never really had much of an example, but from what I've been able to pick up from other sources, being married means you share a house, and a room, and a bed. You wash each other's clothes and eat dinner together every night you can, even when it means that you have to stop working on an extremely important scientific discovery to do it, and you fight over whose turn it is to do the dishes. Sometimes you have kids, once you're both ready. And you look out for each other always."

"Sounds pretty nice," you said with a smile.

Drakken nodded. "It's meant to last forever," he said, and then he paused. It isn't like Drakken to leave something unsaid unless it pains him.

You said the next part so he didn't have to. "But it doesn't always."

"No. But these kids – they're going to make it last, and not just because they're two of the most frightfully stubborn people I know!" Drakken shook his head, his eyes wide with wonder. "If anything could drive them apart, it already would have."

You remembered how Kim and Ron looked at each other every time you'd ever seen them, the connection behind their eyes strong enough to transmit any mood, any instructions, or any simple thought. They used words, you were sure, only to include you and Drakken in on the conversation.

"So I take it nothing has?" you said.

Drakken shook his head again. "Not even me." This he said with gravity, as though he was the greatest threat Kim and Ron had ever faced.

You moved closer to him and took a moment to search your own feelings, which still felt new to you after so many years of suppression. You found joy for the humans and a hint of sympathy for the anglerfish. Slowly disappearing into someone else at the bottom of the ocean is not love; it is not even close.

Beneath Kim's and Ron's names are a date – in early summer; Dr. Drakken was correct about the time needed to plan – and a time, what you believe to be late afternoon. The address below them appears to point to a temple of sorts in Middleton.

"RSVP." Peridot glances up at you, and her eyes sink into deep thought. "That's a thing for all the weddings? When Steven sent his invitations, I thought it just stood for Ruby Sapphire Very Pretty."

You laugh and read aloud the small, rumpled words that must have been added by Ron: "Note: this is just a fancy way of saying, 'Please call us and let us know if you're coming.'"

"Well?" Peridot demands, poking your lap with her elbows as she wriggles. "Are you going to go?"

"Hmmm. Prob-aaaa-bly. I'll have to check my schedule for that week, though." You watch the confusion flicker across the tiny gullible face just long enough for Peridot to blink once, and then you snort. "Yeah, Peridot, of course I'm going to go. I really like Kim and Ron, and it'll be neat to go to a wedding. I mean, I hope. I've never been to one before."

Peridot nods; she wears an expression as close to wisdom as she ever comes. "Weddings are extremely joyous and moving ceremonies," she says. "I predict you will enjoy yourself." She dips the pointed chin that Drakken always refers to as "elfin" at the card. "You should call and let them know now before you forget!"

You stand up and pull your body straight. "Yes, ma'am!" you say. Peridot grins, knowing that you are jesting.

The warp pad delivers you to Steven's house, and he answers the front door when you knock. He has never met Kim and Ron, but stars grow in his eyes when you tell him about the wedding invitation, and he hands you his phone without waiting for you to request it.

You hold the card close with one hand to see the combination of numbers that you tap out with the other. You wonder if it is the same combination Kim's family had in their first home before the Lorwardians destroyed it. For some reason you hope so.

The phone jingles a few times, a warp pad's announcement, and then there is a click before the phone is answered by a voice you recognize. "Hello, Possible residence," she says.

"Hi, Kim. This is Lapis Lazuli," you say. "I, um, I got your invitation."

You hear a shuffling noise as the phone changes hands, and then Ron says, "You did? All riiiiight! It wasn't too weird that we sent you one, was it? KP said that we didn't need to, 'cuz of course you'd be Drakken's plus-one, but I thought, hey, she probably doesn't get stuff in the mail too often, and she might like –"

"What's a plus-one?" You hate to interrupt, but you need to ask before the flow of the conversation carries the phrase out to sea.

"The extra person you get to bring to a wedding with you," Ron says. "And guys tend to bring their girlfriends. Ya know, when they have them."

"Yeah, that makes sense," you say. "And, no, it wasn't too weird at all."

"Boo-yah," Ron says, and you know that somehow means he approves.

"Anyway, I'm RSVPing," you tell them. "To tell you I can come."

The phone shuffles again, and Kim speaks once more. "Great. We'll look forward to seeing you."

You pause. It would be the easiest time to say goodbye and hang up, but something about what she has just said holds you in place and thins out your nervousness.

"I'm really glad you guys are getting married," you blurt out. "If any humans belong together, it's you two."

A soft silence follows.

"Aw, that's so sweet, Lapis," Kim says. "We're pretty happy, too." Her voice is giddy, childlike, as Drakken's so often is, as though this excitement is too great for even her taut willpower to contain.

"Okay. Well – see you later, alligator." You use a term you have heard on television, then frown. "'Alligator' isn't an insult on Earth, is it?"

"Not in that context." You can hear Kim smile. "See you, Lapis."

You disconnect Steven's phone from hers. Next to you, Steven squeals and encloses you in a hug. It is still strange to rest your head on his shoulder without having to bend down.

"So – what next?" Steven asks, his breath warm against the tip of your nose.

"Next." You straighten. "Next I go see Dr. Drakken so we can make our plans."

Steven gives your arm a squeeze and lets go. "Have fun, Lapis!"

You step onto the warp pad again, flinging your body of light into the gray sky. It doesn't look dull anymore, just quiet and patient, awaiting springtime.

Your feet touch the warp pad in Middleton and then lift again as you summon your wings. You gaze down at the tops of road signs while you fly, realizing that you are not paying attention to what they say. Sometime in the last several years, you have memorized the path from the warp pad to the blue-spotted house.

After you press the door-chime, you hear Dr. Drakken mutter his way to the door, but his face shines when he opens it and sees you. His feet are shoved into a pair of soft, fluffing shoes that likely wouldn't offer much protection against snow or stone, and tufts of his hair jut in various directions, like a clump of beach grass that has gotten trampled by excited feet and stayed that way. A winter wind shrieks as it rattles the glass door between you and him, and Drakken rips it open, beckoning you inside.

"Quick, quick!" he calls. "Before you freeze us out!"

You sit down at his kitchen table as you did the day you found out about Kim and Ron's marriage. "I got my invitation today," you say.

"Invitation…invitation... Oh, yes! The invitation from our two little lovebirds about their wedding?" He smiles as though a piece of machinery he has invented is working flawlessly, a smile that rounds up his cheeks below his eyes, one of which winks at you. "Got mine yesterday. I think because I live closer to them."

"Probably." You scoot your chair closer to his and reach your hand across the table's uneven surface. His hands bumble in front of him and then find where they need to be, his fingerprints pressed against yours. "So – I know I already asked you what marriage is like. What's a wedding like?"

Mist seems to pass over Drakken's eyes. "Oh, weddings. Weddings are very huge and complicated affairs, but don't worry over that! We're just coming as guests. We're not part of the wedding party."

"Oh. So we don't go to the party?" You are not sure whether to be relieved or disappointed.

"Oh, we very much go to the party that is the wedding! The wedding party is just what they call all the people who have to actually stand up and walk around and do things in the wedding. Rather strange use of the term." He shrugs his shoulders, broadened by extra padding in his coat-of-labs, and rubs at a wayward petal behind his ear.

"So…who are the people who have to move around?"

"Well, let's see. That would be the bridesmaids – all the bride's closest friends – and the groomsmen – all the groom's closest friends, and oh my gosh, I didn't even tell you that Kim is called the bride and Ron is called the groom!" Drakken's words are a line of Rubies attempting to walk in formation, some stopping abruptly, others tumbling over them, and all of them jumping to their feet almost before they hit the ground. "There's the flower girl. She carries a basket full of petals and scatters them everywhere.

"The ring bearer. That's a little boy who carries the wedding rings forward on a giant pillow. The groom should already be standing up front, and then, last of all, the bride comes in and walks down the aisle."

"Are we supposed to clap?" you ask.

"Well, you'd have to ask Kim Possible to know for sure. But, generally, no, we don't clap. Hmmm. There's typically a rehearsal dinner the night before."

"You have to rehearse to eat dinner? I thought that came naturally to humans."

Drakken shakes his head. "Two separate events, actually. We rehearse, then we eat dinner. And guests at a wedding really only need to sit and watch quietly and cry, so the two of us won't have much to rehearse."

"I'm pretty good at sitting and watching quietly. I don't know about crying." You are suddenly conscious of every blink of your eyes, the short fringe of eyelashes you see before your eyelids close and the irregular patterns of light you see afterward. They are so dry.

Drakken's thumb bounces up and down on your middle knuckle. "Oh, Lapis, you're not required to cry by any means. It's just that most guests end up doing it because they get overwhelmed by all the happiness. I'll probably cry, so don't freak out at that, okay? It'll be good crying. But nobody's going to be paying attention to whether or not you're crying. This isn't some test you have to pass."

You look at him, disheveled and shining with confidence and hesitation; exuberance and wistfulness; certainty and doubt: all of the raw, conflicting, human emotions that have slipped like sand through your fingers for so long.

"And waiting up front with the groom will be… hmm." Drakken's fingers pull back and fold inward in thought. "I just realized I don't know if it'll be a priest, a minister, or a rabbi."

"Singers?" you guess.

Drakken shakes his head. "Religious leaders. They're usually the ones who perform the wedding ceremony. It's how they make everything official."

His words remain buoyant, and you take them to mean that there will be no war over which type of leader will serve Kim and Ron. You feel a swell of pride for humanity.

"Anyway, he – or she, I guess – usually gives a big speech about why marriage is so special and how the couple's relationship is so beautiful." Drakken tilts his chair back a few centimeters, hands meeting behind his ponytail. "Which, in the case of Kim Possible and her beau, is so very true. Did you know they've known each other since they were four?"

"Four years old?" You try to imagine a human so new. The smallest human you have ever seen is the silent child with the eyes deep and vacuous as empty wells, the one whom Steven calls Onion, and even he seems of a greater age than that.

"Uh-huh! Which means that in all likelihood, they would have very few, if any, memories of a time before they met." The knowledge seems to secure Drakken's wobbling eyebrow, and he exhales. "They've always loved each other, I suppose, but the kissing is a relatively new development. Just the last couple of years, I think."

He speaks of years the way your people speak of centuries, and this time you do not blame him. The last couple of years have crushed and reshaped your life in more ways than you would have believed possible.

"And anyway, the prie – the rabb – the leader of the ceremony," Drakken blusters, "gets the wedding rings from the ring bearer. The bride holds the groom's ring, and the groom holds the bride's. And then rabb – prie – the leader asks them if they promise to love and honor and take care of and stick with each other for the rest of their lives!"

You find yourself leaning forward, your breathing slowed. "And they say yes?"

Drakken's eyes drift somewhere beyond the room. His teeth look as brilliant as jewels, and the smile he gives you differs from his usual smiles: quiet where they are loud, and reverent where they are reckless. "They say, 'I do.'"

He leaves that alone for a second or two, the way you will leave a fresh meepmorp alone so as not to smear its paint or ink, and then begins again. "The bride puts the groom's ring on his finger, and he puts her ring on hers."

"And then do the rings become a part of them? Attach, I mean? So they can never take them off again?" You picture metallic bands welding to Kim's and Ron's flesh, a connection that they cannot dissolve any more than they can remove their own heads.

Drakken points at you as though you are a particularly clever contestant on a game show. "That would be really cool! But no. It's more of a symbolic thing."

"Oh. Duh." You roll your eyes at yourself. "I guess they'll need to wash their hands sometimes. So – what happens then?"

"Well, the leader says something along the lines of, 'I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride.' And then the groom does, and then they're married!"

Your attempt to visualize a kiss with a promise wrapped inside it is interrupted when Drakken's chair falls over backward. A thick vine shoots out of either side of his neck and wraps behind him, forming a spring of sorts so that he bounces forward rather than hitting the ground. He grins as his feet find the floor again, pulling the rest of his body upright.

"These things are so nifty," he says. "Now, where was I?"

"In your chair, talking about what happens after the groom kisses the bride," you tell him.

"Ah. Yes." Drakken props his chair back up and perches on the edge, rubbing his hands together as if trying to warm himself, his gloves making squelching sounds as they are forced quickly together and just as quickly apart. "Then we all go to a big party called the reception, where we'll have to sit and wait for an hour or so while everybody who was in the wedding gets their pictures taken two thousand times or so. They'll serve cake and punch, and that's when people will give toasts!"

You frown at him. "Do I have to make toast in front of everybody? Because I've only used a toaster a few times, and I'd probably forget how to do it with everyone staring at me."

Drakken's chuckle is soft, the muted rumble of thunder on the horizon rather than the raucous clap of thunder overhead. "Oh, no, Lapis. For some reason that escapes me, 'toast' has nothing to do with bread when you're talking about a wedding. Giving a toast means that someone stands up, raises their drink, and makes a speech about how much they love the bride and groom."

"Oh," you say again. You let your face go slack the way you have seen Shego's do, surprised when the hardening that usually follows does not strike you. You have no need for it anymore.

"And no one has to give a toast if they don't want to." His hands part and he holds up one palm, stopping a question unspoken. "But don't worry. Tons of people will be there, and plenty of them will be dying to give toasts. I mean, not literally dying, but maybe eager enough to drool!

"Now, what they will expect from us, as esteemed guests, is a gift."

"What kind of gift?" You think of the first gift you ever gave Drakken: a small seashell, marbled brown and white, that the ocean let you take to him.

"Well, usually something for their new house."

You blink. "You mean like a toilet? Or a bed?"

Drakken wags his head, still grinning. "Most houses come with toilets already attached, and beds cost much more money than Kim Possible and the boy would ask us to spend. It'd probably be more along the lines of an appliance."

"Appliances? Those are the things Peridot takes apart when she wants to build robots, right?"

The short finger thrusts in your direction again. "That's absolutely what they are! Hmmm, I don't know precisely what to get them off the top of my brain, but the really nice thing is that most couples make lists of what they're going to need, and then they'll put it on the Internet so all the guests can choose something! That's called a registry." He nods with importance.

"Okay," you say, shrugging. The wedding, when you try to envision it, has yet to develop beyond an image of Kim and Ron surrounded by an ethereal mist, like the realm where Gem spirits wait for their bodies to recreate themselves, but the thought of walking into that mist does not frighten you this time.

Drakken sighs as though he has exhausted himself with his own intensity. "Oh, Lapis –" his gaze darts to yours – "this is going to be incredible!"

You keep your eyes focused on his. You do not feel tears in yours, but neither do you feel the flatness that developed after five thousand years of compression behind a circle of glass. You do not feel the huge jagged crack that split your instincts, denying new facets of life the chance to be perceived as anything but a threat; its healing has been too slow and mystifying to be caused by Gem magic.

Days pass, then weeks. Drakken looks up Kim and Ron's wedding registry on his computer and skims through it, his eyes flickering from one appliance to the next, rumbling sounds stirring in his throat. Every now and then, he asks for your opinion on an item. You always respond with a shrug; your time on Earth has taught you about these appliances and their uses, but you have no idea which would best serve a pair of young humans moving into the same house. Drakken has already assured you that whatever he buys for Kim and Ron can be offered as a gift from both of you.

Eventually, Drakken bounces from his chair and cries, "A-ha! Now there's something I can get excited about! A food processor!"

You blink. "I thought food was already processed when you bought it. You know, to make it edible." No humans you know eat meat straight from the animal or grain straight from the ground.

"Edible, yes, but not necessarily convenient," Drakken says. "Imagine you bought an onion to eat."

You remind yourself that an onion is also a heavily-scented vegetable, not just the name of the quiet, staring child back in Beach City.

"Of course you want to eat it, because in the right form it's delicious. But taking a big bite out of a whole onion tends to be…eh, a bit much." Drakken shivers. "BUT, if you have a food processor, you can chop it into tiny little pieces to put in soup or slice it into…err, slices…to put on a hamburger."

"Oh. I get it. Sounds neat," you say. "Can we get one of those at Smarty Mart?"

"We can and we shall!" The sparkle in Drakken's eyes reminds you of sunrays glimpsing off the ocean. He shoves a finger into the air. "To Smarty Mart!"

"To Smarty Mart," you echo, more quietly.

A few minutes later, you pass beneath the brain cartoon drawn to have human limbs and a human face, and the doors open in deference to you as they would to any other visitor. As soon as they slap shut behind you, the sky disappears, Smarty Mart's bold white lights swallowing the weather outside. You are not yet sure whether or not you like that.

"Food processor," you say, scanning the store.

"Food processor," Drakken confirms.

He selects a basket that hangs over one wrist and plunges into the store past the stand of magazines, the display of makeup meant to paint lips and eyelids, and the stack of food in cans. At the entrance to a corridor of candy, his resolve founders. You catch his arm as he starts to drift down the corridor and tow him back. He nods his thanks and continues with sounds emerging from him half-formed and his lower lip pushed out in determination.

The two of you reach a corridor where appliances are stocked from the floor level to several feet above your heads. You are glad that Peridot didn't come with you. She would be tugging boxes to the ground and throwing them open to make off with parts. You are somewhat impressed that Drakken refrains from doing the same. He runs his fingers across the metal shelves where the boxes rest and lets out a squealing noise when his eyes land on one that reads BLING 2000 FOOD PROCESSOR.

"Yesss! Here it is!" Drakken lowers the box into his arms and flips open its top. The pieces inside are chaotic and disconnected, but you recognize its main component: a translucent chamber about the length of your forearm, tiny tips of knives poking from the unopened end. It looks right to you.

You glance at Drakken to see him gazing down into the box with eyes like mirrors. "Amazing," he says. "Just imagine what else it could do with a few simple modifications."

You smirk to yourself. Whatever Dr. Drakken describes as "simple" often turns out to be anything but.

When he closes the box again, you hold your hand up for a high-five. "To Kim and Ron, from Lapis Lazuli and Dr. Drakken," you say, trying out the words.

"Indeed!" Drakken sets the box in the basket and looks down at it with his hands curled in triumph on his hips. "Oh! They'll also probably be expecting a card!"

"A…card?" you say.

You imagine the card Kim and Ron sent you to announce their marriage and the cards that instruct you to move to different spaces on the racing-board game you and Peridot play.

"A card to say congratulations, we're happy for you, best wishes, etc." Drakken scurries forward, his strides short choppy waves. They stop when they reach a section of the store lined with paper envelopes and the memos humans send each other for their birthdays, light plastic fitted between each variant to maintain their individuality.

"Oh," you say. "I didn't know they made Happy Wedding cards, too."

"They do! Many different kinds, in fact. And the one I select shall be the most –" He hesitates, his mouth pulled to one side. "Err. Gggh. Um, since I picked out the present, do you want to pick out the card?"

You wait to feel the terror of being placed in charge steal over you. You wait, and when it does come after a long moment, it is weak, a trickle. "How about we each pick out one?" you say.

"Brilliant plan." Drakken pats your bare shoulder and swivels to look at the signs placed along the length of the corridor. "New Baby, Sympathy, Anniversary – ah, here we are! Wedding!"

He busies himself with the cards right away. You pick up the first one at your eye level and stare at the picture on the front, a pair of bells linked with a pale pink ribbon.

Marriage is a beautiful phenomenon, the essence of human closeness and connection, it reads. The bond you share can never be broken. Two very different people who, with their vows, become something stronger and greater than the sum of themselves.

Your back trembles, remembering the feel of Jasper's arm against it as she leaned you backward into a great flash of light. You shake your head and put the card back on the shelf.

Some of the cards feature short, cute sentiments rhyming on every other line; there is nothing wrong with them, yet you cannot imagine signing your name to them. Others tell jokes that you don't understand. One particularly thick card that appears promising begins to blare music when you open it, at such a depth and volume you would almost believe it to be blown through a conch shell. You quickly slap it closed again, and it grows quiet.

At the end of the corridor, you pick up another card and look it over. There is love in every season, if we look for it. Honor, commitment, and joy have always defined your relationship. May it continue to define your marriage, for the rest of your lives.

You sigh. The card is nearly perfect, except for the feeling of artificiality that your signature would bring to it. The words are beautiful words, tidy and well-chosen, but they are someone else's words. You can see how this would work well for Dr. Drakken, whose own words tend to get caught in riptides when his emotions are this intense, yet you want to give Kim and Ron something more than borrowed words.

You want to give them a meepmorp.

It takes Drakken quite a while to find the card he likes best, which gives you time to consider what you want yours to say. When he meets up with you and asks if you have chosen one yet, you shake your head.

"No. I think I'm going to make my own card for them."

For an instant, Drakken's face swims in confusion, and then it surfaces with a grin. "Oh! Okay. You know what? I think they'd really like that, Lapis."

A Stock-Bot trundles by, its corded arms extended and ready to lift objects. Drakken jerks away from it, his eyes wary, as if he distrusts either it or himself. You suspect the latter.

Yet the Dr. Drakken you have known for years on Earth lies rarely, never well, and never to you.

You watch the Stock-Bot until it disappears from view, and your thoughts grow as vivid as reflections. You see Kim and Ron coming to greet the two of you, the warmth that suffuses their smiles as they look at Drakken, a man who has wronged them in so many ways. You hear their words of encouragement. You remember a particularly frightening memory Drakken has only recently been brave enough to share with you, of a time when he fell unconscious and awakened to find himself in the ocean, his lungs hacking up water, the sky and sea both stained a violent red. Kim Possible was beside him, and though her look of concern had turned hastily to annoyance, her arm was around him, keeping him up.

"If it weren't for her," Drakken told you, an earthquake in his voice, "I know I would have drowned. Or maybe worse."

You glance at the card Drakken has selected, one of the sweet ones with the gentle poetry, and give him a thumb's-up, but you know you have made the right choice.

On your way to the payment line, you pass a small plateau of metal propped against the end of a corridor, showing off the tent atop it. The tent is pink and its flaps kick outward, reminding you of the tents where Rose Quartz's armies once took shelter between battles, although no one but the Earth and Heaven Beetles would fit inside this tent. You reach one hand toward its fabric but stop yourself, not sure something so delicate will hold up to even the faintest touch.

"Ooh, hello!" Drakken stops at your shoulder and looks at the tent, his eyes lively just as they have been all day. "What is this?"

You read the tag hanging from the lip of the plateau: "SALE – seventy-percent off –" you smile, remembering a time when you didn't understand those words – "pet beds." You look more closely at the tent, feeling your eyebrows pull together. "Pet bed? That'd be way too small for Commodore Puddles."

"No doubt about it," Drakken says. "It must be for really, really small pets – like hamsters, or mice, or gerbils –"

"Or Ron's little pet." You imagine the creature even pinker than Steven, the creature who never wanders far from Ron's shoulder or the pocket of his pants, his tail swinging upward like the ends of Drakken's hair. "What's his name?"

"Rufus," Drakken says, his chin straight with certainty.

"Right, Rufus. What kind of animal is he?"

"A naked mole rat."

You have heard of rats and you have heard of moles, yet the first word remains a stranger to you. "What does 'naked' mean?"

A rosy flush hits Drakken's sharpened cheekbones. "Well, when you say it about humans, it means they're – ahem – not wearing any clothes," he says, his large voice dwindling to nearly nothing before reviving again. "But for Rufus, all it means is that he doesn't have a big thick coat of fur the way other types of rats do. Instead, he's just got all these thin little tiny hairs."

"Kind of like you," you say. You have seen men on the beach who have hair heaped upon their chests and arms, dense enough to be animal pelts. Drakken does not.

The flush deepens. "Errr, yes. Indeed. Nggh."

You determine that you will not use the word naked around Dr. Drakken again.

Beneath the metal plateau's face, there is a shelf of boxes, all shining with the smooth image of identical pet tents. You bend over to look at them and straighten again with one in your arms. "I want to get one for Rufus," you say to Drakken's puckered, confused expression.

"Okay." He blinks. "How come?"

"Because if Rufus is anything like Pumpkin, he probably likes to sleep in Ron's bed sometimes. And if Kim and Ron are gonna share a bed now, where's Rufus going to sleep?" You keep your eyes wide open, refusing to picture the pink furless creature sad.

Drakken's flush remains, but he gives you a grin wide and beautiful. "It really shouldn't surprise me anymore – how thoughtful you can be."

"You think they'll like it?"

Drakken climbs onto the tips of his toes, lets his weight fall, and rises again. "Lapis, if they don't adore it, I will be very surprised! And ticked off, but we don't need to go there." He clutches the front of his coat-of-labs as if overwhelmed by the emotion he anticipates witnessing.

You shift the box under one arm and head for the payment counter, your gem filled with light.

When you arrive back at Little Homeworld, you grab a piece of chunky paper and your box of pencils in different colors. You fold the paper in half, brush your bangs back from your eyes, and write high on the front flap of paper, Best Friends Love Each Other Forever.

On the inside, you draw several heart shapes and write, Kim and Ron, I'm so happy for you. You are two amazing humans. Not just because you save the world from bad guys, but because you save the bad guys from themselves. Thank you so much for helping Dr. Drakken. Have a great marriage!

You flip to the front of the card once more and place your pencil in the space you left for yourself under the words, and you sketch the outlines of two figures clasping hands, and then you fill them in with as much detail as you can. You are not sure what people wear to their own weddings, so you draw Kim and Ron in the outfits they wear on missions to save the world, slowing down to capture the sheen of Kim's purple pants and how it draws out the red sheen of her hair, the way Ron's pants fall in slacks folds around his shoes, the pattering of sun-speckles on his cheeks, and the wild patches of yellow hair that stick out from the back of his head. They stand on a beach at sunset. You know there is no beach in Middleton, yet it is the most romantic place you can imagine.

When you are through, you recognize the faces smiling up at you. They belong to people who you realize you love.

You take the card into your room and stand it on your window seat amongst the sea of books. It will hold there in the months before the wedding, if you are careful with it.

Spring creeps into the air, persuading it to return to warmer temperatures and calling the green buds out from where they have hidden themselves in tree branches. It is the same tussle for control you have seen in every one of your Earth-years, and spring always wins eventually. The buildings in Little Homeworld grow taller, their skinny frameworks filling, built up by Bismuth's steady hands, which you can now watch without fear provided they do not transform into hammers.

The sky has lightened to a cloud-smeared blue and the grass has begun to grow in tender peeking wisps like the hairs on Dr. Drakken's arms when Peridot decides she has to teach the Nephrites how to play baseball. "They've never played before," she tells you as she shakes the ball back and forth.

"Peridot, you've never played before," you say.

Peridot rolls her eyes, the movement unconvincing on her. "Well, yes. Technically. But I have watched from a distance, and you guys did amazing, and I have a fantastic memory, so I know all I need to teach them!"

She gives her triangular head a flick, tossing aside doubt as easily as she would do droplets of unwanted liquid, and makes a dramatic pivot on one heel. You wait until she stalks away before letting yourself smile.

Pumpkin yaps in Peridot's direction, then turns and paws at your arm. You run a hand over her stem as you balance your newest library book, The No-Home Boys, on your lap. The book is the first in a series that Steven recommended to you, about boys who solve mysteries and travel around the country by leaping on and off the cargo cars of moving trains. Within the pages you have read so far, you have encountered less loneliness than the premise suggests; the boys have the stars for a ceiling, the grass for a floor, and each other for family.

The warp pad sings out someone's arrival, and you sit up. The wall of light recedes, leaving Steven standing on the stone circle, staring straight ahead as though in a daze.

Your fists tense. You haven't seen Steven in days. He has been in a conference with the Diamonds that has lasted almost all week. Most of the news he brings back from Homeworld now is encouraging: the Diamonds have vowed, in Pink Diamond's memory, not to harm the Earth again, and the caste system is not as strictly enforced anymore. The ends of his pink jacket blow limply in the breeze, and you wonder if this time he has returned with bad news.

"Steven!" Peridot yells from the center of a circle of Nephrites. She drops the ball to the moist ground and waves at him.

Steven lifts his hand yet forgets to move it back and forth.

You fly up and land before him, your uncovered toes centimeters from his. He looks tired. Moon-halves rest below his eyes, making them more of a match for Drakken's than ever.

"Hey, Steven. Is everything okay?" you ask.

Steven's nod is slow; he stares at his fingers as though trying to make out the prints. "Yeah, Lapis. Everything's okay. Actually, it's a lot better than okay." He lifts his head, and his gaze swims to yours. "I – um – I got the Diamonds to agree – they're not going to colonize any more planets."

The silence seems to vibrate. Your mouth falls open, and you stare at Steven, for in that moment you are the human watching the Gem kindle fire with her feet or move metal with her mind; you are witnessing an impossibility.

"You did," you say. It was meant to be a question, but the marks of exhaustion on Steven's face leave you with no doubt. "You really did."

Steven nods again, quicker this time, and tears shimmer in his eyes. "We're gonna need more meetings before we figure out how it'll all work out. Yellow Diamond's already saying we need to prioritize how to maintain a sustainable Gem population without robbing other planets of their resources." He repeats the words exactly as Yellow Diamond must have said them, his jaw stern, his newly mature voice solemn. Any other time it would make you laugh.

A dam inside you bursts open and drenches you with love, permissible now, for the world that was once your home.

"White Diamond said that today was the beginning of Era Three," Steven says. He still sounds somehow puzzled.

"Steven! You started a whole new era! Way to go!" For the first time in a long while, you can think of nothing humorous, nothing sarcastic to add. You nudge him into a hug, holding his cheek to yours, and whisper in his small pink ear, "Thank you," knowing he will not ask you why you're acting like you were the one he just saved from a horrible fate.

The hug you receive in return feels so much stronger than the first one he gave you, but he is still soft in your arms. "Glad I could help," he says with a sniffle. An ocean-scented tear drops from his eyelashes and lands beside your nose.

Era Three. The words cascade through your mind like a waterfall, carrying terms from your earlier life away into shallow pools where they will stagnate and become obsolete. At some point, Gems will have no more need for words like "Kindergarten" and "Injector."

Or words like "terraf –"

"What's all the ruckus?" Bismuth's voice rumbles behind you, breaking your thoughts. You turn to watch her approach, Peridot hopping beside her to keep pace with Bismuth's broad strides.

You step aside to let Steven share his news.

"I just came from Homeworld," Steven says. "And the Diamonds finally agreed not to colonize any more planets." His words teeter as though on the steepest point of a cliff. "And to get to work dismantling the Gem Empire right away."

Peridot's squeals resound throughout the meadow, glimpsing off incomplete houses.

Bismuth stills, her body the frozen ocean on Kanatar's surface, stiff and resistant. "Are you serious?" she says to Steven.

He nods.

A smile warmer than any you have ever seen from her swoops across Bismuth's face. She tosses Steven up in her arms, and envy pulls at the curves of your gem. When she pulls back, her eyes too are streaming, unashamed. "Steven, I can't believe you. I didn't think I'd ever see the day."

She chooses to leave the remainder of the truth unspoken, that she did not think she would see this day without the pieces of four Diamond gemstones scattered about her. Rather than torment her with the reminder, you lift your face to the sun, let the warmth of it enfold you, and envision the stars and planets currently hidden by its glow. The universe is a large and unsafe place; they will be threatened again, but not by your people.

A group of Quartzes and Nephrites gathers around Steven, the Earth and Heaven Beetles perched on Biggs's horns. Snowflake, Larimar, and Bixbyite float at the edges of the crowd. Peridot holds up her hands as though she is in charge of an assembly of musicians and begins a song the two of you heard on television once: "All hail the conquering hero…"

"No, Peridot," Steven says. "The whole point is not to conquer anymore." He wags his finger at her, but he giggles; he is not scolding.

"Oh! Well, in that case, how about this?" Peridot pauses only long enough to launch into a different tune, quickly picked up by all the Gems nearby. "For he's a jelly good fellow, for he's a jelly good fellow…"

"I think it's actually 'jolly,'" you say, though you doubt anyone hears you over the delighted cacophony.

Bismuth slings Steven across her shoulders. You look at him, his legs fitted against her back as they once fit against yours, and he looks somehow different than the first time you saw him, when "jolly" would have been an apt description of him. In the course of only two years, his face has matured, tempered by time and pressure, his softness still prominent yet mixed with the strong, brittle constitution of a Diamond.

Peridot, still singing as much through her nose as her lips, leads the group past the unfinished building nearest the warp pad. The cement at the middle of the structure has long since dried, solidifying the small handprint she left in its wet surface and the silly smile she sketched next to it. Four slabs of concrete garnished with wood lie in a rough circle around it like the bases on a baseball field. You wonder what their purpose is.

Your curiosity, of course, cannot compare to Peridot's. Hours later, she trips over one of the slabs while she says good night to Steven, and after the warp pad has carried him away, she tugs at Bismuth's open shirt. "What are these?" she asks.

"Walls," Bismuth says.

"Hmm, yes, that would correspond with the architectural layout." Peridot bends down even farther to study a slab. "But walls are vertical. These are horizontal."

"Not once I get through with 'em," Bismuth says. "They just need to be pulled up is all. Steven says there's this guy down at the Beach City construction place who'd let me borrow his crane, so I'm gonna go pick it up tomorrow." Her laugh is oil, just dark enough to be rich. "I'll even let him know before I take it."

She does return the next day with a crane, and you can see the resemblance to the water-bird in the elongated, bending neck. Its beak, however, is thick and strong, and it clamps around the top of the slabs and slowly drags them upright. Their corners touch, and a house forms from the scraps.

Bismuth crafts a tower of wood and stone and mortar higher than any of its neighbors in the center of the valley. Peridot surrounds it with steel braces on every side, barricading it from careless movements. Within the braces, platforms are supported by stacks of metal that can fold and unfold to reach any height on the walls. Angel Aura Quartz rides the platforms to the top and back at least once every day, just for the fun of it.

Little Homeworld continues to grow every day. The panes of glass for the plant-house arrive, and you and Peridot spend a day working them into the wall frameworks. You confront your reflection in each pane, daring it with your dry eyes, until the shaking in your knees stops.

One night the two of you return home, having exhausted yourselves helping Bismuth build a wooden pulley almost as large as your house that will serve as a second crane, and collapse onto the couch. Silence reigns briefly before Peridot's tablet begins to vibrate and jingle like a warp pad.

She snatches it up and glances at the screen. "It's Drakken!" she calls.

You scoot closer to her and sink deeper into the cushion at your back. Your boyfriend's likeable face appears on the screen, his expression as coiled and anxious as you know yours is relaxed.

"Lapis!" Drakken bursts out. "Oh, hi, Peridot," he adds when she waves a greeting. "Lapis, I didn't know it was happening so soon, but Shego called and reminded me, so I knew I had better call and remind you before it slipped my mind, because I really didn't know it was happening this soon –"

You straighten and inch toward the screen. "Is somebody in trouble or something?"

"What? Oh, no, no trouble." A ripple forms on Drakken's forehead, his breaths still shallow and unevenly timed but no longer harsh. He is both quicker to agitate and quicker to calm than any body of water you have ever known. "No, it's just that I'd forgotten Kim Possible's wedding is scheduled for only next weekend!"

You nod slowly, Drakken's frantic eyes following the motion. It makes sense to you that Kim and Ron would hold their wedding in the short span of days when humans rest from their jobs each week. "So, yeah, that's really soon now," you say. "Is that going to be a problem for us?"

"I – I guess not. No, it shouldn't be. Not as long as we don't forget. The rehearsal dinner's next Friday evening, and then the wedding itself is on Saturday. Listen, do you have a calendar?"

An image splashes into your mind of the book, pages wide but thin with a crease dividing them in half, a lovely picture above and a chart of dates below, hanging on the kitchen wall of the Crystal Temple. "No, but Steven does. He won't let me miss it."

"Phew." Drakken exhales and his body folds around his belt like a calendar around its crease. "I feel much better with that off my chest."

His chest does look somewhat looser and less strained now that his breathing has steadied, but you have lived among humans long enough to know that this is merely a speech figure.

"Good," you say. "Now you can move on to just being so excited you can hardly stand it." You give him a sly look. "Which I'm guessing you're gonna be right about…now."

A joyous, rattling sound immediately issues from Drakken's grinning mouth. Peridot joins him, and they catch hold of your own happiness and carry it along as cargo, neither of them bothered that it remains so much meeker and more subdued than theirs.

The three of you talk while the night fades into shadow, until Dr. Drakken looks at the timepiece on his wrist and remarks that he needs to be getting to bed if he hopes to get to work on time in the morning. "Good night, Peridot!" he calls. "Good night, Lapis!"

Eyes turned downward, Drakken taps the palm of his hand to his mouth and breathes across the palm toward you. The gesture is a mystery to you, yet you can sense the love within it, and you mimic it back to him. "See you Friday," you say.

Drakken's cheeks rise in a grin. "See you Friday."

The tablet's screen goes blank. Peridot picks it up and holds it close to her chest. "I'm so excited for Kim and Ron!" she says. "I think they're going to be happy together. Don't you, Lapis?"

You drop from the couch to the floor and let your legs sprawl, surprised by the ease with which you move. The tension which used to claim your back at every moment is far too easy to remember, but you cannot recall the last time you felt it. "Most of the time," you say. "Sometimes they'll be sad together or mad together or scared together."

Peridot begins to say something, but you hold up your hand to her. "I'm not trying to be a pessimist. It's just that – life isn't always good.

"That's why it's so important that they're best friends, 'cause best friends are cool enough to stick with each other no matter how tough it gets," you add. You toss your head back to look at Peridot and give her a slow wink.

Her eyes shimmer, heightened by the moonlight, and she smiles, understanding.

On the afternoon that Steven tells you is Friday, you collect your card and fly down to the beach. The breeze wings your hair in all directions and seaweed brushes the backs of your heels as you stand before the ocean. Now that your relationship is no longer founded on peril or desperation to survive, you have grown to enjoy your conversations with it, conversations that don't ever have to leave the safety of your gem.

Guess what, ocean? you say now. Well, the bad news is that I won't be here this weekend. The good news is that it's because I get to go to a wedding.

A stream of curious foam bubbles up at your feet.

Drakken's friends, Kim and Ron – they're getting married, you explain.

The ocean sighs, a sigh as thin and fine as the grains of sand it moistens. You wonder whether Kim and Ron would believe you if you told them the ocean has blessed their union.

Peridot catches you on your way to the warp pad. "Bye, Lapis!" she calls. There was a time when she would cling to you like wet cloth, but living among so many new friends has made goodbyes easier for her. "Have a great time!"

You plant your hands on your hips and study her with mock severity. "Only if you promise to have a great time here."

Peridot cackles and steps forward into the hug she knows is coming. She fits in your arms like a key into a lock. When you pull away, you feel warmer than you did before.

You step onto the warp pad, raise your arms, and throw your body of light into the sky and across the distance between your two favorite cities, landing in Middleton under a canopy of thick branches, Emerald-green with the beginning of summer.

When you arrive at Dr. Drakken's house, you find him flitting around in fast, nervous motions, his entire body stammering. The sight of you provokes a smile, hearty as ever, though it does not appear to be anchored firmly to this place and time. "Lapis!" he says, his voice tumbling down at you from his lanky height. "You're here! It's good to see you! Good, good, good, good, good, good, good…"

You place your hand on his arm as an apology for interrupting him; you are not sure how many more times he will repeat the word "good" if you do not. "What do we need to do to get ready before we leave?" you ask.

Drakken rams his fingertips together again and again. "Let's see – what do we need to do? Well, we've got to wrap the cards and sign the presents. No, wait, the other way around – wrap the presents and sign the cards! Get cleaned up and into our wedding clothes." He bends his head to the space beneath one arm. "Shower," he says, and the word is the only fixed, steadied one amid the rest of the bobbing buoys. "Not all necessarily in that order…"

"Well, I've already signed my card," you say. "So maybe you should sign yours, and then we can wrap our presents."

"Excellent plan! Glad I thought of it!" Drakken blinks, the black parts of his eyes edging closer to each other. "Or did you?"

You shrug. "I don't think it matters."

"So! Yes! Wrapping paper!" Drakken shoots down the hall, and you hear him banging and grunting his way around his room before he reappears holding two long tubes of gift paper, one a dark blue that matches his coat-of-labs and the other pale with dusky roses that remind you of Steven and his mother. You reach for the second one, and Drakken nods.

"Excellent choice." He pitches the blue tube onto the couch as though discarding it and retrieves the presents from under his kitchen table – "where I won't forget about them," he tells you.

You lay the package with the pet tent inside it on the floor next to the gift paper and watch as Drakken tries to stuff the food processor into a large crate of cardboard. You decide not to even try to figure out where its original box went. Though the overhead lights still travel smoothly across its silver facets, it somehow has the appearance of a book that has already been opened and read before you found it, its spine and pages not as crisp as they once were.

"Oh, they're going to love getting a food processor!" Drakken exclaims. He stretches out on the floor beside you, his back creaking. "Especially this one! I programmed in a laser security system and an A.M. radio function, should they ever need it."

You snicker. "Of course you did."

You have helped cover Steven's birthday presents in gift paper before, and the process is not hard to remember: measuring the paper to make sure it is large enough; snipping the paper with the safety blades, trying to hold it plumb to the sides of the box; securing the two longest ends over the top of the box; gathering the additional paper on the sides and arranging it into triangles, edges tucked into crevices.

Beside you, Drakken seems to find the task more rigorous; his arms flail and his forehead shines with sweat before he proclaims, "Done!" He holds up a box that he has concealed in patches of gift paper, neat and uniform on one side and as jagged as your bangs on the other. A strand of tape is stuck in the middle of his eyebrow, and a golden petal pokes from below each ear. His eyes hang on yours, earnest.

"It looks great," you say without lying.

He beams and rests his head against the package. "Shower time next. Yes, that should do nicely! Oh, and that reminds me! Just so you're aware about what to, uh, wear –" he chuckles for a moment at himself – "a wedding is generally considered a formal occasion."

"Formal? You mean, like a ball?" You try not to imagine yourself standing in a strict line with hundreds of other Lapises, the tile floor of the palace ballroom cold on your bare feet as you prepared to curtsy before Blue Diamond.

"It's not quite that bad for us, since we're not the ones getting married," Drakken says. "But we shouldn't show up wearing our sloppy old everyday clothes, either. Eeggh, not that you look sloppy at all – "

You touch his sleeve again. "It's okay. I get it." You look down at your pants, ribboned at the waist into loose wads like crumpled papers. "So, should I just wear my skirt again?"

Drakken's shoulders relax. "Yes. That sounds lovely, actually."

He presses a quick kiss to your forehead and then darts off to the bathroom to take his shower. The door slams closed behind him, the knob shaking.

You kneel on his sofa, combing through a pile of what seems to be misplaced mail, in envelopes addressed to either Dr. Drakken or Drew Lipsky. The latest magazine for digesting readers appears, and you page through it until you find an article about endangered animals. Some of them have begun to recover, their numbers increasing over the past few years, but many others remain frail things fighting to exist on whatever land they have been spared. Many humans, you know by now, can be just as callous to different species as Gems once were.

You were among the worst.

A reflection of hollowed, wilted planets takes shape in your mind, but it has only an instant to haunt you before Drakken bounds out of the bathroom, dressed in an outfit you have never seen him wear before, an outfit that looks to have been designed for a larger man. The shining pants that run the length of his legs are the same profound black as his rowdy hair, which he has assembled at the base of his neck in bristles that lie flatter than they typically do. A matching jacket covers a white shirt that buttons from his stomach to his throat, a blue fan of fabric perched above the top button like a butterfly has alighted on his collarbone. For a moment, he looks almost too tidy to be Drakken, but then he smiles and you watch his lower lip form its familiar ledge. You remember seeing his round smooth face that first day on the beach and following him when he turned and walked away, because it was a kind face and you were not ready to see it leave.

He tilts his head at you. "Spiffy," you tell him.

You close your eyes, though it does not require much concentration to call back the clothes you wore from the moment of your emergence until the day Yellow Diamond Destabilized you on the beach. You feel the ribbon tie into place around your neck, and air wisps up your legs as a skirt replaces your pants. Memories that could boost you or beat you down do neither; you have felt everything in these clothes. The one thing you alter is the Diamond symbol on your top and skirt. Ashamed now of what they represent rather than who, you spin them sideways and transform them into the star of the Crystal Gems.

When you open your eyes, Dr. Drakken's are there waiting for you. They beam as he says, "Very nice. You – look very nice."

A beeping sound comes from outside, and Drakken's head twitches toward the front door. "That must be Shego! Well, it must be Shego honking the horn on her car because it's time for us to go!" His feet begin to fidget. "I forgot she was picking us up…"

"Everything's gonna be fine," you say. You take his wrist and guide him out the door and onto his lawn. In the driveway, you spy Shego's dark ocean of hair behind the steering mechanism of a bright red car with no roof, a car as slim and sleek as the fit of her Emerald-green dress.

"Hey, kids," Shego says, although she is younger than Drakken and much younger than you. "Lookin' sharp. Huh, should I make the joke about bringing Kimmy 'something blue' for her wedding, or is that too obvious?"

"Much," Drakken says, his voice attempting to be dry.

You climb into the stern of the car and slap the door shut behind you. "What does that mean? Does it matter that we're blue?"

"Not at all – well, it shouldn't." Drakken wriggles into the seat beside you and snaps the blunt end of his restraining strap into the plastic holder at his side, and then he reaches over and covers your hand with his. He has taken off his gloves, and you can feel the perspiration forming between his fingers. "There's an old Earth superstition that every wedding should somehow feature something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue."

"Oh." You don't ask him to explain further. If it made sense, it wouldn't be a superstition.

You fasten your own restraining strap and wait for your back to shudder as the strip confines your chest. It does, though so faintly you almost miss it. Shego twists around to look at you, her face shifting with a rare openness. You nod at her, and the car comes to life with a growl.

Drakken bounces in his seat on the drive, his legs juddering in the space in front of him as though it pains them to stay still. You lean back and watch a sky the blue of Pearl's eyes, the sun meandering toward the horizon. Somewhere beyond it, your people are beginning anew.

Shego stops the car in front of a tall building made of stones stacked on one another, the seams of mortar between them hardly visible. Dr. Drakken leaps from the car and holds his arm out to you in a wide swing, and you slide yours through so that the inside of your elbow hugs his. He scoops his gift into his other arm, and you pick up the one you wrapped. Together, the two of you walk under a pointed spire that thrusts into the sky, meant for communication or decoration, you are not sure which. You press one hand to the rock wall as you pass and find it natural and uneven.

Cool air pushes gently against your face as you step into a broad, elongated chamber ringed with windows comprised of small pieces in Sapphire and Amethyst hues that fit inside one another, benches and pretend-looking plants beneath them. At either end of the chamber stands a pair of grand doors. The ones to your left are shut tight against a darkened room; the ones to your right have been flung open as though by the wind, and bits of laughter and snippets of human conversation float out to you.

"Oooh, this place is ritzy," Drakken breathes as he steers you toward the open doors. "As the teens say…or said…sometime." Even Shego raises her eyebrows in appreciation.

The room you enter is dim, as if lit only by candles, though you see a few electric bulbs, turned to dull yellow and shoved deeply into sockets, their light caressing the room. It skates across Shego's hair and scatters in all directions, illuminating a prism on the edges of its wave, and disappears into Drakken's hair, leaving behind nothing but black. At the center of the room, behind the longest table you have ever seen, are two people you recognize.

Drakken lets go of your arm, which allows you to catch him when he collides with the corner of another table, almost obscured by a thick layer of fine fabric the color of the cream Mama Lipsky rubs into her skin at night, and nearly falls into the platter of meat atop it. You wait a few moments for the pink blotches to fade from his cheeks before leading him the rest of the way to Kim and Ron.

"Greetings, all! We have arrived!" Drakken announces.

Even his voice is not enough to fill this massive room, but it is enough to get Kim to turn toward you and break into a smile. Her hair has been lifted into a ball at the base of her head, with a single strand freed on either side of her face, looped just above her bare shoulders. She wears a dress that reminds you of the first whisper of dawn, pale lavender and soft gray intermingled. You are not sure what brides are supposed to look like, but she is a beautiful one.

"Drakken. Lapis. Hi! It's great to see you." Kim leans toward you and gives your arm a gentle squeeze, her eyes level with yours when they normally fall a few inches short. You are confused until you glance down at her shoes; at the heels, where they should be flat, they balance atop a thin blade, strength linked with delicacy.

"Good to see you too," you say.

You peer over to Kim's shoulder to see Ron, in pants and a jacket much like Drakken's, his arms and legs extending at ungainly angles. He is a person who radiates glee and anxiety every time you look at him, but you have never seen him look as gleeful or anxious as he does right now. "Are you having fun?" you ask him.

"You kiddin'?" Ron's grin shakes, inflating and falling and inflating again amid a backdrop of sun-speckles. "This is the best day of my life! So far."

"Even better than Bueno Nacho opening day?" Kim says.

Ron frowns in thought. "That was reallllllllly close. But, yeah, this is still better."

Kim tugs him toward her by the front of his shirt, and her lips skip across his.

"Yikes, princess. PDA much?" says someone behind you. Shego wedges her way through the crowd and scrutinizes Kim and Ron out of narrowed eyes.

"Hey, Shego," Kim says. "Glad you could make it."

"Well, I called the spa and Midas the masseuse had the weekend off, so I figured I might as well come."

Shego smirks at Kim, who smirks back at her. They have an odd, off-center relationship; their fusion would argue with herself constantly, yet it would be in one voice.

"Oh, I almost forgot!" Drakken hunches down and lays his box at Kim's feet. "We come bearing gifts!" You step forward and extend your arms, too.

Ron looks from you to Drakken and back again. "The two of you…got us two separate gifts?"

"Not exactly," you say. "My gift's really for Rufus."

Ron's lower lip grows unsteady, and he pats a bulge in his pocket. "You hear that, buddy? Lapis brought you a present!"

There is a muffled squeal from the pocket.

Drakken turns to examine the room, and you follow his gaze with yours, your throat constricting with shyness.

"Who is everybody?" you whisper to him. He at least appears to recognize some of the people surrounding him, while none of them save Kim's family are familiar to you.

Drakken gestures to a table where the only people who remain in one place long enough for you to get more than a glimpse of them are a golden-haired man and woman. Other humans swarm around them, the majority of them children, led by a little girl with much darker features. "Well, I know that's Stoppable's family over there…and over there is their friend Monique – did you know she designs clothes in New York City now? And over there is – oh no –

"It's Felix! Hide me!" Drakken dives behind you and throws his hands over his head as if to shield himself from someone.

You glance at the young man at the end of the table, the last person whom Drakken's eyes touched, and he glances back at you. The chair where he sits is lower and wider than the others, shaped like a square with handles that rise from its back and shining silver wheels in place of chair legs. His hair is brown, his eyes blue. He does not look threatening – but neither does Aquamarine.

"Felix? Is there something wrong with him?" you say.

"No, no, nothing wrong at all. Not with him." You can feel Drakken shaking, a boat weltered between waves. "It's just – do you see that special chair he's sitting in?"

You nod.

"It's because he can't walk."

"Why? Did he break his legs?" you say.

"No. He's just never been able to walk. It was something that happened to him before he was born – you know, when he was developing inside his mother – something to do with the nerves in his legs. Or maybe the muscles. It happens to a lot of people, and there are a lot of different causes."

You push the term off-color from your mind almost before it has a chance to enter. "Can't they fix that?"

"In some cases, they can," Drakken says. "In other cases, they can't. And Felix's case is one where they can't."

"Oh." You blink at him. "What's scary about that?"

There is a long silence, then a gusting sigh that sends your ribbon fluttering. "The part where I stole his wheelchair a few years back to strip it for parts."

"You did what?" You turn sharply to look at what you can see of the kind, honest face that cringes under the weight of its admission. "And he can't move without it?"

Drakken nods.

"Why?"

"Because his wheelchair is full of cybertronic technology the likes of which would have taken me years to develop on my own," Drakken says. His head bows forward. "And because I was a bad man."

"Right. I keep forgetting," you say. His eyes have taken on a liquid vulnerability, and you don't try to imagine them sparking them with interest at such an evil idea.

Drakken's bowed head sways back and forth like a sad pendulum. "He must hate me."

Were you talking to someone else, you might have said, Duh. Instead, you say, "Well, it's not like he's going to attack you right here, right?"

"No, he won't attack me. He's too good for that," Drakken says, yet his voice still seethes fear. "Oh, but what in the world am I going to do if he recognizes me? When, I should say. When he recognizes me."

"You're a little hard to miss," you say. "And, I mean, you can keep standing there if you want, but I don't think I'll do a very good job hiding you.

"If you run into him, maybe you should just be extra nice to him. He'll know it's because you feel bad. That's what Bismuth does for me."

You unroll Drakken's hand from its tight fist and let your fingerprints kiss his. You hope he can sense your confidence. There is enough love in this room to fall on any hate, no matter how justified, and put it out as easily as dirt covers a campfire.

Kim shows you to your seats; you sit between Drakken and Shego, and across from a stranger who smiles at you and asks you how you know Kim and Ron. You smile back and say, "My name's Lapis Lazuli. Dr. Drakken is my boyfriend, and he's one of the supervillains they always used to fight."

The conversation dissolves like powder in water.

The lights dim further, plunging the room into a nearly black shadow, until one brilliant light flicks on and spills across the mounded stage set up against the far wall. A man, strongly built with hair so short it seems sharp, walks up into the light and stretches over a wooden podium. He wears a thick green string knotted at his neck and aligned perfectly with the creases of his white shirt. Shego lowers her glass of punch to get a better look.

"All right, listen up, people!" The bulk of the man's voice rivals Drakken's, and the amplifying tool he speaks into allows it to crash around the entirety of this large room. "My name is Steve Barkin, and I have just been informed that the arranged Master of Ceremonies has been sidelined with laryngitis. Therefore, I will be assuming command of this affair beginning now! I want all of you to carry on as if everything is normal." He makes a huffing sound that you think may be a laugh. "Or as close to normal as things ever get with these kids around."

"Is laryngitis serious?" you whisper to Drakken.

"No. It just hurts your throat so you can't talk. Which would be a problem for the Master of Ceremonies."

Steve Barkin moves a piece of paper around on the podium in front of him. "Our first speaker will be…Mrs. Veronica Stoppable, the mother of the groom!"

Amid cheers, the golden-haired woman stands up from the Stoppable family table and walks, light-footed, to the podium, while Steve Barkin backs away into the darkness. She surveys the audience from behind thin corrective lenses, and you see Ron's nose and his eyes, though hers are distant, not vacant but straggling, as if she can live in five or six realms at once and must sort out which one she currently inhabits.

"I just wanted to say thank you to everyone for coming out," Mrs. Stoppable begins. "I can't tell you how happy I am to be here today. Is there anything more precious than young love, especially when it involves your only son and dear little Kimberly from down the block?"

She doesn't seem to be expecting an answer, so you remain silent.

"To say these two are close would be an understatement. They're inseparable, and not just by proximity. I'm fairly certain the Stoppable family could pack up and move to Norway, and poor little Kim's heart would just follow along behind."

You watch Shego set her glass down on the table, hard enough that the red liquid within shivers.

"If I'm honest, I think I've been waiting for this right from the beginning," Mrs. Stoppable says. "Or at the very least since they started high school. Even before they became an item, Kim's friendship has meant the world to Ronald. Ron's father and I were rather…distractable in his childhood, but it rarely seemed to bother him – because Kim, who was busier than we could have ever hoped to be, somehow always managed to make time for him.

"I hope you know how grateful we are to you for that, Kim. We couldn't ask for a kinder or more thoughtful girl to become our daughter-in-law." She lifts her head. "Thank you."

The people around you all applaud politely, and Mrs. Stoppable returns to her family's table and sits down.

Steve Barkin reappears from the darkness and dwarfs the podium again. "That was a lovely speech, Mrs. Stoppable. Next, we will hear from a close friend of the couple, young Mr. Wade Load!" Somehow, he makes the words an Agate's order.

Wade, the boy who helped you figure out which rivers most urgently needed purifying, approaches the podium as though walking across stepping stones. He has grown since you last saw him, and the same small black hairs bristle on his chin that you see on Steven's chin some mornings.

"Hey, everybody. Wade here. Some of you might know me – I manage Kim's website. And she and Ron were basically my best friends growing up," he says, as if he is done growing, as if the process is complete, and you have to blink.

"So – um, not to brag or anything, but I finished school really early. I didn't really know what to do with myself after that, and my parents didn't really know what to do with me, either. Normally when your kid finishes college, you expect him to move out and get a job, right? Yeah, but what if your kid is eight?" Wade sweeps his confused eyes over the audience, gleaning laughter like ears of corns.

"Kim found me not too long after that. She was…thirteen, I think, then? She'd just put up her 'I can do anything' website, hoping she'd get some jobs walking dogs or washing people's cars." Wade pauses. "Those weren't the kind of jobs she got."

The crowd laughs again, Drakken chuckling with them. You feel separate from their jokes and their familiarity with each other, and you reach out and clasp Drakken's hand; he seems surprised, but he holds on.

"So Kim was kind of freaking out about the hits she was getting on her sight. And not the way most of us would've freaked out – not like, 'Oh no, the nation's top scientists are asking me to help them safeguard their secret formulas, and there's no way in heck I can ever do that because I'm in middle school!' No, Kim was all like, 'Oh no, I don't know how to prioritize how serious all these problems are, and I might accidentally let somebody down!' 'Cause you know Kim.

"Anyway, so she went and dialed up onto the Internet – remember when you needed to do that, guys?" Wade wiggles his brows. "She went looking for help, and my online friends sent her straight to me since I was right in her area. She must've thought it was a pretty weird setup, but from pretty much the moment she met me she's treated me like I worked at the Pentagon.

"I never really thought about it at the time, but now I realize that Kim probably chose me because I was just a kid who was gonna be bored stiff without the work. If there's one type of person Kim loves to help most, it's an underdog. We all admire her because she's Kim Possible, and she's saved the world about a thousand times, but I think sometimes we forget that she isn't just in it for the rush. She's also super compassionate, and she cares so much about all of us, all over the world.

"Gotta admit: at first I kinda thought Ron was another one of Kim's underdogs. But he turned out to be so much more than just that. How many dudes will drop everything to gear up and go with you to an ancient temple on another continent in the middle of the school day? Especially when it turns out to be a shrine to monkeys, the animal he's most afraid of? But he did. Every. Single. Time. The way the two of them worked together…it was the most natural thing in the world.

"That doesn't mean it didn't weird me out majorly when they got together – because I was eleven, and eww, right?" He nods at the audience. "Of course, it didn't help that an emotion-controlling nanobot on the fritz was involved."

You watch Drakken's mouth fall open and you remember how Shego once forced it into a fusion with hers, something he blamed on an emotion controller.

"But then the real thing happened. And all through that summer, and all through their senior year, I saw that the two of them were so much happier with each other than they were with anybody else. Being with other guys usually stressed Kim out, and Ron was always a nervous wreck when he was with other girls. But when it was the two of them…there wasn't a lot of drama in their relationship.

"So, a couple months before they started going out, Kim had just broken up with a guy who she'd been crazy about for years. No hard feelings; just didn't work out. But it was right before Valentine's Day."

The audience gives a sympathetic moan. You think of Drakken bringing you chocolate in the red container with edges scooting in to meet each other in the shape of a Spinel's gem.

"Well, Valentine's Day rolls around, and Kim calls me to tell me that someone left a big bouquet of violets and a Secret Admirer note in her locker. Well, I have a webcam trained on her locker twenty-four/seven, so it wasn't a hard mystery for me to solve. Turns out, Ron left them there. He wanted her to think there was some hottie out there who had it bad for her so she would know guys still thought she was amazing.

"I don't know if he knew he was in love with her then. I don't even know if he was in love with her then. But even back then I knew he loved her, Kim knew he loved her, everyone knew.

"Ron has always had Kim's back, and Kim has always had his. And now, they'll have each other's backs for the rest of their lives." Wade lifts his head, wearing a grin almost as wide as Steven's or Drakken's. "All the best, guys. You deserve it."

The room erupts into applause, and you don't hesitate to join in.

Wade lumbers back to his seat, and Steve Barkin resumes command of the podium. "Another lovely speech. Thank you, Mr. Load." His voice hasn't softened any, but his eyes no longer look as unbreakable as they did. "Our last speaker of the night will be the father of the bride, Dr. James Timothy Possible!"

Drakken tenses, his limbs contracting. You remember there was an enmity between him and Kim's father that has not entirely been washed away.

A man you recognize rises from the table next to yours and strides to the stage. He is between Steve Barkin and Dr. Drakken in size, with a jaw pointed and stern and a stripe in his hair where it has begun to lose its color; he looks nothing like Kim aside from the way his expression falls across his face, the pleasantness settling into his skin with determination. He grips the sides of the podium with thick hardy hands and swallows several times before he speaks:

"I'd also like to thank everyone who's here this evening. This is a day I've been both looking forward to and dreading ever since Kimmy was a newborn." He winks one bright eye. "I'm sure those of you with daughters will understand."

That should not include Drakken, but he gazes at Shego and you see a sigh push his shoulders down.

"Without a doubt, my Kimmy is one of the bravest people I have ever met." Dr. Possible's words are fresh spring leaves, wavering in the breeze yet in no danger of detaching. "But there have been moments in her life when she was afraid, too. I've asked her permission to speak about some of those times tonight.

"The one that I remember most clearly was her first day of Pre-Kindergarten."

Planets in that phase alarm you, too, but you know he is talking about school.

"Kimmy hadn't ever really been separated from us for any significant amount of time, and she was worried sick that she wouldn't be able to make a friend. She didn't pitch a fit – that's never been her technique – but she put up a pretty convincing argument for why she should have been allowed to stay home with us. I think it might have been the last fight she ever lost.

"But when we picked her up that afternoon, she was just glowing. She'd made a friend after all – a boy named Ron, and he was so weird and so nice; she couldn't wait to go back the next day and see him again. Could we invite him over to our house sometime? I wouldn't be surprised if my wife started planning the wedding right then, but I took a little longer.

"As Kimmy grew up, I kept a careful eye on every young man in her life. Every young man except the one right under my nose.

"We had a scare pretty early on in her junior year where I wound up having to give Ronald the same talk I gave all the other boys, about a black-hole probe with his name on it should he ever hurt Kimmy." He smiles halfway, as though he is at once joking and serious. "Thank heavens it turned out to be the emotion-controlling tech Wade mentioned.

"So I was blindsided a few months later when she and Ronald actually launched a romantic relationship – sorry, a little rocket-scientist humor there. Part of me couldn't believe I hadn't noticed that Ronald was the one I should have been looking out for all along. But I think that deep down, I knew he was no threat, and he had never been a threat. Ever since they'd begun going on crime-fighting missions, their friendship had consisted of working together and protecting one another. It's hard to find fault with a boy when you know he would give his life for your daughter if he had to.

"He was good for Kimmy in so many other ways as well. People always have such a tough time believing this, but during her school years, Kimmy could actually be very insecure."

Of course people have a tough time believing it, you think. You have never seen insecurity in Kim at any point since you met her.

"Oh, she had the social life other girls dreamed of. She was on the cheerleading squad, she was popular, and she knew all the 'right' people." Dr. Possible's fingers twitch to throw the word into question. "But it took its toll on her, all the time she spent making sure that she was on top of every trend, that she was 'cool' enough to be accepted, that she didn't embarrass herself in front of a set of kids who would never let her live it down. Except when she was with Ronald. That boy was the first – and for a long time, the only – person outside of our family who helped Kimmy feel comfortable enough to completely be herself. He kept secrets that I've been very pointedly warned away from sharing with you today." He chuckles. "That night when they stood in our living room holding hands…I hadn't seen Kimmy look that happy, or that relieved, since the day she started Pre-K.

"It changed something in her. She became less and less concerned with the thoughts of other people judging her. The energy that fear used to use up? She took it back and devoted it to becoming the best daughter, sister, and friend she could ever be rather than projecting a perfect image. I've sensed this huge weight lifted off her since then.

"And even that isn't where it ends." Dr. Possible lifts his eyes to the ceiling before leveling them at the audience again. "I'm sure you all remember the alien invasion the night Kimmy's graduation was scheduled."

You glance at your lap. You wish he had said "the Lorwardian invasion."

"She was abducted right off the stage." Dr. Possible's fingers clench on the sides of the podium. "We all watched her disappear into that night sky. I'd never felt so inadequate in all my life.

"Ronald didn't waste any time shooting into space to find her. The boy…he saved my Kimmy's life that night. More than once. He found her, he brought her back to Earth, and he defended her against the most dangerous enemies they had ever faced.

"He was the only boy I'd never considered. And now, he's the only boy I can imagine ever trusting with her." Dr. Possible stares directly at Ron. "Thank you, Ronald. None of my black-hole probes bear your name anymore."

Dr. Possible places a hand over his face for a moment, breathes deeply, and then goes back to sit down with Kim's mother and the two matching boys. Beside you, you think you hear Dr. Drakken snuffle.

Steve Barkin marches back to the podium. "Wonderfully put, Dr. Possible. Wonderfully put," he says and gestures to the far wall, which now flickers with a gray haze. "All right, people, please enjoy this video the Possibles and Stoppables put together showing these two over the years." He manages to make even these words a demand for obedience.

In contrast to this man's voice, a soft, sweet melody begins, Pebbles dancing across piano keys. A reflection, square and notched at the corners, swims into place across the haze: Kim and Ron, so young that it cannot have been very long since their first meeting, on a sidewalk clutching bags for the holiday Steven calls Halloween, Kim wearing a hat as tall as she is, a Crystal Gem star pinned to her shirt, and a belt clipped heavily onto a pair of pants that gape around her legs; Ron in a pink dress that flounces at the waist and flat shoes that wrap up his ankles in silken curls the way your shoes do.

A current of squeals moves across the room.

The haze flickers and the picture disappears, replaced with the top of a newspaper. Underneath its headline, Middleton Welcomes Up-and-Coming Fast Food Franchise Bueno Nacho, it shows Kim and Ron in black and white, a little taller and a little older, Ron's face splitting into a grin as he tugs Kim toward the restaurant you pass on every flight to Middleton. This dissolves into recorded footage of Kim and Ron standing together in front of a building labeled Middleton Middle, where Ron tries to talk Kim into assuming silly poses with him. She shakes her head at him, a ponytail much more controlled than Drakken's snapping side to side, silver bands glinting on her teeth, and then this picture too shifts out of sight.

In the next picture, their faces are much closer, their hands tangled together. Ron's other hand rests steady and uncertain around Kim's waist, and he peers at her as though trying to make sense of a dream. She looks back at him through eyes half-open, beneath strands of hair that lilt over her forehead. Both of them wear blue, Kim a dress and Ron an odd outfit with great tufts of puffing white material piled across the opened chest. Both of them wear fright around their parted mouths and reassurance in their even brows. There is an inevitability to the pose, and yet there is a choice as well; you know a fusion dance when you see one.

You can also see a brittle darkened streak up the length of Kim's dress, a charred black mark like the one on Drakken's cheek.

From somewhere nearby, you hear a sound, an odd bubble of sound that rises to the surface and splits apart, spattering everywhere. It is not a sound you recognize, and yet you know it can only be coming from one person. You turn to look at Drakken.

He stares at the wall, at the picture, with an expression that does not correspond to it. His eyes are seeing mirrors and war and the bottom of the ocean. His hands fall to the level of his waist and hang there, fingers gaping in shock.

You start to ask if he is all right, but the question floats away and you don't bother to chase after it. He is clearly not. Inside you, your wings constrict as though they will need to dodge an enemy attack soon.

Shego's mouth is pressed into a grim line, yet no confusion dulls her eyes. She knows what is happening, then, and why.

Drakken's chair slams against the back wall as he pushes away from the table, and then he is up and gone, threading through the thin space between it and the wall. His footsteps skim the ground, lightly, and you know he is trying to slink away, but Dr. Drakken does not slink: his feet tangle in the end of a table covering, and his leg meets the table leg, sending an empty candlestick lurching to the floor. The broken, spattering noise trails behind him.

Shego starts to stand up, but you shake your head at her and slip from your seat. Trust me, you mouth to her. You follow the same narrow path that Drakken took, dodging the candlestick and an urn of artificial flowers he must have also disrupted.

The dark corridor outside the celebration room jars you, as though you have waded from warm water into cold. After a moment, the blackness settles itself into differing gray hues. Halfway between the two sets of doors, you spot a wide, tiled hallway emitting murky light, and shaking near its opening is a hunched figure, his arms cinched around his knees, his body pitching back and forth, again and again. He seems smaller than he did earlier today; he seems smaller than you. Your shoes brush across the tiles, and a sniff cuts off as his head lifts and jerks around.

"It's okay," you tell him. "It's just me. You can cry."

Drakken nods, and his face collapses into sobs again. It is a harsh, rasping sound with no moisture to soften it. You remember, all too well, sobs without tears and how they seemed to shred your gem from the inside.

You sink down across from him, keeping a distance in case his thoughts need room to pace and stew. The tiles feel cold through your gauzy skirt, nearly as cold as the marble floor where the Elite stood to await their cue to enter the ballroom.

"What happened?" you say. "What about that picture scared you?"

"Her dress…"

You frown. "Why? Because it was burned?"

Drakken flinches as if the words are fists flying at him. "I…I did that to her." His voice is a cracked gem, barely able to keep itself from falling to pieces.

"You?"

"Well, not me personally." Drakken's laugh is a mirthless grunt. "Not that that absolves me in any way. It was my – my – my –"

He stops with a gasp. You know he does not like to talk about any of his past schemes, but there is only one that turns the skin around his lips gray like this. He must be referring to the red, four-limbed weapons that you saw on the news video, the ones that tore up roads with lasers and crushed buildings as if they were made of sand. Shego told you once that they were called Diablos, another language's word for the utmost evil. Supervising them with satisfaction on his cruel face was the man your boyfriend used to be, a man you do not know.

"Oh," you say.

"I never knew because I never saw the dress," Drakken says. "By the time she made it to my lair, she was wearing her battlesuit."

You don't know what a battlesuit is, and at this point, you do not care. "Then how do you know it was one of them that did it?" you say.

"Because – the night Kim and Ron got together, the night she wore that dress, was prom night." Drakken gazes ahead with sheened eyes, as though he is expecting the memories to roll over him and drown him.

A prom, you learned from Camp Pining Hearts, is the biggest dance of the year at schools for teenagers, though this does not make it any clearer to you.

Drakken closes his eyes. "It was the same night I put my evil plan into action. I specifically chose prom night so she'd have tons of things she'd rather do than stop me! I sent a Synthodrone – a really realistic robot – to the prom with her, and he was so handsome and charming and wonderful, everything a shallow girl that age could want. I thought for certain she'd be too distracted by her teenage frivolities to get the upper hand this time!

"I shouldn't have underestimated her." He shakes his head. "No, I shouldn't have done any of it in the first place! She spoiled the whole night, ruined everything, and Rufus destroyed my Synthodrone, which was really, really sad, and I – and I – I got carted off to Cell Block D for the next six months!"

None of your people would consider six months of any significance, yet pain rushes through your throat anyway. Imprisonment is always too long.

You ease your hand toward the fists he has clenched in his lap.

"I was so close, Lapis." Drakken sounds faint, and had he not used your name you might wonder if he knew who sits beside him. "It was the closest I had ever come, and it felt so good! It felt so good to be the one who could hurt others for a change! And that night, I destroyed things. And places. Not to mention p-p-pe-people!"

Though his remorse puts pressure on your back, you say nothing at first. You cannot excuse this. He would not want you to excuse this, and you feel the rich ache of loving someone who has done something so unjustifiable.

Drakken lifts eyes wet with shame to yours, pleading unnecessarily, seeing only your milder imperfections. He cannot fathom how far from innocent you are. At his most evil, he was still unable to destroy even one planet.

You shake your head. This is not about you right now.

Drakken's fingers curl around yours; the distance is no longer comforting to him. You have never felt such a chill on his skin before, as though the heat his body produces can no longer travel to its outside. "I'm so sorry," you say. Your voice is tiny but it surprises you with its strength.

The words appear to defeat Drakken once more. His fingers go limp between yours, and his head falls forward. The hall goes silent except for the sound of his gasping, fragmented sobs, and the silence tightens around both of you, enclosing you into it like a private hideaway. You wonder if this is how it was for Kim when she danced with Ron that night; you wonder if they occupied an interim between planets, the world around them close and agreeable yet taking care to give them their privacy.

In the emergent red light from a sign at the close of the hall that reads EXIT, you study this man who has brought so much good and so much suffering into the world, and your gem cries with him. You were not there the night he let the darkness consume him and change him – you were imprisoned in a mirror, penance for what you would have done to the Earth if freed – but you can see the mark it leaves on him, searing lines around his mouth where there were none before.

Drakken shudders, his shoulders wrenched forward as though facing into a stout wind, and his eyes skid away from yours. "Sometimes I still wonder: how could I have done it? How? How?" He works his hands free and curls them on his legs, staring down at his palms. "Not in the concrete sense, of course – I understand all the technology I used, and I remember the tricks I played on everyone, and I still know they were brilliant, but still – how?"

You don't reply. It is not your question to answer, and as much as you want to reassure him, you have seen what happens when a person's own evil begins to make too much sense to them.

"As if seeing Felix wasn't bad enough!" Drakken seizes the fabric over his chest and twists it. "Gngggghhhh! This whole conscience thing hurts!" He grabs a petal that has sprouted and pulls on it, as though he doesn't have the strength to pluck it.

Still crouched, you creep across the cold tiles toward him and with slow, soft tugs peel the petal from his skin.

"Look, I don't know a lot about weddings," you say. "But I'm pretty sure you only get invited to them if the people getting married love you."

Tears hover on Drakken's eyelashes, turning them into unruly spikes like his hair. He looks like he wants to believe you, yet some other force is drawing his face back to fear. "How?" he says.

You shrug. "I don't know how. They just do."

Drakken clutches the back of his neck and lets his head fall forward again, a posture whipped by guilt. "It's just like I said earlier, Lapis. I was a bad man."

His sigh grips you like the energy on a warp pad, transporting you back to the day you sat across from each other at a table on the boardwalk, an ice cream cone between you. Do you have someplace to sleep tonight? he asked before he knew you didn't need one. I can get you another room at the hotel where I'm staying.

You bend your face nearer to his, leaving a sliver of space for him to escape if that is what he needs. "If forgiveness was only for good people, there wouldn't be anything amazing about it," you say. "And your story is the most amazing one I've ever heard."

Drakken surrounds your fingers with his and closes what distance remains between the two of you so that your knees knock against his, his forehead a shaking breath away from yours. The thunderstorm of his heartbeat passes from his fingerprints to yours, and if what he believes is true, perhaps somewhere in the place where dark deeds go after they are forgiven yours and his sit and hold each other as well.

You feel his lips on your nose and then he says, redundantly, "I love you."

"Love you, too," you murmur. Your voice has weakened; you don't let that stop you.

The two of you remain there, holding hands and touching faces, until a torrent of applause bursts from the room you left behind and Drakken straightens, his spine stiffening once more. He glances backward, and even in the dimness you can see the longing in his eyes: to return and to pretend he has never endangered Kim any more than any of her other friends in that room have. He groans. "How am I going to be able to go back in there?"

You give him a crooked grin. "You aren't. We are. Together." You stand up, reach down and catch his hand, and tug as you did to pull the petal free.

Drakken is no graceful petal; he stumbles as he rises, and his ankles turn in two separate directions, but he manages to regain his footing. He peers down at you with swollen brave eyes and forms the same hook with his elbow that he offered you outside the church. Around the corner, the double doors still spread wide, an invitation.

"Shall we, Miss Lazuli?" he says.

"You bet."

You lead him back through the doors. The lights have faded to nothing by now, human figures no more than silhouettes, and the atmosphere in the room has flowed back together, covering Drakken's absence the way water fills whatever breaks anyone can force into it. Keeping your fingers on Drakken's wrist, you lead him in a furtive path between the chairs and the walls until you stop before a shadow curved in Shego's shape. You slide into the seat next to hers, and Drakken manages to drop into his chair beside you.

Shego tilts an eyebrow at you, an inquiry. Though you are not entirely sure what she is asking, you answer her with a nod.

The rest of the dinner proceeds without incident.

When the lights switch back on and Steve Barkin orders everyone to have a good night and be back tomorrow evening for the wedding, Drakken sits at the very edge of his seat, tapping the tines of his fork against his plate and darting looks at Kim and Ron out of the sides of his eyes. Several times he starts to stand, only for yet another giggling girl with glowing cheeks to run up and hug Kim, dropping him heavily back into his chair. At last the crowd around her recedes, and Drakken shoots to his feet and bolts in her direction. You are right behind him.

Drakken's face is the color of frost as he pulls up in front of her. You hear him swallow hard, the lump in his throat grating against the tears he is trying to tuck away like a sword between battles.

"Hey, guys. Thanks for coming –" Kim greets the two of you with a cheerful glance that sobers when she takes in Drakken's reddened eyes. "Is everything okay?"

Drakken's head immediately begins to bob like a buoy. "Yes! Maybe! Probably! Yes! It's just that – it's just that – the picture I saw – the two of you – prom night – your dress – gghh – burned – I did that and I – I – I can't believe…" His words sink into each other, vanishing beneath a bog of murky water.

Kim reaches out and adjusts the butterfly tie at Drakken's collar. In a voice almost quiet enough to go unnoticed, she says, "Drakken, if you want to talk about this some other time, we'd be more than happy to do that. For now – just know that we don't hate you anymore. Can that be enough for this weekend?"

Drakken sniffles, nodding even faster. Though wavering lines sketch his chin, the winsome smile forms above it.

You take his hand and give Kim and Ron a smile of your own, the unguarded one you don't share with many.

Drakken sits beside you in the backseat on the drive to first Mama Lipsky's house and then his own. With some regularity, he runs his knuckles across his eyes to rid them of teardrops, and you don't know whether they are from happiness, sadness, or that wavering restorative mixture of the two that you have felt only a few times. He has taken on a transparent quality, almost like a ghost in one of Steven's scary stories, yet his touch seems stronger when he kisses you good night, though his fingers are bony and frail as ever. You watch as Shego's car backs down the driveway and breezes down the street, feeling somehow strangely proud.

He looks much the same the next day in his fine clothing, black against white, when he and Shego arrive to pick you up for the wedding, although his smile is somewhat heavier than the one he showed on the way to the rehearsal dinner. He hugs you to him with one arm. He smells of something fresh and sharp: a finger-snap of a scent, which, while not unpleasant, crowds out his customary odor of sweets and plants that you prefer.

The church building, too, looks the same from the outside. Once you enter, however, you discover that today it is the left set of doors that hangs open, inviting you inside, while the right set stands silent and shut like Pearls waiting to be granted permission to speak. You walk next to Drakken through the open doors, and Shego leads the two of you near the front to a vacant bench hewn from smoothened wood like the one on your window. Drakken sits between Shego and you, his fingers skipping across the tall back of the bench in front of him. His eyes dart to the front of the room and grow damp in the light of the chandelier.

You follow his gaze with yours. You see a large instrument that reminds you of a piano, but less regular in shape and with dense golden tunnels sprouting from it; you see a speaker's platform, draped in white silk and topped with a voice-amplifier; and you see Ron, in front of the podium, wearing what is no doubt the widest smile his mouth can support. His hands, so often idle, are as restless as Drakken's, opening and closing at his sides, twisting at the buttons on his sleeve, and pulling forward the air as though urging Kim, who has yet to appear, to join him. Two men stand with him, one on either side of the podium, the first with pale cheeks almost as smooth as the texture of his pants and the second with square corrective lenses and a short brown chisel of a beard fringing his chin.

"I see they went with a minister and a rabbi," Drakken tells you, making an effort to whisper.

You see the woman in the row in front of you is also crying. Of course she is – you know her to be Kim's mother, an older version of Kim with a longer body and shorter, brighter hair. Each of the identical boys beside her offers her a tissue.

"Where's her dad?" you ask Drakken. "He's going to miss it!"

"Don't worry," he says. "He and Kim will show up together a little later, and he'll be the one to walk her down the aisle."

You glance across the aisle and shrug. "If you say so."

A sudden gust of music blows through the room, yet it seems to be coming from the ceiling rather than the instrument in the corner. Its notes are as deep as Drakken's voice and as dignified as Pearl's posture, its pace patient and confident, holding no concern for the two young people it celebrates.

The girl whom Drakken called Monique last night begins to stride down the aisle in a red dress that shimmers against her skin, which is on the darker side of brown. On her left, the boy named Felix keeps stride in his wheelchair, turning its tires with one hand and holding to Monique's hand with the other. Several other young women and men, who aside from Wade are less familiar to you, follow them down the aisle, all of them with arms linked, the women's bending downward to hold bouquets of flowers close to their stomachs.

A brief, confused silence is followed by waves of laughter from the humans when Rufus walks by next, balancing a pillow longer than he is tall on his outturned front paws. His black seed eyes never wander from the task before him, not even when the air fills with whispers of "Aww, how cute," or when some of the women, and a few of the men, shriek. You feel Drakken's chest shaking against your back.

Rufus reaches the front of the room and turns to face the doors, his pink form as faint as a blush from this distance. A tiny girl, even smaller than Peridot, skips down the aisle with a basket slung over her arm; you recognize her as the girl who sat with Ron's parents last night. You can tell by the gentle tremble of Ron's grin as he looks at her that they are family, though she bears no resemblance to him. The girl reaches into her basket and throws a handful of flower petals over her shoulder and then another handful into the crowd, trailing petals behind her as she bounces to the end of the aisle and stands beside Rufus.

"The girl of flowers?" you whisper to Drakken. He nods, and your gemstone pinches when you realize you missed Peridot's performance in the role.

The music swells, expanding on itself as if sprinkled with a Diamond's essence, and then Drakken is taking your arm, nudging you to your feet. "Time to stand up for the bride!" he hisses.

You turn in time to see Kim enter the room. Just as Drakken predicted, she is being escorted by her father, to whom you give only a brief glance; your attention clings to Kim.

Rather than the simple, pretty dress she wore last night, her dress today is voluminous and silver-white, a dusky cloud of eyelets, frippery, and beads with Kim at the center. Her Chalcedony hair cascades down her back, dark and brilliant all at once, its ends flicked upward. A layer of sheer netting hangs down over her face but cannot hide the luminous life in her eyes. You hear a susurrating sound as she passes you, and you glance downward to discover that her the hem of her dress runs to the floor, rendering her feet invisible so that she appears to float like a Sapphire.

You see Mr. Possible set his jaw, the muscles protruding on either side.

A hush falls over the room. At the white-clothed podium, Ron begins to bounce on the arches of his feet.

Kim's father stops several feet from the podium and releases her arm, swiping furiously at his eyes. When she kisses his cheek, you can almost taste the salt.

You wait for her to waft toward Ron as though tugged into his orbit. Instead, you see something you have never seen before in planets or satellites: an intentionality and a resolve that will knock aside every hindrance that may drift across their path, a decision already made that nothing will come between them. It isn't gravity that draws them together; it is a trust you have only just begun to understand.

Ron grabs her hand and they exchange a smile before they focus on the men in front of them. The minister and the rabbi take turns speaking of the beauty, sanctity, and indelible bond of marriage, all things you already know just by watching Kim and Ron look at each other.

The rabbi opens a book and reads, "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh." He nods to the other man, who also holds an open book in his hands.

"Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate," the minister says, as though finishing the rabbi's sentence for him.

The room goes still, and so do you. You are not completely sure what is happening, but it seems the respectful thing to do.

Rufus walks over to Kim and Ron, the cushion held as high above his head as he can lift it. The rabbi bends down and retrieves two rings the same color as the tunnels on the instrument, handing one to Ron and the other to Kim.

The minister asks Kim if she takes Ron to be her lawfully wedded husband in sickness and health, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, until death do them part. To you, it sounds rather a tragic ending, but Kim's face is bright in the lights as she agrees and the ring seems to coast onto Ron's finger. The rabbi repeats the question, about taking Kim for his wife, to Ron, who says, "I do," in a voice clearer and stronger than you have ever heard from him, yet his hands shake so badly he drops his ring and has to hunt around for it on the floor before he manages to slide the ring into place on Kim's finger.

"Then by the power vested in me," the minister says, glancing up from his book, "I now pronounce you man and wife."

"You may kiss the bride," the rabbi adds.

Ron pushes the netting back from Kim's face and lowers his lips to hers.

You know by now that no tremendous white blaze will mark the moment, and yet one still seems deserved. The crowd holds a reverent silence for a moment, and then the cheers begin to clamor, striking the walls like water cresting against a cliff. As Ron and Kim take a step apart, you wonder if they saw any great light; you wonder if they feel any differently at all now that they are forever united.

Beside you, Drakken weeps again but you hear no sadness in it this time, merely the fresh sound of flowing water. Shego wears one of her rare smiles.

The rabbi turns away for a moment and comes back holding a glass, the kind from which humans drink, and you watch in confusion as he wraps it in another white cloth and places it on the ground beside Ron. Ron doesn't seem confused, nor does he hesitate; he lifts his foot and moves it over the knot of cloth. As it descends, you jerk your head around and shapeshift the innards of your ears, crumbling them to silence the horrific noise, which to humans signifies only that they should take care not to cut themselves.

By the time you let yourself hear again, applause has broken out, and Drakken grabs your arm and urges you to stand once more as Kim and Ron spin to face the rows of benches, hands intertwined with just enough space for sunlight to stream between their wrists.

They hurry down the aisle, Kim holding her dress above her ankles so she won't stumble over it. Monique is close behind them and Wade follows her, walking backward, calling, "Will the guests please gather in the reception room?"

"That's gonna be the other room with the big set of doors, right?" you ask Drakken.

"Correct." Drakken digs a crushed tissue from his pocket and dabs at his cheeks. "Ah, that was a beautiful ceremony. It's a shame about the glass, but Stoppable always was a bit of a clumsy oaf." When Shego rolls her eyes, he adds, "Not that I'm one to talk, I understand…"

"Dr. D. Doy." It falls from Shego's mouth the way the word duh would. "That was on purpose. Old Jewish tradition? Hello?"

"Oh. Of course," Drakken says. "I keep forgetting he's Jewish." He glances at you. "That's a religion."

You nod. Since the rabbi was the one who oversaw the breaking of the glass, he must be the one representing the Jewish religion. You twist to see him and the minister gathering up their things and locking their books under their arms. They shake hands, a human gesture of goodwill, and your back races with pride for this species that presides over your new home.

Around you, all grows thick and hectic. The crowd of humans has become a parting ocean, and you and Drakken end up on opposite sides of the divide. You see disquiet in his eyes before the typhoon of bodies carries him away, and you brace yourself against a post and call for your wings before you too can be dragged under.

From above, you watch the chaos, careful to keep sight of that head of spry black hair, bobbing in the sea of people as Drakken picks his usual unwieldy way toward Kim and stops in front of her, his legs two coiled springs beneath him. She says something you cannot hear, and he responds by throwing his arms around her. A silent gap forms in the area around them, but then Kim smiles and gives his shoulder a pat.

The doors to the second room are propped open just as they were last night, though significantly more light pours from them now than then. Inside, you can see that the tables have been maneuvered to hug the lines of the walls, leaving a wide blank area in the center. You hover above the other guests until Drakken and Shego choose a table and settle at it, and then you land in the chair Drakken has graciously pulled back for you.

"So – what happens now?" you say.

Drakken's fingers twiddle on the plate in front of him, a high-pitched noise ringing everywhere they strike. "Now the wedding party takes a hundred zillion photos, and we get to just sit here."

"And be patient," Shego adds, her voice bright with teasing.

"Yes. And be patient," Drakken says. He speaks as if the idea is repugnant to him, and yet his eyes do not lose their shine. "Oooh, but when they come back! When they come back, they'll cut the cake, and we'll all get to eat it!" He bobs his chin in the direction of an unoccupied table; when you look, you see what appear to be three or four different pastries packed atop one another like layers of sediment. "And there will be drinks and dancing and music –"

"Don't forget the bouquet," Shego says.

"Of course – the bouquet! How could I forget the bouquet? Well, I know how I could forget the bouquet, because it doesn't pertain to me." Drakken's chuckle is slightly embarrassed. "At some point, the bride tosses her bouquet of flowers over her shoulder, and all the single women gather behind her to try and catch it."

"Single women?" You frown around the room. "Wouldn't that be everyone? I'm the only Gem here, so there can't be any fusions."

Drakken's hands continue to squirm. "Well, yes, of course. When humans say someone is 'single,' it just means that they're not married yet, so that would include you. And Shego."

Shego quirks her lips at you, but you are not ready to smile yet.

"So then, when two people are married, do humans call them a double? I'm not sure if I'd like that. I mean, I love you an awful lot," you say to the pink patches sprouting on Drakken's confused face. "But we're not…anglerfish."

The memory of deteriorating into Jasper catches you like teeth, and you replace it with the image of those whom you will shelter and who will shelter you. It almost doesn't stun you that Bismuth is now part of that image.

"Kid's got a point," Shego says.

Drakken ducks his head. "Well, no, we are definitely not anglerfish, thank heavens. I suppose it's just one of those weird English expressions that no one thinks about if they've all been speaking the language since they were two. Anyway, all the women who aren't married yet line up behind the bride, and she tosses the bouquet, and they all try to catch it. And according to legend, whoever does catch it – she'll be the next one to get married!"

"But that's just another superstition, right?" you say.

"Exactly. Of no prophetic value of all." The small expressive hands have left the plate and now dart through the air as though trying to take its measure. "Although every now and then it ends up being right, thanks to our good friend the Law of Infinite Probability."

You wish Peridot were here to show the proper appreciation.

"Yeah, and for some reason we all follow tradition and act like we believe it and jump like crazy to get that bouquet." Shego reaches for Drakken's ponytail; he swats her away, and she grins at you. "So unless you wanna get yelled at –"

"I don't."

" – you should probably keep the wings stashed, if you get my drift."

"Unless you're about to be trampled," Drakken cuts in, his eyes wide at the thought.

A cheer that floods the room announces the arrival of Kim and Ron, and time begins to speed, the rest of the night coming to you in a series of snatches. Kim cuts off a piece of cake the shape of Peridot's head and shoves it toward Ron's face; he laughs, a globule of white topping hanging from his nose; Kim's mother comes by to offer everyone at the table their choice of champagne or sparkling grape juice, which you decide must be what fills the bottles she holds in both hands. Shego accepts champagne, but Drakken is quick to request sparkling grape juice for you and himself.

"What's wrong with champagne?" you ask as a translucent green liquid rains into your glass.

"Besides the fact that it tastes gross? Nothing, really. In small amounts." Drakken's eyes shift from side to side, and he leans in to add, "Alcohol." It is something he has explained to you before: a drink that in the process of going bad somehow turns humans more suspectable to acts of foolishness than they would otherwise be. He had a bad experience with it once, you recall, and avoids contact with it now.

Steve Barkin orders the guests to collect their cake, calling them forward one table at a time. You are stand just beyond the cake table, poking at the mounds of sweet-smelling white substance, scalloped like palace architecture, on the plate Drakken handed you, trying to figure out where it ends and the cake begins, when you hear the tick of wheels across wood flooring. You nudge Drakken and whisper, "Felix."

Drakken swallows the bite of cake he has just taken, and it must lodge in his throat, because he continues to swallow as he says, "Felix! Buddy! Hi there!" His words pitch at a steep angle, threatening to capsize, and for a moment he sounds oddly similar to his mother. "How are you? Great job best-manning today! Would you like a piece of cake? Here, just point one out to me, and I'll get it for you! Happy to help!"

You watch Felix from the corners of your eyes, ready to place yourself between him and Drakken if it is needed. To your surprise, it is not; Felix takes the piece of cake Drakken hands him and says, "Uh, thanks, man." His smile is forced yet not unwilling.

When all the women who have yet to marry gather around Kim and she flips the bouquet over her shoulder, you restrict yourself to jumping for it. You don't catch it. Shego does. She appears perplexed, an expression you have not seen often on her face.

At several points in the night, humans gather on the empty terrain in the middle of the room and begin to dance with one another. Drakken holds out his hand to you and puckers his forehead in a question; you shake your head as politely as possible. Regardless of where you make your home, you still believe the facet of a Gem that allows her to dance is one of her most precious, and you choose not to expose it in the presence of strangers.

The sun leaves the party before you do, but when Dr. Drakken walks you up to Mama Lipsky's front door, you see that she has left the porch lights on for you. By their placid yellow glow, you see your reflection in Drakken's dark eyes; that is much preferable to seeing it in glass. His grin always convinces the smiles of others, no matter how shy, to join in.

"What a fabulous night!" Drakken declares even as he breaks into a yawn. "Exhausting, of course. But, ohhhh, it's that marvelous type of exhaustion that I only get when an experience far surpasses my wildest dreams! And that's not often. But I had a blast!"

When you first began learning Earth sayings, you could not understand how an incendiary word like blast could symbolize anything good, but now you nod. "I had a blast, too," you say.

"Well, that's even more important!" Drakken says. The light is gentle on his face, the way his hands are gentle on yours. "And – listen – I wanted to thank you. For your help last night. With the – the – gggh, the how – with how I panicked." His broad voice grows unsteady, the cracks showing again. "I don't know if you know this or not, but you can be such a comfort, Lapis."

You don't know if you know this or not yourself, though this is not the first time he has told you. "No problem," you say. "We're in this together, right?"

"Absolutely! We must stick together!" Drakken flinches. "Well, not literally stick together – not, you know, physically, because – because –" He fumbles with the words as though they are sandbags of a weight he cannot support.

"Because we're not anglerfish," you say for him.

"Yes. Not anglerfish. Better not to be anglerfish. I love you."

It is an odd time to notice that he no longer pauses before he says it. You lean forward on the ends of your toes so you can kiss his forehead, and you say, "I love you too."

From the driveway, Shego's car makes a sharp, intrusive sound, and its front-facing lamps flicker on and off. Somehow, without saying a word, she manages to turn Drakken's cheeks pink again.

You wave good night and walk inside.

After you lie down on the couch and close your eyes, you see the weekend behind your eyes all night long: the past marring of Kim's dress in the picture; the present horror that leaped to Drakken's eyes when he realized he was culpable; Kim moving between the two rows of bench so lightly that you can't be certain her feet touched the ground; and the tremors in Ron's hands as he swept her netting aside, perhaps shaking with excitement or fear, or perhaps shaking with both. When you open your eyes the next morning, your back is a cloud and sunshine warms the room around you.

You thank Mama Lipsky, wish her well, and ride the warp pad's path back to Little Homeworld. As soon as you touch down, you see the unfinished lines of the central tower Bismuth is building, her crane standing empty as though she was called away to something else. You see Larimar and Snowflake Obsidian standing nearby conversing, and you see Steven. He sits next to Bixbyite's house, his body in a crook over the type of book that does not have writing in it yet, his pencil rubbing across its pages, his tongue peeping from the corner of his mouth.

He looks up at the sound of the warp pad, and light seeps through his solemn face. "Hi, Lapis!" he calls. Sometimes you still startle hearing his voice, the first voice outside the mirror to offer companionship, yet deeper and less immediate now, as if it has to make its way from a riverbed at the bottom of a canyon to reach you. "How was the wedding?"

You remember the sight of Kim and Ron dancing in the empty spaces between tables, as though they already shared a fusionscape, and the patter of Kim's laughter as Ron stepped on her toes by mistake. "The wedding was…amazing. Really beautiful. I can see why you like them so much."

Steven nods, his gaze still radiant on you. "I knew you would as soon as you got to go to one. They're the best! And you had a good time?"

"I had a great time. A blast." You lower yourself to the earth beside him and sit there for a moment. He has grown into the kind of person with whom you can be silent, and you will need that before you return to your house and to Peridot's surfeit of questions. "Are you making a meepmorp?" you ask, pointing to his book.

"Not…exactly. The Diamonds want to make an intergalactic broadcast next week, out to every planet that has Gems living on it, announcing the official beginning of Era Three and the end of the Gem Empire. White Diamond finally decided we'd worked everything out enough to put it into action." Steven rolls his eyes. "You know what a perfectionist she is."

"Oh, yeah."

You wrap your arms around your chest. You are not sure how Steven can stand in the same room with the Diamond who pried his gemstone from his body and discuss the future with her as though none of it ever happened. Is there something that makes it easier for him than it would be for you?

"So – what'll you tell them is going to change for Era Three?" you say. "I mean, not to be nosey, but…"

"But of course you still care," Steven says. "And I don't blame you. I'm super-invested in what happens to Homeworld by now, and I never even lived there. So I'll tell you.

"Era Three's gonna mean the Diamonds not having absolute power anymore. Equal rights for all Gems. No more colonizing other worlds. Any of the Gems can move to any planet they want to, as long as they do so peacefully. And, speaking of which, all the Era Two Gems have to turn over all their fancy high-tech weapons in exchange for being told the truth about what powers they have. You know, Peridots control metal, Aquamarines control water –"

"Wait a minute," you say. "You're saying that Aquamarine, the Aquamarine, didn't know she had water powers?"

"Nope! She will next week, though."

Through the stone on your back, you hear the ocean churn in protest, and you agree. You don't trust its power to a Gem who kidnapped Steven and nearly took a small portion of Beach City with him, but for a grim moment you look back on your own past, as riddled with impurities as the rivers you now clean, and the looking is painful. Perhaps it will be better to wait and see what Aquamarine becomes once free of the Empire.

"The Diamonds want me to give a speech, too, considering I'm Pink Diamond's successor and everything." He taps his pencil against the page. "That's what I'm working on now. I want them all to know I'm their friend."

"Trust me. You couldn't hide that if you tried," you say. "Steven, I know I've told you I'm so proud of you every single day for the last two years, but – do you mind if I say it again?"

He smiles, and you feel a pinch between your shoulder blades. When he smiles, he looks the same as ever and yet he doesn't: his smile has more weight behind it now, as though gravity affects it differently. "No. I don't mind at all."

You touch your jaw, pretending to think. "Well, I guess I just did say it, so do I really need to do it again?" You snort and bend your head to his. "Just kidding. I'm so proud of you, Steven."

"Thanks, Lapis." The thick curls jostle against your skin as Steven laughs. It is a sound to rival the ocean and a sound to redefine what you once thought possible. You don't need to close your eyes to see Kim and Ron with their hands together, each pushing the rings onto the other's fingers with an unbreakable certainty, the same kind that emboldened you to come back to Earth when it needed you.

You sit there for several more minutes with your shoulder against his, feeling both its foreign firmness and its familiar softness, and gaze at the horizon, staring in the direction of what is yet to come.