~To whoever's been reading - thanks for being willing to give this a try. :)
STANDARD DISCLAIMER: At the time I wrote this, the most recent episode was "Friend Ship." I tried to be deliberately vague when recounting details of the War, but it may still be contradicted as canon expands.
It may also give you the feels.~
"Lapis!"
You turn around. Though the early morning light blocks much of the figure hurrying toward you, you are struck by its lopsided, birdlike run.
It brings a smile to your lips when it does turn out to be Dr. Drakken. He's changed from his swimming garment into what must be the coat for his lab, and it gives him a more confident air. But those are the same soft features and the same tender way of holding his head slightly to one side.
His face is pinker and puffier than when he left you last night. Is this what sleep does to humans? You've never seen one recently awoken before, and you are surprised at how soft and fresh he looks.
Well, fresh save for the flaky crust at the corners of his eyes.
His sloppiness is so foreign and so fascinating.
"Hello, Dr. Drakken," you say.
"It's great to see you again!" he says. Despite the crust, Drakken's eyes are as bright and curious as they were yesterday. "Did you have a good night? Stayed out by the ocean, didn't have any problems?"
You nod.
"Stupendous!" Drakken taps his fingertips together, the unique prints hidden today by black gloves. "Look, I'm still a newbie here myself…just here for vacation."
He gestures to the cluster of shops below you that are just being opened for the day. They're primitive structures, but fairly civilized, all things considered. When you were last here, humans lived in tribes, nasty fragments of populations, always going to war over land ownership or which gods they worshiped, and you were so frightened when their influence on the Crystal Gems became strong enough to lead them to turn against their own kind, as well.
Maybe humans have progressed some since then.
"And I thought it might be fun for the two of us – newbies – to go shopping together?" Drakken suggests.
You aren't familiar with the concept of "shopping," but you enjoy this man's company. And you have been so lonely. You agree.
Drakken's first stop is a furniture store where the walls are lined with high stools and the floors are darkened with scuff marks. Some of the furnishings are appealing – especially the ones that appear to have just washed in from the sea, whitened by the sun and splintered by the waves. But none of them are particularly impressive.
You tilt your head toward Drakken. "So – what's here that's so interesting to you?"
Drakken grins as though he has been waiting for that exact question. "Ah, yes! Right over here!"
He reaches for your hand, then jerks himself away, fingers twiddling again as he realizes he does not need to grab you: his enthusiasm already tethers your own hopeful wonder along in its wake.
In the farthest corner of the store, back a few feet from the display windows, are two huge black chairs, so incredibly padded that you aren't quite sure how to sit down in them. Dr. Drakken plumps right into his, and you follow his lead, though a bit more delicately.
The cushions give beneath you, cupping you like the pillowed trees on Kindergarten Base 17 would – you hated to see those brought down. You squeal a little, and Drakken's hair, caught back at the nape of his neck with a thick band, swings up as if in direct response.
"They're massage chairs!" Drakken says joyfully. He reaches over to the chair's arm and flips a switch. Instantly, his chair comes alive with jolts and vibrations that whir almost alarmingly.
You sink your fingers deep into the folds of your chair's arms, careful not to even bump the switch. "I – I like it the way it is," you say. Chairs have served your people and countless others for many, many years as stationary objects, and you don't feel like changing that today.
"Su-u-u-uit-t-tt yoo-our-rrr-selllll-ff," Drakken stutters. His voice wobbles up and down to the rhythm of the seat.
Pulling your feet up under you, you are content to watch.
"Why do you like those chairs so much?" you ask when you leave.
"Oh, I have a really bad back," Drakken says with a grimace.
You circle around behind him and examine his back. It appears to be a perfectly suitable spine. "How is it bad?" you say.
"Well, the joints and the discs and the vertebrae…" Drakken's hands flutter in midair. "They hurt a lot. You're lucky Gems don't get old."
He squints at you. "You don't get old, do you?"
"No."
"Didn't think so." Drakken's hands move again. Small enough to express even the most intricate emotion, they fling skyward and pluck at nothing. "We humans have to fight the gray hairs and the spread and the aches and pains, while you all just become more distinguished!"
His eyebrow is straight down over his eyes, looking so funny, as if someone smudged it onto his forehead with a piece of wet bark. You suppress a laugh just so you can feel it tickle your stomach.
Drakken's expression storms over further, into something that no longer brings you pleasure. "Are you making fun of me?"
"No, no, no!" you're quick to exclaim. This is another phrase you don't have a concept of, but you can tell it is not a good thing. "No, trust me, I wasn't! How can laughing be an insult?"
Drakken smiles a little, a fleeting curve without teeth. "Trust me, on this planet, it can."
His momentary pain is deeper than you knew had a chance to collect in such a short lifespan.
You are briefly sorry for him. And yet you can tell by the way he says "on this planet," the friendly glance he gives you, that he knows this was not your intent.
And for that, you are grateful.
Next, Dr. Drakken insists on visiting a toy store. Toys, he explains, are given to young humankind to bring them comfort and teach them how to interact with spacial objects.
You recognize a stuffed bear – Steven had one of those, though one darker in color and smaller. And, while you have never kept track of species relationships on Earth, last time you checked, bears and humans didn't always coexist very well. Why would you give a toy in the shape of a predator to a – a – child, are they called? To teach them to be fierce?
No, that can't be. There's resolve in Steven, but no fierceness. He is a nice, sweet young one.
You are surprised to find some of that spirit here. The flashing lights and the loud beeping noises take your mind back to a day when this was the extent of Homeworld's tech.
Drakken is currently leaping back and forth in front of a toy with a motion detector. You've always found those slightly creepy, so you allow yourself to back away a few inches and find yourself looking at a miniaturization of something. Some instrument.
There are Pearl-white, long keys that remind you of Dr. Drakken's teeth. Black, skinnier keys nestle over and between them.
You can't recall the name of it – pictures still rise to you easier than words – but you know they had them back on Homeworld at one time. Distant memories, hologram-like ones that disappear when you try to touch them, unspool, as you release a finger and press it to the white key in the middle.
It expels a single, perfect note.
A shiver zips through you, the good kind. You move one key over, and then another, until you have reached the end and then start over from the beginning. The farther you go to the right, the higher and clearer the notes become; farther to the left, they grow thicker and lower.
Music.
It has been such a long time since you've heard it.
You glance over your shoulder at Dr. Drakken. He's moved on to a robotic wolf of some sort that responds to your commands to sit, much to Drakken's delight. His laugh has the rumble of a cannon-shot, though not the precision or the violence.
Finally, he shows you to a "home furnishings" store, where humans purchase various items – Drakken refers to them as "knickknacks and whatnots," but that's obviously not the technical term – to decorate their dwellings. Framed photographs, abstract paintings, carpet that bends under your feet. These aren't the sorts of things savage barbarians collect, are they?
Steven's house was certainly more welcoming than anything left on Homeworld when you returned.
Your attention is especially drawn to a little gray anchor. It's metallic rather than wooden and would look sharp and dangerous were it not for some flakes of charming rust that you poke tentatively at. Yet something about it puzzles you:
"This is too small to hold down a ship. Even a one-passenger canoe would need more than this."
Drakken strokes his chin with sudden wisdom that looks pale from underuse. "That's because it's a fakesy," he says. "It's not meant to be an actual anchor – it's meant to hang on a wall or something. For people who like the beach but can't live near it but want to be reminded of it."
"Oh." You glance back at the anchor. This makes some amount of sense. You understand why those who must live inland would want to keep a token of the sea.
"My interior decorating skills are really being pushed to the limit right now," Drakken continues as he skips ahead. "I'm in the middle of a big move, and I thought, Wow, how much money could I save if I just hologram-projected all my décor? But it turns out it's really expensive to build a hologram projector, plus you can't actually touch it and that's not that great when it comes to furniture…"
His words are like buoys bobbing in the water, cresting and falling, sometimes dipping clumsily below the surface but never ceasing.
You cross over to a low shelf and find yourself at eye level with a reddish-orange chunk, etched with intricate wavy lines that divide it into blobs. The feel of it is tough under your fingers but not stony. Although it is strange to see it above sea level, you recognize it instantly.
The tag resting next to it proclaims it to be "real, non-endangered coral."
Your legs shiver. Non-endangered? Last time you were here, reefs were plentiful and provided many fish with the nutrients they need to survive.
Maybe humans are still barbarians, after all.
You shake the thought off the way your projected body can shed water, drop by drop, and scurry over to Dr. Drakken. He is running a finger over several picture frames – wood, metal, plastic – each in turn, awestruck. He sizes up a stool made out of driftwood, fingers forming a square, and then casually dropping into a diamond, as if the shape carries no weight with Earth's citizens.
Right now his buoy-words are saying, "Like me, I live in the Midwest – town called Middleton, to be precise, and there's no ocean there. My first real home since I was eighteen. My former – errr – occupation called for me to be on the move a lot, and it didn't pay to get too attached to any one lair…"
You would ask what a Middleton is or why he stutters when describing the past. But before you can, Drakken comes very close to squealing, cries, "Ooh! Lapis! Look at this!"
He snatches a handled object from the display above his head and holds it up close. Almost immediately, his face distorts, mouth flattened enough to let his pink glistening tongue hang out.
Since he doesn't appear to have been harmed, you realize he's being – what's the term – silly? But why would he bother – unless –
Drakken turns the thing eagerly toward you. The overhead lights beam off its silvery surface and blast your eyes with the glare and the reflection that was once your whole world.
Your own face distorts.
Everything distorts, as though you are shapeshifting without any idea of what you are changing into. Although outwardly your assumed form remains steady, black spots blot at the edges of your vision.
It all comes back.
You watch the proud Galaxy Warp fall into shattered crystals, hear angry voices blare around you, feel everything condense into a knob on your back. Apart from the ocean, you are small and weak.
Your arms claw over each other, nails nicking the flesh – protect the gem. Protect it at any cost. When they cannot reach the hollow between your shoulder blades where it's encased, you shrivel inward in a series of shakes. Small, subtle movements that feel big and leave your ears ringing.
Dr. Drakken's deep voice seeps through. "Lapis? Are you all right?"
You shake your head no.
A change comes over him then; you can hear it when he says, "Okay – okay – okay – what is it?" He sounds nervous, almost shrill, but with a determination far stronger than anything else he's shown you so far.
Drakken points at the life-size carving of a fishwoman next to you. "Is it this?"
You shake your head again.
"Is it this?" The driftwood stool – no. "This?" A display of bristly mats like the one Steven had in front of his door – no. "Is it this?"
This time, Drakken gestures to the mirror.
This time, you nod.
"Okay. Okay. Getting rid of that." Drakken sets the mirror back on the display shelf and wipes his hands on the seat of his pants. "All right. Let's go…"
He guides his arm in a wide arc around you, gets behind your back without actually touching it, and urges you forward. You half-stumble after him, through a glass-fronted door, out into the open air.
One whiff of the salt breeze coming off the ocean, and you can breathe again. You sit down, hard, on the concrete steps and let your muscles slowly uncoil.
Dr. Drakken lands right next to you, hands dangling awkwardly between his thighs. "Better out here?" he asks. His grin is hopeful.
"Y-yes," you can say. "M-much better. Thank you."
Drakken cocks his head to one side, the forest of hair swinging. "You know, I used to not like mirrors that much, either, because I thought I was really ugly, but I'm over it now."
Ugly?
What are men supposed to look like? Drakken has two eyes, a nose, a nice set of ears…everything the Gems have catalogued as natural for humans.
"But you, though, you're really cute, so I don't see what the problem is," Drakken says. His forehead puckers with the strain of attempting to fathom you, his tone never once straying from its factual reporting.
And that is what loosens your grip on yourself. He wishes to understand, so badly wishes you can see it frustrating him from the inside out. His eyes show none of the judgment the Crystal Gems, other than Steven, were so quick to issue you.
You allow your sigh to quiver and truly release. You concentrate on the spot where the sea meets the horizon.
And then you part your lips, and your whole story comes out.
"Wow," Dr. Drakken says. "Trapped in a mirror. I didn't know that was a thing." This is apparent in the unease of his legs shifting on the steps; in his troubled stare, turned in your direction but clearly aimed at something beyond the both of you; in the genuine way he says, "I'm so sorry."
An apology? An admission of guilt? Does he believe he is to blame?
"You're sorry? But you didn't put me there." You reach over and leave your hand suspended right above his knee.
"What?" Confusion stirs in Drakken's eyes for a moment, then clears. "Oh, no, I know that. I'm just saying that I feel really sad for you."
You pull your gaze from your bare toes and manage a smile for him.
"How'd you get out, then?" Drakken asks.
"My friend Steven." It's the first part of the telling that doesn't hurt. How long has it been since you've had a friend? "He freed me."
"Steven, eh? What's he like?"
"He's…young." You fumble for an estimate, but everything about humanity is compressed into spans too brief for a Gem to measure. "He's – well, how old are you?"
"Forty-two," Drakken says.
Using Drakken's age – old enough to creak but not yet fading – you try to parse it down to Steven's innocent newness. "Then he's probably….ten? Or maybe twenty?"
"How big is he?"
You hold your hand about ninety-six Earth centimeters from the ground to indicate where Steven's tumble of curls stops.
"Hmmm." Drakken's brow creases as he ponders this. "Probably closer to ten, then. Unless he's a midget."
It's not a term you are familiar with, but you are bombarded with the immediate picture of unusually small Gems who need to fuse to be strong.
"I think I'm supposed to ask if he has whiskers now," Drakken continues. "But that's not always the best indicator. I barely have any myself. See?"
He thrusts his chin very close to your nose, so near you can pick out tiny individual wisps of dark hair scattered along his chubby jawline. When your hands go to your own cheeks, you are astonished to feel a very similar layer of down, even finer, and you wonder if it has always been there.
Now you know what to call the stubble like a harvested field that surrounds the human Greg's mouth.
"He's…good," you say. It's such a simple word, childish almost, and yet it is the best summary of Steven. "He's sweet and friendly and laughs at everything. And if you're in pain, he'll know. He'll understand, and he'll…forgive you."
You are abruptly, achingly aware that Steven's healing press against your back was the first time in your millennia of existence that you have been forgiven.
Drakken's spiky head tilts. "Sounds like a neat kid."
"He is." Your arms are limp, somehow weak from the recount, and you drape them across your knees. "So…I'm sorry that I panicked in there."
Drakken lets out a snort, as if he is choking on the gases in Earth's stifling atmosphere. Something humorous and something whimsical do a fusion dance on his face. "Heh – you call that panicking? You should see me sometime!"
"You?" You are confused.
Palms on his legs, Drakken nods again. A thin sheen of sweat is breaking out on his forehead. "I've – I've been in prison, too," he says. "Not in a mirror. In a building. They put bars on the windows and assign you a number and basically forget you're a person."
You quiver in sympathy.
"It's awful, isn't it?" Drakken asks this as though he is not truly expecting an answer. "You come out – well, I don't know about you, but most people can come out pretty mean. You want to hurt the people who put you in there."
Relief invades you, slackening your body further. There is something warm and wise gliding across this man's eyes, and it understands you, even the dark places you would rather not be understood. The anger has felt so dirty for so long.
You return his nod with your own. "And – and – maybe even more – you want to hurt the people who knew you were in there and didn't do anything," you say.
Three faces flash through your mind – purple, firm red, pointy and white. Three faces frozen and shocked, three faces who assumed you were a monster beyond hope.
"Hoo-boy. Yes." Drakken hugs himself and talks practically into his lap. "That's a big one."
It sounds so natural, though he speaks of it without fondness. You are not alone in your disgrace.
You look down at your fingerprints.
"Sometimes – sometimes I have nightmares. I wake up and I'll be all alone in the dark, and I won't remember I'm free," Drakken says.
You cannot relate to nightmares or waking up, but you know of being alone in the dark. No one comes to look at a mirror in the middle of the night.
Suddenly, Drakken is on his feet, grinning an enormous shining grin down at you. "You know what I like to do when that happens? I like to find the biggest, widest-openest space I can and run around in it! There's – I think there's a meadow around here somewhere. You want to go run in a meadow?"
The once-vast fields of Homeworld loom in your mind. A place to which a warp, even a functional one, can no longer take you.
"Yes," you say.
Drakken leads you away from the huddle of shops and down a sandy path to a wide, green expanse dotted sparsely with trees. Sprigs of grass, damp from the early morning mist, are soft and flexible under your feet. The wildflowers are different here on Earth, light shades of blue like Drakken's skin, and soothing lavender. Some have rings of white petals surrounding friendly yellow centers.
You run, legs pumping, heart pounding, through an area with no walls, no confines of any type. The longer blades of grass lash at your heels and your dress lifts and floats in the breeze. The air is sweet, crisp – and Dr. Drakken stays nearby, a benign presence, laughing and rolling on his back down a rise too small to be a hill. His pedals sprout every now and then, and he giggles as he plucks them out.
Eventually, you join him, on your back on the ground, looking up toward the clouds and smiling at his human ritual of imagining shapes in them. Earth, miserable planet that it is, does have quite a bit of potential.
It can never live up to the majesty of Homeworld, although – and perhaps it is traitorous to admit it, even to yourself – you are beginning to prefer the company down here.