~At loooooooooongggggg last, enjoy!
Huge, huge, huge thanks to everyone who's been reading and reviewing! I can't believe this thing is getting the attention it is. Ya'all are the best.
And in case I don't update between now and then, have a very merry Christmas and a happy holiday season!~
It is a strange thing, guilt.
It does not simmer slowly to a boil, the way a Gem gradually matures deep in a planet's mantle. It washes over you in a great and terrible rush, much as horror overcame your relief once you were released from the mirror's confines.
You could feel the grit of sand – your favorite texture – between your fingers once more, but the Earth was a twisted facsimile of your memories. A haze of silver hung over everything; the ground warped beneath feet that wouldn't quite hold steady. And no matter how hard you strained, you could not summon your wings, only a clogged windup that never found fruition.
The realization shook you: I'm cracked.
Steven healed you then. And yet something in you now feels irreparably damaged as you wander down the streets and docks of Beach City with Dr. Drakken, more closely examining the parade of humans passing by, going about their ordinary lives.
There are children, like Steven, running barefoot across your meadow, trailing behind them long strings. At the end of those are multicolored diamonds that gust and dip with the wind currents, fluttering as they rise to meet the clouds. The shape makes you shudder. The children's gleeful giggles make you hurt.
There are pairs of young men and women who must be mates, strolling along with their fingers intertwined as though they are two parts of the same being. Whole units formed of men, women, and children of both the large and small varieties. Some of the children must be recently emerged, and they dart across the sand, headed straight for the ocean – who could blame them? – while their female caretakers yell because they haven't yet had the chance to coat them with sunscreen, a type of cream humans have developed that protects their skin cells from the sun's harsh rays.
Every picture you store up of them is tainted – black ballpoint scribbling out a form of consent – by a strangled refrain of, My people didn't think you deserved to exist.
One day, Dr. Drakken shows you to a building with a pole strapped to the front entrance, spinning red and white like some archaic welcome. He refers to the place as a "barbershop," a place where humans have their hair attended to.
Apparently, they cannot stabilize their hair at a certain length and fashion as Gems can. Instead, theirs actually grows – at an exceedingly slow rate, albeit one that occasionally requires trimming. Some wear theirs long, other shorter, and there are even some males with no hair at all. This happens sometimes when humans reach the midpoint of their lifespan, Dr. Drakken tells you, though some go "bald," as he calls it, earlier.
You understand now the shiny, pink dome crowning Greg's hair.
Their limitations are intriguing. There is so much they cannot do and even more which they are just beginning to limp their way through. You feel a sudden sweep of caring, a desire to keep watch over them, the way you would over young Gems poking out of their Kindergarten holes for the first time. As if the humans have committed no crimes more grievous than being new and unknowing.
You know this is not true. The huge block letters screaming out from human journals stored in front of the barbershop prove otherwise. And yet, from your observation, when the humans pass by and see the destruction other members of their species have wrought, they sigh and shake their heads in dismay.
Other details catch your attention. Every human who uses the barbershop exits with smoother, shinier, silkier hair than when they entered.
You put self-conscious hands to the sides of your raggedy – "bob" is a term one of the barbershop magazines used – which you have never given a second thought to. Dr. Drakken swats them away and says, in his surprising softness, "Nuh-uh."
But the moment which sears and stays is when a young woman carries in the tiniest human being you have ever seen to have his hair – a cumulus cloud of dark curls like Steven's – cut. His eyes are barely open.
And you know – if Homeworld had crushed the rebellion, there would never have been a Steven to free you, to reach out to you and heal you even after you stole his ocean and frightened him and hurt someone who means as much to him as Greg obviously does. You haven't had more than a passing acquaintance with any of its current citizens, but you certainly cannot see any of them troubling to rescue a Gem who was probably long past her prime anyway.
You grab for the wall behind you. Your legs are limp again.
It makes you want to withdraw, possibly all the way back into your gem, even though you have sustained no physical damage. The cold that once slunk across your back when you heard the Order being given over and over – Colonize this planet – is now burning you with shame.
A great gulf opens up inside you, like the one you can split the ocean into with a simple wave of your wrist. You hug your knees. And you turn to the one human who can understand, whose own shame hangs over him in distinct but translucent layers.
"Dr. Drakken?" you begin.
Drakken looks up quickly from licking at the sugared knob on a stick – known as a "lollipop," he's informed you – that he talked the desk woman at the barbershop into giving him. You haven't unwrapped yours yet. "Hmm?"
In spite of it all, his appearance – eyebrow snarled, eyes roaming, sticky patches of sucking-juice hardening at the sides of his mouth – lets you giggle. It is somehow as freeing as a good soar up into the atmosphere, far beyond the noisy aircraft that have also developed in your absence.
You pick your way around the words carefully. "I'm confused."
His face alights, as it always does whenever he is invited to further educate you. "Oh!" He leans over and tears the thin covering off your lollipop. "See, you have to take the plastic off first, remember? Then you stick it in your mouth and suck on it some to get it soft. Don't try to bite it – not right away. Otherwise, you could chip a tooth – which, I mean, I guess you could just grow a new one, but it would still hurt, right?"
For all his fumbling, he is the best Teacher you have ever had.
But that was not the question you need answered. "I mean – I'm confused about Gems," you say.
Dr. Drakken's eyebrow lifts, rumpling into a frown. "Oh," he repeats. "Well, you know more about them than I do."
"I thought I did," you say. "Now…I'm not so sure. I always thought my people were good. But we could've destroyed your planet and your kind just so there would be more of us around."
You shake your head. "It was one thing a long, long time ago, but there are plenty of us by now. And we don't age and die the way other species do, so it's not like we need to be constantly making replacements.
"Dr. Drakken, the Homeworld Gems – are we –" You grasp for the term you heard him say earlier, reflecting it back across your memory. "Are we villains?"
Drakken's breath retracts sharply, dragging the entire stick in with it. He quickly reaches in and fishes it out before you can seize the opportunity to save him. "Whoa," he says. "That's heavy."
You put your hand up to feel the air. It does seem heavier somehow, as if it is being weighted down with – what is it called? – rain. Since the clouds are white, puffier and less intense than the view from Homeworld, and the pressure rests solely on your shoulders, though, it can't be. Perhaps it is what the shoulders themselves are – an illusion, with mass.
There is a thick silence, one you are afraid to speak into. Drakken drums his fingertips together and makes a processing noise.
"Ooh! I know!" he cries at last, bracing his knees on the cement as he lifts himself to a stand again. "Come on, Lapis. I have something to show you."
You follow the blue-clad back as it weaves, off-kilter, through the milling crowds. His movements are quick and eager now.
He leads you down the walk-of-boards; across an Earth street whose sign flashes a green outline of a human that indicates it is safe to walk among the fussy, zigzagging cars; to the same windowed building – library – welcoming you with its lack of urgency. Through the doors, where he playfully pushes a button so that they swing wide for him as if he is a Commander.
The bookcases are every bit as tall and wide-set as you are accustomed to, yet they don't glower down at you in the same manner as the glimmering ones that hold the few paper records Homeworld continues to use. Pompous is the term that comes to you.
In spite of the sunlight washing in through smeared windows, you shiver.
It is not the bright, cheerful children's section that Dr. Drakken heads for this time, however. He situates himself on a cozy strip of carpet, wedged narrowly between two differently sized bookcases, and you sit with him, doing your best to duplicate his cross-legged pose. It is surprisingly comfortable.
Drakken scans the finger humans most often use across a shelf of books, muttering and murmuring and grunting until it lands on one in particular: a volume flat on almost all edges, squared off in importance. With the same haphazard gentleness with which he always treats you, he nudges a corner toward your lap and allows your hands to explore its glossy surface with its tiny rivets.
Only when you nod him on does he open the book, flip through the pages, and nod with satisfaction over one spread in particular. This does appear to be like the books on Homeworld, with captions beneath every grayscale picture and charts filling the white spaces.
What Drakken points to is a picture of a – a – creature. It has wings, like you, but that is where all similarities end. It is stocky, with a hooked nose (no – beak comes to you) that curves back around on itself like a twisted paddle.
"This is the dodo bird," Dr. Drakken declares.
You giggle again. The name somehow perfectly suits the silly-looking creature staring blankly at you from its position on the page.
Drakken's face, however, remains sober. "It's extinct."
"I'm sorry," you say automatically. Extinction is never a happy event, but it can happen so easily. One quick strike from a meteor, and some poor race is cracked beyond repair.
Drakken shakes his head – slowly, as though the weight is strapped to him, as well. "Only a few hundred years ago, too. And not from natural causes. That's not what killed it."
Your eyes narrow. "What did kill it?"
"Humans." The curl to Drakken's lip is so familiar it takes you a moment to recall he is one of them, he is not a Gem.
"How…why?" You survey the "bird" again. Its wings are too stubby to enable flight; it appears harmless. "Was it a threat?"
Drakken snorts. "Hardly. It only ever lived on one island, which was…recently" (you can tell it is hard for him to refer to centuries ago as "recently") "colonized by humans. The dodos had never seen humans before, and they were big and dumb and just followed humans around like puppies…I mean, you know, loyally. And the humans thought they were a big pain in the neck, so they started killing them off and didn't realize they were wiping them out until the last one was gone." His eyes, deep and lustrous as wells of oil, find yours. "Just because they annoyed us."
His voice is rigid but it splinters, like the wood Homeworld does not use in construction anymore. You are unable to speak at all, and you blink at him.
"See, we're not the scum-sucking bottom dwellers you guys…some of you guys think we are," Drakken says. "But we're not a billion times better, either. All of us that are advanced enough to be selfish tend to be."
He tilts his head to one side. With faintly illuminated squares from the window speckled across his soft blue skin and his mouth resolute between the sticky patches, he does appear strangely wise. He is the Guide, well-versed in the geography of an alien planet, ensuring the rest of you do not get lost in some wild jungle or swallowed by hungry quicksand.
And you never stray far from a Guide.
"But – there are good humans," you say. It's the first time you've admitted such a thing aloud.
The room shimmers with Drakken's grin, which never stays away for long. "And there are good Gems, too." He shrugs, suddenly near shy. "Such as yourself, Lapis."
A smile lifts your cheeks as naturally as your wings will skim a gust of wind.
"Oh!" Dr. Drakken taps on the front of the book, and you refrain from startling just in time. "Funny story about dodo birds!"
You glance at the date marked as the dodo's extinction and at this man whom you know to be forty-two years old. You frown. "How do you have a story about dodo birds?" you say.
"Ah, I'll get to that. You see, back when I was a supervillain, my best friend Shego was my sidekick. That's like a subordinate who's also your friend," he clarifies. His gaze lands somewhere above and far beyond you, as if he, too, is viewing a reflection of the past. "But, oh my goodness, did that girl have a mouth on her! Finally one day I mind-controlled her, just to get her to stop mocking me."
You nod him on.
"And I made her bring me milk and cookies and listen –"
Although you hate to interrupt – "what are cookies?" you ask. Drakken's voice is grim, like he is confessing to an unimaginable crime. And since you see nothing sinister about milk – it is a liquid produced by mammals, if you remember correctly – there must be something to "cookies."
"Food. Treats. Dessert for when you're done with the rest of your food."
"Oh." This doesn't answer your question, but you let him continue.
"And I was telling her all my childhood stories, about how I invented this ray to survive dodgeball. That's a game they make you play at school, and it involves – well – dodging a ball, of course."
Game? School?
Ball. You receive the word, connect it with the recreational spheres you have watched children bounce down the walk-of-boards. You do not understand what about it is bringing that faraway pain to Drakken's eyes.
"Then, while I was working on my latest evil plan – which…let's see…what was that?" Drakken strums his lower lip as though playing an instrument whose name you cannot recall. "Oh, yes, of course! More mind control chips!
"Anyway, I was asking her to fetch all my tools and she was obeying, which was just a really nice change for me. And then I started thinking I was 'all that'" – the ridiculous way in which he exaggerates the words, pinching at the invisible mass of gases that he needs to breathe, sets you giggling again – "and I told her to get me a fork."
Your face must be giving off puzzlement, because Drakken explains, "A fork is something, a utensil, that you use to get food to your mouth when it would be rude to just pick it up."
You look down at your lollipop, lying still in your lap. The existence of rules which you have not learned twitches uneasily inside you.
Dr. Drakken's laughter seems to rumble from his shoulders, though of course you know it is coming from his mouth. "And then – I told her to get me a dodo bird, just to see how she would respond. Eventually, I told her, 'Psyche! Dodo birds are extinct!' But I guess she didn't hear me.
"Because when I turned around and happened to glimpse our security camera, there was our arch-nemesis climbing up to get us! She was thiiiiiiiiis close to the lair." Drakken holds his pointing finger an unbelievably small measure away from his thumb. "And I – and I asked why Shego hadn't told me she was coming, and you know what she says?"
You shake your head no. How could you know?
"She says – she says – she says, 'I was looking for a dodo bird.'" Drakken slaps his hand against his knee several times and laughs so hard it requires him to lie down, head reclined against a bare base shelf behind him.
This must be Earth humor, because you don't get it.
"Then – well, to make a long story very, very short, my mind control chip was dismantled and Shego came out of it. And she was ticked," Drakken says.
"She had ticks?" you ask disgustedly.
"No!" Drakken chuckles even harder. "She was really, really mad. She said, 'Do you have any idea what listening to you is like? IT IS SO BORING!'"
You cast a second look at this man – quivering with energy; perched on his knees; leaning as always slightly forward, as if eager to welcome whatever his planet conjures up next. Who could possibly label him boring?
"She gave me a black eye," Drakken says.
"Your eyes are already black," you say. Gem eyes tend to be light-colored to complement flesh and hair, and his are striking in their contrast. And while Earth customs may be different, Gems do not typically give gifts when they are angry with someone. You feel slithers of anxiety.
"Oh, no, no! It's more like – here." Drakken taps the area between his lower eyelid and his cheekbone. "It's when you get punched in the eye so hard, all the skin swells up and turns dark."
The slithers morph into sympathy. You've been briefly pained by bruises, but it doesn't take a Gem long to shapeshift their blood vessels back together. How long does a mere human have to suffer the throb under their skin?
And then the truth of what he's saying immobilizes you. Only your lips part enough to say, "She punched you?"
"Er, yes." Drakken grimaces as he rubs the bridge of his nose. "She beat me up pretty good."
His face is so open and unguarded, not even shielded by the visors all Homeworld Gems began wearing in your absence. And you know by sight, with the same intuition with which you can judge the sea's currents, that it will not stand up to angry fists, even the smallest of them. "She beat you up?" you repeat. "Why?"
Drakken gazes at you as if you have said something nonsensical. "Um, because I mind-controlled her."
You give your head a couple of frenzied shakes. "And made her bring you treats and look around for extinct birds? That's nothing. Do you know what Yellow Diamond and her armies would do if they had the power of mind control?"
It's the type of question you do not expect an answer to; the type which, you recall uncomfortably, a Gem is only permitted to ask of her inferiors.
Dr. Drakken does answer, to your relief, because you can't bear to consider him your inferior any longer. "No. I don't even know anyone named Yellow Diamond."
"That's a good thing." You lean away from the cold metal of the shelf, which is suddenly too close to the bleak shining hub that used to be home. "Your friend hurt you?"
"Oh. Lapis. Look," Drakken says. He gratingly scoots his seat across the carpet toward you, and you surprise yourself by not leaning away from him. "Shego and I worked it out. It's over. Water under the bridge."
Familiar with the behavior of water, you nod.
And yet you must ask – "So, things are different? You're safe with her now?"
"Yup!" Drakken shoots you the grin again, wide open until you can see all the ridges of his throat. "I don't mind control her anymore, and she doesn't beat me up anymore. I'm safe with her – and she's safe with me."
Releasing a breath, you let the book slap shut and return it to the shelf. You admittedly have no idea what your course of action would've been, if any, had he said no. You have never fought for anything in your life and you are unsure whether you could bring yourself to stand with the humans should the war begin anew.
But you cannot endanger this human.
Drakken's forehead has furrowed into fine rows; his hands loop and tumble in his lap, attention still at that burrowing level where he might not even be seeing them. He appears so knowledgeable at this point that you find yourself searching for other questions to pose.
"What other species have gone extinct on Earth?" you ask.
"Oh, all kinds!" Drakken's expressive fingers warm to the topic. "Dinosaurs, woolly mammoths, passenger pigeons" – he shakes his head – "not really sure what happened there. Saber-toothed tigers."
Energy quivers across your back as you envision large, powerful creatures – felines, if you remember correctly – with teeth like Gem weapons. You do not think you regret the lost opportunity to encounter those beasts.
But another reflection from the past streams across your mind. A solid, towering, majestic creature with movingly wise, compassionate eyes. They, far more than the humans you encountered so many centuries ago, took care of their own kind. You hated to see such a species wiped out.
"Do you still have –" you scan every one of your manifested senses for the word to match the picture – "elephants?"
Drakken nods with more ceremony than you ever thought a simple human could give such a simple act. "Yes! They're endangered, but-but-but, people are working to save them!" The nodding head ducks and tilts to meet your face. "Because we can do that, too."
They can?
When you shut your eyes, old memories are punctured by the new ones, collapsing from the inside. The brutes who chased each other with crude wooden tools dissolve, sandy bit by sandy bit, into the image of human beings trying. Rising to walk, halting and stumbling much as you did when you emerged from the mirror and took your first steps in thousands of years; failing more often than not yet still rooted in firm determination that pushes them to their feet again.
You could not abandon your home, your life, your community for them as the Crystal Gems did, but you can see how they produced Dr. Drakken. And Steven, your Steven, whose goodness perhaps did not stem in its entirety from his Gem heritage.
Your eyes open again to discover Dr. Drakken's legs stretched in full across the aisle, his toes spread inside his sandals toward the sunlight. The playfulness of it echoes in your memory, conjuring up pictures of other creatures, comma-shaped ones with smooth gray skin and laughing voices. You remember being greeted by them last time, when you first plunged into the ocean and led it away with you, how relieved and comforted you were by the sight of their spiky, grinning teeth.
"I know you still have dolphins," you say. "And lions. Steven has a pet lion. It's pink."
"A pink lion?" Drakken's eyebrow slides upward, one bristly side higher than the other. "How delightful! I have a pink poodle."
"What's a poodle?" you ask.
"It's a dog."
You recall the book illustrated in warm, rich-toned reds that welcomed your touch. "Like Clifford?"
"Yes!" Drakken points at you as though you have set Gem culture forward a thousand years. "Only much, much smaller, and their fur's curly."
"Oh." You adjust the picture to one of a miniature animal with fur the lion's color and Steven's texture. This and the happy sounds chirping from Drakken's mouth relax your grip enough to slide your hands down to your own lap and slowly retrieve your lollipop. You examine the sphere for a minute that seems longer than normal, then place it carefully between your lips, following Dr. Drakken's instructions not to bite down right away.
It is sweet. Almost too sweet, with a taste that matches the smell of overripe berries that once overran Kindergarten Base 12. The air was always pungent, sticky with that odor when the planet's orbit passed nearest the sun. And yet when you take a tiny, cautious lick, something more solid lies underneath, something that anchors the flavor and holds it in the pleasant.
Dr. Drakken stands now, reaches a palm down to help you up even though you don't require assistance, and knocks his own hip into a bookshelf as he swivels. The stick shifts to the other corner of his mouth and wiggles unhappily as he rubs the knot that must hurt, fragile as his kind is. "I have so much to show you here!" he cries.
And he is so hopeful that it does not even occur to you not to follow when he turns and twirls up to the front aisle of shelves.
He removes a small, flat square box and hands it to you. It appears solid, but when you touch it, it squishes slightly under your fingertips. Although you've never broken anything before without the aid of the ocean, you drop your hands anyway. You cannot cause damage, cannot be charged Earth currency when you have none to pay.
Drakken pops open two snaps on the case and opens it. A familiar pristine ring, silvered save for the band of rainbow in the center, lies inside.
"It's an instructional disk," you say, blinking at it.
"We call it a DVD," Drakken informs you. "A Digital Video Disk."
You nod to let him know this makes sense.
"And they're not all instructional down here. Which – a lot of them still are – and those are really neat – but they can also be used just to tell stories," he says.
"Like the books?" you say.
"Exactly! They can make you laugh or cry or get scared." Drakken crosses his arms to touch opposite shoulders, as if giving himself a hug. "But the best movies do all of that – and more!
"Behoooolllllllllld!" he bellows, the noise echoing in the strangely silent building, as he gestures grandly to his chosen shelf and begins rifling through the square cases. "Let's see, we have The Lion King, Anastasia, Toy Story, Beauty and the Beast." He interrupts himself with a wince. "Well, maybe not that one…it's got a mirror in it…."
Though you do not see how a mirror could fit into a square that small, you pace a short stretch backward anyway.
"And there's more!" Drakken flits around behind you and spreads his fingers into starbursts that frame your cheeks from a respectful distance. "There are so many real-life stories behind our holidays. Everything from Columbus Day to Thanksgiving! And Christmas – oooh, Christmas is my favorite!"
The words are more buoy-like than ever, bobbing on waves of excitement that capture you in their cap. Whatever he is speaking of, you want some of it for yourself.
"What's Christmas?" you ask.
Drakken's chin jerks sharply to the right. "Whaaaaaa – ohhhhhh – wait, when did you say you were last here? Before the mirror thing?"
"Five thousand years ago." Or was it six? Much of that still exists in a walled-off blur in your head.
The fascinating black eyes stretch as wide as his starry fingers. "So…before…"
"Before what?" you say.
Drakken turns to look you full in the face. His smile shimmers, so joyous. "Oh," he says happily. "This is one of my favorite stories."