~No, I'm not entirely finished with the next part, but I had to get this chapter up before the hiatus ends. (One week, w00t!)

We're switching over to Drakken's POV for the next couple of chapters, but we'll eventually come back to Lapis. Promise!~

Dr. Drakken knows he does not have the swiftest of memories.

It is not uncommon for him to forget occurrences from this past week, this past month, let alone this past summer. Especially this summer – since his reformation, everything has been so wondrous, the flashbacks blur as if they're being played in fast-forward rather than rewind.

So when Drakken's watching TV one day, listening to obscure scraps of news – savoring how many channels the huge screen in his old lair gets before he has to give them up in favor of this new thing called a "budget" – and he hears the reporter say, "The citizens of Beach City are settling back in following last week's evacuation," it takes him a moment to grasp why his ears perk up.

Beach City. That's – that's not the seaside port where he almost drowned; no, this recognition is a happy one, not a frightening one. It doesn't register as any of the resorts where Shego enjoys visiting. And it's certainly not the site of a failed evil scheme.

Is it – could it be where he went on vacation this summer? And met that nice girl? Lapis?

Yes, of course! Phew, that was about to tunnel under his very skin and drive him bat –

Wait a minute – evacuation?

Drakken's body is nothing more than a throbbing collection of pulse points as he rivets his attention to the newscaster. "Mayor Dewey ordered the evacuation," she says, and she's almost grim about it, so different from most smiley reporters, "upon sighting what is presumed to be an extraterrestrial craft, which the townsfolk have dubbed 'the giant space hand.'"

Reporter Lady is replaced by a photo, and her assessment is not wrong. The golden-green hand in the sky is seemingly part of a larger, invisible statue. Very War-of-the-Worlds-esque, it's more elegant than the Lorwardians' battleships, but the hostility is every bit as clear, with its mammoth fingers extended toward the shore like diving boards – or landing gear. More likely the latter, since they were intent on, you know, landing…but near the ocean, so it might make some sense to have a diving board…

Drakken finds it suddenly very difficult to breathe.

"It is confirmed that the craft made a touchdown, but the few witnesses to this event have thus far declined to comment. However, stories are circulating that the craft contained anywhere from two to five life forms. The life forms are rumored to appear humanoid and female."

While Reporter Lady continues to drone on – and Drakken feels his blood vibrating in his ear drums – another photo appears. Someone with a cell phone of the elite variety Drakken can't afford has captured the ship from a different angle. The hard lines of it are visible, intimidating even through two or three layers of tech-screen, and so is a strange insignia blasted on the side:

A white diamond shape cresting high with two others, positioned lower and yet equally imperious, tucked into its sides – a yellow and a blue.

The blue one is familiar to Drakken. No, more than familiar – some part of his brain has been engraved with the pattern. But where – when – how?

Drakken's eyelids skitter shut, and he resorts to tapping on his temple like Winnie-the-Pooh. Come on, Drakken – think! Use that genius brain of yours and THINK!

Of course. When he and Lapis exchanged goodbye letters right before his return to Middleton – and she asked, "Is this how you spell your name?" and he had to admit that "Drakken" was a name he made up himself and its spelling was more a matter of invention than convention – she had carefully signed hers with the design of a blue diamond beside her name.

And yellow and white?

Lapis mentioned someone named Yellow Diamond.

"The craft was airborne again for a time before finally crash-landing near the…"

The words that follow dissipate into a colorless blabber for Drakken. He only sees hunks of alien tech showering down, a wall of fire splitting the beach, a beach where he once stood. It's all he needs, all he can possibly handle. Drakken fumbles for the remote, snaps the TV off, and makes a beeline for his file cabinet before the image of the ship's insignia can dwindle from his mind.

He checks under "B" for "Beach City" and "L" for "Lapis Lazuli" before finally locating the letter under "V" for "Vacation." (So his system can be a little haphazard – so sue him!)

Fingers trembling, Drakken scans the letter and lands on the end. Sure enough, next to Lapis's eyelash of a signature, is a much more thickly inked, respectfully rendered blue diamond.

Identical to the one on the ship.

Homeworld. That ship was from Homeworld.

Then that means –

"Lapis!" Drakken blurts out. When no one answers him – he would be even more spooked if they did – he bolts down the stairs for the hovercraft, stopping only to grab the first thing in the pantry, a box of Fruit Roll-Ups that he throws on the seat beside him. He hasn't a second to lose.

In theory.

In reality, it takes quite awhile to get to Beach City. How long, Drakken couldn't report, since he never bothered to install a digital clock on the hovercraft's otherwise-fully-equipped dashboard. He'd wager an hour and a half, though every minute simultaneously takes two nanoseconds and two million years.

When he finally touches down, add another ten minutes of sheer gawking. Something different permeates the air in the town now – a stirring, a relief not quite yet realized, an adrenaline burst that hasn't worn off yet. Shiny shards of debris litter the streets, smash down roofs, and glitter on the sand like broken bottles. And while it's a pale version of the damage done to Middleton by the Lorwardians – or even his own Diablos – Drakken's stomach seizes anyway.

To make it even more disconcerting, he still recognizes every location. The arcade, the donut shop, the pizza parlor.

It's there, surrounded by the reassuringly mouth-watering odor of oozy cheese and fresh hot bread, that Drakken spies his first human being – a small brown woman with white hair twined up in one of those knob things on her head. He pounces (not literally) on her. "Excuse me," he somehow coaxes himself into saying. "Where are the Gems?"

She doesn't look at him funny. In fact, she redirects to him to "a house on the beach. Built right into the cliff – you can't miss it."

Drakken doesn't. He's never come quite this far down on the beach before, and now the house is unmistakable, lifted from the ground and cupped in the hands of a rock-hewn woman with long, flowing curls and at least four graceful arms. Scientifically speaking, she is a marvel, a mixture of oddities and unimaginable latent possibilities. From an emotional standpoint, she is perplexingly serene and calming and projects a feeling of being watched over.

Both beckon him closer.

The sea, however, is anything but serene. Though the day is near cloudless with only the slightest suggestion of a breeze, the waves roil and churn as though building to the climax of a storm. They lash, almost angrily, against the cliff. Skeptical as any good scientist should be over such mysticism, Drakken nevertheless gets the impression that they are trying to tell him something.

And he can't understand them. Not the way Lapis does.

Drakken can feel the panic threatening inside him, and he churns sand under him in his trek for the elevated porch. His footfalls don't line up with his heartbeat, and it pushes his anxiety even closer to the top. He barely has the lung capacity to hike up the steep porch steps.

Once the door is in sight, though, Drakken regains his energy. He's pounding on the frame with his clenched fist, hollering, "Lapis! Lapis!"

More footsteps approach. He waits for Lapis to open the door, waits to be on the receiving end of her enchanting, little-girl smile and a story of how she escaped the crash.

None of that happens. The door squeaks open, and Drakken is now staring at a very tall, very skinny, very white lady. Her very long, very pointy nose is level with his forehead, and Drakken is afraid to move forward so much as a centimeter and risk being impaled.

"May we…help you?" she asks. Her politeness would sound almost forced were it not so creamy and musical. That helps somewhat – that and the oval gemstone centered between her pale bangs, without any of the tacky glue traces that would be evident in a costume.

Okay. She's a Gem.

"Errr, yes, actually." Drakken tries to not appear rude as he slips sideways, out of nose-range. "I'm looking for Lapis. Lapis Lazuli?" he ventures when the white lady's eyebrows squeak toward the gemstone.

"Not here, dude," says a second, husky voice.

It comes from a second woman, with purple skin and a corresponding round stone on her chest, shown off by the shoulder strap sliding down her sternum. Her hair is long enough for her to stand on, though this is perhaps not saying much as she's even shorter than Mother. In the dimness of the other lady's shadow, it looks almost white, but when she steps into the light, flips it at him, and then turns back around, Drakken can see it's truly a light shade of lavender.

For the moment, he is too befuddled to be offended.

White Lady sticks out a long leg and catches the door before it can clap all the way shut. "Amethyst, really!" she snaps, bristling with angles.

Amethyst. Well, that makes sense.

The white lady takes another lyrical breath, the way Drakken's English professor in college used to do before he launched into an hour-long lecture. But before the first note can emerge, someone else nudges into the doorway.

This one is a little boy, whose chubbiness and curly black hair remind Drakken of a less intellectual version of Kim Possible's computer kid. He tugs on the white lady's…tunic is the closest word Drakken can find. "Pearl, my Elefun's all stuffed up again," he says, skirting the edges of whining without falling in.

White Lady's point softens, much as pencil graphite does when it's been worn down, as she glances about two feet down at the kid.

The child's face records Drakken and then breaks into a mile-wide grin. "Oh, hello, sir," he says – clearly he got his manners from his pointier baby-sitter. "Do you know what's the best way to unclog an elephant's sinuses?"

Drakken strokes his chin and ponders that for a moment. His brain is more than glad to handle this rather than the anxiety produced by the abundance of people and the absence of Lapis. "Well, peppermint is a pretty good natural decongestant," he muses.

The kid's smile grows even bigger, if that's possible. "Yeah! That'll work! I think I still have some candy canes left that Dad gave me for Christmas –"

He is cut off by the white lady – Pearl, did he call her? – and her slight shudder. "I know it's plastic," she says, "but that game still doesn't strike me as being very sanitary."

From closer to the ground, the girl named Amethyst snorts with delight. "No, what would be 'unsanitary' would be if I shapeshifted into the elephant and snorted the butterflies out my nose."

Shapeshifting. Funny how Drakken's dread has reduced his disgust with the practice to a trifle.

The kid's entire body springs forward like it's made of elastic. "Would you do that?" he asks.

"Yeah, you bet!"

Amethyst grabs the child's wrist and tows him behind her through the screened door. The white Pearl chases after them, calling, "Oh no, you don't!"

Leaving Drakken alone on the porch, his skull about to crack from the roar of a thousand demands:

What happened to Lapis? Why isn't she here? You need to tell me where I can find her!

It is drowned out only when a fourth person approaches. This one doesn't so much as step outside, likely because she would have to stoop, if not fold entirely, to fit through the doorway. She has nearly as much hair as Shego, though hers is a puffing-up hair and not a flowing-down hair; it appears to have been packed into a cardboard box and then dumped onto her head to hold its shape around her face – a plum-colored face, sporting dangerously shiny sunglasses and attached to a solid body.

"You coming in?" the…person asks. Flatly. Utterly void of emotion. Not exactly welcoming, but Drakken is desperate.

And so he follows her inside.

The inside of the house is wide-open and breezy-looking, with windows everywhere and the furniture done in neutral. Ordinarily, Drakken might find this boring, but today it serves as a comfort. At least enough of one so that he doesn't feel like he's wandered into a den of lions.

Enough of one that he's able to wonder why three Gems are baby-sitting a boy who, by all accounts, seems to be human – hair and eyes as dark as Drakken's, no stone visible, referencing a father –

Said boy hops up onto the couch and pats the cushion beside him. "Here, have a seat. Make yourself comfy," he says.

Drakken nods in return and aligns his stress-strained back with the back of the couch. It gives gently beneath the knobs of his spine, and his feet, almost of their own volition, stretch out and prop themselves up on a nearby table.

A dagger-gaze drops on Drakken, matching the white lady's pointed words. "Sir, you misunderstand the nature of that table. It was not put there for you to rest your humanus pedes."

Drakken is so impressed by her correct usage of scientific nomenclature that he removes his feet immediately.

And squirms in his seat next to the child. He's never been super-good with kids, and while this one isn't pulling his ponytail or threatening to spit up on his lab coat, there is a certain matter-of-fact acceptance about him that Drakken doesn't want to fracture.

"I was wondering if you... any of you. . . could tell me where Lapis Lazuli is." Drakken hears the cracks in his tone; feels the hefty thump of his heart against the walls of his chest. "She's a friend of mine."

Tiny stars seem to form in each of the boy's eyes. "Oh, that's so nice that Lapis has another friend!" he cries. "She always seemed really lonely!"

The sweetness unlocks Drakken's memory as effectively as a pass-code. For only the second time since he arrived here, something makes sense. "You must be Steven," he says. "She talks about you all the time."

Steven ducks his head, one pudgy hand pressed to his cheek in an "aw shucks" manner.

He does recover quickly to gesture toward his three caretakers and say, "Yeah, and these are the Crystal Gems. Garnet" –

The plum-colored one adjusts her shades briefly and says, "Howdy."

" – Amethyst –"

Two purple fingers flash the peace sign as Amethyst says, "Yo."

" – and Pearl!"

"How do you do?" The white lady gives Drakken a smile that appears both happy to be there and anxious to leave.

Drakken nods, although it's not a yes-or-no question, and it might even be rhetorical. His insides are knotted too severely to let him do anything else for a long minute.

Then he manages to say, "And I'm Dr. Drakken. Lifelong citizen of Earth." Drakken waits for the standard round of how-come-you're-blue-then questions. They don't come – maybe not surprisingly from this group. "And I just need to know – where is Lapis?"

Everyone is suddenly looking at everyone else, with frowns and furrows and sad fidgets. Unless facial expressions function very differently for Gems than they do for human beings, they're plainly communicating, Who wants to be the one to tell him?

Drakken's heart now stops beating altogether.

"No," he breathes once his body has jump-started it. "Oh, no, no, no, please, no…"

Pearl squats down on her knees beside the couch and glances at Drakken as if she's uncertain whether to touch him or not. "She's alive, Dr….?"

"Drakken," Steven supplies before Drakken can – which is probably for the best, because Drakken feels as though his tongue may be frozen for another decade or two.

But it isn't. It works and it sputters, "Then – what? I saw the giant space hand crash into the beach – I need to know – where is she, please?"

Pearl and Amethyst flinch, out of sync with one another. Garnet remains as rigid as a board.

"Lapis was aboard the…the 'giant space hand,'" Pearl says after some hesitation. Drakken would want to stroke the melody of her voice were it not saying these particular words, words even it seems uncomfortable saying. "It was being piloted by two hostile Homeworld gems – Jasper and Peridot. Lapis was their prisoner."

Drakken's throat grows thick with dread. "Prisoner? How? Did they – they didn't put her back in the mirror, did they?"

Pearl's eyebrows pitch toward the top of her gem. "My, she did tell you a few things…"

It'd seem like a compliment under other circumstances.

Not now, not when the Gem called Amethyst lets out another snort. "Nah, not in the mirror. They said she was their 'informant'" – she twitches her fingers into sarcastic quotation marks, Shego-style – "but, I mean, come on! They were just as quick to slap her in space jail as the rest of us."

"Space…jail?" Drakken repeats.

"On board their ship," Amethyst says. "They landed, fought us – threw us in these dinky little cells that were radioactive-protected or some junk like that –"

"Jasper head-butted me!" Steven says with a certain note of pride. "And gave me a black eye!" He points. The skin around his right eye is swollen and faintly blackish; the sight of it aches in Drakken's own flesh.

"Battle wounds, yo!" Amethyst cries and lifts her palm for a high-five.

In the midst of the chaos, Pearl sits up taller, spine as straight as a new textbook's. "Steven was able to escape from his cell because he's half human," she says, which sets Steven beaming again. "He broke out and rescued the…errm…the three of us."

"What about Lapis?" Drakken asks. It's not an angry demand – it is a bewildered one. He knows Steven would never leave Lapis, never in a thousand million centuries.

Everyone glances at Steven, whose eyes droop at the outer corners. "I tried to get her out," he says. "But she wouldn't come. She thought they would go easier on us if we didn't fight back – she didn't want to make any trouble."

Of course she didn't.

"Yeah, so, Steven busted all us out, Garnet kicked Jasper's butt, trashed the ship, made it crash, blah-blah-blah," Amethyst continues. "Peridot shot off an escape pod, so she's still somewhere on Earth." She gives a sour smile. "Comforting thought for the day."

Drakken shivers, and Steven pats his knee. The kid is as nice as Lapis talked him up to be.

"Lapis survived the crash," Pearl says. "So did Jasper, though, and she was fully intent on attacking us again. So –"

Drakken suddenly longs to cover his ears. Slap his hands over them and shake his head until he banishes whatever she's about to tell him next. But he can't do that. He can't do anything except swallow hard and close his eyes and wait.

Just as Lapis must have waited for the crash she knew was coming.

" – Lapis fused with Jasper and used her water-manipulation powers to drag the fusion to the bottom of the ocean."

That is not what he expected to hear.

"Fused?" Drakken says. His knuckles are pointy against his gloves – that's how tightly his fists are knotted, matching his insides.

Pearl's mouth stops midway through shaping the next syllable. "Did she not tell you about fusion?" she asks.

"No. Yes. I mean, she did explain fusion to me." His words crack and bleed like chapped lips. "It's just – the rest of it – I don't understand…"

"It is rather confusing," Pearl says – it's probably meant to be comforting. "Maybe you'd understand better if you saw it."

She rises from her queenly sit and waves both hands over her forehead. The gem on it begins to glow and then project a green-tinted, holographic feed.

"Fantastic," Drakken says, gaping.

The footage, though – there is a wild version of the Lapis he knows, with silver platters for eyes and stricken anger in her stance. A giant hand of water rises out of the ocean behind her, aimed at Pearl, Amethyst, and Garnet. This must be from the time she was cracked, the time she told him about. She is a being of desperation and fear, iced with a brittle sheet of fierceness.

Pearl clucks a little and twiddles her fingers as though to scroll through the feed, turning it to fuzz. "No, no, this is from last year…ah, here we are!"

The fuzz comes into focus on the image of debris raining down on the sand, setting it aflame. Steven has cast some sort of pink bubble to protect himself and the three Gems present. The air itself nearly roars with anticipation.

Sure enough, the main body of the ship creaks and groans, and from it emerges a cinder block of a Gem, whose height must be somewhere in the seven-foot range and whose breadth is not far behind. One look at her, and Drakken instantly sees the Lorwardians – not just in the size, but in the carefully delineated war paint and the brawler's pose as well.

This must be Jasper.

She drags to her feet, glaring hatred at specifically Garnet, who no longer seems quite so tall, and lashing her with a rusty chain of a voice. "You only beat me because you're a fusion!" it says.

Drakken feels his eyes widen. He turns to Garnet, who gives him a barely perceptible nod in response, still as calm as a pond.

Huh. Wouldn't have guessed that.

"If I had someone to fuse with –" Jasper continues.

And at that moment the wreckage shifts again.

Drakken knows, he knows what's coming, and he can't direct his gaze away. It's like watching a train wreck. One time, he did look away from a train wreck and nearly sent his mother to her doom by accident.

A waif pushes herself out of the rubble and manages to stand on weak legs. Drakken gets busy telling himself it's not Lapis, it's not Lapis – and then she sprouts wings made out of water and attempts to fly away, and it can't be anyone else.

She doesn't get far. A hand as big around as Lapis's entire leg locks around it and jerks her effortlessly to the ground, with a spit of, "Come here, brat!"

Every thin hair on Drakken's arms, on the back of his neck, bristles to attention, and he lets out a long, low growl. When there's a cry of "Lapis!", Drakken wonders why his voice has discarded puberty before realizing it's a playback of Steven's.

Lapis falls and squints up out of an almost-palpable daze.

There are scratches, blood, on her pixie face. Drakken wants to wipe it off. He even steps toward her, fingers fanned, before it occurs to him that it's only a hologram.

Jasper has no such problem. She's on Lapis in a split second, snatches Lapis's cheeks between her fingers and digs in as though she's trying to extract a molar from the outside. Even her nails are buff, and one of them is precariously close to a particularly painful-looking cut.

Never once, in all his months of reformation, has the urge to hurt someone again been this strong.

"Lapis! Fuse with me!" Jasper's words would be more at home launched at a spittoon than at Lapis.

Lapis's eyes try to shift, and Jasper brings them back to hers with a mere flick of her wrist. She keeps going, purring rustily, something about doesn't Lapis want revenge on the Crystal Gems (these fine folks right here?), since they held her prisoner once – hello, as if Jasper hasn't?

"Come on," Jasper finishes. She bares sharp teeth, finally releasing her physical grip but not the one embedded in her gaze. "You. Just. Gotta. Say. Yes."

Drakken squeezes the cushion he's on until he can be sure he won't throw up.

Lapis looks across the beach at the frightened clump of four. There's a new, clean focus and resolve as she peers back up at Jasper and consents – more of a quick head-snap than a nod. In that instant, Drakken understands the plan.

And desperately wishes he didn't.

Jasper splits her face open, a heinous imitation of a smile. Lapis's eyes slip shut, as though this is something she doesn't care to watch, doesn't care to remember.

Drakken recognizes the quick flits and high kicks that follow. It's her dance, her pretty Lapis-dance, and each move is like a blow to the kidneys.

There's one big hard shine all over Jasper's body, which is as still as the stone she is except for the knees vibrating in anticipation. Lapis dips into one of her dainty twirls, the hem of her finespun dress swishing across the sand, and Jasper grabs her hand, twirls her around, and forces her backward into a bend that looks closer to assault than fusion. Then there's a flash of doctor-bright light and he can't see Lapis or her tormentor anymore.

Just her and her tormentor, in a creature that rises to an enormous height, cackling down at him.

Oh. So that's a fusion.

Mommy!

The fusion named Garnet is mildly intimidating; this creature is grotesque, her head nearly level with the top of the beach cliff. She has two arms, two legs, and two additional appendages in between, which Drakken suspects can function as either/or. Her skin is sea-green, her bushy mane of hair and bitter-as-cyanide eyes – all four of them – a complementary mint.

Makes sense, scientifically. Orange mixed with blue.

Drakken tries with everything in him to convince himself it's just Jasper, taking on a strange, evil new form.

And for several rapidly-quickening heartbeats, that's easy to do. It is a cruel face, this fusion's face, and that all comes from Jasper. Lapis didn't look like that even when she was hurting people.

But Drakken can't tear his gaze away in time to stop it from recognizing Lapis's impish chin. He notices chins – one of the inevitabilities of having one as prominent as his. And while the fusion is strong, like Jasper, it isn't bulky the way she is; someone else's influence keeps her muscles ropy and lean. This is what happens when you combine a brute with a pixie.

It's more terrifying than if there were no trace of Lapis at all.

The fusion continues to cackle, raising her hand. An identical one, though even larger if that's possible, forms from the ocean behind her, seemingly poised to slam a wall of water down on Steven and his caretakers.

At the last second, however, the water-hand grabs the fusion's arm instead. Holds on. Morphs into a chain. And begins to tow her backward into the fire-lit ocean.

"What the – ?" the fusion cries in a harsh rasp that must be Jasper's.

"I'm through being everyone's prisoner!" says someone else's voice. Even when she's yelling, Lapis's voice somehow remains soft and quiet. It undergirds her words with power. "Now you're my prisoner – and I'm never letting you go!"

By now the fusion is up to her chin – Lapis's chin – in the water. Her two pairs of eyes appear to spread in opposite directions as if they're being pulled by two different magnets. The entire face strains and bucks.

"Let's stay on this miserable planet – together!" comes Lapis's higher pitch. Drakken listens for her innocence, but he can't hear it.

The fusion's head sinks.

Two slaps of water come back together over the vanishing point, as though it's nothing more than a raindrop. The footage blips back into Pearl's gemstone, and Drakken continues to stare at empty space. Not until he finally gasps for air does he realize how proud he is of Lapis's bravery.

How he would trade it in a nanosecond for disappointment in her cowardice.

"She calls herself Malachite," Pearl says softly.

Drakken's heard of that – a rock crystal, naturally occurring only in that one greenish color. Used by the ancient Egyptians in makeup. He always thought it was kind of pretty.

He doesn't think that anymore.

"I'm very sorry, Dr. Drakken," Pearl continues. "I know this must be very hard on your…human…emotional… structure."

Her sympathy seems at once arbitrary and sincere. She deserves a smile, but Drakken can't summon one. He writes her a mental IOU.

Garnet speaks up. "Lapis did a brave thing, but that's not what fusion is supposed to be for," she says. Her voice, though still flat, is not emotionless anymore – now it is stern.

"I know," Drakken whispers. He's not functioning well enough to grow angry, but that won't stop him from defending Lapis's honor. "She told me it's supposed to be about trust."

The barest hint of a smile tips Garnet's mouth, reducing the enigma.

"You still haven't answered my question, though," Drakken says. His throat is squeezing, making yelling more trouble than yelling should be, more trouble than it's worth. "Where is she? I know you can search the bottom of the ocean – even humans can search the bottom of the ocean! We have submersibles now…and scuba gear – I told her about scuba gear. . ."

Bring her back.

Steven's got his arms locked in a tight embrace around a couch pillow, and he pokes an identical one into Drakken's side. Drakken accepts it gratefully, hugs it to his own stomach, and rocks.

"Dude, we've been trying!" Amethyst's exhale is one part sigh, two parts Huh! "But even as honkin' huge as she is, the ocean's even bigger, and a fusion who doesn't wanna be found can hide like nobody's business."

Drakken can't answer this time. He can only stare down at his fists, fists barely visible through the skin under his eyes that always bunches up when he's on the verge of tears. But this round never comes to fruition, staying and stinging his nasal passages. He's always cried at the stupidest, littlest, pettiest things – why can't he cry now?

"She was brave," Drakken breathes. "I knew she could be."

The silence is respectful, but Drakken can't appreciate it – not even when Amethyst coaxes him into a fist-bump that he weakly returns.

"We need to find her soon, too," Pearl murmurs, almost to herself. She glances out one of the windows at the sky, as if she can tell the day and the hour by it. She probably can. "If a fusion's held for too long – an unhealthy fusion, that is," she adds after another anxious glance at Garnet, "both of the Gems can lose their identities."

Drakken's lower lip quivers.

"You didn't havta tell him that part!" Amethyst whirls on Pearl as easily as she was whirled on back at the door, upsetting a lavender hunk of hair to settle back down over her glare. "Look, now he's about to puke or something!"

She reads people well, Drakken observes numbly. He does feel as though he might lose the Fruit Roll-Ups he consumed on the way over here. Judging from the frantic look Pearl takes at the sanded-wood floors, her mind is on the same path.

Steven cuts in, his kind face more effective than Pepto-Bismol. "No, it's all right," he says to Amethyst. "He needs to know."

For a child who plays with an Elefun, Steven looks awfully mature as he clicks his gaze straight onto Drakken's. "I talked to Lapis in a dream," he says, "because I guess that's a thing I can do, and I asked her where she was, and she wouldn't tell me. She said she didn't want to be rescued. She's still trying to save us. Probably you too," he adds in a child's excuse for a whisper – the one that Drakken never outgrew, if you believe Shego.

Drakken feels as though he's been hit with one of his own doom rays – the one where the victim freezes, locked in suspended animation, and then is wrenched by a series of spasms. He is immediately sorry he ever intended to subject anyone to that type of torture.

It isn't that he can't imagine his life without Lapis – his thoughts of her since returning home have been infrequent, if fond. But it isn't fair for her to be merged with her worst enemy at the bottom of the ocean. She's a nice Gem who loves her people and tries to understand humanity and wants to do the right thing, and she deserves to be okay.

Steven nods several times, as if by bobbing his head he can delete the worry from Drakken's. The folds of the kid's mostly-bare arm glisten with sweat, though it's still far enough away from puberty to be stench-free. "But we'll find her, even if she doesn't want to be found. We'll find her, because I am a gumshoe," he says, reaching into his denim pocket and producing a plastic detective badge. "Fifty more pages, and I'll be an inspector-in-training."

The badge is inscribed with the words Earned at the Beach City Public Library Summer Reading Program, but Steven has the same determined eye-glint that Lapis wore. He will never stop looking for her, not ever, Drakken knows.

He pulls his knees up to the pillow and searches the faces looking back at him. Each one is alike only in concern – Garnet's stoic and barely there, Amethyst's rough-and-tumble, Pearl's uneasy, and Steven's chubby and bright.

A knot ties in Drakken's throat, though not tightly enough to prevent him from saying, "I want to help you find her." He hasn't taken the time to fine-tune his voice, and yet its thickness, speckled with fragility, doesn't embarrass him now. "I – I have some property down in the Caribbean that I still own, and there's ocean down there, and it's all really one big ocean – even if the globe-makers split it into four parts, and so she could be there! I have equipment! I could scan…or something."

Drakken hugs the pillow tighter and hears his blood roaring in his ears, still circulating as if nothing is wrong, its flow deceptively stalwart. His limbs are weightless and trembling, but there is a heavy heat-pocket in his chest anchoring him to the ground. It is exactly how he felt when he realized he needed to save the world, needed to atone for his past misdeeds.

Those same four faces stare back at him.

Pearl stamps on a grin. "Well, that's very…nice of you, Dr. Drakken," she says. Her words seem to pat him on the head, with no idea how they are patronizing him. "But we've already been scouring the ocean bottom all week, and if our abilities are being put to the test, I don't –"

"Pearl." Garnet's monotone interrupts. "It can't hurt."

Drakken shoots Garnet a thoroughly grateful look. Experience has taught him that those embrace you, in a non-physical manner that can't panic your nervous system. Garnet might be even less big on hugs than Drakken is.

("Less big" sounds strange, but "smaller" won't really work for this turn of phrase.)

Drakken lifts his head, sets his jaw. "And could you do that projection thing again – because it's marvelous that you're able to do that" – this pleasantly startles Pearl, he can tell – "and show me this Paradox person? I could keep an eye out for her, too!"

Pearl raises one corrective finger. "Peridot," she says.

Oh, yes. That makes sense, seeing as how "peridot" is a gem…and "paradox" is more of a time-traveling concept.

Drakken employs Steven's tactic, bobbing his head to see if he can incite a chain reaction. "Yes, her. Pretty please?" he says.

Pearl responds well to manners, and, with no further begging, projects another greenish image from her forehead. This one appears to be naturally green, judging from how deep the tint goes, and it shows a triangular-headed, pointy-faced, snarky-eyed Gem lifting her lip in his general direction. Shego skips across Drakken's mind, although this Gem's long, wiry arms and legs have an odd, sort of metallic quality.

Drakken gulps. "Yes. Well. Thank you."

"We'll find her, Dr. Drakken," Steven says. "And we'll find Lapis, too. We'll find Lapis, and then I'll have her give you a call or something. Here – lemme give you my cell phone number."

Drakken pushes aside the yeesh-you-have-a-cell-phone-already instinct and, with tingling fingers, pokes in the digits that Steven recites for him. He titles his new contact "Steven U."

Perhaps it is intentional that Drakken opens his photo folder next. It does occur to him that he wants to jog the memories of a beach that wasn't on fire, no cinders raining from the sky and no angry metal warped on the sand.

He forgot, however, that it wasn't just the landscape he snapped pictures of.

There's the sandcastle he and Lapis made that one day – the one that she protected from the tide until he could get the perfect shot. There they are goofing off for a selfie – or it is a groupie? The picture captures Lapis in a rare moment, with her guard down but her wonder still intact. Her cheeks are puffed out, nose wrinkled, making a silly face for the camera.

Drakken locks his focus there, commanding himself not to remember that face scratched and bloody, her body slammed down like one of those novelty slap bracelets. Only Lapis's hands waft into his thoughts, the blue skin torn, the fingers extended toward a no-doubt-crushing grip in order to save Steven. Her courage and her fear fuse into something far more beautiful than Malachite.

And it hurts.

There's still so much to show her of Earth. Butterflies. Marshmallows. Snowman Hank. He has to give her the teddy bear Mother made just for her; he just has to.

It could be hours that Drakken sits there, before he scrolls to the photo of them saying goodbye – him loading his hovercraft, her waving with her skirt flapping in the breeze – and the eye-bunching program resumes. He stirs only when he feels a presence at his elbow, a presence warm with little-boy stickiness.

Steven examines the picture over Drakken's shoulder, his head tilting – knowingly is the only word. "Do you love her?" Steven says. "I think you love her."

Drakken blinks into the image of Lapis, smiling shyly up at him from his phone's screen.

"Steven!" Pearl bursts out. Turquoise blooms across her white cheekbones, which Drakken supposes is the Gems' version of a blush, as she swivels to meet Drakken's eyes. "I am so sorry," she sputters.

"For what?" Drakken looks at Pearl without really seeing her. "He might be right."

~"The only witnesses have declined to comment" - read as "Garnet broke my camera." ;)

And of course it was Connie who got Steven involved in the Summer Reading Program.