~Hey, I'm back. . . and just about to jump out of my skin with happiness over last week's eppies. I guess I shouldn't put spoilers, but this whole chapter's going to be a spoiler, sooo. . .

The next chapter might be awhile. . . and it'll probably be contradicted all over the place once more episodes air. But, hey, I knew this was going to be an AU when I started it! I'm just also OCD and like to adhere to canon as closely as possible. Go figure. :P

Hope you all enjoy!~

The lovely Lapis Lazuli – here played by the winged teddy bear Mother embroidered herself – writhes at the bottom of the ocean, her eyes empty of tears but her heart full of them. Though she can breathe underwater – because she's a Gem, and she's just amazing like that – her spirit is slowly suffocating in the harshness of her surroundings. Faint rays of sunlight beckon her from far, far above, and she cannot go to them.

For she is chained, of her own design, to the nasty Jasper – here played by an Incredible Hulk action figure Eddy left at his house a long time ago. It takes effort to hold down someone that much bigger and meaner, effort and an unyielding sense of duty.

She thinks of Steven, the one who saved her, healed her, forgave her. She thinks of all the things of Earth she has to learned to accept, even enjoy. She thinks of these, even as her identity flakes away in linty bits.

Malachite is the only way to keep everyone safe. She must stay Malachite.

It is becoming easier and easier to stay Malachite – harder and harder to retain Lapis Lazuli.

She is alone with her worst enemy, unless you count the anglerfish and the lantern eels and various other creepy deep-sea life that lurk near the bottom. And she is frightened.

Enter the hero!

The semi-dashing and not-quite-handsome Dr. Drakken – here played by his own teddy bear, Sir Fuzzymuffin the Second – swoops down to save the day. He dives without fear into the ocean – here represented by an empty bathtub, since teddy bears don't tend to be water-resistant – taking full advantage of his scuba tank – here represented by a large LEGO brick on his back. The salt water stings his eyes, but he pays no notice as he chops down, down, down to the abyss, shoving aside the walls of water that stand between him and his beloved friend.

Until he spots Lapis.

Drakken does not question how he can see a mile below the surface, nor why Lapis is visible when the fusion is still reigning supreme. He doesn't question any of it. He swims down beside her, and he bubbles, "Lapis?"

She turns, a vacant quarter-turn, as though she can't recall why the name rings a bell. Her skin is washed green and haggard. "I'm sorry. I can't come with you," she says, with flatness that could rival Garnet's, save for the quake at its edges.

It blasts at his heart with laser precision.

Drakken digs into his own (admittedly shallow) well of courage in the face of her terrible blankness. "Lapis…you don't have to do this."

"Yes, I do."

She erodes further with every word. Soon it will be too late – if it isn't already.

It is this thought, this soul-ripping possibility, that pushes from Drakken advice too wise to have originated even with him. "You don't have to do it alone."

Lapis has no response this time. Her bob has become Malachite's seaweed tresses, stringing in the fierce current. The eyes – now blue, now green, now silver – swim over him.

Drakken curls his fingers around both of her wrists, feeling Jasper's sturdiness in them. "Please, Lapis. We can help you."

This protest gets only halfway out before it dies; it dies and something of Lapis returns to her face. Her body braces, refusing to weep. "Steven," she gasps. "And the Crystal Gems. I have to save them."

She is begging him to understand. And for once, he does.

Sir Fuzzymuffin folds his arms around As-Yet-Unnamed-Female-Bear, pillowing her into a squishy, teddy-bear embrace. "Then we'll save them together," he says.

He waits, waits to feel her reciprocate, not by holding on, by letting go: relinquishing, unfusing, surrendering Jasper to the combined wrath of all the Gems. As well as his own. It's hard not to relish the idea of dangling her out a window by a slender vine – maybe a marigold; his marigolds have been very feisty this fall…

But that's not the important part. His breath holds in his lungs until he knows that her wings, slowly and magically as the oxidization of brass, will spread.

And "unfettered" is the only word.

This is what Dr. Drakken playacts when the worry begins to choke him.

In reality, though, he is helpless – helpless as a jellyfish washed ashore.

The scans from his old island lair have turned up nothing. There is no lapis lazuli within a three-hundred-mile ocean radius, and the only jasper a pair of cheap earrings an unimpressed girlfriend must have hurled into the sea – some thirty years ago, judging by the corrosion. (What a snobby lady.)

Some days – many days, in fact – Drakken is able to keep himself busy enough that the anxiety is nothing more than a lingering unpleasant odor in the breeze. Many days, he wakes up with the remains of whatever nightmare already fading from his memory banks, gets dressed and heads to Global Justice, spends the day making the world a safer place, and returns home to watch cartoons that'll keep his mind from wandering.

Many days, this works.

And some days, it doesn't.

One of those days, he's buying groceries at Smarty Mart and walks past a jewelry display. Hanging from a golden hook is a beautiful necklace whose silver chain renders the stones even more vibrant – the stones that are dark and blue and teardrop-shaped.

It's not the real thing, not in any sense of the word – not the living, sentient Lapis, and probably not even genuine Earth lapis, because that stuff is rare and expensive. Valuable, so valuable. And yet Drakken's cart comes to an abrupt halt, squealing its wheels nearly straight into the display.

He approaches it at something partway between a skitter and a jog. It would be so much more poetic if he could sift the chain like sand between his fingers, but his hands are overly emotional and only tangle in the strands so that it's looped around itself three times before he can bring it to their tips.

"Please," he murmurs, to anyone who's listening, clutching the lapis. "Please, please, please."

These are the days when he doesn't know what to do. It is hard not to characterize Lapis as a damsel in distress, tiny and shy as she is, and yet he remembers the iron in her voice when she confronted Jasper. She is stronger than he gives her credit for.

And that's part of what makes it so darn hard. There's no textbook on rescuing a damsel in distress who doesn't want to be rescued in the first place.

Drakken takes some comfort in the teddy bear Mother made for Lapis. She's pleasantly plump and brown, the way any good teddy bear should be, but Mother made certain there was some resemblance to Drakken's description. The teddy has wings – not attached wings that you can grab onto and use them to hoist the bear, but shiny embossed things, stitched almost down to the wispy skirt Mother knitted around her waist. She also sports a gemstone, albeit a plastic one, between her shoulder blades.

That was Drakken's own doing. He accompanied Mother to the craft store in order to help pick out the teddy-bear materials: the exact shade of russet-brown felt, the precise stitching for the mouth, the perfect black seed-shaped buttons for the eyes. Mother's such an talent seamstress – she can sew the eyes just right, so the fur doesn't start encroaching on them, as it does on tackier stuffed animals within a few months, and give the bear a permanent glower.

(All right, so Sir Fuzzymuffin the Second has one, but that's only because Mother also graced him with Drakken's signature unibrow.)

Lapis's bear, on the other hand, must have the same gaze she does – elliptical. Hesitant. Guileless.

It was there, in Aisle 5, that Drakken spotted bags of gems. Obviously fakes, cheaply die-cut, because a bag of real rubies – Drakken wonders vaguely if Lapis knows a Ruby – would cost significantly more than five bucks. But they were pretty nonetheless.

Mother was selecting the second fabric for the wings – ocean-hued, watery and shimmery all at once - when a flash of blue caught his attention– blue always does. Drakken glanced down at a baggie full of blue plastic stones. Most were too light-colored and luminous to be anything but sapphires, but he did spy a few darker gems in there. He picked the bag up and rooted through its plastic sides with his fingers until he found a teardrop shape that summoned its brethren in Drakken's eyes.

Drakken remembered Lapis saying that her gem was the most fundamental part of her – "everything I am stems from it," is how she put it. And while Drakken isn't well-versed enough in the science of Gems to understand how this is accomplished, you didn't have to be the super-genius he was to gather that little stone was of the utmost importance.

It didn't take much begging to convince Mother. Hardly any, actually. After all, Drakken decided, she could always use the leftovers in…scrapbooking…or whatever craft-related thing mothers did in their free time.

Once the rest of the teddy bear was complete, Drakken had the honor of peeling the sticky end off the plastic gem and positioning it, tongue rooting at the corner of his lips, equidistant from the bear's birdlike shoulder blades. Mother supported it with the feed of a hot glue gun. It wasn't as seamless as the one on Lapis's back; still, it was a more-than-passable replica.

Drakken gave the bear a big hug.

He still does, every time he opens his closet and sees it – her – sitting on top of his board games. He hugs her. He wonders what Lapis will name her, if she'll like her, if she'll get the chance to meet her.

And he keeps busy. Bowling with the henchmen. Movie night with Shego. Working at Global Justice to make the world a safer place for humans and misplaced Gems.

That's where he is right now, in the bathroom, just finishing washing his hands. Drakken sticks them under the dryer, which is powerful enough to blast the moisture straight off his fingers and nearly plaster his skin to the bone. It's also powerful enough to weld its noise into his eardrums, disallowing access to any other, so it's only when the dryer shuts off that Drakken hears the snazzy jangle of his cell phone.

Hmm. Odd. Personal calls don't usually come in during work hours. Unless it's an emergency.

Don't panic! Drakken commands himself. He glances at the screen – and feels his blood cells transform into ice cubes.

It reads, Steven U.

It's good news. It's bad news. It's good news. It's bad news. It's good news. It's bad news. It's good news. It's bad news. It's good news. It's bad news. It's –

It's news – who cares?

Drakken cares. He cares with his heart vibrating its way up his throat.

He can't get too excited – easier said than done – because it's not even a guarantee that this will put an end to the not-knowing that's driving him to the brink of madness. With his luck, the Crystal Gems are probably just calling to say they found Polka-Dot or whatever her name is…

By some miracle, Drakken fumbles the phone open with the useless, fluttering moth wings that his hands have become. If it is bad news, Steven will deliver it gently, which is some consolation. He shakes out the greeting: "Hello, Dr. Drakken speaking."

It's bad news. It's good news.

"Dr. Drakken?"a fairy voice asks.

It's good news.

"Steven wanted me to call you," Lapis continues. "He said you were worried?"

It takes several minutes for Drakken to answer the slight lilt to her words, the unspoken question mark. The surface tension across his eyeballs breaks, and tears bubble over like foam dribbling down a mug of root beer. His shoulders collapse with relief and then jolt back and forth, over and over.

"You're alive," Drakken finally blubbers. He falls against a wall – or what he suspects is a wall, having pretty much lost all sense of time and place.

There's a tiny lapse. "You remembered me," Lapis says. Drakken can envision how her smile looks from how quiet she sounds – thin, fragile, its ends pointed upward, daring to hope something might be there to meet them.

"I did," Drakken concurs. He wipes at his cheeks with the backs of his wrists, smearing salty water across his face. "And that's saying something because I have – I have – I have a really bad m-m-memory…"

Drakken lets the rest trail off into a few more joyous sobs. Lapis's silence on the other end of the phone is confused, but Drakken can't comprehend anything beyond the fact that she is speaking to him, her own voice from her own lips, the lips of a single, solitary Gem. There is something new, something stronger, between her syllables, but none of Jasper's harshness. For the moment, he isn't even curious to find out what happened.

He just wants to stand here and hold the phone and listen to her be okay.

"Are you still there?" Lapis finally says.

"Yes, yes, yes, yes!" Drakken says – overdoing it is not even an issue under these circumstances. "I'm still here. I just – for a second – I wasn't sure what to say."

Thank the heavens above that this child's parents bought him a cell phone. He'll never rail against its uses in adolescence again.

"That's all right." Lapis's voice seems to shrug. "I just wanted to make sure I was talking into the right end. Steven – I am talking into the right end, aren't I? These are so different from what we have on Homeworld…"

"You're doing really good, Lapis," says a kid-voice, vaguely familiar and every bit as cheery as Drakken's recollections. "But if you get your mouth a little farther down, closer to this end, it'll come through better."

"Oh. Okay. Thanks." There's a rustle, which Drakken imagines are strings of her bobbed hair resisting static electricity – if Gems are prone to such nuisances the way humans are – and then Lapis sounds closer. "Is that better?"

Drakken uncurls a clenched fist, observing the sweat that sparkles in his palms. Despite that and despite the rattle of a toilet that should have stopped flushing minutes ago and probably needs its chain readjusted, and despite the burned-out light bulb and the crack of his back suffering from its rigid rest and the fact that someone could walk in any moment and catch him crying –

"It's perfect," Drakken replies.

"You were worried about me," Lapis repeats, in a key of disbelief that vibrates across Drakken's soul. He recognizes it – the stricken awe that comes when the cord is looped around your neck and the medal taps gently against your chest, gracing you with worth you struggled to find for yourself anymore.

"Of course I was worried about you," Drakken says. "You're my friend! Plus, also I'm an enormous worrywart – but first and foremost because you're my friend," he adds quickly, "and that's more important, and I was so worried you wouldn't survive – or you would but not really be you anymore because of what happened when you fused –" and it is just now coming to him that he might still need to worry about that. How does the reversal of fusion – un-fusing, de-fusing – work? Is it a clean split, or does a tiny particle of Malachite still infect Lapis now?

His sentences smear together like marker on posterboard, and through them he can hear Lapis say, "Are you breathing? I know humans need to breathe."

"Quite so!" Drakken sucks in a huge breath and feels it gurgle a path down to his lungs.

There's a pause, and then Lapis says, "I'm sorry I made you worry." The note of apology in there now almost skewers Drakken, and yet it also confirms she is still one-hundred-percent Lapis, because who else would apologize for saving the world?

Drakken lets out a snort so juicy with pulsing emotions that he has to stop and wipe off his phone's screen. "Are you kidding? I'm so proud of you! You protected us all – risked your life – defended Steven – hang on a second…" He transfers the phone to his right hand, freeing his dominant left to seize a wad of public-restroom paper towels. Texturally speaking, they're closer to sandpaper than Kleenex, but they're as good a surface as any to blow his nose.

"But I'm okay now," Lapis says softly. Another, briefer pause. "I swear."

It's the faintest whisper of a smile he can hear now. Even with tears drooling down into it, Drakken wouldn't be able to dim his own grin, the one he's been wearing ever since picking up the phone to the sound of her, for anything: power, glory, cash money, a lifetime supply of Cracker Jack – prizes included.

He catches a glimpse of himself in the one of the glazed mirrors hanging over the sink; he rather resembles a jack-o'-lantern carved by a sloppy child, though Drakken can only think of a few times in his whole life when he's cared less. "Where are you now?" he says.

Lapis's automatic response is, "With Steven," which Drakken surmises must, for her, be a synonym for safe. "And the Crystal Gems," she continues. "We're all staying at a barn right outside Beach City. It used to belong to Steven's aunt and uncle?"

There's confusion in the way she says those terms. Drakken claps himself in the forehead. "I forgot to teach you about aunts and uncles!"

"That's all right. Steven already did." The smile in her sound waves grows brighter, though still wispy.

"And what about…the big mean one?" Drakken doesn't want to say her name, not until he realizes the alternative is to have Lapis say her name, and he wants that even less. "Jasper?"

There's a starched silence.

"I don't want to talk about her," Lapis says. She sounds cold now, as though winter has come over her early.

"Right, right, I understand." Drakken feeds his hand back through his hair. "Neither do I. I just wanted to know – is she someplace where she can't hurt you?"

"Yes."

A rush of balmy tenderness surges through Drakken's muscles, only to give way to the tension of fierce heat. "Is she someplace where I can't hurt her?"

This pause is just long enough for her to blink; Drakken times it. "Yes," Lapis says. There it is again – that pleasant, precious wonder that she is of value to someone.

"Then that's all I really need to know." Not quite true – there are still several more possibilities to be curious about, and Drakken will be. Later. "Carry on."

"Well, we just finished –"

And then her voice grows distant somehow, which quickens in Drakken's throat. He clenches the partition behind him and doesn't loosen his grip until Lapis says, from far away, "Oops – Steven, I think I hit a button."

"Oh, it's okay," Steven says. "You just put us on speakerphone. If you hit it again, it turns back off."

In the shuffle for the correct button, Drakken hears the breeze shrieking happily through leaves that haven't fallen yet, as though it too is overjoyed to have Lapis alive and well and un-Malachite. He hears chirping birds in place of whining seagulls, and he hears the big fusion named Garnet shooing her friends away:

"Pearl. Amethyst. Get back. The girl needs some alone time."

"Oh. Should I go, too?" Steven says.

"No," Lapis says firmly. "You stay." There's another rustle, right before speakerphone bleeps off, and Drakken just senses without seeing that Lapis has reached for her little friend's hand and squeezed. "Drakken? Am I back?"

"Yes! You're back!" Drakken gets the impression he wasn't supposed to whoop that, not right into her invisible ear, but who's even keeping track of such things at this point?

Lapis apparently isn't. She picks up where she left off – a skill that Drakken himself never mastered. "Well, I guess we all just got done stopping the Cluster, so…"

An error message flashes in Drakken's brain. "What's 'the Cluster'?" he says, pronouncing the words, familiar only in a different context, with as much grandeur as possible.

"It was a Homeworld weapon," is the tight reply.

Drakken has "Yes, but why –" out before he registers it, that her voice is teetering on a precipice, and it will go careening over if he presses for more information. He wishes to vanquish it, exile it, barter it for the sound of her sweet spirit manifesting itself again.

Cataloguing that, too, as a question to be posed at another time to another person – perhaps the fastidious Pearl; or the quiet but seemingly wise Garnet; or even the crudely enthusiastic Amethyst – Drakken repairs his sentence, changing it to, "Why – don't I come see you? If that's all right, that is?"

His old villain motivational tapes would scold him, say he's not supposed to set himself up for failure like that. But Lapis is long overdue for some common courtesy if nothing else.

For a moment, all Drakken hears are soft, superfluous breaths stirring at the other end of the phone. Then Lapis nearly whispers, "Yes. I'd – I'd like that."

Her words are tinged with what Drakken could almost describe as grogginess. "So, when would work for you?" he asks. "Does Saturday work? Because I'm free on Saturday…"

In the span before she answers, Drakken can almost hear Lapis's brows twisting. "When is Saturday?" she says. Her near-embarrassment tunnels inside him and squeezes. It's not her fault her species operates under an entirely different lunar calendar – and he is just about to reassure her of this when she actually yawns. "Sorry, I was asleep for awhile, and I guess I haven't woken all the way up yet."

The knot in Drakken's stomach would do a Boy Scout proud. Gems don't need to sleep – not under normal circumstances anyway; Lapis told him that the very first day. It's wrenching to calculate what put her into emergency shut-down, what she suffered that not even a Gem's body is built to endure. "Are you sure you're okay?" he says cautiously.

"Yes. I'm fine." The tenderness of it is a welcome respite from Shego's approach to concern, which was always flippant and clenched-toothed, as if she were mortified to depend on someone for even a nanosecond. "Well, I was really weak at first, but now – now I'm better than I've been in six thousand years."

Wow.

She throws out the time so casually. When Drakken closes his eyes, he can see a vast background spread out from her present – a lifetime of eternal youth, unseasoned against the blows of pain and fear and loneliness. It works to lift her far beyond him.

Drakken says the only thing he can think of that might be able to bring her back within reach. "Today's Thursday. So Saturday's in two days."

"Oh." Lapis's hair squeaks against the phone as she nods. "Yes. Two days is fine."

The thought of seeing her again feels like fizzy water bubbling away a stomachache. He aches to fold his arms around her and –

And what? Hold her? Tickle her under that chin that is now wholly hers again? Kiss her? What does one do when one loves a woman?

Gulp. Steven was right.

Drakken squints up into the foggy light from the bulbs, including the one that keeps hiccupping on and off, grinding electricity like fingernail clippings. "Lapis," he begins, "I just realized something. And I need to tell you now, before anything else happens, okay?" His knees lock under him as though he is preparing for the impact of a meteor – something he has never really experienced in his life, though Lapis might have.

The line stills for a beat. And then – "All right. Go ahead." Lapis sounds bewildered.

Drakken inhales sharply again – because humans need to breathe. He doesn't allow himself a moment to harvest his remaining scraps of courage. The doubt will only bleed in if he waits for it, so he doesn't:

"I love you."

His words waver; their meaning does not.

The silence is even longer this time, so long that Drakken fears the connection has been dropped, the phone hurriedly handed off to Steven in complete incomprehension, or the whole thing revealed to be a dream that he is even now preparing to wake up from.

When Lapis speaks again, her voice is air. "Wow," she says. "No one's ever told me that before. What…what do I say back?"

Drakken's tongue is cemented to the roof of his mouth, requiring several large swallows to free. "Well – you thank me. And if you love me back, you can say 'I love you, too.'"

As soon as the words have ventured out, Drakken considers slurping them back in, if such a thing can be done. He's done it now, pushed it too far. Just the knowledge that Lapis is alive and well and safe and un-fused is sufficient, and he probably should have left it at that.

This silence is the longest yet, stretched longer by a sudden mindfulness of a metallic dent in the stall door poking right below Drakken's collar. Concentration is unachievable, let alone comfort. Drakken's ready to switch the phone back to his other ear in order to reposition his shoulder blades – until a soft exhale that can only come from a flabbergasted Gem filters its way through.

"Oh. Okay," Lapis says. "Thank you. I…." Silence, infinite as her space home. "I love you, too."

The rattling toilet chain transforms into a choir of a thousand angels.

(It's unabashedly sappy, some would argue. Drakken would contend that he and Lapis have earned themselves a moment or two of unabashed sap.)

There is a delighted, childish gasp from somewhere beyond Lapis, and Drakken knows immediately it must be Steven's. He can envision the stars that must be forming in the kid's eyes.

Now what?

Drakken scrubs at the back of his neck. The miniscule hairs beneath his fingers tingle in the same way they used to before he launched a scheme he was particularly proud of. "So….I guess I'll see you Saturday, then?"

"Bye." The giggle is a threadbare version of the bell-like one sealed in a little treasure box in his brain, securely nestled just above the cerebellum, and yet it's mighty.

Drakken's crying again when he pushes the "END CALL" button. Lapis, of course, isn't. She never has, in all the (admittedly short) time he's known her. Of course, when he considers what she has told him about her life, about the war, about her confinement, it's not hard to conclude she must have been wrung dry long ago.

Some selfish sector of him hopes she will weep someday, so he can be the one to – clumsily – dry her tears, since he could not be the one to rescue her from her watery prison. Whether that happens or not, he's fully persuaded he needs to be there, even if he can do nothing more than offer her some competition for deepest psychological scars.

Drakken clacks his phone case shut, feeling like – well, "a new person" isn't entirely accurate, not to mention how clichéd it sounds. But definitely an older, pre-owned person with minimal wear and tear.

With petals that somehow pair well with the grin of utter giddiness, a new layer of varnish on his paint, as if he's a stone that's been polished, although – and here he can't resist being clever – he's actually been polished by a stone.

Mint condition, for sure, Drakken thinks as he studies his reflection in the glass Lapis still fears so. Why, he might even fetch a decent price on EBay.

Genuine mad scientist in love, rare blue breed – bidding starts at ten dollars. (Best when purchased alongside genuine lapis lazuli.)