~SHE LIVES!
Sorry this update took so long, guys. I had a lot of ground to cover in this chapter. The good news is, it's extra-long for your enjoyment. And my first time writing for Greg and Peridot, so. . . that was fun.
Thanks to everyone who's followed, faved, reviewed, and read. You guys rock. :)
Next chapter we'll switch back to Lapis's POV. ~
A day and a half later, it is finally Saturday – and reasonably into the morning so that the fog has faded away and Steven should be awake and ready to receive visitors.
Forty-two hours of dancing around the kitchen with a broomstick, singing love ballads Drakken remembers from his childhood; tossing and turning with excitement at night; periodically pausing to squeal and clap.
Two thousand, five hundred and twenty minutes, but who's counting?
Well, Drakken is. The tingle perching in his limbs never accompanied any of his numerous evil plots, just the one good one – to save the Earth.
Only now, in the last seven thousand, two hundred seconds, does distress begin to bleed in; he is pierced by a tiny sliver, questioning whether or not Drakken's substantial intellect makes up for his utter lack of data on relationships.
He's never had one before, not one of this type. Not the type where he says "I love you," and then the woman says, "I love you too." What the women always say – what Drakken almost believed they're supposed to say – is "Oh, you're sweet," or "You're a good friend," or "I'm so sorry, Drew, but…"
This is new, uncharted territory. Is this reunion a date, then? Should he wash his hair-spikes shiny and sleek? Douse himself in cologne? Wear a tie?
Does he even own a tie?
Drakken's balancing, with limited success, on one leg, stuffing the other through what might be the wrong hole of his business-casual khakis, when it occurs to him that his only halfway fancy shirt has short, capped sleeves. Weather's getting too cool to spend the entire day wearing it. He lets his pants fall in a heap around his ankles.
The weather is getting cooler. The sun is setting earlier, too, and the red and orange encroach on the edges of the leaves like the beginning of a blush. Even little Steven's voice, as heard by Drakken on the phone, sounds lower than it was a few months before.
So much has changed on a planet already foreign to her; the least Drakken can do is present some familiarity. He wants to bear more than a passing resemblance to the Drakken she first met on the beach, whose wet ponytail dribbled down the back of his old-fashioned bathing suit as he offered her his towel. If he arrives all gussied up, she probably won't be impressed – she'll be terrified.
After all, won't he panic if he sees the slightest deviation from the picture of Lapis stored in his mind for the past six months – and as his phone's background for the last two thousand, five hundred and twenty minutes?
Instead, Drakken runs a brush through his hair, another over his teeth, applies deodorant, and wriggles into his lab coat, which is comfortable in every sense of the word. He snaps a photo of himself and sends it to Shego, texting her, How do I look?
Her prompt reply is, Like a dork.
Drakken thrusts his fists through the air in triumph.
An unused plastic garbage sack holds toiletries, a couple of changes of clothes, and Sir Fuzzymuffin the Second. Lapis's teddy bear, however, straddles Drakken's shoulders. And while he heaves the garbage bag into the hovercraft and wedges it under the dashboard, he places her in the passenger seat and arranges her so that she can sit up – small and untidy and nervous, yet ever-striving, ever-determined to maintain her own essence.
Drakken squats to buckle the bear's seat belt and begins to address her softly, deliberately forgetting that she is an inanimate object and therefore deaf. "We're going to go meet your new owner," he says, in the same voice he uses when he's trying to coax his poodle out from under the bed. "Her name is Lapis Lazuli, and she's just going to love you! She's gone through a really tough time recently, and she'll need somebody she can cuddle with who won't try to hug her back – or judge her – or fuse with her."
The bear stares solemnly back at him, and in her eyes, black and seed-like as they are, Drakken can see the chemical solution of Lapis's personality: layers of old fear being peeled back to display the playfulness and the full-bodied wonder. Unscientific as it is, he would swear the thing understands what he's saying.
It is a long flight, stretched and fidgety, and Drakken whoops for joy when Beach City's welcoming highway sign, difficult to see from the hovercraft, comes into view.
The city's previous collectively held breath seems to have been let out in a ripple, easing the landmarks back into a sense of relief. Debris from the giant space hand has long since been disposed of. Now there are only cracks in the ground – some skinny as a pinkie finger, others gaping wide and nasty – as if it's been overrun by moles, which are actually pretty hateful vermin for being so oddly cute.
Farther away from the shops, out into the fields, trees are yellowing with fall, though the grass remains a luscious, rolling shade of green. The barn is easy to locate, as rusty-red as if it came from the pages of an old storybook, connecting toward a pond and another deep, almost tunnel-like hole in the soil.
Drakken narrowly avoids colliding with the water tower once he chances a glance down and spies the six figures, just now coming into focus, that stand before the barn's weathered doors. He doesn't recognize some green person, whose stunted height and pointy head remind Drakken of a department store elf. But the others –
There's Garnet, in her constant straight stance, like a black-capped, red highlighter that never runs out of ink, and Pearl, clasping and unclasping her fingers, a smile stuttering on and off her lips. Amethyst is on Pearl's other side, rolling her hands through the air – Drakken can't hear her, but he knows she, too, is whooping – and next to her is Steven, whose face is glowing brightly enough to put the sun out of a job, and next to him, their fingers entwined, is Lapis.
Oh, dear God – Lapis.
She looks smaller than ever and weary from holding down that brute. But she is still Lapis, barefoot, filmy skirt flowing in the breeze, round inquisitive eyes with the little blue irises.
He hasn't let himself be inundated thus far with how much he missed her, how much more he was worried for her. Losing her after this brief a time might not have ripped out his heart, but it would've left a gap in there, however small, that no one else could quite fill.
Drakken's seen enough movies to know how it goes from here. He brings the hovercraft to a bumpy landing, trips over the side on his way out, and then he runs. Gravity seems to get lower, and he can feel his pulse pounding in his ears and only that, and he wonders if this is how Lapis feels when she flies, and decides it must be because his own feet are barely connecting to the ground, and he thinks there are instances where they're both in the air at the same time…
Lapis, though, stays still, like her bare feet are rooted to the spot. Her expression is flat – not hard, just blank, as though wiped away with a blackboard eraser. Behind her, Drakken is vacantly aware that the other Gems – the Crystal ones – are exchanging looks of concern, wondering – Oh, no. Does she have any idea what to do?
But Drakken can't stop running, not until he absolutely has to, when to come any closer would mean trampling up onto Lapis's toes. Only then, with him exactly a quarter of an inch away, does Lapis leap up, quick as a hummingbird, and wisp her arms around his neck. What happens next is so automatic Drakken couldn't recreate it for an experiment.
All he knows is that somehow he's nestled her in his own limbs and hoisted her up so their faces are level – she is heavier than one would expect from a fairy and lighter than one would expect from a stone. And she is a little chilly, lacking in body heat, though Drakken can feel the contents of his own chest liquefy. Her pixie chin is so near and waiting, just waiting, for its cue to spread into a matching smile.
The lump in his throat is more work to swallow than the gristle from last night's steak. Drakken's own grin expands until there's no more space for it and his eyes begin to water as a result.
"Hi," he greets her huskily.
Lapis's mouth wiggles. "Hi," she says.
Who gives way to muted, slightly delirious giggling first, Drakken couldn't tell you. Hers come in fits and bursts, an instrument stuck and stammering on the same key, and his wobble over every note within a human's range, and they both seem to slide directly up each other's nostrils.
Their fledging connection clips into place again, and it doesn't sever when Drakken sets her back down.
"What are they doing?" says a voice that could easily belong to the world's first talking mosquito. Drakken has to hold himself back from turning to view this marvel of modern science.
And then Garnet quiets it with a calm, dense, "Shhh. Not now, dear."
Lapis's head rotates about forty-five degrees, in angle measure, and her tired eyes cool about twenty degrees, in temperature. It is not a good look for her.
Drakken gives her hand a brief squeeze, gladly donating some warmth to her, and then skitters up to Steven. From this range, he can see a single, dark hair bristling right below the boy's bright pink cheek. How old is this kid, anyway?
But that doesn't matter right now. Drakken tucks their hands together – Steven's are shorter but broader; he will be big someday, probably dwarfing Drakken. For now, though, he is still very much a kid, round and sticky and shining in a fashion that makes it impossible not to shine back.
"Thank you," Drakken says. "Thank you so much for looking out for her. I owe you many an ice cream sundae."
"Oh. Well, no prob, B –" Steven glances at Lapis, mashes his lips, and begins again. "I mean, happy to help. Happy for both of you."
The vividness of his grin, the compassionate tilt of his head – there can be no question of his sincerity.
Drakken, head swimming merrily, weaves his fingers through Lapis's once more. "So – can you show me around, Lapis?"
Lapis's face swivels back to meet his and settles back into that vulnerable openness that first drew his concern at the beach that day months ago. She unravels from the weave to waft her fingertips across his and gesture to the surrounding pasture with a sweep of her gossamer skirt. "Sure," she says.
Her speech seems looser now, less formal. It is her shoulders that are locking together, saturated with something too tightly burrowed under her skin for her to share yet.
But it doesn't come into play as Lapis leads him – with pride, Drakken would even venture to say – around what remains of the former farm. She shows him the water tower with the rust-eaten ladder she doesn't need to ascend to the top and study the sky that means so much to her. It is, Lapis tells him, where she goes to get away when the noise and the clashing presences of the Crystal Gems are too much for her.
She takes him into the barn itself, which holds in the heat comfortably now in the shrinking daylight hours and has more of a pleasantly mechanical scent than a musty animal one. Drakken watches her glide across the raw wood, and he cringes at the prospect of splinters lodging in her exposed toes, but Gems appear to be immune to such inconveniences. There is a pile of hay – a bed, Drakken wants to call it, not even knowing if this is the correct term or not – arranged on the floor, and while several straw heaps at the bottom are tousled like tangled bedclothes, it still shows a near-perfect indentation of Lapis's body.
He shivers despite the conserved warmth.
Lapis doesn't seem to notice as she directs him to the barn's features: the old paint cans with molten orange and red and green forever encrusted on their lidless tops; a portrait that appears to be even older, depicting a man and woman whose genial look convinces Drakken they must be some relatives of Steven's; and the graying pickup truck, rear bumper teasing against the storybook doors, a mattress cushioning its cab. Drakken turns to Lapis, points at the mattress, and puckers his brow.
And at once, she is illuminated again, even under the coating of pain – she is the fine metal of the ladder, gleaming beneath the rust. "This is where Steven sleeps," Lapis says.
It is there, in her voice – that soft zeal with the firm roots – the same as Drakken heard on the phone when she returned his bold declaration. This is how it sounds to be loved by Lapis Lazuli.
Drakken gets the feeling it is not an honor afforded to many.
"Where would be a good place to put my sleeping bag?" Drakken asks after clearing away the speaking-lump that threatens to burst into a tidal wave. (He is proud of himself for coming up with an ocean metaphor.)
It is Lapis's turn to pucker her brows – the both of them. Drakken has always wondered how people with two of the things manage to maneuver them both in tandem. Such dexterity is beyond him.
"Your bag sleeps?" Lapis nods toward the navy-blue bag, with the stripes a shade still darker and the glow-in-the-dark zipper pull, and then shakes her head. "No, that doesn't make sense. Is it – is it a bag that puts you to sleep?"
That light wells up inside Drakken again – that urge to unpeel a gold star sticker to reward her well-thought-out guesses. "You've almost got it! Except it doesn't automatically put you to sleep; it just helps, same as a bed. You use one when there isn't a bed around. You just climb inside and zip it up and then hopefully manage to fall asleep."
"Oh." Lapis glances from him to his bag and back again, and he can almost hear her brain, whether she has a physical one or not, absorbing the information. "Well, how about up here on the shelf? It looks sturdy enough to hold you."
Drakken tests the shelf with his weight, and it doesn't crack or give, proving Lapis right. He spreads his sleeping bag out, claiming his turf, and then sighs with pure contentment as he glances around.
All is right with his world again.
Or – close enough.
As they leave the barn, Drakken almost trips over the elflike green person he noticed earlier. From close up, the vaguely triangular stone on her forehead clearly marks her as a Gem.
The green elf-Gem says enough of a "Hello" for Drakken to recognize the owner of the mosquito voice. Then the sound chokes off in her throat, everything on her face bulges, and a squeak slips out. "Oh my stars," she says. "Why are you blue? You can't be a Gem – but you're blue! Have I provoked Blue Diamond's wrath, too? Is she sending an army for me? Are you just pretending to be the friendly Lazuli? Is this the end?"
Wow. It's been a while since Drakken met someone who could flip as thoroughly inside out as he can.
"I am the real Lapis Lazuli," Lapis says, "and I'm not your friend." She levels her eyes at the other Gem, and Drakken can almost feel the friction blistering between them. "He's my friend. His name is Dr. Drakken, and he's a human. He had a lab accident, that's all."
Her tone is a flat slab of granite, foreign to Drakken. His gaze whips between her and the green Gem, who is now staring straight ahead, setting her angular jaw as though to ward off tears and it's still trembling somewhat.
Lapis curls frigid fingers around Drakken's bicep, meager though it may be, and leads him several yards away. Even the bangs leveling across her forehead seem sharper, harsher than before.
Drakken is confused – troubled, as well. He's never known Lapis to behave this way. "Is she okay?" he asks.
Lapis blinks at him. Her feathery shoulder blades rise and fall. "I guess you can go check," she says faintly. She sounds like the same old Lapis, only with a bitter undercurrent.
Drakken gives her a pat and scuttles over to the green Gem, who's linked her wrists tightly behind her head and fallen halfway to the ground, where she nearly blends with the grass. "Errr… hello? I don't believe we've met," he tries. "Are you quite all right?"
The green Gem has fallen wordless, though not silent, a state Drakken understands quite well. Her irises – like Lapis, she lacks pupils – have dilated to the point where Drakken wonders if she sees anything at all.
An awkward kinship rumbles in Drakken's chest. He reaches a hand down to her. "You know, my therapist does excellent work," he offers her.
Her dilated irises snap up to his. "Your who does what?" she asks. Her words are so rushed, as if they have only been allotted two-and-a-half seconds to exit without paying surplus charge, that Drakken is amazed they don't collide with each other and fall away entirely.
They tell him she is far away from him, that anything from his world is pointless. Drakken makes no further attempt to reason with her; he instead gives her a small, nervous smile and resolves to check in on her mental state with someone else later, preferably the same someone else he asks about Jasper's fate.
It feels rather akin to betrayal to walk away from the poor girl, but her pain disperses in the breeze as soon as Drakken spies Lapis, with her arms folded around her middle and the remainder of her body swaying back and forth. If he had ever seen her eat anything more than a lick or two of ice cream, he would peg her as being about to vomit. For the first time, Drakken can see her thousands of years on her face – not in crow's-feet or sagging skin, but in the sullen steel grafted around her eye sockets.
He slips up and grabs her hand again, because she now seems in need of someone to anchor her to the ground. (Another good sea metaphor, Drakken notes.) "What's wrong, Lapis? I don't even know her – could you explain your hostility?"
Lapis turns to him, eyes aghast. "That's Peridot," she hisses.
"Peridot?" Drakken's esophagus locks around the name that doesn't fit, and he whips a glance back at the elf-Gem. Yes, now he recognizes the uniform and the visor, the distinctive triangular head. But devoid of the sneer, her lips appear knotted and fragile; and she's so tiny, even shorter than Amethyst, and an entire head below Lapis, who's no NBA player herself, height-wise. "But she – hmmp hmmp – hmmp hmmp" – Drakken spreads his arms to full length and then squishes them to within inches of each other to indicate her change in size and then does it again.
Lapis doesn't smile the way she's supposed to. "She had limb enhancers."
Drakken snaps his fingers and looks down at his own runty legs. "Why did I never think of that?"
Silence from Lapis. Her body is a blade, set bitter against the sky and the sharp green of the grass, shrouded in fear. If only he could smooth it over, if only he could comfort her…
"So – Peridot came over from the dark side?" Drakken asks.
"According to Steven. He says she's a Crystal Gem now." Lapis's snort reminds Drakken of the sound of his poodle sneezing. Under other circumstances, he would chuckle.
But these are not "other" circumstances; they are critical. After all, Lapis has only just been rescued from dire straits – literally. Is that literal? Are there straits in the ocean?
These are the real questions.
The look Lapis directs back at Peridot is not quite a glare – it is too heavy with worry. Drakken follows Lapis's gaze with his and finds the little green Gem beginning to uncurl from a quivering, conical shape. It would be hard to find anything frightening about her now.
Drakken leans over Lapis's elbow and purposefully perks his face. "Well, I don't think she could hurt you now even if she wanted to," he says. "I mean, she's a bigger wreck that you are, and you were in –"
No, no, no, Drakken! Do not bring up what she's been through!
Shego's smart-aleck tone in his head adds, Not too likely she's forgotten yet.
"Okey-doke, aborting that," Drakken continues aloud. "Redirecting – umm – no one around here is going to let her hurt you. Least of all me. Or Steven."
Lapis ducks her head and her bob slides into itself, concealing her face like a solar eclipse. "I know. I just don't get why you even care about her." It comes out so tightly, as though she has sucked all the oxygen out from the words in order to constrict them further.
Anxiety nips at Drakken's stomach. He blinks twelve times in a row. "I guess it's because – I saw her having a panic attack," he says. "And that's almost exactly what it looks like when I have a panic attack. There are these things my therapist calls 'triggers' that always send me into a frenzy like that, and I guess I felt kind of sorry for her, because it's a horrible experience. I just wanted to make sure she had somebody to help her – even if it probably can't be me."
At last, the corners of Lapis's mouth tweak upward. It's like seeing nothing but black marks in your bank account.
That's when Steven pokes his curly head out of the barn. He holds in one hand a videocassette whose peeling, lightly chipped case blasts Drakken straight back to the '90s. More importantly, when Lapis notices him, the opaque layer that descended over her at the sight of Peridot lifts, and she becomes the Lapis he knows again.
"Hey, Lapis. Are we still on for Steven-and-Lapis time?" Steven gives the video another wag. "Because I have The Lion King."
Peridot's green eyes droop, and Steven peers at her reassuringly. "It's okay. We have Steven-and-Peridot time later, remember?"
Lapis skips four steps toward Steven, and then stops to glance back up at Drakken as if she's being split down the middle. "Is it – is it okay if I go?" she asks.
Something about the way she looks at him – in trust, in eagerness, in the echoes of trauma – lifts one response, unchallenged, to his tongue:
"Do you want to?"
Lapis nods, timid once more.
"Then go do it!" Drakken can't resist grinning at her, nudging her with his shoulder pad. "I'll entertain myself for an hour-and-a-half."
Lapis smiles back at him – a whole, complete smile – and she squeezes his wrist with her little fairy fingers and flits off after Steven, who's now asking her, "Oh, do you mind if Lion watches with us? I think he has a crush on Nala."
Ah, yes. The famed pink lion. Drakken makes a mental note to get a sample of that creature's fur to examine under a microscope before this visit ends.
It's only after they've both disappeared into the shadows of the barn that Drakken realizes he hasn't even considered how he shall entertain himself, or even if he's capable of doing such a thing at all. A reflex simply kicked in based on Lapis's needs alone.
And that's not a reflex Dr. Drakken possesses in the normal order of things.
And right now, he knows, Shego would be saying, Boy, are YOU in deep.
He is also alone with one of the most beautiful days to have ever dawned. The few clouds are as clear and precise as the weathered palm-lines of the men who awarded Drakken his medal; the tender breeze sears into his memory just as intensely as the muggy one that first blew Shego onto his doorstep; the surprisingly soft sketches as Peridot draws in the dirt with a stick remind him that there are others he meant to speak to.
Drakken begins with Garnet; of all his new Gem friends, she seems the most stable. He finds her standing by herself – well, in the company of herself, at least – still not sure how the fusion thing works –and she's staring at the sky. She receives his "Hello" with a nod that implores him to cut right to the chase.
Nudging some wildflowers with his boot, Drakken is mildly intimidated by the sheer size of her, though she does not wear it with aggression like the Lorwardians or Jasper. "That green child –" he wafts an arm in Peridot's direction – "does she have a support group?" he asks.
"She's got us," is Garnet's reply.
There's no arguing with that voice. Or with those hands, gems embedded in each palm, apparently tailor-made for support. Drakken wants to inquire which of her components controls which side, and what their names are, and whether they both happen to be red naturally or have absorbed her signature color through the fusion process, but he narrows his list of questions down to just one more:
"Whatever became of Jasper, anyway?"
Garnet adjusts her sunglasses. "The earth opened up and swallowed her whole," she says.
Drakken sinks to his backside on that same earth. "Wow," he says. "I've never had one of my wishes come that specifically true before."
Garnet makes a small noise in the back of her throat. It could be anything from amusement to allergies – except, no, scratch that last one; Gems probably don't suffer from allergies –
The flapping of wings draws Drakken's attention up to a flock of geese honking down from overhead. They are already headed for warmer climates.
"That little gosling in the back is going to get lost somewhere between here and the Midwest," Garnet says out of nowhere. "His mother is going to have to backtrack twenty miles to retrieve him, and the leader of the flock will not be happy."
She doesn't seem to be expecting an answer from Drakken, which is good because she just predicted the future of waterfowl and how does one respond to that and how does she know and wow. Mustering all his social graces, Drakken says, "Thanks, Garnet. Nice talking to you." She sends him off with the same nod she used to welcome him.
She is an unabashed oddity, Drakken decides on his hike back up the slight slope. He also decides he likes that.
Just past the barn – which is now leaking the first few strains of "I Just Can't Wait to be King –" is a new arrival, a van with so many different designs painted on it that it can hardly be called white anymore. Another new arrival, a man comfortably padded like an easy chair, is loading it up with boxes, bins, and a duffel bag or two. While Drakken has no ID for the man, seeing him is almost like a memory. His ruddy dome is bare all on top and a quarter of a way down the neck, but hanging down – and down – and down from there is…
"Oh, supreme!" Drakken exclaims. "My cousin would love your mullet! How long has it been since you cut it? I've got a little baby one back here myself," he says, tugging his ponytail, "but I have to keep it trimmed because if it gets too long it itches and distracts me from my work."
The man breaks into a grin that Drakken knows he's seen before. "Hey, thanks. Yeah, I've been workin' on it for awhile. Used to trim it every now and then, too, but – eh – I figure there's not gonna be too much more where this came from anymore."
Drakken anticipates the moment where this man will register that he's speaking to someone whose skin is the same shade as the sky and marred by black perma-stitches. It never comes – no stares, no squirms – and so Drakken extends his hand. "Hi, I'm Dr. Drakken," he says – quite happily. "I'm a friend of Lapis's."
The man swallows Drakken's fingers with his pudgy paws. And right as Drakken recognizes the easygoing grip, the man says, "That's cool. I'm Greg Universe."
Of course. Of course.
"Oh, yes," Drakken says. "Steven's father." He tilts his head to the left. "How's your leg?"
Greg's lips form an O, a soft O. "Yep, good as new," he says cheerily. "Probably better, in fact. Steven patched me right up."
For an instant, Drakken has the strange image of young Steven splinting his father's leg and setting the bone, a Boy Scout gone extreme, before it vanishes into the scene Lapis painted for him with her stories. "Ohhh, right. Because he has healing saliva."
Greg's "How'd ya know?" trickles toward an "Ohhhh" of its own, and Drakken knows he is watching the same scene: Steven licking his hand and pressing it to the life-stone on Lapis's back. Greg reaches into the front passenger seat of the van and comes back with a six-pack of soda. "Want a Fizzy Pop while we talk?" he asks.
Carbonated beverages have never been among Drakken's favorite things, but he's learned to recognize an extension of friendship when he sees one, and it thrills him. He graciously accepts, and with the enormous effort of an inexperienced soda consumer, pops the tab; Drakken is pleased to note that he does so without suffering a cut. He takes a small sip and pricks an ear toward the barn, now alive and overflowing with Steven's shrieks, so loud that Drakken can't distinguish which part of the movie they're at. If he were to take a guess, he'd say the elephant graveyard, because Steven is squealing with a child's delighted fear over something purely fictional.
"You made a really great kid," Drakken finally says.
"Well, thanks." Greg swigs from his own can and stuffs his other hand into his weather-beaten pockets. All of his movements have a quiet purpose about them that keep them from being lazy. "My genes can't take all the credit, though. His mother was an amazing woman."
Drakken nods, his mind encircling every fact he knows about Steven before cinching around the child's powers and his unusual living arrangement and the glow Lapis has described seeing under his T-shirt. "She was…a Gem?" he ventures, not entirely certain of why he said "was."
"Boy, was she ever," Greg murmurs. His voice is thick with something Drakken and Lapis haven't gotten to yet. His glance toward the horizon is bittersweet, and Drakken can't tell whether it's meant to invite further questions or bar them, and he isn't sure which one would be the bigger social goof-up if wrong, and before he can ponder through it to a hypothesis, Greg speaks again:
"So I hear you and Lapis are in a relationship now?"
Drakken swallows his mouthful of soda, harder than soda generally needs to be swallowed. His head bobs, automatically acknowledging the correctness of Greg's thesis, and relationship is such an ambiguous term; he has a relationship with everyone from his mother to Kim Possible to Professor Dementor. From the sound of Greg's knowing warmth, however, Drakken knows he is talking about a capital-R Relationship, the kind that changes the status of that Villainster profile he used to have.
Squeezing the can so tightly the metal crunches even under his bony fingers, Drakken nods again, more deliberately. "Yes," he says. "Yes, I suppose we are."
There's no heavenly symphony when he says those words. And when Drakken gazes around again, none of the details have changed – he can say that without a doubt from a scientific perspective – yet there's something different about the landscape, as if Steven has come in and healed it all with a spit-shine.
"Good for you," Greg says. "Lapis and I – we got off on the wrong foot, but I'm sure she's really nice when she isn't fighting for her life."
There's not a single phony note in that sentence. Drakken's nod is heavier this time, burdened with his imaging of the insane fear that could drive a mild Gem like Lapis to such extremes. "She is," he must say right away, but then he remembers that narrow glare hollowing out Peridot, as if Lapis were unsure whether to malign her or simply dismiss her existence altogether, and fears that perhaps he hasn't spoken the truth.
"To me, at least," Drakken amends. "She still seems pretty bitter toward some others."
"Can hardly blame her." There's something sympathetic, something almost sad, in the hang of Greg's arms. "I mean, from what Steven tells me, she's been through a lot. You're doin' great to have her trust. You should be proud of yourself."
"I am," Drakken says. In fact, the feeling is bigger inside him than it probably should be. "And I know it would be healthier if she liked everybody, but I like feeling special now," he confesses.
Greg shrugs. "That's probably normal. Like Pearl used to remind me once a week – you're only human."
An already hefty cast of questions begins to multiply in Drakken's head, quicker than a pair of rabbits. How does he know Pearl exactly? Why did she feel the need to remind him of his species status? (It's a rather hard thing to forget.) Why does Drakken get the feeling there's a whole other story behind Greg's chuckle?
And then Greg is chuckling again and saying, "Well, I might be the only one around here who understands what it's like to date a Gem. If you ever need somebody to talk to…it can be a little different, especially when it comes to the, ya know, the physical side of things."
Drakken can feel the softening around his own cheekbones as he pokes at a bubble swelling across the surface of his soda, its convex surface refracting a rainbow, millimeters away from popping. "Lapis and I held hands once," he says, and there in his mind he can see his fingers, for once the bigger ten, folding around hers.
There's a soft grunt from Greg, who appears to be blushing under his sunburn. "Uh, yeah," he says, massaging the back of his neck as though the muscles are knotted. "We don't have to have this conversation just yet, then…"
It is Drakken's turn to shrug, because he honestly cannot fathom what it is they're not talking about, but since they're not talking about it, where's the harm? He sips more soda, the thin crust of frozen water at the base of the can even now melting into his palm.
"So what do you do?" Greg says, and from the easiness of it, Drakken decides he must be accustomed to holding the conversational steering wheel. "For a living, I mean?"
Drakken grins. "Well, I used to try and take over the world. But now I help save it. I work for Global Justice – it's all very hush-hush." He slips a finger to his lips to seal his pronouncement.
Greg's eyes widen above the rim of the can. "Wow. That's pretty dramatic. I bet running a carwash sounds kinda boring in comparison, huh?"
"Are you kidding?" Drakken rockets away from the van, his hands already flexing, testing the space they will need to reinforce his words. "Carwashes are fantastic! You get to use the wax applicators and the vacuum nozzle attachments and those brushy things that I forget the names of –"
"Brushes?" Greg says.
"Yes! Those!" Drakken thrusts a finger, throbbing with his rushing pulse, toward Greg. "And you get to just open up an absolute deluge on people's cars and then blow-dry it off and – do you say 'Wax on, wax off,' during every wax job? Please say you do!"
Greg's mouth works from its gawking position into a grin of its own. "You know it."
"Who could resist, right?" Drakken's laughter rumbles his diaphragm on its way out. "Do you do hovercrafts, too? Because I could definitely bring min –"
That's when he feels a different vibration, a staccato shake against his hip, and Drakken rocks back against the van in alarm before realizing it is coming from the cell phone in his pocket. He extracts it, glances down at the screen, and nearly overturns his soda can when he reads the block letters printed on the screen.
MOTHER.
Drakken already has the phone most of the way to his ear by the time he turns to Greg and says, "Sorry. I've got to take this. It's my mother."
Greg frames his good-natured face with both upturned hands. "Say no more."
It's only fair for Drakken to respond with a wave and a thumbs-up, even as he scrambles away from the van, to the shelter of a wide-leafed tree several yards away from the barn's back door and the sinister timbre of Scar's musical number. "Hello, Mother," he says, in the high, boyish pitch that tends to soothe her anxiety.
This time, however, it doesn't work. "Drew LIPSKY!" she hollers. "I went over to see you this afternoon, and you weren't home, and there was no note! I had to ask Shego, and she told me you'd left town – left the STATE – and didn't think to tell me!"
Drakken's stomach takes a sharp dip worthy of a roller coaster. "I'm sorry, Mother," he says, turning the placation up to full force. "Truly, I am. I was so busy running around and being worried that I forgot to tell you I was going back to Beach City for the weekend."
His last word cracks, and this does gentle Mother's ire. "Your summer vacation spot?" she says.
She remembers everything about him, and he remembers nothing about her, and sometimes the lack of balance can guilt Drakken without her aid. "Yes," he says. "See, I went to see a – um – I mean, I wanted to be with someone who needs –"
All the verbal roads he could travel chop off into sentence fragments. There is no path around the growing, breathing, stretching thing whose recent development has led him here.
Drakken's lungs need to be freshened for this; he sighs deeply. "Mother, I need to tell you something – and don't freak out, okay?"
Mother gasps, the opposite of a sigh, and her air seems to be lost, unable to find its way back out. In her defense, the last time he called and told her that, it was because he had irreversibly stained his body blue.
Drakken surges ahead, actually able to feel the stampeding of his heart – or is that the horde of wildebeest, about to upend Simba's life? "Mother, I met a girl. And I really like her – a lot."
What follows next necessitates pulling the phone away from his ear. Mother is once again screeching at the limits of the human hearing range – but experience tells Drakken that this time, the noises are joyous ones.
"Awwhhhh, DREWBIE! I'm so happy for you! Just think, after all these years…" Mother's voice, riddled with giggles, drops to her version of a whisper. "Who's the lucky girl?"
Drakken gropes for a phone cord to twirl and, finding none, fiddles instead with a hank of hair sweating itself free from his ponytail. "Lapis Lazuli," he says. "The one I had you make the teddy bear for."
"Ohhhhhhhhhhh." Every extra h carries with it a quality of…knowing. Yes, knowing again, and Drakken wonders if he were the last person on either of their planets to recognize this. "I see.
"Well, what's she like?" Mother says.
Like? What is Lapis like? She is like a friend, only deeper; like an ally, only closer; she is like a new slot in his heart with plenty of space to grow.
This speech manifests itself solely in pictures and ideas, nothing that will print legibly. Drakken tinkers with the format for a few seconds to no avail, and so decides to get the most important – or at least the most pressingly obvious – information out on the table:
"She's an alien."
Mother gasps, again, even more theatrically than before. "Not one of those nasty aliens who kidnapped you, Drewbie?"
Her worry draws back for him the feel of Warmonga's venomous breath on his neck. Drakken does a two-step to avoid it, fingers fidgeting at his waist.
"No, not one of the Lorwardians, Mother," Drakken says. They've actually since been blown up, and that is a topic Drakken doesn't wish to spend much time on. "She's a Gem. I mean, that's what she's really called. She's much smaller and much nicer. And she's blue, like me!"
Mother deserves to be acknowledged for recovering as quickly as she does. "All right. Well, I'd love to meet her."
It is, Drakken knows, his mother's way of saying, You will bring her home if you value your life.
"We-ell, I can certainly invite her, Mother," Drakken hedges. His pulse is pounding; he isn't sure Lapis will want to come, and how will that look to Mother?
"And we can all have dinner together! That's perfect," Mother says, as if the event has been planned months in advance. "I can cook all her favorite foods. What does she like to eat?"
"Actually, her species doesn't need to eat. But she can shapeshift a digestive system if she wants to." Fearing this response may be unhelpful, Drakken adds, "She likes ice cream."
Drakken has never heard his mother speechless before.
At long last, he gets back, "What…does she look like, Drewbie dear?"
Another first. Mother has never inquired that of the few friends he's had in his lifetime. But she speaks with hesitance – and also, probably, with the image of her only son returning home, escorting in some gelatinous mass of a creature with compound eyes like an insect's.
"She looks like a person – only she's blue, like me. Her skin is blue, her hair's blue – oh, and so are her eyes – which isn't strange at all, just a recessive gene – but she has the normal amount of, um, appendages and facial features. Well – she doesn't have ears, but they'd be covered by her hair anyway if she did, so it's not that noticeable." She can't see Drakken's nervous smile; he is only using it to form the proper tone.
He counts off the seconds during the pause. One Mississippi, Two Mississippi – he's up to thirty-four by the time Mother says, "Would honey-glazed ham be okay?"
"That sounds wonderful," Drakken says – because how could anyone dislike his mother's honey-glazed ham? "And could you make the potato salad I like? With the chopped gherkins and everything?"
"Absolutely. And I'll be sure to have ice cream on hand. What flavor?"
"Vanilla."
"Vanilla it is, then." She babbles on for a while longer. Drakken can picture her face creasing in delight, the only wrinkles on her clay-smooth skin, born of a love that has ventured to the pit and back with him.
And he can still see it for quite some time after he's bid her good-bye and hung up and returned the phone to his pocket.
Drakken drops to his backside beside one of the fissures running parallel to the horizon. Though barely wide enough to see into, if you angle your head correctly, it's impossible to miss the expanse of geological discoveries in the making, layered like Mother's lasagna. It is so fascinating that Drakken stretches, on his belly, toward the crack. Moments later he remembers that Jasper was last seen toppling into one of these, that there's no guarantee she's gone, that she was, somehow, created down here in all that heat and pressure, so it'd be silly to think it could do her any harm.
The potential for Jasper to arise from the Earth's mantle, snake her arms around his neck, and pull him down into a place where he can't survive is unappealing enough to get Drakken leaping from his sprawl and plastering himself to the barn's back wall. The planks are warm in the early evening cool that's begun to spread, soothingly so.
Drakken's ears, nearly canine in their sensitivity ever since his inadvertent rise to plant power, easily pick up the strains of the movie's soundtrack. But he can tell by the heaviness of the music that they're at the saddest scene ever, and he pushes past it to sounds beyond.
Near-whispers. Hushes, at least. If not a secretive meeting, one that isn't quite open to the general public, either.
A high, nervous voice that still retains too much beauty to belong to anyone but Pearl says, "…home to meet his mother. Are we really going to let her go home with him?"
The rush of her words reminds Drakken so much of Mother that it takes him longer than it should to realize the "him" Pearl refers to is Drakken himself.
"I mean, he seems very nice," she continues, "but we don't really know anything about him."
Drakken waits for the pain to strike him, yet when it does, it is only a sliver of wood peeling loose from a plank to jab the flesh of his back. As he grunts and bats it away, a sour taste lingers briefly in Drakken's throat, then dries up and blows away. Pearl is trying to protect Lapis. He cannot fault for her for that.
(Well, he can, but far be it from him to do so!)
"Garnet, do you see any risks?" Pearl says.
The silence defers to Garnet, who apparently does have some type of psychic powers – they must be rare even among Gems, from the reverence Pearl employs when she asks. Garnet, for her part, does not make the same noises the quack fortune-tellers on television do. There is no pressing of fingers and murmuring of "Ommmmm," as if groaning the name of the derived unit of electrical resistance will make the future clear.
There is only clean, wise silence before she says, "I see risks in everything." Garnet's voice never rises, and yet its intensity hits Drakken like a sandblaster. "But there is no future where he harms her."
Drakken's entire body goes slack and melts down the side of the barn.
He really has changed, then. Certainly he would never, ever hurt Lapis on purpose – but he never wanted to hurt Shego or his beloved mother, either, and there were occasions where in his carelessness he almost lost both of them.
It is a good thought to marinate in, and after retrieving his gift from the hovercraft Drakken does just that, sitting in the twilight and experiencing the rest of the movie secondhand. The credits roll before he knows it, and in only three minutes by his wristwatch, Steven and Lapis emerge from the barn, their hands connected, their eyes blinking to adjust to the last rays of sun. Steven gives Drakken a cheerful wave, high-fives Lapis, and then bounds off in the direction where Drakken remembers seeing Peridot last.
Lapis's shoulders bow slightly as she watches Steven disappear into the dusk, but she smiles upon turning around and finding Drakken waiting for her. She looks like a whole other person when she does that.
Drakken shifts his hands, clasped behind him, weighed down with his gift. "I have something for you," he says.
Lapis cringes, a cringe too quick to be a conscious one, and in a way indefinable, it seems to sink hooks straight into him. After what her life has consisted of, of course surprises would be a dicey prospect. But Drakken would never hurt her – Garnet herself classified it an impossibility; he would rather have a double-hangnail on every finger than hurt her.
Granted, he'd complain a lot about the hangnails, but it would still be better than hurting her.
"Don't worry. It's a good something," Drakken reassures her. He pulls his hands from behind his back. "Behold! Your teddy bear!"
There is an evening birdcall, and then there is only a glorious moment as Lapis stares, glassy-eyed and opened-mouth, at his mother's handiwork.
"Look-look-look-look!" Drakken can't resist a full-sized grin as he turns the bear around to showcase her embroidered wings and her imitation gemstone, both of which Lapis absorbs with a velveteen expression. Drakken can feel it draping his own insides.
"Oh, Drakken," Lapis speaks his name as though it is an ancient incantation, "she's beautiful."
This is the point where he should liken the bear to her, but his throat is precariously knotted and might not survive the comparison.
Slowly, Lapis reaches out and fingers the hem of the bear's skirt. Her touch is light as an old-fashioned down pillow and delivered with the utmost care.
"Go on, take her," Drakken says. "She's yours."
Lapis cradles the bear gently, and as she scoops the bear into her arms, she is powerful and she is fragile; she is happy and she is sad; she is old and she is young; she is hopeful and she is cynical, and a whole host of other contradictions Drakken thought only existed in him.
"It's been so long since I had something of my own," Lapis says into the russet fur. She swings her face up to his, the twinkle bright under the dusty layers from months of having nothing to twinkle about. "Thank you."
"What are you going to name her?" Drakken manages to say.
Lapis traces the outline of the bear's gem. "Well, her gem is a lapis, so she should be a Lapis."
Drakken is disappointed and yet not surprised. Culture gap and all. "Well, she doesn't need to be," he says. "You can give her whatever name you want. Besides, that's plastic anyway –"
"Then her name should be Plastic," Lapis says.
Her voice is so decisive that it tears a laugh loose from Drakken. "Plastic Lazuli?"
"Yes." Lapis nods, and Drakken is thoroughly charmed by the absence of irony in her eyes.
And that is when the delayed impact of her earlier words crashes over him, like a sonic boom leftover by a plane traveling faster than the speed of sound. He frowns: "A Lapis?"
If he were Lapis, his head would snap up in wild panic – but she is Lapis, and she merely lowers hers, body seemingly shrinking to meet it, until her slightly lopsided part is visible. "Oh," she says, altogether too quietly. "I guess I forgot to tell you."
"Tell me what?"
Lapis sighs, in and out. "I'm not the first Gem to be Lapis Lazuli. And I won't be the last."
She glances at Drakken, as if she expects to find him devastated from war wounds. He isn't; the confusion in his head is too dense to allow him to be.
"You mean – you have clones?" Drakken asks. From a purely mad-scientist type of standpoint, he can see where an army of Lapises, with their flight capacity and command of water, would be advantageous, though if they all have Lapis's demeanor, they would surely needed to be molded and manipulated into soldiers.
Lapis shakes her head. "That's not even how Gems are made. Just – other Lapises."
"Oh, well, that's not really a big deal," Drakken says. "I mean, there are plenty of other people on Earth named Drew; it doesn't mean anything!"
He watches Lapis, waiting for her relief to sync with his. It never does. "No, you don't understand," she says. "We can all fly. We can all control water."
"Do you all look the same?" Drakken says.
"Not identical. But similar." Lapis sort of squeaks, which would be hilarious if it weren't for the gravity of her words.
Drakken grips his temples. They are thumping as Lapis crosses her arms onto opposite shoulders, across the checkmark of her top's neckline, and as she stares down, he does too – down at those little feet that can flit so gracefully or follow so loyally or step forward so bravely.
How can a creature who speaks of such involved design be mass-produced?
Drakken isn't sure which variable to solve for first, so he latches on to a random one. "Doesn't it get confusing? You know, when someone yells 'Lapis!', how do you know if they're addressing you or not?"
"We have numbers."
The very word encroaches on Drakken like claustrophobia itself. "Numbers?" he sputters. "We had numbers in prison!
"Not to criticize the way your people do things," he adds hastily, after Lapis's face turns a shade darker.
"They aren't exactly numbers." Lapis takes on a tone of clarification. "We have classes and facets."
Right. Those terms bandied about when people discuss the stones too precious for Drakken to afford.
"Do you like being called a facet?" he says.
Lapis's gaze wanders three degrees to the right. "No," she admits. "Almost as much as I don't like Peridot calling me 'Lazuli.'"
Drakken can understand that. He always hated being called "Lipsky," the way its very phonetics skewed people's lips into mockery.
"Then you'll always be Lapis to me," he says. "And if I ever meet another Lapis someday, I'll just call her…Lisa or something."
Lapis giggles, and Drakken wishes to lengthen it. He leans forward and uncurls her fingers with the same tenderness she used on the bear – Plastic – and he says, "Plus, if they're not your clones – then –"
He taps her fingerprints, and the smile that washes her cheeks makes something click into place inside Drakken. "Are they the same as before?" Lapis asks.
Drakken swallows. "Well, I didn't exactly have them memorized. I'm not that much of a prince. But, scientifically speaking, there's no reason why they wouldn't be."
This appears to satisfy Lapis. Her stare fixes in place and yet moves far beyond him; she murmurs, "I kept trying to look at my fingerprints when I was her. But I couldn't remember why."
Her forehead lines with pain Drakken can't stand to see on her. He moves instinctively closer, flailing his hands at his sides. "Are – are you okay?" he asks.
Lapis breathes as if she is emerging from a wind tunnel and her eyes recover something she clearly feels compelled to maintain. "I'm fine," she says, and it's the first lie she's ever told him.
It seems strange, almost sadistic, to hope someone will cry. But the hurt is already there; all he wishes on her are the tears to release it.
A cool breeze rustles past them, snapping Steven's pink shirts and denim shorts on the clothesline, shaking the trees until they surrender their loose leaves, and then depositing one in Lapis's hand. Its rusty orange nearly engulfs the blue – robin's-egg is the closest crayon-color, Drakken decides – of her tiny palms.
Lapis grasps the thing by the stem and twirls it between her fingers like the ballerina in Mother's favorite music box. "Did you know that the leaves change color to mark the different seasons?" she says, sounding worshipful again.
Giddy warmth bubbles in Drakken's chest. "Yes!" he cries. "Isn't it marvelous?"
He is struck by the overwhelming urge to tickle her, and only when his hands are squashed into her armpits and she is giving him a look of complete bewilderment does it occur to him that Gems might not be ticklish in the traditional sense.
"What are you doing?" Lapis asks.
"I was attempting to tickle you," Drakken says. "It's when someone just kind of tiptoes their fingers across your skin and it makes you need to laugh really hard. I guess it doesn't work as well with you guys as with humans. Me, I'm super-ticklish…"
Lapis eyes him from behind her bangs. "You are?"
"Yes, especially the bottoms of my feet…" Drakken notices the slyness too late.
She grabs his boots, tosses them aside, and doesn't stop until he literally begs for air.
By the time the sun has disappeared completely and all the other stars have begun winking into visibility, Greg's finished loading the van and is ready to depart. He bids Drakken farewell – or at least "see you later" – before he leaves.
"I'll be back in the morning to pick up the Schtewball," Greg says, and somehow Drakken gathers he is referring to Steven. "He wanted to stay one last night here for old times' sake. That kid is all nostalgia." Greg shakes his head and chuckles the way, Drakken has observed from a distance, affectionate fathers do.
The heaviness of that thought doesn't last for long. Drakken busies himself spreading his sleeping bag on Lapis's recommended ledge, thrilled by the delightful unconventionality of sleeping in his clothes.
Before he climbs in and settles down for the night, he manages to think up a potential solution to the need to see what is in Lapis's heart when she thinks of the bear and not just what is necessitated by Gem naming standards. "Can you give her a last name?" Drakken suggests to Lapis. "That way, she could have a name just for her – chosen especially by her loving owner."
Lapis's eyes sink into the possibility, as though she is being offered new powers that extend beyond her range. "I can think about it," she says.
This is good enough for Drakken. He falls back into his sleeping bag, reluctant, in spite of his sleepiness, to permit himself to drift away. His emotions are as exhausted as his esophageal muscles are after a good lengthy monologue, spent by the scope of the day, and that promises a nighttime spent running from monsters of his own design.
Drakken tells himself the truth constantly: the truth that he has made amends, that he has begun an entirely new life, that he is free and safe. It's like a song – not as catchy as "Quit Playing Games With My Head," perhaps, but beautiful in its own way, and yet it warps, becomes discordant without his conscious mind to conduct it, especially after a charged day like this one. His mind will be a Petri dish for nightmares.
And so it is tonight.
Drakken is not surprised to find himself running, running as quickly as his weak calves can carry him, away from the heat of his past sins and grievances. Some have snapping claws, others tweezerlike pincers, still others barrel-blasters for arms; all were created for maximum destruction. And if they catch up to him, they will do worse than destroy him – they will drag him back into that throbbing, itching, miserable life.
So he's running, straining – breathe, Drakken, breathe – to stay ahead. It must be hours, it must be miles, plunging through a blackness purer and richer than oil, too black for anything to cast a shadow.
There is a shift then, in the air. Drakken's speed is not so much slowed as it is rendered utterly ineffectual – as if he has been running on a treadmill loop all along and only now noticed. A figure cuts out of the darkness and stands before him. Through the detached intuition of dreams, Drakken knows it's Warmonga even before her voice, deep as the next-to-last key on a piano, takes aim at him:
"Blue Deceiver! See how your lies have brought ruin to the people you love! You have dishonored Lorwardian prophecy! Now you will watch your puny planet burn!"
Something is wrong, very wrong, even in this unreality, even though all of her accusations are true.
It sends Drakken scrabbling backward, where he collides with a wall that wasn't there five seconds ago, it wasn't! He's knocked to his backside, making Warmonga's figure appear even more Herculean as she looms before him.
Drakken doesn't feel anything, but he's aware of the pulsing in his neck, the near-penetration that then collapses in on itself. Something that should be working – isn't. An intangible panic surges in him.
"I defeated you!" he hollers up at her.
Warmonga's laugh is every bit as seismically-disruptive as her footsteps. "Do not be silly, Blue Deceiver! You never defeated Warmonga."
Drakken scrambles to his feet and claws his way toward a patch of murky grayness that speaks of a light somewhere far away.
He never makes it that far. Warmonga grasps a handful of his ponytail and reels him in like a fish on a line.
Well, two can play at that game! Drakken thrusts his hand behind him and blindly latches onto her shaggy hair.
Shaggy?
Drakken frowns. He remembers Warmonga's hair as silken and slippery from its fall across his face as she smooched his cheek.
With one last yank, Warmonga flops Drakken back toward her. "Blue Deceiver, don't you understand?" she jeers. "You never defeated me. You never did a thing to defeat me! And you never will!"
Her voice has changed. While still low in pitch, its cannon-boom has been replaced by a rasp.
And since when does Warmonga refer to herself in the first person?
Drakken already knows what he will see as he's spun around in her vise grip, knows he should not look, but he looks anyway. The sight is even more horrific than he feared.
Warmonga has become Jasper.
He doesn't know if he's more afraid of her than of Warmonga, but it is a different breed of fear entirely. Jasper grows to fills all the spaces, until there is nothing around Drakken that is not part of her. With one swipe of her mammoth, orange hand, she flicks him aside as though swatting a fly.
Drakken skids across invisible bricks. Gravel fills his mouth when he opens it to scream; he screams nevertheless, a loud, ripping scream that….
…that sits him bolt upright.
Drakken scrapes at the surrounding dimness and tries to determine his coordinates. His lab coat adheres to his chest with sweat, and his legs are tangled in something that has yet to be identified. He continues screaming, for lack of any reason not to, and a woman's scream joins his – shrill, nasal, and endless. Drakken does not recognize it, and it makes him scream all the louder.
It's a wonder he hears, over the cacophony he can't make sense of, feathery footsteps approaching.
Lapis Lazuli runs in, waving an inactive garden hose the way a supervillain would brandish a ray gun. The near-comedy of the sight – the hose is both longer and thicker than the arms holding it – is countered by a fierceness that would give even the hardest villain pause.
A shaft of moonlight washes in then, and Drakken is able to figure out his location – lying on a ledge in the barn on the outskirts of Beach City – and the originator of the mosquito-cries – poor little Peridot, who is currently upside-down on the ceiling like a cat, clinging for dear life to a rafter. Once that is settled, there is nothing for him to do but drop his head back into his sleeping bag and howl with laughter, and to holler, "It's all right, Lapis!"
Lapis lowers the hose in one-inch increments.
Across the barn, Steven yawns and stretches. "You guys picked a strange time to have a scream-off," he murmurs. "Couldn't you at least have waited until morning?" He rubs one eye, sitting up on his mattress in the pickup.
When Eddy talked about "the bed of a truck," Drakken's pretty sure this wasn't what he was referencing; and suddenly everything is hilarious. Drakken laughs into his sleeves until he's set his entire body quaking.
"That thing that isn't a Gem started it!" Peridot protests.
Lapis raises the hose again threateningly. "I'll still spray you."
Her words are determined, miniature spatters of rain that soften into a light drizzle when she turns to Steven. "Sorry we woke you up," Lapis says.
"Oh, that's all right," Steven says. True to his youth, his face is already bright with no traces of drowsiness. "Garnet!" he calls toward the barn door. "We need a Peri-extraction!"
Lapis gives up a smile and turns to leave. All Drakken can see as the moonbeam wanes away is the teardrop-shaped stone, set vulnerably between her shoulders, and he has to be with her.
"Lapis, wait up!" Drakken calls. He disentangles his boots from his sleeping bag, stumbling twice, and trots to catch up with her before she leaves the barn. She stops in the doorway, turns around, and without a backward glance curls her marvelous chilly fingers around his.
Happy things take place in Drakken's insides.
He has felt these things before - heart pumping yet light, thoughts leafy and clear in his head, warm urgency up and down his spine - and there is only a change that is so slight that it wouldn't be noticed unless taken out and examined under a microscope. The differentness of it is almost too small to be felt.
If this is love, Drakken decides, he's a big fan.
He follows Lapis outside, behind the barn to a sprawl of rolling grass, and lies down on the ground, which is just chilled enough to refresh his sweating back. Lapis stretches out beside him, and there is nothing uncomfortable about their silence. Drakken's always been tangle-tongued and tangle-limbed around the females he's liked, but it's well-nigh impossible to feel too self-conscious around Lapis. She's straight-bodied the way he is, as much a girl-woman as he is a boy-man.
A gentle gust slaps a few willowy weeds against each other. The night is still, save for Garnet's centered voice as – Drakken presumes – she coaxes Peridot off the ceiling.
"Lovely night," he says.
Lapis's skin twitches ever so slightly, as if something has tunneled in beneath it and saddened her. "Yes. For Earth."
Her tone does not carry an insult. "You really miss your home, don't you?" Drakken says, squirming to one side to see her better.
As soon as the words have left his lips, Drakken knows he might as well have asked, "Your skin really is blue, isn't it?" Doy, as Shego would say.
Lapis nods. Her longing is big, maybe larger than her – and as alien to him as her liquid wings.
"See, I've never really experienced that myself," Drakken explains. "When you're a supervillain, you have a bunch of different lairs, and you need to be ready to hop from one to another just like –" he attempts to snap his fingers, fails, and instead says, "at a moment's notice, if the authorities show up or you explode your own living quarters or…something. So I never got too attached to any one place."
A brief sound comes out of Lapis, something ironic and wistful. "You're lucky, then."
Drakken frowns; his life has not been one of good fortune until these last four months or so. "Maybe I was," he says. "Or maybe you were."
Lapis looks at him as if he has just said something worthy of the radio talk-show doctor he long pretended to be. There is surprise in her expression, but none of the disbelief that would assume such wisdom to be out of his reach. She rolls herself onto her left elbow (Drakken wonders, oddly, if Gems can be left- and right-handed) and says, "So – why were you screaming in the barn? Did Peridot try something?"
"No, no, Peridot did nothing!" Drakken is prompt to answer. "When I woke up screaming, it must have freaked her out, and she started screaming, too. That's all."
"Oh. Okay." Lapis's face loosens somewhat. "Why did you wake up screaming?"
"I had a bad dream."
Unlike his nosy mother, she does not press for further information. This is good, because Drakken has no desire to tell her that Jasper was a key player and watch the small features tighten again. Lapis only says, "I know about those now."
Drakken's mind slips back to the tousled pile of hay in the barn. Undoubtedly she does – between Jasper and the horror she once described so well for him:
She is standing in a pasture that has become a battlefield seemingly overnight, thick with Gems in all directions – Homeworld or Crystal; it hardly mattered – her sky turned bewildering, too shrouded in smoke to navigate. But the battle appears to be winding down, Homeworld Gems stumbling and shouldering in their haste to retreat. There is, perhaps, an end in sight.
And then, out of nowhere, one enormous brown Gem swivels around to Lapis. She has wild, multicolored ropes of hair, framing a killing grin. It is the first time Lapis will look at another uncorrupted Gem – though what corrupted means, Drakken is still unsure – and see evil. Her arm is grabbed in a grip strong enough to anchor her to the ground, wings useless; a giant fist rears back and then everything goes black.
Everything goes black for him, too, speckles at the edges of his vision, coating his muscles in lactic acid. He thinks how all it took to mortally wound her was a punch; how no jury would ever convict him; how he would have protected her, but that was an eternity before he was born.
Drakken yanks himself back to reality, deciding now is as good a time as any – a better time, in fact, than many – to put forth his invitation. "Speaking of homes," he begins, "would you like to come visit my home for a while? My mother's very insistent on all of us eating dinner together. She's been waiting a long time for me to…meet a girl."
Lapis leans over him, curiosity admirably bright in her eyes. "Are we endangered?"
Drakken turns his head so that he guffaws into the blades of grass, autumnal soft before their winter browning, and then it is so much easier to stay facing them while he explains. "No, I mean, for me to…to fall in love."
The words somersault clumsily out, and Drakken can feel the patches of embarrassment coloring his cheeks.
Lapis has two darker blue smears on either side of her own nose, but she smiles, one petite corner at a time. "How do you know you're in love with me?" she says. "What does it feel like?"
The question is quiet, even by Lapis's standards, and yet it hacks into Drakken's brain, disabling his speech software as well as his vocabulary. She may have finally asked something he doesn't have an answer to.
The first time he saw her, he noted only that she was small and wet and alone, and he wanted to make sure she had someplace safe to go. It is hard, it is perhaps impossible, to sort out what was there and what wasn't then; what was and what wasn't when they exchanged backstories; what was and what wasn't when she danced on the beach and enchanted him so; what was and what wasn't when he found out she was in mortal danger at the bottom of the sea.
Drakken's thoughts stagger through that collection until they finally land on one that offers itself up for support: his knee-jerk response to Lapis asking if she could watch the movie with Steven. Others follow, emboldened now with the presence of a leader – how it does not occur to him to be offended when she speaks of his planet with less than fondness; how, as much as he fears pain and toil, the thought of Lapis suffering is even more frightening to him.
Lapis waits on the fringe of his vision. The smile is still there, though it perches restlessly, as though it must be ready to pack up and flee anytime.
"It's not so much what I feel," Drakken says. "I mean, I definitely have the heart palpitations and the fluttery stomach and all, but I've had those before. I know I'm in love because – because whenever I think about you, almost always my first thought is how much I want you to be happy or how badly I want you to be safe. That goes against my whole mindset - so it makes me sit up and take notice!"
Drakken releases the air from his tight-corded lungs and dares a full glance at Lapis. He is rewarded when her own miniature generator appears to switch on inside of her, setting her aglow.
"Well," she says, "thank you for not flirting with me." Her voice is wry.
Drakken isn't sure which part of that demands first response – that someone is grateful for his lackluster wooing skills, or how she even knows what flirting is to start with – and so he just laughs, one short laugh so as not to hurt Lapis's feelings. "I never learned how to flirt," he says. "Or parallel park."
Lapis nods mutely. She has the simplest of faces, and yet the play of moonlight and emotions across it is, in its own way, just as fascinating as any specimen he ever studied under a microscope.
"I'd love to meet your mother," Lapis finally says. "I just hope she'll like me."
She is far too modest. This is a problem Drakken's never had.
He snorts, a noise something less than gentlemanly. "How could anyone not like you?"
Lapis's gaze stops probing and drops to her folded legs. "I'm not always as nice as I am with you," she says. "When I get scared, and I'm with people I can't trust – well, basically, I have two kinds of scared. One kind makes me really nice, and the other one makes me really mean." She lifts her head, straining as if it weighs twelve tons. "That probably doesn't make any sense."
Drakken ponders that. "Scientifically speaking, it shouldn't. But I know exactly what you mean."
The relief that engulfs Lapis is almost strong enough to touch, but there is still that pocket of defeat holding her down, Drakken can tell. He dials down to a whisper and says, "Well, did you ever mind-control anyone just because they had a smart mouth?"
"No."
"Then you're still nicer than me," Drakken declares.
Lapis threads her fingers through the grass-blades, as though their texture is a minor miracle to her. "How can a mouth be smart?"
"Oh!" Drakken grins. "That's a figure of speech. It just means she was really sassy, talked back a lot, you understand."
Another nod; she's heard that story.
"Well, next time your friend starts talking backward," Lapis says, "you can just tell her…" Rather than finishing, she raises a palm and blows a raspberry onto it, startling another chortle from Drakken.
"What does that mean?" he asks.
One side of Lapis's mouth tweaks upward again, restoring the playful look from the days prior to Malachite. "I'm not sure, exactly. Steven taught it to me."
The twinkle in her eye might be mischief now, but it is something alive and undefeated, and therefore, beautiful. Drakken falls back against his bed of grass and heaves a sigh, the deep kind wrought by satisfaction.
"Besides," he says, "as long as you're nice to me, you could probably be an ax murderer and my mother would still love you."
Lapis frowns. "How do you murder an ax?"
The question is so startling from her that Drakken can only blink, rapidly, until she multiples in his vision.
Lapis must misinterpret his expression, because her hands rise in the gesture of surrender his darker nature used to crave. "I'm not planning to," she says. "I was just curious."
Drakken is so tired that all he can do is laugh – and hope sleepily that Lapis isn't offended.
She doesn't seem to be. She just stares like a silent question mark until Drakken manages to explain, "In that case, the ax would be the weapon, not the victim."
He has never realized what a hideous concept that is until he watches it pass through Lapis and take her aback. Finally, to Drakken's great relief and with much blinking of her own, she changes the topic. "So, you really think your mother will like me?"
Drakken nods with all the enthusiasm he can summon at one in the morning – which, not to brag or anything, still outnumbers most people's midday levels. "Yes, yes, yes! I do."
"All right," Lapis says. "Then I'll come."
A victorious "YESSSSS!" rockets off Drakken's insides, waning into the "Thank you, thank you, thank you!" that squeezes eventually out between his lips.
Lapis's giggle is rich and grounded: inanity and frivolousness have no place in her life anymore, if indeed they ever did. "You're welcome."
In that moment that she still kneels, hands resting on the grass so that blades poke between her knuckles, she is a Precious Moments figurine topped with Raggedy Ann hair; all he wants is to protect her as she has protected Steven. Yet his body is bound and determined to stitch back together the interruption in the night's slumber. Drakken pictures the gap closing in long, expert knitting strokes – like his mother's – and nestles back into the downy grass, letting out a yawn. "Is it all right if I go back to sleep?" he says.
Lapis squints at him. "Well, there are three other beings around here who don't need to sleep at all." The squint comes open and rolls. "Four if you count Peridot."
"Five if you count Garnet being a fusion," Drakken chimes in. "But – do you trust them?"
Lapis shrugs. "I trust that they love Steven. That means they probably wouldn't do anything to me."
It's Drakken's turn to squint at her. There is fear in her eyes, but just in a few small streaks, and her chin is held with such determination, as though she can will life's hills and valleys into behaving themselves. Drakken has tried that before himself, with absolutely no success. But perhaps it is different for Gems.
He doubts it, though; only sheer fatigue prevents him from arguing.
Lapis picks up on this, too. She wiggles, feet tucking up under the hem of her skirt, and adds, "And if anybody does do anything, I can always just scream and wake you up."
"Ah. Yes, that'll work splendidly. Good plan," Drakken says.
He locks his arms behind his head and throws one last glance at Lapis as he lies flat again. She parses the sky as one would page through their high school yearbook, remembering old friends, acquaintances, enemies. Grief and happiness huddle together in the sigh she releases before the wind carries it off.
"Look," she says. "Up there."
Drakken instinctively follows the point of her finger to an orb of light amid an array of other givers and reflectors. Their arrangement on the purple-black expanse appears as haphazard as Drakken's sock drawer, and still somehow manages to be breathtaking in its beauty.
"That's Homeworld," Lapis says.
"It's pretty," Drakken says. It seems more an automation than a fitting response, and he takes another, more nuanced, look at it. "I mean, it's a speck. But it's a pretty speck."
Lapis sighs again. "I never thought I'd be fighting against it."
The hooks burrow into Drakken once more.
"You're not fighting against it. You're fighting against the forces that have corrupted it." Drakken hears the volume of his voice careen upward, even as his eyelids descend with the irregular flutters of the lightning bugs landing on wildflowers nearby. "You remember the Lorwardians?"
Lapis nods, and Drakken continues, "It turns out the leaders were tyrants on their planet, as well. There were plenty of other Lorwardians who thought they were wrong but were too afraid to challenge them. When we defeated them" – and they are more than defeated, and that condenses in his throat, because he cannot add to the luggage Lapis is already carrying around – "we became heroes on both planets.
"You will be, too," he finishes.
The silence is enraptured. Right as his eyes seal off the night, Drakken thinks he feels Lapis lean over him and gently kiss his cheek.
But it may be just a dream.