~Well, I finally got this puppy finished up! Lapis gets a chance to meet some of Drakken's friends and neighbors. Big thanks to all my readers - I'll go ahead and risk sounding sappy and say I really treasure your patience and support. Love ya guys!~
You spend the next several silent hours flying around the high, slight eaves of Mama Lipsky's house.
The sky persists in being dark and too clouded for stars, heavy with the truth that all humans on this hemisphere have slipped away to sleep for the night. It's not a trigger for you, but it is a lonely thread trailing down your back.
You land on the floor and your gaze lands as well – on a compact, well-glossed stack of pages: a magazine is the term you've heard Drakken use. Its front cover shows pictures of people with symmetrical features and is crowned with the title, Reader's Digest.
Perhaps it is something to read as you digest.
Your thumb strolls through the magazine's pages. Though the creases at the corners suggest age, the date printed on the cover means nothing to you, and you realize with a sudden displacement that you have no idea how humans count their years.
There are articles inside – about how to get the most out of something called your money; about a movie who won an award from someone named Oscar; about a doctor many years ago who invented incubators to warm and save the premature babies Mama Lipsky told you about. You flip another few pages and come to a page labeled "Quotable Quotes." The layout is anything but uniform, and one block of text in particular springs straight into your vision.
If you can laugh at it, it can't kill you, it reads.
You frown. Literally, this isn't true. If you laugh at a corrupted Gem monster, it can still kill you; someone like Jasper is probably more likely to kill you if you laugh at her.
So it must be symbolic.
You pull your knees into the familiar knot and through the ragged hair that fringes your brow you peer at your toes. Their small neatness seems deceptive in the light of where they've been, what they've been part of.
And now that you are alone unoccupied, those things seem to surround you like a thicket of thorns – plants without blooms, without any hint of Drakken or Steven. You can almost feel one directly behind you, its claws on your neck, its point ready to perforate your gem, and you cannot allow it.
You speak aloud, though not loudly: "I was trapped in a mirror for five thousand years."
It does not make you laugh. In fact, you cringe, your backbone a piece of driftwood, your limbs tensed, your lips trembling.
But you are not shattered.
You speak again. "I was trapped in a mirror for five thousand years."
The coward you once were seizes you again and wads your face in fright. Only because no one is around to pity you do you allow it. Only the sightless seeds of Plastic's eyes are watching.
"I was trapped in a mirror for five thousand years."
"I was trapped in a mirror for five thousand years."
"I was trapped in a mirror for five thousand years."
As the night progresses, you do have the advantage of becoming blessedly numb, your pain nothing more than an alarm disabled by capable fingers. Yet by the time the first faint suggestions of light begin to play at the banks of the clouds, you still have found no humor in the statement.
Maybe it never becomes funny on its own. Maybe it needs to be helped along.
"I was trapped in a mirror for five thousand years." You pause. "I guess you could say that at least I had plenty of time to reflect."
Now you are not sure what's happening to you. Your body torques again, weakness teeming in the joints of your wrists. And yet no moisture is falling from your eyes, so you think you must be laughing.
Mama Lipsky is, thankfully, an early riser, and it is not too much later when her bedroom door opens and she walks out. Her skin is even more supple in appearance than last night, and it glistens as though she has rubbed it with the ice cream. Her pink hair smells of some type of sealant, though a few strands have fallen into endearing fuzz around her ears.
She greets you with a pat on the hand and a, "Good morning, Lapis."
"Good morning, Mama Lipsky." You rest your other hand on her arm, feeling the blood flow meticulously through her.
Mama Lipsky prepares some cereal for herself – it neither looks nor smells as interesting as Steven's cereal – and, at her insistence, you nibble on a browned piece of bread that she refers to as toast. It's almost bland, with just a hint of soft flavor, and you're wondering about that box she put it in to change it when you hear the door-chime ring.
You drop your toast and run as fast as you can without winged assistance to the door, peering through the window as you have seen Steven do. When what is perhaps the only other blue face on Earth peeks back at you, you hurriedly open the door. Dr. Drakken steps in with another human behind him.
"Good morning, Lapis!" Drakken sounds as pleased as if he has spun the planet back toward the sun all by himself. "How was your night?"
You search for a word that would sum it up. Finding none, you shrug – "It was okay."
This is what you do on Earth when you can't talk about it.
"Well, I've got someone I'd like you to meet!" Drakken says.
"Yeah, so can I come in already, or would that spoil your big surprise?" says a second voice, this one with something snide in its shadows.
Drakken, still sparkly-eyed, inches backward into the hall, clearing a space for a woman to enter the house, her stride long and loose. She wears a clinging one-piece suit that swears ambiguous allegiance to green and black Diamonds you have never heard of. Her skin is a thin film of greenish-yellow whose color falls short even of Peridot's hair. It is even more striking against her hair – shiny black, not absorbent black like Drakken's – with an eerie green glow to outline it, as though it has been wired with some of Homeworld's new technology. Her body is all wiry muscle and harsh, angled bone.
Her eyes are narrow, her nose shrewd. There is a certain danger about her, woven thicker than Jasper's beneath the possibility of friendliness. While are you trying to decide whether to be afraid of her or not, she lifts one side of her mouth, painted black and set sardonically. It is a smile, cool and reluctant compared to Steven's or Drakken's, yet not without its own kindness.
She takes stock of you in an instant, saying "I don't know how you do it, Dr. D. You even found a blue one."
When she says, "Hi. I'm Shego," you think you may have already known that.
"Oh!" you say. "You're the friend that beats him up."
Shego lets out a laugh – one sharp as a bird's beak, yet you do not think it was meant to skewer you. "Yep, that's me!" She swings her asymmetric smile up toward Dr. Drakken. "You been telling her a lot about me, Doc?"
"Yes! All of it g-g-g –"The black markings under Drakken's eyes fold as he searches for words of his own. "All g-g-g-g – errr, true!"
The smile-curl drills deeper into her cheeks as Shego turns back to you. "Well, I've heard plenty about you," she says. "Mostly of the 'Shego, help me!' type. In fact, lemme see here, I think the first text said, 'I might possibly maybe be in love, but she's at the bottom of the ocean. What do I do?' Exclamation point, question mark, exclamation point."
The cold waters of memory are limned by the knowledge that Dr. Drakken was sending messages about you over his phone.
Mama Lipsky escorts you into the kitchen, and then drags Drakken down to someplace known as the basement to help her look for her extra box of coffee grounds. He goes with her, twisting to call back, "You ladies have a lot to talk about, though! Shego has powers, too!"
Shego slides into a chair with her eyebrows high. "Too?" she asks.
"I have water powers." Your tone is so empty of shyness you almost don't recognize it as your own. "What are yours?"
Shego coils her fingers back. When she snaps them forward again, verdant waves just short of flames rise from them, encasing and glowing until her hand is as green and powerful-looking as the ship that returned you to this planet. No other part of her moves.
Your legs take one step back instinctively, but you command them not to take another one. Instead, you simply say, "Wow. Can you start fires with those? Rubies can start fires."
Shego's expression remains impassive, save for a nodule of pride. "Well, not exactly. It sort of does the work of fire without any actual fire. It scorches things, melts them – and it's great for punching people. Knocks 'em into the next room and can really give you a nasty burn at the right angle."
She doesn't sound as if that bothers her greatly.
"I've never met so many humans with powers before," you say, tipping up on one foot. "All Gems have powers. Well – most of them."
You feel a spiteful victory that Era Two Peridots are the exception, and you can almost feel the Rubies' fire on your tongue, poised to share the information, before a breach extinguishes it. This isn't the playful gossip about the Crystal Gems that you related to Dr. Drakken. To shame Peridot for a deficiency over which she has no more control than her gem location is the work of someone like Jasper.
A kinder Gem wouldn't need the added incentive of Shego not knowing, or likely caring, who Peridot is.
"Yeah, I've had my powers a lot longer than Dr. D's had his," Shego says, and you assume she's referring to Drakken. "Poor slob hasn't really learned how to control them yet."
"Oh. Well, I've had mine longer than either of you." You form a smile and then let it drift away with the tide. "I'm just having to relearn how to use them on Earth, since Gems can't drown and humans can."
"Seems solid." Shego scans you with the intensity of a Red Eye. "You don't strike me as the drowning-people type."
And although she does not know you, every facet of your being implores her to be right.
You grapple for something else to say to her, remembering it probably isn't polite to comment on her paleness, nor on her plentiful hair, nor on the arrowhead point of her jawline. Finally, you settle on, "So…Drakken told me you used to work with him?"
"Yeah," Shego says. "The Doc and I go back a ways."
"In time?" you ask. You are fairly certain your guess is correct, but as you don't know the location of their meeting, you see reason to clarify.
"Yep. About six years," Shego says, as though that is any way a significant amount of time. "I knew from the start he was gonna be a little pain in the rear, but he was also the only one who didn't make me feel like I was trying to break into a man's job."
From the angry glitter in her eyes, you can tell this is something of high value to her, and yet there's no part of you that can empathize. "Oh," you say, shrugging. "I wouldn't know about that. My species doesn't have men."
"Nice." Shego grunts with a sophistication not even all of the Elite have perfected. "I mean, it's gotta be a lot less complicated that way, right?"
You shake your head. "Not really. Things have managed to get pretty messed up even with only women."
Shego's every expression is spare and dry, especially in comparison to Drakken's unrestrained ones, but now she sends a tiny scrap of approval your direction. "You know, you're honest. I like that.
"And for what it's worth," she adds slyly, "Drakken's crazy about you. These past few weeks, it's been all 'Oh, Shego, I can't wait for you to meet Lapis! She's so much fun! You'll just love her!', etc."
Your cheeks unconsciously shift several shades darker than the one mandated by the color of your gem. You attempt to deflect it by responding, "He likes you a lot, too. Even when he told me about you beating him up, he did with a smile. I…I can tell you're very important to him."
The corners of Shego's mouth reward you with an upward tweak. She scrapes her chair closer to yours, and in a whisper she says, "So – if this isn't too personal a question – why'd you fall for Dr. D?"
Her voice suggests that she does not terribly care if it is too personal, but there's not the demand and utter disregard that come from Jasper. You appreciate this.
You consider what she has asked. In the time you've known each other, Drakken has done most of the falling, so you search for alternative meaning. "You mean…why am I in love with him?" You have never before announced yourself to be in love, and you are surprised by the lack of quiver when you do now.
"Exactly. So spill!"
The only object in sight that could do so is a chipped mug, and it is empty. "You want me to spill it?" you say, pointing to the mug.
The laughter that splatters out of Shego is the first thing about her that she hasn't kept tight reins on. "No, it just means tell me."
You don't want to tell her; you want to reflect it for her: Dr. Drakken securing a towel around your wet shoulders; the ice cream cone, extended in an invitation to sample; his delicate hands treasuring your fingerprints; the broad sweep of his arm as he ushered you away from the silly hand mirror that frightened you so; his tears as he confessed his stained past; the glee with which he showed you storybooks; his uncharacteristic patience in explaining to you; the twig-flag he poked into the top of your sandcastle as proudly as the rebel Gems planted Rose's banner; the shine on his face as he watched you dance; the feel of Steven's arms around you as he told you that he promised Drakken you would call when you were safe – every tiny, rich deposit of your reef.
Words seem flimsy, inadequate, unfit for flight. And yet you owe it to Dr. Drakken to try.
"He was so kind to me," you risk saying.
Shego's gloved, unnaturally long fingernails tap an amused pattern on the tabletop. "Yeah, that was always part of his downfall as a villain."
You giggle once before sobering again. "And he's so brave."
Shego has a brief coughing spell, similar to the one Drakken had this summer when he accidentally breathed in one of Earth's tiniest insects. "Brave?"
There's a dumbfounded aim to her question. You nod, firmly, to erase it. "He's overcome so much, and it's changed him for the better," you say. "He makes Earth seem like a wonderful place. Like it's worth sticking around just to see how magnificent everything is to him. He makes…he makes it seem like life can be good again."
Not a movement from Shego.
"And that's something I need," you continue, ducking the ends of your hair forward to meet, "because up until lately, my life has really sucked."
The only motion now is a grin. "I hear ya, kiddo," Shego says in the happiest tone she's used thus far.
Warmth drips in the crevice between your shoulder blades.
"And speaking of the Doc…" Shego inclines her head toward the stairs, which Drakken and his mother are now ascending with a great clatter, she holding boxes and pouches, he with a glass of something thick and pastel-brown in it.
"We come bearing coffee!" Drakken says. Giggles are interspersed between his words, that thunderous bubbled laugh that can be summoned by simply being alive. "Are you two getting along? I thought you would! I told you she was a friendly type of alien, Shego!"
Shego's eyes sparkle, mellowing them somewhat. "Not that I couldn't totally take her if I had to," she says.
Your brow puckers. "Take me where?"
"You…totally could not!" Drakken springs upward, poking his finger toward Shego, though you're not aware of any threat in the air, and your intuition is fairly acute. "Not if she was by the ocean!"
"Someone's taking me to the ocean?" you pose again. It's a well-intentioned offer that you aren't ready to accept yet.
Something passes between Drakken and Shego then, something that has been raised and tossed about so often that the words have been pared away, the essence distilled to nothing more than a glance. It has a different presence, a different heft than the ones that pass between him and yourself – without the constant glances down at the path to ensure you still walk in tandem. And it is not jealousy you feel.
Drakken smiles luminously again and takes a sip, long and relishing, from the glass. Right before he turns back to help his mother with her armload, something staccato slips from between his lips – a short, flat sound, like a gulp being played backward.
"What was that?" you whisper to Shego.
"Oh, that?" Knowledge steeps on Shego's face, sincerity. "That's a one-body symphony. Height of class. Takes years to master."
You tuck that information away.
"Oooh, and now there's whispering!" Drakken exclaims. "That's a sign of good friendship, am I right?"
A trail of the brown is now smeared across his top lip, dribbling at the ends. It piques your curiosity. "What's that you're drinking?" you ask. Your powers lie indifferently inside you, so you know it is not a form of water.
"Nothing more than good old two-percent milk with cocoa powder mixed in!" Drakken says. "It's called cocoa m –"
Shego groans as though about to lose her physical form. "Oh, don't get him started on that. He'll never shut up!"
Drakken sniffs with mock haughtiness and stalks back through the kitchen door. There is no tension in your back as you watch the hunching line of his, no room for dismay with his vivaciousness crowding the kitchen.
It is your duty now to heal so you don't burden Steven and the Crystal Gems any more than you already have. And while you don't know where that undamaged place is if not at Blue Diamond's feet, every encounter with Dr. Drakken feels like a step closer.
At last, Drakken plunks his empty glass on the table near you, the last few drops of cocoa-milk taking a slow, dribbling journey down the sides, and plunks himself into the chair on the other side of you. "Would you like to go to my house a little later and meet Commodore Puddles, Lapis?"
"Commodore Puddles?" you ask. "Oh – your little wolf?"
"That thing is nothing like a wolf." Shego's volume is low, her measure scornful.
With great, visible effort, Drakken dismisses her. "I should probably warn you," he says, to you, "he doesn't really like people that much. Except for me."
You shrug, helped along by the reflection of yourself with a baseball bat hanging from one hand, flanked at each elbow by a distrusted compatriot, the space constringed and smothering and zippered enough that you had to deliberately concentrate to keep yourself from slinging the bat like a club. "Sounds like me," you say.
Shego subdues a laugh into her palm. On Homeworld, such a display would have been regarded as disrespectful; here, it seems a sign of acceptance.
"Oh, but don't worry, Lapis." Drakken's voice clutches you and soothes in a manner he must have been given by his mother – it seems near-exotic to you, that this trait was able to be duplicated rather than relinquished. "His bark is worse than his bite."
This is one expression you don't need explained to you. You are somewhat familiar with the behavior of wolves.
Shego captures Drakken's jubilant gaze with her own nimble one. "Sort of like you, Doc," she says.
Applying that to Drakken stirs up a little more puzzlement, but not much. Although Drakken hasn't barked before, you've heard his heavy tone and strident pitch when he is riled. But you have never known him to bite or strike anyone, though he must have in his villain days – a time which seems as ancient and removed as Homeworld's glory.
You smile to yourself. You still understand the expression.
Dr. Drakken remains at his mother's house long enough to prepare and consume another class of cocoa-milk – whiteness poured from the carton and then seasoned with a sprinkling of sweet-swelling special drink powder from a brown tin. By then, you are persuaded that despite the occasional disagreement between her words and her inflection, Shego is an ally.
During the short span of your flight beside the hovercraft, Drakken repeatedly glances your way, as though he fears you have fallen from the sky. After two or three indignant twitches of your wings, you realize it's not that he doubts your competence; it is that he can barely keep his excitement bound inside his body.
The blue-circled house soon comes into view. You choose the grass for your landing strip – you have grown accustomed to it during your brief stay at the barn, and the stone package on which the hovercraft lands appears rough-textured, too similar to the sand you last viewed through four eyes blurred with loathing. In Drakken's presence, avoiding it does not feel like catering to your own weakness.
Drakken leads you across the grass – he refers to it as a lawn – and up to the front door, which he unlocks and swings open wide, his grin riding up cockeyed as though the sides are racing one another to the top. "Welcome," he says grandly.
You place one foot over the threshold and then the other, moving as if through the gooey innards of a defective escape pod. This is Dr. Drakken's home.
He shows you up a squat flight of stairs, into a room he calls the living room. You are confused by that – all the rooms were made to be lived in, after all – and yet to ask him would be to disrupt the giddy tide pouring from him. He has already sprouted petals again.
The walls are white as Mama Lipsky's milk, striking against his maroon and umber furniture. Drakken looks at one chair with particular fondness. The couch appears fresher and plumper than the wilted one at his mother's house. A few piles of cloth – alternate clothes, you assume – lie untended in a corner, and you abruptly envy that he's comfortable enough to eschew orderliness.
A television screen, not half the size of the ones used by Homeworld even in your time, claims the focus on one wall. Tucked beneath it is an oblong, rectangular storage container, holes in the sides and a system of interlocking dungeon gates across the front that worry the flesh around your gem. From between the links peers a pair of cautious brown eyes.
"You keep him in a cage? He's your prisoner?" you say. The carpet is plush and there is something remarkably unspectacular about it under your toes; you defy your voice the right to quiver.
Abject terror is what you see in Drakken's face, stamped there as though by the seal that once fastened the Diamonds' letters. His hands begin to wave, frantically, two little engines churning for their lives. "No, no, no, Lapis! Commodore Puddles isn't a prisoner! He's a pet!"
"But you have him in a cage!"
"It isn't a cage. It's a kennel." The buoy-words rustle nervously from side to side. "I hardly ever put him in there, but I just sprayed down the bathroom with bleach.
"That's a chemical commonly used in housecleaning," Drakken says, before you have a chance to inquire. "It's very effective at killing germs and shining surfaces – but it's toxic to ingest or get in your eyes. And dogs, as intelligent as they are, can't be trusted to read toxin labels." The vibration of Drakken's chuckle sounds a little too tightly strung. "Normally, I let him have free rein of the house."
You glance around the house, and while it is much more spacious than Mama Lipsky's and probably appears even larger to a small wolf, the air will stale quickly. "Does he ever get to leave the house?" you say.
"Oh, yes, all the time! I take him out for walks almost every day – his leash is by the back door –"
"You tie him to a chain?" You are in no danger of squealing now, for you know you are missing something. The Dr. Drakken you know, the one who stands before you now wearing a smile so anxious it dents the rounds of both cheeks, is not capable of such oppression.
"GGkk! No! It's not a chain – it's – it's fabric, and it's very soft. I take him all around the block and let him explore," Drakken says. "I just follow behind with the leash to keep him from wandering into construction sites or – or junkyards – or – or –"
"Or wars?" you finish for him.
You wonder how different your life would have been if anyone had cared about you enough to follow you to Earth.
The waxy fear all across Drakken melts into something soft that he turns on you. "Yes," he says. "Something like that, yes. Would you like to meet him?"
You nod.
Drakken walks over to the kennel and squeezes the rod protruding from one side of the interlocks. Both ends shrink inward and the door clicks open, and a creature emerges from inside.
Shego is right – this creature is nothing like a wolf. Nor is he anything like the big red Clifford in the books Drakken showed you.
He is a sunset cloud, padding lightly across the floor. The pink – of a gem, of a sword, of a shield – and the curls that once spoke of dissent and distress now represent unmatched purity, and you smile to see them. His ears slacken down where wolves' ears taper up, hung with the same tufts of pink fluff that grace his tiny paws. The rest of his coat is snug and tidy, as if he has shapeshifted it close to his skin, though you suspect that, like Drakken's, it is the result of meetings with scissors.
The wolf's eyes match the drizzles on the sides of Drakken's glass: milky-brown and runny. They are gentle eyes, even as the fur on the back of his neck elevates.
Drakken fits himself between the two of you with a lack of neatness, although it does not take much to block the wolf from your sight or you from his. "Shhhh, it's okay, Commodore Puddles," he says. The words are bobbing again, tender and playful, in their natural element. "She's not an intruder, boy. She is our esteemed guest."
Esteemed has a much broader, freer scope than the heavily-guarded borders of elite, and you decide at once that you prefer it.
"Her name is Lapis Lazuli," Drakken continues, reclining on one knee so that he is closer to his wolf's level. "She's my – she's a – she's friendly. We like Lapis."
Commodore Puddles seems doubtful, but he approaches with his head lowered, his black nose bulging as he sniffs. "He's not growling," Drakken whispers to you. "That's a good sign. He usually growls."
It is a good sign. After sharing a being with Jasper, you have heard all the growling you can tolerate.
"Here, put your hand down for him to sniff," Drakken says.
In spite of your disbelief in the merit of that idea, you let your hand descend until it is centimeters away from the flaring nostrils. They are sodden and slippery as they connect with your fingers, a sensation consistent with your Teachings but still startling. Commodore Puddles draws one long, deep whiff, and then he pulls back and a thin whimper comes from his snout – a term gleaned from reading the wolf books.
"What's the problem?" you say, hardly daring to so much as move your lips.
"Ummm….either you smell like a cat or a vet….orrrrrr you've got no scent at all." Drakken glances the palm of his hand off his forehead. "You don't have a scent at all, do you?"
You shake your head in slow strokes. Of course, like any other stone, you can take on the odor of your surroundings – right now, Commodore Puddles is probably smelling sharp air and old leaves and a hint of sea salt that always seems to linger on your physical form – but you, yourself, do not produce a smell the way Dr. Drakken does.
"It's okay, Commodore Puddles," Drakken continues to comfort his dog. "She's just an alien, that's all. Nothing to worry about."
He reaches down and entwines his fingers into the woolen curls, nodding to you. You bend over and tentatively do the same, resting your hand atop a tangled knot of fur that ruffles only slightly as you rub it. This is the closest you have ever been to a land animal.
"Hello, Commodore Puddles," you say. "Sorry you can't smell me. I'm not organic, after all."
"Inorganic but still a very kind person!" Drakken hastens to add. It has been millennia since you were described in such a way.
Commodore Puddles prances in place, pulls back after a moment, and then lifts those liquid eyes to you before shaking himself with a great jingling of metal shapes around his neck you will ask about later and trotting off.
"Well!" Drakken takes a backward step and drops his hands to his hips in apparent satisfaction. "That went much smoother than usual! You know, I think he likes you."
You have no idea why that feels so good.
The next people you are scheduled to meet are Kim Possible and her sidekick – whose name Dr. Drakken admits that he can never quite remember. This seems an odd thing to you, until you realize that humans do not have their namesakes stamped somewhere on their bodies to serve as a reminder.
Kim is probably at the sidekick's house, Drakken explains to you as he flies his hovercraft away from his blue-spotted house with you swooping along beside it. Her own house was destroyed in the Lorwardian invasion several months ago; while thankfully no one was home, her family lost everything they owned.
The next flap of your wings is hard, as though they have been solidified for an instant.
The sidekick's house, several streets away from Drakken's, is plain in comparison. Its roof juts out like the brow of a cavern, and the door on which Drakken knocks appears sunken too far into its frame.
A woman who must be Kim Possible opens it. Unlike most humans, she is not significantly larger than you, and that she was the one to see Dr. Drakken imprisoned surprises you for only a moment. If a Lapis can restrain a Quartz for so many tides, no odds can be predicted. Her hair is the color of Chalcedony, her skin sandy, and her eyes remind you of those things you have seen floating atop ponds – Steven called them lily pads.
When she sees the two of you, Kim breaks into a smile, smooth yet warm. "Drakken! What are you doing here?" she says, and although her tone is surprised, there is no suggestion in it that she is addressing an archenemy.
Drakken shrugs. "Well, I was in the neighborhood and thought I'd drop by," he says. His buoy-words have a skittish swish.
"Dude, you're always in the neighborhood," a second person says. A boy slightly taller than Kim – between Steven's age and Drakken's, you would hazard – appears in the doorway behind her. His face has sun-speckles, as Drakken's did this summer, though his are a bright medium brown, not black, and his hair is equally sunny. "You live here now, ya know, and…WHOA."
This last exclamation comes upon seeing you.
You don't mind. You are long past expecting to be greeted with reverence.
Kim's smile grows. "Well, Drakken, who's this?" she says, inclining her head toward you.
Drakken's cheeks turn into a pair of Rose Quartz gems. "Ummm, this is Lapis Lazuli," he says. "My – err – significant other."
You swing a look up to him. "Other what?" you ask. You didn't think he had any other Lapises in his life, much less significant ones.
Kim folds her arms across the front of her top, which you notice crops off at the end like yours. "Come on, Drakken. The girl's confused. Explain it to her."
"It's a word that means….we're in a relationship," he stammers, "the kind of relationship where... where we… we are…" Kim's smile widens and widens until Drakken's shoulders finally swell with a sigh and he says, "She's my girlfriend."
There is a snicker, badly muffled, from the sidekick.
"Girlfriend," you say slowly. "I like the sound of that." You look again at Drakken, who still flushes. "Does that make you my…man-friend?"
"Boyfriend." Drakken supplies this information at a squeak. "And this is her boyfriend –" He flails a hand over Kim's head at the sidekick. "Her boyfriend, um…"
"Ron Stoppable," the boy says, sounding weary. This is clearly a discussion they have had many times before. He glances expectantly at you, as though hoping your mind will store information with more precision than Drakken's.
You cannot promise him that, so you simply respond with politeness, "Hello, ma'am."
Immediately Ron's eyes cloud over. "Awww, man, is this about the goof-up at my Bar Mitzvah again?" he sputters.
"I don't know what those words mean," you confess, still grinning.
Fidgeting, Drakken leans down toward you. "No, no, no, Lapis. For boys, it's sir," he says, as quietly as you have ever known him to speak. While you blink to assimilate the new Earth-term, he straightens again and flashes all of his well-granulated teeth at Ron. "Sorry. Her species only has women."
Ron's brows descend in the same line as Mama Lipsky's did when you mentioned her chin – a line that makes even less sense in its appearance here. How in the stars can "woman" be an insult? "A likely story," he says.
But Kim is blinking, too, her eyes never moving from yours as if afraid to invalidate what has always been the natural order of things. "Her species?" she repeats.
"Yes," you say, before you can lose your nerve or your courtesy. "I'm an alien."
The word tastes pungent across your lips, and you silently vow never to use it again.
Kim releases a mighty breath and leans her right elbow back against the doorframe. "Oh, thank goodness. I thought he'd found a regular Earth girl and dyed her blue."
The look she gives Dr. Drakken is one that has known him longer than you have. You think that is what makes everything on Drakken bunch up into an overall sheepishness. It is charming on him.
Ron's arms come unfolded, and he stares agog at you. "WHAT?"
The single syllable is a huff, the kind that will come from a Sapphire right before the ground beneath her feet begins to freeze.
You see no need to answer the question twice – it was one of your biggest annoyances in the mirror; that people would ask the same question over and over – and so you simply plant your jaw and wait. Ron averts his own gaze, all the way down to the fraying toes of his shoes and slightly to the left, and in that moment you understand what it is to be a Pearl.
"Ye-es," Dr. Drakken hedges. "Is that a problem?"
A laugh bursts from Ron, a deformed laugh blasting through a tight emergence hole. "No, sir, the Ron-man can be very open-minded."
"That explains why you're not looking at me," you mutter.
The only thing you see then is Dr. Drakken's face, bending close to yours, a look of bemusement scampering across it. "Did Shego teach you that?" he says.
You shake your head. "I kind of always knew it. It just took me a while to figure out how it works on Earth."
And right now, it is the only thing keeping you from feeling as if you have been tread across, a big footprint left in the center of your back.
The silence that descends is as uncomfortable as an ill-fitting shapeshift. You scavenge for a shred of the kindness that once came to you so easily. "I'm not from Lorwardia," you say.
Kim's eyes sparkle. "Wasn't seeing much of a resemblance. Where you from, then?"
It is almost visible, how she terraforms the conversation: suspicion dammed up, flow redirected.
You are able to say, "Homeworld," yet with a dull imitation of the pride you once took in the name; in your people; in the diamond insignia woven by threads of light into your clothes. You wish you could blame it on Ron's aversion.
"Uh, I don't mean to be rude, but so what?" Ron says – to Drakken, and not to you. His voice is the same – thick and high, with a shrill edge that rivals your top pitch, only now he has filled it with ice. "Tell me her species has never invaded another planet!"
Drakken runs a hand down the back of his neck. His cough, you gather, has nothing to do with the condition of his lungs. "Well, I would," he says, "but I'm trying not to lie anymore."
Ron's expression is triumph, springing gaudily over a current of fear.
Drakken apparently can't bear it any more than you can. "But she isn't like that, Stoppable!" he says. "She's good and loving, and she's sorry, and you can't blame her for the mistakes her people have made! That's like saying, 'Well, okay, Hitler was a human, and you're a human, so you're the same.'"
You do not know who Hitler is, but from the dark look that sweeps across Ron's face, you were lucky not to have known him. He kicks the grayed shoe against the carpet, and yet no other argument comes from him.
Kim gives her boyfriend the sour glance of a Commander too gracious to scold in public. "Well, come on in, guys," she says. "Make yourself at home."
Only once Ron has turned his back on you do you slip your hand into Drakken's. You aren't sure which one of you squeezes first.
Together, you walk into a room with light-Amethyst walls and sturdy beige furniture and pale, patted-down carpet. A screen stretches across one full wall, massive in length but thin from back to front; should Peridot see it, there would be no end to the squealing. Clearly these Rons – no, the family as a whole would likely be referred to as Stoppables – are higher-ranking than Drakken and his mother; perhaps even elite, although they do it without snobbishness.
You are almost disappointed. Snobbishness, at least, you have encountered before. Snobbishness you somewhat understand.
"So, does she have any weird alien powers?" Ron says, addressing Drakken. The deliberate slant of his body away from you is an insult.
It would be without sting were it without truth.
Kim speaks a cryptic phrase: "Ron, turn down the temp." Though her tone lashes, her eyes are kind, and kind they remain as she turns to Drakken and says, "Congrats, Drakken. I'm glad this worked out for you."
Drakken's smile beams, his cheeks round, his teeth rectangular.
"But have you really thought about it?" Ron flings his hands out, palms turned desperately upward, going white around the lines. "I mean – what if she can shapeshift or something?"
"As a matter of fact, I can," you volunteer. "But this is my natural form."
Drakken's "That's not actually helping" fuses with Ron's "A-ha! I knew it!"
Kim touches her boyfriend's arm. "Like I said, chill."
This phrase you have heard. Amethyst says it to Pearl all the time.
Ron bends his head down closer to Kim's, so close that you can see the thistle-like patches that sprout in his hair. "You mean, after – I mean – you seriously don't care what she can do?"
He whispers as poorly as Drakken. No true whisper ever achieves that much clarity.
But Dr. Drakken's voice can out-thunder it with ease. "Speaking of abilities," he says even louder, "how is our darling little Hana?"
It melts the suspicion straight off Ron. "Oh, she's doin' great," he says. "Walking – talking – leaving all those baby books behind in the dust."
You glance from Kim to Ron and back again. Did they make this baby?
Somehow you doubt it. They are both so young, even by Earth standards, and though you see affection in Kim's eyes, it is mild and distant – not a mother's expression at all.
"She hasn't defeated any more demons of darkness lately," Ron continues. "But she did say her first 'Booyah' last week."
There is an unmistakable pleasantness when he talks about Hana, when he interacts with the others. It only makes the sting worse.
Drakken hoots. "I love that!" He turns to Kim. "So is Dementor still after that battle suit of yours?"
Dementor is a name Drakken's mentioned before, one for which he doesn't seem to have much tolerance.
A huff comes out of Kim, and she waves it around the room with her fingers. "Oh, that thing's on its last legs, but try convincing Dementor of that. He still thinks if he gets his hands on it, he can be the next Iron Man or something. In fact, just yesterday I got a call from Wade…"
"She's not very big," Ron muses from his spot where he kneels on the couch. "So her powers must be mental – like – like – mind-reading!" He shoves his face, now inspired, uncomfortably close to yours. "Can you read my mind?"
You don't answer.
Ron grabs both of his temples. "What am I thinking right now?"
"That I might be reading your mind?" you say.
Ron whimpers, a sound that, mottled with fear, generally summons your pity. You can't retrieve any now.
Drakken and Kim have fallen into a familiar conversation by now, and they drift away through a doorless doorway into another room, which features a table and chairs; a sink and a flat countertop; and an ice closet, so you gather it is a kitchen. You are left alone with the young man whose accuses you of every crime since the inception of the universe.
You hang your arms at your sides, unroll your toes, and imagine an invisible string pulling you into the posture that resembles a straight spine. Do whatever you need to inure to what will come next.
A timepiece ticks.
You don't need to read Ron's mind; you can track his thoughts from the movements of his eyes. They are the same shade as his sun-specks, and they never once extend contact to yours: they shift nervously to the ceiling above his head, then throw a crooked glance at your feet, then traipse up every step in the wide, distinguished flight of stairs that lead to another level of his house.
The gem on your back feels the size of a moon, too large for the body it crafted. "I'm not going to hurt her," you say at last.
"Who?" Ron squeaks.
"The girl upstairs. Hana." You squint at him. "I can tell you care about her very much."
There's a bead of sweat on Ron's forehead. "R-really?"
You release the squint and stare at him, wide-eyed. "The word I read in your mind was…" You chance a guess. "…sister?"
Ron swallows, and his throat-bump bobs as if it's under siege by fierce waves. One hand drops to one of the many oversized, buttoned pockets on his sand-colored pants, and it squeezes until the fingernails whiten.
"I'm not going to hurt what's in your pocket, either," you say. You take careful, nebulous pauses between words, much the way Sapphires do when they are predicting a future.
Ron's hand shoots back up and grasps a flat-faced pad that reminds you of the lower-tech interfaces your people used to use. It has more buttons than his pants, and his thumb jumps into position over the top, translucent one. Peridot has used that enough times that you know what it does.
"You're thinking about turning on the magic box so you don't have to talk to me anymore," you say.
Ron's laugh breaks into halves that fizzle and die. "I don't suppose you know if there's anything good on?" he says.
You let your eyes roll. "I can read your mind, not its."
There is a frenzied nod. Ron's glance bounces across the back door for the faintest moment, and you nod as well.
"Yeah, go ahead and go outside," you advise. "Take a minute." You lean in on your knuckles, so that you can see individual strands of golden hair shivering in his nostrils. "Let your head rest. Everything looks pretty tangled up in there."
Ron leaps from the couch and trips over his own untied foot-laces three times before making it to the back door, which he bangs shut behind him, hard enough that the house seems to jump on its foundation. Numbness that's already won your insides begins to creep out to your limbs.
Drakken chuckles from the kitchen. Even muffled as it is by mechanical hums and scraping chairs, you can almost feel its weight, linking around you and hanging on like his unwieldy arms do.
You hear the sound of a door, too new to creak, breathing open. Footsteps start across the smooth pat of the carpet, and you'd like to imagine they're Drakken's. But the tread is something harder, something stronger, something flexible but stiffer than the soft cushion of Drakken's boots, and the steps are farther apart, taken by longer legs.
The couch texture responds to the outline of your fingers, and you trace a diamond. "Hi, Ron. Welcome back," you say without looking up.
"How did you know it was me?"
This time you do look up. Ron is teetering on the toes of his dingy grayish shoes, and the rest of him appears to be teetering, too. His eyes bulge as though he is reacting unfavorably to another planet's atmosphere.
You give him a half-smile that you hope is sufficiently mystic. "I have my ways."
Ron takes several steps backward, shaking his head. He trips over a table that's been rather pointlessly placed in the middle of the room and gets back up with red ears.
A mean satisfaction settles over you, the way a mist once silvered your broken eyes.
You are glad when Drakken tells you it's time to leave.
~And so. . . the stage is set for next chapter's conflict. I don't wanna give spoilers, but rest assured there will be fallout and follow-up.~