Lilly did not condone thoughtless illegal actions. If the rules were fair, and reasonable, then they should be upheld. End of story.
That being said, forging a fake ID and online documents along with a false bank Acount, however illegal, could easily be condoned with the reasoning that Lilly needed some sort of identity to fall back on if and when Steven inevitably drug her into the overwhelming throes of human society.
And She did mean overwhelming. Honestly, why natural selection had not yet claimed a few million just to help do away with overcrowding was beyond her
Then again, Gaia was known for being terribly sentimental with her creations. All the gods got a sentient species, not every one dwelling in the same universe or reality, but Gaia was stubborn, something that reflected in her species, and so they appeared in nearly every universe.
Why Apricity allowed the goddess of natural life to spread her humans across nearly all of her domain-the multiverse, that is-was beyond her.
It would have made far more sense if it had been Magie, the reigning diety over Magic, whom Apricity doted on constantly. After all, who worked more closely than Magic and the Multiverse? They were a more dynamic pair than taken at face value.
But Magie was far more subtle than that, choosing not to settle her beings on a unique habitat but rather slipping them in among Gaia's humans in a few choice timelines and letting Gaia do the work from there, shaping the planet, sustaining it's life. All that was needed from there was to poke and prod enough to ensure her influence remained.
Magie was crafty and sly, and Lilly did not understand how the other gods overlooked her obvious acts of mischief, but it was far from her place to pretend she understood their politics, no matter how much time she spent walking their plane of existence.
It would be ill advised after all, to offend such powerful beings while walking within their territory.
Lilly was interrupted from her thoughts by a sharp tug at her scalp. She flinched but quickly composed herself. When she had volunteered her long, pale hair to Steven's sudden hairstyling whims she ought to have known what she'd gotten herself into.
Granted Steven was far from unskilled at traditionally feminine hobbies such as this. Far from it, Greg had done well in raising Steven away from human societies obscene habits of Gender-restricting certain activities.
It was ridiculous and Lilly looked fondly back on memories she had of Her and Steven painting each others nails and playing dress up more than once in some long ago life. Lilly sighed and closed her eyes, relaxing somewhat into the soft blanket on Steven's bed.
"Just one more twist aand...There!" Steven twisted a final plastic hair tie into her moondust pale locks before releasing his grip on her hair. Steven then reached past her to grab a handheld mirror from the scattered remains of a box of hair and makeup supplies the young teen had drug out from under his bed.
Steven held out the mirror for her to see and Lilly grinned. Her hair was done up in a similar style to her usual half bun hut now her hair was done up in a braided half bun, with several more tiny braids trailing down her back and a few streaks of her hair dyed a sky blue. Her fringe, once rested in an annoying manner over her eyes, were now pinned back away from her face.
As always, her crystallized namesake was pinned carefully to her half bun, secured tightly enough to ensure it did not come loose unwillingly.
"Do you like it?" Steven asked after a few moments of Lilly examining her new look.
Lilly turned away from the mirror to look at her Once-brother with a soft smile.
"Steven, I love it. Thank you."
Steven grinned right back at her and caught her off guard by catching her in a hug.
"It must be hard for you." Steven told her in a quiet voice. "Being stuck here with us here on earth, without your mentor and your other moonstones friends. Pearl told me more about your gem type. You moonstones are all really close weren't you?"
Lilly swallowed an unexpected lump of emotion clogged in her throat. By the gods this kid really knew how to get her waterworks flowing!
"Yeah, yeah we were pretty close, and I do miss them. But I'll fine so long as I'm around other people. We're like that you know, moonstones are always seeking out other gems. It keeps us stable on a mental level."
Lilly gave a wet chuckle "Heh, it's probably because of how we're formed. Moonstones are inventors. It's a field that's always changing, shifting, evolving. The equipment is always being changed, replaced or removed. Nothing is ever the same long enough for us to just be programmed with instructions on how to do our jobs."
Lilly paused and took a calming breath. Steven stares up at her with big eyes, always eager to learn more about the world his mother came from.
"So, instead we're made to learn and to be curious. I think, because of that, we feel like, we need to be surrounded by other people, because no matter how hard the authority tries, we are all different. And When you are surrounded by other gems you are always learning more about them, and about yourself, and you change them and they change you."
"People change people!" Steven shouted excitedly, a grin on his face and stars in his eyes. Always so eager, by the gods it was a shame this kid didn't go to school. because he would thrive there.
Lilly laughed, tears gone now in the wake of Steven's constant cheer. "Yeah I guess you're right, Steven. People change people."
Lilly looked out the window at the ocean, listing to the distant crash of the waves onto the shore.
"And I suppose..." She said softly. "Earth really isn't so terrible a place to be. It's kind of, familiar, in a way. Humans aren't as different from us as we insist. Not really."
Familiar indeed. What would Fern say if she could see the world in this modern era? She was so wild and inquisitive. Lily doubted she'd be able to stop her from dashing about, insisting that she see everything!
Or maybe she'd be horrified at what had been done to the planet by her own kind.
Lily disapproved as well, but sometimes she couldn't helo but feel as though it wasn't her place to make such judgements. This wasn't her planet after all. It didn't matter how many lives she'd lived, or where she'd been born in them. She knew who and what she was, and neither gave her any right to earth.
She was an invader, all of them. She wasn't supposed to be here.
But she'd die if she left. And Apricity would send her right back to where she'd started. Because Lily had signed up for this, and there were no escape clauses in consensual contracts with gods.
The Warp pad lit up and a wet trio of Crystal gems padded off.
Steven gasped and scrambled off the bed and down the stairs to greet them.
"Hey guys! did you make any progress looking for Mallachite?"
Pearl sighed and knelt down to lay a gentle hand on his hair, smoothing it down slightly. "No, Steven. Not today."
Garnet stepped forward and tapped his nose playfully. "I'm sure we'll get a little luckier tomorrow."
"Oh." They had been saying things along the lines of this for several days.
"Try working your way towards the Pacific." Lilly spoke vaguely, giving no explanation as she made her way down the stairs, Data pad in hand as it often was every spare moment the pale blue gem got. Lilly made to sit on the couch but paused, before deciding she'd had enough sitting around and instead chose to stand, scrolling through the latest earthen news feeds, curious as ever about the happenings on the great blue planet she resided on.
Amethyst noticed the change in her appearance first and gave an impressed whistle.
"Dude! Sweet streaks!" The purple gems sprung forwards to tug at a lock of blue streaked hair. Her hands drifted uncomfortably close to her precious crystal lily causing her to jerk away slightly, hand drifting to her namesake to ensure it had not been tugged loose.
"Steven did it." Lilly explained calmly. "He insisted that I do something other than my research" Lilly gestured to her data pad " all day so he asked if he could play with my hair."
Lilly smiled slightly, unable to resist the warmth that bloomed within her gem at being in the presence of other gems. A social gem type indeed. No matter how old she was within the depths of her mind and memory, she would always seek out the company of others.
Amythest smirks at her words and turns to Steven to give him a noogie. "Not bad for a little nerd! Sweet skills Steven!"
"Amethyst! Let me go!" The young gem manages to giggle out before being rescued by Lilly, who gently pulls him out of Amethyst's grasp, and placing him softly on the floor.
Steven gave her a grateful smile before turning the conversation back to her earlier words.
"So you think Jasper and Lapis are somewhere out in the Pacific? How come?"
Lilly shrugged and switched tabs on her data pad. There were a few articles and web journals on biochemistry that should keep her overactive mind occupied for a few hours...hopefully.
Her minds ability to run at a hundred miles per minute could be terribly annoying at times. It could be so hard to find good intectual entertainment. What she really needed was work...
"Intuition." She said simply. "Sometimes I just...know things. Not nearly as reliable as a sapphire's future vision, but it's saved my kind from a fair few lab accidents."
It was equally useful in battle. But as far as the gems were aware, she'd never been within five thousand miles of a battlefield, and Steven hardly needed to think about such things. Not yet. Not for a few years if she could help it.
Speaking of which...there was an itch at the back of her mind that called for attention. Her hands twitched and she felt the holographic hairs at the back of her neck prick.
Lily snapped her holopad off and twisted her head around. A strange sort of static shivered through her spine and selttled in the pit of her stomach, burning and writhing until it settled into a heavy ball of lead that dragged her down down down into the earth, sinking into sand then dirt clay stonehotburningscreamscan'tbreathnonononono-
"LILY!"
she hadn't known she was hyperventilating until her false lungs simply ceased all movement and her head become dizzy from the sudden change.
Two hands squeezed her shoulders shoulders, a pair of gems bit into the soft mass, dragging her up from the suffocating molten depths of the botter darkness. Still however, did the leaden ball of wrongness do it's very best to drag her back down with every breath her body, still to used to being flesh and blood, fought to suck in.
"I-" Lilly stumbled away from Garnets touch only to find the biting waves of another gems magic were the only thing keeping the awful assault on her senses at bay. This time when the...vision for lack of better word tried to drag her back down, her legs gave out, knees slamming hard onto the ground.
Garnet, still only inches away, grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her up, gently into her lap, Sapphire's gem drifting across her brow, pushing her hair way from her face, before sliding down to her ear. Long, precise fingers pressed against her gem, sliding over the smooth surface to check for cracks or fractures.
"Lily?"
"Som-somethings wrong! It's coming it-something going to happen and its not-a bit not good."
Lily closed her eyes and went slack in an attempt to alleviate the oncoming headache.
ugh, she had been getting a lot of these lately.
Gods damn this timeline.
Then the shriek of static sounded and the Television lit up. The figure that appeared on it caused a groan to escape the dimension traveling moonstone.
"ugh! Peridot!" Lily shook her head, wincing as she did so. "Not now." She muttered under her breath.
Specks of black were starting to dot her vision but she paid it no mind as she stood, shoving Garnet's worried grasp away and smoothing back her now ruined hair. The pretty streaks remained but her bun had come loose and the braids were starting to come loose from the plastic ties that bound them.
Annoyingly, her fringe had also gone back to pricking at her eyelashes and obscuring her vision.
if only she were a little better at shifting. She would grow the stupid things out long enough to tie back!
Note to self, take time to study gem magic outside of combat techniques when the opportunity arises.
The white noise turned into real, comprehensible sound and Lily's head turned at the realization that someone was tugging her hand, trying to guide her somewhere.
"Lily? C'mon, we're gonna go the Communication hub to try and stop Peridot!"
Lily made it a few steps towards the warp pad before the pounding in her head strengthened to an intensity that downed out her very thoughts. The black spots in her vision grew brighter, ringed in white and she felt dizzy.
Suddenly the world pitched and dimly, the slightly overcooked moonstone was aware that she had fallen, if the smooth wood under her cheek was anything to go by.
Someone was screaming. Wait...that...might have been her, but the yelling certainly wasn't. Nor was the rather annoying prodding at her gem, tugging and touching gently, as though she'd crumble into mere shards at any second.
That was...Pearl, surprisingly. The slender fingers were too cool and rough to be Garnet's, as the fusion's habbit of wearing an extra protective layer of light in the form of gloves prevented her from gaining any calluses over the centuries.
Pearl on the other hand, was far rougher inside and out than many gave her credit for. Her limbs were strong with learned strength earned from centuries of fighting and training and her hands, though slender, were covered in rough calluses as only a mechanic and a skilled swordswoman could have.
The amount of fussing over Lily was on the receiving end of was weird though, She though dimly through the pain. She hadn't thought Pearl like her very much in this timeline.
Indeed, in any timeline they'd never really been too close. Kind words and a shared adoration of Steveb and his big, innocent eyes, nothing more really. During the rebellion Lily had rarely crossed paths with Luna, shaken by all the exposure to violence and shardshed, kept her close, and the renegade pearl rarely wandering away from Rose's side and speaking to very few outside of new recruits who needed to have any lingering prejudices beaten out of them by way of rather brutal sparring sessions, and of course, Garnet, who was almost as constant a companion to Rose quartz as Pearl. Though Garnet tended to wander away more often than the renegade pearl, eager to try and seek out new companions and, as many often did, to squeal internally (for the most part) at the sharp, disterbingly regal moonstone and her tiny newling apprentice, whose gem still shone smooth and shiny with a coat of gel-like protective minerals.
Ugh, being little already sucked without being young! Being both just...made everyone coddle her! which she hated, especially now that she had so many memories that told her she was, in fact, technically even more ancient than white diamond herself.
Now though, Lily didn't think she'd mind a little coddling. What with the pain pounding away at her head and the worried voices and proddings at her gem-
Her gem!
" 'm s'rry" Lily mumbled out, searching for the little niche at the back of her mind that all gems had, like a tiny escape hatch that led straight into their-Yes! there it was!
With a flash of white Lily's physical form vanished as she retreated into her gem to recover from whatever wicked force that was causing her intuition to go haywire.
sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
Steven sighed, resting his chin in his hands as he continued to watch over the pale dusky blue-white gem that rested on his bed, placed carefully in a nest of blankets.
It had been nearly a week since what had been dubbed 'the sardonyx incident' at he communications hub and Lily had yet to emerge from her gem.
initially, Garnet and the others had been concerned, as they didn't know the couse of her illness outside of the fact that she'd obviously been suffering some kind of headache or migraine. Garnet had worried that this was some sort of terrible side effect of Lily's separation grom her mentor and that it was a sign of her mental and physical deterioration but all theories and speculation about the young gem ended once Pearl's betrayal of Garnet's trust had been discovered.
Indeed, it seemed as though Lily had been forgotten completely in favor of the toxic atmosphere. Even Amethyst no longer bothered to check up on her.
It seemed as though steven was the only one who remembered that the little scientist even existed.
"At least you're not on your holo pad all the time anymore. Dad says too much time on electronics is bad for you." Steven tried to joke but it fell flat. All this tension and animosity was killing him.
"Ugh! I don't care if you're on your holo every minute of every day! I just wish you were here."
No doubt the moonstone would hate this terrible situation just as much as him, if not more.
Steven still remembered what had happened a few weeks ago, when Pearl and Amethyst had gone and had another one of their fights.
It had started with Amerhyst being lazy, as it often did. The kindergarten gem had refused to do her part of the chore wheel, which had led to jabs at her inability to take responsibility to herself, which led to jabs Pearl for being too uptight, which led to even nastier remarks about Amethyst being reckless, which escalated into yet another full scale shouting match between the two.
Steven, being far too used to such fights between the two to bat an eye, had simply settled more comfortably on the couch where he and Lily had been playing checkers (which he would eventually win, though Steven suspected Lily hadn't really been trying to beat him in the first place) and prepared to wait out thethe fight as he had so many others.
Lily, on the other hand, had gone stiff. Hands frozen over the peice she had been about to move once the insults started to get worse. As the voice raise she began to pale (well, more than she already was) noticably and start edging away from the pair. The moment however, that it became fullscale shouting, Lily bolted out the door, eyes sqeezed shut, lookingas though she was going to be sick.
Steven had cast a single glance back at the quarreling pair, who had either ignored simply not noticed the slender gem's escape, before following his new friend outside, where he found her on the wooden staircase that led down the beach, where she was leaning over the railing, breathing deeply as though she was trying not to throw up the pizza rolls steven had convinced her to eat a few hours ago.
"Lily? Are you...are you gonna be okay? you don't look so good."
The reasuring smile that Lily attempted fell flat in Steven's eyes as she rested her head on the rail.
"I'll be fine steven, I just, don't like it when people fight is all. I...don't usually mind little argument or anything but those two-"
The yelling escalated so that it could be outside. Lily groaned and rubbed angerly at her gem. She shuffled down the the staircase in an attempt to escape the noise without wandering too far from the temple.
"Aagh! I can feel the anger rolling off of them all the way from over here! It makes me feel sick."
"You can feel their emotions?"
"Only the really strong ones. And some of the really warm ones. Those are nice..."
"...Oh. That's kinda cool I guess. Not right now...but it's still really cool!"
That got a chuckle out of her. A little bit of color returned to her face and she relaxed a little. "I suppose. I forget that this must all be new to you. You're still only one foot in the door when it comes to gem culture. It's all I've ever really known. I wonder how it'll feel when you've stepped fully into our world."
"I'm still half human. That'll always be a part of me. Earth will always be a part of me!"
Lily hummed in acknowledgment. "We shall see. But it's far easier to lose yourself than you think."
Steven didn't know what to say to that so the pair simply lapsed into silence. Back in the house, Pearl and Amethyst seemed to be finally winding down. The shouts were harder to hear now and Lily looked less like she'd throw up at any second.
In the end the fighting died down competely and the pair retired to their rooms for the night.
Steven led Lily back into the house and the pair finished their game in silence. Though this sulence was far less tense and contemplative so much as it was lazy and comfortable in a way that settled into your chest and shoulders, dragging one close to sleep in it's warmth.
Looking back at that particular memory, Steven thought that perhaps it was best that Lily wasn't here because if she had reacted badly to that one fight between Amethyst and Pearl then he hated to think of what this absolutely suffocating atmosphere would do to Lily.
A mental image of his long haired friend curled up in a fetal position, eyes closed and shivering, one hand clutched to her chest as she did whenever she slept at Steven's behest, the other wrapped around her stomach. Face a sickening shade of white while Pearl and Garnet fought somewhere in the background...the thought made Steven shudder and hold Lily's gem close to his chest.
Lily was...strange. She could be sharp and sarcastic, holding herself at a distance from the others. But it was an action akin to running. Eventually she'd trip and would be as if she'd melted, all warm, kind eyes and bubbly laughter that spilled from her easily.
One moment she was quiet and calculating, all flying hands across her beloved holopad, the next she was flying across the beach, hair flying as she danced over the ocean on a leyline to a song no one else could hear.
She didn't seem to like being alone though. Moonstones were social gems, Steven remembered. They needed to be around others. He giggled a little at the thought of a dozen or so identical versions of Lily all curled up in a gigantic dog pile of sleeping gems, all hugging and squealing and babbling 'Science! science! science!' that entered his head.
Okay so maybe that wasn't the most realistic depiction of moonstones, but Lily was still pretty social for all her reserves. She was always close by, sitting somewhere she could soak up the white noise of conversation or, if they were all here, join in herself. The more people she surrounded herself with, the happier she seemed.
It made Steven wonder what her life was like on homeworld. Had she been happy before she'd been sent off on her 'final assignment'? maybe she'd had a nice big lab filled with other moonstones where they all did science stuff and hugged. Lily liked hugs. So did Steven.
Ugh. the temple was way too quiet today. Pearl was away, probably trying to find peridot on her own, and Garnet was in her room, probably still raging mad about the whole thing. Amethyst...Steven wasn't sure. Probably she was at Vidalia's househouse. She'd been visiting her old friend a lot lately.
Hang on, friends! He should go visit connie! And maybe Lily would Reform while they were over there and she would finally meet Connie!
Excited for the first time in what felt like ages, Steven grabbed his cheeseburger backpack and stuffed a few snacks, a deck of cards, his phone,and after a moment of hesitation, Steven carefully picked up Lily's crystalized flower, which he had kept safe on the shelf above his head, and stored it gently in the front pouch by itself, so that it would not be harmed.
Last but not least Steven place Lily's gem in the side pouch of his backpack and race down the stairs with it secured on his back.
Maybe things were going to get better after all.
sssssssssssssssssssss
So! Lily missed the whole Sardonyx incident. But really I did this because lily doesn't really sleep at night so she would have caught pearl sneaking out of the temple and could've talked pearl out of making a stupid decision and to talk to Garnet instead.
I'm sorry but Lily's peacekeeping skills and doe like eyes are far too powerfull for the crystal gems!
on that note im not entirely sure i did my best with this chapter. Im trying but finals are coming up and im up to my chin in homework!
shout out to all my fellow slaves to the education system and i wish you all the best.
for now though, i bid you farewell until the next update!
see ya
-blue