~Hi, everybody! Welcome back.
I hereby use my authorial powers to purge "The New Crystal Gems" from existence. This is the way I wanted that episode to go down - well, minus Drakken. I never expect him to show up in SU, much as I'd like it. ;) I hope it'll be to your enjoyment as well.
Thanks to all my readers. Review replies may be a little slow in coming because I'm in school right now, but I do plan on getting back to all of you. Eventually!~
24. Connie
From across the room, Dr. Drakken watches his girlfriend sleep for just a while longer – he wants to see what a cosmic super-being who drinks the energy of the universe looks like asleep.
He isn't sure he likes it, how limp and still she is, though the curl of her body shows the beginnings of peace. Her upturned nose still tilts toward the ceiling, trying to look so dignified even in unconsciousness. Her hands twitch at her sides, searching for something just beyond reach, and Drakken has to remind himself that he is not the cause of that.
Well, not the sole cause of it, anyway.
Which reminds him that the tape of the Diablos must still be paused – no, it's probably resumed playing by now – on the TV in the basement. He'd better go and turn it off before he forgets. The thought of those fiendish forms lurking on the screen overnight makes Drakken feel sick to his stomach.
He tiptoes down the stairs, uncertain how heavy a sleeper a Gem who never needs to sleep would be, not willing to take any chances. Through the thin wooden door that doesn't quite meet its frame, Drakken can hear rumblings, clankings, and blaster-blasts. He swallows a wad of responsibility, takes the knob in his fingers, and pushes the door open.
There they are – the Diablos – tossing fireballs from their blaster-arms, carving the road down the middle, propelling themselves forward, ever closer to the helpless humans. They must still frequent the nightmares of goodness-knows-how-many civilians in addition to Drakken's own.
And then comes the worst part: himself, standing in his Bueno Nacho HQ lair, his suit spangled and blue against the dark. The night he power-tripped, the night he thought of himself as a god.
The night he messed everything up so, so badly.
That's why I can't go back. Can't go back, can't go back, can't go…
Drakken punches the POWER button on the remote. It takes the Diablos away, and he stands there for a moment with his hands smashed up to his eyes, his mother's braided rug fluffy and soothing against his cold, cold toes.
Next thing he knows, Shego stands in the doorway. "Hey," she says.
"Hey," Drakken replies. There was a time when he would have made an attempt to harden himself under her stare, tried to push through the guilt he wasn't supposed to be feeling. The guilt that would prove he was exactly what Dementor said he was – a sorry excuse for a supervillain.
Sorry in more ways than one.
And he is sorry – so, so very sorry, to the depths of his gut and back. But he sees Dementor's smile in his mind, all shiny and condescending, and it matters very, very much to him that Dementor be wrong about everything. Ever.
"Kimmy texted," Shego says. "She and What's-His-Nose made it safely back to Paris. Killigan didn't give them too much trouble…" She trails off and gives him a pointy look. "You were watching it again, weren't you?"
Drakken knows his mouth is falling open as he looks back at her. "How did you know?" He doesn't believe there's such a thing as ESP, but if he did, Shego would be the first person he'd look at.
"Heard them blasting and crashing away from upstairs," Shego says.
Ah. Of course. She heard them. Shego has ears like a Fennec fox – well, in terms of hearing ability, not of appearance. Drakken stares down at the palms of his hands, unable to give her the compliment, unable to express his gratitude that she said "them" instead of calling his inventions by the name Nakasumi gave them.
Shego steps in closer to him. Drakken isn't sure whether she is trying to comfort him or not – in either case, she knows better than to touch him. "I don't get why you torture yourself like that," she says.
And she speaks the truth – the face that looks back at him doesn't "get it," not the way Lapis's did.
"It isn't about torture, Shego." Drakken hears the clinical stiffness gathering in his voice, just the way it always did when he was explaining some genius plan to her and she wasn't doing her part to keep up with him. "It's about – uh-errg – we had a run-in with Dementor today –"
"And you were still willing to make the day worse?"
"Let me finish, Shego!" Drakken arches his neck toward her, trying to stretch away the sudden tightness in his muscles. "We ran into Dementor, and we won – naturally; how could we not? – but not before Dementor told me that I'd been absolutely horrible at being a villain."
The memory of that little pigtailed girl running from the Diablos is a cooling agent for his temper but an impediment to his airways. Drakken clasps his fingers together behind his back and begins to pace. Sharks aren't the only ones who find it easier to keep breathing when they're in motion.
"And so I had to remind myself that this is what it looks like –" Drakken gestures to the screen, blank though it now is – "when someone is good at being a villain. And I don't want that."
Shego blinks at him, still fox-like and sharp, but just the teeniest bit softer than a few minutes before. "Oh," she says. "Did Lapis see?"
"Yes." Drakken nearly whispers the word. All he can see when she asks is Lapis staring at him with something quivering in her wide blue eyes, something that stole away any lingering doubts about who and what he wants to be.
Near-pity crinkles Shego's forehead. "Did she freak?"
"Mmm. Yes and no. A little bit at first, but then – then she said that she finally knew someone really could change from bad to good."
Now I know for sure, she'd said. It feels better than anything he achieved on Diablo Night.
"Because of –?" Shego is cut off as a sound like a buzzsaw rips from upstairs. Well, a miniature buzzsaw. Maybe a buzzsaw for children, if they make such things – which Drakken highly suspects they don't, because how could anyone ever green-light such an idea? It zigzags through a few more tree trunks before being pulled in again and then gurgling its way back out.
In the space of time it takes Drakken to recall Peridot's words, Shego's face has already turned toward the ceiling and come back down wearing a full-out grin. "Is that…is that her?" she says.
Drakken's fists clench at the sound of her squeaky snicker. Its bladed surface scratches even sharper knowing it's directed at Lapis. "Yes! And it embarrasses her! Don't make fun!"
"No, I'm not, I'm not." Shego's head shakes, and one palm smears across her mouth. "It's just…she looks so dainty."
Her eyes twinkle with genuine joy as she turns them back to Drakken. "So – you're saying she saw the footage and she didn't dump you?"
That seems to be at least three questions as far as Drakken can tell, and he nods to the first one. "Mgnng. I mean, yes, she saw it, and no, there was no 'dumping' involved."
"Wow. Dr. D., she is a keeper." Shego glances at the ceiling again a little too innocently. "You could even snore in harmony."
She dodges the couch pillow he throws at her.
Drakken returns to his mother's house the next morning to find Lapis already awake and perched on the edge of the sofa, her teddy bear in her lap. Mother is in the bathroom, putting on her makeup for the day, which is time-consuming in a way Drakken could never explain. He's glad neither he nor Lapis bothers with the stuff.
When Lapis looks at him, it seems to go to a deeper place than it did yesterday, as if she has opened his closet and pushed aside the neatly-hanging rows of lab coats to reveal the box of weapons he'd slung in behind them. To continue with the metaphor – or is it a simile? – her morning smile picks up the box and move it outside, sets it down somewhere beyond, and says, Don't need these anymore.
"Good morning, Ms. Lazuli!" Drakken calls. "It's another glorious day here on E –"
He stops himself, although probably not soon enough. How Gems' nerve receptors work, he doesn't know, but he is pretty that, figuratively speaking, he just plunged a paper cut into a five-gallon saltwater tank.
"A glorious day here on Earth," Lapis finishes for him, like the words don't bother her in the faintest. She gives the snorting noise he has come to like so much. "You know, I didn't used to believe there was any such thing." Her head tilts ever so slightly to one side. "That's why you're so protective of Earth, isn't it? Because you damaged it so much back when you were bad?"
Talk about deep. Anyone else would need a scuba tank to descend to that depth, but Lapis, fittingly, does not.
"Ggghnng. Yes." Drakken winds his ponytail around his two longest fingers. "I did awful things to my planet. But when I saw the Lorwardians –" he scrambles for an impressive phrase to prevent his brain from drifting – "laying siege to it, I knew there could be no more of that. No more manmade Ice Ages, no more stealing the Great Lakes…I stole the Great Lakes, you know," he says to Lapis's bewildered face. "Those are the five really big lakes up farther north from here."
A sparkle takes shape in Lapis's eyes. "Well, I stole the entire ocean, so I'm still worse than you."
Her elbow-nudge is playful, but Drakken can do nothing but frown at her. "Not even by half!" he sputters. "All you were was lost – and hurt –"
"You were too," Lapis says, even more quietly than usual. "Just in a different way."
It takes several clearings before Drakken's throat lets him counter, "Yes, but I hurt people! Not in self-defense, either. To make myself feel better. For revenge! It's a whole other category."
Lapis does nod this time, and she reaches out and slips her hands around his. He wonders if he will ever get over being surprised at her the strength and the spunk in her chilly little fingers. "Do you still want the Great Lakes?" she says. "Because I could get you the Great Lakes. For your birthday or something."
Her earnestness makes Drakken burst out laughing. "Oh, no, no, no, Lapis. Thank you, that's very sweet, but no. I no longer have my weather machine – the weather machine I stole," he corrects himself, "so they wouldn't really be of much use to me. There are people up North who need them –"
"Fish need them, too. Don't forget those fish, Doc," someone else adds.
Shego. She has slipped in the door in that soundless way that always seems somehow predatory to Drakken, even when she has a friendly face like she does that morning.
Drakken swivels on the sofa cushion to stab a finger at Shego. "Do not even start with me, Shego!" He turns back to Lapis, whose eyebrows have slid toward each other, wanting to hear that story. He will tell her, sometime later, when Shego is not around to pepper in gloating details. How he hates it that she's always right!
Well, no, he doesn't hate it every time. She was right about Lapis being a keeper, too. Drakken doesn't know what his reaction to that is called – but whatever the polar opposite of anger is, that's it exactly.
Your next few weeks at the barn pass with the newfound normalcy of your life on Earth. Together, you and Peridot watch television and create meepmorps – Peridot uses an old ink-pen she found among the barn's treasures to scribble long, wavy lines down a sheet of paper, and you tap them with water, revealing the rich assortment of colors hidden inside the black. You continue reading every book you can find, reintroducing yourself to Peridot's smaller-than-average lake one toe at a time, and sleeping whenever the memories become too heavy to carry.
One after-morning, you and Peridot are sprawled on your bellies on the barn floor, watching as a bushy-tailed creature collects the knobs that have fallen from trees, brown nondescript bodyguards sent down with the leaves. You know from Camp Pining Hearts that the creature is called a squirrel, though the show's shifting drawings don't capture its comical bouncing movements as it hops from ground to tree again and again. Steven has told you the knobs are "nuts," related to the almonds you saw at the Middleton mall, food for the squirrel, and gathered by it in large amounts when the leaves begin to fall. It will find a knothole, Steven explained, curl up there, and sleep for the whole winter. This sounds interesting to you, but as this will be the first winter when you can do something besides watch it behind glass, you plan to stay awake for most of it.
At this moment the warp pad jingles. Its glow reaches upward and inward to pull out a stubby little shape with a shrub of curls on its head.
Steven.
The sight of him is all the command your wings need to bloom and to deliver you straight to Steven's side. You crouch at his side and wrap your arms around his neck, even as you notice Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl materializing on the warp pad behind him. It no longer frightens or angers you when they appear. Rather, you are filled with the lingering, clammy sensation that something about your physical form needs to be adjusted or straightened somehow.
Steven's body feels strangely taut in your embrace, and when you pull back and stare at him, you see he is not his usual vivacious self today. His face, still alive with goodness and cleanness, also houses an intensity that tells you his shield will be conjured soon. Someone he loves is in danger.
"Steven? What's wrong?" you say.
"We need to borrow the Ruby ship and get into space," Steven blurts, flinging his arm in the direction of the red craft for which you and Peridot have struggled to find a use. His eyelids blink speedily, tears rising behind them. "They took Dad. We have to go get him back."
Your fists clench at your waist when you imagine Greg in captivity on a Homeworld ship. Right now he could be facing a Ruby fusion, a full-sized Amethyst – even an Emerald, though they rarely patrol this quadrant of the Crystal System – and each new possibility is a whirlpool in your gemstone.
"Who took the 'Dad'?" Peridot demands for both of you.
"Blue Diamond."
Though his voice trembles, Steven speaks the name as if it is small, when surely the sound of it alone has the power to perforate your gem. Your brain locks into place, thoughts dried and diminished; it stops in a way Steven's never could, not when it's needed to keep that series of systems running inside him. You bite the inside of your cheek hard to hold onto your color. Pain bubbles around you, yet it is muffled, as if you feel it from lightyears away.
"What does Blue Diamond want with your dad?" you blurt, hoping too late that Steven will not take offense. There are many good reasons to want Greg around, but you cannot see any of them mattering to one of the Diamonds.
Your Diamond.
Steven turns confused eyes up to Pearl, who peaks her fingers together and explains with grim cheer, "She still thinks the Cluster will destroy the Earth any day now. Obviously, no one bothered to tell her otherwise!" Pearl's tittering laugh is empty, a musical husk. "So she thought she'd rescue one more human for – well, probably to take to the human zoo."
An ugliness that you have never heard before lurks in those two words. You prevent yourself from so much as shifting a finger; to move is to tremble and perhaps never stop. Peridot's lips are curled in honest confusion, and you envy her that reaction.
You have been to the human zoo.
Not a frequent visitor by any means, you nevertheless accompanied Blue Diamond and her Pearl on more than one occasion. It was set up as a way to preserve a sampling of Earth, a way to appease Pink Diamond. Your only impression back then was of Quartzes at every door, staring expressionlessly forward, while Holly Blue Agate bellowed insults their way and glanced to you for affirmation. Try as you might, you can't remember whether or not you gave it to her.
You train your gaze on Steven. "He'll at least be safe there," you say quietly. It is the only small thing you can offer him.
Steven merely nods, not asking how you know this.
It is true, though. The humans in the human zoo have never been mistreated. All of their needs are met, and they are kept free of any danger they might encounter back on Earth. At the time you thought it refreshing and merciful.
Now it is like a barnacle lodged on your back, not painful but nagging, invasive. You picture Greg in the coldly spotless assimilation room designed by Blue Diamond, and you wish you could scrape away your insider's knowledge.
Steven gives you and Peridot each a quick hug before he turns and climbs into the Rubies' ship alongside Amethyst and Pearl. The small, round shoulders that usually blend with the rest of his cushion-like form are now pulled backward and lie level.
Garnet has to fold to enter the ship. She pauses in the hatchway and turns to look back at you and Peridot, one long leg inside the ship and the other on the grass. "Lapis, Peridot," she says, "it's your job to look after Beach City while we're gone. Take care of it."
The tides of her voice are smooth and calm, unlike Pearl's rushing rapids. They don't doubt you for a moment.
You lift your thumb and one corner of your mouth at her. Peridot's eyes receive the information like a pair of satellites and are almost as wide. Her devotion to Earth far surpasses your own, you know. She comes from a different world; it must have been far easier to leave Homeworld when she never knew it as anything but a cold ball of steel and glass. Yet every place in Beach City – from the beach where Steven released you from your reflective prison to the hair-shortening station where Drakken picked up a pair of sucker candies – is a part of your world, and you will defend it from any Ruby patrol who happens to sweep by.
Garnet pulls the hatch shut behind her. The engine slips on, and you watch as the ship putters into the sky and slowly disappears from view.
Be safe, Steven, you will him.
You continue to gaze at the sky. Your eyes see nothing but patches of clouds and the occasional bird, but inside your gem you see Blue Diamond, the Diamond who held you in the palm of her hand and smiled as you popped your wings in and out for her perusal, the Diamond who transformed, in quiet ferocity, into someone you had met before yet didn't recognize, contemptuously watching this mistaken fusion on her base, demanding Ruby's life in reparation. You see Greg grinning at you from under the brim of his frivolous shipman's cap, his regard having chosen to forget the wave that punched his vehicle into the air and turned it end over end. He is a mere speck in her shadow.
"Poor Greg," you say quietly.
Peridot gives you a quizzical glance. "If Blue Diamond believes the cluster is still a thing, then she must believe she's saving Greg-Dad from imminent destruction." She pronounces the Earth-slang words with the same briskness she applies to her most technical terms, a habit that ordinarily makes you giggle.
Now, however, you feel the drapery that adorns each corner of Blue Diamond's palanquin pressing down over you in layers. You still, with very little effort, can imagine her: her arms hanging and swaying in two graceful lines, her soft-spoken Pearl at her side, the weight of her attention heavier and more physical than your entire body. As hard as you try not to wonder if she remembers the Lapis she sent to Earth five thousand years ago, the question remains lodged inside you.
Blue Diamond might keep Greg from harm, but he is not safe in her company. No one is.
Instinctively, you snap your head to one side as you would to rid yourself of bothersome droplets. Your fear doesn't go away, but the gesture is casual in appearance and doesn't arouse Peridot's suspicion.
"Well…" You fold your arms and scan the ground around the barn. "If Beach City needs me, I'll be in the barn. Reading."
"Okay!" Peridot hunches down on the grass, her face solemn, confident in its defense. "I'll letcha know!"
With another, very different shake of your head, you stroll into the barn and retrieve from your hammock the last book you read: The Once and Future Wizard, a thin volume with paper covers instead of board and corners that were curled inward long before you first opened it. On Homeworld – or at least on what Homeworld has become – you believed words to be tiny soldiers, each lined up in perfect formation with its neighbors, never daring to break rank. Since coming to Earth, though, you have come to understand that they are fluid and pliable, restrained in the way the sea is restrained yet free in the way the sea is free. You enjoy opening a book and watching them spill across the pages, unlimited by the dimensions of what is, able to inhabit abstractions of what can be.
Humans have discovered how to make meepmorps from words.
This particular meepmorp, however, stops its words before it should. The last sentence is a complete thought, duly punctuated, but it is not an ending. The dark wizard has not stood trial for his war crimes; the boy with the levitation powers has not yet figured out whether his parents are still alive; his little sisters who were born together – the Earthlings use the term twins whether they are similar or not – still inhabit the bodies of rats. When you first finished it, you stopped and stared at it, and then you rotated it in your hands, squinting to see if any of its pages had been torn out. Despite its worn condition, it was intact, and the last page simply read "ABOUT THE AUTHOR."
Who cares about the author? you remember thinking. What about the story?
Your mind spun. Was the true ending encoded and somehow hidden in the rest of the book? Were you supposed to make up your own ending? Homeworld would never accept such an incomplete report, but you know the rules are far more lax on Earth. Was this normal down here? You searched the author section for clues for any information on whether she is unusual or not, yet all it told you were her favorite color, her favorite food, and where she lives – somewhere called "Kansas," presumably a province of Earth. You couldn't see how it matters where she lives, unless she wants the readers to come visit her and have her explain in person what happens to the characters.
With your back up against what Steven calls a lawn chair – its body narrow and jutting, its spine short and straight – you turn the pages back to the book's big showdown and read it for the seventh time. You go over each word, one by one, the way the boy in the story felt each individual brick in the wall when he was trapped, hoping to open a secret tunnel that would lead him to the truth. The Earth is sliding away from the sun when someone's footsteps land on the wooden floor, and someone's voice says, "Hi, you guys."
The voice is not loud, yet it has a strong presence, and you start.
Behind you stands a human slightly shorter than you, her hair braided down her back. Her face is familiar, impossible to place; it streaks into dozens, hundreds of others, blatant reminders of how water can take this frailer species. You roll through centuries of knowing this, forgetting it, remembering and discarding it. Gnashing waves and the human pleas that stopped them just before the damage became irreversible.
You drop your eyes to your book again.
"Oh, hi!" Peridot cries, scampering to stand beside the human girl. "You must be Connie! The human who Pearl taught to sword-fight? Steven's best friend?"
The configuration of light that shapes your arms gives a jerk. It might be jealousy – another thing you know to be repellant to Blue Diamond. Members of her court have no one to envy.
Connie. The name has a place in your memory, as does the face; you have simply never seen it without the metal rims around its eyes. The last time you saw her lips, they were open in a scream, yet a moment ago they smiled at you.
"It is such an honor to finally meet you!" Peridot gushes. She clutches Connie's arm as if trying to get Connie's scent to rub off on her.
Connie laughs, a pleasant gurgle from someplace far back in her throat. "Peridot, we've met before," she says patiently. "I came over to the barn for Steven's birthday party. Remember, he turned into a baby?"
"Oh. Right." Peridot blinks, and then she turns to you. "You weren't here for that. You were – uh – never mind."
Malachite. You were her.
"And, um, Lapis – " Connie circles around so that she stands in front of the lawn chair, so that you cannot send her away from the edges of your vision. "You've met me, too. Don't you remember?"
Her voice is careful, as if holding back resentment, and her eyes seek something from you – a look of realization, an acknowledgment, an expression of regret that she nearly drowned at your hands.
You nod at her. It is the only thing you can grant her right now. You have almost drowned a lot of people, and it is better not to let their images last.
Connie continues to study you, and you take an aloof measure of her over the top of your book. Her brown skin is on the darker end of the human spectrum, with strong pockets of resistance welling on the palms of her hands. Her face, though not pointy like Peridot's, is more thinly molded than Steven's or Drakken's, with less room for a grin. She stands with her feet spread and pointed outward, replicating Pearl exactly.
She doesn't seem angry anymore. Her hands are empty, so there is no way she can hurt you. She loves Steven, just like you do – and yet it is somehow so hard to meet her gaze.
"Sometimes Lapis prefers to read instead of talk," Peridot confides in Connie, her voice nowhere near as low as she likely thinks it is.
"I get that," Connie says. She sounds as if she's shrugging, and her words have inched away from caution and toward genuine kindness. You are not sure if you deserve it, or her wrath, or something else entirely.
You pull your shoulders together until a dent appears between them with your gem inside. It doesn't fear Connie the way it did as she charged your ocean on the back of the pink lion, but the hollows of your insides are rolled tightly together, a bound scroll.
"Well, it doesn't look like Beach City is in any danger right now," Connie says. "So what would you guys like to do?"
You tow the book closer to you so that your nose almost touches the page. The letters seem to shift positions, and you wonder if this how dyslexia looks; you wonder how it attaches to Drakken's vision, if dyslexia is made of organic matter, like his brain, or if it is an intangible collection of energy and electricity, like your own.
"Lapis wants to keep reading," Peridot says. She strokes her chin, feigning wisdom. "As for myself, I'd love to give you 'The Grand Tour' of our Gem cav – uh, our humble barn and our many artistic meepmorps."
Peridot glances up at you, her face asking your permission, and you grant it with a nod. If Connie is to stay here, that is the safest path. When Peridot talks, her ramblings take up all the available space so that no one really has room to speak alongside her.
Even now, Peridot loops her fingers around Connie's and guides her around the barn, leading her from one meepmorp to the next with bright chatter. The circumstances that brought Peridot to Earth have already been converted and accepted in her mind; coral has grown over their wreckage, turning it into a viable piece of the ecosystem.
It takes shape in your mind again: Blue Diamond's fabric-swathed arm extending to condemn the helpless Ruby, the vicious mob your fellow genteel Court members formed in so little time, closing in as you slipped away on cowardly wings.
After Connie has been shown every rafter and every seam in the floorboard, the two of them drift back to you again. Peridot crawls onto your chair, balancing on her narrow knees beside you. "Is it not 'the coolest'?" she asks you.
"Yes," you say, your focus on Peridot – you can answer her as long as you can pretend she is the only one.
"It's like you have your own little Earth museum," Connie agrees. She settles on the floor, crossing one leg at ease over the other. "Art is one of the absolute best ways to preserve the past. This –" she gestures to the barn – "this is your history here. It's like you've totally documented your own journeys."
Without looking away from the book, you lower your hand over Peridot's. Her naïve strength is just what you need in this moment.
"Whoa," Peridot says on a breath.
"Hey, Lapis." Connie edges closer to you now, and you wish your ears were fleshy sacks like Drakken's are so you could cover them. "What are you reading?"
This is not the question you were expecting. Mutely, you close the book with your finger still inside the pages, the closest you can come to pausing it in place the way Peridot does with Camp Pining Hearts episodes, and rotate it in your grasp so that the title is visible to Connie.
To your surprise, Connie's eyebrows bounce up at the sight of the regal purple cover printed with the boy who has a wand in his right hand and a rat on either shoulder. "Oh, yeah," she says. "I have those. They're really good."
Curiosity parts your tightly clasped lips. "Those?" you say. "There – there are more than one?" You stare down at the book, expecting it to replicate itself in your lap.
"Yup." Connie speaks with amusement, although if there is laughter in her, she is stifling it. "There's a whole series of them. See?" She takes the book gently from you, turns it on its side, and points to the numeral "1" above the title.
Your head smacks against the back of your chair, and a snort escapes from you. "Oh, so that's why I still had so many questions at the end! I thought that was just how books worked on Earth."
"Well, sometimes an author will deliberately use an ambiguous ending for effect," Connie says in the knowledgeable way of a museum guide. "But usually a lot of loose ends at the denouement means that there's a sequel or series on the way."
"Oh-hhh. Duh." You open the book and squint at the words again. "That makes so much more sense."
The ends of Connie's braid whisk to the side as she tilts her head. "I can lend you the second one, if you'd like," she says softly.
You are startled into looking straight into Connie's eyes. They are calmer and more mature than they were an Earth-year ago, and while the memory of your battle still clings to them, it has been pushed farther back than you expected. Lying in front of it is what you instantly recognize as a full, intense devotion to Steven.
A tiny point of starlight trickles around your core, and you offer Steven's best friend Connie something you have not given most of Steven's other friends – a smile.
Connie smiles back, the edges of her mouth nearly shy as they tip up. You see the pleasure shining from her before you drop your gaze to your book once more.
It is not safe with her here, not as it is with Steven. Yet your powers lie quiet and still inside you, damming up the source of your closest fear.
Beside you, Peridot gives a tiny squeal. One of her hands touches your back, and the other touches Connie's. "Well," she says, "I think as Beach City's loyal standby protectors, we should scout out the area and make sure none of its citizens are in need of us." Her fingers fold hopefully. "Whattaya say, Lapis?"
"Aye-aye, ma'am," you say, as you once heard a bird dressed as a sailor do on a cartoon. Your voice, as well as the hand you flick to your forehead and away, drifts between concurrence and sarcasm. There was a horrid day once on Homeworld when you had to obey Peridot's orders, but that day is long past now. At times, the best times, it is even hard to view her as the same Peridot who stood above you, artificially tall with her chin level with your forehead, and interrogated you without emotion.
This new Peridot is a Crystal Gem all the way through, all courage and no sense. She has even disavowed her loyalty to her Diamond and insulted her to her face, despite the experience she surely must have with Yellow Diamond's anger, which is more frequent and rapid than Blue Diamond's, if no more terrifying. Rather than yell at a Ruby or a Quartz, she laid the blame directly where it belongs.
You don't know if you will ever know that type of bravery.
Even now, when you think about Blue Diamond, you feel meek and separated from water the way you were in the desert. There is still a part of you that she declares belongs to her, as though you are one of her colonies. The thought of her claiming Greg, too, is a pond-ripple through you, but you can no sooner burst open and scream at her than her own Pearl could.
The best you can do is hope to the stars you will never meet again.
As soon as the three of you have passed from the barn's rough wood to the stiffening grass outside, Peridot folds her arms. "All right!" she says. "Let's split up and cover a broader range. Lapis, you can examine Beach City from the sky since you're the aerodynamic one! And Connie, you can comb the ground for threats since you're the non-flying one!"
Connie gives a small frown, and the hands at her sides grow stiff like the grass.
You roll your eyes. "And you can tell everybody what to do since you're the bossy one. Come on," you say, and in one motion you grab Peridot, tug her onto your back, and lift off from the ground.
The air is crisp and strong against your skin, its sharp edges no longer rounded off by the summer's moisture. At a leisurely flap, your wings carry you to a height from which you can view all of Beach City: the small tucked-in shops, the building where Drakken introduced you to overly greasy pizza, the walk-of-boards where you first gave Steven a reflection, and the ocean ever beckoning beyond it all. Steven was right – when you look at Earth, you no longer see the planet where you were held captive, where Rose Quartz began an uprising and ended her own Diamond's existence. Except for the car-place Steven called Jersey, the Earth is cleaner and more civilized than it was five thousand years ago, cleaner than Homeworld is now.
Peridot lets out a needling gasp above you. You don't have to see her eyes to be able to describe them – spread wide with learning, bulging as they attempt to pick every detail of information from the air and hold it. Of course the view from the sky should not be a novelty to her, yet before it was always seen from the window of a spacecraft. The world looks so much brighter when not viewed from behind glass.
It takes more than awe to fasten Peridot's lips, though. "Ohhh-wow, Lapis!" she squeals. "Gee whiskers, this is amazing!"
"I've always liked it," you say dryly, feeling the breath of your own voice drift into your nostrils. Your smile is natural, even automatic, at this altitude.
"There's so much," Peridot continues. She cranes forward, nearly losing her grip on your ribbon. "So much everything! It makes me feel puny."
You pass up the opportunity to say she is puny, merely nodding instead. "Don't you love it?" you say.
On Earth, you are a speck. You are not an Elite, not someone whom the Diamonds would ever consider a target. You are just a life form among billions of others, hidden away in a barn, an unremarkable and comforting existence.
"No aerial threats detectable from here. We should swoop in closer and run a sweep for 'inside' hazards." You can imagine Peridot lifting her gaze skyward and running it back and forth in a meticulous line.
Typical behavior for a Peridot. The thought is not yours; it flows from Blue Diamond – the Diamond who thought the kindest thing to do for humans was to imprison a selection of them behind glass – and its influence is no more palatable than the pizza was. Peridot has fingerprints, too, after all.
Sometimes realizations make dramatic entrances, but this one does not. It simply appears as if it has been inside of you all along, just waiting for you to grant it form.
"Aye-aye, ma'am," you say again, laughing, and you dive nearer to Beach City. Its citizens walk or drive from place to place, some calling hello to each other and none looking twice at the two Gems overhead. The city appears to be under the exact amount of heat and pressure required to sustain itself.
The only situation that even looks like it could cook a problem involves a scruffy, tied-up dog-wolf. The little boy Steven told you was named after a vegetable, though of which class you cannot remember, with his hair that spirals on his head like the tip of an ice cream cone, is poking the dog with the end of a pointy stick. Peridot takes great joy in "confiscating" the stick, and the boy shrugs and crawls away into the brush.
You return to the barn to find Connie peering through a set of small spyglasses at the surrounding fields.
Peridot giggles, a sound entirely her own, as she slides from your back onto the grass. It occurs to you that the list of people you have flown is the same as the list of people you trust: Steven, Drakken, Greg, and now Peridot. "Any enemies on the horizon, Connie?" Peridot says.
"None that I can see!" Connie straightens her spine; there is a playful twinkle on her face. "I think our mission is accomplished for now, troops!"
"Great!" Peridot exclaims. "So who's up for watching a Camp Pining Hearts episode – or five?"
You nod, relieved. The knowledge that Steven is no longer in this galaxy has unplugged you from the port Dr. Drakken said keeps all beings supplied, and you have burned through a lot of kindness already. You aren't sure how much you have left in reserve.
Connie grins and snaps her black braid. "Sounds like fun," she agrees.
Inside the barn, Peridot removes a disk from its nesting box. Her fingers are still clumsy as she grips it and deposits it in the waiting slot that pokes from within the DVD player, and you know why. Nearly everything on Homeworld these days is either stored in chips or transferred directly from Gem to Gem, and in some strange way you are happy to be on a planet that still uses disks.
Connie and Peridot huddle together in front of the screen. You dock yourself a few feet apart from them, but your hand never leaves Peridot's arm as you watch the characters in their familiar flickering colors and fuzzed lines. They laugh, cry, panic, fight, apologize, kiss, and distract you.
Two episodes later, an unfamiliar jingle comes from somewhere within the huddle. Peridot sets Camp Pining Hearts to pause. Connie reaches into the pockets of the black pants that cling to her closely, as if sopping fabric were plastered around her legs and then dried there. Out comes a thin instrument seemingly comprised of one large screen. You have seen something like it before, and when Connie lifts to her ear, you know it is a phone before she even begins to speak.
"Hi, Steven!" she says, and it is as if there is a tiny creature inside your gem, rapidly leaping up and down, shaking you. "Yeah? Oh, thank goodness! And is your – he is? Oh, great!"
You are grateful for the pressure of Peridot's hand in yours.
"Yeah, I found Lapis and Peridot," Connie tells him. "What? Oh, no. There weren't any real problems here. We've just been hanging out."
You rise and walk over to Connie. With your eyes looking directly into hers, you hold out your hand, raising your eyebrows and the barest corners of your mouth.
Connie nods against the phone and holds up a finger. "Sure, we can meet you on the beach," she says. "I'm so glad everyone's okay! Oh, Lapis wants to talk to you for a minute. Is that okay?"
Steven must say yes, for the phone is passed to you. You hold it up to the spot where your ear would be and say timidly, "Steven?" You know Connie wasn't lying to you when she said he was okay, but you need to hear it for yourself. You need to know he has escaped Blue Diamond's cold grip and coercive face.
"Hi, Lapis!" You can hear Steven grinning. "Look, we're coming through the Earth's atmosphere right now, so I don't know how much longer I'll have bars."
You weren't aware that that ship had bars, and you don't see how they could possibly assist in passing through the atmosphere. Yet his chirping voice is all you need; it reconnects you to the port immediately.
"Okay," you say. "But you're all right? And you've got your dad?"
"Yep!" Steven says. "I'm safe, my dad's safe, Garnet and Amethyst and Pearl are all safe! Did Connie tell you we're gonna try to land on the beach?"
"Yeah." You are surprised by your steadiness. The last time a ship landed on that beach, your world was ripped into pieces and set aflame.
"Well, I'll see you there, okay?" Steven's words begin to fade. "I think I'm cutting out. I'll see you in just a little bit…"
Then there is nothing but static, though you are sure your name is in it somewhere. You lower the phone and pass it back to Connie. Blue Diamond has lost.
The thought should make you happier.
At least you've retained some loyalty. You can almost hear her, as if she stands directly behind you, murmuring in faint disgust, her cloak hanging over you like a shroud.
You cannot wash away the power Blue Diamond yields. You can only encase it in a water bubble and leave it suspended somewhere around the horizon, immobile and soundproof.
You fly low over Connie's and Peridot's heads as the three of you venture down to the beach where you first demonstrated your fusion dance for Drakken, where you gave yourself to Jasper, where your ocean waits ever patiently for the day when you will again feel safe with it.
The Rubies' ship takes shape in the sky, at first seemingly no bigger than a single pod of Peridot's corn, then growing larger and larger as it descends. Sand is churned in all directions as it lands – a gentle toss compared to the last ship you remember crashing on this beach. You hear the slim door hum like the long-forgotten song of Homeworld as it opens and unfolds.
Garnet emerges and greets all three of you with a silent nod. Pearl walks as though she does not trust the ground beneath her as she exits, followed by a grinning Amethyst. Last are Greg and Steven, looking more alike than ever in the uniform of the human zoo: white, rippling cloth skirts that begin above the waist, wide brown belts around them, and short blue shirts that do not pull together above them. Tasteless baubles hang from the fleshy sectors of their ears. That must be a new alteration, as you don't remember seeing those before the War.
Steven smiles at all of you, his eyes tired and glassed over with relief. "Well, it looks like Beach City is still standing," he says, "so you guys must have done a great job!"
Laughter gurgles from you – the true, unrestrained kind that lines your throat with the same feeling you have in your fingertips when you redirect a wave of water into a genial arc.
Peridot flings herself at Steven and, true to form, begins to spiel every detail of your "investigation," from the humans who carry supposedly suspicious black bags out to even more suspicious green rectangular docking stations that reek of spoilage, to your intervention before the boy with the vegetable name could poke the dog too much more. You shake your head at her, yet deep inside you don't mind. To add a few more minutes to your wait is to add a few more drops to the sea.
As soon as Peridot pauses, Connie steps in front of her and wraps her arms around Steven. He folds his around her in return, fingers linking behind her braid. The sight of the two of them embracing is as natural as sunshine; they are two bodies pulled into each others' orbits.
"Thank goodness you're okay," Connie says, all in one long, brittle breath that feathers across the clip of Steven's ear-bauble. The corners of her lips tilt upward. "Also – nice skirt."
She says it like she is teasing, but it is a nice skirt. Earth humor still eludes you at times.
Steven blushes slightly and chuckles before he turns to you. His face is sagging, exhausted, having expended its verve but none of its sweet softness – he looks at you as if you are the one who brought him home intact, untouched by Blue Diamond's capricious hand. "Hey, Lapis," he says.
You lean in and place one hand on each of his shoulders. "Please tell me Blue Diamond didn't see you." Your words come out sturdy and solid, though apprehension keeps your voice small.
An unmistakable circle of ice forms around the rim of your gem, threatening to shoot down your back. You called her "Blue Diamond" instead of "My Diamond," and you did so effortlessly, unashamedly.
Steven wags his head back and forth. "Nope," he says, sounding as bright and optimistic as ever even in his weariness. "I saw her, though."
"Oh." You pull your arms back to your sides and let them dangle there – they are suddenly too heavy to hold up any longer. "How is…she…doing?"
At one time, you vowed your eternal devotion to Blue Diamond; you feel you should at least ask about her well-being.
Steven's pink skin appears to sag as if it, too, carries a burden. "She's still really sad. About Pink Diamond."
The ice around your gem turns inward and expands, sharpening the edges of your wings. "You know – you know about Pink Diamond?" you say, your voice squeaking. "About what happened to h –"
You stop, both because you cannot say anything more to those kind eyes and because the worn disenchantment in them is an answer itself.
"You mean – the part about my mom?" Steven swallows and blinks. "Yeah."
You engulf him in a hug, supporting his weight with your arm, acutely aware of his warmth and your lack of it, hoping you can still manage to be of some comfort to him. "Steven, I'm so sorry."
He quivers inside your embrace. It does not matter one bit that he never knew Pink Diamond – he grieves for her as surely as he grieves for the image of his mother, which has also been irreparably shattered.
Steven wipes his eyes with the backs of his hands and peers up into your face. "You knew?" he asks. His voice peaks without accusing.
You tighten your grip and remember Blue Diamond's sobs shaking the very ground beneath you. "I'd heard rumors," you say with stiff honesty. "I didn't want to spread them. So…Blue Diamond's still pretty broken up about it?"
Broken up is a term you learned from Shego, and you understand it perfectly: the feeling that one has been destroyed while still on one's feet, still conscious, still somehow continuing forward. In your darkest of moments, you have wanted Blue Diamond to experience it, but it is her hatred you wished for her to regret, not her glimpses of love.
Steven pulls back. "Yeah." He tilts his head to one side, studying you as if you are a specimen recovered from a scouting troop's first voyage to the surface of a new potential colony. "Was she – she was your Diamond?"
You don't trust yourself to speak. It is enough of a marvel that you manage to nod. The strip of midsection that shows beneath the boundary of your top grows colder, knowing it covers only emptiness.
Steven just returns your nod. When he hugs your waist again, you are no longer sure who is holding up whom.
"I'm just so glad you're okay," you say softly.
After receiving a warm squeeze in response from Steven, you wander away, toward your ocean. It dances forward and backward as if teasing you to fuse with it, when you know that the two of you are already folded around each other in a bond no weapon can break. You close your eyes and send it a message, apologizing, telling it you do not fear it as much as you fear yourself.
Farther down the beach, Steven is attempting to whisper to Connie, though you hear him easily. "How did everything go? Did you guys get along okay?"
"Yeah," Connie says. She glances both directions and leans in closer to Steven. "Peridot was full of ideas – kind of B-O-S-S-Y – but she was still pretty sweet. And Lapis – well, I talked to her about books. I think I got four sentences and a smile out of her."
You lower your head to hide your blush. Hearing Connie describe it from the side of her mouth cuts down its enormity in your mind, makes it sound rather insignificant.
Yet Steven has never heard of anything insignificant. His face brightens to a rain-washed sheen. "That's really good with somebody who isn't me!" he tells her.
Connie looks as though she has received something precious and priceless, something no more special but much rarer than Steven's complimentary words.
Despite the cold slap of the air when you fly Peridot back to the barn, not the slightest bit of ice encumbers your wings.
When you arrive back at your new home, you pick up the book that connected you with Connie and turn it over in your hands. In the purpling twilight, its cover looks even deeper and more majestic now that you know it is the first part of a story bigger than it is, just a diplomat sent out to search the planet for readers.
Peridot's tablet begins to vibrate and buzz – a sound not nearly as urgent as a Wailing Stone's, yet Peridot flies to her tablet as if there truly is someone inside who needs to be saved. You have to take a moment to tell yourself that this is not an enchanted device, but one crafted by human hands, inert without some form of electricity, and one into which beings cannot simply be tucked. It is a reminder that needs repeating once Dr. Drakken's image appears on the screen – though the display shows only his upper body, he does not bear the stooping shoulders of confinement, of separation from the universe's energy, of the formless inability to reach out and take hold of what is just beyond your grasp.
Drakken smiles when he sees Peridot, the way he smiles at the silly cartoon show where the dog helps solve mysteries. Finding you alters the expression on his lips. It is now a smile of coming home.
You gather up both Plastic Lazuli and your book and make your way across the floor to the laptop, using your elbows to claim a space next to Peridot and then resting your weight upon them. "Hi, Drakken," you call over Peridot's babbling welcome.
"Good evening, ladies," Drakken says with a chuckle. "Just checking in – how was your day today?"
Peridot responds before you have a chance to, and in a different fashion than you would have: "Great!" To Peridot, everything is great, save for the fourth season of Camp Pining Hearts. Blue Diamond's specter hangs over you, heavy as the folds in her lush cloak, and you can imagine her frowning with distaste if she learned her Lapis was jealous of Peridot.
"It was good for us," you say cautiously. "Probably pretty strange for Steven, though."
"Steven?" Drakken startles, his long arms flinging upward to grab at the thorns of hair rising from his forehead. "Is Steven – did he – is everyone all right?"
"Everybody's fine," you assure him. "It's just that –"
Peridot interrupts, which is for the best because the next words are a wad of frost on the surface of your tongue. "Steven's 'dad' was taken to the human zoo today."
"Human zoo?" Drakken's eyes widen. "Oooh, there's a story here!"
Peridot's triangular head tilts your direction, and she gives you a poke."It's from before my time. Lapis can tell you."
That is up for debate.
"Well," you begin, "back when Pink Diamond was working on colonizing Earth, she would take some of her favorite humans from Earth and put them in a little satellite off Homeworld so that they wouldn't be wiped out with the rest of life on Earth." By Diamond standards, it was merciful, yet you will never again be able to fathom a situation where it would be a mercy to put someone behind glass.
"And they're still there?" Drakken says. "Wasn't that like a bajillion years ago?"
"Five thousand, seven hundred and fifty," Peridot replies with precision. "But it turns out humans can grow new humans. Like corn."
You aren't sure, but you think Drakken shivers.
"Yeah," you say, allowing your voice to scoff. "She captured and bred them."
Drakken grimaces. "Ewwww. So – you're saying the Diamonds took Greg back to this establishment?"
You are grateful for the phrasing of his question. All it requires from you is a nod.
"But Steven followed them to the human zoo!" Peridot exclaims. "He stealthily infiltrated their society and then engineered a daring breakout the likes of which Homeworld has never seen!"
"Ohhh-wow-oh." Drakken lets out a low-pitched squeal, and his hands roll up and shake beneath his chin. "Did you guys go with him?"
"No," you say. "Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl did."
"We stayed here with Steven's girlfriend Connie," Peridot adds, "and kept Beach City safe."
You turn and stare at her. "Peridot, she isn't Steven's girlfriend!" While you do not know much about human growth, you believe that there is a juvenile phase in a human's life when they are too young to pair off and create other humans. Surely that is the place where Steven and Connie are right now.
"Aw, sure she is," Peridot says. "You saw how she hugged him when he got back."
"I hug him, too, Peridot." You draw in air only for the purpose of blowing it out in derision. "So do you, for that matter. So does everybody else who knows him."
"It's different." Peridot fixes you with a look meant to convey that she is wiser, more experienced – an overreaching look especially laughable on a post-War Gem. "When you've watched as much Camp Pining Hearts as I have, you begin to know love when you see it."
You roll your eyes. "WHATever. Look, I don't think you can call someone somebody else's girlfriend without asking at least one of them for permission."
"Yes, quite," Drakken says. "It can be a doozy of an embarrassment. I can't tell you the number of times people have just assumed Shego was my girlfriend! It didn't do much to improve her disposition," he finishes at a whisper.
"Shego?" Peridot peers up at you, her face puckered, no longer denying its youth.
You feel the slopes of your gem softening. "His best friend," you tell her. "She's green, too."
"Oh, cool!" Peridot squirms closer to her tablet screen and squints at Drakken. "So, in your expert human opinion, is Connie in love with Steven?"
"Peridot, come on!" you cry. "He's never even met Connie!"
"So?"
You glance back at Dr. Drakken. His body appears tense, as if it is suspended between two detector beams that will fire on him if he swerves too much to either side. "You know what it could be?" he says, tugging at his collar, though it looks to fit him as well as it always has. "It could be that they're in love and they don't know it yet!"
"Oh," you say. "Yeah. It could be that." You, after all, only knew uncertainty with Drakken, the navigation of new waters, until he said he loved you and you realized that was the only thing appropriate for the man who introduced you to your own fingerprints.
Peridot clasps her hands to her cheeks. "That can happen?" she sighs. "How romantic!"
"Of course it can happen." Drakken draws himself up with confidence, proclaiming himself an authority on such matters. "It's what happened to Kim Possible and…uh….her boyfriend, whatever his name is. They were my arch-foes back when I was evil," he says before Peridot can ask. "They were best friends for twelve years –" he still handles those words as though they indicate a great length of time " – before they ever started dating. In fact, they got together on the night that my absolute nastiest plan for world domination ever was launched and then fell apart and got me taken to prison, so I guess as nights goes, it wasn't a total bust!"
Drakken chuckles again, but the black of his eyes appears to have dived somewhere deeper below a hard, clear shine. You know you are looking at a person reflecting on images that they lack the power to transmit.
You meet it with your own gaze, steady and determined, and will yourself to send it away as Drakken has always sent away your residue of fright and the apathy that you aren't sure is an act or not. When Drakken breaks into a grin like rays of light, you choose to believe you have washed his regrets out of existence, the way you have with so many hills and plains over the eons.
"Did you help them realize they loved each other?" Peridot asks. Her voice is tender and supple with awe.
"Just maybe I did," Drakken says modestly. "In a funny way. Well, not funny ha-ha. I've been told one day we'll all look back on this and laugh , but it's going to take a very, very long time."
Peridot immediately begins to bombard Drakken with questions about humans' perceptions of time, and you listen in amusement as they exchange big words and scientific theories. With one finger you trace the glossed number 1 on the book's covered side. For the first time in what humans would deem quite awhile, you are excited about something.
You can hardly wait to see where the story goes next.