~I think our characters have earned a little down time between crises. I'm not going to detail every event of the two years until the movie in the chapters to come, but I'm not going to completely time-skip over them, either. Believe me, there's still plenty of action to come once Spinel makes her appearance. . . but for now, we're going to do fluff. :D~

The first images to walk into your mind as you sleep are dark, sinister ones: silhouettes cut down by rays of light only to rise again as creatures of shadow, distorted smiles on their faces; the creeping of blackness across ash; the play of luminance at the borders. Their colors swirl in sharp contrast, whites popping against blacks, blacks diving beneath grays, yet underneath, at their essence, they are all the same.

Just when the dream becomes overwhelming, it shifts to the beach, color surging forward and multiplying into the forms of dozens of Gems – Gems of all different shapes, sizes, and classes, yet underneath, at their essence, they are all the same.

You awaken on the same beach to Bismuth's voice, a sound which neither frightens nor reassures you. It rises, falls, and rolls like a crisp wind as she discusses the construction of Little Homeworld with her friends, expounding on the beauty of the meadow and pondering where to obtain building materials.

Beside you, Dr. Drakken grunts and mutters in his sleep, the spread of sand beneath his mouth damp with saliva. One of his short legs jolts outward, kicking against a clump of dune grass. You roll over onto your stomach, chin resting on your forearms, and for a moment study the contentment and trust dozing on his round, kind cheeks.

When he wakes up, he stretches sleepily and then leaps at once to his feet. His back makes a noise of the sort you remember hearing from the barn's floor on winter nights, and Drakken grimaces, though he gives you the thumb's-up signal before unease can shoot down your back. A minute later, his brow straightens and when he steps forward, all you hear are a few quiet clicking sounds.

You rise as well, high-five him, and look around you to remind yourself of last night's events. There is no fear left on this beach, no hatred, and no loss; there is nothing cold to negate the warmth of the salt-scented air or Peridot's gleeful yip from where she sits within a tangle of Nephrites. She runs to greet you, and not long afterward Steven joins as well, though you can see his attention split among every group of Gems. They have formed clumps around where the hastily constructed stage, now empty, still stands, talking excitedly over the divots in the sand where the pink leg-ship touched down. You wonder what it will be like, living among them, the Gems you once considered traitors, and you are amazed by how nonchalantly that question settles in your gemstone.

But if Rome was not built in a day, then Little Homeworld will not be, either. You will have plenty of time to discover how to live as neighbors.

"So – where do we go from here?" you ask. You almost shiver as you realize for the first time in your existence, you have no enemies left to escape and no orders left to take. You are qualified to answer yourself, and the question feels too large and unwieldy in your mind.

"I would like to lend my tremendous talents to aid in the building of Little Homeworld," Peridot says.

Your snort is light.

"So would I," you say. "But where are we going to go if…if we need a break?"

The words come out in a heavy trudge, the way humans will drag tired feet. You are still weary from yesterday, and you expect to be crushed by your own frailty as soon as you speak. Yet if anything, the waves behind you feel smoother and lighter as they reach for the shore.

"I have a marvelous idea!" Dr. Drakken shouts. His voice, like his eyes, is puffed and watery from sleep, but it has lost none of its buoyance. "You ladies –" he gestures wildly between you and Peridot – "can come and stay in Middleton! At my mother's house! I'm sure she won't mind!

"We could give Peridot the tour," he adds, glancing at you. "Introduce her to my friends. Let's see, it's summertime now, so Kim Possible will probably be home from college, and so will…" He frowns, his eyebrow plunging. "…her little boyfriend… um…."

"Ron," you supply.

"Yes! Him!" Drakken lets his longest finger click off his thumb and flings wide his arms. "Well, what say you?"

"Sounds great to me," you say, and you are telling the truth. When you envision Middleton, you see a steady wharf with a storm awning on top, a place where you can crouch down and wait for the sea to calm again. "How about you, Peridot?"

Peridot grins as though she has been invited to Camp Pining Hearts. She grabs Drakken's hands and squeals, her legs bowing in a series of quick, stuttering jumps. "Yes, yes, yes, yes!" she says. "I accept your generous offer, good sir!"

It is Drakken's turn to grin, his brightness eclipsing even Peridot's. "I just wish it wasn't so far away," he muses. "It's going to be a bit of the pain in the caboose to get you back here to help build."

You were not aware that the end cars of trains felt pain, yet somehow you understand. "It seems like there should be something we can do about that," you say.

To your surprise, Peridot bursts into conceited laughter. "Oh, come on. Isn't it obvious?" The tiny green palms turn upward. "We build a warp pad from here to Middleton!"

Drakken's jaw drops. "Can we do that?" he says, but he appears to have been affirmed already, his face aglow.

"Of course," Peridot says. "I helped build and repair warp pads back when I was an agent of Homeworld. Plus, I am very, very intelligent."

You roll your eyes but do not argue.

"Especially now that the Diamonds are on our side," Steven says. "We could ask them to help, too. I was thinking about visiting them some over the summer anyway. We've still got some stuff to work on."

Steven's face has always been covered with the same wisplike hairs that you can feel on your own face and distinguish on Dr. Drakken's when he comes close enough. Now, however, you think you see two dark wires that remind you of the kitten's whiskers curving from Steven's shining pink skin. You blink, and you cannot find them again.

A warm tongue suddenly licks your ankles, in between the gold straps that wrap around them. You lurch forward with a yelp, but you are already smiling by the time you turn around and find exactly whom you expected to find: Pumpkin.

Peridot picks her up and tries, with very little resolve, to fend off more licks with the back of her hand. "Pumpkin can come, too, right?"

"Of course!" Drakken says. "The more the merrier!" He pauses. "She is housebroken, right?"

Peridot draws herself to her full height, her body a rod. "I object to the very question! Pumpkin has never once broken a house!"

You thought the word to mean the same thing, but after hearing her speak with such certainty, you know it must have another definition.

"Does she….you know…" Drakken taps his fingertips together, eyes flitting toward Peridot and then away. "Does she go to the bathroom in the house? Like my dog does sometimes?"

Peridot scoffs. "Pumpkin is much more polite than your 'dog.' Eliminating waste isn't even in her genetic makeup."

"I wouldn't call Commodore Puddles impolite, really," Drakken says. "Just a little…leaky."

You tilt your head back to smile at the morning mist that wanders around the top of the lighthouse, depositing sparkling droplets on everything it passes. The sun is subdued at this early hour, freeing the sky to remain the color of Bismuth's skin, nothing at all like the tight white swab of pollution above Homeworld.

Earth has called the last of the mist back into its atmosphere by the time you tell Steven good-bye and wish the rest of the Crystal Gems good luck. You motion for Peridot to climb onto your back; she shakes her head, retrieves her trash can lid, and balances atop it the way you have seen Beach City's summer visitors balance atop flat fin-shaped boards, crashing ashore with the waves. Dr. Drakken fastens his safety strap and fastens Pumpkin into the opposite seat, Plastic Lazuli Hope resting beside her. Your wings lilt out as if they have never been touched by Jasper.

The three of you soar.

Air currents, though not as submissive as ocean currents, nevertheless part and fold to admit your physical form. As you fly, they come alongside you, challenging you to a race, and pull on your bob to tease you. The molecules of water vapor inside them are frivolous and affectionate, like Pumpkin, and when they give you another gentle shove, you let yourself giggle.

The expression tingles against your manufactured skin like a newly healed wound, the same strange mixture of rawness and relief. It was not so long ago, you know, that the numbness from inside would drape your face as well, a dark cloak separating the truth of you from nearly anyone who came too close, yourself included. You realize you shed that as well when you regenerated. It may try to return, as unhealthy companions often do, but there will be no room for it in you or any of the places that have become home.

Peridot gasps aloud as her trash can lid carries her over the chiseled peaks of mountains, the gentle waves of hills, and the angular edges of reflective silver buildings that reach for the undersides of the clouds. She has fallen in love with her fluid, changeable new home in a way only Peridot can. Even when you fly through a rain shower and raindrops pelt her visor at a rate you would expect to annoy her, she gazes forward with wide, misty eyes that seem to be reminiscing.

A few hours later, you fly over a cheery yellow sign that welcomes you to Middleton. You don't need to look over at Drakken to know he smiles, the fears of the past several days assuaged now that he is home; you know the feeling. You do glance at Pumpkin as she whimpers in anticipation and turns in circles on the seat, knocking Plastic Lazuli to the floor, where she will be fine.

The hovercraft leads you over the eating-place with a roof shaped like a hat, its edges scalloped up, the mall where you and Drakken once spent an afternoon, and multiple rows of houses that appear to have sprung up out of the ground, all from the same Kindergarten. Beyond a large domed building that you recognize as an observatory, the houses begin to fall out of pattern: some squat, some high and thin, their colors murky, mingled, and not fitting together well. The air smells stale, aged somehow, and it occurs to you for the first time that is one of the less affluent sectors of Middleton. If Earth has Elite equivalents, they do not live here.

One skinny, tilted brown house does stand out to you, though. There is life around it, however grimy it may be, flowers arranged in pots, birds splashing in a hollow rock propped beneath a pleasantly gnarled old tree. Your thoughts soften into memories of the couch that Mama Lipsky offered you without a second thought and the table where you sat and tried foods.

You follow in Drakken's gleeful, hopping wake, Pumpkin trailing behind Peridot, as he walks up to the front porch and presses the chime beside the door that will alert his mother to his arrival. Almost at once, the front door creaks open and Mama Lipsky's face, so similar to her son's, appears. She breaks into a smile.

Warm water laps at the sides of your gem. You did not realize you had missed her until you saw her again.

"Drewbie!" Mama Lipsky cries. She dashes out on the porch and winds her arms tightly around Dr. Drakken. "Welcome, snookums! And…oh my land…" Her focus shifts to you, and you swallow against an empty throat.

She is so small, the top of her hair not even reaching your shoulder, and yet in your mind she towers over you, becoming larger with every step she takes your direction, a guardian prepared to defend her son at any cost. You remember how her shrill voice grew fierce enough to stab when she complained about the many girls who had "broken his heart." At the time, the term made little sense to you, but the longer you pondered it, the more you realized you knew it. It is the sensation of being Destabilized not in body but in spirit. The thought of Drakken in such pain tears at you.

You step forward, the air around you growing so quiet you can hear the faint swooshing of your pants legs, and lower your head. You do not want to watch Mama Lipsky contrive a welcome for you. "Mama Lipsky," you say. "Can you ever forgive me?"

"Forgive you?" she says.

"Yes. I – I ran away from Earth. I abandoned my family. I broke your son's heart." You bite your lip. "Just like all those other girls."

Mama Lipsky's hands, as warm and plump as the fresh-made donuts Steven eats for breakfast sometimes, fold around yours. "Honey," she says, "if you were anything like them, you wouldn't even be standing here talking to me."

She stares directly at you, and as you hold her eyes with yours, you feel as though you are looking into the eyes of your teddy bear. You search her for signs of anger but find none. "So…does that mean you forgive me?" you say.

"She did come back!" Drakken adds, hope afloat in his voice, and you almost giggle at how unneeded that statement is. "She came back in Earth's darkest hour and saved, you know, basically everyone! So that gets her some points, right?"

"Also…" You flit back to the hovercraft, retrieve Plastic Lazuli from the floor, and return to the porch, holding her in front of you. "I still have her."

Mama Lipsky presses a hand to her chest, and you wonder if it has become as tender as your back.

She does not need to speak her forgiveness. It flows from her to you, and your powers rejoice inside you, just as they did when Steven healed the crack in your gem. You blink; a watercolor glow traces her outline.

"So, in celebration, we came home for a visit!" Drakken says.

Peridot cannot stay quiet any longer. Truthfully, you are amazed that she has stayed quiet as long as she has. "And me, too!" she says.

Mama Lipsky swings her head toward Peridot: the star on her shirt matching the ones on her knees, the sunburst angles of her visor, and the wide busy grin. At one point, it would have embarrassed you.

"This is our friend Peridot," Drakken says before she can ask. "She came with us."

Mama Lipsky backs up and motions for your group to join her inside. Drakken locks the door behind him.

Peridot scrutinizes Mama Lipsky with even more fascination than Mama Lipsky scrutinized her. "Greetings, Mother Drakken," she says.

You roll your eyes. "Peridot…that's not her name."

"It's not?" Peridot steps closer to Mama Lipsky until there is not so much as an inlet of space between them. "How?"

You grab her elbow and tug her back to you.

"It's Mama Lipsky," Drakken says, his eyes agitating between his mother and Peridot. "Because….my given name is Drew Lipsky. Dr. Drakken is my chosen name."

Peridot nods as though she understands. You find yourself nodding too. Drakken has told you there are other Drews in the world, though they are likely not related and they do not necessarily have anything in common other than their names – more evidence of Earth's fluidity. You like knowing that there is, however, only one Dr. Drakken.

"He's not even a doctor," you say. "He's smart enough to be one, but that's not his job."

For a man who boasts of his intelligence every time he sees an opportunity, Dr. Drakken gazes at you in surprising awe after the compliment. His hands twiddle at his waist. "Where you have been all my life?" he says.

You shrug. "In a mirror, mostly."

"So – you like 'Dr. Drakken' better?" Peridot says.

"Yes." Drakken glances backward at his mother and leans in. "She's one of the only people who still calls me 'Drew.'"

"Actually," you say, "she usually calls him 'Drewbie.'"

A pink path bridges Drakken's sharp cheekbones, and you frown. If you had known your words would do that to him, you would have found others to use.

"Yes, she does," Drakken says, in a whisper hoarse and straining to not become louder. "And there were more than a few children who teased me ruthlessly for it back in my school days."

You picture Drakken in an Academy classroom, at Steven's size, being taunted by other small humans with Agate-hard faces. "Why?" you say with a rough laugh. "Did they not have moms or something?"

"They did…" Drakken begins.

"Just not moms as nice as yours," Peridot says. She folds her arms with finality. "You must be very special to have acquired a nickname."

Drakken blushes deeper and rubs at his face with the back of his wrist. "Aww, shucks," he says, his voice engulfed in a rare humility. He slides his left hand into his pocket and pulls out his phone; with a flip, it opens, and he winces at what appears on the screen. "Ngggh…looks like I missed a lot of phone calls. Apparently even my upgraded coverage doesn't extend beyond this solar system."

Peridot gives a sympathetic sigh. "One of the only things I still miss about Homeworld is their superior technology."

You remain silent for a moment, then shake your head. "I like Earth tech better."

Drakken punches a button, and the phone plays back a mildly distorted recording of Shego's voice that reminds you of interplanetary transmissions from Era 1, when the most complicated communication device in use was a Wailing Stone and you knew how to operate one. "Hey, Dr. D," she says. "Just checking in. You said you were going to a wedding and it's been, like, a week, sooo….did you get invited on the honeymoon, too, or what is actually happening?"

You have never heard of a honeymoon, but Shego's teasing tone laughs at the idea that it would include Drakken. Since Ruby and Sapphire were kind enough to invite him to their ceremony, then a honeymoon must be either something very private or something which would not interest him at all.

Taking another step onto threadbare carpet, you scan your surroundings until you glimpse your reflection in a pane of glass further down the hallway, exactly where you remember it being. You roll your shoulders back, press your feet together, and stare your image in the eye until your body once more believes itself solid.

"Looks like we should swing by Shego's house and tell her the good news," Drakken says, grinning. "The news in question, of course, being that you two are coming to stay here for a while!" His eyes suddenly cringe as they travel to his mother. "Errr…they can stay here, can't they?"

Mama Lipsky's hands fly to her soft hips. "Drewbie! Haven't we had a talk about not bringing your friends over without asking first?"

"Ummmm….no. We haven't." Drakken's buoy-words are tentative. "I never had any friends."

"Well, you've got some now!" Peridot says.

"Yeah. And you'll never be able to get rid of us," you add. Since he does not startle at the sound of your voice, you chance hugging his back; the tension in it dissipates under your touch.

Mama Lipsky smiles. "Of course you can stay, dears."

"Oh! We also have a pet!" Peridot turns around to grab Pumpkin and holds her out to Mama Lipsky. "Her name is Pumpkin! And don't worry, because she does not break houses. Or do bathroom things indoors."

"Or do bathroom things at all," you say. "Because she's a pumpkin."

Mama Lipsky's face twists in confusion, but she extends an arm in Pumpkin's direction. Pumpkin twitches forward and runs her tongue over the backs of Mama Lipsky's fingers, and Mama Lipsky's face smooths. Drakken stands at her side, delighted, and in their closeness the similarity between them is even more striking. How nice it must be to share a face with someone you love.

Peridot lets out a cheer when Mama Lipsky nods.

Shego's house is on the side of town farthest away from Mama Lipsky's and the opposite of Mama Lipsky's in every way: stout and solid, built low to the ground, and well-thatched on top. Painted the color of damp sand, it has no porch to speak of, only a stone pathway that leads from the driveway to the door, where it ends in three short steps. "Get behind me – I want this to be a surprise!" Drakken instructs you from the first step, so you stand on the second step while Peridot obediently positions herself on the third.

Drakken presses the welcome-chime. Shego throws open the front door. From behind Drakken, you can see only the edges of her hair, but you have no trouble hearing her when she says, "Hey! He lives!"

"Absolutely, of course! Errr, sorry about making you worry like that," Drakken says. "I was in outer space."

"Of course you were." You imagine Shego's lips jerking to the side, that quick, indefinite smile you remember. "Visiting relatives?"

"Noooo," Drakken says. "And I have good news for you!" His voice is gleeful; he rocks up to his toes and back to his heels so rapidly you are afraid he will fall. He does stumble as he steps aside to reveal you, and you clutch his sleeve before he can hit the ground.

Shego's lips don't jerk this time. They spread into a complete smile, the largest you have ever seen on her face, and you know you are looking at something as rare and precious as a Sapphire. She comes over and drapes a sinuous arm across your shoulders. "Well, welcome back, squirt!"

"Hi, Shego." Your back tingles; the pressure of her strength actually feels like an exoneration. Behind you, you can feel Peridot pacing back and forth, and you motion her forward. "And I brought a friend."

Peridot steps closer and runs one of her long, evaluative gazes over Shego. "I appreciate your greenness," is the first thing she says.

Shego snickers. "Is that a pick-up line?"

"Negative," Peridot says. "Lines are one-dimensional objects and cannot be picked up without matter conversion."

Shego looks at Drakken over Peridot's head. "Wow, Doc, are you sure this one isn't your girlfriend?"

"Positive." Drakken seems to shiver at the thought.

"I am Peridot 5XG," Peridot informs Shego. "You may call me Peridot."

Shego pauses as if to consider that, though you know she is only playing with Peridot. "Hmmm, no. I think I'm gonna call you Nerdlet."

"That is your prerogative," Peridot says. "Are you, in fact, the Shego, Dr. Drakken's best friend of whom he speaks so highly?"

There is another pause, this one shorter and tinted with a genuine thoughtfulness. "Yeah, I guess that's me," Shego says at last.

Drakken beams, the sunlight sparkling off his brilliant teeth.

"Okay – so – there's got to be a story here." Shego nods toward you. "And I bet you'd tell it a lot less annoyingly than Little Mr. Ramble."

"Ramble?" Drakken pulls his neck taut. "Me, ramble? How dare you! I don't ramble! Well, maybe I do, a little bit, sometimes, but only in matters of great importance, and this matter is greatly –"

"My point exactly." Shego squeezes her fingers together in front of Drakken's mouth and turns back to you. "Lapis? Take it away, babe."

You look down at your new shoes and then up again, the weight of attention uneasy on your backbone. Over her shoulder, you see furniture as square and sharp as the tallest shining buildings you passed on your way here, its dull, nondescript color enlivened with splashes of green and black. You fill your chest with Earth air and say, "Do you know why I left in the first place?"

You do not look at Peridot when you say this. Although you know she has forgiven you, the reminder of how you hurt her makes you cast your eyes away from hers.

"I think so," Shego says. "Here, let me see if I've got this right so far.

"Down here, there's Steven, the little Boy Wonder who rescued you. And up there –" Shego aims a finger at the sky – "are the Diamond space goddesses who can destroy other planets by, like, breathing on them. And they've got it out for him because ten thousand years ago his mom was the one who started a war – and, oh yeah, I think she bumped one of them off when she did it, too?"

"There's actually a really long story about that," you say – quickly, before Peridot can begin to correct her. "But we don't need to talk about that right now."

Drakken jumps down from the top step onto the grass below, flinging his arms as widely apart as he can. "Yes, and get this! Just tod – no, yester – no, sometime since I saw you last, I found out that all those years ago, the Diamonds wiped out Steven's mom's entire army!"

"Really?" Shego says, looking at you rather than Drakken. "You mean like – ?" She pretends to run a long fingernail across her neck, a gesture you know humans use to replace words too terrible to speak.

You shake your head. "Almost worse, actually. They wiped their memories and turned them into wild monsters. It's called 'Corruption.' So their old friends had to hunt them down and destroy their bodies and then put their gems in these protective bubbles so they couldn't grow back…you know…like that…"

Your voice trails away. The Corrupted Gems suffered in many ways more than you did, and someday you will stop envying the time they spent entombed in bubbles, unconscious of the changing of the stars above them.

"Yikes." Though Shego does not sound frightened, you see a catch in her ordinarily smooth forehead. "Sounds like a pretty legit reason to take off."

You study her eyes: they are hard, substantial, as though they would sooner crack than overflow under pressure; but they are also open and bright, absorbing your story.

"So what made you come back?" Shego says.

"I got a distress call from Steven," you say. "The Diamonds showed up and tried to rip the planet apart with a superweapon they planted in Earth's crust ages ago. And I knew I couldn't leave him to die. Him or anyone else I love."

Shego's eyes clear, disabling a security system so deftly installed that you did not notice it before it vanished, and you imagine her making her own vow the night the Lorwardians invaded.

"Well, since Earth still seems to be intact, you know, more or less – I guess the good guys won?" Shego grunts. "When did that start being a thing I want to see happen?"

"We won, all right!" Peridot blurts. "And Steven got the other Diamonds to heal the Corruptions, so they're not raging beasts anymore! So now there are so many Crystal Gems even I lost count!"

Shego holds up a hand. "Whoa. They're not all coming to Middleton, are they?"

"No," you say. "We've got a friend –" the words slide out as though they are true, and maybe they could be – "who's building an immigrant community for us. They're going to call it 'Little Homeworld.' We're just staying with Mama Lipsky until our new house is ready.

"I may have used the old one as a weapon against the Diamonds," you add, letting the hint of a smile peek through.

Shego's brows lift. "Nice."

You glance back and forth between her understated aggression and Dr. Drakken's boastful frailty, and it occurs to you that their relationship is, in a sense, a human version of Opal's incarnation: formed of two people who crash their way through each other's lives, bickering and staggering and flailing, different at their cores yet ultimately, forever linked in their aims.

At Shego's suggestion, Drakken once again fishes out his phone and calls Ron's house to make sure he and Kim are there before he leads you over there. You pad up beside him and whisper into his free ear, "Tell them I'm bringing a friend. And she's really new to Earth, so I apologize if she says anything weird or inappropriate."

"Righty-o!" he responds, and you laugh. He has a wellspring of Earth phrases, from which he continues to draw new ones that do not take nearly as long to be understood as they once did.

The driveway where the hovercraft touches down belongs to the Stoppables, Ron's family, yet it is Kim who greets you at the front door before Dr. Drakken has even unstrapped his safety harness. Her smile brightens an expression already lively and alert, her arms held out to you in bewildering hospitality. You think back to all the time Drakken spent launching strikes against her, and there is something more than her bravery you want to emulate.

"Lapis! Oh my gosh, it's so good to see you again," she says, each word a cool jet of water in the muggy air.

"I've never been so happy to see an alien," Ron says. You turn to smirk at him; the wariness with which he once looked at you has evaporated, leaving behind a kind, silly face, an even younger version of Drakken's. His tiny pink pet squeaks in agreement from his pocket.

"Yeah," you say. "Glad to be back." You turn and indicate Peridot, whose eyes skim across Kim and Ron as though she is reading a wall of text: a look that can seem pragmatic and impersonal but isn't, not on her. "Um, guys, this is Peridot." You hesitate for only a moment before you explain, "She's… my best friend."

Peridot's eyes expand and glimmer with sunlight and adoration. A squeak comes out of her, sounding remarkably like the pet's, and she clamps her arms around you.

"Peridot, this is Kim Possible. And this –" you mimic Dr. Drakken's dramatic mannerisms as you gesture to the boy whose name is truly not that difficult to remember – "is Ron Stoppable."

Ron gapes at you for several moments before he regains his composure. Tranquility pools between your shoulder blades, as it always does when you have made someone happy.

"She's good for him," Ron says, nodding. "I always said she was good for him."

"You so did not." Kim gives him a playful shove.

Their gazes fuse, and you feel yourself disappearing into the background, a dot in the corners of their eyes. If Drakken and Shego are Opal, then Kim and Ron are Garnet: everything between them speaks of ease and familiarity, even their disagreements. The fact that these humans have existed for less than two decades makes this more astonishing still.

Kim breaks away first. "Well, don't just stand there. Come on in." She holds the door open wider, allowing the three of you entrance. Inside, the house feels smooth and dry, protected from the summertime heat by draped windows and walls that deflect light. "So, Lapis? What brought you back?"

You shuffle your feet. "Well, it was the same thing that drove me away. The Diamonds. They –" you glance to Drakken for help.

He is more than willing to pick up the story. "The Diamonds showed up on Earth! Uninvited! On a mission to unleash the Cluster!"

"That's a biological superweapon they implanted in the Earth's crust over five thousand years ago," Peridot interjects.

"O-kay," Kim says.

"The Crystal Gems fought them valiantly!" Drakken continues. "With my help, of course. But Blue Diamond has a very nasty superpower. She can make any other Gem cry when she cries, regardless of whether or not they actually feel sorry for her! I, naturally, was immune, but the Diamonds are something like twenty stories high. A little difficult to fight off by yourself."

"Understandable." Kim exchanges an amused look with Ron.

Drakken rubs his palms together. "Blue Diamond held them all in her cruel grip! And then, just when all hope seemed lost, when the Earth had almost begun to accept its doom, a water droplet fell on Blue Diamond's head! We all looked up, and it was this incredible little lady right here!" The arm gently encircles you, nudging you forward, and you blush. "Using a lake to suspend the barn she and Peridot had been living in.

"And then, nobly sacrificing everything she owned in this world, she hurled the barn onto Blue Diamond's head, breaking her hold over the other Gems in the vicinity!" Pride flourishes in Drakken's voice. "By the time Blue Diamond was able to stand up again, Lapis had already thrown herself in front of her friends, summoned the ocean, and prepared to do battle with the woman who had frightened her so!"

You blush deeper. "He's really making it sound more impressive than it was."

Drakken shakes his head, his ponytail beating back and forth. His small hand comes to rest on your wrist, uncorrupted by possessiveness. "No – it really was this impressive."

"Agreed," Peridot says at once. She leans closer to Kim and Ron, searching them with her eyes again. "So – you two are what they refer to on Earth as an 'item'?"

It takes you a second to remember what that means: two humans so close that they are almost one human, usually a boyfriend and a girlfriend. It has been too long since you last watched Camp Pining Hearts.

"Yep," Ron says.

"Do you kiss?" Peridot says.

"We've been known to." Kim's eyes twinkle down at Peridot.

"Will you demonstrate for me?"

You somehow resist the urge to bury your face in your hands and shapeshift yourself to the size of an insect. Instead, you direct a stern stare at Peridot. "Peridot, you can't just ask people to kiss! Not just so you can watch."

"But we watch it on Camp Pining Hearts all the time!" Peridot protests.

"Yeah, because those are just pretend people. These people are real. And there's probably a whole ton of kissing etiquette when it comes to real people." You glance at Kim. "Right?"

Kim alights on the arm of the couch. You watch her lips, expecting to see them pulled tight and whitened, but humor plays over them as she says, "Uh, yeah. Absolutely."

"Fascinating." Peridot inches even further forward. "Would anyone care to explain this etiquette to me?"

Kim turns away, hiding her laughter behind a flow of hair.

Ron, however, eases himself against the sofa cushion and shores his chin on the back of his hand, regarding Peridot somberly. "I probably could. I mean, I had a lot of the same questions, back when I was, you know, an amateur. But now I consider myself something of a kissing expert."

Kim stands up, takes your elbow, and beckons you to the kitchen where you and Ron first learned to understand one another. Dr. Drakken follows, hanging in the kitchen doorway, halfway attuned to you and halfway to Peridot and Ron's conversation.

"Okay, we're out here for three reasons," Kim says without even giving you the chance to ask. "Because I didn't think you were super excited to listen to that, and because I absolutely COULDN'T listen to it without guffawing myself to death, and because I wanted the chance to comment on your new duds." She slants forward across the table and smiles at the lopsided star on your shirt. "You look SO adorable."

You glance down at what must be your new "duds" – your new clothes, the only visible difference about you – and wind the string on your new pants around your finger. "Thanks. I was really hoping you'd like them. I based them off your mission outfit. Your old one." Shyness coats your words but does not stop them. "Because I wanted to be brave like you."

It is the deepest thing you have ever shared with Kim, and you do not regret it when her eyebrows bend inward, the sight of a person hit with an unexpected emotion. You know the feeling well. "Aww, Lapis," she says. "Thanks. Where'd you get them?"

"I created them in the innermost depths of my consciousness," you tell her.

Kim blinks. "Spankin'. Mine came from Club Banana."

You know that name from a sign at the Middleton mall. "Is that…a clothes store?" you ask. "Because it sounds like it should sell banana costumes."

Dr. Drakken chuckles. "Yes! Thank you! I've always wondered why a clothing store named after bananas doesn't stock human-sized peels among their apparel!"

Kim puts her fingers to her temples. "It's kind of…hard to explain." She nods to you. "I'm really sorry about your barn. Believe me, I know what that feels like."

You think back to the empty space on the street the first time you flew over it, and you remember how much the attack that redeemed Drakken took from her. "Yeah," you say, trying to shrug and failing. "It's a bummer."

"Yup." Kim sighs and pulls back a short, level plastic covering from the kitchen window. "Not that I'm complaining. Our new place is just about ready. Take a look."

You join her at the window. The barren square down the street has been filled with not just an outline but an entire structure, vulnerable and unfinished yet strong and proud. Limp strips of paper press against the walls in the scant breeze, but they hold no more bizarre pits and veers, only spaces left open for doors and windows. Soon Kim, too, will have a new house to make her own.

Heat shimmers in through the window, intense enough that sweat pops out from under your newly reknit skin, yet it does not feel as scorching and invasive as it did on Homeworld. Though you miss the salinity of beach air, you accept this town that has come to accept you.

"Yeah, you see, after someone really is your girlfriend, you don't usually have to ask for permission to kiss her anymore," Ron says from the adjacent room. "Unless she's in a really bad mood or somethin'."

"Describe the symptoms of this 'bad mood,'" Peridot says. You picture her hunched forward and intent, typing furiously on her tablet.

"Whoa! Not easy, dudette. It can look like all kinds of different things," Ron says. You don't have to see Peridot to know she frowns; she has dealt in absolutes for so long that the uncertainty of Earth is still a wilderness to her at times. "My rule of thumb is: better than safe than sorry."

"What are the rules of your other fingers?"

Kim slips back into her chair and folds her legs. "Anyway," she says, over their bizarre conversation, "I was in the middle of finals when Wade beeped me and said we'd been invaded by giant nasty aliens – you know, again." You don't know what finals are; they sound grave but don't appear to have harmed Kim. "I was still trying to get the prof to let me go when Wade called BACK and was like, 'LOL, never mind.' So whatever you guys did, it worked crazy-well."

There is something powerful about her approval: if she were a Gem, she would be a Sapphire.

Drakken runs his hand down the back of his disarranged hair. "Well, I don't like to brag…"

"Pfft! Since when?" Kim says.

"Since I became the world's greatest and humblest hero." Drakken examines his hand, fanned out in front of him, then reels it back and claps his forehead. "Gah. That was bragging, wasn't it?"

"Little bit, yeah," Kim says, her green eyes soft and shining. Although she doesn't move, her concentration seems to tip toward Drakken.

That is the only permission he needs to begin a thunderous recounting of the frightful battle on the beach, the harrowing journey to Homeworld, and the beauty of the healed Corruptions, once again greatly exaggerating your role in all of these. You lean back into the quiet of your own being and watch his genial face glisten, sober, and crease with the story. That Kim's attention is riveted to him only magnifies his joy.

When at last he is done, the sticks on the kitchen clock now positioned at new numbers, Kim grins and her eyes move gently from Drakken to you. "Congrats, guys. Believe me, it's WAY good to know there's another crime-fighting couple around town."

Drakken's chest swells even as his head lowers, an odd combination.

A placid stillness descends over the room, dispelled as usual by Peridot as she squawks, "Wait. But if two people do kiss, am I allowed to watch them?"

"I mean, if they know you're there and they decide to kiss anyway, yeah, you can look. But don't, like, come right up next to them and take notes or anything, 'cuz that will get you slapped," Ron says, his voice sagging with experience. "Usually by the girl. Sometimes by the guy."

Kim bursts out laughing, and you see no reason not to join her. She reaches across the table and folds her warm fingers around your cold ones, a contrast that you are surprised to appreciate without despairing of the fact that you cannot offer her the same in return.

"Welcome home, Lapis," she whispers.

She does not say with the grandeur and the bombastic flair of Dr. Drakken, and perhaps it is the very simplicity that gives rise to the sting in your throat. Every flippant thought washes away, and you find yourself smiling at this girl who is also afloat between homes.

"Thanks," you say, the word shy for want of a hiding place. Yet you remember flying to the warp pad on Kanatar; you remember placing your hand on Blue Pearl's shoulder; you remember holding Jasper's eyes until she glanced away; and you no longer wish to hide.

When you arrive back at Mama Lipsky's at twilight, an odor that you recognize as cooked human food greets you as soon as the door opens. Drakken's nose begins to twitch and he breaks into his enormous, staggering grin, running for the kitchen. "Mother! Did you cook?" he cries.

Mama Lipsky props the kitchen door open, her body swathed in a white cloth that ties at the back of her neck as your shirt used to. Her hands flit about in the air, more genteel replicas of her son's. "It's just some very plain chicken," she says. "I didn't have time to prepare anything on such short notice. Because my son didn't even warn me beforehand we were having company."

For a moment her eyes flash. Drakken doesn't seem to notice. He stoops to kiss his mother on the cheek. "Mother, even TV dinners taste better when you defrost them."

"Chicken," Peridot repeats. Her brows lower. "As in 'why did the chicken cross the road'?"

"Yes!" Drakken outruns you to the answer. "It's a type of meat."

"So it is our job to 'eat' it?" Peridot says. You nod at her.

Drakken picks up a plate and dashes to the stove, picking up a slab of pale meat with the assistance of a device that resembles an oversized pair of scissors with whorls on the end in place of blades. Before you can even walk across the kitchen, he has filled his plate and dropped into a seat at the table, swiping his tongue across lips already dripping and eager.

You curve your fingers around the handles of the bladeless scissors and stir them around in a sweet-smelling liquid. They prove to be not nearly as bulky as they look, and after two or three tries, you nab a smallish selection of meat and hoist it from the pot, where it comes to rest at a skew on your plate. It is hardly an accomplishment, but Drakken applauds for you anyway.

Peridot stalks toward Drakken; the table conceals all but her face. "So – we're supposed to mash this up with our teeth and then shove it down our throats?"

Drakken's fork clatters to the table. "Suddenly, I'm not that hungry anymore," he mutters.

"Peri-dot!" You come to stand beside Mama Lipsky and speak to the top of her head; you can't make contact with the glossed black eyes that surely look insulted. "I'm sorry. She's never really eaten before."

"It is neither necessary nor instinctual to our species," Peridot says. Her voice is as straightforward as ever, but it does hold a hint of apology.

"Oh. Well…" Mama Lipsky blinks, her gaze roaming the table. "That's quite all right, dear."

Peridot folds her arms behind her back. "You all can go ahead and 'eat.' I will simply observe." She stands at Drakken's elbow and fixes him with a stare sharp as one of the knives on the table.

Drakken picks up his fork; the handle disappears inside a tight fist. You cannot blame him. Were eating obligatory for you and had you Drakken's self-consciousness, you would not want it monitored by eyes as analytical as Peridot's.

"Okay. That's enough." You summon your wings, scoop Peridot up in your arms, and push open the door to the living room, where you deposit her on the couch. "There. Now you can see us if you want to. But we don't have to see you."

"Why wouldn't you want to see me?" Peridot says.

"Because you're watching us eat. It's rude."

"Like watching people kiss?"

"Something like that." You give her a scowl, mostly in jest, and walk back through the swinging door.

Dr. Drakken spears a piece of chicken meat with his fork and slides it into his mouth. His eyes close as a delighted moan drifts from his throat. "Like I said, Mother makes everything taste better. I'm a good cook," he tells you, "but I can't quite capture her unique touch. Even when I've methodically recreated her entire cooking process! Accounted for every variable! Therefore, I have come to the conclusion that my mother has mystic powers."

You raise your eyebrows at him, and he chuckles. "I know that sounds rather unlike me. But think! Mystic…ness is just stuff that science can't explain yet! Heck, a thousand years ago, gravity was mystic!"

"You'd think the humans would have noticed they weren't floating away before then," Peridot says from the living room.

"Oh, we knew we were stuck on the ground," Drakken replies. "We just didn't have a clue why.

"Maybe it's love," he says, his face vacant. "That makes Mother's food taste best, that is."

You bring a napkin to your mouth to hide a smile and take a bite of chicken. While you have seen love in someone's eyes, heard it in someone's voice, and felt it in someone's clumsy touch, you are not sure if it's something you can smell or taste. This variety of meat, though, does have a subtler flavor than the ham and a wetness that squeezes your taste buds like a delicate hug. If it is not love you taste, it is still pleasant enough.

At the end of the meal, Mama Lipsky pulls a blue tub from the refrigerator. You recognize its shape, indented on the sides with a flat, elongated top. As soon as she opens it, you inhale its faint scent, and you are pulled back in time, feeling all of it again as though for the first time: the boardwalk's wood, just beginning to cool after a long day of sunshine; the chair cushion's scratching, frayed fabric; the diffident, lonesome Lapis's slight hesitation as she risked showing Drakken what little trust she had left to give. It will always be your favorite food, even if you should find something that tastes better someday.

Drakken devours two bowlfuls of ice cream with much more gusto than your small licks and ends up slanted backward in his chair, stroking a faint stomach protrusion. Mama Lipsky suggests playing a game of some kind while he recuperates from his food enthusiasm, and Peridot leaps into the room to share the card game Greg taught you both, the one where you go fishing for pairs. Peridot ends up winning and tosses the entire card-deck into the air in celebration.

You avoid looking at Mama Lipsky this time as well; you would rather not see her eyes arrive at the conclusion that Peridot will be nothing but a hassle. You simply nudge Peridot, then bend over and begin picking up cards. Peridot throws herself onto the floor as though anticipating a Nova Blast and scrambles to gather as many cards as she can fit into her diminutive hands.

Not long afterward, the sky is dark and the day is done. You once felt that Earth-days concluded so quickly, even at their most prolonged in the summer, but now it feels like a year has passed since you fell asleep on the beach surrounded by your fellow Crystal Gems.

"You had better get yourself on home and to bed, Mr. Drewbie," Mama Lipsky says, patting her son's cheek. "My goodness, look at those bags under your eyes. I know how much you love your work, but you've got to get more rest than you're getting right now. I know that; you know that; we all know it…"

You don't see any bags on Drakken's face, only the black semicircles you have always known, and you try to imagine how he would look without them: wide and dark, they suit his eyes quite well.

Drakken puts one hand on the doorknob and then turns and gives you a long, aching look. His fingers tie around yours as if they are lifelines and the sea will carry him away if he lets go.

But you are in control of the sea, and it is not taking either of you anywhere.

You put your hand on Drakken's arm, feeling the jump of his pulse. "It's okay. You can go. I'll still be here in the morning." You swallow. "I won't leave you again."

A trembling line bisects Drakken's chin. He clears his throat. "But if, say, the house should catch on fire, you know it's okay to flee then, right?"

You shrug. "If the house catches on fire, I can just rip up one of those fire hydrant things and dump water on it until everything's okay."

For a drawn-out moment, Drakken stares you right in the eyes, the type of look that would make you uncomfortable were it not so familiar and so fluid with admiration. "All right," he says at last. He rests his hand on top of yours, hugging it with his, and lets go in short, uncertain twitches. "Good night. I love you so much."

"I love you too," you say.

Drakken takes a deep, preparatory breath and then steps out into the darkness, clicking the front door shut behind him. You hear his footsteps hop down the porch steps and listen to them clamber across the driveway. He is racing ahead of his doubts, and you hope it will not prove too much for his outstretched stomach.

You turn away from the door and silently wish him a restful night of sleep, whether it changes his face or not.

"Well, I better be getting on to bed, too, so I won't be a hypocrite." Mama Lipsky laughs like a happy dolphin for a minute, and then she eyes you and Peridot, a warning ripple on her brow. "You ladies ought to get some sleep, too."

"We don't need to sleep," Peridot says, barely glancing up from her tablet.

"No, but we can settle down for the night. Right, Peridot?" you add, prompting her with your eyes.

Peridot bobs her head several times. "Affirmative."

Mama Lipsky stares at Peridot. You are surprised by the look on her face: it is the look humans adopt when they are confronted by a species vastly different from their own, though she has never directed it at you. You don't want Peridot to notice.

She does not appear to. "Wow thanks for welcoming us into your dwelling establishment," she tells Mama Lipsky.

Mama Lipsky's expression, while still puzzled, gives way to the smile you have come to love. "Oh, of course. Good night, dears."

Dawn breaks in your gem, casting invisible shimmers down your spine. "Good night, Mama Lipsky," you say.

She disappears down the hallway, the flat surfaces of her shoes tapping against the floor. You hike yourself up onto the couch; you are light as seafoam, a feeling you had all but forgotten as soon as news of the Rebellion reached you. The couch's padding is thin, its strength dubious, and its support unquestionable, much like Dr. Drakken himself. Peridot sits down on the far left cushion at your feet. "Can we talk now?" she says.

"Yeah. But – quietly," you whisper.

There is a pause, and then Peridot speaks again in a voice that is probably as close to quiet as it will ever get, and even at that it reminds you of air being pressed out of a beach ball. "It's so cool how you're not afraid anymore!"

The words strike you like an errant rock. You reach for the truth you have so long avoided, and it approaches you as though you have never mishandled it. "Who says I'm not afraid?" you say with a snort.

"Oh."

"Look, I get it," you say. "There's not a lot of people left to be afraid of. The Diamonds are on our side. Jasper's gone. We're not at war anymore, finally." You remember peril from a distance, and that is how it feels when you view it – not numb, not deadened, but distant, as though you are watching a character's struggle on an episode of Camp Pining Hearts you have already seen, sympathetic to their predicament but understanding how it inevitably ends.

"Can I tell you a secret?" Peridot asks.

It surprises you more that Peridot has a secret than that she wants to share it with you. "Sure."

Peridot glances over both shoulders as though you are being spied upon and then leans in so that her hair brushes your chin. "Even after everything that happened yesterday, I still don't fully trust Yellow Diamond."

You almost laugh aloud. "Of course you don't! She blew you apart." You touch the top of her head. "Which was like something out of a nightmare for me. I don't even fully trust Blue, and she's a lot nicer than Yellow."

A chasm between enmity and trust exists inside you and every other being, with the possible exception of Steven. There the Diamonds will reside, for at least a human's lifetime if not a Gem's as well.

"That is fair." Peridot lets out a nasally sigh.

"Just…living can be scary," you continue. "Earth life is so fragile. And the more I come to love it, the scarier that gets."

Peridot inches still closer and regards you with worried eyes.

"But I'm done running away," you say, and you feel light at the core of your gem once more. "This is home."

"Even without the barn?" Peridot says.

For only a second, you consider this. "Yeah. Weirdly enough, yeah. I miss the barn, but…believe me, I know what it feels like not to have a home. And that's not what this is."

You remember that all too well: the stars outside your wingless scope, Homeworld a twinkle in the faraway sky; each new minute you spent away from it deepened the crack until you were sure you'd been dashed to pieces, the pain beyond anything a soft Gem like you could endure. It will always be a memory, but you have begun to believe it will never be anything more.

The dimmed lamplight rinses Peridot's face, rubbing away its sharper angles, as she bends down and pulls Pumpkin into her lap, just the size for a comfortable fit. "There is an ancient human expression which states 'Home is where the heart is.' When I first heard that, it confused me, because I thought it meant home was here." She presses her fingers to the left side of her chest.

You have to lie down and close your eyes at the energy running through her voice. "But it doesn't," you say. You are balanced on the surface of contentment as water bugs balance atop the surfaces of ponds, and if you have to listen to Peridot methodically explain a truth you already carry inside you, it will break the surface tension for certain. With a sigh, you gather Plastic Lazuli Hope close and let your head list to the side, and even though you are landlocked, you feel the stilling of the sea.

"No, it doesn't," Peridot agrees. "It means that when you…Oh." The lively little voice stumbles and lowers without stopping. "Good night, Lapis."

You smile. "'Night, Peridot," you say, and the tide, soothing and affectionate, washes you to another place.

Inside of it, you encounter a smeared, unreal scene with shocking glimpses of verisimilitude: Garnet against a black sky, Pearl touching her hand to her forehead and pulling out a five-pronged spear, and Steven in his fancy clothing dancing around on green sand. Once again you hold the barn in the air, cross your arms, and heave it at Blue Diamond's head. This time, however, at the moment of impact, the barn does not smash but dissipate, into a fine reddish mist above the ocean. When you land, it descends to embrace you and Peridot and is absorbed into your gem and hers, a weapon to be stored away until you need it.

Even after you awaken and recognize your surroundings, the dream clings to you in specks, keeping your footsteps even lighter and more thoughtful than they would already be.

It is just past dawn. Pale lines of sunlight tip through the living's room window, high on the wall that faces outward, and the room, though not soundless, is empty of human noise; Mama Lipsky must not have woken up yet. The world seems soft and delicate, an ocean without boats or distractions and a welcome respite from the pandemonium of the last several days.

The skinny paddles on the overhead fan churn the warm air as you wander the living room. It looks just as you remember it: narrow and tall like the rest of the house and slightly off-keel, with an inexact center; a slope to its walls beneath patterned paper; and exposed eaves, all of which would undoubtedly drive Pearl crazy. You take in the solitude the way Dr. Drakken's flowers take in sunlight and devote a moment to holding it before you pack it away in your gemstone and turn to face the day.

You push open the kitchen door and step inside. Midway across the floor, you see a silver spring right before your foot can come down on it, and you stop. Your wings pop out uneasily, sending you backward as you rise to the ceiling and look around the room.

In front of the stove where Mama Lipsky cooked chicken meat last night, a fat conical tube about the length of your forearm rocks back and forth on the floor. It looks familiar to you, and you soon recognize it as the chamber on a piece of machinery that tears food apart and turns it to liquid much faster than humans can with their teeth and their digestion. Sprawled around it are serrated gears, jagged planes, and rounded scraps, some plastic and some metal, as though a strong wind blew the machine apart in the night.

Yet the cabinet beside the stove hangs open, its contents parted, creating a safe path for something to be dragged free. You fly over to get a closer look and spot a simple tool with a wizened metallic tip and a firm plastic handle; what they are called, you do not know, but you have seen humans use them.

You have seen Peridot use them.

You groan. Last night Mama Lipsky seemed unsure what to make of Peridot's idiosyncrasies. This will not help.

Although you doubt Mama Lipsky would ever raise a hand to you, and she would be no match for you physically even if she did, that is not the possibility that stiffens your back. You think of Mama Lipsky, kind enough to accept the two of you into her home despite her experiences with other extraterrestrial life that attacked her planet and kidnapped her son. To repay her hospitality by scavenging her kitchen is discourteous at best.

The kitchen's rear door leads to a short brown passage, not quite a room in itself. On one side, a steep flight of steps marches down to a cavernous opening where you think you remember having seen Mama Lipsky wash her clothing. On the other, a door that teeters on its hinges opens to another lawn in back, this one filled with dark green plants, a few thin trees, and pools of stagnant water separating the grass from the fence.

It is anyone's guess where Peridot might have gone. You want to find her and drag her back to the kitchen to reassemble the food-chopping machine before Drakken's mother wakes up, yet how much worse will it look if she arrives in the kitchen to find the machine dismantled and both of you missing?

You retract your wings and drop lightly to the floor beside the pile of scraps. You were Taught to recognize and operate a few machines back on Homeworld, though not to build them – a skill considered unnecessary for Lapis Lazulis. But Homeworld at its most primitive still overshadows Earth at its most advanced, and you cross your legs in front of you and pick up the cone, bald and barefoot without its lid or its base.

The lid lies only a few centimeters away and easily clamps again to the top of the cone with one twist and a light press from your palms. You glance around until you locate the endpiece that chops and guide your hands under its plastic support, careful to keep your fingers away from the blades that jut forth like propellers. It is quick to slide back in, but with nothing below it to hold it in place, it is just as quick to slide back out.

You turn the cone upside down so the endpiece doesn't slide out and look around the room again. The black electric box which forms the base of the machine has skidded, as though kicked, into the opposite corner and been split open. Disconnected wires stretch outward, tendrils of seaweed waving in the current.

With a sigh, you skim your fingertips over the riot of springs and gears in search of anything that can heal this crack. You are still sifting when the back door opens. You recognize Peridot's reckless footsteps and when you look up she is there, Pumpkin at her heels. A round black probe spins above her head, a red light blinking at the end of a long, slim stalk.

"What are you doing?" Peridot says.

"What am I doing?" You direct a stern stare at Peridot and point to her probe. "You didn't have that last night!"

"My drone and I have just finished securing the perimeters."

"You took this apart to build it." You wave the box of wires at her. "Why?"

"It was preliminary."

"Which is a fancy way of saying nobody needs it right now!" you say, throwing your arms into the air.

She blinks at you.

"Peri-dot," you say, "you can't just go tearing other people's stuff up just to get parts for your machines. Especially not Mama Lipsky's. We want her to like us."

A crimp forms between Peridot's eyes, and for a moment you expect her to say she doesn't understand the correlation between disassembling others' belongings and not being liked by them. "So…if she finds out, will Mama Lipsky be mad at us?"

"Mad?" You shake your head. "She'll be disappointed. And since she's not a Diamond, that's worse than her being mad."

You remember the first time you watched Blue Diamond's tender, flowing eyes turn as hard as the stone on her chest and how your wings beat their way about inside of you as if they suddenly did not know how to materialize. Even without magic to enhance it, Mama Lipsky's look of disapproval will surely be even more guilting.

"Oh. When you phrase it that way, it does sound…undesirable." Peridot's voice rattles like an old tin can. "What should I do about it?"

Though this cannot be repaired by water, you glance at the faucet anyway. For an instant, you imagine asking its help, using it to sweep away the evidence, but that stream empties into a gulley of dishonesty that you no longer frequent.

"Um, maybe help me fix it?" you say instead.

Peridot nods. "All right. Let's see what we can do.

"Hmmm." She eyes the open box. "Yes, this has sustained significant damage," she says, as though she is talking about someone else's work. "I wonder – is there a way to reconfigure this so that it doesn't need a motor?"

You shrug, although she probably does not anticipate an answer.

Peridot grabs the two outermost wires and stretches them toward each other, and you press your fingers to your forehead. "Peridot – you're not going to put it back together without the part you took and just hope no one notices, are you?" you say.

She stares at you, her face truly perplexed. "Why not? What other recourse do we have?"

"I don't know. Maybe we could –"

You do not finish your thought, for someone pushes open the kitchen door and a short shadow spills inward, enveloping Peridot. Mama Lipsky stands in the doorway, dressed in her usual flower-patterned clothing, her fulsome pink hair stacked neatly atop her head. She has a pronounced lack of wrinkles compared with other humans you have seen of her age, but now lines form around lips that remind you of a butterfly's wings.

"What's going on in here, girls?" she asks.

Peridot glances your way, wild-eyed. You know in that moment that it is your turn to be strong for her, a burden she has borne for you so many times.

You take a step forward; you are a boat luffing to face the wind. "Mama Lipsky, Peridot took apart your food-chopper before I woke up this morning. She wanted to use its motor to power a patrol drone." The urge to retreat stirs in your gem, but you do not bend to it. You fuse your gaze with Mama Lipsky's. Though her eyes look a measure less welcoming than they did, it is not hardness you see there, only an ashy layer of exasperation. "She didn't mean any harm, and we were just about to put it back together. We're sorry."

"Very sorry," Peridot adds.

Mama Lipsky's mouth opens into a laugh, a fountainlike sound in a high register that nevertheless seems to come from somewhere deeper than her throat, and sits down in a chair, shaking her head. Confusion runs down your back, but you find you prefer it to dread.

"Oh, heavens. I never thought I'd wake up to this again," Mama Lipsky gasps.

"Again?" you and Peridot say together, in synchronization again after such a separation, and you feel as though you have discovered a hidden tide pool.

"Yes. Ohhhh, Drewbie took things apart all the time when he was a little boy. My little scientist. Always had some machine he was building or some experiment he was performing, and he had to make do with what we had."

She speaks in the tone of someone resigned to their status on Homeworld, the tone you misinterpreted as satisfaction for the first several thousand years of your life.

You observe the slanted walls, ill-fitting doors, and drafting windows as if through the eyes of someone else, someone who is not charmed by them. "What do you mean?" you ask. "Were you…poor?"

An immovable picture fills your mind: the illustrations you have seen of poor children in books, hungry and cold because synthetic heat costs money, their clothes compressed against large bodies and billowing even more dramatically than Dr. Drakken's coat-of-labs against small ones.

"Well, we certainly weren't rich." Mama Lipsky waves a hand, as though to invalidate her own words. "I shouldn't complain. We had food and clothes and a roof over our heads, and that's what mattered. But after that no-account husband of mine took off, there just wasn't always enough left over for Drewbie to have some of the things that I know would have made him even happier."

"Like chemistry sets," you say. You envision Dr. Drakken – little Drewbie – slouching on the front porch without friends or even preassembled chemicals for company, the skin crawling up beneath his eyes to keep the sadness at bay, and your physical form seems to grow denser. You wonder if this is how it would feel to sink, pulled down by a force outside your control.

Mama Lipsky nods. Her eyes are distant, surveying the world through a mist as yours did when they were silver and broken.

"But it's – better now, right?" Peridot says.

Mama Lipsky smiles, and the room looks brighter for it. "Oh, much. Drewbie makes a good living out there at Global Justice, and he always sends some of his paycheck home to me every month. I've been able to patch up this old place pretty well. I don't know if I could afford to move someplace nicer; don't know if I'd care to. I've spent forty-five years here, and it's always been good enough for me."

You lean against the wooden food-closet. That is all you needed to hear.

"So, does that mean you forgive us? And by 'us,' I mean 'me', because Lapis didn't do anything except erroneously assert that no one needed my drone yet?" Peridot blurts.

"Yes. I've almost missing waking up to find the blender taken apart or the vacuum cleaner in pieces since Drewbie moved out." Mama Lipsky crooks an arm around Peridot's neck and pulls her closer, not appearing to notice her shorebird-squawks. "I can see why you and he get along so well, dear."

Peridot stops squawking, and her face beams.

Mama Lipsky extends her other arm and pulls you into the hug as well, squeezing you so tightly you think your manufactured bones will give way and yet, somehow, it is not uncomfortable at all. You catch a quick glimpse of your fingerprints as you return her squeeze, and you feel the same ripple in your identity you felt when Drakken first explained to you how families fit together and again when you realized you had a family of your own.

Drakken's mother made you an offer the day you overheard her talking to him about your encounter with Jasper on the boat: "If I ever get my hands on the woman who did that to my daughter…"

It is an offer you are finally ready to accept.