~Sorry for the delay, everyone.
Okay, so the short version of the story is that my entire family except me managed to catch Covid over the Christmas season. (We're all okay, BTW; mild cases all around.) Things got a little crazy, and I know there are still one or two people I haven't gotten caught up with since last chapter. I'm sorry about that, and I'll try to get back to you sometime next week. Thanks for your patience!~
Dr. Drakken has no earthly idea what just happened.
Of course, "earthly" probably isn't the correct word, not now, as he stands on this floating extraterrestrial rock that used to be a garden. "Spacely" would be more appropriate. Except Drakken's not sure if that's a word at all. He would look it up if he had a dictionary – and if he could hold said dictionary without it fumbling out of his shaky hands –
Focus, Drakken. The voice that echoes off the walls of Drakken's head isn't Shego's this time. It's Kim Possible's, which manages to be lighter and gentler without losing any of the strength. He shakes himself back to the scene at hand.
Right. Focus. There's an infinity of space above him and a jester-Gem coming unglued across from him, and he doesn't know how to deal with any of it.
The sound that came out of Spinel when she first transformed was simply hysteria – laughing, crying, both, neither. But now it's resolved itself into sobs, sobs that bend her in half, her forehead against the ground, watering the soil with her tears. The sound of it makes Drakken's own breath scratch against his ribs, as if Shego is going over them with her nail file.
Drakken's having a little trouble standing up straight himself. The only one he has ever seen cry this hard is his mother, and a little bit of good-boy behavior always dries Mother up pretty fast. But Spinel – Drakken has no idea what, if anything, can set her world right again. Even after nearly a full day of chasing her around Beach City and the Kindergarten, he doesn't truly know her.
He does know he should go to her, try to soothe her somehow. After all, he spent most of today picking her brain, trying to catch sight of the pain that had to have been in there somewhere, and now he's found it, and now it's out, oozing down her cheeks and whining from her throat, and the majority of him wants to run away from it. He hasn't even attempted to speak yet, but he can feel himself going into a full-body stammer.
Steven lowers himself to his knees beside Spinel and offers her his arms. To Drakken's surprise, she readily accepts them and cries against Steven's chest, her fingers clenching in his jacket. "I can't believe she did that to…" He stops, sighs. "Actually, I can totally believe she did that to you. She hurt a lot of people." To Drakken, the sentence doesn't sound angry, doesn't sound like much of anything.
Drakken hugs his own elbows. The majority of him wants to run away, yes, and has probably already taken a vote on the matter. Which would be great if he were one of the Houses of Congress, but he's not. Not even close.
He looks at her and he sees the dangerous red numbers counting down on Warmonga's timer, and he imagines how he must have looked standing beside Warmonga, fresh out of Cell Block D, shriveling in on himself, unable to bear up under the weight of betrayal.
A deeper, truer piece of him keeps him on his feet and moves him forward, closer to the kid-Gem he still has a responsibility to. His muscles burn, though the steps he takes are short and slow – he must have strained something sprinting down the beach after her. Or maybe he's just about to strain his unselfishness, which still occasionally feels new and raw and sore even after several years as a good guy.
Drakken remembers Spinel sitting beside him on the giant boulder in the Kindergarten, clapping her Mickey-Mouse shoes together, and it carries him to her side.
He crouches down and puts a hand on her heaving back. It feels like a rubber band ready to snap. "So that was it," he says. "The thing you wanted Earth to pay for."
Drakken waits for the triumphant sparks of success to rush up his backbone, but they never come.
Spinel glances at Drakken and nods. Every single one of her movements looks like it hurts, and Drakken abandons his ankle-crouch and sinks to his seat on the dirt. She kicks her feet up on his lap to guarantee he doesn't leave.
Drakken reaches for her shocked-looking hair and cringes inside, expecting a blast of static electricity to tingle his fingers when he touches it, but it never comes either, and the next thing he knows he's stroking the frazzled strands backward. "I'm so sorry, Spinel," he says. Just as he predicted, his words are knocking together, the way his knees would if he were still upright.
Spinel peers up at him, her face a mess of tears and snot. "You are?" she says.
There's no giggly young jester inside her anymore, Drakken is certain. Her eyes almost look the same, still big, still charged, but Drakken doesn't need any of his scientific instruments to tell that it's changed from a positive charge to a negative one. The trust flickers in and out like a faulty TV signal. She's got her arms wrapped around herself – twice – and even that doesn't strike him as comical this time.
"Yeah, he is." Steven answers for Drakken. "So am I. You should never have had to go through that. Never."
Spinel turns those eyes back to Steven. Her hand floats over his shirt, near his belly. "I don't s'pose you remember being her," she says. "I don't s'pose you could tell me why she did that."
Steven shakes his head. "That's not how it works, Spinel. I'm sorry."
"Didn't think so." Spinel sags against Steven. He hugs her fiercely, and Drakken watches him in awe. Love comes so easily to this kid.
Drakken manages to position himself by Spinel's side, the same spot Shego always stood when they were about to pull a heist together, the spot that felt so empty without her all during his stay in Cell Block D. The coldness of the ground seeps into him and makes him shiver, but after what Spinel has just relived, he's not about to start griping about his own discomfort. At least not out loud.
He doesn't know how long it's been before Steven pushes back just enough to meet Spinel's eyes. "Spinel, can you do me a favor?"
"Sure. A-anything." Spinel swipes at her cheeks. Drakken half-expects the black streaks to smear off, but they stay in place, unbudging.
"Could you maybe turn off your Injector and stop the poison so that it doesn't kill all the organic life on Earth? Please?" Steven says.
Spinel nods again. Just a quick bump-up and bump-down of her head, but it might as well knock the garden on its side. Relief overtakes Drakken, flushing the tension from his fisted-up middle and taut limbs, and he finds himself flat on his back, blinking up at the stars, somehow dizzy and trembling with the knowledge that Earth doesn't die in three days. "Relief" actually isn't a big enough word for it.
"Thank you so much," Steven says. "Come on, then. We'll take you back to Earth, and you can shut it down."
He starts to stand up, but Spinel pulls him back down. "Back to Earth? With your friends? Like they'll be able to stand looking at me like this."
She gestures to the stripes, and Drakken squirms against a familiar itch, the memory-feeling of stitched-together skin trying to heal and not getting very far. He rolls onto his knees and bends close to her cheek, her scars against his. "Spinel," he says. "They can stand looking at me. And you know what an odd view that is, right?"
"Right, whatever." Spinel's voice is harsh and feeble, like some frosted-over twig ready to break under the weight of its own ice. "You've never tried to destroy the Earth."
Drakken can't stop the laugh that blurts out of him, banishing the self-conscious flush he could feel starting to creep up his neck. "Don't be so sure of that."
The magenta eyes seem to inflate. "You have?"
Drakken gives her the smug nod he has practiced for moments just like this.
"What?" she says.
"A very long story," Drakken says. "Which I hope to be able to tell you eventually."
Steven tries to tug Spinel to her feet again, and this time she lets him.
"The point is, Drakken's all right now," Steven says. "And someday you will be, too." Her lips part, but Steven shakes his head at her. "I know it doesn't feel like it right now. But it's the truth."
"Okay," Spinel says in an uncharacteristic almost-whisper. "Just – just don't leave me."
"Of course not," Steven says, before Drakken can get his thoughts unscrambled or his tongue freed from its knot. "We'll be right beside you the whole time."
"Maybe not right beside you," Drakken feels the need to clarify. "I can't get too near the poison, but I'll be cheering you on from the sidelines."
Spinel reaches her other cartoon-gloved hand out to Drakken and stares at him, wide-eyed, as he takes it. The trust is back, and Drakken's throat stops up.
Hand in hand in hand, they walk back to the warp pad that only Spinel can activate now. Drakken knows the pulse drumming in his fingertips is his own, but it feels like it's coming straight from her upside-down little heart.
Black clouds churn in the cobalt, violet-shot sky like silt in water, rumbling in anger as electricity leaps from one of them to another. The hill has been taken entirely by the pink toxin, and you stand among dead grass between Peridot, who is standing next to Amethyst and running yet another test on her tablet, and Bismuth, who is facing Garnet and attempting to explain how Garnet set a precedent for the fusing of two unlike Gems. The ocean no longer screams; it has quieted to a dull, pulsating moan, and against it you have constructed a wall that it can strike without hurting you.
Bismuth sighs and pushes her hand through her long ropes of hair. "All right," she says. "Lapis, can you take a turn with Garnet here? I need to take a break."
Her words are true, and you read a stronger truth in the corners of her eyes: it is too painful to sit here with this Gem who used to be one of her best friends and try to persuade her to remember. You step up to relieve her. You have shoved your pain into a single facet of yourself, a facet that is to remain chambered off as long as there is something else you can do.
"Hi," you say to Garnet. "It's Lapis again. And you remember that you're Garnet, and since you haven't come unfused, I'm guessing you guys still want to be together, right?"
Garnet nods. She stares at you with Ruby's squared hair and Sapphire's tapering fingers, which she turns over in her lap and examines as if checking her fingerprints. An ache runs down your back. Even with her components only tentatively acquainted, fusion is beautiful for her in a way it never has been and now probably never will be for you.
"Bismuth is right, you know," you say. "You changed everybody's idea of how fusion was supposed to work. All the Gems on Homeworld used to think fusion was just a battle strategy, just a maneuver you pulled so you'd have a better chance of winning. Even I used to think that. But with you, fusion is totally different. Ruby and Sapphire grow to love each other, and they're so good for each other. Being you makes them stronger and wiser."
The look that flickers through Garnet's eyes is not quite recognition; it is the look of a bird seeking a place to land.
Before you can say anything else, you hear the warp pad and turn in time to see it drop Greg, Pumpkin curled in his arms, and Pearl. She wears her jacket and her pants, and her face rises to meet yours without apology. Lines of worry huddle close on either side of her gemstone.
She is Pearl again. You feel a warm wave caress you and then turn tepid when you realize neither Steven nor Drakken is with them.
"Pearl!" Amethyst calls. She pushes herself off the ground in a massive leap toward Pearl, and you join her on your wings, but Bismuth gets there first. Her burly arms slam Pearl into an embrace, and then she tosses Pearl up into the air and catches her. The collision looks rough to you, and yet Pearl squeals with laughter, a sound with which you are becoming more familiar.
"I knew you'd come back, Pearl," Bismuth says as she sets Pearl down.
"Yeah, and thank goodness you did." Amethyst lands heavily at Pearl's side. "I think we might have actually gotten a little disorganized without ya."
Pearl cuts her eyes at Amethyst as though in disapproval, but you can see the smile behind them.
"Nice to have you back, Pearl." Peridot holds her hands behind her back and studies Pearl, her oversize goggles exaggerating her wide green gaze. "Please grant us your insider knowledge of who Spinel is and why she attacked us."
The mirth drains from Pearl's expression. "Oh, if only I could. I know she was Pink Diamond's personal Spinel. The other Diamonds specifically created her to entertain Pink and accompany her wherever she went.
"She and Pink and I were inseparable for so long." One graceful hand slips to Pearl's forehead and holds there. "But as the years went by, Pink began confiding more and more in me and less and less in Spinel. She didn't come with us when we went to colonize Earth. I'd always assumed Blue and Yellow Diamond had told her that she was no longer needed."
You watch the sky crackle and blaze, no longer the friendly sky through which you are used to traveling, and your jaw clenches. Beside you, Peridot says, "That must've really hurt her feelings."
"Oh, I'm sure it did, Peridot," Pearl says. "But I have no idea why she would seek revenge now, after all this time. Steven and Drakken were trying to figure that out."
"Where are they?" you ask.
"We're not entirely sure. The last we saw of them, they were talking to Spinel on the warp pad near the Temple. Then she warped all three of them away."
"Are they safe?" Your voice sounds cold even to you.
"We think probably so." Greg speaks up for the first time. "Steven took Spinel's weapon away from her, so she's not, ya know, armed right now. And Drakken still has his powers, even if Steven doesn't have his."
You can scarcely bring his words into focus. Electricity simmers in the sky and in your gem.
"Timeout!" Peridot holds up both arms. "Since when does Steven not have his powers?"
"Since Spinel stabbed him with the Rejuvenator," Pearl says. "It caused his Gem abilities to return to how they were when he first started experiencing them, back around the time he moved into the Temple."
Your hands knot at your sides. You would have still been trapped in the mirror then. By the time you ran off with the ocean and he pursued, he was already strong enough to summon his shield and say, with such bravery, "I don't want to fight anymore!"
You remember your water breaking apart on his shield, the weapons neither of you wanted to use on each other, and the facet that holds your pain bulges and threatens to burst.
It never gets the chance to do so, however. A few minutes later, the warp pad lights up again and your shoulders slacken as Drakken and Steven appear, separated by Spinel, who clings to their hands like life buoys.
You try to keep your mouth still and set, but you feel yourself frowning as you look at her. She has regenerated, her physical form altered in a way a Gem's does only when something inside her has also shifted like the plates within the Earth. Dark, fierce trails of what appear to be solidified ink drag down her cheeks, her hair lashes from her head in two coarse whips, and her body bends in the middle like the blades of grass she poisoned.
At the sight of you and the rest of the Crystal Gems, Spinel gasps and throws herself behind Drakken, tugging his arm around behind his back. He grunts in discomfort, and then he and Steven say, "It's okay, Spinel," almost as one.
"And everything's chill, guys," Steven continues, moving his eyes to each one of you in turn. "Spinel got her memories back, but she doesn't want to hurt us anymore. She's going to shut down her Injector."
Somehow you say, "We'd really appreciate it, Spinel."
Spinel slowly disentangles her fingers from Drakken's; you can understand her reluctance to let go of him. She glances warily at you as she passes, and you notice that her gem is inverted now, the bottommost sides of it pointed upward. Yet that is not what distances her so from the happy, tumbling Gem she was earlier, in the sunlight: it is her eyes. Something has been stolen from her eyes and replaced with something heavier, and she now sees everything around her through its warped weighted layers.
Drakken gives her an encouraging smile, and when Spinel begins to climb the hill he staggers to your side. His eyes are dark wells, sunken under the weight of the story he must have heard.
You nod toward Spinel. "So did you figure out what her deal is?" You speak quietly, though no more quietly than you usually do. Oftentimes it is kinder not to whisper about a person as though you are trying to hide the truth from her.
"Yes, and oh, boy – it was a doozy! See, it turned out she and Pink Diamond were really close friends. Or at least, she thought they were friends until Pink Diamond ditched her in some kind of space garden. That's where she took us, but don't worry, there was oxygen! Oh – of course there was oxygen, or else the plants never could have grown in the first place! At least, I don't think…Okay, yes, focus." Drakken's words blur together, his gestures as grand and wide as ever yet somehow somber. "Spinel stood there for six thousand years and waited for Pink Diamond to come back for her, and then just this morning she found out Pink Diamond was, you know, gone. Because of Steven."
"Six thousand years?" The thought groans inside you like the ocean's misery. "That's longer than I was in the mirror!"
Drakken's face wavers, as it always does when you mention your imprisonment, and the hand he puts on your shoulder is gentle. Bismuth, standing close enough to have heard what Drakken said, gives her head a sad tilt, her hair slipping like chains.
Spinel approaches the Injector as though her legs are bound. She gives it and its poisonous outpourings a look you cannot decipher and lifts her hand. The longest finger shapeshifts into a ship's horn, and her breath bellows through it. The Injector rattles and whines, and then all the energy goes out of it, a pink bead stopped on its tip before it can fall.
You feel Dr. Drakken exhale against you, every centimeter of him relaxing. To your surprise, he leans over and holds out his arms, and to your greater surprise Spinel runs into them and buries her striped face against his coat-of-labs, held fast by the scent that has always comforted you so. "Thank you, Spinel," he says.
"Yeah, thanks, Spinel," Steven echoes. He wipes his sleeve across his forehead. "Man. That was too close. Now all we need are my powers and Garnet's memories, and we can go back to living happily ever after!"
You hear something in his words that believes itself to be true but isn't quite. Before you can ponder it, Spinel says, "Happily ever after?" There's a sharp, steep edge to her voice that Steven doesn't seem to notice.
"Yes!" he says. "We can forget this whole thing ever happened! Now, what would work for Garnet? Something about fusion…something about love…"
"Steven –" you start, but Spinel gets there first, grabbing Steven by the front of his blue shirt.
"How are you gonna live happily ever after with me around?" she demands. "I'm the one who caused all of this! How would you ever be able to forget it happened when I'm still here?"
She gives Steven a shake. The Rejuvenator falls from his jacket pocket and clatters to the ground, a heavy, accusatory note.
"Hey! That's mine!" Spinel snatches it up and narrows her steaming eyes at Steven. "What are you doing with this? Why do you have it now?"
"Oh, no," Steven says. "Spinel – that isn't what it looks like! I was just carrying it around because I didn't want it to fall into the wrong hands, and since I couldn't put it inside Lion, I just –"
Spinel laughs, not a jesting sound but one that threatens to rip open the clouds. "Oh, I get it now! 'We can all forget this whole thing ever happened'? You mean, I can forget it ever happened! You just needed me to stop that Injector, didn't ya? And then as soon as I turned my back, bam! Pow! Reset!"
Steven shakes his head. "No! Spinel, you haveta listen to me –"
"I don't haveta to do anything!" Spinel says, her entire body shivering. "You were lying to me right from the start, weren't ya? Just like her! And I fell for it because I'M STILL STUPID!" She moves her angry gaze to Drakken. "Were you in on this, too?"
A noise of terror peeps from Drakken's throat.
It appears to be all the affirmation Spinel needs. She slings the Rejuvenator across her back and sneers at Steven. "Well, forget it, ya bunch of Earth-lovers! You're not getting rid of me that easy!"
She shapes her finger into a ship's horn again and when she blows into it this time, the sound is resonant, full of pain and cruelty, pain and cruelty granted to her by the woman who gave Steven to the world. The Injector comes to life again, pumping the toxin into the ground at a speed you cannot comprehend. Even from your position at the bottom of the hill, you see half the beach shimmer pink, the dune grass withering.
"Time to go!" Peridot cries. She grabs Drakken's arm with one hand and Greg's with the other and hurries them down the hill, away from the poison. An ancient anger deep as an ocean trench condenses between your shoulder blades, drowning the fear that tries to surface and keeping you in the same place even as everyone else runs.
"Spinel, I –" Steven says.
"Shut up!" Spinel shoves Steven away with one arm even as her other arm lurches across the distance between them, its palm clapping viciously against his face – the first face to smile at you from inside your glass prison.
Your throat aches. Spinel turns and runs.
"Lapis?" Drakken calls from farther down, but this time not even his voice can override what is happening inside of you. Within your gem, your powers rush forward, flowing frantically over every obstacle in their paths, surging around corners until they are rapids, tipped white and dangerous.
All you can see is Spinel as she clambers down the hill and into a small, dipped valley where the earth cracks open, poison seeping in the seams. Your world is cracked and on the verge of shattering, and all you can see is her. You hurt for her pain and her cruelty, but it will destroy the planet if someone does not stop it, and you have not come all this way only to lose yet another home.
You shoot into the sky, now nearly Obsidian-black, and pin your wings almost flat as you take off after her. You make yourself not notice the broken landscape beneath you: the infected sea, the shriveled husks of trees, and the crusted footprints left behind by fleeing humans. Your eyes focus only on the small pink shape running across the ground she has ruined.
Even when you hear another Gem in pursuit, her footfalls heavy as she keeps pace with you, it barely registers. It is Bismuth, and from the way her teeth are clamped together, you know that she is at least as angry as you are.
Spinel is not watching where she's going, not looking around her or searching the sky to make sure no one is following her. It is easy to land behind her, and when you do, you don't waste time with threats or witty quotes; you simply tackle her, pinning her to the ground with your knees.
Spinel stares up at your face as though it is unfamiliar. She ripples beneath you and you brace, anticipating the punch. Yet instead of tightening, she loosens, becoming almost watery in consistency, and she slips through your legs and out on the other side.
Your confusion is brief, but Spinel is fast, much faster than any Gem you have ever fought before. Her fist knocks hard into the back of your head, and in the fraction of a moment when you drop, she climbs on top of you and forces your forehead into a pink puddle that smells of dead leaves and spoiled fruit. Something thin and curved comes to rest against your left shoulder, and you know without having to look that it is the Rejuvenator, pinning you in place. Should you call on your wings, the left one will form in the Rejuvenator's blade, and you will once again be barefoot and wearing a skirt, unquestioningly loyal to Blue Diamond and disdainful of all organic life.
"Take another step and I'll Rejuvenate her!" Spinel hollers over your head to Bismuth.
Bismuth comes to a halt so quickly it is almost comical, her lips parted in disbelief.
"Ohhh, and you're a Lapis, too?" Spinel coils her neck forward so she can stare more closely at you. Her eyes glow red as lightning flashes across them, and her breath smells of nothing; it is empty. "Wow, I bet you were all kinds of interesting before you came to Earth!"
For an instant you feel nothing but the blade, and then the memories come over you like a flood. You curtsy before Blue Diamond as she inspects you with a smile. You stand with the other Lapises, laughing at some joke that is for once not at anyone's expense. You feel the hot sand between your toes as you gaze at Earth's ocean for the first time. Steven tugs your gemstone free from the back of the mirror, and Jasper's fingers crush your cheeks together. You join with her and are buried in her, unsure who is holding whom captive until the moment Alexandrite's spear pushes the two of you apart. You see the barn in vivid detail: its rough, sun-paled wood; its ledge where Drakken rested in his sleeping bag; its doors as they hung open, sunlight scrolling through them across the floor, grains of dust floating in the air; and its scattered, random objects that were transformed, slowly and lovingly, into meepmorps. You and Peridot giggle together after sundown on Mama Lipsky's couch and stand in awe in the doorway of your new house, and a grinning blue Earthling is everywhere, all at once, holding an ice cream cone, his life so much larger and deeper than you ever thought a human's could be. You think of the few times his lips have brushed your lips and the many times his fingers have brushed your fingers.
An incisive humming sound fills your head, and you wish Peridot or Steven or Drakken were here so you could tell them how much you love them before you are erased. But the only other one here is Bismuth, and you have only one thing of importance to say to her.
You raise your head and meet her eyes. "I forgive you."
Bismuth's eyes fill. You cannot hear her, but you watch her mouth shape the words, "Thanks, Wings."
You clench your artificial muscles and lower your head again, waiting to feel your shoes and your life disappear.
They never do. Instead, you feel the blade lift from your shoulder and Spinel slide halfway off your back, and you hear her say, "Hey! What the –"
You roll to your side and kick Spinel from on top of you. The ground opens wider, and the toxin rushes in to saturate it. When you are on your feet, you see her standing, knees bent, a few centimeters away and staring at her empty hands as if she is searching for the Rejuvenator, which sails away from her wrapped in a green vine that extends from a small oasis of dirt that the poison has not touched yet. The vine slips back into Dr. Drakken's neck, and the Rejuvenator lands with an ungraceful swoop in his small hands.
"All right!" Bismuth calls.
You allow yourself an instant of relief, then step forward and take Spinel's arm. It turns flaccid and leaks out through your fingers, but she does not even look at you, her attention focused solely on Drakken.
"You? You, too?" She throws the words at him like handfuls of wet sand. "I thought you liked me!"
"I do!" Drakken snaps back. The ferocity in his expression startles you. You are used to seeing his eyes flare with annoyance and irritation, small angers. Anger of this magnitude awakens rarely, and only in connection with the thought of someone causing you harm. "But not enough to let you reset my girlfriend!"
You watch his meaning drop onto Spinel and break the surface tension of her trust. "Oh, I get it! Because you like her more than you like me! Right?"
An incredulous look crumbles Drakken's honest face. "Spinel, you're not being fair! I've known her for years, and I just met you today –"
Spinel interrupts him, shrieking. "Not being fair? Not being fair? Since when is any of this fair? Since when has ANYONE ever played fair?"
"Spinel!" Steven arrives at Drakken's side, puffing from exertion, and you realize with a shiver that he is fully dependent on his human side right now. Garnet stands next to him, still a swirl of pink and blue not yet blended. He holds out his hands, his lips pinched. "Spinel, if you would just listen…"
Without even turning in his direction, Spinel screws her neck around to face him. "Listen? I'm done listening to you! I'm done listening to any of you!"
Steven steps closer to her, his footsteps heavy. He has always been round, soft, and warm to you, yet now he suddenly seems pointed, like a fishhook, something that will not let whatever is on the other end go. "I wasn't going to reset you!" he says.
"Why should I believe that?" Spinel says. Lightning glints off silver streaks on her cheeks, but they are as dried and stiff as the grass she has ruined.
"Because it's the truth!" Steven says. He snatches the Rejuvenator from Drakken's hand and snaps it over his knee. The blade breaks free from the handle and falls into a pink pool, where it quickly vanishes beneath the surface.
"Truth."
The word comes from Garnet. All three of her eyes bob for a moment and then still, like ships pulling into port. "I've known hardships and confusion," she says, "but love can live through it all, if you face the truth together."
A white shaft of light pours from Garnet's eyes and her skin, contained only by the boundaries of her body, which twist and reshape. You scarcely have time to fathom it before it dissipates and she stands before you again with her sunglasses on her nose and Ruby's and Sapphire's rings on her fingers, enveloped in warm, silent knowledge. She greets you with a nod. You nod back, and you feel as though the two of you have just embraced.
"No!" Spinel begins to strike her own head with her fist, pounding it the way Bismuth pounds her anvil. "No, no, no, no! Don't you dare!" She hurls herself toward the oasis, her arms outstretched, ready to attack the first person who crosses her path.
The first person in her path turns out to be Drakken. She runs into his chest and bounces off, and she shoves him so hard that he stumbles backward, one leg flailing, foot seeking the ground, seconds before another seam opens in the earth, bubbling and deadly. His heel comes down in the pink mire.
Drakken screams, a noise as full as his laugh and as jagged and sharp as his cheekbones. The edges of the day that have kept prodding you forward now sink more deeply into you and cut you, painful for the first time.
"Drakken!" Your wings burst from your gem; you fly over to his side and catch hold of his right side before he can put weight on his injured foot or tip backward into the poison. He collapses against you, his face blanching. You hear thunder flicker in the sky and feel his neck flicker with his heartbeat, and in that moment you do not care what happens to Spinel. You have already plunged ahead, submerging yourself in what you must do now; she is a problem of the shore, none of your concern.
Tears roll from Drakken's eyes and down his cheeks. He does not acknowledge them; he does not even appear to notice them. His face looks bewildered with his pain.
You pull him into the sky that threatens a storm and off the glowing, pink ground that promises far worse, making sure to keep a firm hold on his small wrists.
Drakken curls his injured leg under him, and you can see the heel that stepped into the poison. A jagged hole gapes in the surface of his black boot, as if it has been clawed open by a predator, revealing a lighter, grayer area beneath. You wonder for an instant why he is wearing a second layer of clothing in this heat, and then a trench opens up inside of you when you realize you stare not at fabric, but at flesh. There is no sign of a wound, no blood and no opening that would allow it to exit, just a stiff patch the color of burnt slate, a dead color that does not belong on Dr. Drakken's lively body.
Even over the wind, you hear him sniffle. "Oh, doodles," he says, his voice sloshing in confusion. "Those boots were a special gift from my mother."
"She'll buy you new ones," you tell him.
Far below, you watch Spinel launch herself onto the Injector and begin to climb its grooved wall, her loose flexible limbs scrabbling for holds like a wild creature. You do not waste any energy hoping she will fall. You are beyond anger now, your physical form crystallized into a substance more harsh and resilient than your gem.
Greg has docked his van farther down the beach and thrown open its rear doors, hurrying as many humans into the back as will fit: crying children, frantic parents, older adults. The pink toxin surges toward the van on one side, but behind it and to the opposite side, there is still a clear path for them to travel. If there is any human in Beach City you trust with Dr. Drakken's safety, it is Greg.
You swoop down to the van and place Drakken inside, propping him against one of the back-facing seats when you realize there is not enough room to lay him down. Sweat glistens on his gentle blue skin like ice, and you are reminded once again that he is far from the biggest human on Earth. Even among the huddle of children, he somehow looks delicate and vulnerable.
Greg groans in sympathy, and you turn to face him, fixing your eyes to his. "You'd better take care of him," you say.
The grin Greg gives you wobbles like a boat that has been poorly tied to its moors. His hand snaps to his forehead and back out. "Yes, ma'am," he says.
You take one more look at Drakken, careful to keep your gaze away from his deadened heel. Turning around and flying away from him is the hardest thing you have done today, but there are other lifeforms still trapped by poison that will not stop until they relent. Humans run for higher ground and try to scale trees, an array of terror and senselessness. That you once saw no value in them makes you even more determined to save them.
One woman screams as she loses hold of a low, slender branch and slides slowly down the tree's trunk toward the stream of pink that waits at the bottom. You push your wings hard and land in the center of the poison, which washes up to your ankles but seems to ignore you, your feet not even an obstacle worth dodging. You are immune to the destruction of Earth, and the realization carries guilt with it.
Your hands shoot out and catch the woman before she can fall into the poison. As you rise back into the sky, Peridot pulls level with you, balancing with one foot on her trash can lid, fingers moving with their usual alacrity over her tablet. The sky is thick with clouds, the sun invisible, and only the pink luminescence reflects off her visor.
"What's the damage, Peri?" you ask her. You do not want to know, but you need to.
"It's actually quite complicated and probably not what Spinel was going for. When she emptied the poison into the ground all at once, she compounded its potency but decelerated its natural ability to spread and consume." You open your mouth, and Peridot adds quickly, "That is to say, everything within a five-mile radius will die even faster, but it will not come anywhere close to covering the Earth. In fact, if my calculations are correct, the poison shouldn't even reach Little Homeworld!"
The thin pointed words dive at you like shorebirds on the beach, daring you to give chase and inviting you to play. Your back remains rigid, but you can see another time approaching: a time when it will yield and you will let yourself laugh at Greg's salute and figure out how to treat Drakken's foot.
You give her a thumb's-up. "Let's take all the humans there, then."
Peridot nods and the two of you soar until Little Homeworld takes form beneath you, still damaged and disheveled from the cutting of Spinel's saw. Bismuth has arrived before you, and now she guides humans into the spaces between buildings at the center of the valley, where you and your neighbors stood to watch Steven's transmission this morning – when Spinel was still standing in a garden somewhere, believing Pink Diamond would return for her any minute.
Angling toward the ground, you let the woman drop into the crowd. Your powers turn you and thrust you away as though they are in control of your mind and your body. When the beach comes into view again, however, you pull up short and search for Steven.
You find him standing with Garnet several meters away from the Injector, on an island of earth with a flow of poison in every direction. Amethyst and Pearl run across the devastated ground to join them. They stand there, the four Gems who chased after you when you took the ocean, their heads bobbing; they appear to be having an argument of some sorts, which you anticipate Garnet will win.
She does. She takes a few steps away from Steven and lifts Amethyst and Pearl by the backs of their shirts. They nod and twist around to clutch at her shoulders, and the white light of fusion swallows all three shapes. Alexandrite rockets into the air and lands in the undertow of the pink stream, seizing humans by their clothing or by their hair, whatever she can grip with four of her strong, capable arms – arms that once freed you and Jasper from one another – and tucking them into place beneath the other two.
"Steven? Are you okay?" you call down to him.
"Lapis!" Although Steven sounds happy to see you, his breaths are quick and heavy. He shields his eyes with one hand and squints up at you. "Yeah, I'm okay. I just need to get to Spinel. She's hurting so bad, and I have to talk to her."
That he still cares for her pain after everything that has just happened should not astound you anymore, but Steven's goodness is a human heartbeat: remarkable every time you encounter it.
"Pearl and Amethyst didn't want to go off and leave me," Steven continues, "since I still haven't, you know, got my powers back yet. But Garnet told them I'd be just fine and I'd know what to do."
You study him from the sky; he is as tall as you now, and the hairs sprouting from his jawline are faint but sturdy. He stands there shaking, the sleeve of his jacket torn, the pink of his cheeks faded. Real fear burns in his eyes. Yet you feel the same soft strength when you reach out and squeeze his hands, hands you first knew when they were just strong enough to pull your gem off the back of the mirror, and you know that he is powerful in a way that has little to do with Rose and much to do with Greg.
Spinel does not stand a chance.
You understand then why he is still fighting, even now that the Injector has been emptied and the damage contained: Spinel's spirit is still cracked, and Steven will not give up until he has healed her. She stands atop the Injector now, a small innocuous figure framed by the natural dusk and the unnatural black clouds. Only Steven can save her now, because only Steven can love her now.
"You have all the power you need," you tell him quietly.
"Thanks, Lapis." Steven's eyes revive, warm as sunlight washing through your bedroom window, and he covers them with his plump fingers. "This has been the weirdest day," he groans.
You shrug. "Definitely in the top ten. But you've got this."
Steven gives you a brief smile, and then he tears for the Injector, gone without telling you what you already know, what was once your only certainty on this strange new planet. You allow yourself a few seconds to watch him run and leap across the chunks of earth that remain between streams of pink. The Injector's needle has slipped sideways, out of the ground, and even from here you can see the thickened, changed consistency of the last of the toxin; no longer disseminating, it coagulates into a pile near the needle, the freshest layers traveling down from the top of the stack in lazy, lumbering rolls.
Peridot's calculations were right. The Earth will survive. The majority of your sea will survive. With your help, the citizens of Beach City, too, will survive.
You soar over the boardwalk, arms extended beneath you to grab as many humans as possible, the memories of Dr. Drakken's wilted foot rubbing at the back of your mind like loose grains of dry sand. Everyone, you tell yourself, is going to survive.
The good news about the Injector Steven Universe currently struggles to climb is that it's made mostly of rock, which means it's got a bunch of natural little dents and dips for a person to hold on to. It's not as easy to shimmy up as the fake rock wall at Funland, but it doesn't require superpowers, either, and after what might be just a few minutes he's halfway up, sweat rolling down his neck and gluing his T-shirt to his skin, and the metal panels hang just over his head.
Steven reaches up and curls his fingers around one panel. He cries out, more in irritation than pain, when its sharp edge slices into his palm, but he doesn't let go. A fall to the ground would hurt way worse at this point. He stays there with his grip fastened around the panel until his other hand finds a hold in the stone above him, and then he pulls the rest of his body, which feels so much heavier than it did this morning, up and over. His knee bangs into a panel as it passes, but he doesn't feel anything tear, and he's thankful for that.
The only thing in his ears is his own panting, but Steven imagines he can hear Garnet and Amethyst and Pearl and Peridot and Lapis and Bismuth urging him forward, telling him he can do it. It helps him reach for the next handhold, and then the next, and then the next.
Pictures of Mom pop into his head, the face that Dad knew and the other face that Spinel knew, and Steven suddenly wants to scream at both of the faces that never told the whole truth to anyone. What was she thinking, abandoning Spinel on an asteroid garden in space? Did she plan to come back for her eventually, only she couldn't because the war broke out and she had to fake her own death? Did she expect the other Diamonds would come looking for Spinel? Did she just – forget? Entirely?
Steven doesn't know. And he almost doesn't care. He is just about done trying to figure out how she thought and why she did what she did.
At last, he sticks his cut hand up and it lands on something flat and smooth. With a sigh from his trembling kneecap, Steven drags himself onto the Injector's shiny glass roof and collapses. Through the panes, he can see into the Injector for the first time, and it's a black, hollow blank space, only the tiniest dripping bits of pink goo still left inside. He thinks he remembers Peridot saying that was a good thing somehow, but he can't figure out why it would be.
Lightning cracks then, and in its glow Steven sees Spinel, standing with her back to him and her pigtails going crazy in the picking-up wind. She hurts – she hurts so bad that it seems to come off of her in waves like static electricity. Steven props himself up on one arm.
"Spinel," he says.
"Leave me alone!"
Steven pushes himself to his feet and makes them move in her direction, because her voice wants something and it isn't the thing she just demanded. His legs seem to have turned into Jell-O cups underneath him. He can't remember the last time he felt this weak, probably the day before he first summoned Mom's and his shield. He pictures, too easily, the little-boy Steven trudging home from the Big Donut in tears because Cookie Cats had been discontinued, and his stomach pulls into a knot.
"No," he says. "We need to talk." He takes another wobbly step toward Spinel. "And I need my powers back."
Spinel flips around to look at him. Steven thinks she might be crying, somewhere on that black streaky mess that her face has become. "I don't wanna play anymore."
She tosses the words out carelessly as a handful of confetti. Blood pools in Steven's palm and crashes at his temples, red and angry, and his Jell-O legs explode into action. "Spinel – this isn't a game!"
He grabs her by the arm, surprised at how thin and wobbly it feels in his hand, like a deflated pool toy, before she jerks it away and vaults over his head to stand on the other side of him.
"What's the matter, Steven?" Spinel does a headstand, peers at him from upside-down. "You still mad I was going to Rejuvenate your little Lapis friend? That I was gonna do to her what you almost did to me?"
Steven shakes his head, and he's amazed by how she can pick up the truth and warp it and twist into a whole other thing. He's amazed, and he's so tired. "That's not the way it happened," he says.
"Says you!" Spinel flips back onto her feet and scrapes the heel of her shoe across the glass, which screeches in protest. "You won't even admit it – you only liked me when I was trusting and innocent and stupid!"
She winds up like she's about to pitch a baseball, though Steven doesn't even see her fist before it socks him hard in the chest and knocks him a foot or two backward. He doesn't mean to gasp, but he does. When she'd lashed out at him with her arms and legs this morning, that had stung some, but this punch hurts, really hurts, in a blur of pain he almost can't see through.
"Nope, I was right all along," Spinel says. "I knew you'd hate me like this."
For a frightening second, Steven can't tell if she's wrong. He doesn't know if he's ever felt hate before, so he isn't sure he'd recognize it if it came, but if it did come, it would probably be pretty close to where he is now, his cuts sizzling and his bruises throbbing and heat swelling beneath his collarbone.
"I'm trying not to," he says. "I don't understand you. But I want to help you."
Spinel's entire body shakes until Steven almost expects her to fall into a long string of spaghetti. Only when she clasps her hands to her cheeks does Steven realize she's laughing, a sound as empty as the Injector.
"You really are clueless, aren't you?" She spits the question as if she can't hold it in her mouth for another moment.
"What do you mean?"
"You can't help me, Steven." She gives him that ugly, Tasmanian-devil grin he remembers from when she first showed up. "It's too late for that. It's too late for me. And since Pink isn't here to pay, you'll do!"
Her pink bloodshot eyes find his across the Injector's roof, and then she throws another punch, vaguely aimed. Steven sticks his arms down to protect his gem – it's the only thing he can do – and her knuckles bash against his so hard that he staggers. Before he can regain his balance, her fist cracks his jaw and sends him sprawling to his side, where the glass feels cool and nice against every burning part of his body.
Steven tries to remember the sound of the Crystal Gems cheering him on, but they're fading away fast. All he hears is the creaky, broken sound that comes out of him, small and pathetic like the little kid he used to be.
Nausea rolls over him. And a little bit of hope. Maybe if he pukes, it'll confuse her long enough for him to come up with something.
Spinel circles around him, her head tilted nearly down to her waist as she surveys him, trying to decide which angle she should attack from next. A cloud drifts over the rising moon then, obscuring her, but Steven still stares up into the blank space where her face should be. He remembers how impossible Peridot was when she first came to Earth and how scary Lapis was when she fought them with her water powers, and now they've become two of the greatest friends he's ever had. And Bismuth – he doesn't know her as well as the others, but she's part of the family now, and he isn't afraid of her anymore.
Still, it's been such a long time since he had to talk an angry Gem out of what Amethyst calls the "crazy tree." And he's never had to do it without at least being able to pull his shield up between them.
Steven pushes himself to all fours and blinks upward, and he tries, because he has to, because he can't abandon her too. "Spinel, I promise I wasn't going to Rejuvenate you! I swear."
"Yeah, right!" Spinel hurls a derisive laugh at him. "You're lying."
"Do I look like I'm lying?" As soon as Steven speaks the words, he knows they were the wrong ones to say, but anger got hold of his tongue and moved it before he had the chance to think of anything better.
He almost doesn't blame Spinel for grabbing the hair on the back of his head and yanking him closer, lining him up to improve her aim. "No," she says. "And neither did she!"
Steven tries to jerk away from what he knows comes next, but Spinel is fast, and the next thing he knows he's skidding across the glass roof, with no idea where her fist even landed until he feels the moisture trickling from his nose. Every muscle in his body stings and screams so much he wouldn't be able to narrow it down otherwise. Steven remembers watching Sadie show him how donuts were made back when he was a kid, grabbing a wad of dough and slamming it onto the counter and flattening it, twisting it over and pounding it flat from the other side. He's pretty sure he knows now exactly how it felt.
Almost too late, a rush of cool, open air hits Steven's legs, and he realizes there's no room left for him to slide on the Injector. Its roof has thousands of tiny raised edges marking the glass, separating them into panes like the ones on a window. Steven grabs one with each hand and holds on for dear life. He strains to pull himself up but can't, finding empty little pockets in him that his powers usually fill.
The silhouette of a Gem saunters up to him, narrow and stretched and not looking completely solid. Steven's heart pumps panic and adrenaline all over his body, and he knows Spinel must feel as beaten-up inside as he does. He wants to feel sorry for her. He wants to help her.
He wants to not die.
Because Steven realizes in that moment, drained and empty and shivering, that this will be it. He has survived Jasper and Aquamarine and all of the Diamonds only to get killed by the Gem who was created to be his mom's playmate.
And happily-ever-after isn't true. Not for any of the people Mom left behind.
"I don't get it!" Steven says. "Why aren't my powers back by now? How could I not have triggered the memory? I mean – a Gem I don't even know is trying to kill me for something my mom did, the Earth is in terrible danger, and I don't have a clue what to do? Hello – this was every day of my life before the peace treaty!"
Spinel's arms, which have started to extend toward him, now flop lazily to her sides as she watches him with what he's pretty sure is amusement. "Wow," she says.
"What's 'wow'?" Steven fights back a sob.
"I actually didn't know what my Rejuvenator would do to you when I first got here," Spinel says. She doesn't have to add that she didn't care – the lift of her shoulders says it for her. "I thought it might set you back a ways, but seriously? This is how you started?" Her voice is the same chirp that's been following him around all day, only heavier and darker, biting into the night. "How did a powerless loser like you ever save the universe?"
Spinel flicks the insult at him like Amethyst's whip, but it doesn't hurt Steven. It can't – he's reached his capacity for pain, and his pulse has replaced every other feeling. She leans over the edge of the roof, her eyes burning magenta, and reaches down to snag his left hand, pries his fingers loose one at a time and traps them between her own thumb and index finger. It's slow and unnecessary, but Steven's glad for it – it'll give him the chance to think of something.
He hangs there, and he closes his eyes for a second. Fireworks are going off in his mind, but he manages to hear Lapis's whispery voice saying, You have all the power you need. Feel the cool air rush up the legs of his pants, which are three sizes bigger than the ones he was wearing the day his belly button first tingled.
"I changed," Steven says.
"Huh?" Spinel draws back, pinching her hold on his left wrist. It's the only thing aside from his other hand's grip on the wall that keeps him from plummeting.
Steven laughs out loud. "All of this talk about happily-ever-after made me forget the first and most important power I ever had. The power to change!"
At first, Steven almost misses it, a little plunk like a raindrop has landed in him instead of on him, sliding through him. Then another and another drip down beside it, and soon it's a steady stream, a rainstorm inside of him, soaking him, and Spinel disappears as the world becomes white light.
Crooked memories rush into his head – he watches himself eat Cookie Cats, accidentally heal Connie's eyesight, nick himself as he learns to shave. It plays across the light and into it, the movie of little Steven growing up.
"No, no, no!" he hears Spinel cry. "Cut it out!" She begins to peel back his other fingers, faster and more frantically than before.
The pain shrinks to miniature splinters that he doesn't have to be afraid of anymore. He finds everything he has lost and then some.
Distantly, he feels Spinel let go of the last finger.
It takes only half a thought to wrap the bubble around himself and another half thought to shoot it into the air and hover above her. "I changed, Spinel," he says, lowering the bubble so it bounces softly onto the Injector's roof and pops. "You can, too. Look at you – you already have."
"Yeah – into something worse!" Spinel shoots back, misery folded into every word. She rears back to hit him again, but he throws his shield out and her entire body with the shock. She comes at him upside-down, trying to swipe his legs out from under him with her hand, and he levitates just out of her reach. From this far up, it looks like the poison is spreading more slowly, and even from here Steven can see Alexandrite, Peridot, and Lapis snatching people away from the pink goo and zipping them away to safety. The only one Spinel can hurt anymore is herself.
She stomps her foot, and cracks appear in the glass underneath her. "You don't get it, Steven! You can't fix me! No one can!"
"Why not?" Steven challenges her. After only one long afternoon and evening of them being gone, he'd almost forgotten how his powers fit into him, not just strengthening him but smoothing his reflexes and straightening his instincts. Right now, he feels like he could heal the hole in the ozone layer that Connie's been researching for that paper that could get her into college early.
Spinel balls up her hands again and flops them backward to hit herself in the head, over and over. "Because you can't change the way – I – feel!"
Steven plants his feet a hip-width apart and Spinel does her slippery thing and shoots between them, tipping her weight onto her hands once she slides through on the other side of him. He senses her foot coming for his lower back and spins the shield around just in time to meet it with a thunk. The impact ripples up her entire leg, and Spinel growls as she falls, her heels punching out more glass.
Frustration sinks its fingernails into Steven's chest. At least the ozone layer wouldn't fight him if he tried to fix it.
"You're right. I can't," he says. "Only you can!"
"No, I can't!"
Fury flashes across Spinel's face and she reels toward him again, slapping at whatever she can find. One of her hands hits his jaw, hard, and Steven stumbles, loses his balance, and falls over backward onto his shield. There's a crunching sound from underneath him, and he does a quick inventory of his bones to make sure he hasn't broken any. The good news is, he hasn't. Steven scrambles back to his feet and grabs his shield, and by the time he's upright again the gash down its front has already started to heal.
The Injector isn't so lucky. As Steven looks down at it, he sees that a wide crack in the shape of a V cuts into its ceiling, smaller lacy cracks fanning out from its edges. Glass flutters from the panes into the black hollow place where the poison was stored. He rolls out of the way just in time for Spinel to take another swing and knock another pane loose.
"I get that you can't choose to feel better right now," Steven calls to her. He wants to step toward her, and he wants to step away from her. "But you can choose not to attack all of us for something terrible my mom did! Especially when she's not even here anymore."
Instead of replying, Spinel doubles the length of her legs so that she towers over Steven. He doesn't know how she can squash and pull and reshape her body like she's made of Silly Putty – he likes to imagine himself still being around to ask Pearl about it tomorrow. Spinel clenches one fist and blows into the curl. It puffs up to the size of a wrecking ball, and she swings it toward Steven.
That's really gonna hurt if it comes down on him.
Steven steps back and raises his arms. An image of safety skips through his mind, and the next thing he knows, he's enclosed in the pink bubble that's become almost easy for him to make over the years. He remembers being thirteen again, the time he couldn't figure out how to get himself and Connie out of the bubble, and he nearly snickers to himself as it tilts away from Spinel.
Spinel's wrecking-ball fist misses the bubble and her arm plunges through the ceiling glass up to her elbow. Steven has to bite his tongue, but Spinel doesn't scream, doesn't even cry out, like she's also so filled up with pain that any more of it just slides off.
The frustration stops squeezing Steven, and he lets the bubble pop. "Spinel?" he says. "Are you okay?"
Spinel reels her arm back in like a fishing rod. Steven winches at the sight of about a zillion shallow cuts beginning to mend, but she doesn't seem to notice them.
"It doesn't matter," she says. Her arms sprawl at her sides and go limp – completely limp, like deflated balloons. "None of it matters. I was never good enough for Pink Diamond. And now – now I'm not good at all!"
Steven hears her tears before he sees them, dripping from between her lashes to soak her cheeks. He drops next to Spinel and opens himself up for a hug, same as he did for Lapis and Peridot and Bismuth and every other Gem who's gotten to the point where their past smacks them in the face.
She bats his hands away, more out of confusion than actual rejection, Steven suspects. "Why – why do I want to hurt you so bad?" she says.
Steven doesn't answer, because she isn't really asking him. She's asking the one she needs to ask – herself.
"You – you really weren't gonna Rejuvenate me, were you?" Her swimming eyes dart to Steven's. "Not that I could blame you if you wanted to. Who would want me like this? You were so nice to me, all day, and all I did was – was hurt you. And Drakken! I liked him, I really liked him, and then I went and hurt him, too! This wasn't what I was made for! I was made to be a friend! I just wanna – be a – a f-friend."
The last few syllables are nothing more than sobs, and Spinel winds her boneless-looking arms around her knees, the wind snapping her pigtails back and forth. Steven watches her and feels his own throat swelling. This isn't the crying of a Gem who messed up at whatever assignment Homeworld gave her and is scared of what she'll get for punishment. This is the kind of crying Steven's been barely fighting off all day – the kind of crying that comes when you look back over your shoulder at what you used to be able to do and wonder if you'll ever have the ability to do it again. Even the tears are something weird and unknown to her. She was made for joy.
Steven keeps kneeling beside her. "Spinel –" he says again.
And then he doesn't get the chance to say anything else.
The Injector churns from side to side, and a sound erupts from it – a crushing, scraping, collapsing sound. The glass Steven is standing on suddenly feels brittle as ice, and when he stares down through the holes where the windows used to be, he can see a light flaring red deep inside the stone chamber, warning them to run.
Except they don't have time to.
It's total instinct that thrusts one of Steven's arms out so that he can swish the bubble into existence. With the other hand and with the same instinct, he grabs Spinel's hand and holds on tight.
Somewhere in the crowd of humans that have been delivered to Little Homeworld, a baby cries, and you are not sure why. From what Drakken has told you about infants, they aren't capable of understanding the danger that surrounds them. They cannot begin to comprehend that the channels of pink on the ground mean the end of everything they touch or that Steven battles Spinel's bitterness on top of the Injector.
Alexandrite lands in front of the central tower that Spinel almost cut down earlier in the afternoon. On one of her shoulders sits the man who was once mayor; on the other, the pale silent child called Onion.
You fly up to her. Tension forces your back into a stiff line, but the rest of you moves serenely, focused and empty of fear. "Are these the last of them?" you ask. The first time Alexandrite appeared in Little Homeworld, it was with an armload of humans, and even on her last trip she clutched multiple humans in each hand.
Alexandrite puts two of her hands to her forehead to think. She speaks, and the air around her seems to vibrate; the words belong to Garnet, powered by her future vision: "Yes. I've searched every inch of the city in every timeline. There is no possibility that anyone is still in danger."
It is easy, even with your spine readied for trouble, to believe her. You glance down and see every face you know from Beach City. Even Pumpkin and the small cat Garnet keeps as a pet have been ushered to safety, chasing each other around the half-finished buildings.
You cast another wary look to the sky. Above the Injector, it still broods, clouds wrapped around each other, hurricane skies even though the sea itself has calmed to a confused ripple, the dead pink part of it scarcely visible from where you float. The expanse above you, however, has cleared, though it remains an angry violet, and a few stars peek faintly through.
Midway between Little Homeworld and the lighthouse hill stands Peridot, little more than an arrow of shadow on the ground, her mind and tablet analyzing the poison as it crawls across the earth, the droplets destroying grass before obliterating themselves with their plunge into the soil. According to her most recent calculations, the poison is slowing "at a rate of thirty-three percent approximately every two-point-five meters," which means it will come to a stop well outside the valley where Little Homeworld sits. She delivered the report with the precision of a computer and the wet eyes of a desperately relieved Gem.
You turn away from the Injector and scan the hubbub below you until you find blue skin wearing darker blue clothing.
Dr. Drakken slouches in one of Greg's collapsible chairs, his injured foot shored up on the wooden crate Bismuth dragged over for him. His face is the color of old snow but he finds a smile, weak and courageous, to give you when you sweep in next to him and let your feet touch the ground. "Hi," he says.
"Hi," you say. A layer of warm water settles over your gem, and your voice is light, almost calm. "How are you doing?"
"Oh, you mean with this?" Drakken looks at his foot as if he has just now noticed something is wrong with it, but a pinch forms in the center of his eyebrow and you can see the pain even that slight movement causes him. "It's…it's…I'm all right. It only hurts when I, you know, do stuff."
A laugh and a sob contend within you, and somehow neither of them make their way into your next breath. "You mean, like breathing?" you say.
"No, breathing is fine with it. It's when I move that we have a problem."
The inability to do so must be painful in itself, you think. Drakken is a man in constant motion; even in his sleep you have watched him toss about, from one side of his sleeping bag to the other.
"Well, why don't you focus on being able to breathe for now?" you say. "Priorities and everything. We'll get it taken care of after this is over."
"Peridot still predicting it'll fizzle out before it gets here?" Drakken says. When you nod, he adds, "Cheese doodles, I wish I could be out there with her, double-checking her work!"
He flinches at the intensity of his own voice, and you follow his gaze toward the group gathered at the base of the central tower. Alexandrite has unfused and Garnet stands taller than any of the humans near her, her expression hooded and not a black hair out of position.
"I'm sorry you can't be." You rest your hand next to his on the arm of the chair, being careful not to touch. "But I like it better when you're not about to get killed."
"Yes, I suppose." Drakken sighs in concession and then snaps frustrated eyes in the direction of the baby who continues to cry, their screams long and high like the alarms in a spacecraft warning of imminent engine failure. "It'd also help a lot if that kid could stop crying. What is he, hurt or something?"
You can see Drakken's heart pounding at the side of his head in the shape of a forked branch. He has held on to his patience well until now, but it is about to leave him.
"I'll go check," you say.
The crying leads you to a baby who fills the arms of a young woman. You cannot tell if this baby will be a man or a woman when they grow up. They are a large baby, the sort who could probably move around on their hands and knees if their mother set them down, and you know the film of hair stretched finely across their scalp will vanish from sight when sunlight strikes it.
"Hurt?" you ask the woman, pointing to the baby.
"No." The woman shifts the baby to her shoulder and repeatedly pats the quivering little back. "But she missed her nap today, and now it's so far past her bedtime. The city would have to be evacuated around the same time we finally got her sleeping straight through the night."
The woman releases a burst of bewildered laughter and passes the baby to the man beside her, who stands there looking every bit as lost as she does. The baby's wails grow louder, and while a facet of you understands Dr. Drakken's annoyance with it, the sound is more than obnoxious; it is piteous. You wish you could stop the damp stream that flows over her shining red cheeks, but tears are the one form of water on this planet that do not listen to you.
Your eyes catch on an object between and behind the baby's parents: the plastic spouted container that Peridot fills with water every day to tend to the flowers she and Bismuth have planted around Little Homeworld.
You close your eyes and the water comes to you, smooth and tender before your eyes when you open them. It hangs there, level with your face, awaiting your request. You lift your hands, propping one several centimeters lower than the other, and pull the water apart.
With that slim motion, the world becomes smaller, until you splash into a realm occupied only by you and the water and your connection. Everything else around you hits your physical form and slides off, disappearing in the current of your powers. The bottommost portion of water you allow to remain in its wiggling, flowing state, but you squint at the topmost portion and flood yourself with images of dolphins, playful and majestic, until it bends into the shape of them. You flick your left hand forward, and the dolphins spin and leap from the sea, two translucent fluid animals moving as you direct them.
As though from a great distance, you hear a man's voice say, "Look at that, Uzo. Do you see them? Do you see the dolphins?"
You raise your right hand and turn the sea beneath the dolphins into hoops through which they jump, over and over again. The baby's siren-cries slow, then fade, the absence of them changing the atmosphere, like something cracked has been healed. You let the water become amorphous again and divide it once more, sending the pieces to twirl and tumble around each other. You have just realized how much they look like a troupe of Spinels when a cry from Garnet cracks the air: "Everyone get down!"
An explosion resounds through the night like an underwater volcano pushing its way to the surface. You throw yourself in front of the baby's family, pushing them against the nearest building with your back, protecting them and your gem as a shower of metal and stone rains from the sky. In less than an Earth minute, the debris stops pelting the ground, and you whip your head in the direction of the hill where you left Steven. Dust and smoke create a cloud that puffs outward in the shape of Mama Lipsky's biscuits and blocks everything behind it from view.
You fall to your knees and beg Drakken's God not to let this be the end.
~Yes, Baby Uzo was named for Bismuth's voice actor.~