~Ack. Chapter Fifty.
When I started this story (summer 2015!), I never planned it would get even half this big. I thought I'd write a few cute little scenes between the little blue cinnamon rolls and call it good. And then...this happened. Still not sure how exactly. :P But I've had a great time, and I'm so pumped that it's managed to put a smile on your faces, too.
Thanks for everything, guys, and Happy Easter! #Heisrisen~
Your wings feel faint, more vapor than liquid, yet they still move at your urgings, shoving forward and then slicing back, carrying you toward Steven and away from your own fright. The world below you seems altered, pieces of metal, glass, and stone glinting gold and silver in the last of the day and the first of the night.
The ocean bubbles at the edges of your consciousness, waiting for you to request its help, as the memory of the explosion echoes through every hollow place inside you. Even in the jagged chunks of debris, you recognize Homeworld's craftsmanship. It was the Injector that blew – with Steven on top of it. If he rediscovered his powers before then, he will be fine.
You refuse to consider his outcome otherwise.
Currents of air part for you as always, the feeling of a soft summer breeze bafflingly normal, but even as quickly as you are moving you feel as though you are wading through a thick scoop of ice cream, unable to reach a comfortable speed. You reach the spot where the poison stopped and continue, and then everything you pass is dead: trees scorched as if by fire, flowers blackened and hunched. Anxiety thrives in your gem when you spy the Injector's needle lodged in the rotting wood of a stump, nearly cleaving it in two.
You hear a gasp and look over to see Peridot in the air beside you, lying chest-down on her trash can lid, her arms paddling, swimming in the air. "Steven! Hang on, Steven! We're coming for you!" Her words are brittle but they have not broken yet.
At the top of the hill a massive crater has taken the place of the Injector, punched deep into the earth, its sides thin and pointed as thorns. In the center of the crater are two people. They are both upright.
You feel the ocean sigh.
A figure that looks more man than boy holds the hand of a second, slighter figure. You abruptly remember the Gem whose fate had become secondary to you.
You let Peridot be the one to scream Steven's name, as her voice carries better than yours does, but you are the one who lands in the crater next to him and approaches him on legs as wispy and insubstantial as jellyfish as you examine him. Scratches and bruises fleck his face and holes have been burned in the sleeves of his jacket, but they are almost laughable compared to the damage you know he could have sustained.
"I know it doesn't feel like it right now," Steven says when you are close enough to hear. "But someday you'll love again, Spinel. Someday you'll remember how."
This time, you do throw your head back in silent laughter. Of course this is what he is saying. Of course he has survived in the epicenter of it all, and of course he is still trying to fix Spinel.
"You sure?" Spinel says. Her eyes are miserable but lucid, so different from their inflamed glare when she pressed the Rejuvenator to your back.
"Totally, completely, one-hundred-percent," Steven says.
He wraps Spinel in a hug and she stands there, arms bent at her sides, her face a pool of confusion.
"Steven!" The round silver lid comes to a sudden stop, and Peridot rolls off it and scrambles toward Steven on her hands and knees. "Steven, don't worry! I'm here! I'll save you!
"Oh…" she trails off. "You look fine."
Steven turns and breaks into a smile, perhaps the first one all day that doesn't appear to be an effort. "Peridot! Lapis!"
"Steven." You walk over and embrace him, surprised as usual by the solid feel to his shoulders now, though he still retains the layer of softness that has always defined him. He pulls closer to you, though he never once lets go of Spinel's hand. Her gaze strays to you for only a cautious moment before returning to him. "So, I take it you got your powers back," you say casually.
"Yep!"
"Thank the heavens you're okay," you murmur in his ear.
He gives you a squeeze.
You turn to address Spinel, trying not to stare at her upside-down gem. "And Spinel – I take it you're good now."
Spinel's head bobs like a cork in water. "Yuh-huh. Or at least…at least I wanna be."
The earnestness in her eyes catches you. You understand it far too well.
"Steven!" you hear Greg call from outside the crater.
You lift Steven into your arms and fly him over the thorned lip of the crater as Peridot hoists Spinel onto her trash can lid. As Peridot predicted, the poison has already seeped well into the ground, taking its danger with it, and you know when you set Steven down that it won't hurt him anymore.
"Over here, Dad!" Steven says.
Greg's van drives up, its path winding and rocking as if it is trying to follow the flowing turns of a river, and comes to a halt so sharp that it tears dead grass from the soil. Pearl and Amethyst pour out of the front windows while Garnet, calmly as ever, slides open the door in the center of the van. They drown Steven in their hugs and tears, which he answers with happy tears of his own.
"I told you he could do it," Garnet says.
The van's rear doors flip open, and Bismuth steps out, cradling Drakken in her arms the way the mother at Little Homeworld held baby Uzo. She moves with a gentleness you would not have credited to her.
"I'm pretty sure we just committed several traffic violations," Drakken mutters, dazed, and then his eyes land on Steven. "Oh, Steven! Oh, good! Everyone's fine!"
Drakken's leg slips from Bismuth's arm and dangles above the ground. Steven flinches at the sight of his injured heel. "What happened?"
The skin around Drakken's mouth trembles, though he tries to hold it steady. "Oh, I stepped in the poison. Very painful. Not fun. On the other hand…I got to be critically burned by elements completely foreign to this planet!" His shaking lips manage to form a grin. "Pretty cool, right?"
Steven doesn't respond. He jogs up to Drakken, cups his hand around Drakken's foot, and kisses its underside. The sagging grayed skin rounds out once more and refills with the cloudless sky color you have come to love.
Drakken's breath comes out in a deep gust, and you watch the pain leave his face. "Ohhh, thank you, Steven! A thousand and one times, thank you! Ah…that's so much better." He swings out of Bismuth's arms and drops to the ground, snickering to himself when his heels accept the weight of his body. "I always did envision a day when people would kiss my feet, but I never saw it happening quite like this."
You don't know what he is talking about, but you don't mind. There will be plenty of time, later, for him to explain.
"Drakken."
All eyes turn toward Spinel, who stands with one leg bent behind the other. "Drakken, I'm so sorry!" she says. "I'm sorry about hurting your foot. I'm sorry about almost Rejuvenating Lapis. I'm sorry for being who I am right now. I know – I know you probably can't ever forgive me, but I just want'cha to know…I'm sorry."
Drakken's eyebrow twists in the middle, a curve that can mean any number of things. You haven't figured out what it represents at this point until he crouches on his ankles, his head level with Spinel's, and opens his arms to her.
Spinel takes a step backward and stares at him as though she thinks he might be an illusion, built by her tortured mind.
"Well, come on, Little Miss Springy Legs!" Drakken says. "Not to rush you into anything, but my back won't let me stay like this for long."
Each year that you have lived on Earth, you have watched winter change to spring, the cold fog lifting and the frost giving way to green and warmth. That is the expression you see in Spinel's eyes now.
She runs forward and then, with a series of flips, bounds into Drakken's arms and clutches at his back. From a few meters away, you hear the words she sniffs into his coat-of-labs: "Soon as I figure out how to love again, I'm gonna come back and make it all up to you. Promise."
Drakken rests his hand against the back of her head, soothing the frayed hair. "Indeed," he says. "That'll be nice."
Pearl has yet to stop crying.
Peridot's fingers brush yours, and she stares up at you with glimmering eyes. "Is this happily ever after, Lapis?" she says.
Steven answers before you can shake your head. "No, Peridot. There's no such thing as happily ever after." His tone is as somber as you have ever known it to be, yet undefeated. "I'll always have more work to do."
He draws up to his full height, and for a moment when you look at him, it is hard to see the child you first met. His eyes travel to something over your shoulder, and his jaw drops.
You feel the pull at the air and hear the whir of thrusters as still another intergalactic craft descends into Earth's atmosphere, blocking the sinking sun. The shadow it casts across the hill forms the shape of an imposing, towering woman. You know without turning around that the white head and body, the blue and yellow arms, and the pink legs will be there to greet you.
The white spiked head opens and rolls away, and White Diamond's own head replaces it, a beacon against the darkening sky. A silence seems to pass over your family as Blue and Yellow appear at her sides. Within you, your powers stammer like Drakken's speech, never certain if these three faces bring with them safety or danger.
Spinel ducks her head and disappears behind Steven. Dr. Drakken closes the distance between himself and you in several graceless strides and takes hold of your arm, his fingers tiny points of warmth, as the Diamonds waft from their ship and onto the ground, crushing the brittle remnants of grass beneath their feet.
"Yoo-hoo! Steven!" White Diamond flutters an arm, and a rush of cold air blows your hair away from your forehead.
"It's us. The Diamonds," Blue Diamond says, as if they could be mistaken for anyone else. The familiar softness in her gaze makes her face both the easiest and the hardest to focus upon, and you center your attention there, feeling as though you stand in the place where the ocean's bottom will fall from you with your next step.
Even after everything today has been, Steven still manages to wave; he still manages to look happy to see them. "Hey, guys. What's up?"
"Well, we felt just awful about our silly quarrel with you before you left Homeworld," Yellow Diamond says. "We talked about it all day, and finally we decided to come check on you and make sure there were no hard feelings."
"They aren't any hard feelings, are there, Steven?" Blue Diamond says.
"'Course not." Steven shakes his head. "You were just disappointed that I couldn't stay – I get that."
"It's just that…we miss Pink so much." Blue Diamond closes her hands before her chest, and you suspect she is trying not to cry. "And you were the last one she gave life to before she went away."
"So we got together and came up with an idea," White Diamond says. "If you won't come live on Homeworld with us, perhaps we can come live on Earth with you. How does that strike you?"
You hope it doesn't. Steven has received enough blows for one day.
"Um…" Steven's eyes dash from the Diamonds to Greg and then down to the beach where the Temple stands. "Not that that wouldn't be awesome, but I'm pretty sure you won't fit in my house. Or in most other places around here."
White Diamond's laugh startles you as it does every time you hear it. "Oh, we'll think of something. Don't you worry…"
Her words trail off, and you don't have to wonder why. Now that the last of the toxin's pink glow has ebbed away, the land looks as if a killing tide has swept over it: the cluttered wreckage of the Injector slung every which way; holes torn into the ground, the earth agape at what has happened to it; the hill scarcely more than a heap of ash.
The corner of White Diamond's upper lip turns up, the most expression you have ever seen on her face, and it almost makes you giggle again. "Was Earth always this…ruined?"
"No." Steven rubs the back of his neck. "You caught us on a bad day."
"That's putting it mildly," you murmur to Drakken, whose warm little fingers still curl near your elbow.
"Remind us again why Pink fought so hard for this planet," Yellow Diamond says. The night traces the outline of her features, which are sharp enough to carve straight through the gems of anyone standing in front of her. The thought laps at you like cold water around your ankles, but you refuse to immerse yourself in it.
Blue Diamond reaches out, her elegant sleeves waving, and touches Yellow Diamond's shoulder. "Because of its life, Yellow," she says, gently as ever.
Steven's eyes brighten, and he holds up a finger to the Diamonds, signaling for them to wait an Earth-minute. He twists to face Spinel, his wide body blocking her from their view. "Spinel?" He speaks her name in a whisper. "Do you want to come see the Diamonds?"
She hesitates.
"They've seen you before, haven't they?" Steven says.
"Yeah, but…not like this." Spinel painfully motions from her disheveled hair and streaked face to the upside-down gemstone on her chest.
"They won't care." Steven's voice fills with conviction, a strength that will yield only when it knows it is believed. He has used it with you many times.
Spinel swipes at her eyes with the back of her wrist and nods.
Steven swivels toward the Diamonds once again, tugging an anxious-eyed Spinel with him. "Hey," he says. "I know it's been a super-long time, but –"
White Diamond does not allow him to finish. "I remember you!" she says, pointing at Spinel. "Pink's favorite little playmate!"
"Spinel," Yellow Diamond says. She is smiling, the harsh planes of her face eroding in increments until the smooth golden surface appears to have been wholly rearranged.
"Another one of Pink's lost treasures," Blue Diamond says.
Spinel's mouth is tilted open and silent, fishlike, so Steven says for her, "Mom left her on a floating garden in space. She just found out this morning."
"Oh, you poor dear." Blue Diamond stoops and holds out her hand. Her eyes are wet, yet yours remain dry, her pain no longer forced onto you. It is every bit as jarring as White Diamond laughing.
It is Spinel who laughs now, though, a sound with which she seems familiar and comfortable, as if she has never stopped. "What, are you kidding? It was only six thousand years! I could do that standing on my head! As a matter of fact…"
Spinel catapults herself onto Blue Diamond's hand and catches her weight on her palms, throwing her legs into the air and knocking the toes of her oversized shoes together. They squeak like startled Peridots, and one by one each of the Diamonds' expressions buds into a smile. "How long you wanna bet I can hold this?" Spinel hollers.
"Four hours!" Drakken calls.
"Ten months!" Peridot yells at the same time.
You doubt Spinel hears either of them, however, as she regales the Diamonds by overstretching her legs and braiding them together so she intentionally loses her balance. They look at her as if they can't get enough of her, and she looks back at them, all four of them lost in the same memories for a moment. You do not see the ownership or the entitlement you have come to associate with the Gems who once ruled your planet, just a measure of homesickness that you would recognize anywhere.
"This Gem…" Blue Diamond strokes the top of Spinel's head with her fingertip. "Oh, this Gem. Don't you just love her?"
The question sounds so natural in the understated power of Blue Diamond's voice, which cups words the way you would cup a handful of water, not letting any drops spill through your fingers, that you almost miss the effect it has on Spinel. She lets her legs drop, and you catch a small glimpse of her eyes pulling shut and a smile seeping across her lips before the enormous blue hand lifts, carrying her closer to Blue Diamond's face.
"She is cute," Yellow Diamond says.
"She's adorable," Blue Diamond corrects her. "And so much like Pink."
You hear Steven grunt under his breath, and you know that he, like you, is wondering whether or not that is a compliment. You hear no protest from Spinel, however, no shrieks and none of her wailing laughter.
White Diamond bends toward Steven so she stands only nine meters above him. "Steven," she says, "since Earth is so repulsive…what do you say we just take Spinel back to the palace to live with us? She can have Pink's room."
Steven rubs his jaw, cautious. "I dunno. That'd be up to Spinel."
You can't see Spinel's expression; you only vaguely hear her voice, airier now, a cloud unburdened by rain. "Do you mean it? I mean, you really want me?"
"Of course we want you, darling!" Blue Diamond says. The sincerity in her eyes winds up and down your back, warming it like Drakken's touch.
"Then I'd love to go!" Spinel pauses. "But – can I say good-bye first?"
"Absolutely," Yellow Diamond says. "We've waited this long – we can wait a little longer."
You feel your forehead twist as you try not to stare at her. Steven was right about the progress the Diamonds have made.
Blue Diamond's hand descends to the earth again, and Spinel hops down. With all of today's outlandish events, what happens to Spinel has not been of great concern to you. Steven cares for her, though, as does Drakken. Just because Spinel is not important to you doesn't mean she is not important.
A sigh catches in the back of your throat, stopped like an impurity in a filtration system. If only Pink Diamond had remembered that, none of this would have happened.
Steven reaches out for Spinel, but it's Drakken she goes to first, coiling her arms around him three times and burying her face in his chest. His large round chin wobbles, seeming to soften all the more.
"You know we're not chasing you off, right, Spinel?" Steven says from behind them. "You're perfectly welcome to stay on Earth if that's what you want. I'm sure we could find a place for you in Little Homeworld."
You aren't, but you don't contradict him.
Spinel peels back from Drakken just far enough to look at Steven. "Appreciate it. But I've already messed up bad with you guys. I think – I think it'd be better for me to start over with someone new. Someone I haven't hurt. Learn how to love again. Then maybe, someday, after I know…I can come back." She spins to Drakken again. "I mean, I've kinda been your enemy today, huh?"
The corners of Drakken's eyes lift in a smile. "Spinel," he says, "with enemies like you, who needs friends?"
Her giggle leaps out of her, and the breeze grabs it and scatters it across the night. Drakken laughs with her, an understanding laugh. This must be something they both know from their interactions earlier today. You can ask Drakken about it later.
"Good-bye, Dr. Drakken," Spinel says, letting go. "Thanks for everythin'."
Drakken swallows nothing. "Don't you be a stranger, you hear? I want you to call me – virtually, I guess it'd have to be – when you need to. Homeworld does have Skype, doesn't it?"
"Skype?" Spinel echoes with a frown.
Peridot wedges her way in to explain, a task which still thrills her, and you shuffle your feet on the poisoned ground. The feel of it is so unnaturally smooth that you don't want to be connected to it anymore, and you take to your wings and rise into the sky, until you are high enough that the destruction no longer fills your vision and you can see the green of the surviving plants and the blue of your resilient sea. You let your limbs relax, and the light that constructs your muscles seems to melt in relief.
"Can I ask you a question, Spinel?" Steven is saying when you touch down again near him.
"Yeah! Anything you wanna know!" Spinel calls from her new perch on Blue Diamond's shoulder.
Steven braces a hand against his neck and breathes hard. "Where did you get the Injector? And the bio-poison?"
In the calamity of today, you have not had time to entertain the thought, but now it swims into your mind on seal flippers, barking to be noticed. This morning, Spinel was standing in the same place where she stood for the last six thousand years, expecting to be retrieved by her Diamond at any moment. How did she obtain a weapon in the span of a few Earth-hours?
"Bio-poison?" Yellow Diamond's eyebrows are arrows, pointing at her suspicious eyes. "We destroyed all of that at the beginning of Era Three."
Spinel nods. "Ya missed some. There's this group of rebel Gems – I guess they ran off with it while everybody else was so confused, and they've been saving it for something special. I guess I was that something special, 'cuz they gave it right to me and wished me luck."
"Rebel Gems?" Steven says.
Your gem tightens on your skin, like a ship battening down in preparation for a grueling storm. For the majority of your life, the phrase "rebel Gems" meant Rose Quartz and her allies, shadowed and despised figures that tore Gemkind apart to save a foreign planet. Somehow, you became one of them and fought alongside them for something other than yourself. Yet now that the Diamonds have changed so drastically, standing in opposition to them means something far different, something far less noble.
"You mean, they want Homeworld back the way it was?" you blurt out. You understand all too well how a Gem could long for the sheltered, unbroken procedure of Era One, but Era Two?
"Who are they?" Steven says.
"Their leader is a Jasper," Spinel says. "Funny-lookin' Jasper with horns and spots all over her."
You do not hold back your sigh this time. You knew that there would never be anything soft about Jasper, but you had begun to hope there might someday be something good.
"That figures," Steven mutters.
"And there's a whole bunch of Rubies," Spinel continues. "And a lot of the old Elite."
Someone in the crowd starts to growl, only to cut herself off. You know it is Bismuth without looking around, for you cannot look around at this point. Your hands shake at your sides. You try to numb yourself to what has to be coming next, but the instinct has rotted with disuse, and your hands won't stop shaking.
"You mean, like Aquamarines?" Peridot says. She does not turn the information over and brood over it as she typically would; instead, she is trying too hard to sound cheery and bright. She can anticipate Spinel's next words, too.
"Yep, there's an Aquamarine," Spinel says. "And a few Lapises."
Your hands shake faster.
"Because they miss having their old status, huh?" Peridot's tone is almost begging.
Spinel shrugs, and the informality of the gesture almost cracks you. "That and, I think they actually miss terraforming."
There it is.
Terraforming.
The word goes straight through you and out the other side. It feels as though you have not heard it in eons, though in truth it has only been a few years. You don't make a sound; you clamp a hand to your mouth and let the ocean scream for you, the surf foaming and raging, its head white as the noise inside your head.
The conversation goes on without you: questions are answered, farewells said, reminders to keep in touch given with the brush of a finger over Spinel's tiny nose. You barely see her give a final wave, her arms flaccid and eyes shining. You barely see the hatch of the Diamonds' ship close as it speeds into the sky and vanishes beyond the borders of the Crystal System.
All you can picture is a newly-made, callow Gem with bare feet and a gauzy skirt, drowning planets in their own oceans for the continued glory of Homeworld. A thousand pleas for mercy ring in your head, pleas you never heard.
I'm sorry, the core of your gemstone sobs to all of them. I'm so sorry for what I did to you.
Even as you gaze at your surroundings to steady yourself, you do not see the scene of your triumph or the expanse of land and sea you were able to save together. Everything around you is destruction and guilt.
When at last even Peridot's chatter has died down, and you hear Steven say, "Wait a second – Lapis, is something wrong?" and feel Drakken's bony comforting hands settle on your shoulders, your only thought is that you do not deserve any of it. The thought is brittle and sore inside your gemstone, as familiar and foreign as Homeworld itself.
"Lapis Lazuli," Blue Diamond said then, wearing the smile that meant everything to you, the one that told you that you were good and you were doing the right thing. "I have a special mission to assign you."
You remember the thrill that engulfed you.
"Lapis," Dr. Drakken says now. "Are you okay? Are you hurt?"
"No," you say to both questions.
"Is it…did I do something?" His voice, typically so boisterous, has grown thick and sloshes against its banks.
You shake your head.
"She stopped talking around the same time Spinel identified the rebel Gems," Peridot says. The sunlight glints off her visor, obscuring the concern you know churns in her eyes.
"Is that it, Lapis?" Steven says. "Is it about the rebel Gems?"
You nod. "Yeah. And…something else." You notice that your chest is still and tight; you have stopped breathing, your attention forced to other matters. "Something that happened a long time ago."
Even Peridot goes quiet then. No one can believe you just said that, least of all you.
This secret is the darkest and the fiercest one you have ever kept. You have spent your time on Earth dodging it as Steven would dodge enemies in one of his virtual games, but now it leaves you with no choice: you must turn to confront it here or forever feel it at your back, poised to strike where you are most vulnerable.
You can't figure out how to begin.
"What kind of something?" Steven prompts.
Fear pelts you from above, swamps you from below, and surges around you from all other sides. The only place you can retreat is inside yourself, and you will not do that again. "I can't…I don't want to tell you about it."
You are not sure to whom you are speaking, but it is Drakken who circles around you and peers into your face, only his gaze touching you. "Are you afraid that if I find out, I won't love you anymore?"
The notion is so ridiculous it is almost funny, but you still cannot move.
"Because I love you for who you are now." He reaches out and brushes your fingerprints with his. "Who you were then doesn't change that.
"Besides," he adds with a splintered laugh, "I've tried to sabotage the Earth's atmosphere at least three separate times – and I'm a native."
You look up into his eyes and see the goodness in them, the goodness that had to swim upstream for so long to make it there. He understands the depth, if not the breadth, of what you have done.
"Terraforming." Somehow the word squirts from you. Somehow your lips do not shatter when they say it.
You escaped the Rejuvenator, but not the past.
There is an empty hesitating moment, the kind that occurs when someone tests a bridge centuries old with their weight, and then Drakken says, "What about it?"
"It's what Lapis Lazulis are created to do," you say. You stare at the ocean, your partner, the weapon you were taught to wield. "It's our Purpose. We helped the Diamonds convert other planets into Gem colonies. They'd set up the first few Kindergartens to make sure the planet was viable, and then they called us to prepare it for total colonization. Which meant using our powers to completely redo the planet's surface…and – and wipe out all its organic life."
You twist and look directly at Steven, into the dark, rounded eyes. It will be the last moment that his eyes don't know this about you, and you want to savor the look in them, for there can be no restoring them to this state.
"That's why I was here when the war broke out. I was supposed to terraform Earth." You wait for the cold to steal over your physical form, but pain comes instead, a pain at once sharp and dull, and there is no diverting it from its path across your spine into the center of your being. With your last drop of courage, you lift your arms and gesture to the world about you. "I would have destroyed…all of this."
You do not realize you are crying until you feel the moisture graze your cheeks.
Long flowing arms glide around you, and Pearl's graceful voice moves the hair stuck to your forehead. "Lapis, we've all done things we're not proud of," she says. "It's –"
You jerk away, not from her touch but from the lie she is about to offer you. "Don't tell me it's okay."
Someone else comes up behind you and spans your shoulder with her strong narrow fingers. "It's not okay. But we forgive you." Garnet's words, wise and unfluctuating, pile on one another and form a wall too firm to be knocked down.
Your face grows wetter, and the words escape your control; you are not yelling, yet the words are water from a broken pipe, blood from a fresh cut. "It was going to be my first solo mission. So it would have been my fault. All my fault!"
Amethyst barges forward and lets out a grunt. "Right. Because there totally weren't any Diamonds telling you what to do or anything. Even I know that."
Something in her irreverent manner wants to soothe you, and you take a step backward, not yet ready to be soothed. "But I could've told them no. I should've told them no."
Amethyst grunts again, her arms wandering into a fold. "Right," she repeats. "Because they totally wouldn't have just shattered you and used a different Lapis."
"Amethyst!" Pearl and Peridot scold her in unison.
You shake your head at them. As much as the thought once terrified you, it is easier to bear than the idea of what you were commissioned to do to Earth: discard its life, obliterating its trees before you discovered their colors shifted with the seasons and its humans before you heard the oceanic beat of their hearts. Under the Diamonds' ascendency, Dr. Drakken would never have been born.
The night breeze skims your bare middle, yet it is not responsible for the shiver that runs through you. You consider Pumpkin, Greg, Lars, Sadie, Connie, Shego, Lion, Commodore Puddles, and all of Drakken's small sociable flowers and think how each of them had ancestors that Pink Diamond chose to defend. She saw their beauty before you did, and she rescued them from the cruelty you did not understand you were practicing. You wonder how the same person could have abandoned Spinel and never looked back.
You wonder how many equally deserving species no longer exist because of you.
Fresh tears drop from between your eyelashes, and you make no move to wipe them away. "I never wanted anything to suffer. I just never looked close enough to see that anything was," you say, almost in a whisper, unsure if anyone will hear you.
Someone does.
A hand too big to belong to anyone but Bismuth swings forward and tilts your chin upward. "We know that now, Wings," she says, as if your nickname has become something precious to her.
Peridot has already wrapped her arms around your knees and buried her face in the fabric of your pant legs. For a moment you stand there, boxed in by Crystal Gems, and if they cannot stop your trembling or absorb your tears, neither do they seem affronted by them.
For another moment, you let them hold you, and then you drag yourself around to look at Steven. You remember how Drakken once told you that organic lifeforms don't automatically adjust to the differing gravities throughout space, and how a planet like Jupiter or Saturn would crush them under its mass. You suspect this is how that would feel.
Steven stares back at you. His eyes shine like glass, but there is nothing in them now that wasn't in them before and nothing missing now that was. You did not expect censure from him; it is not Steven's way, yet he does not even appear to have heard you.
"Steven, I –" you say.
He holds up his hand, as though he cannot bear to hear any more. "Actually…I'd kinda already figured it out."
Only your lips move, the rest of you still as a bubbled Gem. "You had? How?"
"Some of the stuff I overheard Blue and Yellow Diamond talking about at the human zoo," Steven says. "And the timing…you know, you being sent here just before the war broke out…"
To visit. "Visit" was the word you gave Steven that night at the Galaxy Warp to explain your panic, and shame smolders in your cheeks. You did not mean to lie to him, only to leave terraforming far behind you where it belongs.
"You knew?" you say again. "But you still –"
Steven interrupts you once more. "Of course I 'still.' We're Beach Summer Fun Buddies." He smiles at you, the smile that was the first beautiful thing you had seen on Earth aside from the ocean.
You still possess the strength needed to hold back the floodwaters but no desire to do so.
You drop into his arms like a leaf over a waterfall and truly begin to sob. You cry until you taste salt and hear the ocean roar behind your eyes, yet as Drakken promised you all those years ago, there is an end to it, as there is to any storm: first a steadying of the wildness, then a slowing, and then a stopping. When the tears subside, you do not shove them off your stiffened skin, and instead lift your face to the sky and let the summer breeze do it for you. You are finally empty; you are finally unbound.
Someone's arm encircles your back without touching you, and you do not need to feel its lack of both coldness and power to know it is Dr. Drakken.
"I bet that's been building up for a while, huh?" he says. Empathy crashes across his face, shaking it from the plumpness of his jaw to the spikes of his hair.
You nod, and he slips to the ground beside you, his hand resting lightly over yours to remind you he is here. Your wet eyes find his, and you say, "I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner. I just wanted – I just wanted to forget about it."
"Understood," Peridot says. "I do not enjoy looking back on the Era in my life before I became a Crystal Gem."
You smile at the tinny quality of her voice, your shoulders loosening, and you watch Drakken's spiked black eyelashes glance off his cheeks as he blinks. "But now that you've told us," he says, "I bet it feels like it does after you throw up."
"You mean, like it does after you throw up," you say. "I've never had that experience."
"Lucky." Drakken bumps his shoulder against yours and gives you his charming, offbeat grin.
You cross your legs to keep them from wobbling. "No, seriously – what is throwing up like?"
"Well – see, that's the thing. It's awful. Before it happens, you're dreading it, and you're just thinking, Oh, please, don't let me throw up – oh please, I hate throwing up – oh please, no! And then it happens and it's disgusting and it's terrifying and it tastes terrible, but then afterward…afterward, you're just all shaky with relief because it's over with. Afterward, you feel so much better now that your body's gotten rid of all that stuff that probably had no business being inside you in the first place."
Like four thousand cupcakes, you think, but you do not say it to him.
As usual, there is a deposit of accuracy in his ramblings. Your body no longer strains with your secret, and the atmosphere does not crush you anymore. You look down at your quivering feet and nod. "Yeah. I guess it is kind of like that," you say.
You move your eyes to Bismuth's, which study you with concern pinching them, and you shudder again. Since you returned from Kanatar, she has offered you her remorse and her protection. Now she deserves for you to tell everyone else the truth: that you might have been her victim, but you were not innocent.
"That's why you poofed me that day on the battlefield," you say. "You had to. To keep me from destroying everything. You – I think you might have done the right thing."
The words are limp and soured, dead fish in your mouth. Drakken was right, even about the bad taste.
Bismuth stares for several seconds at the justification you have just offered her, considers it, and then dismisses it with a shake of her head. "I'm not so sure I did. I didn't have to poof you. I could have taken you back to Rose, had her show you what we were doing and why. Tried to get you to join our side. I'd done it before." Her eyes are pained, so different from the vitriolic ones that attacked you along with her fist. "But you were an Elite, and I hated you for that. I thought I knew what Lapises were like."
"And nine of out of ten times, you would have been correct," Peridot says. She wipes her tablet's screen with her forearm.
"No. Ten times out of ten," you say, pain coursing down your back. Your eyes burn, yet you have to keep them on Bismuth's. "I never thought you were inferior. But I let everyone think that I did. I used to be such a coward."
Amethyst frowns. "Hello! I used to not be able to talk. And look at me now."
"Yeah, look at you now." Steven hooks his arm around Amethyst's neck, and she swats playfully at his side. You fold your own arms across your chest and feel weak from the effort of divulging what you have.
Bismuth's mouth flattens without hardening, and she props an elbow on one bent knee, her thumbs tapping together. "What do you think would've happened if Rose had shown you what we were fighting for? Would ya have joined us?"
When you close your eyes, there is no light behind your eyelids and you know you are staring into the darkest pieces of yourself. "I don't know," you say. "I hope so…but I'm not sure."
You have said it. You have said it all now, and it hurts as you have not hurt in years, but you are not in shards.
You open your eyes so that you will not imagine yourself standing before Rose Quartz, feared leader of the Rebellion, telling her that humans are crude and brutish and unworthy of the trouble she was causing to save them. The ground where you sit is gray and bleak, like a moan waiting to be released.
"I bet you would have, Lapis." Steven sounds tired when he says it, and older than the boy who would have readily believed it of any Gem he met, his eyes sagging. Yet you can still see his belief in you, stouter than your belief in yourself.
The breeze presses against your face and makes off with more dried salt. "Thank you, Steven," you say in a voice barely stronger than the movement of the air.
You stand up, and Drakken rises too, bending to kiss the top of your head. All around you, fireflies pulse on and off as though this is any other night, as though you and most of the Gems with you have not been broken apart and put back together again today.
Drakken leans against you and you lean against him, two sagging fence posts propping one another up, and his fingers hug your bare arms. "You did awesome today," he says to you. "Matter of fact, we all did awesome today! Go, team!
"What?" he says when Amethyst smirks at him. "My old arch-nemesis was a cheerleader. And let me tell you, it did wonders for her side's morale!"
Steven grins then, relieving the tension on his face. Drakken offers him an open palm for a high-five, and you notice he scarcely has to stoop to reach Steven's level anymore. "Thank you once again for fixing my foot," Drakken says. "In case I forgot to say that earlier. I am very appreciative, just not…rememberative."
"Of course! I'm just really glad I was able to help," Steven says, and although you hear the exhaustion tugging at his words, you know he means it.
"Too bad you can't just do that for, like, everything else." Amethyst kicks a dead flower.
You gaze around at the landscape: once so familiar to you, now buried in shades of dull purple and gray, life crushed and muted. The majority of Earth has survived and it seems almost silly to weep over the small portion of it that hasn't, yet these were the places you stood when you first saw organic lifeforms as anything other than obstacles to be swept away; they deserve to be mourned.
A sensation you are accustomed to keeping submerged swims up from the center of your gem, but before it can break the surface, Steven lifts his head with a gasp. "Amethyst! That's a great idea!" He doesn't sound exhausted anymore, and the fireflies' light flickers in his eyes.
"Dude, I was just joking," Amethyst says.
Steven ignores her and bends over the ground, and you watch him kiss it in much the same way Drakken will kiss his mother's cheek. Pink runs across the ground again, but this time is a bright, nurturing pink that wraps the ruin and, when it fades an instant later, leaves the grass green and healthy and the wildflowers jolted upright as though surprised, the color returned to their petals. You are almost certain you hear a chime in the air.
"Holy smokes, Steven!" Peridot nearly drops her tablet. "It really works!"
Steven takes a modest bow.
Petals leap from the sides of Dr. Drakken's head, one jutting over each ear. He grumbles under his breath in incomplete syllables and works them free, and then his face, too, grows brilliant in the twilight. "Speaking of great ideas…" he says.
Drakken jogs forward and trips, pressing his hands into the nearest patch of dead ground. There is no glow, no sound, and no ceremony as the buds and blooms appear between his fingers and then unfold in mundane hues hardly visible surrounded by darkness. It would almost be a subtle act, if he did not throw both arms up toward the stars and chortle in triumph.
You giggle, too, as the grass sprouts beneath your feet, and you kick off your shoes to feel its whisper across your skin. The texture is irregular and wild; it is natural. For a few moments, you can believe that this planet is alone in the universe and that the lights in the sky do not hide threats, threats who wear your face.
"Looks like you guys have a lot of work to do," Greg says.
"You bet we do!" Steven starts to run off, grabbing Drakken to tow him along, but Garnet stops them with a hand on Steven's shoulder.
"You've got a lot of kissing to do," she says. "I want you to report back to me in half an hour for a glass of water. It's very important to stay hydrated while you're smooching."
You blink. You had been so consumed with thoughts of how dangerous a surplus of water was to humans that you almost forgot that a dearth of it can be just as bad.
There are so many ways my powers could destroy them.
"How does she know that?" Drakken hisses to you.
"You don't want to know," you reply, although you would rather consider that than continue to confront the thought circling your hollow insides.
As Steven and Drakken become faint figures in the distance, Pearl takes out her phone, her fingers performing a dance across the screen. "I'm setting my timer for exactly thirty minutes!" She laughs, a sound that used to sit and nervously flutter its wings but now soars with the wind, and looks up at Garnet. "Well – I presume this means the citizens of Beach City can now safely return to their houses, doesn't it?"
Garnet nods.
"Yeah!" Amethyst says. "Let's go un-evacuate them!"
"On it," you say.
You summon your own wings and return to Little Homeworld and its cluster of evacuated humans, looking for Uzo's family first. You find them near the back of the crowd, the baby finally asleep with her head against her mother's chest, her mouth frozen in the shape of a whimper as though she might need it when she awakens.
Peridot spins the trash can lid to a halt in front of them, and you take her arm and tap your finger to your lips. In a voice as low and quiet as Peridot's can be, she recites the exact coordinates of where the poison has stopped and informs them they are now free to leave, "provided their dwelling establishments are not within those parameters." Uzo's parents thank both of you with tears in their eyes, and they turn and stride off in the opposite direction of where Steven pulled Drakken.
You get one last glimpse of the baby as she lets out a fragile breath. Perhaps Uzo will sleep more soundly in her own home.
Perhaps she will dream of dolphins.
The humans of Beach City no longer gather in a frightened mass around one another: their bodies have relaxed, they speak more loudly and openly, and they cheer when they see the other Crystal Gems approaching. You flit from one departing group to another, tying shoestrings and retrieving dropped items. As long as you keep moving, your back is all strength and no pain. You watch Lars and Sadie squeeze hands before they go their separate ways; you help the boy called Sour Cream chase down his brother called Onion; you wave to both the current and former mayors as they escort their families from Little Homeworld.
When the last of them have drizzled away, you slump to the roof of your house and glance up at the sky. You immediately wish you hadn't. Though the stars look steady and peaceful from here, you know them to be always roiling, always changing, rebellious Gems becoming heroes and devout Gems becoming traitors.
You close your eyes. In this stillness, it is difficult to look at the sky and not envision Jasper smashing through it, her large demanding hands outstretched to you. As always, the rhythm of the ocean beats up and down your back, but right now it feels discordant, uneven, and you don't think that is just because of the damage it has suffered today.
"I'm kind of taking a break from water right now," you hear yourself tell Peridot in a caustic voice that reminds you Jasper is not the one you most dread encountering.
An image rises in your mind of your previous form standing on a dock in front of the boat you would eventually sink, your skirt blowing in the breeze. Steven is there with you, eyes pleading with you to enjoy yourself. "Just because you had one bad experience with water…"
You paused. You flinched. "It was more than one."
You went numb then because there was no alternative, your body a sandbag, a buffer between your deeper places and the pain. Now there is nothing to hold back the tide of memories or keep invisible fissures from forming inside you. When you open your eyes, the sky gleams above you, unchanged. You try not to picture slender blue Gems descending from it, affronting your friends with eyes as sharp as spears, their arms raised and their minds set to finish the job assigned to you.
For the first time all day, you feel hopeless. They will come, you know that. If not for Earth, then for some planet with an ocean. Your shaking fists clench in your lap at the thought of them anywhere near Steven.
Below you, Peridot chatters happily away while Pearl checks the timer on her phone. The feeling that you should rejoin them is new to you yet too powerful to ignore. Your eyes find Bismuth easily, her head well above anyone else's, and something she said earlier today reverberates through your gem:
"We are the Crystal Gems. And we never give up on our friends."
Her voice drowns yours without effort. Whatever is going to happen now, you will not face it alone.
Your family heads toward the warp pad, and you join them, wedging yourself between Garnet and Peridot. All of you tumble through the air and touch down in Steven's house, the strong slats of plastic over its windows turned out to admit the sunlight that no longer shines. Through their smudged panes, you can see glimmers of pink against the darkness as Steven and Drakken reanimate what has been wilted, straightening the crooked lifeless grass and mending the scrapes in the earth. The room where you stand is so quiet that you can hear when Garnet flicks the lights on, revealing a sofa with cushions askew; you realize with a start that this is where five Gems woke up today blank, their memories stolen.
Pearl retrieves two glasses from a cupboard and turns the faucet handles, and you look away. Your eyes are unable to rest comfortably on the water with that word – terraforming – still tearing into your gem. Until today, your Purpose was an antiquity, hardly worth mentioning. Now there is no escaping it.
Amethyst opens the door and peers outside, calling, "Hey – S-Man and D-Man! Timer went off! Time for hydration, my dudes!"
They arrive within minutes, their cheeks flushed and triumphant, a ring of dirt around Steven's lips. Both of them accept the glasses Pearl hands them with grateful nods and empty them in great hearty gulps.
"Thanks, guys," Steven says as he puts his glass down. "I needed that."
"Me, too," Drakken says. "Even though I haven't actually been kissing anything."
You approach and extend a smile to him. "Would you like to kiss me?"
Drakken's flush deepens, but he bobs his head without hesitation and lowers his grinning mouth to yours. The touch of his lips is like the touch of his hands: clumsy yet not careless. It does not make you forget why you were first sent to Earth, but it helps you remember why you have chosen to stay.
When he pulls away, he says, "I'd never actually considered the possibility of dehydration through kissing, but then, I'm not exactly the smooching expert our friend Steven here is."
To your surprise, Steven does not deny or deflect the words. You don't know if Drakken sees it, but you do: the shift in Steven's skin from the color of his gemstone to the color of Ruby's and the strain between his eyelashes as he fights to keep his gaze on Drakken's. You will have to ask him about it when the two of you are alone.
Through the opened windows, you can hear the ocean's playful roar more clearly than ever. You sink down onto one of the couch cushions, not bothering to adjust its imperfect angle, and you feel yourself compressing, your chin and your knees meeting at your chest. The impervious numbness does not drag you down as you expect, even when you search the edges of your being for it. You are alert to the cooling night air the window sweeps your way, the soft surface beneath you, and the sharpness of everything in your mind.
You hear yourself again – I'm not getting caught up in another war – and while you will not run now, it is all too easy to remember why you did then.
A warm, graceless body lands on the couch next to you and Drakken reaches out to lay his hand next to yours. "Are you doing okay, Lapis? Because it's absolutely fine if you're not doing okay – I just had – I just –" he says, and his earnest buoy-words tangle.
Peridot stands at your feet, bright-eyed beneath her visor, cradling Pumpkin in her arms. Her tablet has been abandoned on the square island of wood and glass across from the sofa.
You look at these two people who have never once called you a coward, and you give them the truth: "I don't know for sure if I'm okay. Now there are rebel Gems again, and they're actually bad this time. Does that mean – does that mean there's going to be another war?"
Your pitch is going shrill, and you call it down only out of concern for Pumpkin, who gives you a worried look and churns her legs. Three wars is too many for one lifetime, even a lifetime as lengthy as yours.
"Over my dead body!" Drakken blurts.
You lower your eyelids like sails on a ship. "That really didn't make me feel any better."
"Oh." Drakken pauses. "Yes. I can see why it wouldn't. Come to think of it –" A tremor moves through his body; even his thornbush of hair seems to shiver. "Eww. What an awful saying."
"Our present conditions make a war extremely unlikely," Peridot says. "Yes, there are a small number of rebellious Gems – a 'handful,' I believe the Earth term is – and, yes, they appear to have procured some weapons, but they are acting without either the backing of the Diamonds or any support from the majority of the Gem population. There might be a few skirmishes, which is never fun, but not another war. I would be highly surprised."
Her voice is as metallic and mechanical as the inventions with which she surrounds herself. It is exactly what you need to hear.
"Quite right." Drakken bounces on the cushion. "I'd imagine pretty much everyone on Homeworld likes it better now than they did before. Everyone but the rebels, of course. It definitely makes you wonder what their ish is," he says, using a phrase you have heard from Kim before.
You frown. "Jasper…she probably just misses fighting. It's like the only thing that makes her happy anymore." Pity and disgust fuse inside you as you recall being her, feeling Jasper's glee even as she struggled against your chains.
Drakken grunts, and he does not sound pitying in the slightest.
"And Aquamarine probably resents the loss of her status," Peridot says.
"See, I don't get that," Drakken says. "Did Homeworld completely flip-flop? Is she lower-class now?"
Peridot shakes her head. "There is no lower class anymore. Aquamarine has lost none of the privileges she was afforded as a member of the Elite, other than the confiscation of her weapon, which happened to Gems of every status. But all Gems now enjoy those same privileges, and that could aggravate her."
"'Cuz she doesn't want to be treated fair," you finish for Peridot, your voice flat. "She wants to be treated special."
Drakken's brow lowers. "I know I'm hardly one to talk, but that seems a little warped!"
"Try a lot. A lot warped." You pull your knees farther in. It is very warped and likely very true. During your time in Blue Diamond's court, you met several Elite who would probably have been satisfied with everyone on Homeworld being equal. You met many others who wouldn't have.
"What about the Rubies?" Drakken says.
"That has me puzzled, as well," Peridot says. "Rubies are – were – one of the lowest-ranking Gems on Homeworld. I don't see why any of them would miss the lives they had prior to Era Three."
"I don't think it's all the Rubies. I'm pretty sure Spinel said it was just a couple." You frown. You remember the moment when the Ruby whom Steven called Navey turned around to sneer at you, her pleasant eyes suddenly as hard as the stone that centered her stomach, as if she had been terraformed beyond recognition. You remember Steven crying as he told you that he'd had no choice but to eject the one he called Eyeball from his safe bubble into the void of space. "And if it's the couple that I think it is…I think they might just be doing it because they hate Steven."
You wait for the cold to seize you, but the thought is a hot one, setting your spine aflame as though one of the Rubies herself has stamped down it. You have known unkindness, you have known vengeance, and you have known ferocity; but you have never known the type of malice that would delight in hurting someone as sweet as Steven.
"Weird," Drakken says at last.
No one mentions the Lapises.
Peridot reaches over and pats your knee. "Don't fret, Lapis. We will protect you."
"Absolutely we will!" Drakken adds.
You fix a stern expression on your face. "On one condition. You need to let me protect you guys, too."
Drakken gives you his grand, glistening smile. "That sounds fair to me."
"Then it's agreed," Peridot says. "Pinkie swear?"
She holds up her smallest finger. It is barely long enough for yours and Drakken's to fold around it, and within seconds your hands have separated, and Drakken cringes and shakes out his knuckles while Peridot rolls on the floor giggling. There is nothing mechanical about her anymore.
When Steven and Drakken wander back outside, you follow them. You want to see things restored to life; you want to be reminded that not all power is meant for destruction.
You watch from a sand dune as they work their way toward the beach, attending to the broken plant life along the way. Dr. Drakken's gleeful laughter leaps through the night, relieving the strange pressured feeling at the borders of your gem: rough and grainy, as though you are unfinished and have yet to Emerge. You think of him, of Steven, and even of Spinel and all that happened today to keep your mind from drifting back across the millennia. For now, the danger is lightyears away, and you let your hands shake as you rest them in your lap.
The ocean mutters darkly and its tide attempts to trudge toward the shore, encumbered by poison that now looks stiff and almost solid, like drying cement. Your insides burn as you commiserate. Don't worry, you tell the ocean in formless words. It'll be your turn to heal soon.
It seems to reflect the sentiment back to you before absorbing it and sinking deeper to wait.
You see Drakken press his fingers into a dead clump of dune grass and then quickly jerk them away as new fibrils of it sprout, sharp and healthy, from the sand. You see Steven pick up an unmoving hermit crab and kiss its borrowed shell, then set it down and hug his arms over his chest as it scuttles away. Beauty and rescue fill your sight, in spite of the debris scattered across the beach and the foul odor that persists in the air. The breath of the sea, usually light and crisp, is heavy with the smell of fish that you see bobbing lifelessly at the surface.
It hits Drakken and Steven, too, as they run down to the ocean. Drakken groans and pulls his hand over his nose. "Ugh. I might have to sit this one out," he says, his voice a watery tremble. He looks at Steven imploringly. "You know, if you don't mind?"
"Of course not," Steven says. "You've been a huge help already, so thanks!"
"Wonderful!" Drakken retreats toward the wooden porch that attaches to Steven's house. At the base of the steps, he stops and glances your way again. "I am a little curious about how you're going to kiss the ocean, though."
"Who said anything about kissing?" Steven grins, a movement as instinctive as the one that pushes your wings forward and carries you through the air to land next to him on the shoreline. The ocean's undercurrent of pain would be too much to bear if you didn't know what was coming next.
Steven makes a straining noise in the back of his throat. A comet of saliva shoots from his mouth and drops into the water.
For an instant, the mass of poison in the ocean shimmers, filled with light, and then it splits like mirror glass, the pink fading and returning to blue, until the starlight casts the same color on its surface as on your skin. The limp dark shapes wriggle and plunge once more, their fins whisking them out of view.
"Ohhh, now I get it!" Drakken calls. He leans against the stair railing, satisfaction in the shape of his shoulders.
The roiling in your ocean calms, a Wailing Stone silenced after surrendering its message. It throws itself onto the sand and bubbles around your feet, gurgling and foaming in gratitude.
You turn to Steven. "It says thank you."
He nods. "Well, tell it I say it was my pleasure."
You take a step forward, and that is all the ocean needs; it draws the message from your illusive body into its liquid clutch. You smile at it because you know it is also somehow smiling at you.
With another step forward, your shoe meets rock. You pull back and stare. A hunk of Spinel's Injector drives into the moist sand, chilled to a violet hue beyond Amethyst, its jagged slicing edges pushing above the surf.
There is no anchoring your mind this time. It detaches from your control and spins violently backward until you are sitting in a cell aboard another craft of Homeworld's invention that is about to crash into the beach and fall into rubble. You remember the impact and everything that came afterward: the burning of the sand; the cold vise of Jasper's hand around your wrist; what she did to you and what you did to her, your existences drenched in the color of old seaweed that turned greener every time you set your jaw and willed strength into your arms, up to the day you finally yielded. You remember becoming her.
It drags at you and though you are gone for what can only be a few Earth-minutes, it feels much longer. You push yourself to the top, grasp the tattered, flailing ends of your memories, and tug them back into place. Color bleeds back into the scene in front of you.
You glance down at your reflection. You don't see her eyes anymore, only yours from the day you were first sent here, appraising this planet, considering how best to carve it. A shudder runs through you. You are not thankful for what happened to you, but you are very thankful that you did not fulfill your Purpose.
You feel the other Lapises' approving gazes upon your back, turning you from light to frost. The ocean froths at your ankles, asking you to play, but you can't answer it.
"Lapis?" Steven's voice comes from nearby, and he touches your arm. "What are you thinking about?"
Although his scratches and bruises have already begun to fade, his face still reminds you of a ship that has been tossed about by fierce waves and nearly wrecked against a coastal shelf, yet there is that spark of concern in his eyes. He has suffered enough today to eclipse all other thoughts, and still he worries about yours.
"Terraforming," you say. He deserves a smile but you cannot form one. "And how I regret it – so much."
Steven doesn't offer you words then, only his hand; even with its newfound firmness, it is immediately recognizable as the sweet hand that caught yours and kept you upright that first night on this beach.
The tide brushes in, rolling over the tops of your shoes and holding the backs of your feet in a comforting grip. It bubbles in question, ready to become a tempest at your request. This gift you don't accept. When the other Lapises show up to manipulate it, it will be conflicted enough, and you remember how terrible it is to feel yourself pulled in two opposing directions.
You shake your head. "I didn't know –"
"No," Steven says. "You didn't know." The tone of his voice matches the consistency of his hand. "And when you found out, you changed. You stopped.
"I know that doesn't make the bad stuff go away," he adds at the skeptical expression you must be wearing, "but it says a lot about who you are inside."
He eyes you as though he can assure you with the depths of his belief alone. You want to believe that you are the person he sees when he looks at you; you want to believe that you are the person for whom he risked angering his family in your defense when you were nothing more than a mirror to him. For the most part, you do believe it, and yet that does not drown the feeling of Jasper's cold fingers stalking up the back of your neck while smaller, far more frightening Gems hover nearby on wings of water.
The ocean warps as your eyes sting again. You flatten your palms, salted with sea and sweat, over them as if you can somehow press warmth not just into your body, but deeper into your soul. It is the only part of you that is not made of light or stone, and its wounds keep mending and tearing open again and again, like the insect bites Drakken receives in the summertime and can never seem to leave alone.
You lower your hands and manage half of a smile for Steven. "So" – you nudge his longest toe with yours – "what happened with you and Connie today?"
Steven glances your way, eyes startled. "What do you mean?"
"You blushed when everyone was talking about kissing. Did she kiss you?"
Steven's cheeks turn pinker as he nods and points to one. "On the cheek," he admits. "Right before she left for space camp."
"Way to go, Steven!" You grab his arm and give it a swing. "Does that mean you're officially boyfriend and girlfriend now?"
Steven's eyebrows huddle together. "I – I think so. I'll have to ask her. You know, make sure."
His eyes do not look startled anymore. They are messy with a mixture of gawkiness, satisfaction, uncertainty, and joy. You recognize it from the day Drakken first told you, over a phone connection, that he loved you.
You nod at him. "Well, keep me posted, okay?"
You try to lash down the joy, but the wind snaps and carries it away. The idyll where you have spent the last few years is over. Healed now, the Earth still bears the marks of Spinel's rage. Peridot was most likely right: there is no war lurking on the horizon with forces strong enough to shatter you, and yet you feel like you might break anyway just from the weight of your adversaries' identities. You will have to confront those who fight with the same weapon that you do, whose minds and tongues are as sharp as yours have become.
You are not sure you have been prepared. You are not sure you could be prepared.
Footsteps small but loud pound the sand behind you, and turn to see Dr. Drakken running your way in his shorebird-skitter, his smile bright beneath the starlight. Green stains the front of his coat-of-labs, as though he has rolled down the lighthouse hill. It would not surprise you at all if he had.
"Greetings, all!" Drakken cries. "What are we doing now?"
"Waiting," you tell him. You hate to burden him with this, yet you have finally cleared away a secret you had forgotten you were keeping from him and you do not wish to place any more between the two of you. "Waiting and worrying."
Drakken's face goes slack, the answer not what he was expecting. "Huh? Oh…you mean about the mean Gems? Jasper and the – and the – and –"
"The other Lapises," you say. "You can say it."
"Ngggh, yes, but I hate calling them that!" His stubborn lower lip pushes out further. "They're not you, and they shouldn't have your name!"
There was a time when you would have argued with him and defended Homeworld's efficient, impersonal system. Now, however, it lightens you to know that he sees you not just as separate from them but different, as though you would not all simply form one giant Lapis if you fused. Your gem shivers at the prospect.
You recall a conversation you had with him early on, and you find the other half of your smile for him. "So…will you just call them Lisa or something?" you tease him.
"Hmm, yes. You know, I tried that with Aquamarine – calling her Lisa – but then I found out who she really was, and – brrrr, we don't need to go there! But there's no need to let such a great name go to waste, either." Drakken taps his fingertips against the sides of his head, where the hair clings tightly at its least bushy, and closes his eyes for a moment. When he opens them again, they shine with mischief. "How do you think they'd like being called Lisa and Leslie?"
The reflection of the entitled, taunting blue faces appears in your mind with devastating clarity that not even five thousand years of absence could tarnish.
"I don't know," you say, your jaw firming. "And I don't care."
Drakken squints, briefly puzzled, and then nods, his neck drooping with exhaustion. The entire day has been filled with loss, recovery, and tears, and you realize he will need sleep soon.
"But we'll get through this," you say, hearing only the faintest of shakings in your voice. "The same way we got through today. Together. Right?"
"Together," Steven says, jerking his neck as though there is no doubt inside him. You are surprised he didn't say it first.
"Together," Drakken confirms. He puts an arm around you, making sure to stay wide of your gem, and pulls you to a chest that feels at once both rickety and secure. Despite the fatigue you can feel in his thin muscles, his heart is a steady thump under you, and you are glad he has this in his center to anchor him when his world can change so quickly and knock his mood about so readily.
Your fear does not disappear but parts, allowing bravery to peek through, and you turn your face toward it. You know this moment will not last forever, except in your memory, where your powers can take it out and throw it across the surface of the sea at any time for everyone to see. Perhaps you should. Surely no Gem could see what you have seen of organics and still work toward their destruction
The ocean slips quietly around your heels again and lingers there, lending its support. You remember occasions where you distanced yourself from it: after you discovered the truth about terraforming, or after you and Jasper were released from the trap you had set for both of you and you were terrified of what it would do for you. Yet it never took offense; it never grew impatient as you fought through layers of brokenness and grief to find new ways to relate to it.
Does it love and obey you because you are Lapis or because you are a Lapis?
You push the thought from inside yourself before the sea can sense it. That is a question you do not want answered.
Steven plops into a sit on the sand and watches Drakken and Lapis wander farther down the beach. Lapis points to an owl who hoots his way across the almost-black sky and rests her bobbed head against Drakken's arm, and he grins hugely, their fingers fitted together like puzzle pieces. They look so in love. Steven wonders if he and Connie will look like that when they're all grown up – except for being blue, of course.
Connie. Steven knows he's grinning, too, at the thought of her. He hadn't expected her to kiss him today, but as soon as she did it felt completely normal and natural, and nothing changed even though everything changed. She leaned closer to him, her eyes bright as friendship-bracelet Glow Sticks, and then her lips touched his cheek butterfly-gently, and perfume he just then noticed she had started wearing went up his nostrils. It was like biting into a Cookie Cat only to find that it was some brand-new flavor even better than the one you remembered, and he decided he liked the perfume.
He likes everything about her, as a matter of fact – her smile, the way she handles the sword Bismuth made for her, the little pull between her eyebrows when she's studying for a big test. Not to mention the thousand and one memories that skipped through his brain every time they were in the same room, memories of getting trapped in his bubble after they'd only had about half of their first real conversation, memories of dancing and fusing without even trying, memories of debating the plot and the character development and the ending of the Familiar Familiar series.
Connie, who's now maybe his girlfriend. Probably. At least one good thing happened today.
Steven's hand drifts to his stomach. His gemstone throbs with a feeling that reminds him of an ice-cream headache, which he figures must have something to do with how fast his powers came rushing back and how quick he was to gulp them down and put them to work. He stretches one leg out in front of him, cringing when the ground bumps a place that Spinel punched hard enough to bruise.
Spinel. Steven grimaces. The little pink tornado showed up and touched down, and now just like that she was gone again, leaving junk scattered everywhere behind her. A lot of it Steven and the rest of the Crystal Gems will be able to clean up with their powers. Some of it's the type that nobody can get rid of.
He hopes she'll be happy now, living with the Diamonds in the palace, but he has to admit it's a relief that he won't have to deal with her anymore right away.
Lapis leads Drakken closer to the ocean and bends down to watch the now-pink fish leap and splash, so happy to have been brought back to life. Her gem is a dark patch between the spots on her back where her wings come out. Twin pangs hit Steven's chest and stomach. He and Lapis are the same height now, but as he's gotten taller she seems to have gotten smaller, 'till she's started looking awfully tiny for such a powerful person.
She didn't run today, Steven realizes. Not from Spinel or from the poison or even from the truth, which must have been the scariest part of all. It had been years since he'd seen her shoulders curl in toward her chest like that. He'd already figured out what she'd been sent to Earth to do, from what Yellow Diamond had said in the Human Zoo and the timing of when she arrived and the way her guilt seemed to run a lot deeper than just Dad's broken leg, but she needed to say it, out loud, before she could get rid of it.
Steven tilts his head back and looks at the huge ceiling of space above him. It looks deep and sleepy up there, way more peaceful than he knows it really is. Somewhere on that planet where the Diamonds had begged him to stay just this morning, there's a group of Gems out there who still hate his guts. Gems like Jasper who have lost everything, and Gems like Aquamarine, who haven't lost anything. He wonders which of the Rubies he's met are working with them. Most likely Eyeball, who pulled a knife on him after he saved her gem, and maybe Navey, who acted so sweet and kind and then threw them into the ocean. But that doesn't mean Army and Doc and Leggy have to be involved.
He really hopes not Leggy.
His eyes get this heavy, sand-filled feeling that he can't rub out. Even after he saved the universe and dismantled the empire and set the Gems free, not everything Pink Diamond did can be undone.
Thanks a lot, Mom.
The feel of the thought in Steven's mind is like the taste of coffee on his tongue the first time Dad let him try it black. He clenches his fists and waits for it to drain away, but it doesn't. It just stays there, making everything bitter.
Until he hears Drakken's always-loud voice ring out from down the beach. "So – you don't have to talk about this if you don't want to," he says to Lapis, "but I'm really curious about what Lisa and Leslie are like."
Lapis stares ahead and tries to wipe her face blank, but it doesn't work. The corners of her mouth shiver. "You know all the bad stuff Bismuth told you about the Elite?"
"Yes."
"That's what they're like," Lapis says simply.
Drakken takes a hard swallow. "So…definitely not you, then."
Lapis nods, but Steven can see her not quite believing him. Still, there seems to be something lighter about her now, even though it's only been about an hour since she blurted out the truth and maybe it's too soon to tell. She's still acting quiet, and a little sad, two things Steven is used to from Lapis, but before she always seemed to think there was some kind of monster living inside herself and her voice had to tiptoe around it constantly to keep from waking it up. He doesn't see her doing that anymore.
Steven manages to be proud of her, before the thrumming headache in his gem overwhelms his ability to feel anything else. He stares at the sky again, blood rumbling in his ears.
Mom saved the Earth and hurt people, healed her friends with her tears because she genuinely loved them and kept secrets from them because she was so selfish, and then she left. He'll never get the chance to ask her any of questions that squirm around inside him whenever he thinks about her. Pearl said that Mom had made Steven and become Steven because she wanted a fresh start, and she hadn't ever anticipated that Steven would get stuck cleaning up her messes once she was gone. And since Pearl is the only person Mom was anywhere close to honest with, Steven knows that has to be true.
He knows it. He knows it, so why has his whole body turned into coffee beans, and his limbs gone so stiff that his joints feel like they've locked, and his hands folded into fists he's not sure he can get them out of?
Steven stares down at those fists and feels his eyes go wide as they begin to light up pink – as pink as Mom's hair in all the photos of her, as pink as Lion's paws, as pink as that crazy force field he was able to pull up when he fought White Diamond in her ship. It shoots outward until it forms a film around his arms that just keeps getting bigger and more vivid. It stings hot, burns cold, explodes into fireworks beneath his skin. His breath tightens, stuck in the middle of what it was trying to do, the way it gets when he sticks his head in Lion's mane.
In fact, the whole thing reminds him a lot of Lion's mane – sort of his and sort of Mom's, sort of real and sort of not, a place obviously filled with mysteries and secrets that would be so fun to explore if only there was a way to get air inside it. It's not a good feeling, but it's so much better than the weakness and uselessness that spent the whole day with him after Spinel swiped his powers.
And then, just like that, it stops.
The pink dims, the fireworks fizzle, and the pain shakes itself out. He can breathe, and he can realize it only lasted a few seconds, and he can fall back against the sand and wonder if he just imagined it.
Steven unknots his fists and watches them return to their normal color. Bizarre. Definitely not the weirdest thing that's happened today, though. He's way too exhausted to try and figure this one out, and it's hard to be worried with Lapis and Drakken on their knees digging for seashells. And with Peridot whooshing by on her trash can lid as a laughing Amethyst chases her down the beach. And with Pearl's footsteps crunching precisely in the sand while she pokes at her cell phone, Bismuth peeking over her shoulder and gesturing to the phone with her usual big movements, Garnet walking next to them and not saying anything because she's Garnet.
Happily ever after? Nah, that doesn't exist. But this, Steven decides, is close enough.