~Finally got this done! Thanks to everyone who was willing to wait. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Season's Greetings! :)~
The book falls from your hands, forgotten. For the moment, even Dr. Drakken is forgotten as you shove your wings free and bolt through the sky. Soft, capable Greg is afraid, or in pain, or both, and the thought is a harsh wind at your back, urging you forward despite your dread at what you may find.
Your first thought is that Bluebird has finally done something, but what reason would she have to harm Greg?
You snort a little as trees blur past you. A few brief years of peace, and you have already forgotten how dangerous Gems think.
The beach house comes into view below you. Bluebird is not there.
Her components are.
Aquamarine hovers near the underside of the roof, and she holds Greg above the porch by his hair, both hands clenched in the tumbling brown strands; the sudden clarity of her reminds you of how her fellow Aquamarines would lift and turn away Blue Diamond's veil to announce her arrival. Eyeball hangs from the roof's edge, fixing her attention on Greg and wearing a leer sharp enough to tear him apart. Steven stands on the porch, his shield rigid before his body. Hatred swirls in the air like the poisoned clouds conjured by Spinel's Injector.
The doubt drains from your gem, allowing something fiercer and more jagged to come pouring in, and you turn off your breathing as you slink lower behind the roof. Giving your position away too early will not do any good.
"Ha! How's that for a surprise, Steven Universe?" When Aquamarine speaks, her words are clearer than Bluebird's and each seems to angle upward, away from their natural sweet sound. "It was us all along! And you never knew it!"
It is not the fear of revealing yourself that keeps you from laughing. It is the look that passes over Steven's mild round face, hardening it until it truly seems to belong to a Diamond. He, too, is seeping something that violates the atmosphere, and it is every bit as disturbing as the rest of the scene below you.
"I knew it!" Steven calls back to her. "Everybody knew it!"
"You did?" Eyeball sounds genuinely surprised. "Then why – why were you being so nice to us?"
Steven throws his head back. "Because I wanted to believe that you had changed! Because I really thought everybody could!" His eyes narrow. "I should have known better with the two of you."
You don't know whether or not his words are accurate, but in his voice, they are wrong.
"You should have," Eyeball agrees, and you can imagine her smirk. "But I'm pretty glad you didn't. 'Cause now we get to do this."
A laugh snaps from Aquamarine. "Yes. And you'll have to live with the knowledge that you were too late to save your precious Mydad!"
You stare down at the bare dome of Greg's head, which has shifted color from pink to red, Rose Quartz to Ruby. Sweat beads in the folds of it, the same sweat that sticks his skin to yours every time he squeezes your hand, and you know in that moment why the two of them would harm Greg: to hurt Steven, the boy willing to trade his freedom for the lives of those he loves. Your limbs are lost to you, impossible to move.
"Oh, don't worry about me, Schtewball," Greg says, his voice atilt. "I'll be just fine, kiddo –"
Aquamarine nods at Eyeball, and the center of Eyeball's gemstone begins to glow. She reaches inward and her fingers do not come back empty. Sunlight brightens the blade that almost killed Steven as Eyeball flips herself around and lines the knife up with Greg's head.
Time slows, and your gem feels nothing but the roaring of the ocean.
"All right, Ruby," Aquamarine says in the tone Drakken uses to persuade Commodore Puddles to do a trick. "Just like we saw in that movie."
You see the empty paper sleeve that read Knife Maniac; you remember the van echoing with the scream of an actor who was only pretending to die. Someone unafraid takes control of your body, thrusting you forward and around the corner. Your fingers tauten until you can no longer see the prints, readying to close around Aquamarine.
In the instant before you collide with her, Greg snatches the knife from Eyeball's hand. She has no chance to raise a protest and you have no chance to consider what his plan is, for in the next instant Greg raises the knife above his head and drags it through his hair, severing everything outside of Aquamarine's grasp. She is left holding a pelt of hair several times her sizes, which she immediately releases with a noise of disgust.
For a moment, you hear only Dr. Drakken's voice – Business in front, party in the back – and then you hear two heavy thumps as first Greg and then his hair land on the deck.
Greg rolls onto his side and gathers his hair into his arms. Even from far above, you can see the tears begin to roll down his cheeks.
"Dad!" Steven cries, but his eyes are fixed on Aquamarine and Eyeball. "Now look what you did!"
Eyeball lunges for her knife in frustration, but Aquamarine remains afloat, arms folded across her chest, lips cocked in a satisfied, frozen smile. You drive yourself at her again, pinching her small arms between your fingers and slamming her against the side of the house. The smugness disappears from her face.
"What the HECK is going on here?" A thunderclap of a voice rattles through the air.
You look up to see Dr. Drakken skittering down the beach, stumbling and lagging as he battles for breath. His legs churn sand and his sharp cheekbones jut from his face, as abrupt against his plump cheeks as the yellow petals are against his neck. His eyes find Greg and his disconnected hair at once.
"Oh, no, Greg! Your mullet!" Drakken scowls at Eyeball, who is trying to pry her knife from between the boards of the deck with shaking hands. "You monster…s!" he adds as his eyes travel to Aquamarine.
The shock that has kept her still between your arms will not last long. Already the poisonous curl has returned to her mouth, and her muscles feel steadier; she is angry, but she is not yet as angry as you are.
At the end of the beach, the ocean's rhythm is full and pounding, about to burst. It is beholden to both of you. What this will mean in the confrontation to come is anyone's guess.
Aquamarine's eyes are cold and bright, light from a collapsed star, before they fall on you and understand what you were.
"Lapis! Things on Homeworld have changed," she says in a voice of pleading and conniving. "There are no more Elite! All of the Gems are…equal now." She holds her body still, as though to stop herself from shuddering.
You let your eyelids flag like sails on their masts. "Really? Sounds awesome," you say, and even to yourself you sound distant.
The surprise on Aquamarine's face rapidly gives way to disappointment, and the disappointment to a scowl. You hear the ocean sob at the same instant she yanks one arm free and thrusts it forward, and you brace yourself against the wall of water that leaps from the ocean to slam into you. It spins you around and lays you on your stomach against the rough wood planks of the deck, holding you down. The salt and brine in it, once such a sweet fragrance to you, smells foreign and sad.
You push your thoughts against its mass, and it slinks back just enough for you to climb, slowly, to your feet, keeping your body flush to Aquamarine's; you refuse to allow her access to your back.
Greg is on his knees now, hugging the limp pelt to his chest, the strands that once fanned from his head clinging to his shirt in frayed hanks. Beside him, Dr. Drakken has stopped moving, his physical form set and fixed in shock, his eyes glassed. Eyeball has recovered her knife and drives it toward Steven, slashing the blade across his shield. It does not break through – it could never hope to scratch a Diamond's weapon – but the sound of it grates your gemstone until you think it might crack. There is no song of the surf to counter it. Behind the ocean's round and regular waves, its essence peaks into harsh lines and dark, scattered fragments of force.
A heavy jet of water lunges for you again, propelled by Aquamarine's laughter, and you feel its apology even as it strikes you hard enough to drive you backward, down the steps of Steven's deck and onto the beach.
Somehow you remain standing. Somehow you throw your elbow forward, and the ocean bends around it. Somehow you call to your wings and take to the air, and you hear Aquamarine hiss in anger as she readjusts her aim. It takes strain to direct the ocean's might at a target this high, strain to which she is unaccustomed.
Before she has the chance to collect herself, you snip off a long narrow section of the sea, gently tug it to your level, and extend your arms to help it take the shape of a large hand. When Aquamarine charges toward you, she crashes into the palm; the water absorbs her and pushes her out the other side.
She opens her mouth as if to say something, but you get there first, the words like steam boiling on your lips. "This is low, Aquamarine," you say, "even for you. Eyeball was right – we were nice to you. The library? Remember? I read you a story. Did that mean anything to you?"
You know it didn't, but you need to hear her admit it.
For a second, Aquamarine doesn't appear to have a response, her expression blank. In that second, you train your gaze on the places where she differs from you: the way her legs end so suddenly in white stockings and tidy blue shoes, the neat uninterrupted skin where her nose should be, the whimsical curving swoop of her wings; and end up at her hate-burdened eyes. You hope that you are different in that regard as well; you need to be different in that regard.
The ocean screams beneath the pressure. You can feel the rift opening up inside it, promising to cleave it in two. You reach for it and find it with your mind, stroking the connection that has saved you so many times, yet a moment later Aquamarine jerks it away again, and hers is a jealous grip.
Then she smiles, her face opening as though Eyeball has split it with her knife. "Well, Lapis, you said you wanted to hear our story. Well, here it is – the whole truth. Are you listening now?" She holds a swell of water behind her and leaves it suspended against the sky, taunting you.
It is the kind of foolish mistake that Dr. Drakken has told you he made so often as a supervillain. While she looks at you with contempt, you clench your fists and roll them toward your shoulders. The water bats Aquamarine aside as it surges from her side of the sky to yours. "Absolutely!" you call back to her.
On the deck far below, Greg has disappeared, and Dr. Drakken has emerged from his stupor. He holds Eyeball off the ground, the back of her pinned against the front of him, his arms clamped around hers to lock them over her chest as she flails and kicks. You watch her scream words that do not come close enough for you to hear; she wrenches her shoulder sideways and frees one fist, and you watch it crack into Drakken's chin. He stumbles backward, hands plastered to his face. You can see the pain travel through his jaw to the entirety of his head despite his effort to keep his posture straight, and your own jaw cinches tight. The knife clatters to the ground.
You don't get to see who picks it up. Aquamarine swerves through the air in front of you, ragged ribbons of water following her. "Once upon a time," she begins, "there were two lovely, loyal Homeworld Gems who wanted only to expand the Gem Empire and serve the Great Diamond Authority.
"One of them was the best of the best, the pride and joy of Blue Diamond, an Elite who was fresh and eager, not all used up like so many of the Era One Lapises she owned." There is a thin hard edge to the way she says it, as if she hopes her voice will lacerate you. "She did exactly as her Diamond asked in every circumstance, and she had been richly rewarded for her efforts. She didn't even complain when she was sent down to this miserable dumping ground of a planet called 'Earth' to retrieve human specimens for experimentation."
The feeling leaves your gemstone. You remember the day she came – the last day you lived in the barn.
Aquamarine throws her next punch and you duck, tendrils of warm water grazing your hair. The water shakes in her hold, and you close your senses to everything excepts its displacement and its desperation. Your powers twist into desperate claws, groping for it, and you are able to drag a spurt of it free, but it rolls back to Aquamarine as soon you worry for Steven and Drakken or recall Greg's tattered sobs.
It is like no battle you have ever fought before, not even the one inside Malachite. Jasper was determined to usurp your powers, coming closer to them every time she circled you. Aquamarine, however, has all the powers she needs in the stone under her eye, and she waits on the other side of your connection with the ocean, her presence surpassing the size of her physical form. You hear terror on the ocean's breath.
Your body has become nothing more than a haze of motion, dodging and twisting and arcing as Aquamarine throws water and words at you.
"The other was nothing more than a common soldier, but she was willing to give her all for Homeworld's glory; I'll say that much for her. She was there the day Pink Diamond was shattered," she says, and you realize how deeply she has deceived herself, not letting the truth amend her story. "And she vowed she would find the treacherous Rose Quartz and make her pay for what she had done – a vow she never forgot, even after Rose took a new form."
"Steven," you say. "His name is Steven."
She ignores you. "One day, everything came together for her, and she was fully prepared to destroy Rose's body and bring her gem back to Homeworld to face justice. But before she could, Rose threw her into space to float along for months before being rescued by her fellow Rubies.
"Then, out of nowhere, the Diamonds made a bewildering announcement. They claimed that Rose Quartz had been Pink Diamond all along, and her new form would help them rule more fairly. All of a sudden, the traitor was the rightful heir, and the two Homeworld Gems who tried to end her were the traitors. Their years of service and their old status had no meaning anymore. They were rounded up with the rest of the Gems and told they were all the same now. So they came up with the frankly brilliant idea to fuse and travel to Earth to pick Rose Quartz's life apart piece by piece.
"The end."
Aquamarine looks at you as if searching for sympathy. She finds none. You are only sorry that she believes what she is saying.
From below you, a scream rises, and you see a burst of pure brilliant pink, like the light that used to flare in Pink Diamond's eyes when she begged Yellow and Blue to grant her a colony of her own. You have not seen it in centuries, and in the short time your focus slips, Aquamarine stabs a fist in your direction, and the slice of ocean that she controls coils around your body. It wraps your ankles, cinches your hips together, and begins to creep toward your back.
Outside of your control, the water feels dark and dangerous, as it has at only one other time in your life. You are unable to stop yourself from returning to it, the memory of being her: the cold infinite against her legs and her shoulders, surrounding you; the wide paths that even the most fearsome hunters of the deep took to avoid her; the feel of the abysmal plane beneath your feet; the threat of being crushed by the weight of the ocean and by your link to the Gem who demanded access to every part of you. For a moment, you go limp.
In that moment, you do not fight and you do not try to win. You give no command; you hold forth no incentive. You simply are: hurting and frightened and vulnerable. The ocean pauses and pulses in the air.
And then it lets you go.
You stare at the foam it kicks as it retreats to Aquamarine's side, and you understand. It has a duty to Aquamarine, but you and the ocean share something that goes far beyond that, something profound that has been honed and cleansed over a lifetime of protecting one another, like the bond between Kim and Ron. The two of you are not merely connected; you are sealed in an embrace.
"So is that what you're going for?" you call to Aquamarine. "Revenge? Because that'll only make you feel better for a little while. It's not gonna fix anything, believe me."
Your eyes run over her like a probe, watching for a sign of remorse, sadness, or anything else salvageable. If it is there, however, she has closed it off, hidden it like a cave behind a waterfall, rendering it inaccessible.
"Why should I believe you?" Aquamarine shakes her head, no longer topped by the ribbon that gave her the power to suspend people in midair. "You are nothing like me."
It is the only kind thing she has ever said.
With a flick of her hand, Aquamarine dismisses most of the water beside her, leaving only a few droplets hanging before her face. She draws the other hand in tightly, reeling the fingers inward, and the droplets turn to ice shards, an action you remember only from when you first demonstrated your powers for Blue Diamond's approval and when Jasper had control of your powers. Her fist unclenches, the fingers clawing the air, and the ice shards become swords.
For no longer than a second, she has managed to leave you motionless even without her wand. You stare at the swords you had no idea a Gem could create with water. It is a form you have never thought to force the sea to take, even at your angriest.
Yet when Aquamarine heaves her arm forward and the swords come at you in a rush, you smooth yourself, your core whisking away horror and fear the way your clothes will whisk away moisture so that it is incapable of leaking through the surface. You cross your arms over your chest and pull a sheet of water only marginally larger than your head in front of your face. You think of heat – of molten metal being flattened on Bismuth's anvil, of the magma beneath the ocean's ridges, of suns baking planets dry.
The edges of your water-shield begin to bubble. The swords pass through it and turn to mist that hisses as you scatter it across the sky.
Aquamarine, too, hisses, baring her teeth at you. Her arms are tiny axes, chopping at the air. "For the sake of the cosmos! How dare you keep outperforming me?"
You shrug. "I guess the ocean likes me better."
Her lip pulls back as though you have shoved her face into a stagnant pond. "Don't be ridiculous," she says. "It's an ocean. It can't like anyone."
The center of your gem smiles; your body just gives Aquamarine a casual stare. "Annnnd that's why it likes me better," you say.
Aquamarine's cheeks darken, the brightness of her gemstone looking wholesome and off center. She jerks her head around and snaps, "Ruby! Get over here!"
"I'm trying," you hear Eyeball whine. You glance down and see that the knife has fallen between two of the deck's wooden planks and that she and Drakken are both scrambling to grab it, him by the handle and she by the blade. Steven eyes them both uncertainly from over the rim of his shield.
Aquamarine scoffs and tosses her head back toward you. "You cannot imagine what a drag it is, being fused to one of these lower sorts."
The words slide through you as though they are made of something harder than you are. You remember again the ocean floor beneath feet that somehow both did and did not wear shoes, and Bluebird is not the fusion who fills your mind.
You cannot bring yourself to shrug, so you move only your eyes until they clamp on Aquamarine's.
"I've got a pretty good imagination," you say, your voice dull. What she has said is untrue, but you do not owe it to her to correct her; you do not owe her your story.
Aquamarine glides in closer, and what you see in her eyes reminds you of the Kindergarten: something is being created within them at the expense of everything else that should grow there. She folds the water that remains under her control into a fist which flies straight at you.
You blink, and you do not feel hollow at all; the ocean fills you the way blood would fill a human, smooth and clean, and the fist becomes a hand that gives you a high-five and then turns to wave at Aquamarine. "Aquamarine," you say, not because she will listen to you, but because you need to tell her. "You can be better than this."
"I was!" Aquamarine says. "And I will be again!"
She rips another panel of the ocean free from its bed and hurls it at you, the edges uneven as though meant to perforate your skin. You raise your palm and give your wings a gentle flick, and the water encircles you, a fluid planet orbiting your body. Through the blurred view that has become comfortable and familiar to you again, you see the entirety of her small neat physical form trembling with fury, and only in that moment do you sympathize with her. The twirling skirts and dainty lights of Blue Diamond's court never Taught her what to do with anger.
"Ruby!" Aquamarine says, twice as sharply as before; she sounds appalled that Eyeball could respond to her with anything but obsequiousness. "Get over here and help me, you mass-produced fool!"
"I'm coming, snob!" Eyeball calls back, her cheek pillowing against Steven's shield and her feet pinned in Dr. Drakken's hands. She kicks and frees one leg, shoving her boot off Drakken's nose as she leaps from his grip. You don't hear the exasperated huff she lets out, but you see it in the movement of her shoulders, and heat bursts across your gem. She cares as little for Drakken as Aquamarine does for her. Eyeball vaults from the porch railing and lands hard on the beach, heels churning sand as she runs, her knife balanced awkwardly between her shortest finger and the one where Garnet wears her rings.
"Hey!" Drakken calls out, his voice muffled by the hand covering his nose. "Didn't your mother ever teach you not to run with knives?"
You do not expect the words to do any good, especially in light of the fact that Eyeball has no mother, but she stops and pushes the knife back into her gem. You have the urge to laugh.
Aquamarine swoops down toward Eyeball the way you have seen shorebirds dive for a crab. "It's about time you got here. The plan only works as long as you listen to me, remember?"
"Well, excuse my lateness," Eyeball says, and you can tell right away this is not a sincere apology. "How much of an entitled little brat are you?"
For an instant, you hear Jasper's voice layered over hers like sediment from a previous era. Your powers shudder, but you manage to hold your body steady.
"I believe the term you're looking for is 'My Aquamarine'," Aquamarine says. It is another ancient custom you had almost forgotten in such a short time. A chill passes through your gemstone as you consider how many of your friends on Earth would have been forced to address you as "My Lapis" on Homeworld just a few years ago.
"WHATever." Eyeball lifts her arm. "Let's just fuse already."
The surge of light you have come to dread does not appear when Aquamarine clutches Eyeball's hand. Instead, there is a pulse in the air around them, quicker than Drakken's frenzied breaths, and Aquamarine tumbles onto a clump of dune grass as though pushed, Eyeball falling on top of her.
"There you go, messing everything up again," Aquamarine says. "You see what I mean? It's embarrassing, really."
"I'm messing it up?" Eyeball says. "Look, I'm a Ruby soldier – I know how to fuse! You're the one who always thought you were too good for it!"
"Get off of me so I can fix it!" Aquamarine pushes herself from the sand and strikes Eyeball's chest with her foot, murmuring to herself, "Useless. Useless, the whole lot of you, useless."
She grabs for Eyeball again, ramming blue fingers between red ones. Their arms quiver with the contact and their wrists give a brief twitch, and then they sprawl once more across the ground, Aquamarine's face buried in Eyeball's back this time. You watch them, and only half their bickering reaches you as you begin to understand: There is not enough harmony between them to allow them to fuse, and their cruelty is not the type that resorts to Jasper's methods. They will not be able to do it.
This, however, does not stop them from trying. They reach and pull and grope for one another's fingers, and they fall in a disorderly heap on the sand, Eyeball on top of Aquamarine, Aquamarine on top of Eyeball, both of them lying on their backs with their hands still tangled around one another, Eyeball upside-down, her legs kicking without grace, as Aquamarine lands with one arm twisted beneath her.
You cross your legs and sit down in midair, resting your elbows on your knees. "You guys done yet?" you say.
Neither of them answers you. Their heads are turned in Steven's direction as he strides across the beach, his shield bouncing against his side, sweat and disbelief shining on his face. "Did the two of you actually just fuse because you both hated me?" he asks them.
They look at him as if he has challenged the tides, as if he has questioned something beyond questioning.
Eyeball shrugs. "It's as good a reason as any, isn't it?"
"No way!" Steven shakes his head. "There are a lot better reasons to fuse. Like love, or – or duty." He glances at you, and even in that barest of glances you can feel him pulling beauty from the mire of what you did with Jasper. "It's supposed to be this beautiful, amazing experience, and you've turned it into something so ugly."
You do not add anything. You do not need to; what he says is enough.
"Ugh!" Eyeball says. "He's so annoying!"
"So self-righteous." Aquamarine nods.
Eyeball takes an exaggerated step away from Steven. "I know, right?"
"I hate him – " Aquamarine begins to say, and Eyeball joins her to finish – "so much."
Their eyes find each other, and their hands meet with just enough agreement that white light erupts between them. You turn your head away, and when you look again, Bluebird floats in the sky, innocent and uneven and grotesque, a doll whom no one is allowed to touch.
"And this is the part where you lose, love," Bluebird says. Her voice still moves over the words with almost a stagger, indistinct and careless. Yet it does not detract from the mockery inherent in her use of the word "love," something she has thoroughly rejected.
"I don't think so!"
Dr. Drakken's heavy voice storms across the shore, and you glance down and see him skittering to keep pace with Steven. A vine shoots from his neck, reaching for Bluebird. She pulls the knife from the gem over her eye socket and, with one clean cold motion, hacks the vine in two. The scrap still attached to Drakken's neck turns backward, recoiling in pain, and you can see Drakken's face doing the same. Within you, the sea roars, furious.
"Stop it!" Steven swings his shield forward, an aggressive move you have rarely seen him make. His soft pink skin has grown closer to red, a tight wounded color. "What is your problem? You're willing to hurt everybody here, just because they're connected to me?"
Bluebird shrugs one shoulder. "Pretty much, yes." She speaks almost with relief, the lies abandoned.
Steven rushes toward Bluebird and she lowers her head to meet him, two boats on a collision course. You lift the ocean with a tilt of your head and line it up behind her, pausing a moment to check twice that you are not going to hit either of her gems. You will not give her the satisfaction of turning you into the monster Jasper has doubtlessly told her you are.
In that moment, Bluebird raps the hilt of her knife against her open palm. The blade twists apart, dividing down the middle; the two blades that form are adjoined like the Rutile twins. Flames immediately engulf one blade. The other becomes a fountainhead, spewing a torrent of water that runs down over the hilt and froths onto the neighboring blade, dousing the fire.
You snort.
"Blast it!" Bluebird says. "Now look what you've done!" You don't know if it is Aquamarine yelling at Eyeball or Eyeball yelling at Aquamarine, and you suspect it doesn't matter. She bounces the blunt end of the knife against her palm repeatedly and shakes her head, a flurry of red and blue. You wonder if you and Jasper looked that unnatural, jumbled together, contaminating each other.
The front door to Steven's house opens. Pearl pokes her upper body out, and somehow her smooth musical words filter through the chaos to you – "Steven, why is Greg crying in the bathroom?"
There is a pause where Steven does not reply, and she turns to find him fending off Bluebird with his shield, Drakken in a ball on the ground beside him. She does not make a sound. She simply slips back into the house, the door scarcely a sigh as it swings shut behind her.
She returns with Garnet and Amethyst, both of whom appear stiff and ready for a fight. Bluebird swivels and points her blades at them. "Well, if it isn't my favorite trio," she says with a sneer.
None of them answer her; they clasp hands, and the places where they touch begin to shine. As the light builds around them, you watch Bluebird, and you can see it in her face: her halves cursing one another for forgetting that they are not the only ones who can fuse.
Alexandrite rises taller than the beach house and the surrounding hill, her head seeming to prick the sky, the entirety of the deck vanishing between her legs, both of her mouths set and serious.
Bluebird's eye begins to trace upward, though you are fairly certain it loses its way long before it reaches Alexandrite's face. She shoves the blades behind her back. "'Ello," she whispers.
Alexandrite raises one foot and brings it down with a harsh thud, driving Bluebird into the ground.
Dr. Drakken, now standing once more, gasps, but you do not. Alexandrite knows how to wound just enough to separate Gems who should never have been joined to begin with.
For an instant, the only sound is the ocean, lapping toward the shoreline and then away as though nothing has happened, and then Alexandrite steps away. A shallow crater in the shape of her foot marks the sand, and in its imprint lie Aquamarine and Eyeball. They seem a size beyond tiny, their expressions dazed, their limbs already darkening with swollen patches like the one on Drakken's face.
"Ow," Aquamarine whimpers. You are not kind enough to hold back a smile.
Alexandrite relaxes and splits, and Steven throws himself into Garnet's arms just as he would when he was small. Pearl grabs the sides of his jacket and begins an inspection of him, starting with the tips of his curls.
You do not watch them for long. You walk over to the lip of the crater and crouch, staring down at Aquamarine and Eyeball. There is surely something nasty that you can say to them, something that they deserve to hear, and yet you cannot think of it; your glare and your silence are enough to hold them still. You do not rejoice over the fear in their eyes, but you are glad for it.
The door opens again. The footsteps that shuffle out are slow and sad, and you know they belong to Greg even before you hear Steven say, "Dad! Dad, I'm so sorry! I never should have let them near you –"
Greg speaks over him – "Easy there, Schtewball. You're okay, I'm okay, everybody is okay –"
Only when Dr. Drakken cries, "Oh, Greg! Your mullet! Your mullet!" do you lift your head.
Greg sits on his ankles on the deck, hunched over the pelt of detached hair like a primitive human over the hide of some animal he has killed. For the first time, you get a clear view of the back of the shirt he wears, its fabric surprisingly smooth and dignified. He looks weaker without his hair, the way Drakken looks weaker in clothes other than his coat-of-labs, the edges and boundaries of him limp and sagging as if the thing that held his confidence has been washed away. Drakken puts an arm around him and Greg leans into it; their eyes meet, wet with an odd suffering, a suffering you could not explain but think you might understand.
"I don't – I don't suppose there's any chance you can grow it back," Drakken says.
Greg skips his hand across the ruddy dome of his scalp. "At this age? Nah. Not gonna happen." His voice seems to shrug, trying to count the loss as of no importance, but you hear the way the words creak at the ends.
Above your head, wings flap. You glance up to see Aquamarine has taken to the sky, Eyeball clinging to her foot, both of their faces stubborn and hateful, anything that could reside beneath them sheathed like unviable weapons.
You straighten, the ocean growing tense and alert at your back, but no one else has hold of it. She is not fighting anymore, and she does not even seem to notice you.
"You may have beaten us, Steven Universe!" she calls down to him. Her lip curls around his name as though she can barely tolerate the feel of it. "But you've still lost – because we'll always be out here. We'll always be out here, hating you!"
Steven stands with his fists doubled, his eyes lost.
"Yeah, because you stink," Eyeball adds. Her words are almost comical and her glower almost pitiful, but you can still see her hand inching toward Greg, unwavering with the knife held toward his face. You wonder if her aim was as sure that day in space when she turned it on Steven.
With a swish of her skirt, Aquamarine propels them higher. They are two specks against the sun as it sinks toward the horizon, and then they are not even that; they have vanished.
Your laugh is one part relief and two parts regret.
Dr. Drakken can't stop thinking about the mullet.
Actually – check that – yes, he can. He can also think about the glint in that stupid little Ruby's one stupid little eye as she came for Greg like he was a pumpkin she wanted to turn into her own personal jack-o-lantern. About the peeled-flesh rawness of the spot on his chin where she clocked him and the way his nostrils throb from her boot. About the fuchsia fusion whose name he can never remember – and really, how could anything top "fuchsia fusion"? – raising her foot and stomping Bluebird into the sand, the way the giant pink spaceship-feet did to his friends all those years ago on Homeworld… the way the Diablos did to parked cars as the darkest parts of himself laughed.
So, yes, he has to keep thinking about the mullet.
It lies in a furry mass in Greg's lap. So far it's held together pretty well, but now little strands of it are starting to flake off and blow away in the breeze. The way pieces of Greg's heart must be chipping off, Drakken wants to add, even though it's unbearably cheesy.
Tears tremble in Greg's eyes, and he lets them spill onto his cheeks without embarrassment, without fear for his dignity. It is one of the most impressive things Drakken has ever seen, and he's seen lots of impressive things. The boiled-shrimp-pink top of Greg's head fills Drakken's vision, and he understands that Greg is right; nothing else will sprout from those follicles. He doesn't know how old Greg is – it would probably be all right to ask, but he doesn't want to risk making Greg any sadder – but his time for growing mullets has passed.
Drakken plays with the ends of his own ponytail, still thick and defiantly shaggy. He imagines how naked and vulnerable the back of Greg's neck must feel, helpless against any attack that might creep up from behind. Tendons tingling and muscles bunching because their bio-engineered and environmentally-sustainable security system has been trashed.
Greg's nape will never know that type of protection again.
The thought spikes into the backs of Drakken's eyes. No, wait – those are tears. Unexpected. But surrounded by a group of people who Drakken just now realizes have never once judged him, he rocks forward on his heels and puts his arms around Greg's wide, sweaty back and lets said tears come. There's no straining, no churning, only deflation. His body goes from tight to loose, appendages shaking with the aftereffects.
"Am I supposed to cut mine too, in solidarity?" Drakken says. Well, blubbers.
He feels Greg's head – his small, defenseless head – shake against him. "No, man. Let yours live. Carry on the legacy!"
Drakken lets out a sob of relief. "That's good, because I look really dumb with short hair!"
Pearl makes a soft sound in her throat. Drakken's unsure whether it's sympathy or amusement, but it reminds him of wind chimes, so it doesn't even really matter in terms of the comfort factor.
"All right, good job, everybody," Drakken hears Steven say in a voice that sounds like it's been run over by a semitruck.
Drakken's head jerks skyward, and he searches the almost-sunset for a glimpse of the little brats, or the one little brat that's the two of them together, or whatever they're doing now. No sign of them – they got out while the getting was good. Lucky for them, or they might have to taste the wrath of Dr. Drakken.
Not that there's much around here for him to cook or serve his wrath with. But a mad genius can always improvise!
For the mullet. For Greg almost being carved up. For all the places on his own face that are going to be bruised as heck tomorrow. And – oh, yeah, for the fact that one of them, the little blue one, threw swords at Lapis. Lapis, his first and best and only girlfriend.
Drakken whips around, barely noticing the pain that ripples across his shoulders, and locates her now, finally moving away from the enormous footprint that Fuchsia Fusion left in the sand. She picks her way up the deck steps, planting her sandaled feet soft and careful like they're still bare. The knots in her shoulders are gone, but she still seems tense.
He runs to her. "Lapis! Are you okay?" he says. And then he wants to kick himself, because that is the absolute worst question anyone could ever ask Lapis Lazuli.
She doesn't lie this time, though. "No. But at least it's over." Her strength sounds as ragged as her bangs look, but he can hear it anyway.
Gosh, he likes her so much.
"It is over," Drakken says in a cheerleader-peppy pitch that would do Kim Possible proud. "And you kicked so much butt out there!" He grins at her, hoping to spark even an ion of a smile from her in return.
Something flickers in her eyes. "Well, the ocean helped a lot." Modest as ever.
"Yes – but – seriously!" Drakken curbs the grunts pressing against his voice-box. "The fact that you defeated her with the ocean while she was using the ocean too? That's pretty spiffy! And I don't care whether or not anyone says 'spiffy' anymore!"
Lapis turns and gives the ocean a long, full look, so understanding and caring it would probably make pre-reformation Drakken jealous. She doesn't say anything for a minute, and she doesn't have to. Lapis isn't one of those people who needs to be babbling every minute to cover the uncertainty in their bellies. She just stands there, her head tipped the tiniest bit to one side, as if she's just stopping and listening. Drakken always means to ask her how in the world she manages to do that – now's probably not the time, though.
When she turns back around, she looks at Greg. Her eyes seem to be shifting between different states of matter, tough and solid yet soft and fluid at the same time. "I'm sorry about your mullet, Mr. Universe. I'd give you another one if I could."
The sheer sweetness of it seals the sides of Drakken's throat together.
Greg gives her a wet-eyed smile. "'Preciate it, Lapis."
He strokes the furry mass in his lap. Drakken gets that fizzly feeling of curiosity in his fingertips, but he hesitates before reaching out, unsure of the etiquette of touching someone else's detached hair. He's always hated having anyone put their grubby mitts on his hair – whether they were actually grubby or not – but his hair has always been attached, except on those occasions where it's been burnt too thoroughly for anyone to fondle. (Occupational hazard. Wires and chemicals are even testier about incompatible matches than the people on those reality dating shows.) So he doesn't rub it or pull it, nothing like that – he simply gives it a pat, gently, the way he would with Commodore Puddles.
"This is a real loss, Greg," Drakken says. "It's too bad we can't have some kind of…funeral for it."
He expects Amethyst to snicker. She doesn't. She tosses a glance at Greg and twiddles the ends of her own shaggy mess of hair. "A hair funeral?" she says.
The complete sarcasm…less…ness of her question is all the encouragement Drakken needs. He shoots to his feet, snaps the ache from his back, and curls his wrists onto his hips. "No, not just a hair funeral – a mullet funeral! It deserves to be honored. And I know just the perfect person to officiate!"
Greg and the Gems pass a puzzled look around, but it doesn't sting Drakken's spirit at all. This idea is so mind-bogglingly perfect, absolutely no one can discourage it.
(Well, maybe Shego. But she's a professional.)
Drakken takes the deck stairs down two at a time on excitement-feet, bracing for a soft landing in the sand, but an unauthorized rock throws itself in his path as soon as he leaves the last step. His toe catches, his body heaves itself forward, head over heels over head over heels, and finally he comes to a much harsher touchdown on a hard-packed pile of sand. Pain shoots up his knees and cracks across his back, and he's pretty sure the injuries in his face explode.
After a groggy, world-pulsating moment, Drakken struggles to all achy fours and runs his fingers across his face to find it intact. "I'm okay!" he calls with what breath he's been able to gather.
From this distance, he barely sees Lapis's arm move, but he knows she's covering a giggle. And, for some reason, that makes him even happier.
Drakken digs his cell phone from his pocket and scrolls through his preprogrammed list of numbers. The right one jumps out at him – well, not really; it stays stationary on the screen, but it seems to glow with perfection – and he punches the button with no small amount of triumph. It rings and rings and rings, and then the last ring gets chopped off in the middle by a blip and a heavy heaving of air.
The voice that answers makes Drakken think of a German shepherd, equally prepared to either growl and defend his territory or wag his tail gleefully and chase after a ball. "Yo," it says. "This is Motor Ed."
"Eddy," Drakken says.
There's a surprise-party pause, and then Eddy woofs some laughter into the phone. "Cousin Drew!" he cries. "What's up, man?"
"I need to ask you a favor."
"Sure thing! What can I do for ya?"
"Come officiate a mullet funeral. Please," Drakken remembers to add.
"Mullet funeral?" Eddy repeats, as if those few syllables are the most heartbreaking and befuddling ones he's ever heard. "Aw, man, Drew, don't tell me you –"
"No, no, it's not for me! My mullet is alive and well! I mean, not actually alive, because all hair is dead, but – but that's not the point! The point is that a very nice man named Greg Universe had to cut off his own mullet today, and he needs to honor it."
"Cut off his own mullet?" Uh-oh. Eddy's appalled. Drakken should have known. "Why'd he do a thing like that?"
"Because he was being held at knifepoint by a crazed alien!" Drakken cringes as soon as the words are out of his mouth, but in this case, they are appropriate. Or at least true. "Her associate had a grip on his hair, and he had to grab the knife and cut it off to avoid being graphically maimed!"
Silence descends then, a thoughtful type of silence he's not used to getting from Eddy. "Dude," he breathes. "I guess that's a pretty decent reason."
For a hiccup of a moment, Drakken wonders if Eddy would have had the good sense to do the same thing in that situation. He shakes his head. Not a thought he should spend a lot of time with, especially not with his chest still being hammer-pounded from the inside out.
"Will you do it, please, Eddy? You're the only one I can trust. The only one who knows how important this is," Drakken says, and it might be a little manipulative, but it's also the complete and honest truth. Who else does he know back in Middleton who doesn't act as if "mullet" is a dirty word?
"'Course I will. You can count on me, seriously." Drakken can imagine a grin sprawling under Eddy's mustache, Eddy looking at Drakken like Drakken is a head taller than him and could break both his femurs with one kick, even though exactly the opposite is true.
It's a bright shiny moment that spreads through Drakken, the kind of bright shiny moment he always envisioned waiting for him as newly-crowned ruler of the planet. He peeks backward at the group of women on the porch with Greg. Sometime in the last several minutes, Peridot has shown up and now she's spouting questions at fifty-five miles per hour, which Pearl and Amethyst scramble to answer. Lapis stands a foot or so apart, saying nothing – of course – her face peace-shiny.
A bruise of a memory, the kind that hurts to be prodded at, rises up stinging in Drakken's mind. The reminder of how Eddy is around the female of the species. And while all the females here are technically of a different species, they look human enough to swirl dread through Drakken's stomach. He remembers all too well Eddy leering down at Shego, his hands pinching her arms – she looked so young that Drakken had forgotten about the forty-seven ways she knew to destroy him until she started implementing them, and even then he'd still wanted to give his cousin a swift kick in the behind. (Maybe worse. He was still a villain back then.) His cousin has a way of looking at women, talking about them, reaching for them, that tries to turn them into less than what they are, and it's been that way since they were teenagers. A bitter film forms on Drakken's tongue.
"One more thing, Eddy." Drakken hears himself growl in a way he hasn't had to do in quite some time. "There are quite a few women here. I expect you to be respectful."
He can predict Eddy's next line is going to be, "Huh?" And it is, but it's quickly followed by an, "Okay, yeah."
It's almost good enough. Not quite. Not with Lapis, Lapis, Lapis bouncing through Drakken's mind.
"There's one particularly lovely woman here. She's blue, and she's my girlfriend." The words feel strange to Drakken, how real they are, like he's just run headlong into an actual wall that he was sure was a holographic projection. "Call her 'babe' or anything similar, and we will be holding a second mullet funeral."
Drakken stands there for a moment with his ferocity ringing in his ears, a ferocity so much stronger than anything he could summon as a villain – probably, he surmises, because he's running on love this time, not hate.
"Anything you say, Cousin Drew," Eddy says. Hopefully in round-mouthed awe. "So where am I comin'?"
Drakken consults with Greg and recites the address into the phone. Eddy listens, grunting in true Lipsky style at each part of it. With any luck, he's jotting it down somewhere. Eddy falls a bit short in the planning-ahead department.
When he hangs up, Drakken drops the phone back into his pocket and watches the women on the porch again, trying to drag his thoughts away from the idea of Eddy hitting on any of them or bringing out his elementary-school mentality about them being weaker and less awesome. It is, he thinks, one of the only truly bad things about his cousin. His foot taps the porch in a staccato rhythm out of sync with his heartbeat, and the harder Drakken tries to coordinate them, the more they resist him.
"Okay, but can we just talk about the fact that Eyeball actually said, 'You stink'?" Amethyst's husky voice gives Drakken a mental rib-nudge as her elbow gives Steven an actual rib-nudge. "Like, seriously, did she just leave the Kindergarten? I'm trying to remember if I ever woulda said something that immature."
Pearl's ever-focused eyes take on an impish shine. "Oh, you would have. But there would have been a quality of self-awareness to it that both of them are sorely lacking."
She's over-analyzing everything, and Drakken understands. It makes him feel better, too.
"I don't get it," Peridot says. "First she tells you that you smell good, and then she tells you that you stink. I believe they call that 'sending mixed messages.'"
"For real." Garnet nods and exchanges a look with Peridot, a look that says, I understand you, even though they're about as different as they can possibly be and still both be Gems.
Make that all three be Gems. He thinks. He still doesn't entirely get the whole fusion thing, and he's not about to ask Lapis, not about to watch her turn into an icicle and angle her head down to hide behind a rumply-haired curtain.
Especially not now while she leans against the porch rail, her arms in a lax fold. Her lips are quiet and mischievous, like she's giggling without moving them, without making a sound.
Drakken comes up beside her and winds an arm around her waist. She feels frail in the spot where her shirt ends, even though he knows better than to believe it. "Hey," he says.
"Hi," she replies in her almost-whisper. "Did you find someone to officiate?"
Drakken nods. "My cousin. Eddy."
"Is he the only who really likes cars?" When Drakken nods again, she adds, "I've never met him before."
"Yes, well, there's a good reason for that." Drakken lets his nose wrinkle, and it's a mistake – the concussive blow he can still feel from Eyeball's boot nearly blows it in half. "He's…weird around women."
"Weird how?"
"Weird bad. Like…" Drakken feels like he's playing Minesweeper, searching for a square he can click on without risking spontaneous combustion. "Rude. And demeaning. Like they're his toys he can play with. I don't think he'd ever hurt one," he hastens to add, "but I'll still try to keep him away from you."
A gleam starts deep in her eyes. "I can probably handle him."
"No argument from me," Drakken says. "But you shouldn't have to." She blinks at him, all big eyes and itty-bitty lashes, and his throat walls constrict again.
What must be hours later, a car screeches to a stop at the edge of the beach. Drakken couldn't tell you its make and model, but it has to belong to Eddy; it's every bit as bulky and shambling-looking as he is. Sure enough, a man with blond hair swaggering to his shoulders climbs out of the car and gives its door a slam that shakes the whole frame on its tires. It's not an angry gesture, just one careless with its own power.
And what power that is! He seems to get bigger every time Drakken sees him, or maybe it's just that Drakken always scales Eddy down in his mind, brings him closer to Drakken's size. He will come barging into this group of happy people the way Eddy always barges into everything, loud and oblivious to all that he's ruining.
Drakken takes off toward Eddy before Eddy can come to him and get any ideas about getting his grubby mitts on Lapis. And in Eddy's case, his mitts are very much grubby – and oily and burned-rubber-smelly from the recycling plant where he works now that the Lipsky men are law-abiding citizens instead of criminal lunatics. He comes to a halt in front of the truck, hands on his knees, lungs heaving for air.
"Hi…Eddy…" he pants. His ego feels funky for a second. He's not in the worst shape ever, but he always feels his inadequacies next to Eddy and the no-sleeve white shirt that barely contains his pectorals. Pectorals as firm and strong as Greg's are squishy and Drakken's are bony.
It does occur to Drakken that this time he's not standing on his tiptoes and thrusting out his chest, trying with every atom in his body to impress his cousin. Eddy has never cared one way or another. Even if he did, that's no reason for Drakken to burst a blood vessel pretending to be someone he isn't.
Eddy greets him, like always, with a bellow of "Cousin Drew!" and slaps him on the back hard enough that Drakken's sure his bones rattle. Also like always.
Somewhere in the midst of the pain and the battle to realign his spinal disks – he, like his unfortunate Intercontinental University lair, wasn't built to seismic standards – Greg wanders up beside him, the mullet balanced on his open hands. Drakken touches Greg's shoulder, taking care to avoid the pinkest part because that looks like it would really hurt, and sweeps his other arm toward Eddy. "Eddy, meet Greg Universe," he says. "Greg, my cousin Eddy."
"Great to meetcha," Greg says.
"Greg. Bro. I'm so sorry for your loss." Eddy's usually loud, sloppy voice mutates into something almost gentle, and it's a good mutation, the kind that allows a species to survive a hitherto unknown threat. He glances at the hair Greg's holding. "Is that it?"
Greg nods.
Eddy lets out a whistle, and not the kind he likes to sling at women. "Dude, that's a sweet one. How long you been workin' on it?"
"Almost twenty years." Greg smiles, the type of smile Drakken has heard described as rueful, and he doesn't think he needs to know what rue is to understand that Greg has it in full. "Ever since I dropped out of community college."
Speaking of dropping, Drakken had to practically tie down his aching jaw to keep it from falling to his collarbone. "You're a college drop-out, too?"
"Yeah," Greg says without ducking his chin, without seeming ashamed at all. "I kinda had to get away from it all."
Eddy bobs his head in what Drakken thinks might be empathy, though he's the only one there with a college degree. "Had to leave home to grow the mullet, huh? Or did your folks disown you or somethin'?"
Drakken loses the battle with restraining his jaw. Even he knows that's not an acceptable thing to ask someone!
But Greg doesn't appear offended at all – just tired, his eyelids at a record-setting depth. He shrugs with the corners of his mouth. "Something like that."
Drakken's stomach folds in, hot, like a fist. He went and became a supervillain with designs on world domination after he dropped out of college; Greg went and grew a mullet. And Greg is the one who got disowned? It seems so unfair.
Eddy shakes back his own mullet, revealing the two chunky black letters, E-D, branded on his arm. (Actually, they were put in with ink and a needle, but Drakken fails to see how that would be any less painful.) "I hear ya. Parents can be such Philistines."
"Wha?" Drakken blurts. As much as he despises sounding unintelligent in front of others, the urge to kick himself only hangs around for a moment and then scampers off like a naked mole rat with your doom-ray blueprints between its teeth.
"You mean, people who don't understand art?" Greg says.
"Yeah. Also people who think they can take down a seriously awesome man by choppin' his hair off." Eddy tosses a grin Drakken's direction. "Remember, Cuz? Sunday school when we were kids?"
Drakken nods. Curtly, he believes is the word for it. He can remember Sunday school quite easily, but as with most of his childhood experiences, he would prefer not to.
Eddy wraps an arm around Greg, and Drakken winces, hoping Greg's armchair-cushioned flesh absorbs the shock of Eddy's strength better. "So," he says. "Where you want to lay this beauty to rest?"
Greg stares down the beach, forehead thought-rumpled. "I think the ocean's as good a place as any."
"And it won't be a pollutant, because it's hair. It's bio-degradable," Drakken adds, because it is a fact, and facts shrink grief, make it easier to kick away from you.
He grabs a handful of Eddy's dirty-white tee and almost hauls him toward the ocean and away from the women on the deck. They're only shapes from this distance and even though Amethyst and Peridot are shorter, Lapis somehow looks tiniest of all. Only after they've left the beach house far behind does Drakken wonder who he is protecting more – them or his cousin.
They stop a yard or two from the ocean's starting line, though tendrils of it still lap around the toes of Drakken's black boots. It's the same ocean he looked upon every time he pulled back the blackout shades at his haunted island lair, familiar. He never thought he and the ocean would have anything in common, but he knows it loves Lapis, too. Someday he'll have to try and figure out how that works, scientifically speaking –
But not right now. Drakken shakes the thoughts aside, lifts his face to get a whiff of the sea-salted air, and then turns his gaze to his cousin. "Eddy," he says, "it's all you."
Eddy takes a step forward, crunching sand beneath his heels, and bows his head. "My dudes, we are gathered here today to pay our respects to Greg Universe's rockin' mullet. He'd had it for so long that he probably can't imagine life without it. He kept it through a bunch 'a' decades of changing fashions and everything, and it totally blows that he can't have it anymore because it was a good mullet. It served him well. It let him express himself. Let the world know that there were some things he was gonna do his way, and not theirs."
Drakken had closed his eyes, but now they pop open to study his cousin's furious frown and the aggressive way he slams his hands into his pockets. It may be the most heartfelt thing he's ever heard Eddy say.
"But I'm still me, Eddy," Greg says, and the words are like quick-drying cement, wet but already starting to set. "Same as I always was. Nobody can take that away from me, no matter what they do to my hair." He slides his fingers across the shorn mane in his lap. "So long, hair. It was fun."
Before Eddy can make the sound of disbelief Drakken's sure would be his response, Greg kneels in front of the ocean and places the mane on top of it with a touch so light that Drakken almost misses it. One minute it's in his arms, being told it was loved and would be missed, and the next it's rocking back and forth in the current, separating, water swarming it on every side.
Pressure builds in Drakken's nasal passages, and he has to give a mighty sniff to relieve it. Now that it's actually gone, being carried away from them, the calm beach takes on a weird atmosphere so that it really does feel like a funeral, like the one he helped DNAmy arrange for Monkey Fist all those years ago. No one is dead in this case, he knows – it's "just" hair – but it's still a loss. There are memories tangled in those strands. The memories will stay long after the hair disappears, true, but surrendering one of those tactile reminders of them feels how Drakken always imagined it would feel in those old cartoons when someone got a molar yanked by a non-dentist character.
But from above him a seagull cries, sounding a little ticked-off – tweaked, Kim Possible would call it – the way they usually do, as if their voices are so annoying they themselves can't stand it. Drakken turns squinty eyes up to it, and then he sees the world in front of him – the sun sinking in shades of pink and orange and cream, the coppery glow it sends out across an ocean of deepest, almost-green teal, the lilac clouds streaked with light from beneath. The beauty of it all distracts him. It's one of the few times in his life he's been grateful for his ADHD.
Drakken glances at the mane. One last time. He doesn't want to watch it fall apart. "Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust," he says. He's not a hundred percent sure what that means, and he's not even fifty percent sure of whether it applies to hair in the ocean or not, but it seems the thing to say, at any rate.
Eddy grunts and sighs all in one noise. "Seriously."
And that, Drakken is fairly certain, is Eddy-language for "Amen."
"A very poorly-thought-out plan, if you ask me," Peridot says. "I mean, what did she expect? That Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl wouldn't come running the minute they heard Steven or Greg in distress? That they wouldn't fuse to form Alexandrite? That she, who even as a fusion was smaller than me, would somehow be able to defeat them in a fight?"
She continues to pour out her relief in rattling words, and Garnet puts a hand on her shoulder; you know Garnet's touch to be subtle and soothing, so you are not worried for Peridot.
It is Steven who worries you. He turns away from the bright chattering group and wanders farther down the coastline, his arms wilted like seaweed. The sea breeze catches the ends of his pink jacket and tosses them high, but he does not seem to notice.
You give the rest of your family a little wave, call forth your wings, and flutter after him. Your feet touch down on sand near him in the shadow of a boulder, one side bulging and rough, the other pressed flat by the tide with a sharp outcropping at the top where the water doesn't reach. You recognize that boulder; Steven hid in its shadow as your prison exploded into fragments of glass and you felt air on your skin for the first time in five thousand years. It is now as it was then: just him and you and the ocean.
He is taller than you now, and broader, as he always has been, and the hand that reaches out and takes yours engulfs it, your fingers reduced to mere traces of color peeking between his. The pads of his flesh don't feel quite as soft as you remember them. His eyes are weary when he glances at you, and the turmoil of the day seems to drag against his shoulders.
"What's up, Steven?" you say.
Steven lets out a sigh hard enough and close enough to further muss your hair. "This was all my fault."
You snort, at the absurdity of it and at the knowledge that you would be saying the same thing in his place. "Nah, I'm pretty sure this was all Bluebird's fault." When his eyes turn to meet yours, as sluggishly as a waterlogged sail, you add, "You remember? Bluebird? The creepy little fusion who just left?"
He does not laugh as you expected, and at once you want to hear his laughter again: the round swell of it, the quick huffing breaths bobbing through it, and the beautiful gasps between bouts preparing him to begin again. You consider blowing into the palm of your hand and producing the ripping noise that made him laugh so hard that first day, but for a moment you are frightened it will not work.
"I never should have given her a chance."
Steven speaks the words softly, but there is a violence to them that stings the air around you. It is as unnatural as the red and blue of their bodies twisted together.
"Are you serious?" Your voice is too shrill; you try to temper it. "No way. You did the right thing. Just like you were doing the right thing when you gave me a chance."
You lift your hand and place it against the stone behind you, so much sturdier and grittier than the stone that keeps you alive. Steven puts his hand next to yours. He still doesn't smile, but something other than anguish flickers behind his eyes, and you know he recognizes this location too.
"Yeah, but – you never would have tried to cut up my dad's face!" he says.
You have to take an instant's pause to blink and adjust to the sudden pressure in your throat. Even now, his belief in you is still so strong, stronger than your belief in yourself.
"You couldn't have known Bluebird was going to try that, either. Garnet used her Future Vision and still said there was a chance she might have changed." You sound ridiculous, you know, as though you are trying to defend Bluebird to Steven, yet of course you are not. You are trying to defend the Steven you first met to the one who stands before you now. "Just because she – she threw it away doesn't mean you did a bad thing by believing in her."
"I didn't believe in her, though," Steven says with a loud swallow. "I never did. I just pretended to, and the whole time I was waiting for her to do something awful."
"Oh." You blink again. "That's…different."
"Well, a lot of things are different about me now, Lapis," Steven says. He doesn't seem angry anymore, just tired, rubbing his face with his knuckles as if to wake himself up. "Maybe that's one of them."
You have a sudden memory of Peridot's corn and how quickly it grew from seed to stalk, and a tender warmth one push away from pain claims your back. You sit down and scoot closer to him, lining your toes up beside his on the sand, but the distance between you is deep and not far. The thought that he might have trenches which you do not know unsettles you, like you have been playing in your ocean and somehow come across a dark cave unfamiliar to you.
You can almost feel Jasper looming behind you.
"Anything you want to talk about?" you say.
Silence is your answer. You close your eyes and listen to the ocean whisper your name: Lap-is, lap-is.
"Soo…I became a vegetarian a couple weeks ago," Steven says at last.
"Oh. I didn't know that." You shrug. "But everybody's got a right to their own religion."
Steven laughs then, and it is everything you had hoped for, his head dropping back, his eyes pushing shut, his cheeks flushing further. You cannot understand his sudden hilarity, but you still feel as if you could float inside it, invulnerable surrounded by the sound.
"Oh, man. Thanks, Lapis." Steven pulls his thumb beneath his eyes; he has laughed so hard he has cried. "That was the best laugh I've had in a long time.
"Vegetarianism isn't a religion," he explains, his face brightening. "It's just a way of eating."
You tilt your head. "Like – you only eat vegetables now?"
"I mean, not just vegetables, but yeah. It means I don't eat meat anymore – you know, the kind of food that used to be animals?"
"Yeah. Well, good for you," you say, although humans eating meat has never appalled you. Most dominant species need to prey on other lifeforms for nutrients; it is just the way of things. "I don't see how that could be a problem."
The clouds appear in Steven's eyes again. "The problem is that the other Crystal Gems keep forgetting about it. Pearl keeps trying to make me hot dogs and stuff like that for dinner, even though I've told her like ten times that I can't eat that anymore. Is it really that hard to remember?"
He plucks a rock from the sand and tosses it into the ocean. The sea ripples around it and then forgets it, the scrolls of its waves bending toward the sand, washing over your feet, and trickling back.
"Oh," you say again. "Well – I'll try to remember.
"And I definitely won't try to feed you hot dogs," you add. "I always thought those things were kinda gross."
Steven flashes you another small grin, but his eyes return to the sky and his thoughts undoubtedly to Bluebird. Yours do as well, and they are surprisingly gentle. You never want to see her again, not even to attack her and make her pay for what she almost did to Greg. Ferocity does not roar within you, for you know how it feels to bind yourself in chains of hate and let it suck you under, and that is what Aquamarine and Eyeball have already done. They are cold and lost, clinging to the illusion of power where even the Diamonds have ceded, jerking the broken edges of themselves away from Steven, the boy who could have healed them. Any punishment from you would be deserved but redundant.
He finally nods, as if in response to something you cannot hear, and though he sits beside you as comfortably as he always does, a quiver of unease haunts the atmosphere. You know it can't be from the ocean; your tether to it has smoothed over, freed from Aquamarine's influence. It can't be from you, for peace has settled between your shoulder blades. You don't think it can be from Steven because you can still see love in the tired eyes he turns to you, perhaps not as brilliant as before but just as sturdy, like the sun-paled deck of a hardy boat.
If only the three of you are here, how can it be here as well?
You scoot nearer and bump your shoe into his, and he does not pause before returning the nudge. You are safe here with him, you know, and yet this silence is rough, like hot grains of sand against bare feet. You are so accustomed to Steven filling in your silences, and you never thought you would have to fill in his.
The ocean comes closer, still whispering your name. It holds its shape, but you feel it tilt and curve, the mark you see in books at the end of a question. You shake your head at it.
For another few seconds, all is quiet in the spot where the rest of your life began.
Footsteps crackle across the beach soon afterward, and you look up to see Greg approaching, his smile every bit as tired as Steven's yet his eyes not as defeated. His body looks odd without his hair framing it, like a stone broken apart and pieced back together, some of the soft angles and turns seemingly in different places than you remember.
You expect Steven to throw himself into Greg's arms. Instead he stands there, his hands tight in the pockets of his jacket as if crushing clay. "Dad, I'm so s –"
"Don't even go there, Schtewball." Greg pulls Steven to his chest. "You have absolutely nothing to be sorry about, okay? Nothin' at all."
Steven's ankles tremble. You step behind him, prepared to reach out and catch him if he falls like you fell on that first night.
Over Greg's shoulder you see two more men running in your direction, one instantly recognizable as Dr. Drakken, his steps quick and graceless. The other man, with what you believe is called a mustache the color of wet sand, must be the cousin he talked about. He does not resemble Drakken greatly – he is much bigger and rougher-looking, without Drakken's cuteness – but you watch the way he swings his arms around in the air as he talks and the way he cocks his head to the side to listen, and you can believe they are family. You lift your hand in greeting, and Drakken waves back, grinning.
Steven hangs there against Greg's chest, his arms uncertain and unmoving. "Lapis says I did the right thing giving Bluebird a chance." His voice strains, as though each word requires grueling effort without his innocence to help him speak.
"She's right, kiddo." Greg doesn't even glance at you, his focus centered on his son. "Look – you stuck by your convictions even though you weren't feelin' it. And that's amazing." He taps the underside of Steven's chin, raising it. "I'm proud of you.
"The truth is," he continues, "everyone can change. But not everyone wants to."
Drakken catches his lower lip between his teeth and sniffles.
You wait for the fierce line of Steven's back to relax. It never does. As his eyes search the sky again, you get the disquieting feeling that you and he are looking at it from different perspectives and that, for once, yours sees more light than his does.
Steven drops away from Greg, nods once more, and plods off through the dune grass, moving away from Peridot and her stream of chatter rather than toward it. He looks adrift, blown from the course he has always known to take.
You start after him, his words already in your mouth, but Dr. Drakken pushes in front of you, his thin flexible arms drawn across his chest like iron plating. You can't understand why he should want to shut out Steven; then you see the edges of the man with the mustache, still visible on either side of Drakken, and you know it was not Steven he was trying to block.
Drakken takes one fleeting look back toward the water and then just as quickly snaps his face around to yours.
"What are you looking at?" you say. "And then not looking at?"
A shudder, small by his standards, moves through Drakken's body. "The mullet. Greg put it in the ocean to…you know, rest in peace. I keep trying to find it and then remembering that I don't want to watch it fall apart and sink."
"Don't worry," you say, touching his arm. He cares so much for the simplest things; it is one of the things you love most about him. "The sea creatures will know what to do with it. Some fish will use it to hide their eggs, or some birds will take it to line their nests or something. It won't go to waste." You nod to the man behind him. "And you must be Cousin Eddy," you say in your most polite voice.
The man peers effortlessly over the top of Drakken's spiked head. When Drakken warned you about him, you thought he would remind you of Jasper, but he is not nearly as big as she is and when he smiles at you his face is obtuse, not cruel. "Dude," he says. "Is this her? The –"
"Don't say it, Eddy." Drakken's jaw punches forward, even more tenacious than usual. "Don't. Even. Say. It."
"Wasn't gonna." Cousin Eddy blinks down at you, as though you too are not what he anticipated. "This is your girlfriend?" he asks Drakken. "She looks like a little kid."
Drakken's neck stiffens and his eyebrow dives. He looks affronted, and yet you are not at all offended. You emerged from Homeworld's crust at full size and with full knowledge of your role in Gem society. There was exploration and discovery in the days before Earth, but it was invariably related to that Purpose. The life you and Peridot have had since the day you moved into the barn is the closest thing either of you will ever have to childhood, and you cannot imagine a lovelier way to live.
You cast another worried look around Cousin Eddy's broad back at the vanishing pink figure. Yeah, childhood's pretty great, you think. You just wish Steven didn't have to leave his behind, and every portion of your gem aches for him.