~Hope you all have been having a good summer. And buckle up, folks, cause it's going to get crazy from here.~
Steven Universe kicks the sheets away from his sweaty top half in disgust. His eyes are almost too heavy to stay open, but the pounding behind them won't let them close very long. He crams his fingers into his hair and tugs as his forearm swells up like a baking-soda bubble and turns pink before deflating and going back to normal. Or as normal as anything gets these days.
This has been the suckiest month of his entire life. And he's had some pretty sucky months.
Beach City High School had had its graduation ceremony a few weeks ago, and so many of his human friends had been bumped up from kids to adults, just like that. Lars was talking about going into space again while Sadie was on tour with the band with Dad along as their manager. And then after that, the band would be no more, 'cause Buck Dewey was leaving for medical school in the fall and Sour Cream had to take off to wherever somebody needed to go to learn to be a professional DJ. Steven thinks something like that is probably supposed to happen to him, too – he is almost seventeen, after all – but every time he tries to crawl forward something seems to knock him back, like being stuck on that one level of a video game even after scouring the area for power-ups.
There was the disaster with the cactus. The disaster with Peridot and the Camp Pining Hearts Reboot. The disaster with Connie and her friends at the skating rink.
And there's – Connie. She's getting ready for college, too, even though she's a full year younger than Steven is, and she's made other friends who are on her same path.
He's been jealous of people before, and that isn't what he's feeling now. His palms just get clammy at the thought of her driving away from Beach City too, because she won't just be one more person leaving him – she'll be Connie. Connie who makes things make sense. The only times all year that he's felt strong or smart or able to understand anything about the world are when they were Stevonnie. He wanted to fuse with her permanently and live as one person for the rest of their lives, like Ruby and Sapphire have done.
So he'd asked her. He'd taken her on a romantic sunset date at the beach and strummed his ukelele for her, and then he'd gotten down on one knee, taken out a glowstick bracelet, and asked if they could get married and live together as Stevonnie from then on.
It wasn't the fact that she'd said no. It was the way she looked at him – pulling her legs away from him and gaping into his face as if he were something she didn't know what to do with. As if he were a Corrupted Gem and she was afraid of him.
She recovered quickly, though, and explained to him all the reasons why it wouldn't work to do that right now, and he realized how nuts he must have been to think it would. Her voice was as nice and as determined as ever, and Steven watched her lips move and watched the only future he could imagine being okay with burn away. She gave him a hug that he hoped would last forever.
It hadn't, and when she let go and walked away, he collapsed on the sand and blew a crater in the beach. He would have to go back and fill it in before anyone saw it.
Those power surges had gotten worse than ever after that. It wasn't enough to just turn him pink anymore – it had to grab parts of his body at random and inflate them and then drop away again. It really doesn't hurt much, but something about it feels wrong, like the tingle left behind in his mouth after using too much toothpaste. And it doesn't scare him so much as annoy him.
All the Gems are on a Little Homeschool field trip this weekend, and Steven's glad they aren't around to see this. He doesn't want to have Pearl flit around and fuss over him while Amethyst tells jokes like that'll make things better.
Steven really thought maybe it would clear up before anyone noticed, but then Connie called to make sure he was okay. He was pretty close to convincing her he was, and then his entire head turned pink and almost exploded. She didn't believe him after that.
In fact, she took him down to the hospital to see Dr. Maheswaran – not as his girlfriend's mom, but as a doctor. Steven had never been to a doctor before, though he'd seen it on lots of TV shows. She checked his height and weight and blood pressure just the way the TV doctors always did, and she did it away from all the other doctors and the questions they'd probably have. When she first mentioned hormones, Steven was terrified that she was going to give him the talk he'd already had with Dad, and that she was gonna do it right in front of Connie. But instead she'd started talking about traumatic experiences and how his hormones and adrenal glands just assumed he was in danger all the time now, even if he wasn't.
She hadn't had a diagnosis or anything, and she didn't know how to get the pink things to stop, because he's a Gem-human hybrid and she doesn't know how they work. No one does, least of all Steven. Connie grabbed his phone, ducked out of the room, and called Dad to ask him to come home.
None of this would be so bad if he could just feel like himself again, like the real Steven he remembers being a few years ago – the happy, hopeful kid who loved everybody and wanted to save the universe, not all at once, but one person at a time. But that kid has disappeared, poofed away like Pearl's body did when her hologram stuck a sword into her, and Steven can't kid himself anymore into thinking he's coming back. He tries to hang on to the pieces of that person, but that's all they are, pieces, as if he's been worse than poofed.
It's hard being around Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl now, because they want him to go back to being cute little Steven even more than he does. Hard being around Peridot because her energy reminds him so much of what he used to have, and because she'll want to graph his problems out like the technician she never stopped being. It's even hard being around Lapis, 'cause she acts exactly the same way she always has around him – like she hasn't even noticed the changes, and he wants to keep it that way.
And now here he is. Connie worried about him, Dr. Maheswaran wrestling with questions no doctor's ever had to answer, and Dad coming back and screwing up Sadie Killer's whole schedule. All because of him and his stupid, stupid hormones.
Steven throws himself sideways across his bed, his feet sticking out on one side, his head almost brushing the wood floor on the other. Another pink flare across his shoulders has him gritting his teeth.
Aside from the ugliness with Bluebird and the other two Lapises, there hasn't been any trouble on the intergalactic front since Spinel. Jasper is being uncharacteristically inconspicuous.
Steven used to think once Earth was safe all he would have to worry about was living happily ever after, but now he knows better. Now Earth is safe and it isn't at all like what he imagined. Everything's so calm, so peaceful – everything but the inside of him.
He remembers being a kid and having enemies and monsters to fight and try to tame. Those are his best memories and his worst memories, but they are all vibrant and colorful on display in his mind, and now is different. Now is more faded and he wants his colors back.
Steven looks through the glass door at the upside-down beach. Where are you, Jasper?
The doorbell rings a few minutes later, and Steven hits the floor with a thud. His heart still jumpy and his mouth still sticky with the taste of coconut cream pie, he jogs down the stairs toward the front door. He doesn't think Jasper would waltz right up and ring his doorbell, but she's done stranger things than that.
It isn't Jasper standing on his porch, though. It's Connie, the best person who could show up and the worst person who could show up. As soon as he sees her, Steven wants to dig a tunnel through the floorboards and vanish. He also kinda wants to kiss her.
Instead of doing either, he reaches over and opens the door for her. She steps just over the threshold, just barely into the house. The air is weird between them, like they're back in that bubble where he accidentally trapped them back at the beginning, and the space over the door seems too high without Mom's portrait hanging there.
"Hi," Steven says.
"Hi," Connie says. "I saw your dad wasn't home yet, so I just wanted to check on you. How are you doing?"
Steven almost expects to turn into a huge pink firework at that question. When he doesn't, he shrugs. "About the same."
She looks up at him, and for a crazy moment Steven misses being shorter than her. "You promise you'll let me know if anything changes, right?" she says. The hesitation in her voice, like maybe those aren't the right words, feels like a jab in the stomach, right next to his gem.
Steven nods almost without thinking about what he's agreeing to. Anything to get that worried look out of her eyes.
Those eyes come closer and scrutinize him now, and he feels like he's back behind her mom's X-ray machine. "Do you need me to stay?"
Steven doesn't know if she's hoping he'll answer yes or no. He's pretty sure she doesn't know, either. Finally he shakes his head. "No, I'll be all right."
Connie reaches out one hand like she's going to touch him and then pulls it back. Probably trying to make sure she doesn't hurt him.
"Oh – I almost forgot to tell you," she says. "When I called your dad, I found your regular doctor's number in your contacts, too."
"What regular doctor? I've never had one."
"Really?" Connie says. "Well, I found another doctor in there, and I sent him a message to see if he'd come over." She takes one step back so she's outside again. "Call me if you need anything before then, okay?"
She puts her fingers in her hair and pushes it to one side of her face. Steven really wants to kiss her then, but he knows if he does it'll be hard and desperate, and that's not the way Connie deserves to be kissed. He waves and lets her leave, turning away from the door so that he doesn't have to watch her get farther away, and then he flops down on the couch and thumbs through his contacts.
It doesn't take him too long to figure out who Connie found. A name and number Steven put into his phone so he could call once they found Malachite and got Lapis back. It seems like a lifetime ago.
When his doorbell rings again an hour or two later, Steven's pulse doesn't jump into his throat this time. He puts his bowl of ice cream and cake down, jogs to the door and opens it and gets a nose-full of petunia petals. His head tilts back, and he sees marigold petals surrounding a blue face.
Dr. Drakken gives him an awkward grin and says, "Hi. I heard you've been sick, so I thought I'd bring flowers."
Dr. Drakken stands there and gives Steven what he hopes is a reassuring smile. The sun warms the backs of his ears and the sides of his neck where his self-cut ponytail doesn't reach, but it feels good to Drakken, seeing as he's still a little damp around the edges. He'd been experimenting with hydroplaning technology – which Shego wrongly refers to as "playing with water" – when he'd gotten a text from Steven's phone, but the person writing it identified herself as Connie Something-Or-Other, and she said that Steven had just gotten home from the hospital.
It had taken Drakken a moment to place her – he's still getting used to the fact that people can type letters into their phones and send them to each other now – but eventually it hit him. Connie, with the sword and the last name that Drakken couldn't spell even if he wasn't dyslexic. Steven's best friend. Maybe his girlfriend? He can hardly keep up with these teens today and their changing relationships.
He'd hesitated. He doesn't know very much about taking care of sick people, and whenever he doesn't know how to do something, it makes him feel like a jigsaw puzzle still in its box, being shaken around in pieces. But this is Steven, the boy who's saved Lapis's life twenty-nine times or something by now. Drakken owes to him to at least show up with flowers.
Flowers are something Drakken does know how to do. His own are getting smarter by the day. Every time he visits Little Homeworld, he makes sure they get at least one chance to do a close-up inspection of Lapis and Lisa to make sure they can see the difference – or hear it or smell it or whatever sense flowers use to take in information. They have to know which of the tousle-haired, fairy-faced girls to pull into a hug and which to attack should the situation come to that. Which it won't.
Probably.
Anyway, even with the clueless feeling weighting his tongue, Drakken is sure he's made the right choice when Steven opens the door with tangly hair and red rings around his eyes and a bigger, clear, sticky one around his mouth. His cheeks and jaw are dark with scruff, and Drakken waits for his facial-hair jealousy to kick it – seriously, how can a mere child grow a beard faster than Drakken can? – but it never does. All he can think about is the lackluster expression Steven turns up to him and how little it resembles the Steven he knows.
"Hi, Drakken." Steven shoves the door wider. His voice is warm, like it always is, but it sounds to Drakken like he's having to do CPR on it to make it stay that way. "Come on in."
Drakken takes him up on that offer, twirling in a gawky circle for a few seconds before he finds the glass-crowned coffee table exactly where it's always been and sets the flowers down on top of it. Steven plops against the sofa cushions, looking as soggy as the ice cream in the bowl next to him that melts against a squarish piece of cake, chocolate with purple frosting – whipped-cream frosting, if Drakken's eye does not deceive him. Drakken's salivary glands kick in on principle, but he tries to keep most of his focus on Steven.
"So Connie told me you had to go to the hospital. What on Earth happened? If you don't mind my asking," Drakken adds. Reluctantly. He wants the whole scoop – no, not the ice cream, although he wouldn't mind some of that, either – but all the intel.
"It was a hormone thing."
Drakken feels pink blotches flare up on his cheeks and the back of the neck. Hopefully it isn't too noticeable. "Oh. Yes. I had some of those back in the day myself." It was one of the most miserable times of my life, he stops himself from saying.
"Yeah, well, they aren't getting along too well with my powers. Weird things started happening, and Connie kinda freaked out and dragged me into the hospital where her mom works."
Steven looks at Drakken with lost, vulnerable eyes. A beat starts inside Drakken's temples and works its way across his entire head, pounding like it does whenever he's desperate for information. He needs to know how human hormones and Gem powers interact; he needs to know if Steven's in any danger.
"But you're okay now, right?" Drakken says.
"Yeah. I'm fine."
The words are like something out of a time capsule – dusty and musty and rusty, but also so, so familiar. Before Drakken can get out his magnifying glass to search for clues, Steven leans forward and scrubs the floorboards with a toe that used to dangle several inches above it at rest. Drakken can't see the telltale number printed on the inside of his flip-flop, but he would bet it's at least two sizes bigger than the day they first met and at least three sizes bigger than any shoe Drakken has ever been able to wear. "Dr. Maheswaran let me go home and Connie called my dad to come home and take care of me," Steven says.
"Right." Drakken nods. "The Gems are on that big field trip thingy this weekend, aren't they?"
Steven sinks deeper into the cushions. When the kid finally says, "Yeah," the word is Lapis-quiet.
"Your ice cream's melting," Drakken says because there's nothing else to say.
Steven pulls the bowl of ice cream into his lap and presses down hard on the spoon. "Thanks. There's more in the freezer if you want some."
Drakken does. He dashes into the kitchen up to the refrigerator and opens the top door. A blast of machine-cold air hits him, and a carton of ice cream sits right at nose level. It looks so perfectly normal that Drakken can't decide whether to hug it or tip its contents straight down his throat.
He gathers a bowl and a spoon and the ice-cream scoop instead and wanders out to sit next to Steven. "I can stay with you until Greg gets back," he offers.
Drakken has heard people talk about reading someone's face before, and he's always assumed they were using figurative language. But right now, it's like Steven's face really is made up of letters and words, and the dyslexia is snatching them up and rearranging them in combinations that make no sense. Some looking hesitant, some almost angry, some like they're ready to cry.
"I guess," Steven finally says, and something about the reply makes Drakken feel inept again. He sticks the scoop into the ice cream and drops a ball of vanilla into the bowl that sits in his own lap.
"Is everything…okay, Steven?" Drakken's voice isn't big enough. It needs to be bigger.
A full twenty minutes (or maybe just seconds) seem to go by before Steven answers. "I don't know. I've gotten all messed up."
"No way!"
Drakken regrets the exclamation, but there's some truth to it. How can Steven be all messed up? Steven, with pluck and spunk and vitality to rival Kim Possible's? Steven, who isn't an ex-convict or a recovering supervillain or a person whose insecurities claw away at the kennel where he's stuffed them in the back of his mind?
"Yes, way. A lot of my friends in Beach City are getting ready to leave for college. Away from here." Steven talks like he's giving a book report, his spoon unmoving in the bowl.
Drakken doesn't need to fake his sympathetic frown. Just hearing "college," just watching Steven's lips shape the syllables, sends a chill through him from his collar to his tailbone. He hopes that isn't too noticeable, either.
"And I'm gonna miss them." Steven drags one hand over his eyes, and Drakken watches the skin on his forehead squint itself lower. "So I did something that you'll probably think is completely stupid."
"Try me," is all Drakken can say. Most of his energy is occupied with wrangling the memories of dates who weren't really dates and friends who weren't really friends.
"I proposed to Connie."
Drakken blinks. Steven doesn't appear to be reciting a book report any longer, unless it's one of those books where the dog dies at the end (Drakken always hated those). And he'd thought "college" was bad – "proposed" wraps its way around Drakken and squeezes like a pair of plump pretty arms that he once thought would choke the daylights out of him.
"It doesn't sound stupid to me," Drakken says. His esophagus is thick with Steven's angst and with all the things he's recalling: a soft dimpled hand that seemed geometrically designed to fit in his, a voice that chirped at him and called him by ridiculous pet names, a gap-toothed smile that saw something in him that none of the other villains did, something that made him not care whether he was good at villainhood or not. "Especially not after what happened to me."
Steven drops his hand and leans in closer, his eyes the size of self-destruct buttons. Maybe they are self-destruct buttons, because looking into them and knowing what he thinks happened – it hurts the way Drakken remembers it hurting when a lair would crumble to rubble beneath his feet. "You mean you –"
Drakken cuts him off. "No, no, no. This was years ago. Long before I met Lapis.
"Her name was Amy Hall – DNAmy, everyone called her." Even saying her name stings, and Drakken hugs the carton of ice cream to his chest. "She was a supervillain like me. Except nothing like me. She wasn't – malicious or – or power-hungry. She was a very kind and loving person who was completely emotionally unstable and liked to do gene-splicing experiments."
Drakken's surprised to hear himself describe her so charitably after she broke his heart, but the truth is the truth. And vulnerable isn't catastrophic enough a word for what he's feeling right now. Try turtle-knocked-on-its-back-with-its-feet-in-the-air. "I had a bit of a flutter – or – wait – what is that thing called when you see someone and it completely changes the consistency of your insides?"
"A crush?" Steven says.
"Yes! A crush! I had a crush on her. It's rather ironic – cruelly ironic – because I was initially trying to get her to fall for me so that she'd help me with one of my schemes. But I ended up falling for her. And proposed. And got turned down." A chuckle would probably be appropriate here, but Drakken consults with his and finds it too wobbly for use. "I'd only known her for a day. But she was so nice to me and she made me the most wonderful homemade cookies, and she had a science lab that…ohhhh, it was like heaven, Steven, and I could have stayed there for eternity, so what more did I really need to know, right?"
Steven doesn't correct him, doesn't laugh or shake his head. He just sits, his face still hard to read and a smile nowhere nearby.
"And I know you've known Connie for much longer than a day, so it's not a perfect comparison, but…" Drakken hears his boom trail off, a squeak slipping into its place. "It hurt."
And at this moment, it still does. Or maybe that's the plastic carton crumbling against his chest where he's got it crushed, the cold cutting through his lab coat as if it's made of paper and not good stout fabric. He rocks forward and pushes his hands into fists. Not to hit anyone. Not to shake at the sky in villain-rant mode. Just to slip tighter around the spoon and direct another huge gulp of ice cream down his throat, around the lump that he can't figure out how to evict at this point.
(His old standby – conquer the world and subjugate the population – wheedles its way in, but Drakken rejects it faster than DNAmy rejected him, and he doesn't bother trying to let it down easy, either.)
After that, he can't figure out what to do with his arms – they feel long and dangly, as awkward as the vines were at the beginning, before he gained some measure of control over them. He guides them toward the ice-cream carton – the arms, not the vines – and gets the spoon to his mouth again. As it dissipates lusciously on his tongue, he works the question he has to ask between his cheeks until it's softened, the sharp edges sucked away. "So I take it Connie said no?"
Steven draws his gaze, red and wobbly, up to Drakken's. "She said 'not now.'"
He continues to stare at Drakken as though that is the worst news he could possibly deliver, the look clashing with the message of his words, with the smile that Drakken can feel spreading across his face and through his heart.
"Not now?" Drakken cries. "Steven, do you realize what that implies? Ohhh, that's so much more open-ended than, 'You're sweet, but the truth is my heart belongs to another man because I did radical genetic surgery on his hands and feet.'"
Steven just blinks, a blink that seems to take a long time, like a piece of security-camera footage slowed down so the detective can pounce on anything suspicious. "Oh," he says, tilting his curly head to the left. "Did that work out for them?"
Drakken squirms in his perch on the coffee table, itching beneath the skin. It's not one of his fonder memories. "No. He sold his soul in pursuit of ultimate power and wound up being turned into a block of stone." He tries to grin, tries to make the whole thing less horrifying than it actually is. "And – I was going to say that you can't date a stone, but look at what I'm doing now."
Steven laughs, but it has a strange sizzling sound to it, fizzy soda when you're expecting a smooth cool glug of milk. His spoon roots around in his bowl again.
Drakken can hardly blame him for that. DNAmy, Monkey Fist – the whole miserable mess of it moves his hand back to the scoop, the scoop back to the carton.
And then he pauses with it in midair, something weird nagging at the back of his throat. It's as if Drakken is transported back in time, to a Father's Day years ago when he had nothing to commemorate, as always, how he'd ended up shoving donuts into himself until it was standing-room-only in his stomach and he was moaning with it all. Not fun.
"All right, how about this?" Drakken doesn't bring out his authoritative voice, because it's not what either of them needs right now. "We each get one more scoop, and then – then we talk about something else?"
Steven stares at him in surprise. Maybe awe. Drakken doesn't blame him there, either. He did come out of that sounding awfully mature, if he has to say so himself, when inside he's a hodgepodge of jumbled nerves.
It occurs to Drakken that for all the time he's spent in Beach City over the last several years, he's never been alone with Steven for any of it, and this deflating, rough-cheeked version of Steven is practically a stranger to him. The word alien comes into his head, but Drakken shakes it out. He's never felt this awkward with Lapis, and she truly is from another world.
No, this is the type of feeling Drakken remembers from when Shego would start poking holes in his latest ingenious scheme and make it seem less than ingenious. The type of feeling that hid under layers of evil chortling and proclamations of his own wrath. The type of feeling he was inapt, that he'd failed an eptitude test – no, make that inept and failed an aptitude test – and therefore didn't deserve to rule the world because he couldn't even point his q's in the right direction.
He swallows the last drop of ice cream hard.
Steven leans forward and slides his empty bowl onto the coffee table. The spoon slumps lifelessly to one side, leaving a gloppy white stain on the glass that Drakken vows to clean before Pearl gets home and finds it. "So…what did you want to talk about?" Steven says.
"Me," is the first word out of Drakken's mouth, and then he wishes he could grab it and choke it back down. He scrambles around in his brain, rifling through memories and overturning mental furniture in search of more words that will make him sound less…well, less like what he used to be. "Me – and Lapis. Lapis makes us happy, right?"
Steven nods. His smile is puny but it makes its way to his eyes, and Drakken admires its scrappiness. "Right."
"Right," Drakken repeats. He sets his own bowl next to Steven's, careful to turn the spoon-dip inward so it doesn't slop all over the glass too. "Anyway, because of DNAmy, I learned my lesson about proposing to girls on the first date. Or before the first date, I guess, because trying to destroy your mutual arch-nemesis together probably doesn't count as a date…" He trails off and licks his lips, trying to scrape off the bitter residue he can almost taste on them. The flavor of evil is one he has come to loathe.
"So I've been patient with Lapis. Very patient. Which is amazing, because I am not and have never been a particularly patient man. But she's worth it. I don't want to scare her off."
Steven practically becomes one with the sofa cushion. His bloodshot eyes stare at Drakken like Drakken has just kicked him. In a way, he probably has. Now he's really wishing his words came with a rewind function.
"Oh, Steven, I didn't mean – you know I didn't mean – you know –"
Actually, at this point Drakken doesn't know, and he doubts Steven does either. After knowing DNAmy for a couple dozen hours, her not wanting him had driven him to lock himself in his lair's walk-in shower and sob until he dredged up a plan to travel to Middleton High and steal the kinomatic continuum disruptor that contained the dinosaur they'd created, because it belonged to both of them and he wanted to have it so she couldn't. What Steven and Connie share runs much deeper. It must be that type of pain to the seventh power.
It must feel like he was ground into the ground.
And there has to be a more dramatic way of saying that, because ground into the ground just sounds stupid. Would it be grinded into the ground? Grounded into the ground?
He doesn't know, and when Dr. Drakken doesn't know, it makes his legs jitter under him. Even when he crosses them and presses down on them with his elbows, he can still see his knee bouncing like a basketball. He throws himself at the first unselfish thought he can find.
"Steven…you and Connie really have something special. I haven't seen such a bond between two young people since – well, since my ex-arch-nemesis and her sidekick."
"Really?" Steven says.
"Really truly. They'd been best friends since the first day of preschool, and they've always loved each other, and eventually they realized they love-loved each other. Thanks in no small part to me. Not that I take all the credit – nggh, make that 'blame.' See, I had a fiendishly clever plot to drive them apart, and it wound up having the opposite effect – and – and – and –"
And now he's remembering the Diablos, and to say he can't afford it to is an understatement. One thought of them is enough to bankrupt him for the rest of the day. Drakken brings his hand up to scratch at his neck and finds his fingers entangled in a yellow petal. The annoyance doesn't poke at him this time. This – this he will gladly remember.
Steven's body straightens with interest, and Drakken realizes that his sitting-down height is only a few inches below Drakken's own. Something else pokes at Drakken then, and it's worse than annoyance. "What happened to them?"
Drakken rubs his hands together, the way he always does before he delivers the most delicious part of his speech. "They've been married almost two years."
"Oh." Steven doesn't jump up smiling the way Drakken had wished, but he can see a little bit of hope struggling to break through. Which is good, because up until now the kid's face has been awfully bleak. As in abandoned-forest-during-a-snowstorm bleak.
"It worked out for them, Steven," Drakken says, perkily, gushingly, because he needs to watch that hope grow and that bleakness shrink. "It'll work out for you and Connie, too. Okay?"
The room goes quiet, and Drakken's reminded of just how much he hates quiet. It takes up all the unclaimed space and winds up feeling bigger than he is until he has to shout it down. He nips at his tongue to hold back the urge.
"Okay," Steven says at last, and Drakken can't tell if the boy is talking to himself or to Drakken or to no one at all.
"So Lapis and I were at the park in Middleton last week, see? She sat next to the fountain and read, and I swung on the swings. And then these three guys walked past – just kids, really, not that much older than you."
Drakken takes another helping of oxygen and prepares to keep going. He's been talking for upward of an hour, and though his vocal cords are sore, they've also been toughened by decades of villainous monologues. They're not about to quit on him.
Across from him, Steven slumps against the sofa like a half-empty sack of flour and watches Drakken with an expression Drakken still doesn't recognize. His face would look young and vulnerable were it not for the smattering of stubble, something Drakken knows all too well. "Young and vulnerable" has looked back at him too many times from his own mirror, most maddeningly in his many lairs where he tried to cultivate a yes-of-course-I-have-what-it-takes-to-take-over-the-world look.
But the stubble is there, and it makes the texture of Steven's face wrong. Matter of fact, the texture of the whole scene feels…off, somehow, and it scratches at Drakken like the tags he always forgets to cut out when he gets new shirts, which isn't very often.
Nice description. Terrible feeling. Drakken talks over it.
"Anyway, they stopped and they saw me, and they got that look on their faces. That bullying look. And sure enough, they started making all these snide comments about me, because apparently a grown man on the swings is just the funniest thing ever. They were asking if I wanted someone to push me, if my mommy knew I was at the park all by myself, as if their juvenile attempts at humor would faze me." Drakken shakes his head at himself, at the things that still spurt out of him when he's in pride-preserving mode. "Who am I kidding? It did faze me. Especially when one of them started pantomiming like he was on a swing too and singing the Sesame Street theme song."
Steven's face flinches, and for that moment it's the same face Drakken saw when he first showed up at this house, inquiring about Lapis's whereabouts. "I'm sorry. That's low."
"They'd have to crawl underground to be any lower," Drakken agrees. He can still call to mind – and body – all too easily how it feels to be picked on, how it creeps inside you and chews you up, how it heats and burns your whole self like a chemical rash, complete with awful side effects: vision blurry, feet antsy, ego swelling to protect itself. "But don't worry," he says to Steven and to the remnant of Drew Lipsky that he still lives with. "This is where the story gets good.
"Well, before I could even decide whether or not to go after them with my plant powers, Lapis just appeared right next to them. I always forget how quick she can be, you know?"
Steven nods. He's listening – Drakken can tell by the way his eyes track everything Drakken says – but there's something else happening underneath them. Not boredom. Not mockery. None of the things that make up the oh-my-gosh-Drakken-shut-up look he's so used to receiving from Shego.
So it can't be that bad.
"And she took the Sesame Street guy by the arm and said to him, 'Hi. That's my boyfriend. And I'm an immigrant from space with water powers standing next to a fountain. So I think you better stop talking.' And he tried laughing and he said, 'What are you gonna do, drown me?' And she said – in that little tiny voice of hers, mind you – 'No, I wouldn't do that. But I wouldn't have any trouble making you wet your pants in front of everybody.'"
Steven guffaws, the sound startling in its rightness.
"I know, right? You should have seen the shade of white that guy's face turned. I almost felt sorry for him." Drakken jiggles his eyebrow. "Almost.
"Lapis is – she's just the best." Drakken goes ahead and grins, gives up all pretense of not feeling smug. Actually, smug probably isn't the word, since he's not talking about something amazing he did, but he feels it anyway, the unfurling triumph in his chest that takes the ache from his back and the pressure from his shoulders. "I just…she's so quiet and sweet most of the time, and then she just goes and does something like that. I can't get over it."
"Yeah. You two are really good for each other," Steven says, his words happy but his tone sad, or maybe it's the other way around.
In the should-be-gentle moment that follows, Steven bites down hard on absolutely nothing and his arms snap to his sides like a primitive cartoon robot's. A flash of magenta blinks under his shirt and then blinks out again, faster than a hiccup.
Faster than Drakken's own eyelids, which begin to bat, as if by matching its pace he can find a way to understand it. "Steven, did I just see –"
Steven swats the words out of the air with his hand before Drakken's even done with them. "Yeah. It's not a big deal. Just my powers being weird."
"Oh. Like when I sprout petals at the worst possible times?"
"Yeah," Steven says. "Like that."
Drakken allows himself to exhale in relief. Of course. He knows exactly about the struggle for control and the grimace it brings on. That's annoyance, not pain. Steven is fine; puberty is just the pits.
(The literal pits. Drakken remembers adolescent-Drew spending a week trying to get up the courage to ask his mother to buy him deodorant.)
Silence falls for nearly two minutes, broken only by a knock on the front door. A voice, all round and soft with no harsh corners, calls, "Steven? It's Dad."
Drakken leaps from the coffee table and races Steven to the door only to find that Steven hasn't budged from the couch. The winner by default, Drakken takes it upon himself to open the door and usher Greg indoors with a grand flourish of his arm.
"Oh. Hi, Drakken," Greg says. "Didn't expect to see you here."
Drakken nods and cranks up another grin. "Connie saw my name in Steven's contacts and thought I was his primary-care doctor, so she texted me. It's kind of a funny story, actually."
Usually Greg can be counted on to chuckle along with Drakken, but at this point, there is so much worry radiating from the man –
Of course there is. His son just got back from the hospital. Drakken supposes most dads would freak out about that.
Injustice slams hard into Drakken's gut, so hard he stumbles and grips the doorframe for support.
Greg doesn't seem to notice (which is understandable – but still disappointing). He pads across the room in his flip-floppy feet and sits down next to Steven, the sofa cushions bowing under his weight. The ends of his hair stick out, whacked off above his ears, and Drakken mourns once more for Greg's mullet. "Hey, kiddo. Look at that – somebody already brought you flowers," he says in a soft voice, an inviting voice. A dad-voice.
"That was me, actually," Drakken says. His own voice can't quite reach its usual baritone depths.
"Well, thanks for that." Greg presses the back of his wrist to Steven's forehead. "How ya doin', Schtewball?"
"I'm all right," Steven says, and for a moment he sounds like someone – Drakken just can't pinpoint who. "You didn't have to pack up and come all the way home just for me."
Drakken glances at him in surprise. Steven's face has slammed shut like a bank vault. Drakken tries to run the look through his own recognition software, applies everything he knows about human facial tics and visual cues that may be subtler than the ones he gives. But the data comes back tangled and raw and arguing with itself.
His readings tell him that it's nothing. And it's something. And it's nothing.
He doesn't know, and he hate-hate-hates not knowing.
"Of course I did." A sternness Drakken's never seen before carves itself across Greg's face. "Connie told me you were at the hospital. That's not something I can ignore."
Steven sighs – from the innermost crevices of his being, it sounds like, and Drakken's not far behind him. He's not crazy about human touch, especially from other males, but at this moment he can almost imagine a father's hand on his brow, a father's concerned murmur in his ear. The stubble didn't make him jealous. This does.
Drakken closes his eyes so Steven and Greg can't see him throwing a laser-death-ray glare at the man whose picture is nothing more than a low-resolution image in his mind. The room goes quiet again, and Drakken realizes he's not supposed to be participating in this conversation, not even by listening. Both the father and the son are just too polite to tell him to bug off.
One heel wiggles against the floor, dancing in sync with his firing nerves. "Well, see you guys. Feel better soon, Steven." He smiles, a weak effort, but hopefully enough to show that this is a plea, not a command.
Steven lifts his right hand and puts it down again. He looks weaker than Drakken feels, even though Drakken's seen the kinds of things those pink powers can do – more than once. Each time, it's left him thankful that Steven's on his side, that Steven's careful with his abilities in that way only good guys can be.
Drakken almost sprints out the door and hears it clap shut behind him. For a few minutes he stands on the deck with his fists curling and uncurling, Greg Universe and Richard Lipsky stacked up next to each other in his brain. There is absolutely no contest. Greg is fifteen-point-three times the man Drakken's father ever was.
(Okay, so he's fudging the numbers a little, but the results are undeniable!)
Drakken takes another breath and closes his eyes and lines up the periodic table of elements in the darkness, each box smooth and evenly spaced in neat, unwavering rows, to assemble his thoughts. He's not alone anymore. He can go home and call Senior. He can cope.
Still, as Drakken hops from one stair step to the next on his way down to the beach, he's still pestered by the thought that he might have done something wrong. Not wrong like conquering the world and subjugating the population – more like using your napkin for a Kleenex in a fancy restaurant. The idea flops around inside him, where he can't grab it and interrogate it, ask it what in the world it's upset about.
He doesn't know. (And he hates-hates-hates not knowing.) He just thinks the atmosphere in the house now that he's left may be every bit as dour and sulky as when he arrived, as if it's weighted down by the heaviest element on his beloved periodic table.
Which is number 118. Oganesson. It's synthetic, lab-created, and has only survived in atomic form for milliseconds at a time.
Drakken's lips flick upward as his feet hit the sand. That, at least, is something he knows.
And he thinks he'd have more luck recreating it than making sense of the nothing-something he saw in Steven's eyes.
You step off the warp pad and to the side, swathes of green growth brushing well above your ankles, so that the next group of Gems can touch down on the island where Steven was once stranded with his friends Lars and Sadie. They arrive with spurts of light, one by one, in a procession that takes several minutes to end. This is a field trip for all of Little Homeschool. Some of the Gems hold plants in pots, others cameras, and still others meepmorp supplies, but they all wear the same look of unfeigned awe.
It isn't hard to see why: the island is teeming with life, most of it rooted yet little of it motionless. Broad notched leaves, the longest you have seen on Earth, stir atop trunks that stand higher than Bismuth's head, their knobby brown fruit loose as the breeze plays over them. Jumbles of stones drip with moss, binding each stone to its neighbors on every side. Flowers, every shade a Gem's skin can be, dangle overhead or peek from the ground or climb into the bushes that arise in scattered points, uneven and overgrown. The sea lies in every direction you turn, and the sky mirrors its Turquoise shine.
It was Amethyst's idea to come here; she wanted those who live at Little Homeworld to visit a place that neither humans nor Gems have ever tried to tame, and from the gasps you hear around you, unfurling like blossoms themselves, you know she has made the right decision.
Peridot's hand tightens with excitement inside yours, and you squeeze back, the feel of her thin straight fingers seeming older than it is, as though you have always known it. Garnet announced last night that this field trip was going to run on what she called the "buddy system," citing the wildness of the island, and instructed every Gem to find a partner to watch over and to have watch over you. You and Peridot selected each other right away, a choice that has become nearly automatic to each of you.
This morning, as the two of you stood as a team near the warp pad, joined at the hands, you heard someone call your name. You recognized the voice immediately; it is only a few shifts away from your own.
Lisa landed beside you, stowed her wings, and nodded to Peridot before addressing you. "Lapis? Um, would you mind being my field trip buddy?"
Her smile is sweet and hopeful without Leslie's pull on it. Since she arrived at Little Homeschool, she has been clinging to you the way some of the Quartz soldiers cling to their helmets or whips: not as a weapon, but as a keepsake from the only life she can fathom. You did not want to hurt her, but you knew she could not thrive forever at your side, looking to you for answers you may not have. She is not an offshoot of you – she needs to grow roots for herself.
You felt Peridot's green eyes on you, inquiring, but you didn't turn to look at her. She must know by now that you would never break your word to her. "Sorry, Lisa," you said. "I promised Peridot we'd be buddies last night. Maybe next field trip?"
"Oh."
Lisa's face seemed to wither, and guilt tried to take form at the top of your spine. You bubbled it and sent it away.
"Look, there are a ton of really great Gems around here." You spread your arms to indicate the other immigrants behind and before you. "Maybe this is a good chance to get to know some of them."
Lisa peeked over her shoulder, and then, almost too quickly, her gaze swiveled back to yours. "You mean you think I should hang out with one of them?" The gentle fussy features puckered, and she shook her head, chastising herself before you could speak. "Sorry, sorry. I know: there's no 'them' here. Just 'us.' That's the problem."
You looked into her eyes, so much like yours but imbued with a worry that was all her own. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that I don't know how to be around them." Lisa rolled one arm forward and captured the elbow with her opposite hand. "I don't know how to talk to them because I never did before. Their lives have been completely different from mine – and what if they hate me because I was supposed to be superior to them before?" Her voice dropped to a mutter. "I wouldn't blame them if they did."
You kept looking at her, and in that moment you understood the fear in her eyes: not only that she would be seen as a pool too shallow for life, but that she was a pool too shallow for life. "You don't have to be afraid of them," you began.
She threw her words over your own. "That's easy for you to say. You do so well with them. No one would know you'd ever been Elite at all."
It was both intended and received as a compliment. You gave her a quiet, tentative grin.
"But not me." Lisa's hands cinched at her waist as if to protect her gem. "I'm scared because – what if I insult them all by accident? What if I start pulling rank on them without even trying to?"
You reached out and touched her shoulder, the way you had when she'd decided to come to Little Homeschool, as alone as you had been in your first hours on Earth and almost as nervous. "Then tell them that. Tell them you're nervous because they're different from you and you're afraid you'll hurt their feelings. A lot of them will get that, and the rest will probably just be glad that you're honest."
Lisa blinked at you. "You mean…that's it?"
You laughed, and Lisa's eyes relaxed when she heard you snort. "I wish. But it's a really good place to start." You let go of her and added, "The first step is always the hardest. Trust me."
She nodded without hesitating, and you realized that was part of the problem too. She does trust you. You are the only one here she trusts.
It was a relief to slip your fingers into Peridot's once more. No Gem produces body heat, but Lisa's skin felt profoundly cold in a way that reminded you of an oceanic trench.
You turn now to search for her among the gathered Gems. You see no sign of the familiar ribbon and skirt until Topaz, the fusion who used to work with Aquamarine, lifts her arm to wave to one of her Quartz friends. Her other hand is curled around Lisa's, dwarfing and shielding it.
There is nothing shy about your grin this time; it strikes your face like sea strikes shore. You had not begun to speculate which of Little Homeschool's citizens Lisa would choose for her "buddy," but if you had, Topaz would have been among your last guesses.
Golden light glints off the speckles on Lisa's cheeks, and her mouth lists open. You watch her consider the island, her brow still grave, and you wonder if she, too, notices its similarities to the world you found her destroying, from the pale glow of the sand to the last drops of morning dew on the vibrant, tangled jungle leaves. You wonder if she views her surroundings through the eyes of a terraformer, or if she can see the beauty of things growing without interference. Her stare is at once both empty and overflowing, as only a frightened Lapis's can be.
"All right, everybody, eyes up here!" Amethyst gives her hands a brisk clap. "Okay, so I don't have a ton of rules for you, but I'd like you guys to at least try to keep track of your field trip buddies. And respect the island – no tearing things apart or pulling junk up, 'kay?"
You nod along with the rest of the Gems. Amethyst still speaks in a casual manner, so different from Pearl or Peridot, but her hoarse voice sounds stronger and firmer when she gives instructions, like one of the trees that knows the wind cannot break it.
"And, of COURSE – have fun. All right, guys – disperse!" Amethyst breaks into a grin, her hair falling recklessly over one eye as it did the night you first met her, and yet there is an authority about her you would not have accredited to her then, just as you never could have predicted Peridot's kindness.
Peridot grabs your hand tighter now and tugs you forward, even as she squawks, "Is it okay if we go this way first? Steven has informed me that there is a cave over here where he and the donut handlers slept." It does not matter that neither Lars nor Sadie works for the Big Donut anymore; that is what Peridot will always call them.
You try to walk carefully through the plants, but with every step you smell discarded blossoms crushed beneath your shoes, rich and evanescent. Over your shoulder, you see Centi Nephrite weaving her way around the larger Gems to reach you, an eel slipping between sharks. "Just a sec, Peri," you say and you let your feet stop moving.
Centi catches up and fixes her single eye on you. She holds a thick sheaf of paper in one hand and a wet drawing-stick with its cap still on in the other. "Lapis," she says, "what's our meepmorp assignment?"
You do not even twitch at the word by now. You hate giving "assignments," yet you have learned this about the Gems you teach: when they ask for guidance, it is best to provide a raindrop of it, to moisten their minds in preparation for the flow, rather than let them wander aimlessly.
"How about…you can draw the prettiest thing you see on the island. Or the ugliest thing on the island." You let yourself giggle. "Or…the way you think the island will look in six thousand years. Or the way you imagine it would look if Homeworld got ahold of it six thousand years ago. Any of those things would be great – or anything else you can think of that doesn't hurt the island, right?"
Peridot nods even though you are not addressing her, her small face solemn, an expression you recognize from the moments when people have mentioned Jasper. She is almost as protective of what fascinates her as she is of the people she loves.
"Okay." Nephrite gives you a small, bright smile and scampers off to rejoin her crew, all of whom also clutch meepmorp supplies between their fingers.
Peridot lets out a contented sigh. "Now we can go see the cave, correct?"
"Correct," you say, pretending to salute her.
She takes hold of your hand once more and sprints through the grass, her boots skidding on sand where the cliff shore bumps against the jungle. She has the kind of enthusiasm that spreads like the moss, coating every Gem near her, and you feel your wings stirring inside your gem as you match your strides to her short-legged ones.
When you reach the cave, she stops and gasps, even though the cave is far plainer than you would have imagined it to be: green and brown on the outside, hiding among the vines and branches; black on the inside; with an archway so low it barely admits you. If not for Steven's description of how its entrance opens to the sunset sky, you likely would have walked past it and never noticed it. You think again of the reason you were sent here, and in place of the agony you expect, you feel relief that this planet did not fall at your hands. The ocean murmurs against the cliff base far below, and you know it must feel the same way.
The cave's air nudges against your face, cooler than the air outside yet just as damp, and the water vapor's presence curls around you like a hug from a friend. You breathe it in as Peridot drops to her knees and examines a rock formation from the floor, sand and dirt gritting beneath her.
From within, the cave is not the black void it seemed to be in the sunlight; it is a magnificent array of brown hues, like human skin, and it is smaller than you would have thought as well, a slender tunnel stretching backward for only several paces before it broadens into a rounded area plugged by a back wall. This is the area you step into now, your eyes journeying up its sides and down to the corners just wide enough for a young human's curled sleeping form.
Steven slept here while you were still in the mirror. He fought what he did not yet know was a Corrupted Gem before he learned his friends were not the last of their kind. You run your hand cautiously over one wall, surprisingly smooth despite the tangle of hues and shifting planes that comprise it. You would never know he was here; he left no mark on the place.
Your hand presses harder into the wall. Sometimes the brevity of Earth, how small a gap there can be between beginnings and endings, still weighs on your back like ballast.
Peridot has pulled a measuring box from her pocket, and laid it against the varicolored rock formation where it now rests. The numbered ribbon inside it shoots forward with only a lifting of her fingers, the metallic clamp on the end obeying her. She writes a number on her palm and moves to the next formation, mumbling things to herself that you feel no need to understand. The sound of her happy grunts and caws of delight are enough.
"All right," Peridot says when at last she has put the measuring box away, both hands stained with ink that will not hold its shape for long. "I believe my research has concluded for the time being. Now – where do you want to go, Lapis?"
"Guess," you tell her with a snicker.
The skin around her gem tightens for only a moment before her expression fills with light. "Steven said there's also a waterfall around here somewhere. I will 'bet' – not with actual Earth currency but with a great deal of certainty – that there is where you wish to go next."
You grin at her. "Good guess."
The two of you leave the cave, and you shut your eyes to listen for the presence of a waterfall. Its call is different than the ocean's song, quicker and more urgent yet not panicked, the way Dr. Drakken moves on a good day. You hear it deep in the center of your gem, the divisions between ocean and land, the place where the land is interrupted by gurgling, hurrying water.
Your feet swivel to align with its direction, and with a thrust of your wings you scoop Peridot into your arms and take off. You fly just above the ground, dodging trees as the smaller plants skim Peridot's belly; if you rise too high, you know, the waterfall may seem diminished in comparison.
It is your turn to stop and gasp when you catch sight of the waterfall. You have come to know water in its every shape and display, and yet the element you command has a magic about it that freshens every discovery, as if you have not seen it all before, as if it is imparting secrets even after none remain.
Like the cave, the waterfall is small and unconcerned with appearing grander than it is. Water rolls smooth as glass over a promontory at the top, then enlivens, wild yet calm as it trips over the crooked jutting layers of rock beneath it, veering from corner to corner. At the bottom, it rains into a pool that speaks of stillness even as droplets pucker its surface and a trickling of it edges away, called back to the ocean by the slope of the earth. The faint sunrays that manage to filter through the branches and leaves dance lovingly atop the water, and it magnifies their glow, pulling it wider.
Peridot comes to a stop, too, and examines the water like she examines everything else she encounters: plants, vehicles, or new arrivals to Little Homeworld. The water seems unoffended by her scrutiny; its song resounds in your gemstone and vibrates against your back in restful chords that make you think of Pumpkin's breaths when she nestles down in your hammock with you for the night.
"Pretty, isn't it?" you say.
"Exquisite. As I knew it would be." Peridot nods, her face steeped in the satisfaction of having proven herself right once more, and while you know it to be very near to arrogance, you have come to not mind.
The dense jungle around you swallows up the cacophony of so many Gems the way Dr. Drakken's hair swallows up light – not so that it ceases to exist, but so that it ceases to penetrate. You sink down onto one of the rocks that rings the pool and ease your feet into the water, letting it find the ribbons on your shoes and bat them about in flutters of gold. Every worry within you slows as soon as the connection is made, a connection deeper than fusion and older than this island.
Your toes do not skim the bottom; the pool is deeper than you thought. You turn to your best friend. "Peridot, would you mind if I…?"
"Certainly not. Not at all." Peridot bobs her head again. "I will be somewhere within a twenty-meter radius to ensure that I do not lose track of you, Field Trip Buddy."
You grin at her back as she walks away, the peaks of her hair pricking toward the sky as though performing the Diamond salute.
You slip into the water and it closes over you, leaving no evidence that you were ever there. Hands reaching downward, you feel around the crags and crevices of the stony bottom until you locate an expanse of muddied sand twice as large as you are. You flip yourself around and drift to a patient, peaceful stop, reclining on the side of your back to keep your gem from being pressed into the silt.
The water runs over your arms like an embrace, and you remembering Drakken telling you that in some churches, the leader will hold a human beneath the surface for a few seconds to symbolize the washing of old wounds and the banishment of impure deeds. You can stay here for as much time as you wish, relaxed and staring up at the world, crinkled and serene through the prism of water. This is a good thing, you think, as your soul has more smudges than many.
You peer at the sky, the same sky that held you when you first swooped over Earth, when you were young and the war was younger and all you wanted was to bring glory to Homeworld. Thoughts of the mirror binding you on all sides burst in your mind and your shoulders flinch. You will never be grateful for the time you spent in there, deprived of freedom and feeling, but you are glad that someone stopped you before you could bring ruin to this planet.
You don't know how long you have been there when the water around you begins to tremble and bounce with the weight of someone treading down the grassy hill beside it. You lift your eyes and sit upright and find yourself looking at a face for whom cruelty is familiar yet not comfortable.
Topaz. Her gems clamp on to both sides of her head like the headphones you have seen in Beach City's music store, and you think of Dr. Drakken again, on his first visit here, how he gently swung your hair aside to fix the headphones where your ears would be if you had them. She is perhaps even wider and brawnier than the Quartz warriors, which would be fitting as she is a fusion, a combination of two Topazes clinging to each other for strength and support.
When you see her, your thoughts divide like the rivers in the center of a landmass, half of them flowing east and half flowing west. She snatched Steven and Lars for Aquamarine, squeezing them into the liminal space that no longer existed between her components when she was fused, yet she also cried when she heard their fear and would have put them into an escape pod and sent them back to Earth if Aquamarine had not stopped her. Steven told you all about it…back when Steven told you everything.
You do not mean to eavesdrop, but Topaz's voice is impossible not to hear, heavy and solid as a slab of granite. "I get it," she says.
Someone else speaks, lightly and quietly so their words remain a mystery. You move your eyes a few inches to the right and your mouth opens in surprise when you see Lisa. Topaz is talking to her field trip buddy.
When you first saw them together, they reminded you of so many sets of characters in Drakken's favorite cartoon shows, a duo utterly unalike in size and personality, but there is nothing comical about them now: Lisa's head hanging, her back curved, the ends of her hair bowing forward to hide her chin, and Topaz leaning toward her in sympathy, one hand wavering in the air as though to touch Lisa would be to break her.
You offer a silent apology to the waterfall. It is no longer the most beautiful thing you have seen today.
"Same here," Topaz says, her words wet and full like rainclouds. "I mean, I knew it would take her a while to get used to the idea, but I always thought she'd come around, y'know? I always thought that one day she'd show up here all ready to give it a try."
Lisa asks a question too soft for you to make out.
"Oh, yeah, she showed up one day, all right," Topaz says. "Fused with a Ruby. Going to use her knife to cut up Steven's dad. She hated this place and all of us so much."
You steady yourself against the sand as your shoes jerk in the mud. Aquamarine. She is talking about Aquamarine.
Lisa presses her hands to her face and draws her long legs deeper into her skirt, curling them beside her. Your throat aches. You do not know what she is saying, but you have no doubt what she is feeling.
The thought of encroaching on their privacy seems silly on this island streaming with Gems, but their words are not meant for you. Topaz has not granted you permission to hear what she says, and her life before Earth was fraught with choices that were not her own to make; you do not want to take anything else from her.
You grip the rock wall that surrounds the pool and twist yourself out.
Peridot sits in the grass at the edge of her radius, her tablet in her lap as she squints at one hand, trying to read the smudging of ink on her palm. You don't know why she didn't just transfer the data to her tablet immediately, yet you have learned by now that sometimes it is best not to ask Peridot to explain the things she does, and you get the feeling this is one of those times. A grin lifts her narrow cheeks when she sees you.
"The natural vegetation on this island is simply incredible!" she says. "Here – check this out!"
She gestures to a flower that blooms in the shadow of a boulder, its center the shade of Lion's nose and its petals bursting from it in flat spreads of pink. There was a time, not very long ago, when neither you nor Peridot would have seen the beauty of this flower, when both of you would have seen only an extant species on a planet that needed reshaping and tempering. You sigh, grateful to be apart from that time now.
Peridot continues to ramble about the flower, detailing how human scientists classify plants, and though you listen, you find yourself hearing less her words and more the odd, pinched kindness in her voice that has become something of beauty to you, too.
Sunshine and peace warm your back. You wrap your arms around your knees and watch the wild crests of waves, white and rumpled and free, as they skid onto the shore and dance away again, all the while chanting your name: lap-is, lap-is, lap-is.
When you return home the next night, the sun is low in the sky, pitching long shadows behind the buildings and trees of Little Homeworld. The Gems around you appear somewhat dazed, exhilaration from the experience still bright on their faces but their eyes blinking slowly, almost disappointed to view mundane surroundings once more. They look as you feel when you come to the end of a book. Several of them run up to you, waving meepmorps, and several others, Topaz among them, press their papers close to their chests as they walk past you, politely declining assessment.
The last of them trickles away when you reach your house. You place one hand on the doorknob and turn, and over Pumpkin's joyous barks you hear a voice like yours.
You turn. Lisa stands behind you, her shoulders straighter and more confident than they were this morning.
"Hi, Lisa," you say. "Did you have a good time today?"
"I did. I really did." Lisa sounds surprised. "This world…it's kinda pretty. Messy, but pretty."
Your eyes meet in an unspoken appreciation that you failed the mission you were sent here to accomplish.
"And was it okay having Topaz for your field trip buddy?" you say carefully. "I…I saw you guys talking."
"Yeah. She looks scary, but she's really nice. I did what you said – I told her I was scared I was going to start being all Elite on her because I don't know how to be anything else yet, and she said it was okay, that this is big stuff and it takes time. And we have a lot more in common than I thought. We talked about what it's like to have a friend…who isn't really a friend." Lisa's gaze startles, and she shakes her head until her ponytail nearly comes loose from its band. "Or…someone who is…but they're still not good for you."
"Toxic," you say.
"Huh?"
"Toxic friends. That's what my boyfriend told me they're called," you say, and you understand why; you can see their influence as the poison from Spinel's Injector, seeping into the ground and slipping around the life that surrounds it, overtaking it. "And – this is the part that's really hard – someone can still be toxic even if they do care about you."
"Like Leslie." Lisa looks at you, and her eyes are as dark as the sky in the moment before she closes them. "I really thought she'd want to come with me." She laughs, and even in the softness of the sound you think you hear a tearing, like the noise Dr. Drakken's winter boots make when he unfastens the scratching straps that hold them closed. "Is it…is it weird that I miss her?"
"No," you say without hesitation. "It's not. You guys were close for a really long time. Of course you miss her."
You bite your lip. Someday, when you trust her more and when she is more prepared, you will share with her how it feels to miss a Gem whose spirit was like broken glass against yours, and the emptiness you felt inside when it should have been a relief to be rid of her.
Lisa swallows at nothing, the way Drakken often does. "And then that really big Gem, Obsidian, she got us playing Bird Bingo with those little flying creatures. And I almost won!" She pulls a crumpled piece of paper from the gem on her stomach. "I was just missing an albatross," she says with a shrug. "I don't even know what that is."
"A large bird, similar in coloring to a seagull," Peridot informs her. "It is very graceful in the air and the water but extremely clumsy on land."
Lisa giggles, a sound that still fills you with reflections of planets disintegrating and Elite Gems congratulating one another on their destruction, and some part of you is glad to discover she does not have your snort. "Kind of like us!" She moves, her elbow out as though to poke you, and when you draw back in instinct, she nods, almost in understanding.
"I can see the comparison, yes," Peridot says, snickering through her nose.
Lisa gives her a glance, one that lands close to Peridot's eyes, and then turns back to you. "Everything is just so…new here. That's why I'm glad you and I get to be friends now. Like, for real friends."
She steps forward and hugs you. Her body is as cold and gangly as your own and its familiarity provides no comfort, and yet you do not feel the urge to pull away. You stand, stiff but softening, in an embrace you never expected to have.
"Aww," Peridot says.
You scarcely hear her as you peer at the sky above Lisa's head. Somewhere in the net of luminous stars floats a shimmering white sphere: Homeworld, too far away for you to see how it has broken into pieces.
You let yourself smile at it.