~All right, this one is finally here! Sorry for the long wait, guys. Hopefully you won't have to wait as long for the next chapter. Hope you all enjoy!~
The tip of Steven's tongue still peeks from the corner of his mouth and curls onto his cheeks when he concentrates fully on something, a familiar sight on a boy who has changed so much. You watch him as he sits now on Dr. Drakken's sofa with the book full of wedding plans open before him, Mama Lipsky leaning in from its other side.
"Can we talk about the cake now?" he says.
"Heck yeah!" Amethyst says with a grin. "The cake is the most important part of any wedding!" She lets the words hang in the air like firework sparks for a moment, and then smirks. "Kidding! Just kidding. But, seriously, it is the tastiest part."
"No argument from me," Dr. Drakken says. He lies on the floor with his chin propped in a hand scarcely big enough to support it, his other hand beating and clicking at the keys of his portable computer. Peridot lies atop him, her stomach to his shoulders, her arms draping either side of his neck. If his petals were to bloom, you think with a smirk of your own, she would be displaced.
Mama Lipsky lets out a squeal. "Ohhhh, the cake! It should be big and fancy, now, shouldn't it? We do want all the piped icing and the rose appliques and the four tiers, now, don't we?" Her eyes shine like polished stones behind her correcting lenses; she looks so much like her son in the moment.
"Fine with me," you say, hoping your inner flinch was not perceptible; the word tier still reminds you of the Homeworld ranking system, though there is no reason it should. Mama Lipsky has responded with kindness and understanding to your confession that you would prefer a wedding dress that is neither big nor fancy. This, you can grant her.
"I wonder if they have chocolate wedding cakes," Drakken says. "With chocolate frosting. Ooh, I think those would really catch on!"
Mama Lipsky frowns. "White is the traditional coloring, Drewbie."
"Oh, we passed traditional coloring a long ways back," Shego says. She taps Drakken's cheek and you stiffen to see the curved, carving surfaces of her gloves against the delicacy of his face, although after all these years you know she has learned how to pluck at his skin without piercing it.
Drakken bats her away and growls under his breath, but his eyes quickly return to the state of elation where he frolics most of the time these days. "We could still frost it white," he suggests.
"Isn't there something called white chocolate, too?" Pearl says from the other end of the room. She crouches beside Drakken's television set, adjusting the transmission rods at the top of its screen.
"There is," Drakken says. "A valiant but pale imitation of the real thing." For a moment his expression is serious, and then a radiant smile overtakes him. "Get it? Pale imitation? White chocolate? I didn't even do that on purpose!"
Shego drops her face into her hands.
This is the sound of your life most days now, these voices coming together, rising and falling, blending and contrasting, layering in different combinations, somehow harmonious even when they cannot hold a melody. It reminds you of the essences of water: some briny and murky, some crisp and clear, some mischievous and others subdued, and yet all of them resonate in the most inner parts of your gem – a companion, an ally. Mama Lipsky often draws up her small flower-blossom lips, as though she has been done a discourtesy, when someone disagrees with her, but she does not scream or fuss, for which you are grateful. Garnet's contributions are sparse and understated, while Drakken and Peridot communicate in a volley of words, throwing measurements and analyses and ratios at one another, a stream that can be dammed only when Shego cups her hands around her mouth and calls, "Earth to nerds. Earth to nerds. Come in, nerds," to Peridot's giggles and Drakken's scowls.
Everyone looks to you for approval before they consider anything finalized, yet they take care to make you the center of attention only when necessary; it is a role in which Drakken is far more comfortable than you are.
"I'd probably choose vanilla if it were all up to me," you say, looking straight at Drakken. "It tastes like our first meeting and everything." You shrug. "But I want you to be able to get what you want, too."
"Doy," Shego says. "Don't they make half-and-half cakes?"
"They do!" Steven exclaims. His eyes are aglow again, and he cut the bristling whiskers from his face this morning; he looks more like the boy you met on the beach than he has in months.
"Well, there ya go," Amethyst says. "Half chocolate, half vanilla, you both get what you want. Problem solved." She slaps her palms together, and Shego looks at her in approval.
Steven hunches over the book and begins to jot new notes into the margins of its pages.
A few minutes later, you hear a buzzing, shaking noise that you recognize as Drakken's phone. He pulls up onto his elbows and fumbles around on the carpet in front of him, though you can tell from the slant of the sound that the phone is nowhere nearby. He has probably mislaid it in his excitement.
"Don't worry," you tell Drakken. "I got it."
You fly to the kitchen and spot his phone on a chair, folded over and vibrating like a frightened insect in its shell. When you slip your fingers under it, the screen lightens to white with thick yellow letters reading "KIM POSSIBLE" and then dulls again.
Back in the living room, you drop the phone into Drakken's searching hand and sit on the floor beside him. "Here you go," you say. "It's Kim."
Drakken raises his head abruptly. Yellow petals sprout from the sides of his neck, and as you predicted, Peridot topples to the carpet with a shriek. "Kim Possible!" he says with a dramatic, gasping inflection unique to him.
Shego snickers into her hand, and you lean toward her. "Did he use to yell her name like that when they were still enemies?" you ask.
"All. The. Time," Shego says, and while she sounds exasperated, she also sounds delighted.
Drakken flips the phone's casing open and holds it to his ear. "Hello, you have reached the ever-brilliant and now-heroic Dr. Drakken." A pause, a frown. "You don't have to laugh that hard." He pauses again. "Yes, Lapis is with me. Hold on – I'll put you on speaker phone so she can hear."
He presses a button that allows Kim's voice to project to everyone else in the room. It flows with confidence to the walls, around the furniture, and back again, not desperate to claim space the way Drakken's so often is.
"Lapis? Can you hear me?" Kim says.
"Yeah."
"Spankin'. Okay – so you remember my friend Monique?"
"The one who's going to make a wedding dress for me?" you say.
"Yeah, her. She's coming back to Middleton for the weekend, and she thought this would be the perfect time to start getting ideas for your dress. You know, you could tell her what it is you're looking for, and she'd be able to get a look at you."
"A look at me?" You glance down at your straight hips, your long legs, and your small feet. There is nothing there Monique has not seen before on several occasions.
"Not in a creepy way," Kim says, as though to assuage a worry that had yet to weigh on your back. "Just to know what's going to work best for you. Every woman's different – duh – and a dress that looks gorgeous on one woman might look…a little less flattering on another one. I think I remember you saying you wanted something less busy than your usual wedding dress, right?"
"Right."
"Exactly. And Monique's going to figure out a way to make it perfect for you." You can hear the smile in Kim's voice. "So would you be able to come over on Saturday and meet with her?"
How many days is that? you mouth to Steven, and he holds up four fingers.
"Okay. Sure," you say. "The wedding planning's keeping me kind of busy, but I can always just not sleep or something if I need more time." You pause. "Not to brag."
"No," Kim agrees. "That's more Drakken's speed."
"Hey!" Drakken yelps.
Kim ignores him. "All right; that'll work out great. We are gonna send you down the aisle in style, girlfriend." The smile in her voice widens. "Your style, that is."
"So is now an okay time to hang up?" you say.
"Absolutely."
"Okay," you say. "Bye."
You close the phone and look at Drakken. "She called me 'girlfriend.' Is that 'cause I'm your girlfriend?"
"It's a term of affection among female friends that in no way relates to any romantic feelings for the person on the receiving end," Drakken says, and Peridot nods along. "Besides, you're more than my girlfriend now. You're my fiancée. You know, because we're engaged and everything."
His voice splits around the words, and he rolls onto his back, staring at the ceiling with a silly grin wadding his cheeks. You float in the moment, lost in the thought of Monique assembling a dress that will move for you and with you the way water moves to accommodate rocks and logs.
Drakken's eyes fall on you again, and he sighs in contentment. "Is this the part where I'm supposed to say you'll look great in anything?"
You shrug. "I mean, I'm not gonna make you. But if you mean it, that's really nice."
Pink begins on his cheekbones and connects over his nose. "I do mean it."
"Then thanks."
You lean over and kiss the spot where his blush started and smile at him. Mama Lipsky and Steven exchange smiles, too, united in the way their hands clutch their chests.
"Ugh." Shego rolls her eyes. "Speaking of plans, who's bringing the insulin pump? Because I have a feeling I'm gonna need it."
You do not know what an insulin is or how you pump it, but you feel the corners of your lips turning up in understanding anyway. Shego has been roughened by a life she has not divulged to you, and when the world is sweet it scrapes against her, though you suspect not as severely as she wants others to believe. She will never be soft like Drakken, but neither is she impenetrable like Jasper. Having a family wears at the edges of that – a natural terraforming that, for all its pain, is ultimately to the planet's benefit.
Four days later, you sit on the couch in Kim and Ron's living room, your feet sweeping above the floor. Dr. Drakken wrinkles his nose playfully at you as Ron takes him by the wrist and hauls him up the stairs to continue their discussion. For the last several minutes, they have been talking about a fancy suit called a "tuxedo" that Drakken must wear, apparently the groom's version of your dress. You wonder if the notion of wearing one wrings his thoughts as tightly as the idea of a back strapped in lace wrings yours.
You hear the ring of the door-chime and then a crisp, confident knock, the sounds almost layered atop one another. Kim opens the door and immediately hugs the young woman who walks in, familiar to you from the baby shower, dressed in warm earthen colors that rest against her dark brown skin like they belong only to her although you know most human clothing is mass-produced. Monique holds her for a moment and then comes near you with her arms spread, her smile wide and inviting and beautiful, and she does not seem to feel insulted when you choose to give her hand a small squeeze rather than embrace her.
"Lapis!" she says. "Congratulations, girlfriend!"
You smile, remembering how Drakken explained the word girlfriend to you. She has a bold presence, much like Kim's, but louder and more carefree, responsible yet without the burden of having held the world's fate in her hands. The carpet muffles her footsteps, which might be raucous otherwise with the thick flat blocks grafted to the heels of her shoes.
"How are you doing?" she says.
"Pretty good," you say. "Excited. A little nervous."
"About the wedding?" Monique waves her hand. "That is totally normal."
"No, not about the wedding," you say. You trust Drakken the way you once trusted only water; attaching your life to his in this way feels natural, the next step on the journey you have been taking together since the night he found you on the beach. "About the dress."
"The dress?" Monique says. Her face does not, at the moment, understand, but neither does it pucker in disbelief. Her sleeves flow against her upper arms as she moves them. You try to juxtapose this woman with your fear of a dress ponderous enough to accommodate a Quartz soldier's bulk, and you cannot get the images to settle. The knot in your back looses a touch.
"Yeah. Most of the dresses I've seen in stuff look really…big." You hold your arms as far from your body as you can without needing to summon shapeshifting energy. "Kind of intimidating, you know? With all the lace and the ribbons…"
Monique's eyes warm. She lifts her hands and arranges them into a slanting Diamond shape, not to salute you but to look through them with one eye shut, holding you in her gaze.
"Nah, I don't see you in a lot of frills," she says at last. "You would pretty much disappear."
"And I can't have anything on my back." You are careful to keep your voice low and kind; it is the only way to keep from feeling that you are again standing with other Lapises, requesting increasingly more specific things from Gems who were stationed beneath you. "Because that's where my gem is. You know, it's the thing that keeps me alive. So it's kind of a big deal."
You hear the ache of wryness in your last few sentences. The thought of your gem encased between straps, your wings tense and unable to form, leaves you feeling dry and disconnected, the way you did in the hot cruel air of Jasper's Kindergarten.
Monique pulls a pad of paper and an ink-stick from the bag that swings from her shoulder. "Backless, got it," she says, moving the ink across the paper. "Don't worry, Lapis. I've never made clothes that've cut off anybody's circulation before, and I don't plan to start now."
Peridot would take this opportunity to correct her erroneous assumption that Gems have a circulatory system. You take the opportunity to watch Monique's long fingernails, painted in a Garnet-like shade of red to match the jewelry on her ears and wrists, and how the ink-stick slides with no effort into the shape that she forms with her thumb and her closest finger. You wonder, for a moment, if Steven will ever feel as secure in his Purpose as this woman obviously does in hers.
Monique pushes her waving hair behind her ears and reaches into her bag again. When her hand surfaces, she holds a long yellow ribbon with broad black numbers printed in intervals across it. It reminds you of what comes from Peridot's measuring-stick when she yanks it out to double-check one of her calculations, but this one looks supple and capable of looping around an object that is not all one size.
A weight drops between your shoulder blades again. "Are you going to fold that around me?" you say.
"Yeah. I have to, to get your measurements." Monique gives you a sideways glance, a look you have seen on humans when they must pass under a nest and do not want to frighten away the birds.
You close your eyes and quiet your senses, all but the nameless one that pulls away from you and searches until it locates the kitchen and finds the water waiting in the pipes of this home and the core of the refrigerator. It stirs as your mind brushes it, and you feel its allegiance. You open your eyes and the rest of yourself and glance at Kim, who assumes a casual pose, not attuned to a threat as she often stands when she is around Shego.
"I promise I'll be super-gentle," Monique continues. "It's one of the first things they teach you in designing school. And if I get anywhere near your gem, you've got my absolute permission to scream at me. Okay?"
You giggle as you nod. You have only screamed a few times in your life, and you do not care to try to recall the last time you did so.
Monique grins and begins to unravel the numbered ribbon. "Hardest part first or last?" she says.
"First," you say with certainty. You want to begin by laboring to the peak so the rest will follow like water running down a slope.
"Gotcha." Monique steps forward, the ribbon strung between her hands.
You keep your eyes forward and focused solely on hers, which are as brown as the ice cream that smeared Dr. Drakken's sleeve as he held the ring in shaking hands. The numbered ribbon slips behind you and hangs loosely while Monique adjusts it to lie well below your gem, just above the spot where your top ends. When she makes a satisfied noise and tugs the ribbon so that it cinches around your chest, its pressure against your body is much smaller and less constricting than you expected.
Monique's finger glides along the tape and stops on a number. She nods to herself, an easy line of concentration between her eyebrows, and jots something else on her pad. You wonder briefly if you should feel like an object being appraised like this, and yet even the hollowest places inside you bear none of the mirror's cold. It is entirely different; you are a meepmorp whose dimensions must be considered.
Monique slides the ribbon, still clipped around your body, in a straight line to your waist and then farther down, at the place where the top of your pants folds. She murmurs something beneath her breath, drops the ribbon, and jots a few numbers on her pad of paper, but you can still feel the phantom warmth of her hands against you. When Steven caught hold of you to keep you from falling that night, it was the first time you had ever felt such a thing, like a warm current teeming beneath the skin, and as accustomed to it as you have grown, you imagine it will always be a wonder.
"So – small. Backless. Not scary-fancy." Monique looks up. "Anything else?"
You glance at Kim for advice. She is more attentive to clothing than you are, as a human who must swap her dirtied clothes for clean ones every day; you have only thought about it at any length on the few occasions you have regenerated. Her face is bright with an idea.
"Maybe waterproof?" Kim suggests. "I mean, Lapis, I totally wouldn't blame you if the first thing you do after saying 'I do' is just run down into the ocean."
"I do," you repeat, trying to recall the day she and Ron were married. "The pastor's going to ask me a question, right?"
"Yeah," Monique says. "He'll ask you if you take Dr. Drakken to be your lawfully wedded husband, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and health, forsaking all others, as long as you both shall live."
"Well, duh, I do," you say. "Why else would I even be there?"
Kim and Monique exchange looks. "Do you love that as much as I do?" Kim asks her.
"Maybe not quite as much, but pretty close," Monique says.
You hear their laughter, and it is kind, though you cannot imagine what you have done to amuse them. "But I guess it's pretty important that I say 'I do,' huh?" you say.
Kim grins. "Personally, Lapis, I think it'd be amazing if you said 'well, duh' instead of 'I do.' I think it might give Mama Lipsky a heart attack, though." You must gaze back at her in horror, because she holds up her hands. "Not literally."
"Still," you say. You glance at your toes. You do not want to do anything to attack a human's heart, especially not Mama Lipsky's.
"Waterproof," Monique says as she runs the ink-stick across the paper again. "Got it." She turns to you. "Are you okay with white?"
You shift your feet. You feel uncomfortable again with the amount of authority they are giving you; you feel it the way you once felt the fate of a planet dripping through your fingers, but the longer you look at their faces, the fainter the memory grows. They do not venerate you nor await your answer as an Elite, as a Lapis Lazuli – they see you only as their friend and they want to help make the wedding beautiful for you and Drakken, as you would want to for Steven and Connie.
"Mostly white is good," you say. "Maybe a little blue in places." White, Mama Lipsky has explained to you, is the color of innocence, while you already know blue is the color of everything you have done before. It seems fitting that you would blend them on this day.
Monique nods and makes another note on her pad. You look right into her eyes when she lifts them. They are only moderately familiar, and yet you know they are to be believed; she has earned and kept Kim's trust, and Kim has earned and kept yours. The vision of yourself overwhelmed by layers of lacy refinement ebbs away. There is no other picture to take its place, but you do not mind that. You are fine, for the moment, with being a blank easel.
"This is going to be one heck of a wedding dress," Monique says.
"This is going to be one heck of a wedding," you add.
An instant later, Dr. Drakken's voice falls onto the conversation like heavy, scattering rain: "I don't know! Maybe the ladies have some ideas!"
You turn your head to see him stomp down the stairs on shaking legs, a petal blooming beneath each ear and another at his collar. He moves with the peculiar strain of vigor that grows stronger the more tired he becomes.
Kim lifts her hand. "Hey, Drakken. How goes the tuxedo shopping?" There is a flicker at the corners of her mouth that tells you she already knows the answer; she simply wants to hear him say it in his own words.
Drakken skitters across the room to your side, and one foot strikes the carpet without rhythm. He grabs at the tousled black grass of his hair. "BLLLGH GAKNG," he says.
"Frustrating," you translate.
You sit down on the couch and pat the cushion beside you in invitation. Drakken drops beside you, then stands again, sits down again, and then stands back up. "Tell me again what a tuxedo's like," you say to distract him.
"It's black" – Drakken runs his hands over his shoulders and legs – "and white." He thumps his chest. "So you look like a penguin."
"Well, penguins are cute," you say with a shrug.
Drakken makes a creaking sound, like a door hinge is breaking apart in his throat. "I keep looking at different models, trying to figure out which one my mother would like best. Well, they say they're different models, but I suspect a conspiracy! They go on and on about the minutest little differences between them even though they're clearly all exactly the same! And they come in sizes, and I can't remember the last time I got measured for anything –"
He stops for a breath. "Other than that, things are going great. How are you doing?"
You ignore the question. "I guess it's my turn to tell you that you'll look fine in anything," you say, and he gives you a shimmering smile that confirms it. He is energy and momentum and joy, and that will come through whatever the rest of him dons.
"And if measuring's what you need –" Monique waves her numbered ribbon at him.
Dr. Drakken's eyebrow works, two blotches of pink sunrise on his cheeks. It is an expression that makes Kim cough into her wrist to contain a giggle. "You can do that?" he says.
"Why not?" Monique says.
Drakken frowns. "Okay. But you have to promise not to laugh at me."
"Why would we laugh at you?" Kim says.
"You already are!" Drakken shoots back. His eyes are round, hurt, as though he has bitten by a creature he deemed harmless.
Kim's lips immediately still. "Well, gosh, I'm sorry, Drakken. You just have such an expressive face – it still cracks me up sometimes." She leans closer, one hand behind her back, which she must also know is more conciliatory than reaching for him. "That's all it was. I promise."
Drakken swallows, and you watch his throat bob. The wariness evaporates from his eyes as though it never wanted to be there in the first place. For all that he pretends to view the world with suspicion, he aches for its approval. "All right," he says, his buoy-words husky.
Someone else trips down the stairs, and you turn to see Ron standing at their base, the sun-speckles on his cheeks like bold boats pitching in a tumult. "Is… uh…is it okay for me to come down here?" he asks.
"Oh, of course, Stoppable." Dr. Drakken waves his hand, trying to appear unperturbed. "I was never mad at you to begin to with – just those sneaky little tuxes. I really hope that wasn't how it came across."
"Nothin' but love, man," Ron says, and the wave of his hand is far more convincing. "I totally get it. I mean, come on, those things were starting to remind me of in those kids' magazines when they're like, 'Can you find seven differences between these two pictures?' and I'd practically have to get out a microscope to find one! Kim always crushed me at those."
A piece of yourself wants you to recoil at the word crushed, but you know it must have another meaning, for Kim would never flatten her husband and leave him broken and prone on the ground. The idea is so ridiculous that a larger piece of yourself wants to laugh.
"Ooh, and how about those ones where they gave you one big picture that looked totally silly and harmless, and then there were all those other little pictures hidden in them?" Drakken says. "Those always creeped me out a little. I mean, they never hid anything scary there, but there's something kind of disturbing about realizing that the forest you've been looking at for twenty minutes is actually a giant upside-down rabbit head.
"When I got older, I turned it into one of my many metaphors for my villainous career to help my self-esteem," he continues, in the tone he uses when he is quoting the shrink he and Steven share. "I told myself that I looked all silly and harmless to everyone, and by the time they figured out to take me seriously, it would be too late."
Drakken bites at his lower lip as Kim's eyes darken a shade, their expression not angry but cast in anger's shadow, a memory of a memory where his forgiven deeds still bring pain. At the foot of the stairs, Ron's hands curl but do not quite transition into fists. They must be thinking of the same night, the night when buildings tumbled and Kim's dress burned; it is the only night that can draw this reaction from all three of them.
"I shouldn't have said that," Drakken says, and his voice sounds as though it is making an effort to take up less space. "I'm sorry."
The words are hard for him to say, you know, but he speaks them well. You edge up behind him and slip your hand into his, now that he has passed the point where he would not want you to take his guilt away.
"I always liked those – what are they called? Word searches?" you say. "We used to do them in the barn, and I would circle everything that looked like it should have been a word."
Drakken chuckles. "Have you found 'meepmorp' yet?"
"No, and Peridot says since it's a really long word, I probably won't. Whatever. But I did find 'vurd.'"
"Vurd?" Drakken says.
"Exactly. It sounds like a word, but Peridot and I looked it up and it didn't mean anything. So I decided it was the word for how you feel when you fall asleep in the afternoon and don't wake up 'til it's dark outside, and everything just seems all flip-flopped."
In Drakken's laugh, you hear a rocket rumbling toward takeoff.
Monique waves her ribbon of numbers again. "Not to break up the party or anything, but the only way this is going to be accurate is if you stay still and quiet."
Dr. Drakken gapes at her, seeming to find the idea unfathomable, but after a moment he concedes, his shoulders pressed back and tall, his chin puckering with the effort. The pink spots broaden on his cheeks as the ribbon drapes his chest, and you remember that the organic warmth that is such a wonder to you is stifling to him, a desert wind bearing down; he has told you on several occasions that he takes comfort in your loose, cool touch.
Monique eventually drops the ribbon, and Drakken sighs as though he has been delivered from an arduous duty as she flips to another sheet of paper and scribbles down several more numbers. She tears this page loose and tucks it into Drakken's gloved hand. "There," she says. "Now you at least know what size to look for."
Drakken studies the numbers for a moment, then folds it unevenly and places it in his pocket. You have the distinct impression he is still embarrassed, though how numbers on a sheet can be embarrassing you do not know and don't think you should ask right now.
"How are things going down here, ladies?" he says. "I know I asked that earlier, but I didn't exactly wait for an answer."
"Pretty good," you say with a glance toward Kim and Monique. "I think I figured out most of what I want in a dress. And I remembered the bit about saying 'I do.'"
You expect a smile to find Drakken's face, but instead his forehead stoops in a frown. "Ngggh, that reminds me how much we still have to work on. The rings, the vows…"
"Vows?" You try not to picture a Gem on her knees before her Commander, a spear or sword or knife clenched in one hand, but the image still surfaces. It shows on your face, you know; you have washed away the sandbar that once stood between what you felt and how you looked.
"Wedding vows," Drakken says. "The things the bride and the groom promise each other. To be nice, to take care of each other, to stay faithful – you know, not have other boyfriends and girlfriends."
"There are the traditional ones," Kim adds, "but any couple can tweak those however they want. Some of them even just go ahead and write their own."
You almost ask her to remind you what she did for her wedding, but she is looking at Ron as though the rest of the room is shrouded in mist and he stares back, their eyes meeting in a hug even from across the room. Monique shakes her head and grins as she watches them. She is seeing an entirely different facet of the night that haunts Drakken so, as is Rufus, who watches from Ron's pocket, his front paws clasped over his heart.
"So what's this about rings?" You hold up your fourth finger, where the weight of your engaging ring has begun to feel natural. "I already have one."
"Errr, yes, but that's just for the engagement. We're both supposed to get new ones for the wedding. And I have no idea where to get the money for them…"
"Should we go back to the arcade?" you suggest.
Drakken throws his shoulders and hands upward in an exaggerated shrug, frustration stirring in his eyes.
"Okay, well, how about we just think about the vows?" you say. "Those aren't going to cost anything."
"No, you're right. I mean, yes, you're right; no, they're not." Drakken pulls his phone from the pocket of his lab coat, peeling Monique's paper from beneath its plastic shell as he snaps it open. His fingers skid across the keys for a few minutes, and then he says, "Okay, here we go. The traditional ones are listed here."
You duck beneath his arm to look. The bride's vows are listed first, in a typing style that reminds you of Blue Diamond's handwritten edicts, and you nod as you pass the words "honor" and "cherish" before coming to a stop on a different one.
"'Obey'?" You squint at the word. Something about it seems misshapen, out of place, like the horns left behind on a newly healed Quartz. "What's that about?"
Drakken squirms, his arms shifting behind his back. "Outdated wording," he says, his skin still wearing a blush. "Boy, I remember a time when I wanted to make people obey me! I mean – errr, to be honest, with some people I still do.
"No one in this room!" he says quickly. The corners of his mouth soften as he turns his face to you. "And especially not you. You've spent far too much time following orders already."
He watches you, his eyes intense and ingenuous. Even in this brief silence, his eyes are talkative; he is loud in all the ways you are quiet. You think of how easy it would be for him to outshout you, how he takes so much care to make certain he doesn't.
"Thank you," you whisper. "I – I think I'll write my own, though." If you owed Kim and Ron your own words in the card you made for their wedding, you certainly owe Drakken the same.
"And I'll promise to respect you," you add. "'Cause I think maybe if someone had ever just done that for you, maybe you never would've felt like you needed obedience in the first place."
A smile staggers across Dr. Drakken's face, a wobbling line that seems to run from one ear to the other, and a sound like the hooting of a nightbird chuffs from his throat. His eyes are focused on you, yet something behind them seems to loosen and drift.
Kim stands to the side of him, and you watch her hands find her hips in a gesture that seems natural even with the baby taking shape inside of her. "That's going to be mutual, right, Drakken?" she says.
"Mmm-hmm," Drakken replies with a nod, his gaze still adrift.
"Right. He promises to respect me, too," you translate for your friends. You do not need to hear it, for you already know it, have always known it from the moment in the home furnishings shop when he saw your face go dull with terror and he set down the hand mirror before he asked questions. It has dwelt in a quiet, surprised place in your gemstone ever since.
"Ah, man," Ron says, his blinks rapid. "That's actually kinda beautiful."
Rufus begins to weave back and forth in Ron's pocket, and you think he may be trying to dance. "R-E-S-P-E-C-T!" he squeaks as though singing. "R-E-S-P-E-C-T!"
Monique lays her palm across her eyes. "Yikes, who taught him that?"
She begins to laugh, Kim and Ron joining her, and while Drakken's head turns toward them, his mind startling from the place where it had gone, his hand remains in yours and you can feel the hurrying of his heartbeat, eager as ever. It resonates within your hollowest places, seeming to assure you that you will not be lost in this boisterous group. He is quick to join in the laughing and singing, and you rest your other arm across your knees, soaking in the scene before you as you once smuggled others' words into the mirror and hid them between its glass walls.
If the next newcomer to arrive at Little Homeworld, confused and freshly healed, asks what a family is, you will have so many reflections to show her. You will spread them across the surface of the sea, and they will explain without you having to speak at all.
They are part of your voice, stolen no longer.
It has been weeks before Kim calls Drakken back to tell him that Monique has finished designing the dress, before you stand once more in the living room she shares with Ron as Monique scuttles in as if on a summer breeze. She and Kim exchange hugs, just as they did last time, and each compliments the other's outfit, a conversation that you suspect could last for quite some time if Drakken wasn't jumping in place beside you, his breath struggling against a whine.
"So I think I've got it pretty much finalized now," Monique says, "but it's still just drawings. I want to make sure Lapis likes it before I can actually start making it."
"Making it?" you say quietly, and no one seems to hear you.
Monique takes out another pad of paper, this one denser and neater, covered by canvas that appears as strong as the fabric of Garnet's pants. She folds the cover back, bringing the first few pages with it with the care of one who is handling ancient scrolls, and when she turns the pad toward you and you encounter the drawing rendered in precise distinct strokes that might as well have been engraved into the paper, you understand why.
An unassuming whisper of a dress stares back at you, moon-white, Pearl-white. It falls in a gentle ripple, swaying slightly at the waist before straightening again, following a path that ends a little more than halfway down your legs. No tufted bows or strings of lace fight for attention on its fabric; only the subtlest of impressions, the shade of a cloud's underside in the moments before dawn and arranged in an inexact pattern, mark its pure canvas: rising as though from nowhere and curling over themselves before disappearing again. As you study the drawing, you realize that the dress starts below your shoulders instead of above – rather than sleeves, it is held in place by two stout blue straps that match Dr. Drakken's coat-of-labs, leaving your arms bare.
It is a good thing you do not need lungs to survive, for you cannot summon the will to shapeshift them or let them breathe.
Monique rolls the paper tenderly over to the next page, and you realize you are now looking at the dress from behind. There is less to see from this angle, and that in itself comforts you. The fabric to which the straps attach has been contained to the outer rims of your back in strips that run parallel to your gem; should you wish to fly, your wings could emerge undeterred. Like small bands of sand when the beach is at high tide, the fabric strips edge down your back before gathering at the waist and widening to complete its skirt. It is a peaceful dress, one that anticipates no trouble.
"Wow," Drakken says. "Wow, wow, wow, kazow."
Monique does not respond to him. Her eyes are steady on you.
"He's right," you say. "Wow." Her inked lines stand out from the page like Obsidian against marble, and the details of the dress lie there in serenity, patiently waiting to be reviewed, unafraid of your judgment. You have to swallow before you can say the words Monique deserves: "It's perfect."
Monique grins. Her pride is more restrained than Drakken's, but you can see how it flashes in her eyes as she turns to Kim. "Hmm. That sounds like approval to me," she says.
"Erm, yes, hello?" Drakken says. "How can you get more perfect than 'perfect'?"
"Okay, Drakken, we get it," Kim says, though she does not sound annoyed in the least. "Lapis, I bet that'll be so pretty on you."
You shrug, scarcely hearing her, your attention focused solely on the drawing in front of you. You take the previous page between your fingers and fold it forward again to study the front of the dress. Energy collects at the base of your spine.
Your eyes close.
The dress rests in the darkness, its sincere white almost glowing in contrast as it rotates like a satellite in your memory. Once you have seen it from all sides, all angles, you reach for it and pull it into yourself, inhaling it the way humans inhale air. Even from behind your closed eyelids, you can sense the radiance that lifts from your coloring and you know that your top and pants have been claimed by flares of pale amorphous light, abbreviated glimpses of an endless realm you can still access after all this time. Your body feels the tingling but only at its edges as you let the dress surround you, your wishes solidifying into matter over your knees and at your sides, its straps like kind hands on your shoulders.
It feels against your skin as a streaming brook feels against your powers. You hear the soft thump of the train hitting the floor, and you open your eyes.
As you anticipated, any hint of the dress's dramatic origins has disappeared, probably washed away as soon as it completed itself. It has settled around you, quiet and patient as it awaits your next movement. You run your hands over the small spiraling patterns that interrupt its smoothness, letting your fingers wade through a different texture, somehow both coarse and smooth with the occasional scratch, the way Dr. Drakken's voice sounds when he tries to whisper.
He is not trying to whisper now. His mouth opens and closes many times like a fish that needs to be returned to the ocean. Often this expression worries you, but now you watch him without concern, knowing somehow that what has tangled and caught in his throat is not a scream, not a sound of fear at all.
Monique stares at you, unblinking, over the top of her pad of paper. "That is a new one," she says.
"We'll still pay you," Drakken supplies quickly.
You nod, though you were not aware that wedding dresses were something you had to pay to acquire. You have still only partially adapted to the Earth custom of offering money to those who have assisted you, but it makes sense to you here: It was Monique's mind that devised this dress and her adept hands that recorded it, so of course she should be credited; of course she should be acknowledged.
The ceiling's warm lights catch on the surface of a pane of glass taller than you, pressed into the wall across the room. For perhaps the first time, you are glad to see a mirror.
You walk toward it with slow, unafraid steps. There is some heft to this dress, you recognize, but most of it seems to be concentrated in the train that Pumpkin will carry, and though you are very aware that you carry it, it is like the weight of water, cooperative and pliant. It slinks behind you as you approach the mirror and gaze at yourself.
You are blue clasped between sheets of white, and you look like no one but yourself: not like any of the brides you have seen in Mama Lipsky's magazines, and not like any of the other Lapis Lazulis in your Kindergarten. The dress has a hold on you, close yet not tight, neither concealing nor exaggerating the small thin body tucked inside it. You sway and the fabric sways with you, the motion as light as a water-insect capable of not breaking surface tension.
It has been a long time since you have studied your reflection this closely, and longer still since you have seen her look this happy.
You recognize the sounds of Dr. Drakken's clumsy footfalls before you catch sight of his reflection advancing on you. He stops just behind you, his hands hovering above your shoulders but never quite landing on them, and yet somehow their presence still touches you. You feel areas of your soul, areas scorched where it rubbed against Jasper's, begin to sink, not disappearing but plunging to a depth where they can easily be unreachable, if you do not look for them.
"Wow, wow, wow, wow, kazow, squared," Drakken says. His feet churn at the carpet, needing to move even now that he has gotten to where he wants to be. "Ohhh, wow. I should have saved my wows. It looks so much prettier on you than on the paper." He shakes his head. "And to think I used to not like shapeshifters."
You smile at him in the mirror. "Just the dishonest ones, I think," you remind him. You have seen the way your fiancé's face seems to swell, the way his eyes fold almost shut, when he is in forced to live with an untruth, whether it belongs to him or someone else. It is small wonder he languished in a Purpose that demands them.
Ron gifts you with his greatest sign of approval: a cry of "Boo-yah!" He high-fives Rufus, a single fingertip to Rufus's entire paw, and nods to you. "Now if only she could shapeshift a veil to go with it."
You grin back at him, seeing the mischief in your reflection's eyes. "What do you mean 'if only'?"
This time you do not need to close your eyes; an image blooms from the center of your gem and bobs upward to fill your head. You see the gossamer draperies bound to the ballroom ceiling at the opening which leads from Blue Diamond's quarters of the palace, the captured pieces of mist that Aquamarines tugged apart to admit her. You remember the admiration that consumed your back, the closest thing you knew to love back then, whenever you watched her enter, and how proud you were to be a member of her court, even though you often felt yourself misplaced there. You sigh with relief and longing as you feel the gauzelike fabric unroll around your head and across your face, moving the fringe of hair on your forehead.
"Wow, wow, wow, wow, kazow, squared, cubed, infinity!" Drakken breaks into a small round of applause and hops in place. "I think that is the most amazing thing I have seen since the day I produced a sample of uranium in my lab! Only this is better, because I love you and you're not radioactive at all."
"So romantic," Kim murmurs to Monique.
"Isn't he, though?" Monique murmurs back.
Ron's brow furrows; he, too, must wonder what fault there is in what Drakken just said.
When you glance at your reflection again, the image of Blue Diamond has yet to fade entirely. You still look like yourself and no one else, but any Gem who knows her would be able to guess that she gave you life. The realization is the place where the beach gives way to open ocean, where waters sun-warmed and frigid commingle.
And at that moment, you believe you understand how Steven feels about his mother. His Diamond.
You catch Monique's eyes in the mirror then, and while hers are still more friendly than frightened, you watch them struggle to process the alienness of what you have done, the scope of the differences between your two species. It is how you must have looked the first few times you saw Dr. Drakken sleep, or run out of breath, or become sick.
"Hey, Monique," you say, giving her a small, easily decipherable smile. "Thanks for the dress."
She grins and hunches her shoulders. "You're welcome, girlfriend. Not sure how much help I was, though. You made pretty quick work of that dress."
"That's the point, though," you say, and you keep your voice loud enough for her to hear. "I made that in, like, ten seconds. You did all the real work." It must have taken so much more effort for her to sketch out ideas, elaborate on what worked and erase what didn't, until her fingers were stiff like talons around her drawing instruments.
Monique smiles, her cheeks indenting like the print on your dress. You still take notice every time you bring that expression to a human's face, even now when it has become much more common; it feels somewhat like atonement.
Kim has spent the last several minutes in contemplative silence. Now she comes over to stand beside you, placing her face next to yours in front of the glass. "Lapis," she says, "you look gorgeous."
Dr. Drakken's head bobs like a cork.
You gaze at your reflection's face enshrouded in mesh, small pieces of yourself peeking through miniscule holes, your gem alive and somehow buttressed by the space around it, the openness that it alone occupies. The effect is beautiful yet unfamiliar, and you wish to be back in clothes that have served you well for years.
The wish is all it takes. Squinting against the glow, you guide your new dress to the side, where it turns to light once more, and let out a sigh as your regular outfit resumes its place.
A hush almost reverent descends upon the room.
Ron breaks it. "So, dude – can she still change back into the dress after this? Like, does she have it stored inside her in some kind of Gem closet or something now?"
Drakken draws himself to the pinnacle of his height; he is the tallest in the room, taller than Ron, but not by much. "Indeed," he says. "It's a highly advanced metaphysical process during which she makes a photon copy within her consciousness –"
The correction and the boasting come off as strange, almost cruel in that moment. You step in front of Drakken and fit the beginning of your words to the end of his so he will not feel you have cut him off. "So, yeah, basically, a Gem closet," you say.
Ron nods. "Can you put it on a hanger?"
"Absolutely I can," you say.
"Then that's all that matters," Ron says. He puts his hands behind his head and grins sloppily. His words are nearly nonsensical to you much of the time, and yet it seems there is something more swimming within them, like a fish you can glimpse but not quite grasp. It is so similar to how Dr. Drakken is that you find yourself grinning back.
Drakken's cheeks are flushed, but he does not wear a scowl. He looks, in fact, as though he cannot even remember how to be unhappy.
And while your memory may be stronger than his, there is a wellspring of peace between your shoulder blades, feeding all which projects out from it. The outline, the potential of the dress sits inside you, and you contrive a hanger and slip the straps over its hooking ends as you gaze into a mirror from where you stand on the right side of it. You reach behind you and give Monique's hand a press, to hug her without using your whole body.
"Oh, and then there's the caterer to get in touch with!" Drakken claps his hand to his forehead, and then lowers it to look at you. "Tell me again – who did we pick to cater?"
You point your thumb over your shoulder and watch Ron's brown eyes widen in the mirror.
"This isn't a prank, is it?" He almost whispers the words. You shake your head and even without the periphery glimpse of Drakken the glass provides, you can sense him doing the same.
Happy cries ring out from Ron and Rufus, and Drakken joins at a lower pitch but with just as much abandon. He bounds up on his toes, and Ron runs across the room to thank him, and they collide in a tumble of arms and petals. As the chaos grows up around you, you glance at your reflection once more.
"I can't wait," you whisper, "to tell Steven."
You find him at the beach house, as you expected: not huddled in his bed with his blankets built around him, as he stayed for the first week or so after he took and then released the monster's shape, but sitting on the deck, his back pressed against slats of wood, his ukelele on his lap. His fingers wander from string to string, creating music.
"Hi, Steven." You land on the deck beside him. "Is now an okay time to talk?"
He lights up, an expression that used to go unchallenged on his face, and he pats the spot on the boards next to him. "Yeah, it's great!"
You sink down, unfold your legs, and lean back, his head resting a little higher than yours against the wood. You open your mouth to ask him how he has been lately, but he reaches you first. "You're all smiley today," he says. "You must have good news."
"I do," you say. "Monique finished the wedding dress design. And I got to shapeshift it on."
Steven does not say a word. He doesn't have to; his eyes have rounded, dark against white, urging you onward.
"Oh, Steven, it's wonderful." You hear your voice go high and wistful, unshielded. "It's so pretty, but it's not fancy at all. It's…just right. And it's got some blue in it and it leaves my gem free and everything."
"That's great, Lapis! Aw. I always love it when you're happy."
In his words, you hear the little boy from the beach on that first night – speaking in a deeper, more mature tone, a tone that has come to know things you wish it hadn't. It is undeniably still his.
"Thanks," you say. "It's pretty fun for me, too. Just as much fun as you always made it look."
You prod him softly with your elbow; you do not need words or even your psychic connection to communicate to him, We're going to get you back to being happy, too, and he looks back at you with eyes that believe you.
"And Drakken really likes the dress, so I'm hoping his mom will like it, too," you say. "Even if it doesn't have a back or a lot of lace."
"Drakken saw you?" Steven says.
"Yeah."
"Oh." Steven's mouth falls open. "But seeing the bride in her dress before the wedding is supposed to be bad luck."
"Yeah, well, so is breaking a mirror, and I think that worked out pretty well for us," you say.
Steven lets out a spurt of laughter. Too often these days his laughter has seemed pale to you, but this laugh is free and full, just as it was when you first replayed the rude squeezing noise from the mirror at his request. "I guess I can't argue with that," he says.
"You better not," you agree with a snicker.
Steven nods, the movement absent, and his eyes drift up and away to somewhere beyond you, drowning where the boardwalk meets the horizon. He breathes out heavily, a rattle in his chest.
You feel yourself tense. "Did I do something wrong?"
"Of course not!" His voice is a growl, but a gentle one, not unlike Lion's. "I've just got a lot of…stuff on my mind."
"Okay, gotcha." You scoot toward him, try to keep him a fraction closer. "Bad stuff?"
"Not all bad," Steven says. "Just… hard. Really, really hard. And I don't wanna talk about it right now."
You nod. "Will you talk to me about it later?"
"Well…"
Cold condenses on the surface of your gem for the first time all day. You stand; your hands shore up against your hips. "Will you talk to somebody about it later?"
"Yeah. Connie and I have been talking about it all the time. It really helps."
Steven almost cringes as he looks at you, as though he expects you to be insulted, but you do not feel insulted. What matters is that Steven returns safely to port, not whose boat he boards for the journey.
"Good for you, Steven," you say.
You sit back down across from him, your narrow knees pressed to his much wider ones. He takes your hand in his with a light touch, one that allows you escape if needed. "I'll tell you sometime, too, okay, Lapis?" he says. "When the time's right and everything."
"That's cool," you say with a nod. "No rush. I've got a long lifespan."
Steven laughs again, and his gaze lifts, not shutting you out but still seeking something over your head. It reminds you of the look Garnet adopts when she is using her future vision, and you wonder if he sees anything in his own future other than an immovably dense layer of fog as you once did. Now your future is filled with questions but spilling over with light, while his is the one trying to rebuild.
"I can show you the dress now, too," you say, "if you want to see it."
Steven shakes his head. "Nah. I'd rather be surprised. It'll be nice to have a good surprise for once."
The last couple of words trail away, and he gives you a look that belies them, a look of struggling hope. Your news may have put some of it there; your bright future is a light in his misted one. And to see a beacon through the storm, you know, is to know you will someday be safe, even if you cannot yet tell which direction it is pointing.