[CLOSED] well the answer is always the same- won't you please just let it be?

[slapfight]

Who: Peridot and Lapis
Where: The Beach
When: Backdated to the second day of the event
Rating: PG
Summary: Mirror Gem/Ocean Gem, but with Peridot instead of Steven, and 100% less stealing the ocean. And also 100% more dinosaurs.
The Story:

Peridot ran as fast as her tiny legs would carry her, choosing pathways that she hoped would be free of these stupid, giant reptiles, clutching the mirror to her chest like a sacred talisman. In truth, she could have released Lapis anywhere, but it felt better to do it near water. She'd feel safer there.

Hnngh. When she found the clods responsible for Wonderland, they were doomed. It was one thing to inflict all the other various torments on them, but putting Lapis back into a mirror is just callous.

She finally reaches the beach and only then, with the waves washing over her hard light feet, did she dig her fingers up underneath the gem to yank it away from the mirror.

"Okay, here. We go. Hngh. Just gotta- oof!" She pulls hard enough that she smacks herself in the face with her own hand when the gem comes free unexpectedly. Her arms pinwheel and she ends up on her butt in the wet sand.

The gem floats into the air and begins to glow and reform...

Comments

[ssmisery]

At that, at least, Lapis looks up again. "I'm not leaving you alone." The concept that Peridot depends on her is still not one she's accustomed to, even though Wonderland has forced it to develop over the months. It's rarely something called on overtly. She stands by her decisions, though, and her people, and the need to make reassurance actually wakes her up a bit.

She understands well that making Peridot deal with Wonderland by herself would be cruel, but then it always seems like Lapis is the one getting actively screwed by it. What else would Peridot need but for her to just be here? What else is she meant to do? And isn't that how they work together, anyway?

(If she could leave, but had to leave Peridot here alone again... Well, nobody here is generally given a choice in that matter. And it would enrage Lapis as much as all her other least favorite things about this place. What would she do, though, if it came to that?)

"I know we need to do something, but -- it doesn't matter," she repeats, again. "You can plan whatever you want, you can make whatever you want, and if this place decides to wreck it all we can't stop it. How are we supposed to live like that?"

[slapfight]

Some part of her- that age-old need for validation and praise or any kind of acknowledgement that used to be directed at Yellow Diamond and is now spread outwards to everyone- feels satisfied by that response, and she visibly relaxes.

Despite everything- the danger and the terror and the hopelessness- she and Lapis are still here, and still together. Wonderland hasn't broken them yet.

She scoots closer. "Remember in Season Two, Episode Twelve of CPH? Pierre and Percy got stuck behind enemy lines while trying to steal the flag from Camp Brooding Stare? They knew that they were on opposing teams, but they had a common goal- escape with the other campers finding out they were there. And sure, they had to go through a lot of awful stuff just to get across the lake, but they utilized their combined brains and strength to bring the flag back."

This is an abstract metaphor. Peridot is terrible at abstract metaphors, but she was definitely going somewhere with this beyond writing another ship manifesto in her head. "The point is... We do this together. We live in this stupid place together. And when Wonderland least expects it, we find a way to deprogram everything and escape back to Earth!"

[ssmisery]

Lapis doesn't answer for a while. Even for her, knowing that she has this kind of support has been known to help, but right now it just feels like the same old empty platitudes, CPH analogy or no. She doesn't want to argue about it, though; not when she's so tired, not when she's coming out of her daze, and not when she's just been reminded that Peridot needs her too.

What other response is there?

After that while, she heaves a long sigh. "A while ago, I was thinking that I wanted to... to start dealing with having those mirrors around." It's awkward, in large part because gems just don't have a concept of therapy or this sort of deliberate self-development, but Lapis sounds a bit more like herself. Her fingers tighten on her knees. "And then this happened. Just to remind me that it can."

[slapfight]

She looks down at Lapis clenching her fingers, and makes an uncomfortable sound- barely suppressed and despairing. What can she really do in the face of this?

"Maybe some things don't have to be moved on from. Maybe holding on to that pain helps somehow." She heaves a sigh. "I wish I knew. I wish it were logical."

[ssmisery]

She snorts, continuing to sound more like herself. "That's the opposite of what everyone usually says. Including you." A momentary pause, and Lapis continues with more momentum again, pained. "This place is full of people trying to make the best of it, and I get it. I do. I don't want to be more comfortable, but I know that just makes it easier to survive."

The ability has eluded her all this time, and maybe she managed to fool herself, sometimes, into failing to understand. It's easier to get offended by other people accomplishing what seems so impossible for her. But of course Lapis does grasp the idea of coping. In between events, people do fun things, and focus on the better parts of Wonderland, and build nice things for themselves, build lives. And they know perfectly well that they'll all be subjected to something horrible again anyway, but stewing in misery about it would only break them faster. More; Wonderland will destroy whatever they build, but building makes it easier to bear anyway.

She knows what the point is, but she can't see a point. Either she doesn't work like that, or the universe just has it in for her personally, the moreso in Wonderland. Anything she builds will be destroyed. What good is it to try to do anything at all?

"And I can't do it," she says, looking away.

[slapfight]

"It sounded really bad when I said it." She makes a disgusted face, but Lapis is opening up a bit, and that's a good sign. Peridot doesn't have to keep speaking in bizarre cliches that are mangled but well-intentioned. Honestly, how do humans deal with all of this?

"Maybe you just learn things like that slower than other people..." It sounds... Logical. And she's grasping for logic. "This isn't exactly something you're built for, and, in my experience, breaking out of all that Homeworld made us to be is difficult." She pauses- awkward, hesitant. "On top of... everything else you've been dealing with."

[ssmisery]

"On top of Wonderland putting me back in that mirror," Lapis corrects her almost sharply. Right now, dancing around it just seems like a pointless rigamarole that she can't possibly be bothered with; there's no concern about reminding her, she is darn well reminded already. She's not going to be unreminded anytime soon. Which is the problem.

In some awful way it's almost refreshing to just say it, actually. It's been a long time since that was out in the open, but it's always been there nonetheless, hasn't it? It's certainly always been what she's been afraid of happening. And it's... it's, well. Something dangerous. Lapis bites her lip, then mutters, "You manage it."

[slapfight]

Peridot flinches, and then nods. "Right... That."

As for the last bit, she feels targeted, and wonders if she's going to be called out as a phony, because truth be told, Peridot doesn't think she's managing it at all. She hasn't become immune to it, so much as she's found that with Lapis here, she has to be strong and enduring and put on a brave face. She can't collapse like she did the very first time she was turned human without her consent, because if she did that, then what is Lapis going to do?

And, somehow, if Lapis knew that all of this was just a front for her sake... She might be angry about it. It might take a sledgehammer to everything.

"I... Just, erm... adapted. Like I did to Earth. It took a lot of accepting things as they are, and I feel like I have a better understanding of the inner workings of the Wonderland machine than most. It's torturous and awful, and what it does feels real, but it's just code."

[ssmisery]

"Right. It's just me."

It's something dangerous, something that hurts to look at, but if it's true it's true. Lapis is the only person who has this problem, and that means there's something different about her. And she knows perfectly well what that is already. It always has been there, indeed.

"Because I'm still trapped." Her head sinks back down onto her arms. "I'm still broken. It's not going to go away."

[slapfight]

"You're not broken." What wanted to be a loud vehement outburst comes out softer and sadder, because to Homeworld, they're all broken, maladaptive, dysfunctional, but in Earth terms, they're fine. It's still a hard line to walk, however.

"Thinking differently doesn't make you broken or all the Crystal Gems- including Steven- would be broken."

That's logical. That she can do.

[ssmisery]

"It's not about thinking differently!" Peridot always thinks in those kinds of terms, but Lapis really doesn't care as much about that; Homeworld did less of a number on her in that particular regard. If she's defective it's because they themselves finally reconstructed her that way. One of their finest Lapis Lazulis, the rebel she never wanted to be at all. Never mind that.

It's something different about her, but it's not being different that makes it a problem, except that she's different from herself. It's not that she can't be what she's supposed to, it's that she can't be what she wants. Most of the time Lapis is so much better than this at not letting herself care about that either. She could almost despair at herself for sounding so despairing. But how is she even supposed to hold on to the safety of apathy right now? When she has these big, awful, vulnerable weak spots, and Wonderland does as it pleases, and as sure as it can wreck what people build it can leave a wreck of her?

"It just never gets better. It's so hard for me to even want to move past anything, and I can't. It's still..." Her aim has gotten lower and lower into her arms as she spoke, so it's not wholly clear if she actually trailed off there or mumbled something else, but it probably amounts to about the same either way.

[slapfight]

Peridot is torn between curling up on herself and trying to make the situation go away or reaching out, and so she ends up doing neither and yet both- drawn up into a ball, hand reaching out hesitantly. This is going nowhere.

She's so lost.

"I'm sorry." She really seems to mean it to. She's not used to being sorry about anything. "I don't know what to do."

[ssmisery]

You don't have to do anything, Lapis doesn't say. The gulf between intent and thought is wide, let alone between thought and speech, and she can't keep pushing across it right now. So the silence fills in instead and fills out, another of those pauses that could go on for minutes or for hours as long as nobody involved has any mere mortal need to move. If they never need to move, then it doesn't matter. Drop it here and never pick it up again.

Honestly, there is nothing more to say. It is going nowhere. Lapis doesn't look up, and so if there is a hand reached out to her she doesn't notice it. But talk is on the long list of things that won't fix this.

Yet, in the end, that long moment has to pass like every other. One might suggest that nobody can just keep on feeling bad forever; Lapis has her doubts. Even she, at least, can't keep feeling bad in precisely the same way forever. "Talk to me," is what she eventually says. "About anything."

[slapfight]

Peridot lingers on in hope, frozen, desperate- waiting for something. She's free now, and she isn't beholden to laws or rules or orders, but sometimes... Sometimes she needs that structure. Sometimes she feels like she needs to be told what to do.

So when Lapis tells her to talk to her, she doesn't hesitate. She just starts babbling about the first thing she can think of. It starts out as analysis of CPH, turns into some gossip about the people in Wonderland, and just keeps going until Lapis either walks away or she reaches a point where she feels like Lapis ought to chime in, but beyond that she doesn't really leave much room for interjection, so eager to talk about everything on her mind that doesn't involve feelings or the current situation.

And, honestly, for a moment? It actually does feel better.