Lapis shakes her head. "Peridot, this... really messed me up. I did learn, but all I learned was not to trust myself. I wanted this, and I liked it, and it left me scared that if something feels good it just means I'm going to look up from it and realize I'm back here. And ,aybe I've gotten better, but I hate knowing everything could have been so much easier. It's like I ruined my chances at being happy before they ever existed."

She looks down at her hands and finds that they are holding one of Jasper's. Lapis frowns deeper at that, but it's not as surprising as it should be. It doesn't inspire so much horror anymore, just kind of a sick dread. "I guess... I don't want to be okay with it. I don't want it to keep being part of me. But she's a part of me too, and I still can't stand it. I don't know how anyone can be okay with that." She glances back up to Peridot, almost pleading. "How can you be okay with this?"

Peridot doesn't understand fusion. She's never done it. Although she has glimpsed at Malachite before, thanks to Wonderland, and even now Lapis still hardly knows what to make of that -- but it couldn't possibly make anything better, regardless. Peridot is a good gem who would never have this experience, and it really, really shouldn't be something she has to contend with. But Lapis still doesn't get to decide that.

She moves forward again, flowing like liquid. Once more fusion comes easily, as if they simply belong together. But that's not actually true. Malachite blossoms into existence low against the beach, glaring balefully down at Peridot with her unsettling four eyes. "This is ME!" she says. Her two-toned voice doesn't sound more like one side or the other right now, only like defiance, like she's announcing her mission statement. Whether she's Lapis or Jasper or an embellished memory construct or an embodiment of some dark bits of psyche or something else entirely, Malachite is consistent about some