entrancelogs | + Guilt Runs Deep

Jasper laughs more. She, for one, is having a great time with this, which would be decisive proof she's not real if anyone actually needed it; the real Jasper never knew how to have fun like this. While she seems generally unconcerned by the threats and taunts, she does turn partway to address Peridot, pointing with her free hand.

"You still don't get it if you're still trying to protect her. I'm not the one who's looking for a fight." Hmm, yeah, that's probably not something the real Jasper would ever say under any circumstances. She raises the hand that's still holding Lapis's wrist, dragging her in close, much too close, and gives a particularly mocking grin. "Unless you want to take her place here."

That gets an immediate "What?!" from Lapis, by the way. You know, she was already worried about things managing to get even worse, but she was not prepared for THAT much worse that fast, wow.

It takes Peridot a moment to even process what Jasper- illusory, out of character, and generally awful in impressively new ways- is saying to her right now, so the immediate response that comes out of her is also, "What?" but in a much duller, vapid way.

And then it hits her.

If she had a stomach, it would have knotted up into pretzel-like contortions. She slaps her hands to her mouth as if Jasper has asked her to do the unthinkable, all for Lapis's safety. This isn't real, but she still feels like anything that she says will and can be held up for scrutiny later.

"Take her place," she repeats, cautiously, like maybe she heard wrong or she's mistaken. Her lime green skin has gone a shade paler at the thought. "You mean fuse with you?"

Peridot doesn't know how to handle fusion on a good day. In theory, she's almost comfortable with it, but this is a concept that sets her back a good fifteen paces. She doesn't like Jasper at all, and knows on some level how visceral and horrible Malachite was for both of them- moreso Lapis, than Jasper, though given Jasper's reactions post-Malachite, it clearly did something to her, too.

"Trust me," Jasper says, "her place is better than mine." The hand still pointing at Peridot turns over, the start, perhaps, of a beckoning gesture.

But Lapis has had enough from this line of discussion. She doesn't know if there's seriously any chance of Peridot humoring the horrible suggestion, or how far Jasper will push it, but she's not stopping to find out. And while there's very little she can control in this scenario, she does quite specifically have a way to keep Jasper at bay.

"Just stop it!" she shouts, and dives for Jasper's free hand with a look of fury.

Ultimately, this is no more than what she's been doing all along; Lapis is at least used to it already. The details have been thrown off by now, though. After being forced through it so many times, or maybe because of the sheer anger, fusion comes easily, the pair barely needing to dance at all. And when Malachite forms, she doesn't even get to her monodialogue -- she only laughs and laughs as the ocean drags her down. It's as if Hell is accomodating Lapis's desire to get this over with. Or as if it's eager to encourage her plunge further in. One way or another, getting her to start doing this voluntarily has got to be the opposite of progress.

When she returns to the beach, she's still angry. There's been anger in Lapis's response to Peridot since she arrived, but it was outweighed by fear and shock and all that stuff. And those are still there too, but getting angry at anyone handy is an age-old Lapis pattern, isn't it? That's part of why she's here in the first place. She's nowhere near as mad at Peridot as she is at Wonderland and the awful fake Jasper, and by this point she actually is able to tamp it down and not explode -- she is in fact capable of self-awareness -- but things really did get even worse, she's more shaken than ever, and she's mad about that. "You need to leave," she says in an uneven, but very determined, voice.

Peridot is still processing the equation of her and Jasper fusing like it will actively make her blue screen if she doesn't solve why it bothers her so much, and so she misses most of the scene playing out. By the time it resets, however, she's realized that this isn't about her, which is a feat in itself to realize. Even at her most compassionate, Peridot is extremely bad at realizing that not everything is tied up in her own feelings, even when she's trying to be selfless. Lapis being happy makes her happy, so she has to keep Lapis happy, and then if anything Lapis decides or does makes her unhappy, she needs to suck it up, because it will even out, eventually. Or so went the logic before the wonders of settling communication disputes.

The crux of the problem- the end of the equation, the math that makes it all make sense- is that the Crystal Gems sat back and watched this helplessly. She can see them now, standing slack-jawed and vacant, gearing up for a fight. No one stepped in for her. No one protected her. And now it's Peridot who's angry.

"No!" She snaps back, more vehemently this time, fists clenched into tight balls at her side. "This isn't right. Why didn't they help you?" She points accusingly at the Crystal Gems- not Steven, never Steven, who does what he can. "They could have stopped this."

She glowers at them, but they all might as well be furniture for how much they react. "If they won't, I will."

She's scared and her entire form vibrates. She doesn't even know what will happen or if it will even work, but that's fine. She cares about Lapis. Lapis needs to understand she isn't alone, that there was a choice in here. She just needed to trust someone to have her back. Maybe the Crystal Gems didn't move to help her, but she didn't have enough faith in them.

That's fine, too. Peridot will pick up the slack.

She steps in front of Lapis, but she doesn't take Jasper's hand. Instead, she forms a tiny, physical barrier, a little under a foot and a half shorter than Lapis and ineffective, but there's fury in her eyes. "You're not alone, Lapis. You never have to be alone again."

Yeah, honestly, since this is not an accurate memory recreation but a setpiece twisted to specifically make things worse, the Crystal Gems are if anything more pointedly useless than ever. They look outright bored waiting for the Homeworlders to finish their inane business and get off the beach. Jerks. Lapis can't really speak for their actions or lack thereof, but she knows how thoroughly alone she did feel then; the Crystal Gems had never helped her before, and they weren't going to start now. The Homeworld she knew was long gone too. At this point, she had already lost everything.

If the rebels had tried to help, then, would it have mattered? It's impossible to know. Lapis wouldn't have felt much safer with them, but self-preservation was never the whole equation anyway. She would still be hurt and angry, pushed past her breaking point, and she would still hate Jasper.

She's not in quite such dire straits now, but hurt and angry are true enough; Lapis seems to always have a reserve supply of those. As for trust, well, she can certainly rely on Peridot to try, so that much is a difference. The problem is whether or not it can actually help, and if it doesn't, not being alone sorta seems more like a liability right now.

"What makes you think you can change this?!" she demands. "You're just making things harder!"

Jasper lazily rolls her shoulders, as though her muscles need to warm up after coming back into existence, which isn't remotely close to how anything actually works. "Seriously, how do you still think you need to protect her from me?"

"I'm not protecting her from you, you clod," Peridot snaps back, ignoring Lapis for the time being just to take advantage of the opportunity to call Jasper a clod and mean it in every sense of the word. "I'm protecting her from ending up stuck with you, because she thought she didn't have a choice."

Theoretically. With that in mind, she adds to Lapis, though she keeps her eyes on Jasper, with a much softer voice. "I'm not leaving you, Lapis. If I have to test a hundred ways to make you realize that this happened, but you'll never have to do it again, then I'll do it. Just trust me."

Please trust her, because, quite frankly, for all that confidence, she has no idea what she's doing.

Lapis glares at Peridot a good long moment. She's still mad and would like to argue about it more. Actually, right about now she'd ideally want to make Peridot leave, but even if she had any idea how to do that she wouldn't be able to try. No, the problem is they've been through too much shit together already, and she knows far too well how serious Peridot is about what she says. Lapis herself would probably be just as bad if the positions were reversed. It's something not wholly unlike their Agreement. Under normal circumstances she can out-stubborn most people, but this is kind of an impasse.

Lapis has a lot of experience already in yelling at people to stop helping and let her self-destruct in peace -- it never works out, but it's still an easy go-to. But she does need to be reminded that self-destructing isn't actually something she wants to do now. It's an option on the table, she'll do it if she has to, but that's another difference between now and back then.

"I'm not letting her do anything to you," she says eventually, still angry. This could be interpreted as a very grudging conditional acceptance if one is optimistic enough. It also sounds something like a warning or a threat; the intervention ended very badly a moment ago and can again, or worse, who knows? If Peridot is insisting on that risk, anything that happens is gonna have to be her fault. It's still not even clear whether Jasper actually can do anything to Peridot, despite her little offer, but it's the only area where Lapis has any control here, so that's where she's setting her boundaries.

"Then take my hand." Peridot whirls to face her again, putting her back once more to Jasper, and this time it doesn't even scare her to do so. She's decided Jasper is as much furniture as the slack-jawed Crystal Gems in their melodramatic uselessness. The scene will move on again, she knows. She feels like she's holding back the hand on a clock and every second that ticks by, it wants to keep moving and will if her grip slips even slightly.

"And let's go. Let it go. You don't have to feel bad about it anymore."

She just keeps pushing that clock back and it's starting to build like the pressure of an oncoming storm. You can feel herself needing to either step away or be pushed. She's a bit tearful now, her voice shaking. "I don't know what to do. I just don't want you to keep doing this to yourself. Let me help."

Dismissing Jasper as set dressing is a solid idea, the main downside being that she's not in on the memo. Sure she does seem to be all talk, but the purpose of her existence is to make things worse and she likes doing it, so she's not about to stop trying. This time she chimes in again when Lapis doesn't answer right away. "Oh, so you DO just want to fuse with her."

"Shut up!" Lapis snaps at her, but she was hesitating because she was already wavering, the anger having to weigh against a growing awareness that now she's just hurting Peridot herself. Again, she's gained far too much an understanding of why that is to dismiss it easily. And it's not fair at all when Lapis was trying to protect her, but then maybe protecting Peridot was still only a means to protect herself, in the end. Besides which, she does know better by this point, even if she has to be reminded of it. Peridot may very well even have the right answer for all she knows.

Lapis never wanted Peridot butting into these particular matters, which is something they've been over. This doesn't involve her. But it could if Lapis lets her in, in the same sense that any of their problems could become each other's concerns, because they're supposed to be a team and it's better to face things together than alone. And maybe, maybe that's the right thing to do. Still, if Peridot is to tie herself to all this baggage, that means it can get a hold on her too, and neither of them necessarily gets to choose how. Good or bad, what happened here was as intimate as anything can be.

And it's not like she gives any credence to what her illusory Jasper says, but she can't take Peridot's hand. She absolutely can't. Lapis finds herself clinically aware, like a glimpse through the eye of a storm, of how little control she has over herself right now, both emotionally and in a very literal sense. If she did that, she does not know what she would do next, and if it didn't free her from the loop... there is no amount of freedom or emotional well-being, ever, worth the tiniest iota of risk that she might still keep acting it out at that point.

"I know," she says to Peridot miserably, and the walls have at least crumbled enough for some proper honesty. "But it's not that simple. I don't know what to do either, but you can't just pull me out and fix this. And I want to listen to you, but you don't understand what you're getting into, and I don't..." She swallows. She can do better. "I'm scared of that."

Edited (eh, icons are hard) 2019-03-18 22:09 (UTC)

Peridot is trying so very, very hard not to turn a color not meant for a green gem. She doesn't need this after the stupid fusion room or after the dance at New Year's. She doesn't want this to be something that just keeps coming up as a point of issue that she and Lapis have to deal with. She just wants Lapis, and not in any way that Jasper is implying. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Maybe they'll never be ready for that.

Which is why she doesn't get angry or upset or despairing when Lapis speaks. She accepts it and takes a step to the side, no longer preventing the scene from moving on. Her ego is boundless, but she knows she doesn't understand, but just because she's stepping to the side doesn't mean she's giving up. "I want to understand, though. You don't have to be scared. Don't you realize that, after everything?"

Tell me what I need to do and I'll do it.

...Yeah. Yeah, she does know better. It's just really hard. But she has to trust Peridot, in the end. Because it's not only a fear of judgment or rejection; Peridot shouldn't have to be affected by something like this, she thinks. Peridot deserves so much better. And Lapis also knows by now that that isn't her decision to make. "Yeah," she says, and steps forward.

All right, then. Just get on with it. She closes her eyes as if to brace herself. "This is me. All of this is me. You can't pull me out of it because it's in me. And maybe it'll get better, but I can't... I'll never be someone who doesn't have this. Out of everything that's ever hurt me, this is the one I did to myself, as soon as I got the chance, and I can't take it back."

Many things have gotten better, but that specific detail bothers her more than it used to, not less. Ever since she got a little freedom, Lapis can rarely afford to look back and wish things had gone differently; the things that should have gone differently are too immense to start in on. But right now she wishes she could take this decision back, and that's new, or at least happening in a new way, and it hurts. The aftereffects ran so much farther than she ever could have guessed.

Another step forward, and rather than giving her hand to Jasper, Lapis reaches up to touch her face. (Jasper, for her part, just smiles, passive again and sorta generically smug.) "I probably know Jasper better than anyone now. And she knows me. And you saw how she ended up after this." She turns her head back to Peridot but doesn't meet her eyes. "That's in me too."

Edited (ennnnnnh writing is hard!!) 2019-03-22 14:57 (UTC)

"Not all of it." Peridot's usually whiny and very pointed when she makes her opinions known, but right now, she's surprisingly quiet, because yes, she did see Jasper. She saw Jasper putting corrupted gems in makeshift cages and turning them into her personal army. She saw her so desperate to win against Smokey Quartz that she'd fused with a corrupted gem and got corrupted in turn. She saw that look of despair when she couldn't force another fusion, like some part of her had become incomplete without Malachite.

"You may have done it and you may not be able to take it back and maybe Jasper didn't deserve... all of it." But this is Peridot, who hates Jasper, so she's not going to sit here and act like Malachite was one hundred percent not unjustified. "And maybe not right now, but... eventually, you can be okay with it. Maybe you learned something. There's plenty of awful things I've done that I felt awful for, but I learned things, and that makes them just as important as my many, many successes."

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

Peridot drops to her knees in the sand as a sudden realization overwhelms her like the waves on the ocean they're standing in front of her, and that realization is that she will never truly understand this. She really doesn't get fusion- her experiences with it are secondhand and her fear of it is irrational and based on so much uncertainty of what happens to the individual when you're two people in one.

And that's the crux of the issue, isn't it? Because Lapis is no longer an individual in the strictest sense. She's a Lapis Lazuli, shot through with yellowing imperfections like scars from the time she spent with Jasper. Those scars can't be smoothed over. They'll linger. She'll be imperfect and off-color forever now.

Just like a crystal gem, then.

Peridot forces herself slowly back onto her feet. Malachite's shadow eclipses her, blocking out the moonlight on the beach. "I don't know how. I just am. I've always known this about you, even when I didn't understand it." No, that's not right. "Even though I don't understand it. You don't have to be okay with it, but you can be happy. You can be happy with me. It's not easy for either of us, but we'll figure it out."

Gingerly, hopefully, with tears in the corner of her eyes: "Can't we try, Lapis?"

Malachite lowers herself further, braced on her arms until she can bring her face to something approximating Peridot's level, although all that really does is underscore the sheer size of her. She looms. Her eyes narrow contemptuously. Jasper always liked to posture and intimidate, and Lapis knows how to play things for an effect. Whatever Malachite is right now, she makes an excellent scary monster.

"Do you have any idea who you're talking to?" she demands. The voice still isn't dominated by Lapis, but something in the tone resembles her. "Do you have any idea what I could do to you right now? Do you know how much I'd enjoy it?"

It's rude to address one half of a fusion. Whatever Lapis is right now, she might currently lack the ability to feel bad for making Peridot cry. But it would also be ridiculous to pretend that she's not still right here, having this conversation. It may or may not be only her and it's certainly not all of her. There are really a lot of questions to be asked about exactly what's going on inside this half-real recreation of a fusion with someone who isn't here. But even in the real course of things, even when Malachite was sometimes just Jasper, there was none of it that Lapis didn't also become.

Peridot can posture and be bold and brave all she wants, but she's still under five feet tall and not a fighter class gem, and she's still sweating and shaking and trying not to sob. Even a Peridot would get smashed by those disconcerting appendages Malachite's boasting- and it's Malachite, isn't it? She knows better.

She's running out of tactics, and that's about when it occurs to her that maybe the answer is just stop that. Malachite is Lapis is Jasper. This is all part of who she is, and Peridot needs to be aware of that, and she is and she isn't at the same time.

"Then do it," she snaps, as furiously as she once snapped at Yellow Diamond. This isn't even real. It's a stupid dream. If she gets hurt, then what's going to happen? Better than than walking away since nothing else is working. "What're you waiting for? I don't know what to say to make you believe me, but if you really think you can crush me, then prove it."

Every idea she has feels like the worst idea, but this one takes the cake as far as stupid goes.

Malachite growls, her fingers digging overlarge furrows in the sand, but she does not, in fact, proceed to tear Peridot into little bits. She shudders a bit. Enough of her is real that she could, and as things are she really might enjoy it as promised, but that's not the same thing as wanting it. Not in the slightest. Whatever it is that she's made of, the important parts are unyielding on that matter.

In other words, yep, bluff totally called. Malachite isn't happy about that either, though, so it'd probably be a bit much to hope she might admit it. She glares some more.

"And if I don't, what then? Do you think you can beat me down with kindness? Are you going to talk me out of being a monster?"

"I don't wanna talk you out of it." That's a lie. She knows it's a lie. Malachite knows it's a lie, too, which is worse. "I... know I can't talk you out of it."

Better.

"But it's okay. We're all messed up. I've done bad things too. I've been awful to you, and you were right. It really couldn't just be fixed by me apologizing and saying things are different now- we really did have to work at it to really understand each other. You can't erase who you were. You can't unmake those decisions. We're stuck with them forever, even when we change. I get that now, but I don't feel bad for it. I learned from it."

"And I'm not you! That's the PROBLEM, isn't it?!"

That's definitely not the main problem. Maybe it is a little of it, in a certain sense. But Peridot is again clearly talking to Lapis, only Lapis, putting things in the usual context of her, and it makes Malachite shudder again. Because again, of course she is Lapis, and therefore she can't pretend the words are meaningless to her.

"I did this to myself. I hurt ourselves for so long that we couldn't stop." Ah, fusion pronouns. "I'm still doing it, and now I'm hurting YOU with it! And you don't deserve to get dragged into this mess!"

It's in this moment that Peridot wishes her fusion lesson had gotten further than 'I'm Percy and Pierre,' because her brain keeps getting overwhelmed by the idea that she is talking to Lapis and not Malachite, who she has not met, who she only knows as an amalgam eldritch nightmare created by Lapis and Jasper's combined rage. She doesn't know how to communicate with that.

So she sighs and plops down on the sand. "You're not hurting anything but my head," she growls, stubbornly. "But if I didn't want to be here, I wouldn't be. No one drags me anywhere. I'm my own gem! I do what I want! And I want to be part of this mess." Another sigh, this one louder. "Even a mess that contains trace amounts of Jasper."

This gets another long, angry glare as Malachite continues to grapple with the fact that she... really can't do anything about Peridot. Peridot, who is planting herself in here trying to throw everything off with her recontextualizations and her assurances, who will not be scared away by empty threats and can't be touched by real ones because too much of Malachite is Lapis. Peridot is absolutely too good for any of this.

This Malachite, maybe, isn't real. Malachite, in real life, never was very real. If she is anything, she could only be a name given to the overlap between Lapis and Jasper, and there always was overlap, wasn't there? Like any relationship, they were brought together by something they had in common, even if that particular something was a desire to exploit each other. And so were they held together by mutualities, their shared capacity for cruelty and bitterness and hatred. Those were the things they fed in each other and the places where they bled into each other.

So Malachite hates most things, because that's what she is, and none more than herself; but this iteration of her can't hate Peridot, and that's a horrendous weak spot. She's pretty mad about it too, but in the end that can't amount to anything more than a tantrum. She's never going to win an argument here, and she can't stop herself from listening.

"I can't get rid of you," she grumbles, reproachfully. "Why won't you just HATE me? I'm the monster that ate your friend."

"That's factually inaccurate." And here, Peridot thrives. She sees her own weakness to exploit- a fault in the framework. She glowers back, seeing the monster recede and leave behind someone struggling to maintain their control. She knows that look- she's worn it a time or two.

"You're the monster that is my friend." Because that's what Lapis (and Malachite) have been trying to get her to see, hasn't it? At the very least, it's something. "And I'm not going to hate you. I can't. You mean too much to me."

"Then that makes one of us."

Malachite closes all her eyes, gives a long petulant groan, and drops the rest of the way onto the beach among the rubble. Granted, there's a bit of a tremor when she does, but even a giant angry torso monster has to look a bit less intimidating lying on her belly in the sand.

When she opens her eyes again there's something a bit different in them, still defiant but less spiteful; searching. She brings one hand forward, moving slowly as if the mechanics of it are unaccustomed, and extends a pointer finger longer than Peridot is tall. It's going on top of Peridot's head. This could be considered a last test or threat or intimidation, but no part of Malachite really has any illusions that Peridot is going to duck out now. As easily as the little gem could be crushed into a fine powder, all she's getting is her hair mushed down. Honestly, there also aren't a lot of more complicated gestures one can pull off at this size difference.

But, then, there are a lot of things she can't do because she's like this. That's also the whole problem. Oh well.

When she speaks again she finally sounds a bit more like Lapis. "You're really just going to accept this, huh?"

Peridot, who has been anticipating being crushed this whole time and has come to expect it to be a natural end to the whole conversation somehow, just scrunches her eyes shut in grim acceptance and when all she gets is her hair smushed down, she breathes a sigh of relief and reaches up to pat the huge finger awkwardly.

"Yes. You're not the most unfortunate thing I've had to accept since defecting from Homeworld."

This is the point where the last of Malachite's anger, despite being what she is, melts away completely, helplessly. She pulls her hand back and stares at the spot that has been touched, flummoxed, as if she's never experienced anything like it before. Which is, of course, quite true to varying degrees in varying senses, depending on how you interpret things.

Then she shoots Peridot one last frown, just an actual sad one this time. It is very much a Lapis expression.

Then she shudders again, all over and a bit violently, and glows.

Unfusing is rarely graceful, even if the circumstances are a bit odd here, and Lapis lands flat on her back in the sand. In just a moment she levers up to her elbows, but she's pretty exhausted. Frankly that whole thing hurt her rockbrain too. She's probably still going to have to react or something, but give her a sec.

On the ground next to her is Jasper's gem.

+ Guilt Runs Deep

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Yikes that last tag had a hard time... well, the important things got across

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