entrancelogs | + Guilt Runs Deep

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.

Peridot waits until the glow from the fusion's destabilization fades entirely and only then does she stop counting grains of sand underneath her fingers. There's Lapis, on the ground. There's Jasper, inert and presently not an issue.

She resists the urge to run to her, and instead just slowly gets up and walks over, and once again, she extends her hand to offer her a hand up this time.

Her expression is twisted into sheepish worry. The world hasn't dissipated yet. She's not sure if this is fully over. Maybe it won't ever be. Maybe that's okay. "Did it work?"

Lapis looks up at the offered hand. It would be nice to say she can accept it gladly this time, but if there's one thing we've established today, it's that nothing's ever going to be that easy. Look, even without all the relationship drama, she just got manhandled by Jasper like several dozen times and there's definitely a part of her that would prefer to not touch anyone again for the next year. (That feeling will not actually last a year, fortunately. These two have held hands way more than that by now.)

She can, however, accept it at all, and that's a marked improvement. It's frustrating that it still kind of feels like she must be doing something wrong, that she can't just properly appreciate having someone so thoroughly on her side. But it's... it's such a damn miracle that the hand is somehow still there at all. If there's one thing she's established, it's that there is no way to mistake that for anything but good. Also, Lapis is sufficiently worn out that, while she can stand up under her own power, it might honestly take longer, and nobody needs this pointlessly protracted any more than it already has been.

'Did it work', like this was all a puzzle awaiting the right input to solve. The awful kicker is that it really was, too. Lapis doesn't answer that immediately. Helping her up feels like nothing, and her expression is unreadable, aside from her generally looking like a bit of a mess of a person. Regardless, she's coming along cooperatively. She casts an uncertain glance at Jasper's disembodied gem; it's unclear whether Lapis knew it was there or just now noticed it. But then it's back to what's in front of her. When she does speak it's quiet, as if all the shouting that didn't come from her throat tired that out too, but she answers dutifully, because she owes that much. "I think so."

Peridot is not nearly as exhausted by all of this as Lapis has, having just borne witness to the whole thing rather than experiencing it, but there's a clear weight off her tiny shoulders and she looks relieved, if not a bit paler green than usual.

Despite knowing that Lapis has been manhandled a lot and that touch is probably way too much right now, especially intense physical contact, Peridot still drops Lapis's hand and goes for the hug. It's brief and she pulls back almost instantly, rather than let it linger too long and potentially force Lapis to push her away.

"Good," she says. And then, because that feels underwhelming as a response, she adds, "I'm glad."

Lapis is completely unmoving during the hug, which is at least better than pushing away even if it's sorta like hugging a mannequin. That's definitely something she can't really appreciate right now; she understands the gesture, but viscerally it feels like she doesn't. Again, very frustrating. But that too is kind of a summary of this whole thing.

"Peridot," she says, still quietly, but now because she also has to struggle to figure out the words she wants to say. Well, besides an obvious one or two. "Thank you. This, and... you help me so much. You're always helping me, and I'm..."

Never going to be able to repay it. Not even always able to accept it gracefully.

Going to keep having these things happen, all this drama and messy unsolvable problems, going to keep on needing to be bailed out.

Nothing like you.

Not worth it, maybe. But she doesn't get to decide that.

It's frustrating. Because she knows, she does, that Peridot doesn't care. But maybe someone SHOULD. Maybe she does. Her fists tighten.

She has no idea how to end that sentence, ultimately. Peridot already knows perfectly well what she is, and other than the frustration she could dredge up more of, Lapis just feels hollowed-out. The only thing she can see how to accomplish right now is more arguing in the circles she already ceded. "Let's get out of here."

Peridot pulls back a bit, canting her head and looking a bit like she's autofilling various endings to that sentence somewhere behind her shaded eyes, and none of them are what Lapis is thinking, and to find that out would probably baffle her and set the situation back on its axis to revolve in circles again.

She casts guilt aside like a tool she doesn't need anymore. Already it's filed away neatly with Homeworld sensibilities and casual gem classism- these feelings I have for these things I've done don't matter to me and shouldn't matter to anyone else.

Lapis does not have a brain that files things away neatly. Lapis's brain is a tempest in a teapot, scattering baggage and guilt every which way, but there's just not enough room to hurl it so far that she can't find it again. They'll be here again. They've only stopped this Hell.

Peridot doesn't care. The scene fades and they're back in the barn with only the memory that were storms here once. It still tastes like salty sea air and the ground still feels gritty under her feet, and she makes a face. All the words she could have said before are abruptly replaced with mild disdain as she looks at their room. "We're... probably going to have to borrow another room for the weekend. The barn is a little... unfortunate right now."

Edited 2019-05-02 22:38 (UTC)

+ 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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