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mimiplaysgames · 6 years ago

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save it for the morning after

Pairing: Terra/Aqua Rating: E (Explicit) Word Count: 7,219

Summary: Aqua learns the value of being vulnerable.

Read on AO3.

A/N: HAPPY TERRAQUA DAY!!!!! I’m so glad to celebrate the only OTP I have, so ENJOY THE SMUT. I want to thank @lyssala, not just my critique partner but also such a good friend, a wonderful cheerleader, someone who knows the right things to say in my darkest nights, and an amazing writer who has given pieces to this fandom that still inspire me. Thank you so much for your support, this piece would have died without you.

“Can I kiss you?” was his response when she finally gave in to her curiosity and outright confessed that for years, she’d been thinking differently of their friendship. She wanted to know if she was the only one to experience how her stomach lurched into her lungs whenever he gave her attention.

It took him a great amount of courage to ask, even though she was the one to take the risk and expose herself first. But growing weary of being patient sometimes reaped great rewards, and a calm, collected (flattered) Aqua, who failed to contain the smile stretching across her face, answered by leaning forward to meet her lips with his.

They were warm and intimidated. He held his breath.

Her hands stayed crossed over her lap, knees tucked under as she sat on the carpet. Terra’s knuckles whitened as he balled them into fists, one on the loveseat behind them and another on the coffee table, like he was terrified of contaminating her with his touch unless he washed them first.

The two of them kissed in her favorite spot in the multi-storied library, at a usually undisturbed nook tucked away at the edge of a maze of shelves on the second floor. The only other thing here was a fireplace – unlit, because the sun shone through the tall windows. Open books waited across the table, full of studies for their Mark of Mastery exam, which was coming up in a few short weeks. They certainly weren’t compelling enough to keep anyone’s attention, so they sat there, ignored.

Terra only allowed himself to fully breathe when they parted. He licked his lips, and swallowed. “That was interesting.”

“What?” For something that was supposed to be good, pleasant at best, ‘interesting’ wasn’t an ideal reaction.

“Uh, well…” He rubbed his fingers, ran a hand through his hair, and avoided her eyes. “You smell good.”

“Oh… so do you.”

His eyes caught hers, lips pursed exactly the way he would have them when the Master criticized his progress. “You didn’t like it.”

“No! I mean yes! I liked it,” she said, hoping the blush burning in her cheeks wasn’t too obvious. “It sounded like you didn’t.”

“I did.”

They slowly melted into a nervous laughter, clearing their throats as they picked off glances from each another for any sign that they could continue.

She moved first, inching her knees closer to him and he met her halfway this time. This kiss was more relaxed, made for two friends needing the safety in exploring the unknown together. He eased into more of them when she leaned in, and found the most appropriate place he could place his hand – her elbow.

What stopped them was the sound of footsteps, hearing the Master call for their names.

The rip out of the kiss was full of wide-eyed shock, held breaths, snatched books, bent pages, and throwing themselves on opposite ends of the table like they never had the audacity to think about touching each other.

Terra signaled to her with a hum, but she couldn’t interpret his warning. He whispered with tight lips, “Your book is upside down.”

It was. She was just too mesmerized on the moment. Her heart knocked in her ears. She stared at a blur of ink, where words didn’t have letters. She wasn’t used to sneaking around.

She corrected it and pretended to read, just as the Master appeared around the corner. Terra was the only one prepared to play it smoothly – and he did it so well.

So this was how he hid his thoughts from her, well enough to keep her guessing whether he reciprocated her feelings. She let him talk as she took the seconds to calm her beating heart before joining the conversation. Something about how proud the Master was to see them working so hard, that lunch today was going to have meat.

The struggle to keep their giggles to themselves until they were sure the Master wouldn’t hear them was harder than any test they’ve taken so far, so much that her cheeks hurt from the uncontrollable grins she clenched behind her hands.

Being close to him was distracting enough that they agreed to study for the exam away from each other. They made sure their spar sessions were focused and productive – up until Terra decided they needed fun. It turned into a game of cat and mouse: he’d swoop his offenses inward, breaching the gap when she evaded his heavy swings, just so he could grab her into a hug. With a smug look on his face to top it off.

Small moments were filled with him holding her hand – once an innocent act but now it had different connotations. They talked about when they realized they held crushes for the other. Terra was the first.

When they critiqued each other’s work, it was always interrupted by smiles and lingering stares. They stole kisses when Aqua pinned him on hidden walls, so they wouldn’t be caught right away. He leaned downward enough so she didn’t have to be on her toes, and they progressed to a point where he held her close by the waist and she started to part her lips to invite his to do more.

But the day the Master noticed their technique floundering was the day they stopped, at least for now. The exam came first, and they promised each other to back off – until the moment where they would pass the test and became Masters together like they were supposed to.

In her favorite nook in the library, the light from the fireplace burns. It can only shine so far, able to stretch past the loveseat she’s sitting on, but weakens, engulfed in the darkness on every floor, taking the books with it, amplifying the shadows, if they are even there to begin with.

It is night. An army of silent snowflakes beat on the window panes. Tightly wrapped in a fleece blanket – nothing this soft existed in the Realm of Darkness - she doesn’t relax. She can’t. The cackle of the flames is predictable, but what isn’t is the pattern of creaks that moan in an old castle caught in the middle of a blizzard.

But she is confident she can handle whatever lurks among the shelves behind her. She is Aqua, Master at keeping her proverbial shield up, checking if the rooms are free of threat five times a day, and being snippy with her Keyblade.

She is only a complete dunce at sleeping.

“I’m not afraid of you,” she says, even though there aren’t any shadows left to speak to here. But old habits are hard to break. “Any of you.”

Silence replies too loudly.

It’s common nature that the quiet is the most powerful. Keep a person feeling like she is small, inconsequential, nothing. No greater force worthy of such a title than to break away any sense that she has a reason to exist.

The blizzard outside makes good work of suffocating the trees under a blanket of white. It’s eerie how it’s just as hushed. The snow is weightless, even in droves, and no creature outside dares to test its endurance. Even if she finds the strength to scream at the top of her lungs to make it stop, it will barely be a whisper against the tranquil onslaught that envelopes the entire castle. By morning, they’ll be buried. And she’s the only who knows.

But it’s in the way the earth drowns in snow where she finds what really bothers her: she can’t fix loneliness by herself.

At least silence has one weakness.

“Who is there?” she asks at the footsteps approaching. They are soft against the carpet - whoever is there is barefoot.

“Me,” Terra replies, gliding across to take the seat next to her. He is dazed, like he’s experiencing something electrifying in the exclusivity of his mind, and she doesn’t have the privilege to feel the same.

“What is it this time?” She lets go of the grip on her blanket.

He smacks his lips and hisses out an esophageal breath. “Mouthwash.” He fans at himself. “It burns.”

She laughs through her nose. Terra has always been sincere, but this is entirely different, and endearing.

Cut off from all his senses for over a decade, he now experiences the smallest things with the biggest enthusiasm. A “WOW” for the taste of marinated beef. Mouth agape in a stupor when he hears music. He cried the first night he came back to the castle, watching the stars.

“You’ll get used to it,” she says when he doesn’t stop squirming and rubbing his face.

“Easy for you to say.” He takes one hard look at her. “What are you doing here anyway?”

She should have known this is coming. “I’m fine.”

He snorts. “You’re talking to yourself.”

“I’m not…” It’s useless to lie to him.

“I’m guessing you’re talking to Heartless. Did you name any of them?” He leans his arm on the backrest of the loveseat, surveying the library.

“Sure,” she says, deadpan. “There’s Dark Darkness, Bitter Sadness, and I Don’t Recall.”

He straightens himself. “Which one’s your favorite?”

“Dead.”

“Cute.”

Aqua really, really hates to be associated with anything cute, and he knows it. But she would be lying to herself to pretend like she doesn’t miss it. She shuffles out of the protection of her blanket and curls over on his lap, leaning on his chest to feel his heartbeat.

“I’ll let that slide for now,” she warns.

He wraps his arm around her shoulders, and she has no resistance to how it melts away years of hard conditioning. In the early years in the Realm of Darkness, she hugged herself for comfort. In the later ones, she forgot what a hug was. There is something about an embrace that nearly shoves her into tears, like it’s an apology she’s been needing to hear.

He puts a hand on her bare knee, and she has to wonder if he remembers the kiss they shared in this very room, all those years ago.

“You’re never going to get warm if you don’t dress appropriately for the weather,” he says, talking about her shorts.

“I’m fine,” she repeats.

“You’re shivering.”

She draws a long inhale to stop herself from snarling, a crooked smile wrestling on her face. “What do you want, Terra?”

“Are you going to stay here?”

Years of being possessed and he comes back with this maddening need to know where she is at all times of the day and night. He doesn’t spare Ventus, either.

“Would you feel better if I was safe in my room?” Safe being the wildcard of a word. Being in one place for too long always makes her expect that the floor is going to suddenly collapse.

“I’ll carry you.”

It’s not a bad offer. “Fine. Piggy-back style.”

He grins, no doubt proud he has succeeded in convincing her when she’s really just doing him a favor. Or maybe he really has. It doesn’t matter when he has his hands under her thighs.

So this is what it’s like to be as tall as he is. It’s cozy to nestle her face into his hair, breathing in a faint trace of sandalwood and his natural scent, something along the lines of earthy dough.

The residence wing is dark because it rests in the comfort of the storm, one lit lamp to be the only guide in the hallway. But everything is the same, and neither of them need to reacquaint themselves to it. The castle truly never gave a damn about the test of time, and time never spared a care for it either.

It’s too quiet, and she feels the anticipation in Terra’s shoulders as he creeps up to Ven’s door. The lights are off.

Their boy is locked in a dream, with Chirithy curled into a ball at his feet, like it’s attempting to be a proper cat. What they see is a marvel: Ven is finally sleeping.

They don’t dare say anything to each other, keeping the scene undisturbed. Aqua fights back tears as she digs her face into his neck. It’s been a long time since any of them have seen any real improvement.

Terra meticulously shuts the door, drawing the longest seconds to twist the knob.

He carries her to her room, letting her go in front of the bedside table. The lamp that sits there casts off such a dim golden glow it leaves the rest fighting for the right to stay in the light. She should really replace that lightbulb soon.

“Is something wrong?” he asks.

“He cheated,” she says, her voice hushed and dark.

“Who did?”

“Xehanort.” In an attempt to keep her voice low so there isn’t a probability that Ven will wake up, she hisses. “He cheated everything. Death. Time. And in the end, he gets away with it like nothing ever happened.”

In these situations, Terra usually takes the path of least resistance. Not a day has gone by that he has spoken about what he’s been through, and the mention of Xehanort leaves a mark in the glint of his eye before he works to erase it.

And she can’t demand him to speak when she refuses to talk about a lot of things, too.

“He gets to rest in peace when we’re the ones who still deal with the fallout,” she continues, keeping her whisper sharp and she flails her arm around to prove a point and lets it slap back to her side. “When is time going to work for us? When will it let us sleep?”

“We’re going to be okay, Aqua.” It’s his go-to.

She doesn’t know how he does it, how he got so much stronger than she hopes to be. His eyes are still soft like she has always known them, but he has grown to wear the face of a man who was forced to let go of everything. No Mark of Mastery hovering over his head, no faraway glances at worlds unknown that he’s desperate to explore. Terra is now and will be present with his family first before anything else.

Aqua inches closer to him, needing a hug to save her from sobbing. But she doesn’t ask for it. She has survived isolation for so long, she can certainly survive the night once he goes to bed.

“How are you not angry?” she asks softly.

His jaw drops. It’s too personal a question.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.” She rubs her face, backing away.

“No.” He holds her arms to keep her near, a smile on his face. The Terra-smile: gentle, steadfast, faithful. “It’s about time we talk about these things, anyway.”

She doesn’t want to talk about it.

So he volunteers, avoiding her gaze. “If I really make myself think about it, of course I get mad.” His eyes scatter around her room, though there isn’t much to gawk at. She’s very tidy. He clenches his jaw for a moment, and wills himself to let go like he’s done with everything else. “But how can any of that be important when I can see again?”

It’s hard for her to know right away if she finds that justified, when she still wants some sort of retribution for what she’s been through.

“What about peace of mind?”

Terra chuckles half-heartedly and inward, the sort of thing he’d only do when he’s shy. He takes her hand. “You’re here. You’re real. I don’t need anything else.”

What she finds in the touch is irony. Love is too strong a word to give him when they’ve been separated for this long, even though her feelings have remained unchanged all these years, in spite of everything.

“Can I kiss you?” is her response.

He doesn’t give her enough time to interpret what it means when he stares hard at her, speechless. Instead, she is pulled toward him, and he comes at her with such a fever that he stops himself before he finds her lips, letting himself finish with a slow, nonthreatening advance.

The kiss is tender and long, mending together their shattered pieces with the care not to break them any further. The moment he pulls away is the opportunity she takes to close the gap, in case he disappears into thin air. She rests her hands on his chest, encouraging him to stay, gasping in shock over the smell of mint in his breath.

And stay he does, caressing her as he feels the sway of her back, the curves of her waist, the softness of her arms. She nearly collapses when he brings his hands to cup her jaw – it isn’t too far away a time when she believed she’d never feel his desire for her again. She parts her lips, and he responds in kind, holding her tighter as he runs his hands over the same areas again and again, like he keeps forgetting what she feels like.

Their first accident happens when she throws her arms around him and they bump into her bedside table. The lamp rattles like a screaming echo, and he rips from her embrace to catch it.

They flinch when they hear the soft thump of it landing it on her nightstand. They stare at her open doorway, waiting to hear if Ven will start rustling, desperate for their attention. Please, let the poor boy sleep in peace.

Nothing stirs save for their panting.

Terra takes the initiative to shut her bedroom door. Wrapping herself in her arms doesn’t have the same effect. They aren’t as tender as his.

It’s when the door is coaxed back into its frame that they strain near-giggles, breathy and careful. He pats her doorknob, like he’s unsure if he’s invited.

“I don’t want to stop, Terra.”

A second or two pass by before he rushes back to her. It doesn’t matter who hugs who first, tasting themselves with their tongues, someone’s hands in someone’s hair, bodies pressed together, and heavy breathing.

They shuffle over to her bed, and it’s an awkward dance where they take turns stepping onto each other’s feet, and they’re too busy with their hands to make commentary or laugh about it.

Sitting down forces more distance in between. She spent enough years in isolation - this needs to be fixed. She climbs him, straddling his lap. It happens so quickly and so naturally that it’s nearly innocent when it truly never is. The buck of his pelvis, the growing erection underneath his soft pajamas which she feels through her thin shorts, and the groan exchanged from his lips into hers confirm it’s a good decision.

He rubs a hand on her thigh, focusing his mouth on her face, her jaw, down to her neck.

Her neck, the stars don’t know how much she has daydreamed of this. And they can’t witness it, not with the storm clouds keeping the castle discreet.

Her body doesn’t respond like she expects it to. Fighting Heartless, fighting Terra in a duel is a reflex of intuition. That is reactive, primal, intelligent, where she understands her body well enough to know the limits of how far she can jump, how hard she can take a hit and still stand.

Kisses on her neck, though, appear in how she squeezes his hips in her thighs, how she leans her head back to give him more room, and how she realizes too late that she’s gripping his shirt into knots.

Terra responds to her movement with deep guzzles in her skin, pushing on her tailbone to rub against his groin. She gasps.

He stops immediately in between a smack of his lips to her skin, reeling back. “Was that-”

She murmurs disapprovingly – at him putting a stop to his actions and at the hint of apology in his voice. “I liked it.”

To prove it, she grinds against him, closing her eyes as she feels the warmth of her insides as he throbs underneath her. This fabric needs to go. She nearly asks him to strip them, but he’s so busy with her mouth that she doesn’t dare interrupt.

He squeezes her thigh, pulling it toward him though there is nowhere else for it go, and meets her movements, creating a rhythm with her that at first is messy and unsynchronized, until they find a proper momentum.

His breathing gets more coarse as time goes on.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“I-It’s hot,” he sighs, squirming like the acknowledgment has made the room’s temperature unbearable.

Aqua teases his shirt, and he desperately does the rest, throwing it over his shoulders and tossing it to wherever it lands.

His body is a craft, years of dedicated labor shown through the dips of his pecs. Her hands are too small to wrap around his biceps, and his abdomen is firm. Then there are the irregularities, the tears of skin that have braided over each other, a huge fossilized gash across the left side of his chest, where his heart beats behind it.

The last thing she saw before she plunged into darkness after him. Magic will probably never erase it.

He splays a hand over her fingers against the scar. “It’s okay,” he says.

“What is?”

“Everything,” he breathes. “Whatever you’re feeling, if you’re never ready to talk about it, it’s okay.”

She has to wonder if he tells himself the same thing to make peace with all the debris left behind for them to pick up. Does he also consider words dead after all that’s happened?

She has to stop wondering or else she will cry.

It’s okay.

It’s okay if she releases anger with her nibbles against his neck, in a spot where she quickly learns he likes most. It’s okay to try her hand at forgiving darkness when she steadies his face to explore his jawline. If she can’t find it in her heart to forgive now, she’ll try later. If she kisses his scar with a spell and it still doesn’t disappear, maybe there will be a day when she will be proud of him for wearing it. If they skip a beat in the rhythm of their grinding, if they choose to forget that anything bad has happened to them so they can enjoy the moment, now, in between the interlacing of their fingers, they’ll be fine.

Terra’s fingers trace and take steps up against the sides of her waist, lifting her shirt up along with them, until they find a space to linger right on her rib cage.

“Aqua?”

“Yes,” is her affirmative answer.

Too needy to let her do it on her own, he lifts it over. She doesn’t let him see when she presses onto him, skin to skin on areas she used to think were forsaken, now exposed. This is the closest they have ever been. His hands are calloused, finding new areas on her soft shoulders that leave a friction. It electrifies her and she’s about to beg him to finish her off.

A warm thumb finds itself testing the side of her breast, waiting for her reactions before treading further. Until a hand plays with massaging it, the callousness of his palm making her breath hitch in his lips.

It’s a good a time as any to pull away, and he observes her with the expression of someone forced to relive regrets as he slowly conducts his fingers to make the softest skin on her body move.

“I never told you,” he says solemnly and moves to the other breast before lifting his eyes to look right into hers. “You’re beautiful.”

Aqua catches a scoff before it fully exhales, releasing it as a chuckle instead. She is probably never going to get used to that. “Terra, speak for yourself.”

She knows him enough to notice when he catches sight of an opportunity to tease about her shyness, and she promises herself that she will pay him back twofold if he takes it.

But instead, he finds the inspiration to flick a thumb at her nipple. To make his finger do the same, to hold it in between. She shivers and a whimper escapes. It is not a breakdown of her defenses but a dissolution, and she loses strength in her knees.

“Shit,” she sighs, unable to find control over her sensations, relaxing into his embrace.

“You alright?”

“More than.”

He lays down her body, making sure her head lands on a pillow, and she lays down her arms when he hovers over her, following a brilliant idea to trace kisses on her collarbone, her pectorals, down her breastbone, before coming back up to take one of her nipples.

His tongue tickles. Her lower body clenches.

There is something velvety about his abdomen when she rubs her palms against them, or her hands suddenly got clammy. Traveling downward, she teases the hem of his pajamas, wondering if she can level the playing field.

“Can I?”

He smiles into her softness. “Please.”

His pelvis lurches forward when she continues to travel, finding a sweet spot tucked between his inner leg and the rest. She wraps her fingers around his shaft, and the impeccable wall he’s been doing a good job of keeping up this entire time disappears.

Terra stifles a moan, letting it out in grunts and muffling it against her shoulder so he doesn’t risk making too much noise. He slips a hand in his pants to wrap around hers, tightening her grip, coaxing her to move it the way he likes it. Weakness takes him over, too, and he settles by her side as she continues.

There have been times when she’s knocked him down in duels, times where she’s accidentally hit him in sensitive areas that had him reeling, but nothing is like this. It’s like watching him dissolving, head buried in the pillow, eyelashes fluttering, face speaking a language of its own as he enjoys it, chin stretched so much that the veins of his neck start to protrude. A pulse beats in her hand, and he’s completely submissive.

But soon he gains his will back to look at her with half-lidded eyes, and takes a finger to her shorts, drawing circles on the top of her pelvic bone, and her heart beats harder. It’s easy to let her nerves take over, but she decides to be brave when she does not resist, rolling on her back, inviting him.

He slips his fingers into her shorts, running them over her panties first, and the chill climbing her spine is already enough to send her over. Her wetness is cold in comparison to him, and when he’s done, he spares her the agony by slipping under the last piece of fabric sheathing her from his touch.

It isn’t just courage when she gives him the most vulnerable spot on her body. He takes it slow when he massages her slit. Her hips perk, on the edge of throttling but she holds on to the last bit of her control. There is truth there as well, to offer the areas they protect the most to the other. Maybe it will help them rebuild the strength they’ll need to endure the insane amount of years necessary to let them move on. Together.

Her relaxation teeters on a spike, very easily thrown off, as she closes her eyes and lets herself feel. She gasps. Sharply. He found her clitoris.

“There,” she moans.

“Shhhh, you’ll wake Ven.” She feels his voice on her temple, followed by a peck. He chuckles into her hair. “I don’t think you want him to find us like this.”

She nearly smacks him for putting an image like that in her mind at a time like this. But she must have been scowling hard when she hears him laugh gently.

He is watching her as he works her, tracing circles around such a sensitive collection of nerves, lying on his side and resting his head on the other hand. Studying her face.

“Your reactions are very interesting,” he says.

The more he does his job, the more it becomes unbearable to contain herself. She covers her face in both of her hands, rubbing her eyes hard enough to stop them from letting her tears run. It’s been a long, long time since she has remembered that she deserves good things.

“Terra, I’m ready.”

“For what?”

“You.” It takes a moment, watching his face blank in confusion, before she continues, “I want you.” She needs him.

It’s a struggle between knowing she should relax and enjoy the ride, and the desperation to have everything at once and learn what he’ll feel like inside. But it’s fine, she can take all the time to explore everything else once she’s had what she’s most curious about.

He sits up, his mind wandering, apprehension sitting at the tip of his tongue. “Isn’t it going to hurt you?”

“Maybe,” she says, recalling three books she has read on the subject, which have mentioned it might. Three vague books in a library of hundreds, with a Master never inviting such a discussion. She makes a mental note that she’ll have to buy better ones.

It’s in the nature of their work to brace for pain. Swinging Keyblades, for real or for practice, is an art of building resilience, respecting the bruises and scrapes for what they are until soreness is no longer an issue. They have grown up under this discipline – Terra and Aqua are partners in improving their technique but also in standing together. Accidents will and have always happened, and they have to listen when it hits too hard.

The strictest rule they have abided by is not to strike the other’s head.

She smirks. “Just don’t hit my head.”

It makes him smile, and he nods. Standing off the bed, he bundles her shorts and panties and pulls them off, his fingers trailing the sides of her hips, down her legs. Then he takes his pants down, and it’s when she sees his naked body that it truly hits her like a ton of bricks that she is actually doing this with her best friend.

“What?” he asks nervously.

She doesn’t know what her expression looks like and there aren’t any good words she can use to compliment the tone of his thighs, how the dim light in this room casts shadows around the folds flexed by muscle, his length which is aroused and ready, his height, anything else.

What she knows is that she is blushing, there’s a smile she can’t remove, and she is hiding it behind her hand.

“You look good,” is the best thing she can come up with.

“Really?” he replies like he knows it. “Speak for yourself.”

He’s back on the bed now, on his knees, taking hers and spreading her open. Rubbing her inner thighs like he’s warming her up, taking his time to look at her.

“It looks like a rose,” is what he has to say, wrapping a hand around her hip to give one of her buttocks a firm squeeze. He wears a coy smile, like’s he’s planning something devious. “You’re beautiful.”

He laughs when she scoffs at the compliment, and she’s probably going to have to deal with it for as long as they’re together. He plants a kiss on the inner side of her knee, and can’t help himself to but to give more to her thigh.

“You’re sure about this?”

“Yes.”

“Okay… Tell me when to stop and I will.”

Slipping himself into her doesn’t come as easy as it should. The mind can be a horrible friend.

Horrible enough to stop her attempts to relax. He meets resistance as he sinks deeper into her. It’s impressive how strong her muscles are to put up such a fight, and she doesn’t know how to calm them down.

So she tells herself that it will go away when she notices that Terra is really taking his time, carefully monitoring her responses. He stops to give her time to adjust, and each new sharp wave evaporates as pleasure comes to the rescue and takes its place. There is what feels like a hard push deep within that gets her to clench her eyes tight enough to see red.

“I’m sorry,” she hears him say.

“Don’t,” she snips. It’s something she hears too often. He apologizes for what he’s done, for what he didn’t do and for things that she still doesn’t blame him for. Maybe she’s a hypocrite, asking him to live without crying over the same things she cries over when she’s alone.

She’s tired of being reminded of things they can’t go back to fix, of having to tell herself that she isn’t fucking crazy. There’s no place for that here, right now. After all, if there is any person out there that she could possibly choose to trust this with, it’s him.

She softens her voice, assured that’s he’s just as nervous as she is. “It’s okay.”

Aqua lifts her head to invite a kiss and he answers. This gets him in deeper and he moans into her mouth, and she learns that he particularly likes her bottom lip. He lets himself relax on top of her while he waits for her to give him the okay to move again.

A short moment to acknowledge the fullness is all she needs, wrapping her legs around his, sending him into a rocking motion.

This is how it works, him rolling his hips forward for her to take him in and she gives back with a sway of her own. He pins her against the bed, interlacing all of his fingers into hers, timing his thrusts with his deep kisses. They steal her breath, but they give her life.

Aqua remembers too well what it’s like to never let go. Letting go used to mean to get eaten alive, to fall to darkness, to be taken advantage of. Anxiety was a friend she relied on, using its warnings to keep her prepared for what is coming next. Most of the time, it worked, but there have been times where it completely sabotaged her.

She relishes the strength of his thrusts and the friction he massages her insides with when she lets anxiety go in sweet surrender. The weight of his body on hers is like having a guardian there to keep her safe, where it’s easy and she doesn’t have to think or analyze anymore.

Inspiration strikes, and she lifts her legs higher to squeeze his hips, eliciting a moan from him. It sounds intoxicating. His thrusts become faster and harder as he grunts into her shoulder, his hot breath coming at her ear at the same speed. His kisses just can’t keep pace, and the room fills with the scent of what they’re doing.

He gets on his elbows, and his heavy eyes perk open when he looks at her. His own darken, their bold color desaturated in such delicate artificial light, but if they aren’t under the scrutiny of something bright and natural, then they are safe to be themselves here. He is lost somewhere in her, speechless in the feeling, and it feels good to have him do this, her hands on his back feeling them work.

The way he looks at her like this makes her realize that he really, truly means it when he tells her she is beautiful, and she wants him to know, wants him to always remember, that she is the one to love him first.

She immediately sits up, because words won’t come and they don’t need to. She hopes the kiss can translate what she’s really thinking. It stops his focus and forces him back to his knees, holding her to receive what she’s giving. But nothing she does seems to be enough to send the exact message she wants to tell, and she finds herself turning the tables, straddling on top of him as he lays out on his back.

This movement is easier, riding herself up and down on his length, and she thinks he finally knows. He changes from throwing his chin up high as he pushes himself into the pillow to letting it hang, from chewing his lip to hot sighs. She is doing this to him, letting him savor her like this. He grips her hips, kneading her ass as he pushes her harder on him, the pressure captivating her up the spine. She forces herself to not let it out too loudly, moaning through pursed lips. She changes the angle and it’s even better, hitting her in sensitive areas she’s never realized she has.

He grips her harder, enough to snap her out of her meditation. Terra clenches his teeth, his face contorting in pain. “I can’t,” he says.

“Terra?” She stops.

At the sound of his name, his eyes blink. He scrambles, throwing his arms around her tightly, and he buries himself in her shoulder to muffle the sound of his crying. Tears fall down her chest, first warm and then chilling, and he fights for breath, shivering because this, like many other experiences for him these days, is overwhelming and powerful.

This finally undoes her. She cries hard enough to clog her nose, her tears covering his face when she holds him firmly. She’s exhausted.

“Hey,” she coos, rubbing his back.

“I’m sorry,” he says, taking a slow moment to breathe her in deeply. “I ruined the moment.”

She sighs. “I thought I hurt you.”

He rubs the sway of her back, but he’s really trying to comfort himself. “No… not at all. This is the best thing I’ve ever done with you.”

There isn’t a truer statement, these two finally taking a moment to sew themselves a new life.

“It’s okay. You’ll get used to it,” she says softly into his hair.

Terra exhales slowly, and she feels the muscles of his arms give way to weariness. She gives him gentle kisses on his cheeks, and he tenses just enough to pick her up like she weighs nothing and lay her beside him. Her bed is smaller. It brings them closer.

He trembles from the adrenaline, his gaze darting all over the ceiling. They never finished, but it’s probably something that would happen when he’s constantly re-discovering what it’s like to feel.

“Are you sore?” he asks, taking his turn to wipe undried tears from her face.

“A little.” She returns the favor, finding a comfortable spot on his shoulder.

There is a shot of guilt on his face and there is really nothing she can do to convince him otherwise. That there is such a thing as a good bruise. It will take time.

“Do you need anything? Water?” he asks.

If he slips away, even for her sake, he takes home away with him. “Stay with me,” she says, holding his waist tighter.

The nod he gives shudders too fast, like a schoolboy unsure how to talk to a special girl. “Did I…” He clears his throat, and he doesn’t stop shaking. Still.

It’s cute.

“Did you…?”

He’s afraid of what she will say, so he answers it for himself. “I could have done better, I think.”

She giggles into his shoulder, and he groans, mumbling about how embarrassed he feels.

“No one expected you to be a sword master when you first tried,” she says. “We’ll both improve.”

He nods softly, the look on his face telling her he’s still kicking himself for not doing his best job, like he has forgotten that good technique takes practice.

Terra rolls onto his back, his hand stuttering at her touch on his forehead. Everything they’ve done is leaving a mark on him, like his entire body doesn’t know what to do with all that stimulation.

He eyes her window. The blizzard has softened, but it leaves them a tall pile of snow packed on her windowsill, nearly reaching half as tall.

He sits up, leaving her embrace, and he has only half a sane mind when he fiddles with the latch. It is difficult for him to undo because he is shaking so much.

“Terra, what are you doing?” She covers herself immediately.

“It’s really hot in here,” he says, leaving a space in between his words like they’re too difficult to utter.

The window opens outward, toppling mounds of snow over and he sighs loudly onto the marble. Then he jumps back, shuddering from the ice.

She laughs when the wind hits her across the face, bundling herself up in a roll.

“Shhhh.” He has a finger to his lips. Snow starts to dance its way inside.

A hand to her mouth too late. “Oh no, what will Ven think if he wakes up?”

Terra picks her up to sit her on his lap, taking her comforter to wrap the both of them tightly in a knot together, like a cocoon. “He’s old enough to know what this looks like.”

He finally breathes something that sounds like he can rest, letting snowflakes hit his skin like the cold doesn’t bother him - rather it calms him, his shudders tensing up at the first touch and then slowing. He has her covered so that she’s protected, supported in his embrace where it’s difficult to wrestle out of. Not that she’d want to. Being this close is a privilege she will remember never to take for granted again.

A star-shaped snowflake, broken only on one side, falls on his neck. She takes it in with her lips, suckling on it.

The ice is a painful sting on her tongue, like a needle that shoots down her throat. But it is welcoming, reminding her she’s alive Nature doing its best job uncorrupted.

At least now, she has him to share the view with tonight.

They have warmth wrapped under that blanket, kept just for them and saved for a rainy day. Or a snowy one.

#terraqua #smut #lemon #kh fanfic #terqua #terra #aqua #kingdom hearts fanfiction #terraqua day #ahhhhh guys #this was a whole 3 months of work squeezed into to make it for this day #i hope you like it #my fic

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mainadjacent · 6 years ago

Text

Sticking to the Script

Pairing: Gwilym Lee x Reader, one-sided Ben Hardy x Reader

Summary: You are the star of the hit TV show, “Winthrope Manor” and you’ve just got a new costar, Gwilym Lee who happens to bring around his friend, Ben Hardy, to set. You develop feelings for Ben, but they’re not well received. Lucky for you, your costar is there to help make things better.

Author’s Note: I’m just getting the hang of fic writing so hopefully this is coherent! I’d like to thank the lovely @sevenseasofky for being so kind and inspiring me with her fic, “Nothing but a Number” which this fic is heavily inspired by. Really, if you haven’t read her work, you are missing out.

PART 1

“Bohemian Rhapsody” star Gwilym Lee joins the Award-winning Cast of “Winthrope Manor” as possible love interest

You sigh exasperatedly at the Google Alert on your phone. You knew that this was going to be a possibility, the press has a habit of making a big deal of your show’s guest stars and it really took away from the quality of the show. It wasn’t even like he was the most important guest star you’ve ever had.

“Anything wrong,” asks your costume designer, Nicole, as she laces you into your corset.

“Nothing,” you say nonchalantly, “just a bit tight is all.”

“Sorry, but you know how they want it, it has to be authentic.”

“Right, right, the good name of Winthrope Manor rests on the tightness of Violet’s corset,” you grumble.

Nicole giggles but does not loosen your laces, and even though you’ve been doing this for a whole season, you can feel your own organ rearranging painfully.

It’s a small price to pay, really, as much as you complain to Nicole about it. You are consistently at a loss for words at how lucky you are to be in this position: one of the stars of the award-winning television show, “Winthrope Manor.”

“Winthrope Manor” or “American response to ‘Downton Abbey’” as critics often put it, was the story of the wealthiest textile family in America at the turn of the 20th century. It was soapy and dramatic and lots of fun. You played Violet Winthrope, the intelligent and determined oldest Winthrope sibling who was constantly trying to establish herself in the industrial world while dealing with all sorts of romantic and personal entanglements.

The show premiered to critical acclaim in part because of the writing, in part because of the star-studded cast, and the amazing production value didn’t hurt either. “Winthrope” had had an amazing first season, sweeping in awards, amassing a pretty impressive fanbase and gaining all sorts of acclaim. Apparently, Meryl Streep was in negotiations to play your grandmother for the upcoming season.

As for you, you were still adjusting to the fame since you hadn’t really had much exposure beforehand. In a way, “Winthrope” had really changed your life in that aspect; you were relatively unknown before it—most of the younger cast was—and now you had been catapulted into some sort of fame. You weren’t super famous, it wasn’t like you were getting mobbed by paps constantly, but you had gained a substantial following. People tweeted you, approached you on the street, and even had whole internet presences dedicated to you and your character. It still took a while to get used to it, but you were trying to handle it with the most grace you could muster, but you would be a liar if you said it wasn’t exhausting at times. It was a small price to pay though.

Nicole finished with your laces and you gave yourself a second to adjust. Speaking of prices you pay.

As Nicole is pinning up the hem of one of Violet’s evening gowns, you hear a knock at the trailer’s door.

“Come in!”

You were expecting any one of your female costars, as this was the woman’s costuming trailer, however, you were surprised to see your character’s newest love interest and the subject of internet articles, Gwilym Lee.

“Hi,” he says as he awkwardly stands at the trailer’s threshold.

“Hey” you great him coolly while holding the hem of your dress up as Nicole took measurements.

“Right, hi, anyway. I was wondering if you had lunch plans today? One of my friends is on the lot today and I thought we could all get lunch together?”

You lean down to fix the train of your dress while you think about it. In the last month on set, Gwil had never invited you to do anything, which you were completely fine with. You had tried to keep Gwilym at arm’s length for the last few weeks of table reads and preliminary filming. You’ve learned not to get too close to the leading-man type, and you have yet to figure out whether or not he is someone you can trust enough with your friendship. Your experiences have been mixed with male actors on your set, to say the least.

“Who’s your friend?” you ask, slowly rising upright.

“Ben, Ben Hardy. We were in ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ together. He’s on the lot doing some post for ‘X-Men.’”

“Um, sure,” you say, although you’re not entirely sure why.

“Great, so, I’ll see you then,” Gwil takes one last look at you before heading out the door.

You catch Nicole giving you a long look.

“What?”

______

You spend the first half of your day in fittings which is pretty exhausting. Nicole remains cryptically silent on the significant exchange this morning, which strikes you as odd because she loves to talk about any possible set drama. Instead, you keep the conversation light and talk about how nice it is to be back on set and what each of you did over the break. While Nicole and a few other designers pin and prick and pull at your complicated wardrobe pieces the tv hums in the background and you comfortably set into a rhythm. You are too entertained that you don’t even notice three short knocks at the door, you also miss one of the seamstresses letting your costar and his friend into the trailer.

“Hello,” says Gwil, “is this a good time?”

You look up from the inseam of a pair of riding trousers you’re trying on. Gwil is back in plainclothes and behind him is a shorter, blonder man. You recognize him instantly from his feature films and even though you knew to expect him, you’re caught off guard by how handsome he is. He smiles flittingly at you and you can feel a blush creeping on your cheeks. It’s at this time you realize that you did not have a shirt on and instead were still in your 220th-century underthings. Now you’re really blushing.

“Oh, sorry, we kind of lost track of time. Give me a second,” you say as you step down from the fitting platform as you try to keep cool, “let me change.”

Two costumers usher you behind a partition and both try to help you out of your costume and back into your plainclothes which is an affair all of its own.

“Hi nice to meet you!” you say as you stumble out from behind the partition extending your hand out.

“Nice to meet you, I’m Ben,” the blond man chuckles as you reach to shake his hand, “I’m sorry we barged in like this but Gwil just wouldn’t stop raving about his beautiful new costar and I wanted to meet the famous Violet Winthrope myself.”

You can feel yourself growing redder by the second, Ben Hardy had called you beautiful.

“Well, I hope I don’t disappoint, Violet is much more interesting than I am.”

“I beg to differ,” Gwil says, reminding you of his presence.

The three of you decide to eat close by since Ben only had 30 minutes until he had to be back on set (“Those angel wings take forever to get on!”) so you find one of the cafes on the lot.

While you eat, Ben tells you about his recent shoot on the “X-Men,” what he hopes his next project and asks you if the Richard Winthrope was going to lose ownership of the family business to his brother.

You laugh, “There is no way you watch ‘Winthrope Manor’!”

“What do you mean by that?” Ben gawks playfully, “I will have you know that I am very interested in the rich tapestry of 20th century American life woven by ‘Winthrope Manor’ and maybe I might have had a crush on the beautiful and charming Violet.”

You blush, which you seem to be doing a lot today, “Well if you must know—”

“We aren’t allowed to spoil anything!” Gwil interrupts forcefully.

“Right,”—since was Gwil so concerned about spoilers? —" I guess you’re just going to have to watch and find out!” You smile cheekily.

You and Ben carry most of the conversation during the short lunch, which you really don’t mind. You would be lying if you said you didn’t find yourself utterly charmed by Ben: he was funny, interesting and very attractive. Before you knew it, though, your short lunch came to an end and the three of you had to go to your respective sets. Before leaving, Ben shares that he would be on the lot tomorrow for some time too and promised to try and stop by your set if he could. You try to not look too giddy when he says this and instead play it cool while you bid him goodbye.

______

“He’s nice,” you say casually to Gwil as the two of you walk back to the set. He hadn’t talked much during lunch and while you did not know him well, usually Gwil was talkative between takes and during reads. He had always struck you as someone who was naturally friendly, as someone with something to say.

“Yeah, Ben’s a nice guy,” Gwil says, his brows furrowed.

“Yeah, I mean, I can see why the two of you stayed friends after filming ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’.”

“Right.”

A beat of silence.

“I’m sorry, did I do something wrong?” you ask, and regret it almost instantly when you see the look Gwil gives you.

“No, why would you think that?”

“Well, it’s just,” you sigh, “you just seemed really quiet at lunch and now it’s like you don’t want to talk to me. Which is honestly confusing, considering you invited me to lunch.”

“You think I’m confusing? You’re the one that won’t say more than a sentence to me at a time but when Ben I’m-a-literal-angel Hardy shows up suddenly you can’t stop talking.”

“Wait, this is about me being friendly to Ben? I thought you wanted us to get along, he’s your friend,” you stop in the middle of a crowded lot.

“No, that’s not it,” he reaches a hand to his temple, “its just that, we’re supposed to be playing love interests and you barely talk to me. At first, I thought you were just shy, so I invited you out with someone else to make it easier for us to get to know each other, you know? Without so much pressure. But you aren’t shy, at least not with Ben which sort of leads me to believe that you just don’t like me, which is fine I guess, you’re not obligated to like me, I just thought—”

“You worried that I don’t like you?”

“Well, you never really talk to me and whenever I’m around you find a way to not spend time with me unless you have to,” Gwil says, almost sheepishly, “and with everyone else, you’re so nice and personable.”

It’s true. You had been avoiding Gwil, but it wasn’t because you didn’t like him. Up until this point, you hadn’t really formed an opinion on him.

“You’re right, maybe I have been avoiding you, but it’s not because I don’t like you. I just haven’t decided what to make of you yet,” you say, biting your lip.

“What?”

“Well, last season I got involved with the guy who played William, Charlotte’s love interest. The actor’s name was Aaron Mayfield and, well, it ended badly, like, really badly. Lucky for me, William died on the front lines, so I didn’t have to see Aaron again. After that though, I decided to keep my relationships with any new costars as professional as possible, until I could figure out if I could trust them to be friends with. I guess I didn’t really think that through though, because now I’ve hurt your feelings and you actually do seem like a really nice guy,” you say all this with your eyes trained on the ground, part of you relieved to have come clean.

After some silence, you look up slowly, hoping to gauge Gwil’s reactions. His head is tilted to one side, and he looks like he’s trying to figure out some sort of mathematical equation, his bright eyes catching the midday sun.

“So, does this mean we can be friends?”

PART 2

#bohemian rhapsody fanfiction #gwilym lee #gwilym lee x reader #ben hardy #ben hardy imagine #ben hardy x reader

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vampirefreakism · 6 years ago

Text

The Scientist (Chapter 29)

Summary: In the events following Asgard’s destruction, Loki finds himself on Earth seeking refuge to await the inevitable. Much to his surprise, it comes from a source he would never have expected.

AO3 Link

The Soundtrack So Far

Warnings: angst, Loki being a casual bitch

Word count: 2.3k

A/N: Amazing, and look at me, releasing a chapter in less than 2 weeks. Thanks for sticking with it so far. I have never written something this massive, but I'm glad I started. This chapter was going to be one huge one, but I figured I'd go easy on you guys and split it into two parts. I know some of y'all got school and finals looming on the horizon, so take it easy. But make sure to take it.

Masterlist

----------

The first few days of the New Year progressed as they had for the past few months as though nothing had changed. Interactions went as desired, and peace in the home remained sustained. Luna's holiday break from work would last for another long weekend, as would the snow surrounding her apartment complex. Once the time was gone, it was back on the grind.

Loki was getting his fill of her, watching her every move whether she was aware of it or not. He carefully gauged their conversations, asking questions to things he felt she may shy away from, each time toeing the line set between them. It was tempting to cross it or sway Luna to move it, but he staved off such desires. It was too soon to take such heavy risks.

Engrossed in his new device, Loki perused the internet, reading clickbait-y tabloids and watching cat videos, all from the palm of his hand. If he had such a thing on Asgard, he would have never bothered to venture outside his room. As much as he detested Stark, his products were fantastic.

On the opposite end of the couch, Luna was deep into her own activity, her own phone sitting in her room. In its place, she busied her hands with a bundle of strings and a piece of paper dictating instructions on how to tie them.

“What are you doing?” Loki inquired.

She threw him a side glance. “Making a friendship bracelet for Tony. I promised him a Christmas present, so here it is,” Luna said, tying another colored knot.

“I thought you said he wasn’t really your friend.”

“Yeah, but what do you get a man who has everything and can buy anything?” She held up her partially-done creation. “Something handmade, of course.”

Loki gave a light chuckle. “Of course,” he echoed.

She set the bracelet back in her lap and continued. “If you’re jealous, I can make one for you too. I used to do it for all the Avengers, no matter if they liked jewelry or not.”

Loki put his gaze back to his phone. "If you wish, I won't object,” he said, missing Luna’s little smirk. She could read him well, but sometimes he suspected she forgot how well he could read her. Or rather, how hard he tried.

He could assess her emotions with ease, but their origins were tricky. He got a goodly amount of information from her diaries and the personal belongings he looked through, but the blank spaces were a mystery. Any piece he came upon, he filled in with his own experiences involving other people. Such things have been unreliable in his past. However, when push came to shove, he was forced to make do with them now.

Forgetting the random blog post on the screen, Loki pondered on his findings in regards to his unlikely friend. She was kind, headstrong, loving, intelligent, and realistic. Any problems she had, she dealt with and didn’t try to create more. She kept a sturdy house despite being alone in it. It perplexed him, but he accepted it wholeheartedly.

But Luna’s sides didn’t stop. Peter and Tony were closest to her, but she wasn't entirely comfortable with them. Mentions of her family were met with quick diversions, and talks of love or past relationships were countered by indifference and disdain. She hid something from him. As impressed as he was by her ability to do so, he craved the unknown.

And now she makes friendship bracelets for people she’s not friends with. Interesting.

Clicking his phone off, Loki angled his body towards Luna. “I think I’ve got it.”

Luna glanced his way. “Got what?”

“You.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Me?”

“Yes. I’ve finally figured you out.”

She scoffed and returned her attention to the assembly of the bracelet in her lap. “Alright, tell me what you think you know about me.” She acted as unfazed as she felt. She’s heard such lines from the boys she was acquainted with in college. In this instance, Loki is no different from them, so she expects falsehoods and misconceptions.

Loki threw an arm around the back of the couch, his hand inches away from Luna’s shoulder. “You’re all alone here.”

“Obviously.”

“And that makes you lonely.”

“Again, obviously.”

“Though you’re friendly, you don’t cling to people. You keep them close, but far enough so you can push them away at the right time. You do this with Stark, Rhodes, and Peter. You guard yourself from friends and from love.”

Luna shook her head. “You know, you’re really going to have to try harder because that sounds just like every depressed teen going through puberty.”

“You find some aspect about yourself undesirable. Whether someone told you or you decided it is, you can’t get rid of it, and it eats at you.” Loki gripped the back of the couch and pulled himself closer to her. “Your cordiality is a façade to cover up for something seated deep within you, something dark.”

Luna's hands stopped their knotting. Her skin felt icy and hot, her jaw clenched tight, and her heart beat like a bird’s wings in flight. The air unsettled around her. Could Loki feel it too?

“Again, Loki, try harder,” she said quietly.

Loki leaned back. “Oh, I intend to, so long as you play these games with me.”

Luna gasped and whirled around, aiming her pointer finger at Loki’s chest. He pulled back more, surprised. “Don’t ever say I play games with you! I do no such thing!” she yelled, her nerves and face on fire.

Loki knew she was right, but old habits die hard. “Well, what do we have here? Is that anger?” He leaned his face closer to hers and watched as her expression contorted into one of shock, then rage.

Using her finger like a spear, Luna stabbed the center of Loki’s sternum, pushing him further into the cushions. “Don’t,” she growled.

Grabbing her craft and its instructions with a crunch, she got up and marched back to her room without another word. Pushing the door shut and locking it, Luna sank down to the floor, hands covering her face. The raging fire in her veins simmered down as it was joined by the telltale prickle of fear. Her temper got the best of her. Loki’s words deserved to be silenced in the manner they were, but they made Luna lose herself. It was embarrassing and disgraceful and made the scars on her legs itch and ache. She scratched her thighs over her leggings, but it did nothing to help.

Loki was dangerous. His inquisitive nature proved as much. It was clear he snooped through her things, but what else did he know and think? He was capable of toying with her emotions and not feeling the least bit sorry if he poked the wrong area. Luna knew so, but she let her guard down enough for him to hit her where it hurts.

But he was right; right about her harboring a dark secret close to her heart. Much of it was written out on her skin. He showed no signs of knowing what it is, but he was determined enough to make her spill it if he wanted to. Luna ground her teeth.

On the other hand, he accused her of playing games with him. Manipulating him. She never did and had no intentions to. How dare he charge her with such a fault? Luna rose back to her feet, whipped her glasses off, and face-planted on her bed. She hoped Loki was happy with himself because she certainly wasn’t.

Loki sat quiet, one hand lying still by his side and the other over the spot where Luna jabbed him. He stared at the wall – mind blank – trying to see through it, past it. Over the many people he’d angered in his life, being on the receiving end of Luna’s anger felt like the worst of them all. His snide comments got the better of him, and he touched a nerve he wasn't supposed to. A place no one was meant to tread. And here he went in and walked all over it without her permission.

Bringing his hand up and covering his mouth, the last words his mother spoke to him surfaced in his mind: ‘Always so perceptive about everyone but yourself.’ With an anguished groan, he put his head in his hands and shook it. He made the mistake of mistakes. He transgressed in a way he may not be able to redeem himself from.

Next in the imaginary line to whisper words of wisdom in his ear was his brother: ‘Life is about growth. It's about change.’ Yes, indeed it was. Loki had changed enough to gain a worthwhile companion. Someone not looking to use him or hurt him to get what they want and pervert the title of ‘friend,' but someone who knew the value of him. Someone who liked him – free of all illusions and disguises – but he gracefully dashed those prospects away. The look in Luna’s eyes told him enough of how he hurt her and how deep it went.

‘But you seem to just want to stay the same.’

No. Loki did not want to stay the same. He wouldn’t stand idly by and let his beautiful friend slip away from him. She clothed and fed him when no one else would, stayed up with him when he couldn’t sleep, danced with him solely for the sake of having fun with him. Nothing was worth maintaining her fury against him.

Grabbing his phone, he opened up the text app and sent one to Luna: ‘please come back out.’ Loki heard a ping from her room and watched the screen with anticipation, willing a response from her to pop up. A little ‘read’ appeared beneath his message, but nothing more of note. He tried again, but no sound was heard. Another ‘read’ marked his text, and he was granted no more.

Loki kept up a repetitive motion, of sorts. He would choose a spot to sit, send a text, and pace, waiting for a response. He never received one, but he’s as stubborn as they come. Luna had to emerge from her room at some point. She couldn’t stay in and go hungry. The thought to break her door down drifted into his mind, but it left as quickly as it came. The apartment was public property. If he destroyed it, Luna wouldn’t be the only person cross with him.

She did come out about an hour after the sun had set. The glance she shot him on her way to the kitchen burned his heart like a hot knife. Albeit calm, her upset emotions hadn’t settled. He didn’t blame her. He would be mad too.

“How about leftovers? I don’t feel like cooking,” Luna called out. Reluctant to raise his voice at her, Loki shot up from his seat and made his way to her side in front of the open fridge. “I'll have curry and rice. You can have whatever." She pulled a bowl and water glass from the cupboard.

“I’ll have the same,” Loki said evenly, treading lightly with his words. Though Luna wasn’t looking at him, she was speaking to him, and he wanted her to keep it up.

From the cold pot of rice, she pressed into it firmly with a clean spoon, slowly breaking apart the mass into pieces she could scoop into her bowl. Once done, she pushed the pot and spoon in Loki’s direction for him to take as much as he liked. He copied her method and served himself.

They filled their bowls the rest of the way with as much leftover curry as they liked, effectively emptying the Tupperware container. Luna heated hers up first with Loki waiting patiently for his turn. Bringing everything they needed to the couch, Loki sat in his spot and switched on the television. Luna placed herself as far away from him as she could. It made Loki antsy. She always sat closer.

Leaning towards her, Loki spoke, pleading with her. “Talk to me.”

Luna didn’t bother looking at him. “I have nothing to say to you,” she stated, taking a sip of water and changing the channel to a nature show about Indian wildlife.

Loki took the hint. She was intent on not talking to or hearing him. However, circumstances as they were, he still admired her. Personally, he would have started a fight as soon as he could and argued his way to receiving an apology from his offender. Luna's method ensured she gets her way as well as keep the peace in the home, her silent treatment stoking Loki’s guilty conscience as it was meant to.

They took their time eating, hungry for good food but lacking in a proper appetite. Luna finished hers first and rinsed her bowl out at the first chance she got. She didn’t rejoin him. On the way back to her room, she stopped at the doorway to the little hallway and gave him one last look.

“I’ll be up for a while so you can shower first if you want to.”

Loki didn't get a chance to respond. She was gone, the door shut and locked behind her, allowing her to have the last word. He opted to let her sleep on it. In the morning, her temperament would be cooled down enough for her to hear him with a level head. He would have a proper apology ready by then.

He did take her advice and freshen himself up enough to sleep comfortably. Leaving the books alone, he read anything and everything he could find on his phone until it slipped from his weak hand. He took the hint from his body and turned it off, eager for sleep to take him.

----------

Taglist: @the-doctor-9-10 @pinkieperil @sherlockfan4life

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newtinalover · 7 years ago

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About Johnny Depp in Fantastic Beasts and what does this mean for me

Well, there is some time I want to comment about the case Johnny Depp in Fantastic Beasts and after these statements by David Yates and JK Rowling, I would first like to share this Claire Willett thread @clairewillett on twitter: https://twitter.com/clairewillett/status/938890109893591040

We all know the story of The Publishing House That Harry Potter Built, how everyone passed on her manuscript until Scholastic said "sure, what the hell, we'll buy it," and then she like singlehandedly turned the ship around with all those sweet sweet Potterbucks. Amazing.

I want to love J.K. Rowling. I truly love the Harry Potter books. I truly love the world she created. I truly believe that those books have transformed our culture in some ways that are really positive. I am a proud Ravenclaw and Hermione Granger is my Patronus.

But.

I've been trying to put my finger on what it is that makes me feel so disappointed in Rowling's words and behavior of late - not just the Depp thing, but also the Navajo skinwalkers thing from last year with Ilvermorny - and I think I've finally figured it out.

As a writer, I found her origin story so inspiring. She was a broke single mom on public assistance and, as Lin-Manuel Miranda says, she wrote her way out of her circumstances. The art of storytelling changed her life. That's beautiful to me.

So the story of J.K. Rowling the author is the story of someone who was given public assistance by the government, and was given a chance to succeed by a publishing house who believed in her. She was helped when she needed help. That's how she became who she became.

And the story that made her famous is the story of a kid in terrible circumstances - abuse, neglect, loneliness, danger, grief - who is helped when he needed help, and is willing to sacrifice for others.

I believe that the J.K. Rowling who first wrote those books espoused the values that the books stand for. But now she is the most recognizable author in the entire world and is a kabillionaire and suddenly I am no longer sure if her values are the same.

The Ilvermorny debacle was the first moment where I began to really see the defensiveness of Wealthy White Feminism seep into the way Rowling responded to critique of her work. There were so many better ways to handle it and she swung and missed SO BADLY.

See, and here's a place where as a writer I am fully 100% in sympathy with her, Rowling is now completely boxed in by the Potterverse. She's reached a level of fame where this is the only thing the world is ever going to let her write from now on. Even if it's time to stop.

If she tries to write ANYTHING ELSE, even under an assumed name like she did with "The Casual Vacancy," she'll get outed and it gets held up next to the Potterverse books anyway. She can't escape it. So I get the desire to find a way to broaden the world.

What she SHOULD have done, in deciding that she wanted to expand the Potterverse to explore other cultures, is either A) partner with writers FROM those cultures to create and flesh out the backstory, or B) at MINIMUM do a fuckton more research into them than she did.

So when she released the story of Ilvermorny on Pottermore and everyone was like "girl no you cannot use things that are SACRED to Native culture like that," it was clear that no Native folks had been consulted by the white British lady about how this would make them feel.

It is . . . not difficult to imagine how Native peoples might feel like the rich white British lady showing up to appropriate stories and symbols she doesn't understand for her own personal financial gain might be, um . . . you know, an unpleasantly familiar sensation.

So, okay. There's backlash. People are frustrated. The old J.K. Rowling, who built a fantastical wizarding world on the framework of a set of progressive values that champion diversity? You'd think she would have heard that and listened, right? Maybe apologized? Yeah, no.

That's because the Potterverse is no longer just the story she poured out from her heart in that tiny apartment in the few hours she could carve out while her kids were sleeping, the story that saved her and turned her life around. Now it is a multi-million dollar business.

Which brings us back to the Johnny Depp question, and why her response today was so enormously frustrating.

The thing that is very very important to understand about writers whose books are made into movies or TV shows is that they have control over casting, writing, story structure and production approximately nothing percent of the time. There are incredibly few exceptions.

People like Diana Gabaldon and George R.R. Martin are given a lot of creative control, compared to other writers, in the making of their shows, because they were big-ass stars already and they have agents who would have demanded that before signing anything.

But the vast majority of writers, when they're lucky enough to sell the rights to something, have no ability to affect the outcome after that. Which includes casting. 99.99% of writers who find a problematic actor cast in their book's movie are stuck with him.

But the exception to this rule is people exactly like J.K. Rowling, and that's why I'm angry at her.

Rowling is a producer on the Potter movies. Rowling has arguably more creative control over the film versions of her books than any other writer who has ever lived. If she wanted Johnny Depp out, she could have made it happen. She did not.

Let's recall that the old Rowling, the one writing the first Potter book by hand on legal pads in her public assistance apartment, the brave and creative scrapper whose love for these characters saved her and kept her going, wrote a hero who ESCAPES A LIFE OF ABUSE.

Harry lives with a family that abuses, mistreats and neglects him, and then gaslights him about that abuse until it's all he knows and understands and he can't imagine a better life, but he's saved by people who tell him "you deserve better than this."

What makes it possible for Harry to return to the Dursleys' house every summer between school terms and no longer suffer psychological harm from their abuse is that now he understands that that treatment was not normal and not something he somehow deserved.

There are also too many incidents to count throughout all seven books where a major plot point hinges on a character saying "this is a terrible thing that happened to me" and whether or not they are believed about their own story: ´´Did that thing REALLY happen? Did you REALLY see the thing you thought you saw? Does such a being REALLY exist? Is Voldemort REALLY back? Is that REALLY true? That sounds implausible. I know that guy, he can't be a Death Eater. He comes from such a respectable family...´´

You see where I'm going here, yes?

The old J.K. Rowling we all fell in love with built a world where BELIEVING PEOPLE WHEN THEY TELL YOU ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM, EVEN IF IT IS IMPLAUSIBLE OR TERRIFYING, is the most important thing you can do.

But the current J.K. Rowling is the CEO of a massive multinational corporation built on the backs of that story she first wrote by hand back before she had any wealth or power, and Johnny Depp is an actor who has been proven to be able to anchor a film franchise. So.

It was frustrating enough when she was merely silent. Today's statement is so much worse than saying nothing.

Today's statement achieved the following things: --it confirmed that she would, in fact, have had the power to do something about casting Depp in that movie if she had chosen to exercise it, and that he continues to remain in this franchise with her enthusiastic consent.

--it confirmed that she had all the same information the rest of us had about Amber Heard's story and her allegations of abuse, including all the documentation and testimony from other witnesses, at an early enough point that there would have been time to recast.

--it gave us vague assurances that she did some degree of due diligence in looking into the story to assess whether or not it was true, but offered no specifics of any kind. --it explained away that lack of specifics with some handwaving about confidentiality clauses.

--it declared that she, J.K. Rowling, now possessed information she was not at liberty to share which essentially exonerates poor Johnny Depp from these mean and unfair accusations of wrongdoing, and suggests that we should take her word at face value.

"I looked into it and I can't tell you what I found out but rest assured, Johnny Depp is innocent and we all love him and that gold digger Amber Heard made it all up" is so much worse than "no comment." It's so, so, so much worse.

This is EXACTLY the kind of privileged white feminism we saw with Lena Dunham's statement last month: "yes, I believe women, I'm a feminist, I trust women when they come forward about their abuse .... unless I'm friends with the guy, then she's lying."

This is what you say when you've built your brand on being a progressive feminist and you want people to believe you still are - YOU want to believe you still are - but now there are huge amounts of money at stake and suddenly things are a lot more complicated.

Believe me, I get that she's in a tricky position. It is easy to stick by your principles when it costs you nothing. It is harder when big things are at stake. I don't know what's in Depp's contract, or in hers. I can't fathom how much money we're talking about here.

But this is why this whole situation is so fucking depressing.

Because J.K. Rowling is not the Harry Potter of her own life story anymore.

She's no longer the scrappy underdog who came from a world of no privilege and always took the side of the powerless. She's like one of those dudes from the Ministry of Magic who was too scared to take a stand because they didn't want to lose their comfortable position.

And it's so sad. I'm so much more sad than angry. I mean I'm angry too, but my overwhelming feeling is " . . . oh. okay. so as soon as you have a shitload of money you're just like every other rich person in the world."

It would have been so easy for her to release a statement that basically said "I stand by my values, I believe women, I believe abuse victims, I am the person you always believed me to be, but here are the limits of my authorial control on films."

But instead she confirmed that SHE HAD A CHOICE, SHE HAD THE POWER, SHE HAD THE ABILITY TO DO THE THING THAT A HEROIC PERSON WOULD DO and instead of being Hermione Granger she was like . . . Cornelius goddamn Fudge.

This is what White Feminism looks like. It means you stand with other women when you look good doing so (like roasting Trump on Twitter, which costs her nothing), but you won't stick your neck out and use your unfathomable privilege if it might negatively impact you.

For the life of me I don't know why she's doubling down on Johnny Depp, when Hollywood is full of dudes who would fall all over themselves to headline a Rowling film franchise and who have never abused anyone in their lives. But she is.

So, that's where we are. She's made her choice. She's said her piece. She's not the woman we wanted her to be. I'd like to believe that she once was that person. I'd like to keep believing in the woman who first sat down to write that story. But who knows.

I am not personally invested in the "Fantastic Beasts" 'verse, and haven't seen the first movie, though someday I probably will. There are good questions to be asked about boycotting vs. not boycotting. I think that's a personal decision, tbh.

I don't think it is morally bad or wrong to see these movies because Johnny Depp is in them. I think if this story means something to you, you shouldn't let this take that away from you. I think we're allowed to enjoy things that are problematic, as long as we're aware.

Go see it if you want to see it. Don't feel guilty for enjoying it. Don't apologize for loving the story. The story belongs to you. The world belongs to you. If you love it, it gets to be yours. But if @jk_rowling disappointed you today, let her know why.

Having said that, I would like to add just a few things about my vision of whoever accompanies the magical universe of Harry Potter there, no less than 16 years:

When I knew that this world would return to theaters in 2016, I was absurdly happy, since I had felt ''orphan an HP' 'since 2011, when the last film was released. I've always considered myself a feminist and sympathetic to the cause of marginalized groups, so imagine the impact when I knew that Johnny Depp would be in the franchise that not only taught me about these exact values of empathy and love, but I grew up seeing JKR campaigning for these causes too. In a way, she was one of my biggest mirrors.

But until then, honestly, I've never been to follow JD's career, so I knew, by all accounts, about his case of aggression against his ex-wife Amber Heard. When I heard that he was in FB, I soon learned more about it. It should be considered that the information is inaccurate in this respect, but what we have in hand is that:

1) There is a historical legacy that shows us the oppression that women suffer, on a world scale. No matter how much a woman says that she has suffered any kind of aggression, if her word is questioned by a man, she will, in the vast majority of cases, go out as a lying prostitute, or as a mercenary, or as someone who only wants destroy the career of the 'innocent' man.

2) In everything I research about AH and JD, that's exactly what caught my attention: how much people are struggling to invalidate her word, even she PROVING that the assaults happened.

3) Yes, Evidences! First let's talk about the much-discussed video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdmB2zoaiu4

Some claim that he was out of control, that he hit objects but that at no time does he hit him. If this is not concrete proof of an emotional uncontrolled that certainly falls into psychological and then physical aggressions (remember that domestic violence follows a cycle that begins with psychological violence that goes up to the physical), I do not know what else it can to mean. If I am close to a person uncontrolled in this way, even if she did not attack me, I would certainly be terrified.

´´Oh! But Amber certainly provoked him! He was drunk! Surely if he had been sober he would not have done it!´´

This is the most ridiculous excuse of all and it resembles when they try to blame the victim of a rapist because she was wearing "short clothes". It's also similar to when Kevin Spacey tried to justify his crime by saying that '' I did not remember, I was certainly drunk ''.

Some people also say that the video was edited and the man who appears there actually was not JD. I'm sorry, it's ridiculous too.

4) ´´But AH withdrew the accusations! So JD is innocent!´´

Oh really? Are you so blind so you can not see that she did it out of sheer pressure from all sides? We have recently discovered the rotten side of Hollywood, whose victims are mostly what? That's right, women! So it is more than obvious that Amber was pressured to withdraw the accusations through a series of agreements, such as those made explicit here: http://mashable.com/2016/08/16/johnny-depp-amber-heard-divorce-statement/#rz12DBHO3OqR

In the part that says: "Neither party has made false accusations for financial gain. There was never any intent of physical or emotional harm." For me it is more than clear that JD himself assumes to have attacked Amber, you who do not want to accept.

5) '' Amber is an aggressor too! She hit your ex girlfriend! ''

As if that justified what JD did ... but come on: http://ego.globo.com/famosos/noticia/2016/06/tasya-van-ree-nega-que-ex-amber-heard-seja-violenta-diz-site.html

Tasya issued a statement defending the ex and would have told TMZ sources that Amber's domestic violence arrest would be ridiculous because she was never violent. Besides, Tasya and Amber remain good friends. If the aggression were true, the logic would be that Tasya kept away from Amber, would not it? And even if the aggression had happened, that would not erase the feat of JD

6) "But we must separate the staff from the professional! JD is a great actor! ''

Oh really? If you hired a gardener to work in your home, and later knew that when he comes home he hits the woman, would you continue to use his services quietly? If your answer is yes, forgive me, but you have a dubious character. Men are already privileged in a macho society just because they are men, imagine then a white and rich man.

7) '' Amber is a slut who just wanted to take money from him! ''

Honey, she's an actress, she's also rich. She does not need it. Oh, and for your information, all the money she got from the JD deal was donated to institutions that help victims of domestic violence. Your stupid argument falls.

8) '' Okay, the aggression may be real but that's no reason to boycott! We should not boycott and support JKR and the other actors that are in play ''

Okay, I agree in parts. In fact, the rest of the cast is not to blame for this whole situation. Do you think I'm happy to know that most likely I will not see my beautiful girl Katherine Waterston playing Tina Goldstein so beautifully? Am I happy not to see Eddie as fantastic as Newt? Am I happy not to see my beautiful Newtina couple getting together (and probably kissing) finally? That I will not see Jude Law as my dear Dumbledore ???

It's exactly this immense sadness that I carry after these statements that leads me to the imminent decision not to follow the Fantastic Beasts franchise. Everything JKR taught through Potter stories (which - he was a victim of abuse) falls to the ground when they not only hire someone like Johnny Depp, but put him as the protagonist! It's so contradictory and disappointing!

I repeat: 16 years are loving and admiring a woman who today decided to simply say: 'Yes, we know that fans are not 100% satisfied with JD in our cast but we do not care, we want more visibility and, of course, money' '

After JKR's statement, an immense disgust swept over me and I said goodbye to the franchise, emphasizing, more than ever, my eternal love for Katherine Waterston and the ship Newtina, which were my greatest gifts from the first film.

I remembered the farewell scene between Newt and Tina and I cried. I know they are not to blame, but JKR taught me: "The time will come when we will have to choose between what is right and what is easy.”

I make the right choice, according to my values and principles, even though it hurts me. I decided not to follow the FB franchise anymore, and I would like to be respected in that regard. No, I AM NOT LESS HP FAN BY CAUSE OF THIS! I had the displeasure to read that those who boycot FB are not really fans. GET OUT OF YOUR CASUAL! YOU ARE NOT BETTER THAN NOBODY TO SAY THESE STUPID THINGS!

Respect my decision and my pain! Respect my decision to follow what my heart asks for at this moment! JKR is no longer the same woman who wrote the HP series to get away from her abusive reality, she has changed! Now she is a millionaire (thanks to us who consume her material, by the way) and obviously want to win more for it. I reiterate that I will continue, with all my might, loving Katherine and Newtina, accompanying future works of Katherine and the other cast members, but I keep only that of the woman who once inspired and loved me so much.

If one day you read this, JK Rowling, I wish you to be very happy, know that your story inspired me and changed my life in many aspects, but today you no longer have my support and I hope, from the bottom of my heart, that you never go through abuse again so that you need to prove that you are speaking the truth, like as happened to Amber, and it happens to all of us, every moment.

PS: Sorry if there are any terrible errors in writing, but I'm Brazilian and not accustomed to English.

Eloany Homobono.

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romcomathon2016 · 8 years ago

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From Prada to Nada (USA, 2011)

Predictions: Kat initially misheard and thought the title of this movie was From Nada to Prada, so she thought it was about a plucky, underdressed girl making good. Upon realizing the correct title, she was forced to revise her prediction and decided that surely, instead, it was about a high-fashion lady falling from grace and being forced to sell all her designer clothes. Alex kind of knew that the movie was a Latina Sense and Sensibility, so she corrected Kat, pointing out that it was, in fact, multiple high-fashion ladies falling from grace. Maybe with some Spanish?

Plot: Latina Sense and Sensibility was, indeed, very true to regular Sense and Sensibility. Our story begins in Beverly Hills, in a house full of rich Mexican-American people, whose servants, it would appear, are non-rich Mexican-American people. Our heroes (dear lord) are Determinedly Boring Sister, who, at 24, has never once in her life had time for a moment of fun, and Obnoxiously Frivolous Sister, who is a caricature of the least pleasant sort of Beverly Hills white girl. Their mother is dead, and their father also perishes in the first ten seconds. It is his birthday. He is having a celebratory dance with his daughters when he suddenly keels over, and that’s that.

At the funeral, they discover that a) they have an Illegitimate Brother with a Cartoonishly Villainous & Racist Blonde Wife, and b) their father was secretly bankrupt, so they are now penniless. Long story short, they go to live with their Down-to-Earth Aunt in — horror of horrors — East LA. Determinedly Boring Sister temporarily drops out of law school, intending to get a job...as a law-firm intern?? A paid law-firm intern???? What sorcery is this?? (Least believable part of this story.) Obnoxiously Frivolous Sister, meanwhile, gets to keep attending college, and is extremely ungrateful about both this opportunity and having a roof over her head. She’s like, GOD, I HATE IT HERE IN THE HOOD, even though, like, their aunt’s home is really pretty. Although she does seem to be running a sweatshop. Hmmmm. Oh well, look at these beautiful colorful walls! We would like to live there. Alone, though. No sweatshop.

Anyway. Determinedly Boring Sister gets her implausible job at White Savior Edward Ferris (the only person who got to keep his name)’s law firm, because he’s Cartoonishly Villainous Wife’s brother and liked her boring face when he met her at the house before she was kicked out. She is, for some reason, allowed to bring pro bono cases to this law firm, where he is not even a partner (weird), and they fall in love while helping out some Mexican ladies she met on the bus, and, despite this ostensible act of charity, she never once misses an opportunity to refer to them collectively as “the janitors.” Can’t they just be clients now?? Or people?? God forbid we forget for one moment that they are janitors! Anyway, Edward Ferris wants to kiss Determinedly Boring Sister’s mouth, but because she is a lame-o who can’t cope with her feelings, she’s like, NO, HOW WILL I HAVE TIME FOR MY TEN-YEAR PLAN????

Meanwhile, Obnoxiously Frivolous Sister gets into a semi-antagonistic flirtation with the insufficiently wealthy boy next door, whom she thinks is a hoodlum but we all know probably has a heart of gold. She’s like, ARE YOU GOING TO STEAL FROM ME, YOU MEXICAN???? and he’s like, ...no?? And also, aren’t you also Mexican???? Yes. Yes, she is. But whatever, she doesn’t have time for him anyway; she’s like super busy falling in love with her TA, Señor Cad. (To her credit, while she does fall in love with him, she seems to mostly be interested in his money. She would like to live in Beverly Hills again and have him buy her a house and pay for everything. Apparently, her ambition is to never work, which… Well, at least she’s honest.)

One evening, after Determinedly Boring Sister has inexplicably quit her job, even though White Savior Edward Ferris promoted her, and put up an in-home shingle for free legal help (???? SHE’S STILL NOT A FULL LAWYER, IS SHE???? DID SHE TAKE THE BAR DURING HER SAD MONTAGE???????? Stop lying to these immigrants needing legal help, lady!!), they end up going to White Savior Edward Ferris’s engagement party. SURPRIIIIIIIIIISE. My, that was fast. He is getting married to some girl picked out for him by Cartoonishly Villainous Wife, or, as he would call her, Cartoonishly Villainous Sister. At this party, Determinedly Boring Sister ill-timedly finally confesses her love, while Obnoxiously Frivolous Sister runs into Señor Cad and discovers that he was married all along. Rough. Devastated, Obnoxiously Frivolous Sister runs off and gets in a car accident. Sure, sure. Because that’s a productive solution.

Obnoxiously Frivolous Sister almost dies, but obviously she doesn’t, and, in her convalescence, she realizes the true value of Heart-of-Gold Hoodlum, who, by the way, is some kind of barrio artist, who teaches art to young children. Not a hoodlum at all!!!! And then White Savior Edward Ferris shows up with a giant moving truck. Is he moving, you ask? Yes. Into the house across the street, which he has purchased for himself and Determinedly Boring Sister, even though they have kissed exactly one time and never been on a single date. Apparently, he’s been taking tips from Jim Halpert, ONLY WEIRDER, BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT EVEN MARRIED YET.

Buuuuut, we guess that was a proposal, probably, because then we cut to their wedding, where a recovered Obnoxiously Frivolous Sister finally dances with Heart-of-Gold Hoodlum, or whatever. Good to know that both these young women have found men who can support their lifestyle, even if neither of them ever works a day in their life. Solid messaging, movie. Real good.

Best Scene: When Obnoxiously Frivolous Sister has her heart broken by Señor Cad and rushes from the premises to drive around, sobbing, in the rain. It’s amazing. It’s pouring. She’s weeping. There’s some kind of blurry movie effect, just to make it clear how devastated she is. She runs out of the car. She runs back into the car. It’s ludicrous.

Worst Scene: Well, okay, so — both these sisters were NOT good actors. But Determinedly Boring Sister was particularly bad. Her love confession to White Savior Edward Ferris was somehow both the most excruciating and the most boring scene. To be fair to her, the script was also atrocious.

Best Line: "If he announces an engagement that quick, it just means that he is way more confused than you are.” — Obnoxiously Frivolous Sister to Determinedly Boring Sister, regarding White Savior Edward Ferris. The only reasonable thing she said in 100 minutes.

Worst Line: “You ain’t got to worry about it. You didn't lose. I did.” — Heart-of-Gold Hoodlum to Obnoxiously Frivolous Sister, after he realizes she’s with Señor Cad. It’s worth noting that both the boys were better actors than the girls, but oh my god, this script.

Highlights of the Watching Experience: Well, we wondered why White Savior Edward Ferris spoke Spanish, when neither of the girls did. Even though they are first-generation Mexican-Americans growing up in Los Angeles. We thought that was weird. To be fair, all the other characters clearly thought so too.

How Many POC in the Film: So many!!!! That was nice.

Alternate Scenes: If the script had been better, and the girls could act, this movie would actually have been okay. We like the source material, and they did a good job of adapting that story. They did not do a good job of writing it. :|

Was the Poster Better or Worse than the Film: The poster is actually...worse, shockingly?? The poster leads you to believe that the aunt is a much bigger character than she was, and also that the three of them are all out on the street together. Maybe hitch-hiking? For shoes? What is the poor aunt doing out on the street?? She has a very nice house!

Score: 3.5 out of 10 Hilariously Terrible Smooches.

Ranking: 57, out of the 75 movies we’ve seen so far. How sad, that a Sense and Sensibility adaptation could be ranked below Jersey Girl.

#from prada to nada #camilla belle #alexa vega #2011

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su-navy · 8 years ago

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The Homeworld Is Too Much With Us [ACT 1]

Rating: K+

Word Count: 18k+

Summary: Your gem is Ruby, under the alias “Navy” for an improvised undercover surveillance mission that better land you a promotion to the intelligence division. However, you’ll have to accomplish your primary objective if you even want Yellow Pearl to so much as skim over your mission report: FIND JASPER.

A/N: Why break this up into smaller chapters when I can give huge chunks at a time? Though, it’s not like anybody will read this fanfic here anyway lol. “We want more fan content,” the thirsty fandom demands. “But we’ll only like the content to maybe read later and not actually support authors with comments or reblogs.” Jk, the real problem is that my content isn’t worthy enough.

Scene i. - Outside the Steven’s house.

“Oh please, oh please! Don’t make me go back to Homeworld! Oh, I just want to stay here with you!”

“This… is a surprise…”

You couldn’t have said it better yourself. It’s a split-second plan that your comrades would have shattered you for, but you attribute that to their traditional mindset. (You can almost feel that old veteran’s chisel weapon at your neck right now.) Guerilla warfare is what you like to call your specialty. Not all gems realize how broad of a spectrum “adhering to Homeworld’s agenda” is, and now that you’re solo, you intend to proceed with this mission your way.

“... I just want to be somewhere I can be myself.”

You can hardly sustain your form when you’re assigned a label--Navy--by the “Steven.” It’s as crude as your comrades’ (oh, wait, ex-comrades’!) strategies. You just sit and smile and remind yourself of the invaluable skill Homeworld taught you.

Assimilation.

Scene ii. - Outside the barn.

You see so much of Homeworld on this planet that it’s hard not to see it as just another colony. The Lapis reminds you of the old veteran Ruby, not that you miss her. She’s distrustful, aching, and more perceptive than she’s socially allowed to be. Absolutely adorable. You’ve had an eye on this one ever since the baseball game she seemed reluctant to be a part of. And just like with the veteran Ruby, she’s powerless to act on her own instincts without approval from her misplaced superior.

The Crystal Gems are so silly. They have this foreign concept called “equal rights” that completely contradicts itself in practice. Even they have to acknowledge that individual’s pursuit of their own self-interest only results in a life that is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. True equality is only achieved when workinggems are united under a sovereign government for the sole sake of serving unquestionable entities. It’s impossible for a gem to disassociate herself from the inferiority complex programmed within her. You think Lapises may be the closest to breaking free of such an inevitable mentality, given their awesome craft of carving entire planets like a big bang expanding a universe. Clearly, more observation is needed.

“It might be hard to like Earth at first,” the Lapis explains quietly. “It is where a bunch of bad stuff happened.”

For the first time, you notice how ancient her gem outfit looks compared to the Peridot’s standard uniform, as fresh out of the Kindergarten as the newbie Ruby. She must have been in the war on Earth, too. It’s not a subject Homeworld likes to teach, but it sure is fun to hear from veterans. You feel like you’re in the presence of a well-preserved antique.

“What is ‘rain’?” you ask out of genuine curiosity. They don’t question your apparent lack of knowledge. It’s amazing how stupid they think you are. You’re a Ruby, for Diamond’s sake! You’ve been on missions to other planets for as long as you’ve been issued, so of course you know that undeveloped planets have inconsistent weather conditions. (Well, only thanks to stories from the veteran… You suppose that your question taken at face-value would have been valid, since most Rubies don’t know about changing weather conditions.) You’re asking what Earth’s version of rain is like because your former squadron almost got poofed when it was raining diamonds on Neptune. (You and the veteran were the only ones smart enough to stay in the ship when that happened. And, for the record, you two helped save your comrades as a contribution to your entire species’ devotion to the Diamonds’ agenda. If that’s not equality, you don’t know what is.)

The rain is just falling water, thankfully. Leave it to a Lapis to abandon Homeworld for a planet abundant in her own element.

Scene iii. - The Roaming Eye (YOUR ship!)

“This is perfect! The Crystal Gems finally have a pilot!”

More labels. That’s nice. That means you’re assimilating well. Never mind the fact that they have a Lapis with water wings, a Peridot, and the infamous renegade Pearl. It seems that Navy is going to be the Crystal Gems’ personal chauffeur from now on.

You’re just glad you have your ship back. You weren’t lying when you said the ship was the only place you feel like you belong--there has to be some truth mixed in with your facade to make it more realistic, after all--you’ve spent more time in the ship than in Homeworld. At this point, it would be easy to dump the intruders out of the ship (your ship!) and relish in the sweet ecstasy of their betrayed faces. (Oh, if only they hadn’t touched anything. All the system settings have been messed with by some Era 1 pebble who probably thinks a light year is a measure of time.)

But as you glance over your shoulder to tell Steven to hit the button you programmed to dispel everyone from the ship except you, you see the Lapis smiling at nothing. It reminds you of a strange phrase that you heard from the veteran Ruby when you were still a shiny newbie teeming with questions. Art for the sake of art--you suddenly understand it now that you can see it on the lips of a criminal Lapis that sleeps simply because she likes it. It’s senseless like shattering, yet conforms to an aesthetic that you’ve seen before in other undeveloped planets.

Just as suddenly, your cheerful act is too heavy to maintain. Rookie mistake--inconsistency. You’re supposed to be better than that. You’re no ever-changing atmosphere rich in deteriorating substances. You’re a perfect, manufactured product of precious resources, trained by the best Homeworld has to offer and shined by centuries of experience.

“Is something wrong, Navy?” Lapis asks.

She’s by your side now. Something about her concern reads more like long-awaited relief to you. You didn’t know Lapises were so sadistic. Or maybe it’s just her.

“Oh, it’s nothing. I was just thinking that you have the prettiest smile I’ve ever seen!”

For some reason, you’ve gained some hostility from the Peridot.

“You dirty little--” She has a snorting laughter that pulls you away from your controls. She leans on your chair for support. “I was wrong! I thought no one could be that well-adjusted, but you are! Otherwise you would’ve backstabbed us and dumped us out of the ship by now!”

You laugh a little alongside her, but you’re actually not sure if that’s the right thing to do.

She’s almost wheezing now, to the point where she has to perch herself on the arm of your chair because she can no longer stand on her own. “I’m really the only one that’s trapped, after all this time… My cage is your sky, my mirror is your shield, my pain is--”

You think it’s time to land.

Scene iv. - A beach, beyond the Steven’s house..

The Ruby-Sapphire fusion is already waiting on the beach to greet you, holding an inflated bag of pink aluminum attached to a string that welcomes you to “the party.” There was another similar inflated bag of aluminum, in blue, but it popped before you could get a chance to see if it had its own message. They hand you the bag with a thumbs-up.

“Wow! Thanks Ruby and Sapphire, I’m so humbled!” You’re not sure what its functional use is and hope that nobody will notice when you release it into the atmosphere later.

“It’s Garnet,” they correct you.

You stare at the inflated bag of pink aluminum. “Oh! Thanks for the Garnet, Ruby and Sapphire!” You suppose there’s some convenience to assigning labels to useless but complex objects.

They laugh. “No, that’s a balloon. I’m Garnet.” In a flash of light, they’re instantly unfused. The lovey-dovey Ruby and Sapphire that couldn’t get their hands off each other during the baseball game appear, holding hands like that part of them is permanently fused, even as individuals. “We’re Ruby and Sapphire,” the Sapphire explains.

You gasp. “Oh! That makes sense!”

And just like that, they’re a Garnet again, and they’re flashing you a thumbs-up.

The Peridot looks at you in shock. “It does?” She takes a step back once she remembers the Garnet’s presence, frantically waving her hands apologetically. “I-I mean, it does, I guess, but you just understand it that quickly?”

Lapis is smirking at the Peridot with her arms crossed smugly.

You nod. “A plus B equals C, so it’s easier to substitute C into an equation instead of saying A plus B.”

“No, fusion! You understand fusion?”

“Rubies fuse all the time.” Eyeball likes fusing with just you, sometimes.

“No, cross-gem fusions! Without any kind of functional utility other than a marginal benefit! You understand that?”

“Um, yeah…” You subconsciously look up at Lapis. “‘Art for the sake of art.’”

You don’t even know what art is, but you’re pretty sure you’re looking at it.

Scene v. -Your ship, outside the barn. Nighttime.

She can turn off so quickly--Lapis, you mean, because in your mind it’s obvious that there’s nobody else to talk about when she’s present--and she does it so willingly, so vulnerably, like there’s nothing stopping her from doing what she wants. You’re marveled at the fact that she can still manage to feel trapped in a planet with oceans ready for her to command, sources of water everywhere you look, artillery waiting for her to fire at any whim. How much freedom does she need? She could be floating in outer space, eons away from the nearest star system, and she could still be complaining about not having enough room to stretch her wings. Yet, she’s content to settle in a primeval structure constructed with planet-made materials (wood, nails, paint).

In the dead of the night, which is a time of darkness that encompasses half of all time on Earth, noises echo in the barn. Such include her snoring. The Peridot wasn’t kidding about the volume of it. However, there are also other more insignificant noises, like the buzzing of tiny organic native species, creaking of the wood, and the gentle spring breeze. The moon and the Peridot’s computer are the only sources of light in the otherwise dim barn. You find yourself missing the soothing red light of the Roaming Eye and leave your “barnmates” to their nighttime activities.

You know this would be the perfect time to slip out of Earth, but that wouldn’t be interesting. Your personal agenda has been amended from revenge to research. This mission may finally prove your worth in the surveillance/intelligence division.

Everyone else laughed at the thought of a Ruby entering the intelligence division. (You gotta admit, it is pretty funny that a mere Ruby outranks most gems made to be smart in IQ alone.) No more. You will be the pioneer of a brave new Homeworld, where a common foot soldier can be promoted to a slightly more valued foot soldier just judging by their intelligence! Oh, such a radical revolution would have sentenced you to a shattering in Era 1, but Yellow Diamond’s rule in Era 2 was a game-changer. You’re grateful to have been made for such an innovative, tactical leader.

Hints of social mobility in gem society has been evident in Rubies, most of all, given how little resources it takes to make one and how adaptable they can be. They’re your foot soldiers, guards, factory workers, servants, heavy-lifters, and most recently, intergalactic squadrons. The more technology is developed, the more niches a Ruby can sneak into. This mission report can be your ticket to defining your rank in the hierarchy. You settle into the main commander’s seat and open up a new file to type in.

Mission Report:

You can’t use your squadron’s ID for this. That egotistical chest-gemmed Ruby would love to ride on your coattails.

Mission Report: NV-419.310

Wait, Yellow Pearl will only bother to glance at this report if your main objective has been fulfilled first. Backspace, backspace, backspace...

Mission Report: NV-419.3

Mission Report: NV

Mission Report:

Missi

Missing Jasper. Where IS she?

Personally, you feel like she has developed some kind of attachment to Earth. It is, technically, her home planet. It was the colony of her Diamond. Oh, even perfect gems corrode when exposed to Earth. Everything is fleeting on that planet.

Missing Jasper. Where IS she? Can’t stay on Earth too long.

You jump in your seat when you hear pounding on the outside of the ship. Backspace, backspace, backspace--you’ll write the report after you find Jasper. Right now, you have an unexpected visitor to deal with.

The hand-gem Ruby steps in hesitantly. You can tell it’s her without even spinning your chair around to look. Her awkward, clunky steps give it away. “H-Hey, Navy, uh… What’s, uh… How’s it going?” You can hear the sweat in her voice.

You turn around to face her, since she’s a fellow Ruby. You’re glad you get to a moment alone with her, unattached to the Sapphire (although you’re certain the Sapphire is waiting just outside the ship for this Ruby’s return). The camaraderie between Rubies is the only break from eternal servitude of the Diamonds that you’ve known. “Why don’t you just call me ‘Ruby’?”

Her nervous chuckle is sporadic and jolty, so unlike the mellifluous laughter that bubbles out of Lapis. “It’s just to lessen the confusion. You must know how confusing it gets when someone says, ‘Hey, Ruby!’ and five-million Rubies turn around…”

The cultural barrier is so thick you could cut it with a laser. Era 1 must have been a much simpler time. No gem would actually yell “Ruby!” in a room full of Rubies unless it was a joke. Sure, you could address a gem by their facet and cut number, but usually gems make it clear who they’re addressing. There’s almost like a sense for it, definitely acquired. “Oh, that’s true!” you lie. “It just seems really pretentious to have my own unique title.”

The Ruby smiles. “Welcome to Earth. We get to be individuals, here.”

That’s ironic, considering that she spends virtually all of her time in a fusion. “But I’m just a Ruby.”

“No!” she abruptly shouts. She blinks in surprise when she realizes how loud she was, then blushes. She wrings her hands behind her back. “I mean, it’s just--” Her words jostle like the Roaming Eye when it’s caught in a meteor shower. “That’s just what Homeworld wants you to think. You’re more than that.”

Um. Not really, but okay. It’s hard to conform to individualist, entropy-ridden propaganda. “I like being a Ruby, though. Don’t you?” You’re going down a bad path. You’re supposed to assimilate to whatever they say to avoid suspicion.

“No! I don’t!” Her hands are in her hair. She starts pacing back and forth, unable to form tears because they’re sizzling off of her. Thank goodness the ship was designed for Rubies--no burn marks on this baby. “I hate it!”

You close the ship’s opening. Too much noise might wake Lapis.

She freezes in her tracks when she hears what she just said. “I mean, I hated it, back when I was on Homeworld,” she corrects, but you know what she really means. She lets out a strangled scream and starts pacing even faster. “Rubies are stupid, Rubies are disposable, Rubies are worthless, Rubies are too emotional--” She pivots on her foot and waves her hands frantically at you. “--I mean, that’s not true!” she assures you, not that you’re the one who needs it, “But that’s what Homeworld makes you think!”

You know all those things, but you don’t hate it. “Well, what’s wrong with that? We’re made a certain way, that’s just fate.” At least Homeworld organizes these traits instead of randomly assigning them by a lottery. That would be unequal. All gems have the right to be where they belong. Ultimately, as long as each gem fulfills her purpose, there should be no problem.

She freezes, again. Her tears flow faster than her pyrokinesis can immediately evaporate. “That sounds like something Sapphire would say.”

“Oh, Ruby…” (Oh, Diamonds. You should have expected her to start talking about Sapphire sooner or later.) You quickly prance over to her and let her cry into your chest. Lapis mentioned something about two individuals gems having an unstable fusion, earlier, but she didn’t mention anything about fusions separating into unstable individual gems. “I’m sorry that I upset you! I just really love that you’re a Ruby, like how I love being a Ruby!” You could easily return her to her Sapphire, but you believe that only a Ruby can truly comfort another Ruby in such a state. Her blazing hot touch doesn’t faze you in the slightest, whereas an icy Sapphire would be frizzling with steam.

She collapses to her knees. “No, Ruby, I want more than that!” she sobs. It looks like she’s too distraught to keep up with that silly nickname. There’s no Ruby to disambiguate from the other if it’s just the two of them alone. “There’s a love stronger than that, and I couldn’t have it on Homeworld. I-I was going to be shattered because of it!”

That makes sense. You’ve never seen a cross-gem fusion before Garnet, but it sounds like something Homeworld wouldn’t like. Nobles would call it an abomination. “There’s nothing wrong with just being a Ruby.” And by that, you mean that she doesn’t have to be in a fusion all the time. Really. It’s great and all, but it’s a lot of energy.

She screams something incoherent into your chest.

“... What?”

She lifts her head and stares up at you with the most intense, passionate gaze you’ve ever seen in your life. The nuclear reactions from a thousand stars fills her voice with ardency as she proclaims, “I love Sapphire.”

Um. Okay. “Yeah, I know…”

She weaves her fingers into yours. “No, but I really, really, really love Sapphire! More than you love everything on Earth and more than Lapis hates everything on Earth!”

“Yes. I know, Ruby.”

She takes in a deep breath. “I lo--”

You swear you’ve barely been speaking with her for five minutes and you already want to dump her back into the Garnet fusion. At least the Garnet fusion stays silent most of the time. “Yes, you love Sapphire, we know, you love Sapphire so much, she’s the light of your physical form, you love her so much, you just love Sapphire, I know, you really love Sapphire, okay, we know, we get it, YOU LOVE SAPPHIRE. WE GET IT.”

Her clasp on your hands tighten. “You don’t KNOW how great it feels to be fused with her all the time, though.”

This conversation has taken an unprecedented turn into a salacious realm that you feel, despite being centuries old, too young to hear. Components of a perma-fusion truly are shameless. Yet, the curiosity tugs at you. The forbidden sin has to be exhilarating to make it worth committing continuously, uninterrupted, for thousands of years…

“You just don’t know how great it feels to be something entirely new. I-It’s like I’ve been re-made! Like, I don’t have to be the dispensable Ruby that Homeworld made me as! Our masses are one, but not just like two colors mixed together to make another color--more like our color transcends the spectrum entirely and a new spectrum has to be made to properly classify our love.”

And you thought you were over-using the word “love”,

“The initial burst of energy is the best, though…”

You hope that noise she just made wasn’t a moan.

“I can’t stop thinking of the next time we’ll fuse every time we’re apart. It’s so different to fuse with a different kind of gem, especially when you can never be close enough to them without fusion. It’s this unity of light, life, and love, and it’s addicting.”

You think you figured out why Homeworld restricted this practice. “Crazy idea here, but,” you introduce slowly, “isn’t--addiction--bad?” Abnormal compulsion destines a gem for instability. Exhibit A: this hand-gemmed Ruby, currently suffering from severe withdrawal. The symptoms are straight out of the textbook: restlessness, depression, irritability, crying, and, wait for it--

“Fusion isn’t bad!” she screeches at you.

Denial. It takes all of your willpower to not roll your eyes. “Do you want to fuse?”

“Yes.”

Melding into one slightly-bigger Ruby is as easy as breathing. It’s not the best fusion you’ve ever been in, admittedly--you feel much stronger than usual, but your arm-gemmed ex-comrade was much more exciting to fuse with, which was why you sought her first while you were floating around in space--but at least the hand-gemmed fusion isn’t in a total panic anymore, although her innumerable paranoid thoughts are still coursing through the fusion.

She’s thinking, above everything else, that she did miss the easy unity that same-gem fusion provided--like it’s just herself, but bigger and not alone. Every other thought is about how she’s breaching the sanctity of her love for Sapphire.

You think it’s time to unfuse. (It’s a little harder than usual to separate, this time, because this Ruby is unbelievably clingy when it comes to fusions, but you manage.)

As soon as there are two Rubies in the ship again instead of one, there’s more screaming. “Th-That’s not what I meant!”

“Oops.” You thought she was just feeling lonely.

“I have to tell Sapphire!”

“Doesn’t she already know?”

“Oh no! You’re right! What does she think of me now? She’s going to hate me now for fusing without her without me telling her! Oh no, what if she doesn’t hate me and she just forgives me right away because it’s already done and over with? This is fusion we’re talking about, though, it’s FUSION!”

She heads towards the exit of the ship. You don’t think she actually knows how to operate the exit on her own, since she talks like she was one of the lower-lower class Era 1 Rubies. You grab her hand. “I’m sorry, Ruby, I didn’t mean to cause this much trouble for you.” It’s not even that big of a deal. Rubies are meant to fuse together, in great numbers and often.

She screams. “You’re right, you’re right--you didn’t mean to cause trouble, because I was the one who came to you in the first place… This is my fault! Ugh!” She kicks a wall of the ship. “I really am a stupid Ruby!”

You’re extremely grateful that this ship was made specially for Rubies. You pull her away from the wall, just in case.

“Let! Go! I need to go back to Sapphire!”

“Wasn’t there something you came here to tell me?”

She ceases her struggles. “Who cares what I say?”

You let her go. You weren’t manufactured for this moonshine. She’s nearly clawing her way out of the ship until you finally saunter to the nearest panel to release her.

“Buh-byee!”

There’s going to be a lot of altercations excluded from your mission report when you write it.

Scene vi. - The Steven’s house.

The Steven invites you to the Crystal Temple, along with Lapis and the Peridot. There’s no objective behind the visit besides time-wasting. In fact, there are multitudes of games and devices on Earth built solely for temporary entertainment pleasure. It’s an expected product of a hedonistic planet with no regards for full employment. Unoccupied gems can claim to be active when participating in inconsequential tasks. What a waste. The Peridot confesses that she once thought the same, but now she claims it’s “pretty great”. To them, it must be, but for a society, it would be terrible. Remove incentive, and you get low quality products. The Crystal Gems can detest Homeworld all they want, but you don’t think they would do a better job at governing an entire species.

The Steven is fascinated by your affinity for puzzles. The Peridot is more skeptical. She dumps out the pieces for three different 1000-piece puzzles into one pile, mixes them up, and challenges you to solve all of them within one hour without looking at the pictures on the boxes. Additionally, one of the puzzles is composed of only white pieces. It’s an interesting challenge, but it’s still too easy for you. You’ve trained yourself for these kinds of unorthodox intelligence-testers as soon as you set your goals on being in the surveillance/intelligence department. You heard that the exam consists of abstract teasers like these.

There’s a process to it, and with any process, a technique. Categorize, sub-categorize, match, and make educated guesses. There are key differences between the three puzzles that you look out for, like the type of paint used for the images and the art style and the way each piece is cut. Inconsistencies are easy to pick up by the trained eye--that’s why they’re such a rookie mistake. All you have to do is make quick decisions, and you should meet the time limit.

Lapis is invested in the challenge. She almost watches with as much amusement as she does when she’s indulging in Camp Pining Hearts. The Pearl becomes a spectator once Steven explains. She immediately expresses that such a feat is impossible for a--she cuts off, but you don’t miss the way her mouth shapes to say something the begins with an “R and most definitely ends with an “uby”. She cuts off because she didn’t notice that you had two puzzles finished when she sat down and that you were barely past the 40-minute mark. She amends the ending of her sentence.

“--ah, um, many gems. It’s not a natural gem skill, I mean.”

You’re not sure what kind of pretense she’s trying to pull or for what purpose. Everyone knows that a normal Ruby doesn’t even have the attention span for a 100-piece puzzle.

At the warp pad, Ruby arrives. “Hey, guys.” Everyone’s eyes are glued to her as she calmly strolls to the hub of attention. “Wow, did you complete those two puzzles all by yourself, Navy?”

“Yup. This is my third one. Peridot told me to complete all three within one hour.”

It’s the 45-minute mark, and you’re already halfway done with the final puzzle. It goes by a lot faster without the other pieces from other puzzles mixed in.

“Seriously? Most Rubies are too dumb to even do one of them in one day.”

The Pearl is at a loss for words. You just need everyone to be quiet for five more minutes, and then you’ll be done…

Of course, it only takes three more minutes before you’ve connected all the major chunks together and fit in the lonely pieces not a part of any units to complete the puzzle as a whole. The Peridot stops the timer.

“Nice job, Navy!” Ruby raises her fist to punch you in the arm--traditional Ruby gesture of praise or affection. You remember that cravings are also a symptom of withdrawal. You take a step back to dodge it. Any physical contact with her could result in an unintentional fusion, considering her absurdly high potency for fusion at the moment.

“Wow, thanks…” you mutter quickly.

Steven is choking on the unspoken issue lingering in the air. “Rubywhyareyouunfusedwhathappened?”

Ruby shrugs. “Nothing.”

The Pearl’s fingers grip the cushions of the couch like a lifeline. “Did you and Sapphire get into a fight?”

“No, really, nothing happened,” Ruby swears. She cracks her knuckles nervously. “Actually, we both went on separate missions today.”

The Steven sighs in relief. “Not missions for Garnet, huh?” he assumes.

Ruby shakes her head. “Garnet could have handled it. But, you know, so could Sapphire and me.”

Lapis bursts into laughter, that same effervescent laugh from before. “I may not win them all, but I was right about fusion, wasn’t I?” She nudges the Peridot.

Ruby blushes. The Pearl glares at Lapis.

“And what was it that you were right about, exactly?” the Pearl demands threateningly.

Lapis rolls her eyes at the Crystal Gems’ defensive nature about the sacrilegious ritual of fusion. “You need a break from it, eventually.”

Pearl relaxes a bit, but she’s still wary of what Lapis is implying. “You can’t speak for Ruby and Sapphire’s case. Garnet is different from--”

“C’mon, now, there’s no point in arguing over this,” Ruby interrupts. “We can all speak from our own experiences, but the only ones qualified to talk about long-term fusions are me, Sapphire, Garnet, Lapis, and--” She glances at you, then immediately omits the last name. “--and, uh, that’s it. Sorry, Pearl, but Lapis is right. Sometimes we need a break.”

Huh. She actually took your advice. You suddenly have a deeper respect for Ruby. Like, two centimeters deeper.

The Pearl gapes. “You’ve had breaks before?” She holds her shocked faced in her hands. “I can’t believe it…”

“No,” Ruby says quietly. “This is the first time. Ever.” She starts that anxious pacing again, blackening the wooden floor with Ruby-sized footsteps. “First time for everything, huh?” she mumbles, mostly to herself. “Anything could happen. She could get attacked by wasps, or fall off a cliff, or get struck by lightning, or trip and fall on her gem, or get attacked by a corrupted gem, or, or, or…” She throws her hands into the air. “... EXPLODES!” She bites her fingers. “What if she explodes, Pearl? I can’t do anything if she explodes!”

You hop onto the couch to whisper into Lapis’ ear: “I think the real challenge is if Ruby can last an hour without fusing with Sapphire.”

She smirks. You’ve gained more hostility from the Peridot, but you can’t bring yourself to care about her amiability towards you if it means getting closer to Lapis.

An Amethyst enters the room, wondering what all the racket without her was about. “Is that Ruby? Without Sapphire?”

Ruby screams. “I can’t take this anymore! Fuse with me, Amethyst!”

The Amethyst isn’t prepared for this, clearly. “Oh. Uh. What for? I’m not sure how this is going to work, to be honest; we’re both usually the dippers, not the dippees...”

Ruby full-on tackles the Amethyst to the ground. Her gem is already glowing before their masses make contact with each other. Their bodies change into blinding white light for a few seconds, before Ruby’s form pushes the Amethyst away, tumbling them both out of the fusion. “No, I can’t do it! This isn’t the answer! I’m so sorry, Amethyst, I’m so sorry…”

The Amethyst lies on the ground, still confused.

As if summoned by the power of love, the Sapphire arrives on the warp pad. Ruby and the Sapphire meet each other halfway. The Pearl smothers the Steven into her chest when their lips lock in a fusion-starved reunion makeout and covers his ears with her hands when they start moaning into the kiss. The Peridot takes the initiative to squeeze her own eyes shut and cover her ears by herself. You wonder if chipping off a part of your gem will erase the memory of this lascivious act.

“Oh, Sapphy, I was so worried! The mission was so lonely just being alone!” Ruby says in between kisses up Sapphire’s neck. “I don’t know what to do without you, Sapphire, I’m so scared…”

The Amethyst rolls her eyes. “Ugh, this isn’t a novela, guys.”

The Sapphire clears her bangs so she can see Ruby for herself, right in front of her own eye instead of just her future vision. “I foresee a long fusion dance in our future.” She captures Ruby’s lips again in hers. “Let’s make this one special. We can go to a river, like the one from 5,750 years ago, under the moon with the stars twinkling enviously above us…”

You notice that her gem is glowing, but Ruby’s isn’t. Ruby laughs nervously. “... Under the full moon?”

The Sapphire touches their foreheads together. “Silly Ruby! It’s only at its first quarter right now.”

Ruby’s sweat sizzles off of her. “We could wait until the full moon,” she suggests.

The Sapphire giggles. “You’re so funny, Ruby--it’ll take a week before it becomes a full moon.”

Ruby glances worriedly at you. You’re not sure why she’s looking at you, specifically, for help. You didn’t force her to take your advice.

The Sapphire holds Ruby’s face in her hands. Her cold gem warms up under the heat of Ruby’s blushing face. She’s too afraid to use her future vision. For once, she’s looking at the situation in front of her with her very own eye. It is daytime, the other half of all time on Earth but full of light from the ever-burning Sun, yet the Sapphire feels the most blind than she has in ages. “Are you… tired… of fusing?”

The things you do for your comrades. “Ruby, you’re so forgetful! Weren’t you going to give me a tour of Beach City? I’d love to see the… thing you were talking about before!”

Ruby hits her head. “Oh, haha, right! How stupid of me to forget!”

The Sapphire keeps her eye locked on Ruby. “You’re not stupid.”

“C’mon, Ruby,” you reluctantly urge her. “I really can’t wait to see that thing!” What does a Sapphire have to worry about, anyway? If it’ll turn out okay in the end, she should be fine with it, and if it doesn’t, then she should already know that it’s destined.

Ruby grabs your hand and runs out of the house with you. “ByeseeyoulaterSapphyIloveyou!” She bumps into the table on the way out. “Oof!”

“Buh-bye!”

You didn’t mean to gain hostility from the Sapphire, too. The room is frozen over by the time you two make it out the door.

Scene vii. - A street in Beach City.

Earth has “food.” The native organic inhabitants consume certain substances for energy, about three times in a 24-hour cycle. Some foods are mostly for epicurean indulgence and tend to be high in a tiny crystalline structure called “sugar.” The category for these kinds of sweet foods is called dessert, sometimes treats, other times confections or pastries. Foods can come in various forms and temperatures. Ruby likes frozen desserts--”ice cream”, specifically, though only because she likes to melt it and also because they remind her of the Sapphire.

She takes you to a specialized fried pastry store maintained by two native humans. The door jingles when she holds it open for you. Beach City is like an urbanized human zoo, except resources are harvested by the humans instead of simply handed to them and the humans have independent consciences that can make their own decisions. Ruby takes two plastic-sealed ice cream treats from a freezer. “This is a freezer, by the way,” she explains offhandedly.

“... Did you not have freezers in Era 1 Homeworld?” you ask. “All Era 2 Roaming Eyes have one in case we’re sent on a retrieval mission for materials with special storage conditions. They can also keep an object hot.”

The glass door slams shuts. “Y’know… I don’t remember.”

You two are about to walk out of the store, but the tall human speaks up. “You have to pay for goods and services, here.”

“Just put it on Garnet’s tab,” Ruby says.

The shorter human appears to have noticed the gems on you two. “You know her?”

Ruby sighs. “Well, I don’t really have the star on my outfit, since Garnet is the one with mine and Sapphire’s stars, but yes, I’m a Crystal Gem. I’m Ruby.” She points at you. “This is Navy.”

Actually, you’re both Ruby, but okay. You suppose she can be the Alpha Ruby since she has been on Earth a few centuries longer. You didn’t know seniority was a big thing on Earth. “Hi! I’m new to this planet!”

The tall human shrugs. “Steven has weird new friends, whatever. We’ll put it on her tab. If she comes complaining later, I’m blaming you two.”

Ruby grits her teeth. “Y-Yup… I’m totally… a new friend…”

This Ruby sure has a lot of triggers. Her and Eyeball could have been great friends. “Hahaha… Buh-bye!”

You pull her out of the store and let her lead you to more parts of the Beach City. She takes the plastic wrapping off of the ice cream dessert and burns that into a crisp in her fist. Not even a second passes before the ice cream dessert evaporates and the wooden stick is ashes on the ground.

You would imitate her actions, but pyrokinesis was never your forte. You never needed it before. “Why do you like sibilant destruction?”

“Huh?”

Oops. Your mistake. You rephrase yourself. “Why do you like to burn things?”

She holds her gem up to eye level. “I like to feel. Heat is hard not to feel. It burns and it melts and it sizzles and it boils and it hisses… I don’t see it as destroying. I just think it’s simple reactions.”

She’s not wrong. Atoms can neither be created or destroyed. The frozen dessert she had still exists in the form of vapor in the atmosphere. “That explains why you’re so good at it.” Not that pyrokinesis is useful on Homeworld. Modern technology has made that skill obsolete. It’s quite bleak that Earth gems are always on a pursuit for a diversion from the fact that their existences are otherwise meaningless. Even a task as small as melting ice can be a means of coping. What a primeval occupation. You hand your frozen dessert to her. She needs it more than you.

In a moment, it’s ashes and vapor. Nothing more.

“Does Homeworld consider me defective?” Ruby asks.

“Uhh, that’s not really my department--” You’d certainly make a call to a professional Kindergartener if she was on your squadron, though. “In terms of value, you’re actually more--”

“Ugh! What Lars and Sadie said back there bothers me!”

“Who?”

“They didn’t even know me, but they know Garnet. And Pearl and Steven and Amethyst, they all only see me as half of Garnet! It’s never, ‘Hey, Ruby!’ It’s always, ‘Hey, Ruby, where’s Sapphire?’”

Why did you sign yourself up for this, again? “I thought you hated being a Ruby. Isn’t that why you’re always Garnet?” It’s a miracle she can even handle being on a mission by herself without spontaneously self-combusting.

She screams. There must have been a lot of that on her solo mission. It catches the attention of a few passing humans. “You’re right! I do hate myself! The reason why I stay fused all the time is because my love for Sapphire is just as strong as my self-hatred!”

Seriously, why did you do this to yourself? Her wails are so corrosive you can almost feel your gem cracking.

You decide to take her to the beach so she can (literally) blow off some steam.

Scene vii. - The Steven’s house, within the kitchen.

“I wish I could just set the ocean on fire!”

Now that’s a wild evocation you want to fulfill.

The interior of the Steven’s household is initially difficult to enter. You discover that it’s due to the door having been iced shut. The Sapphire is nowhere in sight, yet the house is a tundra. She must be nearby.

You’re alarmed by the unexpected fizzle under your feet as you step inside. You didn’t know your thermoregulation was unconsciously activated in frosty environments, likely an old feature that takes more trouble to get rid of than to keep. You can’t control it, though, or else you would turn it off. It tingles when you walk.

You rummage through the kitchen, a room dedicated to the storage and preparation of food, for oil. Or, at least, a handful of substances you think could be oil. Written Earth language is completely foreign to you; it’s curved or straight in all the wrong places and sometimes hook strangely like they want to pierce the letter next to them. It looks like there’s no system at all to the formation of each letter. They all exist individually with no coherent meaning unless they’re a part of a bigger word. It must be difficult to learn, and thus, difficult to teach. No wonder Earth is such a mess.

“Ruby!” The Pearl is disappointed to find that you’re not the Ruby she’s looking for. “Oh, Navy. What are you doing?”

“Hi, Pearl! I’m looking for oil.” You hold up the bottle in your hand. The liquid inside is frozen, just like everything else in the house. The freezer is probably warmer than the kitchen’s shelves at this point. “Is this oil?”

“That’s soy sauce...”

Ugh, you don’t need such a patronizing tone from a Pearl. It’s not like you’re not designated for fulfilling the wishes of another gem. You serve the Diamond Authority, so you’re not used to fetching trivial substances for a demand. Looks like you’ll need to learn Earth language for better convenience. “Is it flammable?”

“Flammable?” she echoes. “What are you trying to do?”

“Is it flammable?” you repeat. You want a proper response before you let a Pearl question your actions.

“No, it’s not,” she snaps. “Why do you need something flammable?”

“To set the ocean on fire.”

“What? You can’t set the ocean on fire!”

She’s not wrong, technically. Just smile and nod, and maybe it’ll lessen her hostility. “You’re right, Pearl! But I think I can achieve a realistic simulation of it by having a flammable buffer between the dihydrogen monoxide, preferably a liquid less dense than the dihydrogen monoxide.”

She’s taken aback. Oops. You should rephrase yourself for better understanding.

“I mean, if I put oil in the water, it’ll float and not mix with the water, so I could set the oil on fire and--”

“Yes, I know how the process goes.” The Pearl snatches away the soy sauce. You didn’t need it, anyway. “I meant you shouldn’t set the ocean on fire because it’s bad.”

So there are some forbidden recreational activities on Earth. Without some higher authority to appease, you’re not sure why. You don’t have the capability to set the entire ocean on fire unless you’re able to attain an entire ocean’s worth of oil. At best, you would be able to set a good, controlled portion of the ocean on fire. “Oh, I’m sorry, Pearl, I didn’t know it was bad! Ruby said she wanted to set the ocean on fire, so I was just trying to help…”

Scene ix. - A beach, beyond the Crystal Temple.

The sand Ruby has been sitting in has been superheated into glass. Although the water tries to invade her personal bubble of heat, it’s to no avail. It shrivels to a semi-circle of salt deposits before it can reach her.

“There’s this thing on Earth we do, called ‘exaggeration’. It’s when you blow things out of proportions because you’re a stupid, overly emotional Ruby.”

Yes, you know how hyperboles work. You have to humor the Crystal Gems, anyway. “I don’t really get it, but that sounds funny!”

The Pearl tries to step into Ruby’s “circle of emotions” as you call it, but it’s an attempt as fruitless as the water’s. She settles for a spot in the non-superheated sand a few meters away. “You’re more than that, Ruby. You know that. You were the one--well, technically it was Garnet--who told me--”

“I know what Garnet said.” Ruby curls into herself. “I just don’t want to be what you were to Sardonyx.”

The Pearl is struck speechless. She scoops up sand in her hand and lets it fall between her fingers. The frothy white crest of the ocean laps at her feet. You wonder who Sardonyx is.

Ruby stands up from the center of her circle and walks forward into the waves. Steam rises all around her. “I was really scared on that mission without Sapphire. It was so simple, too! All I had to do was bubble one of the weakest corrupted gems out there. And I thought I couldn’t do it just because I wasn’t with her. That makes me no different than, um…” She moves farther into the ocean. “... someone who I suddenly can’t remember the name of.”

Oh, come on, that sounds so fake. Who is this mystery person that’s being referenced?

The Pearl nods knowingly. “Garnet looked so stable just last night. I would have never guessed.”

Ruby kicks and splashes the water. “This isn’t about fusion! Why is it always about fusion when me, Sapphire, or Garnet is involved?” The water starts to boil around her. “Fusion, fusion, fusion! Maybe that’s the answer! Maybe I’m sick of fusion! Maybe I’m sick of erasing myself because existence is just an idle quest for objective in a void of absurdity!”

She’s completely right about that.

“Being makes me anxious. And I mean me, Ruby--the stupid, worthless, disposable, emotional…” She pauses for a word at the tip of her tongue. “... uh…”

“Incendiary?” you suggest.

Ruby blinks. “Um, yeah, thanks. I’m still a stupid, worthless, disposable, emotional, incendiary Ruby after a long-term fusion, a war, and the development of human civilization, but…” She pauses, but the pause goes on so long that you’re distracted by the cries of flying white-winged creatures in the sky. “Uh, that’s it, so far. It’s been like, three hours since I’ve been just Ruby all on my own. I need more time before I can learn a real lesson from all of this.”

The Pearl winces at the unresolved tensions swirling around Ruby. “Well. No rush. Just… remember what you’re worth to us as a Crystal Gem.”

Scene x. - Deep into the ocean.

“Oh no, oh no, oh no… What am I worth as a Crystal Gem?” Ruby asks herself as she paces back and forth at the bottom of the ocean.

You look around at the aquatic organisms. Their design is unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. You don’t know how they got there or why there’s such diversity within even a single species, but you don’t want to resign yourself to the Peridot’s “nothing on Earth makes sense” theory. No matter how ludicrous it is, there is always logic within madness. There are patterns to decode, languages to translate, behaviors to study.

“I don’t even have the star! Should I poof myself and get a star? But that would be stupid!”

The Steven mentioned that Lapis performed the incredible feat of stealing all of Earth’s oceans in order to build herself a tower to get back to Homeworld when she was cracked. You think Ruby can perform a similar miracle and evaporate all of Earth’s oceans by the time she reaches her final eureka about the baffling paradox of a meaningless existence searching for meaning.

Scene xi. - The barn.

“But which pairing do you think is better? Percy and Pierre or Percy and Paulette?”

You glance between the Peridot’s shipping chart and the unreadable notes Lapis scribbled on the blackboard. There’s a striking resemblance between the writing in the chart and the notes that distracts you from the issue your barnmates pose at you. “Why can’t all three of them be together?” you propose.

The Peridot narrows her eyes at you. “Three’s a crowd,” she hisses.

Wow, okay, totally not groovy. You hold up the shipping chart next to Lapis’ notes for better comparison. “You two have the same kind of writing. It’s like Earth language and gem language combined.”

The Peridot folds her arms smugly. “Yes, we have our own little dialect here, derived from our special culture here in our barn. We moved in at the same time.”

“We never learned English completely,” Lapis confesses bluntly, in contrast to the Peridot’s frilly interpretation of their Earth-Gem writing mess. “Maybe you could learn it and teach it to us, since you’re so good at learning.”

A genuine blush rises to your cheeks. “Oh, stop!” You perform the corresponding gesture that Ruby and the Sapphire’s fusion did in response to the same flattery-induced embarrassment.

“No, really, you’re smart for a Ruby,” Lapis insists. “I know you caught up to the third season so fast because you watched every episode at twice its normal speed. That’s pretty clever. You could ask Pearl to teach you.”

Ugh. That Pearl… But you can’t look away from that unusually kind smile Lapis has today. Maybe it’s just hard-wired into your gem to want to obey higher-ranking gems like Lapis.

Scene xii. - The Steven’s house.

It’s a numb realization that spreads within you like ice blooming around the Sapphire--you’re enduring this long-winded, tedious torture for Lapis.

“Before we even touch the written alphabet, there’s so much to discuss about phonetics in the English language! English has five sonorous syllables categorized into ‘vowels’: A, E, I, O, U, with a tricky addition known as Y...”

This test of endurance, infinity more dull than your training days, is for an entity independent of any higher authority or community. You could even go as far as to say that, in this scenario, she’s the one acting as the higher authority. Just her. Your commitment to this task is for her sake. You placed her on a higher echelon than you for no “rational” Earth reason. Not because of a caste system or a punishment or a social pressure. After all, this is irrelevant to your primary objective to Find Jasper and your secondary objective to Get Ahead In Homeworld, and thus, won’t be included in your mission report. Your motive aligns more with a primitive inferiority complex embedded into the “moral” coding of your gem type than pure self-interest.

You don’t like to believe that amenableness is an innate quality for you, though. You comment without raising your hand, which is a gesture that communicates proper English classroom deference. “Pearl, this method of teaching is a little…”

She doesn’t hear you over her sonorous ego. “... We’ll begin at the beginning. Lots of words begin with the vowel A. Apple, air, away…” She writes two versions of the letter on the chalkboard.

You speak up a little louder. “... antiquated.”

The Pearl pauses, then smiles rewardingly. “Yes, ‘antiquated’ begins with the letter A, too!” The pedantic praise grates at you.

You slump onto the wooden platform attached to your seat. “Also, anachronistic,” you deadpan.

“Yes!” The Pearl claps her hands together. “‘Also’ and ‘anachronistic’ begin with the letter A, too. You’re a fast learner.”

You smile. And laugh. And want to shatter yourself a little. “Oh, not really, you’re just a really great teacher, Pearl.”

She beams at you. “We’ll stop now, for today. Amethyst warned me about burning you out too soon.”

Wait. What, already? You scour the room for the nearest clock. Apparently, pi-over-six radians have already passed by in circular Earth time, or 1/24th of a solar day. All you learned was the letter A. You don’t even know the significance of the two sizes of the letter A.

On your wooden platform, the Pearl slams three kilograms of thin, white sheets in a stack. “Here’s your homework: writing practice. Complete it by tomorrow, and then we’ll be able to move on.”

You pick up the sheet on the top, which has black imprinted onto it in the shapes of variously sized A’s, along with small instructional English text at the top. Some of the A’s are formed by dots and others are in a light gray ink. You’re supposed to trace over these letters until you’re “advanced” enough to write the letter without a model (you can hear the Pearl’s emphasis on the A in your mind, ugh). Nothing is written in gem language.

Pearl snatches the sheet away from you and waves the flames off of it. Wisps of smoke trails off of the sheet as it moves. “Careful, Navy. Paper is flammable.”

“Oh no,” you say halfheartedly as you slam your hand onto the stack of homeworks. “How clumsy of me.” It combusts. “I feel. So. Bad.”

Then, the Pearl teaches you what a fire extinguisher is through demonstration--a much more efficient method than oral explanation.

Scene viii. - The Steven’s house, within the kitchen.

The Amethyst has an even more simplistic teaching method, but at least the straightforward nature of it is faster. It’s fit for a Ruby, but doesn’t linger on the basics too long. She places small, adhesive sheets (paper, but this particular object is called a sticky note, which makes sense because it is a note that sticks) on objects with the written word for it. She sounds it out for you as she writes out the label for each object, which you have to admit is very helpful.

“Cccuuuppp… Chaaaiiirrr… Sssiiinkkk… Tttooortaaa… Rrruubbyy…” She sticks the last sticky note on your gem.

“Ruby?”

The temperature suddenly drops. The Sapphire floats into the room. Her eye is exposed, fervently searching for her Ruby, her love, her literal other half. She knows she found the wrong Ruby before she even sees you. “Hello, Navy. You’re learning English.”

You’re almost afraid to think a wrong thought in her presence. But only almost. “Yes, Your Clarity,” you respond instinctively. She can read your future, not your thoughts. Plus, since you’ve made it this far, then that means she can’t the definite future, otherwise she would have found Ruby by now.

She has the courtesy to stop staring directly towards your general direction. (You know she’s not looking at you, she’s looking through you.) It unnerves you how subtly her power manifests in the way she carries herself. The thin glaze of frost barely misses you. Your natural heat prevents external conditions from affecting the temperature within your minuscule radius. “We don’t use those titles on Earth,” she says politely.

Classless, unorganized society on its path towards self-ruination--right, right. You offer a sunny smile with your hands clasped behind your back. “Forgive me.”

“Hm.” The noise communicates nothing you can use to your advantage.

“Dude, chill,” the Amethyst whispers. Pun fully intended.

You resort to laughter. Ruby does it when the situation is uncomfortable, so it must be a proper course of action. “Are there no manners on Earth, either? I was polished to be a gentlegem.”

“Formalities are discarded amongst one’s compatriots.”

You don’t know what to say. There’s no energy to match. Even time seems to stand frozen in her presence, so fragile that you’re afraid a single movement could shatter the moment. The ice crystals continue to spread around her.

“‘The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog,’” she finally concludes.

Then, she floats out of the room as lightly as she floated in. The Amethyst goes to the fridge to rearrange the jumble of plastic magnetic English letters on it to form the sentence. “Woah, that’s cool.”

“Everything in the room is cold,” you point out.

“No, the sentence she just said uses up all the letters of the alphabet.” She writes it down on a sticky note for you. “This will totally ruin Pearl’s lesson plans, huh?”

Scene xiv. - The barn.

You finish the remaining two seasons of Camp Pining Hearts at double the speed, with subtitles, then the entire series from the start with subtitles, on mute. You think you get it, but just to make sure, you search the barn for a book so you can apply your knowledge. If you’ve truly learned it, then simple tasks like setting the ocean on fire will be that much easier. It’s difficult to find a small stick of metal in a stack of dried organic stems, though. By luck, you’re able to find one of Lapis’ favorite books. She said it only makes sense to her because of the pictures, but anything with written words in it will do. Read from right to left, she said.

Your hope sinks as you flip through the pages. These characters, although more elegant and reminiscent of gem language, are nothing like “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” They consist of more complex strokes within a single character, which can stand alone like mini pictures. Nothing you just learned is applicable.

Scene xv. - Beyond the barn, in the corn fields. Nighttime.

One of the noises of the dark half of time is chirping from a cricket. The source is difficult to locate because the creature, you’ve read, is only about 50 millimeters. The Peridot had you read her a book about insects to test you. Obviously, you passed, or else you wouldn’t be following her while she hunts for crickets. On Earth, doing favors for others has unexpected consequences.

The corn stalks rustle. “Peridot?” you call out. She disappears into the corn so easily.

“Naaaaavyyyyy!”

The Steven flies out of the corn stalks and onto you. The surprise attack induces a Pavlovian response from your training days, which includes rolling on top of him and readying yourself to summon your weapon. Upon finding that your fight or flight response is for naught, you let yourself roll back under you to feign submission. “Steeeeveeen!” You hope he didn’t notice the glow of your gem. Dust clouds kick up around you two as you both roll around.

“Haha, you’re really warm!” He gets off of you. “Actually, you’re hot…”

You laugh, too. Gaining better control of your thermoregulation is currently at the bottom of your agenda. It’s his business if he gets himself burned. “Steven, why is manga so different? Is it from another planet?”

“No, Earth has a lot of different languages. Manga is in Japanese instead of English.”

“Ohyou’vegottobekiddingme,” you hiss between gritted teeth. Earthlings can’t even decide on a single planet-wide language to use. You can’t imagine how there’s not wars left and right just about the language barrier issue.

“Huh?”

You force yourself to laugh more. “Oh, no kidding! Earth is such a funny place, I love this planet so much!”

Steven hugs you. This time, you’re prepared for it. “I’m so glad, Navy! That’s one more gem lending her hand to protect Earth!”

You didn’t sign up for that.

Scene xvi. - Your ship.

Lapis sitting on the edge of your Roaming Eye’s opening is unsettling. Wind swirls around the ship like a private tornado and makes all conversation useless. A few times, she stood up with intent, letting her skirt ripple and flap around her as if she was readying herself for flight, but then she sits back down after a while until the process starts all over again. You offered her your seat as an incentive to rest somewhere less precarious. She declined. You don’t really understand art, even if you appreciate its aesthetic.

You don’t hear her walk up behind you. She perches herself on the arm of your chair. “You can close it now.”

You don’t hear that, either, so you close the door. “Huh?”

She shrugs. You will never know what she said. “The moon is beautiful tonight.”

Actually, you don’t like the Earth’s moon. Bad stuff happened there. “Uhh…”

“You know what else is beautiful?” she asks you. The Peridot’s attention is caught, now.

You blush. “U-Um…”

Long fingers dangle mere centimeters away from your own--temptingly, teasingly. A radiance this dark isn’t supposed to charm you. It’s an art, though. You must resist. Such close proximity on the captain’s seat is reserved for gossip. Giving into primal urges would make you more human than gem. Relinquish the Id, bask in the Superego.

Her rise in volume is uncharacteristically jarring. “The phases of the moon.”

A chill runs through you. You nod. “‘O, swear not by the moon, th’ inconstant moon,’” you quote, “‘That monthly changes in her circle orb, Lest thy love prove likewise variable.’” Waves of heat wash over you.

“Do you know what else is beautiful, Ruby?” the Sapphire chimes in. She sits in what used to be the rookie Ruby’s seat.

“You?” Ruby squeaks. She sits on the opposite side of the Sapphire, where you formerly sat.

“Garnet.”

You think about that button at the back of the ship, the one that you were going to tell Steven to press on your first day on Earth. That’s a really nice button.

The Pearl stands up and claps her hands together. The Amethyst is quick to occupy her spot as soon as she makes her way towards the center of the ship. “Alright, everyone, here’s how this mission is going to go--”

You spin your chair around to face her. “What is this mission?” Usually, you know your objective before you proceed. It’s standard protocol for successful missions, no matter where you pledge your loyalty.

The Pearl doesn’t appreciate being interrupted as much as you don’t appreciate being uninformed. She reluctantly explains the objective to you. “We’re searching for eight corrupted gembeasts. Since there are eight of us now, we can split into four even teams--”

“Isn’t it safer if we all just stick together?” you propose.

Lapis spins the two of you away from the Pearl. “If there’s eight of us, then that’s one for each corrupted gem.” Then, she spins you two back to her. And then away. And then back. And then in a circle.

The Pearl sighs. The Sapphire floats towards her and rests a comforting hand on her shoulder. “One team is too slow and eight teams is too risky. It’ll be me and Ruby, Pearl and Amethyst, Lapis and Peridot, and Steven and Navy.”

There appears to be unanimous satisfaction with the groupings until Ruby spins her chair towards the center. “That’s so predictable, Sapph,” she teases.

You shiver.

“N-Not that there’s anything wrong with predictable! Or predicting!”

Amethyst kicks her feet up on the dashboard of the aggressive Ruby’s former post. “Yeah, it’s always same-old, same-old. Let’s change it up. It’s kinda unfair that the veteran Crystal gems get paired up.”

The Sapphire isn’t pleased with this new path, but she concedes. “The most compatible pairs, then, would be--”

“Me and Amethyst, Sapphire and Steven, Lapis and Navy, and Pearl and Peridot,” Ruby proposes.

The Sapphire sits back down.

“Wait,” the Peridot says, “what were the most compatible pairs?”

“Oh, no, those were it, Peridot,” the Sapphire confirms. “Even if we’re split up, we’re still synchronized with the power of love.”

You and Lapis cringe simultaneously.

Scene xvii. - Above an evergreen forest. Flying.

You’re holding hands with Lapis. You’re also dangled a few thousand meters above a forest, but gosh, you’re holding hands with Lapis. The Lapis’-eye-view impresses you, even as shadowy as it is. You’re never able to get this great of a look on the landscape in the ship--just clouds and meteors.

“What does a corrupted gembeast look like?” you ask, finally.

She doesn’t even seem to be on the lookout for the targets. “I dunno. Peridot said they’re ugly.”

Oh, that sure narrows it down. Most things on Earth are ugly: the English alphabet, crickets, unresponsive photosynthetic organisms… It’s only worth living on to find the few exceptions, sparse and rare. “Wouldn’t it be better to get a closer look on the ground, then?”

“Oh no, you’re slipping,” Lapis declares halfheartedly as she lets go of your hands entirely.

You maintain your grip on her. “I do know how to float.”

“Really?” Lapis is genuinely surprised. “Peridot said that Era 2 gems are handicapped by the lack of resources on Homeworld.”

“I wasn’t made on Homeworld.” You see a couple of trees fall over, below. “Plus, Rubies are easier to make, so they turn out better.”

Her hands hold onto yours, again. She squeezes yours. “... Do you miss Homeworld?”

“My squadron had this saying: ‘Homeworld is where the conquering is.’” Your eyes stay locked on the fallen trees.

Her hold on your hands loosen. “Oh.”

A cry, which you believe can be rightly classified as “ugly”, erupts. You think the source is from the same area from the fallen trees, but it’s hard to tell from so high up. Everything looks like it can be measured in centimeters from your perspective. “We should get a closer look.”

She looks down at you. “I like the view.”

Oh, right--Lapises aren’t made for missions. “Gosh, Lapis,” you say with exaggerated fascination, “your wings are so strong! I bet you can descend really easily--”

“Ugh, okay, I heard you the first time.” She lets go of you for a brief second before wrapping her arms around your waist and diving towards the fallen trees. You’re alarmed by the hand over your navel gem. “Stop heating up or else I’ll drop you.”

(Were you always this uptight about mission objectives? You swear you would’ve had the same attitude as Lapis before.) “I don’t know how,” you confess.

“Seriously? Ugh, Era 2 gems and their lack of control over their powers!”

She actually drops you. You thought it was only an empty threat, so you fall for a few seconds and scream until she dives under you to catch you on her back. Your gem feels ready to burst out of its placement location. She snorts when you immediately cling to her back. “Ha! You totally fell for that!”

Lapis terrifies you more than an Agate. “Haha… I sure am susceptible to gravity when dropped thousands of meters in the sky…” This flight has sure brought you two closer together. In fact, you’re inseparable from her now. You’re quivering against her back gem as she accelerates straight down.

She doesn’t even care to fly into the clearing that was made earlier, she just crashes you both through the branches. You end up falling off of her and tumble into the dirt while she gracefully floats beside you. Her toes touch the dirt first, then her entire foot rolls into the Earth. “Did you know that the trees on Earth change colors during certain seasons?”

You brush the dirt off of you after standing up. You have a limit to how much you can pretend to love the dirt. “These are evergreen trees. They stay green all the time.”

She crosses her arms. “Oh.”

You’ve disappointed her. How cruel of her to go through phases so quickly. At least the inconsistency of the moon has a pattern. She pulls tides at mere whims. “Th-They still change!” you promise. “They just stay the same color when they grow.”

She uncrosses her arms. “Oh!”

You hear trees fall to your right. “That way.” You light your gem in the direction of the noise.

You deliberately slow down so Lapis can lead you. Although the moist dirt gives way to the pressure of your feet, Lapis barely leaves a trace. You think she hates the Earth so much that she doesn’t even want to walk on it--she’s so silly.

“You’re slow,” Lapis says bluntly.

“I like the view,” you say without thinking. Oops. You try to save face. “I mean--”

“You really think so?”

A dried twig you step on scorches. Maybe you should learn how to control your powers instead of ignoring them for the sake of more important tasks. “... ‘I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.’”

“You’re so funny, Navy!” Lapis giggles out. “That’s like, spoken meepmorp.”

Well, she’s not wrong. You’d be happy to tell her more if the corrupted gem beast hadn’t just cried out. It’s close. You and Lapis stay still while the noise echoes. The soundwaves bounce into the open air for a few good seconds, then silence settles in their place--a void compensating for a lack of substance. Lapis scoops you into her arms and takes off towards the noise. Water wings are out before you can even register that you’re off the ground.

Your pink gem light is turned towards the corrupted gem. The monster’s mane travels from down its head to a tail at the end. Where eyes should have been are horns. The entirety of its body (you can’t even bring yourself to imagine the gem it used to be, so it’s an “it”) is a muddy brick orange, splotched with yellow and dark orange. It screeches from the light exposure, then pounces away on its hind legs. It’s forced to tread on four limbs instead of two due to its abnormally long flat hind legs and awkward back arch, which weighs down its chest like its intended pose is to be prostrated before proper gems.

“It really is ugly!” Lapis remarks. Puddles rise in the form of chains and fly after the beast. They wrap around its hind legs. The hands disturb you the most--they’re fat, stubby fingers that remind you that its form was once another perfect creation of the Diamonds and they claw desperately into the dirt in an attempt to escape. The chains pull the beast towards Lapis, piling just in front of her, without her even lifting a finger. She walks towards her trapped prey. “So this is what Jasper has been up to.”

Jasper. You let yourself slip out of Lapis’ arms and float to the ground. The beast garbles and snorts softly as a makeshift whimper. You can’t believe the Jasper your squadron has been looking for associated herself with malformed masses of monstrosity. That thing was a Jasper, too, you think.

(You turn off your light. Such a blasphemous form is better to be forgotten in the pits of death’s second self. If only more trees could shoot out of the ground and shade this tragedy from the moonlight’s gaze.)

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Mass-produced gems cling to each other for strength. She found one of her own kind.” The chains tighten. “No offense.”

(Can’t those chains capture you, instead? Won’t they wash over you, cleanse your gem, and thus spring forth a renewed form? Oh, but you’re just mass. Mass and light. Perhaps darkness is the water you’re looking for.)

You approach it cautiously. You’re afraid you might catch its peculiar affliction if you’re too close. “What was Jasper doing?”

“Bad stuff,” Lapis says, and leaves it at that. How wonderfully vague. “You wanna shatter it?”

You… sincerely hope she’s joking. She says it so casually that you don’t know if she’s serious. Gems are never shattered, nowadays. Poofing is the worst punishment due to how little resources are available for manufacturing new gems. The methods of poofing, though, have advanced since Era 1. “We’re supposed to bubble it.”

“Oh, but…” Her voice pitch shoots up to soprano as she feigns a coy, swooning facade. “... I wanted to see a strong, capable gem weapon from a modern-day gem!”

“I haven’t summoned my weapon in ages.” (What is it, again? A hammer? Wait, no, that’s another Ruby. A scythe, right?)

Lapis rolls her eyes. “Ugh, Era 2,” she grumbles. “It’ll be out of its eternal misery if it’s shattered.”

She’s right. “Sapphire specifically told us that we’re not allowed to shatter the corrupted gems.”

“Fine, but you’re in charge of capturing the next one if you’re not going to shatter anything. I can’t do all the work around here.” She saps water from the ground to form a giant bubble around the corrupted gem. “Plus, I really do want to see your weapon.”

You don’t remind her that you’re the reason why the task is being completed correctly. The two of you continue to look for another corrupted gem with the bubbled beast floating behind. You end up summoning your weapon, mostly for Lapis’ sake, to clear some thick foliage out of the way.

“Oh, so it’s a sickle. You should help Peridot and me harvest.”

Scene xviii - Near a lake in an evergreen forest.

You think Lapises are attracted to water, no matter where they are, because her leading you to the lake is no coincidence. Though, you think she would have preferred it if weren’t frozen over and that Steven and Sapphire weren’t hiding in a spiky pink bubble in the middle of the lake while five corrupted gems circle around them.

“This one’s yours,” Lapis says. She crosses her arms and leaves you to your designated task. “Go ahead.”

You walk towards the lake for a better look. The beasts aren’t alarmed by your presence and seem to have no interest in attacking you. However, you can’t simply rush up to them, slash with your sickle, and hope they’ll suddenly be tamed--for one, ice automatically melts in your presence, and also, there’s no way you can take on all of the beasts at once.

“Sapphire!” Ruby comes springing out of a bush and immediately rushes up to them, summoning her gauntlet, under the assumption that she can subdue them all at once. You tackle her down. “What are you doing? She needs me!”

You can’t believe you have to explain something so obvious. “Ice melts under heat.”

“I don’t care! I can swim!” She pushes you off of her, but then catches sight of Lapis and the bubbled beast. (You would’ve put up more of a fight, usually, but seeing how second-nature she summons her weapon frightens you. Maybe she could subdue all the gem beasts at once.) “You!” She points at Lapis angrily. “First of all, you’re supposed to poof the corrupted gems!”

“Pearl said we had to bubble them.”

“Yes!” Ruby exclaims, pulling at her hair. “Poof, and then bubble them!” She lets out a strangled scream. “And second of all, why aren’t you helping? You could have saved Sapphire by now!” She kicks up dirt. “Ice is frozen water!”

Lapis cares enough to fix at least one of her mistakes, and compresses the bubble tighter and tighter until it poofs the corrupted gem. You look away. “Okay, I know all the properties of ice now--thanks, Rubies, but did you also know that ice is frozen ice?”

She’s… not… wrong…

The Amethyst emerges from a bush. “Thanks for leaving me behind, Ru…” She brushes leaves and dust off of her form, then runs to the edge of the lake where her partner is. “Steven and Sapphire!” She makes it onto the frozen lake, but the ice is unable to handle her weight, causing it to crack and collapse the Amethyst into the water.

“Thin ice,” you observe.

The Amethyst swims back to land. “Really? I didn’t notice.”

But if the beasts are still able to stay on the ice without falling into the water, you reason that the ice must be thicker where they are.

“What does that even mean, Lazuli?” Ruby shrieks.

Lapis crosses her arms. “It means that your fusion counterpart is leaving me to do all the work even though she’s literally in her element and I don’t want to do it.”

You heat up your sickle, then throw it far into the lake to where the corrupted beasts are circling the spiky pink bubble. It hooks deep into the ice with a force strong enough to initiate a long crack down the middle of the entire lake. The beasts’ mindless panic exacerbates it, which causes more cracks and separates each beast onto its own personal floating ice island. Steven uses this opportunity to roll the bubble back onto land, away from the beasts. He’s panting when he makes it; letting the pink bubble burst is a major relief to him.

“Sapphire!”

“Ruby!”

“... And… Steven!” Steven adds between gulps of oxygen.

The two gems look like they’re about to embrace, but Ruby grabs Sapphire by the shoulders and shakes her. “Why didn’t you just poof them yourself? You can control ice! You could’ve made spikes or frozen them or made the ice so slippery they couldn’t walk or trapped them in ice cages or used your future vision to avoid this in the first place…”

Sapphire throws herself into Ruby’s arms. “I didn’t know. I just saw the moon, and then I couldn’t think anymore.”

“The moon?” Ruby looks up at that cursed orb and sees what Sapphire saw: a waning gibbous, the phase after the full moon. All frustration leaves her. Her voice softens. “Oh Sapph, I’m--” But she already knows nothing she says can prevent Sapphire from sobbing into her hands, so she takes Sapphire’s hand gem and kisses it. “I’m stupid. You can’t even control ice, you just know how to freeze things. I can’t control fire, either, I just know how to heat things.”

Sapphire brushes her bangs out of her face and stares up at Ruby. “You’re not stupid. Stupid is that we’re still unfused. I can’t see a future where we’re not together, yet we’re still apart from each other. I don’t even know what we’re fighting about!”

��We’re not fighting, Sapphire.”

“Then what’s the problem?” Sapphire begs. “Garnet is the perfect fusion, Ruby. How could you just throw that away?”

“Nonono, we can still be Garnet! But don’t you just want to… exist?”

“Not without you.”

Ruby glances at the Steven. She hugs Sapphire. “Let’s end this.”

Scene xix. - Your ship.

You’re not sure, exactly, how Lapis ended up taking up your entire seat. She seemed content on the arm of the chair until she began to lean on you. You think you gradually scooted to the edge of your seat to accommodate her. At one point, she was across your lap, sound asleep, and you couldn’t see the panel at all. You just decide to relinquish the seat to her and surrender to your old seat on the right side of the captain’s seat. You could still pilot the ship from there, anyway, and the controls on that panel are more familiar to you.

While you’re up, you look around. The Steven is asleep, too, squished into the same seat as the Peridot, who is making sure all is well with the ship. The Pearl is doing the same while talking quietly with the Amethyst next to her. The Sapphire is as still as an unbreakable silence. Ruby can’t stop moving.

Ruby stops swiveling in your chair when she sees you accessing the panel in front of her. You sigh--someone altered the basic customization settings. All the applications are in the wrong place, and, ugh, someone thought blue was a more suitable color for the windows than yellow. You can barely read with the new color preferences. Nothing feels right at your very own seat. You rest lightly on Ruby’s knees while you squint for the settings application. This panel is the one remnant of your squadron you’re not willing to sacrifice.

“Do you want me to move?” Ruby asks.

“C’mon, we’re Rubies, you know it’s fine,” you scoff. “Unless you think it’s more comfortable to just fuse.”

She relaxes. “Oh. Um. Okay.”

You have no idea which application is which, anymore. You’re just taking shots in the dark. You’ve become desensitized to the icons and text of each application after a couple of decades of having the spot of each application memorized based solely on where it felt right to be in. Honestly, you don’t think you recognize half these applications simply because you never used them often.

By chance, you stumble upon the panel settings. There are so many sliders to adjust, though. You don’t remember the exact slider positions for the yellow color you preferred. You look to your left, where the veteran Ruby is supposed to be, but she’s not there to help you find that exact shade of yellow you prefer with her virtually photographic memory. The Steven is there, squished into the same seat as the Peridot.

You slam your hands onto your panel and hop onto Ruby’s lap. That touch command was supposed to close all of the apps, but even that has been changed. It opens the atmospheric shield settings. “Oh, Ruby…” You hide your face in her shoulder; you don’t even want to look at your panel, anymore, it’s already ruined. Crystal germs, indeed--nothing is safe from their infectious touch. The Ruby you’re with is no different, but it’s hard to see her as an enemy. “Comrade,” says you, who only wants to feel the word escape your lips at least one more time.

“N-Navy? What’s wrong?” Ruby doesn’t know what to do with her hands, suddenly. The heat of her hands hover behind your back.

That gut-wrenching feeling when you saw the corrupted gem beast clawing its hands into the dirt returns. “Why are we poofing gems?”

She tentatively puts one hand on your back. “Existence is painful for corrupted gems. We’re bubbling them until we find a way to completely heal them.”

That thing that used to be a Jasper was afraid for the remnants of its life. Homeworld would have put them to use. Maybe in a zoo. Maybe for research. At least they would have a use instead of being hidden away in a gemmade static purgatory. “May I express dissent, my comrade?”

Ruby sighs and rubs reassuring circles on your back. “You don’t need to be so formal on Earth.”

“I don’t like poofing gems,” you confess. You curl into Ruby’s chest. “There’s too little resources. Too little gems. I’m proud that Rubies are disposable because that means we can still live on after one of us is gone. We’re popular. We can go more places, have more uses, be more significant in quantity if not quality.” Maybe you don’t have as much sign value as a Pearl, but a Ruby’s use value is much higher than a Lapis’. Lapises have no more new planets to terraform.

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize…”

Your face feels wet. “Do you remember what bubbling means on Homeworld?”

“Imprisonment.”

You smile. Her age makes you feel like you’re still fresh out of the Kindergarten. “No, not anymore. We have special barriers for that. Now, it means a gem is obsolete. Too good to shatter, but not useful enough to exist.”

“We’re trying to save them, though--we’re different. It’s not like we’re the ones that corrupted them.”

That’s what Homeworld says, too. “At least those gems can still exist when they’re not bubbled.”

Scene xx. - Near the Steven’s house.

The official Crystal Gems are dropped off first at the Crystal Temple. With the deep oranges mixing into the midnight blue, a dawn of a new day flourishes. The hot color forgets last night’s immoralities, yet permeates it into your memory all the same. You try not to look at the sunrise. You have no right to tarnish a star’s light with personal afflictions. It is not the dawn after a dusk of poofing, it is only dawn, and there will continue to be more similar dawns after this one no matter what you see during the dusk.

Ruby is the last to leave the Roaming Eye. She lingered, even after she shooed you off of her lap and you shooed Lapis off of the captain’s seat. You wanted her to leave so you could close the door already.

“Is there something you want to say?” you ask. You hope it’s what she was going to say when she first visited you in the ship.

She punches you in the arm. “Oh, who cares what I say?”

She’s jovial, for some reason. You wonder if you should say that you care, that Homeworld would’ve given a strong Era 1 gem like her her own squadron, that inflation has made her far more valuable than what she thinks she’s worth. But you wonder for so long that she’s already out of the ship and hugging her Sapphire from behind. The light of the rising sun makes you blink, which is long enough for you to miss their masses turning into light and fusing into one Garnet.

“Garnet!” the Pearl, Amethyst, and Steven exclaim.

They all run to hug her. Peridot rushes to your side to see what she missed. Lapis groggily joins you, too.

“How did Ruby and Sapphire make up, though?” the Steven asks. “They were fighting the entire time until they just decided to ignore each other on the ride back home!”

The fusion’s visor gleams. “An answer isn’t always needed. After all, I’m too good to not exist.”

You give her a thumbs-down before you drag Lapis and the Peridot back inside the ship so you can close the door. (There’s no way you can ever condone this absurdity.) The ramp retracts slowly. Oh your stars, who changed that setting? Who could possibly want all the suspense and apprehension of a slow ramp?

“Buh-bye,” Garnet says before her face disappears behind the closing door.

Scene xxi. - The Steven’s house.

Lapis likes to pick out puzzles for you to complete. You’ve actually already finished all of the Steven’s puzzles at least twice, but that’s not saying much. He only has five. Nevertheless, Lapis enjoys how fast you’re able to make pictures out of pieces. Of course she does. Earth is a planet of instant gratification. Time is like a currency. Earthlings gain more when they spend more of it.

The Steven digs in his closet for more toys for you to play with. “Aha!” he exclaims triumphantly. He tosses a cube with multi-colored squares on it to you. “That’s a Rubik’s Cube! Right now, it’s mixed up, but the goal is to shift it so that every side has only one color.”

You toss it back at him, completely solved. “Earth puzzles are so absurd,” you muse. By that, you mean all struggles on Earth are senseless and characteristic of a chaotic universe.

Garnet and the Pearl arrive on the warp pad.

“Oh, perfect!” the Pearl says. “You’re all conveniently gathered here, just waiting for something new to do! Garnet and I were just talking about how our newer additions should be employed more.”

Garnet nods. “That means Peridot, Lapis, and…”

There’s a moment of suspense as she holds off on saying your name. The first few seconds could have been brushed off as dramatic effect. At the ten-second mark, it becomes questionable.

“... Navy,” she finally finishes. But then she shakes her head. “No, not Navy.” She folds her hands together. “Yes, Navy should come, too.” Then, she throws her hands back to her sides in closed fists. “We can’t make her,” she hisses.

“I’ll go,” you declare. You feel pressured to volunteer if everyone else is going. If you didn’t, you would be left all alone in the Steven’s house with Id-filled games. At least you’ll be put to use. It’s working for the enemy, yes, but you’ll just call it “advanced undercover work.” Maybe you’ll be able to sneak in a few questions about where bubbled gems go when they’re sent off, what Jasper was trying to do, where Jasper is…

You’ve been developing a theory about where she could be, but it’s hard to brainstorm without four other heads and with notes you have to write in Japanese to keep secret. (Lapis and the Peridot think it’s a Piercy fanfiction about a bad game of Truth Or Dare. Eventually, you’ll actually need to write one for them. You also need a completely new set of notes just listing all the lies you’ve told.) Something about Pink Diamond, that’s the most you know. It all seems to come back to her--the missions you were sent on, the fits the veteran Ruby has thrown, the diminishing resources on Homeworld, the disappearance of Blue Diamond’s influence--yet nobody wants to actually talk about her. That’s the flaw about gems’ built-in inferiority complex. Their devotion drives them to their own destruction. Meanwhile, you can’t even fully commit yourself to your squadron.

“... so, that’s why everyone should be involved!” the Pearl explains.

Oh, groovy. You missed the entire briefing. You’re too used to tuning out the Pearl’s voice. “Uh, can you clarify the… um… first part?”

“Garnet and I were talking about how you, Peridot, and Lapis should be utilized more for missions.”

“Oh, haha, I meant the second part!”

“Last night’s mission could have been more… efficient,” the Pearl says, with a pointed gaze towards the cross-armed Peridot, “if our forces were more well-rounded--”

You wave that off. “The part after that.”

The Amethyst huffs. “It’s just sword training with Pearl. Are you down with the clown, or what?”

“Sounds groovy.”

Scene xxii. - The Ancient Sky Arena.

The Ancient Sky Arena is R-E-K-T, wrecked. On Homeworld, the ruins would have been restored to their former glory. Earth lets beauty rot instead of fixing it. The Crystal Gems don’t even care enough to preserve what’s left.

“As you can see, this place, where the first battles of the rebellion took place, has been sculpted by years of fighting,” the Pearl summarizes (for once). “Though, some damage is… newer.”

The Steven and Amethyst chuckle suspiciously on the higher steps. The Peridot is catching on, from her assessment of the cracks in the structure, that a certain pair had a lot of fun only weeks ago.

Lapis blows a raspberry. “The Arena wasn’t always a battleground, you unpolished pebble.”

(You think that’s the Era 1 equivalent of “clod”.) You and the Peridot are unable to back her up, though. You’re always on missions away from Homeworld and she’s only a technician. Neither of you had any business on any kind of arena. Garnet, however, nods, but doesn’t give anything away more than that. The Pearl lets the statement linger on your mind while she summons a rack of sabres from her gem.

Lapis can’t help herself, and laughs. “Are you going to put on a show for us?”

The Pearl draws a sabre from the rack. “A demonstration,” she corrects. The irritation is clear in her tone. “Swords are more than pretty props that you spin and toss.”

The Steven can’t take any more of this hinting. “Waaaiiit, whaaaaat?”

Lapis takes the liberty of drawing her own sabre from the rack. “Blue Diamond’s court is renowned for their performances in Arenas. Especially their colorguard.” She started spinning it in her right hand. “I spent all my time in the Cloud Arena when I wasn’t busy. I was never a part of any group, but all members of Blue Diamond’s court are expected to learn a thing or two.” She stops spinning it and readjusts the position of it so she can push down on one end and send it straight up into the air, where it makes at least three rotations before it returns perfectly to her hands.

You gasp. There are stars in your eyes. Art for the sake of art--this is what it means. “Blue Diamond’s court was known for that?”

Lapis pauses her idle sword-spinning. “‘Was’? Does Blue prefer something else, now?”

You’re surprised she can address her Diamond so casually. “She’s like a ghost. Nobody has seen her for thousands of centuries. There’s no more Arenas, now, or anything like it.”

“Arenas are for new planets, to celebrate--” Lapis’ eyes widen. “Oh! No wonder Era 2 is so miserable.” She goes back to spinning the sabre in her hand. “At least Earth held on to some of Era 1’s glory.”

The Pearl kicks Lapis’ sabre out of her hand. “We’re not here to learn a retired noblegem sport. We’re here to learn sword fighting.”

Lapis makes a disgusted face. “Pass.”

“Oh, no! You’re not getting away so easy!” the Pearl chides. She picks up Lapis’ sabre and shoves it back into her hands. “You won’t always be able to rely on water during a battle. And since you’re so eager, you can go first.”

(Garnet mumbles something in agreement behind you. Something about being a strong, independent gem who doesn’t need a fusion?) The Pearl summons a hologram version of herself from her gem. Its blank, white eyes seem to stare straight into your very core.

“Welcome to Holo-Pearl version 2.0000001,” it says, with its rough, robotic voice.

“Initiate Combat Mode, Level 1,” the Pearl commands. “What I want you to do first, is widen your stance and lower your body for stability.”

“Combat Mode, Level 1, initiated.” The Holo-Pearl lowers its stance and does a sweeping rond de jambe on its left foot to the back as it holds its sword across its chest. “Do you wish to engage in combat?”

“No,” Lapis answers.

“Level 1, begin!” it says anyway. “Your defeat is my pleasure!” It advances towards Lapis with a thrust, which Lapis easily dodges, before she impales her sword straight into the Holo-Pearl’s chest. It glitches as soon as it’s pierced. “Match set. Challenger wins.”

Lapis unsheathes the sword from the Holo-Pearl’s chest. “You do realize that I taught you a third of the sword techniques you use today, right?”

There’s a tense blush on the Pearl’s face. “Initiate Expert Combat Mode, Rank F.”

The Holo-Pearl shifts into a forward lunge with its sword held high behind it. “Commence duel. This shall be your fatal flaw!”

Lapis is nearly caught off-guard, but blocks a hit just in time. She remains cool, though, and is able to push the sword off fast enough to leap for an opening in the Holo-Pearl’s leg. The Holo-Pearl, however, spin-kicks Lapis’ arm away, which then gives it the opportunity to recede away from Lapis. She sighs.

“When, exactly, will I be unable to use water from my own gem?” she asks.

“When your gem is cracked,” the Pearl answers.

(The Amethyst cackles and shakes the Steven for him to spit on that sick roast.)

Unfazed, Lapis stalks towards her opponent lazily. The Holo-Pearl detects the obvious opening she has and dashes towards it with her sword. Lapis spins her sword high into clouds before she hops atop the Holo-Pearl’s sword and uses it as a springing board to backflip behind her. The Holo-Pearl whips around quickly, only to be kicked backwards by Lapis. Before it can recover, Lapis’ sabre comes crashing down on it. The Holo-Pearl is hit right on the head by the blade, and falls to the ground. The sword clangs down beside it.

“Challenger wins.”

Lapis picks up the sabre. “Colorguard was not just a noblegem sport, by the way. All gems loved it. You can get poofed just from not catching a big toss.” She looks into her reflection in the sabre. “Era 2 sure is missing out.”

As horrifying as it is to play with spinning weapons for other’s entertainment, it has you hooked. You’re certain everyone on Homeworld would rush to complete their tasks if such exhilarating performances were the reward.

“Congratulations for completing the easiest level on Expert mode,” the Pearl mutters dryly. “Navy and Peridot, you’re up.”

Garnet leg is unable to stop shaking. One of her fists is clenched. She crosses a leg over her shaking one, which temporarily stops its incessant movement, before it starts shaking again. She suddenly unfuses into a disgruntled Sapphire and a restless Ruby. Ruby drags the Sapphire down the steps to where you and Peridot are. “Us too!” Ruby says.

Ohohoho. You can see where this is going. “Welcome to the party,” you greet them.

The Pearl isn’t exactly thrilled to see them unfused again. “You two don’t--”

“I agree,” the Sapphire replies. Not that you need future vision to know what the Pearl was about to say.

Ruby accepts the sabre from Lapis. “You can go spinning, if you want, but I’ll just remind you that the last fight one of us had was 5,750 years ago, before Garnet even existed.”

“That was fate,” the Sapphire says.

“Garnet was fate. That was--” Ruby looks up at Pearl, then at Steven. “--uh, doesn’t matter. Just... let me do this for you, okay?”

The Sapphire draws her own sword from the rack. “You’re not my guard, anymore, Ruby. We’ll do this together.”

Scene xxiii. - Still in the Ancient Sky Arena.

Apparently, the rule with the Crystal Gems is that any time there are an even number of participants involved, teams will be arranged. You didn’t listen to the real sparring rules, or the song the Pearl sang about sword fighting technique and sacrificial love. You attribute that mistake to your one-track mind--great when studying, bad when distracted. (You think you caught that all gem abilities are allowed, though?)

You’re still hung up on the fact that there were entire architectural feats dedicated to the gay jubilance of unoccupied gems. Gems used to be so invested in their pastime that they would risk their physical forms for a few minutes of entertainment--oh, that’s so Earthlike! But how can you jeer at it when its potential is so beautiful? It makes you realize how long you’ll live. Eras come and go, too. Rookies become veterans and veterans become… super veterans, or something. For the first time, you’re realizing that the Earthlings were right about something: there’s a lot of time out there. As long as you eventually finish your task and the Earth doesn’t self-destruct, you can hypothetically vacation for as long as you want.

“... Navy will spar with Ruby and Sapphire with spar with Peridot.”

You forgot about the other rule that Ruby and the Sapphire aren’t allowed to be paired together. Or, maybe it’s just that you and Ruby were paired due to your similar sword-wielding progresses. Not that you were paying attention to anyone’s progress. Oh, sometimes you feel like a rookie all over again, head in the clouds and dreamy-eyed and such. You suppose you are, from the Crystal Gems’ perspective. That would explain why your vision has been so blurry. You wave the cloud away. Ruby is already in a proper stance. What was your plan, again?

“Psst, Sapph!” Ruby not-so-discreetly whisper-shouts. “Who wins?”

The Sapphire giggles. “Only time will tell,” she whisper-shouts back.

“Really? Because I see a victory kiss in our future.”

You remember your plan, now.

“Begin!” the Pearl declares.

You drop your sword immediately. “I don’t want to fight you, comrade.”

“It’s just pretend! Sorta!”

“But I love you.”

“And I love Sapphire.” Ruby comes running towards you with her sword, which is exactly what you expected her to do. “We fight for what we love on Earth!”

You wait until she’s close enough to summon your sickle. Ruby’s sword strikes down in the curve of your weapon. Bright orange sparks fly. Oh your stars. She could have poofed you. You’d like to thank your preliminary training days for drilling weapon summoning into your gem, and Lapis for reminding you that you’re still capable of summoning it even after years upon years upon years of neglecting it. You can almost hear the Steven’s cheers for you over your internal screaming.

Ruby continues to strike down at you, but you’re diligent enough to block every one of them. The force of her hits send orange sparks bursting at each clang. She’s incredibly strong. A new weapon does nothing to put her at a disadvantage. If only you could take her back to Homeworld as an ally. “Stop! Blocking!”

You have to, eventually. She has enough pure strength to dissipate your weapon. You catch Ruby’s sword in the curve of your sickle, again, and slide it towards the hilt before twisting it down, then swinging it away. The sword flies off to the edge of the Arena.

“Now we’re talking.” Ruby summons her gauntlet and crashes it down to the ground as hard as she can. You jump high into the air onto a column to avoid the resulting quake. Her gauntlet sends ripples of marvelous architecture erupting away from the point of impact. You continue to scream internally.

The Sapphire has already predicted this, and has jumped high enough to avoid the vibrations, whereas her opponent is knocked over. The Sapphire uses this opening to thrust towards the Peridot. The Peridot bends the metal away from her body, curving it just enough to give her time to scramble away backwards. She’s unable to fully rip the Sapphire’s weapon out of her hand, though, because ice has frozen her hand to it.

“Are you a gem or a rock?” Ruby mocks. You forgot that taunting one-liners were also a part of the unwritten set of fake sarcastic rules you’ve begun noting in your head. She runs towards the column you’re on with her gauntlet of doom in tow. “What were you planning to do in a real battle?”

You pounce onto her with your sickle held high behind your head and strike down at her. Hopefully the physics of your attack is enough to deal some worthy damage. But it’s not. She counterattacks with her gauntlet. You tumble backwards behind her. Your weapon dissipates. “We--” No, your squadron isn’t here. You don’t have a squadron, anymore. “I would’ve just fused.” You never added anything to the Mega Ruby fusion other than mass, before, though. You just melted in and let your captain take over.

“You can’t depend on that! That’s just, ugh, a cheap tactic to get stronger!” She kicks a low cloud. Having to admit that physically pained her. She looks at the Pearl, though, which reassures her. “Be strong in the real way!”

(In your defense, your second option would have been to avoid combat at any cost. One-on-one combat was never in your resumé, job description, or agenda. That strategy has worked wonders, save for this abnormal exception.)

She picks up a fist-sized rock and throws it up into the air. You’re distracted long enough for Ruby to pick up the sabre you discarded earlier. You’re not dumb enough to fall for her diversion. You roll out of the way as Ruby. To your side, the other fighting pair approaches, clashing metal to metal. Ruby launches the sabre straight forward, where you used to be. The rock falls just in time on the Peridot’s head. She lets out a yelp. The diversion works too well, though. Miscalculations cause the Peridot to be impaled in the shoulder and the stomach.

The Peridot looks down at her wounds. “Wow, thanks,” are her final words before she poofs.

You raise your hand. “Can I forfeit?” You feel like this is the most appropriate time to request this. Forfeiting would be a very lovely option at this point.

Scene xxiv. - A panic-filled Ancient Sky Arena.

The Steven stands up. “Peridot!” Everyone else follows suit, except for Lapis, who saunters over. She picks up the Peridot’s gem. It still has that Homeworld-patented Era 2 shine to it.

“I’ll bubble her,” she volunteers. A thin water bubble forms around the Peridot’s gem.

You shriek. You understand where Jasper is, now. Stupidstupidstupid. She was defeated, she was poofed, she was captured, she was bubbled, she was imprisoned, she was forcefully withdrawn from any and all utility by the Crystal Gems because she was bad. Her moral expiration date arrived and what was left of her had to be sealed away, as if she was corrupted into a monster that needed to protected from its own agonizing existence. The Crystal Gems don’t think she’s good, so she has to be bad, and she has to be gone.

Ruby hugs you into her chest. Her gauntlet is gone. “That’s not how we deal with all poofed gems, Lazuli. That’s not even a proper bubble! That’s just water!”

“She’s fine. She just needs some time to regenerate,” the Sapphire says. “This isn’t the first time we’ve poofed her, after all.”

You let out a muffled shriek. You can’t believe it’s a common practice to poof comrades on Earth.

“Not funny, Sapphire,” Ruby deadpans.

“Oops.”

Scene xxv. - Just outside the barn.

Lapis and the Sapphire are in charge of cooling you down because everything you’re around bursts into flames. It was a better option than being banished to the bottom of the barn pool. Ruby is making you sit cross-legged in a pile of ice slush with your fingers intertwined and your thumb tips touching. The Steven is in the barn, analyzing any dings or dents that may be on the Peridot’s gem.

“Shh, sh sh, just breathe in… and out… Can you do that for me, Navy? In, then out.”

You know how to breathe. “Is this a normal thing on Earth?”

The Amethyst laughs. “Yup. I get poofed, like, every other week.”

The slush around you boils and sizzles. Lapis adds more water around you for the Sapphire to freeze.

“Amethyst!” the Pearl scolds.

Ruby picks up the Amethyst and places her a good distance away from you, where she thinks you won’t be able to hear her lecturing the Amethyst. “Listen here, young gem, you were not polished to speak so irresponsibly around your juniors--do you want to try calming a Ruby down? We don't need another visit from the fire department!”

You let yourself collapse backwards into the ice. It steams slowly around you. Above you, Lapis and the Sapphire remain as cool and blue as the Earth sky. You sit up properly and straighten your posture, but make sure to keep your gaze on the ground. “My Clarity, why did this happen?” You were under the impression that future vision was supposed to prevent accidents like this.

“Sit down,” she orders.

You do so and hug your knees to your chest. She sits down in front of you, too, with the same position Ruby showed you, presumably with her legs also crossed under the blue puff of her skirt. You follow suit.

She clears her throat. “Take a moment to think of just…”

Ruby has already finished her lecture with the Amethyst and senses the impromptu musical number. She comes sliding over to the Sapphire’s side. “... flexibilityloveandtrust!” she finishes frantically.

They sing in perfect harmony together. “Take a moment to think of just, flexibility love and trust.”

The Amethyst sighs heavily. Lapis’ water wings are out. You stand up. “Nonono, I'm asking why you didn't foresee this, My Clarity!”

Ruby isn't happy about having her duet thwarted. “You don't even sing on Homeworld, anymore?”

“We use regular verbal communication to answer simple questions, comrade.”

Lapis pours slushy ice water onto Ruby.

“What the heck was that for, Lazuli?”

“Thought you needed to cool down after that hot roast,” she says.

Ruby scoops up slush into a tight ball, but it melts immediately. Lapis snorts at the poor attempt. She doesn’t expect the snowball thrown at her back by the Sapphire as revenge.

“Nice!” the Amethyst exclaims. She throws a snowball straight at the Pearl’s butt. “Snowball fi--”

A ball of snow is flung into the Amethyst’s mouth by the Pearl before she can finish her battle cry. “... I’m also curious why this wasn’t preventable,” the Pearl admits.

All eyes turn to Her Clarity. Even Ruby is curious.

“In the heat of battle, I can only focus on one future possibility at a time, so I have to bet on the most likely outcome,” the Sapphire reveals.

Multiple future possibilities! You were right! You’ve been a bit afraid that the Sapphire is simply an omniscient figure that withholds information for the sake of universal balance. You’re going to regret asking this, but, “What outcome did you bet on?”

“The one where--” Her blushing, nervous laughter scares you a little. Maybe a lot. Ice crystals grow. That grin on her lips is nothing but perverted. “--uh, that doesn’t matter!” She clears her throat. “What I saw was that you were supposed to have an epiphany about gem independence and start attacking Ruby seriously.”

… But you were fighting her seriously the entire time?

“You should have blocked the sabre with your sickle, but be distracted long enough to still be hit with the rock. Peridot was supposed to block my thrust to her chest, but then bump into you. I would have used that opening to tap her lightly on the shoulder with my sabre. That’s Peridot’s loss. Inevitably, after charging into offense, you should have quickly lost, too.”

No wonder the Peridot’s poofing wasn’t predicted. The Sapphire was depending on you to be the pneumatic Ruby everyone thinks you are. It’s only a matter of time before the dark matter recipe comes out of the vault--time and a lot more terrible acting on your part. “Oh, this is all my fault!” you wail. You toss yourself into the mound of ice. It only melts slightly under your mass, though. Can’t fake guilt that well. “If I figured out how to be--” (Ugh.) “--strong in the real way, then Peridot would’ve never poofed!” (Ah, but isn’t that true? You still haven’t fulfilled the prophecy the Sapphire spoke of. You’re only surviving from lie to lie.)

The Sapphire folds her hands. “... I can’t say that you’re wrong.”

The Pearl nods. “That would have saved Peridot.”

The Amethyst takes more time to fully process the scenario. “Ooh, I get it. Your cowardliness doomed us all.”

Lapis doesn’t even try to sugarcoat her blame on you. “Yeah, Navy, I can’t believe you poofed my barnmate.” She shakes her head in disappointment.

Oh your stars, they’re seriously putting all the blame on you for not sticking to a script they never gave you. Never mind that two fighting rookies not cut out for combat were pit against veterans of the Gem War, that all you did was avoid getting injured yourself, that the Peridot was too inexperienced to prevent this disaster herself, or that Ruby and the Sapphire were literally the ones who stabbed her. It was all your doing that the wrong future played out.

Ruby doesn’t contradict everyone else, but she doesn’t buy into what they’re saying, either. “What’s supposed to happen in this future, then?”

“I don’t know,” the Sapphire admits bluntly. “Peridot was never supposed to poof.”

You sit up.

Ruby doesn’t like how fast that answer came out. “What futures were you looking for?”

“All the ones where Garnet is back together.”

The Amethyst’s eyes widen. The Pearl starts to falter backwards, barely saved by the Amethyst shapeshifting into a chair to catch her. “Y-Y-You mean,” she babbles, “that you two won’t… Garnet isn’t… This future is… Oh boy.”

Ruby groans. “That doesn’t make sense! Garnet always exists as long as we’re here.” She pulls the Sapphire close to her and fuses them into Garnet to prove her point.

“This is Garnet, back together,” Garnet says.

They unfuse. “And this is Ruby and Sapphire,” Ruby says.

Then, they fuse again. “Garnet.”

And they unfuse. “Ruby and Sapphire.”

Fuse. “Garnet.”

Unfuse. “Sapphire and Ruby!” Ruby exclaims. “Also known as, Ruby and Sapphire, but in a different order.”

Your eyes hurt. The Sapphire pushes Ruby away. “Okay, we get it. You’re giving me a gem ache. It’s just hard to see all the possible futures while I’m trying to sword fight without depth perception.”

“Sorry.” Ruby rubs the Sapphire’s hand gem soothingly. “I’m just saying, we’re overlooking something important. The last time this sort of thing happened was when Pearl--” She takes a moment to glare at said gem. “--tricked us into fusing into Sardonyx.”

(Ah, so that’s who Sardonyx is.)

The Amethyst returns to her original form, which sends the Pearl falling to the ground. “Can’t save your butt there.”

The Pearl stands back up and brushes the dust off of her. “I--”

“We already forgave you,” the Sapphire assures her. “Right, Ruby?”

Ruby narrows her eyes at the Pearl. “This Ruby doesn’t forget so easily.”

“Ruby--”

“No, Sapph, I’m serious! All future vision is biased towards what we want to happen.” She starts pacing into the ice slush area. The mound of ice you’re on melts in her presence. “What if Peridot is cracked?”

“Steven has healing spit,” the Sapphire reminds her.

(Woah, really? That’s groovy!)

“What if your future vision has become defective?”

“Ex-cuse me?”

“Uh, kidding! What if there’s a new fusion coming?”

Everyone looks at each other. It’s silently agreed upon that nobody is in the mood for a new fusion.

“What if Pearl tricks us again?”

The Amethyst snickers. The Pearl shakes her head; nothing is up her sleeve.

“What if Navy is an evil genius just waiting for the right moment to betray us all, just to see the looks on our faces?” Lapis suggests.

The Pearl can hardly withhold her laughter. She turns away. The Sapphire, though, shakes her head. “She’s on our side, now. I’m certain.”

Personally, you’re rather offended that Lapis is the only one who acknowledges your intellect. All the better for your plan, though. “That’s groovy, My Clarity, but how can you be so sure?” There’s no way you’re not going to betray them eventually.

“Everything has already aligned in our favor.” And she leaves it at that. Very mysterious.

(“Already aligned,” she says... Then, they’re looking in the wrong direction.)

“That’s what you like to think,” Ruby grumbles. “We’re in your blind spot and I refuse to re-fuse until we’re out of it!”

“You’re overre--” The Sapphire breaks her calm facade and takes the time to laugh at the pun. “Ah, that was a good one! Steven would’ve loved that!”

Ruby is unable to stay mad. (You have to admit, that was pretty clever.) She gives the Sapphire a quick peck on the lips. “Oh, be serious, Sapphire!” she teases. “Isn’t this the baseball game all over again? Us being unable to focus on anything but each other…” Her hands slide down to the Sapphire’s waist. “I don’t forget so easily.”

“How about I… test how well you remember how to dance?”

The Pearl clears her throat. “You were saying something about a blind spot, Ruby?”

“There’s still time,” Ruby and Sapphire promise in unison.

You sure hope so.

#steven universe #fanfic #the homeworld is too much with us #act I #navy #navy-centric #what did you do over spring break?#I WROTE AN 18K FANFIC THAT NOBODY IS GOING TO READ #rupphire #i love ruby and sapphire separated i'm sorry

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shalnarkonice · 8 years ago

Text

A gift for @geeky-afakasi with help from @beamthechao who inspired this fantastic chinera ant au💖💖

The sound of designer heels, an expensive pair that was most likely studded in rivers of diamonds and hugged by velvet and gold, clicks against the marble floors. It was amazing how a sound so mundane, so everyday, could be the cause of such chaos in a professional, well known, multi million dollar company.

Now it wasn’t rare to hear a pair of heels bang against smooth tile (seeing how most of the women and few men preferred the footwear), but it was sharp tack tack tack, followed by the smell of roses that alerted most of the employees that the queen had made her appearance.

The Queen, better known as the CEO of chimera communications and technology, rarely visited head office. The queen was a figure head. An older woman with warm brown skin and large oval eyes, her locks lay hidden by a dark red hijab that covered silver hair which would give away her age. She was someone who made her way across the world with her hand picked team, cutting deals, and sometimes cutting throats when it came to hard business (all for a good cause, however).

There was no one in the world who could rival the empire she has built after the death of her late spouse, a cruel man who had given her nothing more than the one son who shared his facial characteristics, and had instantly become the woman’s pride and joy.

Being a single mother running a huge corporation had not been easy, but her employees were treated like family and as the company grew so did the bond between them

To the Queen’s right was Colt, walking in pace but always a step behind. He was one of the first men to be hired to work for the chimeras, his fierce ambition and sense of loyalty making him one of three executives in the entire company. With dark hair and sharp eyes, he always dressed professionally, his suit bearing tiny wings on the cufflinks as his one name brand element. He had coined the line himself, but always kept the chimera business dear to his heart, even as he travelled overseas with the queen to meet with other potential companies that they could overtake.

“There are exactly fifty four hours and twenty seven minutes before our plane to yorknew is due to leave.” Colt says with a firmness that would be appalling to most, but to the queen, it was a tone bearing utmost respect. “Once we land from our detour in NGL we will be greeted by the head of the Zodiac corporation. Netero will be providing our rooms and dinner reservations, as per agreement.”

“Make a note of it to have my things sent over from NGL to yorknew via private blimp.” She says swiftly, eyes running over the doors of offices where employees had pressed their faces against the glass in hopes of getting a view of the woman who had started it all.

“I will make a note of it and send the message directly later today.” Colt hums, his leather briefcase brushing against his thigh before someone darted into the hallway from seemingly nowhere, their blond hair flowing around them before being followed by a long silky black scarf and a whirlwind of glitter.

Glancing back at Pouf, the head of the financial division and the backbone of this locations funds (as well as a full time stick in the mud), Colt wasn’t surprised to see the man flustered. Colt had spent many months training with the blond, sometimes their ideas conflicting, until the rare moment where they made a earth shaking breakthrough together. When the queen had asked who would join her overseas, and who would manage head office (because it was only Pouf and Colt who she felt confident in placing this responsibility on), Pouf had been the one to lose the opportunity to be at her side, and was left behind.

Later Colt had learned Pouf had given up the chance so Colt could take it.

Although Colt didn’t exactly get along with the man, they had learned to accept and trust the other, but it amused Colt greatly at how flustered Pouf always seemed to be.

Pouf, with a clipboard and pen in hand, could not fathom the possibility of having overlooked this moment. Having Colt walk in suddenly would have been nothing to fret over. All Pouf needed to do was show some case files of their work stats and offer the man some black tea. But seeing the queen was often a blessing and a curse, as any employer would be.

Hearing chatter break out in the hallways they passed, Pouf could only hope to smother this tension over and lead the guests to his own office as he informed the buildings head of the affairs taking place.

“Madam president, your arrival is earlier than noted. I didn’t have time to prepare the paperwork or speak to the other department heads or even-” Pouf is cut off as the woman smiles at him.

“What did I say about you calling me madam president? I may be in my fifties but I’m not that old. Please, feel free to call me something less formal. Mother perhaps?” She chuckles as Pouf latches to her side, following her through the main lobby, “now, what are the numbers for this quadrant?” she asks, her tone shifting to one more appropriate for business.

“Twelve percent with an estimated point three gross over the next four months.” Pouf says proudly, his sharp eyes darting around the room in a panic, knowing what kind of insolent staff the building had and how lenient this divisions boss was. He wasn’t sure (or more like, he was very sure how afraid he was) of how the queen was going to react.

“And how is the department running, Pouf?” he jumps the the question he automatically dreaded, “has everything been going smoothly?” the woman prompts.

“Of course!” Pouf blurts out, lying being his first thought, “business is booming and the clients are all happy!”

“Fantastic, and what of the staff?”

Pouf winces a moment and shivers when Colts eyes focus on him, before glancing down at the butterfly wing charm on poufs collar, a product from Colts “wing” line.

“Absolutely amazing. The security is talented and have stopped all issues before they have time to unfold, especially from outside sources. Our scientists are busily working away on new creative, and very, very safe products for our consumers to buy into for the purpose of better communications. Our HR lead is one of the most positive and uplifting, provide amazing customer service and helping our staff with their personal qualms. Our head receptionist holds this family together, always working hard to keep everything in order. Ah, and the sales staff we have are not only respectful, but positively professional. We have three experts for our Public relations team who focus directly on branding our image with the goal of not only creating public events but also placing an emphasis on community. Our building manager is very active in taking care of any safety issues, as well as tending to the many plants we have in place to make a more positive environment. Our financial lead is like a caring father, who also manages to keep all the books updated weekly with our numbers. And of course, the department head and future CEO of the company has been the best, most supportive of leaders. We have no complaints about his ability.”

The Queen pauses and turns places a hand on Poufs arm, smiling in that ever so sweet way she did, reassuring him that his words were taken for face value and that she did not, even for a second, doubt him. It was that look that gave pouf severe guilt, because he knew. oh hell did he know that every word was just as far from the truth as it could be.

“With a staff like this im sure all has been going well,” she says firmly, turning around and continuing deeper into the building towards the cubicles in the open work space.

D A N G E R. The word flashes through Poufs mind, and Colt picks up on the sudden tension.

In seconds a large man with a suit as dark as his hair approaches, a finger to his ear as he starts speaking, his name tag reading Youpi, along with chief of security.

“Take the suspect to the west wing for investigation under clause 330 B, subsection c for trespassing.” Youpi says into his ear piece, before looking to Pouf who was trying yo subtly tell him to shut up. “It appears that NGL representatives have been protesting our use of technology again and this is the third break in this week at ground level. Bloster has apprehended the men and is now-”

“This is a situation we can easily deal with!” Pouf grimaces as he speaks as the queen continues to walk, listening to Youpi give his report as they enter what could only be a mess hall.

Passing the front desk for HR, sitting with his feet up talking away was Welfin, a tall, slender man with sharp eyes who had on a headset. Pouf could only hope the man was being civil.

“You think that’s a problem? Hell, you dont even know what a real trauma is. Seeing someone fight isn’t worthy of a sick leave, the hell.” Welfin barks up, leaning back in his chair, “you should see what I have to deal with here. One word, Zazan! I should be getting a four day weekend for putting up with her shit! Oh hell, Pouf!” Welfin hangs up and tosses the headset aside as he stands, following the group, not sure who the woman or the stiff were, but not caring in the slightest. “So that vacation I asked for, ya know the time off for next week, seeing how I’ve dealt with-”

Pouf feels his eyes roll back into his head as he resists grabbing Welfin and choking the man, all while youpi is still rambling about broken codes.

“I assure you we have the best staff,” Pouf raises his voice, gawking as Leol, Flutter, and Hina appear with huge posters and rave lights. Leol, tall and bulky in a band t-shirt, raises a hand at Pouf. Flutter, with his head of wiry hair, glances over Hina’s head, the petite woman jumping up excitably as the three rush over. Leol, as head of marketing, would often place up ads on buildings while Flutter would focus on anything skyward like blimps and billboards, while Hina dealt with television and radio ads.

“Pouf, bud!” Leol grins, the three joining the group, “we got everything we need for the sponsor party. Even sick music by Morel the euro god-”

“Great snacks and lots of booze!” Hina chimes in while raising a bottle of champagne as well as a few glow sticks.

“The entertainment will be showing up in a few hours,” Flutter buzzes, “we brought in quality chefs as well. The zodiacs have received their invites.

Trying to catch his breath, Pouf begs for it to stop. “We do not hold parties. We are professionals!”

“We decided to hire the dancers too,” Leol continues.

“I’m thinking two weeks is a little short, and I’ve been feeling under the weather so maybe three would suffice,” Welfin strokes his chin

“There has also been twelve incidents regarding broken office supplies that we are still in the process of replacing after last years incident,” Youpi rambles.

The group come across the secretary’s desk near the back of the large room, where the curly haired Zazan sits painting her nails, looking annoyed as a smirking, energetic man talks at her.

Spotting Pouf, Zazan grabs her nail filer and points it at him, “I do not get paid enough to deal with cheetu so you better get him the hell out of my face or so help me I’ll file for harassment!” she snarls, joining the group and listing everything Cheetu had done to annoy her.

“Our secretary is a loving, and respectable human being.” Pouf grits out, feeling Colts eyes bore into his back.

Cheetu, with zeal, heads to the front of the group, walking backwards with a grin as he waves for Poufs attention. The blond pales and his nails dig into his clipboard, his head shaking as in no, Cheetu, shut your damn mouth.

“Okay great! Listen up to my new pitch!” Cheetu clears his throat, his salesperson representative self coming out, “Tired? Tired of technology running slow? Don’t you wish you could talk faster? Don’t you wish you could talk so fast that you would be abletotalktoeveryoneallthe-” Cheetus rambling becomes too quick and excited to understand and pouf is dying.

The queen makes it into the science sector and slowly Pouf whispers oh no as the sound of an explosion occurs, before a slight smoke makes its way out of the door. No one is phased as a woman with white curly hair throws herself out of the room her white medical lab coat a little singed.

“That was a rush hell yea!” she coughs and notices the group, and leaps at pouf, “the new coolant adhesive is almost done! We’re making it less flammable but hell does it have a kick! It’s amazing! I’ve never seen subject 2I9H 3000 react so fiverantly, there have only been four explosions this week!”

Youpi taps his earpiece, “Pitou again. Send men to clean up. Extinguishers needed.”

“The vacation will help me relax and be a better HR lead! Come on, Pouf!”

“These explosions are horrible for my headaches, especially when dealing with idiots!” Zazan whines

“Ya know if the budget was increased we could totally bring in a sick bartender, like the phantom troupe are an A-class party must have, right Flutter?”

“Talk all the time with chimera communications! never stop! Never stop talking just keep taking always-”

“Ya know, with this experiment almost done, if i reversed the polarity I could probably make the adhesive into a bomb-”

“Dont!” Pouf yells over the chatter, “absolutely do not! Remove the thought from your mind!”

Pitou sulks as a new voice enters the fray, a short, bulky man with wise eyes and a beak nose. In his hands were slips of gray paper, and on his chest was a name tag reading Peggy, finance. Around his neck was a lanyard that held every nerdy button the man could get his hands on. Some like “checkmate for the king,” or “like a good friend chimera com is there,” and “edgar allen poe before hoes.”

“I’m glad you’re all here, because it’s pay day!” Peggy grunts out, and cheers amble around as the man hands out slips, watching them get tucked into pockets and shirts, or ripped open fiercely. “Now for this next trimester we need to cut back on some staff funds, and unfortunately that’s the amount of coffee we are buying each week.”

Zazan gawks as she stares at the man, “you monster!”

“Peggy are you insane? We all practically live off coffee,” Welfin shoves past Leol and Flutter, grabbing onto Peggy in disgust. “If I’m not able to make a coffee every two hours, I’ll die. Straight up. I might as well go on sick leave because I won’t be able to function.”

Cheetu nods his head vigorously, “how do you think i get to be the way I am? You think I’m always energetic! Nah! we need our espressos!”

Youpi side eyes the man and mutters under his breath, “he shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near caffeine”

“You’re not the boss of me!” Cheetu yelps, puffing out his chest.

Pouf steps between them and lifts the clipboard in front of cheetus face, “under a general consensus you will be provided only with decaf and you will accept it without complaint! We don’t need anymore incidents like last year-” Pouf gawks as the words slip out

Colt narrows his eyes as he places a hand on Poufs shoulder, “please elaborate.”

A collective breath moves through the group, almost as if there was the presence of a monster amongst them. Pouf could only cower, hoping someone else would step in so he wouldn’t have to.

“Rammot,” Zazan swirls the name in her mouth and grimaces, “that was the worst month, thank god he gone.”

“He was a menace,” Youpi murmurs, “theft, blackmail, slander, assault…”

“And a rude, ugly man to boot.” Hina murmurs, shaking a glow stick vigorously. “And the things he would wear around the office should have been enough of a crime to get him arrested!”

Leol rubs his chin, “I heard he went to jail for killing a man.”

Cheetu nods, “That doesn’t surprise me! What a creep! He punched me once!”

“He spit in my coffee,” Welfin bares his teeth.

Pitou cracks a knuckle, “I was tempted to kill him one time. Try experiment 541 on him.”

The Queen blinks back her surprise as a yell breaks the chatter of the group from the other side of the hall. A balky man with pierced eyebrows and long hair runs towards the group, almost at a gallop. Some could say that the man was horse like in his demeanor; although he lacked any grace and came off as a beast (who was into some questionable kinks, the other employees had unfortunately come to learn). Zazan and Cheetu grimace and step against the walls, knowing that the man with the snake tongue, Yunju, was bound to make a messy entrance.

In his hands he carried a large box, his two assistants (both thin and lean, sticking to Yunju as if they were mosquitoes) carried their own boxes.

Now Pouf wasn’t sure what Yunju did. He was…usually just there, with his vulgar mouth and that damn split tongue, which was pierced seeing how it made a clink as it touched his teeth as he spoke.

Part of Pouf wanted to say that Yunju had been hired to be a health rep, although it seemed like hell of a mistake on their hiring department if they did that. Perhaps Yunju was the hiring department. What a nightmare.

“Nyaa, the chief of privacy,” Pitou whines, looking at Youpi, who technically was the chief of security but never used the title, meaning he and Yunji should have been partners at least. It never happened.

Pouf pales, shocked that he had forgotten that this monster of a man was responsible for all their personal issues and privacy, especially from having their identities safe from being revealed online. Anti technology protesters had been getting more violent with each year

“Got the stuff!” Yunju smirks, spotting Colt, a new face in the crowd, “and a catch.”

Colt gives him a piercing glare, not interested in the man’s advances. Leol and Hina hoot and holler as they leap towards the box, only to have Youpi intervene.

Only now did it come to everyone’s realization that they had been chatting and yelling in front of a large oak door, the only in a long hallway. No one could remember when the tile floors had become carpet, or when the lights had become tinted red, or that it was silent in this sector. Candles and roses sit on their perches, and a glass wall sits opposite to the door, delicate but deadly looking fish filling the space.

Standing on a stool, with their back turned to the crowd, is Kite. Short, lanky, silent at most times, quietly feed the fish. Feeling eyes on their back; they which was covered in long white hair which he occasionally dyed red, he peers over to the crowd.

Despite taking up the role of gardener, and in charge of health and safety, kite was also the third executive of the company.

“Mother,” Kite says lowly, stepping down from the stool. Pouf had almost forgotten Kite was the Queens adopted child.

Behind the large oak doors would be the future CEO of the company, the lead of the entire building. A man who was young, yet notable in his early 20s. He had been a child genius, and eager to learn all from his many tutors. The future ceo was a terrifying and gifted man.

As the doors were thrown open, everyone in the hallway held their breath as Meruem appeared, silent, somber, his dark hair covering his forehead, his eyes looking sharp with pointed eyeliner and his purple contacts.

“What is the meaning of this noise?” Meruem asks, voice soft and yet almost sultry

Pouf hesitates and tries to work up the courage to offer an explanation, a reason, something to ease the heavy, smoggy tension.

“We….They…The Queen-” Pouf almost curses himself as tears spring to his eyes. How could he explain the motive behind the horrible staff. Everyone had left their posts! All they did was argue! Or fight! Or try to blow things up! Godawful, good for nothing trouble makers! Everyone here, and the queen had watched it all.

Meruem shifts his glance to the queen instead, slightly shocked.”Mother, Pouf did not inform me of your attendance.”

Pouf pales at the mention of his name, positive he was going to lose his damn job.

“I am sure you know why I came,” the woman says lowly, stepping forward to tower over the short man. “To see how you have run my company. To see your employees and their capabilities. To see if you are willing to inherit the CEO title when you turn 25…and to wish you a happy twenty third birthday.” she smiles, breaking from her facade.

Party poppers explode and balloons escape from the box Yunju was carrying. Ikalgo and Melodeon, two delivery boys, ran in with champagne, and cheering radiated through the hallway. Pouf, very quickly realized, this whole thing has been a set up.

“Lighten up pouf! It was fun wasn’t it!” Pitou hoots as glasses are passed around as a cake is brought into meruems office.

“Happy birthday!” is yelled out, and meruem feels his face flush as he beams at the gesture.

To be so loved by his family and company was a true blessing, Meruem realized, lost in a sea of voices. Despite being thankful, meruem knew that one day he would have that special someone here with him, to meet his mother and coworkers. But for now, Meruem would enjoy the impromptu party.

And pouf? Pouf would be fine

Well, after he stopped crying tears of relief that is

#hxh #meruem #pouf #chimera ants

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charles195 · 8 years ago

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The Homeworld Is Too Much With Us

Fandom: Steven Universe

Warnings: Slightly suggestive language (fusion), hints of Communist-ish or bigoted language, addiction mention. (Tell me if there are any more warnings I should list.)

Rating: T

Characters: Navy, Steven, Garnet, Lapis, Peridot

Notes: Navy-centric, 2nd person POV. Title derived from William Wordsworth’s poem “The World Is Too Much With Us.” Set during “Room For Ruby”/parallel universe where Navy doesn’t backstab Steven, Peridot, and Lapis at the end of the episode. Anti-redemption(?).

Summary: Ruby--alias name “Navy”--has a personal agenda to complete before she inevitably betrays the Crystal Gems. Meanwhile, she finds that Homeworld’s beliefs are still fully applicable on Earth.

“Oh please, oh please! Don’t make me go back to Homeworld! Oh, I just want to stay here with you!”

“This… is a surprise…”

“... I just want to be somewhere I can be myself.”

Assimilation.

“It might be hard to like Earth at first,” the Lapis explains quietly. “It is where a bunch of bad stuff happened.”

The rain is just falling water, thankfully. Leave it to a Lapis to abandon Homeworld for a planet abundant in her own element.

“This is perfect! The Crystal Gems finally have a pilot!”

You’re just glad you have your ship back. You weren’t lying when you said the ship was the only place you feel like you belong--there has to be some truth mixed in with your facade to make it more realistic, after all--you’ve spent more time in the ship than in Homeworld. At this point, it would be easy to dump the intruders out of the ship (your ship!) and relish in the sweet ecstasy of their betrayed faces. (Oh, if only they hadn’t touched anything. All the settings have been messed with by some Era 1 pebble who probably thinks a light year is a measure of time.)

“Is something wrong, Navy?” Lapis asks.

She’s by your side now. Something about her concern reads more like long-awaited relief to you. You didn’t know Lapises were so sadistic. Or maybe it’s just her.

“Oh, it’s nothing. I was just thinking that you have the prettiest smile I’ve ever seen!”

For some reason, you’ve gained some hostility from the Peridot.

You laugh a little alongside her, but you’re actually not sure if that’s the right thing to do.

You think it’s time to land.

“Wow! Thanks Ruby and Sapphire, I’m so humbled!” You’re not sure what its functional use is and hope that nobody will notice when you release it into the atmosphere later.

“It’s Garnet,” they correct you.

You stare at the inflated bag of pink aluminum. “Oh! Thanks for the Garnet, Ruby and Sapphire!” You suppose there’s some convenience to assigning labels to useless but complex objects.

You gasp. “Oh! That makes sense!”

And just like that, they’re a Garnet again.

Lapis is smirking at the Peridot with her arms crossed smugly.

You nod. “A plus B equals C, so it’s easier to substitute C into an equation instead of saying A plus B.”

“No, fusion! You understand fusion?”

“Rubies fuse all the time.” Eyeball likes fusing with just you, sometimes.

“No, cross-gem fusions! Without any kind of functional utility other than a marginal benefit! You understand that?”

“Um, yeah…” You subconsciously look up at Lapis. “‘Art for the sake of art.’”

Everyone else laughed at the thought of a Ruby entering the intelligence department. (You gotta admit, it is pretty funny that a mere Ruby outranks most gems made to be smart in IQ alone.) No more. You will be the pioneer of a brave new Homeworld, where a common foot soldier can be promoted to a slightly more valued foot soldier just judging by their intelligence! Oh, such a radical revolution would have sentenced you to a shattering in Era 1, but Yellow Diamond’s rule in Era 2 was a game-changer. You’re grateful to have been made for such an innovative, tactical leader.

Mission Report:

You can’t use your squadron’s ID for this. That egotistical chest-gemmed Ruby would love to ride on your coattails.

Mission Report: NV-419.310

Wait, Yellow Pearl will only bother to glance at this report if your main objective has been fulfilled first. Backspace, backspace, backspace...

Mission Report: NV-419.3

Mission Report: NV

Mission Report:

Missi

Missing Jasper. Where IS she?

Personally, you feel like she has developed some kind of attachment to Earth. It is, technically, her home planet. Even perfect gems corrode when exposed to Earth. Everything is fleeting on Earth.

Missing Jasper. Where IS she? Can’t stay on Earth too long.

The Ruby smiles. “Welcome to Earth. We get to be individuals, here.”

That’s ironic, considering that she spends virtually all of her time in a fusion. “But I’m just a Ruby.”

You close the ship’s opening. Too much noise might wake Lapis.

She freezes, again. Her tears flow faster than her pyrokinesis can immediately evaporate. “That sounds like something Sapphire would say.”

She screams something incoherent into your chest.

“... What?”

Um. Okay. “Yeah, I know…”

She weaves her fingers into yours. “No, but I really, really, really love Sapphire! More than you love everything on Earth and more than Lapis hates everything on Earth!”

“Yes. I know, Ruby.”

She takes in a deep breath. “I lo--”

Her clasp on your hands tighten. “You don’t KNOW how great it feels to be fused with her all the time, though.”

And you thought you were over-using the word “love”,

“The initial burst of energy is the best, though…”

You hope that noise she just made wasn’t a moan.

“Fusion isn’t bad!” she screeches at you.

Denial. It takes all of your willpower to not roll your eyes. “Do you want to fuse?”

“Yes.”

Melding into one slightly-bigger Ruby is as easy as breathing. It’s not the best fusion you’ve ever been in, admittedly--your arm-gemmed ex-comrade was much more exciting to fuse with, which was why you sought her first while you were floating around in space--but at least the hand-gemmed fusion isn’t in a total panic anymore, although her innumerable paranoid thoughts are still coursing through the fusion.

You think it’s time to unfuse. (It’s a little harder than usual to separate, this time, because this Ruby is unbelievably clingy when it comes to fusions, but you manage.)

As soon as there are two Rubies in the ship again instead of one, there’s more screaming. “Th-That’s not what I meant!”

“Oops.” You thought she was just feeling lonely.

“I have to tell Sapphire!”

“Doesn’t she already know?”

You’re extremely grateful that this ship was made specially for Rubies. You pull her away from the wall, just in case.

“Let! Go! I need to go back to Sapphire!”

“Wasn’t there something you came here to tell me?”

She ceases her struggles. “Who cares what I say?”

You let her go. You weren’t manufactured for this moonshine. She’s nearly clawing her way out of the ship until you finally saunter to the nearest panel to release her.

“Buh-byee!”

There’s going to be a lot of altercations excluded from your mission report when you write it.

#su #steven universe #fanfic #my fanfic #navy #room for ruby #what is navy and lapis' ship name?#i wanna call it navuli #sometimes i just wanna re-write canon

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