Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"It's sad that it didn't work out but I'm glad you tried," said Sniffling Croissant before openly sobbing in sympathy for his friend. The literal stream of tears pouring from Glum Glass slowed slightly in response.

Connie hung over the edge of her bed, lying on her back with her hair spilling across the floor of the loft as she watched the upside down characters bawl on the television. She narrowed her eyes as she tried to see the show, one of Steven's favorites, from her friend's perspective. Metaphorically; he didn't, to Connie's knowledge, routinely watch Crying Breakfast Friends! flipped 180 degrees.

All I have to do is power through two more days and then Steven's family will be back from vacation. Besides, thinking about emotionally overwrought breakfast drama beats thinking about dad. Or mom. Or Priyanka, or the gem in that book I used to have, or Ame-

Connie rubbed her eyes, telling herself it was just a sympathetic reaction to binge-watching this show, like yawning when you see someone else yawn.

Besides, Glum Glass keeps trying and trying despite all her setbacks. It's noble... in a poorly-animated sort of way. Still, I have to wonder if the writers for this show take some sort of sick amusement in putting her through so much. I kinda miss the earlier episodes, when things were simpler for her.

The crying onscreen ratcheted up a notch.

Not for the first time, Connie considered watching the CBF on mute. Reading the subtitles upside down would be a little difficult until she remembered most of them would be variations of '[sounds of crying]'.

The sound of the warp pad chiming saved her from the dilemma. Rolling upright Connie saw Lapis standing on the crystalline teleporter. The two locked eyes from across the house, the Blue gem holding up one hand and making a surfer sign, finger and thumb outstretched, her expression inviting.

When Connie smiled, Lapis' face split into a wide grin and she gave a whoop.

"This is your captain speaking. We've finished our pre-flight checks and are now ready to be completely awesome," drawled Lapis in a monotone voice completely at odds with the tail end of her statement. "Co-pilot Connie, are you ready for takeoff?"

"Ready!"

"C-2 preparing for liftoff!" shouted Lapis, breaking character and giggling excitedly as the pair sprinted across the top of Lighthouse Park, straight toward the cliff.

Lapis launched herself into the air about thirty feet from the edge. This was so she was directly overhead, gripping Connie's outstretched arms at the moment the teen leapt into the void with a shrill cry of excitement.

Blue hands gripped brown forearms and brown hands gripped blue as Lapis flapped hard, once, twice, the pair cartwheeling through the open air, each alternating between inarticulate cries of fun and outright laughter.

Corkscrews. Loop-de-loops. Rolls. Dives. At one point Lapis flew low enough, built up enough speed, that Connie did some barefoot water skiing across the suddenly smooth surface of the Atlantic.

While they were readying to make another pass, winging high over the lighthouse and temple both, Connie felt the sweat gathering in her palms, feeling herself slipping incrementally with each wingbeat.

"Lapis?"

"Hmm? Higher?" called down the gem, the wind whipping her pigtails almost straight back as she ascended.

"Wait! Lapis!" Connie tried to grip tighter but the adjustment only made her slide further down Lapis' slim-but-deceptively-strong arms.

"Whoa, careful Con-con, I think you're-"

Lapis' words were lost in the roar of air as Connie suddenly succumbed to gravity. Unlike previous dives, the instinctual terror of weightlessness wasn't tempered with the knowledge that it was just a ride. Connie screamed.

toofastTooFastTOOFAST, screamed a corner of Connie's mind, while another could only quip, Oh no, not again.

She summoned the force field at a sharp incline, grazing it rather than hitting it directly. It slowed her down slightly, propelled her away from the cliff face a little, but it set her tumbling, making up and down difficult to differentiate.

She willed another field but it had either been off-target or even above her because she never encountered it. The third field was placed more accurately: Connie bounced off it hard enough that it was only the flash of yellow that told her she hadn't ricocheted off the cliff face after all.

There was a blur of blue followed by the press of arms around her tight enough to choke Connie's scream into a wheeze. Up and down became even more confused for a frantic fraction of a second, the wind of wingbeats briefly overpowering free fall and gravity both. Then the world shook with concussive force and every corner of Connie, even the snarky one, was jarred into insentience.

At some point Connie became aware of things again. First, that her back, shoulders, and the back of her head were hurting in a way she wasn't aware they could.

Still not as bad as that time with the Nightmare Monster, thought that irrepressible part of her, because apparently her ability to make wry observations was the quickest to reboot. Somehow, she wasn't surprised.

The second thing she became aware of was that her back had somehow gained the ability to vocalize its discomfort and was groaning beneath her. That was a surprise.

When a hand that wasn't hers dragged lazily across her face it clicked just who was back there and why. "Lapis!"

Exemplifying the expression 'painful slowness,' Connie rolled over and off the Blue gem, squishing into the sand Lapis had apparently winged them over when they'd crashed.

"Oof," groaned Connie, still too jarred to do anything but flop on her back despite how tender it was. "I think I know how some of those bee monsters felt when I zapped them and they hit the sand hard enough to poof."

Connie heard a wheezed chuckle beside her and then, “Hon? I see bees in — OH!”

Connie blinked at the odd response. Rolling onto her side, she saw Lapis pressed into a sandy crater, kind of like when the Centipeetle Matriarch had spiked her like a volleyball. The Blue gem slowly sat up, using a cerulean hand to stabilize herself, and glanced at Connie.

Thin, blue eyebrows furrowed over mirrored eyes as Connie gasped. "Lapis! Y-your eyes!"

Lapis squinted out of blank orbs for a second longer before twisting around and groping with one hand across her back like she was trying to scratch a hard to reach itch. Her expression then became one of resigned embarrassment. Turning to Connie with a weak smile she said, “I’m a fool; aloof am I.”

Before Connie could ask further questions, the gem turned revealing her teardrop-shaped gemstone, the seat of her consciousness, crisscrossed with a jagged crack. A glance in the crater showed the rock Lapis had landed on, its surface sprinkled with sparkling blue splinters.

Once again Connie gasped. Lapis shrugged and was about to stand when she stopped, bent down, and brushed the fragments into her open palm. "No, I save on final perusal – a sure plan if no evasion."

Connie was pretty sure she was in some kind of shock. She'd seen the gems hurt, poofed even, but never cracked. Unable to really process this overwhelming development, she rose to her feet, the complaints of her body relegated to a distant place. "I think 'no evasion' is what got us into this situation," she drawled.

Lapis looked at her with featureless eyes, lifted her free hand to her mouth, and blew a long, loud raspberry in rebuttal.

Connie barreled through the front door, uncaring about it slamming against the wall. The second she was across the threshold her gem lit up and the temple door across the house opened on a room of scrap, sluggish lava flows, and the sparks cast off by whatever Peridot was doing over her workbench.

"Peridot! Lapis needs your help!" she shouted.

The technician looked up from Johnny's open chassis --the ersatz robonoid lying upside down on the workbench-- her glasses shifting from welding visor-dark to clear as she did so. Extending an arm overhead, five of Peridot's floating fingers spun to a blur, allowing the gem to helicopter out of her room and into the Beach House proper.

A pair of floating fingers remained behind long enough to buckle Johnny into position like a baby on a changing table, before zipping out to rejoin Peridot. Johnny kicked its limbs feebly, unable to right itself. The temple door closed moments after the fingers soared through.

"I'm afraid the noise of my activity drowned out the specifics of your call," said Peridot, landing with a heavy thunk and walking the rest of the way over. "What seems to be the problem?"

Connie had ran ahead of Lapis in returning to the Beach House, the gem unable or unwilling to keep pace. That was why the Blue gem stepped through the already open door, one hand closed into a fist while the other she used to wave in Peridot's direction. "Yo, Aloha, Hola, Oy!"

Peridot saw the mirrored eyes and made a frightened squeak, quickly stepping forward to put herself between Connie and Lapis. "Stars! What happened?! How many oceans does the Earth still have?! Is Central America still an isthmus?!" she asked, her voice almost a shriek.

“A man, a plan, a canal. Panama,” Lapis said, attempting to lean on the door frame. She missed, fell to the floor, then staggered to her feet, giggling.

Jasper laid a still-damp hand on Lapis' shoulder, and said something for only Lapis to hear. Lapis' smile dropped off her face and she turned to look up at Jasper. "Oh. Oooh. Uh... Can I get a raincheck?" she said, giving a pained smile up at the large Quartz.

Jasper took a step back, drawing herself up to her full height, and began surveying the surroundings for threats, looking everywhere save at Lapis.

"I'm gonna make sure the ol' wing-a-lings are still working right." With a flash and a flap, Lapis was airborne.

Connie was quick to cup her hands to her mouth and shout, "No islands!" as the gem soared past.

Lapis hung in the air a moment and called back, "No islands. I'll be home when you get there." And then she was gone.

Peridot sighed, turned back, and walked over to the fountain, meticulously filling the specialized containers to their brim. “Let’s go,” she called once the job was done, Connie walking beside her and Jasper, ahead, as they made their way back through the garden and to the warp pad.

Jasper returned from the temple. "The vials are all secured."

"That's fortuitous. I just finished giving these two an upbraiding for the reckless behavior that got us into this situation in the first place," said Peridot, standing on the other side of the coffee table, limb enhancers crossed, her pose that of a principle reprimanding a pair of school-aged hooligans.

Lapis, who was decidedly not school-aged, sat on the couch looking more impish than contrite. Connie, however, was sitting adjacent and had her head hung low.

Lapis and Peridot shared a look and then Lapis said, "Hey, Con-con. Don't let Dot's fun-allergy get ya down. Everything worked out alright."

Connie looked up and met the eye of each gem in the room. "Yeah, but I've been pretty much pointless this whole time. I had no idea what was going on most of the time and I completely failed as a lookout, the one job I could do. Or, could if I wasn't so blind and inept."

"The apostate cheats," was all Jasper said, arms crossed.

He wasn’t sure and he knew Connie wouldn’t be either. That’s what this was, what this whole awful three weeks had been: Connie questioning what it was to be a Crystal Gem, what it was to be her mom’s daughter, what her place was with her dad and her three, kinda-yes-but-kinda-no moms.

And here she was, scared, angry, sad, turning to him for help.

The roller coaster in his stomach did a series of twists and spirals as the significance settled in. He scooted around so he was sitting beside Connie, the two of them looking out at the ocean together. He reached around to grab her side and pull her into a half hug. She rested her head on his shoulder (and his roller coaster started doing more swirly things in response).

He was still trying to find the right words to say despite the swirling emotions inside him when Connie said, “Thanks. I… Can we just sit here, like this, for a moment? It’s nice.”

Steven nodded, leaning his head gently against Connie’s.

The two sat in silence save for one another’s breathing and the sounds of the beach below.