Chapter Text
Her new room is really weird .
In her old room, upstairs, the blinds had been broken. Ruby kept saying she’d get about to fixing it, but something was always breaking around here, and some of the other kids were far less patient than her. The point being, the sun rose perfectly in that window, waking her early to feel its warmth on her bare arms and entirely eliminating the need for an alarm that would wake everyone else up. That way, Lapis had the mornings to herself. Well, save for Sapphire in the office at the crack of dawn, maybe Garnet singing to herself if she was around. But they were nice, and got that she needed time to herself, especially in a house as busy as the Rose Garden Retreat.
When the sun woke her, she’d pad downstairs, find something for breakfast, then go watch the sunrise on the shore. The way the sun burned its way into the sky, making the ocean sparkle like a field of crystals… It enchanted Lapis, always had, for each of the fifteen years she’d been alive. She can still remember her first day at this home, when she was flighty and still on edge. She’d run from the house, down the path, and found herself staring at the infinite ocean. That was what had decided it--that feeling that the ocean was more her home than any house would ever be.
Sapphy didn’t like her going alone, but she hadn’t stopped her, as long as she stayed in sight of the house. It was nice, and that’s all it needed to be.
But--as the alarm clock blaring right next to her now reminds her--the time of ‘nice’ is over.
In the hospital, she’d been in too much of a daze to realise exactly how much she was missing. The stark white and violently boring beige of the private ward had been their own kind of sun, those merging--like oil on water--with her impossible whirlpools of worries to keep her awake until midnight and wake her with a start throughout the snatches of sleep she could grasp. She’d drifted in and out of rest, with nothing else to do when no one was visiting, except listen to reruns of whatever was on a TV she couldn’t even keep her eyes on. She was sick of the Little Butler theme song, that was certain.
At least the alarm in this room is better than that.
Reluctantly, Lapis forces open her eyes to stare up at the ceiling of her new room. Somewhere overhead, there’s a massive THUMP that sends dust spiraling down from the cracked plaster, followed by a chorus of laughter--Amethyst, the house’s resident troublemaker, up to her normal tricks, probably. Being on the bottom floor of the house is weird , too.
The alarm clock continues to blare, and for the tenth time in as many mornings, she forgets she can’t move to turn it off. A phantom feeling of her arm raising to slap it onto the floor echoes through her body, but the incessant beeping continues to drill into her skull.
With a heavy head, she manages a twitch, then a quick nudge to adjust the position of her pillows. At least this way she can glare at the object of her annoyance. 9AM, and she’s stuck in bed, listening to the house starting to buzz to life around her. By 9AM, she should be dressed, she should be swimming laps in the pool down the road with Ruby cheering her on at the side.
But she’s in bed.
Not in a pool.
Never in a pool again.
“Hey, Lapis!” A sharp voice cuts through the bzzt-bzzt of the alarm, and then a pale hand hoves into her vision, cutting off her staring contest with the clock to finally end the ceaseless beeps.
“Ah, my saviour,” Lapis mumbles out, her mouth as dry as her tone as she follows the line of the arm up to see Peridot grinning down at her--much the paragon of positivity as she’d ever been, “Morning, Peri.”
Her girlfriend waves, then gestures out of her line of site, “I made you breakfast...?”
In that single moment, the dark clouds that have begun to swarm Lapis seem to lighten for a moment, and her heart softens. She watches as Peridot bustles around, moving away to open the curtains and push open the window beyond it as she talks.
“You know how hard it is to make smoothies?” Complains the younger of the two, content to fill the silence that Lapis leaves with her idle thoughts, “I had to try like a million times, at least! The first time it nearly got jammed, ‘cause it can’t make apples smooth apparently? And then Ruby came out to try and fix it and it nearly broke ‘cause she kept hitting it. She said something about--uh--percussive maintenance? But I dunno what that is. I’m surprised she didn’t wake everyone . But then? Greg came over and said he was taking Steven out for the day, to Empire City? And he fixed the blender while he waited for Steven to get ready. Then I found out that the blender has a boost function, and that changed everything…!”
Laughter bubbles in Lapis’ chest, filling her with light for a blissful morning as Peridot continues to ramble on about everything and nothing.
“Peri,” she calls at last, when the blonde gets carried away arranging new flowers (“ freshly ripped up from outside! ”) in the vase on the bedside table, “Peri, help me sit up?”
“Oh,” Peridot glances over, and an awkward smile crosses her face, “Sorry!”
Jumping to action, she carefully starts to stack pillows behind Lapis on the bed, just like the doctors showed them all, and hops onto the bed, unevenly balanced, to try and move Lapis into a sitting position.
“You’re heavy ,” she huffs, struggling against her own muscles to manoeuvre the leaner of the two upwards. With one last heave, she finally props her girlfriend up, cackling triumphantly as she almost tumbles backwards off of the bed.
In the late morning light, with Peridot buzzing around like a bee hopped up on sugar, Lapis can almost kid herself that she’s just taking a day off. And that’s nice , she supposes. But the fog still lingers in the back of her mind, especially now that she's sat up, and she can catch her reflection in the mirror to the side of the room. The bandages are off now, but the neat lines of stitches in her forehead still stand out, raw scars against her rich skin, and reminders of a summer day gone so horribly wrong.
As Peridot helps her eat breakfast, turning on the TV that Greg wheeled into the room, Lapis’ mind is elsewhere, reflecting on the snatches of memory she has of the incident, and her current situation. Peridot, bless her heart, isn’t quick to catch onto her girlfriend’s silence, still talking as if the silence is the worst thing for Lapis right now. And perhaps it is. Perhaps without the background noise of her girlfriend’s voice, she’d be even further retreated into her own mind. That would err on unbearable in her current state. Before this all, her mind was a sanctuary--an endless ocean of bliss where she could retreat in times of fear and strife. But now all it is is an empty cavern, echoing her worries back at her at a volume she can barely stand. Peri’s words take the edge off.
“What if I never get back in the water again, Peri?”
The question falls from her lips like a stone, always fated to sink and disturb the calm lake.
Peridot puts down what’s left of the smoothie, her smile faltering as she sets the tray of fruits and toast aside to squirm into the small bed next to Lapis.
“I mean… You will though, right?” She says simply, resting her head on Lapis’ side and looking up at her curiously, “You’re Lapis . You’re the swimmer! You can’t just never be in water again! That’d be stupid!”
In an instant, Lapis’ face is wracked with pain, and she can’t help but let out a dry sob, hiccupping and scrunching her eyes closed, as if to stop any tears from welling up.
“Of course that’d be stupid, Peri. That’s the point!” Lapis wants nothing more than to stamp her foot in frustration, but even that pleasure has been taken from her. She settles for shaking her head hard, her already flyaway hair tumbling out of its bun to sit haphazardly on her shoulders, “But if I get back in that water, who’s to say it won’t happen again? Who’s to say I won’t be able to regain movement of my stupid arms and my stupid legs and I’ll just be stuck like this!”
The sudden display of upset and frustration strikes true with Peridot, and she glances down at where their legs knock together under the patchwork blanket--her brightly decorated prosthetics resting against Lapis’ paralysed legs, chipped nail polish and old scars galore.
For a moment, all she can say is ,”Oh.”
Then, she regathers herself, and turns her pout of concern into a grin.
“I’ll be right back. Give me, like, an hour tops. I have to do some research ,” Peridot’s eyes flash with a spark of inspiration, and she pushes herself out of the bed with all the grace of a baby giraffe, “Yell for me if Camp Pining Hearts comes on, I wanna watch it with you!”
“I- I, uh…? Sure?”
And just like that, Peridot’s energy fades from the room, returning Lapis to the unique loneliness that comes from knowing there are people just feet away. She leans back as well as she can onto the stack of pillows behind her, returning to her silent vigil of the ceiling, as if it might distract her.
Time passes differently in solitude. What feels like an hour to Lapis can only have been ten minutes in actual time. But as second after second stretches on, she swears she’s come unstuck from regular time. Maybe that would be fun. Floating, for once, in a tide that can’t hurt her.
For a while, the solitude is nice. She’s used to imagining herself in better situations. This is no different. But even Lapis can only bare it so long. Still…
She brings herself back out of her half slumber to hear someone rapping at the door with precise, intent knocks. Pearl.
“What is it?” She mutters, just loud enough to be heard over the still blaring television.
“Lapis, honey, do you want company? I’ve just finished my cleaning, and I have some time…!” The earnest, mournful tones of Pearl’s voice carry through the thin door, and Lapis can’t help but flare up with annoyance. It’s probably misplaced, but the pity in her voice is just infuriating .
“I’m fine.”
Self imposed solitude is better. This way, she can say she chose this. Reclaim her loneliness like she’s done on the beach for as many years as she can remember. Cut everyone else off before something cuts them off for you.
“Well, are you sure ?” Pearl’s tones cut through again, and the annoyance starts to simmer into anger.
“I said I’m
fine
!” She snaps, focusing all her attention on the TV now, trying to unweave the heavy thread of anger now winding through her, “Unless you’re Peri, just
go away
!”
The darkness clouding her head seems to like when she does that. If it gets it off her mind for a bit… So be it. Behind the door, she can hear Pearl’s footsteps retreating, soft conversation that she can’t make out the words of. They’re talking about her, of course. Peri will tell her what’s going on later though, probably.
She turns back to the TV, anger and boredom laying their claim on her chest as she lets her mind wander away once more to the million what ifs that rest in her future.
This time, the rest of the hour passes with expediency. And--as if she’d been planning it--Peridot returns exactly as the minute changes. She stumbles in without knocking, sentences tumbling disorganised into the room as she heaves a pile of papers almost taller than herself onto the bed.
“I found a local disabled swim team!” She proclaims, frantically cleaning and adjusting her oversized glasses as she looks up at Lapis, pride practically visible about her form, “You wanna go see some of them in action?”
“What- What do you mean , Peridot? I can’t join a swim team; I can barely-”
“You don’t have to join!” Peridot cuts Lapis off, her enthusiasm more than enough to stave off the negativity once again, “You can just go and watch, see how you feel? And I’ll be there, too! And ‘cause it’s far away, Greg will drive you! Turns out he went to get his van made wheelchair safe!”
“I mean, it’s nice and all, but-”
“But what, Lazuli? You can’t stay in this room for the rest of your
life
!” Peridot now gestures to the wheelchair in the corner that Lapis has been stoutly refusing to acknowledge, “Even if we don’t go to the pool today, we should at least get outside, right? We could… Go get doughnuts? Go with me this time,
please
?”
Peridot pauses in her almost manic attempts to encourage Lapis outside, and scoots up close to the other young girl, smiling in the same way she’s always smiled to convince her to do something.
“ Please ?” She wheedles, brushing her mess of a fringe out of the way to make proper eye contact with her for the first time in the day.
Lapis tries to resist, but ever since she met the other girl, her heart had had a soft spot growing for her.
“Fine. Let’s go get doughnuts. Then we’ll see about the swim team. You… said there was a meet today?”
“Yeah, they meet every day, that’s what’s so great about them! Now, stay there! I’m gonna go get Amethyst so we can get you into your chair!”
With that, Peridot dashes back out of the room, and Lapis lets out a fond sigh. ‘Stay there’? Where does Peri even think she’s going to
go
? She’s so funny sometimes. It’s not like she’s said it, but Lapis loves that most about the other girl. She’s missed the sun since the accident. It’s beyond refreshing to have someone who can bring it into her room, regardless of the weather.