her handdraws back, LIGHTNING-QUICK;; her voice loses its vive & life, her tongue starts stumbling over words she snapped out as fast as she moved a minute ago. ( she has confidence, yes, but IT IS FRAGILE;; it takes only a word, a phrase, a change in tone to snap it in two. ) there’s not even a crease in peridot’s shirt were her hand had been;; all she’d done was BRUSH the other’s shoulder, in an attempt to get her to pay attention to her NEW ROOMMATE instead of the screen. ——&apparently, it had been a vain one, from the glower she’s getting now. ( well, really, she isn’t even getting that glower;; the laptop is. she doesn’t even get the privilege of DIRTY LOOKS. )
❝ i’m – uh – well, i’d just – i’d – i’d’ve —- i’m your – your new roomie. y’know. LAPIS. jasper – er, she told you about me, right?? ❞
that’s the rub, isn’t it?? that’s the CATCH. she could leave;; she’s clever, she’s charming, she’s small & sweet-voiced – not a threat – and she couldFIND HER WAY OUT. but what then??what but being RECAPTURED, what but being sent away to this NIGHTMARE of a ‘ home ‘, this time with no chance of escape or REDEMPTION ??no chance of LENIENCY??all she’d do is damn herself. ( she can hear the crunch, CRACK of her gem shattering against the rocks even now. NEVER AGAIN. ) ——&if she ran, she’d be caught, surely.
or she wouldn’t.
or she wouldn’t, and that would be worse. she’d NEVER RETURN to the only home she’d ever known – how dark & different it was now, but it was HER HOME, in the end – or she’d be signing her own death warrant. she’d wanderFOREVER. ( she’d be lost, holding a map home & staring at the trail she could never follow. )
an undignified yelp comes from peridot’s mouth, gasping loudly as she scrambles away from the water. the LAST time lapis had done this she’d nearly shorted out all of her work! it took her hours to re-calibrate and rewire the navigational systems AND fix the artificial gravity. there’s nothing worse than having to listen to everyone complain about how ‘oh peridot, i’m on the ceiling. how do i get down? peridot we’re floating. INSPACE. why are we floating!?’ while you’re clipped into the chair with a blowtorch five feet from your gem.
in the present, the communications to her escort flicker in and out, the screen going black. and there’s a gaping mouth, and then a loud huff of ANNOYANCE comes from between her lips and she’s pointing directly at the other with a look that screams frustration.
❛ stop breaking everything you touch! you - you - AGH! ❜
scrambling further away from the other gem, to avoid anymore water, peridot’s digits return to her. for a moment that lasts only a tiny fraction of a second, she actually MISSES her fingers. her real fingers, before the accident and her inability to fully regenerate came to light. because if she could have just regenerate completely, she wouldn’t have to be AFRAID of her prosthesis going dead ( or even worse being UNABLE to return to her ) because of some prissy TRAITOR. peridot steps even further back, carefully flicking open the casing, hiding the wiring in her arms to fix what was indubitably currently ruined by water damage.
▌▏✤┊▸ HOME ISN’T WHERE THE HEART IS ANYMORE. ❞
a smile that’s trying – really, truly trying – to be a SELF-SATISFIED SMIRK climbs onto her face, but while there’s no doubt of her self-satisfaction, it keeps on inching towards a grin. it’ll be wiped from her features soon, she knows, but she doesn’t get many smile-worthy moments anymore. to survive, she’s got to SAVOR THE LITTLE VICTORIES. like those hours of being the only living being on peridot’s ship that knew how to handle ZERO-GRAVITY – she’s spent a lot of her timeFLOATING, after all. water, air – it’s all the same to her. it is such little moments that keep the FIGHT in her ;; as petulant as they seem, they are REMINDERS. reminders that these homeworld gems, these gems who have taken her home and made it HELL, are advancedBUT NOT INVINCIBLE.
——&, to cement her point, suddenly the water in the air isn’t liquefying into a haphazard waveform, a shapeless splash. no, it’s taken the form of her ADVERSARY – from the triangular style of her hair to the free-roaming digits of her hands to the clunk of metal feet. ❝ – stop breaking everything you touch !! ❞ it’s a remarkable imitation, though the PITCH of her voice might just be a little too high( though lapis is probably quote aware of THAT). with that, peridot’s double shuffles towards the real thing, immediately sticking her fingers into whatever it is the other gem is attempting to fix.
the words are thrown haphazardly to the other gem, standing but a few feet from her. disconnected digits move over a holographic screen and there is nothing to deter her from alerting her ESCORT to their location. if it suits lapis to be a giant annoyance and an overly melodramatic child about it, so be it. it would not be a scratch on peridot’s gem to let jasper handle her.
▌▏✤┊▸ HOME ISN’T WHERE THE HEART IS ANYMORE. ❞
all she wanted was to SCREAM until she’d done to this world what it once did to HER GEM – until itcracked apart. but the sea is never still, and now all she wants is to curl up on the ground and squeeze her eyes shut ;;maybe then she can pretendNONE OF THIS has happened, maybe then she can go back, maybe then she can just float through waves of time ALL THE WAY HOME. ( maybe then she can forget that home isn’t there anymore. )
but she did that LAST TIME – &she’s too angry, with HERSELF for wanting it and with these OTHERS for making it so, to let herself. at this point, she doesn’t CARE how petulant she looks or how childish she seems to her observer. the sea isn’t known for being gentle.
even so, all she can really do now is send a flick of water peridot’s way. at least it’ll INTERRUPT her.
aliases: the mirror gem, water witch, riptide queen.
age: 5000+.
species: gem.
gender: feminine agender.
preferred pronoun(s): she/her.
YOUR NAME IS LAPIS LAZULI, and you are nobility. your name is your rank, your life, your world — and you are lapis lazuli, and that name is power. there is no other quite like you, no other whose name rolls off the tongue quite so smoothly ;; you are unique & that is what makes you truly noble. they say there is none, that there are no classes here, just roles to fill, but that is speech and not reality — you are unique, and so you hold your head a little higher and your shoulders a little straighter than a common gem. you are no pearl.
IT IS FOR YOUR UNIQUENESS YOU ARE HELD IN HIGH REGARD, and it is for your uniqueness you are kept sheltered. you have a home, and pearls to command, and a physical form with a laugh like silver bells and a smile like distant suns, and you are happy here in your world in miniature. you do not want for anything — you do not want even for the stars. you can reach them with nothing more than a beat of your wings. you don’t know anything else.
——& YOU NEVER WANT TO. homeworld is all you know, homeworld is the place you love — you would give up everything & anything for your home. it is perhaps not the freest of all societies ;; you are born in your role and you keep it. but it is the only world you have ever known, and it is a world that has treated you with the utmost respect ( more than it has done for many ). it is perhaps darkening — that yellow diamond has some alarming ideas — but even as the days grow shorter & the nights longer, you still love your home more than anything in the universe.
SO WHEN IT COMES UNDER ATTACK, YOU WILL DEFEND IT, even if it means leaving the only place you’ve ever known. a rebellion, a damned rebellion against what your world stands for — why would anyone rebel against that ?? — leaves gemkind reeling. the pearls have defected to fight for the other side. the fusions — the outcasts, the ones who will not split — fight for their very existence. the replacement pearls, the olivines, are already whispering amongst themselves — you can tell. there are so few left to defend your world & way of life ;; though you do not want to answer the call, you will.
SO YOU ARE REMOVED FROM YOUR WORLD, taken to the planet earth. you hate it from the start. covered in strange, clinging flora, disgusting fauna, and a blue liquid called ‘ water ‘ that, somehow, calls to you. ( you don’t want to admit that, though. it makes you feel weak. ) you immediately want to go home — but you are needed here, you are needed in the fight.
YOU ARE BARELY A MILLENNIUM OLD, so young for your species, but already you are learning to fight. most know the skill almost from the beginning of their existence, but you have never had need of it before. you haven’t a weapon in the conventional sense, unlike so many others who can pull a spear or a sabre from their gems ;; you have only your wings. but reconnaissance, scouting ahead, aerial attacks — it seems your wings are more than you will ever need. you are handed a sword, and you fight. simple.
BUT YOU DO NOT WANT TO. you hate this. you hate this fighting, you hate this pointless squabbling — homeworld will win, it always does, why do the rebels even try ?? — you hate this world. & especially you hate its water. the water that thrums through your being with a force you do not understand, the water that whips itself into waves when you draw near. the other gems do not feel it, do not have this effect on the substance. ( perhaps you are defective, just like the pearl that helped start this. )
& AS THE FIGHT BEGINS ON THE SHORE OF A GREAT SEA ONE DAY, THE FLOODGATES BURST OPEN.
EMOTIONS RUN HIGH as you swoop in, cleave, fly away ;; you want to go home. you do not want to be here a moment longer. you want this battle — no, this whole war — to disappear, swallowed up by the miles upon miles of blue surrounding you.
——& THEN IT DOES. the sea rushes in and consumes the world and it feels so, so good, and you know somehow that you have done this, you have succeeded, you have brought an ending to this horrible war. you withdraw your wings, you fall into the waves, you let yourself be taken.
BUT YOU HAVE NO CONTROL OVER THIS NEWFOUND POWER, and it dashes you against the rocks, back first. gem first.
YOU CRACK. THE WORLD SHATTERS.
IT IS THE DEPLORABLE ROSE QUARTZ who finally finds you after the tide of your wrath has receded. at first, she thinks you dead, your gem cracked beyond repair. you hear it all from within as she does what she planned for you — installs you into a mirror, to power it, to make it record all it has witnessed until the end of days.
ONCE YOU ARE INSTALLED, you scream until you are heard, and rose realizes you are still there. you hope desperately the sympathetic rebellion leader will understand what she has done and set you free. she does not. you are too dangerous here, she explains. too volatile. your absolute control over water — unknown to gemkind before, for no water exists on homeworld — makes you too powerful here to be unleashed on the world. she tells no one you are alive.
AND THEN SHE DIES.
YOU LANGUISH FOR FIVE THOUSAND YEARS, trapped behind glass, until you meet the gem calling himself steven — what is a steven ?? — and he speaks to you. he helps you.
HE SETS YOU FREE, AND YOU WILL NEVER BE TRAPPED AGAIN.
▌▏✤┊▸ VERSE: THE CAGED BIRD SINGS. ( between ’ mirror gem ’ and ’ ocean gem ’. )
no one checked before burying the corpse and she SCREAMED for two thousand years, but no one came to let her out, no one paid enough ATTENTION to even notice – not until steven. not until he spoke to her, HELPED HER, and now she is out and as free as the sea and SHE WILL NEVER BE CHAINED AGAIN, not if she can help it. crystal gems be DAMNED.
▌▏✤┊▸ VERSE: THIS ONE’S NOT EVEN GILDED. ( during lapis’ captivity on jasper and peridot’s ship. )
and yet – her home was NO LONGER HER HOME, it was replaced with a different place, one frozen and sterile and cold to the core, and here she is, shackled and alone again like she swore she’d never be. she just wanted to go home, and all she found out was that the place she’d loved no longer existed, and the people who loved her have FORGOTTEN EVEN HER NAME. she’s nothing but an informant now – kept in a cage without even pretenses, without even being presumed dead. (a fate worse than death. )
▌▏✤┊▸ VERSE: A TIME TO GIVE; A TIME TO TAKE. ( malachite. )
she is not lapis anymore. she is not jasper anymore. she is MALACHITE now, and her poison will bubble up through the sea and infect the wide world ;;she is MALACHITE now, and that will never be undone as long as the sea still holds her down. as long as the lapis lazuli somewhere inside keeps jasper in sea-wrought chains. ( and lazuli is NEVER LETTING HER GO. )
▌▏✤┊▸ VERSE: HOME ISN’T WHERE THE HEART IS ANYMORE. ( au in which lapis escaped jasper and peridot. )
ladybird ladybird flew away home – and her house had ALREADY BURNT DOWN. there was nothing left of the home lapis knew when she arrived on homeworld, and though SO MUCH OF HER just wanted to linger and hope home would suddenly materialize out of the ash, she made the smart decision. she made the smart decision and FLEW AWAY – back to earth. back to the only place she’d known for a thousand years and a thousand years more. back to the place that wasn’t home, but was STILL THERE.
unfortunately, she didn’t escape NOTICE. in other words – she brought a technician and an escortAFTER HER, hot on her heels in their green, green vessel. soon they will be here.
lapis lazuli does not have much time.
▌▏✤┊▸ VERSE: WE’RE ONLY HUMAN. ( humanized verse. )
being a marine biology major better damn well mean that lapis lazuli lennton( yep. named after a gemstoneAND three l’s. un-fucking-fair. ) gets her own submarine one day, because otherwise it won’t have been worth it. after all – she’s given up EVERYTHING for this degree ;; her parents wanted her to take over the company, and when she didn’t go into business – bam. disowned. no inheritance for lapis. fortune gone.
–& on top of THAT, she’s sharing a room with a call of duty addict and a weightlifter.
this better be worth the wait.
▌▏✤┊▸ VERSE: HOMO SAPIENS SUPERIOR. ( marvel verse. )
she does not want to be here.
she does not want to be here, at this school for the strange, learning strange things and unlearning everything, it seems, that she ever knew. she doesn’t want to be here in this place where nothing QUITE SEEMS REAL. she wants only to go home.
but her home isn’t her own anymore, is it ?? no, her home is the home of her mother and her father and her sisters, all smiling stunningly from the covers of newspapers and magazines ( their kind of money will get you there ) – her home is not home for a HYDROKINETIC FREAK.
no, this ’ school for gifted youngsters ’ is where a hydrokinetic freak like her belongs.
( NOTE: to make things easier, my general marvel verse will have lapis attending xavier’s school for gifted youngsters, but my comic verse – not mcu – in specific may have her at the jean grey school, considering this probably fits best with her steven universe storyline. )
▌▏✤┊▸ VERSE: WATERWITCH. ( gravity falls verse. )
no puppet strings can hold HIM down so anxiously you watch this town you know the truth -- that they are doomed and yet -- they fight against the gloom
the water's colder than the grave and those who are not very brave will never find her deep below but legends say that she will go and leave her lake to warn her home
but do not make her angry.
( it seems that sometimes the locals are drawn in by the verse of the WATER WITCH. she will not let them take her lake, though -- she has no ocean, she has NO HOME, but this is the second-best thing. no CURIOUS CHILD will take that away. )
▌▏✤┊▸ VERSE: CRACKED GEM. ( crack. )
first of all — hey there, i’m persephone !! first things first, these rules are gonna make me seem like a HUGE JERK, but i promise you that i’m actually really nice. ( well, most of the time. sometimes i’m an asshole. but shhhhhhhhh. ) please don’t be afraid to approach me !! i love you all.
this is a blog for lapis lazuli from steven universe. her personality will be based around the show. this blog is selective & private. i’ve got a lot of other blogs as well as this one, and some can get rather busy. since i become anxious easily, i choose to be selective. as such, i’m going to interact almost entirely with mutuals — plotting is for mutuals only, most open starters will be for mutuals only, etc. ask memes, however, are open to everyone. ( and you’re welcome to turn them into threads, but please don’t reblog asks. it’s much easier for me if you make a new post. ) zero tolerance policy on hate. i define hate both as the typical anonymous hate in the inbox, and hateful actions such as ’vagueposting’ in ways that are obviously about me or my friends. also, i’m very slow at times (okay, all the time) and if you harass me about it, i’ll stop interacting with you. simple as that. i’m oc-friendly — i’ve had several ocs myself, and i love them !! however, if i can’t find sufficient information about your character on your blog, it’s not likely i’ll follow back.
triggers.
it’s possible triggers will come up at some point. i’ll try to tag everything with ‘ [trigger] tw’ or ‘ [trigger] cw’, but if i forget, please remind me. do not kill lapis ( lookin at u jasper ) without my permission. any plot in which she dies will need to be discussed with me beforehand. if there’s something you would like me to tag specially for you, just ask. i can do it.
ships.
first off — on smut. i’m seventeen, which is above the legal age of consent in my state, indiana. i can provide proof of this. so i can write it WITHOUT getting anyone in trouble, and i will, but ONLY if i am very comfortable with my partner. if we’re not close, i’ll be weirded out and it won’t be happening. i ship lapis/chemistry. i prefer plotted, developed ships, so if you want to ship with me, please discuss this with me beforehand.
other.
i’ll be the first to admit it — i’m a fucking marshmallow. if you break one of these rules, i’ll be inclined to baby you. ‘oh, my rules are long, it’s fine, i’ll fix it !!’ you’ll most likely get plenty of second chances from me. HOWEVER. do NOT take advantage of my kindness. i tend to bottle up my feelings and accidentally let them all out at once — meaning if i have to give you third and fourth and fifth chances, you run the risk of me blowing up at you. please don’t make me blow up at you. [bruce banner voice] you won’t like me when i’m angry.
