Authors Note: Hey, everyone. Just so you know here and now, this is a series of one shots that'll likely update multiple times a week. Connected oneshots. All of these take place within the same universe (Though, not necessarily at the same time). It is a supernatural AU that will contain violence, blood, abuse, pregnancy, character deaths and racial discrimination (Hate crimes against supernaturals). It will also contain various ships.

The ones planned at the moment are Jasper/Lapis, Rose/Greg, Lapis/Peridot, Ruby/Sapphire, Zircons, and Connie/Steven. More ships may appear later on.

And, one final note? This is not going to be a happy series of stories. Happy endings do not exist here.

The M Rating is there for the violence and general unhappy/dark nature of this rather than explicit sexual content.

Lapis meets a stranger and falls in love.

When they had first met, Lapis was still in high school. A junior year dealing with a family that ranged from negligent to abusive and a school that discriminated against people like her. She was seventeen years old, but she had dealt with more bullshit from the world than most people in their eighties had. Her parents were dead, her family on her father's side was unreachable (Possibly dead themselves with how life was) and she was stuck living with her family from her mother's side. That consisted of her aunt, uncle and two cousins. They were horrible.

They were also human.

Lapis was not.

That was half of the reason that the Bleu family despised her, the other half was because she was gay and had no real intention to stay closeted.

Her Aunt, Holly Bleu, made a point of demeaning her every chance she got because of these two things. She'd run the house extra hot some days, knowing that Lapis dehydrated far easier than her human relatives. She'd make crude, homophobic comments offhandedly whenever Lapis was in earshot.

Most days, Lapis just wanted to dive into the ocean and never come back. She could do that, too. She was half-mer after all. Merfolk had lived underwater for centuries until they decided that they were to join the rest of the supernatural and join the upper world.

The only problem had been that the humans weren't ready.

Even now, in the year twenty-seventeen, after all these wars, riots, protests and laws had been passed to ensure equality (not that there really was any to begin with), the louder part of the human race seemed to have no intention of letting the supernatural live among them. They were loud about it. Violent about it. When it became apparent that their voice alone wasn't enough to keep Congress from passing Human-Supernatural Equality Bill, they took other means.

All they had to do to keep from getting in trouble was to make it look like the supernatural had instigated the conflict and they could kill the person. So long as they could prove that the other part was acting aggressively in any way or form and nine out of ten courts would let them go with just a slap on the wrist.

It was bullshit.

So many people like her, supernatural people, were murdered on the daily for doing no other reason than that they were a vampire, a werebeast, a witch or so on, were anything but a pure blooded human. They rarely got justice. If the supernatural being was with another human who tried protecting them, the attackers would kill the human and claim it was the supernatural who killed them. Their killers were often heralded as victims of a malicious attack from the 'beasts' of their kind, and called heroes for 'standing up for themselves'. It made Lapis sick to her stomach.

It was how her parents died. Her father was killed for being a merman, her mother for trying to defend him.

It's why she was now living with her awful aunt Holly.

She hated it here. She hated it in this city. But, she had to soldier through it. She had to at least finish high school (If she lived long enough to) and she had to at least get her diploma. Then, depending on what she wanted after that, she could go into the sea and live with the other merfolk underwater and away from all them (Though that was growing more dangerous as time went on. The water pollution could and would cause long-term health problems, such as cancer) or she could find herself a college or home in a primarily supernatural community where she'd be safe.

But either way, she wouldn't really know anyone in her new home. Not that it was necessarily a bad thing. Maybe a fresh start was what she needed.

She hadn't yet made up her mind at the time of which she would do when they met. She'd just been at a coffee shop drinking some coffee and working on some homework all alone when a towering figure came up and slid into the booth across from her.

The woman was massive; well over six feet tall and built entirely of muscle. Her brown skin had pale patches all across it, her hair was bleached white and her eyes a bright amber. She grinned at Lapis and leaned over to her, glancing back at the door she'd come from.

"Hey, sorry to intrude, could you play along for a bit?" She'd asked. Before Lapis could get a word in, she'd pulled back and broke out laughing, "Oh, man that was a good one! Where do you always come up with these jokes?" she'd asked her with a wide, genuine smile.

Lapis was at a complete loss until a petite little thing came up to the table. She gave Lapis a dirty look and smiled sweetly at the woman, "Jazz, so this is where you came hurrying off to. I thought you said you had something important to do?" she'd asked all sickeningly sweet.

The woman, Jazz, rolled her eyes and gestured to Lapis. "Yeah. I do. I told you I was meeting up with my girlfriend for some coffee, and thanks to you I was late and she started on it all without me," she scoffed and turned back to Lapis, "Again, really sorry for not being on time, babe. Got held up by Aqua, she just would not let me go, couldn't understand that I didn't wanna talk to her."

Lapis looked at the small girl then quirked a smile. Yeah, she could play along, "So you're Aqua?" Lapis asked her and turned to Jazz, "I think you forgot to mention she was British, tiny and annoying when you told me about her."

She could just hear the offense in Aqua's gaze as she took a step back and glared at Lapis like the supernatural was the worst thing on this planet.

Before either could say anything, Jazz looked at Aqua and shook her head, "Can you get going already? I told you I wasn't interested, and as you can see I've a girlfriend now, so you might as well stop bugging me every chance you get."

It took a minute or two of the women quietly bickering until Aqua stormed off and the woman turned and gave Lapis an apologetic smile. She explained the situation, how Aqua was her ex and wouldn't back off and how she may have lied about having a girlfriend to get her to leave her alone. She introduced herself as Jasper and Lapis assured her that it was okay, she was fine with it and asked her if she'd like to stay around for a coffee. In case Aqua came back.

The two had hit it off pretty well. They talked and they learned about each other. Jasper was a freshman at the local college, she was studying physical health. Once a month she'd go out of town and roam the fields for a few days with her pack.

Yeah, Jasper was a werebeast. Specifically, she was the 'classical' werewolf along with her younger sister, a spitfire girl who was three years Lapis' junior. She'd only met Amethyst once, but, Lapis liked her well enough to not roll her eyes and scoff whenever she was brought up in conversations.

The two continued meeting up for coffee after that, too. When Lapis hit her senior year and was eighteen, Jasper asked her out. Lapis accepted, was more than happy to accept. She'd been crushing on Jasper for a while at that point and had been scared Jasper didn't like her that way.

They were happy together, though Lapis' family wasn't too pleased. As soon as they learned about her dating Jasper they'd given her a choice: Dump Jasper or move out.

She chose to move out, Jasper was happy to let her move in.

Life together was like a fairytale. Jasper always hugged and kissed her each morning, she drove her to school, they helped each other with their homework (Lapis was exceptionally good with English and history, while Jasper excelled in sciences and math). They took turns cooking dinner, they always went out on a date each week. They encouraged each other. They loved each other.

When they'd dated for over a year, during the summer after graduation, Lapis found out she was pregnant.

It wasn't like they had intended for it to happen or tried for it to happen. But, sometimes they got lazy about protection and Lapis wasn't always the best at remembering to take the pill. It was startling when she'd taken the test just as a precaution. It was earth-shattering.

Lapis was terrified, they both were.

The two had a long and hard talk about what they were going to do. They could get an abortion, or they could give the child up for adoption. They didn't know which side the child would take after; would it be a werebeast or a merfolk. Did they want to raise a child? Were they even ready to become parents and raise a child?

In the end, the two had decided that they wanted to keep the child. They weren't perfect, but they wanted to do the best they could to give the child a happy and healthy life. Lapis wanted to be a better parent to her child than Holly had been to her, give the child a better home than either of them had.

Jasper was happy to be a parent, she was terrified, but she was happy. She dedicated so much of her freetime to reading books for new parents, looking for bigger apartments or homes they could get so the three of them could all live in it.

They were happy about this, as scary as it was, they were happy.

It was a great life, a life with Jasper, that is. She was happy and she was in love and she was about to have a family of her own. It was a life that Lapis never thought she'd have, but a life she never wanted to give up.

It was raining when it happened.

A full moon, too.

Lapis had been going over magazines and catalogs for baby supplies, looking through cribs and decorations for her baby (she was five months in, four months left and it was showing). Jasper had left for her monthly trips to run with the pack. Lapis didn't really think much of it, she certainly didn't worry at all. Jasper had a pack of twelve with her, she'd be safe. As much problems as these so-called 'defenders of humanity' may be to the supernaturals, they never went after packs. They didn't have the spine to go after a group of supernaturals.

Someone had started banging on her door, startling Lapis.

She'd approached it and looked out the peephole and saw two uniformed individuals standing outside in the rain. She'd recognized one of them as one of the only two vampires on the force. The other, she wasn't sure. But, she presumed her to be human.

Opening the door, the officers introduced themselves; Officer Barriga and Officer Miller. The human, Miller had complimented Lapis on the decor as they sat down in the living room. She was trying to keep the mood up. But, from their somber faces, Lapis knew something had to be wrong.

"You are Jasper Gartens significant other, correct?" the vampire officer asked as she sat on the table, he was a skinny fellow. Certainly an unprofessional look to him, more like a lazy teen than an officer of the law, but Lapis liked that he wasn't a stiff and stuffy uniform man like most others.

Lapis had just nodded, feeling something horrible bubbling up inside of her as she looked between the two police officers, "Yes, I'm her girlfriend," she said slowly. What happened? Was Jasper okay?

Sadie had rested her hand over Lapis' and gave her a sad look. The girl knew before they said anything more what had happened.

During the night Jasper, along with two of her pack mates, had been killed, they weren't sure who it was, but an investigation was in progress. The two officers promised that they would find who killed Jasper. But, Lapis didn't want to hear any of it. She knew what was going to happen. If they found whoever it was who killed her girlfriend, they'd just tell some lie about how Jasper and her friends attacked them. They'd bang themselves up just to make it look like they really were attacked. No one would look any further into it after that and they wouldn't even get a fine.

And she was right.

A week later they found the ones who'd killed them. A bunch of college boys. They'd roughed themselves up like Lapis had bet, made a claim that they'd just been walking home when they were attacked by a group of werewolves and they shot them out of self-defense. Cried to the officers that they didn't want to kill them, but they would have been killed if they hadn't.

The people in charge of the investigation believed every word of it. And why wouldn't they? They were human, too, and they probably hated the supernatural just as much as the kids could.

Lapis knew Jasper. The girl could be violent, but she wouldn't hurt someone. She was a giant teddy bear. The only person who actually gave a shit about Lapis, the only person who cared and loved Lapis.

And now Lapis was alone. Alone. Alone. Alone. She was alone and was going to have this kid alone and God she didn't know what she was doing and how to raise a child on her own. She was scared. So fucking scared. She wanted Jasper back, she didn't want to be alone.

But Jasper wasn't coming back.

And she was going to be alone.