Part Null

Steven's was the first friendly face Lapis had seen in so long—and god, how Lapis wished that he hadn't been on the beach when they'd arrived. Now he was trapped here just as much as she was—

"Lapis!"

Her head shot up. No… Praying it was all a bad dream, she turned—and there Steven was, bright and happy despite having a wounded eye. A smaller gem, deep red in color, panicked and pacing, accompanied him, but Lapis couldn't bring herself to worry about it right now.

"Lapis, I can get you out!" Steven announced, reaching out toward the force field.

"Stop!" she cried, moving to stand—but even if she did, she wouldn't be able to keep him from hurting himself on the force field.

He stopped short of the humming yellow energy, and Lapis felt a little of her worries dissipate. He looked almost distressed for a moment, but then his smile returned. "It's okay, I can—"

"No—I don't want your help," she moaned. "Things are bad enough as it is." She wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly unable to meet his gaze. "I've already made too much trouble. Once we get back to Homeworld—" she swallowed hard and forced herself to finish the statement—"they're going to decide what to do with us."

Whatever Steven might have said in replied was cut off when his Gem companion groaned in exasperation. "I don't have time for this!" Without waiting for Steven to follow, she took off down the corridor, as if on a mission.

"Wait—" he called after her, moving as if to follow.

"Steven—" Lapis scooted closer to the force field between them—"whatever you're doing, just stop. If we do everything we say, they might go easy on us." She hoped she sounded convincing when she said it, but even in the cold echo of her cell, she knew she didn't.

"But they're…" Steven paused, searching for the words, before meeting her eyes. "Mean. They hurt my friends, they hurt my face—they've got you here in prison!"

"That's why we can't fight them," Lapis murmured.

His expression was one of desperation, but just under the surface… determination. "That's why we have to fight them."

Part of Lapis wondered if Steven knew what he was getting into, if he knew how technologically advanced and brutal his opponents were. And at the same time, looking at him through the force field, seeing how determined he was to set everything right… "How can you get me out?"

Steven's face split into a wide grin at her agreement. "This is really cool," he promised, and, before Lapis could stop him, thrust his arms into the force field.

Lapis' hands flew up to cover her eyes, terrified to see her friend die… but no pained cries met her ears. She lowered her hands to see Steven standing in the force field itself, his arms blocking the flow of energy and his whole body quivering. The energy started to seep into his body, making him glow a faint if sickly yellow.

Understanding what he wanted her to do, Lapis crawled through the opening Steven had created. She stood, looking around the corridor as he broke from the barrier with a shudder. "Do you know where we're going?" she asked as he joined her.

"Well… not really," he admitted. "I was following her—" he pointed in the direction the smaller Gem had run off. "We're looking for a Gem named Sapphire."

Lapis shook her head. "You follow her," she instructed. "I'll make my way to the bridge."

• • •

Part One

When Lapis had agreed to help the Crystal Gems in their mutiny, she'd expected to have a bigger part in it. Instead, she'd been forced to the side, useless. What could she do, exactly? Amethyst had easily overpowered Peridot and currently had the other Gem bound in her whip. Pearl was piloting the ship. Steven was watching haven only knew what on one of the view screens—and then there was Lapis, standing in the middle of the command bridge, anxious.

The ship rumbled ominously as it reentered the planet's atmosphere. Lapis swayed on her feet and fell, the turbulence making standing a challenge. As she managed to right herself, she heard Steven call her name—

And the walls of an escape pod closed around her.

Before she had time to try to break free, to even think, she was knocked to the floor again as the pod was launched from the ship. She pushed herself up from the floor—and found herself face to face with Peridot. "What did you do?" she gasped. "Peridot, what did you do?!"

"What did I do?" the other Gem demanded, writhing in the whip that still bound him in an attempt to get free. "How did you get out?"

"We're going to crash!" Lapis finally managed to get to her feet and staggered toward the control panels of the pod… and her heart sank. Like everything else on Peridot's ship, it was the height of Homeworld technology, designed while Lapis was trapped in her mirror and thus completely foreign to her.

"How do I pilot this?" she yelled over her shoulder. "Peridot, how do I pilot this thing?!"

"You don't know how?" Peridot spat, still trying to free himself. "Get me out of this—I'll do it!"

"There's no time!" Lapis' hands flew over the panels, calling up anything she could in the hopes that it would help. "Please, just tell me how!"

Whatever Peridot was screaming at her in reply was lost to the deafening roar of a crash. The last thing Lapis remembered was the pod informing her, Impact in ten, nine, eight—

• • •

Part Two

Lapis heard her surroundings before she saw them, and they sounded like something burning. She opened her eyes, wincing at the pain that seemed to have seeped into the core of her being, and found herself staring up at the stars.

She considered staying like that, but sat up and looked around herself. The pod had come to crash in a forest, and its wreckage was the centerpiece of the destruction. Trees had been pushed out of the way like they were toys, and some of their branches were smoldering. The damage to the environment appeared to be just that.

Lapis stood up, gingerly testing her body's limits. In the moonlight and the light provided by the scattered fires, she could see scrapes and cuts on her body, and could only assume she'd been thrown from the pod when it crashed. The world around her was quiet, save for a breeze rustling the leaves and the crackling fires, and she felt… alone.

Peridot. "P-Peridot?" she called, almost afraid to raise her voice too much for fear of being discovered. "Where are you?"

Silence answered her, and she bit the inside of her cheek. "Peridot!" she hissed. "Say something!"

As if on cue, a faint but unmistakable groan caught her ear. Lapis pressed her lips into a thin line and strained to place where the sound was coming from… Inside the pod, it sounded like?

Lapis deliberately circled the downed pod, double checking that Peridot hadn't been thrown from it as well. Finding the area deserted, Lapis clambered up the side of the pod, bracing herself against the open hatch. "Peridot?"

For a moment, there was no reply, and she hopped down into the pod. A few of the panels that hadn't been seriously damaged in the crash lit up, illuminating the interior. It was this pale light that allowed her to better see Peridot, still tied up and just now starting to come back to consciousness. "Peridot?" she asked, stepping down into the pod. "Can you hear me?"

His eyes opened and he looked around the pod briefly before his eyes settled on Lapis. "Where am I?" he asked.

"The escape pod," she replied, crouching next to him. "Do you remember what happened?"

He blinked slowly, as if considering the question, then a look of disgust passed over his face. "Vividly." He writhed in the whip again, this time managing to turn himself onto his back. "Where did we crash?"

"I don't know," Lapis admitted.

Peridot shook his head. "Help me out of this—" He started to tip over, and he swore colorfully.

Lapis reached out to stop him from falling, and understanding the command, started to look for the end of the whip to untangle him. "Were you hurt?" she asked, finally finding the end.

"I don't know," Peridot admitted as Lapis unwound the whip. "Let me run a diagnostic…" He fell silent, and for a few moments, his visor was overrun with technical specifications that Lapis couldn't even hope to understand. The only sound was that of the whip being unwound.

"I'll see if I can figure out where we are," she announced when she finally untangled him.

"What good is that going to do if the pod is destroyed?" Peridot asked, his eyes still scanning the specs in front of him.

"We still need to get out of here," Lapis reasoned, sitting in the pilot's seat and calling up what panels she could. Surely one of them was navigation…?

"Where are we going to go?" he went on.

Lapis considered the question as she called up the (thankfully functional) navigation panel. Where could they go? "…To Steven's home," she announced finally, thinking of him for the first time since she'd been trapped in the escape pod. "In Beach City. We'll be safe there."

"The Steven's home?" Peridot echoed in disbelief. "What makes you think those traitors will take us in?"

"That's the kind of person he is," Lapis replied confidently. "He won't let the… the Crystal Gems turn us away."

Peridot turned to look at her—or so Lapis assumed. His visor was still swarming with the diagnostic, so she couldn't be sure if he really saw her. "How do you know?" he pressed.

Lapis sighed deeply as she tapped a few commands into the navigation panel. "…You wanted to know how I got out?" she murmured. "I agreed to stop you and Jasper."

"You betrayed Homeworld?" Peridot's voice was laced with surprise.

"Homeworld isn't going to help us, Peridot," Lapis pointed out, clenching her hands into fists. "Not here, not when we can't even get a signal out to them."

When Peridot spoke next, it wasn't in reply to Lapis' accusations about Homeworld. "Fuck!"

"What's wrong?" Lapis asked, turning away from the panel.

"My casing is wrecked," Peridot snapped, tapping his visor and dismissing the diagnostics display.

Lapis bit her lip slightly at that. "It doesn't look that bad," she offered. It was true—the worst damage the metallic casing that covered most of his body was some dents and scratches.

"It's all internal," he grumbled. "The auto-repairs can't fix it all."

Lapis sighed heavily. "You probably don't want to hear what I have to say then," she mumbled.

"What?" the other Gem said warily.

"We're here—" She called up a map of the region in which they'd crashed, their position marked with a glowing dot. "Steven lives here." She expanded the map so that it showed a second glowing dot, this one several miles to the south of their position.

"I don't think I can make it that far," Peridot said, shaking his head.

"So you're not even going to try?" Lapis pressed, turning from the map to give him a meaningful look.

"I can't move—" Peridot started to pull himself up from the floor, the trouble he had doing so underscoring his point.

"I'll help you." Lapis abandoned the control panels to rejoin Peridot, and she knelt next to him to help pull him to his feet.

"What makes you think I can walk that far?" Peridot demanded. "I need to repair my casing first, and I don't have the tools for it."

"You can get them," Lapis promised, "if you come with me to Steven's. He'll take us both in."

Peridot's eyes narrowed, and even behind his visor, his mistrust of her was obvious. "Did you and the Crystal Clods put a price on my head? Is that why you want me to come with you?"

"No—" She was ready to shout at him, but forced herself to stop and try again, calmer this time. "Look, we're both in a bad situation. We're not going to get anywhere or anything we need if we don't help each other." She reached up and placed the palm of her hand over Peridot's gem, their culture's equivalent of the humans' handshake. "Deal?"

At first, Peridot seemed on the verge of denying her, but then he wrapped an arm behind her to press his fingers into the gem on her back. "…Deal."

To answer the question everyone seems to be asking (very rudely in some cases): Peridot is non-binary, female presenting, but male-identifying. Like all Gems, he doesn't subscribe to the male / female binary. While the physical form he's projected for himself looks what we would call female. However, he prefers to use male pronouns, which is how I write him. I really wish I didn't have to explain this because it's really disappointing for the bulk of my reviews to remind me that Peridot is "a girl."