Have you forgotten what you have and what is yours?

[oceantier]

Who: Greg, then open to Agent Apartment residents
What: Lapis confronts Greg about the things she's learned from Steven; life with Agent Apartment residents
Where: Beach, then Agent Apartment
When: Early April
Warnings: Angry blue lady.


A. Closed to Greg - She's waiting there for Greg when he comes -- a blue wraith in the near-darkness, stepping out from behind the rocks when she's sure he's alone. The ocean is restless that night, with a smell of a storm rolling in from the sea; the waves fidget, lashing against the sands in fitful bursts like energy just barely contained.

There are things she needs to discuss with him. She's been waiting.

B. Open to Agent Apartment - With the combination of the city being so close to the sea and the wet season upon them, it's not infrequent that Lapis -- or rather, Luna -- comes to Agent Apartment damp . . . even dripping. Find her when she comes in the door, or when she's dryer (hair much fluffier) and herself again, curling up in a corner of the couch with a minute sigh of what could be pleasure/relief.

She never makes a big deal of her presence; she generally settles in to watch whatever action is currently going on, leaning on the couch arm with a half-smile, her legs tucked up underneath her.

C. Closed to Steven - She gets to see him almost regularly now -- generally later into the evening, when practices are complete and most of the rest of the dancers are packing up or in the showers. Unnoticed, Lapis separates from the others, heading off. (The others are already convinced that Luna is a little stuck up, never staying and talking or going out afterwards with them. Lapis herself has barely noticed.)

She heads off to the designated meeting spot -- a quiet corner in one of the empty practice rooms, readily out of sight of the door. Legs tucked up underneath her skirts, she sits waiting for him, rolling a bit of the fabric between her fingers.

Today there's a woven bag beside her. She's hoping what's inside will lift his spirits.

D. Closed to Frisk - I want to bring him back before Papyrus knows.

The words haven't quite left Lapis since Papyrus appeared in the apartment. At first it's merely something to tuck away -- something to check on with Frisk once they reappear, something to resolve and put aside.

The problem is that Frisk doesn't reappear.

Even that wouldn't completely be a worry; Frisk is often out and about the city, and between their intermittent stops in Agent Apartment and Lapis', missing each other is par for the course.

The bigger problem is that word comes through that Sans has been captured.

And Frisk doesn't return.

Those two facts are what prompt Lapis to move. Though she can't take time off practice, she takes time from the spa, using the extra hours to comb places they tend to be or that she thinks would attract them.

Maybe it's nothing.

But she can't get rid of the echo of the words in her own head.

The warehouse is one of the last places she checks. It doesn't rate high on the list of places she might expect them to be, abandoned long ago and used only for the briefest of intervals. But. She's checked so many other places, and this can't be left from the list.

Her feet are light, barely audible as she steps into the space. The vastness of it stretches over her, around her -- makes her wary. For a moment she lingers close to the door, one hand still on the knob.

Calling quietly: "Hello?"

Comments

[panspermia]

When he catches sight of her, there's no longer the surprise or wariness of past encounters. Instead, Greg greets Lapis with a warm (if weary) smile. He knows this is where she likes to hang around, and some small part of him even looks forward to the possibility of seeing her.

The thought that she may not feel the same right now never occurs to him.

"Hey there. Feeling a little blue?"

[oceantier]

She doesn't laugh, too still, eyes too dark, too focused on his face.

It's probably only then that he'll see the water back near the rocks, silvery and rising, collecting and re-forming . . .

Until there's an echo of who he should be stepping out of the puddle and facing him back across the expanse -- an older Greg made completely of water, face set in a grim mask.

He won't have long to look until the water clone rushes forward, aiming to knock him down and pin him to the sand.

[panspermia]

The thought that something may be wrong stars to process right before he catches sight of the water rising up, unnaturally shifting to form a figure--unfamiliar, unknown to him, but...

...but not really.

Greg hasn't collected any memory of his own face, his true face, but in that moment he knows that's surely what he's looking at. The shock of realization is enough to keep him from getting out more than a short cry of surprise before he's been pinned down against the beach.

"Wh... what..." The watery grip on him is unyielding and cold, and panic flutters in his throat. He tries to look away, to focus on Lapis so he doesn't have to stare back at this icy-cold reminder. "L-Lapis, what the hey is this?!"

[oceantier]

"It was you."

Lapis' voice is as icy as the water clone that holds him as she steps forward. "They took him because of you."

The water clone's fist slams into the sand near Greg's head -- not trying to hit Greg, but to emphasize, sending a shower of icy droplets raining down on him. The fist quickly regathers, re-forms as it was.

[panspermia]

Even if it wasn't meant to hit, Greg flinches from the motion. It feels like things have been building up to this, his past self dragging him down and condemning him for what he's been up to in the meantime. Confusion and fear make his breath tight and fast.

"I--Lapis, what..."

It took a second before he understood what she meant. It was only the shock that kept him from understanding immediately; there's nothing else she could have meant. Greg goes still under his clone, no longer struggling save for his quick, frightened breathing. His eyes dart from her to the clone, and back. He'd thought she'd known. He'd thought it had been obvious. Then again, he was the one who had done it.

"Yes."

[oceantier]

Water drips downward from the grim-set face of the water clone, unmoving, unyielding, onto Greg's face.

"He was broken; he was scared." Lapis' voice digs into him; the water clone's fingers echo it, jabbing into skin. "I could have helped him. I could have saved him. I was trying to save him. And then they came in -- Virgo's robots -- from nowhere and I couldn't do anything, I didn't have enough power, and they took him from me, tore him away."

"They took him. And I couldn't do anything."

"For you. They did it for you." The last note is wilder, higher, ranging out of control.

[panspermia]

Greg shakes like a leaf, taking in a sharp breath as the ice-cold fingers jab into him. His eyes squeeze shut, partly from pain and fear, but largely from not wanting to keep looking at the figure above him. He wishes he could face Lapis, talk to her that way, but he can't take this.

"I... I didn't know..." His voice is small and pitched. He just wants to look at her, if he could look her in the eyes he could sound like he meant it, instead of like the cowering and pathetic whelp he is down here. "I didn't know, I thought... no one was helping him..."

It's no excuse. He kidnapped his own son. He sent them to do it. He tried to protect him, tried to save him, but not even Steven wanted to stay. All he did was take agency away from people, like it was from him.

[oceantier]

"I'll always help him!" The words are snapped back, high. "I came here for him."

"I promised him."

Her voice breaks off abruptly.

Nothing follows.

[panspermia]

"I didn't know." He repeats it, even softer. "I just wanted to protect him, I..."

He opens his eyes again, blinking away the stinging saltwater. His clone glares down at him, unsympathetic, unmoved. His past and future, both judging him in drowning anger. Greg wishes he knew what that version of him would have done differently.

"I'm sorry."

[oceantier]

Just as suddenly as it came . . . it's over.

The water clone trembles and dissolves, loses its form, gushing over him in a small deluge of water and salt.

Lapis is a short distance away, but not looking at him. Seated, her legs are drawn upward towards her chest, her spine curving to meet them. Her gem is visible between her shoulderblades, exposed along the curve of her shoulders.

[panspermia]

For a long stretch there's just silence. Greg lies there, still shaking, blinking saltwater away from stinging eyes and gulping down his breath.

Finally he sits up, still quiet. Sand clings to his hair and skin. Greg shivers, not from the cold or the damp, and wraps his arms around himself.

"I didn't know what else I could do." He stares down at the damp spots in the sand, what used to be his clone. Trembling, he looks to Lapis. "I'm sorry, Lapis. I didn't know how else to get him away from them."

[oceantier]

The muscles in the back tighten in response, her chin burrowing deeper into the small gap between her knees.

She could blame him for a lot of things. Wants to. It would be so much easier to have a focus for what she feels -- to tackle it as she might anything else, and take it apart.

The hardest part is that she can't.

Her shoulders quiver too -- though also not from the cold or damp.

"I promised him," she repeats. The words are soft and slow. "I haven't . . . been able to protect him. Not once."

[panspermia]

She looks so terribly small. For one moment longer Greg hesitates, before getting up, and walking over to her. She did just attack him, and maybe he's the last person she wants to be near right now, but... she needs someone. He can tell that much.

So he sits beside her, very slow and careful, letting her know his presence. His knees tuck up under his chin, as well.

"You've done a lot for him, already. And for me, too. I know it doesn't feel like it, but... you've helped us."

[oceantier]

She lets him come, doesn't move, eyes lowered to the sand.

"How."

She's not adverse at this point to asking, even if the word is quietly flat on her tongue.

[panspermia]

That heavy, flat word makes him close his eyes.

"We thought we were going to be stuck like this forever. Even when we got memories, it only made us feel more helpless."

Looking over at her again, Greg hesitates for a moment, then lays a hand on her shoulder.

"You changed that, Lapis. You showed that we had options. That people cared about us, and wanted us safe. You gave us hope."

[oceantier]

She's quiet for some time at that, unmoving . . . though she doesn't pull away, either.

Then her head moves slightly, minutely.

"It doesn't . . . seem to matter. I still remember it . . . his hand. It was there. And then . . . it wasn't."

"I haven't . . . not been strong enough. For a long time."

[panspermia]

"It mattered to us." He wants to be sure she knows that. Feeling helpless is terrifying, something he can't easily fix for her, but he can assure that her efforts haven't been for nothing.

"It's maybe not as satisfying as destroying whatever would hurt those you love. But sometimes we need it more." He hesitates. "At least, that's what I always told myself. Back before."

He's used to not being strong. He'd grown to accept it. It's not as easy for someone like Lapis.

[oceantier]

Steven forgave her.

That's soothed the back of her mind, filed off some of the rough and jagged edges. But the fact remains that she's smaller than everything she faces. In the end, there's so much out of her control.

Knowing what Greg had done . . . that had only reminded her of it -- sheared off what had been smooth until it bit and cut again.

But in the end . . . she can't deny him what he's done. Wouldn't she have done it too, grasping at any straw she could manage? She can give him a little of the blame for the fear, the panic he caused . . . but it was also obviously unknowing -- an act of desperation.

And she understands desperation.

She listens to Greg quietly with an ear -- distant, but listening. He's not wrong, and she appreciates it. It's just . . . not how she's used to fighting, and it's hard to rectify that in her mind.

"Need it more?"

The implicit question is "how." She's looking for something to grasp onto, however small.

[panspermia]

Greg nods, not quite looking at her.

"It's really easy to see when someone's body--or, um, their gem I guess--when they get hurt there. And so that makes it easier to know what needs fixing."

The "how" might not be easy, but the point was it generally got a lot more obvious.

"When someone feels alone, or scared, or lost... other people can't see where they're hurting so easy. Sometimes you can't even see it yourself. Those wounds can go a lot longer without anyone knowing how to heal them."

He's not quire smiling, but his expression is gentle.

"That hope you gave us... the knowledge that we're not alone, it might not feel as important, because you can't see the wounds it's healing. But we were hurting."

[oceantier]

Her head turns at that, cheek still resting against her arms and knees. For a long moment she watches his profile, quiet, as though she's seeing something for the first time.

The words resonate, humming inside of her like a completed chord. They hum and expand, and for a moment, she's warm, full in a way she can't remember being.

". . . Thank you," she murmurs.

"I'm sorry."

[panspermia]

Greg takes in and lets out a deep breath before looking back to her. The last ten minutes or so have been... hectic. But it feels like they've come out better for it.

"Hey, don't worry about it."

[oceantier]

That's Steven's same resonance -- that strange ability to forgive and let go in the the face of what should be hard to forgive.

Sometimes she wishes she had that quality herself. At the same time, however, her life, everything she's been through feels like a wall. It stretches upward, up, far away . . . insurmountable, unknowable, with her left at the bottom looking up.

Still, with all she's done, with all she knows she would be willing to do, the idea that people are willing to forgive, that she can be forgiven is balm to the long-standing remnants of old wounds.

"Is that," she murmurs, "how you healed him?"

[panspermia]

That catches him off guard. Greg blinks at her, before glancing off and rubbing at his neck.

"N-no, that... I... I don't really know how..."

It's confusing to think about. If he's glad he healed Steven, why is he so uncomfortable talking about it?

Greg frowns at the ocean.

"I didn't... used to have magic. Did I?"

[oceantier]

"No." She's a little more alert then, though she doesn't change position, watching him.

"You didn't, or you would have--"

. . .

She's never really revealed to him how they met, has she? A faint flush of blue gathers in her cheeks. He just forgave her, but would he do it again?

She's not quite ready for the risk.

"You would have used it before," she finishes, and hopes it suffices.

Venturing, "Where . . . did it come from? And when?"

[panspermia]

If Greg caught that slip up, he doesn't react to it. He just shrugs a little, still looking over the ocean.

"I didn't even notice it, at first. I would play music, and people would like it, and..." He makes a vague gesture with his hand. "I noticed things started changing."

A moment of silence passes. "They're making me learn how to control it. In exchange for helping Steven." His tone is clear: he's not happy about it. It scares him.