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It's an awkward dance, because Peridot is young (how young? so young) and you're rusty. (That is a joke. You were stuck in a metal mirror and you have an affinity for water. Water rusts iron. That is the joke, get it?) (The other joke is it took you half a lifetime to realize that silver does not rust.)
Oh, but she's young, and you're newly old (you were young when you were imprisoned, but now you're a relic from a lost age.) She's only lived a half-dozen 'centuries,' which is human shorthand for 'barely adult,' and you've lived a 'millennia'. When you were a mirror Steven's city's leader mentioned something about 'millenials.' Is that what Peridot is? A Millenial? A pre-Millenial?
She's full of herself, is what she is, and obnoxious. Sour and shrill. In the handful of moments your mirrorself spent with Steven you saw the face he made when he sucked on a lime. Peridot is that face. Hey Peridot, you want to yell, you lime-suck face! But she won't understand the insult, so what's the point?
How did you get here? Why are you dancing with her? Why is she dancing with you? "Look crybaby," she'd said, "how about fusing? Maybe then you'll quit being scared of tech." And you'd agreed, fascinated by the spin of her - fingers? appendages? - half hypnotized. Ingratiate yourself, Lapis. Acquiesce. Bide your time and gather your power. Maybe your fusion will share her curiosity about Earth and your longing for escape, and she'll be able to run and hide in Earth's vast oceans.
Maybe she'll be your fear and her zealotry and she'll destroy the ship in a showoff-y explosion of wet electricity.
Maybe she'll overwhelm you and you'll disappear forever, absorbed into the fusion, and this child will just be a tall, wet and mopey iteration of her current self.
Maybe you won't be so lonely. Exile is a solitary business, particularly when you're grievously wounded and trapped in a reflective object. Fusion would be a nice break from being alone. Fusion would be a nice break from being you.
Besides, who else is there? Jasper? No, never, not in a million years. No question there, you and Jasper would be pure fear and pure hate. Not good.
So this is what it's come to:
You're dancing, limbs still unused to movement, and she's dancing, false confidence and difficult-to-read awkwardness, but you're opening up, she stomps and you sway, eye contact, embrace
fusion
and you
are
YOU! YOU ARE YOU AND YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL, SO SMART, SO STRONG, SO TALL, YOUR ARMS, YOUR EYES, SO MUCH! You see! You breathe! By choice! You exhale a cloud of scalding steam and laugh! You're like a dragon, and you know what a dragon is, it is an Earth fiction about a fire breathing lizard and likening yourself to a fake animal from an abandoned colony is pathetic but also so cool, and you know this because you know EVERYTHING important. YOU. ARE. FLOODED!
With information!
Pun intended!
How could you not know what a computer is! What sort of educational system wouldn't teach you about Rose Quartz's Rebellion! But now you know it, now you know it all.
You raise your hands and oh, such tragedy, your fingerlings (hah! is that what they're called? On Earth, fingerlings are potatoes, which grow in the dirt) your poor fingerlings are joined to your palms with what, what, what are thoooooose, they're hinges! Hinged fingers and knuckles, your beautifully filigreed prosthetic arms, ugh! so backwards! oh! how clever! and they smell like well-oiled machinery (Smelling, how archaic. Haha, nerd, smelling is wonderful, you can smell salt and water and rain and dew, you can smell wet soil and wet iron.)
Oh ho ho ho, but won't wet iron rust? Oh no! Oh noo! Hahaha, how sad, you can't help but laugh!
Oh yessss! Look at your other arms! They may look organic but at least they're detached, the elegant fingers curl and wiggle and are so lusciously separate from the rest of the forearm, which is blissfully divided from the upper arm. Your body is, of course, a compromise, but can you really call something so beautiful a compromise? Isn't it an improvement? You're so . . . so elegant.
Oh it's so good. You're so good. So beautiful! Gleaming! You can feel power flooding from both of your gemstones and you love yourself. Glittery, sharp, shiny, you know the past and the present and you're young again, you're STILL young. Years mean nothing. You are the age you're supposed to be.
You want to shape a screen and write a report, but you don't want to share this with anyone, so you trace a rectangle - ugh, awkward, you have to BREATHE a cloud of steam and use a FINGERTIP to draw a window instead of just building one out of your fingerlings, but still, what a lovely glow in the vapor - and you take a selfie. What's a selfie? It's a selfie, who cares, it's a picture of you and you are so beautiful and so strong, you're dignified and elegant and your hands built of gears and your hands hinged by magic all make cute "V" for "Victory" signs and your picture turns out adorable and charming. As predicted.
Ah, you should show Jasper! She'd be so impressed. She'd be so jealous. She's so angry and weird and scary all the time, maybe she'd like this, maybe she'd respect how great and beautiful and tall and mechanical and magic you are - look at your wings, all gears and metal and steam. You look like an angel, which is an earth thing that is very new and stupid but fancy. You really should go show Jasper!
No. No, don't show Jasper. Jasper is different, she's as old as part of you. She isn't curious, she isn't young, she knows, she knows and she'll see that you're half coward, all coward, because aren't you utterly afraid of Jasper? Aren't you entirely consumed with fear? All parts of you are afraid of Jasper, because maybe she won't respect you and maybe she'll just straight up shatter your gem because you're taking up space in the prison cells.
No, you should show Jasper. She'll finally take you seriously! You're so beautiful! You know so much!
No! you can't show Jasper, she's unstable, she'll break you apart, and you're so happy, you're so good, you were so unafraid, why change it, just leave it a little while longer -
-but you're young, and young sometimes means stupid, so you send Jasper (she'll be so impressed!) your location and you mark it 'urgent' and why, why, why, oh god, you were always afraid but you were happy, why would you ruin that -
You want to impress her. She'll kill you! She'll admire you. No, please, you can't die, not when you've waited this long to be alive. You're so afraid.
You're so afraid, NOT!
You're shaking, and your mechanical arms are rattling, and your other arms are drifting apart, and you're feeling a pull and a deep wrongness and a ripping
it hurts
so badly
and Jasper
is here and you are lying on the floor, covered in condensation, and Peridot is somehow looking composed, or at least no more disjointed than usual.
"What's she doing out of her cell." It's not a question. Jasper doesn't ask questions, she makes statements, and other gems scramble to answer.
"I was curious about Earth technology. I thought she might know something."
"Well, she's half-dead. Put her back where you found her."
And you are. Half-dead. Fully dead. Fully alive. You know so much, but it's slipping away, and the more you grab at your memories the further they drift. Before long, Homeworld again feels as alien as Earth.
Peridot doesn't look at you when she leads you to your cell. She assumes (correctly) that you're cowed and cowardly enough to follow.
There's a skip in her step.
A hop. A little shuffle.
You have to keep yourself from pirouetting.
It's idiocy, you tell yourself. Fusion with Peridot. Hah. A fool's choice.
You know what Homeworld thinks of fusion.
But now you know what Peridot thinks of Homeworld, and it takes all your strength - the strength that pulled up Earth's oceans - to keep from reaching out your hand and spinning into your brilliant, beautiful, rebellious shared self.