Lapis Lazuli submerged into the dark depths, feeling the cold and yet comforting embrace of the water. She hid from the sight of her saviors and her jailers, while a bittersweet feeling blossomed inside her. Her fingers traced the contour of the metallic patch adhered to her gem, a golden object that kept her whole despite being cracked almost from end to end.
The faint golden light of that metal brought her most recent thoughts to the surface. For an instant, everything seemed like an illusion, a happy ending invented by the mind of a defective gem before falling into true madness. But no, this was not a dream; it was the raw, indifferent, and sad reality she had been forced to face since her arrival on this cursed planet called Earth.
What else could it be but the same reality that condemned her to a life where she was never more than a broken trinket, a traitor, a rebel? Even a toy for the Diamonds would have been treated better than what she had lived through.
Then there were her saviors? Nora's confused and fearful gaze remained etched in her memory, and Lapis did not understand the reason for her own emotion. Adrian, however, spoke as if he knew everything. His fleeting question had answered her feelings, but it had only sown more doubts in her mind, newly emerged from chaos. He had told her she was free, that she could choose anything... and that very freedom, paradoxically, was what paralyzed her.
She could choose anything... but, what to choose if in the end she had nothing left? She did not stop walking on the seabed, her gaze lost among thoughts that, for the first time, ran with clarity. The cold caress of the water was her only companion as she descended into a new form of pain: the self imposed pain of having to decide something as important as her destiny in this cruel universe.
That sad but kind smile on her savior's face, while he offered her his options, gnawed at her mind like the song of something impossible but hopeful. Those eyes as black as the very vacuum of starless space... without stars.
As if it were a revelation full of intrigue and half placed clues, she understood or gave meaning to everything he did for her.
"Hahaha... You truly are my savior" she laughed, or at least thought it intensely, as she pushed the water away from her body. In the vacuum created, a figure of Adrian made of water formed, reminding her of his look of compassion. "Even now, far from me, you do nothing but help me as if I were a gem fresh out of the kindergarten" She caressed the face of the imitation, failing as she tried to feel the warmth that his gestures generated.
"But I suppose that like every gem I have to go out and fulfill my duty outside of this one" she said as her face drew closer and closer to the imitation until only a non existent space separated them before she dissolved that empty illusion of that strange spark he possessed.
With a heavy sigh, she forced herself to emerge from the gigantic mass of water. Her choice was already made, taken at the moment when such a different being forced her, a Lapis Lazuli, to reflect on her own decisions.
When the starlight reflected on the water, touching her form, her silver mirror like eyes fixed her destiny toward a planet so distant she could not observe it in this immense galaxy, but she knew it was out there waiting for her, whether as a traitor or as just another one in the empire.
She took a leap, expecting the momentum of the water to join her back in two wings that would take her beyond this world whose only two good things she had already known... But all she felt was the characteristic pull of gravity, dragging her back into the infinite pit of salt water she had just left, as if the world itself laughed at her attempt to free herself. But she was no longer driven by that feeling of self pity. No, she would rise and face the world even if it led her to a worse place, because she was able to choose, and as long as she can do that, it will not matter what happens.
"This will not stop me" She declared. "Because this former prisoner of the mirror has already made her choices, Lord of my metal" The golden metal reflected the starlight as if it were the signature of her oath before this world, and perhaps it was because of the magic of the being who gave her the metal, perhaps because of her own conviction, perhaps it was that mysterious force that pulls the strings like a puppeteer called destiny or just a mere coincidence in this vast cosmos, because only in that moment did she shine between the fragile crystal of what she is and the unbreakable metal that conviction will turn her into.
Lapis Lazuli would not surrender before obstacles even if the goal itself she aims for was nothing more than another path full of broken glass, because this time she chose that, and no one will take away that divine right to choose.