Blue was taught to hate himself by his father. It wasn’t ever that he wanted to hate himself, but that those feelings were forced upon him. “D-Don’t act like you know me.” That’s right, they only just met. She couldn’t know. Sure, maybe what he’d been doing all his life was wrong in the sense it wouldn’t settle the fear he lived in, but it wasn’t because he wanted to.

Blue never wanted to hate himself, he never wanted to live fearfully. It was just.. those thoughts were so stuck in his head, forced into his mind as a child by his own father. He frowned. His mother sacrificed herself just to create him. Yet somehow his father ended up loathing him. Forced into the mind of a child that the people his mother once knew would kill him the moment they got the chance for her cowardice.

“You think I’m being cruel?”

She brought a hand up to cover her mouth.

Her head tilted with a smile, and she stood back up, joints creaking faintly.

Apatite knelt down, elbows on her knees and hands on her face, ending up a bit below his eye-level and looking up at him.

A clawed finger extended, and tilted his chin up so she could get a better look at his face before she retracted her hand.

“Well Blue, depending on how you look at it, that’s the most lost you can get, don’t you think?”

Blue jumped a little, startled by the other gem’s sudden presence. “W-What?” Oh. Lost. He paused, blinking slowly as he stared toward the stranger. “N-No I’m.. I mean..” Well, he didn’t know where this was, but he didn’t care to so.. did that count as lost? “Maybe..?”

Their grin widened, and they offered a clawed hand to the other gem as a gesture of goodwill.