Chapter Text
Steven was not really religious.
He was smarter than most people thought he was. But he wasn’t exactly a religious person.
His Dad was. A catholic, like his extended family. And at times he still follows their beliefs, some of their ideas about god. And at times, he taught that to Steven. And at times, that knowledge took. And it helped Steven in dark times.
But that was a long time ago.
That was before he’d met the gems. That was before he was a part of their war. Before he was believed to be his mother, and threatened countless times. Before he had to fight some of the most powerful beings in the galaxy. Before he had to confront his own demons. His own monster.
Sure, he remembered the mythologies. He even looked into more mythologies after. As a kid, it was cool to learn about the legends of Odin, Thor, and Asgard. About Kali and Vishnu. About Hercules, Prometheus, and Sisyphus. They were amazing, they were heroes . They were everything he strived to be.
But when he was a teenager and became more existential, those ideas became something more. And he realized that those tales were more than just legends to astonish, that they were documentaries . Odin and Thor were based on gems. Asgard was based on Homeworld. Many Hindu legends told of the fusion Steven knew as Opal. Same with all the greek tales.
Hell, some people interpreted Prometheus as Pink Diamond herself. Wasn’t that amusing?
The appeal of those legends was lost when he realized that he had fought many Gods and Monsters himself. So he lost his appetite for the astonishing.
Especially when he realized that even the most altruistic of people were capable of some of the greatest evils. His mother was a damning example of that.
But when he had hit his lowest point, the idea of the Devil stood out. An ultimate evil above all things. Was there even such a thing? Was there anyone out there who could be so evil? When was evil at its highest? With its actions and motives? Or with its deceit?
Over time, he began to wonder if that evil was split into people, like in the sense that “good” as a concept was ever-present throughout people. Some did lie, some were prideful, some had uncontrollable tendencies that sent them and others into the darkest pits of despair.
Some people were more evil than others. Or at the very least, more destructive.
Some people had the devil in them.
But sometimes he wondered…where all of that unimaginable evil came from. Or where all that unimaginable good came from. It must have come from somewhere if it were divided into pieces. What happened if you combined the pieces?
But when that time was past, he moved on. He began to feel better, more optimistic about the war. And even though he had confronted that evil in some people, that monster…and even though he had fought his own monster, he held together. He held faith in people and humanity. He held faith in the people he loved, and let go of those who were gone.
But then Isaac Sterling walked into his life.
Steven had put Connie on the last makeshift bed he had set up. There were about 8 beds total. Connie, Lars, Ruby/Sapphire, Spinel, Amethyst, Bismuth, Lapis, and Peridot were all rested on the beds. The wound on Connie’s head had been mostly cleaned, and the shrapnel in Lars’ head had been removed.
Pearl, Volleyball, and Steven had done their best to stop the bleeding, but they needed a doctor. So Steven was picking up the phone. For a call he was not looking forward to making.
The phone was answered in three rings, and immediately Steven found himself speaking to Dr. Maheshwaran.
“Steven? What’s wrong?”
Steven found himself nearly crying immediately. And that betrayed the situation to the Doctor.
“Steven.
What happened to my daughter?”
He tried to speak but it came out in bursts. “I…we were attacked and, everyone was poofed except Pearl and Volleyball and Lars he had shrapnel in his head and Connie’s head was smashed against a wall. She’s alive, I-I healed her but she needs you. She needs you.”
Priyanka was frantic. “I’m on my way Steven! I’m already in the car and I’m driving there.” She was starting to cry, but she took just enough time to pause. “And Steven…whatever happened there, I promise it wasn’t your fault. We’re going to figure this out. I promise.”
And Steven…very quietly spoke softly. “Thank you.”
The phone line went dead. Leaving him alone with his thoughts. Steven looked down at his shirt and saw some light blood covering it, along with some very noticeable, borderline unrepairable cuts in his shirt. He managed to heal the cuts but that shirt…
It was his dad’s, or at least one of his dad’s old shirts. He would have to get a new one. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, there was one shirt he’d had his eyes on for a while…
But it wasn’t just the shirt was it?
This whole situation was bigger, more scarier than any shirt could live up to.
They had been fighting gems, evil, monstrous gems for years.
And yet no one had ever brought the fight to their home before.
At that moment, Steven realized he wasn’t entirely alone. Volleyball was out there getting help from the larger denizens of beach city. His Pearl.
His mother.
Was right behind him.
She hugged him tightly. She remembered when she had to lean down to hug him, but now he was taller than her. It felt overwhelming at first but now it almost felt nice.
“Steven? I’m right here okay?” She spoke softly. Like a mother would. Like a mother should . “I’m right here honey.”
That broke him. Steven collapsed, and began to sob. The entire weight of the day began to crumble upon him, as he realized what he had been through. His wounds were minimal but he felt so, so tired. All the while, Pearl held him tightly, as tight as possible with her strength. And as Steven muttered, “I’m sorry”, over and over and over again.
Pearl just responded with a simple two words.
“I’m here.”
She repeated those words over and over again. Like a mantra.
Like a promise.
Steven leaned into her arms, like he did when he was a child. And it made him feel safe. It made him feel comfortable. For a second he let all of his worries melt away. Let himself believe he was in the arms of an angel. Of a beautiful, comforting cloud. His mother.
But then underneath it all, past the hole left in the temple, rested Rose’s picture. Her face, torn apart, still smiling as if unaware of the suffering she had created.
And dripping from the picture was a pink liquid. But it wasn’t just dripping. No. Like bubbles in the sky, the pink blood was floating. Floating . Like the blood of a monster, like something beyond human.
The blood of something with so much anger, it had a physical presence in his biology.
Like the blood of someone with the devil in them.
Doors open both ways.
Isaac had that realization a while ago. When the gems walked into his world
It meant that Isaac could walk right back into their world.
So when Steven started (accidentally) breaking into his mind, Isaac realized that he could see within his own mind.
Doors open both ways.
Isaac stood at the top of a staircase, in a warehouse deep within the heart of Beach City(specifically just behind the Beach City Emporium, the giant, independently owned, general store and repair shop).
It was 12am, and he felt more exhausted than he had in his life. His body was covered in water, sweat, and blood. Pink blood.
Isaac tried to get himself to walk down the stairs but his exhaustion kicked in, and he stumbled downwards. He barely held himself up using the railing but he still fell to the ground floor with a slight bump.
Then he noticed something. He noticed what Steven noticed.
The blood was floating in the air. Straight from the open wound on his chest and throat.
“Huh. That’s new.”
Then he looked at the gauntlet on its hand and saw a glowing energy oozing from it, straight to the rest of his body. It was small, almost imperceptible, but it was there.
Isaac got up and turned on the lights in the warehouse, revealing his work bench, his motorcycle, and cacophony of books, work materials, and weapons, that were both human and gem in nature. But some of the lights just...didn't turn on.
Isaac let out a deep sigh. “God, I still need to work on that electrical bill.”
He went straight to the voice record that laid on the table in front of him. He turned it in with a soft click, and began to speak.
“The day is December 17th 202X. I’ve stopped keeping track of years, so for now I just call it X. Makes things easier. Gave the Nth Gauntlet a full test run and I captured the powers of Steven Universe, Garnet, Pearl, Peridot, and Amethyst. Lapis, Bismuth, Volleyball, and Spinel still elude me. But that’s okay.” He chuckled softly to himself. “I’m not particularly fond of the idea of being able to stretch far beyond human proportions.”
“According to what I’ve gathered, Pink Diamond’s power has an immense effect on the body…which I guess we knew, but combined with the original dosage, it has a much larger effect. I’m not feeling much pain but it is causing my blood…to float. Not particularly sure why, and it makes me wonder if the effects will be different per Diamond. Maybe Yellow will generate some kind of electric charge? Who the hell knows?”
Isaac took a seat and rested his back against the leather chair he had bought a few years ago. “A lot’s happened in one day. I went to the Jotunheim Homeschool and burned the whole thing to the ground. I let the people that did nothing wrong go, the ones that were simply bystanders. But the ones that had been part of terroristic attacks against both Earth and the New Homeworld for years, the ones who caused the deaths of so many lives…I gave them a taste of their own medicine.”
“At one of my CA meetings, a Tanzanite therapist spoke about how revenge usually caused some of her patients to feel less full, and caused them to feel…incomplete. Empty. Everyone mostly agreed but one Zircon didn’t. See long ago, she was a Crystal Gem. And long before that, she was a lawyer for Homeworld. She helped to defend other servants to her Diamond from turf wars and discrimination. But there was so much everywhere. So much injustice, so many wrong acts. So she joined up with the Crystal Gems and became their legal representative. She was good at it too, but she never touched the battlefield. She helped the gems navigate through tough spots in policy and all that.
She had managed to drag her clients with her and all was good.”
He rubbed his head painfully. “Until a Jet wiped out her entire clientele.” He stood up and walked to his work bench where weapons collected from all across the universe were stored and experimented on. There was a mirror at the edge of the table, and a first aid kit under the table. Lastly, on an adjacent table, sat a record player with a variety of records under it, all neatly put together.
Isaac sat there and rested his recorder on the table and took a deep breath. “She was enraged. But Rose implored her to stay calm. She didn’t want her to resort to anger and hatred. Nowadays I wonder if Rose hated the concept of anger because she knew its consequences. But still, it caused more problems than it solved. Zircon used a device that had some fancy name but I always simply called it…
The Berserker. Keep in mind, this is long after things went wrong for me. I wasn’t sure how to stop her so I just kind of…let it happen.
Maybe I should’ve done more.
But she declared war against those who hurt her…and she killed them all. I saw her standing alone in a field of broken, shattered gems. And just under her heel was the gem of the Jet that killed her clientele. The people she was sworn to protect.
You know what her gem weapon was?
A giant fucking sword. ”
He started using a small handheld welder to fuse together some human weapons with some gem weapons. It wasn’t as loud as he expected, so he was able to continue. “So, after that Rose Quartz was of course unpleased and she exiled Zircon off of the planet. I told her that I’d keep in touch and I never got the chance.
Because just a few days later she was corrupted into this…mechanical spider creature. Every time I fought her, I was left wounded and exhausted. She was a hell of a fighter.
And do you want to know the irony of all this?
She was Pink’s .”
Isaac chuckled to himself, just a bit, as he took his carried, bloodied, and messy shirt/armor off. He continued working, glancing at his destroyed gun and getting to work on that next. “When she decorrupted, she learned what she missed. All of it. And she grieved for a long long time. But then she met Steven and started to meet the other gems. The Crystal Gems made up with her, and Steven learned her story. She was a good person deep down, underneath it all. She stayed at Little Homeschool for a while, and she was…happy.
Until she realized there was a whole world out there. Filled with people who were wronged by Rose and by Pink. People who were exiled by one because of their loyalty to another. See, back then, Rose was so adamant about leaving Pink Diamond behind, that she…she wanted to forget, destroy, burn all ties to that part of her life. The only exception was Pearl but…god, on that planet they were so…angry. Left behind and betrayed.
Zircon’s rage came flooding back, but she used it to help the people on that planet. It paid off, of course, they needed her quite a bit. She makes sure that they are covered under New Homeworld’s new policies. But their anger never died out. It never ended. And when she came to the meeting, and told that story?
She told us all that revenge made her feel better. It gave her a purpose when she felt she had none. All of us in CA were shaken, unsure what to make of it, but it sort of made sense. The one thing every gem needs is a purpose. So where do you go if you have no purpose?
You go to the deepest darkest recesses of the mind. Sometimes doing good helps, sure but…it takes time. It takes pain and effort and sometimes you just want something easy. A quick fix. It’s not healthy, its not good but…damn if it isn’t effective.”
He had finally fixed his gun. Added a new and improved chamber and made the bullets a little bit more potent. Now…for the Nth Gauntlet. Maybe he could rewire it and use it as a power source.
He tried to keep talking, mostly to calm his own nerves down. “Steven he…from what I got from his internal dialogue, he was talking about the Devil in people. What’s the old quote?” He took a moment to think, and then he smiled. “Jean Paul Sartre. ‘Hell is other people’. Right. I believe that quote is from a story called…No Exit. Where three characters end up in hell and discover it to be an empty room. And they are stuck there for eternity. Alone together.
But Sartre was onto something” He spoke as electricity blasted against his fingers and he groaned. “See, there is more to evil than just wrong acts. It's every sin imaginable. Pride, greed, all of that. And each of us have pieces of that. In little ways, shit like that isn’t bad . It’s just human. We all have pieces of darkness inside us but as long as the light outweighs it, all is good.
But the gems…Pearl is obsessed with the past, to the point it blinds her every moment. Garnet is obsessed with the truth and love, to the point where if someone breaks that, she loses it. And Amethyst wants everyone to tell her everything at all times no matter what. Again, they are not evil just…
Flawed. To the point it hurts people around them. They are so obsessed with secrets and yet they won’t share the truth with others?! How is that even possible?! They kept Lapis hidden for years, they kept everything that mattered away from Steven, they didn’t even tell him that I EXISTED!”
Isaac noticed himself losing it. So he took a deep breath and calmed himself. “So what is the root of all evil? If evil is split into people…where did it all come from? The Devil himself? Satan?”
“Well…I have my own theory.” He took a moment to hold the recorder, but then he lowered it down slowly onto the table and held his head in his hands. “God, look at me. Obsessing over the Diamonds like I’m crazy, like I haven’t moved on!
But how can you move on?! The gems pretend like its all easy, but they have so much time to get over their pain?! What about us?! It’s been five thousand years and I’m still hurting!”
He stood up and grabbed his gun and pointed it at the wall, at a makeshift symbol of the Diamonds. “All because of you! You hurt all of us! You doomed our planet, our whole race, and you’re still hurting people even now! The pain you caused isn’t resolved yet! Connie, Steven, Lars, even all of the gems, we are still hurting because of you! Entire planets are in ruin! Exodus 9 is hell itself because of what you did!”
“Steven wants to know the root of all evil?! There they are! The Diamonds! They took all of it from us and they are still taking! And no one is acting against them because they’re afraid! But I am not! I am done running and if I have to become a monster to end their rein, I will do it!”
He started frantically slamming at the sign with his gun, screaming, “DO YOU HEAR ME ROSE QUARTZ?! I’M TAKING IT ALL BACK AND I WILL DESTROY EVERYTHING THAT YOU ARE! EVERYTHING THAT YOU WERE! I SWEAR IT!”
His star brand began glowing a bright red as his anger reached its peak…but then it slowly died out as he collapsed to the ground. “You took…everything from me. I trusted you with my life and you just…didn’t care. How many lives have you ruined Rose? How many? Your friends, Greg…
How could you ruin the life of your own son?”
He looked down at his brand as he leaned against the wall. He chuckled just slightly. “You know, after you guys left me for dead, I made my own work. Any gems that even tried to come here and start something, I ended. And made them regret ever coming here. I attracted the attention of a lot of people. But no one ever bested me in a fight. No one.
The gems I shattered, man, it was a sight. They had a name for me. The Terra n. For a while, I never understood it. Technically, all humans were terrans. Why did I get signaled out like that? It wasn’t until I had a face to face encounter with an army of gems that it made sense.
They screamed out, ‘LOOK, IT’S THE TERRAN!’, and ran. It clicked at that moment. It was their way of referring to me as something beyond their control, beyond their knowledge. A demon.
A devil. To put it like Steven.”
Isaac stood up slowly with a chuckle. “But I was never into that kind of stuff. I’m not…terrifying to these guys. I’m just a human, an ordinary, down to Earth-“
At that moment, the Nth Gauntlet had a violent reaction and it sparked against the generator and power switch, and something, everything in the room turned on including…
“WRONG!”
Isaac stood up in shock and walked towards the glowing Nth Gauntlet and the record player.
“WRONG!”
Isaac looked at the song and saw its name. Wrong by Depeche Mode.
“WRONG!”
At that moment, the ironic beauty of the moment clicked in his head.
And he began to laugh.
“WRONG!”
“Oh man! This is the best, haha! Of course it could be used as a power source! This changes everything!”
He slowly began to get to work with welding as the song blared in the background. But everything worked more efficiently with “Pink Diamond” powering it all.
“ I was born with the wrong sign
In the wrong house
With the wrong ascendancy
I took the wrong road
That led to the wrong tendencies. ”
So what if everyone saw him as a demon? The world had taken everything from him…it was time to start taking things back.
“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time
For the wrong reason and the wrong rhyme
On the wrong day of the wrong week
I used the wrong method with the wrong technique. ”
Steven used his precious friends to motivate him all the time. Maybe Isaac should think about his own!
“ Wrong
Wrong
There's something wrong with me chemically
Something wrong with me inherently
The wrong mix in the wrong genes
I reached the wrong ends by the wrong means- “
Weimar,
Oscar,
Sasori,
Lucius,
And…
Saga.
At that, Isaac stopped dead in his tracks.
He had had so many good reasons for resorting to anger, and as far as he knew, that was his only path…
But Saga.
“ It was the wrong plan
In the wrong hands
With the wrong theory for the wrong man
The wrong lies, on the wrong vibes
The wrong questions with the wrong replies
WRONG!
WRONG! ”
But she was committed right? Just as much as he was.
They all were.
This was it.
“ I was marching to the wrong drum
With the wrong scum… ”
He loaded his gun, now fully working and connected to the gauntlet and blasted it at the wall
And with a loud, almost unnatural bang
It punched right through.
All the power instantly went out as Isaac looked on in awe. “Whoa. That’s…holy shit .”
Suddenly, the power came flooding back because of the gauntlet. The song reached its final note as Isaac put the gun down and set to work on his wounds.
He chuckled as he changed to record to something more intense. “Alright old friends. You guys wanted a war? Wanted to hate me? Think it’ll make things easier if you had a Devil to fight?
Okay.
I’ll give you a Devil.
Just you wait. You won’t die, no…but you’ll see.
You’ll finally see what I see .”
He placed the record on the table and the music blared on.
“I AM THE GOD OF HELLFIRE!
AND I BRING YOU-“
Pearl stood at the edge of the shore, watching the waves slowly seep onto the beach and then recline itself. She held the remaining pieces of Rose’s picture, all with pink blood dripping from the edges.
She sat down on the sand and took a deep breath. “They’re terrified of you, you know? Scared because of what you can do. Scared because you have nothing to lose.”
Suddenly a hologram burst forth from her forehead, revealing Pearl and Isaac-Baldur, talking in an empty room.
Pearl tried to mimic Baldur’s voice as much as he could. “Maybe they have reason to be afraid. Maybe I can finally make things right after all the pain that Homeworld has caused.”
“But I know the truth.”
“What?”
“I remember how we drank together after a successful battle. How you were always compassionate to everyone you met-“
“Wait-“
“How you cared about us, no matter what happened. How you placed bets about how…how long it would take for Rose to discover my feelings for her.”
“Okay, stop-“
“How we would bond, and sometimes go into town, and make friends and find hope and happiness and-“
“Enough!”
Pearl looked up at the hologram and saw that Baldur had pushed her backwards just a bit as he began to sob. She muttered what she remembered him saying.
“That man died…on that spire years ago, Pearl.”
The hologram suddenly poofed away as Pearl was left alone with her thoughts and her tears. She wiped one from her eye and sighed. “You were my best friend back then. You listened to my worries and never once cared who I was. You saw me for me and…back then that meant more than I could say.
And yet we ruined you Baldur. We destroyed your family, your life, your everything.”
“For years, I wanted to forget what we did to you. It felt easier. To assume that humanity had nothing good to offer because they weren’t like you. But I never could. Because sometimes when I look at Steven…I see the life you could have lived. A life of happiness, of love, of…something you never had the chance to enjoy.
Sometimes I really wonder that you could have been a part of our family...if things had gone differently.”
She chuckled slightly. “I’ve never told anyone this. Not even Volleyball. But when that happened, there were days on end where I was…so angry at Rose. It felt wrong what she did, how she let you suffer quietly.
I loved Rose with all my heart.
But looking back…”
Pearl chuckled bitterly. “I finally see your point Baldur. Maybe she is the reason all of us are feeling like this. Volleyball, Spinel, Amethyst, Garnet, the Diamonds, all the Roses, Bismuth...you and I. The planet itself. Everyone we have ever loved and cared about…broken. Lost. Without direction or purpose.
When she approached the end of her life she was…kind. I guess in many ways Greg did bring out the best in her.
But now she’s gone.
I loved Rose with all my heart.
But…my love is now directed to…others.”
She stood up and turned to see the makeshift campfire she had set up, burning slowly with its embers floating in the night sky. Next to it were a collected pile of the remains of Rose’s picture.
Pearl took a nervous breath as she looked at the remains. “She was my whole world. She was my Diamond, the person most precious to me in this galaxy. But she’s gone.
And in many ways, I’m better for it.”
She smiled softly. “Garnet, Amethyst, Bismuth, Lapis, Peridot, Greg, Volleyball, the other Pearls, Spinel, Connie, Steven .
And you , Baldur.
Without Rose, I never would have met any of the people I love most in this world, so it seems unfair to hate her completely.
But…maybe it's time to finally make good on my word…”
She tossed the paper she held, the one showing Rose’s face into the fire. It quickly burned up and almost exploded in a sea of embers.
“And move on.”
Pearl slowly picked up the pieces of the picture, and one by one, tossed them into the fire. Talking to herself all the while. “You gave us everything Rose. Freedom, happiness, hope…and a life. But you took everything from us, too. The people we loved, our past, and any chance of moving on.
But it’s over. You’re gone. And your son is all that’s left. Your son, who is sleeping now, being comforted by his father, because of another disaster you wrought.” She began to speak more angrily. “Your son, traumatized by you and the weight of the world you placed on him. YOUR SON! WHO HAD HIS CHILDHOOD TAKEN FROM HIM BECAUSE OF YOU!”
All at once, she tossed pieces of the picture into the fire with a loud guttural scream, They burned up instantly, raising the fire higher and higher. The only piece of the picture left in her hands was a picture of her eye. Her lovely beautiful eyes.
The eyes she passed to her son.
“Your son. Who is a better person and gem than you ever were.”
She threw the last piece into the fire. There was no ceremony, no long moment where it burned into cinders.
It was just gone.
And for the first time, Pearl felt…okay because of it.
She clenched her fists as she stared at the fire. “I invoke the ancient laws of gem culture, the laws of Homeworld, and the laws of the Crystal Gems, and on this day make an eternal vow.
I swear to protect my family with all my heart. To protect the people I care about without losing myself. To protect Steven and Connie as if they were my children. I swear to protect my…my girlfriend Volleyball no matter what comes. I swear to fight and fight and rage…”
She smiled softly. “Rage against the dying of the light.” Then she finally steeled herself. “And I swear…I swear to bring you home Baldur. No matter what may come, I will bring you home. I failed you and Moonstone all those years ago.
So now I swear…
To protect all of you.
As a knight. As a Crystal Gem. As a mother.
And as a friend.”
As she spoke her final vow, the waters of the shore pushed forward. It slowly but surely tried to make its way to the fire, to snuff it out for good.
But nothing could snuff out that vow.
Nothing could snuff out that fire .
AS ONE STORY ENDS,
ANOTHER SHALL CONTINUE.
BECAUSE NO STORY IS EVER TRULY OVER.
IT IS KEPT ALIVE BY THE PEOPLE WHO WERE AFFECTED BY THE TALES. BY THE LEGENDS.
AND FOR THAT REASON.
NOTHING EVER TRULY ENDS.
Isaac climbed onto the stage slowly. He felt his hands shaking manically because well…he didn’t know what he was going to do.
What if the whole world rejected him or ostracized him. Maybe he deserved it but…
God, he didn’t want this, he wanted to do good, to make his mark.
Wasn’t that what this was all about? Making a mark?
Wasn’t that why all of the gems were here, at this show? To make a mark on the world? To go beyond what people expected of them?
He could do this.
He could do this.
Isaac climbed onto the seat, with the microphone connected and everything. There was a guitar set up against the chair, it was just as he imagined.
Just as he had hoped.
He sat down and that’s when he saw everyone.
Everyone he had ever known and beyond.
He saw Dot and [REDACTED]
He saw Spinel, Volleyball, Peridot, Lapis, Bismuth, Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl. He even saw Eckhart.
And he saw Steven.
And everyone of them were smiling.
He could do this.
So he sat down and took a sip of water. Then he grabbed the microphone.
“Hey everyone!”
He chuckled awkwardly as everyone said hey back.
“Wow, big crowd. Wasn’t expecting this.
My uh…”
Here was the big moment.
“My name is Isaac Sterling.”
No reaction. Some people smiled.
“Uhhhh. You guys may know me as Baldur or-or the Terran.
A soldier…a terrorist…a monster.”
Still no reaction.
He chuckled slightly. “But maybe you guys know what that’s like. You know what it’s like to try to attack people or humans or this planet. I think that’s the one thing nearly everyone here has in common. We’ve all felt that pain and taken it out on this planet.”
He smiled wide. “For me personally, I was born here. Like some of you. Born as uh...Baldur Odinson. But…but Rose Quartz changed me. Made me something that wasn’t entirely human and not entirely gem.
I spent years of my life angry and in rage . But I think someone showed me that that is not all I have.
I think it’s the same person that showed you all that lesson or that idea. That there is more to a person than their anger or their rage and their purpose. There is more to a planet than its past. Everything has more to it than meets the eye.
His name is Steven Universe.”
The crowd roared at the name. The poor kid already had tears in his eyes.
“Yeah, I guess we all really do know his name. Believe in Steven . Isn’t that the phrase? I don’t know who came up with it, but who ever did, good on you guys.
See, I think everyone needs a friend like Steven Universe. A friend to watch their back and constantly defend them at every turn. Be there for them. No matter what.
The best of friends are there for you, but the even better of friends know that even they have limits. I think…I hope that Steven knows that he doesn’t have to help everyone.
He’s started to take breaks and take his time and that’s…good. It’s amazing. He shouldn’t have to help people, we are all capable people. We can absolutely help ourselves.
And yet he does it in spite of it. In spite of it all.
He helps people not because he owes a debt or anything but because he wants to. Because he’s a good man.
I believe in Steven. I believe that all of our worlds would be in hell without him. I believe that the Diamonds would have killed us all if not for him.
And I believe that maybe…just maybe…I can become more than the soldier Baldur, or the terrorist Isaac.
I could be something else.
I could be…
Me .
So that’s why I’m here. Because I was convinced and dragged here away from my whole…terrorism shtick.” A giggle from the crowd.
“When I got hit with corruption…like a lot of us, I saw things-uh, you guys may also know me from Corruptions Anonymous.
And uh…I saw things and I heard things. The big thing was that I uh…I heard things from the future.
Crazy right?
But one of the songs I heard just…stuck out to me. So…”
He grabbed his guitar and tuned it just slightly. “So I decided to sing it for everyone here.
Maybe it would be a relief in dark times or something. A relief in general.
Just what everyone needs.
Because in the end, that’s what everyone needs.
Not anger. Not rage.
Just happiness.
A Resolution .”
He wasn’t expecting a reaction.
But what he got was clapping. Unanimously loud clapping.
And for the first time, Isaac felt himself shed a tear.
It felt good. Relieving.
Hopeful.
So he took a hold of the guitar.
And he began to strum.
A soft tune. A calm tune.
He could vaguely see people wave their hands in tune to the rhythm. But at that point, nothing else mattered.
Except for him. The guitar.
The light.
And his world.
So he began to sing.
“Ultimately I don't understand a thing
I try to do the best I can
I know you try to do the same
We're just so bound to make mistakes
You could call it a disposition,”
It gave him goosebumps to sing that song that he heard so long ago.
“I apologize for all your tears
I wish I could be different
But I'm still growing up
Into the one you can call your love
I don't know if I'll ever be enough
I'm throwing in my chips
I guess I tend to push my luck.”
He could see the tears stain the cheeks of everyone in the crowd.
“And ultimately I believe we'll be okay
It's so cliché to say these things, but repetition is a key
I think I'm better when I'm with you
But I worry when you're gone
I think I need to learn to love myself
I must learn to be strong
So, for now we'll say goodbye
Although it pains me in my heart
Your words they come to me in memories
They sing to me like songs
It won't be long until I'm here
Soon I'll make my arrival
Under shady trees
A quiet street
The roads that I have traveled”
He could feel the tears stain his own cheeks.
He could feel something watching him. A presence.
“Ultimately it's a beautiful thing
Like flowers blooming in a lonely field
The petals drift through crossing winds
They find their way to river streams
That scent the water beautifully, it takes me back to you
It takes me back to you.”
And as he strummed those last notes, he realized what was filling his heart. That feeling.
That presence.
It was hope.
It was hope .