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Chapter Text

Five thousand lunar cycles into Yellow Diamond’s lifespan, she finally learns what it means to fear death.

She is young, more developing sediment than immortal goddess, and this makes her want to look away from Blue’s less than graceful descent through the air.

The awkward flailing of her cloaked limbs.

The sickening crack of white quartz as her spine collides against floor.

Yellow crawls to her side, on all fours, like a dog.

“Blue!” Her voice is hoarse, unrestrained, spiraling out of control. “Blue!”

But White Diamond only laughs, heavy fabric—torn, desecrated—swaying from the tips of her claws.

Chapter Text

The permafusion tells her that a kiss is an experience, the electric union of two souls.

It makes sense… for what she is.

Off-color.

The Pearl (once White’s, then Pink’s, now nobody’s) stares off into the distance and says that a kiss is magic, binding and freeing all at once.

“We kissed,” she whispers, not without some defiance, “Often.”

Moonlight on the beach, weaving itself through Yellow’s hair like shimmering, silver threads, and Blue cannot stand not knowing any longer.

Unthinking, she leans forward, blue lips pressing urgently against gold.

She tastes like music.

Taut lyre strings.

Holy.

Divine.

Chapter Text

Fourteen years ago, Pink was still very much alive and her bare feet touched this golden sand.

Fourteen years.

A mere eye blink to a Diamond.

An affront.

She can almost reach backwards in time and snag the train of her dress. (Her long fingers tangling around fabric, she imagines she would say sorry.)

But where her footsteps might have been, waves have been there already—dark, cresting things—unforgiving and indiscriminate, they’ve kneaded all traces of her into nothing.

Blue closes her eyes and half-wishes they would do the same to her.

Wash away her every haunted place. 

Chapter Text

The battle is over, but no one is the winner because Steven is still sprawled in the sand, Pink Diamond peeking out from under the button down shirt she had immaculately pressed only this morning.

“Why isn’t she waking up?” Yellow Diamond demands, and it might have been intimidating were it not for the slight quiver in her irascible voice.

But Pearl has no pity for her.

For stars’ sake, she was the one who stepped on him after all.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” she says, and thousands of years of ingrained servitude suddenly mean nothing anymore.

Chapter Text

It is only a second.

An inconsequential fraction of eternity.

But just before white light engulfs Steven and White Pearl, the monochromatic head tilts in her direction, regards her with one black eye.

Even as she smiles blankly, Pearl can feel the burn of recognition.

The condemnation.

There is someone still inside that bastardization of a creature.

She is the perfect Pearl, subservient, unwavering.

She is a lobotomized monstrosity.

(Once upon a time, she loved to sing.)

“That Pearl was effed up,” Amethyst says three seconds after Garnet has already covered Connie’s ears.

“It isn’t her fault,” Pearl whispers, unheard.

Chapter Text

In the beginning, there is White and only White—achromatic, vibrant, extraordinary, alone. She erupts out of a supernova and fashions Homeworld from the debris. She and it and this alien race are consequences of a dying star.

Her first subjects are made in her likeness—prototypic Pearls and Moonstones, Chalcedonies. They are so grateful to be alive that they can never be her equals.

One cycle, she destroys them all on a whim.

She does not know what she is looking for.

A blue quasar (fading). 

A golden sun (dying).

(Colors and companions.)

It is lonely in space.

Dull.

Chapter Text

The globe throws its image around the circular chamber.

A fire, slowly flickering to embers.

The stars, cold and regal, wheeling across the sky in nightly conference.

A human family: a man, a woman, a child. They are pressed together.

Shh, they are sleeping.

Pink Diamond, knees against her chest, chin resting lightly on her knees, sighs, the sound soft and susurrant, a whisper in a windless room.

“They’re so intimate with each other,” she murmurs longingly. “Loved—I wish I had that.”

Stung, Pearl tries not to wince anyway.

“Tomorrow, my Diamond,” she offers. “If everything goes right, tomorrow.”

Chapter Text

Peridot laps one end of the pool to the other, all awkwardness and clumsy limbs. She’s never really swam before, but stars, she wants to learn.

Wants to be able to swim at the beach with Steven.

Wants to explore the ocean with Garnet someday.

She’s so focused that she doesn’t realize that Lapis has materialized from the shadows of the barn until the last second—arms crossed.

Wary.

Caged.

(Longing.)

“Why do you swim with your head above water?” 

“Baby steps,” she shrugs earnestly.

Lapis only tilts her head, as though the thought has never crossed her mind before.

Chapter Text

The question, as questions are wont to do, comes out of left field.

And socks Lars right in the gut.

“Lars?”

“Yeah, Sadie?”

They’re lying on her bed in opposite directions, hands just barely brushing.

“Do ya think we’re just... I dunno, wasting our lives here? We go to work, and then we come home, and then we do it again, and I just... kinda feel dead inside, y’know?”

A pause, electric with their fears.

The doomed to be dead boy bites his lip so hard that blood wells.

The future singer of the undead swallows back words.

“I know.”

Chapter Text

Lars,

I was passing your house the other day on my way to see Sadie, and your mom was sitting on the porch steps, her face in her hands, tears running through the gaps between her fingers. She didn’t see me ‘cause I ran, and that night, I dreamt of you.

The sickening crack as your head landed against that stone.

The stillness of your chest against my hand.

I know you said that I saved you. I know you said that it wasn’t on me. I know. I know. I know.

But... I’m sorry, Lars.

I’m so, so sorry.

Chapter Text

Blue teaches him about his burgeoning powers, warm with him (in a way she had never quite been with Pink). And Yellow instructs him in the more practical matters of being a Diamond, patient with him. (She had scarcely been so with his mother.) He’s sitting on the arm of her throne, practicing his Gem script, all harsh lines and severe shapes.

Taking a break from surveying her multitude of screens (bored), Yellow surreptitiously peers over his shoulder.

I, he has written clumsily.

love, he has scratched out.

y—

Steven whirls around, laughs at her bewildered expression.

“Hey, no peeking!”

Chapter Text

Pink Pearl is but magenta light inside of her gem when the tendrils come—blinding and tentacular, writhing over all of her vulnerable places.

She loves to sing, her voice high and melodious—like one of those avians Pink adores.

You are White Pearl, the tendrils seethe, white hot. You will serve.

She likes picking flowers: hibiscuses, orchids, and blossoms—likes threading them through her Diamond’s hair.

You are White Pearl. The tendrils sink into her core, excavating it, eradicating her. You will serve.

She is…?

She likes to…?

I’m sorry, Pink! I’m—

She is… White Pearl. 

She will serve.

Chapter Text

Titan’s Drop.

Elevated at 989 units, it is the tallest waterfall on Homeworld.

She stands on its precipice, solemn, purposeful—hands clasped in a temple next to her stomach.

The black waters seethe below her, spewing out of the rock like clotted blood.

“Please,” Yellow begs, her voice hoarse, sieved of all its edges. The other Diamond is just behind her, almost close enough to touch. “Please don’t do this, Blue.”

“I’ll return in a decade.” Or so.

“That’s too damn long!”

“But is it really?”

Millennia upon millennia could pass, but Blue Diamond will never be the same again.

Chapter Text

She plucks him from the zoo in the very way a hawk would descend upon a worm.

Zee Seven.

A human.

His hair is obsidian black, drawn down his back in a thick braid.

“What makes you so special?” She murmurs, more to herself than him. He shivers before her throne—dull and dumb and mute, his forehead beaded with sweat. “Why did she want to preserve your species so badly?”

He does not reply.

She frowns, wonders if this one is broken.

“You’re rather ugly,” she muses, “but she wanted you… and I can’t… I can’t begrudge her that.”

Chapter Text

Blue Diamond’s palace is ornate, drenched in the very color of her gem and just as brilliant—but Connie doesn’t have time to admire the scenery, not when Steven’s just been kidnapped.

Again.

Distracted, she frustrates the shimmering tiles.

Distracted, she doesn’t realize that she has engaged the matriarch’s attention until her cool voice drifts down to her from some forty feet above.

“You’re anxious for her, too,” she observes, and Connie stops in her tracks, tilts her head skywards and tries not to swallow. 

“You sound surprised, ma’am.”

The Diamond's laugh is strangled.

“I am all bewilderment, little human.”

Chapter Text

Lapis is shuffling through debris when she finds it: a bent sketchbook, full of her.

Water Witch, the first rendering names her. Lips snarled in wrath, she summons Beach City’s waters into the sky.

Lapis does not recognize the villainess in the picture.

(She doesn’t want to face her.)

She shuts her eyes against the rising, dizzying panic and then flinches when a hand lands on her shoulder—big and warm.

Greg, his whole body an uncomfortable apology.

“That’s not you, kiddo!” he pleads. “I was wrong!”

Diamonds to stars, she thinks disbelievingly.

But can witches ever change their spots?

Chapter Text

“How do we quell an uprising, Steven?”

The question hangs in the air for a long moment as Steven chews on it, his dark brow knit together like a caterpillar.

“We, um, try our hardest to please everyone and hope for the best?”

“Wrong,” Yellow clucks, all affection. “Connie?”

The junior tactician puffs out her chest, eager to please. “We amass the dissenters and either intimidate or negotiate with them, ma’am!”

“Correct,” the Diamond nods approvingly, and Connie simply beams.

They think it’s a game, and why shouldn’t they?

They’re children. 

(They don’t need to know about the shattering threats.)

Chapter Text

No matter what they do, they cannot please their Diamonds.

Yellow Diamond frowns and she paces and she seethes, her hands clenched behind her back as back and forth she goes, never satisfied, always angry.

“Go away!” she snarls, and Pearl can only comply. Her chest is full of live wires, aching.

Blue Diamond sits in her throne for hours on end, a petrification in process. Her hollowed face is all but stone, alive only in the tears that seep down her face.

“Pink,” she keens, and her Pearl can only watch.

She deserves to be harvested.

Useless creature.

Defective.

Chapter Text

He falls asleep in the palm of her hand, exhausted after a full cycle of making plans for the destruction of the human zoo.

Gazing down at him, she calls him Pink and then sternly corrects herself because that’s not his name.

“Steven,” Blue murmurs, “your name is Steven, and sometimes—oftentimes—I still do not... quite understand that.”

“But I want to. I want to understand you. I want to love you. I want to atone for having not loved her enough.”

“I want to be present for you, Steven.”

He is peaceful in sleep, beautiful.

(I will be.)

Chapter Text

On Wednesdays afternoons, they train in the Sky Arena with Pearl, parrying Holo Pearl’s fierce thrusts and blows.

But the evenings belong to Garnet, to meditation and reflection, sometimes just to talking. The waves whisper against the shore, whisper secrets, whisper clandestine doubts.

“You were distracted today,” she says. It is a fact, not a condemnation. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Stevonnie closes their eyes tightly, trying and failing desperately not to think about the ‘B’ Connie made on her last science exam.

“Negative, chief,” they groan.

“That’s all right," Garnet only smiles. "Just know that I’m here.”

Chapter Text

They reform within seconds of each other.

Yellow Zircon is first—naturally—but Blue is not far behind, hands caught in her final flurry before Yellow Diamond.

“Forgive me! I—”

But there is no angry Diamond in sight.

Just Zircon, whose trademark haughtiness is smeared across her sharp features, backlit by the sickly lighting of their holding cell.

“Satisfied yet, traitor?” She sneers. “Now we’re both in trouble.”

But she is all talk and no bravado, Blue observes—all horror, a hand wringing mess.

“Nice to see you again, too,” she mutters, but not as unkindly as her counterpart deserves.

Chapter Text

Pearl hums quietly as she kneads the dough, her ivory knuckles moving in time with the rhythm of her high, lilting voice. 

It’s an old song from the eighties, Amethyst recalls. Some sweet love ballad rife with clichés about heart and soul and other mushy stuff.

Amethyst can’t help herself, doesn’t even try. She nudges Pearl’s arm, grins up at her like a cheshire cat.

“Not gonna lie, P, I had you pegged as a Mozart over Madonna kind of gem.”

Pearl laughs, nudges her right back. “Don’t you remember my eighties variant leg warmers, Amethyst? I had some taste.”

Chapter Text

The grand matriarchs of Homeworld, supposed pinnacles of gemkind, argue all the way back to Blue’s chambers.

“Dammit, Blue,” Yellow growls, her hair electric with her growing frustration. “You know very well I wanted to colonize that planet. Those sandstone gorges were perfect for growing Quartzes.”

Blue doesn’t bequeath her counterpart with so much as a cold glance, the heavy fabric of her robes sweeping quickly along the floor. 

“Yes, but you neglected to stake your claim with White,” she returns. “I did. Therefore, I win.”

“Pedantic nag!”

“Overzealous clod.”

(Trailing behind them, their Pearls cannot quite conceal their smiles.)

Chapter Text

Strangely enough, Ronaldo takes the news like a champ.

Ronaldo, who once broke his wrist trying to snap a picture of a ghost that turned out to be a plastic bag caught in a tree.

That Ronaldo.

“You were dead.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But because of Steven’s magical alien powers, you’re alive again, and, like… pink?”

“Yeaaaaaah,” he flushes, shrugging a gloved hand across the back of his neck. “Something like that.”

Ronaldo lets out a deep breath, his broad chest deflating like a balloon. 

“Holy shit, dude.”

Lars thinks he might crack one of his undead ribs.

Holy shit indeed.

Chapter Text

They are entangled on Blue’s divan, her golden chin buried against cerulean neck, her gloved hand resting on soft belly where thick fabric has pooled. 

(Even dictators have to rest, too.)

“Blue?”

“Yes, Yellow?”

“Steven doesn't think too highly of our court practices. He told me as much today.”

The Diamond stiffens against her chest, stone now, where she had once been warm flesh.

“He informed me of his misgivings as well.”

“And?”

“And I was at a loss for words… I told him that he didn’t know any better.”

These lines are hauntingly familiar.

Old mistakes in new places.

Chapter Text

They are all so cold.

Her creations.

Her gems.

Her court.

When they kneel before her—Rubies, Sapphires, and indiscriminate Pearls—their faces are etched in stone, saying nothing and betraying even less.

They are not in her likeness anymore.

Not in this age where Diamonds can be shattered like the common rank and file.

No—Blue Diamond wants to watch the world burn, piece by ugly piece.

She incubates a new species in salt.

Terraformers.

Slender but powerful, they can summon hurricanes if they so desire.

She names them Lapis Lazuli.

She tells them they are made to destroy.

Chapter Text

The Quartz scoops that mouthy Peridot out of the sand with a tenderness that surprises Yellow Diamond.

There’s a familiarity in the movement that doesn’t quite befit the hierarchical constructions of her court. The Quartz is undersized, yes, but she still has precedence over the Peridot, given the Peridot’s own deficiencies.

The Diamond is curious, irate that she’s curious, and very simply enough, irate.

“You, Quartz.”

The gem looks up, button nose wrinkling, glare openly defiant.

(Rebel riffraff.)

Yellow bulldozes on anyway. “What’s so significant about that Peridot?”

“Well...” she grins, insolence reconciled, “homegirl did call you a clod once.”

Chapter Text

Ten people.

Five people.

Four.

The line to the bouncer is growing smaller with each passing second. Pearl is thankful that she doesn’t possess a stomach, thinks she might have been sick all over her flats if she did. And irritated though she is at a glowing Amethyst, she is glad for her warm hand, how her lavender palm fits perfectly in her own.

“This isn’t a good idea, Amethyst,” she says for the twentieth time since the night began.

“Haha, it’s definitely not, but you need this, P. Trust me.”

“IDs?”

Amethyst procures the (faked) cards with a flourish.

Chapter Text

Court drags on—Peridots asking for better assignments, Agates complaining about Quartzes, and Quartzes complaining about Agates—the usual fare. Yellow Pearl has long given up proper stenography, just as her Diamond has long given up the appearance of proper decorum. She yells, and Pearl doodles until a blinking light on her interface tells her that she’s just received a message.

Has Yellow Diamond concluded her session yet?

No—some dull Rutile started my lustrous Diamond on a rant about mining efficiencies. End my torture and poof me, Blue.

And deprive you of such a scintillating spectacle? No way.

Clod.

Chapter Text

Garnet’s palms begin to glow.

Pearl’s forehead does the same.

Red light snakes around their entangled limbs, and Sardonyx opens all four of her eyes.

She is not in a desperate situation where walls are closing around her like a vice.

Nor is she celebrating Steven’s first fusion with a gem.

Rather, in-between these two extremes, she is sitting cross-legged on the beach, watching the dark waves slap the moonlit sand.

The boundary between sea and shore is thin.

The boundary between breaking and remaining together is even thinner.

“Is this okay?” she whispers.

“Maybe,” she eventually replies.

Chapter Text

At the very edge of the universe, two Diamonds sit side by side, one old and one new, eyes alight with the explosion of a star. Pink has never seen a more brilliant sight.

“This supernova happened approximately 3,000 lightyears ago,” Yellow explains with a wave of gloved hand. “I’ve been tracking it for awhile now, and it’s just now safe for us to approach.”

“It’s gorgeous,” she whispers, nose pressed against the curving glass. “Thanks for showing me, Yellow!”

“I thought you should see what it looks like… just once.”

“Hm?”

“Death,” Yellow murmurs. “Something we will never know.”

Chapter Text

She’d started the night hoping that Mike Krol’s dulcet tones would be enough to take her mind off the breakup, but she ends the night with a different kind of distraction: the allure of this crazy chick who is currently babbling on about saving the universe.

Maybe she’s a hippie.

Which is, like, cool.

“Got a pen?” She grins. “I have paper.”

“Mmm, let me check.” The girl rummages around the pockets of her jacket and procures one, delicate features awash in blush.

“Nice."

Sabina scribbles her number down but neglects to add her name.

Mysteries can be attractive creatures.

Chapter Text

They are ten thousand years old, and they have long learned every groove in each other’s bodies. 

The spiny nature of Yellow’s knuckles, miniature mountains gilded in gold.

The curve of Blue’s hips, like perfectly formed waves, cresting and then falling.

These little knowledges gather like leaves on a tree, a collection of quiet intimacies.

Blue wants more, though.

(They both do.)

“White would never go for it.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I don’t,” Yellow concedes, grimacing, “but I can make an educated guess.”

“She created us—why can we not create for ourselves?”

Yellow’s objections cake on her tongue.

Chapter Text

She emerges in a burst of brilliant light.

But there is nothing brilliant about the planet she is born into.

It is a gray, wasted place, leeched of all color and life.

A consequence of her own parasitism.

But she is only seconds old.

She doesn’t know that.

Rather, she knows precisely two things:

One—her name is Pink Diamond, and in the hierarchy of the universe, she will one day sit upon a throne.

Two—that throne may be but dust and ashes because she is completely and utterly al—

“Oh, Yellow.”

Pink startles at the sound.

“She’s beautiful.”

Chapter Text

“Connie?”

“Yes, ma’am?”

Yellow Diamond’s golden gaze slides down to her right shoulder where she’s perched. They’re watching the sunset together, watching the sky set itself on fire.

“You once told me that I reminded you of your mother.” 

“Mmm... yes?”

“What does that mean exactly?”

Oh, she smiles. That’s an easy one.

“You’re harsh and exacting,” she says unsparingly, never one to mince words, “and it’s hard for you to tell the someones you love that you love them. Mom’s like that, too, sometimes...”

“...but I’ve learned that that’s okay. She loves in the best ways she knows how.”

Chapter Text

They’ve long abandoned a close viewing of Lonely Blade 2.5—sorry, Steven—just to talk.

It’s a little bit of everything, and it’s a whole lot of nothing, but whether she’s extolling the virtues of Estelle’s new album or articulating her dissatisfaction about local politics, Sabina is enrapturing, a whirlwind of passionate gestures, a canvas of many colors.

The green of her searching eyes.

The pinkish blush that has scribbled itself along the bridge of her nose.

The ruddy birthmark on her chin—only visible when she tilts her head back to laugh.

You’re beautiful, she almost blurts out. Extraordinary.

Chapter Text

Court has not yet begun, so why does Pearl feel as though she is on trial? 

They stare at her from their adjacent daises, as though waiting for her to argue the case for her existence.

And perhaps they very well should.

By all means, she should have never been formed.

“She’s uglier than Pink was,” Yellow Pearl sniffs, shattering the heavy silence. “Too plain, and her colors clash.”

“You’re being harsh,” Blue scolds, the hands she has clasped below her skirt her unspoken judgment. “It isn’t her fault.”

They squabble on.

Pearl remains a spectator to her own condemnation.

Chapter Text

She can’t stop thinking about her.

That Rutile who grabbed the hem of Blue’s robes and asked to be harvested.

She had lived six thousand years too long, she whispered.

Shatter her and resurrect her shards.

And Blue Diamond, ever merciful, obliged.

Pink can’t get the image out of her head, how her ruby pieces stained the ground.

“Some gems weren’t meant for longevity,” Blue murmurs, running tall fingers through her fluffy hair.

The gesture is nice and soothing and a rarity.

Pink leans into the touch.

“Eternity stretches on,” Yellow agrees, “but you’re young. Don’t learn that lesson yet.”

Chapter Text

Lapis Lazuli, Facet 9, Cabochon 10K, has exactly ninety-eight golden freckles. They clamber down her shoulders and wrap around her elbows. They scatter like stars across her cheeks and stumble over the bridge of her nose. 

They disgust her.

Every single one of them.

She can only hover inches off the ground.

Lapis Lazuli, Facet 5, Cabochon 8J, only has twenty-two freckles. They trail down her exposed back like a long ribbon.

She likes creating little ponds.

She once poofed herself trying to make a lake.

Lapis Lazuli, Facet 1, Cabochon 3A, turns Beach City into a wasteland.

Chapter Text

The ringback tone stretches on for what seems like an eternity, and she thinks she’s liable to scream or puke one if Greg doesn’t answer his damn phone. 

Marty skipped town two weeks ago, and she’s three days late.

Mom’s going to kill her.

“Yello’?” God, Universe would be the type of person to say yello’.

“Hey… it’s Vidalia.”

“Oh, hey, kid! What’s up?” But he’s also the type of guy to help a gal out.

“I’m freaking out, dude. I… I–” She can’t go on.

But Greg’s… Greg. He picks up the pieces.

“Hold on. I’m on my way.”

Chapter Text

Lapis Lazuli, Facet 1, Cabochon 3A is creating little waves in the water for Steven to swim upon.

Slender hands poised above the foam.

Head thrown back in a laugh that is lost to the wind.

Abandon.

Happiness.

Joy.

These emotions have long been alien to Blue Diamond.

She had wished to inflict her same fate on an entire species.

She failed. 

When the wave troughs, Steven collapses into Lapis’s arms, giggling. They are a tangle of affection, and she is an impossibility, an unprecedented variation, a miracle.

She has grown.

Changed.

Blue Diamond wishes she could say the same.

Chapter Text

Fairly sure that Yellow Diamond isn’t sensitive to scalding temperatures, Steven is careful not to slosh a drop of the fifty liter drum on her outstretched hand anyway as he stumbles between the lines of her expansive palm. 

She chuckles—a deep, rumbling sound incongruent with the frown usually slashed across her sharp features—and lifts him up to her chin.

“Black coffee,” Steven explains. “Dr. Maheswaran—Connie’s mom—swore it was the best thing on Earth.”

“Interesting,” she only hums, “but I’m afraid that appellation already belongs to someone else.”

Her smile is wry, her eyes golden and melting.

Chapter Text

Obviously, the planetoid that comes with its own seventy foot long leviathan is not a suitable location for Pink Diamond to colonize.

Obviously, Yellow thinks as she unthinkingly propels herself onto the monster’s serpentine head, wrapping her arms around its jaws to keep it from spitting venom onto her companions.

Obviously, Blue moans, torn between wanting to tell Yellow that she had told her so and running back to the ships. She settles on pushing Pink behind her with one hand and summoning crackling energy with the other.

Obviously, Pink grins, rather satisfied that this latest catastrophe isn’t on her.

Chapter Text

Now Priyanka Maheswaran has never had a best friend sacrifice himself to aliens on the guise that he’s his own mother, only to return and pretend like everything is normal... but she has been hurt before, and she knows that there is nothing so readily palliative for hurt than a pint of ice cream and an awful movie to mercilessly criticize.

“That movie sucked,” Connie says when the screen fades to black.

“Agreed. Interesting idea, poor execution.”

A pause—quiet, angry, sad.

“This whole situation sucks.”

Priyanka pulls her daughter close.

“Agreed.”

It was an interesting idea, Universe.

Poor execution.

Chapter Text

It’s not uncommon that sniffling sounds punctuate off hours in the Quartz barrack. Gems missing Earth. Gems recovering from a Holly Blue lashing. Gems indulging in their star given right to despise themselves.

But dammit—it’s an outright rarity to hear Carnelian join in on the nightly boohoo.

Carnelian, who’s always been so outgoing that Skinny used to hate her for it.

But that was then.

Now, she wraps a lanky arm around the gem’s shoulders and holds her while she cries.

“She kicked me, SJ—kicked me. Said I should’a been shattered.”

“Screw her—your life, ours, mean something.”

Chapter Text

In the pink room, he conjures up his mother.

Not as he has always known her.

Not as Rose Quartz.

But as the Diamond she once was; they share a smile, the dictator and the rebel.

They are each other’s deepest secret.

“You’re not real,” Steven whispers. “I won’t fall into that trap again… I just wanted to see you with my own eyes and not through Pearl’s memories.”

The illusion tilts her head, brow furrowed.

“If I am not real, then what am I, Steven?”

Dictator.

Rebel.

Mother.

Liar.

Lover.

Friend.

Protector.

(Who are you?)

Gone.

“I don’t know.”

Chapter Text

“We trusted her, and she lied to us, and I—” Ruby stops pacing the cliffside, cradles her head in her hands.

“…I dunno what to do anymore. I’m not… Garnet. I can’t… see.”

“Join the rest of us,” Greg smiles.

“Eh?”

“That’s the thing,” he laughs. “We all don’t know what we’re doing. We’re all blind! It’s just a part of life that you and Sapphire have denied yourselves for thousands of years as Garnet.”

“It’s okay not to know?”

“Yup.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

Belief is a scary ravine to jump.

Ruby jumps anyway.

“Thanks, Greg… I appreciate that.”

Chapter Text

Manacled below her throne, the poor human struggles against his salvation, shouting and squirming and leaking fluid from his olfactory apparatus.

“You’ve gotta let me go, your Majesty! Please—I have a son. He needs me! I need him!”

“Sun?” 

Surely he isn’t emotionally attached to a celestial object, right?

No, no that can’t be it. 

“Do you mean offspring?”

“Yes, that! I have an offspring I have to get back to!”

“Oh, is that all?” Blue Diamond’s smile is understanding. “Don’t worry, little human. You can have plenty of offspring in the zoo.”

They have an excellent breeding program.

Chapter Text

Chin in her hands, rear end appropriating a ledge in the cliff, Yellow Diamond teeters the line between intimidating and pathetic.

Not that Peridot’ll ever admit that to her.

(Her glare alone could petrify a gem.)

“I just don’t understand him sometimes,” the Diamond huffs. “How was I supposed to know he’s sensitive to criticism?”

“If I may interject, my Dia”—she stops herself in the middle of the old habit—“Yellow… Steven is rather in touch with his emotions. You should… apologize.”

“It’s an absurd concept for me.”

“I’m aware.”

“But,” she sighs, “for him, I’m willing to try.”

Chapter Text

Sitting on the stairs leading up to the beach house, Bismuth and Garnet brush shoulders in the gentle night. They joke about this, and they recollect that, and they skirt around the topic of Rose because it’s just too painful, but mostly, they talk about Steven.

“Tell me a story about him,” Bismuth says. “Something I missed.”

(She missed a lot.)

“When he was younger, we would collect shells on the beach. I held the bucket and tried to dissuade him from picking up broken ones—little, fragmented pieces. Even then, he told me that those were worth saving, too.”

Chapter Text

From giant alien eels to gems who can absorb humans with their bodies, Connie has seen tons of weird stuff since she became friends with Steven… but she’s gotta admit, watching a (roughly) human-sized Blue Diamond perusing her copy of The Libation Bearers takes the cake.

An ageless space goddess.

Curled up on the couch.

Reading a book.

“Absolutely ludicrous,” Blue Diamond murmurs.

“Hm?” Connie puts her own book down, glad for the excuse to openly stare at her companion.

“Clytemnestra deserved better! She was avenging her daughter!

Connie giggles.

“I had a sneaking suspicion you might like her.”

Chapter Text

Connie pulls back from the embrace but doesn’t quite let go, hands still tangled around his neck, eyes drinking in every part of him—his dark eyes, his dimpled smile, the stray curl that falls onto his forehead. 

(She’s afraid he’ll disappear if she so much as blinks.)

“You can’t keep doing this to me, Steven!” she chokes out. “You were here, and then you were gone, and I was scared, and I missed you.”

“Um,” he stammers blushingly, “at least I didn’t sacrifice myself this time?”

“Small consolation,” Connie can’t help but laugh, “but I suppose I’ll take it.”

Chapter Text

LOG #11037

Informant: Lapis Lazuli, Facet 1, Cabochon 3A

Interrogator: Aquamarine, Facet 1, Cabochon 10B

— 

Aquamarine: I think you’re lying to me, Lapis Lazuli. I think you saw something on Earth that we should know about. I think you’re obfuscating the truth to… protect something.

Lapis: [The Lapis crosses her arms, gaze averted.] …

Aquamarine: Cat’s Eye got your tongue, Lazuli? Refute me. Have a go at me. Anything. Please. I haven’t had a real challenge in ages.

Lapis: …

Aquamarine: Stars, what a waste. You sat at the right hand of our god once upon a time. What happened to you?

Chapter Text

Garnet doesn’t see Rose Quartz in their baby’s future. 

Rather, she sees her gem embedded in its tubby, little belly, sees tears leaking down Pearl’s nose, sees Greg alone—all alone—sees darkness and indecision and fear.

And Rose, hearing all of this, doesn’t so much as blink.

And Greg, searching her dark eyes, realizes that she’d known this would happen all along.

“I should have told you,” she says quietly when they are finally alone.

Alone.

He’s going to be alone.

“You should have,” he returns, “but you were never going to, were you? You knew I’d never agree.”

Chapter Text

“We make tactical sense together,” Peridot begins with a dismissive wave of her shaking hand. “You’re obviously incredibly powerful and superiorly designed, whereas I’m admittedly not... but I make up for those physiological deficiencies with my unparalleled capacity for advanced thinking and logic.”

“Um...”

“Additionally,” she stumbles on, “if we formed a cohesive unit, I believe we would model the perfection which is Percy and Pierre. They both have their disadvantages, yes, but paired together, they balance each other out. They complete each other, and I, um… I—”

Lapis Lazuli captures Peridot’s hand.

Smiles.

“I like you too, you dork.”

Chapter Text

On their first date, they go hiking; they traipse through the forest at the edges of Beach City in search of nothing and everything all at the same time.

They’re learning about each other.

Pearl sneaks a glance while they’re ducking through undergrowth, and Sabina notices, flashes her a wry grin.

They’re flirting.

“To tell you the truth,” she says, “I didn’t think you’d call… what made you change your mind?”

(Amethyst pressing the call button and keeping it out of Pearl’s reach until it was too late.)

Pearl’s smile is soft, fond.

“A friend gave me a little push.”

Chapter Text

“Nyeh,” Peridot mutters in-between ice cream licks. “Lazuli needs to hurry up. It’s been eons.”

“Pearl said to be patient,” Steven reminds her dully. “Lapis probably hasn’t been poofed very many times before.”

That catches the gem’s attention.

She looks up, frowns.

“Poofed?”

“Yeaaaah, you know—poofed. When Yellow Diamond zapped ya, she, uh, poofed you.”

“Oh, right… that.”

She assumes that “poofing” is a bandaid word that the Crystal Clods gave Steven, a softened blow, a coping mechanism.

(Fine. Whatever. Coddle the kid.)

On Homeworld, they call it disincorporation.

You’re torn down to your component part.

You’re destroyed.

Chapter Text

“And pray tell, why should we imbue a Pearl with extensive knowledge of fighting?” Underneath her rippling hood, Blue Diamond’s lips gather into the beginnings of a frown. “She’ll be programmed to sacrifice herself anyway. Her own body will be a shield as she intercepts any conceivable threat.”

“That system works well enough for us, yes,” Yellow counters, “but Pink is different. Her size could be disadvantageous. She’s emotional; she could very well be emotionally compromised. She needs a capable line of defense.”

“The Pearl won’t last long,” Blue hums, skeptical, unconvinced.

“We can always make her a new one.”

Chapter Text

“Alright, Garnet, in order to start the car, you simply have to turn the key in the ignition.”

“Like this?”

“Excellent! I know you’re nervous, but there’s honestly nothing to this!”

“Now what?”

“This stick is the gearshift. It allows you to control whether the car is moving or not. We’re currently in Park, so what you’re going to do next is guide the stick downwards to Drive and—wait! Not so hard! Gaaaaarnet!”

“I panicked.”

“I know, Garnet.”

“Sorry.”

“I know, Garnet.”

“Don’t tell Amethyst.”

Pearl’s lips twitch.

The newly detached gearshift sparks blue in Garnet’s clenched fist.

“Never.”

Chapter Text

Jasper dreams of, Lapis dreams of—I dream of? We? 

Someone dreams of a battlefield of shards. 

Jasper cannot take a step in any direction without being caked in our fallen comrades, her friends, my companions. I look down at my palms. They are orange, blue; they are a sickly, mottled green. 

They are enshrouded in pink dust.

My Diamond. Her Diamond. Pink Diamond.

Lapis dreams of, Jasper dreams of—I dream of a sickening crack in the darkness.

Our gem, hers—erupts down its middle.

I am bisected.

Crack.

She is eroding.

Crack.

(We are Malachite.)

We are gone.

Chapter Text

In the week leading up to Steven’s arrival at the newly completed house, Pearl… socializes with humans.

On Monday, she goes to Fish Stew Pizza, where Nanafua’s gnarled hands teach her how to shape homemade dough.

On Tuesday, she drops by the Fry Shack, and Mr. Fryman demonstrates how to… well… fry various things—which is objectively disgusting, but she digresses.

On Wednesday, she watches carefully as Vidalia somehow whips up a beautiful omelette in five minutes top.

“Listen, lil’ alien lady,” she grins, sharklike, triumphant, “if you can save the world, you can sure as hell cook an egg.”

Chapter Text

They sit side by side in the Sky Arena, Greg and Priyanka—two parents whose children have inherited an intergalactic war.

Steven blocks Holo Pearl’s thrust, allowing Connie to roll under his shield and slash the hologram at its knees.

It shatters in a burst of static.

“I can hardly stand this,” Priyanka murmurs. Her hands are in her lap, clenching at the fabric of her khakis. “She’s good—excellent even. I just…”

“It’s hard,” Greg agrees. “We swore to protect them, but they’re out there protecting themselves.”

“They’re growing up,” she whispers.

On the battlefield, Connie’s smile is triumphant.

Chapter Text

“I hated you, you know.”

“Huh?”

Zircon’s smile is fond, wry; it twinkles in her cerulean eyes.

“When I was assigned to your case,” she explains, “all of my ambitions were ruined. I was rising in the Zircon ranks. I had a near impeccable record.”

“Oh, um, sorry about that.”

But Zircon only shakes her head. 

“I hated you,” she whispers, “and then I suddenly didn’t… because you made me realize something.”

“What?”

“If one trial could be riddled with inconsistencies, then Homeworld itself could never be perfectly judicious. You made me question the system, Steven. You set me free.”

Chapter Text

The lines between enemy and dictator and kind of, sorta grandmother are blurred, so they dance around each other—they hesitate, and they duck.

When White Diamond lowers her glowing palm to the ground, Steven swallows before he clambers on.

And even though she’s sure Steven is secure, she is painstakingly meticulous anyway as she elevates him to chin level.

“You’re a phenomenon,” she whispers. “A conundrum, a statistical impossibility.”

“I guess that’s true,” he returns softly, “but I’m also made of love.”

“My algorithms did not account for such a variable.”

“I know,” he smiles. “It was a wildcard.”

Chapter Text

Homeworld without Yellow Diamond is disorganized, a world of gray static—muted, formless, empty.

The rank and file look to their Diamond, that shining north star, and wonder if they are pleasing to her.

Wonder if her radiant likeness exists in them.

Wonder and wander and wonder.

(Without vision, gems perish.)

White Diamond wipes these prototypes away with a sigh.

Homeworld without Blue Diamond lacks fervor—that dangerous, delicious zeal.

Gems toil on because they are told to toil.

They praise their goddess.

(They are programmed to.)

Emotionless sycophants.

Fragile toys.

White Diamond shatters them to see if they’ll shriek.

Chapter Text

Seven consecutive romantic comedies, two hours of prep time with Steven, and a cool thumbs up from Garnet later, Peridot is sure that her proposal is unlikely to fail.

Sure, Andy’s skywriting is… questionable… but with such little time and zero other contacts who know how to operate a plane, it’s the best she can do.

“You’re leading me into a trap,” Lapis deadpans.

“It’s not a trap, Lazuli.”

“It so is.”

“Isn’t,” Peridot clucks, “and I can prove it—open your eyes.”

Against the sunset canvas, in fading smoke, Andy almost got it right.

Will you muse with me?

Chapter Text

“Cats,” Steven enunciates with the air of a patient schoolteacher. “This is Lion, who is, well, a lion, but he’s also a big cat!”

Attentive to the two Diamonds leaning against the cliffside—a sight Steven isn’t sure he’ll ever get used to—Lion rumbles a cautious greeting.

“Oh,” Yellow hums, “I read a report on these... cats once. Do you not hunt them for sport?”

“No!” He hesitates. “Not here at least, but…”

“I believe he’s domesticated, Yellow,” Blue offers in a manner she believes to be helpful. “Like a trophy.”

“Nope,” Steven sighs. “Where did I lose you?”

Chapter Text

The night is quiet, the barn asleep. Peridot tiptoes around Amethyst’s snoring form and slips through the crack in the large sliding door, where cool air rises to greet her.

Where the stars bloom like flowers in the sky—red, silver, and gold.

She drops to the ground, her knees groveling the dirt.

And she begins to cry.

She cries because she’s here.

Here, Earth.

Here, at this barn with a bunch of organic loving clods.

She cries because the stars are beautiful but distant and forbidding.

They are millions of lightyears away.

They are silent.

And she is lost.

Chapter Text

Beyond the purple veneer of the bubble, the gem inside is instantly recognizable to Yellow Diamond.

“She tried fusing with a corrupted gem,” Steven explains, gentle as he cradles the bubble, vulnerable.

“And it corrupted her?”

“Yeah…”

“Foolish gem,” Yellow hisses. “She was always too impulsive, too reckless.” 

But Yellow folded her into her own court for those very reasons.

She promised to bring Rose Quartz back on a silver platter.

She promised to avenge Pink Diamond.

“Even so, would you take her home anyway? Please?” He asks. “She hates it here.”

She nods slowly, hesitant to speak.

I’m sorry.

Chapter Text

“Kiki?”

There’s something in Jenny’s voice that startles her from the till, something vulnerable and sad, something incongruous with her usual chill self.

She’s not about to ask if Kiki can cover her shift for the umpteenth time.

Her dark eyes distant, she doesn’t even look as though she’s thinking about this world at all.

“What’s up?” Kiki plays it casually, though; her sister wouldn’t appreciate coddling.

“I kissed someone last night... and I shouldn’t have.”

“That’s rough,” she sighs sympathetically. “Does he have a girlfriend or something?”

“Something like that,” Jenny murmurs. “They’re in love with a dead person.”

Chapter Text

Entrenched in servitude for thousands of years, the Diamonds’ Pearls are justifiably... confused when they suddenly get vacation time as a part of Homeworld’s new reforms.

(“I don’t want to participate in a union,” Yellow Pearl whines.)

But Pearl takes pity on them, grabs Blue Pearl by the hand and drags Yellow by her ruffled top—steals them away and barely promises to return them.

“You adore your Diamonds,” she says lightly, “and that’s fine—I loved mine—but I want you to learn that there’s more to life than serving them—that there’s such a thing as loving yourselves.”

Chapter Text

They’re having trouble unfusing.

“We just have to let go,” Stevonnie says, their dark brow flustered together. “It’s simple!”

“We’re not talking about monkey bars,” Stevonnie retorts. Their chin is scratched with stubble, though they’ve only been gone for mere hours ship time. “This is, like, metaphysical!”

“Is not!”

“Is too!”

“Do you even know what metaphysical means?”

“Oh, jeez,” Lars sighs from the captain’s seat. “For someone so cool, you suck at emotions. Listen, you haven’t been alone in a very long time, and that’s scary, yeah... but it’s also okay.”

“Just take your time,” he grins. “We’ll wait.”

Chapter Text

Steven doesn’t tell his dad that he’s applying for Delmarva Community College.

Heck, he doesn’t even tell the Gems.

(He’s afraid of disappointing them.)

(He desperately wants to make them proud.)

He pays twenty dollars for the application—why do applications cost money anyway?—and finds himself squished between Mr. and Mrs. Maheswaran at their dining room table one evening while Connie’s at tennis practice.

“Now how do we phrase saved the world multiple times into an appropriate academic statement?” Doug asks, scratching his day old scruff.

“Easy,” Priyanka shrugs. “Extensive community service and volunteer work.”

“Ugh, nice one, honey.”

Chapter Text

On its spidery, mechanical legs, the gem drill teeters over to the bottom corner of the cliff, the last unfertilized location in Earth’s Prime Kindergarten.

Its position close to the ground isn’t... optimal, especially for hefty gems like Quartzes, but one could say the same about any part of this canyon—that it isn’t optimal, that it has long been leeched of its functionality.

(Not that the drill cares.)

With its metallic pincers, it bores a hole into the rock, injects its solution into the newly made crevice.

Its consequence, its parasite, won’t see the sun for thousands of years.

Chapter Text

Lapis and Pearl clean up the rest of Thanksgiving before everyone else returns from Peridot’s gratuitous farm tour.

So... not particularly friends but not really enemies either, they find themselves sitting side by side in the grass, watching the sun sink low into the horizon.

“Homeworld doesn’t have sunsets like these.”

“Goodness,” Pearl laughs, “it barely has a sun after we stripped it for parts.”

A slow grin unfolds across Lapis’s delicate features, lights her eyes with mischief.

“Rumor has it that Yellow Diamond herself had to do the job.”

“Indeed—I was there when she returned with scorched armor.”

Chapter Text

He’s ‘fraid of Garnet.

She’s nice… but she doesn’t talk to him, only stares at him when she thinks he’s not looking—but he really is, because it’s hard not to notice her gaze.

Amethyst said not to be scared of her, though, said that she was an “emotional wuss.”

Not sure he knows what that means, he taps Garnet politely on the leg anyway, a Cookie Cat sandwich melting between his fingers.

“Hi… Garnet.”

“Hello, Steven.” Her gaze is impenetrable, her voice… soft—which is encouraging.

He smiles shyly, all gapped teeth.

“Wanna share my Cookie Cat with me?”

Chapter Text

Try as she does to retrieve her entire squadron from space, Navy cannot recover the gem that that pesky human called Leggy.

Because Captain Lars finds her first.

“Fluorite? Padparadscha? Whatcha thinking?” He asks the remaining members of his crew as the Ruby cowers before them, wide eyed and helpless. (It’s a hard pass for Rhodonite and the Rutile twins.)

“Oh, Lars!” Padparadscha effuses. “We’re destined to save a Ruby from a horrible fate in space!”

“Ahhhhh, it’s true!” Ruby chimes in. “It was terrible!”

(Which is more than enough for Lars.)

“Bingo bongo, kiddos,” he chortles. “We’re keeping her.”

Chapter Text

“Just checking in on—” Lars stops short, his cape settling around him like a sigh.

The smoking circuitboard long abandoned, Peridot is palming the nearest window with one hand, her wrench dangling limply in the other.

She’s looking at the stars, he quickly realizes—at all the nebulas and little asteroids and the galactic dust the color of Skittles.

(She’s revering them.)

“I once spent all my time traveling amongst these stars,” she says—not particularly to him. “I called them… home.”

The word scalds him where he stands.

(He misses his mom.)

“I’m sorry, Peridot.”

“Occasionally… I am too.”

Chapter Text

They make a date strolling around Beach City’s annual Art Festival, and Rose is enamored, in love, her eyes brimming with stars.

That is... until they reach a jewelry booth, where a vendor is selling homemade turquoise accessories.

“Greg!” She suddenly tugs on his arm, nearly wrenching it from his socket. 

“Agh!” He yelps. “What’s wrong?”

“That human is selling gems!”

Greg finds where she’s looking and immediately understands her concerns—her being a sentient space rock and all—but fumbling and out of his wheelhouse, he doesn’t quite know how to tell her that, “Those are just, uh, rocks.”

Chapter Text

One day, while they’re goofing around and not doing farm chores, Steven realizes that Peridot has a natural knack for translating gem ages to approximate human ages, and it all goes downhill from there.

Garnet, Pearl, and Lapis are technically in their forties, being the oldest of the Crystal Gems. (“Granted, Lazuli lost time in the mirror, so she postures a... younger maturity.”)

Amethyst is, like, twenty three. (“Makes sense,” Steven nods.)

“And I’m... well... I’m, ah, theoretically nineteen,” Peridot admits, a green blush creeping across her cheeks.

“Oh my gosh, Peridot! You’re so young!”

“Nyeh, you’re one to talk.”

Chapter Text

“Before I met you, I lived in a cave and saw only shadows on the wall,” Connie murmurs, “but you found me, Steven, and my world was forever changed.”

In the space between their (colossal) seats, Blue and Yellow Diamond’s fingers are templed, a holy union.

Once upon a time, we found each other.

Blue squeezes the other’s hand.

“You showed me friendship, kindness, fun, and, well, monsters,” Connie smiles wryly, her voice taut, a hundred emotions thick. “You showed me love.”

Yellow leans down, presses her lips to the crown of Blue’s head.

I cannot live life without you.

Chapter Text

Stance wide, body lowered, Connie warily eyes the perversion of her sword master.

White Pearl, Steven called her.

Broken, Pearl explained.

Connie readjusts her grip on her new sword—it’s thinner than Rose Quartz’s—and tries not to think about how the buns on either side of her head remind of her of Princess Leia’s.

There’s a certain sweetness to them.

An innocence.

“Surrender now, human,” White Pearl intones, her voice monotonous, stilted, and not her own.

(She’s gone, Pearl murmured. There’s… there’s no coming back from this.)

“My apologies, Pearl—I’m afraid that’s not a part of my vocabulary.”

Chapter Text

The lifted ban on fusion has not caught traction in Homeworld yet.

So Steven—because he’s Steven—suggests that the Diamonds fuse to set the shining example.

And Blue Diamond, because she’s trying, murmurs, “Show us how.”

Connie offers her hand and Steven takes it. 

Their dance is simple, but more than that, it is fun.

They’re both laughing when pink light swallows them whole.

“I know it’s scary,” Stevonnie says. “Intimacy usually is… but fusion is just another way to tell someone you love that you love them.”

At this, Yellow Diamond’s golden gaze shifts.

Almost imperceptibly.

Meeting blue.

Chapter Text

They stand upon the precipice of a world soon to be theirs—Andromeda, a telluric planet in the seventh system.

The landscape is swollen with Quartz soldiers trampling the ground underfoot.

Their marching order is to destroy.

“Stop them!” Steven shrieks, ramming his fist against her leg, but it registers no more than the breeze.

For Yellow Diamond is preoccupied by numbers and stratagems and statistics.

She’s wondering if she should have sent more Jaspers than Amethysts and eyeing that massive canyon rife with sandstone deposits.

(She doesn’t see the flowers that are dying where her soldiers dare to tread.)

Chapter Text

As Stevonnie, they drive to the top of the cliff where they’d once raced Kevin, and as Steven and Connie, they lie on the hood of Greg’s car and point out constellations.

“Dork!”

“Hey, that’s my line!” Steven huffs, nudging Connie with his jacketed shoulder.

“Wait, Steven—my hair’s tangled in your stupid sleeve zipper!”

“Oops, sorry! Lemme…” 

They squirm to get free, but somehow, they’re only drawn closer together.

So close that Connie’s lips are hovering just above his.

They’ve dreamt of this moment.

They’ve feared it.

Blushing, Connie takes it.

(It’s barely a kiss—they’re laughing so hard.)

Chapter Text

“I know what you did.”

Yellow Diamond does not quite look up from her panels when she grumbles, “Oh, and what exactly would that be?”

Blue snakes her enrobed arms around the throne, encircling Yellow’s neck, her palms coming to rest above her golden gem.

“Pink had twenty meetings in her queue this morning, but she told me that she only had ten.” The Diamond leans in, her mouth brushing against Yellow’s ear, tickling it. “I wonder where those other ten could have gone?”

“Perhaps… there were cancellations.”

“Ah, yes,” she hums, “cancellations… because we Diamonds receive loads of those.”

Chapter Text

When she gets home from her shift, Sadie finds her mom passed out in the recliner, her hat dangling lopsidedly over one half of her face, her empty mailbag propped limply at her feet.

The sight plucks at her where she stands, and before she knows it, she’s hovering above the recliner, and then she’s leaning down, pressing a kiss on her mother’s lined cheek.

Because she watched Steven’s dead alien mom tell her kid she’d always be with him today.

And sometimes, she forgets how lucky she is to have a mom who tries to be the very same.

Chapter Text

“She hurt you,” Pearl whispers, “and I’m sorry for that.”

She says it so seriously, with such vulnerable conviction, that Bismuth cannot help but pause and look up from her crafting table. In the dim light of her forge, Pearl’s pale features are sunken with shadows, all of the light in them gone.

“What’d’ve you got to be sorry for, honey?” Bismuth replies, looking away, looking anywhere but her. “Rose… Pink Diamond… whoever she was… did what she did, and that’s not on you.”

“And as a matter of fact,” she adds quietly, “what I did isn’t on you either.”

Chapter Text

The royal Pearls do not realize how lucky they are—to be made to serve a higher order, to be consigned to a Diamond’s side.

Blue Diamond made her own Pearl in her own solemn likeness; Yellow did the same.

Pink Diamond accidentally broke her first toy, but White took the pieces and made it her own.

They are lofted high, those royal Pearls; they are lucky.

Pearl, Facet 6, Cabochon 5XG is a common Pearl given to a Morganite.

And that Morganite tells her she’ll never be worth anything.

And that Pearl takes it and takes it and takes—

Chapter Text

In the end, it is only Greg and Pearl, each holding one of her hands like it’s a lifeline.

She’s so damn happy; her plump smile cuts through the sheen of sweat coating her face.

But she’s so damn sad, too; she looks between Pearl and Greg and can hardly face what she’s done to them, what she’s doing to them now.

(But Rose Quartz doesn’t have time for second thoughts; she doesn’t have any more time at all.)

“Love them,” she whispers. “Love them like you loved me… you both loved me so well.”

And I’m nothing like you.

Chapter Text

“Ruby?”

“Yes, Sapphy?”

“I know this seems random… but do you remember that time Rose and Greg entered a pie eating contest to win concert tickets?”

“Oh, yeah! Greg tapped out after, like, five.”

“And Rose carried on until the referee told her she had to stop.”

“Pearl had to look away,” Ruby sighs fondly. “Not too bad of a concert either.”

“Not at all given their eccentric tastes,” Sapphire laughs, but then just as suddenly stops, catching herself.

“You miss her.” 

The statement is soft; Ruby’s eyes are the same.

“I’m angry at her.”

“… you can be both, Sapphire.”

Chapter Text

So because Greg said that the house had to be functional for Steven to live in, Bismuth resigns herself to mediocrity and adheres to the old blueprints as much as she can.

Repairs the shingles on the roof.

Reconstructs the side of the house that Blue Diamond’s ship crashed into.

Goes to a hardware store and purchases some wood—wood!—for the deck.

Easy peasy and boring as all get out.

Granted… she does end up making a few aesthetic choices.

Something for her designer sensibilities.

Nothing too big.

(Steven definitely won’t miss that ugly, white seat in the bathroom.)

Chapter Text

One day, they have the conversation they’ve been trying not to have for months now.

Because Greg does his thing... he goes out of his way to be nice to her—extends a warm smile, a word, a touch.

And Lapis almost despises him for it. 

“I took your city’s water. I nearly drowned Steven. I broke your leg,” she hisses. “What do you want from me?”

I’m your Water Witch, remember?

“You were scared,” Greg retorts, his eyes kind. “Heck, I would have been, too. That doesn’t make you a bad person, Lapis.”

“... I did horrible things.”

“Even still.”

Chapter Text

In Sector 9, two Quartzes get into a fist brawl, and only one makes it out.

She sends a drone to collect the shards.

At the same time, she watches Blue Diamond kneel at her altar and weep for the hibiscus petals scattered across its surface.

At the same time, she directs her Pearl to apprehend a suspected Off Color for trial.

At the same time, she holds the core of Homeworld together.

It is falling apart.

She is.

It’s dying.

She may very well be.

At the same time, White Diamond frowns slightly.

She’s never considered this variable before.

Chapter Text

“Pink?”

The question drops down to him from Blue Diamond’s throne, where her inquisitive gaze lands just as heavily.

Steven looks up and tries not to flinch from its intensity—the love in her eyes, the sadness.

“Hm?”

“Why do you choose to consort with that… that… fusion?” She purses her plump lips. “It’s beneath you.”

Garnet.

His stomach drops.

She means Garnet.

“Because she’s amazing,” he quickly insists, “and awesome and funny and made of love, and she… she loves me!”

“That hardly justifies fusion.”

“But you shouldn't have to justify love… you of all gems should know that.”

Chapter Text

“I’m… like you,” Peridot says suddenly. “Logical, pragmatic, task oriented… cold.”

Yellow Diamond arches a thin brow. 

They’d been discussing electricity efficiencies before this, and she doesn’t quite see the correlation between amperes and shared personality traits.

“Yes, I suppose that’s true,” she frowns. “You’re a gem from my court—naturally, you’ve retained some of my likeness.”

“But level with me here—doesn’t that mean that I don’t possess free will? That everything I’ve done is a reflection of you?”

“Peridot,” she snorts indelicately, “you once called me a clod to my face. My ego could have never anticipated that.”

Chapter Text

It’s been seven hours days since Steven entered the Diamond mindscape to reason with the less than reasonable White Diamond. In the real world, Lars and Connie sit vigil over his body.

“I told him not to go alone,” Connie murmurs, “I told him we could physically go to space, but he wouldn’t let me help him, but he’s allowed to help me, and I—”

She falters, her fighter’s fists crumbling in her lap.

Lars gets it, better than most.

“That dork doesn’t know the effect he has on people,” he shrugs fondly, placing a pink hand on Connie’s shoulder.

Chapter Text

Rumor has it that Pink Diamond has been resurrected from her shards.

That the Diamonds have finally have succeeded in doing the impossible.

That they’ve reversed the effects of death.

Long live the Diamonds.

Rumor has it that she looks different now, that her hair is as black as night, her eyes full of stars.

“But she’s back,” an Amethyst whispers, wiping at her eyes. “She’s home.”

Rumor has it that she’s going to reform Homeworld, that she plans to bring it back from the brink with her smile, her hands, her words.

“I’d like to see you try, Starlight.”

Chapter Text

Hands intertwined, they sit above the field that will be their battlefield tomorrow. It is rife with strawberries and vines and butterflies; a sweet aroma flits upon the slight evening breeze.

“Pearl?”

“Yes, Rose?” 

(She doesn’t know it, but she says it with the same cadence as: Yes, my Diamond?)

“I want you to be careful tomorrow,” she murmurs, urgent. “No unnecessary risks, alright?”

“You know I can’t agree to that.”

“Why?”

Pearl tilts her head questioningly—as though the answer is obvious.

To her, it is.

“Love is sacrifice.”

Her smile is sad, soft.

“And unfortunately, sacrifice is unkind.”

Chapter Text

It takes him a little while to get used to nights in the beach house.

Boards creak, and shadows whisper.

Steven whimpers, and within seconds, a gem is there.

Sometimes, it’s Amethyst, who sits on the edge of his bed and tells him funny stories.

Sometimes, it’s Garnet, who curls up on top of his sheets and promises to protect him from the night.

And sometimes, it’s Pearl, who used to never talk to him, but now she cups his face as she hums strange lullabies in his ear.

She kisses his forehead.

They all say, “I love you, Steven.”