Work Text:
The room shook as secondary perimeter alarms sounded. Blue Diamond heard the footfalls of guards rushing to try to bolster the failing defense. As she reclined into her throne, she felt the first pangs of fear in over five millennia.
"Leave me," she commanded her guards.
The quartzes shared a look, but said nothing. Instead, they made to secure the palace doors.
Before long, the hall was nearly empty, save for the fountains, and the pillars, and the tyrant.
Blue Diamond almost didn't hear the flutter of water over the nearby ripples of decorative fonts and far away rumbles of collapsing wall. But she did.
A Lapis Lazuli who was hiding in the vaulted ceiling supports drifted down to meet her former Diamond.
Blue's eyes narrowed. "And what do you want."
"Just wanted to see you, one last time." The Lapis seemed calm, but distant. Blue just now noticed the small bundle of water floating behind the intruder. The blob burst, and spilled a sopping brownish heap of something dead onto the floor. Blue Diamond recoiled.
"What...what is that?" Blue squinted.
"It's the reason you're going to get shattered."
Blue still couldn't much make out what it was, under the mats of hair, but entertained the little interloper a bit longer. Her guards were busy, after all, but it wasn't like she was in any real danger from one gem.
The room shook again. Blue Diamond called up another of the monitor screens in time to see a small boy get cut down by one of her guards, only to stand up again. By the time he had waded through her forward defenses, he had lost and regrown limbs, and shattered dozens of gems.
"All of this," she whispered, "How can Steven...how could Pink...?"
"Yes. Pink Diamond." Lapis spoke up from down below. "She could heal things, right? And her powers were even more effective on organics, and grew more powerful with emotion." She ticked off the qualities on her fingers. "Sound right?"
Blue sank into her throne once more. "But why..."
"Because you killed her," Lapis flipped Connie's body over with her foot. The girl had drowned some hours ago, and her eyes had long gone grey.
"Is that...his pet? But we didn't...I didn't-"
"I know," said Lapis, "I did. But I told him you did it. I'm just here to leave this-" she kicked Connie's corpse forward, letting it slide across the wet floor, "to make sure he finishes you off."
"...Why?"
"I care about Steven," Lapis said, with the first hint of emotion in her words that night. "I really do." It wasn't there when she continued. "But I hate you more."
With her job done, Lapis leapt into the air once more, slipping through a crack that had formed in the palace dome.
Blue could only sit and watch the sealed doors to the throne room. They were meters thick and lattice-locked with six redundant shield power supplies. No force in the empire could break them.
She sat and watched her doors,
as they began to move.