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English
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Published:
2014-07-31
Updated:
2014-11-26
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1,380
Chapters:
2/?
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126
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Sugilite Alone

Summary:

What happened to Sugilite after Pearl and Steven left her in 'Coach Steven'? And what could have happened to make her so angry when she came back?

Notes:

After I saw Coach Steven, I got very interested in the relationship between Sugilite and Steven himself and wrote a couple things about it; this was one of my favorite ones I did about it.

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

The sound of her flail is like the sound of the earth splitting open, and the noise fills the air almost as hard as the literal impact of the ground tearing asunder; rocks fly up for miles and come crashing down so that their respective impacts make a noise. One after another with barely seconds inbetween them, and each slightly different. The noise is a symphony, a song of beauteous destruction, and maybe it's just made to happen from Sugilite magic leaking out around her like light from a star, tweaking the world around her just so for this little bit of loveliness in accordance with a dramatic streak.

(For one part of Sugilite is Amethyst, and she does so love her moments of drama; she is like an actor moving in her own play, dancing in a wild path through life, and everyone compelled to move with it. So it is with Sugilite, and the dance is ever bigger and brighter, and where trees bend for Amethyst, mountains jump aside for Sugilite in recognition of being smaller from a cosmic perspective.)

Dust flies up, fountains up. Rock and stone and all the things of the earth alike mesh with the ancient workings of long-dead Gems. Their work is beyond the world, mighty enough to withstand the ages until at least breaking but not mighty enough to withstand Sugilite's unrelenting power. They had withstood hurricanes and earthquakes and terrible things seeking to feed on their magic, but Sugilite was more than them, and broke them easily. Now, the pulverized remnants of natural geology and Gem-artifice alike went up, big as a hurricane-cloud and shooting up where the force pushed it up, and a thunderclap when it moved so fast it made friction against the air and lightning flashed out, lighting all the land for a time.

And the last of the pillars had fallen, and there was a single massive step, bigger than the thunder and the earthquakes and all others, for she was big, bigger than all those things combined. Power and wildness given a face and a name, and her step would have crumpled a truck.

Sugilite raises her head up, up, and she laughs.

The thunder is defeaned and extinguished from the loudness of her laughter. As the lesser bends knee to the greater.

The ground itself break around from the force of it, and another massive joyous step, and the dust is raining down now, and Sugilite surrounded by debris and dust.

There was just one thing on her mind. Rather, one person. She grins, with all the intensity of Garnet's respect for Steven and Amethyst's affection for him, and it is doubled, tripled, a hundred-fold and it all comes booming out as she tilts her head up to shout "Heck yeah! That was AWESOME! Wasn't that cool, little buddy?!"

The air quakes, shakes. She pauses, and there is no answer.

She waits for a long moment, in such a way that she seems detached from time, drifting in and out for the answer to come, and when it does not come she stands up taller, higher than a building and wider than war machines. Above her shades, her brow furrows.

"Steven? Pearl? Hey. HEY!" She turns, stomps, and the ground quakes from the force of it as she marches around, looking and searching with a desperation and surprise that is more fearsome than her anger alone. "Guys!? Where'd you go!? Guys. GUYS!"

She stops.

She stands, bigger than any living thing and stronger than any empire or machine. Yet, just a little bit... her shoulders tilt inward, her arms are slack, and the ground shakes as her fingers drop her weapon.

Her lip trembles, just so very slightly.

"…You guys left me…?"

There is no answer.

Her head bows further, hair covering her face and shades. Maybe it doesn't hide the secret and shameful moistness of her eyes now. Maybe it really is raining, though it is so hard and not a cloud in the sky. And when she speaks one last time, her voice is so terribly, sadly small.

"…Steven...?"

Chapter 2: The Long Walk Home

Summary:

It was a long walk for Sugilite back to Beach City, under the sea. Plenty of time to think about being left there, and get upset about feeling bad, and getting angry.

Chapter Text

Her feet pound against silt and dirt and mud, miles below the sun touching the water. It swirls around her, currents tearing old bulkheads loose from where they were entrenched, vast swathes of diffused dirt cast behind her like an unglamorous carpet to declare her passing.

(And somewhere in the back of her head, past the rolling storm of thoughts that blend into a harmonious consensus, there is a point where the one was once two, a bit of her that is not purely Sugilite. It is a purple thought, angry and small and untouched by raw red intensity, and there is a flaw in the purple, and the thought is that it deserves the dirt and the mud and the muck. Forgotten and left alone, now below the sea where no one has to look at them; it is shamed and filled with a nameless fear of weakness and more loss. It thinks itself a dirt-thing, a mud-thing.

And teeth grit against the hurt. Against a dozen little lost feelings that taste like hate. The purple hates herself, sometimes, or maybe thinks she should hate herself, sensing weakness where there is none. And where purple and red meet together, she sees clearly and truthfully, and she feels an honest hate, a clean hate. But its a hate at someone who makes her feel like that, and she knows its wrong, but she doesn't deny it. That would be lying.

Sugilite is many things. But she is honest. And she knows herself.)

A massive foot, larger than the semi-truck lodged deep below the sea in some unknown chain of events, came down with a thunderous impact. Secondary quakes flooded the ocean floor with subtle shifts of sunken soil and broken ship-corpses, and it was the same step as every single one she had taken, so big and so strong she changed the world just by walking. The truck broke beneath her tread, flattening and then snapping apart.

Another step. Dirt fountained beneath her, around her. She ignored it, pushed it aside. Unworthy of interest, unworthy of attention; just something in her face. Swat it away.

(The word unworthy bounces around in her head. Singing at her like it was her truth. It resonates hurtfully, stinging. She clenches her teeth, and does not roar. There is no air to scream under the sea. She leans forward, down, punches the sea and tears open a rift several meters long. The shocks distort the sea, changes the lines of the beach. A whirlpool rips open overhead, for all of a few hours.

Her knuckles don't even sting. It comes to her, brooding and feeling the hate, that maybe she's too big and strong, and nothing else is made of stern enough stuff. Miserable. Brief. Weak. 

A little face, rosy-pink and beamed up at her, no bigger than one fingernail of her hand.

She doesn't punch again. She does not feel any calmer. But it's hard to hate the world and everything in it, thinking that this little person is in it.)

Sugilite stopped in mid-step, and the water sluggishly slowed about her. Her massive form altered the course, just by ceasing movement. Distantly, an ancient steam liner (dropped down here years and years ago, when it was cheaper to sink ships than to salvage them) drifted by her. It was big even for a ship of it's kind, and dug out a massive trail behind it. It's highest point, even so, was a steam vent that barely reached up to Sugilite's waist. It wasn't even half as wide as she was. Her flail, floating behind her and anchoring her somewhat, gently floated into it and right through.

'Home', she thought angrily, miserably, and took another step.

('Figure things out when I get there. Figure it out when I'm home.')

And she thought of Pearl, taking Steven away before she got a chance to see what he thought of her. Something curdled inside, angry and full of rage.

She could not scream, and she was walking too hard to punch again.

But her steps impacted the ground, and changed the shape of the ocean floor for miles around.