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Pink Diamond had never truly prayed to anything before. It was a foreign concept to most gems - all who did their duties would be rewarded with their place in the caste system, and all who went against it would be punished. Such was life.
Over the centuries since she had left Homeworld, however, she and the rest of the Crystal Gems had learned about the human concept of prayer, often to deities that may or may not have existed.
(They had inspired at least a few of those myths, she was sure).
There were stories she had heard from Blue about the Moon Goddess, of long ago - before the current era, before she had emerged and the gem species had been a galactic empire that knew no mercy. But she had never prayed to that goddess before - she knew no prayers that might be whispered by ritual, though some humans, usually the less fanatically religious, had told her that the ritual of a specific prayer didn't mean anything if you were saying the words and didn't mean them.
The Authority really needed to learn that.
Now, though, as she walked down the halls, towards the highest level of security in Homeworld's prison for the gem Courts, Pink Diamond became the first of her type to whisper words in prayer.
It was a very desperate one.
Please let them be wrong, please, don’t let it be them-
And as the last word passed through her mind, she turned the corner, she saw a pair of Topaz guards - neither of them one she knew. If they had any great surprise at seeing her there, they hid it well.
“I’m going in. The prisoner is secure?” The two Topazes nodded. If she looked carefully, for a second she’d swear she saw depression coloring their frames. But Pink Diamond had other things on her mind, and she wasn’t looking at the Topazes. “Good. Secure the door behind me. And turn off the observation transmitters, I want this to be private. Unless another Diamond comes in person, you two had better ensure that nobody is going through that door but me , do you understand?”
She makes sure to punctuate this with a dark look at the two of them. With the state of her mind - fear, love, and many other more extreme emotions all ricocheting around without any pause or cease - it wasn’t hard to make the two of them almost pale, and nod incredibly hard. Pink Diamond, as she passed through and the door shut behind her, paid her actions no mind - she had already returned to praying, sending up one last request to whoever might be listening.
Please don’t let it be them, please, please, please-
And then, she saw the cell in front of her.
It had what appeared to be a human in it.
A human who was emitting a familiar aura, one that had been with her since the day she had emerged.
And she knew that her prayers hadn’t been answered.
Instantly, a myriad of emotions shot through her - despair, joy and love, terror - pain. It was a true testament to how good of an actor the gem currently known by all but her original self’s former Pearl as Pink Diamond was that none of them appeared on her face.
Now… well, she had to do something. “Hello there.” The child in the cell turned around curiously when he heard her voice - even as bad as she was at dealing with children, she could tell easily that this human appeared to be, biologically, male.
So this was her little Steven, then.
The shocked look on his face made her want to rip apart the barrier and hug him, but she pushed it down.
“Pink Diamond?!”
“That’s what they keep calling me, yes.” She replied, without missing a beat. “And I was told that we’d captured Rose Quartz.” She let her gaze fall down across her son, studying him intently. “I think that we may have made a mistake somewhere.”
“I am Rose Quartz!”
Rose fought down the urge to facepalm, rub her eyes, snort, or do one of the many things that humans did to show their exasperation. “Rose Quartz is twice as big as you are, human. And she has pink hair, and an admittedly similar skin color to you, and breasts, I believe they’re called?”
Steven flushed a little at the Diamond across from him using vulgar language (well, vulgar by his standards), but annoyance took over. “I am Rose Quartz! See?” To make his point, he lifted his shirt up to reveal a glimmering pink gemstone - one that, at first glance, and even potentially second glance, could easily be passed off as the gemstone of a Rose Quartz.
She’d had that gemstone - or, her predecessor had that gemstone - for thousands of years, arranged in just that position. She knew it a little better - the color was just a little different from a Rose Quartz’s, and if you took a very careful look close up, the clarity that you would find in a thinner Quartz gemstone wasn’t present there.
It was visually almost identical to the average Quartz gemstone, meaning nobody would likely question her cover story too closely, as a “slightly off” color Quartz (and given her rebellion, being slightly off-colored actually wasn’t her biggest crime).
And Homeworld’s most infamous Jasper had, during the war, been both exceptionally tough and had an extremely unusual gemstone (how many other exceptional gems had “off color” gemstones and were allowed it because they were useful? And how many had them and weren’t useful, and weren’t allowed it for their short lives?)
“That is certainly a Rose Quartz gemstone, I suppose.” She admitted. “But I have plenty of Rose Quartzes, and I suppose a few could have been missed on Earth when the others were evacuating after I...” Come on, say you’re just one of them-
“Wait! How are you even alive?! Mo - I killed you!” Steven realized something belatedly - the gem standing across from him shouldn’t have been standing there.
“What’s a… mo?” She asked. She was taking no chances that White Diamond or Yellow or Blue might - somehow - be watching her. She couldn’t just take him and leave this place, no matter how much she wanted to. Steven just blushed red, and looked away. “Well, I suppose that isn’t fair, anyways - you asked a question first, didn’t you?”
He looked shocked, and she wondered for a second why. (Later, she’d discover how long it had taken the Crystal Gems to volunteer information about themselves, and she would spend several hours venting her rage by mutilating a brick of metal). “Uh, yeah! Didn’t - I - kill you?”
“Rose Quartz certainly killed me, you could say.” She smiled in a manner that was far more friendly than any Homeworld Gems hearing their conversation might believe. “But the other Diamonds apparently came prepared for such events - and a machine was apparently made to transfer our minds to a blank copy of our gems, should our bodies die.”
“So… the Diamonds aren’t mad anymore?” Steven looked hopeful as he looked her in the eyes. “I mean, you’re alive, and that’s the whole reason that Blue Diamond and Yellow Diamond got angry enough they corrupted all the gems on Earth! You could help everyone!”
Stars, he was so good . But she had an appearance to maintain. “What do you mean, corrupted?”
“Uh, whatever happened at the end of the war, like… it twisted all the gems on Earth! Like, they look like animals now, they can’t think clearly - I’ve been trying, but even when I got through to Centipeedle, she reverted back super fast…”
The news that her child had run into corrupted gems, had succeeded even minutely where she’d failed for so long, brought a smile over her face, for a split second. She hid it away about as fast.
“Gems are still on Earth, hm? I thought the others said they killed them after I was shattered myself…” she mused for a second.
She couldn’t sugarcoat this. Steven couldn’t be left ignorant to how horrible Homeworld could be - how horrible she might have been if Homeworld had had its way.
“Killed?!” Steven looked horrified - she gave him a dark smirk that she in no way actually meant.
“Did you really think that the Diamonds could let something like my death go unanswered for?” Because I did. “The Authority could hardly let a fellow Diamond’s death go unpunished. Both for the culprits and those who failed us… well, I suppose if what you say is true, we can pick up anyone who was loyal later and figure out a way to fix that.”
“Oh, that’s great! You… you’ll do it? Help all the corrupted gems?” He looked hopeful.
She wanted to, stars knew she wanted to.
But she couldn’t say she would do it, not here.
“All? Well, I’ll be happy to help my corrupted gems, Rose.” She gave another smile. “Like my Pearl, I imagine, wherever she ran off to…”
“Nobody belongs to somebody else…” Steven murmured under his breath, shaking his head. She felt a little better. “Well, I guess I can’t stop you… you can do whatever you want to me, I guess… after the trial, after I… well, probably get shattered…”
Something in her broke inside at those words.
“You REALLY THINK that you just DYING will FIX EVERYTHING?!” She screamed.
The look she gave her son was filled with rage - entirely unfaked. Someone watching might misjudge the reason behind it, though.
“Well… I guess the Diamonds won’t have a reason to hate Earth anymore, right? And the Cluster can get taken care of, and…”
“Ah bah! Bah. No. No, it won’t. Earth is my planet. Rose Quartz or not, I am going back to get what is mine - and to deal with anyone who gets in my way.” She gave him a dark smile. “Believe me… the death of Rose Quartz would be pleasant, but it’s just a footnote in my plans. And I would just hate it if you weren’t there to watch them .”
Standing up, she walked back towards the door, carefully standing so that he could see her entering the combination if he was looking. “Now, the trial is tomorrow. So I suppose unless you’re innocent, it won’t matter either way.”
The door opened. “See you later.”
And, hoping that he, or his human companion, had paid enough attention to remember what buttons she had hit, she walked out.