Steven Universe does not belong to me.
He'd been asleep, dreaming of something with Connie.
That was a new development; with the recent dealing with their thoughts as Stevonnie, Steven and Connie had found themselves connected somehow.
Neither of them could describe it fully. Sometimes one felt the other's injuries, sometimes it was like their fused self was whispering in their ears, and sometimes they dreamed together, no matter how far apart they were.
Then he wasn't asleep. He was wide awake, tripping down a flight of stairs. It was a moment's work to think of Connie and he was stuck on the ceiling, unharmed. He let the floating power fade away and dropped to the floor, very glad that the other Gems hadn't seen his moment of indignity.
Something was off.
It wasn't anything obvious. Well, to Steven it was. Many of the various oddities around his bedroom and kitchen had been fixed. Most notable were the patches of slightly differently patterned wood where Peetly's acid had burned through the floor, and the gauges from the first time he summoned his shield.
Wonderingly, Steven leapt up the stairs and took in his room. He'd gotten rid of those posters ages ago, and... TV number six was back.
"Six! Oh how I've missed you," Steven cried, hugging the box and chuckling when his hair stood on end. "Never again will I put a shield through your side." He lovingly rubbed his thumb over a scratchy part of the TV's edge, before turning back towards the posters.
Ninja Squad? He hadn't seen those particular shades of red and orange since he took that poster down, right before...
"Future Vision," Steven breathed. "Did Garnet kiss me recently? Wait, it'd have to be in the past when Garnet kissed me, but I guess I'm in the past now, and as much as I'm a nice person, I can't remember every kiss, so I guess I don't know anyway." But if it was future vision, why wasn't Garnet around?
In fact, nobody was around. It was as quiet as it had ever been in the temple room. Shrugging, he went to get a snack from the fridge.
The sight that greeted him finally jogged his memory. It was before he'd first met Connie, before he'd even gotten his powers, but it wasn't by more than a few hours.
For a moment, he hesitated. If he lived out his life exactly the same way as before, he'd just get sent back in time again, like in all those movies he'd watched. But if he changed anything, he knew that everything else would change, and possibly go worse than last time. And if he did change anything, he might not be able to go back again, especially since he didn't even know how he'd gotten back.
Garnet would know what to do. She always did. But then, that wasn't quite true, was it? As much as he loved all of his moms, none of them were infallible.
Briefly, Steven wondered why he was thinking in such big words, but then he chalked it up to Stevonnie. Connie had always used much bigger words than him, and she'd had to explain what each one meant as they went along.
His heart plummeted. He was back in time. Connie wasn't.
In fact, nobody else was, either. Garnet was still almost mute, and Amethyst and Pearl weren't getting along at all at this point, and they were all different colors, and Garnet still had square shoulder poofs... And Lapis and Peridot weren't around either!
He'd never see his friends again. Well, he would, but they'd be different. They'd have to go through all the growth that he'd seen, all the tiny things that he'd be terrified to change. Connie was still the bookworm who couldn't dance-
They'd never be Stevonnie again. Not the same Stevonnie.
Steven sniffed, shut the fridge and climbed the stairs one at a time. Then he collapsed onto his bed. He didn't feel as awake as he had before.
The Centipeetle attack shouldn't have been unexpected, Steven realised, but thinking was hard when you were being swarmed by baby bugs.
He didn't dare summon his shield yet; as far as the Gems knew, he still had no idea if he could do it, and even if they weren't here, he couldn't take the chance that they'd warp here while he was holding it.
As it turned out though, Steven had a mean right hook. And a mean left jab.
Pretty much all of his punches were mean, actually. His kicks too. The mother Centipeetle was soon the only one left, and it scurried off once it realised how strong he was.
Maybe if he just bubbled the mother himself before the others came back, he could get her to her crew and they'd all be happy. But that would change the future, and the Gems wouldn't realise that he was capable...
Eventually though, Steven's kindheartedness won out as he knew it would. He couldn't just let the Centipeetle suffer when he could help her, and with that in mind he climbed the temple in the general direction that she'd gone.
It occured to Steven that having his new powers had changed the future already, like what Garnet said about how she couldn't control the future because she couldn't do exactly the movements that she'd need to for everything to go perfectly; her voice faultered, or she tripped, or she twitched when she told a lie, and everything changed.
Steven floating had changed everything from the moment he'd woken up.
Still, he also knew that it wouldn't change instantly. The Gems would probably still grow in similar ways for the first few months, but the fact that Steven would grow differently would affect them too eventually. He'd thought about how knowing the future would affect things a lot because of Garnet.
His Garnet.
He tried not to think about that, at least for now. He'd need to eventually, but right now he needed to get back. He stepped onto the warp pad and the edges shone white, surrounding him.
When the glow faded, he found himself staring at three Gems, who were staring back.
Smile.
He did. "Hey guys! I figured out how to use this!" He pointed down to the warp pad, sweating slightly.
Garnet looked as impassive as her pre-poofed self always did. Amethyst looked dumbfounded, and Pearl looked mildly insane, paused on one leg with Steven's bed held over her head.
He got what he expected from two of the three; Garnet didn't move a muscle, and Pearl immediately began berating him half-hysterically.
Amethyst, instead of butting heads with her opposite or bursting into laughter, sank to the ground and sighed quietly, still looking vaguely confused.
"...Where did you even go, anyway, Steven? I-I wonmt be angry, but I need to know if you've damaged anything or angered anyone, or any number of horrific things you could have done!"
"Maybe phrase that a little better?" Amethyst suggested half-heartedly. "It kinda sounds like you think Ste-man's helpless..."
"O-Of course I don't Amethyst, it's just that that warp pad grants access to so many dangerous places that I doubt even we could-"
"Steven," Garnet interrupted forcefully, and her visor might have been invisible for all it masked her urgency, "where did the warp pad take you?"
"Um, I wasn't really looking around," he lied. "I was just surprised that it worked-" He paused, remembering that he'd been gone for a while. "And then I tried to come back, but it took me a while to do it again."
The urgency was gone, and Garnet nodded. "Good work warping, but don't do it again without us."
Steven nodded and sighed. Crisis averted. For now.
I'm trying to make the characters feel like the canon ones, but it's difficult since they've changed so much. I'm also having trouble making it feel right, since SU tends to massively deconstruct all kinds of tropes, and I feel like I need to do the same.
And the reason Steven suddenly has so many conclusions regarding time travel and future knowledge is because Garnet's future vision and his Steven and the Stevens experience made him sit down and really think about all the consequences beforehand.
I doubt I'll be doing every episode (for example, Cat Fingers has no reason to happen), but I'll resolve all the really important stuff when it comes to that point.
Next time, Laser Light Cannon. Or not. Probably though.