Author's Note: This piece is paired with "On the Effects of Unexplained Electromagnetic Discharge on Homo Sapiens.", and is co-written by LadyRavenEye. Please see my profile for a link to more of her wonderful works.
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The Way You Love Me is Frightening
For as long as he can remember, Greg has been afraid of magic.
It starts with his second grade teacher, Ms. Liefting. She is tall and broad shouldered and plays rugby, which is really cool, and he has a little second grade crush on her. Until she starts talking about magic.
"Magic is a powerful force, but it isn't like a thunderstorm or an earthquake. That's just nature, y'see, and can't think for itself. But magic… well, it's rare, so that's good. Like a lightning strike with a mind of its own. Even if you come out alive, you'll be changed forever."
Greg has always been more afraid of thunder than lightning. The what came after part of magic is what scares him the most. But Greg likes understanding things. So he waddles to the school's library and asks for books on magic.
"Not fake magic," he says, when the librarian gives him picture books illustrated with pretty winged creatures and gentle giants and superheroes who fight for Earth. "The real stuff."
Into his arms goes books far beyond his reading level, so he skips the parts with too many words. The blurry photos of snarling pointed beasts and physics-defying ruins does not help things. Greg likes big; he does not like impossibly massive.
He decides no one will ever understand magic because it does not want to be understood.
He has nightmares where he is turned into a slug, or stretched thin as paper, or zapped into dust. Finally his parents notice.
They buy him a telescope.
He goes back to the library to get books on space. This time, when the pictures show him things like supernovas and gamma rays and roche limits, even if he doesn't understand, he takes comfort in knowing that whoever wrote the books does. The margins of his notebooks become filled with planets and comets and galaxies.
Nothing on Earth is impossibly massive compared to the sun. No eldritch horror can withstand a black hole.
"I wanna be an astronaut!" he tells his mother one day.
"Oh, darling," she says. "Astronauts are smart, you see."
Greg turns fifteen, and pawns his telescope for a guitar.
But he never forgets the stars.
When the purple owl speaks to him, it's all Greg can do not to turn tail and run.
He's made it this far. Maybe the feelings the big pink lady have given him are clouding his head, anyway-maybe he just thought he heard it speak.
It's harder to pretend when the owl turns into a small purple person.
When the column of light flashes upward, Greg has a thought for the first time in his life that maybe, just maybe, magic could be beautiful. This fades quickly when a tall lady with square hair picks him up like he weighs less than air, intending to throw him over the fence.
He is saved by Pink Lady. Rose, he finds out her name is.
He is young and he is infatuated. He decides he can overlook the magic, as long as it isn't too big.
Except that nothing about Rose Quartz is small. And isn't that why he is falling for her?
The nightmares come back. This time, they usually feature Pearl slicing him up with that spear-dealy she seems to conveniently summon whenever he's present. Occasionally-and these are the worst ones-it's Rose, mutating into one of the monsters Greg thought he had left behind in the second grade.
Rose asks him about this.
"You say my name when you sleep," she says. She loves to watch him sleep, and Greg hardly minds. Besides, she lets him sleep in her luxurious California king, in her admittedly weird room. Greg was able to convince himself the pink clouds were just some strange mystical decorating trick. "Most of the time it is… adorable." She does that thing with her voice and her face and her lips and Greg gulps because how can one person be so-
"But sometimes you whimper. Is everything alright?"
He considers lying.
"Rose. I'm… afraid of magic."
She laughs. Throaty and full and big, hair shaking.
"Oh Mr. Universe! You are a delight!"
"I'm serious! It's this terrifying unknown thing, I don't know how to explain. Like I could wake up as a slug or something! That's scary!"
Rose quiets, but her eyes still twinkle.
"Well," she says after a while. "What would you like to know?"
"What?"
"If the unknown part of magic is what scares you… let me help you understand."
"Hoo boy," he says, considering. "How do you… learn it?"
"Oh, Gems don't learn magic. It's just a part of us."
"Are the Gems responsible for all the magic on Earth?"
"Yes."
"Then where did you come from?"
Rose eyes him sideways. Greg wonders what she is thinking about.
"We came from space."
She says it so casually.
"What like, space space? Like, stars and galaxies and the whole deal?"
Rose laughs again.
"Yes, Mr. Universe."
"Why did you come to Earth?"
Rose frowns, and turns away. Greg worries he has touched a nerve. Or-wait, were Gems even human? Suddenly Greg is hit with a wave of something, half nausea, half giddiness, all anticipation.
"Rose," he says slowly. "Are you an ali-"
"Pearl?" Rose calls out into the pink clouds of her room. "Would you come in here please?"
Greg knows he has been rebuffed, so he does not ask again, although every inch of him is burning to. Rose fidgets with a lock of her hair, tugging the enormous curl downward and letting it bounce back into place.
In the vague distance of Rose's room, the clouds part (Greg gulps nervously), and a door appears. Out of it bounds Pearl, face jubilant. As soon as she sees the bed, with Greg in it, her face morphs into something nasty, before returning to neutral.
"Yes, Rose?" she says, and Greg is amazed at how two words can contain such reverence alongside such a clear disdain.
"I was wondering," Rose says. "If you wouldn't mind showing Greg some of the footage from our travels?"
Greg can see a series of emotions flicker over Pearl's luminous features-anger, annoyance, disgust-it's clear to him that she does mind, but Rose seems unaware or at least unwilling to acknowledge it.
"Of course," Pearl says woodenly. She closes her eyes, pirouettes, and stops in a pose that makes Greg's ankles hurt just by looking at it. Her forehead begins to glow.
Any misgivings Greg has are banished when the images start to appear. The stars in Rose's eyes make sense now.
It's years later, and now somebody has come to Greg to ask him what's more-or-less the same question.
Greg looks at Dr. Maheswaran- intelligent, educated, responsible- and Greg knows he won't be nearly as casual giving his answer.
"Well," he says, after he's finally finished with the guitar lesson and sent Buck on his way. "It's a little unbelievable, but bear with me. Gems… they're not actually from Earth. Basically, they're well. They're aliens."
There's none of the disbelief Greg was expected. In fact, if anything, the expression on Dr. Maheswaran's face is victorious.
"I knew it!" she says. "I knew there had to be some underlying order… None of it is magic at all! It's all science! Science and alien technology."
"Eh, well, maybe," Greg says, rubbing his neck. "But I don't think it's as simple as all that. Don't get me wrong, the Gems do have some pretty far-out technology… Spaceships and teleport pads and stuff… But they call a lot of it magic themselves. Even if there is like, a logic to it, it's so advanced and beyond us that it might as well be magic, y'know?"
"Yes, yes. Clarke's Third Law," Dr. Maheswaran says, looking thoughtful. Greg is pretty sure she isn't talking about Dick Clark. For a moment she seems lost in her own thoughts, until she drags herself back to the present, her usual intensity back-in-place. "Regardless, that's not the important thing right now. The important thing is- are the children safe, being around the Gems?"
"We-ell…" Greg begins. He doesn't want to lie to Dr. Maheswaran. He also doesn't want Steven's best friend to get banished from hanging out with him. "Depends on what you mean by safe?"
Dr. Maheswaran's eyes narrow. "I mean, don't get me wrong," Greg says hastily. "No one takes the protection of humanity more seriously than the Gems! Er, for the most part. And more than anything, they want to keep Steven safe. And Steven wants to keep Connie safe, so she's protected."
"I did not ask you if she was protected. I asked if she was safe."
"No," Greg finally gives in. "No. I can't sit here and tell you she's safer being around magic stuff than she'd be if she wasn't."
They are both silent for a while. Greg feels sweat bead on his upper lip and forehead and resists the urge to fidget. The doctor's face is unreadable.
"Why do you," she finally says. "Let Steven be around the Gems, if it's not safe?"
Greg winces. She doesn't know the nerve that question hits, she can't know. She's just a concerned parent. Like he is. Like he was when he handed custody of his only child over to three admittedly dangerous aliens.
"Because life isn't safe," he says, which is at least part of the truth. For some reason, he remembers his telescope. "Because childhood, especially, isn't safe. All we can do is try and get them ready, I guess. And the Gems can do that better than unmagical ol' me."
This time during the silence that stretches between them, he can see the gears turn over behind Dr. Maheswaran's eyes. He fervently hopes he has not ruined things for Steven with Connie.
"Alright," she says. "Thank you, Mr. Universe."
"Please," he says. "It's Greg."
She smiles and takes her leave. Greg sits back and strums his guitar, thinking about Steven, thinking about magic.
"I miss you, Rose," he says, into the air. Maybe she could even hear it.
Stranger things have happened.