True Quartz
(CW: mild body horror)
When Steven climbed onto bed, he slipped his headband on and glanced at his reflection in the television screen. Furrowing his eyebrows, he clenched all the muscles in his face and growled. He brought two fingers up to each side of his temples as he stared into his own eyes and concentrated as hard as he could on concentrating.
"Steven?" Pearl came up the stairs and crossed her arms. This was a bedtime ritual that she hadn't seen before. "What are you doing?"
Steven relaxed his body and jumped onto the bed, rolling onto his face to get the sweat off his forehead before he rolled over and gave Pearl a confident grin.
"I'm gonna try to dream again!" Steven said. He stretched the headband and snapped it back against his skull, wincing slightly. "I mean, I wonder if I can find Lapis again. It happened before, right?"
Pearl reached down and removed his headband with a sigh.
"Lapis Lazuli wasn't exactly happy to see you, Steven," she said. "Not because of you, of course, but…she had other things to worry about. Like keeping control of Malachite." She crossed her arms over her chest, squeezing the headband with tension. "I don't know how long that she can stay with Jasper, but any distractions could tear their fusion apart."
"I know, I guess," Steven said, lying back on the bed. "But what if she needs our help?"
"We've tried so much already. What more are we really able to do?"
He couldn't find an answer to that. Instead, he gave a defeated sigh and went up to the head of his bed, snuggling under the top layer of covers.
"I'm still gonna try and sleep. Even if I can't find Lapis, maybe I can connect with someone else! Maybe even someone in Beach City!"
Pearl glanced out the window.
"Steven, it's one in the afternoon."
"But—"
The sound of the warp pad broke the conversation, quickly followed by the scuttling of metallic claws.
"Gangway!"
Pearl and Steven looked over the banister to see Amethyst grappling with a gem creature about the size of a snapping turtle, with the body of a magenta crab and muscular arms which grabbed at the Gem in front of it. "Don't just stand there!" Amethyst yelled, repeatedly kicking the creature where its face should have been. Each kick resulted in a squeak of pain as the monster tried to snap at her.
Steven ran down the stairs with his shield already out, raised to bash the beast over the head. One swift thwack, and it froze for a moment before glowing white and fading into a gemstone that shuddered on the floorboards, an angry shade of pink.. Steven bubbled it and warped it away to the chamber before he smiled back at Pearl.
"Thank you, Steven." She tried to smile back, but both of them knew that this was a demonstration, something to prove that he was ready to exercise his mental connection. "Just wait until tonight, alright?" she said.
The boy saluted as Amethyst shook off her limbs where the monster had pummeled her.
"What are you trying?" she said.
"I'm gonna make a dream-line with someone! And get into their head."
"Just don't give 'em too many nightmares, right?" Amethyst paused. "Actually, that might be pretty awesome."
"Never!" Steven raised a hand to his heart, fluttering his eyelashes. "After all, I'm a dream come true."
A squeal and a grunt came from the other room, followed by the sound of another monster crushed under Garnet's fist. She came through with the bubble in her hand before it vanished once more.
"Just don't overexert yourself, Steven," she said, adjusting her sunglasses. The blue sky reflected off of the visor from the open window. "Bad things can happen to Gems who aren't remember your bubble at the bottom of the sea. "
Steven looked from Garnet's concerned stoicism to Pearl's cautious disapproval.
"How dangerous can it be? I'll be asleep."
"Wait until tonight, at least," Pearl said. "Then, everyone else will be asleep, making it easier to connect with others."
Steven had to agree with her, and although the crashing waves masked the sound, the bustle of Beach City told the Gems that their little community was not yet ready to dream with Steven.
The sun broke through the world's laziest clouds and finally faded behind the western mountains after what had seemed like an entire day of waiting. As much as he hated to admit it, the anticipation had its role in exhausting Steven. As soon as he slipped under the covers and watched the last tinges of magenta disappear on the horizon, he focused on his mission with heavy eyelids and a light heart.
Almost immediately, Steven knew that he was dreaming. The warm blackness which had first called to him in Lapis Lazuli's dream surrounded his limbs as he swam through. "Let's see. Who's gonna meet me first?" he asked.
The darkness didn't feel like responding at the moment.
Once more, he found himself confronted with the faces and images that had frozen in place as mementos of his previous dreams. Connie stood in a fighter's stance, her sword cutting through the void as her eyes stared off into the distance. Steven waved, even though he knew that there was nothing substantial in the muted image. A skateboard (Amethyst's, perhaps?) spun around and around, a pair of disembodied feet and shins stuck in the air above it. It was strangely noiseless, but then, this dream collage tended to be like that.
"No, no," Steven murmured to himself. "I'm looking for something that makes sense."
Truthfully, there wasn't much around here, as faces and trinkets plastered themselves around his brain. It took the boy a moment to understand that he was standing instead of floating, and there was a secondary blackness under his bare feet. It flowed like a river of oil, but was as cold as the deepest winter as it rose to his toes.
He shivered and decided to follow it to the source, turning his feet to feel the flow and determine where this invisible river was. It was only partially separated from the void by a thin luster which shone against his jeans. Steven walked for what felt like hours against the current, noting that it did not get any faster or deeper, but the coldness was just enough to make him uncomfortable in the worst way.
The riverbed gained texture underneath his shoes, and as Steven reached out into the darkness, he felt the cool, slimy walls of a cave pressing in on him. Every so often, his fingers would brush against something smoother, and he recognized the geometry as unformed, immature gemstones. This was finally starting to become more concrete, but it wasn't nearly as pleasant as he thought it might be.
The lightness of his surroundings started to become manifest around him. Some mild chemical phosphorescence from the stones showed him the narrowness of the cavern in which he stood, as well as the slight downward slope that led him into the earth. Was this even Earth anymore? It was impossible to tell from here, but he remembered something about this place. It wasn't until the opening that Steven realized just where he was.
"The…Kindergarten?" Sure enough, the layers of purplish stone around him were muted with the taint of war and was obviously a part of the quarry far underground, with drill bits of the strange machines poking through the ceiling. They acted as rusted stalactites, dripping chemicals onto the dirt.
In the wide cavern, Steven saw a platform, a spherical mirror with perfectly smooth edges surrounding it, like a giant silver coin. Or at least, he thought it was silver. It was so reflective that it was almost hard to see – at least, it would have been, if it wasn't almost a hundred feet wide and floating two inches off of the cave floor.
Space was given by the cavern to accommodate for the disc, as if the room had been carved out somehow to make way for the platform. Steven hoisted himself onto it, his feet sliding somewhat on the smooth surface; wet sandals certainly didn't help. Looking down, he stared awestruck at the clarity of his reflection. It was more perfect than the most polished mirror, the shiniest chrome bumper, the clearest gemstone. Metals weren't supposed to be this shiny, but it looked like Steven had found the motherlode.
"Whose dream-cave is this?" he murmured, kneeling to extend a single finger, shivering as his flesh met the reflection below.
As he knelt, a shadow fell behind him. Whipping his head around, Steven gasped and felt the tingling readiness of his shield. But nothing seemed to be there. Turning back, he concentrated on the reflection. There had to be a clue, something to tell him where on Earth he was.
Out of the corner of his eye, pinkness appeared in the center of the mirror. It took all of his willpower not to react with the same kind of curiosity that had caused the specter to vanish a moment ago. His head turned slowly, cautiously, and the sight of the bottom of a dress made his heart sink into his stomach. Steven followed the point of reflection down the length of the body in the dress, the upside-down ruffles leading to an upside-down torso and a distorted face amidst a mess of brilliant pink curls.
Reflections were one thing, but he turned his head to the real dress – the 'real' dream dress – and started to crawl on his hands and knees towards it. Even though he didn't want to, Steven felt a trickle of tears come down his cheek, as well as the involuntary shuddering of his fingers on the cold metal surface below.
Steven, he heard, Steven! A voice echoed from a place he had known and forgotten, just like the cave that he knew he could find in the waking world, right underneath the Kindergarten.
The dreamline remained taut as he touched the hem of Rose Quartz's dress, before looking up to the arms coming down to pick him up, past the star and gemstone embedded in the fabric, and he opened his mouth –
"Mom!"
Steven shouted as he bolted upright in his bed. Pale dawn broke through the glass of his window. Alone once more, he tore off the blanket and his pajama shirt, clutching his arms around his bare chest. His heart pounded underneath, and he felt the beating straight through to his gem. His clothes and bed were wet from sweat; his pillow was moist as well.
"Mom…" he repeated, closing his eyes and embracing the calm blackness, breathing steadily as he let the tension in his muscles fade into the early morning.
"But I saw her!"
Steven paced back and forth in front of the warp pad. A shower, a change of clothes, and even the promise of donuts hadn't helped him calm down. The other gems watched as he eventually settled down on the steps in front of the pad, resting his chin in his palms and heaving the smallest of sighs.
Stiffly, Pearl cleared her throat and manifested a projection of Rose's gem from her forehead.
"As much as I want to believe you, Steven, it's just not possible. You have your mother's gem because she gave up her physical form to create you.. Rose couldn't be in a cave underground the Kindergarten. Dreams don't make sense sometimes – you said so yourself." The hologram fizzled out as Pearl gauged Steven's reaction. Explanation notwithstanding, he was still lost in thought, his toes curling in aggravation.
"We all lost someone." Garnet came down in front of Steven, on one knees with her forearms folded over the other. "But we had more time, more time to understand that she's no longer with us. I understand you feel–"
"You don't understand!" Steven pushed himself upright. "You don't know what it's like to have a mom! I don't even understand what it's like to have a mom! But you have memories, and I have, like, nothing," he shouted, pointing to Amethyst. "Amethyst wasn't even born – she was grown here, and even she knows who my mom was. What's the point of telling me how close I am to her? I'll never know her unless I find her. And I….I can, I can do this!"
Amethyst jumped up and clenched her fists until it seemed that her knuckles were going to crack. "Get a grip! You had a dream, that's it. If we could bring Rose back, don't you think we would have done that a long, long time ago?"
"Did you see it?"
The Crystal Gems paused. "Did we…see what?" Pearl asked.
"Did you see her die?"
Each of the three looked at one another, each shaking their heads in turn. The birth of Steven was shrouded in mystery, a secret kept from all of them. Nobody had thought to ask Greg about it, but the thought had passed several years ago. Pearl covered her mouth in thought, and Amethyst sat back. This was something that would be better to witness than to indulge in – especially if Pearl got weird about it again.
Garnet broke the silence with a heavy, worrisome sigh. "Rose Quartz was our leader. She loved us almost as much as she loved you. What reason could she ever have for leaving us here? Would she leave you?" A beckoning hand extended to the boy, the fingers loose and nonthreatening. "Even before you were born, she loved you more than anything in the world, Steven. Including herself."
Steven stepped away from Garnet onto the warp pad, his expression as unrelenting as ancient granite. "I need to find out what happened in the dream," he announced, turning to each Gem in kind. "Even if I don't find her, I'll find some kind of answer."
He looked at Garnet for some semblance of clairvoyance, a portent of his journey. He was met with the same stoicism that he had expected. Closing his eyes, Steven felt the warp pad hum as he was lifted from the platform and pushed into the æther.
Garnet withdrew her hand as the other gems surrounded her. Pearl cleared her throat in expectation, but Garnet merely walked over the warp pad and into her room.
"We should go after him," Pearl said, looking down at Amethyst.
"Dude, I don't think Steven's really in the mood for us to help him."
"We're not going to help! We're going to supervise, to make sure he doesn't…well…"
"What, get hurt?" Amethyst said. "I think we've already took care of that for him." Turning on her heels, she stalked towards the other door and disappeared into her jungle and tangle.
After the door closed behind Amethyst, Pearl turned to the portrait of Rose that hung above the door. Her eyes were closed in peace, her hair in tangled, blooming curls. There was no point in pursuit. All they could do was wait.
No, wait. That couldn't be it. Could it?
Pearl hurried after Garnet and into her room.
"Garnet!" she said, and the larger Gem stopped in her path; she didn't have to turn for Pearl to know that she was paying attention. "We don't…I know we don't know exactly what Rose did to form whatever Steven is, none of us know. But it's not possible, is it? Rose couldn't have been gone all this time." She glanced to the door, anxiety etched into her face. "She's part of Steven now. Right?"
"Steven's gem is his own." Garnet turned with her Pearl's azure image in her glasses. "We see him grow into his own self, his own being, every day. Perhaps as he grows, Rose becomes more separate from him. Still." Both gems looked to the massive collection of rogue shards and monsters, suspended in bubbles throughout the room. "Rose Quartz would have told us if she was returning. She would not have lied to us," she said softly.
"Then what did Steven see? He doesn't act this way unless there's something truly wrong, like when he saw Malachite! But this couldn't be anything like that, could it?
Garnet shook her head, an irritated grimace coming over her.
"I don't know," she said. "I know he will return, but what happens in the Kindergarten is his own fate."
Despite the ache in her heart, Pearl remained. This was the first battle he had to fight alone. "What if he's right?" Pearl asked. "What if…"
The Kindergarten was bleaker than he remembered; It also was a lot bigger than he remembered. Heavy onyx clouds shadowed Steven, but without the threat of rain.
Shivers ran through his skin and goosebumps stuck out as he rubbed his hands over his arms. Nothing to do except keep walking forwards until he found the river that led underground. He listened carefully as he trudged over the dead soil, kicking up the dust in which Gems had lived and died.
Waves of assumptions clouded his mind as he paced through the canyon with his hands in his pockets, shivering under the sunless sky. This had to be the only way that he could find out the meaning of his dream, it had to be! Steven just wished that he could have gone anywhere else but here; the Kindergarten wasn't the best place to be a Gem, he imagined. The giant, viral drills loomed so far above him that he could barely look up without getting dizzy. The canyon walls stretched even higher, and he felt smaller than he ever had.
"So where's the river?" Steven asked, still wandering past the points he recognized. It would be easy to return to the warp pad – probably – but this was still a strange place to wander. The Kindergarten seemed to go on for hundreds of miles, obscured by venomous fog and dust. Rocks sticking up from the earth assumed the form of gem monsters in his head. Each shift of the dust clouds made them grow against the horizon. All Steven could hear was the sound of his sandals against the ground, echoing off of the canyon walls and stifled against the feeling of his heart pumping against his eardrums.
Steven was so focused on the menacing shapes that he didn't notice the water until his toes felt the icy coldness trickle over them. He stepped back with a little gasp, and turned to find his destination: a deep cave, small enough to be hidden but large enough for him to stand. Everything was almost exactly as he had remembered from his dream. The sloping cave angled down into complete darkness. Each mineral deposit cut down like teeth and blocked out the light as the boy started to venture down. Steven could barely feel the coldness in his feet, because at that point, it had spread straight to his core.
Darkness pressed upon him once more, but it was tangible now in a way that it hadn't been in his dream. It was just like Lapis, where the sight of Malachite was nothing compared to seeing her dragged into the sea right in front of him. Steven felt a jab of guilt at the thought of the Gem in pain, but he knew he couldn't go back. Not now.
The rocks pressing in around him dripped with grime, moss, history. As he descended away from the light, Steven could feel the stratification of the canyon's deeper layers where drills had once destroyed the crust and pummeled the life force of the planet. It was colder than the outside and he had to concentrate to keep his teeth from chattering. Everything felt so wrong, but it was necessary, like the strenuous exercise before results, or the pain in his lungs before coming up for air.
One misstep made the child's foot slide down farther than he expected, making him scrabble for a handhold as his gasp echoed around the cavern. "This isn't a dream," he reminded himself aloud.
Minutes ticked by without another hunt of light. The slow progress had felt reasonable before, but now it was becoming more and more worrisome as the air grew thinner around his face. Where was he now? Could he be any closer to this cave, if it indeed was real? One gap, which was particularly difficult for him to squeeze through, forced the thought into his head that perhaps this was a mistake after all. The Gems had warned him, and he hadn't listened – not that that was unusual, but now there were bigger consequences than a scolding.
Despite this, all Steven could do was continue his descent steadily. One deep breath and one step followed, and Steven started to calm down until the stone cracked beneath him and gave way.
The boy yelled as he fell through the earth, his hands scraping on the sides of the rock as his foothold turned to rubble. A bubble, summoned in swift panic, protected him from additional scrapes as he rolled down the edge of the cavern's rim where the hole had appeared.
Steven opened one eye at a time to make sure he was safe before he looked at his his raw, pink hands, wincing at where the stone had scrubbed away. "Easy enough," he murmured, licking his palms one at a time. The mineral mud was strong and made him gag, but the tenderness faded as he released his bubble and stared in amazement at his surroundings.
"No, this is…this is wrong."
Just like in the dream, the mirror floated off of the ground and Steven could hear it humming with energy. It was bigger than he had first imagined and came all the way up to his chin, and it glowed faintly teal, and as he looked closer, etchings appeared in compact patterns, a maze of magical technology that presumably kept the mirror upright. And it wasn't even a mirror, Steven realized, as he leaned over it and stared at his frustrated reflection. It was translucent, clouded like impure glass, and was merely polished to a perfect shine.
The dream had lied to was nobody else here.
Steven swept his eyes over the whole room, illuminated with the ghastly sheen of the mirror. There were only the hints of abandoned Gems in the walls, and the rusted drill bits dripping down onto mineral stalagmites.
"Mom?" he called, in a voice as desolate as the room itself.
There was nothing to be found, no discovery, nothing except a useless piece of Homeworld junk. Steven didn't even have the energy to be angry anymore. He sighed and rested his face and arms on the surface, dirty and defeated and in desperate need of comfort.
"Mom…"
The humming turned angry. Steven started to bolt upright, but an electric force crackled and sank into his bones like snake fangs, binding his hands and arms to the mirror in agonizing adherence. He screamed, digging his heels into the ground in desperation to try and get back. The child's very blood felt like it was on fire.
As suddenly as it had started, the mirror released him and threw him back onto the ground. The pain still ran through Steven's fingertips, all the way to his skull, and even the strongest of his healing powers didn't ease the sensation of being speared with force by the mirror. He struggled to get back up onto his feet, using one of the fallen deposits to raise himself up. The angry hum increased exponentially, shaking the walls around him before it suddenly turned to silence.
Upon wiping away his tears of pain and opening his eyes, Steven saw the surface of the mirror warp and bulge in the center, a slight violet glow emerging from the distortion. A perfect curve grew until it reached its apex, and then pinched down until there was a perfect sphere resting upon the mirror.
"A Gem?" Steven asked, but that couldn't be possible. It was bigger than a watermelon, perhaps even two feet across, and it was too perfectly smooth. Even Pearl's gem looked natural in its geometry, whereas the sphere in the mirror was grotesquely divine. It did not shine, nor did it roll upon the mirror's edge, but the clouds within it rolled like flexing muscles, a slightly sickly shade of pink tinged with an off-white, like petrified eggshell.
Steven was mesmerized by the emergence, but an interruption tore his gaze away, a low, agonized growl that registered instantly as a Gem monster on the wall opposite him.
It looked almost lizard-like, so elongated was its body as it crawled on four limbs towards the mirror. Most of its body was dark off-teal, a color of vile sickness. Its form tapered to a thrashing tail, and along its body were five pairs of misshapen orange hands upon which it scuttled. Instead of a face, four stocky, cylindrical protuberances emerged from the body, each with a gnashing mouth that drooled onto the cave floor. Gem shards in an opalescent array of twisted colors were jammed into its back like spikes, running down the part of its body that could have at one point been mistaken for a spine.
The hum had stirred it from a deep and terrible slumber. Mud and dust slid off of its form as it growled once more. Finally, it detached itself from its prison and fell to the floor. So long had it been trapped in a cocoon of dirt that it shuddered as it staggered towards the child.
One of its hands raised and stepped onto the mirror, and Steven saw the same electric charge run through its body. It roared in pain and the entire cave trembled around them. It seemed, however, to last for a much shorter length of time than Steven's own torture, and it regained its footing almost immediately. Both the Gem mutant and Steven stepped back, away from the mirror, and then the floating sphere started to glow with a transformative light.
It was like a Gem reforming, an enormous Gem, but now Steven was more on edge than he had ever been.
"I need to get out of here!" he said, but even he couldn't tear his eyes away as the form of the sphere started to take shape. A pink light cascaded to the surface in a wave that reminded the boy of his mother's dress, extending in ruffles and curves as it spread out before him. But then the light started to grow above it, and Steven's wonder turned to confusion. The two arms he expected emerged from the glowing torso, but then an additional pair arrived next to them, equally elegant and equally terrifying. Even the Gem mutant stared as curls of hair cascaded down, and, as the glow receded, the form of Rose Quartz emerged more clearly, showing each ribbon of pink in her body.
"Mom?" Steven whimpered, too shaken to summon his shield, to do anything but stare at the being before him.
She lifted her head, then turned her entire body towards face of Rose Quartz was distorted by the distended jawline, forced downwards by spiked gem shards emerging from the sides of her mouth. Her torso and stomach appeared to have been hollowed out, torn dress fabric revealing a cavernous wound where her lungs might have been. The same pink light that emerged from the sphere thumped like a beating heart, covered in veins of lightning across an organ-shaped cluster inside the wound. The arms which emerged from either side were twisted in various directions, nonsensically snarled as if there were a thousand broken bones inside of them.
But her eyes had the same glow as they gazed upon Steven, widening in surprise as the horrified child stared at her. The mouth was forced open and drooled the same pernicious liquid upon the surface of the mirror as Rose's lips twisted in what was probably supposed to be a smile.
"Ste…ven…" she said, the voice distorted by her gnashing teeth. One of her arms crackled violently as it twisted in Steven's direction; even the fingers weren't all facing the same way. "Ste…ven!" Rose repeated, her neck snapping suddenly in a tilt.
Steven turned away with his hands pressed against his eyes. "This isn't real," he whispered to himself, "no, no, get away from me!" Yes, he understood that it was a physical manifestation, and that this was a real cave, but he knew in his heart that the beast before him was nothing more than an illusion, some twisted intersection of monster and mother that refused to leave his mind. In the end, the dream had lied to him, feeding on his desires and connecting him with the sphere. It had merely copied his mind. It had stolen from him. This was his punishment for want. Tears soaked his palms as a sickened sob echoed over the now-calmed hum of the mirror.
The Gem lizard turned itself towards him, less interested in the falsehood before it and more in the Crystal Gem for which it hungered. With a harrowing screech, it scrabbled over the surface of the mirror towards the unsuspecting boy, its hands slipping over themselves in murderous zeal. Navigating around Rose, the mutant pushed past her as all of its mouths gave a victory cry. Steven turned to see the mutant rear up on the edge of the mirror and roar as it prepared to pounce.
As soon as it started to lunge, it jerked backwards, pulled by its tail. All four of Rose's hands twisted to wrestle the beast as it writhed in pain, its limbs crushed in the illusion's hands. Steven could barely grasp that the scene before him was real. Rose raised the mutant to its mouth, the serrated gem shards tearing the arms from the mutant's body. Gem fragments showered around the mirror as they fell from the Gem monster's body, each mouth wailing in terror.
Each of Rose's four limbs snapped its fingers around the mutant's oral protuberances and stretched them apart. The muffled shrieks of horror made Steven cover his ears as his mother's figment tore the creature apart in a burst of light. The shrieking came to a sudden, gurgling halt as the fragments that had once been fused together clattered to the ground in various green Gemstones.
"Ste…ven?"
He whirled around, too fearful to just run. And still, he could feel the beast's smile upon his back, its innocence, its image of love and serenity that he had kept in his head and in his heart for all of his life. It didn't mean anything right now; it was a tool, a tool to trick him into…into what, exactly.
"What do you want?" Steven clenched his fists in frustration. "You. You came from my head?" he mused, opening his eyes and his fists to stare at his scratched palms. "You're here because I wanted mom to be real."
Still, he could hear it moving behind him, and he pushed his hands over his ears.
"You're just here because I imagined you, because I wanted you!"
Even with the blood pounding in his head, he could feel the shifting of the massive creature as it pulled towards him. He could feel the fingers stretch over him and maneuver through the air around his head. The shaken child collapsed to his knees, gripping the sides of his head in agony.
"I can wish you away!" he spat. "I can just…not want you to be here, and you'll be gone, and…" But then he thought about what he had wanted, what he had needed in the dream. It was because he wanted his mother back that the gem had led him here and connected with him in the dream. The love for Rose Quartz had filled his desire. The desire had made him search, searching for a reality that was simply no more. Steven knew that Rose Quartz was no more. She was inside of him, inside the gem on his belly.
"I'm sorry." The tears rolled freely as he let his hands fall to trail in the mud. "I can never not want you, mom. I can't ever stop missing you. But I know you can't be what I want you to be."
The hot, acidic breath trailed down the back of his neck as the beast leaned in close, the scent of rotten sulfur mixed with the flowers of Rose's meadow.
"You gave yourself to have me, to have me exist! And…what kind of son would I be if I didn't understand…" He wiped his face with the back of his hand, sniffling and swallowing his fear. "…if I didn't understand that you loved me more than you love yourself?"
One deep breath, one at a time. Steven stood up once more, steadying himself as he prepared to turn.
"You did all of this for me."
The energy came through once more, the power of his shield, of his bubble, the healing from his mother's spring.
"I love you. I miss you," Steven said. "Goodbye."
He turned, opening his tired eyes to the mirror. There was nothing but the calm, swirling sphere surrounded by Gem fragments. Dirt and mud stained the mirror from the mutant's tracks as it had hunted Steven. The boy hoisted himself up onto the surface, bending down and bubbling each of the shards one by one, sending them to the Burning Room. Finally, Steven walked across the surface until he was standing underneath the enormous ball, watching the darker flecks as they congregated in his direction, like the pupil of an all-seeing eye. It was the largest bubble he could make for a gem, but he waved his hands and surrounded it, before sending it back, confined, in an unceremonious pop of light. It was gone.
"It's not true quartz." Pearl gestured to the orb in front of her, a projected image of the sphere in the cavern. "But it's called Lithium Quartz because of its color and its smoothness. You can see the…slight resemblance. But it's partially a gem, and partially a tool. Think of it like a living computer, one of your printers, or copiers. It's used to take ideas and bring them into three-dimensional space."
Pearl and Steven sat on the outcrop above the temple, underneath the lighthouse. Afternoon gloom rested on the horizon, silver doldrums on a storm far beyond them, beyond Beach City and all of its residents. Steven didn't respond to Pearl, and she sighed and put away the hologram for the time being.
"It's not your fault. It needed a user to keep its system from shutting down completely. All it was doing was fulfilling its programming," she explained, desperately trying to find an in.
The child stared out over the ocean, cross-legged and tight-lipped. His entire face felt heavy, as if weights were dragging him back to the earth and the dirt. A red streak of irritation had emerged on his face from rubbing his palms over it to wipe his tears. He hadn't even had the chance to clean the mud off of his face and clothing, and there were smears of grayish-brown all over him. There was nothing in his head. He barely heard Pearl as she called his name.
"Steven?"
The second time allowed him to turn his head painfully. Why did it hurt to move? Why did it take so much effort, just to see the Gem he had seen his whole life? How could there be so much inside of him, too much to even try today? All of his records were muddled together in his body. Somehow, despite Pearl's expression reflecting the fullness of his heart, he couldn't help but feel like he was appearing empty.
"I know what it's like," Pearl said, kneeling besides him. He couldn't even begin to protest before she waved his reply away. "It's something…so connected to you, and when it's gone it feels like part of you is dead as well."
Steven's confusion prompted her to give another small sigh.
"We all come from somewhere, Steven. Whoever makes us puts a part of themselves inside of us, and it stays with us forever. Rose put so much of herself into you that she had to sacrifice herself to have you live. But we all have to learn how to break away from our origin, so that we can become something entirely new."
Steven blinked, still not quite there, but at least he was listening. "But how do you know that you're something new, Pearl?"
She traced a circle on her leg, trying to stifle a little smile as she remembered her loyalty, her past with Rose, her own journey to becoming a Crystal Gem. "Well, Steven," she said slowly, "we know because we put ourselves inside others, and it all starts again."
Steven nodded in understanding, shifting to make sure his feet didn't go numb.
He thought about what the Gems had told him, what they had instilled in his heart. The portrait of Rose Quartz filled his memory as he imagined the battles, the healing, the images told by the stories from Pearl, the jokes from Amethyst, and his father – his father had the best stories of all. Perhaps human love was similar, in a sense. Just as his father and his mother had been so different and come together, Steven could love Rose from the distance of time.
Steven got up. "Pearl? I'll be back in a little bit. I need to –"
Pearl rose immediately, concern riveted into every part of her face. Steven paused as they stared at one another in sudden silence.
"I'll be okay," he said. Somehow, this was true.
It took a good fifteen minutes to walk down to the car wash. The sun was starting to shine underneath the heavy clouds, coating Beach City in a sudden glow of deep yellow. The shadow of the building kept the back parking lot cool, but Steven could see as he came around that the back doors were still open. Soft rock passed through the air as he drew closer, one of the more obscure bands from Greg's collection. He couldn't remember it off the top of his head, but he knew it was a love song as soon as he heard it more clearly.
Greg Universe leaned against the side of the van, the record played spinning in the back as he sat with a rag and a small box of picture frames. Back and forth, he cleaned the glass, rubbing over the images before putting them on a towel beside him. When he caught sight of his child, he immediately put the current picture back in the box, smiling with surprise.
"Hey, Steven! What's on your plate?" The smile faded as he saw the clear hurt in the boy's face. "Steven?" He offered a hand, helping to lift the child into the bed of the van with him.
The boy didn't bother to stand up. All he could do was sidle up to his father, snuggling into the man's chest. Greg pulled Steven close immediately, his eyes scanning his son for any sign of injury, any cuts or bruises, signs of struggle. But all the cuts from the cave had healed; there was nothing he could see except for one clearly shaken boy. Steven actually was shaking as he hugged his dad, before he sniffled and buried his face in his father's body.
"Steven, kiddo…"
But Steven couldn't respond; in fact, he could barely move as he rested against the warmth of his dad's body. His breathing was steady, but ragged. His heartbeat slowed back down to normal, but he could still feel it pounding in his needed his father to come through and be real for him. Not just as a man of flesh and blood, but as the anchor to earth – the love that Greg and Rose had tied him to the past, even as he drifted farther from the beginning.
Greg pressed his fingertips into the boy's scalp, running them through his hair, pressing them gently into his skin.
"Everything's gonna be all right," he murmured. "It's all gonna be all right."
Still keeping one hand on Steven's head, he scooped Steven into his lap and held him still, shushing his son's last silent whimpers. Besides them, in a freshly cleaned frame, Greg caught a glimpse of himself sleeping with Steven as a toddler, in the exact same position, resting in the back of the exact same van. Greg started to think that perhaps things don't truly change, but then he felt the gem embedded in Steven's belly.
"Everything's gonna be all right," he repeated, his grip tightening around Steven's body. The love song passed through them as Steven held tightly to his father, no space between them except for their breaths and the boy's gem. Even as the light faded, even as the sun passed down below the horizon and the two rested, a faint pink glow shone from between them, filling the inside of the van with its light.