No storyline. Prettymuch non-canon internal monologue that took me since...before Too Far came out, that's for dang sure.

Listen to Porter Robinson, people.

Nothing and no one is perfect. Garnet knew that. But somehow, she couldn't help but think of Steven's worldview as almost perfect. He was kind. He would accept anything, even monsters, into his care. He wasn't bothered when he found out that Garnet was a fusion-he seemed genuinely happy for her. Mostly happy to see her, probably. He didn't mind Pearl and Amethyst both being "Defective", and he even tried to be friends with Peridot-and succeeded with becoming friends with Lapis. He cared for all of the Crystal Gem fusions, recognizing them as their own people, and he cared for Ruby and Sapphire, despite not knowing them well enough to recognize when they probably shouldn't be left alone.

But then there was how...naive he was. How he panicked easily. How immature he was sometimes.

Garnet wished there had ever been a point in her life when she could have been more like him. But she had fully developed as her own person during the Rebellion-and that wasn't, er, the best set of first clear memories. Especially since she lived and relived everything over and over again-for the sake of knowing all the potential futures. No matter how horrible it felt, she would go through that again for the sake of this planet.

She managed to hide what she was thinking most of the time. Everyone seemed to recognize the fact that she was stoic, cool, and was always her usual, composed self. Which was why she internally reprimanded herself when she let herself start crying when they thought Steven was going to die from aging. When she thought Steven was going to suffocate and die of hypothermia simultaneously, she had to wipe away a few tears from the corner of Ruby's eye.

But when she saw that abomination, if she weren't a fusion, she would've openly started sobbing. Instead, she just came very close to separating slowly and painfully.

She had known those gems. She had actually gone to the extent of calling one of them family-when she only found one shard after the war, she thought that maybe it wasn't her. You had to see the facet to be sure, right?

But deep down, she had always known it was the Topaz she had known. She must have been shattered by a Ruby, Sapphire, or Diamond. Or maybe just the brute force of a Jasper. It didn't matter. She had hoped she was merely a prisoner back on Homeworld, as a best-case scenario. She had gone through the bubbled Gems countless times. If she could help her somehow...she would have.

And now, today, she reminded of the beginning of the war as Pearl and Peridot fought. It had been like that-one force defeated, they make a recovery, the other side is defeated. Endlessly, until one side stands in an epty battlefield.

Only this time, this might end with an uneasy truce. If they could just get those stupid, show-offs of Diamonds out of the way, then it would be easy to plant the seeds of revolution. The unreasonable social standards had drawn the populous taut long before the war.

But no, no. That was impossible. The gems living on Homeworld had long since been brainwashed. Altered, somehow. But occasionally, there were glitches in the system that caused them to go haywire. To become asymmetrical, weak, defective...just like her. Rubies and Sapphires were supposed to be intensely powerful, second only to the trio of Diamonds. But instead, unlike the other four, she had turned out weak and useless.

With a completely unique personality and incredibly strong willpower. Which, of course, led them to be invaluable in a fight. Garnet led one battle-a hard-won victory thet completely obliterated the opposing side. After that, she refused to do more than lead small groups of other Fusions. Everybody looked up to her during the war. That never changed. Rose looked up to her as a figure of mental stability. Pearl and Amethyst looked up to her as strong and brave. And now, Steven looked up to her as a mentor and leader...

She had a hard time handling this. There was no way she'd admit it, but sometimes she wished that Rose was still around. But then the thought fully registered, and she realized that no matter how hard she tried, she could never picture a life without Steven. He was her family.

But a Gem can't have family. Friends, maybe, but family...that had to be impossible. She had known him a mere decade, so why was he so...so...Different. She had known Greg over twenty years, at this point. She found him kind, likable, and the very picture of a good father. But she didn't feel as strongly as she did with Steven.

Garnet could somehow feel herself falling to her knees, the grass brushing her legs softly.

For some reason, she cared about those three Gems much more than she could say. They had hurt her before. They always left her alone, which she wished that they would stop sometimes. Sometimes, it's nice just to have someone next to you, looking up at the sky, seeing the same minuscule bit of the infinite maze of Space as you. They let her do her own thing, looking onward from afar as they smiled and laughed, closed their eyes and cried. They didn't seem to mind her constant silence. But when she did speak, they listened.

Love isn't something that Gems should be able to feel. It just causes them sorrow for their long lives, with an unclear end to this giant cycle. But despite this, Rose had defied the world, the unspoken laws, and gave up herself so that Steven could exist. Garnet couldn't help but admire this, although she missed Rose bitterly sometimes.

But she could never go back. Despite th fact that she desperately wanted to occasionally, she could only remember. Remember how much she had lost of her life that had spanned generation upon generation, era after era, of Human lives. She sometimes wished that she had been created a human-eventually, she knew, that she would start searching for death. All gems did, eventually. And ultimately, that was what led to their downfall. To their corruption. It was an inevitable fate, that have been predestined for every Gem that had ever existed and ever will exist. Only those that fell in battle had ever broken thet destiny.

Garnet could feel herself begin to smile as she stared unseeingly at the sky. The wind blew coldly through the mountain range, with no protection in sight.

Everything that had ever existed. Nothing could triumph this silence, this solidity of one of the few planets that could support life, in this vast universe. The wind, the birds, the clear blue sky, the crisp and fresh air...all of it was perfect. Earth was truly the kindest thing she had ever seen. It has it's bad spots, it's dangerous areas, but still...it supports all kinds of unimaginable life. Surely, this was enough to love, to view as beautiful...

A thousand years of war. Five thousand years of solitude. Fourteen years of leadership. Sometimes, even the strongest of people has to be alone. Thousands upon thousands of years of life grow tiresome after while, and sometimes you need to be alone. In the wilderness, where no human can ever find you. Surrounded by mountains, forest, and just a quiet field full of lush green grass. As if it had fogotten the deaths that had happened here thousands of years ago. The fires that had burned the human village to the ground within a raging battle that claimed countless Gem lives as well. The way the Earth could just forget the scars upon it's surface, that had laid waste to countless lives, to countless cities...

Garnet let the tears silently fall. She didn't mind. After all, nobody would see these memories of someone like herself. Not for a very long time...