Recollection

Steven didn't like to think about the past, but sometimes he'd manage to jump onto the train of thoughts and find himself not able to escape once the train started rolling. And that was the current situation as he sat on the beach, hugging his legs, unable to fall asleep, staring blankly at the waves of the ocean as his mind went back in time, bringing along emotions that he didn't want to feel because of how bad it felt.

Things had been so simple in the beginning, now that he really thought about it. Besides being a little depressed over how he couldn't control his gem, he didn't have any major problems in his life. He slowly got to discover his powers, meet Connie, Lion, Lapis and Stevonnie, save Beach City, explore new areas... Sure, learning about the Kindergarten, worrying about Homeworld and having cats for fingers were some of the other hardships back then, but they were almost nothing compared to now's problems, and he'd do just about anything to go back to that time and just relive it. Fighting with Garnet, Amethyst and Pearl was so much fun, and being able to be excited for what tomorrow had in store was something that he longed for.

It was when the gems had sent him off with Dad after the pointing green hand appeared in the sky that the simplicity began to dissolve.

Dad had let some words slip during the first few minutes of the car ride away from Beach City, and Steven felt bad for raising his voice and pressing him for answers, but he felt like he needed to know what Dad was hiding from him. He had found out from him that gems weren't much unlike aliens, about how most gems weren't like Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl, and how they and Rose fought in a war to protect the Earth, and how a lot of gems and people died during said war. And about how Rose's shield was probably the only reason those three were alive. Upon hearing all of this, Steven immediately wanted—needed—to turn back around and protect his family with her shield. He couldn't stand the thought of them getting hurt while he was practically running away from the fight. He eventually convinced Dad to let him go back and help out with whatever the space hand was going to do. He thought about how ominous the thing was, and how it sent chills down his spine. He was thinking about how he could help the gems out and defeat the hand before any major damage was done. "There was no way that he was going to let his family get hurt," he had told himself.

Man, was he in over his head.

As soon as Jasper saw her shield, she came to the conclusion that he was Rose, and that he needed to be brought back to Homeworld. Just thinking back on it ticked him off to no end. And when Garnet got stabbed by that yellow electric weapon that Jasper carried, he saw the shock and pain on her face that has now been forever scarred into his mind.

After seeing Garnet poof into Ruby and Sapphire's gems, he'd been picked up by Jasper and knocked out with a head-butt. Waking up in a cell with a swollen eye was a bit frustrating at first, but after escaping and finding that his family and Lapis were relatively unharmed, he felt an overwhelming sense of relief. When the ship crash-landed and Jasper starting babbling on about how she only lost because Garnet was a fusion, she caught sight of Lapis trying to fly away, and Steven remembered clearly screaming out her name when Jasper caught Lapis's wrist and help it up roughly.

Jasper had asked for Lapis to fuse with her, and seeing Lapis hold out her hand and Jasper grabbing it harshly with a victorious smirk on her face was almost as heartbreaking as watching them dance together, and man was Malachite terrifying. But as he had stood there, mouth gaped wide open, water chained her down and dragged her into the ocean. He realized what Lapis was doing, but before he could form a coherent sentence, wanting to yell at her to stop and separate herself from Jasper at once, Malachite was already gone. The one that he'd saved from that mirror and let go back to Homeworld. The one that his family didn't trust, the one that ended up becoming a prisoner of Jasper, finally had her own prisoner now, at the bottom of the ocean. Steven wasn't sure of the effects a fusion like that could have, but he was sure that it couldn't be at all healthy for her.

After that, he'd tried his best to keep Lapis and Jasper out of mind and just try to live day to day without worrying. Boy, was fighting the fused gem shards of the past Crystal Gems with Garnet of all people one heck of a way to do it. However, it was only a matter of time before it became unavoidable, and that was when he had dreams about Lapis. Seeing her chained down form sink like an anchor under the water and having Jasper replace her was horrifying. Seeing Malachite face to face was also horrifying. Everything about it was horrifying.

Then came Pearl's obsession with fusing with Garnet, which added a lot of tension in the house for a while, and how obsessed she then became with capturing Peridot for redemption. When Garnet and Pearl finally talked it out and the four of them caught Peridot, he became so glad that he was able to teach her about how amazing the Earth was, and even with the heavy disappointment of having his trust betrayed when he noticed that she stole the communication device from the Moon Base and had planned on contacting Yellow Diamond, he was pleasantly surprised when she disobeyed the diamond's order and talked about how precious the planet was. It was a nice change in routine, having something finally go right.

Peridot had brought up the Cluster and its dangers, which were pretty intimidating. Soon after, he found out that Malachite had been terrorizing the Watermelon Stevens on Mark Island, and Steven had taken over some poor W.S.'s body in order to help Alexandrite defeat her. Malachite had divided, and while Lapis's unconscious form was able to be caught and saved, Jasper's fell into the crack where the earth was split in two, which lead to even more worrying. She escaped, and the unsolvable question of whether she escaped dead or alive lingered in the air of uncertainty.

Not a minute after, he'd woken out of the Watermelon Steven's body and found Peridot needing him to come with her down into the earth to destroy the Cluster. Those two hours of drilling down had left him feeling empty. It was freaky down there, with how dark and cramped it was before they hit the... asthenosphere, was it? Having to fight off more gem mutants gave him the most awful feeling. He wished that he could have at the very least bubbled them, but Peridot had explained how there was no helping them, with how broken they were, and how the Cluster was a billion times bigger as an inseparable fusion capable of destroying worlds.

When they finally hit the denser rock and found that the Cluster was about to form, seeing the transparent limbs of the shattered gems struggling made him start to have second thoughts on drilling it, but there was no other choice at the time.

His stomach had twisted into complicated knots when the tips of the drills finally made contact. His head had felt fuzzy, his vision was blurry, his ears were ringing and he'd felt so darn hot yet so cold at the same time, but he told Peridot that everything was okay, and that she could continue drilling. Looking down and seeing what could only had been explained as the souls of all of the drilled shards made the experience a thousand times worse.

Hyperventilating only made his head hurt more and become fuzzier, but he didn't know how to calm himself down back then. Now, he had learned exactly what to do when something like that happened, seeing as he had had similar problems occur at the most random of times after the incident, whether they had been when he was in the middle of battle or just sitting on the couch. He considered himself lucky enough that none of the gems had ever noticed.

There were so many souls, and he'd been so distracted by them that he didn't pay much attention to the fact that the drill was slowly fading away, and that Peridot was seemingly gone, replaced with the tens of billions of gem shards being forced to form.

Bubbling the Cluster had felt so... incredible, for lack of a better word. He had been able to save them, along with the entirety of the Earth, and knowing that Lapis was safe and sound when they returned to the surface only made the moment a lot more unbelievable. Here she was, free from her suffering at last. Things had been turning around for the better.

Alas, it was after he's had his moments of blissful joy that it all has to be taken away from him.

Gem corruption was a lot more complicated than he had originally thought of them to be. Learning about Centipeetle's past and being unable to permanently heal her didn't sit well at all. For goodness sake, he had healing powers. The fact that those powers were limited and couldn't save fully corrupted gems struck a chord with him. Thinking back on it once more, it was quite the coincidence that Jasper had showed up not long after while he, Dad and Lapis were out on the S.S. Li'l Lappy. Her appearance was more than a surprise, and things got a bit out of hand, but Lapis had declined her offer to fuse into Malachite again, and for that he was eternally grateful for. He had worried about how Lapis was feeling and just how stable her state-of-mind was, but seeing her reject Jasper had pushed aside his concern.

Jasper had inevitably returned, though, and he fused with Connie to fight her at the beach when Amethyst was beaten down and poofed. Learning that Amethyst was in the same situation that he was in really opened his eyes. She felt like she wasn't good enough, like she wasn't who she was supposed to be, and that was exactly how he felt. It felt good to know that he wasn't the only one and that he had someone to talk to about it. Really, Amethyst was the one out of the three that he could really connect with.

And here was the starting point of his more recent troubles.

It began with her.

Bismuth.

Bismuth seemed like a fun, easy-going person at first. Sure, she had at times gotten a bit over-zealous and intense, but he had shrugged it off as just her personality. It was easy and tempting to warm up to her company.

There were a lot of hints dropped about her, but Steven guessed that the biggest hint about her he had received was when they were all watching a movie and Lonely Blade was reluctant to use the legendary Demon Blade for infinite power. Of course, being a demon sword, Steven didn't want Lonely Blade to use it, but Bismuth's logic to it all was something along the lines of, "If that thing's got infinite power, then of course Lonely Blade should use it. It just makes sense." He was too engrossed in the movie to be paying too much attention to Bismuth, though he had later come to regret it.

When Bismuth brought him down to the Forge alone and shattered that rock dummy with the Breaking Point, smirking with what could only be intense satisfaction, he felt physically sick. And when she forced that terrifying weapon onto his arm, he could only stare at it in a mix of shock and disgust. She told him to come up to one of the rocks dummies and shatter it, but even using the weapon to shatter a rock that wasn't even alive was too much for him.

And then once again, just like with Jasper, Bismuth got the idea that he was actually Rose Quartz and she took her anger out on him. She had outright been trying to kill him, but it wasn't like he wasn't already used to the concept. And when he had taken the Breaking Point out of her hands, she told him to just shatter her with it, and when he wouldn't, she took the weapon back and tried to use it on him. But it didn't end like she wanted. Steven had taken Rose's sword and accidentally pierced Bismuth's stomach, just below her gem.

Facial expressions, he had learned before, are worth a million words in and of itself. First it was shock, and then it morphed into resentment and hurt as she told him that he—Rose—should have shattered her, how then at least she wouldn't have had to know how little Rose mattered to her to find out that the quartz didn't even tell the other gems about what happened to her. Her humorless laughter when he told her that he'd tell the gems added to the tears forming in her eyes was the last thing he remembered before she retreated to her gem.

He'd never understand how someone can willingly murder another living thing, whether that living thing be a human, insect, or gem.

And then it was only a day or two after that he, Amethyst and Peridot had come face to face with Jasper for the last time at the Beta Kindergarten. When she started becoming corrupt, he automatically thought back to Centipeetle, and how he couldn't save her because she was just too far gone. But Jasper was only starting out. He—he could have saved her if she had just let him save her. But his distress was met with resentment and refusal. She didn't want to be saved by him, and he was forced to watch her become deformed as she went on to tell him that Rose, the supposedly loving, caring quartz, had ruined her colony, her planet, and her diamond. That she'd shattered their diamond.

That she'd shattered Pink Diamond.

He didn't even have enough time to let all of that information sink in when the three of them had returned to see that the dispatch team of Rubies were back. He had tried his hardest to continue acting normally, like he hadn't just watched someone become corrupt before his very eyes and didn't do anything to stop it, but it was tough. To his relief, no one really noticed his struggle, and they all—Garnet, Pearl, himself, and Amethyst, who had shapeshifted into Jasper—made their way into the Rubies' ship and went to the Moon Base. Luck had not been on their side, as the Rubies had found out about Amethyst just before they were about to leave.

He wasn't sure what he was thinking when he opened the Moon Base's airlock. Even if he hadn't been sucked out with them, it was still one of the worst ideas he'd ever had. And then having Eyeball try to kill him because she too got the idea that he was Rose Quartz made him want to scream, especially after he had just healed her cracked gem. He had to send her off, floating in space uselessly for who knows how long. He had had no other choice, right?

Steven had a lot of time to think while trapped in that bubble, alone.

To be completely honest with himself, he'd wondered then if he'd ever get back home, and some dark, dark thoughts had intruded his mind.

But his family did eventually find him, and he cried and laughed hysterically before taking some deep breaths and calming himself down enough to confront the three about Rose and Pink Diamond. He had been hoping that Jasper was just fibbing in a desperate attempt to mess with his head but, as he expected, it turned out to be true. It wasn't what he wanted to hear, but at the very least, they had been honest with him.

And so here he was, sitting on the beach, thinking about all of his failures. He had failed to save Lapis from Malachite back there, failed to revive Centipeetle from her corruption, failed to change Bismuth's mind about shattering gems, failed to save Jasper from corruption when she was right in front of him, and failed to think his idea through while dealing with the Rubies, and now they were floating endlessly in space with no hope of ever seeing another living thing ever again.

He was a horrible person.

It was hard, keeping up the façade of happiness. He'd learned to keep it up even when he was alone, in case he suddenly needed to put it back up, or to just trick himself into being happy and forgetting about him troubles. But at nights, it became more difficult, and sometimes he just couldn't keep it up. There were times when he genuinely forgot about his problems and got to enjoy himself, but those were slowly becoming few and far between.

Steven wasn't sure of himself. He had replaced someone who people had loved with all of their hearts and hated with all of their being, and that left a lot of guilt and conflict his way. It stunk whenever he caught one of the gems looking at him with a sad, nostalgic expression after he did or said something "Rose-like", and it stunk when his life was put in danger because of someone's hatred for Rose. He was expected to be this strong leader with a pure heart, but he just wasn't. He was a klutz who couldn't do anything right by himself. He couldn't have saved Peridot were it not for the gems capturing her and saving them from the gem mutants when they went to the Kindergarten. He couldn't have stopped the Cluster were it not for his family and Peridot building the drill and the gem shards bubbling each other. He couldn't have helped Lapis were it not for Alexandrite poofing Malachite. Heck, even the fights he'd been in weren't without someone being there, whether it be with the gems or Connie. Every single one of his "victories" weren't done without aid.

He really was useless.

There are times when Steven just can't think of Rose as his mom, but rather as just a person to constantly be compared to, and—

"Steven?"

He jumped and looked over his shoulder to see Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl standing behind him, looking troubled. He then noticed how wet his face felt and turned around quickly to wipe the tears away.

"What—" He mentally cursed at how his voice cracked and tried again. "What are you guys doing?"

He heard Pearl speak from behind him, albeit a bit hesitantly. "I saw that you weren't in bed, so I called the others to come help me look for you. Why are you sitting out here in the middle of the night?"

Steven turned around to face them, and the expressions they were making led him to believe that he looked as bad as he felt. He looked them straight in the eyes and smiled the biggest smile he could manage. "I couldn't go to sleep, so I was just watching the ocean is all."

This had the opposite effect of what he was hoping, because all three of them simultaneously frowned.

He strained a bigger smile and stood up. "I'm going back to bed. Goodnight, you guys."

Even as he walked past them, he could still feel three pairs of eyes staring a hole in the back of his head. Thankfully, they didn't push any further and let him go, but he could hear them mumbling amongst themselves as he retreated into the house. Sleep should do him some good.

A/N: After seeing "Mindful Education" I felt inspired to write a Steven Universe story. So here it is.

I've never written something like this, with so little dialogue and all, so I apologize if it's amateur work.

This is written as a one-shot, but there's a possibility that if people really want me to continue, I might consider turning this into a short story, or even a full on story. If I do continue this, it'll probably just go up to "Mindful Education" unless I come up with some original story-line for it.

Criticism and compliments are always welcome in reviews.