"Garnet, focus! Attack again!" Rose Quartz urged, unsheathing her sword and pointing it towards Garnet, threatening. "They don't think you'll ever be good enough. That your an abomination! Prove them wrong."
Garnet took a deep breath, with slight difficulty summoning her gauntlets, and preparing to attack Rose Quartz, trying to imagine her as a hateful Homeworld soldier. She believed it would help her learn faster, and react better. That her hesitations would go away if she didn't think of them as friends.
She set of running before she could think another thought, Ruby eager to get going and kick some ass, metaphorically dragging Sapphire along with her.
Ruby wait! I don't know the future yet I can't just run off without ...
It doesn't matter! They think I'm worthless, I'm going to prove them wrong, I'm going to beat, I'm going to…
RUBY NO!
SAPPHIRE YES!
It was like hitting a brick wall at a hundred kilometers an hour, and Rose watched with concern as Garnet first came to a sudden complete stop, sliding a few meters ahead due to the speed she already built up, before just a suddenly throwing her entire body backwards, landing in a heap on the ground, all her eyes closed and her body still enough to look like a human corpse.
"Garnet? " Rose asked carefully, hoping the fusion could somehow hear her.
Sapphire what are you doing they insulted us we have to attack them, have to beat them, have to show them we are so much stronger than they think come on Sapphire let's get up Garnet get up get up now!
Ruby please stop I can't there's too many futures, they stretch into eternity and they're calling for me want me to focus on them please my head it hurt please Ruby it hurts stop focusing on the present
Garnet started shaking violently, her entire body convulsing as she suddenly opened her eyes wide, staring at nothing and saying nothing. She just lay there as a white light was spreading across her body.
"Garnet?!" Now Rose was scared. She had never seen such behaviour from the fusion, and while she knew a lot of strange things happened when fusion was involved, she truly didn't believe this should have been one of them.
With a sudden, violent explosion of light, the white shimmer that had been covering Garnet blew up, the light so bring that Rose couldn't see anything except Garnet's two gems, who were somehow shining through the other light.
"GARNET!" For the third time that day, she screamed Garnet's name, panicking as she saw the unexplainable shimmer that had covered Garnets lifeless body exploded, terrified she was hurt. The moment after, she heard the light tip tap of Pearl's soft feet, and she looked away from the light that was still shining, facing her second in command instead.
"Rose, is everything alright?" Pearl looked frightened, and Rose realised her scream probably scared her.
"I don't know! Garnet fainted all of sudden and then this bright white light engulfed her and…" She began her scared explanation.
"Rose, turn around" Pearl said, voice shaking and her face visibly paler than minutes ago. She looked as though she had seen a ghost.
Slowly, Rose turned around, due to the frightening images still wandering around her mind more hesitant than she would have been otherwise. Still, she collect all the inner peace she can muster and turned around.
When she finally do, she find that Garnet is no longer, but Ruby and Sapphire is there instead. She smile, because she now realise that all that happened was Garnet unfusing, but she's still apprehensive, for she can see that they are not okay.
Ruby is standing at one end of the clearing, upset, crying and screaming and hitting the ground in an attempt to suffocate the flames that her feet originally lit.
Sapphire, is laying on her side in the grass, frozen in ice and clutching her head like she's trying to fend off a huge headache. Rose could see tears that trailed down her cheeks but never fell off due to having been frozen half-way down to her chin.
The scene was devastating, and Rose felt the urge to run away as she thought of what kind of mental pain had run through Garnet's head in order to leave them in this state.
"WHY CAN'T YOU EVER DO WHAT I WANT TO!" Ruby screamed suddenly, the action starling the other two gems watching her, but Sapphire didn't even flinch. All she did, was to shakily raise her hands to brush her hair out of her eye. The single eye on the cyclops face stared intensely into thin air, and the thick eyelashes were covered with frozen droplets of ice. "THEY INSULTED US, SAPPHIRE. AND YOU DIDN'T WANT TO DO NOTHING!
Rose flinched, realising how incredibly hard the mockery had hit Garnet. She knew little of the workings of conundrums, she admitted, but she thought it seemed as though it helped motivate the fusion when they were sparring. This time, she had obviously taken it too far.
"Rose, let's get out of here. They're upset, they might try to harm us if we stay" Pearl urged, tugging at Rose's arm and telling her to hurry as their leader unwillingly let herself be led away from the two normally so harmonious gems, healing tears rolling down her cheeks to no use as she fled from the scene she had caused.
"INSULTED US, SAPPHIRE! WHY WON'T YOU CARE!" Ruby screamed, still feeling furious, but finding that it was starting to fade as her mate refused to dignify her with an answer. It was the fourth time she had screamed out what was on her mind for her partner to hear, and the fourth time she had been refused an answer.
"It hurt too much, Ruby. Please. Help." The voice was a bare whisper, a breath of air so faint Ruby barely even noticed it was being said, but as soon as she did, she spun around on heels to now face Sapphire, all stubbornness blown away.
She had never felt so scared in her entire life. Not when she fused the first time, not when she was threatened to be shattered by Blue Diamond herself, never.
Sapphire was laying on her side in the grass, hands clutching her head like she was fending off a headache, and he eyes staring out into the nothingness, filled with an intense fear that was only rivaled by Ruby's own.
"Sapphire, are you okay?" She was by her lover's side as fast as she possibly could, breaking her lover free from the ice she had surrounded herself with and cradling her in her lap, trying to pry her hands away from her head.
Now Ruby knew that she had been blinder with two eyes than Sapphire was with one. She had let the thought of what Rose said, the words that had been supposed to focus and encourage them, carry her away so to the point that she'd become oblivious to her mate's suffering, missed her desperate pleas for help and ripped them apart in the process.
"It hurts Ruby" Sapphire whispered again. "All these futures. They hurt. I can see you dying, Ruby. I don't want you to die." She started crying all over again, the wounds reopened and her fear of all these potential futures renewed and amplified. Her sweet, sweet lover, who risked everything for her, dying...it was more than a poor little Sapphire could bear, it broke her.
"Sapphire, it's okay. I...oh baby" Ruby felt as though she had been shattered, and her grip around her partners cold, unresponsive body tightened. "I'm never dying if you're not."
Slowly, carefully, Ruby bowed her head down, her lips landing just above Sapphire's one eye and kissing her carefully, the warmth of her own lips meeting the ice cold feeling of Sapphire's skin and leaving a pink, almost red mark in its wake.
"Fuse with me, Ruby" Her voice was stronger now, but it still trembled. Sapphire could still see all the crushing futures, could still feel herself get lost in an endless sea of possibilities so big it threatened to swallow her hole. She needed Garnet to grow strong enough to control it all, to be able to push off the most improbable outcomes and stop herself to look too deep into the traumatic possibilities that constantly haunted her.
"You got it baby!" Ruby smiled. Fusing, now that was something she could do. Relified that there was finally something she could do for her girlfriend , Ruby quickly got back up on her feet with Sapphire still held tight in her arms. She could feel the others body shaking, and she felt even more determined to fuse as she held her closer.
Looking down at Sapphire resting in her arms, the smaller of the two entirely surrendered to the will of the bigger, Ruby couldn't help thinking of how the two of them had started their life together. It had been raining, Sapphire had been scared and frozen, and against her explicit will Ruby had lifted her and carried her off to a dry and relatively safe cave she found out in the djungle.
"Ruby hurry " Sapphire hand, so tiny it almost didn't exist at all, clawed at Ruby's shirt, and suddenly she was aware of how much time she had passed while she got lost in memories.
"Don't worry, love" Another flaming hot kiss graced Sapphire's forehead, leaving a similar red mark to the first one, and shortly after Ruby set the two of them spinning in bigger and bigger circles all around the clearing, all until the white light of fusion took over them and merged them into one.
Garnet had been separated by intense, stabbing, agonizing pain, that shot through her body like electricity and ripped her apart in a way she never knew possible.
Garnet's came back together with utter bliss filling every part of her mind. For her, it felt like a huge weight had been removed from her shoulders, and she felt as light as a feather, much like the first time they had purposely fused with one another to make her.
"Take a moment to think of just flexibility, love and trust, take a moment to think of just flexibility, love and trust." Garnet hummed, smiling, lifting her hand to touch the pinkish red marks on each side of her third eye. The ultimate sign of love from Ruby, gifted to Sapphire, then given to her.
Here comes a thought, that might alarm me, what someone said and how it harmed me.
Something I did, that failed to be charming. Things that you said are suddenly swarming.
"And, oh, you're losing sight, you're losing touch. All these little things seem to matter so much." Garnet continued, furrowing her brow as she thought of all that had happened them.
That they confuse me
That I might lose you
"Take a moment, remind yourself to, take a moment to find yourself." Garnet knew there was always things buzzing in her head, that risked separating her two parts, that risked ending up forcing her to cease existing.
Take a moment to ask yourself
If this is how we fall apart
But it didn't matter, because Garnet knew she could be stronger than those thoughts. She could conquer them and win, no separation needed.
"But it's not, but it's not, but it's not, but it's not."
It's okay, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay
I've got nothing, got nothing, got nothing, got nothing to fear
"I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here." She knew she was going to keep existing, no matter what, for as long as her parts still existed. Of that, she was certain. There was no other path into the future for them, and neither would there ever be.