Who am I?

by The pen or The sword

One shot: Steven has spent his entire life trying to be better than his mother. Trying to live up to the expectations of those who knew her, yet he has always taken comfort in the fact, that despite inheriting her problem he was not truly his mother. Now the more he grows, the more he remembers... The less sure he is of this comforting reality.

Note I lacked a beta while writing this feel free to point out any mistakes.

Steven always felt as if he was being compared to his mother. Even at a young age he often weighed his mothers choice to have him against the gems needing her and couldn't help but feel she made the wrong choice. Then he had to deal with those who thought he was his mother, that the entirety of who she was is lodged in his stomach.

When gems arrived from homeworld and saw him all they saw was his mother, but the gems were always there to remind him he wasn't his mother. That he didn't have to be.

For a while he was angry at them believing they thought he couldn't live up to his mothers memory. Yet as he grew he realized they simply meant that he should be himself, that rose hadn't sacrificed herself to create another Rose Quartz. She'd done it to make a Steven and for a while that was enough. He still compared himself to his mother but he remembered to be Steven, to make his own decisions and his own mistakes.

Than more of his mother came to light, the secrets she kept the lies she told. The more he grew to hate her, and what she stood for. He spent a long time hating her for what she did to his family the way she kept secrets from Pearl who loved her so dearly, from Garnet who had to lead in her stead, from Amethyst who only ever saw her as a maternal figure. In the end he came to the conclusion his mother may have loved him but she still left him with all the problems she hadn't been strong enough to face.

Than the final blow came, Rose had silenced pearl. Had hidden even her true name "PINK DIAMOND". This crushing realization only made him more determined to make up for her mistakes, to be what Bismuth claimed he already was to be better than her. The gems tried to dissuade him telling him they weren't his mistakes and for a time this was a comfort as well.

Then it all went wrong. The "diamond dreams" came every night, but they weren't always about the diamonds, they were about great battles he'd never seen. Sitting on a throne bored for hours at a time waiting for her first colony, long talks with Garnet with a swollen belly. Staring lovingly into pearls eyes, doing the same with Greg and innumerable other humans.

Despite trying to block them out they only grew louder, the emotions and thoughts she had came back to him in waves. He remembered bubbling Bismuth, not wanting the diamonds shattered. Ordering the kindergartens to be built, sneaking off in the dead of night to play rebel. Finally after two years the memories stopped, not because he finally managed to suppress them but because there was simply nothing left to remember.

He now knew his mother better than anyone but it was no comfort. The gems had always claimed he wasn't her but now he couldn't help but think homeworld had the right of it. That Rose Quarts had simply changed, far more than even they realized. It all came down to a simple but haunting question.

If you erase someone's memories and place them into a new body, raising them in completely different circumstances are they a different person? Or simply a changed version of who once was? If that new person remembers who they used to be wasn't that the answer? What was seventeen years of memories against the thousands of years worth that now occupied his mind?

The gems, his dad, Connie, Lars, nearly everyone he knew thought he took to much responsibility for his mothers mistakes. Now he couldn't help but feel he hadn't taken enough responsibility for HIS mistakes…

Note the thought occurred to me when a person I often debate with (Agent66 over on ao3) mentioned why Steven hadn't gotten any memories of Pink diamonds time as Rose Quartz? From there I wondered what would happen if he did remember everything. That grew to a question how do we know Steven isn't just rose without her memories raised in a different environment?

How do we distinguish between her creating a new person and simply changing herself? How do we know she actually gave anything up to make steven? She had no idea what she was doing and neither did anyone else.