Author's Note: Hey everyone, I've been posting on Ao3 lately. Thanks to writer firecracker1990, I'm crossposting some of those stories here. Enjoy!

"Then you really are better than her…"

They were the last words Bismuth remembered saying before Rose Quartz's sword destabilized her form. As far as she knew, that was it for her. Nothingness for eternity. And she figured that she was fine with that. No more traitorous Rose Quartz, no more of that little kid who she turned into, no more secrets and lies. It was for the best. Even if Bismuth wanted to try and force The Breaking Point onto the Crystal Gems, they would cast her out. If the only weapons she wanted to make to fight Homeworld were the kind that shattered, the kind that killed, then they didn't have much use for her on the team.

Useless…

The word repeated over and over in her head. She usually wasn't one for self-pity, but this was a special circumstance. After all, it was just her and her thoughts until the end of time. But slowly, pride started forming. She was poofed for something she believed in, a grand idea that nobody could pry from her. Bismuth was proud that she went down swinging for,what she believed was right. She was so proud, that, when she poofed, she hoped The Breaking Point fell on Steven's foot and and broke his toes. Were she able to, she would be smiling right now. No matter what eternity had in store for her, she could always take solace in that thought.

But then, that in and of itself was a problem. As nice a thought as it was, there was the glaring issue in that bubbled gems are not supposed to be able to have thoughts at all.They've no consciousness. And Bismuth was bubbled before for thousands of years, so she knew what that felt like. So how could she think? Why did she have some form of wits about her? Unless of course…

She wasn't bubbled at all…

OoOoOoOoO

Steven Quartz Universe was sitting in a rocking chair, plucking the strings of a heavily modified version of his father's Jader brand electric guitar. Instead of the usual six strings, it had been given a much thicker neck and an additional three lower strings. The pickups, bridge, and headstock were all modified to compensate for these adjustments.

The guitar was plugged into various pedals that rested in front of Steven's feet on the dusty, wooden floorboards, and the output from those pedals were plugged into a pile of metal and wires that all fed into one of his shields, concave side facing outward. But no sound was coming from it. In fact, the only sounds that could be heard were the creaking wood of the chair, the twanging of an E pentatonic scale being played on an electric guitar with the volume turned all the way down, the soft pattering of steady rain coming down on the wooden roof, and a rather large gem slowly beginning to reform.

Bismuth reformed looking much the same as she did before the incident with the breaking point, tattoos and all. She was hunched over on the ground, trying to get her bearings before she tried anything. Slowly but surely, she rose to her feet and looked at her surroundings.

She was in some kind of wooden structure that was covered with boxes made of glass and metal. If her memory served correctly, these were the same as the "teevie" she watched with Steven before her second bubbling. They appeared to be functioning, but the only image on them was a green, rounded triangle that flickered on and off, nothing like the "moovy" that she and the gems watched.

In addition, she saw various piles of what appeared to be garbage. Some of the piles were just heaps of trash without much to them, but others, like a glove and wooden club hanging from a coat hanger and a group of several broken toilets, had a much more deliberate placement to them, as if they had some meaning.

The roof above her seemed to be dripping slightly, but all of the droplets were falling into several buckets that were only half full. She noticed, however, that there used to be very large holes in the wooden ceiling, but were covered haphazardly with pieces of sheet metal. Not the best kind of roofing by any means, but it would work in a pinch.

As she continued making observations, she noticed that the large, wooden double doors that lead in and out of the structure were barricaded by a large girder that stretched almost the entire length of this domicile. At least, she was pretty sure it was a domicile. She saw a bed, a couch, even some musical instruments that hung from the wall. But her eyes caught something that left a bad taste in her mouth; a single pink shirt with a yellow star on it. It was well worn, torn and stained in various different spots. She knew that shirt. She knew who this place belonged to.

"Rise and shine, Bismuth. A decade is a long time to be asleep. Well, maybe not for gems, but, well, you know how Earth is..."

Bismuth quickly turned around with a sharp inhale as soon as the first word left Steven's mouth. But she was confused at the sight that greeted her. This wasn't the boy she remembered. Surely it had to be, he had the Rose Quartz stone, after all. It was displayed prominently through a hole that had been cut in a black, sleeveless T-shirt with the same yellow star that was on the pink shirt. But he looked so much different. He had thick, black 5 o'clock shadow on his face that seemed to stop deliberately right before his neck, not quite reaching his throat. His hair was much longer than Bismuth remembered, and it turned into black and pink ringlets the further down it got. He was also much, much taller, Bismuth could tell even though he was sitting down.

Steven didn't bother looking up from his 9-string, he just kept noodling around, up and down scales. This was enough to unnerve Bismuth, however. Steven, Rose Quartz, whatever he might be, ran her through with a rather large pink sword last time they met. That's not exactly something one would forget any time soon, and Bismuth certainly wasn't one who forgave so quickly. Without thinking about it, her hand shapeshifted into a large mallet. She took a few quick breaths before she charged at the young man who sat before her.

Before she was able to actually bludgeon his skull in, Steven, in one swift movement, brought his boot covered right foot down on one of the pedals before him and slammed out an extremely low C#5 chord. The sound came blasting out of his shield that sat next to him, pointing directly at where Bismuth was standing. The note reverberated throughout the place, and Bismuth was tossed backward as if she were nothing. This was unlike anything she had ever experienced, even back on Homeworld. Even a gem as strong as Garnet would never be powerful enough to do something like this. The panic began setting in, and it only worsened from there, as all of a sudden, she began losing her form. She tried desperately to hold out, but it only stopped once Steven pressed his foot on the same pedal again. Bismuth collapsed as the white light emanating from her stopped, and her usual form became solid once again. The low rumble from the shield had ceased, and Steven went right back to doing his twangy scale runs, rocking back and forth on the rickety chair, its creaks being heard loud and clear among everything else. Bismuth sat up and stared at him, seeing his content, comfortable looking face. He wasn't even alert. He had something big up his sleeve, as Bismuth just experienced, and he was well aware that it gave him a rather large advantage.

"Steven… What in the stars was that…?" She asked, after a few seconds of silence on her part. The mention of his name got him to stop playing his guitar, if only for a moment. The silence that came with that action was louder than anything else up to that point. Though it wasn't quite as powerful as when Steven finally answered.

"The last resort."

Though she wasn't going to show it, Bismuth was afraid.

After a few seconds of silence, Steven began rocking in his chair and playing again. And with his barely audible music, he also began to talk.

"You're wondering why I let you out." He punctuated this sentence with an Emaj7 chord before continuing down another scale run.

Bismuth finally found her voice again and replied. "Uhh… Among other things, yeah. Where are we? Where is everyone else? What's with all the screens and green triangles? Why is it so humid? Oh, and most importantly, I'd appreciate it if you elaborated a bit more on whatever that noise was that threw me to the ground like a ragdoll."

A giggle came from Steven. Not one of the cute, small ones he used to have, but a grizzled, almost spiteful laugh. When he stopped, he was quiet for a moment before replying back to the gray gem.

"Tell you what. I'll answer some of those first, and you can figure out the answer to the big one afterward."

Bismuth nodded, unsure as she was, and Steven began to tell the story.

"Couple years ago, Homeworld decided they were done playing games. Our numbers were larger than they were previously, but we had a small militia, they had enough soldiers and starships to blow the Earth into smithereens. Now, lucky for us, Blue Diamond and Yellow Diamond were having their own little spat which led to a second rebellion happening. See, Blue actually grew fond of our little ball of dirt. Especially the people who lived on it. I saw through her own eyes a few times, she learned that we could feel and empathize with her, we all knew what loss was like. She started seeing things the Rose Quartz way, she wanted the Earth to be left alone." He clicked his tongue once before continuing, "Yellow didn't exactly see things her way.

"The ensuing battle between their armies was incredible, Blue actually enlisted the help of The Crystal Gems on a few occasions, which led to a lot of defecting from both Blue and Yellow Diamond's armies. We laid low when we could, but we were never completely safe.

"It all came to a head when Yellow Diamond was shattered. Before you get your undies in a twist, we weren't involved, that was all Blue. But when you shatter a diamond, bad things happen. And that particular bad thing was White Diamond."

Steven stopped playing and took a deep breath before continuing his story, giving his hands a rest. Aside from Steven's voice, Bismuth could only hear the steady rain and thunder from outside.

"White Diamond thought what Blue did was unforgivable. She took whatever forces were still loyal to Homeworld back home with her, and left everyone else, Blue Diamond included, exiled on Earth. We had about two seconds to celebrate before I heard the song."

Bismuth looked confused. Steven, perceptive as he was, picked up on it and sighed, looking up at the ceiling and rolling his eyes.

"Oh come on, Bismuth, you know the one. Homeworld's number one hit single, coming back onto the charts after an absence of thousands of years, 'Corruption' by White Diamond! You know, it was written by the diamonds just for the Crystal Gems! Their present to Earth! It's a bit tacky to give someone the same thing twice, but it's the thought that counts! Not really my thing though, I have to say. The diamonds seem to like the classics, but I'll stick to my rock 'n roll, thanks, it's a lot less… what's the word... Torturous! That's it!"

Steven began laughing again, clearly pained, and it just made Bismuth more uneasy. She looked like she was ready to bolt. Steven, seeing this, let out a sigh.

"Tell me, Bismuth, you ever see all your friends turn into hideous monsters right before your very eyes? Because it's not a pretty sight. I saved one gem, Bismuth, one. And she's not even able to reform anymore."

Steven stared at Bismuth with a strange, desperate look on his face. But he couldn't start crying, not now. He couldn't show weakness. Not wanting to scare her any more than he felt he had to, took a moment to regain his composure. During the silence, Bismuth spoke up.

"So you're the last Crystal Gem standing… Because you're not a full gem, the corruption, it didn't turn you…"

Steven stared at her, but didn't say anything. Bismuth continued.

"Pearl, Garnet, the short Amethyst, they're all gone…" she sighed, letting out a very long breath. "I'm sorry…"

"Yeah…" Steven said, his breath hitching. "I'm sorry too… But they're not gone. Not yet, anyway. And that's where you come in."

Bismuth raised an eyebrow. What would Steven need her for? If he had the key to curing corruption, Bismuth could only do so much. But she decided to hear him out. "Ok, shortstuff, I'm listening."

Steven heaved a sigh and the twanging started up again. "So," he began, "Corruption starts with a song. I heard it with my own ears, I can even play a reasonable cover of it. But I keep thinking that maybe I can reverse it… Peridot helped me figure something out that turned my shield into a sort of speaker cone, a resonator, and it does… Really cool stuff. I can dissipate forms if I play just the right notes to resonate at the right frequency of a gem. S'why my dad's guitar has more strings now. But I can only do so much, Bismuth. I'm strong, sure, but you're stronger. And if I recall, you can build things, great things. And that's just the kind of gem that we need to start saving the Earth."

Bismuth held her hands up. "Whoa whoa, Peridot? I thought you and I were the only gems left on Earth that haven't uh… Y'know, lost 'emselves…"

Steven smiled a bit. "I told you I saved one. She might not be able to reform, but that doesn't mean she's not still here." He stopped playing for a moment and cupped his hands around his mouth. "Peridot!" All of a sudden, every screen displayed a large green exclamation point.

Bismuth looked confused, but Steven was quick to notice and explained. "So you might remember how Homeworld would put gems on certain objects to power them, right? Well, Peridot got poofed and didn't come back. I waited months, and there was nothing. I tried my healing spit and everything, and she just never came back out. She'd later tell me it's because she's an Era 2 gem, but I give her more credit than that. Anyway, not long ago, I got the idea to wire her up to a PC motherboard, and now we have this situation. She… She is actually the one who told me to unbubble you."

As the words came out of Steven's mouth, the screens started displaying a smiley face emote made up of a colon and a right parenthesis.

"And so far," Steven said, projecting his voice so Peridot would better hear him, "it hasn't been a total disaster."

The screens quickly changed over to the words, "WOW THANKS" followed immediately by "SARCASM" which caused Steven to chuckle. Bismuth didn't laugh, but she did smile slightly. Things were coming together, she could make sense of this. But she still had a few questions about Peridot.

"Ok, so you put her in a computer… Like your friend's uhm…" she struggled to think of the word, but snapped her fingers when it came to her. "Laptop, right? I remember you mentioning something about it before we… Well, you remember… Anyway, why doesn't she have a voice? How come it's all just text?"

Steven frowned, and so did the screens, displaying ":(" in a bright, lime green.

"We tried speakers once… All that came out was a garbled mess whenever she tried to form a sentence. It's only been a few weeks since we got all of this working anyway, so we both think that maybe she has to work a bit harder at projecting the things she wants to say as some sort of data. At the current moment, any time we aren't talking, she spends her time practicing some kind of voice modulation. Occasionally, I wonder if putting an actual operating system onto a hard-drive for her would help, but we're both afraid to make things worse. So for now, she spends most of the day figuring out speech, and at the end of the day, we give it a go. She's getting better every day, to be perfectly honest."

The screens all flashed "WOW THANKS" followed by "NOT SARCASM" which garnered a chuckle from both Steven and Bismuth this time.

There was a short silence afterward, while Bismuth was taking everything in. Eventually, Steven spoke up again.

"We need to get Pearl. Pearl has as much technical know-how as Peridot, and she could fix Dad's van, fix Andy's plane, with enough parts she could even make some sort of robot body for Peridot."

The screens started flashing brightly, displaying "AMETHYST FIRST" repeatedly. Steven smacked his forehead and let out a long groan.

"Peridot, Amethyst is on the shortlist of 'gems to save,' but unless we can get the van working again, we can't exactly get to the Prime Kindergarten, can we?! It's not like you have any more robonoids to repair the warp pad over there! So we save Pearl, Pearl can fix the van, and then we can go find Amethyst. We've been over this dozens of times!" He punctuated his last sentence by throwing his arms up exasperatedly.

The screen went blank, and Steven's face sank. "Peridot, I'm sorry. I know you care about her a lot, I mean, I do too! But the best chance we have of saving everybody is if we get Pearl first. We know she went somewhere that was meaningful to her, so maybe she'll see Bismuth and myself and she'll be easier to calm down. Look, this isn't exactly empirical science, I'm just going with what my gut tells me right now, please don't make this any harder than it has to be…"

After some silent moments, the screens displayed, in all lower case, "sorry." Steven smiled. "It's okay, Peridot. We're going to fix as much of this as we can, and getting Pearl back first means we can speed that process up. Amethyst is important, but Pearl can help us more to get started. I swear, Amethyst will come next, okay?"

The screens replied, "OKAY."

Bismuth frowned. "Pearl… I never thought she would go down… Definitely not like this. You know where she is, I take it…? I mean, you did say she went somewhere meaningful to her."

Steven looked over at Bismuth and smirked. "Does this mean you want to help? More importantly, does that mean you won't try to kill me or shatter my gem when my back is turned?"

Bismuth raised an eyebrow before sighing and pinching the bridge of her nose. She then slid her hand down the rest of her face and let it fall back at her side.

"From what you told me, Homeworld thinks the Earth is done for. Whatever is still here, Homeworld doesn't want it. On top of that, all the corrupted gems here are on the same side. As a Crystal Gem, I'm a protector of the Earth and its inhabitants. If those gems live here, they're inhabitants too. Even Blue Diamond… But the most important reason I'm helping you is because if they're all corrupted and you're the only one with any kind of plan to bring them back to their former selves… Well it would be pretty stupid to try to do something to you."

Steven's smirk turned into a wide grin. "So you're on my side then?"

Bismuth chuckled darkly. "No, kiddo. I'm on my side. Once all this is over, I want that rematch. Loser gets shattered."

Steven's grin disappeared. He didn't expect Bismuth to talk like that so boldly. He slowly nodded. "After all this is over, you'll get your rematch. But I'm not gonna shatter you. Stars, why does it always have to be shattering with you? There's more out there than just death, you know."

A tense silence filled the barn. It was only broken when Peridot's screens started flashing with the words "STRAWBERRY BATTLEFIELD."

"Oh, right! Yeah. Pearl's stomping grounds nowadays are the strawberry battlefield." Steven stood up and Bismuth was able to grasp how much he had grown. They were nearly the same height, but Steven was actually a tad taller than her. And he looked pretty intimidating in black.

Steven picked up his shield amplifier and strapped it to his back with a ripped up backpack. He unplugged it from the wall and slapped an electrode from amp onto his gem. This made Bismuth curious enough to ask a few questions, but Steven answered before she was able to verbalize them.

"I power the amp with my gem when I'm not here in the barn. It takes a lot out of me if I'm not careful. But that's why I wanted you to come along. I want to save most of this for Pearl, and you can poof anything I don't want to waste my strength on. Of course, you could probably poof anything else too."

Bismuth smiled. "Don't try to flatter me, Steven, it won't save you."

Steven smiled back. "Maybe not, but it doesn't hurt to try. Heck, maybe I just like being nice. It used to work wonders on anything that stood in our way. Not… Not so much anymore..." He looked at the floor contemplatively for a moment before shaking his head vigorously, snapping himself out of his flashback, and shouting. "Peridot! Keep an eye on the barn. If anything comes by, do the flashing light thing. Usually spooks 'em away. Oh, and if you start hearing the beeping again, let me know as soon as we get back. If it means you're 'sick' somehow, then we need to figure out how to fix it."

Steven lifted the girder that kept the barn doors closed and dropped it on the ground. Then he swiftly kicked the doors open, revealing a black, stormy sky and powerful winds. He seemed unphased by it, but Bismuth was awestruck. All the clocks in the barn said it was sometime in the afternoon, but the skies were blackened completely as the torrential downpour continued.

"Ready to go?" He asked the shorter gray gem as lightning streaked across the sky.

She smiled at his fortitude. With a clap of thunder punctuating her next sentence, she cracked her neck and said, "Let's get down to Bismuth."