"You have to. You have to be honest about how bad it feels so you can move on. That's how it was for me."

Steven opened his eyes. Connie's face through the tears was so plaintive, so honest. What did she want? The hurt and the pain he had caused was still coursing through his skull. He remembered everything he had done. He remembered everything he had said.

This destiny before him was full of so much strife, and it was – it came from –

"Steven!"

"I can't."

The ground rushed towards them, still so far but far too close.

"No! You have to, Steven, you have to so that –"

Steven released his fingers. His face was devoid of hope. Connie stopped and stared, the wind turning numb in her ears as she watched Steven relax everything in his body. It was wrong, so wrong, so uncomfortable to see him like this, but she couldn't quite place it. And then it struck her – this was the first time she had truly seen Steven give up.

"I…I did mean to hurt them," he said. "I meant to hurt them because it was the only real way. Nobody has to change. Sometimes, they can't change. We're never truly different people, no matter what we see, no matter how much we grow."

Connie reached for his face. Steven gripped her wrists, eyes closed. She cried out in surprise, feeling the bones grind under the strength of his hands.

"I couldn't see it. But I can now. As long as I live, others will die – because of me. Mom made me because she wanted me to experience the world. But what kind of world will it be as long as I'm here? I can't live with the humans, and the more I live with the gems, the more I turn into her. And we don't know a thing about Rose Quartz! She kept secrets, she killed, she lied to people, and even the Gems didn't know!

"I'm turning into her whether I like it or not. And I don't want to end up like her. I don't want to be her. I want to be Steven. This is the last time that I…"

The jagged peaks of the mountain were coming into focus now. Connie couldn't look, not for as long as Steven was here in front of her. Their tears joined in pearls above their heads, flying back up into the atmosphere.

Steven's hands broke from hers suddenly, and his fingers curled as a pink bubble formed around Connie. It would be enough to break her fall if he pushed his powers into it, yes, enough to make it float. A layer of clouds broke as they fell through. Steven pushed off of the bubble's surface and fell backwards into the mist, closing his eyes as he drifted away, still falling, with the bubble still floating, far away enough not to hear Connie's screams.

There it was. As the bubble disappeared as a pink dot in the sky, he reached for it one last time, and he wished it could have been something better. It could have been a life without violence, a life without the Gems. Just him, and his father, and perhaps a scar in his stomach where a pink stone once sat. He touched his belly and felt that familiar, hideous warmth.

"No more."

Connie pressed her hands against the side of the bubble and wailed as she saw the speck below her hit the earth. A cloud of pink exploded from its impact. The sound shocked her into silence, and then she was left alone, staring at the cloud as she drifted down to earth.

"He doesn't want to go."

The town was there, almost everyone who had ever seen or known Steven, everyone now filing out of the hillside memorial grounds. There were stragglers, but soon it was only the two of them staring at the granite tombstone. The Crystal Gems couldn't bear to stay. Greg put a hand on Connie's shoulder, heavy like it had never been in his life.

There had been no body. There hadn't even been a gem. All there had been was the faint smell of rose blossoms in the meadow and a scorched crater in the dirt.

"C'mon, buddy, you need to come with us," Greg said.

Lion growled begrudgingly, but didn't move an inch. Connie reeled and hugged Greg suddenly, burying her face in his suit jacket. It was almost too warm for suits, but the clouds overhead covered the city, more silent observers to the funeral.

"He's gone, Lion." Greg choked on his words. He didn't even try to wipe the tearstains on the suit's lapels. "Lion, please, just come with us, please…"

The beast curled over the plot of dirt and grunted once again. Connie couldn't stop, couldn't move. She was frozen against Steven's father, unable to get past the hurt of the reality before them. They had to survive now, for him. They had to. What else could be done? There was the Steven they knew before who would have understood. He would have done the same thing.

So much to do, gone. Greg didn't want to go back to the van. There was a crown, a cape, a photograph and a whole booklet of them – and baby teeth, and his first guitar, and extra clean shirts and underwear and socks, and drawings from when he was just barely an adolescent –

He understood. He cried silently over Connie's sobs, embracing her as he turned both of them away from the plot. Lion watched them, eyes slit and breath steady. There was no emotion on his face, as unreadable as ever, but there was knowing. He huffed again, closing his eyes as the sunlight warmed his mane.

There was the meadow by the hill where Steven was remembered. There was another unseen meadow behind the fur of Lion's mane.

The grass was endless and pink, just like his fur. The sky was always clear and pleasant, betraying the illusion of distant stars.

There was an island with a tree. There were things there, Things that Rose Quartz had saved from her life before, things she knew Steven would one day find.

In a tiny bubble, near the branching heart, a new stone sat, pink and warm. Five sides, five angles, one circle in its embedded base – it waited.

And it slept.