Steven Universe is the story of a boy who lost everything he ever had, piece by piece.
He started off as a cheerful, excitable child, who thought his powers came from ice cream. But now he knows better.
He knows his mom killed people, in a war, and kept secrets from everyone.
The lines are blurred for Steven now. His friends and family are still there, but... It's not the same as before. They lied to him, multiple times. He couldn't keep forgiving them. He couldn't let some people be forgiven and some people not.
He grew colder. He started to hate, starting with the enemies, the rubies who invaded Earth, and then his mom, for keeping so many secrets.
Then his dad, for being so ignorant.
Then the crystal gems, for not telling him anything, for lying right in his face.
He knew why. They didn't think he could handle it. They didn't want him to be ruined by all the terrible things they had done. But it was worse this way. He had find them out on his own.
The coldness increased. He shut out his friends. They, like his dad, were ignorant, incompetent. They didn't lie to him, but only because they didn't know the truth.
He shut out his dad. He stayed in the attic of the Temple. Amethyst was the one to bring food to the Temple, now, informing his friends that he was fine, just... Just a little sick. Or that he was on vacation. Excuses piled high. Until the stack of them overflowed and the town broke into the Temple.
But Steven was gone. He had entered his mother's room.
"I'm ready to know the truth."
"You told Bismuth that nobody should be shattered. Yet you shattered a diamond."
"I don't understand. How can you be so hypocritical? How can you be so insensitive? Say some gems are better than others?"
"WHY DO YOU KEEP SECRETS FROM EVERYONE? I CAN HANDLE IT! I'M YOUR SON!"
He said these things, in the room, amongst others. And in a day he came back out with a dark expression.
He went to his room, to where he kept his mother's sword. Pearl saw him and yelled, "Steven! We've been looking everywhere for -"
Only then did he look at her, the sword in his hand. There was something different about him, she could tell. But she wasn't able to discern what it was before he plunged the sword into his own chest.
"STEVEN!" She screamed and ran up the steps. But it was too late.
"Why did you do this, Steven...?" She asked, sobbing, staring at him.
He couldn't answer. He just stared, the life of his slinking out of his eyes, the blood flowing out of his back, onto the ground surrounding him. Pearl removed the bloody sword and tossed it aside.
"Oh, Steven..." She stared, wondering what could have drove him to such desperation, to such a horrible edge.
His body disappeared when his breath stopped, when the blood ran out, when the heart stopped pumping. His corpse was contained in the gem.
No one knew why. No one understood the pressure, the things he had been put through.
The gem didn't reform. No, not after four weeks, or double that time. Not even after triple that time did the gem reform.
They put it, just onto the kitchen table, as the centerpiece. They waited.
A year passed. Friends came by and left flowers and such. Greg moved out of town.
Another year. The town had gotten over the gem's death. Connie, Sadie, Lars, everyone, everywhere, they remembered him.
And more time passed. Almost a decade since the gem had been poofed, when Steven had killed himself.
It began to glow, and lift. Around it formed someone they had not seen for a long time... Not for a very long time indeed.
And she was crying.
"He couldn't handle it."