AN: I'm sorry for not posting this sooner. My girlfriend broke up with me and I've been kind of a wreck. Still, this is little more than copying and pasting from my Ao3 account, so there's not much I have in the way of excuses. To those who wrote reviews, keep 'em coming! I love feedback, it really drives me to write more. The next chapter is the last one I have already written, so beyond that, I'll be posting both here and Ao3. Archive of Our Own is nice, but there are a lot less people there. If you really, really like this story, you should check it out over there. I listed my musical influences for each chapter in an author's note at the beginning of the chapter, and I did some really cool things involving each gem and their own metal themes. Pearl has a lot of Tool, Lapis uses a lot of black metal like Apostasy and Dimmu Borgir, Steven is classic heavy metal like Black Sabbath, Bismuth is djent, Amethyst has a lot of hair metal and stuff like Van Halen, it's a lot of fun. Well anyway, enjoy!
Waving Hills Asylum for the Mentally Disturbed was founded in the early 1900's in northeastern Keystone, almost reaching into the Jersey border. The construction took place deep in the forest, and was completed in a little over five years. It was a decent asylum, as asylums go, but during the outbreak of tuberculosis in the 1930's, however, it doubled as a hospital. One wing went to those who were suffering from the disease, the other went to the criminally insane who were too dangerous to transfer to another facility. Medical staff who were trained to deal with the disease were brought in, but the medicinal breakthroughs that were needed to save the afflicted hadn't happened yet, and still wouldn't for quite some time.
Regardless, these events that occurred decades ago shaped the building into something nobody knew they needed until they found it. This asylum had been restructured, making it one-half prison, one-half hospital. It had a massive wall surrounding the place with a gate that was controlled via remote access from an adjacent guard post. The only other way in and out was a lightly guarded tunnel (which, during the outbreak, was used to haul the ever rising number of corpses out of the building) that could be blocked by simply storing various items and riff raff inside in an effort to block the path.
Hundreds of people perished within the walls of this colossal building that was meant to help people, ultimately achieving the opposite of what was intended. Some people believed it to be haunted by the spirits of those who felt cheated out of a chance at a normal life by this horrid place. That didn't seem to deter anyone, however. When the second wave of gem corruption hit, people found a safe haven in this monstrous construct. The ghosts inside had become less frightening than the very real monsters that had begun roaming the Earth.
Waving Hills became a safe haven for people from miles around. Word spread through the multiple gangs of survivors that it was the place to be, the place with the best hope for survival. The man who was responsible for this kind of reaction was Roger Patel, who was a multi-millionaire after founding Patel Soundworks. He kept the asylum up and running, housing every family who came to its heavily guarded doors (and blasting away any rogue gems with a very low frequency from a barrage of amplifiers set up around the perimeter) for a year and a half before he met an untimely demise at the hand of a corrupted agate that had made her way through the tunnel very quietly. She managed to kill nearly a quarter of the residents before Roger's son had managed to take it down. His name? Kevin. Kevin Patel.
He was praised as a hero and immediately put in charge. Everyone was in agreement that it's what his father would have wanted. And after that show of bravery, the 28 year old heir to the Patel fortune deserved it. Or he would have, if he weren't the one who baited the agate into the tunnel and let it wreak havoc for a while before finally taking it down with a trap that he had set up hours beforehand.
For a year and a half, Kevin had been in charge of Waving Hills, and in that year and a half, he changed the quasi-socialist commune into a dictatorship that he was in charge of. His one law, while being purposefully vague, was enforced harshly, and that law simply stated "Do right by me, and I will do right by you." Naturally, this tended to lead to a lot of personal issues being dealt with via brute force from his own secret police.
Kevin was not an unintelligent person by any means, he remembered everyone he knew from Beach City who had shown any modicum of strength. Whether that strength was intelligence, brute force, charisma, it didn't matter. He knew the people he wanted and he got them.
The first was Kiki Pizza. He knew about her athletic ability. Her consistent and lengthy runs she did every day were something he observed on a regular basis. She wasn't muscular, but she had enough endurance that he knew she would be a valuable asset. All it took was a small bribe to Kofi Pizza and Kiki was all his. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing for Kiki Pizza and her family, on the contrary. With Kiki being on the secret police, her family was sure to be taken care of better than anyone else. But it didn't mean she had to like it, even if she did enjoy her co-workers.
One such co-worker was Sadie Miller. Kevin had heard stories about how she took down some sort of invisible monster on an island somewhere in the Pacific. All for Lars, the rumors said. Since her mother had died in the first wave of attacks, Kevin figured he couldn't bribe Sadie into working for him, so he took a different route. Emotional manipulation was his specialty. All he had to do was put on an act. "Oh, Sadie, I'm so sorry that your mother died, let me know if you need some Kevin time to talk about it. By the way, I heard Lars is still alive down south somewhere, and if you join my security team, I'll let you make a plan to venture down there to find him." Of course, he knew that day would never come. But he didn't have to tell Sadie that.
The third deputy he received actually showed up late to the party so to speak. One strange day, a mysterious woman with short pink hair on a motorcycle approached Waving Hills. She was almost shot on sight, but she was able to outdraw the guards with her revolver. Over the intercom, she had a very short job interview. "You give me food and water and I'll do shit for you." Well, that was music to Kevin's ears. For a few steak dinners every month, she even agreed to train the secret police in firearms.
Kevin's final deputy was not difficult to get. The girl's mother was a doctor, and her hippocratic oath made the asylum an optimal place to do some good for what was left of humanity. Priyanka was glad to have gotten her daughter away from that Universe boy before he turned into one of those *things.* Connie, however, was less than pleased.
Before Steven and Connie got separated in the mass hysteria surrounding the second wave of corruption, Steven had told her that she was the best hope humanity had. She would have to help defend the weak and sick from all of the gems while Steven did his best to figure out how to reverse the awful things that happened. Well, now she was stuck guarding an asylum that belonged to a terrible person who was making everything worse. It ate at her. This isn't what was supposed to happen. This wasn't right. She had to fix it. And fix it she would.
It was slow going at first, convincing her fellow deputies to leave Raving Hills (the name had been changed in exchange for Sour Cream's DJ prowess). Sadie held on hope for Kevin to come through on his promise to help get Lars back, and the pink haired biker chick (that Connie swore she had seen somewhere before) seemed content with scavenging bikes to bring back to the facility.
Kiki, on the other hand, was thrilled with the idea to run off. The two planned in secret for months before Connie finally showed Kiki Rose's sword. At first, the younger girl thought Kiki would run, maybe tell the others, but soon she had enough questions to fill an entire encyclopedia (How do you have this? How did you smuggle it in? Doesn't this belong to that nonbinary person who fought those giant corruptions on the beach that one time?). It was a little overwhelming for Connie, but all was well once she gave Kiki a demonstration of her ability. She expected the Pizza girl to be impressed, but wasn't anticipating her wanting lessons.
Twice a week, in the middle of the night, Connie and Kiki sparred in the forest. They mainly used sticks for two reasons, the first being that they wouldn't hurt as much when either was struck by one, and the second being that swords weren't exactly commonplace.
Everything went rather smoothly until one night ended with applause from a third party. They breathed a sigh of relief when Sadie's familiar voice echoed through the trees. She must have followed them after their guard shift ended. At first, the two sparring partners were afraid that Sadie was going to rat them out, but she soon expressed an interest in joining them, much to their excitement. There was one caveat, however; Sadie wanted to use a spear. Connie was happy to oblige.
The three of them kept a steady training regimen, both Kiki and Sadie were trained by Connie twice a week on different days. This was mostly to work around their guard shifts, but the youngest of the three preferred not having to train both of her students at the same time. She was great with a sword, but a spear required a bit more concentration. All she knew was what she gleaned from Pearl, and Sadie obviously couldn't shoot any kind of magic bolts of lightning out of her sharpened stick.
The three of girls enjoyed each other's company, often joking and reminiscing about the old days in Beach City. One day, Connie broached the subject of leaving Raving Hills with the other two, and both of them agreed that if they were in charge, they would run a much better safe haven than Kevin ever could. It would be run fairly and without discrimination or manipulation. A rather believable rumor had started going around as to what Kevin was doing to keep Sour Cream under his thumb. Nobody knew the exact specifics other than it involved Vidalia and some kind of disease. In any case, Kevin was a scumbag who shouldn't be trusted. So the three of them became resolute in their want to leave this place behind and start anew somewhere else. The only problem, of course, was getting there.
The training pattern continued on for weeks, and it was very clearly draining Connie. She loved teaching and considered it vital that her friends know how to utilize proper melee combat techniques should they be attacked by any corruptions, but in between night shifts and scavenging missions that Kevin had been sending the four of his deputies on, it was really throwing her off her groove, and the endless rain that plagued everywhere they went didn't help matters at all. She had begun to get careless due to her lack of sleep.
Every time Connie was sent on a mission, she brought with her a small collection of electronics that looked like a heap of junk. Little did they know, that junk heap was actually comprised of several different parts that, when put together, could be hooked up to a radio antenna and begin transmitting signals. She didn't have the right parts for a decent enough microphone, but it was okay. She usually was accompanied on these scavenging missions by another deputy, and with increasing frequency, it was the pink haired girl who came along. Using a microphone to transmit any kind of message would be impractical, as it was difficult to nonchalantly insert the location of Raving Hills into a sentence without it seeming suspicious. So instead, she put together a small rig to transmit a single D note one octave above middle C. With this one note, this one single sine wave, she was able to broadcast her message across the tri-state area in Morse code; "STEVEN QUARTZ UNIVERSE STOP STAY NEAR BEACH CITY I WILL BE COMING SOON STOP LOVE JAM BUD"
Whenever she came across any kind of large antenna, all the way to ameteur HAM radio setups to college radio stations, that message would be sent out. She was going to find Steven, she knew he was alive somewhere out there, and they would be together again someday very soon.
It was somewhere near the Jersey border when events were finally set in motion to put "The Runaways" together. Connie was on a scavenging mission with Pink (who seemed okay with this nickname more than any other) in a town that she knew they had already been to. Pink told Connie to just do the best she could and that Kevin was probably just being extra careful. This, of course, was a lie. Pink was under very strict orders from Kevin. Wait for Connie to start broadcasting her signal, put her magnum to the back of her head, and pull the trigger.
To Pink's credit, Kevin wanted to kill the poor girl outright, but Pink wanted proof of her wrongdoing before she took any action. Kevin, with his own radio, had been picking up the signals that Connie was sending out. Instantly recognizing it as Morse code, he got someone to translate it very quickly. When he worked out that someone was looking for Steven Universe, his mind immediately leapt to Connie Maheswaran. Those two were the brats who tried to beat him in that street race and almost made him commit a felony.
And that brings us to the present. Pink, the motorcycle-riding, badass punk-rock chick was holding her revolver to the back of Connie Mehaswaren's head. And Connie felt it there, its stinging cold barrel aimed right at her visual cortex. If she survived the shot, she would be severely blinded, and that wasn't ideal. She stopped moving, stopped breathing, stopped typing out the code. But when Pink spoke, it didn't sound like the voice she expected her killer to have. It sounded broken up, remorseful even.
"Why'd you have to make me do this? I don't go around murdering fuckin' kids, and before you start yellin' foul at me, yeah, you're a fuckin' kid, not even old enough to rent a car in the old world. I don't want to do this, you know. But you're ruining something great with these messages you're sending out. I don't know what you want with Steven, but there's nothing we can do for him, so just let it go. If you see reason in this, maybe I don't have to kill ya. Maybe I go tell Kev that you ain't got nothin' to do with any of this. Maybe we can all go home, put all this behind us."
Connie, resuming her breathing, worked up the courage to speak. After all, it takes a lot of effort to talk when you're seconds away from literally biting the bullet. "You call Raving Hills a home? A run down insane asylum with a dictator leading the cause? A dictator who's more of an expert in fear mongering than getting any actual work done? He doesn't know anything about the 'monsters' that everyone back there is so afraid of. They're all still gems, Pink. Gems with feelings, with thoughts and emotions. Steven can help them if *we* help *him,* I know it."
Pink cocked the hammer of her revolver back, seeing her efforts were futile. "Steven can't do that, Connie. Reversing corruption has never been done by a normal gem before."
"Steven is not a normal gem!" Connie shouted as she spun around and got Pink into an armbar, something that the deputy certainly was not expecting. She fired a shot that hit nothing important as the two of them fell onto the ground, Pink on her stomach and Connie onto Pink's arm. The gun was being twisted around wildly before Connie wisely pinned Pink's hand to the ground, rendering her unable to fire.
The pink haired girl let out pained screams as Connie worked her arm out of its socket. It all had happened so fast, the deputy barely had any time to register that she had been beaten by this much smaller girl. She continued thrashing about, and Connie bellowed, "Keep moving and I'll break it so my mom can't fix it."
Pink froze, knowing Connie was capable of doing what she just said. She let her body go limp, and Connie relented. She didn't allow her to stand, however. Connie took the handcuffs that Pink had on her belt and cuffed both of her hands behind her back. Then she stood and leaned against a nearby traffic light pole.
The tide had turned so quickly, Pink was so sure she had the upper hand with a gun to Connie's head. But Connie was too swift and powerful with her hand to hand combat skills. It didn't matter much now, though. Connie was surely about to finish the job. Pink would tell Kevin about all of this as soon as she got back. Connie couldn't let that happen, not when she was so close to getting a group together to leave.
Pink made peace with her god as she heard the sound of a blade being unsheathed. Quickly, she rolled over and sat up. If she was going to die, she was going to face her killer. She was going to look her in the eyes as she breathed her last breath. That breath was *not,* however, supposed to be a gasp. She couldn't help herself, though, when she found herself staring at Rose Quartz's very own sword.
Connie held the blade out onto Pink's shoulder. "I promise you, I'll make this quick. You won't feel anything, you'll just go. One second here, the next, gone. I'm sorry it came to this…"
Pink was crying now. Not for herself, no, but for the gem who showed her this sword so long ago. The gem who she loved and then lost when the corruption hit. The gem who showed her how much more to life there could be.
"Connie wait…" she said, softly, as Connie held the sword high above her head, ready to bring it down on her would-be victim.
The Maheswaran girl sighed, not wanting to drag this out. "Pink, don't make this harder than it has to-" she was cut off.
"Pearl… She trained you. Well, you and Steven, but it *was* her… You're Connie. *The* Connie. The one she always talked so highly of…"
Connie's eyes were wide as saucers. How did Pink know that? The only person who knew she had any interaction with the Crystal Gems was her mother and father. But Pink saw the confused look on her face and laughed through her tears.
"My real name is Sheena…"
The sword dropped to the ground at about the same time Connie fell to her knees. A tense silence filled the wreckage that surrounded them. Confusion filled both of their heads, mostly about how this situation would be resolved now that new information had come to light. Sheena assumed she would still die, she knew how Pearl was during the war. She could only imagine how much of the "Terrifying Renegade Pearl" came through during Connie's training. The Maheswaran girl was the one to speak first.
"Your hair looks different… I mean, I only saw you in pictures from the boardwalk photo booth that Pearl kept on the refrigerator in the beach house. Before I went off to college, she talked about you so much… She wasn't ready to introduce you to everyone yet, still wasn't by the time I left…"
Sheena stayed silent, attempting to figure out Connie's endgame here. If she wasn't going to die, then what did Connie have in mind? Was she just going to keep talking? That question was answered when Connie went silent again, but Sheena didn't want to say anything. Not now, considering she almost killed her girlfriend's protege. But who was she kidding? She couldn't have killed Connie if she tried, not if she was trained by Pearl.
Connie once again broke the silence. "If you really are Sheena, and all evidence is currently pointing to that being the case, then you know about Steven. You know at most everything Pearl knew about him. So naturally, you don't know about the times he and I visited Jasper in his dreams."
Sheena shifted uncomfortably at Jasper's name. But Connie was right, she hadn't heard about anything like this. She stayed quiet and let the girl continue.
"He never told anybody he was doing this because he knew the gems wouldn't let him keep trying, but doing everything on his own wasn't an option either. He got really good at astral projection, and was able to enter Jasper's subconscious. He brought me along that night, and together, we put her mind back together. It didn't happen all at once, but eventually she could talk to us. It was slow going, but eventually she let us unbubble her. When we did, and she reformed, she still looked corrupted, but behaved like a normal gem. She remembered herself, she remembered us, she kept it together. I underline that for you, *Steven was able to fix the mind of a corrupted gem.* And before the second wave hit, he had been texting me about using sound to reshape Jasper's form."
Sheena remained stone-faced, not sure what to make of this new information. "Okay… so why are you telling *me* all of this? What does that have to do with you or me?"
Connie sighed and stood up, grabbing the sword as she did. But she didn't raise it, she just held it tightly in one hand. A show of force, a vulgar display of power to show Sheena that she had the upper hand without explicitly saying so.
"Steven came extremely close to fixing a corruption before everything got ruined. I know that he's still alive, and I think you do too. If he were saving gems, the first one he would save is Pearl. Pearl was more of a mother to him than Rose Quartz could ever hope to be, he told me as much himself. In addition, continuing to be a part of Kevin's secret police is morally reprehensible. We've all heard the screams that come from the east wing, and despite the rumors that Kevin has expertly started perpetuating, they aren't 'The ghosts of the tuberculosis patients who died that are now wandering the halls.' What do you think happens to the people that we 'arrest?' It's not like we just kick them out of the place, Kevin makes sure he gets whatever he can out of them. Fuck, do you even know what he's doing to Vidalia to keep Sour Cream in line? We are resources for him to use, and he sees us as nothing more. Having said all of that, I know you're a reasonable woman. I know you know that I can't have you standing in the way of the reversing of the extinction of all gems on Earth. So I'm offering you a very, very good deal that I think you should take. You can either die here, in the rain, by the sword that belonged to your girlfriend's ex, or you can go with option B."
Sheena sat there in the rain for a moment, waiting for Connie to finish. When she didn't, Shenna took it upon herself to inquire further.
"What's option B?"
Connie breathed out a quick sigh as she walked over to the bike where her bag was and stowed the sword away, breaking eye contact with Sheena. She explained during the process.
"Option B is joining up with myself, Sadie, and Kiki. The three of us don't want to stay at Raving Hills until Kevin decides we're all too dangerous and his 'citizens' turn into slaves. Stars, Sheena, he calls us his secret police, how much more proof do you need that this is going to get ugly?"
She zipped up her green duffel bag after making sure her sword was secure and lit up a cigarette that she had pulled from a pack of Persian-brand menthols. It took some effort, considering the rain, but she eventually managed to keep the fire going.
"If you come with us, you get to help start a better tomorrow. But more importantly to you, you get to see Pearl again. And depending on how busy Steven has been, maybe even more of the gems. On top of that, you won't have to worry about food, injury, probably electricity, or being left to die by your comrades. See, if you help us out by giving us three of the bikes you made, we can all get the hell outta dodge while the gettin' is good. We'll be free. Gems don't operate on any sort of hierarchy, not on Earth anyway. No gods, no kings, only us. Shit, once we get to Beach City and find Steven, you don't even have to stick around with us. You and Pearl can fuck off to somewhere tropical and do the domestic thing til the day you die if that's your purview. If you haven't realized it, I'm basically offering you paradise, a chance to start a new hold out for humanity, or an opportunity to do much less work for a lot more payoff. It's an offer that's too good to refuse. I know it, because I already put my sword away, and you know it because you've had the lock for those handcuffs picked by the time I said 'Option B' and haven't reached for your gun yet."
Sheena's eyes went wide for a second before she sighed and put both her hands in her lap, the handcuffs hanging off of one of her wrists. Connie laughed as she let the smoke out of her lungs, and Sheena got defensive.
"I didn't have to pick them, you know, you didn't take the key off of my belt!" she protested.
"I didn't have to, if you didn't tell me your name, you would be dead by now."
Sheena couldn't argue with that logic. Connie was right. She was being offered the whole world on a silver platter and all she had to do was give up three of her bikes. Nothing was keeping her loyal to Kevin except for food, shelter, and protection from whatever fresh hell might come for them all next. Of course, Sheena wasn't one to just trust someone she barely knew, but this was Connie Maheswaran. Steven Universe's girlfriend, Pearl's protege, possible future leader of the free world, and here Sheena was, able to get in on the ground floor.
Connie took a long drag from her cigarette while Sheena was thinking things over. She knew Sheena was going to take her up on the offer, she was really just racking her brain on what to call the four of them now. "The Four Horsewomen" sounded cool, but it just didn't roll off the tongue quite so well. "The Runaways," though, that had a nice ring to it.
Connie was able to finish an entire cigarette in silence before Sheena spoke up finally. Just as Connie started kissing ash, Sheena got to her feet.
"I'll do it. Shit, I know, I should sound pleased, but we did almost murder one another."
Connie raised an eyebrow and gave a smirk.
"Aright, alright," Sheena relented, "I almost got murdered by you, happy? Christ, kid, I'm good with guns, not so good with whatever martial-arts mumbo jumbo you came at me with."
"We're gonna fix that straight away, Sheena. Kiki and Sadie both know how to use a sword and staff respectively, we gotta find your niche."
Sheena tilted her neck to the left and right, the cracking noise it made echoing outward, overpowering the pitter patter of the rain on the asphalt under their feet.
"Brass knuckles count as weapons? I'd much prefer learning how you were able to go from having a gun to the back of your head to having me on the ground getting my arm worked out of its socket."
"In time," Connie said, getting onto the bike that Sheena had refurbished for Kevin's secret police. "I can teach you some basics, maybe a little more. But Pearl is gonna have a field day teaching the three of you once we find the remnants of the Crystal Gems."
Sheena merely nodded in agreement. "So, once we get back, what's the plan? We can't just pack up and leave, they'll try to stop us. I don't exactly hate anybody at Raving Hills, so I'd rather not have to kill anybody."
"We won't have to," Connie uttered, pulling a pair of goggles over her eyes. "We're going to wait until everyone else is asleep, just the night watch is awake. The night watch tonight is, of course, Kiki and Sadie. We'll meet up with them, tell them to say their goodbyes to everyone who can keep a secret, then we pack up, saddle up, and ride off into the sunrise. Anybody who *does* try to get in our way, they get their arm broken and their nose pushed into their face. Any questions?"
Sheena shook her head and got her bike started. Connie did the same, and as a loud clap of thunder echoed through the darkened skies above, the secret police had officially ended and The Runaways began.
OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO
Loud sirens were blaring at the barn courtesy of Peridot. It had been nearly three weeks since Bismuth and Steven had returned from the Strawberry Battlefield with Pearl's gem in tow. Steven had done his best to cure Pearl of her corruption, but to Bismuth, it didn't look like he was doing a whole lot. This was understandable if someone didn't know what exactly corruption and its cure entailed, however. Steven did his best to keep the peace, but after Pearl had been spent two entire weeks in her gem, Bismuth had gotten impatient. She attacked Steven while his guitar was out of reach, leaving a rather large gash on his head right below his right eye. The fight was going on for near an hour, and Peridot helped in the only way she was able. Whether or not her help actually aided anybody was debatable, but there wasn't much else she could do.
Bismuth retained the upper hand throughout the fight. She managed to keep Steven from reaching his instrument the whole time and he ended up in a compromising position. Bismuth had him pinned up against the barn wall by his neck, her shapeshifted arms taking on the form that one could only describe as wrench-like in shape. Every breath Steven took was haggard, taken with great difficulty. She made sure he got just enough air to keep him alive.
"It's been THREE WEEKS, Steven! You said you could cure her, you said you could save her, but she hasn't reformed since we let her out of the bubble! And why would she?! All you've been doing is sleeping! Every day, every night, nothing but sleep, sleep, and more sleep! That's not how you save a gem, you poor excuse for a Crystal Gem!"
Bismuth's sentence was punctuated by a flash of lightning and a loud clap of thunder. Steven did his best to talk, but all that came out was a hoarse whisper.
"What do you… know… about curing… corruption…?" It was a question and an insult, telling Bismuth she had no idea what he was doing while he slept. She didn't know that every night, he drifted into Pearl's mind, wandering through mazes of non-euclidian geometry, trying to put things back together that seemed impossibly broken. He *talked* to Pearl in his dreams, got her back to her normal self, and when her mind was finally back to normal, he and Peridot played just the right frequencies to alter her gemstone to produce her usual form. It wasn't perfect, but it was the best he could do.
"I know that it's more than just NAP TIME, you little worm!" Her grip tightened around his throat as another flash lit the barn. She was ready to snap his neck, it would be over quickly and she could finally rest knowing that Rose Quartz was no more. The gem that kept her hidden away in a bubble for millennia, the gem that didn't understand how Homeworld worked or how useful the Breaking Point could be, the gem who had no idea what it meant to be a leader, she would be gone from this world once and for all. Steven's eyes were bloodshot, tears biting the corners of them, and his face was as red as a cherry tomato. No more air was entering Steven Universe's lungs. No matter. As soon as either his neck was broken or he had suffocated, Bismuth would scoop out his gem and shatter it under her foot. It hardly mattered how he felt if that was going to be his fate within the next few minutes.
Unfortunately for Bismuth (and very fortunately for Steven), she was not paying attention to Earth's weather at that moment. She could hardly be blamed for that, it was a rather intense moment after all, and weather was pretty simple to understand regardless. She knew it rained, she knew sometimes it snowed. She knew that lately, it was nothing *but* rain and that was odd. She knew that sometimes the wind would be so strong that it would level entire cities. She also knew about thunder and lightning, but she seemed to either overlook or not notice the fact that when there was lightning, there was always a boom of thunder very close behind. Were she paying attention to that, she may have questioned when there was no thunder. She may have asked herself what that flash could have been if not lightning?
But she didn't ask herself that question. She didn't notice the meteorological issues that had just occurred, and she wouldn't realize it until she felt some very familiar handiwork being pressed against her back. A trident, specifically, that was beginning to pierce her form. Her grip slackened and she breathed in a sharp inhale, realizing in that moment that the lightning that just happened wasn't lightning at all, no, but it was in fact a gem reforming in its nest of blankets that Steven had so lovingly created.
Slowly, Bismuth turned her head, her eyes looking downward from her right shoulder. Before she could take in the sight that greeted her, the would-be assailant had some very important words that Bismuth needed to hear;
"Get your hands off of my baby or I am going to break you…"