White mist burst out of the images of Jasper and Connie, consuming their forms and obscuring Steven's view. A moment later, Steven found himself standing alone, and noticed that the room had remained in its Homeworld spaceship form.
"The ship was destroyed. We already cleaned it off of the beach," Steven murmured. "You can't scare me with this." The room's walls jiggled for a moment before going still. White goo ran and oozed down the green walls like paint as the room began to reset itself. A moment later, Steven thought he saw Lars appear.
"You're just a joke! You know that? A joke!" the room-generated image of Lars insisted.
"At least people like jokes," Steven said with a deadpan.
The image of Lars took a threatened step backwards, his face uncertain. The image disappeared, and a moment later, Lapis Lazuli appeared.
"We're Malachite now..." she shrieked, morphing into a giant monster.
Steven looked away, his shield manifesting in one hand.
"I am not afraid of you," he said sadly, holding up his weapon as the form Malachite tried to strike a blow.
Malachite stopped only inches from the shield, recognizing the symbol. The form took a moment to stare at the weapon, and then looked over at Steven. Morphing back into the original Lapis, the room's manifestation began to approach calmly.
Steven looked up and sighed.
"Where are my friends?" he asked quietly, but boldly.
The Lapis form drew back for a moment, shook her head, and then disappeared completely.
The room grew a bit brighter, and Steven looked beyond where he was standing. It was now that he finally got an accurate reading of the chamber's size; the room was not even as big as the spaceship that the gems had been held captive on. White walls were stretched into a perfect square, and each wall was only about fifty feet long.
Steven finally looked over and saw Pearl sobbing in one corner of the room, her face buried between her knees as grief made its attempt at consuming her.
"Pearl...?"
Pearl looked up for a moment to see an image of Steven approaching, and felt the back of her head smack against the back wall.
"Go...get away..." Pearl managed to say, shrinking from the image. Her voice was breaking. "Get away from me."
Steven froze where he stood, only a few feet away.
"Pearl...It's okay..."
"Get away! I don't want you! Just get away! I can't take it!"
"Pearl..." Steven said slowly, watching tears stream down Pearl's face. Her eyes were wide open, and Steven stepped forward.
"No! You're not real!" Pearl shouted. "So just go away! Leave me alone!"
"Pearl...calm down. If I was not real, I would have disappeared already. That's what happened before with Connie and Jasper."
Pearl paused for a moment, and drew in a sharp breath. Steven watched as she sniffed and tried not to cry, Pearl's efforts inevitably failing.
"She...she stabbed me..." Pearl sobbed, managing to further recede into the corner of the room. "Just stay away..."
"Pearl," Steven said seriously, nodding. "Take a deep breath. You're not telling me everything that I need to know if I am going help you."
There was a long pause, and Pearl put her head between her knees.
"...She called me defective..." No sooner had the words reached Steven's ears than the room managed to conjure up an image of Rose Quartz glaring maliciously at Pearl.
Pearl looked up at the image to shrink away, both from it and from Steven.
"Pearl...It's not real...Command it to leave," Steven said.
Pearl sniffed loudly, and looked at the image of Rose Quartz, standing up. The image of Rose Quartz drew her sword, and charged toward Pearl.
Pearl closed her eyes, and spoke. "Stop," she said out loud. When she opened her eyes, the image was still approaching.
"You have to be confident!" Steven shouted. "Again!"
"You're not real!" Pearl shouted angrily at the image of Rose Quartz.
For the second time that day, Pearl heard the sound of splitting flesh, but this time, it was not her own. She opened her eyes long enough to see that Steven had stepped in front of her, a sword sticking out of him, The image of Rose looked up at Pearl, and then back down at Steven in wonder.
Pearl looked at Steven in horror, and then drew in a breath.
"Get out," she said to Rose, and the image with the word disappeared.
Steven gasped for breath, lifting his shirt and seeing no sword wound.
"Good," he said, sounding relieved. "Now...let's go find the others..."
Steven grabbed onto Pearl's hand, pulling her out of the room's corner. She limply allowed him to pull her in the direction of Amethyst, staring in wonder at the younger gem as she pondered how he had managed to stand between her and the sword.
"Amethyst?"
The purple gem looked up from where she was lying in the corner, her hair completely ruffled and sweat running down her face.
She did not respond.
"Amethyst...We need you to get up..." Steven said, stepping forward.
Amethyst looked up for a moment to glare at him icily before sliding back into her depressed, reclusive position on the floor.
There was a long pause where neither of the two gems spoke. Pearl trailed behind Steven by a few yards, remaining perfectly silent and still heavily cautious of the room she was in.
Finally, the kindergarten gem spoke.
"I can't come with you."
Steven paused mid step. "Why not?"
"...Don't you get it? I'll never be anything more than this. The room was right, Steven. I am treated like garbage because I deserve it."
Steven looked at Amethyst incredulously for a moment, and then glared.
"You're deciding that now?"
Amethyst turned to face Steven from where she was lying down. Steven continued to speak.
"...You know, there is absolutely nothing you could do that would actually decrease your value, right?"
"But what if I never had any value to begin with? I was created to destroy things. To hurt people. To be hated by anyone I came across." Amethyst could not prevent her voice from cracking as she spoke those words. She stood up, but remained with her shoulders hunched.
"What you do is not what determines your value. The reason some gems thought you existed for doesn't determine your value, either, Amethyst. You are not what you do." Steven drew in a breath, and tentatively stepped forward. Amethyst's glare broke into a look of shock as the younger gem stepped forward, until, finally, he stood directly in front of her.
Steven leaned over and hugged Amethyst.
"You're not an accident, or a mistake either. Some gems may have made you to try and use you, but that doesn't mean that that was what your purpose is. You're greater than any accident or mistake could ever be, Amethyst. And you are more loved than you could ever know," Steven whispered into Amethyst's ear.
Something wet dripped onto his shoulder, and Steven pulled out of the hug just enough to see tears streaming out of Amethyst's eyes.
There was another long moment in which nobody spoke, and then Amethyst sloppily wiped the tears away with her wrist.
"Let's go find Garnet," she murmured, and Steven grinned, ear to ear.
"Yeah, let's go find Garnet!" he cheered, and the two gems raced over to Pearl.
Garnet opened her eyes for a moment, and shivered. Her visor had fogged over, obscuring her vision. When she removed her glasses, Garnet noticed that the room had reacted to her fear by growing colder, so much so that ice had begun to crystallize in large shards up against the walls.
"Garnet?"
The bigger gem jumped as a voice cut through the depositing ice, and it felt as though the gathering fog within the room began to press up against Garnet, thickening enough not to allow her to see more than two feet in front of her.
"Garnet, are you okay? Say something!"
"...I can't see," Garnet finally stated, and she began to look around frantically.
The darkened silhouette of a large mess of gem limbs, all obscurely tied into a hand, moved into Garnet's field of vision.
"The Cluster," Garnet murmured, backing away and finding herself already pressed against a wall.
"Garnet, stop." Garnet thought she heard Steven's voice. "We see it too...it's not even real."
"What is that?!" Pearl said in a panic, drawing her spear. "Isn't that the one we bubbled at the Kindergarten?"
Garnet could see Pearl's image through the fog, and likewise saw it when Amethyst drew her whip out of her gem. The Cluster only paced around, seeming to ignore the gems all together. Pearl allowed her sword to disappear, and sighed.
"Is it even real?" Amethyst asked quietly, still poised to attack.
The image of the Cluster let out a sound similar to it's component gems screaming in pain, as if to make a point. Garnet felt herself flinch, overcome with grief.
"Garnet, it's okay..." Pearl spoke this time. "We bubbled it, remember? We'll figure out how to separate them...They won't be stuck like this forever. We can un-fuse them...some how."
Garnet took a look down at both of the gems embedded into her palms, and drew in a deep breath.
"That's just the thing," she said, loudly enough that the other three gems could hear her. "We might never get them back. And what's Homeworld planning to do to us, when they finally come for us? Just what are we going to do then when they add us to the Cluster?"
"Garnet, that's not going to happen," Steven said.
Garnet glanced down, and to her surprise, noticed the youngest gem standing right beside her.
"How do you know?" Garnet asked Steven, surprised by how child-like her question sounded.
Steven shrugged. "Those gems were prisoners of war, weren't they? We escaped last time...And we can escape again, if Homeworld comes back."
Garnet began to calm down upon hearing those words, and the fog slowly began to clear. The Cluster stood only a small distance away, examining Pearl and Amethyst.
"It doesn't want to be added to," Steven said. "It wouldn't allow that. It only wants to be broken up."
Garnet nodded, and turned away. Amethyst and Pearl both took a tentative step backwards as the image of the Cluster disappeared, and the room remained blank.
From the inner part of the temple, the large door to the Chamber of Courage slowly creaked open, and all four gems walked calmly out into the darkened hall.
"What now?" Amethyst murmured, beginning to turn around to see the door.
"Stop," Garnet commanded the purple gem. "Don't look back. Whatever it was that you saw in that room, put it behind you."
Amethyst caught herself before she laid her eyes on the door, and turned away. Pearl flinched upon hearing the door slam close behind the four gems, her eyes wide.
"Pearl, keep walking," Steven said, taking hold of the slender gem's hand when she froze in place.
"I never want to go back there," Pearl said, quickly and quietly.
"You don't have to, just leave it all behind," Steven said reassuringly. "We don't need to go back."
Garnet allowed a small smile to pass over her face. "Rose Quartz did program the room well for helping us find out what we were afraid of, but we never got to understand how to properly withstand that. Steven, well done. Your mother would be very proud right now. You figured out how to successfully shut down the room, and how to aid your teammates when they were devastated by what was in front of them."
Steven's eyes brightened into stars for a moment, and he grinned up at Garnet.
"You wanna know how I did it?" he asked excitedly.
"Go on, then," Garnet said with a small smile.
"Fear is a lie," Steven said with a simple grin. "And love cancels fear." Steven glanced up at Pearl happily. "It's just like what you said earlier, Pearl. 'Fear merely fills the space where love is absent.' Right?"
Pearl sniffed, and then felt a small smile cross over her face as she looked down at Steven.
"Right," she said finally.
The gems made their way back out of the temple, and the door of the chamber remained untouched, just as it had been before Rose Quartz left them.