"Lars didn't have time to get his things, huh? He seems excited to go pack it all up."
"None of us did. Those ships, they left fast. Too fast! We had to either leave or get left behind!"
"Yeah, I just sort of found that out. A lot of things we still haven't had the chance to tell each other." A frown. "Like that you and I met before, recently, I mean. What did you want to talk about, Rhodonite? Why didn't you want him to hear it?"
"I needed to tell you about Lars." Guilt clouded her voice. "I mean, not that he's not dead, you know that already obviously. But I needed to tell you what he'd been doing since you saw him right after he turned pink. And about your lovely Center."
"Right, the Refugee Center. How come you're not still back there?"
"I went. I tried to stay there, I really did! It's a beautiful building. You did a nice job. But all those gems! You said it would be a safe haven but I could still feel them judging me. Judging Ruby and Pearl. Even if they can't tell just by looking that I'm them, it's still obvious that I'm a fusion."
"Ruby?" Pearl sounded flabbergasted. " And Pearl ?"
"It's a long story! And you wouldn't be interested. Point is, I'm something they've never seen before. Even the nice ones were staring! And Lars can tell you how that feels: it 'sucks .'"
"Gosh, I'm sorry, Rhodonite… We're trying to educate gems there, but it's still so new to them."
"I know!" An exasperated sigh. "It's no one's fault. But I still didn't like it. I'm used to living down here in the Kindergarten. I guess I wasn't ready to move yet."
"If you do ever change your mind about living on Earth," a cool voice said, "You can have a place with us. A friend of Steven is a friend of ours."
A guffaw. "C'mon, Garnet! Steven's not the reason why you wanna hang out with her!"
"What? What's the real reason then? Do you want to do experiments on me? Are you going to try to study me like they did to Lars?!"
"No! No no no, Rhodonite." A placating gesture, hands raised.
Rhodonite was silent, breathing in sharply in understanding.
"Wow," Rhodonite finally said. "You're like me."
A grin. "You should see me fused with Pearl, here."
"Ahah! Yes, if she likes seeing you, she should see Sardonyx!"
"Or Alexandrite!"
"C'mon, guys, don't overwhelm her! Besides, she's friends with a seven -gem fusion. But Lars is gonna be done in a minute. Rhodonite, what did you want to say about him? What did he do while he was stuck on Homeworld?"
"What'd Lars do? What didn't he do?"
"Well, from what I knew of him as a human, I'm guessing: everything?"
" Amethyst ! Don't be rude! Even if you're probably right."
"Huh? No, no. He spent all that time after you left fighting the robonoids since he was the only one of us who couldn't be shattered. And did he tell you he lived on the surface? For a really long time! Walking around as an off-color!"
"He didn't tell us much about him fighting . He said he spent most of his time running with you."
"Oh, stars, that-no. He complained about running all the time but he's the only one of us who did something about it. He talked about you all the time, Steven."
"About… me?"
"Mhmm. Steven would do this, Steven said that, this sucks but Steven said it's okay to be afraid. Got to the point where for a while, we thought you were his version of a diamond or something. Which you gotta admit would explain how you could change his color so easily."
Steven was flattered to the point of blushing. "He… he didn't say anything like that."
"Mhmm! That Lars, always talking about how much of a 'wimp' and 'coward' he was. But he got whisked away to another planet not just once, but twice. And he stayed and stuck through it." She turned her head, watching him slowly returning with an armful of knick-knacks from his old storage hole. "I really admire him."
"Yeah? Have you told him so?"
"I don't think I have to." A small smile, one of real admiration. "He might not technically be a gem, but… he's still the bravest gem I've ever known."
"Yeah." Amethyst was watching him too. "Gotta be brave to even try to carry all that crap on his own." And then she bellowed: "YO! LARS! NEED A HAND?", shifted into her wrestler persona, and ran off to help him.
A laugh. "We should go help too. And Rhodonite?"
"What?"
He reached out to squeeze her lower shoulder softly, briefly, as he walked past. "You should tell him."