Part V: Iridescence (Act I: Revelation)

Well I didn't tell anyone, but a bird flew by.
Saw what I'd done. He set up a nest outside,
and he sang about what I'd become.
He sang so loud, sang so clear.
I was afraid all the neighbors would hear,
So I invited him in, just to reason with him.
I promised I wouldn't do it again.

But he sang louder and louder inside the house,
And now I couldn't get him out.
So I trapped him under a cardboard box.
stood on it to make him stop.
I picked up the bird and above the din I said
"That's the last song you'll ever sing".
Held him down, broke his neck,
Taught him a lesson he wouldn't forget.

But in my dreams began to creep
that old familiar tweet tweet tweet

I

opened my mouth to scream and shout,
I waved my arms and flapped about.
But I couldn't scream and I couldn't shout,
couldn't scream and I couldn't shout.

I opened my mouth to scream and shout
waved my arms and flapped about
But I couldn't scream I couldn't shout,
The song was coming from my mouth.
From my mouth,
From my mouth,

From my mouth.

-Florence and the Machine, 'Bird Song'

...

...

In the beginning, there was the Light, and the Light radiated out in all directions, passing all things by in an instant on its straight, unbending paths.

Until, after a long, long time, the most venerable of immovable objects was at last met with an unstoppable force.

Something had to give, and it was not going to be Steven Quartz Universe.

…

Steven had seldom been more grateful than when he grasped Connie's subtle indications that she meant to take the explanations upon herself, and hence, out of his hands; It once again sent an all-new wave of fondness and admiration onto the agitated sea of relief, disorientation and slowly fading terror that was still slowly settling within him.

But that would have to be a matter for another time. Now that they were finally en route for earth, there was a limited time window that he needed to take advantage of – He needed to steal his way back into the great central audience hall before Connie would be done explaining because, once that came to pass, the others might not let him go – Not if it meant leaving him alone with White Diamond.

Then there was the other two to worry about – In part out of the love that they held for his mother, they had surely agreed to use his name, and they'd certainly begun to understand that they had not exactly done right by her or their many subjects – but he wasn't sure in how far they had grasped that the two of them were actually separate.

Heck, he wasn't sure he truly knew this before this day. He could certainly always look inside and ascertain that there were nobody's thoughts but his own, but one's own thoughts were an easy thing to doubt and almost impossible to prove to others.

Though it was for a good cause and arguably a matter of self-defense, he had, in a sense misled them during their confrontation on Garnet's wedding day. It was a cruel false hope to dispel, and he felt guilty for leaving precisely because of how badly he wanted to be out of the room for it – the Crystal Gems, too, would have to lay aside any lingering hopes that she could see how far they had come, even if they had long accepted that she would never return – And in the end, even they had struggled their fair bit to understand it, and they, at least, had been somewhat used to humans. They were, after all, brought up with the notion that appearance was almost an entirely variable thing, with the only constants being their gemstones such as the one embedded in his stomach.

They would probably put on their best brave faces once he came back inside, if only he could escape the rawness of their immediate reactions, and he wanted to grant them the chance to do just that… though it was only part of the reason.

"I'll just go check up on White for a bit, alright? I'll be right back..."

Leaving his gathered friends and allies on what he could only suppose to be the flight-deck, though the only indication was the large screen showing a feed of the outside world, an enormous think taking up an entire wall of a half-circular room that was exceedingly spacious even with regards to the proportions of the intended occupant.

The ships 'eyes' has been sealed shut to keep in the atmosphere, chiefly for his and Connies' benefit, that, and because they weren't anticipating much more need for the unhindered passage of any laser blasts, hopefully, not ever again. There wasn't actually anything like an oxygen tank on board, but the enormous rooms held so much air that this was unlikely to become an issue. The interior apparel throughout this ship was pretty… minimalist, actually. And maybe that was just White's style, with homeworld being the way it was he wouldn't think think that she'd ever heard of such a thing as posters or potted plants, and there was no room for doubt that the monochrome look was most definitely on purpose.

At least, there were no distractions by which to lose the way to the audience hall, which was impossible to miss in its central topmost location.

To be honest, Steven didn't really look forward to going back in there, after what just transpired; Perhaps at some other time, he might get around to processing that chill that came into the back when he thought of her enormous clawed fingers reaching forward –

But now, he had something to do. He had to accomplish as much as he could, and there could not have been a more fruitful time for that endeavor that right now, while she was still in that malleable, transitory state – That's why he'd endured all this and put himself and his family through all this to begin with, so he'd better make it count.

It took a good bit of floating to get up to the access panel and then dash right inside the room before the enormous gate would have swished shut beside him, but the occupant of the room beyond took little note of it; To her, the titanic contraption was just an ordinary door and himself, less even less than a fluttering sparrow.

Just moments ago, it seemed like nothing would get past her all-seeing eye, so much that he almost, for a moment, believed her, but now, she plainly seemed to preoccupied with her own thoughts and notions to take much note of what was going on around her, though maybe this had pretty much been the case all along.

The first time he came in, he'd barely had the chance to utter a single sentence and based on the accounts of Blue and Yellow, it seemed that few would have had much luck telling her anything that she had not previously decided upon, but now, at the very least, she actually managed to take note of his approach before he had need to explicitly announce his presence; Before that, he found himself greeted by the enormous thundering 'Thump!' as she put down her ellbow so as to turn in his direction and have a look at him.

She was still more or less where he'd left her, crumpled in a heap on the great crystal dais, though even 'heap' was at this point a rather charitable designation on Steven's account. She was practically lying on the floor in all her glittering finery, complete with the heels, nails and elaborate hairdo, enormous lashes and all, and never mind the star-patterned cape, but there was little majesty left about her, and all the fastidious royal attributes only served to underline how the mighty had fallen, scattered on the floor with her limbs in an ungainly tumble, and the treasonous tint not yet wholly gone from her face, or the general tone of the light that emanated from her form.

He'd always been told that the bodies of gems were supposedly made of light, but as the source of them all, it was particularly apparent in her case, as she sheer energy that she put out was so immense that the excess scattered off her surface as this ambient radiance, shining so bright that her outline easily shone through her raiment, though now, the proof that came forth from within it only served to illuminate her shame.

In all honesty, Steven found the sight a little over dramatic, looking like the sort of statue that an overly proud king in a fantasy novel might have built to commemorate the humiliation of a foe, though the only thing that didn't fit would have been her expression which, thought no longer completely overwhelming, still spoke of great profound confusion.

When she saw him, she turned over, getting on both her hands, as if she were expecting some kind of answer, or rather, desperate enough to take whatever explanations she could get, for she had very few left of her own.

And though he understood this, some part of him couldn't help but find it grating that she was still somehow leaving it up to him to be the one with the answers after she had essentially plucked him into two separate pieces, and come here chiefly because it was needed to end all the devastation she had wrought, which he had reason to think had gone further and wider than he could hope to understand – He'd been in space on several occasion, but this was only just the second time he'd stepped on any other planets, if you counted Stevonnie's crash-landing within sight of that truly scooped-out planet, and heaven knows how many more such empty shells must be scattered through the cosmos.

He's not sure that he could be here if he could truly understand that scale, but somebody had to do it, and since he could not expect it out of anyone else, that somebody would have to be him, for whatever means might end this madness could only be a boon.

Though wretched indeed she could not hope to command much pity, not with her ugly, grating whines, nor for her much-deserved debasement that did not come near to what she had inflicted in others, many of them so dear to his heart that the empathy for their suffering would have to burn much hotter inside his heart, and not when he must first be concerned for what she might do when even just the barest slightest motions of her titanic shape sent tremors through the flooring –

But mighty and alien as she may have been, she was still a living thing, and divorced from any notions of justice or deserving, he felt same basic little tug that would have been elicited just as a base, thoughtless response to any creature in dire straits.

"...You..." she acknowledged, with a heavy, thoughtful pause, as he drew near, before her pale eyes darted to the doorway. "...You're alone." She concluded in a more miserable tone than would have been merited. "I thought Yellow and Blue would be with you."

Steven wasn't sure what she expected him to tell her. "Yeah… They might need some space to process all this. You did just blast them with your laser eyes and everything… So, how are you holding up?"

Though she did not seem to have paid that much mind to his questions not listening all too closely, her entire countenance was overcome with a wave of stunned realization. Steven got the impression that his arrival had merely induced her to speak out loud the thoughts that were already coursing through her mind and bouncing around in her gem by the time he'd gotten back here, though it was probably not altogether a bad thing for her to spell out in full awareness what she had even refused to consider for so long. She'd really have to work at that whole 'actually listening to others' thing, but they would not be here right now if she had not at least taken the first step, and if what it took right now for her to do that was someone to bounce her thoughts off, then so be it.

But then again, if he looked back at his experiences with Lapis, Peridot and other homeworld gems… Or even the many tense situations he'd lived through with the Crsytal gems, or what his father told him of his mother, it didn't seem like 'talking about your feelings' or open communication of any kind had really been a common practice on the homeworld, so perhaps this was a moment to appreciate things whose absence he could never have conceived of.

It was easy to see how his mom, or even the rest of homeworld society, would have come to be the way it was because she was this way, she'd built it up from the ground and they had all come from her, but it was more than that: When two humans met each other on the open field, almost the first thing they would need to tell each other were what their names were, what they did for a living, and for what purpose they had come to this place. With two gems, especially homeworld gems, much of this would have been clear at a glance – One could immediately assume that any Ruby was called 'Ruby', and that she was a guard or foot-soldier of sorts. You would immediately know their background and occupation and have some idea of what their abilities and life experiences might have been like, and on top of that, you might be able to deduce something of their basic characteristics by looking at their coloration, the placement of their gem, and which court they belonged to, which their uniforms would usually helpfully supply for you.

You could conduct most basic interactions without ever asking the other person about themselves or needing to gleam any sort of knowledge about them, furthermore, the most common social scripts concerned hierarchy and orders, with this being the chief context in which it would be expected to have anything to say so each other. On earth acquiring some communication and constructive expression skills would be considered part of maturity, but that, again, would be a far less emphasized concept among ageless beings that are born fully formed. Emotional maturity was definitely a thing – in the relatively brief time he had known her, he'd seen Amethyst's increase in leaps and bounds.

There wasn't necessarily a hard limitation, but a network of factors that would facilitate certain biases, until it didn't seem so strange anymore to come across cases like the Topazes, who had never told each other how grateful they were for each other's support until introduced to the example of himself and Lars.

– it's not like there weren't many nonsensical things things on Earth that had often raised the eyebrows or Garnet and Pearl.

Considering that it was no longer so astonishing that White Diamond, who might well be older than humanity and yet had somehow never had to process the experience of being proven wrong in public would crumble when introduced to ideas that to her might be as incomprehensible and alien as she had at first looked to him.

Already, the odds of coming as far as to get her pondering to herself in such breathless small whimpers had been considered minuscule beyond any estimation, though it surely confirmed all his suspicions about just how startlingly novel the idea of self-reflection was to the frameworks of her mind. She's never once strayed into those depths, so she was unaware of the dragons that lay waiting there.

"They wereafraid of me..." she mumbled, her voice trembling under the weight of what, to Steven, had been obvious from the moment when Yellow and Blue had first mentioned her by name "They were really, actually terrified..."

Then her eyes turned toward Steven – really and wholly this time, and very quietly she croaked:

"Did… I do this?"

Her stance and mannerisms took on an almost pleading quality.

"Did Pink go away...because of me?"

Steven suppressed the urge to sigh, and somberly he replied: "Only mom could answer that."

Face to face with the uncertainty she'd turned away from all her long, long life, at the mercy of the unknown which she had always denied, stripped of the thought constructs and rationalizations she had spun up to make sense of existence and endure its terror, she felt as bared as she did on the first of her days when she was alone with the pale rocks and the cruel, tar-black skies, she crumbled now as she had then.

Her arms shook, and with her clenched fists she set herself down onto the crystalline floor, and she wailed piteously, garish grating noises: "I DONT WAAANT THIS!"

She had been wholly defeated a good while ago, but only when she caught note of the iridescent droplets that had dripped onto her knuckles did she finally receive the coup the grace. "Are these-? Did they come from-?"

She might have concealed her face in the crooks of her arms, but the errant flurries of colored light still made their ways onto the walls.

Bereft of all remaining dignity, she beseeched the cosmos in a raw, bunglesome screech: "Do I really have to feel this disgusting feeling for the rest of time?!"

It was unclear what sort of feeling she really meant. Guilt? Regret? Grief? Shame? Frustration? Wrath at not having her way, or just simple displeasure? Her discernment in these matters might not have been differentiated enough to name it anything more than distinctly unpleasant.

Those who feared her across the galaxy might have called it karmic punishment, or not nearly punished enough. The world that had caved in all around her was built up from the ground of her own beliefs and actions, her despair self-inflicted to the last. She was discernibly in pain, but it was a shallow, selfish, superficial pain, a frivolous lamentation for something that could not, and should not ever have been.

Here was an ancient, wicked creature, and an incarnation of folly besides that; she had made her own bed, and now she was laying in it at last, after Billions had become dust under her feet, and it occurred to Steven that he was probably the only being in the universe who could possibly feel sorry for her.

Yes, because he was her relative, and in a sense the same kind of being, but also because he was not the same, and because of the parts of him that were come of a completely different, unrelated source, because he wasn't raised in terror of her and had his own being apart from her, and his own life back in Beach city.

It's not like he didn't fear her at all, but it was only in proportion to her power, not how one fears the horror from one's childhood, or the carnivorous slayer that had preyed on ones' ancestors, not deep in his substance, like Garnet, Pearl or even his mother must have feared her. He didn't know if he could have been quite as fair and patient if it had been his mother weeping on that floor, though her crimes were but a minute fraction of her maker's, simply because he was personally involved - But if he was going to speak against unrealistic standards, it was best that he start with himself rather than torment himself with hypothetical scenarios that he now knew to be impossible.

Looking in from the outside, he could behold White Diamond and see that see was not all that impressive and her supposed superiority laughable, but neither did he flinch away in instinct or reject her with the force that one kept between themselves and their physical or spiritual annihilation. He could laugh at her, but he could also pity her for that very same absurdity, and feel sadness on behalf of her pain and the apparent emptiness of her being.

Most would not have dared to go near her, even if they had somehow felt the inclination, not when even the most minuscule of her careless movements could have squashed them like a fly – But by now, Steven had experienced what it was like to be Obsidian, how they could be mighty and firm like a cathedral tower and still protect Connie's little form cradled in their massive hand, her disproportionate size was not near as daunting, nor was the luminosity that filled her, not when he knew that he too, held the same light somewhere within, interwoven with his fingertips, light and stone in flesh and blood.

So he strode up toward her, and gently reached out his hand to lightly pat her on the forehead. (Her enormous gem was just about the smoothest, most pristine surface he'd ever felt, cool, regular and otherwordly despite the heated thoughts it must have contained and the light that shone from it; Looking in he saw only brightness, and his own reflection)

Looking past her fingers, dainty in proportion through colossal in size, peering past her long lashes, she now appraised him in earnest, all principles by which she had once form her preemptive judgments smashed on the floor before her, and for once, really looked, seeing him, like she hadn't truly seen anything in a long, long time.

"You're a very strange little creature. I don't understand you at all. I have lived a long time, and I have never seen anything like you…."

"I get that a lot." he admitted, mildly sheepish."To be honest, even the Crystal Gems say that it took them a long time to understand it all. I'm supposed to be the first half-human half gem there ever was, but to be honest, it doesn't really feel all that special, though everyone expects me to. In the end, I'm just me. Doing me stuff… I don't really have it figured out myself."

"That makes two of us then, strange little creature. I don't understand. I'm not sure I understand… anything anymore, or that I ever did… I was wrong… about you. If I was wrong about you, how do I know I'm not wrong about everything else?

I'm not supposed to be wrong. If I can be wrong, how will I ever know for sure if I'm right? How can I be sure of anything ever? I'm supposed to have the answers. I'm supposed to know what to do. But how can I do that if I don't know if I'm right?"

"You know White Diamond, I don't think anyone is ever really sure if they're truly right, or if they're doing the right thing. I'm sure I don't… I try to help people, but it doesn't always work, and sometimes it all blows up in my face. It's happened to me many times. It happens to everyone, no matter how great they are..."

Bracing himself for a story, he sat down on the topmost step of the dais she was bedded on, and tried to gather his thoughts and put them in order even as the hot flurries of his own feelings bid him to tarry.

"You know, when I was growing up, everyone told me that my mom was so great and perfect in everything, that she was the one who fixed everything and helped everyone. This probably sounds pretty weird to you, but a whole lot happened in the time since she left homeworld. These days, I think that she was simply one of the first people who was ever nice to them in any way, not to mention the very reason that they could live the lives they wanted, so it makes sense that they'd have a lot of admiration for her. No one had ever told them before that they were important, so they thought that they were important because of her.

But back when I was little, I didn't understand that. I just heard all these stories about how she was supposed to be so great, and how much everybody missed her. In a way, it was just like what happened with you and the others.

Everyone was lost, and in pain, and didn't know what to do, and I couldn't stand it. So I thought that, if I wanted to help them, if I wanted to be what they all needed – you would probably say 'to make everything better'… I thought that I had to be just like her. Before I knew it, I had convinced myself that that's what I was supposed to be, and that as long as I didn't manage to be just like her, and do all that she could do, I wasn't good enough…

And that hurt. It really did. It's a really painful thing, to always be compared with someone else. I felt like I could never measure up. Everyone made her out to be so perfect, and that was really, really scary, 'cause I didn't think I could do it even if I tried...

There were times when I was really, really mad at her for that.

But after coming here, I think that she would probably be horrified if she knew that. She didn't want me or Amethyst to think think that we had to be anything. She left homeworld to get away from all that. It's not nice, what you did to Yellow, and Blue, and mom, and all the others too… That's that last thing she would have wanted for us…. But things didn't go how she wanted. In the end, the forces of homeworld came back to earth, and Garnet, Amethyst and Pearl had to face them all by themselves.

And then I started hearing about all the things she did wrong. Everything she'd been hiding from us. About homeworld. About what she'd done, and who she really was, and I just felt betrayed. We all did. The weird thing is, I think that's probably exactly how she felt when she found out the truth about the empire, and when she ran away… I almost thought of doing that, more than once. If I didn't, it's only because my Dad and the Crystal Gems were a little better at showing me that they really cared about me. They didn't always listen to me, and I didn't always think things though, but in the end, we started to understand each other.

First I thought she was this scary perfect person that I couldn't possibly measure up to. Then, I was afraid that she was this horrible monster who did all these horrible things, and I was afraid that I was going to become just like her and make all the same mistakes that she did. The Crystal Gems were all looking to me, but I didn't really know what I was doing at all.

But when I found out the truth, after Pearl told me everything, and meeting you guys, who knew her when she was younger and not all that impressive yet, I started to see that she wasn't really any different than me. She didn't really know what she was doing either, and she sure didn't have it all figured out… she was just trying her best and trying to find the answer along the way, just like me. And once I knew that, I wasn't really frightened of her anymore.

If anything, I feel sad for her. I had my dad and my friends and the other Crystal Gems to help me figure things out. But mom was all alone. No one before had ever tried to do what she did.

So despite everything, in the end I'm glad that I came here. I understand a lot of things better now.

But you know, if she had just been honest to begin with, I she hadn't gone out of her way to hide everything that went wrong, I don't think anyone would have been scared of her or mad at her to begin with. We wouldn't have expected her to have all the answers or do everything right, after all, we don't have the answers either. It's not like I never pretended that everything was fine when it wasn't because I didn't want the others to worry, or do be disappointed… But it never works in the end.

I think no one ever really knows what they're doing. We're all just trying to do the best we can, and hoping that we get it right. Me, my mom, even you. There's no one who's always right, or who always knows what to do."

"But then… what do we do? How can we ever be sure of anything?"

The small boy smiled. "We probably can't. Everyone makes mistakes sometimes. I guess the best we can do is to keep that in mind and try to notice them sooner instead of later. We'll just have to think over what we believe and what we are doing and check again and again that it all makes sense and fits together.

And we can listen to others, in case they noticed something that we didn't. The place where mom went wrong, I think, is with the things that she decided all by herself without telling anyone. If she'd told her friends everything she knew, maybe they could have helped her more… though I guess I did something like that too once, back when I turned myself in.

But if you never consider that you might be wrong… if you never listen to anyone, and never let anyone help you… if you never go out there and check if what you think is actually right, and if you try to decide everything all on your own…

I think it would be very difficult to know how to get things right."

For a moment, the silence lay heavily above them, brimming with resonant significance.

"But you now what the great thing about asking others for help is? It means you don't have to do it alone."

Ages seemed to pass, and the First Light found herself reminded of a distant, different time, back when she had different wishes, long before she had come to be known as 'White Diamond', so long ago now that it seemed like little more that a long faded dream.

Then, at last, the mighty being sat up, wiping the glittering tears from her face with her right forearm – the first she had shed in her life, which had lasted over a little over half a million years. It was a grossly negligent waste, really, that stuff must be brimming with all manner of mystical powers – but at last, it seemed like she had managed to regain her composure somewhat, and then, once she had braced herself for the blow, she finally asked:

"You really can't access her at all? Not even before you… reformed?"

Steven shook his head. "There was something like… empty rooms that could have been hers, but not more than that. And even if I'm wrong and she's still around somewhere, I don't think she's ever coming back."

"Then… we have only spoken thrice before."

"Yep. I'm afraid so."

"No wonder that I didn't understand anything about you… you really are some sort of organic… Oh my stars!" she exclaimed, as something suddenly occurred to her. "There really was no way to know what was going to happen just now, was there? I was so sure that Pink was just going to reform, and then, everything would go back the way it was…, but I truly had no idea… I could have shattered you!

...I'm glad I didn't. I really know nothing about you..."

"From what I've heard, Pearl almost did the same thing when I was a baby- that means, when I was very new."

"I know that." she snapped, likely out of habit, for she caught herself immediately: "...actually, I'm not sure I do… I have been wrong about you before."

"That's not so strange, considering that we've only just met. But you know what? We might be strangers right now, but we don't have to be. I might not be Pink Diamond, but I came from her, the same way that she came from you. Which sort of means that I came from you as well. On earth, we would say that we're family."

And at that, he hadn't expected more than the blank confused strares that he'd gotten when he'd introduced the concept to Blue, Yellow and all the other homeworld gems. But instead, by whatever hidden powers of perception she had (imperfect as they may be) she seemed to understand what he meant almost immediately:

"Light of my light."

"We got off to a bad start the last two times, so maybe we should start from the beginning again… Hi. I'm Steven Universe. I'm from the planet Earth, and I'm a Crystal gem, too. Nice to meet you!"

And he reached out a tiny arm to her, comical as it must have looked.

"So, introductions are in order, right..." She anxiously wrung her hands. "I've never… actually done this before. I've never actually talked to any organics. My gems usually know who I am… I'm not sure I know that anymore… "

"Well, my Dad always says there's a first time for everything."

Thus, she awkwardly reached out her hand, and Steven did his best not to flinch at the specter of her clawed fingers approaching, but at last, he grasped her index finger with both hands and endeavored to attempt an up-and-down motion reminiscent of a handshake.

"Hello there." she volunteered. "I am called the White Diamond."

…

The door opened.

Judging by the looks on everyone's faces, they already knew, and Garnet and Bismuth looked just about ready to charge in and get him. Even Yellow and Blue turned around when grim faces when they beheld White's unmistakable glow – but their expressions changed immediately once they actually saw her.

Gone was her wide, towering posture; Rather than spread far, her arms were awkwardly picking at the slit of her gown, and the corners of her eyes were stained with tears.

"Everyone… I think White has something to say to you."

She stepped forward, fighting down a grimace, and placed herself before her two remaining scions first of all.

And though she first tarried, and clearly had to forcefully wring the effort out of herself, she then spoke at last: "I- I owe you an apology.

You were right, and I was wrong… about everything."

Bismuth's jaw almost dropped to the floor, and Pearl's eyes looked like they were just about to pop out of her skull; Peridot and Amethyst actually blurted out various audible "Wow!"s, but most telling of all were Yellow and Blue, whose expressions betrayed that they had never once heard these words from their makers' black lips, not in all the tens of thousand years they had lived.

"Ehm, White? Are you feeling alright?"

"No, dear Moonshine, not at all. ...She's not coming back. That is, Pink is. I've confirmed it with my own eyes..."

She'd staid back at first toward their maker, having made to stick close behind Blue as she'd been the first to rush but it took little more than Blue covering her mouth with a distressed look for Yellow to come forward and take it upon herself to help their creater to the lonesome throne that stood all by itself in the frontmost third of the room, still a good distance away from the screen it was facing.

Blue, in the meantime, turned to the gathered rebels "Would you give us some space?"

"In case you haven't noticed, we don't take orders from you." said Bismuth.

"Then I request it", but she waited not to make sure that they had gone toward the door or indeed anywhere else before she followed after her kindred and before long, she was at her maker's side, approaching cautiously reluctant at first, but, as soon as she dared to convince herself once again of the foolish hope that she wouldn't be rebuffed, she stood right by her, firmly grasping her hand in both of hers, and drawing near to her on her seat, so that her hair loop hung in part over the creator's ample shoulder pads.

Yellow did not have the faith to come quite so near, but she probably wanted to, so she kept herself leaned against the armrest of the great chair, keeping them both in her watchful eye as her face as a whole had sobered – She had always suspected that all this might be a little too good to be true, and was not quite so given to be swept away by her passions as Blue, at least not by the same sort, but no matter how her understanding tried to detach itself, she was still aware of the feeling welling up somewhere deep down. Some acerbic, hardened part of her couldn't help but surmise that it was now finally White's turn to face the bitter reality outside the castle walls that had been her life for the past six thousand years, just as they had been Blue's.

Blue, for her part, could be seen to be making some effort to restrain her psychic powers, and perhaps instead channeled that feeling into the firm grasp of her hands and the vivid feeling in her voice; Perhaps all she'd ever wanted was for White to acknowledge the truth, and feel its unforgiving lashings along with her, so that she could know for certain that it had mattered to her, too.

Moments ago they wouldn't come near her; They thought her so terrible, even broken on the floor, and couldn't see anything other than further threats even in her desperate, reaching hand, but though they were still wary, it did not take much but the faintest glimmer of hope for them to rush to her again -

Blue was too sentimental, too lingering in her attachments and too enamored with dreams of the past, and Yellow was too dutiful and protective of their kin – and for that weakness, she had often scorned them, and she had spat at the love that she'd still always relied on to be there, and by those hooks, she had caught them time and time again until they came again for her, coming repentant on their knees waiting for her to kick them to the curb time and time again, and through the gifts that, in another life, could have been their greatest virtues, she had ruined and twisted them until there was nothing good left of them, concerned only with reducing them to things she could use, tools that could be bent to her warped purposes.

If they'd had any idea what was good for them, or any good sense left, they would have deserted her long ago just as Pink had done, but much to her luck, they were great fools; But not so much as the fool who had taken all that for granted until she had nearly outworn their threadbare patience.

She had thought them sorely beneath her, even unworthy insults to her likeness, but right now, she couldn't say by what grievous injustice of blind luck they were still at her sides.

"It's alright..." she said, with the after-storm calm of acceptance, the aftertaste of bitter pills swallowed but the relief of strained deceptions abandoned, "I have known all along. In truth, I have known for six-thousand years.

But I didn't want to believe it. And didn't want to know. I didn't want to hear. And because of that, I have left you to suffer through it all on your own… I didn't want to think of it, or be reminded of it- . In truth, I wasn't there for you at all, was I?"

"I don't care!" cried Blue, though it was surely not the truth. "All that matters is that you're back here with us!"

And she threw her arms around both of them, long sleeves hanging down, startling them both quite a bit as they crashed into each other like a cubist rendition of ungainly scarecrows, having no idea what to do, least of all with each other. Yellow froze and White stuttered out something between utter panic and indignation, but Blue would not let go of either.

"All this time, we all wished so badly for Pink to be back with us, but when she was actually here, the truth is that we didn't really appreciate her. We didn't listen to her, and we failed in her in many ways. We cared for her, but we didn't really show it. I know I didn't… And we didn't show you properly either, Yellow, despite all that you did for us-

Maybe things will never be as they were. Maybe it's too late to make up for what we did. Maybe she left this world, never knowing that we would miss her even a little bit- But if I were to lose you too, or Yellow, or Steven, for that matter… I couldn't stand it! If I were to be shattered somehow-"

"Don't say such a thing-"

"No, Yellow. It needs to be said. If anything happened to any of us, and you didn't know how important you are to me, I couldn't stand it! So now and forever, I want you to know."

Then she let go, and looked straight at them, and there was a new fire rekindled in her eyes that had not been there in a long, long time, and maybe never before.

"All this time, I kept wondering what Pink would say if she were here. What she would think, what she would want us to do. When I realized that there was nothing I could do for her anymore, that nothing I might do would ever reach her, I couldn't stand that… Yellow stood by me and urged me to move forward, but I couldn't find it in me to do that… .Or rather, I didn't want to. When I pictured us going on like we always did, carrying on like ever before, as if Pink had never existed, I couldn't bear the thought! I wasn't thinking of Yellow, or of our gems, and that's another regret that I will have to carry.

But now, everything is different. We know now, what she would have wanted, or what she would have said to us. Now we know what she would have wanted us to do! She wanted us to get along. And she wanted us to change the way we run this empire.

She felt like she couldn't tell us, and in the end, she thought we wouldn't listen unless she made war on us… But it's not too late to fulfill her wishes. We can still honor her legacy. We can make it so that it could never be like she never existed. And I think we owe it to her, and to Steven.

And why shouldn't she have a say? She's one of us.

So even if Pink never really came back to us in the end, I can't help but feel as though she has left us one last gift."

After a brief glance at White, who was, after the day she'd had, far too nonplussed to make any decisions, Yellow nodded firmly. "Let's do it."

She turned to White: "...unless you have any objections."

"I can think of many, actually!

...but I'm no longer certain if they have any merit. I'm no longer certain of very many things at all. We've been doing my way for a long, long time, and as much as I hate to admit it, it doesn't seem to be working... So for once, I think I shall be leaving this up to you three. And Steven too, of course."

...

"Guys, you think they'll let us back inside before we get to Earth?" remarked Amethyst after a while. "I wonder what they're talking about in there for so long."

A/N:

I've had all these scenes in my head for so long. Despite everything, I'm kinda glad they're finally out.

In the Next Chapter: "The Empire is Dead – Long live the Commonwealth!"