"Is this frozen?"
"No, chef. It's fresh."
"LIAR!" Peridot yelled at the screen of Stephen's new TV. After everyone had left in the morning, Peridot had accidentally turned the TV on, which was playing an episode from Kitchen Nightmares. At first startled by the sudden noise emitted from the TV, Peridot soon became enamored with the show it was playing. It fascinated her to watch Gordon Ramsay examine the details of the restaurants, noticing each of their flaws. The way he was able to command the entire kitchen, demonstrating his superior cooking skills whilst still maintaining his composure was truly admirable. She'd been watching the show all day, the channel having been playing episode after episode. Peridot even started to learn what some of the cooking terms meant.
"I-it was frozen, chef." the waitress confessed to Ramsay, admitting that the head chef was lying to him.
"I KNEW IT!"
"Why would he lie to me?" Gordon Ramsay questioned the stunned waitress, who had no real excuse.
"WHY WOULD YOU LIE TO CHEF RAMSAY?! He was trying to help you, clods!"
Stephen and the gems entered the house, promptly interrupting Peridot's Kitchen Nightmares session. Having been discovered, she ran into the bathroom before anyone could say anything to her about watching the TV, leaving the station still on as she didn't know how to turn it off. No one said anything to her about it though; having Peridot living with them didn't really seem to be that big of a problem at the moment.
Pearl sighed as she grabbed the remote and turned the television off. She looked behind her shoulder to the front window, which was still broken from Stephen's idea of a joke in the morning. It was annoying knowing she'd be the one to have to repair it yet again, but it's not like anyone would care if she complained. Stephen walked past her, going into the bathroom to take a shower. Garnet sat on the couch, taking a moment to herself. It had been pretty tough on her to keep everyone under control lately, what with Stephen causing such a disturbance and acting so different. Pearl began to silently clean up the broken glass shards, the two remaining in silence.
As Stephen got in the shower, he kept the GoPro in his bellybutton, but made sure to take the gem sticker he had placed on it off. He had bought a sticker awhile back to cover up the fact that he was lacking a gem, as well as to hide the fact that he had a camera longed in its stead. It was pasted onto the wall so that he could reuse it once he finished bathing.
Much to the real Steven's horror, he was forced to watch Stephen take a shower, all from the perspective of his naval. He couldn't look away, as he had been frozen while his eyes were open. Small drops of water speckled the camera's lens as Stephen turned on the water. A bar of soap was grabbed, Steven hearing the scrubbing sound faintly. Some soap had begun to cover the lens as well, blurring most of his vision of the shower. Though, that was probably for the best. It was seriously uncomfortable for Steven to have to watch this, and Stephen knew it; he wanted his brother to suffer as much as possible, even if in the most obscure of ways. After a painful half hour of forcefully watching the boy shower, Stephen had finished. He turned the water off and opened the shower curtain, giving Steven a detailed view of what used to be his bathroom.
As Stephen went to reach for a towel, a loud shriek interrupted him:
"HE DOESN'T HAVE A GEM!" Peridot, who had been sitting silently in the bathroom thus far, had noticed something peculiar about Stephen when he opened the curtain. Where his old pink gem used to be was now the shiny black glass of a camera lens. She didn't quite understand what this meant, but it was concerning nonetheless. Stephen, realizing his cover could be blown, immediately knocked the GoPro from his bellybutton and grabbed the fake sticker, licking it and pasting it where the camera belonged. He immediately started to charge, trying to catch her before she could say anything further. She gasped and ran out of the bathroom, Stephen not far behind. Poor Steven, who now only had the visual context of an obscure angle in the bathroom, saw the bare ass of his naked brother running out to catch Peridot, hearing the loud sound of smacking wet feet on the wooden floor.
Peridot ran into the center of the room, pointing behind her towards Stephen as she stopped in front of Garnet and Pearl. "HE-HE-THERE'S UH, A BLACK THING WHERE HIS GEM IS-" she was gesturing frantically to Stephen, who was close behind her. Pearl set down the hammer she was using to fix the window, slightly confused on what Peridot meant.
"Wha-" was all Pearl could say, before Stephen took the hammer from her hand and grabbed Peridot's wrist. He raised the hammer up to her forehead, silently threatening to shatter her if she said anything further. A small scream was all Peridot could utter before Stephen gently clinked the tip of the hammer to her gem, an indication he wasn't joking. She shivered. "Don't." he hissed. Pearl was about to intervene, when the front door opened with a large slam.
"NO! STOP IT!" Amethyst barged into the house, small tears in her eyes. "I'm done with this!" She yanked the hammer away from Stephen before he could harm Peridot, throwing it away from him. It landed in the wall, leaving a large imprint. She was too distracted to worry about what she was doing.
"Oh, my god!" Pearl yelled, now realizing that she'd have to repair the wall now too. "You know what? It's fine. Why not."
Amethyst was now fully in tears as she stared directly at Stephen, her fists clenched. "You're sick, you know that?"
"YEAH, YOU ARE," Peridot pointed at him, shaking. Amethyst was actually referring to something entirely different then the scenario she had walked in on, but Peridot didn't know or really care. She was just extremely shaken up from every encounter with Stephen, always ending with something terrifying, and was happy for once to assume that someone was agreeing with her about him.
"Amethyst-"
"Don't speak to me!" She was even yelling back at Garnet. "Steven, tell me, why would you do this?"
Stephen turned to face her, puzzled. He couldn't recall hurting Amethyst in any way, so why would she be so upset? "Why would I do what?"
"Why would you do this?" Amethyst was holding a soggy bag in her hand, reeking of an unidentified foul scent. Its contents spilled onto the floor as she upturned it, revealing a horrid mess of human organs. Onion's organs. "This was a human child..."
Taking off her visor, Garnet looked down at the clumped mess in horror. Her third eye was opened, too, showing a great sadness that was rarely ever revealed to the others. For once, she was speechless. She had seen many deaths, and experienced many losses, but never like this. This was a disgrace to Onion's corpse. Beside her, Pearl moaned in disgust, turning her face away from Amethyst. It haunted her to imagine the gruesome torment this child faced in order for his body to be this mangled. The smell of it alone made her sick, but knowing it was from an innocent human child caused her to throw up bile onto the ground. She didn't even try to restrain herself.
Also, forgetting her scare from before, Peridot shrieked and backed away from the body as soon as it was revealed, pressing herself into the coffee table. She didn't know much about humans, but she knew for sure that they weren't supposed to look like that. Organs were supposed to be inside a human, and normal children didn't have deep pools of rancid red fluid staining the floor under them. She covered her mouth as she tried to prevent gagging from the putrid sight of decomposing meat. Everyone stood still for some time, not sure on how to move forward from this.
"I knew something was up with Vidalia this morning." Breaking the deathly silence, Amethyst looked down at her feet, hardly raising her voice. "She had told Onion to go and buy himself a doughnut this morning. And, you know, he hadn't been back since he left all day. That's why she sounded so odd this morning; she was worried about her missing son. And when I came over in the afternoon, I found her in tears, broken down on the floor. Yellowtail and Sour Cream were there, too. Crying. Horribly, too. Like, I never heard anyone cry like that before. Then they told me about Onion. They showed me his body." Her voice started to crack. "I-It still had the remains of the doughnut he had bought this morning on him, still. He was just trying to go home."
Stephen wasn't sure what to say to this. He didn't think killing Onion was that big of a deal, but it was much more than that. Onion was merely a tally on the ever-growing list of victims whose lives were cut short by Stephen. The severity of Stephen's actions seemed to have finally been acknowledged by the gems at this point.
Pearl had finally recomposed herself, having gotten over the initial shock of Onion's body. Now, a whole whirlwind of emotions, including the shock from before, plagued her. Guilt, horror, disgust, anger, even sympathy for the boy. This was all so sudden, it seemed. Or maybe, maybe it wasn't so sudden. Maybe Steven had been doing stuff like this long before, and they'd only just now realized. How could she and the others have worked so hard to raise Steven right, only for him to become a monster? Somehow, she blamed this on herself. Maybe she wasn't the role model for him that she thought she was. But, even if it was true that the gems weren't the best example for him, they certainly never provoked him to do anything like this. The Crystal Gems had fought for love and freedom, not death and destruction, and Steven had always cherished that about them. Something was very wrong with him, Pearl thought, for him to have become so corrupt. "What do you have to say for yourself?" her voice shook slightly as she spoke, still not fully desensitized to what just happened.
"I thought he stole my doughnut." was all Stephen said, a blank expression on his normally cheery face. It was hard to guess what he was thinking about at the moment, if he even was thinking at all. "I guess he didn't."
"You guess?" Amethyst threw her arms in the air. "You killed a kid for a doughnut that he maybe stole?! He was only nine years old! Was his life really worth a fucking snack that he didn't even take!?" she was now boiling with anger, almost to the point of hatred for Stephen. He still had that same expressionless face, a face that filled her with burning fury. He didn't even seem sorry for what he did.
"And you guys think the Diamonds are bad when you have THAT thing running around? What is wrong with you all?" Peridot stood up, placing her hands on her hips. Having gained a portion of her confidence back, it was immediately stripped away as Garnet also stood up and stared down at her angrily. As she just began to go into a rant about the horrific ideology of the Crystal Gems, Garnet stopped her. This was the last thing anyone needed right now. What was going on was personal, and Peridot would only make things worse. "Get on the fridge." she pointed to the white refrigerator in the kitchen. She would be out the way up there, and Garnet wouldn't have to worry about her causing any more trouble. "Excuse me-" "NOW. And don't say another word." Garnet snarled. Accepting defeat, Peridot grumpily stomped over to the kitchen, mumbling incoherently. She sighed as she climbed on top of the refrigerator, having known its name from the cooking show she had been watching not too long ago. Garnet kept a close eye on her until she had completely climbed up. "Stay." Garnet pointed at her, who stuck her tongue out in response. She didn't move from the fridge, though.
After getting Peridot out of the way, Garnet took a deep breath and leaned against the wall, sighing and rubbing her temples. "It's going to be alright." She told herself. Once Peridot was on the fridge, Garnet turned her attention back to Stephen. Her expression soured when looking at the boy.
"Steven," Garnet spoke up, catching everyone's attention. She had been so quiet since they saw Onion, even more than usual. Stephen almost forgot she was even there at first. She sounded sorrowful and uncertain, and she spoke softly. A brief silence fell over the room as she hesitated on what to do. By the time she resumed, she was talking more to herself than to Stephen at that point. "Where did I go wrong?" was the only audible phrase coherently heard by the rest. It was such a mournful, cold statement, uttered with little emotion. The room immediately went silent as all eyes turned to face her.
Garnet had never spoken about her concerns of Steven's recent outbursts; she hadn't wanted to burden Pearl and Amethyst with that. Everyone was already struggling enough with their own anxieties, some more than others. She never felt it necessary to confide in anyone else; she had herself. Besides, if Garnet said anything that expressed uncertainty or worry, even for a moment, the others would certainly freak out. She had to be strong for them, she believed. But still, it was eating away at her, day and night, to know that her little Steven had grown to become such a villain. She had tried to tell herself, over and over again the past few days, that it was just what Greg said: that he was going through some stuff and needed space. But Greg was wrong. This wasn't from puberty, or over an argument with a friend, or whatever other excuse could be made, this was pure malice. Only something truly evil could do what Stephen had willingly done, and it tore away at Garnet's very being to come to that fact. The spunky little boy she had come to love so much was gone.
Garnet could feel her physical form coming undone; Sapphire and Ruby had been too overwhelmed to stay focused on being responsible. "Where did we go wrong?!" she shouted this time, her vision starting to blur. She could feel the couple's connected emotions, their anger, their sorrow, all of the worry and fear that was held in for so long; all of it becoming separated from each other as she started to disconnect from herself, losing touch with reality as tears fell down her face. Garnet clung to herself, trying to not lose focus, but it was impossible. Garnet had come undone, Sapphire and Ruby falling on the ground where their fusion had stood only moments prior.