CHAPTER THREE
"Hey Stee-man," Amethyst greeted him from the sofa as soon as he walked in the door.
"Hi." He walked over to Peridot's door and knocked. "Your motivational donut," he said proudly when she opened the door.
"Wow, thanks."
"Absolutely no severed thumbs," he added as she took a bite out of it.
"How come she gets a donut and I don't?" Amethyst complained as Peridot paused mid-chew and stared suspiciously down at her donut.
"Because she asked," Steven said simply.
At that moment, Pearl and Garnet stepped out of the Temple and smiled identical smiles at him. "Good morning, Steven," Garnet greeted.
"Are you hungry?" Pearl asked, taking a step towards the kitchen. "I could fix you some breakfast."
"Nah, he's fine," Amethyst said before Steven could answer. "He's just been on a breakfast date with Connie."
Normally Steven would've ignored this sort of comment, maybe rolled his eyes at most, but now, it was just the opening he needed. "It wasn't a date, OK?" he said firmly. "Connie and me are just friends, nothing more."
"Of course," Pearl said soothingly. "Nobody expects you to rush into anything, you're still young."
"I think Connie's still too young to actually get married anyway," Amethyst added. "How old is it for humans? Thirty? Of course, you don't have to married to have babies," she mused. "But maybe hold off on that one a little longer, yeah? We only just got used to you."
Steven took a deep breath and tried not release it all in a scream of frustration as Pearl began openly contemplating whether they should've expanded the house to make room for Connie as well when they'd built Peridot's room. He wanted to give up and storm out, but he could feel Peridot's eyes on his back and knew she was watching, waiting to see how this would play out. "I'm serious, you guys!" he tried again. "Connie and I aren't dating. We're not a couple, and we never have been a couple, and we don't plan to become a couple in the future."
"Don't be ridiculous, Steven," Pearl said dismissively. "You two are perfect for each other."
This comment was so incredibly patronizing, Steven was momentarily stunned into silence. Then fury rose up within him and he opened his mouth to respond, but before he could do so, Peridot stepped forward and placed a warning hand on his arm. "Shouldn't Steven and Connie be the ones to make that decision?" she interjected, then flinched as Pearl and Amethyst both turned to glare at her. "I-I mean," she stammered, "isn't that one of the reasons you rebelled against Homeworld? So you could be in charge of your own lives?"
"Peridot's right." Garnet finally spoke up and stepped forward. "Maybe Steven and Connie will end up together and maybe they won't. But that's something they have to decide on their own." And with that, she turned around and walked back into the Temple.
There were several seconds of uncomfortable silence, and then Amethyst exhaled loudly. "Jeez, what happened at this breakfast date? Did she dump you or something?"
"It wasn't-" Steven began, and gave up. "Yes. That's exactly what happened. We met for breakfast and she told me she's met someone else," he said, sending out a silent apology to Connie as he did so. He knew it wasn't really fair of him to throw her under the bus like this, but if it got Pearl and Amethyst to finally shut up about them dating, he was sure she'd understand. "But it's OK! I wasn't bothered about it, and that's um, that's when I realized I only liked her as a friend anyway. We had a long talk, and it's all cool now. But can we please not talk about it any more, because it's making me uncomfortable."
Pearl and Amethyst exchanged quick glances. "Of course," Pearl finally said, stepping forward and giving him a small smile. "We didn't mean to upset you, and we'll leave you alone now if that's what you want."
Steven sagged with relief. "Thanks guys," he said, and began inching towards the warp pad. "Anyway, I gotta go now, me and Peridot have um, a thing we gotta do." And before anybody could ask what that thing was, including Peridot herself, he pulled her onto the warp pad and they vanished, reappearing a few seconds later in the strawberry battlefield. "Ugh! That was so frustrating!" he complained.
"I'm guessing there isn't actually a 'thing', is there?" Peridot asked.
"No, I just had to get out of there," he confessed. Then he pulled her in for a hug. "Thanks for sticking up for me back there."
"You're welcome," she said. "I had no idea they were that bad."
"They're usually not as bad as that." He released her and they began walking slowly through the strawberries, hand in hand. "I guess maybe it's because I don't tend to argue about it. I'll give them a couple of days for it to sink in before I tell them about us, is that OK?"
"That's fine," Peridot agreed.
As they walked together in companionable silence, her attention was caught by the sheer size of the strawberries, and she felt a pang of loss for her crops back at the barn. She'd been much less ambitious after that first harvest after discovering that she'd grown far too much food for Steven, Greg and Amethyst to ever eat, and that much of it had had to be given away, but she'd still enjoyed tending her garden. Nothing she'd ever grown had been as large as the strawberries though. She wondered if their unnatural size was something to do with the weapons that had been used in the battle here, or if gem fragments in the soil were responsible, and that reminded her of something she'd been meaning to talk to Steven about. "Steven? Can I ask you about bubbles?"
"Bubbles?" Steven repeated in surprise. "What about them?"
"When I bubbled my first gem, you told me that when I tapped the top, it would go 'home'," she began. "But how does it know where 'home' is? If I had tapped the bubble containing that Obsidian in the Kindergarten, where would the bubble have gone? And why do your bubbles all go to Garnet's room and not the beach house?"
"Uh… that's a good question actually, I guess I never really thought about it before," he admitted. "I suppose I just assumed they went 'home' because that's where I ended up when Garnet sent me-"
"Garnet sent you in a bubble!?" Peridot interrupted in amazement. "I thought you could only send gems-" She caught herself and laughed. "I suppose you are a gem."
Steven laughed as well. "But yeah, you can send other stuff through bubbles. I sent a bag of chaaaps through once."
"So why don't you send more stuff through bubbles?" she questioned. "Why didn't we do that with mine and Lapis's belongings when the barn fell down?"
"I don't know." He shrugged. "I guess it just didn't occur to us. Why do you ask?"
"I've been thinking about the Cluster," she began slowly. "Garnet said Yellow Diamond's eventually going to wonder why it hasn't emerged, and she'll probably come here to check on it. It was so close to taking form, if she manages to unbubble it, that's it. The Earth will be destroyed. If we could just get it out, even if she manages to defeat us all, at least the Earth will still have a chance. But it might be too large to really fit in Garnet's room, so I was wondering if it would be possible to send it somewhere else."
"Ahh, I see." Steven nodded in understanding. "Well like I said, I just assumed they went 'home' because that's where I ended up, but you're right, my bubbles should be winding up in my room then, not Garnet's, so maybe I can change where they go."
"Try it now!" Peridot urged. She looked around quickly and then bent down and picked up a small strawberry roughly the size of a basketball. "See if you can send this… over there, by that sword."
Steven obediently took the strawberry and bubbled it, and stared hard at the large sword stuck in the ground a few meters away. He pictured the bubble floating above it, took a deep breath and tapped the top of the bubble.
It vanished. The two young gems leaned forward hopefully, their sights fixed intently on the sword, but it was quickly apparent that it wasn't going to reappear there. "It didn't work," Steven said with disappointment. "Now what?"
Peridot gave him a comforting pat on the shoulder. "Try again," she encouraged him. "You can't expect results immediately."
Steven pouted. He had actually expected to get results immediately; as he'd gotten better control of his gem powers, he'd found himself mastering new skills almost as quickly as he discovered them. But he knew Peridot was right, so he picked up another strawberry and bubbled it. Once again it vanished and failed to reappear. "Gah!"
Peridot couldn't helping laughing at his expression of confused frustration. "You can do it, I believe in you!" She stepped forward and embraced him from behind. "And when you do, I'll give you a kiss," she teased. "Deal?"
"Deal," Steven agreed at once. And duly motivated, he bubbled another strawberry and tapped the top. Several seconds passed. The bubble didn't reappear. "Oh for fuh- one more time!"
"You can do it, Steven," Peridot said softly.
He took a deep breath and bubbled yet another strawberry. Concentrate, Steven! he told himself sternly. For years he'd been assuming bubbles went 'home', but Peridot was right, Garnet's room wasn't home. There was no specific reason why his bubbles should go there other than his own belief that that was where they should go. Which meant there was also no reason why they shouldn't go any other place he wanted. Like, for example, just above that sword. He stared at the spot and tapped the top of the bubble. It blipped out of existence… and almost immediately reappeared just a short distance away, exactly where he'd wanted it to. He let out a gleeful laugh and flailed his arms. "Ha! I did it!"
"You did it!" Peridot shrieked too, and flung her arms around his neck. "Oh my gosh, Steven, do you know what this means!?"
"It means you owe me a kiss," he said with grin.
Peridot happily obliged, and then pulled away. "But it also means you can extract the Cluster! Yellow Diamond won't be able to use them to destroy the Earth!"
"Maybe once they're out, we could even unbubble them," Steven said thoughtfully. "You know, they were mostly made of shattered Crystal Gems, they'd probably be on our side."
"Hmm, you're right." Peridot gazed at the bubble for a moment. "You should keep practicing," she said abruptly. "With bigger strawberries. The Cluster is a lot larger that that one."
"All right." He walked over to a much larger strawberry and bubbled it. "But I'm going to need lots more kisses if I manage to move this one."
xxx
For the next few hours, they bubbled strawberries, ancient weapons and in Steven's case, some of the floating islands, sending them back and forth across the battlefield with the occasional make-out break to keep themselves motivated. "I'll begin work on another drill in the morning," Peridot was saying as Steven concentrated upon bubbling another one of the floating islands. "I kept all the plans from last time, so work should proceed much more quickly-"
As Steven reached out to tap the bubble, his phone suddenly chimed in his pocket and made him jump. "Oops," he muttered as the island vanished. "Dunno where that went."
"What happened?" Peridot asked as he floated down and landed beside her.
"I got distracted by my phone," he admitted as he tapped the screen. Then he frowned and passed the phone over to her to read. "It's from Connie. She says she has to talk to me urgently."
Peridot skimmed the message and frowned too. "You don't think…?"
"That Pearl and Amethyst went to see if they could convince her to take me back?" He pulled a face and shoved the phone back into his pocket. "Yeah, I do. Shit. I'd better go and find out what's going on."
"While you're doing that, I'll talk to Garnet about building another drill," Peridot said as she followed him back towards the warp pad.
"OK. Oh, and can you apologize to her about the strawberries and stuff in her room? I'll send it all back here later."
Peridot nodded and the two of them stepped onto the warp pad and appeared moments later in the beach house. Steven immediately dashed towards the door. "I'll see you later, bye!"
"Bye! And good luck!" Peridot called after him. She watched as the door slammed shut behind him, and turned towards the Temple door, troubled. She hoped it was just a false alarm and that Connie wanted to speak to Steven about something completely different, but deep down, she knew that it was unlikely to be such a coincidence, and she really didn't like the idea of Pearl and Amethyst meddling. The sooner they accepted the situation, the better.
She approached the door, but as she raised her hand to knock, the door slid open and she jumped backwards with a small squeak of surprise. For a fleeting moment, she thought it was Garnet's future vision at work, but it was Pearl who stepped out into the house, not their leader. "Has he gone?" the elder gem asked in a hushed whisper, her eyes darting around in search of her foster son.
Peridot narrowed her eyes and nodded slowly. It hadn't escaped her attention that Pearl hadn't asked where Steven had gone. "Yes. Why? What have you done?"
Pearl ignored her question and skipped over to the window, peering outside to see if Steven was still in sight. "How was he?" she asked instead. "Was he terribly upset?"
"No. He was fine," Peridot said flatly.
Pearl sighed and briefly closed her eyes as she clutched her hands to her chest. "I see. Putting on a brave face. My poor, poor baby."
Peridot valiantly resisted the urge to roll her eyes at this show of dramatics. "He really was completely fine," she said instead.
"Oh, Peridot. You just don't understand how it feels to have your heart broken." Tears glistened in the corners of Pearl's eyes. "To have to hide your hurt behind a smile and carry on through the pain."
Peridot was beginning to understand now why Steven had given up and let them carry on believing he and Connie were dating for so long. Still, she opened her mouth to protest a third time, but before she could, Pearl spoke again. "But fortunately for Steven, he has us on his side."
Once again, Peridot opened her mouth, this time to state that if Pearl was really on Steven's side, she'd step back and let him deal with his love life on his own, but then she stopped herself. Something had clearly happened while she and Steven had been gone, and her chances of finding out exactly what that was would be better if she let Pearl talk. "Right, us," she said carefully. "Is that… all of us?"
"Well, Garnet refused to help," Pearl admitted.
"I see. So… what's the plan? Where's Amethyst?" Peridot glanced over at the Temple door, hoping she was still in her room and not following Steven to his meeting, because if Pearl wasn't around to squash some of the other gem's more impulsive behavior, there was a very strong chance that Steven and Connie were about to be handcuffed together. "Connie sent Steven a message, asking him to meet her, am I correct in assuming that was something to do with you two?"
"Oh, yes," Pearl said proudly. "We thought if we could just get them to talk, Connie would see reason."
"So you asked her to meet him?" Peridot checked.
Pearl scoffed. "No, of course not, She might have refused. No, we simply went onto the internet and sent them each a message from the others cell phone number, asking them to meet urgently."
Peridot bit her mouth, struggling to hold back the incredulous laughter that rose up within her. It was nice to learn that Pearl and Amethyst hadn't browbeaten Connie into meeting with Steven, but what did they think was going to happen? That Connie would take one more look at him and suddenly change her mind? Actually, she realized, that was probably exactly what they expected to happen. In which case, the best thing to do was absolutely nothing, just stand back and let Amethyst and Pearl watch as Connie and Steven rejected each other.
So as Pearl began walking towards the doorway, explaining that Amethyst was expecting them and that she'd only stayed at the house to make sure Steven actually went to meet Connie, Peridot smiled, nodded and followed silently behind her.