CHAPTER FOUR

Lion had been nowhere in sight when Steven left the house, so he set off on foot, at a pace that no normal human would've ever been able to emulate and so it was only a few short minutes later that he reached the top of Brooding Hill and began heading into the trees. His mind was full of unlikely-but-dire possibilities - Amethyst shapeshifted as him, trying to seduce Connie, Pearl holding her at swordpoint, Opal sat on the Maheswaran's roof, refusing to move until she took him back - and so he failed to notice the flickering lights of hundreds of bubbled candles until he burst out of the trees and into a clearing and almost tripped over a picnic basket. "What the-?"

There was a rustling noise from the other side of the clearing and Connie stepped forward, looking concerned. "Steven? What's wrong- what's all this?" she asked in confusion, looking around at the candles floating in the trees and the basket, set beside a pretty blue and white checkered rug and surrounded by cut roses. "Why did you ask me to come here?"

"I didn't." Steven was equally confused. "You asked me."

Connie took another look around and her expression changed to one of grim annoyance. "Oh. I think I get it. Let me guess, you told the gems about us? Or rather, that there is no us?"

Steven looked blankly at her for a second and then the penny dropped. "We've been tricked!" he gasped.

"Yeah." Connie shook her head and turned away. "Ugh. I'm going ho-"

She halted abruptly as the sound of music began to float through the trees towards them. The sky above darkened as clouds formed above them, and then morphed into heart shapes. There was a flicker of movement to the side of them and Steven briefly spotted Amethyst, shapeshifted into the form of a bird as she flew into a tree and perched there, a cell phone held firmly in her beak, and he fought back the urge to laugh. The situation may have been ridiculous, but it was no laughing matter.

"What do they think this is, The Little Mermaid!?" Connie hissed under her breath as Pearl's voice began to sing along to the music that Steven now realized was coming from the phone in Amethyst's mouth. "Where's a barracuda when you need one?"

Steven did laugh at that, and quickly clapped a hand over his mouth as Connie glared at him. "Sorry. I'll go and talk to them."

He walked up to the base of the tree where Amethyst was perched and folded his arms sternly, glaring up at her. "Knock it off, guys. It's not gonna happen."

"Caw caw," Amethyst replied, trying to look innocent. "Caw- ah shit." Steven stepped aside and the phone bounced off the ground where his foot had been just a moment ago. The music stopped at once and a moment later, Pearl's voice faltered to a halt. "Sorry," Amethyst called down to him. "Lost my grip."

"You've lost your minds," Steven corrected. "I told you, Connie and I aren't interested in each other, a nice song and hearts in the sky aren't gonna change that."

Behind the trees, just out of sight, Pearl sighed in disappointment. "I suppose we'll just have to move on to Plan B," she murmured.

Peridot looked sharply at her. "Plan B? What's Plan B? You never said anything about a Plan B!"

Pearl ignored her and met Amethyst's eyes. Some unspoken signal passed between them, and Amethyst sighed dramatically and stretched her wings. "All right, fine," she said loudly. "We'll clean this up and leave you alone. I'll just pop those bubbled candles, OK?"

Before Steven could stop her, she flew forward and stabbed a bubble with her sharp beak, and he had to lunge forward to catch the flickering candle before it landed on the rug and started a fire. He snuffed it out and turned just in time to see three more candles drop out of the air. "Slow down!" he wailed, trying to catch them all at once and almost crashing into Connie, who'd had the same idea.

Amethyst glanced down at them, making sure they were both close to one another, and then darted to another bubble before flying up into the trees again, out of range. Once again, Steven and Connie stepped forward to catch whatever had been inside the bubble, but then they stumbled to a halt, confused, because it didn't fall to the ground like the candles did. Instead, it hung in the air for a moment, and then began to glow, and the two teens froze in horror as they began to understand exactly what Amethyst had just unleashed.

Hidden in the trees, Peridot froze as well and if it hadn't been for the other glow of light in the corner of her eye, things might have gone very differently. But that glow caught her attention and she turned just in time to see Pearl withdraw Rose Quartz's sword from her gem. She didn't stop to wonder why Pearl had the sword or what the hell she was doing with it; almost before it had fully emerged, she grabbed it and ran forward, ignoring the shriek of rage behind her. It was heavier than she'd expected and when she threw it, it didn't go very far, but that was OK, she just needed to get it airborne for a second. Her metal powers would do the rest.

xxx

Jasper!

Steven could only stare as the enormous, warped form took shape in front of him. Strangely enough, as soon as he recognized the gem, the horror vanished to be replaced with an unexpected flare of hope. It had been four years, after all, and he looked rather different than the last time. Maybe now she'd let him help.

He took a step forward and raised his hand towards her, even as Connie let out a low moan and tried to pull him away. "Steven, we have to get out of here!"

"I can help her," he breathed, almost hypnotized.

"No you can't!" Connie said harshly, pulling at him again. "She won't let you, she hates you!"

Steven ignored her and took another step forward, staring up at the horns where her eyes had once been. A long time ago, he'd believed corrupted gems were nothing more than mindless monsters, but he knew differently now. He'd seen it with Centipeedle. Somewhere inside there was the old Jasper, and if they just let him try, he could bring her back.

And then Jasper looked down at him, and even without eyes, he saw recognition cross her face and suddenly understood that Connie was right. He completely forgot about his shield and stumbled backwards, blood pounding in his ears and almost drowning out the sound of Connie's screams as Jasper lifted a giant, shaggy paw, but before she could bring it down and tear his head off, his mother's sword flew through the air and slammed into her chest. She poofed at once, and the orange gem fell to the ground.

"Quick, quick, bubble her and send her away!" Connie begged, a note of hysteria creeping into her voice.

Steven, dimly aware of some sort of commotion taking place in the trees behind him, snatched up Jasper's gem and sent it away just as Pearl and Peridot burst into the clearing. "What did you do that for!?" Pearl was berating Peridot. "They were so close!"

"Close to what, dying!?" Peridot snapped back. "Are you cracked!?"

Pearl waved a hand dismissively. "They would've been fine, they've beaten Jasper before."

No, we haven't, Steven thought to himself as Amethyst flew down to join in the argument. Stevonnie beat Jasper. He glanced at Connie and saw that she'd come to the same conclusion. "Guys, this is insane!" he protested, but his words were lost in the noise.

It was Connie who got their attention, by raising her fingers to her lips and letting out a piercing whistle. The gems stopped squabbling at once and turned to look at her. "Excuse me, but did you guys seriously just throw Jasper at us to try and manipulate us into fusing?" she asked coldly, her eyes glittering with icy anger.

Amethyst at least had the grace to look ashamed of herself, but Pearl simply shook her head in earnest. "It wasn't like that," she protested. "I know the two of you had problems the last time you tried to form Stevonnie, and we just thought if we gave you the proper motivation, we could remind you of how well you and Steven worked together."

"And what if it didn't work?" Connie asked. "Were you just going to sit back and let me die so that Steven would have to use his tears to bring me back as a magic zombie like Lars?" Now the glitter in her eyes was recognizable as unshed tears. "You know why we couldn't form Stevonnie before? Because I didn't want to! I want to be me! I'm a human being, and that doesn't make me lesser!"

"Connie…" Steven said uneasily, and tried to place a comforting hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged it off.

"Of course you're not… lesser," Pearl quickly interjected. "You're one of the most promising humans I've ever met," she added, clearly intending for that statement to be more reassuring than it was. "I just don't understand why you would want to waste your potential on some other human when you could have Steven!" She gestured proudly towards him, totally unaware of how much he wanted to sink into the ground at that moment. "He's perfect!"

"Perfect!?" Connie laughed harshly. "Why would I want a 'perfect' boyfriend? How am I supposed to measure up to that?" She swiped a hand across her face, brushing away hot, angry tears. "Yeah, maybe Alice isn't perfect. She's messy, she's kinda bossy, and she's never on time for anything. But I'm not perfect either! And when I'm with her, I never feel like that's a bad thing!"

Steven squirmed miserably. He knew he wasn't really perfect, and he knew Connie didn't actually think he was either… but he did make her feel inadequate. She'd never quite recovered from those early training sessions with Pearl, and in the end, she'd decided the best way to deal with her feelings was to take a step back from all the magic stuff and embrace her humanity. And apparently, this Alice person as well.

Seeing that Pearl was opening her mouth to speak again, he stepped forward between her and Connie. "That's enough. If Connie's girlfriend makes her happy, that's good, right?"

"But what about you?" Pearl asked, looking deeply concerned. "I mean," she added hastily, "of course I want Connie to be happy, but I want you to be happy too, with the person you love."

His eyes flickered over to Peridot, stood beside Amethyst. She met his gaze and smiled a tiny smile at him, and he felt a rush of love for her. "I am."

"Wait, what?" Amethyst blurted out. "Who? There's nobody else in this Podunk town-" Her mouth fell open in horror. "Not the gross donut girl!?"

Steven laughed. "No, not the gross donut girl." He stepped forward and took both of Peridot's hands in his own, and smiled down at her. "Definitely not the gross donut girl."

Now Pearl's mouth fell open too and for several seconds, she was too stunned to speak. The same was not true for Amethyst, who ran through several other options ("can't be the pizza chicks, they both left, same with old donut girl- wait, is it a guy? Fry guy? Other fry guy?") before the penny finally dropped. "Holy shit, Peridot!?"

"Peridot," Steven confirmed, not taking his eyes off of his girlfriend. He opened his mouth to apologize for not telling them sooner, but it was at that moment that Pearl snapped out of her stupor.

"Peridot!?" she repeated shrilly. "But she's a Homeworld gem!"

The smile slid off Peridot's face at once. "Um, Crystal gem, thank you very-"

"How long has this been going on for?" Pearl demanded loudly.

"Um… about two weeks…?" Steven replied. A vague feeling of unease began to creep over him. "We- Peridot wanted to tell you all sooner-"

"Oh, I see!" Pearl laughed a dry, humorless laugh. "I suppose that explains why her bedroom door was always locked, so that she could seduce you under our noses without getting caught!"

Steven and Peridot exchanged glances. "It wasn't like that-" Peridot began, but Pearl once again spoke over her.

"Steven, think about this. Your mother wanted you to have a normal life-"

Amethyst snorted loudly and quickly covered it up with a cough as Pearl looked sharply at her. Still, the message was clear, and she quickly changed tack. "Yellow Diamond is coming for her Cluster. We don't know when, but she's coming, and Peridot has no powers. How is she supposed to protect you?"

Peridot glanced down at the sword that still lay on the grass. "I managed just fine a few minutes ago," she muttered under her breath.

Either Pearl didn't hear that, or she chose to ignore it as she carried on talking. "She can't fight, she can't even fuse!"

"Neither can Greg," Peridot said tartly. "But that didn't seem to bother Rose Quartz."

There was a sharp CRACK as Pearl slapped her across the cheek. Peridot's head snapped to one side and when she slowly turned back and locked eyes with Pearl, a small trickle of blood ran from the corner of her mouth. Steven flung himself in front of her, shield at the ready, and she was dimly aware that somewhere behind her, Amethyst was yelling, but she kept her eyes fixed upon the other gem until finally, Pearl looked away. For a moment, she looked like she was about to speak, but then, without a further word, she spun around and sprung away into the forest.