Chapter 2

Rose Quartz sat on the side of her bed, gazing around at her room. The pastel-pink walls were lined with various objects. Some sat on shelves, while others were mounted directly onto the walls. Rose was unaccustomed to the idea of belongings (Gem soldiers hadn't tended to own things back in her day), but she was learning to enjoy the sense of self expression that came from giving her quarters a personal touch. The bulk of her collection consisted of an impressive array of weapons. She had salvaged them over the past couple of weeks from an old Gem battlefield located somewhere in Earth's northern region. The site had become overgrown with huge, fruit-bearing plants, but the tangle of leaves concealed a treasure trove of weapons left over from the Gem War. While many of the weapons' owners were probably still alive (and indeed, living under the same roof as Rose) none had been back to collect their old weapons, so Rose had simply assumed that they were unwanted, and taken them herself. Once polished back to a shine which disguised their millennia spent in the dirt, they made attractive decorations for her room, and helped it to feel more fitting for a soldier.

While there was definitely still some work to be done to make the place feel like home, Rose was grateful to have the room at all. Upon arriving on Earth just a couple of weeks prior, she had been confined to Beach City for her own safety, and to keep her presence a secret from Earth's governments. Steven had offered to let her stay with him, and the Crystal Gems, despite looking wary at first, had acquiesced, granting her a room in their temple. Apparently the structure had the means of creating rooms out of thin air; rooms which completely defied the building's internal dimensions. Since the Diamonds had healed the Gems corrupted during the war, the Temple was now home to hundreds of them, and the building's miraculous power had been invaluable in housing them. Most of the Gems spent the majority of their time in their respective chambers, but Steven's living area was still more crowded than it had been before the Gems were healed, or so Steven had told her.

She wondered sometimes what the rooms belonging to such a strange group of Gems must be like, but she had never had cause to visit any of them. She had largely kept to herself since coming to Earth, emerging every once in a while to talk to Steven. It was…difficult to be out there sometimes. Some days, there would be healed Gems hanging around the house. Often, they would stare at her with such intense expressions that she wanted to shrink away and hide behind the nearest bit of furniture. Sometimes the expressions were sad, or fearful, or angry, and sometimes they were almost joyful. The Gems had all had it explained to them that she was not the same Rose Quartz that had led their rebellion (though how much Steven had told them about Pink Diamond's alter ego, Rose wasn't sure), but she understood how they must be feeling, seeing someone with the same face as their beloved leader just sitting there in front of them.

And then there was that damned painting. Rose tried not to look at it, but every time she visited Steven her eyes were inevitably drawn to the smiling, serene face of the portrait on the wall; the face of the Gem she knew to be her Diamond, but who looked more like her doppelganger. Rose wasn't sure what was more surreal; the fact that the face in the portrait looked so much like her, or the fact that she knew that under that Quartz mask had been the Diamond she had known for years. Pink looked so peaceful in that picture; so angelic; a far cry from the playful, childish Diamond that Rose had known. Even though she'd learned the truth about Pink just after she was freed, it still felt unreal sometimes to see the life the Diamond had led after fleeing her old one on Homeworld. Pink's Crystal Gems had idolised her just as devoutly as Rose had, but they did so without ever knowing who she was. Rose had always followed Pink out of a pre-programmed desire to serve her Diamond, but these rebels had been willing to do so on nothing more than her charisma. It troubled Rose that there was a side to her Diamond that she had never seen. Despite claiming to be one of her most loyal servants, she had never noticed Pink's pain; never noticed that the years of sadness that pushed the Diamond into rebellion.

Still, Pink hadn't exactly been observant of others' feeling either. She had given seemingly no thought to what would happen to her Rose Quartzes after she used their form as an alias, and, if the stories Rose had heard from Steven were true, she had caused her fellow rebels a good deal of heartache too. Since being unbubbled, Rose had become acutely aware of the fact that Diamonds could be flawed, and it seemed Pink had been no exception. Steven though, seemed intent on making up for the mistakes of his predecessor, always giving Rose the attention she needed. Whenever she was feeling down, he would drop whatever he was doing and chat with her. Rose still couldn't wrap her head around why he would do such a thing after everything she had tried to do to his planet, but she was grateful for it all the same.

As much as she appreciated Steven's company though, the young hybrid could only do so much. The one Gem that Rose truly wanted to talk to right now still wasn't willing to even speak to her. Sapphire spent most of her time wandering around Beach City these days, and what few discussions she did have were with Steven or Garnet. Whenever Rose had tried to approach her, she would quickly leave, sometimes without even trying to come up with an excuse. It stung whenever she did that, but Rose couldn't truthfully blame her. She understood all too well what Sapphire must have been feeling; it was the same feeling of betrayal that Rose had felt whenever she cast her mind back to her time serving Pink Diamond. The pain of those memories had driven Rose to near insanity, and in her quest for revenge, she had inadvertently betrayed Sapphire in exactly the same way Pink had betrayed her. Sapphire had only been concerned with their future, and what had Rose done in return? Driven a sword through her chest for her efforts. That might have been the part which Rose found the most painful to dwell on. She could stand Sapphire avoiding her, as much as it hurt; but what was infinitely more painful was the knowledge that the small blue Gem was right to do so. If the situation had been reversed, Rose would likely have done much worse, not unlike she had tried to do to Steven. There was a part of Rose that cried out for Sapphire; longed for the two of them to be on speaking terms again, but there was another part of her that felt just as adamantly that she didn't deserve Sapphire's forgiveness.

Realising that she would rather be doing pretty much anything besides wallowing in her pain, Rose got up from her bed and headed out into the house. As she emerged into the chamber bearing the base's warp pad, she had a clear view into Steven's living quarters. It was early in the morning, but already the cosy wooden structure was bustling with activity. Steven was sat on the sofa with his breakfast in his lap, chatting to a group of Crystal Gems. They were a bizarre sight to behold; each one of them bearing a pair of horns, or a modified appendage, or strange patches of colour which clashed with their overall colour scheme. Rose knew that the unusual features were the lingering aftereffects of the corrupting light which the Diamonds had unleashed at the end of the war, and, for the first time, she reflected that she may have been lucky to have been poofed and taken off-planet before that weapon had been fired. The Gems were all eyeing Steven with great interest; some listening intently to what he was saying; others seemingly more interested in watching him eat. As Rose got close, the conversation almost instantly came to a halt, as all eyes turned to her. Some of them Gems stared awkwardly at the ground or tried, unconvincingly, to look busy. Others though, stared at her with the fascination she had come to expect; seemingly unable to take their eyes off her. Not for the first time since arriving on Earth, Rose became uncomfortably aware of the Facet 31 logo which still emblazoned the front of her black jumpsuit. She didn't wear her cape these days, but her outfit was still rather conspicuous. She wondered what the Crystal Gems thought of the other rebel group; especially given that it had been run by a body double of their own leader. Truthfully, it was probably her face that was giving them pause much more than her uniform. Facet 31 had been responsible for some immoral acts under her leadership, not least trying to wipe out the race which many Crystal Gems had given their lives to defend, but it was likely Steven could have smoothed all that over in his characteristically miraculous way, had it not been for how Rose looked. More than once, she had seen a Crystal Gem's face light up at the sight of her, only for Steven to take them aside and explain that she was not the leader they had held in almost messianic regard. The circumstances of Steven's own creation had thankfully taken much of the attention away from Rose in the days that followed, as he had gone public to more and more of the cured Gems about Pink Diamond's masquerade. However, Rose still received strange looks on a regular basis, presumably from Gems who simply couldn't believe that their leader was truly gone, or who didn't know how to feel about having another Gem who looked so similar wandering around the base. Rose couldn't exactly blame them; she felt the same confusing mix of emotions whenever she looked at Steven, or the painting of his mother on the wall. It was as though her Diamond was right there, but at the same time, not. So much had been left unsaid between Pink and Rose, and she was still struggling to deal with the knowledge that it would all remain unsaid.

Noticing that she was uncomfortable, Steven took charge of the situation. "OK everyone" he said, addressing the Gems who were crowded around him "I can finish the rest of the story later. I'm just gonna go talk to Rose for a while, ok?" The Gems accepted without complaint, and allowed Steven to slip out of the huddle and head up to his bedroom with Rose in tow. Rose would have expected them to have been more reluctant, given the reverent fascination with which they regarded Steven, but then they were probably all as eager to escape from the awkward situation as she was. Steven's "bedroom" didn't actually have any walls separating it from the rest of his living area, so it didn't offer much in terms of privacy, but the other Gems clearly held Steven's words in high regard, and had filed back into their own rooms to let him talk to Rose alone. The pair sat on Steven's bed; Rose lowering her weight carefully to avoid breaking it.

"So…" Steven began, "how are you holding up?" Rose wasn't sure at first how to answer. Her first instinct was to say that she was fine, but it quickly occurred to her that if that had been the case; she probably wouldn't have sought out a conversation in the first place. Not too long ago, she would have been irritated at even being asked such a simple question; incensed at the assumption that her pain was small enough to be put into words. Now though, she was in a much better place, and while things were far from perfect, she felt that she could now face her feelings without letting them overwhelm her. After thinking for a prolonged moment, she finally answered Steven's question.

"I… I think I'm ok. I mean; it's great being back on Earth again, and it's great having my own room…"

"But…?" Steven pried. He was a lot more observant than he looked. Rose sighed, and decided it was finally time to get a couple of things off her chest. "But… it doesn't exactly feel like the same planet I left. The Humans have done so much in the last five thousand years; almost nothing feels familiar anymore. At least when I was in Facet 31 I had all the other Rose Quartz from my kindergarten, but here it's just me."

Steven picked up instantly on the implication of her last sentence. "Sapphire still doesn't wanna talk to you?"

"No." replied Rose dejectedly. "And why would she? She gave me her trust and I betrayed it. Not everyone is as understanding as you are Steven; I wouldn't be surprised if she never wants to talk to me again." Rose brought her legs up on to the bed and curled her arms around them. She knew that she must have looked rather pathetic, but she didn't much care. Her thoughts were focused mostly on Sapphire. She had tried not to think too much about her tiny blue companion since her last attempt to speak to her, but the conversation with Steven was causing the wound to reopen with a vengeance.

Steven stared sadly for a moment at Rose, who had seemingly become lost in her own thoughts. The sight of such a large and powerful Gem curled up like an upset child was the sort of thing he had become all too familiar with, but no matter how many Gems he befriended, their plights never failed to move him. He inched closer to Rose, and put his hand reassuringly on her arm. She turned her head towards him just enough that he could tell that he had her attention. "Y'know" he began, "I don't know Sapphire very well, but from what I saw of her it seemed like she cared about you a lot. That kind of thing doesn't disappear because of one argument."

"I stabbed her through the chest" Rose replied flatly. "Calling it an argument is a bit of an understatement."

"I know it was bad, but I've seen people forgive each other for worse stuff" replied Steven optimistically. "Garnet forgave Pearl for tricking her into fusing; Lapis forgave the Crystal Gems for leaving her trapped in a mirror for thousands of years; Connie even forgave me for trying to sacrifice myself to homeworld without running it by her first!" Rose gave Steven a somewhat concerned look, before finally saying "you and your friends live really messed up lives, y'know that?"

"Exactly!" replied Steven. "And if we can move past crazy stuff like that, I'm sure you and Sapphire can find a way to fix things too. It might take a while, but if you two are anything like any of the other Gems I've met, you'll get there eventually."

Rose's face softened into a grateful smile. She relaxed from her hunched position, and gently took hold of Steven's hand. "Thank you Steven. That means a lot. You didn't need to do any of this, especially after what I did."

"What can I say?" Steven replied with a smirk and an exaggerated shrug "I'm pretty good at forgiving too." Rose mustered a tiny chuckle at that, and before long the two were chatting happily. After a while, Rose decided to head outside. Her talk with Steven had given her the feeling that now was as good a time as any to explore a bit more of Beach City. She hadn't strayed far from her room since it was made, but for the first time she felt eager to see more of the world that Steven seemed so fond of. Waving goodbye to Steven, she opened the front door and headed out onto the porch. Having not been looking where she was going, she was caught off guard by the knee-height obstacle that she collided with and almost tripped over. Giving a small yelp, she looked down, and found herself staring into the face of Sapphire.


Author's Notes: And now we begin to tie in Rose's side of the story. Hope you guys are enjoying it so far. Feedback as ever is appreciated; I'll see you in the next chapter!