Steven sat near a massive bonfire, surrounded by hundreds of Crystal Gems. Cotton Candy Garnet stood nearby, and he decided she was his favorite Garnet.
"Rose Quartz... was Pink Diamond?" Garnet asked again. He was surprised hadn't split up over this.
"Exactly, Garnet." He responded, and she blinked in surprise at the fact that he knew her name.
She had tried to punch him when he had appeared through the treeline, followed by the rest of the gems fusing to try to catch him off guard. That had been put to an end when Pearl had appeared along with him, still in a state of shock. All of the fusions besides Garnet fell apart shortly after, when he had told them the truth about everything: that they had served under a Diamond and that their rebellion was actually a civil war.
"The way the War is going now, Rose Quartz comes to the decision to fake her own shattering and, in their grief, the Diamonds unleash a massive attack that corrupts your minds, turning you into beasts. The only gems who survived the original blast were Pink, Garnet, and Pearl. After Rose decided to have me, even they lost themselves to it."
"But why are you here?" One of the Quartzes asked him. She was bold, a good trait for a rebel.
"It was an accident really, I voiced my wish to punch my mother in her face and the Timeglass responded by sending me back here. I decided to try for a better future for this timeline." He heard a gasp and looked around, he saw it came from Pearl. The pointed gem in her hand was glowing.
"That was fast, she must be worried. You should all back up." Steven warned. They all backed up and watched as Rose's form started to appear, flickering through physical forms before settling into Pink Diamond, a dark pink and black version of Rose Quartz's dress formed on her, her shoulder length curly hair was pulled into a messy ponytail, and black lipstick was painted on her lips. When she touched down, she lunged right at him. Steven reacted quickly and caught her fists before planting his feet and lifting her off the ground.
"You're going to hurt your friends." The taller of the two said, dropping her. Rose looked around, seeing the Crystal Gems watching the two Diamonds in apprehension.
"You didn't hurt them?" She asked, confused.
"The only gem here I have any issue with is you, Pink," her son responded, focusing hard on not blowing up at her. The last thing he wanted to do was shatter the gems like he shattered the Temple.
"Now, we need to have a talk, and you are going to tell me everything you've done that's even remotely wrong. Any little detail that could come back to bite you, or, more importantly, me."
"We should go somewhere more private," Rose suggested.
"No, the Crystal Gems deserve to know this too. They can decide whether or not to keep following you after." He told his mother, his tone leaving no room for an argument. She looked around her, at the people she had considered friends for hundreds of years now.
"Okay, the truth." Pink sighed as she thought about where she should start her story.
"Start a little before you learned you would be given the Earth," he prompted and she nodded.
"I learned I would be given my first colony while in the Garden with…" she trailed off, horror dawning on her face.
"With Spinel, oh stars, Spinel! I told her we were playing a game, it's been hundreds of years, it wouldn't even occur to her to move.'' Steven clenched his fist, pink energy starting to form on his body at his barely restrained rage.
"Continue." He said, voice tight.
"I left Spinel in the Garden and then I returned to Homeworld. I gathered the tools needed for a colony: gems and the injector drills. I set off for the Earth and planted the Prime and Beta Kindergartens before building the Moon Spire. I sent the Bismuths to build the other buildings. Then, hundreds of years later, the Quartzes started to emerge and Pearl suggested a wonderful idea, to take on the form of a Quartz to go and walk among them. After most of them had emerged, I didn't want to return to the Spire and Pearl suggested I look around the planet I had been given."
The gems all looked at Pearl, who blushed blue.
"I just wanted to make her happy." She admitted, and some of the gems laughed.
"It was during this time that I finally realized that we were not creating life from nothing. We were killing the life that was already here, and I realized that I needed to stop it,"
"Why didn't you talk to the Diamonds? Why form a rebellion on Earth under the guise of a Rose Quartz?"
"I begged them to spare the Earth! Yellow got so angry and Blue built the Zoo, taking humans to fill it. They didn't understand."
"You should have told them! You're a Diamond, not a child." Steven scolded her and she looked down, embarrassed at his call out.
"So.. I decided if they wouldn't listen to me as Pink Diamond, I'd make them listen to Rose Quartz. Then I met Garnet and realized that it wasn't just me who knew that homeworld was wrong, it was at that moment the rebellion really began.'' Steven looked at Garnet, seeing her looking really surprised.
"My turn." Steven said, deciding to share his story too.
"I come from the far future, five thousand years after the War. When I was born, only three of the Crystal Gems remained: Garnet, Pearl, and Amethyst 8XM. You decided to fake your shattering and, in their grief, the Diamonds unleashed their great power onto the Earth in an attempt to avenge you. But it wasn't enough to shatter the gems on the planet, it corrupted them, an infection that spread like a plague. You only managed to save yourself and my Crystal Gems. You spent the rest of your life capturing them and putting them in bubbles, trying to save them with your powers."
Steven could see the horror on the faces of all of the gems around him after hearing his future.
"And then you met my father and fell in love, or at least he fell in love with you, and I was born the day you died," he saw Pearl cover her mouth in horror and Rose looked shocked.
"Then there was an incident, and I lost the gems to the corruption too, leaving me as the Earth's only protector. I was stupid and young, and I died alone. This is what I am now, I'm not going back to what I was born as. I've spent years trying to undo the corruption and Homeworld returned. I learned that I wasn't a Rose Quartz, but a Pink Diamond. Now, the Earth is safe and I am taking the corrupted gems to Homeworld to force the Diamonds to fix their mistake. I'll force White, Yellow, and Blue to cease their destruction of the galaxy in the name of their empire." The pink teenager finished, and Pink stood up.
"You need to be careful. Keep your guard up around White, she's been changing, she's not like the rest of us. She was ancient even when Yellow and Blue emerged. Changing her mind may be impossible, and forcing her hand even more so."
"That's the mentality that lost you the War. You see your sisters as perfect Diamonds, not as the flawed gems they really are. They made us but they are not better than us, and you need to believe that. You need to fight them as a Diamond, order the gems off of this planet, return to homeworld and stop this at the source." He told her seriously. His pocket then started to glow.
"No, no, no, not now!" Steven groaned, pulling the timeglass out.
"STEVEN!" He could hear the Peridots yell out in unison.
"Cut it out," he yelled at them. "I'm not ready to return yet!"
"We can't turn it off! Do you know how hard it was to find the signal!?" Peridot yelled at him.
Steven briefly considered crushing the timeglass in his hand and trapping himself in this timeline's past. He pushed the thought away and walked over to his mother.
"We will never see each other again, in truth, you're not even really my mother anymore. Too much has changed, but I'll never have another chance to do this will I?" The younger of the two Diamonds asked. He dragged his mother into a tight hug. This was the first and last time he would be able to.
"Goodbye, Rose," Steven told her as he pushed her away. "And good luck."
He reached out and grabbed Skinny before she could reply. In a flash of bright light, her son was gone.
"Goodbye, Steven." Rose said to herself.
Steven found himself in the engine room of his ship, a glass dome looming above him seemed to be hooked up to the ship's batteries. Immediately, Squaridot, Lapis, and Peridot swarmed him.
"You're back!" They yelled, relieved.
"I didn't know it had a callback button." Their friend responded before pulling out the timeglass. He stared at it for a moment before crushing it to dust in his palm, deciding that it was far too much power for anyone to have, especially him.
"It doesn't, we had to build a transmitter capable of transmitting a signal through time, we had to syphon energy from a star through the ship's batteries to power the thing!" Peridot yelled at him.
"How long has it been here?" He asked, taking in the disheveled states of the Peridots and the thrown together state of the retrieval device.
"Weeks! We thought the Diamonds would send Jasper after us the entire time!"
"She would have tracked you through the galaxy, she could be in the ship now waiting for you to let your guard down." Skinny said, grinning at the panicked looks on their faces.
"How long will it take to get the ship operational?" Steven asked. They looked between themselves.
"A few hours, we had to divert almost all of the ship's power,''
"Get to it, do I have enough to send a message?"
"It should, we turned off the tracking systems to keep the Diamonds from tracking us down!"
"Good, don't turn it back on." He directed them, walking towards the lift. Skinny and Lapis followed after.
"Where did you go, Steven?"
"The past, I met Pink," Steven answered.
"Oh… what'd you do?" Lapis wondered aloud.
"I punched her in the face and I hugged her. I didn't want to have regrets." Her friend admitted, his focus directed to the main room they arrived in.
Lapis stopped Skinny from following him, waiting until he reached the front. The interface formed around his legs, a panel raising from the ground for him to place his pink palm on.
"Is he okay? This must have been hard on him," Lapis asked Skinny, who shook her head.
"I don't know, he doesn't act like a gem, but he doesn't act like the humans in the Zoo either. I think this was hard on him."
Steven opened a screen, connecting to the Spire. An Amethyst answered the call quickly, her face flickering as the connection stabilized.
"Steven!" She yelled, surprised at the sight of him. Hearing her yell, all of the Amethysts crowded onto the screen to look at him.
"I need someone to come pick me up, I'll send my coordinates," their leader said. He heard a yell and the Amethysts went flying, Jasper appeared a moment later, standing in front of the screen.
"My Diamond!"
"Hello, Jasper, can you pick me up? My ship won't be operational for a few more hours and I need to be somewhere 5000 years ago." Steven told her. His hands moved across the screen, pulling up the ship's coordinates to send over. Jasper nodded, her orange eyes filled with determination.
"I'll be there right away, my Diamond!" She yelled, rushing off screen. He could hear the yells of various gems being pushed out of her way. The Amethysts came back on screen shortly after.
"Has anyone contacted the Diamonds since I've been gone?"
"No, we wanted to wait and we convinced Jasper that it would be disrespectful to undermine your authority, my Diamond." The Amethyst who answered the call reported, grinning at him.
"Good job, spread the word that all gems who don't wish to stay are to leave the Earth and return to Homeworld as soon as possible. The Amethysts are to go to my Diamond palace and wait for me there, bring the paint." Steven commanded, a smirk stretching across his features. He found he liked the matching mischievous glint in their eyes. Gems were already moving in a rapid flurry in the background.
"At once, my Diamond." The screen was cut off and Steven reached for the Diamond communicator that sat on a pink throne. He called up Blue and it opened immediately.
"Steven!" She greeted him excitedly.
"The Garden, where is it?"
"Now, how did you hear about that? No one's been there in thousands of years."
"Time travel, now what are the coordinates, Blue? It's time sensitive, my last stop before leaving for Homeworld."
"Oh, lovely, one moment. Pearl?" She called and Blue Pearl walked into view of the screen.
"Pearl, what were the coordinates for Pink's garden?"
Blue Pearl paused for a moment before rattling off some numbers.
"Thanks, Pearl." Steven said, hanging up and re-slotting the communicator. The teenager walked back down to the hangar, where he found the Jasper ship landing. He walked up to it, Jasper rushing to greet him.
"My Diamond!" She saluted him and he didn't bother correcting her.
"Jasper, you, Skinny, and Lapis will stay here and take my ship to Homeworld. I will meet you there."
"M.. my Diamond-!" Jasper began to argue and he cut her off.
"No! You, Lapis, and Skinny are going to stay here and take my ship to Homeworld. You will not harm the Peridots and you will not argue with me on this matter."
"Yes, my Diamond." She replied, walking down the ramp and into the hangar.
Steven shut the door, moving to sit in the pilot's seat. He pressed his hands onto the display and the ship took off, warping reality. The hybrid pictured the coordinates in his head as he pushed the ship to its limits, coming out of warp speed in front of a large garden. Through the glass, he could see that it was overgrown.
He flew the ship down into an old hanger, close to the door, but it refused to open for his signal. Pulling his hands out of the display, he walked over to the ship's door and it opened. Steven walked back and took a running start, launching himself out and towards the door. He dug his fingers into the metal once he landed, to hold himself in place, before digging his fingers into the cracks in the door, forcing it open. Steven felt the air rush out from the hole he ripped and climbed through, finding giant roots sticking down from the roof. He scanned the room, before finding the door and striding over to it, glad to find that it opened and closed for him. He found himself in the massive, overgrown garden.
"Spinel?" Steven called out. He could hear the sound of plants ripping and footsteps coming closer.
"Pink?!"
