Final Chapter, y'all. Longer note at the bottom.

"H…hey Dad?"

Steven's father popped up from the other side of the RV, guitar in hand. "Hey, Stu-ball! I wasn't expecting company so late. What's up?"

Steven couldn't really articulate the sinking feeling beneath his gem— or, well, coming from it? Was it possible his gem was causing this feeling in his stomach? Or was it just, well…his nerves?

"I just…" Steven scratched at the back of his skull. "I've been having a lot of thoughts. You know. About Mom."

His dad blinked. "..Oh."

Steven walked his way around the Van. "Dad?" he asked. "Do you remember…like, did Mom tell you anything about living on Homeworld? What it was like for her? I keep hearing different things about her from different gems, and then I had this weird dream, and now I'm trying to figure out where I can go to learn anything about her. Like. Anything about her."

Steven's dad looked up to the stars. The moon was out tonight, a smiling yellow crescent hanging in the sky above them. It was an old memory of Steven's that resurfaced; hanging out on the pier with his dad, eating Cookie Cats from the Big Donut as they looked for pictures in imaginary constellations. He used to think the moon reminded him of Cookie Cat's sweet, sweet smile.

Now all he associated the stars with was the knowledge that Homeworld was out there. And waiting.

"I have to admit, Stu-Ball, your Mom didn't say much about where she came from." Steven's dad eased back onto the side of the van. For a moment, Steven thought he looked— well, a little bit winded. It was rare to see him do anything other than smile. "Those weren't the kind of conversations we had."

Steven's hope plummeted. "W-what?" There was no way he could come out of this with no answers. He had to know something else— the two had made him! There was no way! "She just, what, never talked about where she came from?"

His dad let out a bone-weary sigh. "Steven, your mom really wanted to focus on moving forward. I respected her wishes, so we didn't talk about it. She…she made it clear she hadn't come from a great environment."

Steven's mouth dropped open. "Did she tell you she had been a Diamond?" he asked his dad, the words tumbling out of him like empty shells dropped onto the beach sand. There was reasonably no way that his dad could have known that, but the desperation was real, and it trumped logic.

His dad's eyebrows narrowed, a huff of a laugh escaping. "Steven I don't even know what that is. What is that, like a job? Like a celebrity? Or a president?"

"I mean, kinda…" Steven trailed off. His eyes fell to the concrete ground of the carwash. "Oh, forget it. This was a dumb question to ask anyway."

Steven leaned back against the van with his dad. It had been many years since they had lived together, his dad moving out to the van to get his own work at the car wash. When he was little, they weren't side by side on the wall of a rusty, dusty old vehicle: they would be side by side on the bed as his Dad would coax the nightmares away with a tired, loving voice and a simple enough tune to carry.

His dad bumped shoulders with him. "Listen, Steven," he coaxed his son's attention. "Pearl and Garnet and Amethyst…they knew your mother for a really long time. And I get that. But when I got to know your Mom, I didn't know anything about gem stuff, or fighting, or any of that. So all I got to learn was Rose as she was."

Steven looked up at him, expression contemplative. "And that was…different?"

"Sure it was." His Dad shrugged down at his kid. "I didn't have any expectations of her, and she didn't have any expectations of me. All we wanted to do was learn about each other now, not who we had been. That was why we got along so well. Rose didn't talk about gem stuff with me, because she didn't want to freak me out or anything."

"Well, you do freak out sometimes."

A hand came down on Steven's hair, scrunching it around as he rubbed down on Steven's puff. Steven couldn't resist honest laughter.

"I freak out because I care about you!" his dad laughed. "But yeah, I don't know how she was! I don't know anything about where gems come from or what they do or anything like that. Because I know Rose wanted to change without her even saying anything. So we let each other be who we wanted to be."

Steven's dad ended his fierce patting with a final wiggle to the hair. They leaned back, letting the moon be the moon, and the ocean air be salty, and the quiet sound of the far-off ocean build in the space their conversation had left vacant.

It was a good night. A quiet night. Beach City had already dropped in tourism at the end of the season, letting the year-rounders catch up with all the laundry and grocery shopping and car maintenance they had been avoiding from May to September. The long stretch of the town's Beach City beach was empty. Still, the wind was not too cold, and not too warm, but a cool, gentle thing that cradled Beach City in her hands.

"Wait," Steven asked aloud, realizing what his dad had said. "How did you know she wanted to change? If she didn't say anything."

His dad scratched his beard. "We-e-e-ll," he said, stretching the words out, "There were a couple things she said about being a gem, and a couple things about what it was like living in the temple with everyone. But really?"

Steven's dad grinned mischievously. Steven stepped back, playfully nervous, but his dad swooped in, grabbing him up in a big bear huge and, embarrassingly, a sturdy boop to the nose.

"I know," his dad said, his smile bright and mournful and regretful and grateful all rolled up into one, "Because Rose made the biggest change she could think of. Your mom gave up every part of herself to make you."

And Rose Qua— Pink Di— Rose placed her hands on her distended belly, wondering what her little offspring would be like. "Bundle of Joy" Greg called it. Would it be a fussy baby? A happy baby? Would the baby take after her, or Greg? Would it grow up smart, or strong, or wise, or clever? Would it want to learn music like its dad? Would it have her shield?

There was no way of knowing. The mystery gave a thrill down her body. By the time the baby came into the world, Pink Diamond and Rose Quartz and every other name she gave herself would be a memory. Nothing more, nothing less. This new baby would have her gem. And it could be anything in the entire world, and anything it wanted to be.

And that was enough for Rose.

[If the Earth was Pink Diamond's to give, she'd trust it to no one besides her son.]

For the people who found this story later down the line, thank you for liking and following. You are the sole reason I finally mustered the energy to finish this. I started and planned this story way before more of the reveals of the Diamonds and Homeworld came down on the series, and definitely before the series continuation had begun to air. I know people have a lot of opinions about Pink Diamond and how she was secretly a terrible person and made poor choices and yeah, I can understand the point where you see a complicated and borderline toxic mother figure and immediately see the problems with her. But I started this series to highlight a couple of things I thought really spoke to her story arc: that she was raised in an emotionally deprived environment, did her best to change the wrongs around her with all the tools she had available to her, and, when it came down to it, gave every part of her being up to try and finally change. In the end, choosing to end yourself, no matter how you do it, whether by complicated space alien pregnancy magic or not…it's not a choice people undertake when they are well. But Steven was left to pick up the pieces of a person he never got to know. The series has gotten more aware of the trauma this had left on the kid, but when I started planning this it had not been addressed at all! :') Ah well.

This is technically the second story— not just fanfiction, but any story I ever wrote— that I have every finished. Read it and weep.

Thanks for reading! :)