Garnet had stepped through the door of the temple into the beach house. Pearl was on the floor, surrounded by a random assortment of items; Amethyst was next to her, looking bemused.

"Oh, Garnet!" Pearl said. "Could you stay, please? I want you and Amethyst to be here when Steven returns."

Inside Garnet's mind control room, her ten emotions glanced at each other.

"Okay, that's fine," Joy S said. "Any idea of how long it'll be before he gets back?"

Fear S checked the probabilities on the future vision. "Odd; I don't see him," she said. "He's not entering from the front door, or from the temple or the warp pad… I don't know where else he could possibly-"

"He's in Pearl's pearl, if that's what you're wondering," Amethyst said.

"Wait, what?" said Disgust R. "What's he doing in there?"

"I'm not even going to try to predict why," Fear S said, shutting the future vision down.

"They'll probably explain once he comes out," Joy R said.

"They'd better," said Anger R.

Fortunately, Steven emerged from Pearl's gem before too long, clutching her phone and looking downcast.

"I wanted to tell you for so long," Pearl said.

"Mom was Pink Diamond."

Garnet's emotions went ballistic.

"What!?"

"How!?"

"But Rose shattered Pink Diamond!"

"That's what everybody said…"

"She lied to us? All this time?"

"Why would she do this!?"

It went like this as Steven explained how Pink Diamond, having failed to scare off the other Diamonds with a rebellion lead by "Rose Quartz," had had Pearl shapeshift into Rose's shape and poof her with the sword, making it seems like she had been shattered, and how Pearl had been sworn to secrecy.

Joy R chuckled nervously. "Well, I guess that-"

"No!" Anger S shouted. "Don't try to be optimistic! Rose lied to us! She was a Diamond! And nothing from you either," he said, turning to Joy S.

"No, I'm on your side," Joy S said. "If there was ever a time to be angry, this would be it."

"Why didn't we know about this?" Fear R said. "I mean, why didn't the future vision reveal anything?"

"Future vision can't catch everything; you know that," Fear S said. "If something's going to happen that's unlikely given what we know… or think we know..."

"Or that we don't bother verifying that we know because Rose told it to us!" Anger S shouted.

Sadness S slumped down in her seat. "The war… all our friends who were shattered, who were corrupted… the forced fusions… was it just some game to her?"

"She was probably laughing at us, secretly mocking us!" Disgust S said. "Look! A Sapphire and a Ruby fusing! Let's convince them that they're in love!"

"But… they are in love. Right?" Sadness R looked at Joy S.

"…I don't know. I mean, I thought they were, but…"

"But what if they thought that because of what Rose told them?" Sadness S said.

"It's a sober thought," Joy S said, "but if our relationship was built on a lie…"

"You can't mean that, can you?" asked Joy R.

Joy S said nothing.

"Is anyone else getting paranoid?" Fear S asked. "I mean, if Rose was Pink Diamond, who else is hiding a terrible, horrible, dark secret? Amethyst? Connie? One of you?"

"What?" Fear R exclaimed. "How could any of us possibly conceal secrets from the one another?"

"I don't know," Anger growled, "but if I find out..."

"Look, I know I'm the last one who would usually recommend this," Anger R said, "but how about we calm down a bit? I mean, I'm upset at Rose too, but-"

"DON'T TELL US HOW TO FEEL!" Anger S slammed down with all her might on the control panel, sending a wave of emotion as to cause Ruby and Sapphire to separate.

"Well," said Disgust S, now the only Disgust in the control room. "I guess this is happening."

"You're darn right it's happening!" Anger said. "If Ruby's Anger doesn't want to be angry, then I don't want to be in the same control room with her!"

"Maybe splitting up like this could be a good thing," Joy said, not fully sounding convinced of what she was saying. "I mean, sure, Sapphire seemed happy as part of Garnet, but she might be able to find a way to be even happier on her own. Maybe. Perhaps."

"I don't care if this leads to Sapphire's happiness or not!" Anger shouted. "I just want her to be mad!"

"She lied to us!" Sapphire yelled. "She lied about everything! She held our hands, looked at us right in the eyes, and told us to never question who we are as Garnet. We never questioned ourselves, or her!"

"We couldn't have known," Ruby said.

"No, Ruby couldn't have known!" Anger said. "But Sapphire has future vision! Ruby's emotions would be clueless without it!"

"Not that it helped us any," Sadness said. "We never looked into the possibility that she might have been something other than what she seemed to be."

"Exactly!" said Fear. "We trusted her enough to never use our future vision to look in to her… and she betrayed that trust completely."

"Does that really count as a betrayal?" Disgust wondered. "I mean, if she was never really on our side in the first place..."

"I don't know if that would make it better or worse," said Joy.

"Please," Ruby pleaded. "We can just stay calm and talk about this, right? Let's just talk."

"Talk? About what?" yelled Anger. "We couldn't reach an agreement when our emotions were shared; what makes her think we can reach one now?"

"Their relationship- our relationship- was based on a lie," said Sadness. "There's nothing else to say."

With that, Sapphire warped away.

There was silence in the control room as Sapphire arrived at her destination.

"So," Joy said, "I guess we should change the mood of all those memories of Rose, huh? Or… perhaps we should change those memories of Pink Diamond…"

"No, greens and reds suit them," Disgust said. "And those are what we should change the others to. Anger?"

"Later!" Anger said. "I can't bear to look at memories of Rose right now, even to change them! I'm just too mad!"

"Probably shouldn't have warped to Rose's Fountain, then," said Sadness.

"WHAT?" Anger yelled, looking at the screen. A flame burst out of his head; these fiery emotions caused Sapphire's powers to freeze the area around her.

Sadness sighed. "A monument to our leader, its beauty now covered by her deceit and our sorrow."

"In retrospect, Rose did seem a bit overpowered for a Quartz," Disgust said. "I mean, healing powers? Control over plants? It makes more sense for a Diamond to be able to do those things."

"I know!" Fear moaned. "How could we have been so careless?"

"Because she manipulated us!" Anger shouted. "She manipulated all her followers into thinking she was this kindhearted, all-loving leader, when she was really just a cruel, tyrannical Diamond!"

"Sapphire!" a voice yelled. It was Steven; him and Pearl were running towards her. A jagged column of ice shot up from the ground near them.

"What are you doing?" Fear cried, pulling Anger away from the controls.

"I was just trying to scare them off," said Anger. "Those two are the ones I least want to talk to right now. I mean, Pearl knew all this time and never told us."

"She was physically unable to," said Sadness. "Pink Diamond ordered her to keep it a secret."

"Yeah, well, that's no excuse."

"It's literally the perfect excuse," said Disgust.

"What about Steven? He literally is Rose!"

"I think we established fairly early on that he wasn't."

"Okay, but he has her gem; same difference."

"Garnet has both Sapphire's and Ruby's gem, but she's neither of them," said Joy. "…I probably shouldn't have mentioned that."

"Yeah, probably not," Sadness said. "I'm going to take charge now; Anger, you can help as long as you restrain yourself."

"Everything we were running from," Sapphire said softly. "She was there all along, using us for her little war, making me believe in a better future that I couldn't see because it wasn't real, and now here we are, our friends shattered and corrupted… of course she was a Diamond. What a long road she took to torture us all like this."

"It wasn't like that," said Steven. "You know she didn't want anyone to get hurt."

"No we don't!" said Fear. "We thought Rose Quartz didn't want anyone to get hurt; but Rose was actually Pink Diamond, who wanted everyone to get hurt."

"We clearly don't know anything," said Disgust.

"You deserve to know everything," said Pearl. "I was given to Pink Diamond a few thousand years before she was given the Earth."

Pearl proceeded to tell how, bored watching the colony from her moon base, Pink Diamond desired to go down and have fun with the Amethysts who were emerging from the Kindergarten. Knowing Blue and Yellow would disapprove, Pearl came up with the idea for Pink to disguise herself as a Rose Quartz. Together, the two discovered the wonders of the Earth - its fields and its flowers - and Pink decided to try to save it from what the Gems were planning to do to it.

Disgust gave a harrumph. "So what? Pink Diamond just suddenly started to care about Earth?"

"And why'd she have to rope everybody else into all this?" Anger said. "Why couldn't she just stop the colonization herself?"

"She tried," said Pearl. "She did everything she could as Pink Diamond. But her status meant nothing to Blue and Yellow. So she decided to make a stand, as someone they couldn't ignore. She was going to scare every Gem off the planet. But something changed when she saw your fusion."

"Our fusion? Garnet?" said Fear. "How would that change anything?"

"Shush," said Joy, listening with rapt attention. "She's about to tell us."

Pearl told how, after their departure from the Cloud Arena, they had been amazed at two different Gem types fusing, and how they had attempted fusing with each other. By luck, they stumbled onto Garnet, and Rose had invited her to join them.

"Before Garnet," Pearl said, "Rose was only fighting for Earth. But Garnet changed everything. Rose wanted to fight for her, she wanted to fight for Gems! And maybe she was foolish, and maybe even selfish, but she was-"

"She was following us," said Sadness.

"Come again?" said Disgust.

"No, that makes sense," said Joy. "We thought we were following her, but it was really the other way around! It was Pearl who inspired her to save the Earth, and Garnet who inspired her to help Gems as well!"

"Exactly," said Sadness. "But Pearl also helped inspire her to help other Gems. I mean, their bond, their love, their attempt at fusion… they didn't stay Rainbow Quartz all the time like Garnet, but they were still incredibly close."

"You're right," said Joy. "It was sort of like Sapphire and Ruby, wasn't it?"

"Ruby!" Fear cried. "Sapphire left her all alone!"

"We said so many terrible things to her," Sadness said. "We have to go back and apologize to her… and to her emotions."

"As soon as possible!" Fear said.

Sapphire, Steven, and Pearl returned to the beach house via the warp. A quick glance about revealed no Ruby; there was, however, a note addressed to Sapphire in the middle of the floor.

"Oh, no!" exclaimed Fear. "We're too late!"

"Maybe it's not so bad?" Joy suggested.

"It's extremely bad, and you know it!" Anger said.

"Anger's right," said Sadness. "Ruby's broken up with us, and we're never going to get back together again!"

"She wrote Sapphire's name off center," Disgust noted.

"I don't think that's what's important right now," said Joy.

"Hey, it's true."

Sapphire picked up the letter and read it: "You were right. I need some time to think, so I am running away. Ruby."

Sadness burst into even more tears than she had before.

"Right!? We were not right!" Anger yelled. "We were wronger than we've ever been! Doesn't that idiot know that?"

"Oh man," said Fear. "This is bad. This is really bad.

"This is our fault!" Anger yelled. "The emotions we sent to Sapphire made her lash out at Ruby, then storm out!"

"You're the one who sent those emotions," Disgust remarked.

"You don't think I know that?" Anger said. "You don't think I'm regretting it immensely?"

"Amethyst," Steven asked, locating her on his bed playing a video game, "Have you seen Ruby?"

"I don't know," Amethyst said. "Maybe she'll come back. It's not my job to babysit her."

"What!?" Anger raged. "Doesn't she care that one of her teammates, and the love of Sapphire's life, is missing?"

"Lazy, selfish, apathetic… yep, typical Amethyst," Disgust remarked.

"Do you see her coming back in your Future Vision, Sapphire?" Steven asked.

"Oh!" said Joy, turning to fear. "That could work, right?"

"Maybe," said Fear. "But remember when we were acting unpredictable? That was mostly Sapphire's Joy's doing! And now she's on her own, she could be doing anything! She's so spontaneous!"

"One of the many wonderful things about her."

"Exactly!" Fear said, pulling up the future vision. "I mean, look at how many different possibilities she's gotten into!"

"What- why would she be a cowboy!?" shouted Anger.

"I don't know," said Sadness, "but I've just been setting my controls to maximum for the past minute or so."

"Yeah, that seems about right," said Joy.

So they let Sapphire cry in the arms of an equally weepy Pearl as Steven and Amethyst left to try to find Ruby.