6. The Moments.
Content warnings for:
Major character death.
Implied suicidal thoughts.
"To cease to exist
and to die
are two different things entirely.
But you knew this,
didn't you?"
- Erika L. Sanchez
It snuck up on her like a thief. Or that's what it felt like, the day she finally caught sight of it.
She sat outside their shelter on the top of the cliff overlooking the wide expanse of the sea, sharpening her sword blade on a weathered rock.
A quick glance at her reflection lead to a double take - and suddenly there it was, vivid as an arc of lightning against the blackest of nights. Blinking to ensure her eyes were clear in the morning brightness, she lifted the sword - angling the blade so that she could get a closer look at her hair.
She shot up onto her feet in alarm.
"Hey, Lars?" she called over, not looking away from the blade. She tried hard to keep her tone even. "Were you ever planning to let me know I've become a silver vixen?"
"I look at you every day," Lars replied, shrugging, from where he was cooking over their campfire. "I guess I didn't notice. It looks cool, though. Very distinguished."
She stared longer at her reflection in the blade, attempting in the sunlight to accept this new development.
"I can't believe my mother was right," she muttered, finally. "It happened so young."
He laughed, swinging tongs around. "Too bad you got no one to appreciate it but me."
He perhaps had an inkling that it was dangerous to ask this question of an adult woman, but he blithely asked it anyway. "How old are you?"
His grave transgression caused Connie to cast an unwilling glance at the nearby tree they referred to as the Calendar Tree. Tally markings by now covered almost every square inch of its trunk. She continued to edit it religiously with every passing day, but hardly ever thought to add them up very often.
She knew Lars had given up trying to understand the system, but she understood it through and through. Once she was done, she took a moment to acknowledge the vague dread that washed over her. It was a very familiar feeling by now.
"Twenty nine? Give or take," she said.
Lars dropped the tongs into the fire, but fished them out with no trouble. Only a minor burn, which he knew would heal fast. "You're like an old lady."
She gave him a look. "I am so mad right now I can't even."
"So," he started, shifting awkwardly where he sat. He flicked his hair back and struck a pose. It took her a second to figure out that he wanted a critical assessment of his age based on his looks.
She wrinkled her face and then came closer, leaning right down to look at him.
Eventually she was forced to admit, "You haven't aged a day. You're still a pink teenager."
He raised a hand to his face and rubbed it across his cheek. He supposed in the back of his mind that he just wasn't a facial hair guy, or that perhaps he was just a very late bloomer. Obviously, it had something to do with this instead.
"But it's okay!" She said reassuringly. "It's better than aging, right?" Lars frowned, but she continued. "And I'm sure you wouldn't be the only dude in his mid-thirties ever to get asked for ID. You're still young and hot."
She tried a smile but it collapsed quickly. Lars chewed on his bottom lip. The look on his face made her heart hurt.
"Anyway, look at me," she continued in a last ditch effort to cheer him up. "I'm old enough to have grey hair, apparently! Oh, and my ganglion - remember that guy?" she exposed her wrist to show him, and he cringed. The harmless little lump that had formed on her wrist shortly after she'd taken a fall a few years earlier was still as weird and gross as the last time she'd made him look at it.
Okay, now she was smiling.
"Go on, touch it," she urged him as she held it out toward him. "Touch it."
He had no interest in ever touching it again and declared so using much stronger language.
In the dark of every night, each sat alone with their thoughts.
Inside the little cabin, Connie wrapped herself in blankets. They'd managed years ago to make the hovel about the size of a garden shed with enough height to not have to slouch too much. Inside it, the furnishings were almost nonexistent - just blankets for the most part, for sleeping on and in. The storage space service provided by Lars' head meant they could otherwise live clutter-free.
The cabin had scant insulation from the fall night outside, but the fur blankets were enough. She also had her winter gear available in case she needed it, but it was too early in the season for that. They had noticed over the last fourteen-odd years of being here that the summers were getting cooler, the winters, ever harder. It didn't matter much, though - as always, they spent the majority of their days elsewhere in the world, returning here every night out of a persistent sense of homesickness.
She stared up at the ceiling in the darkness. With only the vaguest concept of the hour, she regardless knew it was fast approaching the middle of the night. Sleep was not an easy thing to catch.
In these moments, she often thought of her parents. She missed them, but she had no photos of them with her and her memory had whittled them both down to their basic features.
But sometimes, if she concentrated, she could almost make them out with clarity.
She missed the gems, especially her mentor Pearl. She hadn't seen her or Garnet once in the entire time she'd been here, and she wondered what they were doing, where they were. Her thoughts of Steven were much the same. She would wonder what he would think of all this, how he would be tripping all over himself to help her and Lars, if only he possibly could. She remembered him fondly, but in her mind his face was indistinct. Blurry, like those of her parents.
His voice? It was hard to admit, but she wasn't sure exactly what he'd sounded like, anymore.
The fading of her memories brought her unspeakable grief, so she thought of him often to try to retain all of him that she could.
She often drifted off thinking of his smile.
Outside, Lars leaned back against the wall of the cabin, arms draped over his knees. He was dimly aware of the cold as the waves endlessly rolled in on the beach below. Neither fall nor winter had bothered him before, and he doubted that it would begin being a problem this evening.
A slight breeze rustled the nearby canopy. He gently rested his head back against the wall to watch the twinkling stars above through half-closed eyes. He listened to the lone owl somewhere off in the woods.
When he allowed himself to let his mind wander in moments like these, he found his thoughts often bucked up against the terrifying amount of time that stood in the way of the people he left. He instead tried to think of other things. His parents - their faces were sort of there in his memory. Sadie, who meant the world to him, was much the same. So were the faces of his friends - the crew he'd bonded trial-of-fire style with on the other side of the galaxy. His little buddy Steven - who he still somehow pictured as a tiny kid despite having watched him grow.
None of them would ever know what had become of him.
He groaned silently to himself. This wasn't helping. He wasn't sure yet if he wanted to sleep tonight but he knew making himself sad wouldn't help.
He instead thought of Connie, and his thoughts quickly turned to his worry for her. Then to the elusive Rose, then of course to Moldavite - not the one safely contained in his head, nor the one kicking around in the present, oblivious to everything, but the one in the distant future who would someday be waiting on the beach below, ready to destroy the lives of two promising young adults.
And he thought of the task that lay before him, on the other side of an impossibly distant future.
They'd long since begun searching areas more difficult for a normal human to withstand. The desert that would someday be a much larger wasteland known as the Saharan was one of those places.
"Yeah," said Lars after they'd spent a long moment at the top of a dune, scanning the flat sandy nothingness that sprawled off into the distance. "This is worse than the ocean."
This place wasn't alive at all. Even the sky seemed sand-colored.
"At least I can stretch my legs," Connie stated with a shrug of her shoulders. She adjusted the headwrap she wore to deal with extreme weather and began to trudge her way down the side of the dune.
Lars followed along without needing to be so encumbered. "Okay, but are you properly hydrated?"
"Are you?"
She could feel his eyes burning into the back of her head. Or maybe that was the blazing sun. Either way, she'd had plenty of water and knew there was plenty more sitting in the dark world on the other side of Lars' head. When that ran out, water was only a portal away anyway.
"I'm fine," she eventually reassured him. "I'll hit you up when I need something."
"I only ask all the time because I have no point of reference anymore. Like, I drink water and I'm fine for weeks. Maybe even months. Maybe I don't need it at all. Not to live, anyway."
Connie scowled slightly, unseen by Lars. Must be nice, she thought to herself.
"I have no frickin' clue what powers me now," he added in low tones, a little disturbed.
Her expression softened as she quickly regretted her fleeting thought.
As they walked, a slight breeze kicked up enough hot sand and dust to make them shield their eyes.
"Anyway," he said through gritted teeth after the breeze settled. He glanced around. "Where exactly are we heading, little buddy?"
She sighed. "Not a damn clue. I don't even know if it's around here right now. This could be a waste of time."
He stopped short in the sand. "Then why are we even here?"
"I was thinking about the origins of the Sand Fortress. It could be that maybe its original function was just to be the base of the Crystal Gems. So why not check where it was last seen before the gems captured it?"
"But... Wait." He scratched his head. "Is this the thing that can easily, like, be moved around? Because it has a gem at its core?"
She stopped walking and turned to look at him. "Yeah. I know it was corrupted and puking up towers and stairs to nowhere in the future, and I know that doesn't necessarily mean it was is here now, but-"
Lars wiped a hand down his face. "Connie. We need to be following real leads, not bullsh-"
"We don't have any real leads."
"It's dangerous here! I can tell it's super hot. We'll never find-"
She thrust a finger up, pointing vaguely at the sky above. "Well, maybe fly us up for a bird's-eye!"
"Listen here, you," he muttered darkly. "I am not a fairy. I can't fly."
She rolled her eyes. "You know what I mean, just-"
"You don't think that was one of the first things I tried to do when I found out I had cool powers!?"
She snorted, and suddenly their latest argument was over.
Seconds later they dropped from a portal a short way. Clinging to each other, they used this one weird trick to take in as much of the surrounding region as they could from way up in the eternal sky.
Connie ran at him, teeth grit, sword out, ready to slice.
But he was ready for it. He gripped the handle of the awesome battleaxe with both hands and, teeth grit and eyes focused... stepped aside, swinging the axe out of her way as he did.
Without anything to strike, Connie skidded to a halt in the dirt, sending up a cloud of dust as she did. She spun on him.
"Fight me! Don't just dodge!" She shouted, unable to keep a temper out of her voice.
Lars grunted. These training sessions did his head in. He wanted to be helpful, to hone his skills and help keep hers sharp, but he was stronger than he thought he should be.
"You did fine the other day! What's going on?"
"Just that same old hangup. Afraid of killing you with my superhuman strength, blah," he admitted. But now that it was out there, he felt a little better. He grit his teeth, swung the axe so that it was out in front of him again and changed his footing to brace himself. "Also? I miss my spear."
"Yeah, well, you're the one who dropped it, and it was gone by the time we went back to look for it. And you refuse to use the human spear for some reason, so maybe you should deal," she told him in a no-nonsense way.
"The human spear sucks." He sulked in a teenagerly way. "It doesn't even look cool. It's not the same."
She rolled her eyes and widened her stance. "Look, we'll get you a shiny new gem spear someday, alright? Just fight me."
He looked at the wicked axeblade, and then at her. And then the vivid recurring image of the thing slicing clean through her came back to him. He shut his eyes and shook his head briefly.
"Can we put a pin in this?" he asked. "I can't - look, I hate this thing. I still don't know what I'm doing with it. I'd rather just use it to get firewood so I can cook you dinner, not friggin' pretend to try to murder you with it."
She groaned loudly. She'd been looking forward all through yet another day of searching for this session and now her only viable sparring partner was opting out like some loser.
"Fine." She lowered her sword and stood, considering other sparring options. "If only there was a way we could train together. Like, on the same side. Like a-"
Fusion.
It hit her like a revelation from the skies above. Her eyes widened as she stared at him. The boy was riddled with gem magic, but there was no gem at the center of his being. Surely it wasn't possible. Or was it?
"Hear me out," she said suddenly. "I've been trying to think of ways that maybe I can like, last longer."
Lars' gaze met hers.
"My body, I mean, since I'm getting older and all."
He narrowed his eyes. Whatever she was getting at, he couldn't tell. "You mean without dying, right?"
"Yeah. I had the thought just now that, maybe… Well, what if we could fuse?" She shrugged, almost casually.
Lars meanwhile almost choked on his own saliva. He threw the axe down to the side, suddenly. The sparring session was definitely over if it wasn't already. "What! I don't love you!"
"Wow. Thanks, Lars. Real hurtful."
"Come on, you don't love me either!" Lars interrupted her, waving his hands around. "Not in that way. Like, if you were to ask, do I love you? I'd say, Sure. But, more as a friend? Maybe a little sister?" He paused. "One who's... biologically much older than me?"
Connie's eyes widened. "Lars. That's adorable!"
Lars frowned at her, but blushed dark pink nonetheless. "An arch nemesis I happen to be going through an endless hell with." He walked a few steps away from her to sit down on top of the upturned canoe in front of the firepit. "Not in a sexual way."
She followed him over, pulling a face. "You know fusion has nothing to do with that - you saw Steg Multiverse, didn't you?" she asked with a touch of pained jealousy - she really wished she'd gone to the rock concert instead of Space Camp that day. But that was neither here nor there. It had been so long ago.
"Okay, okay, point taken."
"A fusion can embody any kind of relationship. Maybe Laronnie would just be fun and easy, you know?"
"Why would they ever be 'fun and easy'?" Lars muttered. "When are we 'fun and easy'?"
She ignored him. "They'd be magic and know swords and maybe not age and only occasionally give into bouts of overwhelming existential dread-"
"Laronnie," Lars interrupted again with a snort.
"What?"
"I mean, is that a hard and fast rule, or...? What if they wanna be called Jeremy or something."
Connie blinked. "Huh. That never occurred to me. What if they'd rather be called The Cursed?"
Lars snorted. "Or maybe like Sam or Toni, if we're being gender neutral." He kept riffing, his furrowed brow revealing his engagement with this idea. "But that doesn't matter, I guess. It's not like they'd be here to make friends."
Connie made eye contact with him. She sat down next to him and smiled. "You're actually considering it."
He spread his arms wide. "I don't have a gem! It doesn't matter if I consider it or not. I, I'm not- I literally- I-I likely can't."
"Can we try, though? It'll be better."
He hesitated. How would it be better? But admittedly, this topic was too interesting to ignore.
"Pretty sure if I could, I woulda done it with Sadie... back in the day. Larsadie," He said, frowning. "Sadars?" He shook his head. "Whatever. Their name coulda been Strawberry-Shortcake-Limbo-Potato for all it really mattered - it didn't happen."
"I love the weird rants you go off on to try to distract me." She smiled.
He sighed, but he was unable to help grinning back at her. "Fine. We'll try it."
She pressed her fingers together in glee and jumped back up. It had been a rather calm late afternoon, not too cool but not exactly warm either. She had just been in bare feet for training. What better way to dance than barefoot as well. "Lars!"
"I'm not a great dancer," he admitted, mildly intimidated by her enthusiasm but still far more into this idea than he ever was about fighting her.
But she smiled down at him reassuringly and held out her hand. "I don't think you have to be. You just need to be you."
"The Total Douchebag it is," he smiled as he placed his hand in hers and rose to his own feet as well. "What's your dance style?"
She smiles up at him. "Hm. Well, I guess tonight I'll be performing the Polite Nerd."
"What? You're never polite to me."
"Do I have to be?"
"Never. So how do we-"
She bowed to him. He snorted, and bowed back. And then, after a false start where they almost tripped and fell into each other, Lars had an idea.
"Mind if I beatbox?"
"No," she said, giggling.
It didn't work but the effort at least gave them something a little different to do for a while.
"So say we finally find her. What are we going to do?" He swallowed nervously on some other day in some far off place. "Are you, like, planning to get pinked straight away, or…"
Connie stopped in her tracks and hesitated a long while, looking thoughtfully at the surrounding trees. They'd found an abandoned gem structure and were checking it out. It was in ruins - to the point that they couldn't tell what it was once supposed to be. It had been left alone for at least a number of decades. Plant life was beginning to reclaim it. The Earth was taking back what belonged to it.
It was evident there was nothing here worth seeking but, lucky for them, they didn't have anywhere else they needed to be.
Except for wherever Rose was, of course. But they were working on it.
"I. I don't know," she responded, finally.
Lars frowned. "I mean, there's no way I'd be able to-"
Her eyes were wide. "I'm not asking you to!"
"Well then… Does that mean you will, uh..." he had no idea how to finish his thought.
"Maybe I'll just have to," she replied finally. "Or else we risk losing her again."
"What if it doesn't work?" He asked in a small voice.
"It has to," she insisted.
"Okay, well, what if we find the Crystal Gem's base or whatever." This topic was difficult to discuss, but it had to happen. "Are we just going to, uh, wait for you to die of old age? Would you even want to come back after that?"
"Well, listen." She shrugged. "People in this period aren't supposed to live very long. Old age is supposed to be more like thirty, thirty five."
"Oof," came Lars' helpful contribution.
"I mean, that's what the public school system would have me believe anyway." She furrowed her brow. "On the other hand, I've seen lots of old people around. Clearly people in the future don't give people back in gem times enough credit."
"So…"
"Listen. Whenever, however it happens, you need to take me and stake out their base until you see her. Is that okay?"
"If we find their base," he grumbled, trying to keep the despair from his voice.
She eyed him. "Lars."
"Connie. I love having you around, but-"
The way he was talking, the tone in his voice and the way she could tell the words hurt him as he spoke them - she knew what he was ramping up to. She became cross quickly.
"I thought you were done with that! Telling me to run off - as if that's even an option!"
Lars folded his arms and sighed. "Look, I know. I'm just... not happy. About anything we're doing."
She tried a smile. "It'll be better when we can for sure do this together."
This made Lars frown. There was that word again. Better.
The search continued, and yet another season passed them by.
Somewhere else, some other time, a gem battle exploded down on top of them.
They had known there was something going on nearby and were heading toward it, but part of the main battle must have branched off wildly, and here they were, suddenly caught up in the center of it all.
The peace of the forest around them turned insane in an instant. Projectiles flew everywhere as gems hit the ground running, many of them too close for comfort. Eyes darting around in the twilight, Connie pulled her sword from its scabbard and attempted to start making sense of the situation, but Lars grabbed her and yanked her through a portal before she had a chance to do anything.
It was a close one. A topaz with a sword sliced the air where they would have been not a second later.
They rematerialized on a nearby hillside and immediately crouched to observe the battle going on below. This looked to be a big one - bigger than the handful of others they'd come across during their time searching. It was sort of hard to see through the trees but that was a problem that was solving itself - swathes of them had already been mowed down in the onslaught. Some of it was even on fire. Although Earth was reclaiming some of its lost areas, the planet was still paying dearly in others.
As she watched, Connie became aware of a familiar figure flying through the air.
"Pearl," she whispered to herself.
"Huh?" asked Lars, who was staring at the action going on in some other direction.
She continued to watch as the Renegade Pearl, famous in this time for being exactly what she was, swooped confidently like a majestic bird, spear held in front of her in an aerodynamically efficient way, her gem glinting in the sunset as if to dispel any lingering doubt that it was her. She took Connie's breath away.
Pure love for her old mentor rushed into her heart like light flooding a darkened room.
She was just about to grab the distracted Lars' arm and draw his attention to what she was seeing but before she could, she noticed movement below them, further down the mountainside. It was a gem, glinting yellow in the dull light. From Connie's perspective, she could see that this archer was tracking Pearl's descent through the air with a loaded bow.
Connie set her jaw and grabbed her sword. Before she could think she was half-running, half-sliding down the mountainside - a difficult situation in twilight. She faintly heard Lars hissing loudly out for her to come back, but she didn't care.
The archer had thought herself alone, and jumped in surprise to hear someone barrelling towards her location. Her shot flew wide. Rattled, the gem - a yellow quartz - spun around. Her face was contorted in fury as she looked down upon the being that caused her to miss.
The gem held out her hand and another bolt materialised in a flash of light. She came at Connie with it, but the woman grit her teeth and swung. Her sword connected hard with the bolt, sending it flying. It disappeared midair.
Connie smiled, bringing her sword back to her center. She smiled grimly at the adversary towering over her and braced herself. This was too easy - it had been so long since she had fought against a real opponent. Lars had been okay to spar with, but she always felt like he was holding back. In the heat of the moment, she didn't even care about breaking time. She was ready for more.
The gem presently pulled a rather ornate dagger from a little strap she wore at her waist and came at her once again. Connie stepped aside and swung once more, aiming this time for the gem's physical form, but the well-trained warrior gem dodged as well and Connie felt a weird jab somewhere in her torso. But it didn't bother her too much - she took a few more steps back to give her time to spot the weaknesses in the gem's next advance. To give her time to assess the best way to strike.
To give her time to realize that something was very wrong.
She felt lightheaded, suddenly. Sick. She fought against herself to take action, but her sword was now too heavy to throw around. Her grip faltered. Then it failed, and the sword clattered to the ground.
And the gem was advancing. She wore a look of glee as a swift kick sent Connie flying back into a boulder. All at once, her body was racked with pain as well. She crumpled to the ground.
She watched helpless as the gem turned and jumped from this vantage point, presumably to seek another vantage point.
She could also do nothing more than watch as Lars stumbled into her narrowing field of vision.
"Hey! Hey, Connie!" he was saying, but his words were faint and growing fainter. He looked troubled, his brow a knotted mess. She tried to shake her head to clear her mind and sit up, but he was kneeling beside her.
"Hey!?" he said again.
Hey, she tried to return her friend's frantic greeting. She wanted to be reassuring, but everything was wrong, and she couldn't. There was no pain anymore - only a dull ache getting duller and the sensation of her vision slowly fading out. Of all her strength leaving her.
The worried face of her pink friend soon blurred into grey, then stark darkness. Moments later, her hearing went and silence, absolute, followed.
She couldn't help but think of her old life one final time. Her parents, she could almost hear way they laughed when they hugged her.
Her Steven, and how much she loved the way he smiled when he looked at her. How full her heart felt when she smiled back.
His face was perfect in her memory now.
She shuddered, looking up at him weakly with eyes that were drifting quickly out of focus. She opened her mouth, but no sound spilled forth.
It was only a moment later when her body released all tension that he began to wizen to the seriousness of it all.
How gravely injured she'd been.
"Connie! Yo!" He shook her by the shoulder. "Wake up!"
Gingerly placing his hand on her chest, Lars immediately noticed she was covered in a warm liquid. Her shirt had been ripped by something sharp.
It was only when he raised his hand up briefly to see what it was, he noticed it. The ripped cloth of her shirt, the wound itself, the blood on his hand. The blood everywhere else.
A coldness gripped his heart. "Uh-"
Whatever else he was going to say died on his lips, much like Connie had just now.
The part of his mind that was relatively okay at not panicking took over. He knew what he was supposed to do - he'd thought about this moment for years. Agonized about it. He'd had no idea it was going to happen so soon, but here he was in a world that had proven time and time again that it did not care about either of them.
He slid his vest off and wrapped it around her torso, making sure to cover the wound which appeared to be just below her ribcage. He didn't really know for sure how this all worked, but he figured she'd be better off with the rest of her blood kept inside her.
As a last minute thought, he picked up her sword and stowed it away in his head. Then he hefted her up and stepped through a portal with her in his arms.
Her skin became ashen quickly as he flung them both through portal after portal. There was no time to explore new places anymore. That luxury (and it had indeed been one) was abruptly and forevermore unavailable.
He knew unequivocally that if Connie had even a slight chance of returning, it would be because he got incredibly lucky.
He had to hope they'd missed something, somewhere, and that he'd come across it soon and stealthily while trying not to panic. He was reduced once more to hoping - that futile pastime he'd shared with her for so long.
Rose's Fountain had been his first stop. Standing on top of its waters, he awkwardly held her by her underarms and lowered her in. Despite how much he wanted it to be that easy, it didn't work. Her body was too damaged. He resumed the search.
It was during perhaps the twenty eighth fruitless jump that he finally let out his first sob.
By the fiftieth, his throat was dry and yet his face was slick with tears.
Still he persevered, searching for Rose through portal after portal, jump after jump...
...Until he couldn't any longer.
He saw the conical shape of the active volcano in the distance. His tearstained face tightened.
He easily hefted her slipping body back up and took a listless step toward it.
The hours had piled up quickly. He'd in his panic tried everywhere he could think of. But this time, throwing down a portal didn't even occur to him.
Automatically, mechanically, he dragged himself and the body of his best and only friend up the side of the volcano.
Toxic plumes of smoke and fiery ash rose past him, buoyed aloft by jets of hot air. Below him, the bubbling of lava.
He lowered himself to sit somewhere above it, at a relatively safe distance, but one from which he was still able to see the toxic pool. He still held Connie's lifeless body to him. She was still and cold, unlike the atmosphere around him.
He was sorry. He'd failed her, like he'd done many times before.
"Ugh, this tastes like sludge," said a voice nearby in a casual matter that didn't really fit this situation.
"Caffeinated sludge," he replied in a flat voice without looking up.
He pictured Sadie smiling softly at him. "It's been a while, huh?" she said.
"I." He sunk. "Yeah."
"Wanna talk about it?"
He shot her a wounded glance which quickly softened before turning his eyes back down to his friend. Connie looked so peaceful, the familiar lines of tension on her face all but gone.
She seemed like she was sleeping. Which, he figured, she was.
He hoped to join her soon.
"Lars?" asked the part of himself that was trying to save him.
He closed his eyes.
"Please don't remind me," he said at length. "Not now."
Sadie took a couple of slow steps toward him, careful to avoid the rocks. "Of what?" she asked gently as she took a seat beside him in the warmth.
"About how I'll disappear from your life someday. How I just... won't come back."
She smiled that beautiful smile. "But you're the Human Boomerang; always comin' back to me."
He exhaled. "Listen. There's something I've been wondering. When I disappeared, what will everyone think? Did they know? Will they know why?"
She shrugged. "I won't exist for five, five and a half millennia or so. None of us think anything yet."
But he continued. "What did my parents think? My crew? You? Did.. Will you guys ever find out the truth? Will you know how happy I finally was, before it all went away? How I didn't want to just leave you all?" He lowered his voice, "Will there ever be closure for you?"
Sadie went quiet. Her smile faded. She turned her gaze down to the bubbling lava below.
"I know you can't answer that," he said in hollow tones. "I'm only talking to myself."
A long silence passed, punctuated only by hot bubbling of lava going on below.
"What are you doing here?" She asked in a way that implied she already knew.
"Without Connie, I got nothin'," he shuddered, voice low, at last. "Not even the thought of you. I can't do this. Not without her."
"She wanted-"
He sobbed openly. "She wanted!? What she wanted got her-" his voice caught in his throat. "I didn't want this for her! I wanted her to be happy! I bet if she tried, she could've had a life. But she... she wanted to stay with me."
"Of course she did, Lars. Even if time didn't depend on it, you're still worth sticking by."
"She was perfect for Steven - they're both so stubborn."
"You're one to talk," Sadie's face grew solemn. "You can't control people. You can't decide how others get to be happy."
He exhaled, long and loud. "Yeah, well. Neither of us were ever happy."
"You deserve to be. You both do."
He glanced across at her, with eyes too afraid to believe.
"Sure, it won't happen for a while. Maybe not even for a long while. And, maybe, no matter what you do, it'll seem like you can never be happy again. Not even if you try really hard, not even for a moment. A-and... oh, man," she said with a sorrowful laugh as tears pricked at her eyes as well. "Will there be an endless procession of moments."
Lars' face ran thick with tears.
It had always been there, lurking in the back of his mind - the passage of time separating them? him from their? his goal. Avoiding it, thinking of other things was no use. He always went back to it. He was there right now.
Her voice - if this was even what she sounded like, he couldn't really remember after so long - sliced into his miserable thoughts.
"But you said yourself, you were happy once. Five thousand-odd years is a long time. You could be happy again."
He had no idea where all this fluid was coming from - he'd been crying for hours and couldn't remember the last time he'd had water. He should have run dry by now.
"You just have to keep going."
He stared down into the bubbling pool some feet below them.
"Lars," she urged him. "You have to do right by her."
"What if I can't find Rose?" he asked in a small voice.
"What if you can?"
He sniffed. "What if it doesn't work?"
"What if it does?"
He exhaled as he considered the half-remembered face of his on-again-off-again paramore, and his thoughts drifted to Rose. He made the difficult decision of trusting the universe; that this next portal would be the one to find her.
"You're so smart, Sadie," he said, closing his eyes. "I think about you a lot, you know."
"I know," she said with a sad smile.
He drew a breath. When he opened his eyes again, they were glowing. He belted it out, and there it hung - a mysterious portal to parts unknown, swirling a couple of yards away from him in the air away from the lava.
It waited patiently while he gathered back the emotional wherewithal to rise to his feet.
Connie was heavy, but he could lift her. She was limp, which took a short moment to adjust for. Even though he knew on some level that she couldn't feel anything, he wanted to remain vigilant of her comfort. Caring for her was a habit that was hard to put down.
"Goodbye Sadie," he said quietly.
"Goodbye, Lars."
When he felt they were both ready, he flung the both of them into the portal.
The haze slowly dissipated into the hot air around her.
Rose, sword still in hand and distraught by the deed she had been forced to perform, caught the colorful gemstone of one of her closest friends before it hit the stone floor.
Tears streamed down her face. This encounter hadn't gone anything like she'd planned.
Not that she'd ever planned this at all…
What to do, what to do. She'd let her emotions get the best of her, once again, but Bismuth had been so-
She grit her teeth. She didn't want to think about the look in her friend's eyes, about all the things that she'd been saying. A magenta bubble sprang into existence around the dormant gemstone. It seemed like the next logical step. She went back to trying to think instead of what to do next.
Her concentration broke at the sudden realization that there was something behind her. She spun around, sword raised and shield up, to find a white and pink swirling circle hanging in the air across the room from her. Her eyes widened at the sight of it. Her grip on the sword grew tighter as she took an uncertain step backward.
She tensed as something spilled out of it.
And, to Lars' complete and utter surprise, Rose was there.
His breath caught in his throat at the sight of the giant woman armed to the teeth before him. At the sight of the bubbled gemstone she subtly tucked into her hair.
He glanced around to get his bearings, but there were none to really get. He was alone in a windowless, lava-filled room with her. He suddenly felt very unsafe.
But Rose seemed too overwhelmed in this moment to be too threatening. He narrowed his eyes at her. Had she been crying?
Rose recognized the incredibly defective gem immediately. She'd never seen another quite like this one, after all.
"It's you," she said with surprise evident in her voice. She lowered her sword arm and her shield disappeared. "H-how did you-" she paused briefly as her mind seemed to catch up with her mouth. "How did you make that?"
"What?" he asked, miserably.
"That!" she repeated herself as she waved vaguely at the portal behind him. "That big swirly... thing!"
He swallowed. "Oh. Uh-"
He presently made his escape route disappear.
But this diamond was a being of boundless curiosity, it seemed. "After the battle on the Facet Nine hillside - I-I wanted you to meet with me. But you didn't." Her eyes widened. "Where have you been? I was looking for-"
It suddenly appeared that she noticed the sad bundle in his arms.
"-You?"
Lars honestly couldn't think of what to say. He was exhausted, clinging Connie's limp body close to him, shaking as he stared up at Rose. The woman in his arms was cold, but less so the longer he had her here in this warm room.
Rose's eyes flicked from Connie's face, and back to his.
"Oh," she said as her shoulders sank, her voice dropping. "Oh. Your human friend."
All he could do was nod, causing the tears to fall faster. He had no spare arms to wipe them up.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I've known a lot of humans. All of them do this, after a time." She hesitated. "It's sad, but..." She shrugged. She couldn't offer much else in the way of consolation. "It's their way," she finished, matter-of-factly.
Lars felt like he was playing with fire, and inexplicable new tears burned his eyes all the same.
She eyed him oddly, suddenly. "You're not really a gem, are you?"
Lars stared up at her. "No."
"Then wh- Do, do you have a name?"
"Yeah."
A silence hung in the air where she expected his name to go.
Eventually, he instead continued, "I know what you are-"
He saw the manner in which her eyes widened. He couldn't not. She was an extremely expressive person and in this moment, she looked like a deer caught in the light of an oncoming train.
"-Rose Quartz, the healer," he exhaled. "And… and I know you can help this woman."
Rose had seen many humans pass into this state before. "I'm sorry, I-"
Lars never, ever thought Rose could have ever looked so uncertain.
"Please, help her. You have healing tears."
The sight of this miserable creature struggling to keep it together before her was enough to get her going again, and Rose's eyes budded over with tears. To his surprise, she placed the sword down on the floor and stepped closer.
He was fearful for a moment. Fearful it wouldn't work. He squeezed Connie's body tightly and shuffled her around in his arms in order to brush errant strands of hair from her face.
Rose, standing directly in front of him now, spoke quietly. "How do I-"
"Uhh-"
Before he could bumble his way through his half-formed concept of what she should do, she'd already brought a finger up to wipe moisture from her eye and was reaching out for Connie's face. She touched her forehead, so gently, in exactly the same manner Lars remembered seeing Steven heal others so often.
She moved her fingers back slowly, leaving a tiny teardrop in the middle of her forehead.
He held his breath.
In the dubious moment that followed, neither of the pink beings could take their eyes off her still form.
Suddenly, Connie became awash in a bright light that radiated in a ripple effect from where Rose had touched her, leaving pink skin and hair in its wake. A long second later, Lars felt her body tense, her muscles vital once more. It was an alarming sensation, to have the dead weight in his arms spring back to life after so, so terribly long.
He gasped as she brought a hand up to clasp her face.
She breathed in. Her mouth formed sounds. "Ughhh. What-"
Wiping errant strands of hair from her face, the first thing she saw was Lars looking down at her in complete disbelief - his eyes, red and raw and wide as they stared down at her.
"Huh?" she asked, immediately alarmed. "Wh-what happened?!"
Lars had no words. He hugged her tighter and cried. She felt a little awkward but let it happen as she struggled to understand what was happening. She began taking in their surroundings and belatedly noticed the huge gem in front of them. She tensed.
Rose Quartz.
This could only mean one thing.
She raised her hand again and really looked at it, this time. It was pink.
Her mind boggled. It had happened, so suddenly. She shifted in Lars' grasp, who took the hint and began to let her down carefully.
Her balance was wobbly, but she managed to stand on her own. She used this moment to roll up her sleeves, to check out her hair.
Awash with conflicting feelings, Connie at last raised her eyes to regard the runaway, rebellious diamond. Yet more of the same life-giving tears that had brought her back ran down her face in a constant stream born of intense emotional confusion.
"Rose. Thank you," she said quietly.
This whole experience has been staggering for Rose. She wanted so badly for this to make any sense, so she asked, "Who are you? Where are you from?"
Connie was caught up in the emotion of the moment. To Lars' dismay, she began to respond. "I-"
"Sidebar," he urged her quietly as he took her hand. She went willingly, still reeling.
Rose, confused, reached out toward them. "Please, don't go-"
Lars hurriedly barked a portal into the air. Rose's eyes flicked from it, back to them.
"Wait, no-" she said, eyes wide. "Where are you going? Please, talk to me."
"No," said Lars. "We, we can't-"
She gazed at him in earnest. "You were a human too, weren't you? I never brought you back," she reasoned. "So, how did- Who are-"
"I can't explain, but I wish I could. Maybe someday we'll be able to, but…" He trailed off. He was already concerned that he'd ruined everything.
Rose stared as they made their way toward the portal. "I just want to understand," she said.
Connie glanced back at her while being pulled toward the portal, and Lars did too. Rose's eyes narrowed as they disappeared into it. She was overcome with the idea to follow and took a couple of steps toward it, but it blinked out of existence behind them almost immediately.
It would be a long while before Rose could return her thoughts to the mess that had been made before the interruption. But she knew for certain she couldn't tell anyone about anything had happened here.
"Was that the Forge?" she asked as if in a daze, once they were standing back on their familiar and silent cliffside.
"I guess so," he said as the portal blinked out behind him. Now that the light from it was gone, it appeared to be sometime in the middle of the night, but the full moon provided enough light to see by.
"Did you see Bismuth?" came another question while she was checking out her arms. She noticed only then the vest wrapped around her waist and dropped her hands down to untie it. It was tight and covered in old and darkened blood.
"I'll, uh, tell you later," Lars muttered as he watched.
The ruined vest fell from her and she glanced down at her ripped shirt. She pulled it up to reveal a dark pink scar a few inches across her bloodied abdomen, just under the bottom of her ribcage. She leaned forward to take it in before quickly yanking her shirt back down over it.
"I'm pink," she said suddenly. She looked up at Lars. "Will you help me figure out my powers?"
He was taken aback by the odd question. "Uh, o-of course?"
"I died," she said after a time, attempting to get a handle on the situation.
"Yeah, you did," he said quietly.
"I died," she repeated.
"And I carried out your will. So no more risking yourself."
She looked at him to see an odd mixture of relief and fear written all over his features.
"You have to promise me," he told her.
She was still reeling, to be truthful, but she squashed it down. "It's not like it went to plan."
He glared at her and grit his teeth. For a moment it seemed like he was going to get angry, but he exhaled. There was no point in anger.
What had happened, had happened.
"You know as well as I do that it did," he told her in low tones.
"Lars-"
"You've kind of had this deathwish for a while now. You resigned yourself to this the day you told me what you wanted."
She spread her arms wide, unable to see his point. "What else did you want?! For me to die naturally, old and decrepit? You'd rather I be a burden to you until the day that finally happened!?"
"No. I wanted you to be free. To not have to worry about me. To go have a real life somewhere, with normal people who could have given you what you needed." Before she could start, he continued, "But yeah, I knew it would ruin everything. Yeah, I knew it wasn't possible."
She was confused. "But even if I could, what about you?"
"Connie, I'm trapped," he said, voice cracking. "I always was. And now? You're trapped too."
"But-" she started, before frowning. "Huh."
"Yeah. Stings a little, right?"
Connie tightened her lips. It wasn't a smile. Lars folded his arms and exhaled, regretting his last words a little.
"How do you feel?" he asked softly, this time. "Are you okay?"
She took a moment to consider. "Yeah? I mean, I think so." She flexed her fingers idly, as if trying to get used to them. "I guess I don't really know."
He nodded. "Sounds right."
"Are you okay?"
"I don't know either."
"How long-"
He shrugged miserably. "Hours."
"How did you even find her?"
"I don't know, I guess I can just find Rose? By wanting to? Because... magic!?" His voice was hollow. "Isn't that funny? We searched everywhere we could, all those years, for nothing."
She wanted to laugh but she couldn't. "What else is new."
"Well," he said as he indicated her. "This is."
Connie glanced down to look at her pink-colored hands once more. "At least you don't have to worry about feeding me now," she said, looking back up at him with a small smile.
He didn't share her sentiment. "I always liked cooking for you," he said. "When I died, I was tired and hungry. I didn't want that for you. And," he continued after a breath, "it at least felt normal. You realize nothing is ever going to feel normal again, don't you?"
Her lips tightened. Her magenta eyes narrowed. Her general mood was starting to go into a nosedive.
"But… no, wait." She shook her head. "Why doesn't this feel any better, Lars?"
"What are you talking about?"
"I-"
"What on Earth made you think this was better?" He quickly checked the incredulity that had seeped into his tone before he continued, gently this time.
"Don't you know? This is going to suck, Connie."
He saw the way her expression fell and, to his credit, attempted to reassure her. "Hey, but, look. It's okay. You're like me, now." He tried to smile but couldn't. "You get to while away the oncoming centuries too."
"Lars-" The corners of her eyes pricked with tears.
He shrugged. "Maybe I need to try to feel flattered that you'd want to do that with me. Y'know, instead of feeling sad for you as well."
During the brief silence that passed between them, her mind raced. She tried on a little bit of hope for size, but as she began talking, she could already tell it was too small. She wasn't sure exactly what it was - the general fit? Or just the shoulders?
"But now," she was saying, "We'll see everyone again, right? We can get home now, can't we? Y'know, together."
He breathed deeply. His words were even and calm. "No. This isn't about going home. It never was. Remember? You said it yourself, once. We're just doomed alternate versions of ourselves. We're just-"
He trailed off as realization began to dawn on Connie. A stark, bitter light. One of railing resentments against a cruel universe.
Not hope.
Somehow, during the decade or so since they had first determined their goal, she'd managed to trick herself.
Unbidden tears rolled down her face. She didn't bother wiping them away. Her recent death aside, Lars could tell that he'd just witnessed something inside her break. He wondered when that very same thing had broken inside him, too.
But he'd already been reborn by the tears of a diamond well before the moment they'd first woken up on the primal beach below. She'd spent most of her time since then being worried about her eventual death, about whether they were going to find Rose in time.
Lars had been worried about that too, of course, but not in quite the same way.
With or without her, he'd always known that he faced this bleak gulf regardless. This intimidating abyss of time, some five thousand years wide and deep, stood there in his vision. It separated them from the lives they couldn't possibly go back to. The lives they wanted to save.
It loomed, dark and silent, behind the many tasks he would preoccupy himself with. But often he would lift his eyes from the present moment, from all the other things he'd ever been worried about, to regard it.
And it was staggering.
At this stage it remained impossible to grapple with, difficult to truly comprehend. But it had always been there and the knowledge of it ate away at him like rats in the garbage, more so as his inability to age had gradually become more obvious.
Connie was pink now, and that meant there were no more meaningful mundane tasks with which to occupy the days. They didn't need to hunt, cook or search anymore. Decades, centuries, millennia of hiding in wait before they could engineer the conditions of their true death were all they had to look forward to. He'd known it.
Meanwhile, the true reality of this was brand new to Connie.
But she was smart. From the look on her face, he could tell that she was already figuring it out.
"We're just fixing what Moldavite broke," she said through bitter tears. "We'll serve this purpose, then we'll die."