Summary: After sharing her first meal with Steven Diamond Universe, Rose Quartz reflects on the situation she finds herself in.
(In-Canon, set just after 'Together Breakfast')
oOo
Aunt
Rose Quartz stood on the hilltop, staring across the human town of Beach City at the small van tucked in the shadow of Mr. Universe's car wash. She was shivering, shaken to her core by a storm of emotions she could scarcely begin to identify.
That was the trouble with emotions. They were all so tricky.
Foremost: Inside that van was sleeping Steven Diamond Universe.
Not Blue Diamond. No more Blue Diamond than Rose Quartz was Pink Diamond.
Maybe… maybe even less so. Rose, after all, remembered all her life as Pink Diamond, however much she wished she did not have to. Steven… Steven truly did not seem to remember anything. Not the slightest sign. And his personality was different too. Yes, Rose still saw flickers of Blue in him— the way she would hold her head, or the thoughtful shadows in her eyes, that close attention to aesthetics— but there were so many things wholly new. Blue Diamond had never giggled with a quartz in a shapeshifting contest, or gotten upset about shattering Gems, or shaken Rose's hand…
So. Blue Diamond was truly gone, or changed so radically she might as well have been.
Rose's stomach twisted at that. She… she had never expected to see Blue again, wasn't sure if she'd ever really wanted to… but she hadn't wanted her gone. She'd always hoped, or dreamed— that maybe someday she could prove to her— prove to all of them that— That there was a better way. That she was right.
Well. She could do that now, couldn't she?
This new Blue, this Steven, he was so young! He barely knew anything about Homeworld or Earth! Rose could teach him so much! About plants and animals and shapeshifting and being wholly and unabashedly yourself! They could be—
Family.
The human word popped up automatically in her mind, surprising her a bit. On Homeworld, the Diamonds had certainly been kin. Kin meaning 'similar', not family. Most certainly not family. Not in the way they'd treated her, not with all those times she'd spent crying and furious in her room, ignored, forgotten, avoided.
Well, that would be different now. Rose Quartz would be better family— a better 'aunt'— than Blue or Yellow or White had ever been.
