A/N: Here, have some head canons of mine that are very sad and also probably not true. I just - gotta love that water witch, y'know?
The meadow is vast. It stretches on in every direction, endless, beautiful. Vines have engulfed the remnants of a battle long since over, covering weapons and shields, hiding burns and hollowed spots in the ground, secreting away a history that so few know about, that so few care about, that so few really understand. And Steven thinks, I've been here before. Or at least, Pearl has, and his mother has. And he stands at her side and watches through her eyes.
Pearl fights like a rabid dog, fights like a beast unchained, fights like there's nothing else to do. And she dies, she dies, she dies, each time coming back as herself but a little bit different, just like that day, in her room, with the hologram - except this isn't a hologram. It's real, dreadfully so, and Steven cries his mothers tears each time Pearl dies, wondering: is this it? Is this the last time I will see her, the last time I will know her? It never is, but the world is too broken, and the hurt is too deep, and Rose Quartz's tears are absorbed into the soil as if they are nothing more than rain.
Sometimes, she calls out his mothers name when it happens. Usually though, it's another Gem, because Rose Quartz must always be protected and she's fading fast. So Pearl shouts for Garnet, or for Citrine, or for Topaz, and once, just once, she calls out a name so familiar that it burns: Lapis Lazuli. But it's not the shout of a warrior to a warrior, or a friend to a friend. It's the shout of a sister to a sister. And - there's light engulfing the Ocean Gem. And - it's too late, too late, always too late. And - there is despair on Pearl's face, and heartbreak in his mothers eyes, and Steven wishes more than anything that this is a lie.
With the startlingly clarity that is Steven's-not-Steven's, he thinks, I've taken everything from her.
Pearl lunges forward, salt staining her cheeks. With each swing of her sword, pulse of her body, heave of her chest, she is broadcasting a single thought. I hate, her actions scream; I hate, cries the look in her eyes; I hate, insists the jerking motion of her blows, no carefully created finesse to be found, no plan to be seen, and when a blade pierces her from behind, she doesn't call out a single name and there's a flicker of relief in her gaze.
"Sorry," she says, but Steven isn't sure who the apology is meant for. "M'so sorry."
The world always cracks then, like a mirror someone has just shattered, and the nameless Gem behind Pearl becomes a hologram, and the despair is no longer his mothers, is all his, and Pearl says, "Steven!"
Except she doesn't.
She says, "isn't it wonderful? Your mother and I fought here, you know. She was amazing!"
Steven wonders if she's thinking of the right thing, because as far as he could tell, she was the amazing one. He wants to say this, but he doesn't. "Tell me about her," he says instead, taking Pearl's hand in his own.
She smiles at him and does.