18. When One Door Closes

The hourly visits had gone through eight cycles since Steven felt Pearl slip through his fingertips. It was impossible to know how long he had been asleep, so he relied heavily on guesswork when he tried to estimate how long he's been in his odd little clinic. He expected it must have been 12 hours, if not longer, since he was originally brought here: two when he first arrived, maybe four asleep, and eight since then. He had disrupted Danburite's regular pattern a few times when he would break into a cold sweat, his heart pounding, returning again and again to everything he tried to forget. His brain had turned into a classic film reel, continuously spinning the same dozen frames no matter how hard he tried to distract himself.

Opalite. Amethyst. Blue Diamond. Pearl. Holly Blue Agate. Garnet. Jasper. Lapis. Peridot. Danburite. Dad. Connie. Opalite. Amethyst. Blue Diamond…When he lingered on Connie or his Dad or any of the others back on Earth, everything didn't hurt so much. He envisioned them all at the Temple, maybe out on the beach together, joking and laughing, and, hopefully, continuing their lives without him. The thought made him smile sadly, happy they could live, happy he could do this for them.

When his mind wasn't eclipsed by duress, Steven would occasionally flicker back to assess reality, amazed and thankful at the difference half a day made in his recovery. His skull no longer ached with a dull pain from the back of his head, the swelling in his ankle was all but gone, and his wrist was feeling somewhat better – he had to guess it wasn't healing quiet right, since it felt like Holly Blue had literally crushed his bones to dust, but it was hard to know.

Danburite continued to be his only visitor, her once calming presence turned menacing after she had hurt him around several hours ago.

Once he had reached hour six, she appeared at his door per usual, but brought with her something unexpected – a large basin of plain, old water and a sponge. It was incredible, how something so simple on Earth, something he had completely taken for granted, could so completely fill him with joy. The common conventions of a shower, running water, and the ability to brush his teeth had all been lost to him, so he wasn't surprised when he felt tears in his eyes.

Heliodor had entered the room after Dani and directed her attention to Steven. Her voice still made him flinch, always dripping with venom. "Clean yourself. Do nothing else."

Her warning might as well have fallen on deaf ears, Steven having no intention to do anything but savor every moment he had to himself. Starting with his teeth, then moving to his face and his hair, he enjoyed the moment of sweet bliss. Layers and layers of sweat and dirt and blood came off of him, dirtying the water with each soak of the sponge. It was hardly sufficient compared to his tub or shower back home, but it had been the most human moment he's had since leaving Earth.

He had stopped once the water had turned a dark, murky brown. Unsure if he was supposed to let Heliodor or Dani know, he resigned to sitting and waiting. He flexed his fingers, loving the feeling, impressed by how clean his fingernails remained in their hold. After another minute or so, Steven's eyes lingered on his branded wrist once more. He traced the outline of the diamond lightly, feeling the odd way it raised above his skin. It was a difficult thing for him to explain, the sensation new and unfamiliar, but he was interrupted a moment later. The water was taken away, his cuffs returned, and he returned to reclining in bed, alone with nothing but his thoughts.

That was two cycles ago, but still he lingered on the subject from time to time. In some ways, he still related it to Lar's explanation of a tattoo, but he had seen tattoos on other people at the beach before. Those settled into your skin eventually, flat against every freckle, wrinkle or curvature of the human body. This wasn't like that, though. It was raised like when he burned himself on the oven when he was younger, forming a painful blister on the singed area, but that still wasn't quite right. That had been continuously painful until it healed and it was imprecise, an amorphous blob against his the back of his hand.

The mark of his wrist was slightly lighter than the skin that surrounded it, like when he would use a white crayon on white paper – not really changing the appearance, but the slight disturbance could be seen if you looked hard enough. It never hurt inside of his cuffs, but the two times it had burned him had been agonizing, flaring yellow from within. The real mystery of it wasn't what it was, though, but why he had it in the first place.

The only logical connection Steven could associate with the mark was to his security monitor, since it hurt when he didn't wear it at certain times, but it felt like something more than that. It was just… a feeling he had, he thought to himself, shifting under his blankets. It could just be a hands-off way to enforce he wears his cuffs, but Homeworld had made it clear that they were not shy to punishment. If it was a compliance issue, they could easily force that another way.

Thinking himself into circles again, the movie skipped ahead to Blue Diamond.

Thousands of years I mourned her, and for what?

The pink walls that enclosed him made him fidget uncomfortably, very aware that the one Blue Diamond was mourning owned this vessel before her death. Her death… his mother had seen to that, leaving him with… well, whatever this was now. Not really life, not really human, not really gem, not really anything. Blue Diamond had left him with dozens of questions, but one thing had been perfectly clear – he was the one who had to take responsibility now, his existence, as she called it, a paradox. He didn't belong anywhere in the order of Homeworld, and he wasn't the same as the inhabitants on Earth, but he still was. His purpose had been decided long before he made his deal with her: he had always been a prisoner, caught between two worlds in which he could never belong, and now the rest of his life was just about him accepting his magical destiny. A prisoner from birth to death.

The beeping in the room was growing louder, but not to its usual peak of panic that would send Danburite in after him. He was still a few miserable spirals away from that, but it probably wouldn't take long for him to get there. Steven was really trying to be okay with his decision, trying to move on to acceptance, but it was so hard. So, so hard – what would come next? He didn't think he could handle another experience like Opalite, sure that he would go insane if he tried to rip his mind a second time. It was silly, he realized, but he envisioned his brain like budding roses, coming out of the ground, but they had been plucked or snapped halfway up their stems. Post-fusion, the roots had not been torn up, so maybe the roses would bloom again, but right now the stems just swayed vaguely in an existential breeze. They might wither and die, or they might recover, but for now, the roots were intact. Steven was almost certain he wouldn't survive another encounter of that caliber.

His thoughts were interrupted when the door opened. He expected Danburite to come in with her monochromatic digits and unemotional face, her objective predictable: to stabilize his breathing and leave without a word. But, to Steven's surprise, it was Heliodor. Her long orange form, intense gaze, and extremely short hair made her every bit as intimidating now as when he had fallen from the rafters of the beach house.

"You have been summoned." She moved to stand at the end of his bed, her face expectant as he sat there, staring at her.

"By who?" he blurted out, regretting it immediately. Steven was really struggling with the whole "speak only when spoken to" directive that all Homeworld gems seemed to operate under. His heart was racing once again, filling the room as the orange gem studied him.

Then, after a pause, she simply gestured with her hand for him to get up. "Come."

Was that one of the only words she knew, Steven wondered absently, hugely relieved that she did not hit him again. His eyes looked at hers, a wordless exchange of mutual distrust, but he complied; she was giving him a chance to stand on his own, not to be dragged away like the first time.

Without use of his hands, it was a bit difficult as he had been under the covers of his bed. Steven detangled his legs one at a time, bending awkwardly to throw them over the side of the bed, and turned his head to one side in pause. He was about to ask what to do with the tube in his arm – surely they wouldn't just rip it out? – but he thought better to just wait for instructions.

Cautiously, Steven approached Heliodor, worried that she might kick him or grab him by the collar again, but she had turned her gaze away from him. She was looking out the door, her eyes narrowed in a deadly stare. Steven shivered at her expression, her eyes and lithe body reminding him of a predatory snake, ready to sink her fangs into some unsuspecting prey. Eyeing the door nervously, Steven hadn't considered that whoever summoned him might come to him, only for his nerves to be dispelled when Danburite entered. His tense muscles relaxed slightly, relieved it was at least someone familiar.

Heliodor did not greet her upon entry, staring daggers while her countenance grew ever more deadly. Confused and nervous, Steven just looked between them, waiting for someone to do something. Finally, Dani walked towards Steven and raised a hand, and he felt himself shrink away automatically, but no pain followed. Her fingers flew in many directions, halting the beeping and the tubes and dismissed all of the probing fingers that had remained with him around the clock. With the exception of his secured hands and his long shirt, he felt almost normal for the first time. Pain more-or-less gone, semi-clean and fully clothed, he watched Dani turn to leave again. To his surprise, she stopped in the doorway and glanced in his direction.

"Be wary, half-human child. Self-sacrifice is not noble, and it will kill you if you are not careful."

And just like that, she walked out, not waiting for any sort of response.

Steven's eyes went wide, shaken by the implications of her statement. Where was he about to go? What would make her say that? Was that genuinely a warning, or was she taunting him?

Steven did not have an opportunity to seek any answers, however, Heliodor already halfway out the door. She paused when he did not follow and turned her head slightly, saying nothing.

Steven would have expected her to turn and grab him roughly, or to have smartly dismissed Dani's passing comment. Instead, the orange gem just stood perfectly still, her directive clear: follow.

Dani's message, Heliodor's passivity… were they, was this… pity? Mercy?

Shaking his head back to reality, Steven quickly picked up his feet to follow. He wasn't good at this whole prisoner thing, always going along according to someone else's agenda, being expected to know what to do without being told, making someone repeat themselves…

The two walked along the path Steven was pretty sure had brought them here from Blue Diamond's ship, expecting it must have been her that requested his presence again. Now that he was more-or-less healthy, he imagined that she had something for him to do (or, more likely, for something to be done to him). He tried to study his surroundings as best he could while keeping up with the tall gems stride, being easily outpaced, his four steps to her one. There was no room full of Rose Quartz gemstones this time, but he remembered that oddly shaped, sloping room well, and they did not turn towards that direction of the ship. Instead, they headed towards the exit hatch he had originally expected, but the destination was all wrong.

The large entryway that had connected them to Blue Diamond's ship was replaced by a solid wall, a panel to the side suggesting that it was a door. This connecting parts of the ship had not been closed the last time they passed through here, so was Blue Diamond's ship gone? In that case, were they going out to… space? That thought made him cringe anxiously, knowing full well that gems might not need atmosphere, but he certainly did.

Heliodor had paused a few feet from the door, so Steven did the same. He thought about telling her that if she opened the door to the void of space, he would die almost instantly, but they had to know that by now. If they had gone through so much trouble to keep him alive, they wouldn't kill him by making such a simple mistake, right?

The two stood there for a long moment, not speaking, no noise that Steven could hear, save his own breathing and the rhythmic beating of his heart pounding in his ears. The hybrid was nervous, but he tried to focus on his own inhales, and exhales…

Remember, this was your choice. You chose to stay. It was you, or them. So breathe, breathe…

Another minute or two passed before there was a soft click, at which Steven sharply took in air and held his breath incase his supply of oxygen was ripped away, but it was for naught. The door opened from the middle, half rescinding into the ceiling and half into the floor. The sight beyond was almost as breathtaking as it was terrifying. He hadn't been brought to Blue Diamond's ship, or to confront the expanse of space. This was Homeworld.

Heliodor started moving again almost immediately, so Steven had to react quickly as the sounds and sights triggered all of his senses like wild fire. Everything was alight in a brilliant rainbow of colors, blues, greens, yellows, reds, purples, orange, whites, and a thousand others marking the ground, the walls, ships and gems. Steven couldn't believe it, he never thought he would see this place. He remembered the strain in Pearl's expression when she longingly spoke about the world she left behind, but he had never envisioned it was like this.

They were walking along some sort of pier, or something close to it. There was other militarized-looking ships docked around them, and there were so many gems it made his head spin. A brigade of Ruby guards, tall green gems and short yellow ones, bulky ones like Jasper and a colorful group of Bismuths; some gems wore limb enhancers, some had yellow diamonds white diamonds, and blue diamonds, and for each kind of gem Steven recognized there were 10 more he had never seen before. An exhaustive variegate of a culture he had never known, Steven was awed as he hurried down the pass after Heliodore.

All of the ships were different colors and shapes, too, but each was emblemized clearly with a white, yellow, and blue diamond that overlapped, creating a terrible triforce, leaving no question to whom these gems were loyal. Steven turned behind him briefly, just to catch glance at the door from which they had made their exit, to see that it was different. The glow of their vessel was dull compared to the dazzling light that seemed to emanate from the cores of everything here, and it was the only thing in the lustrous sea of color that was pink. A piece of Pink Diamond's base… he must have been housed in a fraction of it the whole time, never realizing they had detached from the main facility.

Craning his neck in wonder, struggling to process so much at once, Steven felt fear creep up through his chest, studying the faces and the technology around him. This was a different kind of fear than when he had woken up at Blue Diamond's feet, or when he was trapped in that darkened abyss. Here, he looked as all of the gems around them divided into a walkway as Heliodor marched through them, not looking or speaking to anyone. All of their eyes were on him anyways.

The Diamonds must have announced his – or Rose Quart'z? – capture, given their watchful eyes. No one uttered a word to him, which he found surprising. He would have expected heckling or taunts or even an angry mob by how he imagined Homeworld's hatred for him. But there was nothing – no sound, no mob, no suspicious whispers, just the idle sound of the ships around them and Heliodor's commanding footfalls, echoing into the beautiful, frozen docking area.

With nothing else to do, Steven tried to memorize the sophisticated curvature, craftsmanship, and magnificence that was this mysterious place. The room itself was absolutely massive. The walls were white and blue mostly, radiating with that same iridescent light that came from all gem tech. There were columns of yellow that suspended the floor beneath them above and below, hissing with energy. There were brighter columns that branched out in every direction as they approached the connecting platform at the opposite end of the pier.

The expanse of metal that Heliodor marched towards split into three distinctive pathways where it connected to the docks, the floor illuminated to match the doors themselves: yellow to their left, white down the center, and blue to their right; Steven need not ask what this color assignment meant. Turning his head, Steven audibly gasped when he saw a gem he recognized, someone he had nearly forgotten about in the passage of events. It was Apatite, as frightening as he remembered, her eyes narrowed as she watched them trek through dozens of other gems. She must have been at least thirty feet away, leaning against a column that rose from the blue floor, but there was no mistaking her: the gemstone placement, blue and in place of her mouth, central to her visage, was unforgettable.

Steven had to crane his neck to see her, which struck him as odd at first. He guessed they would be getting closer to her, expecting her to join Heliodor as she drove them down a path into the unknown. Steven had always imagined the two as partners, but they were moving away from her. At risk of being left behind, he turned his attention back to Heliodor, always a few paces ahead. She did not hesitant, refusing to deviate from the exact orders she had received, marching straight forward off of the dock. Crossing the platform in an eerie silence, Steven gasped as a massive white door came into view. He began to choke on his own breath, fear tugging at his heart and filling his lungs with noxious gas, realizing at last who had summoned him.

White Diamond.

As quickly as the thought came to him, he was back at the moon base all over again, studying her mural on the wall. It felt like so long ago, as if he had seen it in another life, but the memory came all the same. She had been carved larger than the others, the only to face forward in their portrayal. Her hands were outstretched in a show of power, surrounded by so many planets…

He hadn't the necessary time to panic, or fear, or run, or hope, or do much of anything before the door opened, beckoning them forward. Heliodor did not break her stride, but Steven's legs slowed as his every muscle screamed at him to turn around. A tiny voice spoke in his head, wincing when he realized it was not his own. A fraction of Opalite, dormant in the coils of his broken mind, whispered softly in his ear…

If you go through that door, you will die.

His escort had already crossed the threshold, however, when his pace had started to slow. He was only a few feet away before he came to a full stop, looking at Heliodor. She paused a few feet in and turned to face him, but her face was blank. Beyond her, Steven gazed into a brightly lit, very, very long hallway. Surely he couldn't flee now that he was on Homeworld, but how could he step through the door? It was like signing up for a suicide mission, something he really did not want to do.

Be wary, half-human child. Self-sacrifice is not noble, and it will kill you if you are not careful.

His brain stirred as he stood frozen in front of the door, a memory rising as Dani's warning played through his mind. This was his own memory, to which he was thankful, but he wasn't looking through his own eyes – not exactly. It was the day he had awoken in a watermelon Steven, just before his encounter with the Cluster. Jasper had fallen into the schism in the Earth, and Lapis was unconscious. But none of that was what mattered in the – it was the image of Amethyst, Garnet, and Pearl looking down at him, all of their faces painted with love. They looked so proud of him.

You got this, dude.

Be careful, Steven.

And Steven, we love you.

Steven lowered his head, squeezing his eyes tight as he worked up his nerve, and stepped forward. He was doing this for them. Another step. You got this, dude. Another. Be careful, Steven. Almost. And Steven, Just one more step… We love you.

A moment later, the door closed behind him sealing, away the universe.

The hallway was white all the way through, like a storybook depiction of the path to heaven, but there were no clouds, no pearly white gates like they had in cartoons. All he saw was the orange gem that had dragged him from his home, and a cold, long hallway absent of all color but filled knowingly with light.

This was not heaven. This was hell.