*A/N at the end of this chapter

35. We Won

Steven laid down in the hard dirt, looking up into the darkness that seemed to stretch to infinity. The best he could tell, it was a true, deep black; he knew children were supposed to be afraid of the dark, yet, the inversion of this familiar color terrified him much more.

Since he's been here, black has meant relief, escape, and even comfort; white has brought him nothing but pain, emptiness, and loss.

The black swirled lazily at the end of his vision, ambivalent to the rocks crumbling around his toes or the shouting he heard bouncing around the cavern. Everything he could focus on shined unnaturally pink, as if he was looking through the veil of his bubble, but that was just his vision now – the darkness, at least, was predictably black.

Fingers tingling, Steven flexed his hands, thinking about getting up. He didn't, but he thought about it – he knew he probably should, that things were going to hell around him, but right now all he could do was stare into the void.

Connie was dead.

Somehow, he had lost her when the fog started to spin, and he must have thrown up his bubble at some point and was carried away from the valley entirely. At first, Steven thought he had died, but the scorching air in his lungs told him he had not been so lucky. One of his hands had absently moved to rest against his stomach, just an inch above his gemstone, grimacing as the sensation sent a shot of pain down his legs. As much as it hurt, Steven forced himself to take a deep breath, if nothing else but for the pain to force him to keep his eyes open.

Right now, Steven needed to stay awake – he was pretty sure that if he fell asleep, he would never wake up, and the Crystal Gems needed him. He knew something had happened, his brain buzzing when he recognized the voice of Alexandrite reverberate through the emptiness that both surrounded and consumed him, soon followed by the haunting echoes of White Diamond's laughter. It wasn't clear how it had happened, but they got out, and now they were fighting…

"Ugh." Steven said to no one, his voice muted by the rumbling of rocks and dirt. He couldn't believe them right now, he was so angry it made hot tears burn his eyelids. They had escaped, and they thought it was a good idea to fight White Diamond? Were they blind inside that box, had they not seen how entirely she had destroyed Blue and Yellow Diamond? If he had the Glass of Time again, he would use it just to go back and yell at them for being so stupid – they needed to run, not to fight.

He had already lost Connie – he couldn't bear to lose anyone else. Well, that's what he tried to tell himself, but every time the thought appeared it was dwarfed by another, more menacing voice in the back of his brain.

You said you wanted this, didn't you?

You wanted this.

Didn't you?

Didn't he? Steven had thought, time and time again, that he had seen the end. The worst it could be, the worst it could get, only to be violently shoved further towards the edge. Hide. Capture. Starve. Fusion. Shatter. Bargain. Dream. Torture. Trials. Explosion. Execution. Fooled. Goodbye.

Each time, he had tried his absolute hardest to do the best he could, tried to make the right choices, tried to protect the Amethyst and Jasper, to protect his family, to protect Connie, and he had failed them all

Now, the darkness clanged noisily with the reality that the people who had risked everything to save him were fighting face-to-face with the hand behind the curtain, an unstoppable authority, and for what? To save him? It would be a wasted effort – and so, Steven gritted his teeth and pushed himself to his knees, sucking in painful breaths along the way.

He wouldn't let them die for him; he wouldn't let Connie's death be in vain.

Prehnite returned to the high ground, pulling the scraps of the lutetium together and contorting it intricately, trying to focus as the whirling green sphere shined beautifully in her vision. With the world falling to pieces around her, she was trying to balance too much, pulling at her attention and her heartstrings.

First, there was Connie and the distorted structure of the palanquin. The girl was bubbled near to the fusion, which only exacerbated the heart-wrenching indisputability of her death; she hung limply in the air, floating like a body might at the surface of the ocean. It was disturbing, but to their fortune, the bubble had prevented her body from entering rigor mortis, which would have been much worse.

One of her first actions after recovering Connie was to keep the bubble from popping, fruitless though it was, she still felt the need to protect the girl, so Prehnite tore the top from the palanquin and transmuted it concavely, creating a sort of yellow dome to shield her from debris that fell from above.

Then there was the matter of Steven, Prehnite's chest growing tighter as each minute passed and she failed to find him in the depths of the fog. From above, she had hoped to spot his pale skin or his ragged clothing peeking through the white mist, but she had so far been unsuccessful. Nervously, she rubbed one arm with the opposite hand and furrowed her brow, a comforting feeling as Lapis' eyes brimmed with tears.

We'll find him.

Will we, though? What if he's already gone through the cracks in the ground? What if he poofed, or…

Well… yeah, maybe, but we need to focus, cause if that's not what happened…

I-I know, I'm sorry. Thank you.

It's okay, as long as we're together, right?

Right.

She blinked her many eyes, wiping a hand behind the visor and shaking her head. Prehnite turned back to the lutetium orb, setting her face in a determined frown; they needed something strong, strong enough to get them out with nothing but brute force, and this was going to have to do it. Brow furrowed in concentration, she moved her hands in the air as the green metal started to harden, trying to ignore the painful sounds and yelling that filled the air.

"For all of the reasons cross-fusions are egregious," said White Diamond. She was stalking after Alexandrite, having just knocked the fusion back into rough ground.

"You are a perfect example of why I find the whole charade especially worthless." Raising a sinewy leg, the dominating tyrant kicked the side of Alexandrite's head, the momentum smashing her skull painfully into the ground.

Visor cracked, the fusion gritted her teeth and summoned three gauntlets along one side of her body, smashing the ground beneath them so White Diamond might lose her balance and put some distance between them.

The plan had worked well enough, the ghostly embodiment of authority lost her footing and staggered backwards, but it also send a fresh shower of boulders crashing down upon them.

Hissing in pain, Alexandrite repeated the movement and brought more rocks down, but this time she rolled away and breathed a scorching flame over the wreckage, creating a fiery barrier between them.

White Diamond was hardly impressed. Extending her arms, she created a triangle with her thumbs and fingers, causing the wind to pick up especially violently. The smoldering rubble was blown backwards, making contact directly with the fusions chest. The force was so great and so sudden, a tether that kept the four of them together snapped as Amethyst's gemstone cracked at the sudden assault.
"Aaugh!" Alexandrite roared in pain, glowing brightly as she was thrown back into three across the floor of the vale. Amethyst's face in particular was screwed up with pain as she skidded backwards with Garnet while Pearl was flung in the opposite direction.

"Amethyst!" Garnet called for her immediately, having felt the first flicker of pain when her gemstone was smashed by the flaming boulders. Crawling over, she breathed a sigh of relief to see the crack wasn't deep, and Amethyst looked at her with one closed eye.

"I'm… 'kay, ugh," the purple gem said, leaning up on her elbows.

The relief was short-lived, however, a terrible scene settling in the darkness of the shaking cavern. Now separated, Garnet and Amethyst were starting to get up near one of the canyon walls, vaguely aware that they were below where Pree had retreated. Both purple gems silently prayed that she had managed to find Steven – there wasn't much time left. The Kindergarten was starting to deteriorate in earnest now, what had at first been dust and pebbles crumbling from the ceiling turning into rocks larger than a fist and growing larger with each passing minute.

Maybe thirty feet down the wall, Pearl was leaning up on her front, battered but otherwise unharmed as the fires from the explosions and their most recent attack scorched the earth around them. Smoke billowed and twisted dangerously with the white fog, turning the valley a dangerous shade of silver and gray as the temperature around them continued to rise.

"A-Amethyst! Are you okay?" Pearl yelled over to them, but they hadn't the chance to answer before White Diamond's palm came down to crush them.

Thank the stars for Sapphire, Garnet thought as she grabbed the small gem and rolled away not a moment too soon, the radiating force of her hand against the ground still sending them stumbling gracelessly away from the spot of impact.

Clicking her tongue in disapproval, White Diamond brought another hand down, this time coming even nearer to smashing them both. "This, this is what I'm talking about."

Clenching her fingers together slowly, more translucent limbs emerged from the air, grabbing Garnet and Amethyst and holding them still, suspended several feet off the ground. Just as Pearl started to get up, another arm found her, pinning her back to the dirt.

"Cross-fusions…" She leaned down, examining Garnet's anger as they struggled in the incorporeal grasp.

"What you gain in confidence, you lack in cohesion. Your minds aren't designed to have competing instincts..." Narrowing her eyes, White Diamond looked especially lethal as her alabaster face shined against the glowing orange flames at the base of the canyon.

"But I must commend you for trying. Staying together, so unnaturally? Such a show of loyalty." She stood back up to her full height, contemplating which death might be the most satisfying to watch.

"It's a shame, even I must admit – had you demonstrated the same devotion you shown Rose Quartz to me, things could have been very different. Alas…" she swept a hand casually, and at the end of the graceful movement she tensed her fist, watching the forms of all of them compress under the pressure of the hands. They all started yelling, painful, disturbing shouts as the force grew stronger and more intense as White Diamond squeezed her own hand tighter.

Just as another crack started to surface across the face of the Amethyst gemstone, a sudden smack against the back of White Diamond's head, followed by a voice, forced her to stop and turn around.

Steven had limped his way towards the cliff-face that looked down into the valley, squinting clear across the gap to see… Lapis, and the palanquin, maybe? It looked like Lapis, but he was already having enough trouble seeing through the pink shroud that clouded his vision and the white fog that was so hot it burned his eyes, so he turned his focus to closer, more pressing, things.

At level with him was White Diamond's head, but she was turned away from him, looking down to the brightly lit ground below. There were flames scattered across the ground in strange patches, there not being enough life to really sustain a blaze, but the heat and magic behind the fire kept it burning anyways.

Barely enough time to catch his breath, clutching at his chest painfully, Steven heard the familiar voices of Garnet, Pearl, and Amethyst – he couldn't see them, but they must be at White Diamond's feet from the direction of their voice. And he hadn't heard them like this before… this wasn't just their voices, serious, comforting, or rowdy – this was screaming, a sound so horrible in Steven's ears that he knew it could only be a product of intense, agonizing pain.

Moving his right arm in front of him, Steven clenched his fist and summoned his shield. It was still circular and pink, emblazoned with the symbol of his mother, but it had grey and black splotches that crept along one side sickeningly, like the shield was decaying from the inside out. Steven guessed it probably was, but he was not really in a position to waste time examining the damage.

Using as much strength as he could, Steven swung his shield like he had so many times against the Holo-Pearls and he was pleased when he saw it make contact with the back of White Diamond's head. Well, he wasn't actually pleased – he was downright terrified – but at least the Gems had stopped screaming.

"STOP!"

White Diamond turned to face him, her eyes alight with fury and malcontent, flashing even a deadlier shade of white when her gaze found his tiny figure. Steven's palms were sweaty, but he gripped the stone in his left hand harder, forcing himself to meet her gaze.

"Oh, Steven… Don't be a fool. You're just prolonging the inevitable. Now – " she started to turn away, ready to finally put an end to these rebels that had caused her such trouble, but she was interrupted again by the boy.

"No! I've had enough!" Steven shouted, causing White to freeze in her turn, face etched in rage at his sudden disrespect.

He adjusted his hands, the back of his left holding the bottom of his shirt while the right tore the fabric down the center. Twitching as his hand lightly caressed his gemstone, Steven bared his navel and held the rock in his left hand clearly in front of it.

Steven had already lost his freedom, his Connie, his home, his identity – the last thing he had left to bargain with was his life. "Let them… Let them all go or I'll end this, right now!"

Though the caverns still rumbled and the fires still blazed, it felt like the Kindergarten had grown perfectly still for a single moment in time. Steven couldn't see her, but Prehnite had stopped her project when he had appeared on the cliff-side, her thin blue hands covering her mouth in shock. Pearl, Amethyst and Garnet were still trapped in the grasp of the white hands, but the grip had slackened so as not to crush them further. Amethyst's legs had turned into long, useless noodles from the cracks in her gemstone, her shapeshifting slowly spun out of control like it had the day she fell from the hill by the lighthouse. Garnet was now fighting an internal battle, unable to speak as the future shifted once again, the paths expanding infinitely like the darkness that enveloped them all. The terrifying figure of White Diamond had raised her eyebrows in surprise, her face otherwise unreadable as his threat sank deeper into the blistering air. Pearl had managed to push herself back up so she could see him, standing at the edge of the cliff-face, bartering with his life.

As a choking sob rose up her throat, she called out to him from below. "S-Steven – no! What are you saying?!"

Steven did not falter, even if the tears in Pearl's voice broke his heart. "Nobody else needs to die! It… it should have been me, from the start. White Diamond, My Diamond,"

Before he could proceed, the so-named ruler made to approach him, but he threateningly moved the stone closer, bracing his stomach. He tried to make his voice as cold as he could, trying to match the wicked inflection that usually came from her lips, not his.

"Don't. Weren't you the one who said not to be ruled by your emotions? Well, here's your choice – you can have your vengeance," he used his free hand to gesture at the others, praying this would work.

"Or you can have me." Again, he moved the stone closer to the crumbling Rose Quartz in his stomach.

Before White Diamond could respond, there were other voices.

"Steven, wait!"

"Don't be stupid – stop, we can – "

"STEVEN WHAT ARE YOU – "

"No, d-don't do this!"

"Steven?"

"STOP, STEVEN, DON'T."

"STEVEN?"

"NO!"

First, it was Garnet, then maybe Lapis, or even Peridot? He knew that was wrong, because Peridot wasn't here, and then Amethyst joined the racket, too. Their voices were all out of key, a half-step too sharp with pain, a symphony of sorrow that he completely ignored. Steven had no eyes for anyone but for White Diamond.

And consequently, she had no eyes for anyone but him, and they were narrowed in more contempt and loathing than they had been in thousands of years, the last time she came face-to-face with the same wretched Rose Quartz gemstone. She, the first and last matriarch of Homeworld, was truly conflicted as she examined him, pursing her lips. How dare he chastise her? But, then, he was a wretched human child at heart, as bound to be foolish as he was bound to his flesh. She wanted nothing more than to kill him, kill all of them and leave them to turn to dust miles below the surface of her throne, but that was short-sighted. In him rested so much power, so much potential…

Gritting her teeth, White Diamond finally cut off the dull cacophony of voices pining after him. She needed to test his nerve. "And what would I gain by letting them go? What's to keep me from agreeing, and kill them the moment you turn your back, Steven? What then?"

He winced, but he did not back down. "You'll have… leverage, insurance, something. I'll stay, and I'll never try to leave aga – " but he was cut off by a shout – or was it a sob? – from below. Pearl.

"S-Steven, no! I-It doesn't have to be like this!"

He clenched his fist, shaking with anger. How could they still be so stubborn?

"YES, Pearl, it does!" His voice was so sharp that all of the Gems flinched, but he didn't care.

"How can you… How can you not see? I tried to tell you from the beginning – it's over, Pearl. Homeworld won…" he glanced at White Diamond, his face serious. "We won."

Steven squeezed his eyes together to dispel this urge to cry, and then returned his full attention to White Diamond, looking straight into her shining, dangerous eyes.

"I won't leave – I'll do whatever you ask. We can try to fix corruption, or heal any gem you want, or fix whatever went wrong with the artificial fusions. If they come back, I'll…"

He needed to make the message as clear to her as he did to the Gems, listening in.

Don't come back for me.

"I'll kill them myself."

Staring at him blankly, White Diamond thought seriously about his proposition. It was clear that he was not lying, not trying to go against his word – he really did just want to spare the lives of these miserable rebels. What was more valuable – to meet the demands of justice that her subjects deserved, or to invest in a future with near-infinite power? The answer was, of course, obvious, but it still irked her.

Steven's hands were shaking, his heart pounding furiously in his chest as he watched White Diamond's expression grow thoughtful.

Please, please, please let this work… Just once, please, let this work.

A wordless answer, the others were suddenly released and fell into the dirt – Pearl face first while Garnet managed to catch Amethyst before she hit the ground. Steven heard the thud and cries, and he knew he had done it, so he slightly lowered the stone. The Diamonds were scheming, cruel, heartless – he knew that now, he wasn't going to be fooled again, so he did not drop his guard completely.

Tilting her head, White continued to look at him skeptically. "Prove it."

Steven's brow furrowed as he looked at her innocuous expression, hating her more than he could have thought possible. "What?"

White slowly moved a hand out to her side, demonstrating that she had no false motives, and new hands, open palmed this time, appeared beneath the Gems at the bottom of the valley, delivering them to Prehnite's feet across the canyon.

"In the spirit of… moving on," she repeated the phrase, proceeding cautiously. "I will… let them go, but, I will need more than just your word."

Steven didn't understand what she meant – what else could he do? Did she have something in mind? Was this a trick, to get him to step back from the edge? He waited for her to continue, keeping his expression hard.

She continued to study him, piercing him with her gaze, the anger still eminent from the boiling air. Her tone was short. "Think of something. Show me how serious you are."

Prehnite was frozen, eyes streaming with tears as the bodies of Garnet, Pearl and Amethyst were dumped on the ground before her. Was Steven serious? Did he have some sort of plan? Was she supposed to do something, fly over there, or would Steven…

Garnet stood up, still cradling Amethyst gently as her arms shrunk to tiny, T-rex sized purple appendages. "Pree," was all she said. It wasn't really a greeting, or a warning, or a command, just a statement that they were here now, and that Steven was standing a mile across the open air, offering to die or seal his life away forever so they could escape.

Pearl said nothing, crawling on her hands and knees as close to the edge she could, cursing herself for not trying harder, for not seeing it coming, for letting him do this, for not being there for him.

"I will… let them go,"

White's voice carried easily across the darkness, but they missed a part of it when Pearl shouted suddenly; a particularly violent tremor sent the tip of the cliff-face tumbling downwards. Prehnite had stretched the metal of the palanquin to shield them all from the rubble, but Steven was totally unprotected on the other side of the canyon. She was very, very nervous, rubbing her arm, barely resisting the urge to pull them all back by the shoulders. The falling rocks had grown to full-on slabs, the Kindergarten turning to ruins around them, and the pseudo-lutetium-drill was as ready as it could be. She had already placed Connie inside as carefully as she could…

We can't leave him…

We can't, I know.

But we're running out of time…

If we're going to go...

It has to be now.

Garnet looked worried, considering, desperate… then, a gasp, and she covered her mouth.

"Steven, no!" she shouted across the valley, but the future continued to narrow, the seas of time coming together into a single path of inevitable, cruel fate.

"W-what's happening?" It was Amethyst, her voice dark and sad beneath her flickering form. Pearl covered her mouth with both hands, words beyond her as she looked on, a single stream of tears lining her tired cheeks.

Steven looked at the ground to his right, eyes dark, ignoring Garnet's pleading voice that echoed from across the vale. He took a deep, heavy breath and lifted his gaze from the dirt to his left, focusing on the confused, proud, spiteful figure a few feet off.

"Holly Blue," he reached out a hand. "Fuse with me."

*Author's Note:

Thanks for reading along everyone! Geez, I can't believe we're almost at 200,000 words. What is wrong with me?! I really appreciate all of your on-going support, new readers and old readers alike. A special shout-out to yarajaeger, Osicne_C, Indyboo102, S3rp3nte, Doctor Jupiter, and VulpineSnow for joining the story for the crazy ride!

Coming up soon, Garnet will face a difficult choice as a leader, Lapis and Peridot will have a heart-felt conversation, and Pearl will have the chance for sweet, sweet vengeance.