Sky Blue, Ocean Blue

by purplegirl761

When a reformed mad scientist befriends a stranger to Earth who's also haunted by the past, neither of them suspects that their blossoming relationship will carry them through everything from ice cream to intergalactic warfare. Welcome aboard a little ship I like to call Drakkis.

58. Breaking

~Woo, and now things get full-blown weird.

I'm wondering if you need to put a warning for character death if they're resurrected almost immediately? If you've seen Fragments, you know what happens, but just in case - we don't lose anyone for long.~

Steven Universe charges across the sand, the ends of his jacket slapping painfully against his sides. He doesn't know where he's going. Probably nowhere, just away from that beach where Dad shows Bismuth the crushed door of the van, and she frowns at it as she tries to figure out how to fix it, and the sky slowly turns dark.

The memory of the steering wheel caving beneath his hands won't leave him alone, and he needs it to; it's turning his insides to jelly. Sand turns to grass beneath his flip-flops, and he's not a weak kid anymore. He doesn't slow down until his chest stops feeling like it's ready to burst into flames.

When Dad left the band on their tour to come home and check on him, he perched on the side of Steven's bed like a penguin and looked at him with soft, confused eyes and run a hand over Steven's head the way he had when Steven was a little kid. What they needed, he said, was a father-son road trip. Steven agreed because that was something that used to always cheer him up, and maybe if he did it again he'd get back to the feelings he recognized, the ones he hadn't felt in so long.

Then they wound up in some weird neighborhood where Steven had never been, and he thought they were lost, but Dad stopped the van like he had a purpose. Dad went over to a tree in some yard, climbed it, and then dropped right into the house through a window he wedged open. Breaking and entering really wasn't Dad's style, and Steven was about to freak out, but Dad was calm like always and told him everything was fine, so Steven came in, too. Wallpaper pressed against the walls without creases, the furniture was arranged at angles that would meet Pearl's approval, and even the thin layer of dust over everything seemed to have been carefully put there. That was when Dad told Steven why he knew his way around this house: he grew up here.

The house belonged to Mr. and Mrs. DeMayo – his parents. The grandparents Steven never knew he had, and that probably didn't know they had him, either. Suddenly he wanted to ignore the dust and run upstairs into their room and meet them, introduce himself and apologize for sneaking into their house.

But they weren't there. "Probably at their time-share condo for the summer," Dad said, and there was something harsh Steven had never heard in his father's voice except for when he talked about Marty.

He tried not to be disappointed. He tried not to be angry.

Sweat rolls down Steven's collar, plastering his curls to the back of his neck. A sharp, hot-cold pain travels through his stomach, and he doesn't have to look to know that a bulge of pink is forming around his gem.

He and Dad went back upstairs to Dad's old room, and Steven pulled a graduation-yearbook out from under the bed and found a picture of Dad a little older than Steven, with a bad buzz-cut and pimples and braces. Dad gave his big groaning laugh and Steven immediately took out his phone and snapped a photo to show to Amethyst later. For a minute, everything seemed normal again for them.

Once they got back out to the van, Dad let Steven drive and played one of his favorite old cassette tapes for him – a song about a guy named "Mr. Universe" who was totally free and did whatever he wanted to do. He told Steven it was that song that had inspired him to get his name changed legally and give the new one to Steven, too. He talked about his parents, how they were obsessed with his grades and made him wear his hair short and controlled every move he made, like those were the worst things that could've ever happened to anybody. Worse than spending your childhood being attacked by alien monsters, worse than getting kidnapped and thrown in space jail and knowing someone would always be out to kill you because they thought you were your mom.

If he'd been to school and had a normal life, he'd know how to talk to other human beings his own age. He'd have learned how to do something besides save galaxies that don't need saving anymore. He wouldn't have to worry about Connie vanishing from his life when she went off to college and he couldn't follow her. Steven looked at his dad's sympathetic eyes and the baldness peeking through the hair that ended up getting cut short anyway and the smile just waiting to appear on his lips, and suddenly all of it seemed like a lie.

In that moment, he didn't want to be a Universe at all. He wanted to be a DeMayo.

And he screamed all of that in his dad's face. Dad looked so hurt, like Steven had socked him in the jaw, and Steven tried to feel guilty but couldn't. He felt the steering wheel squash out of shape and heard the breaks squeal, and then everything went black.

Steven keeps running, faster than ever, the ground seeming to punch his feet every time he sets them down. Steven wants to punch it right back, and no matter how tightly he grinds his teeth, it's not tight enough to offset the anger sizzling inside him. He wonders how long it's been milling around inside him, just waiting for something like this to happen.

The world had kinda just settled after the Diamonds came around and all the Corrupted Gems were healed. Which would've been great if Steven were able to settle with it, but he couldn't. Inside, he's still churning in place like a treadmill.

When he'd woken up and the van was slumped against a light pole, Dad had already forgiven him. He'd even said he was proud of Steven for having the guts to stand up to him, something he'd never been brave enough to do to his "old man." His arms wrapped around Steven, the newness of his sweater rubbing against Steven's arms like balloon static, and every muscle Steven had curled up and clenched. Dad felt smaller than he used to, and he didn't smell like car-wash soap and sweat anymore the way he had for Steven's whole life.

The Gems came back from their field trip pretty soon after that, and Steven knew right then and there that he couldn't face Pearl's hovering and Amethyst's pretending to be a counselor and Garnet's showing him all the different ways he could screw up his future.

So he ran, and he's still running.

Steven swerves around a tree, pushing himself off the trunk with a hand that immediately swells, heats, and turns pink. He pulls it away before it can do anything to the bark. His powers haven't been this out of control in three years. He could destroy something without meaning to, the way Mom had cracked her first Pearl's eye.

A cave comes into view, and Steven charges straight for it. After a minute, he realizes it's less a real cave than a den, just big enough for a large stray dog to crawl in and spend the night, but it's still dark and cool. Maybe that's just what he needs.

As his feet carry him toward the cave, though, his eyes are drawn to something above its grassy top. Just behind the cave, the air is filled with something grayish and moist, like thin smoke or thick steam, and with heat that doesn't come from Steven. He leaves the cave behind and rounds its bend, and he's finally able to put on the brakes when he sees what's on the other side.

It's a spaceship, a Homeworld spaceship. And it must be an ancient one, from the looks of it and from the way that white-gray stuff comes pouring out of every crack, out of the rear jets that stick straight up toward the sky and out of the front point that's smashed against the ground. It makes Steven think of that one swing at the park with a cruddy chain, the one you ended up having to use when all the good swings got snapped up before you got there. Definitely not the kind of thing the Diamonds would use, and it's not nearly big enough to hold them anyway.

But it is big enough for the person who shoulders her way out of the hatch, throwing herself against the door until it falls and clatters to the ground. She stands with her back to him, so Steven can't see her face, but he knows that bulky-strong body and that shaggy hair the color of old white carpet and the blue-green Corruption stains on the back of her neck. She's straight out of his nightmares. Probably Lapis's and Amethyst's, too.

Jasper.

Steven feels a grin shoot across his face.

Someone who he knows he hates. Someone who he knows hates him. Someone he won't ever have to worry about disappointing. He wants to hug her almost as much as he wants to flatten her.

She turns and catches sight of him right away. "What are you doing here, weakling?" Her voice is the same raging growl it's always been – it scratches against Steven's own throat like a cough, one you've been holding back for a long time to be polite. He knows he hasn't imagined the disgust he saw in her eyes. She hasn't accepted him as her Diamond, and she never will.

And that's great. Because he never will be.

Steven rushes up to her, stopping just in front of her boots, closer to her than he's ever willingly put himself before. Her glare turns into a stupid stare for a second as he starts to talk, a wild storm of words he shouldn't be saying.

"Jasper! Fight me! Please! You don't – you're the only one – I'm so angry and I can't go back to being with them! I can't! They expect me to be good, and I can't! All I can do is save the world from threats like you, so threaten me already!"

She kicks him hard in the chest, and it's the best thing he's felt all day.

Steven skids backward across the ground, his body ripping grass loose as he goes. He should fix it, heal it, but at this moment he's not entirely sure he can. Heat blooms in the spot where she kicked him, less like pain and more like motion, like something is finally moving around when everything's been so still for so long.

"Thanks," he pants. "That's much better."

Jasper stands wide-legged in front of him, her muscles bulging with excitement, her eyes getting beadier as they focus on him. "You call yourself a warrior?" she says. "Do you think this is some kind of game? Quit smiling!"

"But I've seen you smile." The words feel fragile in Steven's mouth, and he doesn't doubt that she could beat them to a pulp.

Instead, her fist collides with his jaw. "Shut up!" she roars.

Steven staggers and lands on his butt, and his teeth bounce up and down in their sockets. If he weren't half-Gem, he'd be spitting some out right now.

Okay. That's all the hits he deserves. Now to fight back.

Steven rises and reaches inside for his shield. It doesn't tumble and trip on its way out like it did when he was a little kid, but it doesn't come out in that easy slide he's learned to expect once he got control of it. This is more like yanking beach grass up by the roots. He swings it in front of him, and he tries not to imagine the look that would fall across Dad's face if he knew Steven was out here squaring off with Jasper.

But Dad's not here, and he's not anyplace inside Steven, either. It's just him and Mom, pounding in their gemstone. He can feel her strength like a second heartbeat. Which is she doing – helping him or hurting him?

Which has she ever been doing?

Steven glares through the hard pinkness of the shield at Jasper's scowl, which might be even harder. It's the same way he looked at her at their first meeting, in the blinking green light from her ship, the same way he's looked at her two dozen times since. He remembers what he used to feel when he looked at her, fear and pity and determination to stop her, but only that last one is still here, and the hormones have turned it into something ugly too. He should still feel sorry for her; he wants to feel sorry for her, now that he knows what she must feel like – mad all the time everywhere, like lava in your throat, every glimpse of someone else's smiling face landing like a punch. But when he stares her down now, all he can see is her hands on Lapis, her body rolling over Amethyst like a buzzsaw, her Destabilizer flicked against Garnet's skin.

"Why do you want another war so bad, Jasper?" Steven demands, even though he thinks he might already understand, in some part of him that used to not exist. "Why do you hate Earth so much? You were made here!"

Jasper lurches forward, fists first. The shield rattles under her punches.

"This filthy planet. My Diamond chose to leave me – leave all of us – to live here instead! And it destroyed her! It destroyed her, even before you stole her powers."

There's so much hatred wrapped around everything she says, so thick he can't untangle it.

"I didn't steal anything!" Steven says. When Jasper takes another swing at him, he raises the shield higher than he has to, clocking her under the chin. "She gave them to me! She chose to let me have them!"

Jasper's voice drops. "Then she chose wrong."

She doesn't give the words a chance to sink in before she throws her fist forward again. Steven jerks the shield up to block her. Something inside him trembles and flinches, but whatever it is, it doesn't affect his grip or the toughness in his arms.

"Yeah, well, then you chose wrong, too!" Steven says. "You could have chosen to stay here with all the other Gems who got healed from being Corrupted! You could have attended Little Homeschool, learned how to live on Earth like a normal person! You could have decided to be better than this!"

He's yelling now, without regret, liking the way his voice swells and darkens to match hers.

Jasper's mouth curls. She circles him, looking more like a predator than Lion does, and Steven turns with her, careful to keep his shield between him and her anger. "I'm not like those other Gems," she says.

"That's right! You're not! They were all Corrupted by the Diamonds!" Steven's chest aches, and not just from the impact of her foot. He pictures the Corrupted Gem whose horn Jasper grabbed, whose body Jasper slammed into hers, while she screeched and thrashed to get away. She was so afraid, and even now that's she cured and safe, she tears up when she remembers it. Everyone calls her Ocean 'cause she's mostly blue, but she was another Jasper – not a Crystal Gem, a Homeworld soldier who was a zillionth of a second too late getting to the warp pad. One of Jasper's army. "You Corrupted yourself! To win a fight that you lost! To me!"

He remembers too, how he cried for her and begged her to let him save her. How she refused, because even then, when she knew she was doomed, she was too stubborn, too mean, to accept any help from anybody. How he had to watch as it went slinking up her arm, staining her one bit at a time. The guilt had eaten into his dreams, and it feels good to insult her now, to say this to her hateful face with those stupid red streaks and the stubby horns the Corruption left behind.

Jasper's eyes nearly disappear. She whacks the shield with her forearm like she thinks that'll get it to move. "The only reason I lost is because you and that runt fused. There's no way either of you could have beaten me on your own!"

"That runt?" Steven repeats. His ears throb, wanting to throw her words out. "You mean Amethyst? The one you tried to shatter because she wasn't 'perfect' enough for you? The one who forgave you and was sad for you? She tried to help you, Jasper!"

Steven feels a knot of pink well up on his left shoulder. Instead of letting it go back down, he grabs for it, turning his mind into hands that take hold of it and push it down his arms and out of him. When he looks up, eyes wet with exertion, the rose in the center of his shield has bloomed into tiny thorns that poke outward.

Jasper doesn't notice until too late. Steven can't quite bring himself to look away as she lunges for him again and thrusts her hands out, the thorns biting into them, piercing holes in her different-colored gloves. She wobbles on her feet and howls, though to Steven she doesn't sound hurt at all. Just too furious to breathe.

He knows the feeling.

She shakes out her hands, the holes in them already mending themselves. "Is that the best you've got?" Her head shakes, too. "You may have her gemstone, but you will never be – My! Diamond!"

"I don't want to be!" Steven says.

Jasper keeps coming as if she hasn't even heard him. "My Diamond could do things…she could do so many things." Her eyes are greedy. "Things you could never possibly do."

"All she wanted to do was save the Earth and heal all the Corruptions," Steven says. "Which is what I ended up doing for her!" He levels the shield at her, his pulse vicious against his temples. "We didn't have to grab your gem that day we took them all to the pool, you know. We could have left you there, and you would have deserved it!"

He can't believe he just said that, but he's not sorry. Not more than a tiny bit.

Jasper takes another step, sideways, not farther away, not closer. "You've changed," she finally says. "You're at least talking like a Diamond now."

A Jasper-compliment should feel more like an insult, but what lights up in Steven's head is somehow beyond either of those. His stomach wants to cave in relief just that she notices, that she's acknowledging it, that she doesn't just pretend everything is the same as it's always been the way pretty much everybody else does.

"You're right," Steven says. "I have changed. I'm stronger now. I'm not some kid playing around anymore."

For a heartbeat, he forgets to move his shield with his head, and it's all the opportunity Jasper needs. She blows over to him and lands a punch right beneath his ear, and his whole head fills with static.

The blow is brutal, but something hot and cold inside Steven takes the pain and wrings it out and he doesn't cry out, doesn't make a sound. He just returns Jasper's stare, their eyes sizzling against each other's, and even though he's gotten bigger since the first time they faced off, that doesn't make Jasper seem any smaller. Or less scary.

"If that's your idea of strength," Jasper spits, "you're either mad or you've been holding back so long you don't know how to do anything else." She hisses, and the sound drills a hole right through Steven, tearing open the lava that Steven's sure he can feel in himself. It wants to burn something up.

Jasper rolls herself into a ball like that video-game hedgehog, and then the ball turns into a yellow-orange blur, and she bulldozes him the same way she did Amethyst.

Steven's back meets the ground with a thud that seems to come from really far away, and he hears his breath gurgle out of him. It hurts like heck, and somehow he knows it should hurt even more, but those hormones are on it, taking that away. Like they're on his side for once.

The ball-blur turns and starts to come his way again. Steven leaps upright again and slams his palms against the air in front of him, throwing up pink curves that surround him in a circle. In the shadow of the bubble, his hands look a smoldering, angry shade of pink. Or maybe they really are. When he taps at the bubble's wall, it feels harder than it ever has and his fingers tighten, like they don't fit inside his skin anymore and any minute something's going to come bursting out of them, something that's closer to what Jasper wants to see.

She plows into the bubble. It shudders but knocks her back, unrolling her and leaving her in a heap on the grass. Jasper turns her head to the side and snickers into the grass.

"Not this again," she says. "Is that the only thing you know how to do? Make things to hide behind?"

Steven closes his stinging eyes and opens them again.

Pillars of pink shoot from the bubble like a laser-light show. One of them nails Jasper in the chest. She flies backward, her big arms and legs pumping emptily, and she looks so peeved that Steven can't help laughing.

The ground shakes when she falls to it, and Steven thinks of the floor cracking in White Diamond's throne room. He did that as he said, She's goooone! And she is gone, from Eras Two and Three's Diamond symbols, from the spot above the door in the temple.

But I'm still here.

Steven's feet start to move before he realizes he wants them to, and then he and the bubble are running toward Jasper. Then it's his turn to bulldoze over her.

She accepts it with only the slightest of groans, and a moment later she shoots up, her arms swinging and ready, pointed somewhere around Steven's throat. He dances back, out of her way, and stretches his arms, pulling the bubble, dragging it out to a firm length that spins far above his head and then loops back down to surround him on all sides, every inch of it covered with thistles.

Jasper hurls herself against the wall, and Steven smiles as she bounces off it again and again.

"Quit hiding, you coward!" Jasper says. "Get out here and fight me!"

Steven shakes his head, slowly, with a calm he must feel somewhere. "You really don't want me to do that, Jasper," he says.

"Are you kidding me? Of course I do!" Disgust rings in Jasper's voice and through the static in Steven's head. "There hasn't been anyone in so long who's been worth fighting!"

Well. She asked for it.

Steven leans against the shield-pink wall and flips through his powers as if they're TV channels. It's a strange moment for him, one that makes him feel like he's re-discovered Mom's secret chamber of weapons Lion showed him and Connie when they were kids, only this time he knows how to use all of them.

The wall drops, but it doesn't go back into his gem. It spatters into dozens and dozens of tiny bubbles, hard as ball bearings, and one by one they smash into Jasper's forehead. Her ever-tightening cheek muscles make more sense to Steven than anything has since before the proposal, before the hospital.

"You can't! Have! Earth!" he says. "I know you feel like my mom betrayed you, but you don't get to come in and destroy the planet she loved just because you got your feelings hurt!"

Steven vaguely remembers saying something kinda like that to Spinel, only it'd been more a tough-love lesson with her. Because he still believed there was a chance that Spinel might come around.

But Jasper – she said it herself on the day she almost took Amethyst away from them: Jaspers never give up until we get what we want.

Jasper's neck heaves, wet near a splotchy area that still remembers being Corrupted. Steven can't remember if he's ever seen her break a sweat fighting him, just him, before.

The last of the bubbles bonks against Jasper's head, and Steven doesn't bother to create any new ones. Jasper launches herself at him, and he feels her fingers bite into his skin before he shoots straight into the sky, beyond her reach, beyond the treetops. He watches as she tackles the hollow space between her own arms, watches as she stands up and smashes her knuckles into an innocent tree over and over, cutting its bark open, because she can't get to the person she really wants to beat up.

And for maybe the first time ever, Steven thinks he might know who that person is.

He stays in the sky. In the hottest corner of his mind, he sees Pink Diamond and Rose Quartz and good-kid Steven Universe fade away.

The only one left now is him.

The lava inside pours over Steven, catching on every ache where Jasper touched him and sealing it shut. There's no pain anymore, and somehow that's painful too.

Steven breathes in, and even his nostrils feel singed. He breathes out, and pink hexagons he recognizes appear in the sky, taller and wider than the ones that hid him when he was fighting White Diamond, creeping out and thickening until they form a layer next to him, and no sun reaches through them to the place where Jasper still stands attacking a tree. The faces of everyone he saved and everyone he let down flash through Steven's head – Dad, the Crystal Gems, his friends who are grown-ups now, and Connie, Connie, Connie…

The hexagons moan and creak, and then they're not flat anymore. Points, long and sharp, form in their corners and their centers, smaller ones filling in the spaces in between. These aren't thorns or even thistles. They're spikes like on Amethyst's whip, like on some of those medieval weapons he's seen in Connie's textbooks.

His insides don't feel like jelly anymore. He's hard and taut, stronger than he's ever felt.

"You were right about one thing, Jasper!" Steven calls, letting his grin spread as far as it wants to. "I have been holding back!"

He drives his fist down, the spikes fall, and at the same time Jasper finally looks up at him, her eyes tiny and yellow and scared.

But the tinge of fear he's seen only a few times before isn't what turns the Jasper he knows and hates into a complete stranger. It's what's not there. What she's never been without.

Her expression is empty of anger.

In that moment, Steven changes his mind, but it's too late.

Jasper's body disappears.

And as Steven's knees hit grass, he hears a sound he knows he'll keep hearing for the rest of his life.

Crunch.

---

"All right. Now for…the color inversion!" Peridot peers up at you, her eyes expectant. "Are you ready, Lapis?"

"Uh, yeah," you say. Peridot has a habit, at times endearing and at other times annoying, of enlarging otherwise ordinary moments and trying to make them more dramatic than they are.

She presses a button on her tablet, and the pair of faces looking back at you from the viewscreen change. Peridot's skin washes a shallow red, lighter and finer than a Ruby's, her hair becomes pale lavender, and her eyes take on a scarlet hue so bright they almost burn. Your transformation is less remarkable: your face now close to Kim Possible's skin tone, deep orange eyes matching the jagged fringe of hair that stops just short of covering them.

You pretend to grimace at your reflection. "I look better blue."

"I would look amazing in any color," Peridot says, neck arched. "But you are correct. My natural shade of green is preferrable."

You snort. The two of you have been playing with her tablet for at least an Earth-hour by now, experimenting with something she calls filters – not the variety humans install to strain out impurities, but a variety that changes the appearance of the user onscreen. They do not help the tablet to function in any way, as far as you can see; they appear crafted solely to entertain, which seems an important enough Purpose to you.

Peridot drags at the screen until the color inversion option pulls away and another slides forward to take its place. "And next – whatever this is!"

She taps the screen again. You watch as your eyes grow ridiculously wide, the lashes elongating until they seem to touch the glass that keeps no one prisoner as it holds the image in place. The upward tilt of your nose disappears, replaced by a small black dot. For the first time in your existence, ears form on your reflection: not large flopping ears like Dr. Drakken's or small tidy ears like Steven's, but ears as delicate as new blossoms, dusted with a layer of hair thinner than the one on Drakken's chin. As you move your head, one of them flicks to the side as though wary, the movement so brief you can barely detect it. You glance over at Peridot to find the same thing has happened to her, although her ears have been placed in the center of her hair rather than atop it, at an angle from which they could not have possibly originated.

"Oh my gosh, look at us," you say.

You grin at the sound of your voice. It is higher and airier than it has ever been, and you can barely hear Peridot's when she replies, "We're so cute! We look like those…those creatures! You know, the ones in that movie that Drakken can't watch without crying! What are those called?"

"Well, the name of the movie is Bambi," you say. "But I don't remember what the animals are called."

As you speak, your overwide eyes move, the blue parts seeming to swell with every blink. Peridot shrieks with laughter and buries her face in your bare shoulder.

You are about to roll your eyes and snicker when there is a knock at your door and, in the same moment, a thrust that pushes it open. Bismuth fills the space, her face the fusion of tenderness and ferocity you have seen every time she protects someone. Behind her, through the door, you become aware of a cold, misplaced silence.

Little Homeworld always rings with noise that is pleasant, if occasionally daunting. Now, however, the air is still and empty, and you are reminded of the black void of space through which you have flown so many times. It did not frighten you there; space was designed to be silent.

Little Homeworld was not. It was meant to be a running brook, bubbling and gurgling with life; even in the moments when you shut yourself in your room, your door a barrier between yourself and the chaos, you could still hear broad outlines of sound, signs that your home was still in motion. It is absent now, the water stagnating, cut off from its source by what can only be shock.

Bismuth shuts the door behind her.

"Bismuth!" Peridot leaps up, her tablet clutched between two fingers. "Is everything all right?"

You rise, too, staring at Bismuth. Her eyes, when they meet yours, are steady, but you do not mistake that for calm.

"Not exactly, guys." Bismuth clasps her hands in front of her. "Okay – try not to freak out, all right? – but Jasper's here."

You force your eyes to stay open, as wide as they were on the screen, so you can see beyond the scenes of distress that begin to swamp your mind when you hear her name.

Peridot drops her tablet. Seconds later, she joins it on the floor, on all fours like Steven's lion, she is crouched so, ready to beat away the threat that has frightened Little Homeworld into silence. "Jasper? Here? Is she being detained?"

"The other Crystal Gems are with her," Bismuth says. She sounds strange, the anger you expected to hear piercing her words blunted by something less certain. "Look, I don't think she's gonna try anything. She's pretty messed up."

You sink down to the couch like a ship going under. You do not realize how weak your legs feel until you take your weight from them.

Peridot scuttles like a crab across the front room to the window that faces outward. Her small clever fingers curve around the wooden sill, and she raises her head just enough to peer through the glass. From behind you watch as her back, already stiff, seems to ice with tension. "What happened to her face?" she says.

"She got Corrupted, remember?" you say, grateful for the chance to roll your eyes. "You were there."

"No. This is new. One of her horns appears to have been chipped off. And the marks on her face are no longer symmetrical." Peridot's voice falls into the easy tinny rhythm of recitation that has always comforted her, yet you feel no stronger as you listen; the thought of Jasper further damaged weighs down your wings, and your toes grow cold.

"Yeah. About that." Bismuth closes her eyes for a moment. "She got shattered today, but Steven was able to bring her back." Her eyes open. "That's the good news."

If that is the good news, you are in trouble.

"What's the bad news?" you manage to say, bracing your feet on the wooden planks beneath them. Whatever she is about to say, you suspect it will have the power to knock you over.

Bismuth sighs, the sound like wind sweeping through your house, and looks down at her hands, still squeezed into knots at the tops of her legs. "Steven was the one who shattered her in the first place."

You remain standing, but the feeling evaporates from your limbs, leaving only the crashing of the ocean in your gem.

"What?" you say.

"What? Steven? No way!" Peridot bursts into a guffaw, so unfitting for the situation that it grates at every hollow place inside you like hot sand in your shoes, and yet you want to join her; you want to dismiss the idea and mock it alongside her.

The nagging weight between your shoulders won't let you. Your mind pinches at the thought, keeping hold of it though it can barely tolerate touching it.

Who else on Earth would be strong enough to do this? Surely many of the former Quartz warriors in Little Homeworld could, as could Snowflake Obsidian, Topaz, and perhaps even Bismuth herself. A fight like that, however, would never go unnoticed; it could not have happened here. You do not think you can account for every one of their whereabouts today, but you know you cannot account for Steven's. You haven't seen him since before the field trip last weekend.

There was a time he came to visit Little Homeworld every day.

He will never be Pink Diamond, but he has her powers. A Diamond can cut anything she, or he, touches.

The water swirling within is unrecognizable to you, the direction your mind is flying unthinkable. You understand, then, what has forged the blunted edges of Bismuth's words and left them ineffective weapons.

You think of the sound Dr. Drakken makes when he throws up, and you believe you understand that as well.

You ask the only things that matter: "Where's Steven now? Is he okay?"

Bismuth flinches. "Well…that's what we're still trying to figure out. See, right after he healed Jasper, he jumped on the warp pad and yelled at everybody not to try to follow him."

You succeed in nodding. You try to tell yourself that if Steven is capable of shattering Jasper, he is capable of taking care of himself.

Beside you, Peridot gasps. It is odd hearing her try to reject information when she usually rushes to consume it with as much gusto as Drakken consumes his sweet cereal in the mornings.

Bismuth's eyes shift back and forth between the two of you. "What do you need right now?"

Cold crawls along the top of your mouth, coating the surface of your tongue where taste buds would appear if you wanted to enjoy a flavor. You know what you need right now: warmth, the kind that only an organic being can produce.

You glance at Peridot, who continues to gasp and make harsh noises of disbelief. It feels strange being the one to speak for both of you, a mirror-reversal of your typical roles, but you look straight at Bismuth. "Drakken. I need Drakken."

"Sure thing." A sad smile spreads through Bismuth's eyes, and she nods toward the door. "Let's go get him."

Bismuth reopens the door and gestures the two of you forward. You follow her out, each footstep echoing in the unnatural stillness.

Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl stand in front of Little Homeworld's central building, each of them looking as if the earth beneath their feet could collapse at any time. Among them, blocking the lowering sun, stands Jasper.

The other half of her.

You walk toward Jasper even as you remember her soul twisted around yours, scraping against it, hoping to peel you away and pour herself into the spaces left behind. It is a memory you will never be free of, but it does not have the hold on you that it once did.

Bismuth strides behind you and Peridot leaps in front, trying to form one of Steven's defensive bubbles. You squeeze Peridot's shoulder in thanks and glance over her head at Jasper.

Although you know Jasper was created during the war and is therefore younger than you, there has always been a sense of age, an oldness about her that transcends even Era One. Looking at her now, you see that this sense has multiplied, as though she has been around longer than the Diamonds, long enough to have seen the universe's first spark and this time has somehow, without fatiguing her, exhausted her. For the first time since you have known her, her arms are lax at her sides, unprepared for battle; the sight would feel like a triumph if you did not know its cause. The slash of deep orange across her face has been torn, the tip of one horn snapped off like a broken pencil point. Her gem sits on her nose as it always has, and were it not for what Bismuth just told you, you would not notice the minute flecks of black inside it, too small to be cracks.

An ache, the only warm feeling left inside you, travels through you as you imagine how Steven must have gotten down on his knees and gathered up the pieces, searching the ground for shards, knowing that to miss even one was to fail.

Just as before, it is Jasper's eyes that frighten you the most, but not in the same manner they once did. They are stunned now and look almost vacant without their usual hatred, staring forward. Her gaze does not dismiss the Gems around her as unworthy opponents; it does not register their presences at all. Her eyes at times move back and forth, and yet they never clear, not for a moment, not even when they land on you.

Your spine chills. Whatever arcane dimension holds a Gem's soul when they shatter – wherever that is, Jasper has been there, and from what you see now, she may not have fully returned.

She flicks a look over you and out at the horizon. You step around her onto the warp pad and Peridot hops on beside you, still glaring at Jasper. You raise your arms to activate the warp, and even as it raises the light of your body and throws it across the sky, a weight heavier than gravity sits between your shoulder blades.

Dr. Drakken comes to the door at your first knock; you hear him trip as he races across the floor and fumbles for the knob. When he tugs the door open, he grins and says, "Lapis! Peridot! Hello!" He has not even touched you yet, and you can already feel the warmth, not just organic but his: bombastic and disorganized and sensitive.

You throw your arms around him.

"Well, glad to see you, too, of course," Drakken says. He chuckles awkwardly and starts to return the hug, but whatever you wear on your face stops his hands before they connect at their usual place at the center of your back. "This…this isn't a just-for-fun visit, is it?"

You shake your head, and the words tumble like stones from your mouth. "Steven's disappeared. He might be in trouble. We have to find him."

Drakken stiffens, the rods of his ribs pressing against your head. "Yikes! Well, by all means! Just let me switch off my computer, and I'll be right there." He makes a frantic gesture toward the living room, where a machine twice the size of Peridot's tablet sits unfolded. "I was just finishing this fascinating report on the effects of early anesthesia on the nervous system and how that influences our search for the perfect humane knockout gas – oh, you don't know what that is. It's the stuff they use to – but only when they – and then they – and I –"

He grabs the sides of his head, the places where the thick hair is thinnest, and tugs. An instant later, he straightens, steps aside, and says, "Come on in," smiling as though the world has always been good to him.

You join him in the living room and watch his fingers skitter over his computer's keys. The waters roiling in your gemstone are nowhere near as fast as his nervous movements, and yet they are far from still; you need to prevent them from sweeping him away. "Um," you say. "Thanks so much for coming. But I think you ought to know first that there's going to be somebody there you don't like."

Drakken lifts his eyebrow at you.

"Jasper," you say.

Dr. Drakken's deep, kind eyes turn into twin lances. "Jasper? What makes her think she can just show up and make herself right at home? Huh?"

"Don't be too hard on her," Peridot says, speaking up at last. "She died today."

"Oh." The sharpness disappears from Drakken's eyes; they blink rapidly, the blackest parts drifting closer together. "But she's…better now?"

You want to giggle. You want to find it comical, the confused lean of Drakken's voice that matches the tilt of his head, but a block of ice has lodged in your throat.

"Steven accidentally shattered her," you say, holding your words to keep them from shivering. "He was able to bring her back, but she's still pretty out of it. I don't think she'll be a threat."

Drakken's expression contorts, casting about, you are certain, to see if he can find any sympathy for Jasper. Heaviness settles in the circles beneath his eyes. "Gkkk," he says at last. "All right. I suppose I can cut her some slack. But if she lays a finger on you, Lapis, so help me God –"

Before he can finish telling you what God is going to help him with, his computer screen gives a chime not unlike the one at the door that alerts him to visitors.

"Incoming video call," Drakken reads. He turns to you, his face pleading. "This might be an emergency call from work. I should probably take it."

Peridot's foot strikes the floor in an impatient rhythm as his fingers skim the keyboard again. A gray box opens on the screen, its parameters dull against the bright colors behind them.

"Heya, Drakken!" someone calls. A face, pink with streams of black down the cheeks, flickers into view.

You almost groan out loud. You cannot imagine having the patience to deal with Spinel today.

"Oh, hello, Spinel," Drakken says. You can hear him straining to be kind, and in spite of everything you hope Spinel does not notice.

She squints at the three of you lined up before the computer screen. "Y'guys looking for Steven?" Spinel lifts one arm and tilts her hand to the side, shaping a question mark with her forearm. "'Cuz he's here."

Drakken and Peridot begin to screech. You close your eyes. The irony of it bites into you: it is a relief to have Steven in the company of the Diamonds.

"Wow thanks!" Peridot yells now. "We had no idea where he went! He just jumped on the warp pad and said no one was supposed to follow him!"

"Yeah. He didn't want me to tell anyone he came here, either. But I'm worried about him." Spinel's voice is as it was before, heavy and tense like coiled metal, though some of the bitterness you remember has been cleansed. "He's kinda remindin' me of…me, back when I wanted to kill everybody."

You take a step forward, dismissing the pain that rolls in wild waves down your back. "How so?" you say.

"Just acting all mad. Really mad. He didn't even seem that glad to see me." The corners of Spinel's lips turn down in an exaggerated fashion, her face elongating so that her frown can crawl farther. "He was all snappy and went to go see if Blue and Yellow could help him with – something, I dunno what – and they showed him their new powers."

"What new powers?" Peridot asks, hungry for new information even in this moment.

"Blue figured out she could help make Gems happy instead of just sad. And Yellow can put shattered Gems back together. Bring them back to life! I thought that would make Steven happy, right? But I think he had his fists up the whole time." Spinel demonstrates with her own hands, her knuckles billowing like wind-caught sails. "Especially when Yellow told him to let her know if any of his Quartz friends wanted their horns removed 'n' stuff."

Your physical form tightens at the mention of Quartzes. You stare at the back of Dr. Drakken's head, where his long black hair dips toward his collar before swinging upward once more in a thick arc, so that you will not picture a chipped horn and a proud face marked with discolored patches.

"It makes sense. He had to bring a shattered Gem back all by himself today." You give Spinel an incomplete truth, and neither Drakken nor Peridot races to correct you.

"Oh. Yikes," Spinel says. "Well, he's in with White right now." She turns, her head a bobbing cork as she nods down a long white hallway toward a section of the palace you have not visited since before the war. "Maybe she can help fix him up."

You do not even have time to doubt it, for at that moment a scream thick and piercing rises from the direction Spinel just nodded. The sound of it brings to mind the feel of Jasper summoning your wings: pried against its will from the deepest parts of a gemstone.

You do not know if comes from Steven or White Diamond.

All feeling of relief and all feeling of pain drain from you. Your senses blur, sights and sounds sharpening while the rest of your awareness dulls.

"What the heck was that?" Dr. Drakken is shouting now, clutching the computer's screen. Somehow you put your arm around Peridot, who buries her face in your side and shakes.

"I don't know. Nothing good." Spinel's eyes bat frantically. "I'll have to go check it out."

She pivots and spins down the hallway, rotating her weight among all four limbs. As a door falls shut behind her, you remember that the walls of White Diamond's chambers are designed to net sound in and trap it. For a scream to swim outside of it…

You shake your head, but the thought clings.

Time moves as slowly as a tugboat. Peridot's knee bounces against your pants leg and Drakken tries to regulate his breathing and shoves a fist into his mouth; it is small enough to fit. You sink to the floor and cold permeates the inside of your head.

When Spinel reappears, you grow still colder and force yourself to your feet, bracing your body. She does not leap or skip or twirl down the hallways. She walks, her shoulders bent with what she has to tell you.

You find the words first, and they are even-keeled while all else capsizes around you. "What happened? Is everybody okay?"

"Yeah?" Spinel says, but you recognize her inflection; it is the one Drakken uses when he speaks to his mother, reassurance before accuracy.

"Well?" Peridot says. "Are they?" She sounds near tears.

"I mean…nobody ended up getting hurt." Spinel's face puckers like the skin on Drakken's cheek, reaching to seal the edges of his wound. "So there's that. But – you know how I said White Diamond had a new power?"

All three of you nod.

Spinel's mouth works; she is unrecognizable as the Gem who pressed a Rejuvenator to your back and threatened to send you back to where you began. "Well, instead of taking over other Gems' bodies all the time, she realized she could let them take over hers."

"Amazing!" Peridot says.

"Creepy," you mutter.

Spinel looks down at her hands, uncharacteristically stiff in her lap. "She let Steven in so he could tell her what was going on, make her understand. And then…then he grabbed the controls and totally took over. He was yelling about how White Diamond had pulled his gem out and turned all his friends white, and how even though all of that got fixed he still hated her. All kinds of stuff that we couldn't hear.

"But then he made her walk over to one of those pillars and grab it. He said he was going to smash her head against it!"

"That's…unkind," Drakken says with a grimace.

"That's where her gem is!" Peridot points to her own forehead to illustrate.

Drakken makes a tiny twittering noise.

"That was when both of 'em screamed. That's what we heard," Spinel says. "And I guess that made Steven more like Steven again, 'cuz he let her go and fell back into his own body. Started telling her he was sorry, over and over again."

You stand calm and motionless, beyond fear. It overtakes you, the thought of White Diamond the tyrant, the one whom all other Gems once feared, the one who instituted the Gem hierarchy and set up the colonizing system, screaming and pleading for her life. At one point it might have seemed like justice; now it merely increases the emptiness swelling within you.

"But Steven didn't shatter her?" you say. You hate speaking the words as a question; you hate that you believe her account. "And he's okay?"

"Well. He was. When he left." The streaks on Spinel's cheeks draw tighter as she awaits your reaction.

Sounds surround you: Peridot lamenting that Steven is once again unlocatable, Drakken grunting and growling in frustration, Spinel repeating words that must be an apology, and all of them drift apart when they touch you, not one of them finding you. You are, at this instant, a sailor rushing to tie everything of value to the deck and lash the sails to the mast.

A storm is coming, and the first trustworthy Earthling you met is in the center of it.

"Where did he go?" You are surprised by the clarity of your voice. "Do you have any idea?"

Spinel's head shakes, helpless. "Maybe back home?" She, too, sounds ready to cry, and sympathy for her freezes in your hollow places, alongside everything else you are unable to feel.

You remember Steven's arms around you the day you deserted your family for the safety of Kanatar. This time, you are the one imploring him to return home.

You rise once more and look at the computer screen. "Well, we should at least go check. Thanks, Spinel."

"You're welcome," Spinel says. "Good luck."

Little Homeworld is no longer silent when the three of you land on its warp pad. Gems who had been pressed into the shadows of buildings, avoiding the dread that hung in the air, now mill about in groups of uncertainty, whispering, shaking their heads, and shrugging. The Ruby whom Steven named Leggy stands with the book she fills with her writing limp in one hand, chewing on the instrument she uses to mark its pages. All of them have dozens of questions, you know, but no one dares to breach the circle that has formed around the central building: Garnet, Amethyst, Pearl, and Jasper. The ice inside you thickens as you realize that Greg now stands among them, his face wreathed with more pain than when you broke his leg.

"I keep telling you," Jasper says as you approach. A facet of you wants to cower when you hear her voice, rough as dry sand even when dulled, while another facet recalls how it felt to bind her and hold her beneath the ocean; neither has authority anymore. "My Diamond shattered me."

Her words plow over you. She is acknowledging Steven as her Diamond. He has finally done some horrible enough to earn her respect.

You remember how that feels, too.

"And by 'your Diamond,' you mean Steven?" Pearl asks. She is upright; she is strong; she is shaking.

"Yes," Jasper says as though Pearl is exceptionally dim. "My ship landed, and there he was, standing there, challenging me to a fight. First good fight I had in ages. And in the end, he won."

Although she is answering Pearl's question, her eyes do not even try to find Pearl's. She still looks and sounds depleted, but the contemptuous set is beginning to return to her jaw. You stare at her stiff shoulders and for the first time it occurs to you that Steven has changed a great deal, but he cannot have changed that much; he does not subsist on cruelty the way Jasper does. What must she have done to him that provoked him into shattering her?

The ocean readies at your back, but you don't grab it. Even Jasper does not deserve to be shattered twice in one day.

"I bowed to his strength," Jasper continues. "And he just ran and jumped on the warp pad and told all of us not to follow. That's…that's it. It's just it, okay?"

Jasper's fists are curled, but the rest of her body shows no preparation to swing them. She seems vulnerable, you realize, and it frightens you in a way her strength never has.

Peridot shoots in between Pearl and Amethyst and tugs at the hem of Amethyst's top. "Excuse us," she says. "We have just arrived, and we have some very relevant news. See, Spinel contacted Drakken –"

You expect Drakken to talk with her, his words blurring into hers, but he stands glaring at Jasper with his arms knotted across his chest and a scowl on his face that you cannot imagine Jasper would find threatening. She is not looking at him at all.

You turn around and push Peridot's voice aside. You do not want to hear this story again. You did not want to hear this story the first time.

None of the Crystal Gems demand to know why Jasper returned today to the planet that gave her life. Most likely, she planned to destroy it, and yet no one can focus on that now, Jasper herself least of all.

You feel the ocean's temperature dropping.

Garnet abruptly breaks out of the Gem circle and treads a meter away, hands gripping the sides of her head as she stares at something the rest of you cannot see, something that has yet to happen.

"Steven," she says with a groan, her fingers arcing at her temples. Whatever she sees is an ache to her. "He's back at the beach house. I'm almost certain of it."

Your legs grow weak once more, but you walk toward her. "He is? Is he okay?"

She nods.

"Should we go see him?" The lack of confidence in your voice disgusts you, when all you should want is to burst in and find Steven, to cover him with your arms and comfort him. You try to imagine it, and your thoughts freeze on the possibility that he would push you away; that he would be broken in a way not even Yellow Diamond could reassemble, and that would break you, too.

"Yes, of course!" Dr. Drakken declares, but his eyes are nervous as they glance at Garnet.

"No. Actually." Garnet holds up her hand, a gesture that reaches you before the meaning of her words does. "He doesn't need everyone to run in and fuss over him."

"What does he need, then?" you say.

Garnet lifts her head. "I don't know."

Peridot gasps out loud. You take a step back, the sole of your shoe coming down hard on Drakken's toes. Both his yelps of pain and your apology sound flimsy, half-formed. In that moment, you understand why Garnet is having trouble sorting through her visions, winnowing out the improbable futures: she does not know Steven as well as she once did.

Perhaps none of you do.

Leggy steps forward, her writing instrument still between her teeth. "Um, Miss Lapis?" she says hesitantly. It is the title she has recently adopted for you; she still finds it hard not to call you My Lapis. "Are we still gonna have meepmorp lessons tonight? I drew a really pretty picture yesterday."

"Um…" You glance at Garnet. Everyone, you notice, is looking to her, even Jasper.

Garnet gives the subtlest of nods. "If you feel up to it, it would be the best thing to do. Steven is going to want things to be as normal as possible."

You almost laugh at the word normal. It has no meaning and no comfort.

"Then, yeah," you tell Leggy. "Meepmorp class will meet like it usually does. My studio. Half an hour?"

"And anyone who wants to take my fascinating course on botany will find me in the greenhouse afterward," Peridot says. She looks up at you, a smile bright and desperate in her eyes. "What could be more stable and predictable than the life cycles of plants?"

Drakken grins back at her, though his lips are shaking.

You place a hand on Garnet's arm, the muscles taut beneath your fingers, and employ a goodbye phrase you have heard on television: "Give him our love, okay?"

She nods again, her face smooth, rinsed of any expression besides determination. You know in that moment that you were wrong, that some sense of normalcy holds your family together.

Garnet steps onto the warp pad, dragging Greg with her. Amethyst and Pearl are not far behind.

An instant, a flash of light, and they have gone back to find Steven.

You close your eyes. Your mind is a pool and reflections play across its surface, clear and vibrant, ripples bending away from them.

"Steven – is – a new friend."

"Really?"

"Ye-ee-ss!"

"You're my friend, too!"

You spoke to him in borrowed voices until he set you free. He lent you his strength when you had forgotten how to stand on solid ground. If normalcy is what he needs, you can do that for him.

I'm still here, Steven, you think, and you hope he can hear.

Bismuth snaps a thumb over her shoulder at Jasper. "Shouldn't somebody be keepin' an eye on her? I mean, she did come here to destroy Earth, right?"

Jasper glares at Bismuth with incredulity. "Not anymore. My Diamond wants this world protected, so it's going to be protected," she says, the rocks and dirt in her voice pressed tightly together.

You almost laugh; you almost scream.

Bismuth turns to you. "Is she for real?"

You close your eyes so you won't have to look at Jasper's face, and you expect to remember the slimed ocean floor beneath your feet, yet instead you stand on the paneled deck of a ship staring at Jasper, refusing to let her pressure shape you into something else. The memory of her pain, the certitude of its source, drives through you like nails through wood. For all Jasper is cruel and bitter, she is also unswervingly loyal.

"Unfortunately, yeah," you say, opening your eyes.

Bismuth's posture relaxes, but she continues to watch Jasper with a waiting, warning look. You take a step backward and feel Dr. Drakken's rigid ribs against your back; nothing Jasper says or does will ever persuade him to trust her, you know. Her gaze now hangs somewhere over the horizon.

Darkness has settled over the sky, and Earth has developed a chill that seems more characteristic of Kanatar. You take Peridot by the hand. "Come on," you say. "Let's go home for a bit before class, okay?"

She clings to you as your feet travel a memorized path to your house, which stands calm and warm in its shades of pale red. Drakken bobs behind you like tugboat cargo.

You shut the door behind you, its metallic knob still warm from the day's light, and then sink to the ground in front of the couch and fold your legs against your chest – a motion you have had no cause to use recently but that washes back up on your shore as though it never left. Drakken continues to stand, his fingers curling and straightening in starts, his face the unhappy grayish color of the sky before a hurricane. Peridot climbs onto the couch behind you, her small knees denting the cushions.

It is she, of course, who breaks the silence first. "Holy snap," she breathes.

"My thoughts exactly," Drakken says. "Are we – are we really going to let Jasper just stay here? After everything she's done? She makes my skin crawl," he says, even though his skin is the only part of him you can see that remains still. "I just don't…I don't trust her as far as I could throw her, which would be…not terribly far."

He would crack in two if he even attempted to pick her up, but you do not point this out to him. Rather, you wrap your arms tighter around your legs and try to explain. "But she thinks Steven is Pink Diamond now," you say. "And she loved Pink Diamond more than anything. Believe me, I know."

"You know," Drakken repeats. "Right. You know. From the time – and the thing – yep. Yep. Okay." His foot beats a furious rhythm on the floor, and as Peridot watches with fascinated eyes, his gaze bounces from wall to wall. "Sorry. I'm a little on edge right now."

Peridot nods. "I think I am on the edge with you."

"I almost wish I were," you say. Your own limbs have drawn inward, stiff and still, resisting movement. "Right now I don't feel much of anything."

"My offer to pinch you still stands," Peridot says.

You shake your head at the same moment Drakken snarls, "No!" and petals burst from above each of his ears. Peridot startles, and he swallows, his cheeks turning as pink as Steven's gem. "Sorry. I mentioned I'm a little on edge right now?"

"Yeah, you did," you say. "That's kinda how that whole thing got started."

"Yes. Right." The smile he gives you is weak, though his teeth shine brilliantly as ever. "You know what I really like about Little Homeworld?"

His buoyant words lead away from all that has transpired today, and you permit yourself to follow them for a time. "What?" you say.

"Everyone here is so different! Nobody looks at me like I'm a freak or anything!"

You have heard the word freak before on television and read it in books, and you flinch at the idea of someone using it to insult him.

"People really called you that?" Peridot says.

"Oh, yes. That and other things. 'Monster.' 'Fiend.' 'Creepy blue guy.' They were afraid of me."

You frown. "But I thought you wanted them to be afraid of you. That was why you were a villain, right?"

"Yes, but…" Drakken works his tongue for a moment. "I wanted them to be afraid of me because of the things I could do! I wanted the kind of fear that comes from respect, not from being so ugly no one will look you in the face! I wanted to commit atrocities against mankind, not be classified as one!" His eyes dart again, and the longing in them, the wanting that can scarcely express what it wants, sends a dull ache across your back. "I wanted the power to make them fear me, for the right reasons, and that was why I was a villain. I think."

You remember lifting your hand and making a fist, feeling the potency of the Earth's ocean rallying behind you, and you shiver. "But trust me," you say, "having the power to wipe out entire planets isn't nearly as cool as it looks."

Drakken's smile turns almost shy. "Well…you make it look pretty cool," he says. "But I think that's because you're not…gnnkhhg, what is that word? Restless, restraint, reck…ful, reck…less! Reckless! You're not reckless with your powers the way so many of us would be!"

There was a time you would have argued with him on that. Now you unfold your legs across the rug that used to be a beach towel, and you let yourself rest in the beauty of how he sees you.

"I don't know," you say. "You've been pretty responsible with your plant powers since you got them. I mean, I know they go a little crazy sometimes, but I think that's just because you still need to get used to them. Like Steven did."

Steven. The name has weight and volume; it saturates the room.

"Steven," Drakken repeats, and it becomes no easier to hear the second time around.

Peridot shrieks and slams her hands on the cushions. "Why isn't he here? Why can't he be here right now so I can see that he's all right? I keep feeling like something bad is going to happen to him!"

"I think something bad already happened to him," Drakken says. "Doing that kind of thing to someone…it messes you up. Bad."

His voice trails off into a low keening sound, and your eyes burn. You had nearly forgotten how well acquainted Dr. Drakken is with guilt.

"Right." Peridot sniffs and hugs a throw pillow, Pumpkin nudging at her shoulder. "How did you ever stand it?"

"Well, I had a lot of other things to distract me from feeling guilty. The regret, the disappointment, the flagging self-esteem, the lairs in need of repair," Drakken says, his voice almost cheery. "And usually some first-degree burns – which are very effective distractions, but which I hardcore do not recommend unless you're completely desperate!"

His arms sweep in the air as he explains, and a fragment of a smile finds your lips. His animation and the earnestness in every syllable he speaks fit inside your gemstone the way they always have, so large and drastic the fear seems to weaken in comparison.

Steven never wanted you to be afraid, either.

You recall him standing on the tower of water you created from the ocean, sitting beside you in a tree, perched on your back, and shielding you on the boat, always telling you that everything would be okay. You did not always believe his reassurances, but coming from him they were never trite, never forced.

You hug your knees more tightly to your chest. "I should probably think of something for my meepmorp class," you say. "So that things can be more normal here for Steven."

Dr. Drakken drags an unsteady hand through his spiking hair. "My mother always says that 'normal' is just a setting on the washing machine."

You do not ask what this has to do with your situation; his arms have fallen and he sounds fragile with confusion, as though that was the only thing he could think to say.

"Well, if Steven needs a normal washing machine, he's gonna get a normal washing machine." You shrug. "I dunno. Maybe we can talk about the blue period tonight."

You say these words hoping they will return the smile to Peridot's eyes, and you are right. "Blue period?" she cackles. "You've never had a period in your life where you weren't blue!" She swivels to face Drakken, her heels smacking against the arm of the couch. "You did, though, didn't you?"

"Yes, believe it or not, I was actually born within the normal human skin-tone range, and I lived that way for the first thirty-eight years of my life. And strangely enough, it doesn't perfectly overlap with my times of sadness. I had four sad-blue years and now I've had three happy-blue years, which isn't a perfect one-to-one ratio, but it will be soon!"

Peridot nods, her lips knotted, pondering. You also study Dr. Drakken. It is difficult to picture him any color other than blue, though you love envisioning him as an infant, his hair even less controlled, his huge, black eyes running over every object around him, wanting even then to know how they worked; how things linked together and succeeded, whether in pieces of machinery or systems of the human body. You imagine he wore the same expression then as he wears now – hopeful and wary all at once, equal distances from chuckles or tears.

You push yourself to your feet. The room where you stand is no different than it was earlier this afternoon, the same size and shape that Bismuth measured so carefully years ago, the edge of every decoration clear and familiar: the spectrum of colors on the throw pillow Peridot hugs, the glazed reflection of the television's dormant screen, and the soft wooded surface of the table where you rest your books. It would be easy to stay here, convened with almost all of the people you love, and hide from the truth of what has happened, and what is likely still happening, outside.

But this scene before you is a lovely, incomplete meepmorp, a canvas with one corner left unpainted.

Steven taught you how to stop hiding, and you owe him this. There will never be a time when you stop owing him.

Meepmorps also speak when you are voiceless. Something about them heals.

"I guess I'd better get going," you say. Your voice is flat but not cold.

Dr. Drakken jerks his head around to you. "Are you sure you're up to this?"

You nod. "It's for Steven. I've done harder things for Steven."

To your surprise, Drakken looks out the window, his eyes harsh upon Jasper's dark strong-limbed outline, his growl lower and louder than Pumpkin's. An instant later, he returns his gaze to you, his face benign once more. "I love you, Miss Lazuli," he says hoarsely.

His words do not tear through the pandemonium that almost certainly awaits you outside, but they make you stronger. When he opens his arms, head tilted in question, you nod and step into them, and for a moment there is safety in his odd scent and his body heat and the way his hands curve to close behind you while avoiding your gem. "Thanks," you say. "I love you too."

Peridot sits upright on the couch, Pumpkin's tail draped across her shoulder. "Can you love me, too?" she blurts to Drakken. "I mean, I know it would not be in the same format, but…can you? I think I really need it right now."

A mist forms over Dr. Drakken's eyes. "Peridot, it would be a lot harder not to love you."

Peridot squints at him. "Can you say that for a scientific fact?"

"Absolutely," Drakken says without hesitating.

The long, clumsy arms unspool once more and lift Peridot from the couch, tossing her into the air as she squeaks for joy. Pumpkin yaps, her tail beating against the couch.

Things are not perfect with all of you loving each other; they are not even okay. But they are better.

You swallow, your throat aching, and push the door open.

Outside, Little Homeworld looks as it often does this time of evening, with Gems rushing toward your meepmorp studio or Peridot's greenhouse, the Nephrites setting up a game of baseball in the field beyond, and the Heaven and Earth Beetles on the roof of their tiny house, searching for star-pictures. You concentrate on your feet on your way to the studio, watching as they navigate bumps and depressions in the surface of the Earth, which also seems to have been shattered and then pieced back together in arrangements you don't understand.

When you open the studio door, it swings back and taps the wall as it always does. You smell wet drawing-sticks and the types of paints that require water to function, and you sigh. You round the corner to the small notch in the side of the room where you store your spare papers, hidden beneath your bag-of-beans chair, watched by the salvaged photograph of Greg's aunt and uncle, their faces clearly shaped by the same Kindergarten that would eventually construct Steven's. For an instant, you recall its rounded sides and short blunt nose peeking into the mirror, and warmth bleeds through your gemstone, followed by bitter cold. You wonder what his face looks like now that he knows he has betrayed himself.

The papers shake slightly in your hands as you gather them up.

A group of Gems awaits with drawing instruments already poised in their hands. Leggy sits at the front of the room, her hands folded with precision in her lap, while Lisa reclines on her hands in the back and chatters to Topaz, who gives the occasional nod. On an ordinary day, the sight would cheer you.

Yet you can still feel the heft of Jasper's stare even from here, though it is aimed not at you but at everyone and no one. There will never be a normal washing machine as long as she is here.

You lean back against the wall and cross your arms in front of your bare stomach. You remember Steven's advice to you when these classes first began: to talk to the roomful of Gems as if they were all your friends, and now they are. None of them are Peridot, Drakken, or Steven, but neither are any of them unknown, dangerous entities.

"Welcome back, everybody," you say. "So today's been…kind of weird, and weird days cause weird feelings, right? The good news is that meepmorp can help you sort through all kinds of weird feelings, like being sad. In fact, in the human world, a lot of famous people who made meepmorps went through what they call a 'blue period.'"

In the quiet that follows, you hear Lisa giggling.

"That's 'blue' like 'sad,' not 'blue' like…well, 'blue,'" you add with a smile. "Because for some of us, we can't stop being blue. But no matter what color we are, we all feel sad sometimes. Maybe more than sometimes. Our world's been a mess for a long time. If you're anything like me, you miss Homeworld a lot but you'd never want to go back there."

Several Gems nod. Others shake their heads, and that is all right.

You hold up one of the papers. "There are so many meepmorps I could make with this paper to show what feeling sad looks like to me. I could paint a picture of what I'm missing and draw myself with a sad face, or I could just pick the color that seems saddest to me and draw big swirls everywhere. I could cut shapes out with scissors and stick new shapes in. I could –"

Footsteps scuff the grass outside the studio door. You pause and, in a slip of a moment, you move your eyes to the Gem who stands in the doorway.

Steven.

You do not learn what he looks like after betraying himself, for he is blurry, as if you watch him through the ripple of your wings over your face the way you used to do when he had a surprise planned for you. You wish it were only water that separates you now.

You do not see the pain in his eyes but you feel it, near the facet of yourself where you would feel a storm at sea.

The paper wrinkles in your clutch. Your mouth shapes his name, but you do not know if you say it aloud. He stands there, a smear of pink and black, and then he turns and sprints in the opposite direction, the ridges on the undersides of his shoes flashing as he runs away from you.

You have known fear almost as long as you have known water, two opposing forces teaming up to drag you toward a path you never intended to choose. You know the sort of terror that simmers inside your gemstone and leaks outward, under your skin and behind your eyes, the sort that will not grant you one glance over your shoulder to see if you will succeed. You have lived in it, and you have seen it in sea creatures as they swim away from predators: the tuna from the net, the seal from the shark, the krill from the whale.

But what you also know, and what you recognize in Steven's disappearing footfalls, is the frantic, aching, aimless horror of fleeing from something you can never outrun.

A dark silence covers the studio. You are afraid, too.

Your physical form stays at the front of the room so as not to upset the norm of things around him, yet in your mind you are pursuing him, chasing him down as though he is a thief – which, of course, he is not. What he takes with him as he flees is precious to you but belongs only to him. Even in your imagination, you cannot keep pace with him.

You take one last look out the open door. Jasper and Bismuth are no longer in sight and Steven has vanished, though you can still see the grass tousled and upset from where he tore across it. Every face that looks back at you loves Steven, too; he saved them just as plainly as he saved you. Although you know you are not alone, your gem feels like it is sinking, dragging itself down your back, and you close your eyes.

"All right," you say a moment later, opening them again. You shake your paper out and smooth it against the wall. "So – sad meepmorps. That shouldn't be too hard right now. Let's get going."

Every eye in the room swivels down to their papers. It is still quiet, so quiet you can hear Peridot's prattling from the greenhouse several buildings down, the annoying sound somehow sweet like the tides.

You lie down, pressing your chest to the floor and pointing your thrumming back at the ceiling, and reach for the containers of meepmorp supplies. Your hands plunge into the box filled with the slim, dry drawing-sticks with the fine delicate tips and surface holding pink and black.

The white paper below you comes alive with color, seeming to expand its borders rather than shrink them. There is no one significant moment where everything else falls away, only the narrowing of your awareness and the thickening of your concentration. You are here, with your meepmorp and your feelings, and while there is no peace or safety in them today, you run to their enclosure and know it welcomes you anyway.

You draw Steven's body in short, uncompleted strokes so he will appear as indistinct as he looked in the doorway. He spins away from you at an angle that sends the side of his jacket flapping in the breeze, the zipper pointed your direction clearer than he is. His feet in their comfortable shoes rest a centimeter above the ground so he can be seen as either running or floating. You sketch his body again and again, each figure getting smaller and farther away until he meets the horizon and his dark hair tangles with the night.

That is when you realize that none of Steven's figures has a face, though only the largest, closest one is defined enough to need one. Yet your fingers tighten and you find you cannot draw one. You have no idea how to reflect that round innocent face stained with the guilt you know he must carry now. You do not know what darkness looks like in Steven's eyes.

There is only one way to replicate what you saw in that doorway, and what you felt when you did.

You slide the tip of one wing out of your gem and slowly tap the paper until it lies in the wing's shadow. With a long sigh, you let your wing flutter. A drop of water detaches and drops, landing in the center of Steven's featureless head. The paper ripples and bends; when it dries, it will leave a puckered ring where Steven's face would be.

Leggy scoots toward you, her feet pointed in opposite directions. "I like your drawing, Miss Lapis."

"I don't," you say, your voice not as dull as you expected it to be. "But thanks anyway."

You blot the excess moisture from your paper, wipe one hand across your eyes, and survey the room. Gems who are already done either push their papers closer to themselves and shake their heads or nod and reach out for you. When you travel up and down the aisle, remarking on the intense colors of one piece and the jagged edges of another, you see that you are not the only one who has chosen to depict Steven in the doorway.

"Really good job tonight, guys," you say quietly. "So how about we take a break for now? I'm betting a lot of you are ready to be done with thinking about sad stuff."

There is a chorus of agreements and a wave of bobbing heads. You smile at them, somehow, and watch them leave the room, with less of the rowdiness and enthusiasm you recall from classes past. When the studio is empty, you tip your head back to meet the wall and feel your wrists shake.

Bugs hiss from nearby trees, and night-birds hoot as they search for prey, and then over the usual ruckus of Little Homeworld, you hear a sound that strangely thrills you, the sound you heard before everything began again: the sound of glass bursting apart.

You walk on the ends of your toes to the door and peek out. The Nephrites stand in a circle, their baseball bats limp in their arms, the tips of them draggling in the dust and grass. Each has her singular eye aimed toward Peridot's greenhouse and the person who leaves it behind in a shower of dirt clods.

The edges of a pink jacket flare at you, plead with you, and then Steven has become part of the night once more.

You pause with one foot pointed in his direction and the other turned away. You long to go after him, pull him into a hug, and hear his account of what happened today, how he came to break Jasper. You feel as you felt the first time you heard Dr. Drakken sneeze and thought something inside him had exploded: wanting to come closer to him, to reach for him, to comfort him, and yet terrified that the brush of your fingers will touch off something even worse.

Someone skitters to a stop behind you, heaving for breath. You don't have to turn around to know it is Drakken; he is the only other being in this place who requires air to speak. Even now, when it sounds like he has yet to recover a comfortable supply of it, he continues to try.

"Lapis! Is everything…is everyone…gnnngh?"

He makes less sense than usual, and when you look at him you see his eyes are red and liquid, the black semicircles beneath them deeper. His face crumples in a yawn, and though life in Little Homeworld never takes a break, you can see in the distance that most of Beach City's lights have been switched off for the night. You suspect he was asleep, or close to it, on your couch; at home, he probably would have been in bed by now, unless he had something new or curious to keep him awake.

"Sorry," you say. "Did we wake you up?"

"Nnnggh, yes, but that doesn't matter right now!" Drakken grips the back of his neck. "I heard a big bad break sound, and I need to make sure it wasn't anything important! And by 'anything important,' I mean anybody."

The skin around his mouth trembles. Sadness and affection fuse atop your spine.

"No, I think it was just glass," you say. You turn and point at the greenhouse. "One of Peridot's windows."

"Okay, that's better than anything I was imagining. But somebody could still be hurt! I'll go check!"

Drakken lurches up the hill, his back bent at an odd angle and his feet fast even as they stumble. You fly behind him and follow him up to the greenhouse, into the broken puddle of light cast by the hole in the glass. Through a pane rimmed with cutting edges, sharp as Jasper's teeth, you see Bixbyite sweeping the glass to a corner with her claws and Watermelon Tourmaline picking fragments out of fledgling leaves, but your attention is riveted to Peridot.

She stands among the overturned clay pots, looking small and dispirited. You are reminded of dogs you have seen on television who appear to halve in size while they are being bathed, fur soaked and sticking to their bodies, tails wet pieces of kelp. You laughed at their transformation, but you do not laugh at this.

"What happened?" you say to her.

"I don't even know for sure!" Peridot's voice screeches, a shorebird unable to find a place to land. "Steven showed up and insisted that he would help me teach the class because he has a 'green thumb,' even though I have all the necessary qualifications to act as plant instructor, including thumbs that are actually green." She lifts hers, demonstrating even now. "I allowed it because I wanted to give him the sense of 'normalcy' that Garnet prescribed. But his face appeared extremely unsettled, and as soon as he touched two of the plants, they turned into…that!"

She points to the other, more shaded end of the greenhouse. At its farthest wall jagged ceramic pieces litter the ground, and standing among them are two plant stalks each easily as tall as Dr. Drakken. They are heavy and thick-needled like the plants that grow near the desert Beta Kindergarten, but they appear to have faces, irregular features twisted in misery, and the limbs held at their sides look taut, as though they are preparing for battle.

"I am aware that Steven has the power to bring plants to life," Peridot continues. "But his creations are usually…cuter." You think of the watermelon creatures that lived in the bay where Jasper finally wrenched control of her away from you, and you nod. "Can you fix them?"

This question is directed at Dr. Drakken, whose petals have again begun to sprout around his ears.

"Oh snap," Drakken breathes, though his tone is one of awe and not fright. "Those look almost exactly like the killer plants I was hoping to get when I first built my Hydro-Pollinator." He strokes the vine that winds from his neck with a shamefaced smile. "Not that I'm not fully satisfied by you guys, that is. Not a bit."

"Is Steven still here?" you ask, even though it is clear he isn't. You do not regret interrupting Drakken, because he is safe; he is known here, and Steven may not be.

"Negative," Peridot says. "He ran away and a minute later I heard him conversing with the Nephrites. He appeared to be joining their 'baseball' game, which I thought might be good for him. But then he threw the ball with much more force than was required, and it broke our window." She crouches, glass popping under her boots, and returns holding an object you recognize, a small white ball with rows of stitching like the one on Drakken's cheek. "I kept waiting for him to come back and ask us if we were okay, but he never did.

"The last I saw, he was headed in the direction of Bismuth's forge." She turns to Drakken again. "Do humans such as yourselves still take an interest in forging?"

"I beg your pardon!" A petal rises from the top of Drakken's head like a ship's flag. "I may have a rap sheet, but there's nothing on it as mundane as forgery!"

"Guys –" you start to say.

A loud low wail flails at the air, and you watch the thin collection of hair on your arms shiver. You know the heft of that scream all too well, yet you can also tell this is not the battle cry she gave before she attacked you; it is a keening, sorrowful sound, as if one of her best friends has fallen in battle.

"Annnnd that's Bismuth," you say.

You flick your wings, and then you are in the night sky, barely aware of Little Homeworld passing beneath you, Peridot hanging on to one arm and Drakken to the other. If they shriek as they usually do in flight, you do not hear either of them.

The three of you land at the forge in time to see Steven backing out of the doorway, his hands raised in a posture of surrender that does not match the defiant straightening of his back.

"Of course it is," he is saying as you skid to a stop on the grass. You hear a familiar pitch and register, and yet that voice, striking like a thunderbolt, that voice cannot belong to Steven at all. "I'm fine!"

You cringe as Steven flips his body around and runs once more, the head of rolling curls bobbing, shrinking, and vanishing. To your surprise and relief, he is not aimed at the warp pad; instead, he takes a route that leads out of Little Homeworld, toward his beach house and your ocean. It is the only thing that keeps you from streaking through the sky after him.

"Is that what I sounded like?" you whisper to Peridot.

The intelligent green eyes don't even blink. "Your voice was quieter. But otherwise, yes."

"Uh, ladies?" Drakken says. He has taken Steven's place in the doorway, and his ponytail points backward like it has frozen under a Sapphire's touch. "Something has – gnngh – it isn't – gak – just look!"

You step under his arm and into the forge.

The fire glows behind Bismuth, and you see that she has remained upright, yet she sways like a tree beset by a gale, and the wounded sound continues to spill from her. At her feet are two lumpen shapes that you at first mistake for small boulders; then the light turns them to silver and you recognize what is missing from the forge: Bismuth's anvil, the one she has had since she first came to Little Homeschool, maybe since she first arrived on Earth.

It sags on the floor, split cleanly in half, the ends leaning away from each other.

Beyond Bismuth, the firelight illuminates a room full of Quartzes: Angel Aura, Biggs, Cherry.

Jasper.

Her eyes are not faint anymore, but she still appears unreal as she stares past you, her brawny arms locked in position across her chest. Looking at the mended gem on her nose, you can feel it against yours, but you are not cowed by the memory and you stare past her as well. Her presence is not the most frightening thing that has happened today.

"What happened here?" Drakken breathes the question shakily, as though even in his scientist's desire to understand, he is not sure he wants the answer.

"Steven came in while I was trying to explain to the Quartzes about how metalworking can be a great way to work off some anger, you know? He seemed pretty riled up, himself, so I gave him the student hammer and told him to take a whack." Bismuth gestures, and you notice that the student hammer lies at a crooked angle on the floor, like a downed branch, and that Cherry Quartz cradles the Earth and Heaven Beetles in protective hands. "And he broke it. He broke my anvil. My favorite thing on Earth. My anvil."

She drops her face into her hands. You have seen Bismuth cry before, but only in sweet ways, at movies or transmissions from the Diamonds showing how Homeworld has been reinvented.

"It was spectacular," Jasper says. "Nothing is safe from my Diamond."

"Oh, shut up, Jasper," Drakken mutters.

Jasper turns toward Drakken, and you see no recognition in her eyes. "Do you know how many different ways I can break you?"

Her words scrape against you, just as they did when you were in the interrogation room on Homeworld, though now they sound like they are spoken by rote. You step forward and curl your fingers around Drakken's elbow, interposing yourself between him and Jasper.

"None," you say, your voice small and sharp. "Absolutely none."

Jasper throws her head back and laughs, and beneath the layers of malevolence you can almost hear something else – something that is both more and less than she has ever been before. At some point, you may care to know what it is.

"Um. Ngh. All right, then." Drakken grips the back of his neck again. "Kids accidentally breaking windows isn't that unusual, but anvils? Yeah, that's…uh, that's pushing it."

He ends with a nervous growl, and when you touch his arm he startles.

"At least he's back at the house now," you say. "The rest of his family is there. They'll calm him down."

You do not know if you have persuaded either Drakken or yourself, but he flashes you his smile and nods when you say, "Come on. We can at least clean up after him."

"And do not fret about your anvil." Peridot comes over and lays a tiny hand against Bismuth's massive shoulder. "I can probably repair it. It's metal, after all."

Bismuth drags the back of her hand across her eyes. You turn away, your throat throbbing once more.

Back at Peridot's greenhouse, the sky turns from black to blue-tinged gray as Peridot sweeps up broken glass with a metal broom, and you resettle plants into pots, packing and moistening the soil around them, and Dr. Drakken sits on a wheeled chair and counsels the plant monsters Steven brought to mistaken life. "Really?" he says every now and then. "And how did that make you feel?"

When at last the room is clean and Watermelon Tourmaline and Bixbyite have woven clear tape over the damaged window, Drakken walks up to Peridot from the back of the room, his forehead shining with sweat as though he has been working in the forge. "Well," he tells her, "I didn't manage to get them back to non-sentience, but they are a little less homicidal now – or should that be 'herbicidal'? Heh. Anyway, they're even a tad bit smaller and still shrinking, so someday they might be fit back into pots again!"

You want so badly to laugh, to jest with him to recruit the help of his shrink, whose work you know does not involve resizing things; you want to let his babbling buoy-words comfort you. You can't.

"What other settings are there on a washing machine?" you say. "Because I don't think I can pretend this is normal anymore."

Drakken's eyebrow forks in the middle, crinkles riding up his forehead. "Well, there's the spin cycle…Although, come to think of it, I may have misquoted my mother earlier. She might have said it was a just a setting on the dryer."

You have no idea what difference that makes.

A moment later, a swarm of bitter unhappiness teems across your back and your head and the hollow places of your stomach. It presses against you, seething and wet, and it is not yours. It comes from someone else, through the vibrating ethereal channel where Steven tried to convince you to tell him where you had hidden her, where his message to the Cluster slipped and reached you on Kanatar, bringing you home.

Steven? you try to say.

I mean, sure, I broke an anvil today, but what teenager hasn't?

Steven? you try to repeat.

The birds begin to sing, and through your connection you sense nothing but a pulsating interference, a Wailing Stone handling a message it cannot translate. You stand still as glass yourself, afraid to move.

I know everybody thinks I'm so good, but the thing is – I'm not that kid anymore! I'm not him anymore!

Steven? you try one last time.

I'm a monster!

There is a scream, as filled with anguish, fear, and rage as any sound you have ever stifled before it could leave your lips. You almost expect it to cleave you apart, leave you lying in two pieces like Bismuth's anvil.

The connection slams shut.

~To be continued. I'm sorrryyyy...~