~Happy V-Day, everybody!~

The sun is high enough on the horizon now that its light limits your visibility to the Milky Way, several thin hazy clouds and a few faint twinkles of neighboring planets, as though there is nothing greater lurking out there, awaiting your return.

You will be going back to Homeworld. The thought stings your eyes like a spray of sand you cannot shake.

As of yesterday, you know what it is to come home. This will not be anything like that, you know. When you were last on Homeworld, it seemed to have somehow both grown and shrunk from the beauteous planet in your memories. Pillars and towers stretched taller, brighter, and statelier than they were before you left, yet were surrounded by an emptiness that pressed against your spine. You briefly considered that you may have taken a wrong turn and ended up on an ancient colony, burnt of its life, except for the stark uniformity that has always marked Homeworld. It had swollen into the air, leaving no room for anything else, be it dissent or true joy.

If fortune favors you, Steven will be imprisoned in some distant wing of the palace, far away from Blue Diamond's Extraction well, her living towers, and her court, sharp of tongue and eye, which will have long since flowed together like the sea, filling whatever paltry hole you left in their ranks.

If it does not, you will still march into the middle of whatever debacle is happening on Homeworld, pick up Steven, and fly him back home.

"We should gather an army!" Peridot says. She prods at the tablet that is never far from her grip. "I have fifty-four 'followers' on Chirpsy, which means they have devoted their lives to me!"

Drakken laughs – a straining, shaking sound. "I hate to burst your bubble, Peridot –"

"I'm not even bubbled!" she protests.

" – but that's not what 'follower' means on social media."

"It's not?" Peridot says, her small face losing some of its secure point.

"No. It just means they're interested enough in your life that they want to get updates whenever you post something new."

Peridot looks so crestfallen that you walk over to her and place a hand on her shoulder. "Besides, your followers are scattered all over the planet," you say. "We don't have time to wait for them to all get here."

"O-kay." The sigh folded around Peridot's words doesn't last long before she gazes around her with shining eyes. "Do you really think we can do it? The four of us?"

Dr. Drakken's shoulders form proud corners, and you realize that Peridot has included him without hesitation. A year ago, you would have tried to convince him to remain on Earth, not wanting to throw him into the troubles and quarrels of your people. Now you know it would simply be a waste of the fighting energy you need to reserve for the Diamonds. Drakken will gasp and tremble before them for certain, but he will do so stubbornly by your side, and you would have it no other way.

You answer from the center of peace inside you where you can still feel Steven's voice resounding, newly strong and forever warm. "Of course we can."

For a raindrop of a moment everyone exchanges looks, surprised by your confidence, and then time begins to stream forward again.

"I'm with Lapis!" Drakken exclaims unnecessarily. "Look at what we have to offer! I have my plant powers, she has her water and flight powers, Peridot has her metal powers, and Bismuth – is really big!" He coughs. "No offense."

"None taken," Bismuth says. "I like being big." Her grin is brash, and you have to look away from it.

It is not that you believe yourself or your team to be invincible. The Diamonds are the most powerful beings in the cosmos: Blue with the tears on her cheeks that she can spread around like a human disease; Yellow with her long neck and her Destabilizing fingers; White Diamond with her endless delegation and aversion to showmanship, untold powers inside. There is a chance, a very large chance, that you will not win this battle. There is a chance you might not come back from this battle.

The thought is sobering, but the waters within do not churn or struggle. Perhaps it is better to give it all amongst friends than to keep it all for yourself in isolation. This must be what every Crystal Gem before you has realized; without it, they never would have made the choice they did.

If this plan works, they will no longer have to suffer for it.

"Greg? You gonna come, too?" Bismuth asks.

Greg's skin pales somewhat, from the bright red of a boiled lobster to the pale orange-pink of a coral reef. "Ho geez. I'm uh…kinda…powerless."

The word runs through you; it reminds you of lying supine and formless, feeling nothing, watching the stars cycle through the centuries.

Drakken turns to you and the other Gems. "I don't suppose one of the Diamonds' weaknesses is epic rockin' guitar music?"

"No," you say.

"Negative. I had never even seen an 'instrument' of the musical variety before I came to Earth," Peridot reports, in the same way she will read the day's temperature prediction from her tablet's app. You shiver, though the air is warm and moist, breathed upon by the ocean. She has confirmed what you already knew: nothing beautiful on Homeworld survived the war.

"Then I'd probably better stay put," Greg says. "I'd hate to hold you guys back."

He speaks with his usual casualness, but you can see the stress grinding between his eyebrows. He is sitting out of a mission he should be leading. He is trusting his son to four people, none of whom he has known longer than an Earth-year, all of whom have a history of trailing destruction behind them.

You reach out and squeeze Greg's hand, the warm flesh cozying between your fingers. There is nothing you can say to him. There is no reassurance that doesn't have the potential to be lying to him.

He smiles at you anyway.

"How are we going to get to Homeworld?" you ask. "I can carry you," you say to Peridot, "but I don't think I could carry Bismuth, and Drakken –"

You do not finish. The man you love is built of organic matter that will not stand up to the vacuum of space.

Bismuth shrugs. "No problem. I can fix up the arm ships." She gestures to what remains of the Diamonds' vessels, metal gleaming haughtily in the sun.

"All right, team!" Dr. Drakken calls. He claps his hands together and then seems to have difficulty pulling them apart again. "Let's get crack – ooohh, uggh, poor choice of words. We don't want to crack, no, sir! Let's hop to it! Nghgh – wait – not actually hop!" he amends as Bismuth's legs tense, preparing to obey. "What I mean is – let's get this show on the road! In the sky! Whatever! Off to work we go!"

It is the silliest, sloppiest rallying cry you have ever heard, as well as the most encouraging.

Bismuth heads for the broken ships, and you walk beyond her, past the scraps of your two former lives and down to your sea. Peridot falls in behind you, her mouth still in motion. She probably won't let you out of her sight for the next hundred thousand years, and for now you can't object to the idea.

"Isn't it strange that humans use 'burst your bubble' to mean something bad?" Peridot says. "Why, if Steven hadn't burst my bubble, the Cluster would have torn the Earth apart! Not to mention I never would have had the chance to become the amazingly lovable person I am today! Human phrases are so weird."

"Lots of things are weird," you agree. Your voice is distant, preoccupied, as you watch Bismuth lift a metallic blue chunk from the ground. For an instant, the Gem who did you such harm vanishes, and you see only another lonesome castaway, hoping beyond anything else that she can burst her friends' bubbles someday soon. You cannot blame her for that.

You glance at the ocean, rolling in and out in its usual steady, loyal beat. With every wave, it croons your name: Lap-is, Lap-is, Lap-is. You smile at it.

Even if it were still the only friend you had on this strange fragile planet, it would be all the motivation you needed to come back. You will do everything in your power, and that is a lot, to make it happen.

Dr. Drakken joins you shortly. His weight jumps from foot to foot, his eyes shivering above their black semicircles. You find it endearing now that your own worry has been swept away.

A smile, nervous but genuine, finds its way to his lips. "We've got this in the bag, ladies!" he says, using an expression you recognize from Percy's consummate victory in the three-legged race on Camp Pining Hearts. Drakken's deep, trembling voice is ill-suited for calm, but he tries even now to comfort you.

This, then, falls upon you. You reach out and clutch his right hand; it is even warmer than usual now, sweat sticking to his gloves. "Drakken," you say, "everything will be okay."

One way or another, you know yourself not to be lying.

Drakken lifts his other hand and points his longest and shortest fingers toward the sky. The two in the middle hunch over and curl into his palm.

"What's that?" you say.

"It's sign language," Drakken says.

"What's that?" you repeat. It must be one of those Earth expressions that means something other than what it sounds like, for you have read many signs around your new home, and none of them speak their own language.

"It's a way of using your hands to talk," Drakken says. His right hand pulls from your own and keeps time with his words, and you almost giggle at the irony. "There are some humans who can't hear – we call that being deaf – so obviously it would be pretty hard to carry on a conversation with them if they didn't have some way of seeing what you were saying. This is ASL, American Sign Language, to precise."

"Oh," you say, marveling. You are not sure if it would be possible for a Gem to be deaf, unless they somehow shapeshifted defective internal ears, but you know how they would be judged on Homeworld: a failure, relegated to menial thankless work at best. "And what is 'this'?" You nod at his left hand, the two inner fingers still bowed.

"It's the sign for 'I love you.'"

You wonder if those words will always take an Earth-second or two to register and if they will always spark sunrays under your skin. "Oh. Well, in that case –" You raise your left hand and guide your fingers into the symbol, two up and two down. " – too."

Peridot mimics you with both hands, waving them through the air as though to encompass the world.

Briefly, you pity the Diamonds, the strongest, most resilient beings in the universe. They are not loved but feared, the sensation a Kindergarten bereft of the green life that once bloomed there. Likely they don't even notice the emptiness in everything they do and everything they are.

Drakken continues to fidget. "So, just out of curiosity – what are the Diamonds' weaknesses?"

"I didn't think the Diamonds had weaknesses," Peridot says, her eyes round. "That's why they're the Diamonds! Absolute power! Untouchable! Unbreakable!"

You can't think of a kind way to tell her to shut up.

For a moment, Drakken's mouth opens and closes like a clam's, his two rows of Pearly teeth exposed and rattling against each other. Before you can reach for him, though, his bright smile returns. "Oh, pshaw! Nonsense!" he cries with a flip of his wrist. "If there's anything two decades as a supervillain taught me – you know, besides the futility of despotism and not to scratch an itch when you're holding something sharp – is that everyone has a weakness! No villain is invulnerable, no plan foolproof!

"And if Little Miss – Big Miss – White Diamond thinks otherwise, so much the better!" Drakken rubs his hands together. "That's when you start getting all cocky, all sloppy, all 'oh, my arch-nemesis couldn't foil me even if she had access to her jet-pack backpack, so I can afford to wait a few more minutes before I take it away from her.' Oooh, won't it just be delectable to watch it be someone else's downfall for a change?" His fingertips tap each other as he bounces on his ankles.

"Yes!" Peridot cries, throwing her arms out so far that she loses her balance and her back strikes the sand. She scrambles upright immediately and begins to flit from you to Drakken and back again with almost the speed of and far greater sweetness than your fellow Lapises. "I have a comprehensive knowledge of all the Gems' modern technology!" Her laugh is a shore-bird's call, the playful snap of wind through leaves, and secret plans for tomorrow whispered by moonlight: everything you missed about Earth. "Even if by some strange quirk of fate they decide to unleash archaic weaponry upon us, they'll only have shifted from my area of expertise to Bismuth's. There's no way we can lose!"

You wait for the cold grip that typically cinches around your spine when people talk of weaponry, but it leaves you be for now. You shift your attention to the ocean, the pattern of its untiring waves echoed in your own dormant wings. "I don't think we're talking giant armies with weapons this time, Peridot," you say. "If we were, Steven would be worse than locked in a room, and the other Crystal Gems would be…worse than poofed."

Your shiver feels unfamiliar and is quickly absorbed by the pliant fabric of your new clothes.

"A little family squabble then, perhaps?" Drakken says. His beautiful eyebrow creases with hope.

You do not correct him. You know what it feels like to have a family now, though you still have a difficult time with the words humans use to describe how they are bound together – parent, uncle, aunt, and sibling. Yet if Steven is the son of their fellow Diamond, the four of them are connected, and they can no more break that connection than they could break a moon from its planet. Countless worlds they destroyed, but they were never able to convince the moons to give up their orbits.

Steven's mother gifted him more than just a Quartz's powers; she linked the strongest of Gemkind with the weakest of humanity.

The feeling of safety has yet to evaporate from you. If anything, it clings more snugly than before. As a newly Emergent Gem, you heard Blue Diamond chastise Pink many times, and you knew there were consequences when she acted in ways contrary to being Taught, but no harm ever came to her. The part of you that believed Blue Diamond was strictly benevolent, that she would never would hurt anyone, has been shattered since Garnet's first appearance on the base, yet only the slimmest of cracks shows in your belief that she would not hurt Pink Diamond – or anyone whom she believes to be Pink Diamond.

"Hey, Tiny?" Bismuth's voice rings out across the beach, nearly identical to the sound of her hammer pounding metal. The essence of her has been placed in the forge as well: glowing with heat that can be horribly dangerous if mishandled, but also heat that with the proper instruction can be convinced to take a new shape. "Can I get a little help with this metal heap over here?"

Peridot jerks around to face you. Her eyes are bathed in concern, though she quivers all over. You wouldn't be surprised to see her visor split right down the middle if she's kept from being of use for too much longer. She would do it for you – reshape herself and her plans at your command – but you shouldn't have that power.

No one should.

You give her a gentle nudge. "Well, go on," you say. "Help her already."

Peridot scrambles across the beach, pausing to look back over her shoulder only once. You stand there for a moment without loneliness, especially not once you hear Dr. Drakken's resonant chuckle beside you. "She's a hoot, isn't she?" he says, nodding toward Peridot. The word makes you imagine night-birds vocalizing from deep in their throats, nothing like her.

"More like a squawk," you say, grinning. "But I like her anyway."

You turn toward the ocean once more so as not to be flooded with the enormity of the task before you. Just as there was a person worth becoming submerged in the vapid, cowardly Lapis who terraformed everything she did not understand, there turned out to be a person worth becoming inside a Peridot with no emotions and a Bismuth with entirely too many. It would make sense that the same would exist inside the Diamonds – especially Blue.

She has something in common with Peridot and Drakken, something that reminds you of water: whatever is happening inside her shows up in ripples and currents on her face and in her posture, her surface easily readable. White Diamond, by contrast, reminds you of the smooth implacable marble surface of the first Kindergarten Base you helped create – blank, lifeless, revealing what was underneath only after days of merciless pummeling.

In that regard, you have spent most of your existence behaving like White Diamond. You hide; you run; you hole up in your own head and refuse anyone else admittance.

No more.

Water you have admired from the very instant you became aware of it. Marble you have never admired.

You stare silently at the ocean. Beside you, Dr. Drakken is never silent, and he rambles on now about all the experiments he has done while you have been away and all the fun the two of you are going to have this summer now that you have returned, though eventually his small hands stop flailing and find their way to yours. Shego has said it is hard to listen to Drakken's spiels, but you don't know what she means; listening to him and holding his hand are the easiest things you have done in the last several days. By the time the sky has fixed the sun in its center, you are even able to wander over to the arm ships' wreckage and watch Peridot and Bismuth at work – Bismuth with her concentrated focus on a straight path, and Peridot leaving a wide, crooked haul of foam in her wake like a boat inexpertly sailed.

A few minutes later, Bismuth glances back over her hefty shoulder at you. "You know, if we don't wanna split up, I can synch-wire the ships so that we don't lose the empty one." She holds your gaze, her eyes steady but nervous.

That your opinion carries weight with her is satisfying; the thought of your choices determining the mission sits warily in your gem, crushed against the powers you already possess.

"Yeah. I think we should stay together," you say. It will be good to have people you know with you on a planet you no longer do, even if one of them is Bismuth. "So – which ship should we ride up there?" You look around at the group, eager to distribute some of the power.

Peridot rubs her chin. "Hmmm. Since three-fourths of our party is blue, it seems only logical that we would take the blue ship."

You don't even try to stifle your smile.

Drakken's fist shoots into the air. "Blue Team for the win!" He gives Peridot a kindly glance, stooping to pat her arm. "Errr, you can be an honorary Blue for the day."

She glows with pride.

Drakken turns to you and nods at the ship. "I suppose this wouldn't be the best time to go on a tour of Homeworld?" he says. A hint of laughter edges his voice, but you cannot laugh along with him, even nervously.

"No." Two wildly differing images of Homeworld stain your thoughts; you focus on your tender, compassionate sea to rid yourself of both. "Even if it were – I don't know where much of anything is up there anymore."

Drakken lets out a sympathetic moan, his lips hanging down.

That is when the reality of the situation finally descends on you. You will be returning to Homeworld, and it will not at all be the Homeworld you knew back when you were new and innocent. No, you were never innocent – the detritus of dozens of planets will testify to that – but you were young and naïve, and you believed your people to be the greatest of any in the galaxies. You listened to them when they told you Earth had no value and that organic life didn't count as life at all.

You trusted them.

At last, Bismuth pronounces the ships completed, and they are, for the most part. Every essential part has been fixed, the understructure repaired, protective panels welded back in place, wires covered, circuits reconnected. The additional features, however, have not been treated with such care; the thumbs on each hand actually appear to point backward.

"I didn't get everything perfect," Peridot confesses. She straightens her body, her arms tight at her sides. She is still so much like the Gem she was created to be, and yet she is nothing like the Gem she was created to be.

"Ah, well," Drakken says. "Who needs thumbs, anyway?"

Most dominant species do, but it would be mean to answer with that now, and you have had enough meanness for a star's lifetime.

Drakken frowns. "Wait – Homeworld has oxygen, right?"

Peridot draws herself up again, though the stance that once reminded you of a measuring rod now sways with glee. "The composition of Homeworld's atmosphere is remarkably similar to that of Earth's, just slightly higher in nitrogen concentration, which should not be a problem for the proposed amount of time –"

"Nerd." You roll your eyes, put your hand on Peridot's yellow peak of hair, and give her a gentle shove. "Yes, you can breathe," you tell Drakken. "Connie went up there, remember?"

"Excellent." Drakken holds up a finger. "One more question: does Homeworld have public restrooms or do you need to, you know, contribute to the empire before they grant you access to the toilets?"

"What's a toilet?" Bismuth says.

"And that just told me everything I need to know!" Drakken says. "If you'll excuse me, ladies, I shall make a quick pit stop and be right back!" In three sharp kicks of sand, he has run back to the beach house.

Peridot begins to explain toilets to Bismuth, using the "immense insider knowledge" she acquired from living in Steven's bathroom for a time. She seems to believe that, in addition to the handle you push to cleanse the toilet, humans also have to press a button in order to empty themselves. Before you can correct her, Drakken is running to rejoin you, an upward-turned thumb pointed your direction. Peridot kisses the top of Pumpkin's head and instructs her to be a good girl while you are gone. You steal one last snuggle from your pet and place her in Greg's caring arms.

"All aboard!" you call out like the captain of a boat. Your throat thickens with warmth you don't recognize, and you swallow it. "Next stop, Homeworld!"

Only when you have boarded Blue Diamond's ship and you stand again beneath the massive leveled ceiling with its five anterior flares does the ground weaken and wave below you, as though you are attempting to walk atop jellyfish.

It is exactly as you remember it: the steering controls chambered toward the bow and the elegant, vaulted chair behind it, rising to a height that dwarfs Steven's house, draped on either side by opaque, sheltering cloth; you know without touching it that it will be fine, smooth, and unbelievably strong, a feather of stone. Your first off-planet mission was to retrieve some from the Geode System where it was spun by the moon-insects. Neat rows of indentations fan the walls, separated from each other by cobalt bars and broken apart within themselves by a dividing arch, all placed with deliberation and malice. You wring Drakken's fingers as you would a damp rag until he yelps with pain and you let go. Though the toxic partitions that separate these slots from the rest of the ship have been deactivated, there is no still no mistaking what they are.

Cells.

Somehow, you have never noticed them before now.

You sink to the floor of the ship. Your feet splay in front of you, no longer bare, now supported and protected. The sight of them is all that keeps you from drawing your knees up to your chest and hiding behind them. Instead, you fold your legs to one side so that they curl first outward, then inward, your toes skimming the seat of your new pants, and peer through one of the windows.

A quick glance at the horizon rights you. As long as you can see out, as long as you have permission to approach the windows, you are not aboard the green ship as a prisoner, Jasper does not storm its halls, and it is not about to hit the beach and explode into flames.

Dr. Drakken comes up beside you and brushes your bangs back to see your face better. "Are you okay?" he asks in a voice that is quiet for him.

You let yourself relax against his hand; you have missed his touch, awkward and halting though it may be. "Not exactly. But close enough."

"All right," Drakken says, his head bobbing along with his buoy-words. "Just let me know if you need to…talk…or…hide…or something. Or if you need to run around screaming – I'm sure we could arrange for that to be done in a non-alarming way."

It is difficult for you to imagine an occasion where running around and screaming would not alarm anyone, except perhaps for the various speed competitions held for fun at Camp Pining Hearts. You reach down and catch his other hand, which is agitating the air around him again. "Can you just stay with me? For now?" you say.

"Absolutely." Drakken speaks on an exhale that tells you this will be no great sacrifice for him.

You lean in closer to him, feel his warmth, and wonder why you feel safer in the presence of this smallish, intermittently-powered human that you ever did in Blue Diamond's.

Stunning white lights suddenly blaze down from their niches in the ceiling, accompanied by a rustling whir. Peridot yelps in delight as the floor begins to slope beneath your shoes. Without looking, you know that Bismuth has climbed to the highest point on the chair and swung her arm into the operating sling suspended above the control console, her fist thrust forward as it will be for the duration of the trip. You keep your eyes on the window; it still brings you no comfort to watch the motions of her hands.

There is a great creaking as gravity releases the ship. Driven forward by Bismuth's fighting posture, it shoots upward and tunnels through comfortable blue sky that quickly matches and then surpasses the shade of your eyes; through vaporous layers of the clouds which you have grown to love; and finally through the Earth's atmosphere, with only the lowest of groans and the faintest of resistance. The Diamonds have always gloried in the fact that they can triumph over what seems insurmountable to other species, and a lifetime ago, you mimicked them. You were showing people what they wanted to see, you realize, long before anyone decided to hold you captive in a mirror.

The darkness in your gemstone does not get a chance to spread before Dr. Drakken's fingers flutter against yours. "I have to admit – this is really exciting!" he cries, as though his bright, bulging eyes aren't already showing you that. The stark lights glint off his smile and soon bear no resemblance to the searching ones in the Interrogation Room, intent on probing every secret you had ever kept. "It's the first time I've gone to outer space of my own free will!"

You place your hand on his back, right in the spot where the plates appear to cave, and stroke as the one person a wounded creature permits to touch him.

The sky is pure Obsidian black by now, split between two rangy paneled windows, the bottom one a reflection of the top. All around you, stars burn and whirl, sight and sound all at once, majesty without arrogance, elegance without Elitism. These are not the stars you observed from behind glass until Pearl happened upon your mirror. These are young stars: the ones that watched you as you staggered in your attempt to readjust to a tangible body, that lit your way back home, and that wept with you at what you found on your return. The few times you do glimpse a star you recognize from your former life, it is gathered within a group of fresh ones, its light aged and worn among theirs.

"Are we there yet?" Dr. Drakken asks. He holds up his hands and chuckles, a sound which seems much smaller against the expanse of space than it did on the surface of Earth. "Kidding, kidding. But, really…are we there yet?"

"No," Peridot says. She presses against the bottom window, letting the starlight shine off her visor, obscuring her face but not the waver in her voice. You don't know what it is she's feeling, but you understand it completely. "Not even close yet."

"Oh." Drakken's lower lip slides out.

From that point on he is not silent, grunting his approval or gasping his awe, but he doesn't say another word until you have left the Crystal System behind and can look back at it, tiny planets coiled around their sun like the pattern in the center of a seashell and the pattern in Drakken's nose. For a moment, your gem is the only part of you that still feels solid; the rest of you is powder, smeared from one galaxy to another, a streak of confusion.

"Are we lost?" You hear Drakken's breath hitch, his pulse rushing between your fingers.

"Also negative. We are on a fast and efficient route to Homeworld, though perhaps not the fastest and most efficient," Peridot reports, sounding so much like the electronic voice that speaks from the device on the dashboard of Greg's van that you almost giggle. She turns to Bismuth. "May I offer you some directions?"

You don't glance Bismuth's way, but you can imagine her waving Peridot off with her free hand. "Naw, Tiny, I know where I'm going. The coordinates are still the same. It's just the landmarks are a little different now."

Now you look at Bismuth, missing her eyes by only a few seconds when she turns her head back to the console. She, too, is somewhat disoriented among a sky of altered stars, overwhelmed at her return to a home planet she doubtlessly considered lost to her forever. There is no sentimentality in her expression, though; it is only grim and molded in determination. You two are on the same ship but different journeys.

You turn back to the window and place your palm on the glass. The stars illuminate you and welcome you just as they always have, but this time you see only Steven's face when you try to envision the reward waiting behind them. The planet on which you were made – with deception carved into its crust– is no longer the treasure worth your life.

Without your calling upon it, a reflection over which you have frighteningly little control surfaces from where it resides in the center of your gem: Layers of rock gave way, dust blanketing the air, unfamiliar light sweeping into the crevice that bore your shape. You took your first step. Your toes met soil. Though you had nothing to compare it to, you believed it to be the perfect soil, soft enough not to pierce your feet but not so soft that it sank beneath them. Before you stood the insistent sun, the placid sky, the kind, assisting arm of a senior Gem as your knees struggled – a Sapphire, probably, or perhaps a rare gentle Aquamarine. You called it all beautiful and good, because you didn't know what true beauty and true goodness were.

Yet the soil was soft enough not to pierce your feet but not so soft that it sank beneath them.

Someone nearby sighs. Not until Dr. Drakken's grip firms on your hand do you realize that it is you.

"What's wrong, Lapis?" he says, eliminating any possibility for you to deny that something is. His face is sincere and open, as it always is, and you remember the question he asked you once: Will you do me the honor of telling me how you're really doing?

You will.

"I guess – I just realized that Homeworld still means something to me." You gaze out the window, its fresh glass, melted down by Bismuth, so smooth and clean as to be forgettable. "Even though I know it shouldn't."

"Says who?"

Peridot turns from the window and sprints to your side, hands clenched on her hips. Her eyes hitch on to yours and won't move from them. "Of course Homeworld means something to you. It means something to me, too." Her hand presses flat against her chest, starred with the symbol of her allegiance where Yellow Diamond's icon once stood. "We were made there. It's only natural."

From the control sling, Bismuth grunts; you can't look at her.

Drakken's head bobs, one fast eager nod after another. "Yes! My childhood was mostly a bummer, but I'm still attached to the house where I grew up. Well, not physically attached, or I wouldn't be able to voyage into space, but – what I mean is – " His buoy-words grow choppy, yet he still offers them to you without reservation. "I still like it. A lot. And you know why, Lapis?

"Memories!" he exclaims before you have a chance to answer. "That house was where I unwrapped my first chemistry set. Started my first chemical fire. Blew up my first garage. Lost my first tooth."

"How can a tooth get lost?" you ask.

"That just means it falls out," Drakken says.

"Oh." You shiver a little, imagining a tooth ejecting from its socket like an escape pod and crashing to the floor.

Peridot moves closer, scrutinizing Drakken's mouth. "You appear to have all your necessary teeth, and then some." She tilts her head. "Were you spontaneously producing excess teeth that needed to fall out?"

"Ew," you say.

Drakken grins as brilliantly as ever. You remember how it used to surprise you that a lifeform entirely organic could keep inside them something that seems so magical. "No. It's just that – okay – children – little human kids – they have two sets of teeth in their mouths. Small ones on top of the gumline, and big ones that lurk underneath the gumline. Eventually, those small teeth are just too small to be of much use, and so the big teeth started poking their way out. And of course that compromises the little teeth, so they start wobbling around and eventually just fall right out to make room for the big teeth. The big teeth are the only ones humans get for the rest of their lives, though, so they're much more firmly anchored. And that's without even getting into twelve-year molars and wisdom teeth…"

He continues, expounding on human tooth upgrades with pride, as though he engineered the system himself. It lightens you to hear him, to feel his fingers against yours. In your mind, though, thoughts pitch back and forth, cargo that needs to be either lashed down or cast overboard to prevent the ship from sinking. Numbing yourself to their presence is no longer an option.

"I do have a lot of good memories of Homeworld," you say to this ship with its hollow cells, its reinforced layers of steel and glass, and its stark coexistence of light and dark gathered in the corners. You can feel Blue Diamond in here, as though she hides among the wall panels, as though a Diamond could possibly hide anywhere. It feels like a spray of sand in your eyes and down your throat, sand you cannot bear to swallow any longer. "Meeting Blue Diamond for the first time. Curtsying to her. Demonstrating my powers. Being sung the Emergence song."

"The what?" Peridot says.

You freeze, your voice shutting down at the sight of Peridot's puckered face. In it, you see every reason you are so bad at sharing the truth. You want to wash the words away downstream where they can't hurt your best friend. You shake your head. "Sorry. I shouldn't have said that. I know they discontinued it after the War."

Bismuth gives another grunt, this one with the seethed warning of a volcano's first shakings. "Nobody ever sung me anything."

This time you do turn and look at her; you cannot help it. "You? Really? But you were an Era One –"

You stop. The melody that never left your gemstone now twists in your mind, writhing as reality bursts through it, that gorgeous song that was gifted to you not because of when you were, but who you were: an Elite.

The air inside the ship stiffens. A coldness creeps up your legs, though it is not powerful enough to dull the pain. You drop your face into your hands, and your breathing pauses as you consider the number of Gems who were never welcomed into the world with song. No Amethysts. No Pearls. No Rubies.

No Jaspers.

When you look back up, a small rueful smile sits on Bismuth's lips. "You really didn't know, did you?" she says, and her eyes are not unkind.

Your head refuses to shake. "No," you say instead. "I didn't. I wish I had paid better attention."

The silence lasts for only a second before Drakken protests, "You can't pay attention to something if you don't know it exists!" Yet that second is long enough for you to order your thoughts. If Bismuth was cheated out of every privilege in life, it is no wonder she was so quick to steal yours from you.

It doesn't make you like her any more, but it makes you hate her a little less.

Now Bismuth turns her attention back to the stars and the asteroids as she steers the ship around them. "Not even all my memories of Homeworld are bad," she says quietly. She smiles again. "Most of 'em. But not all."

How she can smile about it is beyond your ability to comprehend, as is everything else about this conversation. You slide to the floor and cross your legs in front of you, pulling Drakken down so that he stumbles and smacks his chin on the floor. "Sorry," you whisper.

Drakken moans and massages his chin but manages to send you a thumb's-up.

Ordinarily, his pain would take precedence over nearly everything else, but you are still staring into a pit that was deeper and more warped than you had ever known it to be. You thought you had become aware of every kind of evil that has Corrupted your first home beyond recognition. You thought you had come to terms with it.

It is hard not to worry if the revelations will keep coming for the rest of your life.

Steven, then, is not trapped on the Homeworld of your memories or even the Homeworld you thought you understood. He is trapped on the Homeworld that is and perhaps always has been, within the gates that opened once so freely for you. Maybe not all of the Crystal Gems were as enamored with life on Earth as Rose Quartz was – as Pink Diamond was, you correct yourself. Even she could not stand another day in the palace's shadow.

Your throat hurts, although there is nothing in it and hasn't been for a long time.

Dr. Drakken squeezes your hand. His other hand frets for a moment at his side before lifting to tug through the thick dark spikes of hair, the way you have seen Steven do, oh so rarely, with a knife-shaped object that boasts broad-spaced, delicate nubs in place of its blade. You can tell it requires his every last bit of effort to remain still.

You return his squeeze and let go. "Go ahead and pace if you need to," you say. "It's fine by me."

Drakken shoots you a look of gratitude. Moments later, he begins stalking briskly back and forth between the windows and the control panels, his fists clenched behind his back at the spot where his belt divides his long straight body, his head leaned toward the ground as he mutters pieces of words. In spite of the homesickness taking shape in your core, homesickness for a place that may never have existed, you can't help smiling.

"So – who are the Corruptions, anyway?" he asks several lightyears later. "I mean, I know they're other Gems, but which Gems? And how and why?"

He has no way of knowing what that question will do to you. You never imagined Blue Diamond's ship could feel small in any situation, yet now the walls seem to push together until you are standing alone in narrow corridor, your destination singular and unavoidable at the other end. It will be up to you, you realize, to tell this story: it came too late for Bismuth to have been there and too early for Peridot.

You take a breath that feels needed even though it isn't. Below you, Peridot has dropped onto the floor, eyes sparkling, knees pulled up to her chest with elbows resting atop them. It is the same posture she always adopts when you are reading to her, performing all the voices to her appreciative cheers. A wave softens the edges of your gem, washing bravery ashore.

"Some of them were Homeworld Gems who didn't get off the planet in time," you say.

"Wait – really? Didn't the Diamonds send out an evac call?" Peridot says. Innocence trembles in her voice, and you wonder what rearranged story the Era Two Gems were given about the war.

"They did," you say. "There was a massive stampede to the warp pads. That's how –" you pause – "I got cracked." The layer of rime on the words melts off much more quickly than it used to, leaving their sting on your tongue.

Peridot's face wilts like Drakken's scorched flower. "Aww, poor Lapis."

You can't find it in yourself to tell her that it didn't hurt; there was only a dulled awareness of tectonic plates sliding apart and a rift opening. It was the mirror's only kindness, and you hung on to it for far too long after you were freed.

"But most of them were Crystal Gems," you say. You force your eyes wide open, because if you close them you will see your fellow Gems' beautiful features contort into unnatural positions and stay there; you will hear cries of agony transform into bestial snarls; and you will be consumed by the same nothingness that you overtook you then. "Rose Quartz's army."

"Army?" Drakken repeats.

You turn to Drakken. "Yeah, army," you say, giving his foot a mischievous nudge with your own. "Do you really think she fought off Homeworld's forces with three or four Gems?"

Drakken's chuckle is embarrassed, though his grin does not dim. It should be nothing compared to the stars beyond the windows, and yet somehow it draws your attention even with them glimmering in the background. "Well, gee, now that you put it that way, it does sound…rather silly."

"Highly illogical," Peridot adds.

A sniff breaks that belongs to neither of them. You turn to see Bismuth, fierce-eyed and resolute, her arm secure in the control sling, her neck tight. Her tongue creeps from between her lips and catches a tear that drips off her cheek. "My old friends," she says, on the cusp of a sob she doesn't bother hiding. "Most of 'em I never saw again."

Drakken's entire body shivers as though he is stepping out of a cold river.

Bismuth gasps, a sound almost as surprising as her sniff. "Sweet copper alloy. If Rose and I hadn't fought – if she hadn't bubbled me – I'd be a Corruption right now."

She stares blankly ahead. It isn't a question, so you don't give her an answer. You remember when you realized the same thing about yourself and the mirror: that your glass prison was the only thing that stood between you and whatever form a corrupted Lapis Lazuli would take. You remember Steven waving the mirror around and telling his friends it "talked like a person." You remember Amethyst's immediate reaction: "Let's bubble it!"

At the time, you hated her for it. Now you see what you didn't see before – their assumption that whoever was in there had been Corrupted thousands of years before, only managing to communicate through pictures.

"Rose survived the Corruption Bomb, obviously, so she must have shielded or bubbled herself," you say. "But I guess there wasn't enough time, or enough space, or something like that – because she only managed to grab Garnet and Pearl."

"Amethyst?" Drakken asks, his bark-smudge eyebrow crinkled.

You shake your head at him. "She hadn't even Emerged yet. She was safe inside the ground."

Bismuth sighs. She is no longer a volcano. She is a caldera, smoldering but rendered harmless, and uncertain what to do without her lava for support. "I wonder if Rose would've grabbed me," she says.

You find it painful to look at the doubt in her eyes, the type of doubt that can only be quieted by a person who loves you, standing at your side and whispering as best as they can. It comes to you like a heavy hand on your back that no one on this ship loves Bismuth enough to be able to fill that role.

Yet Peridot, never one to be daunted, steps forward and examines Bismuth up and down. You can almost see her scanning Bismuth as though she is an output report that needs an overview, processing her, and filing her away somewhere behind the visor. "Hmm…probably," she says. "If you were within her radius."

Peridot can often bring comfort with her honest summarizing, and it does appear to console Bismuth now. She returns to steering the ship, the creases in her forehead smoothing with each turn.

"So…you mentioned a bomb striking the surface of the planet," Drakken says. One foot taps on the floor as realization leaps to his face. "I take it that was the work of the Diamonds?"

Before you can even nod, Bismuth says, "Of course! Why not? They were just traitorous Gems to the Diamonds!"

You glance back at her and lift your chin as you used to do only when you were getting ready to tell someone off. When your voice ventures out, however, it is still gentle, though no longer bashful. "They were just traitorous Gems to me, too, and it was still torture watching them be tortured."

Drakken wraps his fingers around yours once more and shivers again, disturbing the hush that attempts to fall over the ship. Still observing the sky, he cries, "Zounds! What is that?"

You rush to the window, afraid that he has spotted some hostile spacecraft, and when he indicates a planet you only briefly lapse into relief before snapping your gaze away. One glimpse at the gray haze scorched into the planet's surface and the deep punctures where the Injectors' smoke has burned away and left behind only rot tells you more than you wanted to know.

"A colony," you reply.

Peridot reaches your side in three tiny leaps. "We must be getting close," she says. She puts an arm around your waist, and you know the same thoughts that are shadowing your mind also shadow hers. Another planet lurks behind the first one, and a third drifts aimlessly on the right. Like the bread crumbs dropped by the clever children in one of Steven's storybooks, they leave a trail, this one to Homeworld: a trail of discarded planets, their lifeforces drained away as if they were no more than pools of standing water.

Many of them with your help.

You turn your back to the window. You can hardly look at Dr. Drakken, the destruction reflected in his dark eyes. Their wide ovals and the protruding knob of his jaw make him look too soft to comprehend what he sees until the corners of his mouth fold down, forming lines harsh and haunted. You remember the terrifying red machines that cut through steel structures, and you realize he may understand the Diamonds better than you thought.

"I confess – I still have a thousand questions about the nature of that bomb and how it worked, but…" A stiff wind tangles Drakken's buoy-words together, and the black half-moons below his eyes wane. "…I'm gathering now isn't a good time?"

There may never be a good time, but you place your hand in his and smile at him thinly. He still feels as though he has lain in a puddle of Earth's sunlight, even though you are so far away from home, and you inch closer to him. Behind you, Peridot shoves her face to the window and details the climate of every moon the ship passes. Her blathering is a mercy as you try to call back your memories of the sea flowing steadily and of Steven restoring your wings with a press of his hand, and then she squeaks. Unusual for her, the sound holds no joy; you recognize it only from the time when the lid on one of the toilets in the barn fell shut on her finger.

"Uh, guys?" Peridot says, her voice scratched. "I think we're here."

You turn and stare into the ash and rubble of the first place you ever knew.