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.

37. Pool

37. Pool

Through the window, Homeworld grows smaller behind you, a mangled relic that someone should have preserved more carefully. Longing always used to sweep over you as you drifted away from it, and a similar longing sweeps over you now, but lighter and pointed in the opposite direction. You raise a hand to bid the planet farewell and thank it for your existence.

There is a tense, pressurized moment when you press against Homeworld's atmosphere; then it releases the ship and you are free.

All is different this time. This time you ride as neither subordinate nor informant but friend in the pink ship handed down to Steven, the only one of the operators you trust. You believe the Diamonds can change, but change is rarely immediate. Their journeys have just begun.

Small skinny fingers weave around yours, and you startle at the sudden presence of Dr. Drakken, having last seen him with Peridot as they flitted around the ship like a pair of insects. Now he bounces his weight on his ankles without ever leaving the ground. On the other side of the ship, Bismuth does much the same thing, though less charmingly. Garnet stands beside her, tall and stoic, a hand resting on Bismuth's arm, while Pearl and Amethyst talk quietly a few feet away.

Steven runs on the spinning strip of rubber in the ship's center to power it. His face shines with exertion and something else altogether: an expression you have seen on humans when a particularly acute state of hunger is satisfied. Connie sits next to the rubber, knees tucked up in front of her, sword strapped to her back, watching Steven with a treasuring smile.

You peer out the window for the remainder of the trip. Although glass mars the view and reminds you of frightening places, the sky remains indigo and endless, just as it was whenever you soared through it on some errand or another for Blue Diamond – some benevolent and many not. Its beauty holds your memories, some bright, glistening stars and others dark, destructive black holes.

You are not disappointed when the ship burns through another atmosphere, the sky begins to mellow to a soft blue like Drakken's skin, and you sight the beach, the vast sandy stretch that means you are almost home.

Greg reclines on the sand, waiting for you. He rises and clutches Pumpkin more tightly to him, keeping her away from the fused ships as they land in a sitting position on the beach. Once the pink ship's doors slide open and Peridot trips exiting them, however, he cannot maintain his hold on her. Yapping loudly, she lunges into Peridot's arms and begins to lick her cheek, stopping every now and then to stand up on her hind paws, reach over Peridot's shoulder, nudge your hand, and whine in contentment.

"Dad!" Steven calls as he tumbles from the ship. "Dad-Dad-Dad-Dad-Dad!"

Greg sweeps Steven up in a hug and laughs, sobbing, into his son's curls. "So…the ol' Universe charm worked again, huh?" Greg asks huskily.

Steven nods against Greg's shoulder. His words are muffled, though you believe them to be a declaration of victory.

You stand there for a few minutes, rubbing the top of Pumpkin's head and feeling the sweep of her tongue across your face before you turn and fly down the beach toward the other friend you had to leave behind on Earth, its waves sighing your name as they meet the shore.

There is no skirt to hike up anymore. This time, you sprint directly into the water and feel the drops that land on your pants whisk away. The ocean stops several feet from you in respect and deference, but at your nod it rushes forward and splashes you.

Trickles of foam, heated by the sun you have grown to love, caress the tops of your toes, and you giggle at their touch. Water can be fierce when the wind cuts it into jagged edges or when a ground-quake in the seabed stacks it in waves that can overwhelm any ship, but in its natural state it is mild; it whispers and plays. Little wonder, then, that you have always understood it so well.

You look down and see your reflection blinking back at you, and you do not have to manipulate the image to calm the blue eyes, to lift the small pointed chin, or to straighten the gawky, long-limbed posture. This is who you are now.

So many colors sparkle on the surface of the ocean where the light hits it, like facets appearing all at once on a smooth stone, shades of the depths hidden beneath. You bend toward your reflection and align your fingerprints with hers, shapeshifting lungs to fill them with salted air, and then turn and glance back up the beach.

The Diamonds have stepped from their own ships and assembled like three pillars near your friends. Even from here, you hear the sharp breath Greg draws in, as though a mere glimpse of the Diamonds might be enough to knock him out, holding the same power as stone on the back of the head. Your wings lift you into the air and over the beach that has witnessed bravery, cowardice, and the strange mixture of both that created Malachite. You land on the squishing material of your shoes rather than coarse grains of sand, and for that you are grateful.

"So where are these…Corruptions?" Yellow Diamond asks. You don't miss the way her upper lip curls, and you take a step backward. No good has ever come from that slant to her lip.

"In there." Steven points to the Temple. "We've got them all in bubbles, so…I guess we go inside and get them and bring them back out."

"Back out to where?" Yellow Diamond retorts. Her voice still holds the clean snap of a twig cleaved from a tree, but uncertainty dims her eyes.

Steven brightens at once, not even needing to think it over. "My mom's pool! She had a healing fountain that she used when people got hurt or Gems got cracked. She could only fix, you know, the physical parts. Not the Corruption. But now that you three are here, I'm sure we can all fix them together!"

His optimism resonates off the sand dunes, striking your back and, you are certain, every other place on the beach where stone holds life. You wait for the Diamonds to exchange a dubious look, yet they never do.

Neither do they accompany you and your friends into the Temple. You will leave it to someone else to decide whether or not they belong, but it is easy to determine they do not fit.

The door to Steven's house squeals on its hinges as Garnet pushes it open. Passing through the door, you remember Garnet reaching her hand out, speaking over Steven's protests, and before numbness can steal into your gem you dash to the couch and run your hand over it, something you could never do in the mirror, to moor yourself. You also finger the knob on each of the kitchen's small wooden closets, grinning and rolling your eyes when Peridot glances misty-eyed in the direction of the bathroom.

Garnet turns her palms toward the Temple door, lighting up the red and blue stones on the lock. The door opens and a draft of heat puffs out, the vapor leaving a few droplets on your face. You follow her in as Drakken's steady stream of exuberant chatter itself returns to vapor in your head.

You and Garnet have traveled this path before, just the two of you. Then she kept one of your hands pressed between hers at all times. Now she does not hold your hand; she does not do anything to keep track of you and you realize that inside her, Sapphire sees not the only Crystal Gem you have become but the Crystal Gem you will forever continue to be.

The group traipses through Garnet's room, further into the core of the Temple. Ahead, you see bronze pipes crowded near the ceiling, reminiscent of the scatterings of tubes on Homeworld but far less imposing, yet you feel the shudder that goes through Peridot. A moment later, you remember: she too was once bubbled and secluded in this room and she would have floated among the pipes for as long as Earth remained had Steven not gotten the idea to recruit her as an ally. This is her beach, where she faced the decision that would determine the course of her life, and it disturbs her to approach it again.

"Hey, Peridot?" you say. "Do you think these Gems will remember this?" You need to distract her, and nothing distracts Peridot more than an opportunity to expound on a theory.

Peridot frowns. "Being bubbled? Negative. I just paused like a DVD player. Right in the middle of a sentence! Had no idea I'd gone anywhere!" The shake to her words hurts you.

"No, not being bubbled," you say. "Being Corrupted. What their lives were like between when the bomb came down and now."

Peridot's green eyes go wide, slipping beyond her knowledge of where she is and what she is doing to the realm where she goes to speculate. "Wow. That would be psychologically fascinating to see if they retain those memories, what emotions would be produced when they realized the devastation they caused in Corrupted form, and to what extent it will shape their lives moving forward from this point." She stops, and the corners of her mouth sag. "But – holy smokes, I hope not."

Holy smokes. It is something you first heard her say when the Rubies' probe centered its laser on her, and you had to choose between what would gratify your need for revenge and what you knew to be the right thing to do.

You have been rewarded for that decision every day since.

Respectful silence permeates the sweltering atmosphere. By some agreement unspoken, Garnet crosses the room and then, with a touch that appears all light and no force, lifts her hand and selects the first bubble. Inside you recognize an Angel Aura Quartz. It is strange to see a being so powerful in such a weakened state, and you wish that you knew where that gemstone fit on her physical form and what about Earth persuaded her to stay and fight for it. You wonder what the Homeworld Lapises would think if they saw you now, as you once wondered whether the voice-lending humans of Camp Pining Hearts resembled their characters: it does not impact your life, yet still you wonder.

Garnet shifts the bubble into the crook of her arm and turns around to look at the rest of you, her usually expressionless face breaking into a smile. "Well, don't just stand there," she says with pretend sternness. "Let's get to work."

Amethyst and Peridot shoot forth like steam from an underwater vent. You take a few hesitant steps forward, staring around you, uncertain where to begin in this thick amassment of bubbled Gems that covers the room from your height upward, some bubbles packed as tightly together as the seashells on strings you have seen in the boardwalk shops. At last your gaze lands on a bubble at your eye level, and you navigate the remaining steps toward it. From here, you can see it is a Bixbyite, identical to the ones you saw strolling around Homeworld just today.

You reach upward and cup the bubble in your hands. It's all right, you whisper soundlessly to this Gem who has suffered so much and whose fate would have been yours were it not for Bismuth's temper and a Homeworld mirror. You're going to be just fine.

This time, you know, it is not a lie.

You turn to hand the bubble to Dr. Drakken, and he tilts his head at it in curiosity. "So…what I am supposed to do with these? Exactly?" he asks. Excitement pushes at his voice.

"Pick 'em up, hold 'em, and don't drop 'em!" Amethyst calls to him as she snatches a low-resting bubble.

"Oh. I'm very talented at doing those things. Usually," Drakken says, a nervous chortle stirring his buoy-words. He takes the bubble from you and supports it with both palms.

"Just pretend it's one of your machines," you say.

Drakken's eyebrow crimps. "The beneficial kind or the destroy-the-world kind?"

"The destroy-the-world kind." You give Bixbyite an apologetic glance. "At least until she's healed."

"Right-o!" Drakken says. "Um…does that also apply to Peridot?"

You turn to see that Peridot holds a bubble in each hand and attempts to balance a third on her triangular head.

"Peridot, try to be more careful with them!" Pearl instructs her from her position at the farthest wall.

"Aw. Okay." Peridot scoops the bubbles into her arms and gives one a pat, and you snort. It is actually something of a relief to see; maybe the horrific things she witnessed on Homeworld today have not been Injected into her memories to grow and rise.

Steven leaps in the air to retrieve bubbles and, once he has them, lines them up at the base of the wall opposite Pearl's. He jumps higher than you remembered him to be able to do, and something beatific, something far exceeding his usual optimism, intensifies his movements. You remember how you felt reviving Drakken's flower and know it cannot compare to what Steven has already begun to feel, the saving of a single star juxtaposed with the saving of an entire galaxy.

You stand on the tops of your toes to grab a few bubbles just outside your arms' reach and fly among the pipes to gather the ones even Garnet and Bismuth cannot reach, and you sort through them as you hand them off to Dr. Drakken: Quartzes and Larimars and Spodumenes, Gems whose lives would never overlap yours on Homeworld and whom you would have ignored. It would not have been a willful ignoring, merely a comfortable one – a distinction that you suspect would have made little difference to any of them. Each Gem who passes through your hands, you handle as though they are the thin pages of a book that you must turn without tearing the corners. It is the least you can do for them.

"Hey, neato!" Peridot pulls another bubble down and gawks at the unconscious Gem inside. "A Tourmaline!"

"Let me see her!" Bismuth says, somehow managing to hold out a hand and catching the bubble Peridot tosses to her, although she already holds dozens of them, supporting them against her chest. Her arms will soon overflow; her eyes already have. "That's not just 'a Tourmaline'! That's Watermelon!"

"Watermelon?" Peridot says.

"Watermelon!" Bismuth repeats. "See, 'cause she's pink and green!"

Steven steps over and examines the bubble. "Oh, yeah!" he says. "She's the one who turned into a pufferfish! A land pufferfish, and she attacked like a tornado! Blowing shingles off roofs and knocking people over and everything!"

Bismuth gazes lovingly at her bubbled friend. "Well, I always did say ol' Watermelon was full of hot air," she mutters with a laugh. The face you first saw twisted with hatred has gentled, a feat more astonishing than any of her other powers, and it gentles further the more bubbles she adds to her collection.

You grin and reach for the next bubble in front of you. A thin trail of light strikes the gemstone inside right before you touch it, and its design washes into focus: small and densely packed, two tiny conical points positioned, one atop the other, the upper one the faint orange of a sunrise and the lower the deep orange of a sunset, both ridged on all sides from top to bottom.

Despite the heat of the room, a chill begins in the core of your gem, a reaction premature if not ridiculous. This gem lying dormant in front of you could belong to any number of Corruptions. She could be the one who fought for Earth alongside the Crystal Gems. She could be one of the many who were rounded up and caged in the desert.

Or she could be the one you let have you on the beach.

You lower your hand and back away, leaving Pearl to harvest the Gem in her neat, efficient way, as though plucking an Earth-fruit from a tree. The room remains in focus.

You will not deny Jasper another chance at life, but you want no part in it.

You take another step backward and bump into Dr. Drakken. He squawks and frantically scrambles to adjust his handful of bubbles before they can fall. You lunge forward, catch one, and take a moment to lean against Drakken's chest and hear the rhythm inside, quick and skittish yet still steady as the rote of the surf.

When finally the last of the Gems have been collected and you can see the room's ceiling, Garnet leads the way back through her room, grabbing a small glass box on the way. Inside rest the tiny insect-like creatures you recognize as the Earth Beetle and the Heaven Beetle: Pebbles whom Pink Diamond brought to life on Earth, perhaps unintentionally, perhaps in her disguise as Rose Quartz. The Corruption Bomb struck them along with the rest of Earth's Gems, but as Pebbles they had no powers and could hardly be considered a threat. They click and twitter happily when Garnet picks their box up; even Corrupted, they are cute.

"Okay, just one more stop," Steven says as you emerge from the Temple into the daylight.

"Steven," you say, pretending to moan. "Any more and I'll have to shapeshift bigger arms."

"No, it's okay, guys," Steven says. "These ones will follow us."

Steven escorts the group onto the warp pad outside the Temple, holds out his arms, and transports you into an overgrown meadow. Vines creep downward and branches sneak upward until you almost don't see the spacecraft fallen cockeyed in the soil, its rounded edge having worn a deep crevice into the ground. The Diamonds haven't used ships this bulky and feeble in millennia. This is the type of technology you left behind on Homeworld on your first visit to Earth and that had vanished by the time you returned.

Steven knocks against the main hatch door. Probably once a proud silver, it is now gray and matted with rust, and it falls from its hinges at the touch of Steven's knuckles.

Inside, four Centibeetles squint as sunlight laps across the floor where they lie. Three of them retreat into the deeper shadows upon spying all of you, hissing, acid forming on their jaws. But the fourth and largest one scuttles cautiously forward and stops in front of Steven, her head cocked. Though you have never known a Centibeetle to show pleasure, you have no doubt that is what you are seeing when Steven pats her gently and she squeaks.

"Heya, Centi," Steven says in a voice that reminds you of the sweet, brown, stretching substance inside the chocolates Dr. Drakken once gave you. "Are you tired of being Centi? You ready to go be Nephrite again?"

The other three Centibeetles, probably former crewmates, line up behind their leader. Joy lights Steven's face.

You wait for the rush of feeling to overtake you the way it did before you left Kanatar; you want it to come and pry you open after you have kept yourself shut so long. Its presence, however, has taken refuge inside a bubble of its own, prepared to wait for its freedom. You cannot celebrate before the Corruptions have been poured into water touched by the Diamonds. You cannot celebrate until the work is finished.

You cannot celebrate while there is still a chance that any of it could be undone.

Steven directs the warp pad to drop your group off in a valley with tangled, verdant bushes grown thick and an air of melancholy hope. He leads everyone through a well-worn white gate into a plainer field where you see the fountain he mentioned. A rough circle that starts beyond the gate travels back more than a kilometer to a distant wall and bows out, thin and wide, around an enormous bowl shape in the center. Directly atop it stands a stone statue of Rose Quartz, her etched face calm and secretive as she presides over the area.

Without hesitation, Steven climbs to stand next to the statue and presses his hand to the impression hewn into Rose's stomach. The statue trembles for a few moments, and then two pink streams spring forth from beneath eyelids forever shut. Thick and odorless, it is water but not your water. It belongs to Steven; his mother gave it to him so that one day he could accomplish this very thing. The water flows down the length of Rose's gown, over her feet, and begins to fill the bowl.

"Great!" Steven runs, panting, back to the warp pad. "Okay, I'm gonna go change into my swim trunks. Don't start without me!"

"Like we could, Shrimp!" Amethyst calls in his wake, but she grins at him with a gentleness she must have discovered during your time away.

You wonder what other meaning "trunks" can have, for you are certain Steven is not going to go swimming with an elephant.

If the Diamonds are puzzled, they do not show it. They simply stand, three statues to complement the one of the friend they lost, Centibeetles milling around their feet. One bubble rocks to the side in the breeze as though restless. You step away from it.

Dr. Drakken approaches you, beaming in that brilliant way that first showed you there was magic inside humans as well. "Look at this! Look at this! My, my, this will be a sight to behold!"

Of course he is curious; of course he desires to watch it. You turn your face toward him, not hiding the frown on it. "I mean…you can watch if you want. I'm not going to," you say.

"Oh," Drakken says. "Oh. Mmmkay. Are – are you afraid of the Corruptions?"

His voice works to understand, and that makes it easier for yours to be honest: "Not all of them," you say with a careless shrug. "Just Jasper."

"Ohhhhhhhhh."

The confusion flees from Drakken's eyes and they harden, black as Obsidian. "Yick. I forgot she got Corrupted, too." He shivers as though replaying footage of the incident, and his hands pull into fists. "Well, in that case, I don't have to stay and watch, do I?" he says, his buoy-words all the sweeter for the note of longing in them.

You tuck your arm into the crook of his and lead him away from the pool, back out the gate.

Very soon, the warp pad glimmers and jangles to announce Steven's return. His chest and belly are bare, showing his mother's gem, and his lower half wrapped in shiny green fabric reminiscent of your pants that does not reach even midway down his legs. This, then, must be the other meaning of "trunks." You recognize them from nearly every episode of Camp Pining Hearts.

You try not to startle at the changed sight of him. Although you know human clothes are fragile like human bodies and need to be replaced with some regularity in order for them to stay clean, Steven and Drakken both own so many identical outfits that this becomes easier to forget. A Gem only changes her clothing when she has experienced an enormous shift inside, a shift of mind and soul, and you can hardly imagine Steven needing to improve any.

His expression, however, is exactly the same: gentle and amused as he watches Peridot prance in and out of the gates, prattling to anyone who can hear her, and he smiles at you. "Welp," he says. "Now I guess I go heal all the Corruptions."

"Great." You glance over your shoulder at the pool where so many tormented Gems will reclaim their identities. "I'll be…somewhere else."

Peridot stops prancing and squints at you. "You mean – because of the J-word?" she whispers.

You snicker at how round her eyes grow and how her lips move in slim, surreptitious lines. "Yeah. Because of the J-word."

"Okay," Steven says with sympathy. "I'll come find you when we're done!"

Peridot positions herself in Steven's path, her posture straighter than you have seen it since she forfeited her limb enhancers. She slides her hand in between Steven's. "Well, then, Steven, have a great healing and best of luck to you. I, Peridot the great and noble, have a higher duty to attend to!"

This time you do not snicker. Peridot looks ridiculous with her eyebrows drawn down over her visor and her legs parted so that she barely remains upright, but you have seen her poof Corruptions before. She has a might hidden inside her.

You toss Peridot onto your back and grab Drakken by the wrists. With a flap of your wings, you carry them away from the fountain and for a moment wonder where you are taking them. You cannot visit the meadow and see the patch of lifeless grass that the barn once covered; you cannot visit the beach and see the barn strewn across the sand in slivers. Finally you decide upon the woods where Steven first showed you changing seasons and where you used to take shelter when Peridot was annoying you. It is closer to the fountain than you would like, but the pressure lifts from your gemstone as you settle Peridot and Drakken on a branch strong enough to bear their weight and then land beside them.

The rush of feeling you were expecting still has not shown up, but perhaps that too is okay. When it stormed you on Kanatar, it was in the form of a wave that crested and broke over you, washing away the mineral deposits that had built up around your emotions, and you know that very little else can match the force of waves. Yet that water now moves inside you, if only at a trickle, steadily shaping you so you can never become hard as flint again.

You turn and gaze through a shade of leaves toward the horizon. "This is amazing," you admit. "I'm – I'm so glad it's happening. I mean, if it wasn't for that stupid mirror, I'd be in one of those bubbles. I don't even know what I would have turned into." There were, of course, no other Lapises on Earth at the time the Corruption Bomb fell, so it will always be uncertain: whether you would have lost your eyes like the Quartzes or your limbs like the Tourmalines.

Two bright pairs of eyes, eyes that seize every unanswered question for the sake of science, push their curiosity aside. "It doesn't matter," Peridot says with a fierce rush of air through her nose. "What matters is you're not a Corruption, and pretty soon, the Corruptions won't be Corruptions anymore, either!"

Sunlight washes through the shade and plays on the fine grooves in the undersides of leaves, illuminating Earth's shy, understated spectacle. The Corruptions will reawaken to find themselves in a beautiful place, you know.

You reflect back on the moment when you saw White Diamond's cheeks redden and the moment when you heard her sigh and surrender. They seem diluted, fainter than memories you have of a thousand years ago. "This is really happening, isn't it?" you ask them.

They nod.

"How?" you say, not expecting an answer.

Drakken lifts his arms and lets them hang over a branch above his head as his gaze joins yours on the horizon. "Good is stronger than evil," he muses. "Not in every individual instance, but overall. In the grand scheme of things.

"I mean, how else can you explain why someone as brilliant and charismatic as I never managed to take over the world?" Drakken fans his fingers dramatically across his coat-of-labs.

You roll your eyes and grin at him.

It is an odd moment to realize that you have pulled your legs up in front of you on the branch, your knees to your chest in a pose familiar to you: confinement's pose, attempting to conserve space, a pose from which you have gradually separated since coming to Earth. Panic does not keep them drawn up now; they remain, rather, by the same stern awareness that prevented you from celebrating with the other Crystal Gems. You cannot let them relax until you can see with your own eyes that it is over.

You are right to do so.

The sun has scarcely moved across the sky when you hear a great scuffle of leaves, a small yelp, and a deep, lingering holler, all from the very edge where the woods begin. You jerk upright and only your wings prevent you from falling to the ground. The yelp is Steven's, you know; you can feel it ricocheting off the curves of your gem.

But it is the scream that terrifies you. It has the abrasive quality common to standard Quartzes, and yet there is so much more within it. It is rage encountering resistance and splitting open; it is a waterfall pouring onto jagged rocks; it is hailstones striking wood.

It can only belong to one Jasper, the one who fought you for control of her mouth.

Memories rise from the sediment, of her fingers around your wrist, her arm against your back, and her hatred inciting yours. You always thought you knew wildness from the ocean, but at the point of fusion you were introduced to wildness the direct opposite of your sea: it could be understood through absorption yet never predicted, even when shared. The only thing that frightens you more than the remembering is the thought of that wildness directed at your precious little friend.

All you can see is her grabbing Steven by the arm at their first meeting and mashing her face into his. All you can see is him falling, motionless, to the sand while you stood by and allowed it to happen. Your fear grows so large that it collapses upon itself and is no more.

Power surges down your back and sends a wordless request into the sky, and a cloud glides over and gives itself to you. Its vapor follows your physical form as you turn to the beginning of the woods and straighten your shoulders.

"Lapis!" Dr. Drakken grabs you by the arm. You can tell by the terror in his eyes and the quiver of his beetling chin that he recognizes Jasper's scream, too. "Don't go! Please! I – you – we – ngggh – stay away from her!"

You gently unwind his fingers from your arm, the scene moving too quickly to disturb the peace in the core of your being. "It's okay," you tell him. "She can't hurt me anymore."

As you soar among the trees, tearing through leaves that bat your bare middle and catch in your hair, it occurs to you that this is not even a lie – not when you look at what you have now.

You have a home. You have a family. You have Garnet, Amethyst, Pearl, and an opportunity to forgive Bismuth. You have Steven and Peridot and Pumpkin. You have Drakken. In some peculiar way, you even have Blue Diamond again. Jasper has nothing.

What can be only seconds later, you burst into the clearing at the start of the woods, your fingers curled, keeping the cloud at the ready above you. "Jasper," you say to the hulking figure with its back turned to you, blocking Steven from view, "please don't do this."

Your voice rings out clear as the pattering of rainfall. Jasper reels to face you, grass ripping under her boots, her predacious teeth bared. She releases her grip on Steven's cheeks and lets him fall to the ground, though she continues to hold him hostage with her presence.

The creature looking back at you is somewhere between Corruption and perfection. Although the worst of the damage has been healed and you can tell by her movements that she has her mind back, two short horns sprout from her pale thicket of hair. Her strong, proud body is marked with circles that ripple around one another like the rings in a bare tree stump: some deep blue, others bright pink, and the most haunting the shade of Malachite's fusionscape. More of the same disturbs her face, and you barely make out the original forked shape of deeper orange that was placed there by design. She watches you with aged eyes though she is several thousand years younger than you. Those eyes swim over you; she might not recognize you without your skirt and your ribbon and your desperation.

At last, recognition enters her gaze, and a tiny grin, disturbingly free of malice, appears. "Oh. Lapis," she says. She speaks with the same inflection you remember: a sandy grit that the wind throws your direction.

"Hi," you say flatly. "So – what's going on here? Why are you mad at Steven now?"

"Why am I mad? The Diamonds said – he said – and he showed me – and now they all think –" Jasper's words come out like blades, slicing each other to pieces. "But he is not My Diamond!" She points accusingly at Steven's stomach, where the gemstone lists off-center. He must have rotated it, knowing that she would need proof.

Turning away from Steven, Jasper refocuses her anger on you, as one of you has always done to the other in the past. The cloud shivers, anticipating your instructions, and you stand prepared to fight if it comes to that, but it occurs to you that there is no rage within you, no urge to destroy her.

Jasper has done a good enough job destroying herself.

"No, he's not," you agree. "He's her son." You take a step forward, feeling the tide at your back though you are Earth-miles away from the beach. "And he healed you."

You search Jasper's cruelly mottled face for any sign of softening, any hint of contrition. You find only her scowl, bitter and constant, so much a part of her that she would probably retain it even if she shapeshifted to another form. Her amber eyes pierce ahead, furious light not flinching when it meets the sun's rays.

In some respects, you understand Jasper. The war left its scratches on both of you, scratches like the one on Drakken's cheek that will never disappear. You, too, found this foreign planet unwelcoming and the Gems who populated it hostile and uncouth. At one point each of you lay in a defenseless, unconscious sprawl on a beach only meters apart from each other. If you had made different choices, you could have become what Jasper is.

Yet in other respects, you don't understand Jasper at all. When Steven healed you, touching you with his kindness when you knew you didn't deserve it, it restarted your life and changed you forever. How can it not do the same for her?

"I never asked him to!" Jasper snarls.

Your jaw drops. Cold blows over you again, only this time it carries not numbness but horror. Jasper becomes abstract in your vision, her one comprehensible attribute the gem anchored to her nose and glinting in the sun as though nothing has ever happened to it.

"Of course you didn't ask him!" you say. "You couldn't talk! We just kind of assumed you didn't want to be a mindless monster for all eternity." You tilt your head at her. "Were we wrong?"

Jasper says nothing. She scans you again, and you know what she is looking for: the piece of herself that she left inside you. She will not find it.

"So – what?" Jasper flings an arm in Steven's direction, the gesture unsubtle yet nimble, as it has always been. "Does he expect me to obey him now?"

You glance under Jasper's arm at Steven. He looks back at you with an expression of gravest sorrow, his curly head shaking.

"Nobody wants your stupid 'obedience,' Jasper." There is a bite in your voice but no heat in your back. "But it might be nice to say, 'Thank you.'"

Jasper's forehead wrinkles, deep confusion hooding her eyes. What you have said makes less sense to her that the rules of Earth baseball did to Homeworld's Rubies.

"Or at least start with not killing him," you add.

You see Steven smile at your sarcasm. Jasper takes a step toward you, closing the distance until nothing is visible beyond her chest. Facets of you want to back up and run away, but you now stand on something more solid than the seabed.

"Look," you say. "There's a whole batch of us who would be goners if it weren't for Steven."

Jasper's fists wave. You're not sure where they desire to land and suspect Jasper is equally uncertain. "I am nothing like the rest of –"

You interrupt her. "This isn't about who's better or stronger or faster or smarter anymore! The rest of us figured that out when we were given a second chance! Now you've got one too. And if you don't take it, you'll never stop hurting."

Jasper's face twists with disgust. "I'm not hurting."

You laugh out loud.

You cannot help it – the statement is so thoroughly ridiculous. The memories rush over you and fill you like a tide pool: chains you constructed yourself cinched around your wrists, tethering you to a dark mass you had to swallow and contain; only a sandy barrier standing between you and Jasper, washing in and out of existence with every change in the ocean currents; and pain. Pain was what created Malachite, and she never moved without more igniting in the spaces where her originators overlapped. Your pain has always come in waves; you were unable to imagine anything different until you became part of her, for there was another set of pain, yours to feel but not to own, that drove into her in sharp spikes, like the cacti in the desert Kindergarten.

Jasper continues to stare at you.

"See, I had a feeling you'd say that," you say. Some type of harsh giggle escapes you again. "And I'm the only person in the universe who knows you're lying."

Feral silence falls over the clearing. You lock your eyes with Jasper's and hold them there. For humans, this event is decided by who needs to blink first and clear sand or pollen from their eyes, but such things don't hinder Gems. It means something else entirely that you gaze steadily into Jasper's eyes until she lowers them for an instant.

You didn't feel this powerful when you dragged her to the ocean floor.

"Fine," Jasper growls. She shoves Steven's shoulder, knocking him to the grass, and then turns and bounds back the way she came, as though she is still trying to outrun what she will not admit is there. You walk over to Steven, help him to stand, and stare after her, wondering how two beings given life by Pink Diamond could have turned out so dissimilar.

Twigs snap behind you, accompanied by grunts of "Ow, ow, ow!" Someone comes up behind you and takes your hands in his, which are warm, soft, and scrawny: everything Jasper is not.

"NGGHDPT! Are you okay? Did she – she didn't try anything, did she? If there's so much as a scratch on you, then so help me God – "

Dr. Drakken has to stop to catch his breath, which gives you enough time to rotate and wrap your arms around him. The odor of sweat meanders down to you, unpleasant but produced by his care for you. Three petals stick out at haphazard angles from his neck.

"Yeah. She's leaving." You glance back over your shoulder and see her racing for the beach, away from the gift her Diamond left her. Perhaps the remaining three will take care of her, though it is difficult for you to envision Jasper allowing that.

"Yeah, that's right, you better run!" Peridot calls to the large retreating figure now far out of earshot. She scoops a clod of dirt from the ground and hurls it like her favorite insult. It falls back to the ground in scraps.

You watch as Jasper meets the horizon and disappears. Something stirs in your gem, not quite sadness but something lighter and sparser, the barest of what you will always feel for any creature who does not have a place to call home. Perhaps then Jasper is like the greasy pizza Drakken sometimes eats: it does not bother you to see her, so long as you know you will never have to taste her again.

Steven walks up to you and hugs your waist. "Thanks, Lapis! You saved my bacon." This, you know, means you have saved his life, though why he equates his life with the dry, crinkled character on Crying Breakfast Friends you cannot understand. "Hey – you wanna come meet all our new friends?"

You glance at Drakken, who gives you a hesitant nod, and at Peridot, whose grin expands until it nearly touches the sides of her visor.

"Yeah," you say. Rather than flying, you offer one hand to Drakken and the other to Peridot and follow in a dancing Steven's wake, letting yourself hear the swish of Earth's fresh growing-season grass beneath your new shoes and recognize how much you missed it while you were away.

The Diamonds' forms become visible first. They reach the same height as the lighthouse that sits on the cliff overlooking the beach, and their heads bend downward to observe those whom they have healed, Blue Diamond with misted eyes, Yellow with a crease resting between her eyebrows, and White with an expressionless stare. Much progress has been made today; much has yet to be made. At this distance, the figures in front of them are no more than dots of color, like the tips of the waxed drawing instruments Steven arranges in their hard-paper box.

As you draw nearer, however, they come into focus, and you nearly gasp. Beside you, Peridot hollers exclamations of glee you can't quite make out.

Nothing has prepared you for the sight before you, not even a ball on Homeworld. Gems – your people – encircle the healing pool in layers, spreading farther than you can see from the ground. Quartzes of every cut and facet, from Angel Auras to a full-sized Amethyst who seems too big, rise above the Gems around them, not a one of them crouched to prepare for battle. Near the center of the circle, Bismuth stands next to an ashen-black Gem who is blind in one eye: a very old, discontinued variety of Gem that you believe bore the name Obsidian long before the Crystal Gems appropriated it to describe the four of them combined. In front of them stands a green and pink Tourmaline who must be Watermelon, her waist puffy with spikes. An odd, patchily-colored Gem wears two disparate gemstones, one in place of her right and the other in place of her nose, that mark her a fusion. The Earth Beetle and the Heaven Beetle have reclaimed their faces, and they sit on Garnet's shoulder, gazing at one another adoringly.

The realization that they have found each other reverberates in your hollowed insides like the breaking of countless mirrors.

Horns, stripes, and lopsided jaws remain, yet eyes take in their surroundings with a new clarity, mouths shape words rather than bestial growls, and hands raise to greet old comrades. You see tears and laughter and life, so much life.

It is like the first time you stepped into a library and found yourself surrounded by books, overwhelmed by the abundance of stories and unsure which to approach first.

A cheer goes up as someone catches sight of Steven. A crew of Nephrites, whose Corrupted forms were especially gruesome, break from the crowd and wrap their spindly, hinged arms around him, murmuring gratitude. Steven dips his head as though in modesty, but his cheeks are pinker than ever, a pair of his mother's roses in full bloom. You would be disappointed in anything less; if anyone has earned the right to pride's glow, it is Steven.

"Sweet Nobel Peace Prize." Drakken breathes the words like an oath beside you. Peridot screeches in delight.

"This is amazing," you agree.

The beauty surrounding you appears defined yet not wholly real, as if you are viewing a mirror image of this event rather than the event itself. Perhaps it is this distortion that lets you see that not all of the healed Gems seem at ease. Some fold trembling hands in front of them, more than one watches the Diamonds with cold wariness, and several others pull away in frightened huddles, grouped together more closely than when they were in their Emergence holes.

You remember dirt falling away to reveal a sky still blue, the smile on the face of the stocky Gem charged with monitoring your arrival, and the first faint strains of the music that used to exist on Homeworld. Before you can think twice, you turn and walk through the gates and up near the fountain, making sure to keep your steps quiet and reverent as you tread the path Rose Quartz created.

You know what these Gems need to hear.

Only when you stand in front of the pool do you begin to doubt yourself: your quiet voice and the streak of shyness that still often dulls you when you are around all but your closest friends. You cough as Drakken does when he is nervous, and the sound burns up in the atmosphere, unnoticed by anyone except Garnet, and even she has more likely been drawn by her future vision than anything you have done.

In a spout of light, she separates. Sapphire, a Gem with an even greater rarity than your own, gives Ruby's arm a squeeze and glides between pairs of feet to reach you. Her long dress brushes the earth and then the stone wall of the pool as she steps up and extends her hand to you. You reach out and grasp it tightly, staring at her, and although you cannot see her eye through her fringe of hair you know she gives you a reassuring look.

Your lips part. The two of you begin to sing.

"Welcome to your life, dear friend

Welcome to your home

Your future's bright; stumble you might

But you'll never be alone"

All eyes are on you now. Fear grinds into your gem, entreating you to flee and try to lose yourself among all the other Gems, and it does not go away. It simply prowls your back, seething, as you choose to ignore it.

"The stars will keep you safe, dear friend

Their light's far more than warmth

Let them guide your way; watch them dance and play

Constantly being reborn"

Sapphire's voice is low, though not as low as Garnet's, and it slides under the words while yours soars atop them.

"We are one, born from the ground

Eternal unity

Our reach extends, horizon without end

Far beyond our galaxy

So do not fear, my newly made

There is no need to cry

We must move ahead, but wherever we tread

You'll not be left behind"

You gaze out across the multitude of Gems who have waited too long. At opposite ends of the gathering, you see Bismuth and Drakken wiping moist faces.

"Drink the stardust now, dear friend

Wrap our sun around your skin

There's a whole new sky inside your eyes

You have so much to give"

You recall the lifeless stones lying inside those bubbles, and you close your eyes before your vision can wash.

"Welcome to your life, dear friend," you sing, not stopping when your throat begin to ache,

"Welcome to your home

Your future's bright; stumble you might

But you'll never be alone"

Your voices fade away.

For a haunting moment, a hush grips every Gem watching. Your eyes open and meet no hatred, fear, or envy. They look at you as if you are the person Steven always believed you to be.

When you climbed into the arm ship and left for Homeworld, you were frightened of the number of goodbyes that might await you before day's end. You did not allow yourself to hope for the number of hellos you now have to say.

You release Sapphire's hand and wander to the other side of the pool.

It isn't long before Dr. Drakken finds you there. His nose still runs and he wipes it on his blue sleeve, which is already stiff with Homeworld debris and old tears. "Talk about amazing," he sniffles. "You sang me that song when I was sick, right?

"I thought I was dreaming then," he adds when you nod. "But this…this was no dream. And may I just say you have the voice of a thousand angels?"

You laugh to yourself at the reference to angels: messenger spirits some humans believe serve their God, rumored to have wings and beautiful voices, qualities that, according to Drakken, you share. "You may," you say. "But I think you're exaggerating by at least seven hundred angels."

He chuckles and slides his arm around you. You let yourself relax into his hug. The points of your guilt parade through you again, only this time each one is matched with a counterpoint – yelling at Navey pairs with apologizing to her, the Earth growing smaller as you deserted it pairs with the warp pad sparkling as you returned, and holding Jasper captive pairs with talking her down before you left for the pool. The darkness you have held inside since you first aimed a wave at a rock now itself erodes and collapses, and the promise of freedom comprises the landscape that lies behind it.

Over the next several hours, you drift back to the beach and watch both the illusion of the sun traversing the sky and a scene before you that also feels illusive: Gems with their lives returned to them moving, talking, holding one another, and crying in glee. It spins and swirls around you, a cyclone with calm at the center, ensuring you will not be dragged asunder. A Larimar whose ice-colored head reminds you of the frozen peaks of Kanatar's ocean attaches herself to Steven's leg and will not let go. The fusion with the patched coloring runs by, carrying a beaming Amethyst atop her shoulders while Garnet, now whole again, organizes what appears to be some sort of clapping game with the Pebbles and Pearl embraces the half-blinded Obsidian. She is musical even when she weeps.

You receive compliments for your singing and questions about the strange blue man resting his chin on your head, and you smile as you watch Peridot attempt to count the many forms that flit back and forth. Even with no screen and no one to whom to report back, she cannot help cataloguing them, only now her eyes are wide and alive as she does so.

Things begin to clear as Bismuth walks your way, and beside her the Jasper who fought for the Crystal Gems, her three horns the rich hue of wet desert clay, arranged in trident positions. Without fear you can identify a Jasper's small eyes, heavy brow, and spirited chin, complemented by a beautiful smile almost as large as Dr. Drakken's. He stiffens behind you, and you grab his hand and squeeze it to calm him; she is not the enemy.

"Hey, everybody!" A swollen river of joy gushes from Bismuth's deep voice. "Just thought I'd bring Biggs around, introduce her to some of our new recruits!

"Biggs, this is Big A, and that's Tiny, and this is Wings." Bismuth rotates her arm from Amethyst to Peridot and then to you like a lighthouse's beam.

Biggs's eyes widen exaggeratedly, as you have seen Shego's do when she teases someone. "Bismuth," she says in a playful tone, "you're hanging around with a Lapis?"

Your bare stomach wrenches, anticipating something that every other part of you now knows will not happen again. You stare levelly at Bismuth as she shrugs, smiling the way Drakken does in moments of nervousness. "Hey, the years have changed all of us," she says. "In case you didn't notice, girl, you've got horns now!"

Bismuth guffaws and drives her fist into Biggs's shoulder repeatedly. The impacts are gentle, tears jetting down Bismuth's face, but still not something you can watch for very long. You let your eyes shift subtly to the side.

When the striking sound has faded, you look up at Biggs, your gaze coming to rest somewhere among her trident of horns, and it is your turn to smile. "Nice to meet you, Biggs," you say. You remember her hunched form, her thick swinging tail, the vacancies on her forehead where her eyes should have been, and it is more than nice to meet her. A current of thankfulness runs through you that she is no longer either bubbled and forced into unconsciousness or roaming the Earth in misery.

"Same to you," Biggs says. The rasp in her speech is somehow pleasant, a tumble of kindness that bears no resemblance to the Jasper who threatened Steven.

Bismuth's body relaxes, still large but not nearly as cumbersome as it appears prepared for a fight. She stands now not as a solider but as a comrade, relief slackening her lips. She looks like a Gem who has at last been accepted.

"Good to have your old friends back, huh?" you say.

The words sound ridiculous to you; they are much too small to encompass the wonders around you, but a comet-like light flickers through Bismuth's eyes. She throws back her head, and her laughter bellows around you, no longer frightening with Peridot and Drakken flanking you on either side.

"Where are they going to live?" Peridot's words charge forward like quick, choppy waves. "Where are you going to live?" She points at you. "Where am I going to live?" She pulls back, the stars on her knees quivering.

Of course, you think with a frown. You recall dropping your fingers to your sides, releasing the barn, and bidding it a rueful farewell as it plummeted. You and Peridot no longer have a tangible home. Sadness comes with the thought, though it does not make you feel lost as you did when you saw Homeworld's deterioration, but merely disoriented.

"You know, I helped patch up Steven's place after the Diamonds tore it apart," Bismuth murmurs as though to herself, though she faces Biggs. "I bet I could build houses for all of you guys, too. Would you wanna stay on Earth?"

"Sure!" Biggs says. "I fought for this planet with everything I had. I wouldn't want to leave it now. And I'm sure the others will feel the same way."

Bismuth's face changes until she is no longer the Gem who hated you on sight for your status and your mission. Her mouth creases and puckers in thought. Even with Drakken's anxious muttering beside you, safety sluices down your back.

You drop an arm casually around Peridot's neck. "Will you build us a house?" you say.

Bismuth's nod is immediately overshadowed by Peridot's shorebird-squawk. "Us?" she cries, her green eyes bulging as they collide with yours.

"Uh, ye-ah," you say. You think of dark, distant places without the presence of a warm and obnoxious Peridot, and you don't shiver because they are behind you, where they should be. "We're still roomies, right?"

It is a phrase you picked up from Camp Pining Hearts, and it does not miss its target. Peridot grabs you and presses her face into the inlet of skin uncovered by your top. The touch that you once distrusted now serves as your anchor, tethering you to this strange lovely planet the two of you have come to call home.

You don't pull away this time.

"Awwww," Drakken says behind you, his buoyant voice bobbing on a starlit sea. He coughs much as he does when he tries to propel his thoughts forward, out of the murk of distraction. "But, Bismuth, won't that still be a heck of a lot of houses?"

"Your boyfriend's got a point," Bismuth says. "Where exactly are we gonna put them all?"

It is an odd moment to realize that you are standing at your tallest, your back straightened, showing the world a gemstone that feels at once exposed and invincible. "There's this big open meadow right outside of town," you say. You recall it now: how Drakken led you there on the second day of your acquaintance, how its undulating span of grass seemingly as vast as the sky brushed your ankles as you ran with your skirt blown out behind you, how he said it was the best place to forget what confinement felt like.

He was right. You can think of no place better.

As dusk begins to fall, purple shadows cooling the ground, your wings lift you to search for the nearby warp pad that can transport the four of you to the meadow. Before you can crest the treetops, however, a voice calls, "Lapis?"

It is a voice low and full yet sheer and quiet, as though made from the same material that shades her palanquin. It is a voice you heard before you knew what your own sounded like. It is a voice that you once believed could control the waxing and waning of all moons and destroy your universe with one careful whisper.

Despite time, distance, and your wish to deny it, your name in that voice will always mean something to you. You could no sooner change that than you could your color or the placement of your gem.

Dr. Drakken's arm forms a loop in the air behind you, urging you nearer without actually touching you. "Lapis! Are you up for this? Because it is absolutely okay if you're not!" His words blunder in their rush to reach you, and the edges and curves of his face have grown white. You know that no fathom line could measure the depth of his worry: first Jasper, and now Blue Diamond.

"But what if I am 'up for it'?" you say immediately, lending no time to doubt. You sneak a glance back at Blue Diamond. You have more faith in her than in Jasper, though this is perhaps not saying much. "Is it okay if I want to talk to her? You can listen through your plants and make sure everything's cool."

Drakken deliberates for a long moment with his lips puckered in earnestness. "Should we have a code word for if you need help?"

"How about, 'Ahhhh! Help'?" you suggest.

"I like it!" Peridot cries. "Brief and to the point." She bobs her head at Drakken until he bobs his in return, and you turn away and stride toward the Diamond who first outlined your Purpose, making it seem such a noble calling.

Blue Diamond stands on the beach, the light from the stars behind her blotted out by her head. The hood of her cloak has been swept back, revealing the interlocking hair that forms a pouch over her chest, and it seems some of the dimness that surrounded her has receded as well. With every step you take toward her, you feel a minute ripple as your body readjusts to the weight of her authority, like it would to another planet's gravity, and even without the threat of oppression to it, it is a load to bear.

You stop in front of her. Homeworld protocol demands that you curtsy to her, but you cannot; you no longer possess either the skirt or the attitude to do so.

"Ma'am?" you say. The greeting you choose almost unconsciously: it respects without deferring.

It appears to be enough for Blue Diamond, because a smile warms the face you have grown accustomed to seeing crusted over with frost. The expression looks natural on her, as though it has waited behind her ancient sadness all along. "I see you remember the Emergence song," she says.

"Yes. I thought the Gems needed to hear it. All of the Gems." You restrain the casual tone you have picked up in your years on Earth, narrowing it and stiffening it until it once again falls within her court's limitations; you know you are speaking of sacred things.

No tidal wave of anger shakes Blue Diamond's hands as she folds them at her waist. You hold your chin plumb to the shoreline, your eyes falling just short of hers. All around you, the shorebirds are quieting for the night.

Blue Diamond at last folds her legs under her and crouches on them as though to lessen the disparity between the two of you. "You're the one I sent to Earth before this whole debacle began, aren't you?"

You would be ashamed to admit it, if not for the tender way Blue Diamond extends an arm toward you, just as a sailor would for a drowning crewmate. The recognition in her eyes almost undoes you.

"Yes. I am," you say, drawing your back against the memories of Bismuth's attack, the mirror, and everything else that came afterward.

The corners of Blue Diamond's smiling mouth tremble as she looks at you. "Oh, Lapis. I thought they'd shattered you," she says, her voice unsteady. It is the same voice that celebrated your creation after you Emerged, tinged with a subtle laughter: the voice of a summer breeze.

Something deep in the center of your gemstone seems to catch and then relax, as your body does after it completes regenerating. You remember slamming the barn onto her head and thinking that would be the end of it. You were wrong. Two years of Earth's freedom and the authentic love of its creatures have frayed that bond, yet they have not snapped it. You wonder now if anything ever will.

You are now one less person the war has taken from her, and for that reason if no other you have become something precious to her.

"I'm sorry." You have to force yourself not to whisper the words. "I'm sorry about the barn. You know, the one I dropped on you."

Blue Diamond's sigh echoes with the strain of two Eras spanning countless eons. "I understand. You were trying to defend your allies – and your little pet, weren't you?" she says. You look at her in confusion, because her eyes travel not to the pumpkin who yips and cuddles and knows nothing of war, but to the man who has treated you with far more kindness than you have treated yourself.

A vague unsettlement coats your gem, and you shake your head at her. "Actually, he's not my pet," you say. "He's my boyfriend."

"What does that mean?" Blue Diamond's voice divides, a river flow briefly disrupted by a rock before rejoining. She sounds as if she truly wants to understand.

You frown and search your inventory of reflections for one that will make sense to her. The only men she has met before are the ones imprisoned in the human zoo. "I think it means….we Choosened each other," you say, and then, realizing the boldness of this statement, add, "Or we will. Someday."

"Oh. Oh. Oh, goodness." Blue Diamond begins to blink, her long limpid eyelashes flicking up and down. Her hand rises in alarm, and you feel a blush darken your cheeks.

Yet the oasis-blue eyes looking back at you are not scandalized. They search yours in puzzlement between blinks, and for an instant when you meet them, you stand on some other plane, gazing directly down into her soul: brindled light and dark, like the healed fusion's coloring, and maybe not so different from your own.

Blue Diamond shakes her head before speaking again, so softly that you wonder if the words are actually meant for you. "I suppose maybe someday I'll get used to it," she says. "A Gem in a relationship with an inferior being."

The scene around you dulls as you consider all of Dr. Drakken's remarkable traits: the sounds of his pattering heart, gurgling stomach, and creaking joints; the scent of food on his breath and the sour, shellfish-like odor of his socks; his fragile strength; the way his right hand is clumsier than his left; his winsome smile that anyone could mistake for magic. Had she insulted his species six thousand years ago, you would have ducked your head and acquiesced, anything to avoid conflict. Had she insulted his species two days ago, you would have searched for something else to throw at her, anything to vent your anger.

Something sound and stable has settled near the core of your gem, however, and you wish only for her to understand.

"Permission to speak freely, ma'am?" you say.

Surprise passes through Blue Diamond's eyes. "Yes. Of course."

You peer around her at the ocean, seeking not its defense but its companionship. "Humans aren't inferior," you say, gentling your own voice so as to avoid the impression of chastisement. "Their bodies are weaker, but they think and feel just the way we do. They deserve a chance."

Blue Diamond's eyes fill with tears. Yours do not. "You sound exactly like Pink," she whispers.

"I didn't really know her," you say. "But Steven – he's shown me a lot."

Blue Diamond nods. "So he has."

You glance at her again, expecting to see an outpouring of the grief she can spread among Gems as quickly as wildfire can leap from one branch to another. Instead, she breaks into a graceful smile. "I suspect Homeworld is going to become a very different place after today," she says. "And you are more than welcome to come back."

Those words are bombs themselves, striking you with such force that you expect to crack. They are the words you imagined for five thousand years as you stared up at the changing night sky. They are the words which led you to steal, to attack, and to compromise in your resolve to return home and hear them again. Even now, they beckon to you from across the stars, back to a life you remember still with some measure of fondness.

Yet you glance down at your fingerprints and you remember how Drakken had to explain to you what a family is; you remember Homeworld's hard, dried squalor.

An answer begins to rise in you that you never would have dreamed yourself capable of delivering. The balls, the happy vapid chatter of the other Lapises, and your comfortable seat on the palanquin seem to wave farewell to you.

You lift your eyes to Blue Diamond's. "Thank you," you say, pain piercing your throat. "That means so much to me. But this…this is my home now."

Just like that, your decision is final. You lean backward and a weightless luminescence moves through your body, as it did when you dismissed your Aquamarine disguise and resumed your true form.

Blue Diamond's face smooths before astonishment can streak it. You have only recently adjusted to thinking of her as an enemy, a comfortable settlement for your mind, yet the truth of her cannot be contained in such a narrow casing. "As you wish, then," she says, sweeping one arm outward, her cloak fluttering noiselessly as she gazes upon you. "Lapis – is it me? Was I that terrible?"

You stop moving and stare at the long, noble fingers that rest at her sides: generous fingers that can float over a Sapphire's head as she murmurs in approval, and merciless fingers that can order a Ruby shattered without hesitation. They seem foreign somehow, as alien as Dr. Drakken's belly button and great flopping ears once were to you. You have known her so well, and yet you have not known her at all.

"No, ma'am," you say. "It wasn't you. You were always very kind.

"To me," you add, because you cannot lie anymore.

Blue Diamond's shoulders rise and fall with sharp clarity. She has understood you, and it pains her.

"What was it, then?" she asks. Regret smears her voice.

"It was – a lot of things," you say. Behind her, the ocean waits patiently, but you have nowhere near enough energy to paint your explanation on its surface. You wonder how you would even begin to reflect the sticky, forgiving touch of a young boy's hand; the vibrant colors spilling out of leaves as the planet changes; the burden your own identity became; and the accusing eyes you pictured every time you searched the sky for your home. "It's a really long story."

"Ah," Blue Diamond says. You see a fresh, tender expression in her eyes as she lowers them to you. You have grown to recognize love, and this does not match it. But the first shells have been Injected below her crust to develop there, tended by her warmth; by the time they Emerge, they may have assumed the shape Steven introduced to Homeworld. "Will you tell me that long story someday?"

Had she not added the last word, you would have vehemently shaken your head at her. Instead, you dig your shoes into the sand and raise your eyes to meet hers. "Yes. Someday. I'd like that."

Blue Diamond's neck pulls back and her hands fold, one over the other, like layers of sediment – the signal you have always known to mean you are now permitted to leave.

You dip your chin to her and walk away, stopping only once back to glance back at her: erect and lonesome, enveloped by her cloak and by the charitable calm that you thought lost forever. All feeling flees from your legs, and you walk on sand as if on water light and delicate beneath your toes.

Between you and your friends, between Steven's house and the boardwalk, White Diamond stands surveying the beach. Steven is with her. You come to a stop when you hear her sigh deeply.

"Well, now, there you have it," she says. You track her fingernails with every move she makes, and behind you the ocean tenses, readying to create a tempest at your command. "Are you happy now, Pink?"

You have to hold back a snort; the question is a silly one, and not simply because she continues to address him as someone he never has been. Steven is radiant as starshine. You hope that gleam will never fade.

"It's Steven. But, yeah, I'm happy." Steven leans back against a sand dune, crossing his short legs in front of him, and looks at White Diamond without fear. "I'm so happy it's amazing! Thanks for everything, White."

You cover your grin with your hand.

The most fearsome being in the universe now reminds you of a string about to snap, as though she wants to relax but does not know how. "I trust you shall colonize your next world without this all this – upheaval?" she asks.

You stop grinning.

Steven flinches, and a shower of sand rains down onto his pink shirt. "Yeah, um, about that. We need to talk," he says.

White Diamond draws herself taller still. You start toward Steven but then see Amethyst rush in front of him and Garnet step up behind him and rest her hands on his shoulders. Pearl comes to stand on one side of him, her slender fingers curved around his elbow, and Greg stands on the other side, surrounding him with love.

You take one more cautious glance at White Diamond's fingernails, motionless at her side, and leave Steven to deconstruct Homeworld, down to its very foundation. A small crab scuttles by, moving in a wide sweep to dodge your feet, and you grin again at the darkening world. For so long, you found safety and splendor on a planet where everything conformed with precision to an outline drawn generations ago, and you thrived in it. Without it, you knew, there would be chaos, as there was on lesser planets. Yet there is something lovely about Earth's disorganized plant life and the spontaneous twisting, rising, and falling of its terrain.

Peridot and Dr. Drakken both lunge for you as soon you reach them, Drakken throwing his arms around your shoulders and Peridot attaching herself to your ankles. "Are you all right?" Drakken asks yet again, his voice rough with exertion. A full ring of petals has bloomed around his head.

"Very all right." You place your hand on Drakken's chest for a moment and let it feel the churnings of all his systems, powered continuously by his brain without so much as a thought needed. "That – I think that was good for me."

Peridot lights up and releases you. "Great!" she cries, bounding in the direction of the Nephrites, who have wandered over, faces curious. "Hello. Peridot 5XG speaking. I wonder if I might ask you a few questions."

They nod, and she produces her tablet. For their sakes, you hope she is only sorting out who is who and who did what before the war, not prying into the time they spent imprisoned in the mirrors of their own minds.

That is when you notice Bismuth piling pieces of wood in front of her, and you frown. Over the millennia, you have watched humans gather wood for burning to keep warm, but that is not how she fuels her forge, and she lifts and stacks this wood with more care than you have ever seen humans handle kindling. You creep forward for a better look, and in the twilight you can see an old, weathered red on the knotted surface of the planks.

The current of remembering pulls you closer. "Are those –"

Bismuth cuts you off, taking from you the weight of the words she is more equipped to bear. "The barn? Yeah. Your boyfriend told me how important it was to you and Peridot." You glance at Drakken; he taps his fingers together and his cheeks scrunch, jovial. "So I figured I'd salvage what I could, use it to help build you guys' new house, you know?"

Her voice is so matter-of-fact that for a moment you cannot speak. You can only stare down at the splits in the wood that you used to feel beneath your bare feet. You realize then that Bismuth has shapeshifted out of her suit of armor, choosing instead a fuzzy stretch of fabric that is the color of Garnet's third eye and does not divide into segments at the waist; it comes in a single piece, supported by straps that ring her neck and button at her chest. An ink-mark of a star, signaling allegiance to the Crystal Gems, floats across her forearm.

"Oh. When I was goin' through those boards, I also found this," Bismuth says. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a tape recorder that survived only by having been already mangled, its metal crushed, tape spouting from the inside outward. A forlorn ringlet of blue ribbon clings to one corner. "I don't know if it means anything to you."

For the second time, a Gem who has wronged you holds it out to you in an offer of atonement.

This time, you do not make the mistake of rejecting it.

You pick up the remnants of the tape recorder and hold them close. "It does. It means a lot." The metal pokes at your palms, but not enough to injure you. "Thanks, Bismuth."

Her eyes shine. "Sure thing, Lapis."

Drakken hugs you, and you must readjust your elbow when it lodges in his ribs and he cringes. Though his eyes are wary, he smiles at Bismuth. It is probably the least of today's absurdities, but also perhaps the first that registers in your gem.

"Okay, then." Bismuth straightens. "You gonna take us to go see that meadow?"

"Definitely." You turn around and tap Peridot on the shoulder. "Peri. Time for a field trip."

You know this term from Camp Pining Hearts, yet apparently you have not used around Dr. Drakken before. It sends him into gales of laughter as you lead the group down from the boardwalk and across the sandy path he showed you the day he learned the story of the mirror. In the scope of your life, it is such a short time ago, but change comes at a much more rapid pace on Earth and, despite yourself, you have been swept up in it. When you look to the future now, you see it approaching in minutes and hours rather than years and centuries, moments the Diamonds wouldn't have bothered to measure now precious to you.

"See? It's extra-funny because it's literally a trip to a field!" Drakken is explaining when your group arrives at the end of the path and you hold up a hand for their attention. When they turn to you, you simply point across the expanse of the meadow and anticipate their reactions.

Bismuth's jaw drops, and her eyes sweep the landscape the way Drakken's tongue will sweep across an ice cream cone, determined to ingest every individual morsel. Her awe neither surprises you nor surpasses yours. You are not sure what is more beautiful: the Peridot-green grass whispering in the breeze; the clean view of the infinite, iridescent sky above; or the land itself, scrolling and folding like letters written in script. Shaded in the violet evening light, all three appear to have fused anyway, the sky's lights spilling across the grass, plants ascending to fill the spaces between stars, fireflies winking from both ground and sky, further nullifying any difference.

You remember running through this meadow with Drakken looking on upon your first visit. You had not run in quite some time; Lapis Lazulis never did, because why would a Gem with wings ever need to test her legs that way? There was no one else to compare your strides to theirs or to care if your legs flailed and stumbled in uncourtly ways, yet you and Drakken were far from alone. Life burst from every crevice of Earth, brief, frail life that you had been Taught did not matter.

It was not long after that you began to wonder if you had been Taught in error.

"Wowie wow-wow!" Peridot grabs your wrist and jumps up and down. "This place is perfect!"

"Told ya," you say with a small smile.

Bismuth shakes herself, her vines of hair bouncing off one another. "This is…yeah. Wow. Definitely the prettiest place I've seen yet on Earth. Rose must've loved it."

A wistfulness finally breaches her face, and she stands there without armor, a Bismuth you are sure you don't know. Even once she joined the Crystal Gems, she remained an instrument of destruction. Only now does she separate from the Purpose that Homeworld assigned to her.

"So – does that settle it?" Peridot glances from one person to another. "We'll build a place for all who cannot and/or do not wish to return to Homeworld?"

Drakken chuckles. "Sort of an immigrant community." He receives more puzzled looks than just your own, and hastens to explain. "An 'immigrant' is an Earth-word for a person who leaves one country and comes to live in a different country. Sometimes you get whole waves of people coming in from the same country because something – something – something cataclysmic has just happened there! And a lot of those waves end up settling down in the same place and remaking it with the best parts of the country they left! Like Little Havana and Little Italy."

You have heard of Italy – it is where humans learned to cook noodles for food – though not Havana, yet the words seem to spread as he speaks them, extending hands in all directions.

"That's what we should call it, then," you say. "Little Homeworld."

"All in favor?" Peridot shoots her arm into the air.

You are laughing too hard to raise yours.

"Maybe we should, you know, clear it with Steven first," you say.

Peridot nods as though in great wisdom. "Absolutely! Steven must be consulted."

The four of you stand there for a few minutes more and watch as the night descends, all dividing lines forgotten.

When all is saturated in blue richer than Drakken's coat-of-labs, you turn and make your way back to the beach, where the Diamonds' huddled outline still marks the sky. They talk to one another in low tones that hold no anger, only misplacement – the feeling of having arrived on a previously unexplored planet, glancing this way and that to make sense of the scene around you. Beyond them, a group of healed Gems swarm Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl, questions and exclamations of gratitude bursting from their mouths. You recall the stoic, removed customs of Homeworld, all of which these Gems ignore; they touch whoever is within reach and cling to them, greeting old friends whom they never had the chance to bid farewell.

A few meters closer to the ocean, Steven rests near a clump of beach grass, holding a small, hollowed musical instrument. His fingers stroll across the strings and produce a deep, cheerful lilt. His eyes light up as he sees you approach and he reaches out a hand to clasp yours. "Hey, Lapis," he says.

You sink down beside him, the sand beneath the seat of your pants cooled by the evening. "Hey, Steven. You still doing all right?"

"Yup. I had a nice talk with White Diamond."

You snicker. "Now there's something nobody has probably ever said before.

"And it would be you, Steven," you add when the joy does not immediately return to his face.

"I tried to talk to her about maybe not colonizing other planets anymore, because it just makes a whole lot of new trouble." The instrument lies limply in Steven's lap like one of the boards from the barn. "I don't think she quite gets it yet."

You would have been surprised if she did, though you know this would be no comfort.

It is Dr. Drakken, instead, who speaks up. "You've already done more today than anyone could ever ask of you, Steven. Rome wasn't built in a day, after all." He chuckles and raps his fingertips together. "Or perhaps the better analogy would be – Rome didn't fall in a day, either."

You missed Rome – it rose and fell during the time you were in the mirror, which was much longer than a day – but you understand what he means.

Steven appears to as well, because his body relaxes against yours. "Also, she might still think I'm my mom," he says.

Drakken has nothing soothing to offer now. His eyes are glass paneling, exhausted, and his normally loquacious mouth hangs open, empty of even his jumbled grunts. It occurs to you that this is the first chance he has had to rest since your group boarded a ship bound for Homeworld.

"Don't worry. You'll set her straight," you say, elbowing Steven. "You're way different from your mom."

"Thank goodness," Steven says. "She made a lot of mistakes."

You grab his shoulders and flip him around to face you, seeking his startled eyes with your own. "You're not one of them. You know that, right?" Your words come out small yet fierce and resolute, like a brigade of Ruby soldiers.

Steven sighs. "I think I'm starting to, yeah."

"Good. 'Cause if you didn't, I would just have to keep bugging you –" you tickle him under one arm – "and bugging you –" you tickle under his other arm – "until you got it."

Steven's husky giggle is as pure as the day you first met him.

"Honestly, though," you say in a quieter voice, "if the only good thing your mom ever did in her whole life was make you, it would be enough for me." You lean forward and rest your chin atop Steven's head and for the first time, you thank whatever remains of Rose Quartz for her decision to forfeit her life so that someone else could begin, someone without foreknowledge or hatred. "Not that I'm the boss of that or anything –"

"No, but you're my friend," Steven says. "And I value your opinion."

He sounds so serious that you smile, but it does not make you want to laugh the way it would have a year ago. You remember seeing him on Homeworld: pink and shining, stopping White Diamond's rays with his hexagons, stomping across the room despite her screams, picking his human half up, and folding his arms around him. There is so much power in him that it no longer seems ridiculous when he talks with authority. You used to believe that much power stacked up inside someone could bring about only one ending, which was not a happy one.

Now you glance at the ocean and feel its loyalty as its waves tumble, and it does not frighten you.

Peridot trips up to you, stumbling over her own feet and beaming under her visor as she tows Greg along behind her. "Lapis! The band! The band is performing right now!"

"Phew! Yeah," Greg says. "I forgot they had a gig on the beach tonight."

For an instant, you picture a rubber band, but then you recall that Sadie has started a music group with several of the other young people from Beach City.

Peridot points a tiny finger, and you turn to see that farther down the beach, near where the healed Gems stand with their friends, someone has indeed set up a stage. Humans you know from around town have drifted in to watch, weaving around and among the Gems as though they have always gone through life together. The sight is a warm wave down your back. You let Peridot drag you by the hand down the beach.

She chatters all the way: "You're gonna love this band! Maybe. I think. Their name is 'Sadie Killer and the Suspects,' which I don't entirely understand, but it may be an 'inside joke.' Anyway, they sing a lot of what they call 'horror' songs, which also confuses me, because they're not horrible at all – they're great songs! But I guess they're kind of scary. Some of them are about ghosts or zombies, which I've been told are creatures that died but then came back to life but not all the way. Is that too scary? Will you be scared?"

Something protective docks behind her eyes again. You grin into them. "How about, I'll let you know if I get scared, okay?"

"Okay!" Peridot gives your fingers a squeeze and then bends to pick up Pumpkin, who first runs her tongue across Peridot's face, then stands on her hind legs to lick yours.

"Yeah, Pumpkin," you whisper as you rub her stem. "I love you, too."

Peridot abruptly drops to the sand and sits there cross-legged. You choose to remain standing, slightly adrift from the crowd, so that you are equidistant from the person on your left and from your ocean.

Onstage, a person calls, "Good evening, Beach City!" into a bushy-headed rod that amplifies her voice.

You recognize Sadie, but just barely. Her body is still a solid little tugboat, and her pale yellow hair still reminds you of tufts of cotton, though the ends are now the shade of pond algae. You knew humans could alter the length of their hair, but you never imagined they could change its very prisms, and for a moment your wings rustle eagerly inside your gem as you realize there is still so much to learn about this species. Rather than the donut uniform which you are accustomed to seeing her in, she is bundled in dark pants and a large jacket the same purple-black as the ocean behind her, unbuttoned only at the top of her neck. Red face paint hugs the skin beneath her eyes, as though she has aged at a speed impossible even for Earth life.

Blue Diamond steals closer to the crowd, hands folded at her waist, and watches with curious eyes. Yellow and White Diamond continue to look lost without the air of hostility that has surrounded them for as long as you can remember. No beams of draining light appear as White Diamond blinks, and neither does any desire to grab the people around her and manipulate them into speaking her words. You think back to her rage in her head ship and it suddenly makes sense: A star always flares its brightest just before it collapses.

"Are you ready to rock?" Sadie cries.

Peridot gives an affirmative cheer, and you join in, depending on the mass of humans to drown you out.

A boy named Sour Cream bends over a keyboard, electronic notes ringing from it at his touch. After that, you lose track of Earth-minutes. The longer you live on Earth, the slower they seem to become, Homeworld's timetable fading away. You can only measure time by the ocean's tide, and if the sea does not feel hurried, then neither do you.

Sadie screams in some songs and warbles in others; some songs are accompanied by a fierce beat and others an eerie, asymmetrical melody. Peridot was correct in warning you about ghosts and zombies, and other imaginary beasts you have not heard of also stalk the words of the songs. They are dark, but it is a silly darkness, nothing like the darkness you have known in your life.

You are not sure how long it has been when the first truly scary thing happens.

You feel the oscillation before you hear it, an inclement churn of the air above you, and even before you bring your head up to look, you know nothing good can come of this. Only one civilization has perfected soundless interstellar travel, and that is Homeworld.

The ship that appears above you is constructed entirely of triangles and vicious lines, its front ends meeting in a diamond peak sharper than Peridot's head, each of its four corners reinforced by a girder that extends far beyond the ship's body. You recognize it from the sleek new fleet of ships you saw when you returned to Homeworld after five thousand years gone. It confused you, then, how a ship with such an odd shape and no visible support engine could stay in the air. Now you see a green energy scintillating at the end of each girder, and though you know this must be what sustains it, it is no energy you can identify, discovered while you were away.

Its officious green metal, notched from the battles it has survived, confirms it. Ships like this are afforded only to Emeralds, a class of Gems so Elite that even Lapis Lazulis duck their heads when they pass by.

The ship sets itself on the ground, sand blowing away from it. You grab Peridot's hand and alert the ocean, though you doubt even an Emerald would stand a chance against all three Diamonds and Steven.

When the ship's hatch opens and a glistening silver ramp extends to the ground, you turn and stare at the Gem who stands in the hatchway. She is no Emerald but a Rutile; rather, they are Rutile twins, their bodies not fused but merged, sharing a hip, each with a head, a leg, and an arm. It is an old defect that sometimes occurs when an Injector does not leave enough space between two Gems for them to grow. Such Gems would not qualify to exist on Homeworld, let alone to ride on an Emerald's ship.

This does not escape White Diamond, either. She draws back, her lip recoiling – but that is all.

"Well, we made it, everybody! Welcome to Earth!" someone calls from deeper in the ship. You recognize this voice, though not with the vein of confidence that runs through it. Other Gem figures appear behind the twins, a rare orange Padparadscha Sapphire who has no visible flaws and an enormous, multi-Gem fusion shaped like springtime's caterpillars, nose a large soft knob and eyes scattered across her face. The four-armed Gem who stands nervously beside them must be a fusion as well; the rich magenta of her skin and the weaving texture of her hair bear a marked resemblance to Garnet, suggesting a Ruby component.

Padparadscha clasps her hands. "I can't believe it! We are about to touch down on Earth, where we will all be safe!"

You bite your lip to hold back a laugh. Now you understand why she stands with Off-Color Gems: her future vision is broken, and she can only predict things that have already happened. This happens every now and then with Sapphires, and even the Diamonds do not know why, though they have complicated theories involving mineral deficiencies and rushed Emergences.

The smaller fusion sees the Diamonds first. "Well, we're cracked," she says, with resignation rather than fear, a response shaped by a life on Homeworld opposite of yours.

"No, no, no! Wait!" All heads, human and Gem alike, turn toward Steven as he calls from the center of the crowd. He wafts one arm toward Homeworld's rulers and the other toward the ship full of Gems they consider refuse. "Diamonds, meet the Off-Colors. Off-Colors…meet the Diamonds."

White Diamond's eyebrows lower in distaste, yet she makes no move toward the Off-Colors, stayed perhaps by Yellow Diamond's rare expression of confusion and her hand on White's arm. Blue Diamond inclines her neck ever so slightly toward the ship, her face open and ready.

That is when the Off-Color Gems step to the sides, and the person who first spoke appears, wobbling atop long skinny legs down the ramp. He is a man, or possibly a boy a few years short of becoming one, so you know he cannot be a Gem. You squint at him and then remember: Steven's human friend Lars, left behind on Homeworld after Steven stood trial there. In the aftershock of your own decision to leave, you did not spare any time to worry about his safety. The thought sends guilt rippling down your back; you feel it tear through your gem and then, amazingly, turn and sail away, not banished but only content that it has done its job.

Sadie, still clutching the voice-amplifying rod, walks across the stage and drops to the ground as Lars descends the ramp.

Like her, he has the same outline painted in different colors. He has turned pink, even pinker than Steven, his skin matching Lion's fur and his hair matching Lion's mane. You vaguely recall Peridot mentioning that Lars was badly injured on Homeworld, and Steven's tears were the sole things to save him. He wobbles, readjusting to gravity, yet Sadie doesn't appear much steadier approaching him. They stop several centimeters apart from one another and stare.

"Hey, Sadie," Lars said, the words like feathers. He grins at her as though in a daze, his lips quivering.

"Hey, Lars," Sadie says. "So…you're a space pirate now."

Lars's grin seems to solidify. "And you're a punk rock singer now."

"I think it suits us," Sadie says.

Lars chuckles, a hearty, authentic sound you have never heard before. "Yeah," he says, even more quietly. "I think it does."

His arms, draped in an imperial robe that also once belonged to an Emerald, bend around her, and a moment later their mouths find each other. It is a brief, stumbling kiss, not all like the ones on television, yet Peridot sighs dreamily and slouches against you as if a pairing she likes has finally come to be.

"Ooh, look!" Padparadscha coos. "They're going to kiss!" The crowd titters gently.

After another moment, Lars and Sadie pull apart, spots of red high on their cheeks.

"Well." Sadie lifts her voice-amplifying rod and turns to Steven. "I guess that's my cue to turn this thing over to Steven."

Steven points to his chest and wrinkles his forehead.

"Yeah, you! Get up here, you little stinker."

Steven steps on to the stage and Sadie rests the rod in a metal stand in front of him. Closing his eyes, he raises his instrument and begins to once again pluck at the strings.

"We," he sings, "are the Crystal Gems. We always save the day."

From behind, you watch Garnet gather Pearl to her with one arm and gather Amethyst with the other.

"And if you think we can't, we'll always find a way. That's why the people of this world believe in –"

Steven's eyes shoot to you, slide to Peridot, move to Bismuth, and then drift across the crowd of healed Gems that he surely already counts as friends.

"Every – single – one – of us," he pronounces, "and Steven!"

You are the first to applaud, and this time you do not care if the crowd notices you. It catches on, sweeping from person to person until even Yellow and Blue Diamond are caught up in it. Dr. Drakken's shout, though dulled with fatigue, still rises above all other noise.

"Thank you, Beach City! And, hey, a lot of you wouldn't be here today without some great new friends of mine! So let's have a big hand for…the Diamonds!" Steven says.

He shifts his instrument to rest in the clamp of his arm and begins to clap. You join in, and the Diamonds' former subjects stamp their feet and cheer.

Yellow Diamond holds up her hands, effectively stilling the crowd. If you did not know better, you would think she was blushing. "Thank you, citizens of Earth," she says, her forceful voice faltering. "We will take our leave now and leave you in Pink's – Steven's – capable hands."

Amid more cheers, the Diamonds climb into their ship, now reconnected after being split for so many centuries. An instant before the pink hatch closes a horned, shaggy-haired figure, miniscule compared to the Diamonds, hustles inside. She is going home, you realize, something you would not have credited to her the sense to do.

White Diamond awakens the ship. An instant before the pink legs begin to jog toward takeoff, Blue Diamond raises her arm-ship and salutes Steven. It is a reflection you will gladly pull up for the rest of your existence.

The pink legs hop into the air, and then the Diamonds are gone, jaunting across the sky, headed for the planet you once believed to be your home.

Now it cannot be undone. Now it becomes real to you, and your gem swells as though trying contain the entire ocean.

A squeal, a sound you are surprised still has a place within you, jumps from you, and you throw your arms around Peridot, Pumpkin yipping merrily between you. Your eyes blur as they travel over the legions of Gems who were tormented monsters this morning and who now laugh with Bismuth and introduce themselves to the people of Beach City. Sadie takes the stage again, and you do not hear the cries of their suffering anymore; you hear only the music.

"Who wants a hot dog?" Greg says, and you spin to face him and the machine he has constructed, a black circle perched atop three spindled legs. Beneath strips of metal like the ones on the front of the truck at the barn, embers pop and dance.

Unsurprisingly, Bismuth takes to this machine right away, grabbing hot dogs from Greg's hand, skewering them on Pearl's spear, and dangling them over the circle of fire to cook. "Just think," you whisper to Peridot. "If Yellow Diamond had just stuck around for a few more minutes, she would've finally gotten to see what a hot dog is."

Her squawks of laughter do not disappoint.

A tiny, tamed lion with one large Sapphire-eye and no mane passes by. She must be what Peridot called Garnet's kitten. Pumpkin bounds toward her, her tail-vine wagging in glee, and the kitten elevates the fur on her back and retreats.

"No! Wait! She's really friendly, I promise!" Peridot lunges for Pumpkin, lands on her stomach, and chooses to stay there, her arms clutching Pumpkin's legs. Pumpkin continues to bark, and Peridot giggles anew, sounds that no longer annoy you.

You are tired now. After a day like today, you do not need sleep, but you do need rest. You find a thick, low box, one of Greg's noise-transmitters, and sink down beside it. You fold your arms atop its clean level surface and lower your chin to rest on them. Your eyes close.

Behind them are nothing but still black waters, a gentle, unbroken cycle you memorized long ago. It immerses you, and you let yourself slide under; you do not need to jolt upright and search the area around you for threats, for you are no longer a wartime refugee. You belong on this beautiful, chaotic planet where a Peridot and a Lapis can be best friends, a Bismuth's life can center on houses rather than weapons, and a Pearl can make her own decisions.

The sand shifts as someone sits down beside you. Small fingers begin to twiddle in your hair, their touch so light, bouncing, and absentminded that they might not even be aware of their own circling and sifting.

Your mind returns to the fact that you once depended on Homeworld and believed its every action to be necessary for your safety. Yet safety turned out to be a hologram without mass. Homeworld does not need leaders to maintain that façade; it needs leaders that will know what to do when plans inevitably shatter and peril catches up. Even now, as you nestle in closer to Drakken's organic warmth and his liveliness, there is no safety to lull you to sleep, but there is something greater, something that swirls in your gemstone and feeds out into your body, opening you up and pouring out darkness that had become so familiar to you.

There is peace.

~And so we come to the end of Change Your Mind. . . but the story is far from over. And, yes, I remain a Larsadie shipper (at least, I ship them after all they have matured and experienced a great deal of positive character growth). I've certainly got nothing against Shep, but I definitely didn't feel like we came to know them well enough to convince me they were meant to be with Sadie. Yeah, I get that that was kind of the point, but knowing that still doesn't make it a satisfying wrap-up to Lars and Sadie's story. ~