You float in space above Earth, and from afar you see its ocean, once the loveliest sight on the entire planet, turn to something hideous as it consumes its fragile land masses.

Yet somehow, you are also close enough to see the damage it does. It rips grass from its roots and rises above the tops of buildings. It presses against the barn from all sides and squeezes it until it bursts, splinters of wood and tufts of pretend animals zinging through the air as the humans shriek and climb for higher ground.

One of your hands is curled backward, trying to drag the water back toward you and away from the organics below. Your other hand is thrust forward, fingers rigid and earnest, determined to finish what your other hand tries to stop. You pull at your wrist, hard, but it will not be moved.

Dr. Drakken's silly frightened face disappears beneath waves of murk.

You scream, hoping the ocean will understand the desperation in your voice, but the sound is struck down by an emptiness in your mouth as soon as you open it. Your eyes will not close. Your head will not turn.

You stand there and watch the planet you love die.

You swerve to the side, and your face hits sleek cloth. Your eyes open to warmth and light and birdsong, and you take a moment to still your trembling limbs and wipe the sweat from your forehead. You lie inside a banana hammock, a bed that can exist on no other planet but Earth. Its destruction was a cold dream of guilt and fright.

Your fingers find the zipper and unpeel the hammock enough for you to slip out. The end of the fabric catches on your shoe and threatens to overturn you, but you call out your wings before you can fall, hovering there as you work your foot free.

Sunlight streams through the window, over your books, and across the pale red floorboards, turning them near brown and emphasizing the pink-Topaz pigment of the board beneath the hammock's base, one that is clearly older and more worn than the rest. Bending down, you rest your palm against its gentle roughness and remember that parts of the barn survive. Once you straighten up again, you turn away from the window; when you check the sky today it will not be from behind glass.

You open your bedroom door and brace yourself for another day.

Peridot leaps from the sofa and dashes to you, a small hand clutching her tablet. "Good morning, Lapis!"

"Morning, Peridot."

Her gaze is compassionate, though she wields it like a Redeye probe as it scans your face. She must detect evidence of the hallucination from which you awakened, for the skin around her gem ripples. "Another dream?" she says.

You nod. "Terraforming," you say, answering her next question before she asks it. The word seems to diminish every time you speak it, though it still feels large and heavy like a Quartz's fist. "Again. It's really starting to get old."

The two of you stand there for a moment with your honesty sitting in the air. This is how you talk to one another now, since the day a few months ago when Spinel tried to poison the Earth. Everyone knows everything now, and while it is an odd feeling to you, you recognize it from the lakes you clean – the feeling they have once you have sifted out their pollution and taken it somewhere else.

You watch Peridot's eyes gather data and arrange it, and then she shifts her tablet behind her back so she has enough room to give you a quick hug. She crosses into the kitchen and flings open a cabinet that crouches above the floor, revealing a sparkling, beeping array of knobs, wires, and dials, the machines in which she takes solace. You smile at her back and open the front door to search the sky for an attack that could come at any time.

Now, however, does not seem to be that time. This morning's sky looks much the same as yesterday morning's: thinly-clouded and blue, though of a slightly darker tint. It is endless and innocent, as if it has never known violence or deceit or mockery.

Crazy Lace gives you a wave, and you wave back, careful not to startle the small gray bird she and Snowflake are watching. You shut the door and turn back to Peridot, who eyes a piece of protuberant plastic on her shelf of instruments with a suspicious expression. She runs her fingers across a row of three buttons and rotates a dial to first one side, then the other.

"That's strange," she says.

"Uh-oh," you say without conviction. You do not fear the strangeness that comes from Earth anymore. "What is it?"

Peridot leans closer to the readout on the small square computer screen that used to belong to Greg. "Hmmm. It appears we're detecting signs of life in Amethyst's Kindergarten."

You lower yourself to the sofa and prop your feet on the farthest cushion. "Life? In a Kindergarten?"

"I know!" Peridot says. "The two concepts should be mutually exclusive. Unless…"

She leaves the words unfinished, pokes several more buttons, and drags a switch down the length of its panel.

"Mmm-hmm," she says, squinting at whatever the screen tells her. "Hmmm-mm. Just as I suspected. It isn't organic. But that doesn't make any sense! There haven't been any Gems there since Amethyst's Emergence, and that was thousands of years ago! Surely they don't have another latecomer. If they do, she must have been cooked down to Pumpkin's size!"

Pumpkin lifts her head from the rug that was once a beach towel and lets her tail swish back and forth.

Peridot slams both hands onto the shelf of instruments, but when she glances up at you, the annoyance has already receded from her face. "You wanna go and check it out? Provided, of course, that Amethyst accompanies us?"

"Provided, of course, that Drakken and Amethyst accompany us," you say. A thought swims through your mind, and rather than wait for it to ebb away you speak it aloud. "Her Kindergarten was one of the last ones they tested before Blue Diamond told me Earth was ready to be converted to a full-scale colony. It'll be a lot easier to go there if he goes with us."

Peridot turns away from the computer; her eyes appear calmer and wiser outside of the screen's artificial green light. "Oh," she says in a voice soft for Peridot. "I understand."

You don't argue that she doesn't, not even within yourself. Every time you raise the topic of the other Lapises and your fear that they will succeed where you failed, Peridot touches your arm lightly and reminds that she too left "unfinished business" on Homeworld, which brought Aquamarine and Topaz to Earth with a list of humans to collect. Why, you wonder, is it so much harder to remember Peridot's time in darkness than your own?

"Of course bringing Dr. Drakken along will be to our advantage," she continues. "That almost went without saying anyway." Her hand flutters, dismissing any other possibility. "And factoring in this new information, his presence becomes very close to essential."

You know what she is saying: that she wants to make sure you are all right.

"So – how about I retrieve Amethyst, and I let you retrieve Drakken?" Peridot's head bobs like a cork in water. "Then we shall assemble at the Little Homeworld warp pad!"

You snort. "'Assemble'?" It is not the oddest word she has used, but it seems a touch too grand when two of you will be long and skinny and the other two smaller than Steven.

Peridot rolls her eyes. "Ye-es. That means 'get over here and do a cool pose.'"

"I'll be sure to tell Drakken that," you say, only partially mocking her. "He likes doing cool poses."

You open your front door again and give your surroundings one more quick glance. All you see are the other citizens of Little Homeworld, your friends and fellow immigrants, who call out greetings to you and Peridot as you pass by.

You let Peridot ride the warp pad to the temple first and then step onto it after she has transported, glimmering, across the sky. You hold your arms out and fill yourself with images of Middleton: the protective roof shaped like a large hat on the restaurant where you hung your odd-job flyers, the brain that stands on two legs and wears glasses on the shop where you bought the objects that now decorate your house, and most of all, the splotches of bright blue on the otherwise nondescript house that Dr. Drakken calls home. An instant later, you land before a group of straggling, tangled trees; their branches, heavy with summer leaves, nod in the breeze as if to say hello.

From there it is only a short flight to the street where Drakken lives. At the sight of the blue circles against the sandstone paint, you stop and grin, feeling, as you always do, like a ship that has gotten its first glimpse of the harbor.

Ordinarily, Dr. Drakken would be at work in the underground labs of Global Justice today, but those are closed for repairs – "due to a chemical fire that I'm fairly certain I didn't start," is what he told you several days ago. You rap on his front door and he calls, "Coming!" and then says in a voice meant for someone else, "Just a second!" You hear him fumbling and stammering his way to the door, and then he sweeps it open and stands there with his new portable computer balanced on his hip. His face, already bright, takes on the look of a summer sky when he sees you.

"Oh, good, it's Lapis! Hi, Lapis!" Drakken pulls his computer forward and starts to turn the screen toward you, and you scarcely have the opportunity to prepare yourself for the illusion of imprisonment before you are looking at a dark-streaked face and a neck twisted into a coil. You vaguely recognize the opulent interior of the Diamonds' palace behind her.

She waves at you. "Hey, Lapis."

"Hey, Spinel," you say, cautious. She has a different smile these days, warm and lively rather than bitter and broken, and yet you can still feel the Rejuvenator pressing against your back every time you look at her.

Drakken sits down in his doorway; it would now be far too much effort to maneuver around him, so you slouch on the porch beside him. "I think I need to get off for now," he says to Spinel. "Is that all right with you?"

"Yuh-huh," Spinel says, her eyes trying to be brave. She clenches her hands together. "Can I talk to ya tomorrow?"

"Absolutely you can!" Drakken gives her a small, fluttering wave. "Toodle-oo until then!"

Spinel giggles and shapes a heart with her fingers. Her face disappears, leaving Drakken's screen covered with images of wildflowers and scattered icons like the ones on Peridot's tablet. He tugs the computer's top flap down and turns to you.

"So, how's Spinel?" you say.

"She's doing so much better. She's got her old room back at the Palace – the one she shared with Pink Diamond, right? She thought she'd never see it again – and she says all the other Diamonds are being super-nice to her. This little arrangement turned out to be just what they needed." Drakken lifts his chin as though the arrangement was of his invention. "And Yellow Diamond did the coolest thing yesterday!"

"What coolest thing?"

"She took one of her bubbles where she kept the Gems she'd shattered, and she got out the – errrr –shards." He handles the word carefully, but you still flinch. "Oh, no, Lapis, it's okay," he hastens to add. "This is a happy story, because she got them all together and built them back into the shape of the original gem – you know, the stone-gem. And the person-Gem, she…she came back."

Even in his strong expansive voice, the words somehow sound too small for what they mean. For the first time since you made your confession, tears sting your eyes. "She came back?" you repeat.

Gem shards contain fragments of consciousness, just enough awareness to puzzle over how disconnected they are from everything else, including the other pieces of themselves. If not bubbled, they will reform as a single body part and crawl along in misery, attempting to find something, though they have forgotten what. None of them have the chance for the peaceful life after death that humans are offered.

Yet now they can be restored. They can live again. Relief drapes your back like one of Mama Lipsky's blankets, thick and warm but with a scratching weave that matches your envy that Yellow Diamond can undo what she has done.

You wrap your arms around Drakken's waist. "So it's really over," you whisper into his coat-of-labs.

"It really is." Drakken tilts his head. "Um, what is 'it,' exactly?"

You shrug. "I don't know. All the stuff that was messed up about Homeworld, I guess. All the stuff that made me realize it wasn't really home."

Drakken sticks his arm into the air. "Okay, this is probably a stupid question, but Dr. Director says there's no such thing as a stupid question, so I'll just go ahead and ask – you're not planning to go back, are you? Because that would make things really difficult…"

"Maybe to visit," you tell him before his panic can rise. "But I like this place way too much. Plus, one of Peridot's weird beepy machines picked up some weird readings in Amethyst's old Kindergarten, and she wants us to come check it out. Like I'm gonna let you guys do that without me."

Excitement leaps into Drakken's eyes, and they expand to fit it. "Ooh! A mystery. Sounds quite intriguing!"

"Yup. And when we get back to Little Homeworld, Peridot expects us all to assemble and do a cool pose."

"Sounds delightful," Drakken says. "I'm good at cool poses."

You scoop him up by the wrists and sprint across the sky to the Middleton warp pad. He screams beneath you, but fear does not crowd the sound as it did when you first lifted him from the ground. The two of you reappear in Little Homeworld next to Amethyst and Peridot, Amethyst holding her whip in one clenched fist and Peridot balancing a handheld device the size of a large book and adorned with flashing lights. She cries "Assemble!" upon seeing you; you would have expected nothing less.

Dr. Drakken spreads his fingers wide and thrusts them upward, throwing his head back in a triumphant laugh at the same moment two yellow petals blossom from his neck. You freeze in the midst of a dance move you saw once on TV, a move that is nothing like your fusion dance, the sides of your body tweaking back and forth and your fingers forming a forked branch around your eyes. Peridot shoves the device over her triangle of hair and breaks into a smile that catches the sun. Amethyst sticks two fingers in her nose, snickering at Peridot's protests.

"We did awesome," you tell Peridot as Amethyst activates the warp pad.

The world spins and blurs from ground to sky and back again before you touch down, and then Amethyst's Kindergarten looms over you, mountainous and fierce, the holes gouged into its face frighteningly exact.

You step down from the warp pad, and your shoe startles a layer of dust into the air. There is no dirt here, only filth; the ground is smooth and bare and cold, just as the Diamonds wanted it.

Just as you would have turned it for them.

It is a part of you and it always will be, but you have learned that humans and Gems are not like bushes and trees, fated to stay wherever their roots attach. Like seeds, they can be picked up and taken away by the wind, carried to places impossible to fathom. There is a rift between you and your past now, and nothing can fill it again.

Peridot crouches and wanders in a circle, frowning down at the gyroscope on her box as it twirls and trills. Drakken skitters ahead of her, his eyes as stricken with curiosity as they are with disgust, and you are left alone with Amethyst. She is part of your family, but you have often reflected on how little the two of you have in common: Amethyst slept in the ground through the events that shaped you. She is bold in ways you are just beginning to discover. Her uneven voice carries across distances that would engulf yours.

To your surprise, however, Amethyst does not hurry to escape your company. She bunches her shoulders and works the words to the corner of her mouth. "Kinda sucks, doesn't it?" she hisses to you. "About Jasper, I mean."

You realize then that you and Amethyst do have one thing in common – one cruel, wounded thing that can never be forgotten.

"Doesn't everything about Jasper suck?" You try to deliver a scornful laugh, but it will not come when you notice how it contradicts the sadness at the corners of Amethyst's eyes. You untie your anchors and let your voice sail where it needs to go. "Were you hoping she'd suck a little less since Steven helped her?"

"Hey, it worked pretty well for some other Gems." Amethyst's elbow drives into your side, the force of her strength behind it. Unlike the others, Amethyst has never treated you as though you are something light and fragile, and you realize that you respect her for it.

"I just…I don't understand how she couldn't," you say. "After everything she'd done to Steven, he could have just kept her in her bubble until the end of time, and nobody would've blamed him. But he got her out and saved her with all the rest of the Corruptions. How can that not matter to her?"

It is, you are sure, the most you have ever said to Amethyst.

She just shakes her head, her lips grim. You wonder if she is remembering what you were not there to see: how Jasper pushed Steven away, refusing to let him heal her even as the Corruption grew over her. She could not have hurt him more if she had slammed her helmeted head into his again.

You glance upward out of habit and cringe at the sight of the Kindergarten's sky; it is the color of ash after everything else has burned down, tinged with lavender and fogged. You have read stories at your slumber parties with Steven and Peridot about apparitions, remainders of things that have already lived and died, lingering around unhappy places, and were they not just stories, you could easily envision them here in the dimness that will never surrender to black, peaceful night. Dr. Drakken is the only organic life around, and he seems confused by the lack of objects for his fingers to explore as he follows Peridot, who navigates by the beeping of her box with her head hunched toward the ground.

"Yup, home sweet home." Amethyst reaches up to run the flat of her hand over a boulder taller than she is. "Hard to imagine how I ever liked it here," she says, although you suspect it is not as hard as she claims it is.

"Well, I used to think Homeworld was pretty great." A feeling both painful and welcome spreads through your gem as you remember a sun once clearly visible and how you could watch it cast the illusion that it rose and fell at the start and close of days. So much of Homeworld was powered by illusion.

"Yeah, you were, like, in love with that place." Amethyst turns closer to the boulder, her profile strong against the fog. Her skin is roughly the same shade as the cliff face where the indentations stand, her hair seeming to reflect the sky, and you can see how the life that was stripped from this place went into her. You wonder if she feels as guilty about that as you do about terraforming, even though she truly, genuinely had no choice.

She runs a thumb under her eye. With small, slow steps, you approach her and rest your hand on her shoulder. Amethyst doesn't swat it aside, and the two of you stand together.

"Come on," Amethyst says after a minute. "Let's go catch up with the nerds before they nerd themselves right into trouble."

You smile at her. "Right."

Drakken and Peridot have left an easy trail to follow. Amethyst shuffles after them, her feet scuffing over ground that they know well. You remembering standing beside Blue Diamond in the base on the moon as she honed the viewfinder on this Kindergarten and told you others would be created with the help of your craftsmanship. Even then, you did not find it pleasant to look at, but that was unimportant compared to the spreading of the empire. Everything was.

Peridot's voice blasts into your thoughts, scattering them, and you are grateful for it. "Oh my gosh!" She drops the box with a thud and a jingle and then trips over it, her face flat atop the emptiness. "Is that what I think it is?" she cries as she pushes herself upright again.

Your eyes turn in the direction she points. It is a flower, bright blue like the circles painted on Drakken's house, somehow poking out of stone without soil or water, its petals turned toward the sky as though in hope.

"Looks like a flower to me," Amethyst says.

"Well, that's exactly what it is!" Peridot leaves the box behind, reverence dragging out her steps as she approaches the flower. "But – but it can't be! The land around the Kindergarten was thoroughly sterilized. No organic life could possibly survive there! Unless –

"Unless what?" you say. You fly over to examine the flower with her.

"Unless the land somehow repaired itself. It's had thousands of years to do it!" Peridot gasps, hands on her cheeks. "Could even the Kindergarten not be beyond saving?"

You doubt it, but you do not tell her that.

She gropes for the flower, and when you shake your head at her, she says, "I'm not going to pick it, silly! I just want to…touch it." She leans closer.

"Stop!"

The shout came from Dr. Drakken. Petals surround his face and yet he doesn't seem to notice, his eyes frantic as his fingers shake the air. "Stop!" he says again. "That – that's not a flower!"

The ground beneath you breaks open.

You and Peridot are pushed apart. From the crack in the earth rises something hulking and deformed.

The creature's body is a droplet shape like your gemstone but bulging, purple flesh poured into the frame. The eyes are punctured slits, the mouth a black vent. She rolls onto her stomach and stands upon legs that do not look capable of supporting her weight. The blue blemish all of you mistook for a flower is connected to her forehead by a thin strip.

Peridot screams, a sound that turns your back to ice. On the other side of the creature, Drakken joins her with, "Holy sweet niblets! What is that thing?"

You watch Amethyst lock her teeth together. "One of my sisters," she says from between them.

She unfolds her whip and lets it snap against the ground. Your wings are already out, carrying you around the misshapen Gem to Drakken and Peridot.

"Wha?" Drakken says, staring at Amethyst. He blinks, bewildered, as you tuck him under your left arm and nudge Peridot under your right and climb higher into the sky. You set them down only when you have reached the top of the cliff face.

"It's a Corrupted Amethyst," you tell him. You have never seen one before. You thought all of the Amethysts made it off planet before the Corruption Bomb touched down. The Quartzes you were forced to watch fall were of other varieties: Angel Aura Quartzes, Cherry Quartzes, Raspberry Quartzes.

Jaspers.

Drakken swallows. "Oh, snap."

"I reiterate his statement," Peridot says. "What do we do?"

You peer over the edge of the cliff and watch as the Corruption circles her fellow Amethyst, her jaws gnashing open and shut in response to the whip flicking near her face. Your thoughts become a river, one running into the next, all else swept away. "Those little legs aren't going to support her for long. Drakken, could you tie them up under her so she can't get away?"

"Tie them?" Drakken repeats, and then laughs nervously as a green shoot creeps from his neck. "Oh, yes, with my vines! Splendid! What will you guys do?"

You frown. "Well, there's not a lot of water around here. But I'll take what I can and see if it's enough to do anything with. If it's not, I could just distract her by flying Peridot all around her. You know, annoy her."

"I am very good at annoying people," Peridot declares.

Drakken gives an absent nod. "So what'll we do with the Amethyst…I mean the Amethyst who isn't our Amethyst…the Amethyst who…"

"The Corruption?" Peridot speaks with exaggerated patience.

"Yes, her!" Drakken's fingers click together. "Do we still poof her even though we know we can cure her now?"

"We don't have the cure," you tell him. "Steven does. And she'll have to stay still for us to dunk her in it, and pretty much the only way that's going to happen is if she's poofed and bubbled."

Drakken nods, a tinge of sadness leaking into his eyes.

"I know you don't want to hurt her," you say, "but trust me, she's gonna suffer a lot more if we don't do this."

The wind sighs against the cliffs and Drakken sighs with it, unsettled yet accepting.

You deliver him to the ground and swoop up again with Peridot, letting her dangle like a hammock from your arms; she giggles, her earlier fear replaced with anticipation. Below you, Amethyst stalks in front of the Corruption, weaving out of her path every time the Corruption charges her, switching her whip back and forth. You realize once again how wrong Jasper was about her – she is as pugnacious as any Quartz twice her size.

Dr. Drakken shifts his attention to the Corruption's legs, which clump beneath her, close to her underbelly. She lifts one fierce foot to swipe at Amethyst, and you see a rounded purple gem glint beneath it.

"Try to get her to fall on her back or her side!" you call down. "Her gem's on her stomach!"

"Got it!" Amethyst says.

Drakken's face draws into an expression you recognize, distant yet resolute, the one he always wears when he is working calculations in his head. He rarely does this quietly, and while you don't hear his thoughtful grunts, the Corruption must, for she looks at him and lowers her head, the growth that appeared to be a flower tautening. Several more petals appear on Drakken's neck.

You fly in front of the Corruption before she can take a step toward him. "Hey, Corruption!" Peridot says. She pushes the tip of her tongue between her lips and wiggles it at the Corruption. "Nnyn!"

Whether or not the Corruption recognizes it as an insult, it distracts her from Drakken. She lets out a roar and runs after you, gnashing at Peridot with jagged teeth that poke from her mouth like rocks from white water, closing them only centimeters short of Peridot's leg.

"Whoa! Careful, there," Peridot says with a nervous laugh. "I can't spare that one, not this time."

You feel the beginnings of a smile somewhere inside yourself, because Peridot has told you that story: When she was still the person Homeworld had made her to be, strong and cold with her limb enhancers, she detached one of her metallic feet to escape from Steven. He gave it back to her afterward, and she kept it with her in the barn while you lived there.

You lift Peridot higher, and the Corruption leaps as if to follow you. A vine arcs through the air and lashes her legs together, tangling front feet with back feet and knocking her off-balance. She capsizes, the contours of her gemstone pointed toward the misted sky. You hear Drakken shouting in triumph.

With one motion Amethyst snaps her whip around the Corruption, cinching it in the area where most creatures have a neck. She gives the tips a jerk, sharply and with the conviction of someone who does not want to have to try again.

The other Amethyst's time as a monster ends. Her gem falls to the bare earth. The next time she opens her eyes, her mind will belong to her again.

"Woo-hoo!" Peridot's shout skids between the canyon walls.

Dr. Drakken lets out a breath of relief and falls onto his backside. "All right, we did it! Great work, team!" He pauses. "Wait, did you ever notice that you can say 'Great work, team!' and 'Great teamwork!' and they both essentially mean the same thing? I mean, the first one sounds more personable, and the second's more of an evaluation…"

He is rambling to calm himself down, and you do not stop him.

Amethyst kneels and picks up the gemstone, which slips neatly into her palm. On her face you see only triumph. The poofing of a Corrupted Gem is no longer a time for grief and solemnity; it has become a celebration. She gives the gem's center facet a gentle tap, and the familiar pink bubble takes shape around it.

"Come on, girlfriend," she says to it. "We're takin' you home to Steven."

You wonder if she said the same thing to you as you lay unconscious on a foreign island.

Steven, of course, seems delighted to see the four of you when he opens his front door. "Hey, guys!" His eyes fall to the bubble in Amethyst's hands and grow bright as sunshine. "Aww, you found another one."

"From my Kindergarten," Amethyst says.

"She was hiding underground, disguising herself as a flower," Peridot adds.

Steven's forehead creases. "What?"

Peridot dives into the story and splashes around in it, explaining every minute detail of the Corruption's appearance and defeat, Drakken's voice layering over hers. You glance at Amethyst just in time to see her shoulders wobble. She now knows what she would have become had she not still been cooking inside the Earth when the Diamonds' bomb came down.

Steven leads the four of you through the hallway to his bathroom. Peridot flops to her back on the floor and tracks a finger across its surface of smooth squares, looking at it as though she gazes upon someone she trusts. You sink down next to her with a smile, and Amethyst scrambles atop the closed lid of the toilet. Dr. Drakken stands, lanky and awkward, behind the door, almost throwing himself into the wall when Steven bends to open the cabinet under the sink. You hear metal bottles clinking against one another as Steven rifles through them, sorting the substances that will clean his hair or the basin where he bathes from the ones that will heal the Corruption.

A few moments later Steven's head and chest reappear, and cradled in his arms are three slim vials of blue, yellow, and white. He tugs the bathing basin's faucet and water begins to flow from the tap; you feel it feel your hope and quicken, coming in spurts. Steven pulls the tabs from the vials, kneels beside the basin, and tips them on their sides, allowing a few drops of each to run into the water.

"What is he doing?" Dr. Drakken demands next to you, his voice almost quiet.

"Shh," you tell him. Silence is not required for this part of healing, yet it feels important to you that this Gem return to a world that does not overwhelm her.

The water comes alive with three bending streaks the colors of the surviving Diamonds. They creep around each other at first as though cautious and wanting to remain independent, and then gather into a loose spiral, embracing but never combining. You try not to stare at the blue substance for too long, but it is what first gave you life, shading your skin to match the ocean and forming the ragged tips of your hair. Even now, you remember opening your eyes as feeling spread to your fingers and toes, knowing the world outside waited for you.

You remember how unafraid you were.

Steven gently pops Amethyst's bubble and plunges the purple gemstone into the basin, seeming not to notice the water rushing over the sleeves of his jacket. His finger pops into and out of his mouth, then into and out of the water, and a glistening pink aura blooms around his hand.

You hear Drakken gasp, and you nudge at his chest. "We should probably wait in the hall," you whisper.

Drakken lets you tow him out the bathroom door, his neck twisted to peer over his shoulder as the aura swells to fill the basin and the pealing of a Gem returning to herself rolls around the room. Amethyst and Peridot follow you, slipping eager grins to each other. The four of you stand to the side of the doorway, allowing Steven to gift his full attention to the Gem whose glowing outline is already materializing in the bathing basin.

Through the gaps where the door's hinges meet its frame you can see the rest of her figure fill in, her head risen almost as high as the ceiling, her hands large enough to hold Bismuth's anvil, her broad shoulders sheathed in what you recognize as Era One Quartz armor. Of course. She still believes there is a war on.

"Welcome back," Steven says.

"What – what's going on? Who are you? Where in the stars am I?" she demands. Her voice has the same grains and ridges in it as Amethyst's does, but it is stronger and rougher. It reminds you of Jasper but also of many other Quartz Gems who live in Little Homeworld and play on the beach. Drakken clutches your arm, and you place your hand over his to reassure him.

"I know, I know. You've got a lot of questions," Steven says. "And I've got answers to probably all of them, and none of it's going to make sense at first. But the first thing you need to know is – you're safe."

"How? How is that possible?" the other Amethyst says. "The last thing I remember…" her words fade as they give way to memory. "…there was this huge light in the sky and all the others were standing on the warp pad screaming for me to hurry. So I jumped really high, and the light came down at the same time I went up. That's it."

Amethyst's side moves against yours, and you look down to see pain fill her eyes.

"The Diamonds sent down a bomb, and it Corrupted you and all but of a few of the other Gems left on Earth," Steven says. "You've been living as a monster for a long time. But we finally found the way to cure you. Me and the Diamonds."

"How do you know the Diamonds?"

"I'm Pink Diamond's – well, she made me, too. Only she did it in a really special way that made it so I got her powers and her gemstone and everything."

There is another pause. Steven must have lifted his shirt, because you hear the Amethyst scoff and say, "Pink Diamond, huh? Looks like a Rose Quartz gem to me."

"Yeah, but check this out." Steven grunts and spangles of pink leak through the space between the door hinges, and you realize he has to be rotating his gem. You didn't know that he had figured out how to do that. "Ta-dah!"

"Oh, wow." You hear a heavy footstep, and then another, boots wet against the floor. "But – I don't remember you. I don't think we ever met."

"That's because Pink Diamond lied. About a lot of stuff." Steven sounds calm, his words strong though curled with regret. "You might wanna sit down for this. It's a long story. And a weird one."

The Amethyst lowers herself to the floor.

You press against the wall and listen to Steven's kind, familiar voice recount the events that led your people to where they are today. The generous, appreciative way he speaks about their accomplishments makes you proud to be a Gem, something you have not felt in quite some time. She nods frequently and makes occasional noises of disbelief. You cannot see her face, but you imagine it folded in confusion as she adjusts to all that is laid out before her: how Homeworld went on without her, the sham of Pink Diamond's death five thousand years ago and the reality of her death sixteen years ago, and even the alienness of referring to another lifeform as "he." None of that, you know, can be easily absorbed.

"So in a way," Steven says at last, "both sides kinda won the war. Earth's not a colony and its life is safe, but the Gems are united again. We're a family, and you can join our family right here on Earth if you want to. There are tons of Gems already here."

Those words tell you it is time. You step into the doorway with Peridot beside you, her fingers tangled with yours. Amethyst sticks her head beneath your arm.

"Whoa," the other Amethyst says.

You can clearly see her face now, the Quartz features obstinate yet not unpleasant unless they choose to be. Stripes cut sideways paths down her cheeks; she still bears the marks of Corruption, as Drakken bears the mark of his old wound. The flower no longer dangles from her forehead, but its pattern etches her forehead, a flat orange circle ringed with blue wedges. Her eyes, large and deep purple, fasten on your hand in Peridot's.

"A Lapis Lazuli…and a Peridot?" The other Amethyst lets out a puzzled laugh. "Associating with each other?"

You realize that you cannot recall how many tiers would keep you and Peridot apart on the Homeworld caste system, and that alone feels like something destructive has been cured.

"Not just associating," Peridot informs her. "We happen to be absolute best friends."

The Amethyst shakes her head. You are reminded that a friendship with Peridot would be aberrant and forbidden on Homeworld, and you wonder how you forgot that in the span of only a few years. It feels like it has been much longer.

The passage of time on Earth seems to function differently than it does on Homeworld. Homeworld time is long but shallow, water stretched thin over miles and left to evaporate in the sun. Earth time is short and small but deep, the same amount of water collected as a tide pool in the sand with life hidden inside it.

Amethyst steps forward and waves at the Gem who stands just outside the bathing basin. "Hey, sis," she says, smiling at the look of bewilderment on the bigger Gem's face. "Yeah, I'm an Amethyst, too. I'm just super-puny 'cuz I stayed in the ground too long. Slept through the whole dang first war, yo!

"But here on Earth, that doesn't matter. It's okay that I don't look like what everybody says a Quartz oughta look like, and it's okay that I'm not as strong as you. I can just be me, exactly the way I was made, and it's not a defect. It's not even a problem." Amethyst lifts confident eyes to the other Gem. "On Earth, you just have to be the best you that you can be. Nobody else. Just you. So – welcome back, yeah. And welcome to Earth."

Organic warmth brushes you as Dr. Drakken crowds into the doorway. "I cordially welcome you to Earth, as well." His tone is hesitant, though it barely manages to keep the buoy-words still; he extends his hand. "Dr. Drakken, resident supplemental supergenius."

"Thanks." The Amethyst squints at him. "Wait, what are you?"

Drakken's stomach flinches against your back, shrinking until you can feel the bony rods across it, but he makes no attempt to reply, even in scattered syllables.

"Jury's still out on him," Amethyst says. Before you can raise your eyebrows at her, she adds, "But we like him."

"Especially Lapis," Peridot says, nodding with authority. "She and Dr. Drakken are what the humans refer to as an 'item'."

"Like a fusion?"

Her rasping voice did not bother you until she spoke this word. Immediately you feel the coldest waters of the ocean press against your legs and see the endless dark close around you like a fist, and this time Drakken's hand finds yours, life pulsing behind his fingerprints. You are not too proud to cling to it.

"Definitely not a fusion," Peridot says, her voice almost stern.

"But enough love to be one," Amethyst puts in.

There is another quiet moment before Steven takes up the conversation again. "Anyway, you can totally go back to Homeworld if you'd like – it probably won't be exactly the way you remembered it, but that might be a good thing. Or you can move into the settlement we built for the Gems who stayed here. We call it Little Homeworld. Either way you choose, you'll be free."

The Amethyst frowns. "Free to do what?"

"Whatever you want," Steven says.

"'Want'?" she repeats, as though it as foreign a word as a man is a lifeform.

There was a time when you would have considered her fortunate not to know what it is to want something so badly that it crushes and rends, yet now you know the truth: The space within her that should long to be filled is worse. You can see it in her wide, confused eyes and her unmoving body.

"Yeah, you know," Amethyst says. "If you could do anything – anything in the whole universe – and you knew the Diamonds were never gonna chew your tail for it, what wouldya do?"

The larger Amethyst stares if in a stupor, stroking a stripe near her jaw.

"I'm a soldier," she says at last. She speaks the words as though they are a part of her, traced upon every line of her gem. "I was made to be a soldier. I'm supposed to be a soldier. How can I be a soldier if there's no war anymore?"

Her tensed shoulders sag, and she appears uncomfortable with it, as though she has shapeshifted into a form she knows cannot be sustained. She does not miss the war, you realize, not in the way that led Jasper to try to start another one, but it is the only thing she understands, and she is searching for something to understand, like you search for water on every unfamiliar planet.

"It'd be pretty hard," Steven says, conceding. "But there are a whole lot of other things you can become on Earth instead. A writer, a musician…"

"A kick-butt beach volleyball player," Amethyst says.

"A philosopher," Peridot says. "A detective."

"A scientist. Or a superhero!" Drakken grins. "There are still ways to protect people, even without being a soldier."

"You can be just about anything," Steven says.

The Amethyst stands there, water droplets falling from the ends of her shaggy hair, pooling around her boots. "How?" she says.

The question is so simple and short, and yet it falls heavily at your feet, as if weighted down with wet sand. You recognize it; it was the same question that stalked through your mind when you first moved into the barn and watched the Crystal Gems move and talk and laugh like the war had not destroyed their friends. How did all the things that frightened you most not taint every beautiful moment of their lives? How could they live among Earth's creatures, love them, and not be devastated by how fragile and transient they are?

And even though you have reached that place and accomplished those things yourself, you still do not know the answers.

Perhaps it is not a journey that can be explained, only taken. You hope hers will not have to be as torturesome as yours was.

You take a step forward. "How about this? How about we show you around Little Homeworld and find you a place to stay, at least for now?" Your voice is small, but it does not sound as tremulous as you expected. "And we can get out of your face and stop with the existential questions and just give you time to, you know, process and explore. You don't have to figure anything else out today."

The Amethyst lets her gaze drop to you. You see a hint of it in her eyes: the mixture of reverence and resentment that forms when a Quartz looks at an Elite. The system has been abolished but not erased; it may take longer than you wish for her to forget about it. Some of the former soldiers in Little Homeworld have only now stopped ducking their heads when you speak to them.

"Yeah, this has been a big enough day for you already, right?" Amethyst says. She taps her knuckles against the other Amethyst's arm. "When you're ready, we can introduce ya to the other Gems in Little Homeworld. And our friend Bismuth can get you hooked up with an awesome nickname, so that you don't have to use a facet number or any of that junk anymore. They'll help you find out what you wanna do and who you wanna be, okay?"

The other Amethyst nods. Caution blurs her eyes, but the strong, broad features no longer appear frozen.

"Happy Welcome-Back Day!" Steven says. His voice blows to the edges of the room, scattering any doubts that may have gathered there. The other Amethyst cranes her neck to see farther past Drakken, her face still perplexed at the peace.

Steven extends his hand to her and, as though newly made, she accepts it and allows him to lead her from the bathroom, down the hall, out the front door, and onto the warp pad. It flings you into the sky and sets you back down with a jangle, and the other residents of Little Homeworld turn their heads toward the sound. There is an ocean of them, enough to part around the six of you and then close over you once more. You do not need the breath you take in, but you do need the bracing moment it provides you.

The crowd clears a path for Steven and his newest friend, and Bismuth strides down it, her grin seeming almost to touch the chains of hair that hang on either side of her cheeks. She walks up and takes the other Amethyst's hands in hers, both sets solid but only Bismuth's confident, and looks at her with so much respect in her eyes that it feels solid, too – a land bridge that the Amethyst can trust with her weight.

Bismuth puts an arm around her shoulders and guides her down the slope deeper into Little Homeworld. Steven is close behind them, pointing at every landmark of your new home as he summarizes it: the yellowed field where the Nephrites like to gather to play baseball, the building with glass where Peridot keeps the plants she has begun to grow, and the array of structures that stand empty, waiting for a newcomer.

To your surprise, the Amethyst selects a house near the central tower, in the thick of Little Homeworld. It is tall, strong, and brown, its roof spraying dramatically upward before meeting in a peak the shape of Peridot's head.

"I had my eye on that one myself," Dr. Drakken says, his eyes shimmering. "I have a thing for high ceilings, too."

The Amethyst nods again, glancing from the stray hairs on Steven's chin to the stray petals on Drakken's neck. Over your shoulder, you see that the rest of the Gems have lined up behind you to greet her. The other Quartzes welcome her with hugs and slaps on the back, which she returns with more enthusiasm than you would have expected. She thanks Steven in a husky, shy whisper before calling out more questions to the gathering of Gems.

The sun is sinking and the stars surfacing by the time you, Steven, Amethyst, and Drakken find a quiet place to, in Peridot's words, "reassemble." Steven looks so exhausted that she does not even pester him to join her in another cool pose.

"Boy, she had a lot of questions!" he says, wiping away the sweat that has collected on his forehead.

"I've actually heard a lot of the Gems around here asking the same questions lately," Amethyst says. Guilt pokes at your back like a piece of driftwood; ever since Spinel came and left, you have been too consumed with confronting your darkest memories to notice any discontent around Little Homeworld. "They like playing and having fun and all, but they wanna have more of a – what did they call it on Homeworld?"

"A Purpose," you say. "A capital-P Purpose."

"Exactly. A capital-P Purpose. Most of them don't have that, you know, since we flushed their whole society down the toilet," Amethyst says. "They've gotta start all over again."

Peridot looks at you, her eyes shadowed with an old worry that you recognize because it is the same worry that crept through you when the Corruptions were first healed: Would Homeworld's ways prevail, if only because everyone was accustomed to them?

"Wait a minute. Hold the phone," Drakken says. He stamps his feet in the grass, startling white seeds into the air, irritated with a problem he cannot rectify. "I always thought Gems were born knowing their Purposes. I mean – I know you weren't really 'born' at all, but – ngghk, I thought it was all there from the start."

You recall your first day, Blue Diamond laughing gently in a palace the color of winter. She informed you of your Purpose at the same moment the water in her Extraction Pool called to you. You cannot separate those events in your mind, yet if Peridot did not know about her powers until she suspended her tablet in the sky with her feelings, they cannot possibly be innate.

"Nah, it's definitely not. I mean, look at me. When I first popped out of the ground, I was totally alone until Garnet and them found me," Amethyst says. "I mean, I knew I had my whip and all, and I practiced doing stuff with it, but I didn't really know to do anything. I hardly even knew how to talk." She smirks. "I know. Hard to believe, isn't it?

"But I was lucky. I had Rose." Amethyst doesn't bother to hide the pain in her eyes. "I know she wasn't as perfect as we all used to think she was, but she helped me so much. She was really great at explaining Earth and telling us why she loved it and getting all of us to love it too. And if anything was wrong with me, she never gave a rip, ya know? Man, I wish we could print up some pamphlets or something for the rest of these guys."

"You mean, like those find-your-fit quizzes? Connie took a bunch of those this summer trying to figure out which classes she needed to focus on first." Steven plays with the zipper on his jacket, wrenching it noisily up and down the plastic tracks that hold it in place. "So how do other Gems learn their Purpose?"

"Their Diamond tells them, first off," you say. You shrug. "Which I guess ended up happening for Amethyst, too. And after they've got the basics down, they're taken to the Academy."

"The Academy?" Drakken repeats. His comical ears roll back as if someone has slapped at them.

"The Illustrious Homeworld Academy. Educating Gems in their Purposes and Functions to bring further glory to the Great Diamond Authority," Peridot says, a surprising bitterness tinting her words. "Complete with multiple Kindergarten branches."

For an instant, you think of the Kindergarten in the desert and its largest hole, the sand on its walls burned into glass as one faultless Quartz emerged, her helmet already donned and her fists already clenched.

Steven shoves his eyes shut, and when he opens them again, lights seem to fly from them. "That's it!" he says. "We'll fight fire with fire."

"Um, no, actually, we fight fire with water," you say. You are about to roll your eyes when you see that Steven wears a smile that tells you that you are wrong without telling you that you are foolish. "Oh. But you must mean like – like letting one Gem with fire powers fight another Gem with fire powers. To make it fair?"

"Exactly!" Steven says. "We'll fight their school with our school!"

"What school?" Peridot says.

"The school we're going to start right here in Little Homeworld." The exhaustion has gone from Steven's face, and he spreads his ruddy hands. "They need to learn how to find new Purposes and new ways of doing things, and a bunch of experienced Gems could teach them!"

Drakken clasps his fingers behind his back and begins to stalk across the ground. "Ah, yes. How-to-be-a-good-guy lessons. I certainly needed those. I'd been a supervillain all my adult life! If Dr. Director hadn't found me, like, half an hour after I decided to reform, I would've – I would've – gosh, I don't know what would have become of me." He gives an exaggerated shudder.

"Experienced Gems like Amethyst?" you say. "And Pearl and Garnet?"

Steven grins at you. "And you and Peridot and Bismuth. All of you have an awful lot to teach these guys."

You are not sure if he is correct, but it is hard to argue with him, especially when you are smiling this widely.

"Our very own school. I like it." Amethyst leans against a tree trunk. "What should we call it?"

"The Earth Academy of Re-Learning and the Correction of Homeworld's Fallacious Teachings!" Peridot cries. The tiny green stone gleams in the remainders of sunlight, and the rest of her is comprised of light and racing thoughts, eager to assist the Gem who nearly tore off her leg earlier today.

You shake your head at her. "That is way too long to say."

"And it reminds me way too much of college," Drakken puts in.

College, you remember, is the place where the darkness inside him welled up and spilled over. If there was anything positive about his time there, he has not shared it with you.

Shouts and laughter continue to rise from Little Homeworld, but a thoughtful silence washes over your group.

It is Steven who breaks it, tugging at the opening in the center of his jacket. "Well, we've already got Little Homeworld. Why not just make it Little Homeschool?"

"Homeschool?" Amethyst says.

"Yeah, I read it in a book once," Steven says. "It's when you learn all the things you need to know at your own house instead of some school building."

"Kinda like you," Amethyst says to Steven, her mouth crooked and teasing.

"I guess," Steven mumbles, and you see something in his eyes that does not belong there, a harsh feeling you recognize from when it lived between your shoulder blades. An instant later, it winks out like a firefly's light.

"Well, I, for one, think it's awesome!" Drakken declares.

"Me too!" Peridot says. She and Drakken high-five.

"Dude. Maybe we actually could print up pamphlets for them," Amethyst says. Although she smiles, her face has the same set it took on when she unwrapped her whip and started toward the Corrupted Amethyst. "Not just for the Corruptions, but the Gems who come here from the big Homeworld or wherever."

Steven looks at you. You turn a thumb upward to show your support.

"I can teach them how to care for this planet's vegetation!" Peridot raises her arms, and they swing excitedly over her head. "Clearly, that is a vital step to coming to respect and love all Earth life! Drakken could help me, of course."

A loud, bright round of congratulations breaks out, and the noise is too much for you, scraping beneath your skin. You step away from your friends and tip your head back to gaze at the sky. You have a moment, perhaps two, to appreciate the beauty of the stars before you imagine Lapises leaking from them, barefoot and giggling and far stronger than they should be.

The first cold droplet of fear settles on your back. This day, with its immediate problem and its quick decisions, has made thoughts of them feel distant and less alarming, but now they return with a force that almost stuns you. For millennia you lived and worked together, and yet those bonds broke so easily. You remember them standing in a knot on Homeworld after Steven healed you and you went back, assembled in a pattern that no longer had room for you, the gap you left filled by other, newer Lapises whom you did not recognize.

Footsteps stumble behind you, and Dr. Drakken calls, "Are you all right, Lapis?" His hand rests on your shoulder, a bird that must be ready to wing away from its perch at any minute.

You search within yourself for honesty, which does not hide as cleverly as it once did. "Mostly. I had another terraforming nightmare last night."

"Oof. That stinks," Drakken says. "I haven't had a nightmare in almost two weeks. Well, more like a week and a half. 'Week and a half' – that expression always confused me. Weeks are seven days, right, so they don't divide cleanly in half, you know? I mean, half a week is obviously three and a half days, but that's kind of messy, and you can't have a nightmare in half a day, unless it's the night half of the day –"

You bury your face in his coat-of-labs and laugh; somehow, his gabbling has consoled you. His arms wrap around you, keeping clear of your gem.

"You know we all still love you, right?" The center of Drakken's eyebrow staggers, one side hiking higher than the other.

You pull back to look into the dark glistening eyes working so hard to convince you. "Yeah. I do." There are times when it still seems to you undeserved, but you do not question it anymore.

Drakken's shoulders relax. "Good."

You press your hands to the sides of your head. Your physical form holds the same force it always does, yet inside it you feel heavy and waterlogged. "I think I need to just hang out by myself for a bit. Today was huge. You don't have to leave right now, but you're gonna have to get someone else to warp you back to Middleton later."

"Absolutely!" Drakken leans down to kiss your forehead and ends up untangling his lips from your hair. You see him as you turn away, still wiping at his face and spitting.

He is far from a perfect person, yet it is difficult to imagine a better one.

You fly back to the house you share with Peridot, waving at the Gems who smile at you on your way, and let yourself in. Quiet dampens the chaos outside as you slide your feet along the wooden planks, step into your room, hang your "Having Lapis time. Check back later" sign on your door, and click it shut. You crawl onto your window seat, picking your way across books and unfinished meepmorps.

Your window faces the back edge of Little Homeworld, so what you hear when you open it is mostly the sighing of the night. A breeze trifles with your hair and brings you the scent of healthy plants. Fireflies spark on and off, and you are alone with your thoughts, which remind you of the sky: dark but studded with points of light.

Beneath your window, sheltered by the roof from the day's heat, sits a patch of mud. The voice of the water inside it is thicker and harder to decipher than the clear tones of the ocean, but it still reaches out to communicate with you.

You raise your hands and then still them. The mud sits, expectant, waiting for instructions you do not give it. Instead, you let your eyes close and the essence of yourself open to the muddied water, allowing it to feel everything you feel toward the Gems who helped you destroy other planets, emotions as smeared and clotted as the mud, so tangled they cannot be recognized as the fear and pain and guilt which they were originally. You are aware, vaguely, of your fingers moving, yet no conscious thought passes through your mind.

Someone knocks on your door, and you jerk around in fright. Peridot always respects your closed door and your sign, never bothering you unless there is an emergency. To your relief a man's voice, smaller and less mature than Drakken's, says, "Hey, Lapis. It's me. You got a second?"

"Come on in," you call back to Steven, grinning. "I think I can even spare a whole minute."

Steven nudges the door shut behind him and crosses the floor. He leans his body against the wall beside you as though not to disturb the items on the window seat. "Sorry to bother you, but we were all talking about classes for Little Homeschool and everything, and I wanted to ask you real quick if you'd like to teach one."

"Me?" You try to imagine standing before a room of confused Gems and teaching them any of the things which you have scarcely mastered yourself.

"Yep. You. Would you wanna teach our meepmorp class?"

You stare at him. "You mean your art class?"

"No, I mean our meepmorp class." Steven's gaze dives deeply into yours and comes back, as it always does, having seen more than you knew was there. "Nobody does meepmorp like you, Lapis. It's therapeutic, you know? Connie's found all kinds of scientific articles about it, and it really works like that. You'd show Gems how to create things when all they know is how to destroy. And you'd show them how to use the things they've created to help them process the things they've destroyed."

You do not trust yourself to speak.

"I can't think of anybody who'd better at this." Steven reaches for you, and you take his hand, still surprised by the strength of him even almost an Earth-year after he began to grow. It is a change more drastic than any regeneration you have ever witnessed, and you have had much too short a time to become acquainted with this new incarnation of Steven.

You don't ask if he means it. He would not say it unless he did.

"I'd love to, Steven," you say. The words are thin in your throat, and yet they do not flutter away, not even when your vision mists at the edges. "Thank you."

You turn back toward the window and peer down at what you have formed from the mud. A Gem who looks diaphanous even in dirty brown stands at one end of the puddle, her arms raised, commanding the wicked wall of liquid behind her to crash down over a landscape helpless to stop it. At the other end, a Gem sculpted in equally delicate lines hovers aboveground, her wings thrust to the sides and her jaw tight and determined, and parcels out just enough water to rescue and heal while holding back the brunt of the tide. No more, her posture seems to say. No more of this.

You are unsure which of the Lapises is you.

Perhaps they both are.

~Snagged some things from Steven Universe episodes that never happened in my canon: the "get over here and do a cool pose" line from The New Crystal Gems and the encounter with the Kindergarten Corruption from Back to the Kindergarten. I also found out doing research that apparently the flower monster is canonically NOT an Amethyst but a (big breath) Grossular Diopside. But I was already halfway done with the chapter, so I decided to keep her an Amethyst. Complaints may be sent to my secretary. ~