Content Warning-
Blood
Minor Violence and Torture
Potentially triggering descriptions
Please take care of yourselves. I've made myself read stories I knew would trigger me, and then spent days suffering the consequences, I don't recommend it. That being said, the content isn't incredibly intense or overly descriptive, though it can still be upsetting and triggering for some.
So please take care.
I love you all
Yellow Pearl smiles to herself from where she stands at attention. Her diamond is in a good mood today, as she has been all week, and all thanks to Steven. Steven is such a joy to be around, with his infectious positivity and his lovely singing voice! Why! Even right now Yellow Diamond is humming one of his songs to herself as she works. Her melodious tone is a treat for Yellow Pearls ears. One she hasn't gotten in many, many years.
Until it stops.
Yellow Pearl looks up at her diamond and sees a frown form on her face, the red blink of an urgent transmission alert reflecting off her face.
"A transmission from Rhodonite?" Yellow Diamond mutters to herself, brow furrowing.
She presses the screen to accept the transmission. The Rhodonite fusion and Padparadscha, are barely on screen a moment before the orange sapphire is pressing herself forward. Her apparent urgency making her move at a more "normal" pace, which, Yellow Pearl supposes, is fairly speedy for her.
"I've just had the most awful vision!" She frantically says, "Steven will be kidnapped by two gems!"
Yellow Diamonds face darkens, Yellow Pearl gasps in shock.
A moment's silence then, "It's an Aquamarine and a Ruby!" Rhodonite says. She then shares an image from security footage around Steven's palace, showing a small blue gem with distinctively small water wings, and a short red gem with cube shaped hair, carrying a clearly unconscious Steven into a small, saucer shaped ship.
"Track that ship, inform all available gems on Homeworld to begin searching and contact me the moment it's found." Yellow grinds out, her grip on the arm of her chair cracking the stone.
"Already on it, my diamond." No trace of the usual timid fear in Rhodonite's voice. "The moment Pads relayed her vision I sent a message to the twins to scour Homeworld from the sky while I began searching the security footage." She holds up a second tablet on the screen to prove it.
"Excellent. Now then," she appears to relax, but Yellow Pearl can tell what's about to happen and quickly ducks into a small alcove for safety, "mind telling me, HOW THIS HAPPENED!?"
"There are constantly gems all over the grounds enjoying that garden of his!" She slams her fist onto the arm of the chair, shattering it and causing large chunks to be sent flying.
To her credit Rhodonite doesn't flinch when faced with Yellow Diamond's anger. She, herself, is far too angry to feel her usual anxieties. Being used to Padparadscha's past predictions she was prepared to pull up footage, the moment she heard the prediction she started searching the security footage of the garden.
Steven had told her and Peony he was going on a walk. When they offered to accompany him he refused, saying he needed his alone time. They had respected that at the time, but now she regrets not insisting.
She quickly found the time that the incident should have happened, Pads predictions always occur between a few seconds to several minutes after the actual event, allowing her to quickly calculate the timeframe and find him. She was horrified and angered by what she saw.
"From what the footage shows, the attackers waited until he was alone to reveal themselves, catching him by surprise. They were clever and worked together, but my diamond put up a fight. He didn't make it easy for them." Yellow's chair did not survive her temper after she watched the footage. Her scream of rage echoed off the walls, and shattered nearly every window down the long hall from her office.
Yellow forcibly calms herself a moment later before picking up Yellow Pearl from the alcove she'd hidden in. "Alert Blue and White immediately. Tell them I will be waiting outside the throne room, then play this footage on every screen on Homeworld. I want these traitors found. Now!" Yellow ends the call without waiting for an answer, places Yellow Pearl on her shoulder and leaves her office, heading for the throne room.
Steven stirs on the cold floor. His head is throbbing in time with his heartbeat.
Aquamarine and Eyeball!
His eyes snap open. He sits up rapidly and regrets it immediately as his head throbs more painfully and his vision darkens around the edges. He sits still and breathes steadily and evenly, in and out, in and out, until the pain dulls somewhat. He takes stock of himself and what happened. He's alive, though with a painful lump on his head, a gentle probe with his fingers reveals the goose egg sized bump with dry blood crusting up his hair. Eyeball knocked him out, she probably hit him, thinking she could dissipate his form or something. Had he been an ordinary human the blow might have been fatal. As it stands, he's just in a lot of pain.
Aquamarine and Eyeball kidnapped him. Out of some sort of vengeful desire to prove he's a liar or something. He frowns in frustration, he never asked for any of this, and yet stuff like this just keeps happening. Looking around he sees a cell like those on the hand ship Jasper and Peridot kidnapped him on, only blue in color with metal bars blocking his way out instead of a destabilizing barrier.
"Hey!" someone yells, making him flinch as the sound makes his head throb more painfully. "She's awake!" Eyeball yells again.
"Well it's about time! I was beginning to think you'd cracked her!" Aquamarine replies, sounding pretty far from where the cell is. She must be piloting their ship to who knows where.
Eyeball, who'd been watching him from the doorway, he hadn't noticed, walks off and talks more with Aquamarine. Arguing more like. It seems like the only thing these two can agree on is how much they hate him, because he hears them bickering about everything from where to land their ship, to who gets to do whatever they plan to do to him. He struggles to focus on their conversation as his head continues throbbing.
"You dullard! We can't just go about landing anywhere! The diamonds believe her to be Pink Diamond!" Aquamarine yells.
"So?"
"So! That makes us traitors in their eyes until we prove she's lying!" He can imagine her pinching the bridge of her nose as she looks down on Eyeball from wherever she's hovering with her little fairy wings. He's suddenly so tired.
"But we're not traitors! She is!" Eyeball exclaims in outrage.
Aquamarine sights and replies, "I know that. You know that. We have to prove it." as if she were talking to a child, not a seasoned war veteran.
Eyeball, being used to elite gems speaking down to her like that, doesn't seem to react, only asking, "How do we do that?"
He can practically hear the smirk on her face as Aquamarine says, "I have an idea, but we need a safe and quiet place to land first."
Eyeball huffs and returns to his cell, glaring balefully at him through the bars. He tries to sit up straighter, to talk to her and maybe convince them to let him go, but he's met only with nausea and his vision darkening again.
Looks like he's stuck like this until he recovers, or someone rescues him. The thought that, despite all his sparring with Hessonite, this still happened, has his frustration mounting again. Along with a nagging fear that he's just going to be left here… After whatever it is Aquamarine and Eyeball plan to do with him happens at least. Someone will come for him right? After all this time, they wouldn't just… leave him… alone.
His head throbs painfully again.
Steven moves to lay on the floor, the coolness of the metal soothing his head, for a while. Might as well get some rest as long as there's nothing else he can really do.
The ship shifts slightly before the humming of its engines stop. They must have landed.
"Finally!" Aquamarine floats over to Eyeball, glaring at Steven as well, "They must have discovered your absence fairly quickly. It was positively obnoxious, having to dodge the patrols and search parties. Incredibly inconvenient." She smirks at him, "However, I am far more clever than most any other gem. I found us a nice, secluded place in an old kindergarten. Far, far from the cities. We're fairly unlikely to be discovered here, since you convinced Yellow Diamond to stop the robonoid patrols to protect those… off color defects." She sneers.
"Alright!" Eyeball cheers, "Let's tear her apart!"
Steven flinches, both from pain, and fear. They won't actually do that! Will they? His fear mounts when Aquamarine doesn't immediately shut down Eyeball like he hoped she would.
Instead she hums, "Actually, something like that. First! I need to make sure we're recording. More than one kind of hard evidence will be needed."
She adds for Eyeball's benefit, "This is also why we couldn't leave homeworld proper. We'll need to be close enough to send the recording directly to the diamonds. After all, if we simply show up before they see the evidence we're likely to be shattered on sight. I will not be shattered over you." Aquamarine glares at Steven again.
Eyeball watches from near the cell bars as Aquamarine presses a few buttons on a wall panel nearby, causing several metallic spheres to pop out of the corners of his cell. Steven recognizes security cameras when he sees them. They are all over a lot of Homeworld and his palace after all.
Suddenly he's engulfed in that blue light from Aquamarine's wand as she opens the cell door, allowing herself and Eyeball inside. His heart starts racing, making the throbbing pain in his head worse. What are they going to do to him?
"This is Aquamarine and my associate," she speaks into one of the cameras, and gestures for Eyeball to introduce herself.
"Uh, Ruby 1F4 Cut 4ND." She states, giving the diamond salute.
"And we are here today to definitively prove, without a doubt, that this," Aquamarine points to the immobilized Steven, "Steeven, is nothing more than Rose Quartz, lying to all of Homeworld using this organic human form to fool our scanners and scheming to destroy our society from within!"
She turns to Steven, twisting her wand in complicated motions, making his position change while keeping him immobile. She adjusts him to a standing position, legs straight and together, arms pinned straight behind his back. She turns him, angled to directly face one of the cameras. Humming to herself the whole while. She then tweaks something with her wand, freeing his midsection from the blue field, while leaving the rest of him still stuck. With an evil little grin she flutters oh-so daintily to his side, and points to his exposed gem.
"Ruby. Remove her gem."
He struggles, stomach twitching as panic sets in and he tries to free himself.
"Uh, what? Why?" Eyeball asks.
Aquamarine rolls her eyes, "Obviously, to prove those scans of her gem were fake, or wrong or whatever. This way we can show for certain that her gem is a Rose Quartz, not a diamond."
He can't breathe, can't speak, panic overrides everything.
"Oh! Gotcha!" Eyeball steps forward, reaching toward his stomach.
"Please, don't!" He begs, "Please! P-please!", all on deaf ears as Aquamarine giggles to herself, enjoying his fear and looking forward to the status and accolades she's about to receive.
Everything moves in slow motion.
Eyeball reaching for his stomach.
Touching the edges of his gem and grimacing at the feeling of his soft flesh around it.
Aquamarine continues to giggle as Eyeball tugs, gently at first, then harder.
It hurts, pain spreading from his gem to his body, like a spider web, electricity fires through every nerve, traveling from his stomach to his arms and legs, toes and fingers, up his spine, around his ears, and through his eyes. The throbbing in his head increases to a near blinding pain, agony coursing through his whole being, body and soul. He cries out in both fear and agony.
His gem loosens.
Then pops free from his stomach with a sickening rip.
Aquamarine stops giggling, her wand arm falling to her side. Her blue stasis field vanishes, dropping Steven limply to the floor. He hits the tender spot on his head and everything goes white.
The white gets brighter and brighter, shining from everywhere at once and filling the small cell.
Then suddenly his eyes snap open.
He looks around himself, he's standing in the cell, Aquamarine hovering over him, looking incredibly nervous. Eyeball is standing next to him, shaking fiercely. Both are radiating complete, absolute fear. Something else catches his eye. Someone, lying broken on the floor.
Himself.
Steven looks down at his body, his clothing is the same as his counterpart on the floor but his hands are a pale pink, almost white, color. None of the pale, peachy colored skin he had before, since he'd long lost the sunkissed tan he'd had from Earth. He gently grabs a tuft of hair to see, bright pink curls, softer than ever before. That's not right though… His hair should be a shiny, healthy black. He feels… strange. He knows he should be panicking, scared, or horrified, but it's all muted. Distant.
He looks back at himself on the floor. His hair black like it should be, but it's sweat soaked and limp with crusted blood from his injury. His skin that peachy color, though paler than, perhaps, it should be. His breathing is shallow and uneven, his eyes wide and unseeing. No, not unseeing he realizes, when he blinks and he, on the floor, blinks. Seeing, just not through organic eyes.
His consciousness, his mind, is in his gem. The emotions he's struggling to feel are in his organic body. Chemicals flowing through a brain, making it feel, but not knowing why without the consciousness to process it.
He's been split in half.
His gem and organic halves are still tied together, though by a thin thread he can feel growing weaker by the moment.
He needs himself, his self needs him.
Steven takes a step, fear and pain echoing dully from himself.
Aquamarine is suddenly in his face, stopping him. She's uttering apologies, simpering at him and trying to deflect all the blame on to Eyeball. Distantly he can hear Eyeball argue back, begging him to not listen to Aquamarine, that this was all her idea.
All at once pure rage flows through him, burning like the surface of the Earth's sun. He can see his organic body struggling to breathe, skin gradually becoming gray-tinged as Aquamarine continues fluttering around in front of him. She's keeping him separated. He needs him! His gem needs his organic half, his organic half needs his gem!
His very soul is split in half and all he can think of is rejoining. Being whole again. This nasty, mean little gem is in the way!
Quicker than the blink of an eye he grabs Aquamarine by her small round head and squeezes. She doesn't get the chance to scream or beg for mercy as her form crumbles under the pressure and she poofs, gem clattering to the floor. He turns his head toward Eyeball, daring her to try anything. She doesn't even try to rescue her fallen comrade, just falls onto her backside and scuttles back against the wall, terror written across her face, tears forming in her one eye.
The rage drains from him as quickly as it came, becoming muted and distant as before, like the other emotions.
A few steps.
Only a few steps and he's by his side. He looks into his own eyes, his own eyes look into his. The sensation is strange, like looking into a mirror, but… not. More like he's looking into his own soul, while his soul is staring back at him. He is bared to himself, like an open wound. Through that simple eye contact he sees himself, who he was, who he's become, and who he could be, all laid open before him. Almost as though he's suddenly developed his own future vision he can see what would happen if he stayed this way, what he'd lose, and the awful future ahead if he were to allow that to happen.
He can't let that happen, for his own sake.
He carefully lifts himself into his arms, dulled emotions flooding through him suddenly bright and nearly overwhelming, as if the world around him had become as gray-tinged as his organic skin but now suddenly color returns. That healthy peachy tone returns to his skin, along with a slight flushing of red as life returns to him. Pain, relief, fear, anger, happiness, and love, flow through him. Despite the ache still in his organic halfs head, he can't help but spin, dancing around in joy and love, both halves smiling and beginning to feel whole again. His bodies become alight, appearing to liquify as he rejoins himself. Piecing himself back together. Gluing himself back together, never to be separated again.
Then there he stands, in the center of the cell, whole.