Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Steven’s ears were ringing and he was covered in a cold sweat. He was barely able to stay on his feet- he almost certainly would’ve collapsed then and there had Connie not been holding onto him.

Steven was waking up. Or… no, he wasn’t human anymore. He was reforming, that was it. He could feel himself emerging from something resembling slumber, blossoming into existence.

Steven slid his shirt up, swaying slightly. There was no gem on his stomach where should’ve been. He had been split into two. He looked up, mouth dry, to see his gem suspended in midair.

Steven’s form didn’t come out right away. He could feel himself phasing through two others, first. Two others he’d rather have never had to blemish his form with. He was Pink Diamond, and then he was Rose Quartz. And then, he was Steven.

The glowing pink version of Steven wordlessly descended to the ground.

He slowly turned his head to look at Connie and him. The other him.

He reached out to the gem, but slammed into the ground before he could take even a handful of steps.

Steven watched himself as the human reached out, body racked by violent shudders.

“No… please. I need… I need it.”

“What is this?” White Diamond asked, dumbfounded. “Where is Pink?”

The gem felt a prick of irritation. “She’s… gone.”

“What did you say?” Clearly, she wasn’t satisfied with his answer. “Answer me,” she demanded.

“She’s GONE.” When the gem spoke, it was in a scream, creating an indentation in the floor beneath him with its sheer force.

The human laid on the ground, shaking and clutching at his head.

The gem began to walk, first suspended above the crater and after, on the ground.

“Where do you think you’re going?” White Diamond’s voice was asking him, but he didn’t bother to listen.

The human reached out again, trying to crawl forward but not finding the strength within him to do so.

“Ngh… help…” he murmured, and Connie did. She said his name, and she lifted him up, because of course she did. She was Connie.

“Hold on,” she said, and then she made her way forward.

They made their ways back toward each other, but White still loomed above, expression rife with irritation and confusion. “Don’t you dare take one more step,” she said.

They ignored her. She retaliated, like how a cornered animal might lash out in desperation. “That’s enough!” she exclaimed, and sent her white light toward the gem half of him.

Steven shielded himself. The light was deflected.

"Don't you raise your shield at me! I only want you to be yourself! If you can't do that... I'l do it for you!" Her voice boomed throughout the head they were in.

When she shot the third time, sending her beams at him from every angle, he hesitated. He remembered something like this.

The three diamonds… extended their palms. From their hands, they blasted the magic which would scar the Earth for centuries to come.

But that wasn’t his memory, was it? What was something like that doing in his head?

It didn’t matter why it was there, though. What mattered was how he responded to it.

He faltered.

The white light ran through his body and he was one with the eldest diamond.

Steven watched from Connie’s arms, vision blurry with tears. Or… were those tears? He was crying, but… usually, he could still see.

His breath hitched.

The other Steven, now glowing with a white hue, looked at him. The layer of his expression that was White looked utterly taken aback.

The layer under that could only be seen in his eyes. His eyes were screaming.

Steven reached a hand out, but his counterpart didn’t respond. White was shouting from where she stood, fuming. “What’s wrong with you, Pink? Why won’t you just come out?!”

The human could feel his breaths growing more shallow and wet. His lungs felt like they were filling up with fluid. He couldn’t inhale… god, he couldn’t do anything.

“Steven, please!” He was vaguely aware of Connie’s panicked yelling, her insistence on reuniting the two. Of course, his ears felt like they were full of fluid too, so he couldn’t make it out as clear as he could have. He couldn’t make anything out anymore other than what seemed to be claws raking across his body, splitting his cells apart as they seemed to die one by one, an agonizingly drawn out cacophony of horrible sensation-!

The gem was, on the other hand, perfectly aware of what Connie was yelling.

“I’m begging you, Steven!” she said, tears streaking down the sides of her face. “Can’t you hear me? Please, Please! Just let me help you for once in my life! Why won’t you answer?! You have to answer!”

He heard it all, but he couldn’t do a thing.

The human’s body went limp in Connie’s arms. She gaped down at him, frozen in place. No more frantic pleading left her mouth. Now, she was at a loss for words. Moments later, her knees buckled and she smashed into the ground hard, still holding the boy.

White was still muttering to herself. Steven saw his other half, lifeless and tired. All the life had been sucked out of him. He could give it back. He had to.

Steven pushed back against her light. He took a step forward, and then another.

He knelt in front of Connie and his body, staring at them blankly. Her reaction was delayed, but after a long moment, Connie looked up. She searched his gaze hopelessly, appearing almost like she was searching for a reason to carry on.

Like this, he was… inadequate. He needed to fix this.

The gem clutched his other’s hand. He lifted it up to his lips, pressing a kiss to the boy’s knuckles.

Nothing. So he needed to cry, then.

He had cried many times before. He didn’t know why it was so difficult to now, when he really needed to. He supposed that those times were always when it was the hardest.

He leaned over. His eyes remained remarkably dry. The tears wouldn’t come.

He willed them to. They still didn’t.

“You can heal him, can’t you?” Connie asked- not quite a question. She said it as though it were something she already knew, but wanted to be reassured of it.

“I…” He pressed his lips together. “That is one of my powers.”

She must’ve seen or heard the glimmer of uncertainty. After he said that, she lifted a hand- the other still grasping the body- and placed it on his cheek. “I… believe in you,” she said in a trembling voice. He could feel the tremors going through her hand as she pressed it to his skin. She then somehow managed to flash him a small smile.

He cried.

Chapter Text

Connie held onto the boy for dear life. It felt as though if she let go, if she allowed him to slip out of her grasp, he would be gone forever. She had to keep him safe. She had to protect him.

The other him, the one with glowing pink skin and small glowing diamonds in his eyes, was crying. She was almost surprised to see it, but then, he was Steven, wasn’t he?

The gem’s face hadn’t contorted into any sort of distressed expression. He looked the same as before, an unreadable face with blank eyes that currently stared down at the boy Connie had her right arm tightly wrapped around.

The only differences, really, were the large pink tears that were welling up in his eyes and dripping down onto his other half. They splattered onto the human boy’s cold skin. It was almost like he’d borrowed the tears in order to do what he needed to.

They flooded his eyes for a few short seconds and then they were gone as surely as they had arrived.

With no small amount of trepidation, Connie allowed her gaze to slink back down to the one who she was holding. For a beat, he remained still. The moment seemed to drag on for an eternity, like all of time had been compressed and stuffed into those few seconds.

Then glow spread through his skin. She held her breath. His eyelids fluttered. He opened them wide enough to see her, and then they slid shut again.

She could feel his chest gently rising and falling again.

The relief had just washed over her when White felt the need to interrupt it. “What are you doing?! Pink Diamond doesn’t act like this! You are Pink Diamond!”

Her eyes shot up, venom tingeing her glare. “He isn’t When are you gonna get that through your head?”

But she persisted. “Pink, why are you doing this?”

The gem ignored her, instead gently sliding his hand under the human’s head. Connie watched him tug the boy towards himself, looking a bit perturbed. The human Steven was now pink as well, his hair a pillow of cotton candy colored fluff.

White let out an irritated huff. “Thousands of years old, and you’re still acting like a child!”

“He is a child!” Connie shouted, making her throat burn with the surprising volume that the words left her mouth.

A few beats passed and then, without looking up, the gem said to her in deadpan, “What’s your excuse?”

White stared, appalled. A pink color tinted her cheeks. The controlled gems surrounding them stood, surprised, as it spread through them. “What’s happening?”

“What is this? What’s wrong with them?” White asked herself, eyes sweeping the room as it was bathed in a rose-colored light. “They’re turning… pink. I don’t understand…”

“I’m in control… I…” The diamond gasped dramatically. “Something’s wrong… with me!” she exclaimed. “No!”

The gems surrounding them, once drowning in her suffocating light, were released from her grip and returned their original colors. They all fell to the ground, freed from the diamond's control.

The gem Steven was holding his human counterpart tighter now, and so Connie tentatively allowed him to take the boy from her grasp. He blinked and said, “Faulty,” to no one in particular. It was quiet enough to be a whisper, but he said it in his normal voice. It was like he had turned his volume down.

“What is?” she asked, trying to make her lip stop quivering and failing. He looked up. “Attempt failed. Organic matter is faulty.”

“What… do you mean?” She waited for a response, reaching out with trembling hands.

“Fusion is unachievable.”

Garnet staggered up to them. Her visor had been removed and she was staring with wide eyes. “Steven?”

Connie lurched forward and wrapped her arms around the two boys that made up her best friend. She could feel the conscious one of the two stiffen.

She didn’t know what to do. Was there anything to be done?”

She eventually loosened her grip on them and looked over at the crystal gems, who had congregated around them. The six of them had varying levels of panic plastered on their faces.

“What happened to him?” Lapis asked her, hands moving around like she wanted to do something but was unable to do so. Peridot was crying into Bismuth’s leg and Amethyst… well, she was just looking. It seemed as if she didn’t believe her own eyes, because she kept rubbing them, dumbstruck.

“He… he…” Connie choked back a sob. It was going to be okay, right? She had to believe it… she had to, but… “He died,” she forced the strangled words from her throat, and the tears started running. “She… she took his gem out and he healed himself b-but he…” She doubled over, head hung between the two Stevens.

“But he died! And now he's... he's broken up!” she wailed. She wasn’t supposed to be like this. She was supposed to have it together. She was supposed to be cool and collected and dependable for Steven.

But it seemed there was no Steven to depend on her. Only his parts, and now she was falling apart as well.

She stayed like that for a while before her sobs died down a bit. Pearl hesitantly placed a hand on her shoulder. She glanced up to see that the crystal gem had tears streaming down her eyes as well. Still, she managed to speak to Connie with as level and comforting a tone as possible. “He’s going to be okay,” she told her, as if it were a fact.

“We’ll make sure of it,” Garnet said, crouching down. With an anxious smile, Amethyst took a step forward and nodded. “Yeah… yeah.”

She could figure this out. They could do it. They had to, for Steven’s sake.

Even if there was no more Steven, not in the way she had known him. Even if he remained like this. She had to find a way to help him how he helped everyone else.

The diamond that loomed above stayed silent, what was perhaps a look of dawning horror on her face. She was promptly ignored as Blue and Yellow Diamond led the ragtag team of once-rebels to safety, the boy that had come to be their leader broken into two.

Chapter Text

In seconds, Steven’s body went from being in excruciating pain that pierced every facet of his skin to being utterly numb.

He was standing on nothing, staring out into a white void that stretched on forever. He looked about, eyes searching the endless expanse surrounding him. The air was still.

“Hello?” he said, and there was no response. He swallowed, throat scratchy and dry. “Is anyone… there?”

He turned around and was taken aback when he found himself inches away from a pink version of himself. The gem stared at him blankly. When he spoke, it was in the same voice that the human himself had. “We are separate.”

“Uhm… eh-heh, what?” He laughed nervously, taking a small step back. The other him slid across the floor so that he was the same distance away as he had been. “Unnecessary.”

Steven balked, spinning around as a sense of panic overtook him. But the gem simply stayed where he was in relation to the human, skimming across the ground indifferently. “You are unnecessary,” the gem said. His face started to contort, and before Steven knew what was going on, he was face to face with Rose.

The human sucked in a short breath through his teeth as he realized that he could feel his body remodeling itself similarly, an echo to the gem’s own. It changed once more, and there she was. Pink stared at him with her unsettlingly alien eyes. When she opened her mouth to talk, what came out was Steven’s voice. “You know it.”

He could see the crystal gems lined up behind her, staring forwards with dead eyes. They all spoke at once, but it was in the way White had used them as a vessel. But it was Pink… no, him, this time. The better half of himself.

“We all know it. That you’re useless like this.” The ground shattered, pummeling an indentation around her feet. The unreality shook violently, filled with a blaring buzzing sound.

Steven woke with a start, staring up at a pink ceiling. He could feel himself trembling.

“Back… here,” he croaked, throat raw and aching. He caught a glimpse of homeworld through the window. He bit his lip. What had happened in White’s head? Why was he back in his… Pink’s room?

“Steven!” he heard Connie say through the persistent ringing in his ears. He used his elbows to prop himself up, looking to his front. The girl was practically sprinting over to him, but she abruptly halted at the foot of the bed.

“Hey,” she said, giving him a small wave. He waved back, smiling weakly. “Hey.”

The ringing in his head had started to subside a bit, allowing him to make out several voices talking in the background. They all seemed to be agitated, but he couldn’t seem to make out any of what they said. He glanced at the exit- it sounded like they were just outside.

“Oh, don’t worry about them.” His attention was directed back toward Connie, who had sat on the end of the bed.

“I… what happened?” Her face fell.

“You… um.” She inched closer, almost wary. She slowly inched her hand closer to his, and when he scooted it slightly in her direction, she placed her palm over the back of his hand. “White Diamond… removed your gem. But you’re okay now.”

Her fingers intertwined with his. “Everything’s gonna be okay.” Her tone was soft and soothing. It felt like a pillow, welcoming him to take a moment to breathe, to relax. She was a very persuasive pillow.

Of course, he didn’t get to stay in this comfort for long. (He never did).

His gaze drifted down toward where she was grasping his hand. His skin against hers… there was a stark difference. His hand had shifted in hue, to possibly the worst color it could have.

Pink.

He jerked his hand back, looking at his palms with nausea welling up in the back of his throat. No, no… was he still dreaming? He tried pinching himself, and all he got was a sharp pain in his arm. He shook his head, trying to understand. What didn’t he understand? What was he not getting?

“-ven, listen to me!” He snapped back to reality, foggy vision focusing on Connie. “Calm down. Deep breaths, okay?” She took his hand again, giving it a squeeze. “I’m here. Everything is fine.”

He nodded mutely, avoiding looking at his skin. He kept his eyes centered on her.

“Listen, Steven… I’m going to explain what happened, now. Is that alright?” She waited for his approval. After a pause, he gave another nod.

“Okay. Steven, you… you were separated. Your gem tried to make it back to you, but it wasn’t fast enough. You…” She trailed off, eyes darkening. “It had to heal you. You’re better now, but… you can’t fuse back.”

Steven slowly moved the hand that Connie wasn’t holding down to his stomach. He placed it against his skin and, sure enough, it was lacking the rock once embedded in his skin. It was a disorienting feeling. As if he wasn’t already disoriented enough.

“The gems are outside discussing… the situation.” He inhaled slowly, and then exhaled. Again. And once more.

“Are you okay?” she asked him, clasping her other hand around his. He smiled weakly. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m… fine.” She was close, now. Without thinking much about it, he leaned in so that his forehead was resting against hers, closing his eyes. She relaxed into the touch.

“No good.” A voice cut through the silent moment. Both of the human children jumped, head-butting each other in the process. Steven clutched his head and looked up, perturbed. “Huh?”

Oh.

He was staring at the other him. The one from his dreams, the one from when he… when he… took a… momentary break from life.

He was standing right behind Connie. He didn’t know how the gem had managed to walk right in without alerting either of them, especially with the pink glow he emitted.

Connie stiffly turned her head to look at the one standing, perfectly still, at the end of the bed. “No good?” she repeated his statement as a question.

“Gems. I can’t,” was all the information he provided, which wasn’t all that helpful. “You can’t do… what?” she asked patiently, though there was an edge of discomfort to her voice.

“Mediate.” He turned his entire head to look back at the exit. The previously annoyed-sounding voices had escalated to raised voices with an occasional shout sprinkled in.

“Oh… that’s what that is. O… okay, I’ll go out there and try to calm them down.” She stood up, taking a deep breath, then started to march off, determined.

“Connie, wait,” he called out, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “I’m coming, too.”

She looked him up and down, clearly fretting over him. “Are you sure you’re feeling good enough to? Let’s just say the gems are a bit… distressed at the moment.”

“Don’t worry, Connie. I’m literally magically better.” He wanted to scream at the top of his lungs. He wanted to cry, or ramble about how confused he was. He wanted to bang his head into the wall.

But he didn’t. He could mope later. Right now, the gems needed him. So right now, he ignored the fact that the ringing had stopped completely. Right now, he ignored the fact that he didn’t think his head had ever been this chillingly quiet and started off toward Connie.

Those thoughts were for later, or better yet, never.

The pink him followed them dispassionately. He swallowed and tried to focus on the matter at hand.

Still, he couldn’t help but wonder if he’d ever be whole again.

Unnecessary...

Chapter Text

“A clod like her isn’t trustworthy! If she wants to ‘make things better’ so badly, why can’t she do it herself? Steven didn’t colonize thousands of planets, that was the diamonds!” Peridot exclaimed, frustrated.

“He isn’t Steven. If the diamonds want to keep him, let them!” Lapis waved her arms about for emphasis. Bismuth pinched the bridge of her nose, groaning under her breath. Garnet simply sighed and said, “He is as Steven as the other. In one way they are both Steven, and in another neither of them are. How could we abandon even the smallest part of him here?” As she spoke, her tone grew increasingly more terse.

Pearl wrapped her arms around herself, eyes distraught. “B-but… if he’s stuck like this, what are we going to do? We… we don’t even know if that half of him is…” She went silent for a long moment, and when she spoke again it was in a much darker tone. “If that half of him is Pink Diamond.”

“He isn’t,” Amethyst said firmly. “He’s Steven.”

“But… he has her gem. It could still be her… taking on a new form. We can’t know!”

A duo- no, a trio, that was what they were now- stepped out of the room and a wave of discomfort washed over the company.

“Hey,” Amethyst was the first of the bunch to speak. “How ya doin, buddy?” She asked, looking at the human part of Steven. “I’m doing… good.” Never better. “But what’s going on, you guys?”

“Well…” Amethyst started. Lapis promptly interrupted her. “White Diamond said you can go home if your gem half stays here. She’s going to let you go!”

The human’s eyes shifted to the side, looking anywhere but at somebody else’s face. He could go home? Just like that? And not have to deal with any of this anymore?

But that wasn’t really an option, was it? “I… came here to fix this mess, didn’t I? I can’t just… leave.” He glared at the floor. “I have to do what needs to be done.”

“But that’s why she asked…” She gestured toward the gem Steven, whose blank eyes seemed to almost be challenging him. “...to stay with her! He can do it!”

Bismuth glanced at gem Steven, who seemed to have gone rigid(er). “I’m… not sure about that, Lazuli.”

Peridot pushed her visor up her nose. “It’s true, he does seem to be lacking many of Steven’s traits. Such as… empathy… compassion… you know. Emotions.”

At least he was good for something. But most gems have feelings, don’t they? Surely the gem did, if it healed him.

Surely it wouldn’t need him for much longer.

“He’s probably shaken up from being forcibly unfused. Right, Garnet?” Amethyst looked up at the fusion for affirmation. She didn’t say anything in response, simply pressed her lips together more tightly.

Pearl walked up to the gem Steven and looked down at him. She twiddled with her thumbs, shifting position every couple of seconds. “Listen, Steeee…. um. Are you sure fusing is impossible?”

He blinked and then nodded jerkily. “The organic matter is incompatible. Too solid, now. Wasn’t before.”

She simply stared at him for a long while, no longer playing with her thumbs. Her hands had gone still apart from the way that they now shook.

The gem just stared back.

“It’s gonna be okay, Pearl,” Steven said in a quiet voice, stepping closer to her and placing a hand on her arm. She turned to look at him and, rubbing her eyes, leaned down to embrace him. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re okay…”

He slowly lifted his arms to return the hug, resting his chin on her shoulder with his eyes closed.

The gem Steven looked up to his left, teeth clenching. “Is something wrong?” Connie asked softly, placing a hand on his shoulder.

“The Diamonds.” The girl blinked. Sure enough, it wasn’t long before the vibrations the massive gems sent through the floor reached the group.

Pearl moved away from the boy, hands still resting on his shoulders. “Maybe you should go back to your... mother’s room. You need to relax right now and they…” her tone shifted to something more sour. “...they certainly won’t help you do that.”

He let out a small laugh. “C’mon, Pearl, I’m fine, really. I… have to deal with this now. Putting it off won’t do me any good.”

The two immense gems had soon walked up to them, coming to a halt upon sight of the gathering. Blue and Yellow Diamond bent over, observing the two parts of Steven with what might have been pity. The boy tensed at the uncharacteristic display, especially from Yellow.

“Steven!” Blue said. “I see you haven’t returned to your usual self yet.”

“Have you all made your decision yet? If we don’t come back with an answer for White her whining is going to be the end of me,” Yellow muttered, allowing a surprising amount of annoyance to color her words.

“Uh… about that… why did she want my gem half to stay, exactly?”

“She wants to right her wrongs, to bring peace to the gems that she’s hurt. Like you,” Blue explained. “And… like Pink.” She paused. “We want to, as well.”

He must’ve missed something. That didn’t sound like the White who’d ripped his gem out of him and let him die.

But if she’d changed for the better… who was he to be upset about that? That would just be selfish.
“So?” Yellow asked, voice powerful and demanding. He squirmed under their expectant gazes, trying to conjure up the right words but finding that they were eluding him. What was he supposed to do? He wouldn’t be taken seriously if he wasn’t a diamond. He was… just a human, now.

He inhaled deeply. “I’m sure we can figure something out,” he settled on. That was good enough for now, or at least, he hoped it was. “...Actually, if we’re in the business of ‘righting wrongs’, I know where we should start.”

Chapter Text

His human half and the diamonds had decided to set course for Earth the next day. Steven had watched from a distance as the organic boy went to bed, and Connie(not without asking him how he was doing) settled down beside him.

He told her he was functioning perfectly fine. She told him that wasn’t what she meant. When he said nothing more, she seemed exasperated, but accepted his answer.

He was not in particular disrepair, aside from his newly solitary state. While this counted as a problem, the girl was already well aware of that, so it was unnecessary to explain it to her again.

The crystal gems had hurried away to do something off somewhere else. It was likely that they would argue about the situation more. The gems were not particularly equipped to deal with a crisis such as this one. Albeit, they were not good at dealing with most assortments of crises, especially emotional ones.

He was now sitting in the dark in what was once Pink Diamond’s room. He sat perpendicular to the bed, back pressed up against the wall.

Theoretically, he could sleep. It wouldn’t do any good, though, aside from passing the time. He was also doubtful that he would stay (peacefully) unconscious for long what with his subconscious’s bothersome interruptions.

He would just stay awake.

He looked up as Connie shifted to move a bit closer to the human Steven. Her expression appeared to be pulled taut for a moment before relaxing again.

He wondered if that Steven would be willing to return to Homeworld. He had acted enthusiastic enough about the idea of bringing about peace, whatever that may entail.

The gem supposed, when they were whole, they had been rather stubbornly stuck on the idea of fixing his mother’s mistakes. It must have been coming from one of them, after all

He would gladly leave Homeworld and not return, but that would not do. It looked to be unavoidable that, for him to achieve his(Steven’s?) goals, he would end up returning here. He would simply have to go about making his peace with that.

Connie’s expression had faded into something peaceful now. Or at least, that was what it looked like to him.

… he hoped that he was correct in his assessment.

He sat there for much longer. The silence dragged on, and he tried to fill it with his thoughts, but it still loomed, threatening to swallow him up if he allowed it to.

It had been around three hours when he felt somebody approaching him through the ground. It was a few moments before he could hear the footsteps, and then, a good bit until the gem in question arrived.

Amethyst poked her head into the room. She looked at the two humans first, then her gaze shifted down toward him.

Steven looked back. She stepped into the room and, in a very small voice, said, “How’re ya holding up, there?”

Noticing her volume, he lowered his own to match. “I am well,” he responded, watching her walk closer. When she was next to him, she slid down the wall into a sitting position. “You sure?”

“Yes,” he insisted, voice taking on a bit more of an edge than he had intended it to. How irritating.

She held up a hand. “I wasn’t trying to pressure you or anything. I just wanted to make sure you were doing alright. S’not like an interrogation, or anything.”

He furrowed his brow slightly at this. “I do not see why my state is relevant. The matter at hand is healing the corruption and making an agreement with the diamonds.”

The purple quartz huffed out a small sigh. “You always do this, you know. Focus on every problem but your own.” She blew a chunk of light hair out of her face. “You gotta think about yourself sometimes.”

“Now is not the time.”

“It’s never the time with you, is it?” She gave him a look, with her eyes half-closed and her head tilted so that it rested somewhat against her shoulder. He couldn't quite tell what this one was. It looked almost like she was amused and almost like she was fearful.

“He is the one you should be worried about becoming emotionally compromised.” He turned his head to look at the newly pink Steven, whose hand had somehow snaked its way into Connie’s since he last saw it.

“That doesn’t mean you aren’t important.” She tousled his hair, and he stiffly turned his head to look back at her. “You’re both important,” she said, “Even if you act like neither of you are half the time.”

The only thing he did to acknowledge this was make a small humming noise.

After that, she just sat there in his company. She drifted off after another half hour, give or take a few minutes. She might have been feigning so as to now make him uncomfortable, but he didn’t bother to check. It didn’t really matter which one it was, after all.

They stayed like that for the rest of the night. The gem didn’t sleep- not like this, not yet- but he did let his eyes shut and stayed there in a peaceful state until daybreak.

Tomorrow, they would fix one of their biggest problems henceforth. Then... then, they would figure out how to proceed when the time came.

Chapter Text

Steven stared at the platform for a long time. Pearl stepped up to his side. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” he responded, rigidly placing his feet where they needed to be. Where she had stood, all those centuries ago. But she was dead now. There was no need to think such things.

He felt his human counterpart’s eyes frozen on him from where he stood across the room. He did his best to ignore this, but he was well aware of the boy’s constant stare as he launched the ship Eventually, Connie spoke to him- “You look tired. Did you sleep badly?” His eyes were finally coaxed away from the gem.

There was an discomforting silence as they made the journey back to Earth. Connie and the human Steven whispered to each other, but the diamonds were in their respective pieces of the combined(fused, one might say) ship, and the crystal gems seemed not to know how to interact with him. He, too, was unsure of how to behave toward them.

Of course, there was Amethyst. She didn’t say much, but she lounged next to him and occasionally commented on peculiarly-shaped galaxies. He could tell she wasn’t completely comfortable quite yet, but her efforts were appreciated. She did a rather good job of ‘faking it till she made it’, as they say.

By the time Earth’s face came into view, a decent number of hours had passed. Connie had fallen asleep on the other him’s shoulder, but he had stayed wide awake. The light pink boy was now gently shaking her shoulder, rousing her from her slumber.

He braced for impact and they landed in the middle of the ocean, sending hundreds of gallons of water shooting out around the ship and crashing back into their whole.

“We have arrived.” They were back on Earth. What, he supposed, was his ‘home’. Though, he wasn’t quite sure anymore.

_______________________________________________________________________________

The corrupted gems were healed. That had been their goal, hadn’t it? He felt the same as he had before. Well... it felt good, to help people. But he still knew that there was more work to be done.

After the day had ended, all the human could feel was a sensation in the pit of his stomach akin to dread. The satisfaction of doing good had faded and left him thinking of the future. He could see the obstacles looming in his future as plainly as if they were before his eyes.

It would be okay, he reassured himself. He would make everything better.

They had healed as many of the corrupted gems that day, a task they carried on with until late in the night. It was much easier to be content when he had something to do- what with meeting the gems and explaining what was going on. The day was good, all in all.

They got home. Half of the house was still destroyed, but Steven assured the gems that it would be okay, he’d slept outside plenty before.

The pink him- well, he supposed he was also pink now, something that made him a bit sick every time he remembered it- started up the stairs almost immediately. “Hey… what’re you doing?” he asked it, rubbing his eyes.

“I will wait until daybreak. We can then discuss matters of importance,” the gem said, and then sat down at the end of Steven’s bed.

“You’re not gonna… sleep?” he asked, blinking.

“I do not require rest,” the glowing Steven said.

“Yeah, he sits on the ground now,” Amethyst said. "It's a bit weird, but he's chill." Pearl made a small noise like she was about to say something but decided against it. She turned and placed a hand on Steven’s shoulder. “Goodnight, Steven.”

He nodded, stifling a yawn. Garnet shot Pearl a look, but she didn’t respond to it. He supposed he’d help with that if it came up in the future, but he was too tired to process it at the moment. He climbed the steps and collapsed into his bed.

Despite his exhaustion, he couldn’t seem to fall asleep. Thoughts kept weighing on his mind, and it was hard to process the sheer immensity of it all. How could he even begin to fix the universe? It was a seemingly impossible task.

He groaned, turning over. He’d always figured it out before He just needed to stop overthinking things.

Ignoring a faint buzzing sound and pulsing pink glow, he finally slipped into fitful sleep.