Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Priyanka doesn’t know what to think of Steven. His family seems… normal enough, besides the fact that his mother has a completely different skin tone from him and is wearing sunglasses at 7:30 pm. Though, the first can be explained by adoption and the second is just a bad fashion choice (alongside the square hair- seriously, how much hair gel is that woman using?)

But, no, it really isn’t his parents that bother Dr. Maheswaran. It’s the kid himself. There’s nothing she can note, really, just a pervasive off-ness to him that’s hard to describe.

“So, kid,” Doug asks, “You got any hobbies?”

“I have a ukulele.” Steven says. It’s hard to tell whether that statement is a non-answer or not. Steven has a ukulele. Whether or not Steven plays the ukulele is anyone’s guess. He seems happy about having the ukulele though. Maybe. He’s got a big yet somehow placid smile on his face, at the very least. It’s almost the exact same smile as an emoji. The simple curve, the way it doesn’t quite reach his eyes…

Priyanka tries very, very hard not to let herself wildly speculate. She fails. Connie’s only ever said good things about Steven and his family. She has to trust that.

“Do you use your ukulele?” Doug asks.

“When the time is right.” Whatever that means. Trying to have a conversation with this kid feels like trying to draw blood from a stone.

“By that he means he’s written like, twenty songs just last week.” Connie helpfully translates.

“Last week deserved twenty songs.”

“Didn’t I hear you singing something about snakes?” Greg asks.

“They don’t have any arms.” Is Steven’s… explanation? His Emoji Smile™ turns into an Emoji Frown™ at that. It’s genuinely shaped exactly like the letter ‘c’ turned on its side. There’s no change in his tone of voice, though, and this new expression is equally as… well, Priyanka would feel rude calling it soulless, but calling it an Emoji Frown™ is probably already a much worse insult.

Greg hesitantly pats his son’s back.

The awkward silence returns once again. Well, for the adults it does. Connie and Steven start right up on their own conversation, oblivious to everyone else’s silent suffering. At least Steven can hold a conversation when it’s with someone he knows?

They ramble about a book series they’ve been reading together. Something about the recent twist about the main character’s dead father.

Priyanka takes a bite of her pasta. It’s dry.

“Is he, like, autistic, or something?” Doug leans over to whisper to Greg. Priyanka considers homicide.

Greg shrugs. “We’ve never gotten him tested for it, if that’s what you’re asking. He, uh, has trouble with doctors.”

“More like doctors have trouble with him.” Steven’s mom (Priyanka’s pretty sure her name is Garnet or something.)

Greg snorts. Priyanka feels vaguely offended, but not enough to do much about it. She just silently takes another bite of pasta while giving him a mild stink-eye.

(This bite is a lot less dry than the last one.)

Greg completely misses the stink-eye and continues talking with Doug. Priyanka turns her gaze to Garnet, who seems to have not touched her plate much at all.

“Are you not gonna eat?”

“Nah, this food is shit.” Garnet replies easily. “Steven seems to be liking it though.”

Priyanka glances over at Steven’s plate. His soup seems to be half-eaten, though… she never noticed him take a single spoonful. Actually, his spoon is still wrapped up in the napkin, right where the waiter put it. And she definitely would’ve seen it if Steven had been chugging straight from the bowl.

Weird, Priyanka thinks as she takes another bite of her pasta- and is immediately met with the sharp, metallic taste of blood. It’s such a sudden hit of what the fuck? That she doesn’t have the wherewithal to spit it out properly, rather, her mouth just hangs open as she stares openly at her plate.

Whatever that pasta was, it’s no longer pasta. It’s a baby, raw and skinless and screaming out in horrible pain as it bleeds out on the table.

Priyanka screams and jumps back so hard she falls off her chair and knocks her head on the ground. She scrambles back up, grabbing her chair and raising it high, aiming it at the plate-.

Which is back to normal. No baby, no blood. Just a normal fettuccine alfredo.

“What the fuck just happened?” She half-whispers, still holding the chair, poised to strike.

“Erm, I’m guessing you just saw something really terrible?” Greg says sheepishly. Priyanka turns her stare on him. “That would’ve been him.” He points to Steven, who is curling in on himself, blushing a deep red. A stark contrast from his earlier lack of expression, though it still doesn’t reach his eyes.

“What the fuck.” She repeats, “I just hallucinated a fucking dying baby in place of my goddamn alfredo and you’re putting the blame on your fucking son!?”

“Um, mom, he’s not being mean.” Connie speaks. “This is just kinda a thing that happens around Steven sometimes? Usually with me everything just turns into this big void…”

“I see the corpses of those who fell in the war.” Garnet says calmly, somehow. “It’s actually helped some with some of the guilt about it.”

“I’m sorry.” Steven says. There is still nothing in his voice, and Priyanka’s worried about that, now. “I’ve been getting better at controlling it, but it still leaks out sometimes.”

She realizes, suddenly, that Steven has not blinked once during the entire dinner. Somehow, that breaks her, and she makes a keening noise from the back of her throat as she slowly slides down to sit on the floor, chair in her lap.

“I’m going to second my wife’s ‘what the fuck.’” Doug says, “because what in the actual fuck?”

“I promise he’s not dangerous or anything!” Connie says frantically, “He’s just! Weird! But he only ever means well and he never does stuff like this on purposeandI’mprettysureit’sjustbecauseofthewhoelthingwithhismombeingan-.”

“Connie.” Priyanka cuts her off.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t. I just…” She takes a deep breath. “I just need a minute, is all.” Because now that she’s had a second to stare at the floor she’s realizing that that baby was one she recognized, she knew, even despite the skinlessness and the blood and the gaping bite wound. She just… knew.

“The baby… that was one of our ICU patients.” She swallows, “It- she died of leukemia. Her mother was a smoker.”

Garnet nods. “Nothing you could’ve done.”

“But-.”

“Nothing you could’ve done.” She repeats. “You know that, you just haven’t admitted it yet. It’s easier to beat ourselves up thinking we could’ve changed something instead of realizing the harsh reality that people just die sometimes.”

“This is a nice discussion and all but can we go back to the fact that our kid’s made friends with some eldritch kid that makes people hallucinate dead babies?” Doug interjects.

“Yeah, right, that.” Priyanka says breathily. “Connie, explain why we shouldn’t ground you for the rest of your life, please.”

“I was worried you’d be scared of him.”

“I don’t think I have to explain why that’s not a good argument.”

“But he’s not- I mean- he’s just-” Connie slowly shrivels in on herself. “He’s lonely. Nobody else really hangs out with him because of – well, all that – so I’m pretty much his only friend.”

“And he’s your only friend.” Priyanka sighs.

“And he’s a really good one.”

Priyanka lets out a longer sigh, then slowly stands. She looks over to Steven, who seems to be trying his best to become invisible. It’s actually sort-of working- her eyes keep sliding off of him, so she can’t get a good view of his face. Not that that would matter much.

Doug looks at Priyanka, eyebrow raised. It’s going to be her decision.

(God, she already knows she’s going to regret this.)

“Fine. You can still hang out with him.”

“Yes!” Connie raises a fist into the air.

“But you have to tell us if anything happens.” Priyanka adds, “And I do mean anything.”

“I can live with that!” Connie lowers her fist a little.

“And you’re still grounded.”

“Drat.” She lets her hands fall to her sides.

“I’m sure they’ll only kill you a little.” Steven offers.

“And then you can bring me back from the dead.” She jokes. “We can be horror buddies.”

Yup. Instant regret.

(Well, at least Connie’s happy.)

Chapter Text

“It’s happening.”

“What?” Greg asks. He doesn’t see anything happening. It seems like a normal walk on the beach.

“The- what’s the word? The labor is happening.” Rose clarifies, continuing to walk like normal.

“Oh my god.” Greg halts. “Oh my god, wait, wait,” He grabs her arms and pulls her to look at him. “Shouldn’t you, like, lay down, or something?”

Rose blinks at him. “Oh, right! It’d probably be bad if they fell!” She sits down on the beach, legs crossed primly.

“How are you not panicking right now?”

“I guess I’ve done all my panicking already. You’ve been a big help with that.”

“Right, right, yeah.” He remembers all those many, many nights where one or the both of them would cry on the other’s shoulder. He sighs, then kneels down on front of Rose, holding her hands gently. “I guess I just don’t understand how you can be so blasé about… you know.”

“I’ve lived a long, long time, Greg.” Rose smiles sadly. “I’m ready to move on to something else, now.”

Emotions churn in Greg’s gut. He hadn’t really thought about how he was… well, how he was basically assisting his girlfriend with her suicide, and he very much doesn’t want to start thinking about it here and now, at the very last moment to have regrets.

It would be incredibly stupid to tell her any of that, though, so he just smiles softly back. “I don’t know if Gems have something after, but…”

“We’ll meet each other again, someday.” Rose finishes for him. “Are you ready?”

“I don’t think I’ll ever be ready, Rose.”

“Well…” She glances down at her stomach, “no reason to drag this out any longer then, huh?”

She pulls him close, kisses him one last time, and then with a flash of light, Rose is gone and in her place is-

No, that’s not- That can’t-

What?

It’s a regular baby b̴̲̬̯̃͂͝ò̵̡͙̞̋ỵ̸̛͖͍͈.

A regular-

Greg knocks on Vidalia’s door, baby Steven in his hands, but- no-

He doesn’t remember picking up Steven, doesn’t remember walking, doesn’t remember-

A flash. Someone shouts something. A table gets knocked over. Vidalia hits his face with a wooden spatula so hard the spatula breaks, and it knocks out a couple of his teeth.

The next thing he knows, he’s standing back outside Vidalia’s door, bleeding from the mouth, heart thudding in his ears, still holding Steven.

He blinks a few times, kind of sluggishly. He glances down at Steven. Steven stares back. His eyes are a deep, deep bitch black, no irises to speak of. He leans a bit closer, drawn in by the-.

Greg shakes his head, blinking a few times. He needs to focus, focus on- on- on-

“Greg? Are you bleeding?” Pearl asks him. Since when-?

“I don’t know.” He’s at the Temple now. “I think something’s wrong.”

“What happened?” Pearl asks. “Why are you holding a baby?”

Greg shakes his head. “Something’s wrong.” It’s hard to think. Hard to speak. “Take- take Steven.” He clumsily hands Steven over to Pearl, who stares bug-eyed at him.

“Steven- wait, is Rose-.” Pearl cuts herself off, looking back to Greg, who is already starting to walk away. “Wait, Greg!”

“I just- I need a minute.” Everything’s blurry and muddied and strange. The floor is spinning underneath him. “I jus’…” He manages to slur before he faints, hitting the ground with a heavy thud.

***

Greg wakes up surrounded by cushions, laying on the Temple dais. Steven is sitting up in front of him, waving around some flowers in his hands. Greg’s pretty sure babies aren’t supposed to be able to sit when they’re less than a day old, but he’s also got no clue what’s going on in general, so he lets it slide.

“Monin’ kiddo.” He says around the cotton feeling in his mouth. “Seems like I might need a doctor, huh?”

Steven stares at him. There’s something like sadness in his eyes, or guilt, maybe, but he’s just a baby, so-.

Steven hands Greg a flower. A white rose. It’s not one of the ones he was playing with- Greg’s never actually even seen one before. Rose Quartz had, though, and she once told him, in one of their many meandering conversations, that a white rose was supposed to represent innocence and humility. An apology, basically.

Greg picks up the rose. It’s a beautiful thing, almost too beautiful, with unnaturally perfect symmetry and a strange inorganic sheen to it.

He looks back at Steven. At the guilt in his eyes.

“Okay.” Greg says, “Okay, I forgive you.”

And Steven smiles.

Chapter Text

Steven sneaks up on Beach Citywalk Fries, hiding behind one of the boardwalk’s benches. It seems Peedee’s manning the shop right now, which is good. Very good. He slinks his way up to the counter and raps his knuckles against the surface.

“Ah!” Peedee jumps, “Steven, you scared me.”

“Sorry.” He must’ve been too sneaky again. He’s a bit too good at not being seen. “Do you have the bits?”

“Yeah, but we gotta do this quick.” Peedee starts on getting the fry bits as he talks. “Dad’s coming home soon, and you know how he gets when he sees me hanging out with you.”

“I could help with that.”

“Can you explain what you mean by that?”

“I do not have the words.”

“Then no.” Peedee drops the fries on the counter and Steven passes him a couple dollar bills. “Now shoo, before the maggots start stirring.”

Steven nods and scurries off, fry bits held carefully in his hands. He wouldn’t want to damage them, now. Once the fry shop is out of sight, he slows down, wandering. There’s somewhere he needs to be, today, but he’s not sure where just yet. It’ll come to him eventually, of course, as these things tend to do, but for now he just has to wait.

He decides to settle down at one of the tables outside the Big Donut. He eats his fry bits slowly, making sure nobody sees a thing. It’s very, very important that nobody ever sees him eat. Though, Sadie in Lars can still see him, in the general sense, from inside the Big Donut.

“What’s he doing out there? He’s gonna scare away all the customers.” Lars says. Steven knows these are not words meant for him to hear, but he can’t help it. For the most part.

“You don’t even want anybody to come in, Lars.” Sadie retorts.

A scoff. “You know what I mean.”

Sadie doesn’t reply. At least she’s kind to Steven when they’re face-to-face. Still hurts, though, but he knows there’s not much he can do to change it. At least, not without hurting them back.

But Steven’s never wanted to hurt anyone.

(It just happens to be part of his nature.)

He gets in itch, and stands, abandoning the now (empty) carton of fry bits. He’s got somewhere important to be right now.

He walks away from the boardwalk, up to the cliffs near the forest at the edge of town. There, in a particularly rocky spot, he stumbles onto Dead Man’s Mouth, and the three teens currently swatting down the police tape that should’ve warded them away.

He jumps down in front of them, and they collectively flinch backward.

“You three shouldn’t be here.” He says.

One of them (Sour Cream, he remembers), spreads his arms out in front of the other two. “What do you want?” There’s a venom in his voice.

“Yo, have you like, met him before?” The woman (Steven does not know her name, unfortunately) asks Sour Cream. “Is he like, actually…?” She trails off.

“He nearly killed my mom once.” Sour Cream explains. Everyone else looks a normal amount of terrified about this.

“That is not at all what happened, and also, I was a baby and lacked control.” Steven corrects. “Also, she’s forgiven me for that years ago.”

“I still don’t know how you tricked her into liking you.”

“By apologizing?” This is getting a wee bit frustrating.

“Yeah, okay, sure, and I fart rainbows out of my ass.”

Steven sighs internally. “Look, I only came out here to warn you not to go in the pond, so if you could just please promise me you won’t do that? There’s people-eating moss in it. I’d rather you three not die.”

The third teen (the mayor’s son) slaps his hand over Sour Cream’s mouth before he can speak. “Yeah, we can leave, right Jenny?”

“Yep, we can go!” Jenny’s shaking a little. That’s one potential friendship gone, there.

Sour Cream makes some muffled angry noises. He probably was going to lay the blame on the people-eating moss on Steven, as if Steven would

A: Make people-eating moss, and

B: Warn people about it if he had made it.

But Sour-Cream’s hatred of Steven had long ago moved on from “probably justified” to “irrational,” and there’s not much Steven could do to change his mind at this point.

(It’d be fine if Sour Cream disliked Steven. It’s fine that he hates Steven, even, because he can totally understand either. It’s just the blatant mischaracterization that gets him. He’s not a monster, no matter what anybody says.)

(̶͔͈̐H̸͔̜͆e̸͓̩͊̈́ ̵̡͈͌j̴͓̃́u̵̳̝͑s̶̻͖͑͘t̷̗͐̌͜ ̷̖͕̆ḷ̷̈́ő̷̧̯ö̸̻̈́k̵̼̣̎s̴͇̍͘ ̷͔̅̋l̶̩͑͠ȉ̵̙̤ḳ̶̡̀̄ē̷͉̝ ̴̹̖̒o̷̢̝͊͠n̵̩̥͐͛ē̵͎̥̕.̴͖͋)̸̭̀

“Let’s go, SC.” Mayor’s son says as he and Jenny drag Sour Cream back out.

After they leave, Steven lets out a long-suffering sigh. He doesn’t even bother making it sound human. There’s nobody around to hear him, after all.

(Besides, he’s tired. He’s so, so tired of the stares, of the comments, of the pretending and having to pretend, of having to hold back lest he break someone.)

He’s alone right now, though, so that doesn’t matter. Alone, with only the birds and the bees and the people-eating moss.

Actually, he should probably get away from that stuff himself, lest it try to eat him, too. Not that that would work, really, but it would be uncomfortable. He finds a nice tree to sequester himself in the branches of, and takes a very well deserved nap.

(He dreams, as he always does, of the stars. He flies between them, free and light and happy. He could do anything he wants like this.)

H̸̻͙͖̠̖̹̳͛̔́̅̆̈͊̀͛͗̕͠e̷̜̞̱̮̾̓̃̌̆̈́̎ ̵̩̺́͆͒̽̈́̈́̌́͑̚͝͝c̷̫̺̜̻͓̺͉̯͍̦͗̄͜͝ǫ̵͇̦͙͔̘͔̥̮̩͗̄̈́̇u̵̙̪̗̝͗̈̿̈̆͜͝l̵̨͖̳̱̀͛̽̕͝͝d̶̺͉͚̝͈̳̯́̔̑͑̐͌ͅ ̸̡̹̳̭̺͇̲̲̱̦͐̃͛s̴̝̫͈̠̈̄͆͐̀w̷̞̞̝̠̼͍̹̣͂̀ǎ̴̰̝̽̐̌͝l̸̡̛̖̦̗̹̋͂͌̆̓̏̉̅̓̾̐ĺ̸͙͕̘̉̀̌̐͐̉͊o̶̮͓̬̱̤͓̾w̶̦̋̒̑̒̄͂̍̐̄̚ ̶̤̭̪̣̲͉̹̞̭͙͔̳̺̏͑̍͊̒̈́̏̀̿̾̆̉͝ͅt̵̨͇͓͕͎͊͌̄̀̓̈́͐̊̀̈́͝͝͠ͅh̴͈̉̽̍̀͊̿̐̏͒͘e̴̞̻̹͎̞͈̱̰̦̩̅̈́̅͌̓̐̚ ̷̤͍͖͚͉̻̘̮̽̊͋̇͆̐̈́̆̓͠s̶̨͍̖̣̹͔̱̤͙̗̱̠̤̅̀̈́̾̈͆̀ț̴̢͙͔͙̘̺̲̝́̀̓̀̏͑́̑̒̕̕̕͘͜ͅą̶̫͎͖̟̘̃͆̏̅͂̇̊̇́̄̓͘͜͠͠r̸̛͔̺̝̙͔̝͓̟̃̚͝͠ͅs̶̢̘͔̩̫̈͂̃̂̄͛̽̉͋́̚ ̶̢̞̩͍͓͎͉̭̟͆͂̓̿͝ͅẁ̴̢̪̣̠̣̙̣̩̫̥̮̥̀̉̈̓̈́̇̓ḣ̸̡̪͍̹̩̺͓̝̬̭̆̃̐́͐̒̒̐́o̸̢̮͚͚͓͂̽l̵͖͍̪̼̭̠̔͆͝ė̸̠̩͓͉̘͇̗̑̆̐ ̶̡̳̹̹̜̠̱̄̆̈̍̔͑͆̈́̀͗̇̌͊͝i̴̡̫͕͓͓̘̥͎̜͓̓̊̃͐́̎͝f̴̡̛͈͆̚̚ ̸̧̥̰͇̊͂̈ͅh̷̡̗̻̻̮̰͓̠̹̾̏͒͑̐͊̍̇̐͠e̴̖͈̻̺̠͖̯̍͐̒̚̕ ̶̨̛͙͖͎̰͍͍̠̼͚̩͔͖̿̐͆̈́̃̉̇͊̚̚͠w̸̛͔̫͉̖͈̃̀̒͆̆̂̌͑̍̉͘ͅa̶̡̯̬͔̣̟͚̰̭̫̠͖̘̫͠n̴̨̖̩̪̪̽̀͂̍̓t̷̯̝̱͎͚͔͛̅͐͐̐͑̈͐͊̊ȩ̶̨̲̺͙̜̃d̸̨̥̠͖̓͒ ̷͙̣̠͖̥͖͍̼͍̙̪͙̺̈́͂̾͆͒̈́̽́̀ͅt̸̹̞̮̜̠̦̙̠̹̾͆́̋̀͐͠o̴̮͓̣̘̤̪̟͉̽͑͜ͅ.

(He doesn’t, though, so he just drifts, peaceful)

And then he wakes up suddenly, the itch having returned ten-fold.

He scrambles down the tree and back to Dead Man’s Mouth, moving much faster than any human being ought to, limbs contorting in odd ways just to keep up with his speed. He makes it just in time to see the moss completely envelop Sour Cream’s face. The other two are there, too, screaming.

Steven lets out a growl of frustration (which makes the other two flinch away from him, dammit!) and grabs Sour Cream’s arms, pulling him away from the moss. Jenny takes this the wrong way and starts pulling at his hair and arms.

“Let him go, you- you freak!” She shouts.

“I’m trying to save his life!” His voice is distorted in his frustration.

“Maybe we should all calm down?” Mayor’s son asks.

“How am I supposed to be calm right now!?” Jenny screams. She’s still tugging at him, and it’s very much not helping.

Steven mentally preps a wonderfully worded and incredibly polite apology, and then bites her hand. She screams again and rips away from him. She’s not bleeding, though, so Steven counts the win where he can get it.

Then he hauls Sour Cream into a fireman’s carry and runs. He doesn’t know where- he’s trusting his instincts to tell him where to go, really. Jenny and Mayor’s son are following him, of course, but he’s running just fast enough that they won’t catch up until he’s already where he needs to be.

He winds up running up to a cliff that overlooks the whole town. It would be a beautiful sight if he had any of the needed calm to appreciate it. He drops Sour Cream unceremoniously onto the ground. Jenny and Mayor’s son exit the forest soon after.

“Are you going to drop him off the cliff!?” Jenny shouts. She’s fully in hysterics at this point, crying her eyes out. “Oh my God, Buck, he’s going to drop Sour Cream off the cliff!”

Buck is shaking, pale. “Please don’t. Please, please don’t.”

Steven just steps to the side and waves his arm to Sour Cream. Right as he does so, the moss flowers, and the flowers float off into the breeze, leaving Sour Cream perfectly safe and fine.

“I was actually trying to save his life.” Steven says. “Also, sorry for biting you.”

Sour Cream lifts himself off the ground while Buck and Jenny stand still in utter shock. Steven isn’t surprised but he is disappointed that it turned out this way. He mentally prepares himself for whatever they’re going to say to him next. Sour Cream opens his mouth, and Steven looks away.

“I’m so glad you’re okay!” Jenny says. Steven glances over. She’s hugging Sour Cream tightly. “We were so worried when the moss started eating you, and we couldn’t do anything because what if it ate us next? And we were just about to call the cops when Steven came in, and he, like, saved your life, and-” She pauses for a moment. “Oh my God, Steven just saved your life. Buck, Steven just saved SC’s life!”

Sour Cream looks to Buck, who takes a moment to notice. “Oh, um, yeah, that, uh, yeah.” Buck turns to Steven. “Um. Thanks for that. Sorry for, um. Y’know. Everything else.”

Well, this is pleasantly surprising, so far. Steven looks back to Sour Cream. Sour Cream stares back. Then he looks away sharply, scowling.

“Let’s just go home.” He says, and walks away. The other two hesitate, then follow afterward.

“Uh, bye Steven!” Jenny calls out as they leave. “See you again sometime?”

“See you.” Steven waves goodbye.

Well, that went better than expected.

Chapter Text

Connie walks into the Gems having some sort of party. They’ve got a dance floor set up on the beach, glowing a soft pink, and Greg is playing some sort of jazz/metal fusion song on an electric guitar. Pearl, Amethyst, and two other Gems she doesn’t recognize are dancing to the beat.

Steven’s watching from the patio. He looks lonely. She glances between the patio and the dance floor. It’s an easy decision.

Steven looks surprised when she sits on one of the chairs next to him, leaning over the table to talk.

“So who’s birthday is it?”

“You don’t need a birthday to have a party.” Steven says. His voice sounds floaty, like he’s not all the way there.

Connie isn’t sure how to respond to that, or even if she should. She watches the Gems dance around each other. The two she doesn’t recognize spin, glow, and merge into each other. Garnet now dances where they once did. Amethyst and Pearl take this as a cue to do the same, combining to make a four-armed woman. The two of them continue the dance with each other, now.

Connie looks to Steven for an explanation. “It’s fusion,” He says. “Like how eggs and flour can make cake, two Gems can combine their forms and minds to make someone new.” He stares at the Gems dancing. The light reflects off his eyes, warped and strange. “I’ve been told it’s a wonderful experience.”

“But you can’t do it.”

“It would break them.”

She can hear the Gem’s laughter from up here, easy and bright, and she realizes that she might actually hate them, just a bit.

“Dance with me.” She blurts out. A probably-terrible, spur-of-the-moment idea.

“Um.” Steven says, glancing between her and the dance floor, something like panic in his eyes. “They, um. I wouldn’t-.”

“So? We can dance inside.” She stand up and opens the door.

“I’m not that good at dancing.”

“That makes two of us.”

He returns his stare to the dance floor. A second passes, then two. “Okay.”

She leads them both inside, and shuts the door behind them. The music is a little muffled here, but it’s not enough to matter. She offers her hand to take. He looks at it for a moment, and one of his hands twitch slightly towards hers, but he takes a few steps back.

“I wouldn’t want to-.”

“You won’t.”

“I- still.” He stares at the floor. “I’d rather play it safe.”

Connie has to stop her eyebrows from knitting up in worry. “Okay.” She says.

They both stand there for a while. Neither of them really know how to start dancing, so they don’t. Eventually, She sighs, and closes her eyes. She can still feel Steven’s stare on her, but if she has to fight her own social anxiety to make him happy, then she will.

So Connie starts dancing. It’s painful and awkward at first, but slowly, over time, she starts getting into the beat. Eventually, she stops caring what she looks like, and her movements becomes wild and free. It’s amazing. It’s the most fin she’s had in ages.

She cracks an eye open. Steven is- well, he’s struggling. Stiff.

“Do you need help?” She asks.

He immediately stops. “No, I-. It’s just hard to dance like a- like a human, is all.”

“Then don’t.”

Steven opens his mouth. Closes it again. Stutters- though not vocally. His whole being stutters, the world seeming to lag a second or two behind him.

And then, Steven closes his eyes, and he dances. Not like any ordinary person would, or even could; no, his dance is entirely unique. His body moves seemingly by some other force, as if it’s being held aloft, puppeted by invisible strings. His limbs contort in odd and impossible ways as he spins and glides his way around the floor.

It’s beautiful.

It’s Steven.

Laughing, Connie joins him. Trying her best to match his moves is an exercise in futility, but it’s fun and it’s new. They circle around each other, moving in their own weird harmony.

Connie’s hand brushes up against Steven’s, and that slight bit of contact sends a wave of numbness chittering down her spine. She can’t help but giggle at the odd sensation. It’s almost electric. Their touch ends as they move past each other, but in a moment of bravery, Connie snatches Steven’s hand back up again, holding it gently in between both of hers. That odd numbness comes back, travelling up and down her spine, shooting tiny pinpricks of pain through her back. She should probably hate the feeling, but she can’t. It’s just making her giggle too much.

Steven stares at her like she’s crazy. She probably is.

“I- You- I-.” Steven stammers. “You don’t- People don’t usually do this.”

Oh. Oh.

Connie swallows her laughter, and pulls Steven in for a hug. He stiffens, then gently, ever so gently, lays his hands on her back. She can barely feel them, his touch so feather-light as to be nearly nothing.

“You can hug me for real, you know.” She whispers.

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t. Even if you do, you won’t.”

Steven laughs. “That doesn’t even make any sense.”

“It wasn’t meant to.”

A snort. “You’re insane,” He says, but he’s smiling.

He tightens his hold on her, just about to the level of a regular hug. His arms are warm and solid and real, so real, and she doesn’t understand how anybody could just… take this for granted. Well, the fact that she’s starting to lose feeling in her arms is probably a good enough answer, but people who back away from a hug this good just because it makes them a little numb are cowards.

She lets go once she starts to get a migraine, though. She’s crazy, not stupid.

Steven smiles at her, soft and warm.

And then her nose starts gushing blood.

“Oh, holy fucking-!” She pinches it shut. “Shit, shit, Steven, grab the towels!”

“Yep!” He tosses a paper towel at her, and it bonks off her head. “Sorry!”

***

She dreams that night of being on a dying planet. The sun overhead is dying, too – bloated and red, and its heat has dried out the ground below. The dirt beneath her feet is cracked and broken, pools of lava seeping up through the crevices like blood. There is no atmosphere, so she can see the other stars clearly.

She can feel the oppressive, stagnant heat, but there is no pain. It’s just there, weighing down her shoulders, filling up her lungs. She should be dead, but she’s not. Everything else is dying around her, yet, impossibly, she lives.

There is one other being, though. Something that orbits the sun lazily. She can’t really see it clearly enough to tell what. Actually, she can’t see it at all. It’s nothing. Not the nothing that’s space, because that black void is at least a color, and not the nothing that’s air, because one can see through that.

It’s the nothing that you see during a dreamless sleep. The nothing that you see when you try to look out the back of your head. The nothing that you see when you try to remember a time before you were born.

It hurts her head to look at, but she can’t help but stare anyway. It’s enrapturing in its mystery, in the way it glides smoothly around the sun, doing loops through solar flares, dipping under the surface to rise back up in a spray of plasma and fire.

She watches, in silent awe, until the moment the sun finally explodes, and she wakes back up.

Chapter Text

Peridot gets ordered to check up on the Cluster. In person, because APPARENTLY the machines they put in the kindergartens, to, you know, check up on the Cluster don’t work anymore! Wonderful! The engineers tell her that it was probably some harmless Earth creature, but how could a harmless creature destroy Gem tech?

The engineers completely ignore her (perfectly valid) line of questioning, and tell her to go anyway because her Hematite said so.

So she sends some Robonoids down to fix the Earth’s galaxy warp (and who broke that, huh?) so she can warp down to that cruddy planet. Hopefully after this they can give her the remote interface equipment necessary for her to never come here again.

She lands on the warp pad, then scans the area. Broken warp pad, broken warp pad #2, broken warp #3, some earthling staring at her-.

She does not scream or yelp or do anything in her surprise, of course not. It’s just an earthling. Perfectly harmless.

(It looks like a human, but something in the back of her mind tells her it’s not. This is unnerving.)

“Erm, hello there, thing.” Peridot says. “Are you going to interrupt me at all?”

It just continues to stare at her. Okay then. She’ll take that as a “no.”

“Okay then.” Peridot starts up her log, keeping an eye on the earthling. “Log date, 3 1 2. This is Peridot, performing Earth hub maintenance check.” She pads around the warp hub, looking more closely at the warp pads. “Warp repair a success. All 80 Flask Robonoids deployed and accounted for.” There’s something stuck to one of the pads. An… image of… something. Some sort of crying, black-and-white rectangular thing. The image peels off the warp pad when she drags her finger on it. “Did you put this here?” She asks the earthling.

The earthling continues to stare at her.

Peridot sighs. Either the earthling cannot understand her or it does not possess basic critical thinking skills. “The site has been compromised by an earthling. I may as well shatter it so it doesn’t screw up the rest of my work. Charging plasma cannon.” She aims a ball of plasma, and fires. The plasma hits its mark.

The earthling is unaffected.

She blinks a few times in confusion. “The earthling seems to be immune to plasma.” She notes.

It continues to stare at her.

“Whelp, I’m going to ignore it then. Not worth the trouble.” She walks to the domestic Earth warp. “Warping to Prime Kindergarten.” She narrates, and then activates the warp. After a second and a half (rather slow compared to modern warps) she reaches her destination and steps off…

Right back at Earth’s warp hub. Okay then. “The warp seems to be broken. Returning to Homeworld.” She closes out the log. “Ugh, Hematite’s going to have my gem for this.” She walks back to the Homeworld warp and warps away.

It leads her right back to the Earth warp hub. Again. Despite working perfectly fine the last time.

“Update.” Peridot growls into her log, “None of the warps work on this cruddy planet.”

Now she’s stuck here. Great! Wonderful! It’s not like she wanted to live, no, she’s just so very excited to get shattered by the Cluster!

AND that stupid earthling is still staring at her!

“Ugh!” She shouts, “Did you do this!?”

“I did, yes.” The earthling responds.

“Geh-!” She grabs a chunk of a broken warp pad with a tractor beam and hurls it at the earthling. “You stupid clod, you-!”

There is no earthling. She’s not at the warp hub anymore, either, she’s… she’s standing on the warp pad to Earth’s Prime Kindergarten.

“Heh.” Her eyelid twitches. “Okay. Okay. I’m seeing things that aren’t real. I must be cracked. That’s the only explanation.”

“What are you doing here?” A voice, that earthling’s voice, speaks directly next to Peridot.

She screams and falls off the warp pad, off the cliff. She falls into the fog lining the bottom of the ravine, and exits the fog in the middle of the sky. She can’t see land. Can’t see anything, really, other than blue sky and white clouds. She tries to use her limb enhancers to fly out, but they’re gone. She doesn’t have them, doesn’t have anything.

“Why are you here?” The voice asks again.

“The Cluster!” Peridot screams. “I’m- I’m just here for the Cluster!”

“The Cluster…” The voice muses. “Oh, right, that.”

Suddenly, Peridot is no longer falling. She’s floating, out in the middle of space, and in front of her-.

“I already took care of that one.”

The Cluster is in front of her, fully formed. She can’t see it all at once. It’s too big, bigger than the stars, bigger than space itself. A thousand wings flap in a thunderous harmony, a million eyes stare directly into her soul, billions of voices cry out in ceaseless agony.

And then the image cracks and shatters. It cascades around her, broken glass piling on the ground beneath her feet.

She lands. The ground beneath her is still, black water. The sky above, the Milky Way, stars twinkling. The shards of glass float on the water’s surface, giving glimpses of the Cluster. Glimpses of other things, too. Strange, warped images that she can’t quite grasp, pictures so clear she’ll never get them out of her mind.

In one piece of glass, she’s laughing with a Lapis Lazuli. In another, she is melting, distorting,, fragmentating. A hand starts to reach out of that piece of glass. Her own hand. Peridot yelps and stomps on the glass, shattering it even further. The pieces sink deep into the water.

Peridot’s pretty sure she’s dying. Not just being shattered – she’d still have some of her faculties if she was being shattered. She must be dying. Gems hallucinate when they’re dying, right?

There’s something in the distance. Something black and fleshy. Something pulsing. It draws her in, and she can’t help but walk towards it.

“I’m dying.” She says. “I’m dying, and this is my gem trying to make sense of my last seconds of existence. That, or I’m already dead, and this is whatever comes after.” As she gets closer to the thing, it pulses faster and faster, a dissonant thrumming that shakes through her being. There’s a song in there. Music. And even though Peridot doesn’t know music yet, hasn’t gotten the chance to learn, she can feel her tongue wanting to form words, wanting to sing along.

The sound of shattering glass makes her flinch. She looks down. Underneath her foot, there’s a broken image of Yellow Diamond. Yellow Diamond is smiling, and her hand reaches out, but the pieces sink before she can see what happens next.

The thrumming continues. Peridot’s head hurts. Her mouth feels dry. The water, cold and unyielding, laps around her feet.

And then she falls through it.

She emerges back in the Earth’s ocean, the warp hub a scant few meters away from her. She flails uselessly in the waves before realizing that she has her limb enhancers now. She flies herself to the warp hub and lands, stumbling, by the Homeworld warp.

The organic thing is gone. Somehow, she thinks it might’ve had something to do with all this.

She warps away. She lands on Homeworld successfully this time, and stumbles, dizzy, soaking, back to her Hematite.

“We need to leave the Earth alone.”

“What?”

“We need to leave the Earth alone. The Cluster – either it already failed or it’s already going to fail, either way we need to never touch that- that cursed rock again!”

(Nobody listens to her, of course.)

(Nobody was ever going to listen.)

(Peridot gets sent back later.)

(She was always going to be.)

(She is Important, after all.)