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Rose Quartz brought herself unsteadily to her feet, blinking at the sterile-bright floor like it was a hallucination, which it had to be. Her last memory was of a pain in her belly, in her gem, of giving birth surrounded by the Crystal Gems-- was of Earth, hopeful and changing and full of life, a dream come true despite its costs. She felt taller than she'd been in millennia. She felt wrong. And she recognized these tiles.
That was impossible, though, she thought distantly. She couldn't be here, in White Diamond's chambers. If she was--
Where was everyone? Where was her child?
"Pink," a warm, terrible voice said above her. Rose had been anticipating it, dreading it ever since she'd recognized where she was, but the sound of White Diamond's apathetic smile still made her flinch. She looked up into her elder's face and forced her hands to still. She was a rebel leader. She'd led a campaign to drive Homeworld from Earth and had won it, even if the price was steep. She wouldn't be a coward here. "I'm so glad to see that you've finally returned." Rose fought the impulse to scream at White and to attack. Diplomacy might be needed here, she told herself.
White only watched her with a distant, uncaring smile. "You've caused a lot of trouble for everyone, you know. But I'm sure you've gotten this rebellion out of your system now."
"Out of my system," Rose echoed. Dread gathered in her gem as she became fully cognizant of what her presence here meant. "White, I-- what did you do? How did I get here?"
White Diamond gazed down at her, unmoving, pure white but for the red at her fingertips. "You don't remember?" she asked, sounding like she didn't really care about the answer. White had never cared what Rose felt or thought; in her mind, every gem was meant to agree with her, and any protests were signs of illegal thought or immaturity. In her mind, there were no opinions but her own, and mistakes had to be punished. Rose was pitifully glad that White's Pearl wasn't there, too, watching her."How strange. Perhaps the organic was telling the truth after all. Not that it matters now, of course. It's good to have you back."
Rose had never thought about this-- had thought she'd never see another Diamond again, not as anyone but Rose Quartz, war criminal and leader of the Crystal Gems. The Diamonds were her enemies. But standing here, in her original form, and being spoken to like she'd just thrown another tantrum and broken another mural, made the situation feel unreal. Surely she couldn't be here, reformed at White's feet and at her mercy, while White implied that she'd murdered Rose's child. Surely the Gems couldn't have been captured, or the Earth destroyed.
Surely that couldn't be blood pooled across the floor, couldn't be a corpse--
"No," Rose choked out, reality hitting her with the force of a meteor. She couldn't be here, not as herself, not unless-- "No, no, no, what have you done?" She scrambled across the floor, heedless of her strange, familiar form, and kneeled beside the cooling body. Stars, he was so small...
Her son had curly black hair and a star-print T-shirt. Her son had dark eyes, and a friendly face, and Greg's body type.
Her son had a gaping, bloody hole in his stomach where White Diamond had disemboweled him without a thought, and his skin was losing its warmth.
"My son," she breathed, brushing a pale pink hand (wrong, wrong, her skin was peach) over his round, cold cheek. His eyes were frozen open and scared. He'd been awake when she'd done it. He'd been-- had he tried to run? Had White caught him, like a human child playing with an insect, curious and apathetic and willing to tear him apart for her amusement? Greg would be horrified. The Gems would be horrified. But if she was here, if she'd been brought here, it was likely that none of the others were alive. Five thousand years of hope and love would have crumbled to nothing, as insignificant as another tantrum.
Pearl was dead. Ruby and Sapphire were dead. Amethyst was dead. If the Earth was destroyed, her lion was dead, most likely, so that was Bismuth gone, too. Five millennia were a drop in the ocean compared to the Empire's billions. How could she have ever thought that they could make a difference?
Steven was dead, too, and he'd been more blameless than any of them. Rose wanted to wail. "White, you killed my son. How could you? He'd never done anything to you!" Her shield was in her hands. White didn't even bother to draw a weapon.
"Don't be so upset, starlight," she said placatingly. "I understand that it was important to you to act as Earth's organics did, but you had your chance. It lived fourteen years before it was brought here. For an organic that's plenty of time, isn't it? But you can't run away from your responsibilities forever."
"My responsibility was to him!" Rose screamed. "To his health, to his wellbeing, to his happiness-- I never even met him, and I loved him more than anything!" Tears streamed down her face. "How could you do this to me, White? Don't I have anything that you can't take away on a whim?"
"You're hysterical," White sighed. Rose wanted to tear her gem from her forehead and shatter her where she stood. "Starlight, you know I can't talk to you while you're like this. Why don't you go into your room for a while to calm down?" A silvery bubble started to form around Rose. "I'll even let you take the body with you, if you like." Dismissal, again. Like her emotions didn't matter. Like her child's life hadn't mattered.
Rose could have fought. She could have raged, could have thrown her shield, could have aimed all her power at White Diamond and hoped to make a dent in her facade. She would have fought, if she'd had anything left to fight for.
She stood still instead, crying in rage and ruinous grief, and let the bubble take her away.
*
Her room was just as she remembered: magenta, metallic, and utterly lifeless. Rose had spent more time here than she liked to remember-- had been sent here by White every time she yelled at her, every time she protested, every time she tried to convince her that she was a Diamond and deserving of respect. She had grown so sick of it that when she'd finally had the chance to make her own room in the Temple, she'd made a chamber as different from this one as an Agate was to a Pearl.
There was an unzipped backpack in one corner of the room, with an empty bag of chips beside it. Steven had been kept here for a while, then. The sight of his corpse against the abstract patterns of the floor was so incongruous it made her sick.
"I'm sorry." Rose kneeled beside her son's corpse and pulled him into her lap. His head lulled to the side, limp and pallid, and she choked out a sob. "I'm so sorry. I never meant for this to happen, I just--" She was crying, tears streaming down her cheeks, and if he'd still been alive she would have lowered her face to his wound so that he could heal. "I just wanted to make someone better. I didn't know this would happen. I wouldn't have made you if I had."
She hadn't known she could heal, the last time she'd been on Homeworld. She hadn't known anything about her powers then. It wasn't until she'd rebelled on Earth that she'd learned of her communion with plants and her ability to relieve peoples' pain-- of her bubbles and her dream-walking, her possessions and her projection. She hadn't told the Crystal Gems about most of them, since she'd never bothered to use them. Once, though, she'd brought a lion back from the brink of death, after his body had been torn to pieces by a rival male. His blood had soaked the sand red, little grains digging into his gaping wounds, and Rose had only thought to wash them clean, thinking it a last gesture of respect. His body had been--
Rose froze, clutching the body tighter in her arms. The lion's body had been cooling, too. She could-- if she could--
It couldn't work. It couldn't, but she could never forgive herself if she didn't try. Resurrection abilities had been her strangest discovery, and the least-used, since it was unwise to unleash a flood of immortal pink organics on the planet. But for her son...
For Steven, Rose would give up her life. For him, she would do anything.
Rose raised her too-slender hands to catch the tears falling from her face and thought of her grief and her rage, her hope and her furious love. She couldn't let his life end here. She'd brought him into the world so that he could be better, and she couldn't be there for him as he grew, but she could be here now. She could save this remnant of Earth, this last piece of the joy she'd helped to build.
Rose had been too late to keep him safe. The least she could do-- please work, please work-- was fix what had been broken.
Her tears seeped into Steven's body and did nothing. Rose watched, begging the universe for this one thing, please, just let her save him, and when nothing had changed she threw back her head and screamed.
In her lap, after, Steven started to glow.
*
Steven had been scared. He remembered that much. White Diamond had kept him in Pink Diamond's chambers for three days, feeding him fruit from the Human Zoo and having her Pearl bring him the clearest water he'd ever tasted. He'd begged her to let him see his family or the other Diamonds or anyone, and she'd looked through him like he wasn't even there. He'd begged her to help with the Corruption, and she'd only given a distant smile.
She'd summoned him back for another audience after those three days, and that time she hadn't even bothered to let him talk. Instead, she'd caught him in one immovable hand and had fixed two of her fingers around his gem, and she'd pulled--
Steven thought he was lucky not to remember anything past that.
He didn't feel any pain now, though. Wherever White had put him after... whatever she'd done, she'd apparently given him some pain relief to go with it. Or maybe he was dead, and this was the long oblivion that awaited Gem-Human hybrids. Steven wished he could have gone to an afterlife with other people instead.
Something cool brushed against his cheek, and Steven thought, oh, I'm not alone. Then he wondered who was with him and opened his eyes to find out.
Bright pink eyes with Diamond pupils, a face he'd only seen in dreams--
Steven yelped and pulled himself back, tumbling off the person's lap and onto the floor. Pink Diamond started to get up and caught herself halfway, staring at Steven like she thought he'd spook if she made a sound. She looked like she'd been crying. Steven's heart clenched in sympathy.
"I didn't think that would work," Steven's mother said softly, keeping perfectly still. Her hand was still held out, like she'd been trying to catch him before he fell. "You'd been dead so long--" Her voice broke. "Your body was already cold. I thought I was too late. And I didn't know if you could survive without your gem."
Steven took her words in blankly, then looked down at his hands. "Oh." His skin was as pink as Lars's had been. That meant-- "I guess that's better than being dead, right?" He tried to smile, but he couldn't make it stay. His hands went to his belly and found only smooth flesh, and Steven felt sick. "I-I'm not a gem anymore, am I?"
Pink Diamond-- Rose Quartz-- shook her head, expression morphing from relief to sorrow. "No. I'm sorry, I- this should never have happened."
"It's not your fault," Steven said automatically. He paused. "Well, I guess it's a little your fault. But if you hadn't rebelled, me and most of my friends wouldn't ever have been alive. The Earth would've been destroyed thousands of years ago! At least this way there's still hope." He steeled himself and tried to summon his shield, and was surprised to feel its weight settle into his hands. He stared at its shimmering pink surface and felt a rush of heady relief. Not everything was gone, then. If he still had his powers, he could still fight, could still heal, could still form Stevonnie. He wouldn't be completely useless.
Rose Quartz touched her gem with a look of amazement. "I can feel it," she breathed. "You still have my powers!" She summoned her own shield, morphing smaller as she did so, and then she stood before Steven in the form she'd taken when she'd rebelled. Steven glanced between their matching shields and smiled for real.
"I'm okay, then," he said. "Right? If I'm not dead, and I still have my powers-- well, I'm a pink zombie now, but I think I should still be able to shape shift so that's okay-- then we're better off than we were before! You're here! I--" His eyes welled up with tears. "You're here." Steven surged forward and threw his arms around his mother, and she caught him in a startled hug. "Dad's gonna be so happy. Pearl's gonna be so happy." He stepped back and wiped his eyes. "Things are gonna be weird, though. I mean, there's some new Crystal Gems, and everyone knows you're Pink Diamond, and-- gosh, there's Bismuth. And Blue Diamond's been mourning you this whole time, she and Yellow attacked Earth and we had to be all diplomatic."
Rose flinched at the mention of Bismuth and outright froze at the mention of the attack. "She and Yellow did what?" she demanded. "Themselves? Why?"
"It's really complicated," Steven said apologetically. He raised up a hand to scratch at his hair and was startled all over again at its color. That would take some getting used to. "There's this bioweapon called the Cluster that Yellow made, and the Peridot she sent to check on it joined the Crystal Gems but not before it activated, so we bubbled it for a while and it's our ally but it can still destroy Earth. And then Jasper was running around for a while, and Dad got kidnapped and taken to the Zoo so we had to get him back, and then I got arrested as you and put on trial for killing the other you, and my friend Lars became a space pirate, and-- um. It's been a lot."
Rose was staring. "I can see that," she said after a long moment. "I must confess, I didn't imagine this much happening in just the few years I was gone. I definitely didn't expect to come back."
"It's good to have you back," Steven assured her. "I mean, I-- I've really wanted to meet you for pretty much my entire life! And everyone's missed you a lot, and if you're here it means maybe we can get off Homeworld--"
"Wait." Rose looked like she was running back through their conversation in her head. "When you say 'we', do you mean-- is the Earth still intact? Are the Crystal Gems okay? I thought White would have killed them!"
Steven flinched at the name despite himself, and Rose's eyes welled up with fresh tears. "I don't know where they are," Steven admitted. "Me, Pearl, Garnet, and Amethyst-- and my friend Connie, she's the best, I promise-- we all came here with Blue and Yellow. I thought I could convince White to help us heal the Corrupted gems, since Blue, Yellow, and me couldn't make it permanent. Bismuth, Lapis, and Peridot stayed back on Earth. If they're not dead, or bubbled or anything... they must be really worried."
"If Yellow and Blue were with them, they could have protected them from White," his mother mused. "White was always more focused on me. She might have overlooked the others as inconsequential. Though--" She shuddered. "I don't know what she'd want to do to Pearl. There's... history, there. It isn't pleasant."
Steven choked back a sob, and Rose Quartz pulled him into her arms, petting his head like Garnet did. "It's okay, Steven," she whispered in the husky voice he'd never actually heard in person. "I promise. We're both here, and White doesn't know you're alive. We can get everyone out. There's still hope."
Steven looked up into his mother's face and clenched his fists. "I won't let you down," he promised, pushing past his fear. "They're my family, too. You're my family. I'm not gonna let Homeworld hurt you."
Rose's eyes went misty. "You're so much like them, Steven. You're so kind, so careful, so responsible. I'm sorry you had to be pulled into all of this. Children shouldn't have to fight their parents' wars."
"It's okay," Steven told her. "I want to. Earth is my home, and they're my family. I can't stand by while my family's hurt."
"So much like them," Rose repeated, squeezing him tight. Steven felt warmer and safer than he had in months. "I promise, Steven. I'll do everything in my power to make things right."
And Steven would do everything in his power to do the same, he thought. The Crystal Gems were his family. His dad, Connie, everyone in Beach City-- they were all his family. He didn't have to fight, now. He could let his mother resume her position as leader and stand aside. He could be a kid and have everything taken care of for him, could keep himself and Connie away from the war and play without any trouble. He could take the easy way out, and do what everyone would want him to do-- what they would probably beg him to do, once they saw that he'd died. He could leave Earth to its fate and enjoy his life while it lasted.
But Pink Diamond hadn't done that when she'd begged Blue to leave Earth as it was. Rose Quartz hadn't stood aside when she and Pearl had decided that the colonization would have to stop. Maybe it had meant heartache for them, had meant pain and betrayal and bitter triumphs-- but because of them, the Earth had had five thousand more years to grow.
Rose said he reminded her of his dad and the Crystal Gems, but Steven knew which parent he took after the most.
He summoned every ounce of his courage and took a deep breath. "Okay," he told his mother. "I think I know where to start."