For a long, long time, the Crystal Gems stood out on the deck in silence.

Then, slowly, they retreated back into the house to get Steven ready for bed. Again. Steven had a shower, to clean away the grime and the dirt and the tears. As he did, the waiting Gems packed away the cot which had been set up on the couch. Then Amethyst made him a late-night snack. What the snack was, exactly, wasn’t entirely clear, but it was hot, comforting, and covered in melted cheese. Steven poked at it, not really hungry. Eventually the leftovers were put in the fridge. Steven put on his pyjamas, before spitting onto a tissue and rubbing saliva onto his scratches and burns. The cuts sealed, the burned red flesh of his foot returned to a more normal pink. Pearl still applied some aloe vera to it, just for good measure. By then Steven was yawning heavily. Garnet scooped him up in her arms, and carried him up to his bed, the other two trailing behind them. He was asleep by the time the blankets were tucked around his neck.

The Gems watched him for a moment. Then they crept down the stairs as quietly as they could. They stood in the living room, uncertain.

“Uh,” said Amethyst, voice low. “Er… I’m going to my room. If either of you— er, wanna find me— uh. That’s where I’ll be.” She trailed off, fiddling with the hem of her white shirt.

“I’m going for a walk,” announced Garnet.

Amethyst didn’t reply. She just bit her lip, and set off towards the Temple door. She tilted her head at Pearl, as if to say, ’Coming?’

“I—” Pearl began. She looked at Garnet. “May I join you?”

Garnet nodded.

“Okay,” said Amethyst, letting the other two head towards the screen door. She opened her mouth to say something, but all that came out was, “I’ll be in my room.”

She disappeared into the Temple, while Garnet and Pearl disappeared down towards the beach.

They didn’t speak. For a long time, the only sounds they made at all was the crunch of their footsteps in the sand. It blended in with the background noise of the wind, the waves, the seagulls. Quiet, peaceful beach sounds, same as any other night.

“I was so happy to see her again,” said Pearl. Her eyes were shining.

“Me too.”

It had been so— so amazing, to see her again. After so long. One of their oldest friends, one of the first rebels.

One of the first rebels lost, as well. The one, perhaps, they’d cried the hardest for, before deaths had started becoming so common place, before the Corruption destroyed everything, before their seemingly infinite grief had been exhausted. They hadn’t even allowed themselves to think of her in… in millennia. There was just too much pain there. Too much.

But then she had reappeared. She was just there again, as if she’d never been gone at all. So much was different, but so much was the same. Her stock of wonderfully terrible jokes. Her brilliant smile. Her friendly punches. Her bombastic attitude. Her rousing war stories. The way she could pick you up and toss you into the air and make you feel like you were at the top of the world.

“She tried to kill Steven,” said Pearl.

Garnet’s fists clenched. “I know.”

“I can’t believe— I can’t believe she would do that.”

(But she did believe it. They all did. That was the problem).

“I should have seen it coming.”

Pearl stopped. “Garnet, no. You couldn’t have predicted—”

“I don’t mean with future vision.” Garnet pinched the bridge of her nose. Her glasses vanished. “I should have thought—” She took a shaky breath. “You said it yourself. Rose said she had lost lost track of Bismuth. So how could she have shown up in Lion’s mane? I should have been wondering, I should have asked Bismuth what had happened— We should have realised something was amiss—”

As she spoke, Garnet’s usually level voice grew more and more distraught. Pearl reached out to her, but her skin felt strange and shifting beneath her hand. A moment later she burned with a bright light. Pearl stepped away. The light split, and then two Gems stood in Garnet’s place.

Pearl blinked at Ruby and Sapphire, startled. “Are you two alright?”

“No,” growled Ruby.

“We’re fine,” said Sapphire. And it was true. Sapphire’s arms were wrapped around Ruby’s waist, and while there were waves of heat and cold radiating off each them, the anger didn’t seem directed at each other. “We simply have a lot to talk about.”

Pearl gave a small nod. She understood. Fusion… fusion was so intimate and close, but sometimes… sometimes you just needed words.

She glanced behind her. The Temple’s serene faces stared down at them, calm and unaffected.

It wasn’t much of a comfort.

“Let’s go to the lighthouse,” Pearl suggested. Ruby and Sapphire nodded, mutely. Somewhere they could get out of the Temple’s steady gaze.

They walked slowly, footsteps heavy and weary. They only made it about halfway up the hill before Ruby burst out, “Why didn’t Rose tell us?!”

Pearl looked away, and only partly because of the wave of intense heat scorching at her face. “She must have been afraid of how we’d react—”

“SHE SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN!” Ruby stomped. “We get it. We made the same choice. We decided to bubble Bismuth, too, we—” Tears bubbled and boiled in her eyes. “She lied to us!”

“Not just by omission,” added Sapphire. “A deliberate deceit.”

“She let us think Bismuth was DEAD!”

Pearl stared down at her feet as she climbed, tears beginning to stream down her face. “She must have had a reason. You— or Garnet said— the same thing, after Lion— Rose kept many secrets—”

“This is different, and you know it,” Ruby said.

Pearl took a shuddering breath. She did.

They were nearing the top of the mountain, now. The lighthouse was flashing, again and again and again.

“We weren't the only Crystal Gems,” Sapphire said.

The other two looked at her. “Huh?” said Ruby.

“She had to consider all of them,” continued Sapphire, voice terribly even. “If they had learned about the Breaking Point, they may have sided with Bismuth on the issue. What if they had agreed that shattering Homeworld Gems was our best chance of winning?”

“Rose would have reasoned with them—” began Pearl, but she stopped.

Would Rose have been able to? Pearl wasn’t entirely sure. Rose had valued life, in all its forms, but not everyone had been able to see things the same way she did. Pearl certainly hadn’t, though she had strived to, for thousands and thousands of years.

She understood the desire. Keenly. She knew the frustration, the anger, of having Gems look down on you, time and time again, dismiss you, ignore you. Knew the urge to fight back, to show them what you really were.

And she knew fear. Fear yourself, fear for the ones you loved. It was what had propelled her to throw herself between Rose and mortal danger, over and over. If necessary, she had been willing to die for Rose. She had also been willing to kill. There were others, now, she’d be willing to do the same for.

And Rose herself had made that terrible choice once. Rose had decided that there was no possible alternative. Rose was the one who had struck the final, shattering blow to Pink Diamond.

But that had been a desperate, painful thing. The final option, when all other alternatives had been expired. But to set out to kill, indiscriminately— where could the line be drawn?

Ruby and Sapphire were holding hands, grips tight. They were wondering the same thing.

Ruby’s face was screwed up into the look of intense concentration. “Maybe the others wouldn’t have all agreed,” she said. “But we should have still talked about it. Let them make the choice. That's what the rebellion was all about. The right to choose.”

“Yes,” said Sapphire. Frost was forming on the dew soaked grass around her. “But what would have happened, had a significant segment of us agreed on using deliberate lethal force? It would have caused a schism. Broken us into factions.”

“You’re saying Rose was right?” Ruby demanded.

“I’m just trying to see things from her perspective,” Sapphire said. “We were a guerrilla force. Infighting would have destroyed us just as thoroughly as the Corruption did.”

“We’re still a guerrilla force,” Pearl said, softly.

And they were. Outgunned. Outnumbered. Out planned.

It would have been good to have an old friend on their side.

“Couldn’t we still try?” Ruby asked. “We could— just talk to her. Show her our side. Introduce her to Peridot. Great way to show how anyone can become a Crystal Gem, no matter how—”

“Irritating?” suggested Pearl.

“Peridot’s not so bad,” Sapphire and Ruby said, in unison.

Despite everything, Pearl smiled. They could be such a couple.

“She isn’t,” Pearl admitted. It was quite impressive, actually, seeing how much Peridot had changed in a few short months. Directing her attention to Sapphire, she asked, “Would it work? Could we convince Bismuth?”

“Possibly,” she said. Not a yes. Not a no. Just a possibly.

A possibility that she could come back. That she could fight at their side. Talk with them. Dance with them.

But also: The possibility that she would lash out. That she’d go behind their backs. Shatter someone in battle. That she’d attack Steven.

None of them could risk that. None of them could forgive it.

“I hate this,” Ruby said. “I hate all of this. Bismuth didn’t trust us, Rose didn’t trust us—”

A sob cut her off, mid-sentence.

“Pearl?” Ruby and Sapphire asked.

“S—sorry.” Pearl wiped her fresh tears away, embarrassed. “It’s just— I always knew that Rose kept secrets. But I thought— I thought she had more faith in me. In us.”

Sapphire edged over, and laced a cool arm around her friend’s waist. Ruby got up and went to stand at Pearl’s other side, the perfect heigh to lay a hand on her shoulder. “We did too,” Sapphire confessed.

There was anger there.

Old anger, too. It hurt to admit but— they’d all been angry. Angry for a long, long time. They’d tried to ignore it. To hide it. To redirect it.

But they couldn’t, any more. They were angry at Rose.

For her secrets, for her lying, for her leaving— for this position she'd put them in-

“At least,” Ruby said, before the silence could grow too oppressive. “At least she trusted us with Steven.”

“Yes,” said the other two, in unison. Pearl sniffled a little, but smiled a little, too. The three of them pressed in, holding each other close, embrace tightening—

— a beam of light brighter than anything from the lighthouse shot up into the night sky.

Sardonyx opened her four eyes, stretched out her limbs. She leaned back, one set of arms bracing against the ground, holding her up, while the other set wrapped around her knees. She tilted her head back, staring up at the sky and the Earth’s familiar starscape.

Maybe one day— when the Diamond Authority was dissolved, when Gems were free, and the Earth was truly safe— they could let Bismuth out, and mend all that had been broken.

For now, they didn’t have Bismuth. They didn’t have Rose. They didn’t have hundreds of other friends that they had lost.

But they had Steven and Amethyst. And Connie, and Greg, and Peridot, and maybe even Lapis Lazuli. And they had themselves.

And maybe that was enough.