#so they had to erase one of them and shove a silly bat in instead

[tiger-moran]

No

(also I hate Disney Ratigan anyway not in a 'he's a great villain and I love to hate him' way I just hate him, I hated him as a kid and nothing has changed now)

[yukippe]

wonder what she thinks of me

for @yuekiweek ​ day 3: reunions | word count: 2.3k | read on ao3

“you need to buy your books suki!!” sokka lectures through the phone. last year suki didn’t buy the books for any of her classes and she was fine. she isn’t actually planning on buying books this year either, except now sokka’s roped her into coming to his book club and she can’t lie and say she doesn’t like to watch sokka rant about something dumb while enjoying the baked goods that sokka will have convinced his gran gran and his parents to make for them.

unfortunatley, this means suki has to brave the bookstore during some fancy author signing to try to buy the book sokka’s demanded everyone read for next week. he’s still talking through the phone, though suki’s mostly tuned him out. she’s normally much better at listening to sokka’s rants, but the bookstore is packed with awkward high school students and suki would rather not, at the moment. she slips around a table of overpriced waterbottles and planners and weaves past a random grandpiano over to one of the computers with the bookstore directory. “sokka,” suki asks as she almost trips over a four year old holding a picture book. “why did you have to send me to this bookstore at this time?”

there’s a huff on the other end of the line and suki sighs deeply, “suki, please you should be thankful! they’re running a special discount if you buy a tote bag to go with the book this weekend!!” well. okay, maybe suki collects tote bags and sokka is probably being a good friend. but suki hasn’t been to this store before, having not bothered with buying her textbooks last year and getting anything for fun as an ebook. but sokka believes in the experience of a physical copy or whatever, so tote bags and author signings it is. 

suki puts her phone between her shoulder and ear as she sets her fingers onto the keyboard of the computer directory, “hey, what’s the name of the book again?”

“have you listened to anything i’ve ever said to you?” sokka asks her. suki can picture him in their apartment at his desk, doing something fancy with math as he coaches her through a bookstore, pinching the bridge of his nose out of frustration. suki doesn’t actually need him to tell her the name of the book, she just likes to rile him up sometimes. she types in the title. suki thanks him for his help, asks him if hes found his glasses yet (the same glasses she hid before she left) and hangs up with a smirk.

adaptation by malinda lo. there, young adult section. it’s supposedly sci fi thriller and sokka, though he lacks taste in most things, has always had solid book taste. suki looks around for the sign to section she needs and spots it, tucked behind a tech display and next to the little cafe. suki walks over, eager to grab her book and get out of the shop. she walks through the shelves searching for the author’s with the last name l. malinda lo. there, suki reaches out to pluck the book of the shelf, when the back of her hand brushes against someone else. 

suki steps back, book in hand, to look at the girl next to her. she has brown hair in a pretty updo and really cute heart shaped beaded earrings. she looks familiar, but suki isn’t sure where she recognizes her from. 

“hi,” the other girl says, her voice sounds like a princess. all bells and whistling wind. 

“uh,” suki coughs, smiling crookedly and titling her head. “hi!” 

the other girl giggles at her, but her smile is warm and suki finds herself settling. “i’m yue - so adaptation? what made you interested in it?”

“oh, my friend is hosting a book club and this is this months pick,” suki tells her. maybe she should have done a little more research on the book before she’d shown up. she hadn’t really pictured a bookstore as the spot to meet a cute girl. 

“oh!” yue says, surprised. “i have the same one assigned for my book club. do you want to grab something to drink and let me tell you about it?”

“sure,” suki says, her smile growing even wider. “that sounds great” 

yue winks at her as she grabs the same book of the shelf, “perfect, there’s this bubble tea place a block a way i want to show you.” yue turns on her heel, her hair falling onto her back as yue bounces in her steps. suki checks to make sure her flannel is neat and her docs are tied before hurrying after yue. 

the two of them wait in line one behind the other at the register and yue flips through the display before the register of pins and pens and bookmarks. a rainbow lion turtle eraser set catches suki’s eye and she lifts it up to her face to look at it closer. it’s the type of thing aang would like, so suki puts it on top of her book when she gets to the register. after she picks out the simplest canvas tote bad (most of them have obnoxious book puns katara would make fun of her for months about) and pays, suki finds yue waiting by the door peeling a sticker off of a sticker sheet suki remembers seeing on the display. 

“so,’ yue asks. “where do you want your sticker?”

suki blinks, “what?”

yue waves the - oh it’s a hello kitty sticker with fairy wings. suki blinks at it, “um. cute?” she gets a smile for her efforts and then yue leans in and grabs her wrist, turning suki’s hand around and carefully placing the sticker onto the back of suki’s right hand. 

“so,” yue says, after failing once more to steal a drink of suki’s boba. her mouth is screwed up in a light pout, but it feels teasing. “do you go to ba sing se u?”

only a little while later, they are wandering to nowhere in particular, still holding hands. yue keeps trying to steal a sip of suki’s drink even though when suki ordered yue had made a face at the idea of coffee boba. yue’s own drink is sweet like her. strawberry, reportedly to match yue’s nails which are done up in a neat mimic of the fruit. 

suki nods, squeezing yue’s hand and lifting her drink over her head, too high up for yue to reach, though that doesn’t stop yue from playfully batting at it. neither of them caring about what passerby might think as they wobble on the sidewalk smiling at each other full of silliness. “yeah, i’m majoring in gender and women's studies with a minor in literature and art.”

yue lights up, the way she’s done every time suki’s shared a fact with her. suki’s face feels flushed, yue makes her feel like she’s on her first date ever. “oh wow!” yue says. “i’m majoring in four nations politics with a minor in theology and spiritual studies but i would love to see what your classes must be like. i think i could be a student forever, you know?”

and then yue doesn’t let go of suki’s wrist. instead, she links their fingers together and suki watches their hands held together hang between them. she looks up and smiles at yue, stupidly happy for a moment. and really, suki doesn’t even know for sure if yue is into girls even if yue does seem to be flagging. for now, suki just lets yue tug her down the street as her phone buzzes in her new tote bag with texts from sokka she’ll ignore for now. 

“hm, not really, i think one degree is enough for me. but academics are cute,” suki says, watching as yue swings their hands back and forth as they walk. they’re both absolutely terrible at walking together, suki’s noticed. they can’t seem to walk in a straight line and suki’s almost fallen off the sidewalk twice already. it’s nice. suki’s finding that yue makes her comfortable everywhere. 

“oh?” yue asks, her eyes twinkling. “does that mean you think i’m cute, suki?”

“hmmm,” suki teases out, a trace of laughter in her voice as yue finally manages to dart forward to steal her drink, finally realizing her success would be increased if she let go of suki’s hand. suki doesn’t even mind that much, wow. “well,” suki settles, after a moment of false consideration. “yeah, i think you’re pretty cute.”

yue winks at her, the same way she did in the bookstore, and takes a sip of suki’s bubble tea. then she makes a completely disgusted expression shoving suki’s drink back at her. “suki! that’s so gross, tui and la, how do you drink that?” 

suki can’t help the laugh that spills out of her as yue sticks her tongue out and crosses her eyes, making a fuss that shouldn’t be as sweet as it is. well, suki’s always been a sucker for clowns. suki reaches out and links their hands back together and they both sip at their drink as they seem to stop together at the bus.

they make shy eye contact as a bus comes up to the stop. “so,” yue says. “i’ve got to go, i’m meeting up with a friend. but this was really fun, right?”

suki smiles, “yeah, it was really fun.”

“that’s great! i really liked talking with you!” yue informs her. then, yue leans forward and kisses suki’s cheek before turning around, and her earrings sparkle in the sunlight as she jumps onto the bus right before the bus doors close and it pulls away with the rest of the flow of traffic. suki blinks and watches it go, still feeling the soft touch of yue’s lips on her cheek.

when suki pulls her phone out of her bag to video call sokka he immediately points out the lipstick mark on her cheek and she resolves not to give him any details, no matter how much he pesters her 

-

two weeks later, after bemoaning to ty lee about how she was dumb and completley forgot to ask the cute girl she met at the book store for her number, she sees yue again. at sokka’s book club.

the members of the secret book club hadn’t been a surprise for the most part, consisting of sokka (obviously), aang (one of sokka’s only friends who wasn’t a gay girl), azula, mai, ty lee and suki (the gay girls sokka was friends with). sokka’s parents, hakoda, kya and bato, had baked with sokka all last night and prepared a whole table full of snacks that sokka had made her haul over to their apartment. suki thinks it’s a ridiculous amount of food for their handful of friends, and then she and sokka ate a good section of it before their friends even show up.

mai, sokka and azula are arguing over the finer points of the book already even though the meeting has yet to officially start. sokka and azula, to be fair, have actual opinions that they are fiercly defending from their spots on the floor as mai causes problems on purpose on the couch she and ty lee stole as soon as they stepped through the front door. 

there was only one person that had yet to arrive, and apparently only aang had met her before. azula had raised an eyebrow at the pronoun and asked sokka if he’d made friends with another gay girl. the answer had been yes, and suki who was looking for another chance at talking to a cute gay girl after flopping earlier in the month and failing at getting yue’s number or social media or anything, was looking forward to meeting the newest cute gay girl sokka was friends with. 

sokka had impeccable taste in cute gay girls (besides azula). so really, maybe suki shouldn’t have been so surprised to answer the door when the bell rang to find yue holding a tray of pastries. 

yue stands out in the hallway with its broken light, looking as pretty as the moon in the sky. her face breaks into a smile at the sight of suki, and suki’s sure her expression matches. “suki?!” yue asks. “wow, small world huh?”

suki nods back, her cheeks starting to hurt with how big she was beaming. “so,” suki says. “do you think i could make up for last week and get your number?”

laughter comes from behind suki, and suki knows her friends are probably making fun of them right now, but she’s too interested in yue’s answer to pay any attention. 

yue rolls her eyes, but she doesn’t stop smiling, “of course suki, now do you want to help me bring these in so i can program it into your phone? no excuses not to call me this time.”

“don’t worry,” suki says as she takes the sweets from yue. “i’ll be sure to blow your phone up more than sokka when he’s trying to prove a point.”

she’s rewarded with another kiss to her cheek (and teasing from her friends at another lipstick stain) and yue’s number in her phone saved as yue🌙💖😘. 

yue, through suki’s phone, texts something to herself and suki leans over yue’s shoulder to see what it is. 

omg yue you’re so hot please go out with me <3

suki bumps yue’s shoulder as best as she can with her hands full and raises an eyebrow. “so, yue?” suki asks. “will you go out with me?”

yue giggles, her lipgloss sparkles and suki wonders what it tastes like, “of course, suki.” 

a few seconds later, suki has her question answered and can confidently report that yue’s lipgloss tastes like mango. 

suki passes the tray off to sokka, who was helpfully waiting right behind her with the tried familiar expression of accidentally setting up his exes. then, suki tugs yue into the loveseat, kicking out aang who had been sprawled across it.

book club is much more fun than suki was expecting, though almost all things are improved, suki finds, when she’s hanging out with her friends and eating sweets and practically sitting in the girl she likes lap while yue braids her hair and teases sokka with her. yue winks at her as aang and ty lee stop azula and sokka from getting into a fistfight with mai and sticks another hello kitty sticker onto her cheek. suki leans over and kisses the same spot on yue. fair is fair after all. 

[tiny-smallest]

i always thought i might be bad (now i'm sure that it's true)

Rating: G Characters: Steven, Rose Quartz Warnings: Mildly disturbing but despite his issues there are no suicidal themes here because despite having sunk really low the entire point of this is that he doesn’t want to die Description: When he was little, Steven thought his mother was something of an angel. When he got a little older, he looked into the light she blazed upon the world and felt the cold shadow her memory cast on him, the million and one ways he failed to measure up. By the time he confronted the fake image of his mother in her room, he wondered if he existed at all, if Rose Quartz's gem being wiped clean of her had truly left any room for him, or if one day he would wake up and be her, again. In that way, and in her looming memory, she had become his prison, a prison he? She? Had done to herself.

But one day a video call gone wrong with Peridot and Lapis brings up a horrific second possibility: maybe he was her prison.

Also on AO3!

---

Steven remembered, only vaguely, the first time he saw his mother.

He was four, maybe five, and he sat on the floor in Mrs. Vidalia's garage, chubby little hands gooey with paint. There was music off to the side; his father, Steven supposed in hindsight looking back.

He was smacking his hands against a canvas, and he remembered that viscerally- the texture of the paint and of the canvas.

But what he really remembered, the thing he actively tried to hold onto, was his father's gentle voice calling him, and looking up, and Mrs. Vidalia and his dad pointing to the painting she'd just finished.

He remembered thinking she was the most beautiful lady he'd ever seen.

---

By the time he was ten he was enamored with her. She was something both adored and forbidden, something brought up only on special occasions or in hushed whispers or through slips of the tongue. He lived for more of her story, fed to him in piecemeal installments, and was grateful that his father gave him them so easily when it occurred to him to do so.

He wondered years later, if he'd just been more candid with his father, if he could have heard about her more frequently. At least from him.

She cried because she loved so much that seeing others in pain brought her pain. That made his heart jolt. That was just like him! He cared about everyone too, and it always hurt so much to see them hurt! He'd felt it just that day, even, watching Amethyst dance around the edges of the cliff face, the thudding of his heart matching her steps, tears burning his eyes at the thought of her falling.

But when push came to shove and she really did fall and get hurt, he couldn't do it. He couldn't seem to make himself cry. It was like hearing that his mother could cry tears that healed people had robbed him of all his own tears, despite the awful feelings welling in his stomach.

Why couldn't he do this one simple thing? He cried all the time! Pearl herself pointed it out! He was still such a dumb kid and he cried over everything, like commercials and snakes and ice cream. Why couldn't he cry over Amethyst getting hurt!?

And when he did finally cry, nothing happened. It wasn't his tears that saved her life. It was the other Crystal Gems.

He failed to cry. He failed to have any healing magic in his tears when he did finally cry a hair ahead of it being too late. He failed his first mission at the Lunar Sea Spire. When he healed Connie's eyes and healed Lapis's gem, he thought he was finally making progress, only for it all to slip out of his fingers. A single silly lie was all it took to topple him? Really, Steven? No, instead he had to use tape to fix the geode. It was fine that Dad needed the tape, but Dad was human. He was a gem. Mom wouldn't have needed tape.

Failed, failed, failed.

That night after the test (that he passed but didn't deserve to pass but, thinking back to the choice he'd made, maybe he'd passed the most important test of all, somehow?) he sat underneath her portrait and stared up at her, the soft moonlight pooling on the floor around him but not touching him, the wall where her portrait hung in the way, and felt very small.

He was never going to be as good as her.

He did try, though! He tried so hard! Sometimes it came naturally, like when he helped people, or was just nice to them, and they were nice back, and somewhere amid all the warmth and joy of friendship and family hummed a happy little thought that maybe, just maybe, there was something good about him despite everything.

Even if he was never as good as her, at least he had that.

---

Lately he wasn't sure if he existed.

During the day the thought felt far away most of the time, but every once in awhile at night he would remember the way Jasper looked at him, feel the stark, cold terror of her gaze freeze him from the inside out all over again. Sometimes it was the memory of when they first met. Sometimes it was her as Malachite. Sometimes it was her gaze shot back at him over her shoulder as she turned to face him, Lapis's horrified face just barely visible behind her.

But for the past week it was her eyes as they lost lucidity, teal spots and spikes overtaking her body. Her shriek.

A trembling hand touched his gem and then flinched back.

He wasn't sure when the idea occurred to him. Maybe it had always been there, buried deep inside him (buried, like the truth-) and recent events made it too big and too painful to ignore, like right now, in the otherwise peaceful quiet night.

Nobody knew what he was, exactly. Or what he needed.

How did they know he was even him?

He had Rose's gem. That's what they called it, sometimes. His mom's gem. Other times they called it his.

What if they were both right? How did Mom giving up her physical form even work, exactly? And that's what they called, it, too- her physical form. Not her life. Her physical form.

Gems didn't get a lot about humans, even the Crystal Gems, but he was pretty sure they used 'life' as an everyday word. If she gave up her life to make him, wouldn't they say that instead?

Heck, even Dad had said that phrase to him once! Did they just want to avoid the word 'die' that much?

Did they phrase it so specifically to avoid saying anything they didn't know was the absolute truth, so they would never technically lie to him?

Was she really gone completely?

Sometimes, you even sound like her... Do you remember this place? Do you have any of her memories?

Maybe the questions Pearl should have been asking were 'did you somehow wipe your own memory' and 'why did you do this to yourself.'

Shattered someone. She shattered someone. She shattered someone and now... where did that leave them all?

He (she? he? she?) wished for a lot of things, once. To know the Crystal Gems better, to be in control of his powers-

Powers, he realized with a startle one day as he erased a save file on his video game (and found himself idly wishing he could forget the game entirely so he could experience it fresh again) that he was supposed to be growing into- and wasn't that what she wanted? Wasn't deleting her own memory just... a real life version of what he'd just been doing? 

Erasing her save file to make room for a new one, to experience it fresh- to grow into her abilities and into the world instead of having it all foisted upon her.

Steven buried that game under everything else in his collection.

'Why did you do this to us?' 

Steven (Rose?) had wished for a lot of things once, but now all she (he?) wished he (she?) had was an answer. 

A prison.

This was a new possibility, one he hadn't considered until he righted Connie's laptop and found to his intense relief that Lion had knocked it over onto the safe landing space of the couch.

In the cooldown over being grateful that Lion hadn't seriously damaged something so personal to his best friend and that Lapis was feeling okay after such a raw, sudden spike of terror had ruined her afternoon, Steven found himself feeling bad all over again about what Lapis had gone through. She was a little rough around the edges maybe, but she was a good person. She hadn't deserved that.

As much as dropping everything to get to the barn had been inconvenient, he couldn't begrudge her the reaction she'd had. That must have been so scary, to think someone was putting Steven through what she'd experienced. Her eyes always went hard and kind of foggy at the same time whenever she talked about it; it was no wonder she'd lost her mind just now. Being trapped in something for years and years, in a prison nobody could even see you in, god, he couldn't even imagine-

W-where's your gem on this thing I-

Right here, he thought automatically to the memory of her scared voice, her frantic eyes, and he touched a hand to his gem as he closed Connie's laptop, and somewhere in the thought and the physical touch an awful, awful, connection was made.

Right here. Right here, in his belly. Where it had always been.

His gem. Her gem?

How did giving up her physical form even work?

What if it had in exactly that way. In exactly just insofar as her physical form.

Nausea took over his stomach. A haze of fog settled into his head. Cold fingers gripped his heart and squeezed until there was no more air in his chest.

A gem's whole being is their gem. Their body is just hard light and magic. Giving up her physical form meant giving him her gem but did it mean she stopped existing? Gems didn't stop existing when they retreated into their gems to heal. They were still themselves, inside their gem. Lapis didn't stop existing when she was embedded in the mirror; why would Rose stop existing when embedded in a human?

Was he her prison?

He ran to the bathroom and threw up.

For the next few days he drifted in and out of a fog, smiling at cues, nodding through conversations. He didn't talk to Lapis, but he thought about her baseball bat, how the solution was to smash the mirror, the laptop. He closed his eyes in the shower and didn't touch his gem.

But eventually Steven found himself sitting in the bathtub, feeling too tired, too heavy to stand up. Had he taken his shower? What time was it? What day was it? He didn't know the answer to any of those things.

After what must have been at least a week since the initial thought, he finally laid trembling fingers against the smooth surface of the jewel he had no right to be carrying around inside him. He traced the facets, watching the clear, brilliant pink gleam in the light. It was a little dull. He hadn't been keeping up with his daily grooming routine, giving it the attention he usually did. If I polish it, he thought blearily, my face will reflect in it, but that doesn't make it anymore mine.

Actually won't that just make it a mirro-

He gagged and clapped his hands over his mouth instead.

After a moment he eased his hands from his mouth and back to his gem, tracing his way down the sides to where the hard rock met his skin. He poked his belly a little, watching the way his finger made the indent in his roundness. He traced his way back from his flesh to the gem.

Flesh. Gem. Human. Magic. The mirror was smooth against the back of his hand. Ripping Lapis out had been hard.

He gripped his gem experimentally in one hand.

It was warm against his palm. It was always warm, even when the rest of him was cold, like after a long dip in the ocean when it was freezing, or a day outside playing in the snow. Somehow it was still always warm.

He set Lapis free. He should set Rose free, too.

I can't.

His pulse, or maybe his gem, thudded against his hand.

I can't.

He didn't know how he knew, but he knew that he needed this gem. Would removing it kill him? Would it erase his memory somehow? Split his consciousness in two? He didn't know. But he knew--maybe in the same way young humans know they need blood without being told--that he needed it. To pull it out would be to destroy his own existence, one way or another. He thought of how he flinched as Lapis's gem finally came free and the mirror jerked and spat shards everywhere, and his grip on the pink quartz in his stomach tightened.

He liked being alive. Or at the very least he liked his own consciousness. Liked being him. If asked if he loved himself he would answer without hesitation because of course everyone wanted to hear he did even if he didn't, but love and like could be two different things, right? He could like being himself the way humans liked having blood, and hearts, and lungs. It didn't mean he had to love his failures or his weird body or any number of things.

And besides, he could love how he helped other people, how he was kind and gentle and how he tried to be good, how that affected others-

Lapis's exhausted face, stumbling steps, the way she grabbed at his hands and smiled at him, weak and grateful...

Except that was all a lie wasn't it? 

He couldn't take his gem out. He didn't want to take his gem out. His breathing grew harder, faster, sweat rolling down his face the more he thought about pulling, the more his fingernails dug into the jewel, scraped against his gut, his soul. He didn't want to take his gem out.

He didn't want to set her free.

He wasn't willing to break the mirror.

So he stood up, showered, dressed, crawled into bed, buried the whole night deep, deep under layers of quilts and fine, fine, I'm fine, we're fine.

Three days later he heard the story of the gems kidnapping him (guys seriously why didn't you just talk to Dad, he groaned in his head) and how all of them, Pearl specifically, so selflessly decided that Steven's life mattered more than Rose's wants. More than their wants. Her hand had touched his gem, but only seconds after her fingers tightened, she stopped. She could have had Rose back right then, but she stopped. Steven sat frozen through that part of the story. At least the whole thing had a gentle ending to soothe him a little. And wasn't it lovely, to think about how much they all grew!

After the general merriment and amusement had died down he excused himself to the bathroom to lift up his sweater and stare at what lay beneath. They didn't do it. They had no right to decide to do it, he supposed, not when it wasn't their lives in question. But he did.

He did and he still couldn't do it.

Selfish.

He was pretty sure that made him bad.

---

I forgot to copy this over from where I posted it originally oops. Here’s the original closing notes:

I've been picking at this for ages and ages because Youtube has been recommending me White Diamond's... speech? Verbal abuse tirade? At Steven for like, a solid month now, and I watch every single time, because it is chilling as hell both in just the possibilities she puts into the world (that thankfully aren't true but still, yikes) and in how it turns out she knew the whole time that Steven was Steven all along and just didn't care about ripping him apart if it got her Pink back.

Somewhere in all these rewatches of that scene I realized it's entirely possible Steven doesn't just fear that he's somehow literally Rose with severe amnesia, and then I remembered Lapis and the mirror. I have no idea if Sugar did that parallel intentionally but Steven's a smart kid. He probably picked up on it himself.

And since my other wips are all about Steven and his dad and Greg and Rose, how about a story about Steven and his mom.