#steven always bounces back! when danger is near he has no fear

[little-cereal-draws]

What happened to Steven in the Duat

[darisu-chan]

Final Thoughts

So after digesting everything that went down in the finale, I finally decided to write a post about this show.

I found out that Star vs the Forces of Evil existed through a Tumblr post about great new cartoons featuring Gravity Falls, Wander Over Yonder and Steven Universe. You probably don’t know since I honestly didn’t post much about it, but Gravity Falls is one of my favorite cartoons ever. It’s the kind of show I always wanted to watch as a kid and I’m so happy I got to watch it as a young adult. SvtFoE falls in the same category. A quirky show about a magical princess from another dimension who comes to Earth and befriends a shy and insecure boy who’s secretly a badass and they go on adventures? That’s right up my alley. It’s the kind of thing I would’ve loved as a child, and, as such, it was exactly what I wanted to watch.

I don’t watch cartoons for the sake of watching something mindblowing and life changing. For that kind of experience, I either watch artsy and indepent type of movies or I read high literature texts. I don’t expect to find the holy grail of story telling in a kid’s cartoon, although I’ve been pleasantly surprised before (like with Avatar and Gravity Falls). I watch cartoons because they are more light hearted than any content created for adults and, even, for teens. Because they always have messages of love, friendship and hope. And for someone like me, filled with insecurities about my future, trapped in the negativity of adult life, at the end of the day, I want to watch something that will bring a smile to my face. All I want in a cartoon is to laugh, to have fun, to care about the characters, and to feel as if life can be good after all. That’s what  SvtFoE has meant to me from the very first moment I watched the show back in 2015 to yesterday, when the finale aired.

I’ve always loved the animation, specially during the first season, filled with colors and movement. The music has always been astounding. The voice acting has been near perfect, Eden Sher and Adam McArthur made a fantstic job giving life to these characters. And the plot also progressed in ways I didn’t imagine it could. The forces of evil went from representing Ludo and his classic cartoon trope of trying to steal something from the main character (and failing spectacularly) to so much more than that. Racism, discrimination, colonialism. These are hard topics to tackle in a kids’ show, but they have never been more fitting than in today’s political climate, not only in America but in several countries of this world. I hope that kids out there got the message and become more loving, respectful, tolerant and accepting of others, no matter how different they are. I hope that all the kids that have felt ostracized by others due to thier backgrounds, identities and personalities have felt that they could be themselves because there’s nothing wrong with being who you are as long as you’re compassionate, kind and caring. Hate is never the answer. Love is the answer. That’s the message I hope we all carry in our hearts for the rest of our lives. The message we will taught the kids around us, because it is something we will need in the future.

The second reason why I love this show is that it has given mee the opportunity to share something with my cousins. With over a decade of an age difference, finding interests we can share together has been tougher and tougher. I’m glad that we got to spend our holidays watching SvtFoE and sharing time together, given the fact we live so far away from each other and we hardly get to see each other. I thank this show for giving me a reason to spend time with them.

I know that many people are disappointed with the finale. I myself have been disappointed through most of season 4 and I only started liking it again during “Cornonation.” However, this doesn’t take away from the fact that the things I love about this show in the first place are still present. I have seen many, many awful endings of books and series I loved. I have lived through the pain of seeing how something I loved became garbage. I’ve decided to not be negative about this series anymore. Because love is the answer. Because I still love this show very much and I will continue rewatching it.

So here’s a list of the things I love the most about Star vs the Forces of Evil:

1. Star, our magical princess from another dimension, who went from rebelling against her future to embracing it to using her title and powers to protect others. Star is far from perfect and that’s why I love her. She’s intense. She feels too much and acts accordingly. And because of this there’s so much goodness inside of her. Someone who felt less emotions than her would have never been able to sacirfice as much as she did. Only a rebel princess would have been able to break the system, to destroy magic, and start the first steps towards unity. Always remember that she's a thunderstorm roaring through the night, she's our shooting Star, and she's lighting up the sky!

2. Marco Diaz, the safe kid who pretended to be a misunderstood bad boy, and who ended up overcoming his own insecurities to be the best version of himself, a boy who loves adventures while still being responsible. As a Mexican myself, I’ve always loved how the show embraced his Mexican heritage as part of his identity without making fun of it. But as a deeply insecure person, and one that as a teen let my fears hold me back, I’ve always felt more personally connected to Marco, when I see him I see myself ten years ago, and I’m so happy about the way he developed. Fear doesn’t hold him back anymore, and fear shouldn’t hold us back either. He’s also the most loyal person you’ll ever meet, and I think it’s his loyalty which separates him from the rest. We should all be more like Marco.

3. Star and Marco’s relationship. Through their ups and downs, through all the pain, the danger, and the difficulties they faced, they always came back stronger than ever. I started watching this show because of its quirkiness and I stayed for Star and Marco. It’s what constitutes this show. Without Star and Marco, there would be no show. It starts with these two and ends with both of them. The finale makes it clearer than anything. “With or without magic, we belong together.” I love their friendship and I love how much they love each other.

4. The magic. Although it got destroyed in the end for not only being dangerous, but being a tool to destroy and dominate others, I absolutely love Star’s strange, often hilarious, cute and bright spells, who definitely fit her. The wand was absolutely gorgeous when it was Star’s wand. I also like how it changed appearances for each wand user. Marco’s wand design complemented Star’s perfectly too.

5. The various dimensions and the different kingdoms of Mewni. The world building, particularly the effort put into creating visually appealing places is something I’ve always admired about this show. Even though expanding world building can be tricky and is often the downfall of many narratives, I believe they managed to pull it off. My favorite places in the SvtFoE universe were the Bounce Lounge, the Forest of Certain Death, the Underworld, Dimension X-103, Pixtopia, Neverzone, Plains of Time and the Realm of Magic.

6. The parents. It’s refreshing to find a show in which the adults love each other so much and are examples of healthy relationships. Moon and River. Angie and Rafael. Eclipsa and Globgor. Wrathmelior and Dave.

7. The different relaitonships between mothers and daughters. Often complicated but filled with love. Throught it all, Moon and Star became closer by learning to understand each other and, though they still have a long way to go as of the finale, they’re on the right path. Eclipsa and Meteora are another example. And that ending with Comet and Moon, and Solaria and Eclipsa. It played right in my heartstrings.

8. Tom, Janna, Eclipsa, Ludo and Buff Frog who became a few of my favorite characters due to the development they got, my boy Tom more than anyone.

9. The humor, the music, the colors that make this show special. A shout out to the animators, storyboard artists, musicians, writers and everyone else involved in the creation of SvtFoE for making it the way it is.

10. And a big thank you to Daron Nefcy, for creating this show and for fleshing out a story unlike any other, through the journey of Star Butterfly along her best friend Marco Diaz, and the rest of their family, friends, allies and even enemies. The real forces of evil we should all fight against are indifference, hate, discrimination and intolerance. I hope we all do our part in making this world a better place for the ones to come next. All it takes is someone that cares enough, and I really wish we all are like Star in our lives. I wholeheartedly believe we all possess the ability to be our own shooting starts.

Let’s all light up the sky!

[mimik-u]

Something in Common

Prompt: For a bellow diamond prompt, I would be really curious to see the humor between blue and yellow? How once makes the other laugh, or how they make each other laugh. They don’t seem prone to it in the show but I figure there’s gotta be something in there?? I’ll also cry pure joy if u could incorporate pink as their kid figure in there (@pointlesslypoetic)

Summary: After White Diamond whisks him away to the pink chamber, Steven receives a welcome visit from Blue and Yellow Diamond.

A/N: I originally thought this was going to be three paragraphs long and much, much happier, but I’m a mess who can’t write short, pure fluff. I hope you enjoy all the same, though!

AO3 Link

The first mistake Steven made on this abysmally chilly, fear leaden, but otherwise perfectly pleasant Homeworld evening was to force his new dictator grandmothers of sorts—who both thought he was his mother, which he kinda was but not like that—to bring him back to Homeworld. Trapped in a spacious pink chamber now, he recalled the previous horror and dread and misery he’d felt upon being trapped within a Diamond’s clutches before. At least last time he’d occasionally had Lars to talk to… or even Zircon, nervous creature though she was. Now it was just him and the luminescent bubbles drifting peacefully, emptily above him.

Were they his mother’s? he wondered.

Had she ever been alone in here, too?

If she had, and he had a vague gut feeling that it was so, he could see why she felt the desperate need to escape this world’s cloying grip on her. The room, or whatever it had formally been to Rose… no, to Pink… to Mom?… possessed an eerie quality. A child’s playroom for a being who had never exactly been a child. A farce. A vicious trap bathed in pink, ethereal light.

A chill collapsed down his spine. It wasn’t the cold this time.

The second mistake Steven made was thinking that a single audience with White Diamond would be enough to turn eons upon eons of alien autocracy upside down and all around. He’d seen the body language of the other gems. Blue Diamond’s tall hands splayed over her mouth. The subtle shiver that ran like an electric current down Yellow’s back. Pearl’s expression. Garnet’s. He’d known each and every one of their hesitations just by looking at them… but Steven had insisted anyway, and they’d all acquiesced, and now they’d been separated within three minutes of arriving on this broken planet. 

(He supposed it was about high time someone else picked the family vacation plans because he was zero for zero at this point.)

And the third mistake Steven made tonight—because obviously he was on a roll of self-inflicted regret—was peering down from the balcony at Homeworld sprawling below. From his towering perch, the planet was vast, overwhelming, intricate, interconnected. An extensive neuronic network. Spaceships and marching gems jumping like impulses from one synapse to another in lightning, methodical movements. Below all the commotion, though—the rigid mechanisms and the appearance of order—laid the deep, black abyss, yawning at him with its inscrutably dark teeth. 

He clenched his gem and inhaled deeply. He’d been down there before. He knew how desolate and hollow and dangerous it was in Homeworld’s abandoned trenches.

All those holes in the cliffs?

Lesions in a rotting brain.

So jumping… jumping wasn’t a viable option.

Because even if he did jump, and even if the ridiculous logistics of a kid bouncing around in a rosy bubble went unchallenged his entire ride down, Steven highly doubted that White Diamond would allow him to remain unchecked for long.

Starlight, she had called him, and the way she said it had iced over his insides.

Unless something miraculously gave, he didn’t think he’d be adding her to his entourage of moms anytime soon.

Steven groaned, the sound welling up from deep inside his throat, his chest, his spinning head, and collapsed wearily on the softly glowing floor, his hands cushioning his head from the fall.

This sucked.

This really, really sucked.

He tilted his chin skywards and was unsettled to find that the scatterings of stars shining coldly upon Homeworld were alien to him.

No Canis Major.

No Big Dipper.

No dad and Gems to trace the constellations with him with their soft words and even softer eyes.

The beginnings of tears had begun to form in his eyes when he heard a sudden whoosh and then a decisive snap of a closing door.

The sharp clack of heels.

The sweep of heavy fabric against the floor.

Steven, startled, flipped over on his belly and found himself staring at Yellow and Blue Diamond, their eyes searching for him at a height he could not compete with… not their own, nor a human’s, but that of a gem who came up to their knees, who had fluffy, pink hair and a laugh that hung in the air like the echo of a beautiful melody.

But then they both remembered.

Blue with a half-gasp.

Yellow with a jolt.

Blue’s eyes, half-moon shaped and pierced through with an unsubtle sadness, found him first.

“Oh, Pink!” She exclaimed, relief evident in the intricacies of her high pitch, but Yellow nudged her shoulder stiffly. “I mean… Steven,” she amended uncertainly, his name drawn into two hesitant syllables in her lilting accent.

All the same, though, the Diamond lowered her long hand to him in a clear invitation for him to clamber up. Steven got to his feet and hopped onto the groove between her index and middle fingers, quietly hoping to himself that the profusely emotional gem wouldn’t, uh, squish him against her wet face again. She gently lifted him into the air and cupped her hand protectively  near her diamond.

“After White took you, your friends may have clarified what a mother was for us,” Yellow offered shortly by way of explanation, refusing to meet his eye. A faint golden scribble had drawn itself across her strikingly cut cheek. 

Oh.

Oh.

Oh, wow.

“Um, that’s good,” Steven laughed nervously, deeply relieved and simultaneously mortified that someone had enlightened the Diamonds. (On the one hand, it would have been an absolute disaster had he tried to dredge up Greg’s very skittishly delivered birds and the bees talk from the annals of his repressed memories, but on the other hand, he didn’t quite imagine that the gems, with their inorganic bodies made of light and incomplete understanding of human antics themselves, would be able to do much better.)

“Hmph,” Yellow grunted, and that was thankfully the end of that.

“We’re sorry we couldn’t get to you sooner,” Blue apologized, “but we weren’t exactly sure where she’d sequestered you off to. I didn’t think she’d be so… transparent as to send you back to your… Pink’s chambers.”

She frowned deeply, that same puzzled expression misting her eyes again; he got the feeling that it would be a little while still before Blue unraveled the mystery of his existence in her head.

Steven felt a short pang for her.

A pang for all of the confusion and hurt his mom had left behind.

“Well, I thought it was obvious enough,” Yellow said haughtily, but there was a slight tilt at the corner of her mouth that spoke more to smugness than crossness. “White isn’t exactly a creative disciplinarian. We behave badly and she whisks us off to our chambers for decades at a time.”

“When we were younger gems,” Blue whispered conspiratorially, leaning her long face closer to Steven’s, “Yellow was quite the truant. Always sneaking off to participate in battles she was supposed to delegate to lesser gems.”

“I was bored, and I feared no consequences,” she said with a dismissive shrug of armored shoulder. “No permanent ones anyway.”

They were glad, light, and relieved, but Steven couldn’t quite feel their levity, honing in on one word Yellow had used to describe his punishment.

“Decades?!”

“Yes,” Yellow said, somewhat irritably, very obviously a person who wasn’t used to having to repeat herself, “that’s what I said.” 

Blue shot her counterpart an exasperated look before returning a softer, sympathetic gaze to Steven. “Decades aren’t so long—not to us anyway. Just think, your gem has lived through thousands and thousands of decades already! What are a few more?”

“But I’m half-human,” Steven mumbled, grasping at his gem again. His lungs had long adjusted to Homeworld’s thin atmosphere, but suddenly, he was finding it hard to breathe again. He sat down on Blue’s palm, drew his knees to his tightened chest. “I don’t even know if I have decades, you guys! But I surely know that my human friends and family don’t.”

He thought first of his dad. Forty years could pass by, and Greg would be eighty, or something bad could happen, and he wouldn’t even be there at all.

And then he thought of Connie. If he couldn’t get her back to Earth, how would she ever become the President and govern the country with a strict but fair hand?!

The Diamonds were silent as the weight of what he told them descended upon their persons like stone curtains. 

Like the Crystal Gems, they accepted his status as a gem, and what’s more, as one of them! A Diamond! But unlike the Gems, they knew next to nothing about humanity, his own or in general.

Mortality was as foreign to these timeless matriarchs as Homeworld’s stars were to Steven, and when they scrutinized him, they wore the same exact expressions he had modeled upon looking up at that vast, velvet sky.

“We… can’t get you out,” Blue Diamond finally said, her voice heavy, hundreds of emotions thick. “White would never let us.”

“And what’s more,” Yellow added dispassionately, massaging one of her temples, “she would disallow us from ever getting close to you again.”

“My apologies, Steven.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s… fine,” he got out, forehead buried against his knees now. (It wasn’t fine.) “Maybe White’ll be lenient? Maybe I can explain this mess to her, and she’ll let me go?”

But when Steven looked up and saw the knowing look that passed between the Diamonds, he knew his brave attempt at optimism was nothing but dandelion dust.

Silence again, oppressive and disconsolate. 

Maybe Steven should try his chances at jumping off the tower after all.

“I know the situation seems…” Blue began, pausing to search for the right word, “dire at the moment, but maybe we shouldn’t give ourselves entirely to moping just yet?”

“You’re one to talk,” Yellow interjected with a disbelieving snort, golden eyes rolling with fierce aplomb. “You’ve been moping for six thousand years.”

“For an entirely justified reason, mind you,” Blue sniffed indignantly, “but that’s not what I’m getting at, Yellow. I mean… it’s just that we’ve been granted an incredible opportunity to reconnect with Pink.” She frowned. “Maybe not in the way you and I originally longed for, but something is better than nothing all the same. We should celebrate, love! We should be happy! We should do something to commemorate Pink’s legacy—both old and new!”

“You could tell me a story,” Steven said quietly, the slow beginnings of a smile beginning to take over his face.

“Hm?” Blue tilted her head inquisitively.

“A story,” he repeated, growing increasingly excited. He even had to stand up to release some of the new energy welling up inside him like a storm. “A story about my mom! About Pink! I didn’t know she was a Diamond until very recently—like, last week actually—and I didn’t really have time to ask Pearl for Pink Diamond stories, you know, with you guys attacking the beach and all”—the Diamonds shared an appropriately uncomfortable look—“but you two could tell me stories about her! New ones!”

A reflective quietude hung in the air for a long moment—Blue and Yellow, judging by their thoughtful expressions, seemingly searching through the repertoires of their minds for the perfect story to tell.

It was Yellow who came up with one first.

“We could tell him the Brineheart story,” she said slowly.

“You hate the Brineheart story.”

“I do, but it’s objectively entertaining, and isn’t that what we’re aiming for with this silly exercise?”

Blue Diamond smiled, the gesture transforming her whole face.

It lit the blues of her big eyes.

It narrowed the deep grooves underscoring them.

“The Brineheart story it is then,” she murmured. “Start us off, love, and I’ll follow.”

Yellow Diamond shifted her weight from one heel to another, took a deep, sighing breath, and started them off, love, her usually present voice straining as she looked back to the past: “Brineheart. A planet that is approximately eighty-two percent saltwater and eighteen percent marshland. Located in the Andronicus Galaxy only a few lightyears away. Though we were already fairly sure it would be an unsuitable planet for Pink to colonize, we took her with us to scout it anyway because we wanted to teach her how to go about scouting planets…”

◆

“What are thooooose??!!” Pink’s voice, loud and jarring and brimming with the excitement of new adventure, uprooted the very organic creatures she had been inquiring about from their resting place in the trees. With great, beating wings, the avian creatures lifted off from the tall, soggy branches, flinging mud and moss into Yellow Diamond’s eyes.

“Generally, they’re called birds or avians,” Blue patiently supplied while Yellow, with a considerable amount of annoyance, flicked the offending dirt off of her face. 

“Be more careful, Pink,” she growled. “You’re provoking the organic life.”

“Sorry, Yellow!” Pink was obviously not very sorry at all. She was a constant whir of vivacity, of motion, not stopping to even blink or breathe—not that gems had to engage in those practices, per say, but they had their uses. “Ahhhhh, I’m just very excited to be scouting a planet! My planet! I think I want it already. Can I have it, Yellow? It has birds. Birds! Can you believe it?”

“Many planets have birds, Pink, and besides birds aren’t sufficient criteria for judging a planet for colonization. Look here, for instance!” Yellow leaned down and pulled back a leafy branch at Pink’s eye level, revealing one of the huge bodies of saltwater that mostly composed Brineheart’s surface. “See all of that water? Underneath it assuredly exists sediment foundations that are conducive to forming Lapis Lazulis or Aquamarines. So what can we surmise from that, Pink?”

Pink pressed a thoughtful fingertip to her lips; even still, her leg continued to jitter. “That I could have an army of Lapis Lazulis and Aquamarines?”

“Not hardly,” Yellow snapped impatiently. “It means that this planet would be a better fit for Blue to colonize as those particular species of gems fall under the jurisdiction of her court.”

Blue bent down on Pink’s other side and frowned slightly as she peered through the small gap in the branches. “I mostly agree with your assessment, but all truth being told, I don't believe I’d bother. Saltwater tends to influence the cuts of gems too much for my tastes. They’re less… refined.”

With an approving nod, Yellow let the branch recoil back into its natural position, unintentionally (but not particularly regretfully) spraying Pink’s face with a burst of grayish leaves.

“Excellent point, Blue,” she nodded and straightened to her full height once more. The other Diamond did the same. “Did you hear that, Pink? Blue was quick to evaluate the formation conditions for gems here and found them wanting. Whenever you receive your own colony, you’ll want to ensure that you plant your Kindergartens in the most environmentally stable locations available to—“

But Pink wasn’t listening. She had already bounded off in the opposite direction, puff ball shoes plopping through the brown marsh, leaves strewn through her pink hair like a silvery crown.

Yellow slammed a frustrated fist into the nearest tree, causing even more avian creatures to take to the salted air.

“Dammit, Pink!” She called after the skipping form. “Get back here!”

“Oh, hush, Yellow.” Blue placed a staying hand on Yellow’s tense arm, and then, because there was no one else around, went a step further and pressed her plump lips to the other Diamond’s shoulder. “We were just as excited when White was showing us our first colonies.”

“Yes, but our first colonies weren’t hazardous marsh planets. She’s going to get herself poofed if she doesn’t watch her step!”

“Then let’s go watch her step for her,” Blue suggested, moving her hand down Yellow’s arm until their long fingers were touching and linking, a certain warmth spreading between them like fire, like electricity.

It licked Yellow’s stony veins.

“You coddle her too much,” Yellow accused, but she squeezed Blue’s hand anyway.

“Perhaps,” she conceded with a small smile, a thoughtful shake of her head, “but she’ll be a fully grown Diamond before we know it. I can not coddle her then.”

The two Diamonds followed Pink’s erratic footsteps at a leisurely pace, hand in hand, shoulders brushing. 

No one was there to see.

No one would ever know.

“BLUEEEEEEEEEEE!! YELLOOOOOWW!!!”

Naturally, no one would get to have a slow, romantic walk through the jungle either.

The shrill summonses quickened their paces. Blue and Yellow ducked behind a wall of hanging ivy, and twenty feet ahead, Pink had scaled a tall tree that was bent towards what looked like a large marsh pool. She palmed the ancient trunk with one hand and held onto a thin branch with the other, legs splayed in-between the very same columns. Even from a distance, both of the older Diamonds could tell that the tree wasn’t structurally stable at its branches, had been weathered down and eroded by rain and salt and wind.

“Yellow,” Blue tugged on her hand urgently, “get her down from there.”

But Yellow was already in motion, extracting her hand from Blue’s and marching towards what was surely a ticking time bomb. Her heels were slick with mud and slime and moss, but anger, that steady anchor, kept her upright as foot over foot, she slammed her way to the ever reckless Pink Diamond.

“Pink,” she yelled, apoplectic with fear and rage, “get down here this instant! It’s not safe up there!”

“Aw, come on,” she wheedled playfully. “Don’t be such a stiff cut, Yellow! I’m perfectly fine up here!”

“You won’t be perfectly fine when a tree branch spears through your form and poofs you—or even worse, cracks your gem!”

Yellow was ten feet away from the tree now, and within two giant steps, five, fully prepared to climb into the damn thing after Pink if it proved necessary to do so, but the young Diamond relented with a surly sigh and released the thinner branch.

“Fine,” she rolled her eyes. “I’ll get down if it makes you happy.”

“I’m never happy now that you’re around,” Yellow grunted, but she was inwardly relieved that coaxing the gem down had been easier than she had thought it was going to be. “You seem to take ten decades off my life every time we take you out somewhere.”

“Oh, please,” Pink laughed, seeing through the ruse immediately. “You love—” But she never got to finish her taunting sentence. As she moved to shift her weight from the branch back to the trunk, the branch finally snapped and fell into the marsh.

And Pink Diamond went with it.

Panicked hands seizing over her gem.

Eyes closed against what was surely going to be an awful impact.

“PINK!” Blue and Yellow screamed at the same time, but Yellow was closest and she did the only thing she could do with moments to spare. She jumped into the marsh seconds before Pink landed, and the full weight of the gem crashed into her back.

The marsh, like the branch, gave away.

(It had never been a true marsh to begin with, had always been a relatively thin layer of mud covering what was actually a giant pit.)

When Yellow hit the ground after what seemed like hours of falling, she tasted dirt.

And salt.

And little organisms with multiple creeping, crawling legs.

“The hell?” She muttered, winded, and spit out a truly disgusting amount of shit.

“Pink! Yellow! Are you two alright?” Blue’s panicked voice reached them from far above. Yellow looked up, squinted against the bright sun, and saw that the outline of the Diamond’s long veil was roughly sixty feet away… ten feet taller than Yellow was herself.

“I’m fine!” She called back and lightly contracted her back, where Pink was still sitting, seemingly stunned but otherwise unharmed. “Are you okay?”

“I think so, yes,” Pink replied, hands still roving incredulously over her gem. Though she was covered in marsh, the pink gemstone remained unblemished, sharp, positively glowing. But, judging by her reaction, Yellow’s threats about hurting her gemstone had apparently gotten through to the Diamond.

Good.

She needed to learn caution.

“Good,” Yellow said aloud, shortly but not entirely unkindly. “Now please get off my back.”

Pink leapt up within a sprightly instant, her back scraping against one of the narrow sides of their hellhole. The pit was tall but not very wide, probably the work of intense erosion.“Oh, sorry, Yellow.”

“It’s fine, Pink,” she sighed and stood up herself. Every inch of her golden armor was coated in sticky, oozing mud. She flicked a particularly clumpy piece of it off of her shoulder. “Now yell up to Blue and tell her that you’re fine as well, or she’ll be in hysterics before you know it.”

To her credit, Pink did as she was told, promptly bursting Yellow’s eardrum, but when her voice returned to normal, it had acquired a nervous, pleading character to it.

“No, seriously, I’m sorry, Yellow!” Finally having ascertained that her gem was unharmed, she drew her quivering hands across the back of her neck. “It was my fault that we fell in here, and you had to save me! Oh, stars—you saved me, Yellow! Thank you!”

“Forget it,” Yellow muttered uncomfortably, and because Pink had most definitely gotten the habit from her, she frustrated her neck with her hand, too. “Blue would have had my diamond had I not risked neck and limb to save you.”

Which was true but also not entirely true.

Yellow tilted her chin upwards.

There was sixty feet for them to surmount and fifty-nine feet between them both.

“Pink, get on my shoulders.”

◆

“No way!” Steven laughed, looking up at Yellow Diamond with wide, starry eyes.

“Way,” she replied dryly, a reminiscent sigh passing from her lips. “She climbed up on my shoulders and got out. I scaled up afterwards.”

“Oh, but Yellow,” Blue smiled teasingly, “you’ve left out the best part.”

“You mean the worst part,” Yellow scowled, but she told it anyway.

◆

After a quick, spidery climb up the relatively sturdy wall, Yellow Diamond reached the edge of the pit, extending her elbows onto solid (if wet) ground.

Blue’s face, tilted in a mischievous grin, was waiting for her, inches away from her own.

“You’re dirty,” she purred and blew cool air onto Yellow’s dirt smudged nose.

“I’ve noticed,” Yellow, despite it all and damn it all, laughed, head tipping back with the harsh sound.

“Get a chamber, you two,” Pink grinned from the side, but relief shone brightly in her delicate features. Nothing had changed. Everything… everyone… was okay.

They were safe.

Blue extended a hand from one of her oversized sleeves and Yellow took it gratefully, used it to leverage herself up and out of the hole. The two Diamonds ungracefully stumbled back into standing positions, hands still clasped, gems almost touching.

Yellow wished she had the time and privacy to share some of the mud on her face with Blue.

The longing expression on Blue’s tall features seemed to communicate a similar wish.

Neither of them saw the birds coming.

◆

“To be fair,” Yellow laughed, and the sound was like a hoarse bark, “I think they thought my hair was a nest.”

But Blue was bent over in hysterics, mirth slipping from her eyes as easily as grief had once done. 

And something else came with her.

Her aura.

◆

“Pink, stop standing there like an asshole, and help us kill these things!” Yellow screamed in the midst of a flurry of wings. Some of the pestilent beasts were desperate to take root in her hair; others were attracted to the shininess of her gemstone.

Every time Yellow zapped one with her powers, it was as though two more took its place.

But Pink was laughing, and so was Blue, and their mirth, loud and ringing and lovely, echoed over the treetops.

◆

Steven had already been chuckling, but with Blue’s influence, he and Yellow began to howl, joy and warmth and humor blooming in their chests like flowers, like fireworks, like songs.

“She never did… let you live that… down!” Blue gasped in-between tears, clutching at her chest.

“Stars,” Yellow, more composed, but only just, cried, “she brought it up every time we were in the same room together.”

“Oh, dear, oh dear.” Blue shook her head, and her aura finally receded enough for Steven to regain his breath. He flicked away joyful tears from his eyes and found that some—his own this time—continued to well all the same. “That was a fun time.”

“It was,” Yellow agreed grudgingly. “We had fun together… we were complete back then.”

But then they looked down at the little boy sitting on Blue’s palm.

Pink Diamond but not exactly.

Not anymore.

Never again.

He was something entirely new.

They looked down at the little boy, this child called Steven and remembered, very suddenly, that they had the potential to be complete again.

“You loved my mom,” Steven said. It was a statement, quiet, softly spoken.

“We did,” Blue whispered tearfully. “We loved her very much.”

“We just didn’t know how to show it sometimes,” Yellow added, looking away sharply. She couldn’t blame Blue for the thickness that had risen in her throat, for the wetness threatening to prick the corners of her eyes.

Not this time, at least.

“I didn’t know her… and even now, learning more about her, I don’t think I ever will,” Steven murmured, slow and thoughtful and sure, “but I love her, too. We have that in common, you and I.”

“It’s a good place to start,” Yellow said huskily, scrubbing her face hard with her left hand. 

“It’s a good place to start,” Blue echoed gently, and then she brought him to her face and squished him.