That's better.

But why is she alive- well, awake- in the first place?

And where is she?

It settles down into a rather nondescript white room.

It is reminiscent of her room in... maternal hospital. She's alone.

Huh.

She notices she's... pregnant. Sort of. Well, at least she looks this way? She can just shapeshift out of it??
It's silent and still.

"Hel-lo? Is anyone here?"

The door opens. There's a man behind it.

Who is this human- wait. Wait. Is this-

"Hi, mom", he stammers.

He runs into a hug.

This... takes a while.

"Steven-..."

This takes a while longer still. But, eventually-

"Steven, where are we?"

"My gem. Well, our gem."

"Oh.

Well. I really thought I would be gone, but..."

"Turns out, gems keep logs. Extensive logs, with all past experiences. I mean, they must have, I've seen those Pearls inside Pearl and, uh. Yeah.

We had to decrypt you, mom."

"Ahaha! Oh, Steven, I am so, so glad to... meet you..."

"Yeah, mom, it is a bit silly.

Somehow, though... nevermind."

"Oh? What is it, my dear?"

"The logs... show you stopping existing for a decade, then relaunching for a bit over two minutes, then stopping again until today."

His voice is lightly strained.

"I don't... really know how."

He has a guess, though.

"That's weird."

(It's obvious to her.)

(The monochrome scene. Her terrible sisters, watching her; her friends, powerless.)

(She did not want to be there. She didn't know why she was. She lied until she wasn't.)

"But, Steven, why are we talking about technicalities? I have so, so much to ask of you! How is Pearl? What about Greg?"

As she says this, the circumstances and seeming implications of her previous awakening dawn on her.

"H-how is the Earth?"

However dubious was her path there, her concern for all living things is always an inspiration.

"Earth's fine, mom - better than ever, really, as Earth does. Dad's getting old, but I'm healing him up. Pearl is happy, but she still misses you pretty badly- they all do."

"Oh..."

It must've been many years. And they know, now, they actually know. And despite that, they all still-

Tears collect in her eyes.

Long hug 2: the return of long hug.

"Oh, Steven... you would not believe what am I feeling right now..."

It's such a wild mix of emotions that Rose herself would not be able to quickly untangle.

"You will just have to tell me everything, you know that, Steven?"

"I figured, mom. Though... there's an option to watch it instead. We're already in the archives of our internal states; we can revisit the projections of those memories."

"Ah. You know, I would never have thought of that! Or of restoring me, for that matter."

"Studying Earth computer science really gives you some interesting perspectives. Peridot totally beat herself up for not thinking about it earlier." 

"But of course, Earth is at it again!
I can't help but wonder if your gem can handle two of us going and interacting with more copies of you, though."

"Oh, we checked that. I didn't want to find out the hard way what happens if I crash.
Turns out, though, that my gem running me is just a drop in the ocean of its processing power.

Well, what gives, we do have an unusually powerful gem."

That... is one way to put it, Rose supposes.

"Well then, Steven.

For me, you are a miracle. You are... a human being... and also... my child. The very fact of your life opened up infinite possibilities...
It is a windfall of grace that I do not deserve - to be able to talk to you, to be able to see which one of the infinite possibilies was realized.
It almost seems impossible, that everything turned out fine! Yet, it is also only natural, isn't it?

Oh, Steven... I look forward to learning everything about you! Lead the way."

He can't exactly do the same thing Pearl did - it isn't exactly a defaut feature for a Gem to travel their own mindscape.
He is connected to the machinery Pearl and Peridot and himself have concocted, though, and it has a bunch of useful features.

He doesn't need to meditate or somehow shove himself into himself. He can touch his gem, open a civilized graphic UI, and pick and choose the options.

Surroundings shift and blur a few times. Some dutifully recorded scenes are replayed in full 3d.

Whaddya know, baby Steven is adorable!

Pearl, Amethyst and Garnet are predictably not taking the change well.

Rose doesn't actually know that much about baby care, and in fact some of her vague impressions are a few centuries outdated, but...

She can tell that that the whole thing was a chaotic disaster.

...There's a point where Steven gets kidnapped by the Gems and Pearl nearly kills him in an attempt to free Rose; only her love for Rose stops her from coming through with it.

Rose sobs.

Oh no...

"It's okay, Mom."

Was she always this prone to crying?

"It was so... shortsighted of me, to leave them like this..."

Rose wipes her tears out, and looks Steven in the eyes.

"I should have been more clear, Steven. I should have explained babies to them. I should have explained them how I felt, and what to do."

(But she didn't want to explain things. She wanted to leave.)

Steven hugs his mom.
It's the third time, now, and the narrator will continue to increment the counter each time to draw attention to the ridiculous number of hugs this thread will feature.

"Aww, come on, mom! We should move on to the next few years, you're gonna love it!"

He doesn't, exactly, correct her.

She smiles.

The next few years ARE fun!

Kid Steven is adorable. In fact, he is too adorable.

Kid Steven is the reason why the first half of the first season of Steven Universe is a test of strength for a prospective viewer.
They risk choking on his childishness and dropping the show before it gets going.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS TOO ADORABLE

"Look at you! First learning to walk, now learning to talk! Isn't it remarkable, how even those things need to be learned?"

(Steven has barely any flashes of memory of being this age - though he supposes that, now, it would be possible to unforget reintegrate them.)

"It's honestly more remarkable how gems don't have to learn them."

"I am not sure of that. Humans don't need to learn how to breathe or digest food!"

"Wait, do gems?"

"Digest food, yes. Breathe... not really - you need it to speak."

"Honestly, why do gems even speak? With soundwaves? And have mouths and noses?
Gems could just communicate via shapeshifting radio antennae - way further and faster and not dependant on air..."

"I... have absolutely no clue, and have never even thought of asking myself that question."

"Huh. Sounds like maybe a kind of thing that would come up when drafting up colonization plans..."

(She... does't particularly enjoy that side of her being acknowledged out of nowhere. But it's not going to be visible on her face.)

"Well, perhaps it would, if colonizing Earth was considered remotely difficult."

Steven is unusually thoughtful for a moment.

"Turned out to be difficult after all..."

An awkward pause in the conversation happens.

Then, in the record-replay, young Steven repeats "Mama!" after Greg, and-

"STEVEN!!! DID YOU HEEEEEAR THAAAAT???"

Steven laughs.

And now for something completely diffetent.

"...that thing isn't a comet. That is a probe."

(Is this how the Diamonds find out?)

Turns out, no one knows where the appropriate AA weapon is.

They find it on accident.

(Phew!)

Turns out, no one knows the password to activate it.

They activate it by accident.

"Not... the most secure password ever, mom. Ahahaha~"

"Wow.

Wow. How many more vitally important things have I not shared with anyone?"

"Honestly, there's kinda... too many of them to list? I have to say, Bismuth was particularly fun to stumble on."

oh no

"Well, on the other hand... Looking back on it, life sure would be much more boring if I had a convenient list of my gem powers and your resources and strategic information and such.

It definitely was an adventure. And it all worked out in the end.

If every porkchop was perfect, we wouldn't have hot dogs, right?"

"Yeah..."

(Five thousand years ago, a stunt goes bad.)

(Blinding light envelops the Earth.)

(Thousands of friends, living beings who have done nothing wrong, nothing at all, are reduced to mindless beasts by a weapon of mass destruction.)

(Not everything works out in the end.)

Here's a memory: Steven recklessly handles a time machine to set up a concert out of copies of himself.
Then he destroys the -hard-to-make and potentially very useful- time machine because he's scared.
He gives a concert with the Crystal Gems instead.

"Wow, Steven, you are truly your father's son!"

"What can I say, I am as much of a whimsical dork as Mr. Universe himself."

And soon after, here's the memory of where the things actualy start to go south.

Steven gets ahold of a fun new item, a talking mirror!

The mirror has a surprise inside it.

"Oh no, Steven..."

"Mhm, 'Oh no' is right."

"So, this poor Lapis Lazuli was apparently stuck there, imprisoned and cracked and conscious, for millenia.

With me having never noticed it."

"Well, it's not like gem technology doesn't commonly use components that look just like actual gems but aren't."

Rose processes this.

AND THEN LAPIS LAZULI STEALS THE ENTIRE WORLD OCEAN.

Rose's voice cracks.

"Oh, right. Lapides Lazuli can do that."

Rose is only a little bit of an ecologist, but Lapis just did this with ALL THE WATER ON EARTH.

"We're lucky she was careful. Otherwise Earth wouldn't have any fish. Or intact dams.

Greg told me that there was an insane panic in the news for the next month. Some people thought the world was ending."

"Have... people died?"

His voice is heavy.

"Three hundred and seven known victims. She kept swimmers on the surface of the water and within athmosphere, and only flipped over two small boats, but she couldn't feel things outside of water and so streams of water occasionally crashed into things; and some people were just accelerated way too fast. It was courtesy for her, not mercy - she had no idea how fragile humans were compared to gems."

It... really, really, really could have been a lot worse. Multiple orders of magnitude worse.

"..."

Rose thinks humans must not mind dying as much as gems typically mind shattering; otherwise they'd stop having kids.

This is still 307 more irrecoverably destroyed individuals than her side of Gem War claimed.

AND THEN LAPIS TAKES OFF TO HOMEWORLD

oh no

"Well that happened.

So that's how the Homeworld finds out, huh."

"Oh, they don't, actually, find out much. Yet. But sort of. They do send Jasper and Peridot here to resume operations."

"You know, I thought that they never would. That you're just going to live among humans, and never get entangled into that whole mess.
There weren't - any signs of them still being interested in Earth, for thousands of years."

"Mom, I'll be honest - that just had to happen, sooner or later. I mean, at some point, humans would become a space empire too, if nothing else - and eventually meet the Homeworld. And the Crystal Gems are known historical figures."

"Oh, Steven... it happened so soon, too. You barely even knew how you worked at that point, right?

Well. Um. You knew how to heal Lapis up."

"Yeah... Very useful power. Though some would say me using it on Lapis, to give strength to an enemy, was stupid."

Rose looks at Steven with a serious expression, and says, in a somber tone:

"Steven, if there is one thing you should know about me, you should know that I would have done the same thing, and stood by it."

Hug.

hug_counter:=hug_counter+1

print(hug_counter)

4

"Well, as of today, Lapis volounteers for coast-guarding every Saturday. On every sea coast. I dropped her an idea to do aid via fishing, too, but the logistics are hard."

Rose blinks a few times.

"She lives on Earth now.

You made friends with her."

"You would have done the same thing, and stood by it."

She smiles.

"Yes. Yes I would."

The Crystal Gems notice the arrival of Peridot, a Homeworld scout!

Garnet smashes the warp-pad to Homeworld, which WAS OPERATIONAL AND TURNED ON THE WHOLE TIME, into bits.

"Uh. We didn't touch it because it might have alerted the Homeworld of our activities."

(They should have tampered with it to make it look like it's working while it wasn't. It's not like Homeworld ran regular inspections to Earth.)

"Yeah, despite how silly this looks in hindsight, maybe it was a good decision overall."

(They totally should have tampered with it to make it look like it's working while it isn't.)

And in the next memory...

Rose stares with a gaping mouth.

Steven waggles his eyebrows suggestively.

"This is completely impossible. This is also the greatest thing I have ever seen."

"Ahahahaha! Thanks, mom. And yeah, it is kinda very impossible.

Pearl said that maybe the tech we were building for retrieving you will help us investigate what is even going on there."

"Look at you two, Steven. You are SO ADORABLE.

This is nothing short of a miracle."

"Wait until you see Steg."

Rose starts laughing.

She doesn't stop laughing for a while.

Steven just stands there, smiling.

"Steg can levitate things with music."

"But of course he can!"

More laughter, a bit calmer this time.

"Steven, creating you required quite a bit of fiddly magical work, but in no way have I built in or anticipated your capacity to do this.
I do not know where this miracle came from. And I have only one guess, that it must somehow be an innate property of our gem. But I am not even sure about that.
This is not how fusions generally work. They are based on two-way communication between the gems, their projecting and processing protocols understanding and adapting to each other. It should flatly not work with no other gem to take information to and from - but we can see this to be false."

"Yeah, as I've said, no clue, for now. But we'll figure it out. We have contacts in academias of two worlds.

It's fun, being a fusion. Stevonnie really is an experience.

It's useful, too. Fusion components don't age while in the fusion, can communicate instantly, get new abilities, and such.

Humans who don't have that don't know it, but they're really, really missing out."

Humans are so different and fascinating...

Greg and Steven help the Crystal Gems decipher Lapis's message of warning, which was, thank all the gods above, in analog format.

"GREG!!!"

"Honestly, I'm surprised Pearl needed help."

"She's the kind of person to miss an obious solution, sometimes. Well, really, all of us are."

(She'd never thought Greg could be useful in Crystal Gem affairs. This... might have been a part of what made him so attractive initially.)

And then the promised doom arrives.

Rose's vintage AA battery has no efect on a modern Gem warship.

Jasper, a single Homeworld soldier, beats the entire Crystal Gem team.

Steven beams.

"And that's when I first met Ruby and Sapphire! Not that I knew who they were or anything."

She doesn't get surprised or startled.

The whole thing kinda settled into a pattern, where most of Steven's most memorable and most dangerous experiences are something that follows directly from past mistakes she made.

"I am learning a lot today. About you, but mostly about the astonishing lack of foresight in the decisions I made as a leader and a mother. It is very informative."

"Hey, we're the Crystal Gems!

We aren't in business of making complex long term plans, we're winging everything on the spot and making friends with everyone in the blast radius!"

(Those times her sisters refused to take her seriously? They were right, weren't they.)

"..."

"Mom?

If this is making you sad, you don't have to watch it, you know? Maybe you shouldn't."

"Thank you, Steven. But I do need to watch it.

And I can. I have defied and fought the Homeworld for my principles. I have seen thousands of gems reduced to mindless animals. I have lied to my friends for millenia.
I am strong.
And more than that, Steven, your story is my story. I have to know it. As your mother. As, apparently, a part of you."

Steven can't argue with that logic. He nods.

Anyway, the Homeworld incursion is resolved because of Homeworld's incomprehension of Steven's nature and because of Garnet being awesome.

✨✨✨

Peridot escapes and is now loose on the Earth.

Lapis, an ex-mirror-prisoner and an ex-homeworld-prisoner, volontuarily becomes a prisoner inside a toxic fusion to keep Jasper down.

"Oh dear... it appears that this Lapis Lazuli is as unlucky as we are lucky."

"It gets better for her. For everyone, really, but for her it gets the most better. Well, at least in comparison."

Before anything gets better, we get to witness the remains of shattered Crystal Gems being forced to fuse into miserable semisentient abominations.

To call her sickened would be an understatement.

"Whose idea was this?"

"Yellow Diamond. She wanted revenge for her sister. Viciously."

Rose lies down.

(AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA)

"Steven, I..."

"..."

He hugs her again.

(the rare and highly dangerous 5x hug combo has been achieved)

"Are you sure the Earth survived? Yellow did not blow the planet up with a relativistic missile? Did not send a hundred terraforming-spec'd gems like Lapides Lazuli to render it a hellscape? Did not unleash a black hole to absorb it?"

"She tried to do something like this. Except worse."

"Maybe we should have a small break after this one. Can we visit a memory of a cozy lunch in a cafe or something?"

"Oh, I'm always down for that! You've seen enough of me to know this, right mom?"

She smiles. She would giggle, but her eyes track a shambling forced fusion in the background.

He considers asking her again about maybe skipping the whole thing, but decides not to.

"Alright then. I have just the thing in mind."

It's a wedding banquet.

(The reader might think that this particular wedding was interrupted in its very beginning.
It wasn't, the show just cuts between morning and evening, for some inexplicable reason.
Naturally, somewhere in there, there was a banquet.)

"It's not quite a cafe, mom. But I just thought it's something you needed to see right about now."

✨✨✨

"Why didn't I think of this, Steven?!"

(This is not the first time today that she's dramatically asking herself this question, but, of course, this time, it's doesn't have any desperation to it.)

"Oh, mom. You didn't even think about it with yourself and Dad.

Help yourself to anything. I mean, the things I didn't eat would probably have no taste. But I helped Greg and Pearl cook, and I think I've tried everything, here."

"Well, neither did he!"

She laughs, as she begins to stuff her plate full of random holiday dishes popular in the state of Delmarva.

"Good thing none of the non-Steven memory constructs can react to you. There'd be quite a hot mess."

Steven just picks up a piece of a meat pie from a plate and stuffs it in his mouth.

"How's the athmosphere? Lively?"

She answers through munching.

"Yesh, ith eis."

She swallows.

"You have both Peridot and Bismuth invited here, having fun with everyone. Oh, but I cannot imagine the road to here.

And so many humans, too. The Crystal Gems really are a proper part of the town, now."

"Yeah. The future really does get better. It gets wonderful."

He waits for her to finish murdering her plate, picking bits and pieces from the table here and there.

Rose looks much better, of course.

But you'd be foolish to imagine that she really is suddenly alright, deep inside.

"Hey, mom."

"What is it, Steven?"

"This wedding was just a couple weeks after we all found out you were Pink Diamond."

If she were eating right that moment, she'd choke.

This is not very painful to her to hear, somehow, but it is very... surreal.

She knows not how to respond. She stares at Steven for a while, then looks over the surroundings, attentively.

Everyone is having fun, saluting Garnet and chatting with each other. No one seems to be discussing Rose right at that moment.

"Things get better, mom. Things get even better than this.
Almost nobody hates you; almost everyone misses you; and most of those who knew you personally? Love you.

You were a miracle, too. You still are. And don't you forget it, mom."

She cries.

But it's good tears.

He does't hug her. But he fetches her a napkin, and beams at her.

"Thank you."

"Hey, mom. Before we go back to my story... there's a thing I want us to do."

"Of course! What is it?"

"Could you, for a moment... shapeshift back?

I just want to ineract with you for a bit with you while you look like that, nothing more."

"Ah. Um. Of course, Steven."

"Hi.

It's me, your mom, the conquering alien empress."

She tries to smile, but doesn't quite succeed.

Steven himself shapeshifts, taller and pinkier. 

Then he hugs her.

It's a bit like My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love, but it's not a kiss, it's a hug; and it's not between two socialist leaders, it's between an ex-colony-administrator and an unofficial interracial liason, and it's not ugly, it's beautiful.

So, really, nothing like that.

It's also the sixth hug in the thread, if you were counting. And even if you weren't.

"You know how perky your voice is, when you're like this, mom?"

Now, she smiles, and even giggles.

Her giggling sounds perky too.

Steven shrinks back.

"You always told everyone basically the same thing, mom - 'you are who you make of yourself'. And you were right.

A conquering alien empress is not something you made of yourself."

"No, just a dubious rebel leader and a questionable mother."

"Maybe. But a true visionary. And an unquestionable ally. To the Crystal Gems, and to the humans of Earth, and, really, to everyone."

"Well, if it wasn't for me, that forced fusion made from my shattered friends wouldn't be a thing, and Earth wouldn't be endangered..."

"If it wasn't for you, mom, voluntuary fusions wouldn't be a thing, and Earth would be long-converted into a wasteland. This entire conversation would not be a thing."

"Well, this is correct..."

"Even the sun has spots, mom."

"If you say so, Steven."

"You should have confessed about your past, of course you should have, it would have saved everyone a lot of trouble, but it's not hard to understand why you didn't.

I don't know if I would be able to."

"I would have done it in a heatbeat if I knew just how much trouble it would save everyone, you know? It's just that I did not consider it."

"You're not omniscient."

"Well, look at me. I... am a Diamond. A "born" planner - you know, supposedly.

If I actually planned my departure, I would see it. I would see it in five minutes of thinking like a Diamond.

I just did not want to. I wanted to believe Homeworld forgot everything. I wanted to believe your future is that of a human.

I wanted to think more like a human, and less like a Diamond, and believe whatever I wanted to believe, while there was a threat looming over everything I cared about."

"You know, the only times when I actually used my administrative skills were when I inconspicuously ran my forces into my own ambushes."

"And when you lead the Crystal Gems and kept them from falling apart for five millenia?"

"I suppose."

"Don't forget, mom - you are loved.

And now, let's get out of this memory before you see what happens during the dance party."

Oh boy. 

"Um, can I... shift back, now?"

She's going to need so much therapy.

"Of course."

"That voice is just a bit too perky, you know?"

"Oh yeah, look at you now, miss 'motherly and etherial and inspirational'."

"Well, those aren't bad things to sound like, are they?"

He giggles.

"Of course not, mom.

Anyway, let's go!"

Steven restats slow, going over Greg's reaction to Stevonnie and his story about dancing with Rose.

It gets all the predictable reactions from Rose.

The next notable set of memories is Pearl sabotaging worldwide communications to have exuses for fusing with Garnet. When this comes out, Garnet does not take it well.

And then unfuses over Ruby and Sapphire disagreeing over just how mad they should be at Pearl.

"Look, you can't downplay yourself, Mom. You kept these people a functioning and harmonious team for centuries."

Rose remembers some of the things that have happened between the Crystal Gems in the past few millenia.

And many more things that did not happen, but were narrowly averted.

"You make a compelling point, Steven.

I doubt that Yellow and White would see successfully leading a team of four to be an impressive achivement, however."

"They actually do, once they understand that you did so with no fear, punishment, brainwashing, suppression of individuality, or culture of submission."

(Not "they would", but "they do".)

(Huh.)

(Well, he did drop vague hints here and there that they're friendly with the Diamonds now. This is not so vague of a hint.)

"Well, I did have magically-enhanced empathy powers to help."

"You had what now?"

"Magic empathy powers? Do you know how Blue can project her emotions around? I can take others' emotions in.

It helps with making people see reason. If, you know, they are at all willing and able."

Wait a second.

Wait a second.

"Me having this the whole time actually explains so much about my successes."

"...do you need an instruction manual for all our gem's abilities? Because I'll write it, if you do."

"I'll think about it."

Meanwhile, Ruby and Sapphire make it up between each other by deciding they should be significantly mad at Pearl.

"Oh joy."

"Well, they did have a cause to be mad. Pearl lied to them about something very important for them."

(...)

"I'll be taking us to the moment when Garnet and Pearl reconcile. It's actually pretty soon."

It only takes the two being stuck in a deathtrap together!

"I'm sure they'd make peace eventually anyway."

Could have taken years though.

"Of course they would."

"Almost forgot to ask: Did the Earth react to all the communications being jammed worldwide repeatedly?"

"Yeah, though not as much as you'd think. There wasn't the kind of mass panic that happened during Lapis's departure; it kinda coulnd't compete. Humans did not manage to find out where the signal was coming from; and they couldn't understand spoken Gem."

"Fascinating!"

You know what else is fascinating? Steven getting kidnapped in his sleep!

But not, like, for malicious purposes.

Peridot just really wants Steven to help her get off the planet. Because Earth is "not gonna be like anything, soon!"

"Oh no."

"Yeah. Good thing I investigated this after we poofed her."

Because soon after, the other Crystal Gems poof Peridot and dismiss everything she says as desperate lies of a cornered gem!

"Did all of you almost die there, and the Earth with you? Just want to clarify this."

"Honestly, yeah. But there weren't many close calls that were THIS close. Jasper defeating eveyone was pretty bad, and then White Diamond's trial was kind of a terrifying hail mary, but.

Most of the time, we had our situation more or less under control."

"O-okay."

Steven frees Peridot to investigate.

Peridot awkwardly tries to escape and... ends up barricading herself in the bathroom.

Okay, now Rose is just laughing.

The Crystal Gems leave Steven as a warden for Peridot.

Steven immediately lets Peridot out for a walk, without looking at her.

"Did Garnet foresee this one ending well?"

"Didn't ask her, so, no idea."

Peridot begs to retrieve backups of her logs from Prime Kindergarten.

(Peridot doesn't know her gem stores all of the logs within it.)

Peridot, when pressured, agrees to Steven's demands about the trip.

(Steven's demands is that they should hold hands the whole time.)

Peridot finds out about Steven's nature.

(Peridot does not want to hear Steven's "Ballad of Rose and Greg".)

Peridot cannot access the control panel and immediately despairs of any further progress.

(Steven opens it on his first try.)

She laughs vigorously at the impromptu comedy duo.

He does too.

THE CLUSTER IS REVEALED

"..."

She doesn't say "Of all possible ways to destroy a planet, this must be the most convoluted, gratuitous and horrific one." It's way too obvious to say.

Instead, she cries, just a little.

He holds her hand.

"You know what was a really hard choice? Whether to tell the Earth about this."

This doesn't make sense to her. She wipes her tears, and asks:

"Why wouldn't you? Panic?"

"Oh, no, not back then. After the fact, long after, the whole situation got resolved, when the gems became common knowledge."

She visibly doesn't understand.

"We're peacefully coexisting with the Gem Empire right now. The Diamonds have scaled back on expansion, gems no longer treat everyone else like inferiors, there's interworld commerce and traffic..."

✨✨✨

"...gems can eat earthly food and watch earthly shows; humans can use gem technology and hire gem magic; there are joint research projects.

It's all going smoothly, it's all great.

Now imagine that it's common knowledge that a few years ago, Yellow Diamond tried to commit the worst war crime in history that would have killed all of those people and created a tortured amalgam out of their protectors. And she's still in charge. And cannot be easily removed because a third of gems are Yellow's and were mustered into loyalty; and because White would not stand for it."

Rose doesn't quite know how human politics work.

She can guess that this doesn't exactly contribute to peaceful integration.

"Yellow's changed, now. She's not that person anymore."

Yellow Diamond had been an amazingly terrible person.
She had so many ways to destroy the Earth and she picked the most horrible one possible.
To avenge one person, she would murder billions and eternally torture tens of thousands.
And one of the main reasons why that one person went away in the first place were her own bullying and negligence.
She's always been pushing for aggression, for war. Since Pink's "shattering", she was specifically out to destroy species and raze planets.

"She deserved a second chance, and she wouldn't get it, if people knew."

"That's why I haven't publically told all the details about the Cluster's origins and purpose to the people, yet.

It's known that it exists, and that Peridot and I saved the Earth on the Day of Earthquakes by preventing it from emerging."

(She would not have expected Steven to keep truths from the public, considering all of the things he shown.)

(There seemed to be a lesson to be derived from there, that secrecy is never worth it, that it puts everyone and everything into danger.)

(It's silly to think life would have coherent lessons baked in, isn't it?)

"So... you're going to tell them at some point?

Wait, wouldn't they find out about it from Homeworld's own records and people?"

"Yellow kept it a secret. She knew Blue would not support it, because it would be obvious to her that Pink wouldn't want it.
White would not support it either, because this is a gratuitous way to destroy a planet that wastes gem labor-hours on fulfilling petty, imperfect emotions.

And yes, I will tell about it, when it will become obvious if Yellow reformed - perhaps in a decade or three."

He is... really not looking forward to becoming known as a perpetrator of misprision, even for an obviously good cause.

But he is also not exactly enthusiastic about stepping in his mother's shoes.

"Yellow... passed it over as a 'weapon test', Peridot said."

There is no possible practical use for this method as a weapon, for a starfaring civilization.

"People who are not in fear of their diamond's ire are not so stupid as to actually fall for that."

"I see.

What did the other diamonds do when they found out?"

"Blue... kinda went along with it. White found out much later and did not react."

"..."

She didn't hope for anything much better than that.

It still stings, just a little.

"How did you even put up with them?"

Were you like them? Were you as petty and callous as them? It's not like it would matter by any stretch of imagination, over five thousand years have passed since then, but...

"I tried to play along to them to the best of my ability, which was not high, and that actually got me sidelined from most of the active squabbling or scheming.
They did not take me seriously, and now I realize I was lucky for it."

They were right to, it seems.

"I am so relieved that you did not fit in with them from the very start.

It shouldn't even matter, reasonably speaking, but it kinda does, to me."