Chapter Text
Darkness gave way to soft white cushions as Connie rolled back into her body. She would have dropped onto the hardwood floor if not for a pair of bejeweled hands catching her and easing her back onto the couch. Her body thrashed against freezing waters that weren't there anymore until those same hands caught her arms and squeezed, keeping her from hurting herself on accident.
"You're okay, Connie," Garnet told her in a firm, placid voice.
Connie stilled, her heart racing, chest heaving as she drew in the warm ocean air. The broken, mirrored ocean had vanished so suddenly that it left a vacuum inside of her, and the waking world was slow to trickle back into place. Slowly, the details of the beach house filled in around her, cast in the fiery red and orange light of the fading day. Somewhere above her, a kerplunk resonated loudly against the walls of the house.
From her angle on the couch, she could see Pearl sitting up in Steven's loft, and judging by her soft fussing sounds, Steven was up there on his bed. "Steven," Connie breathed, and tried to sit up.
Garnet didn't hold Connie down, but she kept her grip around Connie's forearms, trying to convince the girl against moving suddenly. "Steven's okay," Garnet assured her.
"The bump is starting to go down," Pearl called from above, her voice thready and teetering at the edge of panic. "Maybe Greg won't have to buy a hospital after all." There was another soppy kerplunk and a dripping sound as Pearl dipped a washcloth into a bucket at her feet and wrung it out, then folded it back into a press to reapply to Steven's forehead.
With her biggest fear eased, Connie focused on Garnet's calming features. The fusion looked as she always had despite her constituent parts' dissipations. Framed in the light of the sunset, she looked even more like the invincible guardian she had always appeared to be. It seemed farcical that she could be the same two tiny beings who had been in danger atop the landing pad in a battle that felt like it had happened a lifetime ago.
"Garn… Sapphire, I…" Connie struggled with the nomenclature. Addressing half of a fusion seemed rude somehow. And thinking on it, she owed both halves the same apology. "Garnet, I'm so sorr—"
"I'm okay." The corner of Garnet's mouth quirked. She eased her grip off of Connie's arms and sat next to the girl, helping her to sit up on the couch. "It wasn't pleasant, maybe, but it was the only way. That's why Steven and Ruby never would have done it. Sapphire knew you had to be there to save her. I'm grateful you were."
Connie thought back to Sapphire's last moments before being taken by Pyrite. Had that actually been a nod meant for her? Garnet's knowing smile made it feel that way. Sagging with relief, Connie looked down at the fists clenched in her lap, relaxing her hands at last.
That's when it really hit her. Turning her palms upward, Connie examined her hands, her wrists, her forearms. Ages ago on that battlefield, her body had been warped into a mottled green nightmare of chitinous flesh. Now, when she flexed her hands, she saw tendons jumping under healthy smooth skin, her fingers moving independently instead of fused into a mitten-like wad.
She parted her hands and looked past them to her legs. Her jeans had split along the seams up to her thighs to accommodate the bulging sheets her legs had been. But now her legs looked like legs again, bare and healthy skin peering through the gaps in her jeans. She tried to wiggle her toes, and her toes wiggled obediently. Her body was hers again. And it felt…empty.
Reaching up, Connie cupped the stone beneath her throat. It felt cool and solid, like it always did, and was still rooted in her sternum. But there was only one set of feelings inside of her. The growing panic she felt had no other presence to push against it. She spoke the question aloud, even though she already knew what the answer would be. "Jade?"
Nothing.
Her fingers trembled as she dug against the edge of the gemstone. She threw a novel's worth of nonsense thought-noise into her mind, trying to spark a reaction. She hummed the opening notes of T8king Over Midnight under her breath. She wanted to scream and shout until that haughty, superior voice emerged in her thoughts. But nothing came.
Connie let her hand drop from the stone. Her eyes welled, and her breath hitched, but she clamped down with every muscle in her restored body. An ironclad coil of refusal wrapped around her lungs, squelching the cry before it could leave her.
There had to be something else she could try. Peridot was a Gem expert, and would undoubtedly know how to wake Jade back up. Or the other Gems would reveal knowledge of some lost relic that would restore Jade to her gemstone. They would lead Connie on a grand adventure into some dangerous, forgotten Homeworld ruin, where Connie would brave traps and corrupted monsters until—
Then Garnet's hand slid atop Connie's trembling fist, pressing it gently back to the couch. Connie's gaze snapped to the fusion, and she was shocked by the sight of her own angry, teary reflection in Garnet's visor.
Her body slackened. Her fist went limp. She felt Garnet's fingers thread between her own, and without a word, Garnet leaned next to her. All of Connie's fantasies broke apart under that quiet, comforting gesture from the fusion. Closing her eyes, Connie gripped Garnet's hand and began to cry. Her sobs came out as quiet, shuddering gasps.
Garnet never said a word, or even squeezed Connie's hand. She just remained a steady presence that Connie could lean into. And though Connie's eyes never opened, when she felt the couch next to her shift and someone else take her other hand, she knew that Pearl had descended to sit on her other side.
A small part of Connie felt so grateful for the Gems' silent support. But the rest of her just felt lost.
Connie rested her chin atop her knuckles, her arms folded over the deck railing of the porch, and watched the last colors fading from the sky. There were wispy clouds that blazed with pink, and low waves inching their way up the shoreline, and the pungent smell of brine in the air, and the grit of sand under her unblemished skin rubbing against the wood of the railing. There were a thousand little reminders that Connie was back in the waking world. But all she could think about was the blank expanse where the ocean met the sky, stretched out endlessly in front of her.
Steven had woken shortly after Connie's tears had run dry, however long that had taken. He used his phone to call Connie's parents, since her phone had been left in a utility closet in the wake of a monster attack that had left her school in chaos and her parents in a desperate panic. Shortly after that, Amethyst had returned through the warp pad, looking disgruntled. And then the two teens had been filled in on what they had missed.
Pretty much the moment they had seen Pyrite being cannonballed by a freakish green monster, Flint and Milky had decided that the fight wasn't worth getting poofed over, and had scampered. Opal had warped back to the house to find Steven and Connie both insensate. Half of Opal wanted to stay and care for the teens, while the other half wanted to return to Ascension and rout their enemies, at which point Opal stopped being Opal.
While Amethyst returned to the battlefield, Pearl had made Steven and Connie as comfortable as she could, and released Ruby and Sapphire from their bubble. By the time Garnet had pulled her two gemstones together, Connie's warped body was crinkling back into its current shape. And then…
By the strictest physical definition, Connie felt fine. Her muscles ached as though she had crabwalked an entire marathon backwards, and her stomach was turning itself inside-out with hunger. But her lesions were gone, and her limbs were limbs again. From the outside, she looked whole.
Inside, it felt like half of Connie was missing. Whenever her mind had wandered, she could recall feeling Jade's impatience pressing her back into focus. Something that amused Connie might amuse Jade in kind, or irritate Jade, or result in a sense of superior indifference. No matter the feeling, there had been another feeling moving in concert with hers, responding to her. Connie hadn't been aware of what a significant unspoken presence Jade had been until confronted with the absolute silence of her feelings echoing alone inside of her.
Murmurs filtered through the screen door behind her. the discussion was kept quiet in the same way her parents would speak when they were upset within earshot of Connie. "—probably warped out of there before I got back. I circled the mountain, but didn't find diddly," Amethyst finished explaining. "So I smashed their doohickey and came back here."
"We could have given their device to Peridot. She might have gotten some information out of it," Pearl chided, but didn't herself sound convinced.
"No," Garnet said firmly. "They can't retrieve it now. If they want to know any more futures, they can wait for them."
There was a significant pause, and then Pearl whispered, "What did you see?"
"As little as possible." Garnet's even tone flattened into something bitter. "Sapphire resisted for as long as she could. Eventually they stopped asking complex questions and just fed her possibilities."
"Possibilities?" Amethyst echoed.
"Search patterns," Garnet said. Her voice hardened. "Schedules. Itineraries and strategies. Whatever they're looking for, they'll find it soon."
"How soon is soon?" asked Pearl.
"Weeks. And more of them are coming to help."
"Did Sapphire see that too?"
"Eavesdropping. Sapphire heard them talking about a ship dropping off a Polarite with heavy equipment."
"Good," Amethyst declared. "More of them means they'll be easier to find. They already know they can't win a straight fight. As soon as we find them, they're as good as poofed."
The other Gems didn't answer Amethyst's confidence with their own. In the silence, Connie heard floorboards creaking, and then the whoosh of the temple door at the back of the house. Minutes later, the screen door creaked open, and the porch behind Connie shifted slightly with a new presence.
Steven stood on his tiptoes and peered over the rail next to Connie, one hand braced to lift him to the edge. His other hand dragged a plush green alien toy across the decking. One of the alien's legs thumped against the boards, too heavy to be filled with regular stuffing. Connie knew the lump in its leg was a river stone with the word JADE scrawled across it, a stone that had been trapped within the alien's stitching back when it had been reassembled.
"I tried," Steven said. His teary gaze dropped to the sand below them. "I really did. I practiced until my mouth was dry every day, but I couldn't get the stone out. Maybe Peridot was wrong, or maybe I just didn't do it right, but…I'm sorry."
Connie stared out at the darkening horizon. With all of the extra space inside of her, it took some effort to find her reaction. When she did, she was a little surprised, but too exhausted to raise her voice above a whisper. "I'm so mad at her, Steven."
From the corner of her eye, she saw his brow furrow. "At Jade?" he said.
Nodding tiredly, Connie let her chin drop back against her knuckles on the rail. "I don't know if there was any other way to save both of us. Jade is…was so much smarter than I am. So I'm sure she already thought of everything I could have. Honestly, she probably figured out everything two seconds after she counted my spots for me."
Fresh tears threatened Connie's eyes. She dug her fingernails into the railing and fought them back.
"But she didn't tell me. She wouldn't talk about it, and she wouldn't listen," Connie rasped. "She just left. Talked about leaving me some kind of gift, as if that would help. Acted like I had done her some big favor for just letting her exist. And then she just left."
Steven reached for her, but then hesitated. "Connie…"
She kept her eyes locked on the horizon. If she looked at him, saw his consoling expression, she knew she would start blubbering again. So she crushed her eyes shut. "After I messed everything up, she saved Sapphire, and you, and me. She wouldn't let me make it right. And now I'm stuck here wondering why she did it, why she wouldn't warn me, why she couldn't stay. And I hate myself for being mad at her, and I know that's crazy, but it just makes me madder, and I can't even yell at her for it because she's gone. She's just…gone."
"It's okay to be mad at her," Steven said. "I get it. Pearl and Garnet and Amethyst and my dad spent so long not telling me things I needed to know because they thought I wasn't ready. And maybe I wasn't, but it was still awful not knowing. Jade didn't tell you she was leaving, and you have every right to be mad at her.
"But…" His voice began to crack, and Connie felt her eyes grow hot under their clenched lids. "But I hope you won't be mad at her forever, because I'm really grateful for what she did. I know it's selfish to think of it this way, and it's okay if you hate me a little too for saying it, but…Jade saved my best friend. I'm sorry I can't be mad at her with you. I'm too glad you're alright."
Connie lost the fight. Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks as she opened her eyes to see Steven crying with her. She heard herself laugh, or sob, or do both at once, and took her hands into his. Their foreheads met with a soft bump as they leaned into each other.
When she could speak again, Connie wheezed, "I'm sorry I lost your sword."
"That doesn't matter," Steven told her.
"It was your mom's sword. Of course it matters," she insisted.
She felt his nose brush against hers as he shook his head. "Mom left me a whole armory," he said. "I only ever found the one Connie. And I need her way more than I'll ever need a sword."
Connie smiled through her tears, and her insides warmed. It made the cold, echoing void inside of her ache that much harder, but the warmth made it bearable. "Then you're in luck," Connie said, her voice tight. "She's back in her original packaging." Then, stepping back, she gestured to her sopping face and coughed up a little laugh. "Do you have anything for…? I don't want to freak my parents out any more than they already will be when they get here."
Steven produced a clean handkerchief from his pocket and presented it to her. "I got you covered," he said.
Her smile widened as she remembered what Jade had said about Steven. Accepting his handkerchief, she mopped her face dry. At the very least she could look slightly put-together when her parents arrived. She had no idea what she would tell them, and even less idea what their reaction would be. Would they turn into a mess like she had? Though she knew they would never say it out loud, Connie had to believe that some part of them would feel relief at their daughter being just a plain old human again, even if she did have an extra lump of pyroxene in her chest.
When she blew her nose, Connie felt her lungs crumple like deflating balloons. A tremendous blast of wind tore the handkerchief out of her grasp, and the force of the blast blinded her and knocked her back onto the deck, pain shooting up through her tailbone.
She shook the hair out of her face and blinked her eyes clear again, dizzy from the sudden fall. Then she gaped in shock.
The wind that had knocked Connie down had been the blowback. Steven, and the patio furniture, and a large portion of the far railing, had taken the brunt of the wind, and were scattered across a dozen yards of sand beyond the edge of the porch. The patio table had snapped in half, and the chairs were plastic flinders mixed with the splinters of the rail. Beyond them, Steven pulled his face out of the sand and gaped back at her, bewildered at his violent relocation.
Touching Jade's stone, Connie took in the aftermath of her accidental hurricane, and realized that she might owe a few other explanations to her parents. If only she could explain it to herself first.
