A Terrible Thing

Commissioned by Crow T Robot

It was on the last day of the War that Rose Quartz was born. She had been born many times in her life. Once in a mountain top on an alien world reduced to rubble and dust. Once in the mind of a lover, borne from her skull like Athena. Once and again on the Moon: first out of curiosity, then anger. Once in the fields, a new life to escape into. Once in the Palanquin. And now, on the last day of the War. She would be born again and again throughout her life, as all things do. But it was on that last day, when all was lost to the cruel winds of stagnation, that Rose Quartz was born again.

It was not quite the end, not yet. The sky had not turned an enveloping white with song and misery. It was still the technicolor rainbow of twilight as the War raged on. She would later recall the smell of chestnuts in the air. They only grew in this forest during the fall and she quite liked the smell. There were three of them at the time: herself, Garnet, and Pearl. The others were outside the forest in a field that was known to grow strawberries. Rose thought of forming a community in the forest one day. It seemed like the perfect environment for gems and humans alike to live together. It would be a nice day to live to see. A day that would never come, alas.

Garnet was in her[1] third incarnation. Her blindfold covered only her red and blue eyes as the trio wandered out the other end of the woods. She wondered about the hole she saw in the future. Not quite the black abyss of death or the uncertainty of an unfused life. But rather the blankness of a piece of paper. It frightened her more than the certainty of death[2]. At least with death, there is a chance that the story could end and there would be but the eternal sleep. Half of her accepted this potential fate. There are worse things than dying after all. But another part of her felt the heat of eternity and would refuse such a fate.

 

Pearl, by contrast, was still in her first incarnation. For all her foolhardy and arguably suicidal actions, she had survived the War with only the aesthetics of scratches. She taken down the largest of Tourmalines, the swiftest of Lapis Lazuli, and the tenacious of Aquamarine. She had survived battles that stole away countless friends and lovers[3]. She had escaped capture from Homeworld to Kindergardens to abandoned colonies. All with a devotion to one gem. She was her Pearl after all and she her Rose. She didn’t think about the implications of that, especially not in the woods that twilight. In many respects, thinking about such implications might have prevented a lot of heartbreak over the course of thousands of years of Romance.

 

What she was thinking about was the smell of something distinctly unlike chestnuts. It was a sad, small little thing with eyes dulled from blue to grey. It did not move, save for when a high wind coddled its face. Its hair glistened in the twilight sky, frozen short above the shoulders. It had five limbs: two on the side, two on the bottom, and one on the forehead. The forehead limb was a discolored pale against the dark skin. Its fingers a jagged three with no thumb in sight. Most odd was that, as Pearl demonstrated, it was detachable.

 

It slumped down the tree and crumpled into a carpet upon the leaves. The wind blew softly in the air, as if no tragedy had occurred in these woods. Rose lifted the body’s head before it kissed the ground. She did not know this human. She was still young and shy around those exotic beings. Rose viewed their beauty from afar. The families formed, the stories told and formed. Life too fast to truly treasure. It would take her many centuries before she felt comfortable talking to a human.

 

She did not need to wonder why this human was dead. In the times before the War, gems were expected to confront dangerous fauna and lifeforms on the worlds they colonized. She was raised on fairy tales of princesses running from vicious flangerfi in the deserts of the fifth colony and a little boy who cried Fishmonger until no one believed him when it came to kill them all. It didn’t matter that the human race, by and large, were a peaceful species. They kept to their own, often interacting with gems in much the same way one would approach a statue in a museum. What mattered, ultimately, was that this was a human and it was in the way of progress.

 

Holding the body’s head, Rose thought of that progress her people wanted. Much like hope, Rose’s son would come to understand when traveling America, progress is a term that requires a high level of specificity in regards to which direction it is pointed towards. For some, progress is the trampling of a forest to create an oil refinery while others see it as a chance to allow people the freedom to love whoever they love, as long as they were loved back. Rose did not think of progress in these terms. She was still young and full of romantic ideals about the beauty of nature and the destructive cruelty of her people. She could see the chains, but she couldn’t see the full scope of them.

 

The body lay still on the ground. A chill went down Rose’s back, as if someone had walked over her grave[4]. She felt a cold breeze skip daintily over her shoulder. Words she could not hear were spoken by people she could not see. They spoke of her, she thought, of how she was responsible. How they could have known what she had done was not something that came to her mind. She knew how her thoughts knew what she had done. They were there after all. Even as she left the body behind, Rose could not stop thinking those thoughts, which plagued her mind.

 

When they left the woods, the battle was raging. Gem against gem fighting to the last gem. A trio of Aquamarines were pining down a giant Malachite as tall as twelve trees. A Lapis Lazuli washed away a platoon of Rubies. Rose drew her sword and attacked a Topaz. Pearl leaped in the air and struck down wave after wave of Ambers. Garnet was immediately assaulted an Opal, bendy like an unstable tree. They fought all night against the Homeworld army. They would not back down, they would not surrender. And Homeworld knew this. Which is why it came to no surprise that the soldiers retreated very quickly[5]. The War was over. They won.

 

Pearl looked at Rose with a toothy smile and tears in her eyes. She thought of how much she wished Bismuth was here. They would have to save her one day, surely[6]. Rose looked at her with a pinch of guilt poisoning her happiness. What that guilt was over, not even Rose knew. It was the kind of guilt often felt when everything is going perfectly, but you still don’t feel like you deserve any of it.

 

Rose would feel that guilt often throughout her life. When she first danced with Garnet. When she met a scared gem in a hole in the wall. When she went to a concert. And always she felt as if she was being parted, broken hearted. She would think of all her mistakes in those dreadful moments. The Palanquin, The Breaking Point, The Garden, The Forest. But above all, this field she stood in, her friends celebrating, her loves smiling, her heart beating like a drum. She would feel so much guilt that she ever thought this feeling could ever last.

 

Rose was the first to see the light. Her first thought was horror. They wouldn’t, they couldn’t! Not with just three of them! And she was right, they couldn’t kill them all with only three[7]. She didn’t know that at the time. What she knew was that the night sky was being consumed by a solitary ternary star. She could only save two of her friends. Two of her loves. Two of her comrades. In the split second between darkness and light, she grabbed Pearl and Garnet and shielded them from the devastation. The whole world was consumed by the light. And the War ended.

 

In the wreckage of all of her mistakes, Rose Quartz found the world awash in amber. Garnet’s blindfold fell from her face, her body on the verge of defusion. Pearl collapsed to her knees and belted the most awful sound ever conceived. Even thinking about it can cause a bout of depression. Rose was in a trance. She couldn’t stop walking away from the survivors. She kept moving without any thoughts in her mind as to where. She just needed to be away from the people she hurt, destroyed, broke. Shattered.

 

Inevitably, she stopped. She stood atop a hill where a giant black tree in the shape of a battle axe jutted out of the ground. Far away, she could see a figure standing in the battlefield. It draped in a black cloak made of nighttime and sorrow. She approached the figure, somehow recognizing him from another life, long ago and far away. Where he once stood, on the body of a human lay. It had a spear in its hands and the shards of countless gems surrounding him. Rose fell to her hands and cradled the body. She cried tears that did no good[8]. He was far too gone. She cried for the shattered gems, all scattered about the battlefield. She cried for her the fallen and wished they could all just come back to her.

 

As if by some cruel, black sense of humor, the world around her began to glow. Gem after gem began to change, to solidify their images. Maybe she was right! Maybe three wasn’t enough to kill. She had hope. But, as the saying goes, hope is a terrible thing on the scaffold. 

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[1] There has been many debate among the scholars of the Crystal Gems with regards to pronouns. With some Crystal Gems such as Lapis Lazuli and Amethyst, the She/Her pronoun has uncontroversialy been used. Others, like Stevonie and Kryptonite, They/Them pronouns have been applied. Even with non-fusion Gems like Amber, Ruby, and Malachite have used hir/hir, per/pers, and we/us respectively. Garnet, however, has been the subject of debate. There are numerous records which indicate her using She/Her, They/Them, and, in one rather infamous Christmas Party, Motherfucker. She has stated in official capacity that her preferred pronouns are She/Her and that she would prefer to be referred to as such “Else ye suffer the wrath of me Rocket Fists!” (It was Talk Like a Pirate Day when she said this.)

[2] Another subject of debate is the question of whether or not Gems can die. The common answer seems to be “OH GOD, THE ARM IS STILL MOVING! PLEASE, WHY WOULD A LOVING GOD LET THE ARM KEEP MOVING!! IT’S ATTATCHED TO A FOOT, BUT IT WON’T STOP MOVING! HELP!”

[3] The polyamorous nature of Pearl and Rose Quartz’s relationship is often left underdiscussed. It would take Pearl millennia to have her own human lovers, though her Gem loves included roughly 24% of the Crystal Gems. Many of these romances ended in heartbreak.

[4] Rose would not hear this turn of phrase until she was much older, when a woman by the name of Jane Kelley came into her life for three weeks and got Rose to help her rob a palace. Pearl, naturally, bailed them out.

[5] As with most wars, the nobility and other members of the upper crust were safely transported away long before the soldiers even got the order to leave.

[6] Often, when things seemed bleakest, Rose would hold the bubble she put Bismuth in. Sometimes, she would consider bursting the bubble and telling her everything. She could have destroyed the Breaking Point any time she wanted.

[7] Many historians have argued over which of the Diamonds was the one to ultimately go “Fuck it, let’s try it with three.” Some would like to simplify things and say it was White or Yellow. Others, who are interested in the complexities of guilt, argue it was Blue. What matter, ultimately, is that it was done.

[8] Not that she knew the potential good they could do. It would be many centuries, maybe even a millennium, before she would.