I am dying to see how the series is going to handle Lars being back on Earth, and just had to try my hand at writing it. This work will update erratically when I have time. I hope you like reading it as much as I liked writing it!

The spaceship landed a little after nine a.m. on Sunday, a week after Steven and Lars had been taken from Earth together, a few days since Steven had mysteriously returned – alone. It was impossible to miss the landing, since the ship more or less crashed in the middle of the beach. It was in poor condition, burns and wear marks obvious on the hull, but it was alien and it had arrived in one piece.

Sadie was on the beach in moments, any caution about the Gems that may or may not be outside disregarded. Steven and the Crystal Gems were the only ones to get there faster, and she stopped a few feet behind them, just in case. She was here to see if Lars had made it back to Earth, not to get taken again herself.

She'd wanted to be angry with him, she'd tried to be, but she couldn't manage to get it to last. Every time he'd left her behind for his own interest, even that final time on the ship when he'd run instead of trying to help her, paled in comparison to the fact that he was god-knows-where in space and possibly dead already.

Being angry would have been a whole lot easier.

Instead, she found herself worried. Worried about what had happened to him, what the Gems on the ship had done, about where he'd ended up. Worried about if she'd ever see him again.

The door popped open with a hiss of steam, and a ramp extended down after a moment's delay. Sadie craned for a glance inside, but the door was blocked almost immediately by an impossibly huge . . . Gem? It had to be, right? But none of the other Gems looked like enormous caterpillars.

Behind the enormous Gem came a nervous-looking large red Gem with two sets of arms and eyes, then a Gem split at the waist. There was a pause, then, and Sadie felt her blood freeze in her veins, fearing there was no one else aboard.

But after that pause came a tiny Gem in a puffy dress, and as she descended the platform, Sadie could make out another silhouette behind her. A silhouette of someone she recognized. Someone almost twice her height, with a familiar pouf of hair.

She was running towards the ship before she realized it, feet pounding up the ramp seconds after the last Gem made it to the sand, and with her momentum, the hug she intended to give wound up sending them both to the floor of the spaceship.

Sadie couldn't help but laugh with relief, and she heard a familiar laugh in response. Sadie quickly pushed herself back up, blushing, and extended a hand down for Lars to take.

"Sorry about that, Lars, I'm just glad to see . . . you?"

The hand that took hers was both right and wrong at the same time. It was the right shape, it felt the same as Lar's hand, felt familiar, comfortable. But it was colder, somehow, and in the light coming in through the doorway, it was the wrong color, too: a bright, vibrant pink.

The hand gripped hers tightly, and using it, the figure stood up, revealing the rest of himself in the light, and heaven help her, he looked so familiar and so alien at the same time.

He was Lars – the height, the hair, the proportions and features, he was even wearing the same clothes she'd seen him in last, albeit more torn and dirtied. But the rest, his skin, his hair – pink. Sadie was used to weird skin colors, hell, Steven was pinker than most people, but this color belonged in a box of crayons: "Your Friend, in Alien".

Was he even Lars? The other Gems were able to shapeshift—what if this was just a Gem, shapeshifted to look like him?

Sadie hurriedly dropped his hand and stepped back, trying to avoid being too close to this possible stranger, forgetting about the doorway and the ramp behind. Her foot slipped out from under her, and as she tipped backwards, her hands flailed, hoping to catch the edge of the doorway.

But instead, a hand caught hers and pulled her back upright. The pink Lars lookalike smiled sheepishly.

"Guess I do look pretty startling, huh," he said, nervously rubbing at the back of his head. "Let's get down before you take a real tumble, okay?"

Sadie nodded, not trusting herself to speak. He sounded like Lars, but when had she heard Lars so . . . serious? Caring? Mature?

At the bottom of the ramp, Steven didn't seem to have any qualms about this being Lars, and quickly caught him in a hug and started talking a mile a minute, using words that Sadie only understood half the time.

But Sadie stopped a few feet short of the bottom of the ramp. She wasn't ready, yet, to join in the scene of reuniting happening below, because she wasn't sure if she was really reuniting, yet.

"What happened?" she asked, and Steven stopped talking and the pink Lars turned to look at her, and she kept talking because if she lost the nerve to ask now, a small part of her would always be wondering—

"What happened to you? How did you turn pink, and why, and –are you . . . are you really Lars?"

For a second Sadie thought that time had frozen somehow, the way everyone stood still. But Steven started talking, too fast for her to understand, and anyway all Sadie could focus on was the pink Lars's face as his heart seemed to break.

"Sadie . . ."

"I'm sorry, but I had to ask. All this Gem stuff, I didn't know—"

"Sadie . . . I get it."

"Whuh?"

The pink Lars took a moment to gather his thoughts, and when he spoke up, it was with none of the anger she'd expected the accusation to spark.

"I get it. I'm pink now, and that's definitely not normal, ha. It's a long story—a really long story. A lot has happened, but . . . I'm still Lars, as far as I know. And . . . I'm sorry."

Sadie was catching Lars in a hug before she realized she was moving. Up close, she could see a scar over his left eye that hadn't been there before. What had he been through, out there?

"What the heck are you sorry for? I'm the one that should be apologizing!"

"For running away instead of helping you. I want to be the kind of person that would have helped you instead of getting afraid and running away, and I wasn't, not when you needed it."

"Lars, it's okay!" Sadie pulled back so that Lars could see her face, her sincerity. "I can understand being afraid, and I got out okay anyway. I'm over it. I should have done more to make sure you got off the ship. We all have regrets, and that's okay."

Lars smiled, hesitantly, but it was a genuine smile – Sadie had enough practice to tell.

"Thanks, Sadie. I needed to hear that, I think."

"No problem. Now, what I want to hear is what happened up there – it seems like it was intense!"

"Oh, for sure it was," Lars said. "I may have, haha, died for a little bit there—"

"WHAT?"

"Like I said, it's a long story. And maybe not one to tell on the beach?"

Once Lars mentioned it, Sadie noticed the crowd of Beach City residents now crowded onto the beach to gawk at the alien spaceship, or the new Gems, and a couple at Lars himself.

"Sure," Sadie said. "I don't think anyone will mind me closing up the Big Donut today—we could go back to my place and you can tell me the whole thing."

Lars smiled, wider this time.

"Yeah, that—that sounds nice."