I'd suggest waiting to read this one until after seeing Jail Break, considering the spoilers implicit in it.

I've grown fond of Jasper (because huge awesome buff brute, what's not to love?) and I like the idea of a redemption arc for her and the other Homeworld Gems. I've heard the idea of her having some sort of relationship with Rose Quartz, and thought of her transferring it to Steven.

Disclaimer: I do not own Steven Universe.

Jasper lives and loves violence and war, but she knows the value of patience, and the day when the Crystal Gems permit her released from Lapis' custody under the conditions they set, she bows her head and obeys.

This, she thinks to herself, is only for a short time.

This, she tells herself as dreams of war upon the whole of the Earth, is only to wait and plan.

This, she tells herself with a brutish smile she hides in her core, is just a misdirection.

She promises herself that she will not believe a word of what she says; Jasper swears to herself that she will win this fight, as she has countless others. She will beat Rose this one last time. She will smile, she will nod, she will obey their pointless petty little dictates, until she can strike them all down in a single blow.

And at the very first, as the tiny thing bearing Rose's Gem steps up and proclaims himself her warden and it is revealed to her that it was his idea that she be freed in the hopes that she might come to see their point, Jasper feels the slightest flicker of something she does not experience in the normal course of things or really understand.

She has no truck with doubt; her life has been a train-ride of absolute certainty and ferocity. The desire to understand and know is new to her.

So, when the tiny pink thing that feels like Rose and smells like Rose and leaves ripples in the world filling up the hole Rose left in it, when he grabs one of her fingers all one one chubby hand like a turbo-fox nipping at the heel of a glacier-mammoth, she wordlessly lets him drag her along to wherever he deems it important for them to go.

Her feet drag in the sand, heavy and shuffling ponderously, and all she can think of is that this tiny creature that she so easily tossed aside is something new.

Jasper isn't much for thinking. But she does know curiosity.

So, she lets him maintain this delusion that she is tamed, and that he has any hope of restraining her.

She tells herself, she can smash him whenever she wants and just leave. She never asks herself why she never does.

Nor why the notion comes to distress her.

Jasper is a being of violence, of extremity, of hardness. She does not, and did not, really understand what one might mean by friendship.

She doesn't really consider it in herself to embrace sentimentality or to support herself by relying on another for emotional support or strength or even just for the pleasure of it. Bringing down worlds and reveling in the screams of her foes as she nails them to the walls of their great cities and watch their ambitions burn; that is her joy. She doesn't want or like sentimentality.

Nevertheless; she has such a thing as a favorite enemy. Someone expected to do battle with for eons to come, a reliably stubborn and noble enough foe to attract her interest and rouse her valor. Someone she loved to test herself against, time and time again.

Her favorite enemy is Rose Quartz. And she learns what grief is when she learns that she must now say that Rose Quartz was her favorite enemy.

She had thought that Rose had somehow become part human, assuming the shape of this world's paltry inhabitants. The thought had disgusted her, that Rose should disgrace her dignity by taking the form of the weak-willed and puerile things of this planet; blasphemed in this way, polluting the purity of her projection by actually mingling it with flesh. In a bizarre parody of the robotic inhabitants of lost Cybertron, blending in with the native life rather than assuming authority over the worthy.

But, no. Rose was gone. And she had done it by somehow creating this... not creature, she wanted to say. That seemed somehow disrespectful to a surprisingly strong rival. This 'boy', as the humans might say. This entity.

He was completely unprecedented in all of their histories. Never before had a Gem given new life by mingling it with another, combining the best of two to make a new one. And dying in the process: it was fascinating but at the same time somewhat depressing. It was no use as a replacement for the Kindergartens, not if it made they had to die to create even a single new Gem.

And yet... Jasper had to confess, peering down at this little entity no higher than her knee and significantly slimmer than her arm but still offering a toy to her like she was supposed to play with it, Rose had made something new. Something... with potential.

She wanted to see how it might go. She'd lived a long time enough to see again and again how potential might crystalize, and she wished to see what he would do with power.

So she took the toy, and learned how to make sand castles.

And as she does, she wonders if the boy knows what a wonder he is.

He is not Rose Quartz, she knows, but he makes a marvelous replacement. And it is a strange thought next, that she realizes that he does not know she considers him an enemy, favorite or not.

And time passed, and times goes on, and the Homeworld seems to forget them. Jasper, captive to the Crystal Gems. Lapis Lazuli, lurking beneath the seas in peace. Peridot, somewhere in the world doing unknown things.

Jasper isn't quite sure why she's not bothered. She can afford to wait. All things die; she can wait until this planet boils away and then she can surf her way back on rocks and meteors. All the same, it is unpleasant to be... written off.

She has learned to call him Steven now, the creation of Rose. She doesn't know what a child is, and from what she can understand the concept seems profoundly bizarre. It seems to work for humans. Steven assures her that it is fine for her to call this place home.

She's not so sure she wants to remain here for that long, but the prospect of doing so in the company of Steven is... palatable. Upon further consideration, she judges the Crystal Gems, low and lost though they are, have done a fine job shaping and polishing Steven and perhaps worthy of revaluation.

Jasper still does not like Earth much. Or it's people, little care she takes of them. But the Earth itself produced Steven, and that is good on it.

And now, she has had enough reason to consider the Homeworld and the diamonds and frown as she wonders why they never thought to do things like what Rose did to make Steven. Afraid, perhaps, or just not willing to consider it.

Weak.

She doesn't think of it as changing allegiance to the Crystal Gems, just a shift in priorities. The others do note, though, that she makes a point of carrying Steven about on her shoulder whenever she can.

He is small, tiny and perhaps easily broken. She does not know why this bothers her.

Steven smiles and says he knows why, but will not tell her.