A/N: Thanks for reading! This is an epilogue of sorts.

...

They hold a funeral of sorts for Sapphire- Ruby, Amethyst, Greg and Steven crowd around the rebubbled shards. Ruby replaced the blue one with her own red. She can't let the shards sit without Stasis, but she'll be damned if she lets Sapphire spend forever in the hold of anyone but her.

Steven carries Pearl's gem in his palm, so she can attend too.

Ruby touches the smooth white gem affectionately, once she's said all the words she can for now about her partner.

"Pearl did care about you after all, Sapphy," Ruby chokes.

.

Pearl comes back, eventually. She's bigger, fluffier, aggressive- not like the gem Steven knows. She looks a bit like a dinosaur, with white feathers primarily, pink and blue scattered in. Her eyes are the same.

With the help of the rebel gems, they manage to hold her down, tying her up to the ship. Ruby sits with her most of the time. She gets hurt, occasionally, but she comes back each time anyway.

She's found Pearl reacts best when she's wearing Garnet's visor.

.

Steven calls Connie back, after a little while. He plans to keep her away from him, which works at first, but eventually she calls him on it, coming to see him face to face. He feels so lonely- he's got his dad, but Amethyst is sad and Ruby is sad and Pearl is gone and Garnet is really gone... The rest of the gems are strangers to him.

Connie's nice to have back. She doesn't even mind that he cries for a while.

.

The rebel gems are around. They mainly keep out of the Crystal Gems' way, formulating their own plans. The Homeworld gems stay bubbled, for now, including Spodumene. With Chalcedony's permission, Steven unbubbles the pearl who brought him his blankets. She's spooked, but she listens to him. Eventually, she begins to spend more time with the rebel pearl.

Amethyst avoids the rebels, including them, snapping one time that they're not Pearl, and that they should get their own names. It's confusing anyway. Steven gives them a baby name book, in case it's something they want to seriously consider.

He doesn't like the way they refer to themselves, as "Beryl's pearl" or "ex-pearl to Iolite", so he doesn't think he'd mind if they gave themselves their own identities.

.

Amethyst seems to hit it off okay with Peridot, and she eventually joins the team set on fixing the Cluster, disappearing with them to the Kindergarden a lot. She continues to hang around with Steven, especially when she's mad at Peridot- which is often enough- but they tend to get along well, after a while, and sometimes they hang out together, without him. He's glad, for both of them, that they're friends. They both needed one.

.

"I think Ruby can fix her," Steven whispers to Greg, one night. The stars are bright, and Pearl and Ruby seem to be watching them together.

"Me too, kid," Greg says, hopeful.

"I can do Centipeedle next, and then the others," Steven says, "maybe if we can help a lot of gems, they'll help us, in case Homeworld comes back."

He brings the pearl who helped him in his cell by to see the collection of bubbled gems one time. He can see a peridot, several amethysts, some rubies... there's some pearls, too.

"I wonder who they belonged to," the pearl muses.

"No-one," Steven tells her, firmly.

Ruby says she'll prioritize the corrupted gems for him- they can do the ones that she knows were Crystal Gems first, and the ones she knows were Homeworld gems last. A good number are unknown, she admits, but they can cure whoever he wants.

.

There's a lot to do.

...

A/N: Please let me know how you liked the story, if you have a moment! For more fics by me, please check out "theoncomingwolf" on archiveofourown. I rarely post to FFNet