Full of Fear, But no regrets

It was night. The human residents of Beach City had gone to sleep. The Crystal Gems were off on a mission, except for one. Gently stepping out of the van was Rose Quartz. She looked back into the van to see Greg snoring. She suppressed a giggle. He was adorable when he slept. Then she had to suppress a gasp. Steven kicked just a little too hard. She smiled and rubbed her baby bump. Yes, Steven. The doctor confirmed earlier that day, they were going to have a son.

She held the tape up to her face. 'For Steven' was written on it. It was time to put it somewhere safe, somewhere Steven would find it eventually. The gems didn't understand human things and Gregg… she loved him but odds where he would put it in that storage unit and forget about it. So, Rose started walking to the outskirts of Beach City. It was much harder now than it was before her pregnancy. For the first time in her life she felt physical exhaustion. It was exciting, but also terrifying… It meant, her gem was giving more energy to the baby now than to her… It meant, soon she would be no more.

Now she was in the forest waiting. The leaves rustled telling her he had arrived. A large pink lion emerged from the shadows and approached her. Rose smiled and gave him an affectionate scratch before entering his mane.

There she stood in that pink field, with the pink tree. She approached it and placed the tape at the base. She looked up at the bubble.

"Hello, Bismuth," she solemnly said.

She looked out and watched the wind sweep over the pink grass, like an invisible broom. This was the one place that was secret. Even from Pearl. This was the one place, she didn't have to be brave.

She looked down at her bump. Could she do it?

She'll go very slow, if it feels like it's hurting Steven she'll stop.

Her being began to glow a pink light. Slowly, gently, her form grew taller. Her hair shortened. Her physique became more slim. She didn't turn her gem down like it was supposed to be, she wanted to do nothing to her belly. Her dress remained the same, but she wasn't Rose Quartz anymore, she was Pink Diamond.

With her larger form the bump wasn't as obvious. She looked more like she was digesting a large meal than being pregnant. She held still for a minute when she didn't think the baby wasn't moving. Then sighed in relief when she felt him kick again.

She sat down in the field and rested her back against the hill. It had been a few years since she went back to her real form. The reason Pearl didn't know about Lion was because she told her all those years ago that she never wanted to look back; and she meant it. She loved being Rose Quartz, she loved being a crystal gem, she loved the Earth, the humans, the life she made, all of it. However, after a few decades, the Rose Quartz form she adopted, felt funny. Like putting a shoe on the wrong foot, even though as a Diamond she could hold her form indefinitely unlike common gems. And to her horror… she missed her fellow Diamonds.

When she unintentionally resurrected the Lion, she learned his mane now led to this… dimension. It was nowhere, even beyond Garnet's sight. So once every few decades she would come to this place and become Pink Diamond once again. Sometimes to frolic through the fields… or to cry over absent presence of the Diamond's.

Now, she was crying as she clutched her stomach. She was going to disappear… It wasn't the fear of death that made her cry. She would never see her son. She would never see his first steps, or first words, or hear him say 'I love you, mommy,' all the things she saw other children do with their mothers. She wanted that so badly. To raise Steven with Greg. To take him to school, to take him to concerts and movies, to buy him toys, to see him grow up. The reason she wanted a child was because it was the only other way to be with Greg.

Greg was human, he was going to grow old and die eventually. Pink didn't want that but didn't want to leave him either. But what if he got tired of her? He called her beautiful, but what if he got tired of a woman who couldn't age, who couldn't grow old with him? So, they talked it over, she explained what would happen to her, and after many talks, many tears, they decided to have a child. One that would grow with Greg. He would tell Steven about her, Rose Quartz. How she was a beautiful, strong, and selfless woman, who saved the Earth.

Then a new form of tears began, from a new sort of pain; That was a lie. She wasn't strong or selfless. She wasn't even a Rose Quartz. She was a Diamond. She was weak and selfish. She was the one who endangered Earth in the first place. She brought the injectors to the kindergarten's. She destroyed a small piece of life on Earth. She realized that too late. When she fell in love with the life on Earth she wanted to join it. She said it was for freedom, but the truth was she was just running away from her duties and didn't have the courage to tell the Diamond authority. Only one other gem knew that, and she was unable to speak of it.

She stroked her stomach as Steven kicked again. She had thought about telling Greg the truth… Of what type of gem, she actually was. Amethyst and Garnet too. She didn't want to disappear without telling them. But decided against it. For thousands of years, she had told Garnet that Pink Diamond was evil, a tyrant who deserved her fate of being shattered. Amethyst never knew her because she emerged too late. Greg knew little, and she was grateful he didn't ask. She wished she could tell them, so much, but couldn't. It wasn't because she was afraid they'd hate her… not anymore at least, but for her son. She had come to learn a child isn't responsible for their parent's action, but that was almost impossible for a gem to grasp.

When humans had children, they gave up a piece of themselves to create a child. Pink always thought that was beautiful. As a gem she couldn't give a piece of herself. If she plucked a hair off her head, it would vanish without her gem sustaining power. The only way for Pink to have a child with a human, was to transfer her gem's power into sustaining her babies physical form instead of her own. The baby would have her gem, but not her memories or soul. It was easy for humans to understand, but for a gem? The gem was their true selves. The source of their power, form, mind, and soul. Steven form will give him a brain and soul that should act separate, but the gems wouldn't understand that. She barely understood that. Which was why she wouldn't tell anyone that she was truly, Pink Diamond. She wanted the Crystal Gems to see that first. To see that her son wasn't her in another form. If she told them now… when Steven was only a month away from being born. They might not want to be there for him Greg may not want to raise the son of the gem who tried to colonize his home, and she knew that he was going to need the guidance of gems and his father, since she wouldn't be there.

Steven wasn't going to be human or gem, he was going to be both. He was going to be the only one of his kind. He needed his human father and the gems in his journey to discover who he was and what he wanted to be. She knew that Steven was going to have questions, he would hear things about homeworld and the gem war.

And the thing she dreaded the most… she knew he was going to find out. Not that Rose Quartz shattered Pink Diamond, but that Rose Quartz was Pink Diamond. She didn't know how, but she just knew he was going to find out eventually. And when he did, he would be angry at her, and he'd have every right.

She hated the gem she was before. Spoiled, whined when she didn't get her way, doing things that got those around her hurt, because of what she did most of the Crystal gems were shattered or corrupted. She never wanted that! She thought when she staged her shattering homeworld would just leave, but instead the other Diamonds corrupted them. She tried to save them. She tried so hard, but the healing powers of one Diamond could not undo the damage caused by three. And Pearl stopped her from going back and begging the other Diamonds to help her save them.

She wasn't naïve anymore. She knew now that her actions were going to come back and now instead of her fixing them it would fall to Steven. Something she realized too late. She just hoped… prayed that somehow her son would forgive her… And that where she failed, he would succeed. And she wished so much, that she could see that, but she knew she couldn't.

"Blue… Yellow… White," Pink sobbed, "You lied to me… you said Diamonds got everything they wanted… but what I want most I can't have…"

Finally, after what felt like an eternity of sobbing. She calmed down. She had regrets; from the gem war, her time as a diamond… but the little boy growing inside of her? She didn't regret it. She didn't regret becoming Rose Quartz. And her love with Greg, she didn't regret that either. She was afraid, for her son, for Greg, and for the Crystal gems, but she had no regrets. To her, having Steven was the best thing she ever did, as Rose and as Pink Diamond.