Fusions - A Steven Universe AU Story

2

Many times after the strange dream of other fusions, the interactions were still fresh in Gold's mind. She thought about the handshake, as Rainbow called it, and the friendly gems. She thought about Sardonyx and her weird way of talking, which almost sounded like she was addressing dozens of people at once despite there being only four gems besides her.

She thought about Smokey Quartz, and wondered about their three arms and how all those limbs functioned together. She thought about that annoyingly curious Rainbow Quartz, and how he was still kind to her after she demonstrated that she didn't understand an incredibly basic gesture.

Then she opened her eyes into the completely blank space that had haunted her mind for the last week. Gold lifted her arms to look at them. Sure enough, Amazonite's gem was missing. She sat up and looked around. He was sleeping on the ground nearby, unaware of where they were. She crawled over to him.

"Hey. Wake up." Gold said, shaking him gently. No response. She shook his arm again. "Amazonite, wake up."

"Gems don't always like to come here." Smoky told Gold, causing her to turn around in alarm. "He's fine, he just would rather sleep than be here. I can understand that."

"So... This is normal?" Gold asked. Smoky nodded. She sighed, then stood up. "Okay. Can I hang out here for a while?"

"I don't care." Smoky replied with a shrug. They walked off, and Gold followed them. The two gems walked until they found the others. Rainbow Quartz and Sardonyx. The giant purple gem, who'd never introduced itself, was absent. Rainbow was the first to notice Gold was there.

"Goldstone! Hello!" He yelled, waving at her. She cringed at the volume of his tone. Smoky sat down by Sardonyx, and Rainbow stood and walked over to Gold. "Come to sit in on another conversation?"

Gold nodded anxiously, and the fusion continued grinning. He started back toward the group, and waved for Gold to follow. She took a few steps forward, but still sat at least a dozen feet from the group.

Over the next few periods of darkness, things went similarly. Spend the day doing the exact same testing Obsidian has always done, then at the dark period, Gold would go and observe the group of fusions. Amazonite never joined her, insisting it was just crazy dreams, or refusing to speak of it at all.

Every couple of dark cycles, Gold would cautiously come a little closer. It was only ever at the insistence of Sardonyx, Smoky, and Rainbow. She was slowly growing used to them, listening to their chats about things she didn't understand and sometimes saying a few words when directly spoken to.

One day, weeks later, she came all the way up to the group. They were happy to have her finally approach them, and had her sit between Sardonyx and Rainbow. The group was much louder up close, and Gold spent most of the time staring absently at the white, reflective ground. She tried to focus on the face that stared up at her, and found out that this form had black hair with thin golden streaks, creating a beautiful, almost shimmering, effect, and her hair went just past her shoulders. Her irises were a dark grey-black.

"Goldstone?" Rainbow's voice right by her ear startled her, and she jumped a few feet away. Rainbow raised both hands, his palms facing outward. His eyes were wide with surprise. "Calm down, I just wanted to check on you. Are you okay? You're more quiet than normal."

"Um... Yeah..." Gold muttered. She didn't say anything more as she cautiously returned to where she was.

"You're sure?" Sardonyx pushed. Gold nodded in response, but pulled her legs to her chest and stayed silent. Sardonyx shrugged, then looked at Smoky. "Alright then. So, tell me more about these corruptions. They had how many legs now?"

Over the next two weeks or so after that, nothing changed. But then, one day, she got to the usual place and found a ridiculous scene. Sardonyx seemed to be hosting some kind of event, and the fusions were taking turn going up and singing over a speaker. Every single time Smoky finished a song, they dropped the thing that everyone was talking into. Every time the object hit the ground, it created a high pitched, ear-shattering noise.

"Can you please not break my sound system?" Sardonyx muttered as Smoky passed her. A shrug in response.

As Sardonyx picked up the thing connected to the speaker, she noticed Gold walking up. She smiled and lifted the object close to her mouth.

"Well, if it isn't our dear Goldstone!" Her voice was even louder than usual coming from the speakers. Gold froze in place.

•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•

"Obsidian, my dear!" The experimenter greeted her as she entered yet another day of pointless attacking.

"Dear Obsidian, this won't hurt a bit." Was the promise she heard just before they started seeing how many hits it would take for her to lose form. It hurt badly, but she remained Obsidian.

"Obsidian dear, come to the test room, please." A voice over the loudspeaker. She started down the hall for more tests.

"My dear Obsidian, there's nothing for you out there." A hand waved toward the endless nothing beyond the window. The experimenter put a hand on either of her shoulders and looked up at her. "Stay here, where you're safe and loved."

•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•

"Goldstone?!" A voice snapped her out of it. There were hands on her shoulders. Her mind started to race.

"Get away from me!" In an act of blind terror, she summoned fire and forcefully pushed the person back. Tears stung her eyes as she tried to gather her thoughts.

There were a few small gasps of shock at the seemingly out of character reaction. Gold shook her head, and her vision cleared of the memories and horrible images. When she could finally take in her surroundings, Sardonyx was still by the sound system, the strange object dangling from the cord that now hung in her fingers. Smoky was at least ten feet away, looking genuinely scared and worried for the first time since Gold met them.

On the ground in front of her, Rainbow Quartz was staring in shock, holding his chest where his shirt was blackened from the flames. He looked more taken by surprise than actually hurt or upset, but it was all the same to Gold in that moment. She took off running, away from everything.

Then Obsidian woke with a start. Gold was still panicked, and Amazonite took control of their physical body before she could get too out of hand.

After that, Gold quit going to that strange place. She stayed in the real world, terrified of confronting the fusions after what happened. But it seemed she had no choice.

A week later, she found herself in the endless blank space, and tried to make herself go back to sleep. She was too scared, though, and couldn't.

So, she just stayed where she was. She could feel tears running down her face as she sat with her legs pulled to her chest and her head resting on her knees. She didn't cry. She never could, always believing they would do more tests if she let tears fall. But here, nobody could stop her. She released all the emotions she avoided daily. Sadness, loneliness, anger, fear...

Guilt. Regret. She curled up tighter as she remembered why she stopped coming here. She decided that she still wasn't ready to talk to the fusions.

It went like this every dark period. She would go there unwillingly, reflect on everything she hated about her life, then go to sleep from the exhaustion of allowing herself to feel emotions.

During the day, she took out all of her frustrations on the targets, giving more power to her attacks than she ever had before. At one point, she burned a target so bad that it was like it never existed. It had just disappeared. Her room was no longer entirely white, and now had burns on the walls, floor, and bed just from Obsidian pacing around in it.

Amazonite spoke to Gold less and less as he got more absorbed into his escape plan and she became steadily angrier at herself.

She was completely alone, and it was destroying her.