The Soul Gem

Fusions

Having failed to develop any social ties with Amethyst, Ermac was sent over to Garnet. Garnet was one of the most apprehensive towards Ermac, due to him being an blatant disregard to her philosophy of fusion. He's a product from an earlier time, which he could not control. So Garnet needed to keep that in mind, as the amalgamated gem approached her.

"Amethyst told us you would help us next," He said to Garnet.

"Ermac I have a question for you." Garnet began their interaction.

"Hm?" Ermac inquired with a head tilt.

"How many of you are there?" Garnet asked, cutting straight to the chase. Ermac's eyes darted around rapidly, as if trying to calculate the exact answer himself.

"We are 10,000," Ermac replied. It was then that to Garnet, Ermac's mannerisms suddenly made much more sense.

"Oh dear...you're all in a large amount of pain...aren't you?" Garnet asked, cupping Ermac's blank face in her hands.

"We are in no amount of physical distress," Ermac replied, as if he himself could not recognize that Garnet was attempting to address the collective inside of him.

"I think I might know how to help," Garnet said as she guided Ermac to the temple and sat down in a cross legged fashion. She also had to force Ermac down to mirror her.

"I want you to try and focus on introspection. See into the realm that is your mind," Garnet instructed. Ermac had a tilted look of confusion, and tried to follow her instructions. He tried to take a look inside of himself, to try and see what Garnet was talking about. Suddenly, he and Garnet were in this blue landscape. A grassy plateau bathed in a blue hue, and he was looking around in a state of confusion.

"Where are we?" Ermac asked, him covering his mouth once he heard his own voice. As before it was a singular tone that was distant in inflection, now his voice was emotive and intense. However...his voice was also no longer...his voice. His voice sounded as though there were thousands talking in his place.

"We're in the Fused Mind. It's a visual facsimile of what the mind of a fusion looks like," Garnet said, her voice still the same as her normal voice.

"Why is your voice fine...while ours is...like this?" Ermac asked, while he still looked around.

"The parts of me are able to see me as an expression of their unity. I am my own Gem, yet an expression of love at the same time," Garnet explained.

"What is wrong with our voice then?" Ermac asked again.

"Even though you yourself express yourself as a single gem. Your individual pieces are fighting against you, they do not accept that you are them and that they are you. You're at odds within yourself," Garnet explained once more. Ermac looked down at his body, seeing it flash briefly between many other gems. Garnet could see a few thousand butterflies forming out of Ermac, not knowing what anxieties were now beginning to flood his combined mind.

"What's going through your mind? Are these yours? Or are they the grievances of your pieces?" Garnet asked Ermac, as for the first time since he got here Garnet could see genuine emotion on his face...one emotion...terror. Terror of what he was seeing, what he was witnessing and what was flooding into his system.

"We...we....we were hurt...badly...hurt..." Ermac whimpered, a butterfly exploding into more butterfly with a shrill glass smashing sound effect. Each smash making Ermac flinch in recognition, because it meant every butterfly that exploded into more was one part of Ermac reliving its own shattering...reliving its own death.

"Make it stop....MAKE IT STOP!" Ermac yelled, grabbing his head and ducking down into a ball as the butterflies flooded around him in a giant cyclone of anxiety. Every few butterflies creating thousands more as a shattering occured, which just consumed Ermac further

"Ermac. You need to hold it together. These may be intense memories for your various components, and I'm sorry for all of them because of what they must have gone through. You however, do not need to be overwhelmed by memories that at their core...are just as much yours as they are rhe gems that you are composed of," Garnet said to him, trying to ease his extremely troubled mind.

"What do we do?!" Ermac yelled, trying to face the reality of his parts.

"Accept that these instances are parts of you...and let them go," Garnet said as she let a few butterflies of her own land on her shoulders. They wandered around her arms for a bit before flying off into the sky and out of her mind. Garnet could see that Ermac was trying to listen to her, some butterflies dissipating into the air. However, once Ermac accepted some of those memories more shatterings occurred which floored him once more. Then...something interesting happened with Ermac and his butterflies of anxiety. In an instant, the remaining 9,985 shatterings happened simultaneously. Billions of butterflies being spawned at once, as Ermac's cries of anguish tore through them. The butterflies were beginning to form into...a body. Swirling into arms and legs, and a torso and then...a head. Forming behind a slumped over Ermac, was a gigantic humanoid form that seemed to replace all of Ermac's robotic sameness with sheer unbridled fury. Ermac seemed to have a bit of energy left, turning to face the giant. The giant wound back its fist, Ermac's eyes widening as the thousands took hold and had a single emotion in the collective. Fear of their collective selves, their original form that was meant to serve their original purpose.

"Get away...GET AWAY FROM US!!!" Ermac demanded in fear as he threw his arms outwards, about to blast the giant with his energy blasts as an instinctual reaction. Garnet seeing Ermac having such a violent reaction to his memories and anxieties, rushed over and embraced him. This snapped them both out of the Fused Mind, Ermac not realizing that he fired his panicked energy blast at Pearl. Who needed to deflect it with her trident, sending it into the ocean to defuse the electrical energy. Garnet slowly let go of Ermac, trying to see how he looks now. Ermac no longer had the stoic blank look on his face. Ermac's hands were trembling, there were tears streaming down his face. He dropped his hands to the ground, and was silent the whole time as his tears dropped onto the sands.

"How do you feel?" Garnet asked him. Ermac shakily moved his hand up and wiped the tears out of his eyes.

"We feel...uncertain," Ermac replied with a warble to his voice.

"That's the first step of accepting who you are as not just a fusion...but as an individual," Garnet clarified.