Chapter Text
Today was just like every other day for Ray as he was meditating above the temple by the light house and training his gem powers like usual. Until "Come on guys! Why can't I come with you just this once?!" he heard coming from the house "Sounds like Steven is trying to convince the gems to let him go with them again." he says to himself "But this is way louder then usual if I able to hear it from up here. I should probably go see what's going on and try to stop it from getting any worse." saying this he gets up and produces to walk back to the house.
As Ray reaches the steps of the house he begins to think to himself 'Seems like things have quieted down now, that's good, but still be good to know what caused it to get so bad in the first place.' however when he opened the door he finds something he wasn't expecting. The gems are gone, tho that's not surprising, Steven is up in his room lying face down on his bed under his blanket, clearly upset about what just happened, and Leah is pacing around the living room looking very worried and stressed. 'What the heck did I miss?!' he wonders to himself as goes over to Leah, "Brother!" she says when she notices him "Hey Leah, what happened here?" Ray asked quietly. She looks down at the floor at this and says "You should probably ask Steven about that because I only caught the end of it." at this he nods, pats her head, and heads up to sit next to Steven "Hey Steven." he says. Steven shifts his head to look at Ray, tears streaming down his face, only to move it back as Ray hears a muffled "hey." from Steven 'Yikes.' he thinks 'Something really bad must have happened if he's this upset.' "So..." he begins "What happened to make you so unhappy?" steven proceeds to sit up will trying to hide how upset he is, even though it's impossible considering one of Ray's gem powers is to literally feel the emotions of others, as he says "I... got in a fight with spinel." "Whoa wait what? You got into a fight with Spinel? What brought that about?" Ray asked, completely surprised "Well..." Steven begins as he recounts what happened.
Several minutes earlier
"Come on guys! why can't I come with you just this once?!" Steven asks "Because Steven it's too dangerous for you." Pearl says "Not only that but you haven't even activated your gem yet dude." Amethyst adds "But spinel could stay with me and keep me safe." Steven counters "Oh no. You're not going to use me to get what you want, not with this, you're not coming and that's final." Spinel says "What?! How come?!" Steven asks "Because I don't want to have to worry about you." Spinel says "Well what about Ray? Can't he come with to make sure I'm ok?" Steven states "No Steven, we're not going to bug him just so you can come with us." Spinel replied as she turns to the warp pad "Also he wouldn't do it in the first place because that would mean Leah would be here all by herself. And Greg is busy so we can't ask him to watch her." Garnet adds "But-!" Steven begins but is interrupted by Spinel "Steven that is ENOUGH!" she yelled turning back around, but in her anger she ends up accidentally hitting Steven and knocking him to the ground.
The others gasp as Spinel covers her mouth in complete shock as she stares at Steven 'oh no, why did I-?' "Spinel!" Pearl shouts "Why did you hit him?!" "I-i didn't mean to. It-." Spinel trys to explain but is stopped when she notices Steven get back up with an emotionless face "St-steven?" she asks "Are you o-." however she is cutoff when Steven suddenly attacks her, tackling her to the ground just as Leah enters the house.
"What the- Steven! Spinel!" Leah shouts as she and the others pull Steven and spinel apart "What's gotten into you dude?!" Amethyst asks when they manage to separate them "I hate you Spinel! you're not my friend anymore!" Steven shouts as he frees himself from Amethyst's grasp and runs away to his room, tears in his eyes as he basically dives under the covers.
"Steven!" Pearl calls out but is stopped from going after him by Garnet, who looks down at the pink gem who hasn't seem to realize that she's started to cry as she thinks 'Steven... he-!' "Hey." Leah says, caching Spinel's attention "Are you all right Spinel?" at this Spinel begins to cry harder as she quickly gets up and runs to the temple door, opening her room, and running inside closing the door behind her.
present
"After that I heard garnet say that they should just leave us alone for now and then they left to go do their mission." Steven said as he finishes recounting what happened, tears in his eyes. Ray looks over towards Leah and asks "I going to guess that Spinel is still in her room right?" Leah simply nods "thought so."
Ray scratches the back of his head thinking 'God. why am I the one who has to deal with this situation?' he sighs 'Welp I may as well do the best I can and try to fix things.' looking back towards Steven and says "You know Spinel would never actually hit you on purpose right?" "I know but. I just don't get why she didn't want me to go with them." Steven says "she's always been on my side when I get into an a disagreement with the others. but when it comes to going with them on a mission all of a sudden she's on their side?!" at this Ray responds with "it's probably because she didn't want to risk her best friend getting hurt." hearing this, Steven begins to look down at the floor as he wraps himself in his blanket "look I'm not going to try and tell you what spinel felt or how to go about making things right because, well, I trust you to know what to do. After all you've known her a lot longer then I have." Ray says "Do you... really think I can make things better?" steven asks "I don't think so, I know so." Ray responds with a smile.
After that Steven trys everything he can think of to get spinel to come out but he is always met with silence, however he continues trying never giving up hope that maybe, she can hear him. And after two weeks of trying, something finally happened.
Steven was at the temple door trying to talk to spinel like always, but this time he had something with him. A gift, one he planned on giving to her as a form of apology "Hey Spinel. it's Steven... again... look I understand if you don't want to talk to me or even see me after what happened but I just wanted you to know that I'm sorry for attacking you and that I didn't mean what I said and... I have something I want give you as a form of apology. So will you open the door Spinel? Please??" as Steven stood there waiting, wondering if maybe, spinel will finally open up, he gradually began to lose hope. thinking that he had lost his best friend, he begins to turn around and walk away.
But just as he does the door to the temple reacts and, to his joy, opens to spinel's room. heading inside, he looks around at spinel's room 'Wow this is the first time I've ever been in here. it's... a lot more plan looking then I thought it'd be.' Steven thinks as he looks around, there wasn't much inside her room, just a table with some chairs and her bed 'Though now that I think about it, I don't think I've ever seen her go into her room. she's usually with me or the gems.' as he walks over to spinel's bed he notices a small bump under the blanket. believing it to be Spinel he begins to talk to her "Hey Spinel. long time no see. Hehe... so um. I have something for you. Would it be alright if I moved the blanket so I can give it to you properly?" no response "Ok I'm just going to assume that you're silence means that you're ok with it. So I'm going to move the blanket now." after speaking Steven proceeds to move the blanket, however what he found wasn't something he was expecting, as underneath was a plow and resting on top... was spinel's gem.
As Ray entered the house he was surprised to see that the temple door was sitting opened 'Oh. Maybe Steven was finally able to get spinel to open her room. Let's take a look and see if I'm right and if Steven needs help.' Ray thinks to himself as he walks over to the door. As he reaches the door he decides to take a look around at what he assumes is spinel's room and is surprised by how baron it is 'Huh I was expecting it to be a lot more... fun looking then this, though this does explain why spinel has never been in here til recently. Oh and there's... uh oh.' As he looks over at the bed and sees Steven holding something, gift on the ground, and no spinel in sight, he can't help but think that something went wrong "Steven?" Ray asks worryingly "Is everything alright?"
As Steven turns to look at him, he can tell that everything is definitely not all right, as Steven is silently crying and in his hands is spinel's gem. Thinking quickly, and having an idea on what might have caused spinel to poof because of a question he had asked Pearl before, he tells Steven "You should probably take her up to your room, so at least that way she won't be alone when she reforms." Steven just nods and walks over to his bed in complete silence, Ray, noticing Steven forgot his gift for spinel, walks over to it and picks it up before leaving the room with the door closing behind him.