Intuition
Steven has fantastic intuition.
They are on a mission to poof and bubble a corrupted gem. No clusters, no dark secrets, just your average mission.
This corrupted gem used to belong to someone powerful, though. It is putting up one hell of a fight. Steven isn’t ready for this kind of battle, so they’ve instructed him to keep out of the way while they handle it.
“Steven, no! What are you doing?” cries Pearl as Steven, predictably enough, ventures from his hiding spot and boldly approaches the creature.
Garnet sees what Steven is about to do about fifty seconds before it actually happens. It’s unorthodox, but ultimately effective. “Let him go,” she tells Pearl.
Perhaps it’s strange to say, but in many ways Garnet doesn’t worry about him like she worries about Pearl and Amethyst. Steven is young, and his body is fragile, but these are things that will be addressed through accumulated experience and completing missions with them. And, when all else fails, Steven’s utterly empathetic and compassionate nature wins out anyway. He has Rose’s heart and, in many ways, her luck too.
The corrupted gem roars and screams as Steven comes closer, but while he is a little apprehensive he is ultimately not afraid. “Hey,” he says quietly, holding out an empty hand. “Are you still in there? Can you hear me?”
“Garnet,” Pearl hisses. “That thing is going to kill him. We need to get him out of there!”
“Steven can handle this.”
“I don’t know,” Amethyst remarks dubiously. Her whip is out and poised, ready to rip Steven out of harm’s way at a moment’s notice. “Doesn’t look like he’s exactly fighting it off.”
Amethyst and Pearl. They fight like drenched cats, and it takes putting Steven in danger or the threat of Garnet’s own wrath to make them function like actual teammates (now, for example; they are actually agreeing on something). Having fundamental personality differences is understandable, but they have those with Steven and Garnet too, and that doesn’t affect how they get along.
Steven is still talking to the creature, who is either deeply bemused or outright stunned that this is happening. It never would have paused like this for anyone else. “It’s okay, I won’t hurt you. You’re still in there, right? You can hear me? I can’t believe you’re all gone.”
They have been living together for thousands of years, but losing Rose really did a number on the Crystal Gems’ dynamic. Steven is wonderful, and whether he realizes it or not he’s done a lot to heal the grief Rose left in her wake. He can’t ever replace Rose, though—Steven is his own person, and while there are traits that he and his mother obviously share the point remains that he is still Steven.
Steven closes in just enough to put a slow, steady hand on the creature’s leg.
That’s about when it decides that it’s had enough of whatever is going on. It strikes out with one of its many tentacle-like arms.
“Steven!”
None of them ever would have looked to Rose Quartz as a son, for example.
Steven catches the creature’s blow with his shield. Much like with the Lapis Lazuli’s water clones, the reverberation from the impact causes the creature’s illusionary construct to destabilize, and it retreats harmlessly into its gem. Pearl is quick to dash up and bubble it.
“Steven, what were you thinking? You could have gotten yourself killed!”
“Woo, Steven! You poofed that thing all on your own!” cheers Amethyst. She allows her whip to dissipate as she runs up, relieved but also excited. “That was awesome!”
Their love for Steven is no less real or potent; it’s just different than the love they had for his mother (very different, in Pearl’s case). As such, it makes sense that they can miss Rose and adore Steven in the same breath.
Steven isn’t smiling or cheering. Instead, he is looking at the bubble floating in Pearl’s hands. “I really thought that would work,” he says as she sends it to the temple. “It really looked like it was listening to me.”
Garnet walks up and rubs at his hair affectionately. “You did a good job today.”
“But don’t scare us like that again!” says Pearl.
“I don’t know, I thought that shield trick was pretty cool,” Amethyst remarks.
“Amethyst! Don’t encourage Steven to do reckless things like that!”
For people who can live an eternity, if given the right conditions, gems don’t adapt very well to change. The Crystal Gems are leagues better now than they’ve been since Rose left a little over a decade ago, but in so many ways those emotions are still fresh and raw.
Maybe that’s why it makes sense for gems to be so long-lived. It takes them decades to properly deal with anything.
Steven glances up at Garnet, who still has a hand on his head. They both ignore Amethyst and Pearl’s bickering as he smiles, already past with his melancholy mood. “You’re right, Garnet. I can’t give up!”
She smiles. He’s misinterpreting what she said, but that’s okay. His heart is in the right place, and the direction he is choosing is a good one.
And maybe that’s why Garnet doesn’t worry so much about Steven. He may be half a gem, but he possesses all of the adaptability of a human, and that’s a beautiful thing.