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We eulogize the dead; Steven was too young to understand this. It had never occurred to him, in all the fourteen years of his life, to think that all the stories about Rose Quartz were anything less than an objective portrayal of who she was.
That’s not how it works.
When someone is gone, it becomes hard to look at them as a complete entity. You miss them dearly. You regret the things you didn’t say, and the things you did. Every time you failed them, and every time they didn’t fail you, becomes forefront in the mind, and you want so badly for one more day. That despair sands off the rough edges of your memories until all you can remember about who they used to be are the things which validate how much you loved them.
Rose Quartz was Pearl’s savior. She manifested with sword and shield and rended the shackles of servitude that confined her. She granted her personhood. What does someone who has never been anything but an object do with that? Pearl was willing to throw her life away for an ideal because that ideal was the only thing that ever gave her value. It isn’t hard to understand why she loved Rose Quartz, even if the only way she knew how was at the expense of herself.
You set me free, and now I belong to you.
Even Garnet finds the lack of self-awareness sickening, but it isn’t as though she can do anything about it. She’s too lost in her own head; sometimes she forgets that she’s a walking, talking entity that takes up space. Sometimes she’s acutely aware. That she exists at all is only due to the benevolence of Rose Quartz and it isn’t as though she can tell Pearl that it’s wrong to love so dearly someone who allowed her to be love. She wishes Pearl could see beyond her own myopia. There’s more to love than this.
I understand love, because I am love.
Amethyst will never quite know who she is. She’ll look to the past, and all the things she never was. She’ll look to the future, to all the things she wants to be. She’ll never live in the now, because the now is hard. Now is the place where all the bad things happen and now is inescapable because it’s always upon us. Rose only ever saw her for who she was, right now. Not who she should have been. Not who she should become. Who she was, right now, was good enough. Too bad, now, she's gone.
I don’t want to think about me. I’d rather hang out with you.
When Rose was with them, the Crystal Gems felt grounded. Rose was authority, and empathy, and kindness. She was love. Rose was the freedom to be. She might have done a great many terrible things. She might have been a liar, and a hypocrite. It’s difficult to say, because all the people who loved her cannot escape the eulogy. It’s all they can remember. It’s all Steven ever knew.
And the people who knew Pink Diamond? Well, they eulogized, too. That’s how ‘Rose Quartz, savior’ becomes ‘Rose Quartz, murderer.’ When Pink Diamond was with them, her gems felt grounded. She was authority. She might even have been love. She was the security of knowing who you were, and where your place is in a huge, terrifying universe.
We eulogize the dead. That’s how one person can become two different people, and two people can be the exact same person. Steven is too young to understand this, but he’ll have to learn someday what it really means to be Rose Quartz.