Her knowledge of regular organic life was limited, except for ways to destroy it. In terms of fauna, she knew even less, but she did know someone who was more than knowledgeable on the subject. 

The diamond line didn’t ring long before the youngest diamond appeared on screen, surprised by her call no doubt. 

She held the plant up for him to inspect and explained the situation.

“A gift from Blue, huh?” He smiled knowingly and Yellow only huffed but didn’t argue.

Steven was happy to explain how to keep the plant alive, even sending her several digital copies about how to care for all manner of plants. He wasn’t confident it would survive though since his area of expertise was earth plant life and this had come from a faraway star system he had never even heard of, but hopefully, the same principles would apply.

She watered it and it did perk back up after a few cycles, color, and plumpness returning to its soft petals and stems.

Yellow smiled to herself as she ran a gentle hand over the reinvigorated petals and then couldn’t help but notice how empty the large shelf looked with the single plant sitting on it.

Which was really how it started.

That one plant eventually became two and three and before she knew it Yellow’s rooms had become a veritable garden of plants and flowers that ranged from every size shape and color imaginable, even having stepped shelving build into the room to hold the plethora of fauna that now took up so much of the once cavernous space. 

Since most of the plants had come from far off places in the galaxy Steven’s advice on caring for them could only take her so far, instead, she dove into her extensive library of notes about every planet that she took a plant from, careful to only take plants that lived on worlds that had similar atmospheric conditions to Homeworld after the first plant that all but exploded after only a few cycles on the planet’s surface.

Apparently, unlike the gems that were created out of these plants’ mineral resources, the organic life was a bit more… sensitive. Something she kept in mind, carefully monitoring each new addition to her growing greenhouse for a while after its introduction, though she found the word to be lacking as there was a plethora of colors now splattered through the room, though if she were honest with herself, there was more than a handful of blue and pink toned plants and flowers dotting the room. 

She didn’t need to look too deeply into what that meant. She was nothing if not self-aware.

Even with Steven and Spinel to help fill the void, there were times when her gem ached fiercely at the sight of anything with those bright magenta hues, but as sharp as that pain sometimes was, it was more often than not a dull warmness. A fleeting thought, and sometimes not so fleeting, at how pleased Pink would be with everything as it was now.

Yellow snorted to herself as she gazed down at a plump, blush-colored flower with an uncountable amount of tiny layered petals making it up, even as that pain tried to ignite itself in her core.

The once smallest diamond would have been absolutely beside herself to see the three of them now, perhaps herself especially. 

Tearing her gaze away from the plants in question, her eyes immediately found what she might say was her personal favorite. 

A flower from a faraway world on the edges of the once empire

It’s six nearly symmetrical petals were a pale almost violet color at the center, darkening toward the tips into rich cobalt, where they the curled ever so gently under.

They were small, considering all the plants around her that dwarfed them in size and grandeur, but it fit in the palm of her hand and the deep, complex colors and simple beauty reminded her so much of Blue that she’d planted a number of them to make up for their lack of size and presence. 

While she could visit her counterpart anytime she wished Yellow still had many things to make up for and an immeasurable amount of damage to fix as far as shattered gems and her experiments were concerned, such as the cluster, luckily she had an eternity to correct it, in fact she often lost track of the time and Spinel was forced to come and fetch her when she had worked past an appointment time.

She could spend long amounts of time at her desk, carefully piecing together even the smallest nearly microscopic shards until she had a whole gem. Sometimes though, she just didn’t have all the pieces. Those were not good days. Those were days she would have to walk away, with the air crackling with the unspoken threat of an electrical storm. 

Today was just such a day. 

She had gone through every bubble in her possession and couldn’t find the last pieces she needed to fix the gem she was currently working on. These bubbles had been early, smaller prototypes of the cluster, so none the gems here were part of the cluster, meaning that the pieces she needed were simply gone, lost.

A frustrated noise worked its way out of her throat as she carefully placed the incomplete gemstone, with its jagged, splintered edges back in her bubble and looked at it for a long moment before setting it specifically to the other side of the room, where several other similar gems sat, incomplete, for always. 

A grim reminder that while she could work nonstop till Homeworld ceased to exist, that she would never be able to completely erase all the mistakes she had made, nor fix all the pain she had caused. 

The longer she stared at her failures the more energy began to burn and sizzle across her skin in little sparks but then in jumping arcs or brilliant yellow light.

Her jaw set and electricity buzzed around her closed fists. She turned, ready to unleash the pent up energy when the sight of all the vibrant plants helped her reign it in, as one wrong placed firing of her powers could send the whole room up in a blaze and she had worked much too hard carefully cultivating all the fauna to let her temper send it all up in flames within mere moments. 

She lowered her raised hand and sighed, letting her powers fizzle out as quickly as they had reared their head.

She could still feel the pent up energy crackling beneath just beneath the surface and set about watering and pruning the plants, losing herself in the calming monotony of the tasks, much like when she put gems back together. The frustrated energy bleeding out with every snip of her tiny shears and pruning of a wilted leaf or flower as she knelt on the floor, the remains becoming ash nearly instantly in her hands.  

She became so engrossed in the task that she never heard the doors slide open with a quiet hiss, nor the quiet rustling of fabric.

"I very much like what you've done with your rooms." 

Yellow jerked, looking over her shoulder to find Blue, standing behind her, admiring all the plants that littered every available space that wasn’t needed for walking or working. 

“Blue! I didn’t hear you come in…” She stood, brushing any specs of soil, imaginary, or otherwise from her form. 

“So I noticed.” She smiled a hint of laughter in her voice. “It’s beautiful, Yellow. Whatever made you decide to take this up?”

“Thank you.” She set the shears down and clasped her hands behind her back. “It wasn’t something I planned…It just happened, I suppose.” Her eyes looked over the dozens of plants, easily finding the source of the indoor garden. Blue followed her gaze and saw what she was looking at. 

The golden flowered plant that she had given her nearly a month previously, a bright spot, nestled between two of Yellow’s favorite blue, flowering plants.

“Oh!” Blue walked quickly over to the plant and ran her fingers over the bright, healthy leaves. “You still have this?” She looked surprised and Yellow looked affronted.

“Of course,” she huffed. “I never dispose of a gift.”  

Blue leveled a long look at her and she scoffed.

“I never dispose of a gift from you,” she clarified, and Blue smiled.

“I know you don’t, but to be honest, I didn’t expect it to live this long,” 

She was doing her best not to laugh in the face of the scandalized look Yellow was now making. 

“I’m glad I was wrong though, and I very much like all the additions. It adds some much-needed cheer in here.” 

Yellow only grunted, turning to look at the flowers instead of Blue, who walked up beside the quiet gem, adamantly refusing to look at her and laid a gentle hand on her arm, stopping at her side.

“I didn’t mean anything by it, darling, only that caring and nurturing organic life is just so… different from what you did before it’s surprising is all. It is very beautiful,” she insisted.  

Yellow hummed in acknowledgment, diamond-shaped pupils finally sliding over to meet Blue’s, who smiled at her when she did, tightening her hold on the golden gems arm.

“Considering how adept she was at breathing life into all manner of things, I think Pink would be very proud of what you’ve done as well.” She hummed, laying her head on Yellow’s shoulder as she looked at all the brightly colored plants, eyes drawn to the brilliant fuchsia ones just behind the ones she had given Yellow.

A hand reached up to lay itself gently over the one she had curled around Yellow’s arm and she looked up to find golden eyes fixed on her. 

“I think she would be proud of all of us.” The tone left no room for argument and Blue only smiled, laying her head back on Yellow’s shoulder.