Alone.
She left her here alone. Surrounded by strangers and nowhere.

Spinel's breath caught in her throat at the sudden and painful realization.
Not again, not them too. She couldn't do it again, she couldn't wait, she couldn't stay.

Her feet wouldn't move though, despite every beam of light begging to escape, Spinel wouldn't, or couldn't move. It was like a wrongness in everything that tilted the world sideways and made her gem ache and burn and pound and she couldn't do it again.

"Connie?" She repeated, frantically darting her eyes about the crowd in search of the girl. She couldn't hate her too, she- she wouldn't leave too.

Pink left. Whose to say that Connie wouldn't just drop her here alone and never come back too? Did she, did she tell her to wait? She didn't say where she was going. She just dissapeared.

Spinel caught a glimpse of someone, familiar curly black hair.

"Steven?" He would come back, he would help her, he would make that wrongness go away. Spinel weaved through the crowd, her pace quickening as she followed Steven.

"Steven!" She called, resting a hand on the boy shoulder, he turned a look of shock on his face and Spinel ripped her hand back. It wasn't Steven.

Tears brimmed in her eyes as she took an embarrassed step backward, glancing back to look for someone, anyone she knew. How do you see?
She forgot. That aching wrongness, and she couldn't see or think or move.

"C-connie?" The words dropped out of her mouth like dead flowers. Something was wrong. Very very wrong. Where was she again?
Not here.

Spinel glanced down at her feet, feeling that far too familiar pull and poke. Weeds? Grass?
She left. She left the garden though. How could she be back?

"No, no, no, no." Like muddled whispers, her mouth felt like cotton and the words didn't leave her breathless lungs. It wasn't real, it couldn't be real. She could see how clearly it wasn't real. Spinel knew it wasn't real but through all of that clarity, she was still standing there, waiting. No Steven, no Connie, no Crystal Gems, no Pink Diamond.

Just her, and the stars and the dead plants. An ache grew inside her, something so painful she swore she would shatter.

"I can't-" Spinel gripped her head tightly at the insurmountable suffering, it wasn't working, nothing was working. It wasn't like the other times. She couldn't breathe or think or move, only hurt. She shook and shuddered, lowering toward the ground in search of some kind of comfort, some way to make it stop.

She left her. She left her all alone and now this awful awful thing was happening and she didn't know what it was and it hurt.

"Spinel?" Familiar voice, Connie's voice. The gem's head shot up, surveying her surroundings, some kind of crowd had circled her, among them stood Connie who was pushing through, trying to reach her. Spinel stared at her, almost not registering that she was there. Connie dropped to her knees, wrapping her arms around the gem to provide a useless and late comfort.

"I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to leave you alone, I didn't know." Connie pulled the gem to her feet, keeping a tighter grip on her hand as she pushed through the slowly dissipating crowd.

Spinel trailed behind her like a mere apparition, dragging her feet in time with her shallow forced breaths.
It didn't work.

All of that happiness fluttered away. It was so fleeting already, it was so dumb. She was so dumb to think that going to get new things or spending time with someone would just make the hole disappear.
It only grew. She could feel it growing with every step, feeling like her light would pour out into a puddle on the ground and leave a trail to wherever her empty gem landed once she ran out.
How was she supposed to fix it? It wasn't like a crack, it was worse. So much worse than that.