Lars had always held a quiet anxiety when it came to the topic of death. Ever since his mom and dad had to explain why his grandfather would not be able to visit again, it had been an undercurrent in nearly everything he did. He was afraid all the time. Even if he couldn't place his finger on the source of his fear for many years, it was there.

So, when Steven told him he'd died, that same quiet terror had torn its head out of the mud it had been stuck in for so long. He felt alive, didn't feel all that different then he had moments before. Sure, he was pink now and yeah, maybe his heart beat a little slower, but he was still the person he'd always been. He was still Lars.

Any semblance of normalcy he might have had about his situation, which really wasn't much given the whole alien and giant ladies thing, when Steven touched his hair. A soft, warn light glowing from his head was not normal. Definitely not normal at all.

Though, as Steven explained to him what this was, what that meant for the younger boy, he took a deep breath and steeled himself. Steven was the one being hunted. He was the one whose life had been at stake in the first place. He had to get back to Earth.

When Lars himself is finally able to return to Earth, he knew that there would be response to the change in his appearance and a slew of questions as to where he had been for months. Steven was there when he sat with his parents and quietly recounted his time on home world, as he told them about his fight with the alien robots, robinoids as Steven kept calling them. He told them how it had exploded in his face.

He told them how the next moment he was awake, colored pink, and apparently the first human brought back to life. At least, outside of any biblical text. He had tried to lighten the mood, saying that the process should be called the Larsarus effect.

His mother particularly did not find that funny.

When they asked him what this now meant, gesturing to the off color of his skin and unnaturally pink hair, he and Steven had shared a look and shrugged.

He was still the Lars they had always known, to a degree. Sure, he hadn't felt hungry or thirsty or tired since Steven had revived him, but he was still himself.

When years began to pass and Lars remained untouched by time, a cold hand of anxiety curled around his gut. He could eat, but he didn't need to. He could sleep, but he didn't need to. He looked human, but he was afraid that he might no longer really be what he once was.

His parents put on a brave face as they grew older and their son remained the same. He knew they were worried. Knew that with each year that his hair did not grow, with each meal he felt no hunger for their fear of him grew.

Eventually, at the behest of Steven, he moved from his parents' home and into the temple. He couldn't bear to see their wrinkles deepen every day, couldn't bear to watch their hair turn gray.

He talked with them on his phone all the time, telling them about what he and Steven were up to, what missions he and the growing group of misfit Gems had recently done. He enjoyed this connection, strained as it was, to the person he'd been before all this craziness.

It's only fifteen years after his fateful day on Homeworld that his parents die suddenly, in a car crash. It takes him at least two years to work up the courage to outright to sell his childhood home. It's fifty years later that it is finally torn down and, with it, a nearly all his human memories.

When Sadie asks him to be the Man of Honor at her wedding, a part of his heart breaks as he says yes. When she asks if he'll be the Godfather of her first child, he doesn't even try to hold back his tears, joy and pain equally mixing together.

When she dies, decades later, he is there, but lingers at the edge of the people surrounding her. Friends and family hug and kiss and remind her of all the good times they shared with her. She is an old and wizened thing when she takes her last breath. He has not so much as lost an eyelash in nearly eighty years.

Lars cannot recall when he stopped thinking of himself as human. Was it when Steven's dad dies, only two years after his own? Perhaps it was when Sadie passed? Or maybe it was when he and Steven were both ball bearers at Connie's funeral? When

The pain and joy of life begins to blur for him after the first century. The Gems do their best to console them, help them dry their tears and listen to their pain.

But, for all their sympathy and compassion, they have no way to understand the sting and ache of mortality. They had never felt the march of time the same way Steven and he had. The Gems had never had to worry about growing old. The only way death came to them, or the closest thing to death a Gem could experience, was in being shattered. Even then, some part of who they had once been lived on in the pieces. They never truly understood the finality that came with a human's death and they never could.

Lars and Steven took comfort in the fact that they had each other, at least. Neither of them was fully Human, nor fully Gem. They had each other and, honestly, most days that was enough.

There came a time though, that they both realized that this would not be the case forever.

Decade after decade passed and he remained untouched. His right eye remained scarred, his hair a fluffy tuft in the top of his head, his arms and legs long and gangly. His skin never blemished, his eyesight never dulled, his heart rate never faltered from that slow, monotonous beat it had been in since his revival.

Steven, though, Steven's body still responded to the flow of time. It was so slow that it took Lars years to realize that slowly, surely, Steven was growing. He watched as Steven's hair grew, watched as the once shorter boy eventually towered over Lars.

The cold claws of anxiety sunk into Lars gut again, for the first time in centuries, when Steven got his first gray hairs himself.

Those claws numb him entirely when, nearly fifteen hundred years after Lars' time on Homeworld, Steven Universe died.

Lars is there, right at Steven's side, to watch his very last link to his mortal years fade away from the world. The wizened old man is surrounded by the hundreds, if not thousands of friends he's made over his long life. A part of Lars so hoped that, since it was Steven's tears that had given him this unnaturally long life, Steven's death might be his own.

Lars watches as the old man breathes his last and passes, his organic body crumbling underneath its own weight once he is gone. The only thing left behind a Rose Quartz gem, just small enough to fit in his palm.

Steven was gone. But Lars was still there.

He leaves the Gems once Steven is gone. Steven was the reason he was there in the first place; there was no longer a reason for him to stay. Lion is by his side when he sets out along the edge of the sea, the ebb and flow of the waves the only thing that has never changed.

Time is lost on him as he and the giant cat travel together. Neither need sleep, but they rest often. Neither of them need food, but they eat when they can.

He watches as cities are built up and fall, as wars are fought time and time again for the same stupid reasons. The idea of death is always on his mind, a voice always tempting him to try.

'Just let yourself fall. Just let yourself drown. You do want to know if you can die, right?'

Every time that voice crops up, Lars reaches back into the oldest part of his mind, thinks back to the day he'd died on a far-off world and the words he had told Steven.

You brought me back to life. Just…let me be someone who deserved it.

So, he persisted. Time and time again, he persisted.

It's years after he and Lion have entered the desert that someone finds them.

A woman, just as tall as Steven had been when grown, smiled at him as she approached. As she drew closer, he could see a familiar, painfully familiar, gemstone embedded into her abdomen. Her hair was in giant, pink ringlets that reached down her back. Her expression was soft and warm.

"Hello, Lars."

A twinge of something old touches at his heart. It had been so long since someone had said his name.

"H-hello." His response is slow and low. It's been so long since he's spoken that he must wrap his tongue around the word. He'd nearly forgotten how to speak.

The woman crouches to be at eye level with him. It's only then that he can see her eyes are brimming with tears.

"I was wondering, if you don't mind, could you tell me about my son?"

Her voice, watery and sad and happy all at once, cuts through the numbness that has been the only thing he's known for so long.

He smiles at her, his own eyes brimming and spilling tears down his cheeks. He's been afraid for so, so long. He's been afraid of so many things. It's only then, in that moment, that he allows himself to truly let go.

"I-I'd love to."