Adrian had spent this past week unusually quiet.
He hadn't used his powers for anything truly important, nor to psychologically mess with anyone he knew the kind of thing where he'd make them rethink their entire existence through carefully measured comments, unnecessarily elaborate schemes, or manipulations disguised as "personal growth." That Adrian, the one who meddled in other people's minds, hadn't resurfaced since the time he ended up improvising a sort of badly written play to push Pearl into taking the first step and finally moving past her obsession with Rose.
Sure, in the middle of it all, he tried to act mysterious and cryptic, as if he were some kind of supernatural entity that had grown tired of how Pearl acted around him.
He failed a bit.
Partially on purpose. But the point was that things had, surprisingly, improved more than he initially thought.
Ever since Pearl made her decision, almost all the hostility between them had vanished. Awkwardness still lingered, obviously; Adrian highly doubted that a relationship where one party had tried to kill the other several times could suddenly turn into something completely healthy.
Even less so when Adrian was basically dating Nora.
And for Pearl, that had some pretty problematic implications considering that, from her perspective, Nora was practically Rose reinvented in a new life. An emotional obsession lasting nearly six thousand years doesn't exactly disappear in a healthy way.
Nonetheless, despite all that, she at least no longer seemed to be constantly calculating the best moment to drive something sharp through his chest; now, she viewed him as her daughter's boyfriend—someone she didn't get along with perfectly, but didn't hate either.
By his standards, that already counted as solid progress.
Another positive change he'd noticed was the relationship between Amethyst and Pearl. It wasn't a miracle, let alone a "everything is fixed now" situation, but Amethyst no longer reacted by running away, contradicting, or ignoring every word that came out of Pearl's mouth. Apparently, the reality check the latter received had been harsh enough to make her rethink not just how she felt about herself, or her complete contempt for me, but also how she treated the other Gems.
It turns out that forcing someone to deal with the consequences of their actions is surprisingly effective when they've spent millennia avoiding doing just that.
Or at least, that's what he could gather from what Nora told him.
Because yeah, technically, he could just know.
He could look directly into the lives of others if he really wanted to. See conversations, thoughts, events, and emotions like someone flipping through an open book. It was absurdly simple at this point.
But he didn't do it, and he didn't want to.
Simply because he understood that there were certain lines that, once crossed, destroy any authenticity in a relationship until it becomes nothing more than social engineering and manipulation.
After all, what meaning would trust have if he could check every secret whenever he wanted? What would be the point of talking to someone if he already knew every answer before even formulating the question? That would be total bullshit, and he didn't want to experience it. The implications were too deep. After all, those who tried to control everything ended up pushing everyone away; in the end, they just saw people as puppets in a stupid game no one else even knew existed. Hell, now he understood the Chaos Gods better and yeah, no, he wasn't going to sympathize with evil incarnate.
And Adrian had no intention of becoming something like that; it was already hard enough just trying to keep feeling like a person, or like a human.
That's why he preferred to listen to Nora tell him things rather than tearing answers directly from reality in these cases.
Besides, lately, new little dynamics had started between them. Like cooking together at night, alternating between one house and the other.
It was something absurdly simple, almost ridiculously mundane considering the kind of people they were, but that was exactly why they both liked it so much being able to share a moment of normalcy amidst how distorted their lives were compared to everyone else's. Especially for Nora, since for him, everything was new in more ways than one.
There was something strangely comforting about arguing over what to cook while they both cracked lame jokes, acting like two normal teenagers, with all the good and bad that came with it.
Of course, life would eventually remind them that their lives were anything but normal like that robonoid entering the house while they were both half-asleep, followed by the feeling of having their hearts in their throats while watching Peridot. Then came the inevitable feeling of: "Ah, right, here we go again." He didn't even need to see the future to know that the peace had lasted far too long.