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A few months ago, Steven had accidentally stumbled upon an ancient Gem technology that he had meant to bubble and send over to the Crystal Gems to take care of, but the damned thing had malfunctioned and went off out of nowhere with Steven still in the blast radius. It completely disoriented him, causing a ringing in his ears and spots in his eyes until it faded away to show a Beach City without any of the current advancements it had.
He was found by the Crystal Gems, and he had been confused by their outfits and why they looked like they were in the past. Then he figured out he was in the past and that was an entire conversation of its own, trying to explain who he was to the people he was raised by and where he even come from. Out of anything, though, time travel was on the tamer side of things they've all dealt with and they took his word on it and started to talk about how big he'd gotten.
And then they brought him back to the temple, and he met his younger self.
The stars in the boy's eyes could rival the sun itself (Steven ignored how there was only a 4 year difference between them) when he was finally caught up to speed on who this bigger Steven was. His younger counterpart had immediately jumped in to asking a lot of questions, while hanging off of the Older Steven's arm and jumping up and down excitedly. Older Steven had forgotten how touchy he was, with his eagerness to have any physical contact he could get.
He went from asking how old he was,— "17,"— how he had even gotten here in the first place,— "A malfunctioning Gem time travel thingy,"— was he able to summon their mom's shield?— "It's my shield, and yes,"— a question from Garnet asking if he was able to get home,— "I don't know,"— a tirade by Pearl wondering how his presence would affect a timeline, and finally a few more mundane questions like how the Gems looked and what they were up to in the present. (Future? technically the present but also his past? Who knows.)
Until finally, Younger Steven asked, "If we're both named Steven, then how will we be able to tell who's talking about who when they call our name?"
Older Steven stopped and looked around at the Gems, shrugging a little bit. In all honesty he never thought this situation with time travel would ever come up again so he hasn't made a mental list on how to prepare for it. "Do you guys have any ideas?" He asked them. He didn't have a good track record for names, looking at all the things he's had to name over the years.
"I dunno, dude," Amethyst piped in, "We kinda just use what we are as names. We're kinda bad at naming things ourself."
Well, Older Steven would suppose that's probably where his poor naming qualities came from, if he thought about it. If he thought about it though, "But Ro-my mom named me, or at least helped naming me, didn't she? You guys can't be all that bad."
The Gems looked at eachother. "Greg provided a list of names he'd thought of and Rose just picked the ones she liked the most," Garnet stated, adjusting her visor.
Ah, okay.
"I know," Younger Steven exclaimed, "How about we be Steven One and Steven Two? I could be Steven One. Or should you be Steven One because you're older? But you did come to our world..."
"Er..." Older Steven scratched his neck and looked apologetically at his younger self, "I don't have very good memories with any Steven having a number being used to indicate them. How about you all just point if you're talking to current me or younger me."
That was that, but since then Steven had still struggled with coming up for a name for himself. It's been months, and the group had all gotten tired of the confusion and resorted to calling him "Twoie" for the time being as an abbreviation for "Steven Two."
He didn't want to be mean, but he found the name ridiculously stupid. Whatever, he was handling it (no he wasn't) and he'd come up with a name for them to actually use.
Or not.
Who knows.
He sighed and looked up at the night sky, wondering if he could steal a name from one of the constellations up there. See, the issue with the whole entire name thing was that nothing felt right, not that he had any sort of issue with coming up with names themselves. He had originally thought of using the other name his parents had thought of, Nora, but that was packed with too many emotions and it just didn't feel right.
He had asked for help from people around the city, who knew about his predicament after a quick and excited explanation from his younger self. They came up with a. few ideas and he tried them for a couple days, but nothing stuck so all he did was jump from one name to the next with others and allowed the Gems to keep referring to him as Twoie.
See, the biggest issue to him was that Steven already had a name. He had an entire identity that he spent 17 years to construct, and it was him. He wasn't Rose Quartz, he wasn't Pink Diamond, he wasn't Twoie, and he wasn't all these other identities that people tried to help him with. Sure, he's certainly had many nicknames over the years, but they weren't supposed to be actual placeholders.
He wanted to tell the Gems that, but a small part of him was hesitant and scared because these Gems weren't his Gems. They didn't go through all the things he had, they hadn't dealt with all their issues yet and were still the same broken mess that Rose had left them. A small irrational fear in him whispered that they wouldn't truly get it, that they'd only act condescending and continue to call him Twoie because they didn't underatand.
But he also knew that the Gems truly cared about him and they wouldn't purposefully hurt his feelings. They messed up, sure, and constantly left him alone in his youth and made it feel like his only worth came from his gem, but he knew now that they loved him for being himself and cared about him just as much as they cared about Rose. He was being ridiculous, but he still hasn't worked it out and therapy those small insistent fears that would hold him back from confrontation.
A scraping noise came behind him, and he glanced back to see his younger self climbing up the rooftop with a look of determination. Older Steven giggled, "What are you doing out here?"
"I woke up and you weren't there," the other responded, "so what are you doing out here?"
"Just thinking," Older Steven responded. "I'm still trying to come up with a name I like but no dice."
"Hm, you don't like 'Twoie'?" Younger Steven pondered, crowling next to him and dangling his legs over the edge in the same fashion that Older Steven was doing.
"No," the older ons decided to admit, "No offense, but it just doesn't feel like me."
Younger Steven stared at him for awhile and then nodded. "That makes sense, if someone were to call me a different name I'd also be a little weirded out. Do you think you'll ever be able to come up with anything? Maybe I can help, I'm very creative with names!"
Older Steven smiled down at him. He kind of felt like an older brother right now, internally laughing at the naivety of his younger self. "No offense, but you named a lion, 'Lion'."
"So did you! We're the same person!"
Older Steven did actually laugh that time. He wasn't denying it, in fact he was the best person to call out his younger self for that because he knew how bad they both were at names.
"Do you think that Peridot or Lapis could help?" The younger boy asked. "Peridot is like, really smart, so she could probably come up with something. And Lapis, well I don't how good she is with names but she seems creative enough with her Meep-Morps."
"Hm, I haven't seen even my Peridot or Lapis in awhile. Maybe we could go catch up with them and tell them what's going on? If you haven't already told them," Older Steven pondered with a glance at the old barn where he knew Little Homeworld should be right now.
"No, other things came up before I ever got the chance. This would be a great time to introduce you!" Younger Steven squealed with an aura of excitement that never seemed to dissipitate. Although, over these months of being here, Steven did start to notice how subdued he'd been getting after the entire cluster situation and the imminent threat of Homeworld around the corner.
Steven wondered if he should tell everyone what will happen in the future, but he was afraid of any outlier factors coming into play that would make him (and even Garnet) unable to intervene in case anything bad happened. He knew the future because he'd been there, so he could guide them along, but could he actually say what he knew? The others have tried asking him before, and all he voiced was his worries about how much he told them would affect his ability to actually help out.
But he wouldn't worry about that right now, he just needed to find a name.
"In the middle of the night during Autumn when it's starting to get really cold out?" He asked sarcastically, banishing all thoughts about how he'd handle this situation eventually. Hopefully it could go better than last time.
"Yeah, you already have a jacket and I can go grab my hoodie," Younger Steven stated, quickly sliding down the roof and opening the door. "Don't go off without me!" He shouted, and then ran inside and slqmmed the door behind him.
Steven sighed and also slid down as well, following his younger counterpart inside to stand in wait over by the warp pad.
It wasn't much long after and the younger Steven came barreling down the stairs with a fresh step of excitement, quickly running past the taller one and bouncing up and down on the warp pad in excitement. Sometimes he would accidentally trigger his floating powers and take a few seconds to come back down, but overall the effect wasn't lost.
"C'mon c'mon, hurry up!"
The Steven from the future giggled and hopped onto the warp pad as well, letting his younger counterpart do the honors (obviously trying not to give him the confidence that he desperately needed), and soon they were off to the quaint little barn that Peridot and Lapis currently inhabited.
"Lapis! Peridot! I'm here and there's someone I want you to meet!" Younger Steven shouted through his cupped hands, looking up at the truck embedded at the top of the wall but without its usual residents currently there. It only took a few minutes until they heard the familiar scampering of a certain green gem, and she immediately ran outside with an excited look on her face.
"Who is i-" Peridot stopped in her place. She blinked and stared at the taller looking Steven with a funny expression. "Whoah, I had no idea humans were capable of cloning themselves. I thought you were all unique?"
"We are! This human just happened to be the me from the future after an accident with a time travel thingy that wasn't working properly," Younger Steven replied easily.
"Nice to meet you, Peridot," Older Steven waved, "Even though we already know eachother both in this timeline and in my own."
She nodded and took the explanation easily, "So, how has traveling to the past been? I know we've managed to make some decent prototypes for time travel but it was always faulty and ended up with unintended consequences that caused for the scientific field to be shut down. Not much was recorded on it, so it's a completely new experience even to us."
"It's honestly pretty weird. Seeing everyone is so familiar but so..." Older Steven paused for a second. Did he want to reveal that seeing them act like their older selves without their current personalities was like looking at the ghost of his past? He didn't want anyone to feel bad about it, but it was odd to him.
"Weird?" Peridot answered for him. "I assume I have even more character development in the future and it must be uncanny to see the faces of people you once loved not replicate the same memories that you have had with them."
"Uh, yeah... And there's also the fact that the Crystal Gems and I are having a hard time trying to figure out what to call me."
"He doesn't like any of the name choices he's been given or thought of," The Younger Steven piped up, and his older counterpart smiled tensely at the callout and he nervously clasped his hands together.
"What have you come up with?" Peridot questioned.
Older Steven contemplated this, "Uh, Twoie is what they've resorted to calling me for now in abbreviation to 'Steven Two,' but there's also been Steve, Rose," he shuddered at that name, "Nora, Cookie Cat, Chives, Esteban, and a whole bunch of other human names given by people around town that just didn't really fit."
"Hm, you do seem really picky considering this," Peridot examined, walking up to him and placing her chin in her hand. "What's wrong about all of them."
He sighed, "Because I'm Steven, I spent the first 14 years of my life trying to debate if I was really my mom or if I was actually Steven and then I spent the next three years trying to figure out who Steven even was. I... don't really know who he is yet but the name just feels connected, y'know? It's who I am."
Peridot stared at him for a few seconds, "So your name is basically your gem? It's your entire identity?"
"I guess you could put it like that," he conceded. As long as she got it, it was good enough for him. He noticed some blue in his peripheral and chanced a look up at Lapis, who had come out of the barn at some point during their conversation and it seems that she had been there for his explanation because there was a look of understanding in her eyes.
"Lapis!" Peridot shouted, "What do you think? Do you have any ideas?"
"Mm, how about we name him after that dog in the book Steven gave us. Shiloh?" Lapis shrugged.
Then suddenly, Stev- or should it be Shiloh now? Anyways, Shiloh felt a connection to the name and it felt like it actually fit. "That's, actually really good, Lapis. I like that name," he responded, smiling and feeling giddy and warm inside. Who knew that choosing a new name for yourself would bring this amount of happiness.
"I think it fits perfectly!" Steven cheered, running up to hug Lapis and then running back over to hug Shiloh as well.
Shiloh was still Steven, once he figured out how to get back to his own time, but he could be Shiloh for now in this one. Shiloh, the time traveler who went back to his old childhood home where everything was nostalgic yet so different than everything he understood. Shiloh, the almost adult who could control his powers much better than Steven so he could actually be there to guide him in ways he needed.
Shiloh, Steven Universe, son of Rose Quartz who also happened to be Pink Diamond, and someone who would make damn sure that his identity would forever be there and present for everyone to see.