Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

They all crowded around the control dais once they were back on Pink Diamond’s ship - all of them but Blue and Yellow Diamond. They were having their own private discussion on the opposite side of the command chamber, a pair of tall, elegant silhouettes lit only by the galaxies streaming past.

It was an uncomfortable gathering, as no one was satisfied with the events that had just transpired, but no one wanted to talk about it in front of Diamond loyalists either. Still, Connie reasoned, at least they were going home.

After everything that had happened on the beach - the truce with the Diamonds, the Cluster’s victory, the return of Garnet and Lapis, the fact that she’d held her own against a diamond even without a sword - it had been easy to be overconfident. She had flippantly reassured her parents that everything was going to be fine. More than fine. It wasn’t until Connie was already aboard the ship that it occurred to her that diplomatic missions weren’t necessarily less dangerous than bubbling missions when the diplomacy was occuring in a violently oppressive dictatorial regime. And then there were the laws of physics to consider. Connie couldn’t believe she’d waltzed on to a spaceship without thinking about the effects of high-speed space travel on time!

...Anyway, the point was that even if Homeworld hadn’t been great, Connie could count her blessings. They were heading home. It probably hadn’t been 80 years since she left.  And -- Connie’s eyes flicked toward the center of their little group -- they were bringing home a plus one.

White Pearl’s arms were still upturned, as though she were here to spread the good news about her lord and dictator, White Diamond. Or maybe it was more like she was in PE, when the coaches told everyone to hold up their arms and make sure everyone spread out.

Not that anyone wanted to stand too close to her. Even the other Homeworld Pearls kept their distance, and Crystal-Gem-Pearl was staring. Personally, Connie had trouble meeting her eye. Hopefully, Steven could help fix all that.

Carefully, Steven licked his palm. He considered the crevice spanning White Pearl’s empty eye socket, and gave his palm a second, extra-healing-saliva-y lick. Everyone stood (further) back to let Steven’s healing magic do its work. Then he patted her face.

And nothing happened.

Worry bloomed across Steven’s face. He applied another glob of spit. It glistened as it slid down her cheek and around her ivory smile, before dripping to the floor.

Nothing continued to happen.

After a few moments, Pearl laid a hand on his shoulder in a feeble gesture of comfort. “It’s okay, Steven,” Pearl said, looking and sounding like things were not at all okay. “You tried.”

“But.. my healing spit...”

“You can’t fix her,” Yellow Pearl said, low enough that Blue and Yellow Diamond, wouldn’t be able to hear her. “She served White Diamond . All her pearls are cracked.”

She said ‘cracked’ oddly, as if she wasn’t just referring to the obvious. It was the same tone one might use while twirling a finger next to one’s forehead and pretending to be discreet about questioning someone else’s sanity.

Pearl’s eyes were closed, welded tight against fake smiles and implied twirly fingers. “That’s enough, Yellow,” she ground out.

Yellow Pearl’s face contorted until she looked like she’d swallowed a lemon. Actually, she kinda looked like Bitter Lemon, from the Crying Breakfast Friends. And if she was anything like the cartoon character, she was opening her mouth right then to dredge up the past in the most painful way possible.

“I dunno,” Amethyst said, casually interrupting what must have been several-thousand years worth of drama. “I think the crack got a little smaller.”

“It’s not!” Pearl cried.

Amethyst backed away as she realized her attempt at consolation had done the opposite.

“And even if it was, she’s still unresponsive, being held up by literal strings, and- and- off-color !” She squawked, her expressive gestures starkly contrasting White Pearl’s immobility. “She’s not supposed to be like this!”

If White Pearl felt any irritation about being talked about as if she weren’t there, she gave no indication of it. Unresponsive, indeed. But, there was something Pearl had said that nagged at Connie. Her brow furrowed; it wasn’t like her mentor to be imprecise...

“Ma’am, did you say literal strings?”

Pearl blinked, derailed, and tried to discreetly wipe away a budding tear, which Connie politely pretended not to see. “Yes?”

Connie squinted, but no matter how closely she examined White Pearl, she couldn’t see so much as a glimmer to suggest anything was holding her in place. “It must be a gem thing,” she postulated at last.

Heavy footsteps rang out behind her, and then Garnet was standing with them and taking off her visor. “I don’t see anything.”

“You… don’t?” Pearl looked surprised and a little unsure.

Amethyst said, “Nah, P. There’s nothing there,” and Steven shook his head from his place on the control dais.

Pearl swung around to look at Blue and Yellow Pearl in a last ditch attempt for back up. Blue gave a minuscule shake of her head, and Yellow muttered, “See, what did I tell you? Cracked.”

Through it all, White Pearl remained at attention, with a slightly unbalanced smile painted on her face and her feet still poised in a perfect sous-sus —like the kind of dilapidated music-box ballerinas Connie saw in trailers for horror movies. If it wasn’t for her one good eye, casually tracking their movements, Connie would have wondered if she were really aware of their conversation at all.

Tentatively, Pearl circled her, nervously eyeing some invisible specter above the other pearl’s head. She held out her hand, miming as if she were grasping something very small, and tugged.

One of White Pearl’s arms jerked up.

Everyone flinched back, but the pearl didn’t move again. Her arm remained awkwardly raised overhead.

Connie gasped. This was just like in the Spirit Morph Saga, when the one-eyed man had used dark magic to hold Lisa’s father hostage! “Pearl, I bet if you cut her strings she’d be herself again!” she exclaimed. When she didn’t get a response, her excitement dimmed. “Pearl?”

Pearl was shaking her head rapidly, her hands clenching and unclenching the end of her sash. “No,” she said. “No, I couldn’t possibly-”

“Sure you can, Pearl!” Steven enthused. “You’re great at figuring things out!”

“Also, you’re like, the only one who can even see what’s going on up there, soooo,” Amethyst shrugged.

If Pearl’s sash had been a living thing, it would have been strangled by now. As it was, Pearl was the one who looked like she was about to asphyxiate. “But-”

Wordlessly, Garnet put a hand around Pearl’s waist. They shared one of their looks.

“Please,” Blue Pearl whispered. “For her.”

Pearl sighed.

Slowly, shakily, she raised her hand again. Then she brought it down in a slashing motion.

White Pearl’s arm flopped to her side. It was the first human-like movement Connie had ever seen her make.

Steven and Connie whooped.

“You got this P!” Amethyst shouted. Even Yellow was leaning forward in anticipation.

Pearl carefully aimed then swiped again, and the other arm dropped. She kept slicing, wielding her hand like a blade, and one by one, the other pearl’s shoulders slumped, her smile sagged, and her knees buckled.

Garnet caught her before she could collapse to the floor.

Pearl was swaying on her feet now. She made one final gesture, and White Pearl jolted. It was like she’d been raised from the dead; her gray form flushed pink, her head lifted, and her good eye swiveled towards Garnet.

White Pearl screamed.

Garnet immediately let go of her, and she stumbled back, taking unsteady steps until she collapsed against the ship wall.

“It’s okay!” Amethyst exclaimed, holding up her hands, but White Pearl just flinched further into herself and started crying.

The Crystal Gems exchanged bewildered, slightly panicked glances, entirely unprepared to deal with… this. White Pearl wasn’t just an entirely different person; she was the exact opposite of the unblinking, unfeeling gem who’d stood before them mere moments ago. White Pearl’s whole body shook when she sobbed, and her ragged breaths were interrupted only by a high-pitched keening.

Just as Connie was wondering who could possibly calm her down -- Steven was stuck on the piloting platform, Pearl looked ready to have a second-hand panic attack, the other gems scared White, Connie was a literally an alien from a different planet -- Blue Pearl stepped smoothly in, wrapping her arms around White Pearl and murmuring in that soothing sotto voce she’d had millennia to perfect. If anyone in the universe was better at handling crying people than Steven, Connie supposed it was Blue Pearl. Connie was glad she was here.

As Blue Pearl held her, Connie noticed more about White Pearl… or maybe Pink Pearl would be more appropriate? Because her form was was now entirely, mono-chromatically pink. It was weird, because up till now Connie had assumed the pearls were -- designed? Selected? -- to match their diamonds. Blue and Yellow Pearl fit that assumption; they were both eerily like the gems they served. But the more she looked, the more she realized that this pearl was nothing like White Diamond. She was… frillier. Less composed.

Pale Pink Pearl, as Connie mentally decided to dub her, was starting to observe more of her surroundings too. She took in Pink Diamond’s ship, the two Homeworld Pearls, and the Crystal Gems with some confusion. Then her tear-filled gaze latched on Pearl.

“You!” In a flash, Pale Pink Pearl had crossed the command chamber and seized Pearl by the tunic. “You have to switch with me again!” she cried desperately.

“ NO!”

Pale Pink Pearl sank to her knees from the force of that one, singular word.

Pearl flinched the moment it left her mouth.

Her face flushed dark teal, and Connie could almost see the butterflies building up in her head. But where Connie had frozen up, her swordmaster took a deep breath, knelt next to the distressed pearl, and tried again.

“What I meant to say,” she began more gently, “is that no one’s going back to White Diamond.”

Switch… back? Connie thought.

The clues began to assemble themselves in Connie’s mind; Pale Pink Pearl’s outfit, her rosy hue, her belly gem and Pearl’s temple one... Pearl and Pale Pink Pearl had switched places! Or else, they’d been switched by their Diamonds. But that raised new questions: why? And had their Pearl had once been like that? Dull and lifeless, a puppet being pulled from one task to another without any room for free will?

Pale Pink didn’t appear to have heard what Pearl meant to say. She was avoiding eye contact, quaking. “I can’t,” she muttered, over and over again. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t-”

“What can’t you do?” asked Pearl. She had to repeat herself twice before the other pearl noticed the question.

“I can’t go back to the Nothing.”

“You’re not going back to the nothing,” Pearl soothed. “You’re free! You’re never going to belong to anyone again!”

Pale Pink sobbed harder.

“Oh, stars…”

Blue Pearl sat down and resumed her embrace of Pale Pink, and after a second, Yellow Pearl - the last pearl standing - joined them, wrapping a tentative arm over their shoulders.

“I’m going to be processed!” she wailed.

“No, no! No one is-”

“They’re not going to hurt you!” Yellow Pearl snapped. “Right?” She glared at Pearl.

Pearl winced at Yellow’s abrasive tone and shot an her acid look over Pale Pink’s head, but nodded anyway. “Right.”

Blue Pearl kept her arms around Pale Pink, whispering softly. Eventually Pale Pink said, “I’m… not going to be processed?”

“No.”

“But you said-?”

“Earth isn’t like Homeworld. It doesn’t have hierarchies, and assigned roles. It’s…”

But apparently, Pearl couldn’t find the words to describe earth, not in terms the Homeworld gems could comprehend. So instead, she held out her hands.

Pale Pink didn’t hesitate to take them in her own. And then something funny happened; Pearl’s gem began to glow, and her eyes went white, like she was about to fuse. But she wasn’t dancing, and her form remained solid. A moment later, the eyes and gems of the other three Pearls started glowing too, and Pale Pink Pearl’s mouth fell open.

Yellow Pearl jerked away, the light fading from her gem as she physically disconnected herself from the others.

“You can’t just show her things like that!”

“She’s coming to Earth with us. It’s her choice what she does when she gets there!”

Pearl paused, whatever she was showing the other pearls fading away. “You do want to come to Earth with us, right?”

Pale Pink Pearl was blinking rapidly... “It pleased my diamond.”

“Ehh, that’s a start.”

Chapter Text

In the shiny metal knees of Pink Diamond’s ship were two holding chambers, where crews of Peridots, Agates, and Bismuths stood in wait. It was to there that the matriarchs of Homeworld and their pearls went when they finally left the main command chamber, one diamond to each knee, to give orders to the worker gems. It should only take a couple weeks for them to repair the diamonds ships -- maybe even less than that, with their advanced alien technology -- and then Earth would be free of the Diamond Authority once (and hopefully forever) more.

 Pale Pink Pearl seemed relieved to see them go  - and from the looks the diamonds had been sending her, Connie thought that they were happy to get away from her too. But honestly, now that she was no longer under White Diamond’s mind control or having a panic attack in the corner, she wasn’t that bad.

 Now, it was Garnet and Pearl who had retreated to a corner -- the former had pulled the latter away after it became clear that Pearl was trying very hard not to freak out, and mostly not succeeding. Connie wasn’t sure why Pearl was so upset, exactly. She hoped it was something to do with the puppet strings, and not Pale Pink Pearl herself.

 Said gem had settled down on the floor with the remainder of their group. She was careful to keep the cracked side of her face turned slightly away, but one pale pink finger drifted absently back and forth, as though she were conducting a silent symphony in her head.

 Connie hummed a few bars of a concerto under her breath. She wondered what day it was, and whether she would still have to go to Monday night violin lessons when she got home. Amethyst flopped onto her back and started drumming on her stomach like it was a pair of bongos. Steven sighed, and finally stopped trying to eavesdrop on Pearl and Garnet.

 “So, what should we call you?” He asked Pale Pink Pearl.

 Pale Pink Pearl looked baffled. “I am a Pearl.”

 “Yeah, but like, Pearl is already Pearl. If you’re both Pearl that’s going to get really confusing.”

 It seemed like common sense to Connie, but Pale Pink Pearl cocked her head to the side at Amethyst’s words.

 “Would it not be more confusing if you had multiple words to refer to the same gem?”

 Connie, Steven, and Amethyst exchanged glances.

 “What about when people needed to distinguish between you and another Pearl?” Connie asked.

 Pale Pink Pearl was still bemused, but she gamely went along with them. “Then I was referred to as White Diamond’s Pearl.”

 “Yeah, but like, White Diamond’s not the boss of you anymore,” Amethyst drawled.

 Pale Pink Pearl shrugged. “I would still know who you meant.”

 “But that’s not right!” Connie protested.

 “What name would you like to call me?” she asked mildly.

 “You’re your own gem now; you get to pick you own name,” Steven explained.

 “I don’t understand.”

 “You could be Bob, or Jesamine, or Onion…” said Amethyst, ticking off various (mostly) human names on her fingers.

 “But I’m not a bob, I’m a pearl.”

 “Maybe you should try a nickname! Something that reflects who you are as an individual.”

 There was a long pause, and Connie nearly suggested ‘Pale Pink Pearl,’ the name she’d been using in her head for the last 3 hours. It was an accurate description of her appearance… but at the end of the day, it was also just another allusion to the gems who had owned her. Plus, even in her head it was a mouthful.

 “I don’t know who I am.” The lost pearl said eventually. “White Diamond has been controlling me for millennia.”

 “Yeah, Pearl said you were dangling on strings like a puppet.” Even Amethyst couldn’t maintain her usual nonchalance when she said that. For the fourth time that hour, Connie tried to shove down a mental image of Crystal-Gem-Pearl and Pale-Pink-Pearl as literal marionettes, their wooden limbs dragging along a crude stage under White Diamond’s perfectly manicured hands, only for the stage to give out while the theater turned into a gallows. Connie shuddered. (They were reading Maus in English this quarter. The terrible graphics in the novel were fueling her imagination almost as much as they were reinforcing her determination to fight Homeworld, with its hierarchies and authoritarianism and-)

 “What’s a puppet?”

 Connie blinked.

 “Uh, it’s like a tiny doll that you can move around with strings.” Steven mimed as he spoke, and

Amethyst went a step further, transforming into a pint-sized puppet and strutting on hinged joints.

 “Oh... You should call me Puppet Pearl.”

There was an awkward silence, as everyone present tried to imagine calling her Puppet for the rest of her life. Puppet-Amethyst slumped down and shifted back to her normal form. The engine thrummed. Connie’s sneakers made a funny sound against the floor. From across the chamber came a snippet of Pearl and Garnet’s murmured conversation.

“I guess we could call you Mary,” Connie offered finally. “Short for Marionette - that’s another word for puppet.”

“Ooh, ooh! Or Pinocchio! It’s from this story about a puppet who becomes a real boy!”

The pearl’s eyes widened. “How did she do that?”

Steven grinned. “I don’t know how, but we could watch the movie when we get home. Oh, uh, a movie is like a made up story with videos and music.”

The light that entered her eye seemed to confirm that Steven had hit upon the perfect name.

Pinocchio Pearl (tentatively) smiled. “I would like that.”