Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“You need to sit down.”

“I’m fine.” Pearl pulled her jacket tight around herself, hiding the spiderweb of cracks beneath.

“Don’t do that, you’ll only make it worse!” Garnet chided her.

“Pearl!” Amethyst said, trying to pull her towards the nearest seat.

“I said I’m fine! Hrrgh.” She doubled over, cracks spreading through into her jacket. They used her momentary lapse in resistance to set her down into a chair, where she took short shaky gasps trying to catch her breath back. She let out a groan as she leaned forward, propping herself up on the worktop.

“Shhh! Quietly or we’ll wake Steven,” Garnet whispered.

“What’s going on?” Steven was stood at the top of the stairs, rubbing his eyes.

“Oh Steven!” Pearl put on her best cheery smile and gave a small wave, lounging into the table to hide the damage. “We didn’t mean to wake you. It’s fine, we’ve got it all under control.”

“Is someone hurt?”

“No, no, it’s fine...” Pearl began to protest, but Amethyst cut across her.

“Yeah: Pearl,” Amethyst said bluntly, Pearl settling into a grimace as Steven looked at her, his face full of worry. Amethyst tried to continue to tell the story but Pearl stepped in, a note of panic entering her voice. “She-”

“Fell! I fell off… a...” Pearl floundered, looking around for inspiration and caught sight of the temple door.

“-Junk pile.”

“-Waterfall.”

Amethyst and Pearl shot accusatory looks at each other as they both spoke at once.

“Pearl was just explaining what happened,” Garnet said and they all looked at Pearl who tried to brush off their attention with a laugh. It petered out.

She rallied herself “What I meant to say is that I dove off my waterfall and landed in Amethysts room, then I also fell off one of her towers of junk and hurt my… leg! Silly me! But it’s fine now, look!” She lifted it up, and sure enough it looked fine. “It was just a silly little accident in all that junk. You should really watch where you put those things Amethyst they're always getting in the way.”

Pearl flustered as no-one else spoke. “It’s fine Steven, really I’m just fine you don’t have to worry-” Pearl groaned again as the cracks crept onwards, doing her best to keep them hidden from him. Luckily for her it was just as she’d put her foot down.

Steven jumped straight over, worry etched on his face “Let me see.”

“I’ll be f- okay Steven, look it’s already so much better than it was! I’ll be right at rain in no time.”

“Well, better safe than sorry.” He licked his hand and planted it on the proffered limb. “How’s that?”

“Oh, much better, thank you Steven.” She gave it a wiggle. “I really didn’t want to worry you you know. I know you part human’s need your sleep.”

“I know. Alright then. If it's okay by you I’m gonna-” he yawned “-head back to bed now.” The gems bid him goodnight and watched as he disappeared upstairs, waiting in silence until a quiet snore filtered back down.

In unison they turned back to Pearl, Garnet gently pulling her arms back to check the damage, half in the hope it’d healed.

“It’s getting worse,” she said, pulling back her visor.

Pearl tried again: “I’m fine,” she insisted.

“It’s not fine," Amethyst said, "this isn’t fine! You’re hurt and it’s getting worse!” She threw her arms in the air. “What’s going on Pearl? You’ve been acting weird for days, ever since you went to the reef, and now this. What happened?" Her face flickered with doubt as a though occurred to her "Did p- Volleyball corrupt you when you fused?”

“No, I-”

“It’s not corruption, it’s emotion,” Garnet explained.

“What?” Amethyst was dumbfounded. “But how?”

Garnet didn’t answer, instead addressing Pearl. “Your state of mind is affecting your physical form. You need to talk to us, tell us what’s going on.”

“I can’t.”

“Pearl, you can’t keep this bottled in like this, it’ll tear you apart.”

“Yeah,” Amethyst added, “don’t you poof on us again.” Pearl stayed silent. “Ugh, Pearl! just tell us what’s wrong!”

“I can’t.”

“Fine,” Amethyst huffed. “If you won’t talk to us we can always get Steven back down here.”

“NO!” Pearls reaction was instantaneous, and the cracks spread once more, stretching up her neck. She gasped, whimpering a little as she tried to keep the pain at bay. “I can’t let him see me like this.” She pushed herself up “We can’t let him see me like this!” She looked down in horror at the expanse of cracks that now so obviously covered her chest. It would break him.

“Then talk to us. Whatever’s troubling you, we can listen, we can help, but you have to talk to us.”

“Yeah.” Amethyst plonked herself down beside her, “and we’re not leaving here until you do.”

“But Steven,” Pearl protested, “How do we explain this? We can’t-”

“Stop worrying about Steven!” Garnet snapped. “Let us do that: you need to look after yourself first.”

Pearl looked at them, and curled away. They waited.

“Pink Pearl, Volleyball… I learned that Pink Diamond, Rose was different. Much different to the gem I knew. She was temperamental, insolent, and she got angry and she lashed out a lot. She hurt her, she hurt her Pearl. But I never knew. We spent so long pretending to be someone different in the war, I spent so long being the only one who knew who she really was I never thought that the Pink Diamond I knew might not be the real her. I didn’t want to believe it but now Steven knows about her and he’s got these new powers of his… it’s just like Volleyball said she was, and now I don’t know. I don’t know anymore.” Garnet came to her side, wrapping her arms around her. “If I didn’t really know what she was like, what else didn’t I know? Did I really know her?” The cracks splintered further and she gasped, but she wasn’t done.

“and I Loved her.”

Her tears fell and she fell silent, staring at the floor, letting them spatter wherever they landed. Amethyst joined them, wrapping herself around them both, pulling them closer together.

After the embrace Garnet chose her moment and spoke. “Pink Diamond, Rose Quartz, whatever we call her, there’s no denying that she deceived a lot of people, she hurt a lot of people. That won’t change. But at the same time if you didn’t know she was like that, that means she changed. She chose to change. She tried to get better. As a person, by deciding to protect Earth, as a Gem by trying to control her powers, trying to stop the war, and even as a Diamond, by taking on a colony. She didn’t always get it right, and yes, a lot of people got hurt. But she tried her best, she tried to help in her own way and sometimes, that’s all we can do.”

“She changed,” Pearl murmured, looking down at the cracks as they quietly pulled back.

“How you feeling P?” Amethyst asked, “any better?”

Pearl straightened up, revealing the much reduced cracks, although a dense collection still littered the center of her chest. “A bit. It’s still… A lot to take in. It still hurts.” She frowned. “I’m not sure if it will ever truly stop.”

“But you’ll be okay right?” Amethyst prompted, “you won’t crack on us?”

Pearl smiled, and pulled her jacket closed around her, the cracks disappearing from sight once more.

“I’ll do my best.”

Chapter Text

The knocking echoed around the inside of the van, sharp, insistent, and just loud enough to wake Greg with a start.

"Hwaah?"

"It's Pearl." There was a pause. "Can we talk?"

Greg blinked the sleep out his eyes, waking up even further when he saw the time. He pulled open the doors, "Pearl, it's the middle of the night!" She avoided his gaze, arms wrapped tight around herself, a haunting frown sketched in sadness on her face.

"I know. I'm sorry, I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important." She shifted a bit more, fiddling at the edges of her jacket. "It's about Rose."

Oh. One of those. Greg climbed down to sit off the end of the van, waving for her to join. They'd had several of these talks before, just the two of them, always about Rose, an unspoken arrangement born of mutual experience, and respect. They understood, in a way so few others could. But even then Pearl was good at 'letting humans have their sleep-cycles'. Whatever it was must really be eating her up- she barely relaxed an inch when she propped herself up beside him, arms still folded tight across her chest.

She explained she'd learnt something new about Rose, talking about another Pearl, Volleyball, their trip to The Reef, backtracking a little and explaining how Volleyball had been Rose's Pearl before her, and then what The Reef was. Greg tried to keep his surprise under wraps. He'd seen the pink gem around, but somehow never matched the two together. He'd never even considered that Rose had a pre-Pearl life at all.

Pearl had known, and yet...she hadn't. Pearl explained how she'd learned it was Rose, not White Diamond who had hurt Volleyball, how they nearly got rejuvenated trying to fix it, how they escaped. How Rose had had this whole different personality and life before her that she'd kept hidden from Pearl all those years.

"...she was so different to the gem I thought I knew. It's...hard to get my head around. These past few days I've struggling to get it off my mind. How much didn't I know? How much more did she keep hidden from me?" The question hung across the beach, surrounding the two in silence. She glanced across. "I guess I wanted to know if you knew. If she ever talked to you about it. Somehow you two got closer than I ever could."

Ahh, that's why she was here. He couldn't blame her- Rose had previous form on just this sort of thing.

"She didn't." Pearl sighed at his revelation, a tight 'huh' of relief, brief reassurance, "but it's not a surprise to me either. We always talked about so much, but not the past, not in any detail. We both knew we were both trying to get away from something but I never pried. Neither did she and that's the way we liked it. I guess we both knew there were some things you wanted to leave behind."

Pearl didn't answer, head drooping even further, almost folding away. Her arm slipped down and he caught sight of a thick dark crack creeping up underneath.

"Woah!" His cry snapped her back up with a start, the movement giving him a glimpse of even more cracks hidden underneath. "You're cracking!" His mind darted to the (thankfully few) times the gems had poofed on him, already hoping this was not another one of them.

Pearl covered it over again and turned away.

"Uhh, you should probably get that healed before it gets-"

She cut him off, "It won't work."

"But,"

"Gem's fine," she insisted through grit teeth. "It's like Volleyball,"

The pearl with the crack over the eye, the one they tried to heal. He realised she hadn't said if it worked.

She continued "...they won't go away."

He wondered how many there were, still hidden under there. "Do the others know?"

A nod. Pearl paused, then added "not Steven. Not yet. It only came up a few hours ago. I wasn't even doing anything," she grumbled.

Greg tried to recall what Pearl had said, trying to figure out what he could do. Scars; Volleyball had been caught up in a blast of Rose's old powers, the echoes staying with her long after the event, lasting trauma manifest in form. She'd said they'd nearly been rejuvenated at the Reef, but Pearl had been in scrapes worse than that before. Heck, she'd even been rejuvenated before! But these cracks had come up-

"-just like that?" he asked, "but why would it-" She turned, and showed him, arms falling away to reveal the full extent of the damage.

Greg froze. He expected cracks but it looked like she'd been hit, impact lines radiating out from a single off centre point just to her left, the stray lines stretching across her body. They became more frequent the closer to the middle they got, curling down into smaller and smaller pieces until they all spun together into an achingly familiar shape: a single stark rosette.

"Rose." It even had that stupid rebellion flag tucked bud-like right in the centre, the trailing cracks looking like vines interspersed with diamond leaves, or thorns. They clung about her, still stretching out, sharp against her pale skin.

"Does it hurt?"

Her head snapped up, and she glared at him, that same look blazed across that he'd seen a thousand times before, be it coming back from a concert, hanging around by the temple, or strumming up a new tune for Rose. That look he'd got used to ignoring, even winding up on occasion in competition fighting for Rose. That look that still stayed after she was gone, present at the sharp edges of their lives where Steven turned from one to the other.

She turned it away, bowed once again. "I thought I'd be used to this by now." She ran her fingers off her tears that fell, "Rose kept so many secrets; I know she had secrets, but it still hurts, it still feels like-" she waved her hands, plucking only frustration and empty words out of thin air, tears beading up as she clenched her fist, hovering it empty over the cracks. Her eyes closed held over that single moment, then she pulled, spilling fresh tears in a sweeping gesture as she let it all go, throwing it out to the empty world. Greg shifted closer, trying to offer some small comfort as she sat there crying those streaming silent tears, clinging onto the edge of the van.

She was so quiet when she finally spoke again, so defeated. "But it finally caught up. After all this time, after everything that's happened I guess it was one secret too many. I couldn't stop it."

Greg reached out, unsure what to say, resorting to somewhat awkwardly patting her on the back. Was this patronising? He had no idea.

"But I should have!" She almost threw him off, jumping up and pacing about, up and down the small strip of tarmac. "That's the awful thing about all of this; I should have expected this, I should have known! Rose had secrets, I knew that, I just- I should have known!"

"How? If Rose never told you then why would you know?" Pearl looked like she would answer him, but the words never came, driving back into her pacing. "You did what you could, it's not your fault."

She halted, going pale. "Of course it's not." She almost smacked her gem as her hand flew up the side of her head, shoving tufts of hair crudely askew as she clutched through it. She turned to Greg again, wide-eyed, her hand still trailing down her cheek, smudging through tear trails. "I'm doing it again aren't I? She hurt us, and I'm still making excuses, still giving her space to hurt me again."

"She didn't mean to."

"I know, but... it still hurts," her fingers floated down, drawn subconsciously back to the cracks, skirting round them, never quite touching. They stilled. "It always hurt."

"I'm sorry."

She sat down with another sigh. "You don't need to be. It wasn't your fault either. It's just a lot to take in. Although," she noted with a dry smile, "it's now starting to make more sense why she chose you."

Greg couldn't tear his eyes away from where the cracks sat, the shape still seared into his mind. "Kinda wish it didn't."

They sat there a while longer, the sound of the waves on the beach just out of sight washing around them.

"It's strange," Pearl said, "I know more about her than ever, yet I feel like I barely knew her at all."

" 'That's a good thing' "

"What?! No, it's terrible," Pearl almost screeched, "how can I-"

"No," Greg stopped her, "that's what she said to me way back when," he explained. "I told her I felt like I barely knew her and she said 'that's a good thing'."

"Oh." Her face fell, "oh Rose..." There were tears in her eyes again, glistening against the first lights of the day.

Greg scrambled to try and recover. "I think she was trying to protect you, protect both of us." Oop, definitely crying now. He kept going. "We may not have known who she was as well as we wanted, but we knew who she was trying to be, who she chose to be. Who she wanted to be for us."

"Rose," Pearl breathed, the word drifting delicately between them like a petal in the morning air.

Greg nodded. "Rose."

Pearl sighed, and to his surprise some of her cracks receded, trailing back from the outer edges and fading away once again. "Woah." It was times like this that he remembered just how alien the gems really were.

Pearl frowned, half covering the cracks that remained, the flower shape clearer than ever. She seemed troubled.

"What is it?"

"I thought they would go away. If I could just get my head around it, figure it out..."

"These things take time"

"I don't have time." She glanced towards the horizon, the first reddish hint of sunrise creeping up the sky. "Steven doesn't know," she explained. "He was so upset with what happened at the Reef, I..." she wrapped her jacket close again, "I don't want him to see me cracking too."

"You're going to keep that hidden?" Greg frowned. "He's going to notice."

"What else can I do?" There was a faint crackling noise and the pattern appeared on the jacket too. Pearl lept up and threw it off with a yelp, descending into frantic pacing as panic gripped her. "No no no no no no no! I can't do this! I can't do this!"

"Oh!" Greg cried, lighting up, "I know! Hang on, I've got-" he rummaged around in one of his draws as Pearl watched, increasingly confused as he decanted half the contents all over the floor. "Aha!" He pulled out a blueish turtleneck, holding it up high. "Here," he offered it to her, "try that."

Pearl hesitated. "Greg, I can't-"

"Eh, I hardly use it anyway."

She pulled it on turning this way and that to test the fit, the top sitting surprisingly snugly around her. Turning her attention downwards she traced over the now blank jumper where the cracks lay, hands finally stilling, relaxing, turning instead to tidy up the cuffs and smooth it all out.

"Thank you."

"It's no problem, I-"

She cut him off, fixing him with those bright blue eyes. They still had the after-echoes of tears about them, but her voice was steady, sincere. "For everything."

"I-" Greg faltered, at a loss. "Anytime." He felt a yawn catching at him, getting an idea, "...although," he gave her a nudge, "if you caaaaan keep it to waking hours this old man'll be very grateful. I'm not quite the spritely fence-hopping youth I used to be y'know!" He gave her his best smile, and a wink for good measure.

But it had the desired effect and Pearl let out a little smothered chuckle herself. "Alright," she waved him down, "I'll try."