Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Starlight.

The display stretched over her head, a feed of familiar constellations gradually emerging like a giant’s window into the universe. Rose scrolled through the desk below, watching file dates as the numbers went down. Six thousand years’ worth of reports, most of them automatic.

A diamond, even a little one, stood considerably higher than a quartz, so the documents displayed at an odd angle, her fingers dwarfed by onscreen controls made for larger hands. Rose’s crouched head only crossed half the height of the great chair taking up the center of the room. Sick of craning her neck, Rose gave up searching on the upper screens and left the view of the stars up for some light. She fumbled her way through the menu on the smaller terminal at its foot instead.

Still no sign of what she was looking for. A faint buzz of the door activating was Rose’s only warning to swipe her screen clear and turn it off, but the stars remained on the larger console overhead.

“What are you doing?” said a sharp voice.

Rose turned around. Holly Blue Agate. A buttoned-up former steward of the Cruise Ship who bemoaned the transition to Era 3, her gem rested on the back of her neck. Holly Blue didn’t like Rose. She didn’t admit to liking anybody.

“I was searching for something,” Rose said.

“What use would a gem of Earth have with priceless Diamond history?” Holly Blue asked, raising her eyebrows.

Rose ground her teeth rather than respond to the agate’s go-to insult. “Records from when the Rose Quartzes were bubbled,” she said, as if it weren’t obvious.

“Well, enough of that. Your humans are looking for you. We’re nearly at your diamond’s dreadful little planet. Again.”

Rose side-eyed Holly Blue from behind her back, but followed into the hallway. “I’m sorry.”

Holly Blue only scoffed and beckoned Rose along with an impatient hand. “It’s none of my business which of you gems stay or go. Let’s just get you off of this ship and out of my hair, Rose Quartz. The sooner, the better.”

Her so-called sibling gems had kinder things to say about her departure.

“We’ll miss you!” said an enthusiastic Rose Quartz, draping Rose in a hug. Another clapped her on the shoulder.

Another Rose shared, “I’d love to go to Little Homeschool with you, just like, not right now.”

“You’ll be fine!”

“Make some cool Earth friends!”

“Call us when you’re settled.”

“I will,” Rose lied easily, a worrisome buzzing throughout her physical form. “Thanks.”

Holly Blue shooed the throng of Rose Quartzes apart. “Just go already,” she said.

“Good bye!” someone said just as Rose activated the crystal pad. “See you soon!” She startled and turned to raise a hand in farewell, offer a smile, but the harsh light of the warp was already streaming past by the time her fingers unfurled.

“Bye,” she said.

Rose took a deep breath before lifting the forge’s door knocker.

“Who is it?”

“It’s-“ Rose hesitated to share her gem, not wanting a repeat of her previous visit to Earth. “I signed up online. The brochure said to see you about lodgings.”

“Oh, a new student!” Rose heard a clattering sound from behind the door. “Come on in!”

The door opened and Rose found herself face-to-face with a slightly sooty, iridescent Bismuth.

She froze in place. The other gem glanced over her form. On Bismuth’s face, she saw a flash of that haunted expression that had become so familiar. Rose fidgeted with her fingers.

“Well, I’ll be,” said Bismuth, cracking a smile with visible effort. “We don’t often see a Rose Quartz around these parts. Welcome!”

Rose found herself ushered into the forge proper as Bismuth stepped into a back room, scraping open drawers. It was warm. Aprons and tools hung against one wall, barrels of sand squat near the door. A handsome new anvil stood in the middle of the room, bellows, tongs and rag abandoned on top.

Bismuth returned with a stiff paper tag in hand. “Give me until evening and we’ll have a spot ready for you,” she said. “If I’m not here, you can give this to Pearl or whoever is.”

“Okay,” Rose said. She took the card, feeling a bit like she’d stepped off the edge of something, and could not slow her fall.

“There you are. Better get to class; you’re running late.” Bismuth offered her hand and Rose shook it. She could see the corner of Bismuth’s eye straining.

“Thank you, Bismuth.” Rose said.

“No problem, Rose Quartz.” Bismuth smiled. “Welcome to Earth.”

Rose ran late. The geminars she attended went more or less smoothly for the first half of the day, with the occasional awkward introduction. If she’d had any doubts about who among Little Homeworld’s population were former Crystal Gems, someone only need catch a glimpse of her and the answer would be obvious. Fully half of the instructors had been close personal friends (or enemies) of the late Rose Quartz/Pink Diamond.

Having to face it put a damper on her first day on Earth, but Rose supposed she couldn’t blame them.

Before afternoon classes was a short break, which Rose chose to spend on a park bench, absorbing the aftershocks of her morning. Kaleidoscopic chimes chattered in the trees and the wind carried a cold, sweet hint of autumn on its way. Gems of all kinds and the occasional human walked in peace around her. A bulletin board covered in flyers danced with the windy day; there were postings for GHEM jobs, human technology tutors, ads for Beach City’s boardwalk attractions (even for human food: donuts, pizza, french fries) and one human seeking a babysitter.

It was remarkable.

Rose watched Snowflake Obsidian and a ruby settle on the bench across from hers. Snowflake kept glancing her way. After a few times, Rose realized she was the one staring and returned her attention to the chimes.

“What are you doing?” she said to herself. “I knew it would be like this. It’s fine.”

Her hands touched one another. Her boots touched dirt. She smiled at a group of tiny ants scrambling back and forth around them. “I’m fine.” The easy humor of her imagination when signing up for fall geminars hadn’t prepared real-life Rose to rejoin life on Earth, and that was fine. Real-life Rose was here, and she was going to talk to people, and, and do things. It would be fine. It couldn’t possibly go as poorly as meeting Steven had.

Her schedule only had two afternoon geminars: a horticulture elective with Peridot and the mandatory course “How To Decide Stuff For Yourself 101” with Amethyst.

Rose had read on Little Homeschool’s homepage that a challenge exam for How To Decide Stuff was available, with instructor petition. It sounded like a wonderful requirement for most gems transitioning to the third era after a lifetime of authoritarian rule. Rose fully intended to test out of that subject the moment the opportunity arose.

Rose was on time to her horticulture class. The building looked like a corrupted gem had torn it apart; plastic sheeting had been duct-taped over about half of the walls, and visible cracks remained on many glass panels throughout the structure. The instructor greeted her at the door, waving her class in.

The air in the greenhouse shimmered and stank of wet earth. Greenery flourished everywhere, in pots and plots and hanging from wires. A lapis lazuli was pruning dead buds to Rose’s left and there was a topaz checking a moisture meter on the right.

Incredible.

“Welcome to Earth!” Peridot exclaimed to the group, as had each instructor before her. Then, to Rose’s horror, Peridot winked directly at her. “Welcome back to Earth, for some of us.”

“Thanks!” Rose said, smiling, freezing. An aquamarine on her right glanced over. Was she supposed to respond?

“We’ll start with something fun and easy,” Peridot continued. “This is Big Greenhouse, Little Greenhouse is west-ish. I’m gonna explain how to move a bulb without hurting it, and we’ll re-pot the other class’s vegetables that‘ve outgrown their current home. You’ll all do great, I promise! Don’t rip the walls open!”

Soon they were all put to work in small groups. Rose stood at one end of a long workbench. The aquamarine worked next to her, but for the most part they ignored one another. Rose let her mind wander as she relocated her charges from pot to planter. Maybe this wasn’t so bad.

“This is fun, huh?” she said to the aquamarine, trying for a friendly smile.

To her surprise, the other gem brightened. “It is! I’ve always been fond of organic life.”

“Me too!” Rose said.

“I so rarely saw any up close before Era 3,” the aquamarine said. “But that’s why I’m here now. This is my favorite geminar.”

“Yes!” Rose said. “I loved that about Earth from the moment I set foot on it. I mean, my whole life. Literally, my whole life.” 

“Have you seen a ladybug yet?” the aquamarine said. Rose had, of course, but she shook her head and the other gem pointed out the spotted wings exploring a leafy bush, and with genuine excitement Rose acted appropriately dazzled.

Even when their small talk died, Rose was left with a warm feeling that things seemed to be improving, smiling while she worked. When a classmate behind her asked for somebody to please pass a spare potting trowel, Rose happily obliged.

A pink hand took it from her.

“Thank you,” said Pink Diamond’s former Pearl, a bright smile on her face to match Rose’s own, potted plant hugged in her elbow.

“You’re welcome,” said Rose. Then, because Pearl didn’t twitch, “I like your onion.”

That startled a laugh out of Pearl, who returned to her station without responding. Aquamarine tapped Rose’s shoulder for a bottle of water and they returned to their task.

Peridot called a break halfway through class, so Rose and others sat outside on the grass for a bit, taking in the afternoon sunlight. She watched a bird exploring in the flowerbed. Its tawny little face was in constant motion, pivoting, surveying its surroundings.

“Excuse me,” said the aquamarine. “I think Peridot’s starting.”

Rose stood up and the little bird lifted its wings and leapt away.

“You gems probably noticed how easy it is to run out of room,” Peridot was explaining. “So we’re going to move our re-pots to the little greenhouse. The next class needs space to work.”

As the spot closest to the door, Rose ended up the one handing off each plant to Pearl to place on a flat cart for easy transport.

“Good job,” Pearl said of Rose’s.

“Thank you,” Rose said.

When the cart was creaking under its own weight, they wheeled it outside as Peridot led the way to the little greenhouse. Peridot started on another series of explanations, so Rose wandered back to the big greenhouse to make herself useful in the meantime.

As she wheeled a second cartload of planters, something flashed in Rose’s peripheral vision and she lunged forward just in time to avoid a blade of ice whizzing past her shoulder into the ground where it stuck.

Rose jumped back and another crashed into the cart. She crouched behind it, peeking out.

A small blue-and-red fusion hovered just before the greenhouse. She flung a shard of ice at Rose’s face. Rose ducked back behind the cart to protect her eyes.

“I come here looking for Steven Universe and get Rose Quartz instead,” the four-legged gem said. “Come on out, you big coward!”

“I don’t want to fight you!” Rose said. She didn’t want to fight anybody, if she could help it. She made for the door of the greenhouse, pushing her cover. The wheels bounced on the soft earth.

The door was getting closer. If she could just get behind there!

The front wheel of the cart ran into a stone, and Rose stumbled forward, already seeing it was too late as the contents flung through the open greenhouse door and dashed across the ground. Rose couldn’t hear anything over the snap of a wave of pottery cracking, muffled by earth. It was like hearing a hundred gems poof at once.

She had to keep moving. Rose leapt after the overturned cart, but the gem chasing her sent more ice attacks straight through the plastic sheeting on the roof. Rose stumbled to dodge strikes from above, backing further up into the greenhouse. Her heel slipped in the mud. Rose fell flat on her rear, scrambling back out of the way of the other gem’s attack.

“Turns out somebody’s no match for the vengeful blade of Bluebird Azurite,” said the fusion grandly, alighting on one of Peridot’s potted saplings like some horrible moth.

Rose had never summoned her weapon before. She wasn’t sure she even had one. As Bluebird leapt her way, Rose strained to draw something from her center to no avail.

She cast about for some physical object to defend herself with, but all she grasped was dirt and beetles and broken clay, and she felt a molten tide of anger rise inside her chest at her own uselessness.

She could see the humidity on the surface of Bluebird’s eye. Rose moved one arm to protect her gem.

Bluebird froze in place. Then she flew backwards.

There was a pink ribbon wrapped about one of her many ankles. Attached to the other end, Pearl stepped through the greenhouse doorway.

“Are you alright?” she asked Rose, eye trained on Bluebird. When the fusion tried to slice at the ribbon with her blade, Pearl jerked her in one direction and then the other.

Bluebird shook her head from the disorienting move. She scowled and tried again to fly away. “Let go!”

Pearl strained to hold Bluebird back. “Can’t you see this isn’t Rose Quartz?”

“I don’t care!”

“What’s going on?”

It was then Rose’s assailant noticed the audience that had gathered from the other greenhouse. A half-dozen gardening implements hovered in the air around Peridot’s shoulders, waiting for their cue. Pearl stepped in front of Rose alongside the instructor, grip tight on her ribbon.

“It’s Era 3, Bluebird,” shouted the aquamarine who’d been next to Rose earlier. “Get a clue already!”

Bluebird Azurite sputtered. Her wings snapped out and she sliced the ribbon from her leg with a flourish, hopping into the air just as Pearl lunged forward to grab her.

“I-I’ll be back, Rose Quartz!” she said while shaking dirt in their faces. Her sword dissipated. “Don’t think you can talk your way out of trouble next time!”

Rose flushed a dark reddish-pink from nose to shoulder. Pearl scowled. Bluebird made a face at them and flew away over the top of the greenhouse.

“Hey! Cut it out!” Peridot yelled after her.

Nobody moved for a moment. The flowerbed was damp under Rose’s elbows. Unearthed bulbs freckled the earth around her.

“It’s not your fault,” said the aquamarine. “She shouldn’t have said those things.”

“You didn’t choose to look like that,” the lapis lazuli said.

“Everybody grab a shovel or something to fill!” Peridot said. With a clear task at hand, the class gems followed her command. Rose retrieved a shovel and started loading piles into Pearl’s wheelbarrow.

“You good?” Pearl said. She had mud smeared down one arm and shoulder.

“I can’t believe I cracked your,” Rose said, looking frantically between Pearl’s frown and the dirt-covered pottery shards littering the ground. Her grip flexed on the shovel handle. “Your beautiful pots,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Pearl said, but she was still frowning.

Peridot said, “We get new flowerpots from 3D morp students all the time. It’s practically the only thing they do in that geminar. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” said Rose, lifting another shovelful into the wheelbarrow.

They worked in silence, eventually moving into the greenhouse to sort out the contents of the mess.

“It’s fine,” Peridot said, once the sky began to turn gold. “I can pick up the rest of this.”

Rose ignored her, hands fisting in a patch of mulch. She stared at the small traces of destruction still scattered through the greenhouse. The pointed pink head of an earthworm emerged between her thumb and pointer finger.

“Hey.” Peridot was standing in front of her. Crouched in the dirt, they were at eye level. ”Go home. Get some rest.”

Rose started to protest. “I-“

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“Can’t I clean up the mess I made?” Rose said, throwing her hand out to emphasize said mess. She hit a folding table propped up against a rack, which slid out of place. One corner of the table dug into the plastic duct-taped around the gaping holes in the greenhouse walls with a strained squeak. As they watched, the weight of the falling table thrust it through, tearing a hole the size of a small gem.

Rose snarled.

“No,” Peridot said. ”Come over tomorrow if you still want to shovel, but you’re going home now. Now, Rose Quartz,” she said, before Rose could respond, herding her onto her feet and out the door. The plastic fluttered in the wind.

“Excuse me,” Rose said when she entered the forge.

Pearl stood at a workbench in an apron and protective glasses, drawing a file down the blunt edge of a sword. When she looked up at Rose’s arrival, the sword clattered to the ground.

“Oh, yes. Bismuth!” Pearl called, wiping oil from her fingertips with a towel, smiling broadly at Rose. Her hair looked damp and dusty. Pearl crouched to retrieve her sand-speckled blade.

Bismuth joined them from the back. “Rose Quartz!” she said. “Perfect timing. You’ll be staying in the dorms. Let me show you.”

“It was nice to see you again,” Pearl remarked, though her polite laugh said the opposite.

Rose followed Bismuth down one of Little Homeworld’s packed-earth streets. “It’s not really a dormitory,” Bismuth said. “The apartments just look a little bit like an old-fashioned quartz barracks, if you’re familiar.”

Rose nodded, thinking of the Amethysts’ cubbies back on the Cruise Ship.

“Steven named it. He likes giving nicknames to things.”

“Universe?”

Bismuth laughed. “Who else? Alright, here you go.”

They stopped in front of a simple rectangular three-story building with a number of entrances. Boneish balcony stairs connected each level to the next. Bismuth showed Rose to a tall inset door.

Bismuth started to explain the living quarters as they entered, but Rose found herself tuning out the other gem’s words. She stared at the living space. They’d provided a seating area, a desk and lamp in the corner, storage cabinets and...

“Hey, can you hear me out there? Surprised?” Bismuth asked.

Rose peered into the bedroom, which, naturally, held a type of human-style bed, of the local variety: a padded raised platform. Just like Steven’s. “I wasn’t expecting it to be so, well,”

“Furnished? I try to make sure every gem has somewhere to just be by yourself for when you need it. We set you up with quartz-sized everything, but lemme know if you want to make a change - or accommodate any friends and family, you know.”

“No! I don’t want to change a thing,” Rose said, turning pink again. “It’s perfect. Thank you, Bismuth.”

Bismuth patted her on the shoulder and turned to go. ”Then I’ll leave you to it.”

“What do I do?” Rose said. Her schedule only went until How to Decide Stuff For Yourself 101. Part of her hadn’t even expected to make it this far.

“Try sleeping - lying down for a bit and doing nothing. Some gems here do. Maybe you’ll even dream.”

After Bismuth left, Rose rifled through the syllabuses. Then she got into bed.

She laid on her back. Not relaxing. Rose tried closing her eyes, but it made no difference to her racing thoughts.

She stopped trying to sleep and curled on her side instead, feeling foolish. She’d missed an entire class. On the first day. Not to mention the smashed flowerpots and fusion debacle - and Bismuth’s frantic smile. Could she do this every day?

“I don’t know,” she said, but she’d made up her mind.

This was what she wanted.

She watched the sky change color. Red to pink to blackest blue.

Night blanketed the streets of Little Homeworld. Rose’s windows were open, and she could see the stars.

Chapter Text

For extra credit, Rose had the choice to answer a listing from the bulletin board - to do someone in Beach City or Little Homeworld a favor.

“The weirder, the better,” her guidance counselor had advised Rose in a grave tone.

None of the listings required anything close to a Rose Quartz’s predetermined purpose, or Rose’s own skills - some sounded more like a social outing than anything - but Rose’s counselor put her in touch with one of Little Homeschool’s human instructors who’d recently lost a babysitter. She was to watch over Onion, the instructor’s friendly child. Only for an afternoon. Rose had been handed off and nervously nodded her way through a series of human care instructions before finding herself alone with the wide-eyed boy.

Onion loved curation and collection. His pointer finger walked them through a tackle box stuffed to the brim with a rainbow of rubber lures. They stared up at Rose from their boxy environment, fish mouths gaping. Onion produced a white mouse from his pocket and held it out to Rose. Rose accepted it. Her hands swallowed the animal like a well. She could see it, but hardly feel the weight. Its body may as well have been air.

The mouse remained still when Onion gave it to her, but soon became curious. It explored the creases in her hand with its nails and nose. The whiskers were soft.

Eventually, it learned it could climb right off of Rose’s hand, and so it did. The mouse fell to the ground and darted beneath a writing desk. Onion nodded.

Rose glanced at her phone; it had only been ten minutes.

This was fine. It might be an odd way to spend her first visit to Beach City since coming back to Earth, but she could handle three hours of this.

The time flew once Onion began to entertain himself with a variety of human child games. After showing her the staircase, Onion tugged Rose by the hand to the kitchen, where he offered Rose a silent explanation of its contents cabinet-by-cabinet while she watched from the doorway.

Onion climbed on top of the refrigerator, leant over the space between the cupboards and pulled a wooden spoon from its hook. He leapt from the top of the fridge and Rose caught him with a hand, placing him on the ground. Onion sped back into the room with the television, tapping each couch cushion and pillow with his spoon.

Rose sat on the carpet and watched him count.

Putting down the spoon abruptly, Onion pivoted and crouched as if to pounce on her foot. Rose drew back.

Onion landed where her leg had been, and jumped to his feet with both hands clasped together. Rose saw whiskers peeking from the space beside Onion’s thumb. Oh. The mouse!

Onion nodded. He continued to nod until Rose followed him upstairs, crouching slightly, her fingertips brushing the railing. He led her from the landing into his bedroom. A rectangle of sunlight from the window fell on his floor and bed. Onion deposited the mouse in his pet snake’s tank on his chest-of-drawers and hopped back to sit against the footboard.

The mouse was growing curious about its new surroundings. Onion patted the floor next to him, and Rose sat down. He winked at her.

In silence on the carpet in Onion’s bedroom, they watched the snake and mouse in their box. The snake pushed itself forward in waves. Its snout pointed straight out, just off the ground. The mouse squeezed cypress between its fingers.

Onion’s snake made a gentle turn around its log, toward the blinking, breathing shivers of the mouse crouched in one corner of the tank. Rose realized, as the snake must already have, that there was no need to rush.

The snake thrust its head out and Rose’s cellphone rang, surprising her and Onion both. After three rings’ hesitation, Rose answered.

“Hey, it’s Vidalia. Can you let us in? I left the spare key inside.”

“Just a moment.” Rose got up. Onion was already scampering around her legs toward the front door. He hopped on the balcony and slid down. Onion landed. Rose opened the door to Vidalia and two Pearls; two of Little Homeworld’s morp instructors and resident model, arms full of morp supplies.

“My guy! He must really like you,” Vidalia said, hoisting Onion into her arms for a hug. “Thanks for babysitting.”

“No problem.” Rose smiled. Onion murmured something to his mother.

“You’re new to the school, yeah? Your geminars going alright?”

“I think so,” Rose said.

“Taking any morp?”

“3D Morp 1. With Lapis. We’re handbuilding flowerpots.”

Vidalia beamed. “I’m sure you’re doing great.”

The blue Pearl interrupted them to tell Vidalia that volleyball practice was starting soon and they needed to hurry up.

”Got a sec to help with this, too?” Vidalia said to Rose.

They moved class supplies from the car into Vidalia and Pearl’s studio. The first time Rose lifted the door curtain out of the way, she froze in place. Blue Pearl passed her with a box of bones and vases in her arms.

“It looks like a lot,” admitted Vidalia as Rose scanned walls lined with portraits of Amethyst, like stepping before a diamond’s mural. Even among the abstract pieces, they were charged with personality. One smirking face in the corner could’ve been lifted from a snapshot of Rose’s guidance counseling appointment with her that morning. “But y’know, when the muse sings, gotta tune in to her.”

“I understand,” Rose said, which made Vidalia laugh.

“You’re alright, Rose Quartz,” she said. “I better not keep you. Call me if you’re ever ready for round two?”

Rose brightened at the look Onion gave her. “Thanks,” she said.

Amethyst: hey RQ! how’d babysitting go? up your alley?

Rose lowered the phone. She pinched her melting ice cream in the other hand. Artificial coloring dripped down its wooden stick and between her fingers, making dark sugar spots of the sand at her feet. Humans and gems mingled on the boardwalk in a buzz of conversation. Two little brown dogs pranced around Orange Spodumene’s heels as she jogged along the shore.

A stone’s throw away, a group of mostly Crystal Gem pearls and quartzes were organizing teams and erecting a net. The perfect Jasper from Beta kindergarten had claimed a seat on the next bench with arms crossed, shooting Rose dirty looks. Ugh. Not her.

The water stretched out and out until its edge touched the sky. Rose closed her eyes to familiar whispers of waves drawing to and fro across the sand, the warm-up banter of the volleyball players.

She peeked at Jasper beside her, who scowled in response, and Rose shut her eyes again.

Maybe she could just ignore her.

Stomping footsteps approached her seat.

“Is this some kind of joke?”

Rose stopped pretending to sleep.

“I don’t want to fight with you,” she said.

Jasper bristled. “You don’t know what I want,” she said. “Why do you look like that?”

Rose clenched her hands. “Are you asking for an argument?” She looked Jasper up and down, and scoffed in her face.

Her impulsive unkindness sank in. Rose regretted the words as quickly as she’d said them. Jasper snarled and lunged at her.

A sharp whistle startled them both from their posturing. Pearl waved at them from atop her chair.

“No roughhousing allowed on the beach, you two,” she said, and pointed in their direction. Jasper took a step back from Rose. Rose scowled, but lowered her fists.

“Don’t point at me, Crystal Gem,” said Jasper.

“I’m pointing at the sign, Jasper,” Pearl said.

And indeed there was a clearly posted NO FIGHTING ALLOWED sign at Rose’s back.

From behind Pearl came the sound of someone’s gem connecting with a ball at high speed. “Either join us for volleyball, or take this to the Sky Arena where it belongs, and get it out of your systems. Oh, who‘s going to bring Blue Lace to the fountain?”

With Pearl’s attention once again on the game, Jasper and Rose eyed each other.

Rose sized up the other quartz. Jasper might be the prize of Beta, and Rose still felt strange in her skin, but she’d fought worse. She didn’t want to play volleyball. Though her classmates were friendly, Rose still felt too separate among the Earth gems, and too Earth among Homeworld gems, lacking even the shared camaraderie of the formerly corrupted.

It was like treading water just trying to figure out what gems expected of her, what she should be doing to catch up to everyone else. But of course a gem emerging from a bubble after thousands of years would behave as though they’d fallen asleep one day and woken to a totally different world. Of course floating in isolation would come naturally to a gem lost for six thousand, ten thousand years in a dream.

The feeling that clung to Rose was only appropriate to the situation, inside and out. As was the bubble-like distance she felt from the other quartzes, a sheer film spanning lifetimes between Eras 1 and 3, nothing like the warm welcome of her gem-mates on the Cruise Ship. On top of that, the occasional antagonizing gem, or horrified, grief-stricken expression at the mere sight of her hair, and the pressure inside Rose’s thoughts reached an unbearable point. She wanted to shout. She wanted to break something. It was momentarily impossible to swallow it all back down. She’d been so excited the first time she took up her physical form.

She breathed. Rose had a bad feeling building in her gem, but it looked like Jasper felt more or less the same.

“Let’s go,” she said.

Jasper’s hands flexed on empty air, like she was crushing something. “What?”

“Pearl said we can take this to the Sky Arena.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Rose expected Jasper to point out her hypocrisy, or the thousands of years since the Rose Quartzes were bubbled, but the other gem just nodded warily.

The feeling grew.

Jasper walked with her to the warp pad, however heavy her step. She still eyed Rose like a threat, but kept her distance, just a hair in the lead.

When their warp arrived, Rose paused at the entrance to the Sky Arena. Today the air was clear and cold, clouds present but sparsely gathered. Though there remained ample arena space for training, only one of the columns stood intact. Rubble littered the far edges, where the most damaged portions of the structure ended in open space. There was no sign of the life it once held, thousands of years in the past.

“What’s the hold-up?” Jasper called, hands on hips, from the arena floor. “Don’t you want to fight?”

Rose joined her.

They warmed-up circling one another, getting their bearings. Rose tried with some difficulty to remember the last time she’d fought another gem in this manner.

“That’s enough,” Jasper said, and their dance paused.

Jasper materialized her weapon, a horned helmet, and ran at Rose.

She dodged just in time, and sidestepped a second attack, but found herself flung to the ground when Jasper threw out an arm to catch her. Rose rolled and got back to her feet, scrambling up and out of the way on all fours while a kick from Jasper cracked the tile beneath her head.

They moved through the space in this fashion, Jasper charging at Rose’s clumsy dodge, until Jasper stubbed a toe on fallen debris. Rose seized an opening to hit her opponent directly, and they exchanged a burst of real blows. A forceful headbutt sent Rose stumbling backward.

From there Jasper charged her, and, off-balance, Rose felt her feet leave the ground. A brief sensation of butterflies preceded the vicious snap of the pillar meeting her back, and she slid to the arena floor.

Jasper advanced from where she’d thrown. Rose’s hand grabbed at the stone, steadying herself as she got back on her feet. Parched-rambla runes on the surface destabilized her grip.

The severed head of a fusion gem statue lay overturned by her heels, four eyes silently judging her. Jasper made it within striking distance.

Rose’s hand flew to cover her gem, the other still bracing her upright against the pillar. Jasper lowered her head.

“You’re so strong,” said Rose, on a breath.

“I’m supposed to be!” screamed Jasper, driving her horns into Rose’s chest.

There was a burst of light and static and the sound of Jasper’s voice.

When Rose reformed moments later, she landed on the arena bleachers.

She checked her abdomen for damage, then noticed the other gem standing over her.

“What was that?” Jasper said.

Rose gaped at her.

Jasper shoved a finger in Rose’s chest, right between where her helmet had pierced. “Why would you challenge me when you don’t even know how to use your weapon?” she continued.

Rose pushed Jasper’s hand away, but she persisted, pulling at the collar of her jumpsuit. Shocked, Rose couldn’t break her grip.

“Did you bring us here just to mock me?”

“No!” Rose said, gathering her legs beneath her once more. She swayed on her feet, but stood.

“Do you even understand how weak you are?”

“No,” Rose repeated. “I didn’t know.”

“This is an insult,” Jasper said, but released her, leaving Rose to lose balance and tumble back again. “I’m leaving.”

“Wait,” Rose said, getting up to chase after her. “Please!”

She reached the top of the steps just in time for Jasper to clear the warp pad. Jasper didn’t look back.

“What if you teach me?” Rose called down.

“Teach yourself.”

“I didn’t mean to insult you.”

At that, Jasper finally turned. Though Rose had the high ground, Jasper’s glare looked down upon her.

“Rose Quartz would be ashamed,” Jasper said, and disappeared into a beam of light.

Rose didn’t return to her room that night. Instead, she warped back to Beach City, and took up her seat on the boardwalk again. A slug was exploring the back of the bench. Rose watched the waves.

The water left behind a faint line of new pebbles and the dark brown of damp sand, which grew light again at the edges just in time for the next wave. Bits of glass sparkled from the streetlights. Rose watched a crab walk into the water.

“Isn’t it extraordinary?” someone said.

So lost in thought, a human had approached without Rose noticing. One of the food vendors, yellow curls framing his face. He wore glasses and held a grease-stained paper bag in his hands. 

She eyed him, not sure what answer was expected.

“Yes,” the human continued, answering for her. “This is Beach City’s infamous Brooding Bench. Perfect for subjecting your very soul to the sea’s impartial gaze, reflecting on cosmic injustices, pondering the depths of the subconscious, et cetera.”

Rose didn’t know how to respond, so she blinked. It was enough for the human.

“You picked our number one spot to brood,” he explained. “It used to be Brooding Hill, that way,” he pointed, “but now they do drumming circle there every night, but this bench is still good for a brood. It’s also way more convenient after closing shift.”

Still Rose said nothing. The human nodded at her like they were two sapphires atop a spire, not only strangers on Earth.

“My name...is Ronaldo,” he said unnecessarily, handing her a business card. On the back side was a smiling pepperoni fish. “Check out my blog. I also offer tutoring in Human Technology. Exclusively Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday mornings.”

Rose took it to be polite. “Thank you,” she said.

Ronaldo also handed her his paper bag. “Take this too. It’s on the house.”

Rose glanced at the roof of the fry shop.

When she looked back, Ronaldo had vanished. She opened the paper bag. Inside was a cardboard boat of food, which she retrieved. Fries. Well, not fries exactly, just the bits. Like shards. Of leftover fries.

Rose thought about trying to eat the human’s gift, but the more she looked, the less appetizing it became.

From the Big Donut’s back lot Rose heard a thump, a cry from Ronaldo, and the grievous wail of a car alarm.

The moment of curiosity left her. She returned the food to the bag with a sigh.

Chapter Text

Amethyst’s geminar frequently consisted of being told to “do whatever” during How To Decide Stuff For Yourself 101, but a workload had begun to emerge alongside GHEM guest lecturers and extracurricular recommendations.

“Thanks, Larimar!” Amethyst said, and Rose pried her attention away from a gem-human couple canoodling on the bleachers. “Y’all got any questions about GHEM?”

The schedule app had Rose’s weekly counseling appointment with Amethyst after class, so Rose would have to stick around until this ended. Just after that a volleyball practice was scheduled, which reminded Rose of the fight she’d picked with Jasper, which reinspired the twisting, swollen touch of guilt that had followed her ever since.

The sole benefit of their one-on-one conversations so far had been that, through sheer exposure, Amethyst no longer grimaced when looking at her. It was as much improvement as Rose could hope for, given the situation.

The couple on the bleachers noticed her spacing out in their direction. She turned back to her phone.

Little Larimar and Amethyst wrapped up their lecture. Amethyst approached Rose.

“Sup? Need any guidance?” she said. “How’s the homework?”

The homework consisted of a daily journal. Empty pages had threatened Rose all week. She’d managed to write most of her entries just that morning.

Amethyst flipped through the notebook. “Cool, cool. Can I make a suggestion?”

Rose watched Amethyst’s finger prod at her handwriting.

“After saying what you did, try writing how you feel about it. If you can’t decide, try to say why. Fair homework?”

“Okay,” Rose said, though the dread of having to write even more loomed over her shoulder. It did sound fair. Two weeks from now, she could request the mid-term challenge exam and test out of the course anyway. If she couldn’t succeed at a single thing she’d tried on Earth, she could at least manage not to fail Little Homeschool.

“Great! I’m not gonna look at these from now on, then. I know the geminar isn’t your thing, but you should try GHEM,” Amethyst said. “Based on what you say about your classes. You might like getting hands-on, getting social.”

“It sounds like a lot of responsibility,” Rose said.

“Yep,” said Amethyst, unlocking her phone. “No pressure. I’m gonna email you the GHEM handbook and a few spots I think you’d be into - hospital? Funland? - tell me what you think, yeah?”

“Okay,” Rose said. Extra journal entries and this. That wasn’t so bad.

The notification pinged on her email app. Rose didn’t check it.

As though following Amethyst’s example, the pressure of Rose’s other classes increased. Her mornings started in Garnet’s Mindful Calisthenics session.

An instructor known for precise feedback, Garnet’s wellness courses attended to the balance of mind and body. Rose had fun at the radio workouts, but struggled to sit still in meditation. As soon as Garnet started in on clearing one’s thoughts, the meaning of light itself, or a vast unknowable stretch of infinite cosmos, Rose‘s physical form would burn with anxiety before she even got to the part about infinite possible timelines of infinite possible choices in infinite possible cosmos with infinite possible outcomes.

Garnet’s lectures slipped through her without sticking. Garnet told them to be present in their physical forms, but Rose would quickly lose track of the sensations of her body no matter how hard she tried to trick herself into it. She knew at any time that Garnet could look into her and get some glimpse of those timelines, and Rose would be none the wiser.

Garnet had not acknowledged Rose once since Steven introduced them months ago, but today she paused at Rose’s cushion after the end of the geminar and gave her a thumbs-up.

“Nice work,” Garnet said, then kept walking.

3D Morp had surprised Rose as her favorite class after Peridot’s. Lapis Lazuli had declared them prepared to graduate to wheel-throwing last week, and today’s lesson entailed conjuring a vessel from spinning lumps of wet clay.

Rose’s current project looked more like a pot than her first attempt, at least. It took her most of the course period, fingertips streaked with slip, but she coaxed forth an object that had sides, and a bowl, and in theory would hold things. At the end of class, she carefully separated the object from the wheel and tiptoed to the drying cabinet so as not to destroy it.

“Looking good,” Lapis Lazuli commented over her shoulder as Rose slid it in.

Rose jumped, spinning to face her, and Lapis stepped away.

“Didn’t mean to startle you,” Lapis said. She didn’t look afraid, but the relaxed atmosphere characteristic of her geminar had vanished.

“Don’t be!”

Lapis gestured to the cabinet. “I’ll take care of that, too.”

“Oh, no.” Her elbow had dented Cherry Quartz’s beautiful mug. “I’m so sorry,” Rose said.

“Don’t be,” Lapis replied easily. “I‘ve got it. You go to your next class.”

She fared little better in Human Technology. Rose was still getting used to the phone; she only opened hers for the calendar and Onion sitting. She’d enrolled in the class with the hopes of relying on her knowledge of Earth, but everything she thought she knew was wrong.

Human Technology had a guest speaker, as well: Pearl’s human friend Kiki Pizza. She’d been intercultural exchange partners with a previous class and worked with Bixbite through GHEM.

“Thank you, Kiki! See, cultural exchange is easy!” said Pearl, every sentence an exclamation. “You can learn a lot from one another!”

“Yeah, we don’t bite,” Kiki joked, and Rose caught a few of her classmates eyeing one another in confusion.

“She means that literally!” Pearl reassured them.

“Most humans are friendly. We’re all kinda new to this,” Kiki said, “alien, magical neighborhood thing, but we’re all here on Earth, right? We can figure it out together.”

“Well said!”

Rose considered the Cruise Ship, where humans and gems lived together - sort of - since well before her gem had been unbubbled. She’d entered the enclosure just once before Pink Diamond’s death. She’d always loved humans, but unlike the amethysts, Rose loathed the zoo. Spending time on the ship in Era Three was strange. Wonderful, but strange. Earth, too. So Kiki hadn’t found it easy to adjust either. Maybe there were others in Beach City who felt the same way. For once, Rose’s classmates as a whole looked more nervous than she did, imagining an unforeseeable future.

Interacting with human beings had never quite lost its novelty, but having grown long accustomed to shared existence, she’d never considered that some gems might find it fearful. Holly Blue Agate’s scowl crossed her mind. But that was just Holly Blue; she had little patience for gems and humans alike, preferring to lecture them on the histories of the former Diamond Authority.

“Don’t be a stranger,” Kiki Pizza said when bidding them farewell. “Stop by Fish Stew Pizza sometime. You can hand this in for a slice of pizza after four punches.”

Kiki passed out stacks of a familiar colorful piece of paper. It was identical to the business card the French fry human had given Rose on the boardwalk.

Rose turned it over, but this copy had no URL or phone number printed on the back.

After Kiki left, class continued. Pearl demonstrated microwave operation with the help of Kiki’s pizza. The other highlight of Rose’s day was accidentally pressing the “baked potato” button. Pearl finally broke their conversation record by saying seven whole words to her, but they were “How long did you - Put that out!”

Singed but safe all around, Rose and her classmates endured a stern review of human appliance safety to cap off the class. She received a Pearl Point in Punctuality but none of the other nineteen categories. Before next class, they were assigned a video call on a human short-range telecommunications device, and a half-page reflecting on the experience.

“Who do we call?” one of her classmates, a Ruby, piped up.

“Anybody you like!” Pearl said. “Little Homeschool friends, or a human - check the billboard.”

The class collectively looked in the direction of the billboard, which was not visible.

“-nd of course, if anybody still needs a partner, you’re welcome to call me,” Pearl continued. “Each student must find an intercultural exchange partner by the mid-term to interview about personal narrative. Class dismissed!”

Rose nearly joined the throng approaching Pearl for her number, but thought better off it and left for break instead.

She napped in a patch of sun on the lawn, daydreaming pruning shears and watering cans and Cherry’s crumpled mug. The chimes and foliage sang overhead. She caught scraps of conversation between Homeschool students passing by her on the beaten path.

“-to Homeworld?” A Lapis was saying. “You really want to go back?”

“Only for a visit!” Her friend replied quickly. Not a voice Rose recognized. Maybe a fusion? “Everything’s changed. There’s organic life everywhere. Blue Diamond even allows common gems to relax in her quarters. Doesn’t that make you want to try?”

“I wouldn’t be able to relax in Blue Diamond’s quarters.”

“Right? Though, the one I really want to see is White Diamond.”

“Even worse. Can you imagine Her Purity herself - speaking with your voice, thinking your thoughts?”

“When you put it like that...”

Organic life, on Homeworld. What a universe she’d woken up to.

Rose’s nap was soon cut short by a tiny shadow falling over her eyes.

“Mind if I join you?”

She opened them to Aquamarine from horticulture class.

“Hi!” Rose said, sitting up.

“Hi,” said Aquamarine. “How’s the group project going?”

“The group project?”

“I heard Peridot’s going to show us a full-fledged cornfield today, and I admit, I’m curious about the ears,” Aquamarine said, taking a seat on the grass next to her. “Sprinkler irrigation nearly makes sense in theory, but I hope seeing the real thing will help it all click.”

The group project. She was supposed to trade off with Nephrite. Between everything else on her mind, she’d forgotten.

Rose sat up. “I’m really sorry, but I have to go check on my plant,” she said, leaving Aquamarine behind on the lawn.

Their plant hadn’t been watered all weekend. It was probably dead by now, and she had no way to magically revive it. Rose’s partner would be furious, and rightfully so.

She stepped into the greenhouse, mindful of the plastic sheeting, and saw the line of class pots atop one workbench. Every juvenile plant looked healthy, standing upright and vibrant green - all but one.

“Oh, no,” Rose groaned. “What is wrong with me?”

To make matters worse, at that moment Pearl appeared like a terrible pink omen from behind a potted tree. She carried an armful of leafy stalks that obscured half her face. “Excuse me?”

Rose froze, hand pressed to her cheek, eyes wide.

Pearl frowned at her, mouth twisted. “Rose Quartz?”

“I need to leave,” Rose said, and fled before Pearl could say anything else.

She walked around the greenhouse, down the path, down another, and another, until she reached the edge of Little Homeworld. Rose picked her way down and continued into the trees.

“I can’t do this,” Rose said, pacing among stones and sparse grass. “I can’t even do this one, simple thing. This is all wrong.” She used to work so hard. She used to be able to weather chaos. Pressure. Responsibility. Now she’d found herself somewhere everybody went out of their way to make it easy, expecting nothing, asking less, and somehow Rose could barely get out of bed for bare minimums. What a waste of Little Homeschool’s generosity.

She reached an open area littered with the telltale sign of martial arts training, splintered trees and boulders strewn about. Impacts from past gems’ roughhousing had left crisscrossing furrows in the earth.

Rose curled up against a boulder and pressed her face into a patch of lichen. She wanted to shout. She wanted to hit a tree of her own. She wanted to sleep.

At some point, her phone beeped at the notification for How To Decide Stuff. She’d missed all of Peridot’s class, and inconvenienced not only her classmate Nephrite but the instructor as well.

After today, Rose didn’t want to show her face in class again. Maybe she could just stay out here, with trees that were already dead and nothing more to break.

It was just a thought, but Rose already knew she wouldn’t go through with it. She’d come here to change. Like the commercial promised. Even if she’d done miserably at that so far.

With stonelike heaviness, Rose pulled herself off the ground.

She hesitated to take the bench at Amethyst’s class, feeling conspicuous in a way she hadn’t since her arrival, and settled cross-legged just beside it instead. The instructor showed no sign of knowing she’d skipped Horticulture, however. Rose‘s shoulders only relaxed after Amethyst declared a free day.

They snapped back up when Amethyst approached not a moment later. “Yo, Rose Quartz!” she said.

“I’m Rose Quartz!” Rose stammered out.

“Sure are. Did you read over that email yet?”

She didn’t have a stomach at the moment, but Rose experienced a sinking sensation all the same. “Um. I.”

Amethyst frowned at her. “You feeling okay?”

“I’m fine!” Rose said quickly, and then, with greater patience, “I’m sorry. I didn’t look at it yet. I’ll be ready before our appointment.”

“Alright...” Amethyst said, watching her. “You know it’s no big deal, right? You can wait till you’re ready to read it.”

I can’t, thought Rose. It’d never get done.

“Don’t stress, alright?”

“Okay,” Rose said, already defiant.

She returned to her apartment after class, tucked herself against the foot of the bed, and watched the stars all night.

The next day was a blur of anticipatory detachedness leading up to the hour of her horticulture geminar. Even a handsome reward of four Pearl Points in Punctuality, Perseverance, Performance and Preparation weren’t enough to tug her thoughts away from the image of that pitiful plant she’d abandoned to crack under its own dry weight.

During the break, Rose gathered her courage and made straight for the greenhouse, afraid she’d repeat yesterday’s mistake given the opportunity.

To her dismay, she entered to find not only Peridot, but both the instructor and Pearl in conversation.

“-about time to lead it up Drumming Hill to bloom,” Peridot was saying. “Before it eats a human, or cracks a gem by mistake.”

Rose picked her way to the class workbench, lifting her partnership’s neglected plant from the group. The soil was damp to the touch.

“Didn’t we move it last year, I thought?”

“It’s an annual thing.”

“The moss returned to the quarry?”

“It’s one of Steven’s.”

“Oh, okay.”

“It seems to remember where to collect itself, but won’t climb up the hill,” Peridot said fondly. “The wonderful mysteries of organic life. Rose Quartz!”

Rose tripped over a rake and caught herself. Pearl turned so that her sighted eye faced Rose.

“We missed you yesterday!” Peridot’s grin stretched as wide as ever. “Are you okay?”

So they had an audience. She wasn’t backing out now. “I skipped class,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut. “It was because I forgot about the group project. I’m sorry.”

“Goodbye, Peridot,” said Pearl. Rose felt the brush of her skirt pass.

“Is that all?” Peridot said. Rose chanced a look. The instructor had a genuinely puzzled frown behind her visor. “It’s fine, these things happen.”

“It’s not fine,” Rose insisted.

“Your wellbeing is more important than the homework,” Peridot said in the same tone she used for lectures.

“But this isn’t the first assignment I’ve failed,” Rose said, searching for the right words to explain the gnawing monster of guilt in her gem. “I’m not doing the work.”

“It’s fine,” said Peridot. “After all, the real goal of your first sessions at Little Homeschool is adjustment to an entirely new social structure and way of life! You have more than enough to contend with in that regard, and you’re almost doing okay at it.“

“But the grade,” Rose said. “The class. My partner?”

“Irrelevant. Grading rubrics and schedules are only a framework to support your social transition.”

Rose stilled. “What?”

“Yeah,” Peridot said. “Grades don’t matter!”

“Grades,” Rose repeated, “don’t matter?”

Peridot ducked forward into her space before Rose had quite realized she’d released her grip on the flowerpot. Peridot caught it before it could reach the ground.

“What did you think we did with the grades?” she asked Rose. “Aren’t you taking decide to do stuff 101?”

Rose hesitated to admit her problem of tuning out during lectures. “What about the dorms?” she said instead. “Don’t I need to be in school? To change? To live on Earth?”

“Not everyone who lives here attends Little Homeschool,” Peridot said. “Like Jasper, the nose one, she doesn’t go to school. She used to live in a cave in the woods, but allegedly Steven knocked some sense into her. Perfect example of Socialization and Support aiding the switch to Era 3! Pearl has a third “S” in there, but I always forget it.”

It occurred to Rose that she’d known this, as she passed Jasper’s grimace on the street at least once a day. “So there’s no consequence for just not doing what you’re supposed to? Not doing anything?”

“You’re not supposed to do anything, anymore,” Peridot said, placing the pot back in line with the others. “You have a choice here. Are you sure you’re in Amethyst’s class?”

Rose stared at her hands. A smaller, greener one touched her wrist.

“We are never going to scold you, or make you live in the woods, because you forgot your homework,” Peridot said. “That’s simply not how things work on Earth. It’d defeat the logical purpose of Little Homeschool. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Rose said.

“You probably need a minute to process your existential crisis,” Peridot suggested. “Take your time. We’ll be here when you’re ready.”

Rose didn’t trust herself to speak, so she nodded, and for the second day in a row turned tail and ran from the greenhouse.

Once again she returned in time for Decide Stuff, and there brought the subject up with Amethyst.

“Oh, yeah,” Amethyst said. “Grades aren’t real. You didn’t know that? My bad, man.”

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Rose confessed, too tired to keep holding her tongue around Amethyst.

“There’s an extra credit assignment for that.”

“Why is there extra credit, if the grades don’t matter?”

“Ugh, right, you’re from the Holly Blueniverse,” said Amethyst. “I gotta get better at explaining this. Yeah, grades aren’t real, but that doesn’t mean they’re pointless. It’s just a tool - to look back on what you’ve done. Kinda like these chats.”

Rose laughed. She felt like crying. “I’m so confused!”

Amethyst slapped her back. “As we say in Little Homeworld, welcome to Earth.”

“I saw the commercial,” Rose said, drumming her fingers together. “About changing. I wanted to give it a try.”

“So do something new,” Amethyst said carelessly.

”All of you, you understand something I don’t think I can,” Rose said.

Amethyst squinted at her.

Rose gestured in the air. “I thought that’s what you teach at the school. How to - how to do this right.”

”Aw. Aw. We have no idea what we’re doing, either. You’ll find your funky flow.” Her guidance counselor waved a hand at her as she said it, easy, effortless. “It takes time. Every gem worries about this. This is what Homeschool’s for. Your job right now is figuring out what you want to do and, y’know, just being yourself.”

”I don’t know how to start,” Rose said. “It feels like whatever I do, I only make a bigger mess. I don’t know how to fix it.”

“Be a mess if you have to,” Amethyst said. “Let it out before you worry about cleaning it up. Era 3’s hard sometimes. Especially for a Rose Quartz.”

Rose frowned.

“But hey, go easy on yourself, okay?” Amethyst offered a thumbs up. “We can look at y’grades, set a goal, but you come first. Word of advice? Talk to a friend. Or therapist. You’ll get there. And I’m here to help with the school stuff.”

Rose thought of the debris in the forest. “Alright.”

“Seriously, check that email. GHEM’ll do you a world of good if you’re feeling stuck.”

“Okay,” Rose said, rubbing her face. “Let’s try again.”

She stood elbow-deep in sentient moss, gathering another patch to haul in the direction of the hill. It squirmed from her grip every time she managed to collect an armful, but at least it didn’t try to consume her form like it would an organic beast.

Her plan had ended somewhere around the vague concept of leading a trail of moss toward the distant hilltop, hoping that would be enough to coax it away from the quarry. Now, that seemed less and less likely.

Rose walked a short ways with the moss in her arms, laid it on the road, and returned to the mother patch.

She gathered another cluster only to be interrupted by scattering light and the rumble of an engine approaching.

A powder-blue pickup truck with a constellation of dents pulled up to the quarry.

“Hello?” A pearl’s voice called from the car. The headlights switched off, and Rose saw Pearl blinking owlishly through the windshield, tight curls purple in the dark.

“Rose Quartz?” Pearl said. She stepped out of the driver’s side. “What are you doing here?”

Feeling the tremendous stupidity of what she was attempting wash over her, Rose said, “I overheard Peridot explaining about the moss. It needs to go uphill.”

“You were going to move all this by hand?” Pearl looked her over.

“I didn’t expect it to be so difficult on my own,” Rose said. Pearl didn’t say anything. Rose forced a shaky smile. “Maybe even ‘im-moss-ible’?”

“I see,” replied Pearl, and Rose wished a stone would fall and dissipate her on the spot. “Well, I did bring a spare shovel, if you really want to help.”

With the aid of teamwork, tools and transport, they made short work of the moss, levering great clumps of it up into the bed together. In no time they were bouncing down the road, green matter creeping over the windows of Pearl’s truck.

Squeezed into a human-scale passenger seat, Rose tapped her knees and glanced at Pearl, but her classmate’s eye remained firmly on the road ahead. They soon reached the top of the hill, which featured a ring of packed earth among the grass. Unloading wasn’t much harder, although after slipping and falling flat on her face the first try, Rose lifted the truck for Pearl to climb underneath and scrape out a reluctant patch, keeping hold of the frame. More moss slithered out from the tire well and up Rose’s arm, startling a laugh out of her. She heard a snort. Rose glanced down to see Pearl’s stony expression lighten while she worked, and it loosened the knot of anxiety in her gem.

They set such a good pace that by the time the sun came up, Rose and Pearl had reclaimed their seats in the car. The moss began to bloom. Pink blossoms opened across its surface, swallowed the sun’s light, and drifted free over the clifftop.

Pearl’s head was shrouded in yellow light. Rose saw the sunrise creep down her shoulders. Pearl smiled.

“You’re funny,” she said.

“I felt bad,” Rose said honestly.

“I wasn’t sure.”

“That that’s why I came?”

“That you were a nice person.”

“Oh.”

Pearl crossed her arms against the steering wheel. “But the truth is written all over your face,” she said. “‘Earth is strange’, ‘Earth is frightening’. Trying to catch up with the universe.”

Rose’s eyebrows drew together.

”When I first came to this planet, I felt left behind, too.”

Rose bit her tongue.

Pearl tapped the wheel and shrugged her shoulders. ”I hope it’s easier for you.”

“Thank you, Pearl,” Rose said. “That was nice of you to tell me.”

“I haven’t said it to anyone else,” Pearl said. “It’s different for them; they all watched it happen. Not like us. You’re the first person to make me think, ‘maybe she knows the feeling.’”

Rose smiled at her knees. “The other Rose Quartzes might.” They’re incredible. “You should visit some day.”

“I should,” Pearl agreed.

They watched the last of the mossflower ascend in warm silence.

“This was fun,” Pearl said, when the morning sun had reached to her hip over the dashboard. “Do you need a ride back?”

Rose shook her head.

“See you in class, Rose.”

She watched the truck pull away.

Chapter Text

The vague shape of a routine had gradually emerged between Rose’s daily commitments. Though she had yet to join a volleyball game, Rose found herself in that time-block spectating from Beach City’s boardwalk more often than not. Today, Rose had another Onion sitting appointment, and stopped by early.

The boardwalk was crowded with locals and visitors alike, enjoying a late bout of warm weather, and Rose’s usual bench had been claimed by a human family unit.

Jasper’s remained free, but Rose had managed to avoid getting in her way ever since the disaster at the Sky Arena, and thought better of claiming it. They’d finally reached an uneasy truce which rested on not acknowledging one another from adjacent benches, and Rose was in no hurry to mess things up with Jasper again.

Instead, Rose purchased a treat from the Big Donut and sat at one of the tables inside. Knees and elbows tucked in, she stared through the window at the sand. Bill the donut man was reorganizing the pastries in their display case and talking out loud to the empty store, something about doctors and distance learning.

Chasing after a scampering ruby, a two-gem nephrite was dashing into the shallows, kicking up sheets of saltwater as high as her friend’s head. Rose lapped at a Lion Licker and watched beachgoers on their romp. The tall gem fell face first into the water in a tumble of braids and emerged as a pair of nephrites laughing in each others’ arms.

Her ice cream slid down its wooden stick. Rose finished it.

“They grow up so fast,” said donut man Bill.

The Nephrite fusion re-formed on the shore.

”Half the town saw yours off! I was in here, selling donuts, you could see - and hear - it all through the window.”

Bill had closed the case and was showing his teeth to her, arms on the counter.

Her fist closed around the piece of wood.

“Your boy? Steven?”

Was he talking to her?

”Aren’t you Universe’s magic space lady?”

Oh. “Well...” Rose fiddled with the stick. The punchline was visible now, under her thumb. A RING. “She’s gone.”

“My sincere condolences!” said Bill, with a spreading flush of embarrassment. “I assumed, with all the magic, an ex-donut boy returning to life...so much has changed! You have the same face, you know. And the same giant, pink hair...”

“People tell me that,” Rose said. She stood up. “Excuse me, I need to leave.“

The Big Donut’s door chime drowned out Bill’s next words.

Rose showed up early to Vidalia’s. Onion accepted her gift of a donut hole by flattening the soft food with the heel of his hand, and politely declined the box of tomato soup that Bill must have put in the bag by mistake. He showed Rose his collection of G.A.L.S., and told her a story with them.

Vidalia asked on her way out, “Would you be down to sit for a painting geminar sometime? I love your hair.”

Amethyst: football next to LHS parking lot in 10. come play!

The Decide Stuff geminar mass text was a solid wall of extracurricular invitations from Amethyst. Usually Rose dismissed the notification.

She made her way to football. A handful of gems were already gathered, both students and instructors. Pearl and Holo-Pearl were demonstrating legal passes.

“Yo, RQ!”

When she stepped onto the court, Amethyst laughed in her face.

“You smell bad,” she said.

Rose‘s gem sent a wave of panic through her form. “What?”

Amethyst reached around Rose to unstick the TELL ME I SMELL BAD sign taped to her back. “Looks like Bluebird’s work.”

“Oh, that little pest,” Pearl said.

“This one’s an actual prank. She’s getting better.”

“If only she would know better.”

“Bluebird talks a big game, but her heart isn’t in it,” Amethyst said. “And you could totally take her one-on-one.”

“But you shouldn’t have to,” Pearl added before Rose could voice doubts; she still felt uncoordinated, like a stranger in her own body, most days. She certainly wasn't a fusion. “Tell her to stop, and let us know if she gives you any more trouble.”

They dropped the subject soon enough for football. She’d been afraid to attend, but the playful energy of the group was infectious. No one pointed out her presence as unusual. In no time, they were already picking up.

“Have you seen Volleyball?” Rose overheard Pearl saying to Amethyst as she left.

“I think she went to Bismuth’s with the beetles...”

Rose’s room had gradually accumulated personal effects over the course of her time in Little Homeschool, both interesting things she’d picked up on the beach and classwork. 3D Morp pieces occupied one corner of her shelves, which were also decorated by peeling Pearl Points she had absentmindedly scraped off of Pearl’s weekly progress reports.

The table in her room had become, among other things, home to every paper she’d been handed since enrollment. On top was a eucalyptus care sheet which also proclaimed 80 percent of koala habitat has been lost to human homes and businesses, drought and fires (San Diego Zoo). She laid the TELL ME I SMELL BAD sign on this pile. Rose put the tomato soup on her windowsill, next to a cola can and a cluster of itty bitty iridescent seashells.

The class text pinged. It was a photograph of Amethyst, hair back, holding up a lime-green plastic disc.

Amethyst: round 2 on the green?

Rose considered her seashells. She could stay here. There was nowhere to go tonight. She could sleep, and maybe even dream. She’d participated in a sport today.

Rose brightened. She had participated, and it had gone better than expected. Maybe it was worth another shot.

Another piece of paper was taped to her door. It rustled when she stepped out. In permanent marker it read, COME TO MY CAVE - FROM JASPER (THE NOSE ONE).

Both at the beginning and end of the message someone had written FIGHT ME and scribbled it out, but the words were still visible.

There went her second chance at sports.

“Bluebird?” Rose said slowly, closing the door behind her. She tore the sign from its place, looked around, and didn’t see anyone.

Rose had to ask directions to Jasper’s cave, but luckily the first person she ran into was Biggs Jasper, beloved by all, who knew exactly what the sign was talking about and didn’t mind helping out a stranger.

“Only thing is, Jasper doesn’t live there anymore,” Biggs told her. “Why are you looking for her?”

Rose showed her the sign.

“That’s not Jasper’s handwriting, either.”

“I think it’s from Bluebird Azurite.”

Biggs scratched her head. “You should just ignore her.”

“That’s what Amethyst said.” Rose rubbed the paper between her fingertips. “I’m just going to ask her to stop.”

“Good luck!” Biggs said. “Remember, she talks big, but her heart‘s not in it.”

Jasper’s former residence amounted to an abandoned campsite with boulders piled everywhere. The “cave” was a shallow space framed by topaz-sized stones, young grass, and yet more piles, the remnants of a scraped-out blue tarpaulin hanging over one rock like a curtain. Rose pushed the fabric aside and stepped in.

Jasper must have been about her height, if not a bit taller - a valuable quartz soldier - and once inside Rose hadn’t room to spare.

Rose pictured Jasper coming back to this place, every day. Ducking into this cave, horns scraping the awning, always a little too big. Like a juvenile cactus straining in its pot. Not the image of Jasper she was used to.

Well, no sign of Bluebird. Though not deep, the cave was dark, and Rose had no desire to linger. She grabbed at the curtain again.

A blade of ice came through the curtain and into her shoulder. Knocked off-balance, Rose hit the back wall of the cave. She curled to the side just in time for a second sword to glance off the stones and shatter into pieces.

“Surprised, Rose Quartz?”

Bluebird Azurite loomed in the entryway, sword drawn, light streaming through the spaces between her limbs.

“Bluebird!” Rose said. “Wait!”

“This is for humiliating me eight, or maybe nine weeks ago!” Bluebird said. She charged.

Rose covered her gem, but Bluebird’s blows landed mostly on her arms and shoulders. “Listen to me,” she tried to say, but Bluebird ignored her, backing her against the far wall of the cramped cave.

The attacks from Bluebird’s weapon stung, tearing through her physical form as quickly as it tried to recover the damage.

“Bluebird, stop!” Rose said, reaching to block the other gem’s next strike with a hand. She stopped it at the expense of burying the blade in the palm of her physical form. Rose growled from the sudden pain, but grabbed for Bluebird, who flapped her wings and hovered just over Rose.

“I just want to talk, Bluebird,” Rose said. “Where did all these pranks come from? Why aren’t you in Little Homeschool?”

“You’re no match for Bluebird Azurite,” Bluebird said, ducking away from Rose’s swiping fingers.

Why wasn’t this working? “I said, I just want to TALK!” Rose shouted, slamming a fist against the wall in frustration.

The whole cave seemed to shake, and fold in on itself, and Rose flinched back from where she’d struck. Showers of dirt and stone fell on their heads. A grinding sound preceded the tumble of piled boulders outside; the light falling across them shrank dramatically.

Bluebird vanished in a blinding flash, depositing a snarling eye-gem ruby in Rose’s lap, already drawing a weapon, while her aquamarine component flew for the collapsing entrance.

The ruby was strong, and she had the advantage of surprise, wrestling Rose onto her back. Luckily, once Rose got a solid grip to hold her at arms’ length, there wasn’t much she could do but snarl. At the cave mouth, Aquamarine was met with a crack of light not even large enough for her gem. She kicked at the wall of stone.

“Are you alright?” Rose said to them. “I’m so sorry.”

“Ugh, don’t say that.” the aquamarine rolled her eyes.

“Yeah, what’s wrong with you?” said the Ruby, who’d been trying to reach Rose’s wrist with her teeth. “We’re here to kill you!”

The aquamarine kept flitting around the cave entrance, looking for holes or unstable stones. The crack of light flickered in and out as she flew past, leaving Rose and the ruby in darkness.

“Why would you do that?” Rose said, even though she knew the answer.

Ruby kicked her legs. “Not being able to beat you up just made us so mad!“

“I‘ve never met you,” Rose said. “What did I do?”

“You look just like Rose Quartz, obviously,” said Aquamarine.

“Yeah!” Ruby agreed.

Rose frowned. “Pink Diamond did something to you?”

“Rose Quartz. I know it’s hard for you Quartzes, but try to keep up.”

“She literally just said ‘Rose Quartz’,” Ruby said.

“Yes, Rose Quartz ruined our life! Via Steven Universe, of course.”

“Yeah! I hate that family!”

“She’s the only reason we fused in the first place; to trick her son and revenge our careers.”

“They took away my service to the empire award,” Ruby said, lower lip quivering despite her venomous frown. “I’ve done nothin’ but serve the empire, ever since the day I emerged.”

“Then precious Steven had to go and change all the rules,” Aquamarine said.

“So we hate Steven and we hate the Crystal Gems and we hate their ridiculous school.”

“They’ve even got statues of her everywhere. Disgusting.”

Rose’s grip on Ruby loosened. “Oh no. Is that true?”

“Why would we make all that up?” spat the Ruby. “Are you cracked?”

“I’m going to let you go now,” Rose said instead of answering, feeling the cold stone against her back. She felt she should say something about that prejudicial phrase. “Please... don’t stab me yet.”

She set Ruby on her feet. They eyed one another, but Ruby didn’t attack her again.

“Ugh, I can’t get through this,” said the other gem in the room. “Ruby, fuse with me.”

Rose saw the streak of sunlight glint on Ruby’s gem when she turned around.

“Right now?”

“Bluebird’s stronger than either of us, isn’t she? Hurry up before I change my mind,” Aquamarine said, holding out her hand. Ruby reached for it, and in their place stood Bluebird Azurite once again.

“Can I help?” said Rose, picking herself up off the cave floor. Bluebird summoned her weapon and wedged it between two stones at the opening, leaning all her weight on it. Rose picked her way over fallen shale and added her strength to the attempt, pressing her palms against the coarse curves.

“Why would you trap us like this?” Bluebird complained.

I didn’t mean to, Rose wanted to say. “I lost control. I’m sorry.”

“Apology not accepted.”

Rose glared at the rock. “Fine. Let’s just fix it.”

With some work they managed to lever Bluebird’s stone out of place with a well-placed strike on Rose’s part, only to have their momentary hopes dashed by a fresh tumble of gravel.

“Don’t punch it again!” said Bluebird.

Their window of light shrunk as it grew golden with the evening sun’s approach. Rose could feel the dark walls towering over her on all sides, her only points of reference Bluebird’s silhouette and the speck of sun before them. She shivered.

“Groan.” Bluebird slid to the ground, legs stuck out in front of her. “This is hopeless.”

Rose paused for a break as well. She curled up against the wall, crossing her arms over her knees.

“What’s your deal, anyway?” Bluebird asked. “Why do you look like that?”

“I don’t know anymore,” Rose said. “You’re not the only one who has a problem with it.”

She could just make out Bluebird’s raised eyebrow.

“What?”

“Find that difficult to believe.”

Rose thought about lighting up the cave with her gem, but who knew how long it would take to get out. They needed to conserve energy. “Hard to believe? How’s that?”

“Those little old Little Homeworld gems are too nice,” Bluebird said. “D’you think it might not just be you?”

For some reason, this made Rose angry. She frowned in confusion. “Weren’t you just going to kill me for being Rose Quartz?”

“Yes, and I will,” Bluebird said, with a very Aquamarine eye roll. “But I’m not Little Homeschool. They’ll take anybody.”

“‘Everyone deserves a chance to change, so come on down today!’” Rose said. “The commercial.”

“They mean it. I thought I’d gotten one over on the Crystal Gems by fusing, when I first came to torture Steven, but they knew the whole time.”

“Really?” Rose responded generously.

”They treated me like a totally different person,” Bluebird said, throwing her hands up. “Invited to yoga, and baking, and, and Mr. Universe even shared his human comedies with me....oh, all the while knowing I was the one who’d tried to kill Steven.”

“Sounds like a lot of trust,” Rose said, thinking about people who’d tried to kill her.

”Or rather, the two, if they’d even be considered me - I’m neither Ruby nor Aquamarine, yet both, and, different now - it’s so hard to explain. I never understood it. This is why Aquamarine loathed fusion,” she said. She kicked a rock.

“They must have liked you, if they were willing to take a chance like that,” Rose said. Their skylight had turned amber.

Bluebird laughed. “They’re nice. That’s history. I’m never baking Earth cakes again. The point’s that you haven’t actually done anything, so they can’t possibly hate you.”

Rose rubbed her shoulder. She took an unnecessary breath. “Sometimes, I feel like they want to make up for how horrible Pink Diamond was. They try so hard to be nice about it, that I look the way I do, they don’t want to admit I’m no better.”

“Have you considered the possibility that, just maybe, you are?” Bluebird said.

Rose frowned at her.

A rumble interrupted their conversation. Pebbles rained down on them again.

“Is it falling?” Bluebird shrieked, scrambling to her feet.

The boulders in front of the cave mouth collapsed inward. Rose dove for Bluebird, tasting water when the fusion snapped her wings out to fly.

She braced her elbows around Bluebird’s smaller body, hissing under the weight of tumbling rocks.

“Are you alright?” she asked Bluebird, who spat out dust beneath her.

“I thought we were crushed,” Bluebird said.

Rose felt the debris over them shift. Just then, a hand grabbed her by the hair and yanked her out of the rubble. Rose held tight to Bluebird, pulling her with. The grip released as soon as she was free, tossing Rose carelessly onto the sparse grass patch outside the cave. She let go of Bluebird.

Night had fallen. She could hear the bugs sing. Overhead, millions of stars. A familiar jasper stood before them in the wreckage of her former campsite.

“Jasper!” Rose said, getting up.

“I heard about the note,” Jasper growled. “Someone set a trap, and you walked right into it.”

“It was me,” Bluebird said.

Jasper ignored her. “I would never do that,” she said to Rose. “If I want to crush you, I’ll say it to your face.”

“I didn’t think it was from you,” Rose said.

“Oh.” Jasper appeared lost for words, blinking with a wider-eyed expression than Rose had yet seen her with. “Whatever. You’re out now, do what you want.”

“Much obliged,” said Bluebird.

“I don’t have time for weaklings. That includes weaklings using my name to feel strong. Got it?” The last bit was directed at Bluebird, who stuck her tongue out and hopped out of reach of Jasper’s fist.

“Thanks for saving us, Jasper,” Rose said, surprised by her own warmth.

“It’s not like I like you,” Jasper said. She looked at the rubble again. Then she turned around and left.

Charged with nervous energy from their sudden rescue, Rose grinned. “Truce?” she said to Bluebird, holding out a hand.

Bluebird made as though to take it at first. She threw a fistful of sand in Rose’s eyes with the other hand.

“Ha! Fooled you again!” Bluebird said, alighting on the midnight wind, all four feet kicking with self-satisfied delight. “You ‘aven’t seen the last of me!”

Chapter Text

With midterm around the corner, milestone classwork had begun slotting into place. Lapis assigned a project, Pearl a video call and essay, and Amethyst doubled her recruitment efforts, finally convincing Rose to submit a GHEM application.

“You wouldn’t believe who came up to me the other day,” Amethyst said. “Bluebird, of all gems. She says hi!”

“Is she, you know,” Rose said.

“Hey, now,” Amethyst said. “She was cool before, then not so cool... long as she stays cool this time, ‘everyone deserves a chance to change’, amirite?”

Peridot assigned partner projects. She paired Rose and Pearl off to research and present on nursery crop production. Some time after classes had ended, as the sun started to fall, they met at the greenhouse as planned.

“Sorry I’m late,” Rose said. Pearl had already laid out her notes on the workbench. Rose flipped over a sheet of statistics on soils and fertility management. Each page was coated in dense, neat rivers of text. “You learned all this just from the class?”

Pearl laughed. “I did the work,” she said. “Why so late?”

Rose’s classmate Cherry Quartz had coaxed her into the volleyball game this time. She’d been sitting in the usual bench, beside Jasper’s, when Cherry called her over.

Rose curled her toes in the sand. The other team was readying a serve as Rose clasped her hands together in an imitation of a teammate. She glanced back at the benches. Behind her, Jasper was getting up to leave.

“Ready, everybody?” Pearl said. “Remember; anywhere but the gem!”

At her whistle, a blur roughly the size of Rose’s face flew straight at her; startled away from actually hitting the ball, Rose jumped out of its path.

The ball struck Jasper squarely in the back of the head, pitching her face first into the curb with a solid CRACK.

“Are you alright, Jasper?” Pearl called to her. Biggs Jasper, beloved by all, jogged past a stunned Rose to Jasper’s side.

Jasper picked herself up off the sand.

“Your gem,” Biggs said.

The fissure down Jasper’s nose split her glare in two. Rose’s hand flew to her hair. What had she-

Pearl said, “Who’s going with Jasper to Rose’s fountain?”

“I don’t need an escort.” Jasper brushed Biggs’ offered hand aside. Her leg discorporated at the knee mid-step. Jasper teetered on one foot, throwing out her arms to maintain balance until her form stabilized again. She glanced over her shoulder, saw both teams staring, and turned back around.

“Rose Quartz, please escort Jasper to the fountain,” said Pearl. Rose winced; the way Pearl said her name still took her off guard, rare as it was.

“Do you need directions?” Pearl said.

“Um, no.”

“Take the Crystal Temple’s warp.”

“Right,” Rose said, and jogged after Jasper. With minimal conversation, Rose steered the furious, glitching gem in the direction of the beach house.

Jasper kept trying to wave her away on the stairs, but Rose hovered at her elbow, worried Jasper’s leg would go out again.

It did, when they made it to the middle of the Crystal Gems’ home, and Rose barely caught Jasper in time to prevent another faceplant on the kitchen floor. Jasper still tried to stop Rose from getting onto the warp pad with her.

“Enough,” Jasper said.

“Pearl said to escort you to the fountain.”

“You don’t take orders from her.”

“I don’t want you to go alone either.”

“I can handle myself.” Jasper continued to scowl, but let Rose step up. Rose activated the warp.

Jasper’s form gave out again while they were traveling in the warp stream; the same leg, and she swatted away Rose’s hand when they landed before it vanished a third time and Rose once again helped her upright. The crack itself didn’t appear to be worsening, but the leg didn’t rematerialize this time when Jasper stood.

“Are you alright?”

“Fine,” Jasper said.

“It’s not far.” It was only a short walk from the fountain’s warp pad to its healing waters. Jasper accepted her arm as a crutch, digging all five fingers into Rose’s form.

Rose could see it ahead: endlessly flowing water, giving off sparks of the sun, cascading into the pool from a raised platform holding a statue whose tears poured from shut eyes. The figure’s dress brushed the surface of the platform, as though standing atop the water. Her palms were raised, elbows bent - on Earth, a gesture of peace, to the Homeworld of six thousand years ago, an inexcusable insult - Rose couldn’t tear her eyes from it. Jasper stumbled again, and Rose nearly fell too.

Jasper was shaking her shoulder, trying to stop her. Rose snapped her attention back to her charge.

“What is that?”

Rose didn’t even know where to begin. Then, she noticed what Jasper was pointing at.

Someone moved in the mouth of the fountain’s gate, much larger in size than the two quartzes. Jasper’s leg rematerialized and she stepped out of Rose’s grip. It limped closer, scattering puddles at its feet, and Rose saw three arms swing.

Her immediate thought, that they’d encountered a corrupted fusion, evaporated when she noticed its faces.

“Steven,” Rose said.

“What?” Jasper hesitated.

“This has to be one of Steven’s living plants,” Rose said. “Careful.”

The cactus Steven finally noticed them. A furious grimace rippled over its faces. Then it spoke, and Rose’s gem lurched. It had Steven’s voice, but she’d never heard Steven like this, warped and scraping at the edges.

“STUPID REAR LEFT TIRE,” it said, stamping the ground.

Jasper raised her fists. One of them flickered into static and then reformed. Rose stilled her with a hand. “It sounds upset. Maybe we can calm it down.”

‘I hate these gems and their feelings,” Jasper groaned under her breath, but allowed Rose to take the lead as they approached Cactus Steven, only touching her arm once when her bad leg destabilized again.

“STUPID CACTUS. JUST NEED TO BE ALONE,“ Cactus Steven said. “WHY’D. STEEVEN.“

Rose approached him. “Hi,” she said. “We just want to use the fountain.”

“THERE’S THE FOUNTAIN,” the cactus shouted. “USELESS, STEVEN!” He began lumbering towards them.

“What does that mean? Why is it talking like that?” Jasper said, looking around as though Steven would step out from behind the rosebushes to greet them at any moment.

“CAN’T GO TO LITTLE HOMEWORLD,” Cactus Steven said. “THERE’S THE FOUNTAIN. EVERYBODY’S HAPPIER.”

Cactus Steven charged up to them, and Jasper retaliated in kind, piercing the tough plant skin with her horned helmet. Rose froze, watching Cactus Steven draw back just as Jasper lunged forward, and then her physical form stung with a hundred tiny points of pain.

Cactus Steven backhanded a dumbstruck Jasper into the wall of the fountain’s star-shaped gate, her wild hair a haystack brimming with green needles. Rose saw her leg go out again, and then Jasper’s hand fell out of form, sending her slipping to her knees against the wall.

The arm rematerialized, but Jasper’s hand still dragged along the ground, connected to the rest of her form by a flimsy tubelike projection. Rose didn’t have to get close to know her crack had worsened.

Still Jasper was bracing herself against the concrete, eyes only on Cactus Steven as he roared and showered the both of them with needles once again.

“NOT NOW, CACTUS STEVEN,” he said. ”THIS IS JUST PERFECT! WHY CAN’T I HEAL?”

“Jasper,” Rose said, “Get in the fountain.”

“CAN’T THE FOUNTAIN,” Cactus Steven said.

Jasper ignored her. She’d tucked her hand into her uniform and stood to face the agitated living plant.

“LEAVE ME ALONE,” Cactus Steven said, pacing back and forth, waving its arms. “WHY CAN’T LEFT EVERYBODY.”

This time, when Jasper struck, her hand stuck in Cactus Steven’s body. Five arms wrenched her out and threw her in Rose’s direction. They tumbled back through the gate together.

The weight of Jasper’s physical form pressed into her, de-and-rematerializing in sputters. Rose struggled to push Jasper off. The both of them were covered in painful needles that every movement agitated. Cactus Steven stomped towards them, all of his eyes narrowed.

“STUPID CACTUS,” Cactus Steven said.

“She needs to use the fountain,” Rose said, hand straying to her gem. “Let us through.”

Still stunned, Jasper was trying to summon her weapon again, but the sparks of light around her head fell out of shape as soon as they appeared.

Rose tried to reach for hers again for the first time in weeks, to no avail. Why did the simple act of materializing a weapon have to suddenly be beyond her?

“I DON’T WANNA HEAR GARNET’S ‘I TOLD YOU SO’,” Cactus Steven said as it bore up on them.

“Garnet?” Rose said, frowning.

“CAN’T GO TO LITTLE HOMEWORLD. JUST PERFECT!”

Moving quickly, Rose managed to drag Jasper out of the way with her, but Cactus Steven struck again, knocking Jasper out of her arms.

“EVERYBODY’S HAPPIER WITHOUT ME THERE,” Cactus Steven wailed, spraying pins in Rose’s direction. Rose bit her tongue.

“It’s repeating his words,” Rose realized. “Of course - it’s his plant. Jasper! It’s repeating Steven’s words.”

Collecting herself from the ground, Jasper said, “Who cares? How do we beat it?”

Cactus Steven cast angry glares between them and the fountain. Rose backed up.

“Maybe we don’t have to beat it,” Rose said. “Maybe we can talk to it.”

“WHY WON’T.”

“Steven cactus,” Rose drew Cactus Steven away from Jasper. “What’s wrong?”

“STEEVEN,” he answered.

“I have to use the fountain. I hurt my friend here and need the water to heal her. You‘ve got to let us through.”

“EVERYBODY’S LEAVE ME ALONE, CAN’T GO TO LITTLE HOMEWORLD.” Cactus Steven said, still shouting, but no longer advancing to attack them.

“You’re alone? Steven’s alone, Steven’s trapped somewhere?”

“NOT NOW, CACTUS STEVEN!”

“He wants to be alone,” Jasper said. “I understand.”

“Is she right?”

“I TOLD YOU SO.”

Jasper crossed her arms, hand still hanging out of her uniform. “Let us through. I’ll fight you.”

“THE FOUNTAIN, STEEVEN. CAN’T”

Rose, caught up the moment, wrapped one arm around Jasper. “Jasper!”

“Get off,” Jasper said.

“LEAVE ME ALONE,” Cactus Steven said.

“Talk to us,” Rose said. “What’s wrong?”

“CAN’T EVEN FIX A TIRE,” Cactus Steven said. “CAN’T EVEN HEAL A STUPID. NOT NOW, CACTUS STEVEN.”

“It caused problems and ran away from the consequences to cry here,” translated Jasper.

“How...on the nose,” Rose said, voice trembling with nerves.

Jasper rolled her eyes. “Welcome to the club. Move aside, vegetable.”

“Why can’t you go to Little Homeworld?” Rose said, shushing Jasper. “Or is it Steven?”

“EVERYBODY’S HAPPIER, NOW I’M LEAVING TOO. AMETHYST HAS EVERYTHING FIGURED OUT,”

Jasper snorted.

“HATE TO SEE THE LOOK ON PEARL’S FACE,”

Rose raised a hand to her mouth.

“WANTS A HUG,” Cactus Steven said, lowering his arms.

“Wants a hug,” Rose repeated, feeling the prickle from needles everywhere on her body. She swallowed. “Okay, come here.”

“A hug?” Jasper said, like she’d swallowed something sour. At Rose’s look, Jasper added, “If that’s all it takes. Fine.”

She rolled her eyes but accepted Rose’s offer of an arm. They both stumbled before Cactus Steven, and braced themselves as five prickly arms drew them in for a painful embrace.

“STUPID REAR LEFT TIRE. I DON’T WANNA USE THE FOUNTAIN,” Cactus Steven said, two and a half faces buried in Rose’s hair. “REMINDS ME OF MOM.”

Rose stilled.

“SHE LEFT EVERYBODY BEHIND. NOW I’M LEAVING TOO.”

“I’m sorry,” Rose said to Cactus Steven.

Cactus Steven’s grip curled against her side, her head. Its touch was gentle, if painful, but Rose felt not unlike a small organic beast between a cage of fingers, a pearl in the palm of a diamond.

A CRACK! rang out in the greenhouse. Rose paused in her retelling.

Pearl was staring at her from the other side of the workbench, horticulture diagrams abandoned. Two halves of a snapped pencil were held tight in in her left fist.

“Are you alright?” Rose said.

“That...poor cactus,” Pearl said, putting aside the bits. “Please finish.”

“Well, after the cactus hugged us,”

“I hate this,” Jasper said. “Is this enough?”

Cactus Steven released them, stepping out of Jasper’s way. Rose helped her sit at the edge of the fountain and slip in with eyes tightly shut, ducking her head underwater. Cactus Steven watched the two without a sound. When Jasper’s head broke the surface, for a moment, she looked as though she were in more pain. But Jasper’s light body quickly repaired itself, and they got up to go, leaving behind sheets of cactus-needles in the water.

Cactus Steven, stopping by the star-shaped entry to the gate, waved good-bye at them. Rose waved back.

When they stepped off of the Little Homeschool warp, Rose offered her hand. “Thanks, Jasper.”

“Don’t talk to me,” Jasper said. “That was all your fault.”

“It was exciting! You communicated with him!” Rose said, smiling.

“I only followed my diamond’s example,” Jasper said, but she had a smile on her face too.

“Diamond?” Rose said, her good cheer replaced by a chill.

“Steven,” Jasper said. “He’s always wasted time talking to monsters instead of fighting them. Now I see why his tactics have been so effective.”

“You know it’s not your job to serve the diamonds any more, right?” Rose said.

“My job is to do something better with my life,” Jasper sneered. “Today I did.”

“It wasn’t easy coming to Earth,” Rose said, “but Little Homeschool has helped me. Maybe it could help you, too?”

“Back off,” Jasper said.

“Alright. I j-“

”Who cares? I respect the judgment of Steven Universe, my diamond, and so does his cactus.” Jasper said. “Why should I care what you think? You may look like Rose Quartz, but you’re nobody.”

Rose cut herself off. “I know.”

“Good.” Jasper squared her shoulders.

“But you‘re right about one thing, Jasper,” Rose said. “It was all my fault. I’m sorry for putting us in danger.“

“If you want to apologize, you can stay out of my way.” The other gem made for the apartments, leaving Rose by the warp.

“Sounds like things worked out in the end.” Pearl had Rose’s notebook in hand, but their work for the evening was long done.

“They did,” Rose said. “Thank you for listening. Somehow, it worked out. But I still feel bad about the way it happened.”

“I think you need to get over yourself,” Pearl said. She was smiling. She checked her phone, lifting her eyebrow at something. “You’re not responsible for everything.”

Rose traced a star shape with her finger in the dirt atop the table. “I guess. Sorry to dump all this on you,” she said.

“It’s no trouble,” Pearl said evenly, polite cheer at the edge of her words.

“How was your day?” Rose asked, but Pearl had gathered her things into her gem and was standing to leave.

“I’m sorry, I have to check something,” Pearl said. It was then that Rose noticed her face.

“Your eye,” Rose said. The faint cracks always visible across the side of Pearl’s face had spread toward her hairline.

“It’s fine,” Pearl said.

“Are you alright? I can go back to the fountain with you,”

“The fountain won’t help,” Pearl cut her off.

“I know,” Rose said, “But-“

“Please,” Pearl said. “You’re not responsible for this, either.”

Rose held her tongue.

“It was Pink’s doing, and some - there are reminders everywhere. These things take time.”

Rose thought about the statue at the fountain. “You can ask for another partner, if working together like this isn’t good.”

Pearl frowned. “Excuse me?”

“If seeing my face-“

She was cut off by a sharp laugh. “Ha! Your face?”

Stumbling, Rose tried to choose her words. “If it’s, if looking at me brings up bad memories - I just don’t want you to f...”

“I told you I missed era two, just like you did. I was gone for eight thousand years. Yes, I knew Rose Quartz, but I only knew her as Pink,” Pearl said, and there was a far-away look to her for a moment. “Your face is just fine. It’s your personality that’s the trouble.”

Rose had lost the thread completely. “Pearl, am I hurting you?“

“You’re so much like her,” Pearl said. “So am I. She made us. I can’t help but remind myself sometimes, and then my face does this. It’s okay, Rose.”

As she spoke, Rose saw a threadlike crack slow its outgrowth through Pearl’s brow.

“Is there anything I can do?” she said.

“Don’t skip class,” Pearl said.

Rose pinched her pants at the knee. “I mean for you.”

Pearl beamed at her. “Do your part on the project.”

Chapter Text

Rose found her seashell collection full of water one afternoon, sitting in spots of puddle across her windowsill. The rain had come and gone while she’d been in class, and Rose had forgotten to shut the window that morning.

She closed it now, yawning, and straightened her now-damp paper pile on the desk in front. Rose deposited a folder from class on top. She retreated from the bedroom into her living space.

Her ordinary fern, Plant, spilled over the edges of a flowerpot from 3D Morp I on the counter. A modest stack of additional flowerpots waited within one another on the floor below. Rose’s living space, outside the bedroom, was an open room separated roughly into a leisure area and a space of creative productivity.

The productive side, attached to the bedroom, contained a working table, countertop and sink. It was also the side with the window. The other consisted of a low table and a few boulder-like cushions on which to lounge. It had, like her bedroom, become a repository for various sorts of things Rose made or brought home, including a number of unsuccessful morp assignments, a local crab place’s takeout menu, and a deflated Dogcopter balloon from Funland. She had storage in the form of two closets as well as the various drawers and cabinetry, but most things that came home with Rose never made it that far.

It was quite a lot more room than she’d expected to live in, but the high walls and narrow apartment space still inspired an uncomfortable buzzing in the back of her mind from time to time, especially on a dim and foggy evening. As far as she‘d seen, each gem utilized their lodgings according to their preferences - many living in personalized apartments - and Bismuth and her team would happily help a gem construct a place of one’s own, within reason.

Rose plugged her phone in to charge and revisited a Philosophy Majors playlist in her TubeTube app history. The phone’s little speakers distorted the sound of the music against the counter into something unfamiliar.

Rose settled against her cushion to catch up on overdue Decide Stuff journaling. She’d also have to complete a goal sheet after her midterm tonight. Her goals being her biggest problem, Rose had avoided looking at the paper since its assignation, buried somewhere in the stack.

Onion waved hello at the Big Donut. He was alone. I was pleased to see him.

Across the room, her phone pinged with a new message, then another, interrupting the music.

Today, Peridot 5XG told the geminar how corn works. We visited the cornfield. It’s organized. I feel glad when Peridot talks about life on Earth.

The phone went off again. Rose got up to check it. It was a message from Pearl - Volleyball, from class.

Pearl: Did you take the project folder?

Right. Their horticulture midterm. They’d made progress on the presentation together in class today. Rose looked through the bedroom door at her pile.

Rose: Yes
Pearl: Perfect.
Pearl: Would you return it before you leave tonight, please?
Rose: Ok
Pearl: and good luck! :^)
Rose: Thank you!
Rose:  :^)

Rose smiled at the screen. Another text popped up, not from Pearl.

Amethyst: yo!
Amethyst: mad early but if you’re ready now, we can pick u up in LH instead of BC
Amethyst: pearl drove today

The smile warped into a grimace. They were almost an hour ahead of schedule. Rose considered her options; she needed to deliver the folder to Pearl, and return a community bicycle to its rack tonight.

She wasn’t keen on troubling them at the beach house if it could be avoided.

Rose : 10 minutes ok?

Ding!

Amethyst : perf. cya soon

The Decide Stuff midterm was a half-shift with one of Amethyst’s human GHEM partners, but the work itself sounded uncomplicated; Rose would provide some form of labor at the hospital for the night and then share her thoughts in class. She’d gone over the information with Amethyst, who had been quick to reassure her the important thing was getting used to “human stuff” and working with humans in a group. By that metric, maybe even Rose couldn’t botch it.

“They’ll give you something easy, just to help out,” Amethyst had said. “It’s a learning experience.”

Rose pedaled down Little Homeworld’s cooling walkways. Ocean Jasper waved to her on the way out of their corner of the neighborhood. The wet surface of the path, plastered with fallen leaves and sticky evening light, gleamed like molten metal. The sun was as red as the leaves themselves, flashes flickering about the heels of hedges and patchworked personal dwellings. Everything smelled of water and earth.

And everywhere, gems and humans. A Topaz fusion sitting on a garden bench, humming to herself; the Sapphire from Rose’s horticulture geminar, crouched by the side of the path, eye trained on a broken line of ants scrambling to collect themselves. She even saw the friendly french fryman, making conversation by the bulletin board with old Crazy Lace.

An overwhelming feeling bubbled out of Rose’s gem and up her body onto her face, splitting it into a smile.

She laughed, and didn’t duck the leaves of the next low-hanging branch in her path, her head and shoulders wet with streaks of rain.

“This is why I’m here,” Peridot had said that morning, her bright yellow boots lost in the mud. “This corn and this rain. They never happen the same way twice. Everything on Earth is changing, all the time!“

Rose returned the folder to Pearl’s. She rode the bicycle back to the Little Homeschool parking lot, where a familiar van idled.

Amethyst was leaning on the driver’s side door, chatting to fellow instructor Pearl at the wheel. Upon noticing Rose, they froze for just a moment in the way people still tended to when surprised. Amethyst waved her over and Pearl raised a hand in greeting as well.

“So it’s your first day of GHEM? How wonderful,” Pearl said. Greg’s sunglasses were hanging from the front of her shirt.

“Just the one-day midterm,” said Rose.

Splendid!”

Pearl had the uncanny ability to make eye contact with every part of Rose except her eyes.

“We’ve got one pit stop before the hospital,” Amethyst said when they were all in the van. “Buckle up.”

Pearl and Amethyst had seatbelts on, but Rose, cross-legged on the mattress, staring into a box stacked with tapes, didn’t bother searching Greg’s bedroom for one. Though far from empty, the van felt strangely vacant.

Their “pit stop” was just for gas. While Pearl filled the tank, Amethyst vanished into the gas station convenience store. She returned bearing an armful of bottles of various colors.

“Drink?” she asked Rose, offering an electric-blue beverage. Rose shook her head. Amethyst buckled into her seat and Pearl started the car again. The little curtain over the van’s back window fluttered.

“So, how are classes?” Pearl asked in an overly-cheerful tone.

“Good.” Amethyst had her hand out the passenger-side window. “Rose Quartz’s midterm session is second-to-last on the list, I’m almost done for the week.”

“Oh yes, Rose Quartz,” Pearl said. “How is your Human Technology project coming along?”

“Me?” said Rose.

Pearl glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “You’ve found someone to interview?”

“Someone to interview?” She still hadn’t asked anybody. Privately, she wasn’t sure she considered herself capable. Rose had nearly avoided thinking about it. She’d been reminding herself grades didn’t matter, with a pit of guilt in her gem nonetheless, for weeks. “Of course.”

“Excellent!” Pearl said. “Who is it?”

“It’s,” Rose cast about for a human-sounding name. There was a paperback wedged beneath Pearl’s seat, but she couldn’t make out the author from this angle. “It’s a surprise?”

“Hmm,” Pearl said, and Rose could tell she’d been caught in a lie for once. But Pearl just smiled. “In that case, I look forward to being surprised!”

“Excited to hang with humans?” Amethyst asked her, leaning around the seat back.

“A little,” Rose admitted. Amethyst beamed.

“I knew there was a secret Earth geek streak behind shy Rose Quartz, ha.” She took a sip of antifreeze. “You’re gonna do great. Dr M‘s chill.”

They pulled into a spot across the street from the hospital and crossed to the emergency room entrance, stepping through shiny reflections of the streetlights overhead. Rose followed her friends, ducking her head through two sets of automatic doors and into a waiting room. Hanging over a hand disinfectant dispenser was a colorful portrait of fish. Approximately-human-sized chairs wound against one wall of windows like a serpent, a few of them occupied.

A human child was slamming a purple cube of plastic against a low table. There were a couple of slightly taller tables containing piles of glossy magazines, and informational graphics adhered to each wall. The child’s table had been adorned with a magnificent sculpture, a 3D morp of colorful wire punctuated by thick wooden beads. On the wall a mounted television was playing Little Butler reruns, closed caption tape unfurling across the bottom.

Reception desks and doors to elsewhere sat behind a clear barrier opposite the chairs, and Rose could see an EXIT sign down the hall ahead of them. Amethyst and Pearl walked right to the desk and hailed the receptionist, who greeted them with warm familiarity.

“Dr. Maheswaran will be right out,” Amethyst said to Rose as she caught up to them. Rose startled.

The door beside the receptionist’s window opened. Pearl beamed and Amethyst moved to hold the door.

“Pearl! What a surprise,” said the doctor. “Hello, Amethyst, and you must be Rose.”

“Hello,” Rose said. Dr. Maheswaran had blue reading glasses on, connected by a plastic chain curled around the base of her neck. Rose had never seen them before. She felt like a giant, half again as tall as she should be. Taking Dr. Maheswaran’s hand, Rose shook it gently, as gently as she could.

“How goes Connie’s college preparation?” Pearl asked.

Dr. Maheswaran laughed. “You know Connie; spreadsheets everywhere. That girl doesn’t know how to slow down.”

“Steven sent us a very nice photo of the two of them last week,” Pearl said, pulling out her phone to show it off.

The teens stood on a wooden platform in some northern forest, arms around one another, Connie bright with laughter and Steven more subdued but smiling, eyes on her. Behind them stood an enormous boulder specked with lichen and lovers’ autographs, and a shock of bright pink fur.

“If you have ten minutes now, you might catch her,” Dr. Maheswaran said. “I left my bag at home. Connie‘s on her way over with it.”

“We need to get back,” Pearl said. “Please tell her, ‘Pearl says hi!’”

“Later, doc,” Amethyst said. She winked at Rose. “Good luck!”

After the instructors left, Rose was alone with Dr. Maheswaran, who lead her through the door and down a series of hallways. There were humans everywhere, walking to and fro with a sense of purpose or loitering in the many doorways. It was almost like being back on the Cruise Ship.

“Let’s get you in scrubs,” Dr. Maheswaran said. “I’m well aware that gems don’t need physical clothing, but you know hospital policy.” Rose didn’t. She stared at Dr. Maheswaran’s long, dark hair as she followed the smaller human through the hospital.

They stopped in front of a closet. “So, Rose, Amethyst said you went over our options, and she passed along your signed paperwork,” Dr Maheswaran said, digging through a box of blue fabric. Someone walking by them shot Rose a wary look. There were other colors and cuts of fabric on the shelves; folded blankets and spotted gowns, a pile of street cone-orange microfiber towels. “We can’t use your skills in violation of HIPAA, so you’ll be double-checking labels with the lab techs tonight.” She glanced Rose over. “You’re about the same size as Biggs Jasper. See if these fit.”

Rose took them. She probably was. Her gem had been based on other quartzes, and all but a few quartz gems manifested the same foundation to their physical form.

“Do you breathe?”

“Yes,” Rose said, then caught herself. “But I don’t need to.”

“Would you put on a mask, please?” Dr. Maheswaran lifted the one hanging around her neck in example.

“Of course,” Rose said, and did.

“Now let’s introduce you to- oh, one moment.” Dr. Maheswaran answered her phone, though Rose hadn’t heard it ring.

“Hi, honey,” the doctor said. “Are you out front? Great. See you in a minute. My daughter,” she said to Rose, ending the call. “She’s dropping something off. But, yes. For safety’s sake, we’ll think of you like any other human.”

“Right,” Rose said. The fabric in her hands, eggshell blue, had the texture of the the curtain in Greg’s van.

“Mom!”

Dr. Maheswaran and Rose turned to see Connie in a bright green polo slip around two nurses and a doc, medical bag in hand. She tripped over her own feet when Rose looked up, but quickly recovered. Connie joined them in front of the supply cabinet.

“Connie!” Dr. Maheswaran said, drawing her daughter into a quick, tight hug. When they separated, Dr. Maheswaran was holding her bag. “Thank you for coming out. You took Lion?”

“Mom,” Connie said. “I’m still on my learner’s permit.”

“Of course,” Dr. Maheswaran said warmly. “Connie, this is Rose Quartz, one of Amethyst’s students. She’s here with GHEM.”

Rose looked at Connie.

“Hi,” Connie said. “I thought you were a rose quartz! Connie, human; nice to meet you.” She offered a hand. Rose firmly grasped it. The difference between their hands was so great, the human girl’s arm looked as though it had disappeared inside her fist. There was a tiny grey Dogcopter embroidered on the breast of Connie’s polo.

“Oh, and welcome to earth,” Connie told Rose’s hand.

“Thanks,” she said. “I like your shirt.”

Connie looked down. “Oh yeah,” she laughed. “I forgot I had this on. You know Dogcopter?”

“I like the movies,” Rose said. “I haven’t seen all of it.”

“The books are much better. They left out a lot of stuff.”

Rose blinked. “What stuff?”

“Oh, it would take hours to explain. You should check the library for them. You know about Dogcopter’s nine lives?”

“From Dogcopter 4,” Rose said. “His...parents were cats?”

“Yeah! In the books, it’s a whole thing. They finally made use of the anticapitalist subtext in Pupcopter, but the movie timeline skips Dogcopter’s memory garden and the intradimensional torus arc completely. Technically, the series isn’t over yet, but still.”

“That is... a lot to leave out.” Rose said. Her face felt immobile.

When Connie got fired up like this, she would punctuate the end of each sentence by either furrowing or raising her eyebrows. She was doing it now. “There’s a lot of lost lore. But the trailers for Dogcopter 6 show some  promise.”

“Connie,” Dr. Maheswaran interrupted. “I’m sure Rose would love to hear about your Dogcopter lore, but we have work to do.”

“Right! Sorry,” Connie said, beaming. “Bye, mom. Love you. Nice to meet you, Rose. Check out the book.”

“I will,” Rose said. “Nice to meet you.”

“Let’s introduce you to the lab,” Dr. Maheswaran said after Connie had left.

Rose was introduced to the technicians on duty and instructed in applying adhesive labels to empty containers and taking down double-counts of refrigerated tubes before they’d be sealed for shipment. She wasn’t permitted to handle samples because of another hospital policy. It was strange work. For some reason, maybe all the GHEM guest lectures, she’d expected something different. She didn’t feel entirely suited to this; gingerly peeling stickers with her fingertips in the depths of a maze, listening to humans talk around her. But then, Amethyst made placements based on their counseling sessions, so if Rose was uncomfortable she only had herself to blame.

The humans weren’t unfriendly, but they didn’t speak much, and behaved like gems. Rather, like gems had once been designed to behave. They wore uniforms by role. Rose could already tell a couple apart by their uniform, like Dr. Maheswaran’s coat. The humans had specialized purposes and spoke mainly about the task at hand. She knew from discussing the placement with Amethyst that she and Dr. Maheswaran had only recently convinced the hospital to join GHEM. As far as Rose could tell, she simply provided a spare set of hands for non-specialized tasks. That would increase the efficiency of humans with specialized skills and knowledge. It made sense.

A few hours into watching the lab staff, she thought she’d figured out the shape of the hierarchy based on who issued commands and who spoke familiarly to one another, but it was hard to be sure. It was unsettling to see. But the humans she worked with were friendly and patient. They made a few attempts at small talk. Dr. Maheswaran stopped by again halfway through her shift to send Rose on a break. Rose followed her down another narrow hallway. It fed into the reception area, which she’d seen from outside before; an open space met by halls on every side, with a big round reception desk punctuated by computer monitors.

Dr. Maheswaran led them into a tiny white room. Inside, a white plastic chair sat at a white plastic desk. The rest of the room was occupied by two white refrigerators under a bright white light. Rose stepped in behind the doctor. The room felt full to the brim. Dr. Maheswaran opened the fridge.

“Would you like a little juice?” she said. The interior was a wall of color; plastic cups of juice in purple and red and orange, green and pink gelatin and squat green cans of soda crowded the shelves, and the drawers at the base had been stuffed with tiny bottles of water.

Rose didn’t really want a little juice from this strange oasis, but she did want to make the most of GHEM. “Sure,” she said. Dr. Maheswaran handed her a tiny purple cup, sealed with foil. It was even tinier in Rose’s grasp. She pinched the edge and peeled it back.

“How are you doing?” Dr. Maheswaran said. “I should have come to give you a break twenty minutes ago; the ER’s on fire tonight.”

“It’s fine,” Rose said. She sipped at the juice. It tasted like corn.

Dr Maheswaran made small talk for a few more minutes, until someone tapped on the doorframe asking for her. She left Rose in the little white room with a thumbs-up.

Her work went smoothly the rest of the evening, thawing Rose’s caution and emboldening her coworkers. In the final hour or so, there was less to do, and conversation picked up as people went home. They were curious about gems. It was sweet. It reminded her of the way she felt about human beings. This team hadn’t worked with Biggs, but they knew of her. When work slowed in the other side of the room, she answered questions she’d fielded hundreds of times from other humans in the past, and found herself warming up to it.

“You’re essentially a solar-powered robot, right?” one of the lab techs was saying, a small square man with short hair. He looked older than Steven but younger than Greg. Rose had forgotten his name as soon as he said it, but he was adorable. He’d wandered over with nothing to do. “How do you manage energy? Hydroelectrics? Sound?”

“A kindergartener would explain that better,” Rose said.

”You don’t need to eat or sleep at all?”

“Gems don’t have to sleep, but they can.”

“Do gems dream?”

“Of course,” she said.

“Is it true you’re time-travelers?” the supervisor asked. “I follow this blog that said so - though they also claim gems are just figments of the imagination.”

Rose squinted at the roll of stickers in front of her. “Well, we live much longer than human beings do. Most of the time.”

Soon enough, it was time to leave. Dr. Maheswaran came to collect Rose. Rose again followed her, but this time she knew the route.

“Isn’t the exit this way?” she said when they took a turn towards the little white room full of juice.

“I’m parked in the garage. Little juice for the road?” Dr. Maheswaran said, pausing in front of the white room.

“No, tha-“ Rose began, but an ear-splitting shriek from behind them froze her in place.

“I DON’T WANNA!”

On the opposite side of the reception desk, a human child was screaming.

“I know you don’t wanna, but you have to,” an adult human was explaining.

“NO!”

Rose couldn’t see the child over the counter, but she spotted the adult human right away, standing in front of an open doorway.

“If you don’t get your shots, you’ll get tetanus,” the adult human was saying. “You don’t want tetanus, do you?”

She heard a high, wet sob, and then, in the same piercing tone, “YOU’RE MEAN.”

“Yes, I am mean. Come on, sweetie, you’re too old for this.”

“I’M TOO OLD FOR TETANUS!”

The counter came more than halfway up the adult; the child might be as small as a Ruby, or an Aquamarine. The adult crouched, vanishing from view.

“NO! I HATE YOU!”

“I know,” said the adult. “Shots are scary, come here...”

Dr. Maheswaran and the admins hadn’t reacted whatsoever, but there was one human staring as openly as Rose, so she wasn’t imagining this.

She couldn’t see what happened next, so she didn’t catch the next thing the adult said, but the human child screamed something else. Then the human adult was standing most of the way up and walking into the room. Rose caught a glimpse of brown hair before the door shut.

“Everything alright there, Doctor?” One of the admins called from behind a noisy monitor. They nodded in Rose’s direction.

“All set, thank you,” Dr. Maheswaran said, turning to Rose. Rose saw her glance down and uncurled her fists. Dr. Maheswaran tapped Rose’s arm for her attention. “Is everything all right?”

Rose stared at her.

“Necessary care for humans is often uncomfortable, or even painful.” Dr. Maheswaran said. “People of all ages fear needles, but children lack the frame of reference of an adult. They can’t internalize that a little hurt today means less hurt later on, and see only the immediate threat of pain.”

“What’s going to happen to her?” Rose said. The door didn’t have a window. It did have a number, but that number was just C.

“The child? They’ll receive their immunizations. Their body will develop a defense in response to the contents.”

Everything was fine, but for some reason Rose couldn’t stop the fearful buzz that had come over her.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” Dr. Maheswaran said. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“A ghost?” Rose said.

“It‘s a figure of speech. You seem shocked,” the doctor explained. She glanced at the reception desk. “Let’s head to the garage.”

Dr. Maheswaran didn’t ask her any more questions until they had gotten in her car, Rose squeezing into a seat made for someone smaller. Dr. Maheswaran’s radio was tuned to a late-night easy listening station, and Rose was surprised to hear a familiar tune. The parking garage was like a stack of alternating concrete ramps on top of one another, decorated by sparse but brightly reflective vehicles. Because of this shape, their journey out took the form of a downwards spiral. It was raining outside again.

They pulled out onto a highway and Dr. Maheswaran turned down the volume.

“Would you like to talk about it?” she said. Rose found that she did.

“Well,” Rose began, drumming her fingers against her thighs. How could she explain the boiling feeling in her gem? I panicked, because all of the humans here act like gems, and I remember what happens when a gem refuses to do what they’re supposed to, made no sense in Era 3, and it made no sense in a human organization either.

“I was worried about the child,” she said, regardless. “When a gem shouts like that, there are consequences. Er, were consequences.”

”I really should tell Amethyst to find a trauma counselor for these gems,” Dr. Maheswaran said, sort of under her breath. But to Rose, she said, “Children are still learning. A responsible adult understands that a child usually needs more information, or reassurance, and won’t punish them for signs of distress.”

“Throwing a tantrum is a sign of distress?” Rose said.

“What else could it be? A scream is one of the first distress signals an overwhelmed or frightened human might communicate with. We scream our way into this world. For a child, whose experience managing emotion is limited, it’s completely natural. That’s not to say emotional outbursts are exclusive to children.”

Rose remembered her GHEM form. She retrieved her phone and texted Amethyst that they were on the way back.

The rain was chopping up Dr. Maheswaran’s headlights, fading in and out of focus with each pass of the wiper.

“Rose, I have to be honest. A hospital is a high-stress environment.”

Dr. Maheswaran’s eyes were on the road. The green beads of her eyeglass retainer reflected no light, unlike the rain. They passed under a highway sign; Beach City, 1/2 mile.

“Is it?” Rose said. It hadn’t seemed too bad, until the end there.

“Very. That’s true even among humans who have preexisting context for human behavior,” Connie’s mom continued. “I’m concerned about the level of distress you expressed tonight.”

Rose flushed with shame. “I’m sorry.”

They spiraled down the exit ramp.

“The ER’s not for everyone. There’s no shame in that,” Dr. Maheswaran was quick to say, waving her hand in the air. “My concern is for you, Rose Quartz. In my professional opinion, another setting might be a better fit for your internship.”

Oh.

So she’d messed things up again. Rose nodded, gathering her voice before she spoke. “I understand. Thank you for helping me tonight, Dr. Maheswaran.”

“You did nothing wrong,” was the reply. “Frankly, most gems - and humans - I’ve met would benefit from a therapist - someone to help process difficult emotions.”

“Like adult humans do for children?” Rose said. She couldn’t help but smile, weakly.

“Much different,” Dr. Maheswaran said. “The average adult doesn’t perform that job without training. Almost anyone can have a child.”

“Anyone? That’s wonderful,” Rose said.

“It usually is.” Dr. Maheswaran took a turn towards Little Homeschool. “A parent-child relationship is more like...you were in a military?”

“It’s close enough,” Rose said.

“How close?”

“Most quartz veins are used to produce soldiers,” Rose said. “Made for fighting.”

“What were you made for?”

Rose’s arm was squashed up against the window, and her hair spilled over the seat around her.

Dr. Maheswaran took her eyes off the road for a moment. “Rose Quartz?”

“Rose Quartzes are the ideal warrior, like quartzes were supposed to be,” she said, staring out the window at silhouettes of bushes and trees just outside the headlights’ reach. “Pink Diamond made them herself. She didn’t want to hurt them.”

“Well, did you ever have a mentor - like someone above you, or older, who took care for your wellbeing? Someone to explain new experiences?”

“No.”

“Someone lower in the ranks, then. People you had to defend, or teach, who eventually became self-sufficient. It’s not quite like that, but that’s the closest analogy I have.”

For that, she could think of something. “Yes,” Rose said. “Something like that. I looked after and tried to protect them. Although I don’t think it was noticed, and if it were it wouldn’t be welcome.”

She was surprised by a laugh in response.

“It sounds like you would understand parenthood better than I thought,” Dr. Maheswaran said, wiping the corner of her eye. “I’ve often felt the same way.”

Rose sighed, fogging up the window. ”I’m afraid I caused more harm than I ever helped.”

“Everyone is,” Dr. Maheswaran said. “We just try the best we can to heal it, and listen when they talk to us. Is this it?”

They’d pulled up to the Little Homeschool parking lot.

“This is it,” Rose said. “Thank you, Dr. Maheswaran. For everything.”

“You’re welcome, Rose Quartz. Good job today.”

Dr. Maheswaran looked a great deal like her daughter when she smiled.  Rose’s phone went off while the car was pulling away.

Amethyst : perf! can you swing by bismuth’s?

Rose : ok

She padded through puddles to the center of Little Homeworld, thinking.

There were voices leaking out the forge’s open door, but Rose thought nothing of it until she heard her name. She paused.

“-rom Rose Quartz,” Amethyst was saying. “She’ll be here in a sec.”

“Oh,” Pearl said in a tone that could have cracked Rose’s gem. “GHEM with Priyanka went well?”

“Probably,” Amethyst said. “She’s pretty chill.”

“I don’t think I’ve seen that gem once since she arrived,” Bismuth said. “I nearly dissipated my form when she walked in.”

“It’s super weird,” Pearl said. “Oh, but I do feel bad.”

”She’s in both your classes?”

“You get used to it,” Amethyst said in her shrug voice. “Kind of. Still weird, though.”

Rose didn’t come any closer. She could see firelight lapping at the doorframe.

After a moment, Bismuth ventured, “...you don’t think Rose did that on purpose?”

There was a silence.

“I don’t know what to think,” Pearl said.

“I’m no Peridot, but this Rose is cool with me.” Amethyst replied. “Huge fan of Earth. She’s really trying.”

“I wish Rose could see this,” and Rose was surprised to find tears in her eyes, a lump in her throat, at the sound of Pearl saying her name. “She was always worried while making the rose quartzes. She’d be so happy to have one back on Earth with us.”

“Rose would have loved this,” Bismuth said.

“Mm.”

Rose heard movement, a sandy shuffle. “We were always daydreaming about Earth’s future. Gems doing what they wanted to do.”

Amethyst chimed in again. “Yeah. It’s sad.”

“Wish we’d ended on better terms,” Rose heard Bismuth say. “Hope people aren’t troubling your doppelgänger.”

“Nah, everybody’s pretty used to it now. Though I guess Bluebird freaked out on her a couple times.”

A sigh from Pearl. Rose could picture the way she shook her head in distaste. “Bluebird. She covered the van in tissue rolls this morning, by the way.”

“Lmao, fresh.”

As the subject changed, Rose finally snapped out of it, face wet from the rain. She’d invaded their privacy enough. She’d just go inside, hand in her form to Amethyst. Just a few steps to the door, a few pleasantries, and then she could return to her room and sleep.

“It’s easier to fix than the proper prank, at least.“

Rose heard an inner door door slide open and shut.

“She got me with a sponge over the front door,” said a new voice. A human man.

Greg.

“Ha,” Amethyst and Bismuth laughed. Rose heard Pearl snort.

“That rose quartz gives me the willies too,” Greg continued. “I don’t know how you do it, Amethyst.”

Just a few steps from the forge door, Rose turned back.

Rose: sorry, may i bring it tomorrow?

Rose: forgot I had to meet a friend.

Amethyst: np! see you tomorrow, RQ

Chapter Text

“Welcome to Earth!”

Another Rose Quartz bursts into being, heels scattering dust and stone as she stumbles forward into the waiting arms of her fellows. Her gem is on the back of her left hand, acquainting itself with the daylight.

“Thank you!” says the Rose Quartz. “I love Earth already.”

Rose, fingers brushing the gem in her abdomen, watches another emerge. That Rose Quartz is greeted in turn, a friendly arm on her back. One of the Rose Quartzes waves Rose over too, a left-shoulder gem.

She’s only had her physical form a short time, and when she heeds the call it shows, stumbling forward into a haphazard, three-pronged embrace. They catch her before she manages to fall on her face, and Rose is just in time for the emergence of another behind them.

“Welcome to Earth,” someone says. The new gem laughs and bumps elbows with their group hug, and Rose, all but invisible in its midst, feels a warmth throughout her.

It doesn’t last. Sand slides away between her toes, cold sea pours over their heads, and in its wake Rose is tossed head-over-gem against a curving staircase, columns crumbling in enormous pieces around her only to reform, twisting into place.

Rose gets to her knees, then her feet, staring at the pink toe of her shoe on floor tiles yet pinker. She looks up.

Starlight.

The zoo. Rose backs up until her calves hit something soft, jumping at the sensation. She turns around. It’s just the cushion.

There’s a loud noise outside the door.

She also sees, like a trip through Funland’s house of mirrors, as the Rose Quartzes appear in perfect formation. They line the stairs and wait in rows upon the dais, eyes shut, arms crossed in cascading Diamond salutes.

“Why are you doing that?” Rose says. No one responds. The noise outside comes louder, closer. Heavy footsteps. “What have I done?”

The door bursts open, with it another memory, and Rose realizes she’s dreaming.

Yellow Diamond walks in. Pink Diamond waves at the Rose Quartzes with a flourish, as if to say, see?

“What is this?”

Aren’t they perfect? Don’t they act like you think Gems should? I paid attention. See? Everything I learned about a gem’s physical form, about building an army, I learned from you.

“You remember how I wanted them to be a surprise,” Pink Diamond says, voice high, eyes on Yellow.

Rose’s ears fill with static - or she’s changing the dream not to hear it, to soften the blur of Yellow Diamond’s sneer. The memory changes again. The Rose Quartzes still stand silent in their places. She doesn’t look at the assembled gems. Rose can’t remember this. She doesn’t want to.

She never even gets to explain how they’re made.

Over the heads of Pink Diamond’s modest collection, Yellow debates the merits of their continued existence, an exchange of words about the rebellion leader who was first to emerge, Pink Diamond’s indignant defense of the whole batch. Yellow’s scorn; the audacity of Pink, making use of her own colony without consulting the other Diamonds! Now one of your defective gems is out there causing trouble for the empire, just like you!

Pink snaps at Yellow. Yellow raises her arm.

Unable to wake, Rose squeezes her eyes shut. Yellow’s destabilizing lightning hops over her body to instead carve an arc through the bowed heads of the many Rose Quartzes, who even now have not set a toe out of line.

They burst. Condensation gathers on her gem. Beneath the window that looks out on the stars, Pink’s room fills with the crackle of physical forms dissipating under Yellow’s power and a hailstorm of gemstones against the stairs.

Rose sinks to the floor, picks one up, unable to find her breath, turning it over. The facets squash and stretch her own expression, but no light shines within the gem. There are no cracks.

“Bubble whatever you want to hold onto,” Yellow says, already turning on her heel. “We’ll have the rest shattered before they reform.”

Hands shaking, she frames the first Rose Quartz between them. The shape of a bubble sputters and flickers away. She barely catches the gem before it hits the floor again.

“Honestly, Pink.”

Yellow’s pearl spares her a glance.

Rose breathes.

Rose breathed.

She lay on her side in bed, eyes open. Little Homeworld was awake with the voices of passersby. Outside her window Rose watched the balding branches of her neighbor, the tree. Its leaves. The moon, a watermark in the pale morning sky.

How she’d like to stay in bed and watch them some more. Her mid-term was today.

If she didn’t get out of bed, she’d abandon Pearl in Little Greenhouse to present their work alone. It would mean the end of their friendship, forever, and all of Pearl’s patience and generosity would have been for nothing.

Rose got out of bed and dragged her feet in the direction of the phone. A pile of calendar notifications appeared when she woke it, and Rose grimaced.

She was really trying not to be selfish about this final, but she didn’t have to like it.

Pearl: Let’s meet at the warp pad after exams?

At least she’d have no exam in Mindful Calisthenics. Garnet’s philosophy was only compatible with the arbitrary school-themed schedule Steven, Connie, and Pearl had initially designed in the sense that Garnet accepted the existence of the Little Homeschool timelines and chose to make the most of her life within a given subjective reality. That, and she loved the infinite potential of Steven’s creativity. But stuff like this was irrelevant to her course. Garnet explained as much at the start of the geminar and then it was business as usual.

If only she’d known school was fake when she first enrolled! If only the horticulture midterm were fake. Maybe she’d be closer to doing what she needed to do now.

Their exercises ended. Rather than leave immediately in her usual fashion, Rose fought herself to remain seated and won. She fiddled with her hands, trying not to look like she was waiting to talk to Garnet, waiting to talk to Garnet. She couldn’t be sure how much the MC instructor knew about her, or what timelines appeared in Garnet’s vision, but she’d tried not to stand out in class.

“Rose Quartz.”

“Garnet,” and with that, Rose was already running out of words.

“You’re going to ask if you should visit the Cruise Ship,” Garnet said.

Rose couldn’t help but groan. “Yes, I. Yes. What do you think? Should I? Visit the ship?”

“You should decide.”

“I should have known you were going to say that.”

Garnet grinned at her grumble. “Try asking Amethyst.”

”No, you’re right. Thanks, Garnet.”

“Have a nice break,” Garnet said.

3D Morp I’s mid-crit had taken place the week before, so Lapis performed a brief watercolor demo and ended class early.

“Oh yeah, uh, everybody?” Lapis said before bidding farewell. “Vidalia‘s taking over after break.”

Cherry Quartz raised her hand. “Like, the class?” 

“Yeah,” Lapis said. “So, good bye?”

She looked a little tense.

“But I’ll be around. And good job, guys,” Lapis said. “Keep... making... morps.”

The overall reaction of the class was such shock at the news, the last minutes of their period dissolved into individual remarks of surprise or well wishes on everybody’s way out. Lapis was fairly well-liked as an instructor for her laissez-faire teaching style and straightforward, simple instruction. On morp she offered fair and useful critique, but during studio if she wasn’t evaluating projects Lapis spent most of the time lounging on her stool in the corner, making meep morp or staring at her phone. It struck Rose how much time she’d spent in the other gem’s company without getting to know her any better, and the opportunity to notice so had now passed.

Rose skipped Pearl’s grading out of cowardice and not a little guilt; she’d never worked up the nerve to find a conversation partner, and had no work to show. Rose used the extra time to watch worms in the greenhouse and distract herself before the presentation.

It was over in four and a half minutes, just as they’d rehearsed the day before. With Pearl in charge of the slideshow and Rose speaking in proportion to her participation grade, no catastrophe occurred. For the rest of the geminar, Rose stared at their classmates, not absorbing a word.

Peridot gathered them at the end for a pep talk and fond farewell. “Great work, everybody! See you soon!”

Amethyst’s class took a vote and decided to cancel Decide Stuff. Rose spectated the democratic process, too slow to raise her hand, and Amethyst awarded her a farewell high-five just the same.

She loitered under the chimes until the time came to meet Pearl at the warp.

“That went better than I expected.”

Rose bit her lip. “Really?”

“We had the best presentation,” Pearl said. “Peridot even laughed at your container joke.”

“That was good,” Rose said.

Pearl texted while she spoke, her right eye darting between Rose and the screen. She’d been fidgeting since class got out. “You decided to come with us after all?”

“Yes,” said Rose. “I think I should. Since they’re in town.”

Pearl bared her teeth. “I was hoping you would.”

Rose finally realized what had her friend so energetic. “You’re excited?”

“Yes! I’ve never been to the Cruise Ship! Not that I can remember, anyway,” Pearl said, putting her phone away, light as air. “And, well, I’ve gotten to know the Crystal Gems through Little Homeschool. I’m curious about the rest of Pink’s army.”

Rose said nothing.

“I’m sorry,” Pearl said, still a laugh under her words. “Not very Era 3 of me, is it?”

The short day meant they’d arrived early, so Rose and Pearl accompanied Amethyst outside the Temple for a Big Donut run. They walked in to an empty counter. Onion was in the store, palms pressed to a fridge. He noticed their arrival and smiled at Rose.

“Look who it is. Hey, Professor!” Vidalia said. She was sitting by the window with one elbow on her table. She waved to them. Bill sat across from her.

Amethyst greeted Vidalia with a hug and a fistbump. ”Sup, teach?”

“Good morning, Vidalia,” Rose said.

“Dude, it’s like four in the afternoon.”

“Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss,” Bill said to Pearl, clutching her right hand in both of his. His forehead was changing color.

Pearl extracted herself from his grip. “How cute,” she said.

“Ha! I mean, ha-ow can I help you?”

“I’m here for the usual,” Amethyst told him.

Rose and Pearl exchanged a glance. “We’re all set,” Rose said. Onion slapped the Lion Lickers cooler.

While Bill collected Amethyst’s order, she and Vidalia made small talk of the establishment’s storied history of nuts and dogs.

“Can you believe this guy used to be the mayor?” Vidalia said, tapping Rose with an elbow.

“Mayor is like the commander of a town,” Rose said to Pearl automatically.

“I know what a mayor is, silly. Why did you stop?” Pearl said, the last bit at Bill.

“One catastrophic failure after another,” Bill said from the register. He counted out Amethyst’s change.

“I thought you were funny. He had this truck he used to drive down the boardwalk,” Amethyst said. “It’s like, ‘May-or Dew-ey’!”

“The Mayormobile,” Bill said thickly.

“Bill here was a real snake of a politician,” Vidalia told Rose. “Great donut guy, now.”

“When they groomed me for a life of mayorship, that was just how the fish flopped in politics,” Bill said.

“Doubt,” said Amethyst.

“They tell you, ‘You’ve got to wear a suit’, and ‘pretend you know what you’re doing’, and ‘just take this speech and send us the repair bill’, and ‘lie constantly to make people feel better’, even when in reality it doesn’t change a thing.”

“After two hundred years of listening to that, the town voted unanimously for Mayor Nanefua,” Vidalia said. “She ran on ‘Everybody shares responsibility’ for Beach City. Go figure.”

“Who knew that my greatest public shame would also empower me to participate in the local community I once only pretended to lead?” Bill said to Rose, who was watching Onion steal a box of plastic straws. Amethyst snickered.

“Nanefua would be volleyball captain if she weren’t so busy,” Pearl said. “I’m not surprised she overthrew your government. That’s wonderful.”

“I agree!” said Bill.

Three gems bid three humans goodbye and made their way back around the cliff.

Pearl met them in the living room, freezing Rose in place with a look. Ah, right. She’d flaked on the midterm.

“Say hey to famethyst for me,” Amethyst said before vanishing into her room with a sack of dognuts.

The Pearl Rose had arrived with said, “Pearl offered me the grand tour of the Cruise Ship.”

Good humor came more easily to Rose under Pearl’s glare than it had when Pearl was avoiding the sight of her. “Wow, sounds fun.”

They took the stairs to the conservatory.

“Will you leave with the ship?” Pearl (jacket) asked Rose.

The grain of the railing unrolled under her touch. “No. I’d rather be on Earth.”

“Oh,” Pearl said, a little misty. Oh, Pearl. “That’s good.”

“I like Earth, too,” Pearl chimed in.

Pearl let them into Steven’s dome.

“Something wrong?” she asked when Rose hesitated to cross the threshold.

“It’s emptier than I remember,” Rose said.

“Oh, yes. Peridot adopted the rest of Steven’s little green friends when he left.”

Once dense with organic life, the conservatory now boasted a modest population of pots and one oversized cat bed in disuse. Steven’s benches were bare. The warp crystal’s surface dominated the room. She’d seen a plant of Steven’s here and there in Big and Little Greenhouse, now that she thought of it.

”I didn’t realize you knew each other,” said Pearl at Rose’s side.

Rose coughed at the first thing that came to mind, an involuntary image of Pearl - Crystal Gem Pearl - calling attendance like it pained her. “What?”

“I wouldn’t say - not that you aren’t lovely, Rose Quartz, some of the time - we’ve hardly spoken outside of class. Or in class, for that matter.” Pearl said, pleasant as can be. “The Rose Quartzes came to visit Steven last year, just for the day. Isn’t that sweet?”

“Um, yes,” said Rose. “That’s when I saw the flowers, a year ago.”

Pearl, pink, hid a laugh in her hand, flushed with delight.

Pearl (Crystal Gem) was already stepping onto the warp, straightening her jacket.

“Shall we, friends?” said Pearl. (Pink.)

Two humans and two gems met them at the warp. Each greeted Pearl with an embrace. The Cruise Ship’s walls drowned them in pink, pink, pink.

“So we finally meet,” Pearl said to a human. “Thank you for all your help with the Human Technology curriculum.”

One of the gems, a plum-skinned Amethyst with a cheek gem, said to Rose, “Is it true the perfect Jasper cracked her gem playing volleyball?”

Pearl scoffed. “The perfect who?”

“I think every gem who plays volleyball has been cracked in an accident,” the Pearl occasionally known as Volleyball said, sparing Jasper’s pride.

“We should invite her to the Earthling party,” said Skinny Jasper (a skinny Jasper).

“Great idea!” That was the Amethyst. “It’s only been, what, five thousand years since the rest of us moved in? Bet she’d love to catch up.”

“Jasper’s not the most sociable of gems,” Pearl warned. “It’s kind of you to invite her.”

“I‘d forgotten that Jasper came from Beta Kindergarten,” Pearl said, raising her eyebrow. “The others travel in packs.”

“Well, yeah,” said Skinny. “Everybody but the perfect Jasper ended up in the Crystal Gems, or the zoo. She’s probably hanging out with her famous Homeworld friends instead.”

Rose made a face. She noticed Pearl doing the same over the head of her human.

“Maybe,” said volley-Pearl.

“Let’s move our butts to the archive room,” one of the humans said. “Holly Blue will be lonely if we’re late.”

“You’re right. Don’t wanna make Holly Blue sad,” said the Amethyst. “Hup, hup.”

“She may look nervous, but underneath that is your standard old-fashioned agate,” Pearl murmured to Pearl. “Just be firm with her and Holly will behave.”

“You say that about all the agates,” Pearl teased.

The tile of the Cruise Ship reflected their shoes back at Rose, a blurry patch of warm tones following them down the hallways. They passed the odd Amethyst or human, and everyone they encountered greeted Pearl like an old friend. This surprised Rose most of all; she couldn’t recall Pearl having been mentioned once in the time she spent on the Cruise Ship after the Rose Quartzes were unbubbled, but then, she’d generally kept to the Rose Quartz chambers, away from Pink Diamond’s other victims.

The Amethyst and Pearl kept up a running commentary directed at Pearl, giving context to the shameful history of the Cruise Ship.

“It’s a significant piece of human culture, especially given the state of Earth’s writing,” Pearl said, in a tone which indicated they should be familiar with the state of Earth’s writing already. “Did you know the humans of the Cruise Ship have an extensive oral record stretching as far back as the Crystal Gem rebellion?”

“Some of it earlier,” said one of the humans.

“I much prefer Era 3,” said Pearl.

Skinny rubbed at her gem. “You must have come often with Pink Diamond, huh?”

“Oh, no, Rose and I loathed the thought of the Zoo. I’d stay on Earth when she had to visit, as often as not.”

“She might like it now,” ventured the other Pearl. She squinted at a door lock one of the humans had opened.

“She would love to see how much has changed, if nothing else.”

“What do you think?” the Amethyst, whose name Rose had already forgotten, asked Rose.

“I’m not sure...” she said.

“She visited the first generation once or twice,” said a human. “We have a few tales about Rose Quartz on Earth. Almost nothing of Pink Diamond.”

“Holly Blue’s got that part covered,” joked Skinny. “She could teach a class at your school.”

“Ha ha, can you imagine?” said Pearl. “Although...”

The Amethyst shot a Diamond salute at Rose. “What’s up, my Agate, is this ‘How To Lick Boots 101’?”

The group’s good cheer was not diminished by the sight of Holly Blue Agate herself, heels together, posture perfect, awaiting them on the other side of the records room door.

“You,” Holly Blue said, stopping Rose at the entrance when she tried to follow the others. Pearl straightened, and Holly Blue softened her tone to something approximating the pretense of civility. “May I have a word? In private?” The agate jerked her head toward the other door, the one she’d caught Rose behind just months before.

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t like,” Pearl reminded Rose, unaware that Rose actually should be doing a lot of things she didn’t like.

“It’s fine. Let’s talk,” Rose said.

The first thing Holly Blue did after shutting the door to Pink Diamond’s office behind them was demand Rose’s cut and facet number.

Rose hesitated, which only seemed to confirm Holly Blue’s suspicions.

“You don’t have one, do you?” she said. “I looked at that screen you were snooping through, Rose Quartz. Pink Diamond made all of you herself, and recorded the emergence and bubbling of each gem. Every Rose Quartz on this ship is accounted for, except for you. The only Rose Quartz who just so happens to look like,” Holly Blue gestured at her hair, “that.”

The screen overhead was dark. Rose’s gem burned at her gut. She was running out of excuses.

“Only a diamond can access that terminal. It hasn’t been edited.”

“What do you want, Holly Blue?” Rose said.

“What did your diamond make you for, exactly?” said Holly Blue. “As chief historian,”

“I can’t talk about this,” Rose said, her face growing hot too. She brushed past Holly Blue, who bared her teeth but made no move to stop Rose, and opened the door to their pile of eavesdroppers.

“Rose?” Pearl said. “Are you ok?”

“I’m fine, she’s fine,” Rose said, passing them by for the outer door. “I’m going to see the Rose Quartzes, like I came for.”

She heard Pearl behind her, “What in the stars did you say to-“

Soon she was out of earshot, pacing the halls. Rose took a detour. She found herself in the Cruise commons. Gems and humans relaxed in clusters, chatting or meep-morping. The Cruise’s constructed waterfalls generated a constant background noise. It was nothing like the sound of waves brushing sand outside the Temple.

She paced between the trees, watching her feet. When it no longer felt like her form might explode, Rose made her way back out of the commons enclosure and into the ship. It didn’t take long to bump into a Rose Quartz heading the same direction. She had a chest gem and pale hair; the laid-back gem who had accompanied her to Steven’s house.

“Well, look who it is,” said the Rose Quartz. She looped an arm around Rose’s, who stiffened on contact. “Welcome back, ‘sibling’,” she said. Air quotes included.

“Thanks, Rose Quartz,” said Rose, trying to breathe.

“You heading to Roses Room?” Rose Quartz asked her. “Let’s go together.”

She found herself led down the hallways to the chamber where Rose Quartzes gathered.

Like the other gems on the Cruise Ship, some were sitting in conversation, others participating in an activity. A few Rose Quartzes by the door were playing four-square handball on the Era 1 Diamond Authority emblem laid into the floor tile.

“Rose Quartz!” the other Rose Quartz who had accompanied her to Earth said the moment they walked in, dashing Rose’s hopes of entering inconspicuously. The easygoing chest-gem Rose Quartz steered Rose toward the floor cushion. Within moments a small army of quartzes had descended upon them, eager for news. The columns stood around them like so many winter-stripped oaks.

“How’s it going? How’s Earth?” asked Steven’s superfan. “I’m so excited to see you again!”

“Meet any cute gems at Little Homeschool?” said her escort. “Or like, humans, whatever you’re into.”

“Is it true their healing fountain is a giant Rose Quartz statue?” someone else said.

“Dope.”

“Right?”

“It’s okay,” Rose said, leaning against the cushion. She felt something touch her hair, but it was only the swinging leg of somebody sitting on the stairs. She sighed. “Yes, the statue is real.”

“You know the statue is real,” someone said to the Rose Quartz who’d asked that question. “Pearl put a picture of it on her Twitter.”

“Pearl has a Twitter?”

“She teaches human history, right?”

“Technology,” said Rose. “Her class is interesting; technology on Earth is always changing.”

“That’s so cool!”

“I wanna see Pearl‘s human technology.”

“You make me want to go back to Earth,” said the superfan Rose Quartz.

“You should,” from a neighbor.

“I like it enough to stay on Earth,” Rose ventured, not wanting to offend.

“We should all visit,” said the chest-gem Rose. “You need to smell the ocean.”

“Maybe I’ll sign up next year,” the superfan Rose Quartz said. “You’ll be a hard act to follow, Rose.”

“What? Me?”

“Yeah!” Superfan Rose said, the sentiment echoed by a couple of the Roses nearby. ”You’re so responsible, and considerate, and, and collected. Like that time you salvaged our Steven Universe meet and greet!”

“Yeah, you like, keep it real,” said chest-gem.

Rose blinked at the others, wishing she were back among the cruise trees.

“I haven’t made a very good first impression,” she admitted. She caught herself. “But I don’t think anyone there will hold it against you!”

“Hey, what do you mean?” A Rose Quartz on Rose’s other side said, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “Bad first impression?”

“I really shouldn’t talk about this,” Rose said, half to herself.

The chest-gem Rose Quartz squeezed her hand. “Mm. Sounds like you should.”

“C’mon, shy Rose, time for a vent sesh.”

“Ugh, I,” Rose said, trying to figure out how to explain what she meant without overstepping. “All the gems in Little Homeworld knew Rose Quartz - er, Pink Diamond,” she began.

“Didn’t everybody?” joked a Rose Quartz with a gem on the palm of her hand.

Others laughed, but the Rose Quartz half-embracing her patted Rose’s shoulder.

“Do we have to knock some sense into these gems?” she said.

“I’m not above it.”

“RQ solidarity,” said chest-gem.

“No, they’re wonderful!” Rose said, waving her hands. “They’re so nice about it, but I know I’m a, I’m disruptive. They’re all trying to move on.”

“So are you,” a Rose Quartz on the stairs pointed out.

“The Crystal Gems were all friends with Pink Diamond, though, right?” someone said. “Pearl and the Betas still talk about her like she hung the moon.”

“They were, but - you know - she started this pointless war,” Rose said. “She got a lot of people killed.”

“I heard Yellow Diamond was on that,” said a Rose Quartz behind Rose.

“She kinda did it for Earth, which I support. Not that I was there.”

”And she won,” whooped a barefoot Rose Quartz from the stairs, to a rainfall-like scatter of snaps.

“C’mon, I understand. People got hurt. People died. Diamond powers don’t fix that,” a Rose Quartz interjected. “You can’t turn back time.”

“Yes. You hurt people, you hurt people.”

“Yeah...”

“World‘s changed,” shrugged stairs Rose Quartz. “We were supposed to hurt people, too. I’m ready to leave the drama behind and just live life, you know?”

“She got you all bubbled, for something she did,” Rose said, searching everyone’s faces for agreement and finding it inexplicably scarce. “That isn’t just ‘drama’. You lost so much time.”

“You have a right to be angry, Rose Quartz,” said the Rose Quartz who’d hugged her before. “You’re valid.”

“I just don’t understand why all of you aren’t angrier,” Rose said, breath shallow, tears coming to her eyes. Oh no. After all the messes she’d caused on Earth, was this all it took to send her over the edge?

“We’ve been hashing it out a little, since you went to Earth,” another Rose Quartz with an eye gem admitted. “Like, everyone knows how you feel about Pink Diamond, and we didn’t wanna stress you out.”

”Sorry,” said superfan Rose. “After we met Steven, pretending everything’s fine back here didn’t feel right either. I didn’t know how to ask before you left. We should have given you the option before talking about Pink Diamond stuff without you.”

”Yes, we’re sorry.”

”Sorry, Rose Quartz!”

Rose tugged at her hair. “She pretended to be a - to be one of - us. Doesn’t that make you mad?”

“IDK, on the one hand very weird and it sucked, but I’d still rather be a Rose Quartz,” said chest-gem Rose. “Era 2 sounded like a drag.”

The superfan Rose Quartz with the shoulder gem scooted up to Rose. She stuck a thumb to her chest.

“I’m proud to be a Rose Quartz,” she said. “Shouldn’t I be proud my Diamond wanted to be one of us, too?”

”’My Diamond’ is so passé, though,” said chest-gem Rose Quartz.

“Shhh,” Superfan said, ducking her head to hide a smile. “You know what I mean!”

“But whatever, that’s her,” said chest-gem Rose Quartz. “Are you okay?”

Rose choked on her own sentence, nodding instead. The Rose Quartz with an arm around her pulled Rose in for a proper hug. Rose’s nods transitioned into shaking her head.

“I wish I could start over?” she said. Her voice cracked.

”Is that a question?”

Someone she couldn’t see patted her head. “School did a number on you, huh?”

“I really messed up on Earth.” She couldn’t hold back the tears anymore, but Rose did her best to wipe the corners of her eyes as soon as they could form, smearing the heels of her hands. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be all - I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Oh, Rose,” superfan Rose Quartz said, leaning forward to hug her too.

“We knew you were mad,” someone said. “We just...”

“You can always talk to us, dude,” said chest-gem Rose Quartz, squeezing Rose’s arm again. “Sometimes all it takes is to tell somebody how you feel. Then you don’t need to carry it all inside.”

“Yeah,” said Superfan. “We’ll listen. Rose Quartzes stick together.”

The other Rose Quartzes echoed the sentiment.

“You don’t have to do this alone.”

“It’s OK to drop out of Earth! Come chill with us and try again later.”

“I didn’t realize you were having such a hard time.”

”You always seem so together.”

”I’m sorry.”

“You duh-don’t have to do this,” said Rose, laughing from the absurdity of her own tears.

“But we want to,” Superfan Rose said into her hair.

“You’re all so good, and I’m still being just terrible,” Rose said, mortified. It was like she’d opened the floodgates.

“Hush. You’re great. And anyway, you don’t have to be. Pink Diamond herself could walk through that door and say she wants to make things right, and we’d hug her too.”

”But we’d still kick her ass for you!”

”Oh, yeah. Kick, then hug, in that order.”

Rose sniffed. “Don’t you mean Steven Universe?”

“Steven can have one, too. It’s Era 3 now!”

Rose laughed, which became another sob, eyelashes wet and heavy. She clung tighter to Superfan Rose Quartz and buried her face in the other gem’s shoulder.

“Don’t be a stranger,” Superfan Rose said when they saw her off at the warp.

“Yeah, let’s call soon,” said the hippie Rose Quartz with the chest gem. “We all miss your face.”

Rose’s face screwed up again. “Thanks, everyone.”

“Aw, c’mere,” Superfan said, pulling her into one last hug. “You’re gonna be okay, we love you.”

“If you need any asses kicked,” the Rose Quartz with the hand gem said, miming a cellphone.

Rose breathed. “Thanks,” she said again. She’d say it a thousand times if she could. Ten thousand, even. But she’d taken enough of their time and compassion already. ”Right now I think...I just want to go home and think.”

Exhausted by the unburdening, Rose took her time wandering through Little Homeworld upon her return. What humans were out this late had bundled into warm clothing. Snowflake Obsidian was helping one staple something high on the billboard. Rose even bumped into the Aquamarine from her Horticulture geminar by the baseball diamond.

“How were midterms?” said Aquamarine.

“Alright,” said Rose. “How were yours?”

“All right. Well, have a nice break.”

“You too.”

The dorms had never looked so inviting. Rose reached the steps to her building and bumped into the perfect Jasper, coming from the other direction.

“Sorry,” Rose said, letting her go first. Jasper ignored her. The stripes on her face were pinched between scrunched eyebrows.

Watching the other Quartz step onto the landing and continue up the stairs towards the second story apartments, Rose felt an itch at her gem. She stumbled up after Jasper.

“Jasper,” Rose called out.

Jasper paused on the steps.

“I’m sorry for picking that fight,” Rose said. “At the beach. I was wrong to do that to you. How can I make up for it?”

Jasper glanced back at Rose, then kept climbing.

Rose waited until the quartz reached the second floor before moving. She fumbled with the door on first pass.

Rose retracted her boots while crossing over the threshold and made a beeline to the bedroom. She dropped her phone on the counter, ignoring the charging cable. Rose collapsed facedown into her mattress.

The phone went off immediately, of course, but she remained where she was. It could wait until morning.

Pearl: You went home, right?

Pearl: I have a favor to ask, preferably in person.

Pearl: May we talk tomorrow?

Chapter Text

Pearl: 1 hour?

Rose: See you soon

The first full day of winter break and Little Homeworld swarmed with life. Residents went about their colorful daily business. Bismuth’s chimney steamed. A groggy pair of beetles trundled through grass stiff with frost on their morning walk.

At this hour, Rose saw more gems than humans. Two materialized in the haze of warm air billowing from Bismuth’s open door; Jane and Frybo had their sketchbooks out, recording the handsome spines of a mace. Bismuth was at another workbench, picking through sorts for the Little Homeworld press.

“Rose Quartz,” Bismuth yawned. She pushed a type case back into place. “How’s it going?”

“Are you busy?” Rose said.

“Need something?” She sighed and scratched at her head. “Let’s get you a ticket.”

“Oh, no, I don’t,” Rose said. She sat down across from Bismuth. “You look tired.”

“I am tired,” Bismuth told her. “Jasper left through Crazy Lace’s wall again last night, so I walked her through a patch job.”

Rose watched Bismuth’s hands shuffle through their Ps and Qs and punctuation on the table.

“Sorry,” she said lamely. Bismuth shook her head.

”It’s nothing, I’ve got both feet in the mud this morning. You never knocked down my hard work,” Bismuth said. “Not bad for a Quartz. Ha.”

Rose didn’t know how to respond, so she didn’t.

“So how’s Homeschool treating you?” Bismuth said.

“Homeschool is remarkable,” Rose said. “I wish I’d made better use of my time here.”

“Hey, at least you’re trying.”

Rose made a sound of skepticism.

“You’re welcome to swing by and try shop any time. Geminar or no geminar.”

“Thank you, Bismuth.” Rose said.

Bismuth gave her a thumbs-up. “Of course, Rose Quartz.”

Bismuth’s work reclaimed her focus.

Rose lingered in companionable silence until her hour was up.

She met Pearl under the chimes.

“Are you alright?” Rose asked as soon as her friend arrived.

Pearl waved her concern away. “It’s nothing, really, but it’ll be easier to discuss face-to-face.”

They took a seat on a bench. The sun’s warmth was beginning to stick.

“Rose, I’m going to Homeworld tomorrow,” Pearl said without preamble. “I have an appointment with White Diamond.”

Rose jerked. She felt as stiff as the bench. “White Diamond?”

”I, I’ve been working on some things. Questions I’ve been searching for answers to ever since I came here. A conversation with myself is long overdue.” Pearl broke eye contact to stare at her hands, wrapped around one another, bristling like chestnut-shells.

The corners of Rose’s eyes pinched. Her heart raced into being. “But - White?”

“I didn’t realize until talking it over with Pearl, but I think I’d rather not go alone. And I don’t-“ Pearl glanced at the ground, and then her hands. “There’s no one else I’d trust to keep a level head. So I’d like to know if you’d be willing to accompany me - if you’re alright with that - if it’s not too much to ask.”

“Pearl, I...” Rose said. “Are you okay?”

Pearl was staring at Little Larimar across the way. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

Rose made a face. “You’d let White - use her power on you again?”

Pearl straightened in her seat. Laser focus replaced her wistful look. She frowned at Rose. “How do you know about that?”

“I- I don’t remember,”

“I’m not angry. It’s obvious you didn’t mean anything by it.” Pearl said. Her hand drifted to her gem. “But whoever told you about me and White Diamond should know better, and I’d like to tell them so.”

“I’m sorry, Pearl. I really can’t explain,” Rose said, butterflies in her chest.

Pearl’s fingers tensed over her stomach. “If you won’t say who it is, please at least make it known they’re not to tell anyone else.”

“That won’t be a problem,” Rose said.

Pearl still had a pained expression on her face.

Rose looked at her feet. “Of course I’ll go with you.”

When Rose’s toes met their destination, she almost fell face-first off the warp at the sight.

Organic life! On Homeworld! Vegetation spilled through spires and vessels. Instead of rigidly divided Diamond districts, color flecked the gem capital. Gems of every cut and function streamed up and down the steps to the palace, and a bulletin from Head Zircon flashed in the air beside the warp.

Like its Little counterpart, the gem Homeworld appeared to have transformed with Era 3, so rapidly as to be near unbelievable.

Rose shot a glare at White Diamond’s looming head ship as they ascended. She looked over at Pearl, who was squeezing both hands together again.

“Are you feeling ok?”

“I’m fine,” said Pearl, eyes darting between the throne and the Gems on tour at its base. She swallowed. “Actually, I’m not fine. I’m nervous. I keep being afraid that coming here was a bad idea.”

“We can go,” Rose said.

“No,” Pearl said, balling her hands into fists. “I want to try, even if the outcome’s uncertain.”

“You don’t have to prove anything, Pearl...” A Jade was climbing up Pink Diamond’s throne so her friend could get a picture.

Pearl shook her head. “For my own sake.”

They watched the jade help another of her fellows up over the lip of the seat.

“Um, Pearl,” Rose ventured.

“Yes?”

She rubbed at her neck. “You’re all right? Truly?”

“I‘m fine, Rose,” Pearl repeated. She was staring at the jades.

“If White Diamond-“

“It’s not about White Diamond,” Pearl interrupted. “I don’t even remember that.”

Rose held her tongue.

“It’s being here.” Pearl gave her a sad smile. “Pink. And everything that happened before.”

The stone in Rose’s stomach plummeted.

“Of course,” Rose said. “You were...close.”

“We were.”

The Jade had her thumbs out and one foot on a crystalline armrest. Her friend, elbow against the other, grinned.

“We were supposed to be close.” Pearl‘s phone rested in her hands now, but it was asleep. “We were made for it. Or I was, at least.”

Rose didn’t say anything.

White’s chime sounded. Pearl stood. “We should get moving.”

The ceiling of the palace was so far above them, further than it had ever been. Built to the monumental dimension of a true Diamond’s form, the geometry of the walls multiplied upwards out of sight.

The shortest route would take them by Yellow and Blue’s rooms, in that order, but when they came to the turn, Pearl paused and weighed their options, cold eye on the correct hallway.

”Can you keep a secret?” Pearl whispered to Rose.

Anything for you, Rose thought.

“There’s a shortcut. Pink’s pebbles made it.” Pearl tugged at her arm and led Rose in the direction of a side hallway. Rose followed.

Pearl took them through a barely-there door that opened into the wall itself. Rose tiptoed around vacant pebble apartments and ducked her head to avoid breaking sheets from the architecture. She struggled to keep up with Pearl, who could more easily slip through the narrow passage. It was brief, though, and spat them out on the other side in no time. Pearl tugged her down another hallway, and then another.

They reached White’s annex. A bright green light flashed through the cracks of the door. Rose stumbled over her feet.

Pearl squeezed Rose’s hand. Rose returned the gesture.

“Do you want me to come with you?” Rose said, though her shoulders were up and her knees felt frozen in place.

She couldn’t tear her eyes from the shape of White’s door.

“It’s fine.” Pearl released her fingers. “I have it on good authority we’re in no danger here.”

Rose nodded.

“Thanks for coming with me, Rose.” she said. “I didn’t want to be alone. But I‘m glad I came. I’m glad you’re here.”

Her crack didn’t look any better or worse than before. It was just there.

“I don’t want you to be alone, either,” said Rose.

The light dimmed and disappeared. A dazzled-looking Peridot with a star-shaped hairdo wandered by them. A chime rang out.

Pearl drew herself up, and for an instant Rose saw a flash of steel in her sighted eye before it was replaced with Pearl’s customary cheerful grin.

“That’s my cue.”

“I’ll be right here,” Rose said, trying to smile.

She saw a white heel behind Pearl before the door closed.

Streaks of light spilled into the hallway, a rotation of colors wiping through. Blue yellow orange purple gold green indigo-

“-pink?”

It felt like the world had vanished; she couldn’t see anything, but there was Pearl, towering above, waves of thought rippling from her head, enormous eye pointed at Rose. And at Pearl’s feet, the shocked expression of a Pearl-sized White Diamond.

Rose saw Pearl lift her hand - White, small and trembling, drew the same gesture, the same slightly-open mouth - touching slender fingertips to her face.

Rose jerked as though struck by destabilizing lightning; suddenly White Diamond’s face was all she could see.

Every particle of Rose’s form screamed at her to get away, and, forcing back her bile, Rose did just that, tearing off down the hall.

She was going to pass Blue and Yellow’s rooms. Rose had space for nothing in her mind but the rising static of fear. Her footsteps made thunder of the high, high hallways.

Blue’s door was open. She didn’t slow, but a gem was on her way out, and Rose bumped into her, giving them both pause - a pink face with streaks of black across either cheek, eyes wide.

“Didn’t see you there,” Pink Diamond’s Spinel said, stammering and already stepping back as Rose continued. The throne room was a blur.

One foot on the warp, Rose was about to activate it when she realized Pearl remained back in White’s room. She paused, and tried to breathe.

She couldn’t think. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t mean to - she wasn’t expecting -

Rose retreated. Stared into the warp.

Her skin was still electrified with dread, each step unsteady, but Rose turned away from the exit and back toward the palace.

She ran into Pearl coming down the steps as Rose ascended.

Rose opened her mouth to ask if Pearl was okay, but her friend beat her to the punch.

“What was that?” Pearl snapped. Rose realized with devastating clarity that the other gem was angry with her. 

Of course she was. What else could Rose expect, having let her down in such a spectacular fashion?

“Let’s go back,” Rose said. ”I’m sorry. We can turn around.”

Pearl’s glare softened. “Go home, Rose. It’s fine. I shouldn’t have asked you to come.”

“I can do this for you,” Rose insisted.

“No, you can’t,” Pearl said. She picked her way down until she was standing just a step above Rose, speaking eye-to-eye. “I meant it when I said I was ready for this. I asked you to come, because I trust you. But I also trusted that you’d be able to tell me no.”

“I don’t want to leave you,” said Rose.

“I’m okay.” Pearl looked tired, scrutinizing Rose with a trepidation she hadn’t seen in millennia. “You helped me through the hard part. I’ve got this. Thank you for coming, Rose. Let’s just - let’s talk about it tomorrow.”

“I want to do the right thing,” Rose said pathetically. 

Pearl touched her arm. “Try being honest with me.”

Parry, parry, thrust.

Parry, parry, thrust.

Parry, parry, thrust.

Parry, parry-

The warp at the arena’s entrance activated. Rose didn’t pause her drills, sword pointed at a crumbling icon. When the newcomer said nothing to make their presence known, Rose looked up to find the perfect Jasper sitting on the bleachers. She was looking right at Rose, arms crossed, mouth twisted to the side.

Rose halted in place, chest rising and falling.

“You move like you know how to fight.” Jasper watched her with a deliberate frown, as though trying to solve a riddle.

Rose had nothing to say for herself. She shrugged, practice sword still raised.

“Ugh,” Jasper said. The spark of interest in her expression was fading away rapidly. “Whatever, I’m leaving.”

“You can stay,” Rose said before Jasper could take the stairs.

“I know,” Jasper snapped. She stomped to the other corner.

Jasper didn’t say anything else to her. While the color of the sky changed, they performed their respective training exercises across what was left of the arena. In the absence of conversation, Rose heard something she’d never noticed before: Jasper was breathing, too.

“Bye, Jasper,” Rose said before she left, not really expecting an answer.

Jasper turned away rather than do so. Her hand twitched at her hip.

She wanted to go home and sleep. Maybe dream. Tomorrow, she’d have to talk to Pearl. Rose hesitated before taking the warp back to Little Homeschool.

Before she could lose the nerve, Rose pulled up the message app on her phone.

Rose : There’s something

Rose : I want to tell you.

Chapter Text

“-four feet, and four eyes, and a big spiky nose!” She scampers up White’s shoulder in an imitation of the organic creature she’d met, snapping her teeth at the larger gem. “It yelled at me, just like this! But it ran away when I got closer...”

Smiling, White plucks her up by the back of the shirt and drops Rose into the palm of her other hand.

“Down now,” she sings.

“Hey!”

“You and your funny little stories. Has Yellow done anything useful on that rock while she’s supposed to be teaching you?”

Rose gets back on all fours and snarls in the direction of a towering shoulder. “What if your feet were spikes?” she calls up. She tries flattening her fingers together to imitate the curving claws of the beast she’d seen. “Then you couldn’t juggle.”

“They aren’t spikes,” White says, looking not at Rose but something on her screen.

“Its butt was kinda spiky too.” She shakes hers, and in response White tips her hand forward just a bit, so that Rose tumbles head-over-heels to the edge of her palm. The slight curl of White’s fingers prevents her from falling over.

“That’s enough, Pink,” says White.

“Hey! Don’t drop me!” She turns upright and gathers her legs beneath her in a disgruntled twist. “Yellow does too teach. We blasted a ship!”

“How lovely, Pink,” says White, reading whatever’s in front of her.

She bunches up her shorts in her fists. “You’re not even listening to me!”

Finally, White looks back down. Gone are the crinkles at the corners of her eyes. Her lips are drawn flat together. “You’re always like this,” she says, and rolls her eyes. “How tiresome. I can’t listen to you act this way all the time.”

White’s hand shifts, and Rose uncrosses her legs for balance. She throws out an arm to hold onto White’s hand as the larger Diamond brings her closer to eye level. “Then just say that instead of ignoring me out of nowhere!”

“Be quiet!” White’s eyes go cold, and Rose flinches. “I indulge your silly whims,” White continues. Her hand jerks a little bit with each emphasis, and Rose hugs her thumb tighter. “I allow you to bother me in my head, where no one else is permitted. I’ve done my job perfectly; I created all these gems for your sake. An entire empire of gems you contribute less than nothing to. All you do is chase organics through the mud and distract the other Diamonds from their duties.”

“I’m sorry, I’ll stop!” Rose says. “I’ll stop! Put me down. I’m scared.”

“You are Pink Diamond! You can’t just - behave however you please!” White shakes her hand and Rose clings.

“You’re gonna drop me!”

She’s pinched between the thumb and fingers of White’s other hand. White tugs and Rose loses her grip. Glossy nails curve over her body like segments of a beetle’s armor. She feels the press of White’s hand, fingers squeezing Rose’s arms to her sides, not yet tight enough to crush.

“Calm down, Pink.”

Rose’s gem is glowing through the cracks of White’s grasp, and she squirms and fights, trying to extract an arm or a leg. White watches her with the same fond disinterest she’d shown the story about the bug.

“Don’t squeeze me, I’ll poof,” she pleads.

“I’m not squeezing you,” responds White, grip tightening. Rose’s cheek squishes up against her shoulder. “Look at you. You have to learn to control yourself, Pink.”

White twists her so that Rose is looking down, down, down the whole height of the tallest Diamond, to the very base of White’s head. Far below, a speck of bright pink can be seen. Pearl looks not even the size of a pebble, erect in perfect posture beside White’s pedestal, looking straight ahead, hands together. All three of them are painted by the glare of White’s screens. “There’s your pearl, behaving like a pearl, starlight. See? Every gem but you knows what she’s supposed to be.”

That’s not my fault! she thinks, but says nothing. She doesn’t want to get squeezed again.

White does it anyway, turning her hand around so Rose faces her once more. “Shhhh,” White says, and Rose realizes she’s shaking in the larger gem’s grasp. She feels fingers pet at her hair. “But it’s alright. That’s what I’m here for. There, there.”

“I hate you!” The words bubble up so fast and so hot that Rose can’t help but scream them.

White’s screen flickers from the force. She kicks her legs against White’s palm.

“Come now, Pink. You don’t mean that.” White’s still patting her on the head. Every time Rose feels a touch in her hair she tries to jerk away, to no avail. “I’ve got you.”

The fight leaves her bit by bit until she’s suspended in White’s grip, just watching White scroll through her screen, looking bored. She can’t see the screen at this angle, so she doesn’t know what the other gem is looking at.

When White notices she’s stopped trying to escape, she brushes the tears from Rose’s cheek with her thumb, which just leaves a damp streak over her temple and forehead. White’s nails poke into Rose’s arm and she tenses.

”What a sweet little thing. I’ll forgive you for stirring a fuss, Pink. You’ve just got to learn not to misbehave. Can you do that for me?”

She’s not crying anymore. Her sleeves have bunched up into her armpits. She just wants to know when White’s going to let her go.

“Why are you so mean to me?” she says. It’s quiet, but White hears her, and lifts her fist to leave a kiss on top of Rose’s head.

“Oh, Pink. I only want you to be yourself.”

She sits with her back against the wall. As far from the door as possible. The single narrow window spills a puddle of light before her in the center of the chamber. At first, at least, it’s preferable to a bubble.

She can’t stop thinking. About the colorful organic beasts from the Kyanite colony.

They came from outside the base. When one hugged her arm, she’d run back in to show Blue. She just thought they were cute.

The surface had been like a dream world. Rose had gotten carried away. She’d imagined playing together outside the way they‘d done on the moon. Not watching the creatures crawl over one another in a tiny box in the middle of her room. They probed around the walls with their little hands and made chattering conversation. She hadn’t been thinking about making Blue scream, or frightening Yellow’s Pearl. She hadn’t been thinking at all, really, but if she imagined anything it was the organics crawling away somewhere to be happy, wild and free, like she’d found them.

She’d forgotten there was no such thing on Homeworld. It wasn’t long before she ached to bring them home, but they can’t go back to the colony. All she thought was, even if they had to stay, at least it shouldn’t be in a cage.

She’s been small and mean and selfish again. If she’d never taken them away from their home in the first place, this never would have happened. They were perfectly happy before. In fact, they’d been friendly, climbing onto her legs and shoulders without fear or hesitation. Of course she’d repaid that friendliness by trapping them forever.

So of course Yellow threw her in here to think about what she’s done. And now the other Diamonds will never let her visit another planet again.

She wants to stop thinking, so she tries lying down, curled into herself in the crease of the wall. It only makes the thinking worse.

The patch of starlight swims before her. She closes her eyes so she can’t see it. Instead of trying not to think, she tries thinking about nothing.

It’s no use; she can’t stop thinking, so Rose imagines something new.

She starts to pretend she’s someone else.

She’s stuck in her room again. Stuck with Pearl. Not her Pearl but the one White had delivered, after she took Pearl away.

Rose returns to her room one day and finds her on the vanity, along with a note. The pearl’s shell waits in midair while Rose and the Pebbles stuff her desk in the wall and hide away all of her things.

She’d gone through Rose’s room again. And now this new pearl. This is another test. A message, like Spinel, who seems to have been designed specifically to twist the knife.

She doesn’t know what White wants from her.

Rose tries not to look at the pearl.

She wants to scream at White, but White has Pearl. She’ll have to play White’s games. Like Spinel. Since losing Pearl, her lessons with the other Diamonds have come to an end. With the exception of an insincere ball, she’s permitted out of her room only to visit the extraction chamber or the garden. The heart-shaped pink gem had been presented to Rose there in much the same fashion as this pearl; much in the fashion, she’s comprehending, that she and Pearl had first been introduced.

But Spinel’s purpose is to play with Pink Diamond, and a pearl’s is not.

The pearl takes form after her customization menu times-out. She greets Rose with a song. The sight of the blank pearl’s beaming face upturned, awaiting a response, twists something inside of her. She looks too much like Pearl, even on default settings. It’s like watching White’s power seep over gems. Like a stranger with Pearl’s voice and body has sucked her personality away.

She doesn’t want Spinel, who reminds her of everything she hates about herself. She doesn’t even want this pearl, not really, but it’s not long before Rose can’t bear to imagine losing her either.

She feels a little pathetic. They don’t look at each other. They don’t talk to each other. But it’s still better than the tower. She doesn’t want to be alone. It’s a joke of a second chance, and the new pearl is a crude substitute for Pearl, but she’ll probably never leave Homeworld again. She’ll take whatever she can get.

Rose tries ignoring her first. She gets on with her half-life, new pearl at her heels.

Pearl’s made to be cheerful, only ever eager to attend her. She’s predisposed to throw open the curtains and let in more light whenever Rose falls into one of her moods. Every smile ignites the torment in Rose that accompanies the memory of Pearl - her Pearl - who’d probably laugh if she saw her pale replacement.

Maybe not laugh. It isn’t funny. But when Rose ever pictures Pearl coming home, she’s laughing.

She tells new Pearl to stop, one thing at a time; stop trying to sing, stop mentioning Pink Diamond’s radiance, stop saluting. Pearl’s behavior changes to accommodate her every request, padding silently behind her to extractions and playdates and standing tight-lipped by Rose’s balcony or door. Ignoring her all the time only inspires Pearl to jump harder at the odd occasion to be of use.

It just makes Rose feel worse. But at least White stays in her head.

Time passes, and Rose starts talking to Pearl again, like she used to talk to Pearl.

Pearl isn’t much of a conversationalist. She has to be tricked into sharing an opinion, like Yellow’s Pearl, and she takes every word Rose tells her literally, even when Rose says something foolish that Pearl would have made fun of her for. It’s more like talking out loud to herself, most of the time. But at least they’re no longer sitting in a silent room for cycles on end, trying not to stare at one another. Occasionally, Rose can even address Pearl to her face without thinking about the yawning emptiness in her gem.

Rose storms out of her extraction with Blue and Yellow one day, startling the walls.

“Can you believe them?” she says to Pearl after the doors shut them in.

“Yes I can, my Diamond!” Pearl says, perking up.

“I thought this was supposed to be mine,” says Rose, pacing, forehead drawn. “I’m such a - after all my - I thought Blue and Yellow were finally going to give me a chance. I should’ve known. I’m such a fool.” Rose grits her teeth. Her stupid slippers and gregüescos frame a fuzzy silhouette on the floor. She turns away from it. “How am I going to prove anything if they won’t even let me plan my own colony? Ugh. Chair.”

A throne-shaped chair extrudes from the panels of the floor. Rose sits down, rubbing her temple.

If this had been before - well, if Pearl weren’t here, at least, the Pebbles would come out and say hello. Maybe she could have talked to them. But they don’t show their faces around Pearl, and Pearl is never not at her side.

She calls up a seat for Pearl, too, who folds herself in half and perches so close to the edge it’s like she’s only pretending to sit out of politeness. Rose tips her head against the seat rest.

“Is it even ‘my colony’ if someone else is picking out the injector sites and planning all the spires? I thought I was getting a Kindergarten! What do they expect me to do - sit up in a moon base and play games for ten thousand years?”

Her voice has risen with her frustration, and Rose doesn’t notice until she slams a fist against the armrest and dents it. She catches herself and withdraws her hand, swallowing her words.

Pearl doesn’t react. Rose notices her glance over the damage with mild intent, expression perfectly neutral. From Pearl this has come to mean Pink Diamond’s presence is the only thing standing between her and replacing the panel immediately, out of propriety.

(Rose knows this because she kicked a hole in the room one day before extraction with Blue. She’d stormed out alone, turned back to get Pearl after realizing she’d left her behind, and found her servant prying the offending section out, one foot on the wall. They’d stared at one another for a moment and not acknowledged it since. Their first secret.)

Rose keeps those thoughts inside from then on. It’s not worth the risk.

The empire needs soldiers, so Rose seeds soldiers first. She and Pearl spend their days on the moon, waiting on emergence. It’s almost as boring as being cooped up in her room, but at least she’s not on Homeworld. Pearl’s there with her, and they have the projector to watch over her incubating Kindergartens from any number of new perspectives.

Rose imagines them: her first gems. What will they be like? Her Prime kindergarten will produce Amethysts, mostly. The Nephrite scouts Blue and Yellow had sent had identified a site of ideal composition for growing gems. Now all Rose has to do is wait as the injectors creep through row after row, depositing their contents in the earth.

She meets the Amethysts on the ground. They’re perfect. They’re everything she’s imagined them to be - and Pearl, the genius, has come up with a way for Rose to sneak out of the base without attracting attention. The other Diamonds are always busy; their micromanaging interference in her every decision has flipped to a state of utter indifference. Yellow‘s even stopped responding to her messages about quartzes. Now that Earth is producing gems, they probably figure it will more or less run itself. She can spend all the time she wants on the surface. So she does.

She follows Pearl away from the kindergarten, across meadows and streams and under the cover of the trees. They encounter a hundred new organics with every step. One day, they even meet organics who look just like gems. She’d known the Earth was rich in resources, but it’s only after her feet have touched the ground that Rose realizes what that means. The Earth is rich with organic life; life that her colony will destroy.

But the empire still needs soldiers. Rose still needs to prove she can be a proper Diamond. Maybe there’s something she can do. There’s got to be another way. Their time spent watching human beings gives Rose an idea.

“Excuse me, my Diamond?” Pearl says the first time Rose pushes a sword into her hands. They project Rose’s new Sky Arena against the wall for a backdrop, since she can’t be caught doing this in person but that doesn’t mean she can’t pretend, and Rose starts running drills with Pearl, whose blade peels shadows through the clouds. Basic, repetitive work. Not that Rose knows much more, or how to teach somebody.

She’d seen Yellow’s gems win with a sword, once, back when all four of them would watch important fighters together. The weapon looked so impressive swinging through an opponent that for a time all of her games with Pearl turned to ribbon-wand-swordfights. Yellow had indulged her only briefly, imposing her expertise on Rose. Rose hadn’t lived up to it. But she’d retained her admiration of the fighters, and regularly fantasized their duels. In her excitement Rose had even ordered their guards to combat her; they were all caught and reprimanded for it after just a cycle of sword practice, and the guards replaced with automatic doors who didn’t talk to her. She’s not qualified for this. But Rose knows enough to get Pearl started. She just wants to test her hypothesis.

They practice basic forms in between stolen days on Earth, and one day Rose looks up from her screen just in time to witness Pearl executing the most breathtaking backflip with a blade in each hand.

She sits up, gaping at Pearl. “How did you do that?!”

Rather than boast about pulling off the coolest move Rose has ever seen in her life, Pearl retreats at the attention, like those little shell lizards from Earth pulling back their feet.

“I, well,” she says, standing there, holding two swords.

Then she seems to notice she’s still holding two swords, and fumbles to stow them away in her head. She’s easing the second point in by the time Rose thinks to say, “Wait!”

Pearl freezes.

“Wait,” Rose says again, then sees the set of Pearl’s shoulders and realizes she’s looming. She crouches on her heels, trying to rein herself in. Rose can’t keep the grin off her face. “That was incredible,” she says. “How did you learn to do that - whatever you just did? Can you teach me?”

Pearl’s mouth works for a moment. She stares at Rose’s face. Rose holds her breath, afraid to ruin things.

Pearl lowers the sword. “I’ve been practicing,” she admits, like a little practice is all it takes to achieve a perfect dual-wielding backflip. She closes her eyes, which makes Rose blink in surprise. Pearl’s gem glows, producing a hard-light replica of her body.

“DO YOU WISH TO ENGAGE IN COMBAT?” asks the holo-Pearl.

“It’s just when you’re not here, my Diamond,” Pearl says, then slaps a hand to her mouth in horror. “I mean, I,” she stammers, and Rose wants to tell her to relax but she’s riveted by the change in Pearl’s behavior. Pearl lifts her other hand too, speaking through her fingers, as though she can’t bear to address Pink Diamond to her face. The words spill out of her like a creek tripping over reeds and stone. “When you’re not here, I. I’ve been analyzing video of the Empire’s fighters, and recording, and, and practicing the information. But, ah, as it turns out, a purely theoretical understanding of combat is rather ineff- incomplete - w-which is where Holo-pearl comes in-“

Rose settles to the floor, crossing her legs. She props her chin on a hand. “You’ve been learning all this time?” she says, trying to tally the days Pearl’s spent in the moon base while she runs home for an extraction, the time she’s wasted reviewing gemetic information on her terminal while Pearl’s left to her own devices in the projector room.

She’s never imagined what Pearl might be doing when they’re not together. She pictures Pearl dueling the holo-Pearl against their Sky Arena backdrop, flipping over its head only to slice it off.

“Pearl,” Rose says. Pearl squints at her from behind her hands. “That’s extraordinary. How long did it take to learn the flip?”

“Well,” Pearl says, splashing into uncharted waters and visibly reluctant to give the wrong answer lest she be drowned. “Y-you said this was just to see if other-” and more of Pearl’s face resurfaces as Rose just listens, wide-eyed. Pearl folds her hands together. She blinks at her shoes, then Rose. “If other gems could learn to fight. A-and, well, I researched that too! There’s no consensus among elite class gems, but a common named figure suggests it takes about ten thousand hours of practice in a given skill to achieve competence, so I started with... so....”

“...so you practiced for ten thousand hours,” Rose says. “And then ten thousand more. And you’ve kept going.”

Pearl’s shut her mouth at this point, but she nods.

“Pearl,” she says, taking Pearl’s hand in her own. “This will change everything.”

She requests an audience.

White sends Pearl.

“Congratulations on your colony, Pink Diamond,” White’s voice sings through the gem in Pearl’s middle.

Rose sports a stomach and lungs from time to time, ever since she started playing with humans. The sight of Pearl’s cracked eye, washed-out into grey, inspires regret for both choices.

“White Diamond.”

“I saw your message, starlight.”

This reminds Rose of her message’s contents, and it’s enough to distract her from the chilling weight of White visiting her room for a moment. “Isn’t it incredible? We thought gems could only do what they’re made for, but Pearl taught herself to fight,” Rose says. “If she learned, so can other gems. We already have enhancement technology in place for specialized tasks. What if this is the answer to this resource shortage? If the same logic applies outside of combat, someday, we might not even have to-”

“A pearl is not a toy, Pink,” is all White says in response. “Where is the Spinel that Blue and Yellow made you?”

“I don’t know,” Rose says. She hasn’t seen Spinel since she was given Earth. Right now, everything before Earth already feels like another life. She wrinkles her nose. “More importantly, don’t you think this is amazing, White? If a Pearl-“

“If you can’t keep track of your things, I’ll need to keep track of them for you,” says Pearl’s frozen, grinning face, hovering at eye level with Rose. “You know.”

Rose notices Pearl squeezing her own hand in an ironclad grip. She’s staring straight ahead with a mild smile, toes pointed, politely ignoring both diamonds while they speak. The sight drops Rose’s newly morphed stomach. A part of her feels like waking from a dream.

“I know,” she says.

Pearl’s empty eyes stare back.

This new vantage point crushes Rose beneath the weight of her own uselessness. She’s a coward.

Since White shut her down, Blue and Yellow have stopped even pretending to listen to what she has to say. Nobody cares about Earth unless it’s to tell her she can’t do something, so Rose fights herself in an attempt to push back. She takes the disguise Pearl designed and her tens of thousands of practice hours and transforms them into superstition. The terrifying renegade Pearl and her rebel Rose Quartz emerge.

She thinks maybe if Rose Quartz causes enough upset, they’ll decide Earth is too much trouble and pull out the Kindergarten expansion. She doesn’t expect to have to bubble the real ones. She feels like a monster, picking them from the floor one by one, but it’s better than seeing them shattered.

The other rose quartz gem she’d made is always with her, but now she worries about Yellow discovering it. Or Pearl, but Pearl she doesn’t mind knowing. Rose just... isn’t ready to tell her yet. She doesn’t want to make it weird.

They meet Garnet.

“I’ve been imagining things,” Pearl says, and Rose finally sees her. Pearl. They’re the same.

She’s been alongside her the whole time, of course, Rose just hadn’t ever bothered to notice; she listens in fearful awe. Pearl pours more courage into one sentence than Rose has possessed in her life.

They fuse.

They fuse and Rose disappears. Rainbow Quartz leaves her with the most peculiar feeling for aftertaste: the radical memory of tolerating her own company. She can’t recall anything like it.

She can’t stop thinking about the fusion. She thinks about it all the time.

She wonders if Garnet feels like that every day. She thinks about Ruby and Sapphire, hand in hand, breaking from the lives they‘d been made for and tumbling head-over-gem down to Earth. A Ruby! A Sapphire! The idea is illimitable. She thinks she understands why they’d want to stay there forever. She thinks she’d like to run away, too.

She wonders: how many others?

Pearl keeps imagining things, and telling her. She knocks Rose flat on her back in practice and outmaneuvers her Hessonite’s tacticians. Pearl’s memorized the patterns of a hundred kinds of warriors, gem by gem. In battle she moves as though Garnet’s future vision belongs to her, too. She proposes Rose‘s armory be placed underground, where not even the moon’s eye can see it. They fuse again and again. Rose comes to recognize that Pearl’s prepared ten thousand exits for every ten thousand parries. For all her long hours in the projection room, Pearl knows more of the Earth even than Rose, and she’s still an expert on the cosmos. She can disappear whenever she wishes, and if she does that, Rose will have no one to follow. Somehow Pearl remains. They still splash together through tide pools and watch wasps build new homes, swapping fantasies. Pearl paints a tour of the galaxy, exploring uncharted worlds side-by-side. She shows Rose the story through a lens drawn straight out of her head, their future in crisp planes of blue light. Rose imagines staying just like this, safe in a dream on Earth.

They still play swords together.

“-a story I heard, from another time, you’ll love it,” Rose says. She whispers the last part: “It’s a human thing.”

Pearl’s mouth twists. “Not another human thing,” she says, and Rose snickers.

Pearl grants her a lazy smile. She leans on a wooden practice sword, hands folded together. A live blade is sheathed on her hip. Bismuth’s work. The Sky Arena’s gardens gleam.

She’s only just reformed. She hasn’t said a thing about diving between Rose and a jasper fusion’s battleaxe, or the way she’d looked back at Rose at the very last moment, round-eyed and trembling, and burst into steam. It’s the second time she’s discorporated this week. Bismuth tells Pearl that Rose can defend herself - “What d’you think she’s got that planet-sized shield for?” - Garnet just gives Rose these long, searching looks, like she should already know better. Pearl takes her time regenerating.

She knows she’s being foolish. Pearl knows it frightens her. They dance around the subject, just like they dance around everything else. But Rose still hasn’t told Pearl to stop. She desperately avoids telling Pearl to do anything anymore. She knows Pearl could - will - get seriously hurt. Everyone’s gotten seriously hurt, but at least the Crystal Gems have her tears; at least if she has to keep messing up, she can keep fixing it, too.

Until very recently, she hadn’t cried since losing Pearl. There was a time Rose thought she’d run her grief dry against the tower floor. Somehow the necessities of her unnecessary war have made her into a fountain. Nothing on Earth goes as expected.

“Well, are you going to tell me what it is?” Pearl prompts. She nods at Rose. “Or no, don’t, I’ll guess: another silly song? A poem about human ghosts?”

“It’s not any of those, but you’ve got the spirit,” Rose says, settling against a ledge. “It’s about a knight.”

“Knight?”

“It’s what some humans will call their mounted warriors,” Rose says. “Nobility, mostly. They wield swords,” she coaxes.

“Hm.”

“Pole arms, too. I know, I agree, sorry. Anyway, that part’s not important, the story’s not about a real one, it’s more the idea of one-“

“I don’t see the appeal.” Pearl says. “Imagine riding an organic beast into battle.”

“Should’ve lead with the sword,” says Rose, tugging at her hair. “Ugh.”

“I have been known to enjoy the sword,” Pearl says graciously. “Bu-u-ut, I much prefer the real thing. Spot of practice?”

She offers a hand to Rose, who joins her. They spar while the Sky Arena fades to orange. Rose matches Pearl feint for feint, until the other surprises her by rearing back with a triumphant laugh and leaping over Rose’s head. Their training regimen falls to the simple fun of chasing one another across the Sky Arena, playing at stories of villains and rogues. It’s like being trapped in the moon base again.

“Renounce yourself, scoundrel!” cries Pearl as she kicks Rose’s knees out from under her. Rose loses her footing and goes tumbling onto her friend. “Ow! Oh, get off.”

“Too late. I’m dead,” Rose tells her, but gets off. She loves when Pearl says scoundrel.

Pearl snorts. “Don’t you mean shattered?”

“I take it back, I don’t want to think about that.”

“Alright.” Pearl sits down beside her, wooden sword in her lap. The edge of the pillar’s shadow clips her knee.

Rose watches the clouds drift by.

”Rose.” Pearl prods with an elbow. Rose attends her. “Would you like to tell your story about the beast-taming human elites?”

She‘s not explaining this well. If Pearl had heard the human’s story instead of an overcooked explanation from Rose, she‘d understand what Rose had meant to say.

“Knights,” Rose says. “In the stories they’re just supposed to be wonderful, always rescuing somebody or another - brave, selfless, loyal...”

“Those are admirable qualities. I may be willing to reexamine my first impression,” Pearl says. She’s looking at the statue. There’s a gibbous ring on its head.

“I gotta tell you the whole thing, let me try to remember,” Rose says. Her attention is divided. “It’s short. Aspirational.”

“How apt.”

Pearl’s gem is pinkish in the light. Their game has left her hair in damp disarray. She’s smiling into space, shoulders relaxed. Rose watches her fingers drum against the flat of her sword. She’s breathing.

Rose re-enacts the humans’ story, dancing across the Sky Arena while Pearl watches with tolerant affection, brandishing her sword at swinging vines. At the end, she explains the knight’s ritual, taking a knee as well as Pearl’s hand.

“My Pearl,” she confesses, pitching her voice in imitation of a Sapphire’s elegance, and wins a flush of surprise for her trouble. Pearl presses her forehead to Rose’s. They laugh at the thought together. The words that had so struck Rose return to her unbidden under the touch of Pearl’s gem: completely dedicated to a person and a cause.

After every battle the Crystal Gems spit on Pink Diamond’s name, and they’re spitting mad. Rose stokes the flames with her own frustrations, venting about the outrage of it all as she flits back and forth between lives. She turns around to find the other diamonds doing the same with Rose Quartz, whose Homeworld image has been sacrificed to Rose’s excuses.

Everyone will hate her. If it were just that, she’d have to accept it: they have every reason to, after all. They already hate her, they just don’t know it‘s Rose. And who could blame them? Everything she tells them is based in truth.

To turn back now means submitting to the Diamonds, and dwelling in her cell until time’s end. She’ll never get another chance to run a colony. They’ll drain Earth to a lifeless husk and harvest her allies. Garnet and Pearl will be shattered, or worse. Bismuth, too. She’ll never see the quartzes or the humans or any of her other friends again. Rose imagines their reaction to the truth. Crazy Lace, Biggs, Snowflake. Little Larimar. The beetles. Don’t they have the right to live as they please? Isn’t this - the low rumble of song around the fountain, the spark of light when Pearl’s gem first dispenses a perfect, curving spear - isn’t that worth more than anything? She’s been there such a short time, but Rose can’t imagine life without Earth anymore.

They’re already being shattered, says the mean voice in the back of her head that reminds her of White. This is all your fault to begin with.

If only she hadn’t - hadn’t what, though? Can she really say she regrets the rebellion, now that she knows Garnet, now that Pearl’s bested quartzes in combat, after helping Bismuth erect her forge and listening to her stir a crowd with righteous hope? Is that fair to Pearl, still hostage on Homeworld? Is there even a point at which she could go back and undo the damage she has done? What if she’d never existed at all? Would they have been happy? Would they no longer suffer?

The closer she gets to someone, the greater their torment. She’s been so busy having fun on Earth and playing at freedom with Pearl that she’s forgotten that.

Rose can’t even say she disagrees with Bismuth; she’s the one who’d planted the seed. She tries to look at it objectively: Pink is hardly even a real diamond, and the others are too preoccupied with the resource shortage to pour more into a wasteful failure of a colony. If the Crystal Gems succeed in shattering a diamond, maybe they’ll finally write off the Earth as a lost cause. Maybe the Breaking Point would win them the war, if the war weren’t a lie in the first place. It’s exactly what she’s been asking for. Still the existence of the thing takes her by surprise.

She hides Bismuth’s gem in the forge.

She’s unforgivable.

The secrets pile up. She goes to the others about giving up on Earth again, actually gets on her knees and begs. Blue makes her cry.

Rose is ready to end this.

She thinks about the empty rose quartz gem, bubbled among the others. She doesn’t know what she‘s going to do with her physical form, after. Hide it in the forge alongside Bismuth? After stealing the plan she’d been poofed over?

Even the thought of facing the other gem makes her stomach turn. If they’re going to pull this off - if Pearl agrees to it - Rose’s secret becomes prerequisite to their success. Once things blow over with the Diamonds and everybody is safe, then she can let Bismuth out and tell her the truth. She has to.

If she just frees Bismuth now, the voice says, they’ll have the Breaking Point and can actually shatter Pink Diamond. It’s not like Pink Diamond doesn’t deserve it. Bismuth is right, after all. The Earth, at least, would have been better off if Pink Diamond had never come. She’s caused immeasurable pain. Those are indisputable facts. Maybe without Pink Diamond there, the Crystal Gems can live in peace with humans. She thinks of the rose quartz gem again. Remembers carrying it around like a promise, wondering if it’s possible, if she can change and not turn back.

Maybe they should shatter this one, for the sake of realism. It’s not like it would be her. She’s still afraid to give up her shield. It’s the only defense against White she’s ever had.

Rose’s imagination stalls. When she closes her eyes she sees the point of Bismuth’s weapon pressed to her stomach.

She’s still seeing it when their plan succeeds and the monstrous forms of their friends spring from the battlefield’s soil. When the attack arrives, Rose barely has time to throw up her defense with a shout. Garnet’s soft hair is tucked under her chin, and Pearl clings to Rose’s side as though she might crumble into dust. They throb with the sound of it hitting her shield.

Gems on all sides discorporate. The light spills over the rim. The three of them settle into a dazed, directionless quest. They wander in search of survivors, capturing who they can. Her healing tears do nothing. Pearl does the most.

Their banter has something underneath it now, a pit of grief and pain as wide as the earth. They unanimously leave it unacknowledged to fester. Garnet stares into space for days, fishing for a positive outcome. They still dance and sing and even talk, from time to time, as centuries of surface adventure unfold, but they don’t imagine things together like before. There’s no future for the Crystal Gem cause, just the constant cycles of life on Earth and a neverending gauntlet of friends whose voices they’ll never hear again.

Pearl stops talking about other worlds. Instead she rejects the present, cataloguing the detritus of Rose’s dead colony. She narrates their way through the empty vaults of every building in search of a corrupted gem, ally or foe. Projecting ghosts where once stood gems in the structures and semblances Homeworld had molded them to, or recalling to Rose and Garnet past adventures from the war. Everywhere they visit, loggias and tilework crumble to their skirmishes.

It’s at the Prime Kindergarten, of all places, that Rose first hears Pearl’s laugh again. She’s crouched in front of a half-buried exit hole, beckoning to something inside with fingers crooked. “Come on out,” she says, while Garnet and Rose catch up.

“Commonout.” There’s a little Amethyst curled up in the back of her hole, staring out at them. Rose gasps.

When the little Amethyst finally emerges, she’s shapeshifted a mirror image of Pearl’s face and body. Pearl scoffs.

“Pearl,” Rose breathes.

“Pearl?” The Amethyst repeats, staring at Pearl, who’s turning blue by the second. She hushes Rose and Garnet’s laughter.

“That’s right,” Pearl says to the Amethyst. “Very good.” The Amethyst turns back into herself. At full height, she comes up to Garnet’s waist.

“This is different,” Garnet says, beaming.

“She’s perfect,” says Rose. Because she exists.

Greg happens to her.

He’s adorable, the light of the dance floor bouncing off his ears. Rose ruins things again. He’s not angry with her, either. He’s not afraid of her. He just wants to talk. To her. Rose tries to be Rose Quartz, floundering for words, and Greg insists it has to be her.

She’s spent so long trying to be someone else, anyone else, she doesn’t know how to tell him who that is. She can’t give him what he thinks he wants.

“Have you ever been in love?” he asks her, and Rose is so afraid to get this wrong, and lose hold of whatever this is.

“How would I know?”

“It’s torture,” Greg says.

She thinks of Pearl.

She learns at Funland how easily human children shatter. Greg takes Sour Cream and runs him home in relief. Rose spends a day and night in her room.

Greg comes to her door just like any other morning, and for once Rose doesn’t rush to answer, dreading the end of their dalliance with an intensity that frightens her.

To her surprise, it still isn’t enough. Greg simply talks to her. Rose listens. She wants to understand.

“‘Watching’ Sour Cream isn’t just about watching him with your eyes. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a lot of fun,” Greg explains. Sour Cream is pulling on his hair. “But we also gotta keep him safe. There’s a lot he hasn’t figured out yet. You can’t do everything you want, little guy.” The last part’s addressed to Sour Cream directly, who convinces Greg to put him down.

They’re sitting in Vidalia’s driveway, a bucket of chalk by Greg’s knee. Sour Cream grabs Rose’s foot.

“What if he gets hurt?” Rose says.

Greg’s making faces at Sour Cream, who’s too cool to take the bait. “Well, that’s where we ‘grown-ups’ come in.” he says. “Human babies don’t have space powers or magic healing tears. They need to be kept safe, and fed and changed, and loved. Just like yours truly.”

He waves a hand down his soap-stained shirt and Rose snort-laughs.

“When people don’t have those things, it’s not good for us, Rose,” Greg says. “Human beings injure easy. We all know we won’t live forever. So you try to look out for each other until then. There’s a lot in this world that can hurt us.” Greg’s learned a lot about human children since walking into It’s a Wash, and he passes the knowledge on to her with the utmost patience.

”Like falling off of forest wheels?” Rose says.

“Ferris wheels. Yeah, but also hurt on the inside. Like you and me.”

“I was never a baby,” Rose says. There’s chalk on her toes now.

Greg lets her get away with it. “You’re my baby, baby,” he says, leaning forward to plant a kiss on the tip of her nose. Rose giggles. Greg’s hair has fallen into his face and she brushes it back for him.

“We can be babies together,” Greg suggests.

“Okay,” Rose laughs. “Let’s be babies.”

“She’d have my gem, but she won’t be me,” she tries to explain, staring at the band stickers slapped across the ceiling of Greg’s van. They’re spilling over one another on Greg’s mattress, Rose’s hair filling up the seat behind her.

“I thought your gem was you. You want to stop being you?”

“Or he. No!” she says. “I love spending time with you, Greg. I want to be me with you!”

“So be you with me,” Greg says, head on her arm.

“They’ll be someone new, someone – someone,“ Rose corrects herself. “A human child with a gem.” It makes sense to her. If the child has her gem, they won’t have to fear Ferris wheels or falling stone. If the child is human, they’ll learn and grow. They'll join the other life on Earth. It has to be both. Greg's shared daydreams of fatherhood on shoreline strolls. Even for her, there must be some way to do it right. “They could be anybody.”

“Anybody but you. I dunno about this, Rose.” Greg scratches his head. He shifts until he’s looking right at her, frowning in concern. “I don’t know a lot about magic, but this....I mean, I like you just the way you are.”

“But aren’t you curious? Who they’d be?”

That was the whole point, that it won’t be her, that the child gets to be whoever they are - he talks like he doesn’t understand, but she equally can’t find the words to articulate it any better.

She glances down. Greg’s full attention is on her. His lower lip is wobbling a bit.

“Of course I am,” Greg says. “If you’re sure about this...”

Sour Cream grows bigger more quickly than Rose is ready for. Greg’s hairline recedes. His new shampoo smells like Blue’s extraction chamber. For the first time, Rose stays with a human. She’s reminded of Lion.

Rose wants to sit on the beach and watch him grow forever. She thinks about the child more as Greg changes. That’s how she thinks of them: the child. She’s not entirely sure it’s possible, because she’s never done it, but she thinks so. She wants to believe. Her old research resurfaces. Their conversations realize like velveteen. She’s still not very good at it, but Greg never looks at her like she’s done something wrong. He gives her everything she’s forgotten how to have and asks nothing in return. They play around the docks down near Funland, and stargaze atop the water tower. Greg writes to his parents about her. He tells her about leaving home at 20.

“Twenty?!” Rose says. “Twenty years?”

“Yeah! Just got in m’van and - actually, I walked to pick up the van, and that was later. But yeah, pretty much.”

“How young!” Rose tries to imagine what it’s like for Greg, to learn so much in so little time. She wonders why it takes so long for her. She thinks about being human. These wandering conversations with Greg, about everything and nothing, pull her beneath the shadow of the Empire’s perfect bliss. They bask in sunshine at Beach City’s shore, watching the sand dollars breathe.

“When did you finally leave home?” he asks, but she’s taking a close-up of his beard, and doesn’t answer.

They record more little videos of the beach on Greg’s camcorder. Rose captures the changing shore. Garnet, Amethyst and Pearl are building a crab house. Amethyst notices Rose watching and sticks her tongue out at the camera.

She imagines her child on the beach with them. Will they be gentle to other animals, like Garnet now, lifting a crab to its throne? Will they be methodical like Pearl, reinforcing grainy turrets with a wave of her hand? Maybe they’ll take after Amethyst, who’s chasing a gull on all fours.

Maybe none of the above. Maybe all of it.

She wonders, if she manages to pull it off, will she disappear? Will the child hear, like a fusion, I love being me; it’s wonderful that I am here?

She dares to picture herself, perhaps one day, in another form, or even just a dream: laughing and playing with her child, a person Rose can’t possibly imagine. Traveling with them all across the Earth, watching them discover the world she’s fallen for, and its people.

She can’t wait for the others to meet them, whoever that child becomes. They‘re going to grow up to be whoever they are. They’ll be human. They’ll be free.

Amethyst charges across the beach and leaps at Garnet, who sidesteps the attack. She barrels into the back of Pearl’s legs instead, tumbling them both onto the crab house.

“Amethyst, the crabs!” Pearl shouts. She‘s covered in sand.

Rose misses them already.

“I wish you’d be more careful around the diamonds.”

Rose pulls a face at Pearl. “I wish the diamonds wouldn’t overreact so much,” she says, collapsing onto her seat. A pair of pebbles climb in her hair. “I just wanted a look at Yellow’s experience.”

“Experiments. It’s lonely when you’re not here,” Pearl says. A pebble agrees.

“Ha,” Rose says. Her automatic thought is, are you cracked?, but one look at Pearl’s face reminds her what she’s done. Rose swallows away the turn of phrase, frowning at her own shoes instead. She taps her toes together. “What are you talking about? You get to leave the room for errands anytime you want. You can talk to other gems.”

Pearl looks confused for a moment. Then she laughs. “I’m afraid it’s not the same. And different sorts of gems don’t talk to one another, anyway.”

“We’re talking,” Rose points out.

“That’s true.”

“What about the other Pearls?”

Rose curls against the arm of her chair. Pearl hops up to claim the other side. She’s solid against Rose’s hip. “I don’t think the other Pearls like me very much.”

“They should. You’re the best.”

“Thanks, Pink,” says Pearl. Her face is turned away now. “You’re the best, too.”

”Maybe they just need to get to know you better.”

“Maybe that’s it.”

She thinks about sitting in the tower.

It’s not the last time.

At some point, weak from sleeping in shadow, she learns to crawl under the light cast by the chamber’s narrow window. She sleeps there this time, too.

She imagines Pearl, waiting alone in their empty room, just like Rose.

She falls asleep in darkness.

She sees Pearl’s face.

She wakes in light.

“What?” Rose says. She sits up. The Pebbles scatter around her. Noggin squeaks in surprise as she falls off of the chair, and Rose reaches to catch her.

That’s when she notices something strange about her arm. “Huh? This isn’t my hand,” she says, frowning when she flexes her fingers and it moves again. “Did I shapeshift in my- this isn’t my voice!”

She jumps off the throne, patting her head, reaching for her gem. It’s in the right place, but instead of a pink diamond’s hard edges, her hand finds a pearl: round and pale and perfectly smooth.

“I’m Pearl?” she says in Pearl’s voice, pinching Pearl’s skirts between Pearl’s fingers.

A bolt of glee strikes her. Rose grins. “I’m Pearl! Ohoho,” she laughs, and makes herself laugh again at the sound of Pearl’s voice laughing like her. The Pebbles skitter away into their pebbleholes.

“I can’t wait to tell Pearl about this! While I’m in here, I’d better do my best to respect her body,” she tells herself. She tries a serious expression, but even imagining Pearl’s face sets her off again.

“Hey!” She says, noticing the Pebbles eyeing her through a crack in the wall. “I’m Pearl!”

The pebbles stare at her. Rose beams at them.

“Yes,” one of them says. Fisto is looking at her like her head’s on backwards again. “We can see that, Pearl.”

This isn’t how she thought it would go. She frowns. “Are you guys okay?”

Fisto speaks for the others. “We’re just surprised to see you so...energetic.”

“I’m Peeeeeearl!” she declares to the gems Yellow has stationed outside her door, who look at one another with brows raised.

“How’s it going, Amethyst?” she says to the one on the left.

The Amethyst glances at her partner again.

“Do you know where Blue Diamond is?” Rose says. She has got to show this new trick to Blue.

Blue’s going to laugh when Rose tells her the truth. Yellow, too. She‘ll probably laugh so hard she’ll forget all about the mess Rose made that got her locked up in the first place.

The right one points her in the direction of Yellow’s office. “Thank you!” Rose says, and she’s off.

She hears as she’s turning the corner, “You’re welcome?”

Blue and Yellow are both in Yellow’s office, discussing something in low voices. Rose peeks inside. The diamonds have their backs turned.

Their pearls are standing just inside the door, toes pointed forward. They haven’t bothered to keep their eyes open but are otherwise waiting just like Pearl does at family extraction.

Rose makes her entrance. The Pearls peek, and then jump in their places at the sight of her. Yellow’s Pearl looks at the Diamonds, who have yet to notice, while Blue’s throws a hand over Rose’s mouth and drags her back out of Yellow’s rooms by the face. Rose scrabbles at the pearl’s arm, unable to break her grip.

Blue’s Pearl releases her once they’re out of sight, rounding on Rose with a furious grimace. Yellow’s Pearl joins them a moment later, still looking over her shoulder.

“What’s gotten into you?” she hisses at Rose.

“I’m here to play a trick on Blue Diamond,” she says, giddy with anticipation. Blue and Yellow are still talking. It sounds like it’s turning into an argument, as usual.

The pearls look at each other. “Excuse me?” says Blue’s.

Yellow’s Pearl peers at her gemstone. “You don’t look cracked. What nonsense is Pink Diamond putting in your head now?”

Rose grins. “I guess you could say, there’s a little diamond in me too?”

Blue’s Pearl hides a laugh in her palm. “I’ve never seen this side to you,” she says.

“Well, you know what they say. We all have, um, sides.” Rose remembers Pearl’s words from earlier. She extends a hand to Blue’s Pearl. “We should be friends!”

“Mmmmmmmm,” Yellow’s Pearl says. “No. This is very not allowed.”

“You need to leave,” Blue’s Pearl tells Rose.

She‘s interrupted by the familiar sound of Yellow’s stomping footsteps. Blue and Yellow’s Pearls jump to assume their places. Yellow’s pushes her back toward the corridor she’d come down. “Go!” she hisses. “Quick, before you‘re seen!”

“Talk to you later,” Rose whispers.

Yellow’s Pearl shakes her head, squeezing her eyes shut rather than look at Rose. “Yes, yes, talk to you later, now goodbye!”

Rose wanders the halls of the palace until the novelty of her newfound freedom wears off. She thinks about going back to the Pebbles, but she doesn’t want to return to her room just yet. She’ll have to figure out how to give Pearl’s body back to her, somehow.

She’s struck by a horrible thought. What if Pearl can’t get back?

Or worse: what if Pearl’s in her body, trapped in the tower?

Now she‘s thought of it, she can’t not check, so Rose makes her way there. But getting in won’t be easy. It’s impossible to get out of, after all. She sees her answer as she’s coming up on the base of the tower: the little window, all the way up on the star-facing side.

Her plan is to jump straight there, buoyed by the excitement of being outdoors, but Pearl has neither Pink Diamond’s strength nor the ability to regulate her descent, and Rose crashes to the ground in a tumble of sheer fabric.

Once she gets a grip on the coarse stone used to construct it, scaling the tower isn’t as hard as she thought. It helps that she’s the size of a Pearl, with a Pearl’s reach and dexterity. It’s not so different from climbing on Yellow, or White. The tower doesn’t move while she’s grabbing for a handhold or yell at her to get down. She keeps her eye on the window, and in what feels like no time actually meets it. She throws one elbow over the ledge.

“What’s this?”

It’s White’s voice. Rose turns around. There’s a bubble floating behind her, as big as her - Pearl’s - body, opaque and white like her gem.

“What is Pink Diamond’s pearl doing outside of her chambers?”

Rose freezes. If White learns she’s found a way to sneak out, she’ll be grounded to the tower for another thousand years. Pearl will be so disappointed in her if that happens. They’ll be apart even longer.

“I’m, uh,” Rose stammers. “Here to - to return Pink Diamond’s - thing - she dropped! Because it makes her happy,” she remembers to add. And then for good measure, “I’m a pearl! Haha!”

White’s bubble swallows her whole.

Rose falls in a tumble of Pearl’s limbs, dizzy with the sensation of rapid travel. She gets her feet under her only to be spilled forward onto the floor of White’s head. Rose staggers out of the bubble.

She looks up. And up, and up, and up. White Diamond‘s eyes are on her. She’s always been small, but White’s face is impossibly far.

"This again?"

Rose has never thought about what Pearl sees from down here.

White Diamond sighs. It’s like a wind. “So irresponsible, Pink,” she mutters. She plucks Rose from the ground, squeezing her chest between forefinger and thumb.

“What did she do to you?” White says, tipping Rose from side to side. She’s used to being picked up, but White’s never usually this careless, and Rose’s head starts to spin.

“I told you! I’m running an errand for Pink,” she tries again, trying to get a grip on White’s thumb and loosen her hold. “So if you put me down, I’m just gonna do that, and then I’ll go back to the room. I promise!”

”Quiet.” White shakes her. Hard. Rose stops moving.

“I’m sorry I yelled,” she says, but it’s no use. White’s glaring worse than ever.

This is really bad. Pearl’s going to be so mad at her when she finds out.

“Why aren’t you behaving as you should? Tell the truth, pearl,” says White.

“Okay,” says Rose, giving in. “The truth is...Surprise! It’s just me! Pink!”

White’s expression curls in contempt. She pinches her fingers together.

Rose wakes in the tower.

“Very much so, my Diamond,” Pearl says, grimacing at the counterfeit shards.

One thing she knows for certain: they can never go back. Rose swallows her guilt, thinking of the bubbled gem among its siblings at the zoo, a short flight away. She thinks of the future.

She forces a smile.

“Soon, it will be just ‘Rose’.”