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If Pearl were to have given it more than a passing thought, she might have expected that the first Gem to arrive to the newly Independent Planet of Earth—other than the un-Corrupted Gems, that is—would be a Quartz. Or a Ruby. Even a Bismuth or a Peridot. Someone firmly entrenched in the heavily class-based strata of their society, certainly, but one who would have spent the majority of their time away from Homeworld. For whom the Diamonds and their authority would have of course been compelling, but a distant sort of compelling—entrenched in their programming, but less so in their direct experience, a theoretical, deified underpinning of their existence, but not one that was immediately relevant in their day-to-day lives.
Surely such Gems would be the ones to acclimate to this new reality more easily than anyone else, and therefore the most open to coming to Earth. Furthermore, working class Gems on the colonies—away from Homeworld itself—had been the focus of their recruiting way back during the Rebellion—and they’d spoken often about the beauty of Earth. It had been a selling point, even, and maybe Gems old enough to have been existent back then remembered…
So, when the first new Gem does arrive, it’s something of a shock.
Pearl is lounging on the couch in their newly refurbished house, trying to adjust to the new view (they’d only lived in the old house for six years—nothing at all for a Gem—and yet, she’s surprised by the extent to which she had come to think of it as home, and to which she misses it now), when she suddenly hears the new Galaxy Warp in Steven’s not-Diamond base activate.
Steven himself is on the beach, trying with Lapis to explain the concept of the ocean to Nephrite, and the only reason anyone else would use that new Warp would be if they were coming from off-planet. And even so, that they would use this Galaxy Warp and not the main one on the island is suspicious, clearly spells trouble, someone—some loyalist with a grudge trying to invade, to shatter their newfound peace, or else the Diamonds changing their mind, back to restart the invasion, reinstate the Empire, begin another War…!
Pearl draws her spear and charges up the stairs. She’ll stop them. She won’t let them get to Steven, or to her family, or any of the newly un-corrupted Gems, or Greg, or the other humans, the Earth, anyone! She’ll stop them…!
She bursts into the dome, ready to strike—
“Well! I was expecting a warmer welcome!”
“I…” Pearl blinks, lowering her spear. “What are you doing here?”
Yellow Pearl steps off the Warp pad. “I was under the impression that Earth was now an independent planet, open to all.”
“Well, yes, it is, but I just didn’t expect—”
“Aren’t you going to welcome me?”
Pearl grits her teeth. “I’m not a Pearl hosting a ball!”
Yellow scoffs. “Pearls never hosted balls. Your Diamond might have, and of course you would have been expected to—”
“I know! I was there too! For thousands of years!”
“You’d never know it.”
“What are you doing here?!”
“Well, I thought that, since my Diamond no longer requires my services...”
(And here she pauses just a moment too long, a crack in the façade just large enough for Pearl to peer through and see what is really going on.)
“...that I’d see what all the fuss about the Earth was about.” Yellow tenses and un-tenses her fingers in a gesture that’s so intimately familiar that Pearl wonders how she didn’t notice it at once. Glances away to avoid meeting Pearl’s eyes, to uphold that nonchalance that she’s trying so hard to project.
Pearl banishes the spear back into her Gem, then takes a step forward, lays a hand on Yellow’s shoulder. “Welcome.”
She sets Yellow up on the couch in the living room. Gems—and Pearls, especially—don’t need sleep, of course, but Pearl has come to understand over the millennia the importance of having one’s own space, and for now, it’s the best she can muster.
Well, she could have asked Bismuth if they had any additional space—she, Lapis, and Peridot have been hosting the un-Corrupted Gems where the barn used to be in what is half reminiscent of a wartime Crystal Gem base, and half of a sort of campground, with plans to construct a more permanent settlement soon—but Pearl suspects that that might be overwhelming.
And crowded. The house is not exactly private, but with Steven’s room no longer merely a loft in the same space as the rest of it, it’s more private than it used to be, anyway. Besides, total solitude can be overwhelming too—it had been for her at first. Even when Rose was still alive, the notion of Pearl having her own room in the Temple, that was hers alone, being alone when she was inside…
Well, no need to drop Yellow off the deep end so soon.
When Steven stumbles back in, brushing the sand off himself, he spots Yellow on the couch and falls into that enthusiasm that comes so naturally to him. “It’s so good to see you again!”
Yellow starts at the sound of his voice, then jumps up. And, before Pearl or Steven can say anything to stop her, she’s in perfect formation, hands forming a Diamond salute. “Pink Steven!”
“Umm…No.” Steven smiles, sheepish. “It’s just Steven, remember? Well, not Just Steven, it’s Steven! And I’m not Pink Diamond, and even if I was, all that hierarchy stuff is over, so you definitely don’t have to do the whole salute thing!”
Yellow blinks, hesitates, then slowly relents and shifts her hands to her sides. They sit there tightly though, and Pearl sees how Yellow clenches them into fists—as if fighting that elastic urge for them to fly right back into formation. (It’s magnetic, impulses like this one, and Pearl fought this particular instinct herself just recently on Homeworld. Every time one of the Diamonds looked at her, she too had had to clench every light-synthesized muscle to keep herself from flying into that servile salute.)
Steven, though, doesn’t see. “Nephrite, Lapis, and I were going to go meet up with Biggs and Snowflake to go on a walk through town if you want to join us! I know you just got here, and maybe you want to settle in first, but if you did want to—”
“Steven,” Pearl interrupts, acutely aware of how Yellow tenses at Steven’s every use of the word want. “Can I speak to you on the porch for a moment?”
“Oh, yeah, sure!” He turns toward Yellow. “Be right back!”
“I know you’re trying to help,” Pearl tells Steven when they are alone outside. “But I think perhaps we need to take things a bit slower with her than we have been with the un-Corrupted Gems.”
“Did I make her upset? I didn’t mean to—”
“I know you didn’t. And, I wouldn’t even say she’s upset, exactly, but...” How exactly does she phrase this? “There are things about being a Pearl that are…difficult to explain. Difficult to understand.”
“But…you understand them, right, Pearl?”
“Well, yes, I suppose I do.”
“Then you can help her if you want to, right?”
Pearl blinks. It’s more of a realization than perhaps it should be, after all this time. And she does want to help… “Perhaps I can.”
When they reenter the house, it’s to find Yellow with her back to the door and a broom in hand, sweeping up the sand that Steven had tracked in from the beach.
“You don’t have to do that!” Steven exclaims.
Yellow jumps again, turning toward them, hands flying into salute for an instant until she forces them down. “My…That is, Pink…Rather…Um…Steven!”
“He’s right.” Pearl reaches for the broom, grips it gently. “You don’t need to do that.”
“I…But…” Yellow’s gaze flits to Steven, and Pearl understands. No one knows better than she does that Diamonds—real or perceived—and silence make compelling bedfellows.
“Steven,” she says. “Weren’t you and Lapis going to take some of the others for a walk?”
“I…Yeah,” he says, seeming to catch her meaning after a moment of hesitation. He turns to Yellow. “It was good to see you again.” Then, with a concerned glance behind him, he paces out the door, leaving Pearl and Yellow alone.
“You’d allow your Diamond to inhabit a dwelling in such a state?!” Yellow asks when he’s gone, yanking the broom back out from Pearl’s hand. “Dust everywhere?!”
“No, it’s generally a bit tidier than this. But because I want it to be. Steven doesn’t order me to clean, and—”
“A Pearl shouldn’t have to wait for orders, not for something such as this! You should be able to anticipate your Diamond’s—”
“Steven isn’t my Diamond.”
“Of course he is! He’s Pink, even if—”
“He’s not. Rose—Pink—gave up her existence to create him. He has her Gem, and many of her powers, but he’s not her. I don’t have a Diamond. I’m free. And…” She hesitates. “I know it likely doesn’t feel real yet, but you are too.”
Yellow’s eyes widen for an instant, and then seem to settle into indignation. She drops the broom, storms over to the couch, and plops down on it, arms crossed…which Pearl takes as an indication that she’d like to be alone.
And that is, at least, something that she can respect. Pearl bends down to retrieve the broom and stows it away inside her Gem, then paces to the door of the Temple.
“I’ll come out to check on you soon,” she promises as she passes Yellow. “Let me know if you need anything.”
Yellow's only reply is an indignant “Hmph!”
“So…how are things on Homeworld?” Pearl asks, breaking the long silence.
They’re strolling on the hilltop where Rose had once grown creeping moss that bloomed into bright pink flowers in the sunlight. In the past two years since Steven guided it back to the hilltop, it has remained here, stable and thriving, but Pearl comes to check on it every so often anyway, just in case. And, of all the errands she has to run, this seemed a good one to bring Yellow along on—no humans to interact with, no un-Corrupted Gems, rebel or otherwise, to unnerve her.
“How do you think?” Yellow responds.
“Well…good, I suppo—”
“Good?!” Yellow stops in her tracks. “You think they’re good?!”
“Well, aren’t they?”
“How could they be? When everything is falling to chaos! When the Diamonds, my Diamond are miserable, and I can’t...they—she doesn’t want—she’s—they’re all alone, and useless!” A pause. “What do you think that does for the Empire?!”
“There is no Empire anymore,” Pearl tests, gently, regretting it even as she says it. “Remember?”
“You know what I mean! Gemkind!”
“But aren’t—”
“I’m not discussing this anymore, and you can’t order me to.”
“I…” Pearl splutters. It’s the emphasis on the word you that strikes her more than anything, as if, if someone else had asked her—Yellow Diamond, perhaps, or even Steven—she’d have muddled through, increasingly uncomfortable, increasingly pained, because she’d have thought—she’d have known, would have felt the truth deeply encoded in her Gemstone—that she had no choice.
Pearl knows.
And she knows too, what it is to snatch autonomy in the small places it can be found, has—had—done it herself on countless occasions. She looks at Yellow, recognizes the resolute terror masked in certainty, and so when she continues, Pearl tries to make her voice reassuring, grounding. “Of course I would never order you to.”
They spend the rest of the outing in silence.
“That’s…that’s really her?” Yellow is standing at the base of the stairs, head angled up at forty-five degrees, such that, if Rose’s eyes weren’t closed in that portrait, they’d be bearing directly into Yellow’s gaze. “Pink?”
“She was Rose, by then, but…yes.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Rose was who she chose to be.”
Yellow squints. “All the images we saw of Rose Quartz were of her in battle…the dangerous Rebel Leader…especially after Pink was—after we all thought Pink was…”
Pearl nods, understanding her counterpart’s meaning. “It’s quite different, isn’t it?”
“She just looks so…serene. She never looked like that in any of the images! And…” she hesitates. “She—that is, Pink—never looked that way, any time I saw her on Homeworld.”
“No, well,” Pearl glances down. “She never felt that way on Homeworld.”
“But…she did here?”
“She tried to. And I believe, for a time, she succeeded. But not as Pink. As Rose.”
Yellow glances away, hums inscrutably.
“Why did you bring me here?!” Yellow scrunches her face in disgust.
It’s the first time she’s been to the residential areas of Beach City, among human dwellings arranged daintily on a grid of pavement, and, while she has seen humans other than Steven—on the beach and on the occasional stroll through town—Pearl can imagine that it’s nonetheless overwhelming.
“Well,” Pearl approaches one of the garages, distinguished from the others because it has purple drapes on its exterior in lieu of a door. “After we spoke the other day about Rose’s painting, I remembered that you enjoyed modeling. So, I—”
“I what?”
“We all discussed it on Homeworld, remember? While we were preparing for the Ball?” A pause. When Yellow doesn’t say anything in response, Pearl continues. “So I thought you might like to meet the person who painted Rose’s portrait. Perhaps see if she could paint one of you.”
As if on cue, Vidalia appears from the garage, and takes a step outside to greet them. “Thought I heard ya out there! Come on in!”
Yellow jumps back.
“This is Vidalia,” Pearl explains. “I called her on the phone—that’s a human communication device—to see if she would be willing to meet you.”
“A human?”
“Sure am!” Vidalia answers, before Pearl can respond. “I take it that you haven’t met many of us before?”
Yellow ignores the question. “You painted the portrait of Pink Diamond?”
“Who?”
“She means Rose.”
“That old thing? Yeah! You guys still have it?”
“Oh, yes! We’ve had it on display in the Beach House since it was built!”
“Huh.” Vidalia chuckles. “So, you coming in, or what?”
Pearl turns to Yellow, who hesitates. Her fingers are twitching nervously; she’s shifting her weight from foot-to-foot. Eventually, though, she takes a few tentative steps forward—leaving Pearl to follow suit—looks around with an anxious expression as she finally enters the space.
“There ya go!” Vidalia settles beside her easel and picks up a pencil. “Now why don’t ya hop up on that stool, and—”
“Hop?”
“Well, no I just meant…sit up there. Or stand in front of it, if that’s more comfortable. Or, ya know, lie down if you wanna—you do you…”
“Oh.” Yellow’s expression changes, wavering, Pearl thinks, somewhere between relief and further discomfort. Slowly, she crosses the studio to the stool, and stands stiffly before it, trying, it seems, to appear dignified.
“Great! Now, stay still—”
“If you want to.” Pearl chimes in.
“Yeah, of course only if you want to,” Vidalia concedes offhandedly, then continues. “I’m going to try to capture your essence!”
“My what?” Yellow takes a step back, clenches her Gem in alarm as her heels brush up against chair behind her.
“You know, your essence! Who you are on the inside! It’s what I try to do with my paintings—show who people are!”
“O-Oh.” For an instant, this seems to relax her, but as Vidalia begins to sketch, Pearl can see the tension building in Yellow’s form. Her muscles may be light-constructs, but in this moment, there’s nothing light about them—her teeth grit themselves behind ever-tighter lips, her flexing fingers form fists. Finally, she bursts. “I can’t do this!”
“Do what?” Vidalia sets down her pencil.
Yellow, though, directs her answer to Pearl, storming away from the stool. “I can’t stand here like a Diamond! To have this same…being…paint me, who painted a graven image of Pink Diamond…I’m not…I don’t have…I’m only a Pearl! This is wrong! And—” She hurries past Pearl, out of the studio, doesn’t even turn her head as she finishes her sentence. “It was wrong of you to bring me here!”
With an apologetic glance at Vidalia, Pearl hastens to follow in Yellow’s wake.
The next time Pearl warps to the Sky Arena to train with her swords, Yellow tags along. After her retroactive disgust at the previous outing, she’d spent several days somewhat more distant than she’d already been, but eventually, that deeply engrained instinct, that need for companionship—because Pearls were never made to exist in solitude—had apparently overtaken even that, and she’d mumbled a request to accompany Pearl to wherever it was she was going next.
Now, she sits on what’s left of the stands, where once aristocratic Gems had sat, watches as Pearl practices the swordsman forms in the arena in front of her. And it must be this—the image of Pearl standing there with a sword in her hand—that prompts Yellow to ask the question, voice hushed, for once more curious than accusatory:
“How could you do it?”
“Fight? Well, I—”
“No, not that…I meant that you…you took a sword and…your Diamond!”
Ah.
“We all always thought,” Yellow continues. “that a Quartz—Rose Quartz—had done it… and that was unbelievable enough, but you…you were her Pearl!”
“I didn’t shatter her.” (And even now, even millennia later, Pearl finds her voice still sounds like it’s pleading.)
“But you discorporated her! Your Diamond! How? I…I could never!”
Pearl paces over the ruins of the stands and slowly sits down beside Yellow. “Even if she asked you to?”
Yellow looks up, eyes wide.
“She asked me to,” Pearl continues. “It…It wasn’t an order. Not exactly. She didn’t give me orders, by then. Well…” she glances quickly at her hands, and then an image, a feeling, words caught in her throat behind stifling, clawing fingers, even now, discussing this, they feel poised to strike at her face… “She didn’t give me many orders, anyway. But she asked me to, and I knew how much she wanted it, and I wanted to make her happy.”
“But…” Yellow’s voice trails off.
“Yes?”
“Weren’t you…free by then?”
“I…I don’t know.” A scoff. “I used to think it was so simple. That as soon as she adopted the Rose Quartz persona, as soon as she told me I didn’t have to fight with her, that it was my choice, she'd set me free. But...I sometimes wonder…” She sighs, voice tapering off into the arena. “I don’t always know how much of it truly was my choice. Some things were. And that moment, in the Palanquin…I wanted to be free, I did, and I wanted to make her happy…”
Yellow gazes at Pearl, expressionless, then down at her hands. “Did…Did it hurt?”
“When she was…?”
A nod.
“Well, speaking from the experience of having been discorportated many, many times, I’m certain it did hurt her. In fact, I worried—”
“No. Not Pink. You.”
“What?”
“Did discorporating her hurt you?”
“Oh.” Pearl blinks. “Yes,” she responds, finally. Then adds, almost as an afterthought, “Unbearably.”
“You loved her,” Yellow says, and it’s almost an accusation. “Your Diamond.”
“I’m not sure I would quite phrase it that way.”
They’re on the beach. It’s early morning—the dawn is just arriving and the sun begins to peek over the ocean. The only sounds: the waves, the breeze, their voices.
“You did! The way you speak about her, the way you look at her portrait...That’s what everything—the Renegade, all of it—was about! You—”
“I loved Rose,” Pearl interrupts. “I loved who she became. Who we both became. Who she was always trying to be. But...” A sigh. “You’re right, I was devoted to Pink. I never stopped being devoted to her, even after it turned to love. And yes, I suppose that devotion is what began…well, everything. But…I think that was…that is…different than love.” A pause. “Why? Did you love your Diamond?”
“I…no! I mean, I don’t think I did…That would be perverse!”
“Perverse?”
“Well, yes! Of course it would! A Pearl and a Diamond?! Love? I…it’s…”
Yellow is on her feet again, walking with that broad gate, gritting her teeth. Pearl can feel the panic radiating off her, understands it, has felt it herself. (This is very not allowed!) But she’d carried it differently, had carried it like the Pink-who-wanted-to-be-Rose, like a secret that needed to be guarded, unspoken, un-thought of, even, except in the quietest, most buried of channels, internalized deeper and deeper insider her pearl, until her head felt like lead.
But Yellow—ever-devoted, her Gem constantly calibrating and re-calibrating to match those Diamond-angled refractions—carries it like her one-time Diamond would. And, like those of her former Diamond, Yellow’s negative emotions bubble to the surface in fits of electric rage, destabilizing.
(Because they’re Pearls, not Diamonds, Pearl would have once thought that meant that the only people that they could destabilize would be themselves. She knows better, now, though.)
“Something I’ve learned,” Pearl lays a bracing hand on Yellow’s shoulder and hopes it’s an insulator. “Is that there’s nothing perverse in how we feel. How we love. Who we love. We spent so much time thinking of their happiness, but...” Pearl moves her other hand to grip her shaking counterpart’s. “We deserve happiness too.”
Yellow swallows. “Did…did your Diamond—I mean Rose—did…did she teach you that?”
“Partly. And so did my friends, my family—”
“The rebels?”
“Yes. But I think it’s mostly something I taught myself.”
“How?”
“I loved. And then I learned to let myself. And to let others love me. Even when it was hard. Even when she was gone. And, every day, it got a little bit easier. Even when it still hurt. Even though it still does.”
“Did…did she love you?”
“Rose?”
Yellow nods. “Or Pink.”
Here, Pearl sighs. Releases her counterpart’s hand to turn away. “I…I think so. I’d like to think so, anyway. But…I would wonder…I would worry…By the time we were here, she was so good at keeping secrets, even from me, that I was never entirely sure.”
“That…must have been…difficult.”
“How so?”
“Well, we were programmed, calibrated, to know exactly what our Diamonds were feeling. It must have been…painful…not to. Especially something like that. Even if…well, even if you were free.”
“I…yes. I suppose it was.”
They pause. The waves crash on the shore. The rising sun catches Yellow’s Gem, glitters off it as much as it does off the waves.
“My Diamond…” Yellow continues at last, gazing out at the sea. “didn’t love me. And I never expected anything different, of course I didn’t, because I was her Pearl! But I thought, at least, I would always be by her side, I was built to always be by her side!”
“I know,” Pearl says, wrapping her arm around Yellow’s shoulders, wishing desperately that there was more she could do to fill the hole that she knows all too well. She repeats: “I know.”
“But…I…She…She doesn’t want me!”
There’s so much Pearl could say. She could relate tales of her own terror, in those weeks after the staged shattering, as she sat with the heavy Gemstone in her lap waiting for Pink to re-form into Rose, how she became increasingly convinced that she wouldn’t re-form—or else, when she did, would decide that she no longer wanted Pearl around—and where would that leave her? An ownerless Pearl, all alone in the universe? How that terror had been nearly enough to shatter her. How she had never quite recovered from it entirely, that even now, after everything that has transpired in the millennia since, it remains a part of her, lurking quietly somewhere in the back of her Gem, ready to pounce at her lowest moments.
Or she could speak of the emptiness, the bitter, bitter hole that had very nearly consumed her when Rose was gone. That, as much as she loves Steven—and she does—she still carries that emptiness with her too and suspects she always will.
But these displays of her own pathos won’t help Yellow. Especially, since, in some ways, Yellow is living that nightmare that never quite came to fruition for her. Pearl was never left alone, not really, and by the time she was nominally without a Diamond, she’d had Rose, and had already theoretically been dreaming of freedom for centuries. And when Rose was gone, she’d had Garnet, Amethyst, Steven…
As far as Pearl knows, Yellow has never dreamed of freedom, never even contemplated it, until it was suddenly thrust onto her. And for her, it has meant a different kind of loss than it ever did for Pearl.
But Yellow isn’t alone either. She has to understand that. Pearl wraps her other arm around her companion, in a fuller embrace, and at this touch, Yellow’s form seems to sink onto hers, gives way to sobs that she must have been holding in for weeks.
“I’m so sorry,” Pearl says, and means it more than she knew she had within her to do.
They don’t speak for most of the rest of the day, following their conversation on the beach.
But when Pearl makes an excuse to come check on her, after nightfall—coming to the kitchen, ostensibly for a cup of tea, which she would in actuality pour down the waterfall in her room sooner than drink—Yellow sits up, stops her.
“If I’m not trying to make her happy, what do I do?”
“What if,” Pearl sits down beside her. “you tried to make yourself happy?”
“I don’t think I’d know what it felt like.”
“Happiness?”
A single nod.
“Do you remember the sensation, that sort of swell in your pearl, when you knew you’d pleased your Diamond?”
Yellow’s hand finds her Gemstone on her chest and clenches it longingly. “Yes.”
“That’s what it feels like.”
“I…but…” Yellow stammers. “How could I possibly make myself feel that way?!”
Pearl smiles a soft, knowing smile. Stars twinkle in with the ocean breeze through the open window. “You eventually learn to let yourself.”
And so, they go on a hunt for happiness—or, at least, for activities that might allow Yellow to begin to feel it. Fun seems a good place to start.
After the results of that last attempt, Pearl has discounted modeling as a possibility, but she considers singing. One of their purposes on Homeworld had been to sing, after all, Yellow as much as the rest of them, and, while these engrained instincts of servitude aren’t of course the be-all-end-all of happiness, Pearl supposes they’re as good a place as any to start looking for it—now that Yellow finally seems to want to, anyway.
So, now, they’re in front of the TV, karaoke queued up, and they take turns singing human pop songs and sitting on the couch, watching the other.
After her most recent attempt—a halfhearted rendition of Haven’t You Noticed That I’m A Star—Yellow raises her eyebrow instead of handing over the microphone. “This is supposed to be fun?”
“Isn’t it?”
“No. Not for me. Singing was always Blue’s activity—but I suppose her Diamond asked for it more.”
Pearl hesitates. In the time she’s been on Earth, Yellow hasn't mentioned the other Pearl even once until now. “How is Blue?”
For an instant, Yellow looks as though she wants to snap, but something seems to come over her, and when she does respond, setting the microphone down on the coffee table and sitting down on the couch beside Pearl, it’s in a quieter tone. “Sad.”
“Oh?”
“She…sulks. Or she did…when I left.”
Pearl doesn’t say anything, waits, instead, for Yellow to continue, and eventually she does.
“Her Diamond doesn’t want her either, or at least can’t have her as a Pearl anymore, so…she’s sad. But…”
“Yes?”
“Her Diamond never told her to leave.”
Pearl lays a hand on Yellow’s shoulder. “Did…did Yellow Diamond tell you to leave?”
A small nod. Yellow clenches her hands in her lap and stares at them. “She got angry—like she always does, when she’s sad—and told me that if I couldn’t serve her, I should just go, leave the planet, because that would be easier...and I didn’t know I could say no. I didn’t know I wanted to say no. But I think I did. And…” She turns to look at Pearl. “I could’ve, correct?”
Pearl nods, eyes all sympathy. “You’re free.”
“If I’m trying to make myself happy, and not her,” Yellow asks. “If I’m not her Pearl, then who am I?”
“You get to be you.”
Yellow swallows. “I...That’s…”
“It’s terrifying,” Pearl admits. “I know. It was for me as well. Perhaps more terrifying even than the War was. But it does get easier.”
“But I don’t even know who I am!”
“And that’s precisely what you’re allowed to learn. It’s…” She stops short, the realization washing over her—like the waves always do the sand on the beach, like the starlight did through the window when, years ago, now, it seems, she’d watch Steven sleep, like Rose’s smile had on her Gemstone, once upon a time. (All of these images happened, true, are stored in her Gem as memories—but there is more to it than that: All of these images are a part of her, a part of the story she has chosen to tell, the picture she has drawn, point-by-by-point, of herself.) “It’s what you’re allowed to create.”
“Like…a painting?”
“Precisely.” Pearl smiles. “Like a painting.”
“So,” Vidalia grins. “You ready now?”
“Yes.” This time, Yellow doesn’t need direction. She stands atop the stool, posture tentative at first, but gradually, as Vidalia begins to sketch, she grows in confidence. And, as she does, she squares her shoulders, puffs out her Gem, so that it catches the midday light through the doorway, glimmers in it, radiant. “Be sure to capture my essence.”
(Pearl leans against the wall, says nothing, smiles.)
The view of the sunrise over Beach City from the mossy cliff is striking, made all the more so by the pink flowers springing into bloom. They’d come back to once again check on the moss, and it had only been a coincidence—albeit a happy one—to find that they’d timed it so perfectly.
They’re sitting, now, at the top of the cliff, watching. If they were human—or if they ate—this would be an ideal scene for a picnic. But they’re not, and they don’t, so they’re content just to exist in that pensive, contemplative silence and enjoy the view.
Finally, Yellow speaks. “Did you...always…want to be free?”
Pearl considers. “Not always. The truth is…I don’t think I started dreaming about my own freedom until Pink started dreaming of hers. I suppose it began as an extension of my programming…like everything else.”
“But…it grew into more. Your dream. Your freedom.”
“Yes, I suppose it did.”
They return to a comfortable silence. The sun swings across the sky—painting it pink, then bright blue—a magnificent backdrop for the petals, floating gently in the breeze and drifting slowly down over Beach City like a dance.
(These flowers are like them, Pearl thinks, like her and Yellow. A clingy substance that bloomed into something else, something beautiful. It only needed to be in the correct location, tended to by the correct people...)
“I’m going back to Homeworld,” Yellow says, and when Pearl looks up at her, it’s to find that her face is tentative, radiant, blossoming. “I feel…ready. And…I…I want to help Blue."
“You will always be welcome here.”
“I know.” And Pearl knows, intuitively, that she does.
In a day, Pearl will walk Yellow to the Galaxy Warp above the house. They’ll look at each other, smile like they were never able to do in that long-ago era before, embrace. Yellow won’t say thank you, not in so many words, but Pearl will hear it anyway, in the way that she stands solid, both feet firmly planted on the ground, how her fingers are still, how she displays her Gem in the light so that it shines. They’ll nod at each other, and when Yellow steps on the Warp Pad, they will maintain eye contact until she’s gone. Pearl will remain there for several moments after, gazing proudly at the spot where Yellow had been.
That’s all to come. For now, though, they sit together, quiet, on this corner of the Earth, watching the flowers and the sun dance.