Chapter Text
Rainfall at Prime Kindergarten. Pearl sat in the back of someone’s long-vacant hole, watching it blur the opening and sky and smudge mud across the ground.
Pearl disliked the mess. She waited for the rain to end and the ground to dry. She’d leave footprints otherwise. It wouldn’t take a day, but Pearl disliked having to wait, too. It brought with it an Earthy air, steaming up from the ground or cooling along its surface. The smell got on her nerves. What few organic beings had moved back in after gemsprout would wash up from the rain afterwards, and they also irritated her. Earth weather slimed up the edge of her hole. The Kindergarten had proven itself Pearl’s most reliable hiding place, between warp proximity and scarcity of other gems, or else she wouldn’t keep returning. The rain would throw off her schedule again.
Not that there was anybody left to keep it for. She had all the time in the universe, presently. She could afford to wait it out.
If Pearl watched the mud too long she grew angrier. She could close her eyes and think about things in her head, though the rain sound would continue outside. She had been on Earth’s surface for three cycles of the moon, and still had a lot to think about. Despite her best efforts, the dance of the rain on mud had half her eye.
Some life she’d salvaged here. Crouching in messy cubbyholes, waiting for the earth to swallow and settle down afterwards, sneaking from place to place. Endlessly shedding dirt. Endlessly stepping on life. Pearl had been on her own all three cycles, immersed in organics. They coated the floor, hovered in midair, pinched her hands, dug at her hideouts, and blew bubbles in the dead of night. She’d stored away her skirt to see them coming.
Her speech for Pink Diamond was a work in progress. For when they reunited. An angry one. Pearl would keep it to herself forever and ever, but went over her words in her head all the same.
Dear Pearl,
Thanks for all your help. I’m leaving and I’m not coming back.
Take this message to Yellow Diamond, for her eyes only.
Thanks again,
Pink Diamond
Pearl opened the message intended only for Yellow Diamond and scanned it. She rolled her eyes. She took it to Yellow Diamond’s Pearl.
“This is ridiculous,” said Yellow Diamond’s Pearl, known to her most intimate coworkers as Yellow. She scrolled back to the top of the message.
“I know,” Pearl said. “Clueless. I don’t know where she’s run off to this time. What do I do?”
“My Diamond won’t stick her neck out for you. If anything, she’ll defer to White Diamond’s impeccable wisdom,” Yellow said. “You’ll need to stay out of the way until they track your Diamond down. See if you can get advice from Blue.”
Blue Diamond’s Pearl, unlike them, took the news very seriously.
“No idea where she went?”
“None,” Pearl said. “She sent me out to look over the legs. They needed cleaning, so I cleaned them. If nobody else saw her, that’s a four–day headstart.”
“She could be anywhere,” Blue said.
They put their heads together. Blue and Yellow Diamond were arguing about their letters from Pink and the missing Diamond’s latest tomfoolery. Pearl hid from their sight to talk to the other Pearls.
“You know White Diamond’s Pearl?” Blue asked her.
Pearl swallowed and nodded. She knew White Diamond’s Pearl. She’d had her suspicions with the pearl’s gem placement and style of dress, but never voiced them.
“So you know what she might do over Pink Diamond leaving notes with you like that,” said Yellow. “Which your Diamond took pains to avoid by sending you to mine. Therefore, the most reasonable course of action is to await her return inconspicuously. That won’t be a problem for you.”
Pearl coughed.
“When she’s back, it won’t matter where you were, and she’ll want to keep you. If she can. To tell you the truth, it’s what she seems to have intended by the letter.”
She couldn’t argue with that and it infuriated her. Pearl trusted Yellow’s characterization of both Diamonds and didn’t want to gamble her life on obeying Pink Diamond’s last mission literally, when she’d learned by now to favor the diamond’s intent. She knew getting in trouble alongside Pink Diamond would only upset her, from past experience, and that was the opposite of Pearl’s intended purpose. But she didn’t have anywhere to go that the Diamonds wouldn’t come looking for Pink and potentially encounter Pearl at peak frustration.
“Maybe Earth?” Blue said.
“Earth?” Pearl said. “Pink’s colony?” Go back there? They’d spent time on Earth’s Moon recently, the past couple of centuries. It was Pink’s only in name. The other Diamonds and their gems organized it all. The invasion was in its early stages. No recorded history to speak of. Still covered in organics. Unpleasant. The moon base was a cage of screens and shadows. Pink used to flip through the feed from Earth, sighing and groaning.
“No one will pay attention. It’s not worth anything yet. You’re one of Pink’s gems. You‘ll fit right in on the surface.”
“More or less,” said Yellow. “Most of them won’t know any better.”
“Keep your head down until word spreads that she’s back, then return to Homeworld.”
“You really think that will work?” Pearl said to her. She fussed with her sleeve. “Maybe I could wait on the moon. No, they’ll look for her there...”
When fed up with the muck, Pearl almost thought about not going back at all. Let Pink deal with the outcome of impulsivity on her own, this time. But she’d rather be back home. Pearl shuddered to think that this might be her new eternal existence, waiting in festering organic pits until Pink Diamond grew bored and grew up and came back. One would never know Pink Diamond’s purpose was perfection, or Pearl’s to manage her mood. Neither was getting done. A waste of two perfectly serviceable, top–of–the–line gems. Pearl wasn’t made for doubts. She was made for forever patience.
When the kindergarten dried sufficiently to jump down from her perch, Pearl wandered into living territory and the shrubby creek she’d stumbled into last cycle. It didn’t take her long to find the spot again.
Pearl stuck her feet in the water, frightening a fish. It was cool. Smooth. Stony. As far as Earth went, bearable. She flopped back against the bank and stared at the bushes.
A gem barreled out of them.
Pearl sat up, scattering petals. The stranger was much larger than her and pinkish-red. She knocked Pearl off her seat and into the shallow water, drenching them both under the splash.
“Sorry! What are you doing here?” The strange – Quartz? – said, still half-crouched over Pearl in the creek, now spitting water from her mouth.
There was mud on the stranger’s nose. Pearl didn’t move. She glanced at the impression she’d left on the grass of the bank.
“Analysis,” she said. What? Analysis of what? For what purpose?
“Oh. Ok.”
“You?” Pearl said. Was she doing this right?
The quartz let her up a bit and shook out her hands. Pearl fumbled in the shallows and slipped on one elbow.
“Just exploring. I ran away,” said the stranger.
“Oh.”
“Yes. From what I was made for. Um...”
It was said straightforward enough that Pearl didn’t immediately realize she was being serious. The mystery gem was staring at her. Burning eyes, like a bird high in a tree. Too much for Pearl all at once. The stranger was still too close, and, not wanting to be chased, Pearl didn’t step back. But she tugged her shirt down and patted her hair back into place. The gem looked like she was waiting for Pearl to respond.
“...the truth is, I did too.”
Bird-eyes turned to star-eyes. “You did? All on your own?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say all on my own,” Pearl said. This hadn’t been her idea. She tried for a laugh. As though the act had no consequence.
“Wow.”
“...What are you?” Pearl said. Very nicely. If she was going to call attention to Pearl’s weird lies, it’d be nice to know the risk already assumed.
“Me?” Her stranger said. She eyed the bushes. “I’m Rose. Rose,” she said, looking at her own arm and hand, “Rose Quartz.”
She didn’t volunteer her name. A quartz soldier, as Pearl thought. Pearl had met others before in passing. They’d said a number of things to her. Always the one thing to start. She braced for Rose’s next words. Pearl could see it forming, the dreaded, automatic question. Even before, she’d never liked to answer. A measured response was rare.
She had practiced over and over in her head: nobodynobodynobody. She’d agonized over propriety in some nobody’s hole in Prime all seven storms of the last three cycles and come to her decision: correct or not, Pearl had no other answer, and she wouldn’t lose her headstart by confessing. Here was her first encounter with another gem. A stranger. A deserter of no consequence. This would test her ability to maintain the cover story for as long as it took to track down her Diamond. The start of a new life, by new rules, albeit ephemeral.
“Who are you?” Rose said. Her voice was high and warm.
Who are — who — Pearl autospat her premade line, defense splintering. “Nobody–”
“That can’t be,” said Rose, Rose, Rose Quartz, elbow-deep at Pearl’s knee. Her laugh hit the river. She retreated from Pearl to a lazy crouch.
Pearl sat up, hands underwater at the wrist. The shape suggested that Rose’s hair was rich with iron. Iron was the most abundant element on Earth. It touched the DNA of all living things. It curled over Pearl and left rain down her arms and legs as she backed up against the bank.
Pearl could see Rose’s gem past the end of Pearl’s body, a five-faceted navel trading drops of light with the water’s surface, like Pearl’s own dripping nose. “You’re the somebodiest gem I’ve ever met!”