Chapter Text
Pearl picks you up at the greenhouse after class, same as always, but something’s wrong. You’ve only seen her at a distance today, running around—she overbooks herself too much, but Wednesdays are the worst—and now that she’s in front of you it’s clear she’s not okay. The way she holds herself; the way her eyes move. The way she reaches for your hand right away. Any pearl’s body language speaks volumes, is actual language, and Pearl’s is less subtle than some. It’s loud as a scream right now.
A chilly wash of dread sweeps through you, sloshes behind your gem. Concern too. Of course concern. You love her, and she’s not okay.
You squeeze her hand, reach out so you can hold them both. Her fingers are cold. What’s wrong? your whole body says, and you know she can hear it.
There’s a strained shiver in her chest, her throat, when she speaks. “Will you...nest with me for a while?”
You want to hold her, right here. Tuck her up against your light, under your chin, the way she does for you when you’re scared, when you hurt, when you need her. But there’s a precise foot of distance between you, and the set of her limbs says not yet. Pearl cries happy tears on a weekly basis where anyone can see; she’ll hug you and kiss you and even get a little saucy right out in the open. She shows her joy to everyone in her radius, and her anxiety too, she just can’t seem to help it. This is different; she looks as if a gentle word might crack her in half, and you know she likes to keep that private.
“Let’s take the warp,” you say, and she nods. You lead her to it, and take her home.
Her nest, the one Bismuth made to fit the three of you, is tucked inside one of the fountains in her room; she hesitates beside it, so you curl into the plush grassy-green cushion and open your arms.
She sinks into them, presses herself into a ball against your body, and shivers. Hard, staticky. She doesn’t cry.
She always cries. At least, she has with you, so far. This dry-eyed shaking silence is new. Frightening. It reminds you that even though you know her inside and out, there are deeper, older things left hiding for you to find. Maybe you should call Bis. Bis has known her longer, knew the war, knew her with Rose. But Bis was in the forge, you could hear the clanging from the greenhouse. If she wanted Bis, she would have gone there. She needed you, and you don’t know what to do for her.
So you hold her, tight. Funnel light into your gem to warm the space between you; rub your cheek against the top of her head. “Tell me what you need,” you murmur, and there’s a tiny shiver in your voice, too.
“You,” she chokes out. “This.”
“You’re scaring me a little,” you admit, and she flinches.
“Sorry.” Her voice is deadened, eaten up by her knees and your chest and the cushion fibers. “I’m angry. Not with you, at all. You make it better. Is that okay?”
She doesn’t sound angry. You’ve seen her angry, taking fury and pain out on Holo-Pearls in the arena, telling off a student who did something careless, spiraling into a rare fight with Amethyst.
“Yes,” you say. “It’s okay. I just. Love you.”
She muffles an injured sound against your body and you rock her, gently, because you don’t know what else to do. Then something clicks—a half-remembered conversation last week, a suspicion. “Did you have therapy today?” Pearl nods, hesitant. Her shoulders hunch. Ashamed. You don’t like that at all, so you rub the curve of her back warm and steady. “But it’s usually on Thursdays.”
“We had to reschedule.” Her head twists; she’s rubbing her gem into your chest, as if it hurts. “Feeling...jumbled. The layers are leaking into each other.”
“Layers?”
“We talked about things I...like to keep put away. Further down.”
Every pearl has layers. It’s how you’re made. For you, they’re fluid; the emotions are distinct, but the memories flow together. They’re sideways, everything near the surface, all of them touching you lightly all the time. You’ve never wondered if other pearls were different, but. Pearl is so organized, precise. Determinedly happy, or overwhelmingly sad. When you fused you got the sense that her layers...aren’t usually touching her like this. You don’t know how she can live that way, not knowing when something old and buried is going to wound her; you prefer to have all your wounds exposed to the air. Not to show them to everyone—except the one you can’t help showing—but for yourself. To keep an eye on them, even if it’s just to watch when one starts to fester.
Are Pearl’s always festering? Tucked away to mushroom in the dark? You love her, you love her so much, but sometimes...you just don’t understand her.
You don’t need to, right now. She’s not shaking quite as hard. She feels safe here, you realize, and you try to be safe. To be calm. To protect her.
They must have talked about Rose. What else would this be? Anger so old that all she can do is tremble? That’s Rose. Or Pink. The same, but not entirely. Will she want to tell you? Will she be able to? You don’t know if you’re ready for that. It’s fresh for you, in a way you’re not sure she understands.
It feels like you just lost her. Your Pink. You took her as she was, because there was no other option; you loved her the same way. She hurt you, and then you were gone. Blip. Then she was gone and you’re still coming to terms with...with freedom. What she felt like to you, and what she actually was to you. You never hoped or wished for her to change, wanted any more from her than she was capable of giving, and you know now that you should have wanted more, wanted better, but you still loved her. Love her.
Maybe...it’s like that for Pearl too.
“I don’t know how to keep doing this,” she says, softer, drained. “Dredging things up I can’t fix. I can’t have any answers, why am I asking the questions?”
You don’t know. If it were you? You wouldn’t be asking the questions either. Whatever the questions are, they’re hurting her. “You don’t have to. You don’t have to do this every week.”
She breathes out slow against your skin. “I want to set a good example.”
“For Steven?”
A nod; a little shudder, but then she uncurls by millimeters, tucks her face more comfortably into your neck. “It’s helping him.”
“Pearl.” You kiss her gem, light, careful. “Maybe a human therapist isn’t prepared to deal with...your stuff. Layers. Everything.”
This gets you a little huff, lightyears away from a laugh but. “She isn’t. But she says...she thinks compartmentalizing can work, for me, to cope. But something triggers it, when I.” She pauses. “When I fall apart. She thinks it’ll help me to know what the triggers are.”
If you’re honest, that sounds terrifying. Painful. You’re very happy to not dig too deeply, thank you. But Pearl seems to want to, the same way she spars with the Holo-Pearls until she’s battered enough to need a bath in the fountain, the same way she overbooks herself on Wednesdays. Doing something hard, to prove she can withstand it. You squeeze her tighter. You wish you knew how to love her enough to protect her from herself. “Can I help?” you ask instead, and she finally lifts her head enough to look at you again.
“You are.” There’s a slack sort of exhaustion in her face. “You do. I’m...I’m sorry I’m—”
“Don’t,” you cut her off, and kiss her to keep her quiet, to tell her what you mean. That’s when she finally starts to cry, like an afterthought, tears slipping out with barely any fanfare.
“I just need some time to...reorganize,” she sighs, when you pull apart. She’s trusting you, to see her like this, to hold her together, and it warms you right through. It’s hard to watch her struggle, but you want to. You want to love every dark and hidden piece of her. You think—you know she loves every dark and hidden piece of you.
“Then let me help with that.” You tuck the offer beside her gem, quick and quiet before you have time to think better of it, and she stills.
“You mean…”
“You did it with Steven, right?”
“I...sometimes I think I shouldn’t have. I wish he hadn’t seen— There’s. A lot going on in there.”
“And who’s going to get it better than me?” The tremble is back in her limbs again, and she hides her face in your neck. You let her, cradling the back of her head in your hand. Sometimes it’s easier, when you’re not looking at each other. “We don’t have to. But I love you. Okay? There’s nothing inside you that can make me stop. You’re mine, and I’m keeping you.”
A wet, quivery breath. The tiniest nod. You kiss her hair, curl around her. “Can I call Bis? So you’re not here alone?”
“No,” she says, sure. “I’ll be all right. We can tell her about it, after. But I think...this should just be us, right now.”
You pull back, wiping the wet tracks from her cheeks. “Okay.”
“You have your phone? You can call me from in there. Call me, the minute you want to come back out. The second.” She looks quietly terrified. As if this will be dangerous. Maybe it will be—you know some of what she’s been through. But you’ve seen plenty yourself, and she’s talked you through the bad days that come when you remember. When someone else’s anger freezes you inside. When some curious Gem asks about your eye. When you feel, for no reason, like your body isn’t your own.
“I promise.” You kiss her like the brush of a butterfly. “It’s going to be okay.”
Pearl closes her eyes; more tears spill out. “I love you.”
“I’ll be careful.”
Then her gem brightens until it’s blinding, and you’re weightless, and you’re somewhere else.
***
The space you arrive in is undefined, and cleanly bright like a gleaming kitchen countertop. Around you, the palest differentiations of colors give the impression of surfaces, walls, a ceiling, a floor, but at the same time every surface except the one you’re standing on feels like you’d have to walk miles to touch it. You feel safe instantly; it’s possible you shouldn’t, but this is Pearl. This is the expanse inside her mind, inside her soul, shimmering and familiar. How could you be afraid here?
You can be worried, though. Snatches of sound reach you, as if through a fog. Getting louder, closer but no clearer; competing, overlapping.
Pearl’s voice, each one of them.
You turn a circle in the empty space, and when you come around again they’re there as sudden as raindrops—projections, glowing blue, moving and speaking and fighting and sobbing in urgent, asynchronous loops. It takes you a breathless minute to process them, to keep yourself from running to the nearest one. They must be coming from somewhere—
She’s at the center of the throng of memories, a hand clutching her chest, the other pressed against her gem; she looks like Pearl—is Pearl—but there’s something just a little off about her, a flawless mask starting to peel at the edges. You couldn’t care less—you thread your way through the cacophony, and when she spots you coming she stumbles. Stumbles away.
“Volley,” she croaks, and she sounds squeezed. “Don’t—I don’t want to—”
You reach for her, voice softening to a croon. “It’s all right. I’m going to help you.”
You can see it, ticking over like the hand of a clock; she’s resisting, and then she isn’t. Little lines of stress between her brows go slack and smooth. Her eyes deaden, coals going dimmer for lack of oxygen. You touch her elbow, and she angles listlessly in your direction. “I can’t make them stop,” she whispers. “I don’t know how. They can’t be here. They can’t be here.”
“Then let’s take them home,” you suggest, and she shudders. “Everything back where it belongs—will that feel better?”
Her head dips. “I’m tired.” It’s an admission, wound in thin threads of fear. You pull her in; you can’t resist. A kiss at the corner of her eye, caked with salt. A soft bump of your noses together. Her light, and your light.
“I know.” You touch your forehead to her gem. “I know you are. Come on. We’ll clean up, and then we’ll rest. Show me which one goes first.”
Instructions seem to strengthen her a little; you’re both pearls, down to the core. She gestures without looking, close by, at a memory curled on the floor hiding her face in her knees. This is one of the sobbing ones, great heaving wails that crash over each other with tidal force. Legwarmers, a sweet little capelet—you’ve seen photos of this form. Recent, then.
You brace yourself. You brace Pearl, your arm under hers, your hands clasped tight together. When you step toward the memory she’s tugged after you in sluggish increments, pulling her feet from tarred indecision; when your joined hands touch the memory’s bent head there’s a pop like a cork pulling free, and you’re swept away.
***
You open your eye on the beach. So precisely the beach that you wonder for an instant if Pearl, the Pearl outside, has pulled you out of her head and deposited you here.
But the Inside Pearl is still clinging to your hand, and then you realize with a jolt that the house is gone. You’re facing the cliff where it should be, but only the warp pad and the Temple door are sheltered under Obsidian’s folded hands.
You’re in the lee of another hand, the sound of the surf behind you; under your fingertips, the memory sits curled. She’s the picture of agony. It’s in the air here, just as thick as the salt scent of the ocean. A feeling like the universe is cracking apart.
Oh, Pearl. You love her. You love her almost unbearably. It’s all right. The pain here is fresh and bright as a new spill of blood, but it’s still only a memory.
The Inside Pearl wasn’t ready; she’s been in the lee of this, protected in her clean white room. She wrenches your joined hands away from the memory and stumbles heaving to her knees.
“I don’t want to be here,” she gasps as you bend to grip her shoulders. “I shouldn’t be in here—”
Everything ripples and she’s the center point, the stone tossed into the pond. There’s a grinding vibration under your feet, screechy and discomfiting, and you think of Bis sharpening a blade in a shower of sparks. You wish she was here.
You drag Pearl back upright and she’s leaning into you, drunk on her own suffering; beside you, around you, the memory slows to a heartbeat of utter stillness. Then it starts again, glitchy, wrong—backward, you realize, like watching a tape rewind.
The memory beside you hops to her feet; takes off in reverse across the sand toward the Temple. You don’t mean to follow, but you do anyway, you and Pearl both, as the sand is whisked away under your feet and the door to Steven’s—to Rose’s—room twists open. Pearl digs her face into your neck; the door swallows you both.
It’s bright and dreamy and pink inside, and the air is ringing. Actually ringing, a high-pitched whine that muffles every sound. The memory stumbles, turns—and there’s Rose.
You’ve seen her, in pictures. In Pearl’s dreams, when she forgets her sleep mask; in Pearl’s mind, when you fuse. She seems so big, somehow, even though Pink was much bigger. Rose touches the memory; she pulls her hand back, lays it on her own stomach, below the gem.
The Pearl twisted into your side is clutching at you, rictus fingers trembling with effort and you’d bruise for her if you could, if you had blood under your skin. You watch, backward, Rose and the memory; you can’t parse what they say through the ringing in Pearl’s head but you can feel it, anguish-panic-terror-confusion—
You see something. “Stop!” you say, and it stops. The memory, the ringing, their muffled words. You tuck your head down next to Pearl’s. “Look. I think you should look.” Protest grates hard out of her throat but she tips her face anyway, lifts her head just a little. “Not at yourself.” Not at the memory, concerned, attentive, not expecting the blow that’s about to fall. “Look at Rose.”
She does. You do, too. You’re not familiar with Rose’s face, not like Pearl is, but you knew Pink’s expressions down to the smallest flicker. You’re not sure she ever looked at you like that.
Like she wanted to crack her own chest open and show you her entire soul. Like she wanted to trust you with the light and dark of her. Like she was scared the best thing she could do for you was set you free.
Inside Pearl is pressed so close to you that you can only see half her face when you turn; she’s crying, a quiet, steady stream, and you wipe her cheek uselessly with your thumb. She barely notices. Peels herself slowly away from you and reaches out, lays her hand so carefully over Rose’s hand, over Rose’s belly. “Steven,” she murmurs, examining their hands. “That’s Steven.”
The way she says it—every time Pearl says a name, Steven’s name, your name, it means a hundred different things. This time she says Steven like it means my baby. Then she looks up again at Rose’s face. “I’ll never know what you were thinking, will I?” When she turns to you, she looks utterly heartbroken. “I’ll never know why.”
You have to be touching her; she’s not even entirely Pearl and you can’t not be touching her. Gently you fold in against her side, place your hand light over hers, over Rose’s, over Steven. Layers and layers and layers, and the hurt of it all around you, humid and heavy as the air before a storm. “I want to see Steven,” you say, tender; she tips her face toward yours, and around you both the memory spins away.
The beach is under your feet again, and the moon above in a sky sparkling with stars. Greg’s van is parked on the sand, the back doors open, and he’s snoring on a mattress inside. Garnet is sprawled on her back watching the stars; Amethyst is curled against her side. You haven’t moved but now, beneath you, beneath your hand on Pearl’s hand, is an infant whose head is no bigger than your fist. He’s asleep, mouth working in his dreams, cradled in the memory’s arm.
“When he was born?” you whisper, as though you might wake him; Inside Pearl shakes her head, caresses the baby’s whorls of dark hair.
“A little later. The first time I held him.” Steven yawns, settles. “This is when I started to love him.”
You both stand there a long time, watching the memory watch the baby as the tide slowly creeps up the beach. When the sun starts to rise, you squeeze Inside Pearl’s hand. “Let’s go get the next one.”
She nods; her gem brightens.