Work Text:
Author's Note: Credit goes to seerofsarcasm for their post about Pearls as Servants, link here.
Prompt was originally requested by a-giant-spider, "anything to do with Pearl's defectiveness."
remembering that you don’t know
Amethst isn’t dumb. She doesn’t forget the things she’s heard. Especially not when the words come from a world she’s only heard of, a world she’s never been to.
Amethyst isn’t stupid. She knows she can’t just come up to Garnet or Pearl (or Malachite) and say, “So, what’s that business with Pearl being defective, huh?”
So she tries to remember all of Rose’s stories about Homeworld, all of the ‘classes’ that Pearl tried to give her once upon a time. She knows that everyone has a place in Homeworld, that gems have a purpose (a function, as Pearl would put it) – but she realizes she’s drawn a blank with Pearl. When she was younger she was fine with accepting whatever she was told, had long afternoons playing with figures made out of rocks: this is Garnet the Lieutenant, Rose the Queen, and Pearl the Irritating Chancellor that no one listens to. Over the years she’d realized that neither Garnet nor Pearl followed their original function. Ruby and Sapphire were pretty open about it but Pearl – Amethyst realizes that she just assumed Pearl was made to be an Irritating Chancellor.
It makes her want to tear her hair, when she hears Jasper’s voice in her head – lost and defective, lost and defective. Lost and defective doesn’t sound anything like Pearl. The thought that Pearl could be overcompensating sounds so unlike Pearl it creeps into Amethyst’s territory.
In her head, she hears a voice: “We’re not so different, you and I.” It’s a cookie-cutter cartoon villain’s voice.
This is a bit much for someone who’s only recently begun to dive into those waters. So Amethyst shapeshifts a grumbly tummy and spends the rest of the afternoon on the boardwalk, buying hotdogs and ice cream, trying to bury the image of Pearl in her head.
She burps between floating memories of life before Steven. She licks the ice cream fast enough to keep the stuff from melting down to her fingers. She thinks about Pearl throwing tantrums in the days after Rose’s departure.Lost.
She finishes her fourth ice cream cone. The sun’s set. The boardwalk’s emptying. She runs up and down, feet thudding hard against the wood, the occasional clanking of collateral damage, anything to make enough noise not to think about it.
Amethyst digs through a whole bunch of gem stuff in her room. Broken weapons. Dusty wires. Old communicators, unable to broadcast frequencies. A receiver with old log messages. Nothing but war things –bzzt – Division twenty-seven down – bzzt – quadrant four taken over – bzzt – we need backup – endless repetitive acts of destruction. There are shards of Kindergarten tech, parts of a puzzle she’s never had the guts to really ask about. It’s all static to her.
Overcooked runt, Jasper had said about her. She was born into this world all alone until Rose came along. She isn’t sure if she should feel this creeping pain at thinking of being born after everyone else, that everyone else must have had a sibling of some sort except for her. The pain is there anyway, and it must be all in her head (or her gem, more accurately) because gems don’t have hearts, not really, but it’s a pain right there in her chest.
a world that’s passed them by
The next day is spent sifting through parts of the ship that they’ve decided is worth looking into. While the rest of the debris stays out of human sight, the more interesting parts of the ship are carted outside for a bigger working space.
Sitting at the far end of the beach, where no one bothers to walk to, they work at putting things together. Pearl is trying to reverse-engineer the ship’s systems. Meanwhile Amethyst allows Garnet to direct her; she’s not really into the tech the way Pearl is, and she isn’t in the mood to think about it. She eventually takes a self-appointed break while Garnet fiddles with some knobs and a monitor. And out of habit, it is Pearl she approaches.
“You sure know a lot about this stuff, huh P?”
“Well,” Pearl says, going through the green debris of Peridot’s ship, “Not really. These are all quite advanced, as Lapis warned us it would be.”
“But you’re still compatible with ‘em.”
“I can harmonize with the ship, but not as efficiently as Peridot can.”
“But that’s like, what Peridot’s for. Harmonizing with the tech. It’s not like, well, your purpose. You’re a strategist.”
Amethyst tenses up. Pearl’s face. It’s so carefully blank. It’s not very Pearl.
“I was Rose’s strategist,” Pearl says quietly. “And you know that.”
Unable to stop herself, Amethyst asks: “What were you before that?”
Pearl dips her hands into a console she’s just completed and powered, her hand pressing through the semi-permeable, glasslike surface. She closes her eyes. When they open, lines of code flicker through her irises. Amethyst waits as patiently as she can as Pearl completes a scan of the computer.
“I fought,” Pearl says.
Just as Amethyst is about to snark back about what a vague answer that is, Steven interrupts, having found a complete set of color-coded wires.
“Good job, Steven!” Pearl says, turning away sharply. There’s a smile plastered on her face as she walks to the boy, inspecting all the parts and how they fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.
The afternoon sun glitters over the ship’s parts, making them shine on the beach. Amethyst half-listens to Pearl’s lecture regarding all the ship’s systems. No need for hydroponics, she says. No need to sustain life, this kind of ship. Not like some old-ass model ship or another, large ships that brought gems by the truckload and carried the tech that allowed them to create more gems. There’s a sudden pause in the lecture, as though Pearl has realized she’s said too much.
Steven asks what’s happened to all those ships.
“We had to fight them,” Pearl says. “They were burrowing into the Earth. At Kindergarten.” Pause. Amethyst sees that awful smile on Pearl’s face. “But, well, we won. And we stopped them!”
And nobody on the beach is fooled that the time is fast approaching that Steven’s going to want a better answer than bad guys losing to good guys.
“Now they’re coming back,” Steven says quietly.
“They could,” Garnet mutters. “Which is what we’re experimenting with these for.”
the warzone they never left
Pearl sneaks out of the house, that night. Amethyst is lying down at the kitchen floor, pretend-sleeping, when she hears the clink of a sword. Peeking out of the countertop, she sees Pearl carrying a thick sack, bulging with blades, tiptoeing onto the warp pad, disappearing into a column of light. What? She could just as easily have put those things into her pearl…
A quick glance at Steven’s bed reveals that he’s sound asleep.
Amethyst waits five minutes, long enough for Pearl to get far away from the warp pad wherever she’s landed.Heh, Amethyst thinks to herself, she can be sneaky when she has to be.
She steps onto the warp pad and the familiar light wraps around her.
It’s the Kindergarten canyon. Amethyst blinks. Neither of them like this place, the looming shadows of all the fighting gems. A trail of glowsticks light up the place, and the full moon glares down on her. Before she can creep herself out further, she hears a solid, reverberating sound of blade on blade some distance away.
Not too far away, a little further down the canyon, is Pearl. She’s dueling a hologram of herself, masterful in the way she bends and pirouettes away from her enemy. Surrounded by glowsticks and helped by the moonlight, she sees and dodges and dodges, and Amethyst would be bored, were she not paying attention to how Pearl’s split-hair evasion requires reading the enemy perfectly.
Geez, Amethyst thinks. It’s not her way. It’s exhausting, that style of fighting.
A powerful upward cut from Pearl disarms the hologram, followed by a swift stab – it’s her favorite ending move – and the fight is over.
The hologram falls. The light of a nearby glowstick bounces off its translucent form. “Challenger wins! Begin new duel?”
Pearl walks to the side of a canyon, where a whole set of swords lean.
Light pours out of her gem. On the ground, more holograms emerge, legs and torso, thin neck and pointy nose, up until the tip of Pearl’s hair.
Oh my god, Amethyst thinks. So many Pearls. One Pearl’s bad enough. But there are like, seven of them now. She can already hear that nagging, computerized voice – but then each of the holograms pick up a sword and surround Pearl.
A computerized chorus asks: “Begin new duel?”
Pearl’s crazy, Amethyst thinks.
“Let’s us begin,” she hears Pearl say, faintly.
They come at her immediately. Pearl gets out of the way. Two of them hit each other. Numbers don’t work all the time in battle, Amethyst hears Pearl say, from a memory a long time ago.
Not all enemies will have the same speed. You can run, turn back, cut one down and keep running.
That sounds stupid, she remembers herself replying. What if you get tired?
Well, there are other tactics. But it’s not a bad idea in certain conditions.
BO-RING.
Pearl doesn’t run in this condition. She throws her sword – it hits a third hologram in the distance – and then she ducks and expertly moves into a closer enemy’s space, grappling this fourth hologram by the wrist on one hand and by the shoulder on the other, tossing Four into hologram number five. They tumble into each other.
More lessons pour through Amethyst’s mind.
Don’t get attached to your weapon.
Be flexible.
(Pearl, flexible? Only in battle, and only when she dances).
Pearl’s retrieved two swords now, from the two previous holograms. It’s down to four on one, after Four and Five recover from their tumble.
The holograms learn. They don’t all step in to battle. One of them lunges – Pearl dodges, but into the waiting overhead cut of another.
Shit!
There’s a huge cut on her left shoulder.
Amethyst, she scolds herself, what the fuck are you doing!
When the next hologram times the attack after Pearl recovers, Amethyst cracks her whip, jumping below to join the fray. Back to back, the two of them square off against four.
“Wha – Amethyst!”
“Dude! What is wrong with you?”
Pearl doesn’t answer; instead Amethyst hears the sound of a parry. Twing!
No time to talk. They don’t even have time to coordinate. Amethyst makes quick, brutal work of her two opponents, being less fatigued than Pearl. After whipping one and spin-dashing another into a canyon wall, she turns to see Pearl cut a hologram down.
The last one charges at an unguarded Pearl, but Pearl recovers fast enough to parry – parry – thrust. The thrust lands maybe four inches away from the center of the hologram, but it’s deep enough for it to stagger, giving Amethyst the perfect opening for a finishing whiplash.
“All in the wrist,” she says proudly as the hologram falls.
Then she turns her head to see Pearl on bent knee, barely propped up by a sword, sucking in air.
“Woah, Pearl,” she mutters, walking over to Pearl. “Don’t pass out on me! I can’t carry you!”
Pearl looks up from the ground. “Don’t warp us back,” she gasps out. “I just need to recover.”
Amethyst glowers at her. Pearl collapses on the floor. Rolls to face the night sky.
“I’m not carrying you,” Amethyst repeats, sitting in the middle of the canyon with Pearl. She expects Pearl to say something – anything – but Pearl just keeps sucking air as noisily as she can. Eventually her breathing evens out.
The holograms stay fallen, all seven of them, their eerie permanence creeping Amethyst out. But they stay fallen, and that’s enough for her. She grins, turning to Pearl: “So, what was that you were saying about my uh, circus of violence? Kinda hypoallergenic of you, huh?”
A little late, Amethyst realizes the word is hypocritical. Pearl doesn’t correct her.
“Hypocritical, I mean,” she has to amend, since Pearl isn’t helping. She sneaks a look at Pearl, whose ‘hair’ is matted and whose 'body’ has various cuts. For some reason she imagines the war – a maelstrom of death, Garnet once said – and wonders if she’d have to see Pearl like this after every fight. If she herself would bearound after every battle.
Pearl rolls yet again and tries to stand.
“What is wrong with you? Just stay put.” Amethyst watches her get to her knees and take a few wobbly steps towards wherever.
“I’m not carrying you, dude.”
A few steps away Pearl falls again. Amethyst can see Pearl sighing, her entire frame shaking with annoyance.
God – damn – it.
Amethyst walks over. “You could say thank you,” she says huffily, her short arm trying to wrap around Pearl’s neck.
Pearl shakes her head and brushes off Amethyst’s attempt at helping her. Amethyst glares, but Pearl looks away.
“It’s fine,” Pearl says. “I just need a little more rest.”
“If I hadn’t stepped in, you’d be regenerating out here for three weeks!”
“Thank you,” Pearl says perfunctorily, in that dismissive tone made to make people go away.
“What – is – wrong – with – you?” Amethyst considers taking out her whip and cracking it a few times. “I hate it when you get like this,” she says, unable to stop herself. “Geez, you don’t see Garnet sulking around over something, begging for attention by sneaking off or whatever –”
Pearl looks at her, straight and lancing. Amethyst waits for it, for any familiar response – she doesn’t want to speak any more than she’s already dug herself into – but Pearl says nothing.
That look. It hurts right there again in Amethyst’s chest, because it’s so empty. There’s nothing in that gaze, not anger, not sadness. Pearls’ familiar nervousness is gone, just this frightening blankness not unlike that of Pearl’s own holograms.
“Pearl,” Amethyst says, running out of anything she can use to get a rise out of her fellow gem, “P, you’re creeping me out,” she admits.
Pearl gets up and manages to walk all the way to a wall. All she looks at are the bodies of her holograms. The swords gleam with the light off the glowsticks. It’s a strange battlefield, both modern and old. In a way, this place is older than Amethyst. She stomps her way to Pearl, sits next to her. There’s nothing left to do.
Out of nowhere, Pearl starts to speak.
“I was part of the ground crew that provided support for Kindergarten,” Pearl says. “I did a lot of other things, mostly in the background. Fixed things. Fought when I was told to. I was shipped around a lot.
“I wasn’t the best. I was the kind of gem you’d put in the front lines. Well. No, that’s not true really. I wasn’t quite cannon fodder. But I wasn’t… way up there, either.”
Amethyst swallows. She looks at the fallen holograms. “Why…?”
“You don’t have anything to feel bad about,” Pearl says softly. “Kindergarten wasn’t your fault.”
Question after question races through Amethyst’s mind. “Where’s all this coming from?”
Pearl sighs. “I don’t know. Homeworld was so distant. When the ship appeared – I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the past.”
Amethyst remembers Pearl screaming during the last visit to the central warp: They’re coming back! I can’t do this! Not again! She bites back the impulse to talk. Pearl keeps her gaze fixed on the fallen holograms. A faint light shines again from her Pearl.
“Uh, P?” Maybe you shouldn’t exhaust yourself…
But the words die in her mind before they can peter out as sound, because Pearl’s light shines farther than usual, creating a static hologram of an old battlefield.
“The first time I fought for Rose, I thought to myself that I could do it,” Pearl says quietly. “But you never get used to it. You can’t rest, because what if someone blows you up? You can’t plan beyond tomorrow, because you don’t know if there will be a tomorrow. You’re always running from something, or counting ammo, or afraid that someone will find you out – you’ll become afraid of your own shadow. Of every noise that you hear. That’s what it’s going to be like, when they come back. And I don’t have it in me to keep doing this. I can barely take down seven gems as infantry as it is.”
It’s a bright blue hologram of a lifeless landscape, drawn with uncomplicated lines. More gem bodies are strewn around. Many more. No one is moving. Nothing’s alive. If Amethyst were the same gem she was before, she’d think nothing of it. Battlefield. Duh, there are bound to be dead bodies. But looking at Pearl’s hologram – it’s not just bodies. It’s bits and pieces of technology, helmets here, suits there. Accessories that once went on gems. The whole hologram is a life size tableau, where she could get up and inspect every element.
“This isn’t a very accurate portrayal of a battlefield,” Pearl admits. “I know every dead body in it. Taken from memory. So I guess, it’s a modified memory.”
Amethyst gets up. Picks up someone’s helmet. “Topaz,” Pearl says. “She wasn’t with us.” Pearl hesitates, as she usually does when she thinks the person she’s talking to isn’t ready yet or some such bullshit.
“Uh huh?”
“Someone blew her up. From our side. I never found out who. I… just saw her broken gem.”
“Where’d you know her from?”
“A few missions before we came to Earth. We worked together.”
Pearl does not offer any more information as Amethyst sifts through her memory. This is too much for one evening, Amethyst thinks. Too much for one gem. Pearl has this much within her; Garnet too probably. And Rose.
“Isn’t this…creeping you out? That I’m looking at all this?”
“It’s fine,” Pearl says.
Amethyst has no idea if Pearl wants to talk about it, or just look at it, or what. She walks through the hologram, picking things up, as Pearl recounts who owned that visor, or told how this group of burnt gems died together because of some sweeping volleys of artillery. The impression of them on the ground was all that remained. After that Amethyst just walks – wondering if this is like paying respects, wondering if this is some kind of cemetery like humans do, wondering if Pearl keeps the parts of the dead all in her pearl somewhere like she herself keeps trash in her room.
After that long walk, she faces Pearl. She’s still got that beat up face, those beat up eyes, deep lines that go further than superficial bruises. She sits back down on Pearl’s right, her boots making a light crunch against the dust.
Amethyst’s eyes rest on Pearl’s hand. If this were Steven, she’d hold his hand, no question.
She looks up at Pearl, whose eyes are glazed with the memory of a thousand battles.
That does it. She rests her hand atop Pearl’s. Squeezes it, just a little. There’s a little warmth there, even if their bodies are an illusion. Pearl tears her eyes away from the battlefield; the vision shimmers for a moment.
Pearl turns to look at the sudden weight over her hand. She squiggles her hand a bit to loosen Amethyst’s weight, but just enough to lift her thumb and brush it over the back of Amethyst’s hand. Their eyes meet. Amethyst smiles, but it probably comes off as a tremulous, warbly attempt.
“You’re not there anymore,” Amethyst says. It’s obvious, of course it is, but she isn’t smart enough to know what to say. “You’re here. With me. And that whole thing is over.”
Just as the word escape her mouth she wonders if she’s said the wrong thing. But Pearl smiles back and looks at the holo-battle. She blinks and the hologram – holo-Pearls included – dissipate into blue twinkles, floating and fading into the air.
“I’m scaring you, aren’t I?”
“I can take it. ”
“Thank you.”
Neither of them have let go of the other’s hand.
“Pearl?” Amethyst says, now that Pearl is out of that creepy funk or whatever she was in.
“Yes?”
“What were you thinking?” God, she sounds like Pearl. But she tries to sound as gentle as she can about the probe. “I mean, if you don’t mind… talking about it.”
“I don’t know what got into me. I was just thinking, when they come back I’ll have to fight again,” Pearl laughs, but doesn’t mean it. “Really fight. I had a whole schedule out for training. Infantry tactics. Artillery tactics. Air support. Formations, logistics… But I can’t even handle seven of me. Imagine if there were more. And there will be.”
“Well,” Amethyst says, trying to stave off the demons of the future, “let’s just… be glad we have this now.”
The hand holding doesn’t seem enough to Amethyst. But they’re long past those days where Amethyst could just climb onto Pearl’s lap and hug her.
“I am glad,” Pearl says quietly. “Five thousand years of relative peace is something no gem has ever known, not really.”
There’s nothing but the sound of the wind here in Kindergarten. Even after so long, nothing grows here. Swords, glowsticks, two gems, and the wind. And holes. Lots of them. Each one of them had a gem. Had all of them perished in the war, too?
“She called me defective,” Pearl mutters, talking into the air, maybe into her past. “Yes, that’s true.”
“I don’t see anything defective about you.”
“I didn’t follow orders,” Pearl says. “What do you call a cog in the wheel that doesn’t do as it’s told? And if it were a barely functioning cog in the wheel, well that’s just another strike against it, right?”
“Were you… did you have a different function that you couldn’t… fulfill?” Talking with Pearl’s words is weird for Amethyst.
“Loyalty for one thing, and I wasn’t sworn to Rose. I wasn’t the perfect fighter either, which is what I should have been. I was supposed to be… the perfect all-around gem, loyal to the Authority. Something of a personal assistant. If I had been… acceptable, I wouldn’t have been reassigned to a support position. But I wasn’t. I tried, though.” Though Amethyst doesn’t hear it, she can tell Pearl’s next words would have been: I tried for Rose.
Amethyst squeezes her hand, trying to say: It’s fine. We know you try.
She tries to side-hug Pearl, but her limbs are too short. She could shapeshift but – ah, fuck it. She clambers on top of Pearl, wraps her arms around the taller gem. Her head still nestles comfortably on Pearl’s shoulder, just like the old days. And when Pearl pats her head and wraps her other hand around her: she feels the tension melt away, wishes she could just bury herself in Pearl’s embrace.
“I missed this,” Pearl says, her fingers massaging Amethyst’s scalp.
Amethyst is starting to think that she wants more, but that thought comes out of nowhere and tonight is not about her.
“We don’t think you’re defective,” Amethyst murmurs into the crook of Pearl’s neck. “I don’t think you’re defective.”
“Technically, I did defect…” Pearl says, and if she’s trying to crack a shitty word joke then that means that things are getting better. “Sun’s rising,” she murmurs.
Amethyst turns her entire body around to watch. Pearl’s chin sits atop her head. They don’t actually see the sun rising; from here, the view is blocked by walls. But the sunlight seeps through the crags and roads and holes, driving away the bluish tint of the ground, giving the earth a warmer glow.
Amethyst feels Pearl lift her head. She leans back on the wall. “I think I’m going to rest for a bit,” Pearl murmurs.
“Hey,” Amethyst says, “I’m not carrying your stuff.”
She waits for maybe five minutes. At first she tries stockpiling comebacks for when Pearl wakes up: so you don’t need to sleep, huh? But she can’t, not tonight, not this morning, or whatever time of day it is. Not when Pearl’s passed out, her face all bruised from a self-inflicted fight. Maybe it’s some kind of bizarre way to make up for Kindergarten guilt, or what else there is in Pearl’s crazy mind that she keeps locked up behind layers of nervous tension.
If only Amethyst could do what humans do. Kiss away the pain.
After the briefest hesitation, Amethyst presses her lips to Pearl’s cheek. Amethyst wishes Pearl could have stuck around for the buss, but it’s a start. Pearl’s gonna need someone. Just like Amethyst needed someone when she was alone at Kindergarten. It’s a weird circle, giving back what she was given when she was found.
Amethyst decides that she doesn’t mind skipping breakfast. She spends the rest of the morning lying there with Pearl, looking forward to walking home with her, maybe holding hands, and maybe something more in the future. Maybe, if the future didn’t come too soon. Maybe, if Pearl wanted to. Maybe, if Amethyst could make things better.
fin
All is full of love
You just ain’t receiving
All is full of love
Your phone is off the hook
All is full of love
Your doors are shut
All is full of love
In any language
– Bjork
Some notes:
Pearl fighting a group is based on randori, an unstructured fighting exercise. Fighting against multiple attackers is associated the most with aikido.
Please note that my interpretation has the Pearl-class fairly high up when they’re cultivated properly. (As executive assistants, no less.)
A few other personal additions:
I got the idea that Pearl might have had some involvement with Kindergarten from On The Run. Maybe not directly, but in general, they were all 'bad guys’ until they fought for Earth, so she probably has some guilt about that.
I also got the idea that Pearl may not have been assigned to Rose Quartz from the word 'lost’ from Jasper, implying that she strayed from her original boss.
The idea that Pearl may have known gems 'on the enemy’s side’ doesn’t seem too unreasonable given that they did all defect. So it’s likely she had to fight against her old comrades.
“Five thousand years of relative peace…” comes from the line in Ocean Gem where Pearl says to Steven, “We’re always fighting.” So I’m guessing Pearl and Garnet never had any peace.