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“And I don’t mean to come off as judgmental,” Greg mumbles to himself, then hurriedly covers his mouth with his hands at the ring of an activated warp pad.
“I don’t see why I couldn’t stay and help her,” Pearl huffs.
Footsteps shuffle on the stone floor of the cave. “It was a one-person job,” says Garnet. “And we have other work to do. Amethyst, go down to the beach. I’ll meet you there.”
“Got it!” calls Amethyst’s voice, followed by the scuffling of her scrambling out into the sunshine on all fours.
“And what am I supposed to do?” Pearl whines in a high voice.
“I’m sure you’ll find something.”
Greg hears a huff of breath, and a soft ballet slipper swivels against stone. He cautiously peeks out over the rock that he is sitting behind and catches Garnet looking directly at him. Without any expression, she turns and moves toward the beach.
Pearl is walking the other way, still murmuring. There’s a crystalline whir as the door set into the back of the cavern fills with pale light. As Pearl steps forward to enter, Greg pushes himself to his feet and rushes—quietly—to leap through behind her, just before the light recedes in on itself.
His eyes dilate and fill with the reflection of seemingly endless pillars of water, their heights staggered, each pouring down its round sides into an endless pit and spiraling back up out of the depths, crisscrossing, leveling off into platforms. He’s still taking it in when Pearl, high up on a platform to the left, realizes she is not alone.
“What are you doing here?” she deadpans.
A wave of water rises and yanks at Greg’s feet, knocking him onto his back and dragging him down, screaming, then back up and around a corkscrew. When the world rights itself, he’s sprawled on the large platform in the middle of the space, Pearl standing opposite him, her heels together, her hands on her elbows. He puts his palm against the solid mass of shifting water and pushes himself up. “I,” his voice cracks and he coughs, “I thought we could talk.”
“And what on this filthy planet would we have to talk about?” Her voice is cold and taut, like it always is for him, nothing like how she talks to Rose. She is looking down, examining her nails.
“Well, I thought we could talk about—” As he steadies his footing and brushes off his thighs, he looks up and notices the shining pole rising from the center of the platform. His eyes follow it upwards to a flag with crisp, fluttering edges, deep pink. “About Rose, kind of.” She is still making a show of ignoring him, so he takes a breath and continues. “It’s just that, you and I have never really talked before. And she and I have been having, um, some trouble lately—”
“Yes, I’ve noticed,” she interjects.
“So I’ve been thinking a lot about us, and, well, her. And I realized that she’s not always… you know… the most sensitive.”
At that her eyes flick up at him, and her voice hardens. “Sensitive?”
He rubs the back of his head, fiddles with a tangle in his hair. “Yeah, I mean. You know what I mean, right? You’ve known her a lot longer than I have.”
“Yes.”
He lowers his arms to his sides, clenches his fists to keep from shuddering, and tries to look her in the eye. “I don’t want to fight you. I’m not trying to take her away.”
“You’re not good enough for her,” she snarls.
“That’s not really for you to decide,” he says softly.
Their eyes are locked. Pearl’s entire face, her entire body is tense. Her feet are set slightly apart, stance braced, as if she were preparing for an attack. He sees the slight bluish flush to her cheeks, the barely restrained twitch growing at the corner of her mouth. Her hands are balled into tight fists as well, and her fingers are slowly, subtly, rhythmically unclenching and tightening again, one finger at a time, then the next down the row, then the other hand.
Greg squints one eye, studies her posture, then his hands relax and fall open. “Pearl.” He takes a deep breath. “You don’t have to like me. I know Rose is important to you. You’re important to her too. And because of that,” he clears his throat, “in a way, you’re important to me too.” She is still staring at him; she hasn’t moved. “Because I care about her happiness.”
Pearl’s eyes narrow slightly.
Greg’s voice rises in pitch. “We at least have that in common, right?”
“Yes,” she admits, after a prolonged pause.
“And look, this is none of my business,” he continues, talking faster as his nerves start to catch up with him, “but it seems like you have your share of issues too—I’m not judging!—just, I want you to know I’m not trying to get in your way, okay?”
She blinks, finally, and her shoulders slip down into a more natural posture. She fans out her fingers, all of them on both hands, twice, then huffs softly and mumbles, “I appreciate that.”
“Has she ever talked to you about… us?” He waves his hand between the flag, high above them, and his own chest.
“What is there to talk about?”
“She’s mentioned you, you know.” He watches closely and sees her eyes lift, her cheeks soften—predictable, but still he breathes a sigh of relief—why does she have to make herself so intimidating? “She’s really special. When she wraps her arms around me, it’s like the rest of the universe just disappears—and not just when her hair tries to suffocate me—it’s like nothing else exists but us.” Pearl’s eyes have glassed over, and a blue flush rises again in her cheeks. “You feel that too, right?”
“Yes.” She’s breathless now, and the gem in her forehead shines softly as she drops to one knee, clouded gaze raised to the flag above them. “I would do anything for her. I won’t allow any harm to come to her.”
“That’s not what I want, either.”
“When she looks at me—when she speaks to me, it’s—” Greg sees Pearl’s face break into a genuine, unaggressive smile for the first time. “She’s made me practically all that I am, and that is what I owe to her. She is everything. She’s perfect.”
Greg sighs as a shiver runs up his spine, thinking of the night last week when Rose Quartz looked at him with stars in her eyes, when he lit up their small corner of the world; of her effortless grace, when he had dipped her and he knew she would have fallen if it were fully up to him to bear her weight; of her fingers moving softly on his back; of their cheeks pressed together, her odd warmth, the almost cloying immensity of her presence, the mind-boggling juxtaposition of her ethereal loftiness, her tangibility, her alien life. “She’s better than perfect,” he finds himself mumbling.
“Perfect,” Pearl repeats.
“No,” Greg shakes his head. “She’s not perfect. She’s caring, and self-centered, and… opaque.” He gives his head a small shake and realizes that Pearl is still staring blankly upwards. The flag flutters softly at its edges, not quite unfurling in the gentle air currents, its fuchsia deep and stark against the pale spray of the waterfalls. “I’m not sure if she thought through her and me. But I definitely don’t think she thought through me and you.”
Pearl starts, looks at Greg, looks back up at the flag, then stands back up and admits, reluctantly, “I guess not.”
“I don’t want to keep you here all day,” Greg says, “or make you uncomfortable. I don’t know if Rose is gonna talk to you about any of this. Or if she has. But I just thought, maybe if she was kind of, you know, thoughtless, towards me, maybe…” He thinks better of it. “If you ever want to talk about her or anything, I’ll be around, ok?”
“I don’t expect to.” The defensive edge is back in her voice; is she struggling to keep it there? Struggling to hold it off? Is it just her natural posture? “But, I suppose it is a nice gesture. So thank you.”
“Yeah, any time.” He rubs his head again, forcing a grin. “So, uh.” He turns, taking a broad look around the maze of shafts and ribbons of water, avoiding looking down into their plunging depths. “Think you could point me towards the exit?”
When he turns back to her, she has a sword in her hand, and is facing away from him, practicing her thrusts and parries. Her feet move rhythmically against the liquid ground, generating no sound, no ripple. She does not acknowledge his question.