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After the war, they scatter.
The decision goes unspoken, but they do it by design. South for Amethyst, to lose herself in lush forests and air that is thick with drumbeats and sunlight and the pulse of organic life, seen and unseen. They’re always aware of her, the tiniest chink in the rockface of this world, carving her footsteps into the land; a kinder Kindergarten. Garnet splits her time between the dry deserts of the plain of First Landing and the polar caps to the south. She spends even more time in the hot streams and paths that lead to the Earth’s core. Pearl doesn’t know what she seeks there. Understanding, perhaps. Rose Quartz seems to be everywhere at once; in the song of the birds, the sweet potential bloom of a budded flower, the muffled pang of every gem shard scattered across several continents. A fanciful thought to have, but believable all the same. Rose had saved this planet, and now she is this planet.
And Pearl…
Pearl wanders.
*
In the grassy steppes of the north, she rests.
She’s never dwelt long upon death. As a Pearl, she expected to eke out existence serving, doing, following. Death would come for her when it deemed, and she would walk unerringly into its light. It would not have surprised her to die on Homeworld, at a hand wave from Blue Diamond. It would not have surprised her to die on Earth, when they first landed and the construction of the Kindergartens began in full force. It would not have surprised her to die during the war, impaled upon some gem’s spear, driven by the impulse that Rose Quartz awoke in her, the impulse that made her turn her body into sword and shield in one.
Dying doesn’t scare her. So many of their kind had perished in countless battle after battle; warped into unforgiving rock, shattered beyond hope of healing, twisted shards sowing the earth that Homeworld had meant to drain dry. Many Pearls had been lost too; gems who had formed alongside her in the same bed, who had been trained by Blue Diamond. All around them their numbers dwindle, and the Crystal Gems are reduced to a stunted kindergartener, a perpetual fusion, an uppity Pearl, and a lone star of gem royalty, blazing bright. Any death in the war might have been hers, but Pearl isn’t afraid. She fights for Rose Quartz, and if dying is in the stars, she would do it for her.
Pearl knows she isn’t special. Laying in the fields full of herbs, feeling the rush of the winds sweeping down from some cold-wracked mountain range to the north, pressing her form against the earth… she knows it. She isn’t the first Pearl to walk this planet. She wasn’t even the first Pearl to rebel, and join Rose Quartz’s cause. All she’s done of note is fight, survive, and form bonds the likes of which she would have never dreamed of, not even in gemsleep.
She’s a Pearl. She isn’t remarkable.
She curls up in her cocoon of grass and earth, listening to the heartbeat of the world pulsing from a jungle somewhere, the rush of lava deep at the core, running red and warm and steady. She listens to the winds blow, closes her eyes, and feels the stalks of wheat bend their heads like a row of nacre in supplication, tilting in the axis of some greater star.
Pearl isn’t remarkable, but when she thinks about Rose Quartz, it doesn’t matter. She’s never been so happy to revolve.
*
Deep beneath the crystalline seas in torrents thick and cold, she learns.
Life on this planet is so varied and variable. Gems have made contact with organic species before, but no world has had such an abundance of floral and faunal life. Their seas are teeming with the strangest creatures; waif-like constructs that float along peaceably, huge mini-ecosystems with souls in their eyes, and the flint toothed predators that swim lazily after them. Pearl feels as if she could watch thousands of them go by and not find any two species that look or act quite the same.
Individuality is a concept that she’s still having trouble accepting. For herself, at least. Pearls aren’t like the Jaspers and the Zircons, the brawlers and the vanguards of the empire. They are allowed their trophies, their marks of distinction and honour. Among Pearls, a gift might be made of a special bauble or construct, but singularity is frowned upon. The Pearl sitting vigil at the doors of the palace should be indistinct from the Pearl knelt at Yellow Diamond’s feet should be indistinct from the Pearl acting as scribe at the Council meeting.
Rose hates that about Homeworld. Once beholden to her cause, Pearl had been prepared to hate it too, hate the culture and institutions that made her the way she is, but her new liege had stilled that instinct in her. With soft hands against her skin, a thumb brushing her gemstone, it had been all Pearl could do to register her voice. When Rose looks at you, all you want to do is look back.
“I don’t want you to hate what Homeworld taught us because I do. I want you to reject it because it is wrong, and I want you to want something more for yourself.”
More for herself. Words spoken in the secret place that had become special to them, words that might have well been carried away by the wind, so weightless did they seem.
But for Rose Quartz, she tries. A desire to be different isn’t so difficult to drum up. Even on the old world, she’d been aware of a buzzing sort of knowing deep in the confines of her gem. She knew she could engineer as well as any of the chrysotile gems. She knew that she could strategise and plan, do more than just hold the galaxy maps and project holograms of potential battlefields. She knew that somewhere in the core of her gem, a weapon was waiting to be formed.
A Pearl with a weapon. Whoever would have thought.
The different species of this world don’t seem to trouble themselves over their alarming degree of specialisation. Pearl watches them beneath the waters, living and travelling together, protecting and feeding off of each other. Species whose lives pass in a flicker of light, so unaware or unconcerned about their own insignificance. Not a one of them are alike.
Rose knows this world, and she loves this world. Pearl sits amidst the waving fronds and the lumbering vertebrates of the crushing depths. She’s not sure if she has it in her to want more, but she wants to know this world too.
*
In the far flung wastes of the western continent, she fights.
Fighting, she calls it, but perhaps training or sparring or duelling might be a better word. Whatever the term, it all seems so objectless without someone to protect. The long toothed creature that attacks her out of instinct is no real threat to her, or anything else she holds dear. There is no comforting presence at her back, no one to act as the arm that holds up the shield of Pearl’s body against their enemies.
But she didn’t become a warrior through stagnancy, so she pits herself against anything that attempts to attack her, anything that she can goad into fighting back. Most of the time she ends up practising her forms into the face of a rock wall. There is only so much that foolish wildlife can do for her.
The humans, she does her best to avoid. Rose would be upset if she were to hurt them, intentionally or not. Moreover, there is something about the humans that unsettles Pearl. At each encounter, accidental and otherwise, they’ve treated her with a kind of reverence that is tantamount to blasphemy in her eyes. To primitive beings like them, any gem would seem awe-inspiring, but the attention had made her skittish and uncomfortable. That kind of reverence belongs to powerhouses like Garnet, to goddesses like Rose Quartz.
Strength comes in different forms. That is something Rose strove to teach them all, like she strove to impress upon them that every being had worth and a purpose. Pearl knows this, believes it like she believes everything that Rose says. But it exhausts her, sometimes. And that makes her feel weak. She is gem enough to fight, to sacrifice herself, to stand in the ranks of an army and be counted, but she has no idea what it takes to be strong for the sake of her own being, not someone else.
The hungry deserts and golden plains don’t provide much of an answer, but they are as good a place as any to spend time trying to figure it out.
For Rose, it’s easy. She has lived her entire lifespan being someone special. There is only one Rose Quartz. She doesn’t know, like Pearl, what it is like to have a perpetual article tacked on to her name; ‘a’, ‘the’, ‘this’, ‘that’. Pearl has always been one of many. On Homeworld, Yellow Diamond had been in the habit of assigning them numbers to tell them apart, but they were always retracted and reassigned at the end of each lunar cycle, so the Pearls wouldn’t get attached to one name, one identity.
Three hundred and seventy-one. That had been her number, on the day she overrode her programming, and took her last order from Homeworld.
If Pearl were up to it, she might resent Rose her individuality, her complete sureness of self, but there isn’t a facet of her capable of anything other than adoring Rose Quartz. So she tries to learn from her instead, even in her absence. She draws her spear out of her gem with the rise of each new sun, testing the weight of it in her hands, how it feels to be armed outside of the confines of battle.
Fight, endure, thrive. Doing more, being more… that seems the province of beings better than her, but Pearl is willing to try.
*
Roaming the huddled villages of the east, she lives.
Looked at through Rose’s eyes, it’s easy to see the appeal of this world to someone who has so much heart, so much love. There is beauty everywhere, the kinds of things she would have never noticed before. The former Pearl would not have stopped for weeks to watch the snowfall softly blanket a low range of jagged hills. She would not have stared across the surface of a shining lake, wordlessly naming the stars she saw reflected in every shift and shudder of the waters. The crisp perfection of a blade of grass, the song of some bird greeting the morning from its perch, a human child’s gurgling laugh…
None of them one their own would be enough to even make her blink. But when she thinks of the way Rose Quartz would react, the way she would feel when experiencing them, it makes Pearl feel so absurdly peaceful she has to sit still a while.
Across the land, there are ripples, echoes. Time flies by, but watching the humans makes her realise how slowly it seems to inch by for them, how much growth and evolution and meaningless achievements they can squeeze into a few paltry years. In no time at all, the toddling human who rolls giggling down a grassy incline is a larger, more serious human, sharpening a spear and readying for the hunt. They have such little time in their lives, but they do so much with it.
Pearl wonders what the others are doing, wherever they are, if they watch the humans as well. Amethyst won’t ever say it, but she feels a certain amount of kinship with them, which Pearl supposes she can’t blame her for. She imagines her nosing around the outskirts of human lives, gleeful at every little glimpse she gets. Garnet is like Pearl; she’d never seemed to pay much attention to earthlings beyond ensuring that they didn’t become involved in the war. Perhaps her time alone has brought her new insight, as it’s done for Pearl.
She doesn’t have to wonder about Rose.
Encounters with humans are inevitable, but Pearl makes a temporary home in a cave at the peak of a mountain, and from there, they aren’t so numerous. This part of the world is no different; they think of her as something far greater than she actually is; some adolescents make a game out of trying to reach the summit of her mountain, to ask of her a boon. They don’t know what real power is, real strength. They have no idea what kind of cataclysm their world was saved from. They are unknowing, and they are content.
Pearl sits at the entrance of her cave, thinking of her friends. She sees all the beauty of this planet as Rose would see it, and suddenly, she thinks that this is a good place. If it had to turn out this way, in victory and exile, then Earth was the perfect stage. Its youth, its naïveté, its unique inhabitants. It is a good place, to build a life.
*
On the edge of a high cliff, a high wind roaring in her ears, she sees Rose Quartz again.
It’s their spot; the place where Pearl first swore allegiance to her, the place where Rose told her that she would stay and fight for this planet, the place where they spoke last. Coming up the incline, Pearl realises that it hasn’t been very long at all, a meagre two centuries, but her eyes are hungry for the sight of that voluminous white gown, her glowing skin, her perfect hair. It is time. The decision to meet here and now was never spoken, but they do it by design.
Rose is facing the wind. Out of habit, Pearl immediately takes a knee, two steps behind her. But she doesn’t get a chance to bow her head before there’s a rustle of skirts, and Rose’s hand is cupping her chin, tilting her face up to meet her eyes. There’s an old Homeworld legend that says that gems are able to draw power by staring directly into a star; when Pearl looks at Rose Quartz she feels like Rose is a sun unto herself, and Pearl orbits and lives and dies at her behest. A tiny dam has built up in her over the years, and in this moment, it bursts.
“I… oh, Rose!”
She flings herself into Rose’s arms, feels herself being lifted and spun without a single beat. It’s unseemly and graceless and absolutely wonderful. Rose’s laugh is a deep rumble near her ear, and everything, every event that has led up to this moment has been worth it.
Rose sets her down on her feet, but not before kissing both her cheeks. Pearl knows she must be going bright blue, but she doesn’t care. Rose Quartz is beaming at her, and that is the only thing that matters.
“It’s good to see you too, Pearl.”
She blushes harder, and would go back to her knees, but Rose stops her. She tries not to fidget, tries to find something to say. It’s not easy. Even after all this time, when Rose looks at her, all she wants to do is look back.
“It’s… I’m…” She rubs a hand along her arm. “How are you, Rose?”
Rose’s eyes soften. “I’m fine, thank you for asking. Better than fine, really. All that time fighting for the Earth, and these years have been the first I’ve really had a chance to sit back and appreciate her, you know?” Pearl nods, because she does actually understand the sentiment. “I’ve been working on a few things too; I’m excited to show you all. What about you? How have you been?”
“I’ve been well,” Pearl responds, playing with her fingers.
“Where did you go?” Rose prompts. “I made prodigious use of the warps. I ran into Amethyst a lot, having a grand old time, and Garnet once, sleeping in a pool of lava. But you’ve been pretty scarce.”
“Oh, I… haven’t really seen much of the warp pads. Not sure that I’ve seen so much of any one place, actually. I’ve been… wandering, mostly.” She feels sheepish as she says it, though she’s not sure why. Rose would never make fun of her for it. In fact, she looks intrigued.
“Really… that must have been interesting. I remember a time when you thought Earth was the dullest place in the universe,” she teases, giggling when Pearl bits her lip at the memory. “What did you see? What did you learn?”
“A lot,” Pearl says earnestly. She tries to put the words together. “I know you already know this, but I wanted to say… This planet, it’s special in a way I don’t really understand, I think, but I’m willing to try.” For you. “It was the right decision to stay, to fight for it.” For you.
Rose smiles so beatifically it makes Pearl’s knees weak, and she feels like her entire construct might just spontaneously implode.
“I’m really glad you think so. Truly.” There must be unsaid words on her face, because Rose tilts her head. “Was there anything else?”
“No, not really… I just.” Pearl flushes, unable to hold back. “I missed you a lot.”
Rose beams, her shoulders sinking, and laces their fingers together like Pearl has been wanting to do ever since she crested the small hill.
“My Pearl,” she says, and brings their lips together in the briefest kiss. Pearl leans up into it, and when Rose lengthens their embrace, she almost melts. She’ll never get used to hearing that. Not ‘the’, not ‘that’, not ‘a’, but, my. With none of the possessiveness of ownership, and all of the fondness of love.
Rose pulls away, and still holding hands, she leads them to sit near the edge of the cliff. Pearl leans against her side, the corner of her gem touching Rose’s arm. Green fields and a backdrop of forestry roll into the distance before them. Battles have been fought here, gems dying with nothing but the ground to soak up their shards, but there is so much beauty in this place, in their sacrifice.
“You were right,” Rose says, eyes trained on the vista.
“About what?”
“This planet. There’s so much we can do for it, but think about what it can do for us. Look at this.” She gestures at the scenery with an arm. “Isn’t it amazing?”
Rose’s lips are parted in her gentle awe, the breeze lifting and tossing her heavy curls. Under the sun, her skin takes on a pinkish hue that is very similar to her gem, glinting in her stomach. Her eyes alone could light up the night sky.
“It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” says Pearl hoarsely.
“I’m glad you’re here, Pearl,” Rose says without looking away from the skyline. “I really am.”
They sit in the sun as the remnants of the day go by. Pearl has never been more content. Not when in the thick of battle, not when throwing herself before every possible danger that might touch Rose, not when searching for herself. She feels like every other event in her life has been a vehicle towards this moment, sitting on a high cliff far from the planet of her creation, holding Rose Quartz’s hand.
Rose rocks against her gently.
“After this… let’s go find the others. I’ve been thinking, it’s time we settled down, found a home, did some good.”
Pearl nods. Rose’s hand in hers… it’s already a start.
“Yes. I could see us building a life here.”