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Rose Diamond stands where she’s stood many times before, at the helm of an exploration starship speeding between intricately overlapping orbitals on the way into non-gem-controlled space. The difference this time is that there’s no crew around her, no bustle below decks. She’s left hastily, taking little with her, and she plans on a long voyage—but she’s content. There’s only one thing from home she wanted to bring anyway.
She controls the ship’s height and direction with an interface projected onto a massive screen, touching bars and buttons with a stylus nearly as long as she is. As she moves, fluidly, piloting with the ease of longstanding habit, she thinks back to the conversation she had over the ship’s communication receiver as the spaceport of Homeworld’s capital fell away behind her. She’d answered Yellow Diamond’s “What do you think you’re doing?” with a placid “Good morning to you too.” From there, it had all played out exactly according to plan.
“Do you really think you can just run away after the stunt you pulled? My detention center is in shambles—you’ve put the entire planet at risk, and for what? For that defective pearl of yours?”
“Most of the detainees who were released in last night’s accident were not violent. It’s far from the system-wide crisis you think it is, although the mass hysteria you and Blue are stirring up might be if you’re not careful.”
Yellow had rolled her eyes at this scolding. “Where is she, Rose? If she escapes punishment then we are—”
She’d looked down, her expression pitched to catch on Yellow’s last bit of affection for her sister diamond and work it for all it was worth. “She’s dead, alright?”
“…Are you sure?”
“She was shattered in the fight at the prison. I delivered her shards back to the factory myself. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
“Oh.” To Rose’s deep and secret satisfaction, there is a noticeable flicker of remorse in her face. “Well, it’s for the best, you know. She was a detriment to your credibility. I know you love your little pets, but your first duty is to the empire and its citizens. You know that.”
“Yes. I’m going to try to do better in the future. But I’ve decided not to take any superfluous personnel for this mission. I miss her, Yellow. I want a little peace.”
“It could be dangerous. I would feel a lot better if you’d let a party join you once you reach the Crystal System. We can send you workers from one of the exoplanet colonies near there.”
“I’ll think about it. Expect me to contact you once we’re into the Orion arm.”
“I will. Goodbye, Rose.”
As a final touch to really sell it, Rose had hung up without any signoff, looking absentminded with melancholy. Judging from the lack of any pursuit, overt or otherwise, on her route so far, the rest of the Authority had fallen for it hook, line and sinker.
Rose taps on the floor with the long cue now languorous in her hand, calling, “We’ve left the homeworld system; I think you can come out now.”
She looks over her shoulder just in time to see the trapdoor of the cargo hold burst open and fly startlingly high in the air (the artificial gravity on this old ship isn’t perfect), one instant before Pearl shoots out of it as if she’s spring-loaded. “Oh, I’m so excited! I can’t wait to see the outer systems. I can’t wait to see the rest of thisship! What does this do? It’s for navigation, right?”
Rose smiles and leans on her elbows with her face in her hands, watching her twirl excitedly from one control module to the next. “Why don’t you try it and see?”
For a split second, she draws back in hesitation. But then she grins, laughing nervously at the thrill of the unknown, and leans down to turn the module on with a flash of her gem. A three-dimensional star map big enough for her to stand in unfolds from its upper panel, so suddenly that she trips backwards and sits down hard, gasping in delight. “Oh! How beautiful!”
“It’s just a map, darling,” Rose says gently. She’s always torn between not wanting to interrupt Pearl’s unbridled joy at mundane things, and the hope that she’ll adjust to the comparative splendor that lies outside the factory walls and seek greater things, the things Rose knows she’s capable of. She wants her to want more.
“I know,” she responds, excitement unbroken by the comment, “but it’s the grandest, most wonderful map I’ve ever seen. I wonder what kind of hardware’s in this thing.”
“I don’t know. You can take it apart when we get to the new exoplanet.”
“Really?”
“Sure. Just try to keep it operating for now while we’re, you know, using it.”
Pearl nods emphatically. The seventy or so years the voyage will take isn’t long to wait, especially with a ship full of state-of-the-art technology to play with and nobody but Rose to need anything else from her. Still stealing glances at the glowing star map, she crosses her legs, leaning forward, her body language bold compared to its usual dainty passivity. “So we’re really out? There’s nobody after us now?”
“It doesn’t look that way, and if nobody’s after us now there probably won’t be anybody after us in the future. White Diamond’s too cheap to send a search party into interstellar territory. If we run into anybody it’ll be private bounty hunters, and we’ve got everything we need to deal with them.”
Pearl isn’t sure if she’s talking bribery funds or weaponry, but she’s up for anything. “The diamonds are one thing, but I still can’t believe you got one over on Nacre,” she says, getting up and heading over toward Rose.
“I didn’t get one over on her, you did!” she says, grabbing her by the waist and pulling her into a celebratory embrace, letting her joy lose its caution. “Faking a gem too broken down to recycle—it was a stroke of genius. When you said we could give her something else and say it was gem shards I was worried she’d try to use them, but you were right, she called you a total loss. And all kinds of other really colorful things.”
“She always used to say she’d have gotten rid of me a century ago but she didn’t even think I’d die to her standards. Lucky for us she assumed she was right.”
“She’s a greedy old clod and you never have to see her again,” Rose quickly says in response to this remembrance of old insults, squeezing Pearl to her so her bitter tone dissolves into giggles, and kissing her cheek.
“Shame we had to sacrifice a perfectly good flower pot, though,” Pearl laughs. She feels a difference in Rose’s touch. It’s more enthusiastic, less tremblingly gentle. More comfortable. It faintly occurs to her that Rose has been as afraid as she has all this time, through all their secret filling of spaces, through all the reassurance, all the caretaking. For once, for once, even if it’s the first and last time, Pearl has done right by her. She’s lifted a weight from her shoulders. If there is any more wonderful feeling than the dizzying excitement of a new spaceship bound for a new world, then that’s it.
“That flower pot met a heroic end,” Rose says solemnly before bursting into laughter herself. She lets out a sigh—a sigh of purest relief—and rests her cheek against the feathery top of Pearl’s head while she leans on her shoulder. Somehow, out here on the interstellar frontier without the context of society around them, she’s hyper-aware of how right it feels. To be close, to be touching her. To hold her Pearl close not like a dangerous cursed treasure but like a lover. Not a beloved, a lover. Active voice, subject of sentence. Pearl is, Pearl does. Pearl moves tenderly in her arms, stands on tiptoes and kisses her neck, just once, just lightly. It’s the first time in Rose’s memory that she has initiated something like that. That’s the spell of space. It makes a gem feel like nothing can stop her.
“Sit down here,” she says, standing up and taking the stylus in hand again. “It’s time you got a look at some real stars.”
Pearl watches her hands intently as she pushes a few buttons and the steering interface dissolves before them, replaced by a view of the way ahead of them. A shining gravel road of ice crystals and asteroid bits unfolds below the ship’s faceted nose—the outer debris cloud that surrounds their system. Its horizon dissolves in towering pillars of dust, shining in the blue glow of the nearest of homeworld’s quaternary suns. Beyond them, the Perseus arm of the Milky Way arches gracefully across the dark, sparkling with the lights of a million worlds. Near the right edge of the window, the Crab Nebula pulsar, always visible in the homeworld sky, seems near enough to touch with its trembling turquoise glow.
“What a view, right?” Rose says, making the understatement of the geological age.
Pearl gets up and curls her slender arms around Rose’s bicep, pressing her tear-wet cheek into her skin. “I’m—I’m so happy, I’m scared,” she says.
Rose looks down, putting her hand against Pearl’s shoulder again. “What do you mean?”
“As much as I told myself we’d make it, I don’t think I ever thought we’d get this far, deep down. It seemed too impossible. It seemed too good. And now it’s really happening. I keep waiting for the fall and we just keep heading further up. When I was in the detention place, when I was waiting for you, I tried to think it wouldn’t matter if they took it all away, because I’d remember how it felt to be with you.” She unwinds her arm, fingers trailing across Rose’s skin. “But…Rose, if I lose all this, if things go back to normal now…I’m going to care. I’m going to be angry and I’m going to want it back, I don’t care if I deserve it or not.” Her voice is breaking under the weight of her tears, under saltwater waves emanating from a seismic shift, the waking of a will that’s been sleepwalking for ten thousand years. Her hands slam down on the control panel, making Rose jump. Her movements are usually so quiet. “I want it! I want this! Nobody owns the dust clouds! Nobody owns the pulsar! Nobody owns this galaxy—it’s as much mine as anybody’s, and I want it, to see and explore and live in and—and whatever! And I want to be with you. And—and if that makes me presumptuous and insubordinate and a worthless investment, then that’s the way it is!”
There’s a long silence. Pearl’s shoulders heave with the force of vestigial breath. She wipes away fresh tears with the back of her hands. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “That was an inexcusable display.”
Rose clutches the sides of Pearl’s arms, turns her around, sits down in the chair before her so that their eyes are level. She remains silent for another several seconds, eyes wide and warm, processing what’s just happened. She’s seen the first green shoots of spring in a field she’s been feeding for centuries. Her hands travel down Pearl’s arms until they fall into receiving hands. “Pearl,” she says, trying not to stammer on the words that have been waiting on her tongue for so long. “I love you. I am in love with you. Do you understand?”
She looks stunned for a second, simply at the fact that it’s being said aloud—the statement itself doesn’t surprise her. She’s known. She’s always known. She nods slowly. Firmly. Of course she understands.
“Alright,” Rose continues. “How…do you feel about that?”
Pearl lets out a halting breath. The fullness of her voice has been stolen so many times, but she gives it willingly now. In a shaky but unhesitating whisper, she replies, “I love you too. I’m more sure of it than anything else. I want that, additionally, I guess. To love you. Forever.”
Rose cups her hand against the line of Pearl’s jaw, covering her flushed cheek and the side of her hair, the way she did the day they met. She waits for her to nod trusting permission, the way she did the first time they kissed. For the thousandth time in ten thousand years, it’s the two of them, touching foreheads, closing eyes, trying to obliterate the gap between them in desperate barely-touching. The gap is not gone. Maybe it will never be gone. But either way, the familiar scene is transfigured. Pearl throws her arms around Rose’s neck, leaps into the encompass of her lips, arches her body against her with such impassioned force that its intentional fragility is entirely forgotten. Rose leans forward, folding Pearl into herself, gasping, holding back a moan of delight as her delicate fingers weave between the strands of her hair. She buries her face in the crook of her slender shoulder, feeling the miniature sinews of her weapon arm tremble into definition under her touch. “Alright?” she whispers.
“Please do something,” Pearl replies, and Rose laughs at the phrasing—the winnowing voice of romantic abandon making a request that belongs to the crisis of the past several weeks—but she digs her heel into the floor, swivels the chair to face the control panel, and lays Pearl’s entire body on the smooth section between the two main groupings of buttons. Rose has just positioned herself over her again when her eyes fly wide open and she sits up. “The proximity warning light!” she says.
“What?”
Without missing a beat Pearl reaches over to the array of switches beside her and adjusts their vector. Rose looks up to see the ship’s nose veer away from a large floating boulder just in time.
She looks back down at Pearl, who is settling again on the slanted surface of the panel. “Anyway,” she says happily, “feel free to continue.”
Rose beams down at her, leaning down so that her arms enclose her on either side. “What would I do without you?”
Pearl lets out a gloriously grating snort of laughter. “Fly your spaceship responsibly, probably.”
“I guess we maybe should wait on this until we’ve put the autopilot on.”
“That won’t be long, will it?”
“A couple hours,” she says, giving her a peck on the forehead. “Not that you’re eager or anything.”
“You know I can be patient. And I know you can be patient. Or what did we prove for ten thousand years?”
“I know,” Rose says, face still crinkled with mischief. “But wow, when you said you wanted it you weren’t messing around.”
As soon as she says it Rose worries that Pearl will take this as a reprimand for impropriety. But instead, she just laughs and shoves her away playfully, then rearranges herself on the panel, crossing her legs and curling her arm under her head. She looks cocksure. Rebellious. All the things she’s always been, all the things she never shows. The spell of space has her, and all her veils of inhibition are no match. Rose just looks at her for awhile, enjoying her familiar adoring beam now transplanted onto this beautiful, forward, sure-headed gem bathed in immediate starlight. “I told you it was different in space,” she says.
Pearl’s smile grows. “Not as much to hold you back.”
She leans against the panel, runs one calm and dreamy finger through Pearl’s hair.
“You know what else you told me? Maybe you don’t even remember,” Pearl says. Rose cocks her head and Pearl’s blush instantly deepens. She’s thrilled by Rose’s beauty. She’s thrilled by everything around her right now. With a slow, fluid arm she reaches up for her hand. “You told me that you would give me the stars someday. And now you have.”
Rose kisses the tips Pearl’s fingers, closing her eyes in a sort of reverence. “You made me realize the stars aren’t mine to give. You set me free, my darling. The least I could do was let you see your galaxy.” Very deliberately she returns Pearl’s hand to her side, as if to remind her that it belongs with her body. “Would you like to take the controls for a little bit?”
Pearl sits up again. “Oh Rose, are you sure? I mean—it’s a battle-class starship, it’s not some ferry flight—”
“You dodged five hundred feet off an asteroid without even looking,” she replies, brows skeptically furrowed. “Just fly the thing.”
“Well,” Pearl says, her voice wavering with uncontainable enthusiasm, as she jumps into the swivel chair, “if you insist.” She once again adjusts the steering and dials up the rockets, throttling it up and away from the debris cloud. The action is showy and jaunty, and she throws a glance over the shoulder opposite Rose—which doesn’t make sense because there’s nothing there but the rest of the bridge, but the silent message (“bye, suckers”) is abundantly clear.
Rose settles on the corner of the controls, silently watching the small fluctuations in expression that fly across Pearl’s face whenever she’s lost in contented concentration. She knows that all this—this crazy dream of theirs—is still a work in progress. That fall Pearl so fears may still be somewhere in the future, but every good pilot fears falling. Rose, for her part, feels like she can breathe for practically the first time since they met. The guilt and the secrets and the holding back have eased. And they’ll be together. That, at last, is guaranteed.
For so long, she thinks, she has been gravity, keeping the born astronaut she loves tethered in orbit. She’s realized today that she would rather cruise for the fall, rather let them fall, and be her parachute instead.
Is that love? Is that freedom? The more she considers it, the more she isn’t sure. But she thinks the answer may be written somewhere in stars; decipherable among the reflected constellations in her lover’s eyes.