Chapter Text
Ruby felt the foundations of her being start to wobble, her physical form becoming less developed and less saturated, until the cement holding her together came undone and two of her constituent parts began to crumble
Those fragmenting parts faded to white.
They started to individually reconstitute themselves when they had gotten over the trauma.
Strings of data winded themselves around each other according to the programming inherent within their minds. It took no conscious effort, in fact their thoughts only began to emerge gradually. First, they knew they were gems, then they knew they were Rubies, then their roles, then their gem placements. They became sentient, then sapient. After that, their history and experience played out before them in tandem. All leading up to the feeling of retreating into their gems.
The first Ruby was startled into materialisation, the blinding light of her inner being was abruptly replaced by the darkness spotted with splotches of white. The automatic adjustment of her perception to her surroundings happened within a matter of seconds, registering the teal hold of what must be a diamond ship. Why was she not in a reformation bay? These certainly didn’t look like Quartz barracks due to the colour, but the cold, clinical and bare room she was in lacked the opulence of aristocratic class who blue diamond surrounded herself with.
She was able to get up off the floor where she’d been placed to reform and walked towards where the walls narrowed the room into a hallway until she reached a glowing electrical barrier similar to those she had seen in holding cells for rebellious gems. Now that made her panic.
Her eyes darted carefully around the high ceilinged cell, trying to scramble some clue as to the purpose of her detainment. Finally, her line of sight landed on some shapes beyond the barrier. There was a crossroads of rooms, hers being one, another being a set of doors and two others being rooms identical to the one she was in.
There was a glow of light emitting from the room opposite her, another gem reforming.
As the second Ruby burst into existence, she languidly stretched her arms about her head, as if having been woken from a nap. As she did so, the Ruby across the way saw the glint of of a gem on the back of her hand. Before being able to notice anything else, she heard her name in a familiar tone of voice.
“Another Ruby? Were you protecting the Sapphire with me?” She responded.
She raised her gem imbedded bicep to the barrier as she saw her fellow solider approach.
“So you got proofed too?”
“Yeah.”
“Is the other one here?”
“There are three rooms, so probably.”
“The Sapphire was hurt then?”
“She’s gotta be; we’re gonna get shattered.” Ruby said with breezy pessimism.
There was a noise of disgruntled disbelief.
“No, dummy, we won’t. The palm-gem Ruby didn’t poof like we did, I felt it. She probably beat up the rebels all by herself. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were in that other room, captive.”
“Then why are we here too, genius?” The other retorted, sneering.
“Well we did poof… Though that Quartz was really strong, and she didn’t even have to unfuse us to make us poof… So, we did mess up and we’ll have to pay for it somehow.”
“I’m telling you, we’ll just be shattered.” Ruby said with a sigh.
At this point, the gem fisted Ruby was getting huffy, crossing her thick arms over her chest and squinting across the small stretch of hall and fixing her fellow battalion member with a look of petulant demand. She threw her hands out of her where they had been folded and asked defiantly:
“Oh yeah? And what makes you such an expert? Are you a lonsdaleite now? I bet you smash gems all day with your huge height and fists as big as meteors and pretty, flowing hair.”
The other Ruby came back with an intense glare and a sadistically indulgent grimace.
“This isn’t the first time I’ve been sent to handle traitors, you know,” she craned her neck as she leaned closer in, “There were more of us that time, we took down this quartz kindergarten that had started producing servant gems on the side and selling them.”
She chuckled nostalgically.
“So yeah, we got there and- you know the drill. We started to poof and bubble all the gems there, sending the criminals to the prison bay, the illegal produce to Yellow Diamond’s ship and breaking all the growing gems.”
Ruby licked her lips in nervous anticipation of the other’s story.
“And I was with this Citrine, right? We had destroyed all the gems in our vector, and then we find a Pearl farm.”
“Really?”
“Oh yeah. Obviously there are loads of failed attempts in there, but also two successfully growing Pearls. We really can’t believe it, so the Citrine says that she’ll take them straight to Yellow Diamond to show her allegiance. And when she’s there, on her knees at her throne, what does Yellow Diamond do?”
She asks this with performance, retreating into the storytelling to observe the Ruby opposite’s baited breath and widened eyes.
“She walks down the stairs slowly, everyone in the room is quiet, then she makes her way across the hall, puts a hand on her shoulder and the Citrine is trying to keep it together because Yellow Diamond’s hand is on her. Then, she stabs her finger through the gem on her clavicle and just- OW!”
Pale blue currents suddenly raced up her skin, as in getting so much into her story, Ruby had brought her arm up to lean on the barrier and accidentally shocked herself.
“Well? What happened next?!” The Ruby two rooms over yelled.
“C-can you not see that I am in PAIN, RUBY?!”
“Yeah but if they're gonna shatter us I wanna know why!”
“Everyone shocked, she t-turns away dramatically, crushes t-the Pearls underneath her big fancy D-Diamond boots. They're perfect and unreasonable. Moral of the story is we’re gonna get s-sHATTERED!”
Just on that cue, the large door to the hallway clanged open, eliciting a short, wavering shriek from both the Rubies as they leapt against the wall.
A pair of large Chalcedony jailers strode into their now familiar little crossroad, both carrying a smaller, limp, cerise figure. One let go of the arm she’d held and it drooped at the prisoner’s side, refusing to pick up her arm to focus on the continued and intent action of keeping her head bowed. The jailer did something out of the line of sight of the Rubies and then the electrical field was down and the new gem was forced up straight, then into the cell. She was slightly taller than the inquisitive gems who had quickly gotten over their shock, only a vague sense of danger lingering in their hesitancy to ask questions.
Due to her gem cut, a burgundy triangle, they guessed her to be a Topaz.
Both Rubies were eager to learn what they could about their situation from the newcomer, however, being collapsed in a bleak heap, staring at the ceiling for too long, then rolling over onto her side was not the best indicator of interest in conversation.
The Rubies decided not to bother her with a mutual shrug, non verbally conveying to wait before the inquisition started. They stuck to what, and who they knew by sitting down crossed legged and resuming a state of quiet loss of thought as they often did to pass the time on long journeys.