Chapter Text
“Hey, Pearl! I didn’t even see you over there!”
Greg tried to grin at the shape in the shadows beside their makeshift stage. At least, he was pretty sure that’s what it was, but it didn’t acknowledge him.
“Pretty sweet to watch, huh? Rose can really sing!”
No response.
He sighed, absently rubbing his temple like maybe that would fend off the headaches starting to sink into his skull. An unsettling large clump of his bangs caught on his finger and came off when he pulled his hand back. He grimaced and quickly shook it off his hand, clutching his guitar like a shield. He’d been coming here for months and the uneven geometry of the temple still set him on edge.
Greg was hesitant to approach the Gem. Of all of them, she seemed to like him the least.
Amethyst was easy to get along with, once you got over how her form occasionally twisted and fell apart; they’d quickly bonded over their love of awful 80′s horror. He’d even gotten the shuddering ten-foot-tall thing that looked like Siamese twins gone horribly wrong to give him a thumbs up at one point.
It’s not like he expected Rose’s friends to be normal, exactly, but once you got past their horrifying exteriors they were interesting and funny and apparently willing to tolerate his presence in their secret midst.
Except Pearl.
He hadn’t even realized she was one of Rose’s friends, at first. With the way she silently lurked at Rose’s side, walking around on all fours, Greg had figured she was some kind of weird alien dog. He found out she she was a ‘person’ by accident, walking in on her trying to graph out something that looked complicated and mathematical to Amethyst by projecting light out of the white gem on her forehead.
She never spoke - or, well, hologrammed? - anything to him, but the icy glare of her enormous black eyes spoke volumes. None of them were easy around him, at first. Rose explained their checkered past with humans, and he tried not to take it personally. Still, she seemed more immune to his charm than all the others.
But Rose and the others had already left, and he felt a little guilty leaving her sulking in the shadows alone.
“Look, uh… You should join us, sometime! We are kinda missing a bassist–” Greg began to offer, before his eyes fell on the fingerless knobs that comprised her ‘hands’, feeling foolish. Then a tad nervous thanks to the long, glimmering sickles attached to those wrists.
“We’d never hurt a human!” Rose had assured him several times, smiling tenderly, but still with rows of fangs, “We’ve devoted ourselves to protecting your planet. You have nothing to fear from us, I promise.”
Greg shouldered his guitar strap and tried to figure out the best way to offer a truce.
“I know people have probably treated you - all of you guys - pretty badly in the past, but I’m not like that! I think you’re awesome! Believe me, getting mixed up with Rose and the rest of you isway more interesting than what I had going on before–”
The pale creature’s pointed head finally twisted to look his way, and he perked up, ignoring the way the uncanny movement of her long neck sent a chill through his vital organs.
< ( You don’t get it, do you? )
Greg blinked, taking a moment to read her text bubble. Pearl’s eyelids lowered sideways over her insectile eyes, narrowing them to slits.
< ( You have no idea what she is. You think you know what you are to her? You... are a phase. An amusement. )
Greg scowled. “Hey, I know there’s a lot I don’t understand yet, but I’m really trying here!”
< ( What do you think she’s going to do when she gets bored of you? )
Greg’s scowl fell into a hurt, defensive grimace. “And why are you so sure that’s gonna happen? Sure looked like she was plenty entertained up there to me! What’s your problem with me, anyway?!”
Pearl let out a rattling wheeze. It was the only time he’d ever heard her make a sound, and it almost startled him out of his anger.
< ( She likes the way you sing for her. )
”Well - what?” That caught him offguard, for a moment.
Pearl wheezed again, a softer sound this time. Her knobby shoulders seemed to shake with a short, mute chuckle, before it trailed off into a sigh.
The white pupils of her eyes rolled over the globular black orbs and fixed him with a stare that meant more than he could decipher.
The mute creature lifted one foreleg, bringing a scythe around and delicately tapping the tip to her mouth-less, almost entirely featureless mask.
< ( She liked the way I sung for her, too. )